by B. V. Larson
I didn’t feel like explaining anything about what had really happened on the rocks, so I went to find Leeson instead. I relayed Graves’ orders.
Leeson was all smiles. Retreating to a defensive position had to be what he’d wanted all along. Why sweat and fight crazies hiding under rocks when you could sip green fizzies in the shade of the lifter ramps?
We set off immediately, heading back along the lakeshore toward the lifter. I barely had time to put my armor on.
It was pitch dark, and we only had our night vision systems and a few suit lamps to go by. On Dust World there was no moon to light up the sky. When night fell it was as if you had a thick blanket pulled over your eyes. The effect was intensified by the fact that we were a few kilometers down in a hole below the desolate surface. Very little starlight penetrated from the distant skies above.
Our night vision systems were helpful but less than perfect. We stumbled over objects that didn’t register as solid to the computers inside our helmets. Carlos fell flat on his face in front of me at one point.
I laughed but then hustled forward when he didn’t get back up.
“You okay?” I asked, grabbing his shoulder.
He didn’t answer. Instead he shivered, his entire body spasming. I let go of his shoulder and unlimbered my weapon.
“Man down!” I shouted over the unit channel. “I repeat, we’ve got—”
“Make for the lifter!” Leeson ordered. “We’re under attack!”
I heard a series of snaps and whistling sounds. I knew what they were, and I began running up the lakeshore. I didn’t like leaving Carlos, but he was probably as good as dead.
Ahead of us, the lifter was a dark hulk. It was slightly greenish in my night vision face plate as the ship had a hotter heat signature than the vegetation or the stone cliffs behind it.
I wondered if I’d reach the ramp before I was shot in the back. I wondered, too, if Della was among those who were attacking us.
-17-
The colonists had decided not to wait around for us to attack them. They’d gotten ahead of us and reached the lifter somehow—I suspected they had tunnels worming through the rock walls of this canyon and had been watching us all along.
Running toward the lifter in my heavy armor, my boots sank into the sandy soil along the lakeshore with every step. Clumps of earth and vegetation squirted from under my heavy tread as I crashed along. Being a heavy trooper was kind of like driving a very small tank. You felt isolated from your surroundings but not invincible.
At least once a bolt spanged off my armor. It didn’t find a crease or joint to penetrate, fortunately, and the nanites dribbled off. They couldn’t eat through solid steel.
When I came to the ramp, I was horrified by what I saw. A dozen dead legion regulars lay around the foot of the massive tongue of steel. I knew this was a very bad sign. Normally, the first action the crew would have taken would have been to button-up the ship. But the ramp wasn’t moving, and there were no signs of life.
Gauntlets struck my back and shoved. I stumbled forward, servos whining.
“Get up that ramp!” Harris shouted. “We’re exposed out here. I can’t see the enemy. They must be cold-faced bastards.”
I jogged up the ramp, holding my weapon at my hip. I adjusted the spread to form a broad cone and stepped into the gloom at the top.
Lights—there should be lights. Someone had shut them off or smashed them all.
Harris and Leeson were right behind me, breathing hard. About a dozen more troopers came up behind them.
For me, the combat situation was an odd one. I’m accustomed to fighting aliens. My experience came from Cancri-9—Steel World—where the enemy were all in the form of very large lizards. These were men I was fighting against today, and this wasn’t a drill. I was on their planet, and despite their lack of armor or heavy weaponry, I knew they could effectively kill my kind.
I turned my suit lamps up to full power and disengaged the night vision. Clearly, the damned infrared input wasn’t working.
What I saw then was shocking. We were surrounded. They were all around us. Some crawled on all fours on top of the jump seat racks. Others hid behind the rows and were even coming up behind us on careful, padding feet.
They wore green-black outfits. That was something I hadn’t seen before. I didn’t know what they were at first, but the way their suits moved and shifted—they had to be smart-cloth.
Nanites, I thought. Of course, if the colonists were masters of a single technology, it was nanotech. They had tight-fitting suits which concealed their bodies even from infrared signatures. The suits must cool the exterior or operate with some other chameleon effect. All I could see was their eyes. The rest was pure green-black.
In a way, the fact that they startled me helped out. I didn’t hesitate. If I’d been given time to think, I might have delayed my fire for a fraction of a second, and that moment of indecision might have been fatal. But I didn’t. I sprayed those that were in front of me, sweeping them with a broad cone of plasma like violet fire.
“They’re all around us!” I shouted, as those in front flickered in flame and withered away to smoldering corpses. I swept to the right and left, singeing the enemy that hid behind the rows of jump seats. Harnesses, gear and even seats themselves caught fire, burning and producing black, oily smoke.
I heard a great deal of commotion behind me, but I didn’t have time to worry about that. The survivors in front of me rallied and charged. They were brave—I had to give them that. I’d read up a bit on the colonists we’d sent into space last century. They’d been hardy souls. They were people who were bright, tough and who’d also apparently been irritating enough to the gathering world governments to warrant being shipped out into the unknown.
Three of them rushed me. They couldn’t have known that I was unable to fire my weapon again so quickly, but they came on anyway. I dropped my cannon as there was no time to cycle up the next blast. I flicked on the force-blades in the arms of my suit, and these weapons met the nanite-edged black weapons of the enemy.
