The Cost of a Bullet

The animal at the wire was the same kind that had bitten her.

Vera recognized the low hips and the way its jaw moved independently of its head. This one's mouth was intact. It stopped beyond a shallow ditch and sniffed the air with its whole chest, the ribs separating beneath pale skin.

She stood halfway from the crate before remembering Venn's instruction. The cup was still in her hand. She set it behind a bench leg where it could not fall and moved to the end of the awning, keeping the workbench between herself and the open yard.

The camp had become difficult to hear. People were moving quickly, but nobody near her shouted. The crane's loose guide ropes swung against its frame. Beyond them, the animal looked at the gap in the wire, turned its head toward the covered ward entrance, and returned its attention to the gap.

Three soldiers took the forward trench. Pell went to the right, Bren to the left. A young woman with her sleeve rolled above a metal support knelt between them. Venn stayed behind the line, close enough to speak without shouting.

Pell had to go around the crane blocks to reach his place. He ducked under a trailing rope, slid the rifle through first, and followed it into the earthwork. Bren was already setting his fore-end in a shallow notch worn into the trench lip. The young woman scraped loose dirt out of her own notch with the side of a glove.

Behind the three positions, the stretcher route bent uphill. Vera could see almost all of it from the awning, including the point where it passed the workshop and entered the ward. Workers were clearing it now. A pair carrying a box of tools stopped at the lower bend, looked toward Venn, and backed up until the box was out of the way.

The hound moved toward a break where a section of the outer barrier had been removed for the crane work.

"Bren first," Venn said. "Kett, wait for the turn. Oran, hold the gap."

They had a plan. Vera could see it in the angles of the rifles. The ditch would slow the animal and expose its side. Each soldier covered a place the next could not.

The hound began walking across the slope, not directly toward them. It placed each front foot carefully in the grass, testing the ground before letting its narrow hindquarters follow. Once it lifted its head and held still. A fly or something like one settled on its side. Its skin twitched, removing the insect without disturbing the rest of the animal.

There were no horns, no enormous plates, nothing to make it seem like an enemy that required a camp. Vera could have carried its apparent weight with another person's help. Below the awning, Bren adjusted the rifle a fraction and put his cheek back against the stock.

Then the hound paused and the fronds behind it closed.

Venn's hand tightened on the back of the young woman's coat.

"Now, Bren."

The rifle gave a hard flat crack. The hound jerked sideways. A strip of skin lifted from its shoulder, exposing something darker beneath. It did not fall.

Bren's head went back as though somebody had struck him under the chin. He lowered the rifle and held it against the trench wall. Blood appeared beneath one nostril. His free hand went to the instrument on his wrist.

He did not wipe the blood. He turned the dial so Venn could see it, and she acknowledged him with two fingers. The motion was so practiced that Vera understood it had replaced words long before she arrived. Bren's eyes followed the hound even while his hand fumbled for the catch on the coupling.

The hound turned exactly where Venn had expected.

Kett fired.

Her shot struck the edge of the ditch. The animal had dropped lower at the sound, its front joints folding nearly flat. Dirt burst against the barrier.

A broken length of root swung above the impact. Through the space beneath it, Vera saw the animal crawling on limbs that no longer seemed arranged to carry it. Then the front of its body rose, jaw opening, and the rest came after it in one movement.

"Hold," Venn said.

But the hound was coming up the cut, and Kett fired again before it disappeared below her angle.

The second report was deeper. Vera felt it under the awning. This pulse caught the animal across its flank and threw it into the ditch.

The tools hanging above the bench knocked together. Kett's rifle had moved much farther against her shoulder than it had with the first shot. She seemed to fight it for a moment, trying to keep the muzzle down while the rest of her body pulled away from the wrist connection.

Kett let the rifle fall. Both hands closed around her wrist. Her mouth opened, but she seemed unable to draw enough breath to make a sound.

Venn pulled her backward by the shoulder straps.

"Seven," Kett managed. "Mara. Seven."

"I heard. Leave it disconnected."

The hound came out of the ditch on the right.

For a moment its forefeet found the packed edge level with Pell's boots. He shifted his weight to keep the animal below the rifle. Vera could see him making the choice: the narrow step backward, the glance along the route behind him, the foot returning to its brace against the wall. There was nowhere on that side for the medics to hide once it was through.

It had lost the smoothness of its movement, but it was closer now. Pell could not retreat without leaving the route to the ward open. He planted his left foot against the trench wall and brought the rifle down toward its chest.

His shot hit at the base of the throat.

The hound struck him an instant later.

Its head caught his forearm. The rifle twisted between them, hose taut. Vera heard the same small sharp noise she had heard on the beach, but this time it came from Pell's wrist.

