by B. V. Larson
When at last I had the unconscious form stretched out and off Della’s body, I found my pistol and helped her stand.
She shook me off and pushed me away, coughing.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“How’d they get in here?” I asked her.
She looked at me with frightened eyes. “They can’t possibly—they can’t know the path.”
“Well, I think they do.”
“Then all is lost. We must save ourselves.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Hydra—they’ll find it. They’ll follow our scent, backtrack. For them, scent is like vision. We’ve left a glowing trail fresh on these rocks. Once they know the way, my people will be forced to fight them in our sanctuary.”
“Surely your fighters can beat a few slavers.”
“We can. But that won’t be the end of it. They’ll mark the spot, and the ship will begin boring in through the walls. That’s what they’ve been waiting for, you see. They’ve been searching for our core living area. They want our young, our pregnant women. They prize them above all.”
I was torn as to what to do. I could go back up the tunnels and fight the invaders—that was my first instinct. But I also knew I couldn’t do it alone. If they blasted holes in these walls, the littermates would be marching in their tight squads. They were far more deadly than any skinny.
“I’m going back to my unit,” I said. “I have to tell them what’s happened. I’ll try to get help.”
She nodded, eyeing me seriously. “I think you’re telling the truth. I’ll lead you to an exit. But I can’t go with you. I must try to warn the others. I might be able to beat them to Hydra. We must hurry, McGill.”
“Call me James,” I said.
“That is your secret name?”
“Uh…yeah. Just for friends and mating partners.”
Della smiled at me and gave me a kiss. After that, she was all business. She led me to an exit, and I wriggled through. Deeper back in the tunnels, I could hear the sounds of conflict. The skinnies must have met up with some of her people.
I reached down and grabbed her arm. “Hold on,” I said. “You should come with me. Your people must know about the invasion by now. You’ll be safer in our camp.”
She shook her head. “My place is with them. As yours is with your unit.”
I heaved a sigh, knowing she was right. I handed her my laser pistol.
“Use this then. Short bursts—don’t burn out the diode.”
She thanked me and vanished into the darkness.
When I managed to get out onto the surface of the world again, I couldn’t believe how cool, fresh and open it seemed. The sky was bright pink overhead, and I enjoyed the dawn winds that lightly ruffled my hair.
My eyes widened. Dawn? We were supposed to attack the ship at dawn. I set off toward the camp at a run.
-25-
They almost shot me as I approached the base. It was a close thing. I was out of uniform, unarmed and too tall for their liking.
“Halt!” boomed a voice. “Identify yourself!”
They didn’t even wait for me to comply. Skittering and flailing, I threw myself down as a bolt sizzled in the air over my head.
“McGill, James!” I shouted. “Weaponeer, 3rd Unit!”
The firing stopped. I quickly worked my tapper, synching it up with the local network again. I’d forgotten I’d turned it off in order to make sneaking away easier last night.
“Advance, hands on head.”
I did so, and when they recognized me, they cursed my name. As I made my way past the pickets, a guard drove the butt of his rifle into my back. Under different circumstances, I would have grabbed that rifle and twisted it around—but I didn’t have the heart. After all, the guards were right. I shouldn’t have been running around outside the camp all night long.
I didn’t make it ten feet farther before I was arrested and hustled back to 3rd Unit. Graves ran his eyes over me, shaking his head, and Leeson snarled—but Veteran Harris—he went ape.
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing, McGill?” he roared. “Are you aware that we’re gearing up for an attack not twenty minutes from now?”
“Yes, Vet! Sorry, Vet!”
I was on my knees. My hands were still on my head, as I hadn’t been given leave to lower them. I stared ahead, hoping that this would be over soon—one way or the other.
“I should execute you on the spot. You know that, don’t you? I’d be perfectly within my rights. AWOL on the battlefield. No weapon in hand. Not only that, you look like shit.”
