Planetside

by Michael Mammay

  “Elliot happened.” His voice faded into a whisper and he stared off again. I followed his eyes, but if something else was in the room, it was only visible to him.

  “Karikov. This is important. What did Elliot do?”

  He looked back at me. “This.”

  After a few moments of silence, hoping he’d say something else, I stood.

  “They won’t let you go,” he said, his voice clearer.

  “Who won’t?”

  “The Cappans. Them. If they intended to let you leave, they’d have never let you talk to me. Her people.”

  “Her people? Elliot’s?”

  “Not hers. But she made them. She mixed them. Mixed us.”

  His eyes. His skin. Cappan. Elliot mixed them? Then it clicked: The geneticists. But no, she couldn’t have. Nobody would allow it. “There’s no way.”

  He grunted, sounding much saner than his previous outbursts. “There’s a way. They spliced our DNA. The healing powers of the Cappans were supposed to help with our robotics. Let our bodies and minds handle the strain. It worked, too. At first. Double amputees walking again. They didn’t know the price.”

  “She told me.” I sat, stunned. She’d offered me a solution to my neural rejection. “She told me she could help me.”

  “That’s why they let you through,” he said. “I didn’t understand. That’s why. They want you to take my place.”

  “Take your place? How could I do that? Why?”

  “Because I’m dying. My body is shutting down. My mind. I was one of the first converts, when the concept was new.”

  “So when Elliot came to see you . . .”

  “She wanted to update me. Start over. She knows I’m dying. Knows . . . thought . . . I was desperate. I told her to fuck off.”

  “She talked to me after that. After her visit,” I said.

  Karikov nodded. “They want you. They’re not going to let you leave. You or your people.”

  “But they let us in.”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  “How will they stop us?”

  “Convert you. Or kill you.”

  “They can’t. We’ll call in reinforcements. Stirling will—”

  He cut me off. “Stirling. Ha! Stirling . . .”

  “There’s no way . . .”

  Karikov stared at me. “Stirling knows we’re losing this war. Lost it. It’s only a matter of time. We never had a chance. We had technology that was beyond them. We thought we were so much smarter. Maybe we were, once. But they learned. And our guys . . . the guys she changed . . . they’re helping them. My guys.”

  “If Stirling knows, then others have to know.”

  “Not as many as you think. Stirling knows the war is lost. He knows who will get blamed for it too. Unless he holds on long enough.”

  I shook my head. “This is ridiculous! Radios—”

  “Jammed. Or controlled by them.”

  “There’s no way. Supplies come in and out. Ships.”

  “Contractors. Paid in silver.”

  “No. I don’t buy it. We’d crush them.”

  Karikov drew his lip into a thin line. “Do you know how many of them there are? Millions. How many men can Stirling put down here? Four thousand? Three?”

  “Our technology—”

  “Has been stolen. They’ve got it. Copied it.”

  Copied? How much could they do? How did we not know? “We’d have seen them—”

  “In the mines. So many mines. A whole underground world. The conventional forces stay too far away.”

  “Impossible!” But was it? The Cappans ran the mines. Stirling knew? “We’ll bring the fleet. More men.”

  He looked at the floor, then back up at me. “Will we? Why?”

  “You know why. The silver.”

  He shook his head slowly. “The silver’s already flowing. Five times more than the authorities know about. If the Cappans can deliver that . . . what’s easier, an enemy or a trade partner?”

  I thought about it. Would we fight? Should we? “Maybe. That’s a big risk they’d be taking.”

  “It won’t matter,” he said. “They’ll break down. Kill each other. The leaders. Elliot’s folks. They’re not stable. They’ll be like me. It may take longer, but it’s inevitable. The two systems can’t coexist.”

  “So we pull back. Wait it out.” I put my fist into my palm and squeezed it.

  Karikov shrugged. “Maybe. But they learn fast. They’ll be off the planet soon, then we’re all fucked.”

