by B. V. Larson
In comparison to Claver, that sadist had been small potatoes.
-46-
The saurian assault began three days later. They started off by withdrawing and hunkering down at the foot of the mountain. The alien troops that were posted above our elevation retreated to the snowy heights. Knowing these signs couldn’t be good, we took shelter ourselves, keeping well back from the entrance but for a small contingent of troops on lookout duty.
It just so happened that Winslade ordered me and my squad to stand duty at the entrance. To add insult to injury, he ordered us to do it without our dragons.
“But sir,” I argued when I received the orders from Leeson, “What good is a cavalry unit without our mounts?”
“You ask yourself that the next time you go off somewhere to play God, McGill!” he shouted back. He was red-faced and pissed-off, and I had trouble blaming him.
“Are you suggesting, sir, that—” I began
“Shut up, McGill. Just shut the hell up. My platoon has been ordered to stand out here in our underwear with beamers in our hands due to your constant meddling. I swear, if I survive this day, I’m going to remember this, Veteran. Graves shouldn’t have judged you the winner of that contest back on Green Deck. That’s what I know for sure now.”
With a sigh, I retreated. Leeson wasn’t a bad officer, but he was as emotional as Graves was stern and unflappable. I knew he’d cool off later on—probably.
Going over the chain of command, it made sense to me that Winslade had given the grim orders. Turov might have done it—but she had retreated from the system, safe in her two ships. Tribune Drusus was aware of my extracurricular activities, but hadn’t seemed overly upset by them. In fact, he’d given me a modicum of faint praise for my part in discovering various squid artifacts in the mines.
No, it had to be Winslade. Of the group, he’d been the one most in favor of perming me the moment the Nairbs had shown up. Maybe this was his way of getting the job done. Better late than never, I guess.
Harris greeted me next with a personal visit, and he wasn’t any more pleasant than Leeson had been. Possibly, he was even more hostile.
His big brown finger jabbed me in the chest. As I wasn’t wearing anything thicker than smart-cloth, that finger sunk in and grated on my sternum.
“You asshole,” he said. “You just can’t hold your shit together, can you? I was a fool. A card carrying fool to think you’d grown up.”
“To what do I owe this assault, Harris?”
“You just had to go down into some tunnel and tease some alien until it bit someone. That’s what I’m talking about. Winslade explained it to me—at least, he explained enough. Winslade’s an ass, but you’re worse. If you didn’t have rank, I’d make you do push-ups until you puked, then I’d let you lie in it while we all died here in this hole.”
In an attempt to change the subject, I pointed downslope toward the enemy positions. “They’re pulling back, sir. Not advancing.”
“And why the hell would they do that? Because they’re going to bombard us, that’s why! Maybe they’ll use some of that acidic gas that eats your suit. That should make your team extra happy you managed to get our commander to post us out here.”
He stalked away, and I let him go without further comment. After all, he was right. Winslade was leaning on my team, and since Harris and Leeson were part of the same team, they were sharing in the pain.
I had to wonder at Harris’ mentioning of the discoveries from deep in the mountain. He must have heard about them from somewhere, and that they were the source of Winslade’s displeasure. The discoveries themselves were neutral, so the source Winslade’s anger had to be the way I’d handled the situation, rather than the fact I’d done something on my own.
It didn’t take long for my slow brain to figure it out. What did Winslade like to do when a discovery was made? Why, he took all the credit personally, that’s what. Apparently, he wasn’t punishing my people for the Nairb ship disaster, he was unhappy about me stepping over his head and going directly to Drusus, cutting him out of the loop.
As there was nothing I could do about my orders, I stood my post with the rest of them. Everyone was glum and few of them would meet my eye directly.
For about an hour, we watched the skies and the slopes nervously. We moved around in a crouch when we moved at all, wary of snipers and enemy buzzers that were weaponized to kill.
