by B. V. Larson
“Yes, I would estimate they do. These patterns in the rock and the ore—they’re like identifying teeth marks for the machines.”
Graves wasn’t happy with my news. If I was right, it meant we weren’t just fighting a few thousand squids, we were facing an unknown number of native machines as well.
-30-
We got a break about an hour later. We were ordered to dig in and hunker down. Supporting fire was due to come down within a few hours. The orders were almost impossible to follow as we were on a mountain of titanium ore and methane ice, two substances that were anything but forgiving. We tried to dig foxholes anyway—but failed.
“It’ll take an industrial drilling machine to penetrate this!” Kivi complained. Her dragon’s claws rasped and scratched pointlessly on the surface.
“It’s hard rock,” I agreed. “Forget about it. Save your batteries. We’ll close ranks and hug up against the overhang. Let’s wait it out, everyone.”
Belter already had her troops in a fold of protective rock that looked like a crack in the ground. Our dragons wouldn’t fit, and I didn’t want to have my pilots get out of them, so we stood awkwardly around and waited for whatever was coming our way.
Fortunately, it wasn’t the broadsides. Each broadside shell from a big ship was a fusion warhead. They didn’t seem to come in designer shapes and sizes, either. They hammered with city-buster force or they didn’t fire at all.
What fell on top of the mountain instead was a much lighter attack, but still impressive.
We saw the brilliant blue-white balls falling through the mist. Bright as an arc-welder’s torch, they could burn retinas if you looked at them with the naked eye.
“Visor’s down, full shades!” I ordered. My squad hastened to comply.
I hadn’t seen this kind of fire from the ships before. It was something new. But the look of plasma balls was unmistakable.
They kept coming down, silent while they were in the atmosphere—but when they hit the ground and the physics effect was triggered, a resounding report rolled down the mountain.
“What are they doing?” Carlos asked me.
“As far as I can tell, they’re silencing those missile batteries. Let’s hope it works.”
Plasma attacks of this kind picked up smaller debris from the region affected and shot it outward in a spray like a fragmentation weapon that didn’t have to bring along the fragments. Gravel, shards of ice, anything would do. They were tearing up the squids, I hoped, far up on the mountainside.
Belter contacted me. “We should advance now, while the enemy positions are under bombardment.”
I felt unsure. Judging from the immediate vicinity, we weren’t getting hit. But if those weapons were walked downslope, and we were exposed—well, we might get taken out by our own artillery. That said, I was a new veteran and Belter was a Centurion.
“All right,” I said, without voicing an objection. “Let’s move out! Same formation as before, Della, turn on those shields.”
We were marching upslope again less than a minute later. Huffing and puffing, the infantry raced after us.
Up ahead, we could see the blue-white flashes as the bombardment crashed down. Now and then, bits of flying debris showered down, hitting machines and men alike. But as far as I could tell, the squids weren’t shooting at us. They were trying to hide.
“McGill?” Leeson shouted. “What are you doing? You’re out of position!”
“Sorry sir,” I said. “Centurion Belter ordered us to advance under the cover of artillery.”
“She doesn’t have the right! She’s not even part of Legion Varus.”
“That’s an officer-fight, sir,” I said, marching my machine a fraction faster. A few snap-rifle rounds were hitting my people now. They seemed to be coming from a nearby position. “I’m just a vet, and this is a joint effort. I follow the orders of the officer who’s walking behind me.”
One problem with using multi-legion forces came to light when we performed joint missions, which had been a rare event in the past. Historically, our legions were independent rivals. Every legion was like an army from a small country—countries that didn’t like each other all that much.
Technically, we were all beholden to Hegemony if push came to shove. But for nearly a century now, the individual legions hadn’t had to listen to outside authority while out in the field. On this mission, we’d been told the two legions would be kept separate. Therefore, this kind of thing shouldn’t have come up. I’d been briefed on the matter and knew that if it did, the officer on deck was in charge, as I’d told Leeson.
Due to the confusion after our initial landing, we’d been forced to put legions and auxiliary cohorts into one force. The brass simply hadn’t foreseen this kind of situation—but in my opinion, they should have.
Cursing, Leeson broke off. I knew he’d go complain to Belter or maybe to Graves or even Winslade. It wasn’t my problem. I kept marching my dragon, leading Belter’s infantry to the next available pocket of cover.
When we got there, we discovered something shocking. The location was already occupied—by the enemy.
We realized what we were marching only when we plunged into their midst. They’d been hunkering down, ducking the bombardment that was landing mostly higher upslope. This group must have been one of the lowest posted enemy concentrations on the mountain.
There were about fifty squids, all armed with snap-rifles and wearing that scaled combat-armor I’d seen on Dust World. It was thin, but tougher than it looked.
“Enemy contact!” I shouted, cluing in Leeson, Belter and every dragon-rider in my squad. “Use grenade launchers if you’ve got ‘em!”
Fortunately, most of my team did. Della’s team didn’t as Harris had put those spinal cannons on her machines again. The arrangement turned out to be a good one, however. Her team advanced into claw-range, blasting a few rounds from their big guns as they came. The crack and blast of the shells was deafening, even through my dragon’s armored chassis.
