by Richard Fox
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and find some Vish down here,” Garrison said. “Par for the course for an otherwise great day.”
“Sir,” Duke said, waving down at Hoffman from a third-story window, “got a crashed torp a few blocks over. Looks intact enough for survivors.”
“How far to the beachhead?” Hoffman asked, touching a string of beads hanging from a D ring on his breast plate. His pace count had them not far from Duke’s initial estimate of other Union forces.
“Two more klicks,” Duke said. “Saw some activity in the IR, but it was washed out with all the wind and dust. Still no contact on comms.”
“Almost there,” Booker said.
“We’re redirecting to the crash site,” Hoffman said. “If there’s someone trapped in there, they need our help.”
“Oorah,” King said. “Steuben, Max, screen ahead. Duke, you look for an over watch position.”
Hoffman cut through a building, the walls lined with shelves of shattered glass and the occasional bottle on its side.
“Found the Class Six store,” Garrison said. “Weird to see the Sanheel ever lived…normally. You know? It’s always been ‘There’s one. Bang.’”
“Where do you think little Sanheel come from?” Booker asked. “Not like they can just build themselves on an assembly line.”
Opal grunted and stepped over a fallen cash register.
“Not like you, Opal,” Booker said. “You’re completely different than that. I mean…because Hoffman used to have that one face and…oh look, something shiny.”
Ignoring her stammering, Hoffman sprinted across a road and slammed his back against a plaster wall to stop his momentum. He heard the snap of low fires and kicked a brick that had a faint blue sheen to it. Looking up the wall, he saw the same color at the broken edge. The radiation seemed to have sucked the color out of everything in the city, but what was beneath the facades might still have some life to it.
He stepped through a broken windowsill and into an open room. Remains of trucks were set out in a circle, the tail end of an insertion torpedo jutting out from a wall the next block over.
Steuben, braced against a far wall, waved Hoffman forward.
The lieutenant crossed through the showroom and darted around the wall bearing the torpedo. The building looked like it had been a target and the Union craft struck it like an arrow.
He glanced around the corner to the rest of the wrecked torpedo. It was a mess of broken masonry, small fires, and the mangled fore of the torpedo, but no sign of life.
“Moving in.” He ducked inside and moved at a high crouch to the blackened hull of the torpedo. The main hatch was ajar, and dark, wet stains formed a red slick running down the open seam.
Hoffman touched the slick, and even with his sense of smell blocked by his helmet, he knew it was blood.
“Damn it.” Hoffman looked over his shoulder to where Steuben had taken up an observation post on the second floor. The Karigole gave him an exaggerated nod and Hoffman gripped the edge of the hatch.
Using his whole body and his suit’s strength-assist systems, he strained to wrench open the hatch. It opened slowly, with a groan of tortured metal that set Hoffman’s teeth on edge. The sound would carry, inviting any enemy nearby.
Something slid against the inner hatch and a weight bumped against Hoffman’s knees and shins.
A Strike Marine lay crumbled at his feet, armor red with a coat of blood.
“Booker, up!” Hoffman called to the medic, then he knelt and rolled the marine over. The Marine’s helmet had caved in on the chin, mangling the jaw beneath. A woman’s dead eyes stared up at Hoffman, wisps of light-blond hair catching the breeze, wafting over the pale blue of her gaze.
Hoffman put a hand over her broken visor and looked up into the crew compartment. Blood trickled out of the twisted wreck. He turned his head away quickly, lest he take in too much that would haunt him forever.
“Stand down, Booker.” Hoffman hooked a thumb under the side of the dead Marine’s breastplate and flipped a latch. A flap popped up just below her neckline and Hoffman removed an ID chit.
“Corporal Keyes,” he said. “Ardennes ship complement. Well done, Marine. I’ll get you home soon as I—”
“Movement,” hissed through Hoffman’s IR.
He snapped the chit into a slot beneath his left gauntlet and took cover against the torpedo. With the smoke and flames from the dying fires washing out his vision, he didn’t know where to watch for the called-out activity.
“Where?” Hoffman sent through the IR, but got a mangled response.
