After several minutes of back-breaking running, Chico finally said, “I think I see something up ahead. Looks like… like ferns or something.”
The tunnel expanded little by little as the path leveled out. Finally, the tunnel opened up into a dense jungle covered in ferns and palm fronds. A TACNET link was established, and with it came several incoming messages from command.
“Looks like Vanderbilt’s been worried about us after all,” Chico said.
“Nah.” Deeks shook his head. “He was worried about the scourge he’d take for sending four Marines on the dumbest mission of his short career.”
“Copy that,” Franklin said.
“Listen, we’re not going anywhere until that kid comes back.”
“Copy that, Corporal,” Deeks replied. “He saved our asses back there.”
“And we’re gonna make sure we save his by getting him off this pile of splick.”
As if summoned by their talk, the young man was yelling something from down the tunnel. Magnus boosted his audio sensors and leaned his head back into the cave. He looked and saw the boy swinging a flashlight wildly.
“What’s he saying, Corporal?”
“He’s saying ‘run.’”
“You think those ’kudas broke through?”
“Dunno, Deeks. But I’m guessing we’re in for another firefight. OTF, boys.”
“OTF!” they replied, racking charges in their MC90s.
Magnus watched as the kid closed the distance, still carrying the robot arms and a backpack full of parts. “He’s coming in hot. Stand back.”
The young man blew from the cave like a blaster bolt, tearing into the ferns without breaking his stride. He was placing some sort of device in his mouth… maybe a rebreather? Magnus and the others knelt to point their weapons down the tunnel, their high shoulder lights cranked to high intensity, piercing the darkness.
They waited for the ’kudas to round the far corner. And waited. And still waited. But nothing came.
“I told you—run, Marines!” came the kid’s voice from farther in the jungle.
Magnus turned to see him waving his rebreather in the air.
“Run! Get to the water!”
“Anybody else get the feeling this isn’t about no ’kudas?” Deeks asked.
Then an idea struck Magnus. If this kid was some sort of tech savant, why else would he hang back in his mountain fortress then make a run for the ocean?
The kid shouted something that snapped Magnus from his thoughts.
“Binary bomb!”
“What’d he just say?” Deeks asked.
“Ah, splick! It’s the ocean!” Magnus exclaimed. “He’s heading for cover! Let’s get out of here!” Without another word, Magnus was on his feet and chasing after the boy. His fire team followed. They charged through the ferns like a pack of Boresian taursars, high-kicking all the way down the hill. They gained so much momentum that Magnus feared his legs wouldn’t be able to keep up. But whether by adrenaline or sheer force of will, he managed to keep his feet beneath him.
Magnus opened an emergency channel to Lieutenant Vanderbilt over TACNET. “This is Corporal Adonis Magnus”—he double-checked the topo grid in his HUD—“on the island’s north side, with a credible ABSB threat.”
He could hardly breathe. He double-checked the IFF markers—identify friend or foe—to see just how many Marines might be in whatever blast radius the kid’s ordnance might envelop.
“Corporal Magnus, I need threat confirmation. Are you actually seeing…”
Magnus heard the disbelief in the LT’s voice. Not that he blamed him. But for all the mystics, there isn’t time to explain!
“An antimatter binary sini-trex bomb?” Also affectionately known as “a big splickin’ bomb” off the record. The weapon’s modulated antimatter was one half of the explosion, and the sini-trex was the other. When combined, the two created one hell of an explosion. And as simple as it seemed, the safest place to avoid the initial blast and the subsequent fallout was under water.
How this kid had gotten his hands on such a device, Magnus had no clue. But he also didn’t have a clue as to how he’d survived for what must’ve been a year or more, on his own, in a hole under a mountain.
“Yes, Lieutenant. Found a survivor, and we have reason to believe—” He couldn’t gulp air fast enough, even with his suit working overtime to hyperoxygenate his blood. His feet pounded ferns into the soft soil, his leg armor breaking small branches in two. “We have reason to believe he’s booby trapped the mountain.”
“Booby trapped?”
