Markov's Prize

by Mark Barber

  “Now that makes no sense at all,” Rae said once the vehicles were clear. “Katya, growing up outside the Concord really messed you up. You want to feel pain and sadness?”

  “It’s one of the few good things about being a soldier and being on this less restrictive shard,” Rhona replied. “I can get all of the external shard assistance and drugs stopping us from getting depressed when we watch our buddies get blown to bits, but back in the Concord proper? Hell, I don’t want my humanity getting switched off by a machine.”

  “I’ll be happy to go home, as and when the time comes,” Rae pondered. “I know they say the system only picks somebody to be a soldier because it’s either in the best interests of C3, or for the personal growth and development of the individual, but… I mean, it must be for me. I’m not exactly a natural born soldier. This has got to be for me. As and when I get released and go home, these experiences must be meant to help me somehow.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Rhona said as the two finally arrived back at the company holding point. “You’re good at this. Just as good as anybody else.”

  As soon as they arrived back, it was clear that something had changed. Seven Duke transport drones had come to a stop by the company supply dump and briefing area; the vehicles’ markings were those of Alpha Company. A line of medical drones flew rapidly over.

  Gant and Qan walked over to stand by Rhona and Rae as the battered vehicles sank slowly to the ground. Their cargo bay doors opened up in succession and wounded strike troopers were helped down by close by troopers from Beta Company.

  “Let’s give them a hand,” Gant said.

  The four jogged over to one of the drones. An uninjured strike trooper appeared at the door and called down to Rhona.

  “Body boxes,” he said wearily, “get some body boxes over.”

  Rhona and Qan ran back to the supply dump and quickly dragged one of the long rectangular boxes over to the Duke.

  “Keep ‘em coming,” the trooper said at the doorway as he manhandled the body storage device into the vehicle. “Can one of you guys give me a hand in here?” Rae jumped up into the doorway.

  “Ila!” Rhona grabbed her by the wrist. “Go get more of the boxes, I’ve got this.”

  Rhona vaulted up into the cramped confines of the vehicle and looked inside. The floor was awash with blood. Five dead troopers were neatly lined up at the far end of the cargo hold. Two had been gunned down by accurate fire which had blasted through their torsos. Another had been shredded by a fragmentation weapon. The final two had been killed in close combat; one had been torn in half whilst the last pitiful corpses had been ripped limb from limb. Rhona’s suit alerted her to a wave of shard external assistance being transmitted to her brain. She quickly set about helping the surviving soldier move the bodies of his dead squadmates. After each body was sealed in the box, the device’s control unit was used to freeze the body solid for preservation, giving the unfortunate occupant a fighting chance of having their memories preserved for the long regen process, or transfer to their stored clone.

  “Four of them,” the soldier told her, “just four Ghar in their damn machines. We couldn’t stop them, we couldn’t do anything. We lost eighteen troopers in the last hour. We only took two of them down.”

  Rhona looked up at the exhausted soldier. She found no words of consolation. A message came through the company command shard.

  “Squad Leaders, report to me immediately,” Van Noor said. “The Ghar have broken through our lines. Tell your guys to get their gear together. Now.”

  ***

  The company’s defensive line had been set up along the western edge of the city center. No camouflaged observation posts or passive drone sweeps – the positions were overt and dug in behind shimmering protective walls made up of lines of kinetic barricades. In the very center, crouched down within a c-shaped arrangement of barricades, Van Noor stared over the devastated remains of the city’s central park, whose one peaceful sea of green was now dominated by chunks of masonry from the fallen buildings which had formed its perimeter.

  Kachi knelt on one knee next to him, his carbine resting against a lip on the barricade. Cane lay prone a few paces away, lining up the sighting unit of his viewscreen with the corresponding receptor built into his carbine. Stood behind them, Owenne occasionally took a few purposeful paces up and down the line of defenses, one hand clasped at the small of his back whilst the other kept his IMTel stave – a functional tool as well as his badge of office - tucked firmly beneath one arm. Van Noor had worked with several NuHu mandarins throughout his career, and most exercised their right to individuality; he had seen flowing cloaks accompanied by IMTel staves which looked like a wizard’s staff, whereas Owenne’s predecessor was more reserved and subtle in her choice of attire. With a thick military style coat over his armor, an officer’s cap drawn over his head, and holding his stave like a walking stick, Owenne reminded Van Noor of a stuffy character from some holo-vid of an ancient war. Only the five drones which hovered around in the mandarin’s wake, under his direct control, gave him the appearance of a modern fighting man.

