by Dan Davis
Ram climbed the stairs again, paused in the doorway and looked out at the approaching enemy. No one in sight, so far, but the sentry drones were showing wheeler comms chatter and infrared signatures matching the alien movements.
“Stirling?” Ram sent a needlecast to the sergeant. “Tseng ordered a withdrawal back to the outpost. Premature, no? We could stand and fight. Push on through to save the others.”
Sergeant Stirling sent a private needlecast right back at Ram. “We might be disobeying the Captain but this team is commanded by Ensign Tseng. That being said, sir, I do agree with you. I’ll do what I can.”
The pilot shouted at him from inside. “You bloody playing with yourself or something, Seti? I’ve got wounded here.”
He picked up the injured woman to take her down to the ground. The pilot had tagged injury information to the woman’s name. It now read: Angela Kaaluyu. x2 broken legs? EVA suit intact. Lost consciousness 2143 Ship Time. 500mg oxyfenac via suit 2141.
“You’re very conscientious, Lieutenant Xenakis” Ram said to the pilot as she dived back into the cockpit.
She turned, hand braced on the door frame. “Out of all the bullshit military regulations, the emergency procedures make the most sense. And I told you before, Ram. Call me Kat, alright?”
“How’s the shuttle, Kat?” he asked.
“Trying to find out,” she said. “But it doesn’t look too bad, considering.”
He left Angela Kaaluyu next to Dr. Fo and spoke to the ensign on the team open comms channel. “We’re going to hold them off here, sir?” Ram asked Tseng.
“You deaf, Seti?” Tseng said. “We’re pulling back. We need to get these people to the outpost.”
“What about the others?” Ram said. “Our people that the wheelers are holding. We’ll never get another chance to save them.”
“Our priorities have changed,” Tseng said. “We now have twenty-four VIPs requiring extraction. A simple cost-benefit assessment will provide you with a logical conclusion.”
“Doesn’t look like many wheelers coming, does it?” Ram said. “Fury, can you see any aliens yet?”
“Yes, sir,” Fury said from her elevated position. “Check out my scope feed.”
Ram pulled the image from Fury’s rifle optics and blew it up to fill half his vision. It showed eight wheelers advancing in their spider-configuration, in two clusters. According to the range finder, they were still 2 km away.
“Only eight of them?” Ram said. “No sign of more?”
“That’s right,” Fury said. “I can start tapping them now, sir?”
“Negative,” Tseng said. “Hold your sniping, do not give away your position. Their reinforcements are a lot closer than ours are. We are abandoning this position, immediately. Get the wounded in the—”
“No you bloody well don’t.” The pilot, Kat, leaned out of her shuttle side door. “You’re not seriously talking about leaving the shuttle undefended, are you?”
Ram and the other Marines waited, wondering what Tseng would do. Initially, he made a tight sound like he was being strangled. Then he cleared his throat and answered on all channels, so that the civilians could hear him also. “The UNOP Marines chain of command supersedes that of the Ship officers when planetside and in a designated warzone. As these conditions are met, I am the ranking officer here and my orders are that we withdraw. When we do so, please be assured that we will contact the outpost and request ground and air support as we come in.”
“You don’t understand, Ensign,” the pilot said. “We have to protect this shuttle. No matter what.”
“I’m sure you are responsible for this thing but we have to remember the big picture, we have to look after our people first, Lieutenant,” Tseng said. “Our strength is in our personnel and we have—”
“Wrong, Lieutenant,” Xenakis said. “We need to save this shuttle so we can get a message to Admiral Howe in the Stalwart Sentinel.”
“Send a broadcast,” Tseng said. “If your shuttle comms is down, the outpost will get their system operational soon, if they haven’t already.”
“The wheeler ship is in orbit. It is blocking transmissions. It was destroying our satellites, if it hasn’t destroyed them all by now.”
Ram looked at the others. They were hesitating, just like he was.
“The Victory?” Ram said.
“Destroyed.” The pilot put her hands on her hips and stared down at them all. “This shuttle might be the one chance we have to save the Sentinel. If the incoming ships are taken out like the Victory, this outpost will not survive. I am not abandoning this vessel and if you have any sense you will do everything you can to help me.”
