Operation Catskill

by J. R. Mabry

  He cursed himself. He should have seen it. The kids with them were well fed, they were reasonably clean. Their hair was stylishly cut.

  They were not Redneck kids. The girl with the carpet bag—that was a Redneck kid. And they had sacrificed her. These kids weren’t going to deter the Rednecks for a second. And every moment they continued in the company of his men, they were targets.

  “Lose the kids,” he ordered. “Just leave them where they are. They’re low, and they’re not moving. They’ll be fine. We need the speed, and we can send the coordinates back for a rescue.” None of them had seen the report, so none of them knew what he was talking about. He cursed himself. Sloppy.

  “But Captain—”

  “Do it. Double time it to that wall.”

  He wasn’t sure how much protection that wall would be—mostly because he didn’t know where the photon blasts were coming from. A stone wall would protect them, but which side of it should they be on? He didn’t know. And what if they were surrounded? Then the wall wouldn’t do a damned bit of good.

  Todd pinged his neural, and a trajectory analysis unspooled in his helmet. God bless her, he thought. The report clearly showed that none of the blasts they’d witnessed so far had originated from beyond the wall.

  It was coming up quickly, and Jeff had point. He would model what he wanted them to do. As he drew near the wall, he rocked back on his haunches and sprang up and over the top of it. A white-hot bolt of pain shot through his calf. Tagged, he thought, as he felt the meat of his body drop ungracefully behind the protection of the rock wall.

  Others followed, and some of them were hit, too. He was relieved to see Charlesworth drop the meat sack of Paart’s body over, followed closely by an expertly executed tuck and roll. Only when the last of them had cleared did Jeff glance down at his own leg—a clean shot through his chamo trousers. The shot had missed his body armor by mere millimeters. Damn it. Fortunately, the shot was clean through and hadn’t hit bone. It would hurt like hell later, but his endorphins were so high he didn’t feel a thing.

  “Report, people.”

  “Mbeki’s shot,” Tillerson said.

  “How bad?”

  “Through the hand. Administering the Morphex now.”

  “Give him a dose of ’phetamine while you’re at it. I don’t want him in pain, but I don’t want him asleep, either.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Anyone else?”

  There were several, but the body armor had stopped the worst of it. Jeff breathed a deep sigh of relief. They were all there, they were all accounted for, they were all mobile.

  Jeff detached a sensor probe from his body armor and raised it above the edge of the wall. Instantly, the view from the probe filled his helmet. The shooting had stopped, but he saw the heat signatures of the shooters. They were a couple hundred meters away, some further than others. A couple were sheltered behind the house, but most were in the woods opposite them. He turned and looked for heat signatures in the woods behind them. None. The problem was that their extraction point wasn’t behind them, it was across the yard and through the woods filled with hostiles.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw several heat signatures moving—they were attempting to flank them. Time was running out.

  A message pinged in his neural. He looked up and saw an order from CDF command.

  —Power through to extraction point. All haste.

  Were they crazy? Their weaponry was not superior to the Rednecks’—they all had photon rifles. He had six men—seven counting himself. But he counted nearly thirty among the Rednecks—and that was just what he could see. Who knew how many more were lying in wait in the woods?

  He sent a message back.

  —Outnumbered. Going to try to lose them in the woods.

  Of course, that was a problematic plan. These were the Rednecks’ woods. They were on the rebels’ home turf. Still, Jeff was from Achorage. He knew the woods, and in his gut he knew it was the best chance they had.

  —Negative. Power through.

  The signature of the message was the highest rank. It was coming from Admiral Tal, or at least from his immediate team, which was the same as coming from the Admiral himself.

  “Shit,” Jeff said out loud. If he listened to his gut, he’d be in direct violation of orders. If he obeyed, he’d be lucky to get half of his team home alive.

  He looked toward the distance, toward the wall as it stretched out into the woods, saw heat signatures leaping over it about half a kilometer away. No time. There was only one way forward if he wanted to keep his job and his freedom. The problem was he would need to also keep his life.

  “New orders to proceed directly toward extraction.”

