by Rick Partlow
Clouds of dust billowed around the ancient vehicle, obscuring the primary star—I had to remind myself not to call it the Sun. It felt weird being out in the day, but everyone had assured me we would have stood out even more at night, when the ground cooled and our hot engines lit up the enemy’s thermal sensors. They’d also assured me the Tahni didn’t care about the dirt farmers going about their business, since they were seizing about three quarters of their output to feed the hostages in the city.
“If anything happens to you, the whole thing is…” Dak squinted at me. “What was that term you used, again?”
“FUBAR,” I supplied, bouncing off his shoulder in the back seat of the cab. It was like ramming into an oak tree. “Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.”
Another Marine term I’d only learned in the last few months, but it had come in handy. Along with goat-rope, SNAFU and candy-ass, among others. The military had no end of terms to describe how badly the military sucked.
“Yeah, that,” Dak agreed. “You’re the only one who can operate that damned suit. You should be back at the trailers with Maria.” He sneered. “Making believe the Goddamned storage sheds are soundproof.”
I tried hard to swallow the frog in my throat and it did its best to choke me on the way down. Dak stared hard enough to burn through BiPhase Carbide, and I thought I might not have to worry about the Tahni killing me, but he couldn’t keep the expression up and it cracked into a grin.
“Don’t worry about it, kid,” he assured me. “Maria is a grown woman. Normally, I’d be worried about you being too young for her, but I get the sense you’ve seen too much in this life to be too young for anything.” He shrugged. “But you should still be back where it’s safe.”
“There’s nowhere on this planet that’s safe,” I said earnestly. If I was being honest with myself, I was glad Maria had been too busy planning for the assault to come along. “But you’re going to need me for the transmission. They’re not going to just take your word for it that you have a functional Vigilante and someone qualified to operate it. I’ll need to include my biometric data in the transmission. Otherwise, they’ll just go right ahead and launch those nukes and everything we do down here won’t mean a damned thing.”
“And you know so much about how the Fleet brass makes its decisions from your vast experience as a corporal?”
“I don’t remember anyone saying you shouldn’t be listening to a corporal when you were all asking me what to do about the Fleet nuking you,” I reminded him.
“Point,” he acknowledged. “But if you get yourself killed, I’m going to make sure there’s a memorial to how damned stupid you were.”
“If you two are ready to stop arguing like an old married couple,” Charlie said, leaning back over the front seat to yell to us, “we’re coming up on the Mendelssohn place.”
I tried to catch a look through the windshield at the road ahead but couldn’t see much more than dust and a few green patches among the red and brown.
“Are these Mendelssohns going to mind us being out here?” I wondered.
“They’re dead,” Dak declared, his voice flat. “Ian and his son made the mistake of thinking they could take on the Tahni landing force with hunting rifles and a few machine guns.”
“Isn’t that what we’re doing?” Charlie asked, not turning around this time. I was glad of it. Having a human driver was nerve-wracking, and every time he looked away from the road, I expected the truck to hit a ditch and flip over.
“Just drive, Charlie,” Dak echoed my unspoken sentiment.
The wreckage of the house was old, dating back to the invasion, the charred and blackened remains fading now, washed by rain and baked under the system primary until it almost seemed a natural formation.
“Lot of those around outside the city,” Dak commented, but didn’t elaborate. I wondered if the house he’d shared with Maria’s family had been one of them.
The truck rumbled past the ruins and on by the silent memorials of storage sheds, still standing but long neglected, down nearly another kilometer before we reached the silo. It was tall and cylindrical and I had never seen its like before.
“What the hell is that for?”
“Grain storage,” Dak said, giving me a curious glance, as if anyone should know that.
“Grains? You mean like corn?” Momma had grown corn in her garden, though not much of it. Mostly, we’d traded with neighbors for it.
“Corn, wheat, oats, barley,” he listed off. “What, you don’t have those on Earth anymore?”
