by James Evans
“World War II, in case you’re wondering. We’re all qualified and we don’t practice it for shits and giggles. It’s not as if you have to take these bodies home to your respectable other halves, but please don’t fuck it up. I don’t want to land in a puddle of guts when I hit the ground and I’m sure nobody else does either,” said Warden, aiming for a lightness that he didn’t quite hit.
The gallows humour drew a round of chuckles anyway and Lance Corporal Long punched Price on the arm. “Don’t be a pussy, mate. Should be a right laugh.”
Price shrugged and sighed. “Oh well, as long as you’re doing it too, sir, who am I to complain?”
“Remember, we’re here for the dumper truck. You can’t miss it; it’s bright yellow, shaped like a kids toy and about the size of a decent pub. Do not, I repeat, do not, puncture the tyres. I do not want to have to learn how to change a tyre that weighs over eight tons, all right?”
“That means you, Price,” said Milton. “If you shit your pants, I don’t want a negligent discharge puncturing a tyre. Or my back.”
“Just tuck your trouser legs into our boots, Price. You can empty them later,” quipped Long.
“You can shut it too, Long. But thanks for volunteering to be first down,” Milton snapped, rounding on him before turning to the rest, “and that’s enough silly buggers from you lot. We’ve got a job to do, Marines. If you’ve got a note from your dear old Mum, you can stay up here where it’s safe. Otherwise, stop fucking about and get ready to move.”
Warden paused for a moment then cleared his throat.
“Yes. What Sergeant Milton said. Get the gear out and into position. If you need an incentive, apparently there’s a good chance you’ll get to see Price shit his pants or Long get shot, if he doesn’t smack straight into the rock.”
He turned back to the map on the screen as A Troop got to work. They’d need to kick some serious arse if they were going to clear the mine and capture the truck.
“Bailey. Got anything for me yet?”
“Yes, sir, all three sniper teams are in place. We’ve got strong vantage points and clear views of the target area,” said Bailey, the snipers’ team leader. “There’s lots of cover down there, sir. Might be tricky.”
“Understood. Anything else?”
“Yeah, there’s a large equipment shed and the workers are taking whatever they’re mining in there. They’ve brought a couple of sleds out with crates on them,” Bailey said.
“Crates? They’re processing the ore?”
“No, sir, I don’t think so. The crates have stamps I don’t recognise, but they don’t look like any of the mining gear around here. In fact, they look like the crates Ten found in the solar plant. My guess is they’re making munitions right here in the quarry.”
Warden beckoned Milton over. If the Deathless were processing ore and turning it into any kind of weapons or equipment, they must have a manufactory. An advanced one at that, if it was capable of turning rock and raw ore into finished goods. Capturing the manufactory might give them a serious boost to their production capability and hurt the Deathless at the same time.
“What do you think?” he asked Milton as they reviewed the map. Milton nodded, and together they adjusted the plan of attack to take the shed and its likely contents into account.
Minutes later they were ready to go. The tech specialists would stay up top, deploying drones to spot enemy troops who managed to take cover and using their carbines to suppress any that tried to return fire. That left six Marines from each section to abseil down the mine’s cliff face and get stuck in.
The forward abseil was a high-speed descent, usually practised for use in a retreat or a night assault where speed was paramount. Today, though, they’d be doing it in broad daylight and there wouldn’t be any covering fire until the Deathless spotted them. The enemy sentries didn’t seem to be very alert and the fact they didn’t have lookouts on the rim of the mine suggested a certain arrogance that Warden was keen to exploit.
That said, nobody was going to miss eighteen Marines abseiling down a cliff. They would need every second they could get. Once the enemy troops brought weapons to bear, everything would get a whole lot dicier.
Warden started the countdown in everyone’s HUDs and took up his own position on the rope. He would be first down, going as quickly as possible before acting as the belayer for the Marines that followed on his rope. They would drop, falling under gravity, and he would pull them up short, one after the other, just before they became a messy splash on the rock. His descent would be ridiculously fast; theirs would be even faster.
Ideally, they’d have had a rope for each Marine and all eighteen would have gone at the same time and been on the ground in a few seconds. As it was, this exercise would take at least six times as long but there was no other way, they had to go over the long drop. Over seventy metres but under a hundred, which was good, because if it had been any higher, this plan wouldn’t have worked at all.
The number 3 flashed green in their HUDs and a tone sounded, audible only to the Marines. Warden pushed up from his crouch, dashing forward and lobbing the coiled rope away from the cliff even as he went over the edge. Then he was over, running down the almost vertical cliff face, going as fast as he dared and applying only enough tension to slow his descent to the point of non-fatality. Adrenaline coursed through his system. The rope hissed, the belay device whirred and his boots crunched as he plunged towards the rock floor of the mine.
A mere handful of metres from the ground he brought his dive to a brutally hard stop, the harness punching into his body as he flipped upright, knees bending to absorb the last of the energy. It was a rough landing but he wasn’t injured.
Warden scanned his surroundings as he unclipped from the rope, checking that he hadn’t landed amongst a group of enemy soldiers. He hadn’t heard the telltale scream of a railgun round and it looked like he was clear. He grabbed the rope, taking control of the next Marine down and bringing her to a much smoother and easier stop than he’d had.
