Order of the Centurion

by Jason Anspach

  The ground outside the steps exploded upward, causing Berlin to temporarily duck back inside.

  “Here they come!” Berlin shouted, swinging his blaster back around and shooting hot, undisciplined fire into the jungle. “Pile up to defend the entrance!”

  Wash was about to remind his friend to make his shots count, when the jungle erupted right where Berlin was shooting. Doro soldiers emerged from the verdant leaves firing their blasters from their hips. Several fell as Berlin’s shots hit home. Soon the other marines stationed with Berlin joined the legionnaire major in cutting them down.

  But the doros kept coming. It seemed that two more emerged from the jungle for each one who fell with a smoking blaster hole somewhere in its body.

  “Light them up!” shouted Sergeant Shotton, and soon virtually all of the marines were concentrating their firepower on the advancing doros.

  There were so many of the dog-men that Wash was afraid they would overrun the marines’ position before the escape plan even had a chance to begin. The massive wave of doros advanced as far as the bottommost steps of the temple before the marines’ fire became all too much for them. They broke and retreated back into the jungle, leaving the field littered with the corpses of their dead.

  The marines gave a cheer at this bloody repulse.

  Wash turned to the small marine contingent. “Did everyone remember to die who was supposed to?”

  “Yeah,” called a few marines.

  The plan was for a few preselected marines to go down in the fight, feigning that they’d been hit. But the doros had come on so thick that Wash had feared they might not have to pretend.

  “Did anyone die who wasn’t supposed to? Speak up now if you did.”

  This was met with a morbid chuckle from a few of the men.

  “Good. How are the other three sides?”

  Denturo called down from atop the parapet. “They disappeared as soon as the main assault began. Haven’t seen a sign of them since. Bunch of cowards.”

  Wash knew that behavior was driven more by doro psychology than by cowardice. The doros attacked in packs to overwhelm the opposition. But that tendency, that pack mentality, could at times be a tactical weakness. It meant the doros didn’t perform as effectively in isolated groups, such as the ones required for coordinated assaults with lots of moving parts. So no, they weren’t cowards; it was just that those doros who found themselves scattered or split up in the chaos of battle would instinctively scamper away in an attempt to find a larger force to join.

  “Okay. I don’t think were going to get another chance at this. That last wave almost overtook us. Everybody get in position and be ready to move out as soon as you hear us reopen fire.”

  The marines hurriedly followed orders. Wash, Sergeant Shotton, Denturo, and Parker moved to a rear parapet with a clear line of sight through the front opening and down the steps. From there, they would attempt to keep the doro charge at bay long enough for the others to retreat. Everyone else moved to the great, loose stone, lining up to begin their escape.

  “Here they come again!” Denturo shouted.

  “That didn’t take long.” Parker lined up the lead doro runner and dropped it with a single shot. The dog-man’s head burst apart as if someone had stuck a det-brick in its mouth.

  Wash could hear Berlin calling for the marines to “Go! Go! Go!” out of the hole in the back of the temple. A quick glance over his shoulder showed him that the doros had indeed abandoned all the other sides of the temple. Tactically that was a colossal mistake—and worse, it had been predictable. The Legion’s victories over the enemies of the Republic—regardless of what species they were—were driven in part by species research: getting to know the enemy and exploiting its weaknesses.

  That was Legion 101.

  The doro assault was more cautious this time. They were mindful of the full brunt of firepower that had broken their last charge. Yet Wash hoped enough marines had feigned injury to give the dog-men hope that this might be the time they would break through.

  And so they would. The result just wasn’t going to be quite what they’d hoped.

  “Last man out!” shouted Berlin from below.

  Wash was proud of his friend. He’d made sure that everyone else got safely outside before escaping himself.

  Emboldened by the lower volume of fire coming from the temple, the doro charge intensified. More doros emerged from the jungle and ran toward the steps. But between the four who stayed behind and the auto-turret, they were still taking severe casualties.

