The Midnight Sun (The Omega War Book 2)

by Tim C. Taylor

  After a few test swipes of the CASPer’s arms, which flung mud but achieved little else, he soon picked up a rhythm that dragged him along the ground like a mechanical swimmer. With a little more practice, he managed to cruise at a fast walking pace. Keep this up for any length of time and his shoulders were going to bitch about it, but the power that pulled him along was coming from the Mark 8’s fuel cells, and they’d last longer than the rest of him.

  It would have to do. They headed north, planning to skirt around the Condottieri and rejoin Venix before the river spread into a wide delta and then the sea. They had no safe means of contacting the other Midnighter forces, and they didn’t know the location of either friend or foe. For this to work, they had to overtake the tugs that were hopefully floating down the river. Catching up with the others wasn’t impossible, because they could take a direct route while the river snaked, but to be honest, they were trusting to blind luck. Nonetheless they were on the move, and it felt good to be armed with a MAC cannon in one arm and a machine gun in the other, even if they’d be difficult to aim at anything higher than feet and worms.

  His main worry were the legs he was dragging behind him across every stone, twig, branch, and fallen nut. Flattened by the weight of his CASPer torso and lubricated by mud, the going was smooth but was still gradually shredding his legs.

  By the time they reached Venix, there’d be nothing left of them but a few nerves and blood vessels caulked with dirt hanging loose out of his suit’s leg holes.

  The pain in his legs. That was a problem too. Having been numbed by the nanites, it erupted into screaming agony before returning to numbness for a while. Then the agony would leap back in the saddle.

  But he kept going.

  Sun kept overwatch and lifted him over a few obstacles but said nothing.

  Entombed within his armor, Branco could see out only via his exterior cameras. But the front-mounted cams were pointed down at the ground, and the ones at the top and to the sides of his torso were permanently blinded with dirt. Only his rear cams were clear, and they couldn’t angle enough to see where he was going. It was like swimming backstroke. Inside a metal barrel.

  Which was why, as dusk descended, he powered straight into a deep pool and immediately sank like the lead-weighted turtle shell that he was.

  Frantically, he sought something to grab hold of to pull himself out. But his CASPer hands clutched only liquid.

  Muddy water poured in through the leg holes.

  If he didn’t bail out, he was going to drown.

  With his left hand inside his suit, reaching for his harness release, his right – still in its haptic hook up – touched something solid through his CASPer fingers.

  A hand. Sun.

  He held on tightly as she pulled him out of the pit and used the immense strength of her CASPer to hold him aloft as the water drained from his legs.

  “This isn’t working,” she said a short while later as he got his breath back, sitting against a tree a short distance from his sodden CASPer.

  “It was a good attempt,” he said. “Leave me here. Come back when this is over.”

  “I’m not leaving you to die.”

  He sighed. “I know you won’t, elf maiden.”

  “What the fuck did you just call me?”

  “Doesn’t matter. If you won’t take my advice, you could carry me in your arms, or make one of those litters you used to haul Venix around.”

  “Those are the fallback plans. We’re in hostile territory. It would be better if we could operate independently, and for me to be able to fight without encumbrance. I…wait, I have an idea. Stay there!”

  Sun took off at a run without further explanation. For several minutes he looked into the patch of trees into which she’d disappeared. Realizing he’d soon lose the light, he crawled over to the legless CASPer and began stripping it of anything useful.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 101

  “What am I supposed to do with these?” asked Branco early the next morning.

  He stared incredulously at the pile of scout robots and vines that Sun had brought back, heaped in her CASPer’s arms, after her nighttime excursion.

  “Four bloodhound bots,” she replied. “Antennae ripped out and reset to factory defaults. Assorted raw materials for lashing, affixment, harnesses, and…other construct…shuns.”

  Man, she sounded exhausted.

  “You’re the engineer-turned-spy,” she told him, “I just acquired the gear, and from the same corpses who donated the suits. I buried them. Seemed only fair, seeing as their friends hadn’t found them. Go figure it out, I’ll take overwatch.”

  Sun moved away into deeper cover, leaving him with the junk strewn over the ground like a grown-up’s puzzle set.

  “Get some sleep,” he told her. “If we’re attacked, I’ll scream.”

  Beneath the dense trees the morning light was dim, but Branco’s mind shone brightly with possibilities.

  * * *

  The next two days saw rapid progress through the jungle on their way to meet Venix. After some hurried experimentation, Branco had settled on straddling a bundle of sturdy sticks lashed together, which he rode like a floating log. Instead of being buoyed by water, this contraption floated on a wooden platform strapped to the backs of the four bloodhounds.

  It was obvious from their shoddy assembly and calibration that the bots had been rush-finished here on the planet. Nonetheless the base design was sound and placed great emphasis on using the eight legs of each bot to provide its sensors with a stable platform over any type of terrain. Branco harnessed that stability to deliver an astonishingly smooth ride for the human they bore upon their backs.

