by Tim C Taylor
Tac-nuke. Fission. As dirty as they could make it.
“I thought we were supposed to be pinning them down,” Jinnee growled.
“We still own orbit,” Remus replied. But it was a weak answer and they both knew it.
Legion armored columns, backed up with Marines and aircraft had swept overland through Europe, Africa, and Asia. That left only one Hardit outpost before the liberation of the Americas. Only one on the planet’s surface at any rate. The underground war was more confusing.
The Rift Valley Defensive Line was built upon arguably this planet’s most impressive land feature. Two tectonic plates were separating, throwing up enormous mountains and deep valleys, often filled with water to make great lakes. The New Order had been allowed decades to fortify the mountain line not only up to its peaks but down deep below ground to the roots of the mountains too. Millions of fanatical defenders, and decades of preparation to build up their arsenal.
And yet the New Order lobbed low-yield dirty nukes, and chemical bombs. They sent patrols of human collaborators – the so-called Faithful – out of tunnels that were hidden everywhere. Much as Remus feared the alternative, it didn’t make sense why the New Order weren’t escalating. The Legion forces in this theater were supposed to be pinning the New Order in place, while the main attack was prepared along a different axis, but it was difficult to argue against Jinnee: that it was Tawfiq’s forces who had always intended to hold the Legion here.
His suit senses alerted him to a radio transmitter powering up 300 yards to the northwest.
“This is Baker-William-Mike-Four requesting medical evac.” The voice over general radio comms was Janna’s, and she sounded as if she was barely keeping panic at bay. “We have two suit breaches. Troopers are taking some bad rads. Anyone? Please! Don’t leave us to the pelt-lickers. Is anyone there?”
“That turn you on, Remus?” said Jinnee with a laugh. “Damsel in distress. Please, Remus, please come rescue me with your big Marine muscles. I’ll be so very grateful afterwards…”
Remus grinned. “Janna is about the least vulnerable person in the galaxy. But, yeah, turns me on a little.”
Jinnee snorted. “A little, he says. Janna could crap in a bag and it would give you a stiff one.”
“Quiet, I think I hear something. Down at the path.”
“Me too,” Jinnee whispered, deadly serious now. “Contact. Northwest. They’re crawling over the crest of the hill.”
Shit!
“Don’t worry about me,” said Jinnee. “They’re too far away. Janna is calling you.”
They both fell silent, each straining their senses to penetrate the hellish battlefield to build up a picture of what was happening. Remus could barely see anything, his goggles fogging up from the inside. He considered lifting them off, but his eyes would soon tear up, and he didn’t fancy breaking the rad-seal.
But he was definitely hearing voices. He was sure of that now. They were whispered, but in the dialect the Faithful used. Booted feet treading stealthily, moving from southeast to northwest. He heard that too.
Which was the main reason Sergeant Gjan had placed Remus in the main ambush position. His Marine heritage meant his hearing was vastly upgraded beyond the merely human capability of his Wolfish comrades.
How many Faithful are there? A dozen? No, more. Maybe a full squad. Frakking clouds! I can’t be sure.
He had a firing arc over a three-hundred-yard section of the path before it opened up to the plateau where, hopefully, Janna and the rest of the squad were waiting in ambush.
His booming heart beat out the seconds as he allowed the lead elements of the enemy unit to pass by unmolested.
He lifted his mini-gun and shoved the bipod into the bracing point he’d dug out of the rocky ground. Then he stitched the path with darts.
The enormous backpack of the SA-75(h) mobile mini-gun was loaded out with microdarts optimized for fire volume rather than stopping power. Didn’t need it because the Faithful weren’t armored – weren’t even wearing gear to protect them against their own munitions. Of the enemy patrols they’d met so far, behind dumb plastic goggles and a simple mouth mask, the Faithful’s skin was already a mess of radiation and chemical burns. But that wouldn’t be what finished off this lot of Faithful. Honest Legion darts would do for them.
The pneumatic hammering of the mini-gun echoed off the hills, all question of stealth now cast to the winds. A simple tactical awareness map overlaid his goggles, showing the position of his comrades in this 7th Armored Claw patrol.
