by Rick Partlow
More trees, thicker, hiding the clearing of the LZ from his view, a haze of thick, dark smoke that turned humanoid figures into shadows and seemed to muffle the jackhammer gunshots. McKay felt as if he were in a nightmare, running through an unending battle yet never able to see any of the combatants clearly or fire a shot himself…and then, as if they’d crossed a threshold, he and the security guard were suddenly in the thick of the fight. McKay almost tripped over the back of a Marine rifleman as the man crouched behind a dead tree, his carbine at his shoulder, firing off controlled bursts at a cluster of three figures partially hidden in the smoke fifty meters ahead at the edge of the clearing.
Dropping to a knee beside the Marine, McKay added his own carbine to the volume of fire, while the security man stood to his left and shot from the hip with his submachine gun, using the HUD display in his helmet linked to the gun’s sights to aim it. The trio of enemy went down and McKay slapped the Marine on the shoulder and yelled “Heading downrange!” before sprinting over to them. He had to know…
Their armor was familiar, large and clunky compared to what he and the Marines used, camouflaged in brown, green and grey where it wasn’t punctured and stained with blood. The troopers were over two meters tall and broad across the chest, but the armor made them seem even more imposing. It was all made from designs over a century old, copied over and over in nanotech replicators built by long-dead aliens on an unknown world. Using the barrel of his carbine, McKay pushed the helmet off of one of the downed humanoid forms, revealing the face that had haunted his nightmares for the last five years.
The skin was the shade of pale blue that reminded him of a cyanosis victim, the nose flat to the face and the brow protected by a heavy, bony ridge. Yet it was the eyes that truly horrified him. They were black and lifeless, like a shark’s, soulless and inanimate. He had to remind himself that the thing was built from human DNA, yet somehow that seemed to make it more horrifying rather than less.
“Sir!” The Marine grabbed his arm. “Sir, we should get moving!”
“Where’s the rest of your platoon, Corporal?” McKay asked him.
“Last I saw, they were falling back to the shuttle, with some of your special ops guys, sir. I got cut off with a couple other Marines and had to run.”
“Then let’s find them. Follow me, both of you.” Before the Marine could object, McKay took off at a sprint back towards the clearing, the Corporal and the security guard trailing behind.
Louder than the cacophony of battle, louder than the crack of bullets breaking the sound barrier in their passage, McKay could hear the ragged pant of his own breath in his ears and he knew he should have been feeling the exertion, but he was riding a wave of adrenaline and pure, unadulterated fear and felt nothing. Somewhere in the depths of his conscious mind, the part of him that remembered the two times he’d been shot was screaming at him to take cover, but his body may as well have been a machine.
Two of the Protectorate biomechs appeared out of the smoke to his left, just meters ahead of him, firing their rifles from the shoulder as they trotted across his path, shooting at someone to his right that he couldn’t see through the haze. Without slowing, McKay fired a burst that cut across both of the hulking figures, slicing through the neck of the first before punching through the second’s faceplate in a spray of blood and shattered plastic. The biomechs collapsed, crashing to the ground in a heap, but McKay had already rushed past them and was scanning for the next target, because to stop in the killing ground was death.
McKay rushed through a thick, black whirlpool of smoke and dug in his heels as a blistering wall of heat loomed before him. One of the Marine assault vehicles that had come down on the shuttle was consuming itself in an urgent rush of flame, the source of the billowing clouds of smoke that covered the area. He didn’t know what could have set it ablaze, but all the possibilities seemed very, very bad for his current situation.
The Marine corporal and the security guard came up behind him, and McKay turned to waved them to a halt...and brought up his carbine as he saw two more running figures coming out of the haze behind them. His finger was putting pressure on the trigger when he saw that the two were Marines: a skinny, painfully young private and a female sergeant.
"Jesus, Bill," the Sergeant gasped, panting with exhaustion, "where the hell did you go?"
"I got cut off by the Gomers, Sergeant Manuel," Bill, the Marine Corporal explained. "I thought you guys were dead!"
