by Mel Odom
“Can you block their signals for now?” Zhoh fired at a traitor who was exposed for an instant.
The particle beam blast pounded the traitor’s back. Unconscious or dead, he rolled down the small hill’s incline near one of the crawlers.
“No,” Mato answered. “Not with the drones we have there. I can destroy them.”
“Don’t do that.” Zhoh took a grenade from his combat harness and threw it toward a crawler where three humanoids had sheltered. The grenade sailed true and plopped to the ground just beyond the crawler.
The explosion blew one of the beings out of hiding and left him lying limp. The other two staggered out with cuts and burns over most of their exposed bodies. One of them no longer had a face or eyes and stumbled blindly while crying for help.
“Leave the sats,” Zhoh said. “Let them get them into the air if they can. Can you use the equipment aboard the transport ship to hijack control of them?”
“Yes. I’ll have those pilots get the aircraft into the sky.”
“Nalit and Warar won’t have time to enact their treacherous plan,” Zhoh said. “When I get Leghef, I will have her talk to the Terran Alliance and bend the humans to our will.”
“I will let you know the instant I have control of those sat systems.”
In the clearing, the satellites lifted from the ground slightly, then slowly rose.
With the chronometer working against him, Zhoh called his warriors to him. The time to move against his enemies was upon him.
Pride swelled within Zhoh as his warriors formed up on him. He led the way toward the cave and took out another warrior and two other beings as he went.
Behind him, the heavens suddenly cracked open and a huge object crashed through the canopy a hundred meters away. As it fell, it tore down trees, branches, and leaves in its path. More of the fierce rainstorm swept through the jungle in torrents around it. Something landed on him and knocked him to the ground.
FIFTY-NINE
Rilormang
The Sulusku Highlands
28 Kilometers North of Makaum Sprawl
0847 Hours Zulu Time
Kiwanuka held on to the safety webbing as the John Lee plummeted through the jungle. The dropship bounced haphazardly as it tore through towering trees five meters in diameter. Judging from the clangor, the dropship was causing a huge amount of damage.
“We’re definitely not on stealth mode,” the pilot said bitterly. “And you better like where we set down because you’re not going to have a choice.”
“I choose alive, Lieutenant,” Kiwanuka replied.
The dropship stopped with a massive thud, but it didn’t wobble. The vessel didn’t sit straight either. Kiwanuka freed herself from the webbing, seized her Roley, and stepped into the transport compartment.
“Everybody all right?” she asked as she glanced over the soldiers and civilians scattered across the compartment.
The soldiers answered back immediately, sounding shaken but steady.
“Then let’s get into the fight.” Kiwanuka nodded to Goldberg. “Open that bay, Corporal.”
“Copy that, Sergeant.” Goldberg tapped the keypad beside the hatch.
“A word, Staff Sergeant.”
Kiwanuka turned to face Morlortai, who only looked slightly worse for the wear. “You’re alive.”
“I am.” The assassin nodded. “Thanks to your quick action, and to the medical treatment I received.”
Not much medical treatment had been necessary. Otherwise the Fenipalan wouldn’t be up and around so quickly.
“What do you want?” Kiwanuka asked. “I don’t have time to stand around talking.”
“Nor do we,” Morlortai assured her. “As I understand it, we’re surrounded by a larger, hostile force in the middle of nowhere. I suggest we continue our truce. We have a common foe, and our goal is to survive. We can work to help each other.”
Kiwanuka hesitated.
“The offer is genuine,” Morlortai said. “I’m the best sniper you’ll ever see.”
“You haven’t seen me shoot,” Kiwanuka said.
Morlortai showed her a trace of a smile. “My apologies. However, wouldn’t two amazing snipers be better than one?”
“How can I trust you?”
“Because you need to,” Morlortai said. “Because we already have one agreement regarding freedom for my crew and me, and I believe you will honor that. We could leave you here as soon as that hatch cycles open. We could disappear into that jungle and take our chances in getting off this planet. Instead, I’m offering you a small, well-trained unit that specializes in surgical operations.”
