by James Evans
He switched over rapidly, audio and visual on his HUD switching to the feed from Ten’s perspective. Opera music was playing from the truck in front of him as it sped toward the enemy base. It was blaring from announcement speakers at full and deafening volume.
The music launched straight into lyrics, “O Fortuna, velut luna, statu variabilis, semper crescis…” it was rousing, but Warden didn’t recognise the tune.
“Hadn’t pegged him as an opera fan,” muttered Warden, unsure he would ever get used to the man’s foibles.
“What the hell are you doing, Marine X?” he asked, somewhat redundantly he realised, given that he could see exactly what Ten saw. Straps to his left and right were attached to the sides of the truck, holding him on top of the huge pile of rock and ore.
“Sorry, Sir? Could you repeat that? It’s a bit noisy here!” Ten replied as he busied himself with a reel of cable.
Warden resisted the temptation to shout and set the HUD to transmit text at the same time. “What is that music?”
“Bloody hell, Sir. Surprised you don’t recognise it, it’s a classic! It’s Carl Orff, O Fortuna from Carmina Burana.”
“Very informative, Ten, I don’t really care what it is, I’m more concerned about why you’re playing it?”
“Ahh right. You did say you wanted the enemy focused on me, Sir. Pretty sure they won’t be paying attention to anyone else right now and maybe these buggers could use a dose of culture. Is there anything else, Sir? I’m a little busy,” Ten asked politely.
“What is that cable for?” Warden asked, dreading the answer.
“That’s how I’m getting off this thing.”
“Aren’t you jumping off it?”
“Jumping off it, Sir? Are you alright? You did take a nasty bang on the head earlier.”
“I’m fine, thanks, Ten,” said Warden, manfully keeping his annoyance in check, “but I thought you were jumping off the truck as it approached and advancing on foot?”
“Bugger that for a game of soldiers, Sir. If I jumped off far enough away that it was safe, it’d be a bloody long walk. And I can’t jump off now, it’s doing over a hundred and forty kph. If I jumped off at this speed, I’d be blown into last week. Or is that next week? Either way, I’d be dead. Nah, when you’ve got a plan like yours to implement you’ve got to work with what you have to available. For instance, I found this winch drum in Ashton, and then I looked for some more kit, and I had what I needed to add my own garnish to your cunning plan, Sir. Can I explain later, Sir? Only if I don’t get a shift on, I’m going to be in a spot of bother.”
“Ok, get on with it, whatever it is.” Warden shook his head, horribly aware that things had slipped beyond his control without a single shot having been fired.
The track Ten was playing was short but it was on a loop and very loud. Judging by the flashes of gunfire from the base, the Deathless did not appreciate Ten’s efforts. He switched back to the camera feed from the front of the vehicle and could see the great, spiny wall of the base drawing closer, spotlights picking out the truck.
And now there were more bursts of automatic fire to light up the night and reveal the location of the enemy troops as they targeted the truck. Information streamed across Warden’s vision as Ten’s HUD collated the flashes and marked enemy locations for the whole Troop to see. The Deathless must be rather optimistic if they hoped to cause any damage at this range but he supposed even an inexpert marksman could hit the truck when it was driving straight at them.
Around here, on the other side of the huge base, Warden’s view was much the same as Ten’s except without the huge gatehouse or the gunfire.
Everything seemed to be working fine but he had no idea how Ten planned to get off the vehicle. Whatever it was, it would have to happen soon.
Goodwin hummed as she watched the feed then she thumbed a control. Gunfire erupted from the front of the truck, showering the Deathless base. They had rigged looted weapons to the truck, set to fire on full automatic when Goodwin sent the command. There was no hope of aiming them, which meant that bullets would be flying all over the place. Sure enough, the enemy fire stopped as they sought cover, despite the fact that it couldn’t possibly hit them.
Warden sympathised. It wasn’t easy to return fire while someone was shooting at you, even if part of your brain accepted that it was vanishingly unlikely you’d be hit. The baser, animal parts of the brain held the strong opinion that you should get your head down until it all went away.