“Sorry, Vet,” I repeated. “I was—”
“NO!” he roared. Spittle landed in my hair. “No, I don’t want to hear it. If I didn’t need you on the line this minute, I’d put you out of my misery right here, right now. And no one—frigging no one would give me any crap for doing it.”
“Are we done here, Vet? I have to get my kit on.”
“You should be in the brig. Now, get your ass to your tent. Don’t be stopping to shower and eat—you gave that up for whatever little romp you had in the bush.”
I smiled a little. I couldn’t help it. Harris must have seen my smirk, because he kicked me in the side. The armored boot hurt more than usual, even though I’d been half expecting it. I got up and staggered away, feeling my ribs. None of them seemed broken.
“This isn’t over, McGill,” Harris called after me.
Instead of responding, I scrambled into my tent, pulled on my gear, shoved a protein bar into my face and began to chew. I was dead tired, but battles rarely waited for a man to get his beauty sleep.
Being a heavy trooper isn’t always better than being in a light unit. One problem is the length of time it takes to put your gear together. I shoved my feet into the bulky leggings, cursing and fumbling. The chest piece I managed to pull over my head, but the two halves didn’t seem to want to knit up. Cursing and struggling, I tugged and slapped at locks and smart-gels that were supposed to find one another and cinch up.
“Here,” said Kivi. She’d followed me into my tent. “You’ve got something stuck in the hinge.”
I cranked my neck, and looked into her face. Her eyes didn’t meet mine.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “I left when you were sleeping. I—”
“Yeah, I figured out where you went, James. Save it. We all looked at the vids.”
She still wasn’t looking at me. I felt a burning sensation on my face. I was surprised to find myself feeling a little embarrassed.
“So you guys saw her, is that right?”
“Of course we did. The buzzers picked her up, followed her as she went sneaking around the camp. Didn’t you even hear them?”
I did recall the sounds of a buzzer or two passing by as we were sneaking into the tunnels.
“I thought they’d missed me.”
“They don’t miss anything. The techs don’t miss anything. We aren’t an outfit of complete morons, you know?”
She was cinching up my armor now, tapping at the smart-gels until they activated. I felt a cool touch at each side of my abdomen as they began easing the armor closed. Like a turtle-shell with two halves, the breastplate closed over me and clicked into its locked position.
“Thanks for the help, Kivi,” I said, feeling bad as I realized she must have known I’d left her lying in the tent and gone off for the night with another woman. “Sorry about leaving you.”
She finally looked me in the eye. I could tell she was hurt. “What I said before—I was wrong,” she said, suddenly becoming angry. “There is a moron in this outfit: it’s me.”
“Ah, now, don’t go there Kivi.”
“First, you kill me. I understood that. I’m glad I wasn’t dragged into that alien ship. But like a fool, I felt grateful. What I forgot was that you don’t care. It’s all just fun for you. Kivi is a fun-bot, just like back home…but I’m not plastic, you know?”
I groaned inwardly. Kivi was an odd sort. She
was promiscuous but could get hurt and upset and jealous about relationships anyway. This was one of those special occasions. It was easy to see that I hadn’t treated her well. I’d run off without a care and pretty much forgotten about her.
“I’m sorry. I was trying to make contact with the colonists—and I did.”
“Yeah, I bet.”
“I’m not talking about that,” I said. “I meant I talked to their leader, in the tunnels. They might help us directly against the aliens now. The slavers are infiltrating their base.”
“That’s great,” she said. “You care more about the colonists than you do about me. For all you knew, that bitch had killed me with poison.”
“No, you were breathing. I checked before I left.”
Kivi’s eyes were a little red. She glared at me for a second. “Why’d you follow her? Just for more tail? Just for seconds? I think that’s bullshit.”
“No,” I said with conviction. “I negotiated the ceasefire with the colonists, remember? I wanted to keep that going. That was all I was thinking about when she came into the camp.”
“But you did end up screwing her, right?”
