Adjust for Obstacles

 

Adjust for Obstacles

It’s not a hard job, nobody complains about that, though I don’t really have anything else to compare it to, since I can’t remember doing anything else.

Mostly, we sit around, waiting. We work out, play dice or spetterline, watch the Tivo. I don’t know how many teams there are altogether, or how many men are on each team, but there are four of us in our pod, and we always go out in pairs. 

Once every six cycles, they bring in females for us. We have sex, and in the morning, the females are gone when we wake up.

We don’t seem to need much food or water, most of our nutrition comes from a dense, blackish-green cereal that sits at the bottom of a bowl of white broth, the Chief calls it ess-gee and laughs, but I don’t get the joke.

The four in our pod are Elgin, Waltham, Gruen and me, Benrus. It seems as if our names should have something in common, but I don’t know what it is. 

Seems like a lot of things I don’t know or understand, but that’s how it is.

Elgin and I were up in the rotation. The Chief came in and said we have a sortie. We suited up -- different outfits for different climates. This morning, we were issued skinthins -- white shirts and pants that the sweat comes through, long sleeves, with gloves, hoods, brimmed hats, polarized eyeshields to keep the sun off, flexible neoprene moccasins. So we knew we were probably going to one of the islands. 

The hip strap holds two guns, a big-bore in .500, and a small one in .22. The five holds eight rounds, the two-two, fifteen. One extra magazine each. I have never had to use the extra magazine for either gun.

Each strap has a hard sheath with a fixed-blade knife, and a burner -- a rod about as long as my forearm that puts out a tight blue flame that will cut a hole in just about anything. 

Those are are we need -- we seldom stay on a job long enough to need food or fluid.

Well. And the locator unit. All you have to do is listen to the locator and it tells you, in a female’s voice, where to go.

Usually there might be one, or a couple of targets. Now and then, three. Once, I remember, there were six or seven every time we went out, but it’s been a while since there were that many.

So Elgin and I suited up and went to the helicopter pad and climbed into the craft. No pilot, they are controlled from somewhere. The craft lifted, and we sat back and relaxed -- there’s nothing to see, since the copter doesn’t have any windows. There used to be some with viewports, but the weather etches and clouds whatever material they used for windows or bubbles, so they don’t bother any more.

We flew. Elgin used to time the flights -- eight-eight hundred heartbeats, ninety-five hundred, it varied. It didn’t really matter, and he mostly doesn’t bother any more.

The craft touched down, the door opened, and Elgin and I climbed out. The copter would usually stay there until we were done, though once Gruen and I came back from a job and the copter was gone. We waited and after a time, it came back.

It was one of the islands. Hot, damp, the sun cooking the sand and us. No vegetation on the island. The episodes on Tivo sometimes had islands in them and there were plants and animals on the islands -- big-leaved trees with ball-like nuts growing in them. Shorter, small-leaved plants in thick clumps. Birds, small animals, a lot of green and like that.

My locator unit said, “Walk one hundred and seventeen steps half-sunward. Adjust for obstacles.”

It always told you to adjust for obstacles, as if you were too stupid to figure that out on your own. 

Elgin and I started walking, though we didn’t really need the locator to tell us. We could see the tank from where we were -- there wasn’t much else on the island between it and us, some buildings tumbled and fallen into ruin, a few rocks here and there.

Elgin said, “A single.”

I nodded. That would seem to be so.

It didn’t take us long to get there. The locator gave us course correction halfway to the tank, and we followed those, even though there was no need.

The tank was old, a translucent manila color, the surface pitted and sun-damaged and abraded enough so we couldn’t see what was inside. The tank was rectangular, with rounded corners, an armspan-and-a-half high by half an armspan wide, laying flat and half-buried in the soft ground. They are sometimes called “Ludens.” I don’t know the why of that, either. 

“A single, like I said.”

I nodded. Sometimes they were doubles. Now and then I had seen a triple. “It has a valve.”

The valve isn’t on all of the tanks, but it was on this one. It’s a small, hollow cylinder near the middle of the tank that offers passage through the tank wall. The valves are capped, but the caps are thinner than the walls. This was a old tank, and the older ones were heavier, thicker, harder to breach. The .500 AP wouldn’t pierce the older ones, and it would take three or four thousand heartbeats for the burner to carve a big enough hole to admit a pistol barrel. Not so long with the valve, though.

