by B. V. Larson
“Murder…” Winslade said, and he seemed to like the way the word tasted. “That’s the word I’m thinking of. It has a nice ring to it.”
Already, I knew where he was going with this. Now that he was my direct commander, he would find it easy to order me into a situation that would get me and my unit slaughtered. I could see it coming from a mile off.
“Possibly, there’s been a misunderstanding,” I said.
“A miscalculation, more like.” He gave me a predatory smile. “You made the error, and you compounded it by lobbying for me to become your direct commander.”
“Uh…”
“Do you wish to hear about your first assignment? Hmm?” Winslade asked. “It’s going to be quite a challenge, I’m afraid.”
“Now, hold on a moment. There’s something else we need to discuss.”
“I doubt that.”
“Do you remember the Galactic Key we were both looking for?”
Winslade looked up suddenly. He blinked twice. “Yes, of course. What about it?” His eyes shifted from dark revenge to a yellowy shade. I thought that probably denoted a hint of greed. “Are you saying you’re in possession of—?”
“Nope. Not any longer. The aliens have it.”
He cocked his head to one side. His mouth dropped halfway open. “You gave these fools the Galactic Key? Are you mad?”
“Some would say so, yes. But using it, I was able to get the Shadowlanders to join us.”
Winslade shook his head and gazed back at the makeshift town. “Such a waste… Does Galina know?”
“Uh… nope.”
He looked at me speculatively. “What kind of scheme are you hatching, McGill?”
“A good one. A scheme that will help both of us.”
“Let me guess: I get the key, and you keep breathing. Is that it?”
“Well… for starters.”
Winslade and I soon had a truce going. It was a necessary thing, really. We couldn’t very well run our troops effectively if we were gunning for each other.
For both of us, it was a relief. Sure, Winslade needed a good killing on the best of days, and he probably thought the same thing about me. But when you were sent into the field together to face an alien menace, well, it was way harder to concentrate when you knew your fellow officers were out to frag you.
We shook on it, agreeing to set aside our petty differences until such a time as we thought it was worth it to backstab each other again. I knew plenty of officers who operated within that kind of temporary framework. It was the Varus way.
“All right,” Winslade said after I’d formed up my unit. They were all slumped over their rifles, looking bored. They had no idea that a major war was about to break out. “McGill, contact your girlfriend in that huddle of stinking domes. Tell her to come out here, rather than having us wait on her like a queen.”
I wasn’t sure how Kattra would take that, but I contacted her anyway. A dozen minutes later a group of Shadowlander agents walked out of the town. Behind them, around three hundred humping black shapes followed.
“What the hell are those things?” Winslade asked aloud.
“Oh… you haven’t gotten up-close and personal with their combat drones yet, have you sir? What you see there is some of their best gear. Just wait until you see one of them stand up on their tripods, they’re pretty impressive machines.”
Winslade seemed appalled. He’d watched the videos, but as was so often the case, such representations failed to impress how wicked and deadly these prime examples of alien technology really were.
-49-
Helsa led the army of drones. She walked up to me and nodded. “McGill… you’ve done the impossible.”
“How’s that?”
“You’ve destroyed my people. I can’t understand my mother’s behavior. She’s never made such a bold alliance before. I think it will lead to the destruction of all of us.”
“Aw now, don’t be so negative. You haven’t really seen Varus fight yet. We can trash a lot of aliens—uh, I mean bright-siders and the like.”
“I hope so. They aren’t incredibly smart—especially the creatures from the frozen wastes. But they are more numerous than beetles on dung, and they don’t fear death.”
“Good to know. Is this your whole army? I was kind of hoping to have several thousand of you stand with us.”
Helsa turned back toward her town. “Don’t worry. When the time comes, more will engage in this great struggle.”
“Okay…”
Winslade pursed his lips and eyed the terrain. “Graves wants our cohort to deploy on that high ground to the west. Do you think you and your lady-fair can setup her drone force among the rocks?”
“Sure thing.”
I was pretty happy to be given the job of liaison with Helsa. I was pretty sure that Galina didn’t know Winslade had assigned me such a specialized task. She probably wouldn’t have approved—but then, she’d decided to hide up on Dominus, above the fray. My daddy always said that if you don’t show up, you don’t get to run the church picnic.
Marshaling my unit, we marched together to an outcropping of rough stone. All around us more Varus units moved toward the same area.
Up close, the rocks were more impressive. Each towering stone was about as big as one of Stonehenge’s upright sarsens back home, and there were thousands of them. The drones crawled into this cover like a mass of spiders. Once they’d found good firing positions they crouched quietly and disappeared from view.
I posted my own troops in front of the drones. Several more units of human troops from my cohort surrounded us. The drones would be a nasty surprise, rising up and tearing into anything that came at us.
All around the field of battle, similar defensive positions were taken. The word was that the enemy was already on the move. They were massing on the bright side of the planet with the mummy-looking guys in their floating chariots. On the night-side flank, which we were facing, the cold-weather types were also gathering into a vast horde.
“How long will it take for them to form an army?” I asked Helsa.
