Infinity Squad (15 page)

"Now General," asked a cheerful but inoffensive Midwestern accent I recognized from last night, "which squad in particular killed the spider under which you're standing now?"

We all looked up to see a bathed, dressed, and professionally made-up Dakota leaning forward on her high heels to put her microphone in the General's face. Juan was beaming, trying to lean forward to catch her gaze, but Dakota was a pro: she only had eyes for Oakley right now. And he was eating her attention up.

"Well, Miss Rand," he started, taking a quick look down her body before answering, "this fearsome skull in particular was collected by Infinity Squad. But our other squads, most notably Immortal Squad right behind you, have actually lead the effort to-"

"And these other two skulls? With the bullet holes in them? Who collected those?"

Dakota was all bubbly charm and innocent interest. I knew what she was trying to do for Juan and possibly his grandmother back home watching TV, even as I could foresee the slow-motion train wreck she was leading us into.

Oakley frowned. "Well, those two as well were collected by Infinity Squad the other day. But the other squads have also-"

"And these two skulls here, the ones almost torn to pieces in the fighting?"

Now Oakley was scowling. "Those were
also
Infinity Squad."

The Immortal soldiers between us and her weren't all too happy either. And then one of the farmers snorted.

"Have ALL these trophies here been collected by just ONE squad?" he asked. "What do you have your other grunts doing- putting their thumbs up their asses all day?"

Now Oakley was red-faced. "ALL of our squads have been fighting tooth and nail for this planet, every day! In fact- Immortal squad- AT ATTENTION!"

First Lieutenant Hector jumped up and saluted in his purple uniform, a scowling tiger tattooed on half of his scowling face. "Sir!"

"Take your squad out NOW, and kill some spiders to put on these walls! Drop in the same valley that Infinity Squad did yesterday!"

"Sir, yes sir!"

Hector snapped at his Second Lieutenant and their squad rose as one, then started hustling towards the door. Shit shit shit.

I sprang to my feet and ran after them, past the farmers and the news team.

"In fact, here is the leader of Infinity Squad now, the brave Lieu-"

"Not now Dakota," I said, rushing past her to try and catch Hector.

I sprinted and caught him at the armory, handing out rifles and grenades to his men. "Hector, look-"

"Back OFF Forrest," he growled, and I did, just from the tone in his voice. "We don't need another Infinity Lieutenant tagging along on patrol. You know what happened to the last one." And then he wolf-grinned at me, daring me to hit him, alone in a hallway with ten of his killers.

And I almost did.

They had done something to Ridley. Maybe jammed his signal or killed him in the tank, I don't know. But I could see the happy malice in his face and I knew.

I should have LET him drop into that valley and get sliced to pieces by Red-Stripe and his hunting party. Except that would have led to 'balancing the scales' and a chilly reception the next time we wanted skulls.

"Yeah, I
do
know what happened," I said. "After you were killed on
first
contact, Ridley led your squad up the mountain like a hero, found a defensible position and then killed five spiders alone after your men cracked and suicide charged the enemy. He outclassed you all, that's what happened."

Now I was daring
him
to hit me. I actually saw one of his men unbuckle the knife strapped to his thigh.

That's when Ann-Marie crutched into view at the end of the hall and just stood, staring at us from a distance. After a second, Hector gave his man a subtle sign and the private slid his hand off the knife.

"Look, I just want to go home," I added. "So I want these spiders killed just like you do. Ridley taught me how to outthink the spiders, that's why we can bring so many skulls back. And if I teach you, we all get home faster. I don't CARE which squad has the most hanging up in the cafeteria."

Hector crossed his arms at me as his men continued arming themselves. He was listening.

"The spiders hunt by night," I continued, "and then return to their tree homes before the sun hits noon."

Their Intelligence Lieutenant and second in command, Samson, perked up, looking at me strangely. "Tree homes? I read that the spiders live in caves."

"Did you live in some strange part of Earth no one knows about?" Ann-Marie said, crutching closer. "Because in my part, spiders lived in webs. And here, the webs stretch between trees. If you find them sleeping in their webs during the day, they're pretty easily to kill."

Samson and Hector looked at each other. As much as they hated us, they were on the edge of believing. We did lead them in skulls five to zero.

I took up the story. "Their webs are north of the mountain where you patrolled with Ridley. That's what he went out to see before you got ambushed. No matter where Oakley wants us to patrol, we've been going to the north side of the mountain and picking off sleeping spiders for our skulls," I stated with absolute certainty.

"The tree webs are hard to see in the day," Butcher added. "They're really high up, and you have to look hard. If you want, I can show some satellite pics. When the spy sat comes back in range in about thirty minutes." God did I love her quick thinking sometimes.

Hector was still sneering at me, and shook his head. "We can't wait thirty minutes. Fine. North of the mountain. Tree webs. We'll drop of at G23 and head north. We'll kill some spiders and help you get back to your stupid homes faster."

They stormed off to the hangar and I finally exhaled, leaning against a wall for strength.

Butcher smiled, watching them go. "Now we just have to explain to Three-Spot where G23 is."

That was actually easier than I thought. Three-Spot was feeling better, and there were many landmarks along the flight plan that both humans and spiders recognized. Ann-Marie hung out in Flight Control, watching the auto-pilots dutifully report their exact position while appearing to chatter away on her cellphone to a girlfriend. On the other end of the phone, I unjumbled the code and pictured the landmarks in my head, so Three-Spot could tell Red-Stripe where the helicopters were in real time.

