Hard Drop

by Will van Der Vaart

  THREE: HARD FACTS

  Pods are not made to land smoothly. The words echoed in Tyco’s head as he came to, blinking as his eyes focused on the cracked hatch. They are made to land as quickly as safely possible. You can expect touchdown to hurt. How many times had he shouted those words at greenhorns in training? He felt them bodily now. His side ached as he stepped out of his restraints and reached for the hatch handle.

  The pod's clear window was cracked, weakened by the heat of atmospheric entry and splintered on impact. He was lucky it hadn’t shattered as well. He groaned as he pulled his trusted, standard-issue battle rifle from the pod’s weapons locker. The display lit up immediately, showing no faults. Better yet, it indicated no hostile presence in the pod's immediate radius. Rolling his neck quickly so the joints cracked in unison, Tyco hit the door release with his palm.

  There was no response from the mechanism. Tyco tried again, mashing the button with more force. Still nothing. Apparently the pod's wiring had been shaken loose on impact. He would have to force it manually.

  With a heavy sigh, he lowered his shoulder against the cracked glass door and pushed, slowly levering his body against it until he was standing diagonally, his large frame fully extended across the pod, with his fully body weight leaned against the glass. And still the door would not budge.

  Losing patience, Tyco rocked back and rushed the hatch, letting his shoulder slam against it with full, painful force. It gave way violently and immediately, sending him sprawling out onto ground beyond it. He felt the dirt through his gloves before he could see it. After the darkness of launch and the shielded confines of the pod, the sun overhead was blinding, and the world was a bright blur. The sensors in his visor compensated slowly, darkening gradually until his eyes could adjust enough to see the dry, yellowish earth beneath his fingers.

  Rough and sandy, the rocky ground below dug into his knees through what was left of his heat shield. It was hardly the best first impression. All the same, Tyco was glad to be alive and on solid ground. He rose to full height, quickly stripping off the charred insulating fabric, and turned to stare into the valley below.

  The world that met his eyes seemed strangely familiar, as if he had been on this planet before. In a certain sense, he had: the foliage that sparsely covered the hills around him was part of the standard terraforming package used on every new planet before colonization. The plants grew unevenly from the soil, their leaf patterns and colors close, but not identical to their standard counterparts on Earth. Every planet’s soil had its quirks and inherent chemical imbalances, which played out visibly in the size, shape, and color of its plant life. Tyco had seen it before, on countless other planets and moons. Terra Xena, they called it, the foreign earth. Nothing was an exact copy. Some soil, even after years of treatment, rejected all plant matter. Tyco had seen miles of forest, broken and wilted, starved by the alien earth. Here, there was forest, but it was unremarkable, dwarf-like, even ugly, as if the planet begrudged what little vegetation its dry soil accepted.

  A half-dozen smoke clouds rose in the distance, churning skyward ominously against the horizon, the silent markers of the war zone Tyco had seen from orbit. He had landed miles away from it, in relative safety, and he was grateful. It was always a relief not to have to come out shooting. That part would come soon enough without diving in headfirst.

  A well-worn, crumbling road snaked through the rocky cliffs below, making straight for the fires and charting the course Tyco would have to take. The hillsides looming over it were dotted with clumps of ragged vegetation, and a stream ran alongside it, occasionally spilling over its tarmac and pooling in its potholes. Thick clusters of short trees rose along the stream's edges, shading its water from the direct sun overhead as it trickled its way down into the valley.

  Tyco traced the path of the road until it disappeared around a bend in the rocky hillside. Its surface shimmered in the heat, and the calm wind blowing across the valley made it seem so desolate that it was hard to believe it had seen any traffic weeks, or even months. The burning wreck of the cruiser above completed the picture, its smoldering remains trailing down through the clouds like long, fiery tendrils. All in all, it was hardly a promising start to the mission that awaited, and Tyco shook his head with a sigh.

  “Well,” He muttered grimly. “That’s wasn’t in the brochure.” Glancing at his navigation beacon on his rifle display, he set a course and started down the hill, turning his back to the burning ship above. The mission awaited.

