Through my helmet mike I could hear Hector’s clear voice calling directions to Abriara and García as they continued down the mountain.
The distant whine of hovercrafts and flashing lights announced the Yabajin as they floated down the valley. There was no place to take cover by the cliff, so I began to run downhill to hide. I risked a glance behind and saw that my tactic wouldn’t work: I’d left a trail through the snow a blind man could follow. I retraced my steps back to where we’d jumped from the hovercraft. The snow was beaten there, and our tracks were mixed. It looked like a safe place to hide. I lay in the snow and covered myself as best I could, leaving a peephole. I turned off the targeting laser on my rifle so no blue spot on the snow would betray my presence. The slopes of the mountain filled with soft white light as the Yabajin blasted beams of plasma ahead to show the way.
"Stop," García said over his helmet mike. He sounded distant—not the typical "voice of God" one heard at close range. "Abriara, go over there. Hector, stay where you are."
Lying still, waiting, tiny crystals of ice drifted through the cracks in my armor; when one touched my skin it felt as if I’d been pinched, then it turned wet and warm as it rose to body temperature. My helmet mike carried the sound of heavy breathing as the chimeras on the cliff panted from exertion. One said, "You down there, Human: Remember to report your kills before the Yabajin shoot you."
"Okay," I said.
García spoke over his mike, "We’re held up about two kilometers from you. We’re setting up cross-fire now. Do you have a report?"
A chimera above me said, "They’re coming cautiously, at no more than 30 kph, a hundred meters apart, frying rocks and trees—any place where a person could hide. I count fourteen men. It looks as if they’ve left a sniper up at the head of the valley."
García said, "What’s your position?"
"Noel and I are on top of the cliff. The human—"
"Angelo," I offered.
"Angelo is at the base of the cliff, your side, covered with snow."
"Okay, Angelo—" García said, "Caesar, Miguel, and Noel will ambush the Yabajin. They might be able to take out as many as seven or eight men. But I want you to hold tight—don’t move for four minutes after the Yabajin pass. We should engage the main party at about that time. They’ll dump a couple of snipers off to take care of Caesar and Noel, and I want you to surprise them. Their best sniper is a short man who swings his arms when he walks—we call him the Chimp. Fry him quick. When you’re done, wait for their last sniper to come down. If we get killed, you’ll be last man out."
"Yes, Sergeant," I said, happy to have a plan to follow.
I flipped on the helmet’s external microphone so I could better hear sounds outside the suit. The noise from the external mike was often distracting in a heated battle, so I normally left it off. As soon as I flipped the switch the sounds from outside the suit multiplied in volume. I’d have staked my life the Yabajin were half a kilometer off, but with the mike on it sounded as if they were in my lap.
I lay still while the whine of the hovercrafts increased. The white plasma fire reflecting on the hillside brightened as they drew near. The sky above me suddenly lit up as a jet of plasma streaked into a tree. A chimera shouted and a Yabajin craft crashed into the other side of the cliff, shaking the ground, and exploded in a flash that bathed the mountains orange.
The white streaks of plasma fire ceased abruptly. Only the flames on the other side of the cliff lit the valley. Two hovercrafts shot by in the shadow of the rock, sending up rooster tails of snow that drifted down to bury me. I kept perfectly still.
"Noel reporting. They just passed us, Sergeant. Miguel took out one craft. I know he took the driver with him, but several others jumped clear before the crash. Three, possibly four, are on foot. The other two craft are coming down in the dark, minus two turret gunners. They didn’t slow long enough to take on stragglers."
"Gracias," García said.
I lay in the snow and counted the seconds. My helmet began buzzing intermittently as if a bee were caught inside, and I began to worry, but I suddenly felt the helmet warm, defrosting the snow that had covered my goggles. After sixty seconds, the smallest of footsteps crunched the snow near the base of the cliff.
The Yabajin stood motionless a second.
They moved again; I could hear them breathing. One began ascending the steepest side of the cliff. Another crept past me, following the false trail I’d left in the snow.
