He shrugged. "That depends on what we find here. We need to determine what Ghar forces remain. If we can defeat them, Astioch will be reclaimed. If they still hold the world in strength, we will withdraw. Our reconnaissance will give the IMTel the data it needs to make that decision."
"Shouldn't the orbital surveillance tell us that?"
The strike leader frowned. "Too much interference from the remnants of the nanosphere. You need to pay more attention in briefings, Trooper. Right now, pay attention to what's outside. Focus."
Feeling as though she had said something wrong, Kalta returned to peering through the ruins outside as Baravit left her alone again. She did not wish to get on the wrong side of her strike leader. They'd never be friends, of course, but she knew he was always ready to step in when Akantha or Heyne crossed the line with their criticisms of her – whether out of sympathy or a simple necessity to encourage squad cohesion, she wasn't sure, and the combat shard conveyed only the imperative, not the reasoning behind it. It didn't matter: she liked him, and she had every intention of carrying out her duties well, to repay his faith in her.
Then, for no reason that Kalta could discern, she felt her stomach lurch. For a brief moment, she felt like she was about to throw up - close enough that she retracted the mask of her helmet, using her implants to manipulate her armor at the speed of thought. But then, just as rapidly, the feeling was gone.
What in Antares was that about? Kalta thought to herself. She could taste vomit on her tongue. Surely she couldn't be having flashbacks to the null-space journey? Surely Baravit - or, worse, Akantha - couldn't be right to be concerned about her? And yet, just like that, it had passed. If it was a flashback, perhaps it might not happen again.
There was a sudden sense of urgency over the combat shard. "Contact!"
In an instant Kalta was alert, looking out into the surrounding ruins, sparing a brief glance for her plasma carbine to check that it was ready. Someone else - Baravit - sent an impulse through the combat shard. "Report!"
"Incoming hostiles on the scanner, sir." It was Akantha speaking. "Picked up by the drones. Direction two-zero-zero, thirty yan and closing fast."
"That's my quadrant," Kalta muttered, only realizing too late the thought had been conveyed through the shard. Irritated with herself, she let her training take over. "Visibility twenty yan - Akantha, give me a heads-up, what's incoming?"
The brief pause while her fellow trooper consulted the scanners seemed to last an eternity. "Ghar battlesuits... five at least, twenty-four yan and closing."
Baravit broke in. "Heyne, get your plasma lance in position, right now! Pair up with Kalta." The trooper acknowledged, but Baravit was already giving the next order. "Javed, you too. Akantha, keep us updated on numbers while I inform Captain Lemelle."
Kalta's heart was pounding. Ghar suits! Her plasma carbine was just about capable of defeating battlesuit armor, but only with sustained fire or a great deal of luck. The focused fire of Heyne’s plasma lance would be much more effective – she needed him alongside her, and soon. Kalta stared out in the designated direction, sighting her weapon into the distance, if only to mark her target for heavier weaponry to finish off.
Akantha spoke up on the combat shard again. "Eighteen yan and closing! Kalta, confirm visual!"
Kalta frowned. There was nothing there. No movement - just the unchanging rubble. Ghar battlesuits would be hard to miss. "Negative, negative, nothing on visual."
"What in Antares is wrong with you, Kalta?" Akantha practically screamed. "Five suits plus auxiliary support, fourteen yan, right in your fire arc! Are you blind?"
Kalta peered, frowning, toward where Akantha insisted the suits were coming from. The hurried sound of movement told her Heyne and Javed had joined her position. They threw themselves down on either side of her, their weapons in a firing position, just as her own was. Javed spoke first.
"Nothing on visual, Akantha," he said, out of breath. "Confirm direction - two-zero-zero?"
"Two-zero-zero, confirmed," Akantha shouted. "Five suits, and that's just the first wave! Eight yan - open fire, you idiots! Are you all as stupid as Kalta?"
"There's nothing here, Akantha," said Heyne. His voice was level; it took a lot to get him worked up, one reason he was entrusted with the plasma lance. "No hostiles, repeat, no hostiles."
