Deathtrap

by Craig Alanson

  To his dismay, the fight had not been easy. The human soldiers were disciplined, professional and well-coordinated. One lesson he had quickly learned was that, in powered armor, even primitive humans could be deadly warriors. The humans were not just respectable enemies, they were also maddeningly stubborn in their refusal to give up.

  “Red Five,” Zajetra called out. “Proceed on my mark. Covering fire as before, watch your aim this time,” he added with a sigh, knowing his admonitions would be ignored. “Three, two, one, mark.”

  Five burst upward, only slightly more under control than his first attempt. He ran in an amateurish zig-zagging fashion, taking far too much time to reach his objective. Finally, Zajetra was relieved to see accurate enemy fire reach out to cut Five down from two directions, and the unlucky fool’s torso was ripped apart. “Good,” he breathed.

  “Good?!” Hevertz screeched in his ear. “My friend is dead. A loyal warrior has fallen and you-”

  Zajetra did not bother to point out that losing an undisciplined idiot actually strengthened the squad’s combat capability. “Forgive me. I meant it is good that we now know the location of two enemy soldiers. His valiant death,” he gagged on the inappropriate word, “has given us an advantage.”

  “Oh. Yes,” Hevertz replied stiffly. “The humans must pay for their crimes. We will slaughter them-”

  Zajetra held up a fist for silence, and added a hiss in case the young fool squad leader had completely forgotten battle signals. “My acoustic sensors are picking up something. Aircraft approaching!”

  Irene’s own eagerness made her lean forward toward the console, her training reminded her to sit back in the proper position where the high-tech Ruhar pilot seat could cradle her body and protect her from violent maneuvers. She was watching the weapons console intently while Derek flew the Buzzard. “Bring us up another fifty feet, that grove of trees is blocking my line of sight.”

  “Got it,” Derek pulled back on the sidestick controller, nudging the throttles ever so slightly to maintain airspeed in the short climb. Higher altitude exposed their stealthed Buzzard to more enemy sensors, that is why doctrine called for flying low and slow. They were already pushing the high limit of speed at which the stealth field would become ineffective. That did not bother Derek much, according to Perkins the enemy infantry were on foot and did not appear to have any sensors other than the gear built into their helmets. What he did worry about was the heat still radiating from the turbine engines that had been pushed to one hundred fifteen percent of normal power during their high-speed dash. The stealth field prevented photons from radiating away from the aircraft, but the hot air trailing behind could be detected by anyone paying attention. A shoulder-launched missile set on heat-seeking mode could sneak up behind them and ruin their whole day.

  Derek would just need to make sure there was no one alive below them to launch a missile at their slow-flying Buzzard. “Ready?”

  “Ready. On my mark. Three, two, one, mark.”

  Emily Perkins huddled to escape a line of enemy rounds hitting the streambank she and Ross were using as cover, the explosions as the rounds detonated chewing into the soil of the bank and collapsing it into the water. She sent a mental plea for help and relaxed her grip on the rifle, taking a deep breath. If Irene and Derek did not come soon, she needed to pop up and fire back, if only to make the enemy keep their heads down. The problem was, she was pretty sure the enemy was guessing where she and Ross were, and shooting back would only confirm their position. And invite a rocket to finish them.

  In the middle of her second deep, calming breath, while she steeled herself to act, there was an explosion that shook the ground and caused most of the remaining streambank to sag and collapse onto her.

  Zajetra waited impatiently for his suit’s computer to determine if the acoustic signature was friend or foe. In theory, the sounds of Ruhar and Kristang turbine engines were different enough to make them distinctive. In reality, there were many types of aircraft and engines on each side, and an old Ruhar turbine could sound very similar to its Kristang counterpart.

  So, his suit was still cycling through its aircraft recognition database when he saw with the corner of one eye a fuzzy shimmer approaching just over the treeline on the other side of the field. As he opened his mouth to shout a warning, the ground under him heaved from an explosion to the south, and the stealthed aircraft began to pour out a stream of maser fire, switching rapidly from one target to the next.

