by Dan Davis
Tseng scoffed. “Because I didn’t look guilty. Your insanity is warping your mind. You have a disturbed view of reality. In fact, I doubt you know what reality is any more.”
“Maybe,” Ram said. “I’m willing to accept that. Do you have a geolocator on you, additional to the ones in your suit that Harris redirected?”
Tseng laughed, shaking his head. “I’m not going to entertain this. Have you taken your tablets this evening? When they said they were assigning you to my team, they told me you would be issued with anti-psychotics mixed in with your nutrients and anabolics and so on and you were supposed to be conditioned with the urge to take them.”
Conditioned to take drugs. I’m chaining myself to the powers that be. I’m as dumb as one of Pavlov’s dumb mutts.
“I took them.”
“Good, well, hopefully they will start to work soon.”
“Hopefully.”
“Alright then,” Tseng said. “I hope we can all get back to sleep now. Assuming the wheelhunters do not attack in the night, we have a long day tomorrow, with an infiltration and possibly a fighting withdrawal. Get some rest while you can.”
“Yeah and we can end the war in the morning,” Cooper said, grinning. “As long as we kill the hive queen.”
Everyone groaned. Harris and Flores threw balled up food packets at him while Cooper chuckled to himself.
Ram crawled back to his spot across the tent. Flores stared at him, her eyes wide and serious. He smiled at her and she gave him a brief, half-fake smile in return.
The other members of the Spaz Squad, the Tard Team, all had their own psychological problems and they had all been taken off active duty in one way or another, for one reason or another. It suddenly made perfect sense that Captain Cassidy had assigned him to them. Ram was insane. In fact, it was worse than that.
I’m a murderer.
He was also certain that Ensign Tseng was lying. The sneaky bastard was working against them, no matter what lies he spouted or how much he discredited Ram’s opinion.
Ram hoped that he would not have to kill someone again. But he knew that he would if he had to.
I’m a space marine. I’m a murderer. I’m a killer.
***
The night proved uneventful. At least, no wheelers attacked and no Marines arrested them. The Tard Team broke camp well before dawn, in efficient, military fashion. The rain had stopped but the world was glistening and slick with moisture.
Ram had slept fitfully, with endless dreams where he fought giants as big as elephants or bigger. Dreams where he fought Bediako. Dreams of Milena begging him to help her. Nightmares where his own guts got ripped from his body and he felt himself treading on them as he walked up mountains, heading for the enemy.
“You alright, sir?” Flores asked as the ETATs rolled out, heading up the valley toward the alien’s lava tube hideouts. She had climbed in the back with him when they packed up. When she’d done it, he had thought that she had taken a liking to him, maybe because they had slept beside each other. He was relieved to realize that she was merely worried about him.
“I’m okay, Flores,” he said. “Was I talking in my sleep or something?”
“Kind of moaning a bit,” she said. “Had the comms off so I wouldn’t have noticed but you thrashed into me a couple of times. Thought the wheelers had come for us but then I tuned in and you were groaning and muttering.”
“Oh man, I’m so sorry. Did I hurt you?”
She laughed. “Your arm weighs about thirty kilos but don’t worry about it, sir. I’m tough as MozTek.”
“Good to know. Still, sorry.” He looked at the sky growing light on the lumpy horizon. “I think we’ll see combat today, Private. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Do you know why I was taken off active duty, sir?” She raised an eyebrow, peering up at him as they bounced along.
“Not sure if anyone told me,” Ram said. “As long as you’re here, and you want to be, that’s alright with me.”
“I appreciate that, sir. But I don’t mind telling you about it. You used to know, before they… you know.” She mimed pointing a pistol at her head with her finger and thumb. The black, armored glove of her suit looked remarkably pistol-like. “My great-uncle is Admiral Goto Howe. On my mom’s side. My dad’s family is in business, in construction. In spaceship construction. We have one dockyard orbiting Earth, another around the Moon and a new one around Mars.”
“Holy shit, Flores. That’s some pedigree.”
