by P. R. Adams
Rimes winked at Shaw. “Mr. Theroux, when we need someone from the bank cartel to tell us how to do our jobs, we’re in some sorry shape.”
“Then you are in some sorry shape, Captain.” Theroux stepped into the light. His wispy, brown hair fluttered slightly in a hot breeze. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. We’re without transport. You have five healthy soldiers, a broken pilot, a wounded engineer, and me, and we’re being hunted by genies who are undoubtedly far better off than we are.”
Rimes turned on Theroux. “I’m well aware of our situation, Mr. Theroux. Where would you recommend we move to? You know this planet well enough to guide us?”
Theroux didn’t react. “We’re easy targets here. You must realize that? They know where we went down.”
“Their ships can’t land in the canyon.” Shaw grimaced as he twisted around to look at Theroux. “Too big. I don’t care how good a pilot you are, there’s simply no way you’re landing something that size in a tight space like this. Take a look at the map. The best they could do is put down ten, maybe fifteen klicks south of here and hike in. We’ve got some time.”
Rimes held his hands up, trying to defuse the situation before it had a chance to get ugly. He pulled up the map data Shaw had sent him earlier and saw the most likely place the genies would put down. “We have to operate off what we know. There are eight of us. We’re armed. We have the ship’s emergency beacon and radio. We may have two more soldiers back there along the landing route. If not, we may still be able to recover their gear. With these suits, we’ll have enough water to last several days. And we have a good head start on the genies.”
“What about the unknown, Captain?” Theroux looked from Rimes to Shaw. “How many and what sort of genies were in those ships? What sort of weapons do they have?”
What sort? What sort are there? Does it matter? “I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough. Right now, we need to focus on what we can affect: gather our resources, find a way out of here, and hook up with Shuttle 332.”
Theroux blinked, apparently stunned. “Why do we care about the other shuttle?”
“Survivors, food and water, weapons and ammunition.” Rimes turned at the sound of someone approaching. Watanabe stepped around the front of the shuttle.
She pointed behind her with her good arm. “There is a cave. It runs deep, into tunnels. Very deep.”
“Does it look defensible, Lieutenant?”
“I think, yes.”
Rimes examined Watanabe’s shoulder. “Sung can give that a look when he gets back. How’re you holding up?”
“I am sore, but I can move.”
Rimes scooped up McFadyen’s carbine and handed it to her. “Can you shoot this?”
Watanabe took the weapon, shifting it around awkwardly with her wounded shoulder. She gave it a look, put it to her good shoulder with a grimace, and sighted at a distant target. “I can shoot it.”
Rimes smiled at Theroux. “Looks like we’ve found our starting point.”
Theroux frowned. “You’re going to get us all killed.”
23
26 October, 2167. Fourth planet of the COROT-7 system.
* * *
The cave was accessible only through a narrow entry that dropped nearly a meter, then turned sharply. Sand had collected at the base of the entry; it made for weak footing. The interior was dark, the floor irregular, the ceiling occasionally low. It would slow the genies down when they came.
Rimes opened his helmet and tasted the air—dry, dusty, but without the strong, sulfuric smell he’d noticed outside. The interior felt noticeably cooler.
Other than the sound of whispering and boots scraping, the cave was quiet.
Rimes closed his helmet and strode deeper.
The rest of the cave was exactly as Watanabe had described it. It ran several meters deep, widening out into an irregular circle before branching off into tunnels. Its layout presented the illusion of a stronghold that could stand against any enemy, but Rimes couldn’t delude himself.
No place was safe for them.
Shaw settled against a wall and dropped his improvised crutch. He was sweating from the exertion, his face red. He set his carbine—Zircher’s carbine—down at his side and gave Rimes a reassuring nod, then relaxed and leaned back. Watanabe sat next to Shaw, her carbine—McFadyen’s—cradled in her lap. She looked at Rimes forlornly.
Rimes knew he couldn’t count on them for too much.
