Cyborg (The Deep Wide Black Book 1)

by JCH Rigby

  We debussed from our surface vehicles about thirty kilometers east of the objective, deploying into our sweep formation. The transports lifted with a puff of dust from their jets, and swung silently away in a great curve to avoid over-flying the Driver. Recce Platoon started their move, with the rest of the Company setting off once they’d gotten a couple of kilometers ahead.

  Usually this area was lively, with Driver loads going to the L2 Orbital and NipponDeutsch’s half-built starship whipping overhead at escape velocity. No pilot in their right mind would want to be anywhere near the place, you get your ship in the way of a hyper velocity Driver load and it would spread you all over the surface in lots of tiny pieces. The majority of the loads scheduled to go up today were heading for the starship. Putting NipponDeutsch into a rare old mood with ARTOK and the government when the loads failed to arrive on time. Maybe the Nippon Deutsch shareholders hadn’t accounted for terrorist action affecting their profit share this year. More political pressure for Colonel Marek our Company Commander. Sometimes it’s nice being further down the food chain.

  Right now, however, the only things moving were ourselves and our empty transports settling behind the nearer hills. The faint hum of the rover came softly to me, conducted through my body cutting on and off every time a bump took me clear of my seat. Recce’s Trackers looked as though they were only a few hundred meters away even though I knew they were a couple of kilometers ahead of us—everything looks really close in vacuum, and there’s not much out there to give perspective.

  The Driver, barely visible in the distance as a low huddle of buildings at the far end of a silvery rail which looped out toward us. I could make out brightly-colored dots that would be surface vehicles were scattered about between the buildings. The Driver itself was a collection of several smaller accelerators grouped around the main one, usually it’s only the big launcher most people notice. Here the biggest loads for the new starship would be lifted out of the Moon’s gravity well. As we closed in I could start to make out the Buckets resting on the loading ramp down by the Operations Complex. They’re called Buckets, but they’re really a kind of big pallet which the loads get strapped onto before being spat into space by the Driver.

  Tiny figures scurried about among the toy-like civilian vehicles, the occasional puff of dust marking the strike of a mortar round from the guard platoon. A lot of shrapnel on those bursts, but no real pressure wave to worry about without an atmosphere. That meant the figures I could see running around must be the attacking Earth First irregulars. I said a silent prayer for my fellow soldiers in the guard platoon. Hang on, boys and girls; we’re coming.

  Recce launched their remotes. We were already linked into all the available sats—Systems Platoon commandeered their images as a matter of course. You didn’t want the enemy or any nosy news reporters seeing what we were up to. Small chemical rockets took the remote reconnaissance packages to a couple hundred-meters’ altitude where they burst, and dozens of the tiny seismic locators rained down, well spread-out around the complex. Any minute now they’d start to predict the positions of projectile weapons, and the Company Commander would have the data we needed to guide us during the assault.

  My machine gunner, McWilliams, was confirming her principal targets when one of the companies Tracker vehicles burst apart in a silent explosion. Direct missile hit. Body panels flew everywhere. Some of our buddies were dead or dying.

  We were a pretty hot company, I reckon, and our reaction to effective enemy fire was as slick as it had ever been. Vehicles scurried for what little cover there was, everyone debussing to minimize casualties in case we took another missile hit. Mumtaz, my driver, whipped our buggy down into a deep linear rille, giving us a little cover from view if not much from fire. If the terrorists possessed mortars or artillery, we were still one big target.

  I got everyone out of the buggy and well away, down on our bellies. The lip of the rille we were in was a sharp white line against the black. Missile exhaust slashed a trail across a sky full of stars, heading for where we’d just been. We’d made it into the little ravine just in time.

  Recce called for fire support from One Platoon in the hills. I started looking for routes out of ravine, while Andy and the rest of the command group went onto the comms net to hear what the boss wanted to do.

