Free Stories 2014

by Baen Books

  An instant of alarmed recognition passed—human to mantis.

  Aiming his weapon from the hip, Private Li flicked off the safety and squeezed the trigger. For the first time since Initial Entry Training, Li felt his weapon feed round after round through the firing chamber. No brass casings were ejected. None were needed on Li’s space-age rifle. Both the propellant and the soft casing were vaporized the instant the firing pin punctured the thin wall separating the two halves of the propellant proper.

  Spouts of water flew up around the lone mantis. Several rounds impacted solidly on the creature’s disc, causing metal and sparks to fly.

  Amelia froze, as all around her rifles began to belch propellant and bullets in every concievable direction. The hammering noise of the guns was only bested by the incoherently terrified cries of the crew.

  A chortling WHAM-WHAM-WHAM could be heard as Corporal Powell churned up the water with his powerful squad gun, which fired a larger, more potent shell. The lone mantis burst into fragments of alien gore and splintered machinery that fanned outward and splashed into the water.

  “Cease fire! Cease fire!” Ladd yelled.

  All of them crept toward the remains of the mantis that drifted in the foamy water. It was the first time any of them had seen the enemy up close and in person. Private Li himself was in a near-daze, his chest heaving mightily. His eyes bugged out so far Amelia thought they were going to pop from their sockets.

  Then, the noise of the mantis soldier’s commrades could be heard. The humming sound of multiple discs far off in the trees, but growing louder as they grew closer.

  “Must have signalled the rest of his squad,” Ladd said, watching in the direction from which the noise came.

  “How many?” Amelia asked, backed up two paces, her pilot’s rifle leveled from her shoulder, but the barrel wavering just slightly as adrenaline made her arms shake.

  “Damned if I know,” Ladd said. “Everybody get behind a tree and shoot at the first mantis you see!”

  When no one moved—their eyes still transfixed on the alien gore that drifted in the water—Amelia hissed, “Do what the sergeant says! Go!”

  Seven humans slipped behind fat tree trunks just as several disc-riding mantes came into view. They moved over the water—the liquid beneath each disc making strange patterns that swirled and distorted according to whatever force it was which kept the discs in the air. None of the aliens spoke, nor made any sound. Their insect like eyes and heads scanned furiously. Until they saw what was left of their commrade.

  At which point both Amelia and Sergeant Ladd shouted for the group to open fire, and again the air was filled with the ear-splitting reports of rifles. Only, this time, it wasn’t just human bullets chewing up the scene. Mantis rounds smacked and popped against tree trunks, bursting off great splinters of bark and wood. Amelia flattened behind her own tree as at least a dozen mantis rounds chewed into it. She almost fell to her knees, she was so instantly petrified.

  But when she peered to the side and saw Sergeant Ladd still up, and still firing, she forced herself to mimic him, peeking around her tree and popping off shots at the mantes as they scattered between the trees. At least three of the mantes appeared down, their discs half subermged into the water and their exposed upper thoraxes split open, with fresh mantis ooze pouring from the lethal wounds.

  Amelia felt a sudden, almost insane surge of pride. If she’d been unable to fight back in orbit, at least down here, humans could successfully defend themselves. That the aliens had fallen at all suddenly gave the mantes a mortal quality which they’d lacked before, in Amelia’s mind. Amelia remembered a line from a very, very old two-dee motion picture entertainment she’d once seen. If it bleeds, we can kill it.

  Though fictional, the two-dee movie seemed oddly appropriate, given Amelia’s present circumstances.

  But then the firefight turned against them. The remaining mantes ringed the humans, and suddenly everyone was shooting at everyone else. Human had to be wary of shooting at human, while attempting to shoot at the mantes, and suddenly the picket ship’s crew were diving from behind their trees, risking exposure to enemy fire while they tried to regroup. Lacking the kind of concentrated squad-level maneuvering skills a proper infantry element might possess, the crew was quickly routed, and sent fleeing east—for their very lives.

  Amelia ran fastest of all.

