The Midnight Sun (The Omega War Book 2)

by Tim C. Taylor

  It was followed by a machine. A bloodhound, she assumed, which matched the description Branco had given her of the bots he’d seen at the landing strip. It was shaped like a metal pepper pot the size of a Flatar, and it was ringed with sensors.

  The bot pushed itself over the roof of wood and leaves and looked down.

  Although the bot had a 360° band of lenses and probes, it had two sensors mounted on flexible arms that resembled eyestalks. It moved its stalks as with any binocular creature of nature.

  It used its stalks to peer down into the water.

  The stalks bent left.

  Then right.

  Then they began angling behind, where she and Branco would be in full view.

  With a crack of snapping twigs, it fell headlong into the water and was swept a short distance downstream, multiple limbs flailing for purchase, before sinking out of sight.

  “Piece of shit,” said one of the CASPers above their heads.

  “Those asshats at Avanti built them too quickly. They’re not properly calibrated.”

  “It’s this swamp. Turns everything to mud.”

  “Like your comms.”

  “Yeah. I tell you, we’ll never get off this planet alive. We’ll be absorbed into an alien mud-gestalt. And if any relief did come looking for us, they’d walk right through us, because we’d be slime beneath their boots.”

  “You talk a heap of crap, Pritchard. But you’re right that too many systems are failing. If I ever meet someone from Binnig, I’ll explain exactly what I think of their all-environments resilience guarantee with a faceful of CASPer knuckle.”

  Sun grinned at Branco, but the former Binnig man still had his eyes closed, and there was more movement a little way upstream. One of the bloodhounds had jumped from the overhang of half-woven wood onto one of the giant lily pads.

  The bot possessed eight narrow legs, each ending in a spike. Surely it would tear through the pad?

  Just before it landed, it looped the ends of its legs to form flat feet, which skidded on the pad as it fought to arrest its forward momentum.

  The back of the pad was pushed down below the waterline, and water poured over its lip.

  But the bloodhound was already leaping onto the next lily pad. This time it landed safely, and the floating plant held its weight.

  Its new vantage point secured, the bloodhound began scanning the water with its eyestalks and with the sensor band around its cylindrical torso.

  They hadn’t much time. If they were to lose this scout robot, they needed an exit, and fast. Sun took another look at the holes cut into the bank behind her. Could she widen them?

  But she realized that not only were the tunnels reinforced with wood as far in as she could see, but the nearest hole was no longer empty.

  Two yellow eyes glared at her from the deep shadows. A snarling snout filled with sharp teeth terminated in long whiskers that pointed at the two humans who’d invaded its domain.

  The bulk of its body was hidden in darkness, but from what she could see, the creature had the size and attitude of Commander Venix in an extremely bad mood.

  “I apologize for our intrusion,” Sun whispered at the creature, before drawing her knives from her boots and stabbing them through its eyes right up to the hilts.

  The creature squealed briefly, then went limp.

  “Not them,” groaned Branco. “They aren’t even human.”

  The idiot was delirious. She clamped a hand over his mouth to shut him up, but that only made him struggle to shake her off. He was too weak to free himself, but in the process, he splashed.

  The bloodhound on the lily pad rotated its torso and pointed its eyestalks directly at them.

  Branco went limp, and she released her hand from his mouth.

  “I’m all right,” he said.

  He wasn’t. It was hard to admit this, but Sun told herself the man was a serious liability, who could only become an asset again if she could keep him alive long enough to receive proper medical attention – a task at which she was failing miserably.

  The bloodhound had taken a step nearer, peering at them myopically from a closer pad.

  She could see why it was coming so close. A bacterial film was cloaking its eye cameras.

  “Readings are haywire,” said one of the CASPers.

  Hell, they were directly overhead!

  “Definitely found something in the water. Doesn’t know what, but there’s a blood pulse it can see.”

  Sun released her remaining grip on Branco and filled both hands with the knives.