“There’s nothing surgical about what we’re doing out here,” Kiwanuka said grimly. “We’re all going to get bloody in this.”
“As you say.” Morlortai nodded. “But put a sniper rifle in my hands and perhaps you’ll see for yourself.”
The hatch opened at the same time Kiwanuka opened the dropship’s weapons locker. Armor and weapons hung neatly there despite the harsh landing.
“Suit up,” Kiwanuka said. She slid a Yqueu sniper rifle free and handed it to Morlortai, who inclined his head. She claimed another for herself. “Veug?”
“Yes, Staff Sergeant.”
“Get these people checked into armor and weps. Even if they can’t handle all the suit systems, the near-AIs and armor will provide protection.”
“Yes, Staff Sergeant.”
“And don’t be all day about it.”
“No, Staff Sergeant.” Veug approached the weapons locker, sized up Morlortai and his crew, and handed out armor.
Kiwanuka extended her hand to Morlortai. “An agreement, then.”
“Yes,” he replied, and shook her hand. “You’ll be glad that you did this.”
“Make sure that I am,” Kiwanuka said. “Let me know when you’re in the field.”
“I will. Good luck, Staff Sergeant.”
Kiwanuka sprinted out of the dropship and took stock of the blasted and broken impromptu landing site. Shattered trees and branches lay all around them. The John Lee stood awkwardly on landing gear that had crumpled on one side.
The dropship listed to the side and was pockmarked with damage from Phrenorian weapons fire sustained in space. The hull was slagged in places where the ablative armor had been torn away on reentry.
The John Lee would never fly again without some serious time in a repair bay.
Any landing you can walk away from, Kiwanuka reminded herself.
The HUD showed that they were three hundred meters from the caves and where the GPS pin Noojin’s sec system showed Telilu was.
“Noojin,” Kiwanuka said. “You’re with me. We’re going to get Telilu and Quass Leghef.”
“Copy that, Staff Sergeant,” Noojin said. Despite the attempt to be brave and efficient, the fear in her made her voice crack. She cradled her Roley in her arms.
Kiwanuka opened a comm link to Fort York. “Command, this is Staff Sergeant Kiwanuka. We’re on-site and everybody knows we’re here.” She stared at the impenetrable jungle around them. “I suggest we ping Master Sergeant Sage and let him know too. That way we can coordinate.”
“Roger that,” Halladay said. “Putting you through now.”
With Noojin flanking her, Kiwanuka ran for the explosions ahead of them. Several trees collapsed, and she was willing to bet Culpepper was behind it.
0852 Hours Zulu Time
The tall trees toppled in perfect synchronization from the hill overlooking the cave mouth. From what Sage could tell, the trees had been ripped free of the earth. They also fell toward the cave mouth on the other side of the small clearing.
At first, Sage thought Culpepper had misjudged the amount of explosives he’d used, that the corporal had used too much, because the trees flew several meters. After a brief reflection, Sage was certain he had seen the trees leap from the ground like they’d been fired from a cannon.
Broken roots shot through with white flesh trailed muddy loam as th
e trees sailed through the air. The trees were at least three meters in diameter and a hundred meters tall. They had to weigh thousands of kilos. Each.
In all the battles he’d witnessed, Sage had never seen anything like the sight before him. On worlds where he’d fought the Phrenorians, whole archologies—a thousand stories and more—had fallen, but never in the controlled way the trees took flight. They sailed like perfectly placed projectiles, which he supposed they were under Culpepper’s guidance, and crashed onto the sat systems rising slowly and heading for the canopy high overhead.
All three units became scrap under the massive trees when they landed. Tremors raced through the ground and shook a cascade of water from the interlaced branches that formed the canopy. The fat drops fell over everything.
“Waa-hoo!” Culpepper exulted.
In spite of the situation, Sage grinned at the success. The timetable for whatever Tholak and the Phrenorians had been planning was at least set back, if not derailed.
“Well done, Corporal.” Sage raised up enough to survey the clearing. The Phrenorians and Tholak’s men huddled in confusion. “The rest of you send these Sting-Tails running or bury them where they stand.”
