by B. V. Larson
“You crazy?” Harris asked. “I thought you hated him anyway.”
“Yeah, but he’s a civvie. And he did what he said; he played his part.”
“Okay then. You want to go up there, McGill? Be my guest.”
I stood and shoved myself up into the tunnel. It really was a tight squeeze.
Harris yanked me back down. “I was kidding, fool. The only way you’re getting your little buddy back alive is when we take this ship. Focus on that, and stop with the suicidal heroics. Man, if there is anything I can’t stand, it’s a goddamn hero.”
He fumed and complained like that until Graves called back with the verdict. Harris listened, and his face fell.
“You sure, sir? Absolutely sure? It’s just that I can’t advise…yes, sir.”
“What?” I asked him.
Harris looked depressed. “It’s a go. Start burning this tunnel wider. Graves is sending our whole unit down here and two more behind it. They figure it’s a better shot than charging across open land. We’re going to storm your ship, McGill, using this pathetic gopher-hole. I hope you’re happy.”
I smiled at him. “Actually, Vet…I am.”
-28-
The next few minutes stretched into twenty, then became an hour. By the time we were prepped and ready to go, I figured we might as well have dug our own tunnel to the ship.
What really helped finish the job was a drone team that had come along with one of the units in the second wave. They had to crawl on their bellies, to burrow through the tunnels.
When they came to a spot that was too narrow, their usefulness became even more apparent. They could dig. We usually used drones to move earth, build bunkers, or carry heavy loads over rough ground. But with careful instructions and operators who knew their business, they could be used as tunneling machines.
The walls at my end of the tunnel were already as slick as glass due to countless bursts from my plasma tube. It had helped, but wasn’t an elegant solution. Digging with a cannon was kind of like—well, digging with a cannon: Messy, dangerous and only half-effective.
The mechanical pigs did a much better job. They could really tear apart loose earth and softer types of stone. Fortunately, Dust World’s crust seemed to consist of little else. I’d come to believe there wasn’t much in the way of hard granite on this planet. Whatever wasn’t sand was sandstone, limestone or clay.
The aliens in their ship above us plotted and waited for us to come out of the rocks they’d cornered us in. They thought they had the upper hand. Rather than attack us, they were waiting for us to make the next move. As we geared up to explode back out onto the surface, I sincerely hoped the aliens had no clue as to how we planned to hit them next.
The only good thing about the delay was that it gave me time to recharge my pack and replenish my ammo. After about ninety minutes of digging and massing up in the tunnels, Graves finally made a fateful announcement.
“Good news, people,” he began. Honest to God, the man’s voice sounded like he really did think he was relaying good news. “3rd Unit has been given the honor of going in first! The entire cohort will follow up on our charge. The Primus herself insisted our unit was to lead the way.”
“That bitch,” Leeson complained in the dark nearby.
I had to agree with Leeson’s assessment. Going first up a ramp into an alien ship full of vicious squids and their slave troops didn’t sound like an honor to me.
Harris clapped his gauntlets together, making a ringing sound that echoed painfully from the tight walls of the tunnels.
“Listen up!” he boomed.
Adjunct Leeson sidled forward like a crab and crouched in the middle of our platoon. There were less than twenty of us left. I found myself wishing Carlos had survived long enough to see this thing through to the end with me.
“This is do or die, people. Maybe both. We’re going up and out of that hole above your heads. The buzzers have reported back that there is a handy circle of rocks, and we’ll probably be under the firing cone of their main gun. The second you see daylight, spread out and head for cover in every direction. Our initial mission is to set up firing positions. We’ll be playing overwatch for the rest of the troops as they come boiling up out of this anthill behind us.”
We gave him a ragged cheer, as he seemed to be expecting it. The sound was lackluster, but he didn’t make an issue of it.
“Now, this next part is important: If the enemy doesn’t seem to notice our movements, don’t fire on them. I repeat, do not engage unless we’re attacked first. Command is hoping for surprise. We want every trooper up on the surface before we hit them, if possible.”
“Sir?” I asked. “The buzzers didn’t show there was enough room in that circle of rocks for all the troops.”
Leeson looked at me with dark eyes. “Yeah, I would agree. But you have your orders. Just set up and cover everyone coming up to the surface.”
“But sir,” I said, pressing the point. I’d been watching the vids from the buzzers for nearly an hour now, having had little else to do. “A fast strike might be a better—”
“For the sake of every legionnaire that ever died on an alien rock like this, I want you to shut up and follow orders, McGill. Shock us all, just this once.”
“Glory hound,” said someone off to my left. I thought it might have been Kivi, but I hoped not. She knew me better than that.
“Yes, sir,” I said with a sigh.
A timer beeped a thirty second warning in my ear. My tapper had been engaged remotely and was counting down the seconds until we were to make our first push up to the surface.
I had to admit, I was feeling a little keyed up. Maybe it was sitting down here in close quarters—or maybe it was the complete insanity of what we were about to do. I’m sure men had felt like this throughout history while gearing up to storm a beach, charge up a fortified hill or drop onto an alien world. You couldn’t help but sense your heart hammering in your chest until it felt like it was coming out of your mouth.