“Affirmative.”
“Ah, splick.”
Magnus hoped the LT was taking him seriously. Seriously enough to expedite his intel. Lives depended on it. There wasn’t time to argue. He prayed to the mystics that his superior would do the right thing.
What was taking so long?
Up ahead, Magnus could see the glimmer of moonlight on countless waves stretching to the horizon.
Finally, an all-comm channel opened, filled with Vanderbilt’s voice. “Attention, all units in the AO of Lima Kilo Niner. Exfil to the closest-point ocean entry. Credible ABSB threat confirmed. I repeat: Get off the island and submerge for cover. ABSB detonation imminent.”
Maybe the LT’s not that bad, after all, Magnus thought.
If the kid had planted an explosive, it was going to be big—at least if his display back at the waterfall was any harbinger. Magnus looked at the grid again and started to notice Marine icons moving toward the island’s perimeter. There you go! Come on! Keep going!
Magnus and his fire team had made it to the sand. The surf was another twenty-five meters ahead. The kid had already disappeared into the black water. They were going to make it.
For whatever reason, Magnus looked over his shoulder. Maybe to make a visual inspection of their retreat, or maybe out of habit to not leave anyone behind. He didn’t know. But in that moment, a light as bright as the sun flashed in his HUD. For a split second, there was no sound. Just pure white energy. But when that split second was up, a sound as loud as a starship colliding with a planet blew into Magnus and sent him flying.
A fissure ran across Magnus’s HUD as the concussion of the binary explosion sent him hurtling a hundred meters out to sea. It felt as if his head, arms, legs had been ripped from his body. He slammed against the water like a child’s toy skipping across concrete.
When the energy finally decided to let him go, Magnus felt his limp body melt into the waves, swaying gently into the cool embrace of the ocean. He blinked as water trickled through the crack in his visor. It tasted salty, like the sweat covering his face. But it was cool, cool enough that all Magnus wished for was to take a long bath in it.
Farther and farther he sank, wishing to shed his armor and just swim. He stared up at a strange light that shimmered over him, far above the water’s surface. It reminded him of the military parades back home on Capriana Prime. Of fireworks. Of weapons displays. Of fighter flyovers. He could smell the festival foods, the late-night campfires, and the scent of perfume and alcohol. He heard music and people laughing. It was as if he could simply step into that world. If he could only climb up to it… But it was just too far away to reach.
“Emergency flotation devices deployed,” said a voice in his head. No, not in his head. It was around his head. Someone was talking to him very close.
Magnus blinked. Something popped then jerked him upright. His legs swung down beneath him, and his head tipped forward. He was ascending. He was floating. Toward the surface of…
Magnus blinked again, trying to put the pieces back together. Trying to suppress the sharp pain in his head and the ringing in his ears. Suddenly, his head burst through the water’s surface, and his eyes filled with the sight of a small mushroom cloud climbing into the sky.
“Great mystics…” Magnus said softly. Everything came back to him. The firefight in the stream, their rescue at the waterfall, the kid and his cave—and him telling
them to run.
He torched the island. He actually torched the entire island. Son of a bitch…
Magnus’s HUD began its reboot sequence. As soon as it was active, more warning indicators than he could count started racing down the left side of his display. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Magnus said aloud. “You don’t like a binary bomb blast. I get it.” But thanks to the Repub engineers, and some hefty fund reallocations by old Marines who had decided to take up politics after they’d retired, Mark IV armor was made to withstand such blasts—at least to a certain degree proportional to distance from ground zero. Unlike a blaster bolt, whose force was concentrated, broadly dispersed energy was easier for the suit to handle. Well, at least that was what the manual claimed. Until a few minutes ago, Magnus had doubted that claim. But not anymore.
Amazingly, no bones felt broken. And other than a massive headache, he couldn’t sense anything else the matter with him. He would need a few days in a gene-therapy tank, no doubt. But that was a paid vacation as far as he was concerned. With any luck, he might even get a cute nurse. Who knows?
