Five by Five

by Aaron Allston

  The device was cool to the touch, but he checked the plunger sticking out of one end of the boomer anyway. Making certain that it hadn’t pressed down while in the bag. Then Tevin risked a quick glance around the edge of their cover.

  Small public square. Drifted with ash. Scorched and cratered from Cyborg assaults against an AID defensive position. Not old enough to enlist, he still recognized the twisted wreckage smoldering at the center of the square as military hardware. Some kind of big-ass gun, hastily assembled behind temp shielding. Apparently the gun hadn’t been worth salvaging by the Cybbies, and the position not worth reinforcing by the Alliance.

  Other than that, hard to say how the battle had gone. Maybe the Alliance had retreated, policing up the bodies of their fallen. Maybe. The Cybbies certainly would have, on both sides. Sending their Pickers in to reclaim any scrap of useful tech. Harvest a body on site if necessary, or claim the entire package for later.

  An impatient tug at the edge of his jacket pulled Tevin back behind the wall. Billy crouched between him and a short line of civvies. Only eight this time: a couple of women, a guy oozing blood from a head wound, and a pack of kids all younger than Tevin. Cog hunkered down at the far end, leaning on the insulated pole of his improvised shock-stick, watching back the way they’d come for Sniffers or a patrol of actual Walkers. All three boys had Gladiators circuitry tats on the back of their right hand. Brands, dedicating themselves to their former street crew—now as dead as the Alliance team which had tried to defend the square. Street cred didn’t hold much weight in a ruined city, especially with the crew’s leadership dead, scattered, or evacuated.

  Billy and Cog still followed Tevin because he was older. Nearly sixteen.

  The civvies followed him because they had nowhere else to turn.

  “Watcha see, Tev?” Billy’s soot-stained hand remained latched onto Tevin’s jacket, fingers poking through a threadbare spot. Every few seconds he tugged at Tevin again. It didn’t look like Billy realized he was even doing it.

  Tevin swatted his hand away, but not hard. “Frontier Square. No movement, but no sign from the Doc either. There is an underground entrance a block up and two over. Or we can take this group north, and get them into the rocks. Either way, we have to move across the square.”

  “Me first?” Billy asked as the ground trembled. Light debris rolled off the wall, pattering around them in a gray dust. His hand tat squirmed as the circuitry constricted with nerves—the fourteen-year old gearing himself up for the mad plunge.

  A prickly flush crawled over the back of Tevin’s neck. It should have been Billy. Anyone with rank in the Gladiators wouldn’t have hesitated to send a new pledge out into no-man’s land to feel out a trap. But Tevin had never been rank.

  “No. Me. When I flag you, bring them out fast and low.” He hefted the boomer, felt himself beginning to hyperventilate and forced a few deep breaths. Leaning out far enough for the rest to see him, he said, “Join hands. Follow the wall. No one stops till we reach the other side.”

  No one spoke. A few tried to stifle coughs, without much luck. Tevin felt the same scratch at the back of his throat from breathing in smoke and ash. He swallowed, dry and painful. Eight pair of frightened eyes looked back at him as the ground quaked again, but everyone joined hands. A few managed nods at his order.

  Good enough.

  Pushing away from the ruined wall, Tevin ran, hunched over in a crouch to make himself as small a target as possible. He cradled the unstable explosive against his chest, held his left fist straight out from his side for Billy to see. Jumped a deep laser scar in the street. Swerved around a pile of rubble spilled outward from a stack of collapsed apartments.

  Ten steps. Twenty.

  He opened his fist and swiped it overhead, signaling Billy to lead out the rest. Crouching in the shadow of the Alliance gun emplacement where he could see down two of the intersecting avenues, Tevin watched for any sign of movement. Of threat.

  Nothing. Large black columns of smoke and ash rose from the south and west, darkening Bountiful’s pale blue sky. Smudges blurred though the thickening haze—Alliance dropcraft or Cyborg flitters. But the streets remained clear. Eerily peaceful, even, with so much destruction and not a sign of life. Just the light fall of ash, and streetlamps beginning to flicker on, then failing, in the early gloom.

