by James Evans
The loss of the square hurt, but the damage to the bio-domes that he and Adams had created was far worse. Built as simulacra of the outside world, they had been too fragile to withstand bullets and explosions and their contents were now dead and scattered. It would be years before they could be replaced and their plants regrown.
Idol shook his head, clearing it of distracting musings and bringing himself back to the present. He ran forward, working with the fireteams as they advanced. He wanted to be at the front, where he felt he belonged, for some reason.
Perhaps, he thought, because leaders are supposed to be at the front.
The target building seemed to be empty when they arrived, so he led the first fireteam straight in, taking the door himself and bounding up the stairs past the parking level, heading for the roof. His team were more cautious, checking the first level before they realised he’d dashed ahead. He could hear them cursing softly as he took the stairs three at a time.
He burst onto the roof and crouched down, hugging the low wall that formed the perimeter. It was topped with a short railing as a nod to health and safety, but this wasn’t the sort of place you were supposed to be wandering around. Shuffling on hands and knees, he made his way to the far side of the building, trying to get a view of the square.
By the time his team reached him, he’d seen enough. The place was wrecked and there was no sign of the Deathless.
“Looks like they’ve gone,” said Adams, echoing Idol’s thoughts.
“Looks that way,” agreed Idol, “but we should probably take a closer look, make sure they’re not just hiding.”
There were drop pods scattered across the square, some on the roads and some in the park. They were all open and empty, their former occupants nowhere to be seen. One had been neatly skewered by the foamcrete obelisk that commemorated the founding of Ashton. From the mess oozing down the polished sides of the pointed composite stonework, the Deathless troopers riding in it had been turned into a paste that resembled strawberry jam.
Serves them right, thought Idol, without sympathy.
“What the hell is that?” someone breathed in a near whisper, pointing down the street.
Idol looked, but it took him a moment to work out what he was seeing.
They were drop pods spread across much of the city, and most of the company had seen them falling from the sky after the orbital bombardment. They were common enough that nobody really noticed them anymore.
But here, in the square, were two much larger pods that really drew the eye. They resembled the common drop pods in shape and style, but they were far larger than the four-person pods the Deathless had dropped all over Ashton. These two were broad enough across the base for perhaps ten or twelve seats and were at least three times as high.
“Perhaps they’re triple-decker drop pods for large teams?” suggested Adams half-heartedly, “Or maybe they deliver a couple of squads with heavy equipment or large drones?” It was clear he didn’t believe either suggestion and whatever the truth, it probably wasn’t good news. “At least they’re not big enough for tanks!”
“Yeah, at least it isn’t tanks,” agreed Idol absently, frowning down at the pods.
They watched for a few minutes longer but nothing moved in the street except dust on the wind.
It took them another fifteen minutes to clear the immediate area, check the pods and confirm that the nearby buildings were empty. Nothing. The Deathless hadn’t stuck around, but they had left tracks across the park and away to the south-west.
Idol looked down at the churned up ground and around the square. “That way,” said Idol, waving towards the south-west. “We’ll follow these bastards and see if we can’t show them what Ashton does to vandals.”
“What, you mean shoot them?” asked Adams. “Only, I don’t know if you’ve read the local news recently, but we don’t usually do that.”
“Well, now we do. Serves ‘em right for smashing up my bio-domes, right?” barked Idol.
“Okay, you heard the captain. Let’s move out and teach these bastards some err… civic pride!” Adams shouted to general amusement as they walked in the direction the muddy tracks indicated.
They moved down the broad street and soon picked up the trail. The boot prints of the soldiers weren’t visible, but something had cracked the surface of the road and left deep impressions every couple of metres.
“Something’s wrong,” muttered Idol, picking up the pace and forgoing cover in return for speed.
Perhaps they’d landed some kind of power armour suits? The ogre suits were pretty massive, but maybe the Deathless had a clone type that was even larger, or maybe they had a second form of power armour that shattered the road, for some reason. Whatever it was, Idol was determined that his company would catch it and destroy it before it could wade into a firefight and tip the scales.
“Come on, you lot. Last one to bag a Deathless buys the first round!” he shouted, as he broke into a run.
It wasn’t long before they found what they were looking for. They turned west at a crossroads, following the damaged road, and came to a junction where the Deathless had gone south. Huffing and puffing, Idol stopped near the corner, and everyone pulled up nearby, gasping for breath. Clone bodies started out in perfect physical condition, but they still gained weight and lost muscle if they weren’t exercised enough, and the day’s activities had already taken a toll.
When his brain had stopped swimming, Idol risked sticking his head around the corner. They were right there, advancing cautiously down the street. There were at least two dozen Deathless troopers, but his eyes were drawn to the two enormous humanoid machines that towered over the enemy soldiers.
Robots? Or giants in powered armour? thought Idol, shouldering his rifle reflexively. The things were huge, over five metres tall, and Idol wasn’t keen to attack.
Then half the team rounded the corner and opened fire on the closest Deathless troopers. Someone hurled a grenade, and a long burst of fire tore into the back of a group of enemy soldiers sheltering behind a low wall. At any other time, it would have been a good response to the threat. The attack had certainly surprised the Deathless and they scrabbled to clear the street and return fire.