They looked at each other, the Marines were unsure.
“What about the rest of the crew?” Tseng said, his voice flat. “Did they evacuate?”
“Doesn’t seem like it, I’m sorry,” Kat said. “I was ordered to get these VIPs out. If I had to guess, I’d say they didn’t make it to the escape capsules. If they did, the wheelers probably shot them down. The fight didn’t last very long and we were running on alternative power after their beam weapons knocked us out. We’ve been dosing with antiradiation meds all the way down. Now we need to tell the Sentinel about the beam weapon before they fall to it, too.”
“How?” Tseng said. “How could this happen? They’re idiots. I mean, they’re useless on the ground. They outnumbered us on the ground, they had armored vehicles and mounted weapons. And they still couldn’t overrun the outpost. How could they possibly destroy the Victory?”
It wasn’t clear if he was being purely rhetorical but Kat answered him anyway. “Who knows, Ensign. I suppose they’re used to fighting in space but not on the ground? Anyway, the Sentinel is in danger. If the Sentinel falls, I doubt the Ashoka and the Genghis can stand when they arrive later. We’ll be without orbital support, the wheelers here will be reinforced, and the outpost will be destroyed. Game over all of us and for humanity in this system, for years, anyway.”
“Alright,” Ram said. “Let’s go take out those wheelers. Right, Ensign? We should take them out further up the valley, sir?”
Ram expected the man to equivocate and hesitate. Instead, he appeared decided. Tseng looked up the valley. “If they bring the jamming technology, we’ll lose comms before they get within five-hundred meters and AugHud soon after. We’ll have to use our signal lights and stay in visual contact. Stirling, I want you to take Flores and Cooper into the rough ground and push up through the side of the valley. When they’ve engaged with us, attack their flank. I’d like to take them all out but do not pursue.”
“Sir.” Stirling said. “Flank them. Don’t pursue if they pull out.”
“And don’t get cut off,” Tseng said. “If they are reinforced, fall back to here. I’ll have the civilians ready to retreat to the outpost and we’ll hold off the wheelers at the shuttle. Remember, they’re tactically straightforward, they only seem to attack in straight lines. Doesn’t mean they will this time. Despite what the pilot says, this isn’t a critical position. Alright, carry on, Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir.” Stirling said. “Flores, Cooper. Ammo up and come with me. You understand the objective?”
“Kill, Sarge,” Cooper said.
Flores was already at the rear of an ETAT, strapping extra magazines onto her webbing. “Kill, Sergeant Stirling.”
They jogged away, boots splashing across the streams, heading for the cover in the fallen boulders and cracked rocks from the jagged side of the valley. Ram wanted the chance to outflank with them. That would be where the action was. But he was too big to hide well and he was too slow and his mass ruined his stamina.
“Rest of you,” Tseng said. “We’ll push up, quickly. They’re almost in range. Lieutenant Xenakis, if I give you the signal to fall back, please ensure the civilians retreat to the outpost. But not before.”
“They’d be better off in my shuttle,” the pilot, Kat, said. “She’s banged up but she can take a hit from those wea
k as piss wheeler pop guns, no problem.”
Ram hustled forward, looking for a good position for his large caliber assault rifle. He would have to be the key for the fire team. Tseng had his sidearm. Corporal Fury would pick the wheelers off with her gigantic sniper rifle. Harris was the only other one who would put down automatic fire.
Ram jogged a few steps before his comms system failed. Tseng and Kat were arguing behind him, Fury moved out to the raised ground to find an elevated forward position, while Harris kicked his way up the snaking streams.
The wheelers crept into view. Their black-clad forms stalking obliquely across the top of the narrow valley, visible only because they moved. Revulsion flooded through him. The aliens turned his stomach. The way their legs flexed, rising and falling, creeping forward like enormous spiders made his guts sour and his skin sweat. The urge to open up on them immediately was almost overwhelming and he crouched against the nearest boulder that was bigger than he was, aimed down his optics, changed the fire mode from safe to burst and put his finger on the trigger.
