Boots of Oppression

by M. J. Konkel

  I rolled forward behind the scout.

  More rifle fire. Marla and Enceladus fired at the scout. Its armor was too thick for the flechettes to penetrate though. They just pinged off the armored surface. I ducked, worried about one of the ricochets.

  “Careful where you aim,” I shouted. “I’m right behind the scout.”

  “Status,” Marla barked.

  Others reported that grenades had detonated in the backs of the second and third trucks. No one was in either of the driver’s cabins. Apparently, the drivers had been in the back with the rest of the Spits.

  The report from around the truck closest to me wasn’t so good. I took a second to sneak a quick glance up at my HUD to see if we had suffered casualties. Lights were gone for Leocore and Estia. Ramone was the only one of the three left at that truck, and he was pinned down taking heavy fire from Spits jumping out of the back of the truck.

  Then a light on my HUD flickered and went out. I glanced up. It was Enceladus.

  That’s when something just snapped in me. I never felt so much rage. Even at the execution of the villagers. All I could think of was killing every Spit within striking distance.

  I left the scout behind and dashed straight back toward the first truck, screaming the whole way. The sandstorm’s ferocity had lessened, and visibility improved. Ahead, I saw a driver in the truck. He saw me too.

  I shot several times at the armored glass of the front window. My flechettes couldn’t pierce it, but there were so many cracks the driver could no longer see me very easily.

  He stuck his rifle out through the side window and fired in my direction. His aim was poor, and the flechettes sailed high over my head.

  I dove to the front of the truck and out of the driver’s sight. I peeked under the truck and saw the legs of several Spits in the back toward the driver’s side. But none on the other side.

  Crouching, I immediately scooted around to the passenger side door, staying below the sight of the driver. I rose, reached out, and yanked open the door with one arm.

  The driver’s side door was open and the driver was turning toward it as I fired three flechettes through his back from almost point-blank range.

  As the driver fell through the open door I whipped my rifle around, pointing it toward the back of the truck. A Spit sprang around the back corner and swung his rifle toward me.

  Too late for him. I put three flechettes through his chest. The man staggered, firing several rounds into the sky as he stumbled backward and fell to the sand.

  He heard the firing of rifles on the other side of the truck. They were still shooting at Ramone.

  I pulled out a heavy grenade, popped the pin, and tossed it over the truck. The grenade bounced a couple of times on the roof as I jumped into the cab of the truck.

  Boom! The grenade detonated. I glanced at my HUD, but Ramone’s light was now out too. I swore as I peeked through clear sections between the cracks in the windshield. Gunfire came from the scout. They were the ones who had shot Enceladus. I was sure of it.

  Then I heard the rattling of the gun overhead. We had not planned in our ambush for any of the Spits getting to one of the big guns. Those guns were heavily armored and impossible to take out with just rifles. Someone would have to dodge the big gun to get to the truck. Then past whoever else was still back there in the back of the truck to get to the gunner.

  I slammed the open door next to the steering wheel shut, flipped the switch on the dash to turn on the motor, and shifted the truck into gear. Pressing down on the accelerator, the truck lurched forward. I focused squarely on my target.

  Those in the scout must have realized what was happening. The scout vehicle began to pull away as the truck I drove barreled at it. They turned to dodge the collision.

  I spun the truck’s steering wheel toward the evading scout, and the truck rammed smack into the corner of the scout. The truck pushed the scout forward, and it flipped onto its side.

  Then the truck’s left front wheel rolled up over the scout. The angle was too much.

  I felt the truck starting to go over. I turned the wheels in the opposite direction in an attempt to keep the truck upright, but it still rolled. The truck’s second driver’s-side wheel slammed up against the scout and that stopped the truck’s forward momentum, but not its rolling.

  At some point, I must have realized I wasn’t going to stop it. I braced against the steering wheel and just hoped to the cosmos to survive the crash.

  The truck’s side slammed into the sand, and the side door, open the whole time, snapped off. The truck’s impact with the ground jarred me.

