His hip crashed hard against a rock. The impact made his knees slam together and left his groin feeling as though it were pulled. He bounced high in the air from the impact, almost as though he’d gone off a ramp. He did a half rotation in the air and landed flat on his stomach. He continued to slide, like a deer on ice, with his belly to the ground… but at least there was no more tumbling.
He could feel the rocks biting at his flak jacket and cutting up his arms. His gloved fingers felt numb from trying to grab enough ground to slow himself.
When he finally came to a stop, it took him several nauseating moments to realize it. His head still spun from all the cartwheeling and somersaulting. It was the sudden relative silence that told him he was stationary.
When he opened his eyes, the world still reeled, but he knew he was at the bottom.
Wash spat and saw blood. His mouth felt caked with dirt and grime. He had more little nicks and cuts on his arms than he could count, and his gloves were frayed and torn from where he’d tried in vain to grab the earth and slow his fall.
Berlin came toward him through blurry eyes.
Blaster bolts danced at the bottom of the valley. The doros were indeed shooting at them from the cliff above. But all were very wide of the mark.
Wash ached all over, but nothing felt broken. Or perhaps everything felt broken. But nothing felt more broken than anything else.
“Come on!” shouted Berlin, evidently no worse for wear. Say this much for Legion armor: it makes tumbling down a hillside more tolerable than it ought to be. Wash really should have brought his armor. “The doros are climbing down after us. We gotta get out of here!”
Wash understood, vaguely, that Berlin wanted him to get moving. He nodded, feeling unable to muster enough breath to give a verbal reply. He wasn’t sure his tongue would even form speech. He felt so… wrecked.
Berlin pulled him up at the armpit, getting him to a knee, then to a woozy stand. Berlin was supposed to just keep going if something like this happened. Instead he stayed, helping Wash take a first, tenuous step.
So far, so good.
Everything felt intact.
Another step.
He could walk. It hurt like the nine hells, but he could walk.
The walk turned into a jog, and then as much of a run as he was capable of coaxing out of his battered and bruised body. Berlin kept prompting him along. Berlin was in the lead—the first time the appointed major had outpaced Wash in the entire operation.
The two men ran across the valley, approaching the creek that snaked through its center. Wash didn’t know how deep the thing was, and with the doros still firing at them, it didn’t matter. They splashed through, the water rising to waist-level at its highest point.
As they scrambled to the other side, Wash looked back at the cliff face. The doros were following, but they weren’t throwing themselves down the slope; they were climbing down slowly. That crazy tumble had been less than ideal, but it had given them a huge head start.
Wash allowed himself to feel a moment of hope. They were going to make it up and out of the valley.
They were actually going to make it.
But then came the whistling sound. At first Wash thought it was simply the ringing in his ears hitting a different key. The deafening explosion that followed, no more than a hundred meters behind them, told him otherwise.
His hope had been premature. The doros were so intent on keeping their location a secret that they had instructed their artillery—artillery that had been focused for weeks on battering Legion firebases and hilltop defenses—to kill two lone legionnaires running through a once-serene valley.
Neither legionnaire needed to tell the other to pick up the pace, and soon Berlin was creating an ever-widening gap between himself and Wash. When he looked over his shoulder and began to slow, Wash shouted at him.
“Keep moving! Don’t wait for me!”
Artillery continued to fall, and it was gradually getting closer. Some doro spotter on the ridge must have been providing real-time corrections.
“Hurry up, Wash!” Berlin had come to a stop some twenty meters ahead. “I’m not goin’ up without you, so get going!”
And then the lights went full bright as Wash was thrown hard against the ground. The last thing he saw before things went dark was a great object streaking directly in front of him, landing between him and Berlin, completely engulfing his friend in its blast.
26
Wash rolled onto his back and sucked in lungfuls of air with a loud, raspy gasp. He sounded like Tierney had when she’d awoken from the dead in the POW camp.
Surely he wasn’t still alive.
And if he was, he wouldn’t be for long.
