by JR Handley
Least my training didn’t rely on all this tech, she told herself as she scanned.
Right now, her only benefit seemed to be enhanced hearing, as she heard the distant sounds of battle floating in on the slight breeze causing the leaves to dance around the moss she was currently kneeling in. Pak bounded over, motioning to his far left.
CRACK.
A mossy patch on the ground to Sashala’s right popped in a cloud of green dust. Rolling into a prone position with some rocks as cover, Sashala scanned the trees while Jade began her work. Pak smashed his back flat against a tree.
“Pak, hold your position,” said Sashala. “Don’t move.”
“Roger that,” he replied.
Moments later, Sashala’s helmet reticle highlighted a figure in the trees. The furry creature, which looked like the result of a monkey mating with a wolf, was almost comical in appearance. The fact that it was trying to kill her erased the humor.
The Hardit fired again, and the sabot it launched embedded in the rock in front of Sashala, causing bits of dust to land on her back. The drenting monkey was upside down and holding onto the tree branch with its long, fully prehensile tail. Its clawed feet clung to the branch and stabilized it. Despite this, it still rocked slightly after firing the carbine balanced in its hands. The rifle was a Hardit variant she hadn’t seen before. Sashala couldn’t help but think the creature looked primitive, but she’d worked with enough of them to know how cunning and crafty they could be.
“Firing,” said Sashala, her words were barely audible.
In one seamless movement, she brought her carbine up, sighted, and gently eased the trigger. Despite the distance, Jade could detect the dull thud of the Hardit hitting the damp soil.
“Beautiful shot, Sash,” said Pak.
It bothered her that these new-era Marines used first names. Despite the slight annoyance, she gave a thumbs-up with her non-firing hand. Taking a moment, she viewed a quick slow-motion replay of her shot. It was a trick she’d been taught by the modern Marines to self-assess her skills with each long-range shot. The replay followed the sabot and revealed that her aim had been off. She’d targeted the frakker’s forehead but blown apart its toothy maw.
Satisfied that they were momentarily safe, Sashala looked over for Pak. He was gone.
“Pak, where the frakk are you?” Sashala said into the comms line.
There was no answer. Jade locked onto Pak’s armor signature, and Sashala followed it down a steep leafy embankment. Her metal-encased feet dug into the ground as she slid down. Almost falling, she tapped her assault thrusters, and a quick blast of air righted her. When she reached the bottom of the ravine, the flow of water lapped around her feet. The rocky creek cut through the dirt, and a few meters away, she saw Pak lying face down on a pile of rocks, his helmet submerged in water.
She splashed over, grabbed him by the handle on the back of his armor, and dragged him out of the creek to the muddy embankment. Flipping him over, she could see his helmet visor was cracked, and the entire fishbowl had filled with water. It only took Sashala a few seconds for her fingers to find the clasps holding his helmet on. Once the helmet was out of the way, she saw a gash on his forehead, running from his stubbly hairline to the bridge of nose.
Sashala, a biometric scan reveals water in the lungs, Jade chimed in Sashala’s ears. Acting on instinct, Sashala unclasped her helmet and pulled it free. Her lips pressed his as she forced air into his mouth. Pak’s lips were icy cold. She didn’t have to do chest compressions, since the ACE-2 Combat Suit had this feature built into it, as well as a defibrillator if needed.
The mechanical hum of Pak’s suit pushing on his chest, following the exhale of breath Sashala forced into his lungs, was rhythmic. The rhythm was broken when Pak coughed a mouthful of water all over Sashala’s face.
While Pak struggled to regain his breath, Sashala put her helmet back on and began scanning the surrounding area again.
“How the frakk did you end up face-first in the water?”
“My AI picked up multiple hostiles to your rear while you were dealing with the Hardit sniper,” said Pak. “I moved to the rear to secure your position and slipped. That’s all I remember.”
While he cleared his head and sprayed clotting foam on his forehead, Sashala performed emergency maintenance on his helmet so it would function enough to allow him to operate at moderate efficiency. He wouldn’t be able to use it in the void, but his AI would be able to assist his aim as long as the enemy wasn’t directly in front of him, where the hairline crack would obscure his vision. Getting the helmet functioning as well as she could, Sashala tossed it into his lap.
