      Expendables
      a short story by Bruce Bethke 

      Foreword 

      28 August 1998 
      I wrote this one in 1986 and sold it in 1988, for publication in early 
      1990. This certainly isn't the most polished thing I've ever done, but for 
      some reason it's been much on my mind, these last few days. 
      BRB 

      Expendables

      The troops bounced in on lorries a week before the demonstration. Two 
      hundred and forty select Afrikaner guardsmen secured the area and 
      established a perimeter; only when Upington was certified safe did the 
      C-130s leave Johannesburg. 
      Ryan came on the first plane, cursing the noisy, jarring ride. As soon as 
      he had both feet securely on the ground again he switched to cursing the 
      heat and the dust, and grimly predicting their effects on hand-wired 
      circuitry. Vittorio stayed silent, trying to fan himself with a floppy 
      straw hat too scratchy to wear. The rest of the passengers -- engineers 
      and observers, mostly -- filed slowly off the plane, blinking nervously at 
      the machine guns and concertina wire. 
      The second C-130 carried hardware, as did the third. Airborne Command was 
      too large to land at Upington so it stayed on at Johannesburg. Still, Ryan 
      and Vittorio had trained their crews well and by week's end 15 small, 
      shark-like aircraft, their stubby wings bristling with weapons pods, sat 
      assembled in the launch cradles. In deference to Ryan, the noses stayed 
      shrouded. Vittorio called Joburg and announced they were ready on 
      schedule. 

      The 747 flew serenely through the clouds, miles above the South African 
      veldt. A small cadre of technicians moved through her aft sections, 
      testing and tweaking computer systems and microwave datalinks. The nose 
      cabin, a walnut-panelled lounge with plush carpet the color of ripe 
      avocadoes, contained a party of perhaps 30 people. Lieutenant Colonel Neal 
      Meredith, U.S.M.C., Retired -- a strong, stocky man of about 60 years with 
      a lot of gray at the temples and too many memories -- straightened his 
      tie, put on his professional lobbyist smile and his native West Texas 
      accent, and eased down the spiral staircase from the flight deck. 
      An old Cole Porter song was drifting up from the piano bar, and Meredith 
      relaxed a notch. He made a mental note to tip the piano player later. The 
      hostess, recently hired away from a Las Vegas casino, handed him a 
      Manhattan as he came off the stairs. He politely took it, but did not 
      drink. 
      A wave here, a nod and a smile there; with long-practiced skill he 
      discreetly established his presence. It was a good crowd to be discreet 
      with: two vice-presidents of the firm he was currently consulting for, a 
      senator who was officially vacationing in Madagascar; five pseudonyms who, 
      judging by the poor way they wore civvies, had to be active military; the 
      usual bunch of aides and sycophants. Meredith moved fluidly through the 
      group, shaking hands, exchanging chat, all the while thinking of how the 
      guerillas could turn this into a truly memorable international incident, 
      if only they had a SAM-6 missile. 
      But of course, they didn't. That's why the firm had picked this venue for 
      the test. 
      Meredith worked his way to the edge of the group. Luckily the South 
      Africans had stayed in a tight little clique again so he was able to deal 
      with them quickly and collectively. For all his years in the lobbying 
      trade, brown-nosing all manner of public and private power brokers, he 
      could barely stand the Afrikaners. Each time he looked in their smug white 
      faces he saw images of Otis Washington, the best damned man white or black 
      to ever sit in the aft cockpit of an F-4 Phantom: Otis, whose good luck 
      and quick wits had gotten them through 36 missions together. 
      Otis, tangled in the shroud lines of his half-open parachute, dropping 
      into the dark green Vietnamese jungle arms and legs flailing all the way 
      down down down.... 
      Too many memories. Meredith blinked them away, pasted his professional 
      smile back onto his face, and looked around. One man was conspicuous by 
      his absence: Dr. David Klein, the project director. Part of Meredith's job 
      was to keep track of Klein, so he finished covering the group and slipped 
      through the door to the aft section of the plane. As he expected, he found 
      Klein sitting in a window seat in the technician's cabin, leaning against 
      the glass and staring down at the mottled, tawny earth. 
      "Doctor Klein?" 
