Dani pulled herself above the surface with a gasp. She had not expected the water to be over her head, but even when she had plunged in feet-first she had not touched bottom. She also was too heavy to float, being weighed down with water-logged clothing and boots, plus the rifle. The rifle was slung over her back so she could use both arms to swim, turning away from the shore to get away from the Buzzard-
Which suddenly rocked violently, lurched side to side. Then rolled into the river, looming on top of her. She kicked and flailed her arms frantically as the Buzzard crashed into the river. The wave it threw up was the only reason she was not trapped under it, and that time she did hit the river’s muddy bottom, getting a face full of sticky sludge. Not knowing which way was up in the roiling, cloudy water, she held her breath and tried to move away from the dark shape of the Buzzard, except there was darkness in every direction and-
Light. There was light, it had to be the surface. She swam for air, breaking the surface with a shuddering gasp-
And came face to face with the grikka.
Fu- was the only thought her mind could form.
It hadn’t worked. The beast was still alive. It would kill her, then go ashore to kill Fobish and Colter. She had failed, absolutely.
The grikka roared, showering her with a spray of filthy water. She screamed defiance, backpedaling with her legs as the beast lunged toward her. It was as awkward in water as she was in her waterlogged clothes and boots, the grikka’s rear legs sinking and slipping into soft mud on the river bottom. It lunged toward her, flopping in the water and sending up spray that blinded her. Knowing she could not swim fast enough to get away, she reached back for the rifle and poured a burst into the thing’s ugly face at point-blank range. Rounds ricocheted off the dense bony armor, flying upward, to the side and one round bounced downward to explode in the river. Dani screamed something that probably were not words, flinging the now-useless rifle at its head, which reared back. The mouth opened to roar at her, jagged yellow teeth reaching out-
The world exploded.
She was flung back and upward, tossed completely out of the water before crashing back down head-first. In shock, she gasped, sucking in a lungful of water. The wave continued to push her, tumbling and rolling until she smacked hard into the mud of the riverbank. Flinging out an arm to hug a tree root that projected into the water, she retched up water and anything else that was in her lungs and stomach. Waves sloshed back from one side of the river to the other, washing over her, the waves cresting lower as she regained her ability to breathe.
When she was able to push herself onto hands and knees, she looked down the river, where the corpse of the grikka bobbed against a rock. As she watched, blinking, her mind still stunned into stupidity, the current swung the grikka around the rock and it continued down the river, slowly sinking.
It was a long time before she could move in a coherent fashion. The world was almost silent, and she clapped her hands to test her hearing. The slap of her hands was muffled, but she could hear. Climbing the riverbank was slow and difficult, she slid back down the mud until she was able to hang onto tree roots and flop awkwardly on her belly. She staggered to her feet, walking carefully, watching where she placed each footstep. First, she checked on Fobish, who was again sleeping quietly, though the skin under the fur was paler than before.
Colter said something to her, and she pointed to one ear. “I can’t hear much,” she explained.
“I got one leg almost out from under this stupid tree,” he spoke loud and clear, gesturing toward his left leg, which was crusted with mud but exposed almost to the knee.
“Good,” she sat down heavily. After a moment, she turned to look at the sergeant. “You need help?” It seemed like a question she should ask.
“Uh,” Jesse had been thinking of asking her to help him, but seeing the glazed look in her eyes, he shook his head. “No. I got it. You rest, Ma’am.”
“That’s a,” she could hardly hear her own voice. “A good idea.”
Dani wakened when someone shook her gently. Embarrassed, she saw Colter kneeling beside her, with a canteen of water and a ration bar. “Eat this, and drink, Ma’am. You had a bad shock.”
She realized she could hear his words, though they were still muffled. “Those grenades blew up right near me. I’m lucky to be alive.”
