by M. R. Forbes
"Is anybody injured?"
"Injured? No. Sable is dead. He got hit by a round that pierced the shell. Crab didn't make it either."
The emotions were being lifted and dropped too quickly. Mitchell held his breath to fight the sudden feeling of nausea. Sable, Crab. Dead? "Frigging son of a bitch."
"I'm still here, Colonel." Cormac's voice was light, as though he had no idea how badly the drop had gone. "Ready to kick some alien ass."
"Stow it, Firedog," Shank said.
"What about the others?"
"The other modules? I don't know. I haven't heard from anyone else. It may just be the four of us out here."
"Any sign of the enemy?"
"Negative, Ares. They probably don't think anyone survived."
"Or they're waiting for us to regroup to make it easier to pick us off."
Shank grunted a laugh. "Yeah. Let them think that."
"I'm coming your way. ETA, ten minutes. Sit tight until I get there."
"Affirmative. See you soon."
Mitchell started moving again, walking at a normal pace through the foliage. He could hear the scraping and scratching and cracking of branches as he pushed through them, the size and power of the machine breaking them with ease. He kept his attention on the path ahead, trying to will every other thought from his mind. How many others had died in the drop?
"Riggers, this is Zed. Can anyone hear me?"
The other Zombie pilot's voice was strained.
"Zed, this is Ares. I hear you. What's your status?"
"Colonel?" He could hear the relief in her voice. "Thank God. I thought I was alone out here."
Something was messing with their comm signals. Was it the terrain, or the Tetron?
"Not alone. I'm zeroing in on Shank and what's left of his direct squad. Sending you the coordinates."
"Roger. I'm five klicks out. I grounded pretty hard, busted the actuator of the right arm on a frigging tree. We might be able to patch it if we get a few hours."
"Roger. We'll work it all out once we get our team reassembled."
There were a few seconds of silence before Zed's voice ran back into his head.
"Colonel." She paused. "Lancelot didn't make it. I saw his mech. It got hung up on the corner of the Valkyrie, and when it got unstuck it was falling like a brick. I think he must have gotten knocked out. There's no way he could survive a drop like that without thrusters." Her voice dropped to a near-whisper. "No way."
Mitchell cursed again, his heart sinking for the third time. The situation was bad, and getting worse with every name of one of theirs who hadn't survived the drop.
How much worse would it get?
There was sudden motion in the trees on his right.
25
His p-rat screamed out a harsh warning, placing the marker on his overlay right before the incoming mech opened fire. Heavy slugs tore through the trees between them, shattering branches and cutting massive divots into large trunks.
"Shit," Mitchell cried. "I'm under fire." He set his beacon, transmitting his location to Shank and Zed at the same time he dropped the mech to a knee, raising the railgun and taking aim. The trees were still an obstacle, and he couldn't afford to waste ammo like his opponent could. He fired the thrusters, scooting the mech laterally, pulling up mounds of earth with the movement.
A second warning. A second marker appeared on the HUD. Mitchell brought the mech up to its feet and rotated towards it, catching sight of a leg through the brush. He fired a salvo of the amoebic missiles from the Zombie's chest, watching them shoot through the air and into the leg. The impact and explosion echoed around him, and at least one tree fell near the stricken mech. He saw the leg buckle and twist sideways. Down, but probably not out.
Mitchell brought his attention back to the first, a Zombie like his marked with standard UPA designations. It was almost clear of the trees and into an open line of fire.
A third signature appeared behind him. How the hell were they popping up so close? Even with the trees, the sensors should have been picking up anything within a kilometer at least.
He turned the mech sideways to get his back, and the armor over the cockpit, out of the line of fire. Stuck in the middle, he held the railgun out and fired, sending a stream of bullets back again, while a hail arrived from the belly gun of the Zombie in front. Slugs peppered the side of his mech, pinging off the heavy armor and taking solid divots with them.
"I could use some help over here," he said. "Zed. What's your-"
A fourth mech came up on his overlay.
He was completely boxed in.
