The Eve of War

by Christopher Hopper

  It was the sleeping sentry from earlier. Magnus noted the sniper blaster in his paw and the binoculars around his neck. The beast seemed just as surprised as Magnus. His eyes widened in disbelief and then suddenly narrowed to those of a hunter. But before the warrior could even raise his blaster, Magnus fired a short burst of blaster bolts under the Jujari’s chin from his MAR30. The point-blank rounds severed the brainstem and produced a shower of gore that sprayed onto the tent fabric nearest them. But it also gave away Magnus’s position. If the revelers weren’t roused from their campout at that point, they didn’t deserve to be among the Jujari’s warrior class.

  Back on his feet, Magnus bounded out of the settlement’s last row of tents and through the gap in the wall. He skirted the well, dashed behind the metal in the orbital-strike crater, and neared the overturned skiff where he’d left Valerie and Piper. He prayed to whatever deity was left in the galaxy, hoping the women were still there—or at least still alive if they’d been captured. He would find them, and he would save Piper.

  Magnus slowed to half pace, flicked off his safety, and stalked around the obstruction with his MAR30 pointed on target. His halo-sights were ready to acquire whatever beast stood behind this obstacle and send them back to hell. As he rounded, he saw a pair of upraised hands. Human hands. Then another and another.

  “Don’t shoot!” whispered a familiar voice. “It’s just us.”

  Magnus lowered his weapon to see Dutch, Haney, Gilder, and Nolan hunkered behind the skiff along with Valerie and Piper.

  “Is that why you screamed?” Magnus asked Piper, running to join them.

  The little girl nodded sheepishly. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Lieutenant Magnus, sir. It was an accident. They startled me.”

  He wanted to tell her off, tell her she’d just alerted the Jujari, but he knew it was pointless. Anything short of a grasshopper would have made the poor kid scream in these conditions. He could dress down the other Marines instead, but their approach had probably been as careful as they could make it. The most important thing was that more of his people had survived the Bull Wraith, and now they needed to prepare for a fight.

  “Do you have weapons, and can you move?” he asked the newly assembled team.

  “Affirmative, LT,” Dutch said, holding up her MX13. “Thirsty, some heat exhaustion, but otherwise ready to kick some Jujari ass.”

  “Copy that,” Magnus said. “We’re looking at a bad stack-up, maybe six to one, and we’ve lost the element of surprise.” As if to reinforce his point, a few bloodcurdling howls went up from the village. The Jujari were mustering. “You’re each going to have a field of fire. Dutch, I want you here in the center with the Stones. Nothing gets to these civilians, copy?”

  “Copy.”

  “Gilder and Haney.” Magnus pointed to their far left. “I want you behind that boulder to cover any attempts to flank us. Nolan, I want you to the right, behind that half wall, same thing.” Each of them assented and prepared to break. “I’m on point behind that obstruction,” he added, indicating the metal heap in the shallow crater. “Nobody—and I mean nobody—shoot me, copy?”

  “We won’t let you down, sir,” Dutch said.

  “What about me, Lieutenant?” Valerie asked.

  Magnus eyed her. “Can you shoot, Mrs. Stone?”

  “I know my way around that MZ25 in your chest plate well enough.”

  She seemed confident, and Magnus didn’t have time to argue. If they were all going to die, each of them deserved to go out with some measure of dignity. He pulled his Z from its holster, flipped it around, and handed it to her. Valerie grabbed it and pulled her dress off her leg as she assumed a shooting stance. She checked the magazine and charged the weapon. Then she selected the single-shot mode with her thumb, pressed the Z out from her chest with a nearly perfect two-handed grip, and aimed at something in the distance.

  Satisfied, she returned the weapon to low-ready position, double-checked that the safety was still on, and looked at Magnus. “I’ll make these Jujari work for every meter they want to gain on us.”

  If Magnus had had the time, he would have left his jaw on the sand. Instead, he closed his mouth and charged his weapon. “Listen up, everyone. This is about to become a danger area. You wait for me to fire the first round. Then pick your targets. Squeeze, don’t jerk. Stay in your assigned fields of fire. And for the love of the galaxy, don’t shoot your point man. OTF.”

