Dire Steps

by Henry V. O'Neil

  “It’s the incendiaries! They’re carrying the logs!” Pappas shouted. “Emile, we’ve made contact with a Sim force that was already on the move, carrying the incendiaries!”

  Prevost, the Triage-­Tech-­turned-­chonk savant, shouted for his fellow grenade-­launcher men to adjust their aim, throwing rounds in a low trajectory into the woods beyond the rise. The eruptions of light showed the outlines of more figures running to the east, using the low ridge to get around the ambush.

  “This is Almighty! They’re passing between your positions and headed our way! We’re shifting fires!”

  “What are you seeing, Almighty?” demanded the ASSL. “There’s nothing on the scanners!”

  The rocket fire ended, and yet the scene in front of First Platoon was still illuminated. More than one of the packs had ignited, and from the look of the blaze, Mortas believed they’d burn all night. The machine guns and grenade launchers had stopped shooting, but one or two of the men kept firing at the enemy backpacks that had not yet caught fire.

  “Cut that shit out!” Dak growled, and it stopped. “Mecklinger, they went by us closest to you, any idea how many?”

  “Yes! Only a few of ’em, but they’re headed someplace in a hurry.”

  “Almighty, I ask you again, what are you seeing?” The net went silent as all of B Company waited for the response to the ASSL’s question.

  “They’re . . . they’re coming through the jungle, our guys on the wire are picking up heat signatures.” The voice was trembling. “There’s a lot of them.”

  “Give me coordinates, and I’ll help you kill them.”

  “Marking targets.”

  Mortas changed his goggles to the fire-­support view, and for an instant the jungle looked exactly as he’d expected. Desultory fires burned from the rocket strikes on the suspected Sim camps, and he could easily make out the heat signatures of his platoon and Kitrick’s. Almighty’s heat blazed like a night game at an athletic stadium, and he was just starting to pick out the tiny dots of light from the fires to his front when Almighty’s new target markers appeared in the miles of blackness that separated First Platoon from Third.

  The small crosses, each with an identifying code number next to it, were almost a mile away from Almighty’s perimeter. A rocket burst in the middle of the dark expanse, fired from Almighty’s satellite.

  “Almighty, how are you able to see these signatures at this distance?”

  “Just fire the fucking mission, will you?” the voice shouted. “We’ve been working this terrain for a long time, and we know when Sam is on the move!”

  Pappas threw himself down next to Mortas. “I knew it. They figured out how to detect Sam on their scanners, even with the invisibility smocks. They knew where he was all along, and didn’t tell us—­or Broadleaf.”

  Despite the warmth of the air and the heat from the pyres, Mortas felt his insides grow cold. Remembering the bodies from Third Platoon, the wounded man in the Extractor, and the remains at Broadleaf.

  “Sergeant Dak.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Prepare to move.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Almighty.”

  “You got it. Mecklinger, your squad has the lead, then Katinka, then Frankel.”

  Mortas drew an electronic thimble from a pouch on his armor, and flipped the goggle view back to the company-­operations graphic. Slipping the thimble onto his index finger, he called up a menu of military symbols that he began moving onto the overlay. While he was doing this, Dassa spoke.

  “I see what you’re doing, Jan. Push your route a little more to the east before you head north, then take up a blocking position . . . here. Let the rockets do the work.” A symbol appeared on the schematic, on the southern slope of Almighty’s hill. “Wyn.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We’re headed south. Fast. ASSL’s going to concentrate support fires where Almighty says they’re seeing enemy, and we’re going to block them to the north. If they try to slide around to the south, Jan will kill them.”

  “Got it. Moving out in three minutes.”

  The First Platoon troops at the creek were already sliding backward, shimmying away from the still-­burning fires to avoid being illuminated. Frankel’s ­people were slipping up behind Mortas when Mecklinger’s squad announced it was moving. Making sure Vossel and Pappas were with him, Mortas followed Mecklinger’s ­people at an interval.