      Klein nervously twitched around, then remembered he was holding a lit 
      cigarette and took a deep drag on it. At last he said, "I suppose they're 
      waiting." 
      Meredith nodded. "Target zone in five minutes." 
      Klein stubbed out his cigarette and stood up. "Let's get this over with." 
      He sidled out to the aisle and started making his way forward. At the 
      lounge door he stopped, muttered, "God, I hate dog-and-pony shows," then 
      stepped through and started shaking hands. Meredith stayed at his elbow, 
      guiding him through the group. Klein very nearly got mired in a young 
      senate aide's declamation on the legitimate geopolitical uses of force, 
      but Meredith gently detached the woman and got Klein to the podium at the 
      front of the cabin. 
      Klein checked the six-foot video screen to make sure it was on, tapped on 
      the podium microphone a few times, then cleared his throat. As the 
      conversation circles broke up and the observers found their seats, 
      Meredith took up station back by the piano bar. 
      "Good afternoon Sen -- uh, distinguished guests," Klein began nervously, 
      "and welcome to the final operational test of the Valkyrie Tactical 
      Weapons Deployment System." Klein tried a smile on the group. The open bar 
      had done its job; most of them smiled back. Klein relaxed visibly. "I'm 
      David Klein, the project director, and the Valkyrie is my baby, so if you 
      have any questions before we start the test I... yes, General?" 
      Someone in the front row rumbled a question that Meredith didn't catch. 
      "THAT'S---," Klein jumped back, startled by the loudness of his own voice. 
      Apparently he hadn't realized he was leaning so close to the microphone. 
      "That's right sir," Klein resumed. "The test is fully automated. Once we 
      give the go code, we don't need to do anything except sit back and enjoy 
      the show." He looked to the rest of the group. "So don't be afraid to 
      interrupt me if you have questions. That's why I'm here: to answer 
      questions." 
      The young senate aide who'd buttonholed Klein earlier stood up and loudly 
      said, "Can you give us a brief overview of the TWDS project, Mister 
      Klein?" 
      "Uh, Doctor Klein, if you please. CalTech was too expensive to forget." He 
      tried another smile; it worked again. "As for -- well, that was covered in 
      the briefing before we left the States. Didn't you... ?" The aide sat 
      down, trying to be inconspicuous and shaking her head. Meredith smiled: he 
      found it somehow reassuring that politicians were still skipping 
      backgrounders. 
      Klein was looking at the rest of the group, seeking support and not 
      finding it. From the back, Meredith could see that most of the heads were 
      shaking. After a few seconds, Klein shrugged, took a deep breath, and 
      began, "The marketing people will tell you that the A-43 Valkyrie is a 
      high-survivability, remotely-piloted, tactical assault aircraft. 
      Configurable for a wide variety of close-support fire missions, the 
      vehicle can dispense payloads ranging from the M77 
      Antimaterial/Antipersonnel Munition to the TGAS Terminally Guided 
      Antitank...." Klein stopped, and looked at his audience again. Aside from 
      the active militaries, most of them were still shaking their heads. 
      "Okay, it's like this," Klein said. "The most expensive part of a combat 
      aircraft is the crew, right? You expend the crew on a minor mission, your 
      cost/benefit ratio goes right down the toilet. Agreed?" 
      The head-shaking switched to nodding. 
      "Now, you can get around this by going to a guided missile," Klein 
      continued. "If you assume that the vehicle is going to be expended, and if 
      the target is important enough, a missile gives you your best return on 
      investment. But if you scale down the importance of the target, and factor 
      in the probability of getting your crew back, then your cost/benefit 
      curves start intersecting and you end up with one conclusion: 
      close-support fire missions are expensive. 
      "That's why we developed the Valkyrie. Think of it as a reusable cruise 
      missile. We launch it like a cruise missile; it runs to target like a 
      cruise missile; if the mission demands it we can expend it like a cruise 
      missile. But if the mission doesn't demand it, the Valkyrie can deliver 
      munitions like a tactical aircraft and come back." 
      "Doctor Klein," the Senator drawled, "I think what Sally was trying to say 
      was, we are all familiar with the A-42 Fury." Meredith noted that both 
      corporate vice-presidents blanched. "If I may ask, how does the Valkyrie 
      differ from what one of my colleagues has properly termed, 'that 
      overpriced disaster'?" 
