Galactic Arena Box Set

by Dan Davis

  “They’re out there, the bastards,” he said, not taking his eyes from the sights.

  “You can see them?”

  “Not directly, no. I’ve got a drone at a thousand meters up but they’re still out of sight. They’re in the hills to the northeast. They’re kicking up dust and I keep getting flashes of heat above the valley sides. And that’s where all the electromagnetic shit is spilling out from. Are you seeing this? What are they pumping it all out with?”

  She looked down at the swarming Marines on the surface. Four teams, Cassidy’s at 70 meters and three others beyond, spaced out but heading for the northern side of the outpost. “You’re relaying it all to Cassidy?”

  Mehdi scoffed. “Course. Check the tactical channel.”

  On her AugHud she saw the thermal and electromagnetic signatures beeping, out beyond the walls of the outpost, in and amongst the boulders at the edge of the foothills. “So, those wheeler pricks are going to attack the outpost from the same direction they did last time, huh?”

  “Looks like it. Where are the Marines that Cassidy was sending up here with you?”

  “Flores and Fury? They were up here but they said it was pointless while the enemy was so far away and they went down again. Heading for the rear.”

  Kat shook her head. “Right. I bumped into them downstairs. They’re Spaz Squad, right?”

  “That’s an offensive term.”

  “Shut up, Mehdi,” Kat said. “Come on, mate, you’ve had your fun. Let’s focus on getting the old girl turned around, right? At this rate, looks like we might have to evacuate the wounded under fire. You’re reading the meteorological data?”

  “Satellites are all operational but that interference is disrupting the signal between us and them. Same as us and the outpost. The wheelers are just flooding the spectrum, just flooding it. Never seen anything like it. Look at all the pulses, Kat. Our personal comms are going to be down. We’ll be blind. Can our shielding even cope with that? Are they going to roll up here with all that and hit us with—”

  She cut him off. “What’s the weather data?”

  “Not getting much but yeah, looks okay. Still, blue skies, wind gusty but stable enough for—”

  An explosion.

  Two hundred meters away, between the shuttle and the outpost, a chunk of rocky ground erupted in a shower of gravel and dust. The sound of the blast was a crack that she felt in the body of her flight suit. An incoming alien weapon had exploded amongst the advancing human soldiers.

  The world slowed as her enhanced reactions cranked up a gear, responding to her spike in adrenaline and cortisol.

  Most Marines had hit the dirt, throwing themselves prone onto the rough black bedrock. A few of them, like Captain Cassidy and Sergeant Gruger, stood tall and issued orders, arms pointing.

  More explosions followed the first, like a series of grenades creeping closer to her shuttle. One detonation every second or two.

  Mehdi scooped up his gear, throwing armfuls of it down the hatch before cradling his telescope and scurrying after the equipment.

  Sheila pinged Kat’s ear. “Danger. Threat detected. Recommend immediate prep for takeoff.”

  “You’re not wrong, Sheila,” Kat said, peering through the clouds of debris, watching them bloom and die away in slow motion. “But we can’t leave until we evacuate the wounded.”

  Mehdi grabbed armfuls of his gear as he struggled to his feet and headed for the hatch. “No one will come out into that. We need to be gone before them or the shuttle will be hit.”

  She did not look at him, instead studying the pattern of explosions. It was like a mortar attack. Explosive shelling. The plumes bursting like flowers.

  The detonations were not hitting the outpost. They were not hitting the Lepus. Just the open ground in between, where the Marines ran for cover.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Mehdi said, pausing by the open hatch down to the cockpit. “No way will the wounded walk through all that.”

  Explosions threw up debris but she could see movement at the outpost. Kat gestured at a group of EVA-suited civilians hurrying from the walls.

  “They must really want off this planet.”

  “There they are,” Mehdi shouted. For a moment, she thought he meant the civilians but his tone was all wrong. Then she saw his outstretched arm pointing over her shoulder at the jagged hills.

  Oh shit. Here we go.

  The wheelers were coming.

  3.

  Ram knew to keep low to reduce the chance of being hit by shrapnel or blast damage but he was 2.5 meters tall and even crouching he was still the biggest target around.

