Outpost

by W. P. Brothers

  “Correction!” The Supervisor pointed a finger toward the ceiling. “We’ve seized the destroyer but don’t yet have it. Not until we can hack the AI matrix.”

  “Forget the matrix. We can tow it out of here and go back into hiding before we provoke a battle we can’t win.”

  “Don’t you see? The war is here.” The Supervisor stood so suddenly that Tom took a step back. “And besides,” he continued. “We have a greater prize to win now.”

  Tom stared at the Supervisor, his mind blank. Then comprehension dawned and he wondered if the man had gone insane. “The warship that came today?” Tom shook his head violently. “No. No way.”

  “Why?”

  Tom was tempted to slap the grin off Smith’s face. “That is a capital ship. There is no way we can take it, and if we tried, we would all die.”

  The Supervisor laughed, an exaggerated, high sound. “My dear Tom! You underestimate our strength. With the fleet we have here and the additional warriors who have arrived, there is nothing on this planet to oppose us. Besides, there are other weapons here you have not considered.”

  Tom wasn’t in the mood for guessing games. “What weapons?”

  The Supervisor grinned. “Bring the other leaders here. It’s time we planned for our next operation.”

  Tom crossed his arms. “So, we’re going to sit here and talk while the military comes to crucify us? They’ve likely figured out where we are by now and are sure to attack soon.”

  “So impatient! That’s another thing I love about you, Tom.”

  His smile faded when Tom didn’t respond.

  “We will let the military come. Let them come and find exactly what they want to find.”

  Tom rolled his eyes. Clearly the Supervisor wasn’t going to tell him everything until everyone was there and he had a bigger audience.

  “Fetch the leaders, Tom. And give the order to begin using… harder methods to persuade the destroyer’s crew to help us crack the AI matrix.”

  Tom took a step toward the Supervisor, anger suddenly tearing through him. “We are crusaders. You’ve said that yourself. We’re not murderers or cowards who torture prisoners.”

  The Supervisor’s grin drooped slightly, but did not disappear. “Perhaps. But if you’re going to be a crusader, you must become much more comfortable with bloodshed. You want to free the oppressed, punish the guilty? You’ve already killed for it.”

  Tom looked at the floor. “Yes, I want to punish the guilty.”

  “Then give the order. The Legion can’t afford to lose this great, strategic outpost. Everything depends on it.”

  His feet heavy, Tom turned to leave, but the voice of the Supervisor stopped him.

  “Make sure to let my lady friend back in on your way out. And give us a little time.”

  “Yes, Supervisor.”

  Tom stepped out into the cool breeze, the young woman brushing past him as he left. As he walked back down the rows of barracks, he wondered if he’d have joined the Legion if he’d been told it would come to this. War? Torture? Tom shook the slimy feeling in his chest, thought of the millions he was trying to save, the millions for whom life itself was torture, torture for the greed of the few.

  No. There was no time for guilt. He’d come too far for that, and there was still too much to do.

  Chapter Ten

  Christine steadied her carbine, listened to the plinking of rain falling on her body armor. Just like home. Daddy setting out bowls and pots to catch the drops leaking from the roof. Mom complaining about how the company representative had promised to fix it months ago. Daddy laughing and saying it was a free shower.

  “At least it gets the dust off,” he’d said, drying himself with a ratty towel.

  Christine had stared at the metal bowls, which caught the orange glare of the sodium lamps on the outside of the food dispensary across the road as they filled with raindrops. Fire and water together.

  Christine chased the image from her mind, focused on the present.

  She looked across at Sergeant Néri, who held the butt of his submachine gun in his shoulder, the barrel tilted toward the ground, his back against the doorframe of the warehouse. Lined up next to Néri, scrunched against the corrugated steel walls of the warehouse were a dozen other soldiers — a mix of rangers and the marines from the Verdun. They held absolutely still, their faces tight. The only sound was the patter of rain on armor and the breathing of the troops lined up behind Christine.

