by B. V. Larson
Looking down, I saw the teleport harness I was wearing, still looped over my armored body. But there was something else, too. A black bulge in the armor that covered my guts.
It was another harness—the one Armel had been fooling with. He’d reprogrammed it to jump into my body even as I was making good on my escape.
I’ve suffered this kind of injury in the past. One time, I’d teleported into some hog back at Central, mixing up his organs with some of mine. On other occasions, I’d merged up my boots with other people’s boots. One time, I’d gotten my helmet stuck in a roof.
Anyway, this time it was bad. The harness had merged up with my body. It was all up inside me, and I could feel it. I was having trouble breathing, and walking was pretty much out of the question.
Deciding to let myself fall on the ground—after all, that’s what my dying body wanted to do right about now—I made wheezing noises. Focusing as best I could with the moments I had left, I unslung my rifle and aimed it into the circle of fighting lizards that surrounded me. They all had their backs in my direction. All I could see from the ground was big fat tails with assholes underneath.
Pulling the trigger on my rifle, I shot them down. It took a few seconds for them to realize the ambush was coming from their midst. When they finally did see me, lying on my back and hosing them down with power bolts, they fell on me, snarling and stabbing with knifes.
They shot me, stabbed me, chewed on my limbs—but of course, nothing penetrated my armor.
The combat drones marched closer, taking the opportunity to burn the last of the survivors down.
“Halt program!” said a girl’s voice.
Rapid footsteps approached. A face—a kind of pretty one—leaned over me. It was Helsa herself, and she looked concerned.
“McGill? You’re back?”
“Yep. Too bad I couldn’t save your mother.”
“It could not be helped… but you’re hurt, aren’t you? Are you shot?”
I coughed, and I felt my organs swelling with blocked blood vessels. “Worse than shot. I’m a goner. Tell my people they’ll need to revive me, okay?”
“I will do this,” she said, and I expected her to run off—but she didn’t.
“Will you open your visor?” she asked. “I can’t get it open.”
“A combat visor wouldn’t be much use if you could,” I said.
With a painful flick of my fingers, I got the visor to open up. Air stinking of saurians and blood filled my nostrils, but it seemed to smell good to me anyway.
“That’s better,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. She was on her butt now, with my head cradled in her lap. It was a nice way to go out, as I measure such things. “You fought like a warrior, McGill. I will be forever impressed.”
“Mighty kind words, Miss. Too bad we’re surrounded by these stinking lizards.”
She smiled. “My people have a saying: a dead enemy always smells good.”
I coughed and smiled back. “That’s a wonderful sentiment. Poetic, even.”
Helsa smiled again, then she surprised me. She bent close, pressing her face to mine.
She kissed me, and it was a long, deep and soulful affair.
But by the time she took her hands from my sweaty cheeks and straightened up, I was a dead man.
-57-
When I woke up, I’d just been birthed by a revival machine. I was on a lifter, I could tell that much. This was no surprise as our lifters were all grounded, and the legion brass had seen fit to leave our revival machines parked aboard them.
The next thing I noticed were the lights flickering in my eyes. I hated that. Couldn’t these bio people just run a wand over a man or something and know if he was okay or not? What year was this, after all?
“What have we got?” asked a stressed-sounding female bio.
“He’s a solid eight.”
“Good enough, get him out of here.”
Hands grabbed me by the biceps and hauled me off the table. I growled in my throat, but I didn’t punch the guy. He was just following orders, and besides, I was getting the idea that something was wrong.
Staggering—almost slipping on my wet, bare feet—I groped blindly for the uniform lockers. Someone threw a coverall into my face. It didn’t hurt or nothing, but it did piss me off.
“What’s wrong with you people?” I demanded. “Can’t a man get the time of day after dying a hero?”
The bio girl laughed sardonically. “You’re a hero, are you? Where’d you die—ah, Centurion?”
“Right in the middle of that dome city!” I shouted. For emphasis, I threw a hand out hard, pointing into the distance. That hand—I will always and forever insist it was by accident—smashed into the orderly’s left ear. He crashed to the floor, cursing.
“Hey man, I’m real sorry about that,” I told him. “You want a hand up?”
“You’d probably land me in the grinder,” the orderly said. “You’re half-blind and as clumsy as a Blood-Worlder.”
“A smart man would stand well clear in that case.”
Straightening, I noticed the lights were flickering again. The whole place was shaking, in fact.
“Uh…” I said. “Is something going on?”
“We’re under bombardment,” the bio said. “I thought that was where you came from—plenty of dead are out on the perimeter.”
Concerned now, I dressed as quickly as my rubbery fingers would allow and staggered out of the place.
“McGill!” called a sharp voice behind me. It was Winslade. He marched after me on springy feet. “I’ve been looking for you—where’s my suit of armor? Don’t tell me you lost it!”
“Well sir,” I began, but he put a hand up in my face.
“Don’t bother. The details will only further ruin my day. Come on, we have to get a force together and march on the enemy positions.”
“Huh? Where are they?”