  The pace was quick, pushing through whatever was to their front. Behind them, the jungle stank from the revolting smell of burning flesh. Only moments after they got moving, the first rockets sailed down into the zone identified by Almighty, where a Sim assault force was allegedly struggling through the undergrowth. Much closer to the humans than the earlier bombardment, it slapped the ground so that the troops felt the vibration through their boots.

  The night jungle changed into a madman’s dream, with air-­cracking explosions to the west that were heralded by enormous flashes of light. Less than a mile distant, ageless trees were blown down, crashing to the earth like mastodons suddenly felled by an unseen weapon. The close, damp air responded like a set of bellows, one moment blowing heated air over them and the next pulling it back in a cooling rush. Amazingly, the moist vegetation caught fire where the rounds were landing, and after a few minutes, the orange light through the vines was a permanent companion.

  First Platoon snaked its way through the unknown terrain, each squad on its own axis but still close enough that they could support each other. Goggle lenses were slid up into helmets as the batteries failed or as the sweat from the wearer fogged them so badly that they couldn’t see.

  “Dak, I take back every curse I laid on you for Goggle Appreciation Night.” Mecklinger grunted, pushing his way through the foliage.

  “Don’t let him off the hook like that! This is easy because of all the fires!”

  “Yeah, if he’d laid on a barrage like this for us, it would have been just a walk in the woods!”

  The chatter stopped suddenly, and Mortas saw why when the man in front of him dropped out of sight. Another salvo landed just then, closer, and in the madly shifting shadow he just saw the ravine before being forced to hop down into it. Erosion had chopped the wound through the dirt, and the soil was loose when his boots made contact, still far from the bottom. His feet sank into the yielding wall, and Mortas fell forward with his Scorpion outthrust. A bush with needlelike thorns was waiting for him, stinging his hands and face before he tumbled head over heels to the bottom of the gorge. The straps of his rucksack slipped forward over his upper arms as the backpack rode up his neck, then onto his helmet, driving his chin into his chest.

  A small stream ran through the cut, and he felt the water on his neck when the rucksack stopped his forward motion, leaving him upside down with his legs in the air, bicycling at nothing. His arms were tangled in the rifle and the straps, and the water started seeping under his torso armor before he finally sagged over to one side. Unidentified hands were grabbing him, pulling him to his feet, the pack falling back into place just before he got to the other side of the gulley. The dirt was steep and riven with exposed roots, and he clawed at them for a handhold, the Scorpion swinging back and forth in his right hand while his boots fought for purchase. The light above was blocked in the chasm, and he had to fight his way up, constantly in danger of overbalancing and falling back the way he had come.

  But he didn’t, and the surging figures to either side didn’t either. The bombardment continued in its fury, but the soldiers were possessed of the energy of the hunt. Not seeing the enemy but knowing he was out there, under the rocket fire, no doubt trying to evade it and quite probably coming right at them. The necessity to reach the block position spurred them on, but the sensation of being in a lethal race spoke to them viscerally. Veterans of other battles and hardened by the months of training, the Orphans now
practically sprinted up the slope.

  Small figures suddenly raced through the files, bouncing and grunting, Vree Vrees and other forest creatures madly fleeing the bombardment. Furry bodies collided with surging boots, and Orphans swatted at Vree Vrees that mistook them for trees. Mortas felt a thud on top of his helmet, a wet paw sliding down his cheek for the moment it took to find purchase, then the animal was gone.

  The point men suddenly shifted the movement even farther to the east, taking the sweating mass on a curving path that followed the contour of the ground instead of pushing up it. Almighty was at the top of the hill, and the rockets were now landing so close to the platoon that they had to believe that the Sims were only hundreds of yards away.

  Dassa called out on the radio. “Third Platoon is in contact! Third Platoon is in contact! Shift the rockets away from us! Drone fire only!”