  Too rapidly. The aircraft’s gunner was not seeking targets on the ground, the maser cannon had been preprogrammed with strike coordinates.

  Zajetra’s brain had two thoughts at the same time. The enemy knew the location of the entire squad, because while he had been using a young fool to make the enemy reveal themselves, the enemy had pinpointed the Kristang positions. His second thought was that he was unquestionably dead.

  He could have risen to one knee and shot at the unseen aircraft, a defiant but futile gesture. Instead, he swung his rifle around to point the muzzle at squad leader Hevertz’s helmet. “Oh, fuck me,” he breathed while he blew the young fool’s head off.

  Zajetra had a split-second of pure satisfaction, before a maser beam cooked him from the inside and he exploded in his suit.

  Spitting out a mouthful of wet dirt and old leaves, Emily listened intently and heard the angry sizzling buzz of a maser cannon ripping on full auto. The maser stopped for only a moment before renewing then cutting off. There was a low-pitched whisper that she recognized as the howl of a stealthed aircraft’s turbines.

  At the same time, she saw a skinsuit-clad Legion soldier stand up and wave to the sky, while the familiar voice of Irene Striebich spoke in her ear. “I think you’re clear down there, Colonel. Thanks for the head’s up, it saved us a lot of time.” As the Buzzard approached, Perkins had gathered data fed to her by laserlink from the two active skinsuit helmets, and sent it to the Buzzard. Knowing the locations of the enemy scattered around the battlefield had allowed Irene to program a missile to loiter near a group of three Kristang, while the Buzzard flew in a wide arc to approach from the other direction, able to avoid flying over any enemy positions that might shoot at the aircraft. As the Buzzard cleared the treetops at the edge of the field, the maser cannon on the chin erupted with searing fire at pre-determined positions, wiping out those Kristang as the missile killed its assigned trio of assholes. “Conducting active sensor scan now,” Irene announced as the sensor drone the Buzzard had ejected sent out a pulse. “We’re clear, the only lifesigns are friendlies. We’re setting down near you, what’s your status?”

  Perkins paused to say a silent prayer before answering. “We have three KIA, but we can only get to one.” Much as she wanted to retrieve the bodies of the two soldiers who died when the truck got hit, she was not risking a manned aircraft in a war zone. “The General is injured and we have one other injured. Set it down close, we need to evac ASAP before artillery starts pounding this LZ to dust.”

  “Roger that,” Irene fully agreed with the ASAP part. Their air attack could have attracted unwanted attention. “On the ground in fifteen.”

  The Buzzard remained on the ground for the absolute minimum time. With people having barely cleared the back ramp, Irene had the ramp closing while Derek lifted off, dipped the nose, and gained airspeed as the aircraft cleared the trees at the edge of the clearing by only a few meters. With the green light indicating the ramp was fully closed and secured, Irene re-energized the stealth field and was scanning sensors for threats when Perkins staggered into the cockpit, flipping up the jumpseat and strapping in.

  “Colonel,” Irene did not take her eyes off the instruments. “How is General Ross?”

  “He has broken ribs and is bleeding internally,” Perkins related. “Maybe a rib punctured a lung. We need to get him medical attention ASAP.”

  “In that case,” Irene tapped a finger on Derek’s hand to get his attention. “New course, transferring vector now.”


  “Where are we going?” Derek asked before Perkins could speak.

  “A Verd-Kris base,” Irene explained. “It’s the closest base with a medical facility. Database says there’s a UNEF medical contingent there for cross-training, so they can treat the General.”

  “We can’t go back to HQ?” Perkins asked anxiously, leaning forward to look at the navigation display.

  “No way,” Derek answered. “Sorry, Ma’am. The Legion is able to send basic navigation data through the jamming, and all the air transit corridors around Legion HQ are hot right now. If the enemy didn’t jump us, our own air defenses would blow us out of the sky before we got within fifty klicks of the Launcher. Irene is right, the Verd base is one of the few places we can reach in this area. We need to set down there, get medical care for the wounded, and wait for clearance. The Legion should be able to establish safe-fly corridors within the next twelve to eighteen hours.” He turned his head to look at the Maverick’s commander. “Sorry, Ma’am.”