Somehow, he resisted pushing the button.
They wanted the wheelers to get close, to give Stirling’s fire team a chance to attack them on the flank. As Ram looked that way, tracking their progress through the jagged rocks, his AugHud blinked off and on again, the wheeler’s interference building rapidly until it was so disrupted that Ram switched it off anyway so that it would not distract him.
Since pulling it on, his EVA armor had rarely felt like it restricted him or blocked him off from the world. If anything, it enhanced him. It linked him to the people in his team and those beyond and to the constant stream of data about air temperature, humidity, time of day, his own biometric data and that of the other Marines. Without all that data streaming in, he felt panicked. Alone.
Harris was in sight on one side. Tseng crept up on the other. Fury was somewhere beyond Tseng but they were all in sight of one other. Ram relaxed a little, listening to the sound of his own breathing and the beating of his heart in his ears while the eight aliens crept closer.
Ram gripped his custom assault rifle tight. Checked the large drum magazine was feeding correctly. Scanned the approach with his optics. The floor of the valley was littered with rubble and boulders that had tumbled from the sides or rolled from the top, some of the rocks were huge, five meters high and more.
He waited. Water seeped round the rocks under his knees. The rocks were strangely oily and porous, leaving some kind of slick residue on his gloves, on his suit. Under his boot, there was a dark red, spongy substance. It took him a moment to work out he was kneeling in some native Arcadian life. Unless it was part of the biologists’ plan to seed the planet with Earth bacteria. How would Ram even know? Slime was slime. He reached down to touch the stuff, prodded it with the tip of his finger.
A weapon blast echoed through the valley. Ram looked up at the wheelers charging down the slope toward his position.
It was Corporal Fury, shooting her sniper rifle. The shot slammed into one of the wheelers, folding them over with the impact. Her next shot echoed around as Harris opened fire with his rifle. The aliens wheeled away, looking for cover and not even returning fire.
Ram braced himself against the boulder beside him and snapped off a burst at the nearest wheeler as it flipped fully upright and accelerated away back up the slope. His first couple of bursts missed but he recovered in time to wing it, maybe, before it disappeared from view.
He had an urge to get up and charge at them but it was his job to just hold them down, hold them in position. The XRS-Handspear felt perfect in his hands, the recoil and vibration were familiar. Fury’s huge rifle kept up a good rate of fire, single shots blowing chunks of rock into the air with every round.
In the outpost attack, the aliens had used their pistol weapons and had supporting fire from some sort of mortar and direct fire high caliber weapons on their Wildcat tanks. But Ram couldn’t tell if the wheelers were shooting back at them at all.
A hand smacked him on the shoulder and Ram whipped an arm round, smacking into his attacker. Ensign Tseng fell sprawling onto his face.
Ram helped him up, apologizing.
“Are you deaf?” Tseng shouted as he got to his feet. “I was shouting your name, you idiot.”
“I think the jammed comms system works best at close range when you’re looking at each other.”
Tseng’s eyes were wide as dinner plates. “Save your excuses, Seti. They’re pulling back already. They’re just running. We’re going to pursue, alright. You stay here and cover us. I’m getting Harris, we’ll go get the ETATs and pick you and Fury up and then the other team. We’ll follow these morons back to their HQ.”
“Alright,” Ram said but the ensign was already running over to Harris’ position. Both men ran, fast, down the stream to the shuttle.
It didn’t take them long to come racing back up the valley to collect everyone and start chasing the retreating wheelers.
“As much as I want to rescue our people,” Ram said from the back of his ETAT, “don’t you think it’s possible they’re just trying to draw us in?”
“Of course they could be,” Tseng said. “But it’s worth the risk nevertheless. It is my belief that the wheelhunters have demonstrated themselves to be incompetent at ground warfare. Again and again. I doubt them capable of setting an ambush or it even occurring to them. All the same, keep your eyes peeled.”
“They’re not close enough to disrupt the AugHuds anymore,” Cooper said.
“Don’t depend on that,” Stirling said. “They could turn that off, whatever it is.”
