“They’re in quarantine. That’s where they’ll stay until we know what’s wrong with them.”
“But some of us have been exposed already. Too many of us.”
“We know who was first in the cave, we know who had physical contact. We can keep tabs on them easily enough.”
Caden had to admit that was probably the best he could hope for. He might not be happy with the situation but there was not very much Feior could do about it. And as far as they knew, whatever virus it was which had affected the people fated to become Rasas, it was not airborne.
“Where are they going?”
“Air support says the skies are now safe out here,” Feior said. “The capital is still hot, but there’s nothing left around us that will pose problems. A shuttle is gonna wing down and lift them.”
“How long?”
“A half hour, tops.”
“We can’t wait that long. They know we’re coming now.”
“Fine, we’ll leave a fire team with them. Drones haven’t spotted anyone else nearby.”
“Any recon from the objective?”
“Only a mess of heat signatures. The drones can’t get a visual of the ground around those… things. Too much mist, if you can believe that.”
“Oh, I can believe it.”
The first splinter he had seen on Meccrace Prime was emblazoned in his memory, towering darkly above him in the compound outside the Eyes and Ears facility. It too had exhaled a dense vapour, forced him to retreat with Eilentes and Doctor Bel-Ures.
“Sergeant, when we make our final approach, everyone is going to need to treat the environment as if it were toxic to human life.”
“Why so?”
“We still don’t know how this affliction is spread, but there’s a good chance it’s through water contamination. That mist looks like it could be a medium. Deliberate.”
“So, breathers?”
“And eye protection.”
“I’ll pass the word around.”
“Make sure your guys get the message,” said Caden. “I can imagine some of them won’t see any threat from a little bit of mist.”
“I’d be insulted, if only that weren’t completely true.”
“We need to get a move on. I want to be at those splinters within the hour.”
“Splinters…” Feior said. “What the hell are they?”
“That’s what I’m here to find out.”
Caden found Eilentes and Dyne with Bro, Norskine, and Daxon. Bruiser and Chun were talking nearby, although they were too far away for Caden to hear the words.
“Anyone seen Volkas?”
Daxon pointed. “Yeah, he’s over there.”
Caden walked over to where Volkas was sat, his back to the others, his head in his hands.
“Mind if I join you?”
Volkas shrugged.
Caden sat near him, and waited. Volkas said nothing.
“So… you knew him?”
“Nephew,” Volkas said. “Omin is my brother’s son.”
“Ah. I see.”
Caden waited again.
“Any idea where your brother is?”
Volkas raised his head and faced Caden. “Well he’s probably dead, isn’t he?”
“There’s not much I can say to that.”
“There’s nothing I want you to say.”
“Okay,” said Caden. “We’re about to set off for the objective. Are you up to this? I’m sure Feior can handle things if you want to stay with Omin.”
Volkas squeezed one hand with the other, staring at his feet. Caden could imagine the kind of thoughts that must have been whirling around his brain: first opportunity to lead the whole company into an engagement, but Omin is family, don’t want to screw this up, need to make sure the lad’s okay, don’t really want The Fist telling my guys what to do…
“That… actually sounds like a good idea,” Volkas said.
“You should make sure he gets lifted safely,” said Caden. “He’s blood.”
“Yes, of course. Thank you, Caden. I appreciate this.”
“No problem. I’ll see you when we get back to Disputer.”
Caden left him to his thoughts, and went back to the others.
“Ready?” He asked. “Final push to the finish.”
The others stopped passing around water, cleaning weapons, and sharpening blades. They got to their feet and gathered their gear.
“Where’s the captain?” Daxon asked.
“Volkas isn’t coming,” said Caden. “He’s going back to Disputer with Omin.”
“Omin?”
“The guy from the cave, the younger one: it’s his nephew.”
“Oh, right. Shit man. Yeah, he mentioned he still had family out here.”
“Who’s taking over?” Norskine asked.
“Might as well be Feior. He’s been giving the orders up until now anyway.”
They fell in with the other squads, all of which were now starting to get organised, and returned to the same formation they had held before the first canyon. The larger rock formations were now behind them, but the terrain was still relatively barren compared to the grasslands. It would be harder under foot, but Caden saw few opportunities for ambush between them and their destination.
The splinters were much larger now, protruding from the horizon; dark, sharp towers. Haze obscured them lower down, their bases were hidden entirely by a bank of fog.
“Move it out!” Came the order. “Visors down for everyone. No external air.”
Caden snapped his visor down and heard the seal confirmation inside his helmet. As far as he could see, everyone else was doing the same. Feior must have passed the word around already that helmets were not optional.
The Kodiak rolled on, and the soldiers followed.
Observing the splinters from afar, it had appeared as though the mist had a definite boundary. But as they walked, Caden noticed that everything ahead of them was become less distinct. The splinters themselves, despite being closer and therefore appearing much larger, were now soft shadowy shapes, melting into the clouds. Had there been clouds before?
He looked to one side, then the other, and saw only a hazy landscape.
“We’re in the fog already,” he said. “Wait up.”
