A Scrimmage at a Border Station

A SCRIMMAGE AT A BORDER STATION

Copyright 2001 E. E. Knight

With the tent keeping out the wind, the fourveefour warmed the men and their bedding well enough. Although the e-manual for a KS-1604v4 Self-Powered Field Space Heater discouraged it, through both text and hooting picto-icon, the Orbital Marines still used it to keep their coffee warm. Even worse, they had just finished warming dinner on the little heat projector, something expressly forbidden by the very first DO NOT bullet point. But it was malfeasance born of necessity. Unlike the food bars in their packs, a crock of Pilaxian voosh had no peel-n-heat chemical strip, though it tasted immeasurably better. The meal for all five of them had been bought in a mountain village for the price of a single half-liter beer back in the Flats. They would even get reimbursed for the expense under the Local Trade and Uplift Act, despite their receipt consisting of a torn-out flyleaf of a plasticback novel with a spidery X scrawled in it.

A weapons strip after a long day in the blowing snow and dirt of Feldspar Pass was one field regulation zealously obeyed by the Marines. The sergeant and the lieutenant started the nightly ritual. The lieutenant reassembled his carbine with one eye on the GuardStar, a pocket-sized screen running diagnostics on the sentry spikes stuck into rocks and dirt a hundred meters from the tent in all directions.

"We got a clean wagon-wheel?" the sergeant asked, hearing the monitor finish its test with a beep.

Sixteen green lights twinkled back from the GuardStar. "Like a Christmas wreath, Marsh. Good work. The rest of you can turn in when you're done with your weapons. I'll be up for a while in case we get anything from the satellite on night-burst."

Lieutenant Hammar crossed his stocking feet in the direction of the fourveefour and opened his torn tenbuck dreadful, reading by helmet-light. He half-listened to the soldiers talking over the snaps and snicks of the weapons-strip. The sharp, oily smell of brainsafe solvent filled the tent.

"Fuckin' autorifles," Huong said, flicking the spring-switch on his weapon's receiver and peering owlishly down the barrel. "You seen the new OM recruiting poster? They got one in Boia's down on the Strip. Some ta-ta in a field harness and dress hat holding a plasmer, lickin' it with her tongue. Where's our plasmers, huh?"

Sergeant Marsh scratched at his incipient beard. "You take what the Empire gives you, Huong, whether it's a rocket/solid autorifle or your pay transfer. Or weren't you paying attention when you raised your right hand?"

"You wouldn't want a plasmer, Huong," Groves added. "The reactor on your back's safe enough, but during the six-second powerup, someone drops a mortar shell too close and your gun'll flare like a starstriker's afterburner. You'd look like a slab of ribs left on the grill all day. The plasmer's a tarmac weapons system anyway. It's something they hand to the senator in charge of the Peace Services Oversight Committee, let him blow the shit out of an old assault lander and image it to show to his wife and kids. He's promising an override on the appropriations bill before the echo or his hard-on fades."

"They were testing the plasmers on Bayworld when I went through boot," the newbie said.

Huong snorted. "Yeah, well, you're on the Pile now, son. Welcome to the asshole of the Empire. What the fuck the OM's still doing here, I can't tell. We hit surface ummm? years ago, anyway."