by Richard Fox
“I should have cross-trained as a comms specialist with Max. No need to freeze my lady bits off.”
“Hazards of the job.” Duke laughed. “You need to stop washing your uniform.”
“I was just about to tell you the opposite.”
“Nope. Have to smell neutral, translation…all natural.”
“You smell like man funk.”
“Let’s talk about woman funk.”
“I’m already asleep. See you in the morning. Don’t forget my breakfast in bed.”
“Sweet dreams, baby sister.”
“Don’t call me that. Makes me wonder about Adams. Why’d she get pulled from the team?” Booker asked, already fading into sleep.
“Just like a woman, start something, then leave me to stew on it half the night.”
****
Duke and Booker were out of the shelter and moving before dawn. He signaled her to stop just before the sun came up. “Dangerous time to move. Easy to give away your position. That’s why hunters hide in tree blinds when deer come out to feed.”
“Good to know. Also explains why I’m not a hunter,” Booker said, moving slower today, still recovering from a hatefully cold night. “Easier to get food from a combiner. Comes out all nice and toasty.”
Duke adjusted his pace but only for the first half hour. Native animals kept their distance, whisking through trees or into snowy holes. He saw what looked like moose or horse tracks leading to a stream. Closer inspection revealed normal animal behavior.
“Problem?” Booker asked.
“Just checking to make sure the Kesaht aren’t using the Sanheel as cavalry. These look like hoof impressions…Quiet…Look there, slowly.”
Booker moved as though the winter air were turning her to ice. “Oh my.”
A majestic moose covered with white and gray fur stood on a rise, morning light streaming down to set tree branches of ice crystals glowing near it. A second appeared, then two smaller versions. All four of them stared at the snipers.
“Are they afraid of us?” Booker asked.
“Don’t know. Have to be careful about projecting Earth-Terran behaviors on local life forms. Something a Pathfinder told me once. For all we know, those things are carnivorous. Or sentient.”
“You just gave me a chill. Thanks. That’s just what I needed,” Booker said.
Duke re-charted his path to avoid the animals wandering out of sight. “The presence of our four-legged friends probably means there aren’t a bunch of rampaging Kesaht freaks in the area.”
“Good to know.”
Hours passed in cold silence as wind blasted snow powder from treetops. Sun glared off the white panorama, forcing their helmet visors to darken protectively.
“Getting close to the top,” Duke said.
“Is that why I can barely breathe?”
They crawled to the summit and scanned the next valley with binoculars.
“Contact,” Duke said.
Kesaht landing craft swooped in to land near hundreds of others. Rakka and Sanheel poured out to join hundreds of warriors formed into loose packs. Slow-moving landers set down in an adjacent meadow, each deploying a single tank, squat and ugly machines with double-barrel cannons.
“A vanguard force.” Duke attached his binos to his belt and pulled his sniper rifle off his back. He took out the two halves of Buffy, his custom weapon, and snapped them together. He fixed an optics set to the top and brought the butt against his shoulder as he scanned over the Kesaht forces.
The twin long vanes of the rifle were matte black, the capacitor port just behind the magazine could take a battery pack or attach to a larger power cell that Booker and Duke each carried. The weapon was a miniature of the rail weapons system used by armor and the Terran Union’s naval batteries.
“We going to take a shot?” Booker asked.
“You got a mouse in your pocket?” Duke asked. “This is recon.”
“Buffy has a power select option, right? You don’t have to break the sound barrier with a shot that’ll shoot a hole through the side of a battleship. Maybe we take an officer. Make them nervous…”
“Kill a grunt, kill a general…they’ll come for us. Maybe we can out march the pig boys down there, but they vector aircraft on us and we’ll be dead. Dead…and we won’t get this intel back to the locals. PDF know what’s coming, how many, and from what direction is a lot more valuable than one headshot,” Duke said.
“Then why’d you break Buffy out of storage?”