“Lieutenant, we’re in position,” Milton said, “are you joining us?”
Shit, he had been distracted by Ten’s antics and honestly, by the childish impulse to watch his own plan come to fruition. He flipped up his HUD and stuck his head up to look over the boulder toward the wall. Milton and the majority of A Troop were at the base, ready to start the their infiltration.
He swore again and flipped his HUD back into place.
“Yes, get cracking, I’m on my way. The distraction is working perfectly.”
He glanced at Goodwin and Bailey, both intent on their tasks. Parker noticed him and turned to give him a thumbs up, before returning to his binoculars to scan the wall for targets to flag for Bailey. Nothing was happening, so it seemed the Deathless were all heading for the gate, which was unlikely to be a good idea.
Warden broke cover and ran for the base of the wall.
16
Ten checked the winch one last time. A couple of rounds pinged off the truck, and he spared a glance toward the base. The range was still extreme for small arms, and there was no sign of anything heavier, yet. He shook his head sadly. Honestly, if there weren’t so many of these Deathless, they wouldn’t be much sport at all. He returned to his checks, grunted in satisfaction and backed away from the winch, releasing the strapping that had held him on the cab and paying out the cable from his harness until he was right at the back of the truck.
Ten took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. Then he checked his liberated parachute was in place, pulled the ripcord and waited as it unfurled behind him. He gave it one last look to check it wasn’t tangled then pressed the button on the winch remote.
He was braced for the snap but at this speed, even in this atmosphere, the chute yanked him back and up with a vicious lurch, the straps of the harness punching into his chest. It was a sphincter-tightening moment and he took a second to catch his breath.
He was rising fast, over a hundred metres in just a few seconds. Craning his neck, he checked the parachute again; it was still free and clear and fully inflated. Good stuff, time to get cracking.
The truck was five hundred metres from the base, now. The Deathless had got over their surprise at being fired upon and were shooting back, their bullets sounding like hail as they rattled from the thick alloy of the truck. Had they seen him up here? Ten wondered, before concluding that they probably hadn’t. Goodwin had put the headlights on full beam a couple of minutes ago, and this thing was designed to be operated twenty-four hours a day; it was bright and obvious, with more lights than a shopping centre at holiday time.
With a bit of luck, the Deathless would focus on the unstoppable behemoth heading toward their gate. Ten wondered if they just hadn’t realised how big the truck was. Maybe they were confused about the difference between very small and far away?
The remote strapped to his wrist showed him at three hundred metres, which was more than enough. He tapped the control and slowed the winch until it stopped paying out cable. Three hundred metres from the base, time to get the party started.
“Goodwin, can you start the light show and effects, please?”
“Do you mean you want me to fire the grenade launchers?” Goodwin asked, somewhat testily.
“Yes, the fire the grenade launchers.”
“Why didn’t you just say that then? Firing now,” she replied.
Bloody wet behind the ears kids, he thought, no sense of style. Didn’t they realise how much fun this was?
The pair of gre
nade launchers attached to the lip of the dump truck’s hopper, let forth a volley of grenades. Three each then a two-second pause and another three. Ten turned up the filtering on his HUD in anticipation; the auto-filter was good, but there was always a delay, and it was better to be prepared.
The flashbangs detonated across the front of the gateway, bright as the midday sun and as loud as any decent rock concert. Sure enough, the enemy firing paused again. The next set of grenades didn’t land quite so nicely but they burst forth into plumes of multi-coloured smoke, lending an eerie feel to the battleground. More importantly, their smoke concealed everything from the enemy, himself being the most important part of that.
“Thank you, Goodwin, and now the percussion section if you don’t mind.”
“Firing.”
The grenade launchers let loose with their distinctive popping noise again, this time emptying the remaining contents of their drums. Dozens of grenades flew toward the wall, striking all across it, some going through the gate, some over the wall, some falling before it. These weren’t flashbangs or smoke-makers; they were high explosive fragmentation grenades. Even if the Deathless were all behind cover, they weren’t going to like a shower of grenades.
