follicles. I radioed my report to HQ, then cleaned the gun. I could strip it in seconds, normally, but it took me three minutes.
What was the point of continuing? Eventually, the Slugs would overrun us. Home was a pinprick in the sky. The woman I had hoped to spend my life with was gone. The woman who had become my sister lay dying. I was cold and hungry and alone. Next assault, I would fire up all my ammunition but, when the Slugs overran us, as they eventually would, I would just relax and let it happen. I was just too tired to fight anymore.
Captain Jacowicz had said something to me a million years ago. That commanders measured their failures in the letters they wrote about soldiers killed under their command.
At Gettysburg, the Confederate General George Pickett hurled his division against a Union strong point. Pickett’s Charge became synonymous with futile slaughter. Pickett returned to Confederate lines, dazed. His commander, Lee, told him, “General, see to your division!” Pickett responded, “General, I have no division.”
Now I understood Pickett and Jacowicz, perfectly.
After I walked our line and made sure my guys were fed, I dragged back to the cave and sat cross-legged next to Munchkin. I spooned lukewarm broth into her, while my remaining troops cleaned weapons in their trench- line positions. The morphine eased her pain but she had sunk overnight. Without more help than I could give, she had hours. She drifted back to unconsciousness.
“Major Wander?”
I looked up to see a medic, out of breath, his rifle slung. He saluted, and I returned it. That still seemed unnatural.
“Finally. She needs help. And I’m just an acting lieutenant, not a major.”
Confusion flashed across his face. “Not anymore, sir. You have Third Battalion of the Second, now, Major.”
“What?”
“Yesterday was bad, sir. Lots of field promotions.”
I knelt beside her and peeled back her jacket, exposing the monitor leads for the medic to plug in his field- analysis reader. “Look. Thanks for the news. You’re a medic. She needs a medic. Go to work.”
“You don’t understand, sir. I’m a medic, but I’m here as a runner. Radios went out after you reported this morning. My orders are to escort you back to HQ. Without delay.”
My head spun. Insanity spread each moment.
“Sure. We’ll take her along.”
He looked down at her. “Moving her will kill her.”
I had lost twelve soldiers. I wouldn’t lose Munchkin. “Then I’m staying with her.”
He fingered his slung rifle. “General Cobb issued my orders, himself. If I have to take you back at gunpoint —”
Purple images of Mom and Walter Lorenzen and Pooh Hart and dead soldiers I never even knew ached in my head like tumors.
I snatched up my rifle and thrust the muzzle against his forehead. “Gunpoint? How’s this for gunpoint?” I pointed my trembling free hand at Munchkin. “You save her life, or I blow your brains out.”
The medic’s breath caught in his throat.
I thumbed off the safety. “She’s my family. Her husband is my best friend. He’s up in orbit, now, expecting me to keep her safe. You understand that? I won’t let my family die. Third Battalion of the Second can go to hell.”
He stood as still as marble, except for his hands, which uncoiled the lead wires from his field-analysis reader while his eyes focused on the gun muzzle pressed in his flesh. “Sure, sir. Let’s get a read on her.”
I pulled the muzzle back as he knelt and fastened the lead wires to her with shaking fingers.
We waited until the reader beeped and he tilted its screen toward his eyes. “Blood loss. Mild infection. The round shattered her clavicle. But that won’t kill her. Overall, critical but stable. Somebody took good care of her. Baby’s fine, too.”
“Baby?”
Munchkin turned her face away, and I knew it was true. It was so incomprehensible I wasn’t even sure whether it violated regulations.
“Munchkin, what about after-pills?” Unwanted pregnancy disappeared courtesy of Squibb twenty years ago.
“I’ve got two more months for that. I’m mission-capable.”
“You’ve been puking every morning.”
“So have a lot of men.” She was right. The army tolerated tobacco smokers’ morning hacking. She could do her job, now. In a month, if need be, a pill could make her body resorb the fetus.
“But why?”
“If I lose Metzger…”
If I could make some part of Pooh or of Walter, of my family, survive, would I break a regulation? Of course. I had just nearly killed a medic to save Munchkin.
“Metzger’ll be fine.” I wasn’t shining her on. The Slugs had no antiaircraft. The Numbers were right. Metzger was safe. But The Numbers said Pooh should be alive, too.
“Jason?” Munchkin’s hand gripped my sleeve. “You need to go. It’s what you signed up for. I’ll be fine. And if I’m not, it’s what I signed up for.”
Neither of us blinked. It was also what Walter Lorenzen and Pooh and twelve dead soldiers who had died under my command had signed up for. They all died try-ing. I could do no less. I wouldn’t leave Munchkin for the flag or the UN or to kill Slugs. I would leave for Walter and for Pooh and, in the end, for Munchkin herself, even with child.
“Does Metzger know?”
She shook her head.
I shouldered my pack, then said to the medic, “I’m ready. And you can write me up when we get back to HQ.”
He shrugged. “Long as you’re going, I don’t need to leave. Plenty of work here besides her. She’s not out of the woods, but I’ve got tricks in my bag. No soldier writes up another soldier. We’re all family.”
I bent and kissed Munchkin’s forehead. “Thank you.”
I turned and loped back toward HQ. As I ran, I peered out across the plain. A black shadow line bigger than yesterday’s formed on the horizon.
Chapter Thirty-Six
I ran through our mostly empty trenches toward HQ, listening as Hope’s bombs began pattering like raindrops out on the plain. Then they stopped.
I looked up, steadying my helmet with one hand. Hope’s silver dot floated overhead, clearly still in firing position. Odd.
Minutes later, the Slug boom-boom-boom echoed off the crags. The Slugs had advanced within small-arms range but Hope had barely fired a shot.
As I ran, I wondered whether I would really have shot the medic. I wondered whether I should tell Metzger that Munchkin carried their child. I wondered how badly we were hurt that a specialist fourth class commanded a battalion after two days’ battle. Three leg-infantry companies and a weapons company made a battalion. If the battalion was at full strength, which, of course, it wasn’t, eight hundred soldiers would live and die on my orders.
By the time I rounded a bend, and HQ came in sight, battle sounds had died. We had beaten back the Slugs again. Since I’d left, the engineers had rigged a roof, of sorts, over HQ and topped it with loose rock. Antennae sprouted from it, and below I saw soldiers move.
I got closer and realized that the movement was the hauling of wounded. Slug carcasses draped HQ’s parapet by the hundreds. If the Slugs had got this close to our HQ, the next assault would be the last.
I ducked under HQ’s low ceiling and waited for my goggles to adjust. The first person I recognized was
