Deathtrap

by Craig Alanson

  If Jates had intended his words to be comforting or at least non-aggressive, the response he got was the opposite. The warrior shouted curses that, even to Dave’s limited knowledge of lizard slang, were foul insults.

  Jates did not shout curses back or speak in any way. He simply pointed the muzzle of his rifle at the warrior’s head and pressed the trigger twice. There were two loud BANGS as the explosive tips punched through the lizard’s skull and chewed into the floor.

  “Shit!” Dave gulped, startled by the unexpected action. There was dead silence, broken by the ting, ting of the two expended cartridges falling to the floor and skidding away. “Damn,” he looked at the Verd-kris in sudden fear. “What’d you do that for?”

  Jates looked over at Dave, the opaque helmet faceplate rendering him unreadable. “I have trouble expressing my feelings.”

  Dave froze. Then he exploded with laughter at the absurdity of the situation. “Was that part of your therapy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Yes. I feel much better now.”

  Dave kicked his right leg, which had gotten splattered with the dead lizard’s brains. “I don’t think the therapy did much good for him.”

  Jates considered the now-headless warrior, and looked at Dave. “Well, he was kind of an asshole.”

  Dave had to laugh again. Sustained rifle fire resounded behind them. Since they escaped from the Swift Arrow clan’s compound, they had been relentlessly pursued by Kristang. The other survivors of the commando team, and even a handful of freed Keepers, had been picked up by Buzzards and were flying back to safety. Dave and Jates had been steadily pushed in the opposite direction from the evac site, and finally the Buzzard assigned to extract them had been forced to abort the operation because it was low on fuel. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  The Jeraptha battleship I Am Aching To Give Somebody A Beat-Down And Today Is YOUR Lucky Day jumped directly into low orbit around Feznako, fearing nothing. Casually, one of the cruiser’s maser cannons warmed up by burning out the aft shield projectors of a Kristang frigate that was unlucky to be raiding that side of the planet, just below the altitude at which it could have jumped away. With the frigate’s shields collapsed, the Beat-Down got the crew’s attention by slicing away part of a propulsion module, then warned the much smaller ship not to try boosting its orbit.

  The Beat-Down’s crew then, of course, paused for a flurry of wagering about whether the enemy frigate’s crew would be foolish enough to try boosting altitude enough to jump away, while the Jeraptha ship’s orbit took it around to the other side of the planet.

  Admiral Tashallo used one claw-tipped arm to beckon Jesse over to the tactical display, an impressive holographic representation of the planet below. “There are pockets of fighting all over the surface, with five major infantry engagements at the highlighted locations. Fighting has been,” the admiral paused to manipulate the display, and frowned. Or Jesse thought the alien senior officer was frowning, for the small antennas above the beetle’s eyes titled down toward each other and his mandibles drooped. “There has been substantial ground combat since you departed. I sincerely hope your people who are experts on the subject of fantasy sports,” now the big beetle was looking at Jesse with the mandibles still down, and the small antennas tilted upward. Jesse guessed that meant the alien did not believe there were truly fantasy sports experts on the planet below. “I hope they have not perished.”

  “Yeah, me too. Uh, with all this fancy gear, can you locate a particular person down there?”

  “If you supply this person’s identification code, then most likely we can. Hold!” He waved an arm to restrain the bridge crew. “There will not be any wagering about whether we can locate the subject.”

  A very human-like disappointed sigh of ‘awww’ murmured around the ship’s bridge.

  “I don’t know what you mean by an ID code, but,” Jesse pulled his zPhone from a pocket. “I can try calling him on this. You can locate him if he picks up the call?”

  Tashallo peered at the phone and grunted. “Your communications device is linked to the ship’s system. Sergeant, if you brought us all the way here simply to rescue a friend-”

  “He is my friend! That’s how he got me into fantasy football. And baseball, he’s into baseball too. Like I said, baseball is a lot more complicated. Lots of variables,” he added in the hope that more variables made for more interesting gambling action.

  “Very well. Call your friend.”

  Jesse pressed the icon for Dave Czajka. Nothing happened. When he tried it again, all he heard was static. Looking sheepishly at the powerful Jeraptha admiral, he assumed it had to be his fault. “It’s not working.”

