CHOP Line

by Henry V. O'Neil

  “Intel, I don’t care what you think. You’re up there, we’re down here. There’s at least fifty of those things forming up, and I got nothing but empty air between them and my people. Fire control, I am marking a linear target across the face of the high ground. I want rockets on this target, now.”

  He saw Dak hustle by, assigning sectors of fire. Tucking the butt of his Scorpion into his shoulder, Mortas watched his goggle view take on the optics of the rifle. For the first time he was able to detect the bobbing glow of the wolves’ heat signatures, prancing around just inside the tree line. It was hard to tell, but he guessed there were now more than a hundred of them.

  “Fire control, what’s the holdup?”

  “Your request has been challenged by intelligence. Your divisional fire control center is adjudicating.”

  “My division? This is First Platoon, B Company, First Battalion of the Orphan Brigade! We aren’t part of a division. Now give me those rockets!”

  “You are temporarily assigned to the Tratian mechanized division on the planet surface. Their fire direction center had rejected your request. They are citing regulations preventing them from expending ordnance on the local fauna.”

  “Local fauna?” Mortas hopped to his feet, grabbed his rucksack with one hand, and ran up to a gap in the eastward-facing side of the perimeter. Dropping the backpack, he threw himself down and began sighting again. “Are you seeing this imagery? There’s hundreds of them.”

  “Jan,” Dassa broke in. “I see your situation. I’m working it from this end. Stay cool.”

  “Hey, how about sending a few of those armored boxes with the big guns our way? Might be helpful.”

  “Working on it.”

  The howling died down in only a few seconds, and through the sights Mortas watched the first glowing orbs leaving the wood line, headed their way.

  “Chonk gunners, boomers, you got ’em first. Fire as soon as they reach max range,” he chanted, checking the sectors Dak had assigned. “Use high explosive. Let’s see if we can scare ’em off with the noise. Once they’re closer, switch to anti-personnel rounds.”

  “Machine guns, watch your sectors. Sweep back and forth.” Dak continued the commands. “Riflemen, plug the gaps. Aim for the ones who get through.”

  The wolves slid down the hills individually, looking like gobs of melting quicksilver in his goggles. The trickling droplets were followed by steady streams, and finally a torrent. Once they reached the flat, their glowing signatures blended together briefly until they looked like a tidal wave hurtling toward landfall. The rolling cloud of light rippled and contorted with the movement of its individual members, and as they got closer they resolved into images right out of a nightmare.

  Enormous heads with triangular snouts and close-set eyes. Jaws that opened and shut to draw in air or to snap at nothing as they charged. Massive shoulders surging forward simultaneously, sending broad forelegs reaching out for the dirt with paws that extended into curved claws. The dust rose up under their pounding strides, and for the briefest moment Mortas almost laughed, thinking that he was about to be struck by one of the massed cavalry charges of ancient history.

  Then the rifle’s optics showed him the cruel, pointed teeth in the flashing jaws and the obsessed intelligence in the slanting eyes, and he wasn’t amused anymore.

  “Nice doggies. Good doggies.” A tense voice came from the firing line, trying to sound funny but failing. “Go away, doggies!”

  “Don’t show weakness,” Bernike responded. “It encourages them.”

  “Yeah,” Ithaca joined in. “Whatever you do, don’t let ’em see they killed you.”

  The jest got much of the platoon laughing, and Mortas joined in. The rippling onslaught came on with terrifying speed, and the mirth died down as the men sighted in.

  “Let’s toss the first grenades as a volley.” Prevost had taken informal command of the chonk gunners, his calm helping the entire platoon settle down. “On my mark. Three. Two. One.”

  The air exploded with the startling concussion of the grenade launchers and the platoon’s three boomers. The rockets struck first, detonating on the hard-packed dirt just behind the lead wolves. Brief flashes of red and orange, followed an instant later by an echoing whump that tossed several of the beasts through the air. The horde was pressed in so close that the flying bodies took down numerous others in a cascading tangle of kicking legs and flying dirt.

