by J. N. Chaney
“I’m out!” Tomiko shouted, pulling her M-49 off her shoulder and firing a burst at the paladin.
Rev kneeled and reached for another Phoenix, his last. This time—if there was time to do it—he’d attach the chameleon pad. He expected the paladin to fire off its anti-personnel shredder any second now.
From this vantage, he could see Staff Sergeant Montez, on the other side of the Centaur, scramble up to her feet. To his utter surprise, she bolted away at a dead run.
“What the—”
“Take cover!” she shouted as she stopped and wheeled around, bringing up her Yellowjacket.
Of course. She had to create some distance.
But there was no cover. Only a . . .
“Miko, into the hole!”
She either hadn’t heard the staff sergeant or didn’t care. She spared Rev an angry look and emptied another ineffectual burst. Rev bounded to her in two long steps, grabbed her by the shoulders, and threw her into the gaping hole. Nix and Hussein were already scrambling, just as the Staff Sergeant fired. The missile hit at the front of the Centaur’s chassis. As Rev dove for the hole, the staff sergeant dropped the launcher and raised her last Yellowjacket. Just before Rev disappeared into the hole, the Centaur detonated its shredder. Rev’s last sight was of the staff sergeant being obliterated before the shock wave pushed him down with a giant’s slap. Rev bounced off a two-meter-wide conduit, then onto a walkway when a larger blast smacked him hard, and his world went black.
“Am I alive?”
It took a moment for all of that to sink in.
“Where’s Tomiko?”
“Why not?”
“Oh, shit. Sorry.”
It took a bit of effort, but he managed to pry open his eyes. Sergeant Nix was a couple of meters away, struggling to sit up. He turned his head the other way, and there was Tomiko, in the process of standing.
“Hey.”
She turned to look at him. “You threw me down the hole.”
“I know.”
That suddenly struck Rev as funny, and he giggled, which set off a series of coughs.
She came to his side. “You alive?”
“Dumb question, Miko.”
“What do you have going on?”
“AI says concussion and dislocated shoulder. What about you?”
“Nothing major. Just bruised up.”
“Hey, is anyone else here?” Hussein’s voice reached them.
“Over here,” Tomiko yelled.
“I’ll get him,” Sergeant Nix said. He limped to the stacked conduits running the length of the access tunnel and bent to peer through. “I see you. You’re going to have to climb over.”
“Your battle buddy say you’re gonna be OK?” Tomiko asked as Hussein tried to join them.
“Am I?” he subvocalized.
“I’m fine,” he told Tomiko. He tried to sit up but fell back.
“Take it easy, big guy.”
Hussein landed with a thud on this side of the conduits. He groaned and lifted a leg.
“Was Kel there with you?” Nix asked him.
“I didn’t see her. I thought she was with you. What about the staff sergeant?”
Rev was sinking into a cottony cloud as the drugs took effect, but that roused him.
“She’s gone. The tin-ass got her just before it blew.”
“You sure?” Nix asked.
“Saw it. She just stood there getting another Yellowjacket when the shredder blast ate her up. A fucking warrior.”
The others were lost in their thoughts for a moment until Nix said, “Respect to the fallen.”
“Respect,” the other three said.
“Now what?” Tomiko asked, stepping to the side so she could get another angle of view outside the hole.
“Now we find a way out. This is an access tunnel, so there has to be a ladder out of here. Let’s mount up.”
“I can stand.”
Tomiko stood over Rev, her hand out to help him up. Rev wanted to join her, but his mind was reeling, and he knew his AI was right.
“My AI says I can’t move. I’m too drugged up.”
Tomiko gave Nix a look Rev couldn’t, or just didn’t want to, interpret.
“We’ve still got a mission. Nothing’s changed.”
“But what about Rev? We can’t leave him like this.”
Sergeant Nix seemed to consider that, then stepped up to Rev and extended a connector out of his sleeve. He pulled out one of Rev’s, then married them.
“Tell your battle buddy to send mine your med report.”
Absent a court or flag rank order, a Marine could only download data from another only if that Marine gave active permission.
“Give him my medical report.”
Sergeant Nix took a moment to listen to it before he said, “Shit. He’s right. For his own sake, he needs to stay quiet and not move. Beyond that, he’s in no condition to contribute. He’d be a liability.”
“But we can’t just leave him,” Tomiko said again.
Nix put his hand on her shoulder and said, “Yeah, it sucks big time. But we don’t have a choice. I’m marking the location. As soon as this is over, someone will retrieve him. He’s safer here than if he was coming with us.”
Tomiko seemed about to argue, but Rev mustered up the energy for another sentence and said, “It’s OK, Miko. You go. I’ll just take a little nap here.”