Sage switched over to the frequency he shared with Murad. “Sir, with your permission, Jahup and I are going after Quass Leghef. Provided she’s still alive, I mean to bring her back that way.”
“Copy that, Master Sergeant,” Murad said. “Good luck. I’ll keep our soldiers on task here and see if we can’t come up with an exfil.”
“Thank you, sir.” Sage looked over to Jahup and switched to the comm channel between them.
The younger man’s body language radiated calm and readiness that probably no other soldier on the mission had. Jahup was in the jungle and fighting for his life. He was in his element.
“Me and you,” Sage said. “We’re going after your grandmother.”
“Copy that, Master Sergeant.”
“You stay on my six. Close. Don’t let anything get between us.”
“I won’t.”
“Nothing that isn’t us lives, Jahup. Do you understand? Everyone down there except your grandmother is an enemy, and we don’t have time for prisoners or mercy. No time for questions or guesses.”
“They won’t get any mercy from me,” Jahup said. “I didn’t come here to give it. Or expect it. Those who took her are going to die. All of them.”
Sage took a breath to center himself. “Then let’s do this.” Popping up, he sprayed a salvo of grenades at the locations he’d noted where the Phrenorians and Tholak’s mercenaries were grouped to drive them to cover. When the grenades detonated, he sprinted forward, taking advantage of all the confusion the falling trees and grenades had created.
A group of Makaum men taking cover behind a crawler spotted him and fired their weapons at him immediately. Bullets and beams ripped into the ground at Sage’s feet and were blunted by the armor.
Sage ducked to one side, fired a trio of gel-grenades at the area where the crawler’s solar batter array was located, and hunkered down behind one of the fallen trees. Projectiles ripped splinters from the tree trunk and lasers scorched the bark into flames. Streamers of smoke rose above the tree and got ripped apart in the rain.
The gel-grenades went off and were followed almost instantly by the solar batteries cooking off with sharp detonations. The roar of explosions blocked out all other noise in the clearing. Shrapnel from the vehicle ripped through the surrounding countryside with sharp pings.
Standing again, his assault rifle to his shoulder, Sage climbed over the tree high enough to settle the Roley onto the rough bark. He fired depleted uranium rounds into a solitary man running from the burning crawler. Flames clung to the man’s body despite the rain. When the bullets hit him, he fell into a large puddle, both he and the flames extinguished.
Nothing else around the crawler moved.
“Master Sergeant Sage,” a woman called over his comm.
Sage vaulted over the tall tree and dropped to the ground in a crouch. He kept going forward toward the cave and blasted suppressive fire and grenades to keep a group of Phrenorians pinned behind a stand of boulders near the cave entrance.
The Phrenorians concentrated their fire on the tree and pinned Sage in place. Splinters and bark ripped free of the trunk. Flaming chunks fell away from the tree.
“Kiwanuka?” Sage asked as he placed the voice.
“Roger that,” she said.
Sage ducked behind a tree with a trunk thick enough to offer him brief shelter while he searched for his opponents’ positions. He pumped ammo back into his assault rifle from the armor and peered around the tree. “You’re back from space?”
“I am,” Kiwanuka answered. “Colonel Halladay ordered us to help you out. I brought my team with me, as well as a complement of talented civilians.”
“What civilians?”
“Morlortai and his crew.”
Sage placed the name with difficulty as he spotted a man’s leg sticking out from behind a boulder. He squeezed off a burst of depleted uranium rounds and the leg came apart in a rush of blood and bone. When the man fell, Sage tapped two more rounds through the man’s head.
“After their ship got destroyed by the Phrenorians, we gave Morlortai and his crew a ride home on a dropship. Helping us is their way of paying back the favor.”
“Some favor,” Sage said dryly. “If it hadn’t been for them, you wouldn’t have been up there.”
“We made it back.”
“Yeah, but a lot of people didn’t.” Sage peered around the tree trunk and ducked back just before a grenade attached to the bark. The explosion of flames roasted the bark and set off warnings inside his suit. “Where is your dropship?”