A hulking shadow appeared in the smoke and Hoffman did a double take, thinking Opal had just arrived. The shadow raised an arm, an axe gripped in meaty fingers.
Hoffman rolled to one side as the crude iron weapon whacked against the hull and buried itself down to the haft.
“Rook rook!”
A Kesaht foot soldier, a brutish Rakka with wide yellow eyes, dirty brown fur and a rebreather mask across the bottom of its face lunged out of the smoke, hands grasping for Hoffman’s throat.
The Marine ducked the outstretched arms and beat an elbow against the Rakka’s stomach, earning a woof of expelled air as the alien doubled over. Hoffman snapped the Ka-Bar blade in his right gauntlet out of the housing and drove it into the Rakka’s neck, piercing through cloth and an air tube. He wrenched the blade out, nearly decapitating the Rakka as it tipped over.
Another soldier tackled him from the side and the two rolled over broken bricks, kicking up dust that fouled Hoffman’s vision. Feeling the press of the Rakka against his armor, he stabbed blind. The knife hit home, and Hoffman felt the blade jerk as the alien tried to get away. He grabbed a handful of something loose and held the alien fast as he punched the knife into its body again and again.
The Rakka collapsed against him and Hoffman shoved the corpse away, wiping his visor clear just in time to see a muzzle flash. A sharp impact on his shoulder sent a jolt of pain down his arm. Another round struck his chest, bouncing off but sending a thrum through his lungs.
A lizard the size of a boy just into his teens, with light-green scales, a sharp beak and a jumpsuit that ended just below its elbows and knees, hissed at him from where it clung to the side of the torpedo. Smoke rose from the barrel of a small pistol in one hand.
“Bad meat!” the alien said and spun around, tail snapping. It clattered across the torpedo and jumped for an open window.
It almost made it, but Steuben caught it by the tail. The Karigole snapped his arm, jerking the alien around and clamping a hand over the lizard’s eyes and head.
“Where is Bale?” Steuben growled.
“Meat. Meat for the master,” the alien said, squirming against Steuben’s grip. “Special meat. Know you. Master knows your taste.”
Steuben squeezed, earning a high-pitched yelp from the alien until its skull imploded with a wet crack. The Karigole tossed the body to one side and flapped yellow blood and gray brain matter off his glove.
“Toth menial,” Steuben said. “Worthless creatures. I would have shot them but the sound—”
“Sir!” King said, running into the crash site, the rest of the team close behind him. “Bug out! Bug out!”
“Rook rook!” sounded in the distance. The Rakka battle cry echoed from what must have been hundreds of soldiers.
“We don’t have enough bullets,” Hoffman said as he grabbed Keyes beneath her arms and hefted her body over his shoulder. He took an awkward step, struggling to balance the body over the uneven ground of broken bricks and twisted metal.
“Leave the body,” Steuben said. “It is of no—”
“Do you know what the Kesaht will do to her?” Hoffman snapped. He slid down a pile of dusty masonry and followed Duke out the other side of the crash site.
“Not far from the landing zone,” the sniper said. “Need to hurry before they—never mind.” He swung his gauss carbine up to his hip and let off a burst.
Rakka we
apons cracked and bullets exploded against a wall just as Hoffman made it into the next building across the street. Steuben removed grenades from his breastplate and tossed them over his shoulder. Hoffman was about to berate the Karigole, but each one sailed through open windows and exploded in the street behind them.
“Got an idea!” Garrison slapped his satchel as Hoffman caught up to the rest of the team in the remains of a foyer with long, low couches still sitting in neat rows through the room.
“Time fuse. Bring the place down behind us,” Garrison said, pulling out two bottles of the binary explosive and connecting them together.
“No one told you to do it yet,” King said, putting two rounds over a broken section of the wall and killing as many Rakka as they fumbled through the smoke kicked up by Steuben’s grenades.
“But it’s a great idea,” Garrison said as he removed a metal fuse from a bandolier and gripped the timer dial. “Two minutes?”
“Less!” Max said, emptying a magazine at the encroaching Rakka.