“Corporal Magnus,” a voice said over the comms. At least those are still working. “You copy?”
“That you, Deeks? Tag idents aren’t registering.”
“Ha, sure as hell is.”
“You in one piece?”
“I think so. My testicles seem a little farther up than usual. That normal?”
Magnus chuckled. “Listen, you got eyes on Chico or Franklin?”
“Chico looks like he’s doing laps on a rooftop pool, and I’m pretty sure Franklin’s taking a piss.”
“I’ve been holding it for hours, Deeks. And we’re Marines, aren’t we? After so much time in the void, we finally get to play in the water again. So sue me.”
“I’m not judging you, Franklin. Just telling the NCO how it is.”
Magnus laughed. He’d just survived a binary explosion and being blasted a hundred meters out to sea, and his fire team was busting each other’s balls.
This is the life, Magnus. This is where you belong.
He loved his job. Loved the service. And for the first time since joining, Magnus had been thinking about doing more with his career, like moving out of the enlisted ranks altogether. But not for the reasons of evading scenarios like this. In fact, it was just the opposite.
Colonel Caldwell, who was like an uncle to him, had told him to attend the academy from the beginning. But Magnus had refused. For one thing, he wanted to know what it was like to fight on the ground with a blaster in his hands. He just couldn’t see himself as an administrator who killed the enemy from a distance.
But for another thing, Magnus wanted to forge his own way through the service. His brother, Argus, had felt the same way. They had both picked similar paths, ones that put them on Caledonia in this gritty war instead of behind a holo-desk somewhere. If either of them went to the academy, like their grandfather had, they would just be dogged every day by their grandfather’s broad shadow. Magnus knew things would be handed to him. Any promotions he received wouldn’t be his promotions—they would be his grandfather’s.
But with two months of heavy combat under his belt, Magnus was beginning to see a potential bright side to becoming an officer. He’d endured several missions with terrible orders from officers who had never seen ’kuda offal dry on their armor. But he had. Perhaps he would lead differently because he knew what it meant to lead from the front. And while Magnus hadn’t seen his younger brother in several weeks, he wondered if Argus might have had similar thoughts about the COs and the need for better leadership. Or would he? His brother always had insisted on doing things his own way. But those memories were still so painful to think about. Time would heal it, though, wouldn’t it?
Caldwell had extended the invitation to attend officer training school once again, not three months ago. Magnus did have enough education under his belt to make the move if he wanted. And having the last name Magnus had its upsides too: he could do just about anything he wanted.
The more he thought about the colonel’s offer, and the more time he spent sloshing up mountain ravines in the middle of the night, the more he wondered if it wasn’t the right call to make. Maybe up there at the top, he could effect some change and keep dumbass officers from doing stupid splick to good men. Like these guys. Hell, I’d take these guys with me to the end of the galaxy and back.
There, floating in the ocean, armor cracked and his cells mutating with antimatter fallout, Magnus decided what kind of officer he wanted to be. A fighting one. A sacrificing one. One who never gave up on his man because he knew he would always have men who never gave up on him.
“Corporal Magnus, this is Falcon Nine-Nine-One-Zero-Four. Do you copy?”
The audio was cutting in and out, but Magnus made it out clearly the second time the pilot hailed him. His eyes lit up. “Falcon Nine-Nine-One-Zero-Four, this is Corporal Magnus. I read you loud and clear.”
“Roger that, Corporal. We have your IFF marker on grid. Hang tight, inbound in thirty seconds.”
“Copy that, Falcon. We’ll be…” Magnus smiled. “We’ll just be sitting here, pissin’ in our armor.”
The four Marines laughed. It even sounded like the pilots were in on it too.
Deeks’s voice broke Magnus’s revelry. “Hey, anyone see that kid?”
“Negative,” Chico and Franklin said.
Magnus looked around, but neither his eyes nor TACNET sensors had any reading on an extra body nearby. “Think he’s gone, fellas. Damn shame too. I would’ve liked to get his name. Buy him a beer.”
“Buy him two,” Deeks said. “Next time.”