  “But—” Kai began, but he cut her off.

  “I know, Ensign, but this comes from the top. This is how we’re going to do it. There’s nothing large enough for us to shelter behind together, but there are lots of smaller possibilities. I want you to scatter. Watch each others’ backs if you can, but basically this is going to be a sprint to the finish line. Seek what shelter you can find, and make sure you take at least two of these bastards down with you.”

  “What about Paart, sir?” Danny asked.

  “I’m going to lay down and I want you to fix him to my body armor with plastic ties.”

  “Sir?”

  “I’ll adjust my center of gravity in the exoskeleton control panel on the fly.”

  “That’s suicide, sir,” Tillerson said. “Besides, you’re hit.”

  “I’ll let the frame do the work. I’ll be fine. Just do it.”

  Jeff lay down as if he were letting Paart spoon him. His men pounced on him, four of them fixing ties to his limbs, and another fastening Paart’s clothing to his exoskeleton at his midsection via his leather belt. When they were done, Jeff could barely move. But he couldn’t let that stop him.

  “Okay, soldiers, scatter! Get back to the ship any way you can.”

  “But, sir—” Kai began.

  “Move it, Ensign Kai!”

  She did. He opened the battle armor control panel and began wildly making adjustments. When he was done, he barely felt Paart’s weight on his back, on his limbs. The armor was powered, intended to compensate for high-gravity situations. It wasn’t built for this kind of assist, but it wasn’t going to break it, either. Jeff did a quick scan and saw more hostiles jumping the wall on both sides. Enemy control of their flank was almost complete. He looked directly behind him, at the hillside, the forest, the one place his gut told them was the road to safety.

  I’m a soldier, dammit, he said to himself. I follow orders.

  He turned his back on the wooded hill and faced the wall. He scouted beyond it, found what looked like an old-fashioned tractor, and ran to his right along the wall until it was directly in front of him. He scrambled over the wall, and began to run. He felt wildly off balance, the heavy, motionless body of the diplomat pulling him backwards. He could strengthen his muscles with the armor controls, but nothing he adjusted seemed to help with the balance.

  He’d only gone a couple steps when a photon blast tore at his left arm. The battle armor absorbed the worst of it, but he felt the sting and smelled burning flesh just the same. He dove for the cover of the tractor and shuddered as a blast hit the metal caging of the engine. A corner of his mind knew that if they hit the fuel source, the machine could explode, but he pushed back at the thought.

  He searched for another way forward, but he as he did so, he couldn’t help but see the progress of his men. Charlesworth had returned to the well, he was hunkered down, waiting for a break in the fire, probably hoping to bolt toward the barn. But a Redneck sniper on the second floor of the barn got a bead on the top of his head. Jeff saw the glowing red dot on Charlesworth’s helmet a split second before it erupted and began raining brain matter and blood.

  What the fuck good is that helmet? Jeff wondered. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and saw Ensign Kai creeping along the
corner of the farmhouse. He saw what she was trying to do—once she reached the corner, if it were clear, she could dash into the woods beyond it. Then it was a straight shot toward the shuttle.

  He held his breath as she edged to the corner. She held a sensor beyond it, to get a visual read, when the hand that held the sensor exploded in a blast of light. Her armor quickly closed off, torniqueting the blood flow, but the blast had pivoted her out into the open and the hostiles had opened fire. One of the blasts hit her oxygen tank turning her into a human bomb.

  Jeff watched the wall of the house buckle and the roof cave in on one side.

  He looked to his left and saw Tillerson stepping gingerly over the body of one of the unconscious children. Her foot got caught in mid stride, flipping her onto her back. A sniper did the rest, and quickly, hitting her armor in a score of places. Jeff was sure it stopped most of the blasts, but it couldn’t have stopped it all. He watched her struggle to get onto all fours, then she jerked and laid still.

  Jeff felt a hand on his back and spun, swinging wildly. The armor overcompensated, and he actually leaped several feet into the air, landing with a thud that shook the tractor.