“Except for corn, I don’t even know what the rest are,” I admitted. “And I only had corn as a little boy. We just had soy and spirulina in Trans-Angeles.” I shrugged. “And the occasional rat. At least in the Underground. I imagine the Corporate Council execs up in the towers got to eat whatever they wanted.”
“Damn. That’s no way to live.” The old man shuddered slightly, as if the thought horrified him.
“That’s the way ninety percent of the people on Earth live. Probably six billion people, between all the megacities.”
“Like fucking bees in a hive,” Charlie commented, pulling the truck up beside the silo, braking hard enough to throw me against my harness.
“Worse,” Dak argued, seemingly unaffected by the rough stop. “At least the bees get to go out in the fresh air before they die.”
“I’ll probably never see it again,” I mused, stepping out of the truck. “Whether I live through this war or not.”
“Don’t tell me you miss it!” Dak said, and I snorted a laugh at the instinctive distaste in his words.
“I don’t know. It’s the only home I’ve had for most of my life.” Which was short, compared to his, but it was all I had to go on.
The silo seemed as dilapidated and neglected as any of the other buildings on the property, except for the thick, solid-looking padlock securing the broad, sheet-metal doors. Charlie touched a keycard to it and it popped open with the snap of an electromagnet de-powering. The hinges shrieked in protest at the man’s attempt to pull the doors open, finally yielding after an honorable struggle, allowing light into the cavernous interior of the grain storage building.
It might have once held corn or one of those other things Dak had been ticking off, but right now, the only thing it contained was a skeletal contraption about two meters tall, folded in on itself and affixed to a wheeled base. If I hadn’t already known it was a transmission antenna, I would have had no clue.
“Where did you guys get this thing?” I wondered. “You made it sound like Fleet Intelligence only sent down a drop pod barely big enough to hold your communications gear.”
“They did. But they had the key components for this thing in there, and they gave us the instructions on how to fabricate the rest from raw materials we had laying around.” Dak went down to a knee in front of the machine and unfolded a keypad, exposing a small, 2D screen beneath it. “Tell me what we need to say, since you’re so damned indispensable, boy.”
Luckily, I’d been thinking about it. He hit the record button and nodded to me.
“Message to Commander, Commonwealth Expeditionary Force,” I said, hoping I sounded official and not just overly dramatic. “Aware of your plan to deploy fusion missiles against the Tahni base. We have a Marine drop-trooper with a functioning Vigilante battlesuit available and plan to utilize him in conjunction with local militia forces to take out the Tahni InStell transmission antenna while you bombard their deflectors with proton cannon fire. His biometric signature will be attached to this transmission.”
I sucked in a breath. This was the hard part.
“We are asking you to hold off on missile launch until 2330 local time to give us the chance to take down the deflectors. If we fail in our mission, we understand you will have to follow up with the nuclear strike. We are attempting to evacuate as many colonists as possible from the city, but clearing them out entirely won’t be possible given the Tahni presence. This is a chance to preserve as
many innocent lives as possible.”
Dak hit pause, and I thought I saw respect in his eyes.
“Not bad, kid.” He motioned me over. “Now show the screen your face and handprint and we’ll haul this outside and set up for the transmission.”
“How long of a timer can we put it on?” I wondered, remembering what Maria had said about the Tahni homing in on the thing when it began transmitting.
“We could do an indefinite timer,” he said with a shrug. “But the Fleet ship is only going to be in position to receive the signal for another hour, so help me get this thing unfolded and arranged outside so we can get the hell out of here.”
“Dak!” Charlie slammed through the door, breathless, his face pale. “There’s a vehicle coming up the old access road from town! It’s still a good klick away, but I think it’s a Tahni patrol!”
“Shit.” Dak’s eyes clouded over in concentration and I almost thought I could make out the gears turning in his head. He unslung his rifle and shoved it at me, followed it up with the belt of magazine pouches he’d worn buckled at his waist.
