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“Incoming!” the voice cried over the emergency frequency. “Mortars from the east!”

Gath had been dozing. Like everyone else on this deployment, he was exhausted. This was day five of the intervention assignment, day three out in the field. In that time, he had gotten perhaps six hours of good solid sleep and maybe another six of scattered dozing that was often broken up by cries such as the one that had just awakened him.

“Tork me,” he muttered, rolling from the semi-reclined position he had been in for dozing to the protective posture that would hopefully save his slagger from shrapnel penetration if one of those eighty-millimeter Norcal mortar shells that were coming toward them happened to land close.

He was behind a protective carbon fiber barrier that shielded him from direct fire coming from the east. The barrier was ten meters long, two high, and five millimeters thick. It came in flimsy rolls that could be carried by a single marine and then unrolled where needed. Once an electrical charge was added by a charging battery the barricade became as rigid as steel, impenetrable by anything short of a cutting laser, and, by means of a reverse magnetron field, rooted to the ground as solidly as if attached to pilings driven ten meters deep. There were dozens of such shields deployed here in the gap they were defending. But they would do the troops behind them no good if a mortar round, which was indirect fire, happened to land just behind them.

Lieutenant Sparksafroth, Sparky, was on his back against the barrier just a meter away from Gath. “How many incoming?” he asked, his voice calm but with an edge of strain in it. Sparky was in charge of the platoon defending this particular gap. Gath could hear his voice both on the command channel that he was monitoring and through the air.

“Three rounds, el-tee,” came the voice of corporal Ganny, who was circling above in one of the AVTOLs. “Three launchers. Wait, they just popped off three more!”

Before Sparky could reply the incoming rounds landed, one after the other. Cracking explosions sounded. The first two were not close. The third was. It landed less than ten meters in front of the barrier they were hiding behind, close enough to rock it a little. There was a pattering sound as shrapnel slammed into it.

“Tork me, that was close,” Sparky said, the edge in his voice getting a little edgier.

“And three more incoming,” said Gath.

“Three more after that, el-tee,” said Ganny. “They just launched again.”

“Take them the tork out!” Sparky yelled at him.

“I’m rolling in hot now,” Ganny replied. The rules of engagement for this particular skirmish had already been adjusted so lethal force would be used on any mortar sites or long popper shooters. Quite a few had already been killed by the AVTOLs and their twenty-millimeter guns. So far, however, the Norcals kept bringing up more and using them. No marines had been killed—yet—but five had been injured, two in this section alone.

The next three rounds landed, sending their sharp crumps rolling across the landscape. None were close to Gath’s position. Before the next three rounds came in, the AVTOL with Ganny in it passed overhead, props forward, engines screaming, heading rapidly to the east where the redwood covered hills rose from the coastal flatlands. In was in those hills where the Norcal soldiers were dispersed, their goal—so it seemed anyway—to move through the gap that Sparky and his platoon held and capture the Crescent City harbor facilities beyond it.

The Crescent City harbor belonged to the homebodies known as Oregonians, who themselves were divided into three other perpetually warring groups. The Southern Oregonians were the poorest and least populous of the three. The center of their empire was the abandoned coastal enclave of Crescent City and the fine harbor it enjoyed. That harbor was a stop for the various PacRun ships that delivered supplies from Homeport Ground to the west coast homebodies. The Norcals, though they had no coastal settlements north of the San Francisco area, seemed to think that the Crescent City harbor was in their territory and they coveted it. Every ten or fifteen local years, according to historical documentation, they pulled together some troops and marched off to try to take the harbor from the Southern Oregonians so they could have the supplies delivered there for themselves. Fleet marines always prevented the takeover.

This attempt, however, was a very ambitious one. Fully six hundred Norcal troops had been spotted by satellite forming up and marching north from the ruins north of San Francisco. For almost a week they marched along the remains of a pre-collapse magna train route that hugged the coast. Once their destination became clear, attempts were made to dissuade the Norcals from their mission by overflying them and warning them by loudspeaker they would be opposed. These attempts were met only by thirty-millimeter fire at the aircraft. The Norcals marched on without slowing, so a battalion consisting of three companies of Fleet marines was assembled from CVS, SCS, and the northern Oregon secondary base (NOS) near Portland. They were flown out to Crescent City and positioned in a staging area just outside the harbor and the city area where the Southern Oregonians lived.

