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The sky was thin and the color of crude oil, except where it exploded above their heads. Concussion was delayed in the thin air but the smell of roasting rangers got to you right now, even through your air filters. The terraformers hadn't done much of a job on this classified rockball before the corporation taskforce move in, the shit hit the fan, and a request for military assistance followed.
The request wasn't denied, not exactly, but it was rerouted to Espacio Intermediario Corporacao S.A.'s security department, who sent out a deniable reconnaissance team----13 Brazilian Guardas----sheep-dipped for hazardous duty under the commander of Colonel Edgar "Eddie" Mendes.
It was Mendes whose charred flesh was sending up the stink that made Cardoso gag as he dove for cover. Long recon meant long odds, long distances, and long hitches, but nobody ever wanted to think it meant dying light-years from home.
Overhead, even through his flash-and-blast suppressing helmet, Cardoso could see the enemy coming in for another strafing run. Nobody ever thought the enemy was going to come at you with airpower, either, because there wasn't supposed to be any hostile force out here that had airpower!
In Cardoso's ear, Garcia was screaming over the comset: "....suggest you form up for extraction, sir, at the beacon."
Cardoso huddled under and overhead of silicate, his rifle cradled against his chest and his knees pulled up, shifted enough t turn his head. "Mendes?" he said into his com-mike, just to be on the safe side.
But there was no way that barbequed officer lying beside him, charred limbs askew, was going to answer.
The airpower came over and Cardoso covered his head: his helmet's recon pack had sent plenty of pictures already; he didn't need to risk his life for one more shot of someone shooting at him.
He needed to risk his life to get to the extraction point, and that was about all he could handle. "Hey, Garcia," he yelled into his mike because the airpower was strafing what was left of Mendes, "Mendes is past it. I'm here all by my lonesome." Rocks exploded near him. Reflexively, he ducked his head in the crude shelter of his arms, eyes shut, and said as clearly and calmly as he could, "But I'm real ready for an order to get the fuck outta here!"
"Then give it," came Garcia's voice, laconic over the static and hard to hear because the sniper aircraft was coming back for another pass. "You're the only friendly voice I'm hearing."
"Falling back," Cardoso heard his own voice say, and his body followed suit. He knew he was calling the roll as he got to his knees, then his feet, crouched under the overhang, listening hard for even a groan or a grunt in response.
But nobody came back to him over his com-link.
13 men, and of the twelve on his com-link, Cardoso couldn't raise a single one but Garcia. He was poised, his thighs cramping as he waited for what he felt like the right time to sprint across the scree, a mapping screen already punched up that gave routing overlays to his target---the extraction site.
But through the electronics, he could see Mendes. Bored grid with its pulsing points and alphanumeric displays, Mendes seemed to be moving. Sliding around the ground, almost, Cardoso didn't want to leave anyone behind that had a breath of life. He scuttled towards Mendes, his pack scraping the roof of the underhang---scrambled close enough to see that not only Mendes's left arm and leg, but the left side of his skull, was burned away.
"Shit!" The shock of it propelled the guarda out from his cover, along the computer-suggested track on his visor-display, as fast as he'd ever moved in his life. Because there wasn't anything else here. There wasn't anything but some kind of deepspace double-cross having to do with mining rights and racial hatreds spread out across the stars. It was the gang bosses against the cheap labor, that's what it truly amounted to. There wasn't any alien life here, despite the security classification level of the planet designated Z-42B, due to artifactual evidence. There wasn't any alien life anywhere, not above the vegetable level---a century in space had proved that beyond a reasonable doubt.
Everything that seemed artifactual had, eventually, turned out to be natural, not intelligence made. There wasn't any reason for these EICSA chefes to be afraid of the boondocks on Z-42B but the way they'd treated the contract laborers they'd trucked in here.
If Cardoso said different, he'd been in psych evaluation for the rest of his life---if he ever got off this shitall to have one, that is.
It hadn't been anything, not anything, that he'd seen out of the corner of his eye. It sure as hell hadn't been a white, human-looking, delicate hand pulling Mendes towards a wall of solid rock---coming out of a wall of solid rock.
It hadn't. His lungs were were burning in spite of the augmented, oxygen-rich mix his computer pack was feeding him as he sprinted; he was sweating like a pig---sweating worse than his cooling system could handle. And, overhead, he heard a subtle change in volume that wouldn't be subtle for long: the pursuit aircraft, laying down rivers of flame as it did a 1-80, had sighted him. It was coming back.
