by Mark Wandrey
Aaron and Gregg spun toward the shot, both firing their beamcasters at nearly point-blank range. Gregg’s was still set to full power. On impact, the Rasa soldier in the lab’s doorway exploded like a meat bomb. With nothing more to do, Aaron, then Gregg, grabbed the rope and rappelled down the side, with mixed results. Neither of them broke any bones, though they ended up in a tangled heap next to Terry’s smoldering body.
Minu checked Terry’s pulse, then waited while they landed, both guns out providing cover. Aaron rolled over painfully to check Terry. “Don’t bother,” she said, “he’s dead. Shot went right through his heart.”
Gregg pounded the ground and struggled to his feet. “What about Pip?” he asked.
“Broken ankle, I think. We need to move quickly,” she said as a shadow moved across the hole three stories above. “Grab the crates and get Pip moving; I’ll cover you.”
Gregg grabbed Pip and pulled one of his arms over his shoulder, hauling him to his feet. Pip cried out and begged Gregg to put him down. “Come on,” Gregg said with a growl. “We need to go.”
Aaron slid his beamcaster into its sling and over his back. With a heave, he grabbed two of the crates by the handles and got one up on each shoulder. Minu was impressed; they had to weigh fifty kilos each. “Where are we going?”
“Warehouses,” Minu said and started backing in the direction of the distant buildings. The first Rasa appeared, and she fired both guns, scoring two clean hits and throwing it back into the lab. The strange procession moved around the corner of the building. They had to leave three cases of guns behind, making Minu hiss in anger. But if her plan worked, it wouldn’t matter. She paused at the edge of the building, peeking around the corner.
A pair of Rasa were rappelling down the rope. They took up defensive positions, and five more descended in quick succession. “Come on,” Minu willed, “follow us.” One, apparently a leader, looked at the three cases, then in the direction the humans had retreated. Its tongue flicked out as it weighed the options. After a moment, it skittered over to the nearest crate. “Damn it,” Minu cursed. She popped around the corner and fired both weapons three times.
Almost a hundred meters was a hard shot with the short-barreled hand cannons, but she still scored two hits out of six, pegging their leader and one other.
The Rasa dove behind the crates for cover or dropped flat on the ground. They carried a mixed bag of beamcasters and flechette guns they fired at her. As Minu dodged for cover, she didn’t worry about the beamcasters; this was exactly the sort of situation for which they were so unsuitable. Those shots went wide. One of the Rasa let fly with a long burst of flechettes that stitched along the wall toward her. Minu felt a horrible tearing pain in her left calf as she rolled behind cover. She came up limping and knew she’d lost a piece of her calf. Her team was already disappearing around the corner of the squat top of the buried HERT. She ran as fast as the dull throbbing in her left leg would allow. She could hear the Rasa racing after her. At least my hearing is coming back.
Even half-helping, half-carrying Pip, Gregg managed to use his gun to help Minu with a shoot-and-scoot fall back as they worked around the HERT toward the warehouses. The hard part would be getting from the back of the HERT to the first warehouse, more than a hundred meters of open space. Just like the first open stretch, the others went first while Minu walked backwards with a gun in each hand. Each step was doubly difficult as her left leg kept trying to fold under her. She’d just reloaded the guns with her last two magazines and was halfway across the open space when an entire squad of Rasa came tearing around the corner of the HERT. One dropped to all fours and sniffed the ground, picking up the scent of her bleeding leg. As the one on all fours looked up, she fired once, nearly blowing his head off.
Two more rounds boomed from her guns, and the Rasa skittered behind cover without further loses. She was nearly to the warehouse corner when her ravaged calf failed her, and she sprawled backwards in the grass. The fall saved her life, as a line of flechettes buzz-sawed through the space her head had occupied only an instant before. She did her best to roll and bring up a gun. One of the Rasa soldiers aimed at her, but a shot from a beamcaster tore a smoking hole through its head, and the alien dropped to the ground. Two of his fellow soldiers also succumbed to beamcaster fire. Minu crab-walked as fast as she could, struggling to reach cover as her friends kept the Rasa occupied. She was in the open just long enough to see dozens of alien soldiers pouring around the corner in an all-out charge.