  I lost my grip. I fell into the sand of the open doorway, and the truck continued to roll, teetered and then rolled back toward me.

  Everything came to a stop. By some miracle, the truck had not crushed me. Curled up in the space on the sand where the door should have been, I was still alive. But others were not. Enceladus was on my mind.

  I grabbed my rifle and climbed, using the steering wheel for leverage, up to the open window on the driver’s side of the vehicle that now faced the scarlet sky. I popped my head up out of the open window and stared at the scout. It lay on its side as well about twenty meters away.

  I placed my rifle on the side of the door and prepared to hoist myself out. But then I spotted a soldier running toward the scout. I glanced up at my HUD. It did not register anyone in that direction. A Spit, I thought.

  I grabbed my rifle and aimed at the running figure. I was ready to squeeze the trigger, but the crosshair turned green. I lowered the muzzle of my rifle.

  “What the f…” I muttered. The soldier reached the scout and dropped a grenade through one of the ports. Then the person dove behind a boulder next to the scout.

  A second later the inside of the scout blew apart, and the doors blew off their hinges.

  Phit! Phit! Phit! Rifle shots came from behind me. Sparks flew off the boulder by the scout.

  I hoisted myself out of the cabin and up onto the side of the truck. I quickly crawled back, careful not to make a sound, until I peeked over the back edge. Two Spits hid behind the rear edge, firing at whoever was behind the boulder.

  I dropped down behind them. As they turned, startled by my sudden appearance, I fired flechettes into their midsections from point blank range. Both tumbled backward to the sand.

  Phit! Phit! Phit! Sounds of rifle shots came from toward the front of the truck. I stepped around to the other side and glanced quickly around the corner.

  A Spit used the front wheel for cover, firing toward the boulder.

  I jumped out and fired three flechettes through his side before he had a chance to even turn. He collapsed straight down in a heap.

  Another Spit stood up on the side of the truck up by the cabin, turned toward me, and fired a three-round burst. I had ducked behind the back of the truck just in time. The Spit had been looking for me in the cabin. He must have been sneaking up the side as I was crawling toward the back.

  I popped my head out for an instant and fired a burst up at him. I expected return fire. But the Spit arched his back and tumbled off the roof. Those were not my rounds that took him out though.

  I wasted no time with the dead (or soon to be dead) and jumped into the back of the truck. I switched to night vision and clambered up to where the gun turret was mounted.

  I grabbed the handle on the hatch and yanked on it. The hatch door swung downward with a clank. I reached a hand inside, grabbed onto an armored collar and yanked.

  Out came a GAT. He stumbled and rolled out flat on his side. I pointed the muzzle of my rifle down at him, and he froze. I nodded my rifle toward the opening.

  “Marla, got a Spit prisoner from the back of the truck,” I said into my mic.

  “I’ll be there soon,” she replied. “Seems this battle is over.”

  The GAT slowly rose and turned toward the opening. He moved slowly. I suspected he was stalling, waiting for an opportunity. I half hoped he would find one so I wo
uld have a reason to skewer him with flechettes. The only thing that held me back was my sense that he might be worth more to us alive than dead.

  The GAT wisely did not make any sudden movements though. As he reached the opening, I saw a rifle muzzle appear from the edge. It was pointed at the GAT who raised his hands into the air. I shoved the GAT hard in the back, and he stumbled to the sand.

  From my HUD, I saw that Marla and others were approaching, but I did not see the soldier near me with the rifle on my HUD.

  The soldier stepped forward with her faceplate up. It was Enceladus. A sense of relief fell over me. It was like I could breathe again. I had hoped it was her out by the boulder, but I wasn’t sure until I saw her face.

  I popped up my faceplate. “Shit! I thought you were dead,” I yelled.

  “Awe, were you worried about me?” she teased.

  “Just a bit concerned was all,” I sheepishly replied.

  “Uh, huh.” She didn’t sound convinced. “A flechette grazed my helmet. Knocked out my coms.”

