by Sara King
“Because, if it were Dhasha trapped down there, their Takki would just dig them out again,” Battlemaster Nebil retorted. “Collapsing the tunnels is something they do to defend themselves, you furg.”
“Oh.” Joe kept his mouth shut for the rest of the questions.
Then, before they were ready, the haauk dropped down in the middle of what had once been a city, broken only by a few odd remnants of buildings and deep pits filled with white-clad recruits that were already firing at them. A blob of blue hit one of the attackers in the head and he collapsed with a scream, twitching and convulsing like a dying thing. Then he lay still.
Joe and the others stared at the body, their confusion quickly turning to fear as more blue shots whizzed over their heads like blue hail from the hundreds of defenders firing at them. Two more black-clad recruits went down in convulsions, blue goop moving on their bodies like it was alive. Everyone ducked, trying to shield themselves with the scant protection of the railing and their fellows’ bodies.
The haauk’s gate clanged open and no one moved.
“Out!” Nebil shouted. “Get out and fight, you gutless cowards!” Then Nebil was whipping them all, forcing them off the haauk and into the blue-painted Hell.
Five went down immediately, falling in a screaming, shaking heap. The rest hunkered down behind the bodies in a panic. Then Nebil and the pilot were lifting off, leaving them there, the sucking wet sound of gunfire coming from all around them.
The wall of bodies wasn’t enough to protect them. One guy beside Joe had nothing but his eyes showing when a shot hit the body in front of him, sprayed, and a couple drops caught him in the face. He fell just as quickly as the rest. All around him, recruits were falling, screaming like something was ripping open their innards.
“Come on!” Joe shouted, grabbing Libby by the arm. He had no idea where the other members of his group had gone.
“Where?” Libby shouted back. “There’s nowhere to go!”
A jagged block of diamond jutted from the ground a few dozen feet away. Joe ducked his head and ran. He heard heavy footsteps pounding the crushed diamond behind him, but he wasn’t sure if it was Libby or someone from another groundteam.
Joe’s vision narrowed to only the battlefield in front of him. He felt a few shots whoosh over his head as he ran, all high. He reached the block and fell into a prone position behind it, gripping his rifle with white knuckles.
Libby fell down beside him, as did two other kids Joe didn’t recognize.
Back at the dropoff point, a few attackers were trying to make a stand, but the fire from the tunnels was destroying them. In minutes, they were all convulsing or still. A cheer went up from the defenders.
“That was fast,” Libby said, eying the pile of bodies.
“You think they’re dead?” a younger boy asked Joe. “They looked dead.” He was shaking all over, but he looked excited nonetheless.
Joe examined his three companions. Of all of Nebil’s platoon, only the four of them were still functioning.
Further away, on the other side of the city, they heard more sucking burps of gunfire. Apparently, another platoon was meeting the same end.
“You think they forgot about us?” the other survivor, an older girl, asked. “They’re not shooting anymore.”
“They’re probably circling around,” Libby said. “I saw tunnel pits all over this place when we landed. They might be walking under us right now.”
“Then let’s beat them to it!” the younger boy cried, hefting his rifle. “Come on, Zero!”
Joe glanced at the pit closest them and swallowed down the fear in his gut. The last thing he wanted to do was go down there. “It’s too open. They’d shoot us up before we even got there.”
Libby frowned at him and edged her head around the block of diamond just enough to see the other pits. Immediately, one of the defenders fired a blast that bounced off the stone only inches above her head. She jerked back and took a deep breath, staring at the blue goop crawling across the stone where her head had been. “Yeah, they know we’re here.” Behind them, more defenders were firing at their diamond block, keeping them pinned.
Joe stared at the pit in front of them. Come on you big baby. You’re gonna have to do it sooner or later. “We’re gonna need a distraction,” Joe heard himself say. “We aren’t going anywhere until—”
“No,” Libby said.
Joe glanced at her. “What?”
She shrugged out of her pack. “That’s not the way. There’s another pit on the other side that’s closer.” She pointed. “It’s just got little kids in it, and they’re bad shots. We can get to it before they shoot us. Gotta leave our gear behind, though.”
