Shadow Play

by P. R. Adams

  They were nearly a third of the way down, almost to the level of the faded glow of something big. His binoculars could make out a little more detail, but the false glow of the decoy lights made the details questionable. Four shuttles. He was sure of that, although he wasn’t sure of their condition. One looked bent and twisted; another was snapped in half. And there was a large crate. And…

  There! Soldiers!

  There were several forms spread across the bottom of the crater. They were hiding behind cases and crates and who knew what else.

  Twenty, he estimated. There would be more.

  O’Bannon connected to Franke. “Lieutenant Franke, I now see twenty. They’re spread across the floor, some with cover toward our side, some with cover toward the north wall.”

  “Twenty? It seems hardly a force worth worrying about.”

  “If they were in the open and we weren’t on this damned slick wall.”

  “Yes, this will be trouble.”

  “And there will certainly be more.”

  “Hidden in the shuttles?”

  “They offer the best cover. But there is quite a bit of debris.”

  “Why the crater, though? Why not attack us at the base? Why not ambush us in the rocky hills between the base and the crater?”

  “There must be a reason. Continue your descent. Stay alert.”

  “Should we warn the captain?”

  “A Black Lightning Commando will already know the exact composition and location of the enemy, Lieutenant.”

  Franke chuckled. “Of course he will, Major. My apologies.”

  O’Bannon gave the crater floor one last look, then put the binoculars away. He tested his legs, sucked in a breath at the pain radiating from his backside and purpled knee, then began the descent once more. At some point, one of the Kedraalian soldiers would spot him and fire, and the pain and suffering would come to an end, but until then he would present them a challenge.

  A quick check of the communicator revealed that Andressen had given up on following the dictate of fiver-meter spacing. The others were doing fine.

  O’Bannon connected to the young man. “Private Andressen?”

  “Yes, Major?”

  “Do your hands bother you during this descent?”

  “They are fine, sir!”

  “Then you have no excuse for forgetting the spacing I specified.”

  The young man didn’t speak for a few seconds. “I am sorry, Major. I wanted to be close should a rock give way again.”

  “No rock gave way. That was my own mistake. I will be fine.”

  “Yes, sir. I will resume my assigned spacing.”

  The major smiled. He had a good unit. Professional. Experienced. If any survived, they would be a testament to his hard work, wherever they were next assigned.

  Halfway down, he signaled another stop, both to stretch out his throbbing knee and backside, and to get a look into the crater once again.

  The Kedraalians hadn’t moved. Their discipline was exceptional. If they had detected his people moving down the crater side, they hadn’t fired. It seemed unlikely his people could go undetected. That meant the enemy was waiting for something.

  O’Bannon connected to Franke. “Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, Major?”

  “They must see us by now, yet they hold fire.”

  “Have they repositioned anyone?”

  “Not in the least. It seems they wish us to continue down into a trap. Have you seen anything?”

  Franke didn’t respond.

  Had he seen something?

  His communicator squealed, then stopped transmitting. The signal had simply…disappeared.

  O’Bannon searched for the nearest soldier to the lieutenant’s position. “Sergeant Lanier? Can you hear me?”

  “I hear you, Major.”

  Lanier was a solid soldier. Past his prime but effective. He had survived two campaigns against the Moskav.

  “The lieutenant’s communicator seems to have failed.” O’Bannon was sure that was all that had happened. Even though their communicators were sturdy and reliable, they did fail on occasion. “Could you make your way to the lieutenant’s position and act as a relay, please? I have marked it for you, just in case your communicator has lost that data.”

  “Of course, Major!”

  The sergeant’s green dot moved toward the last place Franke’s signal had come from. It was a few meters away from where he’d been when the call had started. That could mean that he moved and dropped it, or it could mean that he needed to reposition and it failed. Or there could be problems with the crater O’Bannon wasn’t thinking of.

  For a moment, his thoughts returned to the robot-dog they’d lost when searching the dark depths. It had been so quick and so surprising.

  Lanier was at Franke’s last position. “Major?”

  “Go ahead, Sergeant.”

  “The lieutenant…”

  “Yes?”

  “He is not here, Major. But there is blood.”

  “Blood?”

  “Black and slick, but I am sure it is blood, sir.”

  “And you see nothing to indicate where he is?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Have your men spread out. Find him.”

  “Yes, Major.”

  O’Bannon’s heart raced. Franke wasn’t the best officer to ever serve in the unit, but he was more than competent, and he had become a true friend. To lose him before the assault…

  If there was enough blood for Lanier to spot, it could only mean that the injury had been significant. That meant relying on the non-commissioned officers, some of whom were less experienced.

  Should the assault continue, though? There was always the chance that the lieutenant had run into a trap set by the Kedraalians. If he’d been injured or even killed, knowing what had happened could save other lives and improve the odds—

  “Major?” Sergeant Lanier was gasping for breath. “We have found the body—the lieutenant’s body.”

  Body? “He is dead?”

  “Yes, sir. Something…”

  “Yes? Sergeant? Where was he?”

  “About ten meters down the wall, sir.”

  “He fell?”