Akantha didn't seem to hear him. "They're right on top of you! Second and third waves incoming... start shooting or we're all dead!"
Kalta glanced at her comrades; they met her look, clearly equally bemused. Outside the building they had chosen for their defensive position, there was nothing: no Ghar battlesuits, not even any of their Outcast slaves or Flitters. Just the same desolate rubble and collapsed buildings that had been there since they arrived.
Baravit's thought-voice cut through the confusion on the combat shard, even as he joined Kalta and the others in their firing position. "Enough, Akantha. Get down here now, we'll sort this out." He glared at Heyne. "Scanner maintenance is your responsibility. Why are they malfunctioning?"
Heyne actually flinched; the veteran strike leader was clearly furious. "That’s not possible, sir. Scanners never malfunction, the tech is too robust."
This only made Baravit angrier. "Oh, so there really are three waves of Ghar battlesuits here right now? Then why aren't we dead?" He whirled around as Akantha joined the squad, carrying the scanner projector under one arm. "Let me look at that."
It took just a moment to set up the display. Holographic images filled the room - a map of the surrounding area. Sure enough, there at the center, icons representing enemy units swarmed over a miniature representation of the building in which the squad now stood. Battlesuits, Scutters, Outcast slaves - practically a small army.
Kalta couldn't help but look around nervously. Strange though it seemed, she almost found herself believing the scanner to be true and her own senses to be misleading her – the technology was just too reliable for any alternative to make sense. But the simple fact was that there were no enemies to be seen. Impossibly, the scanners were wrong.
She glanced at the others. They were fixated on the holograph projection, as uncomprehending as she was. In silence, they watched as the scanner showed the phantom Ghar units dispersing, as though they had been victorious in battle. Kalta shivered.
Javed broke the silence. "That," he sounded shaken, with an air of understatement, "was weird."
The others said nothing. It didn't seem that there was anything to add.
With an angry growl, Baravit got their attention. "Back on sentry, you lot," he ordered. "I need to get hold of the strike captain, tell him this was a false alarm. Tell him we can't trust our scanners," he added, half under his breath. It was clearly a message he was not looking forward to conveying.
As the squad dispersed, Kalta couldn't help but notice that Akantha avoided eye contact; the more experienced soldier had panicked, that was the truth of it, and so soon after mocking Kalta for her own mistake. She did not seem in any mood to apologize, though.
On a whim, Kalta took one final look at the holograph display. The icons representing the Ghar had scattered - but one remained. A single Outcast, a symbol above it indicating that it had fallen casualty, slain in whatever non-existent battle the phantoms had fought.
One Outcast dead on the scanners. One Outcast corpse, which she had mistakenly fired upon when she had first entered this building. A suspicion formed in her mind.
* * * *
It took just a few moments for Kalta to convince her squadmates of her idea, but when the leader of the strike company arrived and demanded a situation report, he was not so receptive.
"We have a theory that the scanner malfunction was some kind of echo, from the original invasion," Baravit explained. "The battle that the hostiles appeared to fight on the scanner corresponds broadly to the damage to the building and the dead body we found on entry."
"The dead body you shot on entry," Strike Captain Lemelle corrected him tersely. "
Which one of you is Kalta Byatt?"
Kalta, Baravit, and the rest of the squad were stood to attention in a precise rank. The strike captain had been decidedly unhappy when Baravit informed him that the supposed contact was a false alarm - he had already begun to redeploy the whole company to deal with the apparent attack. Kalta guiltily stepped forward and saluted; she decided it was best to keep her mouth shut.
Lemelle slowly strode over to stand in front of her. Four centiyan taller, he made the most of that height difference to look down his nose at her.
"So, you're the hero who shot the corpse," he sneered. "Impressive, really, given that you must still be recovering from all the vomiting you did in the trans-dimensional tunnel. And now, your squad is panicking over enemies that aren't even there. Not the best start to your military career, is it?"