Joe gave it a split-second thought, then said, “Okay, everybody get your packs off. When I say go, grab your rifles and run like hell after Libby and me.” He doubted the two kids with them would be able to keep up, but maybe they could avoid getting shot. Both of them looked older than Libby, but Libby was getting tall—she was easily six inches taller than the boy and seven inches taller than the girl. She could almost keep up with Joe on the runs. Almost.
“Okay,” Joe said, pulling his pack from his shoulders. “When I say go, I want everybody to throw their packs in that direction.” He pointed in the opposite direction that Libby had done. “I don’t care if you have to kick them or they only roll a little ways. As soon as they leave your hands, get up and run after me and Libby.”
As they waited for the two smaller kids to get out of their gear, Joe eyed the pit directly across from them with increasing anxiety. He could feel the defenders creeping through the tunnels under them. Looking over, he saw Libby’s grim stare was fixed in the same direction.
“We ready? Count of three. One, two, three!” They heaved their packs away from them and lunged up into a sprint toward three wide-eyed kids in the pit. The other defenders were already recovering and blue shots spattered the ground and flew past them as they tried to catch Joe and Libby in their sights. Behind them, Joe heard a scream.
Then they were in the pit, struggling with the defenders. They were forced to wrest the rifles out of the little kids’ hands before they had a chance to fire at them. Diamond dust tinkled and crunched underfoot, scattered by their stomping boots. Libby finally got a weapon free and fired point-blank at the nearest defender. His agonized scream made Joe cringe, but Libby fired again, taking the second boy in the chest. Joe yanked free the remaining enemy’s rifle and held it trained on the wide-eyed girl on the other end, who stared back at him in unconcealed terror. Libby shot her, too.
Joe lowered his gun and stared at her.
“They’re the bad guys,” Libby said, shrugging. “We’re supposed to kill them.”
“I guess,” Joe said, feeling bad regardless. Joe tore his eyes off the three convulsing defenders and glanced over the edge of the pit at the two bodies lying out in the open. “Damn. The others didn’t make it.”
“They were too slow.” Libby said it as if she couldn’t care less. She began picking up the defenders’ weapons and taking their charges to refill her own.
Joe found himself staring at her, glad he’d never pissed her off.
After looting the defenders, they fell back against the edge of the pit, staring down into the dark, diamond-encrusted tunnel. The opening was a full ten feet tall by six feet wide, and Joe felt his heart rate increase just by being near it. He had to grip his rifle tightly to keep his hands from shaking. “We’re not in a very good position,” he said.
“No flashlights,” Libby agreed.
“No, I mean numbers,” Joe said. “They’ve got us outnumbered.”
Libby said nothing. In the distance, down the tunnel, they heard voices.
“Well,” Joe said, “Let’s get this over with.” He took a deep breath. Sweat stood out on his face and his hands felt slick. He felt like he was going to vomit. Somehow, he made himself stand and led them into the tunnel.
It’s not so bad, Joe tried to t
ell himself. I can handle this. He was standing erect, the ceiling another foot above his head. Still, he wasn’t fooling anybody. He had broken out in a cold sweat, the damp earth sucking the warmth out of him on all sides.
It was almost a relief when he got shot. They were rounding a corner when a group of white-clad defenders opened fire. The bluish, gooey blast caught Joe full in the face. Joe’s world collapsed to a blinding white fire that roared down his spine and tore through his limbs. It was the worst pain he had ever experienced.
Tortuous seconds later, he felt his heart stop.
CHAPTER 19: A Battlemaster’s Folly
Joe woke with an Ooreiki needle jammed in his arm. All around him, spread out in piles like fallen timber, hundreds of black-clad kids lay in silence. Some even had their eyes open, watching their Ooreiki caretakers.
Was he dead?
Joe tried to sit up, but couldn’t. He tried to ask a question, but his mouth wouldn’t work. All he could do was lay there, helpless, as an Ooreiki worked over him, his golden medic’s circle almost pressed up against Joe’s face. He was squeezing a bag of some sort of red liquid into his arm.