It was assumed the Norcals would attempt to capture the harbor from the south, but someone in their command possessed a bit of unconventional military thinking. Twenty kilometers south of the harbor, the entire Norcal army took a right turn and headed into the steep, redwood covered coastal mountains that dominated the terrain in this region. They worked their way east and then north through the hills and forest and then turned back west, heading for the flatlands east of the harbor. These flatlands were dotted with densely forested hills that formed multiple gaps of passible terrain. It was in one of these gaps that Sparky’s 2nd Platoon, with Gath attached as combat medic, had been deployed. They had held the line for three days now, three days in which they had not been out of their armor even for a moment, three days of drinking recycled water, eating nothing but food paste, pissing into relief tubes, and shitting into waste packs. The Norcals had tried to push through this gap twice now and both times they had been beaten back easily with overlapping fields of pain sweeping. They had tried similar maneuvers in other gaps with similar results. They now had to know that they weren’t going to be able to push through, yet they still sat up there in the hills above the flatlands and sniped at the marines with their long poppers and dropped mortars on them from their launchers.

The next three mortars landed. CRUMP, CRUMP, CRUMP. Again, none were terribly close to Gath and Sparky’s position.

“No more incoming,” said Ganny. “They’re trying to pack up and clear their position.”

“Understood,” Sparky said. “Continue to follow the ROE.” In other words, Gath knew, kill them anyway so they couldn’t shoot from somewhere else fifty minutes later.

“Never thought otherwise, el-tee, Ganny replied. “Engaging the first nest now.”

The zipping sound of a stream of twenty-millimeter high explosive shells being fired reached them. It was a followed a moment later by the crackling sound of the shells detonating on impact. This was followed by the deep crump of a secondary explosion.

“Target one suppressed,” Ganny reported. “Circling around for target two.”

“Squad leaders, report!” Sparky barked. “Any casualties?”

The four squad sergeants all reported no casualties, letting Gath breathe a little sigh of relief. He had treated several of the injured marines on this deployment—one of whom had had her left arm nearly ripped in half by mortar shrapnel—and was grateful that his services weren’t needed after the attack.

The zipping, crackling sounded two more times. Both were followed by secondary explosions and reports of “target suppressed.”

“Good job, Ganny,” Sparky told him after the third report. “Are you getting any thirty-millimeter fire?”

“No long poppers in sight,” he reported back. “I think they learned they’re not going to shoot us down with those things so there’s no point in sacrificing themselves trying it.”

“Yeah,” said Gath. “They’re saving them to take potshots at us on the ground.” So far, they had not hit a single marine with one of the clumsy thirty millimeter exploding shells the long poppers fired, but they had come close. And none of the marines had any illusions about how well their armor would hold up to such a projectile if directly struck.

“What, do you want?” asked Sparky. “To live for a hundred and fifty years, or something?”

“If it’s all the same to you,” Gath replied.

“Returning to patrol station,” said Ganny from above. “Three hours of fuel left and one two zero of lethal.”

“Copy that, Ganny,” Sparky told him. “You did what you had to do.”

“Yeah,” Ganny said, a little emotion in his voice this time. No one liked killing people, even if they were dangerous, violent homers who were trying to kill fellow marines.

The AVTOL passed back over the top of them, its engines merely purring now as it returned to the monitoring station behind the lines. Things quieted down again and Gath took a long drink of water from his hydration straw, getting little satisfaction from the feel of the bland, room temperature water sliding down his throat. He shifted out of the protective position and put his back against the barricade again.

“How long are these slagholes going to keep this up?” he asked Sparky.