He considered firing the jump thrusters, but he had as much chance of damaging the mech as he did breaking through the trees. He started running instead, forwards towards the Zombie, unleashing a second barrage of missiles. Some of them slammed into trees, blowing apart the trunks and pulling them down with one blast, the force pushing them away from him. Some of them were taken down by the mech's anti-missile lasers. Two of them slammed into the enemy, a direct hit in the chest.
Its ammunition stores exploded one at a time, small fireballs that lit the area around it. The sound of the blasts echoed across the Preserve in a thunderous crackle.
The mech with the broken leg was upright, and his p-rat sounded the approach of incoming missiles. The CAP-NN launched countermeasures without his intervention, firing smaller lasers at the targets and burning them from their trajectory. Mitchell swung around to face the source, which he could now see was a Scarecrow, a medium weight mech with a pair of shoulder mounted missile batteries. His p-rat screamed at him as more incoming missiles came from his left and back, as well as impending laser fire. They were getting closer, clearing the trees, and he was running out of time.
The head of the Scarecrow in front of him crumpled.
A few seconds later, he heard the unmistakable boom of the S-4 Tactical.
"You called?" Shank said.
A head shot wouldn't completely disable the mech, but it did leave it mostly blind. Mitchell turned away from it and backed up as it stopped shooting, trying to use secondary systems to figure out where it was.
More gunfire sounded, and Zed's Zombie appeared on his overlay, perfectly aligned behind one of the enemy mechs. Caught off-guard, it was down in seconds.
"Target destroyed, sir," she said.
"One more," Mitchell said to himself. The arrival of his team had emboldened him, and he turned to face it, stepping sideways to stay on the trailing edge of the trees. He raised the railgun and loosed short, controlled bursts, keeping an eye on ammo levels with each round that left the end of the weapon.
His opponent fired back, some of its ordnance deflected by the vegetation while Mitchell's rounds dug first into armor, and then into critical systems, his aim staying true despite the lag of Watson's interface.
The enemy mech didn't explode.
It just stopped.
"Shank, what's your position?"
"One klick out, headed your way. Three of us still moving. Got a signal from Bravo, they're alive. Charlie, Delta and Echo are still missing."
So were Raven and Perseus.
"Hold your position, we'll come to you. We need to clear this area before any reinforcements arrive."
"Yes, sir."
Mitchell looked up. The trees were giving them decent cover. He didn't see any drones or fighters, and his p-rat wasn't suggesting anything was out there. Not that it was close to being reliable down here. The Tetron had to be jamming their signals.
"Zed, thanks for the assist."
"Anytime, sir."
Mitchell shifted his mech, shouldering the giant rifle. Instead of moving back to Shank, he continued ahead towards the dead mech.
"Sir?" Zed asked.
"Cover me."
Her Zombie appeared through the trees on his right, and she walked it in reverse behind him while he approached the enemy machine. It was a Knight, dimpled, scarred, and battered from their standoff.
He
stood in front of it, his mech silent and still. He had seen the Tetron control a mech on its own. There was no guarantee there was a pilot inside. There was no guarantee there wasn't. The cockpits had an external coded override. They needed to in case anyone had to get in to pull an injured pilot out. He couldn't load him up with Watson's firmware, but he could cut the neural link.
He could set him free.
"Colonel?" Zed said again. "We need to get out of here."
There were no enemies on his sensors, and he didn't want to leave him there. How long would it take to open the mech up and unlink him? Five minutes, at most.
"Colonel?"
"Damn it." Five minutes was a lifetime on a battlefield. Five minutes could get all of them killed. He'd already wasted too many. "Let's go. As fast as we can move through these trees."
"Yes, sir."
They retreated from the mech, heading towards Shank and Alpha squad. Mitchell felt the pull against his heart, the temptation to allow himself to feel defeated again. He couldn't save them. He couldn't save any of them.
No. He would save as many as he was able, even if that turned out to be only one.
Christine.
It would have to be enough.