  My breath caught and a chill ripped through me despite the uncomfortable heat. “Off the planet. You’re sure? Why didn’t you report it?”

  His hollowed eyes widened, then he shrugged. “What’s ‘sure’ mean?”

  “This is important.” I took a step toward him. “How close are they?”

  His alien eyes met mine, but without recognition. He rocked back and forth, slowly. I sat there a long time before I got up. I hit the switch and killed the lights before I left.

  Captain Benton waited outside at a respectful distance. “Sir, there’s a call for you in the Ops center.”

  I squinted against the bright sun. “Really?” Maybe Stirling’s people wanted to know what happened. The shuttle pilots should have called that in, though. And why wouldn’t they have talked to Baxter? “Who is it?”

  “They wouldn’t say, sir.” Benton led the way back to the larger building and punched in the door code. We walked down a narrow hall, boots echoing off the hard floor. We entered a large room with three giant screens on the wall, all manner of data scrolling across them. Two rows of low desks faced the display, but only one seat had an occupant. A muscular woman wearing uniform pants and a tank top handed me a handset.

  “Butler here.”

  “Sir, this is Captain Mallot.”

  I almost dropped the handset. Mallot. Holy shit. “Captain?”

  “Yes, sir. I got promoted.”

  “You’re alive,” I said, stalling for time until my brain started working. Mallot.

  “Sir, we need to talk.”

  “I agree,” I said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “I know, sir. I’ll explain everything face-to-face.”

  Something in his tone made the hairs on my arms stand up. “Sure. Come on in and let’s talk. Where are you?”

  “I’m not far, sir. Just outside the base. But I’m not coming in.”

  “Why not?”

  “Sir, why don’t you come out? Alone.”

  I glanced around the room to see if anyone was watching, but neither of the two paid me any attention. “What’s going on, Mallot?”

  “You have to see it for yourself, sir. You’re not in any danger if you come alone.”

  “What if I don’t?”

  “Sir, that . . . that would be unfortunate.”

  If I hadn’t made up my mind before, that did it. It sounded too much like a threat for me to tolerate it. “Guess we’re going to have to disagree.”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” The line went dead.

  Twenty seconds later an explosion shook the building, knocking dust from the ceiling, and I flinched, then went down to one knee.

  A rocket.

  The dull rattle of gunfire came from a distance, then from closer. Return fire. The crack of Bitches and the whine of a pulse rifle, muted by the thick walls of the headquarters.

  I looked to Benton and the comms operator, but they didn’t react. I gripped my weapon and ran down the hall. I stopped and collected myself, heart hammering and my breath already short. I hit the button to open the door and dove through.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Someone had popped a smoke grenade that hazed the battlefield and blurred images. I dropped my visor and switched my eye shield to thermal so I could see heat signatures through the growing visual obstruction.

  Bullets whizzed from different directions, and I spotted muzzle flashes on two sides of us. Another explosion ripped through the compound, close, compres
sing my chest and raining dirt and bits of rock onto my helmet and back. My ears rang, and sound dulled around me as my helmet filtered out noise to protect my hearing. So far the fire stayed far enough away from me to be safe, but I needed to move. I whipped my head around, looking for friendlies. I wouldn’t have traded my helmet for anything right then, but it severely limited my peripheral vision.

  The area in front of me consisted of open space. Kill zone. I hoped whoever was shooting at us couldn’t see through the smoke. I leaped to my feet and sprinted around to the nearest side of the building—the side closest to Karikov’s hut. I hit the dirt as soon as I rounded the corner, stones biting into my elbows and forearms. I hugged the polymer prefab wall, and bullets ripped up dust where I’d been a second before. The building provided cover from only one direction, but that beat being caught in a crossfire.

  My headset remained strangely silent. My heads-up display showed no malfunctions, so it had to be jamming.

  I couldn’t tell how many fighters the enemy had inside the compound, but the volume of fire said “a lot.” Three human bodies lay dead, or close to it, in the center of the open ground. How many more had been hit?