I put my helmet on and didn’t say anything. It turned out to be the right move because she swung a steel-gauntleted fist at my head. I’m not sure if she would have done it if I hadn’t put my helmet on—but she might have, and I might not have been in any condition to move out with the unit if she had.
“Hey, don’t scratch my gear,” I protested lightly.
She growled and exited the tent, throwing it aside so hard that the flap ripped. Smart-cloth tabs sought one another in vain looking like two blind vines trying to touch. They kept squirming, but the tear was too wide and they would never patch up.
I stared at them, then after Kivi. I felt bad, really I did. The night had been a strange one even by my standards.
Heaving a sigh, I gathered up my plasma tube and hustled to Leeson’s platoon rally point. Veteran Harris was already there, but he wasn’t even looking at me.
“On the ready-line, on the ready-line,” he shouted. “Let’s move, people. I want you to show me how much you love Legion Varus today.”
I moved up and joined the crowd on the line. There was a glowing nano-active paint line all along the ridge where we were, just out of sight of the enemy ship. Up and down that long row I could see troops organizing and standing on their lines.
“This is going to be a straight-out charge,” Harris told us. “Three waves—and lucky us, we’re in the first!”
A groan went up from the assembled troops.
“Why don’t they just recycle us all right now?” Carlos complained.
Harris swaggered over to him with a predatory grin. “In your case, I’m willing to make an off-script exception, Ortiz.”
Harris had his sidearm out and he directed it into Carlos’ face. Carlos turned his attention to the line, and Harris stalked away.
Leeson walked the line with Harris. Both of them were checking kits and hitting people in the head if they didn’t like what they saw.
“Keep focused, people!” Leeson said as he walked the line. “We’ll get the signal soon enough. We’ve got nearly two kilometers to run, so I want you to use every gram of your suit’s artificial muscle in this effort. You’re to make a full-burn charge all the way to the ship’s force field—if we can get that far without enemy contact.”
“What if those armored giants are waiting out there for us?” Carlos asked.
“Then we kill them. We’re expecting to run into enemy troops. They’re marching out of the ship and toward the tunnels they’ve been blasting open all day. We’re going to roll in behind them as they try to get underground. We’re hoping to catch them by surprise and pin them down. The second wave is going to rush the ship, get inside, and take it.”
I was impressed. It was a bold plan.
“What about third group, sir?” I asked.
Leeson fixed me with a stern gaze. “They’ll watch our progress. They’re operating as reserves. They’ll back up whichever group they figure needs help.”
I nodded. Legion Varus was made up of ten cohorts, each about a thousand strong. There was only one cohort in this valley, and we were getting all the action. We had nine units in our cohort that were really combat troops. The last unit was made up of auxiliaries, mostly bio people and techs.
Looking up and down the line on the ridge I saw three full units in armor. Three waves of three hundred men each. It was going to be quite a show of force.
“They’ll never know what hit them, sir,” I said.
Leeson didn’t smile, but he nodded. “Okay, the Primus has just given me the final warning. I’m signaling green. If you’ve got a god or a mama, send some happy thoughts into space for me and the rest of us. We’re doing this in three…two…”
I never heard him say “one”. Instead, a roar swept the line and everyone charged. I joined them with my bulky plasma unit banging on my shoulder.
When set for a dead run, a heavy in a suit can make an amazing spectacle of himself. We bounded across the land, smashing through the wilted vegetation and splattering mud along the lake shore. We tried to spread out and ended up forming a ragged line that wouldn’t be easy to take out all at once.
My heart pounded, and my helmet rang with battle cries from the hundred throats of my unit. There’s something about a long charge across open land that isn’t quite like anything else a man can experience in combat. I can’t recommend it—but it is unforgettable.
My suit was in command now; my legs were moving but almost without meaning to. It was like running down a steep hill—it was all I could do to keep from falling on my face.
