When Duty Calls

by William C. Dietz

  “Roger that,” Santana replied. “Can you give me any additional intel on the firefight? Over.”

  “Negative,” Millar answered. “Not without going forward. Over.”

  “Hold your position,” the company commander ordered. “I’ll bring the second platoon up to join you in a few minutes. Out.”

  “Roger,” Millar confirmed. “Alpha Six-Six out.”

  Santana ordered the company to halt, told Deker to find Amoyo, and was soon close enough to open his visor and talk to her off-line. Cold snow flakes began to kiss his face. “Let’s circle the wagons, Lieutenant. . . . You can use both of the quads in the perimeter—but keep all your people combat-ready until the firefight is over. I’ll take the second platoon forward to see what’s going on.”

  Having allowed Colonel Six to get past her, Amoyo was feeling down, and would have welcomed an opportunity to redeem herself. More than that, she wondered whether Santana had lost faith in her—or was simply exercising his right to carry out the mission himself. Not that it made much difference, because all she could say was, “Yes, sir.”

  Confident that Amoyo would do a good job, and worried lest Second Lieutenant Zolkin blunder into a situation he wasn’t prepared to handle, Santana went looking for the other platoon leader and found the young man raring to go. Even if his tired legionnaires would have preferred to stay back. “We’re ready, sir,” Zolkin said enthusiastically. “Just say the word.”

  Santana grinned behind his visor. “Thank you, Lieutenant. . . . I’m glad to hear it. Please put Staff Sergeant Pool and Corporal Torrez on drag. . . . And tell them to stay sharp. It would be easy for someone to get in behind us on a night like this.”

  Because the orders had been delivered face-to-face rather than by radio, the instructions would seem to originate from the platoon leader thereby strengthening Zolkin’s position with the troops. Santana knew squad leader Pool wouldn’t like walking drag, but it was a very important slot, and would become even more so if both officers were killed. In that situation, it would be her responsibility to assume command.

  With the second platoon strung out behind them, Santana and Deker followed Fareye and Ka Nahn into the maze of wrecked vehicles. Another flare went off, and cast an eerie glow across the battlefield, as the muted thump, thump, thump of a heavy machine gun was heard. “Try all of the allied frequencies,” Santana ordered. “We need to warn those people that we’re coming in. It would be a shame to get shot by someone on our side.”

  Deker was well aware of the dangers involved. He said, “Yes, sir. I already have. Twice. But I’ll keep trying.”

  It would have been nice to turn on their helmet lights in order to see where they were going, but that would be suicidal. So Santana was thankful for the steady succession of flares that kept the area at least half-lit as Fareye led the column forward. They passed between a half-slagged hover tank and a burned-out truck, made their way down into a trash-strewn gully, and up the other side. A frozen human, his weapon still aimed at an invisible enemy, marked the edge of the flat area beyond. There was no way to know if he had been killed by a bullet or frozen to death.

  “Alpha Six-Four to Alpha Six,” Fareye said, as he and his T-2 paused. “I see heat signatures up ahead. Lots of heat signatures. All of which appear to be Ramanthian. They seem completely unaware of our presence. Probably because they’re busy assaulting a big pile of wreckage. Over.”

  “Roger that,” Santana answered, as Deker carried him down into the gully. “Hold your position. Bravo One-Six. Position your platoon in a line abreast. Use Alpha Six-Four as your center marker. Prepare for a sweep of the area ahead—but caution your troops to keep their fire off the pile of wreckage where the friendlies are holed up. Over.”

  “This is Bravo One-Six,” Zolkin replied. His voice was tight with either excitement or fear. “I read you. . . . Out.”

  Santana eyed the display on his HUD, waited for the second platoon to swing into position, and was pleased to see the speed with which the evolution was executed. Zolkin had come a long way since the landing on Oron IV and was shaping up to be a good officer. “Still no response on any of the allied frequencies, sir,” Deker put in over the intercom. “Either they don’t have a com set, or they aren’t listening.”

