No Man's Land Read online

  Cassie said aloud, “Yeah, but I wanted to.”

  She pushed her conscience to the back of her mind. For now, she had to concentrate on surviving. Her head hurt worse than ever.

  The transport was still moving. Probably had a destination programmed in. She didn’t think she wanted to go where it was headed. And she needed to get rid of the corpse. She pushed him up against the transport’s back door, and then crawled into the front compartment.

  It took her a couple of minutes of fumbling around to find the back door controls, put them on open, hit the override when it reminded her they were moving. A quick look back told her the corpse had fallen out. She managed to shut the door, and tried to call up her position. The mapping all ran together. She couldn’t find any lights. Her vision was getting blurry.

  Change the coordinates, her brain urged her. She put in new ones at random, felt the transport lurch to a stop, turn around, and start back in the other direction. Then she passed out again.

  She wasn’t cold. That was the first thing that registered. The second was that someone was washing her face with warm water. Cassie opened her eyes immediately and grabbed the wrist of whoever was washing her. A voice gave a little cry. “Please. I’m only trying to help you.”

  Her eyes focused, and she looked into the face of a young girl—maybe sixteen. The girl’s face was contorted with pain. It took Cassie another couple of seconds to realize she was grabbing too hard. She released the wrist, said “Sorry” and then “Thank you.”

  The girl rubbed her wrist, then started washing Cassie’s face again. Cassie lay there. She had no idea where she was or who this girl might be, but it felt so good to be taken care of. After a few minutes she realized that she was lying on a couple of blankets on the ground, and that a powered one had been put over her. That’s why she was so blessedly warm.

  Over to her right she could just make out the mag-lev transport. It had crashed into the trees that lined the road. ‘Those must have been some coordinates,’ Cassie thought.

  The girl had finished washing her face. Now she was combing through Cassie’s hair, looking for the source of the blood.

  Cassie winced, involuntarily inhaled. The girl had found the wound. She picked up a tube, squeezed out something, began to rub it on the spot. Cassie winced again; some kind of disinfectant. She willed herself to hold still while the girl finished the job.

  “Thanks,” Cassie said. “You’re good at that.”

  “We’ve had practice,” she said. “What happened?”

  “I got shot.”

  The girl said, “I can tell. But where are the rest of your people? You’re one of the offworlders, aren’t you? My mother said you must be from offworld, because you were so cold. Though that could have been shock, I guess.”

  “Yeah. I’m part of the peacekeeping force. Trying to keep you people from killing each other.”

  “You’re not doing a very good job,” the girl said.

  A woman who had just walked up behind her said, sharply, “Myra.”

  “No, she’s right,” Cassie said. “We’re not doing a good job at all.”

  The woman knelt down beside her. She held a steaming cup. “Soup.”

  Cassie took the cup in hands that surprised her by shaking, had a sip. “Thank you. Decent of you to take care of me.”

  The woman looked a little uncomfortable. “We found your truck. We ...we needed some supplies.”

  Cassie nodded. She looked at the woman, guessed that she might be forty or so. Dark-skinned. Graying hair. Probably Myra’s mother. The girl was dark-complected too. She took another sip of the soup, and looked around. Several other people milled about. Mostly women,. The few males Cassie saw looked young. All of them looked tired.

  Makeshift shelters had been set up. Over by the transport, someone was going through supply boxes, sorting items out into piles. Refugees, Cassie thought.

  “We couldn’t take your stuff and not help you,” Myra said. Her mother gave her a look.

  Cassie had the feeling there’d been an argument about helping her. “About the stuff, it’s okay, you taking it.” Though of course, it was nothing of the sort. They’d been given specific orders: no assistance to refugees. Official policy said people should be discouraged from leaving their homes. Camps had been set up for those who made it despite the lack of help.

  Still, even if she’d liked the order, this was neither the time nor the place to follow it. She needed these people. Her head still ached badly. Her last memory was setting coordinates on the transport; she didn’t recall the crash at all. “It’s okay,” she said again and drank the rest of the soup. She set the cup down, snuggled back down under the blankets. More sleep would be nice.