  The grenades struck right after that, with less force but throwing deadly fragments in all directions. Stricken wolves ran on for a few more strides, wobbling, tripping, giving the ones behind them time to swerve. The machine guns opened up next, a stuttering roar that tore tunnels through the onrushing mob. Staring through the Scorpion’s optics, Mortas could now make out the thick hair on the predators, swept back as they ran. He selected one of the biggest, loping slightly ahead of the rest, and the rangefinder in the corner of his goggles flickered to let him know the target was almost close enough.

  “Fire control.” The words came out dry and hoarse. “How ’bout you send a little help our way? Or do we have to get eaten first?”

  There was no response, and the whole subject left his mind as if it had never been important. His vision was taken up by snarling lips and jagged teeth and rippling muscles and bouncing eyes that seemed focused directly on him. Then the red dot appeared right between those eyes, indicating that his chosen target was in range, and he gently squeezed the trigger.

  The charging beast bobbed at the last second, but the round struck it just above the right eye. Its entire head jerked to the side, as if slapped by an invisible hand, but it didn’t fall down. Its jaws opened in pained fury, and it shook its head in a brief spasm before powering forward. Astounded, Mortas put two more rounds into the monster before it swerved to the side, tumbling over and taking two others down with it.

  The troops were already calling to each other. “One shot ain’t gonna do it! Three-round bursts!”

  The wall of teeth and muscle came apart just then, the machine guns having piled so many bodies in three spots that the others were racing around them. The boomers stopped firing, running short of missiles, but the chonks kept up a steady rain of explosives that convinced the separated knots of wolves to break up even more. Though still visible through the goggles, the wolves peeled off into the darkness to either side of the platoon.

  Mortas ejected the Scorpion’s spent magazine, popping his head up to see what the animals were doing. Ducking back down to reload, a bizarre fact entered his mind. He was hugging the ground because in every other battle someone had been shooting at him or shrapnel had been chopping the air. For the first time ever, his opponents weren’t able to threaten him that way. Mortas pushed himself up, but then stood with growing confidence. He breathed in the acrid air with a sensation of unreality, marveling at the unfamiliar freedom, before remembering why he’d had to rise. Looking out over the plain showed what he’d feared. The cloud of gray hair and claws had separated into smaller groups, and several of those gangs were running off to his left and right.

  “Sergeant Frankel, back your men closer to us. These fuckin’ things are cuttin’ around.”

  The rear squad adjusted quickly, moving in twos, and then Dak was shifting one of the machine guns to join them. All around him, Mortas heard the men reorganizing themselves and reloading the weapons. He was just about to renew his call for fire support when the radio started babbling with robotic warnings from a variety of weapons systems.

  “Danger close! Danger close! Rockets inbound!”

  “Seek cover! Artillery impact imminent!”

  “Mark your platoon frontage! Gunships preparing to make a run!”

  Several of the NCOs were standing when the warnings came in, and many of the other men were crouched or kneeling. They immediately pressed themselves into the dirt, but Mortas remained on his feet. Partly motivated by a perverse annoyance that the ordnance was finally arriving, he now wanted to see it land. But
standing there, with the sharp smell of explosives and gunfire all around him, the truth was that he relished the freedom of being upright when he shouldn’t have been. He flipped the view in one lens to confirm that his tiny perimeter was clearly marked, and that the pulsing targets all around them were locked in.

  The rockets hit first, slamming into the far hills where the wolves lived. He saw the distortion in his goggles’ night vision as the missiles shot down into the trees, a trembling ray of blue light followed by geysers of fire and the deep booms of enormous explosions. The artillery struck next, a doughnut of steel fragments with his troops at their center, and that finally put him on the ground. The deadly chunks of metal rent the air all around them, but his helmet microphones let him hear the exultant whoops of his troops over the concussions.

  The artillery stopped, and he looked up to see long furrows being torn up out of the ground in straight rows. Gunships chewed the earth between the humans and the wolves, and somewhere in that symphony of destruction Mortas heard the keening of the animals again.

