by Les Petersen
A fire had started off toward Black Hill and tracer flashes through the trees illuminated the bush as if Father Christmas was coming in full throttle. I could hear kids screaming in fear and the sound of shotguns booming out defiantly. The poc-poc-poc of the chopper warned the gun platform was moving in. Chances were it was a Drone. “Medusa, Bleeder, commandeer the gun platform. I want it to pin down those troops.”
“Acknowledged.”
I looked over the edge to where Sam had been. She was huddled under the log I’d just left and seemed a little bewildered by what was happening. Her holoface was down and a ribbon of blood was running down from her scalp. I guessed a round had grazed her.
Sansan flashed up a warning. “Boris, multiple target acquisition.”
“Where?”
“Bearing 220 degrees, distance 32 meters.”
I pulled my head down just as a burst of gunfire cut toward me.
I needed to know what was happening, but I wasn’t going to stick my head above the lip. “Charlie, full night vision. Sonic representation. Border shifts. Image captures. On my count of three.”
Green light watered down the night vision. “One.”
I pulled the chin mount off and extended it out to its maximum length. The holoface went down leaving me in almost complete darkness. “Two.”
Why Sam hadn’t moved was beyond me. Even a graze shouldn’t have slowed her down. Christ, I hate being a hero. Especially without a gun. “Three!”
I thrust my arm skyward for a brief second, lifting the holo cameras above the lip and then pulled my arm back in. A burst of gunfire sprayed along the top of the rocks and shards of rock wheezed past my ears. It took me a few moments to get the chin mount on and for GaZe to feed the captured image through the Heads-up. All that while I was worrying Sam was going to get into a lot of trouble if they got her in line of sight, or if they used grenades on her.
The HUD was frightening. Coming slowly through the trees toward Sam were a trio of soldiers, each dressed in camo. One Tinman was armed with a shoulder mounted Look-and-Lock targeter, which fed a mini-gun. His was the weapon that had sprayed my position. The other two were Darkmen with no tech larger than a digital wristwatch. I looked around for a weapon, but aside from a few hunks of rock, very little was of use. I stripped off my tie and wrapped it around my hand. “Sansan, Flash prep. Fifteen percent full power. Secondary charge in red spectrum, twenty percent.”
“Construction acknowledged.”
Better get moving. I picked up a stick lying nearby and poked it above the lip. The mini-gun sprayed my position and the stick disintegrated.
“Sansan: approximate delay for the mini-gun?”
“Point oh-nine six six seconds, Boris.”
I almost laughed at her response. Still that darn Boris didn’t sit right on me: made me feel like I should be in snow, not the Australian bush. And yeah, that was an approximate timing, all right. I knew never to ask her for a full report! Twenty digit references are a pain in the butt., but the approximated delay told me what I needed to know. The soldier was running on safety, having to verify his targets acquisition. I inched back from the edge to give me space to rise to a crouch and hefted one of the nearby hand-sized rocks. Sansan had anticipated the move and a trajectory toward the mini-gun flipped up on the Heads-up. Two quick breaths to get myself ready and I launched the rock as hard as I could at the soldier. Just as I threw it I yelled out “Grenade!” One heart beat later I leapt forward and was airborne. The mini-gun was clattering at the rock, sparks were flying off it and it was kicked sideways., but in the brief moment it took for the soldier to change targets, I’d dropped off my perch and under his line of fire. The ground came up at me with violent velocity and I barely had time to get my feet together before the shock cracked my jaws together. A searing pain lanced up my left calf, but I hit the ground rolling and rose in a limping sprint through the darkness to where Sam lay. The mini-gun burred away at my path and I dropped to the ground just as it caught up with my racing shape. The slugs razored through a twenty-meter gum behind me and with a crack and a shudder it collapsed directly toward where I lay. I rolled out of its drop zone, felt like the earth bucked as the trunk slammed down into it and then branches were threshing my back. Dust and ground cover sprayed in the air, sparkling against my holoface like fireflies frantically throwing themselves into a furnace.