  It was Danny. He’d been hit, and was carrying his rifle in his left hand, his non-dominant hand. His right hand was a bloody tangle of sinew and bone.

  “I’m going to cover you,” he said, “and you’re going to complete this fucking mission.”

  “Who’s calling the shots here, soldier?” Jeff asked.

  “You are, sir. Now get moving before I say something insubordinate.”

  Jeff turned. There was only one route ahead of him: toward the ruin of the house, then under the house and out the other side.

  “Move it!” Danny called.

  Jeff did. He squatted, gathering his strength in his legs, then he released it, dashing for the house in a zig-zag pattern that actually succeeded in dodging a couple photon blasts. Jeff felt a jerk pull at his back. He called up a diagnostic tool and discovered that the weight on his back was no longer breathing. Paart’s heart had stopped, too. The diplomat had probably taken a photon blast to the head. Jeff dove for the space under the house’s porch, and allowed the hardness of his helmet to smash through the boards. It didn’t matter what a move like that would do to Paart’s head or body—not now.

  Once under the house, Jeff rolled over and waved to Danny to follow. Danny crouched and sprang, then danced like a puppet as his armor was riddled with photon blasts. When his head exploded, Jeff buried his face in the gauntlets of his armor and howled. He loved Danny like a brother, and he would never be able to unsee that. He would always have the vision of his friend’s head erupting into gas as his farewell memory.

  “God fucking dammit!” he screamed aloud. He twisted around and began to crawl toward the back of the house, over the flinty carcasses of beetles and the brittle bones of rats. He was no longer aware of the body strapped to his back. He fired his rifle at the back of the house, then fired it again. He kept at it until he had nearly depleted his power supply, but had made a hole large enough to crawl through.

  He scrambled through it, and without even looking around, made a mad dash for the woods. He heard the pop of photon rifles from what seemed like every direction. He nearly lost his balance as the shots connected, throwing bits of gore from his passenger looping into the air behind him. He could not have asked for better armor, however. Paart’s body attracted and absorbed the lion’s share of the photon blasts directed at him, and by the time Jeff reached the green sanctuary of the forest, much of the diplomat’s body had been pecked from his bones.

  The image in Jeff’s brain was of himself being ridden by a skeleton—death tied to his heels and close as his shadow—hugging him in a macabre embrace as he ran full tilt and unseeing into a consuming sea of green.

  * * *

  When Jeff opened his eyes, he was surrounded by a sterile white nothingness. A blue-black blur invaded his vision. He struggled to focus. “Go easy, son.” It was Admiral Tal’s voice. “You’ve had a concussion. A bad one. It’s going to take you a while to recover.”

  So he was in an infirmary. Admiral Tal was with him. Was anyone else with him? “Who’s here?” Jeff asked.

  “Just me and the nurse.”

  “What happened?”

  “According to your armor records, you’re lucky you made it back to us.”

  Suddenly Jeff’s memory rushed back. He stiffened, overwhelmed by the onslaught.

  “Woah, just…take it easy.”

  “I’m going to need to sedate him,” a younger male voice said.

  “Not just yet,” Tal said.

  “My unit—” Jeff began. “What happened to my unit?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “Of course I remember,” Jeff snapped. “I mean…who made it?”

  A long silence followed. “Captain, I don’t know how to tell you this. You…only you. Only you made it. You and your communications officer—Lieutenant Todd, was it? You left her to mind the shuttle.”

  “Danny?”

  “No, son.”

  Jeff choked on the phlegm in his throat, then gasped for air.

  “Admiral—” the nurse said.

  A blurry hand blocked the light—Tal holding the nurse back.

  “I’m sorry, son.”

  “Who gave that order?” Jeff asked. “We could have escaped into the woods, we could have…I could have saved some of them. Who gave that order?”

  “Which order, Captain?”

  “The order to power through to the shuttle across the yard.”

  There was another long silence.

  “Did you give that order?” Jeff demanded. “Did you?”

  Jeff heard the Admiral sigh. “Captain, we have no record of that order.”

  * * *

  Continue the story in

  OBLIVION THRESHOLD

  Coming soon!