When the attack finally did come, it didn’t go down the way I’d expected. There was no storm of missiles or massive bombardment from below. Instead, the attack came from above.
I happened to be looking up—which everyone was doing a lot of—and I saw the gray skies suddenly lighten. A bluish ball fell from the heavens. It was like a ball of lightning, like a falling star of legend.
I’d seen this phenomenon before, but from the standpoint of the man firing the weapon. I’d watched it play out from the tactical control room of Minotaur as her broadsides were fired on a planet, causing vast destruction.
The others around me all began to run, but I didn’t bother. I didn’t crouch or throw myself flat. I stood tall, looming over all those who scrambled past me to get into the mouth of the tunnel at my back.
As that single shell punched through the various layers of the atmosphere, it caused frozen rings of bluish light to encircle it. These expanded on their own, like glowing ripples. It was a thing of beauty in its own deadly way.
I knew there was no time left to run, nowhere to hide. A man might as well face death bravely and make the best of it.
The single fusion shell arced down directly toward my position. One of those seven ships above us had coughed out a single shot, and of every square kilometer on this vast planet, the exact spot I stood upon had been selected for erasure.
I had to wonder if Claver was up there, cackling with glee as the warhead fell. Maybe he’d pinpointed me on a vid report from a saurian tech. Or maybe he’d just gotten lucky.
In any case, one second I stood proud and tall and the next I was just a few atoms of vapor drifting around the mountainside with the rest of them.
* * *
When I awoke, I was surrounded by more than the usual degree of chaos.
“Get him off the table, stat!” shouted a bio.
I was rudely lifted and heaved onto the floor. I squirmed there painfully, my nerve-endings still knitting up and reporting to my brain in a disorganized fashion.
“I’m not sure about the readings, Specialist,” said an orderly who was running instruments over my legs. “I’m getting skeletal abnormalities. He might be a bad grow.”
This sent a chill through me. Abnormalities? A bad grow? How long was this version of James McGill going to grace Machine World with his presence?
Through sheer effort of will, I struggled to my knees, then my feet. I wanted to cough. I wanted to pitch face-forward onto the slimy floor. But I didn’t. I stood swaying, and the half of my mouth that was obeying me twisted upward in a grim parody of a confident smile.
“I’m right as rain, orderly,” I said. “Get off me. I’ve got to get back to my unit.”
The bio specialist was one I didn’t know. She ran her eyes up and down my person like an auctioneer pricing horseflesh. “He’ll do. Give him a uniform and get him out of here,” she said to the orderly.
Shaking his head, the orderly helped me to a pile of loose clothing and discarded weapons. I took the biggest suit they had on hand, rammed the helmet down over my face, and gripped a beamer in both hands. I noticed as I was doing so I was limping a little.
The orderly kept looking at my bad leg. I took a deep breath and shook my head.
“It’s just a charley horse,” I said. “I get one every week.”
“No,” he said quietly, shaking his head. “You’ve got a torsion in your left femur. Your leg is twisted, and it’s going to stay that way. Walking will be difficult, and running will be almost impossible.”
I frowned, thinking about that. “I’m ca
valry,” I said. “I’ll get in my dragon and make do.”
The orderly shrugged and let go of my elbow. I swayed but remained standing. I walked toward the exit, my left leg moving with my toes pointed inward. I adjusted, and found I could totter along at a reasonable pace—but run? No way.
That was bad. A worse error than I’d ever been born with before. Still, I found I didn’t want to give up on my current existence. I briefly considered about putting my beamer up against my throat and pulling the trigger, forcing them to recycle me, but I couldn’t do it. From the sounds of battle outside the revival center, who knew if I’d ever draw breath again.
It would be one thing to die proudly in battle, getting permed by the enemy because there was no one to bring me back to life. But to kill myself and then sleep forever—I couldn’t do that.
