She came over from her seat to touch me on the shoulder. “You are not alone, my human friend.”
I had to shrug away her alien touch before she got the message – I hope – that she was not truly my friend. It had been my nerves talking.
Not for the first time, I downed a mouthful of whiskey and considered in considerable detail how much better my life would have been if it hadn’t included aliens.
— CHAPTER 13 —
Obstinate, bloody-minded, awkward frakker, a head like a Hardit and a stench to match: these are just a few of the ways people have described my tendency to do my own thing. They’re not wrong, but I had lived my life under military discipline since my earliest days as a crècheling, and the call of doing things by the book was more ingrained in me than you probably imagine.
In this case, the ‘book’ told me to report suspicious activity to my reserve unit. And in case you thought I’d become a model citizen overnight, I was hoping my reservist comrades could supply some extra firepower for when Volk’s gang returned.
Leaving Silky in charge back at the farm, having unlocked my SA-70 rifle for her use, I drove over to Dulnthorpe and reported in to the CDF base. There was a lot of activity going on, but no one seemed willing to direct any of it toward Sijambo Farm. Even my friend, Sergeant Rao, tried to evade my calls to help, although at least he had the grace to be embarrassed enough to call in the captain so that my CO could tell me to piss off to my face.
“Request denied, Sergeant Joshua. My unit does not perform house calls, especially 30 miles out from base in the rear end of beyond. You know that.”
I bit my lip, because my first reply to my CO would have earned me a world of trouble that I had no time for. I calmed down and went for the tactful approach instead. “What do you frakking mean you don’t do frakking house calls, you gutless lizards? It’s the frakking Civilian Defense Force, isn’t it? Well, I’m a civilian, I need defending, and you’ve got the force to do so. What part of Civilian Defense Force don’t you understand? What, did the bad guys pick an inconvenient time for you? Are you going to be too busy washing your hair that day?”
Even though I’d been so diplomatic, the Jotun officer – who did indeed have a particularly furry hide – bared her fangs.
Jotuns evolved as predators. When my distant ancestors wanted meat, they chased mammoths and other huge animals off cliffs. Captain Elhaym’s ancestors did the same, when they were in a hurry. And when they weren’t, they would stalk their mega fauna and kill them with teeth and claws. I’ve seen a Jotun officer bite the head off a human subordinate. Literally.
But I’ve seen far worse things than Jotuns fangs. She didn’t intimidate me, and I knew just how to make her clamp those jaws. “They aren’t simply a gang out for protection money,” I said, playing my trump card, “in fact they aren’t after money at all.”
That got the Sergeant’s attention, but the CO just flicked her ears in irritation. “This is a matter for the police, Sergeant Joshua. I know it says Civilian Defense Force above the front gate, but that is just a name the Army uses in peacetime. You’re dealing with criminals. You need the police.”
“If I caught someone being mildly abusive in a public place, then I would go straight to the police,” I answered. “This is way out of their league, and you know it, Captain Elhaym.”
The way the CO’s ears drooped told me she agreed. But wasn’t going to help anyway. The problem with police was that until the Legion arrived on the scene, there had been no tradition of civilian authority in this corner of the galaxy. These kind of institutions took decades to bed in, and I had between now and Wednesday night.
The officer opened the palms of all four hands, as conciliatory a gesture as you’ll ever get out of a Jotun “I’m sorry, Sergeant. I can ignore your insubordinate tone, and I can let you take refuge in the base here for a while if things are too hot out on your farm, but we cannot fight your battle for you. I’m afraid you made that choice for us when you decided to live as a hermit.”
“Understood, sir,” I said. And I did understand. I’ve served as a soldier for over three centuries, and the first time I asked for help, the military left me to rot.
They’ve offered shelter, Efia reminded me.
I considered the captain’s offer of sanctuary for almost a second. I would last about a week before I would begin to be haunted by the ghosts of those with whom I had once shared barracks. Another week and I would be classified as insane and potentially dangerous, and permanently reassigned to a pharmaceutical purgatory. Plus, my alien deserter would have to find some other poor sucker to latch onto, and letting her loose on the world would be a serious failing in my civic responsibilities.
None of the digital shades in my spine tried to persuade me otherwise. Not even Efia.
It was down to Silky and me alone to stand up to Volk. I couldn’t say I liked the annoying white sea slug, but she had stood by me, and that counted for a lot in my book. I nodded approvingly as I thought of her continued loyalty, but then stopped and scowled when an ugly thought slapped me around the chops.
Who had I been kidding? It was true! My best friend in the entire galaxy was a frakking alien!
— CHAPTER 14 —
Volk came to the farm on Thursday, just after breakfast time. I appreciated that about him. If you’re going to indulge in some hot work, then get it done first thing and the rest of the day is yours.
As before, his little convoy came along the road from the north, stopping once more just outside my security perimeter.
That, at least, was the showy part of their operation that I was meant to see, the bit where this Volk character stopped by to make some fresh threats.
In fact, he showed up late to the party. Events had been unfurling since just after midnight.