I hate being a hero!
I rolled out of the branches and rose to my feet. One of the dark men raced toward me, his mouth open in a silent battle cry and the SLR in his hands armed with a tongue of sharp steel aimed at my stomach. My holoface went opaque just as the holoface’s flash went off like an explosion. Instantly I could see again, but the soldier had his eyes were screwed tight in agony. Still, he continued charging toward me although blinded. I twisted aside from his thrust like a matador, kicked his feet out from under him as he went by and then drove my elbow into the side of his head. When he went down hard, I leapt on his back, whipped my tie around his throat and hauled on each end until he didn’t move any more. I left the tie there, grabbed his SLR and rose in a crouch.
The mini-gun sprayed the area. A single shot rang out and then Sam yelled out. “Behind you!”
I spun around. A Darkman was thrusting at me. His bayonet sliced through my jacket and along my ribs as I threw myself sideways. The second flash went off and he groaned in pain. I reversed the SLR and smashed him across the side of the head. He staggered, then opened up with his gun. He turned a complete circle with his finger hard down on the trigger and the shots cut above my head as I dropped at his feet.
I shot him. Point blank. A full clip. The bullets lifted him off his feet and threw him backward into the branches; his SLR flipped off into the darkness. Seconds later he was levering himself up groggily, his chest armour smoking. I stood there, hesitating, knowing the bayonet was useless, not wanting to get into full contact. He wiped his eyes and groaned, rose to his feet, blinked at me, shook his head as if castigating me and grinned maniacally. His night vision was swiftly returning.
Sam rose behind him like a demon rising from hell, the darklight of her holoface peppered with static. She aimed the pistol at the back of his head.
He must have read my body language. He dropped a fraction of a moment before she shot at him and the bullet screamed past my face close enough for me to see my name written on the side of the bullet. I cringed back, but the Darkman was rising again with his knife in his hands and his back to me. I launched myself at him and brought him down. One hand wrapped around his throat, the other around the outstretched arm with the knife. I clenched my teeth and exerted all my strength to twist him about. He slumped in my arms. For a moment, I thought he had succumb to the tightness around his throat; that I’d choked him, but then he suddenly came alive in my arms and threw me over his shoulder. I flipped through the air and landed hard on my back; my breath driven from my lungs. Sam’s gun boomed in my ear and I heard the guy crunch into the foliage and thresh about for a moment before Sam let him have another round.
Lying at Sam’s feet, gasping for breath, listening to the battle raging further away and watching her calmly reload her pistol was one of the most horrible times of my life. The thought that she could be so calm about what was going on, how she could confidently blow away some guy who only moments ago was an elite soldier, how she could stand in the middle of a battle and not feel anything was beyond me. I’d been through countless simulations, spent untold days training with any number of weapons or with hands and fists on the tatami and never had I seen such cold calculated ease of finish, nor experienced it. When my opponent was lying at my feet defeated, or, on occasion, seriously hurt, I’d be so pumped up on adrenaline that I’d be grinning enough to worry the referees. If my opponents were looking down at me, there’d be the same jubilant look on their face, or at times one of utter contempt., but never the cool detachment she was showing.
Suddenly a wing of her holoface broke away from its mount and I
saw why she had not moved. A bullet had hit the chin mount. Sensory overload had blanked her mind for a moment.
She looked down at me and shook her head as if I was useless. If I’d had a full lungful of air at that point I would have given her a dressing down. And no doubt she’d have put a bullet in me to shut me up.
Sansan hailed me. “Boris, status report?”
Sam began rifling through the Darkman’s equipment, carefully turning his body over. A Darkman wouldn’t be wearing any booby traps like the other soldiers;, but then again, their equipment wasn’t so valuable. To distract myself from the torn body, I let Sansan feed the report through the Heads-up.