She shrugged. “Ten hours. Maybe twenty.”
“That fast? Aren’t they coming from all over the planet?”
She laughed at me. “No, not really. You see, no one can survive for long more than a few hundred kilometers from the Shadow Line. If you go much further out into either the desert or the tundra, you’ll either fry or freeze. Even the natives can’t handle it. They actually inhabit only a thin ring of land, like we do. It’s just not as pleasant and temperate as our region is.”
I nodded, understanding. Back home on the Moon, the temperature might swing up by two hundred degrees Celsius and then back again in a single day-night cycle. Without special gear, nothing could survive those extremes.
Looking west toward the night-side, I pondered the situation. “So… they don’t live way out in the tundra? They just hug up against the best lands, the same as you do? Seems odd you guys don’t share the livable space more evenly.”
“They are allowed to exist,” Helsa said sharply. “That is enough for them. The Shadowlanders are always generous, always thoughtful of our less fortunate cousins. We only kill them in their masses if they dare step into our moderate slice of the world.”
“That’s mighty considerate of you.”
She didn’t seem to detect my sarcasm, so I gave her an idiot’s grin. That seemed to convince her, and she went back to marshaling her vicious army of robots.
When she’d left me, all three of my adjuncts approached—plus Bevan.
“These machines are amazing, McGill,” Bevan said. “We could learn so much from dismantling one of them.”
“You want me to steal one for you?”
His eyes flashed with greed. “If you think you could get away with it…”
“I’ll give it a shot.”
“Thanks, Centurion!”
Bevan walked away to spy on the combat drones. I let him go, as he was going to be
pretty much useless in a pitched battle.
Leeson and Harris watched Bevan with suspicion. Barton was only interested in her own troops, however.
“Sir, could I ask a question?” she asked me.
“You sure can, but you might not like the answer.”
Barton smirked. “I know that much. Why are we putting our light troops out in front of alien-made robots? Are we seriously going to use human beings as skirmishing troops for machines?”
“Yep,” I answered immediately.
She looked unhappy, so I decided to give her a little more to go on.
“Look, you’ve fought these things before. They can rip through most formations. I’m hoping they’ll make our jobs a lot easier. Even more importantly, I want them in the rear so the enemy doesn’t know they’re here. I want them to pop up and surprise the enemy when they come in close. At that point, it will be too late to run.”
Barton nodded, eyeing the surrounding landscape. “I’ll deploy my men as best I can, sir.”
When she left, and the other two stepped close. Leeson laughed. “She’s not so hot on you today, is she McGill? Where do you want my specialists to set up camp?”
I showed him a sheltered location on the northern side. He looked it over and had his weaponeers set up shells made of puff-crete. These would serve as pillboxes, with 88s inside each of them.
“They’ve got to be forward, and a little raised,” Leeson said. “That way they’ll have a good field of fire when the freaks show up.”
Harris was the last to approach me. He looked concerned. “I think I should deploy behind the drones, sir,” he said.
“How do you figure?”
“Well, after they roll forward, I’ll come up behind them and fill in the holes in their line.”
I looked dubious. After eyeing the field, I shook my head. “Nah. Station yourself behind Barton’s lights. Team up with Leeson’s auxiliaries.”
“With those killer drones behind us, sir? Are you sure you want things that way? If the robots go ape, they’ll cut down my entire platoon.”
“I’ll take that chance. Move out, Harris.”
Grumbling, he walked off and gathered his armored heavy troops.
When I was alone, I checked my gear. It looked to be in order. The single upgrade I had going for me was a big one: I’d kept hold of my Glass World armor. It was shiny, black, and almost impenetrable.
“If we’re out here on the west side, facing the ice-devils,” a voice said suddenly. “Who’s out on the other side facing those desert ragdolls?”
I knew the voice in an instant. It was Cooper, one of my two ghost specialists. Since I couldn’t see him, I knew he was wearing his stealth suit.
Turning sharply, I spotted a pair of oval impressions in the sand. I thumped the butt of my big rifle down in the midst of them. Unfortunately, I’d guessed wrong. Cooper had already moved away from that spot.
“Ha!” Cooper hooted at me. “I’m one step ahead of you today, Centurion.”
“That’s a good thing. A ghost I can easily locate is useless. To answer your question, the Blood Worlder legion under Fike is out on the eastern side. The bright-siders will attack his forces first. If he holds, and we do too, the town will be saved.”
“Sounds easy enough. I’ll go scout.”
“You do that. Report back every half hour until something happens.”
Cooper took off, and I began directing our defensive arrangements. As we were in rough terrain, we didn’t build bunkers. Instead, we sort of glued together the spaces between the big rocks, connecting them with low walls of puff-crete. The enemy wasn’t supposed to be heavily armed, so I had them build slits into the puff-crete to act as firing loopholes.
For a kilometer out, we had a reasonably open field of fire in every direction. It looked to me like it was going to be a good old-fashioned turkey-shoot.
Hours went by, and it felt like it should be getting darker or lighter—but it didn’t. There was no detectable change in the twilight skies. It was kind of spooky, if the truth were to be told.