      "For one thing, it works," Klein shot back. "For ano---" 
      "Also, I would like to know why it bears such a remarkable resemblance to 
      the A-42 Type E aircraft which my Procurement Committee rejected over two 
      years ago?" 
      "The Fury and the Valkyrie are built on the same airframe," Klein 
      admitted. Sally gasped as if this were a major revelation. The corporate 
      vice-presidents tried to shrink and hide beneath their seats. "But," Klein 
      continued, overriding whatever it was the Senator was composing himself to 
      deliver, "but the flight electronics are completely different. And the 
      control concept is completely different. The Fury system tried to mimic 
      human control of an aircraft in an enhanced fly-by-wire system. The 
      Valkyrie is a quantum leap beyond that!" 
      One of the corporate vice-presidents jumped up and turned to the Senator. 
      "Sir?" Meredith thought it a pity men no longer wore hats; the VP looked 
      as if he wanted to hold his cap in his hands and tug his forelock as he 
      spoke to the Senator. "Sir, Doctor Klein has been under a lot of stress 
      lately and his choice of words may --" 
      The Senator waved a hand to hush the VP. "Let Klein talk," he said. "I am 
      finding it quite educational." The VP turned to Klein, shot him a glance 
      that clearly meant Watch your ass!, and sat down. "You were saying, Dr. 
      Klein?" the Senator prompted. 
      The interruption had defused Klein's stridency. "The Valkyrie is a 
      distributed-processing system. The vehicles carry their basic 
      flight-control and survival programming on-board, which elminates the 
      Fury's response-time problems and frees up the command processor for 
      macro-tactical processing. All we need to do is tell it where we want to 
      deploy and when, and service the delivery vehicles. The system plans the 
      mission, selects the objectives, and controls the birds." 
      The officer in the front row rumbled something. 
      "No, sir," Klein said, "we don't use that term. If anything, we say it's 
      A.N.V.I. -- artificial, but not very intelligent." 
      "It seems to me," the Senator said, "that you people claimed the Fury was 
      artificially intelligent." 
      The obsequious vice-president jumped up and blurted out, "The person 
      responsible for that is no longer with the company, sir." Then he looked 
      embarrassed and sat down. 
      "That concept had some flaws," Klein added, but just then the co-pilot's 
      bland, midwestern voice came over the intercom and cut off further 
      discussion. 
      "Ladies and gentlemen," the co-pilot said, "we have reached the target 
      zone and are cruising at an altitude of 20,000 feet. It's a beautiful day 
      in the neighborhood, with only a few widely-scattered cumulus clouds, so 
      if you look out the right-side windows you should be able to make out the 
      target just north of the junction of the Molopo and Nossoh rivers." The 
      observers left their seats and began crowding around the windows. The 
      plane banked into a gentle right turn. "Don't all look at once," the 
      co-pilot said, "you'll tip the plane over. Ha ha, just kidding, folks." 
      Meredith buried his face in his hands and wondered why nice, likable 
      people always turned into amateur comedians when they got hold of 
      microphones. 
      "We'll be circling the target zone for the duration of the test," the 
      co-pilot continued. "Upington reports the weather is clear and all 15 
      birds are go for launch, so you can start whenever you're ready. Have a 
      nice day." The intercom clicked off. 
      After a minute or two, Meredith got everyone back into their seats and 
      dimmed the cabin lights. Klein turned up the brightness on the projection 
      TV until everyone could see the 15 cartoon aircraft on the screen. "This 
      screen echoes the main operator's terminal," Klein said. "As you can see, 
      the interface uses a friendly, graphics-oriented approach that can be 
      understood by anyone with third-grade reading skills." Klein pulled a pen 
      out of his shirt pocket and began pointing things out on the screen. "The 
      brain icon means that the on-board computer checks out; the map icon means 
      the navigational parameters have been downloaded and verified; I think you 
      can guess what the gas tank and bomb icons mean." Klein put the pen back 
      in his pocket and put his hand on the intercom phone. "Any more questions 
      before we start?" 
