by B. V. Larson
“Really?” she said, letting her eyes focus on me at last. “You’re eating now?”
“I’m hungry.”
“You’re always hungry.”
I shrugged, conceding the point.
“Here’s what you’re going to do,” she said, outlining a new plan. “You’re going back out there—to Blood World.”
I released an unhappy grunt.
She ignored that and began to tick off a list of instructions on her fingers. I watched her fingers, drank, and slowly began to frown.
“Galina,” I interrupted at last, “I’m not on your payroll any longer. I work for Drusus. Why shouldn’t I ride the elevator up a few floors and ask for his opinion on this whole mess?”
Her teeth clenched.
“So… here we are at last. The shake-down. I’ve been expecting it. What is it you want, McGill? What will bend you to my will?”
Looking at her thoughtfully, a smile crept over my face.
She caught on immediately, and she took a step toward me. She shook her head and tsked.
“Really? That is what you want? Haven’t you learned anything from your experience with Specialist—?”
That was as far as she got, because I grabbed her and kissed her.
She melted quickly. Maybe it was the booze, or maybe it was her commitment to gaining my support. Whatever the cause, she made love like she meant it.
It was perfectly possible she was enjoying herself, of course. That’s what it seemed like to me at the time, but I wasn’t sure I could tell the difference anymore.
My faith in women like her had been shaken for good.
-44-
My return to Nostrum almost went unnoticed.
I’d taken care to walk through Engineering like I owned the place, and as far as that went, I figured I’d succeed.
Sure, various crewmen looked at me funny now and then as I passed them by. But I figured they weren’t suspicious, they were just wondering why an officer from the legion they were transporting was wandering around in the guts of the ship.
Before I got to the big hatchway, which had been repaired and now looked kind of shiny, a tech caught up with me.
She tapped her finger on my back. I almost kept walking, but I knew that if she’d been ordered to keep an eye out, she would report me. The fact she felt safe enough to walk up and touch me indicated she wasn’t thinking I was some kind of threat.
Therefore, I spun around, manufactured a smile, and asked her a question.
“What is it, Specialist?”
She looked me up and down once. Her expression was one of slight confusion.
“Aren’t you supposed to be on one of the lifters, sir?” she asked.
My eyes widened slightly, but I managed not to look too alarmed. “I’m on my way right now,” I said. “Thank you for your concern.”
Exiting with broad strides, I let my long legs carry me at a pace that was beyond what a normal person would call walking. When no one was looking, I checked my tapper.
Messages were flooding in. Timers, warnings—the cohort had been ordered to drop. I was late for deployment on Blood World.
I shifted into a trot which transformed into a dead run. I reached the lifter bays just in time.
Graves was there, like a hostess offering people a seat. He saw me coming, smiled faintly and shook his head.
“Where have you been, McGill?” he asked. “I had to order your unit aboard myself.”
“Sorry sir,” I said, “I was unavoidably detained.”
“Right…” he said with a rumbling laugh. “What was her name?”
“Uh… something Russian-sounding, I believe.”
He puffed out his lips. “You’ve got to stop employing blockers when you go off-grid with a girl. I covered for you this time, but this has got to stop.”
“I’d dearly appreciate this chance to redeem myself, Primus,” I said. “I promise nothing like this will ever happen again.”
Shaking his head, he went up the chute to ride with the pilots. I sat down in the midst of my unit. They all looked at me with a wide variety of expressions. Some—the women mostly—appeared to be disgusted.
Only Carlos looked amused.
“Another hard night with the ladies, huh, McGill?”
Normally, Sargon or Harris would have belted him one for smart-mouthing the CO—but they didn’t seem interested in defending my honor this time around. Apparently, everyone thought I’d abandoned my post and wandered off to chase some tail.
I wanted to tell them the truth, but I couldn’t. It was frustrating.
“There are things at work here,” I said, “things I can’t discuss.”
“Really? Are we talking about parasols and butt-plugs?”
That was enough for Harris. He backhanded Carlos, causing a trickle of blood to run from the corner of his mouth. After that he finally shut up.
Deciding it was time to take back my command, I opened a channel and spoke loudly into every ear in the unit.
“We’re about to deploy on Blood World again,” I said. “You’ve all been there. You all know the score. Last time around, we won the contest. This time, we’re going to win again.”
They shuffled and studied their boots. A few raised their eyes to meet mine briefly.
“Fortunately,” I said, “we’re not going down alone this time. We’ve got the entire cohort with us. Nearly twelve hundred troops. I’ve talked to Graves, and we’re not going to be put on point this time.”
That was a lie, told because I needed to bring them a win. I’d only checked out the roster moments earlier and noticed we were set to deploy on the southern flank. Probably, Graves hadn’t been sure I’d show up, and a unit without a centurion wasn’t anything a primus would send in first. Leeson could have been placed in charge, as he was the senior adjunct, but Graves didn’t have the utmost confidence in him.
A ragged cheer went up from my unit. I’d delivered good news, and I’d made it sound like I’d negotiated on their behalf. They were perking up now, looking interested. They all felt they deserved a reward after having suffered the day before.
