CHOP Line

by Henry V. O'Neil

  Woomer had cooperated, and for what? Olech’s accident had never taken place, but the hand of fate had struck the boy instead. The irony seemed to know no bounds. Horace was dead and Celestia was in chaos, but Kumar was now safely ensconced at Unity Plaza, no doubt trying to win Reena’s favor. Though a marginal scientist, Kumar was shifty enough to reveal Woomer’s complicity while leaving himself in the clear.

  “I’ve never been a big fan of funerals. Never saw one change anything.”

  Tears filled his eyes as he looked at the immobile teenager again. Woomer tried not to imagine the permanently stilled body, crushed into the mud by a runaway mover. That was what the notice had said; a terrible accident while offloading supplies. He couldn’t stop comparing the forces of the man-sized tires and their enormous load with the pressure that would have murdered Olech Mortas if his pointless plan had succeeded.

  “At least come away from your work for a time, then. What if we just went for a walk around the station?”

  “That will be very nice.” Woomer turned in his chair, raising grateful eyes to his assistant. Reaching out, he placed a small cylinder in Jerry’s hand. “First, I’d like you to send this communication to my special correspondent. Use every precaution.”

  “Yes. I’ll do that right away.” Jerry looked at the cylinder, knowing it was meant for a secretive group of scientists who opposed the never-ending war with the Sims. “This is a positive step, sir. It’s a good idea to busy yourself . . . in other pursuits.”

  “Yes, it is.” Jerry started for the hatch, and Woomer stopped him. “Leave the tray. I’m feeling a little hungry, after all.”

  When his assistant was gone, Gerar Woomer took out another cylinder, this one containing hundreds of small pills. Removing the lid, he filled his mouth and started chewing with his eyes fixed on the photo.

  Chapter 4

  “Here’s what we know so far.” Colonel Watt, the Orphan Brigade’s commander, spoke into the earpieces of his officers and NCOs scattered across the battlefield on UC-2147. The Tratian division’s headquarters was still in orbit, and so Watt was trapped up there, too.

  “The three spacedromes and surrounding settlements were almost empty. The Sims chose this location because they could easily predict where the cofferdams would be established. Their concealed emplacements destroyed numerous APCs, blocking the original landing zones and causing the division command to postpone delivery of the follow-on waves. New cofferdams have now been established, and the rest of the division will begin deploying shortly. Enemy strength is still unknown, so our forces on the ground are directed to hold defensive positions through the night.”

  Mortas half-heard the update while moving in a crouch. Darkness had fallen, and First Platoon had established a strongpoint on a knob of high ground a half mile from the ridge they’d assaulted earlier. Crossing the silent perimeter, he encountered Sergeant Dak going the other way.

  “I repositioned Catalano’s machine gun so it covers more of the woods, interlocking with Tado’s gun.” Dak pointed across a shallow saddle between their position and a low finger of ground covered with trees. The other three sides of the strongpoint looked out across flat terrain scorched black by the fires that had sprung up during the battle. “Mecklinger’s marked the open ground with targets, and fire support central has locked it in. Anybody comes at us, we can call artillery, bring in the gunships, or drop rockets on ’em.”

  “Good,” Mortas whispered. “I don’t want any more surprises. Everybody stays awake for now.”

  Dak snorted. “Like anybody’s gonna fall asleep, after the day we’ve had.”

  Mortas clapped him once on the armor and continued across the perimeter. Approaching Catalano’s position from behind, he duckwalked the rest of the way. Three Orphans were stretched out on their stomachs around the machine gun and its tripod, and he gave them a warning hiss before sliding in next to them.

  Colonel Watt continued his update. “All things considered, we took far fewer casualties than might have been expected. I’m very proud of the way you all responded to this situation, and how well you’re working with our mechanized brethren.”

  “El-tee.” Catalano breathed the words out so that they were almost silent. “Does Colonel Watt know we’re no longer with our brethren?”

