by B. V. Larson
“Hmm,” I said, “Sounds simple enough. Is this to make it easier for the final bombardment?”
“No,” she said. “Planet-busters would sweep away their dome whether it’s on or not. What I’m hoping to do is capture more of these rebellious lab people alive. You see, we can’t save the lab itself, but if we can get any of these tech-smiths off the world and put them to work later, after the Galactic audit, we won’t lose everything they’ve been working on.”
“I get it,” I said. “If they built it once, they can do it again.”
“Hopefully so. If you take down the dome, we can use pinpoint shots from orbit to destroy any resistance that’s effective. These rogue scientists should give up all the faster, and we’ll gain more through their survival than their extermination. They’ll gain more from their survival as well.”
“Okay then, Tribune. I’m your man.”
Deech smiled then. It was a thin smile, but it was indisputable.
“Good. Your mission parameters will be fine-tuned by morning. Have a good night, Centurion.”
“You too, sir,” I said. “Uh… could I ask you a few questions, since you’re here?”
“Certainly.”
“Did you know, Tribune, that Primus Winslade gave specific orders that I wasn’t to be allowed into your office for any reason?”
She blinked in surprise. “No, I didn’t.”
“Well, he did. Then sir, he proceeded to recommend me for this special mission. Don’t you find that combination of events odd?”
She thought about it and cocked her head to one side. “Thank you for that information. I gather that you attempted to contact me.”
“Yes, only yesterday. That’s how I discovered the roadblock.”
“Are you in the habit of visiting your commanders personally?”
“I am,” I admitted. “I’ve always found it’s conducive to the most frank of discussions.”
“Indeed,” she said. “Just the kind we’re having now. What did you want to tell me, McGill?”
“Huh?”
“When you came to my office and weren’t allowed in.”
“Oh, right. Well sir, I wanted to discuss with you why we’re hitting Arcturus IV. This star system is not in the Cephalopod Kingdom. It’s part of Province 921. Imperial space, well within the frontier.”
“My stellar geography is up to date, McGill,” she said coldly.
“Right… I’m only a centurion, but can I assume the reason for this operation is political, not strategic?”
“It’s both—but as you say, you’re only a centurion.”
“Uh… right sir. Sorry sir.”
Deech left me conflicted, and I found I had trouble getting back to sleep.
It had been one thing to contemplate a planetary invasion. It was quite another to worry about having superior officers who were dumping obviously suicidal missions onto my head at the last damned minute.
-24-
The morning of the invasion came, and we ate heartily in the mess hall—the experienced troops did, anyway. The recruits looked kind of green. They picked at their food and worried about dying.
To entertain themselves, the older troops told the newbies horror stories about their own first jumps. The recruits were universally referred to as “splats”—which was the sound these kids were expected to make when they rained down on the target world.
“Listen up, splats,” Harris told a group of five big-eyed light troopers. He was eating and talking fast. He was also obviously enjoying himself. “When I went down the first time, I didn’t tuck-in right when they dropped us. In those days, they fired us out of the bottom of the ship and encapsulated us on the way.”
Knowing where this was going, I sat down at the end of their bench. The recruits looked at me in alarm, but then when I didn’t say anything, their attention went back to Harris.
“When the encapsulation shell slammed shut on you, if you didn’t have your limbs tucked in right, well… Something could easily get cut off. In my case, it was my left foot.”
He chuckled and stared off into space, shaking his head at the memory.
“So there I was,” he said, “one foot in, one foot out. By the time I landed and the capsule opened, my toes were missing along with about an inch more of meat, and I recall the brown-looking stain of burned blood all over the outside of the capsule.”
“Did they recycle you right away, sir?” Sarah asked. She was one of the five attentive listeners.
“Nah, they didn’t have to. One of those big farty giants from the Rigel system caught me hobbling around not ten minutes after I landed. I couldn’t run, and my snap-rifle was a joke against a serious monster like that—it just seemed to piss him off. Wham!”
Here, Harris banged the table with such force every plate and recruit jumped in response.
“He clubbed me down. Must have been buried a foot deep in that muddy soil of theirs… Anyway, you just have to get used to the idea that your first jump might go badly.”
