“I don’t think we could have done any of this without you, Sergeant,” Wash said, placing a hand on the man’s shoulder.
“Bunch of queers,” spat Denturo. But Wash could see that the big man agreed with the sentiment.
“Who’s minding the store?” Shotton asked.
“Parker’s still back there, watching for any doros who picked up the trail again.”
“Let’s hope we lost ’em for good,” said Hellix. “The men are about at their limit.”
“Speak for yourself,” Denturo growled. “I could do this all kelhorned day. Hey! Which one of you’s got my ruck?”
“I do,” said a marine. “And you can have it back. Thing weighs a ton.”
He dropped a massive pack at Denturo’s feet.
Denturo glared at the man. “Careful with that. My girl’s inside there.”
The big marine’s “girl” was a massive, rapid-fire portable blaster cannon capable of bringing down a shuttle if he got one in its sights. Wash had seen Denturo clean it obsessively when they weren’t patrolling… or running away from doros. He carried it along with his service rifle, but so far hadn’t used it in battle. The unwieldy thing required a heavy, non-standard charge pack, and Denturo hadn’t yet deemed its use necessary.
But now he was apparently changing his mind. The big marine began to assemble the weapon as his compatriots rested and ate. He strapped the whole rig to his body, hoisting the heavy barrel onto his thigh.
“Way I see it,” he said, “we’re either gettin’ rescued or the dog-men are gonna kill us. And I ain’t dyin’ today.”
“Glad to hear it,” Wash said. He looked around at the rest of the marines. “Everybody, I know it sucks, but we need to make for the ridge ahead. Once we’re behind those rocks, we’ll take a good, long break. But out here… we’re sitting in the open.”
A couple of marines moaned, but Sergeant Shotton was on them in an instant. “You heard the man and you know he’s right. Get your asses off the ground unless you wanna take a permanent rest when the doros come and put a blaster bolt through those thick skulls of yours!”
Reluctantly, the patrol picked up their weapons and began to trudge across the clearing toward the ridge.
“You all look like a basic just stole your girlfriend!” chided Sergeant Shotton. “Pick it up, Marines!”
The men moved faster, but by no means fast.
The exception was Parker, who came sprinting from the jungle, holding his helmet to his head, his chin straps flapping in the wind. “Doro! Comin’ this way! Right behind me!”
As if to verify the truth of the sniper’s cry, an errant blaster shot sizzled overhead, and the marines dropped for cover.
Wash pointed at Berlin and Hellix. “You two! Carry Sergeant to the ridge. Now!”
The two men hoisted Shotton up and ran as fast as they could to the rocky haven that was the ridge.
Wash ordered the rest of the marines to stay down. There was no cover to speak of. He kicked himself for not making the team move to the ridge sooner.
The marines, lying prone, charged their rifles and kept them fixed on the tree line some fifty yards away. Parker swiftly joined their ranks, but Wash motioned for him to continue onward.
“Get up on those rocks and set up. We’ll need some covering fire in order to reach you.” Wash kicked the boots of the two marines nearest him. “Go with Parker and be ready to support us while we draw back.”
The doros erupted from the jungle, blasters blazing. Energy bolts danced around Wash where he stood shouting instructions. It didn’t dawn on him the courage he was showing under fire. He just… made sure things got done.
But the marines noticed. And it motivated them to fight through their fatigue. They hammered back, dropping the doros as they advanced.
An incoming shot sizzled so close to Wash’s head that he felt the heat against his ear and heard the bolt cracking past him. He turned as if to watch the bolt fly by and saw one of the two marines running after Parker drop hard to the ground, shot in the back.
Corpsman Hellix reached the ridge and set Shotton down behind cover. As Berlin, Parker, and the other marine set up to return fire, Hellix turned and sprinted through a hail of blaster bolts to get back to the downed marine. He reached the kid’s side, knelt down, and rolled the man onto his side.