Finally, it was go-time. Everyone’s beeper sang, and we were all up and rushing through the fresh-dug tunnel to the surface.
I was about the seventh man to reach daylight. We hadn’t dared to put scouts up ahead of time, relying on the vids from our buzzers to do that job. The whole point of this exercise was to catch the enemy off guard.
My legs were stiff from crouching for so long, but I forced them to work when I reached the surface, goosing the power in my suit and transferring it to the legs. I had my cannon on my shoulder, bouncing and clanking. Seeing a pile of loose rocks about as big as a house, I broke left and rushed to cover, putting the stones between me and the ship.
The enemy wasn’t caught napping, unfortunately. I don’t think they knew we were coming, but they figured it out in two minutes flat. A squad of slavers was nearby, and they set up a screeching, warbling sound. They lifted their huge hands to their pursed mouths and called toward the ramp of the ship which, I now realized, was a fair distance away.
The only good news, as I saw it, was that we were inside the force dome, and it looked like their main gun couldn’t dip down enough to hit us here so close to the hull.
I threw myself flat and set up my weapon, cranking it to long range since there didn’t seem to be any immediate resistance. Behind me, troops kept bubbling up out of the ground at a rate of one every three or four seconds.
Harris came close and threw himself down beside me. He looked at what I was doing with a suspicious frown.
“McGill, have you seen any incoming shots fired yet?”
“No sir,” I said. “But those slavers over there have seen us. I’m sure of it.”
He gave me a hard stare, then looked at the enemy in question. There were four of them in a cluster. They were standing tall, looking like meercats straining and sniffing the air.
“They don’t see us yet,” he said. “They probably smell us, though.”
I sighted on the closest, most exposed man. At this ra
nge, I couldn’t miss with a tight burst.
Harris bashed my shoulder spoiling my aim. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Preparing to fire, should the need arise. Could you get your gauntlet off my pack, Vet?”
Harris clearly suspected me of all sorts of craziness. I felt wronged. Sure, I’d gone off track now and then, but to assume I’d disobey a direct order right off—that didn’t seem right.
“Okay,” he said, digging out his scope. “I’ll sight for you.”
That happy period of cooperation lasted about a minute longer. After that, events changed on the battlefield around us.
Two more ramps extended silently from the ship. One was far off to our left. The other was closer to amidships on the huge vessel.
It was immediately clear to everyone present that the enemy had noticed our position and was responding to it. They’d decided to up the ante.
Down each of these three ramps came six squads of heavy troopers. The littermates marched in strict box formation with their lockstep, easy pace.
But it was the immense creatures that followed the littermates that surprised us. They were true giants. There’s just no other word one could apply to these monsters. They were twenty feet high and almost as broad as they were tall. They moved like sumo wrestlers and carried huge guns that were grafted onto their arms.
Staring at these three beings, one of which had emerged from the ship at the top of each ramp, I realized the giants only had one serviceable hand each. The other had been removed and replaced with a weapon that dwarfed my own plasma cannon.
“Giants,” Harris said, staring. “They bred giants. I don’t frigging believe it.”
I didn’t either at first. But there they were, blinking and yawning with wet mouths full of jagged teeth.
“Hold your fire!” Graves roared in my earpiece.
All up and down the encircling rocks, troopers were now aiming their weapons toward the enemy carefully. Almost everyone aimed at the giants. They were terrifying.
“I see a white flag,” Graves said. “Let’s give them a chance.”
I craned my neck and, sure enough, the team of slavers that had first scented us came galloping forward on all fours. The leader, who I’d been targeting had a white flag up, and it whipped in the wind as the group of four approached us.
Such strange creatures. They disgusted and intrigued me at the same time. Did they think like we did? Did they experience feelings like love and sadness, or just rage? They were like specially-bred dogs, but molded by direct genetic manipulation rather than selective breeding. Anne Grant had told me there couldn’t have been enough generations for the squids to change a human’s physiology so drastically. They must have spliced in the traits they wanted artificially to produce these abominations.
Flapping ears spread wide, then drooped as they gathered not a hundred feet from my position. The leader of the slavers stood taller than the rest, rearing up on his hind legs while the others moved restlessly behind him on all fours.
“We speak!” shouted the leader. “We speak!”
I looked up and down the line. Who the hell was going to…but then I saw him. Graves rose up from our line and marched calmly out to meet the skinny who called to us. I was proud to see he didn’t cower. He looked as if he were taking a stroll in the park. I doubted I could have looked so self-assured, and I was doubly glad it was Graves who had stepped forward rather than me.
“I’ll talk to you,” Graves said. “Tell me what you want.”
I glanced over my shoulder and smiled. While Graves talked peace with these freaks, our troops were still coming out of that hole. We were starting to get crowded among the rocks, and our pigs were already throwing up fresh barriers at the open spots by tilting up boulders to block laser bolts and other incoming fire—just in case this little chat went badly. Watching all this, I understood Graves’ motivation. He was playing for time.
“You must drop your stingers,” said the skinny with a fluting voice that was strangely high-pitched for a being of his size. “Stingers not allowed in the ship.”