“Or,” I said, interrupting at last, “it might not. I came down without a problem. We were scattered, but we found each other soon enough on Steel World and formed up.”
Harris grunted at me. “As I recall, your specialist got killed when you ran a saurian back into the group.”
I gave him an icy stare. “Scouting is an iffy business. We took down the monster, and we won the day in the end.”
Harris chewed his breakfast methodically, falling quiet. I could tell he didn’t like me horning in on his story-hour, but I didn’t want him petrifying my recruits right before we deployed.
“The word is this mission should be a relatively easy one,” I told the group. “We’re coming down in a crater outside the field of fire of their auto-cannons. We’ll advance, taking out the AI in the bunkers until we reach the dome. At that point, things should be even easier. We’ll be going up against scientists and lab workers, not real fighters.”
Harris eyed me doubtfully, but he didn’t say anything. I knew what he was thinking, of course. If this was supposed to be a slam-dunk, why’d they send out the entirety of Legion Varus?
No one who was talking had an answer for that, so I chose to believe the good word from Gold Deck. Anyway, to me it sounded like it was high time to change gears and move on.
“Our new injection system is different on this ship,” I told them. “We won’t get our feet chopped off when we drop. Instead of slamming together two halves of the capsule, you’ll be loaded into the tail end, like a bug being dropped into a tube. The key is: don’t resist, fall fast and hard to the bottom of the tube. The lid will slide into place and seal off the tube a split-second after you drop. Then you’ll be ejected at speed and it’ll be time to enjoy the ride.”
Standing up, I left them with a nod and joined the next table. I liked the idea of personally checking in with each team before this new drop procedure was tried out. Graves wouldn’t have done it, but I didn’t like to think I would ever be as heartless as he was.
Time ran out about ten minutes later. The lights lowered, then the floor blazed with colored arrows. We got up as a group and charged out in squads to the launch deck—Red Deck.
The splats went first, followed by their squad leaders. The idea was that if the enemy had anti-invasion turrets, these splats would draw fire and be shredded in their capsules. Hopefully, there would be so many targets coming down the AI aiming systems would be overwhelmed and unable to shoot them all.
The most experienced troops brought up the rear. That’s when we had our first accident.
Being a tall man, I noticed an alarming problem with the revamped delivery mechanism. The new ejection system was supposed to be rated for a man my size—but sometimes, capacities are overestimated.
Sargon was the first to discover this. He was the second tallest man in the unit, after myself. He dropped like a pro into the hole in the floor, and I watched, being up next.
The damned thing took the top of his helmet a
nd scalp clean off. It was the damnedest thing I’d seen since our last deployment. That top sliding cap—it came across like a blade and gave him more than just a haircut.
“Shit!” I said. That was all I had time to say aloud.
“Better duck, sir,” Harris told me, barely holding back his glee.
I stepped up and dropped. There was no time to fool around. The capsules were timed, and missing your slot was unacceptable.
The best I could do was bend my knees and scrunch down as much as I could. The cap slid into place overhead with the sound of a guillotine rasping home.
The interior of the capsule was more than cramped. I’d been in coffins that felt more roomy.
Then the capsule swung around, and I braced myself. Like being fired out of a cannon, I was hit with tremendous thrust. The hammer-like blow hit my boots, but I’d been expecting it.
I was out in space now, although I couldn’t see anything other than a few indicators and a tiny screen measuring my progress. The capsule was inverted again, aiming my feet toward the planet, and I soon felt the punch as I entered the density of its mesosphere.
Arcturus was a fairly stable sun, and the target planet had a significant atmosphere for a specimen of its size. Unfortunately, the air wasn’t breathable. There was too much methane, carbon dioxide and even a sprinkling of sulfuric acid for spice. As a result, the skies were a permanent gloomy brown.
Plunging into this deadly stew, my capsule was buffeted by powerful high-atmosphere winds. We were inserted at an angle, otherwise the capsule would have burned up due to friction.
