by Michael Ryan
The senator thought for a moment and then canceled the arrest team. He glared at Balestain and shook his head. “Fine, Major. You win. I hope you understand what you’re putting in jeopardy.”
“I’ve operated in the Biragon theater. It’s hard – no, impossible – for you to understand what’s out there if you haven’t. You look at a map and think a little space of green covers a short distance. You believe a kilometer is a kilometer. All you see is distance. But it’s not like that. It’s beyond anything you can imagine. Dense jungle so thick a mecha can’t cut through it. Mud so deep a tank can literally disappear.”
The senator spread his palms in front of him. “I understand it’s treacherous. But the lab is our last hope.”
“The lab’s hidden like a leaf on a tree. You can’t see it until someone points it out to you.” Balestain paused. “That is, of course, assuming the enemy doesn’t already know where it is.”
The senator’s brow furrowed. “You believe we’ve been compromised?”
“I always expect the worst,” Balestain answered.
“You think a Tedesconian would betray us? A spy? I find that difficult to imagine, even as jaded as I am.”
Major Balestain moved to the door. “I’ve built my career by believing even the worst expectations are never pessimistic enough. As far as my insubordination, go ahead and file a report with the general upon his arrival if you like – it won’t change anything.” He opened the door and didn’t look back.
~~~
Four weeks later, Balestain’s insistence on positioning a regiment in the Biragon had vindicated him.
The major didn’t like being inside his two-man command mecha, but it provided him the best opportunity for field observation in the jungle. The operator was a seasoned veteran who’d survived countless battles, not that the major was particularly worried about death. He was more anxious about mission failure, after having allowed himself the briefest of hopes that the scientists working in the lab could actually produce a war-ending superweapon.
He chastised himself for the uncharacteristically naïve optimism.
Of course the Guritain forces had discovered the location of the lab.
He’d feared they would, which was why he’d insisted on stationing his men in the middle of the rainforest.
“Second Platoon, move a click north and hold,” he said over Bravo Company’s communication channel.
“Sir,” his mecha operator interrupted, “I’m picking up another set of drop infantry. Fifty clicks southwest.”
Balestain frowned. “Send probable landing coordinates to an available rail-cannon crew.”
“Yes, sir.”
A flurry of missiles appeared from out of nowhere and encircled the mecha. He watched on the display screen as the operator fired chaff and Gauss rounds while expertly moving the robot-like contrivance through the trees. The mecha’s left arm-appendage straightened, and a mini-rail-gun fired HE shots in the air in a high arc. When the operator concluded the defensive salvo, he instantly repositioned behind an embankment of dirt and rocks. Moments later, incoming mortar rounds landed harmlessly near their last position.
The battle between Gurt Specialized Drop Infantry and various Ted companies continued for hours. The Gurts expended their energy on entrenched positions and lost three for every Ted they neutralized in a grim war of attrition. During a lull in the assault, Balestain recognized an opportunity and ordered the mecha operator to advance. “Take out the squad of TCI-Armor that’s a half click to your east.”
“Sir, I see them.”
The mecha lumbered through the trees like a clumsy prehistoric beast, toppling saplings in its path. The operator showered the Gurt squad with Gauss bolts while he calculated precision shots with kinetic energy rounds. The Gurts returned fire, and the mecha advanced and launched a dozen grenades.
An armored infantryman rushed from a hiding place and, avoiding the projectiles, fired a missile at close range, which glanced off the mecha’s armor and went flying into space. The mecha leapt on the armored soldier, crushing the Gurt in the mud while another enemy circled behind it. The mecha operator commanded the mecha to stomp on the soldier, and then fired an HE round into the prone enemy beneath its feet. The blast nearly knocked the robot over, but the operator held his ground and spun to face the new threat at its back.
It was too late to stop the incoming projectile. The HE grenade exploded at close range, damaging an armored panel on the mecha’s back that protected a munitions bay.
The next moment, a round fired at point-blank range blew the Gurt to pieces.
“Sir, we’ve taken some damage,” the operator said.
“Disregard it if it isn’t critical,” the major said, squinting at his screen. “A Gurt beacon just lit up. If we hurry, we can be the welcoming party.” He paused. “I’d hate for the escape boat to miss some genuine Ted hospitality.”
The operator grinned. “Yes, sir. On the way.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.
~ Sun Tzu
Mortars, missiles, and small rounds flew in all directions. Smoke rose in plumes over the rainforest canopy. Fighter craft ripped across the sky, dropped their payloads, and evaded missiles.
We couldn’t see the mecha or other heavy ground equipment; the jungle was too dense. But fire, pandemonium, and death were as present as the trees.
The fighting continued through the night and into the following day. The sun briefly burned through an oily haze in the late morning, but afternoon clouds blotted out the light and turned everything gray.
In the evening, it began to drizzle, and when darkness finally came, the rain was a deluge.
“Should we move?” Callie asked.
“What’s your assessment?”
“We’re getting our asses kicked.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
“We’re badly outnumbered. Plus they’re defending, so they can just lie back and wait for our next offensive and cut it apart. Did you see that last squadron of heli-jets?”
