They Taught Us Wrong Read online

  They Taught Us Wrong

  The Future Night Stalkers

  M. L. Buchman

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  Mare Tranquillitatis my ass!

  Go ahead. Thrash some Duster bastard over Luna’s northeastern Nearside. Make him eat death slow and painful.

  Then, after you’ve won, after his ass is going down hard, his drive goes nova. It kicks out an electro-magnetic pulse so hard that it cooks your ship, too. You dump out two klicks up and watch your ship punch a new crater close beside his.

  See how you feel about that shit.

  Scary as hell ride down. The EMP had cooked my suit’s electronics as well. I had to handle the landing retros manually. Ran out of fuel a few dozen meters up—damn glad this was Luna grav and not Earth’s unforgiving full-g. Felt the leg go when I hit, but I was down and the suit was intact for all the good it did me.

  Welcome to the fucking Sea of Tranquility.

  The Duster’s ship had gone as bright as a second sun, before it piled into the inside cliff face of Cauchy Crater, less than a dozen klicks away. Instead of acting like a beacon shouting “Come save my ass,” the crater had funneled all that light into a beam that was crossing nobody’s path—not Earth, not some off-track freighter. Like a rifle shot due north, it was going straight up. Some dipwad alien scientist sitting on the North Star four hundred years from now might scratch himself and wonder what that tiny fleck of brightness could be, but I wasn’t counting on it.

  As if the busted leg hadn’t just stamped ‘Paid’ on my ticket, my Army training kicked in and I checked my suit. Dead. H2 and oxy recyc had enough mechanical fail-safes to give me something to drink and breath for now. All I could do was hope the suit blocked the rads of the reactor burst, because the dosimeter readout had cooked along with the rest of my electronics. No dosimeter, no radio, no readouts on how much longer I’d have before even the recyc couldn’t save me. Not even a beacon in case someone did come looking.

  I unclipped my RACR and fired a shot at a likely rock. The Recoilless Army Combat Rifle didn’t recoil, but it didn’t shatter the rock either. Three kilos of dead plastic and fried electronics.

  I slammed a hypo through my suit leg, trying not to scream at the jarring to my broken bone. The cold clarity of the meds washed through me and the limb went blessedly numb.

  The Army taught us a whole lot about how to survive in hard places. Zero atmo and the one-sixth g of Luna’s surface wasn’t anything new in the manual. Sitting in a white-gray camo suit at the bottom of a three-klick deep crater four hundred kilometers from the next nearest piece of humanity without even a signal flare? Not so much.

  Walking that distance was in range, if my leg hadn’t decided to take leave without permission. Didn’t really matter; without the nav gear, I didn’t stand a chance of finding a specific point four hundred klicks away. There wasn’t shit at the old Apollo 17 site anyway except scrap—Chinese had gotten pissed half a century back, when there was still a China, and dropped a ten-thousand kilo shrapnel head right at ground zero. Shock-wave munitions—concussers—didn’t work in zero atmo, but the shrap-heads never left anything bigger than a boot sole behind, not for a long way round. The Chinese blew out the museum, the historic lander and buggy, and about three hundred tourists—all done back before this shit war when there were still tourists.

  Army trainers had pounded a lot into my thick skull. Not a single piece of which was going to salvage this screwed-up mess. No impossible engineering feat sprouting from my grunt brain. No “just lean into the fucking traces, man, and grunt it out” solution. Even in one-sixth g I wasn’t going to hop one-legged for four hundred kilometers to nowhere. No miracles—not out here.

  I was dead; I knew that. But I was no cracker. I’d keep my helmet closed and hold on for every second I had.

  Army did a whole lot of mental training. Will to survive was high on their list. But how to turn fear into something useful was the big one—useful to them anyway.

  You’ll be afraid. Don’t care who you are, you’ll be shitting your pants when you’re in it.

  A lot they knew. Why didn’t the psychs ever actually fly a mission? Too goddamn scared was my guess.