26
They converged on Shank's position a kilometer from the scene of the battle. He had picked a good location for the meet. An area of thicker than normal growth and some heavy, moss-layered rocks to use as cover. It had been a tight fit for the two mechs to reach, but it would afford them a decent measure of safety while they regrouped.
Mitchell brought his mech to its knees and unlocked the cockpit with a thought. The sensation of being stuck to the seat vanished, and he shifted forward to unplug from the CAP-NN. Then he twisted to his feet, standing in the narrow entry space and pressing the hatch release. The heavy armor was pulled upward along electromagnetic rails, exposing him to the outside.
"Colonel," Shank said, appearing at the side of the mech.
Mitchell slid down onto a ledge created by the joint between torso and hips and then climbed down using rungs embedded on the rear left leg. "Colonel," he said back, reaching the ground and facing Shank. The soldier was sweaty and had a small laceration on his chin, but was otherwise unhurt.
"Still no word from Charlie, Delta, or Echo. Our module was pretty busted up. I grabbed all the gear I could salvage." He pointed back to where Cormac and Jones waited. Cormac was turning in a slow circle, the heavy exosuit's mounted guns raised and ready to fire. A standard gear pack was resting between them.
"One pack?" It was a lousy haul.
"We took fire through the shell and lost a panel, and that was before we hit the ground at four hundred kph. I can't count how many times we rolled. I felt like a frigging hamster stuck in a wheel. Everything got bent out of shape or spilled out when the module tore open."
"How many MREs?"
"Twenty."
There was motion in the trees to their left. Zed's Zombie shifted on its hips, the torso moving to aim the belly gun at the spot.
"Colonel." Four soldiers appeared through the trees, led by Sergeant Kowalski and trailed by a Mount. He was a short, muscle-bound grunt with a barrel chest and a set of straight pearly whites. "Bravo checking in."
"Kowalski," Shank said. His eyes scanned the squad. "Proteus is dead?"
"The drop left her critical. Broken spine. I helped her along."
There was no medic on the team, no way back out of the zone, and their enemy wasn't taking prisoners. It was all protocol. That didn't make the sting of losing another soldier any less sharp.
"You salvaged your Mount," Mitchell said. The machine was little more than four legs, and a platform to load their gear onto. It was a simple thing, its AI programmed to follow the squad. It was intended to carry the gear for everyone, to reduce the load on the soldiers and leave them more agile. It was carrying five gear packs now.
"We were lucky. Our thrusters and repulsors came out okay. I stowed Proteus' gear just in case."
"Good call, Sergeant," Shank said.
"Did you see anyone else?" Mitchell asked.
"No, sir. I don't think anyone else made it. It's damn hard to tell though. Sensors are barely getting half a kilometer out, and comm signals aren't doing much better. This isn't my first drop. Damned if I've ever experienced this before."
"It's the enemy jamming our signals."
"Planetwide?" Kowalski whistled. "Nasty trick. But if it's mucking up comm channels, how does it keep a hold on our men?"
"One of ours figured out how to do it. I'm sure the enemy did, too. The good news is that I don't think it can jam our positional sensors without frigging up its own, since they operate on the same frequencies. I guess it thinks it's worth it."
Shank laughed. "Seeing as how we're outnumbered, I wouldn't call that a bad strategy."
"What's our strategy, Colonel?" Kowalski asked. "We were supposed to be either celebrating with our mates or dead by now."
"We're way off target. We need to get back on it. There's a city not too far from here."
"Angeles," Cormac said.
"Angeles. It's right off the coast. It was lightly defended before the invasion. We should be able to use the buildings as cover while we regroup. We can see if there's anything to salvage, and also give the Tetron a chance to show its hand. It knows we're here, and it's going to throw something at us. It would be better to have some idea what."
"You think there's anything it will send that won't kick our ass?" Kowalski asked. "We lost seventy percent of our strike force, and it was going to be an uphill battle before that."
"More like up a frigging mountain, now," Shank said. "My favorite kind of mission."
"You think we need a new plan, Sergeant?" Mitchell asked. "Or do you think we should just lay down and die because we frigged the drop?"
