by Richard Fox
Duke fired on three targets, one after another in the space of two seconds.
The lead Rakka charged, wild hair flying, alien face contorting with battle rage and hatred.
Duke’s patrol rifle came up smooth and fast. He fired two gauss rounds in the front runner’s chest and one in his head, then moved to another target. He stepped backward and sideways, then advanced. Knees slightly bent and flexible, his vertical motion was nonexistent no matter his speed. Enemies and friends danced unpredictably in the close-quarter battle.
A squad of PDF soldiers flanked the swarming Rakka, cutting them down in droves with enfilading fire until the mass of aliens turned on them and charged. Two of the young soldiers went down immediately. Others planted their feet in wide shooting stances and opened fire. Their gauss rounds knocked back a row of Rakka but the simultaneous machine-gunfire of the Rakka wiped out most of the PDF squad.
The sergeant from earlier cursed his men as he walked through them with a pistol in one hand. “You have to move and shoot, shoot and move. This isn’t range day! I taught you better than this!”
“On me, Booker! We’re going at them!” Duke yelled. Side by side, they cut through the chaos to the corner of the wall. Using it as a strongpoint, they pivoted back on their pursuers and slaughtered them with accurate fire.
Duke grabbed Booker and yanked her behind cover as bullets ricocheted. He dropped to a knee, so low he was almost sitting, leaned out, and fired the moment he had a target. Booker stretched over his shoulder, murdering one Kesaht after another with head and throat shots.
“This close-range stuff is easy,” she said, excitement and adrenaline causing her words to tumble out too quickly to be understood.
“Take a breath. We roll these assholes back, then recover our gear.”
“Understood,” Booker said.
Above them, a turret swiveled around and fired down into the Kesaht shock troops, blowing them into pieces.
PDF troops staggered around the battlefield, crouching beside wounded comrades or just staring at the carnage. Smoke rose to meet falling snow.
“Grab your kit, Booker,” Duke said. He covered her as she moved, despite the apparent security the flak turret had provided. She returned the favor when he moved.
In the distance, dozens of Kesaht landers streaked toward the surface.
Chapter 7
King led the team higher into the mountains, almost to a pass that would lead down to the main river, as storm clouds dropped low and dumped fat snowflakes straight at the ground. Hoffman could barely see Opal and the prisoners five feet in front of him.
“Find shelter,” Hoffman said, his stomach rumbling, his body aching. Garrison and Masha shivered and complained every ten steps since the Koen wolves attacked. Universal tape imperfectly covered the gaps in the legionnaire’s enviro suit. Opal’s wound was leaking inside his suit, which generated alerts sent to Hoffman’s command unit. King barely spoke.
“King,” Hoffman said.
“Go.”
“You good?”
“Just missing the rest of the team,” King sent over IR. “Come on up. It’s a cave, defensible entrance and might be deep enough to conceal a fire if we run out of heat packs.”
“Copy that.” Hoffman saw the cave a moment later. The opening was small, the angle of entry uneven. “Opal, help the prisoners down, then climb in.”
“Opal hungry,” Opal said as he lowered Masha into the darkness.
“Be careful with her,” Medvedev said.
Opal ignored the legionnaire.
Hoffman waited for Garrison, then ducked inside, sinking past his knees in powdery snow.
****
The passage cut horizontally into the mountain, dropping away and expanding like a cathedral to old gods. Layers of rock reflected from a single glow stick on a frozen pool on one side. Hoffman looked back as lightning flashed in the small opening. A vertical column of snow added to the drift they had clambered through on the way in.
“It’s dry if you come far enough inside, out of the wind and prying eyes of the crescent fighters,” King said. “I didn’t see anything for a fire.”
“Opal, search the room. No enemies,” Hoffman said.
The doughboy took Garrison’s rifle, paused to stare at Medvedev, then methodically cleared the cavern.
“Didn’t your guy clear this delightful place before he invited us in?” Masha said, thrusting her chin at the snowdrift forming near the entrance. “Will we be able to get out?”