  One fleet-footed dog-man sprinted through the hail of blaster bolts, made it to the top step, and crossed the threshold into the temple courtyard. The stones shook from the explosion of the antipersonnel mine that blew him to pieces, painting the stone floor red with his blood.

  “Time to go!” shouted Wash.

  The four remaining soldiers ran swiftly down their defensive steps to the hole in the temple wall. Parker and Denturo went first, followed by Shotton and then Wash.

  But as they raced down the temple stairs in the darkness, the sergeant missed a step, or maybe caught his foot on an uneven bit of broken stone. Either way, he flew face first down the stairs, taking a swan dive to the bottom.

  “Sarge!” Wash shouted, holding out his hand impotently as the marine crashed hard onto the stone floor below.

  With a groan, the sergeant rolled from his stomach onto his back.

  “You all right, Sarge?” Parker asked. He was bouncing up and down on his feet, eager to get out of the ruin before what was coming next… came next. The auto-turret continued to fire, but the doros would swarm past it in seconds.

  “No.” Shotton was holding his knee. “These damn knees. I think I tore something.”

  Denturo said nothing beyond spitting onto the floor, yet it was clear he was as concerned as anyone for his sergeant.

  “Let’s pick him up,” Wash said.

  “Don’t be stupid. You all can’t take me along—I’ll only slow you down. Just prop me up against that wall. I’ll make sure the dog-men don’t follow you out.”

  Wash moved to the hole and readied to put himself through it.

  “You just gonna leave him like that?” protested Denturo. “Not even say goodbye?”

  Wash slid through and called from the other side, “I’m not saying goodbye because we’re not leaving him. Pick him up and slide him through.”

  Shotton began protesting even as Parker and Denturo lifted him up. “Don’t get yourself killed on my account! My knee is worthless. I’m telling you I can’t keep up.”

  The marines passed their sergeant through the opening, and Wash hoisted him over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.

  Shotton chuckled. “You really think you can carry me all that way, Leej?”

  Wash started running. “Legion’s been carrying the marines for years. What’s one more night?”

  Shotton laughed. “You SOB, I’m going to remember you said that.”

  Wash and the marines ran to the predetermined rallying point. The path was free of any doros. They really had devoted every last dog-man to the one angle of attack. Explosions boomed behind Wash—the remaining mines. The turret could no longer be heard. The temple had been breached.

  Wash looked back over his shoulder as he ran. The second he saw doros on the parapet, he shouted, “Now!”

  The temple was engulfed in a thunderous fireball. The great walls toppled, with some of the stones flying nearly out as far as where the marines had taken shelter. The ziggurat at the center of the ruin swayed, but held. Not that it would do the doros any good.

  “That got ’em!” Berlin shouted.

  But as the dust began to settle, angry, vengeful barks could be heard rising above the whining howls of the wounded.

  “It got ’em, but not enough of ’em. Everybody, let’s move toward that valley!”

  It was their only chance at salvation.

  And they couldn’t stop until they got there.

&nbs
p; 19

  Subs cautiously emerged from the trees; the medical bot and Alistair remained hidden. They’d heard a thunderous boom while traversing the jungle earlier in the night—loud enough that those observing the listening bugs back at Firebase Hitchcock had to have heard it too. It was quite clear that Subs was now standing at the epicenter of the blast.

  Massive blocks of stone lay strewn in every direction. They’d apparently been hurled from what had once been a four-walled structure, but which was now no more than a partially crumbling ziggurat. The stones had carved out large swaths of jungle as they skidded and rolled to a stop.

  Oh, and there were pieces of dead doro everywhere.

  Recon marines packed notoriously heavy when it came to ordnance. That was in large part due to their modified role as sappers—at least when they were battling with the Legion through the cities. While the Legion cleared the streets in the pursuit of hostiles, the marines came along to destroy weapons caches or bring small structures to the ground.