  A text alert flashed across Van Noor’s visor.

  “Squad Jai have confirmed visual sighting of enemy units approaching from marker alpha,” Van Noor reported to Owenne.

  “I know,” the mandarin replied coolly, his back to the enemy positions as he stared pensively out to the west.

  “Squad Jai, Command, message copied,” Van Noor transmitted a reply. “Support is available if required.”

  Two further lines of text scrolled across the screen: confirmed enemy sightings from Squads Teal and Denne. Van Noor focused on the battlespace picture provided by the combined inputs of the company’s various spotter drones. Three squads were visual, all at the northern end of the north-south line of defense. It could be a feign – the Ghar certainly were not incapable of such a maneuver – but it could be the main thrust of an attack, in which case the defenders of the northern part of the line may need further support. Van Noor opened his mouth to present the options to Owenne but was cut off by an alert from Kachi.

  “Our spotter drone’s got something, Senior! Looks like Outcasts!”

  Van Noor patched into the visual feed from the drone which was positioned to the northeast, in the corner of the city park. Two groups of small, hunched over humanoids scuttled rapidly across the park, ducking beneath felled trees and scrabbling over piles of rubble as they closed with the command squad. Each group consisted of perhaps ten Ghar, armed with primitive looking lugger guns.

  “Sir!” Van Noor called across to Owenne. “We’ve got…”

  “I’m well aware, Senior Strike Leader,” Owenne raised one eyebrow slightly. “I’ve already taken precautionary measures. It is possible to issue orders to our units using the shard mentally, as it is intended, rather than crassly just bellowing them out.”

  As if in proof, a deep ripple of artillery fire sounded from the west, and a moment later, the park was torn asunder as explosive shells slammed down from above, blowing chunks of rubble and earth into the air in front of the advancing Ghar. The next volley corrected, accurately landing amid the scrabbling panhuman morphs and flinging them up into the sky, tearing them apart in mid-air with the concussive force of the blast and the deadly barrage of shrapnel.

  “This is merely something to grab our attention,” Owenne suddenly declared. “The main push is north of here. Battlesuits, a lot of them. I’m calling in our Planetary Defense allies.”

  Van Noor turned his attention away from the carnage ahead and looked back at the mandarin.

  “What use are they?”

  “They’ve got aerospace assets, sub-orbital craft. There’s a concentration of six Ghar battlesuits to the southeast of marker beta. Call in aerospace support, would you? Their callsign is Angel.”

  The mandarin closed his eyes in concentration as Van Noor returned to his own projection of the battlefield on his viewscreen, finding the marker and patchi
ng in to Squad Denne’s spotter drone to see the fearsome image of half a dozen squat, three-legged war machines stumbling clumsily over a rubble strewn roadway toward a Concord barricade.

  “Angel, Angel, this is Beta Command,” Van Noor transmitted over the shard frequency which Owenne sent across to him. “Hostiles, strength six, transmitting marker, requesting support.”

  A deep, male voice replied immediately.

  “Beta from Angel, target acquired, we’re rolling.”

  As the boom of artillery finally stopped, the noise was instantly replaced by the banshee howl of aero engines. Two rapidly moving black dart-like shapes thundered in from the south, only a handful of yan above the horizon.

  “They’re coming in close!” Kachi said. “Why aren’t they firing missiles from distance!”

  “We sort of scrambled all of their vehicles’ guidance systems when we invaded,” Owenne shrugged. “It would appear they haven’t had time to fix them yet. Still, good of them to come join the party.”

  Van Noor watched as the two crafts arced around and commenced their attack run. From the patched view from the spotter drone, he saw the Ghar battlesuits stop and swivel in place, their weaponry painting the sky with lines of green energy. The two crafts flew straight over the top of the Ghar. Van Noor never saw the munitions which had been dropped, but a second later, the Ghar disappeared from view as a long line of fire and thick, black smoke replaced the entire area where the enemy unit had been. He smiled as somebody whooped in victory over the shard.

