Who got the second kill there? thought the one with the broken hand.
A voice appeared in all four heads. “Berryman initiated the response. But Hogarth commenced firing before the victim was unambiguously dead. So by the rules, they share the kill.”
The helicopter with the four soldierboys dangling slipped down the hill and screamed through the night at treetop level, in total darkness, east toward friendly Panama.
* * *
i didn’t like scoville having the soldierboy before me. You have to monitor the previous mechanic for twenty-four hours before you take it over, to warm up and become sensitive to how the soldierboy might have changed since your last shift. Like losing the use of three fingers.
When you’re in the warm-up seat you’re just watching; you’re not jacked into the rest of the platoon, which would be hopelessly confusing. We go in strict rotation, so the other nine soldierboys in the platoon also have replacements breathing over their mechanics’ shoulders.
You hear about emergencies, where the replacement has to suddenly take over from the mechanic. It’s easy to believe. The last day would be the worst even without the added stress of being watched. If you’re going to crack or have a heart attack or stroke, it’s usually on the tenth day.
Mechanics aren’t in any physical danger, deep inside the Operations bunker in Portobello. But our death and disability rate is higher than the regular infantry. It’s not bullets that get us, though; it’s our own brains and veins.
It would be rough for me or any of my mechanics to replace people in Scoville’s platoon, though. They’re a hunter/killer group, and we’re “harassment and interdiction,” H & I; sometimes loaned to Psychops. We don’t often kill. We aren’t selected for that aptitude.
All ten of our soldierboys came into the garage within a couple of minutes. The mechanics jacked out and the exoskeleton shells eased open. Scoville’s people climbed out like little old men and women, even though their bodies had been exercised constantly and adjusted for fatigue poisons. You still couldn’t help feeling as if you’d been sitting in the same place for nine days.
I jacked out. My connection with Scoville was a light one, not at all like the near-telepathy that links the ten mechanics in the platoon. Still, it was disorienting to have my own brain to myself.
We were in a large white room with ten of the mechanic shells and ten warm-up seats, like fancy barber chairs. Behind them, the wall was a huge backlit map of Costa Rica, showing with lights of various colors where soldierboy and flyboy units were working. The other walls were covered with monitors and digital readouts with jargon labels. People in white fatigues walked around checking the numbers.
Scoville stretched and yawned and walked over to me.
“Sorry you thought that last bit of violence was unnecessary. I felt the situation called for direct action.” God, Scoville and his academic airs. Doctorate in Leisure Arts.
“You usually do. If you’d warned them from outside, they would’ve had time to assess the situation. Surrender.”
“Yes indeed. As they did in Ascensión.”
“That was one time.” We’d lost ten soldierboys and a flyboy to a nuclear booby trap.
“Well, the second time won’t be on my watch. Six fewer pedros in the world.” He shrugged. “I’ll go light a candle.”
“Ten minutes to calibration,” a loudspeaker said. Hardly enough time for the shell to cool down. I followed Scoville into the locker room. He went to one end to get into his civvies; I went to the other end to join my platoon.
Sara was already mostly undressed. “Julian. You want to do me?”
Yes, like most of our males and one female, I did, as she well knew, but that’s not what she meant. She took off her wig and handed me the razor. She had three weeks’ worth of fine blond stubble. I gently shaved off the area surrounding the input at the base of her skull.
“That last one was pretty brutal,” she said. “Scoville needed the body count, I guess.”
“It occurred to him. He’s eleven short of making E-8. Good thing they didn’t come across an orphanage.”
“He’d be bucking for captain,” she said.
I finished her and she checked mine, rubbing her thumb around the jack. “Smooth,” she said. I keep my head shaved off duty, though it’s unfashionable for black men on campus. I don’t mind long bushy hair, but I don’t like it well enough to run around all day wearing a hot wig.