by Rick Partlow
Adrenaline. Not my own, it had been loaned to me by the suit’s medical systems. Loaned because you always had to pay something like that back, eventually, in a few hours when I collapsed from exhaustion. If I made it those few hours, I’d gladly accept the price.
Stars cleared, replaced by flashes of yellow and red from my suit’s displays telling me exactly how bad a shape I was in and what parts would work if I managed to get out of all this rubble and up on my feet. It seemed that the roof had caved in once all those beautiful redwood logs stopped supporting it, and now half of it was on top of me.
Okay, not quite half, just a pile a meter deep with me at the bottom.
“Report!” I tried to shout the word but it came out a croak and I grabbed at the water nipple beside my face and took a long draw off the bladder. It was blissfully cool. “Report! Third Platoon, report, damn it!”
Nothing. It could be my comm antennae had been damaged or it could be they were just too busy. Or dead. I thrashed with my arms and almost screamed at the pain in my shoulders and back but kept it up. It wasn’t my own muscles lifting the weight, I just had to pretend to move to get the sensors to read how serious I was about getting the hell out from under this rubble. So, if I had broken ribs or torn ligaments and couldn’t lift a quarter-liter beer can to my lips, it wouldn’t matter so long as the damn suit sensors figured out that I wanted to.
Rubble shifted and fell away and flickering firelight showed past the blackness of the pile of debris in my helmet screen. It wasn’t a visor, it was the end result of a software simulation based on tiny external cameras, thermal filters, sonic and lidar sensors and whatever else they’d crammed into the armor that I’d forgotten, but when you piled rock and wood and brick on top of it, it wasn’t going to see a damned thing. I had to get out.
I bent my legs and pushed with my feet, rolled onto one side and heard a shriek of stone scraping against stone, the clatter of wooden beams meters long. How much could this suit lift? Had they ever experimented with it, buried the stuff under cement blocks and then tried to have it dig itself out? That hadn’t been in the training. Maybe they thought no one would ever be stupid enough to get a building dropped on their heads.
Well, that was their mistake. Nothing is ever fool-proof because fools are so damned ingenious.
I felt as if I should be grunting with the effort, but the servomotors were doing all the work. The Vigilante burst free of the burial cairn the Tahni had laid atop it and suddenly, I could see again. The hotel had been run down, neglected. It would have needed renovating after the war. The Tahni had saved them the trouble. Half of the building had collapsed outward, and that twist of fate was the only thing that had saved us all from dying under hundreds of tons of rubble, enough to crush even the hard shell of a battlesuit.
The other half had collapsed backward toward the freight entrance, undermined by the missile strikes and maybe more Tahni demo charges, which left tiny islands of stability inside all the destruction like little jokes God was playing on us. A spiral staircase went up to nowhere, the floors it had serviced vanished in billowing clouds of smoke and dust, and the only reason I could see through the blackness was through the helmet optics turning ink black to a milky twilight. A data terminal with shelves filled with complementary tablets for use by the hotel guests still stood, its battery blinking two-year-old tourist information, the display glowing neon in the haze.
I didn’t care about the fate of the furniture, but the motion of hulking, oversized battlesuits picking their way out of the rubble unclenched a fist that had been squeezing my chest so tight I couldn’t breathe. Some of them were alive. I couldn’t even tell who. Either their IFF transponders were fragged or my receiver wasn’t working…and neither was my suit’s communications link. I switched to my external PA speakers and shouted into the pickup.
“First squad!” My amplified voice sent quivers of sonic vibration through the clouds of dust. “Sound off! Respond via public address speakers!”
Nothing for a moment. Maybe they couldn’t hear me. Maybe they were still stunned. Or maybe they were just trying to figure out who was supposed to talk first, which was the most likely scenario.
“Carson!” Her voice was choked, rasping, her throat sounding dry from fear. “Squad leader!” My sonic sensors picked her out of the cluster of Vigilantes, homing in on a battered suit covered in dust and marred by gouges, burns and scraped metal.