  “Let’s hope not.” He tried to match the stillness of the other three Orphans. Looking across the low saddle, Mortas studied the raised ground beyond it. The goggles showed him the individual trees and bushes in the darkness, and would have alerted him to the presence of anything—Sim, human, or otherwise—generating body heat. “Captain Ufert didn’t want us along in the first place, so he probably won’t say anything.”

  “It was a dumb idea, pairing us off with the mech guys with no time to practice. But they came through for us at the end, driving out in the open to shield Dak like that.”

  “Could have moved faster, you ask me.” That came from Lonkott, Catalano’s assistant gunner. “Any more word on Slauern, sir?”

  “No updates yet, but Doc Vossel said he was stable at medevac.” Ufert had used the evacuation of the wounded as an excuse to leave First Platoon behind, and Mortas had not objected. Ufert’s company had lost five men and had twice that number wounded, so First Platoon had been lucky by comparison. Only one of them had been killed, a rifleman in Mecklinger’s squad named Bass. Slauern, a chonk gunner also from Mecklinger’s squad, had been shot through both arms while pinned down with Dak.

  The gun team quieted down, and Mortas switched his goggle view to explore his surroundings. The imagery, a combination of feeds from overhead drones and the ships in orbit, presented a confused picture. Only half the Tratian division had been inserted as planned, and the battle had left them scattered around in seemingly random defensive positions. Fires still burned in numerous spots, consuming the dry grass and creating large heat blobs that a determined enemy could use to conceal their movements.

  Mortas slid the lenses up inside his helmet for a moment, reaching grimy fingers under the frames where they pressed into his cheeks. Closing his eyes, he smelled the smoke from the wrecked carriers and the smoldering fires, mixed with the pungent odor of spilled fuel. Lifting his head just a bit, he looked to the west in search of the newest cofferdam. Many miles away, the shaft stood out as a blue-gray pillar against the night.

  Mortas heard the puttering sound of a drone circling overhead, and lowered the goggle lenses again. Changing the view, he studied the military symbols jumbled around them. Neat ovals and circles laid out the perimeters of the scattered units, each one surrounded by target markers. He changed the view again, and the tidy symbols were replaced by the heat signatures that showed the ragged arrangements of men and machines.

  Seen from above in the darkness, they reminded him of a photo of a star cluster he’d seen in school. Dotted outlines indicated the positions of separate infantry platoons like his own, while larger chains showed the locations of entire companies of personnel carriers. Not far from the nearest Sim spacedrome, a bright white circle momentarily convinced him that a gigantic fire was ablaze. He then recognized it as the location of the field headquarters of the mechanized brigade to which First Battalion was attached. Somewhere in that cluster of running engines and coughing generators was Major Hatton and the battalion staff. Hatton had bitterly opposed the dispersal of the battalion across the mechanized brigade, but to no avail. Mortas smiled at the memory, feeling the exhaustion from the day’s events starting to take hold. He would have to find Dak soon, and arrange a sleep rotation for the platoon.

  “Jander?” Captain Dassa spoke into his ears. B Company’s commander was with the mechanized battalion’s command section.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I need you to rejoin Captain Ufert.”

  Mortas came awake instantly, fueled by a combination of anger and dread. He’d just finished setting his platoon up for the night in a good defensive position, and had no desire to waste that effort. Even more worrisome, Ufert�
��s perimeter was five miles away, across lethally open ground. The Sims were still operating in the area, but the greatest threat was the thousands of jumpy human troops hunkered down along the route. Sam’s trickery had cost them dearly, and they wouldn’t hesitate to call down gunships and rockets on any suspicious sightings.

  “Request to stay in place.” Mortas searched for a reason that Dassa might be able to sell to the mechanized battalion’s commander. “My platoon is occupying a good observation point, on a likely enemy avenue of approach.”

  “Negative. Your platoon is needed to provide security against the possibility of dismounted enemy attack. Get your men moving.” The company commander’s overly military speech told Mortas that their conversation was being monitored by the Tratian command.