One, two, three, four Marines down before anything bad happened. He was looking up, so technically he’d seen the muzzle flashes before he’d heard the guns but there was no time to worry about that. Either he was about to get shot in the back or he wasn’t, and his focus was on the two Marines still coming down his rope.
Then his HUD started to flash with contact signals. The counts of active and injured enemies started to change and by the time his sixth Marine hit the floor, both numbers were moving quickly in the right direction.
The Marines who were already on the deck weren’t wasting any time now that things had turned hot and they pressed the attack, as per training and orders.
Warden turned and brought his weapon to bear, caning half a magazine toward an unlucky cluster of Deathless, then turning slightly to empty the rest at one of the ogres. He needn’t have bothered; its head vanished as one of the snipers shot it with a railgun. The round went through its armoured head, into the rocky floor of the mine and sent rock chips flying in all directions, scything down two more nearby Deathless.
Fuck. There was a good chance his team would pick up injuries if they got too close to a high angled shot like that. Tough, he thought, no time to worry about that now. There were thousands of colonists counting on A Troop to complete this mission. Bagging the manufactory would make everyone’s lives easier.
Somewhere out there in the chaos, Marine X was wreaking bloody havoc on the enemy. He’d check the HUD footage later to find out exactly what had gone on.
A drone spotted two Deathless that had taken cover in what appeared to be a makeshift latrine shed. Warden tossed a grenade in after them as he sprinted past and away – the detonation was going to get messy and he had no intention of spending the next few hours covered in guts or shit.
His charge took him between two boulders and into the midst of a squad of Deathless, all staring at him, agog, as he sprinted between them. Warden dived into a roll and when he came u
p he had managed to turn to face back the way he’d come. The Deathless were scrabbling for sidearms, rifles and blades, horrified by his sudden appearance in their ranks. Warden put a three-round burst into each of them then swapped in another magazine.
There was a wet splatter behind him, and something nasty landed on the other side of the boulders he’d just passed, evidence of his toilet grenade doing its work. He really hoped there weren’t any valuable weapons in that area because they couldn't afford to leave materiel behind and retrieving them would not be a fun job.
It seemed that they had caught the enemy unawares. Most of the Marines had made it to the floor of the mine, ready to attack, before the snipers had even felt the need to execute their first targets. The count of remaining enemy combatants was dropping rapidly, and Warden lurched into a crouching run again, using his HUD to find the next target and relying on the snipers and spotters to keep the information current.
He took a running jump over one of the concentric rings that formed the mine and dropped ten feet onto a smoke-filled ledge. He rolled to absorb the impact and come up in a crouch. He emptied the rest of his magazine, taking down two more Deathless while their colleagues ran for cover from the attack of the cliff-leaping madman. Warden swapped in his last magazine, shooting two more of the fleeing enemy as soon as it clicked into place, then he turned left, searching the smoke for the last of the group.
He found the helmeted soldier waiting right where he was least welcome. Even as Warden turned, he knew he’d never make it; he could only watch as the enemy rifle swung round to point directly at him.
Warden was close enough to see the soldier’s muscles tighten as it began to pull the trigger and smoke billowed around its legs. Then a glowing shape cut through its right arm and into its chest. The severed limb dropped and the rifle went with it, falling harmlessly to the ground in a spray of blood. The glow appeared again, springing forth from the throat to splash blood all over the ground.
“I say, Lieutenant, we really should stop meeting like this,” Ten said, appearing from behind the falling corpse to grin like a madman before vanishing back into the smoke, a glowing Deathless knife in his hand.
Warden took a couple of deep breaths and made a mental note to have a chat with Marine X later. Then he slung his carbine on his back and picked up the Deathless rifle, checking the round counter from force of habit before remembering that he had no idea how to read their strange language. He picked up the enemy soldier’s ammunition satchel and slapped in a fresh magazine, just in case, then moved out.
That leap had been a big gamble, taken in the heat of the moment. Now he took more control of himself, advancing methodically, paying attention to the information in his HUD and giving orders like a real officer should. He held himself in cover and concentrated on suppressing any enemy troopers so they could be flanked. It was bloody work that day – carnage, if truth be told. They’d ripped through the enemy like a chainsaw through rotten wood.
Warden watched as the body count increased and the number of remaining targets finally dropped to zero. They swept the mine for survivors and soldiers that might have escaped the survey then dealt with their own casualties. It turned out that he and Ten had been the only ones to rush quite so far forward; the rest had been more circumspect and their worst injuries were flesh wounds.
“They weren’t civilians, sir,” said Milton, catching up with Warden as he poked at a couple of enemy bodies, “none of them. They’re all wearing military clones, and they’re all armed, even the machine operators. It looks like they weren’t taking quite as many risks as we thought.”
“Good,” said Warden, somewhat relieved that he wouldn’t have a load of civilian deaths on his conscience, even if death amounted to no more than a temporary disembodiment.