Two minutes later he came back, retracing my steps. In the darkness he missed me and walked back to the base of the cliff. I figured I’d waited close to four minutes.
I quietly arose and shook my head. Snow slid from my helmet as I flipped on my targeting laser. Two Yabajin waited at the base of the rock, looking up. They were backlit by fire from the burning hovercraft, and as I followed their gaze I saw that the igneous rock above was shaped like the face of a deformed ogre. A third Yabajin scaled the cliff, perching on the ogre’s nose. One samurai on the ground held a laser rifle and covered the climber, while his compadre next to him was empty-handed. I took the sniper on the ground, aiming the blue dot of my targeting laser on the back of his head, and fried him. He dropped with a grunt. His compadre turned, yelled in surprise and charged.
Down the valley García announced over his helmet mike, "Here they come."
I aimed for the samurai’s face and shot. A white glowing circle appeared on his helmet just above the nose. He was running at me, and I stepped backward and screamed "One down," afraid the laser wouldn’t burn through his armor in time for me to notify the others of my first kill. Then the samurai stopped and held up his hand as if to catch my laser beam with his armored palm.
The effect was almost magical: my targeting computer was designed to hold on target—but as soon as the target was covered, the laser quit firing. I pulled the trigger a second time, aiming at his chest. He kept charging, but he jumped in the air and spun. The laser switched off a second time as the target was covered by motion.
I pulled off a third shot to his kidneys as he reached me. He leapt and kicked. I stepped back and held my gun out, trying to let the beam cut through his armor. He brought his foot down on the rifle barrel, knocking it to the ground. I turned and ran.
He followed me three paces and fell to the ground, sliding face-down in the snow. I turned to attack.
"Make that two dead," Caesar said over his helmet mike.
The samurai lay in the snow, steam rising from a hole in the back of his helmet, his legs twitching.
I searched for the third samurai. He was on the cliff, near the top. He’d found a perch—and a target. He’d unstrapped his rifle and a pink dot shone on the armored torso of a chimera. Before I could yell, the chimera slumped forward. His armor let him glide on the snow like a sled, and he skidded five meters down a steep slope then dropped over the cliff.
"Noel’s down," Caesar said.
I ran back for my rifle, scooped it up, and raised it.
The Yabajin sniper had disappeared into a crevice. I studied the area where he should have been, but couldn’t find him.
"Caesar, do you see a Yabajin up there?" I yelled.
Caesar didn’t answer.
I couldn’t expect him to answer. If he spoke, he might give away his position. I flipped off my targeting laser and trudged to the base of the cliff, and everyone down in the valley began yelling at once: "One down! One down! Felipe’s down! García’s down! One down!" so fast I couldn’t keep track of the kills to learn who was winning.
I circled the cliff face and came to the wrecked hovercraft. A few tenacious flames still crackled, sending up a wisp of black smoke. The crumpled bodies of Miguel and two Yabajin were there. I circled over to the mountain side of the rock and stood beneath an overhang while I searched for a way to climb. A few chunks of ice rained down from the cliff above me, and I looked up. A body came falling out of the darkness to crash at my feet.
A chimera in a green bug suit.
"Caesar’s down," I told the rest of the company.
The battle lulled at the mouth of the valley. No one spoke of a new kill or exchanged commands for two minutes. Someone down in the valley began coughing into his helmet mike, making a sound I normally associate with pneumonia. I waited for the samurai to come down the slope. The snow had drifted deep near the cliff, so I sat down and pulled more snow on top of my legs, hiding myself, and watched the hillsides for movement. I didn’t think I’d stand a chance with that last samurai if I tried to sneak out of the canyon. The coughing stopped, and Zavala spoke through the mike in a deep groggy voice.
"Don’t leave me for the samurai to burn. I don’t want to die by burning." He said it very quietly, very matter-of-factly. His slurred speech made it sound as if he had a concussion. He began to weep. I hoped someone would break his neck.
