1st to Fight (Earth at War)

by Rick Partlow

  I hadn’t seen the effects of the KE gun against live targets, though the ballistic gelatin tests had given us some indication how devastating it would be. Someone had proposed live pigs, or possibly goats, but the DoD had vetoed it, not wanting to arouse any animal rights protests, so these Spetsnaz troops got the honors. The rounds tore through their body armor as if it wasn’t there, putting neat little holes through it and passing right on to hit the troops behind them before they spent themselves. I couldn’t see what they did to the insides of the men they passed through, but I imagined what the temporary wound cavity would be from something traveling that fast and the effects would be if it hit a bone on the way through and I wasn’t surprised at the bodies spinning away and tumbling to the ground.

  A red flashing in my HUD warned me the drum was empty, but not enough of them were down. They’d been too close and there were too many, a good twenty men, and my spray-and-pray burst had taken out only half of them. I would have thought the others would be running like hell, but maybe I shouldn’t have assumed that. They were on US soil with no other sure way out than our shuttle and I was just one guy standing in their way. They swarmed me like mosquitoes at a bayou picnic, trying to take advantage of the lull in the shooting.

  I wasn’t a hundred percent sure there were absolutely no weak spots in my armor where one of them might stick the barrel of a rifle and get lucky, and I knew the visor of my helmet could take maybe one or two hits before it shattered. Lacking a bayonet, I waded into the Russians swinging my M900 like a baseball bat. It was a damned heavy weapon and when it struck, it broke bones. Spetsnaz soldiers were thrown to one side or the other, clutching at shattered arms or legs, or, in one case, limp as a dishrag with his head lolling on a broken neck.

  That was enough for them. There were three of them still standing and they finally decided they weren’t going to take me down by themselves. They ducked around the end of one of the Brads and headed up the hill. Two of the Brads were trying to join them. I stopped moving long enough to finally swap out my empty drum for my last full one and nearly didn’t start again. Pain washed over me like the evening tide coming in, and I would have dropped the reload if not for the suit. I gasped and wanted to just stop right there and curl up in a ball.

  Hadn’t I done enough? How many people had I already killed tonight? Couldn’t the Rangers hold them off?

  Not while they’re trying to hold off the glider troops, moron.

  Damn my conscience. I didn’t want to hear it right now. I shoved the full drum home and put one foot in front of the other, wanting to scream with each step. Two Brads left mobile. Had to take them out. Couldn’t think about the pain, the exhaustion, the emotional shock. If I just took those two out, I could rest. Rest would be nice. Maybe a long stay in a hospital might be fun. Traction. Could use some traction.

  Right now, had to shoot some fuckers. The Brads were revving their engines, trying to make it up this hill. I had to take out those engines. The engines were bad for the environment or something. But I was facing their metal asses and the engines were in front. I could have tried to run up in front of them, but it seemed like a lot of effort. Instead, I set the M900 for single shot, brought it to my shoulder and set the reticle on the hot blob of white that was a diesel engine represented in my HUD by thermal imaging.

  I fired three times, I think. It might have been more. The rounds punched through the rear armor at 10,000 feet per second and right on into the engine, probably going through the driver on the way. Whether it hit him or not, smoke began pouring from under the engine hatch at the front of the Bradley and the APC ground to a halt. It actually began rolling back down the hill and I shuffled to the side so as not to get run down by it.

  That would have been an embarrassing way to die, getting backed over by an armored vehicle like some stray dog in a downtown driveway. Allie would have loved that. I giggled, realizing somewhere deep inside my addled brain that I was slipping into shock.

  No time for shock, no time for concussions, no time for contusions and abrasions and maybe a cracked hipbone. Just one Bradley to take out now.

  I was distracted when something flashed by overhead, a hang glider, then another, then a third tumbled out of the sky, ripped apart by a burst of KE darts, and I might have heard a scream as the airborne trooper fell with it. I sniffed with disdain. Seemed a waste of expensive depleted uranium. This all seemed like a waste.