  They didn’t get that fear came before the mission. During the fight, there was only time for adrenaline and survival.

  You’ve got to turn that fear. Turn it to anger! Turn it to rage! Turn it to winning the battle!

  Fuckin’ psychs.

  We did what they told us. Afraid of something? Attack it! Except the fear came before the mission—we turned it anyway. We’d beat on each other in the ready room, throwing “friendly” punches that would level a grunt if they weren’t as wound up on adrenaline as the next jock. We’d start the flight with bruises purpling and fear-eating grins plastered on our faces. Yeah, we had the old turn-fear-into-rage routine nailed.

  Fear when you went down was different kind of thing. I’d beaten the odds about three hundred-to-one by surviving. Couldn’t get that kind of help in a poker game, but I had the luck now for all the good it was doing.

  No way to rescue myself and no one looking for me here.

  Zara had eaten it at the far end of Mare Fecunditatis—Sea of Fertility. Shit! She’d been the best partner I’d ever had in flight or in the sack. New Army thinking—fighting partners who were also fucking partners.

  Heightened wingman bond. Subjects more likely to go to extreme measures to defend their sleep mate.

  “Sleep mate.” Lame-ass psychs—like that even began to cover it.

  Zara had rocked. Better than anyone, even before the Army and their psychs got their claws in me. Zara and I had talked about rooting down together when our tours were up. Meant it, too. It hadn’t been some feebs’ pillow talk; we’d meant it right down to our boots.

  Yeah, stamp ‘Paid’ on that one, too.

  You want terror, you fuckin’ psychs? Not fear, but unholy, mind-numbing, shit-in-your-suit terror? You watch a renegade Duster zero in on your wingmate when your thrust vector is going the other way and there isn’t squat you can do about it. That’ll teach you terror.

  But I’d turned it. Yes I did. I turned that terror into one flaming, searing, ball-busting tower of pissed-as-hell fighter-jock rage. Rather than just killing him and going home alive, I took that Duster apart one piece at a time. I moved in close and hurt him and kept on hurting him. No kill—just pain.

  When I finally let the bastard die—when he’d crisscrossed a thousand kilometers of Luna trying to get away but knowing he was going to burn in hell—I got close enough to see him right through his canopy. Almost close enough to hear his final scream despite the gap of empty space between us.

  But he’d kept that one last trick up his sleeve.

  When his engine blew, it fucking went EMP, cooking all my circuits.

  And down I went, too.

  I tried to spot the new craters our two ships had punched—side-by-side holes a kilometer up Cauchy’s side.

  Not even a hint. It was night and only cold Earthshine lit that section of crater wall. Earthshine would never reach me here at the bottom of Cauchy’s icy deep. Even sunrise—still a week away—would never reach me.

  The ships had hit in the steepest part of the rim’s cliff. They’d probably triggered a rockfall to bury any trace. Only evidence left was me.

  Some day, a thousand years from now, some geologist would stumble on my camouflaged suit—almost the same color as the soil and lightly dusted with micrometeorites. He’d have to look up my suit design in some historical database to figure out what century I’d been fucked by. My personal recorder was cooked, so no record there. No pad or pen, so I couldn’t even leave him a goddamn note. I considered scrabbling a long message in the Lunar dust; it would last for centuries.

  Then, like some lovesick recruit, I simply scribed two first names—mine and Zara’s. It wouldn’t mean anything to anyone but me, but I liked seeing it there.

  She’d taught me joy in war. She’d trained me, far more thoroughly than the psychs, that there were emotions other than fear and rage—even Army victory celebrations weren’t joy; they were rage thinly disguised as triumph.

  More important than joy, Zara had taught me hope. Hope of one day seeing a girl with her long hair floating behind as she raced down the corridors of Tycho City. Of a boy with her mother’s light eyes watching a ball bounce in one-sixth g and seeing nothing strange because he’d never been to a full-g planet.

