by James Evans
“Dampened cloths,” said Atticus, tearing long strips from the sleeves of his shirt, “but don’t stop.” He wrapped the cloth around his head to cover his mouth and nose and kept moving, driving the others before him.
“We’re almost there,” said Atticus to Denmead, “keep your eyes...” He paused as shapes moved in the dust ahead. “Cover,” he yelled, pushing Denmead into a doorway and diving forward into the shadow of a low wall. The rest of the party scattered into the building as the shadows ahead paused, stopped, then spread out.
“Inside,” he yelled, but it looked like only Denmead was left on the street. He hustled her through the doorway as the enemy returned fire. The concrete prefab structure was tough but there were a lot of enemy troopers out there; sooner or later, they’d come looking.
Atticus hurried down the corridor, pausing on to fire a few rounds back toward the front door as he followed Denmead.
A noise caught his attention and he paused, aiming at the door. Then something peered cautiously around the door and Atticus fired a quick burst then dragged Denmead into a room. There was more gunfire and bullets ripped down the corridor.
“Not ideal,” said Atticus, looking around. The room was big, but the only door was the one they’d come through. “Up the stairs,” he whispered, backing away from the door. Denmead padded up the stairs and peered out at the top.
“All clear,” she whispered.
“Then run,” said Atticus as he reached the top of the stairs and threw a grenade into the room below so that it bounced off the wall and ricocheted back toward the corridor.
They ran, and the boom of the exploding grenade chased them away from the stairs and toward a door that opened onto a balcony.
Denmead just had time to see bodies in the street before gunfire erupted and drove her back inside.
“Not that way,” she said, “maybe down there?” They charged through another doorway into a long room lined with desks. At the far end, they burst out onto a small patio.
“Huh, ground level,” said Atticus in a surprised voice. They ran down a slope and across the street into a park where small, scrubby trees had been planted, a triumph of gardener’s hope over biologist's experience.
“Hold on,” said Denmead, leaning on her knees and breathing heavily, “this shoulder isn’t helping things.”
Atticus knelt, rifle aimed across the patio as Denmead recovered her breath. They waited a couple of minutes but there was no sign of the Deathless. Atticus couldn’t tell if that meant they were dead, distracted, lost or just laying a new ambush.
“We go slow from here,” said Atticus, “slow and quiet. It’s not far now.”
Thirty minutes later they had travelled only half a kilometre towards B Troop’s position. The area swarmed with Deathless scouts and light troops, their abandoned drop-pods littering the streets.
Atticus and Denmead pressed on, hoping to find a friendly face, but her injury slowed them both. They paused to rest in an abandoned hydroponics facility before venturing out again. The air here was clearer, now, and the visibility was better, but that just meant they could be seen from further away.
“B Troop should be the other side of these buildings,” said Atticus finally, looking down the long slope to a large warehouse and chemical plant. It was undamaged, as far as he could tell, probably because the Deathless wanted it for their own purposes.
“Drop-pods,” murmured Denmead, pointing across the slope. Atticus followed her gaze and saw a cluster of pods, four at least. He hefted his rifle and moved slowly forward.
“Stay close,” said Atticus as they made their way across the street. Ahead, the dust had been kicked up by something. Deathless troopers, he assumed.
They skulked through the first warehouse, chemical tanks and packaging materials on either side.
“Over there,” said Denmead, pointing at a door that swung in the breeze. Atticus nodded and followed his rifle toward the door.
There was a burst of gunfire, Deathless by the sound, then return fire from either Marines or Militia. A serious firefight, close by.
Atticus edged forward and peered around the doorway. The enemy troopers were no more than twenty metres away, six of them, all lying in a shallow ditch and shooting at something across the street.
He signalled Denmead to stay back then waited until the Deathless were firing before shooting the first in the back. He managed to shoot the next two before the rest finally realised what was going on.
Atticus grinned and shot the fourth Deathless trooper as it turned to look his way, confused to see one of their own clones. Then he hurled himself back as someone across the way, mistaking Atticus for a Deathless soldier, opened up on his position.
Rounds punched easily through the thin walls of the warehouse and stitched a jagged line across the tanks beyond.
Denmead was beside him, face down, hands over her head. After a moment, the shooting stopped. There was a brief pause then a final burst and everything went quiet.
“You’d better take a look,” said Atticus, “I don’t think they’re prepared for me.”
Denmead looked up from the floor, face pale, and nodded. She grabbed her rifle and edged cautiously to the door and peered out.
“This is Governor Denmead,” she called out, “I’m with Captain Atticus.”
There was a moment’s silence then a pair of Marines appeared, jogging forward across the open area.
“Corporal Hamilton, Ma’am,” said one of the Marines politely, then they hurried her across the street with Atticus following along behind. He paused at the Deathless corpses, considered taking one of their weapons then decided against it. His people were already mistaking him for the enemy; it wouldn’t be healthy to improve his disguise.