Joe’s mind raced. Blood? Were they giving him blood? He couldn’t remember losing any blood. For that matter, wasn’t this supposed to be practice? Why did they need medics? And why couldn’t he move?
The Ooreiki medic that was treating him did not seem to understand or care about Joe’s increasing panic. He simply finished with what he was doing, removed the needle from Joe’s arm, and moved on to the next person, bringing out a fresh bag of red liquid and using the same needle he had used on Joe.
A whole new wave of worry washed over him. What if one of the kids before him had had AIDS? Or some other horrible disease? Didn’t they know they had to sanitize the needles before they used them? What if he was going to die of a cold like a drug addict, just because these Ooreiki bastards were too stupid to use fresh needles on their human victims?
For that matter, why was Joe even breathing? He had felt his heart stop, felt his body shut down. He had felt himself die. If only he could sit up and ask someone!
“Listen up, you soot-eating jenfurglings!” Battlemaster Nebil roared. “We lost! Not only did we lose, but we never even got inside their tunnels! I’ve never seen such a Takkiscrew in all of my time in the Army! You are pathetic! Worthless! We should send you worthless sooters home!”
Good, Joe thought. You do that.
Nebil continued to berate them disgustedly. “You’re not warriors! You are worms! Small, terrified worms! Niish would eat you all alive, you fat-assed primates!”
The medics continued with their tasks, oblivious to Battlemaster Nebil’s tirade. When they finished working with the humans, they packed up their supplies and boarded a haauk, leaving the kids behind.
Joe listened as their battlemaster ranted on and on, alternating between cursing at them, shouting at the ancestors for cursing him, and kicking up sprays of diamond dust in a rage.
Nebil finally ran out of breath, though his sudah still beat in a fury. “Grab your gear and find your own way home,” he snarled. “Ancestors save your worthless asses if you don’t make it back to the barracks before I lock it down.” Then Nebil got on a haauk loaded with the nine other battlemasters, the medics, and a few Takki assistants and departed. Joe’s anger turned to worry as he watched their skimmer slide out of sight, following the road back to the city.
Joe and the rest of the kids continued to lay there, helpless, as the light rapidly faded from the purple planet. Somewhere off in the distance, the fingernail-on-chalkboard sound filled the silence. Joe wondered whether or not the creatures making that horrible noise could acquire a taste for soft, helpless flesh, should they be given the opportunity. Joe’s stomach churned at the thought of walking back to the city in the dark.
Apparently, some of the other recruits were having the same thoughts, because their eyes were wide as they stared at the deepening purple of the sky.
It’s just a walk through the woods, Joe told himself. Nothing to worry about.
Half an hour later, after night had fallen completely, the paralysis wore off—for everybody, all at the same time.
Those bastards, Joe thought. They waited until dark.
Libby found him as soon as he stood up. “They’re trying to scare us,” she said, scanning the huge ferlii surrounding them. Even with nightvision, the upper canopy was too dark for them to see it. Likewise, they could only see parts of the forest around them—everything under the second canopy was obscured in shadows that even sunlight could not touch. With only meager amounts of starlight filtering down through the spore-thickened atmosphere and then the tight weave of the upper canopy, everything from the ground to the two hundred foot mark was completely black. They had to be really close just to make out the shapes of the huge ferlii root systems.
“Let’s find the others,” Joe said, once they’d found their gear amongst the recruit belongings the Ooreiki had graciously dumped into an enormous pile.
“You hear Nebil?” Libby said. “He said none of us made it into the tunnels.”
“Maybe two out of four hundred doesn’t count,” Joe said.
Libby’s face twisted, but before she could reply, Scott jogged up, panting. “Joe, you gotta stop them. They’re going the wrong way. Monk, too. She wouldn’t listen when I told her it was a trick.”
“What’s a trick?” Joe asked, glancing at the stream of people following the same road the Ooreiki haauk had taken. He thought he saw Monk’s slight form amongst the walkers, but he couldn’t be sure from so far away.