Zavala’s crying annoyed me. In the past nine days we’d each been killed over fifty times. You’d have thought he’d begin to adjust to it. At first when I got burned it often felt as if someone had peeled the skin from the back of my head, pried off my skull cap, and exposed my brain to flames. For hours the pain left my face numb, and my teeth would ache. But my endorphin levels were building up, and I was adjusting to the continual shocks. Each wave of pain was the same as the last. Each threatened to bowl me over. But now when the wave hit it didn’t move me so much as move through me. At least that is how I experienced it. I could withstand the pain. I’d have thought Zavala would begin to feel that way, too, but he didn’t. He believed his hands were rotting all the time now, and each time he’d gone to the ship’s dispensary they’d refused to give him antibiotics.
I was tempted to humiliate Zavala, call him a baby so he’d stop crying. But then I realized I’d never before in my life considered humiliating anyone. Since my youth I’d planned to be a doctor and struggled to empathize with the plight of others. I pretended not to hear Zavala’s whining, not wishing to embarrass him by acknowledging his weakness.
No sound other than Zavala’s weeping disturbed the night. "Is anyone else alive?" I asked over the mike.
Perfecto panted, "Ah, Angelo, it is good to hear you’re doing so well!"
"Where are you?" I asked.
"Chasing two Yabajin back to you."
"What if I don’t want them?"
"Then you’ll have to pray that I catch them first."
"Are you alone?" I asked.
"No," Perfecto panted. "I’ve got three compadres behind me."
"Don’t be in too much of a hurry to get here," I said. "We’ve still got one samurai here somewhere up on the hillside, plus the one up the valley."
Perfecto said, "I’m over the north rim. I’m going to try to cut off these two before they reach you. Which rim is your sniper on?"
"I don’t know. Which way is north?"
"Facing down the valley, it’s the side on your left."
"Then he’s on the south—"
"Do you have any extra rifles near?" Hector cut in.
"Yes, why do you ask?"
"One of the samurai we’re chasing isn’t armed. Your friend may try to get a rifle to him."
I looked at Caesar dead on the ground. His rifle was gone. I jumped up and ran around the cliff, looking back down the valley. In the distance, along the hillside near the south ridge top, a man jogged through the snow with his back turned to me.
I flipped on my targeting laser and aimed it on the ground behind him, then moved it up quickly till I had him in the back. I flipped on the image magnifier so I could see my target more clearly. At this distance, I couldn’t hold my beam steady. My dot bounced around the entire length of his body. My breath was ragged, uneven. I inhaled, then released the air slowly, held the light on the center of the samurai’s back, and squeezed off a shot. A white flower burst into flame at the bottom tip of his left lung, and he went down.
"One down," I said.
"Bueno, Amigo!" Perfecto said. "How easy you make it soun—"
"Vasquez is down!" Hector cried over the speaker.
"Did you see where the shot came from?" one of his compadres, a woman, asked.
"He took it in the forehead, so it must have come from somewhere ahead of us."
Hector said, "Angelo, gather up any extra guns you have there and throw them off in the deep snow where no one will find them. Then sit down with your nose pointing up the canyon. I want you to get that man up there. We’ll get these two."
I searched the ground and retrieved two weapons—Noel’s rifle, which had slid down the cliff, and the samurai’s. I tucked them under the wrecked hovercraft and took my place beneath the overhang, burying myself in the snow again. I didn’t dare return any farther back up the canyon: My tracks would have revealed my presence; whereas the snow by the hovercraft was so beaten no one could tell I’d been there.
"One down!" Hector said. "The other is just heading around the bend."
"Which bend?" Perfecto called.
Hector said, "The first bend that sharply turns north, by the big standing pine."
"Then I’m in front of him!" Perfecto shouted.