      No one spoke, so he lifted the phone and said, "It's a go." In ripples of 
      three, the cartoon aircraft zipped off the of the screen. The piano player 
      struck up "Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder," and Meredith changed his 
      mind about tipping him. When the last of the aircraft were gone, the 
      screen switched to display a cluster of tiny red arrows crawling across a 
      map. 
      The co-pilot's voice crackled over the intercom. "Upington reports all 15 
      birds away smooth as silk. ETA over target, three minutes 15 seconds." 
      Silently, everyone watched the red arrows close in on the target. 
      Meredith found the first minute quite tolerable. 
      During the second minute, the steady hiss of the cabin air system began to 
      get on his nerves. 
      By the end of the third minute, the whine of the engines felt like 
      dentist's drills going into his ears. "Is this it?" Sally asked in a loud, 
      bored whisper. 
      "There they are!" someone at a window shouted. Everyone rushed to the 
      windows again, so Meredith looked at the video screen instead. It had 
      switched from a scrolling map to a 3-D graphic plot of the target zone. 
      Hawking arrowheads chased frantic targets across the gridded landscape and 
      erased them. Klein stood alongside the screen, hoping someone would ask 
      him a question. Meredith caught his eye; they exchanged shrugs and 
      what-are-we-doing-here? smiles. 
      After a few minutes the view out the window got boring, so the observers 
      began turning to the video screen. Meredith slipped over to a window and 
      looked down; it wasn't hard to spot the target. Spider legs of white 
      phosphorus still hung in the air over it; the first two attack wings had 
      surrounded the target with a cross-hatch border of orange napalm and then 
      dropped willy peter in the middle. Thick black smoke was already rising 
      from the fires, as tiny dark specks darted around the target like a swarm 
      of midges. One of them apparently disgorged a load of M-77's; a ripple of 
      fire walked down a hill and across the center of the target, ending in the 
      expanding bubble of a high-explosive shock wave. 
      Meredith tasted bile in the back of his throat. An HE shock wave, and out 
      of the corner of his eye the rising roman candle of a SAM, then the canopy 
      shattered and he was punching out on pure instinct and Otis.... 
      Meredith found a vacant seat and sat down, blinking away tears and 
      fighting down nausea. 

      The Valkyries took all the programmed targets within five minutes and 
      moved on to targets of opportunity. Within ten minutes they'd completely 
      neutralized the site; within 15 they were safely snared in the landing 
      webs at Upington and Airborne Command was en route back to Joburg. Three 
      hours after launch, Meredith and Klein were sitting in the hotel bar, 
      celebrating. 
      They'd started with vodka and lime, which got them talking about Russians, 
      then switched to gin and tonics, which steered the conversation around to 
      the Brits and NATO. Eventually they got around to Bloody Marys by the 
      pitcherful and Great Moments in Field Testing. Quite a lot of Bloody Marys 
      had come and gone. 
      "Now, I can't guarantee this one's true," Klein began another story, "but 
      the way I heard it... this was back around '70, '71, they were testing the 
      first Phoenix missile in New Mexico. Were you...? No, you couldn't have 
      been with the company then. I was still in primary school. Where were you 
      in '70?" 
      "Nowhere important," Meredith said. 
      "No, c'mon," Klein badgered him. "Where were you?" 
      "In a tiger cage near Hanoi," Meredith said softly. Klein blushed. "Oh 
      geez, I'm sorry, I -- I didn't..." The liquor got the better of him. 
      "Right, anyway, they were testing the Phoenix down in New Mexico. Now, 
      that baby had a low-band radar, and they were real worried about Russki 
      jamming, so they gave it this home-on-jam mode with priority over 
      everything else. Any hash in the air, it locks on the transmitter and 
      flies right down its throat, okay?" 
      "Okay." Meredith refilled his glass from the pitcher. 
      "So the target's a drone F-102, about thirty miles downrange. They pop off 
      a missile first thing in the morning, and it's perfect. Scratch one 
      obsolete jet. They pop off a second one about noon, and it's about 15 
      miles downrange when suddenly it takes a 90-degree turn to the east and it 
      is gone! That's it, they postpone the rest of the schedule until they can 
      recover the second bird and find out what went wrong." 
      "What did they find?" Meredith asked, helpfully. 