  The sat images paid off. Less than two minutes later we were mounted up and moving again, cutting fast along a shallow fold running to the southwest. We headed for a spot which looked likely to be the enemy missile position. Our section in the lead. I navigated while Andy briefed on the assault. Maybe ten enemy, about four kilometers to our front, possibly dug in. Apparently quite well-armed, they were putting down a lot of fire at anyone who stuck their head up.

  I hung on tight to the bouncing buggy and kept an eye on the data screens. Recce’s spy-drones were up and I clicked onto the overhead picture, checking carefully to make sure we weren’t going too far down the gully. Unsighted from the enemy, I didn’t want to overshoot. That’s always the danger in a quick assault; the minute you start a covered approach, you always end up wishing you’d gotten another chance to study the ground. I couldn’t see us receiving any data-share from the seismic locators; they would be hogged by the company command group. Gimme more bandwidth! Bet Wellington never thought that at Waterloo.

  The buggy’s pulled up in a shower of dust, Mumtaz almost tipping me out as he showily flung it sideways. I could tell he was pissed off at the absence of dramatic sound effects. Out we went and spread along the edge of the gully, hugging the ground.

  The platoon commander crept forward to check our position and then at a word we were off, flat on our guts. The buggies withdrew, running self-guided. We weren’t letting the drivers take them away—no sense in wasting bayonets at a moment like this.

  I looked around at the rest of the section, trying to keep an eye on all of them as well as watching Andy. With luck, the new kids would do all right. I hoped so, because as soon as we reached the top of the gully we were going to come under fire. Mumtaz and the other drivers had seen to that with their dust-storm arrival. That same dust floated slowly down around us now, settling over our suits and gear. The plastic body of my rifle, where I was holding it out in front of me as I crawled, turned grey under a thin film of the moon dust. My breath hissed in my ears, and I could feel the undershirt tangling up beneath my vacuum suit. No time to spring a leak.

  As I watched the crest draw closer, time seemed frozen. I’d noticed the effect before, and often wondered if this was fear. That wasn’t a strange idea—I’d been scared shitless a few times—but it was as if the prospect of closing in on the enemy somehow speeded me up, making me so much sharper. Right now, I became aware of how awkwardly McWilliams was dragging the machine gun, making a mental note to show her a better way of holding the bipod legs when crawling. Absently I wondered why the regolith under me was coarser stuff than at the bottom of the gully. Sometimes the strangest things come to mind as you are about to go into action.

  Reaching the crest, I raised my head just enough that I could get a good look at the enemy position about 100 meters away. I could plainly make out the stupid bastards in it. There had been nine of them, in three pathetic little shallow holes which couldn’t offer them much protection. I could see at least two bodies already slumped over their weapons. There was a missile control unit, or something like one; how the hell had they gotten that here? Take the missile control unit our and we could mount up and cover some real distance down to the main event.

  God knows what the Earth First irregulars thought they were going to achieve, taking on an infantry company while their buddies behind them were fighting for the Mass Driver. I didn’t feel any sympathy for them, even though they were obviously about to die. There was no question of taking prisoners. We were into the assault, and it’s not a thing you can just switch off.

  Movement off to the left caught my eye. Two terrorists were struggling to swing an engineeri
ng laser around, lining it up on us. Everything sped up again. Before I could fire a round off McWilliams had the machine gun in action, for all her earlier clumsiness. The first shots were spot on, the explosive ammunition tearing into the little group and scattering pieces of weapon and body far and wide.

  Alpha Section got some more fire going, and then we were up and bounding forward, practice keeping us from over-striding in the lower lunar gravity but still leaping high. It gives the enemy huge angles to swing their weapons through. It’s dodgy, though, because if someone does get their sights on you it feels like forever before you touch down again.

  Andy and Mumtaz crashed down into the nearest hole, weapons jerking as they fired bursts into struggling figures. I belly-flopped, triple-tapping rounds at the pair in the next trench. Beside me Masters bounced to her feet, holding on to her thrashing opponent with one hand and using the other to gut him with her belt knife. I couldn’t see what had become of her rifle. The knife skidded on his body armor—these guys were well kitted up—but then it sliced deeply through his suit and in. Air puffed from ripped hoses, and little crimson spheres boiled away from the gaping ruptures in his suit.