By the time Hector and his men had un-assed on the north side of the Night Hunting Grounds, Red-Stripe had hurried all the hunting parties home or into deep caves the Immortals wouldn't think to go exploring down. The idea of the Immortals walking around the jungle squinting up at trees for the next three hours made me smile.

Three-Spot thanked us for the information, but requested that they be given just a
little
more warning for the next patrol.

Which was a problem I was about to solve for good. While Steve hopped around on his mostly healed leg and showed the privates how to give someone stitches in the field, I wrote up my report for the valley mission.

A report which concluded that we had killed off all of the Hell-Spiders around that drop off point, and near the caves, and basically all through the valley itself. I didn't state the last point outright, but it was implied. Strongly implied. And then I delivered the report to TacOps personally.

Every Tactical Operations staff seems to be in the map-making business. Maps of the terrain. Of the upcoming weather. Of our forces. Their forces. Of past operations, planned future operations and even unplanned future ones, just in case. And this one was no different.

Digital screens lined the wall, showing weather or old operations. Future ops were on the analyst's screens at the desks. But the one I really cared about, the 'Master Map' of our forces versus theirs, was in the center of the room, on a low glowing table perfect for leaning over. The base and the farmland in its lee were blue, friendly. The entire rest of the planet was red. Red-Stripe's valley was the brightest red of all.

I went over to the desk of a slightly balding man in paunchy fatigues and glasses

"Forrest!" he said, dusting croissant crumbs off his belly and swiveling in his chair to offer his hand. "Don't see you in here much!"

I smiled and shook his hand. "Well Jonesy, that's because your maps never have those little clouds blowing wind or topless mermaids on rocks to make them more interesting for me."

"Wish we could Forrest, wish we could," Jonesy laughed. "What's up?"

I handed him my report and let him skim it while I talked. "Just did a drop in the valley yesterday. Killed a lot of spiders. A lot. We even hung around afterwards, but no more showed up. I'm pretty sure that valley's cleared."

Jonesy was the most affable analyst- that's why I picked him. He was so affable he couldn't directly disagree with me even though most of his data did. "Well... Forrest, you know... I'll let my supervisor know and we'll see..."

"It's blue, Jonesy. We cleared it. You gotta change it on the map or else Oakley's going to come storming in here yelling about why his patrols are going out to bright red areas and finding spit all to shoot at."

He drew his arms in and looked down, not wanting to challenge me, which is why he was an analyst and not a combat soldier. God, is this what the Immortal guys thought of me?

"Well," he hemmed, "it was cloudy last night, but the sats still picked up a lot of heat signatures in that valley..."

"They were passing through- going from these swamps here in the west to their sleeping webs north of the mountain."

"Even if spiders just pass through now and then, we have to leave it red..."

"Hell, Jonesy, by that logic the cafeteria should be red! We had a spider 'just pass through' there a few days ago! And he's still alive inside the base now!"

Jonesy squirmed in his seat, looking back and forth between my report and the Master Map. "You're sure it's completely clear?"

I smiled. "Completely."

"Okay," he said, then extended his wrist tattoo under the laser scanner next to the computer to prove it was him. It beeped and he typed an additional access code too quickly for me to see, hit a few toggles on some screens and the Master Map changed. Three-Spot's valley, the heart of all Hell-Spider activity near our base, was now a friendly shade of blue.

"Thanks, Jonesy. Oh, by the way, here." I pulled three stoppered test tubes of brown fluid from my pocket and handed them to him. "The Immortals have been giving out gifts from their still the last few days. We had a little left over." It was pure Kentucky bourbon from Zazlu's stash, but I wasn't going to tell him that. "Enjoy."

He unstoppered one tube and sniffed it, then his eyes lit up. "Thanks Forrest!"

"Hey, what are friends for?"

When I returned to the barracks, Steve was teaching the privates about burns and all the things you shouldn't do for them, like pull clothes off the burnt skin or pour water on it. I looked around and Ann-Marie wasn't there, hopefully out investigating satellite positions on the night of Ridley's death. Zazlu was there, however, and near the end of Steve's lesson, he indicated to me that it was time to give the squad The Talk.

We gathered all the privates around the tables, had them sit in chairs or bunks or on the floor, and then I explained to their eager young faces why we hadn't killed all those Hell-Spiders in the valley. I tried to make it very official sounding, like Zazlu and Butcher and I had been planning it on Ridley's orders for a while.

I also tried to make it convoluted, so that if any details did leak out to Oakley, they would be a confusing mish-mash of contradictions. I think the official story ended up being that I and Zazlu had worked out some sort of rudimentary sign language with the spiders, like they were smart gorillas, and that the spiders in the valley were snitching to us about where the
really
bad spiders lived, so that we could capture the spider leader for Oakley to kill himself. And we threw in the nonsense about the tree webs so that the Immortals could "drag" that out of some of the privates in the break room, eventually.

I hated lying to them, but I seemed to be doing a lot of that today, and I still thought it better than the alternatives. Zazlu stood next to me the entire time, my cloned second in command, agreeing to everything I said like it was gospel. When I was done, I crossed my arms, gave them a Lieutenant Look and asked, "Any questions?"

Only Juan started to raise his hand, saying, "Wait... that means when we....but then the bees..." I gave him a stronger Look and he lowered his hand.

"Good," I said.

***

Chapter Seven

We had a pretty nice day after that. Steve taught the privates enough to be EMTs in most American cities or the Dean of Medicine in any hospital in Detroit. Ann-Marie returned with information that all the reconnaissance satellites had been on the other side of the planet when Ridley was killed, so theory number two was dead and buried.