“What’s the situation, Lieutenant Hayes,” asked Atticus as soon as they were clear of the enemy.
“Drop pods across the city, Sir, a great deal of damage from the bombardment and now they seem to be mopping up, checking for stragglers,” her eyes flicked back and forth, sizing him up in his new body. It was taking everyone time to get used to it. Funny, if he’d been in one of the more exotic clones the British forces used, she’d have taken it in her stride, he thought.
“Have they taken prisoners?”
Hayes sniffed, clearly unhappy, and said in a firmly disapproving tone, “I don’t think they’re observing any niceties, Sir, doesn’t seem to be in their nature.”
“Right, let’s clear this plant and give them something other than civilians to worry about.”
The snipers were working in teams of four, focussing their attention on the longer avenues where the Deathless soldiers seemed to have problems staying out of sight.
“Two coming from the right, three hundred metres,” said the spotter, binoculars trained on the remains of an office building.
“Got ‘em,” said Pete, fingers fiddling with the sights of the captured rail gun, “just about there...” He pressed the firing stud, and the gun thrummed, dispatching it
s projectile at Mach 6. Before he’d even seen it hit, he was activating the loading cycle to prepare another round.
“Lower body, just above the hip,” said Phil, the spotter. “Its mate is moving, heading for the wall,” he paused, watching, “yup, gone to ground, marking the point.” Phil planted a virtual flag, and the indicator flashed up in Pete’s HUD, “See it?”
“Hold on, yup. Behind the wall, eh? Let’s give this a go.” The gun thrummed again, and a huge hole appeared in the wall.
“Looked like a blood spray,” said Phil, playing the video back in slow motion, “yup, definite blood, solid hit. No movement, so I’ll log that as a kill.”
“Time to move,” said Pete, “wanna try the next building over?”
“Sure,” said Phil, packing his binoculars and grabbing his rifle, “we’re good on ammo, good on time and the dust is subsiding.”
“Happy days.”
“Snipers report multiple contacts, Sir,” said Lieutenant Hayes, “and Marine X is requesting permission to engage.”
“X is with A Troop, Lieutenant, let Warden handle him.”
“He was supposed to be, Sir, but he turned up on one of our vehicles. It seems he mistook our transport for A Troop’s assigned position.”
“Really,” said Atticus, eyebrow raised to indicate his profound scepticism, “just make sure he gets back to Warden before he’s needed.”
“Sir,” said Hayes, turning away.
Marine X slammed a new magazine into his rifle and peered through the sights along the narrow alley. Nothing was moving at the moment but he was sure they were still following him.
“Perfect spot for a surprise,” he muttered, grinning to himself as he set a trap with a grenade and a length of thin, transparent line, “that ought to slow the buggers down.” He grabbed his rifle and retreated down the alley, scanning carefully for ‘surprises’ left by the other side.
As he reached the end, there was a shout behind him, and he ducked away just as a burst of fire rattled tore holes in the buildings across the street.
“Three, two, o…” His countdown was interrupted by an exploding grenade. He glanced cautiously back down the alley and wondered for a moment if it might be worth checking the bodies for supplies. Then a shape moved in the smoke, and he ducked back out of sight.
“Guess not,” he muttered, “better keep moving forward.”
He checked the street again - still empty - then crossed into an office building and climbed up to the first floor where he’d get a good view of the mouth of the alley and any Deathless troopers daft enough still to be following. He found himself a nice comfortable spot, well back from the front of the building but with a good view, and settled down to wait.
But not for a long, as it happened. No more than a minute after setting up shop, a Deathless trooper stepped out of the alleyway, rifle up, looking around. A second followed, then a third, fanning out into the street. Ten waited, just in case more followed, then he opened up using short, controlled bursts.
The first two went down quickly but the third made it to cover and returned fire, spraying the front of the office with bullets.
“Nice try,” said Ten, moving across the room to improve his angle. He switched the rifle to single shot and put a round into the wall where he thought the Deathless trooper was sheltering. Another round to the same spot and a hole opened up. The Deathless stumbled up, looking for better cover, and Ten shot it in the side then again in the neck as it tried to recover its balance. Once more, in the chest, and the thing went down for good.
Ten breathed out slowly and backed away towards the exit.
“Time to rejoin the crew,” he muttered, heading down the stairs. He loved working alone, especially in situations like this, but you could have too much of a good thing. Anyway, it was getting close to teatime, and he had the tea; there’d be hell to pay if he wasn’t back by the time the crew were ready to brew a hot wet.
12
“I don’t have any good news,” said Atticus, calling the meeting to order, “our situation is grim and getting worse.” He looked around the table at the tired, filthy faces of the other attendees. Grimes had warned that water might not be freely available and he had been right; washing of people and clothes had all but stopped.