“Yes.”
“They were transporting more mechas.”
“I saw,” I said. “You think Command will send reinforcements?”
“No. I think they’ll read our reports and retreat. What’s the point anymore?”
“They don’t like to retreat,” I said. “You think they’ll level the ridge?”
“Why waste ordnance?”
“It’ll keep the Teds from reusing the lab. Even though we burned the bodies and some of their gear, the bulk of their investment is intact.”
“To destroy something that deep…”
“They’d have to drop a dozen–”
“We need to leave,” Callie said. “If our boys are going to pull out, they’ll do it before sunrise. If Command decides to nuke this ridge, we’re going to get buried here.”
I had no rebuttal to her logic. “Okay, where to?” I asked. “If they send a retrieval boat, it’s going to have to land at least a hundred and fifty clicks from here or it’ll be a bloodbath trying to get off-planet.”
If we weren’t close to the beacon when the boat came, we’d never receive the hail. We’d either have to get lucky or expect Command to send out a burst specifically for us. The fallback would be to return and join the Fourth Platoon.
“We should get out of here,” I said. “If we get a hail, we’ll follow it to the beacon. If not, we’ll continue back and reunite with the Fourth. They’re probably camped in the jungle, bored out of their minds, since all the action is here.”
“I wouldn’t mind some boredom,” Callie said.
“Let’s hope our trek’s boring, seeing as we don’t have shit for ammo.”
“I think we’ll be good. Who’s going to be moving in this soup?”
“True.” Torrential rains had turned the jungle into a swamp. Heavy equipment got stuck trying to maneuver, and fighting in a
rmor was close to impossible.
“So?”
“Let’s pack up.” We stored our sniper rifles and left our assault rifles on our backs. The TCI-Armor was designed to work with the natural movement of the body, and we’d be faster runners with our arms free. Running was about all we’d be doing since we were out of everything but Gauss rounds.
I plotted some potential routes and sent her the maps.
“I like this one,” she said, sending one of the images back to me with proposed alterations.
“Let’s do it.”
~~~
After crisscrossing along the ridge, we entered the jungle and ran as quickly as we could under the cover of the trees.
“Incoming,” Callie said.
“I got it.” A missile, launched from high above us, was homing in on my suit. I was surprised they were wasting munitions. At this range, the odds of success for this sort of attack were abysmal. Perhaps it was similar to a dog barking – more warning than anything else. I stood directly behind a large tree, and Callie flattened herself on the ground, her camo activated so I was the only target. The missile had to navigate through forest and rain, so I didn’t arm myself with my Gauss. Instead, I waited for the missile to pass the point of no return.
Like a game of chicken.
I bolted from the tree using a burst of jet assist. I made for a second tree, but the cover wasn’t necessary. The missile toppled the tree I’d been using as a decoy and vaporized the trunk.
I went to Callie, and we took off toward a river we’d identified on our escape map.
“Any special spot you want to cross?” she asked. I let her lead, and slowed until she was a hundred and seventy-five meters ahead, leaving space between us for maneuverability.
“Lead the way,” I said.
“On three?”
“Two.”
“One,” she said. Callie made a hard left turn and exited the tree line. She was nearly to the river when her boots got bogged down in the mud. A warning flashed on our screens – a missile had locked onto her. “Avery!”
“I got you,” I said. “Don’t move.”
“I’m…scared.” She’d sunk to her knees. Struggling in the thick clay trap would likely make her more stuck.
“Hold still,” I said calmly. “Stay cool.”
I sprinted from the trees and ran into her at full speed with my head down and my arms out.
The trick to evading a missile in the open was not to move until the last possible moment. A missile can adjust to a running soldier, but a stationary one moving just before impact can sometimes escape its wrath. Callie and I tumbled together into the river as the missile struck the bank where she’d just been, and exploded.
The river was swollen from the rains, and despite the weight of our suits, we were dragged along by the muddy rush.
TCI-Armor is heavy and will sink to the bottom in even a strong current; however, the flooding had increased the river’s pull to where we were tumbling together somewhere below the surface but above the deep bottom. My arms were locked around Callie’s midsection, and we endured the battering as the riverbed rose to slam into us, bouncing us back into the undertow for another dizzying stretch downriver.
Eventually we stopped when we tangled in a snarl of toppled trees and roots at a narrow bend.
When it was clear we weren’t going to be dragged along any farther, I retrieved my blade and managed to free myself without losing contact with Callie. She did the same, and once away from the debris, we waded through the shallows to the shore.
“Let’s not do that again,” she said.
“No kidding. Any idea where we are?”
“Way downstream from where we wanted to be.”
We couldn’t activate our locator chips or we’d be clear targets for any bogies the Teds felt like hitting us with; and without a fix on where we were on the river’s course, our route calcs were meaningless. We moved into the jungle, reluctant to remain in the open any longer than necessary after the missile near miss. Streams of rain showered from the overhead canopy, saturating the ground beneath our feet and making for slow going. Deep patches of mud and the occasional stretch of quicksand were dangerous traps for our armor.