Theroux stood several meters deeper in the cave, hidden in the shadows. Rimes flipped on the BAS’s optics and saw that Theroux was watching the cave entry, his eyes a dull reflection in the dark. Since entering the cave, he’d slowed and gone quiet, retreating inward in the face of the threat.
Rimes wandered past Theroux. His eyes slowly tracked Rimes’s movement.
Beyond Theroux, there were three distinct tunnels, two of them running deeper than the BAS’s sensor range. The third tunnel, tight and short, ended in another small cave eighteen meters beyond its entry. It might be an even more defensible position, but there would be no retreat once they entered it.
He returned to Shaw and Watanabe, squatting to be at eye level with them. “We’ve got two tunnels back there that extend a good ways deeper. It’s unlikely, but it is possible they could sneak in that way and come up behind you.” Rimes looked into the shadows where Theroux stood, unmoving. “Theroux, can you keep an ear out for that?”
Theroux didn’t answer.
“Theroux?”
Theroux slowly turned his head to look at Rimes. “They won’t be coming this way.”
Rimes sighed softly. “Just keep an ear out. The two of you need to take turns watching the entrance and resting.”
Watanabe looked at him anxiously. “Where are you going?”
Rimes gave what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “The squad’s spread throughout the canyon. I need to know everyone’s back, see if they found anything and get them in here. It’ll only be a few minutes.”
Watanabe relaxed. She looked at Shaw, worried. “He will need something for the pain.”
Shaw shook his head. “I’ll be fine. It just takes some getting used to. After a bit, I bet I start to like it.”
Watanabe looked troubled at that until Shaw and Rimes chuckled. She smiled sheepishly and blushed. “I will take the first watch.”
“I won’t be long. We’ll get a booster going for that knee. You’ll be up and moving in no time.”
Shaw grinned. “A little superglue, a little morphine, some stem cells, and I’m good as new.”
“If I’m not back in twenty minutes, choose a tunnel and go. Don’t wait.” Rimes glared at Theroux, then exited the cave.
Once outside, Rimes powered off the BAS and opened his helmet. The sunlight was bright and hot, almost painful, the sulfur-like smell once again strong.
He jogged slowly back to the wreckage. Where possible, he used cover, always scanning the canyon walls. As he approached the crash site, Meyers and Sung stepped out from behind the shuttle. A moment later, Bowring and Plauche stepped into view holding Murphy up between them. Murphy’s environment suit had been hardened around his right ankle. Plauche had numerous scrapes, his environment suit was a ruin and his armor gouged, but otherwise he seemed fine.
Rimes nodded at Murphy and Plauche. “Good to have you two back. You enjoy your thrill ride?”
“Murphy says he wants to do it again, sir.” Plauche’s gap-toothed smile immediately turned into a wince as a gash along his cheek re-opened. He wiped at the blood, annoyed.
Meyers indicated the far canyon wall. “Lazzaro’s on his way down. He said the genies are en route, maybe fifteen minutes out at the speed they’re moving.”
“Numbers?”
“Somewhere between thirty and forty. They were using cover, and they were too far out for his BAS to pick them up. Sounds like an assortment of weapons; assault rifles and SMGs.”
Sung slumped visibly.
Hang in there. Rimes pointed back
along the path he’d taken. “We’ve found a cave about a hundred meters that way. It’s cooler in there. We might have a few defensible positions. There are tunnels leading out the rear. Two extend a good distance. Maybe there’s an escape route.”
Meyers scanned the canyon walls. “We could try to lay down an ambush here. There’s cover, looks like some good sight lines.”
Rimes followed Meyers’s eyes. An ambush looked promising. Cover, elevation…and no way to regroup if the ambush failed. “We’d be committing to it—spread out and separated. Either we wipe them out, drive them off, or we’re forced to retreat with little cover and with reduced numbers.”
Meyers stared at Rimes for what seemed an eternity, his eyes squinting. “You checked the tunnels for an escape route?”
“No. We won’t know anything without investigating, but at least we’d have more cover and we’d all be in the same area.” C’mon, Meyers, don’t do it. This isn’t the time. If you’ve got to challenge me, wait for the right opportunity.