  “OTF,” the Marines replied.

  The cobbled-together fire team broke for their respective positions, and Magnus raced out to the front of the line. He didn’t like the odds, not one bit. But the fight’s not over till you’re dead, he reminded himself, and you have a lot of blaster bolts to burn before then.

  The Jujari snarls grew louder until Magnus was aware that the warriors had started filing out from the walls and into the open. He selected wide displacement on his MAR30, knowing he’d only get one chance to use it to the greatest effect, and brought the weapon to bear around the edge of his cover. He flicked off the safety. No less than eight Jujari warriors with blasters extended moved toward him, completely unaware of what was about to happen. He’d hoped for more, but eight was what the dealer dealt.

  Magnus squeezed the trigger and absorbed the recoil. A wide blast of blue light swept across the sand, lighting up the wall and tents beyond like a bolt of lightning. Jujari bodies flew back, their blasters and swords blown out of their hands. The report was deafening and succeeded in disorienting the rest of the enemy.

  All at once, the night air was on fire with blaster bolts, the first volley coming from over Magnus’s shoulders as Dutch and Valerie unloaded on three Jujari who were just outside the blast radius of Magnus’s first shot. Next came bursts from Nolan on the right, followed by Gilder and Haney on the far left.

  Magnus selected the MAR30’s high-frequency setting and used his holo-sights to zero in on two Jujari who’d taken cover behind the small well. He squeezed off two bursts and watched as the dogs fell backward, one spinning from a strike to the shoulder. Their hulking bodies were ill covered and exposed, making them easy targets.

  Nolan picked off one more Jujari who was ducking for cover. The blaster bolt from the warrant officer’s weapon caught the enemy in the soft tissue beneath his chin, snapping the beast’s head backward, feet thrown toward the sky. Nolan might have been a sailor, but the man could shoot.

  So far, by Magnus’s count, they’d taken down no more than sixteen enemy combatants in the first few seconds of the fight. As good as that was, he knew the enemy had walked into this fight blind and would regroup quickly. Magnus’s fire team’s positions were no longer secret, and the Jujari were natural hunters.

  The enemy returned fire as they found cover, some mutts dashing back into the safety of the village. Blaster rounds seared the air above and beside Magnus; he could see his other team members being pinned down behind cover as well. This was a textbook return assault. The next step was for the enemy to flank their positions under suppressive fire. Which was exactly why Magnus wanted to be forward of their line.

  He looked right and left to see which side would send scouts first. He spotted two enemies to the left. Gilder and Haney were pinned down and would be easy targets if they didn’t spot the enemy. Magnus sighted in the beasts and fired four bursts. The staccato groupings peppered the Jujari, striking legs and arms and catching the far one in the head. The bodies tumbled and sent up a plume of sand and blood. Magnus looked over his shoulder in time to see another warrior advancing along the right flank. He swung his weapon around, sighted in the Jujari headed toward Nolan, and squeezed. The burst formed a tight grouping on the combatant’s bicep and drilled sideways out the other shoulder, searing both the lungs and heart.

  Magnus pressed his back up against his cover and paused long enough to see the energy indicator on his MAR30 replenish, ready for another big draw. That was when he felt something bump against the other side of the metal heap. The enemy. He could hear Jujari c
ackling to one another. They were going to try to jump him.

  He selected Distortion on his weapon and heard the side mag plates spring outward. The helmet’s AI made this sort of shot so much easier; without it, Magnus was only using the holo-sights along with his best guess. Still, a good guess is better than the shot you never take. He stepped away from the metal heap, turned toward it, and squeezed the trigger.

  The distortion field the MAR30 produced was not visible to the naked eye. Instead, it reached through the inanimate metal and found the Jujari’s living matter on the other side. In less than a second, the wave was separating molecules, bursting blood vessels, severing nerves, and disrupting tissue. Magnus heard the Jujari howling as their bodies disintegrated in what was arguably the most painful death possible.

