The branches holding my chest unwound, and with incandescent agony that flared down my back, the animus withdrew from my spine.
I fell to the ground. I might be getting on in years but I was still fairly robust, and the nanoscale trauma squads inside my blood would tackle the wound in my back. After just a few seconds to catch my breath, I sat and looked up into Silky’s concerned face.
The tree scurried away. Shahdi tracked it with her flamethrower. “Let it go,” I told her.
I pondered the nature of aliens – I glanced up at Silky again – and changed my mind. We hadn’t found these aliens; they had found us.
— 6 —
Did I talk with the bosses back at Unity Ascent? Plead with them? Even contact Director Caccamo, Revenge Squad’s chief back in Port Zahir. I did all that and more, and so did Silky. Did it make a difference? Other than adding another notch of discomfort to the Littorane boss, not a bit.
Zhang and To’as-Kan, on the other hand, had more than a few words to say on the topic of why the hell we had opened the gate in the perimeter fence, and invited in the same enemy who had inflicted such a merciless slaughter at their Charlie and Brintz sites. I tried explaining that Damage Unlimited could have made it through whenever he chose, but it made no difference. Perhaps they would have believed me if I’d continued to refer to the animus as ‘killer Ivy’, and ‘it’ rather than the ‘him’ I’d chosen because he’d spoken to me through the Sarge’s manly voice.
The disagreement between the Revenge Squad team and our client was loud and angry, but did not extend beyond shouting. The workers were not paid to fight armed revenge contractors, and the more we displayed gross incompetence, the more the owners could claim compensation from Revenge Squad’s deep coffers.
Besides, the idiots who’d forced the forestry team to take to their boats and watch from the safety of the bay would soon get their comeuppance when the plants ripped their bodies to shreds.
Humans versus trees, on a moonlit beach. We should have thought to sell the movie rights.
But we weren’t thinking clearly enough to consider that angle because a moral doubt affected all of us. Sounds stupid to talk of Revenge Squad having such qualms, but we did, and it was afflicting us because there was one aspect to the coming fight that was new to all of us. Human, Kurlei, and Tallerman: not one of the species of former Legion soldiers in our squad had ever encountered this scenario in the civil war.
We were the alien invaders here.
— 7 —
I felt like an extra in a fantasy drama as we drew up our battle lines, facing each other across the beach under clear moonlit skies.
I’d never known anything like it. Silky had met Damage Unlimited at the gap through the fence, and the animus had followed her in perfect order, riding his trees two abreast in a column twenty deep. Their mounts looked sturdier than those I’d seen before. Maybe these were specially bred war trees?
The whole thing had a ritual quality, not to mention a ridiculous one. But although it was staged, it was real enough. The killing would soon begin.
Across the gentle silver-crested waves, our audience waited for the combat to commence on their rafts and shallow draft boats, or simply floating in the sea in the case of many Littoranes.
Silky was back in her position as the left anchor of our line, which stretched across the narrowest point of the beach from headland to the sea. Strict provincial laws meant that back home in Port Zahir it was illegal to carry anything much more dangerous than a plastic spoon. But here in the Naddox Archipelago, we were 800 miles away from such foolishness, and we had brought some serious toys with us. Protected by our machete-wielding Tallerman, Silky had successfully followed the safe path through the minefield we’d laid, and was ready to fire her tripod-mounted GX-Cannon, while I anchored the right with my SA-71. The rest of us swept behind the two flank anchors in a shallow concave curve. Chikune stood next to me with his shoulder-mounted missile launcher, Sel-en-Sek and Shahdi with flame throwers, and César with a machete and laser pistol.
As the enemy formed up, my confidence drained. Our line seemed very thin and with huge gaps in contrast to Damage Unlimited whose line filled the space opposite, two ranks deep like ancient knights. To complete the image, from the confusing mass of smaller branches, they brought out sturdy poles and pointed them at us. Were they really lances?
