Contact Front (Drop Trooper Book 1)

by Rick Partlow

  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.

  What would have made sense would have been jumping back into the silo, sheltered from view if not from the tantalum darts of their KE rifles, but that would have left Dak alone and unarmed, exposed to enemy fire. I pushed Charlie down off the ladder back inside and leapt forward out of the hatch, my stomach staying up on the platform while the rest of me dropped the three meters to the dirt.

  I hit hard, striking on the balls of my feet and falling to the side, calf, thigh, hip and shoulder, and the breath went out of me with a star-filled burst of pain in my upper back, but I kept my hold on the rifle. The Tahni Shock-trooper on the left side of the car had opened fire on the hatch where I’d stood just a moment before, the shockwave of the stream of tantalum darts a chain of miniature sonic booms. Sheet metal shrieked in death agony as the barrage tore it to pieces, yet I ignored the shots, ignored that enemy soldier and concentrated on the one coming around the back of the car.

  I wished I could afford to look back, to figure out which direction Dak was moving, but the Shock-trooper approaching from the rear of the ground-car was going to have a clear shot at me in about two seconds. I could have tried to crawl to my left, to keep the body of the vehicle between me and the enemy, but I was lying on my back and time wasn’t my friend.

  I rolled onto my belly, hugging the rifle to my chest like a security blanket, centimeters ahead of a burst of tantalum darts. The sound of the incoming fire was nothing I’d ever heard before, an unending chain of painful, supersonic snaps reverberating inside my head, their incessant beat taking my heart rhythm with it into a tachycardic drum solo. I fired and missed. The stock banged into the top of my shoulder like the backhand slap of a disappointed marksmanship instructor at Basic.

  I could hear him screaming in my ear as if he were a specter of a former life.

  Damn it, Boot! You will achieve a proper cheek weld before you touch that trigger! You take another shot without proper cheek weld and sight picture and I will shove that weapon up your ass sideways!

  “Yes, Drill Sergeant,” I murmured.

  I shut out the sound, the fear and the prospect of immediate death and put the aiming reticle over the trooper’s lone vulnerable spot. Something tugged at the borrowed work shirt where the fabric billowed up around my right shoulder, a scoring line of heat from the passage of the round only half a centimeter from my flesh, and I touched the trigger. The recoil was satisfying, comforting in its precision and I knew I’d hit what I was aiming at without bothering to look at the results.

  Because now I really had to move. I had no direct shot at the Tahni on the other side of the car and by now, he’d know exactly where I was and what I was doing.

  Forward. I needed to move forward, take the chance he’d head toward the silo and I could keep their ground car between us. It wasn’t a brilliant plan, but it was as close as I was going to come up with while crawling on the ground on my belly. I couched the rifle in my arms and scuttled like a cockroach fleeing the light, cursing softly at the rocks and gravel digging into my knees and elbows. Something itched in the middle of my back, maybe sweat, maybe an insect inside my shirt, but I imagined it was the phantom touch of the enemy laser sight tickling against my skin. I was about to die. I put my head down and kept moving.

  The KE gun thundered again and there was something different about the sound, the direction of the echo, and I knew instinctively that it was firing from this side of the vehicle, that I was too late. I waited for the kill shot, for the end, and discovered, to my shock, that the idea scared me. I’d never wanted to die, but I’d also never had any particular fear of it. I was going to die scared, and somehow that bothered me.

  The gunfire stopped.

  That didn’t seem right. I raised my head and saw nothing but the side of the assault vehicle, heard no hum of servomotors or clanking of armor.

  “Get up, junior.”

  Dak stepped out from behind the frozen statue that was the first Tahni casualty, the enemy soldier’s KE gun cradled in his arms, the power cable still connecting it to the battery pack hanging from the dead alien’s shoulders. The muzzle was glowing and I looked from him to the other side of the car. The final enemy soldier had toppled onto his side, his chest armor ripped apart by a long burst of tantalum darts from his dead comrade’s gun.

  “You’d better not have messed up my rifle,” Dak said, letting the Tahni weapon fall. It came up short on the power cable, the muzzle scraping across the ground, sweeping dirt back and forth.

  He grabbed the hunting weapon from me, checking the safety and grunting in satisfaction before he slung it over his shoulder.

  “Where the hell’s Charlie?”

  “Oh, shit,” I realized, running back over to the door.

  Dak hadn’t fastened the padlock, just threaded it through the hasps, and I yanked it out and tossed it to the ground, pulling the door open. Charlie was on the ground, cursing and holding his ankle, the afternoon glare shining down on him through the shredded metal a few meters up.

  “I think I broke my fucking ankle!” he said, glaring at me. “Why the hell did you push me off the ladder?”

  “So you wouldn’t get shot,” I said, hauling him up off the ground. He leaned into me, cursing some more when he tried to walk on his right foot.