As the weight of the dead Marine on Hoffman’s shoulder seemed to grow heavier with each passing second, he slapped at his belt. “They’re not wearing helmets,” he said. “Flash bangs. Slow them down. Soon as Garrison’s—”
“Ready!” cried the breacher as he stuck the fuse into the joint between the two bottles and pressed his thumb against it, clicking three times and holding it down after the third. “We have one minute after I let go.”
“Flashers out!” King tossed a device out into the street and the rest of the team followed suit.
Hoffman looked away as brief flares of blinding white light burst out, like ancient Chinese gods were using firecrackers to celebrate the new year. Overpressure slapped at his helmet, and he was thankful his armor’s integrity held. An unshielded person’s eardrums would have ruptured as concussion-level force hammered their skulls and blast waves collapsed their lungs.
His Marines could weather the punishment, the Rakka couldn’t.
“Run!” Garrison said, stepping back from the ticking boom. “Run, run, run!”
Hoffman stepped forward onto a round couch leg and fell flat, Keyes landing on top of him. He was struggling to his hands and knees when his contact with the ground vanished. He felt Keyes fall away and his heels hit the ground a moment later and dragged through the dust. Opal had him by the carry handle across his shoulders. The doughboy ran, pulling Hoffman in his wake.
“No, Opal!” Hoffman twisted from side to side, but the doughboy’s grip was iron. “We have to get her!”
Opal shook his head hard and fast. “Danger. Run,” he said.
“Stop. Stop!” Hoffman yelled, kicking uselessly at the ground.
“Take cover!” Garrison shouted and the rest of the team echoed the warning.
Hoffman had the brief sensation of flying, then he thumped against the ground. Opal dove on top of him, smothering him with his bulk when Garrison’s bomb went off.
The denethrite erupted with the crack of a mountain being sundered in two. Hoffman’s helmet cut out all sound to save his hearing, but he felt the slap of overpressure go over him and Opal like a passing ocean wave.
He slapped at Opal’s shoulder and the doughboy rolled off. They were in a blue fog of pulverized brick, the world around them fading to nothing after a few yards, the clink of falling stones sounding like hail in the distance.
“Sir? Sir no hurt?” Opal asked.
Hoffman scrambled to his feet and whirled around. He had no idea which way was back to the explosion or where Keyes’s body had gone.
“Opal…Opal, you…you left her!” Hoffman gripped his fists hard and squeezed his eyes shut, fighting a rage building in him.
“Friend gone,” Opal said, using his war hammer to brace himself as he stood up. “Can’t help. Can’t help her. Sir in danger.”
Hoffman flexed his hands open and let his anger pass. He touched Opal’s shoulder. “You’re right, big guy. Hard day. I’m not mad at you.” Hoffman unlocked his gauss rifle from his back. “We need to find the rest of the team.”
A series of whoomphs sounded in the distance. Through the dissipating fog, Hoffman saw tracer rounds fly up into the twilight sky.
“Valdar!” carried through the dust.
“Hammer!” Hoffman responded. He and Opal jogged toward the other voice and came upon the rest of the team, where they formed a loose perimeter within an intersection full of crashed trucks.
“Man, am I glad I got rid of all that denethrite,” Garrison said as he peered over a cab toward the seat of the explosion.
“Were you sick of the weight or were you getting chickenshit from carrying it?” Max asked.
“Bit of both. Who can say? Maybe a thank-you for getting that horde off our back?” the breacher asked.
“Now you’ve got nothing in case we really do need an explosion,” Booker said.
“Did we not just need an explosion? None of us are being roasted on a Rakka spit right now. You’re welcome.”
“That’s Union anti-aircraft fire.” King jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I know the sound from Syracuse. Got to be the landing zone.”
“It’s not far,” Hoffman said. “Approach with caution. Whoever’s holding the perimeter might be trigger-happy with all the Rakka arou—”
A sunburst flashed across the intersection. Hoffman looked up and saw a fading nova near one of Kesaht’ka’s moons.
“Isn’t that where that giant-ass space station…is?” Duke asked.
“‘Was’ is more like,” Garrison said.