“Now you’re getting the hang of it, Goodwin. Good job. I’m getting off now; I’ll let you know when I’m clear,” Ten said. He reached out along the cable, toward the linkage, pulled a plastic safety wedge free of the mechanism and then yanked the release. The cable dropped away, and suddenly he was pulling up, gliding higher on the updraft.
“Roger that, impact in five, four, three, two,” Goodwin replied.
The truck struck the gateway just before she hit one. The noise would have been deafening, even at this height, if it hadn’t been for his HUD. The truck flipped forward as the edges of the cabin impacted the walls on either side of the base doors, the whole backend coming up in an achingly slow arc. For a moment, Ten thought it might flip over the wall. It didn’t quite manage that, but the contents of the hopper were thrown forward like shrapnel from a bomb as the truck hit the huge spiky protrusions that festooned the top of the wall.
The arch over the gateway shattered, foamcrete falling in chunks the size of shipping containers. Moments ago, there had been a lot of fire coming from above the gap in the wall. Maybe they’d all got clear before it struck but they were having a bad day all the same.
For a few long seconds, it looked like the truck would come to rest in that position, upright on its cabin, wheels spinning in the air. Then it lost the fight with gravity and tipped far enough forward to come crashing down on the rubble and bodies, landing upside down on the remains of the gate.
Ten cursed; that might spoil the rest of the plan. Never mind, it was a good start. He flicked his HUD to standard night vision mode and the display changed to show a composite image of low light vision and infrared signatures, blended seamlessly to create a clear, detailed image. It wasn’t quite daylight, but it was close.
Below him, there were clouds of smoke and dust billowing into the compound behind the wrecked gatehouse. There were dozens of buildings, large and small, of many different forms. One of the smaller ones was little more than a simple hut, near the wall but off to one side. That was all he’d have seen with simple night vision, but his HUD picked out infra-red signatures, highlighting any that were likely to be targets. Larger lifeforms, hot engines, or the flame from a rocket launch would be shown, but the HUD would filter out extraneous heat mapping information.
The hut showed hot; several Deathless were inside. Ten brought his weapon to bear and neatly plopped a high explosive grenade through the thin roof. He searched for more targets; it was time to get loud.
Ten triggered a preprogrammed button in his HUD and music began to blare from the portable speakers strapped to his shoulders. He had been ordered to provide a distraction and he would do exactly that.
He began to sing along at the top of his voice. Ten was pretty sure he wasn’t in tune but hopefully the Deathless wouldn’t be too harsh in their reviews.
“A British tar is a soaring soul,
As free as a mountain bird,
His energetic fist should be ready to resist,
A dictatorial word!”
As he sang in a decidedly over-acted manner, he accompanied the lyrics with well-placed rounds from the grenade launcher. Any Deathless foolish enough to cluster together or catch his attention received a small gift, along with any building that looked like it might house base control systems. There wasn’t time to be dainty though; any unidentifiable buildings that came into view as he panned around received grenades as well. They must all contain something valuable, after all, even if they weren’t storing anything as vital as personnel, armour or an operations centre.
The chute was carrying him over the base now, heading north-east so that, at some point, he would cross the far wall and be over open ground again. Ten refocussed, ignoring most of the base and looking for bigger, more important targets. One floated past, a hundred metres below or more, and he gave it three rounds. Sure enough, it detonated with a satisfying fireball far larger than his grenades would have caused. Score one for the good guys.
A long pull on the left toggle corrected his course and took him back toward the middle of the base. He craned his neck around to check the truck. Lights were lancing through the smoke and dust around it, and he could see infrared signatures at their source. There were a maybe two dozen troops nearby but no more approaching it.
“Goodwin, standby for Phase 2.”
“Roger that.”