She nodded, miserable. “You can imagine the shit I got when I joined the Marines. As a private. Both sides of my family tried to get me to do something else, anything else. Go to flight school. Take a commission. Trainee management position anywhere in the system. You name it.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Just wanted to do this. Don’t want to fly space fighters or command warships. Working in construction sounds like the worst job ever. It’s all programming or administration or people management. My family never understood that I just wanted to do this. You know, sir?”
Ram nodded, thinking about growing up in Avar, his parents hassling him to take up sports and go to school. “I know.”
“It was alright when I joined. I graduated top of my class. Still had to fight to get on Mission Four. My family laid into me again, telling me I’d never see any action, never get a chance to be promoted, that it was just a security job on a transport ship. Still, I wanted to be part of history and I thought we might have to fight. Might have to board a wheelhunter ship, fight to take it over in close quarters.”
“And you wanted that?” Ram shuddered, thinking about the attack on the outpost and imagining facing the same thing only being as small as Flores. “I think you found your calling.”
“Yeah. Then the others found out about my family. I’d never hid it, exactly, but it’s not something you want to shout about. My great-uncle is one of the most senior military commanders in UNOP. Probably wouldn’t go down well. But I didn’t know how much they’d give me shit for it. It was constant. I only graduated top because they’d fixed it for me. I was only on the mission because they fixed it for me. I was too young and too small to be here otherwise. And, I guess they were right.”
“Why were they right?”
“Because they were. My performance wasn’t up to the standard, started to slip. Started to screw up. And I wasn’t up to it, mentally. I just cracked, that’s all. Just lost it. I was weak.” She pressed her lips together, took a deep breath through her nose. She smiled as she exhaled. “But when the wheelhunters attacked the outpost? I felt good. I felt like I’d proved myself. Tried talking to the guys in my old team and they told me to get lost. Told me I’d have been killed if you weren’t there to save me. So, I decided. Screw them. Screw all of them. I’ll do this mission and I’ll be a hero or maybe I’ll die. But at least I did it. You know, sir?”
“Please don’t die, Flores,” Ram said. “I’m sorry you got so much shit but try not to let it get you. You don’t have anything to prove to me. You’re a Marine and you’re here. Don’t be a hero. Just provide accurate fire support and, if we need you to, blow stuff up with your explosives. You understand?”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
The ETATs bounced on. It would take them another couple of hours before they were in the valley with the lava tube entrances. But everyone was ready. Weapons were clutched in hand, heads scanned left and right. The drivers increased the distance between the two vehicles.
The sun climbed above the horizon, illuminating the peaks and casting the gorges in impenetrable shadow. The rocks were dark grey but much of the landscape glittered with moisture and the flecks of silica embedded within the cracked basalts and granite.
“Looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day today,” Ram said on the general channel.
“That might work in our favor,” Tseng said. “Obviously, their physiology remains largely unknown but it is hypothesized that the wheelers might
not like the sunlight. One reason for their sensory nodules being focused on infrared and electrical signals might be that their world is covered in volcanic smoke or that they have a thick atmosphere that blocks light in the visual and ultraviolet range. Perhaps they will be semi-blinded by daylight.”
“They’ll have day vision goggles,” Corporal Fury said. “Or whatever they need. Sir.”
“I spoke to the scientists when I delivered that fresh wheeler corpse,” Ram said. “They weren’t sure if a world without that much sunlight hitting the surface would have enough energy to sustain a biomass significant enough to support such large—”
“What the hell is that?” Fury said, her voice rising in volume as she spoke.
Everyone swiveled their heads and bodies to the direction she was looking. Toward the dark portion of the sky, opposite the sunset.
“I don’t see anything,” Harris said. “What is it?”
Ram could see it.
Along with Fury, the sniper, Ram had the best eyes in the team. Vision enhanced with superior lenses and denser cones, enhanced data carrying capacity along the optic nerve cables and superior data calculation in his visual cortex.
