by Michael Ryan
“Got it,” Callie said.
“Corporal Coalt, grab a partner and be ready to pull these two out with us,” I instructed.
“Sir,” he said.
“I want six charges in there,” I said. The combat engineer soldiers went to work. I’m not sure if they had any more of an idea of what would be required to enter the building than I did. None of them questioned my guess of six.
It seemed like a good round number.
The reality of battle engineering seemed to me like the engineers simply broke, dropped, fired, threw, and launched things. They recorded the results of their stress tests and then published books that made non-engineers think they’d used complex mathematics instead of experimentation to reach their conclusions.
“Sir, time?”
“Give us ten seconds, Corporal.”
They worked it out. We scrambled out of the hole and ran like scared deer.
The explosion blinded my DS momentarily, and a huge cloud of fine dust billowed near the base of the building. None of our heli-jets were visible in the sky. I scanned for fighters but came up empty. The factory defense forces continued to fire on the units from the Seventh, who’d made various amounts of progress. I sent a quick update along the chain of command but received nothing in reply except an auto-confirmation that Platoon Leader Veenz had accepted my message.
At least he was alive.
“Grab these two and get them back in the hole,” I ordered.
We rushed into the tunnel and found a big enough opening in the concrete to climb through. I went first this time. I crawled through and pulled myself into a machine shop. Large pieces of equipment were making parts out of huge slabs of metal, but no personnel were present.
“No contact,” I sent out over the comm. “Follow me up.”
The squad clambered from the gap, and we moved down a long line of machines, capturing images for our intel department as we went.
“Place charges, sir?” one of the combat engineers asked me.
“Yes. Do your job however you think best.”
“Time?”
“Set them for two hours,” I said. “If we’re not out of here by then…we’re screwed.”
“Sir.”
Our off-planet boat would be landing in an hour and forty-five minutes, plus or minus ten. If we weren’t out of the building in about an hour, it would probably end up being our last. I let the engineers work and motioned for Callie and two corporals to join me on the other side of the space. “There’s got to be an exit of some kind. Let’s find it.”
It took zigzagging through a series of corridors before we found an elevator.
Callie pointed at a pulsing green display beside the steel slab of door. “It’s got a security pad,” she said. “Maybe stairs?”
“I wouldn’t count on it. This building is too new to worry about multiple power failures.”
“Another elevator?”
“It would require a code, too.”
“So?”
“Corporal, blow the doors.”
He set a charge, and the stainless steel doors exploded inward and dropped into the depths. I peered into the shaft. It rose four levels, where an elevator blocked my view, and dropped another six from my floor. “I’m surprised we were able to get in the way we did. This building has an underground section.”
“I love underground labs,” Callie said.
“I didn’t say it was a lab.”
“Sure.”
“Jesus.”
“No, just Callie. But I’m practically perfect in every way.”
“Any preference for which way we go first? Up or down?”
“We go down,” she said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because it’s the thing I want to do the least.”
“So it’s to the basement,” I said.
“Hold fast,” I told the team. “I’ll go first and blow the door.”
Sliding down the cables was easy. They were covered with grease, and I was barely able to slow my descent. I hit bottom, set a charge, and climbed hand over hand up a level just in time to avoid being struck by shrapnel from the explosion. I slid back down and the squad followed. On the other side of the blown elevator doors, a long corridor led to dozens of rooms with glass observation windows. Apparently building security forces hadn’t expected saboteurs to make it to this lowest level. The workers in the rooms were unarmed and obviously shocked to see us. I broke through the first door with my Gauss gun blazing harmlessly at the ceiling for effect.
My quasi-realistic voice roared from my suit’s external speaker. “Hold still or die!”
The workers looked at me like I was a babbling fool, and I realized they probably didn’t speak Common English. I repeated my command using a translator program, which barked it at them in several dialects. Ted and Erru were met with the same blank stares.
“Callie?” I asked over our private comm.
“This is a completely new planet as far as the Gurts are concerned. It’s not surprising they don’t understand you.”
“And nobody thought of this before?” I asked.
“Let’s destroy the computers and leave,” Callie said.
“Our orders were to capture – hold on for a second.” I switched to the squad comm. “Keep order. Don’t kill anyone unless they become a threat. I’m going to do a quick recon.” I brought up the facial-recognition program and walked from room to room.
Nobody wielded any weapons or made any threatening gestures.
I’m not sure what they thought of us in our sleek armor – suits that masked our human and purvast forms.
The aliens in the room were roughly humanoid. They were petite, on average, in comparison to Gurts. Most were slightly shorter than a typical human, although several of them were as tall as I am. Even the largest wasn’t as muscular as a normal-sized human. Their heads seemed too big in comparison to their bodies, leading me to wonder if these were anomalies among their kind. Perhaps idiot savants locked away in a basement to program and do computer nerd things.