  The recyc ran out. I felt the tightness growing in my chest. Oxy-dep setting in. I knew my training. From when I could truly feel it—not some fear or panic reaction, but really feel it—I would have only moments before it killed me. They’d learned that the slow bleed-out of oxygen depravation led to unpredictable panic attacks, bad news in armed soldiers with hell-bent rage burning in their guts. So the recyc ran at a hundred percent until it was gone. The air in the suit was good for three more thinning breaths, maybe four, then I’m done.

  One final look at the stars Zara and I had dreamed beneath.

  Lying here in my last moments, I learned a new fear.

  One that t
he goddamn psychs would never be able to understand no matter how I tried to explain. It wasn’t a fear born of rage or vengeance or honor. It was born of something they could never know—weren’t capable of knowing. Weren’t worthy of.

  My fear, Zara? The one thing that shrivels me? The one thing I can’t turn into soothing, familiar rage?

  It’s that the woman who taught me to love so deeply might not be there waiting for me when I cross over.

  The Nara Reaction (excerpt)

  A Tale of the Apocalypse

  Bermuda 2082

  “So, I’m dead, am I?”

  It was perfect. James Wirden’s voice started with all the power one would expect from the World Premier, but it ended the most delicious twist of uncertainty. Bryce looked down at the nearly empty champagne glass in James’ hand.

  “Yes, sad for you, but true. Poisoned, if you must know. By me.”

  “And you dare to tell me this?” Such indignation from such a small man. He turned toward the guards, but Bryce clamped a friendly hand upon his shoulder to belay the movement. Not that it mattered, all of the guards along the line of French doors were his hand-picked staff. The bright lights from within cast their tall shadows across the stone terrace pushing back the edge of the Bermudan night. His men would stop any stragglers from the party, not that any would dare interrupt when the Premier and his mighty right-hand man were in conference. But no point in misplacing trust when one staged a coup.

  “One of the many things you never properly appreciated, James, is the wonders of modern genetics. There is a tiny little code-alterer running through your system even as we speak. Your genetic code is even now shifting at an exquisitely subtle level. When you have a massive stroke in three days, none shall grieve as much as your lieutenant. None shall take power with as much trepidation as your Right Hand.” A nickname Bryce had carefully cultivated for years. Who better to be named to power than the man who knew the Premier’s every intent?

  The man struggled against his grasp just as pointlessly as a worm evading a short future pithed upon the hook that would send it into the fish’s belly. Bryce took the champagne glass from James’ nerveless hand and tipped the dregs over the broad stone seawall to splash into the eager waves below. Soon, he promised them, soon you may swallow this useless chattel as well.

  The Premier’s pale face twisted in such pain that for a moment Bryce feared the stroke would come too soon. He didn’t have everything in place yet. Of course, he could compensate, but having the man die in his arms would not look good at all to the World Economic Council.

  “You must remember to breathe, my good leader. Besides, in another few minutes you will remember none of this. Another wonder of genetics research you so despise is the revelation of how memories are stored. Your memory of these moments will shortly be erased. And when you pass on in three day’s time, your Right Hand will be there, the Premier-to-be, Bryce Randall Stevens, Sr.”

  James patted at the beads of sweat on his brow with his small hand as he looked up at Bryce. He always backed up when they spoke so that he didn’t have to crane his neck, but Bryce kept him in his place this time. The music surged through the open doors onto the broad patio. The orchestra had come back precisely on schedule drawing everyone’s attention inward. He didn’t want any to think his conversation with the Premier took overlong if the drug didn’t take effect as planned. Of course he knew it would, it had worked perfectly on the man who’d engineered it for him.

  “Do you hate me so?”

  “Stupid man, what does hate have to do with anything? You’re weak, James. Always were. If I hadn’t pulled every single string over the last four decades, Parvati and her temple of democratic fairness would still be in power. I have used you, because you are far more presentable than I. No one expects a small, rotund man to be vicious. Therefore, there were no curious eyes as I did what you were too weak to do behind the scenes. But now you are beginning to interfere. You should never have nuked Auckland.”