He didn’t know what it was but he could see something in the sky. Movement that did not match the drifting wisps of dark cloud, or the reflected glint of sunrise, or the odd sparkle from a bright star near the horizon. Difficult to focus on it. The thing was gone, then he got it again.
It was getting bigger.
“Incoming!” Ram shouted. “Scramble.”
Stirling and a couple of others took up the cry as the ETATs slowed and each of the passengers leaped to the back ground. Harris and Cooper, driving the two vehicles, accelerated away from each other, off the axis of the previous driving location.
The Marines scattered. Ram, encumbered by his huge primary weapon, still ran like a madman. He was far too big to ever be graceful, to ever be a sprinter or a long-distance runner. But he was still human-shaped and humans were the best runners that the universe had ever created. Even encased by the EVA suit, it must have been this way back on the savanna, when his human ancestors fled from a lion or a rhinoceros. Only now he was fleeing on an alien planet, trying to outrun a human-seeking alien missile or an alien ground attack aircraft on a strafing run.
Ram held on tight to his weapon and glanced up to the incoming object. Rather, where he expected it to be.
It was not there. He visually acquired it half a second later. It was not heading right for them. In fact, it was almost as though it had not even seen them and it was thundering through the sky on an entirely different course. A course that would take the object further north.
Sliding to a stop in the black scree, Ram looked up and found his eyes snapping into focus, automatically enlarging and enhancing his sight.
It left a trail behind it as it approached them at an oblique angle. It was a stocky aircraft, that was for sure. The craft rolled as it plummeted toward the earth, and the sun reflected off the rear fin and the wings.
“It’s going to miss us,” Ram said on the general channel. “Return to course departure point.”
“What the hell is it, sir?” Cooper shouted.
“It’s our shuttle,” Ram said. “It’s the shuttle from the Victory.”
“What’s it doing?” Ensign Tseng asked. “This is roughly the shuttle’s take off direction. Where is it going to be landing?”
“It won’t be landing,” Ram said, watching it closely. “It’s going to crash.”
They were halfway back to the vehicles when the shuttle thundered overhead, trailing smoke and debris. It seemed insanely low. A hundred meters, perhaps, and descending rapidly. It went scooting over the tops of the jagged tops of the shadowed valley sides, the undercarriage flat and level as if the nose was straining to come up, the landing gear all the way down. The morning air rippled behind it.
“Come on,” Ram shouted as the ETATs took off in pursuit, following the trail of particles curling and swirling out of the back.
“No way they’ll land that,” Cooper shouted, his voice shaking as the vehicles bounced along the slopes. “Coming in way too steep.”
“Listen to the pilot over there,” Harris said.
“We’re racing to a crash site,” Cooper countered. “This is a distraction from the mission.”
“Hey,” Stirling said. “We’re out here to rescue civilians, aren’t we?”
“Sarge,” Cooper acknowledged.
“There’s no way the wheelers missed this,” Tseng said. “All they have to do is follow the heat signature all the way to the crash site.”
“You think we’ll get company, sir?” Stirling asked. “I assume that when we get to the wreck, we’ll set up a perimeter, sir?”
“That’s right, Sergeant.”
As they crested the final hill, Ram was amazed to see the shuttle rolling to a violent stop up against the side of the valley, tilted on its side. One wing scraped against the rocks and the front landing wheels were twisted and broken. The nose smashed into the jagged black cliffs, shedding broken pieces of hull shielding. Smoke billowed from the rear and from holes in the side.
“They made it!” he shouted. “Look at that, they made it.”
Picking their way over the brow, the ETATs bounded down toward the smoking vessel.
“Hold on,” Harris kept saying. Cooper, too.
The huge shuttle juddered on the landing gear, the wheels rolling back half a turn before they collapsed further, the strut buckling. Before the ETATs reached the shuttle across the valley, the rear cargo ramp opened. Then the side door opened and civilians staggered out of both exits in twos and threes, supporting each other as they moved away from the shuttle.