Hoffman addressed Medvedev. “What do you think? Do legionnaires value a second set of eyes?”
“Any leader that retreats into a cave with one way in or out deserves to die,” the legionnaire said. “But it is getting damn cold out here.”
“I suppose your doughboy could dig us a different exit if needed,” Masha said, “and I’m shivering. Cocoa with marshmallows, anyone?”
He ignored her questions and asked his own. “What do you know about Kesaht aircraft? Will they operate in this weather?”
Masha shrugged. “The pilots do not fear for their safety. Their commanders are ruthless. Should they fly in a snowstorm? I doubt it. Will they? Of course,” Masha said. “Don’t think we can get ahead of the aerial search during the storm. We’ll just end up walking in circles and freezing to death while I complain the entire time.”
“What’ll kill me first? The storm or the nagging?” Hoffman motioned toward the entrance and they got out of the cold.
King collected spare battery packs from the team as they entered, then set the packs in a small mound and covered that with large rocks, pressing the battery leads down. The field expedient space heater clicked on. Hoffman popped his visor and felt a wave of heat from the rocks. The heater would keep a small radius warm without the problems that came along with a smoky fire in a confined space.
Opal returned, wearing fatigue on his face but showing no other evidence of pain or fear. “Big room clear. Small hallways too small for team. Only fur friends fit through.”
He held up three—or maybe five—creatures in his palm that were either rats, cats, or shaggy white spiders the size of his hand.
“Are you going to eat them?” Garrison asked.
Opal furrowed his brow. “No eat fur friends.”
“Put them back, Opal,” Hoffman said.
The doughboy, holding the bundle of animals in one hand, moved away from the glow stick and heat-pack cluster.
“I think that was just one creature, wiggling enough to look like a basket of cats,” Garrison said. “Wonder what they taste like.”
“Chicken, I imagine,” Masha said.
“Rest and recuperate,” Hoffman said to the team and the prisoners. “King, follow me.”
Hoffman climbed from the cave, moving quickly to one side of the opening as King emerged to cover his own zone on the other side. With only two of them, their fire lanes would be expansive in the event of a fight. He heard nothing but freezing night wind and the sound of wolves in the distance.
“Break in the storm. Won’t last,” King said as he scanned the valley below them with handheld binoculars. “We’re in a bad spot, LT.”
“Worse than an alien starship swarming with mindless cyborgs bent on tearing us limb from limb?” Hoffman asked.
King lowered the binoculars and smiled. Moonlight painted his face with stark shadows. “You split our team for that mission as well. I’m not criticizing. I was part of that decision.”
Hoffman did his own scan of the area as King stood security for him. “Epic view when you can see it. We need to get over this range, down to the river, and cut back to the city. The waterways around the isthmus make more sense from this vantage point.”
“I don’t like it. This entire planet gives me the heebie-jeebies,” King said.
“The line between natural and artificial landscape is less defined than I first thought,” Hoffman said. “Once we have comms with base and they regain air superiority, we can request extract
ion and support.”
Several minutes of silence elapsed as wind howled through a mountain pass and raised a cloud of snow from the treetops down in the valley.
“She’s the woman from New Bastion,” King said. “Can’t believe we finally caught up with her. How much more do you think she knows about the Kesaht?”
Hoffman nodded. “Our mission is capture and transport, not interrogation.”
“A certain amount of intelligence gathering is implied in all missions,” King said.
“True.” Hoffman put away the binoculars. “The temperature’s fallen five degrees since we came out here. Visibility will favor the enemy fighters. We should move under cloud cover if we can. All we need to see is one foot in front of the other.”
“That storm on the horizon looks worse than what we just came through. Sheltering here is a risk. Might be avalanche season by the time we’re on the move,” King said.
A pair of the crescent-shaped fighters emerged from a pass across the valley and swooped low over the trees kilometers away.
“Good call, LT. Never doubted you for a second,” King said.