  “Apparently not all,” I said. “When you were running up to the scout, I almost shot your ass. But then the crosshair turned green, telling me you were a friendly.”

  “What’s with this fascination of yours with my bottom?” she asked.

  I think I might have turned red from embarrassment at that moment. Luckily, Marla and Drummer came up to us at just then because I was too tongue-tied to respond.

  “Stay on your knees,” Marla ordered. “Take his helmet off.”

  Drummer set his rifle down far from the GAT and stepped behind him. He unfastened the helmet and jerked it up off the Spit’s head.

  We stared at the face of the man on his knees.

  “What’s your name? Rank?” Marla questioned.

  “I don’t have to answer to the likes of you,” the man sneered. “A coot and a devushka to boot.”

  “Whew! This one’s for real,” I said. “A real live Spit from Spitnik. You don’t have to hear the accent. Just the tone gives him away.”

  “Alive for now,” Drummer growled.

  “As soon as we don’t report in, you’re all going to be roasted. Fighters will come in and drop so many incendiaries --”

  Marla got in his face. “Don’t give me that bullshit. We both know you had no radio contact in the storm. Probably don’t even know where you holed up.”

  “If he won’t even give his name and rank, he’s a total waste of our time,” Enceladus said. “Might as well just shoot him now. Put him out of his frickin’ misery. And won’t have to look at his ugly face any longer.”

  “No, there will be no shooting him. That would be too merciful,” Marla said. “It’s the dessert head treatment for him. Strip him of his armor.”

  Drummer jumped behind the Spit and tore off the Spit’s armor piece by piece.

  “Dessert head?” I questioned. “I’ve never heard of that.”

  “We bury him all except for his head and leave him here in the desert. We’re not the first people to do that, but we think we might have perfected it.”

  “Perfected it, huh. Really?” I questioned.

  “Others before would leave the bastard out to dehydrate and die in the hot sun. We actually leave a canteen with a straw next to his head. We want the fricker to be alive and aware at eve when the coyotes start to prowl. We want him to feel the fear,” Marla turned toward the Spit. “We call it dessert head because your face becomes dessert for those animals out there that will eat you while you’re still alive. They go for the appendages first – your ears and nose. Then your chin and lips. They also seem to like going for the eyes. But then again, you won’t be alive for too long as your face is torn apart and you bleed out through it.” Marla turned to the side and spat onto the sand. “Amerigo, get a shovel.”

  “Monticello Stroggnoff. Lieutenant, Second Division of GAT.”

  “Oh, Lieutenant! I didn’t expect you to be an officer back here with the troops.” Marla laughed. “But you’re going to have to give me a whole lot more than that to keep your pretty face from the animals out here, and I not referring to just the coyotes. Let’s start with what you know about Lustrous Hole.”

  Counting Marla’s cousin, we were down to ten fighters.

  Enceladus took over as the driver of the scout vehicle while Drummer moved back to watch over the captured Spit. Enceladus had been grazed along the scalp by the flechette that took out her com. She replaced her helmet with one that used to belong to Estia, so she had a working com unit again. She did not wear it, though, as I stared at the back of her head where a little blood was visibly caked into her hair.

  Morgan also rode in the scout with us. I guessed Marla was bent on keeping her young cousin close to her. I think it might have been an unspoken promise to her aunt and uncle.

  “This dessert head execution, is that really a thing you’ve done before?” I asked.

  Marla chuckled. “Nah. I needed the Spit’s cooperation though.”

  “So you just cooked up the idea back there,” I said.

  “Actually, it came from a novel I once read,” Marla confessed. “It really worked though. We now know more about the security around Lustrous Hole. If I ever find that author, I’ll have to buy him a drink.”

  “Yeah, speaking of Lustrous Hole, what is the plan for that?” I asked.

  “We get a Spit scout and ride it right through the front gates. Plant enough explosives to collapse the main tunnel and get the hell out of there.”

  “Ooh! I love all the detail,” I chuckled.