  Christine met Néri’s eyes. He nodded, and stepped in front of the closed access door. As Néri placed small breaching charges on the door hinges and locking mechanism, Christine shifted her carbine into the crook of her arm and pulled a heavy, round stun grenade attached to a long, thin steel shaft from the pouch at her side. She fitted the shaft onto the end of her carbine, minding the point of the bayonet as her hands worked near the muzzle. She double-checked to make sure the carbine was unloaded, then positioned the pointer finger of her support hand over the flashlight activation button built into the carbine’s fore stock. It would likely be dim in there, and with the prospect of finding wounded or captured friendlies in her line of fire, Christine wouldn’t risk shooting until she could illuminate her target.

  Néri stepped back, holding a small black remote, his eyes fixed on Christine.

  Christine slowed her breathing, felt the slight vibration of raindrops on her helmet. “Go, go, go!”

  The door vanished in a cloud of smoke as it was blasted inwards, the force of the breaching charges pressing against Christine’s sinuses. She aimed her carbine into the warehouse and pulled the trigger. She heard the whine of the rail mechanism cycling and then the dull thunk of the grenade flying off the carbine’s muzzle. She stepped back into cover, looked away from the door. An earsplitting bang echoed from inside the warehouse, and Christine imagined the flash of light that came with it.

  She racked her carbine’s bolt and surged forward into the warehouse through the open door.

  “Get down! Put your hands up!” Christine shouted, her troops repeating the command. Even if she couldn’t see anyone, she wouldn’t risk shooting any friendlies that might be holed up in here. She blinked as her eyes adjusted to the blackness and filed to the left, heard Néri move the other way. She swept the vast interior with her carbine, her eyes searching for movement. Endless rows of stacked boxes stacked in thick steel racks fifty feet tall. A fork lift. The rusty control box for a ceiling crane. A stack of empty wooden crates, soaked from a leak in the roof. The smell of rot, of dust and stale air mixed with the acrid smoke of the grenade. The footfalls of the soldiers behind her echoed off the metal walls.

  Christine trained her weapon down each row as she passed. Something dark jumped off the side of the crates and ran toward the back of the room. Christine raised her carbine, clicked the flashlight button and released it. A beam of white light knifed into the darkness for an instant from the bayonet ring stud on the front of her weapon before switching off automatically.

  Just a pack of rodents.

  Christine let out a small sigh and kept moving to the left. She reached the last row, turned right, and moved down it. The wall formed by the towering stacks of boxes pressed in on her, made her feel like she was in a tunnel. She reached the end of the row, turned right to enter the back aisle, and her gaze fell upon what looked like a person sitting with his back against a crate.

  Christine shouldered her weapon, ready to fire, and clicked on her flashlight.

  For a split second, her light fell upon—

  “Bodies.” The soldier behind her murmured the word.

  The horrible scene in front of Christine fell back into darkness as her weapon light switched off. She stepped cautiously toward the pile of corpses in front of her. She counted five, all in the green work coveralls of TLS planet staff, one of them leaned against a crate in a sitting position. Their uniforms and the floor around them was caked black with dried blood. The smell of decomposing flesh made Christine gag, stung he
r eyes. She fought back her body’s reaction and moved slowly toward the corpses, her rifle trained on them. She’d learned from fighting the Milipa that it wasn’t beyond an enemy to use bodies as a means to kill, either by hiding living soldiers among the dead or by using the cadavers as the lure for a booby trap.

  Christine reached the body sitting against the crate, avoided looking at its face, and kicked it hard in the shoulder. Stiff and still bent at the waist, it fell with a thud that made Christine shudder. As she passed each body, she poked it with the tip of her bayonet, concentrating only on the press of her ring against the carbine’s fore stock. Christine stepped over the last body, and continued along the rear aisle, grateful as the smell diminished. She heard Henrikson cussing as he passed the corpses.

