Exogene by T. C. McCarthy

Author:T. C. McCarthy [McCarthy, T. C.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Science Fiction, War, Cyberpunk, Fantasy
ISBN: 9780316191838
Google: Hppu27xLoqEC
Amazon: B004RCNGS0
Goodreads: 12819014
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2012-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

Being pulled off the line meant boredom. Sometimes. Although early in the war we had reached Pavlodar quickly, the length of our supply routes from Iran was such that thousands of kilometers of roads and rails had to be protected. Supply lines often broke. The Russians, when they attacked, had less than two hundred kilometers to travel and wave after wave of them came, pushing us south and west, at the same time insurgents hit rear areas. Vehicles and munitions disappeared faster than they could be supplied, so whenever we pulled to the rear for refitting, they ordered us to stay on alert as a reaction force. To plug the gaps.

One day Megan assembled us. “Gather weapons and ammunition. Two weeks’ rations. Form up at the motor pool, fifteen minutes.” It was the first I had ever sensed that she was uncertain.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. We helped each other suit up, holding the hoses and wires of our undersuits out of the way.

“Maykain.”

“What about it?” I asked.

“Men are under attack. Over a thousand insurgents, partially armored and well organized, possibly led by Russian Special Forces or genetics.”

Maykain. A briefing ran through my head until I remembered: key road junction, remote, important supply route that was to be held.

“We will succeed.” I said.

“Perhaps. I do not doubt the unit; it is the distance that troubles. We’ll have no air cover on the way out, and no APCs. Division is supplying us with captured trucks. It will be… difficult. I have a feeling, Catherine.”

Difficult meant that Megan had already assessed it, that many of us might not come back. A feeling meant that it could be worse than that.

After two miles, my teeth felt as though they had chipped from rattling as the line of our ten Tedom trucks bounced over the road, trailing dust. It was summer. The sun glared at us, but you felt cool fluid while it crawled through the undersuit tubes. We hadn’t yet helmeted, so although our suit temperatures had been kept in check, our faces baked in the heat and I struggled to fall asleep, the rough jolting forcing me awake every ten minutes—into some vague reality, part dreamer and part dirt-breather. I found it hard to believe that anyone lived in such a place.

The villages we passed barely existed. Wooden shacks straddled the dirt track, most of them surrounded with warped fences to contain a few chickens, pigs, and sometimes goats. I remembered one settlement in particular. An old woman stood near the road, her white scarf almost identical to the ones worn by our mothers. She stared as we passed. The lines on her face cut deeply, and she scowled, shaking her fist at the trucks and shouting something in Kazakh—not Russian—when she bent over to lift something from the ground. At the same time she threw it, one of the girls swung her carbine and fired, the needles slamming into the woman’s brow and forcing her head back so that for a second it looked as though she laughed at the sky.

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