Shadow Play

by P. R. Adams

  What if she fed the sensors into the tactical display? Would that be enough to let her use the gun herself? She needed something until the probe arrived.

  Benson searched the simple weapon interface until she found the input signal from the sensors. She transferred that data feed to her tactical display, then tapped the manual override.

  Just like every officer trained to fly in the fleet, she’d undergone training on heavy weapons. The targets in such training had been starships and debris. Without computer control, hitting a starship at full thrust simply wasn’t going to happen, but damaged starships maneuvering at slow speeds or debris that had lost energy after a few bounces? Those could be hit.

  Soldiers on foot weren’t nearly as fast. Even if they were smaller and had uncertain signals, she thought she had a chance.

  She got behind the weapon system controls, leaning her shoulders against the heavily padded braces. Most of the weapon recoil would be absorbed by the turret mechanism, but accuracy called for using physical sights.

  All she needed now was a quick walk-through of system use. She activated her helmet external speakers. “Manual weapons use tutorial.”

  Video opened on her facemask display. “Welcome to the Conway Mark VII Anti-Personnel Defense System. At Conway Weapons—”

  “Brief tutorial.”

  “The Mark VII offers integration with most modern Tactical Network Systems. If you have one, please select the integration icon now.”

  Benson hated how slow tutorials were. She selected the integration icon. “Double speed.”

  Images popped up inside the video, and a second video began, this one providing an actual walk-through of the system and of potential problems and solutions. At the same time those videos ran, an audio confirmation informed her that she was now integrating her tactical network.

  “You are now ready to use the Conway Mark VII—”

  She spun the turret around to the right and lightly tapped the trigger when she thought she had a good target.

  The blur was still there, standing.

  Then bullets rattled off the gun shield.

  What she was seeing was no more accurate than what the sensors had managed.

  She fired again, and this time the blurry object moved.

  Had she come too close for its comfort? Good!

  The gun fought against her as she tried to track the target, which finally stopped. It had found cover behind some debris, but that wasn’t going to stop the bullets the gun used.

  Benson pulled the trigger, and whatever the cover was broke in half.

  After a second, the blurry form jumped from what remained of the cover and ran, then the form staggered and fell.

  Yes! She’d gotten one!

  She torqued her hips and fought against the turret rotation system with her shoulders while searching for a target farther out, something that wouldn’t have cover. Farther out, she had to rely less on her own infrared imaging and eyes and more on the sensors. When she spotted something, it was invariably two or even three blurry objects rather than one.

  It was no use. With such limited imagery and technology, the weapon might as well have just sputtered like it had.

  The commander pushed free in disgust.

  They were being overrun.

  She ducked into the shelter and pulled out one of the grenades she’d taken from Azoren corpses. How far could she throw the small explosive? Would the Azoren be stupid enough to stay clustered together? They’d been operating like green troops.

  Dietrich stood and brushed his hands together. “Well, are we dead again?”

  “If we die here, Doctor, we won’t be coming back.”

  “I was stunned they brought us back the first time.” He made a sour face that accentuated the wrinkles on his face. “Technology will never be the solution to every problem.”

  “That doesn’t sound at all like a surgeon.”

  “A philosophical one. What we faced was the creation of societies gone mad.”

  “I would imagine the Azoren would say the same thing about—”

  Bullets rattled against the cargo crate walls. She dragged the doctor to the ground, then felt around for the grenade. People were creeping up on her position. There were dull blurs approaching—three of them, two of them not twenty meters out and the third a few meters back.

  She hefted the grenade. “Time to test your philosophy, Commander Dietrich.”

  Benson belly-crawled to the opening, gritting her teeth and then wishing she hadn’t. Her jaw throbbed, and the little bit of recoil she’d experienced with the gun had irritated her neck. If she lived, she was looking at weeks of rehabilitation.

  At the opening, she checked the enemy positions. They fired again, driving her back inside.

  But she had a sense of where they were now. Eighteen meters and closing.

  How did the grenades work? That was the next thing to figure out. Rather than a pin, there seemed to be a guard over a button. Nothing obvious moved the guard aside. She tried a slow push up, a push sideways, a push down and then up. It didn’t budge. There were no hinges, and nothing seemed like it was meant to just tear away. For a guard to cover a detonation device, accidental triggering had to be minimized. So how—

  She tried an unlikely combination: pressing down with a thumb, then pressing sideways.

  The guard popped free and fell to the icy rock.

  That left just the triggering pin.

  How long of a fuse would they have? Several seconds? It would be useless otherwise.

  Benson located the targets, visualized where she’d have to place the grenade for it to have any chance, then pressed the button.

  The grenade sent a pulse of pressure into her thumb.

  Haptic response. It’s triggered.

  She leaned out the opening and threw the thing as far as she could with the limited wind-up.

  It detonated almost immediately.

  More gunfire rattled against the improvised shelter walls. Some of the rounds ricocheted inside the shelter itself.

  Dietrich curled up. “Too close!”

  “I know.” Benson pulled another grenade.

  Her tactical display flashed, then refreshed with greater detail. The improvised defensive positions became wireframes that looked like X-rays. Wrinkles stood out on her ruined shuttle’s hull.

