“That’s our cue,” Mac said. The main deployment doors were a good ten-minute walk from the armory, but Mac and Ty took off with a long-stride, loping, low-gee run that took them the length of the vessel in a few minutes.
When they got to the rally point, they got breather masks from their platoon sergeant. “We're not deploying in-dome. Air resupply drop every thirty minutes as needed.”
They checked their masks for function and took their place in the platoon formation. The brigade sergeant strode out to the center of the staging deck. “Just like you practiced. Send these murdering kaks to their early demise.”
Ty looked at Mac. “What d’you think he means by that?”
Mac's eyebrows drew close. “What do you mean? He means kill ‘em, of course.”
Ty shook his head. “Not that part. The murdering kaks part.”
“I don't know. They got one of ours for once?” Mac shrugged as if to say no big deal, but his grip on his rifle tightened.
The ship dropped out of warp and the gravity dropped to Mars normal. Descent was quick and choppy. At T-plus four-fifteen, the ship touched down. The deployment doors slid aside, and the brigade sergeant blew the whistle. “Go! Go! Go!”
Dust roiled next to the ship; the shield still deployed holding it all in. The shield flickered with small bright sparks. Small arms fire, the staccato report muffled and barely noticeable above the whine of the ship’s engines. The comms crackled to life. “Prepare for dust off in thirty seconds.”
Platoon sergeants were giving hand signals for getting to cover. “Twenty seconds.” Ty and Mac dropped into position behind an outcropping covered in a yellowish lichen. “Ten seconds.” The shield dropped as the ship's engines reached a fever pitch.
As soon as the first rounds whizzed overhead, the heavy percussion of artillery thumped, the first rounds flying in to impact the ship. Ty grabbed Mac. “That's auto-target! That's our shit!”
The ship only reached a height of twenty meters before speeding off, the blast blowing the dust and smoke clear of their position. Colonel Ali’s voice came over the comms. “Mayday, mayday, mayday. F.S. Becky Sims hit, unscheduled grounding four kilometers south south-west from LZ.”
“Fuck. They got it.” Mac risked a look over the rocks and dropped back down. “Ty, check the dome.”
The top of the habitation dome, normally thirty meters up, looked whole, but sat tilted at an odd angle, ten meters short of where it should be. The communication masts centered on the dome were sitting well off-center and skewed. Lower, the side of the dome closest to the troops was gone. Twisted metal frames showed where the dome used to be. “Holy shit. That’s what, forty or fifty-thousand people?” Ty dropped back down next to Mac.
Gunfire continued to fly overhead and the thump of the artillery started up again. The shells were landing too close for comfort. Ty looked to his squad leader for orders, but everything on the comms since the mayday had been pure chaos. “Mac, c’mon. We’ve gotta get outta here, soonest.”
The two dashed from cover to cover until they were behind the same rock formation as their squad leader. She crouched behind the largest rock, her head bowed, as if in prayer. Ty noticed it first; a small trickle of blood from the back of her neck. “Sarge, looks like you took some shrapnel.” He grabbed her shoulder to turn her and her body fell like an under-stuffed toy. Blood covered the remains of her breather. It looked like whatever had entered the back of her neck exited her face at great force.
Ty grabbed the command patch off her shoulder, and affixed it to his own, patching his comms into the command channel. “Delta Two Seven Squad four to Delta One, over.” He waited for a moment. “Delta Two Seven Squad four to Delta Command, over.” Still nothing. “Delta Two Seven Squad four to any listening unit, over.”
“Delta Two Seven Squad four, Fox Command now Delta Command. Delta One is down. Why haven’t you cleared the LZ? And who is this? Over,” the answer came back.
“Delta Command, Two Seven Four, this is Corporal Carel. Sergeant Benks is Kilo India Alpha. Carel taking command. Where’s the rally? Over.” Ty looked around for the rest of the squad. Aside from himself and Mac he could only see one other troop still moving. He made the signal to gather at his location.
