. The Blood Major climbs down from the Thatcher and walks over, smoking in the downtime, mask off. He takes a drink from my canteen.
‘Blood Major, sir?’‘Johnson, you cock!’
‘Five down sir. And three from coming up the ridge.’
‘I know about coming up the ridge, Captain.’
‘Sir.’
‘Seen worse.’
‘We have sir.’
‘Take over Bennett’s squad.’
‘How many sir?’
‘A Private.’
‘Sir?’
‘Questions Johnson, you cock?’
‘No sir.’
Alf Laden was shaking his head. I beckoned the Private over from the shade of the Churchill, Light Entertainment Units culling our own wounded on its screen, names scrolling past too quick to read.
‘You the last of Bennett’s squad?’
‘Sir! Honour to meet you sir!’
‘Can it, Fodder. What’s your name?’
‘Hans La Feu, sir!’
‘Welcome to the squad, La Feu.’ He sat down on the dirt waiting with the rest of us. Downtime. Fucking NBCBN.
‘Remember the last protesters we saw, Johnson?’
‘I do sir!’ I can’t remember the last time I saw a bird.
‘Two years ago, wasn’t it, soldier?’
‘Two years, sir!’ Two years ago now, dirty and protesting by the roadside, utterly without purpose, their T-shirt’s of dissident rappers, Duff Paddy vs. The Acidic Jew. Long dead voices for impractical peace standing out preposterous against the sea of dirty churning green and loaded 58 webbing. Metal on metal and on leather and wood and earth, rattling and clinking past. Unstoppable straight purposeful machined metal, ridged and stamped and riveted; no give.
‘Good cock I showed them Gods stuff, didn’t I boy?’
‘You did sir.’ Blood Major Andy McNesbit de-personated them with double taps to the head as we rolled past in our flame painted frowning Special Report half-track, at the front of the frontline, ambassadors of Warnage and Corporate Liberation. Everything as it should be, their faceless corpses on the NBCBN screens, their murder repeated over and over, the Blood Major’s profile in the corner as a scarred anchor man gestured with his prosthetic and sang the Majors praises. That was only two years after Washington.
‘They still show that on the screens, sir!’
‘I know it boy, I know it.’ The Blood Major was a Maim Major then, promoted after Washington, and his promotion to Blood was immediate. Before Washington, we were welcomed by celebrating crowds eager for liberation. The streets full of cheering civilians with flowers and gifts throwing themselves under our wheels and tracks, under our guns and blades. Few stayed hidden in back streets with inappropriate T-shirts and had to be forcefully liberated their thoughts shameful. Now it’s different; just us and Dickey. No grateful civilians anymore.
‘Horrible down time, sir.’
‘Keep it together, you cock. We will kill again.’
‘Sir!’ The Blood Major always knows the right thing to say.
Horrible downtime.
Waiting to advance I eye the tree line, Blood Sergeant Baps McFadden next to me breast feeding in the cover of our half-track, solid riveted metal punctuated with plastic eyes, a baby steel dinosaur angry without play. Its scarred windscreen and armor a fierce frown over the flames painted bright on the short bonnet, main lens a blank round nose.
I offer her a cigarette and she takes one with a steady hand, eyes never leave the tree line, her baby quiet and suckling. She was gone for one day when she gave birth in the Human Shield like she was gone one day when she conceived; every woman expected to do one day a year in the Breeding Church for conception. We used to breed within our own squads; keeping it in the family but numbers are down now and we spread it about. Every man expected to go too, during leave. I will be twenty soon and I have not gone to the Breeding Church since before Washington. It’s the pills. In reality few go. I take some more pills.
Skull Sergeant Alf Laden is sitting in the lee of a Media Tank with blood in his beard, every muscle tense. Holds his Electrolux Media G50 with the ammo clip out dry firing down the slope with a finger that is trembling. Holds the clip of three hundred an inch away from reload, red No light shows hazy through the smoke and gloom of the overcast sky. His eyes riveted to the screen on the Churchill, his rifle clicking and clunking in its impotence. The screen; tanks crews at work and then Dickey Enemy, his multiple death replayed over and over in the downtime.
Jr. Lt. Ramirez, not my squad; Captain Clarke’s, a small red-eyed girl in baggy fatigues sticking a Black Blade into the ground over and over between her small boots. Her teeth grinding working the muscles in her cheeks. Blood leaks from her ears, face turns to the screen sneering as Dickey dies, liberated…no one likes downtime. Captain Clarke sounds off his squad. He has lost more than me.
‘Captain.’ He says to me in the downtime.
‘Captain.’ I say back, nodding.
‘Downtime, eh?’
‘Downtime.’
‘See those cows, Jesus!’
‘Yes.’
‘Seen Bennett?’
‘Bennett bought it.’
‘Jesus H!’‘Yes.’ Me and Clarke, we go back all the way to Washington.
On the screens and in the flesh I have seen soldiers shoot themselves in the horror of downtime unable to not use their guns, unable to not be killing, their instant feeds replayed with citations of dedication and posthumous decorations.
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