“Contact,” shouted Remus, stating the obvious over the din of his fire. “I have ears but not eyes on pelt-lovers. Maybe thirty. But that’s just guesswork.”
“We are in position,” said Sergeant Gjan. “Send the frakkers our way.”
“I have eyes on four,” added Jinnee. “Crawling downhill from northwest. I hear more but I can’t see them.”
She fired her rifle, and Remus could hear her shaking afterwards. It wasn’t fear. It was the opposite of fear that was threatening to overwhelm Jinnee.
“Keep it together,” he shouted. “You had your chance to get your blades out at the last patrol.”
He knew her instincts were screaming at her to throw away her gun and charge the enemy with her poison blade. But Jinnee’s discipline held firm against the programming alien scientists had written into her ancestors’ DNA.
“Well done,” shouted Remus. “Keep it up and you’ll make Marine one day.”
Other than seeing an enemy within charging distance, nothing drove a Wolf wilder than telling them the Marines were superior.
He’d only meant to goad her, to use anger at him to overcome her programming, but something went wrong. She was confused, disoriented. Maybe a bio-programming error. Hell, he didn’t know. Jinnee stood up, rifle in hand but didn’t fire it. Then she sat back down. Hard. Remus looked over and saw the blood flooding down over her suit from the rent a bullet had ripped through its neck section.
“Jinnee’s down injured,” he said over the net.
“I see the abominations on the hilltop,” said Furry Harry. “Look after Jinnee. I have your back.”
“We are about done here,” said Gjan. “Cease fire, Remus. Attend to Jinnee.”
Remus obeyed the sergeant, the screams of the Faithful down on the path reaching his ears the moment his cannon ended its death-chatter.
“Janna,” ordered the sergeant, “take Kyn, Umrad and Arborlyn and work your way around the back of the hill. Until they signal they’re ready, Harry, I’m relying upon you and your damned contraption.”
Furry Harry was the squad’s Hardit, and his damned contraption was a one-Hardit Lynx mini-tank. Remus had long ago gotten used not only to the cohort of Legion Hardits he’d fought alongside since the assault on the White Knight capital, but to their diminutive armored vehicles. Harry’s lynx was lying in wait, hidden in the brush at the base of the hill. Try doing that with a super-heavy gravtank.
Trusting the others to watch his back, Remus concentrated on Jinnee, and quickly stabilized her. She was going to live. If they could evac safely.
“Present for you,” said Harry through his tank’s external speaker. Remus heard a pop pop pop from the opposite hillside as Harry’s main gun fired.
“My customized Lynx-3 mini-tank is more than a match for those New Order abominations,” Harry said over the net. “Finest machine in the entire Human Legion.”
“Sarge, are you sure the monkey’s actually on our side?” asked Iyip, one of the detachment on the opposite hill from Remus, tasked with protecting the mini tank, though they all knew that no one hated the Janissaries and their human auxiliaries with a hotter passion than the natural-born Hardits.
The tank’s munitions exploded in the mass of the enemy. They were only simple cluster frags, but they were up against the unarmored Faithful. The human screams that erupted told of the tank’s effectiveness.
“I’m sure Furry Harry takes a picture of Tawfiq to rub i
n his rack at night,” leered Iyip.
“At least I don’t need to rub myself,” the Hardit replied. “Eh, Iyip?”
Iyip laughed and so did Remus. Jinnee had taken a blast of rads, and lost a lot of blood, but she’d been lucky. The bullet wound wouldn’t kill her, but Remus’s inattention could. He hauled the mini-gun over to face any more Faithful coming over the hill. He could see one twitching up ahead in a blood-stained patch of dry grass and decided to let it be.
“Harry, Remus, you boys cease firing,” Janna announced. “My team are clearing the hillside now.”
Three minutes later, Janna and her three companions reached Remus and Jinnee.
“All safe for my delicate boy Marine,” Janna said, giving him a friendly punch to the shoulder. She was panting in excitement and exhaustion. Fresh human blood dripped from her crescent blade.
“Fun time’s over,” said Sergeant Gjan. “We’ve accomplished what we set out to do. More importantly, my stomach’s growling, which means it’s time to head home for a well-earned meal.”