“Set up there,” Tseng shouted, “and over there.” Pointing out the locations for the team on the AugHud while he went on himself to the shuttle with the ETATs.
Ram was given a location by a smooth boulder twice as tall as he was. Instead of taking his position, he stayed on the ETAT as it bounced across a wide, shallow stream.
“Get to your position,” Tseng shouted at Ram. “Cover the perimeter, you idiot.”
“Am I in the Marine Corps, Ensign Tseng?” Ram said.
“What?” Tseng said, perhaps sensing the trap.
“I said, am I in the UNOP Marine Corps?” Ram said. “If I am, then I’m a Lieutenant, right, Ensign? If I’m not, then I don’t have to answer to you, either, right?”
The Ensign did not respond.
“Flores,” Ram said, “can you relocate fifty meters southwest to cover my area?”
“Yes, sir,” she said, sounding miserable. She would be concerned at having another officer giving orders. No doubt it was unnerving to have a confusing command structure.
Ram would have to get rid of Ensign Tseng.
“Who is in command, here?” Tseng was calling, broadcasting on all channels directing at the shuttle.
“I am,” a man said, striding forward from the shuttle with a limp. “I am Dr. Ahmar, the Head of Planetary Science. How did you manage to get here so quickly? This is not the Victoria Planitia. We are in the Bellum Montes, no? That damned fool of a pilot. She’s not only crashed the bloody shuttle, she’s taken us kilometers off course. I’ll have her court-martialed for this, you see if I don’t.”
“Where is the pilot, sir?” Ensign Tseng asked, with far more professionalism than Ram could have mustered in that moment.
“Probably still lounging about in the cockpit,” Dr. Ahmar said, waving his hand behind him as he walked. “The main thing is that we get away from the shuttle, for the time being.”
“Very well, sir,” Tseng said. “Everyone, come this way. Keep moving to our vehicles, please. This way, sir. This way, ma’am.”
“Is anyone else left onboard?” Ram asked.
The shuttle was riddled with holes and cracks, leaking vapor and fluid.
“Few injuries,” Dr. Ahmar said. “Few deaths. The older ones, you know. No time, th
ough. Must think of the mission. Oh, it’s you. What the devil are you doing here?”
Ram ignored the man and hurried to the shuttle and climbed the side steps into the section between the cockpit and the passenger compartment. “Hello?” he shouted, broadcasting. “Anyone in here? Anyone need help?”
Smoke or dust swirled inside and it was dark. His enhanced eyes compensated for the gloom.
“In here.” A woman’s voice. His AugHud indicated the direction of her voice and he turned into the passenger compartment, where bodies moved in the darkness. Name tags floated over them.
“Lieutenant Xenakis?” Ram said to the form bent over someone laying in the aisle between the rows of seats.
The name over the body was one he recognized. Dr. Fo.
“Is he dead?” Ram asked the Lieutenant, who was the shuttle pilot.
“Nah,” the Lieutenant said, “scrawny old bastard’s tougher than he looks. Banged up pretty good though. Grab him, will you? Get him out of here.”
Ram picked up Fo, who weighed almost nothing, and carried him out of the shuttle. “Who else needs evacuating?”
“One wounded, Angela Kaaluyu. Come back and get her after. Three dead.”
Ram stepped back out into the morning sunlight, his eyes adjusting to the glare and the chatter on the comms system. The civilians were gathered in a tight group around Ensign Tseng down by the stream.
“Movement,” Corporal Fury said. She painted the location on the AugHud. “Enemy activity detected.”
“Prepare to fall back,” Ensign Tseng said. “We’ll load the civilians into the ETATs and head back to the outpost. Bring the vehicles up, make ready to provide cover for them.”
Ram placed the unconscious Dr. Fo onto the ground outside the shuttle. He scanned the cluster of civilians for medical skills and dragged the nearest designated first aider over to the wounded man.
“Why aren’t you administering first aid to the wounded already?” Ram said to her as he positioned by Fo. “Do your duty and look after this man. He is your responsibility, do you understand?”
