Sixteenth Watch

by Myke Cole

  “Nope!” Pervez pointed.

  Another rover, its flatbed crowded with troops, was careering toward them. “Contact starboard bow, two hundred…”

  But two hundred yards was already one hundred. Koenig turned and fired an airburst round that missed the rover by at least fifteen feet, detonating over an empty patch of ground fifty yards beyond. Fujimori managed to get a hornet round off that sparked against the rover’s railing but did nothing to deter its course. Okonkwo hauled on the cable and their rover lurched to the left, wheels losing contact with the ground briefly before slamming back down. The Chinese rover sped past, so close that Oliver could see the faces of the shouting enemy through their visors. Like Oliver and her people, they were clinging to their railing for dear life, and none raised their weapons to fire.

  Oliver looked up, now they were moving at an angle toward the crashed Navy boat, getting closer still, but not for long. “MK3, what can we do to get back on course?”

  “Get out and push the nose of this thing around,” Okonkwo said. “Unless you want me to cut a big circle right now.”

  Oliver looked at the Chinese troops moving around them, decided she didn’t want to risk heading back toward them.

  “That’s not gonna happen,” Chief agreed with her thought. “We’ll have to keep going until we’re as close as we can get, and then bail.”

  “Man, I don’t like our odds on foot,” Okonkwo said.

  “We’ll be OK,” Oliver said, “we just have to make sure we’re backstopped by other Chinese troops.” Christ, this is risky. She silently prayed for LSST or the US Marine reinforcements to break through. She could see hornet rounds zipping past behind them, guessed they came from American troops on the flanks unaware of their position.

  “We’re not going to get the chance!” Pervez pointed again.

  Oliver turned and cursed.

  One of the PLAN boats had broken away from the fighting, was barreling straight toward them. They weren’t willing to risk firing on the rover while they were backstopped by other Chinese troops, but they could ram them. “MK3!” Oliver radioed. “Now’s the time for your circle! Loop around that thing!”

  It would have to be timed perfectly, and while Okonkwo was a gifted engineer, he lacked the instinct for handling a moving vessel that Pervez had. Oliver could see him turn in his seat, trying to gauge distance and speed as the PLAN boat arrowed toward them. Jesus, Everistus, don’t wait too damn long. She could see the PLAN boat’s window growing in her vision, its autocannon bouncing in the empty ball turret. The coxswain and lookout beside the helm were holding onto the railings on the helm chair, steadying themselves for impact.

  “Here we go!” Okonkwo shouted, yanked the cable again. The rover jerked to the left as if it had been kicked, shuddered as it tipped up on its left tires, the right lifting so high that Oliver doubted even the weight of the crew would be able to right the thing again. The horizon tipped sideways. Regolith spraying up from the rover’s left side. They turned as if on a dime, the vehicle’s nose sweeping so close to the PLAN boat’s hull that Oliver doubted she could have slipped her hand down between them. One of the Chinese sailors threw open the port side hatch, clung to the railing, aiming a duster one-handed, desperately trying to get a shot off while the two vehicles were so close. But the looping dance was far too bumpy for the sailor to even attempt it, and boat and rover pirouetted like dancers, whipping around one another. My God, Oliver thought, he’s doing it. He’s really fucking doing it. I can’t bel–

  There was a jolt as if some giant hand swatted the rover’s rear end and suddenly everything was upside down. Oliver felt herself tumbling, the lunar sky and ground switching places, bodies flipping all around her, the rover tumbling, one of its tires burst where the PLAN boat’s collar had struck it. The lunar gravity made her tumble a slow, almost languid thing, her body expecting her to impact the ground long before she actually did. She found herself growing impatient by the time she struck the surface, a sliding impact that was so soft it was almost disappointing. She tried to scramble to her feet too quickly, before her momentum was truly spent, and sent herself into another tumbling roll. She caught herself on her shoulder, let the momentum carry her to her feet. Her hands fumbled for her duster, patted the broken clasps of its sling and realized the weapon was gone. She could see Pervez, getting to up twenty feet away. Her duster miraculously still hung by its sling from the crook of her elbow, currently tangled between her knees. There were figures moving further out, and Oliver couldn’t tell amidst the swirling dust kicked up by the tumbling rover whether they were friend or foe. Of the rover itself there was no sign, though Oliver could guess by the thickness of the billowing dust which way it had tumbled. She scanned wildly for the PLAN boat that had struck them, couldn’t find it.

