CHOP Line

by Henry V. O'Neil

  “Two Force divisions were going to assault the Sim colonies on Platinus. You ever heard of it?”

  The name was familiar, and Mortas tried to dredge up the memory. His brain was edging toward sleep, and it fought him, but it seemed important and he finally found it.

  “That is very strange. Cranther said he was on Platinus. He said the Sims had aerobots that looked like the local birds.”

  “They did.”

  “He said it took Command way too long to figure it out.”

  “He was right. But that was later. My platoon was one of several Banshee detachments, inserted two days before the invasion to scope things out. They shuttled us in far, far away from the colonies so we wouldn’t pop up on their defense systems. We walked for a day and a half, and at nightfall we were looking at the target.”

  “Spacedrome?”

  “Near enough. Satellite surveillance had been restricted, so we wouldn’t tip Sam off. Command needed to know the exact coordinates of the fuel bunkers.”

  “They sent Banshees for that?”

  “I know. Any competent groundpounder could have done that job. But you know Command; why do it the easy way? They wanted a force in place that could assault the fuel dumps if rockets couldn’t be used.”

  “How could they not be used, if you had eyes-on?”

  “Platinus has a funny core. Magnetic waves, supposedly strong enough to mess with the guidance systems. Anyway, that’s what they told us. But hey, we’re Banshees, right? This was just a good stretch of the legs, and then a little spotting for the ships in orbit. If they decided not to use the rockets, we could always go in and take care of it ourselves.

  “So we scouted out this tall ridge overlooking the settlement we were going to hit. There were a bunch of targets, each assigned to a Banshee platoon, spread out by hundreds of miles. Our ridge was this bizarre formation, like a row of big round hills shoved together.”

  Mortas raised his hand and fondled her right breast. “Big round hills, you say.”

  “Pay attention.” She lightly slapped his hand. “Sam hadn’t put anything up there, so it was still covered with trees and brush. Perfect concealment, so we spread out and watched the spacedrome all night. Didn’t take long to spot the bunkers, and to lock in the coordinates.”

  “Sounds all right, so far.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Her arms wrapped around his neck, pulling him close so he couldn’t see her face. “But I wasn’t taking anything for granted. I’d formed a plan if we had to go down there, how we were going to hit the place and run off, so we’d be gone before the bigger explosions started.”

  Despite the warmth of the shelter and their intertwined bodies, Mortas felt goose bumps rising on his skin. Too many memories of events that had seemed just fine that had suddenly gone badly wrong. He pressed his lips against her ear. “Go on.”

  “Turned out we didn’t have to. The fleet performed a staggered Step, so that several cruisers just suddenly appeared in orbit. They had the targeting all worked out, and launched the rockets before Sam knew they were there.” She shuddered.

  “They missed? The magnetic field threw them off?”

  “No, they were right on. I mean, they hit that place with a shit-ton of ordnance. We knew it was coming, so we were hugging the ground, and I felt the blast through my suit. The secondary explosions started up, but then they didn’t stop. I was burrowing into the dirt, trying to figure out what was going on, when that ridge erupted.

  “And I do mean erupted. That magnetic field stuff I mentioned? Platinus has a core that is incredibly large, all swirling magma, and very close to the surface where we were. The crust hid it from our sensors, but the rockets cracked that open. We were basically on top of a string of volcanoes.”

  “My God.”

  “More like the devil. Everything changed in a matter of minutes. The air filled with these falling boulders, all of them on fire, looked like a meteor shower. The ground was shaking and shifting so bad that even with the suits we just couldn’t get any traction. The trees started collapsing all around us, and then they were on fire, too.”

  “What did you do?”

  “What any good platoon leader does when everything goes to shit. I yelled, ‘Follow me!’ and ran like crazy. There’s a locator on every suit, and there’s a way for Banshee leaders to override their subordinates’ navigation systems. Instead of getting the directions for the different legs of a march, they just know where the leader’s suit is going. So I activated that.