Still shielded, Della’s front line absorbed most of the enemy snap-rifle fire. The squids seemed surprised and unsure how to handle our marching death-dealers. They poured automatic fire into the shielded dragons, but with little effect.
Throwing themselves prone at the clawed feet of the dragons, Belter’s infantry sprayed the squids with snap-rifles of their own.
The squid armor wasn’t very effective at stopping this barrage, but squids don’t die easily. Many fought on with limbs missing and dark blood pouring out of huge holes in their bodies.
That’s when my dragons got into the fight. We were armed with twin grenade launchers, and we tore them apart with the first volley. The enemy was a flopping mass of flesh after we hosed them down with grenades.
I soon called a halt to the firing, and Belter’s people charged in to finish the job. There was no mercy on our side. We killed every one of them.
My lips were a tight line. I might have accepted any sign of surrender—but there wasn’t any. Squids didn’t think like that. They probably didn’t find surrender honorable, or maybe they didn’t understand the concept at all. They fought to the last, even killing a few troopers by constriction when they got in close. It was a harsh lesson for our dead soldiers who’d never encountered squids before. These aliens possessed a grim vitality.
After it was over, Winslade himself contacted me. I opened the connection without relish.
“Primus, sir?” I asked.
“McGill? Are you in command of that crazy group up high?”
“Uh…not exactly sir.” I quickly explained that Belter was leading the infantry, and I was leading the cavalry. “We’ve done rather well working as a combined-arms force, if I do say so myself.”
“Belter, eh? Figures,” he said. “She’s a grandstander, there’s no doubt about it. So are you, for that matter. Could you be bothered to hold your position for the next several hours while more troops get up to you? No one else has advanced so far.”
&
nbsp; I checked my altimeter, and I had to admit I was surprised. We were about twenty-five hundred meters up.
“We’ll gladly wait for the rest of you,” I said. “Belter’s people are exhausted, and my dragons are about out of juice.”
“Understandable. We’ll reach you by morning. Winslade out.”
Morning? This wasn’t encouraging, but night was falling even as I looked around. Since Machine World had an eighteen hour day, the transition from light to dark as night fell was alarmingly fast. The same was true in dim gray light of every foggy dawn.
Just to be sure I didn’t get in the middle of an argument with my officers, I contacted Leeson to inform him of Winslade’s orders.
“Good,” he said. “We’ll be up to your position shortly. This business of command confusion is bullshit.”
“I was wondering about that, sir. Who exactly is in command when we have so many different groups involved?”
I knew the answer to my question, of course. Barring any special orders, the highest ranking officer present was in charge at any given post. That meant Belter could give me orders whether Leeson liked it or not. If he wanted to change her orders, he would have to find someone higher ranked or convince her she was wrong. In my opinion, he probably wouldn’t have much luck in that department.
Leeson knew all this, but that didn’t stop him from complaining. “Belter is in charge by default. I hope she doesn’t get your dragons smashed seeking glory. Maybe if Turov hadn’t been so busy making side-deals with Claver, she’d have set up an appropriate chain of command.”
A small hissing sound came out of me when I heard him say this. How could Leeson know about Claver and Turov? There was only one way—Graves or someone else had told him. Eventually, this leak of information would get back to Turov. She’d feel like using her broadsides on the mountain then—focused tightly on my location.
-31-
The hours that followed were long and slow. It was cold up here. We were squatting on the side of a spire of rock that seemed to reach right past the limits of this world’s envelope of gasses. I’d thought the flat plains down below had been cold, but I was wrong. Up here, there was even less to keep a man warm. It made me think of the fragility of every world. Planets were really oases in a vast frozen desert known as space.
The battle went on hold around us for the time being. The legions moved upslope all night long, and several units filtered into our defensive spot. Others passed on to take higher positions.
The enemy was maneuvering out there too, somewhere. I could feel it. They weren’t beaten yet, not by a long shot. They were probably hiding from our plasma artillery.
The officers called a meeting with the noncoms as night fell swiftly over the mountain. Most of our forces were made up of infantry who hadn’t done much fighting yet, but they’d done more than their share of the dying.
After the events of the day were analyzed, the commanders had determined the obvious truth: When infantry combined with the cavalry, our formations operated more effectively. Consequently, we were told our dragons would be used to break enemy defensive locations wherever they were encountered during the rest of this campaign. The infantry would be sent in behind us to clean up.
“That’s just grand, isn’t it?” Carlos asked me afterward.
I mumbled in agreement with him. Being told we were no longer a fast-moving cavalry force, that instead we were destined to become an armored shield for the infantry…well, that wasn’t what anyone in Winslade’s cohort wanted to hear.
We set up tents that were never warm inside no matter how much hot air we pumped into them. To pass the time, I ate, slept a little and tapped on my tapper. Various people sent me notes wanting to make sure I was still breathing. Mostly, these notes came from Anne and Natasha. They made me smile even as I answered and erased them quickly, so the other girl couldn’t find them later. Neither girl would be happy to see I was getting queries about my health from the other.