"Enough with the family reunion," McKay interrupted. "You're all with me now. Wind’s blowing that way,” he pointed behind them. “Once we get clear of the assault car, we’re going to lose the smoke pretty quick, so stay low and look for cover.”
At their nods, he circled around the burning hulk, emerging from the smoke into the clear, and immediately becoming aware of several things, the first of which was that he knew what had destroyed the assault vehicle. The Protectorate mostly used things that they had brought with them back at the tail end of the 21st Century, when they had gone through the wormhole in the asteroid belt and emerged in orbit around the ruined alien homeworld. Those and some of the things they had pirated from Republic cargo or colony ships they could run through the alien replication factory they’d discovered and make more. But there was one thing they had built on their own, using designs from before the Sino-Russian War and cannibalized parts. The Marines who had first faced them had dubbed them Hoppers because the armored gun vehicles walked with a curious, hopping gate on ostrich-like legs designed to travel over rough terrain.
One of the Hoppers lay on the ground a hundred meters from the assault vehicle, burning just as fiercely, its cockpit and weapons turrets a smashed ruin. It was clear to McKay that the Hopper had taken out the assault vehicle with a missile before being destroyed itself.
Beyond the wrecked Hopper McKay could finally see the shuttle and marveled that the spacecraft was still intact. The delta-winged craft was designed for combat and heavily armored but it couldn't have survived a missile strike from the Hopper...it was just luck that the Marine assault vehicle had taken out the Hopper before it had a chance to destroy the shuttle. He could see that the shuttle was sealed tight, the cargo and boarding ramps both retracted, but showed no other signs of being ready for takeoff. At least a dozen bodies were scattered around the shuttle’s landing gear, most of them Protectorate biomechs, and the battle was still raging around it.
A force of about twenty biomechs was clustered around the cover of the wrecked Hopper, oblivious to the flames still licking off of its shredded turbines, laying down a steady stream of automatic fire in the direction of the shuttle’s massive, heavy duty landing gear. What was left of the Republic forces were huddled behind the landing gear, firing back but in controlled bursts, conserving their ammo.
And about thirty meters behind the Hopper, there was an overturned cargo jack---a compact, remote-operated forklift; someone must have been using it to unload equipment from the shuttle when the attack came and in the battle it had been knocked on its side and partially buried in the dirt. Without hesitation, McKay sprinted straight for the cover of the cargo loader, legs pumping as he put every ounce of speed he had into crossing the fifty or sixty meters of open ground. The skinny private passed him up like he was standing still, sliding into position behind the loader before McKay was halfway there. He made a mental note to be embarrassed about that when he had the time.
Once all five of them were behind the cover of the loader, McKay grabbed Sergeant Manuel by the arm and pulled her close enough to hear him over the din of unceasing gunfire. “You have grenades?” He asked her.
“Private Toma and I have rifle launched grenades, sir!” She responded, patting a pouch on her chest.
“Load ‘em up,” he instructed her. “At my signal, launch them into the Gomers position, then stay here and provide cover fire.” He pointed to the Corporal and the Security NCO. “You two follow me.”
He watched Manuel and Toma load the rocket-assis
ted grenades into the launchers below the barrels of their rifles, then edge out around the end of the cargo loader to aim them. “Fire!”
The grenades exited the launchers with a puff of coldgas and then their onboard rocket motors ignited, taking them across the thirty meters in an eyeblink to slam into the Protectorate biomech troops with twin blasts that McKay could feel in his sinuses. Shrapnel pinged musically off the casing of the loader and a spray of dirt and debris showered them even thirty meters away.
The last bit of shrapnel was still ricocheting when McKay shouted “Go!” and bolted from behind the cargo jack with the Marine and Security guard trailing close behind. The grenades had taken a toll on the biomech attackers, scattering four of them into component pieces and incapacitating a few others, so McKay concentrated his fire on the ones still standing, particularly the ones who were turning to face the new threat from behind.