Feior brought the column to a halt, and the Kodiak also stopped. Its engines rumbled on impatiently.
“Anything from the drones?” Caden asked Harth.
“Nothing remarkable. We’re now showing up on the scope. Some movement farther in, but the heat signatures are mostly— wait a moment. Small signature heading right for us.”
“Eyes front.” Caden sent it out over the group channel.
“I really don’t like all this popeye shit,” Feior told him privately.
The fire teams flanking the Kodiak went to one knee, and raised their rifles to cover as much of a full arc as possible. The Kodiak co-pilot switched on the dorsal guns. They twitched as their targeting array calibrated itself to the mist.
Caden threaded his way to the front, shouldering his rifle. He felt it snap against the mag-tags in his armour, and let go. His right hand went down to the grip of his pistol. He stood right in front of the Kodiak, and waited.
Moments passed.
At first he was not sure if they were digital noise in his helmet, but then they became more distinct: footsteps, approaching from dead ahead. His visor blinked up a caution, approximating the source of the noise with a broad arrow.
A shape appeared in the mist, coming straight for him; swaying, shuffling, moving without any discernible hurry.
She was only a few metres away when she got close enough to be seen properly. She stopped, regarded Caden fearlessly with a tilted head, gazed at him as if deciding what he was.
Caden guessed the woman was not much older than twenty. She was slim, with long, black hair draping down onto her shoulders in lank clumps; evidently not washed for some time. Her clothing was dirty, stretched out of shape, and a tear at the right sh
oulder made her vest top hang down awkwardly. He could see dried blood on her, which looked to have come from a short but gaping wound on her bare shoulder.
Her eyes were fixed on him, her mouth hanging open. Her expression was impossible to read.
“Voice?” Caden asked.
The Thrall screeched as she leapt, and she was almost at him before his shot penetrated her chest.
“Movement, lots of movement,” said Harth.
Caden moved back into the line, away from the front of the Kodiak. He holstered his pistol, recovered his rifle from the mag-tags on his back.
“Weapons free,” Feior shouted. “Expect multiple hostiles, goggle up for IR.”
Caden switched in the infrared overlay on his visor.
“They can be fast,” Caden said. “Some will reach us. Get Tankers up front.”
Burner appeared on his right, Overkill on his left with another who had ‘The Meat’ stencilled across his armour.
A blood-curdling screech from somewhere ahead of them, answered by another off to the right. The slap-slap-slap of feet hitting the ground, then thumping as the footsteps came closer and closer.
Bodies streaked through the fog, arms outstretched, and the Thralls were in amongst the troops before anyone had fired off a shot.
“ENGAGED!”
Even as he smashed the butt of his rifle into the head of a passing Thrall, Caden noticed his visor display had overlaid the figure with only the faintest hint of an IR pattern. His eyes flicked to the environmental data at the lower left of the display: ambient air temperature of 36.4 celsius… no wonder the body was not standing out. Perhaps only the sensitive eyes of the drone could see them clearly.
Shots, and shouts, and snarls. Flashes in the fog. Overkill kicking a man right off a downed MAGA soldier, then stepping on the Thrall’s chest and shooting him in the face. Gouts of flame somewhere beyond Overkill; it could only have been Burner, dousing the Thralls in a small firestorm.
It was carnage.
“Frenzy,” he heard Feior shout. “Get that Kodiak slaved to its drone. Laser on those heat signatures!”
“Yes Sarge,” Harth shouted back.
For a moment Caden was puzzled by the order, but he had other matters to contend with. An obese woman wearing a shapeless dress trundled towards him, dragging a broken ankle, and he did not like the look of the large, bloodied shovel she was carrying.
She took a bullet in the chest, and fell backwards.
The Kodiak’s squat gun turret whirred into life, spun around, and fired short bursts into the mist, over the heads of those fighting around it.
Ah! The drone was lighting up the heat signatures for the Kodiak. Of course it would start with the densest areas first.
“Sarge, drone says they’re now spreading out. Trying to encircle us.”
“Backs to the Kodiak,” Feior ordered.
Caden was now some distance away from the vehicle, and prepared himself to shuffle-step back towards it. The last thing he needed now was to be isolated out here, when everyone else was too far away to see him. He had not even seen Dyne since he had moved up to the front of the Kodiak, and nobody else was close enough to help if he needed them to.
A shape loomed from the mist on his left, gathering speed, and passed him by. His brief glimpse was just enough for him to make out the irregularities strung around the running body…
Demolition packs.
“Get away from the Kodiak!” He yelled into his link. “Suicide run!”
There was a moment of quiet before the explosion lit up the fog, then an incandescent orange orb flared brightly and surreally, brought with it a deadly rain.
Time slowed down. He saw people thrown outwards across the ground, tumbling until their bodies hit dirt. Pieces of metal clanging end-over-end, armour plates dropping from the sky. He heard the patter of debris, and an occasional thunk as more substantial parts came down hard.
Still the Thralls came.
He ran back towards the wreckage of the Kodiak. Anyone still alive would either be there already, or headed there now.