  Now directly behind one of his men, Mortas wanted to slide his goggle lenses down to see Dassa’s location, but he knew that he’d be temporarily blinded if he did that. The rocket fire slacked off, and he was able to make out the sound of an enormous volume of rifle and machine-­gun fire to the north, along with the low booms of detonating chonk rounds. It was maddening, and he was about to slip out of the column so he could stop and view the imagery when he heard Mecklinger’s voice. “We’re there! My squad will orient to the northwest. Katinka, bring your ­people in on my right, oriented north to south. Frankel, put yours on my left, oriented northwest to southeast, and hook in with Katinka. Lieutenant?”

  “Yes!” Mortas stepped away from the flow of bodies, running into a narrow tree and grabbing onto it to keep from falling. A tide of insects streamed across his hand, and he pushed away in revulsion.

  “We should get at least one more of the machine guns facing northwest and sweeping west. If they hit us, that’s where they’ll come from.”

  “I’m on it,” Dak announced, and suddenly Mortas was standing by himself in the darkness while the armored men pushed through the vegetation and disappeared. Dropping to a knee, turning the goggles back on, and seeing that Dassa was still almost a mile away, with Third Platoon arranged in a narrow perimeter firing to the south. Overhead, he just made out the chug-­chug sound of a drone before it unleashed a long burp of minigun fire along the front of Third’s position. The rocket blasts were coming up the hill, avoiding Third Platoon, coming closer to Mortas’s rapidly forming defensive triangle.

  The explosions from the bombardment each blossomed on the screen for a few moments as a furious patch of light and then subsided, but the previously dark and empty jungle zone between the two platoons was now on fire. Blazes continued to burn from the spot where his platoon had ambushed the Sim bearer party almost to the fences of the glowing Almighty complex, and he suddenly saw what had happened.

  The Sims had been preparing to assault Almighty the same way they’d hit Broadleaf, with different elements moving through the forest carrying the incendiaries they’d fashioned from the local flora. The rocket attack on their base camps had been a waste of time because they weren’t there, and Almighty had known that. The mercenaries had kicked off the bombardment prematurely in the hopes of driving the Sims into First and Third Platoons, destroying their opponents without revealing that they had learned how to detect the enemy’s presence long before Broadleaf had been destroyed.

  But there were far more Sims than anyone had expected. There had to be, because the rocket fire on the enemy avenue of approach was so intense that it had to be killing them by the score. The flaming remnants of their firebomb devices, and the size of the force attacking Third Platoon, were testimony to their numbers.

  “Pappas.”

  “Right here.” A hand landed on his armor, and the intelligence officer dropped to the ground. On his goggles, Mortas could see that the platoon had sorted itself out into the triangle described by Mecklinger. The line of dots facing northwest slowly elongated while the other legs of the triangle shortened, as Dak and the other NCOs put more of the platoon’s power facing the enemy’s location.

  “Why is Sam still coming up the hill? Why didn’t he scatter the moment the rockets started landing?”

  “I have no idea. Makes no sense. Acting like a pack of lemmings.”

  “Major Hatton was right about why they hit Broadleaf.” Mortas spoke calmly, the pieces falling into place. “The target was Almighty all along. They wanted to make us split up between Almighty and Cordvine.”

  Rockets slammed down five hundred yards away, rocking the earth and throwing debris almost to the platoon’s position. Almighty had cut the jungle back from its fencing years before, and although the resilient growth had reasserted itself, thankfully there were no large trees left to tumble nearby.

  “They’re at the wire! They’re at the wire!” the voice from Almighty shrieked, and Mortas shivered at the memory of Broadleaf. “They’re all over the place! Get up here and help us!”

  “Calm down, Almighty!” Dassa shouted. “I will adjust the rockets onto them! Mark the targets!”

  The absence of the company ASSL chilled Mortas even further, and he guessed the man was wounded or dead. The gunfire at Third Platoon’s position was slacking off, so either they’d destroyed the Sims attacking them or the enemy had peeled off for Almighty.

