"Gimme a break." Stark checked his own ammunition, noting less than a half-dozen rounds remaining, and extrapolated that to the rest of the Squad. "Lieutenant Porter?"
"Stark!" The signal came through so clear that Porter must have somehow gotten himself onto this side of the ridge as well, maybe with the assistance of the dismounted APC driver who still had to be thirsting for revenge over her gunner's death. "If you ever take off without orders or Tactical again I'll, I'll—"
"Yessir. Lieutenant, I've got orders from Tactical to assault, but my Squad's out of ammo."
"So what? Follow orders for once! Just do what you're damn well told!"
"Lieutenant," Stark corrected, trying to project regretful innocence, "doctrine states exhaustion of ammunition requires holding in place until resupply."
"It does? Damn. Sergeant Reynolds?"
"Reynolds here," Vic's voice chimed back. Stark ducked his head in gratitude to hear she'd survived the assault as well.
"How's your ammunition?"
"One or two rounds left per weapon, Lieutenant."
"Sergeant Sanchez?" Porter called, sounding increasingly vexed.
"Yes, Lieutenant." Sanchez might have been reporting in a routine roll call. "I have no ammunition remaining."
"Whatever happened to fire discipline?" Porter demanded. "What about casualties?"
"Unknown," Stark declared coldly. "Casualties are being screened out at our level. We can't trust our Tactical picture."
"I—" Porter cut off his own reply, then spoke again as if with difficulty. "I'll report our status up the chain. Stand by for orders."
Stark, trying to fight off a giddiness born of unlooked-for survival, switched his own comms to talk to Reynolds directly. "Hey, Vic. What happened to all your ammo? You been in a battle or something?"
"Look who's talking. How many angels you got looking out for—? Oh, God."
"What?" Stark checked his HUD, spotting incoming through the mess of symbology.
Careless. It's not over. Too damn careless.
"Third Squad! Take cover!" Enemy heavy artillery had finally reacted. Massive rounds started dropping along the ridge, perhaps called in on their own position by the now-fleeing enemy infantry. Stark held on to the rocks beneath him as the lunar soil shuddered with impacts so heavy he seemed to be on the verge of launching into the empty atmosphere, wondering why the artillery had concentrated on this site, then cursing wildly as one of the reasons rumbled by.
"Third Squad, get out of here!" Stark bellowed. "Away from the armor, now!" Tanks were magnets for enemy fire, and there were three of the metal monsters scattered among Stark's own Squad's position. He rose and dashed to the right, downslope, taking only a dozen steps before his suit shrieked another warning. Stark dove for the ground again, forgetting where he was, forgetting to pull himself down instead of depending on gravity, falling with agonizing slowness until a column of fire blossomed close by and a great hand reached over and slapped him with shrapnel fingers.
Darkness without stars cleared abruptly, Stark's ears ringing with comms and suit alarms. Battered but somehow still intact, pitted with shrapnel scars, the armor had absorbed the impact without suffering a major rupture. "Third Squad. Follow me." He rose, limping as either his leg or the battle armor protested the movement, leading the way down off the ridge.
"Sarge?" someone called, voice distorted by screeches of static. "We gonna attack again, Sarge?"
Stark checked Tactical once more, glaring at the red digits demanding his Squad assail the enemy again immediately. "No."
"But our orders—"
"Screw our orders. We're digging in."
Stark stood awkwardly, helmet in hand in traditional deference to the dead as he stood in the field hospital. A medic who looked like he hadn't slept in a week stared bleary-eyed up at the Sergeant. Stark nodded to indicate the medical wards down the hall. "I'm here to see Gomez."
"Gomez?" The medic made an obvious effort to concentrate, typing with careful precision on the laptop before him. "Anita? Bay 25B."
"Thanks." Stark headed in the direction indicated, keeping his hands well clear of the unadorned white paint that sealed the rock walls here. Bay 25B held more of the same, a white curtain strung across the entrance, white ceiling, white sheets on a bed where Gomez lay with a white cast covering most of one leg. Even Gomez seemed whitened, drained of color by shock.
Stark sat and waited, patiently. Sleep was important, more important than his words, so he waited until Gomez finally stirred, blinking up at the whiteness all around with a dazed expression.