  And the Azoren forms resolved into limbs, torsos, and heads.

  “Chief! The probe!”

  A dry chuckle rasped in her helmet. Parkinson’s voice was weak but gleeful. “Overhead. Maybe fifteen minutes.”

  Benson had to make that count.

  She triggered another grenade, then tossed it just a little wide of the forward Azoren soldiers.

  The explosion was deafening, close. Shrapnel whizzed and clattered against the cargo crate walls, which bowed inward. A few crates fell completely, toppling onto the dead Marines.

  But the grenade had worked. The Azoren soldiers fell back.

  And they weren’t running but stumbling.

  Injured!

  She twisted around to return the turret gun to automatic fire control, but the control panel was a white blur with occasional ripples of blue. “Chief?”

  He held up a hand. “I see it.”

  With the VR helmet on, he must have seen the virtual equivalent of the broken interface.

  “Can you fix it?”

  “A few more seconds.”

  She didn’t know if they had that much time. The probe showed at least twenty forms flanking the northern defenses. Grenades would easily—

  The probe overlay disappeared from her facemask, followed by the weapon system interface. Then the Mark VII turret gun hummed to life, and a second later, the weapon fired. Short bursts—probably meant to conserve ammunition—gave the weapon a different sound this time, like a giant chattering robot.

  But what mattered was that the Azoren fell.

  One on the eastern side of camp. Another that was dangerously close to one of the de
fensive positions. A third that was off to the west. The three who had fled after her grenade.

  Then another, this one closer to the center of the Azoren troops.

  That seemed to break them. As one, they stumbled back, sprinting or hunched low. The distinctive sounds of their guns were now silent.

  Benson sucked in a breath. Her team was alive. They had a chance.

  Now all they needed was for Stiles’s team to come through.

  26

  The Kedraalians were devils, things drawn from the shadows of the crater. When O’Bannon ordered his men to cover, the enemy went silent. They moved, shifting from one of their crude defensive structures to another, sometimes burying themselves among the corpses that still distracted the Azoren soldiers. And always, the clever bastards stayed out of sight. Always they were protected. When the major ordered his men to fire, the Kedraalians fired first.

  There was absolute certainty that his men were driving the enemy to cover, sometimes even injuring a target, perhaps occasionally killing them, but it was only at a painful cost.

  The groans of the wounded haunted him. How could he ask them to silence their communicators? What selfishness was that?

  Yet their pained cries and the sudden silences drained his soul. It leaked out in foul, cold sweat.

  His command. His obligation. It was all dying now.

  Death lay hidden in the pitch-black depth of the pit, the crater.

  O’Bannon squeezed the grenade Andressen had taken from Lieutenant Franke’s body. The metal exterior was unyielding, angular, hard. Its surface pressed against his gloves.

  What a masterful throw it would take to reach the enemy positions.

  Something beyond mastery would be necessary to make the grenade count.

  The major no longer had the arm strength for such a thing, but he couldn’t risk someone else exposing themselves for as long as such a throw would take.

  Andressen tapped his commander’s shoulder. “Major, should I throw it?”

  The older man shook off the uncertainty that had settled over him. “No.”

  “But without something to make them keep their heads down, we can never descend the wall.”

  “I know.”

  “You said the Commandos have demanded we charge the positions.”

  “Captain Knoel demands many things.” And he will pay for the losses caused on such folly. “This decision is not his but mine.”

  The young man peeked over the rock cover. “We will defeat these Kedraalians.”

  There was no telling the young man how hopeless a war would be if opened across multiple fronts. It was better to leave hope in the mind that hadn’t yet been worn down by the grindstone of hubris and ineptitude. Franke had seen the futility of war against even the Moskav. That enemy—no matter how brutish—had sensed the desperate need to fight for every centimeter. How else should one respond to an existential threat?

  But there were many within the Supreme Leader’s ranks who felt the war was won and toyed with turning their attention to the Gulmar.

  Two fronts would be madness. A third?

  O’Bannon spied the narrowest gap between the Kedraalian positions. It was a spot between the center position and the one to the east. Set the explosive off there, and shrapnel would have a good chance of finding openings to either position. Little fragments of sharp metal would rattle around and ricochet until buried in armor or flesh. Brains would be scrambled.

  They didn’t need kills; they needed heads to be dropped down.

  Another fifteen meters, and they would be at the crater floor. His young soldiers—battered and angry—would be hungry for a charge. Even diminished, they had to outnumber the enemy. Other than the big gun facing the other side of the crater, there just weren’t that many weapons firing from below.

  “Ready yourself, Private Andressen.” O’Bannon rolled his shoulder.

  The private checked his rifle. “I am ready, sir.”

  “Good.”

  O’Bannon radioed the others. “I will hurl our grenade into the defensive positions. When you see the explosion, descend to the bottom of the crater and charge those positions.”

  One after another, the last of his soldiers confirmed they would.

  They were braver than the Azoren Federation deserved.