The animal slid into the trench and lay still.

Its rear feet kept a little running motion after the rest had stopped. The motion disturbed the dirt beside Pell's heel, then grew smaller and ended. A piece of loosened wire on the slope was still vibrating from the second shot.

Pell remained standing for a moment, looking down at it. Then his knees folded.

Vera was already off the crate. Venn saw her and raised a hand.

"Stay clear of the connections."

Vera stopped at the lip of the trench.

Two medics arrived with a stretcher. Iona stepped past them and knelt beside Pell. She closed something on his collar, released the rifle's quick coupling, and put her fingers against his neck. His instrument was still ticking. The pointer trembled above a mark Vera could not read.

"Oran," Iona said.

He looked toward her voice. A dark patch spread under his jaw.

Iona called for a frame. One medic unfolded a metal brace and held it while she fitted it around the injured forearm. Pell's fingers curled inward. She stopped tightening and tried a different setting.

Pell tried to help. He moved his other hand toward the brace, missed, and rested it on his chest. Iona moved that hand aside without taking her eyes off his face. Her voice stayed at the volume Vera had heard in the examination room. It made the medics lean close enough to hear exactly what she wanted.

The frame's little feet pressed into the earth. One slipped. The medic nearest Vera put his boot against it, holding the whole apparatus steady while Iona worked. None of them looked at the dead animal.

Venn was holding Kett upright a few paces away. Bren sat with his forehead against the earth. The hound lay between them, not much larger in death than an ordinary dog.

Iona looked at Pell's face again. She said his name once more, very quietly, and then closed the remaining port.

Nobody announced anything.

Iona's shoulders settled. The hand at Pell's neck remained there another moment, as though the next task had not yet found a place to begin. Then she took it away and asked the medic for the cloth.

The second medic took a cloth from the stretcher and unfolded it.

Vera knew before it covered his face.

The brass tag above his collar had come loose. It lay against his palm. She remembered him tucking it under the strap so it would not make a noise on patrol.

There had been four shots. A few seconds of firing, perhaps twenty seconds of movement. Pell was dead, Kett could barely breathe, and Bren was being told to keep his head up while someone checked his eyes.

Vera could still see the place under the awning where Pell had sat. His crate faced hers at the slight angle he had chosen to keep his rifle across his knees without pointing it at anyone. Her cup stood behind the bench leg. Nothing up there had moved.

Vera looked at the torn sleeve on her own arm.

She had spent part of the walk wondering whether the first animal's teeth were unusually weak.

Below the camp, the bell rang again.

Venn's face changed before she turned. Not surprise. An exhausted calculation that had become impossible.

The second hound emerged near the open barrier. It was farther away than the first had been when Bren fired, moving steadily along the ditch toward the same gap. The field crew had abandoned the crane, leaving its load settled but its access lane clear.

Its body passed behind a marker and appeared on the other side. Vera found herself measuring the interval. It would reach the first turn before the stretcher reached the workshop. The pale shape looked almost idle, its head swinging as it sampled the air, while everyone above it tried to move faster without jolting the injured.

Venn pulled her sidearm, glanced at her dial, and stopped with it half-raised.

Her thumb rested on its lever. Vera saw the effort it took to lift the supported shoulder, then the small shake of the sergeant's head. She lowered the weapon deliberately. The decision seemed to cost her more than drawing it had.

"Bren?"

He tried to stand and sank back against the earth.

Kett's rifle lay beside her. She could not close either hand.

The medics had nowhere to take her except along the exposed route to the ward.

Venn looked up at Vera.

"How much do you feel?"

"I don't know."

"Anything building? Chest, joints, teeth?"

Vera shook her head. She was aware of her heartbeat and the ringing in her ear. Nothing else.

Venn looked from her bare wrist to Pell's equipment.

"Can you use a rifle?"

"Not this one."

"I'll tell you. I need one clear shot before it reaches the cut."

Vera looked at the dead man. She did not move toward the rifle until Venn said, "The collar first. His will open at the thumb catch. Close the weapon port before you take it off."

Iona looked up sharply. "Mara."

"I know."

There was no reassurance in the sergeant's voice. Vera preferred that to a lie.

She knelt beside Pell. His wrist lay slack against the earth. She followed Venn's instructions, released the outer strap, and took the assembly away without touching the damaged connection beneath it. His brass tag came with the strap. She eased it free and put it beside the cloth covering him.

The hound passed the first marker post.

Vera fitted the collar around her own forearm. Its inner contact was small and cold. The straps had been set for a broader wrist; she tightened one, then looked toward Venn.

"The little catch," Venn said. "Slowly."

Vera moved it.

The instrument exploded before she picked up the rifle.