  “Thanks,” Santana said, as he eyed the constantly shifting blobs of heat in front of them. “Alpha Six to Alpha Six-Six. We’ve been unable to make radio contact with the allied unit up ahead. . . . Once we engage the enemy, I want you to go forward, and get in touch with the people in that pile of wreckage. Tell them who we are, take command if they will allow you to do so, and serve as liaison officer if they won’t. Your first responsibility is keep them from firing on us. Do you read me? Over.”

  “Sir, yes sir,” Millar answered affirmatively. “Alpha Six-Six out.”

  “Alpha Six-Five will prepare to fire two flares, and the second platoon will prepare to charge,” Santana continued. “Readddy, fire! Readddy, charge!”

  Deker was up and out of the gully before the additional flares went off. Real cavalry charges were a rarity given the way most high-tech battles were fought, but the sudden attack out of the surrounding darkness could have taken place on the plains of Mongolia, in the Crimea, or at Gettysburg. Except that these steeds were sentient, could see in the dark, and were armed with weapons that would have been unimaginable two thousand years earlier.

  Someone yelled, “Camerone!” over the company push, and all hell broke loose. Having been caught by surprise, the bugs were forced to turn their backs on the pile of wreckage as the cyborgs swept toward them. Now, as Deker opened fire with both his fifty and his energy cannon, Santana realized there were more Ramanthians than he had bargained for. In addition to the enemy soldiers that had been visible before, more of the aliens came swarming up out of shell holes, emerged from hiding places in the surrounding wreckage, and returned fire.

  All of which caused the officer to wonder if he should call upon Amoyo for reinforcements. But the quads would take a long time to arrive—and were too big to operate effectively within the confines of the metal maze. Plus, were he to strip the big walkers of the protection offered by the first platoon’s T-2s, it would make the cyborgs vulnerable to an infantry attack. So, having considered the alternatives, the officer decided to leave the first platoon where it was.

  Even though it was the officer’s job to lead the legionnaires, that became impossible as the cyborgs passed through the enemy’s ranks, and the members of the second platoon found themselves inside a nightmarish world of speeding bodies, stuttering weapons, and shrill command whistles. Because of the chaos, and the speed with which the battle was being fought, all of the tactical decisions had to be made by the T-2s regardless of whatever rank the bio bod they were carrying might hold. There simply wasn’t enough time for the process to work any other way.

  That meant that as Deker circled a burned-out APC in an attempt to get the drop on a Ramanthian rocket team—it was Santana’s responsibility to provide the cyborg with security. So when a Ramanthian fired at Deker from the right, the officer was there to gun the bug down, even as the borg ran over an alien soldier. Chitin crackled as it shattered, and the alien uttered a nearly human scream, as Deker kept going.

  Though busy trying to protect Deker’s six, Santana noticed that the volume of fire coming out of the pile of wreckage had fallen off, suggesting that Millar had made contact with the people within. But if that was good, other things weren’t so good, as a shoulder-launched missile struck Private Mary Volin between the shoulder blades and blew up. Her body must have shielded Private Shalo Shaley to some extent, because the T-2 survived the hit, even if the cyborg didn’t want to. Because Shaley had been in love with Volin, and the bio bod’s death spurred the Trooper II into a frenzy of killing.

  With the bio bod’s grisly remains still flapping around on her blood-spattered back, Shaley went looking for any Ramanthian she could find, killing each with the ruthless efficiency of an aveng
ing angel. Most of the alien soldiers were already dead by that time. In fact, so many of them had been killed that their bodies lay in drifts, like the snow that was already beginning to cover them, as the raging T-2 ran out of ammo and stomped a wounded Ramanthian to death.

  Sergeant Ramos had a zapper in hand as he went to intervene. None of the other legionnaires knew what he said to the cyborg, since it was off the push, but whatever it was worked because the noncom was able to lead Shaley away without having to zap her. Which was the only way a bio bod could bring an intransigent cyborg under control.