Meyers looked at the rest of the squad. Sung nodded. Plauche nodded.
“I can’t handle those walls with this ankle, Lonny,” Murphy said sheepishly. He rolled his broad shoulders and looked past Rimes at the path to the cave. “Maybe those tunnels give us a way out, maybe they just give us a place to hole up. Either one’s better than getting caught out in the open.”
Meyers looked back past Rimes, dead calm, the message clear: this is my squad. “Will the beacon be able to transmit through the rock?”
No need to waste energy on protocol. He knows I need him, and I gain nothing looking petty, demanding that ‘sir’. “Probably not once we get in there deep enough, no. But I doubt the task force can afford to send anyone for us right now anyway. We’ll check the tunnels out first thing. If it’s all dead ends, we’ll have to stay near the cave entrance and hold out until the task force can rescue us.”
Meyers thought it over for a few moments before turning to look at the squad. “Let’s go.”
Rimes opened a channel to Watanabe. “We’re on our way.” He started at a moderate pace to allow Murphy to keep up. I’m going to have to win their trust.
Once inside the cave, Sung went to work on Murphy’s ankle, injecting structural bonding materials—bone paste—and healing boosters before moving to Shaw. Shaw’s knee was a mess, the sort of thing even a surgeon would find challenging. The bone paste would help the patella come together, but it couldn’t do much about the torn ligaments. There was nothing to do but stabilize the leg and rig a brace to keep some of the weight off the knee. Sung didn’t need to tell Rimes: no amount of painkillers or healing accelerants could change something so damaged.
While Sung tended to the wounded, Meyers and Lazzaro scouted the tunnels. They returned just as the shredder exploded, announcing the genies’ arrival at the crash site. Rimes pulled the two aside, mindful of Theroux’s unmoving form at the cave rear.
“They won’t lose much time at the shuttle. Let’s hear it.”
“The right tunnel runs about twenty meters.” Lazzaro hooked an index finger to the right. He had a freckled face that took on silly, almost animated characteristics when he spoke—big and bigger teeth. His voice was clipped, his delivery rapid-fire. “It felt like a downward slope most of the way. Definitely slopes down after first twenty meters. Narrow, cramped. I don’t like it, especially with wounded.”
“How far does it go?”
“My BAS was having problems. Maybe it’s the rock?” Lazzaro closed his eyes. “I’m guessing another twenty meters? Maybe more? I can go back.”
“We’ll see.” Rimes looked at Meyers, uncertainty already gnawing at his guts. Did I make the wrong call? Did I trap us in here?
“The left tunnel isn’t much better. About ten meters then it hooks hard and starts a pretty severe climb. If we go that way, it’s going to be tough on the wounded. It’s mostly single file. It looks like it gets pretty narrow. I’d hate to be stuck in there during an attack.”
Rimes tried to hide his disappointment. “So we hold the cave for now.” They’ll be on us in no time. It’s starting to look more like a last stand than an escape. “Get folks deployed as best you can. We’ve got some natural cover at least, and the roof is too low for them to use grenades effectively. They’ll have to get past that opening to get any room to throw, and we’ll cut them down if they try. We hold the entrance, and they won’t be able to take advantage of their numbers. Hold your fire until they’re inside.”
Meyers glared for a moment. His eyes conveyed the message: judged, found wanting.
Guilty as charged.
Rimes walked the cave interior quickly, gauging lines of sight and cover. He moved Shaw and Watanabe to the best positions he could while Meyers deployed his squad.
Sung had sealed Watanabe’s shoulder, and she seemed to be over the worst of the wound and treatment. Rimes helped her onto a narrow shelf a couple meters above the ground. It was the highest point in the cave, a decent vantage point with solid cover. He moved Shaw to a sunken area three quarters of the way back from the cave mouth. Shaw wouldn’t be able to provide much fire support, but he would be safe and could assist should the genies break through the entry.
Rimes looked around for Theroux for several seconds before giving up; Theroux had abandoned them. He was probably small enough to fit into the dead-end tunnel. If the genies killed the rest of them, Theroux probably hoped to go unnoticed.