  “Hit the deck, sir,” Gunnery Sergeant Wu shouted, crouching behind a half-unpacked crate.

  The sergeant and the six Marines with him at the rear of the Lepus all hugged what cover they could to protect themselves from the alien mortar fire.

  From the rear of the shuttle, Ram watched the pattern of explosions detonating at intervals between his position and the distant walls of the outpost. Warning lights flashing on his AugHud. The blasts were surely random, fired without a spotter. Lobbed high from the cover of the dark hills beyond the outpost to explode on impact with whatever they hit.

  “They’re not hitting the outpost,” Ram called out.

  “Very interesting, sir,” Gunny Wu shouted back.

  “Not hitting the shuttle, either,” Ram replied.

  “I guess we’ll see about that, sir,” Wu said.

  It was pretty clear to Ram that all they were hitting was bare rock, sending up plumes of pulverized stuff after shattering the ground beneath.

  Ram had a view clear across the open rectangle of land between the shuttle, the outpost and where the plateau rose into a jumble of ancient shattered and eroded stone. There was a lot of surface area in that open space. An explosion hit every second or two, seemingly at a random location, the plumes dissipating in the gusting wind, the tops of the debris clouds curling over as they reached the prevailing currents a few meters up.

  A quick, rough calculation happened somewhere just below Ram’s full consciousness.

  “There’s less than a five percent chance of getting hit,” Ram said to the Sergeant, straightening up. “We can continue to unpack the ETATs. In fact, we should probably hustle, Gunny.”

  “They’re not aiming for us,” Wu said, standing up, looking out at the other Marines who were advancing through the incoming fire, running from cover to cover, such as it was.

  “They’re trying to stop us from reinforcing the outpost,” Ram said to Wu. “The wheelers don’t want to damage the shuttle or the outpost, maybe? Capture the materiel, not destroy it?”

  Before the Sergeant could respond, orders came in from Captain Cassidy on a directional broadcast to the group of Marines the rear of the shuttle.

  “I want F Team to unload those ETATs and get them moving. Mr. Seti, you are formally attached to F Team. Ensign Tseng, you are in command of Mr. Seti. He’s your problem. Watch out he doesn’t get you killed. And Ensign, make… because… don’t…”

  The signal fragmented into nothing.

  The wheelhunters are able to flood the electromagnetic spectrum so thoroughly that our comms equipment is unable to compensate.

  He knew that was a fact, somehow, but couldn’t recall when he had been told it. Probably on the shuttle.

  “Where’s F Team?” Ram asked Wu.

  On his AugHud, the icons for four Marines, one NCO, and one officer lit up around him, overlaying the individuals taking cover behind crates, vehicles and inside the rear of the shuttle.

  The data showing the members of F Team scrolled over his eyes. His AugHud had quickly adjusted itself to Ram’s data-processing speed and the text flicked through his vision. As a leader of a highly-competitive online Avar cooperative, Ram had spent years processing huge amounts of information in seconds and he drank it all in.

  Ensign Tseng, Male, Macanese, Age 28

  Sergeant Stirling, Male, Scottish, A
ge 26

  Corporal Fury, Female, English, Age 36

  Private Cooper, Male, American, Age 26

  Private Flores, Female, Argentinian, Age 22

  Private Harris, Male, American, Age 25

  All team members were armed with standard issue gear but each of them was tagged on the AugHud as NON-COMBAT.

  What the hell? Who are these idiots?

  “Order confirmed, sir. Seti, get over here,” Ensign Tseng said, standing up from cover and waving Rama over to him. The frequency of the incoming rounds remained consistent and one exploded nearby, between two unpacked crates. The blast wave, such as it was, blew past him, showering Ram with stones that pinged off his armor and helmet. Ram did not slow down as he jogged over to Ensign Tseng, his own breathing in his ears as he did so. The Ensign had ducked behind his crate again when Rama crouched down beside him.

  “Ensign Tseng. I’m Rama Seti, pleased to meet you.”

  “I know who you are,” the Ensign said, scowling. He was tall and thin but folded up in his black armor like an insect. Like Ram, he had no assault rifle in hand. Unlike Ram, he had a combat knife in a hip holster that was half a meter long and a huge pistol in a chest holster, red-tipped magazines all around the webbing at his waist.

