Rebellion

by Edward M. Grant

  The Montagnards fired. Rifle rounds hit the barricade, and one ricocheted off Logan’s helmet, knocking his head aside as he crouched. One of the Montagnards grabbed the grenade, and raised it to throw back. The grenade exploded, ripping off the Montagnard's head, and turning his hand into a bloody mess of flesh and shattered bone.

  Then the bright trail of an RPG rocket raced along the alley from the far end, illuminating the smoke as it flew. It exploded between the Montagnards. One collapsed to the dirt, his arms jerking toward the half of his head that remained on his neck. Another screamed and rolled on the ground, with only bloody bone where his right arm used to be.

  The other Montagnards turned to look back toward the main street, staring into the smoke cloud that still hovered there. Rifles cracked from the far end of the alley, firing from the smoke, and spraying their fire across the dirt.

  The remaining Montagnards fell in a bloody pile as the gaussrifles tore through them. Explosions boomed in the nearby streets, and the cracking of the gaussrifle fire intensified.

  Two green squares flashed up near the far corners of the aid station building, and a dozen more appeared along the street and alleys nearby. Two suits crept along the alley, emerging slowly from of the smoke. Logan recognized that Russian flag on the shoulder of the suit in front.

  “I see you made it, McCoy,” Bairamov said over the fireteam net. “We brought some friends.”

  The crack of gunfire and thump of grenades intensified from the hillside south of the village square. Logan turned and looked that way. Dozens of green squares appeared on his HUD, streaming down the hillside toward the insurgents.

  The red squares of the insurgents flashed and disappeared, or retreated. But more green squares approached from the far side.

  Whoever they were, they had the insurgents caught in a crossfire. A few of the Legion markers showed suit or occupant damage, but the new arrivals were taking down ten insurgents for every man the insurgents hit.

  “Who is that?”

  “2nd platoon. We caught up with them on our way here.”

  Volkov stood beside the barricade, and fired his rifle toward the mass of fleeing insurgents. “If you have ammo left, use it. Show these bastards who’s boss around here.”

  “I’m out,” Logan said.

  Bairamov tossed a magazine Logan’s way. “Here.”

  Logan grabbed it in mid-air, and slammed it into his rifle as he limped to the south barricades on his suit’s failing leg.

  2nd Platoon were chasing the insurgents back toward the ore truck, hitting them from both sides as 1st Platoon fired down the middle.

  Logan crouched beside the barricade, and began to fire. A few of the Montagnards dropped their weapons and put their hands up. The rest fought on, but, caught in crossfire from three sides, they had few places to hide. Even Poulin was firing at them from the barricades.

  The Panzergrenadiers were fighting to the last man, still launching grenades at 2nd Platoon as they retreated toward the truck. But only a handful of Panzergrenadier suits were still moving. The rest lay on the dirt, dead or wounded.

  One suit leaned around the rear of the truck, between the truck and the trailers. He swung a rifle and fired. Metal and blood exploded from the back of a 2nd Platoon suit, and the suit fell to the ground.

  Logan went prone beside the barricade, and took careful aim as the suit dodged back behind the truck. It reappeared a second later, firing over the truck’s engine bay.

  Logan’s sight crosshairs lined up with the suit’s visor as the Panzergrenadier began to duck behind the truck again. For a split second, he could see the man’s face through the visor. A face covered with familiar scars.

  Scar-Face. He should kill the murdering bastard. But if there was going to be any value in this mission at all, it wouldn’t be revenge, it would be protecting the decent people of New Strasbourg from Scar-Face and his friends.

  And there were still better ways to do that than shooting him in the face.

  Scar-Face ducked back behind the truck. He leaned out around the rear, between the truck and the first trailer, and aimed his rifle.

  Logan’s rifle cracked. Scar-Face’s rifle went flying as sparks and blood exploded from his right arm. His suit slumped down behind the truck, and fell to the dirt.