  “Don’t do that! You’ll collapse the buildings, just like on Broadleaf!”

  “Sir, you hear what I’m hearing?” Dak asked tightly.

  “Yes I do. Prepare to move.” Mortas switched to the company frequency. “Skipper, I can get up there if you call off the rockets.”

  “Already doing that,” Dassa responded. “We got casualties here, but we’re coming too! Don’t run straight into them—­stop when they’re in sight and use your heavy weapons.”

  “Got it.” Mortas rose, excitement and fear mingling. His eyes had adjusted to the goggles, so he saw the dark green world and the soldiers of his platoon. Katinka’s squad moving up next to Mecklinger’s and, farther down the slope, Frankel’s ­people getting into position. A plan forming.

  “Okay, here’s the play. Echelon attack. Katinka, you’re the lead. Hug the fence, and when you can deliver effective fire, stop right there and start shooting. Mecklinger, you’ll be sweeping along the slope below Katinka, and Frankel, you’ll be below Mecklinger. Swing around just enough so you can fire up the hill without walking into Katinka’s fire. We’ll pin Sam against the fence or tear him up as he tries to withdraw.”

  Katinka’s troops began moving immediately, and Mortas hustled over the underbrush toward Mecklinger’s men. “Dak, you go with Frankel. I’ll be in the center. Make sure you don’t get too far out in front.”

  “Yes, sir,” Dak answered, an expectant timbre in his voice. “Okay, First, it’s our turn. Let’s finish these bastards once and for all.”

  The thin trees and bushes parted easily, but the gradient was tough and they were moving neither uphill nor down. The last of the rockets had detonated a minute before, but below them the jungle was ablaze.

  “Almighty, we are coming up on your wire from the south.” Mortas exhaled easily, grabbing the narrow trees for balance as he passed. “Do not shoot us up.”

  “They are taking down the wire, Orphan! Where the fuck are you?”

  And then the slope opened up into an avenue of churned-­up soil, devastated shrubbery, and broken rock. It was as if a meteor had landed at the top of the hill and tobogganed all the way down, leveling everything in its path. Small fires burned in the open, then Mortas saw the crumpled forms and knew they were the bodies of the Sims who had been carrying the firebombs.

  A human machine gun began thumping away up the hill, then chonk rounds started to land as Katinka’s ­people came within range.

  Mecklinger’s men rushed forward now, reaching the edge of the devastated zone and throwing themselves down. Mortas joined them, the gunfire from Katinka’s position rising in i
ntensity while more chonk rounds detonated up the hill. Crawling forward, he was unable to see because of the brush, and then it parted.

  The lights from Almighty lit up the night sky, reflecting off the antipersonnel fence that was shaking as if caught in a high wind. The outer segment was already breached, and Mortas watched in amazement as Sim soldiers struggled to peel it back on either side of the hole. All pretense gone, knowing they’d been detected, the heavy smocks abandoned, laboring in fatigues that were little more than rags, many of them bare-­chested.

  The platoon opened up, easily felling the Sims still outside the wire in a roaring rain of gunfire and grenades before turning the weapons on the Sims inside the breach. Using the last of his goggle batteries, Mortas raised his Scorpion to see a small cluster of men, also in tatters, cutting away at the last obstacle between them and Almighty. Arms working improvised bolt cutters scissored the air while others hacked at the fencing with what looked like machetes. Just behind them, flinching as the first rounds passed over their heads, a tight knot of bearers knelt waiting with backpacks filled with the incendiaries.

  Sighting in, Mortas saw the goggle’s red dot settle on the back of one bearer’s head. Scorpions began to crack all around him, and he breathed out slowly while gently squeezing the trigger. The rifle kicked against his armor, and the Sim slammed face forward into the dirt. Other Sims around him also fell, twisting, kicking, but then the whole group was moving, there was a gap in the fence, it was widening like a dam being ripped apart by torrents of water, and they were passing through.