      "Nothing. I mean, they found the missile, but there was nothing wrong with 
      it. So they start up testing again a few days later, and the same thing 
      happens. The morning shot is perfect. The noon shot is halfway downrange, 
      and it suddenly shears off due east again." 
      "Ahahh..." Meredith said, comprehension dawning. 
      "You start to see a pattem?" Klein asked. Meredith nodded slowy. "Well, it 
      took them a couple more tries and a couple strange theories about heat and 
      sunspots and such before someone decided to just drive over and see what 
      that Phoenix was so interested in." 
      "And they found?" 
      "About 50 miles off the east there was this guy with an illegal overpower 
      CB rig and a hundred-foot mast, and every day at noon he'd start calling 
      up his good buddies all over the state!" Klein slapped the table and 
      collapsed in a fit of manic cackling. 
      When he recovered, Meredith noted, "Lucky thing the poor bastard didn't 
      catch a missile through his roof." 
      "Or too bad! We could have opened up a whole new market!" Klein did a fair 
      imitation of a RonCo TV pitchman when he was drunk, and he launched into 
      it. "Are amateur radio operators putting a crimp in your TV viewing 
      pleasure? Get the new RonCo CB Killer!" 
      "New Mexico." Meredith shook his head slowly, hoping to change the 
      subject. "Lovely state." 
      Klein was not to be deterred. "And if you order now, you'll get this set 
      of beautiful Ninja survival steak knives absolutely free!" Klein tried to 
      refill his glass, only to find that the pitcher of Bloody Marys was empty. 
      Drunk, he became a man of decisive action. "Eindander!" he yelled at the 
      barmaid, bad German being the closest he could come to Afrikaans. 
      The barmaid, who could speak perfect BBC English when she chose to, 
      thought both Americans were already sufficiently drunk and obnoxious. They 
      were also, however, heavy tippers, so she just smiled and fetched the 
      pitcher. 
      Klein turned back to Meredith. "You were saying...?" 
      Meredith blinked. "I--? Oh yes, New Mexico. I don't suppose you were at 
      Schleyer's range trials, were you?" 
      "Oh God, was I ever!" Klein yelled. "Weren't they a hoot?" 
      Meredith's eyebrows went up. "I wouldn't know," he admitted. "I signed on 
      after the test. Schleyer said he was looking for a fighter jock with real 
      combat experience, and I was looking for a chance to get out of lobbying 
      and back into flying." Meredith shrugged. "Then they sacked Schleyer and 
      made me a lobbyist. So for two years I've been hearing that the Fury field 
      trials were a total disaster, and I still don't know what happened." 
      Klein started to lounge back in his chair; when the front legs lifted off 
      the floor he realized his balance wasn't up to par and lurched forward 
      again. "Pretty simple," Klein said. "In five separate tests, Schleyer flew 
      five prototypes into the same side of the same mountain. Pissed away 15, 
      maybe 20 million dollars, and he still wouldn't admit that the system had 
      a fundamental design flaw." Klein leaned across the table and lowered his 
      voice to a conspiratorial growl. "Y'see, the problem with the Fury was 
      Schleyer himself. You ever deal with him personally? Danke," he added, as 
      the barmaid topped up his glass and set the pitcher on the table. 
      "Gracias senor," she replied, but it slipped by him. 
      Meredith got the feeling he was unleashing a reply of an argument that 
      Klein had lost many times and tried to tread gently. "I met Schleyer 
      once," he answered. "He seemed nice enough." 
      "He was faking it," Klein declared. "Schleyer was arrogant, authoritarian, 
      and very jealous of his power. A perfect example of the Head Cheese 
      syndrome: couldn't trust subordinates to make decisions. Didn't want to 
      hear anyone else's ideas. You know what it's like to work under a mindset 
      like that for six years?" Klein knocked back his drink and started 
      fumbling for his cigarettes. 
      Meredith stared quietly into his glass. "Yeah, I know the type." 
      The cigarette seemed to calm Klein. "Schleyer was in Remotely Piloted 
      Vehicles right from the start; back when it was radio-control and a guy 
      with a joystick on a box. Model Airplane stuff. So when he started the 
      Fury project, that's the approach he took. Digitized the controls of a 
      T-38 and recorded a test pilot putting the thing through aerobatics. Then 
      he put a rudimentary A.I. up on top to evaluate the situational data 
      coming back from the birds, shuffle through the control routines, and 
      formulate an action sequence. It's a high-order anatomical model, right? 