Sparky shrugged, the gesture hard to appreciate through the armor. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he said. “They have to know we have all the ingress routes to the harbor covered. They have to know that they can’t advance through our pain sweeps. They have to know that they can’t drive us out of here. They have to know that if they try to shift their forces to another approach we’ll see them and shift ours as well. There is no military reason for them to think they can achieve their objective at this point. And yet, there they stay.”

“Maybe they’re hoping we’ll come into the hills after them,” Gath suggested.

“Fat torkin’ chance of that,” Sparky said. “Fight hand to hand with those slagholes in the middle of a forest full of hundred-meter trees? We’ll just wait them out. Eventually they have to get low on food. There’s no way they can feed that many people by living off the land in that kind of terrain.”

Gath shook his head. “The pointlessness of this is astounding.”

“From which perspective?” Sparky asked. “Them for expending all this energy trying to accomplish something they knew from the start wasn’t going to succeed, or us for expending all this energy and risking our lives to stop something that doesn’t really matter anyway?”

“Well ... I was talking about from their perspective, but I see your point as well.”

“Hey, at least the concluding resolution is about to start, right?”

“That’s what they say,” Gath remarked, his tone a little sour.

The concluding resolution of putting sperm reduction drugs into the homebodies’ food and water supply was supposed to have started two weeks before, back before the Norcals had even started their march to the harbor. However, as things often went, delays had popped up. There were not enough trained personnel at Homeport Topside and Marsport Topside, where the food tampering was to take place, to begin on the scale it needed to be done. There was not a proper computer program in place to ensure that the contaminated food did not end up being served to Fleet personnel or innocent civilians. But those wrinkles were being worked out. At least, according to the Fleet whiteshirts they were.

“Still having your doubts about the plan?” Sparky asked him.

“I’m still questioning the ethics of imposing birth control on a population without their consent,” Gath said.

“It’s not birth control,” said Sparky. “Thinking of it in that term is probably what is causing your doubt. Birth control means they cannot breed. We’re simply cutting down on the amount of pregnancies to reverse the population growth.”

“Yeah, I know the company line,” Gath said. “And I’d still like some medical explanation of how this magic drug works. Do you think it’s a little strange that they’re not publishing any particulars on the drug?”

“I’m a marine lieutenant,” Sparky said. “They don’t pay me to think about slag like that.”

“I’m a Fleet medic though,” Gath retorted. “They do pay me to think about slag like that. And so far, they’re providing no material to enhance my thinking.”

“I’m sure the drug does exactly what they say it does. You did the math on their figures, didn’t you?”

“I did,” Gath said. He had, in fact, crunched the numbers on the very night the concluding resolution was announced. If the drug did, in fact, reduce the homebodies’ pregnancy rate by half, that, combined with the infant mortality rate of two hundred per thousand and the life expectancy of forty-five metric years, would indeed induce a negative population growth of at least fifteen percent. “That doesn’t change the fact that they’re not sharing the details of the drug with the working medics.”

“At some point,” Sparky suggested, “you have to sit back and assume that your superiors really do, more or less, kind of know what they’re doing. The Fleet has been up and running for more than thirteen hundred years now. The Federal Government has been in its current form for almost as long. Our people are mostly enlightened and educated. Don’t you think that if there was some heavy-duty fouling of the waste converter going on, we would have picked up on it by now?”

Gath thought about that for a moment. “Maybe,” he finally concluded.

“I’ll take a maybe,” Sparky told him. He adjusted his position and shifted his weapon, which had been sitting by his side, up onto his lap. “Well, I guess I’d better get my report on the mortar attack over to the good captain.”

“Yeah,” Gath said. “And I guess I’d better start checking some vitals and making my rounds.”

The two men continued to sit next to each other behind the barricade but each began doing his own thing. Gath picked up his own weapon, which was leaning against the wall, and cradled it across his lap, where his hands could find it by themselves while his eyes were blinded to the scene around him. He then called up his VR display and started looking at the telemetry sent from the marines in 2nd Platoon. The names of any members with abnormal vital sign readings were outlined in yellow. There were three such names. He looked at the first. It was Sergeant Vicadole Dealerman, leader of third squad. His heart rate was elevated about twenty percent above normal and his temperature was slightly high. His urine output was only thirty milliliters in the last two hours and he had been going through water rations like they were going out of style. Something was definitely going on there.

