Letting out a roar of rage, he leapt onto the platform of the drill probe, heedless of the blades as they spun inches from his exposed flesh. He saw the door that led in; it was sealed. There was no way it should have been possible to open it from the outside. But Rogue did it anyway. He flung the door open, kicked the Nort manning the entrance viciously in the face, then flung a grenade inside and slammed the door shut again.
"Stak!" he heard the Norts screaming as he leapt clear. "Stak! Get it out!"
They were right out of luck. The whole drill probe shook then exploded in a welt of fire.
Rogue saw it on the edge of his vision as he knelt to examine what was left of Bagman. It took him a horribly long time to find the head in the mass of gore. When he did, little of the face was left and for a horrible moment he was afraid the biochip had also been destroyed in the carnage.
But it hadn't. The head was pulped, so he used his fingers to dig it out this time. Once it was free, he hesitated a moment, then smiled and slipped it into the slot on Bagman's kitbag. Where else could it go?
"Second lease of life," Bagman said. "Lucky you were here." Even emerging tinnily from the speakers in the side of the pack, the sarcastic intonation on the word "lucky" was more than evident.
"GIs make their own luck," Rogue said. "I'll get you clear of here, Bagman, Gunnar. You're going to live through this, even if your bodies didn't."
Then, as if it had heard him, his helmet mic crackled into life. "Rogue," Helm's voice said. "I'm getting a signal from Milli-Com. They're ordering a full-scale retreat." Rogue ignored the snorts of disdain from Bagman and Gunnar. It had taken the brass an awfully long time to notice that things weren't exactly going the GI's way. "We're to rendezvous at the Orange Sea Coast for rescue craft pick-up." The mic hissed into silence.
"What did I tell you?" Rogue gritted to the others. "We're getting out."
He wished he felt half as confident as he sounded.
TWO
TWO DOWN
Pietr couldn't believe that his brother was really dead. Just couldn't believe it. Jaze had been there his whole life. His first memory was of his brother stealing his teddy bear out of his cot and his parents laughing when he told them about it. It didn't seem possible that Jaze should be dead. Pietr had been the one who was meant to die. He deserved to die. His brother had as good as told him so. And how was he going to earn Jaze's respect now, finally see his brother regard him through eyes glowing with pride, when his eyes were dim and dead? How come it was Jaze's body that was lying here on the ground?
After a few minutes just squatting in the hollow behind the corpse, Pietr staggered to his feet. He could barely see; the tears scalding his eyes felt as toxic as chem. But he made his way to his brother's corpse and no one stopped him. The battle had long since moved off, the ebb and flow of war which Pietr hadn't known about until today carrying the fight far out of his sight towards the coast.
Jaze still looked alive. His body was unharmed. Only the black stain on the breast of his chem suit showed what had happened, and that could just have been mud. Maybe it was mud.
Pietr took the sleeve of his chem suit and tried to rub the mark away, but nothing would shift it. So instead he tried to wake his brother up.
"Jaze," he said. "Jaze, come on, stop kidding around." He nudged his brother gently, then harder when there was no response. "Don't do this to me, Jaze. Don't do it," he said, and he was sobbing so hard that he couldn't speak any more.
But this time the tears were of anger. How dare those blue-skinned Souther freaks take his brother away from him? How dare they?
Pietr staggered to his feet, pulled his beam rifle from where it had remained slung across his shoulders for the entire battle, and clasped it in his hands. The weight felt good. Dangerous. He could make this right. He could take on the Souther scum, kill them all, kill the one who'd killed his brother, then there'd be no one to kill his brother and his brother would be alive again.
Somewhere, hazily, he thought that there might be something wrong with the logic of this. He shook his head. Didn't matter. For the first time since the battle had begun he had a clear sense of purpose. He knew what needed to be done.
The fight was on the shore, so that must be where the Southers were. If he could just find them he could put this all right.
He'd taken only five paces towards the Orange Coast when a voice rang out behind him. "Soldier, halt!"
He carried on walking.