  I was forgetting something. Oh, right, the Bradley.

  Just get it done, Allie said to me in that nasal tone she used when she was pissed at me. You keep putting it off and it just gets harder the longer you wait.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I mumbled aloud.

  Something was nagging at me, though. If they couldn’t take over the shuttle, how had they intended on destroying it? It was huge and well-armored and they couldn’t be sure a TOW missile or two would do the job. If it was me, I would have rigged up one of these Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles like a big-ass IED, an Improvised Explosive Device, maybe with artillery shells or C4 if they had it, just packed inside the troop compartment ceiling to floor.

  Too bad for them they hadn’t thought of that.

  I shook my head. I kept letting my thoughts drift. Somewhere behind me, Jambo and the others were still fighting the other Brads, while up ahead, Quinn and his team of Rangers was shooting down glider troops and I was standing here woolgathering. While I’d been lost in a haze, the APC had rolled up another hundred and fifty yards. I swore, bringing the KE rifle to my shoulder, intent on using the same kill shot as I had with the other vehicle, right through the troop compartment and into the engine.

  I pressed the trigger pad three times as fast as I could and then, as near as I could tell, the old Bradley exploded like an atomic bomb.

  ***

  The world swam in front of my face and I didn’t want to breathe because it would hurt too much. I sure as hell didn’t want to move, but I tried anyway and the suit obeyed, trying to get me upright, but something hard and unyielding and heavy was on top of me and I couldn’t quite move it. What the hell was it? Why couldn’t I see anything?

  Shit. I couldn’t see anything because my HUD wasn’t working and my visor was spider-webbed with cracks. I managed to get my left hand around whatever was pinning me down and yanked up my visor.

  “Oh,” I said aloud, “that’s what it is.”

  The rear hatch of the Bradley was sitting on top of my chest. Most of the engine block and the forward driver’s compartment was fiercely burning, the only light shining in the darkness now that my night vision gear was gone. The rest of the Bradley, as near as I could tell, was somewhere in orbit. I guess the Russians were just as smart as I thought I was, which was depressing. And painful.

  “Jesus Christ, Andy, how the hell do you get yourself in situations like this?”

  The weight of the hatch lifted off of me, but it still blocked my view until the massive piece of metal spun away and crashed down the hill. A suit of Svalinn armor stood above me, its visor dark and reflecting the flickering light of the burning pieces of Bradley fighting vehicle. An armored gauntlet pulled the visor up and Jambo stared down at me in bemusement.

  “Oh, you know,” I said, trying my best to answer his question. “my ex-wife would say it’s because I hang out with the wrong crowd. People like you are a bad influence.” I squeezed my eyes shut against a flare of pain in my hip. “You got any morphine, dude? I could really use some morphine. And a fuckin’ hospital.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what,” he said, grabbing my hand and dragging me to my feet. “You got two choices.”

  While he spoke, I was staring up the hill to where the shuttle waited…with its belly ramp open, light streaming out from it.

  “You can stay here and let the local hospital check you out, but the shuttle is leaving now. The word came down once I called in the report about the attack. Everyone is boarding immediately and we’re taking off. So, you’ll be stuck here for the duration.”
He grinned, still holding my hand in his tight grip. “Or.” He nodded toward the shuttle. “You can suck it up for a little while longer, get your ass on that bird and go on the biggest adventure humanity has ever experienced.”

  I looked from him to the shuttle, then back to him.

  “Well, when you put it like that…,” I said, then gripped his hand tighter and nodded. “I hope you guys have a good time and I’ll see you when you get back.”

  Jambo rolled his eyes.

  “Stop fucking around and get on the plane, Clanton.”

  “You know, you really should start calling me Major Clanton.”

  I hobbled along beside him, passing the lifeless bodies of the rest of the Russian assault team, stepping over the fluttering remains of shattered and shredded hang-gliders.

  “I’m gonna start calling you a major pain in the ass.”

