Backshot

by David Sherman

  Lavager laid a restraining hand on Lanners’s arm. “We won’t hurt you,” he told the figure. “We’re glad to see you. We’ve been in a bad fight. We need help. My friend is hurt. Can you help us? What’s your dog’s name?”

  “Roland,” the girl answered in a tiny voice. She came close enough to see them clearly and her eyes searched Lavager’s face. “I know who you are!” she said, “You’re—”

  “Yes, the same,” Lavager sighed. “We must get to Spondu. Will this road take us there?”

  “Yes,” she answered as she sat heavily on the ground and began to cry. “They killed everyone!” She wept.

  The three men sat wearily beside the girl. “What’s your name?” Lanners asked.

  “Gina—Regina Medina. My father owns . . .” she gestured at the fields on either side of the road, “owned this farm,” she corrected herself, “but they killed him.” Briefly she told them what had happened.

  “Bastards!” Lanners cursed. “They murdered the farmer and his help so nobody would spot the ambush or interfere once it was sprung. Sir, this really is beginning to look like a well-planned setup. Gina, was it you who turned on the water?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there a farm nearby where we can go for help?” Lavager asked. He felt a sharp hurt in his chest, looking at the orphaned girl who was about the same age as his own daughter. Gina shook her head. “You’re closer to Spondu than to the Yatzaina place. Sir,” she looked up at Lavager, “may I come with you? I-I don’t want to go back to . . . I can be your guide and Roland will warn us if—if they come back.”

  Lavager scratched Roland between his ears. He was a big dog, at least fifty kilos, a mixed breed of retriever and something else. “Those men are never going to hurt anyone again, Gina. We’d love to have you come with us, and we can use your help. Once I’ve taken care of some business at Spondu, we’ll send people back to your farm to—” He left the rest of the thought unfinished. It was dark when an overloaded vehicle passed them. It came out of the night without lights of any kind, traveling at very high speed. It was upon them and past before they could react and, had they been in the middle of the road where they’d been just moments before, all four would have been hit. But carrying al-Rashid forced them to take frequent breaks and they were sprawled on the shoulder when it roared by.

  “Did you see those fools?” Lavager shouted. “Goddamned idiots! Probably going back to the cornfield to assess the damage. They took their own sweet time! Did you see all those men hanging on?”

  “They weren’t from the Yatzaina farm,” Gina volunteered. It was well after dark before they reached the Cabbage Patch. The last kilometer of their way was illuminated by the burning buildings.

  The Cabbage Patch, Union of Margelan, Atlas

  Second platoon had five Marines killed and eight too badly wounded to walk; thirteen casualties out of thirty-six Marines who entered the Cabbage Patch. That was a horrendous rate—and it didn’t even count minor wounds.

  Lieutenant Tevedes put the remnants of second and fourth squads to work setting their charges and second section to gathering their casualties in a collection point for Doc Natron to tend to, while first and third squads oversaw the assembling of the surviving defenders on the drill field. Tevedes checked on the dead and wounded Marines as they were brought in. Most of them were hit during the first minute or two, when the towers and bunkers began firing into the area between the power plant and Lab Three. They were twenty kilometers from their puddle jumpers, there was no way twenty-three of them could carry the severely wounded and the dead that far, not with any speed, and they weren’t going to leave anybody behind. They’d need transportation. He toggled on first squad’s circuit.

  “How are the prisoners doing?” he asked when Sergeant Daly answered.

  “They’re thoroughly cowed,” Daly answered. “They see the destruction of towers and bunkers, and hear commands from people they can’t see. They’re scared.”

  “Are they frightened enough to try anything?”

  Daly looked at the gathered prisoners before replying. “I don’t think so. They don’t look like they think we’re about to start killing them. If they did, I’d be concerned. Anyway, we’re securing them as they arrive.”

  “Good. Take Nomonon and go to that vehicle building, see if there’s anything we can use to ferry our dead and wounded.”

  “On the way,” Daly said.

