by Jack Colrain
“OK, we’ll blame you,” Palmer said.
“Always a pleasure to serve.”
Sergeant Stewart’s Big Mike walked down to the water’s edge. “Look, sir,” he said, “it’s flowing as slow as molasses.”
“Sir,” Kenji said, approaching the water’s edge, “I was on the swim team at college. I could go in and test out the water for depth.”
Daniel hesitated, seeing the sense in it, but remembering this was a hostile world. “
It’s slow on the surface, but there might be an undertow, and there might be some sort of lifeforms in there.”
“You mean fish?” Kenji paused in unbuttoning his jacket.
“Or crocs, gators, whatever the equivalent is here.”
“Even the microbial life here will be different,” Doug Wilson pointed out. “You could cut your foot on a stone and some alien pathogen—”
Kenji stepped back from the water. “OK, Prof, I get the picture.”
“So do I,” Daniel said, “and I need everybody in one piece and good shape. The Big Mikes are waterproofed, and the Exo-suit will handle any microbes or pathogens. So, Stewart, you try wading in.”
“And hope you don’t rust,” Kinsella called out.
Stewart laughed, and stepped cautiously nearer to the water. Everyone watching had to try, with varying degrees of success, to stifle laughter as the oversized suit of armor dipped its toe into the water like a cartoon swimmer. He stepped in, and then took another step. Now he just looked like a big metal man wading in a river. He took another couple of steps, and then stopped with a “Whoa.” He sank down a little on Big Mike’s armored knees. “The slope just dropped off by, like, three feet!” he called back.
“It sure as hell goes down fast.” He paused and shuffled around, the Big Mike mechanized suit looking more bizarre and incongruous than ever as Stewart turned this way and that in the water, feeling around with the armored feet. “You know what it feels like? It feels like the riverbed has been deliberately cut into, maybe to make it impossible to ford in a ground vehicle.”
“Sneaky fuckers, these Gresians,” Beswick said.
“You mean they knew we would be coming this way?” Pipsqueak asked, looking around.
“I don’t think so,” Stewart said from his place in the river. “It feels more like something done a long time ago. Maybe they had wars amongst themselves.”
“They did,” Wilson confirmed. “It’s also possible that it was done to control the river itself. Maybe to help prevent its course from changing undesirably, or for some kind of flood defenses.”
“Whatever their motivation for doing it, it definitely makes the drop-off too steep for the transports,” Daniel said grimly. “If we’re going to cross, we need a bridge.”
“There’s the one in that town,” Beswick reminded him.
I’d prefer a different one if possible,” Daniel said, “rather than go through a pretty good ambush spot. Or a tunnel, if there is one.”
“That makes sense,” Lizzie said, reappearing to Daniel for the first time in a couple of hours. She glanced at Daniel. “Just checking in on the VIP. You know how it is.”
“Let’s go check out a river crossing ourselves.” He brought out the drone again and reflected that, whatever the military had paid for it, they were getting their money’s worth out of the thing today.
The drone had been up for about twenty minutes, zipping first upriver and then downriver, when
Daniel had to admit, “Nothing within fifteen miles in either direction apart from the one in that town. Ambush point or not, I guess we’re stuck with it.”
As the drivers started up the APC engines again, Daniel had both vehicles’ stealth modes engaged. It would drain the fuel cells more quickly, but if the town was occupied, then he didn’t want the residents having much advance warning that they were coming.
The gunners locked and loaded the cannons in their turrets, and Sergeant Jackson had his weapons raised on alert as he led the vehicles carefully into the outskirts of the small town. There were plenty of hiding spaces for mines or explosives, as well as for Gresians, and so everyone aboard both vehicles who could see out remained on watch for booby traps and demolitions charges, Daniel most keenly of all.
The light-bending stealth systems on the vehicles could blur them and disguise their speed, but Daniel knew it didn’t make them completely invisible, especially at close range—such as in the gaps between buildings that could be full of observers.