He took the sergeant’s grenade belt; four incendiary, two smoke, and four high explosive rounds, each the size and shape of a rounded pack of playing cards. The rock behind which they were sheltered was fractured. The field around them was pitted with craters and rock debris. “Mac, we’re on their artillery range.”
Mac nodded. “Yeah, I thought so too, just didn’t want to say anything. Where is everybody?”
“Two Seven Four, Command. Merge up with any stragglers and join to Delta second platoon, 350 meters North North-West of your current location. Hold fire until you get there. We are between you and the target. Over.” In the background was the sharp sound of gunfire up close. Judging by the sound over the comms, the command point was right in the thick of it.
Ty saw only two soldiers from his squad join them. Four out of fourteen. Not so good. It sounded like the other squads had fared little better. “Delta Command, Two Seven Four, Wilco. Out.” There wasn’t anything else to do now but get into it. Without making a sound, he led the remnants of the squad from cover to cover. Where there were bodies between him and the next cover, he scanned to find a different route. There were no survivors to join them as they advanced.
He joined up with the remnants of second platoon. Ty wondered to whom he should hand over the squad. Sub-captain Pas Gānē motioned him over. “Carel, right?”
“Yes, sir,” he replied. Gānē, like any other umale, looked like a pre-pubescent girl on an adult frame. She had a few faint lines around her eyes that betrayed age, even through her smooth, tawny complexion. She looked out of place in combat gear. The long-standing tradition in the brigade was trying to guess her age.
“What’s the matter, Carel? You trying to guess my age?” A hint of fire behind her hazel eyes scared him a little.
“Sorry, sir. I was just…” he hesitated. “I have, but not this time. Where is everyone?”
“I’ve got a few of Fox company under cover right now. Not many though. We’re it. Golf, Hotel, and Bravo fell back to protect the ship.” The fire in her eyes faded and her stare focused somewhere inside, away from the world around her.
Ty saw panic setting in and knew he had to deflect it. “So, how old are you? Sir.” That was all it took. She focused back out, on Ty.
“Thirty-seven. That’s my age. You’re welcome. All you assholes had to do was ask.” She opened a small display with a map and pointed. “We’re here. Autocannons here and here. If there’s anyone there, they’re keeping their heads down. There’s two cuts, here and here, where we might be able to get close, but we’re all in a giant kill zone.” With each statement, she tapped and another area on the map lit up.
“From the sound of it, those are series seven ACs.” Ty pointed at the map as he spoke. “If I can get up this side and Mac on that side, we can get in close enough to shut them down, or at least get them focused outside the center. Here.” He handed her the grenade belt and kept one smoke grenade and two of the incendiaries back. “If you pop incendiaries in the center area, here, the heat will pull them off and blind them to movement. If you see us light off the other two, you’ll be safe to come hot up the middle. If we set off smoke, it means the ACs are completely down and secure.”
“Whatever it takes to shut down those autocannons.” She wiped her brow. Despite the freezing temperature, she was sweating enough that the fine reddish dust was sticking to her face. “If you can’t shut them down, try to get a read on the ammo reserve. You should be able to connect with your comms for that at least…if you can get close enough. In this dust, about ten to twelve meters. We’ve got forty minutes of air left, tops, and no resupply now that the Simms is down. And who knows how many survivors still in the dome. You’re probably not the highest-ranking troop left out
here, but damn near. If I’m gonna run the company, you’re now top, sergeant.”
Ty removed a small device from a cargo pocket and held it up. “Sir, if I can get in a few meters, I can shut it down. Override controller from the armory.” He put it back in his pocket. “Um, it’s corporal, sir,” he said, pointing to the rank on his neck.
“As of now, it’s junior sergeant. Your new call sign is Delta One Six. You’re first platoon. When you get those cannons off the center, Fox will come straight in, so don’t be in the way. Move out.” She slapped his helmet and turned back to her comms.
Ty returned to his squad mates and fired up the comms. “Delta One Complete, Delta One Six. Rally on me. Over.” He touched the locator button on the comms. It would show his location to everyone else on the channel.