  He and Nomonon trotted to the barnlike vehicle building. He used his HUD to review the maps of the area that he’d stored en route to Atlas, checking on the roads between the Cabbage Patch and where they’d left their puddle jumpers. There weren’t many, they’d need an off-road vehicle to cover the distance. He hoped they wouldn’t need a driver as well. There were five vehicles in the building. One was a standard landcar, probably the facility administrator’s personal vehicle— Speaking of which, Daly wondered, Where are the administrator and the rest of the civilian staff? Probably hiding out of the line of fire, which is the best place for them to be

  —and one was a passenger bus that didn’t look capable of driving cross-country. Of the three lorries, only one looked fit for all-terrain movement. Daly wished it rode on an air cushion instead of wheels, but it looked like it would do. Corporal Nomonon climbed into the driver’s compartment and tried the motor. When it whined to life he checked the dashboard instruments and declared it ready to go. He also determined that he could drive it easily enough. Daly climbed into the cargo compartment to see what it held. Benches lined the sides of the compartment, and there were shelves above. The benches and the shelves together were big enough to hold the casualties and most of the able-bodied. There was enough floor space for the dead and the able who couldn’t fit on the benches. Daly climbed out of the lorry and went to the door of the vehicle barn to report in.

  “There’s a lorry in here that will carry all of us,” Daly said when he raised Tevedes. “We also got a present—there are two assault guns mounted in the cargo compartment, one fore and one aft.”

  “Let’s hope we don’t need them,” Tevedes replied.

  “Me too. But I’m glad to have them.”

  “Bring the lorry to the casualty collection point and let’s get them aboard.”

  “Roger that.” Daly went back in and climbed into the lorry’s cab. “Find rough spots to drive on,” he told Nomonon, who simply said, “Aye aye,” and started the vehicle. Doc Natron looked up as the lorry trundled to a stop a few meters away. He had the three most seriously wounded in stasis bags.

  “We found an ambulance for you, Doc,” Daly said through his speaker, swinging down from the cab. Natron had his chameleon gloves off to work on the wounded, he turned a palm up in a skeptical gesture. “How are that thing’s cushions?” he asked. “Some of these Marines can’t take being bounced around.”

  “I figured, that’s why we didn’t come here on the road. It’s a smooth ride.”

  Natron looked across the compound toward the vehicle building and shook his head. “That ground’s a lot smoother than anything we’re liable to be on after we leave here,” he said.

  “Sorry, Doc, but it’s the only vehicle we found that can go cross-country.”

  “Then it’ll have to do.” He stood. “Let me take a look at what you’ve got, then give me a hand loading. And take off your gloves so I can see what you’re doing.”

  While the corpsman inspected the interior of the lorry, Daly reported to the platoon commander.

  “Will it hold our goodies?” Tevedes asked. He’d had a couple Marines collect artifacts from the labs, his hard evidence that the Cabbage Patch was a weapons research center.

  “That’s affirmative.”

  “How soon will we be ready to go?”

  “You’ll have to ask Doc, he’s checking the lorry now.”

  “I heard that,” Natron broke in. “Give me two more Marines and I can have the casualties aboard the lorry in ten minutes.”

  “You’ve got them,” Te
vedes said. He checked with Sergeant Kare, who believed they could leave the prisoners alone without the soldiers realizing they weren’t being guarded and trying to break loose to cause trouble. The lieutenant ordered second squad to help load the casualties. Doc Natron was good to his word and the casualties, including the dead, were loaded within the promised ten minutes.

  “Listen up,” Tevedes said on the all-hands circuit, “Mount up on the lorry at the casualty collection point, we’re riding out of here.”

  While the platoon was gathering and Sergeant Daly, as the senior uninjured NCO remaining, supervised their boarding the lorry, Tevedes went to the prisoners.

  “Listen up,” he said when he reached the assembled prisoners. “Some of us are leaving on that lorry over there in a few minutes. The rest of us will walk out when the lorry’s far enough away. Don’t bother talking to us, we don’t want to hear anything you have to say.

  “Sooner or later, some of your people will show up and free you. When that happens, send someone up the hillside to the east, one of your civilians is up there alone. He’s trussed up more securely than you are, he’ll need help getting free.