  She raced to Pervez, grabbed her elbow. The coxswain spun, cocking a fist before realizing it was Oliver and bridging to her radio. “Jesus, skipper! I almost clocked you.”

  “Are you OK?”

  “I think so. I think I bit through my fucking tongue,” Pervez said wetly, “but you fall light out here.”

  “Yeah, we need to get moving yesterday. As soon as this dust clears, we’re going to get jumped by the entire goddamn PLAN.”

  “Which way?” Pervez asked.

  “Any way. Let’s get off the X,” Oliver turned and began bounding away from the dust cloud. If it were me, I’d start looking right around the crash site. She wanted to be as far from there as she could as quickly as she could. She scanned the horizon, made out the crashed boat and the sloping roof beneath it. As she watched, a hornet gun barrel emerged from the shattered front window and sent a round blazing down into a squad of PLAN Marines scattering at the building’s base.

  “There,” Oliver pointed, started bounding without checking to see if Pervez was following.

  “Why there?” Pervez asked. Oliver could tell from her breathing that she was moving behind her.

  “There’s at least one American in that boat. That’s more than I see anywhere else right now.”

  “That’s… that’s not a great plan, boss.”

  “Nope, and if you come up with a better one, sing out.”

  Pervez didn’t answer, and Oliver checked the radio display on her HUD looking for the signals of any of her crew. There was nothing.

  “I’ve got nobody on radio,” Oliver said.

  “Me neither, boss. Christ, I hope they’re OK.”

  “Probably just dust interference, or maybe they broke their antennae when they tumbled,” Oliver said with a conviction she didn’t feel. “They’re fine. I know they’re fine.” They have to be fine.

  “Christ, skipper. You don’t even have a weapon,” Pervez said. “You better let me go first.”

  “I am a United States Coast Guard,” Oliver said, forcing humor into her voice while she swallowed the thick panic roiling her stomach. “I am a living weapon. Just trying to keep things fair.”

  The hab had originally been surrounded by a series of Helium-3 storage tanks. They must have been ruptured when the boat crashed into the roof, and their detonated remains had churned the surrounding regolith into a series of low dunes. A squad of the PLAN Marines had taken cover behind one, were gesturing to one another as they planned to rush up the hab’s side to reach the boat on the roof. The hornet gun emerged from the front window again, but the PLAN troops had moved far enough around the side of the structure to be out of the gun’s range. A moment later, the autocannon on the boat’s ball turret swiveled and declined, but it also couldn’t get a line of fire on the PLAN position. It belted off a few rounds to chew up the regolith over the PLAN troops’ shoulders.

  “That’s a warning,” Oliver pointed. “The gunner’s letting them know what’ll happen if they try to come up the sides.”

  “OK, ma’am,” Pervez said. “Let’s go around, if we come up the other side we can… I got Chief!”

  “You do?” Oliver scanned her own radio. “I don’t have an
yone! Where is he?”

  “Less than a quarter-klick out. He’s got us and McGrath. They’re coming.”

  “Outstanding. Make sure you tell him…”

  “Already on it, ma’am,” Pervez said. “God that is such… Uh, ma’am?”

  She pointed at two of the PLAN Marines, bounding away from the rest of their squad, moving around toward the vessel’s bow – and toward Oliver and Pervez.

  “Shit,” Oliver grabbed Pervez’s elbow, and dragged the two of them into the wreckage of a Helium-3 furnace, pulling them down into the scraps of twisted 3D-printed regolith. “Ma’am,” Pervez whispered out of instinct, even though no one could hear them outside the radio channel, “what the hell are we doing?”

  “We are playing dead,” Oliver said, “and hoping they’re too busy with the boat to worry about us.”