But the huge robots weren’t fazed and they didn’t run for cover.
Even as Idol shouted the order to retreat, one of the robots turned, pivoting its body without moving its legs.
The upper torso span neatly around, bringing a huge weapon to face the militia. Idol boggled at the thing as it spewed rounds towards his troops, chewing up the road surface and then eating through bodies, blasting them apart.
“Back, back!” he shouted, although his troops needed no encouragement and were streaming around the corner, desperate to get away from the monstrous robots.
Idol watched them go, waving them on. Then he, too, was running, and all he could think about was the terrible Deathless weapon blasting apart his comrades.
“What the fuck was that!” shouted Adams as they pounded down the road for all they were worth.
“Don’t know,” replied Idol, “don’t care. Just keep running!”
20
“Lieutenant? You’re okay, sir, just a bit of a bump. How many fingers am I holding up?”
Warden tried to focus, but everything was a blur and his ears were ringing.
“Sir, I’m going to flush your eyes out. Try and keep them open, you’ve probably got some dust in there from the explosion, but this ought to help,” the voice said. A damp cloth was wiped gently across his face then water was splashed over his eyes. As it ran off, Warden found his focus returning and his eyes began to feel better as he blinked them clear. A water bottle was pressed into his hand, and he swilled some around his mouth then spat it out, repeating several times to clear the taste of dirt and the gritty sensation, then he took several deep gulps.
“Again, sir. Can you tell how many fingers I’m holding up?”
“Yes, I can, Goodwin, thanks,” Warden said.
Goodwin leaned back. “Okay, you’re shouting but there’s no blood coming from your ears, so I think you’ll be fine. Let’s put your HUD back on. Set it to compensation mode and let it establish a baseline for audio and compensate for your hearing loss.”
Warden nodded consent and Goodwin helped him fit his HUD back on. Immediately the sound around him quietened and he selected an option to confirm exposure to an explosion. The HUD ran a diagnostic hearing test with him and then began to filter external noises to help him recover. Speech became clearer and a flood of data started to come in.
“What happened?” he asked, still a little confused about recent events.
“The manufactory exploded, sir. Do you remember?”
He shook his head and immediately regretted it, wincing as pain shot through his skull.
“Yeah, use the HUD if speaking is a problem. You almost certainly have a concussion. You were closer than most when the explosion went off,” Goodwin explained.
He remembered something! “Milton,” he croaked, “did she make it?”
“She actually did a bit better than you, sir. She was facing away and moving in the right direction. The blast threw her around, but she landed without cracking her head. You’re both pretty banged up but still operational. Sir, I want to give you something for the pain, but first I need to know if you’ve got any broken bones. Don’t scream or it’ll make your head worse. I’m going to check, now. Slap the floor if it’s bad,” said Goodwin.
Being felt up by a hot sweaty Marine while they were both covered in a thick layer of dust and filth wasn’t even slightly fun. It was painful too but, improbable as it seemed, he didn’t have any broken bones. Lots of bruises, though, and he was sure that some of his bruises had bruises.
Once Goodwin had established there was nothing seriously wrong and had checked the HUD readout for heart rate, blood pressure and blood oxygenation, Warden got a shot of painkiller and a dose of combat stimulant. Nothing major, just enough to let him work through the pain. Then Goodwin hit him with a massive dose of anti-inflammatories and a cocktail of other drugs to support his recovery.
After a few moments, Warden’s head stopped pounding so badly and his limbs felt less leaden. He stood up and checked for dizziness, performing a quick balance test as recommended by the warning symbol on his HUD. Goodwin cleared him for duty and he thanked her, then looked over to where the manufactory had been on the sled. There was nothing left but a crater, a big one. He remembered it had been extruding something, turned on and active when it should have been switched off and dormant.
Warden walked over to Milton, who was sat on a lawn chair by the remains of a temporary hut that had been flattened by the blast wave. She was filthy, covered head to toe in dust.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Like I got slapped in the back with a cricket bat. You?”
“Feels like I’ve got a drunken Welsh choir in my head and I just visited an incompetent masseur who moonlights as a shot-putter,” Warden replied.
“Most of the casualties only have minor shrapnel wounds and some hearing problems. We lost Green, Long, McGee, Headley and Scott though, half the section.”
“Yeah, I saw the HUD report. It’s fucking bad news all around. The only saving grace is that more of our people weren’t closer when it went off,” he said, then looked around, kicking at the dust for a moment. “I’m sorry. If I’d listened to your advice and not tried to have my cake and eat it, we might have got someone here who’d have checked the thing over before moving it. They must have set it to produce an explosive charge if it was moved without authorisation.”
“Shit happens. No point crying about it now. The lads understand and they were backed-up; they’re already queued for redeployment in the cloning bay.” She paused to work a kink out of her neck. “Marine X is a bit grumpy.”
Warden sighed. Marine X was one of those people for whom boredom and inactivity were always the biggest problems.
“What’s got his knickers in a twist?” he asked, although he didn’t really want to know.
“If I understand it, he’s been hoping he’ll get killed next so we can redeploy him in that last ogre. He wants to try it on for size.”