  The major set his rifle against the rocks, sucked in a breath, then pushed the detonation guard aside. His thumb kept the pin depressed as he rose up. One leg stretched behind him for the throw; the other squeezed forward. He leaned back and twisted, corkscrewing for more power, straining his injured back and knee.

  Down in the crater, someone must have spotted him. The enemy guns popped. Bullets cracked around him.

  Something punched him in the ribs.

  The wind left him, and icy pain sucked all the energy from his body.

  He fell, barely aware of Andressen taking the grenade. “I have it, Major. Do not worry. I will throw it.”

  Then the young man rose, assuming the same posture O’Bannon had but looking so much more graceful and capable with the weapon ready for launch. And Andressen had the strength, the raw athletic capability; the old man didn’t.

  But the Kedraalians—the damned Kedraalians…

  They knew. They were just as desperate fighting for survival as O’Bannon was. Or the Moskav.

  Before Andressen could throw the grenade, rounds whistled and sparked against the rocks all around him.

  The tension left the young man’s body. He wobbled. His head slumped.

  He pitched forward leisurely, slowly, and disappeared, trailing the grenade that had slipped from his hand.

  And a heartbeat later, O’Bannon felt rather than heard the explosion.

  Heat and light. Concussion. The whistle of shrapnel.

  It was the artillery called in against the Moskav redoubt all over again. The destructive force that should have been his men’s salvation instead obliterated it.

  O’Bannon curled into a ball. He hissed. He clenched his teeth so that he wouldn’t curse Knoel and his damned Black Lightning Commandos.

  Toys of the Supreme Leader. Engineered humans.

  They had brought destruction to the Azoren, and there would be no escaping it. Mia and the children were every bit as dead as O’Bannon himself. He had lamented and cursed the hubris of the Supreme Leader and his toadies, yet it was that same hubris that had delayed sending the family the major loved so dearly away.

  But at least he could try to save his other family, the last of these young men who didn’t know better than to trust their bloodless superiors.

  O’Bannon pushed himself up, gasping, scolding himself for his weakness. He grabbed his weapon. “Count by threes.”

  The men sounded off—not even fifteen of them now.

  “Ones, you are with me. On my signal, we provide cover fire. Twos and threes, climb. Three meters. Find cover. Then provide cover for the ones as we ascend. Do you understand?”

  They did. No one questioned it.

  O’Bannon coughed. Blood was hot and metallic on his lips. It meant he was still alive.

  “Go!”

  He rose up, and his soldiers fired while the others ascended.

  The enemy weapons were silenced mostly, but some of his men screamed. One fell back down not far away, dangling from a narrow ledge for the blink of an eye, then tumbling down the wall.

  Guns fired from overhead.

  “Ones, climb!”

  O’Bannon toyed with staying behind and providing cover as his final act. That was cowardice. It was weak. His soldiers needed leadership. They needed to know someone would lead them from this black hell.

  He and the ones stopped ten meters above the rest, then he repeated the cycle.

  With each wave, they lost someone, until by the top, there were only eight of his young soldiers. Eight. He counted them, read their names, remembered the day they’d joined his unit. Two were barely old enough to shave. Another had lost a child to an illness long believed conquere
d. Yet another had seen a child born to his barren wife while assigned to Jotun thanks to the wonders of science.

  They were good soldiers. O’Bannon was proud of them.

  He wobbled unsteadily, catching his breath with some effort, blinking away dots that danced around his eyes.

  One of the men—someone short and fat—broke from the loose cluster of soldiers and approached: Private Gerard. “Major O’Bannon?”

  “Yes?”

  “What are your orders now? Do we drive to the north wall?”

  “To help the Commandos? Damn them to hell, Private Gerard.”

  The young man recoiled, as if he’d been called something horrible. “Major?”

  “Your comrades died here because of Captain Knoel, and your loved ones will die because of the fools who created such a monster.”

  “We struggle for freedom, Major. The captain and his—”

  O’Bannon squeezed the young man’s soft shoulder. “We struggle to take from others what we claim we fight to defend for ourselves. We—”

  Someone screamed, and the soldiers clustered several meters away turned as one to look behind them.

  From where he stood, O’Bannon had a hard time making out what was happening. He shoved Gerard aside and staggered forward, squeezing the grip of the rifle. If one of Knoel’s Commandos had—

  O’Bannon froze, and his soldiers fell back as they realized what they were seeing.

  It was Jurgen, the robot-dog that had gone missing in the crater.

  But it had changed. Its dull, metal armor was black now and even without light hitting it, the surface glistened as if it had just climbed from an ocean of black oil. The thing’s eyes had changed, looking now like stars sparkling in the firmament.

  And a chunk of flesh hung from its jaws.

  Flesh torn from a soldier who now bled out onto the frozen rock. Steam rose from a neck that had been savaged, and the dying soldier’s arms flailed weakly.

  O’Bannon raised his weapon. “All of you, back away.”

  His soldiers did as ordered.

  “Jurgen?” The major sighted on the robot. “You hear my voice?”

  The robot lowered its head, and the gory flesh fell from its mouth to plop to the ground.

  “Power down, Jurgen.” O’Bannon aimed at the strangely shaped head. “That is a command override. Power—”