Once he had checked the status of A Troop and satisfied himself that everything was secure, he moved to the target that had brought them here. The truck was intact, nothing but cosmetic damage from the firefight that had erupted around it. The tyres were in good order; the plan could proceed.
Then there was their unexpected find, the manufactory in the shed. Ten had swept through the building, checking for any Deathless they might have missed, and the area was clear. Within the shed, a manufactory unit rested on a large powered sled. Warden levered open a crate and found it full of weapon parts.
Milton whistled when she drew level with him. “Nice. That should make the captain and the governor a little happier.”
“I’m sure it will. Let's get this sled moving and get it back to Fort Widley,” he said.
“Sir?”
“Yes, Sergeant?”
“Shouldn’t we crack on with the plan and let the captain know this is here?” Milton asked.
Warden shook his head. “No, this manufactory could be the difference between winning and losing. It’s set up for military equipment and better than anything we have in Ashton or the Fort. We need to get moving because we can’t stick around to guard it against the enemy. We have two missions now. But once this thing is on the move, we’ll ask the captain if he can send backup. Otherwise, we’ll move it just far enough to hide it, then pick it up once we’ve finished our primary mission.”
Milton frowned but didn’t say anything more. Warden was relieved; he valued Milton’s judgement, of course, but she tended to focus on the immediate problems rather than take the longer view, which was exactly what made her a great NCO. No plan survived contact with the enemy and this was a stroke of luck they couldn’t afford to ignore.
He left her to organise moving the huge piece of equipment and arrange for the enemy dead to be stripped of anything of value while he went to sort out the truck. The techs seemed to have everything well under control, retrofitting it to suit Warden’s mad plan.
Satisfied the techs had the truck in hand, he turned back to the manufactory to get an update. Milton’s team had manoeuvred it out of the shed, and the sled was moving slowly towards the ramps that would take it up the side of the mine and out into the rocky terrain between them and their new base of operations, Fort Widley.
Half a dozen Marines from Section 3 were surrounding the sled, walking with it as it neared the ramp. Milton was checking in with the Marines who had been looting the enemy dead for serviceable items. Warden made a note that they should take even broken kit, if they could carry it. Anything that couldn’t be repaired would just be fed back into the manufactories in Fort Widley.
He was about to walk over to Milton when he noticed something going on with the sled. Corporal Green and Lance Corporal Long were having a somewhat animated discussion, gesturing at the side of the manufactory. One of the panels had lit up like a birthday party, lights twinkling and an image rotating on the large display. That was odd. It meant that whatever was displayed was being made, right now, and he hadn’t certainly ordered anyone to turn it on.
Then Green and Long began to run, waving their arms and shouting. Warden felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He was moving before he processed what was wrong. He couldn’t hear it, they were too far away, but he could see Green and Long were screaming at their section to scatter. Milton turned to face Warden, puzzled that he was sprinting towards her. The sled with its heavy cargo was maybe three hundred metres behind her, down the ramp.
Warden could feel the burn as his lungs sucked down the thin Bristolian air, trying to support his furious sprint. He saw the realisation on Milton’s face, the sudden awareness that something was wrong, terribly wrong. He tried to issue an order through the HUD but he didn’t have the breath or the time.
He didn’t see the flash, not really – it was too bright to register and the HUD blocked most of the glare. He felt the shockwave like a slap in the chest from the hand of a petulant giant, lifting him off his feet and throwing him out of consciousness. Warden’s world went black.
19
“Move up,” said Idol, waving to the team and aiming his rifle down the street to cover them. They headed for t
he next firing position in the odd crouching run that now seemed to be the only way they moved. They were making for a cluster of drop pods that had been flagged for investigation by the drone teams after the orbital bombardment.
Idol had decided that his team would take an active part in clearing the city rather than hang back in one place, waiting for the next Deathless attack. He’d put the plan to his team, asking for dissenting opinions, and if anyone had expressed serious concerns, he would have reconsidered. There were some suggestions, and they tweaked the plan to accommodate them, but it seemed his team were a lot more confident after the firefight at the brewery.
And so, with his team’s backing, Idol had led them out into Ashton to hunt the enemy.
Now they were only a hundred metres from their target building. It was a substantial structure with steel-reinforced foamcrete pillars throughout and vehicle parking bays on the ground floor. Above, the building had floors for warehouse and distribution, a factory and an office, with solar units on the roof. The sturdiness of the building supported the weight of the machinery it held, although Idol couldn’t imagine why it was necessary to have such equipment anywhere higher than the ground floor. Whatever the reason, it meant the building had not fallen victim to the violence that had flattened so many others in Ashton.
“We should get a good view of the square from the upper floors,” Idol had said when they’d thrashed through the plan. The square had once been as nice a place as any on New Bristol to have a sandwich at lunchtime or to wile away an hour’s spare time. Now, it was a burnt and shattered remnant, a dessert surrounded by the corpses of the city’s buildings and populated only with the withered stumps of trees lost in the early stages of the invasion.
He knew he wasn’t going to be best pleased when he saw what the arrival of a series of Deathless drop pods had done to his favourite outdoor space. On the plus side, if they found the occupants, they could shoot them for it. Garden vandals were usually treated far more leniently.