by J. N. Chaney
“Hell, I’m never going to get this.”
“Yes, you will,” the sergeant said. “If this was easy, everyone would be getting the augments. It takes time for everything to knit together.”
That was easy for her to say. She was Zero-Three-Fourteen, a light infantry sniper. Shooting was her entire purpose of being, and she had the augments designed specifically for that.
“Why am I even doing this?” he asked in frustration. “A chemical slug? Why not a spear if we’re going back to ancient history?”
The M-102 Nellis was the main Marine sniper rifle, a normal mag ring weapon. At hypervelocity speeds and a smaller diameter, the rounds were not as affected by forces of nature. He’d been much better at firing it than the Dykstra in his hands now.
“And if the tin-asses hit you with an EMP blast? Your Nellis might as well be a club.”
“But you said the Centaurs are basically impervious to this thing,” Rev said, not wanting to give up on his bitching.
“You don’t always have to take out the Centaur itself. Take out its peripherals, and you’re diminishing its capabilities,” she said, ignoring his attitude. “So, let’s try again and give your battle buddy more data.”
Rev sighed. When he’d come out of surgery three weeks ago, he expected to suddenly be a superman, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. But he’d barely been able to step up over a curb without stumbling.
His mechanicals worked fine. They just took some getting used to for him to control them. His biosynths were a little more difficult to master, but his organics? He didn’t feel anything yet. His eyesight felt normal—same with his hearing. He didn’t feel like he had better stamina or any of the other advantages he’d been promised, and his spider web itched under his skin, no matter that the doctors said that shouldn’t be happening.
Those same doctors performed his daily checkups and assured him that the organics had seated, and now all he had to do was wait as they grew into place. But he was tired of waiting.
And his AI? It was a royal pain in the ass so far. It was like having an idiot lodged in his head, one that didn’t understand common social interaction, or much of anything else, to be honest. He knew that some Marines and battle buddies never meshed, and he was beginning to wonder if he was going to fall into that category.
Tomiko, the only other MilDes Zero-Two-Three in the class, loved hers, however, going so far as to name it Pikachu, which was evidently some ancient Japanese god from back on Earth. Rev refused to give his a name. It was a tool he had to learn to use, not an imaginary friend.
“Try target Three-oh-nine,” Sergeant Jesup said.
With another sigh, Rev searched it out.
“Key analytics,” he muttered again, hoping that his battle buddy would get it right this time.
14
“Distance across the ravine?” Rev asked, holding his focus on a single point on the far side.
Well within his capabilities. Rev sent the mental command to start the scan of the far side for any sign of a Centaur riever. They typically ran at a steady twenty-six degrees, which would show up blue in his eyesight while in temperature mode.
There was nothing, so he went back to normal. He’d mastered the five visual modes of how his brain interpreted his organic vision, but that didn’t mean he liked them. His natural mode was what he preferred.
Rev backed through the brush, ears straining to pick up the slight hum that Centaurs sometimes made when they moved. He’d learned the hard way never rely on one scan mode.
Twenty meters from the edge of the ravine, Rev rose to a crouch. Still nothing.
Here goes!
Within twenty meters, he’d accelerated to almost 40 KPH. He planted his right foot a meter short and launched himself into the air. He easily cleared the gap, his thighs acting as springs to absorb the force of his landing before they propelled him to the base of a boulder, where he froze again and scanned the wooded areas before him. He could hear the rustle of small animals scurrying through the detritus and the far-off call of a bird, but nothing alien.
He hesitated, then gave in. “Any otherworld signs?”
Rev had his AI in passive mode. It would not offer information without his directly questioning it. Tomiko and the other two Raider recruits thought he was being retro about it, but he still didn’t like the thought of someone “living” inside his head, even if it wasn’t technically a person.
But while he didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary, he didn’t have the library of sounds that his battle buddy could access. It would be stupid not to use that tool.
Which meant mostly Earth-normal. There was still native life on Safe Harbor that survived the terraforming, but nothing more advanced than small protozoan-like creatures. Rev didn’t care about them.
His AI still had a way to go in learning just what Rev needed to know.
Crossing the ravine had been a major objective, and he’d had to move down along the south side of the rim for close to eight klicks before he’d found a spot narrow enough to jump. He was now off his planned route, but he unerringly turned to his right and started pushing through the undergrowth.
His ability to navigate had gotten much stronger over the last three weeks. He couldn’t exactly explain just how he knew where he was and where he had to go. He just knew. It was as if there was a magnet at his destination, pulling at him.
The detour had taken time, however. Time he didn’t have. His mental clock was ticking down. Realizing he wasn’t going to make his objective at his current pace, he had to sacrifice stealth. Rev broke out into a ground-eating 25 KPH, scanning the surrounding area.
“Let me know if you pick up any Centaur sign. Active sign,” he corrected.
Based on his original order, his battle buddy would tell him about some ten-year-old tracks.