Two things were different this time. Although I didn’t have the capability of a full Marine company – with a recon squad and sensor drones to deploy over dozens of cubic miles, I did have spiders. These crawling sensor robots, which looked more scorpion-like than their name suggested, had been scurrying around for days in search of anything I programmed them to think of as a threat.
I couldn’t afford many, and I’d gambled by placing most of my spiders on the hills to the east. Three hours before the dawn, their tiny robot minds came to life with wild excitement when the enemy’s artillery battery deployed on the slope of the hill facing Sijambo. The battery’s three guns were a model I knew well, having faced them on both sides of the war. Grasshoppers, they were usually called, on account of their ability to rapidly shift position using their gravitic motors. An experienced gun crew could fire, shift their firing position over 200 meters (with the gunners clinging onto the gun platform for dear life), re-secure the gun platform and fire again – all within a minute, although my gunner friends tell me that such haste would be their equivalent of spray and pray. The Grasshoppers gave me a warm feeling inside when the spiders spotted them because it meant the bad guys took me seriously enough to worry about counter-battery fire.
And it was just as well that I found their presence warming, because the other thing different this time was that I was out patrolling in the hills with my tentacled alien companion. And I was freezing my nuts off thanks to a failure in my clothing’s temperature control.
The final hours before dawn were spent playing cat and mouse – on tiptoes, so as not to wake respectable folks in their beds down below in the farmhouse. Which was quite ironic when you consider that there was no one asleep in their beds for twenty miles, because everyone was out here creeping around these craggy hills.
Despite the rocky cladding of the hillside, which seemed to radiate cold, we didn’t stay chilled for long, because our sneaking about involved lugging my GX-cannon and its power and ammo on our backs. Usually when I’m doing this kind of thing, I’m in an ACE battlesuit with powered muscular amplifiers and a stealth capability that, as far as I know at my pay grade, was the one piece of White Knight kit that the Hu
man Legion techs had never managed to reverse engineer.
That the stealth capabilities were delivered by indecipherable black boxes didn’t matter this morning. We didn’t have ACE battlesuits.
What we did have were stealth cloaks, which basically do the same thing as a battlesuit in stealth mode – in the same way that my pickup truck with sacks of manure in the back does the same kind of thing as Holy Retribution, the Legion Navy’s flagship, when it carries two full Marine divisions, complete with their armor, air, and logistical components.
Still, the cloaks made a difference, and we were cautious. It helped, too, that the bad guys were looking the wrong way. We weren’t spotted, but we were exhausted by our endeavors, and if I had a tailor, they would be royally annoyed at the rips I’d torn in my clothes.
As quiet as the void, we hardened our position as dawn approached by building a low wall from the plentiful rocks strewn around. Then – as I’ve experienced so many times before – we fell into the routine of watchful waiting before the fun and games kicked off.
The gun crews waited too, though without so much of the watching. Half of them dozed to get some rest while the others kept alert, though not enough to see us. I was amazed when one of them lit up a cigarette before having her ear bitten off by a squat Tallerman, whom I took to be the battery commander. Smoking can be seriously bad for your health, especially when you’re trying to avoid the attention of a crazy ex-soldier armed with some big guns, and IR targeting systems.
Dawn finally broke, and half an hour later my heart swelled with pride when curtains were drawn down in the farmhouse, toilets flushed, and (I was especially pleased with this part) a shower started up in the bathroom. As part of the decoy system I’d rigged up, a recorded argument started up in the lounge in which I told Silky precisely what I thought of her stinking alien presence. A proper Force Recon Team would realize the goings-on in the farmhouse were fake, but this mob of buffoons just chuckled to themselves when the spotter, who was training her sensor gear on the farmhouse, reported hearing me going about my morning essentials apparently oblivious to their presence.
Talking of mobs, the trucks rolled up to the farm an hour later. Secure in their craggy hillside hideaway, the gunners readied their pieces to fire at us.
Silky and I did the same to them.
Down below that the farm, Volk was growing angry, twitching visibly, as well he might. That’s the problem with trying to face down an ex-soldier – if your victim doesn’t capitulate then your face could soon be decorated with a new hole between your eyes. I had him rattled.
Suddenly, the Tallerman battery commander tilted his head in the tell-tale sign of listening to radio comms before relaying the command: “Two rounds into the fields. Fire!”
The command was still on the Tallerman’s lips when we threw off the stealth gear and opened fire ourselves.
Thanks to detailed mapping of the hills, which meant that we hadn’t entirely been crawling about in the dark last night, we had set up the cannon on a natural ledge looking down over two of the artillery positions.
Silky fired a rapid succession of grenades from the launcher beneath my carbine. That gun had been my companion for a lot longer than she had, and I didn’t like her touching the weapon, but the feed I could see from my spider eyes showed she did a good job of landing her volley right into the middle of the gun crew. Two EMP-enriched flash bangs were followed by two grenades that released thick clouds of gas of the kind that is normally non-lethal, but leaves you wishing you were dead when it starts tearing at your eyes with its rusty talons, and makes you retch so violently it feels like you’re coughing up your spleen.
Meanwhile, I raked the other two gun positions with the GX-cannon.
In case you thought that the ‘GX’ in GX-cannon was only there to make it sound more impressive to young children, the ‘X’ comes from its ability to fire X-ray rounds, and we’ll come to the ‘G’ presently.