  CHAPTER 35

  Bairamov shuffled across the village square. His suit was battered with deep and mangled dents, the visor was cracked, and the surface camouflage changed colour randomly as he moved. But it didn’t look too bad all-in-all, for being buried under a pile of falling rocks.

  “You’re late,” Logan said.

  “Took us a while to dig ourselves out of that mess in the mine. But at least we didn’t miss the fight.”

  “You arrived just in time for the finale. And it would have been a different story if you hadn't.”

  Desoto stumbled across the village square behind Bairamov, dragging his right leg, with his left arm hanging loose at his side. He held his rifle in his one good hand.

  “Not having much luck today, are you Desoto?”

  “It’s getting better. I think.”

  “Where’s Volkov?” Bairamov said. “We’d better check in before he thinks we deserted.”

  Logan nodded across the square.

  Bairamov grabbed the good arm of Desoto’s suit, and helped him toward the village hall, where Volkov, Merle and Poulin were talking.

  Kader and two of the other Legionnaires had picked up the flagpole, and were lifting it back into place.

  Logan grabbed it too, and helped them push the broken end down into the dirt beside the shattered remains of the base. It might be a metre shorter now, but the tricolour flag of France was flying over the village again.

  Then he hobbled toward the aid station.

  “Alice, visor up.”

  He lowered his head so it would clear the roof as he looked in through the doorway of the aid station. Nicole was hunched over a man on blood-stained straw, holding his hand as a medic worked on his leg, where bone showed through torn, bloody muscle. The front of her dress was stained with blood.

  “Nicole,” he said. “I need you for a second.”

  She looked down at the man’s face. His eyes were wide, but distant. The Legion had good painkillers. They needed them. The man smirked at her, and nodded.

  She released his hand, then followed Logan outside. He led her along the alley, away from the square to the main street, so fewer ears would be listening to what they had to say. With the failing leg of his suit dragging behind him, he didn’t even have to try to walk slowly so she could keep up. The suit could barely hobble faster than she could walk.

  “What happened to your leg?” she said.

  “The suit took a hit during the fight. How’re you doing?”

  “I had no idea it would be this bad.”

  “Welcome to a day in the life of the Legion.”

  As they reached the corner of the building beside the street, she crossed her arms over her chest, and stared at the massive destruction around them. The village buildings had been torn up by rifles and grenades, the surface of the street was a mass of craters, one on top of another in places, and shrapnel protruded from every soft surface along it.

  She glanced at the headless Panzergrenadier across the street, the smouldering suits and bodies of wounded and dead men, then at the wounded Legionnaires who were being helped out of their suits by the survivors, and carried to the aid station.

  “So, this is what your little insurgency came to,” Logan said.

  She turned toward him, shaking.

  “What’s going to happen to me?”

  “You’re done with this insurgency business, right?”

  “I didn’t want this.”

  “Well, this is what happens when you pick sides in a war.”

  “I just want to go home. Forget about everything that’s happened.”

  “Maybe you’ll meet a nice miner. Have some kids.”

  “I don�
�t think I could live like that. Spending my whole life here, farming and making dinner, like my mother.”

  “Trust me. There are worse ways to live.”

  “Maybe I could marry a soldier.”

  He could even come back here, maybe. In another five years, when his enlistment was up. If they'd let him.

  If he survived.

  Come back to a world where everyone wanted to kill him. Even the sun. Maybe not such a great plan.

  He watched the 2nd Platoon medics carry a man past them, heading toward the aid station. Another Legionnaire held the wounded man’s lower left leg, which hung from the knee by a strip of muscle and skin.

  “Not much future in that,” Logan said.

  “I guess you’re right.” Nicole nodded as she watched the medics pass. “I should get back to helping your friends.”

  “You probably should.”

  She turned and hurried after the medics, as fast as she could move with her injured ankle. Logan hobbled along the alley behind her, back toward the village square. Volkov, Lieutenant Merle, and Poulin were still conversing near the village hall. Best to keep out of that.

