by Peter Telep
"You mean about there being silicates down there?" Damphousse asked, turning away from her binoculars.
"Yeah."
"Flat out ask him," Wang suggested. "'Hey, buddy. You got problem blowing away other wireheads?' Just like that."
"I have a little confession to make," Damphousse began tentatively. "I spoke with Coop on a secured channel and asked him if they had spotted the silicates. He said they had and that Teddy had no problems. In fact, Teddy expected there to be A.I.s here."
"It never occurred to me to ask him prior to the mission," Shane said. "Well, at least he's saying what I want to hear."
Just then Damphousse, having returned to her binoculars, jerked her head slightly. "Here they are."
Cooper and Mister 404 crawled over the bank, walked a few steps, then stopped. Cooper dropped to his knees, completely out of breath. The silicate did his nearly convincing interpretation of exhaustion.
"All right. This bank wraps around into that mountain," Shane said.
"Can I catch my breath?" Cooper asked.
She made a face at him. "No." Then she continued, "We'll stick together and follow this line down to that basin. From there we'll run a standard one-two-three. Quick and simple. Questions?"
"Play ball," Wang said, rising.
Still out of breath, Cooper took a hand offered by Damphousse. "Thanks." Then he walked past Shane, saying, "Told you Nathan would make it."
The first replies that came to Shane were multiple combinations of epithets so wrenching, so hurtful that she actually winced over having thought of them in the first place. Then she told herself that Hawkes simply didn't understand, that maybe in the future he would.
And maybe in the future she would as well.
Shane held her hand up, signaling the group to hunker down and pause at the point where the long snowbank poured into the basin. On the east side of the bowl-shaped depression lay the foot of the mountain where Nathan and the other two Marines had most likely fallen. Shane had trouble believing that she had led the squadron so close to the aqueduct. She glanced up, wearing her night vision goggles, and there it was, looming about two hundred feet above her and only about a thousand yards north. God, this thing's big, she thought.
"Captain, I just redialed my compass for Nathan's PLB, and I dropped the freq a point too low by mistake," Wang said. "But I was reading somebody else's PLB. Then I lowered the freq a tenth, and I got another one. Then another one. I got a lot of them now."
"Could be some kind of echo of the signal," Damphousse speculated.
Wang shrugged. "I don't know, but it's weird. It's like there's a whole battalion right near us."
"Don't trust that signal," she told him.
Then Wang's eyes suddenly widened as he stared at his compass. "Wait a minute. There it is. I got Nathan." He turned his head in the direction of the mountain. "North northeast, 320 degrees."
"Yeah, only trouble is, we got no cover to get there," Cooper reminded. "Fifty yards of open ground between us and the mountain."
"Captain Vansen. Both SRR and MT register a sizable ground force of enemy troops headed our way," Mister 404 reported, holding both pieces of equipment and pivoting slightly in an attempt to get cleaner signals. "Appears to be twenty or thirty individuals;"
"What did we expect?" Shane asked rhetorically. "'Phousse. Hold back to jam 'em."
"Aye-aye."
"We going?" Cooper asked, not believing it.
"You got it, Hawkes," Shane said. "Move out!" She took off running with a focus she had developed from spending far too much time in Chig-held territory.
"Come on, Hawkes. You're too slow," Wang said.
Cooper snickered. "Hey, I'm still tired from before."
Rushing down into the basin provided Shane with enough momentum to catapult her up the other side. She nearly ran into a long spine of rock about waist-high that followed a wavy line and fenced off the area in front of her. Slowing down to mind her step, she got over the wall, then dropped behind it. As the others started to arrive, she began a cursory, visual scan of the area. Almost immediately she noticed a boot sticking out from behind a wide tooth of rock about twenty feet to her left. "Got one," she announced, then crawled forward.
Once on the other side of the stone, Shane saw something that caused her to throw a mental switch, cutting off her emotions. She stared down into the unblinking eyes of a young woman whose combat helmet was smashed and whose head was bent at an unnatural angle. The woman had not taken a direct laser hit but had still been severely burned from chin to hips, and Shane had a hard time seeing where environment suit ended and blistering red skin began. Though the odor of burnt flesh was not unfamiliar to Shane, it was something she would never grow used to. The dry heaves came on suddenly, and she had to turn away.
