The Slugs were remaking Ganymede just the way they liked it. That meant they had so far warmed it to zero Fahrenheit in the twilight that passed for day way out there. The atmosphere they breathed was 2 percent oxygen, not 16 percent like Earth. Gases trapped in Sluggo’s tissues confirmed remote spectroscopy. Ganymede’s artificial atmosphere was also as thin as the air miles above sea level.
So when the UN looked for a place to train the Infantry division that was going to fight on Ganymede, it needed a place where the air was cold and thin but that had enough infrastructure to move troops in and out and house ten thousand of them plus trainers and alternates.
Camp Hale, Colorado, was old, like Indiantown Gap. It sat two miles above sea level on the western slope of the Rockies, six miles north of the old silver-mining town of Leadville . Built during World War II to train and house ski troops, it had been knocked down to nothing but foundations in the snow.
But you wouldn’t have known that as the helicopter drifted over the base carrying me and a dozen other GEF selectees.
Luna Base had been built from nothing a quarter million miles from Earth in short months. Camp Hale’s snowy foundations were closer to home, but the sprawled prefab structures, roads, and bustling troops and vehicles were equally startling.
Mountains around Camp Hale thrust up another half mile higher, the peaks above tree line as gaunt as ax blades.
As an early arrival, I drew modern gear and humped it all to my billet, which was a double room in the barracks complex that housed Headquarters Battalion of GEF. I had stowed my gear in my locker when my roomie arrived.
He rapped on the doorjamb. “You Wander?” He stuck out his hand. “Ari Klein.”
He wore civvies, but I knew already that my roomie was part of Howard Hibble’s Military Intelligence company. Ari Klein was rostered as our TOT-Wrangler, so I expected weird.
Ari’s black hair reached such unmilitary length that it curled like wool. Over it perched a knit yarmulke . His eyes were dark beneath bushy brows, but his smile was broad. The TOT-Wrangler scars showed faint at each temple. “Howdy.”
He wore a plaid shirt, jeans, and ostrich-skin boots. Intelligence Branch. My roommate was a Jewish cowboy.
“Don’t let the outfit fool you. I’m not a real cowboy. I’m from North Dallas.”
Ari was a surprise, but his duffel was astonishing. It wriggled. He set it on his bunk, unsnapped it, and stood back while I stared.
A six-legged, black velvet football wriggled out and stared back at me with eyes the size of gray Oreos.
“Jason, meet Jeeb.”
Everybody has heard about Tactical Observation Transports, but few people have been as close to a TOT as I was to Jeeb.
Theoretically, a TOT’s just a sophisticated version of the police surveillance drones seen over every American neighborhood day in and day out. Except that a drone has a four-foot wingspan and costs a couple hundred thousand. Ari’s tin friend cost as much as a tank battalion. So even division-size units like GEF only got one.
A TOT, even with wings spread, can fly through the average window with six inches to spare. It can crawl on six legs faster than a cheetah can run, has a velvet-texture skin invisible to radar and infrared, can change color to blend with its surroundings like a chameleon. Its ultra-tanium chassis is hardened against small-arms rounds, fire, water, and the electromagnetic pulse of a nuclear blast
Ari clucked, and his robot alter ego hopped onto his shoulder, still watching me. “He’s a J-series. He’s the second one, ‘B,’ of six. So, Jeeb.”
Jeeb twisted his head to take in the room. He imaged visible light, infrared, ultraviolet, and radar. He heard sound from five to fifty thousand hertz and soft as a rat fart, plus all bands of radio.
“Is he looking for his bunk?” I asked. Ari shook his head. “He’s programmed to scan for eavesdropping sensors. He makes you nervous, doesn’t he?”
“Nah.” Of course he did. I was sleeping with a mechanical cockroach as big as a Thanksgiving turkey.
Jeeb hopped from Ari’s shoulder to the windowsill, worked the latch with one arm while perched on the other five, and threw up the sash. The covering on his back split, telescoped into wings, and Jeeb flew away.
Ari grinned as he began unpacking the inanimate parts of his gear. “The Swedish troops are landing. Half women. Babefest!”
Ari was seeing them as he spoke, through Jeeb’s eyes. A TOT displayed holo images on a suitcase-size viewer for analysis, but its input also beamed directly into the Wrangler’s brain, through surgical implants.