The responses came back in rapid succession. “Delta One Four Three. Roger, en route. Out.” “Delta One Three One. Wilco. Out.” “Delta One One Five. On your six. Out.”
Ty looked behind him. The remnants of his squad were three or four meters back. Three troops. When the others came in, their numbers weren’t much better. It left him with fifteen troops, counting himself. One squad plus one. Not much of a platoon.
Ty pointed in a sweep at the troops on his right. “You seven are second squad, Delta One Six Two. Mac, you’ve got an override, right?” He took the slight nod as an affirmative and continued, “Take first squad up this cut here.” He pointed at the shallow depression running at an angle to the southwest of their location. “You’ll need to get in close to that AC to use the override.” He looked at the remaining troops. “The rest of you are first squad. You’re coming with me to the east to flank the other AC.” He looked back to Mac, then scanned all their faces. “Keep your eyes open. Just because we haven’t seen any warm bodies up there, doesn’t mean they aren’t there. They could be hiding out, waiting for the ACs to do their job. Once those ACs are down, the rest of Fox will be coming right up the center, so be ready to provide flanking support.”
Mac looked at the controller. “The rhythm on those ACs, if those are model sevens…”
“They are. I caught that too. Fox will be dropping incendiaries in the center; they’ll be focused there and blind to our movement. They don’t last more than a minute or two each, and she’s only got two, so we need to make this fast.”
Ty handed Mac one of the incendiaries. “If we can’t get close enough to shut them down, blind them on the outside while Fox comes up the middle.” He looked around the troops. “Let’s go. Delta Command, Delta One Six ready on your action.” Ty nodded at Mac and moved to the next cover to the east. Mac and his team moved west.
When the first incendiary went off, both teams scrambled to move as far and as fast as possible. The autocannons continued pouring out bullets and artillery rounds, scouring the area around the grenade. The second went off when the first was starting to die down and they continued their run.
When they were within a few meters of the autocannon, Ty pushed the override and it shut down. He spread the group, waiting for direct combat. “Delta One Six Two, Delta One Six. AC one down, over.”
"One Six, One Six Two, ten seconds. Out." Mac's breath was ragged over the comms.
The second autocannon went silent and the suddenness of it was deafening. Mac commed, “One Six, One Six Two. AC two down, no contact.”
“One Six Two, One Six, secure the AC. Eyes peeled. Out.” Ty moved forward with his squad. It was eerily silent after the steady roar of gunfire and shelling. When they got close to the autocannon, they found the bodies of police troops. At least an entire platoon by each. Torn to pieces by the autocannons while standing in formation near them. He set off the smoke grenade. “Delta Command, Delta One Six. ACs secure. No hostiles. Over.”
Gānē’s voice strained. “One Six, Command. Clarify no hostiles. All dead? Over.”
“Command, One Six. No hostiles at all. I’ll brief you when you get here. Out.” The enormity of the destruction around him struck Ty. He needed something else to think about. “Mac, disconnect the command module from that AC and store it safe. Over.”
Mac’s response was short. “Wilco. Out.”
When Gānē arrived, Ty saw that the decimation of Fox company matched his own team, and now platoon. He expected at least three more platoons, but it was less than twenty soldiers. “How many in your platoon, sergeant?” Gānē asked.
“Fifteen including myself, sir.” Ty finished removing the command module and wrapped it in anti-static film before shoving it in a cargo pocket.
“Shit, thirty-two of three hundred left. Two companies gone. Who gave the okay to dismantle that cannon?” Gānē sounded more worried than angry.
“I did, sir.” Ty closed the housing.
“Right, armorer.” Gānē looked at the carnage surrounding the cannon. “So, no hostiles? What happened here?”
Ty looked around, trying to hide his uneasiness. “I can’t be sure until we get these modules on the test bench and check the history. Maybe someone figured out a way to hack the maintenance frequency. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible before, but…” Ty shrugged. “These are model sevens. They’ve been obsolete for four years.”