“Thanks, Sash. I wasn’t sure your old arse had it in you,” he wheezed out. “As soon as I can breathe, we’ll track down Vanderman. Have to find” —he gasped— “find him. He’s all that’s left alive from my crèche.”
“Vanderman may be an idiot, but he’s one of the only moderns I’ve meet who knows his arse from a hole in the ground,” replied Sashala. “Since you two are friends, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.”
Pak laughed. “Benefit of the doubt? Frakk off!” he told her as he punched her arm.
Convinced that Pak was good to go, she helped him don his helmet and waited while he serviced his weapon. Satisfied that they were as ready as could be expected, they sprinted towards Vanderman’s last known position at a low crouch. She only hoped that the lack of any signal from him didn’t mean he was dead.
It was a hard run through the trees, pushing through dense underbrush that caught on their armor, bounding over dead logs, and struggling not to lose their footing in the mud or on the slimy moss that seemed to coat every surface.
The duo paused occasionally, using the environment as cover, and scanned for any more of the Hardits. Sashala knew better than to trust her sensors in the dense wilderness, and insisted that they bound forward in some semblance of tactical coordination. At each of the waypoints, they made use of the huge tree trunks to provide cover, hydrate, and to allow Pak to catch his breath.
Pak was wheezing and clutching at his side with each breath. Short, raspy gasps were giving him little air, and the lack of oxygen was killing his ability to keep up.
“What’s going on with your breathing? You moderns PT as part of your training, right?”
“I dunno, Sash. My side is killing me,” said Pak. “Feels like a knife cutting into my lungs every time I try to take in air. Frakk!”
“I think you cracked a rib,” replied Sashala as she dropped to a knee. “Don’t know why your AI isn’t picking it up. Go ahead and have it administer some painkillers. If it gets worse, you’ll probably get dosed with combat drugs, and even I won’t be able to keep up with your skinny arse when that happens.”
Sashala watched as Pak’s heaving lessened. In about twelve seconds, he went from sucking air to ready to rock. He gave her the thumbs-up, and they continued their trek.
Ducking under a vine and jumping over a rock, Pak sounded in Sashala’s ears.
“You think Dock is really going to come back for us? What if he got shot down after he dumped us?”
“One thing at a time, Pak,” Sashala replied. “Let’s find Vanderman, and then we’ll worry about what’s next. Dock left coordinates for us, so we’ll find out.”
Pak didn’t reply. Sashala didn’t say it, but she was worried, too. Fifteen minutes wasn’t much time. If they didn’t make the initial pickup, Dock would take his Stork and hide it in the lake surrounding Sarpedona Island. The Human Legion assault force was planning on detonating a gamma bomb, and the Stork’s electronics would be shielded under the water. The Stork was also the Legion assaulters’ underwater exfiltration point.
When the time came, Dock would pick those Marines up, then go to the rendezvous point, hopefully. That could be hours of waiting. If the drenting Spacer bothered to tell Major McEwan about their plight, she knew the major would order their retrieval. But after she’d had to “convince” Dock to lan
d, she wondered if he wouldn’t just report them dead. She figured Dock was a duty-bound Spacer, but a knife to the balls makes people do crazy things.
A proximity alert rang in Sashala’s ears, tearing her from those useless thoughts. They had closed on the last known position of Vanderman’s combat armor. They were close, but they’d still have to manually search the area, trees and all.
“Jade, do one last calculation of the fall and provide—”
It’s already done, Jade replied. Vanderman’s last known position is twenty-one meters northeast and approximately ten meters up.
“What does your AI mean by ‘up’?” said Pak.
Sashala didn’t answer; she didn’t need to. Vanderman was hanging by his ankles from a tree ahead. His feet were lashed to a branch by ropes of some kind, and the top half of his ACE-2 Combat Suit had been removed, leaving him bare-skinned. He had been eviscerated from navel to neck. It appeared an animal had broken his ribs outward and scratched out his lungs, heart, and other organs. Pak was gone in an instant, running toward his dead friend and screaming his rage against the situation.