Gomez stared, unable to speak, until Stark finally quirked his lips in a small smile. "Guess I finally found out how to shut you up, eh, Anita?" He leaned forward to peer into her eyes. "You don't look too drugged up." Stark gestured toward her leg. "A heavy round went off right next to you, they tell me, close enough for the pressure wave to hit, but so close you were inside the shrapnel pattern. Concussion broke your leg and bruised the hell out you, but no suit penetration. Lucky."
Gomez drew in a breath, half sigh and half sob as the gesture apparently brought pain. She used one hand to raise the sheet covering her, wincing at the sight of one side of her body painted in patterns of purplish-black, which seemed doubly awful amid the whiteness all around. "Damn. Thought I was dead." Gomez winced, looking embarrassed at speaking so frankly to her Sergeant.
"We all ought to be," Stark agreed.
"You told us to follow you," Gomez pointed out.
"Yeah, I did. Damn fool stunt, but I didn't think we had any other choice."
"Yeah, well, you did good, Sarge," Gomez offered. "Saved our butts."
"For now, yeah, maybe I did."
"What's going on out there right now?"
"Digging in," Stark stated. "Everybody's going deep, laying minefields, building bunkers. There's talk of us trying to retake the areas we lost. Seems the civ politicians still want to claim the whole Moon. They got one helluva appetite for territory."
"Great. What about the other side? They willing to let us?"
"Nah. The enemy seems to still be interested in pushing us off the Moon completely. They're tired of getting kicked around. Fighting all-out back on Earth would be too dangerous, but up here they're willing to face off with us."
"Man," Gomez noted ruefully, "looks like everybody's drawn a line in the dirt."
"That's right, and we're sitting right on top of that line. Looks like it's going to be a long war."
"Lucky us." Gomez grinned. "Hey, I'm alive."
"Yeah, lucky." Stark took a deep breath, avoiding Gomez's eyes. "You've been doing good lately. Real good. Reliable. Sharp. Looking out for other grunts, not just yourself."
She blushed and looked away, unable to deal with the praise. "Just doing what I'm supposed to. You always said we need to look out for each other, Sarge."
Stark leaned back, now gazing at her steadily. "You've been field-promoted to Corporal. Congratulations."
Gomez stared back at him, alarmed. "Corporal? Sarge, I'm happy as a Private. I'm no Corporal. No, thanks."
"That wasn't an offer, so you don't get to refuse it. We need a new Corporal," Stark added bluntly, "and you'll be a good one."
It took a moment to sink in, then Gomez's face fell as the meaning came clear. "Pablo? He was hit, too?"
"Hit, yeah." Stark kept his face impassive, his words flat. "They were able to reconstruct what happened from the vid feed. One of the heavy rounds they were throwing at us, probably a two-hundred-millimeter, hit him dead on. You and I, we had good luck. He had bad. They found enough of him to do a DNA match, but not much more."
"Damn," Gomez whispered, blinking rapidly. "Pablo, he always said he was scared of the body bags, scared of being fastened in one while he was still alive. Funny, huh? All the things we got to worry about, and that's what scared him. Now he won't need one, not scattered in a million pieces across . . . where was it? That last fight?"
"The Sea of Tranquility," Stark replied. "Near it, anyway."
Gomez nodded. "The tanks that saved us, came over the ridge, they also attracted the fire that killed Pablo?"
"Probably. My fault. I should've realized quicker, gotten us moving faster."
"Nah, Sarge. We needed those tanks, but nothing ever comes free or easy, right?"
"Right."
"We lose anybody else?"
"Hector's gone, nailed during that barrage before we attacked, and Carter got her head blown off, maybe before the enemy weapon's pits got taken out. Chen's wounded, took a round in his left hip, but the docs have replaced the joint and he'll heal up fine." Funny thing, the battle armor protected pretty well, which meant that when something did get through, it was likely to be lethal. Fewer wounded. A higher percentage of dead. Sort of a good deal.
Gomez nodded, face stricken. "Could've been worse. A lot worse."
"Yeah, could've been." Stark stood, feeling heavily burdened despite the light pull of Luna. "I'll leave. You gotta rest. Just wanted to be here when you woke." He turned, then looked back before he left. "Real sorry about Juan Hector, and Susan Carter, and Pablo. I know you were friends. Pablo was my friend, too, and a damn fine Corporal. Would have made a good Sergeant someday."
I should've done better. Somehow.