Gath released the telemetry screen and then looked at the tactical map that floated in his view, searching for the location of Sergeant Dealerman. He was behind one of the barricades seventy-five meters to the north and further east, along the main line of the marines.

“Sparky, I’m off to make rounds,” he said. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

“Okay,” Sparky said absently. “Be careful out in the open.”

“You got that slag right,” Gath assured him.

The terrain here was a mixture of ancient, pre-expansion ruins that were crumbled to concrete dust, and open, irregularly shaped fields where luscious green grass grew knee high and waved in the coastal breeze. Half a klick to the north stood Hill 125, which guarded the left flank of the gap. It was covered with dense vegetation and coastal redwood trees. To the south, stood Hill 215, another densely forested rise in the land that guarded the right flank. The gap between the two opened up onto five hundred meters of what had probably once been farmland but was now covered in course reeds and grass. Beyond this flat plain the true coastal mountains rose steeply before them. The trees were particularly tall and dense there, hiding the Norcals from visual sight but not from the sensors on the circling AVTOLs. The sky above was a brilliant blue, almost completely cloudless. The environmental reading in Gath’s helmet display showed a temperature of sixteen degrees and rising as the mid-morning sun climbed higher in the east.

Gath picked up his weapon and rested his thumb on the selector switch, which was currently set for pain sweep. He stood, careful to keep his head below the top of the barricade and then glanced at his mapping display, plotting the easiest, safest course from his position to where he needed to be. He activated chameleon mode on his armor. Though the current conditions were about the worst possible for the effectiveness of the camouflage scheme—bright low-lying sunlight created obvious shadows on the ground, and the varied topography of the terrain made the computer struggle to keep up when a soldier moved quickly—it was still worlds better than just strolling out there in all his glory. He moved away from the barrier, trotting quickly through the crumbled concrete and into the grasslands, weapon held out before him, eyes tracking on his first waypoint on the journey, eyes nervously watching the prominent shadow he was creating. He reached another of the barricades, this one protecting two privates and a corporal. He scooted behind it without incident and paused, head below the top, back resting against the barrier wall.

“Hey, humes,” he greeted the occupants of the position.

All three greeted him with variations of “hey, Gath.”

“Everything demonic over here?” Gath asked them.

“Just torkin’ electrifying,” grumbled the corporal.

“To what do we owe the pleasure?” asked one of the privates. “I’ve been drinking my water rations, I swear.”

“Just passing through,” he replied. “I heard they’re serving hot meals up ahead.”

“Really?” asked the second private.

“No,” Gath said, “not really. I’ll see you all on my way back.”

“Right,” said the corporal.

Gath pushed out from behind their barricade and moved to the next one on his route. He then moved to the next and then the next, working his way to the easternmost positions. At each stop he paused for a minute or two to pass a few words with the marines on station. Most of them grumbled sourly, their words peppered with profanity. One corporal asked Gath to look at his foot, as it was bothering him and he thought maybe he might need to be pulled off the line. Gath told him he was on a mission right now but would check it on his way back.

He reached the barricade behind which Sergeant Dealerman, a corporal, and two privates were holding without incident. Once there, he put his back to the wall of the barricade and slid down to his buttocks, setting his weapon down next to him. He turned off chameleon mode since he planned to stay here for a bit. This was partially to save battery power—chameleon mode almost doubled power usage and the replacement battery supply was finite—but mostly because it tended to cause nausea in a person you were trying to converse with while it was active.

“Hey, Gath,” he was greeted by four voices.

“Hey, humes,” he returned. “How are things up here in the front?”

“About as much fun as a torkin’ slagger tork can possibly be,” answered the corporal.

“Yeah,” agreed a private. “A couple of them mortars came pretty torkin’ close to us. Shrapnel hit our torkin’ barricade.”

“I feel you,” Gath said. “That happened back at my position too. Let’s hope their accuracy with those things doesn’t get any better.”

“Let’s hope they torkin’ run out of food and head for home soon,” said the other private.

