Spaceside

by Michael Mammay

  “Focus on who you still have,” I said over the private channel.

  Tanaka snapped back to life and flipped to a ship-wide net. “The enemy had more defenses than we planned. We’re through it and continuing on to the landing zone. Currently no change to the plan.”

  Heads nodded. He’d said it confidently, which was more important than the content of the message. He needed to be confident, because if he didn’t sound like he believed, nobody else would. Truth was, we had no idea if we needed to change plans or not. The anti-ship battery could have been a one-off thing, or it could presage an overall increased defense posture. We wouldn’t learn that for a while. But he had to pretend he knew, because nothing would destroy a unit like thinking their commander didn’t know. After a short hiccup, he had handled it well. They didn’t all buy in—they weren’t stupid—but the soldiers knew the game too. They wanted to hear it from him, even if they’d see for themselves in a few minutes.

  One thing we did know. If we’d expected the Cappans to sit back and wait for us, we’d been wrong.

  The ship thumped down hard, bouncing me against my belts. The seat absorbed most of it, as designed, but it still shot pain through my lower back.

  “Treat it like a hot landing zone,” barked Tanaka.

  With that simple order, the chaos formed into military precision, as if all they’d needed was to flip the switch. The platoon leader immediately started broadcasting on the same channel. “First squad, exit left and establish a perimeter, second squad take the right. Third and fourth, hold back until we get an initial report on the situation.”

  Four voices said “roger” at the same time. The four squad leaders. My heart rate had picked up, drumming in my ears as the net went silent for a moment while the squad leaders broadcast orders to their subordinates on other channels. I expected fear, but that wasn’t it. It was excitement. My shrink would have a grand time with that, assuming I made it back. For a minute during the silence I let myself wish that Ship Three had been hit instead of Four. Larsson was riding on Ship Three. That’s a fucked-up thing to wish for, but self-preservation will do that. She had threatened to kill me, after all.

  All that disappeared from my mind as the doors whooshed open on both sides of the craft, and soldiers started to move.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The first squads got out quickly, without seeming to hurry. The anxiety had sloughed off the soldiers now that they had a purpose. In the air, we had no control; whatever happened, we were strapped in the back and along for the ride. Here, with our feet on the ground, we could at least shoot back. That made all the difference in the world to infantry.

  “Contact. Three personnel in the tree line, three hundred fifty meters.” A voice on the comm. One of the squad leaders from outside.

  “What are they doing?” Tanaka asked, frustration seeping into his voice. That information should have come in the initial report.

  “They’re . . . they don’t seem to be doing anything. Just observing. Should we engage?”

  I could almost hear Tanaka’s eyes roll as he said, “Are they targeting us, or is it possible that they’re just wondering what three ships are doing landing in a clearing?”

  “No visible signs of equipment,” said the squad leader, after a few seconds. I imagined him looking around at the other soldiers, polling for opinions. I wanted to roll my eyes too.

  I nodded my head toward the exit and Tanaka moved that way. We needed to get out there before somebody did something stupid. We had a ship shot down as we came in, but that didn’t mean that everybody down here was against us. The destruction of fourth platoon could have been a single actor with the right weapon system. But the soldiers wouldn’t see it that way. Their friends died, and they might want to lash out, regardless of if they had the right target. If they started shooting everything in sight, it could complicate the mission. Having to shoot our way through the entire population was untenable for a force our size, especially when success rested on convincing them to give us information. Tanaka had a backup plan in case they didn’t cooperate, but he’d still want to go for the easier way first.

  None of that changed the fact that somewhere they did have heavy weapons, which they shouldn’t have. We’d have to deal with that as it came.

  My boots sank into the ground as I stepped off the ramp. The temperature reading on my suit put it at a balmy thirty-one degrees Celsius, and humid, too, but that didn’t bother me since my super-high-tech suit had temperature regulation. Another point for the corporate life. A light breeze caused the knee-high grass that resembled green wheat to sway. Forest surrounded us on all sides with strange, tall trees in a brighter green that almost seemed to glow.

  I punched the magnification in my screen up to six times and scanned the tree line for our observers. Three Cappans. They looked at each other, not us, as if in conversation. I dropped magnification and glanced at Tanaka. He’d found them, too.

  “Ignore them,” he announced over the command net, ensuring all three platoon leaders heard him. “It’s not like we were sneaking in, anyway. Move out on our pre-planned courses. Third platoon, you’ve got fourth’s support position now in addition to your own. Recon the site and decide if you’re splitting in two or occupying one of the original spots en masse. Your call, based on the actual terrain.”

  I agreed with his order. Maps were great for planning, but nothing ever came out quite the same once you put boots on the ground.

  The first platoon leader addressed his platoon. “On me.” I had their channel active too, since we were traveling with that unit. Tanaka would be on there as well, keeping an ear on the unit closest to him while still running the company. He might try to listen in on all his platoons, which would keep him abreast instead of them having to send reports on the command net. I wouldn’t, but that was more a matter of leadership style than doctrine. I found that it took too much of my attention away from the things happening around me, and though the local platoon leader would lead that fight, I liked to remain aware. The distant leaders could break in and talk to me as they needed.