It was one type of high-tech blade against another. Mine had more reach, but theirs were no less deadly. The first man who came at me did so without finesse. He howled and cut at me. I met his twisted blade with my own beam of force—and his disintegrated. My left arm thrust upward and swept high, a classic follow-through movement I’d learned on my first day of heavy-infantry training. His head popped off and flew away, steaming.
Witnessing this fight gave the other two colonists pause. To their credit, they didn’t run. They came on with greater caution trying to feint and jab at a distance. They didn’t want their blades to touch mine. They wanted them to touch my armor.
Fighting two enemies at once isn’t easy. I was far from a master with force-blades, but I liked to think I knew what I was doing.
The guy on the right sprang close, jabbed, then hopped backward. I made the mistake of going after him—and then the second fighter made her move.
She slashed at my chest, which was lucky for me. The nanites left a long streak of dark metal as if she’d hit me with a charcoaled stick. They dribbled and bubbled there, trying in vain to eat their way through my armor.
I pulled a move then that neither of them was expecting. I extended my right force-blade. Force-blades aren’t made of anything physically tangible. They are mass-less energy, plasma-fields that can reach out ten feet or more.
Instead of a short wand, I suddenly possessed a lance. I thrust it through the retreating man and cut him down.
I’ll never forget the look on his blacked-out face. His eyes were so wide…I realized as he fell that he was a real person, a man who believed he was fighting terrible invaders. Worse, he was right.
The woman howled and came at me, slashing and cutting. I didn’t have the heart to gut her as well. I crashed my fist down upon her head and she crumpled. She was hurt but alive. I kicked her nanite weapon away from her and turned around.
The s
cene behind me was shocking. Leeson was down, but Harris, Kivi and two others had survived. They hadn’t seen their attackers at first and had let them get in from the sides. Hacking at the joints, the enemy had managed to kill most of the platoon.
Veteran Harris looked around and realized he was in charge.
“Damn,” he said. “Looks like the last of them have run off, but we have to be more careful, people. How did you spot them, McGill?”
“Just turn off your night vision. They’re using it to hide from us. They’re more visible with suit lights and regular optics.”
They made the adjustments, and we pressed forward.
“Stay on point, McGill,” Harris said. “We have to head up to the bridge. We can’t let them take this lifter.”
In my opinion, it was pretty clear they’d already taken the ship, but no one was asking me. I pressed ahead, and we swept the hold. There was nothing left alive.
“Crazy ninja bullshit,” Harris complained. “An entire unit was stationed here to protect the ship. They must have crept in while they had their pants down and slaughtered everyone.”
“The revival unit will be working overtime,” Kivi said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “If they haven’t captured it.”
Harris’ eyes bulged at the idea. “We can’t allow that. Let’s roll, people. Retract that ramp so they can’t come in behind us then we’ll clear the rest of the ship.”
We passed over bodies, banging our steel boots down as we tried not to walk on them. A few people moaned, injured. We had no time for them, friendly or otherwise. We had to get control of the ship.
We headed to the tube that lead up to the crew quarters. I only hesitated for a second before climbing up there. I figured there might very well be a full squad of “bullshit ninjas” up there waiting to cut off my limbs, but hesitating wasn’t going to save me. I was on point, and the enemy had to be defeated.
The last few feet, I threw myself upwards, heaving into view on the deck above. I’d hoped to surprise whoever might be up there, but there was nothing to see…except the dead.
A vicious fight had occurred on the upper decks. That was clear. There were dead bodies everywhere, many still locked in fighting positions. As far as I could see, no one had made it out.
Harris bumped up after me. He looked around grimly.
“They must have fought to the finish. No way out up here. The emergency exits are all on the first floor. They sealed the tubes and swept the command deck. Clearly, the colonists won, and the survivors ambushed us as we boarded.”
“Why didn’t they signal for help?” Kivi asked.
“Com system is down in the ship,” Harris said. “Check your tappers, people. We’ll have to fix that. If these colonists know how to sabotage a ship, they’re smarter than I thought they were.”
I had to agree with him. I walked to the hatchway at the end of the main passageway.
“Don’t tell me—” Harris said as we pressed inside and looked around. A stream of curses followed.
I didn’t blame him. The room contained nothing but corpses. Anne Grant was among the dead, as were several other bio specialists and a few colonist fighters.
The worst part was the revival machine, however. It had been stabbed and cut with black blades. The interior guts of the machine looked damaged to me.
“This is bad—really bad,” Kivi said.
No one argued. We knew she was right. We needed our revival machines more than any other piece of equipment in the legion. Without them, every death we suffered was permanent.
“We’ve got to copy everyone to the other ships,” I said. “They’re all as good as permed otherwise.”
“Hold on,” Veteran Harris boomed as people began working on the com gear. “Kivi, you call this in to the Tribune. McGill, you take the rest of them and sweep this deck. I don’t want to see any other ninjas jumping out of the shadows at me.”
We split up and looked around. We soon determined that, except for the wounded, we were alone on the lifter.