  “Don’t do that,” said Myra sharply.

  Cassie opened her eyes wide, stared at the girl.

  “Head injury. You need to stay awake.”

  Cassie sat back up. “Any coffee in those supplies?”

  Coffee helped. Cassie got up, and walked over to the transport. The refugees had left the skels and weapons in the back. She’d have gone for the weapons before the food, if she’d been in their shoes.

  Her skel was in the pile, blood still on the headpiece. Suspecting that the circuitry was damaged, she scavenged a whole headpiece from one of the others, careful to avoid looking at the name plate. Sooner or later she’d have to see whose skels were in that pile, which of her people were dead. But not yet.

  Blood remained on the back door of the transport, too. Killing the rebel was a fuzzy memory. She wasn’t ready to remember that either. She wondered what the refugees had made of the blood.

  Cassie pulled on the skel, cranked the heat up to high, and grabbed a weapons vest from the other pile. Pulling the headpiece into place, she brought up the light controls. Now she could actually see. Her hands ran through systems check automatically. She touched the control for long-range comm; time to call someone to get her out of here. But she hesitated.

  She owed these people. If she called in medevac, they’d lift her out, and they’d take the supplies. And turn the refugees back. Policy. She didn’t want to do that to them. They could have left her in the transport, just taken the supplies. Exposure would have killed her. Her hand dropped away. She’d think about it later.

  The refugees gave her a wary eye as she walked back through the group in the skel. Myra and another young girl came up to her. The second girl seemed to be about the same age as Myra, but looked completely different: fair and blonde, and about a head shorter. She stared at the skel. “You really a soldier?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Cassie said. The thought made her tired again.

  “But you’re a woman,” she said, making it more of a question than a statement.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “I want to be a soldier, but everybody tells me I can’t because I’m a girl.”

  “Hush,” Myra said.

  Cassie said, “Well, everybody’s wrong. Lots of women soldiers out there. Nothing unusual about it.”

  “But not here, not on Titan,” Myra said. “Jobs have been opened up to women in the last twenty years or so, but not in the army.”

  “Well, Titan’s kind of unusual that way. Someone told me it’s because in the first few years of settlement your population was dropping, and you needed women to have as many children as possible.” Though she’d never understood Bobby’s explanation of why they hadn’t just used in vitro methods—another one of those religious things she didn’t get.

  The thought of Bobby hurt. She wondered if he knew she was missing, wondered what he thought. Wondered if he even cared.

  “But now it’s different,” Cassie said. “Now your population is stable; no need to protect women for childbearing.”

  “That’s not what the rebels say,” Myra said. She was scowling. “They say women shouldn’t even be in the schools. That’s why we’re trying to get to government territory. My mother says we aren’t going to go back to the dark ages with those pe
ople.”

  “I’m going to become a soldier like you, and go back and kill those bastards,” the other girl said.

  “Emilie!” Myra’s voice was shocked. She put a firm hand on the girl’s shoulder.

  “I am.” Emilie brushed the hand off, and turned and ran.

  Myra said to Cassie. “The rebels killed her father and brother. She’s been wild to get back at them ever since.”

  “I can understand that,” Cassie said. Oh, too well could she understand. “But you. What do you want to be? A doctor maybe—you seem to have medical skills.”

  Myra shook her head. “A biologist. I want to work on the genemods, help open up the other continent.”

  It struck a chord, somewhere deep in Cassie’s soul. She’d wanted to be a biologist once. Her mother had been a biologist who studied the interrelationship of native bacteria and genemodded plant life on Ceres. At twelve, Cassie’d wanted to grow up to be just like her mother.

  Her mother had died giving her a chance to run away. And since then no one had asked Cassie what she wanted to be. The Combined Forces had plucked her and others like her out of the refugee camp on Luna. Ceresian survivors made good soldiers.