  Christine saw movement at the end of the aisle, recognized the silhouette of Néri. They moved toward each other and met in the middle of the back aisle.

  “Clear,” Néri said.

  “Clear,” Christine repeated. “Except for some former tenants back there.”

  Néri nodded gravely. “Two more in the second-to-last row.”

  “Let’s mark it and move on.” Christine raised her voice. “Alright people, check your shit and stay alert. We’ve got four more to do.”

  Jack watched as marines and rangers filed out of warehouse G20, already knowing by the looks on their faces what Lieutenant Flores would do before she emerged, turned, and sprayed a red X next to the breached door.

  “Damn,” Jack said, talking more to himself than to Major Osterman, who stood next to him on the small rise overlooking the bunkers, just under the branches of the nearest tree. He didn’t feel like looking at Osterman about now. “Team six found more bodies.”

  Osterman remained silent. The day had already been quite sobering. They’d started searching the secondary warehouse complex at daybreak, having hiked in via a set of winding, muddy trails at the insistence of the ranger officers. So far, the eight groups searching the buildings had found six bodies, not including the ones Flores’ team had just discovered. With only a few more warehouses to search, Jack was beginning to think that most of the sixty personnel who Colonel Neville had said were assigned to the warehouses would not be found. That meant prisoners, and prisoners meant leverage for the enemy to use against them. Chills ran down Jack’s spine at the thought of what might be happening to those people now.

  Jack had been happy to lead the search teams. After yesterday, it seemed like a nice break in routine. The rangers and the Verdun marines had spent the previous day frantically securing every single bunker in the greater Kensington complex. They’d used the station’s supply of jeeps — old, clunky things covered with splotches of green, khaki, brown, and black paint — to ferry the different teams, formed by squads of rangers and marines working together, to the various facilities. The effort had dragged on for what had seemed like forever but had gone smoothly. Jack wasn’t certain whether he felt relieved or concerned that the enemy combatants hadn’t revealed themselves. On the one hand, the day had passed without casualties. On the other, it meant the bad guys were still out there somewhere, and part of Jack just wanted it to be over with.

  Nonetheless, watching the marine and ranger search teams secure the warehouses one by one had proved more difficult than Jack had anticipated as the number of bodies had increased. There was something about this place — a planet where servicemembers ought to be safe turned into a battlefield — that left Jack feeling unsettled. But he supposed he couldn’t complain. His job had certainly been better than what Commander Cadogan, the Verdun’s senior medical officer, had to do, identifying and seeing to the burial of the Barracuda crewmembers whose bodies — some seventy in all — had been found in a warehouse at the dockyards. And it wasn’t as if Jack had to see the bodies his teams were finding today himself, thanks to Major Osterman.

  Jack had wanted to help lead the teams, but Osterman had objected.

  “During the ambush, you choked,” Osterman had said, peering at him from under his helmet.

  “What exactly do you mean?” Jack’s head had spun, his friends’ reproach a slap in the face.

  “You hesitated. Fear got the better of you.”

  “I acted as anyone would have in that situation,” Jack had said, his face flushing hot.

  “No, sir. You acted like someone who hasn’t seen combat.”

  Jack hadn’t believed what he’d been hearing. He’d been in more than few battles while on the Verdun. Perhaps he’d never been in a firefight like that, but his life had been in danger before, and he’d never lost his cool.

  There’s a first time for everything.

  “This wouldn’t have anything to do with the Triangle, would it?”

  Osterman had stared back at him for just a second too long. “I don’t know what you mean, sir.”

  Jack had escaped the brutal, close-quarters fighting against the Frontin in their last mission in Derek’s Triangle by virtue of not having been aboard the Verdun when it had happened. Ever since he’d returned to the ship and learned how many of the crew had been killed, he’d felt overwhelmed by … Guilt? Shame? He couldn’t help but wonder…

  No, it wasn’t worth going there. He’d had a different job to do, one that had taken him away from the ship. What had happened onboard was not his fault. He couldn’t have changed it by being on the Verdun, no matter how much he wanted to.