  That was wrong. They should have fled this otherworldly carnage and its unnatural noises. The platoon’s meager weapons had broken their first assault, but the titanic support that now fell from the heavens should have sent them running for their lives. Sliding across the dirt on his chest armor, Mortas reached his rucksack and peered up over it. Human voices now took over the fire control net, calling off the bombardment in order to assess its effectiveness. The taller grass outside the perimeter was ablaze, its short-lived heat adding to the confusion.

  “You hearing that, Sergeant Dak?” he shouted.

  “Yeah! Sounds like there’s more of them!”

  Mortas came up on one knee, but his goggles seemed to be malfunctioning. Out beyond the grass fires, coming from the direction of the hills, was a wall of rolling heat three times larger than the original lupine charge.

  “Holy fuck! Look at ’em all!” He recognized Catalano’s voice, and then Prevost’s.

  “Chonks! Stand up with me! Direct fire! They’re comin’ too fast!”

  Silhouettes popped up to either side, and Mortas saw the grenade launcher men firing their weapons with the barrels level with the ground. The machine guns started up again, and he came to his feet knowing what he was about to see.

  If the original assault had been a tidal wave, this was a tsunami. The rockets must have driven the entire colony from its caves, and they were charging toward the obvious source of their torment. He raised the Scorpion, and then lowered it. A cold throb started in his stomach, and for the first time he looked at his rifle as a tiny, useless thing.

  “Fire control, we need a final protective fire across our eastern frontage.” Mortas spoke slowly, surprised by the feeling of resignation that had taken hold. “Give us everything you got. It’s our only chance.”

  Someone told him that the rounds were on the way, but he was already firing. The solid mass of seething rage was coming on so fast that he couldn’t miss, and he ran through a magazine without really aiming. Once again the machine guns were felling the beasts by the dozen, creating a fracturing domino effect, but this time it didn’t break up the attack at all. The detonations of the chonk rounds appeared in his goggles as bright sparks only, their full explosion blocked by the sheer mass of flesh.

  The rockets landed just then, only a few hundred yards out, much too close, knocking the chonk men down. Mortas was thrown onto his back, gasping for air and clutching his rifle against his armor. His entire field of vision turned a blinding orange, as if he’d been thrown into a fire, and dark shapes were being hurled through the air all around. A form smashed into the dirt next to him, sounding like a bag of fertilizer dropped from a great height, but he knew it was one of the wolves and shot it just as it began to recover.

  The dampers in his helmet locked out all the noise in the face of the concussive avalanche, and so the next few seconds were in dead silence. The explosive rain continued to fall, wind slapping him one way and then pulling him the other way, bubbles of fire like lava erupting to his front. Mortas saw one of the machine gun teams working the weapon back and forth, and then they disappeared under a pile of writhing, rending, biting monsters the size of horses. He was shooting into them, so were others, and the beasts paid no heed until the shots killed them.

  The entire fiery world suddenly disappeared behind a head the size of his rucksack that butted straight into his chest armor, knocking him flat. The behemoth was going so fast that it somersaulted over him, clawed paws and spined tail flailing, but then it was on him, something scraping across the top of his helmet like ice falling off a roof, the jaws descending, his arms holding the Scorpion out crosswise, and the beast yanking it out of his grip and flinging it away like a twig.

  His hand was fumbling for the knife, Cranther’s knife, if the rifle was useless the dagger was simply a joke, when the jaws snapped shut on his left leg. Certain he’d been caught in the workings of some gigantic machine, Mortas felt the teeth piercing the fabric and the flesh and then the pressure smashing the bone within. The massive head was swinging side to side, his whole body left the ground, and then he was thrown clear.

  Mortas landed hard, but was unaware of it. He relaxed into the dirt, it was all right, he was infantry and the dirt was home. He felt warm liquid all over his left thigh and wondered if he’d peed himself, it didn’t matter, none of it mattered, the stars were out in the blackness overhead and that was where he was going.

  Flashes like lightning crossed the sky, but it couldn’t be lightning, it was coursing straight across, very close to him, he might have been able to touch it if his arms would just respond, and then the flashes were gone and the stars were back. Somewhere in his fading consciousness he knew he should be worried about the animal that had killed him, but it seemed so terribly unimportant.