“We’re in for it,” she said, struggling to her feet. The pain in her leg was intense, and it must have shown on her face
“Your leg!” Aaron yelled.
“Yeah, caught one of those damn darts.” She looked at the wound for the first time, which turned out to be a mistake, as she almost puked. About a quarter of her muscle was torn away, leaving skin and tissue hanging in bloody tatters. “Damn plastic darts do some wild things when they hit flesh at that velocity,” she said to take her mind off the grisly sight. Aaron knelt and quickly applied a field dressing. Despite the amount of damage, the blood flow wasn’t heavy. The flechette had missed the artery. Then she felt the deep sting of an injection, and her vision blurred slightly. He’d popped her with a buzz without asking. She didn’t complain as the pain instantly numbed, and her focus sharpened.
“Come on,” she said after patting him on the shoulder, “we need to get under cover.”
They ran down the line of warehouses until she found number eleven. Minu knew she couldn’t handle both guns anymore, so once they were inside and had pulled the doors closed, she handed one to Pip.
“What the hell am I going to do with this?” he asked. His face was white and sweat dripped from his chin. The pain from his ankle was intense and unrelenting.
“Defend yourself,” she said. She pulled the PUFF from her pack and handed it to him. He snatched it and carefully examined it to make sure it wasn’t damaged. “Satisfied?” He nodded. “How long will it run?”
“On this power cell? About a week.”
“Okay, that’s one less thing to worry about.” Minu took her own tablet and accessed her personal files, scanning back through mission logs looking for a particular entry. “Here it is,” she said. “Gregg, find bay 22B.”
“Do I look like I’m wearing green stars?”
“The rows are numbered, and the locations are lettered. Find row twenty-two, go down to space B. That clear enough?” He shot her a dirty look as he dropped the cases to the floor and ran off. Minu spotted a couple dozen crab-bots hanging from their ready racks next to the warehouse entrance. “Can we use those?” she asked Pip.
“My toy works on all bots, remember?”
“Is it still screwing up those back in the facility?”
“I’m sure it is; it has about a kilometer range.”
“So, the bots still work, but they can’t take remote orders?” He nodded. “If I type in an order, it’ll just sit there and wait until the central network can issue it?” Another nod. “Here’s what I want you to do.”
Minu left Pip with his task and checked that Aaron was ready to defend the entrance, then turned to look for Gregg. He yelled that he’d found what she wanted, and she ran to him as quickly as her leg would allow. There was no pain, which was worse in a way, and she tried not to think about the damage she might do to the already trashed muscle. “It’s more important to be able to fight,” she said to herself as she hobbled up to Gregg. The crate was just as she remembered it from two years earlier. She was a little surprised it was still here.
“What were you saying when you came up?” he asked.
“Just talking to myself,” she said and examined the crate. Like most secure cases, it had a computer locking mechanism, and she didn’t know the code. Not that it mattered; the lock was there so that someone couldn’t poke their nose in where it didn’t belong. Any person who’s determined enough can break into a shipping crate. She used the butt of her handgun and smashed the c
ontrol, then used her cybernetic hand to tear away the remnants of the panel. A fair amount of the synthetic skin on her palm had torn away or burned. She could deal with that later.
As Gregg watched her snap the moliplas panel like it was a toy, he whistled. “I might have to get one of those.”
“You wouldn’t like the price,” she said as she dug into the case’s controls. She found the relay she was looking for and crushed it between two mechanical fingers. There was a buzz, and the crate began to open like a flower. “Okay, go back and have Aaron bring me those crates, fast!”
“Go here, do that, carry this,” Gregg laughed and hurried off.
The crate finished unfolding, leaving the machine it contained exposed. Once they moved the machine, the crate would finish collapsing and be ready for its next use once the controls were fixed.