  Dak appeared on the ground next to him, helmet and goggles rapidly shaking disagreement. Mortas nodded, and came up with a suggestion that might do the trick. If Ufert was so concerned about Sam sneaking up on his perimeter, he probably wouldn’t want to leave it.

  “Request personnel carriers to move my platoon. It will be faster, and we won’t run the risk of being mistaken for enemy.”

  “Already denied. I have marked the lane you are to use, and the battalion fire support center is coordinating protection. You will be covered with every bit of ordnance available, and no missions will be cleared anywhere near you without our approval.”

  Next to him, Dak blew out a loud, frustrated exhale. Inside his goggles, Mortas now saw a zigzagging corridor that ran from his location to Ufert’s. Most of its terrain was level, and much of it had been burned barren. Mortas was running out of ideas, and so he blurted out a half-formed argument that he regretted immediately.

  “The ground we’re to cross could be mined. Again, request—”

  “Stop dragging your feet, and get moving, Lieutenant!” Dassa shouted, the words stinging because they were so out of character. Mortas squeezed the tip of his nose, hard, and then answered.

  “Understood. Moving out.”

  Even with the aid of night vision, the soldiers looked like wraiths. Humpbacked by their rucksacks, features distorted by their helmets and armor, they moved across the open ground in broad arrowheads.

  “There’s no good way to do this.” Dak had agreed with him when they’d been plotting the move. “Sam’s out there somewhere, but he ain’t moving around, not with all the surveillance we’ve got up. If he does attack us, it’ll be mortars or artillery. We can mitigate that by spreading out over a few hundred yards—but that’s its own problem. Some jumpy troop on the high ground, seeing just a few dismounts, might think we’re infiltrators. So we’d be better off if they saw a recognizable movement formation.”

  The platoon now walked in a blend of the two, three inverted V’s separated by fifty yards apiece. Individual soldiers were no closer to each other than ten yards, ready to hit the dirt at the slightest sign of danger. Katinka’s squad had the lead because it was almost at full strength, Mecklinger’s battered group was in the middle, and Frankel brought up the rear. Mortas shifted around in the big opening between the first two arrowheads, and Dak did the same between the last.

  The terrain offered no concealment, and very little cover. As a seasoned infantryman, Mortas knew that small rises and minute folds in the ground could shield a man from direct fire, but that they’d provide scant protection from mortar rounds falling from above. The first mile they’d walked had crossed empty acres of crunchy soil blackened by the earlier fires, and only now were they beginning to see clumps of the dry grass. Periodically they’d cross the wide-toothed indentations left by a tracked vehicle, but apart from that there was nothing.

  Looking ahead, Mortas recognized each of the men in Katinka’s squad based on their gear or their gaits. The back-to-back missions had cost the platoon five of its members—two dead and three wounded—but it had also left most of the rest with minor injuries. All the long walking, desperate running, throwing themselves down and then jumping back up, had taken its toll.

  Mortas picked out Dorillet a good seventy yards away, just based on his stride. Short and stocky, the rocket gunner carried the boomer tube across his shoulders. One arm swung gently in a short arc while the other was draped over the launcher, but the man’s normally graceful step was thrown off by a badly pulled muscle in one calf. Turning, the platoon leader walked backward for a few steps so that he could survey Mecklinger’s people. Ithaca, a dark silhouette on the far right, was limping as well. He’d wrenched his knee a week before, and had refused medical evacuation. He slept with it propped up on his ruck, and spent the first few minutes of every day hobbling around on the swollen joint until it loosened up. Other silhouettes bobbed along with sore feet or bruised ribs.

  He checked their progress in his goggles, a stark reminder that they had a long and hazardous way to go. A mile to the east the ground sloped up into a chain of wooded hills, and those hadn’t been scouted yet. Mortas turned to look at the gray band that stretched between the flatness and the sky, wondering if even then a Sim observer was calling in the coordinates of almost fifty humans inexplicably walking in the open.