“That isn’t the way,” Scott said. He turned a hundred and eighty degrees and pointed at a road that looked abandoned and dark, all away across the battlefield from where they stood. “That’s where we need to go.”
Joe and Libby peered doubtfully into the darkness, squinting.
“I saw them go that way,” Libby said, pointing at the flood of humans. More than one platoon had already begun walking down the path after the Battlemasters.
“Me, too,” Joe added.
“Look,” Scott said, “Just trust me, okay? I’m really good at this. We’ve gotta go that way.” He pointed at the empty road behind them.
“Why?” Joe asked, still unconvinced.
“Because that’s the way we came in,” Scott said.
“You recognize something over there?” Joe asked dubiously. Everything about the planet looked pretty much the same to him.
“I don’t need to,” Scott said.
“Why not?” Libby demanded, frowning.
“I just don’t,” Scott insisted, looking desperate, now. “You’ve gotta stop them, Joe. They’re gonna get us in trouble.”
Realizing that Scott was verging on panic, Joe lowered his gear to the ground and took the hyperventilating kid by the shoulder. “Okay. Dude. Tell me what you know, then we’ll see what I can do, okay?”
“I know direction,” Scott said. “My dad said I musta been a homing pigeon in a past life. Back home, I never got lost anywhere, not even in the city.” He jabbed a finger at the departing group. “And that is the wrong direction. Home is that way.” He yanked his thumb behind him.
Joe glanced at Libby, who shrugged. “So you want me to chase those other guys down and tell them they’re all going the wrong way? They won’t believe you.”
Scott’s impish face stretched in a grin. “They’ll believe me next time, after we get home and they don’t.”
Joe gave Scott a long look, inwardly feeling like Monk had a bit of sense when she spoke of safety in numbers.
“Either way, we’re gonna look like morons,” Libby said, shrugging. “Or we get lost and eaten and never seen again. Maybe a few years from now somebody’ll find a few pieces of our gear scattered over the upper canopy, or shards of bone stuck in—”
“You don’t believe me,” Scott said, his grin sliding from his face.
Seeing the kid’s anguish, Joe felt something twinge ins
ide. “I think I’m gonna give you a chance to prove it to me,” Joe decided, to which Scott immediately started beaming again. “Let’s go get Monk. Where’s Maggie?”
They found the other two members of their team wandering amidst the exodus. Maggie was happy to be reunited with her group, but Monk stomped and screamed like a banshee when they tried to take her.
“But everybody’s going that way!” Monk started walking again and Libby caught her roughly by the arm, yanking her back. Monk shrieked and tried batting off her grip, but Libby held fast, glaring down at her with impassive brown eyes.
Monk let her legs go limp and began an all-out tantrum right there in the road. Joe lost his temper. “We’re going,” he snapped. “And you’re coming with us. All of Third Squad is.”
Something in the tone of Joe’s voice quieted Monk. She still held her chin in a pout, but at least she closed her mouth and followed them as they went to collect as many of their squad members as they could find. The others followed Joe willingly, gathering around him in an increasing knot until he had over a dozen children with him. He even saw a few faces that didn’t belong, but since none of the other squad leaders were taking charge and forming up their own groundteams, Joe let them stay.
“What the hell are you doing, Zero?” Sasha had seen the disturbance and had come to investigate.
His back to her, Joe winced. He’d hoped to collect everyone and be gone before she noticed.
“Scott thinks we came in on the other side of the clearing,” Maggie said, motioning the road at the far end.
“Nebil and the medics went that way,” Sasha barked. “Let’s go. Now, recruits.”
“That’s not the right way,” Scott blurted. “I can feel the city we came from over there.” He pointed.
Sasha snorted. “You feel it?”
“Yes,” Scott said, dead serious.
Sasha frowned at Scott, then at Joe. “That’s soot. Get moving, Zero. The others are getting ahead of us.”
“We’re going this way,” Joe growled, shouldering his rifle where she could see it. He still had cartridges left. “And you can stuff it.”