TOTs are just metal-and-plastic machines. They respond to the thoughts of their Wranglers and to no other input, immune to jamming. They have enough artificial intelligence to function when out of range of their Wranglers, but no personality, theoretically. But I read that Wranglers and TOTs are closer than the old K-9 dogs and trainers.
Ari laughed. “The Swedes are catching hell from the drills, blonde or not.”
GEF was technically a UN operation. But after a century as the world’s policeman, the US military, sad as it was, functioned light-years ahead of the rest of the world’s. Most of GEF’s troops were American. Most of GEF’s equipment was American. Most of GEF’s trainers were American.
So experienced soldiers arriving from other countries were being subjected to American boot-camp indoctrination just to get them up to speed with the likes of me.
Ari consulted his wrist ‘puter. “Hour ’til chow. Let’s go down to the airstrip so you can see it, too.”
By the time we arrived the decorative Swedes had moved out for a jolly double-time around the post.
A Here disgorged a sorry-looking bunch of male and female soldiers.
“Egyptians.” Ari was getting input from Jeeb. I shaded my eyes with my hand and squinted at the low clouds. I knew Jeeb hovered up there, but still I couldn’t find him, his belly chameleoned gray to match the clouds.
“They’re bitching about the cold.” Jeeb also translated languages, dialects, codes, and ciphers in real time as he sent his eavesdroppings back into Ari’s head.
The Egyptians formed up and stood more or less at attention. Frigid wind off the peaks ruffed the fleece halos on our parka hoods. The poor Egyptians wore just desert fatigues and shivered on the runway, especially the small or skinny ones.
A voice echoed across the runway.
“Sir? Commissioned officers are addressed as ‘Sir’! I am Division Sergeant Major Ord and am so addressed!”
Even though the words weren’t addressed to me, I shivered.
Ord! It hadn’t occurred to me that Pittsburgh had made Ord a war orphan, eligible for GEF, just like me. But with his qualifications he didn’t need to capture a Slug to get in, like I had.
As divison sergeant major, he ruled my HQ Battalion with an iron fist. Oh joy.
We sidled up to the formation.
The object of Ord’s affection was a young, female soldier, who wore the uniform of an Egyptian army lieutenant. In GEF, we all gave up our rank pending final assignment. She was just another grunt.
She stood maybe four-ten, so Ord had to bend at the waist to get nose to nose with her.
When he finally drew back, I saw her face and nearly stopped breathing.
Her skin was olive and flawless, her eyes wide and dark, and her features perfect. Fatigues don’t reveal much about a woman’s shape, but hers looked promising.
As Ari and I watched, arms folded and smirking, Ord ended his welcome spiel. He commanded, “Dis- missed !”
The Egyptians spun stunned about-faces, picked up their gear, and jogged toward trucks that would haul them to the quartermaster building.
I jogged alongside the little officer, whose head hung a millimeter. “Don’t let Ord bother you.”
She raised her head. Her eyes were prettier up close.
“He picks on soldiers he likes. He did it to me when I was in Basic.”
“And you are?” Her English was perfect but accented. I could watch her lips move all day.
“Wander. Jason. US Army. Specialist fourth class. Or I was. Now I’m just another GEF grunt.”
She nodded and extended her hand. “Munshara. Sharia. Egyptian Army. Formerly lieutenant, Specialist.” She raised her chin a notch.
“Yes, ma’am.” Erased rank or not, military courtesy was a hard habit to break.
Her duffel slipped from her shoulder. The canvas bag was as big as she was, and I reached to steady it. She jerked away and struggled not to puff in the thin, two-mile-high air.
How do you pick up another soldier, especially one who outranks you?
“I’m a machine gunner.”
“I also. Perhaps we will compete.”
Not exactly a date, but the door hung ajar for further contact.
She reached the truck and hefted her duffel in. I thought about offering her a hand up. Maybe a push on the fanny. She shot me a look, and I dropped the thought.
She had to hop twice to get herself up and into the truck. I looked away.
“Thank you for the American welcome, Jason.” She smiled down at me. I watched the truck lurch away as my heart fluttered.
“Nice.” Ari stood beside me. “But not my type.”
“Huh?”
“Israel and the Arabs made peace twenty years ago but Mom wouldn’t have been ready for me to bring home a nice Egyptian girl.” He blinked at the mention of his mother.
“Oh.”