  “The problem is not with my ship,” Tashallo said stiffly as technicians frantically adjusted controls. “The primitive technology being used on the planet allows communications to be easily jammed.”

  Primitive technology? Jesse looked at his zPhone, a device no thicker than a credit card. The Ruhar version he carried had a slightly larger display than the Kristang model he had been issued way back on Camp Alpha, but it certainly was incredible technology. “Sure, if you say so.”

  That remark got Tashallo mad, and the admiral barked orders at his crew. “Try it now,” he scowled at the human sergeant.

  “Uh, huh! Hey, it’s working.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  Dave Czajka was surprised when his skinsuit helmet pinged with an incoming call, using the unique tone he had assigned to Jesse Colter. Surprise was not good, because the ping momentarily took his focus away from what he was doing, which was sending rounds at Kristang warriors, to keep their heads down while Surgun Jates swapped out his own rifle’s magazine. His focus was distracted just long enough for a string of rounds to go too high over the makeshift barrier the Kristang were using as cover. The kinetic rounds impacted the wall behind the enemy, digging deep gouges and making the concrete-like material chip, shatter and erupt outward. Angry at himself, Dave shifted his aim back lower just as a section of the wall sagged downward, exposing a powercell that began arcing.

  Dave was not stupid, he could recognize a golden opportunity when it fell in his lap. “Fire in the hole!” He shouted over the general circuit and pumped his rifle’s last rocket across the gap, the weapon flying out of the undermounted tube and accelerating hard. In the blink of an eye, the rocket hit the skin of the powercell and its smart warhead judged whether to delay detonation. The answer, based on a nanosecond decision, was NO. No delay. When the warhead exploded, it released the energy stored in a large bank of powercells behind the wall.

  And the wall ceased being a concrete-like organization of matter. It became heat, light, kinetic energy and dust. The energy blew in all directions, instantly killing the five Kristang warriors who had been taking cover against the wall. A microsecond later, the blast wave struck Dave and Jates, flinging them backward down a broad hallway. The two soldiers skidded on the tough backplates of their combat skinsuits, the material going slick to allow them to skid without friction compromising the suit material’s integrity. When their suits sensed the hallway was coming to an end in a ‘T’ configuration, the material on the appropriate sides ballooned outward to provide cushioning. Dave hit first, the impact less harsh than he feared. Then the heavy bulk of Jates slammed into him, flattening Dave against the wall and leaving a dent in the concrete there.

  “Are you combat effective, Czajka?” Jates asked gruffly as he sprang to his feet, assisted by the amazing technology of a Ruhar skinsuit.

  “I don’t,” Dave grunted, struggling to catch his breath. “I don’t know if I’m effective for anything.”

  “The suit should have cushioned you,” Jates yanked the human to his feet with one hand, checking the man had not lost any of his gear during their unexpected flight.

  “Yeah, and I was your freakin’ cushion,” Dave pointed his rifle’s muzzle to the dent in the wall.

  Jates shook hi
s head to clear his spotty vision. “Sergeant, what the hell was that? I only asked you to cover me while I swapped the magazine.”

  “Guess I’m an overachiever, then? I saw an opportunity and took it,” he replied without bothering to add that the opportunity had been presented by his mistake. “We-” His helmet speaker pinged again and an icon of Jesse’s face popped up faintly on the right bottom of the visor. “Oh, hey, forgot about that. Jesse? Where the hell are-”

  “No time to chat. You Ok?”

  “Uh, we’re kinda busy here, we got-”

  Explosive-tipped rounds stitched a line down the hallway, ricocheting off the wall behind Dave and making him and Jates fling themselves flat on the floor. They crawled away on elbows, keeping low as possible. “We could use help here!” Dave shouted as he scrambled to his feet and followed Jates running.

  “We have located your friend,” Tashallo used one of his main antennas to point at a blinking yellow dot on the holographic image. “Unfortunately, we cannot use this ship’s weapons to assist in the engagement. Friendly forces are too close to the enemy, we would risk hitting both sides.”

  “Shit. Can you send me down?”