Gath turned to Dealerman, who was sitting with his back to the barricade and his knees drawn up. His weapon sat on the ground next to him. So far, he had said nothing besides the original greeting.

“Vicky?” Gath said, using Dealerman’s common name. “How you holding up?”

“I got the slags,” he said, his voice low and miserable. “For the last twenty-four local now. Been through about six waste packs.”

“Yeah,” Gath said. “I noticed your vitals were a little out of whack. You’re looking kind of dehydrated, sarge.”

He shrugged. “I’ll be all right,” he said. “I’ve been drinking extra water rations.”

“I see that from your telemetry,” Gath told him. “I don’t think it’s enough though. You’re not pissing much.” He reached in his medic pack and pulled out a scanner. “Let me just check you over.”

“I’m fine, Gath,” Dealerman protested. “It’s just my stomach doesn’t like this food paste diet.”

“You never had that problem on deployment before, did you?”

“Well ... no.”

“Exactly,” Gath said. “You might’ve picked up a little gastrointestinal bug somewhere. Maybe something was floating around back at the staging area. Living in these armor suits can lower your immune system and make it harder to fight off.”

“Those latrines at staging were pretty disgusting,” Dealerman allowed.

“My very thought,” Gath said. He turned on the scanner. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

It turned out that Dealerman was indeed suffering from a gastrointestinal bug. His white blood cell count was elevated and viral particles consistent with norovirus were found in the contents of his discarded waste packs. As a result, his temperature was up, his potassium and sodium level were down, and his blood viscosity was high.

“All right, here’s the deal,” Gath told him when his exam was complete. “I want you to double your water rations effective immediately. I’m going to give you a shot with an antiviral in it. It won’t get rid of the viruses that are already there but it will keep them from reproducing any further and making you sicker. I’m also going to give you some potassium and some B12.”

“You’re the medic,” Dealerman said. “Can you give me something to stop the torkin’ diarrhea?”

“I can’t,” he said. “You don’t want that staying inside you, you need to slag it all out. The extra water will keep you hydrated while you’re doing it and, with the antiviral, you’ll hopefully be better in about twelve local. If you’re not, if you start to get worse, or if you start vomiting, get in touch with me and I’ll pull you off the line.”

“I’m not leaving the line, Gath,” Dealerman said. “I’m a torkin’ squad sergeant. They need me out here.”

“You’ll come off the line if I say you come off the line, sarge,” Gath told him. “You’re a slagger kicking squad leader—you and I have been through some slag together so I think I can say that with authority—but this little skirmish can resolve without you. I expect you to report worsening symptoms. Are we clear?”

“Oohrah,” Dealerman said without much enthusiasm.

“That’s what I like to hear,” Gath said.

He pulled out his medication pack and began mixing his concoction in a large syringe. When it was done he injected it into a port on Dealerman’s arm armor, a port that would be able to access his antecubital vein from the inside.

“That torkin’ hurts!” he complained as the medicine went in.

“Yeah,” said Gath, “but it’s a good hurt, isn’t it?”

From there, Gath went chameleon again and carefully made his way to another position, seventy-five meters to the south, where Corporal Binge, next on his list of abnormal vital sign marines, was dozing lightly between two privates. He woke her up to ask her how she was doing. It turned out she was suffering from the same ailment as Dealerman, though her diarrhea had only started eight hours ago. His treatment of her was the same, as were his instructions about worsening symptoms.

“Slag,” she said, “if that’s what it takes to get pulled out of this torkin’ place, then I’m getting worse right now.”

“Honor of the Corps?” Gath asked, knowing that a marine would not lie lightly when the honor code was invoked.

“Tork you, Gath,” she said sourly. “I’ll let you know if I’m getting worse.”

He moved on to his next patient, Private Zulfa, who also reported diarrhea, body aches, and thirst. Physical exam revealed more norovirus in the waste packs, along with the dehydration, potassium insufficiency, and elevated white blood cell count. After treating and lecturing Zulfa, Gath put his back up against the barricade and dialed up Sparky on the comm channel.