In the passageway outside, the chaos intensified. Troops were rushing this way and that. There were injured infantry everywhere, sitting with their backs up against the rough tunnel walls. Bio people knelt beside each in turn and sprayed them with portable flesh-printers to reconstruct what they could. I knew right away things were bad. The bios were patching people up enough so they could stand and get back into the fight. That meant they couldn’t afford to recycle and revive. They needed every trooper on the line they could get.
Leeson was along one wall. He was being sprayed along a bare arm that was a bloody mess. The pink of new skin glared against his hairy shoulders, and he glared at me in recognition when I came close.
“McGill? You injured again already?”
He indicated my leg, and I nodded grimly. “It’s nothing, sir,” I said. “Do I have a dragon waiting for me somewhere?”
“No,” he said regretfully. “We lost our mounts in the first counterattack. I didn’t see you then. Is this your first time back on the front line?”
Front line? I thought to myself. Since when was the core of the mountain, the inner sanctum where we kept our most holy of tech devices—the revival machines—the front line?
“I’m a little out of touch, sir,” I admitted.
“All right. Get me on my feet, and I’ll fill you in on the way back to the fight. No, no, dummy! Lift me by the good arm!”
I heaved him up with his less injured arm and looked him over. He didn’t look like he was in much better shape than I was, but we both had beamers, and we were in the game.
Working our way down long, echoing passages, we passed hundreds of troops gripping their snap-rifles with eyes that rarely blinked. Most of them were Varus light troopers.
“We haven’t got dragons,” Leeson said. “But I know where there’s a stash of heavy armor we can borrow.”
I didn’t argue with him. I didn’t say much at all, in fact. He explained that after the saurians used a single fusion shell to blow open the mouth of the mines, they’d exposed a number of inner chambers and galleries.
“It was like an anthill was cut away to reveal the panicked inhabitants,” he said. “The initial blast killed a thousand or so of us. Radiation, cave-ins and follow-up conventional bombardment finished another cohort. But the enemy infantry waited until the next morning to assault on foot—probably to let the radiation levels die down a little.”
“Is there any sign of reinforcements, sir?” I asked.
“None. Not from space or anywhere else. But the saurians haven’t had an easy time of it, I’ll tell you that. We hung back that first day, squatting in the dark until a few thousand of them filtered into the rubble. Then we hit them hard. Booby-traps, dragons charging in close quarters—the enemy was armored, but we pushed them right back out. They don’t seem to have any juggers with them, just the smaller raptor troops. They left at least three thousand dead, and in the meantime we’ve been churning out fresh troops with the revival machines.”
That had always been one of our key advantages in battle. A human legion could face a force double or triple its size if it had the time to recycle her troops. If each man died three times, ten thousand legionnaires could do the fighting of thirty thousand.
It rarely turned out that way in practice, however. Once a force reached the breaking point, it was overwhelmed and wiped out. The revival machines themselves could be destroyed as well by deep raids. So far, Varus had held on. But if I had to guess from the look of the people in the tunnels, we were already down to half strength in men, materials and spirit.
“There have been two more assaults since then,” Leeson said. “We’ve tossed them all back out. I don’t think the saurians have revival machines, either. Too expensive. They just keep throwing fresh troops at us, and they’ve got plenty of those.”
I scowled. Three assaults? How long had I been in limbo? “How long has it been, sir, since they first smashed open the front entrance?”
“I don’t know. About forty hours, I’d guess. They’re about to hit us again. Here, these are the heavy suits. Get in one. The exoskeleton will help with that bad leg.”
He’d noticed my leg, and I winced at that. When a man came back fresh from a revive with noticeable a physical flaw, he knew he had to hide it. Under normal circumstances, Leeson was well within his rights to order me recycled. He didn’t have to put up with a crippled man when he could have fresh grow a few hours later.
But Leeson never even suggested it. A limping McGill was better than nothing. The revival machines had to be used to churn out every soldier they could and get them back on the line. I wondered how many soldiers were hobbling their way to their next fight like I was.