The fighters selected a trail through the forest and strafed it with energy weapons as a battle flashed from the direction of the navy base.
“There’s a strange rhythm to a bombardment. Easier to appreciate from this far away,” Hoffman said.
“That was just a strafing run,” King said.
Hoffman lifted one hand, acknowledging King was right. “Today a strafing run, tomorrow airstrikes guided by their version of our recon teams. Let’s get inside. I’ll learn what I can from Masha and her bodyguard. Follow my lead, and when in doubt, keep your mouth shut. She’s better at word games than both of us put together.”
“Sir.” King saluted.
They climbed through the deepening snowdrift and made their way to the warming station where his people and the prisoners were eating, more or less.
“I never thought I’d be excited about nutrient paste,” Masha said. “Must be the altitude.”
No one else spoke. Easting paste from a tube wasn’t much of a dinner event, although Opal displayed the most fastidious table manners. Hoffman and the others watched him methodically roll up the tube after each sip until it was compacted into a neat cylinder. He then stored the leftovers in an empty ammo pouch.
Medvedev ignored the food paste until he’d knelt on one knee and prayed for several moments, his quiet words following a familiar rhythm.
“Prayer to Saint Kallen?” King asked skeptically.
Hoffman nodded. “He’s not pretending.”
King made no response.
Battle noises moved farther from the cave with an occasional flyover at supersonic speeds. Hoffman noticed a change in Masha. He watched her watching Opal.
****
Garrison sat next to the big legionnaire, watching him eat with undisguised interest. “I bet you could destroy an all-you-can-eat buffet.”
“Best place to store food and water is inside the body,” Medvedev said. “Harder to lose it.”
“What’s your deal? Why are you babysitting the hot blonde on this forsaken planet?” Garrison shifted to relieve the pain of his injured arm and shoulder.
“Orders,” Medvedev said.
Garrison tipped back his head and squirted a bright-yellow substance into his mouth, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth when he was done. “Is it cheese? Is it roast beef? Is it a hamburger casserole combo meal? We don’t really know, do we? I was just saying you look like you train hard and eat a lot. I respect that.”
“My good friend Medvedev has a healthy appetite. There still Chinese buffets outside the Marine barracks in Phoenix?” Masha asked.
“The General Tso’s plate at Asia Ma Ma is the best of them all,” Garrison said, then he stopped suddenly. “Wait…you’ve been to Earth?”
Masha waved away his concerns. “No.”
Hoffman sat back to watch the show, wondering at the spy who seemed to talk too much.
“What’s best to eat on a buffet? Sirloin steak? Lobster?” she asked.
Hoffman leaned forward from his seat near the edge of the group. “What have you two been up to since Bastion? Other than when we almost had you on Nouveau Marsellie and Ticonderoga.”
Garrison pointed a finger gun at Masha. “I didn’t really appreciate what you did to us on Bastion. We nearly died saving your ass.”
“Hardly,” Medvedev said.
“Be polite, Medvedev,” Masha said. “I never had the chance to say how impressed I was that your team got me away from Fellerin and gave me the opportunity to kill that Haesh bastard myself.” She nodded at Hoffman, then King, and finally Garrison—her eyes wide with innocent appreciation of their prowess. “I was more impressed that Earth managed to sweep the incident under the rug…for the most part.”
“You had to make it ugly,” Garrison said.
“What were you doing on New Bastion?” Hoffman asked.
Her smile expertly mixed naughty and nice. “A little bit of this, a little bit of that.”
Hoffman knew what she was doing but still enjoyed looking at her. Garrison was spellbound for several moments.
“What were you doing here? Skiing?” King said from his position guarding the entrance, bursting the scene like only a gunnery sergeant could.
“Good guess,” Masha said.
Opal woke up in the middle of the conversation and stared at Medvedev across the heat packs warming the pile of carefully stacked stones.
“I’d advise against a staring contest,” Garrison said, “unless you want to make a wager.”