  HK-15mm with AP rounds and a T-R Longblade. Officer’s loadout.

  The knowledge was there, in his memory but he had no idea how he knew it.

  “What are your orders, Ensign?”

  The officer ignored him. “Stirling, get up and carry on. I want these vehicles on their way to the forward fire teams inside of five minutes.”

  “Sir,” the AugHud showed it was Sergeant Stirling speaking, from out by the furthest ETAT vehicle, standing up with his arm out, gesturing. “What about this incoming fire, Ensign?” The sergeant was a huge man, maybe the biggest Marine Ram had seen. He towered over the others near him and the breadth of his chest and shoulders was obvious even in the armor. From within the visor, a brutish and malevolent face glared out, as if Sergeant Stirling wanted nothing more than to tear the Ensign’s head off.

  Ensign Tseng scoffed. “It’s nuisance fire. Ignore it. That’s an order.”

  Before the comms clicked off, Sergeant Stirling—in a strong Scottish accent—muttered, “No shit.”

  A blast a few meters away threw fragments of stone over them, pinging off the underside of the shuttle and the huge engine bells.

  From the cargo ramp, the pilot Lieutenant Kat Xenakis shouted at them on the directional band. “Gunny Wu? I thought you were getting this shit away from my shuttle? I need to turn about. And get those vehicles to the outpost immediately. The civilian evacuees are heading this way.”

  Ram had barely ever spoken to the pilot before but she seemed like someone with a lot of energy. Even hidden in her heavy flight suit, he could tell she was slim, tall, strong. She glared out of her visor with big dark eyes and her top lip seemed to be always drawn back halfway between a smile and a snarl. Xenakis spoke so quickly and with such forcefulness that the Marines seemed to wilt a little in the face of it, despite the fact that she had no official authority over any of them.

  “Lieutenant Xenakis,” Ensign Tseng said before the Gunnery Sergeant could reply. “I am in command of F Team. My orders are to arm the ETATs and proceed to the outpost so they can provide fire support.”

  “Arm the ETATs?” Lieutenant Xenakis shouted as she changed direction, marching down the ramp right toward Ensign Tseng. “There’s no time for all that, those civilians need help right now or they’re going to eat this incoming fire. They’re walking wounded. Where’s Captain Cassidy? Tell him the evacuees need a pickup. We had a clear view from the top of the shuttle but I can’t send him the visual feed from the drone.”

  The Ensign hesitated. “He’s still out there. The wheelers are jamming our comms again, only short range comms is working now.”

  “Well, Ensign, in that case, you’re going to have to show a little initiative, aren’t you. I’ve just given you additional tactical information and I believe the standing orders for this phase of your operation is to unload the equipment and facilitate evacuation of the wounded.”

  Ram looked back and forth between the UNOP Navy Lieutenant and the UNOP Marine Corps Ensign.

  Ensign Tseng “Yes but—”

  “They’ll get torn apart before they ever get here unless you get those vehicles rolling, immediately,” Xenakis said. “And I need to get the shuttle away from all this before she gets hit.”

  The Ensign looked around, scanning left and right.

  “I think we should do it,” Ram said, glancing at the pilot and wondering if it was the best thing to do or if he only thought that because he was attracted to her. “Get the wounded on the shuttle with the vehicles, then take them to the front with the mounted weapons.”

  “I’m in command,” Ensign Tseng said. An alien shell exploded a few meters away. “I am in command. You do what I say, do you understand?”

  “Fine, fine,” Ram said, holding out his hands. “Wouldn’t want it any other way.”

  Ensign Tseng glared at Ram but spoke to the others. “Gunnery Sergeant Wu?” The sergeant was busy pushing a crate stack around a blast crater a few meters to the north. “Please carry on unloading and my team will take the vehicles to collect the injured from the outpost.”

  Lieutenant Xenakis, nodded once at the Ensign, winked at Ram, then jogged away back up the cargo ramp into her shuttle.

  Ram helped the other Marines tear the protective layers off the big vehicles while the explosions continued to smash into the ground between them and the outpost. Captain Cassidy’s fire teams advanced obliquely across the plain toward the enemy and took up positions to provide cover.