“Because I see better through her,” Duke snapped. “Don’t dictate my relationship with my girl. Prepare to copy…Tanks analogs. Looks like the front armor will need a full power shot to penetrate…vision slits for commander and driver. Might be able to thread the needle on a lower setting shot. Got some Kesaht engineers fitting chains to tires of their personnel carriers. I count seven tanks and seven-wheeled vehicles.”
Booker uncovered her arm screen and typed. “Fascinating. Can I just put ‘a shit ton of bad guys’? Joking. Calm down, you grumpy old bastard.”
“I’m not old. I’m thirty-seven.”
“Uh huh. What about mechanized infantry?”
Duke continued his report.
****
Duke studied the map with the illumination of his arm screen nearly off as twilight swept through the mountain forest with surprising swiftness.
“Don’t see any more aircraft inbound,” Duke said. “Looks like the entire Kesaht vanguard deployment is complete. Time?”
“I’ve been freezing my ass off here for three hours and twenty minutes,” Booker said, her teeth chattering.
“Say four hours for them to drop a mechanized infantry battalion-sized force,” Duke said. “Our intelligence analysts will want to know that. We figure out their deployment tempo and it’ll do wonders for our own plans. Snuggle up close. We need to study the map.”
“Lamest line I’ve ever heard,” Booker said.
“You wish. I’d be doing you a favor.”
“As a medical professional, I have to warn you the thin air is affecting your powers of observation and reasoning,” she said.
“You’re telling me you have a lot of experience getting picked up? How many pickup lines have you heard out here at the ass end of the galaxy surrounded by savage aliens and Strike Marine grunts you think of as brothers?”
“Now you made it weird. What did you want to show me?”
“I’ll pretend you didn’t say that,” Duke said and pointed at a bridge on the map. “Here. They’ll cross here. It’s a hard line back to the city.”
“Long way,” she said, her voice sounding tired.
“Not if we cover over this mountain range,” he said.
“That’ll take—”
“Longer the more time you complain. Let’s move.”
Chapter 9
Hoffman stretched out his arms, his muscles tight with cold. Garrison cleaned his weapon as Opal looked on, the doughboy seeming almost jealous that the other Marine still had a weapon.
The lieutenant powered up his armor and checked the power reserves. He had almost three days’ worth of power at normal activity levels; after that, his suit would become so much dead weight that he’d be as mobile as a knight of old in full plate armor.
“Weather’s clearing,” King said from the mouth of the cave. His Strike Marine gear was in perfect order. Although he carried an air of exhaustion, his posture was upright and correct, a model of a professional warrior.
Hoffman took a step closer and put one hand on his shoulder. “You’re welcome to come, but I want to see for myself.” He could feel the silence after the storm. The air in the cave seemed colder and at the same time less threatening. The night had been full of howling wind and whispers of distant Kesaht fighters. What did he really know about Koen? It looked like an Arctic planet, sheathed in ice hundreds of feet deep in most places. Green continents were visible from space, but they were like specks on a blank canvas.
“Garrison,
keep an eye on the prisoners. Show Opal the video on your arm screen if he steps out of line. I saw him staring at the legionnaire while he slept,” King said.
Garrison laughed shortly. “Does Opal look hungry? Because I’m hungry.”
“Focus on the mission, Marine,” King said.
Hoffman listened to his team and was thankful for the banter. Teamwork, esprit de corps, and a defined objective could get Strike Marines through most any situation.
He climbed the short internal path to the cave entrance, stepping hip deep into drifts of snow that had accumulated during the night. He paused at the small circle of light leading to the surface and listened. Touching the side of his helmet with one gauntleted hand, he adjusted the tint to resist the harsh glare of morning sunlight from the winter landscape beyond. His IR and infrared filters showed him nothing special.
“You want me to clear that out for you, LT?” King asked. He held his gauss rifle by the pistol grip with the sling supporting most of the weight. His finger was off trigger and his feet were placed in a ready stance. His left hand was forward of his body and ready to push snow from the obstructed cave entrance.