  His smile faded almost immediately. One after the other, five war machines emerged unscathed from the inferno behind them, leaving only a single suit incapacitated and burning.

  “Angel Flight, back in,” the lead pilot transmitted to his wingman. “Go for guns.”

  The two machines screamed in from the north, their mag guns chattering and kicking up the ground around the Ghar as thousands of projectiles tore through the sky. Again, the Ghar swiveled in place and opened fire with their multi-barreled energy weapons. A sheet of flame suddenly spat out of the rear of the second jet.

  “Mayday! Mayday! May…” a panicked female voice yelled quickly as the swept wing, dart-like aircraft banked right and fell out of the sky, flaring its nose to impact roughly into the park ahead of Van Noor and his squad.

  A wing tore off and spiraled through the air as the stricken machine flipped over, landing on its back as it ploughed a great trench through the mud. Again, it cartwheeled around and shed a multitude of parts before it finally came to a stop, a smoldering heap of twisted alloy at the far end of the city park.

  “I’ve got an emergency signal,” Cane called. “I think the pilot’s still alive in there.”

  “I doubt it,” Owenne sighed.

  “Let’s go get her,” Van Noor stood up, mentally plotting his route across the park.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, man,” Owenne spat. “You’ll be cut to pieces before you get halfway there, and she’s probably dead already.”

  “As soon as their government capitulated, they became Concord,” Van Noor stared at Owenne. “That’s a Concord combat pilot out there. I’m not leaving her to those bastards. If there’s any chance she’s alive, I’m gonna go get her. With or without your blessing.”

  Owenne waved a frail hand dismissively.

  “Go on,” he sighed, “go.”

  “Command Squad, on me,” Van Noor ordered as he planted one hand on top of the barricade and vaulted over.

  ***

  “Approaching range,” Rhona announced as the frantic unit of twelve Ghar Outcasts sprinted through the ruined buildings, flowing forward like a liquid seeping through doorways and cracks in the walls as they closed on the defensive barricade.

  Sessetti tapped his finger against the trigger of his carbine, lining up his sighting display with his weapon as the Ghar moved into the view of his own eyes. Content he had his targets sighted, he switched off the visual feed from the squad’s spotter drone.

  “Five yan from fire marker,” Rhona’s steady voice came across the shard.

  “Stay cool, make your shots count,” Gant said from his position to Sessetti’s left, where the veteran trooper leaned against the barricade.

  The dozen squat, spindly-limbed panhuman morphs flowed over the rough ground ahead, close enough now to hear their inhuman shrieks. Sessetti picked his target; a slightly bulkier individual with a metallic helmet, who waved his gun above his head like a banner.

  “Squad Wen, targets front, open fire!” Rhona commanded.

  Sessetti aimed at the Ghar’s center of mass and squeezed the trigger. His first shot slammed into the Ghar’s torso, just right of center, tearing off the creature’s arm and sending it flailing to the ground. Either side of him, his squadmates sent streams of plasma fire tearing into the ranks of creatures. Jemmel’s plasma lance fired one continuous, solid beam that cleaved through two of the Ghar in quick succession, vaporizing both.

  “Got one!” Clythe reported gleefully from the far right of the barricade.

  Their numbers thinning, still the rabble surged forth.

  “Ghar battle squad, strength four, marker indigo,” the spotter drone reported.

  Sessetti glanced across to the left, toward the drone’s reported sighting. The sight took his breath away. Four lumbering spheres clanked their way over a ridgeline in the rubble, the suns glinting off their thick, armored hulls.

  “Visual,” Sessetti said as he stared at the approaching fighting machines.

  “Plasma lance, on the battlesuits,” Rhona ordered. “Everybody else, drop those Outcasts.”

  Jemmel’s plasma lance cut across the field of fire, sweeping along the ridgeline and through the approaching Ghar troopers. The normally lethal weapon impacted with the huge battlesuits, but succeeded only in causing one of the machines to reel back and stumble before moving forward again. Sessetti brought his carbine back to his shoulder and looked to the front again as the last four or five Ghar Outcasts continued to sprint toward the barrier.