  #

  The tactical group leader held his force back, letting the humans go. The patrol had lost five of their number, having achieved no significant human casualties that the group leader could detect.

  Except for one.

  The human who lay in the water was not dead. Not yet. He dragged himself along, clearly wounded in the leg, and trailing a thick plume of human blood behind him as he want. The tactical group leader called his fellows to him and together they hovered over the human, who’d thrown away his weapon when it became empty of ammunition.

  The group leader pointed with a serrated forelimb at the bleeding human and said—in the silent carriage-to-carriage language of his kind—Observe here, the enemy of our people. An animal. Vermin. We are here on this planet to pave the way. Soon, the Quorum of the Select will launch the Fourth Expansion, and evey human on every world will fall to us. Wherever they may be. Look at this one, and remember. Remember how easily they die.

  With that, the group leader dipped the leading edge of its carriage, scooped the screaming, bleeding human up—serrated forelimbs holding the squirming human fast—and began to feed.

  #

  After many minutes of frantic flight, Amelia heard Corporal Powell ordering them all to stand down. Amelia was so exhausted, she literally sank to her knees and panted, eyes staring into the murky water. Her ears thundered with the beats of her own heart, and she would have gotten back up and run some more, if not for the fact that she simply couldn’t get enough oxygen into her blood to make her muscles work.

  A minute later, Powell’s voice prodded her.

  “Ma’am?” he said in a half-worried tone. “Are you hurt? Ma’am?”

  Amelia didn’t respond. She just turned her eyes this way and that, counting bodies as they crouched behind tries, faces flushed and mouths open, taking in great gulps of air.

  “Sergeant Ladd?” she said. “Where is the sergeant??”

  One by one, she met their eyes, and very quickly she realized the truth. He’d not made it. When they’d broken cover and run, she’d heard someone yell in pain. She hadn’t realized it was him. Of all the people to fall, it had to be the one troop upon whom Amelia felt she could rely with any degree of security.

  She let her chin hit her chest, and closed her eyes against the gentle sob that was trying to tear itself out of her.

  #

  The tacitcal group was thin now. The leader became worried. He had lost almost half his attacking force in the melee with the humans. At the cost of many, his group had destroyed only one of the enemy. And while the feast had been glorious—what a thrill to devour human meat!—the present casualty ratio was not going to yield a successful end to the chase. New tactics would have to be employed. The humans had not gone far. But the water and abundant life forms of the wetlands made it difficult to distinguish the humans from their surroundings. If the group leader sent out a scout, would the scout be any more successful than his fallen sibling? The humans might have been few, but they were heavily armed—something else the tactical group leader had not expected. For a moment, he considered the idea of calling in reinforcements.

  It was the logical thing to do. If the humans had proven much more difficult to deal with than expected, overwhelming force would be best. It had worked in orbit. Already, the tactical group leader knew that almost every human craft had been destroyed, or forced to land, whereupon the occupants were slaughtered.

  Still, even mantes had their pride.

  No. The group leader knew he just needed to be more patient. Calling for help at this stage would be a sign to his superiors that he was
not fit for his station. A warrior did not cry for assistance at the first sign of difficulty! A warrior adapted, and overcame.

  Using his silent contact with his troops, the group leader dispensed a series of new instructions.

  #

  Amelia and her crew dragged themselves from the water and flopped onto their backs at the bank of a small stream filtering into the wetland. At last, they had found truly solid ground. Having spent almost all of their duty time where it was dry and clean—Fleet spaceships and space stations being fastidiously neat and orderly—being put through the hell of the swamp march had almost taken the life out of them. They lay or curled on the solid ground, dragging in breath, eyes unfocused and practically pushed to the point of uncaring.

  Amelia’s body felt leaden from the forced march. They had only traveled a handful of kilometers, but it felt as if she had walked the circumference of the entire planet. Most pilots had to be in better-than-average shape to pass the standard flight and Fleet physicals. But nothing had prepared her for this. Her body was chafed raw where the flight armor had rubbed against skin, and her legs and feet and thighs were a quivering chorus of agony.