Slowly, his head groggy and ears ringing, his nose bleeding, he began to feel his own body as though he’d just discovered the sense of touch. His face was wet with blood. His arms and legs seemed unbroken. He couldn’t hear anything distinctly. Not even his own breathing.
Wash propped himself up onto an elbow, coughing like a H8 addict, expecting his body to fail him at any moment. But it persevered. It went on as it always had, and Wash—gasping, coughing, feeling as though he’d died—rose to his feet.
He stumbled several steps to his right and fell down. But that was only because of how everything spun inside his head. His body was working, but an equilibrium couldn’t be found.
On his hands and knees, his nose dripping blood, he closed his eyes and took several breaths. He waited until the spinning subsided. Then with an effort, he rose again and began to stagger toward where he’d last seen Berlin.
There was a small crater where the artillery hit. Wash staggered around its rim like a drunken man, peering down, searching for his friend. Looking for Berlin in a freshly dug grave.
But Berlin was nowhere to be seen. And Wash wondered if the man—his friend since youth—had simply been vaporized.
It was worse than that.
Another fifteen meters or so ahead, Wash found Berlin lying on his back, covered in dirt and debris. He was alive. Holding up a wavering arm as though he were waiting for someone to give him a boost off the ground.
The sight of this energized Wash, and he ran to Berlin, his knee threatening to give out with every few strides. The artillery had stopped—or at least Wash didn’t hear or feel its concussive blasts. He looked back and saw that the doros were now making the transition from the sheer cliff to the steep decline into the valley.
Wash reached Berlin, who was waiting for him.
“Wash,” coughed Berlin. His voice sounded dirty and mechanical through his helmet’s speaker. “Help me, Wash. I can’t stand up. Help me stand up.”
Wash reached down, wanting to do nothing more than what his friend pleaded for. But as he pulled on the outstretched hand, he realized that Berlin wasn’t partially buried in the upturned soil as he’d thought, but rather that Berlin had no legs on which to stand.
There below the pelvis, which Wash could now see plainly, shattered and sloppy, mixing with the dirt on the ground… was nothing.
“Help me up, Wash,” an oblivious Berlin begged again.
Wash’s eyes were wide with horror. “Buddy… Berlin… your legs… I don’t think you can stand up.”
“Why?” There was a note of panic in Berlin’s voice.
“I… I think they’re broken.”
Wash didn’t exactly know why he lied to his friend. It wasn’t to calm him, he knew that much. It was more like he didn’t think telling the man what really happened was morally right. As though speaking the ugly reality was giving assent to something that wasn’t supposed to happen. At least, not to Berlin.
This kind of… damage… it was for the doros. Or for the unnamed souls who required all those coffins and body bags Wash had continually audited the resupply of back in his sweltering, hellish office hab.
This wasn’t supposed to be happening. Couldn’t be happening.
But it was.
And the doros were sti
ll coming.
Like your life depends on it. The voice of Wash’s drill instructor lit a fire in the back of his mind. His life did depend on what happened in the next few moments. His life, and the lives of all those marines still fighting to keep the doros at bay. And Berlin’s life…
Wash couldn’t leave his friend. Not like this. Not to be slain by a pack of ravaging dog-men.
“My legs are broken?” Berlin said. “Oh.” He sounded as though that made all the sense in the galaxy. He couldn’t stand up because his legs were broken. And that was okay. Because whoever died of a broken leg?
“Yeah, that’s it,” said Wash. “So I gotta get you out of here.”
“You’re too beat up to carry me, Wash,” mumbled Berlin. He sounded like he was under heavy sedatives, or like his mind wasn’t all there. Like the shock of what had happened had fractured his psyche.
Wash didn’t argue. He grabbed his friend by the webbing on his armor and hoisted him onto his shoulders, hoping it wouldn’t cause Berlin any additional pain.
Berlin didn’t even seem to realize it was happening.
