Undertow by Elizabeth Bear

Author:Elizabeth Bear [Bear, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780553903904
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-07-31T04:00:00+00:00

It wasn’t a great idea to call Moon Morrow for comfort, but somehow Closs found himself doing it anyway. He caught her at lunch, dining from hand-painted china with delicate silver manipulators. The food was bitter greens and some cold, rare, shaved red meat. Bison, probably, unless it was offworld. He didn’t imagine that Morrow would eat anything as unsafe as Earth beef, even if it were possible to get.

She wrapped greens in a shred of meat and raised them to her mouth, balancing the bundle on slender tools. He waited until she had swallowed and cleared her palate with a sip of water. He was opening his mouth to request her attention when she fixed him with a glance and interrupted. “There’s been another attack, Timothy.”

His voice died with the breath that carried it. “Where?”

A transfer icon blipped red in the corner of his display. Expecting a map or a series of still images, he accepted the data stream. And found himself immersed in VR as if dumped into fifty feet of water in a weighted vest—the images rushing past him while he struggled to start breathing, to remember to keep moving the air in and out.

And then the hard-earned combat reflexes took over, and—like a fish dumped overboard—Closs began to swim.

A starship—not a lighter, no, and he still read consoles well enough to see that they were slowing from relativistic; inbound rather than outbound, then. Alarm claxons sounded outside his helmet; he was suited and armed, the powerpack of a beam weapon weighing across his back. This ship had been relativistic for some time; the equipment was not unlike what he’d used when he was active duty.

For a moment, he was afflicted with a powerful sense of déjà vu. He could have been twenty-two and a lieutenant again, a kid fresh from Titan Academy, with more brains and guts than sense. But then the body he rode in moved and he wasn’t in charge of it, and he relaxed. This was a game he’d played as a line commander, riding along in the back of a sergeant’s or lieutenant’s head—sometimes four or twelve at once. The miracle of modern warfare: even the guy at the back knew what was going on at the front, from many angles.

He couldn’t imagine what it must have been like when you had nothing to go on but estimated positions, radio reports, and guesswork. What a way to fight a war.

He checked his vehicle’s vital stats—PFC Amelie Heaney, age twenty-three (or about 115, nonrelativistic), currently nursing a sprained ankle from training and a sour stomach from the antifungals she was taking for a welting, cracking case of athlete’s foot.

The information might flow faster, but the soldier’s lot never changed. Currently, her heart rate was elevated, her eyes were darting port and starboard and up and down, and she was only breathing slow and deep because she was consciously regulating the pattern. Her squad was six; two were right behind her, three more detailed to survey a different corridor.

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