Bringing his carbine to his shoulder as he ran, he began pumping controlled bursts into the necks and heads of one biomech after another, hoping fervently that the others with him were doing the same, and that his people at the shuttle would take advantage of the distraction to attack.
If they don’t, this will be the shortest counterattack in Republic history, he mused, coming even with the footpad of the downed Hopper’s twisted, charred right leg, nearly tripping over a dead biomech trooper there. He could see the remaining Protectorate biomechs rising up from cover and turning to deal with the new threat; he downed one with a burst that emptied his magazine and then was forced to duck behind the footpad.
He could hear the Protectorate 9mm rifle rounds spanging off the metal of the Hopper’s leg as he dropped the empty mag from his carbine and fished another from his chest pack, seating it with a slap of his palm and then racking a round into the chamber. Instinctive movements, repeated thousands of times in training; his hands didn’t even shake. What came next was harder; bullets were still ricocheting off the footpad above him, making it unwise to stand up. He looked around and saw Corporal Bill and the Security NCO moving up nearly shoulder-to-shoulder, firing steadily; and he considered yelling at them to cover him while he moved…and then the Security Tech-Sergeant went down with a bullet through his knee.
“Sonofabitch!” McKay muttered under his breath.
He gathered his feet underneath him and jumped out from behind the footpad, making himself ignore the rounds impacting in the dirt around him as he rolled to a crouch beside the Tech Sergeant, who was laying prone, writhing in agony. Emptying his fresh magazine in the direction of the enemy, he slung the carbine and grabbed the Fleet NCO by the back of his armored vest, then hauled him backwards toward the cover of the Hopper’s footpad. He’d almost got the man to safety when he felt a sledgehammer slam into his chest and the air went out of him in an agonized gasp.
Somehow, he stayed on his feet and yanked the wounded Tech Sergeant behind cover before he collapsed next to him, struggling to breathe. He patted at his chest and felt a pair of ragged holes in the armor there, but couldn’t tell if the slugs had penetrated through to his flesh.
Dammit, just gonna’ have to assume they didn’t, he told himself.
Still fighting to take a breath, he rolled over and grabbed in his pockets for a smart bandage, ripped it open and wrapped it around the wounded man’s leg. The Tech Sergeant relaxed as the bandage injected him with painkillers and coated the wound with clotting agents. Satisfied that the man was not in immediate danger, McKay grabbed his carbine off his shoulder and painfully reloaded it, then rolled onto his knees and tried to lever himself back to his feet.
Things had changed since he’d been shot, he saw instantly. The biomechs were down and even as he watched, Sgt. Manuel and Pvt. Toma were rushing past him to finish off the ones still moving. The friendlies who’d been firing from the shelter of the shuttle’s landing gear had moved up and circled around the downed Hopper and were advancing warily, led by Sgt. Sean Watanabe, the Special Ops team’s senior NCO after Jock. He was a short and stocky man with an open face and dark hair worn a bit longer than when he’d been a Marine; like McKay, he was wearing body armor but no helmet.
“Are you okay, sir?” Watanabe asked as he jogged over to McKay.
“All I need’s a clean pair of shorts,” McKay snorted. “Situation report, Watanabe.”
“They attacked out of the woods while we were offloading, Colonel,” the Sergeant told him.
“While I was supervising offloading,” Commander Villanueva interjected, coming up from behind Watanabe, a pistol in her right hand, her left arm hanging limp with her forearm wrapped in a blood-soaked smart bandage.
“Yes, sir,” Watanabe confirmed. “The flight crew wasn’t on board, just one of the junior enlisted they sent down from the Decatur to help with unloading. He apparently shut the boat up tight to keep the Gomers out. The Hopper was gonna’ take out the shuttle, but Gunny Dzvonik and one of her Corporals jumped into the assault vehicle and took it out.” His face went grim. “Then a couple of the biomechs blew up the assault vehicle with a crew-launched missile before we could nail them.”
“The biomechs don’t operate with this sort of organization without a controller,” McKay interrupted. “Hold on.” He pulled out his ‘link and keyed in Vinnie’s frequency. “Vinnie, this is McKay, do you copy?”