Cormac laughed. "Maybe we can invite the alien over and drop our pants so it can give it to us real good?"
"Sir, they had mechs on us as soon as we hit," Zed said. "There must have been patrols in the forest already."
"They couldn't have been there for us," Shank said. "Not that fast. They were looking for something else."
Mitchell nodded. "Not everyone on Liberty has an ARR. What if some of the civilians were fighting back?"
"Civilians against an advanced intelligence with an entire military at its disposal?" Kowalski said, his negative attitude starting to get on Mitchell's nerves. "Good luck."
"I didn't say they were winning, just that they might be out here. The Preserve is a big place, and with limited sensor range it's an easy place to hide."
"So what do we do, Colonel?" Kowalski asked. "Try to find them? Bolster our numbers?" He pointed over at the Mount. "We've got extra rifles."
It was tempting. They had gone from thirty grunts and five mechs to seven and two. Against an entire planet. If it weren't his reality, Mitchell would never have believed it. Even so, the Greylock had been up against some pretty impossible odds before. The Federation Dreadnought that had bombarded Liberty was testament to that. He knew the Riggers had been on some impossible missions themselves and survived.
Slow.
Steady.
Tempting, and a bad idea.
"If the enemy can't find them, we won't be able to either," he said. "Besides, a few dozen civilians aren't going to help much, especially since they're more likely to slow us down and get in the way. No. We need to use our size as an advantage. Move fast, strike fast." He checked his p-rat. "We've got six hours to sundown. I want to be in Angeles by tomorrow night."
"You want to move during the day?" Kowalski asked.
"We have a week to get to York, Sergeant. We're four days out of the capital at a taxing pace, and that's without running into complications. I want to move as far and as fast as possible."
He could tell by the Sergeant's expression that he didn't agree with the plan.
"Sir, permission to speak freely?"
Mitchell clenched his jaw. "Go ahead
."
"I'm all for moving as far and fast as possible. Why do we need to cross through Angeles? We can cut a route through the Preserve and hit the Lincoln Pass in a day or so, and cut hours off the overall travel time. The trees will give us more cover than the city, and we've already seen what we're up against."
Mitchell stared at the Sergeant. He knew Kowalski was right. Of course, he was. His reasoning was a stretch. Except he had flown over York. He had called for Christine. She hadn't answered. Was it because she was hiding? Because her p-rat was offline? Or because she wasn't there? What if she had escaped York? What if she was in the next closest city? What if she was with the civilians?
What if she were dead?
He had no way to know. What he did know was that everything had gone to shit, and they had to do whatever they could to salvage it. The odds of getting into York from orbit were slim. The odds of getting there on the ground were even slimmer. If luck was with them and Christine was in Angeles, it would make everything that much easier, and maybe, just maybe they could find a ship and he could get them all off Liberty alive.
He knew it was wishful thinking.
It was still the best he had.
"Sir?" Sergeant Kowalski put his eyes to the ground, faltering under Mitchell's stare. "It was only an idea."
Mitchell continued to stare. His eyes were looking through the Sergeant now, into the trees on the other side. Into a past so ancient he could barely begin to grasp it. She wasn't dead. He was sure of it. She was here on Liberty, somewhere.
"Sir?" Kowalski asked again.
"That's enough, Sergeant," Shank said.
Mitchell barely heard them. Had he been here before? Was this part of the recursion? Did he lose on Liberty? Die on Liberty? Did Origin know what had happened here and didn't say?
His eyes refocused on Kowalski's face, rough stubble on a square jaw. He glanced over at Shank, his dark face more round, his eyes more red. It didn't matter if it had happened before. The past loop of the timeline might have been written, but the future never was. It was mutable, and wasn't that the point? Wasn't that why Origin had brought the Goliath here? Even if he had found the lost starship in one thousand past futures, even if he had lost and died a thousand times. He was here, now, and he would never know if he was making the same decisions or different ones. Origin said he was the key, the reason humankind had ever even come close to winning this war.
