by B. V. Larson
Graves frowned. “Really? Show me Claver’s face.”
I angled my tapper. Claver stared at us sourly. We’d tied his arms to his sides by this time. I didn’t want him to be fooling with his tapper and making edits of his own.
“I’ll be damned,” Graves said. “I’m going to have to admit, I’m losing a few credits on this one.”
“You bet against me, sir?”
“Absolutely. Once Turov ordered you disconnected from the legion’s net, I figured it was curtain-time on the James McGill show.”
“Turov?” I asked, but even as I did, I began to figure out what had happened.
Before I’d left, I’d pissed off old Winslade pretty good. I’d gone over his head by reviving Drusus. My move had ended his command position.
So, what would a conniving little weasel do in response? Why, trump my trump, of course, with one of higher rank. He’d revived Turov and made his case to her. Being her favorite teacher’s pet, she’d apparently upped the ante on Drusus’ banishment and ordered my squad disconnected and abandoned.
“That’s right, I said Turov,” Graves continued. “She was the one who ordered your IDs blocked. Right now, you’re all as good as permed. Lost on the surface of an unknown, hostile world without tapper connections? No way to tell who lives and who’s dies? We could never have revived any of you legally.”
“Quickly then,” I said, “before we’re cut off, let me give you the identification codes for my dead troopers.”
“Those really don’t matter,” he said. “But thanks for the thought, McGill. I’m going to disconnect, now. I wish you all the—”
“Sir!” I said loudly. “Hold on, man! You can’t just leave us out here to rot. Bring us in. We’re not even sure where the Legion is! You can’t—”
“Shut up, McGill. You’re already on your way back home.”
The signal cut off, and I stared at my tapper, frowning.
Then I got it. A cold feeling came over me, and I looked this way and that, studying the megaflora canopy of greenery overhead.
“I don’t get it,” Carlos complained.
“What kind of bullshit is this?” Kivi breathed. “I can’t connect again. We’re blocked. What the hell are we supposed to do now? I can’t believe Graves would do this to us.”
Claver nudged me. I looked at him in annoyance.
“Are you going to tell them, or am I?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Don’t bother. There’s no point.”
“What are you talking about?” Kivi asked suspiciously.
“Squad!” I said loudly. “I want everyone to huddle up on my position. Stand right here, circle tight.”
“Vet, have you gone crazy?” Sargon asked. But he and the rest of them walked toward me frowning in confusion.
“Follow orders, troops,” I said. “All will be well.”
Right about then, Kivi caught on. She squawked, dropped her pack and started to make a run for it.
My foot snaked out catching her ankle, and she went sprawling. I felt kind of bad, but I knelt with my knee on her back, pinning her down.
“Tech down!” I said loudly. “Gather up! Help me get her to her feet!”
“McGill, you fucker, let me run!” Kivi said, struggling and snarling.
“It’s best this way, Kivi,” I said calmly. “It really is. It will all be over within a second.”
“We might be permed!”
“It’s our only chance of getting home. At least, it’s the best one we’re going to get.”
“All this marching around in the trees was for nothing!” she shouted. “Why’d we even bother?”
“We learned a lot,” I said, “and we caught Claver. He’s going to die with us. That’s good enough for me.”
Breathing hard, she finally relaxed and closed her eyes. I helped her up, and the rest of my squad fussed over her in confusion.
I could hear the missile now. It was coming in low from the east. If I had to take my best guess, I’d say it was homing in on my tapper which I’d left in acquire-mode as it tried to reconnect with the legion’s net.
At the very end the missile screamed, as did some of my troops. They tried to scatter—but it was too late. Way too late.
We were blown to smithereens. Fortunately, I could never recall the details afterward. I think it was a clean death for all, but I couldn’t swear to it. Some of us might have crawled around in the forest, dying—I guess I’ll never know for sure.