  Keep telling yourself that.

  And now this recent fight at the dock… He had hesitated. But wouldn’t anybody do the same in an ambush like that? The enemy had come from nowhere. There was nothing Jack could have done differently, nothing he could have done to save those crewmembers.

  Yeah, right.

  “Are you suggesting I am unfit to command our efforts here?” Jack had clenched his fists at his side.

  Osterman had shaken his head. “No, sir. But frontline operations should be left to ranger and marine personnel. People who have experience with ground combat.”

  As commander of the Verdun’s marine contingent, Osterman’s opinion carried weight. Even though Jack was the ranking officer, he had chosen to follow Osterman’s suggestion, although he hadn’t liked it. Jack was a lieutenant commander after all, not some damn greenhorn. More than that, he and Osterman had served together a long time. He considered the marine a colleague, a friend. To think that maybe Osterman considered him incompetent… An image of Colonel Neville leapt into his mind. Jack shook it off and looked through his binoculars again.

  Team Four, commanded by Lieutenant Squires, was preparing to breach one of the buildings. Jack saw the door blast inward, saw a flash as the grenade exploded inside the warehouse, then watched the team move into the dark doorway, two sharp cracks carrying over to where Jack stood a half second later.

  The details of the attack here were starting to clear themselves in Jack’s mind. Whoever their enemy was had struck at the secondary warehouses first, killing some of the TLS workers and the few soldiers stationed here, then taken the freight train down to the docks and set up an ambush. What troubled Jack is that he couldn’t imagine why. There hadn’t been conflict like this between humans in… Jack couldn’t remember the last time.

  The enemies were normally so clear. The Frontin, Milipa, and all the other adversaries of the Alliance were as different from humans as they could be, and there was something simple about fighting them. But to think that enemies could come from within the Alliance itself. Jack shuddered, and not because of the chilly rain.

  He lowered his binoculars and nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw Lieutenant Flores, followed closely by one of the ranger sergeants — Néri was his name, Jack thought — and Lieutenant Arnot, one of the marine officers from the Verdun, walking toward him from only a few feet away to his right.

  Covering his surprise, he turned to face them and was about to open his mouth to ask for a report of their progress, but Flores walked instead to Osterman.

  “Sir, all the other teams except Squire
s’ have finished.”

  “What’s the final tally?” Osterman asked.

  Jack crossed his arms, his bile rising in his mouth. Arnot eyed him nervously, clearly aware of the break in protocol that was happening.

  “Seventeen total,” Flores replied. “Plus whatever Squires finds.”

  Osterman nodded gravely. “Get started on—”

  Jack cleared his throat. “I am in command here, Lieutenant Flores. Please direct your report to me.”

  The officers looked at him, and Jack saw Flores stiffen slightly. She nonetheless squared herself toward him and met his eyes.

  “Yes, sir. The area is secure. I recommend we leave immediately and take up positions in the woods just north of here in case any enemy forces come from the barracks. We’re visible from high ground while we’re in this complex.”

  “Recommendation noted,” Jack said. “But I’d like to hold position here until we can radio in to the Verdun and receive new orders.”

  Flores shifted slightly where she stood. “Yes, sir.”

  Jack held Flores’ gaze. “Form a perimeter around the northern part of the warehouse complex and stay alert.”

  “Yes, sir.” Flores repeated. She turned on her heel and jogged down the hill.

  Jack watched Flores go, Néri, Squires, and Arnot a few paces behind her.

  “I’m sorry,” Osterman said. “I should have deferred to you.”

  “Yes.” Jack turned to look Osterman in the eyes, his anger mounting again. “You should have. Regardless of what you may think, I earned these.” Jack pointed to the gold fleur-de-lis rank pin on his collar. “And I’m still wearing them. Captain Morden put me in charge of these operations, and I won’t sit back and do nothing just because you don’t respect my experience. Do I make myself clear?”