The Drone gunship’s AI had been over-ridden, but conflicted with its own primary commands. It had maintained an elevation of four hundred meters and was returning to the command vessel. Bleeder was chipping through the firewall, using field commands stolen from the ground troops and was 83.756% certain of eventual system capture. The ground troops attacking the Ferals were halted by lack of communication as the command vessel had been silenced. They were considering a tactical withdrawal, but were waiting on word from the advanced guard. As soon as it reported in the troops would be gone. The ground car was also waiting for commands, which led me to suspect that it too was a Drone.
“Sansan, have you obtained their mission briefing?”
“Affirmative, Boris.”
“Feed it through as well. And scrap the Boris unless otherwise advised. Revert to Jack.”
The mission brief made it all clear. Of course, the target was Boris Stromlo aka Harold Earner aka Jose Millano aka Jack Dayzen aka – in fact, quite a long list of aka’s, not all of, which I’d used in my life., but all my stats were provided, along with a rather clinical evaluation of my current good looks with confirmation of what action to take on capture: Destroy with all malice. Complete or partial body acceptable, with frontal lobe preferred intact. Ferals in control or under the control of Boris Stromlo were to be seeded with current criteria. Current Criteria was non-negotiable. Destruction of Feral headquarters to be carried out with disregard for collateral damage. No confirmation required for acts of introduced or domesticated fauna damage.
Which meant, in layman’s terms: kill me, kill the Ferals if they so much as smiled when you took their picture, kill the Ferals’ pets and level the place if they needed to. Local Command was going to be ticked off that things were not going according to plan.
Sam was talking away into her holoface. She had gone over to see what she could take off the guy with the mini-gun. The guy lay on his back across a small boulder, his head a bloody mess. Sure-shot Sam! Yeah, that was a good name to call her.
I heard Shotgun letting off another broadside somewhere in the distance and decided that at least I could help the guy even if Sam wasn’t going to. I grabbed the SLR. “Sansan, track me out to where those last shots came from. Full alert of heat readings, or shifts in metallurgy above one hundred grams.”
“Acknowledged.” The Heads-up gave me directional indicators and elevation readings. I dropped the holoface into mid-range light enhancement and headed in the direction of the Ferals redoubt. My ankle was giving me hell.
On my way I came across the bodies of five soldiers, a Darkman, two Ferals and the dogs. From the damage to the trees in the area, I could imagine the fierce fire fight that had gone on. I’d hate to have been there. I lifted two mags that were tucked into the Darkman’s belt and hobbled off again. Fifty meters further on I found Doc propped against a tree, his chest still steaming and his legs torn from his body. A row of needles through his throat pinned him against the trunk. Another Feral lay beside him: a young girl of about ten years of age who had been shot in the legs and then bayoneted. Her eyes were open and she seemed to be almost smiling, though she too was dead. Doc’s medical bag lay off to one side. I knelt beside Doc for a moment and said a quite goodbye; tried to close the little girl’s eyes, but they wouldn’t budge. I picked up Doc’s bag, rose to my feet and headed off toward where the rest of the Ferals were dug in.
Sansan led me around an enclave of Tinmen – if I’d had grenades they’d have been dancing with angels. Ten meters further on I dropped as quietly as I could to the ground and whispered into the holoface. “Sansan, comm memory. Find the target known as Shotgun.”
Ten long seconds later a target icon came up on the Heads-up. “He is beneath the surface, Jack. Depth approximately fifty meters. Shall I continue tracking.”
“Don’t bother. Independent track. New target. Find the target known as Barb.”
It took only a moment for the target icon to come up. Barb was no more than ten meters off to the west. I called up area surveillance, heightened the magnification and dropped it on her position. She was lying beneath a log that cut out a lot of the visual, though I could see her feet and the snout of the armalite. From the way the snout was tracking back and forth, I knew she’d blast away at anything or anyone who came out of the bush toward her. Tech reading showed she was wearing a JON. “GaZe, communications capture on target on screen.”