      Brain, nerves, fingers?" 
      "Makes sense," suggested Meredith. He was starting to feel irritable. 
      "Except you don't consciously think about every muscle involved in moving 
      your finger! The Fury was all forebrain; no reflexes, no autonomic nervous 
      system. Every damn trim tab adjustment had to go through the A.I.! It was 
      an Einstein that had to remember to make its heart beat." Klein sloshed 
      some more Bloody Mary near his glass. "I s'pose that, given five more 
      years, we could have ironed out the bugs. We've already solved the reflex 
      problem. Just changed the anatomical model a little, is all." Klein looked 
      Meredith straight in the eye and raised his finger portentously. 
      "Y'know, a grasshopper's brain doesn't know diddly squat about jumping. It 
      just thinks, 'Jump!'" Klein reached around and started poking himself in 
      the back. "Grasshopper's got these ganglia all down its notochord, take 
      care of the actual mechanics of the business. You can cut a grasshopper's 
      head off and the damn thing'll still jump. 
      "That's what we did to the Fury. Put a ganglion in each vehicle and cut 
      most of its head off. The geeks in avionics software are already calling 
      me 'Klein the Philistine.' In 20 years they'll probably put the Fury right 
      up there with Babbage's analog computer as another brilliant idea murdered 
      young." Klein looked at Meredith with an expression that was almost a plea 
      for understanding. "But dammit, I gotta deliver a product the military'll 
      buy! You have any idea how those jarheads reacted when the A.I. started 
      arguing tactics with them? That's the last thing they want: a weapons 
      system that sits up and says, 'I think, therefore why am I taking orders 
      from you?' They get enough of that from humans." 
      Meredith started to suspect that he'd feel better if Klein shut up. 
      Ryan burst in. "There you are! I've been looking all over for you two. 
      We're showing the game film in the Soweto Room!" Klein leaned back and 
      blinked unsteadily at Ryan. "The gun camera tapes from the birds," Ryan 
      clarified. "I spliced 'em together and stole a projection TV from the 
      convention hall. C'mon, you have got to see this!" Klein lurched to his 
      feet and followed Ryan out of the lounge; Meredith stayed behind to settle 
      the bill. 
      "Sorry my friend was so loud," he mumbled as he handed his charge card to 
      the barmaid. "He's had a very exciting day." 
      The barmaid smiled and started toting up the bill. "Oh, he's your friend, 
      then?" She ran the card through the reader and handed it back. "The way 
      you two act, I'd thought him a spoiled child and you his nanny." She 
      smiled again and gave the charge slip to Meredith; he added in 50 percent 
      and signed it. "Thank you, sir!" she said when she saw the tip. 
      Meredith shrugged. "It's not my money. You want more?" 
      Her smile fell. "I'd hoped you were above that. Why is it all you 
      Americans think all the hotel help are prostitutes?" 
      "Sorry. I didn't mean it that way." Meredith tried to give her a real 
      smile, but felt his professional smile coming on and decided to leave his 
      face blank instead. "I just thought I'd share the company's largess. One 
      hired hand to another." 
      "Thank you, no." She picked up a few ashtrays and dumped them in the 
      rubbish. "And if you don't mind advice from someone young enough to be 
      your third wife, stop thinking of yourself as hired help. It leads to 
      feeling you are a prostitute. I know." Someone at the other end of the bar 
      called for her, and she stepped away. 
      Meredith tucked the card back in his billfold and decided to check out the 
      Valkyrie film festival. 

      Sally and one of the younger active duty men were standing just outside of 
      the Soweto Room. She was holding a glass of champagne in her hand and 
      expounding on the military's legitimate role in domestic politics; he was 
      nodding seriously and intently watching her breasts. Meredith threaded 
      through the knot of people standing just inside the door and found a 
      vacant bit of wall at the back of the darkened room, near the Senator. The 
      screen at the other end of the room showed silent images of moving smoke 
      and sky. 
      "Here you see the small-arms fire detector at work," Ryan was pointing 
      out. "Two of the other birds have registered the muzzle pressure wave from 
      a Kalashnikov, and this bird is going to vector in on...ah, here we go." 