  “What about the civilians?” Ram called to Ensign Tseng. “The ones in the shuttle. Milena and the engineers?”

  The Ensign froze for a moment. “No one mentioned them to me. Not my responsibility. One of the other teams must be escorting them into the outpost.”

  Ram looked through the debris clouds at the fire teams advancing toward the enemy, making a staggered line between the shuttle and the outpost. The command team under Captain Cassidy was closest, a couple of runners streaming between the commander and the fire teams to relay orders the old-fashioned way due to the dampening effects of the wheelhunter jammers.

  I should be out there. I should be armed and taking the fight to the enemy.

  “We’re the closest team,” Ram said. “If we don’t get the civilians from the shuttle, they’ll be cut off.”

  “It’s not your concern,” Ensign Tseng said. “Harris, you’ll drive this vehicle and Cooper, you take the other one. The moment it is operational, head directly for the evacuees—”

  “Take one of them,” Ram said, turning to head up into the shuttle. “But do not move this ETAT until I get the civilians from the shuttle.”

  “Stop,” Ensign Tseng said. “Seti, stop. That’s an order. You’re under my command and I order you to stop.”

  “I’ll be back in under five minutes,” Ram said, as the Ensign’s objections broke up and died away.

  Whether the Ensign would listen was another matter but Ram had to try.

  He strode up the ramp, jogged through the almost-empty cargo hold and jumped up the steps through the hatch. By the side door looking out stood Milena, unmistakable even in her EVA suit from the way she held herself, tilted her hips, one arm leaning high on the frame, and the two engineers and the biologist standing behind her.

  “Milena,” Ram said and they all jumped like they’d been shot. The group of four turned almost as one.

  “Ram,” Milena said, a rare smile appearing on her face. “Our suit comms don’t work outside the shuttle. Lieutenant Xenakis said she’s about to turn it around and to disembark but we couldn’t raise Captain—”

  “I know,” Ram said. “Come with me. Your chariot awaits.”

  I hope.

  He had to help the civilians down the hatch ladder, all but
Milena. They struggled as if they had never worn an EVA suit before.

  You’ve never worn one before, either.

  “Come on, hurry up,” Ram ordered then, herding them down the cargo ramp.

  One of the ETATs was bouncing away toward the outpost. The other was just starting to crawl away, two Marines in the front, one in the back. The explosions continued, throwing pulverized rock into the air.

  “Hey, wait,” Ram shouted and ran toward them. “Stop, wait for passengers, wait.” He hoped the wheeler interference would let the signal through.

  The ETAT slowed and Ensign Tseng’s voice sounded in his ear, sighing. “Alright, hurry them up, Mr. Seti. Stirling, Cooper. Hold it there.”

  The four civilians climbed into the rear seats and Ram started to get in the flatbed section at the very back.

  “Hold on,” Ensign Tseng said. “You can’t get on, Seti. You’re too heavy. Wait here.”

  Ram glanced at him. “On Arcadia, the Extraterrestrial All-Terrain vehicles are rated to carry five hundred kilos in the rear cargo section, so there’s excess capacity for supplies and gear. In fact, hold on.”

  “What the hell are you doing?” Tseng said. “We’re going to go without you.”

  “Just wait.” Ram hoped they would not drive off while he ran to the stacks of boxes, searched for the one he needed while Tseng shouted at him and grabbed the weapon crate. He ran to the buggy, threw it in the back and pulled himself into the open rear flatbed.

  “Alright, let’s go,” Ram shouted as he jumped on. The ETAT suspension creaked under his weight.

  Private Cooper, in the driver’s seat, was a fit and handsome blond-haired American. The kind of man that Ram had grown up being jealous of. The private looked back at the Ensign, who gave the order and the ETAT whirred into life, Cooper accelerating rapidly across the plain, heading for the distant outpost. Ram crouched and held on to the roll bars above his head, hands either side of the empty mount for the crewed weapons.

  Explosions burst around them as the buggy raced toward the walls of the outpost. Towards the stream of civilian walking wounded coming toward the shuttle for evacuation.