"She must've been part of the twenty-first," Damphousse said.
"Hey, he's over here," Cooper shouted excitedly. "Nathan's here. And he's all right. Kind of."
"Over where?" Wang asked. "We don't see you, man."
"Location. Right. Couple real big boys paired off to the left. We're behind 'em."
Spotting the boulders, Shane raced to them, feeling the adrenaline pour into her veins. He's alive! she thought. She rounded the corner of stones and found Nathan sitting up, his back resting on the boulder. Cooper had dropped to one knee and was fishing through his rucksack. Sitting across from them was the other Marine, a short, teary-eyed Asian woman who grimaced and nursed her right arm.
"Hey, Shane," Nathan said faintly.
"Hey. Can you—"
"I'll need a little help," he said, leaning forward and away from the wall.
"Can't find my damned medi-kit," Cooper muttered.
"Later," Shane said, then she regarded the other Marine. "What about you? Can you walk? We gotta move out."
After a nod, the woman added, "Wouldn't a better question be: Can I run?"
Shane grinned crookedly, then lifted her comlink's mike up over her lips. "Mister 404, get the hell over here."
"On my way, Captain."
Wang, who had assumed a position on the perimeter of the recovery point, looked up from his SRR and turned back to Shane. "They're scanning us with everything they got. Vanessa's jamming them, but their signal's too powerful. They've locked onto our position and are coming on strong. Think they've sent an A.I. patrol out front, since those guys are hauling major ass."
"'Phousse?" Shane called.
"I'm here."
"DX the scan. How many smarties you packin'?"
"Six."
"Break 'em out."
"Roger."
"And get ready to lay down some serious covering fire."
"You don't gotta tell me that."
Shane offered Nathan a hand. He took it, and she hauled him to his feet. Sensing someone at her shoulder, she turned to see the Asian Marine, a grimace still twisting the woman's face. "We'll take care of that arm once we get the hell out of here."
"We're not going to leave Penny," the Marine said, and her tone conveyed a fact, not a question.
"You talkin' about the woman back there?" Cooper asked, shouldering his way in front of Nathan. "Forget her. She's wasted."
The Asian woman's gaze bored into Cooper. "I'm not leaving her for them to rip out her eyes and heart."
"Then you carry her," Cooper shouted.
"Maybe I will," the woman fired back.
Shane looked around. "Mister 404?"
"Right here, Captain," he answered from behind her.
She turned to him. "You're carrying that corpse out of here. Problem?"
"No. I'll get it now." And he jogged off.
Her face softening, the Asian woman exchanged a look with Shane, then said, "Thank you." She extended her hand. "I'm First Lieutenant Kyoko Iwata of the Sixth Air Wing, twenty-first squadron."
"I'm Captain Shane Vansen. And sorry, I'm in a rush." Then she thumbed on her link. "People. Fall back. Fall back."
twenty
Hig
htailing away from the base of the mountain, Cooper had a hard time keeping up with Teddy, even though the 120-pound body of the Marine named Penny was slung over the silicate's shoulder. For the first time, Cooper found himself envying the android. If Cooper had strength like Teddy's added to his already potent rage, no one aboard the Saratoga. would dare call him a tank. At least not to his face.
As usual, Cooper was either point or rear man, depending upon whether the five-eight was advancing or engaged in an orderly withdrawal from a logistically unsound location, which translated from pogue-speak simply meant they were running away from an ass-kicking. At the moment he was pulling up rear, which meant that he would be first to have his ass kicked. There was, he knew, very little symmetry in his life, save for getting whacked immediately no matter what his position. And that, in a significant way, made him feel more courageous, even though getting whacked still sucked.