      The Valkyrie whipped into a dizzying turn and dove through the smoke. For 
      a fraction of a second, a man holding a rifle was clearly visible. Then a 
      stream of tracers leapt out to meet him and he was lost in smoke and dust. 

      The picture cut to a shot of peaceful brown plains rolling by. "Now this 
      is the view from the third attack wing," Ryan said. "They're coming in 
      from the southwest at treetop level." Meredith could feel the rise as the 
      Valkyrie tracked up the slope of a slight ridge; somebody in the darkened 
      room yelled, "Whee!" as it came down into the green Nossoh River valley. 
      Most of the rebel camp was already surrounded by massive fires. As the 
      camera closed in, another Valkyrie darted across the screen and gouged an 
      angry orange napalm claw mark through the brush. "Look at that 
      synchronization!" Klein shouted from somewhere near the front of the room. 
      "You can't do that with crewed aircraft!" The camera burst through the 
      wall of flame and came on the center of the camp, where it spotted an open 
      truck loaded with -- women? children? Meredith found it hard to tell -- 
      bouncing off to the left. The Valkyrie corrected slightly, but before it 
      fired, an incendiary burst near the truck and the people were enveloped in 
      a cloud of searing white phosphorus. 
      Ground and sky swirled as the bird executed a tight turn. When the view 
      steadied again the Valkyrie was diving on the truck from another angle. 
      The truck was ablaze but still moving; the bodies on the open bed were 
      flaming cordwood. A few of them were still alive, though, even with 
      burning phosphorus glued to their skins, and one rolled off the tailgate, 
      tried to stand, and was caught in a spray of tracers. Then a TGAW streaked 
      out to impact on the truck's cab and the camera swept over the scene. 
      Meredith shut his eyes tightly. He shut his eyes, and clenched his teeth, 
      and listened to the pleased whispers and orgasmic gasps from the people in 
      the dark room. 
      "The fourth attack wing delivered high explosives to the structures," Ryan 
      said. "The best pictures of that activity came from the cameras of the 
      first wing." Meredith opened his eyes long enough to see a large shed 
      disintegrating in an HE blast. The shed was plainly marked with a red 
      cross on a white flag. "As you can see, we do have a minor problem with 
      the pattern recognition algorithm." 
      "Piece of cake!" Klein shouted. "We'll fix it in the next revision!" 
      "Here's the last reel," Ryan concluded. "After taking all the assigned and 
      opportunity targets, the birds made several low-speed passes over the 
      target to verify mission completion." Meredith blinked away the tears and 
      opened his eyes again. The camera was taking a slow, leisurely pass over 
      the camp; where the M77's had fallen, the ground and everything on it was 
      churned into a brown, featureless mass. Where they hadn't fallen, though, 
      it was littered with wreckage, craters, burning vehicles, broken dark 
      things that might have been bodies.... 
      Meredith sagged to his knees, choking on the bile rising in the back of 
      his throat. Putting out his hands to steady himself, he brushed against a 
      large wastebasket. 
      He vomited into the wastebasket. Quietly, wrackingly, until there was 
      nothing left in his stomach but an old and bitter feeling, and still he 
      kept doubling up and retching. Quietly. 
      "Well," the Senator boomed as the lights came up, "I must say, that was a 
      most convincing demonstration! Doctor Klein, you have completely removed 
      any doubts I may have felt about the Valkyrie system, and I am pleased to 
      say that you can count on my whole-hearted support in the upcoming 
      hearings! 
      "Gentlemen, we have today witnessed the dawning of a new age in miliatary 
      aviation! No longer will brave men needlessly risk their lives -- " the 
      Senator stopped, and sniffed. "What's that smell?" he muttered. Then he 
      looked down to see Meredith with his head still in the wastebasket. 
      "Colonel Meredith, sir, are you all right?" 
      Meredith looked up, a feral gleam in his eyes. Slowly, unsteadily, he got 
      to his feet and leaned in close to the Senator. "No Senator," he growled, 
      his breath sour with the reek of vomit. "I am sick." The Senator tried to 
      edge away, but Meredith followed him."I am sick of you, Senator. I am sick 
      of this pathetic little country we're in. And I am sick unto death of this 
      whole God-damned business." 
