by Michael Ryan
My latest version of TCI-Armor had been created by joining the best Erru, Gurt, Ted, and Mecko technology. As far as odd relationships go, the JFUA alliance was incredibly unlikely, but I could attest to the resultant hardware.
It was awesome.
I reached speeds with jet assist I hadn’t thought possible only a year before. It was a good thing; Dreki missiles were superior to anything the Teds had ever fired at me during the Tetra War.
The missile that had locked onto me was guided, but I couldn’t determine what attribute it was tracking. There were only a few options: heat differentials, density, visuals, and sound. I jumped toward a tower of layered sandstone. Under different circumstances I would have found the geological feature captivating in the otherwise desolate desert.
I froze my armor, dropped my suit’s external temperature, and fired a heat flare from my equipment pack.
I unloaded a thousand mini-bees from my built-in forearm coil-guns.
The enemy missile shifted.
I unlocked my suit, dove into the sand, and rolled.
The missile struck the base of the sandstone feature and exploded as I jumped back to my feet.
<
Drekis knew they couldn’t bracket us, so every bombing onslaught was fully “fire for effect.” Their attempts to kill small moving targets usually included seven HE-shells. I guessed seven was a lucky number to many species, or it was just a coincidence.
In any case, math was math.
While language, politics, and religion were as different as fish in the sea, two plus two always remained four.
Well, except maybe where shift physics were concerned, but I’m no mathematician; I certainly wasn’t an astrophysicist.
I froze again. Standing motionless, I plotted the landing points of the projectiles. Locating the round aimed at the center of the burst, I sprinted to its location. There, I locked down everything except my arms – another improvement in the new design allowed this. Using my forearm coil-guns, I unleashed two thousand mini-bees, a thousand from each weapon.
My aim was on target, and a gigantic explosion blossomed three hundred meters above me. I quickly locked down the rest of my body in time to avoid the shock wave. The reverse-force tech that helped shield our bodies had also been improved in the latest generation, but it didn’t perform miracles.
Fragments from the mortar rained down on me as the other six munitions exploded. They landed in a rough circle around me, equidistant from the round I’d destroyed. I felt the shock wave as I was pelted with shrapnel, but my armor did its job.
When it was over, I was unharmed.
I unlocked my suit and ran while searching my DS maps for the three icons that represented my team. Abrel had jumped off a cliff, and his symbol was stationary. Mallsin and Callie were still moving away at full speed.
“Callie?” I called.
She answered immediately. “Hold…”
“Mal?” I asked.
“I’m good Avery,” she confirmed. “Headed to Abrel.”
“Roger,” I said. Abrel was located behind ridges of sandstone, so I was unable to communicate with him directly. His last update indicated he was healthy and fully operational, but that was before he’d jumped off a cliff.
“Can you reach him?” I asked Mallsin.
“Negative,” she answered.
“Callie, you good?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “But I’ve got a line of sight on Abrel. He’s hurt.”
“Roger; following behind you.”
We’d run far enough away from the battle to have a reasonable expectation of not being targeted again. In our experience, they didn’t bother with us if we were over twelve clicks out, at least during ground engagements. In all the battles I’d fought against them so far, the Drekis had displayed excellent tactics and seemed to make straightforward logistical decisions.
But this was a very young interplanetary war against a previously unknown enemy.
While nobody knew exactly what to expect, it was certain our new adversaries didn’t have unlimited resources. If they had, we’d have already been exterminated. But past experience is often the worst indicator of future performance.
I’d found that out the hard way.
CHAPTER FIVE
It is even better to act quickly and err than to hesitate until the time of action is past.
~Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz
“You had me worried,” I said to Abrel.
“I’m good to go,” he said. “I didn’t have time to shoot a ranging laser before I jumped.”
“I can see that. Probably just as well.”
“Yeah, I might have hesitated to jump into a five-kilometer-deep canyon.”
Callie, Mallsin, and I had traversed the steep walls in more of a controlled fall than a hike, but Abrel had tumbled out of control. The bottom of the abyss contained a dry riverbed. Other than a few small shrubs and cactus-like plants, there were no signs of life. The last hundred meters of the valley wall was sheer rock, and I concluded that at some point in the history of the river it had been a raging monster. Because none of us carried Plastite-Webbing while on sniper missions, we lacked the material to build a ladder.
“We need to add an engineer to our team,” Abrel said.
“Or carry PW,” Mallsin offered.
Callie attempted to climb the cliff using cracks and crevices, but she eventually gave up. “I’m not giving up the space for P-Web, but I second the idea we should consider requesting an engineer. We can’t climb out here. We’ll have to hike upriver.”
The dry riverbed seemed flat to me. “How do we know which way is up?”
“Upriver, downriver, it’s a guess either way,” she said. “What difference will it make?”
“We could go up the other side,” Abrel suggested. “It’s not as steep.”
“It’ll put us even farther from the retrieval boat,” Mallsin said. “I say we pick a direction and search for a way up the same side we climbed down.”