Rev jogged through the trees. At this altitude, the O2 content was below twelve percent—eleven-point-eight percent to be exact, after checking the readout on his monocle—but he wasn’t straining. His PAL5—Personal Armor, Light-5—had several supplemental O2 tanks, but he didn’t need them. A little higher in the surrounding mountains, maybe, but for now he was more than able to cope.
I wonder how Tomiko’s doing? he asked himself for a moment before snapping his attention back to his mission.
Letting his mind wander was a dangerous habit. At least his AI hadn’t answered. Maybe it was starting to gather enough data points to begin to know when Rev was asking it a question or not.
As he crossed the high valley, the sun started to disappear behind the western peaks. The shadows reached out to envelop him, and Rev smiled as he activated his ocular shift. This was one of his coolest mods, and it still was a kick every time he shifted. His eyes were still his original organic ones, but his sight had two major improvements. The first was that all seven of the optic tracks were now activated allowing more data to reach his occipital lobe, unlike a normal person’s two. Second, in the eyes themselves and around their periphery, they had been packed with more rods. At the shift, the rods gravitated toward the center, pushing out the cones.
From his perspective, it was as if someone was turning a light fixture rheostat. He lost some of his color perception, but it gave him pretty good night vision without the need for an infrared light source, something the Centaurs could easily pick up.
Rev slowed slightly, but not by much as he continued through the forest, a wraith slipping through the shadows. Not quite a wraith, however. His heart jumped when something bounded up, and he spun, his M-49 at the ready, only to see a buck’s hindquarters disappear into the undergrowth.
“Thanks for giving me a heads up on that buck. I about had a heart attack.”
Rev was
about to snap back at his AI, but it was right. He had given it that command. But Safe Harbor was a genetic preserve planet, and there were other, more dangerous animals running wild. Not that any could really be a threat to him, but the commotion he’d have to make to neutralize a grizzly, for example, could easily reveal his presence.
It wasn’t just his AI that had to learn to adjust to him. He had to learn how to phrase his commands.
“Advise me if you pick up signs of large animals . . . of any animal life over a hundred kilos.”
As darkness fully set in, cloud cover blocked the starlight, and even Rev’s night-vision suffered. He had a torch in his kit, and he debated using it but decided not to. He’d just slow down his movement. He was within two klicks of his target anyway, and he was back on schedule.
He’d covered about half of that when his battle buddy alerted him.
Rev stopped. “Earth-normal or Centaur?”
Which meant a riever.
With the pigeon DNA in his hippocampus, Rev always knew where he was, but that didn’t mean he could place grid coordinates. He blinked up a map of the region on his monocle and plotted the coordinates. His battle buddy wasn’t some omniscient information fount. The azimuth to the Centaur was probably pretty accurate, but the distance was subject to different variables and was only approximate.
The Centaur riever was probably between 1100 and 1350 meters away, at a 068-degree deviation from his present course. The riever was the lowest form on the hierarchy of military power, a scout of sorts and the easiest to defeat. “Easiest” was a relative term. None of them were pushovers, and in a one-on-one fight between it and Rev, the Centaur should win.
If Rev continued on his present course to the target, he’d probably be detected. The question was what the Centaur would do. They were extremely unpredictable. The only way to be assured a Centaur wouldn’t do anything would be to kill it.
Rev stroked his thigh holster, now retracted under his fighting suit’s skin. He carried two Yellowjackets, small semi-intelligent missiles. They were usually deployed in waves to take out a Centaur, but a single one could succeed if the stars were aligned—and Rev would dearly love to tally a kill.
“Is it moving?”
Which really didn’t mean much. It could be asleep, if Centaurs even slept (no one knew for sure), or it could be plotting an attack on him.
The more Rev thought of it, the more he was tempted to go after the enemy. They were the ones who’d invaded human space. They were the ones who had killed billions of people, and with one so close, that kindled a rage that started to burn hot within him. If he could be one of the few Marines to take on a Centaur of any stripe and win, his conscription would be worth it—to humanity and to himself, and it also would prove to his superiors that he fully deserved the title of Union Marine.
He went so far as to pop open his holster and remove one of the Yellowjackets when he realized he was ignoring his mission all for ego and emotion. He wasn’t infantry. He wasn’t one of the specialized hunter-killer teams. He was recon, a raider. His mission was one of stealth, and if he diverted to the Centaur out there, not only were the chances that he’d die too high to ignore (not that a single Marine death meant much in the grand scheme of things), but his mission would be a failure, and that could put many more Marines at risk.
With a sigh, he slipped the Yellowjacket back, retracted the holster, and plotted a new course, one that would give him much greater leeway around the creature.
“Keep a close eye on that thing. I want to know if it moves even a centimeter.”
Rev still wasn’t completely comfortable with his AI, but it was a relief to know that he didn’t have to watch the Centaur himself. Letting his battle buddy take that task would allow him to give his mission his full concentration.
It took him the next eighty minutes to move around the Centaur. He constantly checked on its status, not totally trusting his AI. But the thing never budged. It could be dead, for all he knew.