      A ghastly hush settled over the room as people realized that something was 
      happening. "I am sick of feeling like a prostitute!" Meredith shouted. "I 
      am sick of telling people like you exactly what you want to hear, no more, 
      no less." He spun around to face the rest of the room. "Are you listening? 
      This time I'll tell you what I want to say! 
      "Klein!" Meredith pointed. "Klein, you are a little boy at a crowded 
      beach, throwing rocks just to see how far they go. Where do the rocks come 
      down, Klein? Do you ever think of that? Or isn't people's pain real for 
      you?" The doctor sat there, slackjawed and uncomprehending. 
      "Chambers!" Meredith shouted at the corporate vice-president. "Today we 
      murdered, what, 50 people? A hundred people? But it wasn't murder, was it, 
      because we killed them with the full approval of their government! How do 
      you sleep at night, knowing that you make your living keeping sadists and 
      thugs in power?" The corporate VP sputtered something and tried to form a 
      retort, but Meredith had turned back to the Senator. 
      "And Senator Brock! You know what the Valkyrie really does? It makes 
      killers obsolete!" Meredith grabbed the Senator by the lapels and leaned 
      in close; Brock shrank from his breath. "You should never make killers 
      obsolete, Senator. Killing is a close and personal thing. You need to 
      smell their fear when you kill them. You smell afraid, Senator. Are you 
      afraid?" The Senator tried to back away, but found he was up against the 
      wall. 
      "Have you ever seen someone who's been napalmed, Senator?" Meredith 
      continued, low and guttural. "Have you ever seen a living face that's been 
      burned down to cartilage and bone? I have. I've seen arms and intestines 
      hanging from the trees like bloody fruit. I've watched a woman spend all 
      day dying from a septic gut wound, and seen her children hobbling around 
      on infected, oozing stumps. 
      "Does that disgust you, Senator? Death is supposed to make you sick. 
      That's why it smells so bad. It's supposed to be the most nauseating, 
      horrible, gut-twisting thing you could ever witness, and maybe that way 
      you'll remember why you don't kill more often." Meredith released the 
      Senator and turned away. 
      "Klein! Do you know what you've done? These bastards keep balance sheets 
      in human lives! This many spent; that many taken: and if they take more 
      than they spend, they win! 
      "You've given them cost-free war, Klein! No more soldiers' widows crying 
      by the sides of flag-draped caskets. No more heart-broken kids wondering 
      why daddy's never coming home again. No more maimed and mutilated veterans 
      sitting out in public view, reminding the voters that war is really a vile 
      business! 
      "You know what your Valkyrie really is, Klein? It's a crutch that lets 
      slugs like the Senator here stand up tall enough to get their hands on the 
      trigger! Be it in the name of national honor, or national pride, or 
      whatever affront to their tiny little manhoods they're feeling this week, 
      it doesn't cost them anything to launch the Valkyrie!" 
      Meredith's voice dropped. "That makes it too easy to use. They can forget 
      the cost to the people it comes down on." Shaking his head, Meredith 
      started walking slowly out of the room. "God, I wish I was a plain old 
      prostitute," he muttered. "I'm sick and tired of feeling like some kind of 
      pimp for Death." 
      The people at the door stepped aside and let him pass. When Meredith was 
      gone, Klein blurted, "What the hell was that about?" 
      "It seems Mr. Meredith needs a career change," the corporate 
      vice-president said grimly. 
      "A sad, sad, case," Senator Brock observed, shaking his head. "He was a 
      war hero, you know; shot down over Vietnam. This must be that delayed 
      stress syndrome they talk about." 
      "You see now why we need the A-43?" the active duty general added. 
      "Sometimes ordinary combat trauma will turn an otherwise good man into a 
      totally useless wreck." 
      "Well, that's why we built it!" Klein said. "Our little baby is gonna save 
      lives. Hey Ryan! Can you run that tape again?" 
      "Sure thing!" Ryan yelled back. Someone dimmed the lights, Ryan started 
      the tape, and the Senator sent out for popcorn. 


       Bruce Bethke 1988, 1998
      "Expendables" was first published in Tales of the Unanticipated, Spring 
      1990.