"Halt, I say!" the voice snapped, and some vague part of Pietr recognised it as Lieutenant Kurn. As the recognition sank in, reality began to return and Pietr hesitated and turned to face his commanding officer.
Kurn took a step back when he saw him, as if something in Pietr's posture unsettled him, but he quickly steadied himself. "There are new orders, soldier," he said. "You're to follow me."
"But I want to kill those Souther scum," Pietr said. He noticed that his voice sounded weak, as if he didn't really mean it. Did he? He wasn't sure any more.
But Kurn heard only the words. He smiled, the first approving look Pietr had ever received from him. "Don't worry, Pietr," he said. "That's exactly what you're going to be doing."
Rogue couldn't believe that luck really did seem to be with them. Shortly after receiving the message from Helm, they'd found a cave system burrowing through the quartz cliffs. The Norts must have known it was there, but they had passed through and moved on. There was enough salvage in the cave, broken equipment and disabled armaments, for Rogue to provide Bagman with the raw materials to manufacture him more ammo and as many micro-mines as Rogue was likely to need. A few more med kits would come in handy too. Rogue knelt and tossed it all into the kitbag, where the nanites could get to work on it.
"Great! Food," Bagman said.
Rogue smiled. "Thought you were looking hungry."
It actually seemed like things might be looking up until they emerged from the caves. "Damn it, Rogue," Bagman said when he could see the view. "Don't we deserve one break?"
The coast was visible, toxic orange waves beating against a blackened shore. There were other GIs too, more survivors than Rogue had anticipated. Still, even from this distance, Rogue could see that many of them were wounded, keeping going only through the iron will and inhuman stamina that had been bred into them.
There were Norts too. The GIs hadn't made a clean escape. The enemy had followed and they had the upper hand here as well. For a moment the view was obscured as a gas bomb exploded a hundred yards from their position, and when the choking black smoke cleared Rogue could see that there were a few less blue forms left standing. There was another Blackmare tank, too, blasting sizzling bolts of blue death at the retreating GIs.
"Almost at the coast," Bagman said. He made it sound like a hope rather than a certainty.
"Yeah, I can already smell the pollution," Rogue replied. He didn't like the lie of the land at all. Up here they had the advantage of height, but as soon as they ventured back onto the battlefield they'd be bright blue targets for all the Nort armaments.
His helmet mic crackled into life and Helm's voice came through again. "Guys, I'm getting a lot of readings up ahead, and I don't think they're friendly."
"You don't say," Bagman said sarcastically, as Rogue eyed the massed Nort forces below.
Gunnar's rough voice, emerging from the stock of Rogue's gun, sounded entirely serious. "Norts?" he said. "Cool. A trip to the beach and Norts to kill. I love this war."
Rogue didn't say anything, but he felt a first stirring of unease. Gunnar's bloodthirstiness had always been constrained by the fierce military discipline they'd spent years learning. The GIs were designed to be killing machines, but by giving them human form the Gene Genies had ensured that they could never be only that. Now Gunnar's consciousness was embedded in something that really was nothing more than a killing machine. Could his humanity, or even his sanity, survive it?
"I believe all is clear, Mr Bland," Brass said. He looked down at his short
er partner, then they both rose carefully to their feet from behind the quartz mound where they had been hiding as the last of the fighting passed them by.
The ground in front of them was like an abattoir, except that much of the blood sprayed across it was blue. Pausing only to collect the weapons of the fallen and flip them into the hovercart, Bland towing behind him, Brass made straight for the first blue-skinned corpse.
He knelt beside it, fascinated to see how human it looked. From their vantage point above the battlefield, it had been impossible to tell the exact appearance of the new Souther troops. Up close he saw that the thing could almost have been a man. Except, of course, for the muddy blue skin, the brush of white hair on the head and, perhaps most disturbingly, the strange blank whiteness of the eyes.
"No chem suits," Bland said. His heavy lidded, deceptively tired-looking eyes turned to Brass. "It disturbs me that we knew nothing of these creatures."