No, not really. Centaurs self-destructed, in spectacular fashion, if it looked like they were about to be defeated or captured.
Finally, with forty-three minutes to spare, he arrived at his assembly area. Just 230 meters ahead, in a swale, was his target. Rev pulled up his overlay, which gave him the one clear path to it. His senses and scanners on high alert, he started walking down the path, checking the ground in front of him for boobytraps. The Centaurs usually relied on brute force to deny territory to their human enemies, but they could also be devious. Just because Rev had a supposed clear path in, that was not a guarantee that it was. All during his training, it was hammered into his skull that he was responsible for his actions and to never totally rely on others to give him the correct information.
But the way was clear . . . until he was about forty meters out. A tree had fallen across his path, its branches still laden with leaves. It hadn’t been down long, which meant there was a good chance it was meant to stop someone like him. The easiest and quickest course of action would be to walk around it, but the danger area on his overlay narrowed to a choke point. He couldn’t get around without leaving the safe path.
Rev was running out of time, and he needed to get past the obstacle. He eyed the height, and he didn’t need to query his AI. Even with his augmentations, he couldn’t clear the branches, and climbing through would open him up to the booby traps he was sure were there.
It seemed almost ludicrous that he was being stymied by a simple tree. He wasn’t a Roman legionnaire confronting a Gaulish roadblock. But here he was.
Rev could only see one course of action. He had to move the thing.
But it was big, too big, and shifting the entire tree, even if he could do it, could set off the booby traps that, once again, had to be there.
Rev pulled down his assault packs and removed his lance. It was risky to power it up. The energy bloom could be picked up by the Centaur. But he didn’t have much choice.
He checked on the riever, but nothing was showing up. He didn’t know where it was or what it was doing. It could be coming at him under full cloak, or it could have left the area. The bottom line was that with regard to the Centaur, he was blind.
But he really didn’t have a choice. He powered up his lance, a dim blue light alerting him to where the spinning monomolecular blade was rotating. The blade, which was a chain too small and rotating too quickly for the naked eye to see, could cut through almost anything, including Rev’s armor-clad arm, hence the light.
Rev warped the blade to its maximum length and applied it to the trunk. It barely made a sound as it dug in. But it was still too short to cut through. Rev withdrew it and made another cut, this one at a slight angle, and a thin wedge of wood fell free. Five more times, and he’d cut through. The tree was now in two pieces.
He considered it. All he had to do now was to shove one piece far enough forward for him to slip through the gap. But it would be safer to make another cut, then roll the center chunk free.
He was rapidly running out of time, however. He had to act now.
Maybe the trunk will protect me from booby traps.
Rev had to act. He put his pack back on his back and crouched as low as he could, right shoulder against the trunk, using its mass to shield himself. He dug his feet into the damp ground to give them purchase, then, with a grunt, pushed off with his legs and back. The weight was huge, more than he ever could have managed before, but the trunk shifted a few centimeters.
Rev set himself again and tried to will his muscles into extending. He could feel his joints strain, his ligaments stretch, and he feared them tearing. It wasn’t enough for his muscles to have enough power—the rest of his body had to be able to take the strain, too. A torn tendon or ligament would take him out just as much as a ripped hammy.
The tru
nk shifted another couple of centimeters.
Come on, Rev.
He set again and shoved . . . and a blast went off above him, shrapnel slamming into the ground centimeters from his feet.
“Holy shit,” he hissed, his heart pounding.
Rev hadn’t really thought that he’d set off a booby trap, one, or that the trunk would serve to protect him, two, but he had and it did. He took a relieved breath, then gave the trunk one last shove until there was just enough space for him to slip through.
He’d lost skin on his hands—the mesh underneath gave some protection from penetration, but the skin on his hands and most of his body was just that, skin. His hands burned, but his medi-nanos were already rushing blocking cells to deaden the pain.
There was no more time. Rev bolted the last forty meters to the oblong box that was his target. He had no idea what it was or what it did. His mission was to destroy the piece of alien tech in support of a regimental landing.
The destruction was anti-climactic. He took an MM-901, the same mine with which he’d first trained, and dialed it to Profile Two. Then with just under three minutes to spare, he emplaced it on the side of the box.
Rev opened up the comms link and said, “Recruit Pelletier. Mission completed.”
“Cutting it close there, Pelletier,” Sergeant Moussari said.
“Close still means I passed, right?”
“I thought you were going to take off after the tin-ass,” she said, ignoring the question.
“I almost did,” Rev admitted.
“Why didn’t you? A Centaur would be quite an accomplishment. And targets of opportunity are valid diversions.”
“Not for a Priority Two or higher mission.”
“Oh, so you were listening,” the sergeant said with a chuckle. “And you avoided the booby trap.”
“About that, Drill Instructor. Was that real?”
Rev was still in shock over that. He’d almost been hit, and it seemed inconceivable that the Marines would risk death or a long-term rehabilitation for training.
“Oh, it was real.”