I sat and watched the snow for several minutes. Zavala had quit sobbing. He still coughed on occasion. The largest crescent moon had nearly dipped below the skyline—its light silvered the needles of a pine—and visibility was poor. A shadow moved over the rim of the canyon in the distance: something with four legs and a bushy tail—larger than a deer or jaguar, more the size of a small horse. It moved easily over the snow from tree to tree, sniffing at the air, slinking my way. I couldn’t place it: It had the shape of a wolf, only it was larger and bulkier—more like a large bear. I couldn’t think what kind of animal it might be. Then I realized it was something I’d never seen on Earth. A local carnivore thrown into the simulator. The samurai had done this once before, pitting us against the Kawa no Ryu, the river dragons. I flipped my targeting laser on and shot twice before I hit the beast in the belly. It hissed and whined and growled and spun in circles, kicking up snow and snapping the air. Then it lunged through the snow and back over the hilltop. It will probably come back with a dozen hungry friends, I thought.
I flipped off my targeting laser.
Nothing moved in the canyon in front of me.
Perfecto yelled, "Yabajin!" over the helmet mike, and he sounded so close I sprawled forward. I looked up. No one was even near. I figured they must only be a few hundred meters away.
"I’ve got him!" Hector yelled.
"He’s cheating!" Perfecto said.
Someone got hit in the head and a helmet mike crunched. "Hit the verga!" Hector yelled. Someone grunted several times.
"Okay, you can stop hitting him now," Hector said.
Perfecto said, "Damn him to hell. How’s Juanita?"
"She’s dead. Her neck is broken."
"Damn these samurai!" Perfecto said.
I was surprised. Perfecto never swore, never even used mild obscenities. "What happened?" I asked.
"We had him from both sides," Perfecto said. "All three of us were shooting him. He just kept spinning in circles so the imaging computer would lose its target before the laser could burn through his armor, then he kicked Juanita in the head."
"I had one do that to me just a few moments ago," I said.
"How did you beat him?" Perfecto asked.
"Caesar shot him in the back when he wasn’t looking. "
"These samurai are very frugal," Hector said. "They only teach you a new trick when they’re forced to. We should be proud that they felt compelled to reveal one of their secrets. This will come in handy."
"You know what this means? It means we’ll have to shoot them with the plasma turrets first, so we can force them to lie down for a second. Then we’ll have to finish them off with the lasers before they can get up."
"I hate these damned weapons restrictions—" Hector said, "it takes all the fun out of trying to kill a man."
" Sí," Perfecto said. "But look at the bright side�
��we’ve only got one Yabajin left to kill, and we’ll be rich men."
Hector said, "Where are you, Angelo?"
"I’m beside the wreck," I said. Zavala coughed in a huge wracking burst, trying to expel fluid from his lungs.
"Hold your place. We’ll go back for a hovercraft. We’ll be there in a few minutes."
" Sí," I said. "Kill Zavala while you’re at it. Put him out of his misery."
"Okay," Perfecto said.
I hadn’t noticed how warm I’d stayed during combat, but suddenly I realized I was cold again. Snow had crept through the chinks in my armor, and now my legs felt as if they’d freeze. My hands started to stiffen, and I flexed them methodically. I looked longingly at the fire sputtering among the wreckage of the hovercraft, wondering if I should warm myself by its side.
I watched its red glow and realized something was wrong: though the smoke and fire looked real, and small cinders drifted into the sky, there was no ash, no gray or black soot falling onto me. There should have been ash falling.
Occasionally the ship’s artificial intelligence made such mistakes, neglecting tiny matters. One could look into a handful of soil and find no trace of insects or worms. The ship’s AI couldn’t create an illusion that complete, not with images it developed based on maps and fractal equations and the faulty memories of samurai.
It seemed to me that I should have been capable of using this principle to my benefit. If I could pierce the illusion of the simulator, it would help me beat the samurai.
I thought about money. If we beat the last samurai, we’d have to split the pot three ways. That would still come to 30,000 IMUs apiece—as much as I’d make in an average year of selling morphogens in Panamá.
Twenty minutes passed. We were working overtime in the simulator—a new group of students would be suiting up in the battle room. I imagined how a crowd would gather at the monitors as people watched The Horror Show to see if we’d fry the last samurai. No team had ever outnumbered a samurai three to one. It seemed inconceivable that we’d lose. Yet I didn’t dare hope. I kept expecting the last sniper to fry me any second.
On My Way to Paradise Page 17