  Two blades against two CASPers. It was insane, but she couldn’t give in. It wasn’t who she was.

  The bloodhound was only twenty feet away but took one more leap closer. Sun assessed its body for weak points to jam in her knives.

  Something about the new lily pad was different – more solid. And its purple surface had two lines of dark rings that she suddenly realized were small holes. Nostrils.

  The lily pad sprang to life, and the bloodhound was flipped ten feet in the air – all eight legs floundering.

  It fell into the hinged jaw of the ambush predator with the growth on its snout designed to resemble an innocent floating plant. The water beast swallowed the robot whole, and immediately shot off upstream, churning the water with a segmented tail like a propeller screw.

  “Do we shoot it?” asked one of the CASPers.

  “No point. We’d only destroy the bloodhound. Save your ammo for the Midnighters. You’ll need it soon enough.”

  “Will you look at that?” Sun whispered. “For the first time on this mudhole of a planet, luck finally went our way. Branco? Branco!” Sun mewled in alarm. “Where are you?” He’d disappeared!

  She felt beneath the water for his body while the Condottieri stomped away.

  But it was okay. He’d floated away, but only as far as the pier that extruded into the water twenty yards downstream. It had snagged his slumped form in full view of anyone who cared to look in that direction.

  She hugged the bank as she made for the pier. But before she left the cover of the overhang, she halted and made herself think this through.

  Because this wasn’t going to work.

  It was time to stop fooling herself.

  Either she abandoned him and just walked away, or she found a way to fix him. But pretending everything would be okay if she wished hard enough – that she could carry a man twice her weight through treacherous terrain to rendezvous with Venix – would only get them both killed. And she knew Branco wouldn’t want her to die needlessly.

  Well, damn Branco and what he wanted. She needed him too badly to give him up.

  She swam out along the pier to retrieve him, her mind spooling as she thought of ways out of this hopeless mess.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 98

  With a long sigh, Sun finally allowed her head to sink back into the soft ferns beside Branco and allowed a little of the burn to drain from her exhausted muscles.

  She ached everywhere. Drenched, coated in leeches, hungry, and lost, she began to feel cold despite the warmth trapped by the trees.

  Just ten breaths, she told herself, then I’ll get up.

  Despite the cold, the bed of ferns felt impossibly soft. The unconscious man she’d dragged through the river to this little island was probably going to die here, yet when she snuggled against him, she drew a shred of comfort and a lingering sense of safety from his presence.

  * * *

  Sun opened her eyes.

  She was stiff, cold, but dry. And still hungry.

  Two hours had passed according to her wrist slate. Not good, but the effort she’d expended getting them to this temporary sanctuary had been well spent; they hadn’t been spotted.

  Rising slowly out of the light cover of the ferns, she checked their surroundings. They were a few hundred yards downstream of the dam. The river was wider and faster flowing than before, and beyond a large rock in the center of the water channel an island had
formed, about ten feet wide and thirty long. Big enough for small trees and a coating of ground cover plants. There were no lily pads nearby, and there were no signs of Condottieri on the river banks.

  Satisfied they were probably in no immediate danger, she turned her attention to the groaning man she’d dragged here.

  His green shirt was soaking with sweat, as was his face. When she caressed his brow, it was no surprise to find him feverishly hot.

  “I’m sorry,” she told him, and had to bite her lip to stop herself getting emotional. “I couldn’t be who you wanted before, and I can’t be who you need now.”

  Branco’s lips formed words, but he uttered only incoherent sounds.

  She grabbed his hand in hers and tried to squeeze some comfort into him. Her hands were annoyingly tiny in his.

  “I know I’m small,” she said, “but even without my powered suit muscles, I’m still strong. Just not in the way that’s going to keep you alive.”

  He groaned, almost as if answering her. A brief burst of clarity came to his words before descending back into incoherence. She realized he was speaking in Danish. Her translator pendant could understand hundreds of alien forms of communication, but not Danish. His words became angry, and she realized his conversation was not with her at all but was taking place inside his fever dream.