  “Get in the truck,” Dak ordered, leaning into the carriage of the transmission antenna and pushing it out through the open doors. It looked pretty weighty, so I assumed the wheels were motorized and it was assisting his movement.

  I half-supported Charlie as he limped out toward the cargo truck, past the Tahni dead. Two of them still stood, as if they’d been turned to pillars of salt like Lot’s wife in that Bible story my Momma had told me.

  “They’ll be coming to check this out, Dak,” Charlie warned him, grabbing the handle on the truck’s passenger side door to support himself, “once that patrol doesn’t come back.”

  “We’ll be long gone,” Dak said, not sounding bothered by the prospect.

  He was unfolding the sections of the transmission dish, a flower unfolding to accept the attention of the sun.

  “You know how to drive this thing, kid?” Charlie asked me, pulling himself into the cab.

  “Not even a little,” I assured him, climbing up behind the wheel.

  The fact it even had a steering wheel was troublesome. There were no personal vehicles in Trans-Angeles, but I’d seen a few down in Tijuana. The military had trucks and ground-cars on Inferno, of course, but even those had computer-assisted controls. This thing was completely manual and the prospect of trying to keep it on the road was terrifying.

  “Well, there’s a first time for everything. Hit that start button on the console and get us ready to take off.”

  The machine rumbled plaintively, some great beast wanting to be fed, and the vibration of the internal-combustion engine shook the hard plastic of the driver�
��s seat like a warning. I tried to pay attention to Charlie’s explanation of how to operate the thing, but my eyes were glued to Dak’s systematic assembly of the antenna and the conviction it was taking too long.

  “Did you get that, kid?” Charlie asked and I stared back, wondering if I should admit I hadn’t caught a word of it. He sighed and rolled his eyes. “I said,” he repeated, “you just push the ‘forward’ button on the panel beside the wheel to shift it into gear, then press the accelerator, the pedal next to your right foot, to make it go. The one on the left makes it stop.”

  “Oh, right, sure.” I glanced down at the panel and tried to find the button. It didn’t actually say “forward,” but there was an F lit up across it, which I supposed was close enough.

  When I looked back up, Dak was climbing into the rear passenger’s side, frowning at me, eyes narrowed.

  “What the hell, Charlie? Can’t you drive with one foot?”

  “I could if it was my left foot,” the man in the seat beside me replied, then motioned at me before Dak’s door was even closed. “Go, damn it! You waiting for an engraved invitation?”

  I hit the button and jammed my foot down on the accelerator. The truck’s polymer tires sprayed dirt and gravel and the big vehicle fishtailed wildly, nearly hitting the Tahni armored car. I clenched my teeth, gripped the wheel tightly and let off the gas just slightly, steering us around the circle and away from the silo. The transmission antenna watched silently, a man with his arms raised in prayer, oblivious to my struggles.

  “Jesus!” Charlie was fastening his safety restraint with desperate haste. “Slow the hell down!”

  “No,” Dak said sharply. “Floor it. We need to be far away from here before that transmission gets sent or their drones will trace the truck back to this place.”

  “Whatever you say.” I pushed the pedal down and tried like hell to keep the truck between the ditches.

  The truck shuddered and rattled its protest and each rut in the road tossed me from side to side but I didn’t let up. My fingers clenched the wheel so tightly my knuckles were going white, and I let them, because otherwise, my hands would have been shaking. My heart was hammering against the inside of my chest, and sweat was pouring down my neck, plastering my shirt to my back, and it wasn’t the driving, or the open spaces, or even the throbbing pain in my shoulder from where I’d landed. The adrenaline was leaching out of my system and taking with it the cool detachment I’d felt during the brief gunfight.

  “Hey,” Dak said. Something about the tone of the word caused me to risk taking my eyes away from the road long enough to glance back at him. There was understanding in his expression. “You did good back there. You made the right call.”

  “I guess there’s a first time for everything.” My voice broke a bit and something quivered in my chest. I felt like I could have sobbed and only an iron grip on my emotions pushed them down.

  It was ridiculous. It wasn’t like it was the first time I’d almost got killed.

  Dak was silent for a moment, and I thought maybe he was disappointed in my reply, but then I heard him whispering a countdown.

  “…zero.” He twisted around in his seat, looking behind us. “It’s transmitting. Any time now.”

  The terrain had changed; the flat plains of the abandoned farm disappeared behind us, giving way to rolling hills. I hadn’t remembered to check the distance, but I thought it had to be at least six or seven kilometers. My eyes flickered down to the display showing the rear-view camera just in time to spot the missile.

  I don’t know what I’d expected, maybe an assault shuttle, or a squad of High Guard, or even an orbital kinetic kill strike. I suppose I should have known better. The missile was efficient and versatile and the rising globe of fire coming over the hillside was plenty impressive, certainly enough to wipe the transmitter, the silo and the dead Tahni patrol out of existence.