  “I’m sorry for your casualties, we would have preferred to get in, do what we had to do, and get out without a fight, but it didn’t work out that way.

  “Don’t worry about the explosions you’ll hear in a minute or so, that’ll be the last of what we came here to do, there won’t be any more.” With that, he turned and walked away.

  “Report,” Tevedes said on the command circuit as he headed for the lorry.

  “All hands present and ready to go,” Daly replied immediately.

  “Stand by for the final boom.” Tevedes waited until he was at the lorry before transmitting the signal that set off the explosions laid by second and fourth squads. Mission accomplished, but at a high price. Tevedes pulled himself into the cab and settled next to Daly, who moved to the center of the bench seat.

  “Take the road a few klicks southwest, then turn east,” he told Nomonon, who was still driving.

  “Aye aye, sir,” Nomonon replied with a question in his inflection.

  “The prisoners will hear the direction we’re going,” Tevedes explained. “This is misdirection, I don’t want anybody to start searching for us to the east right away. Besides, I told the prisoners only some of us were leaving now, and the rest would guard them for a while longer before heading out on foot.”

  Daly snorted a laugh. “The funny part is, they probably believed you.”

  “I hope they did.” The lieutenant then twisted around to look into the cargo compartment. “Doc, how’re they doing?”

  “As well as can be expected under the circumstances,” Natron answered. “They’ll all live until we get them back to the Admiral Nelson .”

  The five dead lay under the benches, only two of them were in bodybags, he could see the other three by the bloodstains that wandered across their chameleons. The three stasis bags were on the shelves above the benches; the corpsman thought it would be too morbid to lay the most severely wounded next to the dead. Tevedes saw the other wounded the same way he saw the unbagged dead, by the blood on their chameleons. Two of them, one laying on a bench and the other on a shelf, showed enough blood that Tevedes suspected they should be in stasis bags. But they’d been too optimistic and had only brought three. He remembered ruefully that he had thought the two bodybags they’d brought was a pessimistic number.

  He turned back to watch where they were going. They barely noticed the four people sitting on the side of the road as they sped past in the dark before dawn.

  Cross-country, a Few Kilometers East-Northeast of the Cabbage Patch

  Lieutenant Tevedes kept an eye on the time as the lorry trundled cross-country after leaving the highway. He hoped the rain that had started a short time earlier would wash away the lorry’s tracks. He wanted to stop and send his reports to the Admiral Nelson as soon as they were a safe distance from traffic and the navy starship was visible above the horizon. Ten kilometers east of the highway and a few north of the Cabbage Patch, he saw a modestly tall tree on top of a moderately high hill and directed Nomonon to draw close to it and stop. The lorry would be exposed to any possible overflights for a few minutes, but no aircraft were visible in the sky in visual or infrared, so the danger was slight. He got out and recorded two messages.

  One message reported mission success, casualties, and how they were returning to where they’d left their puddle jumpers.

  The other was the go code to be forwarded to the sniper team in New Granum. When the messages were ready, he coded them to a burst transmission and climbed the tree. He saw Kraken Interstellar as a bright dot halfway up the western sky. He aimed his point-transceiver at the proper distance behind the station and activated it to zero in and lock on to the Admiral Nelson . When it beeped to say it had a lock, he pressed the transmit button.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The Cabbage Patch Agricultural Research Center, Union of Margelan, Atlas

  It began to rain just as the four foot-weary travelers topped the slight ridge that overlooked the Cabbage Patch. What they saw made them pause. The main gate was unguarded, towers were down, parts of the perimeter fence were destroyed, and the flames of the fires they had seen from afar were everywhere. Men ran about silhouetted against the burning buildings and nobody seemed in charge. The drenching rain revived al-Rashid and he made to shake Lavager and Lanners off. “I’m all right, I can make it!” he muttered.

  Roland, who’d been enjoying the walk immensely, sat on his haunches by Gina’s legs and barked down at the ruined compound.

