by M. J. Konkel
I tugged a blanket off the back of the couch and laid it over my shoulder. Enceladus was mystifying.
I no longer hated this world. Only the damn Spits.
Chapter 10
I felt a pat on the side of my cheek. Something – someone tapped on my cheek. I opened my eyes. Dosei, brighter than when I had fallen asleep, beamed through the window enabling me to easily see around the room. Enceladus leaned over me, and I remembered how she almost kissed me before she had left. I was mesmerized by how perfect she looked in the dim light. Maybe I was finally going to get that kiss.
“Hurry,” she urged. “We gotta get out of here.”
“What?” I sat up, confused.
“A convoy of Spits was spotted heading down toward this place. About an hour away.”
Not what I had hoped to hear when I saw her face. But I picked up my rifle, leaning against the couch near where my head had just rested, and followed her toward the door.
I hesitated, spying a picture on the wall that I had somehow missed before sleep. It was of Jergen. I suddenly realized I had slept in his place and now felt I owed two debts to him. How do you repay a dead man?
“Coming?” Enceladus shouted.
“Yeah, coming.” I scrambled out the door. “Are they coming for us?”
“Marla said it’s probably just another platoon on the way to the mines or maybe elsewhere,” Enceladus replied as she jogged down the steps ahead of me. “Not likely looking specifically for us. But it wouldn’t be good to be caught here.” What she was saying was the Spits would take it out on the community if they were known to be harboring us.
We arrived at the same time as several others. Marla was already there, along with several of the townspeople.
Holding a pair of scissors, Marla approached Enceladus and me. “I am cutting a lock off each of you since we won’t be sticking around,” Marla said. I didn’t understand, but I let her cut a bit of my hair and put it into a box. Something to do with the local customs concerning the funeral. The six soldiers killed during the ambush were to be buried at Split Wall Crater.
Marla handed the box with all of our locks to the man identified as the mayor.
“Make sure the Spits don’t find their bodies,” Marla said.
“Already taken care of,” the mayor replied. “They’re safe from those devils.”
I walked up to the man.
“Sir, I beg you to at least pretend to be welcoming to the Spits if they stop here. They are brutal and need almost nothing to set them off. If they ask for something, please just give it to them,” I urged.
The man furrowed his eyebrows. “Spits don’t ask. They demand. But if those Spits want something, they will have to pry it from our hands. We’ll not be handing over a single loaf of bread to those bastards.”
“I’ve been with them. I know how they are,” I warned.
“We’d rather be under a boot than licking it,” the mayor responded.
“We’ll ambush them once they are far enough away the Spits don’t pin it on this place,” Marla said. “Whatever you give them, we’ll take back.”
The mayor grudgingly agreed. Her still grumbled though, unhappy with the idea of giving anything to the Spits. I had just witnessed how persuasive Marla could be. The mayor gave Marla a hug and told her to be careful.
Marla turned toward us. “Alright, everyone, let’s move out.” She peered at me. “Triton or Alexardo?”
“Huh? Oh, friends call me Trite,” I said. “Haven’t had one of those for a while though.” Actually, it was Roberta who had called me that.
“Well, Trite, climb into the scout with me,” Marlo said. “It’ll be less jarring on your shoulder than the trucks.”
“Okay,” I agreed, although I had been hoping to sit next to Enceladus.
Marla hopped into the right front seat, next to the driver; I think his name was Drummer. He was as tall and husky as Helm. At first I had thought they might be brothers or cousins, but they weren’t related. I slid into the back seat, and we pulled out and headed toward the bridge over the wide stream.
“So what’s the plan?” I asked. “We zip out, what fifty, sixty klicks along the trail, set up an ambush, and kick their butts?”
“Wish it were that easy,” Marla replied. “We can only travel at about one-third of our normal speed in the dark. Any faster, frickin’ aircraft might pick up our infrared signatures.” That made sense to me. Once the star set and the desert started to cool, heat sources would stand out easier. “The Spits won’t be constrained the same way. So they would soon run right up our asses at that speed.”
“What are we going to do then?” I asked.
“Going go out about an hour out. They won’t catch up before then. Find a place off the trail to hide until the bastards go by. Then try to follow them. That will make us visible to satellites, but hopefully they’ll think we’re just part of the Spit convoy.”
“Convoy?” I questioned.
“There are two trucks following a scout.”
“That’s likely two platoons,” I noted. I glanced back. We had three trucks too, plus the wagon pulled by the middle truck, that carried the fusion reactor needed for power. But we had only a dozen fighters left. The Spits would have close to twice as many.
“We can’t follow too closely, or those on the back of the trucks or handling the guns will spot us,” Marla continued. “If they follow their usual protocol, they will pull off the road somewhere for a rest. The problem will be spotting where they pull off since we won’t see them doing it. If we can manage that, then we can ambush them while they are resting or set up an ambush down the trail.” She sighed. “What I wouldn’t give for a way to track them.”
“Mm. Wait a minute. We still have all the boxes from when you ambushed my old platoon?” I asked.
“Yeah. Why?”
“Pull over and stop. I think I may have an idea.”