— Chapter 47 —
Remus scanned the cavern, checking it was empty.
Transferring from the Navy to serve with the Wolves – and later on Legion Hardits – of the 7th Armored Claw, had also entailed swapping his rack in Lance of Freedom’s pilot country for a far more random range of accommodation. Random, and often devoid of the simple certainties of hot, running water and plumbing. Despite parting from his brother and sister pilots, he’d never once regretted leaving behind his old life, with its caustic memories of his traitor brother. All the same, he sure missed pilot country.
This forward base, ten miles back from the front line at Bempe and buried half a mile underground, was something else. The giant pseudo-insects they called Trogs moved through dirt the way humans walked through air. But Trogs could sculpt the medium too. Merely on the off chance they might prove useful, the Trogs in their division had constructed scores of forward bases, with compartments fitted out with power and ventilation shafts, and connecting passageways protected by armored sentry posts hidden in the bulkheads.
Remus laughed. He was a Wolf now, and Wolves called them rooms, not compartments. Floors and walls, not decks and bulkheads. Something about the efficient finish was reminding him of Lance of Freedom and Navy ship design.
More than memories had followed him here on the long journey from Lance of Freedom. Janna had too.
The alcoves, each set with three racks on Trog-built shelves, were open to view, their privacy curtains pulled back, not that privacy featured highly amongst concerns of the other Wolves. But they realized Remus had brought a little shyness from his old life and had offered him an occasional chance of private time with Janna. Only one alcove had its curtain drawn; the one he shared with her.
He let out a sigh, long and trembling. Frakk, he needed her so much.
Janna always stuck to a simple routine. Equipment check, food, sex, sleep: in that order. The fact that she had skipped chow and was here waiting for him meant the next hour or so would be brutal, intense and dangerous.
He licked his lips in anticipation.
Wouldn’t have you any other way, darling.
“Couldn’t wait, eh?” he roared and ripped back the curtain.
An old man was waiting for him there. Short and wiry, with close-cropped white hair and a goatee to match, the intruder’s leathery skin told of a lifetime spent planetside, and much of it outdoors. This was an Earther.
‘Who?’, ‘how?’ and ‘why?’ vied to be the first question out of Remus’s lips.
The civilian was standing calmly beside the racks, his arms slightly to his side with empty palms out. He wore a crude, belted robe, bare feet and sandals. Remus was big, but he could move fast and decisively. If the intruder was concealing a weapon in those robes, Remus could snap his neck before he reached it.
‘How’ was winning out, but the sandaled intruder spoke first. “I apologize for disappointing you. There’s an old saying on my planet: a pleasure denied is one intensified. Gotta admit, though. When I was your age, I’d call that bullshit and kick the hell out of anyone who got in the way of a well-deserved rack-time adventure.”
“How?” finally reached Remus’s lips.
The man laughed sourly. “Special ops gear. Officially, I can’t say more than that, though I realize that in the circumstances that’s just ridiculous. I’m Sergeant Bashiri Bloehn of the 163rd Brigade, IFDF.”
“You’re military?” Remus queried, trying and failing to place Bloehn in the rapidly evolving Legion TO&E. “Some kind of civilian volunteer militia?”
“No, regular army.” Anger drew the Earther’s words tight. His hands clenched and looked ready to lash out.
Suddenly the calmness of this bizarre conversation evaporated in a blur of motion.
Remus dropped to the ground on instinct, ready to sweep his legs wide and hook around the back of the Earther’s knees, but he realized that Sergeant Bloehn hadn’t moved. It was Janna who had emerged behind the Earther with the grace of a hurricane. The knife she held at his throat had left a thin red line beading with a single drop of blood.
“IFDF,” she sneered. “I Frakk Drenting Furballs. Is that who you are? What did your monkey mistress tell you to do? Did she make you drink liquid explosive?”
“International Federation Defense Force,” growled Bloehn. “Don’t you arrogant, ignorant ass-hats know anything? We’re the legitimate armed forces of the legitimate Earth government.”
Remus and Janna looked at each other, perplexed. Compared to the rest of the Legion, life in the Wolves was just as short, but was brutish and simple. This kind of surprise didn’t happen to Wolves.