  “I can do better than that. Captain Regarr! Inform the Rapid Assault Team they are to deploy immediately.” To Jesse he added “As you have never fought, or trained, with our cavalry forces, my suggestion is you keep your head down and stay out of the way.”

  Jesse’s mouth went dry at the thought of dropping into a war zone with a group of battle-hardened beetles. “You won’t have to tell me that twice.”

  “Shit!” Dave ducked down as a shower of debris from a rocket pelted his helmet. “Surgun, I’m out! I am out of ammo!” He held up the weapon, to show there was no magazine inserted. The expended magazine had automatically ejected itself so he could slap in a new one. Red icons blinked in Dave’s visor, informing him that the rifle was inoperable. Damn it! He had just swapped the magazine for one taken from the belt of a dead Verd-kris, when a rocket had exploded close enough to fling him backwards, crack his rifle and bruise several of his ribs.

  “I also am out of rockets.” He quickly popped up above the overturned truck they were using for cover, unleashed a stream of explosive-tipped rounds, and ducked down before a fusillade of enemy rounds struck the vehicle they were taking cover behind. He ejected his magazine and counted. “Eight rounds. Here,” he pulled three rounds out and tossed them to Dave. “Take these.”

  “Shit. That’s not good. Did you get a look at the opposition?”

  Jates eyeclicked to play back sensor data the rifle had gathered during his brief exposure. “A dozen. Or more.”

  “We are fucked, then,” Dave shook his rifle angrily.

  Jates tried to think of some appropriate gallows humor and nothing came to mind. “If we had a rocket, we could try blowing a hole in this wall,” he tapped the solid, reinforced wall behind them. They were trapped. The raid had been successful, achieving its goal of forcing the surprised enemy into a defensive posture. More importantly, the assassination of the official Swift Arrow leadership on the planet had caused enemy forces to fracture and fight each other as much as they fought the Legion. No, the Kristang were now more focused on killing each other than kicking the Legion off the planet. Local warlords sought to fill the power vacuum and seize control of as much of the population as they could before one or more of their rivals hit them. The Achakai, suddenly released from their original contract, were seeking bids for their services and acting only defensively against the Legion. That was all good for the Legion overall, but it did nothing to help Czajka and Jates.

  After the raid, they had become separated from the Verd commandos and arrived at the extraction point too late. They had tried to link up with the commandos again, but communications were being jammed and the situation was so chaotic there was no way to know which direction was best. They had mostly by luck gone into a building where, through a blown-out window, they could see two gunships firing at the Kristang while a transport screamed in and picked up two squads of commandos, but the landing zone was hot and too far away. The commandos and the crew of the transport might never know, but Jates and Czajka had shot down two enemy missile teams before they could launch their weapons at the vulnerable aircraft. Immediately after the missile teams fell and the transport roared away, its booster rockets flaring wildly, the attention of the enraged enemy had focused on the window from which they had taken fire. Dave barely got out of the building before the roof fell in, and he had to use his skinsuit’s power to lift a heavy beam off Jates and drag the Surgun out. Since then, they had been stuck in one running firefight after another. The only reason they were still alive was the extreme confusion of the enemy’s soldiers. Twice, when trapped between groups of the enemy, the Kristang had shot at each other by mistake, allowing Jates and Czajka to crawl away in the chaos. Now their luck was running out.

  The visor of Jates’s helmet glowed a proximity warning. “Sergeant, keep their heads down.”

  “Right.” Dave took a breath and popped up, holding the rifle over the truck. With the view from the rifle’s scope transferred to his visor, he did not need to expose his head to aim and fire. Three rounds left, he told himself. Don’t waste them.

  Taking his time was easier said than done. The enemy saw his rifle as soon as it came above the truck, and a string of rounds hit the truck. “Shit!” Dave muttered to himself, not losing focus. He sent a three-round burst into one over-confident asshole who popped up too high to get a better look. Dave caught a glimpse of his rounds digging into the lizard’s armored chest and exploding, before his own rifle was hit and shot out of his hands. “Ah, damn it!” He sat back down, shaking his numb hands. The gloves had absorbed part of the shock, not enough.