He pointed into the distance, off to the north. “You see those cliffs? On top of them is a high plateau. A table-land people once called it. In any case, Armel has moved troops up there with plasma mortars. The first thing they did was shell our remaining star-falls. Now that the enemy has the high ground and an advantage in artillery, they’re raining down destruction.”
Looking around, I saw two burning lifters. That couldn’t be good, I had to admit.
“Sir,” I said, “gather up all the men you can. I know a few of them are back in the dome city. I’ll go fetch them.”
He looked at me with slitted eyes. “This better not be an excuse to chase some alien tail, McGill. I’m on to you. Be back in fifteen minutes, or else.”
I trotted away, assuring him that fifteen minutes was ample time. After another dozen strides, I glanced back to see he had begun pestering one of our weaponeers.
Slowing down to a walk, I ambled into the middle of town. The place was a wreck. It had taken some mortar hits as well. Apparently, Armel wasn’t any happier with the Shadowlanders than he was with Legion Varus.
Reaching the center of town, I cursed when I found my suit of armor was missing. I tried to talk to a few of the combat drones, but they didn’t even look at me. They didn’t seem all that bright, even for robots.
“McGill?”
It was Helsa. I turned around and gave her a hearty smile. “That’s me!”
“How did you get back here so fast? After a hard death, most of my people take a day off to contemplate their place in this universe.”
“A legionnaire has no time for that kind of crap,” I told her. “We’re reborn with a rifle in our hands, and we’re sent right back to the front.”
“Your words are truly disturbing.”
“Uh… speaking of equipment, where did my suit of armor go?”
She looked surprised. “Your suit of armor? Is that why you came back to the site of your death?”
Smiling, I walked up to her and snaked a long arm around her waist. “Not just that. I was hoping for another kiss.”
“You’re a madman. This is no time for mating. The enemy is at our gates.”
“Listen,” I said, keeping hold of her, “if I go up there and wipe out those lizards who are dropping bombs on us, will you have dinner with me afterward?”
She made a puffing laugh and shook her head. “So forward! Our men simper and beg. It’s strange to be accosted in this manner. When I kissed you earlier, I thought I was being aggressive—but you have put me to shame!”
“That’s me. Shameless McGill. What do you say—about the date?”
“I… I say yes.”
“Good.” I kissed her a good one, and she really did seem surprised. Maybe it was true that the men in her culture were all wimps. It seemed like a terrible waste, as the girls were mostly cute, if a little rough around the edges.
When I let go of her, I asked for my armor again. She sighed and led me to a cabinet.
“Here,” she said, pulling out the big lumpy suit. “We’d kind of hoped to keep this and study it—but it would never fit any of our people. Our men don’t grow so big.”
“Thanks a bunch.”
I put on the armor and checked the pockets… sure enough, the Galactic Key was there.
Feeling a bit better about the cruel universe, I raced back to where I’d left Winslade. Unfortunately, he’d already set out toward the defensive position we’d held since yesterday. I ran after him, cursing and panting.
When I got to the cluster of column-like rocks, I found the rest of my unit and my entire cohort were deployed there. Winslade was in a terrible mood, and the rest of them weren’t much happier.
“All right, 3rd cohort,” Winslade said, speaking to every commander under him. “We’ve drawn the lucky short straw today. Three cohorts will be performing a sudden assault effort on that table-like rock formation to the north. 3rd cohort is one of the three formations chosen for this mission.”
Squinting, I gazed off toward the distant cliffs. Everyone around me did the same. Climbing those walls looked damned near impossible. The cliffs were sheer, but there was a winding path that ran around to the rear of it.
“Who’s the crazy?” Carlos asked. “Is it Winslade himself, or is Graves plotting our destruction again?”
“Both of them, probably,” Harris commented.
Harris was in a grim mood. So was Leeson, and even Barton looked sour. That was unusual for her, but I guess this planet was beginning to wear her down.
“We can’t tolerate this endless bombardment,” Winslade continued. “But we can’t simply abandon the defensive positions we’ve set up around the Shadowlander town, either. If they draw us off into an all-out attack, we’ll destroy the force up on those cliffs, but we’ll leave the town open to another assault. Possibly, that’s their real plan—but it doesn’t matter. We have our orders. We will do, and we will die, until it is done.”
“What a tool,” Carlos muttered.
I thought about cuffing him, but I passed. After all, he was kind of right.
“Two cohorts,” Winslade continued, “will make a pincher movement around the west and the east side of the cliffs to the rear of the rock formation.”
As he spoke, my helmet’s auto-mapping battle computer drew the plans out on the inside of my faceplate. It was distracting, but I tried to pay attention, and I restrained my natural urge to swipe it all away.
“A final cohort to engage will join the assault once the other two are at the top, behind the enemy. At that point Graves has authorized the use of a single lifter. They’ll fly up there and attack the enemy from the opposite side.”
“That’s got to be us,” Carlos whispered. “Please let that be us!”
“Our job has been assigned,” Winslade went on. “We shall march around the western side to flank the enemy. After reaching the heights, we’ll engage and the trap will be sprung. With any luck, we’ll wipe them out about six hours from now.”