  Meanwhile, as bio bods dismounted to search the dead for anything that might be of interest to the intelligence people, they also collected anything that might be of use to the company in the future. Not the Ramanthian assault rifles, because they were awkward to fire, but energy grenades, which were better than CSB issue in certain situations, plus the highly prized grain bars that many of the bugs carried in their packs, and which tasted like honey. Their helmet lights bobbed and swayed as they probed the battlefield for loot, adding yet another otherworldly element to an already-surreal scene.

  And that was the situation that Santana was presiding over as an additional light appeared and Millar emerged from the surrounding murk with a woman in tow. A knit cap covered her hair. She had a softly rounded face, a snub nose, and generous lips. The clothing the woman wore consisted of a mishmash of Hegemony-issue items that had been altered as necessary and layered to create the semblance of a winter uniform. That was overlaid by a combat vest at least one size too big for her, and the whole outfit was dusted with snow. But there was nothing amateurish about the Marine-Corps-issue carbine cradled in her arms or the look in her brown eyes. It was hard and calculating. “This is Hoyt-11,791,” Millar announced. “She’s in command of the CVA company that the bugs were working so hard to eradicate.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Santana said as he jumped to the ground. “My name is Santana. I’m in command of Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st REC.”

  “Thank you for coming to our rescue,” Seven-ninety-one said soberly. “We wouldn’t have been able to hold out much longer.” Her voice had a husky quality that Santana found attractive.

  “At some point our forces tried to clear the area of wreckage by making a big pile,” Millar explained. “Having been ambushed as they passed through the battlefield, the Hoyts crawled inside and fought back. It made a pretty good fort.”

  “I’m sorry we didn’t arrive earlier,” Santana said. “How many of you are there?”

  “Fifty-seven when the battle began,” the clone answered succinctly, “and thirty-one now.”

  “I’m sorry,” Santana said sympathetically. “But you were right to put up a fight. They would have slaughtered you otherwise. Where were you headed? And what were you supposed to do?”

  “We have orders to join the 181st Labor Battalion,” Seven-ninety-one answered. “As for what we’re supposed to do, well, no one told us that. We’re office administrators from Alpha-002. So it’s hard to imagine what they had in mind for us.”

  Santana swore, then caught himself. “Sorry, ma’am, but sending office workers into a combat zone has got to be one of the stupidest things I ever heard of. Have you got any transportation?”

  “No,” the woman replied. “Our truck was destroyed in the ambush.”

  That was a problem because Santana knew the bio bods wouldn’t be able to keep up with the cyborgs and would be extremely vulnerable if left on their own.

  “Some of them could ride in the quads,” Millar put in helpfully.

  “I suppose,” the cavalry officer allowed. “But what about the rest?”

  “They could ride on top of the quads, and jump off if we take fire,” Millar answered.

  The legionnaire eyed the Hoyt. Snowflakes caught in her eyelashes and forced her to blink. “You and your people would be exposed to both the weather and enemy fire up there,” Santana cautioned.

  Seven-ninety-one shrugged. “We were exposed in the truck,” she said fatalistically. “And riding beats walking.”

  “Okay,” Santana agreed. “Do you have any objections to taking orders from Lieutenant Millar here for the duration of your stay with us?”

  The Hoyt looked at the hovering recon ball and back again. If the prospect of reporting to a cyborg bothered the woman, she gave no sign of it. “No, sir,” she said formally. “That’s fine with me.”

  The cavalry officer nodded. “All right, Lieutenant, take care of your people. Make sure they scrounge all the good stuff they can find. I have a feeling everything is going to be in short supply up ahead. Perhaps Seven-ninety-one would be good enough to help identify the dead. And let’s lay them out where the graves registration people will be able to find them. Dismissed.”

  By the time the second platoon, and the newly designated third platoon pulled back into the relative security of the encampment that Amoyo and her people had prepared, a full-fledged blizzard was under way. Weather so cold it was necessary for sentries to work the actions on their weapons every two to three minutes or risk having them freeze up. But there was one good thing about the storm however. . . . And that was the fact it would be just as hard on the enemy. Because no matter how many battles the two sides fought—winter would always win.