  Logan hobbled past them, and stopped beside the barricade at the south end of the square, where he could look out over the hillside below. The bark on the tree trunks had been shredded by thousands of rifle rounds, exposing fresh wood beneath that had been decorated with hundreds of chunks of shrapnel that glittered in the sunlight. He sat on the barricade, put his rifle across his lap, and stared down over the hillside. 2nd Platoon were busy rounding up the survivors among the insurgents.

  Some were still able to move, and the Legionnaires led them away at gunpoint. The wounded were carried toward the aid station. The dead... would have to wait.

  Two of them carried a man with a familiar face, and a bloody mess where his right forearm should have been. Scar-Face yelled in Prussian as they carried him up the hill toward the square and the aid station. At least Logan might score some points with Poulin when Scar-Face was introduced to Intel.

  Volkov’s voice came from Logan’s suit speakers. “Where’s the girl, McCoy?”

  Logan glanced back toward the aid station. Should he tell them? No, maybe someone could have some kind of happy ending after this. Or, at least, a not-so-unhappy ending.

  “She didn’t make it, sir.”

  Volkov strode across the square toward Logan, opened his visor, then stared at Logan in silence for a moment, as though trying to determine he was lying.

  Logan put on his best poker face.

  “I’m sorry, sir. The insurgents got her in the battle. There was nothing I could do.”

  Volkov huffed. “Merle’s putting you up for a medal for your crazy stunt today. You’re officially a hero.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “And that’s another reason I don’t want you around. Heroes get people killed.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “There’s a fireteam leader position open in 1st Platoon after they ran into an IED. You’re it. Try not to cause them as much trouble as you’ve caused me.”

  Promoted and cast aside in the same breath. That was Volkov for you. The sergeant turned to walk away, but Logan interrupted him.

  “How bad was it, sir?”

  “The battle? Twenty WIA, fifteen KIA, last I heard.”

  Volkov strode away. Including all the men they’d lost since arriving here, that meant maybe fifteen men in the platoon were still fit to fight. Damn.

  Merle stood beside the entrance to the village hall, talking to a male civilian. Logan hobbled that way. He’d sent Merle the recording from his helmet earlier. Now he should check in.

  “Morning, McCoy,” Merle said as he approached.

  “How’s it going, sir?”

  “Intel managed to crack that tablet you found, and they were very interested in your recording from the mine. Chaput is on his way to an appointment with Madame Guillotine if he doesn't tell them everything they want to know. And some of his aristo friends won't be far behind him. Without the aristos' support and Panzergrenadiers' weapons, the insurgency will be crippled. The Compagnie can handle what's left.”

  “I need to recover my suit, sir. And Legionnaire Gallo’s body from Saint Jean.”

  “I’ll arrange a transport. But do it fast. We move out in forty-eight hours.”

  “More Panzergrenadiers, sir?”

  “With the intel from that pad, the Marine LePen has picked more Panzergrenadier transmissions from orbit. The rest of the regiment is moving in to clear them out.”

  “Why wouldn’t they all attack together?”

  “Your arrival at the mine must have pushed this group to act early, before they were ready. Fortunately for us.”

  He was probably right. Scar-Face had no way to know whether Logan had warned the Legion they were in the mine. Their only hope for surprise was to attack straight away, and kill as many Legionnaires as they could. And they’d come damn close to killing the whole platoon.

  Logan glanced across the square toward Poulin, who was now slumped on the steps outside the village hall with the rifle across her lap, staring at the ground.

  If she hadn’t been so resolute about sending them to the mine, they’d never have found the Panzergrenadiers, and the regiment would be facing coordinated, surprise attacks across the planet in the near future. That would have been a bad day for everyone.

  Maybe she’d done something right for once.

  “What were they doing here, anyway?”

  “We may find out when we interrogate the survivors. But while the Panzergrenadiers have been stoking the insurgency against us, the Prussians have attacked the colony on Saint-Simon. It looks like part of a bigger plan to tie us up so we couldn’t get there to help. Even now, we’re three wormholes away. We still may not get there in time.”