  “I ran back the way we’d come, because we’d passed this open plain and I figured that would get us away from the volcanoes. It did, but not soon enough. You should have seen it. It was literally hell. Everything was on fire. I swear the atmosphere was burning up all around us. A suit’s got more than a hundred microcameras on its skin, all feeding together for a full-spectrum view, but all I could see was flame. I patched into all of the cameras on every suit in the platoon, and it was all the same. I couldn’t see where to go, and that’s when things got really nasty.”

  “Sounded nasty to me already.”

  “No. A suit’s got temperature control like you wouldn’t believe. Put us in space, in an ocean, in a desert, in a glacier, we’re comfortable. It has to work that way. And it’s supposed to work that way, even in a fire. But it didn’t. I realized I was being cooked inside my armor, and my ladies were feeling the same thing. They were calm about it, damn good troops, but they were letting me know we needed to get clear of this but quick.”

  “You don’t have to tell me the rest if you don’t want to.”

  “But I do, don’t you see? I reported it all later, every detail, while I was in the hospital, but I never just told the story, you know? It’s not like the other stories. Maybe I would have talked it out with my platoon sergeant, but she was killed and her replacement was somebody completely new.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Right about then my cameras started blinking out, some melting, some getting clogged with soot. Rocks were still bouncing off of me, and at one point I think a tree landed on me. Must have broken in half, because it dented the right side of my helmet and pressed it into my cheek.

  “The armor was so hot that it burned my face. I was slapping at it as I ran, and it wasn’t accomplishing anything, and it hurt so much, but then I heard the screams. It was just for a moment, because the ground had opened up behind us and the last two Banshees fell into it. One of them was my platoon sergeant, bringing up the rear, and I was yelling to them and then their voices just cut off and I was turning, I was going to go back, you don’t leave anyone behind, but then we went right off of a cliff.”

  Jander squeezed her tight, but she seemed not to notice.

  “Later on they couldn’t tell how far we dropped, because the cliff actually collapsed under us, but falling off of that thing probably saved us. I thought I’d been killed when I hit the deck, but the impact cleared enough of the junk off of my cameras that I saw a path out through the fire. I’d lost two more of my people in the fall, but I pushed the others ahead of me and we managed to get away.

  “The burns on my face were pretty bad, so I’m lucky that it didn’t affect my vision and that this scar is all that’s left. They said they could repair that, too, but I’d have to leave the war zone. I said no, and you should have seen the way they looked at me. How do you explain something like that to someone who hasn’t experienced it? How do you make them understand?”

  Jander pressed his lips to the deadened flesh, quieting her. “You just did.”

  Chapter 17

  Jogging along with the squad, Ayliss was enjoying her newly issued PT uniform. The black outfits reminded her of the Banshees she’d known on Quad Seven, and served as another indication of the trainees’ progress in Banshee Basic. Ayliss allowed her bare arms to rub against the smooth, skin-hugging fabric and remembered running with Lola and the others.

  The run route was familiar by then, a rough trail tha
t zigzagged up and down through a forest not far from their barracks. The tufted trees rose up all around them, and Ayliss knew exactly where they were on the course. Bontenough was in the lead, as always, followed by Amery, Litely, Ayliss, and then Elliott. Though ordered roughly by height, the group was moving along at a fast clip, and Ayliss had to concentrate on her footing.

  “Look at us.” Litely broke the sounds of footfalls and panting. “Running on our own, just like real Banshees. I bet we get to start working with the suits pretty soon.”

  “Working is right,” Elliott called. “Before you even get inside a trainer model, they make you go through the whole maintenance course. That way, if anything goes wrong, you know how to fix it.”

  “Where’d you hear that?” Ayliss asked, hopping upward around a familiar series of roots that waited to trip the unwary.

  “Mess hall, the other day. Sat near some of the support types, they said they’d be seeing us soon.”

  “Now I know we’re getting somewhere.” Amery laughed. “You got to speak to someone who wasn’t cadre or a medic.”