When I found a suit of armor that would fit me, I climbed into it and strapped my beamer to my arm. It felt good to be encased in metal again. I checked the systems and found the suit was fully charged and equipped with shields. I smiled at that.
“As soon as you see the flash of enemy fire, switch on your shielding,” Leeson ordered, as if he’d read my mind.
“Can we gather any more of our people, sir?” I asked. “This all seems a little disorganized.”
“We’ll join our unit at their designated post soon enough. Graves has been charged with holding the entrance to the lower tunnels. It’s feared that the enemy will find a second entrance down there and flank us.”
I nodded thoughtfully and followed him down spiraling dark passages into the depths of the mountain. Above us, distant explosions rumbled. The walls puffed dust and showered pebbles onto our helmets and shoulder epaulets.
We met up with Graves and my old unit about seven levels down. The sounds of fighting above were distant.
Only about a third of Graves’ team was still riding a dragon. The rest had lost their mounts and were dressed in light armor. The only men in heavy armor were Leeson and I. Envious eyes crawled over our equipment.
“Where’d you two steal that?” Graves asked.
“Orders were to make do with whatever we could find, sir,” Leeson said.
“Yeah, fine. But turn off your nameplate, Leeson. It says you’re Specialist Jane Kinlan.”
“Sorry sir,” Leeson said, hastily turning off the letters which were emblazoned on his chest.
I’d already removed my insignia, and I couldn’t help but smile at Leeson’s distress. He was a relatively small man, and whoever Jane was, her armor fit him like a glove.
A few of the troops laughed. Our brief moment of levity was cut short when a warning came down from the upper tunnels. Saurian troops were approaching.
“If they’re coming down here,” Graves told us, “they must be seeking a way to flank, a new route through the tunnels. We can’t let them come up behind our lines. We’ll stop them, right here, or we’ll all die trying.”
There was a muttered chorus of “yes sirs” but it wasn’t enthusiastic.
We hunkered down in the dark, turning down all our suit lights to the barest glimmer and switched on our night vision.
No one talked about the enemy configuration or their numbers. Details like that didn’t matter. We were to ambush them and hold our position to the last man.
No one spoke at all as we listened in the dark. The tramp of heavily armored alien feet could be heard echoing down the dusty tunnels toward our position.
I gripped my rifle, and I waited in the dark. The only sounds were the hissing of oxygen from my tanks and the pounding of my heart.
-47-
Right from the beginning, the fight was intense. The two sides met in the darkness, and the ripping sound of gunfire rang from the tunnel walls. We ambushed them, and they used explosives to destroy our strongpoints. Then we fell back to our next defensive line and repeated the process.
Each time, both sides left their dead in the grit. The smoke was so thick, I’d have been choking if I hadn’t been wearing an airtight suit.
At one point, they rushed us. They sought to close with an elusive enemy that had been tormenting them.
Leeson was dead. I’d been cut off from the rest of the unit, and we were down to six effectives. As the veteran in the group, all their eyes looked at me for direction.
“Stand your ground!” I ordered my team, remembering how Graves had handled a similar situation underground, facing this same enemy back on Steel World. He hadn’t panicked, not even when it was clear we were about to be overwhelmed.
I powered up my shield, and it formed a glimmering shell of force around me. My batteries were low, but saving power wasn’t a good idea. It was use-it-or-lose-it time. I was the last trooper in heavy armor present—probably one of the last armored soldiers the legion had. The least I could do was put on my best showing.
My armor was getting pretty dinged up, but once my shield went on, smaller projectiles couldn’t penetrate. Taking point, I shed bullets, fragments of explosives and even the gravity-propelled pieces of grit from the tunnel floors like they were so many raindrops.
When they got in close, I dropped my rifle, rose up and extended my force-blades. I’d set them to be thick and short as we were in close-quarters. I didn’t want to accidently slash my own troops.