Caden could still hear the pops and bangs of small secondary explosions in what remained of the vehicle, and somewhere a pipe was venting gas or fuel in a roaring jet of flame. Someone screamed off to the right, a sound of true agony. All around him were the shouts and groans of the survivors.
Thick, greasy, black smoke blocked his vision at every turn. He waved his free hand in front of his visor, to no effect, and backed off from the burning Kodiak as far as he dared.
“Eilentes, where are you?” He shouted into his link.
“I’m okay,” she said. “No idea where…”
If she continued to speak, he did not hear her. A hand grabbed the back plate of his armour and yanked hard.
Caden fell backwards, thrown to the ground by someone he could not even see. Three shapes surrounded him, slinking through the smoke like predators, and before he had time to do anything about it a fourth was pulling on his rifle.
Oh, well done.
— 08 —
Worst Case Scenario
Occre Brant was speechless.
Peras Tirrano twisted a thick coil of her red hair around one of her fingers, staring back at him with those dazzlingly green eyes of hers. Her mouth was curved up at the corners… just a little.
“Run that by me again?”
“You heard me, Occre,” she said. “With Branathes out of the picture it was always going to happen.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Of course I am.”
“And I suppose you think this is really funny too.”
“Don’t be insolent, Operator Brant.”
She giggled at her own joke. Brant did not find it particularly amusing; ‘insolent’ was what Branathes had called them when they were trying to outmanoeuvre him. When they suspected what he really was.
“So why you and not me?”
Tirrano stood up, stretched leisurely, and fluttered her eyebrows.
“I guess they just don’t think you have the right stuff.”
“You really are getting a kick out of this.”
“Things will have to change around here,” she said. “No more hopping off to do other people’s work. We have a war to concentrate on.”
“If you’re talking about Caden, he’s fighting the same war. And you were there too, on that jaunt to Aldava.”
“Well… now I’m the monitor for Kosling. I have responsibilities.”
“We’re not in the Kosling system. Hell, we aren’t even on the same arm of the galaxy.”
“I still have to do the work.”
“Get a grip, Peras. Don’t you remember what we saw? They burned up Aldava — our own planet.”
“Aldava was the empire’s planet. The empire can do with it what they want.”
“Oh, you’ve gone wrong.”
“No, you’ve gone wrong. Pull your socks up and get back to doing intelligence work.”
“You know what,” said Brant, “I think I will.”
He stormed out of the office — her office — and seethed his way through Fort Laeara’s corridors.
Peras Tirrano, an Eyes and Ears monitor. What a joke! The woman was three missed meals away from eating babies. It was a good job they were no longer on Fort Kosling, or he might actually have lost sleep worrying about what havoc she could wreak in the lives of the people working there.
What galled him most was that she had been allowed to deliver the news herself.
Brant could hardly conceive of a more delicious task for Tirrano to carry out. She would have been relishing that moment, when his face froze and his eyes showed her that the concept was slowly penetrating his brain.
And he knew what would be coming next. She might even work up the nerve to order him to take off his pants.
Don’t be ridiculous, he told himself. Even she’s not that daft.
But then… she would now have numerous opportunities to put him in compr
omising positions. Even if she did not intend for anything to happen, she would certainly do it just to see him squirm.
Brant was not a violent man, but right now he wanted to punch a wall.
“Operator Brant?”
He stopped and waited for the man to catch up. The man was Brant’s equivalent from the Laeara team, and — embarrassingly — Brant realised he had forgotten his name.
Maybe there was some way to get him to say it.
“What’s up?”
“I was wondering if you had a minute?”
“I’m sort of in the middle of something,” Brant said. It was a lie of course, he had nowhere to be right now, and if he did he would probably be resisting doing anything about it.
“I’ve been working on identifying the source of the data leak from Meccrace Prime. The problem is, every time I trace the signal back to a network node, it splits off to dozens of other nodes.”
“Oh, right.” Brant had also been tasked with trying to solve that particular problem. So far he had not actually looked at it. “Have you tried webbing the node maps?”
“Webbing them?”
“Yeah, overlay the matching nodes and you’ll get a data density map. There ought to be an epicentre. It won’t give you a cartographic point of origin, but it will give you a clear influence peak. All you have to do then is read off the transponder registrations that were present at that node, and eliminate them however you can.”
“I didn’t think of that.”
“Evidently not.”
“Thanks Brant. I’ll let you know how it goes.”
The man walked away, back down the corridor, shaking his head as if ashamed of himself for not seeing the solution.
Brant kept walking, and found his anger had more or less seeped away.
He found himself on the midsection docking ring. Somehow he had walked almost a half-kilometre without realising it.
Activity on the rings had been exceptionally high since the footage from the Meccrace system hit the network. People from the outer colonies were coming through in droves — at least, those with families or second homes in the inner systems. Brant could hardly blame them for fleeing the edges of human territory; if what people were saying about the invasion was true, they were better off closer to the systems which Fleet deemed to be defence priorities.
Books One to Three Omnibus (Armada Wars) Page 73