Five hours of sitting under the bridge passed before I finally heard the scout vehicle approach. That counts toward my promise to the doctor for taking it easy, right? The Spits had stayed for hours at Split Wall Crater, harassing its citizens. The scout hummed, barely audible, over the bridge as I patiently hid and then peeked at the vehicle as it passed. Too dark to make out anything more than that it was the typical Spit scout vehicle.
Thirty seconds later the first of the Spit trucks rumbled toward us. The pitch of its electric motors was much lower and louder than that of the scout, and the bridge intensely vibrated as the heavy truck crossed. I doubted the bridge had been designed to handle trucks of the size of the Spits’.
After close to a minute, the second truck approached, and I signaled Helm to be ready. Then I signaled Enceladus to begin her part. With the low light filter on my helmet switched on, seeing her made it hard to concentrate on my role.
She was now totally naked. And I had thought she was beautiful when she was totally covered in clothing. I had to turn away to stay focused on the mission. Not to mention what she might think if she caught me staring.
I climbed the bank of the stream until I was at the close end of the bridge, careful not to put pressure on my injured shoulder. A large rock hid me as I peered down the road and saw the outline of the truck in the dim light of Dosei.
It was still about a hundred meters away, but then I spotted another truck about four hundred meters back.
“Get back down,” I yelled at Enceladus and her team. I hoped the hum of the truck’s motors covered up my shouting.
Shit! Three trucks probably meant three platoons. We would be outnumbered nearly three to one.
We waited until the second truck rumbled past us and started to disappear into the dark. Then the third approached.
“Now, Enceladus,” I shouted.
She and two of her female friends from the community stepped out from the dark shadows on the other side of the road across from me and strutted toward the opposite end of the bridge. All three were beautiful. Enough illumination from the
dim light of a partial Dosei revealed the women to those on the truck. And it revealed their lack of clothing.
Enceladus paraded across to the far end of the bridge while one of her friends jumped off the close end of the bridge, opposite side of the road to where I lay hidden. From the spot where the first young woman had plunged into the pool under the bridge, the second friend turned and waved at the truck. Then she leapt into the pool as well with a resulting loud splash.
Enceladus reached the far end of the bridge and just stood there with hands on her hips.
“Don’t you just love a man in a uniform,” she yelled toward her friends in the water but loud enough for those on the truck to hear. The scene had all the appearance of three young women out skinny dipping by the light of the gas giant.
The truck slowed down, and whistling emanated from the back of the truck.
I gave Helm a little push in the back. I think he might have been mesmerized as well. He jumped up and rolled out onto the road from the opposite side of the girls and directly in front of the truck.
The timing was just right as he laid out flat and the truck hummed on over him. He hooked an arm over one of the axles, and, suddenly, he was dragged along over the bridge. Luckily, the truck had slowed down at the sight of the women, or it would have been a rough ride for him. I had previously handed Helm a helmet that he now attached to the axle.
Helm let go and quickly rolled off the road as soon as the last of the truck’s wheels rolled past him. Right across from Enceladus who turned just then and performed a swan dive into the pool of water below. Loud cheers erupted from the truck before it picked up speed and disappeared into the dark gap in the crater wall.
“What about any women on the truck?” Helm asked.
“They were staring too,” I said. “Maybe with disgust. But still staring.”
“Are you getting its signal?” Helm whispered. I wondered if he got the irony of his name and the task he had just performed as I peered up at the HUD of my helmet.
“Just a second,” I said. I now saw the green light.
“Did it work?” Enceladus called from in the water under the bridge.
“Yeah! You bet your sweet ass it did,” I shouted back. I could see the direction and receding distance to the helmet that had once belonged to Longshore. I figured the helmet’s power supply would last about twelve hours without being recharged. I was pretty sure the Spits would stop and make camp before then.
Then I saw the scowl on the face of Enceladus. “I didn’t mean …” I was at a loss. How could I defend my stupidity?
As we waited for the scout vehicle and one of the trucks to return and pick us up, I tried to explain myself. But Enceladus just didn’t seem to buy into it just being a common expression on my home world.
She was still giving me the cold shoulder as I hopped into the back of the scout.
Marla must have sense something between us. “Everything okay?” Her eyes darted toward Enceladus’s march toward the first truck.
I rolled my eyes. “Language barrier thing.”
“But you speak standard just like us.”
“No. The barrier between men and women,” I said.
Marla just smiled at that. As we pulled away, she asked about the position of the convoy.
“I lost the connection once they got a little over five klicks out,” I replied.
“Alright, step on it, Drummer,” she ordered. “We need to catch up.” Then she switched on her radio and informed those in the trucks of our pushing ahead and told them to catch up as fast as they could.
It was only a few minutes before I got a signal again from Longshore’s helmet. Afterward, we hung back just within signal range and hoped we wouldn’t be spotted in the growing light of the gas giant by one of the GATs in the back of the last truck. Those on the Spit trucks were from a different platoon than my old platoon, so they wouldn’t be coded into the helmet. They would only know of it if they looked under the truck.