  She rolled over and muttered something about the satellite dish.

  “I’ve got it,” Private Li said. “I almost dropped it a few times. But it’s our only way to talk to Fleet now.”

  Off in the distance, a new noise: the whine-and-thunderclap of hostile ship’s guns could be heard. Only, this time they were firing in-atmosphere. Amelia was just curious enough to crawl her way across the ground to where a pile of half-rotten logs gave her a little elevation. Across the hard ground to the south she could see a stupendously large craft sitting on three, thick, extended legs. It was ringed with what seemed to be smaller craft. Or cargo containers? Troop pods? Amelia couldn’t be sure. They hugged the side of the mother ship. Occasionally one of the nozzle like weapons on the ship’s crown swiveled skyward, and blasted a shot into the sky. What the enemy could be shooting at—when Amelia could not even see it herself—was a mystery.

  Suicide, Amelia thought glumly. Leading the crew past this is totally out of the question. But we can’t stay here! And we can’t go back into the swamp. It will kill us, as surely as the mantis patrol will kill us. Sooner or later we’ll run out of ammunition and then . . .

  Amelia did not want to contemplate what would happen then. Poor Sergeant Ladd had been the first to fall. She felt a desperate need to make his death count for something.

  Dear God, I am so tired, Amelia thought, as her eyes closed.

  An indeterminate amount of time passed, and she drifted, at once present, yet not present, her consciousness swirling away into nothingness.

  The ground suddenly rumbled and rocked beneath her. Amelia sat up groggily, her mind racing to catch up with the action taking place around her. How long had she drifted off? What was happening now? The rest of the crew were also getting to their feet, the hot rays of New America’s yellow dwarf home star blinding them as they looked towards the horizon, and the source of the trembling.

  A great mushroom of fire and debris spouted high into the air in the distance. Directly in front of the huge mantis ship.

  Amelia stared dumbly at the sight, and crawled forward trying to understand what was happening. Then, a finger of fire seemed to fly from the sun itself and arc downward, towards the alien craft. Its shields flickered and sparkled. A third strike from the sky left a massive divot in the turf near where the first shot had fallen. Soil and smoke drifted. Another mushroom rose to join the first, and together they began floating away in breeze.

  Amelia scrambled back and grabbed the satellite uplink Private Li still husbanded. She unfurled its umbrella like dish, tying quickly in to her suit’s communications computer. Then she aimed the dish a few degrees off the limb of the sun, in the direction from which the tongue of fire had come, and pressed the hail key.

  Moments ticked by, and then a sharp, clean transmission broke through.

  The crew huddled close, and all listened as Amelia identified herself. It was not the communication’s officer of the Aegean who answered, but a tactical officer from the Tycho Brahe, one of the new swift Fleet destroyers, specifically designed for stealth.

  The voice from the Brahe was quick and to the point: those few Fleet ships that were still left were playing a hit and run game with the mantes out beyond the third asteroid belt. Most of the mantis ships had been drawn away as a result. But mantis reinforcements were expected from out-system, and the Tycho Brahe had been detailed to return and aid the very few recovery teams that had already been dispatched. New America was officially being abandoned. Any civilian or Fleet personnel still left alive were being picked up prior to the Brahe leaving for Earth.

  “We’ve got a big mother of a mantis craft sitting right in front of us,” Amelia said. “You’re shooting at it, but not causing any damage.”

  “The governor’s private entourage was downed a few kilometers from where you are,” said the Brahe’s tactical officer. “We’re trying to keep that beast diverted while we execute a pickup, copy?”

  “Copy,” Amelia said, and considered. The same shields that had stopped her missiles in orbit were stopping the Brahe’s kinetic kill strikes as well. They might very well be able to keep the thing occupied while the governor got picked up, but that wouldn’t mean a damned thing for Amelia’s crew if they couldn’t hope for a pickup as well. The only way they were getting off-planet now nevermind was if something—or someone—found a way to get through those shields and neutralize the big bastard where it sat.