  They traveled without caution, realizing that sneaking through the swamp was not an option if they were to meet up with Venix and the Raknar. Branco rode his strange mount recklessly, trusting his bots to pick the best route through the swamp. Using a slate Sun had liberated from one of the Condottieri troopers, he set waypoints for the bots via a short-range radio link. The slate proved very handy, with a better map than the ones the two Midnighters remembered from their descent to the planet.

  They decided to aim for rapids downstream where the river neared the edge of the swamp. Both thought there was a good chance the Condottieri would try to intercept Venix and his valuable cargo at the same point, but what else could they do?

  Without any discussion on the topic, a pattern soon established itself. For a couple of hours, Branco would forge ahead with Sun jogging behind. Then they’d set the bloodhounds to act as sentries while they rested for ten minutes before repeating.

  After the first day, the rest stop doubled, and soon they were crashing through the trees for a shorter duration, too. The initial problem was Sun’s CASPer, which had picked up damage to its venting and cooling systems. It wasn’t bad enough to bring up a red light on her status board, but it made her suit more vulnerable to clogging its exhaust ports in the dank environment.

  As fast as Branco worked during their down periods to clear the vents and grills of the major’s suit, they’d clog within minutes of setting off again.

  Heedless of the risk, they had no choice but to seek the best cover they could every hour or so and pop open Sun’s cockpit to vent the fumes that had built up within. Meanwhile, they’d use the downtime to perform bodily functions. Rest was the most vital, and the most unpleasant was eating. The rations that had been lashed across the hoods of the two tugs were lost to them now, and they resorted to eating the worms and beetles that were plentiful in the rich soil.

  At the start of the trek, Branco had shared Betty’s trick of stripping the venom sacs from the brown flying slugs, but the vegetation had changed – the trees getting broader and shorter – and this didn’t suit the slugs. He hadn’t seen one in days.

  They had no idea whether they were extracting nutrients from the results of the bug hunts, but their stomachs were settling a little, and if their guts had only the illusion of something
useful to do, it was better than the gnawing emptiness that was the alternative. Even if they were extracting some goodness from the creatures of slime and chitin, it clearly wasn’t enough. They were both shedding weight rapidly.

  Three days after Branco ditched his CASPer and started riding the bloodhounds, and with a little over a day before they estimated they’d reach the rapids, Branco commented on Sun’s gaunt appearance.

  “You need to fill out,” he told her as they rested in the lee of her venting CASPer. “You’ll fall out your harness if you don’t. Sirloin steak’s what you need. Cooked rare. Roasted potatoes and rich gravy too. Did you want me to order some?”

  She gave him a hard look, then shook her head. “Ice cream,” she said, rolling her eyes in ecstatic pleasure at the thought. “Give me ice cream, Branco. I don’t need anything fancy. Vanilla. Triple scoop with hazelnut sprinklings, and thick chili-chocolate sauce.”

  Branco laughed. “You sure?

  “Oh, yeah.” She grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “If you have the slightest interest in my happiness, Saisho Branco, you’ll get me ice cream. And you’ll do it now!”

  “Close your eyes,” he told her.

  She knelt before him, shaking with laughter as he dropped a beetle into her mouth.

  “Remember, Sun, it’s ice cream. Vanilla. With crunchy sauce.”

  She bit down, crunching its carapace.

  “That’s the chocolate sauce,” he said. “You like?”

  “Feed me more,” Sun laughed, her eyes still closed.

  One of the bots shot off. Then another.

  Then the other two ran off.

  “What are you waiting for?” asked Sun. “That was so good.”

  He leant over and gently put his forehead against hers. “Sorry, Sun. I think something’s spooked the sentries.”

  * * *

  By the time the bots returned to Branco like a pack of faithful hounds, Sun was back in her CASPer, powered up and ready to unleash hell on the culprits responsible for ruining her imaginary feast.

  Once they were within the ten-foot connection range of Branco’s slate, the bots beamed images of what they’d found.

  Branco stared at the video of deep depressions in the muddy ground, filled with water and their edges oozing over. They were CASPer boot prints with horizontal stabilizers. They looked to be a few hours old, and the orientation grid showed they were headed northwest…toward the river rapids.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 102

  They urged each other on through the night, each haunted by the unspoken terror that Venix and their comrades would have already crossed the rapids and left them behind. Ever since they’d been cut off, the belief that they’d rejoin the others at the rapids had become an article of faith, which meant they’d never quite felt alone. Never mind that Branco had cursed himself at the abandoned camp for believing in imaginary reinforcement; he clung to this strand of hope without question.

  Each of them exhorted the other to keep going when exhaustion threatened to overwhelm them. But the words of encouragement slowly grew cruel barbs designed to wound, verbal lashes across their backs to keep them going through that next hundred yards. And the next. They would not be left behind!

  In the end, exhaustion defeated them.

  They halted for a brief rest and to vent Sun’s suit. With the bloodhounds acting once more as sentries, they sat apart in awkward silence, the harsh words they’d used on the journey too recent to be forgotten.

  After a fifteen-minute stop, Branco recalled his bloodhounds and they began coaxing their tired and hungry bodies to head off for the last leg before the rapids.