  Another flicker. Down the eastern avenue only.

  Spinning around, Tevin caught Billy as the younger boy led their line of evacuees across the square. Hauled him around by the scruff of his heavy coat. “East! Take them east. Go. Go!”

  He waved each person forward as the line bent to the right. A girl near the end was crying silently, but she kept a deathgrip on the boy in front of her and managed as she was half-dragged behind him.

  Cog scrambled up at the rear, his eyes bloodshot but still bright with fear.

  “Sniffers, on our trail. ‘Bout half a block back.”

  “Two?”

  “At least.” Cog brandished his shock-stick. An industrial capacitor—overcharged—banded to the top of a rubber-sheathed pole, it was strong enough to put a night watchman down for half an hour. Cog swore that it would short out the circuits on a small Cyborg machine. “I can drop one, if you can handle the other.”

  Tevin shook his head. “We’ll have them underground before the Cybbies ever get close. Doc has us on a camera.” The east avenue streetlamps flickered again, and Tevin pointed them out to Cog before they fell dark once more.

  “Check those at each corner. Tell Billy. Go,” he ordered, shoving the younger boy ahead of him.

  Standing tall, Tevin shuffled through the square as he circled, checking nearby buildings and signal posts for the camera that might still be trained on him. He waved an abrupt salute, hoping Doc was still there. Wondered how longer such devices would remain active in the ruined city.

  Enough, he hoped, to guide them away from Cyborg patrols. Enough for another run? Two?

  Sooner or later, though, he’d be on his own out here. Maybe he’d leave the city himself, then. Take his chances in the rocky hills to the north, or try to reach the Alliance dropcraft landing to the west. Maybe.

  And those who were still in hiding? Trapped in the dark without light, or heat. Praying for a trickle of water out of a working faucet. Hundreds. Thousands? What would happen to them? Eventually failing power and the ruined water system would drive out those who remained, long before anyone ran out of food. But who would be waiting for them?

  Tevin hefted the boomer.

  Or what?

  –3–

  The corridor shook. Dust and grit trickled out of the overhead. Dr. Ethan Xavier Rutheford lurched for the dubious safety of a nearby doorway, bracing himself in the jamb. He had many fears, and being buried alive in the city’s underground research labs rated fairly high among them at the moment.

  Another ground-shaking tremor hit, and he moved it up the list, second only to his concern for being unable to finish his work before Cyborg Walkers stormed the facility. Because they were coming. Oh yes, they were.

  A metallic taste burned at the back of his throat. Adrenaline. The taste of fear. Rutheford despised the weakness he knew showed on his face. Swallowing hard, he screwed his face down into what he thought might be a passable grimace. He pushed heavy-framed glasses up on the bridge of his nose, blotted the sheen from his high forehead with the back of his lab coat’s sleeve. The smart material wicked away his perspiration, pulling it through special micro-filters. Eventually, he would reconstitute the absorption into programmed components. Electrolytes and salt. Fresh water, if he needed it.

  Waste not, want not.

  Easing himself from the doorway, Dr. Rutheford steadied himself against the corridor’s cold, smooth cladding. Considered a luxury as power systems failed across the city, the smartwalls had ceased functioning days before. That was when most of the technicians and what few scientists remaining after the first exodus had given up the research facility as lost. No longer able
to see a fake sky, or walk along simulated avenues projected from the streets above, they quickly lost touch with what was important. The work.

  Let them run, then. He was under no such delusion.

  Without power the walls now had a clouded look to them. Almost translucent, as if one might wipe away a waxy film and peer through once more. Rutheford didn’t require the illusions of technology. He knew he walked under Frontier Avenue, and that twenty meters above him the resourceful Tevin was leading a new group of refugees his way.

  People. They were important to him as well.

  Important enough to get him moving again.

  Easing away from the wall, he left his labs behind and moved toward a nearby junction. Clicking two fingernails together, he activated the virtual displays built into his heavy-framed glasses. Two camera feeds opened up windows which overlay his view of the corridor. Not enough to hinder his walking, though it slowed him. One feed from Frontier Square, now empty. Another of the east-running street along which Tevin’s small group scurried like ants following a torn and littered path.