-29-
When the revival machine unloaded me into a tray some time later, I felt weary.. I figured I’d probably died more times on Death World than on any other planet I’d ever visited. I was tired of dying and frankly, I hated the place.
A bio I didn’t know went to work on me. She was a big woman with big, wet, strong hands. She did everything but lift me up in the air and slap me on the ass. After poking and prodding for a full minute, she declared me a good grow and rousted me off her gurney.
“Back at ‘em, Vet,” she said. “We’ve only got a few hours before it’s go-time.”
I blinked at her uncomprehendingly. “Go-time?”
“Back to your unit. They’ll explain everything—or not.”
A man with a veteran’s rank wasn’t supposed to be depressed by a death, but I was feeling a bit down. It’d always bugged me when my own officers killed me. It just didn’t seem right somehow.
Marching down the passages of the lifter to the ramps, I wandered out into a camp I’d never seen before. The ground around it was a burnt wasteland rather than the lush green of the forest. The biggest shock was the glare of the orange sun overhead. I’d never seen the sun directly on Death World. There’d always been one branch or another of megaflora in the way. But today, it was clear skies and sunshine as far as I could see.
The lifter had been moved out of the forested region so that it couldn’t be easily ambushed by the pod-walkers. To get to us now, they’d have to march across miles of open, blasted land.
The landing ship stood in the dead zone that had been created by the broadsides Turov had fired when we’d first arrived. The tree trunks were still there, but only as smoldering broken towers of charcoal.
In the distance, what had to be five kilometers away, was the living wall of the forest. The edge of it was scorched and blackened in places, but the farther away you looked, the greener it was.
I found Graves with a loose knot of his officers around him. Leeson, Harris and Toro were all there.
There must have been a dark look in my eye because Leeson stepped into my path and planted his hand on my chest plate.
“Welcome back, McGill,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m just here for the briefing, sir,” I said. “Could you get out of my way?”
“I need an assurance. I’ve heard some bad things about your recent behavior. Now, I know you’re a hothead, and I can normally accept that. But today, we’re committed to action—very soon. I need to know you aren’t going to mess with our schedule.”
My eyes, which had been focused on Graves all this time, finally slid to Leeson.
“You’re asking if I’m going to kill Graves for whacking out my entire squad with a missile, is that it?”
Leeson nodded seriously.
I sighed. “I’ve been thinking…I can understand why he did what he did. He couldn’t afford to send anyone out to pick us up.”
“That’s right,” Leeson said. “You were over two hundred kilometers out. Our only flying vehicle is the lifter itself. He didn’t like losing your equipment—but he needed to get you back here, pronto. If he hadn’t acted, you might well have been lost in the woods forever, and probably permed.”
“I get that, sir. Can you let me in on the briefing now?”
Reluctantly, Leeson stepped aside. I walked up and joined the circle. Harris looked alarmed at my approach. He frowned at me like I was an invader. I ignored him and stared at Graves.
“McGill?” Graves aske
d when he saw me. “It’s about time you showed up… Why are you looking at me like that? Don’t tell me you’re about to start whining about a bad death.”
“Never felt better, Centurion.”
“Good. Keep it that way. All right people, it’s go-time in less than two hours. The target can’t be permitted to get away, and we can’t afford to damage it. Therefore, no missiles, no heavy weapons—not even belchers. This will be carried out entirely with small arms and infantry. We must seize the target vehicle intact. Unit, dismissed.”
Even though I had no idea what the target was, I was game to capture it. Since I’d obviously missed most of the briefing, I hung around as others moved away to marshal their troops.
The group of officers and noncoms broke up, but Harris and Leeson lingered, eyeing me with suspicion. I wasn’t sure if I should take that as a compliment or an insult. It was a little of both, I guess.
“McGill,” Graves said, “walk with me.”
We took a stroll around the lifter. Leeson and Harris stared after us, but they didn’t follow.