As she was opening the machine’s access panel and examining the displays, Pip hobbled up. “You’re walking?”
“Gregg popped me with some buzz,” he said, his eyes twinkling and slightly dilated. “Good stuff.”
“He’s turning into a drug pusher.”
“I did what you asked,” he told her and began examining the machine, “but if I turn them on…”
“I know,” Minu said as she found the master control. Once the machine activated, additional control panels opened, and the entire thing began vibrating so deeply she could feel it in the pit of her stomach.
“Is this what I think it is?” Pip asked in awe, his eyes darting over the machine and its displays.
“I hope so.”
“They’re coming,” Aaron yelled as he trotted up and unceremoniously dropped the two crates on the ceramic concrete floor with a crash. “What are you going to do with this thing?”
“Hopefully perform a miracle. Aaron?”
“Yeah, Boss?”
She took his chiseled face in her bloody hands and tilted it down so she could look him in the eye. “Hold them.”
“I don’t know if we can,” he admitted and glanced at the charge on the beamcaster slung under his arm. “Gregg said there are dozens swarming around the warehouses.”
Minu gently touched his cheek. He blinked in surprise and looked down at her, his brown eyes full of concern. “If they get back here before we’re done, we might lose the planet.”
“We’ll make them pay for every millimeter,” he assured her. Then, to both of their surprise, he leaned down and kissed her, gently, on the lips. “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do that.”
Yes I do, she thought. “Hold them for me?”
“Will do, Boss.”
* * * * *
Chapter 7
Julast 13th, 518 AE
Warehouse 11, Chosen Headquarters, Steven’s Pass
Gregg and Aaron set up the best defense they could in only a few minutes. Using handheld gravitic impellers, they moved several cargo modules to build firing positions facing the warehouse doors, then locked them. On impulse as they were finishing, Aaron grabbed a portable plasma welder and burned the door’s hinges and locking mechanism. “That should buy us a couple seconds,” he said as he tossed the welder aside and took his position.
“Let’s hope they pass on by,” Gregg said. Less than a minute later, the doors rattled as someone on the other side tried them. Gregg and Aaron raised their guns and waited. They saved the beamcasters for later. Whoever was outside banged on the doors, pushing and pulling for all they were worth. Aaron’s improvised sabotage held, and the doors remained latched. The metal wasn’t very thick, so they could hear the soldiers outside skittering around and hissing.
“So much for just passing by,” Aaron said. One of the Rasa opened fire on the locking mechanism with a flechette gun. The hypervelocity plastic darts tore at the metal, shredding it slowly like a thousand rats working away with their teeth. It was a terrible waste of ammo, and they both wished they had that luxury. The locking mechanism finally fell away, torn to pieces. The shooting stopped, and they saw clawed hands grip the door through the holes. More pushes and pulls on the door failed to open it, the damaged hinges hampering their efforts.
“Nice little puzzle,” Gregg laughed.
“Yeah, but it’ll confirm for them that this is the right place.” Through the hole left behind by the destroyed lock they could see troops massing outside. “Hold fire, let’s see if they figure it out.”
First, the Rasa tried to make an opening big enough to gain entrance. It took several minutes of sawing with two flechette guns to make a hole. Aaron looked at Gregg, and they both nodded in silent agreement. When the first Rasa clambered through the hole, Gregg shot him dead. The alien shrieked and fell over, partially blocking the entrance. The next trooper tried climbing over his dead comrade, and Aaron’s gun boomed. They’d effectively blocked the opening.
“Damn, this is fun!” Aaron laughed. A beamcaster shot lanced through the door and nearly took his head off, sparking brightly off the packing crate and raining molten globs of metal down on him. “That is not fun!”
The Rasa fired a volley of shots through the doors, indiscriminately punching holes through cargo containers and scorching the floors. Aaron and Gregg hugged their cover, hoping the containers they’d chosen were sufficiently dense to stop the energy weapons fire, and that they weren’t holding anything explosive. None of the beams reached them, but they were both pelted with molten metal and cut by flying concrete chips.