  When the round was spent, Magnus turned back to cover and toggled the weapon to High Frequency. He noticed that Dutch’s skiff had absorbed so much blaster fire that it was glowing orange from the heat. Likewise, Gilder and Haney’s boulder was red and getting chewed apart. Nolan’s cover wasn’t much better.

  Magnus realized that if the Jujari couldn’t outflank them, they were going to try to flush them into the open by concentrating fire on their protection. It was a brutal strategy and a costly one in terms of munitions but effective nonetheless. If Magnus’s team didn’t have cover, it didn’t matter how destructive his MAR30 was; there was no way he could protect them all.

  Magnus chanced two more glances downrange toward the tents, but the blaster fire was growing so steady that he risked being picked off. The angles of attack were also changing, which meant the enemy was taking cover in the town and spreading out. Magnus cursed and cursed again. There were too many, and they were outmaneuvering Magnus’s unit.

  Someone screamed. Magnus looked over and saw Gilder drop to the ground. Haney was on him instantly. Nothing like getting shot next to a medic, Magnus thought. Gilder was still in the fight, however, because he was swearing at Haney to get off him and tried to raise his MX13 around the boulder. That’s how we take it. OTF. Magnus peeked around the corner of his emplacement to pick off an enemy.

  Magnus noticed three warriors trying to advance toward Nolan again. The warrant officer was lying on his belly now, trying to stay as low as possible under the withering assault. Magnus suddenly wondered if maybe he should have taken the right flank instead; it had the weakest cover. Consciously putting Marines in harm’s way was the worst part of being a commanding officer. It was the part of the job no one ever told you about, recruiters never warned you about, and your family never asked you about. It was also something you tried to forget but couldn’t.

  Magnus removed his remaining frag, pressed the one-second timer with his thumb, and pitched the ordnance at the advancing Jujaris’ heads. As soon as the grenade left his hand, Magnus dropped to the ground. A beat later, the frag exploded, drilling down on the enemies with a barrage of superheated metal and razor-edged ceramics. The beasts were thrown to the ground from the blast as their bones shattered under the impact.

  Magnus realized he was out of grenades and sent another burst of blaster fire into some tents. Jujari returned fire, and sand sprayed over Magnus’s body. He wiggled back to cover and sat up. His amount of safe area was shrinking. He was getting pinned down. This was it. His makeshift fire team had put up a good fight, but the adrenaline was wearing off, and soon they’d all feel the brunt of the day’s dehydration. When that happened, there would be no way to stay up with the number of enemies that would rush their flanks.

  As he thought about how it might end, Magnus realized how stupid the whole operation had been. Maybe if they’d stayed in the Bull Wraith, they could have reasoned their way out of the situation like the senator had proposed. Maybe if they’d chosen the other settlement toward the mountains, they would have found inhabitants friendly to the Republic cause. And maybe if Magnus had stayed with Piper, she wouldn’t have screamed when the latecomers approached. Maybe, maybe, maybe, Magnus said to himself, mocking his ego. But this is what you chose, so time to pay the piper.

  Piper.

  Magnus’s eyes went wide. Maybe she could do that explosion-blast thing again. He looked her way but only saw Dutch taking blind shots over her shoulder. Even if he could reach her, what would he say? Hey, Piper, you know that thing you did that killed your dad? Yeah, can you do that again? No, it wasn’t something a person could just turn on and off. The girl’s freakish abilities were just that—freakish and, therefore, unreliable. And even if they had been reliable, he couldn’t ask her to do it on command. Congratulations on weaponizing a child, Magnus. He felt dirty even for thinking it.

  Maybe she would ultimately blast them all to hell at least to get herself free. But Magnus knew he wouldn’t live to see it. He’d gotten her as far as he could—it was up to her to do the rest.

  Magnus changed the MAR30’s rate subsetting from burst to full auto, took a deep breath, and looked skyward. Here goes nothing. Then he leaned around the corner and squeezed the trigger. He saw the first blaster bolts land on a Jujari’s head and then—

  The whole scene went nova. Magnus was thrown off his feet. He flipped end over end as an immense blast threatened to pop him from his armor. The concussion was so fierce and the heat so searing that Magnus thought he’d left this life for the next. He sailed backward and lost his grip on his weapon.