“Read you, sir,” came the immediate reply. “We have the Investigation team secure at the outpost, heading to the LZ now with the Marine platoon.”
“LZ is secure, Vinnie,” McKay told him. “But we do not have a fix on the biomech controller…unless they’ve come up with something new from what we saw during the war, they don’t have much range, so they’re going to be in this area. I want you to take the Marines and cover the area between the outpost and here. We’ll run a search the other direction.”
“Roger, Colonel,” Vinnie replied. “I’ll shout if I see anything. Out.”
McKay turned back to Watanabe. “Casualties?”
“Besides Dzvonik and Corporal Ash,” the Sergeant told him, “we lost Lt. Dodd, the platoon leader…he was trying to get to the vehicle to look for survivors and got caught in a secondary explosion. Couple of Fleet techs got killed when the whole thing started, along with Givens.” The last with a sigh. Givens was one of the Alpha team and had been a friend of Watanabe’s. “We also have three members of the shuttle crew unaccounted for, unless they’re on board and didn’t tell anyone. We have five wounded, not counting you; nothing life-threatening but a couple are going to need treatment for burns and broken bones.”
“Commander Villanueva,” McKay turned to the pilot. “Get a hold of whoever’s inside the shuttle, get it opened up and have the medics get the wounded on board, then get powered up and get in the air…I want a patrol up to make sure we don’t have any more enemy inbound, and some air support.”
“Aye, sir,” she said, then holstered her pistol and pulled out her ‘link to call the shuttle.
“Sean.” McKay turned back to Watanabe. “Get the Marines organized and run a search in a kilometer radius from here out,” he waved away from the path to the outpost. “If that controller is still here, I want him taken, alive if possible. We…”
His thought was interrupted by a burst of gunfire in the distance, back towards the outpost: the stutter of a submachine gun and the rapid booms of a handgun.
“Vinnie,” McKay keyed his ‘link. “Is that you?”
“Negative,” came the immediate reply. “I heard it, though.”
“Podbyrin,” McKay muttered. “On my six, Sean!”
Not waiting to see if the NCO followed, McKay took off running back into the forest toward the fallen tree and the pit where he’d left the Russian and the Security guard. This time, his adrenaline spike was gone and he was feeling every bit of the exhaustion and fatigue of the last half hour, as well as the pain of his bruised chest. He pushed through it on sheer force of will, knowing he’d pay for it later.
It seemed like it took twice as long to get back
to the pit as it had to come the other way, and he snagged his feet on roots and brush over and over, but finally he saw the massive fallen tree looming ahead of him, its bare roots clawing the air in death.
D’mitry Podbyrin sat sobbing quietly on the ground with his back against the tree trunk, Jock’s borrowed pistol held loosely in his hand. The Tech Sergeant McKay had left to guard him was sprawled half-in and half-out of the pit, the faceplate of his helmet shattered, his face a bloody ruin, his submachine gun at his side. And laid out in front of the pit was a tall, powerfully built Russian in Protectorate battle utilities, his head half blown away by multiple gunshots at point blank range. At his feet was a Protectorate battle rifle and strapped to his back was a transmission unit with a small broadcast dish attached.
McKay came to a halt in front of the former Protectorate Colonel, noting peripherally that Watanabe was moving around to the other side of the pit to check on the Tech Sergeant. “D’mitry,” he said softly, leaning over to put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
“Sergei,” Podbyrin responded, not looking up. McKay blinked, wondering if the little man was hysterical and thought he was someone else. “Lt. Sergei Luzhkof,” he expounded. He looked up, glancing back at the dead Russian officer, agony in his eyes along with the tears. “He was…he was my friend.”
“I know, D’mitry,” McKay said, offering him a hand up. “But we have to go.”
The Russian looked up at his hand, sighed deeply and took it, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet. “I should have stayed on the ship,” he muttered half to himself.
“Colonel McKay,” Jason heard over his ‘link.