  In a flurry of hand-to-hand, it was all over. Both my targets were down. I looked around to check for the next threat, and to see how everyone else was doing.

  It all seemed so unreal. Exercises had been fairly procedural since we got to Luna, and this—the first contact we’d had—lacked the weapon noise, the gun-smoke and the shouts of planetary warfare. No crack of bullets passing close, no sweet-smelling earth pressed against the nose as you grabbed cover. Just silent puffs of dust; slow, graceful leaps and tumbles; a few snapped orders on the net. Half the fear-cues were missing.

  In moments, we were through the meager terrorist position and out the other side, regrouping 100 meters away and buddy-checking each other’s suits for tears or pinholes. One of the new guys, Shankardass, screamed in pain from a gut-shot, till Shaw cracked morphine into him and quickly patched his suit. Instantly, the noise died away to whimpers. God knows how he’d kept going for as long as he had.

  Behind us a cluster of suits draped around the trenches, all humanity gone. There was hardly any blood.

  THE RAILS OF THE Driver loomed above me, stretching across the plain for kilometers. We were standing in the cover of a wrecked Tracker recce vehicle and a very battered Hunter troop carrier. The Hunter had taken two or three hits; its armor scabbed and torn, the hatches hanging open on twisted hinges. A few kilometers away, the wreck of a civilian transport lay smashed across the surface in three pieces. Rail support masts stalked off into the distance, like an orderly line formed up at a trans halt.

  We’d moved a long way across Hevelius from the scene of first contact only to be ordered to hold our position here and expect friendly forces to meet up with us. We’d only been here a couple of minutes when two dark suits with darkened visors arrived. They didn’t bother introducing themselves before starting to ask us questions about the assault and what we had seen.

  My back itched where that bloody undershirt worked itself loose. I leaned against the hulk of the Tracker and thought about the troopers’ questions, trying to give them what they needed to know.

  “I’m not sure. There were around thirty guys, I guess. But we dealt with nine in the first contact, and the company commander said there were ninety-odd to start with.”

  “I know, I heard. What I want to know is what you saw,” the voice hissed oddly, and I wondered what sort of faces were behind the darkened visors. I couldn’t make out either one. Somehow, however, I felt they weren’t being impatient, just pushing for precise detail. I tried again.

  “I saw about thirty going in. I remember looking at them falling back under our fire, and they seemed to be trying to work in sections. There was a definite command group as well. What bothered me was I couldn’t see where the rest of them had gotten to. There’s a lot astray from the company commander’s brief.”

  The smaller figure spoke for the first time. A woman. “No. We think there were about twenty in the transport we shot down. Another five or six made a break in the crew tractor; Irwin and King will take them. Seven surrendered. You guys killed twenty-seven, including the ones with the missile system. That’s your ninety, near enough, if you’re right about how many went into the Control Block. There’re hostages in there; missing even one hostile could mean a lot of civilian deaths. That’s why we want to know.”

  She spoke dispassionately, as if she seriously meant two guys could take on six, as if this was a technical problem—routine. Since these people turned up two hours before, the whole siege had been turned around. While we were sorting out the missile site, the rest of the Company pressed on against the enemy around the Driver itself, forcing them back away from the rail masts which they’d been trying to blow. Combat engineers were clearing the charges now.

  By the time we’d re-joined the main body, the enemy had gotten in amongst the buildings, killing or wounding several of the C Company guys inside, who’d been almost out of ammo by then. The platoon commander running things had had the hard choice of abandoning his position, or letting the Earth First gang kill the civvy workforce. One of our transports smacked down into the hottest pickup I’d ever seen, and he’d taken a lot more casualties covering the civilians back to it, but no one was about to say the kid had been wrong. You can’t just sit there and let unarmed people be killed, however important the thing is you’re guarding.