  When he finally slammed to the ground, sand and stones pelted his head like crowd-control shotgun rounds. The blast of whatever berated him was unrelenting. His MAR30 whipped around at the end of the sling, slapping his legs. He fought to keep his eyes shut, but the wind and the heat were sure to fold back his eyelids and stab his brain.

  Then all at once, it was over. The light, the heat, the wind, it was just… gone. Magnus coughed. His ears were ringing, pulse racing, and nose sniffing as he inhaled the smell of burnt ozone, burnt hair, and burnt flesh. His eyes were full of sand, and he imagined plunging his head into the sea just to flush the gravel from his face—and to soothe the pain of his melting skin.

  His body screamed at him as if someone had tried to cook him alive inside his armor. Even though the flames were out, the oven was still hot. He wanted to peel his suit away like an orange rind, but he lacked the energy. He was simply too spent. It seemed like the blast had flushed all the adrenaline from his veins. Plus, he worried that maybe his armor was the only thing holding him together—that if it was peeled off, it would take his skin with it.

  He coughed again and heard himself laughing. Faintly. It is me, isn’t it? Yes—he was laughing—laughing at the planet, at the Republic, at the galaxy. He’d just survived—he just lived through an orbital strike from an LO9D cannon at close range. Close range? It was damn near on top of my head! Any closer, and there wouldn’t have been anything left of him.

  Left of us, he corrected. Magnus suddenly remembered his team—he remembered Piper and Valerie. Splick, they’d been behind the skiff, no armor, pinned down by blaster fire.

  Magnus tried to raise his face off the sand, but the attempt brought more pain to his neck and back. He tried to blink, but that only made his nerve endings shriek. He couldn’t see and could barely hear, and any effort to move was met with the worst agony he’d ever felt.

  A tremor traveled through his body, and his stomach convulsed. Dammit. He hated throwing up. But this would be worse. Every nerve in his body screamed as he vomited on the sand next to his head. Only a small mouthful of bile came out, but the pain was so intense that it knocked him out.

  • • •

  Another tremor awakened Magnus, which led to another dry heave. He cursed his body for the involuntary reflex function. There’s nothing left to purge! he thought, but he knew reasoning with his soon-to-be corpse was a pointless exercise. He heaved and blacked out again from the pain.

  • • •

  When Magnus came to again, he felt more tremors. He prepared for yet another wave of nausea, another episode of convulsing and passing out. He supposed it
was his body’s way of coping with the trauma—of helping him pass into the afterlife to join the Recon warriors before him, to join his grandfather and maybe his brother.

  No, my brother’s in hell, Magnus reasoned. But isn’t that the same place you’re going, Magnus?

  He couldn’t bring himself to answer the question, but he knew the answer.

  The tremor was getting stronger, and Magnus braced himself. He urged his body to make this the last time around, as he simply couldn’t handle the pain. It was too terrible. He’d heard of people—mostly torture victims—begging for death. Well, he was there. He wanted death. He would even taunt it if he had the energy to.

  The tremor came as a low sound in the desert and traveled into his prostrate body. He still couldn’t hear and wondered what was left to make noise after that explosion anyway. His ears still rang but not as loudly. Time had passed, and he felt himself nearing death. He couldn’t see and couldn’t bring himself to move.

  The tremor stopped. Then he felt small thumps that were like… footsteps. Someone was walking toward him. Several someones, in fact. He wished he could turn his head, open his eyes, and at least give himself the dignity of defending himself against the death blow.

  “There he is! That’s him!” a small voice said from far away. It had to be an angel, maybe even one of those chubby cherubs in one of the old paintings. Maybe it would decide his fate, blessing him with heaven or damning him to hell.

  The footsteps fell closer, and someone touched him. Pain shot down his nerve endings.

  “Get him out,” another voice said, this one deeper—much deeper.

  “Please be careful with him,” the little voice said. He knew that voice—knew her.

  “Piper?” Magnus tried to say but was worried his lips hadn’t made the sound he’d wanted them to. He tried again, but the word hadn’t sounded any better to his muffled hearing.