  But why would they be carrying that much boom out here in the jungle? Maybe it was just standard marine procedure. Subs didn’t know; he’d never been a marine.

  As he walked over the bodies of dead doros, one of them flinched, dragging its mangled head across the green where it lay, leaving a streak of blood. Most of its skin was burnt or torn away. It whimpered, whether seeking sympathy or out of fear, Subs couldn’t guess.

  He raised his boot and brought it crashing down on the dog-man’s throat. It crunched beneath his heel.

  Even a dog-man deserved that much mercy. And anyway, Subs wasn’t about to leave behind someone who’d seen him and could report on his location.

  Once Subs was satisfied that the site was secure, if not clean, he returned to the waiting bot and Republic Army comm tech.

  “There appear to be mass casualties at this location, sir,” the med bot intoned. “Should I search for survivors and begin triage according to Republic Samaritan directives?”

  “Sorry, bot. We don’t have time for anything like that. Anyway, I don’t think there are any left alive.”

  “Yes, you are very likely correct. However, my programming states that if there is no immediate need of medical help for those serving the Republic, my directive is to provide what medical aid I can to those fighting on the other side.”

  Subs looked around as the bot spoke, not ignoring it, but not diverting his attention from the surroundings. The sun had peeked over the horizon, and the jungle was growing in brightness with every passing minute. “The thing about that directive is this: What you’re seeing here was caused by some resourceful marines… and a couple of legionnaires, I guess. And from looking at the way the foliage is displaced, I can tell that our soldiers left here in a hurry, and whatever dog-men they didn’t blow to kingdom come were hot on the trail after them.”

  Alastair had already thrown up whatever was in his stomach upon first seeing the grisly aftermath of the explosion. The subsequent minutes had done little to bring color back to his face. “So what does that mean?” he asked.

  “Odds are it means the doros caught up with them, and when we follow their trail, we’ll find the marines slaughtered. But we also might find the doros… and if we do, we can pay them back.”

  Alistair frowned. “There’s no chance that the marines are still alive?”

  “There’s always a chance.”

  Subs tracked the obvious path left by the marines and the doros. It was clear that both groups had been in a hurry; neither had made any effort to hide its presence. Leaves were bent, plants had broken stocks, and prints were everywhere.

  There were far more doro tracks than marine. And that was after a considerable number of the dog-men had been shredded in the explosion at the temple.

  Alistair held his rifle at the ready. His eyes were wide and unblinking. “Should we be ready to fight?”

  “We were supposed to be ready to fight as soon as we stepped into the jungle. Psydon’s a war zone, remember?” answered Subs.

  The basic rolled his eyes. “Right, I get that, Dark Ops. But—i what I mean is: Is this it? Are we about to catch up to them and mix it up?”

  As if in answer to this question, a distant snapping and shuffling of dry underbrush sounded in the distance, followed by the barking growls of doro conversation.

  Subs motioned for Alistair and the bot to hide. The three of them slipped into a thorny, black-leaved swath of undergrowth, disappearing completely from view.

  A band of doros emerged from the direction in which the tracks led. They moved casually, with rifles slung over their shoulders.

  Subs’s first thought was that this group had just returned from destroying the marines. But missing were any signs of battlefield plunder. The dog-men commonly took weapons, flak jackets, and accessories from the Republic’s battlefield dead. But these were dressed up like vanilla doro insurgents, in a mishmash of khaki military fatigues and green pajama-like jumpers, and their weapons were old, Independent Arms–model blaster rifles popular with non-Republic militias.

  So Subs adjusted his thinking. These doros likely had no idea what had occurred here, nor that they were traversing a trail used by Republic marines scant hours earlier.

  Still… that didn’t mean he could let them go.

  He waited for the doros—they were seven of them—to pass him by, then noiselessly emerged from the undergrowth behind them, a grenade in hand. He stalked the pack’s trailing member, creeping closer and closer until he could literally reach out and touch the dog-man.

  He hung the live fragger onto the doro’s belt loop.

