by Richard Fox
“We better slow down, LT. Opal isn’t made for long distances,” Max complained.
“Funny, I don’t hear him complaining,” Hoffman said then did a double take. “King, did you see what I saw?”
“Movement to our left flank. Someone or something paralleling us.”
Hoffman took his team to a slight rise around a large rock formation. The sandy prairie stretched down and away in every direction. “Duke, tell me what you see.”
“On it,” Duke said. “Opal, give me a boost.”
The doughboy pressed the sniper above his head. Seconds later, the sniper scrambled onto the top of the rock and went prone with his optics.
Wind and swaying grass passed the time.
“Whoever or whatever you fine gentlemen think you saw is gone,” Duke said. “Or it was your imagination. Don’t even see a residual heat pass on the ground.”
Hoffman didn’t argue.
“If Duke didn’t see it, it wasn’t there,” Booker said.
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Doc.” The sniper paused. “Look there, two-forty degrees at three hundred meters.”
Hoffman trained his optics on a herd of bright orange gazelle-analogs nearly lost in the rising sun. Ordinarily, he’d be skeptical of their camouflage, but in this light, they were almost invisible.
“They’re on the move. Probably traveling to a watering hole with large numbers of other herbivores to shelter from predators, but they timed it poorly.” Duke’s voice was quiet, reverent as a big-game hunter seeing new prey for the first time.
“Shit,” Max said.
Hoffman’s gut tightened as three blurs of yellow and orange shot from a line of scrub and ran down the slowest of the orange and brown gazelles.
“Hot damn! Those things have big teeth,” Duke said. “Straight-up sabretooths. Somebody's cubs are eating meat tonight.”
“There’ll be other predators. Can’t tell if we smell like dinner or not to them,” Hoffman said.
“Maybe our Karigole hosts will give us some useful survival tips,” Max said, looking around theatrically. “Wait, they’re not here.”
Garrison slapped him on the back of his helmet. “Hey, you act like you’ve gone poking around a ship that was supposed to be full of friendly aliens, only to be chased around by inhuman monsters that want to rip your arms off.”
“Once bitten, twice shy,” Max said.
“I will not turn into a banshee,” Gor’al said. “I promise.”
Hoffman sent a message to the Scipio: “No sign of hosts. Charlie Mike.” Continue Mission.
Birds circled something beyond the horizon. The roar of stalkers echoed from the kill site as they ate. A large, angry hawk creature screeched.
“Just in time for dinner,” Booker said.
Shadows grew long as the sun slipped below the horizon.
Hoffman motioned King into a conference. “This isn’t the worst position from a tactical perspective—good field of view, some cover in the rocks, but no water or other sustainables. I’d rather not try and approach the settlement during hours of darkness. That might spook the Karigole.”
“This mission isn’t as time sensitive,” King said. “We can afford to wait until morning.”
“Good. Let’s move out in five. See if Opal can get Duke down from his perch without hurting him,” Hoffman said.
His team watched three more kills and came close enough to make their own with gauss rifles if they’d had the need. Once Duke found a good campsite, Hoffman ordered them to eat, drink water, and sleep in shifts.
Duke pulled Hoffman aside. “Let me take one gazelle. That’s all I ask. I could be back in an hour or two. I’m sure they’d taste great roasted over an open fire.”
“We’re not on safari or a walkabout.”
Duke spat tobacco. “Had to try. For the record, the air is clear. I could take a two-thousand-meter shot.”
“Of course.”
****
Dawn broke six hours later. Hoffman wasn’t sure if the planet’s axial tilt had the area in its summer season, or if Nimrod naturally rotated faster than Earth.
After silent reveille, less than five minutes passed before they were headed across the alien landscape—Duke on point, Garrison on the left flank, Booker on the right flank, and Opal bringing up the rear. Hoffman, King, Max, and Gor’al held the center of the travel formation but maintained distance from each other. They used helmet radios and hand signs to communicate. No two Strike Marines were close enough to be taken out by one grenade, rocket, or improvised device. The only exception was that Hoffman kept Max closer at hand because of his communications equipment.