But I knew enough Earth history to know that knights hadn’t always had their own way against lowly foot soldiers. We didn’t have pikes or longbows, but we did have mines. And lasers. And me with my trusty SA-71 that had seen action underwater, in space, on airless moons and in hothouse jungles. Now I’d taken it to the beach. This was going to be interesting.
I had my finger on the trigger, a brace of incendiary grenades ready to fly. An uncomfortable silence settled onto the beach. What was the polite way to start a ritual battle?
Damage Unlimited had the answer. A single tree rider advanced out of the enemy formation, and spread its branches wide, multi-colored catkins dangling from their tips. A herald.
It kept the pose for several seconds and then swept down its branches, releasing the catkins.
Good enough for me! I fired the grenades and readied my pulse laser.
The animus mercenary was sneakier than it looked. Before I’d fired my incendiaries, the lance-wielding knights revealed that they were also rocket archers, catapult-launching a barrage of cut logs. Each missile had a ring of natural fuel bulbs from which lit fuses poked out.
Sel-en-Sek activated the SAM pods he’d insisted on setting up. His idea no longer seemed so ridiculous, but his anti-missile salvo sailed past the incoming projectiles. Guess he forgot to load wood-seeking ordnance.
No matter. I knew from bloody experience that human Marines armed with the humble SA-71 had proved decisive in many battles. I slowed my perception of time and aimed at the bulges in the missiles that I assumed were their payload.
I was right, of course. Pulse laser plus fuel blister made for an explosive combination that bloomed vibrant fire across the night sky.
Preferring a high fire rate over penetrative power, I’d set the laser to reduced energy, which meant that by the time the next fuel blister was in my sights, the laser had already recharged. Bamn! A fresh fireball raged in the sky.
I lacked the AI fire control I’d taken for granted during the war, but my eyes were a serious upgrade to the biological ones I’d been born with, and the SA-71 was so familiar that it was practically an organ of my body. Despite the nighttime darkness and the smoke, I fluidly switched fuel bulb targets and hit every time.
Over to my left, Silky was raking the sky with a stream of heavy darts from her GX-Cannon. César was probably firing his laser pistol too but I couldn’t see because I was kinda busy.
Smoke and shredded wood were now absorbing my laser beam, so I switched to darts. But already, it was too late.
No matter the volume of fire we were laying down, it was never going to be enough. The rockets hit our position.
The explosions lifted me up and then slammed me down onto my back. My head rang like a funeral bell and I panicked… where was my carbine?
As I frantically searched for my gun, the spray of sand kicked up by the explosions lashed my face, stinging my eyes.
But my eyeballs self-cleansed and I found my carbine half-buried under the sand. With its familiar heft back in my hands, I readied to face whatever was coming through the confusion of noise and smoke.
The next threat wasn’t in front of me, but was once more overhead. The scream and whine of incoming missiles made me look up.
The moon had disappeared, plunging the beach into darkness. My eyes took a moment to switch to low light mode and I saw what had blacked out the moon and the stars.
“Arrows!” I shouted in warning. Two feet long, with sharpened stone heads and fletched with leaves, they were essentially the same missiles that had rained down upon countless battlefields of ancient Earth.
Whe
n I say the arrows rained down, I don’t just mean they fell from the sky. Could you count the raindrops falling around you in a downpour? No. Neither could I count the arrows.
We wore light armor that was some proof against bullets and darts, and excellent protection against arrows. But there were so many that inevitably some found the joints between the armor plates. Some… let me rephrase that. A frakking multitude of arrows hit me. By the time the arrow storm ended, my grip on my gun was weak because my hands and everything I touched was slick with blood. My wounds hurt like hell but I wasn’t feeling weak yet. But I would do. Blood loss would start to tell if we didn’t get this over with soon.
The enemy could have refused to engage and waited for us to bleed out, but Damage Unlimited seemed as eager to reach a conclusion as me. I shook my head to clear some of the blood from my eyes, and saw the enemy was upon us – a cavalry charge of tree riders, many wreathed in the fire from my incendiary grenades. Two were aiming right for me, holding their lances high.