  She kissed his damp forehead, and that calmed him a little.

  “Where were we?” she said, trying to infuse her voice with the soothing essence of lullabies and the sweet-nothings of contented lovers. “I’m strong. Not with lifting weights, but I was a Spartathlete. I haven’t told anyone since I left Earth. Just you, Branco. The Athens to Sparta ultramarathon. All 245 kilometers of it, and plenty over mountains and rough ground. My best time was just over 23 hours, when I placed second among the women. And I was still improving. When I was a girl, I wanted to be a professional endurance runner. I never wanted to kill people for a living.”

  Branco groaned as if pleading.

  “I never wanted to care about anyone, either,” Sun told him. “Not after my sister’s accident. I had to block out everything and put all I had into watching her back. Till you came along, mister. You have no idea how much trouble you’ve caused.”

  Branco’s body jerked, and a gagging noise came from his throat.

  “And now it looks like I’m about to lose you both.”

  Cursing herself for not doing so earlier, Sun rolled him onto his belly and scooped a hollow out of the ground so his air passages weren’t obstructed.

  Branco’s breathing changed, becoming ragged and shallow, but the groaning ceased, and he seemed more at peace.

  She filled her water bottles from the river and left one near Branco’s hand in case he should wake, one of her last, precious purification tablets working its magic inside.

  Admittedly, she was no medic, but it seemed obvious to Sun that Branco would never wake up. Maybe he’d stand a chance if she’d had more doses of medical nanites, but she doubted he’d live even then. She briefly considered returning to the camp, but anything of value would have been looted by the Condottieri and replaced with spybots and booby traps. There was no salvation for Branco there.

  She left him with a lingering kiss on his sweaty upturned cheek, her goodbye sealed with a silent farewell to broken dreams, of the connection she might have forged with this person, but now never would. Not in this life.

  Without looking back, she ran for the water and dove in.

  The hit of water chill slapped some backbone into her.

  By the time she’d swum two strokes, Sun had decided she was tired of running.

  And by the time she reached the bank, she was ready to hunt.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 99

  “Gotta hurl,” said one of the CASPers below Sun’s branch.

  “Man, you’ll make me upchuck too. Damn place’ll kill us, same as it’s doing to these damned bloodhounds.” He kicked the pile of inert scout bots.

  One kept watch while the other popped open her cockpit and ran off behind a tree to be sick.

  The other CASPer shut his comrade’s cockpit. “Keep it closed, Patel. You don’t want snakes and bugs to get inside. Believe me.”

  But Patel was too busy being violently and noisily ill to reply.

  “That’s disgusting.”

  The CASPer was answered by an extended outbreak of retching.

  “Damn! I’m gonna give you a little space. Walk a perimeter. You do what you gotta, Patel. I’ll watch your back.”

  The CASPer walked beneath Sun, heading out about twenty feet before starting to circle.

  The moment it was out of sight, Sun dropped from the tree and got to work.

  * * *

  When the CASPer on upchuck overwatch completed his second circuit, Sun tugged hard on her rope of knotted vines. Fifty feet away, branches shook, releasing nuts as tough as cannonballs. Hopefully, the wet thuds as they impacted the ground would sound like footfalls.

  “Hey,” called the CASPer to his friend. “You okay? Patel?”

  Violent retching answered him.

  “Merde! I heard something in the jungle. Sounded like a beast. A big one. I’m going to investigate. Don’t go anywhere.”

  As the CASPer stomped away, Sun was already climbing the tree his comrade was using as target practice for the consequences of her unhappy gut. Patel was in a prayer position, on her knees with her sidearm to hand, resting on a patch of ferns.

  With a leg securely wrapped around the branch ten feet overhead, Sun gave a low whistle.

  The merc looked up at her through pitiful, red-rimmed eyes. For a moment, she seemed to be pleading, as if to ask, ‘what now?’ Then she went for her gun.