Our retrieval time was in four standard hours. While the exact location hadn’t been set, the general ten-click sector was stored on our limited maps. We were at least twenty-five kilometers away from the LZ and perhaps as much as thirty-five.
“We don’t want to get stranded on Drekiland,” Callie mused.
“Now who’s Captain Obvious?” I asked.
“We’d better move out,” Mallsin said. She pointed to her right. “I vote that way.”
“Fine with me,” Abrel said.
“Okay, let’s go,” I ordered.
We walked for an hour; the scenery didn’t change.
“We might be lost,” Callie said.
Abrel stopped walking. “It’s possible this cliff extends a hundred kilometers.”
“Maybe we should split up,” Mallsin suggested.
“No, too much could go wrong.” I didn’t want the risks associated with breaking our party in two. We were already vulnerable, and we only had three hours before the retrieval boat landed to take us back up to the Kuznetsov. I looked up the opposite side of the valley and wondered how long it would take to reach the rim. From there, perhaps, we’d be able to see if one direction or another was better.
After a few minutes of introspection, I announced, “I think we need to start thinking in terms of being stranded here.”
“Jesus,” Callie said. “We should at least keep heading in this direction until we’ve absolutely missed the boat.”
“Roger that,” I said.
We walked for two and a half more hours before the obvious couldn’t be denied.
The retrieval boat would be forced to leave without us.
“Should we send up a burst or not?” Abrel asked.
When a soldier misses a pickup, it was SOP to inform Command via a sat-comm burst. The exception to this rule was when the comm would expose the soldier to direct enemy threat. The intel we’d been supplied twelve hours before indicated that the only Dreki uni
ts anywhere close were those we’d been battling, so a sat-comm burst seemed relatively safe.
“Let’s hike another half hour,” I said. “If we don’t find a way out, I’ll type up a report.”
Wildlife and plants were scarce. We observed a pair of shelled reptiles that looked like a failed breeding experiment between a desert tortoise and an iguana, but they didn’t appear dangerous. The strange creatures were roughly a meter in diameter, moved slowly, and ignored our presence.
We also noticed a group of flying animals. Their altitude was too high for us to determine if they were birds, reptiles, or a weird combination. They circled like vultures, and their wings reminded me of a picture of a mythical Chinese dragon.
At the thirty-minute mark, I found a place to sit and type a field report.
“I’m ready,” I said.
“Check,” Abrel said. “I’m as good as I can get defensively.”
The two women answered similarly, having taken cover behind a boulder. I sent the burst up to the Kuznetsov and prepared for an enemy response. My intuition told me that we were too far off the grid to be noticed, but it usually paid to be extra paranoid when you were in uncharted territory. We waited an hour before letting our guard down.
“How long until they get back to us?” Callie asked.
“God only knows. It’s Command. It’s a new planet. Take a break. Eventually, someone with decision-making ability will get my report.”
“Likely someone in accounting.” Abrel was cynical and believed that rescues were driven by the cost of hardware, not the personnel.
He probably wasn’t too far from the truth.
Six hours later we were still sitting with our backs against the natural stone wall. We were restless and bored, but nevertheless happy we hadn’t been discovered by the enemy. We passed the time playing spades and cataloging the few animals we saw. Eventually, I received a message from Command.
<
I selected Y.
To: Second Lieutenant Ford, Avery
UNSN: AF-98o8-9oo876.rkl
CIRO: Joint Forces Command Section Velmonsitder
Lieutenant Ford:
Updated mission:
Proceed to the following section:
<
Unforeseen circumstances have necessitated that
the Kuznetsov leave orbit over the planet known as:
System CAT: ODY–277.4883.006 (Drekiland)
Retrieval: Unknown <
Recon only.
Maintain no-contact protocol.
Map and catalog.
I opened the attachment.
For general distribution:
Command regrets the unfortunate circumstances leading to your situation.
All troops should continue to follow their last standing orders.
If retrieval is not forthcoming, all troops are required to follow proper self-destruct protocols.
May whatever deity you worship grant you mercy.
S/ General Vinstooler
16FEB2311 HCE
YOD12.3453 TCT
8976.34.32 PEC
I’d been expanding my Guritain vocabulary, so I tried a new curse word. “Echovel.”
“What?” Callie asked.
“Our new orders,” I answered.
I forwarded the messages to my squad.
“Golvin,” Abrel said. “They’ve stranded us on this godforsaken planet. This can’t be good.”
“We might only be alive because we were stranded,” Callie said.
“It’s not easy to take out a Makarov-class starship,” Mallsin said. She was the optimistic opposite to Abrel’s pessimism. “I’m sure it only moved somewhere in this solar system. We’re scheduled to remain here for another six-month tour of duty.”
“Since when do schedules matter?” Abrel asked.
“I’m just saying we shouldn’t panic. It’s not helpful to start thinking we’ll be forced to de-suit, captured by the Drekis, and forced into slavery.”
Abrel raised his arms in a questioning gesture. “Who says they take prisoners?”