  Might as well wish for the moon, Amelia thought bitterly.

  But then, there didn’t seem to be any ground troops active around the mantis ship. All of its attention seemed to be on the Brahe. Amelia watched for a few minutes while the mantis ship cracked off another round, and then another, and then still another. Each time it did, the air around the craft shimmered just briefly. At which point a small period of clarity could be discerned. As if the milky shielded air around the alien ship resolved into . . . emptiness.

  “It has to drop its shields in order to fire,” Amelia deduced, letting a small smile curl up the corners of her mouth for the first time since the invasion of New America began.

  “We didn’t receive that, over?” said Brahe.

  “The shields come down when they fire,” Amelia said into the satellite gadget.

  "We know that—but to briefly to matter."

  “Just keep up your firing pattern. I think I might have discovered a way to help you.”

  And to possibly help my crew, too, she thought.

  Amelia looked from face to weary face. They were all tired and worn down to the nub. There was no exhiliration of battle in their eyes. Just exhaustion. However, they pulled their weapons to the ready and waited.

  “What you got in mind, Chief?” said Powell.

  It was the first time he’d ever said that word to Amelia. In the past it had always been ma’am.

  Amelia did not want to throw all their lives away. She did not feel brave or heroic in the slightest. But she had come this far, and she owed it to Ladd to make a final push. Then, and only then, would the crew get their long-awaited dust-off.

  And if they didn’t make it . . . well, it wouldn’t matter anyway.

  #

  The group leader and his forces were searching the small streams that flowed from a low rise of packed soil that overlooked the wetlands. Beyond, far in the distance, a mantis drop pod super-carrier had landed, and was presently engaged with a human ship that drifted somewhere in a very-low orbit, just out of reach of the mantis guns. At that altitude, the human ship must have been expending tremendous energy to loiter over the drop pod carrier’s present ground coordinates.

  The group leader signaled to the super-carrier, announcing his renewed intent to find and destroy the survivors of the crashed picket ship. The commander of the drop pod super-carrier replied that he had no way to assist. Having emp
tied all of his troops on a human settlement far to the west, he’d set down in his present position to await further instructions when the bombardment from the elusive human ship began.

  How the human ship was evading the super-carrier’s targetting sensors was not known. Suffice to say it was difficult to get a lock on the human vessel which would last long enough to launch missiles. The super-carrier commander was therefore engaging the human ship until such a time that mantis capital ships could return from the asteroids, and clear the sky once more.

  The super-carrier commander was fairly certain that a refugee crew of humans—armed with only rifles—could not do him any harm. The group leader was instructed to conduct his search and take care of the humans. The super-carrier commander would relay news of the group leader’s success to their superiors, when it was all over. There would be potential for advancement in such a victory. Perhaps even the possibility of mating.

  The group leader shuddered with anticipated ecstacy.

  Mating was reserved for males of significant rank and ability only. Never in his wildest imagination had he dared to think of such a thing. But now?

  The group leader encouraged his depleted force to redouble its efforts. The humans could not hide forever. They would be found eventually. Oh yes, they would be found.

  #

  Loam and fire flew into the air as the mantis shields swept away another blow from the Tycho Brahe. Amelia and her group were now just a few hundred meters from the low rise upon which the alien craft sat. Like a great elongated egg—mated to a dozen smaller elongated eggs—it perched there: a shimmering dome of energy rippling above it in the blue-green sky, and great, thick landing pylons balancing it on the turf.

  A concussion wave from the Brahe’s latest shot knocked Amelia’s crew flat, yet the great egg remained motionless amongst the maelstrom.

  “We can’t go much further,” Corporal Powell said at Amelia’s ear. “We’re pinned down here. By our own artillery, for hell’s sake.”

  “I know that,” Amelia said back, “but there has got to be a way of getting in closer. We just have to time it right. When the Brahe hits, and when the mantis ship drops its shields for a shot. The real trick is going to be getting in without them seeing us.”