  13

  Tragedy is by no means the exclusive province of the lowly.

  —Paguumi proverb

  Author unknown

  Standard year circa 120 B.C.

  PLANET EARTH, THE RAMANTHIAN EMPIRE

  It was raining as the Ramanthian task force swept in over Seattle. What had once been a discrete city was now part of the sprawling metroplex that began in the old nation-state of Canada, and ran all the way down to Baja, California.

  For reasons not entirely clear, the Seattle area had been especially hard to pacify. This meant it had been necessary to repeatedly punish the animals who lived there. A process that eventually turned what had been gleaming high-rises, floating sea habs, and carefully manicured streetscapes into a cratered wasteland. The destruction was plain to see as the Queen watched the vid screen on the bulkhead before her. Though capable of in-system spaceflight, the Reaper was classified as a combat assault platform, and intended for use inside planetary atmospheres. As such the flying fortress was heavily armed and, thanks to a spacious flight deck, could launch and retrieve smaller vessels at the same time. As the airborne fortress approached the city from the south it was traveling at a scant twenty miles per hour, a fact that somehow made its presence over the city that much more ominous.

  As the monarch looked down onto the surface, she saw an arrow-straight line of craters, each measuring exactly one hundred feet across, which had been etched into the planet’s surface by OTS (orbit-to-surface) cannons firing from outside the exosphere. Thousand-foot-high skyscrapers had been cut down like trees. So what remained looked like a thicket of fire-blackened stumps, many of which were still smoking, because of fires that continued to burn below street level.

  What resembled old lava flows were actually rivers of previously molten metal and glass, which followed streets down to a large bay, where cold water transformed them into something resembling stone. Everything else was a sea of fire-blackened wreckage occasionally interrupted by islands of miraculously untouched buildings. As the Reaper began to slow, the royal spotted tiny pinpricks of light down below, followed by an occasional spurt of light-colored smoke. “What,” the monarch wanted to know, “are the animals doing?”

  Captain Ji-Jua was standing at the royal’s side. He was a serious-looking officer with a reputation for probity. “The humans are firing at us, Majesty,” the naval officer replied gravely. “They have a quantity of shoulder-launched missiles looted from human military bases—and it may have been a lucky shot from such a weapon that brought the transport down.”

  “I find it strange that when we manage to destroy an enemy ship it’s always ascribed to skill—but when they do it we refer to it as �
��luck,’ ” the Queen observed tartly. “And where is the transport? I expected to see it by now.”

  “It’s difficult to see because of the rain,” Ji-Jua replied tactfully. “The stern is half-submerged in that lake—but the bow is resting on dry land.”

  The Reaper shuddered gently as a surface-to-air missile exploded against her screens. The ship’s combat computer ran a lightning-fast series of calculations and fired an energy cannon in response. The blue bolt slagged everything within twenty feet of the point from which the rocket had been launched.

  But the royal was oblivious to such details as the crash site came into full view. There were hills to the left and right as the task force slowed and hovered above the wreck. The Queen knew, as did everyone else, that roughly half of the three hundred troops traveling on board the transport had been killed on impact. The survivors were not only alive, but still fighting, as wave after wave of murderous humans attacked them.

  And, as smaller ships spread out to suppress enemy fire, a task force led by the Queen herself was about to rescue the beleaguered troopers. Video of that was sure to raise morale throughout the empire. Pictures that would look even better if taken on the ground rather than inside a warship. The Queen stood. “I will lead the rescue party myself,” she announced. “I’ll need my armor and a rifle.”

  Captain Ji-Jua reacted to the statement with undisguised alarm. “Majesty!” the officer said. “Please reconsider! The situation on the ground is extremely unstable. . . . I could never allow you to risk your life in such a manner!”

  “You not only can, you will,” the royal responded sternly. “Or I can replace you here and now. . . . Which will it be?”