“Stingers?” Graves asked mildly. “You mean our guns?” He drew his sidearm but didn’t point it at the slaver.
In reaction, the slavers squirmed and milled uncomfortably.
“Stingers must be cast aside. It is commanded, and it must be so. Otherwise, you will not be allowed stay alive in the ship.”
Graves smiled. “What if we don’t want to live in your ship?”
“Wasteful,” said the slaver, suddenly spitting a gob of juice on the sands. “Unpleasant. Hopeless.”
Graves shook his head. “We enjoy our freedom. We will not throw down our weapons. We will not walk aboard your ship like sheep.”
The slaver tossed his head and looked at his fellows who made chattering sounds. I realized they were amused. The leader turned back, and his face suggested he was speaking to a lost child who did not yet understand the way of things.
“There is no freedom. You live here only because the masters allow it. Today is the day your herd must be gathered and taken home again. Do not waste your lives—you are of value to the masters only when you serve them.”
“I see we don’t understand one another,” Graves said. “We will never give in to your demands. We are not native to this world. We are from outside this star system. Our Empire is vast, much greater than you or your masters can imagine.”
More twittering and grunts ensued. Finally, the slaver turned his attention back to the tiny man at his feet. “The masters know of your Empire. It is sick and weak. You are to be our slaves, now. Not theirs.”
For the first time, Graves didn’t answer right away. I was stunned as well. Could these aliens and their slaves know about the Galactics? If so, why didn’t they show the proper fear and respect that extinction should rightly instill in any thinking being?
I turned to look at Harris, and he glanced back to me. We were both frowning, but we didn’t say anything. Either these aliens were crazy, or they knew something we didn’t.
Graves decided to make another attempt. “Be that as it may,” he said, “let’s talk about the here and the now. We are strong, not weak. We are also your brothers, tall man. Look at me. I’m human, just as you are. Your masters have changed your form, but I suspect there is a strong heart beating in your breast, a brave heart.”
The towering slaver eyed Graves curiously. “Your talk is pointless. What must be is preordained. The will of the masters is beyond question. I know you and I are similar beasts—but we are still beasts, nothing more.”
“No,” Graves said firmly. “We’re much more than that. We’re brothers. I’ve listened to your demands. Now, you must listen to mine: turn around, board your ship, and rebel against your masters. Use the giants that stand on the ramps. Command them! Take this ship for your own. We will help you kill your masters, and we will all be free. You can have valleys here to live in if you want.”
All the slavers generated blatting sounds with their overly-large noses. Their ears flapped and splayed. I could tell they were shocked.
“I will attempt to explain again,” the leader said carefully, as if Graves were a slow child. “First, you must lay down your stingers. Then you will be allowed to board our ship. If you do not do this, you must all be killed.”
I thought Graves had demonstrated a great deal of patience up until now. But I could tell he’d had enough. He shook his head.
“Go,” he said. “Go back to your ship before we kill you!”
The face of the slaver darkened. “Insulting beast!” he said. Then his great hand lashed down and struck Graves.
My centurion had his visor lifted to talk to the enemy more easily. The blow caught him full in the face. Graves tumbled, almost doing a backflip.
That was enough for me. I fired. My beam caught the slaver in neck, and his head popped off and splatted down into the dust at his own feet, smoking and steaming. The tufts of curly hair circling his head caught f
ire briefly, filling the air with an acrid smoke.
The other three broke and ran off. Harris and Leeson, along with the other officers, stood up and roared for calm. No one else fired.
I didn’t wait to find out what my commanders thought of my action. I rushed up to Graves, grabbed him under the arms and dragged him back to the protective line of rocks.
His head was lolling, and I could tell right off his neck was broken. He was having difficulty breathing, but his eyes rolled around to stare at me.
“Did you kill him?” he rasped.
“Yeah,” I said.
Graves chuckled, coughed wetly, then managed to control it. “I knew it was you who shot him.”
With that final comment, my centurion died.
I fully expected Leeson, Harris and the rest of them to chew me out for firing my weapon without authorization—but they didn’t. They didn’t say a word. I think they were all secretly happy I’d done it.
The truce lasted about two more minutes. We watched the enemy delegation of skinnies reach the ship and vanish. The giants at the top of the ramps went into motion then, tromping to the bottom. The heavy troopers moved to cover, staying in their tight groups of nine. They encircled our position, deploying as we watched.
“Are we going to do this or not?” I demanded of Harris.
He shrugged hopelessly. We were way off the game plan, and no one seemed to know what to do next. Our chance to “surprise” the enemy had long since faded.
Adjunct Leeson walked to my position and crouched beside me. “McGill, you trigger-happy cuss. I’ve got a suggestion for you.”
“What’s that, sir?”
Leeson gestured toward the enemy line. “Why don’t you go nuts and poke a hole in one of those giant bellies? I almost feel sorry for those big bastards. They look scary enough, but they’re really just walking targets.”
I frowned. “Is that an order, sir?”
“No. But you’re always pulling crap like that, aren’t you? I’m hoping you feel like doing it.”
“Why aren’t we all attacking?”