Finally, after nine long hours, we got word of contact to the northeast.
“Officers,” Graves said in my ear. He was speaking on our command chat channel, which was only available to officers of the adjunct level and above. “An enemy force is approaching Fike’s Blood-Worlder legion on the other side of town. Hold your positions. We’re going to light them up with the star-falls we’ve been setting up in the center of our formation.”
Shortly after this warning, the purple sky brightened and filled with white streaks. We all hunkered down, even though we knew it was our side that was doing the firing.
The star-falls sent bolts of energy in glimmering arcs toward the east. These arcs moved at a surprisingly low speed. The artillery was energy-based, rather than using traditional explosive shells. It was able to penetrate various types of protective force-shielding that protected modern armies from missiles and aerial assaults.
Like meteors crashing in slow-motion, the first barrage rose high before dropping to the ground again. It smashed everything it landed upon. In the distance to the east, on the far side of the Shadowlander town, brilliant flashes flared into life. Each impact made you squint if you looked at it directly.
At ground zero, I knew the alien soil would be fused into glass. The radioactivity levels would spike in every crater. Anything within a hundred meters of each strike, shielded or not, would be vaporized.
The battle for Edge World had truly begun.
-50-
Cooper was the first to alert me to the approach of the enemy on my unit’s position.
“Say again, Ghost? What have you got?”
“Bugs, sir. Zillions of them. They’re—they aren’t what I expected. They look like hairy beetles the size of cows.”
Recalling my briefing and the ugly mug of the night-sider I’d seen conferencing with the Galactics, it sounded about right. “How fast are they moving, Ghost? Which direction?”
“Incoming toward your position, sir. I’d say they’re moving at about thirty clicks an hour. They’ll be there shortly.”
“Go to ground and let them pass by, Cooper. Good reporting, McGill out.”
I moved to contact Winslade, but Graves had already heard the news. He was on command chat again with the whole legion.
“The day-sider formation to the east took a hard shot. We killed thousands with our barrage—apparently, they weren’t expecting that. The bugs to the west, however, are spreading out more and moving faster. They’re trying to get in close before we can light them up—but they’re in for a surprise.”
Graves gave a dirty chuckle and cut the transmission.
Again, the skies split apart with the slow gleaming streaks of the star-falls. This time, however, the target troop formations were a lot closer to home. The glimmering trails lit up the air right over our heads. We all ducked low, it was impossible not to.
“That’s a low angle,” Leeson complained. He’d wormed his way over close to my command post. “Graves must have them zeroed.”
“He does,” I said. “He’s raining on their parade even now.”
Once again, the star-fall salvoes came down with devastating effect. Watching through my HUD, I saw the enemy line obliterated as the evening air was ripped apart. Brilliant gushes of released energy struck a hundred times in their midst. The bugs—I could see them now via various tricks of optics, buzzers and the like—were reeling. Some groups kept approaching, but others split apart and ran around chaotically. I was reminded of ants that knew they were burning alive. They ran with increased vigor, but soon fell and curled up. After that, they were cooked to ash.
“Nice shooting, Graves!” I whooped. “This might be easier than I thought it would be!”
The enemy attack was broken. I watched as the bug-like night-siders split up and ran in random directions. A few of our snipers popped shots at them with snap-rifle, but they were at such extreme range I doubted we g
ot any hits.
“We’re not even going to need those robotic freaks Helsa brought out here,” Harris told me.
“I hope you’re right. Keep a sharp eye out for infiltrators.”
The enemy fell back and disappeared into the low hills to our east. Intel reports suggested they hadn’t given up yet—not by a longshot. They were still out there in their thousands, gathering strength.
We took a few hours to rest and eat. All the while we chowed on dried rations, more reports of massing troops came rolling in. Apparently, the enemy wasn’t done yet.
“How many are out there?” Harris asked me. “And don’t say millions. I don’t want to hear that.”
“Uh… no one knows, not even the Shadowlanders.”
“Well, if they’ve always been so damned numerous, why the hell haven’t they overwhelmed the Shadowlands before today?”
Helsa was nearby, and she heard what he said. She came near and answered his question.
“They’ve never worked together before. Neither have they come in such numbers. Normally, we’ve been able to keep them down by beating small armies decisively. We’ve always known… well, they control much more of the world than we do. They’ve always had the numbers…”
“What kind of numbers?” Harris demanded angrily.
Helsa shrugged. “Ten times our count, I would guess.”
“You mean with night-siders and the dumbass sun-mummies combined?”
“No, I mean each of them.”
“Twenty to one, then?” Harris demanded. “That’s just sweet. That’s great. This is such bullshit! We haven’t even seen Armel yet. He’s letting them probe us. He’s out there, watching on some buzzer feed channel. He’s counting guns and heads—and he’s laughing about it all, too.”
“Then he got an eyeful today!” I boomed, determined not to let Harris turn a victory into something ominous—even if he was probably right. “We whipped their tails for them. It’s my guess they’ll try one more big attack—maybe a coordinated effort—then they’ll give up and run for home.”