Daniel had stayed seated, the hatch closed above him, and he knew Hope had done the same. His eyes were switching from curved building to tree to tower, increasingly rapidly. He could feel his breath quickening with the uncertainty of what was likely to happen, and also sense that Hope was just as jittery as he was.
Stewart’s Big Mike was pausing to aim and scan every window and patch of shadow, but so far, nothing was leaping from them. Daniel switched vision modes through infra-red at intervals, searching for heat signatures as well as anything that could be sighted in the visible light. He saw occasional rectangular or regularly-shaped heat sources that appeared to be cooking equipment or other technology, but each one was small and static. There were no humanoid heat sources.
He was also surprised to see that there were tiny borders of white, petrified wood delineating different areas, though they were so small that they’d barely come up to the ankle on a human, so he wondered if a Gresian would ever really notice them.
There was no movement at all, and that was both baffling and worrying. “Where the fuck is everybody?” Erik Palmer rumbled in frustration from Hope’s APC.
‘That’s what worries me,’ Hope admitted silently to Daniel.
“Could they have been evacuated due to the bombings?” Wilson asked.
The troop landings were even further away, so Daniel doubted that anyone would have fled from so distant a threat. Then again, as he had often reminded himself these past few months, the Gresians were aliens; they thought in alien ways, differently than humans. “It’s quiet, isn’t it?” he asked simply.
“Nobody say ‘too quiet,’ OK?” Marty Beswick added darkly. “That never ends well for the people commenting on how bloody quiet it is.”
“Did you ever see any of the files, or old documentaries—hell, they even did it in Indiana Jones one time—about the old U.S. nuke test towns?” Mary Jefferson asked tentatively. Daniel was surprised to hear her speak up, as she’d seemed to prefer keeping to herself since being posted to the unit. “Where they had perfect little suburban towns with newspapers and food on the table and shit like that?”
“And dummies for people, right?” Daniel thought back to the TV he’d used to watch as a civilian. “I saw that on some show, yeah.”
“This place reminds me of that kind of town.”
“You mean a testing ground?”
“Yes,” Wilson agreed slowly. “She has a point, West. It does seem deliberately unreal for some reason.”
Daniel was tempted to stop and investigate on foot, just to be sure, but if this was going to be a trap, it would be foolish to leave the safety of the armored vehicle. Besides, they were still on a clock, and it must be nearly noon on this planet, he thought. It was hard to tell because the sunlight was a different shade, the planet rotated at a different rate than Earth, and the sky still held dust from the asteroid bombings, but time did matter; the faster they moved, the better. Daniel and his platoon knew from the Earth’s experience, after the Mozari ship had destroyed several cities in a single day, that the dust would persist for days or even weeks.
“Pick it up,” he ordered Torres, who was now back in the driving seat. The APC increased speed, rattling across weaving paths in a straight line. They passed under a snaking building that wrapped around three adjacent trees, and Daniel braced himself for explosives or enemies dropping onto the roof of the APC, but none did, and in a minute or two, they could see the bridge ahead.
There was a twisted tower of dull, dark materia
l at each end, while the bridge itself was built on thick pillars that left no doubt as to its ability to take the weight of the vehicles, and decorated with spires and points and edges that reminded Daniel of the angled buttresses on an old gothic cathedral like Notre Dame. The decoration gave plenty of hand and foot-holds, but not much in the way of hiding places for adult humanoids. There were, however, plenty of hiding spaces for mines or explosives, and so everyone aboard both vehicles who could see out watched for booby traps and demolitions charges.
The Big Mike ran across first, then waited, sweeping the tower and treehouse-like buildings with his sights as the two APCs rolled quietly across the bridge. Maybe, Daniel hoped, the stealth field was working more effectively than he thought.
The Super-Bradleys made it to the other side with no damage except to the anxious platoon’s nerves, and then
proceeded through the array of strange, half-slumped pottery buildings as before. Daniel’s concentration was disrupted by the rolling boom of a distant explosion. “What the hell? Was that enemy fire?” Nothing had hit any of the vehicles, and it had sounded too far away to have been an attack on their own little expedition. It had sounded like it had come from a couple of miles away, Daniel thought as the rumble died away.