  I tried my comm, but got only static. Jamming for sure. I tried an external frequency to get air support. No joy there, either. Karikov hadn’t lied.

  I sighted through the scope of my rifle, magnifying my view to five times. A Cappan poked its head out from behind a stack of metal containers a hundred meters away and I squeezed off a shot without thinking. He ducked. I tried to guide the bullet to follow him, but I doubt it bent fast enough to find the mark.

  Hugging the wall and staying in a crouch, I circled toward the back of the building away from the fire. The enemy ignored me. Or at least they didn’t shoot me, which was all that really mattered. The bullets snapping around didn’t come close.

  Behind the building I found half a dozen of my security detail, two pulling cover and the other four with their heads together, talking. One of them snapped a rifle up, leveling it at me as I approached.

  I put one hand up. “Whoa! Where’s Baxter?”

  “Don’t know, sir! You okay?” The man moved toward me so we could hear each other.

  “Yeah. How many?” I asked.

  “A lot. Fifty. Maybe more. Hit us by surprise, but the LT had us waiting.” He flinched at an explosion a hundred meters away.

  “We need to find the rest of our people.”

  “Yes, sir. We’re going to assault around the side. You join the support by fire team.”

  I nodded vigorously. “Roger!”

  “We’re going to try to get to the building closest to the gate. That’s the last place we saw the lieutenant.”

  “I’ll move on your go.” As the support by fire element, we’d lay down covering fire for the initial movement team. Once they got in place, they’d fire so we could move.

  We took off down the sheltered back side of the building and broke around the opposite side from where I started. The low building by the gate lay fifty meters ahead across an open area. Four of us hit the ground and started firing across the compound toward the heaviest enemy fire. I couldn’t pick out targets, but it didn’t matter. We just needed to put their heads down so our people could make a run. After the enemy bullets slowed, three soldiers took off running and we poured on more fire. I caught sight of a Cappan peeking around the corner of a building and put one into its head and another into its shoulder.

  I dropped my empty magazine and loaded a second, this time with explosive tips. Now I didn’t aim at all. I ripped into any spot that even looked like it might hold a shooter.

  I spared a glance at our moving team. One of them went down, blood exploding from his neck where a bullet slipped between his helmet and armor. One of his buddies stopped to get him.

  “Leave him! Keep running!” I yelled.

  The soldier didn’t hear me, or he didn’t listen. Dragging his comrade, he made an easy target. His body jerked as bullets slammed into his armor. Body armor would keep you alive through one shot. Maybe two. But the force of the projectiles had to go somewhere, and a body could only take so much of it. After a spasmodic dance, he fell.

  “Fuck!” I yelled at nobody in particular. One of the Cappans found my position, and three or four rounds skipped off of the dirt in front of me, somehow missing. I rolled to the right, my heart hammering in my chest, my breathing echoing in my ears.

  By the time I reset, the third soldier had made it to the building and hit the dirt as bullets flashed off the side of the structure above him. I stood and fired the last half dozen rounds of my clip at the source of the fire and it stopped. I dropped back down and rolled over twice to change my location, hopefully without being seen.

  Two smoke grenades flew from the far building—our destination—and landed in the area we had to traverse, giving us concealment. A few seconds later several Bitches and at least one heavier gun opened fire, a couple on the roof of the building.

  “Let’s go!” I shouted, but the others had already seen it and started moving. I sprinted the fifty meters without stopping. It probably took me nine or ten seconds, but it felt like two minutes, what with nothing but smoke between me and death.

  I skidded to a stop and dropped to a knee. The fwap of a pulse weapon nearby drowned out all other sound. I sucked air in through my mouth, trying to calm myself for a moment before skittering around to the front of the building. Someone opened the door and pulled me in, then had it closing before I fully made it through.

  “Shit!”

  “Sir!” Baxter stood half a meter away, shouting. The clattering of weapons firing rattled off of the walls. The building had ports to shoot from, and a soldier manned each of the two on the front side.