X-ray rounds are tricky – a crapshoot to be honest – but so deadly when effective that they can never be written off as useless. Having marked the artillery pieces as ‘objects of interest’ during the night (i.e. things to blow up) the explosive plasma in the cannon shells exploded once they were in close proximity to the target, and converted the explosion’s energy into an X-ray laser that played over the target for a fraction of a second before burning out.
X-rays have an annoying reluctance to pass through things without interacting – an ability that is a good thing when a field surgeon is wanting a look at your shattered bones before clamping you back together. This reluctance to tangle is not so useful when you’re trying to kill people, but electronics and wetware control systems are extremely vulnerable, even when hardened.
Consequently, although the gunners experienced something akin to a trip to the bone clinic, to the weapons they served, my barrage was like being bathed in nuclear fire.
All the gunners I’ve ever known have banged on about the robustness of their pieces, how they could lob a hail of shells into the fight long after a missile battery would have shot its load, and had most of its barrage knocked out by anti-missile fire. I tended to agree with the gunners, divisional artillery having saved my life on many occasions, but in the Battle of Sijambo Farm, if you will allow me to grace this little scuffle with a name, even the deliberately simple control systems of these Grasshopper guns turned to slag. They could be repaired with the right parts, but these two guns would not fire again today, and according to my spiders the third cannon’s gun crew were still too busy examining the former contents of their digestive tracts to think much about firing.
Without needing to be told, Silky switched the cannon out of X-ray rounds and into something more antipersonnel.
The gunners below our position were proving a more disciplined bunch than I’d expected. Rather than running down the hillside, screaming like little children pursued by wasps, they sprayed us with bullets from a motley arrangement of civilian rifles and pistols.
As the bullets pinged off the low wall of rocks we’d built the night before, showering us with stone chips, I was annoyed but not entirely surprised.
These idiots might not have gotten a shot off at my farm, but in effect they had already damaged it four days ago when I smashed up my decorative features, with their fancy classical urns, and used their ceramalloy cores to construct a home-made gun shield attached to my GX-cannon. It wouldn’t stop a Marine squad armed with SA-71s, but it was enough to reduce these low-powered rifles and pistols into annoyances.
Or at least into temporary annoyances.
The enemy firing slackened somewhat, and I looked through a feed I’d set up from my spiders and saw why. Half the gun crews were maintaining a steady fire to pin us down, while the other half were sneaking away on hands and knees to turn our flanks.
Like I said, they were better disciplined than I thought, but not that impressive. They only saw what was in front of them, and none of them seem to wonder what was happening with the third gun team. It was lucky for them that they only outnumbered us 9-1… and that I was being nice to them.
“You’ve made your point,” I shouted over the gun shield.
Holy frakk! A dart went clean through the gun shield and buried itself into the rock behind. They had a military railgun. That wasn’t in my plan.
I cleared my throat and shouted – just a little more quickly this time. “You’ve made your point and I’ve made mine, because I fired non-lethal rounds. Shoot again and that changes. I shoot to kill. Walk away from your guns. Leave now and go back down to the trucks.”
Judging by the chorus of jeers from the enemy positions, I wasn’t persuasive. But then I thumbed the control in my hand, and the frag grenades we’d buried last night exploded, showering the enemy trying to turn our flanks with a rainstorm of soil and stones. Thanks to my portable mine-emplacing tool, we’d buried those grenades deeply enough that the explosions were showy rather than maiming. The next lines of grenades were not buried
deeply at all, but I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
I’d gotten the enemy’s attention. They didn’t move, but they weren’t shooting at me either.
This was my chance. “I’ve loaded gamma munitions,” I shouted. “You don’t need to break cover for me to kill you now.”
I almost felt a wave of shock pass through the bad guys. Gamma munitions were seriously illegal, and with good reason. Even today on Earth, talking about gamma weapons was a taboo subject. In my youth I had hated the people of Earth for having given up my ancestors as slaves. I still hated them, though in different ways now because I’d seen the livid scars the Earth still bore. From their warships in orbit, alien occupiers had long ago wielded gamma weapons to sterilize an entire continent, wiping it clean of even microbiological life. Just to make a point. Logic said that giving up a million of your children to breed an army of plasma fodder Marines was a small price to pay when the gamma beams had just killed a billion. I still don’t buy it. Loyalty speaks louder than logic in my world.
“They’re wavering,” said Silky. “I feel them. It’s building… their fear is building.”
Gamma munitions were almost as tricky as X-ray shells, but their specialty was in passing through any amount of cover to destroy all forms of living matter. Even the Civilian Defense Force wrapped its gamma munitions in such tight bureaucratic protocols that Captain Elhaym could only unlock them if faced with a full-blown invasion by the Muryani Accord, simultaneous with the Second Coming of Cthulhu.
Gunners, spotters, and the battery commander all ran for it, fleeing down the hillside as fast as they could, which in the case of the gun crew still fighting off the gas rounds wasn’t very fast. All of them ran. I knew that, because I’d counted them during the night.
After War (Revenge Squad Book 1) Page 10