“Yeah,” Harris said. “Obviously.”
“What are the VIPs going to do?” Ram asked Tseng.
“When we collected the ETATs, Kat Xenakis was arguing with the scientists. They wanted to leave on foot and she was ordering them to stay and help her repair the shuttle.”
Ram nodded. “What did you say to them?”
The wall of hills rose up quite suddenly over a final rise and they faced another jagged, sloping cliff with tumbles of broken rocks sheared off, all glistening and slick with clear water, so the black was shining where it reflected the high, bright sun.
“We’ll stop here,” Tseng said. “Right up behind there.” They stopped tight against an overhang and unloaded their gear while they turned the ETATs around to face them downhill, ready to escape back to the shuttle. “Our map shows an entrance to the lava tube sixty-eight meters along this cliff face. The hostages’ location signals corresponded with this area in the brief time they were broadcast. We are in the right place.”
The team nodded, flexing their limbs, warming their muscles and sipping water and gluco-nutrient gels inside their helmets while they listened. Tseng continued, looking at each of them in turn.
“We’ll attempt to avoid detection and will only engage the enemy when we are first engaged but we don’t expect the infiltration phase to last long. We’ll be entering an enclosed space and engaging in close quarters combat. Fury, find a position to cover our approach and the ETATs. Stirling, you’ll take Flores and Cooper up to the entrance. Me, Seti and Harris will advance, bounce around you and proceed inside. Our priority is locating and extracting prisoners. Stirling, your team will secure the exit and retain visual contact with Fury unless you need to support me and my team. Ideally, we would have someone at the tube entrance but I leave it up to you. Everyone understand?”
Ram watched everyone nodding their heads. He had to admit to himself that Ensign Tseng wasn’t completely incompetent. Still, there was that nagging feeling that Tseng was not being completely honest with them.
“Alright, good,” Tseng continued. “Listen, we all knew this mission would be a long shot. I didn’t expect us to get this far but now we’re here, we do have a chance of performing a rescue. I do believe the wheelhunters we’re facing are not effective warriors. Perhaps they’re not real soldiers. Perhaps they’re scientists with guns. Or a militia or something. Or war
in their culture is simply not performed effectively. But we need to be aware of two things. They are physically superior to all of us. Except Mr. Seti, of course. Do not stand and engage with them. Secondly, we’re entering an unknown situation. Realistically, it is unlikely we will locate the prisoners or be able to extract them if we do. Even in the best circumstances, hostage rescues result in more negative outcomes than any other mission type. Just the fact that we are here is a credit to the moral character of each of us. Whatever happens, I expect we will give the enemy a bloody nose and then we will be retreating rapidly and under fire. Any questions?”
Ram raised a hand. “Can I have a private word, Ensign Tseng?”
The man looked annoyed but he waved Ram to him and walked a few paces away, switching comms to a private needlecast.
“Something wrong, Seti?” Tseng said. “Having second thoughts?”
“I’m going in there and I’m going to kill as many of those disgusting animals as I can,” Ram said. “But you have to know this is crazy. You were against this from the start but you went along with it, for some reason. And now you’re gunning for it, like a madman. You want this. Why?”
“I’m a professional. Like I already said, I knew this was unlikely to be successful. I thought we would be running home before now. But we’re here. And the wheelhunters are cowards. I think we can do this. But we’re exposed here, we have to hurry.”
Tseng turned to go.
Ram grabbed him by the arm.
The ensign yanked back but he was as weak as a baby compared to Ram. The man’s head came up to Ram’s chest. There was no chance that he would escape.
But he was fast. With his free hand he drew his sidearm, twisted away and brought it to bear on Ram’s face.
Ram was slow compared to the Marines. They weren’t engineered from birth like he was but they were physically enhanced through in vivo gene editing and surgical improvements so Ram’s reaction time advantages over a vanilla human was largely negated. His new body was lighter than his last one, but Ram’s arms had so much more mass than was necessary. But he did have reach in his favor. He grabbed Tseng’s wrist, twisted the weapon from his grasp and clamped on to his forearm, giving the man a hard shake for good measure.