“Smoke, sir,” Stewart called, the Big Mike’s oversized arm pointing southwest, beyond this side of town and off up to the right. Sure enough, when Daniel craned his neck around in the shotgun seat, he could see a ragged column of gray smoke rising there, over a mile away. It wasn’t in the direction they wanted to go, so the question Daniel asked himself was whether it was something he ought to investigate or ought to ignore.
Before he could direct Stewart, the APC’s comm system started blaring out a loud, warbling howl. “That’s a shuttle ELT beacon,” Hope said instantly from the other APC, “emergency locator transmission.” Daniel and Torres exchanged glances, and Torres nodded.
“You sure it’s a shuttle?”
“All our craft have distinctive distress signals. Fighter, shuttle, LCM. That’s a shuttle beacon, no question.”
“Confirm that,” Bailey said. “Comms has a shuttle distress beacon transmitting from two and a half klicks north-northwest. Automated beacon.”
“Send a response on their frequency; see if we can get a voice on the horn.”
Daniel waited impatiently, one leg jiggling against the floor, but he didn’t have to wait long.
“Mayday! Mayday!” a voice came over the radio. “This is LCT seven one niner to any human forces. We are on the ground and under heavy Gresian fire.”
“LCT, seven one niner,” Daniel replied. “This is Greyhound, Trap One.”
“Sir, am I glad to hear from you guys!”
“Sit-rep, soldier,” Daniel demanded.
“Lieutenant Caine, sir. Our shuttle was hit by some sort of SAM round and we came in hard. My people have got a few sprains and cracked ribs, but otherwise OK, but we’re under fire by Gresians.”
“How many in your party, Lieutenant?”
“Twenty-two plus myself.”
“Strength of the Gresian force? And do they have any vehicles with them?”
“Thirty to forty at least. No vehicles that I can see. Not yet, anyway.”
Daniel ran the numbers in his head, and they came up reasonably in human favor. “OK. Stand by. We’ll swing round and hook up with you. We’re about four miles south-southwest of you, on the same side of the river.” If it had been the side they had just crossed from, Daniel thought, his team would have encountered the enemy en route to the bridge.
“Roger that. I think that would bring you out on the Gresians’ left flank, sir.”
“Good. Stand by, Lieutenant.” Daniel broke their connection and said, “Well, I guess that answers one question, at least.”
“It does?” Hope asked.
“It looks like we now know where the people from this town are: They brought down that shuttle, and now they’re pressing their advantage.” He paused. “We can’t leave our troops to those things. Sergeant Stewart, you’ll take the center when we get there. Trap Two, left flank; we’ll take the right flank.”
There was a chorus of acknowledgements. As everyone aboard checked their weapons, Daniel got back on the comms. “Sydney Actual, this is Greyhound. We’re reading a mayday from a downed shuttle, LCT seven one niner.”
“Greyhoud, Sydney. We’re picking up the same distress signal, but the shuttle isn’t one from this ship.”
“Do we know which ship lost the shuttle?”
“Sorry, Greyhound, things are a bit confused and busy up here. I can’t tell you which ship has lost this shuttle.” Daniel groaned inwardly at the lack of helpful information there.
“Sydney, Greyhound. Can you give them any air cover?” An overflight would be useful to get an idea of how the Gresians are positioned around the shuttle.
“Negative on that, Greyhound.”
“Is air support still suspended?”
“No, but we’re allowing limited close air support only over the primary LZs right now. Everything we have in-atmosphere is tied up there at the moment. Turns out the Gresians have better anti-aircraft defense than expected.”
To Daniel, that did make sense with there being a downed shuttle in the area. He’d seen them make good use of hand-held SAM systems before. He turned to Bailey at the comms. “Superman, get a drone in the air and check out the crash site. You heard the coordinates.”
“Daniel, I don’t like this.” Lizzie had appeared again, grimacing while squeezed insubstantially between him and Torres. “Is there a problem?” Daniel asked.