* * *
T’ai Hau survived alone at sea for five days. But he wasn’t really alone, of course. He had his robot.
The bot had been his sole companion as war and disease wiped out the only life he’d ever known. Somehow, though, T’ai had survived. He’d built a life for himself with his robot, biding his time and preparing for the day that he would be rescued.
The evacuation had gone pretty much how he’d expected it to. Though, now that he’d thought about it, he had underestimated the bomb’s mass. The explosion had been much larger than he had intended. In the end, however, it got the job done. He just hoped the Marines had survived in their armored suits.
Eventually, T’ai floated toward a large luxury ship. A true pleasure yacht. He’d seen them pass by his island plenty of times in his childhood. They never stopped to talk. They just circled once or twice, taking pictures with their long-range cameras.
This vessel had several decks and looked like it could sleep thirty or forty people very comfortably. He hauled himself onboard, pulling his backpack behind him, and rested on the aft deck for at least an hour while the sun dried his clothes and warmed his skin. When he was rested, T’ai stood and began looking around the ship.
Everything he saw was opulent. The dark-stained wooden decks, the white leather furniture, and the dark windows—all of it said that whoever owned this boat was wealthy beyond reason. The owner was also hanging off the bowsprit, along with the remains of several other people who’d been onboard. Apparently, the Akuda weren’t fond of this captain or his friends. But the fish had no use for ships, and so they’d left it adrift.
By the looks of it, that had been several weeks ago, maybe more. That meant no one was coming for this ship. So T’ai had it all to himself, and that suited him just fine.
After propping up his half-built robot in a comfy couch, T’ai went about taking stock of supplies on the ship, beginning with food and potable water. Survival was one part luck and another part proper planning. In order to build a life beyond the ruins of his home, he would need both fortune and strategy.
Next, T’ai began by repairing the dead ship. It was a lot of work, but it wasn’t difficult work. All the tools he needed were onboard, and he had plenty of time. In fact, he quite enjoyed the new environment. It was a nice change of pace from his cave.
Within
a few days, T’ai had the drive cores operational again. The ship hummed beneath his feet, surging forward under his command like the massive bull whales in the southern hemisphere.
He labored with every light fixture, pipe, strip of carpet, and wooden panel. He willed the giant boat back to life one day at a time, just as he’d willed his robot to life. Weeks turned into months before T’ai realized he wanted to leave. Not leave the boat. Leave Caledonia. This place… was no longer his home. It had been once. And he loved it. Rather, he loved what it had been. But he did not love it anymore. He thought, perhaps, that the yacht might have changed his heart and given him something more to love. Some reason to stay. But in the end, it was empty, like his cave. Like his island.
He looked at his robot, which was nearing completion, and wondered if they should try to journey into the void together. He wanted to get away from here, away from the cursed planet. But he couldn’t do that, not yet anyway. Not without at least talking to her. And to do that, T’ai knew he would need more than just a robot and a boat. He needed a new identity. There was no way her parents would ever allow him to speak to her, unless… he wasn’t himself. He had to become someone different.
T’ai moved below decks into the captain’s quarters. It was where he kept all of the personal belongings of the former crew. Their watches, jewelry, wallets, and purses. He pulled out identification cards of two men he found the most handsome, then he laid them out on the captain’s dining table side by side.
The men’s faces smiled pleasantly, as if the pictures had been taken when they were in the middle of a long vacation to some exotic destination. Their skin was deeply tanned, like his, and their eyes were almost the same shape. Aren’t they? Or perhaps not. Perhaps T’ai would also need to change that about himself to be accepted by her parents.
He returned to their wallets and pulled out small card drives, each displaying softly glowing numeric values followed by the republic C icon for credits. The numbers were in hundreds of thousands, some in the millions. Hacking the accounts would take less than a day of code slicing. T’ai suddenly realized he was rich. He would have enough money to buy himself a new identity, one that would let him speak with her. To ask her if she wanted to go with him to the stars.
Ruins of the Galaxy Box Set: Books 1-6 Page 34