Staggering, Wash started to run toward the edge of the valley. Already he could feel the incline, but it was far less steep than the side they’d come down. Wash’s legs burned as he made his own switchbacks, zigzagging his way up, taking both himself and Berlin closer to the top.
It actually wasn’t as bad as he thought it might be, carrying Berlin on his back. The weight of the legionnaire was less than he expected.
That’s because his legs are gone. And he’s bleeding out. He’ll be dead soon.
A lump formed in Wash’s throat, and he felt as if he would cry at the terribleness of that reality.
He used the emotion to climb up with gusto, but he felt himself losing steam. The time in the jungle, the fall, seeing his friend maimed… it was all too much.
“Come on,” he urged himself. “Come on, Wash.”
“You can do it, buddy.” Berlin’s voice sounded thin and weak. “You can do anything you put yourself to. You always could, Wash.”
Wash took another step. His legs felt no more energized for the encouragement. But he knew he couldn’t stop. He talked himself along. “Come on, Wash. Come on.”
Berlin continued in his dreamlike cheering. “You’ll do it, Wash. You can do whatever you want to do. You always could. Not me. I could do the things that I was good at, but those were the only things. But you… you can always do everything.”
Wash felt the sting of tears in his eyes as he carried Berlin up closer and closer to the top of the ridge. His friend was dying, and Wash had neither the energy nor the heart to say goodbye.
When at last he reached the top of the slope, Wash gently cradled Berlin’s head as he laid him down. This was where they would have to part. Poro-Poro was still a long climb, and it wouldn’t be possible for Wash to drag Berlin up to the peak. No matter what his friend had said, that was something Wash could not do.
There wasn’t enough strength left in him.
“I can hear things,” Berlin said. Wash could hear him breathing shallowly. “I hear voices.”
Wash’s nose was still bleeding and his eyes were watering. His face felt hot and red and flowing everywhere. “It’s okay, buddy,” he said, unable to control the emotion in his voice.
“Republic voices. I hear them. I can’t hear Subs, but I can hear… Legion things.” Berlin coughed violently.
“Legion things?” asked Wash. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know… Legion people talking about… stuff.”
Wash wiped his bleary eyes with his ripped and filthy gloves. Could it be that scaling the peak wasn’t necessary? Could they reach the Republic from here, through the L-comm? He desperately wanted that to be so.
“Berlin, I need to take off your helmet.”
Berlin shook his head slowly. “Wash, you said you didn’t want one. Remember? I was going to get you one, but you didn’t want one…”
“I remember. It was my mistake. I should’ve let you.” Wash’s voice bubbled with emotion. He began to pull the helmet up, not needing his delirious friend’s permission, but trying to convince him all the same. “But I didn’t, and now I need to use yours. Come on, buddy, just for a little bit.”
“You… can… use it,” Berlin managed, his breathing even more labored than before.
Gently, Wash pulled the helmet fully from his friend’s head.
Berlin squinted and fluttered his eyes at the radiant daylight. He stared up into the sky. His face was pale to the point that there didn’t seem to be any blood left behind his skin at all. His hair was matted down with a cold sweat.
Wash could hardly bear to look at his friend. He held the bucket above his own head and looked down at Berlin. “Just for a minute. Okay?”
Berlin gave a fractional nod that transformed into a cough.
Wash put the helmet over his head. This one wasn’t fitted for him; it felt a bit tight. And the external visor was off, so that he lost some peripheral vision and wasn’t able to see down as well as he should. Not without moving his whole head. It was amazing the number of idiots in the galaxy who assumed a fully enclosed helmet would be a one-size-fits-all ordeal. That wasn’t even true of ball caps.
But even though the fit wasn’t optimized for combat—and in fact keeping it on might get him killed—the comm was right where it was supposed to be. Wash activated it and began an all-channel transmission over the L-comm.
“This is LS-12-OC. I’m part of a detachment of legionnaires and marines organized by Major D’lay Berlin to locate the doro artillery platforms. We have found those platforms and require immediate fire support.”