  They were laughing when Bontenough, arriving at the crest of the latest ridge, stopped in place. The path was wide at the top, and all five of them came together to view the sight that had stopped the short woman.

  “What do you make of that?” Bontenough asked.

  Rain and time had caved in much of the ridge’s face on that side, making this part of the route particularly treacherous. Untold footfalls had hammered out a pair of meandering trails that hugged the landslide’s edges, but the center was a sheer drop-off. The running path resumed on the other side, but that wasn’t what had their attention.

  Clustered at the foot of the small cliff were four landscaping robots, trying to find a way up. Independent wheels twisted and spun while their rectangular bodies rose, fell, and gave off a frustrated whining. A range of tools adorned the jittering bodies, saws and rakes on telescoping limbs, mowing blades on raised undercarriages, all surrounding a silver hemisphere set in the center. That part was actually a complete sphere, capable of flying, designed for trimming limbs and vegetation too high for the arms.

  “Got the wrong coordinates today, is all,” Elliott responded. “They’re probably supposed to be mowing some bigwig’s lawn right now. Somebody’s gonna be in a lot of trouble before the day is out.”

  “Hold it.” Bontenough stopped Elliott just as she was about to start down. “These things aren’t stupid. They know their surroundings. You ever seen them out here? Out anywhere wild like this? Something’s wrong.”

  “Cadre?” Amery whispered. “Messing with us again?”

  The mere suggestion galvanized the squad. The five women turned to form a ring, and then the ring silently shifted backward, putting the crest between them and the robots. Bodies lowered to a kneeling position while eyes searched all around them, observing the machines, the trail in front and behind, the rise and fall of the ground to either side, the trees and the underbrush.

  The complaining engines were now joined by deeper voices, the cutting tools coming to life with throaty growls. Bontenough was closest to the crest. “I don’t know what they’re doing. They’ve extended some of the arms, and they’re cutting branches off the nearest trees, but that’s not going to get them anywhere.”

  “Noise suppression,” Litely offered in a tense voice. “They’re masking something else.”

  “We need to scoot,” Ayliss called above the steadily rising sounds. “And not back the way we came.”

  “Wait,” Elliott barked. “Listen. Somebody’s coming up the trail.”

  The trainees sprinted into the brush and threw themselves down, facing the path. Though eager to see what was approaching, Ayliss tapped Amery and they both reoriented themselves to cover the ground facing away from the trail.

  “Get ready to run,” Bontenough hissed. “Stay together, stay in the woods.”

  The footfalls rose above the machine sounds just before Sergeant Nestor came jogging around the bend. She was dressed in the Banshee PT uniform, but with torso armor as well. It was a common sight, veterans training to run under a load, and the squad collectively exhaled. Bontenough stood just before Nestor passed them.

  “What’s the ruckus all about?” Sergeant Nestor asked, breathing heavily and looking up the slope.

  “We’re not sure, Sergeant. There are four landscaper ’bots down there, bunched up. They were trying to climb the hill when we got here, and right after that they fired up the saws.” Bontenough rattled off the report. “We, uh, thought it might be a test of some kind.”

  “Not that I know of.” Nestor drew a handheld from a pouch on the body armor, walking toward the summit. The saws really started to roar, forcing her to shout. “Banshee Control, this is Nestor, out on the running trail. I’ve encountered—”

  One of the flying spheres burst over the crest, its approach hidden by the racket, and then Nestor’s head disappeared in a spray of red. The metallic ball swept past her, scoring the trunk of a nearby tree without touching it. Bark flew, and the aerobot tilted madly in the air.

  “Leaf line!” shouted Amery, and Ayliss realized that Nestor had been killed by a yard of filament whipping so fast that it couldn’t be seen. The NCO’s headless body stood there for a long, frozen second before dropping to the dirt. Ayliss was staring at it when a hand gripped her arm, pulling her up.