  Marla ignored my sarcasm. “If only the last scout we came across hadn’t gotten blown up.”

  “Heh! I’m sorry!” Enceladus apologized. “It seemed like a good idea at the time, and I didn’t know you had a fondness for that particular vehicle.”

  “Why didn’t we take the trucks?” I asked. “We could get everyone in one of those.” A single scout was not going fit all of us.

  “No trucks. It needs to be a Spit scout,” Marla insisted without explaining. Clearly, there was more detail to her plan than she had revealed.

  After a minute of quiet, I said, “You know if you had told us we needed a scout earlier, Enceladus wouldn’t have decided redecorating its interior was such a good idea.”

  We rode again in silence for a while. Enceladus then asked what it was like on Riva Lontana, and I spent the next few hours describing my home world. The three of them were fascinated by a world consisting mostly of ocean. They were also very surprised by my descriptions of the ground quakes that plagued my home world. Apparently, quakes did not occur on Bahram. At least not ones of the magnitude of those on my home world. And the tsunamis just seemed like fiction to them.

  Eventually, we got to talking about how to take on Lustrous Hole, and Marla finally filled us in on her plan. We argued for a while over the details, but we had a plan. But you know how battle plans go though.

  Chapter 17

  I lay completely buried face down under the sand. No, I had not pissed off the other resistance fighters and received an alternate version of the dessert head treatment. I had actually agreed to being buried alive. But it still sucked. The armored suit had provided me with fifteen minutes of air to breathe, and I hoped that would be enough.

  I stared at my HUD since my faceplate screen was black. Besides my remaining air supply, I saw the positions of the other five fighters around me. Drummer and Marla were closest to me. Amerigo, Tinner, and Xavia were on the other side of the road. They were all buried as well. Face down because it was easier to rise up out of the sand from one’s knees than from one’s back.

  Seven minutes of air left.

  “What’s the status of that scout?” I whispered into my com. I don’t know why I whispered. I guess it was the being buried thing. “My butt itches, and I need to scratch it.”

  “That’s way more info than I needed, and that scout’ll be next to you in less than a minute,” Enceladus replied. “It’s slowing down now.”


  “Patience,” Marla insisted. “And remember you all have to keep still, or the sand could shift around you and expose you to the Spits.”

  “Is it still coming, or is it turning around?” I asked. For this part of our plan to work, those in the scout had to drive up to the bridge and be curious enough to stop. If they just turned around and went back to their superiors to report that the bridge was destroyed, our plan was doomed.

  “Hold your camels. It’s still coming,” Enceladus said.

  I then felt the vibration of the approaching vehicle through the ground – faintly at first. But they grew in intensity, and then the vibrations suddenly ceased.

  “Enceladus, keep talking,” Marla insisted. “Be our eyes for us.”

  “It stopped and just sitting there,” Enceladus said. “I can’t see what’s going on inside. No X-ray vision here.”

  “How close to the bridge?” Marla asked.

  “Less than ten meters away,” Enceladus replied.

  “Should we do it now?” Drummer asked.

  “No. Hold your pants up, Drummer. Just a little longer,” Marla ordered.

  “The front door on the right side is opening, and a Spit is stepping out.” Enceladus described what she observed from a hidden spot on a nearby hill and decided to add color commentary. “He’s wearing an armored suit, but I can still tell he’s frickin’ ugly. He’s looking around. He’s holding his rifle out. Compensating for something, if you ask me. And now he’s walking toward the bridge section we blew up.”

  “Now? Oh pretty please with spices on top, can I?” Drummer begged.

  “Wait just a little longer,” Marla insisted.

  “The driver’s side door is opening too,” Enceladus reported. “Another Spit in an armored suit. He’s walking toward the first frickin’ Spit, and he’s just as ugly as the first. Maybe uglier.”

  “Now!” Marla ordered. “And, Enceladus, get that truck moving.”

  We all rose out of the sand. Marla and Drummer shredded the mid-sections of the two Spits out on the bridge as the rest of us charged the scout.