“Perhaps the battle is turning?” Gor’al asked, tapping his visor. “Reinforcements from Earth? Maybe even my people are here. The Dotari Home Fleet is small, but fierce.”
“Let’s get to the landing zone,” Hoffman said. “We’ll put the puzzle together there.”
Booker touched Hoffman’s shoulder where the menial’s bullet had left a dent. Blood was smeared against his armor.
“You good, sir?” the medic asked.
“Not my blood. Hammers, keep three-sixty security and move to the sound of that anti-aircraft fire.”
****
Gold Beach was chaos. Not the normal carrier flight deck of constant motion and moving parts, but a discordant mess of survivors from the void battle in orbit and units mashed together to try and shore up the Terran Union’s toehold on Kesaht’ka.
Valdar’s Hammers had made it to the perimeter—a thin line of Marines, armed sailors and Rangers stretched around the remains of the dead city’s original spaceport—less than half an hour ago. They’d been waved through the lines and Hoffman had been directed to the command tent with Steuben, while King and the rest of the team had been thrown onto a work detail to build up a perimeter wall with material that came in from the invasion fleet.
Hoffman had only a general description of the command tent, and getting directions had sent them backtracking more than once.
The two walked around a ground loader, a terrified-looking sailor in a light environmental suit at the wheel. The loader carried a green cargo cube on the twin metal prongs as it lurched to a stop and spun around suddenly.
Hoffman had to skip to one side to avoid the load. “Hey!” he shouted through the speakers mounted onto his helmet’s chin.
The driver stopped and looked around frantically.
“Watch it,” Hoffman said, shaking his head.
The driver stuttered and pointed to the sky where a smoking Destrier transport ship flew overhead, wobbling as it descended. Hoffman winced as it sank behind a partially collapsed hangar, waiting for the sound of a crash. He sighed with relief a moment later when the sick cough of the ship’s engines cut out.
“That one made it,” Hoffman said. The last two they’d seen hadn’t been as fortunate.
“Where are the generals?” Steuben asked the driver.
“H-h-hab,” the driver stuttered and pointed behind him. “Enviro f-f-filters out front. Can’t miss it.”
Hoffman nodded
and followed the direction, making his way around a corner. Rows of razor wire surrounded a Sanheel building covered by a polymer tent. Rangers stood guard near a gap in the wire as more prowled around the inner perimeter, their skull masks standing out against the black of their power armor.
“I never understood why your Rangers are so…morbid,” Steuben said. “Karigole do not carry the face of the dead into battle.”
“Intimidation factor,” Hoffman said as they approached the gap. “Tells the enemy death is here for them.”
“And not for the Rangers?” Steuben asked.
“Fair point. Let’s not ask about it right now.” Hoffman went to the soldier on guard and brushed dried blood from the subdued rank insignia on his chest. “This HQ?”
“Roger, sir. Get your rads cleaned off and check in with General Hue,” the Ranger said, tilting his head to a nearly two-story-tall framework leading into the command tent.
Hoffman stepped into the frame. A wall of loose plastic sheets lit with blue antiseptic light were between him and the inside of the tent. Stepping into the sheets, he felt like he was going through an old-fashioned automatic car wash.
Foam squeezed from the sheets and covered his armor. He kept walking as jets sprayed him clean and he walked over a grate and was buffeted by fans from all around him. Next, he went up to a wide doorframe with a black wall at the end. Lasers swept over his armor and a green light blinked on. The wall swung open and he went into the command area.
The room was alive with frantic radio calls, yelling officers, and staffers trying to update battle maps.
Hoffman removed his helmet and took a deep breath. The air smelled of sweat and fear. Steuben came through the environmental controls a moment later. His alien face, prosthetic eye and tall stature garnered a couple second glances, but the personnel were too focused on the unfolding disaster to react otherwise.
To one side were a pair of armor soldiers and a scrum of Rangers and Strike Marines, all gathered around a cargo box where a Marine general stood.
Hoffman recognized one of the armor right away—Gideon of the Iron Dragoons. The other’s battle suit bore more antennae and had gold trim. Hoffman knew of General Laran, but he had never seen her in armor before.