“I do not. It is a doughboy. An organic machine. Not so dangerous by himself. If there were a squad of them, I’d be worried,” Medvedev said.
“No wager?” Garrison asked.
“No.”
“Not even a little one?”
“No.”
“Opal bored,” Opal said.
“You see, Med, Opal isn’t your ordinary doughboy. He’s fought banshees—”
“That’s enough, Corporal,” Hoffman said.
Masha stood, drawing all eyes. “We know all about your fight to save the Dotari home world from the phage.”
“The details of that mission are still classified. I like Garrison. He’s a good Marine. Don’t get him court-martialed, Masha,” Hoffman said.
“Understood, Lieutenant Thomas Hoffman. And I agree. Your corporal is a good fighter. Even though he is injured far worse than he will admit.”
Medvedev leaned forward, planting his elbows on his knees and talking to Garrison as though he were a green recruit. “Your shoulder is dislocated. I have seen this injury many times. The armor you wear is little different from what we are issued in the Ibarran Legion. It will keep you going longer than is healthy. You will require surgery if you don’t set it properly.”
“It will require surgery anyway,” King said.
Garrison glared at King. “Why did you have to bring that up? We all know that, but why talk about it?”
“You’ve had surgery before,” King said.
“And the pain meds do things to me. I say funny stuff. My squad mates—”
“No pain medication is necessary. I will help you. I will set the bone and allow the armor to do the rest. With luck, there will be no more fighting and you will heal very well,” Medvedev said. “I saw you fighting the wolves. You weren’t at your best.”
Hoffman looked to King for advice.
King shrugged. “It won’t heal on its own. And if it hurts a lot, Garrison might shut his mouth for ten minutes.”
Garrison held his left arm with his right and stared angrily at Medvedev. “Let you put those mitts of yours on me?” He shook his head. “No way. You might slip and snap my neck. I saw what you did to Max. Miss that guy. Hope he’s OK.”
“Why do you suddenly want to help us?” Hoffman asked as thoughts of Max rekindled his anger at the Ibarrans, emotions he concealed for the sake of the m
ission.
“You won’t give me a rifle. Won’t let me fight. The best way to keep Masha safe is for all your team to be healthy. I swear by the grace and honor of Saint Kallen.”
“Opal,” Hoffman said, “if Medvedev moves funny, you crush his skull. Med, let’s see what you can do.”
Opal stood quickly, feet already in a fighting stance. “Opal crush.”
Medvedev turned toward the doughboy, watching him for several seconds before acknowledging Hoffman’s permission. He moved close to Garrison and knelt. “This will be very painful. Try not to squeal. I don’t want that thing crushing my skull.”
“I’m not afraid,” Garrison said, his voice rising three-quarters of an octave.
“Curious,” Medvedev said. “You look afraid. I must remove your armor. When we are finished, put it back on and tighten everything above the waist.”
Garrison nodded as beads of sweat formed on his forehead.
Medvedev helped him out of his armor.
Opal growled. “Opal crush.”
“Not yet, big guy,” Garrison said as color drained from his face. “Maybe this isn’t a great idea.”
Medvedev glared at Opal, then focused on his reluctant patient. “Sit up straight. Face the heating stones. Do not watch me.” He shifted his weight on his knees, edging closer to Garrison. “We must start in a neutral position, with your humerus abducted and elbow flexed. I will help you. I am moving your arm. You must relax. Think happy-tree thoughts.”
Medvedev held Garrison’s upper arm vertical against his body with his forearm bent ninety degrees at the elbow.
“This is easy. Are you going to read my palm next, tell my fortune or something?” Garrison regulated his breathing as he asked the question.
“You know what comes next,” Medvedev said.
“Yeah. I do, actually.”
Medvedev slowly moved Garrison’s hand and forearm away from his body. “I will externally rotate your arm until you say when.”
“When?”
“Until you feel resistance and you say when.”
“When.”
Medvedev continued to apply torque to the arm.