  “No, sir. Something tore through his armor. His throat has been ripped out. His head barely…”

  They had seen horrible death. What could have rattled the sergeant? “It was not from a fall, and there is no obvious weapon? No one is around?”

  “No, sir.”

  What could have gotten in close enough to tear Franke’s throat out and drag him away without anyone noticing? His soldiers had been all around. Could the Kedraalians have done that?

  “Sergeant Lanier, have everyone do a head count.” O’Bannon checked on his team. He connected to Andressen. “Private Andressen, bring the others in closer. Three-meter separation.”

  “Yes, Major. Something has changed?”

  “Something has. Lieutenant Franke has been killed.”

  “Killed, sir? How?”

  “We will have to see.”

  Throat torn out, nearly beheaded…

  Could a soldier do that and not be seen or heard? It would be an obvious assassination. A knife wound didn’t rip someone open, and it took seconds for someone to succumb to their throat being slit. Franke would have struggled. Someone should have seen the assailant and the fight.

  Sergeant Lanier reconnected. “Major? We are missing three soldiers. The other squads are looking for them.”

  Three soldiers? How? Had the Kedraalians left assassins hidden on the side of the crater? In the darkness, spread out as widely as the squads were, anyone with the right gear would have been almost impossible to spot. But to tear out someone’s throat with no one seeing you…?

  “Sergeant Lanier, once the missing have been accounted for, have all the squads move closer together.”

  “Yes, Major. What about the lieutenant’s body?”

  “Leave it for now. We will recover it once we hav
e dealt with the Kedraalian attackers.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lanier’s voice shook with emotion. Franke had been a popular officer. He had stood up for his soldiers when higher headquarters had apparently decided they were done conducting responsible warfare against the Moskav with older units. To have the man abruptly taken away by a mysterious assailant…

  And now three others…

  O’Bannon suddenly felt isolated and vulnerable. They were just four, him, Andressen, Gerard, and Lyonne. It had been foolish to take them out on the western edge. Without better equipment and preparation, the odds of success had been ridiculously slim. And they had suddenly become much slimmer.

  They needed to move toward the others and to do so quickly, even if it meant risking detection.

  But should Knoel be informed of the threat?

  What had O’Bannon joked before? A Black Lightning Commando would already know the exact composition and location of the enemy?

  That seemed unlikely. Dangerously unlikely.

  The call would have to be made, Knoel would have to be warned…

  Once O’Bannon and his men were safe and not a second before.

  18

  Benson leaned against the wall of the shuttle that had brought her down to Jotun, exhausted and regretting her refusal to take a painkiller. The last half hour had been a blur—movement, setting out gear and weapons, bringing sensors online. Her leg was a wobbly, throbbing mass of fire-hot pins, held together by the brace the medic had taped together.

  But Benson was alive. To appreciate that, she only had to look from the darkness of the open airlock at the pale-lit corpses that were set out behind modest cover in the open spaces.

  Marines. Technicians. Sailors. People.

  Now they were lures for snipers and other enemy threats.

  It wasn’t just the pain wearing her down. It was Gadreau and Fero pouting and squabbling and resisting at every turn. Their voices were in her head, even when her audio pickup was silent.

  Benson’s foul breath fogged her rebreather mask.

  She needed water. She needed to pee. She needed sleep.

  Not a one of those was possible, not with the enemy possibly out there. Waiting.

  Her communicator vibrated. She slapped it onto the back of her gloved hand and connected the rebreather’s microphone wirelessly. It was Parkinson, hidden away in the shuttle’s crumpled cabin. “Go ahead, Chief.”

  “W-we’ve got something.”

  He would probably be terrified if a rodent scampered up to him. “What is it?”

  “Well, a few seconds ago, I picked up a…like a radio signal. Some sort of multi-frequency transmission, I guess, because it showed up on three different bandwidths I’m monitoring. The ones we knew the Azoren military used at the end of the war.”

  “Where?”

  “South wall. Sort of. This system is inexact. I cobbled it together—”

  “Thanks, Chief.” Another miracle he’d pulled off, sculpting a laser weapon from sand, if you asked him. Still, a radio signal that just so happened to use the same frequency the Azoren used at the end of the war? It sounded like something they couldn’t ignore.

  She edged up to the open hatch and activated the infrared optics system. Nothing.

  If there was someone on the south wall, they had to be well concealed somewhere above the sensor line.

  Or did they?

  “Chief, can you test the sensors?”

  “Still green.”

  “And we know that means they’re intact?”

  “That or the enemy has some serious systems hackers with really sharp eyes.”

  “Thanks.”

  Thirty minutes. Thirty-one now. No word from Stiles. Could they have reached the ruins already? The Badger’s engine had sounded terrible, even as internal combustion engines went. But if she could get there, get the data or destroy the facility, and signal all clear, Benson’s team could scramble aboard the last of the functional shuttles and head for the one stable spot near the ruins, pick up Stiles and her team, and then leave.

  Except even that wouldn’t be easy. Someone would have to stay behind. Six someones. Five plus their commander.

  Without Agent Patel’s gunship, they weren’t getting off the frozen rock clean.