  “No need to be sorry, Bonsu,” Perkins grimaced as she unstrapped from the seat, and her sore back let her know it was not happy about moving. “I’m going in the back to send messages through the Deal Me In. UNEF needs to know Ross is alive. Damn it! Command and control is useless without communications.”

  “We’re jamming the enemy’s comms also,” Derek noted.

  “I’m sure we are,” Perkins paused in the doorway. “The difference is, the enemy is executing a plan, and the Legion is flailing around on the defensive. We need to figure out what the hell is going on, and hit back.”

  After Perkins left and the cockpit door closed, Irene leaned over toward Derek with a sly smile. “I love hearing those three magic words.”

  “Three words,” Derek froze, mystified. “You mean, like, ‘I love you’?”

  “Nah,” she winked. “You said ‘Irene is right’.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Sergeant,” Jesse vaguely heard someone talking. “Colter! Sergeant Colter!” He opened his eyes. Actually, he opened one eye, because the other was covered with sticky blood. He reached up to feel a cut on his forehead, it didn’t feel too bad. The rest of him did feel bad, especially his right leg.

  “Uh, hey,” he looked up to see Captain Grace kneeling on a broken seat next to him. “Dani, I mean, Captain. What happ-” He broke off in a fit of coughing. “How is my eye?” He asked fearfully.

  “It’s just smeared with blood. Don’t try to open it!” She warned. “We crashed, do you remember that?”

  Did he? He remembered the plane twisting through the air, then something about a tree. He shook his head, and a headache flared inside his battered skull. “My leg.”

  “I think it’s broken,” she said gently, understating the truth. Below the knee, Colter’s right leg was bent at an awkward angle, and blood had soaked through his pants. “I need to get you out of here.”

  Jesse’s rattled brain was not understanding. He swiveled his head very slow, left to right. The cabin of the Buzzard was a shambles. Holes were torn in the skin of the aircraft, exposed frames were bent or missing. Part of a tree protruded into the cabin. The forward bulkhead that led to the cockpit was bent inward and crushed at an angle. Even his foggy brain knew that was not a good sign for the survival of the pilots. He could see other bodies, or parts of bodies, tangled in the wreckage.

  When his head reached as far to the right as he could manage, he saw a Ruhar still strapped into the seat next to him. The female hamster was dead, her eye still open but glassy, blood seeping out of her mouth. A jagged piece of metal stuck out of her chest. “Oh, crap.”

  “Sergeant, I need you to focus. We need to get out of here, away from the ship. Now.”

  “Huh?” Awareness of the situation was dawning inside his brain, though it still felt like everything was happening in slow motion. “Fire?”

  There had been a minor fire, Dani extinguished as the first thing she did, when she was able to move. “There is a risk of fire, what I’m worried about is a Kristang missile coming here to finish the job.”

  “Shit!” The idea of a missile lancing down from the sky to bounce the wreckage of the Buzzard around, made Jesse sit upright in the seat. “Ahhh,” he gasped from the nausea-inducing pain shooting up his right leg. “Don’t know if I can move by myself,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “I’ll help you,” she said as she used a wet cloth to wipe congealed blood away from his eye. “Can you see now?”

  “Ah, yeah,” he blinked. His vision was blurry, but getting better. “You Ok yourself, Captain?” He should have asked that question before.

  She gingerly patted her left side, where her uniform top was ripped. “Bruised ribs. Hurts like a son of a bitch,” she grinned. “My left knee is wonky, I can walk. I’m going to unstrap you from the seat, Ok?”

  Getting out of the busted Buzzard was easier to say than do. There was wreckage scattered all over the floor, making it difficult to walk on Jesse’s one good leg, even with Dani supporting him. He threw his right arm over her shoulders and kept all weight off his right leg, that foot still snagged on obstructions. He was surprised to see a sort of path was cleared toward the rear of the cabin, the officer must have done that before coming back for him, and he wondered about that.

  The side door was jammed, no way to open it. Dani led the way through the cabin, helping him over a torn-out section of the floor where electric arcs sparked from a damaged powercell. They went into the rear cabin, where the rear ramp was partly down. “This is going to be awkward,” she said almost as an apology. “I could only get it open part way.”

