Chapter 17: Ancient History and Old Wounds

Once upon a time, I could take a punch and move on. Nowadays, I can still take a punch all right; it's the moving on that's tough.

Pain isn't just pain anymore. My nerves fire differently. It's like they get stuck in a loop, don't know when to stop. But far worse, I simply can't recover the way I used to. It's not about toughness or willpower or even taking the right drugs. My body's susceptible to injury, no matter what I do. And when I do get hurt, it takes a long time to heal. One careless mistake, one wrong step, one little fall, can change everything-which is a problem in this line of work, where a limp or a twisted ankle could mean the difference between getting home for dinner and getting zipped up in a body bag.

I barely broke a sweat in that shootout outside the bar, yet my knees feel like they've been lubricated with acid. I lock the door behind me and trudge into my apartment, shedding my wet clothes. I grab a tin of painkilling salve and sit down on the bed. I apply a glob to my knees and start massaging it in. The salve has a distinct aroma that I associate with my father.

I lay back on the bed, gritting my teeth. The pain is only getting worse. It'll come back down, in a minute or two, but for now, I'm a man who wants to fight trapped in a body that can't. It's a grim reminder that I can work out all I like, get strong, stay fit, take all the right supplements... but it doesn't change the places inside me worn down from long years of hard use. I hate feeling this way. Old. Vulnerable. Brittle.

I wasn't always so frail. Once during the war, I had a gunshot wound go untreated for six hours without getting laid up. We'd taken a desert command post by night, and in the chaos, I somehow managed to take a slug to the hip, which became something of a problem when an enemy convoy, returning from patrol, peaked the horizon. They caught wind of trouble right away and opened fire on us.

Our medic, as luck would have it, was the first to go-taken out by a rocket along with all his supplies. Our only chance was to hunker down in the Virofs' own trenches and hope they didn't charge. So there we were: dead of night, pinned down, outnumbered at least twenty to one. The skies were too rough for assault ships or troop shuttles, so no reinforcements. I called in an orbital strike. But these things take time. Satellite targeting, relayed to gunships in orbit that then need to calibrate for atmospheric conditions, then reposition themselves along the correct orbital path and wait for a clear shot.

For five hours, we were pinned down under heavy fire, exchanging shots with the convoy, trying to hold them back. Gray sand rained down on us in the trenches from bullets peppering above us.

Gunfire killed some of our guys. Mortars took others.

This one guy. Clancy, his name was. Or Chancy or Chaney or something. A sharpshooter. He was a machine. Killed at least four dozen Virofs that night. Just kept shooting and reloading, shooting and reloading. Finally, he says he's out of ammo but remembers a weapons cache fifty yards rear.

"Clancy," I tell him-or Chancy or Chaney or whatever. "Get down and stay down. Strike's incoming. 'Til then, you sit tight."

"No disrespect, Sarge," he says, "but nothin' doin'. We either keep shooting, or we sit and wait to die."

"You stay in this trench, soldier!" I shout at him. "That's an order!"

But he doesn't listen. He jumps up and takes off for the cache.

The guy made it about three steps before I heard the pop-pop-pop of slugs punching holes through his body armor-in through his back and out through the front. He probably never even knew he was shot.

It can't be more than a couple minutes after Clancy's shot down that my man on the horn gives me the word. "Strike is incoming. Take cover."

Take cover. Right. I ask him what he thinks think we've been doing for the past five hours, and he thankfully pretends not to hear me.

Somewhere in space high above the surface of Antioch, gunship cannons open fire, tearing clean through the atmosphere.

I'll never forget the sound. An orbital barrage-manmade, cobalt blue lightning strikes, supercharged beyond imagining-hitting the planet's surface like meteors, disintegrating anything in direct contact, detonating along the periphery, burning half-mile-wide craters into the desert, turning sand to glass.

Even after the Virof convoy has been erased from existence, it's still another hour before we can get a medic in to patch up my hip. Clancy's dead, along with half my unit, and I don't even take bed rest. I go out on patrol, as scheduled, the next day.

I dip my hand back into the salve and apply a generous portion of the analgesic to my right elbow, tender from hitting the street in my dive for cover.

Funny that I'd be thinking of Clancy on a night like tonight, twenty odd years since my last tour on Antioch. I used to think it was bravery that made him run for the cache that day. I've met a lot of guys like him over the year. Guys who never back down, never falter, never surrender. Guys who fight on, no matter what, without fear.

Until they run out of bullets.

As long as Clancy kept firing, he was master of his destiny. What would have saved his life that day was doing the one thing he couldn't do: sitting and waiting, and giving up control.

War is a series of charges and retreats. Those who never charge never win. But those who never retreat once in a while don't live long enough to win, either. Sometimes, you've got to know when to limp home and lick your wounds.

Lying on the bed, looking at the ceiling, I breathe deeply. The pain is pulling back a bit, and I'm pretty much sobered up. Now I'm just tired. Just going to rest my eyes. Just for a minute.