Ten turned to his front again, scanning left and right, then fired a volley of grenades toward a building that looked like a barracks. He ejected the drum, slammed another firmly into the receiver, took a deep breath and held the trigger down as he panned from left to right, spraying grenades indiscriminately across the base and paying no attention to where they fell.
Ten grinned as he imagined the Deathless trying to work out what was going on. Nobody fired grenade launchers on fully automatic mode; it wasn’t even the slightest bit sensible. To the enemy, it would seem like dozens of troops had suddenly loosed a coordinated volley. It would feel like pure chaos down there, and they would have no idea which way to turn. They weren’t finding anyone to fight and confusion, ever present on a battlefield, would be rife amongst these ill-disciplined troops.
He ejected the spent drum and swapped in his last, then slung the launcher onto his back, pulling a magnetic strap tight to stop it bouncing around. He would save the last grenades for an emergency, just in case.
But now it was time to bring this thing down before he got too low and hit something tall, pointy and uncomfortable. In the dim and distant past, he had seen a Marine misjudge a group drop and land on an aerial that should have been removed before the manoeuvre. The comms tech had got a bollocking but the other guy didn’t need one; two weeks in the hospital and a nickname that still made Ten laugh had taken care of that.
Ten killed the music to float silently through the night. The huge ship at the centre of the base looked like a leviathan, set to burst forth from a sea of rock and sand and devour the planet. In a way, that’s exactly what it was but, right now, it was his landing zone. There was a large raised section, smooth and flat, just right for not shattering your ankles after tripping on an unseen rock. There weren’t any aerials either, and he sniggered at the memory. He had missed old Two-Arseholes since he’d retired. He’d have to send him an ecard, something like “I saw this aerial, and thought of you”. That ought to get the proper reaction.
He grabbed both toggles, tweaking his approach with light touches and wondering what to do if he fucked it up. Knife to the throat? Grenade? What was the least painful way to avoid capture?
Then he hit the deck, at a shallow angle, running along the surface of the ship as he slowed then unclipping the parachute. He should police his equipment, but he was hardly likely to need the thing again. He pulled a carbine from a strap on his h
ip. The Lieutenant had said he wouldn’t need everything he was carrying, but Ten had insisted. “A good scout is always prepared,” he had said, too much rolling of eyes and sighing.
Ten checked the suppressor on his carbine and grinned. With a bit of luck, he would have time to get himself squared away before any clever bugger worked out he was there.
He’d shown the Deathless what a noisy Commando was like; now he was going to show them what it meant to be discreet. It wasn’t going to be a learning experience, except in the briefest possible sense, but maybe they would be more fearful, more hesitant when they were redeployed. Fear was good; terror would be better but Ten could live with an enemy that feared the Marines.
“You aren’t going to need a suppressed pistol as well, Marine X,” Warden had said in his exasperated tone.
“Weapon jams, Sir. Got to have something quick to grab in an emergency,” he’d replied.
“Fine, fine, just remember to bring it all back,” had been the resigned response, “And remember, Ten, you're on your own.”
“Well, thank you, sir. That's a great comfort,” Ten had said as he had loaded magazines into his webbing.
He jogged forward to the side of the ship, looking for a way down. A building to his left, about thirty metres from the ship, caught his eye. There were a few Deathless in a well-lit room, with screens along one wall. They were wearing the office clones, Ruperts, like Captain Atticus.
“That’ll be the command centre,” muttered Ten, mildly satisfied that he had managed to land right in the middle of things. He crouched beside a protrusion on the hull and scanned the area. If he had spotted it from the air, he could have come down on the roof of the command room, but maybe that would have given the game away. Either way, he needed to find another way in.
The answer came to him a moment later. The roof of the building was at least ten metres above the ground but well below the top of the hull. There was a launcher turret nearby, and Ten jogged over, clambering onto it. The rangefinder in his HUD confirmed the distance to his target as he withdrew a slim, tubular package from a holster on his back. With a couple of firm twists and a few solid clicks, it took on the appearance of a short harpoon gun. He dialled in the range and charged it from an energy pack on his belt.