  What would they discover there? The remains of a massacre, the bodies of their friends washed up on the shore? Perhaps nothing, with no way to know whether Venix was yet to arrive or had passed by days before. But whatever they encountered, he knew he didn’t want to face it with this coldness between them.

  “Sun?” he called hesitantly. He’d saddled up on his strange traveling contraption, his four bloodhound mounts by now so slick at transforming from sentry mode that they reattached themselves to his platform without being asked.

  She was standing by her CASPer’s leg, about to climb in, but turned around.

  Branco groaned in pain. It was his legs. He’d said nothing on their journey here, because there was nothing to be done, and she was scared as it was. The nanites Sun had injected had gone off to war against the infectious diseases and wounds. But as every hour passed, it became clearer it was a war they’d lost.

  Sun’s face loosened from a near-scowl into a look of concern. “Are you all right?”

  “Piles,” he said. It was a lie, of course, but the way Sun wrinkled her pretty nose in disgust told him she’d bought it.

  “I just wanted to say…” Branco started. Then he dried up. He and Sun had always outflanked any talk about their feelings for each other. They were about to reach the river. Whatever they did or didn’t discover there, things would be different after. He needed to talk directly. There might never be another chance.

  Sun frowned. “Whatever you were thinking of saying, Branco, don’t. I haven’t got time for you to get all weepy and unburden your dumb emotional crap all over me.”

  “Tough shit, Major. I’m unburdening anyway. I only wanted to say I don’t regret any of it. You. Joining the Midnighters. Breaking up. Beetles and mud. If I could rewind, I’d do it all again.”

  She stormed over and planted her boots in the ground beside his riding platform, her crossed arms matching the fury on her face. “You’re a dumbshit, disobedient, disrespectful, pain in the ass.”

  He shrugged. “Is that all you’ve got?”

  “Shuddup! I haven’t finished. You’re a dangerous, overly-complicated, infuriating, self-centered, and insubordinate sweet man. And when I say you’re sweet, I don’t mean in the sense you’re a nonthreatening gamma wimp. I mean you taste good.”

  Sun Sue was a confusing woman. Her face was incandescent with rage, and it seemed to him that those arms were knotted together so firmly to prevent her hands reaching down to the knives in her boots and slitting his throat.

  And yet her lips were suddenly flushed full with promise, and her hungry gaze was locked onto his own mouth.

  “I wish I’d never laid eyes on you,” she said huskily, “but being with you has made it easier not being with my sister. And for that I thank you, Branco.”

  She leaned in. His mind was being lured in by her lips, but where they led was not a good place for either of them right now.

  He swallowed hard. “You’d better suit up,” he said. “Condottieri could be really close.”

  She growled like an angry lioness. Then she clambered into her stolen CASPer and shut the canopy on him without a word.

  “Good luck,” said Branco, but Sun didn’t reply.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 103

  Sun watched the tugs traverse the rapids via her CASPer camera trained on Branco’s slate. A bloodhound had recorded the scene from the top of the tree they were now standing beside, and now they were observing an uploaded copy of what it had seen.

  They were too late. They’d missed the rendezvous.

  The tree in question was the tallest in the vicinity and about three klicks from the river. Even at this distance, they could hear a faint rumble through the ground from the water cascading down the drop, raising clouds high into the sky.

  To the northwest the little bot had seen the edge of the swamp, and on the northern horizon they could make out the beginnings of the river delta that ended in the sea.

  Venix was nearing the end of his thousand-klick trek.

  The sea…was Midnight Sun still alive under the waves?

  Sun refused to accept that this journey Venix had led them through would ultimately prove futile.

  But neither could she bring herself to believe that her sister still lived and awaited them over the horizon.

  The bot had observed t
he final moments of Venix’s descent. She guessed the lift tugs had expended all their fuel now. They sat on huge log rafts that were carried down the descent by the simple method of having teams of CASPers carry them, their jumpjets blasting.

  The bot had scaled the tree too late to see the beginning of the operation, but Sun guessed that, rather than carrying the huge tugs, it was more accurate to say the CASPers had lifted them over the rocks that churned the water into rapids. Once the tugs were falling into the lake below, the CASPers could do no more than slow their descent from headlong plunge to survivable impact. Hopefully.

  The bot had captured the last seconds of the CASPers lowering the second tug down. Their jump juice had finally run out; CASPers, raft, and tug with an ancient Raknar inside plummeted the last 120 feet in freefall.

  Whether anyone or anything had survived the drop the bot’s view had been too obscured by other trees to see.

  Sun had to assume they’d survived.

  “A helluva drop,” Branco said. She caught the strain in his voice. “But that could be our salvation. Reckon they’ll need a while to fix any damage to that raft and fish out any sunken CASPers who couldn’t make it out of the water under their own power.”

  “You’re right. Saddle up, Trooper. We need to get down there. Fast.”

  * * *

  They burst from the trees into clouds of thunderous mist. Visibility was thirty feet at best. There was no way she could see down to the lake below.

  Branco was shouting at her, but his words were drowned out by the roar of the cascading water.

  “Say again,” she instructed him, once she’d filtered out the water noise.