  The ramp to the cargo bay of the shuttle was a gate to another world, one so much more advanced than this one, one I’d only dreamed of and written about in fairy tales. Quinn and his Ranger fire team were already strapped into racks especially built for the Svalinn armor, not much seats as metal gurneys designed to secure the armor for transport, and us with it. The Delta team joined them and I saw that all of them had made it, though Pops had a huge crater at the center of his chest plate, probably from a 25mm round. Relief took some of the weight off my chest, but I thought about the MPs at the front gate and how I was going to feel if any of them had been killed…

  “This is my fault,” I said quietly as Jambo helped me get strapped in. “I should stay behind and tell the base commander.”

  “Be a boy scout later, Andy,” he said, tightening the strap across my chest for emphasis. “Right now, I just want to get into space, where it’s safe.”

  A crew chief for the shuttle was circulating through the cargo bay, checking the straps on the supplies, and once he saw Jambo trying to belt himself in, the man hurried over and helped him. He looked sort of like a crew chief on a helicopter except that his helmet was fitted with a visor and sealed into a pressure suit. Once he’d seen to Jambo, he briefly checked on each of us, cinching my chest strap even tighter before jogging back toward the front.

  He’d barely disappeared into the cockpit when the turbines began spinning up, going from a high-pitched whine to a roar vibrating through the fuselage. I hadn’t even noticed the belly ramp closing until it shut completely with one last grinding thump, a sound reminiscent of a coffin lid closing.

  The gentle vibration of the turbines climbed in pitch and ferocity until the deck shifted beneath us and the force of the belly jets pushed me down into my suit and the rack beneath it. This might have been, I decided with the sort of clinical detachment I adapted when I was scared shitless, the largest VTOL aircraft every built by humans. Partly built by humans. The Helta had provided the engine, the reactor, the weapons and the material for the airframe.

  But we helped! Said the eight-year-olds handing tools to their father as he repaired the car.

  The shuttle’s vectored thrust nozzles began to angle backwards and the acceleration shifted from upward to forward. For the second time in my life, I left the planet. But this time, I was going a lot farther than the Moon.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Well, you were right,” Jack Patel said, his grin as cheerful as if he was about to tell me I’d won the lottery. “You do have a cracked hipbone and a mild concussion.”

  Jack, I’d discovered, wasn’t his real first name. He had a long, extremely Indian first name that his western friends found hard to pronounce, so at some point in elementary school, he’d become “Jack.” Which sounded exactly as easygoing and chill as the Patel I knew. He seemed like he was in absolute heaven in the sickbay of the Truthseeker. Well, I called it a sickbay, anyway. I think the official nomenclature was the medical lab and, in truth, it did seem fancy enough for the name.

  I was lying on a white table that looked exactly like cheap plastic but felt as comfortable as the bed in the Hilton in DC. It had no obvious sensors on the surface, yet the holographic display floating in the air above it showed my entire body stripped of flesh, the internal organs in living color, the heart and lungs pulsing with life, the bones a harsh white. A red halo surrounded my left hip, though I couldn’t quite make out the crack.

  “This shit is amazing, Doc,” I told him, shaking my head. I hadn’t even had to take off my utility fatigues.

  “Isn’t it?” he enthused. “I swear, Andy, I’ve come up with two dozen new medical treatments just from having access to this place. It’s the most incredible opportunity of my career. If I have enough time, I think I can put together a nanite injection that can remove cancers from anyone, no matter what stage of the disease they’re in.”

  “You do that,” I told him, “and it won’t matter what the Russians or the Germans or the protestors say, we’re golden.” I waved at the 3D image of my body and the arm in the display waved back. “But what are you going to be able to do for me with all this fancy gear?”

  “For the concussion?” He shrugged. “Nothing, really. I mean, if it were more serious, a major brain bleed, I could stop it easily enough. Wouldn’t even have to open you up, just a nanotube running in through your eye socket to the bleed.”