“Gingold. Alpha team leader.” The young corporal’s words almost tripped over Carson’s and I knew I’d been right; they’d been waiting on her to get her shit together.
“Delp. Alpha team.” He didn’t sound too rattled, which either meant he was a steely-eyed point man who knew no fear, or he was a teenager too young and stupid and inexperienced to know he should be afraid, that death was hanging over his shoulder, just waiting.
“Fujiyama. Alpha team.”
“Rogan. Alpha team.”
“Bradford. Bravo team leader.”
Closer to me now, near the center of the lobby. Bravo team had been in the trailing group on the way down from the top floors.
“Benitez. Bravo team.”
“Mariota. Bravo team.”
“Woodside. Bravo team.”
“Haskell is down.” That was Bradford, the Bravo team leader, the voice coming from the far left, towards where the collapse had begun. “She’s not moving.” He was standing unsteadily on a displaced slab of concrete beside a three-meter-tall pile of debris, and beneath it I could just make out the leg of a Vigilante.
“Shit.”
I’d shut off the PA mic, not wanting them to hear my frustration. She might be alive under that mess, but her suit wouldn’t be getting out without heavy equipment, and it sure as hell wouldn’t be fighting. Worse, we couldn’t leave it behind, not with the possibility she was still breathing inside. I switched the mic back on.
“Carson, take Woodside and Rogan and wait here with Haskell. The rest of you, get behind me and form up. We won’t be able to communicate so just follow my lead and shoot the bad guys. And don’t shoot me.”
What would Scotty be doing? He had to have seen the collapse and was too smart to just charge into that. He would have tried to call us, and when he couldn’t get through, he would have called Fourth squad and told them to hold in place, assuming they hadn’t been caught in the collapse of the building.
We were alone in here for the moment. Except for the Tahni. They were in here somewhere. Downstairs. The basement. It had to be. It was the only place safe from the explosion and the collapse, or as safe as possible inside the building…
“Oh, damn.”
I hit the jump-jets and soared upward, out over the truncated walls, hoping the others would follow me. The Tahni weren’t inside the hotel at all. We hadn’t detected them coming down, but they’d had plenty of time to dig spider holes and disguise their thermal signatures. They’d suckered us. Our comms weren’t out from the explosion, they were out because laser line-of-sight was fucked by the haze and smoke and the Tahni were jamming microwave.
They’d suckered me.
Twenty meters up, clearing the top of the hotel, it was all stretched out before me. Fourth squad had pulled back from the rear entrance when the charges had blown, nearly to the edge of the woods, and out of those woods was coming a light-show of thermal energy, a platoon of High Guard battlesuits jetting from their hidey holes, probably dug into the side of the hill. Fourth squad wouldn’t see them in time, and wouldn’t be able to warn each other if they did.
I fired off every missile in my battery, all four exiting the launch tube with a dull thump of cold-gas pushing them clear before their solid-rocket boosters ignited. There’d been no time to pick out multiple targets, so I’d sent all four into the lead suit. I would have followed them in, but my jets had reached the limit of their power and were starting to overheat and I had to come down.
The Tahni troopers were less than half a klick out and the missiles took barely tw
o seconds to reach the first of them. The thermal glow of his reactor and jets turned into a supernova of flaring white as the missiles struck one after another, ripping him to burning shreds in a very satisfying paroxysm of overkill. Besides venting my frustration, it also had the effect of disrupting their advance, sending the tight formation scattering. More of the weapons were streaking in from behind me and I whispered a prayer of thanks that at least some of them had been listening.
Fourth squad was turning now, a ragged line of troops arrayed ahead of me, barely noticing my Vigilante touching down behind them. The Tahni were too close for missiles, at least for Fourth’s missiles, and they cut loose with an unorganized and nearly un-aimed barrage of plasma blasts, half of them just splattering harmlessly into the dirt. I hit the jets again, hopping over their position, no way to talk to them and not enough time even if I could have.