To my left I heard the beastly roar of Silky’s GX-Cannon, and the whooshing of flamethrowers. I opened up with my carbine in laser mode, slicing easily through branches.
It did no good. The enemy’s charge was only coming in at fast walking pace, but it carried far too much momentum for me to slow.
Just in time, I realized the lances were actually clubs. And the two tree-riders were going to cross in front of me, synchronizing their club strikes to crush my skull like a nutcracker.
I ducked beneath their attack and rolled forward, the two riders passing behind me. As I brought the carbine to bear on the enemy wheeling around to come at me again, I realized that the mines hadn’t been triggered and why. The trees were heavy, but the root bases were wide, like a swarm of scurrying vermin. There wasn’t enough pressure at any one point to trigger the mines.
I realized something else. The trees were slowing down. That they could charge across a beach was such a marvel of evolution, that I wondered whether their distant ancestors had been engineered, but they were still plants. It seemed they could only perform miracles for a limited period.
It was time to slow them down further.
“Aim for their roots!” I shouted into the confusing melee, as a sudden splashing gave away the enormous rider who coming at me from out of the waves. I rolled away again, and came up, slicing through the roots of my first two attackers.
But their root base was too wide.
They were upon me. Swinging their clubs.
I kept my position Too late to move now. Firing until I’d drained my power pack.
The trees stumbled. Tripped. And fell.
I sprinted away, not wishing for the riders to recover and trap me in their lethal embrace, but I was not fast enough.
A fresh tree-rider, not yet tired, came alongside and swept me up off the beach.
I extended my carbine’s teeth, rotating monofilament needles designed to slice through flesh. I heard the comforting whine and the ethereal blue glow from the needle tips, but the animus stole the gun from my grip with ease.
After that near-death experience at Site Charlie, I knew I had to get away fast, or I was done for.
I threw absolutely every ounce of strength I had into throwing my considerable bulk around, trying to writhe out of its grip.
Everything I threw at it, the animus soaked up with ease.
Its grip tightened.
I weakened, exhaustion and blood loss taking its toll.
With every fiber of my being I fought. It simply wasn’t in my nature to do anything less. Even though I knew it was hopeless.
With a tight grip around my torso and my limbs, it seemed Damage Unlimited was trying out a new way to kill me. Instead of snapping me like a wishbone, it was going to rip every one of my limbs out of their sockets.
The agony was so excruciating, I barely noticed when it snaked a tendril into one of my spine sockets.
Popping fireballs bloomed in my vision as my left shoulder dislocated. I screamed without reservation.
“Make it quick!” I gasped at the alien mercenary. “Damn you! Snap my neck. End me quickly!”
I must make you scream, said Damage Unlimited via the Sarge.
“Why?” I bellowed, unable to speak silently inside my head. Not though these waves of pain. “I thought you had honor.”
I do. Which is why I am fulfilling my contract, no matter what it costs me.
“End it!”
I have done my best to end this, but it would never have been enough to kill you. To protect my client for another 98 years, I needed you to treat me as your equal, to demonstrate respect. Otherwise we would never be more to your kind than dangerous plants destined for extermination. Now I place my trust in you to do what’s right.
“What must I do?” I begged, but Damage Unlimited had already removed its tendril from my spine. The pressure on my limbs withdrew.
I heard the whine of SA-71 teeth starting up again, followed by a splatter of sap and shredded woody flesh.
I felt the strange alien creature die, the branches still embracing me twitching and then stilling to rigidity.
As I lay gasping on the beach like a drunken Littorane, Chikune flew at me, rolling me onto my right side and then descending on my poor shoulder, knee first.
My shoulder exploded in agony, but then, unexpectedly, the pain eased.
My left shoulder was back where it was supposed to be, and Chikune was standing with my gun in his hands. The sound of battle had left the beach.