  The four-fifths gravity offset the heavy armor I wore, and the mechanical assist built into it helped as well. I almost wanted to see how far I could jump in the low gravity. I was sure that as soon as the leaders turned their backs, the soldiers would try it. We kept our helmets sealed due to the low oxygen content in the atmosphere. My heads-up display put it at fourteen point four percent, which would be the equivalent of being around three thousand meters elevation in standard atmosphere. Humans could live in it, but they’d be miserable, especially if they had to do anything physical. Our suits could provide a higher level of oxygen to us indefinitely in this environment, because they pulled in extra from the thin air around us, then regulated the content we breathed as needed. It was nice to know that a suit breach wouldn’t kill me, though.

  As we walked away from the other platoons and toward the woods I lagged a little, letting myself fall back from Tanaka. He was busy, likely getting two or three times the information I was into his display, so I figured he wouldn’t notice. Corporal Matua shadowed me, dropping back as well, his bulk identifying him without requiring me to check my heads-up display for his name. Our platoon formed an arrow, and Tanaka walked about a third of the way back. I dropped to the trailing third.

  While I walked, I took it as a chance to make myself seen. Soldiers’ names automatically popped up on my display, and it gave me the ability to drop onto their private frequency. I didn’t do it, but they’d see my name, too. That’s what I wanted. They’d see me humping alongside them, sharing the same hardships, not taking any privileges. That would earn me some points. Points that I might need to cash in at some time in the future if somebody decided to kill me. Soldiers are funny like that. An enemy or an outsider, and they could turn off emotion and do what they needed to do. One of their own? Not so much. I needed to be one of their own.

  These were mercenaries, not assassins.

&nbs
p; The tall trees formed heavy overhead canopies that choked out sunlight and kept the forest floor relatively clear of undergrowth. We headed generally upward, but slowly, over the first three kilometers. My display said we’d gained sixty-one meters of elevation since we left the drop area, but we did it over a series of small hills, traveling down, then back up.

  “Halt,” announced the platoon leader. The soldiers dropped to one knee as a single unit, and each one focused on their assigned sector, giving us three hundred sixty degrees of coverage. With the shift of an eye I could bring up each sector on my display, and if anybody detected a hostile, we’d all get a red warning symbol. For now the screen remained clear.

  “What have you got?” asked Tanaka.

  “First choke point, sir.” About five hundred meters to the front rocky cliffs rose out of the forest, perhaps sixty meters high. They stretched in both directions, with a narrow pass-through almost directly to our front.

  “Around or through?” asked Tanaka. I pulled my map forward in my display to see how far we’d have to travel to get around it. The platoon leader would have seen it in his map recon and already had his plan. I had a definite thought about which way to go, but I kept it to myself.

  “The plan is through, sir. It’s a long way to get around it. Cost us an hour,” answered the platoon leader.

  “Roger,” said Tanaka. “I want soldiers up top on both sides. No way do we pass through there without eyes above us.”

  Not the decision I’d have made.

  Something felt off to me about the gap, though I couldn’t put my finger on what. I couldn’t argue with a decision Tanaka and his platoon leader already made without making them seem weak, so I kept my counsel to myself. But I definitely focused more on my surroundings.

  “Roger, sir. I’m not picking up any heat signatures.”

  “I don’t care,” said Tanaka. “If you were setting up an ambush, what’s the first thing you’d do? You’d make sure there were no visible heat signatures, right?”

  “Yes, sir. Got it, sir.”

  “Get them moving,” said Tanaka. “I don’t want to lose time.” The platoon leader dropped to another frequency and twenty seconds later six soldiers detached from the group and headed off at a mechanically-assisted run toward the cliffs, two groups of three separating as they moved.

  “Move out,” said the platoon leader. “Half speed. Let’s give the scouts time to get up top.” A few seconds later, two other soldiers launched fist-sized drones, which hovered for a moment before speeding off through the air toward the cliffs.

  I took the opportunity to rejoin Tanaka. “Drones and men on top of the cliffs. You think this is an ambush?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

  “I agree. Something is off,” I said. “Anything from the other platoons?”

  “Nothing. That bothers me too. It’s too quiet. We didn’t expect anything, but after that fire we took on the way down, I don’t know.”

  “Well, if they’re going to hit us, they couldn’t pick a better spot,” I said. “We landed a good distance out. Their signature looked consolidated from the overhead. But then we saw those three Cappans when we landed, so some of them clearly made it out this way.”

  He thought about it for a moment. “You hit it, sir. That’s what’s bothering me. They didn’t have time to get out here after they saw us coming. They didn’t have a visible vehicle. That means they were probably already out here. If Cappans live out this way, we’d see more. But we haven’t. They were here for a reason, even if that reason had nothing to do with us.”

  “I don’t believe in random chance,” I said.

  “Me either. So what are they doing out here?”

  I bit at my lip inside my helmet. “Let’s think about the worst case. What would that be?”

  “Worst case is . . . they knew we were coming.”