  Benson pulled back from the airlock opening. “I can’t see anything up there, Chief. I need to go to Captain Gadreau’s position.”

  “Why can’t you call him to come here?”

  “Because he’s in command of an actual team of Marines, and I’m—” Just hiding in here with some technicians and cooks and you? “I’m directing things. I need to be the one to move.”

  “Whatever.”

  She crouched low, hating her height now as much as she’d hated it as a teen, when she’d been ridiculed mercilessly. Tall, skinny, awkward, acne, daughter of an unpopular member of the parliament. She still hated those years, even after her acne started to clear and she filled out. Pretty or not, she was tall and unpopular, the target of girls whose parents actually cared about appearance and spent the money to help them through the terrible years.

  Her knee seemed ready to buckle before she was even halfway to Gadreau’s position. She gritted her teeth and imagined being in a race with the other girls from school, trying to avoid enemy snipers hidden in the balconies that looked down on Freedom Avenue. A little pain and weakness wasn’t going to keep her from outdoing them! She imagined the snipers would aim for the girls’ cold hearts, and their final squeals of disbelief would be motivation—

  Benson stumbled a meter shy of the open hatch of the shuttle nearest Gadreau’s improvised defenses but managed to throw herself into the airlock before falling. Someone caught her by the chest and dragged her in.

  It was Gadreau. He set her in the corner with a frown. “Commander Benson. What was that about?”

  “We might have people up on the south wall. I was hoping to borrow your binoculars.”

  “You could have radioed me, ma’am.”

  “I can get a better look from here.”

  His rebreather hissed as it cycled carbon dioxide, converting it into oxygen and mixing in nitrogen. His eyes slitted, but he finally pulled the case around to his chest and took the optics device out. “Any word from the lieutenant?”

  That came out full of spite and resentment. “Nothing yet.”

  She took the binoculars and set her boots back on the black rock. There was a little texture to it now—cracks, splinters, scrapes. That helped when she edged along the side of the shuttle.

  At the end of the spacecraft, she brought the binoculars up, poked her head around, and searched until she found the last traces of heat from the cargo container. It was only a few meters down from there to the sensor line. Anyone coming down would be—

  Someone yanked her back by the shoulder.

  Benson twisted around, eyes wide in anger.

  It was Gadreau. “That’s an exposed position.” He nodded toward the north wall where it curved west.

  “The signal came from the south.”

  “It could be a decoy, just like ours. Commander.”

  She turned the binoculars on the part of the wall he’d indicated. “Nothing up there.”

  “That you can see.”

  “Yes. Should I be worrying about ghosts now?”

  He held a hand out for the binoculars, then scanned the north wall himself, moving slowly left to right, then back, then again. “The Azoren probably have the same sort of stealth tech we do.”

  “And what sort of technology would that be?”

  “Well, among the Marines, we have a few types, including systems that make it hard to pick out someone standing still at a distance. But the prototypes we have…” He handed the device back to her. “Well, Commander, if they saw you poke your head out for a look, they would shoot it off, and you’d never know.”

  “You sound entertained by that, Captain.”

  “Of course not, ma’am. Irritated that you let
someone untrained take my best sergeant, yes. That doesn’t mean I want you dead.”

  He didn’t sound at all convincing. “Lieutenant Stiles knows the mission.”

  “That isn’t the same as knowing how to execute the mission.”

  Benson tried to scan the south wall the same way she’d seen Gadreau scan the north. It seemed a pointless—

  Something moved. It was a small pattern of heat. Then another pattern of heat. Then others.

  There were people on the south wall. Plenty of people.

  She marked the coordinates and handed the glasses to him. “You see that?”

  After a moment staring through the device, he grunted. “I count nineteen.”

  “Wearing some sort of thermal-dampening gear?”

  “Something.”

  “Why are they moving horizontal?”

  “Repositioning, maybe.” He shook his head. “Why send people down the south wall? Doesn’t make sense. The north wall would be better. Send a smaller team down the south wall to draw attention away.”

  “We’ve got that gun turret positioned to hit anywhere on the western half of either of the walls.”

  “Maybe you could have the major position her people on the south side and leave this threat to my Marines.”

  He simply refuses to call Fero’s people Marines. “I’ll talk to her.”

  “Or you could give me command over her.”

  “I think I can handle this, Captain.”

  Gadreau scanned the north wall again. “Can you? Commander?”

  Benson nearly stumbled as she stepped off; she turned. “Excuse me?”

  “With your injuries, ma’am. Are you sure you can handle something like this?”

  “Because you could handle it better?”

  “Well, it is what I’ve done for most of my adult life. And I got here through hard work, not through family connections.”

  Her heart pounded. He was attacking her. A superior officer. “Captain Gadreau, are you saying you think I was promoted because of my mother?”

  “I was talking about my record, Commander. I don’t talk about anyone else.”

  “Good.”

  As she hobbled away, all she could think to herself was that there were so many other things she could have—should have—said, but none of them came to her in that moment. His resentment was clear. His low regard for her competence was also clear. And it seemed to extend beyond her sending Sergeant Carruth on a mission without consultation.