He turned back to Baravit, leaving Kalta glad she had not had to answer. "Your squad isn’t exactly covering themselves in glory, so far, but I'll give you a chance to redeem yourselves. The landing site is secure, so it's time to recon for hostiles. Take your troopers out on bearing zero-nine-zero, search pattern. If you find anything, kill it, and keep me informed. No more getting scared over your own shadows, you hear? Get moving."
Kalta saluted with the others as the strike captain turned away. More shame, to add to her earlier embarrassment. All in all, her first mission was not going as she'd hoped.
Baravit turned to the squad, the set of his jaw giving away the anger he otherwise hid well. "You heard the strike captain," he said. "Let's get going."
Breaking ranks, the squad moved out. Having held position in the ruined building for several hours, Kalta was relieved to be on the march again - she found herself eager to explore this alien world.
Not, she considered, that it looked very much unlike her own home world, the complete ruination of the city notwithstanding. Before the planet was shattered by war - before the Ghar had invaded - this city would have seemed quite familiar. The layout of the streets, the architecture, the clear purpose of each building; it could have been anywhere in the PanHuman Concord. Perhaps that explained why the place seemed so eerie. The ruins, the craters, the rubble - even the corpses that lay here and there in piles, though they were barely recognizable as such after seven years left to rot. It was all evidence of the colossal slaughter that had taken place here, and it was all too easy to imagine the same happening elsewhere. The war that had ruined Astioch was far from unique in Antarean space.
The squad moved cautiously through the ruined streets in silence. The lack of talking wasn't just battlefield discipline - the strike captain’s haranguing had hit home hard. Kalta knew that some of the others, at least, blamed her for it – Akantha flashed poison eyes at her a couple of times, her resentment conveyed over the combat shard like a dull headache. But perhaps that was an outlet for her guilt – after criticizing Kalta so loudly for shooting the long-dead Outcast, it had been Akantha herself who had made the next mistake.
Half an hour into their reconnaissance, a partially collapsed building blocked their path, what remained of the walls leaning at worrying angles. They had stayed mostly upright for seven years, though - they seemed unlikely to collapse now. As the squad each picked their individual route through the ruin, Kalta found herself out of sight of the others, all but Javed. He glanced at her and retracted the mask of his helmet to give her an encouraging smile. "Finally on the move, right?"
"Right," Kalta agreed, withdrawing her own mask to meet his gaze, grateful that he spoke to her directly, rather than over the combat shard for the others to overhear. "Hey, Javed – do you think there are Ghar here to fight? Or are they all long-dead, like that last one?"
The other trooper shrugged. "I don’t know. There might be some left behind, but not many, I guess. Nothing to keep them here. Not once they'd had their sport."
"Sport?"
"Yeah, well," Javed said, uncomfortably. "They don't like humans much. But they like torturing them. Killing them."
"You've fought Ghar before?"
"Once," he confirmed. "That was a small battle, only a few dozen of them. Not like here - a whole Ghar army group invaded this planet. Only a few strike companies to defend the whole of Astioch. They didn't stand a chance. Nor did any of the civilians."
Kalta could see the remains of one of those unfortunate non-combatants, half-buried under the rubble. The slaughter must have been horrific. "How many died?"
Javed shook his head slowly. "Almost all of them. Millions - billions, maybe, I don't know. A few got away, those whose ships could run the blockade. They say the cull took a year. IMTel thinks the Ghar moved on after that. That's what we're here to check."
Kalta thought for a moment. "They attack humans on sight, don’t they? Some kind of genetic imperative? Seems like we’d have seen them already, if they were here."
Javed shrugged again. "Ghar aren’t stupid. They’ll attack with whatever strength they have, all at once; it’ll take time for them to get their forces together. Or maybe they’ll wait for us to split up – the strike captain didn’t send us on recon for the fun of it. We’re tempting bait for any Ghar in ambush, so keep an eye out, right?" He grinned as he glanced at her, then suddenly looked concerned. "Hey – your nose is bleeding."
Surprised, Kalta reached up to touch her face. Sure enough, her gloves came away splattered with red. "Damn," she cursed. "I think it's the after-effects of... what happened in null-space. I think my body is still recovering."
Javed was frowning now. "Are you sure you're alright? You don't need a medi-drone, or to evacuate?"