“I’ll get it,” Hoffman said. He was always learning from the veteran gunnery sergeant. Sometimes it was a big thing, like a personnel decision, and other times it was how to do something mundane, like brush snow away from a hole. He cleared it out a little bit at a time, pausing to look through first with sensors, then with his eyes to avoid surprises.
“I’m stepping out. Cross behind me to my left and set up security,” Hoffman said. They went through the opening as though they were assaulting a door, weapons pulled to their shoulders as they searched over the top of their gun sights for enemies. A tiny adjustment in posture would bring the targeting reticles between their eyes and their selected targets.
He swept his own area of responsibility and saw nothing but wilderness.
“Clear, nothing seen,” King said.
Hoffman allowed his gauss rifle to hang but kept his right hand on the vertical handgrip.
He felt like he had seen this landscape before. Something about the snow-covered mountain range and dense forest was primal. Tall, narrow evergreen trees swept across foothills and mountainsides wherever they could grab hold of the soil and grow. In the lowland area, he saw frozen marshes and long legged crane-like birds poking around tufts of tall grass poking out of the snow.
“It almost feels like we’re the first ones on this planet,” Hoffman said.
“Let’s leave the discovery learning to the Pathfinders. Puffies love dropping onto new places and see what’ll try and eat them.”
Hoffman faced the gunnery sergeant. “Not the adventurous type?”
“Every day in the Strike Marine Corps could be your last. Every tube of nutrient paste as tasty as a last meal. Every alien a chance for target practice and to see how well the lowest bidder made our armor. When do the adventures stop?”
“Right about the time your shuttle crashes in the middle of a mountain range. We seem to be doing better than Masha. So there’s that.”
“An act, sir,” King said, “Everything she does or says is a lie.”
“Yeah…we’re not at the ‘trust but verify’ stage with her or the Ibarrans yet.”
King scowled. “No, sir. And she’s just a little too easy on the eyes and friendly for my taste.”
“The Ibarrans grow their own.” Hoffman pointed up to a small rocky outcrop. “Doubt they’d train a spy that wasn’t a bit charming.”
Hoffman moved to a higher position and stood guard as King brought out the rest of the team. Garrison escorted Masha, his visor darkened against the sun just like the rest of the team, and he was moving better than expected. The only pain medication he’d taken from his first-aid kit was anti-inflammatories, which Hoffman thought was strange because the semiprofessional powerlifter had an almost religious abhorrence of anti-inflammatory meds.
“It’s freezing,” Masha complained over the general comms band.
“She ain’t lying about that,” Garrison said, shivering visibly despite his powered armor.
“King, you’ll have to take point.” Staying close to Masha, Hoffman took up a center position to monitor the entire team. The traveling formation wasn’t ideal. He wished he had his entire team.
“Do you want me to fall back into the rearguard position?” Garrison asked.
“I’ll watch the principal. Don’t fall too far back.” He muted the comms links to Masha and Medvedev. “We haven’t seen any Kesaht fighters or ground troops today. Our biggest threats are internal. Watch the Ibarrans. I trust them about as far as I could throw the big one.”
King, Garrison, and Opal acknowledged over the closed channel.
“Do you have an extraction plan, Lieutenant?” Masha asked. “I’m not familiar with the emergency survival suit you issued us. They don’t seem to be made for long-term exposure.”
“She’s trying to say she’s cold,” Garrison said from several strides back. “Which I totally understand. I feel like my recruiter misrepresented the amount of outdoor time there would be in this profession.”
Hoffman ignored the breacher.
“Cold and hungry. That’s the stuff they don’t talk about in those fancy recruiting videos. Am I right? Gunney, did you ever see a hungry-looking poster boy for the Marine Corps? Those guys probably aren’t even in the military. I mean, really, my face camo never looked that perfect,” Garrison said.
“Watch your zone,” King said over the radio.
“I like to talk when I march through frozen hell. You know that, Gunney.”