Glass struck the trench wall. A piece of brass spun past her cheek. Blue vapor burst from the measuring head and wrapped her arm in a hot cloud. She felt a brief resistance against her skin, almost like the cuff of a sleeve being tugged, and then nothing.

"Down!" Venn shouted. "Blowout!"

The nearest medic threw himself over Kett. Bren rolled against the foot of the trench. Venn caught Iona by the coat and dragged her below the lip. Even the workers farther uphill dropped behind the crane blocks.

For an instant Vera was the only person still upright.

The yard had emptied downward. Faces vanished behind wood and earth; a hand pulled a boot out of sight. Vera could see the top of Iona's head below the trench edge and the pale knuckles of the medic holding Kett against him. Behind them, the route to the ward stood completely open.

Blue vapor thinned around her forearm. A drop of the regulator's working fluid ran over the edge of the broken housing, touched the ground, and made the loose dirt dark.

She waited for the pain that had been written across Pell's face. For the swelling in her hands, the black lines, the violence she had seen in the woods.

The vapor cleared enough to show her wrist. The outer measuring head was gone. The heavy contact collar remained, with a short ragged stump where the gauge had been. Its equipment socket was still attached.

The hound had begun to run.

"I'm all right," Vera said.

Venn lifted her head.

"I'm all right. Does the rifle go here?"

The sergeant stared for half a breath. Then she followed the direction of Vera's hand.

Her eyes moved over Vera's face and down to the missing gauge. She had seen what happened to the instrument. Whatever she had expected to happen to the woman wearing it had failed to follow. Vera watched her put the impossible fact aside long enough to find a usable instruction.

"It should. The socket's open. Don't touch the broken head."

Vera took Pell's rifle. She brought its coupling to the socket and turned until it seated. The chamber made a rising noise. She kept it pointed into the empty cut beyond the hound.

Venn crawled high enough to see the line.

"Rest the fore-end. Not the hose. Sight just under the throat. There's nobody beyond it."

Vera laid the rifle on the packed lip of the trench. Her hands were steady. That did not mean she was unafraid. Kett's breath rattled behind her, and Pell's covered body was close enough for her boot to touch the stretcher.

The front sight moved across the animal's chest. Vera let it settle.

The barrel was heavy enough to steady itself against the packed earth. She adjusted her left hand until the sight stopped wandering with her breathing. The hound's body rose above the lip of the cut. Beneath its narrow throat was a brief, clear space between the forelegs. Beyond that space lay the empty bank Venn had named.

Vera kept her attention there. She did not imagine the shot landing, or what would happen if it did not. The animal had to enter that place before she could act. She waited for it.

"The lever beside your thumb," Venn said. "Then the trigger."

Vera opened the lever.

The rifle pulled against her hand, drawing something from the connection that did not feel like liquid or air. The sensation ran up the inside of her arm and faded into an unexpected coolness under her ribs.

She squeezed the trigger.

The hound disappeared behind a sudden cone of dust.

A line tore through the earth behind it and struck the empty retaining bank. The report was so hard that Vera saw the loose cloth over Pell lift before she heard it.

The bank opened in a dark straight wound. Loose earth rose above it in a sheet, and the top of the marker post turned slowly through the dust. For an instant the hound's pale foreleg was visible below the cloud. It was no longer supporting any weight.

Then the rifle came apart.

Its working chamber split along one side. The stock kicked out of her right hand. A piece of metal struck her collarbone and fell, leaving a neat hole in the fabric and no wound beneath. She kept hold of the remaining grip until the chamber's scream stopped.

The connection on her wrist hung slack.

There was no second shot to take.

Vera set the broken weapon down, closed the little catch on the collar, and stepped away from it. She could feel people looking at her from places where they had expected to survive her death.

Venn was the first to stand.

She checked the cut, the backstop, and the motionless shape in the dust. Only then did she look at Vera's face.

"Can you hear me?"

"Yes."

"Pain?"

"No."

Iona rose slowly. "Don't take anything else off until I see it."

Vera held out her arm but did not step toward her.

Around them the camp resumed in uneven pieces. Someone called the all-clear for the gap. A worker went to retrieve the dropped cups. The medics lifted Kett onto a stretcher. One of them returned for Pell.

Nobody came close simply to look. People found reasons to stay at the edges of the route, behind the crane or under the awning. Tavi appeared at the workshop entrance with a pair of long tongs, saw Iona working, and waited where the physician could see them. Farther uphill, the boy with the tray stood holding a single unbroken cup in both hands.

Oran's tag had fallen into the dirt.

Vera picked it up by its cord and gave it to Iona.

"His daughter made that," she said.

Iona closed her fingers around it.

There was blood drying in the cracked seams of the borrowed collar. Vera watched it while Iona worked out how to release her from what remained.