"Sir—" the kid repeated as his streaming visage lifted again.
"Via, kid!" Ortnahme said, almost choking on his swollen tongue. He'd bitten the bloody hell out of it as he struggled. "Will you shut yer bleedin' trap?"
"If I ever have a son," Ortnahme shouted over the fan noise, "I'll name the little bastard Simkins!"
"I thought," said Dick Suilin, looking down at the silent trench line as
It must have rained recently,because ankle-deep mud slimed the bottom of the trench. Two bodies lay face down in it. Their black uniforms smoldered around the holes chewed by shell fragments.
The bruises beneath Suilin's armor itched unbearably. "I wonder what my sister's doing," he added inconsequently.
"The Consies were just tacking the west bank down," Cooter said, his eyes on his multi-function display. "Nothin' serious."
"Nothin' that wasn't gonna run like rabbits when the shells hit—thems as could," Gale interjected with a chuckle.
"All their heavy stuff this side of the river," the lieutenant continued, "that's at Kohang."
He shrugged. "Where we'll find it quick enough, I guess."
"Where's your sister?"Gale asked. The veteran gunner poked a knifepoint into the crust around the ejection port of his tribarrel. Jets of liquid nitrogen were supposed to cool and expel powergun rounds from the chambers after firing. A certain amount of the plastic matrix remained gaseous until it condensed on the outside of the receiver, narrowing the port.
Suilin unlatched his body armor and began rubbing the raw skin over his ribs. His fatigue shirt was sweaty, but the drenching in salt spray from the estuary seemed to have made the itch much worse.
"She's in Kohang," the reporter said. It was hard to remember what he'd said to whom about his background, about Suzette. "She's married to Governor Kung."
The past two days were a blur of gray and cyan. Maybe fatigue, maybe the drugs he was taking against the fatigue.
Maybe the way his life had been turned inside out, like the body of the Consie guerrilla his tribarrel had center punched . . . .
"Whoo-ie!" Gale chortled. "Well, if that's who she is, I sure hope she don't mind meetin' a few good men. Er a few hundred!"
The reporter went cold.
Cooter reached over and took Gale's jaw between a big thumb and forefinger. "Shut up, Windy," he said. "Just shut the fuck up, all right?"