  She was quick!

  The pistol was in her hands and halfway raised to Sun’s branch when she halted and fell with one of Sun’s blades through her throat and another through her heart.

  Sun retrieved her weapons and raced for the dead woman’s CASPer, popping it open and jumping inside.

  Then she waited.

  “Patel? Priya, are you okay?” When the other Condottiere returned, he sounded alarmed even before he discovered the corpse of his dead friend. He roared with rage and loss.

  By then, Sun was behind him in her stolen CASPer. She blasted away at the backs of her opponent’s legs, giving them both drums of MAC rounds.

  The CASPer armor was strong, even the weak point at the back of the knees, but the sustained firepower from the magnetic accelerator cannon tore holes through the ceramic and metal and shredded the flesh inside. All the while, Sun took care to leave the CASPer suit above the legs undamaged.

  The Condottiere toppled forward.

  Sun righted his CASPer, then ejected from her stolen suit so she could carefully remove the dying merc from the other CASPer without damaging it.

  He was trying to tell her something, but his voice was too pinched with pain to make sense. She grabbed the med-kit from his CASPer and gave him two doses of ketamine to ease his passing, but the other items in the kit were no longer for him.

  She jumped back inside Patel’s CASPer and left him dying beneath the trees, dragging his damaged suit behind her on her way back to Branco.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 100

  He was an ancient warrior of the Shield Lands. A hero famed in every village, and yet an outlaw who fled the jealousy of an unjust queen. In an enchanted forest, deep with verdant shadow, he’d slain a metal giant to rescue the elven maid who’d captured his heart with a single glance. Though he’d vanquished the monstrous giant, the wounds he’d suffered were grievous indeed. The loyal elf nursed his wounds with great tenderness, but he pleaded with her to leave him. He tried to explain that the giant’s brothers would soon return, and in their anger kill them both, but she didn’t understand his words and wouldn’t leave his side.

  Hour after hour he begged her to leave him. Go! Save yourself! He shouted at her, cursed her, but through it all she held his hands in he
r dainty fingers and would not let go. Then the last of his strength left him, and he abandoned the elven maid’s fate to the will of the gods.

  Branco opened his eyes.

  A spark of panic ripped through him.

  He was trapped. Underground! A chill running up his legs.

  No, he was inside a CASPer lying face-down in the dirt. From the poor fit of his harness, he knew immediately it wasn’t his CASPer. A quick systems check revealed the suit was off grid. Comms out. HUD disabled. Nav offline.

  He looked down. Dappled sunlight was coming through jagged holes below the torso. Why were there no legs?

  “Sun?”

  “Here,” she replied. He adjusted his cam views until he had a picture of a Mark 8 standing over him.

  Even though she’d spoken through her exterior speakers, her voice triggered memories from his fever dream. A dream in which that same voice had said she’d never leave his side.

  “I think I had a fever,” he said.

  “You did. Pretty intense.”

  “When I was out, did I talk?”

  “You wouldn’t shut up.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “Let’s just say it was very…Danish.”

  Oh, crap.

  “Save it for the psychotherapist,” she said brusquely. “We’ve got a job to do here. You can’t walk. We need to rejoin our people, and my solution was to get us some CASPers. I took a big risk, but I couldn’t carry you without augmented strength, great Viking oaf that you are.”

  “You’re a woman of many fine talents, Major Sun Sue, but the ability to speak long sentences free of racial insults is not one of them. You want me to pull myself along the ground? Is that your plan?”

  “We have more options now, but that’s my preference, yes. The former owners of our new CASPers donated their med-kit nanites to your medical care. You’re much stronger than you were, but still recovering. Take it easy, yeah?”

  Branco tried wriggling his legs. Maybe the nanites had fixed them more than anyone realized, and he could walk again? But his legs stuck uselessly out the bottom of the CASPer torso. He’d have to go through with Sun’s idea.