“Acknowledged.” Two heartbeats later I could hear her breathing into her mike.
“Barb. It’s Jack, the Flintlock man.”
She didn’t sound surprised. “Where are you?”
“Over to your right, between the big tree and the round rock that looks like a pair of buttocks.”
“To the east?”
“Yeah.”
“You hiding near the tree or the rock?”
“The rock.”
“You fucking murderer!”
She opened up on me. Bullets thudded into the ground near my face and sang off the rocks, spraying me with splinters and sparks.
“Jeezus! Cut it out!” I crawled away from the rock.
The Tinmen opened up on her position and then on mine. A spray of stone flashed across my face, one chip embedded itself into my left cheek. I bugged out of there. When I was clear of the firing, I tapped up the channel again and swore at her. When she responded, she was gasping. “They shot me. I’m bleeding. Help me!”
I hate being a hero. The soldiers would chop me in half before I got to her. “Bleeder, I want that Drone in here and I want it here now!”
“I cannot guarantee system stability.”
“And I cannot guarantee we’ll get out of this in one piece. I want a gunfire sweep of those Tinmen’s positions and I want it yesterday.”
“Acknowledged.”
I tapped up the comm port. “Are you still there, Barb?”
Her voice was a lot weaker, but still fierce. “I saw you. I saw you shoot the Doc! I saw you kill Trandy!”
“It wasn’t me. Trust me. The Tinmen probably used my image on their holofaces. That’s how they work. They want me dead too, but I’m bringing in a Drone to take them out. You keep your head down. Tell me where you’re shot.”
For a moment, she was silent and I thought she wouldn’t answer.
“Trust me, Barb.”
Her JON crackled and I could hear her breathing shallowly. “In the shoulder. I can’t use my arm.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Stay there. When the shooting starts, I’ll come to you and help. It will only be a moment.”
It was longer than a moment. In the time that it took for the Drone to be captured, the Tinmen had popped off a grenade at my last position and two toward where Barb was lying. I gave them something to think about by filling their position with shower of leaves from a burst of rounds. Satellite thermal feed showed Barb had moved slightly from where she had been and she was well protected from the blasts. I had a clear view of her this time and it was obvious that a bullet had gone straight through her shoulder. She was sitting up and had one hand pressed against the wound. In her other hand was something dark. For a moment I wondered what it was, then realised she held a grenade, her thumb through the pin. The sight of the grenade worried me. From it shape it was an old model, unstable and chunky. It would do a lot of damage.
“How are you going, Barb?”
“Not too good.” Her voice was very weak and filled with sadness. Her hand clenched and unclenched around the grenade and I could see her teasing the pin out of its housing.
The Drone came roaring over the trees. GaZe had it on full throttle, with all its sirens wailing and its lights thrashing the sky with vengeance. It hammered out a greeting to the soldiers in their foxholes; spraying them with its twin mini-guns and popping off grenade rounds like it was shitting destruction.
At the first shot, I leapt off the ground and scrambled toward Barb, my Heads-up firmly locked on to the sight of her as she pulled the pin out and dropped the grenade at her feet.
I charged through the bush, leapt the last few feet, dropped Doc’s bag aside, rolled over the grenade, came to my feet with it in my hands and hurled it as hard as I could toward where the soldiers were being shredded by the Drone. It only covered half the distance before detonating in the air and a sliver of fire sliced me along the shoulder. The Drone wobbled from the blast, but maintained its destruction of the soldiers. The ground burst into flame about them, the trees roared into roman candles of wicked dancing fire.
The Drone ceased firing. The bush was suddenly very quiet. I looked at Barb and in the flickering light I could see she was holding a long knife against her chest, but was shaking too much to drive it into herself. I reached down and lay my hand over hers, gently easing the weapon away from her until it was lying in her lap. She released it and let it drop. She was shaking in terror and the beginning of shock.
Sansan came on-line. “Targets destroyed, Jack. All other forces are withdrawing.”