  Pervez cursed, but held still, and Oliver waited as long as she could stand, her body crying out to get up and get moving, to do something, anything other than lying there waiting for the PLAN troops to find them and deliver the coup de grâce.

  The moments stretched out, and her only view was of the lunar sky above them. Dark shapes were gathering there now, long and narrow, studded with weaponry and clouded by swarms of launching small boats. “There’s got to be at least three frigates overhead BM1. This is heating up fast.” Why aren’t they firing? Is it a standoff?

  “That’s… not super encouraging, ma’am,” Pervez said.

  “Well, I guess those PLAN bubbas aren’t going to kill us. Can you see where they went?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m looking right at them. They’re setting up a crew-served gun behind one of those dunes. Hornet gun just took a shot, but they’re covered.”

  Oliver sat up, looked over at the squad of PLAN Marines at the base of the hab. They were pressed flat against the side of the structure, well below the incline of the boat’s ball turret. Their heads were turned to their right, watching the other two PLAN Marines setting up their tripod behind the shelter of their dune off the crashed boat’s bow.

  “That’s not good,” Oliver said.

  “No, ma’am,” Pervez said. “That boat’s toast.”

  “How far out are Chief and McGrath?”

  Pervez paused as she checked her suit’s HUD. “Too far, ma’am. We need to make a decision.”

  Oliver watched as one of the PLAN Marines steadied the tripod, opening the locking clamps. The other settled a long, heavy-looking weapon over it, its barrel flaring at the far end.

  An anti-materiel gun. The same weapon that had started Oliver down this road what seemed a lifetime ago. And as at Lacus Doloris, it was swiveling to target a Navy small boat, helpless to respond.

  Oliver’s heart raced, her mouth went dry. Not again. I can’t let this happen again.

  She was up before she knew it, bounding toward them, launching herself through the wisp thin lunar exosphere that suddenly felt thick as molasses. “Boss!” Pervez shouted after her, “what the hell are you doing?”

  Oliver didn’t answer. The world had shrunk to the PLAN gun crew, pausing in their assembly of the weapon, staring in frank shock at the American in the day-glo orange, bounding toward them, unarmed. “Ma’am! I am not getting myself killed!”

  That’s OK, Oliver thought. You don’t have to. Pervez was yelling something more into her radio, a chattering that receded into a buzz, buried beneath the roaring blood in her ears, the hammering of her heart. The flared muzzle of the anti-materiel gun was pointed up at the hab’s roof, blocked by the lip of the regolith dune. It would take the PLAN crew just a couple of nudges to point it out over the top and fire. Tom’s boat, the same boat, danced in her vision, shredded over and over again before her eyes. No. Not this time. Not if I can stop it.

  Time slowed in the tunnel that connected her to the gun crew, the edges gone to a gray blur of the passing regolith, hab-debris, distant boats. She watched as if from outside her body as the crew swung the gun toward her, the flared barrel blooming in her vision like some metal flower. She remembered the last time she’d looked down the barrel of an anti-materiel gun, the spinning world-erasure, the awakening in the wreckage of her longhorn, Flecha and Kariawasm dead in their seats beside her, watching helplessly as Tom’s boat danced itself to pieces. Not this time, her mind repeated over and over and over again, not this time not this time not this time.

  But it would be this time. Even as the distance closed, Oliver knew there was no way she was fast enough. There was no burst of speed she could put on, hindered by the hardshell’s cumbersome articulation. The timing was off, she had given them more than enough to sight the huge weapon in and fire. She had seen what an anti-materiel gun had done to a small boat. It would turn her, hardshell and all, into red mist. And yet she couldn’t turn aside. She barely even saw the crew now, the flared gun barrel fixed in her vision – the sight of it alone a time machine, the scene around it Lacus Doloris and the chaos that Oliver only now realized had effectively ended her life. The woman charging them now was someone else, someone who had risen from the ashes of that conflagration. Someone who didn’t care if she lived or died.