  Trouble was, he’d not gotten them all out. Another twenty or so workers were holed up in the Control Block, which was exposed on all sides, and they weren’t coming out for anyone. I, for one, couldn’t blame them.

  Andy came back from a hasty orders group with the news we’d been told to hold where we were, to keep the hostiles busy with opportunity sniping, but not to enter the buildings. If the Earth Firsters got anywhere near that Control Block, they could get up to all kinds of things. They didn’t even have to trash the launch control computers themselves: they could corrupt the software or anything else that might screw up the operation of the Driver once we’d got it all back, as we were certain to in the end.

  There was a story going around the company chat net the police had arrested a guy who’d been carrying a load of weird software. He was supposed to have a fake ID for the Mass Driver site. Andy loved that one. It fit right in with his conspiracy theories, and he was just delighted with the link to ARTOK.

  “You watch.” He told me on a private comms channel. “That software will be Chinese. He’ll have wanted to install it and corrupt the Driver’s control systems so it spits loads all over the place, and the starship would never be built. No one could link it to the Chinese.”

  “Why would the Chinese care about the starship?” I asked him incredulously.

  “Because there’s only two or three others, and if they stop this one from being finished, and they somehow manage to hit the others as well…”

  “Then what?”

  Andy paused before answering as if he was about to reveal a huge secret. “Then they’ve got a head start on moving out into the new systems. By the time we build replacements they’ll be a couple of years ahead of us, well on the way there. Anyone we send out there will touch down in Little China.”

  I thought I had spotted a flaw in his theory. “So, what are these Earth First guys doing here? They hate everything to do with space travel no matter what country is involved.”

  “Trashing starships is right up their alley. They don’t need to be pals with the Chinese to join in on this.”

  It almost made sense. Almost, this being Andy. I hadn’t quite been convinced, until an ARTOK company representative turned up with a bunch of police and some politico from the Orbitals Ministry in tow. She’d started giving the company commander grief, until RSM Hassan stepped in and led them away “out of contact, gentlefolks. Let’s head over here so you can give us technical details on the relative importance of each
part of the installation. Cup of tea?” Smooth old bugger.

  So, if Andy was right, then fighting a battle to secure the Driver could have done the damage the terrorists wanted. Only now there was an extra element, with the civilians involved. The last thing we needed was a hostage situation.

  ONCE WE REJOINED THE main body, we sat tight for six or seven hours, waiting for the psych-ops boys to show up and add their head games to the mess, and trying to work out exactly where all the Earth First were in the maze of power grids, cargo handling bays, and admin buildings. I never found out what the RSM did to keep the visitors out of the company commander’s hair for so long. Maybe a big mug of cheff.

  A shuttle settled down unannounced a few kilometers away, and the boss disappeared inside for a while. When he came out, we got orders to regroup into a looser cordon around the buildings, about three kilometers across, and to watch out for some friendly forces. I started to guess who’d turn up. Right enough, they came out in a blur.

  Although I’d been thinking about it for ages, I couldn’t believe what I saw. Like all the other guys I’d wondered how fast they moved, but nothing could have prepared me for the flickering images storming out of the shuttle and in amongst the buildings. Fractional glimpses of figures in body-form suits, assault weapons with strange sights, a grenade blast rippling across the surface.

  In minutes, a couple of small groups of the enemy were on the move, pulling out fast and heading toward the cordon. As soon as we had solid targets we let rip sending a murderous fire into them. A few of the Earth Firsters fought their way to within fifty meters of our position before breaking away from our fire. Making a bee line for the Control Block. Just what we hadn’t needed.

  The remainder made it out of the bottleneck, piling into in one of the heavy mover craft sitting down on the pad. That had done them little good; a trooper swatted it down with a missile as soon as it lifted clear of the surface. Two others had taken off after another bunch who’d fled in a small surface wagon. It looked like we’d let the enemy into the one remaining place we didn’t want them to be, and I was getting a closer view of the troopers than I’d ever expected. I could hear a couple of the guys on the net; they were already saying the supermen had screwed things up, but I couldn’t see what else they could have done.