They sat next to each other, taking sips of water and slowly munching the ration bars. “I was thinking, Ma’am,” Jesse said. “A predator like that needs a big territory to hunt in, there can’t be enough game ‘round here to support more than one of them. Unless there is another of those forest ranger drones nearby, all we have to do is sit here and wait for rescue. Maybe order a pizza when comms are restored,” he added with a grin.
“Pizza,” she looked at the bland ration bar. “That would be great.”
“Ah,” Jesse waved a hand. “Whenever they send hot A’s out to the field, they’re always cold by the time they get to us anyway. I’ll settle for just an evac.”
“I hope we get that,” she stared at her boots, her brain still rattled. “And I hope you’re right about there not being another grikka around here.” She turned to look at him. “Because the Kristang hunt grikkas for sport, and hunting is no fun if the quarry is too scattered.”
Jesse shrugged. “Grikkas still need to eat. This forest can’t support a population of prey animals large enough to support more than one grikka,” he declared with confidence.
“True,” she bit off a piece of ration bar and chewed it slowly. “Except, grikkas are a precious resource to the Kristang. They wouldn’t leave their food supply to chance. I’ll bet they feed the grikkas, to enable a denser population.”
“Shit,” Jesse should have thought of that himself. “Then we got another problem.”
“What’s that?”
“With a war on, the Kristang might not be able to feed their pets. That means the grikkas will be hungry, and looking for something else to eat.”
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
“Anything?” Shauna whispered, carefully pushing aside the tall grass to see in front of them.
“I do not see anything that could be a threat,” Nert whispered back, looking through the scope of his rifle as he slowly swept it all around them.
As they walked west, the forest had become mostly grasslands, with isolated clusters of trees, or long lines of native trees that Shauna thought had been planted long ago as windbreaks when the area was used for agriculture. Rectangular ponds in some of the meadows confirmed that the area had been planted for crops, now native grasses and shrubs covered the ground. They had not seen anyone, neither enemy or friendlies, since they had started walking three days ago. The communications were still being jammed most of the time, occasionally a partly-garbled text message came through from Legion headquarters, but those transmissions provided only general information and ordered scattered units in the field to join up with the nearest other friendly force. If Shauna had been with the Mavericks, she would have access to jamming-resistant comm gear, but those devices were too large for an individual soldier to carry, and her zPhone wasn’t capable of sending a signal through the interference. Her team may think she was dead. Jesse may think she was dead.
Jesse could be dead.
For all she knew, the entire Mavericks team had been killed. Or they were all alive and out searching for her, she simply did not know. She didn’t know anything, and that was intensely frustrating.
Nert took his eye away from the scope and sniffed the air, his nose twitching. “We are getting closer to the impact zone,” he announced.
Shauna wrinkled her own nose. She didn’t need a Ruhar-level sense of smell to know they were approaching where the railgun darts had struck, the acrid odor of burnt whatever had been growing stronger all that day. Perhaps it was a mistake to walk toward the impact zone, from the mushroom cloud, the smell and the flakes of charred vegetation that drifted in the air and dotted the grasslands, whatever had been on the ground i
n that area wasn’t there now. Any Legion soldiers who survived would have no reason to remain in the area. The good news was that there was also no reason for any Kristang to go into the blast zone, whatever their ships wanted to hit had been utterly destroyed. “Head out, we’ll go along this treeline to where it intersects that grove of trees, then northwest.”
“Not straight west?” Nert stood partway up, sweeping the area again with the scope of his rifle, then followed Shauna, taking position just behind her right shoulder.
“No,” she shook her head, speaking quietly. “I’m pretty sure now the target was the colony contractor’s supply dump, not the Legion logistics base. We dispersed our gear right after landing, the base was only for transport assets. Colonel Perkins kept warning Legion HQ to make that dumbass contractor move his crap out of the drop zone, but they left it in a big pile. That made a juicy target for the lizards. That asshole was asking for trouble.”
Nert felt he needed to defend a fellow Ruhar against charges of willful stupidity. “Perhaps the contractor thought that if the Legion could not,” his cheeks reddened under the fuzz of fur. “If we could not maintain control over this planet, the supplies to support a Ruhar colony would not be needed?” He asked with a shrug.