Aaron stole a look around the edge of the crate and could see several Rasa soldiers through the hole. Two of them were dead. He snapped his fingers to get Gregg’s attention, then used hand gestures to communicate silently. Gregg narrowed his eyes and nodded. As one, they raised their pistols and began firing. The massive twenty-millimeter slugs tore through flesh and bone, sending surprised soldiers crashing into each other and scrambling to return fire.
Finally, someone outside took control of the chaotic situation and used a beamcaster, its charge turned all the way down to conserve power, to obliterate the doors along either side. “Finally going after the hinges,” Aaron said.
“Officer must have shown up,” Gregg agreed. He checked his gun. He only had two shots left and was out of reloads. “Time to fall back.”
Aaron nodded; he had only one shot in his. They rose into squats and held their guns at high port. As soon as the first door fell from its frame, they fired their last rounds, carefully aiming and hitting all three targets. Before the Rasa could regroup, they ran for the back of the warehouse, dodging between crates for cover. Only a few odd flechette darts followed their path. The pair stopped as soon as they were out of sight. Since the big handguns were now useless, they hurriedly stashed them in an empty crate and unlimbered the beamcasters. “How much you got?” Gregg asked his friend.
“Charge says 40 percent. Say, five full power shots, or about twenty at minimum.”
“Same here, more or less.”
“I say we go for maximum damage. We need to give Minu as much time as possible.” Gregg nodded, and they dialed up their power settings. “We’re going to piss off some people, blowing up all this shit,” Aaron said, looking excited.
“If we don’t blow it up, we won’t be here to get in trouble.”
“I like the way you think!” There was some fire from the direction they’d come from, mostly random. “Probing fire,” Gregg said. Aaron nodded. “So, what’s with you and Minu?”
“Huh?”
“Everyone is trying to figure out why she’s curled up with that pretty boy from command, Christian and not with you.”
“None of your fucking business.”
“Give it a rest. You’ve had a thing for her since we were newbies.” Still more shots, none toward them. The Rasa were finally taking the humans seriously, advancing slowly with covering fire while burning a lot of ammo to keep the Chosen’s heads down. Aaron glared at him in the gloom of the warehouse’s interior, and Gregg continued. “Look, it’s really none of my business—”
“You
’re right, it’s none of your business.”
“—but I know you had that fling with Mandi to get under Minu’s skin.”
“A lot you know.”
“Do you know how badly you hurt her?” Aaron examined his gun. “I could tell, and so could a lot of others.”
“How could she notice? She was so busy screwing that asshole.”
“And you were busy fucking that bubble-headed techie bitch.” He watched Aaron’s reaction, the confusion on his face, then nodded thoughtfully. “Or were you?”
“We were together a of couple weeks.”
“You never did anything, did you?” Aaron looked down, his face red. “Oh my God, you didn’t!”
“Would you shut up?”
“So, if you’re still holding a candle for Minu, why haven’t you let her know or made a play? She’s as sweet on you as you are on her.”
“I tried, after that weekend you spent in Leavenworth. Mandi had already thrown me over her shoulder when she figured out she couldn’t get my pants down.”
“She was probably pissed off. You might be the only male within a hundred kilometers not to give her a go.”
Aaron snorted but smiled. “Wasn’t easy, trust me. Anyway, I went to talk to Minu, and that prick arrived and screwed everything up. Minu was really pissed off at me.”
“She’s a girl, what do you expect? They don’t know what they’re thinking half the time. Different species, if you ask me. You need to make a move! Tell her how you really feel!”
“Tell Minu? Are you crazy?” He thought about the kiss he’d given her a few minutes earlier, and how it’d made him feel wild and alive. Never once had he felt that way with Mandi, even when he was feeling her breasts and kissing her at the movies. All that feeling from a little kiss. “If any woman has ever had a chance of being First Among the Chosen, she’s it.”
