Why am I up here? It’s not because I give a damn about my country or the ideals of either side. I’m fairly sure I was still in shock when I walked up to the recruiting office. Only a short while earlier a 16-ton piece of shrapnel turned my best friend into something resembling extra chunky salsa. He was one of the first casualties in the Solstice War.
At the time we were both shuttle pilots for the Shackleton Orbital; we spent our days bringing goods and people back and forth between the surface and the stars. I remember the docking station was a little more high-strung than usual when I got back, but I didn’t think much of it until I saw the smoke coming from downtown. I wasn’t headed that way, I was already late, and frankly I didn’t care to gawk at the latest crater left over by some idiot smoking at a refueling station, so I kept walking to the orbital subway terminal.
When Dave and I were looking to blow off some steam, we usually went to the Museum of Sex. Once inside, we would split up and return to the lobby in an hour and a half with our dates. It was a game we would play; whoever found the most attractive girl won, and didn’t have to pay for dinner that night. Dinner was almost always at the 230-Fifth Rooftop Bar and Grill, partially because it was directly across the intersection from the museum, and partially because I got John, the head bouncer, his job there.
I had gotten delayed when some hotrod tug pilot slammed a shipping container into the side of my ship’s hull. The damage was superficial at worst, anyone with half a shipping license could have told you that, but the techs still spent two hours covering their collective asses. While I waited for the wrench jockeys to finish, I gave Dave a call and told him he’d have to get dates for both of us. Reception wasn’t that good, atmospheric distortion being what it is, but I think he said something about a pair of Swedish exchange students. As far as last conversations with a best friend go, I think mine went pretty well.
After stepping off the tube at 5th and E 28th, I only remember snapshots of the next 24 hours. John crying on the curb, his massive frame heaving softly. A pair of blonde girls being treated for shock. What was left of Dave, smeared across the intersection by an enormous chunk of ‘crete and rebar. The car radio denouncing the attack with all the fury its black-market speakers could muster. A New Jersey State Trooper tapping on my window somewhere in the Pine Barrens, waking me from a nap I don’t remember taking. Picking at a blanket I’d never seen before, ‘Beth Israel Medical Center-EMT.’
My car ran out of fuel, or rather was within a kilometer of doing so, when I pulled in to a diner somewhere in the Garden State. The menu said taylor ham with egg and cheese; when the waitress read back my order she said pork roll with egg and cheese. Must’ve been Central Jersey then. After finishing the above, four rashers of bacon with two eggs over easy (plus toast), a bacon cheeseburger with the works, and thumbing the subsequent tab, I walked outside.
The cool pre-dawn air didn’t fix anything, but it did lend a subtle focus to my otherwise blurred thoughts. Across the road, there was a recruiting office. They say when you decide to join; you should have a reason for it. Patriotism works for some, honor and valor for others and some just watch to many action movies. I was out of gas.
I just needed to keep moving. I didn’t really care where. That feeling you get when you swim underwater, that eel like motion of cold liquid around your body, the flow of moving forward, that was all that was keeping me going at that point. So when I looked up from crushing my cigarette and saw the recruiting office, I didn’t think ‘A sign from the gods!’ or some nonsense like that. I didn’t even think it was a strange coincidence. I just gave a little shrug and walked over.
I grabbed the first brochure I saw in the foyer and walked into the nearest open office. What followed was a month long blur of paper work and people in lab coats telling me to turn my head and cough. Apparently the pamphlet was for some first strike-y special ops unit, so right after the initial training phase ended, I got shipped across the country for even more training. Again. And again. And again.
And so, after almost four years and three and a half million dollars worth of training, drilling, teaching, beating and honing me into a member of one of the finest combat action units in the world, Uncle Sam saw fit to give my team a mission. The briefs described it in intricate detail, we had Plans A through X for every possible scenario imaginable. Plan A went like this: HALO jump from a commercially registered plane over enemy airspace at nine kilometers up. Land near the coast and begin to make our way to the exfil point, 50 clicks to the west. We were to engage targets of opportunity, military and civilian, hostile or not. Operation Wrecking Ball they called it.
Over the com I hear the go code come down, “Stitch, I say again, stich.” The ramp lowers, depressurizing the cabin, and the light flashes yellow. Thirty seconds. I still can’t rationalize what I’m about to do. I still can’t accept that the place where he died was paved over two days later. I still can’t give a good answer as to why I’m about to jump out of a plane and go plant explosives on bridges and hospitals. I still can’t accept that the plane doesn’t have any courtesy peanuts (it’s the little things, I guess.) What I do know is that in two seconds, I will, for no tangible reason I can think of, hurl myself from this plane, land and start killing people
The light goes green and I swallow the night whole.
Phew. The first idea for this story came into my head over the course of a two mile portage from 51.212529,-72.604866 to 51.206104, -72.585225 (google maps ftw) This should have been up almost a week ago. Sorry for the delay.