“If an enemy sneaks up on us, I’m going to make you bunkmates with Opal for a year. He never complains about the weather,” King said. A moment passed. “We’re moving down a trail to a wide stream bed. Not seeing any footprints or animal markings. It’s virgin snow far as I can tell.”
“Copy that,” Hoffman said. “Start looking for our first rest station.”
“There are several good rally points along this route. I’m dropping a couple coded IR markers to collapse on in the event of ambush,” King said.
“That’s why you’re the top,” Hoffman said. “Garrison will pick them up as we pass.”
Wind gusted across the valley below and through the trees surrounding them. Snow wafted into the sky like disturbed powder. Cold air iced its way into their armor. Birds and other small animals moved in the trees, never coming too close to the invaders. Hoffman figured if they were happy, he was happy. He doubted the animals would show themselves if the wolves were nearby.
“Opal, how you doing?” Garrison asked.
“Opal watch enemy prisoner. Opal look for more enemies to fight. Opal do what Sir says,” Opal said.
“How incredibly original,” Garrison said. “That’s what I like about you, buddy. Always know what to expect. I wonder if you’re edible. Don’t freak out. I’m not going cannibal yet. It’s just that we’re lost on an alien planet about to freeze to death and you have to think about these things so you’re ready for them.”
“Shut up, Garrison,” King said.
“Your Strike Marine has a point. That bio-construct might be worth something if we get trapped in a blizzard or another cave,” Medvedev said.
“Opal eat.”
“Not me, Opie. You’d probably have an allergic reaction or something. Strike Marines like me are notoriously hard to digest. Just ask half the monsters on Barada,” Garrison said.
“Tone it down, Garrison. You’re going to get him all worked up,” Hoffman said. The muscles in his legs and back burned from the hike. His powerful pseudo muscle under his armor chafed him in all the wrong places. Cold leaked through his gear despite the climate-control standards.
“Yes, sir.” Garrison checked the back trail, aiming his rifle in a sweeping arc and scanning with his helmet’s and weapon’s sensors to be sure he hadn’t missed anything. “You heard the boss, Opie. You have to promise not to eat me.”
/> “Opal no promise.”
“Hey, hey, hey, Opie. Those were just jokes.”
Hoffman saw the crescent fighter in the distance long before he heard its engines.
“Sir, I’ve spotted a crescent-shaped fighter on heading to ninety-five degrees,” King said.
“I see it. Move to cover,” Hoffman said.
He grabbed Masha by her left arm and pulled her toward one of the coded IR beacons King had repositioned. Within seconds, his team was set up in a defensive perimeter and hidden from view.
Hoffman watched the crescent fighter through the trees as it hovered over the peak of a mountain and then flew away. From this distance, there was only the suggestion of engine noise.
“I think we’re clear to move,” King said.
Hoffman gave a hand signal and the team moved out. Masha and Medvedev remained silent through most of the day. King led them up and down trails and along switchback ledges that climbed higher into the rugged terrain.
Hoffman called a rest break. They moved off the trail and sheltered beneath the towering Koen white trees.
****
“We’re almost to the pass,” King said. “We’ve made good time, but I think there could be trouble. If these crescent fighters have ground troops looking for us, they’ve had time to start a grid search and set up ambushes.”
“And what better place for an ambush than a mountain pass,” Hoffman said, checking his gear and swallowing some nutrient paste. “We have to get to Koensuu City. There’s no place else on the route and the enemy can read a satellite photo of the area as well as we can.”
“We go through the pass or cut over the mountains to another valley,” King said, lowering his voice so the others couldn’t hear.
“Is there a natural way through the terrain or are we looking at some mountaineering?”
“Look here.” King pointed to a map on his forearm screen. “This is a draw that will lead us out of the pass. There are no artificial structures, mostly because the terrain doesn’t allow it.”
“You’re thinking they won’t have armor or fortified positions along this route?” Hoffman said, pulling up his own map. “This way might not be as exciting, but it’s even less friendly to whatever kind of armor they have and there’s not much room to mass larger forces. Sakkatos tried to get us over the pass.”