“It was still a stupid jackass thing to do. Or not do, not moving all that equipment away from the landing zone. All those supplies, transported across the stars and down to the surface, then just left in three big mountains of crates? I know the Legion offered, multiple times, to help disperse that gear.” She also knew that Commissioner Useless had vetoed the idea of using Legion ground and air transport assets to move civilian equipment, until he felt comfortable that the Legion’s own logistics needs were taken care of. Shauna had gotten the impression the asshole contractor was concerned that Legion soldiers would steal the gear, as if humans or Verds wanted any of that crap. Ultimately, whether to disperse the supply dumps was a judgment call, and in Shauna’s opinion, it had been decided the wrong way. If the Kristang had hit one of the three massive supply dumps, she was sure they had hit the other two. And with the colony support supplies destroyed, it might not matter if the Legion could defeat the Kristang uprising and once more establish firm control over the planet. If the Ruhar task force could not get clear superiority in the space around Fresno, the Legion could simply be starved out. And the Ruhar federal government might decide they had lost too much precious equipment in the uprising, and declare the Legion experiment a failure.
Shit. The battle for Fresno might already be over, regardless whether the Legion retook control on the ground. What the hell was she risking her life for?
For the other grunts stuck on this miserable rock, she answered her own question.
An hour later, she and Nert were keeping low, sprinting across a field of shoulder-high grasses that looked like overgrown wheat gone to seed, when she stubbed a toe on something and sprawled flat on her face. “Oof,” she grunted, wincing in pain from a hot stinging cut to her left cheek.
Nert spun back toward her with alarm, kneeling down and whispering “Are you injured, Sergeant Jarrett?”
“No, I’m fine,” she pushed herself to her knees, noting that while the alien cadet had come back for her, he had not taken his focus away from sweeping the area with the scope of the rifle. Nert’s index finger was properly placed above and alongside the trigger, showing good discipline. When he slowly panned the rifle above her to sweep in her direction, he raised the muzzle slightly, and she could see the rifle’s safety was set to its ‘Ready’ mode. In its ‘Full safe’ mode, the rifle could not be fired. The ‘Ready’ mode was a neat feature that allowed the operator to fire the rifle with a hard trigger pull, but the rifle would not fire accidently. In training, Shauna had found that not having to flick a safety off saved a precious half-second, time that was especially valuable to slow-reacting humans. “I just,” she touched her cheek and her hand came away red with blood, “cut myself.”
“You should apply a bandage,” Nert advised with concern, one hand reaching for the first-aid kit on his belt.
“When we get to the treeline, sure,” Shauna shook her head, irritated at herself for clumsiness. “What the hell did I-” At her feet was a jagged piece of something, one edge wet with her blood. That is what cut her, it was not what she had tripped over. She picked up the jagged object, and felt behind her in the tall grass, fingers seeking for the offending object. “Got it,” she whispered as she picked up a soot-coated piece of machinery. “Move, Cadet.”
When they reached the comparative safety of the treeline, Nert slung the rifle so he could open his first-aid kit. Shauna waved him away. “You keep a look out,” she ordered.
“But,” he protested, “that cut could leave a scar if is not treated with-”
“So I’ll have a scar,” she opened her own medical kit. “Chicks dig scars, right?” She flashed a humorless wink at the boy.
“Oh,” Nert’s face fell. “I did not know you liked-”
“Nert, that was a joke,” she frowned, and the expression stretched the cut open so fresh blood trickled down her cheek. The Ruhar medical kit included smart bandages, smooth and slimy pads that were saturated with nanomachines. Shauna took out a rolled-up bandage no larger than a half-stick of gum and pressed it to her cheek, the bandage unfurled and spread itself out to cover the injured areas. The tiny computer in the kit communicated with the machines, taking a sample of her blood immediately after she slapped the patch over the wound. The computer determined she was of the species that designated themselves ‘human’, and instructed the nanomachines how to properly assess and treat what was really a minor injury. So unimportant was the injury, compared to battlefield wounds the kit was designed to treat, that Shauna felt part of the bandage separate and crawl across her cheek like an inchworm. It felt creepy and she understood the bandage was telling her that the separated portion was not needed, so she plucked it off her skin and carefully placed it back in the first-aid kit. She, or someone else, might need all the nanomachines in that kit.