Gānē stood and gave the signal for the company to join on her location. “All right, first order of business is search the dome. I’ll be traveling with first platoon, heading clockwise around the interior rim. Third platoon, counterclockwise. Fourth, start a grid search from the center out. Find the maps, check every staircase, elevator shaft, or other downway. If you find a breach, call it in immediately. The first level where all the seals are good, we prepare a combat airlock and get ourselves in. Move out.”
Ty took the lead, weapon ready, as they started through the gaping maw that was--until a couple hours ago--a solid dome wall. Gānē stayed close while Ty gave the hand signals to spread the platoon out wider to cover more area.
Ty said, “You know, sir, there’s something about this that bothers me.”
“What’s that, Carel? Something more than the big-ass hole in the dome and the dead troops?” She paused. “It’s Ty, right? You can call me Pas, unless military discipline is called for.”
“Way more than that, sir,” he hesitated. “Pas, I mean. It looks like someone hacked those ACs, but that means…”
“Say it, Ty, I don’t have all day. Hell, we may not have any more days at all. If we don’t find a sealed level soon, we’re all dead.” Her eyes looked panicked for just a moment.
“If someone hacked those ACs the way we think, whoever did it had to use a military comm unit.” He pointed to the comm on his helmet. “Civilian units can’t access that channel at all. And whoever did would have had to be outside the dome, at least as close as we were to make it work and upload the new commands.”
“Are you suggesting one of the dead police troops out there did it?” She stopped and pointed. “Over there, a map and a downway.”
Ty gave the hand signals for two troops to check out the seal, and the rest to stay put. “Nope. First, it would be dumb to hack a cannon only to get killed by it. Second, the attack on the dome would be one command, the attack on the police troops would be another command, and targeting the Simms to wait for shield drop would be another command. They watched us land before they left.”
The comms crackled to life on the company-only channel. “This is third platoon, blown seal to level minus one. Doorway is too mangled to get it open enough to get in though.”
Gānē keyed her mic. “Roger. Head to the next down-way and enter. Company, move to level minus one and resume sweep.” She turned to Ty. “Lead the way, sergeant.”
“Yes, sir.” Ty motioned for the platoon to gather at the down-way. The door opened without effort or complaint. “At least the power’s still good.” Ty was the first to the stairway.
“So,” Gānē said, “if the dome and the troops were two commands, that would have to mean the first command was to wipe out the troops. Otherwise, they would have o
verridden as soon as the cannons aimed at the dome.”
Ty nodded. “Yeah, I considered that. That’s someone with a pair of stone-cold kaya.” He tried to imagine what it would take to make him do something like that. He couldn’t think of anything that would.
“Carel, we got a broken seal over here.” It was one of the first platoon troops. Another voice came over the comms. “Sir, there’s a hole in the floor over here, and looks like one on the next, too.”
Gānē nodded at Ty and pointed down. Ty was about to give the order to proceed lower when a pair of lights, green and blue caught his attention ahead. “One second, Pas, police station. It should have its own systems. Might have its own airlock.” He confirmed that the door was an airlock. There was damage to the exterior, but the interior was still tight. “It’s not likely to be a lot of air, but it should be enough to give us a little time, and there’s likely to be more breather refills in there too.”
“Good job, sergeant.” She keyed her mic. “Delta, Fox, rally on my position.”
Ty motioned for the rest of the platoon. “Okay, let’s get a combat airlock on this door.” He looked at his air reserves. Just a hair over seven minutes. “And let’s get this up fast, yeah?”
The soldiers moved efficiently, sealing around the door with plastic sheeting and spray putty, setting up the collapsible ribs to create a room large enough to hold all of them, and sealing it around them. Ty looked to Gānē for the order to breach. Her lips had gone a pale grey, and she was beginning to gasp. “Breach! Breach! Breach!” Ty barked the order, and the nearest soldiers tried the door’s mechanism. It was locked and not opening so one of them applied a paste around the frame and locked in an igniter. She clicked the igniter, and the paste heated white-hot and burned through the frame, dropping the door into the room beyond. The sudden increase in air pressure made everyone’s ears pop. “Get the sub-captain some air, now!”
Space Bound: A Dragon Soul Press Anthology Page 27