“What must you do?” he asked. “Just make sure your Uncle Chikune is nearby. Saving your ass is getting to be a bad habit, McCall.”
He left my gun in the sand and strode off across the battlefield.
All around me the limbs of Damage Unlimited were dead or dying. Certainly none of the animus was moving, and judging by the extent to which it was shredded, cut, and above all, burned. I was sure our opponent was dead.
I sank to my knees in the wet and bloodied sand, overcome with it all. Being punch drunk with pain, and dragged back when my front foot was across the threshold of death made me temporarily emotional.
I couldn’t process why this had happened.
Silky crouched down beside me and rested an awkward hand on my shoulder.
I looked into her bloodied alien face, but I could see no answers there.
“Why?” I cried, but she knew me well enough not to answer.
“The stupid, soft bastard,” I railed. “Damage Unlimited, He… it… hell, I don’t know… it let us win.”
“I know,” she said and leaned in close enough to rest the cool flesh of her kesah-kihisia over the back of my head. They throbbed gently as she sent enough emotional salve to soothe away my wildness.
“The animus trusted you,” she said. “So do I. If you want to justify our trust, you need to take a few deep breaths and then get your shit together, NJ. This isn’t over.”
I looked at her contradictory face, with its black lips tight with concern, and huge eyes exuding cuteness, and smiled. My smile grew into a laugh that echoed through my ghosts.
I don’t like aliens. If you knew my history you wouldn’t have to ask why.
The first time I ever saw Silky was through the sights of my SA-71. I still couldn’t fully explain why I hadn’t shot her on sight, but as time went on I regretted that less and thanked fate for bringing her to me.
The sense of calm she was projecting from her kesah-kihisia stuttered and changed into something guarded that she rapidly snatched away from me.
Her skin had the color and texture of desiccated fish skins coated in powdery white river silt, but her neck and cheeks had suddenly flushed with lilac.
“I had no idea you regarded our association as positively as I do,” she said.
Dammed alien. Hang out with an empath and you can kiss goodbye to private thoughts. “Don’t flatter yourself,” I snapped. “I just feel sorry for you.”
She widened her black eyes and blinked
them at me, like a doleful kitten.
“Stop that! Stupid alien.”
She didn’t. Silky was the most serious, professional, focused and downright scary individual I’d ever met except for her sole weakness. Me. She liked to tease me.
But this wasn’t the time or the place. There are few things as sobering as the sight of a battlefield, and the scene around me brought me back to my senses. A light coating of sand and ash did little to hide the chaos of shattered wood. A knee-high forest of arrows stuck up from the smoldering beach pockmarked with craters.
Of my team, all were still up on their feet. Most were immobile and silent, but Shahdi and César were striding over the corpses of our opponent, playing flame and laser over anything that looked green.
“That’s enough!” I shouted at them. “Damage Unlimited is dead. He was an alien, and he might look and act very differently from us, but he was a warrior and one with a code of honor we would do well to emulate. Respect him and cease fire.”
My comrades heeded me, but my own words spoke to me too. Damage Unlimited deserved my respect. And I knew exactly how to show it.
“Sel-en-Sek, set up the blower to Port Zahir, would you? I need to speak to the big boss.”
——
“How’s it going?” asked Branch Director Laban Caccamo over the secure comm link a few minutes later. Don’t be fooled by his easy-going manner. None of us on this planet would be alive if not for the likes of Caccamo. He was a genuine war hero who still harbored secrets, but my ghosts trusted him to the hilt, and so did I.
“That depends…” I replied. “Boss, you know you added a new clause to the contracts? After the business with Hurt U Back, we now have the right to withdraw from contracts.”
“We can withdraw at any time before the revenge clause is triggered. Premiums are returned and we pay a small indemnity. But your contract with Zhang-Unison Forestry has already triggered, NJ. There’s no way back.”
“Yeah, about that. Here’s the thing. We’ve just slaughtered everyone who harmed the loggers. Every last one of them. That sound to you like revenge?”
Damage Unlimited Page 4