As my bounding legs propelled me almost painfully fast, I had a moment to think about charging lines of troops in years past. During World War One and prior to that, this sort of thing was a standard of warfare. Heavy armor and faster infantry had brought it back into style.
The ship loomed ahead like a beached black whale. The gun on top of it took notice of our approach. It rose, swiveled with an almost intelligent motion and took aim at our right flank—the unit plunging along closest to the lakeshore.
My unit was on the left, and I was relieved not to be the first group that the massive cannon turned its wrath upon. The tip brightened and the shaft rippled with released gasses. I could hear and see the lakeshore unit—it was the 1st—trying to scatter. Some fell back while others plunged forward, running faster. I’m not sure how much of a difference it made in the end. The ship’s big gun fired, and a dozen or so heavy troops were caught in that invisible beam of destruction.
When you’re hit by a high-powered beam, the effect isn’t just a matter of heat. The blow is a physical one, spinning around the victims and blasting them flat. In a fraction of a second, a thousand pulses of energy are released and delivered to the target. The effect was explosive, as if the victims were suddenly all individually hit in the chest plate by their own personal grenades.
The lake hissed and exploded into steam, which billowed up in a white cloud. The lakeshore under the stricken soldiers was slicked into a crusty mass, having been instantly slagged into smoking glass.
In response to the blast from the big gun, our own people back on the ridge fired at the gun itself. In order to release that big bolt of power, the shield had to come down for a split-second. In that moment, everyone behind us tried to knock out the cannon.
From what I could see, they had little effect. At this range, even the heavier weapons didn’t have enough punch to damage the big cannon. They did strike it, evidenced by little pockmarks rippling the sleek black canopy and the sub-shields that protected it. But they didn’t score the kind of hard, direct hit that would take it out. The dome-like shield shimmered closed again. The gun began to travel, seeking a new target.
I turned away from the scene out on the beach. I had my own problems, the biggest of which was keeping up with my unit. That wasn’t easy, as I was carrying m
ore weight than anyone else. A weaponeer’s bane was always his massive tube and the hump-like power source on his back. I felt like I was lugging a set of trucker’s tools into battle.
The big cannon charged up again and struck at our center next—2nd Unit. They took it hard. I don’t think their commander had expected to get nailed. It didn’t make much sense to strike one unit then another on the opposite flank. But then, I wasn’t an expert in squid psychology.
The beam took out nearly twenty men. Twenty! I couldn’t believe it. At this rate, we’d be half dead before we even reached the dome.
But as it turned out, I didn’t have to worry about that. The enemy troops that had been sent to root out colonists had been recalled, and they now engaged us from the broken rocks long the bottom of the cliffs to our left. They fired guns that sent heavy pellets into our midst. To me, they looked like huge, high-tech muskets.
“That’s it, people!” Graves shouted over the unit-wide channel. “Split up by squads and charge left. Get into cover and engage those troops. We can’t let them get back to the ship.”
Eagerly, we obeyed. At the very least, it would take us out of the hellish face of the cannon. I was almost fantasizing about a good, old-fashioned, stand-up fight with the littermates by now.
-26-
All three of the charging units veered left to intercept the enemy that was coming out of the rocks and heading back toward their ship. We’d managed to get in between them and their goal. I understood the plan, but this wasn’t the spot any trooper wanted to find himself in.
As we scrambled toward the rocks, the huge ship with its deadly cannon still fired slow, ponderous bursts into our formation. I don’t know how many died. I’d lost count and interest. All I cared about was reaching the line of boulders that formed a wall like worn teeth in a skull in front of us.
Behind every boulder was an enemy soldier whose job seemed to be to make our lives as difficult as possible. Their muskets cracked and boomed. They had a slow rate of fire, but they hit hard. Even in full armor, men were spun around and knocked flat. Usually, they got back up and limped forward rejoining the charge. But sometimes they’d taken the round right in the visor, or at some weak juncture in the armor, such as where the shoulder cusp met the breastplate. When that happened, they were taken out.