“I got some cheerful news to brighten up your day, el-tee,” he told him.

“Why do I have a feeling you’re being sarcastic?” Sparky returned.

“You’re very perceptive,” Gath said. “It looks like we got a little epidemic of norovirus out here on the line. I have three people so far with viral particles in their waste, rampant diarrhea, altered vital signs, and elevated white blood cell counts. At this point they’re all still fit for duty and I’ve initiated treatment, but I have a feeling this thing is going to start hitting more of our humes as the day goes on.”

“Torkin’ wonderful,” Sparky said.

“Isn’t it?” Gath said. “The good news is that we probably picked it up from the latrines in the staging area.”

“Why is that good news?”

“That means it won’t spread any further out here, or at least it will have a hard time spreading, as long as we take a few precautions. Norovirus is extremely virulent, but its fecal-oral spread.”

“Fecal-oral,” Sparky said flatly. “That means you have to get infected slag particles in your mouth in order to catch it, right?”

“Kind of,” Gath said. “You can get them in your nose or your eyes as well, and you can also get them from vomit particles. So far, however, no one is vomiting.”

“Thank Whoever for that,” Sparky said. “If they start vomiting they have to take off their helmets.”

“Yeah, that would be bad in the current environment. If anyone does start vomiting I’m going to pull them off the line immediately, for their own safety and ours.”

“Sounds good,” Sparky said.

“In any case, the spread can be contained because we’re all eating food paste and slagging in our waste packs. None of us are using our hands to wipe our slaggers. We all have our helmets on so no one can put their fingers in their mouths or eyes even if someone dig get the virus on their fingers. This alone should stop spread to those who are uninfected, but I’m also going to initiate a medic’s order that, for the duration of this deployment, all marines open and load their own food packs, that the water fill hoses be sterilized prior to refill of an armor tank, and that everyone sanitizes their gloves after they change out a waste pack.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Sparky said. “Any idea how many of us are already infected and just waiting for the bomb to go off?”

“No way to tell,” Gath said. “It could be every last one of us, realistically. We all used those latrines back at staging.”

“Hopefully it’s not that bad,” Sparky said.

“Hopefully,” Gath agreed. “In any case, I need you to put out an order on command. Anyone who has diarrhea needs to let me know immediately. If I can start treatment when the first symptoms appear then I can head the disease off before it gets too bad.”

“Consider it done,” Sparky said. “I’m also going to contact the captain and have him check with battalion command to see if this is going on in other platoons or over in Billion Company.”

“Good idea,” Gath said. “I’m going to wait here until your order goes out. If anyone reports the symptoms I’ll get started on treatment.”

“Copy,” Sparky told him. “Sparky out.”

Five minutes went by, during which time Gath began to imagine he felt rumbling in his own stomach. Was it his imagination? Was it the first sign of the virus? He did not know, had never, in fact experienced norovirus before, though it was one of the few remaining contagious diseases that plagued human beings and quite a common one at that, particularly in spaceborn environments, where close-knit living created an ideal breeding and spreading ground for it.

Just as he was getting a handle on convincing himself he was imagining his own symptoms, three reports of marines with diarrhea came to him. Corporal Hinge, Private Lexus, and Staff Sergeant Mule all contacted Gath to tell him they started slagging their intestines out in the last hour. He checked his telemetry. So far none of them were showing abnormal vitals. Hopefully he could head this off at the pass.

Gath said his farewells to the troops staffing the barrier and stood up, his weapon in hands. He plotted out a route to Staff Sergeant Mule, not because he was the closest, but because he was the one the platoon could least afford to lose. Chameleon mode was activated once again and he started off.

He never made it there.

As he was trotting past a tall mound of crumbled concrete, almost exactly halfway between one barrier and the next, an evil sound, a cross between a whistle and a low-pitched growl passed close from left to right in front of him. He caught the briefest impression of a red streak zipping by less than a meter from his head and then the concrete on his right erupted into a flash of smoke, dust, and fragments. A sharp crack hammered into his ears, overwhelming the dampening effect of his helmet.