While Pak ran to his friend, Sashala sprinted to a large tree behind them. She knew a trap when she saw one. She shouted into her helmet for Pak to stop, but there was no reply.
His helmet comms were damaged by his fall, said Jade. I am unsure if he can hear you at this proximity, but I can confirm he can’t respond.
Combining the speed of her sprint with her assault thrusters, she nimbly bounced and bounded her way up into the large tree. Air blasted from the pack built into the back of her armor, giving her the extra power to make the leaps.
“Jade, highlight targets,” said Sashala. “Give me thermal.”
While the view through Sashala’s helmet reticle flashed to black and white, with living targets glowing red and pink, she ripped smoke grenades from her leg and rained them down around Pak and Vanderman. It took only a moment for the opaque fog to fill the area, trapped between the foliage of the trees and the ground below.
Sabots cracked through the woods as Hardits all around her blindly opened fire. Sashala could see the crimson outline of Pak cutting Vanderman down and holding him. Leaning heavily into the tree trunk, Sashala could also see they were outgunned by a superior force. It was a bad place for anyone with a shred of tactical acumen to find herself.
But Sashala knew she wasn’t just anyone. Distance, wind, heat, gravity, trajectory, bullet penetration: all of this was accounted for by Jade. The moment the numbers and estimations returned, Sashala began hitting targets. Pop. Pop. Slowly and steadily, she engaged. Pop. Slowly and steadily, the Hardits around her fell to the ground and died. A few howled in agony as the invisible demon pierced through the veil and stung them, but more met their ends instantly.
Pak was acting as an unwitting distraction as he sprayed the area around him with sabots. It appeared to Sashala that he hoped to find vengeance for Vanderman. More likely, his sabots would deviate and hit her.
After flipping on her voice amplification, she shouted to Pak. The sound of her voice echoed along the trees.
“Pak, I am at your three o’clock high! Check your fire.”
Pak adjusted his fire and continued his fully automatic assault on the trees and foliage around him. Sashala, on the other hand, chose targets carefully, each sabot delivering death or incapacitating injuries to the enemy. Within minutes, there was only silence, and the smoke below had begun to dissipate.
Sashala leaped down from the branch on which she was perched and ran over to Pak. He had slung his rifle and was holding Vanderman. Flies buzzed around, quick to take advantage of the newly provided food.
“Pak, he’s gone. We have to move,” said Sashala.
“We can’t just leave him like this. Look what those frakking beasts did to him!”
It was a grim sight. Vanderman’s intestines and organs had been strewn about the area. The knife the Hardits had gutted him with lay broken amidst the debris. Vanderman’s body had been marked with bloody writing. It was in a language Sashala couldn’t read, so she took quick pictures through her helmet and continued scanning the area.
“Vanderman was a great Marine, but that firefight is going to pull every Hardit in the area on top of us,” said Sashala. She kneeled next to Pak as she continued. “We stay here, we join Vanderman. We leave, and we get a chance to make these frakkers pay.”
Not trusting Pak, who was obviously mourning his friend, Sashala scanned around the area. She couldn’t detect any Hardits nearby.
Jade sounded in her ears. Sashala, my scanners are being jammed. It isn’t just the dense foliage. I can account for that. The Hardits are actively jamming the area. I missed it at first because they’re not using the standard White Knight jamming protocol. Now that I know what I’m looking for, I can counter it.
“How long is it going to take for you to get the sensors functioning properly? The last thing we need—”
Done. I was about to tell you I was done, replied Jade. Stop interrupting. It’s rude, and I know your mother taught you better. Now that I can actively and passively scan our surroundings, we should be better informed. I have passed this information to Pak, as well, and updated his AI.
Jade was again interrupted, this time by Pak. He sounded surprisingly calm and resolute for a Marine who’d just found his friend’s gutted body.
“Can you find specific signatures? I want the frakk sticks who did this to my friend,” he demanded of Jade.
“At ease, Marine. Nothing we can do for him now,” said Sashala. “Besides, he would have needed to be wearing his helmet for us to have access to any sort of cam footage to pull that off. Right now, we need to push hard for the rendezvous. Dock gave us fifteen mikes. We’re already hurting for time.”