“What the hell am I gonna do with this?” I demanded, holding the rifle awkwardly. It wasn’t the first time I’d handled a gun, but this thing was a qualitative difference from the military Gauss rifle I’d qualified on in Basic.
“You two stay in here. I’m gonna close the door and lock it, and I want you both to be quiet and not move an inch until I come back.”
“How the hell are you going to face down a Tahni patrol?” Charlie demanded. “You think you can talk your way out of this?”
“I think I have a better chance doing that than we have of standing them off with an Alamo in a fucking grain silo.”
He backed out the door, not waiting for any more arguments, and the doors swung shut with a grim finality, meeting at the center with the solid thump of a coffin lid. Metal scraped metal and I knew he was putting the lock in place. The interior of the silo was plunged into darkness and shadow and I became instantly aware of every rustle of dried grain beneath the soles of my boots.
“Fuck this,” I murmured.
I buckled the ammo belt around me, slung the rifle and scanned around for the source of the stray beams of light leaking in from somewhere above us. Gaps in the sheet metal glowed in the afternoon glare, just narrow fissures here and there…except for the unmistakable square of a door positioned at the front, along a service catwalk. I followed the scaffolding around to a rickety-looking wood and metal ladder and I tried not to make too much noise as I climbed up it.
“What the hell are you doing?” Charlie asked. He had his handgun out but didn’t seem to know where to point it or what to do with it.
“He’s going to need cover if this doesn’t work,” I hissed an explanation. “Shut up and get up here with me.”
“This is a bad fucking idea,” he insisted, absurdly tip-toeing across the grit-strewn floor, stifling a yell into a barely-audible squeak as something I couldn’t identify ran across his foot.
Rat, probably. Another accidental tourist, like me.
The scaffolding creaked under my weight and I winced, hoping it couldn’t be heard from outside. I held my breath for a second and listened. The hum of the Tahni engines was eerie in its unfamiliarity. Someone had told me they used hydrogen-burning vehicles. We had them some places, or at least I’d been told we did, but the military didn’t use them. Why bother when we had isotope reactors that would run for years without servicing?
Polymer tires scuffled and thumped over the dirt road, scritching and scratching their way to a stop. I edged closer to the small doorway, idly wondering what it was for. Maybe to let cargo trucks dump grain into the silo from the top? I looked for a latch and finally found something crude and metal and nearly rusted shut. A gap of about a centimeter marked the boundary of the hatch and I squinted through it, barely making out the enemy vehicle.
It was wedge-shaped, utilitarian and ugly like nearly everything Tahni I’d seen, open-topped with a crew-served KE gun swinging back and forth at the guiding touch of an armored Shock Trooper. Dak approached slowly, hands held out by his sides, fingers spread. I kept my eyes on him as I worked at the door latch, firm but patient, trying to break it loose without slamming it against its stop and giving us away.
There were four of the Tahni, half of one of their squads, and they clambered out of the vehicle’s open sides, their weapons scanning in every direction, searching for threats. Metal crunched under their boots and the servos at the joints of their powered exoskeletons hummed and whirred quietly, supporting their extra armor and heavier weapons. They didn’t have battlesuits, and I wondered if there were any High Guard on the world at all.
“Hello!” Dak said loudly. “What can I do for you gentlemen?”
I used his voice as cover and put a little more force into the latch. It broke loose with a gentle rasp and I managed to keep it from slamming into the metal, letting my knuckles take the brunt instead, barely restraining myself from crying out from the impact. I held up my hand and sucked at the blood welling up from my knuckles.
“What are you doing here, Earther?”
The voice was harsh and yet also somehow soulful and rhythmic, like a chant, coming out of the speakers on the exterior of the Tahni’s helmet. It was eerie hearing the alien try to speak English, a haunting unfamiliarity, beyond another human trying to speak a different language and more like a chimpanzee trying to speak.