My mind was wandering, a sign of battle nerves.
The system identified a face and alerted me.
<
That was good enough for me. I grabbed the target and held him at arm’s length. He shouted in a language my system tried to identify.
<
“Corporal, activate your restraint system,” I ordered.
I held the prisoner still and activated my private comm.
“I’m starting to feel kind of shitty about this,” I said to Callie.
“It’s bothering me too. But these people are working with the Teds and the Pros, Avery. You know what they’ve done.”
“Yes. But they’re–”
“They’re just computer scientists building things that kill innocent children like ours.”
“You’re right,” I said.
The corporal made it to my location and took possession of the prisoner.
I allowed my system to scan the remainder of the faces in my vicinity without further matches. “You think you can get into their system?” I asked Callie.
“No. Not a single port is compatible with anything I’m carrying. I’ve never seen any of these configs. We could have the squad confiscate some systems in the hopes that someone at command will be able to get into them. Or maybe the prisoner will give up some secrets.”
“Okay,” I said. “We need our hands to climb out of here.”
“I’ll see if I can identify something that looks like an external drive that’ll fit into our EP storage. It would be nice if the prisoner could run the elevator.”
I looked around. I still felt like this was going too well. Since breaching the building, it had been too easy.
Sometimes easy was a trap.
But sometimes easy just meant the enemy was unprepared.
“Let’s move,” I said over the squad comm. “Callie will direct
you on what to collect. I want to head up in ten minutes, max.”
I wasn’t sure what to do about the rest of the personnel.
Depending on how the regs were interpreted, the workers were either non-targetable noncombatants – or part of an enemy facility’s crew, and thus fair game. The mission parameters were to destroy and kill anything that wasn’t a high-value prisoner.
I had the option of taking more prisoners. This would save a few lives, but they could easily end up worse than dead. And I didn’t want to risk any more of my unit trying to save an alien who I had no idea whether or not had worked on things like those gliding TCI-Armored killers.
Life and death became interchangeable after a few years of war.
I ordered my men to take the prisoner and whatever equipment Callie had acquired to the elevator.
Thinking about the deaths of my children, I fired a few thousand bolts through the heads of the lab rats, ignoring their shocked expressions as they fell wordlessly to the floor.
They were all dead in under eight seconds. I turned from the slaughter and forced away a sharp pang of guilt.
Abrel and Mallsin were still right where we’d left them in the bottom of the hole.
I transmitted a packet of information to Lieutenant Veenz, whose system confirmed was still alive, but he didn’t respond.
The guns and grenade launchers above us were firing on the rest of the regiment. As soon as we moved a few steps beyond the edge of the building, we’d be in their range again. Our retrieval boat was going to set down about eight clicks out, in a little valley beyond a far knoll. The rooftop mortars appeared to have an effective range of about three kilometers; the missiles had a longer range, but beyond a couple of clicks they were easy to defend against.
I scanned the sky for fighters or heli-jets.
Nothing.
Veenz finally contacted me. “Sergeant, you’ve picked up support. Your prisoner is high value, so they’re diverting a heli to pick you up for transport to the retrieval spot.” A map with a set-point materialized on my screen. “One more thing, Avery. Off record. This guy is more valuable to Command than your team’s survival, so take that under advisement.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said. I knew he meant I couldn’t sacrifice my prisoner for the lives of Abrel and Mallsin and expect Command not to notice.
I decided I didn’t care.
I switched back to the squad comm. “Raiders, we have a special transport coming to get us. It’s predicated on our POW staying alive and getting back to the Apollinaris. Callie, you remember when I wrapped you in that dino skin to keep you in one piece on Purvas?”
“Of course.”
“We take Abrel and Mallsin and make a POW sandwich. Let’s make it happen.”
“How do we wrap them up?” a corporal asked, our unwilling guest under his arm like a surfboard.
I fired off my reserve parachute.
“Avery, if our heli-jet goes down…” Callie said.
“I’ll become a pancake.”
“I don’t like–”
“It’s done,” I said. I went to the Raiders’ comm and instructed the engineers to use my reserve chute’s cord to secure the prisoner between Abrel and Mallsin. They did so in about two minutes, and we had our prisoner reasonably shielded, if uncomfortable and frightened as hell.
“Team, I’m sending the set-point for the heli,” I said. “I want to move out. Weapons ready.”
I assigned four corporals to carry the package we’d made like pallbearers.
It took a few seconds for the defenders above to train fire on us after we left the safety of the building’s base. Callie and I stayed behind the procession and returned fire, but our efforts were just for show; we didn’t have anything big enough to stop what was being rained down on us.
<
“Who else has smoke left?” I demanded. Four of the engineers carried smoke and chaff antimissile loads, so I assigned them to provide cover as we left the foxhole and made a dash toward the LZ. I left the hole last and ran like the devil himself was on my tail.