Kivi showed up and rudely looked over my shoulder. “Still at it, eh, McGill?” she asked.
Startled, I turned to look at her. “Just answering a few notes.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Here’s your goodnight kiss from me.”
She kissed her hand and slapped me with it. I caught her wrist and pulled her down into my lap.
Carlos brayed with laughter, and I let her go after receiving a few more slaps. She sauntered off. Her hair was disheveled but she had a smile on her face.
“What’s with you and her?” Carlos asked. “It’s totally unfair, whatever it is.”
“Honestly, I don’t know. I have to admit, Kivi and I have a strange relationship.”
“Yeah, real strange. The end result is you get to screw her and anyone else you can grab. Meanwhile, Carlos is lucky to pick up crumbs.”
I shrugged. “Kivi and I do get together every now and then, but she always seems jealous of other women, while I accept her habit of entertaining any number of other men.”
“Hey,” Carlos said, scooting a little closer and lowering his voice. “I’m hoping to get in on that action soon. You can help me out. Just don’t let her have any. Not even if she begs you for it.”
“What?”
“You know we’re working on a project, right?” he asked. “We’re working together to come up with a box to control these stupid machines. That’s my in. Chicks love working on a cool project together and being told constantly how smart they are.”
Shaking my head, I heaved a sigh. “That’s not how you go about it, Carlos.”
“Hey, don’t be a hater, McGill. Can’t you share the wealth a little? That’s all I’m asking for. Besides, I’m just imitating you. I watch you play the ladies all day long.”
“Whatever.”
“Just starve her, okay?” he asked urgently. “If she comes and tries to crawl into that spider-web bag of yours tonight, push her butt right back out again. Preferably, you should aim her in my direction.”
Carlos had never been easy to like. There was something about him that was swaggering and desperate all at the same time.
“You got it,” I said, which got Carlos to leave me in peace. I saw him pestering Kivi later, and sure enough they started working on some kind of gizmo together.
We called lights out soon after that, and I sank into my sleeping bag of spider silk happily. It really did keep a man warm even on this ice-ball of a planet. For once, there had been truth in advertising. Maybe the marketing man in charge had screwed up.
I’d barely fallen asleep when someone actually did try to slip into my sleeping bag.
This surprised me—I mean really surprised me. I’d never have thought Carlos could have been right about something like this.
“Kivi,” I hissed. “What are you doing?”
“I’m not Kivi.”
It was Della’s voice. I felt a pang of embarrassment for the mistaken identity. But really, I shouldn’t have. I mean, what the hell was this married woman doing climbing on me in my sleep, anyway?
“Oh,” I said. “Uh…what’s this about, Della?”
“I’ve gotten over being angry with you,” she whispered back.
This had me frowning bewilderedly in the dark. I hadn’t known I’d done anything to make her angry, nor had I noticed that she was in such a state. What should I do now? These were new circumstances to me and presented me with a dilemma. Sure, Della and I had a past, and we were both noncoms. Fraternization should have been a no-brainer. Hell, we’d even had a kid together who was some fifty lights away. But she was supposedly married, and I’d just started things up with Anne, a woman I’d had a thing for that went back years.
“Okay…” I said carefully. “I’m glad you’re not angry—whatever it was I did.”
She squirmed into my spider-bag, which really wasn’t big enough for two, but it stretched accommodatingly. It had been warm before, but now it was getting a little steamy.
“Are you disappointed?” she asked.
“About what?”
“That I’m not Kivi?”
“No, not at all,” I said.
She was quiet for a time. I made no moves on her, other than to get comfortable.
“Am I bothering you?” she asked.
“You sure are. I was sleeping—and you’re kind of freaking me out.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re married to someone else!”
“Oh. We colonists don’t operate that way. Jealousy is a primitive thing. We’ve moved past it in our culture.”
I chuckled, not believing her for one second. From what I’d seen on Dust World, people were just as jealous as anywhere else. Hell, one little weasel named Stott had killed me over jealousy.
An unexpected full-moon face appeared above us in the gloom of the large tent. It was Carlos, and he was frowning down on us like the face of the Almighty himself.
“Could you two keep it down?” he asked.
The truth was, there was very little privacy at night in a tent full of your entire squad. Often on Machine World, there had been a screeching wind that covered up any noises people made at night. But tonight, it was dead calm outside.
“You’re just as annoying as people say you are,” Della marveled at Carlos.
“Look, McGill,” he whispered. “Just screw her and get it over with. We’ve only got about four hours until dawn.”
He went away at last. I hadn’t made a single move on Della all this time. I had my arm around her, and I was thinking about doing more—but it just didn’t feel right. A marriage was a marriage where I came from.
She grabbed my arm, lifted it up to her face, and activated my tapper.
Curious, I let her do it and looked on. She paged to my photos and vids section. She quickly found the shots of our daughter.
“You’ve looked at them, at least. Several times, in fact. I can see the date-marks on the files. I’d half-expected to find them all erased.”
“Della, why did you come over here and climb into my bag with me?”