“Six frigging hours?” Harris muttered. “Shit…”
“That’s a long walk,” I agreed.
We started off as soon as the briefing was finished. As it turned out, the target enemy was farther away than they looked. We walked across open, mossy lands lit by the purply skies for a long time before anything happened.
For the first two hours, we marched steadily toward the goal. The lizards on top of the mountain took no notice of our approach. They kept bombarding our main encampments, dropping sizzling balls of energy on top of the cohorts.
Each cohort and lifter was covered by a shimmering shield of force—but these defensive systems could be overwhelmed. Now and then, a warhead got through and killed a squad or two. Sometimes, equipment was destroyed. Twice, even the Shadowlander’s town was hit. That caused fires and no doubt numerous civilian deaths.
“These bastards don’t quit, do they?” I asked.
Winslade had dropped back to march with my unit. I didn’t know why he did that—we didn’t like him any more than the rest of the troops did—but maybe he felt more at home with 3rd Unit. That was just our good luck, I supposed.
“Pray that they stay fixated on breaking Graves’ static defenses,” he said. “They’re letting us get rather close. With any luck, we’ll be hugging those cliffs and at a bad angle for blasting in another half hour.”
We marched onward for maybe ten more dull minutes—but the situation didn’t last. The enemy bombardment of the legion’s entrenched positions suddenly stopped.
“They’ve ceased fire,” Harris said. He came up to me, grinning. “Maybe they’ve seen the light. Maybe they see us coming, and they know it’s time to pull out and forget about popping off at our shielded positions.”
I didn’t answer. Instead, my long neck was craning. I stared upward at the high cliffs and the dark sky behind them. It seemed to me that I could make out a few figures on the rim up there.
“Barton!” I roared. “Switch out your gear, turn your lights into snipers! See if you can pop a few lizards on the cliff up there.”
She was way ahead of me. She’d already anticipated this possibility, and she’d long ago ordered her people to switch to their longer barrels. Giving a single order to kneel and fire, all her troops began taking careful shots. We were still at extreme range, but hits were still possible.
Other units took notice of what we were doing, and they did the same. Soon, hundreds of rifles were cracking loudly in the twilight sky.
“They aren’t even shooting back!” Harris said elatedly. “This is gonna be a turkey-shoot. I can taste it.”
I glanced at him, but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t see any reason to crush the spirit of the only man in the unit who had a morale-boost going.
“Spread out, Barton!” I ordered.
She relayed the order, and her lights scrambled over rocks and bushes to new positions.
Winslade walked up to stand next to me. His skinny arms were crossed over his bony ribs, and he looked at me quizzically. “You’re stretching out your lines? The lizards aren’t even returning fire yet.”
“Uh-huh…”
It took about another minute, during which several of those distant figures on the top of the cliff fell. Sometimes, they even toppled over the edge and tumbled down, tails whipping around hopelessly, trying to regain their balance. During these rare occasions, the troops whooped and hollered like they’d won the pennant.
It didn’t last, however. Suddenly, the whole upper rim of the cliff seemed to erupt in green fire. The blaze of light started off bright and only grew brighter. The plasma mortar warheads arced only slightly. They grew bigger and bigger, swelling with alarming speed.
“Take cover!” I shouted.
A dozen throats took up the cry. Men scattered and scrambled everywhere, trying to find cover—any kind of cover.
Then, the barrage that those bastards up on the cliffs had fired directly at us be
gan to land. We were at point-blank range for mortars, so there hadn’t been much time to do anything.
The ground jumped under my feet. It heaved up and bucked, and I half-fell, half-dove into a crevice. Seeking cover, I wormed deeper still. Others all around me scrambled and crawled over one another. We were like rats trying to escape stomping boots.
-58-
When the big energy warheads landed, men disappeared—a dozen of them at a time. It was as if they’d been swallowed by the ground itself. There was nothing left other than a crater and a few grisly scraps.
The crack in the ground I’d dived into suffered a direct hit. All around me, troops were torn apart. A young woman I didn’t even recognize was one of them. She died in a melting puddle of sand that ran like lava for a moment, then transformed into crusty glass.
Scrambling back to my feet, I checked my vitals. I was hot, lightly irradiated and freaked out—but my armor had kept out the worst of the blast.
“Hot damn…” I said. “This stuff is gold.”
Someone moaned aloud next to me. I looked around until I found the source of the sound. It was Winslade.
“Those vicious reptiles,” he said. “They decimated my command!”
“Can you stand, sir? Can you walk?”
“Yes… I think so.”
“Then we have to run for it, Primus. They’ll be loading back up for another barrage.”
“Of course they will—help me get to my feet, McGill.”
I hauled him up by one skinny arm. I stood him on his boots and half-dragged him over the rocks. Soon, he cursed me and batted my hands off him. Using the same method, I grabbed every able man I could and got them up and running.
Those who were too injured I ignored and left behind. There wasn’t anything I could do for them, and honestly, letting them perish in the next strike was probably for the best.
Harris was one of those I left behind, and he cursed a blue-streak.
“You cold-hearted mother!” he called out behind me. “I’ve got one leg left, and I can still outshoot you!”