She hesitated once more, looking from Rev to Nix, when the sergeant, in his best NCO voice, said, “Now, PFC. Move out.”
She shook her head and turned back to Rev. “You stay safe. I’ll be back for you.”
“Keep your head down,” Rev said as the three made their way down the tunnel. He watched them for as long as he could, the drugs making them fade in and out of his vision.
The sounds of battle kept raining down on him from above, but at the moment, he was alone in a little bubble, near, but outside the flow of events.
“No, not quite alone, right?”
“And the drugs aren’t making you loopy?”
“And you are not going to let me die, right?”
Rev smiled and lay back, watching swirls of dust dance in the sunlight streaming in.
“You’re a good friend, you know?”
Rev had no idea where that had come from.
“Not just that. Miko calls her AI Pikachu. Do you know what that is?”
“What? I thought it was a god,” he muttered aloud.
“Cartoon or god, it . . . uh, she is still Miko’s friend. Aren’t you my friend?”
Wow, I really am out of it. Asking if it’s my friend?
But he still wanted to know.
“Typical AI. And that doesn’t answer my question.”
Is it hinting for more there?
Rev knew he couldn’t trust his thinking at the moment, and he was probably reading too much into things. As it said, it was just a program housed inside some crystals.
Screw it. What ca
n it hurt?
“Well, then, up your PQ. How about fifty percent?”
Rev waited for something. He wasn’t quite sure what.
“Do you feel any different?”
Well, that was a big waste of time, Rev thought as he lay back.
His stomach was queasy, but more than that, he was tired, and he was having trouble breathing. His chest heaved as he struggled for air.
“I’m having problems breathing. Are you sure I’m okay?”
He turned his head and looked around. His cannula was nowhere in sight, and he didn’t have the energy to get up and search for it.
“Maybe I’ll do that,” he said as he closed his eyes again and drifted off.
“Here’s another one.”
Rev opened his eyes. Light was streaming through the opening above him, outlining a mech-head.
“Alive, too,” they said before bending back over to address Rev.
“Hey, Marine, if I drop you a line, can you attach yourself? I can’t really get down there myself.”
Rev yawned. He felt better. Not great, but not as out of it.
“Yeah, I think I can.”
The Marine fished out a line from their cuirass and dropped it into the hole. Rev sat up, waiting for it to come within reach. His right arm refused to cooperate, but it wasn’t difficult to use his left to snake it around his chest and secure it.
“Ready,” he said, standing and giving the Marine a thumbs-up.
“Just tell me to stop if you need to,” the Marine said. “Lifting!”
The mech-head took it gently, slowly lifting Rev the three or four meters to the top. As soon as they could, the Marine reached in to take Rev’s left hand and lift the last bit.
“Holy shit, if it isn’t Rev,” a second mech-head said as Rev was pulled into the open air.
Rev didn’t need to see the Marine inside the mech. He’d never forget that voice.
“Alive and kicking, Udu,” he said as his feet touched the ground.
He unhooked the line and looked around. There was damage, lots of it. Right in front of him, a chunk of the emitter tower was gone.
There was no physical sign of the Centaur they had fought, only blast marks. He shifted his gaze. There wasn’t even that much of Staff Sergeant Montez.
Damn good Marine.
“So, how’d you get down that hole, Rev?”
He didn’t answer. There was a pall of smoke that drifted around the ground, but the complex was silent.
“Did we win?”
“Hell yes, we won, Rev. We kicked tin-ass ass!”
37
“Look what the sons of bitches did. Fucking Marines,” the white-clad Roher tech told her co-worker. “This is going to take months to replace and get back online.”
Rev had just been released from the aid station and was trying to find his platoon, but he stopped dead. The complex was already swarming with Roher personnel, who had to have been waiting in orbit.
Just walk on.
But he couldn’t. “Whatever that was, it was destroyed by a tin-ass.”
The two turned around, and the woman gave Rev a withering glance.
“What are you talking about?”
“That’s beamer damage.” When they both looked at him with blank faces, he added, “Energy weapons. Which the Centaurs have, not the Marines.”
“You’re telling me that you Marines didn’t cause any of the damage around here.”
“No. But not that thing.”
“That thing is an MSC-346A, and it cost more than you’ll ever see in your lifetime.”
“I think you mean that ‘was’ an MSC-whatever. And you’re welcome for taking all of this back from the tin-asses. That cost a lot of lives. Better people than you’ll ever see in your lifetime.”
He spun on his heel and strode off. The woman started to make some retort, but the man pulled her back. Lucky for her. Rev was in no mood to put up with that crap, and he wasn’t sure how he’d react.
The image of Staff Sergeant Montez just disappearing into nothing was seared into his mind. She had known it would happen, but that hadn’t stopped her. She’d taken out the Centaur and saved most of her team.