She knew sympathy wasn’t what Pak needed right now. A Marine needs a mission, a point to focus on. Right now, their focus had to be getting to the rendezvous. The time for mourning and grok-drinking would come later.
It was hidden deeper, but she felt the pull of her emotions. Vanderman had been the only one who truly appreciated knives as she did, and he was one of the only Marines she liked after being thawed. Now he was gone. Jade puffed air in Sashala’s face and brought her back into the moment.
“All right, Pak. You know what has to happen,” said Sashala. “Let’s do it.”
They didn’t have time to bury Vanderman, but they did need to strip his AI, his equipment, and booby-trap his body. To the casual observer, it would seem like desecration to lace a fallen comrade’s body with munitions and blow it to smithereens. To Marines in the field, it was one last chance for their dead pal to reach out of the grave and deliver retribution. Vanderman would be afforded this opportunity, given the circumstance.
“Pak, I’m going to leave the fireworks up to you,” said Sashala. “Vanderman’s torso armor is over here. I’m going to strip his AI.”
She had seen a piece of his armor lying in some low bushes to the right of the tree. It looked like the Hardits had hacked away at the joints of the armor to remove it from Vanderman’s torso. She just prayed he’d already been dead for that part. Crouching down near the main chest piece, which was sprayed with blood, Sashala pushed the release button where Vanderman’s AI was housed. Nothing happened. After pulling a knife from her leg sheath and moving above the button, Sashala found the manual release toggle. She snaked the tip of the blade under the ridged metal and lifted. The AI slot ejected a black polymer sleeve less than an inch wide and roughly two inches long.
The slender sleeve harbored and protected the actual AI chip. It was a precious thing, an AI, a computer intelligence that grew to know the user. For many Marines, an AI was the only steadfast companion they would have through their journey.
“Traps are set,” said Pak. “I’m ready to move.”
Sashala could detect the wobble in his voice. He wanted vengeance, but more than that, Pak probably just wanted to get as far away from this grizzly scene as possible. Pl
acing the AI chip into a protected compartment on her leg, Sashala looked over at Pak. The Marine had procured most of Vanderman’s munitions and had magnetically locked them to his armor. Grenades dotted his chest, and ammunition carousels circled his leg. Pak looked like a walking armory.
“You going to be able to move with all that extra weight?” said Sashala.
“Didn’t want it to go waste,” replied Pak. “If things go well, I’ll be lightening this load as we go. It’s not like you were going to use any of it.”
“Vanderman’s body?” said Sashala.
“It’s good to go,” Pak replied. His shoulders slumped as he spoke. “I packed his chest with enough explosives to take down a gravtank. He’d approve. I can’t think of any finer send-off.”
Sashala’s helmet reticle lit up with multiple red targeting boxes. The enemy was still a distance away, but were now closing on their position, likely alerted by the earlier firefight. They’d spent too much time with Vanderman already, and they needed to move. Saying a final silent goodbye, the two pushed onward.
Using hand and arm signals to indicate their movements, they quickly and quietly stalked through the wooded area and shuffled toward the rendezvous point. Sashala knew they were cutting it close, and that getting into a prolonged firefight would cost more precious minutes.
“Marines, where the frakk are you?!” Dock’s voice blasted through Sashala’s earpiece. “I said fifteen minutes!”
“We’re moving. Stand by for our current location,” said Sashala. “Jade, link our—”
A massive explosion sent a moderate pressure wave through the branches of the trees around them, shaking leaves down from above.
“That was Vanderman,” said Pak. “The Hardits are right on our arses.”
Sashala glanced backward in mid-trot. Her helmet reticle highlighted a swarm of approaching enemies.
“Dock, we’ve got hostiles on our six,” said Sashala. “We are approaching your position. Stand by.”
“Negative. I can’t wait and risk losing the Stork. If that explosion was you, there’s no way you can make it to my location any time soon. The Legion assault team is counting on me to be there to exfil them from Beta City. Hunker down. I’ll come back for you later.”