Brass nodded. "They must have been bred this way, possibly from birth. For the Southers to have run such a programme without our knowledge... Well, it is clear we shall have to step up our surveillance operations on Milli-Com."
"But what are they?" Bland asked. He knelt down beside the body and prodded the cut in its side cautiously with one gloved hand. A gout of blue blood shot out towards him from the wound and he jumped hurriedly back before climbing thoughtfully to his feet.
"I think that further research is required, Mr Bland," Brass said. "Will you take the feet?" He grasped the body's head, unnaturally heavy in death, and with some effort he and Bland heaved it onto the hovercart. They could study it later, in the safety of their vehicular base. A thorough dissection was clearly called for, but there was no time. Others, inimical to their own purposes, would soon be on the battlefield.
Brass wasn't worried about the Norts' own clean-up operation. He knew from experience that they had hours before that was likely to occur - typical military inefficiency, which Brass was all too familiar with after the ten years he'd spent slaving thanklessly in Nort computer intelligence. No, it was other body looters Brass was worried about. Although, he flattered himself, his hacking skills were second-to-none, not to mention his in-depth knowledge of Nort cryptography, it was possible that others would have gathered the same intelligence he and Bland had. Not to mention that the firefight they'd just witnessed must have lit up the chem clouds for miles around. The vultures would be descending soon. And when they did, Brass intended for them to find the corpses already picked clean.
He was therefore in such a hurry that he almost missed it. At first, he took it for just another blue-skinned corpse. But then he saw the gaping wound in the back of its head that hadn't been caused by any beam rifle he'd ever seen.
"Mr Bland, would you pause a moment?" he said. Bland turned to look at him, his hand still on the hovercart's pull-chord, as Brass knelt down beside the body.
He looked at the hole in the back of the head and came to the conclusion that it had been caused by a knife. A quick peek with his nanoscope and he established from the pattern of serrations that it was a standard-issue Souther Infantry knife. Which meant that this soldier had been killed by one of his own side. Except, Brass realised quickly , the wound in the blue trooper's head hadn't been the fatal one. It would have bled far more profusely if it had been inflicted ante mortem. When Brass flipped the body over, he saw that its death had been brought about by an energy beam between the eyes.
There was only one reason that Brass could imagine for the wound. Something had been removed from it. "Curious," he said to his partner. "Mr Bland, I believe this warrants further investigation."
Before he'd got far out of the cave system, Rogue managed to hook up with Helm. He'd guessed Helm must have been looking for him. He was grinning at him, clearly pleased to have found at least one of his buddies alive, whatever rivalry he'd felt with Rogue in training put aside in the crucible of battle. Rogue wondered if he'd still be pleased when he heard the news Rogue had to tell, how badly he'd let their other buddies down, that he'd been too slow to save them.
Helm's smile was slipping as he looked around Rogue, clearly expecting to have found him with Gunnar and Bagman. "Where are the others?" he said to Rogue after a moment. "Couldda sworn I heard them talking over the radio."
"They're dead," Rogue said.
Helm's eyes widened, then narrowed as if to stop them spilling out any emotion that wasn't suitable in a GI.
"Hey, watch who you're calling dead," Bagman's voice rang out from the robot arm of Rogue's kitbag.
Helm looked shocked for a moment, and comprehension lit his eyes. "You got him out in time."
Rogue nodded. "Gunnar too. Quick enough to get them out of their bodies," he added bitterly, "not quick enough to keep 'em in them."
"Don't beat yourself up about it, Rogue," Gunnar said gruffly. "Wasn't for you, we wouldn't have made it at all. Now I get to kill another day."
Helm opened his mouth to reply, then spun round as he spotted something out of the corner of his eye. He dropped to his knees, swung his rifle up and looked down the sniper scope latched to the stock. Rogue saw him breathe in, hold the breath in his lungs, keeping his body entirely steady, and squeeze off a shot. It was too far away to see if it had reached its target, but Rogue was willing to bet money that it had. Helm was second only to Gunnar as a marksman.
"Nort Lazooka unit," Helm said shortly.
"Way to go," said Gunnar. "Do it to them before they do it to us."