  So the boy had caught the signal lights. Observant, that one.

  Dr. Rutheford grabbed the Frontier Square window and threw it aside, erasing its feed. A quick horizontal swipe brought up his virtual terminal instead, over which he pulled the city infrastructure. Microchips embedded in his fingernails allowed him to precisely select the power feeds of the street lighting, shutting them down one by one as Tevin’s group moved past.

  Still tracking the refugees, Rutheford turned through a nearby junction. He had stationed only two of his personal security force in this northeast corridor, and passed between them with barely a glance. Clad head to foot in black, non-reflective armor, neither reacted to him initially as his implanted transponder had identified him fifty meters back. A status light mounted at the left temple of their helmets blinked green: no nearby threats.

  He summoned one with a brief gesture and the drone fell in behind him. Tevin was too cautious to lead Walkers to the facility entrance, but Dr. Rutheford had not gotten this far without taking extra precautions. No, he hadn’t. Protect himself and protect his work. Nothing else mattered. Not when measured against the Cyborg threat against humanity. In such light, he could almost regret the time it would take him to bring in Tevin’s refugees.

  Almost.

  “A little fresh air,” he promised himself. “A little company.”

  He smiled, lips pulled tight over clenched teeth.

  “Then right back to work.”

  –4–

  The most vulnerable time in a hot insertion were the first few seconds of deployment. After the Alliance dropcraft lost its ability to maneuver. While the ICAS soldiers were still bunched together. Before any on-the-ground tactical assessment could be made.

  Such knowledge was deeply burned into any soldier who had lived through their first experience, and Marcos Rajas was a veteran of more combat drops than he’d care to count.

  Ensign Dillahunty had landed them into a large, plasma-burned crater; for what little cover it provided. Residual heat from the dropcraft’s thrusters drove Marcos away from the small vessel. Not that he needed incentive. Arriving dropcraft were not subtle, focusing enemy attention right where the sergeant did not want it. He assumed from the moment the vessel’s back end split open that his unit was under fire.

  This landing, at least, the pilot had bought them a few extra seconds. The ensign had positioned his dropcraft nose-on against the nearby Cyborg position, using the vessel’s shields and physical armor to screen the deploying ICAS troopers. Back aboard their star jumper, assuming they both made it, Marcos owed that cheerful bastard a drink.

  UPDATES scrolled through his DATA STREAM, including confirmation by Dillahunty that the nearest enemy position was concentrated roughly two degrees left and three hundred meters off the vessel’s nose. Almost due east. There were also support requests filling his queue, and conflicting reports of Cyborg action within the nearby city boundaries, but for the moment Marcos had his own priorities.

  Noting that his platoon had already spread into a standard deployment arc, grabbing distance from the dropcraft, Marcos pushed them out farther. “Able take the southern sweep. Bravo north. Gravel, Rabbit and Two-Joe, with me.” That lightened Able Squad by one fireteam. “Clear this crater, and hold.”

  The dropcraft did not give them quite so much time. Before Marcos scrabbled his way up and over the crater’s rim, the blocky, tough little vessel was already scorching its way clear of the battlefield. The pilot used his OVERRIDE for a fading, “Give them hell.”

  Sliding off the crater’s outside lip, it seemed to Marcos as if the Cyborgs had done the job for them.

  Rho VII looked the way too many Alliance worlds did once his platoon finally landed on them. Scorched, pitted, and ruined. Fires burning south and west of their position pushed up a giant wall of black, greasy smoke. Ash fell back to earth in a dingy, gray snowfall, drifting in small piles, collecting on the faceplates and armored shoulders of each man around him. Marcos counted the remains of three dropcraft, broken apart and strewn over the shattered ground, and a large, hulking wreck burning on the northern perimeter which at first glance could be mistaken for a lone building but was actually one of the Alliance’s new Juggernaut assault platforms. The giant hovertanks could supposedly take anything short of a strategic weapon and still churn forward. This one was missing two turrets and about ten meters off its prow.

  From the lack of hard radiation, Marcos’ guess was an antimatter Canister. A big one.