  “But how?” I asked. I knew the answer, since the Cappans had told me, but it wouldn’t do to tell Tanaka that. Best to lead him to it himself.

  “I don’t know. It seems really unlikely. They could have a spy back on Talca who told them we left. But predicting when we’d get here, given the vagaries of space travel, and knowing where we’d land . . . no chance. Right?”

  “It’s always best to assume the enemy has more capability than they really do, right?”

  “It’s improbable, though. Isn’t it?” He looked at me, though I couldn’t see his face through the faceplate. “I mean . . . at a minimum, it’s a stretch.”

  “Hard to say,” I admitted. It was a stretch, by any rational analysis. But the Cappans knew we were coming. They’d told me that much. They probably couldn’t have known exactly when we’d arrive or what we’d have with us.

  We reached the entrance to the pass after a few minutes, slowing further as the scouts struggled to find a way up the cliffs. Even with the assist from their suits it presented a tough climb. We paused to let them clear the position, and the platoon leader reported. “Everything’s clean, sir. Drones say there’s nothing waiting beyond the cliffs, and scouts say there’s nothing up top.”

  “Roger,” said Tanaka. “Move out.”

  The wedge naturally narrowed into a tighter formation of smaller arrows, four soldiers in each, spread as far as they could in the narrow confines of the terrain. Tanaka and I moved behind the third group of four.

  An explosion compressed my chest through my armor, knocking me back a step, followed by a second one less than a second later. I struggled to keep my feet through the concussion.

  “Potato mines!” someone yelled over the comm.

  Shit. Potato mines were a distinctly Cappan weapon, their low metal content making them almost impossible to detect. We’d found my answer about how the Cappans would respond. They mined the natural avenue of approach.

  Tanaka’s voice came over the command frequency, broadcasting to the distant platoons. “All units, watch for potato mines. First platoon has contact.” His calm impressed me. The natural instinct is to react to the immediate situation, but he kept his overall focus and remembered to inform the entire command.

  “Second platoon has contact,” came a reply from one of the distant units.

  Shit. That sealed it. It made sense that the Cappans defended their position, but it put me in a bad spot, because I’d hoped to link up with them. A mine didn’t care who it killed. I wanted to pull up a map and look at the overall situation, assess my options, but I didn’t have the time, standing in a minefield. Right now we had a fight, and while it wasn’t mine, the fight didn’t discriminate. We’d halted, which was standard procedure in a minefield, but that left us stationary and made us easy targets. We had drones, and we had scouts on the cliffs, so the enemy didn’t have us covered with direct fire, which took some pressure off. But if they didn’t have guns trained on us, that probably meant they had artillery or rockets.

  Tanaka and I looked at each other at exactly the same time. We’d both come to the same conclusion. We could either brave the minefield or run away, but we couldn’t stay static. “Forward or back?” I asked, on a private channel.

  “Forward,” he said, without hesitation. “First platoon, move out. Double time. Run!”

  I took off running, my first mechanically-assisted step launching me forward. Corporal Matua matched me stride for stride. I wanted to tell him to get clear, as we’d each get caught by a mine the other hit, but I didn’t have time. I’d gone maybe six steps when the first rocket whistled in from above. Sometimes it sucks to be right. Dirt churned and bodies flew through the air around me, shrapnel dancing across my vision like a swarm of hot, deadly fireflies. My helmet automatically muted the noise to protect my hearing, which somewhat isolated me, giving the impression of sound coming through a thick wall.

  I took long, mechanically-enhanced strides that covered ten meters each, hoping I didn’t land on a mine. It was all I could do. The enemy hadn’t needed anybody on top of the cliffs. They had
a tiny camera somewhere and rockets pre-sighted on the most likely avenue of approach. The next blast threw me sideways, and I thumped hard to the ground, tumbling before I came to a grinding halt. I jumped back to my feet without stopping to assess whether I was hurt or not. Staying put meant death.

  I lost track of the explosions. Seven. Maybe eight. I could replay it from my helmet’s recording later and figure it out, assuming I made it. Something big slammed into me, lifting me off my feet and slamming me to the ground. A split second later my world erupted in an exploding mass of rock and dirt. I tried to move, but something on top of me held me down.

  After a few seconds I calmed down, found some leverage, and I pushed and rolled at the same time. The bulk shifted, and I scooted free. I scrambled to my knees, trying to get to my feet. Anything to get away. It took a moment to register that the thing that had pinned me was an armored body, and another second for my heads-up display to re-synch and tell me it was Matua. I let out a breath in relief as he moved, trying to sit up.

  He’d taken a big piece of shrapnel just above the elbow, and it had shredded his armor for around twenty centimeters down toward his wrist, leaving a mush of blood and polymer and bone. I took a knee beside him and put my hand on the shoulder on his good side. He turned his head toward me, and I opened a private channel to him.

  “You’re going to be okay. We’ll get an evacuation bird.” The words stuck in my throat a little. Even though he was my captor, I cared what happened to him. “Right now, we’ve got to get the fuck out of the kill zone. Can you walk?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.” He had the dazed sound of someone who’d been hit hard. I was pretty sure he had put himself between me and that last explosion.