As we followed, we discussed possible ambush plans. But it really all depended on where the enemy stopped. After eight hours I realized the convoy had slowed down. We slowed too as the signal showed the Spits no longer moved. Then we came to the point where the convoy had left the trail. Unlike the Bahramian trucks, the Spits’ trucks left tracks. We saw from the signal that the convoy had stopped about three klicks off to our right.
“They went to Gumdrop Hill,” Marla said. “I know this area well.” She went on to describe the terrain around the hill.
“I have a couple of ideas,” I said. “My arm is feeling better since whatever that nice doctor injected into me is doing miracles, and I’m itching to play a part in this.” It hurt more than I let on, but I really wanted to be involved. I wanted the Spits to hurt. Oh, did I want them to hurt!
Chapter 11
Marla, concerned over my shoulder injury, was hesitant to let me go out into the field. But somehow I convinced her I needed to be involved.
A tiny fraction higher, and it would have been a whole different story, so I know part of it was the location of the wound. I didn’t know if the rest was the pain meds or the injections from the kind old doctor, but I already could use the arm. That was one of my points when I convinced Marla. My shoulder still ached with a dull pain, but I was just happy to be able to carry and point a rifle again.
I crawled on my elbows and knees through the desert prairie toward the round mound of a hill. Some grasses grew in tufts here. But rocks, pebbles, and sand covered most of what I crawled on and around.
My advantage was that the Spits had no idea I was coming. My disadvantages were that I had no idea where the guard was located and if there was only one. I had set my face shield to night vision, but Spitnik armor covered up most of a soldier’s infrared signature, making it hard to spot a guard in the dark shadow of the hill. Of course, the Spits were going to have just as hard of a time spotting me.
I slowly crept forward toward the hill, careful to be noiseless. It dawned on me I might even crawl right past their parameter without finding a guard.
But then I heard a noise. Just a faint little giggle somewhere off to my left. I changed direction and headed on my elbows toward the guard who had given himself away, slowly easing forward. As I slipped up behind a small boulder, the giggle rang out again, a little louder this time. Like a little dinner bell.
I peeked around the side of the rock. A Spit guard sat in an armored suit, hidden behind a pile of boulders and facing out away from the hill. He was sideways to me. I peered around, expecting to spot the other guard that he had been joking with. But I spotted none. Perhaps he was texting jokes to another guard through his HUD.
I slowly flipped my rifle to its fire mode and rested the muzzle against the side of the boulder. I then waited. I had learned from experience flechettes couldn’t pierce three layers of armor and the man’s arm was in the way. The man raised an arm to make an adjustment on his helmet, leaving his side exposed.
Phit! A single flechette pierced through the side of the man’s rib cage and through his heart and lungs. He didn’t make a sound other than the thud when his body hit the ground.
I froze and listened for a few seconds for sounds and movements of any other Spits in the area who might be reacting to my rifle firing.
It really seemed others were not close though, so I rose and tossed my helmet aside as I hurried to the fallen Spit. I popped off the Spit’s helmet and placed it over my head. I grinned at the fact that a damn video was still playing on his HUD. The stupid bastard deserved his fate.
“Conner, Conner. Why are you not answering?” A voice demanded.
I had to think quick. I made whistling and crackling sounds into my mic and scattered in a few words between.
“… radio not…….right…..”
“Shite, Conner! For a moment there, I thought you’s dead. I’s calling your problem to the corp. The corp’s’ll get someone out to replace you so’s you can go get that crap fixed. I swear I hea
rd a shot from over your way. You hear it too?”
“….. panic………coyote…” I said between crackling noises. I didn’t even know if there were coyotes on this world, but then I was pretty sure these Spits wouldn’t know either. But would the other guard buy into me being Conner? I hoped that any differences between my voice and Conner’s would be attributed to the supposed com malfunction.
“Well, the sarge’s going to have your ass if he finds out you’s shooting at wild critters.” I heard the comment, but I was already in the process of taking off the helmet and replacing it with my original one. The radio in that one allowed me to communicate to the others wearing helmets from my old platoon.
“Marla, first guard’s down,” I said. “There are two others at least.” I sent the positions of the other two that I had read off the HUD from the dead guard. Luckily, they were from the same platoon. I had expected that each would be from a different platoon, but I guess it made sense to have guards that could talk to each other and who knew each other. It was still possible there were others from the other platoons I couldn’t read though.
I dragged the Spit’s body around to the other side of the pile of boulders and stuffed him against them. There were spasms in my injured shoulder, but there was no time to nurse it. I placed the dead guard’s helmet back on my head and stuffed my helmet behind the boulders by the dead body. Then I got myself into the position I had seen the guard before I shot him. Except the video no longer played.
After a few minutes, another Spit marched up toward me. I could easily have shot him, but a second shot would surely have raised the suspicion of the other two guards.
“Hey, Conner! Electronics jinxered, huh?”
I had no idea what the hell that meant, but I nodded my head.
“Head on back. I’ll take over ‘cuz Kova’s now on the job.” He stuck out a fist.
I didn’t know how to react, so I mimicked him. He hit my fist with his.
“That was lame, bro,” he chuckled and ambled toward the pile of boulders.