“Who are you calling illegitimate?” Remus asked. “Us, or the puppets of the Hardit New Order?”
“Does it matter?” replied the Earther, swallowing hard as he tried to regain his composure.
They’d clearly struck a nerve by insulting his service. Remus could understand that. What Bloehn hadn’t accounted for was the consequence of his insulting theirs.
Janna was a true Wolf, and unlike the cyborg Marine bulk of Remus, in terms of physique she was little different from the native Earthers. She didn’t need to be. Despite her being shorter than Bloehn, the man found himself dancing on tiptoes, his back arched under Janna’s chokehold.
“I don’t take well to being called illegitimate,” she yelled, her mouth rammed against his ear. “My comrades who died on the long path to liberate your world… tell me, were they illegitimate too? Were their sacrifices unreal?”
“I’m sorry,” croaked the man, and he genuinely seemed to regret making Janna angry. She relaxed her hold a fraction, just enough for him to apologize with more clarity. “I am – was – a soldier,” he said. “Not a politician. Now I am neither, just a last remnant of the Resistance, waiting in quiet obscurity for years until my superiors activated me. The Voice of the Resistance has spoken. Your Legion ships in orbit are in great danger. Tawfiq is laying a trap for you.”
——
Remus tried to hear out the man, he really did, but two minutes later he gave up and shook his head “No, this still makes no sense. Why me and Janna? Why sneak through this base to bring your words to us of all people?”
“Your brother is the Governor, which means–”
“He’s not my brother!” snarled Remus
Bloehn glared. “My intel says you are… connected, which makes you a person of note. People will be readier to believe you are linked to momentous events, and you are more likely to have the ear of senior commanders. This is urgent. And you both know General McEwan. Can we speak with him now?”
“He’s dead,” said Janna.
The man slumped a little at the news.
Janna continued, “And we lost Remus’s mother, Colonel Nhlappo, long ago on Tranquility-4.”
Even after all these years, an emptiness yawned inside Remus. He and Romulus had been babies, orphaned by the human genocide perpetrated
by Tawfiq on Tranquility. First Sergeant Nhlappo, as she had been at the time, had adopted them both. Although Remus wasn’t related to Romulus by blood, he found he couldn’t disown the traitor because they were forever bound by their adopted mother’s love. To disown Romulus would be to dishonor her, and that was something Remus could never do.
The memories of his mother drained the fight from Remus, bled away too any prospect of properly slaking his sexual hunger. This warning from the Earth man had better be frakking good.
Remus opened a comm hail to his squad NCO.
“Remus,” snapped Sergeant Gjan. “I’m eating. I don’t want to hear Janna pounding your flesh. Later is fine, but I like to satisfy one bodily function at a time. Did she put you up to this call?”
“No, Sergeant. I think we’ve made contact with local resistance forces. Earther here claims he needs to speak to someone about a trap Tawfiq’s about to unleash on the fleet.”
Sergeant Gjan didn’t speak for several seconds. Couldn’t. Remus admired and respected him as an NCO, but like most Wolves, Gjan had a deep need for a sense of underlying order to what outsiders would see as the chaos of the Wolfish life.
“You have an Earther there now?” asked the sergeant. “In your quarters?”
“Yes. A man. Claims to be former Earth Army.”
“And Janna’s there and unharmed?”
“Yes.”
“But Janna hasn’t killed this Earth man?”
“No, Sergeant.”
“Janna hasn’t killed the Earth man yet,” Janna corrected over the same channel. “She is severely pissed off, and not just with this Earther, but before she starts hurting people, she thinks we should hear this man out. I think anyone with the balls to do what he did must think his warning is important, Sergeant.”
“Okay, Janna. Keep your scales on. Jeez, I’d only managed two mouthfuls and I’m hungry goddamnit! Look, if you let him live then I guess that’s good enough for me. There’s a supply shuttle lifting off for orbit in thirteen minutes. Be on it. All three of you. Secure him, but use your instincts – kill him if you have to. I’ll clear your flight with the lieutenant, but whether those crazy Navy types will blast you out of orbit before you dock is far beyond my paygrade. Now shift your scrawny butts and let me finish my goddamn dinner.”