  Before the doro had the chance to bark out a warning or turn to see what had caught its pants, Subs shoved him forward. The doro stumbled, crashing into the rest of the group, while Subs dove for cover behind a tree.

  The grenade exploded right in the midst of the pack.

  Subs rolled back into view, a mist of smoke and blood still hanging in the air. All the insurgents were down.

  Alistair came out from hiding with a look of awe on his face. “That was the most frightening and incredible thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Subs was already moving among the doros, using his knife to end the lives of those who—though not moving—were just barely hanging on. Wet mercy killings, but not worth the depletion of a charge pack. “Any leej can do that. It’s the first thing they teach you at the Academy.”

  Alistair shook his head. “I’ve watched plenty of legionnaire combat holos. That’s Dark Ops voodoo and you know it.”

  Subs cleaned his blade on the khaki uniform of the last doro. “Maybe. How’s your stomach?”

  Alistair looked to the side. “It’s fine. Earlier… It was just the smell more than anything else.”

  Subs nodded, knowing the truth of that statement. He’d had his helmet on when they’d arrived at the temple, but he’d seen enough battlefields to know what the basic was talking about. “Jungle has a way of really making things stink, doesn’t it?”

  Alistair nodded grimly. The glamor of it all—experiencing the ruthlessness of combat with a legionnaire—it was starting to lose its sheen.

  The medical bot strode into the midst of the dead doros. “I see that, once again, there are no beings for me to treat.”

  “Sorry about that,” said Subs. “But I can almost guarantee we’ll make use of you before we get back to the base.”

  The bot nodded. “I am not sure that what you guarantee is a thing I should hope comes to pass.”

  Subs sheathed his knife. “You and me both. You and me both.”

  20

  Wash felt the effects of the hard marching keenly as they stepped past the jungle tree line into a vast, rock-strewn open stretch of land—Cuchin Valley. Poro-Poro Peak stood tall on the opposite side.

  The marines filed along, weariness weighing heavily on them. You could see it in the hanging heads, the slumped shoulders, the listless eyes as they moved into the open field, each man panting, trapped in his own perso
nal trial. Carry on… or die.

  They’d lost the doros somewhere back in the jungle, but not before driving them back with a firefight that claimed the life of a marine whose name Wash couldn’t remember. He felt shame at that. Felt like he should know the man’s name, even if it had only been a day. Because it felt like they’d all been together much longer. A bond had been forged.

  Sergeant Shotton was being carried by Denturo and Corpsman Hellix in a makeshift stretcher they’d lashed together after losing the dog-men. Wash had carried him the whole way prior to that, and his body was punishing him for it now.

  The two marines halted next to Wash, allowing their sergeant to get a view of the open terrain, the ridges, and the valley.

  “It’s gonna be a hard climb down and then back up to the other side after all this,” Shotton said, shoveling a slab of processed meat in gravy from a ration pouch into his mouth.

  Though Wash hadn’t called for it, the marines had dropped gear and were hydrating and refueling with water and rations. Perhaps their action was triggered by the crisp breeze sweeping down from the ridges; it felt like magic after so much time in the steaming jungle. A bit more marching would have let the patrol rest behind the cover of the boulder-studded ridge that rose up before falling away down into the valley, but Wash didn’t have the heart to tell everyone to get up and head that way. They were exhausted. Running on fumes. And the rations these marines were downing—the last of what they had—wouldn’t even make up for the calories they’d depleted just reaching this point.

  Still, they had made it.

  “It’ll be tough,” Wash agreed. “But we can’t just stay here in the open. Ten minutes, then we need to get dug into that ridge. You and anyone else Corpsman Hellix says needs to stay behind will remain there, and I’ll make the run with Berlin to the other side to see about getting the comm transmission out.”

  Shotton leaned back on his stretcher, closing his eyes against the cloudy skies overhead. “I hate being a liability like this. Shoulda had my knees fixed and let someone else take my place.”