Maneuvering across the open landscape was at once easier and more difficult. Team movements were simplified, but they were constantly exposed. They could have moved faster—he trained them hard on and off transport ships and on dozens of worlds—but they had no clear destination. The Scipio was on standby for pickup—a maneuver that took time that they probably wouldn’t have if this was like their last mission or three.
“Just one gazelle,” Duke said.
“Negative,” Hoffman answered.
“I think the old man has something,” Garrison chimed in. “What self-respecting officer doesn’t have an orange gazelle head in their office? All clear on the left flank. Nothing seen, by the way.”
“At what point did this turn into a Cub Scout nature walk?” King asked. “I may not be a runner like the lieutenant, but I will PT you until you hate me when we get home. I’m talking to you, Garrison.”
Hoffman scanned the horizon and then worked his way closer, carefully manipulating his optic amplifiers in his helmet. “Those don’t look like gazelle.”
“You haven’t seen the half of it,” Duke said.
Just over the horizon were gazelle and other creatures they had seen the day before. Hoffman and the rest of the team watched as a herd of elephant-sized creatures meandered to the watering hole. Their earth-colored hide and tufts of hair made them look like small hills had sprouted legs. Talons the size of Hoffman’s arm extended from the creatures’ feet and scraped the ground.
Hoffman checked his briefing map on his heads-up display and did a quick terrain orientation. They were approaching a small canyon that led to the Karigole settlement.
“I’ve got something,” Duke said. “Need one of you to come up.”
Hoffman signaled for King to stay with the main body of the team and jogged ahead. Impatience urged Hoffman forward and it took an effort of will not to sprint. Running would kick up dust, and even though he wanted the Karigole to know he was coming, his training still demanded he move tactically. He slowed as he approached the sniper, switched into a crouching advance, and crossed the final distance cautiously.
“There’s some sort of blast zone here.” Duke pointed at traces of debris. “I don’t normally do this, but I’ll admit something. I picked that up on my optic scanners before I saw it. Someone cleaned it up. Look closely. You’ll see it’s scorched.”
“I see it.” He ran his own field scan from his left gauntlet computer. “I think we’re on the edge of the debris field.”
He called up the rest of the team to search. Hoffman wanted to go look for himself but decided against it. The team was well-positioned and he didn’t want to expose them by being careless. “King, I’m on overwatch. Take an element and scout out that area.”
“On it,” the Gunney sent back.
Hoffman and Duke watched as the other Strike Marines hurried toward the blackened area. One took a knee next to what looked like a jagged rock.
“King for Hoffman,” King said through the team’s IR.
“Go for Hoffman.”
“There’s a pretty good amount of metal here. No markings. Heat scored and warped. I’m collecting a sample for later. First guess is it was a ship that disintegrated on reentry.”
“Scipio says we’re the first ones through the Crucible in years,” Hoffman said.
“That so? Well, this grass was burnt not too long ago. No latent heat, but nature hasn’t repaired the damage either,” King said.
“That don’t add up,” Duke said.
“Maybe a defense satellite lost orbit,” Hoffman said. “Or…something worse. Team,” he said, switching to a wide-band channel so everyone could hear him, “we’re pushing on the settlement. Form up on me.”
****
Hoffman looked through the optics of his gauss rifle to the village on a small hilltop, laid out in concentric circles, with the door of every earthen hut facing toward a large building in the center. A wooden palisade around the perimeter was broken in several places. Thatch roofs looked intact, but he made out scorch marks on the walls. There’d been no sign of life since the team first got eyes on the location.
“Max, Booker, Garrison, with me.” The lieutenant slid into a slight depression filled with shoulder-high grass. “Rest on overwatch.”
“What do you think we’ll find in there?” Garrison asked as he fell in a few steps to Hoffman’s left.