Helm seemed to hesitate a moment, then he unsnapped the sight from his weapon and handed it over to Rogue. "Take this. Makes more sense for Gunnar to have it anyway." Rogue didn't like to deprive Helm of what edge he had, but he knew that he was right. With Gunnar in charge his weapon could auto-fire, making it far more useful than Helm's simple rifle. The scope just made it that much more deadly. And like they'd always told them in training, the best get the best - 'cause they'll know what to do with it.
"Thanks," he said gruffly. "You know, would make a lot of sense for you to take one of the guys. That way, if one of us gets cut down at least half of us'll make it out alive." He held Gunnar out towards Helm.
"Hey, buddy, what do you think you're doing?" Gunnar said indignantly.
"Looking out for you," Rogue said, but he drew the rifle back a little.
"I can look out for myself," Gunnar said. "And I'm not some bit of equipment you can trade around like an object. There's a mind in here, in case you'd forgotten, and it gets to decide where it goes."
Rogue felt ashamed. "Sorry, Gunnar. Guess I'll keep you then, if that's what you want."
"I'm happy where I am," Gunnar confirmed. Helm nodded that he understood and Rogue slung the weapon back over his own shoulders. He knew that Gunnar was right. Subtly, he had already begun to think of his two old buddies as less than human, without real feelings. Only their bodies were lost, not their spirits or their wills.
"Big words," Bagman muttered to Gunnar. "But you just wanted to stick with Rogue 'cause you know he's more likely to get us out alive than Helm."
Rogue hissed at Bagman to silence him and hoped that Helm hadn't heard, but he thought from the suddenly tense set of the other GI's shoulders that he probably had. Great. Their situation was bad enough as it was. The last thing they needed was to reawaken old rivalries.
Helm didn't say anything, he just continued scanning the battlefield before them like a chess grandmaster studying the board before making his move. "We've more chance of surviving if we save our ammo," he said. "Stealth's the best strategy here." Then he turned to face Rogue. "If you jump across that gap, you could sneak up on the tower lookout. I'll cover you from here."
For just a moment, looking into Helm's eyes as the crump and shrieking of heavy artillery sounded below, Rogue wondered if Helm would cover him. His doubts evaporated as soon as he saw the white fire in his comrade's arms. They were GIs; they could trust each other absolutely. Because they only had each other.
And Helm did cover
him. With Gunnar's sniper sight in place it was almost too easy. Rogue took out the Norts before they even saw him coming, headshots every time, and behind him Helm mopped up any survivors. Even another Blackmare tank proved no obstacle - Rogue just found himself the Lazooka unit Helm had downed earlier and used the Norts' own weapons against them.
It looked like they might make it back to the coast unhindered, until the quartz hillock in front of them suddenly erupted into molten lava and the same Hell Cannon that had nearly finished them off swung round and took out a small cluster of GIs only a few short metres from the shore and safety.
Helm fell to the ground beside Rogue, instinctively placing his back to him, ensuring a three hundred and sixty degree range of fire. The air around them was thick with the smell of the nearby sea, a hint of brine masked behind the stink of lethal chem. Even GIs might not survive the waters of that ocean very long.
"Rogue, another message coming in from Milli-Com," Bagman said. "The rescue craft can't come in until that Hell Cannon is taken out."
"And that bunker," Gunnar said. "The machine gun emplacements there will make mincemeat of our guys trying to get down to the shore." He couldn't point, of course, but Rogue knew just where he meant. It lay right between their hideout in the rocks and the shore. Other groups of GIs had spotted it too. Rogue could see them holed up around the rocky escarpment, calculating the odds that they'd make it down to the shore alive. The odds weren't good. And if Rogue could see them, then so could the Norts. They'd be sending in forces to wipe out those last, pinned-down pockets of resistance before long.
Rogue calculated that the bunker was doable. The cannon was the problem. The Norts knew that it was their prize possession, and they'd defended it accordingly. "You take out the bunker," he said to Helm. "I'll take care of the cannon."
The Quartz Massacre Page 5