Damphousse was crouched and waiting at the point where the basin rose into the snowbank. She was already unleashing a fierce rain of slugs with her M-590, and the report of her weapon was so loud that Cooper barely heard the first salvos of the enemy's return fire. "Send 'em a couple smarties," she shouted.
Spread across the snow before her were a half dozen smart grenades. Cooper turned around, plopped down, brought his rifle to bear with one hand, then picked up one of the grenades. He gave the metal projectile a good-bye kiss, armed it, then let it fly. Out popped the tiny fins as it shot toward the enemy. "Get some," he mumbled as he set his rifle to rock 'n' roll, "GET SOME!" And with that he slid his night vision goggles up onto his forehead and jammed down his trigger, aiming for the pair of spandex-clad silicates who had emerged from behind the long, low wall on the far side of the basin. Down one. And then the grenade exploded, its thunder reverberating off the mountains with a sound that warned the rest of the pursuers, if not impressing them. Down two.
"How long until our quarters run out?" Damphousse asked.
Shooting a quick look at the grenades, Cooper answered, "We still got five more bonus points."
"Make that four," Damphousse said, then she scooped up a grenade, and, in a blur of movement, had it in the air and humming away at the three new A.I.s who were leaping over the wall.
Cooper didn't wait for the grenade to reach its target. He fired at the silicates anyway, dropping two of them before the third shook hands with the bomb. A small mushroom cloud of fire, smoke, and shattered electronics expanded above the wall as the explosion sounded again and again amid the pinging and snap-hissing of rifle fire.
And then a growing line of Chigs could be seen from behind the wall, the muzzles of their multibarreled weapons flashing in a hypnotizing sequence that Cooper fought to ignore. He reminded himself that the laser fire from those weapons was presently tearing apart the basin wall nearest them, and all one Chig had to do was raise its weapon a few degrees. In fact, that notion, along with the enemy's growing numbers, was enough to send Cooper bolting to his feet. "Take two, 'Phousse. And let's go!"
They split up the grenades, and, winding up for the pitch the way Wang had taught him, Cooper sent his two bombs first-class, nonstop to Chigville. Damphousse did the same, and then they ran like crazy.
As the first of the four booms resounded behind him, Cooper realized that he was denying himself a certain amount of glory by not knowing just how many of the spoogemiesters would buy it in all. But he still wasn't fool enough to tempt death and stop for a look. Screw glory.
"I hope Shane's got a plan when we get to the top of the slope," Damphousse said, running at his side.
"Why is everybody startin' to sound like me?" Cooper asked.
"Because now we're all as tired of this mission as you," she said, then pulled ahead of him.
As he raced to catch up to her, Chig laser fire tore a line in the snow parallel to them.
Balancing his rifle on his shoulder, the business end pointing backward, Cooper squeezed the trigger forward with his thumb, firing blindly and continuing to run.
"You're nuts," Damphousse shouted.
"All I need is a mirror, and I might hit one!"
The path grew suddenly steeper, and Cooper knew they were nearing the snowbank's summit. From there they would cross the fifty meters straight up to the crest of the slope, where Shane, he fervently hoped, would figure out what to do after that.
But then he thought hard about the situation. Ground force pursing us. Took out quite a few but still a sizable number keeping us on the run. No air support. Yet. They'll wait to see what the ground pounders do. So if we evade them, then the flyboys will come in. The trick is to evade the ground force and the flyboys at once.
How?
Once they reached the snowbank's high point, they discovered that the rest of the squadron was already heading for the crest of the slope, cutting across the crunchy snow, leaving twelve-inch-deep footprints in their wake. He and Damphousse caught up with them, and Shane signaled a halt when they were out of the enemy's view, just on the other side of the ridge. Without his crampons strapped to his boots, Cooper, like the rest, fought for traction. One slip would send him tumbling down the approximately two-hundred-meter-long, forty-five-degree grade.
"I count thirteen still on us," Wang said, having dropped to his belly to monitor the aliens' advance through his binocs.
"Teddy. I want three C-670s set for remote triggering buried in triangular formation right here," Shane said, still struggling for breath. "Spread 'em about five meters apart. Hawkes, you and Damphousse help him."