“Are we not winning?” said Smith, frowning.
“We’re surviving, Mr Smith, but I wouldn’t like to claim more than that. My troops are fighting hard, as are the civilian militia, but our rate of attrition is too high, and, as expected, we’re giving ground instead of taking it. Sooner or later, we’ll suffer a collapse, and they’ll break through our lines.”
“Or they will work out where we are and bombard us from orbit,” said Denmead, voicing the fear that had stalked the colony since the evacuation of Ashton. They had all seen the video, seen the missiles falling and the city disintegrating. There was no defence against an attack like that and everyone knew it.
“The Deathless are out there, searching for us, and when they find us, it’ll come down either to a fight in the caves, which is not something any of us want, or an orbital bombardment. So we’re not going to wait for that to happen.”
Silence greeted this information, as if everyone were waiting for Atticus to finish sticking his head in the trap before they sprang.
“Instead we’ll be taking the fight to the Deathless,” he went on, ignoring the disbelieving looks and the somewhat defeatist cries of despair and raising his voice to speak over the dissenters. “That means finding their base of operations, developing a suitable plan and then hitting them as hard as possible.”
“To what end,” whined Smith, clearly unhappy with the idea, “do you hope to destroy them?”
“Yes,” said Atticus simply, “the locals, at least. But we also need materiel and supplies. The Deathless are well-equipped and comprehensively supplied. We’ve made some progress deciphering their glyphs, maybe enough to allow us to operate their equipment, so we want to test our theories and see if we can make use of their kit.”
It was an impressive achievement. Barlow had been ecstatic when they had first translated the word ‘stop’, found above a big red button. The councillors looked less impressed.
Governor Denmead took over, “Now, I'm sure some had already heard the rumours, and I’m able to confirm that some of them, at least, are true.”
There was a murmur of surprise at that announcement. They had all heard the rumours, of course, but the ingrained suspicion of ‘fake news’ and the lingering hangover from the impacts of media manipulation in earlier centuries had made everyone wary. Nothing was taken at face value, especially good news received against the odds.
“I'm pleased to say that we have had good results from the micro-drones that the children have been building with their domestic fabs. Just a few hours ago, their teams of pilots reported that they'd found the enemy base Captain Atticus has said we need to target, and it seems that they're correct. There is a regrettable downside of this news I'm afraid,” Denmead said, holding the tension for a few seconds.
Then she turned to address one person at the table, “Councilman Smith, your daughter, Priscilla, was the team leader on the shift that located the base and gathered the initial intelligence. I know she's only thirteen and it was against your strong objection that she was allowed to participate. I'm sorry to say, any future attempt you make to give her a curfew or get her to tidy your room may be met with a response that she saved the colony. I'm sure you have the sympathy of all those parents who've had teenagers, and we'll happily make a counsellor available to you after all this blows over,” Denmead shrugged apologetically. Those gathered laughed as Smith hung his head in his hands and the tension eased somewhat.
Presently though, the doubtful whispering started up again.
“I know, I know,” said Denmead, holding up her hands, “this is the first piece of good news we’ve had in a long time, and nobody really believes it. Well, let me tell you now that, as far as we can tell, we’ve fo
und the base the Deathless are using and, we think, a vulnerability we can exploit.”
“Is it a tiny exhaust port, Governor?” said some nameless wit at the far end of the room. Denmead ignored him.
“It’s a fair question,” said Grimes in his thick accent, “what can you tell us?”
Denmead sent the aerial view of the base to a large display screen, and Grime whistled quietly. A large, circular fortification surrounded the buildings. Slightly off centre, sat an enormous ship, its hull broken up by weapon turrets and, by each cargo bay presumably, even cranes for moving heavy gear.
“It’s big,” admitted Denmead, “far bigger than the other ships we’ve seen. It looks like they landed a command and fabrication vessel on the surface and they’ve been busy ever since building out from there. The ship is now surrounded by buildings and a defensive wall which we suspect is foamcrete, although there don’t seem to be all that many Deathless on the ground yet.”
“Worse, this level of production activity suggests a long-term strategic plan,” said Atticus, looking around the room, “colonisation was always the most likely explanation for their presence; now it looks like the only possible explanation. They're building for future needs, not for the troops they've already deployed,”
“So, what?” said Smith, “We go in, guns blazing, and hope to do enough damage to scare them off? Is that your plan?”
“No,” said Atticus, “our key advantage remains that they underestimate or at least fear us. Their attacks have tickled our defences, destroyed some landmarks and killed a lot of clones, but they haven’t seriously damaged us. They’ve been probing, testing maybe, to keep us busy and find out what we’re made of and learn how we would respond. They're overconfident.”