Wash returned his attention to the battle and added his own rifle to the mix. The doros were slowed, but they definitely weren’t stopped.
Wash’s hands were trembling from adrenaline. He dropped to a knee to stabilize. The intense flash of all the incoming fire dazzled his eyes.
There were too many doros and not enough cover for the marines. The dog-men could afford to expose themselves and take casualties; Wash didn’t have the same luxury.
“Denturo! Is that gun set up? I need you to pour it onto them while the men pull back.”
Denturo spat out a spent wad of stim. A strand of saliva thin as spider-silk drifted from his lip. “You can count on that.”
The big marine jumped to his feet and added his blaster cannon to the mix. It sent furious sprays of fire into the advancing doro line, and for the moment, it completely halted the doros’ progress. The dog-men either dropped for cover or retreated back into the trees. If Denturo could do this all day, the marines could simply hang out in the open until help arrived.
But the weapon’s charge pack wouldn’t last that long.
At Wash’s shouted orders, the marines sprang to their feet and ran toward the safety of the ridge. Wash joined them, keenly listening to Denturo’s merciless fusillade for any hints of it letting up.
It didn’t. But the charge pack had to be close to depletion after so much KTF.
The marines were nearly to the ridge; in fact the fastest runners among them had already reached the safety of the protective boulders and rocky outcroppings.
“Let’s get Denturo some covering fire!” shouted Wash.
The marines put everything they had over the head of the hulking marine, attempting to replicate the withering fire he’d been laying down long enough for Denturo to join them.
The big man’s heavy blaster cannon ran dry just as the incoming barrage came in. Denturo shrugged off the heavy weapon’s rig, let it hit the ground, and turned and ran as fast as he was capable, bending down on his way to pick up the discarded rifle of the marine Hellix had been unable to save on the way to the ridge.
With the suppressing fire reduced, the doros began to gather themselves, and sent shots chasing after Denturo. He ducked instinctively as blaster bolts streaked by him in both directions.
Wash took a quick count. They’d taken casualties, but eight marines were left alive, plus Shotton, who was immobile but still in the fight. The survivors covered for each other as they leapfrogged toward the ridgeline. Wash stood out in the open, some twenty meters away from the rest of the team, taking a count of the enemy.
The doros had been hit hard as well, but more than twenty of the dog-men were still in the field. The rest littered the open ground with their bodies.
Denturo finally streaked by Wash and reached the other marines. He was gasping for air, and even in the confusion, Wash thought it was a good thing the marine had spit out his wad of stim before he’d started firing. There was no way he could have made the run without swallowing it, and the last thing they needed was for one of their rifles to be out of the fight, puking his insides up.
“Get on up and find some cover!” Wash shouted.
The doros were advancing, and Wash, being out in the open, was a magnet for their blaster fire. Shots arced all around him, impacting at his feet and sending up plumes of scorched rock and debris.
“Get your ass up here behind some cover, you dumb leej!” screamed Denturo.
Wash turned about-face and dashed up the ridge, hopping over a flat stone slab and landing firmly between Berlin and Sergeant Shotton. Both men were blasting away at the doro with their rifles.
Looking farther up the ri
dge, Wash could see the surviving marines doing the same. Parker was relentlessly dropping a dog-man with each disciplined squeeze of his trigger. Denturo, still sucking wind, was practically frothing at the mouth as he sent charge pack after charge pack into the advancing aliens.
Shouldering his rifle to join in the fight, Wash saw that the doros had been reinforced from the jungle. Even though more of them had fallen, there were still perhaps twenty fighters.
Berlin suddenly dropped, his palm pressed against his helmet, his back against the cover of the boulder.
“Check him out!” demanded Sergeant Shotton.
Wash ducked down. “You all right, buddy?”
Berlin looked okay. There were no blaster scorches on his armor, nor any telltale blood seepage indicating that some shrapnel or other projectile had gotten through the armor’s seams.