“Whatever we face down there, be it man or alien, we’re going to win! Know that in your hearts, and it will come true!”
I ended there, and a few shouts of “Varus!” rang out. They weren’t all that enthusiastic, however. I’d made sure to end with talk of an unknown enemy.
It seemed to work. People began speculating among themselves about what we would have to deal with down there instead of giving me sullen glances. They weren’t thinking of me being AWOL any longer. They were worrying about what they might soon discover crawling and humping over the hot sands of Blood World. That was just where I wanted their minds to be: in the game.
The lifter came down with a plunging finish. I was proud to see not a single member of my unit flipped up his visor to puke. If that wasn’t proof we were professionals, I don’t know what would be.
The big ramp went down, cracking to let in a blazing orange line first, then yawning wide. Like a dragon’s mouth, the lifter released a vast rush of troops.
Two full units of light troops led the charge. They scattered fast, setting up wide lines to cover the rest of us. My unit came out sixth, well to the rear. It was a pleasure not to be expecting death from the first minute.
Slamming gauntlets like drumbeats, Sargon and the other vets shouted until they were hoarse. They all but chased our unit toward the south. When we got to our deployment rally point, we realized our asses were pressed up against the back wall of the crater.
“That’s both good and bad,” Leeson said, walking up to me. “We can’t get hit in the tailpipe—but we can’t retreat, either.”
“Right,” I said, studying the cliffs.
In my mind and the minds of the others, we were thinking of our last struggle in this crater. The lizards had started throwing shots at us right away. There hadn’t been much breathing room. We naturally assumed today might be fought
in a similar fashion.
But it didn’t play out that way.
“What in the nine hells of Rigel is that?” Leeson called out, pointing into the sky to the west.
We all looked, and we watched a hulking ship lift off. It was a weird one. Visible flames shot out of undercarriage. The engines, whatever else they were, couldn’t be called “clean” by any stretch of the imagination.
A massive blast of black smoke roiled across the crater.
“Kivi?” I called out. “Analysis: is that vapor toxic?”
“Just a second...”
She got out her computer and her optical scope and connected the two. The scope swiveled around like a goose’s head on the end of a long neck and studied the cloud.
“It’s toxic, but not deadly. Not enough acid to eat through anything… It’s basically particulate exhaust. Some radiation, but not too much.”
“Looks like something that would come off a tire fire,” I said. “All right, everyone should keep their helmets sealed just in case.”
We began to dig in then. We had two pigs with us—big drones with stumpy legs and loud engines. They buzzed and thumped the sand. Shovels descended, and they edged forward, plowing up trench lines in seconds.
The second the trenches were dug, my troops jumped in. They widened the trenches, throwing all the dirt up in the direction of that strange enemy ship to form a berm to shoot over.
In the meantime, I walked over to Harris. He was one of the most senior troops in the cohort, and he’d seen three times as many planets as I had.
“Harris, what did you make of that ship?”
“Pretty strange.”
“No recognition? Nothing tugging at your memory?”
“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head. “Kind of strange…”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I’ve seen all sorts of Imperial transports, and I’d bet my last credit that contraption wasn’t built by anyone from Frontier 921. I doubt it was from the Core Systems, either.”
Squinting at him, I made a decision. It was time to contact Graves.
The primus was online, of course. I had the text stream option going on command chat for the whole cohort. His lines were the most common, if not the longest running.
“McGill?” he answered privately. “What is it?”
“Any ID on that ship yet?”
“Negative. No tech in the cohort has a listing for that configuration in their knowledge base. They’re puzzling it out, but the pervading theory is that since the Skrull lost their exclusive license to build ships, some other race might have developed their own lifters.”
“Hmm,” I said, “Harris thinks it isn’t from this province. He’s convinced it isn’t Imperial, or even knock-off Imperial.”
Graves hesitated. “He might be right. Keep your eyes peeled. As everyone knows from the briefing you missed this morning, the plan is to kick-off on the defensive. We have no idea what we’re facing, so we’ll let them throw the first punch.”
I didn’t like the plan, but I could hardly complain now. I was stuck with it.
Graves signed off, and we went back to digging and setting up defenses. Kivi and the techs deployed a string of defensive drones and auto-turrets in front of our position. Leeson’s 88s were set up in makeshift puff-crete bunkers, and troops were laying their rifles over humps of dirt all along the line.
It was Della, in the end, who sounded the alarm.
She was a Dust Worlder, and that meant she was the final word in paranoia. While the rest of us were looking forward to where the enemy ship had taken off a half hour ago, she was looking everywhere else.
“McGill!” she called into my helmet. “They’re behind us!”
I spun around, staring at the tall cliff-like walls of the crater. The walls were a hundred meters high, made of reddish clay and crumbling stone. I didn’t see a thing.
“Della?” I called back. “State your position! Mark the enemy if you have a bead on them!”
Nothing. Not a word came back.
My eyes flicked down to Della’s name, which was lit up inside my helmet to indicate she was the one in contact with me.