  “That grove there!” Litely was shouting over the noise of the engines, one hand on Ayliss and the other on Amery. Elliott and Bontenough were already racing off through the woods, headed downhill for a cluster of trees with thicker trunks than the others.

  Litely’s grip disappeared, and Ayliss turned, fearing that the trainee had been chopped down. Instead, she saw the dark-skinned woman go past her and accelerated to keep up just before tripping over a loose rock. Her vision abruptly turned into a kaleidoscope of dirt, sky, and thin trees, and then she slammed into something hard. Ayliss’s ears filled with the muted sound of the engines on the other side of the ridge, and a high-pitched whine that seemed to be everywhere.

  Kicking herself into a squatting position, Ayliss looked up in time to see the flying ball swooping straight for her. It zipped through the vertical obstacles with terrifying speed, as if focused completely on her destruction. Knowing what the invisible line could do, she dived to one side in a painful forward roll that luckily ended with her standing up. The sphere had been moving too fast to correct itself, and it bounced off of the tree that had arrested her tumble moments before. Bark fragments exploded into the air, but the scything line bit deep and got stuck. One instant the ball was rebounding from the collision, and the next it was whipping around the narrow trunk with a rapidly heightening scream.

  She was already running downhill when it exploded behind her. Fragments zipped past Ayliss, clipping leaves that she didn’t take the time to notice. The larger trees shielding the others were barely the width of a human thigh, but they were several times stouter than the rest of the surrounding forest. Reaching the squad, she threw herself down inside the protective ring. Dirt and humus blew up around her, but she was already searching for other ’bots.

  “What the fuck?” Elliott hollered, crouching like the others. “Did you see what that thing did to Nestor?”

  “This isn’t a test!” Amery yelled back, her head turning and twisting.

  “No shit,” Bontenough growled. “We have to get out of here.”

  “Uh-uh,” Litely answered. “The aerobots can’t hurt us here. We hang tight, wait for help.”

  “Help? Who knows we’re in trouble?”

  “Sergeant Nestor started calling it in.” Litely stopped, thinking. “Damn. We should have grabbed the radio.”

  “Is it still up there? Did you see where it fell?”

  “Are you nuts, Bontenough?” Elliott’s voice had dropped almost to normal, and she put a restraining hand on the shorter woman. “You go up there, you’ll end up like Nestor.”

  “Quiet down
,” Amery ordered, and they all went silent. The throbbing machines from the opposite side of the slope continued their growling, and for an instant they didn’t hear it. Then a new sound rose above the background noise. The whining of another flying sphere, perhaps more than one.

  “Rocks! Grab rocks! And fallen branches!”

  The forest floor was littered with loose stones of different sizes, and the trainees scrambled out from the protecting limbs to get them. Eyes up the hill, heads swiveling, shoulders ducking, grabbing up the ancient projectiles and tossing them back into the grove. Elliott ran over to the only tree with a branch low enough, leaping in the air to grab hold of the limb. It gave a brief crack, but then she was suspended there, her running shoes dangling a yard from the ground.

  Without a word, Ayliss and Litely scampered over and jumped, grabbing Elliott about the waist and shoulders. The big woman gave a slight yelp when their combined weight pulled down on her arms, but then the limb let go. It dumped them in a heap just as Bontenough yelled above the mounting whine.

  “Here they come! Get back here!”

  Taking an extra second to look back, Ayliss wished she hadn’t. High in the air, but just below the tufted tops of the trees, three more of the spheres homed in on them. The ’bots passed close enough to the trunks that the leaf-trimming lines would have slapped into them, so the deadly filaments hadn’t been deployed yet. An insanely inappropriate image came to her mind as she ran back to the grove, a luxury resort she’d visited as a child while on a family vacation. She and Jan had been enchanted by the flying cultivators, watching them trim an interlocking series of hedges into fantastic animal shapes. Elliott grabbed her when she reached the grove, bringing her to a stop, and Ayliss realized where the memory had come from.

  “What other tools do they have?” she shouted as the machines began their descent. “Leaf lines, clippers, saws—what else?”