  Across the valley, Flip stumbled out of her pod onto the dusty hillside. She raised herself slowly, achingly to her knees. Halfway up, she stopped abruptly, ripped off her helmet and vomited, overwhelmed by the full force of drop-induced nausea. She had trained for this, of course, but nothing had prepared her for the improbable, unforgiving forces of full-speed descent. Back in the cruiser’s cargo bay, she had felt the veterans’ cautious eyes, had met the Commander’s wary stare, and now she knew why: they had been waiting to see how she would do, to see if she would crack while waiting to drop, let alone survive the experience.

  They had been right to worry. She had felt paralyzed as the launch bay opened, her legs heavy and unmoving at the sight of the planet below. They had come alive only as the missile flashed from the planet surface, and she had found herself in her pod not long after, her visor clouding with the sweat of her exertions. In the end, she had barely made it out in time. The shockwave had chased her pod brutally. The jolt she had felt as it flung her into the thickening atmosphere had left her gasping for breath. Touchdown, abrupt and rocky though it had been, had come as a distinct relief.

  The nausea passed quickly, and she stood, spitting and wiping her mouth, getting her bearings. The valley below, the same one that Tyco was descending into even now, seemed narrow, treacherous, and overrun by wilderness from her overlook. From her vantage point, there were no sign of survivors, pods, or even animals. Only the hot, direct sun shining unforgivingly down onto the shrubs and dry desert below. She had already decided on the best course down the hillside and into the valley when the harsh roar of an engine broke the silence.

  Flip instinctively dropped to a crouch and brought her rifle to her eye. Swinging around to follow the engine, she peered through the sight, combing the dry sand for it source. She found it, at last, at a checkpoint almost hidden in a cleft in the hillside, governing a narrow pass into the valley. A jeep idled by its gate, revving its engine occasionally, even playfully in the silence. Adjusting her scope, she swept across the structure. She counted four soldiers in the checkpoint, with a fifth just outside, standing by the roaring jeep. The sixth, of course, would be inside the vehicle. Whether he had a passenger as well, she couldn’t be sure. A shotgun, three machine guns, a rifle, and a grenade launcher. Plus the minigun mounted on the vehicle and whatever else they had in the checkpoint. For her, a single rifle stranded on a foreign planet, that counted as heavily fortified, not to mention impassable.

  She took a deep breath and calmly checked the map on her display. The yellow, blinking waypoint that marked the orbital’s rendezvous point lay down through the valley, past the checkpoint. The odds that way weren’t good: there were too many hostiles, too little cover, and no support in sight. She could chance it, could try to sneak by the checkpoint through the brush, but the long detour in the pressing heat would leave her struggling and stranded from dehydration long before she reached the rendezvous. She shook her head in distaste.

  She tapped her navigation display, holding her index finger to the glass until the scanner chirped its acknowledgment. A second marker appeared, this one in silver, blinking through the hills behind her. Coupled with it came a flashing, rapidly diminishing clock, counting down second by second in a digital flurry.

  She turned towards the hills with a curious smile, sizing up the snow-capped peaks that crowned them. A narrow dirt trail led up the hillside, winding around and disappearing into a cluster of evergreens. From where she stood, there was no sign o
f fortification in that direction. Nor did the track seem wide enough to support vehicle traffic. Better yet, she could see the shadow cast by the thickening tree cover, offering tantalizing cover from the sun.

  She racked her battle rifle and stepped forwards, picking up the trail. She was heading up into the snow above, away from the desert valley below – and away from what remained of the unit behind her.

  Tyco made steady progress along the stream, careful to stay in the shadows of the short trees that grew along its banks. The brush was denser here, and taller, providing better cover from the road. The thin stream had widened and deepened, as he had descended, and its waters had carved a shallow channel into the earth. Crouched against the bank nearest the road, Tyco had not seen anyone yet, hostile or friendly. The readout showed no crashed pods nearby, and no vital signs of any kind – but there was no reason not take precautions. His pod had gone undetected so far, but there was no telling how much longer that would last. For now, obeying his own order of radio silence, he slunk along the road, cautious and watchful, keeping an eye out for both friendlies and hostiles.