  “Watch for Cans,” Marcos warned, knowing that Cyborg Canisters rarely deployed in anything less than three. Ranging in size from small, anti-personnel mines to much larger ordnance riding the axle between two wheels and the simplest bot brain slung underneath, Canisters could be hard to spot and were able to close quickly and detonate oftentimes before a squad could react. “Cowboy. Pop some exploratory fire thirty degrees across that burning Jughead.”

  On Marcos’ left flank, Cowboy’s squad cut loose with overlapping fire fifteen degrees to either side of the distant wreck. Their CAR-7 assault rifles wailed as a backwash of waste energy rippled the air. Half a kilometer up range, geysers of smoke and scorched earth rose above hundreds of tiny, new craters blasted into Rho VII.

  “Always polite to knock on the door,” Gravel said over STANDARD VOICE.

  At Gravel’s back, Two-Joe nodded. The General Issue soldier had his assault rifle up and ready, sweeping the ruined landscape west of the crater for any threat at the Alliance rear. His software package, like those of his three synthetic brothers in the platoon, did not allow much in the way of relaxation, and Marcos had ordered Books to ratchet up their paranoia index. It made the Joes a bit twitchy, but kept them extra alert and had saved lives more than once.

  “Walkers! Three Walkers marked at eight-six degrees, moving two-seven-niner, toward Bravo.” This from Books, his fireteam at the leading edge of Able’s south-stretching line. The Savannah accent turned walkers into wah-kuhs, but not one soldier would have a problem understanding him.

  And chasing Books came Cowboy. “Flushed six … no, seven Cans,” Bravo’s corporal reported. “Rolling up fast on spreading arcs.”

  As expected, Deploy for hostile intent had fallen off Marcos’ list of standing orders, and now Support forward maneuvers also downgraded in the face of the immediate Cyborg threat. Inquiry icons from Rabbit and Princess flashed on the standing column at the edge of his faceplate, and Marcos swept the premature requests directly into the VOID. Instead, he caught the tactical feed updating from Cowboy and Books, and (literally) in the blink of an eye, uploaded his DATA STREAM to the entire platoon.

  “Bravo, concentrate fire on those Cans without the PAD. Hold position for niner-zero seconds, then cover.” Watching the spider tracks crawl across his faceplate, Marcos took a chance. “Ignore Canister-seven unless it breaks one hundred meters. Let it roll.”

  The rest of Able Squad was
already working its way southeast in an envelopment; Books anticipating his sergeant’s plan. That left the south rim of the crater clear for Marcos’ small fireteam to displace under cover, attempting to cut off the Walkers’ move to flank Bravo.

  Using his own men as bait never sat well with Marcos. Facing an enemy across a battlefield was hard enough. Especially knowing that, if taken (alive or dead) you would be rendered down for muscle, for nerve clusters, for brain matter. Parts was parts, in a Cyborg’s many eyes. It drove them toward populated worlds. On the battlefield, their tactics were efficient and just this side of predictable. Expend the least resources to harvest as much new biomass as possible. So, in effect, every soldier was walking, armored bait.

  But holding fast, inviting them in, went against human nature’s every instinct; at a level that the best Alliance conditioning could never reach.

  His fireteam moved low and fast, scrabbling around piles of scorched rubble and a deep laser cut. The ground trembled once … twice. Cowboy’s UPDATE scrubbed two Canister tracks from his faceplate. Anti-personnel, from the size of the detonation.

  Then the entire world turned bright, searing white as the hand of God lifted his fireteam from the side of the crater and slammed them back down. Hard.

  Violet afterimages, burned across Marcos’ retinas, swam in the darkness. His faceplate had completely polarized with the antimatter flash. It cleared slowly. He tasted blood in his mouth, and his entire right side ached. Fortunately, ICAS technology had absorbed most of the kinetic force, spreading it across his body.

  Not so fortunate: Gravel’s status icon flashed amber, and from Bravo both Princess and Three-Joe were dark. Red cautionary lights burned over another five men, including Cowboy, but two of them cleared back to green even as Marcos regained his footing.

  And worse: his DATA STREAM was empty.