  “Status,” I said.

  “Unknown.” Baxter put her face close to mine so we could hear each other. “At least six down.”

  “Five made it here in my group.”

  “That gives us twelve,” she said. “That leaves six unaccounted for.”

  “Is Mac here?”

  She shook her head.

  Shit. He’d have been right outside the headquarters. I should have had him come inside.

  The two riflemen stopped firing at the same time, throwing the room into a relative silence so that when Baxter next shouted, it seemed out of place. “This building is armored!”

  “Yeah, got it,” I said in a normal tone. “What’s happening? Why isn’t there firing?” The sounds from outside had died out, too.

  “They pulled back, sir.” One of the riflemen turned from his firing position and spoke over his shoulder.

  “Keep an eye out,” said Baxter. “I don’t like it.”

  “Me neither,” I said. “Let me see.” I moved up to one of the firing stations and looked out through the tiny window. The smoke had cleared some, but I couldn’t make out much, even checking both visible and thermal. I’d never done well looking through little apertures. I hated armored vehicles for that reason, though if someone had brought me a Goat right then, I’d have taken it gladly.

  We stood inside the building. A woman treated a man for a bullet wound to his lower leg. Another soldier worked on a damaged pulse weapon, trying to fit a tiny part back into its firing mechanism.

  “What are they up to?” I said to myself.

  “I’m not sure, sir. Maybe they pulled back because they had enough.” Baxter had come up behind me and heard my question.

  “You believe that?” I looked at her.

  “Not for a minute.”

  “They’re planning something. Maybe they’re waiting for reinforcements.”

  She nodded once. “Makes sense. They probably expected to take us by surprise. They didn’t.”

  Wham. The building shook, and I stumbled, barely keeping my balance.

  “Maybe they’re waiting for heavier weapons,” I said.

  “That was at least a one twenty-five,” said one of the riflemen.

  It was bigger tha
n a 125 millimeter, but I didn’t correct him. He didn’t want to know. Four more huge explosions followed in quick succession, none as close as the first. Either they didn’t have the range right or they intentionally spread their fire across the compound.

  A series of smaller reports came next. Smaller rockets that produced a higher pitched explosion, more of a crack than the thud of the heavier weapons. Someone screamed outside. The barrage hammered us for ten minutes that felt like a lifetime. The rational corner of my mind—the part not flinching at explosions—knew that the rocket fire prevented the enemy from assaulting. They could soften us up, but they’d have to lift the fire to come forward again.

  “How many of the Special Ops guys are in the fight?” I asked.

  “On which side?” asked Baxter.

  I stared. “What do you know?”

  “At least two or three of them were shooting at us,” she said. “I didn’t see any shooting at the Cappans. Not sure how many of them are left alive.”

  A rocket slammed into the roof and knocked me to my knees. Baxter kept her feet, but barely. “Fuck!” she yelled. “I had soldiers on the roof!”

  “We’ve got to get the hell out of here,” I said.

  “In case you missed it, sir, it’s raining rockets out there!”

  “And as soon as it stops, we’re going to have a few hundred Cappans up our ass. I’ll take my chances with the rockets. How many people can we gather?”

  “No idea, sir. Where are we going?”

  “Where would they expect us to go?” I asked.

  She pursed her lips and paused. “They probably expect us to sit and fight, keep trying to get through the commo jam and get air support. Reinforcements. If not, they probably expect us to head for the nearest known friendlies. That’s a hundred klicks, straight through the enemy.”

  “So we go the other way. Out the back door,” I said.

  “There’s nothing that way except hills, mines, and Cappans,” said Baxter.

  “There might be commo, though. If we can get out of the range of the jam . . .”

  Baxter’s dark eyes met mine. “Yes, sir. That’s our best chance. We can maybe get some distance on them before they realize what we’re doing. But every time we light up our commo to try, they’re going to get a new fix.”