  He kept up a steady rhythm, one eye on his rifle display, the other on the woods ahead of him, carefully checking all angles at regular intervals. Technology, no matter how advanced, often malfunctioned, and after almost a hundred drops, he wasn’t about to let himself fall prey to blind faith in a faulty sensor.

  Static sounded on his headset, then disappeared abruptly. Tyco froze, staring down at the blank display. He waited in silence for the signal to repeat, to confirm that it wasn’t just a stray wavelength from the city or a trick of the wind. This kind of quiet, wordless tap-in was the textbook method for announcing your presence on radio silence. Opening the channel for the briefest of seconds, saying nothing, and then signing off, the intermittent static click would hardly draw the attention of anyone not listening for it. If it was real, if the click had been a signal and not just a radio malfunction, it would mean someone else had survived their landing. Tyco waited in silence for what seemed like an eternity, unmoving in the shade.

  Click. It came again, unmistakable this time. Tyco kept an eye trained on his display as he climbed cautiously up the shallow creek wall. If someone was in radio range, odds were good they’d be along the road, and their heat signal should be visible. But the display blinked insistently empty. Whatever it was, whoever it was, they were beyond scan range.

  He paused, holding his breath, hoping quietly that the signal would return. The silence this time was thick and unbroken. He took another step up the bank, peering through the thin growth into the blinding sunlight, through the wavy refractions playing over the road surface.

  A truck sat innocently by the roadside, front tires pulled up on the gravel shoulder. Its nose faced the hills and its engine idled calmly, as if someone had casually pulled over to take a piss by the roadside. The camouflage cover marked it as a military vehicle, and Tyco quietly unlatched his safety, going live for the first time on this mission. He raised the scope to his eye and scanned the truck carefully for heat signals. Except for the glowing white engine, it was clear, although the sun-warmed metal glowed brightly in places. Heat interference notwithstanding, the truck seemed to be abandoned. Tyco edged forward slowly, scrutinizing the vehicle as he approached.

  It was a standard covered ten-wheeler, several decades, even centuries outdated by the standards of the inner planets, but then, technological scraps always migrated outwards, and they were clearly on the distant edge of the system here. It had been refitted with heavy treads, likely an alteration to account for the state of the local roads, and its thick metal side was covered in rust and scratches. The canvas camouflage cover had faded into a sullen brown-grey, caked with the dirt, grime, and pollution of what looked like a half-dozen planets. The canvas itself was dominated by a large, hand-painted emblem – an unending double Möbius strip, like a twisted infinity symbol, with a bolt of bright red lightning slashing through it. Tyco stopped and stared. The bright red paint looked disturbingly like blood from this distance, but it was too bright and unfaded to be that.

  Turning his sight on the cabin, Tyco found the first signs of the trouble he had expected all along: the windshield had shattered, pierced from the outside, its glass scattered over the cabin floor. He swept the cabin several times, looking for the bullet, trying to determine where it had come from, where the shooter might still be. But the cheap glass had broken in all directions, and from this distance, he could not make it out.

  Tyco swept his sight warily across the truck bed again, staring out at it as if he could see through its sides. He tapped his comm once, then again, watching carefully for any sign of movement.

  No answer came. He frowned, nerves slowly wearing thin. From the shadow of the creek bed, the abandoned truck seemed like a large beacon by the roadside, a magnet for trouble. Tyco could not afford to wait here. There was nothing for it at this point but to take his chances and go. And above all, Tyco hated chance: the odds were always against him.

  He stepped out of his cover grudgingly and broke into a brisk run towards the truck, rifle braced against his shoulder, finger ready on the trigger. He ran in a crouch, cutting diagonally across the space, trying to minimize his exposure as he crossed the open road. He approached the near side of the truck at a trot and turned the corner, swinging his rifle quickly across the hood.