Kalta glared at him. She felt like screaming. "Not you, too! Come on."
She stomped away, flicking her mask down to conceal her face, leaving Javed to follow. Brushing past what was left of a wall, clambering over another pile of rubble - was the whole world like this, she wondered? Was there a single structure left intact, anywhere on the planet's surface? - she caught up with the rest of the squad.
Akantha and Baravit stood waiting. The strike leader looked impatient. "You two took your time. Where's Heyne?"
Kalta glanced around; beside her, Javed shrugged. "I thought he was with you, sir," he said. Baravit grunted and sent an impulse over the combat shard.
"You get lost or something, Heyne? Hurry up and get out here, will you?"
There was no response. Kalta felt a sudden wave of concern: something wasn't right. She could tell from the shared echo of their thoughts that the others had the same feeling - without a word spoken, all four brought their weapons up, looking out for threats. But what threat could there be? The Ghar were not known for subtle, silent attacks. If any of them had attacked Heyne, there's no way the rest of the squad could have missed it.
Baravit took charge. "Pair up. Find him. Now."
* * * *
Eventually, Baravit had had to report Heyne missing. The strike captain had been near incandescent with fury - another foul-up from their squad. But he had ordered the whole company - half a hundred or so troopers plus buddy drones - to search for the missing soldier. Two hours later, with darkness descending, the effort was called off. They had found nothing of Heyne at all.
Kalta and the rest of the squad crouched together in the shell of a building, waiting for orders. There was very little eye contact, let alone conversation. Heyne's disappearance had made everything worse.
Akantha broke the silence. "This is your fault," she muttered, glaring at Kalta.
"Me?" she protested, rising to the bait. "How is it my fault?"
"You're bad luck," spat Akantha. "This squad was doing just fine until you joined. Now we've lost Heyne, and the captain despises us."
Javed snorted. "Luck? What are you, some kind of Mhagris?"
"Tell me I'm wrong!" Akantha demanded. "Her first mission, and look at what's happened!"
"Enough!" interrupted Baravit. "All of you, as bad as each other. Five minutes away from the nanosphere and you bicker like lavamites. Snap out of it, right now. From
here on in, we get things right or so help me, I'll send you all back to basic training. Is that understood?"
Kalta looked away in sullen silence, but she understood well enough. Akantha hated her, Javed wasn't sure if he could rely on her, and Baravit, well, Kalta just seemed to be one more problem on his list. But she knew she wasn't to blame. She just needed a chance to prove what she could do.
After a couple of moments, Javed spoke again. "It doesn't feel right, giving up on Heyne."
Akantha nodded slowly. "Right. He saved my life often enough. We can't abandon him."
The strike leader shook his head, but the rancor in his voice was gone. "If the whole company couldn't find him in daylight, we'll never find him in the darkness. Besides, the strike captain called off the search."
"But our earlier orders still apply, right?" said Kalta. Baravit looked at her, eyebrow raised. "I mean, we're still supposed to be scouting for hostiles, aren't we?"
"First thing you've said that makes sense," Akantha muttered, though she backed down under Baravit's glare. Javed quickly stepped in to agree with Kalta.
"She's right. We can recon for the enemy. And if we find Heyne while we're out there...?"
The strike leader met the eyes of each of them in turn. He sighed. "Fine. Alright, get up then. Move out in two minutes."
* * * *
The squad advanced in silence. At night, the ruined city seemed even more oppressive than it had in daylight. What had been a crater was now a yawning chasm of darkness, like a mouth ready to swallow them whole; what was earlier just a loose pile of rubble was a chance for Kalta to slip and snap an ankle, if she did not take care with her footing.
Ten minutes later, Baravit called a halt and signaled for the others to drop into cover. "Ahead, six yan. Anyone make it out?"
Kalta squinted into the gloom; even with the light-enhancements of her helmet, the thing Baravit indicated was no more than a shape, obscured by a half-fallen wall. Whatever it was, it was big: maybe the size of a personal transport.
Beyond Antares Dimensional Gates Page 15