With the bogey on his tail and nobody to answer to, Cardoso hit his jet-assist. It was a one-shot-only, emergency move, but there was no way he could outrun that aircraft on foot. No way in hell!
The wrench at his shoulders was immediate, the grab in his crotch comforting. And then he was airborne himself, skimming across the ground towards the extraction point where Mendes's bird was already a dark speck lowering out of the filthy clouds.
Have to touch down before the transport does; gotta watch his wash; wind-shear could crash him. You weren't supposed to do this---it was against every rule in the book; not to jet to an extraction point; gave heat tracking to the enemy; gave random back of a chance to delete you from the hard drive.
He could still see the charred half of Mendes's face, the eye like a lamb's eye that had popped up in his soup once during an Mars tour. He saw it so clearly that when the enemy screamed overhead, ignoring him and going after Garcia in the pickup craft, it didn't bother him any.
Not even when Garcia's VTOL exploded in a gout of dirty orange flame, for he could still see Mendes inching along the rock like he was alive, that had clamped on him.
And then he couldn't see anything, not for a long time, because something shorted his helmet's system and the ground hit him, hard, in the face.
Cardoso was sure he was dreaming again because you didn't sweat in a slow-freeze tank, and anyway, he had this dream all the time. Next, the enemy ship would land, like it hadn't----after taking out Garcia's VTOL, which it hadn't---and lots of pale white hands would start dragging him inside. But he was getting better at dealing with the dream. He could feel the tangle of sopping sheets around him and he could feel the air conditioner trying to dry the sweat on his face.
Rehab was going to be pissed that he had the dream again, but he was getting better at stopping it---at least not letting it run its course, and that was something. EICSA was so nervous about the story of Z-42B getting out that you weren't even allowed to dream about it.
He sat up, shivering and ignoring the tremors, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands. He was in a half-trashed motel room near the base---north of Sao Paulo, on the planet Earth, costing lots of people lost sleep and probably rating points.
He wasn't quite AWOL, but he wasn't punching in and out, either. EICSA couldn't force him to do more than satisfy their question-and-answer people; he was still a guarda, off the duty roster until only EICSA certified him finished with their business and fit to fight.
If it took much longer, Cardoso was going to talk to someone in the Comando Espacial about hurrying things up. EICSA brass might think they were buying him off with groundtime, but Cardoso needed more than a semi-isolated motel room and two professionally worried therapists.
13 men had gone down to the surface of Z-42B and 2 men had been left alive. Now what had happened hadn't happened, officially---not on Z-42B, an in-process terraforming project that had no need for a recon team, let alone Brazilian guardas borrowed from a government that hadn't yet officially claimed jurisdiction over that rockball. All mention of aliens, or possible aliens or rumors of aliens had been squelched by EICSA, because aliens would bring the mineral-rich Z-42b under immediate government control: either Brazil would claim it unilaterally as a territory, or the UN would win a lawsuit to prevent Brazilian annexation and Z-42B would fall under UN jurisdiction.
The cover story was something about a violent work stoppage by the Asian contingent of construction workers that Mendes's men had happened to get caught up in. It was thin, but thin didn't matter unless someone wanted to punch a hole in it.
Well, no one did----it was 3 years later, groundside time. Families had been pensioned, pacified, where there were any Guarda teams like Mendes's spent more time in lentocogelar (what the gringos would call "suspended animation") than they did doing the job they were shipped out to do. Even with superforce, space travel took its toll: Cardoso was physically under 30, but his date of birth was 53 years ago!
Coming back groundside, you always felt the dissociation. They shouldn't have brought him all the way back here, they should have left him at a Saturn station, or somewhere his own kind were. These groundsiders were the true aliens. He couldn't make any connections with contemporary Earth---this wasn't the Brazil he remembered. He hadn't ben home for 5 of his years and 30 of theirs. Nothing made sense---not the society, not its music or its culture or its fashions or its morality. Not its drinks or its women, which was worse. When you came groundside, you were supposed to be coming home.
Cardoso hadn't realized, before, why so few guardas ever did. But here he was, because whatever had happened on Z-42B during the last three years was vital to someone---important enough to make sure groundsiders saw Cardoso's reports without any high risk of leakage, important enough to make sure that the stories didn't get around any guarda bars on Titan or out-system.
Here he was with a technical furlough he couldn't seem to end, with a credit card someone'd given him without telling him its limit, and with nothing to do every day after his three hours in therapy.