  She wondered what she’d say now if anyone asked her what she wanted to be.

  Cassie knew she wasn’t going to call for a medevac. Oh, hell. The GPS locator. Automatic in her skel. She muttered instructions into the skel’s comp. With luck no one had locked in on her yet.

  People were packing things up, piling them in wheeled carts. Wheeled carts! She walked up to Myra’s mother, who seemed to be one of the group leaders. “Pulling out?”

  “Yes. Lots of ground to cover. You coming with us?”

  “If you’ll let me.”

  “We might need a soldier. If you’ll fight for us.”

  “I’ll fight for you.” Now when had she made that decision? “The weapons and skels—in the transport. You should take them, too.”

  Now she’d crossed the line. Trading food and medicine for first aid might be excused as an emergency situation; giving refugees weapons would not. Stupid. It would destroy her career if she got caught.

  “We don’t know how to use them.”

  They didn’t even want them. All she had to do was say okay, let it go.

  But her mind wouldn’t let her. It kept playing back images of her own escape off of Ceres, pictures of a makeshift group of people—mostly children—making their way among bombed-out ruins. Not all of them had made it.

  “I’ll teach you. The skel will work as body armor, protect you. And the scan will show what else is out there. Might get us past any rebel patrols.” She could help them avoid the Combined Forces checkpoints, too. At least without a vehicle they could cut through the forest. Though if they got too close to a point, they’d show up on scan.

  A moment of hesitation, then a nod.

  There were eleven skels, but several had been badly damaged. A little scavenging produced eight working ones. Now Cassie couldn’t avoid seeing the names. The pain of loss was quick, sharp, almost physical.

  And just as quickly she turned it into anger. Her family had died on Ceres; her soldiers had died; but these people would survive. She clenched a fist; swore an oath to herself.

  Perhaps thirty seconds passed as she did this. No one seemed to notice, except Myra. That girl already knows too much, Cassie thought.

  Not counting the smaller kids there were fourteen refugees. She got eight of them to agree to wear the skels, Emilie and Myra foremost. Cassie disabled the locators as she helped the volunteers put the skels on and lock on the weapons belts.

  As the refugees walked along, she moved up and down the group, giving basic lessons. She set weapons to sim mode, so everyone could practice looking at a target to lock it, and then fire. Sim told you when it hit. She also showed them how to switch to fully powered. If any trouble came up, it would happen quick.

  She only showed them the energy weapons. Projectiles required more skill and the explosives were too damned dangerous in inexperienced hands. Emilie and Myra took to them eagerly, as did one other young women and a couple of teen-aged boys. The older women seemed uncomfortable with the idea of shooting anyone.

  Cassie taught Myra and Emilie the rudiments of scan, and put them at the front. Skel scan would only read about five klicks ahead, but that was better than nothing. The first three times they called her over—excited about something they’d seen—turned out to be false alarms. It occurred to Cassie that she’d spent three months in basic, learning how to manage her skel and weapons. How could she expect these girls to get it in a few hours?

  But the fourth time turned up something. A vehicle. Cassie read her own scan. Five people. Weapons. Judging by the maps pulled up on one of the refugees’ comps, they hadn’t crossed out of rebel-held territory yet. Cassie didn’t completely trust the maps, but pulling up her own would require the GPS.

  “Probably rebels,” Cassie said. “That’s the most logical assumption, anyway. Figure they’re running scan. They know we’re here, but they may think we’re friends of theirs. Who else would be moving through here, armed.”

  Myra looked wary; Emilie eager. The others seemed very nervous.

  Somehow, Cassie got everybody herded off into the trees. She and those in the skels took up positions near the road.

  An open vehicle stopped about twenty meters off. Five men got out. Cassie stepped into the road. A couple of the refugees stood just in front of the trees.

  The leader said, “You’re in True Harker territory. No offworlders allowed.”

  “We’re a special detail. Taking a couple of government agents back to Revelations.” As she spoke, Cassie locked her weapon on the leader. She didn’t think much of her bluff. The rebels would want whoever she claimed to be transporting.