Kel Dean-Ballester hadn’t made it into the hole and had died when the Centaur self-destructed. Tanu had been killed in the juncture, and Gunny Thapa had been medivaced off planet already, his condition unknown.
Half of the team was lost, and that . . . that leech was bitching because some of her precious machinery was destroyed?
Rev had gotten bits and pieces of what had happened while he was in the aid station. Casualties had been high, even if slightly lower than expected. But lower than expected didn’t matter on a personal level when it was your friends who were killed. For them, and for their families, the casualty rate was effectively one hundred percent.
As far as his crew, Udu had made it, and she told him so had Fyr, even if his mech had been one of those that ran out of power. For the rest? Rev picked up his pace. Maybe Tomiko would have more news.
The complex was bustling with activity, both Roher and Marine. Teams of Marine techs were trying to get mechs operational again. Even those that hadn’t been damaged in the fight had to get their powerpacks lit off again, and it was a race in time to get that done before any possible counterattack.
Outside the complex, and in a few cases, inside, armor techs would be doing the same with the tanks. Infantry were scattered throughout the complex, eating and sleeping.
Rev slowed down, searching for the platoon. The lieutenant had checked up on him at the aid station and told him where they were, but without an exact location he could pull up, he was a little unsure of himself.
“This about right, do you think?”
Rev turned, and his AI had been correct—unsurprisingly. The rail system that was used to move items around the complex had two breaks in it, separated by about five intact meters. Rev headed to it and found the platoon, much depleted, sprawled out on the ground under it.
“Shit. look who’s back from the dead,” Strap said as Rev approached.
“I’m too much of a bastard to let them take me out,” Rev said.
Strap stood and shook Rev’s hand. “Good to see you. Sorry about Tanu and Staff Sergeant Montez.”
“Corporal Dean-Ballester, too.”
“Respect to the fallen,” Strap said and was echoed by a few of the others.
“Where’s Third?” Rev asked, looking around. “Never mind. I see Hus-man.”
He made his way through the others and their welcomes to where the three Marines were sitting together in a small circle, eating chow.
“Look who decided to show up,” Corporal Nix said. “Grab yourself a seat. You need chow?”
Rev shook his head as he sat down next to Tomiko. Calling the sludge chow was false advertising.
“No, I ate at the aid station.”
“The lieutenant said you were going to be there for another couple of days,” Tomiko said.
“You know how it is. They didn’t need me taking up a bed. Kicked my ass out.”
Which wasn’t true. Rev had begged to leave and rejoin the platoon. He’d made such an ass of himself that one of the doctors had finally relented.
“Just glad to see you, Rev,” Tomiko said, pulling him close for a hug. “I felt so bad for leaving you down there, especially after you saved my—”
Rev put a hand over
her mouth. “I was in no shape to go anywhere. My nanos were in overdrive, and I was juiced. And you still had the mission. Uh, you hear about anyone else?”
He didn’t have to specify who he meant. She knew, and she said, “Cricket made it. I saw him right after the last tin-ass blew. But the rest? Comms still isn’t restored.”
Which was about what he’d expected, but at least it was good to hear about Cricket.
“I saw Udu. She was one of the ones who pulled me out of the hole, and she told me Fyr made it, too,” he said.
Tomiko closed her eyes for a moment, her lips moving in what might have been a prayer of thanks.
“So, you were there at the end? What happened after you left me?” Rev asked.
“Shit, Rev, it was crazy,” Hussein said.
“We had to get out of the access tunnels first,” Nix said, taking over. “We could hear the fighting above us, but we couldn’t find a way up.”
“If the tin-asses had taken over the underground spaces, we’d still be fighting,” Tomiko said.
“But they did. The one that got staff . . . that we fought, that’s where it came from.”
“Just hiding out, we think,” Nix said. “The spaces down there were tight for even a riever to maneuver in. But anyway, once we got out, it was crazy, like Hus-man said. It was like they were cockroaches, running for cover, or maybe just to get away, but everywhere, Marines were swarming all over them, fearless bastards. We joined four mech-heads on this one—”
“Rally up on me!” the lieutenant shouted, cutting Nix off.
“He’s been up at the Three trying to find out what’s next,” Tomiko said as they hurried over.
The platoon—too few of them—formed a school circle around the lieutenant.
“Pelletier, Wen, good to see you two back with us,” he said, nodding at them.
“First, Gunny Thapa, Lance Corporal LaPete, and Corporal Akima are on their way back to Safe Harbor. Their long-term prognosis is up in the air, but none of them are in critical condition. They should pull through.”
“Ooh-rah,” several of the Marines shouted at the news.
“And now, for what we’re doing. This mission isn’t over. I need to see all the team leaders right after this, but as a warning order to everyone else, we’re going out in an hour.”