“Burn or shoot?” I asked Elgin.

“My turn to shoot,” he said.

I nodded. Shooting was easier.

I unstrapped my burner and thumbed the control. The blue flame lanced out, as long as my forefinger, and I leaned over the tank and applied the fire to the valve cap.

Maybe it’s the heat from the burner that arouses them. Or maybe they can sense us somehow. Usually after a couple hundred heartbeats, you can feel them stirring if you are touching the tank. Sometimes you can hear them, even though the sound is muffled. You can’t understand what they are saying, the language, if that’s what it is, is different, but you can get a sense of agitation. 

After a time, the burner pierced the cap and the edges of the material melted back. The hole had to be big enough to allow some angle -- some of the occupants were small enough they might be able to move to one side, so shooting straight down might miss them.

When I was finished, I looked at Elgin.

He stepped up, pulled his five, and put the muzzle into the hole I’d created. He fired one straight down, the second angled to the far side, the third to the near side

The guns are muted, not much noise from the propellent system, quiet enough so you can hear the frangible rounds hit the tank walls if you miss the target. The first one missed, the second didn’t miss. The third was therefore unnecessary, but it was better to waste a shot and be sure.

Elgin leaned back, and blew across the muzzle of his five.

“Why did you do that?”

“I saw in on the Tivo,” he said. “A cowbody episode.”

I nodded. Yes. The ones with the funny hats and odd-shaped guns. Cowbodies and Ardiens.

I touched the target-accomplished plate on my locator, the quick triple tap.

“Second target,” the female’s voice said. “Two hundred steps three-quarters sunward. Adjust for obstacles.”

Elgin and I looked at each other. We started walking.

The second Ludens was bigger than the first, and rather than laying flat, had apparently been stood on its end. It had tilted somewhat over a long time, settled, so that it stood at seven-tenths vertical.

This tank looked even older than the first one. The surface was more pitted, scratched, and clouded by sun and wind.

“No valve,” Elgin said.

“Your turn to burn,” I said. I was pleased it was not my job to make the hole -- this would take a lot longer than the first target.

“Something unusual here,” Elgin said. He pointed.

I looked. Yes, there was a ... seam? running around the tank, bisecting it lengthwise. It was a thin line, hardly visible in places, you had to look closely to see it.

“Huh,” I said. “I never saw that before.”

“Me, neither. Wonder what it means?”

I shrugged. Another mystery in a life full of them. 

“Well. My turn to burn.”

I smiled.

While Elgin applied his burner to the tank, I looked around. Not much to see. Sand and rocks, sun glinting from those and the water, which was a couple thousand steps half sunward. The white foam as the waves reached the land made thin lines against the darker blue. There were, so the rumor went, tanks under the sea, and somewhere, teams equipped to reach and deal with those. I wondered how that would be, to be under the water, finding targets. What kind of suit would you have to wear? Would it be like the Tivo? Masks and tanks and bubbles rising around you? Long and flat shoes -- fins? -- on your feet? Would the burners work underwater?

“Well, shit,” Elgin said.

I blinked and looked at him. “What?”

“I have burned to the depth of the flame and I am not through the wall yet.”

“Really?” I moved closer to look.

He was right. “Huh. I’ve never seen one that thick before.”

“Me, neither. Well. I will make the hole wider and insert the tip of the burner deeper.”

“‘Adjust for obstacles,’” I said. I grinned again.

“Shit on your cereal,” he said.

I laughed. 

Since I was leaning against the tank as we spoke, I could feel the thing inside stirring.

“It’s awake,” I said.

“Not for long.”

I turned to look out at the water again. In the distance, there were thick and dark clouds piled high, looking as if they went all the way to the sea’s surface. The skinthins and hat and eyeshields would mostly protect us from the rain if it came here. But any place the precipitation touched bare skin would redden and blister, so you had to be careful if the wind blew that you kept your hat angled against it. Even so, I had been burned a couple of times. It wasn’t pleasant.

There came a thump against the inside of the tank, hard enough that it felt as if somebody had slapped me lightly where my hip rested against the thing.

“Must be a big one,” Elgin said.

“Still not through?”

“Not yet.”

The clouds were moving in our direction, but it would take at least four or five thousand beats to reach us, I guessed.

I said, “Do you ever wonder why the Chief or his Chief or somebody doesn’t just destroy these things from the air? Have the copters crank minigun AP or drop a bomb or something on them?”