  He was ten paces away when he noticed the cigarette. It had burned all the way down to the filter, the ash building into a thin, grey, unbroken cylinder. It rested between the lifeless fingers of the truck’s front passenger, stretched out low in his seat. His eyes were wide open and bloodshot, but it was the ragged bullet hole through his throat that caught Tyco’s eye. The wound was fresh, blood still trickling out of it and down his uniform.

  “Christ.” Tyco said out loud, pushing in to examine the corpse for some form of identification. Without the luxury of a proper briefing, he was eager to know who exactly they were dealing with here.

  “Put the gun down.” The voice was jarring and rough, but oddly quiet, as if the speaker had lost his voice days before and was only just beginning to recover.

  Tyco looked up to see the driver, bloodied and unsteady on his feet, one hand pressed against an ugly wound in his side, staring at him murderously across the hood of the tank. The man held a pistol in one shaking hand and was pointing it directly at him. Tyco lowered his rifle slowly, holding up one hand in surrender.

  “I should shoot you where you stand.” The driver growled. Tyco stared back at him, unflinching. It was always harder to shoot a man who met your eyes and would not look away. “You’re meddlers, all of you. Messing where you don’t belong.”

  “I’m just a man.” Tyco said. “Same as you.”

  “Just a man?” The driver sneered, then chuckled, then laughed outright. “Maybe you are.” He leaned against the truck, extending his pistol arm across the hood. The gun jerked unsteadily in his hand. “But we don’t take any chances here.” Tyco tensed, ready to hurl himself to the ground even as the driver’s finger coiled.

  The shot sounded, impossibly loud, echoing off the surrounding hills like a clap of thunder. And Tyco was caught flat-footed, standing unmoving and open-mouthed as the man's head melted away and his body toppled onto the truck hood. It landed with a sickening gurgling sound before falling heavily to the ground at Tyco's feet.

  “How you doin’, Cap?” The comm crackled.

  Tyco sighed, recognizing the voice immediately. It was just like Chip to make a grand entrance. “Glad you brought your smokes, buddy.” He said, feeling his heart racing in his chest. “What happened to radio silence?”

  “Already blown.” The sniper’s response was lackadaisical, almost sing-song.

  “Why?” Tyco asked, trying not to smile. “’Cause you gutted the co-pilot?”

  But Chip wasn’t gloating. “Negative. Check the other side.”

  Tyco stepped cautiously around the hood of the vehicle, unsure what to
expect. He turned quickly, swinging the gun in a wide arc, covering the open field and the road beyond.

  He saw almost immediately that it wasn’t needed: there, just outside the thin strip of vegetation, was an opened jump pod, its nose driven a few inches into the brittle rock. Not five steps away was a trooper, lying dead in a crumpled heap, submachine gun still resting in his hand.

  Tyco sighed, letting his gun fall. He walked over to the corpse, put a hand to its shoulder and turned it carefully onto its back. Blank, empty eyes met his, and his heart sank. It was one of his. He dropped to one knee and reached around the dead man's neck, removing his thin metal dog tags.

  “Who is it?” Chip asked over the radio, and then added, hopefully: “Ringo?”

  “Negative.” Tyco responded. “Adamson.” He slotted the tags in the side pocket of his camouflage pants, carefully buttoning down the flap to hold them in place. There was a calm, well-practiced ritual air to his movements, and he looked away from the body with sadness.

  “Adamson…” Chip said, his voice distant as if trying to remember the name. “I liked him.” He decided, at last.

  “Beautiful.” Tyco tapped back, shaking his head.

  “No really, I did – “ But Tyco wasn’t listening any more. Movement in the undergrowth across the highway had caught his eye.

  “Chip, far side of the road, you see anything?” He tapped quickly.

  “Negative. Growth’s too dense.”

  “I’ll check it out. Cover me.” Tyco advanced towards the swaying shrub, using the crashed pod for cover.

  The brush moved back and forth quickly, with increasing urgency. Whatever or whoever was behind it, they were coming in a hurry. Judging by the ferocity of the advance, it was more than one man. Possibly several.

  “I’ve got a shot.” Chip said, his eagerness evident even through the radio.