  And just as when she had tumbled from the overturned rover, she found herself waiting for the impact, for the muzzle flash, for the jerk of the stock, for the split second that would presage her end. But it didn’t come. The barrel only grew and grew, and at last her focus shifted and she saw the crew again, the two PLAN Marines frozen behind their weapon, staring at her in amazement, their faces close enough to be visible through their biosuit visors.

  Why aren’t they firing? She saw one of them gesture to the other and realized with a start, the other PLAN Marines. They’re my backstop. They don’t want to hit their own people.

  But neither were they going to sit idle and let this unarmed old woman tackle them. One of them lifted the weapon, tripod and all, began to crabstep up the dune, changing the angle of fire to put empty space behind his target. The second drew a hornet pistol from his thigh rig and sighted in. Oliver had closed the gap considerably, but not nearly enough. She might be spared the obliteration of the impact of the anti-materiel gun, but the hornet round would certainly do the trick.

  Oliver pushed down with her heels and launched herself forward. The last feet between them shrank, the hornet pistol barrel rising to track her progress.

  Then two things happened.

  The PLAN Marine dropped his hornet pistol, his head exploding sideways, the hornet round fired from the small boat’s front window driving through the dune’s peak and punching straight through his ear. The second PLAN Marine had finally found his position and raised the giant anti-materiel gun to his hip. He’d be firing without aiming, but Oliver was so close that it wouldn’t matter. In the next instant, he was tumbling across the regolith in a cloud of his own blood and metal dust, the anti-materiel gun dropping back down onto its tripod as gently as if it had been set there.

  Oliver landed on her hands and knees, skidding forward in the regolith, blinking in astonishment. Somehow, both PLAN Marines were dead. Somehow, she was alive. Jesus Christ.

  “Boss!” Pervez shouted as she leapt over Oliver, landing behind the anti-materiel gun, dropping the duster she’d just used to kill the PLAN Marine, and propping herself up behind the anti-materiel gun’s sights. “Not a good time to take a break! Clear the lane!”

  Oliver realized she was still in front of the weapon that Pervez was now trying to aim. Aim at what… and then she remembered the squad of PLAN Marines behind her. She threw herself to the side, just in time to catch the first flash of the anti-materiel gun, its contrail raking up regolith as it exited the barrel, shrouding her in a wreath of dust. Through it, she could glimpse the PLAN Marines diving to the side as the kinetic round splintered their debris pile into exploding fragments. She saw one of them shredded, limbs flying in separate directions, another launched into the lunar sky so far that Oliver doubted he would survive the fall even in the weak gravity.

  One of them tu
rned, raised his hornet gun, but then Pervez had put another round downrange, blowing up the ground a foot to his left. It was nowhere near his body, but the explosion of regolith and hab debris was enough to send him rolling, the hornet gun tumbling from his hands.

  And then the PLAN troops were clear of their dune, and the ball turret on the small boat opened up, the rounds chewing the regolith around the marines up into a funnel of plastic, metal and fist-sized chunks of lunar soil. There was no way anyone could have survived it.

  Pervez left nothing to chance. As soon as she saw that the marines had dispersed, she rotated the anti-materiel gun, sighting back down into the battlefield. Oliver waited for a moment, expecting her to open fire again, but she only lifted her head. “Boss.”

  Oliver turned.

  Overhead, three Perry Class frigates were station keeping at broadsides, their batteries trained across the space at a matching number of Type-054Bs. Beneath them, she could see the PLAN boats withdrawing, burning short bursts from their bow thrusters to move them under the cover of their own capital ships’ guns. The Navy small boats on their flanks were fanning out to form a skirmish line, guns trained across the battlefield, but silent for now.

  “I think…” Pervez breathed, “…I think it’s over.”

  “Jesus,” Oliver straightened, stared at the sheer enormity of the firepower all around her. “This whole thing could go pear-shaped if somebody sneezes.”

  Pervez stood, lifting the anti-materiel gun by its carry handle. “Guess we better not sneeze.”

  “Where’s Chief? I still can’t see him on my radio nodes display.”

  “Maybe five minutes out, ma’am. Jesus Christ, what the hell were you thinking? You have some kind of death wish?”