Elgin didn’t look up from his chore. “Never thought about it. They did that, we’d be out of a job. Cost-factor, maybe. Minigun ammo and bombs cost more than handguns and burners.”

I shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense. What it costs to feed and house and outfit us, supply us with females and all? Has to be more.”

Elgin shrugged. “I just go where I’m told and do what they tell me to do. That’s all stuff for the Chiefs to worry about.”

“I suppose you are right.”

“Ah! Got you, you shirker!”

I looked. Elgin had burned through, though the hole was tiny. It was still going to take a while to widen the diameter enough for my five’s muzzle to angle back and forth.

“You know,” he said, “you could use the two-two.”

“That’s not the procedure,” I said.

“I understand. But it is going to take a long time to widen the hole enough for the five. Surely a magazine of two-two is sufficient? Then we’d be done sooner and could go home. You see those clouds out there over the water? They are coming this way. If they get here before the copter takes off ...”

He had a valid point. The birds didn’t fly in heavy rain. We’d have to wait inside on the ground until the storm passed. That might take a long time. And if we got caught in the precipitation, we’d likely sustain some burns. We were worth more undamaged than one magazine of two-two.

“You have a valid point,” I said. “Give me enough room for the two-two.”

We both grinned at each other. I pulled the two-two.

He shoved the burner back into the hole --

-- and the front of the tank blew off.

I was to the side, and the split tank hit me a glancing blow, enough to knock me sprawling to the ground, still conscious, but dazed.

Elgin was less fortunate. The front section hit him squarely and smashed him to the ground. The section toppled onto him, pinning his pelvis and legs to the ground. It had to weigh as much as two or three men. He screamed and tried to get free, but he couldn’t move. Couldn’t reach his guns either.

I felt as if my head had been filled with the sand I lay upon. I couldn’t focus my thoughts. What had happened? 

Elgin screamed again, a horrific sound, and this was a cry far beyond the pain of having his legs broken or crushed. It was pure terror.

My mind didn’t want to clear, I tried to stand, but I couldn’t figure out how to make myself move ...

The thing inside the tank came out. 

I couldn’t believe what I saw. What it looked like. That it could do that. They weren’t supposed to be be able to move, after all that time in the tanks, but this one came out. It went straight for Elgin. It fell upon him and smothered his screams.

It seemed like a long time, but it couldn’t have been more than a few beats when Elgin’s voice stopped. There were sounds coming from the thing that had killed him -- he was dead, I was sure of it -- and then the creature turned away from Elgin to behold me.

I couldn’t stand. Somehow, I had held on to the two-two.  

The thing ... rose from Elgin and came at me.

I screamed like Elgin had screamed, in terror, pointed the gun and pulled the firing stud as fast as I could. The fifteen rounds in the two-two sounded like one long, single sound, a ripping of heavy material torn by strong hands ---

When the gun clicked empty and the slide locked back, it was still coming --

I dropped the two-two --

The thing stumbled ... but kept coming --

I had a moment of blind panic. I was going to die ...

Then my training took over and I remembered the five. I pulled it free -- the thing was almost on me! -- and I shoved the muzzle at it and fired the gun until it ran dry.

The thing fell, landing no more than a handwidth from my right moccasin. 

I reloaded the five with my spare magazine and shot it five more times. It juddered under the impacts but didn’t move otherwise.

It was a while before I could gather myself up enough to move. If the first wind from the storm hadn’t begun to stir the sand, I don’t know if I could have managed it then.

I stood. My back hurt, my jaw hurt, but otherwise, I seemed to be uninjured. 

I moved to examine Elgin. He was dead. 

I started for the copter.

The rain had begun to fall, a hard wind swirling it around enough so that a few drops hit my cheeks as I reached the craft and was admitted. 

A few burns on my face didn’t seem like much, now.

“Close the door,” I said.

“Passenger Elgin has not entered the vehicle,” the helicopter’s voice said. “State the reason.”

“He’s dead,” I said. “Close the shitting door.”

The door cycled shut.

“What was the cause of Passenger Elgin’s death?” 

“It got him,” I said.

“Define ‘it.’”

I leaned back against the seat, exhausted. “The thing in the tank got out. It killed him. 

“The human killed him.”

The helicopter didn’t speak to that. 

I didn’t count heartbeats, but it seemed like a very long wait until the rain stopped and the copter took off. 

 

-30-