The pigs had dug a new ring of trenches in the scorched ground, but I could tell the trench lines were tighter than they’d been before, almost under the shadow of the lifter. Also, the anti-personnel turrets were open and ready for business.
“James McGill,” Graves said slowly, chuckling to himself. “I have to admit, I didn’t think you’d make it back.”
“One missile did the trick.”
“I sent three, actually. I wanted to be sure.”
“That was mighty thoughtful of you, sir.”
“Smart ass,” he said, smiling. “Do you want to know why I brought you back and insisted you be revived immediately?”
“Tell me, sir.”
“Because you have that translator app. We might need that. Any knowledge of how these weird aliens operate will be helpful in the upcoming operation.”
“Are we talking about attacking a vehicle of some kind, sir? I pretty much missed the briefing, and I’m in the dark concerning the details.”
“We found one of their ships,” he said. “It’s just a transport, not a starship. It’s lying right at the edge of this blast zone. It might be damaged, we can’t be sure.”
Nodding, his statement provided another reason why they’d moved the lifter to this damaged region of the forest. I’d thought they’d moved just to put some distance between the pod-walkers and our last remaining forces, but now I realized they’d found something interesting here.
“You see,” Graves continued, “all this used to be a manufacturing area. A special zone on the planet that worked metals and built high-tech gear. God knows how a bunch of plants work metal, but they seemed to be able to do it. Most of the region has been destroyed, but one assault ship survived.”
“How did you detect it, sir?”
He shrugged. “The techs did that. As I understand it, the task wasn’t difficult. It’s a low-metal world, and an object of refined titanium stands out among a mass of sensory data.”
“Got it. Uh…what’s the ship for, sir?”
“We plan to fly it up to Minotaur and retake her. That’s why we have to capture it intact.”
“Why not just fly up in the lifter we’ve got right here?”
Graves shook his head. “That’s what I wanted to do. Tribune Drusus, too. But Turov overruled us. She didn’t want to risk everything on a single throw of the dice. If we can use a vehicle that we captured, well, the stakes aren’t as high. If we fail, we can start over again down here on the ground. We haven’t lost everything.”
I thought about that, and it did make a certain amount of sense. Still, the plan sounded iffy and overly cautious to me.
“But sir,” I said, “what if we can’t fly this alien craft? What if we’re wasting time trying, and in the meantime Minotaur is destroyed, or fortified for use by the enemy? Hell, they might be figuring out how to fly our own ship right now, and maybe they’ll figure that out faster than we can figure out how to fly theirs.”
“Excellent points, all of which I’ve made publicly. You know what all my objections bought me?”
I frowned for a second then brightened with inspiration: “A front-row seat on this mission?”
“Bingo. Our unit will be leading the charge. It’s our lucky day.”
“Thanks for the private briefing, sir,” I said. “Is that all you wanted to tell me?”
“No, there’s one more thing. I wanted to warn you to stay away from Turov. I know you might harbor ill-will toward her, but you need to swallow that emotion like a noncom is supposed to.”
Confusion spread over my face until I got the message. Graves thought I might go ballistic and attack Turov for having disconnected our tappers and leaving my squad out in the bush to rot. Sure, the thought had crossed my mind, but I wasn’t going to act on it.
Everyone seemed to think I was some kind of hothead. I supposed, after some of the things I’d said and done in the past, a man had to expect to gain a certain reputation.
“Message received, sir,” I said.
“Excellent,” Graves said. “Gather your squad as soon as they exit the revival machine, piece together spare equipment for everyone, and get ready to march. Dismissed.”
-30-
Go-time.
We didn’t wait for dawn. We didn’t wait for dusk, either. We suspected a bunch of plants didn’t care much whether it was light out or not.
Less than a day after legion techs had discovered the wreck, five full units of troops marched toward the site. We wore determined expressions but carried substandard gear. After the pod-walker attack, the bio people had managed to rebuild our numbers from a few hundred up to a full cohort in strength. But we didn’t have enough guns and armor to go around.