Rimes put his back to the entry and called back into the cave so everyone could hear him. “We’re out of the sunlight, so conserve your power. Don’t turn your BAS on until you can see them in the entry.”
He dropped to his belly not far from Meyers. After a moment of just listening to the cave’s quiet language, Rimes brought his carbine up and sighted in on the light leaking in through the opening.
Echoes came to him—rock crunching beneath booted feet, weapons being shifted, hands scraping along the canyon wall as someone squatted at the cave mouth. Shadows played across the entry.
They were coming.
24
26 October, 2167. Fourth planet of the COROT-7 system.
* * *
In the seconds from the first sighting of the genies’ shadows to their entry into the cave, Rimes’s awareness of the world intensified. Sand raining onto the cave floor was a staticky hiss in his helmet, amplified by the shrinking confines of the cave. Despite lying in the shadows, the air went from cool to warm, and it was dry enough to evaporate his saliva before he could swallow. The sulfuric smell and taste was overpowering, obliterating the presence of his comrades.
And the genies…they were an animal scent. Hunters. Predators.
The first one came in low and fast, inhumanly fast. In one overlay, Rimes saw the genie as a green form against black stone, in another, he was a red wireframe over a shadowy blur.
The real image, the blur that barely registered on the retina and the mind, was just a man in armor. Mismatched helmet and armor segments, a gun that—like the armor—was probably purchased or stolen from some half-rate weapons smuggler.
And yet the genie was deadlier than his human cousins.
Rimes remembered the genies in the Sundarbans. They’d been the hunters lying in wait for the Commandos. It was the same now. The genies weren’t entering an ambush. They were closing in for the kill.
Rimes tracked ahead of the first genie, sensing his path, ignoring the ones who followed. He tracked their movement through peripheral vision, instinct, and the BAS. When the fourth one entered the cave, the first was only centimeters from Shaw’s position. Rimes could feel Shaw’s terror as he tried to comprehend what he was seeing.
It must have been invigorating for the genies. From the first echoes of their boots scraping on the stone to closing on their targets, it had been two seconds and some change.
Rimes fired.
The roar of weapons and the smell of gunpowder filled the air. Rimes waited until the first genie fell before switching ba
ck to the cave entry. Bullets skipped off the rocks around him, cracked off his armor. He sighted in on the genie firing at him and released a short burst, then another.
The genie staggered, and Rimes moved to the next, a form rolling through the entry, moving, evading. Rimes held his fire and tried to anticipate. When that failed, he tried to follow. Bullets tracked the genie, never finding him. The genie came to a stop next to Bowring and fired point blank, leaving a bloody ruin where Bowring’s head had been, then the genie moved again.
Rimes fired, guessing where the genie was going. He guessed wrong.
Bullets cracked off Rimes’s armor again, and he grunted. The bullets were too close to his head to ignore. He abandoned the target and turned back to the entry. There were two more there now, each laying down suppressing fire. A third genie dove past, tucked, rolled, moved for Rimes and Meyers, gun extended. Rimes ducked as the suppression fire spat rocks into his face. When he looked up, the third genie was on him, barrel lowering to his head.
Rimes fired an instant before the genie could, spoiling the genie’s shot. Rimes fired again and risked a glance at the genie who’d killed Bowring. The genie was now among the team. Sung had engaged it, closing to keep it from using its gun. They were exchanging kicks and punches. Sung desperately focused on the defensive maneuvers he’d been trained to use, countering the worst of the blows.
Rimes pivoted back to the entry and sent three bursts into the genies there. One went down, the other retreated, shoving back another that was trying to enter.
Rimes turned, pulled his pistol, got to his feet, and sighted on the genie fighting Sung. Lazarro popped into Rimes’s line of sight, carbine aimed at the genie. The genie drove an elbow into Sung’s collarbone, sending him backwards. The genie twisted and fired at Lazarro.
Meyers fired six rounds into the genie, dropping him.
Gone. We drove off the first wave. “BASes off. Conserve your power. Keep that entry covered.”