“I hope we don’t find anything,” Hoffman said. “If the village has been wiped out, then we’ve got a more serious problem on our hands than Karigole that don’t want to talk.”
“Sir, look at this.” Booker held up a wooden arrow, the shaft almost as long as her arm, the head a chipped bit of obsidian. “Big sucker. You know how strong you’d have to be to draw a bow back far enough to shoot this with a decent amount of force?”
“Karigole aren’t small,” Hoffman said.
“OK, I know our armor is graphenium composite and can take a full-power gauss shot and probably hold up,” Garrison said, “but let’s not get hit by any of those arrows either. Yeah?”
Booker turned the arrowhead over in the sunlight. “There’s some sort of resin on here. Poison?”
“Oh fun,” Max said. “Poison.”
“My advice remains the same—don’t get shot,” Garrison said.
“So glad you’re here, Marine,” Hoffman said as he moved toward the village at a crouch, his head just below the top of the grass.
Hoffman stopped at the edge of the field, a few dozen yards from the wooden barricades. He zoomed in on the singed walls and sent images back to the overwatch team.
"There's projectile damage,” Duke said. “Gauss rounds. High-velocity hit passed straight through the walls. But that doesn’t explain the blast marks…or the barricade damage. They look like a truck ran over them"
Garrison patted his rifle. “If the locals have bows and arrows, who’s shooting the newer hardware?” he asked.
“Move in by twos,” Hoffman said. “Keep tight.”
The team emerged from the field and through a gap in the wooden barricade. Hoffman and Max went to one side of a house, Garrison and Booker the other. Hoffman quickly peeked around the side, then raised a hand next to his ear to signal for the team to move around opposite sides of the building.
He ducked beneath a diamond-shaped window and stopped next to the door that faced a much larger structure in the center of the village.
“Contact!” Garrison shouted through the IR. “No. Negative contact. Sir, you need to see what’s to the ten o’clock of this structure.”
“Coming around.” Hoffman hustled over and found the other pair of Marines. Garrison had his rifle at his shoulder, pointed between other houses. Buried in rubble of a half-collapsed wall was a massive figure, its hooved legs sticking out from the packed earth. A long rifle of alien manufacture with a serrated bayonet was stuck into the ground next to the body.
“Shit.” Hoffman hurried over to the corpse, checking corners along the way but seeing no one else. He kicked a hunk of wall off the body and a brutish tusked face stared up at him with dead eyes.
“It’s a Sanheel,” the lieutenant said. “The Kesaht got here first.”
As he knelt closer to the centaur-like alien’s body to take a quick temperature scan, he saw broken arrow shafts poking out of gaps in the alien’s armor around the neck and shoulder.
“Body’s at ambient temperature,” Hoffman said. “Can’t say how long it’s been dead.”
“This explains a lot.” Garrison pointed to hoof marks in the ground and then toward open terrain to the east. “Ponies were here; at least a dozen, I’d say.”
“But did they take all the Karigole?” Hoffman looked to the large building in the center of the village.
“Thirty-five houses,” King said over the IR. “Assume three to four in each? No way a dozen Sanheel could carry that many.”
“And there’s no trace of the Karigole,” Booker said. “Raiders aren’t known for burying the dead of those they can’t carry off.”
“So where’d Steuben and the others go?” Hoffman looked to the west, where mountains rose not too far off.
“Apaches hid from the American Army many years in the mountains of Cochise County,” Gor’al said over the IR. “Plenty of defensible terrain to the west.”
“How does the Dotari know this?” Garrison asked.
“Don’t all of you study human military history? You all say ‘Geronimo’ when you do a parachute jump to honor the Apache leader. You mean you all don’t know this?”
“Thank you, Gor’al,” Hoffman said, resisting the urge to kick the dead Sanheel out of frustration. “We’re going toward the mountains.”
“What about the Kesaht?” King asked as he and the rest of the team entered the village.