  “Man-oh-man, they did a job on the place,” Lavager whispered. It was evident even from where they stood that Labs One and Two had been heavily damaged. That was bad but not disastrous. From where he was standing, the Cabbage Patch illuminated by the fires now being doused by the rain, Lavager could not make out the unprepossessing building that housed the heart of what they were doing here. Well, they’d know soon enough. He struck a fist into his palm and said, “Friends, let’s get on down there, organize these people, and get after the bastards who did this!” Al-Rashid staggered after him. Gina, with Roland at her side, and Lanners followed.

  “Good God,” Lavager muttered after they walked through the open gate, “Hieronymous Bosch couldn’t have painted anything as horrible as this!” Everywhere was chaos. Men and women staggered about with no evident understanding of where they were while others, in uniform, officers and noncoms, shouted orders nobody bothered to obey.

  “We were attacked by ghosts!” a soldier shouted as he rushed by. His face was covered in blood from a head wound.

  Lanners stopped the man. “Where is your commander?” he demanded.

  “Dead! All dead!” the man screamed, pulling himself away and running into one of the burning buildings. Lanners made to go after him but Lavager shook his head. “Over there.” He pointed to a figure smoking a cigarette. “Who’s your officer?” Lavager asked, walking up to the man.

  “Major Principale, but he’s dead,” the soldier answered. By the insignia on his collar the man held the rank of sergeant.

  “Can you tell me what happened here?”

  “We were attacked. I never saw them. It was dark, they were camouflaged, they moved too quickly, I don’t know who they were, but they kicked our asses good. Then they piled into a lorry and drove off to the southwest. I saw the lorry go.”

  Lavager turned to his companions. “Dammit,” he slapped his forehead, “that wasn’t farmers we saw in that truck! And I’ll bet they didn’t head southwest for long. Damn! Well, who’s in charge here, then?”

  The man looked disdainfully at the bedraggled figure in front of him and answered sharply, “Nobody is. And just who the hell are you?” He took a drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke in Lavager’s face.

  “He’s President Lavager!” Lanners said in an ominous tone.

  “Awww—” The sergeant smirked and sho
ok his head, but he leaned forward and looked closely at Lavager in the dim light. Suddenly it seemed an electric shock went through him. He tossed his cigarette away and came to attention. “Sergeant Drew Corfram, sir! Sorry ’bout that! It’s been, um, a rather difficult day.”

  “You don’t need to explain anything to me, Sergeant. Now, let’s get organized here. Get some men,” he turned to Lanners, “you help him with that, Lee. Franklin, Gina, I want you two to go inside the portico of that building over there and sit tight until I come back for you. Sergeant, you are now—you said your name is Corram?”

  “Corfram, sir.”

  “Sergeant Corfram, excuse me, you are now the ranking officer in this compound, until I can find someone to replace you. You’re operating under my personal orders. Lee here will back you up. Get as many unwounded men together as you can find. You had to have medics with the security battalion. Find them, and if they haven’t started one, have them get a triage going for the wounded. See what you can do to establish communications with army headquarters back in New Granum. Don’t worry about security. The people who did this are long gone. Set up your command post at that bunker over there. Now, have you seen any of the civilian staff? Dr. Jullundur in particular? You know who he is, don’t you?”

  “Yessir. Short brown guy, little sprouts of hair on his head, thick glasses, talks with an accent. Nossir, haven’t seen him. The civilians all must have gone into hiding when the attack began.”

  “Very good, then. I’ll be with you in a minute.” With that he walked rapidly off. Corfram looked at Lanners and shrugged. “You heard the man.” In only the few seconds he had been in Lavager’s presence the sergeant had gone from being a defeated and demoralized non-ranker to a sergeant again.

  Lavager approached the nondescript building in the compound’s southwest corner cautiously. It appeared undamaged and that made his breathing a bit easier. He punched in the access code and the door swung open. Inside, the emergency lighting system cast a dim red glow over everything. The equipment resembled nothing more menacing than a large distillery. That’s what it was, but not for whiskey. Lavager breathed a sigh of relief. If the raiders had examined the contents of Labs One and Two they might have gathered some idea of what was really going on at the Patch, but it was this building, the “refinery,” that held the true secret of what Lavager’s scientists were doing at the Cabbage Patch. The sweet earthy smell of fertilizer permeated the building.