“Yeah… I don’t know about this. Something’s up with it. Don’t you feel it? I mean, I don’t feel, but you lot do, so you should be having some sort of instinctive response, shouldn’t you?”
Daniel frowned. “You might claim you don’t feel, but it sounds like—”
“Well, all right, if that makes it easier for you, it’s close enough: something feels off about this downed shuttle. It’s not actually a feeling, but subroutines and fuzzy logic acting in a way that you couldn’t tell the difference.”
“I’d be happier if we could have confirmation about where that shuttle comes from,” Daniel admitted, “but there’s a reason they have a phrase about the fog of war. Things get confused in battle.”
“Sir,” Bailey reported, “I see smoke. Looks like it could be fro— Shit!” He twitched, reacting to something in his vision feed. “Ah, not anymore. Something’s taken the drone down. I saw a blue flash…”
“Plasma rifle,” Daniel concluded. “I guess we know where the action is, then.”
“Shall I put another drone up?”
“No need, so let’s not give them the target practice.”
“All your ships and their equipment are derived from Mozari designs and nanotechnology that I gave you,” Lizzie reminded him. “You humans do your best with it and get on well with it, and that’s great, but I still know it so much better. That’s inside and out. And, knowing it so well, I know something isn’t right.”
“Like what?”
“I can’t put my finger on it. Come to think of it, that’s probably what is wrong with it; I should be able to tell what happened with any of it.”
“There’s some logic to that, I guess…. But the shuttle carried two dozen soldiers.
That’s a lot of people needing rescued.”
“That’s the main thing, but there’s another thought that occurs: That’s more guns for our mission.”
Lizzie rolled her eyes. “Without transport. They’re never all going to fit in these two vehicles.”
“That’s another bridge I’m willing to cross when I come to it.”
“If there are a couple of dozen of them, they should be evenly matched with thirty Gresian civilians,” Lizzie said.
“But not with their weapons and equipment. They’re regular troops, not special warfare units; they won’t have Exo-suits, which means they can’t use r
ailguns. Fifty-cal rounds and deer slugs are all they’ve got.”
“Those are pretty effective against the Gresians, remember.”
Daniel remembered. “But they won’t have the speed and agility we had. They’ll tire quicker, and then the Gresians will be a real danger to them. Which is why we have to go. We have suits and railguns, which makes us the most dangerous people on the planet.”
“Depending upon your definition of people,” Wilson murmured. “You know it would be much more useful if we could all hear Lizzie’s side of the conversation.”
Daniel ignored him. “Assuming it’s not an entire company or battalion, we should be able to save some people.”
“And if there’s a battalion?”
“Then he can’t count.” Daniel said simply.
“Or he was lying...” Lizzie added.
Stewart turned right at the edge of town, heading south towards the smoke column. Torres and, in Trap Two, Palmer, did likewise, now hurtling along parallel to the river bank, a couple of streets inland—if streets was even the right word for the areas between Gresian towers and the strange orchards that grew serpentine tree-houses.
Shortly, they came to a range of buildings which were a mix of the crooked towers and structures resembling the barn or vehicle warehouse they’d sheltered in earlier. They turned a corner, and suddenly Stewart had to backpedal to a halt, as there was a very solid wall of piled-up alien vehicles in front of him, all welded together across an expanse of ground that looked something like a stone garden of some kind. “Shit,” he yelled, and Torres stomped on the brakes to avoid running him down with the APC.
Erik Palmer had had to brake Hope’s APC, as well, and, behind them, skeins of crackling alloy tentacles were suddenly hurled onto the ground from the roofs on either side. Trap Two reversed hurriedly, trying to roll over the energy-wreathed coils that resembled razor-wire, but there was an explosion of plasma as soon as a wheel touched it.
“Motherfuckers!” Palmer yelled.
“Shit!” Daniel cursed himself, “I should have known it. Downed shuttle? That’s the same fucking trick we pulled on them back on Lyonesse. Fast learners, aren’t they?”