And it was way too early for therapy. He peeled the soaking sheets from his body, got out of the motel bed, and went to his window. Pulling back the blackout curtains, he watched the light-sprinkled night. He could call room service; he was still well within his per diem. He could get dressed and go out, if he wanted---nobody followed him around. At least he didn't think so. He went to the closet and looked in at what hung there. The strange civvies made him too uncomfortable---brightly colored see-through shirts, body-hugging pants and coats with padded shoulders like armored vests. His therapists had brought them for him, telling him that wearing them would make him feel "like a part of society." Trouble was, he wasn't truly of this society. He resisted the urge to go back to the window, stare up at the black sky, and reach for two more tranks. They gave him all the tranks he wanted; custom drugs that made it okay that this was taking way too long and stopped him from worrying that it might never end.
He'd never wanted to live on Earth, in a city, in a motel room. When his tour was done, he'd figured to get something out-system, somewhere he'd see open skies and others like him. This was what he was protecting----Earth and the Republic of Brazil in all its teeming complexity, but you didn't have to live here. You didn't even have to like it.
You had to serve it, and then, it would take care of you. That was the bargain he'd made. He sorted through his closet, thinking he needed a little flight time, and got out his flight gear. He'd go out to the field and get a plane---rent one, if he couldn't scrounge one. Cardoso needed to get a little closer to the stars.
Then, if he still desired company, he could hit a base bar or something at Purgatorio Field, where he could get away with wearing his out-system gear, not feel like a freak. Once he'd zipped into his coveralls, he reached reflexively for his workbelt with its combat weapons.
His hand stopped. That was what they didn't want him to do, though nobody had suggested taking his hardware away from him.....not more than once.
Finally he let it go at slipping a laser-guided pistol into the pocket of his loose all-weather coat and a force-knife into his boot. Never could tell when you might need a little "edge.'
But he didn't go out after all. He put his head on the doorknob and his fingers started to shake. He stood there for a minute, head down, thinking about pushing himself out the door. But his hand looked too pale and too delicate and it didn't have the right amount of hair on it---in fact, it had none.
He went back to the bed, still clothed, sat down and surveyed the room. Where, for the last time, was Garcia? Was EICSA doing the same thing to him? Those were good questions, and Garcia (if he could only find him) had all the answers that would make him feel better. He reached for the com-unit beside his bed, flipped up the screen and began to punch numbers.
But instead of the base liaison office, he got a computer dating service by mistake.
The pretty senhorita (despite the garish painted jaguar on her face) said to him, "Thank you for calling Dream Date, senhor. I am called Drica. If you'll give me your customer number..."
"I don't have one," he said, conscious that the woman had big blue eyes that weren't at all dismayed that he hadn't shaved or showered in 36 hours. "I'm very sorry. I've got the..."
"Que maravilha! We have a new client!" She broke into a broad, welcoming smile. "All right, if you'll just give me your credit card number, senhor, we'll be able to get started right now by issuing you a temporary customer number."
She looked at him expectantly, with an eagerness that told Cardoso she'd get some extra money if he did what she said; and if he didn't, he'd have to disappoint the first person of the opposite sex who'd looked at him that way since he'd come groundside.
"All right, yes." He reached into his hip pocket, got out his card, and read her the number. After she'd looked away to key it in, she glanced up with approval in her eyes. "That's fine, senhor. Now, if you'll answer some questions as to what kind of man or woman you'd like to..."
"Woman," he interrupted.
She blushed. "Yes, Sr. Cardoso. Now, if you'll just give me the profile data on the kind of lady who's your dream date, we'll be able to give you an immediate readout of possible candidates. Should you like any of them, a date can be arranged as soon as both parties find it convenient."
He didn't know why he was doing this, really, except that it seemed a damn shame to disappoint her, and maybe it'd take his mind off reality. Maybe it'd stop his hands from shaking. Maybe a woman was what he needed.
Damn, he knew a woman was some of what he needed buy finding a prostituta with a clean bill of health might be a better way to go about it. Except that he'd had chances to do that and passed. Or blown it.
He didn't have to go on any dates, he told himself as the woman named Rica with the jaguar on her cheek asked him personal questions in a pert way that was somehow flattering, not offensive. They likely wouldn't have anybody in their banks who matched his "profile" data. He wasn't exactly Joe Carioca.
But it was something to do, human contact on the non-crucial, non-pejorative sort. And it beat the hell out of looking for a fight to pick in some seedy bar to see if EICSA would bail him out one more time. Or if they'd finally admit that they couldn't handle him, no matter how badly they wanted to keep him on ice, and let him go back to the guardas, back out-system where he belonged.
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