  PREVIEW: INSURGENCY

  LEGIONNAIRE #2

  INSURGENCY

  Deep Space, 2123 A.D.

  The universe whirled around Logan McCoy’s head. A silent universe, other than the constant wheezing of his own lungs struggling to suck in another breath.

  His eyes adjusted to the dark a few hours ago, and now the space between the brightly-glowing stars no longer looked black, but had grown into a faint grey illuminated by the glow of billions of galaxies, and trillions of suns.

  Yet few of them traced out familiar constellations.

  He was light-years from the world where he was born just twenty years ago, living a life he’d never imagined as a kid.

  And even the stars were wrong.

  He lay as motionless as he could in the cramped confines of the vac suit, the only thing that was keeping him alive in the cold and vacuum of deep space. His chest pressed against the hard frame of the suit as the stars seemed to pull him toward them, compressing his ribs against his lungs under his own weight. His nose was squashed against the transparent plasteel visor, forcing him to breathe through his mouth.

  A black, skeletal shape slid past the stars above his forehead then on down, blocking the light as it moved lower and lower in front of him, like a monster eating the universe.

  The Robespierre, one of the destroyers escorting the Foreign Legion Assault Ship Marine LePen to Saint-Simon as part of Taskforce Richelieau.

  As it crept across his field of view by a few degrees every second, anti-collision lights flashed, casting a brief red and white glow across the hard, rutted surface of the ship’s spherical bridge, and the missile launchers and guns hanging from a thin frame around it.

  The destroyer slid past his nose, and continued moving down until it disappeared below the bottom of his visor, leaving him alone with the stars again.

  But more ships replaced it. The other destroyers in the task force, the cruiser Jeanne d’Arc, and the Army assault ship Denis Diderot, waiting patiently in deep space until they were cleared to enter the final wormhole to Saint-Simon.

  Logan willed his body to slow down, to use less air, and keep him alive a little l
onger. The oxygen level on the vac suit's HUD glowed red, now down to two percent.

  He had a few minutes left. Ten, maybe twenty at most.

  Every breath he took brought him closer to zero, then he'd only have whatever oxygen was left in the suit to breathe before he died. The air already stank of rubber, plastic and his own sweat, and it was growing warmer, more stuffy and humid with every moment that passed.

  Bungie cords clasped his outstretched arms and legs to the side of the Marine LePen, and they strained under the centrifugal force as the ship's rotation tried to toss him away into space. All it would take was for the clips on the end of the cords to give way, and he’d be left to die a lonely death as he floated away from the fleet, never to be seen again.

  He twisted his head to the right, sliding his nose across the inside of the visor until his cheek pressed against it instead. As his eyes turned toward the edge of the visor, he could just see the rim of the airlock about three metres away.

  The outer hatch was still closed. Despite the low oxygen level in his tanks, no-one was coming out to save him.

  It was so close. Yet impossible to reach from where he lay.

  Even if he could escape from the cords, he’d never be able to clamber across those few metres of the ship's hull without a safety line to hold him in place. If he tried to crawl without one, the rotation of the ship would throw him off into space well before he got there.

  He turned his face back, scraping his cheek across the inside of the cold plasteel visor until he could see space again. He twitched his nose, trying to return it to its normal shape after it had been squashed against the visor for so long.

  Though perhaps that was a blessing, because he couldn’t breathe so fast with his nostrils squashed. So the air in the suit would last a little longer.

  He checked the HUD again.

  One percent.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Edward M. Grant is a physicist and software developer turned SF and horror writer. He lives in the frozen wastes of Canada, but was born in England, where he wrote for a science and technology magazine and worked on numerous indie movies in and around London. He has travelled the world, been a VIP at space shuttle launches, survived earthquakes and a tsunami, climbed Mt Fuji, assisted the search for the MH370 airliner, and visits nuclear explosion sites for a hobby.