After Teddy set down Penny's body, he withdrew the explosives from his pack. Cooper would never get over the fact that such small devices packed so much punch. He took his charge and moved off like a novice ice skater. Once he verified his position in reference to the others, he armed his explosive and jabbed it into the snow, out of sight.
"All right. Everybody unroll your sleeping bags. We're gonna ride them down," Shane ordered.
"What about her?" Cooper asked, gesturing to Penny's body with a tip of his head. He knew Teddy would never ask the question, and Cooper would hate to see the silicate destroyed over trying to "save" a dead person.
"She rides piggyback with 404," Shane responded, then turned to Teddy. "Okay?"
Teddy nodded.
"Being from New England, I know my snow," Nathan began. "And this crunchy stuffs not real good for sledding."
Shane sniggered. "So we don't win any gold medals."
"I bang this ankle again going down, and I'm going to need help," Kyoko Iwata said, unbuckling her sleeping bag from her rucksack.
Cooper winked at her. "I'll be there."
She rolled her eyes and turned away.
What did he do now? He pushed off the thought, opened up his bag, sat on it, then shoved himself down after everyone else had already left. He unholstered his pistol in the event that an overeager Chig or A.I. reached the top of the slope before he reached bottom.
Nathan had been right. The sledding was slow and awkward. When Cooper wasn't breaking through the top crunchy layer and coming to a dead stop, he was fighting to keep his feet forward. Breaking into a sideways descent would surely evolve into a tumble. Even a snowboard would not have helped.
At least he wasn't alone in his misery. Wang was nearing bottom first, only because he had lost control of his bag and was doing a body roll for the last twenty yards. Damphousse had opted to lie flat on her back, and that somehow prevented her from breaking through the top layer of snow but left her face unprotected from chunks which were occasionally launched by her feet. She was just behind Wang, coughing and calling out to him. Nathan, Kyoko, and Shane came down close together, collided near bottom, and somersaulted or rolled off in different directions. Only Teddy managed to reach level ground intact. He had worked his arms with a machine-like rhythm that balanced and propelled him but, like his crosshaired eyes, reminded everyone of his A.I. heritage.
Picking up speed and glad that the snow closer to bottom was harder, Cooper
tossed a look over his shoulder and caught the movement of a figure. He fell onto his back, rolled onto his side, and, still sliding at an increasing rate, he took aim at the silhouette and fired a pair of rounds. He strained to see if he had hit his target.
But then he ran into something and was tossed violently to his right. And the dreaded tumble began. Over once, twice, a third time, then, after a sharp blow to his back, he lay face-up in the snow, the metallic sheen of the night sky now doing the tumbling for him. Shaking off the dizziness, Cooper sat up, quickly holstered his pistol, then kept hunched over to retrieve his sleeping bag. After that, he assumed a place along the foot of the slope with the rest.
"Give them just another moment," Wang said, ever peering through Iris binoculars.
Cast in the flashing red glow of the remote detonator's arming indicator, Shane wiped a bit of melting snow from her cheek while staring intently up the slope. "Dammit, they're on to us. They're going wide around the charges."
As if he had the detonator in his own hand, Cooper slammed his thumb onto his fist. "Blow 'em up anyway!" he told her. Then he yanked out his NVGs, slipped them over his eyes, and the silhouettes at the slope's crest, became grainy green Chigs and A.I.s. Yes, they were beginning to go wide around the charges, but then one Chig, apparently the leader, stopped and made what could be mistaken for a point to the snow. The alien performed another hand and arm gesture that in some cultures on Earth would be considered derogatory. The enemy squadron shifted course and walked over the charges.
"Get ready to run," Shane warned. "Three, two, one—"
Cooper, having already decided that he would be the last Marine away, hesitated to watch the three C-670s go off in unison.
That was his first mistake.
His second mistake was to hesitate even longer to raise his rifle and attempt to pick off the Chigs and silicates who hadn't been immediately dismembered by the blasts, those three or four who scurried off like roaches in the fiery, fluctuating light.