  “Turn ’em over to us.”

  “Now you know I can’t do that. I have orders.”

  “So do I.”

  Scan registered movement in one of the men standing to the leader’s right. Targeting. About to fire. Cassie fired her energy burst at the leader, who went down, dead or stunned. She retargeted toward the second man as she moved for cover. He suddenly collapsed from fire coming from behind her.

  The other rebels were moving now, trying to target. Her own people were standing still. She screamed through the comm at them to move, move.

  She heard the pop of a projectile weapon, saw one of her people freeze and another leap to knock her over. The second one—in the skels she couldn’t tell them apart—took the shot in the upper back and fell forward. The first one returned fire even as Cassie fired her own projectile at the rebel shooter. Three down.

  The remaining two rebels were sheltered behind their minitruck, firing from cover. To hell with it, Cassie thought, and targeted the truck with a smart bomb. The explosion disintegrated the truck and blew the two men back twenty meters into the trees. Fight over.

  She checked the readout on the rebels on the ground. Two dead. Two heavily stunned. One seriously injured. None would be moving anytime soon.

  Several people were huddled around whoever had gone down. Cassie ran over to see what she could do.

  Emilie sat on the ground, crying, cradling the injured person in her arms. “Why didn’t you blow them up before? Then Myra wouldn’t have been shot.”

  Cassie dropped to her knees beside the two girls. The projectile had hit Myra’s right shoulder. From the ragged way she was breathing, it must have hit her lungs as well. A serious injury. With quick medical attention, she’d do okay; without it....

  Cassie sent out a priority call for medevac, set it to repeat indefinitely. Then she reset the GPS on her skel and Myra’s. Might as well make them as easy as possible to find.

  “Why didn’t you blow them up before?” Emilie said again.

  “Because I hoped I wouldn’t have to,” she answered quietly.

  “Why not? Why not kill them all? They kill us all. Oh, please God don’t let Myra die.”
r />   Cassie muttered the same prayer under her breath. She reached a hand over to Emilie. “I’ve called for a doctor. We’ll save her.”

  She told a couple of the refugees to watch the stunned rebels, make sure they stayed down. Someone else brought her the first aid supplies. She cleaned the wound and injected Myra with a painkiller.

  The injured rebel probably needed attention. She knew no one else here would help him. Another charge for the court martial, probably, if she didn’t treat him. She sat there, mentally adding up the charges. Weapons to refugees. Taking sides. Not to mention killing people. One more seemed almost trivial.

  But there wasn’t anything else she could do for Myra, so she walked over to check on the injured enemy. He looked to have broken bones, a probable concussion, maybe internal injuries, but he hadn’t died yet. Nothing she could do would help anything but his superficial injuries. She gave him some of the same painkiller she’d given Myra.

  He looked at her with hate—his skel had disintegrated in the explosion. She felt too tired to hate him back. Her head had started to hurt again.

  It took thirty minutes for medevac to arrive. Two other aircraft followed close behind, both sending out PK signals. She took the medic sergeant to Myra, pointed the others toward the injured rebels.

  The medic knelt down, took inventory of the injury, called the robot stretcher over. He looked at Cassie. “She’s not ours, is she? I mean, in spite of the skel.”

  “No. That keep you from treating her?”

  “Not with an injury this bad. But I’m going to have to report it, Lieutenant.”

  She nodded. The second ship had landed. Someone walked toward her. “Not going to be any secrets here, Sergeant. Just save her life.”

  He was using a half headpiece, so she could see him grin. “That’s our job, ma’am.”

  The person coming toward her wore captain’s bars. Cassie stiffened to attention, saluted.

  The captain returned her salute perfunctorily, and said, “What the hell is going on here, Lieutenant?”

  “We were attacked by that troop of True Harkers, ma’am. Had to defend ourselves.” Cassie didn’t know this captain personally, but insignia on the skel made her military police. Not a friend.