I hadn’t heard of troops being taken as prisoners, but that didn’t mean it didn’t happen. On the other hand, for all I knew the Drekis might eat humans and purvasts. I thought better of raising this point, so instead, I invented something upbeat to say.
I explained how it was better to think positively and that everything would be okay.
“I’m sure it’s just a minor glitch,” I finished.
After listening to my little speech, Mallsin frowned. “You’re just saying that.”
I’ll give her credit for being observant. Even to my ear my encouragement sounded like a cheesy soliloquy.
“Avery’s right,” Callie said a moment later. She often jumped in to support positive thinking. “It won’t help us to think the worst.”
“I’ll self-destruct before being taken prisoner by whatever creatures those things are,” Abrel said.
“Nobody’s being taken prisoner,” I said. “And nobody is going to get eaten, either.”
“Eaten?” they all responded.
The recon coordinates Command had ordered us to investigate were in the opposite direction from the way we’d been traveling. Fortunately, our new route was also away from the steep cliff. We climbed up the opposite valley wall, which was steep but didn’t include impassable cliff faces. On occasion, we were forced to crawl, but at least it was a doable trek. After reaching the top, we made the halfway point two days later.
On the way we saw more of the tortoise-iguanas, a few dozen flying creatures, and various animals that were similar to the kinds of snakes, lizards, spiders, and ants you’d find in the tri-planets. At this point in our journey not a single creature had appeared dangerous to us.
Then again, not many creatures could threaten a soldier in a suit.
The flying things had never dropped low enough for us to determine the type of creatures they were. It was entirely possible that reptiles had evolved to become the dominant species, and the birdlike creatures were mammalian, or something else outside my imagination.
“Any of you guys think we can laser range one of those?” I asked, indicating the overhead forms during a break.
“What for?” Abrel asked.
“Just curious,” I answered. “We don’t have any clue how big they are. It’s not possible to get a gauge on their size with only the sky in the background. There’s nothing to use for scale.”
“They look like little birds,” Callie said. “Seagulls, maybe.”
“Seagulls?” Mallsin had little patience with ridiculous observations. We weren’t even remotely close to an ocean.
Callie reconsidered. “Well, okay. Vultures.”
Abrel lifted his arm, and I watched him try to get a range.
“Golvin,” he said. “They’re really high. I can’t get a bead on…oh, bloody Golvin…”
“What?” I said, standing. I prepared to be attacked, but Abrel was only commenting on the creatures.
“They’re over two kilometers up.”
“Impossible,” I declared. “That would make them longer than a heli-jet.”
Troops who’ve been in the field for more than a day are always on the lookout for practical jokes. Neither Callie nor Mallsin was willing to believe Abrel wasn’t making fun of us. I watched them both wave their arms around, trying to get their ranging lasers to land on one of the beasts.
“Crap,” Callie said. “He’s not joking. I hit one at two point two kilometers.”
“Same,” Mallsin said. “What are they?”
I pulled out my sniper’s scope. It took over ten minutes to get a decent picture of one.
Mammalian dragons were the closest description I could give the creatures. They were easily the size of a heli-jet, at least in length and wingspan. I guessed they were similar to bats, except their necks were long, as were their tails.
“Well, t
he good news is that if we have to de-suit, the Drekis won’t get us,” Abrel observed.
“They might be vegetarians,” Mallsin said.
“Yeah, sure. They might also lay gold eggs and want to be our friends.”
“Don’t be mean.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Hey, Abrel,” Callie interrupted. “Be nice. We already have enough burdens on our shoulders.”
“Sorry,” he said. “We should move out.”
“Agreed.” I packed my gear and led the way.
We trekked another two days before reaching the edge of the area we’d been sent to recon. It was too late at night to safely move around if there were Drekis nearby, so we remained under the cover of thick brush on a riverbank and scanned what we could. Besides visual surveillance, we used heat, sound, and radio-wave sensors. There were pits in the mud across the river, and it was apparent that the area had been recently occupied.
“It looks similar to gemstone operations I’ve seen,” Abrel said.
“I’ve seen diamond mines that looked just like this,” Mallsin added.
We’d left the desert and sand behind us the previous day and entered a hilly region with patches of scraggly vegetation. The river was rust colored, and the banks appeared to be clay. A small floating dock near the pits jutted into the waterway twenty-five meters, but no boats were visible.
Neither were there any signs of activity.
“What do you think, Avery?” Abrel asked.
“We’ll stay put until after dawn tomorrow,” I answered. “And then we’ll reevaluate and see if we can spot any aliens before they spot us.”
“Spades, anyone?” Callie asked.
We played spades until well past one in the morning. Our clocks, having been adjusted to the planet’s twenty-six-hour, forty-seven-minute day, were set to wake us up thirty minutes before dawn.
Callie messaged me on our private comm. “You think we’ll be okay?”
“Sure,” I said. “We always figure something out.”
“There’s no dino-lizards here, but those bat things gave me the creeps.”
“Well, we haven’t seen one for over a day. I think we’re okay.”