“Still got to feed the family,” he said. His voice was plaintive, attempting to sound a bit indignant at being questioned, though I wasn’t sure the Tahni would be able to detect the emotions in his tone. “I need to repair the feed funnel for the silo.”
“Where is your authorization?” The sing-song chant was the same cadence as before, rote terms learned to deal with us without any real understanding.
I pushed the hatch open a few more centimeters, just enough for me to squeeze the barrel of the hunting rifle through. The scope was simple and intuitive, nothing more complicated than the manual sights of the Gauss rifles we’d trained with, just a matter of putting my eye to it then settling it on the helmet of one of the Tahni. It focused automatically, following the movements of my retina, and the six-centimeter wide visor swam into stark clarity. Something flickered behind the polarized polymer, maybe the alien’s eyes glancing around. My thumb found the clearly labelled safety and flicked it off.
“I wasn’t given any special authorization,” Dak said. “I thought you guys needed the output from our farms to feed the population of the city.”
“You are not allowed away from your residence without authorization.” The Tahni Shock-trooper raised his KE gun to cover the older man. “You will be taken into custody.”
The same tone, the same inflection, but to my ears, it was the handing down of a sentence by a judge, condemning us all to death.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit.
“Search me,” Dak invited. “Search my truck. I’m only here to repair a grain silo so we can all eat. You want us all to be able to eat, don’t you?”
The Tahni was having none of it. He took long, loping steps towards Dak, one hand maintaining cover with his KE gun, the other reaching out to grab at the human’s shoulder. I made a decision. I’m not sure when the flip had switched, and I knew I’d probably be getting us all killed, but I couldn’t let them haul Dak away. Not only would he most likely wind up dead, but I was fairly certain the whole attack plan would fall apart without him.
I was no sniper, nor was I Force Recon, but the range was only fifteen or twenty meters. There was no way I could miss.
Famous last words.
“Dak, get down!”
I pulled the trigger.
23
The rifle pummeled my shoulder, the stock thumping against my cheek like a short jab from an opponent I’d let in under my guard and I cursed in surprise and dull pain. But the bullet was gone and my inexperience hadn’t been enough to throw off its trajectory. Time
slowed with the decision to pull the trigger, tachypsychia gripping my thoughts in its adrenaline-soaked claws, and I thought maybe I would get to see a Tahni face live and close up, but when the slug punched through the thick, polymer faceplate, everything behind it splashed back in a spray of red and the legendary too-human face was erased, splintered and torn, before I even caught a glimpse.
The shot had been a crack of summer thunder and it echoed off the sheet metal silo and rolled across the rolling fields of untended grain. Before its echo had quite reached the closest rows of wheat, time slipped back into regular motion, and the Tahni moved with it. I had seconds. Their armor would tell them where the shot had come from by analyzing the sonic waves and projecting the trajectory on their equivalent of an HUD, the same way ours did in the Vigilantes. Their reaction would be slower because the Shock-troop exoskeletons weren’t hooked up via an interface link to their brains, so I had seconds. Just long enough for one more shot.
Picking the next target was instinctive, deducible only in hindsight, long after my subconscious had made the decision. There were three Tahni remaining, one standing to the left of the vehicle, blocked off from Dak by the bulk of the ground-car and the corpse of the team leader, still propped upright by the locked joints of his exoskeleton. The second was behind the car, probably not even understanding what had happened yet, while the third was still behind the controls of the gun mount. He was the biggest threat, in a position to take me and Dak out, and firing the biggest gun.
The scope seemed to take forever to focus on his helmet visor, the targeting reticle swimming into view with glacial slowness, but I forced myself to hold my finger off the trigger until the red ring solidified across the tinted polymer. I heard the report this time, a pressure wave hitting me in the sinuses and the chest and blasting through my ears with a painful whistle.
The Tahni behind the KE turret must have been off-balance, because the powered joints of the exoskeleton didn’t keep him standing. He pitched backwards off the rear of the vehicle, somersaulting head over heels into the dirt, and then I moved.