“We’re not here for them. We’re here for Steuben. The Crucible gate hasn’t been active for years…but this bastard hasn’t been dead that long. Can’t even smell him through my helmet yet. The Kesaht are still on Nimrod.”
“How’d they even get here if the gate’s been off-line?” Max asked.
“We’ll find the Kesaht later,” Hoffman said. “See if they’ll tell us. Let’s go.”
****
Hoffman rotated King to point as they pressed into the narrow valley.
“I hate ambushes,” Max said. “Know who’s great at spotting ambushes? The Pathfinder Corps. Paranoid bunch.”
“When your job’s to map out planets and you don’t know what flora or fauna is poisonous, predatory, or altogether grumpy, I imagine you develop a healthy sense of skepticism,” Duke said.
“Why would you say that?” Garrison complained to Max. “Don’t say the A-word. Just don’t.”
“It’s a good place for an ambush,” King said without stopping. “We need to get through it quickly.”
Darkness fell hard and fast in the mountains. Hoffman and the others adjusted their optics and maintained radio silence. The area was dangerous, but the Sanheel preferred to charge like massed cavalry, which they couldn’t do as well in the mountains. Hoffman reasoned there could be Rakka—the brutish, barely intelligent foot soldiers in the Kesaht force—but those troops weren’t much for subtlety. He’d likely hear them massing for an attack.
Narrow trees swayed and underbrush quivered in the wind gusting through the valley, confounding Hoffman’s enhanced optics nearly as much as it would natural vision. For an empty forest, the slopes seemed alive with movement.
“Hold,” King said.
“Do you need me up there?” Hoffman asked.
“No. I’m sending an image to everyone in the team.”
Hoffman studied the steep path cutting between two large rocks. A small force could defend the spot against most types of enemies. “How far up does this go?”
“Quite a ways. We can backtrack and go around, but it’ll take hours.”
“Garrison, move up to support King,” Hoffman said. “Mark rally points if we have to advance rapidly back the way we came.”
“Yes, sir.”
Hoffman glanced at the HUD icons of his team members. “Team, move.”
King rushed upward, legs pumping for speed. Garrison followed close behind but slightly to one side of the trail. Hoffman lost sight of them each time the rock-walled channel twisted.
“Thi
s next part is straight and really steep,” King panted.
Hoffman rounded the corner in time to see Garrison seize the drag-strap on the back of King’s gear and pull him down before a massive boulder rolled over them. The pair of Strike Marines smashed themselves into an eroded depression on the floor of the micro canyon.
“Back ten meters and tuck into the wall!” the lieutenant ordered.
“Tucking in!” Booker and the others shouted on top of each other.
The boulder rumbled past his position, scraping the front of his helmet as he pressed himself into a groove. As soon as it was gone, he sprinted to King and Garrison. “Sound off!”
“King.”
“Garrison.”
A moment passed.
“Booker.”
“Duke.”
“Max.”
“Opal—sir okay?”
“Sir is OK. Where’s Gor’al? Can someone see him?”
“Opal see Gor. Opal bring back Gor.”
“I have visual,” Booker said. “Opie’s climbing down to check on him.”
“Is he moving?” Hoffman asked.
Booker was laughing with relief when she answered. “He’s all ass-backward and shaking his head. I think he might have gone eight-ball-to-the-corner-pocket. I’m on my way to check him.”
“I’m taking Garrison to the top of this draw before we repeat being on the wrong end of the bowling alley,” King said.
“There won’t be another boulder,” Duke said.
“How can you know that?” Max argued in his high-pitched voice.
“I’ve been counting boulders. The likelihood they found two that will roll down this pass is slim. Definitely worth risking a comms guy and a doughboy,” Duke said.
“Almost at the top,” Garrison grunted.
“We’re coming.” Hoffman sprinted up the trail, hours of running off his frustrations on the Breitenfeld and other ships paying off. He caught Garrison and King, passing them easily.