Dallas had been an early hit and one of the worst. Every soldier in GEF had lived some variation of the same tragic story. Etiquette developed quickly. You never asked about anyone’s family, directly. Unless the other soldier brought it up, first “Lose anyone else?”
Ari nodded. “My father was a haberdasher. We had three stores. North Dallas has good rag trade. Had.”
He couldn’t ask, so I said, “My mother was in Indianapolis.”
The other part of the ritual was to change subjects once basic information was exchanged.
Jeeb fluttered down and perched, one wing brushing Ari’s curls. Four talons gripped Ari’s shoulder, two talons wiped antennae as they refracted into Jeeb’s anterior. Jeeb was a J-series, so he not only observed things, he hacked into any known database and cross-referenced anything he found.
Ari pointed at the shrinking truck. “Lieutenant Munchkin, there? Her father was a colonel in the Egyptian Air Force. She lost her parents and six sisters to the Cairo Projectile. She can shoot the eyes out of the jacks in a card deck at six hundred meters with an M-60. She’s single and straight. She wears thong underwear.”
“That’s some nosy bug you got mere, Ari.”
Ari adjusted his yarmulke . “His grandma was Jewish.”
Her truck turned and disappeared behind a row of parked Hercs. Jeeb had to be exaggerating. I was the best shot I knew with an M-60, and I couldn’t see a deck of cards at six hundred meters. But I hoped he was right about the thong.
The next morning everyone at Camp Hale but support staff assembled in a rock bowl at the foot of the peaks. In its center, the Combat Engineer Battalion had erected a stage and loudspeakers. Earmarked for personal security, I sat up front with HQ Battalion, below the stage, with frigid rock searing my butt through insulated trousers and frigid wind searing my bare nose.
Major General Nathan Cobb mounted the stage in the same fatigue parka the rest of us wore, but with two stars on each shoulder. Our commanding officer flipped back his hood. Better him than me.
Completely gray and rail-thin, he wore old-fashioned glasses. He pushed them back on a red nose and drew a paper from his pocket. Wind whipped it in his fingers.
He looked out over fifteen thousand faces. Ten thou-sand would form the division, the rest were alternates. What that said about expected training casualties knotted my stomach.
Nat Cobb adjusted his microphone. “Cold enough for you?” I’d read up on the man for whom I might take a bullet. He came from a small, plain town in Maine and talked like it.
“No, sir!” Fifteen thousand voices roared back.
“Maybe we can warm things up for the Slugs.”
Bigger roar. Nat Cobb wiped snot off his nose with his mitten and smiled at his soldiers. Most generals come with papers like a pedigreed poodle. West Point. Family history. Embassy and Washington liaison assignments.
Nat Cobb was a mutt He’d enlisted at eighteen, got a field promotion and fought his way into Officer Candidate School. Over the years, he’d earned a master’s in international relations and kicked ass at the Command and General Staff College. He spurned Pentagon career-builder assignments to stay close to troops in the field. They said he didn’t know which fork to use at White House dinners and didn’t care. Fortunately for Cobb’s career, the current occupant of that address didn’t care either, and she was the commander in chief.
He cleared his throat, and the vast audience fell silent. “I’m not going to bullshit you or motivate you. We’ve all had plenty of both lately. Each of us has the most important, hardest job ahead of us any human being has ever had. Most of us will die trying to do that job. All I can offer you is my promise that I will bring you home alive even if it costs my own life. But if I must choose saving you or saving home, my choice is clear. I know each of you will make the same choice.”
He paused. The wind died, and I heard breath in fifteen thousand throats.
“You’ve already listened to me beat gums too long. Let’s get to work.” He turned and stepped down, to dead silence.
I suppose we expected fist-pumping oratory or a detailed outline or something. General Patton telling us to make the other son of a bitch die for his country. General Marshall laying out the master plan.
Ari leaned toward me. “Gets to the point, doesn’t he?”
“Wait ‘til you meet his division sergeant major.”
The next weeks flew. The good news was we slept an honest six hours daily, had staff to pull KP and the like, and got almost-edible meals. Nat Cobb was a GIs general. It was usual to find him in a mess hall, at a table with privates, eating off a tray like a regular grunt. And woe betide the mess sergeant who burned the bacon at that meal.
The bad news was every minute that we didn’t spend on bullshit we spent humping up mountains or cleaning weapons. Basic was a vacation by comparison. And the cold hung around each of us morning and night like an icy rag.
Which brings me to temperature endurance testing and back to Munchkin.