The Tahni were down now, jets cooling, the platoon splitting in two, half of them loping around the northern edge of the wrecked hotel, trying to get to the two squads up front. The other half were circling back around, trying to force Fourth squad toward the thick forest where they wouldn’t be able to maneuver.
I came down in the middle of the group circling back south, blasting one of them with my plasma gun before I’d even touched dirt. Metal flared, sublimating into burning gas, and the High Guard battlesuit stumbled forward, its balance gone, and plowed face-first into the dirt. The gun took seconds to recycle, far too long when I was this close, but I’d bought myself spare time by coming down in a spot where the Tahni fields of fire would intersect their own troops. Not much time, because soldiers are more willing to risk friendly fire in combat than most people would expect when it’s their neck on the line, but a beat, a breath.
I swung my left fist in a backhand blow across the shoulder of the nearest of them as he tried to rush past me, the impact vibrating through the armor of the Vigilante like the head of a drum. It was slightly more dramatic for him. The blow took the power feed for his electron beamer right at one of the junctions and it blew with a shower of sparks, pulling his teeth. He tried to turn, his foot pads digging into the rich, black dirt and sending it showering as he grabbed at balance, but I was already moving. I stamped down on his left knee joint and the suit’s leg bent the wrong way, which wouldn’t kill him and might not even have injured him, depending on how tall he was and how far his biological legs extended down into the metal version, but it put him out of the fight and that was enough for now.
A green light flickered at the edge of my vision, letting me know the plasma gun’s capacitors were charged and I fired again without realizing I’d picked out a target. Another High Guard suit went down in the false dawn of an artificial sun, but I’d lost the time I’d gained and they knew I was here. The lightning bolt of an electron beam sought me out and I backpedaled four meters in two steps and hit the jets again. The beam tracked upward and he would have hit me if a pair of incandescent plasmoids hadn’t converged on the chest plastron of his suit.
I didn’t know who I had to thank for saving my life, but that was three down that I’d seen, and another two dropped at the periphery of my vision. The pincer attack had failed and Fourth squad could handle what was left. I had to get back to the front of the hotel, where the rest of the Tahni platoon would be coming at Scotty.
My suit warned me the turbines were close to overheating but I stomped on the jets anyway, needing to get ahead of them, needing this all not to have been my fault. Fire and smoke and wreckage passed beneath me, accompanied by a soundtrack of warning buzzers letting me know just how banged up my suit was and how close it was to heating up, shutting down, exploding, or all other sorts of nasty possibilities. I ignored it, just needing to get through the next couple of minutes.
Just a couple minutes, I prayed, though whether to God or the suit, I wasn’t sure. Whichever was listening.
And as it turned out, Scotty was the one who’d been listening. I had a ringside seat, cruising in about twenty meters up, watching the two squads of Tahni High Guard troopers stomp their way right into the path of flight after flight of missiles. T82s, they were called, standard for the battlesuit and I’d never thought about them except for the occasional regret that they needed too great a distance to arm. But they were versatile and simple and hellaciously destructive when they hit.
I couldn’t count them all and I doubt the Tahni could either, but by the time the last of them had detonated, the High Guard assault was shattered and burning, and the few who’d survived long enough to try to make it out of the kill zone went down to a well-timed fusillade of plasma.
“Scotty!” I yelled into the audio pickup, hoping the smoke had thinned out enough for laser line-of-sight to work. “Get a squad to the rear! Fourth is still mopping up!”
“Holy shit, boss, you’re alive!” Scotty blurted before he acknowledged my order. “Right, on it, sir. Second, get back there and support Fourth!”
Eight Vigilante suits rocketed into the air, heading back the way I’d come. I stumbled to a halt and my suit’s left hip servo gave out, taking me down to one knee.
“Shit.” Red flashed in my Heads-Up Display, telling me the obvious. I pushed the suit up with its left hand and locked the hip, letting me at least stay on my feet. “We have one down inside. Haskell got buried when the demo charges blew; not sure if she’s alive. Any casualties out here?”