“Looks good,” Nert assured her with a glance.
“Thanks,” she wiped her cheek and neck with the back of one hand, pouring water from her canteen down her cheek to wash away the remaining blood. “What the hell was this doing in a field?”
Nert took his focus away from the rifle’s scope, confident there was no danger in the area he could see. “Old farming equipment?” he guessed.
“Nope,” Shauna held up the jagged piece to sunlight shining through a gap in the tree cover. Whatever the thing was, it consisted partly of metal, the jagged edge was shiny and twisted. Most of it had a fine coating of gritty gray soot. She ran a finger lightly along the jagged edge, a motion that rewarded her with a painful sliver. “Ow,” she sucked on her finger. “This thing is sharp. I think,” she turned it over in her hand, then dropped it to her lap and checked their position on her zPhone. “This might be debris from the railgun strike,” she speculated.
Nert’s eyebrows flew up in surprise. “This far away?”
“Here,” she tossed the jagged piece and Nert caught it. “It’s light enough to fly far. Those impactors can deliver the energy of a tactical nuke,” she reminded the cadet.
Nert rose to one knee, looking in the direction of the blasts they had witnessed. The ground was covered with nasty gray soot that irritated his nose, he knew that was fallout from the explosions. Kristang railgun darts were usually inert tungsten, as the lizards lacked the technology to make the exotic materials used by Ruhar railguns. He did not have to worry about radiation poisoning, yet the force of the explosions had him shaken. If the blast had thrown the piece of metallic composite to the field they just crossed, were they too close to the impact area? “Should we-”
“Son of a bitch,” Shauna breathed. Then, “Son of a bitch!”
“What?” Nert quickly raised the rifle scope back to his eye, searching for threats.
“Look. Look carefully,” she instructed, handing the se
cond chunk of debris to the cadet.
Nert slung the rifle again, curious what the human sergeant thought was so important. Her exclamation could be picked up by acoustic sensors more than a kilometer away, a dismaying breach of battlefield discipline. Assuming Shauna had a good reason for her emotional outburst, he examined the chunk of composite carefully. Like the piece that had cut Shauna’s cheek, the item she tripped over was scorched and covered with soot from the blasts that had thrown it high and far through the air. He turned the piece over three times, peering closely at it and not seeing anything unusual. “Sergeant Jarrett, I am sorry. I do not see anything-”
“Yeah, exactly. What don’t you see?”
Nert looked at the chunk of foam-metal composite again. The sergeant’s words implied the piece was missing something that should be there. Like the other item, it was bent and twisted, the edges showed it had been torn away from something in the blast.
Torn away.
Nert looked up to meet Shauna’s awaiting and angry gaze. “Son of a bitch,” the cadet agreed.
“Hold on,” Dave whispered. To reduce risk of detection, they had disabled the laserlink communications system of their helmets. The lasers were a low-powered line-of-sight system that used nanosecond bursts to transmit messages and were very difficult to detect. However, the laser light was possible to detect, and with the two of them walking side by side, there was no need for communication technology other than simple speech. The helmet Jates wore had been damaged anyway, and its sensors were glitching in and out so much they were useless. “I think something’s wrong with my bucket.” He pulled the helmet off and tapped a few buttons on the display inside the back.
“Why do you call it a ‘bucket’?” Jates asked. Without access to the planetary network, they had to rely on the translation ability stuffed into their zPhone, which was limited because of all the other functions those phones were supposed to provide.
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