“Somebody’s talking to me through my helmet,” Berlin said. “He says he’s with Dark Ops and that we need to stop shooting toward the tree line.”
21
Subs first began to hear the L-comm chatter when he was within a kilometer of Cuchin Valley. It wasn’t standard legionnaire transmissions; it sounded more like someone was panting and speaking without knowing his comm was on.
And that told Subs that the person wearing the helmet was someone who, technically, wasn’t supposed to possess one.
It was a point.
Since it sounded like the point was in the middle of a firefight, and since Subs wasn’t close enough to do anything about it, he waited to make contact until he could better assess the situation.
Now he, the med bot, and Alistair were on their stomachs trying to avoid the incoming marine blaster fire that ripped through the jungle. About eight doro were likewise hugging the dirt about ten yards ahead of them. Beyond the trees, another dozen or more were attempting to take a ridge where the marines were holed up.
Those marines had good position, but it wouldn’t last long. Subs needed to link up with them—for his sake as much as their own. The sounds of the jungle had told him for some time now that he was traveling just ahead of another dog-man force—perhaps even a company-sized element—that had materialized out of nowhere. Like the jungle was hiding a big doro base in this sector that had escaped the Republic’s notice. And when those doros arrived, Subs didn’t want to still be lying here in the jungle.
“You heard me right,” Subs answered the point over the L-comm. The doros ahead of him were oblivious to his presence, utterly blind to the fact that he was orchestrating their deaths. “I need you to stop firing so I can destroy a pack of doros you have pinned down. You and your marines can then focus on the doros making their way toward your position.”
Subs listened as the point relayed the message to someone else. Maybe the marine sergeant. Or maybe to the guy Subs thought was in Nether Ops. Either way, it was clear that the point Subs was speaking to wasn’t the one calling the shots.
“So, I’m supposed to ask for the authenticator challenge,” said the point.
Subs ran his tongue along the inside of his bottom lip, trying to keep calm. Soldiers were trained a certain way, and you had to know how to deal with that training. Just like bots were programmed in certain ways and you just had to know how to deal with that programming. And points… they were essentially civilians who were unqualified to be in a war zone. Subs would have to deal with that reality.
It would do no good pointing out in frustration that he was communicating over L-comm, and that therefore his authentication signal would be popping up on the point’s HUD.
“Six rendered truces waddle shellacked ruby nine.”
Subs heard the point relay the passkey.
The point came back and said, “He says that was last week’s passkey.”
“It is, and I don’t have this week’s, and it’s a long story why. I’m DO-13-RD, and if you want Dark Ops help, you need to do what I’m asking and quit the suppressing fire in the jungle. Otherwise, I’m gonna have no choice but to bug out.”
Of course, Subs had no intention of leaving those marines. But he thought the threat might spur the point into doing what he needed to do.
“Okay,” said the point. “Going to cease fire and focus on the doros trying to get at the ridge. They’ve taken cover behind the rocks below us and we can’t get a clear shot at them anymore, but we’ll make sure they don’t get any closer.”
Likely the doros were only waiting for their reinforcements to arrive and end the whole thing, Subs thought. He considered suggesting they toss down grenades, but the marines would have done so on their own initiative if they had any.
“Understood. I’ll do what I can to clear them out once I take care of the dog-men behind the tree line.”
Subs stood up even though the marine suppressing fire continued on, trusting it would cease as promised. He needed to leverage those critical extra moments to advance on the doros still hugging the dirt in front of him.
The incoming marine blaster fire abruptly stopped as Subs sprinted toward the doros. He reached them just as they were starting to push themselves up off the ground, evidently thinking that their pack brothers had finished the job out by the ridge.
Subs switched his blaster’s selector to full auto and, without a word, opened up on the dog-men.
They dropped back to the ground they had been clutching moments before, mixing their blood and dying breaths with the jungle soil. The engagement lasted all of five seconds.