  Hands were yanking his helmet off, then his goggles, liquid was flowing across his face, cold this time, and he looked up to see Dassa holding him. B Company’s commander wore no helmet and no goggles, and his face was streaked with smoke.

  “Stay with me, Jan! Stay with me!” he yelled, and even though their noses were practically touching, the words came to Mortas from miles away.

  Chapter 5

  “Mother. Finally.”

  Dreaming in the Step, Ayliss stood on a hill covered with waist-high grass. Wind whispered all around her, and the sun was warm. Unlike so many of the other dreams, she’d been alone in this one for some time. Walking in an inexplicable calm, not recognizing any of the features of the rolling grassland, aware that she was asleep in a Transit Tube.

  The figure came over the rise several hundred yards distant, but Ayliss knew who it was right away. Her dream self just stood there, not understanding why she wasn’t running to the woman who’d died when she was six. Tall and slim, Lydia Mortas had always moved with tremendous grace and bearing. She did that now, and the wind played with her dark hair as she seemed to glide through the green stems.

  “Sorry I was gone so long, dear.” Lydia spoke in a detached voice, her face blank. Ayliss looked her up and down, startled to see her mother in a set of outdated army fatigues. The olive drab fabric was ripped in several places and blotched with dried mud, but Lydia herself was unharmed.

  “I tried so hard to remember what you looked like,” Ayliss answered, her words making as little sense as anything else in this unconscious hallucination. “Even with all the pictures and the videos, I forgot over time. But then I’d look at Jan, and I’d see you.”

  Lydia turned her eyes away, surveying their surroundings. “If you wanted to see me, you had only to look inside yourself.”

  “They all kept telling me I was like Father, and that Jan was like you.”

  “But you found out they were wrong.” The dark eyes came back to her. “Didn’t you?”

  “Jan’s a soldier now. He’s had to kill a lot of the Sims, just like Father.”

  “And what about you, daughter? Who did you kill?”
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  Ayliss looked down, surprised to feel ashamed. “I only did what I had to do.”

  “What did Blocker tell you about me?”

  “He said you were the most dangerous member of the family, not Father. And that I was just like you.”

  “Blocker always thought in absolutes. Friend or enemy. Right or wrong.”

  “Was he wrong? About us? Me and you?”

  For the first time in the dream, Lydia showed emotion. Her mouth twisted into a hard smile, but she didn’t reply. Her left hand went into one of the uniform’s baggy pockets, and she held out a closed fist.

  Ayliss reached out as well, and her mother deposited something small and hard in her waiting palm. Looking down, she saw a small piece of polished stone, dark gray but flecked with yellow that sparkled in the sun. A tiny loop of gold metal had been driven into the rock, and she recognized it at once.

  “Father gave me this.” Hot, angry tears blurred her vision while her speech picked up speed. “While you were still alive, he was gone so much, and when he came back he’d give me a stone from wherever he’d been. I hung them on a bracelet. I loved that bracelet.”

  “But you threw it away.”

  “How could you know that? You were already dead. He pushed me away, me and Jan, but he kept giving me more of these rotten things, like it somehow explained everything. I didn’t need trinkets, I needed my father!” Ayliss looked up, startled to see that Lydia was now at the top of the hill. She said the next words in a voice too low to hear. “I needed my mother.”

  The sun was in her eyes, but she knew that Lydia had departed. Looking around, seeing nothing but grass, clutching the stone so hard that it hurt, she heard the wind speak.

  “Sorry I was gone so long.”

  The male Stepper who opened Ayliss’s Transit Tube wore the blank mask that they all aped in her presence, but Ayliss barely noticed. She knew the debriefing session with Mira was going to be difficult, because the emotions stirred up by Lydia’s appearance were impossible to hide. She took her time getting some water, struggling to concoct a phony story that would explain her condition. Normally adept at deception of that sort, Ayliss found her thoughts whirling uncontrollably as she went down the passageway.