  Mortas flipped one lens of his goggles to an overhead image while leaving the other on night vision. Months of service in the war zone had trained his eyes to close or focus based on the need to check the map or to avoid tripping over something. He widened the scope of the image, comforted to see that there were no heat signatures of any kind on the high ground to the east. Sam might still be there, dug in and watching, but he couldn’t have tunneled into every hill on the planet.

  “Approaching azimuth change,” Katinka whispered, from the front of the arrowheads. Mortas flipped one lens to the navigation view, seeing the lane marked out by Dassa. The other lens showed it too, but as a faint blue glow many yards to his right. Mortas turned to look west and saw the opposite boundary, a blue fog in the distant grass. A drone muttered at him as it passed overhead, one of many systems covering and guiding them. Only two more course changes, and then they’d have to stop and call ahead to Ufert’s troops. As dangerous as it was to be walking around out in the flat like this, the most perilous part of the movement would be the final approach to friendly lines. Somehow, no matter how hard they tried to avoid it, somebody with his finger on a trigger always failed to get the word.

  “Hey, anybody else seeing that?”

  The words jolted him, but Mortas recognized the voice of Bernike, a chonk gunner in Katinka’s squad. The entire platoon knelt, its weapons and eyes covering all directions.

  “Whatcha got?” Mortas asked.

  “Overhead view. Hills to the east. Looks like a firefly going crazy in the woods.”

  He didn’t see it right away, but Bernike’s description pointed it out. At the edge of the trees, a dot of light was flitting around at great speed. There was no explanation for what it was doing, as it turned and looped with no apparent direction.

  “Got it,” Dak answered from the rear of the platoon. “Has to be big, to be registering like that. Drop rucks and get ready to fight from here.”

  Sliding out from under his backpack, Mortas hit the emergency bypass that connected him with the orbital fire control center. Although the imagery came from numerous sources, fire control always had the last word.

  “Fire control, we are seeing an unidentified heat signature to our east. I am marking the area where it’s moving around.” His fingers flashed in the air close to the dirt, selecting an ovular icon and sliding it over the frenetic firefly. “Do you see it?”

  “We see it, Orphan,” a crisp voice answered. “Patching into intelligence.”

  “There’s another one.” That came from Mecklinger. “They look like they’re playing, like dogs of some kind.”

  “Big fuckin’ dog, you ask me,” one of the other troops answered, causing a flurry of whispered comments.

  “You don’t think it’s one of those things, right?”

  “From the intel briefing?”

  �
��Who stayed awake for that? What you talking about?”

  “They said they were like wolves.”

  A half-remembered fragment of the intelligence briefing they’d received aboard ship. The weary platoon gathered in a darkened room with projections beamed onto one wall and a droning voice that put half of them to sleep. A blurred image of what looked like a cross between a wolf and a stegosaurus, racing for the cover of the trees. The promise that the lupine monsters would flee any area that became a battleground between the humans and the Sims.

  A low moan hummed into life from the direction of the hills, and then it broke into a full-throated howl. Another one joined in, and Mortas decided to act.

  “Sergeant Dak, I want two squads facing east and one facing west. Oval perimeter. Let’s get all three machine guns facing east, boomers and chonks the same. I’ll coordinate with fire control.”

  “Understood.” Dak began selecting squad assignments, and the men quickly reoriented themselves. Katinka’s and Mecklinger’s squads simply turned in place while Frankel’s men jogged off to take up dispersed positions twenty yards behind them. On the imagery, Mortas saw more than a dozen fireflies were now zigzagging around in the distant trees.

  “Fire control, I’m seeing more and more of these things popping up on the high ground. Must be cave openings where they live. Request immediate suppression.”

  “Just a second.” An apathetic voice joined the conversation. “This is intelligence speaking. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. Just a few wild dogs frisking around.”

  The howling was now continuous, and Mortas felt its vibration in his blood. Raucous and discordant, it still carried a clear message. The pack was forming for a hunt, its members psyching each other up, and his platoon was the only meat available.