  “That’s it, I’m out.” Dave didn’t even have a sidearm left, he had lost his when the building collapsed. He had been out of pistol ammo anyway.

  Jates popped up and fired at the enemy, then ducked back down. “My rifle is out,” Jates declared with disgust, tossing the weapon away and drawing his own sidearm. He ejected the pistol’s magazine to verify the digital counter was correct and to his dismay it was. “Five rounds.”

  Just then, the truck shook as it was struck by a large number of explosive-tipped rounds and the two soldiers were forced to scramble on their backsides to avoid being crushed between the truck and the reinforced wall. An enemy soldier, running under cover of the sustained rifle fire, came around the end of the truck and pointed his weapon at Dave before Jates fire three rounds into the warrior’s neck armor. The armor there was just as thick as the chest, but Ruhar doctrine held that was a vulnerable spot of Kristang powered suits. The impact of three explosive-tipped pistol rounds were not enough to penetrate the armor plating. It didn’t need to. The kinetic energy made the enemy’s chin thrust back, snapping the warrior’s neck and shattering the helmet’s faceplate. The warrior was flung backward to lie dead.

  “Hell!” Dave whispered. “Why couldn’t his fucking rifle have fallen this way instead of away from us?”

  “Two rounds left,” Jates shook Dave’s shoulder to get the man’s attention. He flipped the pistol around and handed it to the human.

  “Uh?”

  “Will you do me?” Jates flipped up his helmet visor.

  “Do you?” Dave laughed nervously. “Shouldn’t I buy you dinner first?”

  “What was that you said, Czajka?” The Verd-kris soldier’s eyes narrowed.

  “Forget it,” Dave had thought the Surgun was joking. “You want me to shoot you?”

  “The enemy will capture you, put you on display as a trophy of war. I am Verd-kris, they will not be so gentle with me. Captured Verd-kris, especially males, are tortured to death, as traitors without honor,” he shuddered. “I do not fear death, but torture without end cannot be endured. Even the strongest are broken. I see no point to subjecting myself to that.”

  “Ok, uh,” Dave thought the enemy were not likely to treat him an
y less harshly. “You can’t just shoot yourself?”

  “I am a warrior of my people. To take my own life is dishonorable.”

  “Ohhhkaaay then,” Dave flipped up his own visor. “Shit. Man, it’s been an honor serving with you. I wish we didn’t have to die on this miserable rock.”

  Jates held out a hand and Dave clasped it with his free hand. “It has been an honor serving with you.”

  Hell, Dave thought, are those tears in the lizard’s eyes? He released his grip on Jates’s hand to he could hold the pistol with both hands and steady the shaking. “This sucks,” he muttered and pointed the weapon at his companion, who closed his eyes. Dave pulled his finger down onto the trigger and-

  The truck rocked backwards, throwing Dave to the side. Pointing the pistol upward, he scooted backwards along the increasingly narrow gap between the overturned vehicle and the wall. Gunfire so continuous it sounded like a thousand angry buzzsaws roared and he toggled his visor closed to reduce the assault on his ears. “What the hell?”

  Jates held up a hand and closed his own visor. “I do not recognize those weapons,” he said hopefully.

  “What?” Dave shouted back, unable to hear despite the noise-absorbing and cancelling features of the helmet. “Your rifle! Give me your- Oh, forget it,” he added when he realized Jates could not understand him over the noise. Safing the pistol and placing it on the ground in front of the Surgun, he picked up the empty rifle, linked it to his helmet and held the scope just above the body of the truck. “What the hell?”

  The scene through the rifle’s scope, watched by both Legion soldiers, made the previous chaos of the battle look like a carefully choreographed marching drill. Lizards were falling. No, parts of lizards were falling, others were flying through the air and others turned into, well, a sticky pink mist in the air. Someone or something was attacking them from behind, and the Kristang were returning fire or attempting to return fire. In seconds, the rifle’s scope indicated the only movement from what had been the enemy position was dead body parts bouncing around. “We- Whoa!” Dave ducked and the rifle was torn from his hands as an enemy helmet ricocheted off the weapon, hit the wall and bounced to a stop between Dave’s splayed legs.