Her name was as red as fresh blood. Della had been killed.
-45-
Della meant a lot me as she was the mother of my only child Etta.
Sure, we didn’t always get along. The first time we’d met, she’d killed me—the second time too, as I recalled.
But all that aside, it was a personal affront to me that someone—or something—had managed to sneak around behind us and nail one of my best scouts without even showing their nose.
“SNIPER!” I shouted on tactical chat. That reached pretty far, at least to the units setting up camp ahead of us and to our right.
Naturally, I had no idea if it had been a sniper or not. But if you want to get a couple of hundred heads turning in an alert fashion right now, there’s no better announcement you can make.
While my unit ducked and looked around every which-way, guns at the ready, I contacted Graves.
“Contact sir!” I said. “One troop down. She said they were behind us. That’s all I know so far.”
“McGill? Switch to audio on command chat.”
He disconnected, and I did as he’d ordered. Immediately, a flood of reports began coming in.
The information was confusing. The enemy was reported to be on the walls of the crater itself, or maybe buried in the dirt at our feet. Whatever the case, a dozen soldiers had already been taken out with no confirmed sightings on our side.
“All right Centurions, listen up,” Graves said. “We’re facing a sneaky enemy. Locate your dead, mark the spots for everyone, and we’ll see if we have a pattern.”
We did so quickly. There was an option to select any red name and highlight it. Everyone in my unit or the rest of the cohort could see where Della had died. She had indeed been on the crater wall.
“Harris!” I shouted. “Take a squad of lights and patrol that wall. Watch your six, these guys are sneaky!”
“Yes sir! Thank you for this golden opportunity, sir!”
I ignored his veiled complaints. Harris never liked to do his job. You’d have thought he was born behind a desk.
“More like a golden shower,” Carlos said, laughing at my side.
“Specialist? What are you doing away from your post?”
“I’ve been ordered to inspect the casualty, sir.”
I glanced Toro’s way. She was hunkered down in the trenches with the top of her helmet barely visible. It was just like her to send a lone bio out to take a sample. Then again, maybe Carlos had been pissing her off all day.
“Carry on,” I told him, and he ran off toward the crater wall.
Before he even got there, snap-rifle fire erupted. Harris and his troops had fanned out and were walking along the bare slopes of the crater. They were shooting at something up-close, but I was damned if I could make out what it was.
“Harris! Report!” I shouted.
But he went down before he could come back with a word. I squinted, not sure what I’d seen. His light troops were backing up, wildly spraying the sand all around them. It was as if they were shooting at the air.
In rapid succession, more light troops were cut down. I stared. Blood was everywhere. They’d been sliced in half, most of them. Cut from chin to crotch. Blood sprayed, turning black when it welded with the hot sands.
“…stealth…” that single word had rasped its way out of Harris’ throat. “Invisible… mothers…”
“Leeson!” I roared. “Sweep that crater wall with the 88s! Slag all that sand to glass, now!”
Startled, Leeson began shouting orders. He spun his twin light artillery pieces around and released uneven gouts of energy.
Our retinas burned with the dazzling light. As big and hot as Epsilon Leporis was in the sky above, the big guns were brighter.
Harris’ squad was all down by the time the beams rolled over them, and if t
hey weren’t already dead, it was probably a painless blessing to finish them off.
What was interesting, however, was the series of white explosions that rippled as our 88s burned the open sand. At first, I thought maybe we’d found some buried mines and set them off—but then the white puffs of vapor dissipated, and I realized they’d been steam.
“Keep going!” I ordered. “Burn them off.”
In the end, we melted down twenty-two bodies on that crater wall. I was gratified to note that a solid third of them weren’t human.
“Toro! Get your heavies out of that hole and advance!”
With some reluctance, she got her platoon moving. They poked around in the ashes and crunched on the slag, but I could tell they were nervous. When a pocket of steam whiffed up from one body, a heavy skittered back like he’d wet his armor.
“Report!”
Carlos was the one that called back in. He had balls when it counted. Kneeling over one of the burnt bodies of the enemy, he gave me what he could, including a vid feed from his body cam.
“They’re melted down instead of turned to ash completely,” he said. “I’d guess these creatures have a higher water-content than humans. I’d say they weigh more too—a couple hundred kilos.”
“What kind of weapons do you see?”
“Um… swords? That’s what I’m seeing. Metal blades at least a meter long. The way the human remains look, I’d say the edges are molecularly aligned to be super-sharp.”
“Why the hell would an enemy with a sophisticated stealth suit carry a sword?”
Kivi jumped in then, she’d been listening in as were many in my unit.
“I’d have to guess that other types of weapons would give them away. Maybe if they fired a gun while stealthed our sensors could pinpoint them.”
Her theory did explain how they’d managed to stalk us without being noticed for so long.
After reporting all this to Graves, he relayed some details to the rest of the cohort, then he came back online with me.
“You turned the 88s on them?” he asked. “That was a good response. Those wide beams are inescapable. Have your techs set up every form of sensor you’ve got? Something has to work.”