We captured the wounded enemy and secured them in jump seats. We made our own people as comfortable as possible.
I picked up one of the black blades and showed it to Kivi. Her lips pulled away from her teeth as she eyed that twisting edge.
“It’s like this blade is alive,” she said. “Such a nasty way to fight. They use metal poisons to kill us.”
“Can you blame them?” I asked her.
She frowned at me. “Whose side are you on, McGill?”
“I’m on humanity’s side. We’re all the same species. You understand that, don’t you?”
She nodded and looked down. “Yeah, but it’s hard not to hate them even though this is their world. Our people might be permed. Our entire unit, James! And the lifter crew, too. Their data was on this ship, and odds of recovery aren’t looking good.”
“Well, it’s like Graves says: if you don’t like getting hurt, don’t start a fight.”
We were all upset. This wasn’t supposed to happen. We were Legion Varus, and these people were a crowd of colonists. We didn’t like killing them—but we liked dying even less. The thing I was most surprised about was the ability of these colonists to fight. How had they learned the art of warfare and become such tough fighters?
We swept the lifter twice but found nothing. Outside, everything looked quiet until shells began to fall on the cliffs on the other side of the lake.
The bombardment began with a growing series of flashes on the shoreline. They lit up the water with wavering reflections in a display I might have found pretty if they weren’t heralding destruction.
I knew it was only light artillery, as we hadn’t had room to bring the heavy stuff on the lifter during our hasty exit from Corvus. But our light guns were enough to do the job. They wouldn’t level a town, but they hit much harder than my shoulder-mounted plasma cannon.
The shells arced upward at a forty-five degree angle then performed a right angle turn high in the air and crashed down into the cliffs. Each impact resulted flashes of blue light. The shells were both guided and independently smart. What they lacked in punch they made up for in accuracy. Under normal conditions, they were designed to hit armored vehicles from above. Today, they were being used to go over the jumbled boulders and crash down upon defenders hiding behind them.
Each salvo shot up then slammed down again like a spiked volley ball a second or two later. The impacts created booming reports that echoed across the valley. In the lake, great numbers of rock-fish surfaced to watch with their wart-encrusted optical organs.
After careful examination via the lifter’s outside scopes, we saw no sign of the attacking colonists.
“The enemy must be ducking and trying to ride this out,” Harris said at my side.
“I agree Vet. We should stay buttoned up, too.”
Once we were sure the lifter was free of the enemy, we all got to work repairing vital systems. We reported our status to the Primus, who was out marshaling the cohort at the base of the cliffs on the other side of the lake. Harris gave me the job of reporting—I think because he didn’t want a disaster of this magnitude associated with his name.
“Primus Turov?” I said, making sure I wasn’t talking to a flunky.
“Who is this?” she snapped. “I’m in the middle of an assault, a priority call had better be worth my time.”
“Sir, this is Specialist James McGill. I’m at the lifter, and I have bad news.”
“McGill? Where’s your commander?”
“Our officer is dead, sir.”
“Then get off this line and put on the lifter’s pilot.”
I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, sir. The lifter crew is dead. So are the bio people and the ship’s garrison.”
There was a brief pause. “What are you talking about?”
“The colonists attacked the lifter just before we hit them at the cliffs. They took it but with heavy losses. Leeson’s platoon was able to retake the ship, but we�
�re down to a handful of effectives.”
“Are you telling me you’re the highest ranking survivor on that ship?”
I glanced up at Veteran Harris, who was watching closely while he pretended to work on the ship’s alarm system.
“Uh, no sir. Veteran Harris survived. He’s repairing the ship’s warning system to—”
“Put him on!”
Veteran Harris winced and worked his tapper in resignation. He joined the channel.
“Primus Turov?” he asked. “Has McGill reported our situation—”
“Silence!” Turov shouted. I could tell she was at the end of her patience. “I’m transferring you up to the Tribune. Make your report to him.”
Harris and I looked at one another in alarm. We waited, and a few minutes later Tribune Drusus joined the line. The instant he did, Turov disconnected.
“I’m going to ask questions,” Drusus said. “I don’t want any excuses, just data.”
“Understood, Tribune,” Harris said.
“Are you under attack now?”
“Negative, sir. The enemy—”
“Next question: is your revival unit operating?”
Harris hesitated. “We have a tech working on it. The unit was damaged by the enemy.”
“Damaged? How?”
“They appear to have stabbed it, sir. They have these—I don’t know—black swords with nanite blades. They can cut through our armor if they hit the non-metal components. Once a little of that metallic glitter is inside your flesh, it eats away at you.”
“Interesting,” Drusus said. “I’m surprised these isolated colonists have tech like that. It’s an expensive import—but of course, they don’t know about imports and exports. They just make whatever they want and to hell with the regulations. Their list of violations must be incredible.”
I thought about what he was saying, and I quickly realized he was probably right. In the Galactic Empire, a planet couldn’t produce anything that other member worlds also produced and sold without going through a rigorous procedure to prove the new product was better than anything produced by the current patent holders. The truth was, Earth hadn’t invented much in the way of new tech since the Galactics had come to our star system. Maybe that was the way they wanted it.