“Meehan took some damage when the building collapsed outward, but he’s fine. Suit is immobile until we get it to a repair rack, though.” On the comm display, I saw him switch to the general net. “Kreis, set up a perimeter with Third squad and keep a thermal scan going, try to find those civilians, if they even exist.”
“I think I know where they are,” I told him. “Follow me.”
It would probably have been easier for him to lead me as slow as I was moving, but it was the principle of the thing. I used the jump-jets as a crutch, spurring the suit along with a half-second burst every other step, sending clouds of dust and smoke rising behind us. The hotel was more of a piece of the landscape now than it had been before. If blending in with nature had been the aim of the design, well, mission accomplished now. It was part of the hill, like a landslide at its base, and all that was left a man-made cave.
“Carson!” I said over the external speakers as we rounded the front of the building. “It’s Alvarez! We’re coming in!”
“Sir!” Carson said, sifting through the debris-strewn floor toward us, her voice static-filled on her speakers. “Haskell is alive! She moved!”
“Stay with her,” I ordered. “Send Woodside and Rogan with me and the Gunny.”
The missiles First squad had launched had taken out the storage room and more. They’d blown open the entranceway to the basement and it yawned below us through a three-meter gap in the flooring, inky blackness clouded with ash and dust. I’d often questioned the wisdom of having a spotlight built into the chest of the Vigilante, wondering what possible use it could be in combat. I found out shining it down the hole. The basement was intact apart from a pile of debris beneath the hole where the stairs had been. Past the splinters of polished hardwood, past the crumbled remains of demolished brick was bare floor.
I tracked the circle of light from side to side, over deactivated cleaning robots, pallets full of supplies and others picked clean…and then to a series of chicken-wire cages. I thought they were for more supplies, but then something flickered through the edge of the light and I shifted it over. My breath caught in my throat and when it returned, it brought a stream of bile I barely kept down.
Inside the cages were skeletons. Living skeletons, their skin sallow and covered in sores, their hair patchy and falling out, their ragged clothes hanging off their starved bodies. Men and women, teenagers, but no younger children, no babies, because they couldn’t have made it this long with so little food. There were at least a couple dozen of them in three cages, some standing and staring up at me with wide, white eyes, not even trying t
o shield themselves from the light, while others were laid out on the floor, unmoving. I wondered if they’d died before we arrived or if the concussion of the blast had been too much for them.
“Jesus Christ,” Scotty murmured.
I turned back to the two privates we’d brought with us.
“Woodside,” I said, barely able to get the words out. “Get clear of the jamming and call for Search and Rescue. Now. Tell them it can’t wait,”
“Yes, sir.” Her voice was shaky, wavering, but she backed out of the wreckage of the storeroom and kicked in her jets, flying clear of the ruin of the hotel.
“Listen to me,” I said to the hostages. “I’m Lt. Alvarez, Commonwealth Fleet Marine Corps and we are here to help you. We’ve called for medical aid and they’ll be here soon. Just wait here.”
They said nothing. Where else would they go?
“Rogan, stay here,” I instructed him. “Don’t go down there, the floor is too unstable. Just keep it secure for the rescue team.”
I left them there and limped outside, needing to take charge of the platoon. Scotty stayed in step with me and I wondered why he didn’t just move out ahead of me to make sure everyone was okay.
“Cam,” he said, and I saw that it was on our private net. “This was a royal fuck-up, you know that, right?”
“I got suckered,” I agreed. “They knew we had to try and they knew just how to nail us.”
“Not that.” He blew out a breath and I thought he was barely controlling an anger he knew he couldn’t and shouldn’t let show. “We had to do that. No matter how we handled it, they were going to spring that trap. I’m talking about you going in there with First squad. You cut yourself off from the rest of the platoon, left us all hanging out there. You’re not a fucking squad leader anymore. You can’t be doing that shit.” I nearly stopped, but I was walking slow enough as it was. It took me a second to find my voice.