“How are we going to cut through this, assuming we can even find our way?” Callie asked.
“Let’s find a tall tree.” We hiked to a high spot and selected a promising banyan whose top jutted above the canopy. At the highest point, we could safely perch and scan the surroundings for heat or light signatures.
Nothing popped out.
The rain and overcast were too thick for us to get a visual on much, so we decided to stay put until daybreak.
~~~
By dawn the rain had eased to a drizzle, and by mid-morning the sun was filtering through the last of the clouds. We’d been swept much farther downriver than either us had imagined; nothing we could see corresponded to our route map. The ridge and battlefield were to the northwest, but we had no practical means to determine the distance.
“Should we try to find the Fourth?” Callie asked.
“Or see if we can find the landing party?”
“Maybe we should risk comm and get a map.” She didn’t sound convinced that was a good idea, and I didn’t like our odds.
“No. Let’s head northwest and see if we can get a ride.”
“All right, let’s–”
“Hold one, I’ve got something,” I said. A beacon hit the ground six clicks from our position.
“I see it,” she said. “Can we make it?”
The retrieval boat would be on the ground in under an hour.
“No problem,” I said. “Provided we don’t get stuck again.”
“Let’s move.”
“Hold one,” I said. A troop of screaming monkey-like creatures scattered from a couple of hundred meters to my left. “Check out that area, about two hundred seventy degrees. Do they look–”
“I see something,” she said. “Our troops or theirs?”
Observing details through the dense jungle was nearly impossible. We couldn’t ping them; it would likely be answered by a couple of missiles. “I can’t see, but they’re headed toward the beacon.”
“Let’s trail them at a safe distance,” she suggested.
We gave the group five minutes of lead and followed in their footsteps. After traveling three clicks, we got a glimpse of them. Five armored Ted scouts were heading toward the LZ. We stayed on their trail at a safe enough distance so their sensors wouldn’t detect us, and crept through the jungle behind them, weapons at the ready. Half a click from the beacon, they set up an ambush to snare our incoming troops.
“We ambush the ambushers?” Callie asked.
“I’ve got four devil rounds,” I said. “You’ve still got all yours, don’t you?”
“Yeah, so we only have to shoot with fifty percent accuracy.”
She was mostly joking – we rarely missed a well-prepared shot. The problem was the five targets were spread out. We could set up on two of them and fire simultaneously, but then we’d have lost the element of surprise, and it would be three against two – and the Teds almost certainly had more weaponry than we did. To make matters worse, with the beacon counting down, the clock was literally ticking.
“We should wait until our crew shows up,” I suggested. “Then we take down two of the Teds and move. That will screw their ambush, and our gang can join the party and neutralize the rest.”
“Agreed. I’ll take target one and you take target five.”
“Moving.”
I left Callie, found a promising spot to set up the sniper rifle, and zeroed in on my target.
The waiting began.
~~~
It wasn’t long before Gurt troops appeared from the edge of the jungle.
“Fire when the fourth friendly shows,” I said. I suspected the Teds lying in ambush would wait until they had five targets in sight. As I knew from my prior practice with the MQ-12, a round, properly
placed, would take down an armored soldier with one shot. I targeted the base of the armored trooper’s neck and fired at the same moment as Callie.
The round did its job.
Inside the suit, an MQ slug doesn’t have the force to exit, so it bounces around the armor like a pachinko ball.
A stream of blue liquid sprayed from the entry hole, depressurizing the suit with a loud hiss and announcing that the Teds were caught in a crossfire.
A firefight broke out when the Gurts opened up on them.
I shifted my sights to the next enemy’s position, but the Ted had shifted to better cover and I didn’t have a clear shot.
“Status?” Callie asked.
“One down. I don’t have a second op yet.”
“I got two.”
“Braggart.”
The Gurts engaged the remaining Teds with their Gauss rifles, so apparently they were as low on ammo as we were.
“I’m moving,” I said.
“I can cover you from here as long as you don’t pass this point.” She sent me a picture marked with two locations. “If you stop at the mark, I think you can get a line of fire on them.”
“Got it.” I took off toward the spot and set up another shot.
The Gurts were fighting defensively, but their presence was forcing the Teds to guard themselves from two directions. The Teds realized they were pinned down and attempted to evade us by moving laterally, but it was too late.
I nailed my second kill of the day, and one of the Gurts lobbed a grenade into a hole the remaining soldier had scrambled into in a last-ditch effort for cover.
~~~
“Thanks for the assist,” one of the Gurts said after he’d pinged me and I’d accepted his message request.
“Anytime. We heard the beacon,” I replied.
“You’re a long way from the Fourth.” The soldier’s identifier placed him with Fifth Platoon, Alpha Company.
“We had a mission, got swept up in a river flood, and now we’re here.”
“And a good thing, too.”
“You’re welcome.”
Callie broke into our comm. “Okay, ass-kissing’s over. The boat will be here soon, but soon’s relative. Keep your eyes peeled.”