Subs motioned for Alistair and the bot to come forward. He preemptively told the machine, “No survivors. We need to move quickly now.”
As the trio crept toward the tree line, Subs let the marines know they were coming. “The doros in the jungle are dead, and now three of us are about to come out into the open. Do not open fire on us. Copy?”
“Okay. Thank you. We won’t shoot you.” Then the point, still not knowing how to mute his L-comm, relayed the request to those around him. “Nobody shoot at the Dark Ops guys when they come out of the jungle!”
***
Wash peeked around the boulder he used as shared cover. The doros had managed to advance to a point where they were no longer in the open, though they’d paid a hefty price to get there. The dog-men and marines were now playing a game of cat-and-mouse, each side popping out long enough to try to find a target of opportunity and then slink back behind cover to avoid becoming a target themselves.
In short, what had been a hot and heavy blaster fight petered out into the sporadic report of a few errant bolts flying in either direction. It would be a great time to toss a grenade down on the doros, but Wash was totally out after the action at the temple, and evidently so were the marines.
Thankfully the doros seemed to be equally ill-equipped.
Berlin was communicating with someone over L-comm who professed to be a member of Dark Ops. Wash wondered how the ultra-elite and obscenely dangerous operators had managed to find them out here. Maybe someone had noticed that he wasn’t answering resupply audits after all.
The speaker’s passkey was stale, but Wash imagined that if this was a doro trick, the doros wouldn’t have been throwing themselves into the meat grinder until after their deception had had a chance to succeed or fail. So he’d ordered the marines to halt what had been a steady stream of suppressive fire into the jungle. If this was in fact a doro trick, it would give them the opportunity to strengthen their numbers at the foot of the ridge. And if their numbers were sufficient to swarm up the ridge, Wash didn’t think he or anyone else would survive.
And they had to survive. They were so close to where they needed to get. A swift descent down into the picturesque valley studded with immense gray rock formations brushed with leafy greens growing from ancient, weathered crags like bonsai plants. A run across the creek running down the middle of the valley—more of a canyon bottom in spite of what the maps said. And then on up the other side, which had a much more gradual incline. Then the climb up Poro-Poro itself.
Easy.
> Even if it was a death trap should the doro artillery descend between the canyon walls.
Wash looked into the trees, watching for some evidence that he’d made the right call in telling the marines to cease their suppressive fire. He saw a sudden flashing in the darkness, deeper within the jungle, like localized lightning that temporarily revealed the rainforest’s features in sudden contrast among the deep dark shadows.
“Well, something just happened,” commented Sergeant Shotton.
Wash nodded, then forced himself to look down at the boulders where the doros were now holed up. They hadn’t moved.
“Okay,” Berlin said over his external comm. “He says he just wiped out all the doros we had pinned down in the jungle.”
That was a good thing, if true. But the proof would be in what happened next.
“Now he says he’s coming out and that we shouldn’t shoot him.”
Wash nodded. “Pass the word on,” he said, meaning for Sergeant Shotton to do it, but Berlin shouted to the marines instead.
“Nobody shoot at the Dark Ops guys when they come out of the jungle!”
Wash strained his eyes to see who, if anyone, would emerge from the jungle. For a long while no one appeared, as though they were taking extra care not to bound out and draw friendly fire. And then, like ghosts rising from the grave, a lone, black-armored Dark Ops legionnaire appeared.
So it was true.
Dark Ops had come to save the day. They would take control of the situation, and finally all of this would be over.
Wash watched in rapt attention as a medical bot followed the legionnaire from out of the jungle. And following the machine was… a basic?
Wash shook his head. This was shaping up to be an unorthodox quick reaction force, to be sure. But then, two points and a recon marine team wasn’t exactly textbook either. And in any case, the med bot made sense; it could certainly be put to good use—although Wash had always thought the Dark Ops kill teams relied on each other for emergency medical help. As for the basic… maybe he was a liaison for the Republic Army.
Order of the Centurion Page 17