“Hah. It’s tempting to slot the bastard now, but we’d have to wait for him to catch up. Anyway, you saw what he did on our most recent video night. Does he even need a suit like that?”
“Not in the usual sense of the word, no. I can’t help wondering what he’d be like in it, though. Certainly a damned sight more effective than those Deathless bastards.”
Warden nodded but he wasn’t going to worry about Marine X’s weird body fantasies.
“How long was I out?”
“About fifteen minutes. Pull up a pew,” Milton said, gesturing at the rock beside her. “It’ll take another fifteen or so for the techs to finish rigging up that monster and filling the hopper,” Milton said, pointing at the dumper truck. The Marines near the truck barely came up to its axles. The thing was an absolute beast.
Warden sat down and pulled a slightly battered ration bar from his webbing. It looked just as squashed as he felt and it had the taste and appeal of sun-dried cardboard. Humanity had been an interstellar species for centuries but still couldn’t make energy bars that tasted or felt like something you would actually eat if you had a choice.
Warden shook his head as he contemplated the horrible bar. They can squirt my brainwaves through an interstellar wormhole the width of a pin and deploy me in a cloned body within a few hours, he thought, but they can’t make a protein bar that you could persuade a four-year-old to eat, not even a chocolate one. A few more gulps of water didn’t ease the chewing, but it did wash the taste away.
“Do you think it’ll work?” he asked quietly, nodding at the dumper truck.
“Maybe. It’s not a bad idea, just a bit unusual. I think it’s worth a try and even if it doesn’t work, it’ll be a good show. If you hadn’t dreamed it up, the Deathless might have caused all sorts of trouble with this site before we noticed they were here. Plus we took care of a load of them all at once and with very few casualties. Not a bad day’s work, all things considered,” Milton mused.
They sat in silence for a while, watching the activity around the dumper truck until, finally, it seemed like it was winding down. Warden looked at Milton, she nodded and they began walking, somewhat gingerly, over to their reason for coming to this god-forsaken hole in the ground.
It was hard to grasp the sheer scale of the thing. Was there any land vehicle he’d seen that matched it for sheer size and bulk? Warden couldn’t think of one. The spec sheet said it could carry six hundred and fifty tons of rock and that it had a top speed of about seventy-five kph, over firm terrain.
He nodded at the techs. “Cooke, Richardson, Barlow. Who wants to give me an update?”
Barlow piped up first. “We’ve got everything ready, sir, as ordered.” He held up a data slate and flashed some sort of dashboard at Warden. “We’re good to go as soon as you want.”
“Will your modifications work?”
Barlow sucked air through his teeth like an old-time mechanic looking over a dodgy repair job.
“Should do, sir, should do. I, er, wouldn’t like to guarantee the plan will come off as you hope, but I think the truck will do her bit. Probably.”
“Good. Sergeant, that’ll do for now. Get your team to their assigned places and let’s move out, on the double.”
Marine Fletcher was sticking well back from the group, still trying to get used to her new body as the Marines yomped across the open terrain. In what Lieutenant Warden had described as an ‘ironic’ situation, she found herself redeployed in one of the Deathless Ogre clones just a few days after being killed by an identical body on the bridge of the ship during her last action. Ten had been wildly jealous but Fletcher wasn’t seeing the funny side.
For the attack on the open-cast mine, she had worn standard fatigues and webbing. Standard Deat
hless fatigues, at least. They hadn’t been expecting trouble so nobody had worn power armour. For the next stage of the mission, the plan called for an entirely different approach. They had ditched the rovers several kilometres out at a secure location, or as secure as they could find, and now she was suited, jogging along with the rest of the troop.
The rovers were designed for moving people and small cargoes; they weren’t good for carrying full troops of commandos in all their gear and they certainly couldn’t handle an ogre in power armour. They’d had to fit her into the armour once they had reached the drop-off point. Armoured, she was truly enormous.
Warden suppressed a grin as he imagined Ten’s reaction when he saw her all kitted up.
But his good humour faded as he remembered how little power armour they had been able to bring for this mission. Some Marines were equipped; most weren’t. The mission required speed and power and they just didn’t have enough reliable rovers to carry all the armour.
The Deathless suit that Fletcher wore was performing well. It was high-quality work and Warden wondered, not for the first time, why the quality of the Deathless kit seemed to be so much better than the discipline and training of the enemy troops who used it. Then again, he was relying on a Penal Marine as a core part of this plan, so maybe he shouldn’t be too critical of the enemy. Never look a gift horse in the mouth.
“Goodwin, how’s it looking?” he said, glancing at the Lance Corporal sitting nearby, back against a rock, watching a data slate.
“It’s all good, sir. We’re on target for final approach in four minutes.”
“Excellent. Get me a feed, would you? I want to be able to see the approach stage so we can get the timing right. Milton, make sure everyone is ready to go. We’ll keep Fletcher and the others back until the fireworks start, then they advance as swiftly as possible. Goodwin, you stay here with Bailey and Parker, and once you’re done with that,” he said, gesturing at the data slate controller, “get us some drone support, okay?”