He left the last unspoken, the thought lying across his shoulders like an invisible burden.
Gomez nodded, wordless once more, as Stark left. The white ceilings, walls, and curtains spoke of peace and healing in the hushed silence of the medical ward, yet as Stark walked down the hall, the chaos of bygone battles raged in his mind, and pain filled him.
The news swept through the front line, leaping from bunker to bunker like a swift, dark messenger heralding pain and loss. "Popularity ratings on the war are down, big time."
Stark cursed softly, his face lit in sharp patterns of light and shadow by the glow of the comm screen in the darkened bunker. Predawn calls were never pleasant, but some were worse than others. "Five points down is one hell of a big drop."
"Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings." Vic Reynolds didn't look any happier than Stark felt.
Stark shook his head tiredly, shaking off the last traces of sleep. Each of the past few years had seemed to add a double ration of age, as if the gravity up here were twice that of Earth instead of a small fraction. Earth. A place so physically and psychologically distant they simply called it "The World" now. "Real bad, Vic. Why hasn't word of this spread around official? Vid ratings aren't classified."
"Because official ratings aren't out, but the brass got advance intelligence."
"Good to know those apes in Intelligence do something with their time, even if it is just watching the vid." Stark closed his eyes briefly, thinking through the implications. "Thanks for spreading the word fast, Vic. There's only one way headquarters will think of for getting the ratings back up."
Vic nodded, her expression now matching that of someone who had bitten into a very foul-tasting object. "Something dramatic." Her image glanced to the side as someone passed her cube over in the command bunker, a momentary shadow tending an unknown midnight errand, then focused back on Stark. "Brass likes to plan things to death, usually."
"Uh-huh. And when the enemy sees the overnights they'll know we'll have to do something to try to boost the ratings, so they'll go to full alert." Stark shook his head again, this time wearily. After years of military and diplomatic stalemate in the lunar war, the patterns of action were so well set that they almost matched the predictability of Earthrise. "Yeah, Vic, headquarters will grind out a plan just after the enemy goes to full alert, so anything we try will be real dramatic and real dangerous. Appreciate the heads-up, though. Maybe for once headquarters will give us a pleasant surprise."
"Want to bet any money on that?"
"No. You tell the Lieutenant yet?" The way it was supposed to work was Lieutenants got the word from up their chain of command and passed it on down to their Sergeants. In practice, the Sergeants heard about anything important first through their own grapevine, given that they trusted neither their Lieutenants nor their chain of command.
Reynolds quirked a humorless smile. "No, nothing there. Kilroy's still too new to have a feel for things up the chain of command, or good contacts. She'll be fat, dumb, and happy until official orders come down." Their last Lieutenant had headed back to the World—Earth—only a couple of weeks before, after sliding through the usual six-month officer tour without committing any particularly horrible mistakes. Stark already had trouble remembering that last Lieutenant's name. The new Lieutenant's real name was Conroy, but the Sergeants only called her that to her face and before the troops. Kilroy had been an inevitable and irresistible nickname for an Earthworm new to the front. Maybe, if the Lieutenant did a good enough job, the Sergeants would call her Conroy in private before her six months were up. Maybe. Nothing came to you up here without earning it. "Sweet dreams, Ethan," Vic added.
"Thanks a lot. You, too." The screen blanked, leaving Stark with the darkness and a large stack of misgivings. There had been plenty of similar events during the past few years, but something about this one felt especially ominous. By no means a superstitious man, Stark still had come to trust his own premonitions for better or for worse.
The rest of the night passed slowly. Sleep wasn't possible anymore, not after Reynolds' warning. Stark thought, running through the sector of the front his Squad faced, visualizing enemy strongpoints that any attack might have to bypass or, Heaven forbid, assault.
Now, there's a way to boost ratings. Watch our brave soldiers prove once again that, even inside battle armor, flesh and blood lose big time against entrenched heavy weapons.
The stars moved and Stark waited, but no orders came. Eventually, humanity's time declared morning's arrival, in a place where the concept had no meaning otherwise. The event was trumpeted by a brief enemy artillery barrage, whose shells sailed overhead to die in sudden glory against the ebony lunar sky as American defenses sought them out, or fell to detonate in soundless fury, the tremors of their detonations coming as brief vibrations against the rock into which Stark's bunker had been dug.