  The little man sputtered. “I had to Bryce. You and your damned gene labs. There is a reason we outlawed that horrible knowledge. We did it. You and I. Together. When I found you were dabbling in that dark road to hell, of course I had to blow it out of existence.”

  “Too little, too late, James. Do you think I’d have let you drop those bombs if I wasn’t ready? All you did for me was a little convenient housecleaning.” Actually he’d barely gotten the chief scientists and the data clear. Less than an hour warning had let him salvage only the most essential elements. But the continuing research on the uses of the Second Human Genome Mapping Project lived on, even if the researchers families hadn’t. And he’d gotten to look like the hero to the ones he had saved.

  The blow of his failure took the fight out of the Premier. Bryce gave James’ shoulder a jovial shake in show for any who might be watching.

  “On December 24th, three days after this birthday party, lovingly thrown by your second-in-command, I shall mourn at your side. I shall cancel Christmas throughout the planet. It shall be a splendid funeral. And by the New Year, the World Economic Council will place me in command and then things shall really start to move.”

  James’ little eyes squinted up at him for a long moment before turning to look out at the restless sea. He hung onto the rough seawall to keep from being toppled by the gentle night breeze and stared toward the dark waves.

  “They will suspect you.”

  “There will be no proof. The last of the drug has just been dribbled into the sea. The change to your genetic code has already been registered in your electronic medical records, by a fine hacker who has, alas, suffered a memory loss due to some bad fish he ate. Very bad fish. You don’t maintain paper files, so I’m safe.”

  Bryce leaned down to watch his face, but James was turned toward the night and he was totally in shadow. There was a long hesitation, then a twitch of his shoulders that Bryce could feel beneath his hand.

  “But I do. I was most careful.”

  Not careful enough, old friend. He knew when James’ was lying. It was for this that Bryce had risked telling him of his own death. The man was so naive that he hadn’t banked hard copies against his future. So, Bryce’s plan was going to go off without a hitch.

  The Premier hung his head and his voice was a mere whisper against the susurration of the surf on the rocky cliffs below.

  “What about my wife?”

  Bryce glanced back to the surging dance floor. What an odd final question to ask before certain death. Given a chance, what would be his last request? Not about some woman, that was for certain. Though if ever there was one…

  Even through the crowd Celia Wirden stood out. Her fountain of white-blond hair and the slender body beneath, shimmeringly not revealed by her gown of midnight-blue silk, did everything to distract from the brilliant mind that hid behind those green eyes.

  The three of them had plotted together since they were young. They had thrown Parvati out of power and when it came time to choose, Bryce had forced the milquetoast James to puppet the Premiership for him. And the Premier needed a First Lady. A fine and elegant First Lady she had made. Perhaps it was time to take that gift back.

  “She’ll be taken care of, James. You don’t need to fear for that.”

  James’ shoulders squared slowly as the man looked a last time at the dark Atlantic. He took up his empty champagne glass from the seawall.

  “Well, old friend. Seems that I am dry. Shall we go get a refill?”

  “I am right beside you to the end of your days, James.”

  “Long may that be.”

  Bryce completed their old code, “Long indeed.”

  At the French doors, he checked James one last time. But he was filled with a bonhomie that even the finest politician couldn’t invent. When he refilled the same glass and drank from it, Bryce knew the memory of the last few minutes was safely gone.

  James was wrapped up into the flow of the crowd as Bryce waited upon the threshold. The broad squares of alternating black and white marble spread across the room before him like a grand chess board. The sycophants rushed to make what they could of the moment, shuffling like mad pawns, the tuxedoed livery of the government descended upon the wrong man. The short stature of the largest pawn of them all disappeared from view. Bryce would keep a close eye upon him, but not too close. Nothing must seem out of the ordinary.