  My lips peeled back from my teeth in a scowl of pure horror and he laughed at the expression.

  “You’d be sedated at the time. But it’s not really necessary. If there were serious brain damage, or repeated trauma to the brain requiring treatment, I think I know how to program this thing to encourage the repair of brain tissue, but I haven’t tested it and I am sure you’d rather I didn’t use your brain for the first experiments.”

  “You know me so well,” I said, swallowing hard at the thought. “What about my hip though?”

  “Ah. Well, I can take care of that right now, but you’re going to have to take your pants off.”

  I glanced around the sickbay. We weren’t in a private compartment or anything. The Helta didn’t go much for that, I’d seen on the way in from the docking bay. Some parts of the ship had been temporarily modified to suit the humans who’d be making at least this one trip with her, but all the public sections of the ship were wide open spaces without so much as a divider. I’d heard from Julie that even the barracks and bathrooms were communal, though I had yet to see that for myself.

  Helta techs were at various stations around the lab, absorbed in tasks I couldn’t interpret on machinery I couldn’t understand, while Ranger medics and human medical staff watched them and made notes on tablets. None of them seemed to be paying attention to me, so I sighed and took off my pants.

  It didn’t hurt, exactly. Patel had given me an injection just above my beltline right after I’d arrived, deposited by Jambo before he went back to see to his team’s lodging for the voyage, and the pain had lost its intensity, fading into the other bruises and cuts I’d accumulated. You’d think I would have gotten used to being naked in front of doctors after the time I’d spent in the Corps, but I still felt self-conscious at his clinical gaze.

  Patel whistled softly to himself, touching a series of haptic controls in the holographic display. In response, a section of the bulkhead slid aside and a segmented polymer arm snaked out into his hand as if it knew he’d been looking for it.

  “Lay back,” he told me with a shooing motion. “Relax. Close your eyes if you like.”

  “That sounds ominous,” I said, but complied.

  “There may be a little pressure.”

  Oh, shit. Whenever a doctor said that, it meant you were going to hurt like hell. Something cold and metallic pressed against my hip and I gritted my teeth, prepared for the pain. It wasn’t as bad as I thought. Patel was jamming the end of the segmented arm hard into my skin, and my hip felt as if it was heating up under the thing, but the discomfort was dull and distant. The heat got worse and I almost cringed in anticipation, but it never crossed the threshold from uncomfortable to agonizing and I tried to control
my breathing and relax.

  “How long is this gonna take?” I asked, eyes still closed.

  “Just another moment,” Patel said, his tone distracted. “And…there we go.”

  The pressure fell away and I opened my eyes. There was a pinprick-sized hole in the skin over my hip, blackened and just barely visible, but no other external effects. In the hologram, though, the halo had turned from red to blue, which I thought must be better. These were aliens, though. Maybe red meant not that bad and blue meant “sorry, buddy, you’re going to die now.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Patel said, nodding as he stepped closer to the projection, peering at my hipbone. “Beautiful. It’s like it’s been in a cast for weeks. Not quite fully healed, but certainly stable enough to use.”

  “You mean it’s fixed already?” I asked, amazed. I’d had broken bones before and none of them had a recovery period that was what I would call fast or fun.

  “Fused with a medical laser,” he confirmed, sounding very satisfied with himself. “I’d send you a bill, but you won’t make that much money in your whole life.”

  “Way to hurt a guy,” I said, pulling my underwear and trousers back on, then slipping into my boots. “Is there anything I need to do? Antibiotics? Painkillers?”

  “Infection won’t be a problem. That shot I gave you when you came in was a combination local anesthetic, antibiotic and Tetanus booster. As for painkillers?” He sniffed with disdain. “Maybe it you’re a wimp. It’s not going to hurt any worse than it does now.” He waved at me with both hands. “Go. Find your compartment and get settled in. Get a shower. You stink.”

  “Thanks, Doc,” I said, laughing. “You’ve got a hell of a bedside manner.”