  “That’s fine, Ma’am,” Jesse replied. His head was spinning from pain, and it was difficult to see with only one eye. “Uh, how am I getting out?”

  “Like I said, it will be awkward,” she answered with a sheepish smile.

  The way for Jesse to get out of the Buzzard involved him squeezing through the gap between the ramp and the bent frame that supported the tail of the aircraft. Doing that was tough enough while keeping his broken leg from getting wrenched as he slipped through. Then there was a three meter drop to the ground, because the Buzzard’s belly had dug a deep furrow in the dirt as it had skidded to a stop. He was supposed to haul himself down on a line, which was too thin to grip without slicing up his hands. He had wrapped a cloth around both palms but that only made them less of a sure grip. Dani was below. “If you fall, I’ll catch you, best as I can.”

  “No promises?” Jesse pondered the possibility of falling ten feet with only one good leg.

  “No lies,” she shook her head, causing her wavy blonde hair to flop across her face. “I’m not going to tell you fairy tales, Sergeant.”

  “I appreciate that, Ma’am,” he grunted, surprising himself by meaning what he said. Just then, he noticed a Ruhar slumped against a tree, twenty meters from the Buzzard. “Who is that?”

  “Ruhar officer,” Dani explained, while waving for Jesse to move. “She’s hurt bad, I got her out before going back for you.”

  That explained why Captain Grace had cleared a path through the aircraft. The Ruhar did look to be in a bad way, her shirt soaked with blood and a makeshift bandage wrapped around her head. Jesse realized he was not working to save only his own life. “Here goes nothin’,” he muttered as he swung his legs over the ramp and gripped the line tightly. He managed to hold on long enough for Dani to grab his good leg, then he slipped and fell heavily to crash onto the Army Captain.

  “Oof,” she gasped, flattened on her stomach with the Sergeant sitting on her back.

  “Sorry, Ma’am,” Jesse rolled onto the ground.

  “You Ok?” Dani asked, getting back to her feet.

  “Good enough. Captain, I can make it over to the Ruhar-”

  “Her name is Ardlunn Fobish. She’s an Urmat,” Dani added with a raised eyebrow. ‘Urmat’ was rank roughly equivalent to Major in UNEF. That mattered because Fobish outranked Dani, so the Ruhar officer could cause trouble, if she w
as able to speak and give orders.

  “Right. I’ll get over to Fobish. Ma’am, you need to get back in there and get rifles and ammo out of the forward locker.” That weapons locker was bent, and Jesse had to hope she could get the door open. “Also whatever human and hamster food you can find. And medical-”

  “Sergeant, I know what we need to survive out here,” Dani pulled her hair back and tied it in a ponytail again. “I’ll have to make several trips,” she looked unhappily at the half-open ramp.

  Jesse paused to let a wave of pain from his leg wash over him. “Ma’am, if you have more of that line handy, you can make a ladder of sorts.”

  Dani looked at the Sergeant, at the Buzzard, then back at Jesse. “Hell,” she breathed. “I should have thought of that. I lowered Fobish to the ground on a line, but she’s heavy and I dropped her the last meter. That’s why I didn’t try lowering you. A ladder is a good idea.”

  “That’s why the US Army has sergeants, Ma’am,” he tried to smile but had to grit his teeth to manage the pain.

  “See if you can help Fobish, I left a hamster medical kit next to her,” Dani ordered as she pulled out a knife to begin cutting line to make a ladder.

  By the time Dani managed to wrench the weapons locker door open and stumble to the rear ramp with an armload of gear, she was surprised to see Sergeant Colter standing below, leaning on a crude crutch. He had cut a sleeve off his shirt and used it to make a splint for his broken leg. “Toss the gear down, and I’ll haul it away,” he suggested.

  “How is Fobish?”

  “Sleeping, her pulse is steady. Looks like that vial of nano meds you injected her with is doing its job, the bleeding has stopped.”

  “Ok,” she propped one rifle on the ramp and tossed the other gear out toward Jesse.