  “Squad Wen, rapid fire!” Rhona ordered.

  Sessetti changed his carbine’s fire mode and squeezed the trigger. The weapon jolted and leapt in his hands as pulses of energy spewed from its barrel. Blasts and hisses issued all along the line of the barricade as the troopers hosed the area in front of them with superheated fire, cutting down the last Ghar Outcasts.

  From the ridgeline to the left, the Ghar troopers opened fire. A torrent of orange-red plasma fire swept across from the fighting machines, smashing against the barricade and tearing up the ground below and around it. Clouds of dust obscured vision in every direction, forcing Sessetti to change his visual display to thermal, giving him an unearthly perspective of the four armored titans than spat streams of fire in his direction.

  “Targets at marker indigo!” Rhona shouted, the nervousness in her voice obvious even above the din of incoming fire. “Open fire!”

  Sessetti fired a trio of aimed shots at one of the Ghar troopers. Two hit the machine square in the center but did nothing. The machines drew closer, tottering on their three squat legs as they waddled almost comically forward, their furious firepower never relenting. Blue bolts of energy continued to spew from the Concord lines, smashing against the Ghar suits’ armored bulks, until one finally fell over on its side with a pair of holes punctured through its thick armor. The remaining two continued to advance.

  “Orders from Command,” Rhona said. “Position’s overrun, we’re falling back. Come on, guys, let’s go.”

  Clythe and Gant were the first to move, reacting instantly to the command and running quickly toward the designated rally point to the east. Jemmel and Qan were next, turning to sprint toward the comparative safety of a single tall building which still stood only a stone’s throw behind them.

  “Lian, go!” Rhona shouted at Sessetti. “Get moving!”

  Sessetti turned to run. Something punched him hard in the side of his abdomen, and for a second, he felt tremendous pain.
His legs collapsed from beneath him and the sky fell forward on top of him, filling his view as the endless stitched lines of plasma continued to blast in every direction. He felt light headed and his vision swam in and out of focus. His battlesuit issued a medication report – severe trauma to the lower left torso, casualty, category four.

  Category four. The medication must have been doing a good job, because Sessetti felt remarkably calm for a diagnostics readout which informed him he had less than thirty minutes to live, unless he received significant medical attention. Numbly aware that he was lying on his back, he looked to his left and saw his own outstretched hand, palm up on the ground. His smoking plasma carbine lay where he had dropped it moments before.

  “I gotcha, pal,” a friendly, feminine voice said as Sessetti was yanked up off the ground.

  Pain broke through the barrier created by the medication as Sessetti was bounced up and down with each step, slung as he was over the shoulder of one of his squadmates. Peering under her arm, he could just about see the darkness of the building ahead as two strike troopers disappeared into the ruined ground floor. Only then did he recognize the voice of the trooper who had rescued him.

  “Ila?” Sessetti whispered.

  “Hang in there, Lian,” Rae replied. “I’ll get you out of this.”

  ***

  Seven of the survivors of Owenne’s artillery bombardment had already reached the crashed sub-orbital craft by the time the three strike troopers arrived at the far end of the park. Three of the Ghar Outcasts had climbed up onto the cockpit and were frantically smashing the butts of their lugger guns into the canopy; one had succeeded in breaking a small hole in the viewscreen and had thrust a bony arm through, its clawed hand slashing and grabbing at the wounded pilot trapped inside.

  Cane was the first to attack, tucking his carbine into his hip and firing a long burst of automatic fire into the closest Ghar. The little creature was blown back against the wrecked jet’s fuselage, where it shivered and shook in a macabre dance as its guts were blown out against the wrecked craft behind it. A second creature let out a yell and hurled itself at Cane, activating a plasma grenade in one skinny hand as it did so. Kachi stepped up and swung his carbine at the creature’s head, connecting with the jaw and lifting the panhuman morph up off its feet and tumbling through the air in a shower of its own broken teeth. The grenade exploded and the Ghar’s limbs were scattered aside.