For the most part, all the troops were from Winslade’s cohort. He’d been given overall command of the operation as well. I don’t think he was happy about that. He’d probably rather be back at the lifter sipping a cool beverage, but he played it straight enough.
“Listen up, Legion Varus,” the primus’ voice buzzed in my helmet. “I know we’re supposed to be heavy infantry but only half of you are wearing armor. Be glad I managed to get everyone a rifle at least. The units we’re leaving behind at the lifter have been stripped bare. There was talk of sending us off with every other man using force-blades alone, but I squashed that idea.”
His words were alarming. The trouble was we’d been sent down to the Death World fully equipped, but most of us had died. In many cases, we’d lost our equipment. My squad, for example, had lost everything. Many of the ill-fated troops in the drop pods had lost their weapons as well.
As a result, my squad’s load-out was definitely less than optimal. It’d been decided that anyone not specifically designated as a line-combatant was to be given a smart-cloth tunic and no armor at all. That really upset my specialists—especially Carlos. You would’ve thought they’d cut off his left nut.
“This is too much,” he said, starting up again. “First, Graves blasts me to paste after humping it over half the planet. Then as a reward for faithful service, they shaft me with a snap-rifle and a gunny sack full of med gear. What am I supposed to do if one of those pod-walkers catches my ass again?”
“Same thing you always do, Carlos,” Sargon answered. “Die squealing!”
Sargon seemed to think this was extremely funny, and he laughed long enough to get most of the squad laughing along with him. People were tired of Carlos’ complaining, and I couldn’t blame them.
“Look at you, muscle-brain,” Carlos said, talking to Sargon. “One breastplate and a pair of boots. The rest of you is wearing fancy pajamas. Half a suit of armor isn’t much good against spines and acids.”
“I’ve got a belcher,” Sargon said, “and I’m happy with that. Some weaponeers are carrying rifles like the rest of you pukes. I can’t imagine the shame.”
The chatter went on like that, but I tuned it out. I didn’t much care w
hat they said as long as no one got mad enough to blast another squad mate. I couldn’t allow that.
“How much farther, Kivi?” I asked.
As my tech, she was watching the map displays on her tactical system. My helmet-based system only reached so far. Hers could scan the entire planet if she was hooked to the legion net—which she was now.
“I’m looking at five to seven kilometers—depending on whether we march straight through or circle around.”
We were pretty close to the tree line now. Marching over scorched ground that sent up choking clouds of ash as we passed by. The trees were like a mountain range directly ahead of us. The massive plants were daunting. Their trunks were somehow more imposing when you could visually compare them to flat, open land.
As we walked into the gloom under half-burned branches, I felt an oppressive coolness steal over my body. The blackened skeletal claws of the megaflora clutched at the skies overhead. It was the ultimate haunted woods.
“I hate this forest,” Carlos said, deciding to complain about something new. “It’s unnatural. We’re like beetles crawling among redwood giants.”
“Yeah, but bugs are quieter,” I commented, but it didn’t seem to faze him.
“Five kilometers in—that sounds like Turov missed a bet,” he continued. “She should have kept firing and destroyed everything.”
“If she had, maybe we’d be stuck on this planet forever,” Kivi pointed out.
“Are you kidding? You’ve got to be joking, right?”
Kivi gave him a disgusted look. I could tell why their short-lived relationship, which had flourished on Machine World, had quickly petered out. Carlos just couldn’t help but rub people the wrong way, even his ex-girlfriend.
“What’s your point, Ortiz?” Kivi demanded.
“My point is, buttercup, that this mission is going tits-up already. We’re not going to take over some damaged landing craft built by plants and fly it up to Minotaur. The whole idea is laughable. It’s got to be Turov’s dumbest plan to date. No, if we don’t die capturing it, we’ll die for sure trying to get it to fly.”