We made it to the LZ without further casualties and scanned for threats. Under cover and a safe distance away from the rooftop shooters, my only real concerns were enemy ground troops or heli-jets putting in an appearance.
Of course, both did.
A squadron of Ted heli-jets usually numbered six, but the actual count was different based on the mission. These enemy heli-jets were Erru, but I couldn’t get an identifier on the ground troops they disgorged on the battlefield about a click away. My system classified them as heavily armored infantry, but couldn’t place them into a more distinct category. There were a dozen of them, which was a favored number among Ted strategists.
Four troop transports landed right behind them. Our friendlies managed to destroy one of them, reducing the number of enemies on the ground to thirty-six.
A friendly heli-jet landed to our rear, and ten space marines jumped out. Another five of our heli-jets were heavily engaged in air-to-air combat, trying to stay alive long enough to support us.
“Sergeant,” the first marine to reach us said, “I’m taking responsibility for getting the…” He noticed Abrel, Mallsin, and the POW tied between them. “What the hell is that?”
“A sandwich,” I answered. “Those two are my friends, so they’re a huge priority for me. Their armor is shielding the prisoner, so I’d suggest leaving them as a package. He’s more likely to survive that way.”
“Roger that,” he said.
My screen lit with a warning.
<
I turned from the newcomer and fired a countermeasure. The friendly heli-jets scored another hit on the enemy aircraft, but we also lost one of ours. The jets obviously had their hands full, so I shifted my focus to the ground troops advancing on us.
“Looks like an old-fashioned firefight,” I said to Callie.
“I’m still expecting a mecha or dino-lizard,” she replied.
We fired our Gauss guns. The enemy returned fire.
“If I had my sniper rifle, I could do some damage.” I concentrated on one soldier with a steady burst of fire, but his armor deflected it. I concluded his counterparts were similarly armored.
“Don’t get sidetracked, Avery,” Callie said to me. She had the uncanny ability to know when my mind was wandering.
“How do you do that?” I asked.
“Pay attention,” she said. “There’s a friendly coming into the LZ.”
Sure enough, a heli-jet was coming in low behind us. The craft chasing it had been taken out by a trailing heli-jet, which then exploded in a shower of glass and metal when a mecha appeared out of nowhere and launched a dozen rockets at it.
“Well, there’s your mecha,” I said.
“It’s a big monster, too.”
Callie stowed her Gauss rifle and used both hands to type in the air. Our projected keyboards had been upgraded in the latest version of the suit, and Callie was faster and more efficient than she’d ever been with the old system. “Transfer your fire control to me,” she said.
I did as instructed and watched her work on a pop-up in my DS. She incorporated Abrel’s and Mallsin’s systems into her program.
“You’re going to need–”
“Quiet,” she said.
I let her work.
Whatever she was doing, it would require adjusting the positions of the two frozen-in-place soldiers’ equipment packs. I waited patiently, unable to use any of my weapons.
“Okay,” she finally said. “Move Abrel so his EP is clear. When his missiles fire, roll them over so Mallsin’s pack is unhin
dered.”
“Got it.”
Our heli-jet ride landed behind us.
“Let’s move it,” the space marine leader said over the comm.
“We need ten seconds, Sergeant,” I said. “We’re going to harass that mecha.”
“What mecha?”
I pointed.
“Golvin,” he blurted. “We can’t catch a break, can we?”
“Have no fear, space marine, my woman is a master mecha destroyer.”
“Are you mocking me?”
“Would I mock a space marine come to save us from destruction?”
“Golvin,” he cursed again.
I watched Callie’s masterful work on my display screen. The remainder of my missiles launched in succession. Fourteen high explosives and five kinetic energy. Next, Abrel’s armaments took off, and I rolled him so Mallsin’s pack was unobstructed. Her EP emptied next.
Callie saved hers for last.
The mecha was still two and a half clicks away, but the operator had noticed our heli-jet landing, and the LZ lit up.
“Grab our POW,” I ordered. The corporals picked up the mess of prisoner and armor, and I hoped the poor sucker was still alive. We ran towards the heli-jet while the opposing ground troops rushed toward us. I dodged a single missile that made it past one of our countermeasures. Mortar rounds landed in our path and several suits fell – two of my group, and one of the SMs.
<
I juked to the left to avoid a mortar and blinked open the message.
<
I acknowledged the communication. It changed nothing for me, but I knew that Command would sacrifice all of us to get the prisoner off the planet alive. There were still soldiers under my direction with various computer drives stored in their EP storage compartments. I imagined that Command didn’t care as much about securing the proverbial plans to the Death Star as they did getting their hands on a living and breathing Chemecko who could potentially testify about the relationship between the Tedesconians and Meckos, or even give up technological secrets.
I was just an infantry soldier tasked with following orders. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to bend the rules to save my friends.