  The sound rolled over the hills like distant thunder about the same time the dome of white expanded into a mushroom cloud rising hundreds of meters into the sky. Not a nuke, of course, but enough Hi-Pex, chemical hyper-explosives, to make a good try of it.

  “And maybe we’re next,” Charlie murmured, staring at the screen, face drawn.

  “No, we’re good,” Dax insisted. “They’d have gotten us by now.”

  I didn’t know if he was trying to convince Charlie or himself, and I wasn’t at all sure he’d convinced me.

  But I kept driving.

  “Why the hell were you driving?” Maria asked, hanging off the side of the door as I clambered down from the truck.

  I winced when I saw how close I’d come to scraping the bumper of one of the open-topped rovers crammed into the narrow draw. It looked like a huge, mutated beetle with curved armor plating welded across the engine compartment and covering the passenger cab, and a decades-old assault gun peeked out above the shielding on a pintle welded into the floorboards.

  “Charlie sprained his ankle.”

  “It’s fucking broken!” Charlie insisted from the other side of the vehicle.

  Shadows were invading the depths of the canyon and I could barely make out his pained grimace as he limped around the front of the truck, waving aside a few younger hands and their offers of help.

  “I guess that means we’ll be pulling off the attack without you,” Maria said, raising an eyebrow as she regarded his pitiful limp.

  “Oh, fuck that!” Charlie blurted, looking askance at the woman. “Just get somebody to wrap my damn ankle and I’ll stand on one foot and shoot!”

  “If you want it wrapped,” Delta scolded the man, grabbing at his arm, “then stop pushing away everyone who tries to help you and let’s go wrap it!”

  Charlie looked as if he were about to argue with her, but he reconsidered and let her slip an arm around him and help him walk back toward the trailer.

  “Wait a second,” I said, turning back to Maria. “You’re talking like the attack is a sure thing. Did we hear back from the Fleet?”

  Dak was at my right shoulder, appearing there like a wraith, remarkably silent for a man his size, and I could see the same question in his eyes. Maria nodded, seeming sober more than jubilant.

  “We did. They’ve given us until the original deadline to hit the Tahni. They’ll start the bombardment just as they planned and if the shields aren’t down by the time they already planned for the launch, they’ll hit it with nukes.” She looked between Dak and me. “We have to attack tonight.”

  “It’s what we figured,” Dak allowed. He fixed me with the sort of glare I would have expected from Top or Gunny Guerrero. “Is the suit ready to go?”

  “It’s as ready as it’s going to be,” I told him. If I didn’t sound confident, it was because I had learned all too well from Mutt just how many things could go wrong with a Vigilante even when it hadn’t fallen out of the sky at a thousand meters per second. “The missile launchers work and that’s about all I can swear to.”

  “Then that’s going to have to be enough.” He slipped an arm around his daughter. “I guess I won’t bother to ask if I can talk you into sitting this one out.”

  Her only answer was to lean into the man and return his hug. He shook his head and headed off, yelling orders at a gaggle of younger men and women who were clustered around one of the up-armored trucks, ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the ancient assault gun as if it were the coolest thing in the world instead of a weapon gone obsolete before their grandparents were born.

  “Are you all right?” Maria asked. I supposed I must still look shaken up, though I was actually beginning to level off from the adrenaline dump and the subsequent fall.

  “Nothing a few years of psychological counseling wouldn’t cure,” I assured her, seeking out her hand with my own.

  Her hand was warm and the sheer human contact seemed to breathe life back into me. She tightened her grip and leaned her shoulder against mine. I wanted to ask her what we were, what this meant, and I didn’t know why. I’d never asked Pris, neve
r asked any of the other girls over the last four years. It wasn’t something you talked about out on the street, and even if it had been, I wouldn’t have cared. They were just someone to have fun with, someone to warm my bed…on those rare occasions when I had one.

  “Do we have any time before we need to get ready?” I wondered, and I hoped I didn’t sound desperate.

  “Not enough,” she told me, and it sounded like a lament. Then the corner of her mouth turned up and she tugged at my hand, leading me away from the crowd. “But we’ll make time.”

  24

  The Vigilante had belonged to a Gunnery Sergeant from Second Platoon, and I felt oddly nervous wearing it, as if the man’s ghost might start yelling at me from beyond the grave for dishonoring his armor. More practically, it felt like putting on someone else’s underwear and it made me profoundly uncomfortable. I pulled the chest plastron down, hoping the feeling would fade in the darkness; instead, it intensified. For the first time in my memory, I was scared of the dark.

  The HUD crackled to life and began searching for satellite signals it wasn’t going to find, and the return of the light brought with it the breath I’d been holding. The passive sensors couldn’t make out much stuck in the covered bed of the cargo truck, and I didn’t want to chance active lidar or radar driving through the wasteland trying not to get noticed.

  “You read me up there?” I wouldn’t have risked radio either, but this close I could get a line-of-sight hookup with Maria’s datalink up in the cab. For once, I didn’t want to be alone.