“Staff Sergeant Thomas Sunday, Junior, is released from Service of the United States Ground Forces September 17, 2009, for the Purposes of accepting a commission as a Regular Officer of the United States Ground Forces and concurrent reentry to the United States Ground Forces as First Lieutenant. First Lieutenant Thomas Sunday, Junior, is ordered to active duty this September 17, 2009, with date of rank September 17, 2009.” Cutprice stopped reading, reached in his bellows pocket, pulled out a battered pair of first lieutenant’s bars and replaced Sunday’s staff sergeant collar stripes. “You don’t owe me anything for these, by the way. I had them rattling around in the back of my desk.”
“Very well, Orostan,” Tulo’stenaloor said. “I’ll send Shartarsker in to make sure they are not coming closer to the base.” He looked at the map and considered the report the oolt’ondai had sent in. “Good luck.”
Goloswin looked up from the sensor readout. “It does not go well?”
“The team apparently has escaped,” Tulo’stenaloor said. “After ravaging Orostan’s oolt’ondar.”
“Well, they are not in the sensor region,” Goloswin said, gesturing at the map. “Or at least not marking themselves as such. I’m not sure if they can at this point. There is a way to communicate with these boxes without other devices, but this assumes the humans are as clever as I am.”
“So even if they are in the sensor net, we might not know it?” Tulo’stenaloor asked.
“Yes,” Goloswin answered, ruffling his crest. “There is a way to modify their software to make them detect humans. The sensors ‘see’ the humans, but they also see the thresh of the woods and all the greater thresh of this planet. The ‘deer’ and ‘dogs’ and such-like that have survived. The humans have designed the systems, quite efficiently I might add, to sort through the information they collect in several different ways. And it sorts out anything but Posleen and humans that are ‘in the net’ and telling it they are there and want to be tracked. Thus I would have to tell all the boxes to change their filters to find humans. And even then it would assume the humans are not cloaking themselves in any of several ways. I could do it — I am, after all, clever. But the humans might, probably would, notice. They, too, have clever technicians.”
“And then they would know that we… How did you put it?” Tulo’stenaloor asked.
“They would know that they have been ‘hacked,’ ” Goloswin said. “That we ‘own’ their system.”
“We don’t want to do that,” Tulo’stenaloor mused. “Yet.”
“What do you want to do in the meantime?” Goloswin asked. “Or can I go back to tinkering?”
“Just one last question,” the War Leader said. “Can you set the system to ‘filter’ out the Po’oslena’ar?”
Wendy shook her head as she watched Elgars finish up her workout. The sniper always closed with an exercise that was peculiar to her. She had suspended a weight, in this case fifty pounds of standard metal barbell weights, from a rope. The rope, in turn, was wrapped around a dowel; actually a chopped down mop handle.
Elgars would then “winch” up the weights by twisting the rope in her hands. Up and slowly back down, fifty times. Wendy was lucky if she could do it five times.
“I gave up on that one,” Wendy admitted. They generally worked out once a day for about an hour switching between strength and cardiovascular sessions. Lately, though, they had been concentrating more on weight training; Wendy was trying out for a “professional” emergency services position and Elgars was backstopping her training. Today Wendy had stuck to warm-ups; when they were done she was going to go to the tryouts and she didn’t even want to think about going through that SOB after a full workout.
“You ought to start at a lower weight and rep,” the captain said. “It’s good for the wrists.”
“I can see that,” Wendy admitted, looking at the captain’s; the woman’s forearms were starting to look like a female Popeye’s.
“Makes it easier to climb ladders among other things, most of the stuff in your PPE.”
“Yeah, well, time to go to that now,” Wendy said nervously.
“One of these days I will figure out the purpose of a fire department in this place,” Elgars said, wiping off her face with a towel and wrapping the towel around her neck. “Every fire that has broken out was extinguished before the crew arrived; that is what sprinklers and Halon are for. I think they’re just a very overtrained clean-up crew.”
“Well, at least it feels like you’re doing something,” Wendy said sharply.
“And caring for screaming children is not doing something?” Annie asked with a thin smile.
“Do you want to do it the rest of your life?” Wendy asked.
“No,” the captain said, leading the way out of the gym. “But, then again, you don’t get the desire to disembowel the little bastards.”
“You get along with Billy,” Wendy said with her own tight smile.
“That is because he doesn’t say anything.”
“Well, there is that,” Wendy snapped. “You weren’t in Fredericksburg; you can’t know what it was like.”
“No, I can’t,” Elgars said. “Thank you very much for pointing that out. I was not in Fredericksburg and I wouldn’t remember anyway.”
Wendy stopped and looked at the officer for a moment. “When did we start fighting?”
Elgars stopped in turn and cocked her head. “I think when I complained about the fire department.”
“Okay,” Wendy said. “It’s something to do that helps. Yes, I’m tired of the daycare center. I was tired of it when most of this damned place was open cavern and it was just a couple of hundred shaken up Virginians. I’m sick and tired of it now. I’ve watched those kids grow up without sunlight or anyplace to play but a few rooms and I just can’t do it any more.
“I’m tired of wiping noses. I’m tired of not making a contribution. I’m tired of being treated like some sort of brood mare, especially since the only guy I’m willing to be one with is NEVER HERE!”
“Okay,” Annie said, raising a hand. “Gotcha.”
“As to Billy,” Wendy continued, leading the way down the corridor, “Shari was the last person out of Central Square. Billy… looked back.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Elgars said with a sigh. “What and where is Central Square?”
“It was the big shopping center outside of Fredericksburg,” Wendy explained patiently. “The Posleen dropped right on it. Shari just… walked away. Carrying Susie and leading Kelly and Billy. Billy… looked back. He’s never been right since.”
“Okay,” Elgars said patiently. “I still don’t understand. Looked back? At the shopping center? Whatever that is.”
“The Posleen were… eating the people there.”
“Ah.” Elgars thought about that for a second. “That would be bad.”
“And they apparently were… spreading out towards Shari. She says she doesn’t really know because she wouldn’t look back. But Billy did.”
“Okay,” the captain said with a frown. “I guess that would be bad.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Wendy asked. She’d noticed that sometimes the sniper was sometimes almost inhumanly dense about stuff.
“No,” Elgars replied.
“It was like one of those nightmares,” Wendy said with a shudder. “Where something’s chasing you and you can’t get away no matter how fast or where you run. The docs think he’s sort of… locked up in that. Like he can’t think about anything else; he’s just replaying the nightmare.”