“Crashed getting us here. The John Lee is going to need some skilled people to get it back online. We’re not going to get any help there.”
“Copy that,” Sage said. “Jahup and I are on a rescue mission to get Quass Leghef. She’s inside the cave with Tholak and some of his hired muscle, and maybe some of the Phrenorians.”
The tree shivered under the continued assault. Another explosion tore into the trunk.
“We’re stalled out here,” Sage said. “Can you clear the way?”
“I’ve got this, Master Sergeant,” Kiwanuka said coolly. “I didn’t survive a Phrenorian space attack just to get back here and watch you die. I’ve got the second-best sniper on Makaum with me.”
Sage grinned at that. He released the drones from his armor and the views instantly became another layer of the transparencies he was tracking on his faceshield. He sent them out to map the area. One of them got ensnared in a kifrik web that he didn’t see until it was too late. A kifrik slid along the wet strands and attacked the foreign thing trapped in its web.
The second drone zoomed along the terrain until Sage spotted Zhoh racing for the cave entrance. Before Sage could recover from his surprise at seeing his opponent there, the Phrenorian general blasted the drone with his assault rifle.
The view transparency from the drone blinked out of existence from Sage’s faceshield.
“Zhoh is here!” Sage roared.
He stood and took a step from behind the tree just as a particle beam cannon fired a blast at his position. The concussion knocked him from his feet and he spun across the muddy turf. His view of the battlefield flipped again and again as he rolled.
Zhoh fired blasts into the Phrenorians in front of the cave, knocked them out of his way, and he disappeared into the cave. The sight of Zhoh killing his own warriors confused Sage. He pushed his questions regarding that out of his mind as he reeled in his scattered senses. Phrenorians were the enemy. He intended to put his sights on as many of them as he could.
Sage hitched up against a copse of young trees and managed a sitting position. He still held the Roley. The assault rifle was covered in mud, no longer as clean and shiny, but he knew it was still lethal.
Four Phrenorian warriors shot at him from behin
d rocks and the trees Culpepper had blasted down and two of the burning crawlers. Bullets and blasts hammered Sage’s armor.
Warning! the near-AI said. Get to cover, Master Sergeant. The damage the armor is sustaining is reaching critical levels.
Only a few meters away, Jahup lay pinned down by enemy fire. Two more Phrenorians crept up on his position.
Sage pushed himself up, pulled the rifle to his shoulder, and put the sights over one of the Phrenorians only to watch the warrior’s cephalothorax burst in a spray of chitin and soft tissue. The Phrenorian fell even as another spun sideways when a heavy-caliber round smashed into him.
Trusting Kiwanuka’s skills, Sage pushed himself up and ran for the cave entrance. Without being told, Jahup followed at his heels.
SIXTY
The Caves of the Glass Dead
Rilormang
The Sulusku Highlands
28 Kilometers North of Makaum Sprawl
0855 Hours Zulu Time
Thunder echoed into the cavern from the jungle outside. Telilu jumped and cried out in fear. Her arms squeezed Leghef harder.
Tholak’s attention wavered for just a moment. His grip tightened on the knife he held as he glanced back over his shoulder.
Leghef was focused, drawing on all those old skills she’d been raised with that had kept her from getting killed taking meat out in the jungle. She stepped forward and threw her hands over Tholak’s blade. She slid the plastic restraining strap holding her wrists together as quickly as she could, hoping to sever it.
When she could slip the plastic binding no farther, when the strap pressed into Tholak’s forearm and the movement caused him to shift his attention back to her, Leghef pulled her hands back again and hoped the strap would part. The cold kiss of the blade against her left wrist brought a hot rush of blood down her hand.
But the strap parted and her hands were free. She didn’t try to run, didn’t try to flee, because she knew those things wouldn’t be possible with Tholak and Osler standing practically on top of her. Instead, she grabbed Tholak’s hand and twisted. For a moment, she thought her blood would prevent her grip from holding, then Tholak’s wrist turned, his hand opened, and he yelled in pain and warning.