There was a pause.
And then…
“We hear you, LS-12-OC. We’ve been looking for you this morning.”
Wash let out a sigh of relief.
A new comm channel opened up, picking up with it the background noise of a SLIC in flight. “This is Captain Uwler. SLIC attack force Gray Ghost. We’re patrolling near Firebase Hitchcock and having zero luck getting visuals. Advise your location so we can find you.”
Wash wanted to cry tears of joy. He had never imagined what would happen if the all-hail worked, but he couldn’t have dreamed it would go so well. “We’re near the Cuchin Valley across from Poro-Poro Peak. We’re taking heavy fire from a considerable doro force detached from the dog-men’s mobile artillery platforms.”
“Copy. We were at the wrong end of the valley. We’re now inbound. See you in a few minutes.”
“Thank God,” Wash said, not caring whether his comm was still live or not. He keyed the L-comm to Subs’s direct channel. “Subs! Did you hear that?”
There was no reply.
“Please don’t be dead,” Wash mumbled into the ether, this time sure to mute his comm before uttering the words. “Subs? Do you copy?”
Still no reply.
Maybe his bucket had gone offline. Maybe it was some sort of transmission trick caused by the gap of the valley.
Wash tried not to think about the more likely explanation as he keyed the comm for Legion command, using the access code he’d been provided—to the chagrin of his superiors—as a point in case he ever needed to “bypass” traditional comm lines.
“This is Lieutenant Washam, LS—”
“We’re already listening to you, Lieutenant,” a gruff-sounding legionnaire responded. “I need hard confirmation. You are near the mobile artillery, is that correct?”
“Yes, that’s correct. From Poro-Poro, it’s approximately in a five- to ten-kilometer radius after crossing the Cuchin Valley.”
“Intelligence has those guns placed nowhere in that vicinity. You’re sure?”
“Yes, sir. I’m sure of it.” Wash had no idea why he called the person on the other end of the comm “sir.” Something about the tone of his voice, he supposed. “And sir, in addition, we need help, bad. We’ve got wounded marines and legionnaires, with Dark Ops and Republic army i
n support. I’m not sure how much longer we can hold on.”
A new voice came on the comm. This one no less commanding than the one before. “You said you have a Dark Ops operative with you? What’s his name?”
“I didn’t catch his name and rank, but he told me to call him Subs.”
There was a long pause, during which Wash’s intuition told him that lots of people were listening in on this comm transmission. People in the Legion who mattered.
“You tell Subs… his kill team is coming for him.”
Wash had no way to do so. Subs hadn’t responded to his direct L-comm transmission. But he answered, “Yes, sir.”
Because… what else could he say?
“Sir, I have to go offline. The doros are pursuing.”
Wash moved to the edge of the cliff to look down at the valley. The doros were already climbing up this side.
He looked around for his rifle. It was nowhere to be found. Neither was Berlin’s. He didn’t even remember when he’d lost it. In the artillery blast? Or maybe in the fall down into the valley. It was all a blur.
He wondered if he had a concussion.
They needed to get out of here.
He ran back to Berlin. “Hey, buddy! We gotta keep moving, all right? Let me pick you back up.”
There was no answer.
Wash still had the helmet on, and couldn’t see his friend very well due to the misalignment, though he knew the man was right at his feet. He pulled the bucket off to get a real look.
Berlin wasn’t moving.
27
Wash dropped the helmet at his side. He knelt down, picked up his friend’s limp arm, and released it.
It dropped to the ground like a stone.
“Berlin?”
His friend was dead.
Wash closed his eyes. He felt numb. He didn’t know what to do or what he could ever say to anyone about… anything. His mind was in turmoil, and he was losing his grip.
All the Legion training reminding him to stay aware, to stay cool and deal with this later… it was there, but all Wash could think about was what he would say to Berlin’s parents. What his own parents would say. How would he handle it when people snidely talked about that legionnaire major, the point, who got himself and everyone killed?
Order of the Centurion Page 20