None of this mattered to me much right now. I was in the hands of the techs and the gods at this point, and I knew it. All I could do was try to control my breathing without hyperventilating. I wished I could talk to the rest of my unit, but that was impossible. The burning atmosphere around us caused a blackout that lasted nearly a minute.
At last, we punched all the way through the clouds and came down in our final approach. My capsule linked up with others, and I caught the general broadcast feed of information.
“Cohort three is down, light casualties,” said an emotionless female voice. The voice might have been human or AI—it was hard to tell the difference these days. “Cohort six is taking fire… Casualty rate acceptable.”
That line made me think the voice was from an AI. Most humans wouldn’t calmly describe death and terror as acceptable under any circumstances.
Mentally, I tried to visualize where six was landing. As I recalled, it would be in the mountainous region overlooking the dome itself. Why would they get shot up? It was only speculation, but maybe the gear-heads down there had set up an AA battery on the cliffs overlooking their lab.
Whatever the case, my number came up next. “Cohort nine is landing now—light casualties.”
There was barely a chance for me to sigh in relief. About a second after the voice announced how we were doing, I hit the ground. It felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer and hit me across the tread of my boots with it.
The capsule tipped over, and it felt like I was slammed onto my face. Then, I began to roll. That lasted for maybe six or seven revolutions, just long enough for me to start wondering if I was on the edge of a cliff, rolling down into an abyss.
Then, blissfully, the capsule hit something harder and stopped rolling.
There was no time to say a prayer. I punched the release and a loud hissing sound began. The capsule opened, and I slithered out of it.
I was wearing a vac suit, of course. The air was poison, and we were going to have to get used to living with full protective gear.
Temperature-wise, the air wasn’t too unpleasant. It was maybe twenty five degrees Celsius, and there was almost no breeze. The sunlight was dimmed by the brownish hazy air. I couldn’t even see Arcturus in the sky—the clouds were too thick.
The landscape around me was wet-looking rock. There was some kind of viscous mess covering every rounded black stone under my boots, and they shifted under my feet as I walked. The going was rough on this planet.
Looking around, I saw more capsules with their occupants crawling out of them. I switched my radio to the tactical channel and demanded their attention.
Soon, a half-dozen troops were following me. I found Leeson and handed him his people. After about seven minutes, we were all assembled—except for Sargon. He’d died of blood loss on the way down.
“We splats made it,” one of the light troopers pointed out, “but our veteran didn’t.”
“That’s right, those are the breaks,” I told her. “Leeson, you’ll have to babysit Sargon’s team personally.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way, sir,” he said with false enthusiasm.
“All right, we’ve got about twenty-three minutes left to reach the dome walls. Mind your pace—we’re going to head straight up, double time.”
“What?” Harris demanded. “There’s no way, sir!”
“Not if we stand around here, there isn’t.”
We charged up the crater walls to the crumbling lip and went over the top. Several troopers seemed to trip and tumble back down into the crater again—it took me a second to see the blood.
They’d been met with a silent hailstorm of bullets.
-25-
The first casualties on Arcturus IV were two light troopers. They’d reached the top of the crater first, and they wore almost no armor. Their ravaged bodies were sent sliding and flopping back down past us to the bottom of the dish-like formation.
“Take cover!” I ordered. “Harris, scout the ridge. Pinpoint and mark the source of enemy fire.”
Grumbling, he led a team of lights up there. They crawled through their last steps. The weird thing was we’d never even heard anything—could their turrets have silencers on them?
Not taking any chances, Harris had a tech send up a drone first. It buzzed around above the crater for perhaps thirty seconds before it was silently blasted from the sky.
Kivi picked up the twisted body of her buzzer and looked at it in concern.
“This isn’t good, Centurion,” she said. “The turrets were supposed to be a kilometer away. Either they have fantastic aim, or there are defenses we don’t know about.”
“Yeah…” I agreed. “Time to send up crawlers.”
The techs rushed the crater wall and began launching more drones. This type squirmed among the wet sands and dark rocks like mechanical worms.
The crawlers lasted longer. It was nearly three minutes before they were blasted to scraps.
“I’ve got some good video,” Kivi told me.
“Feed it to everyone on command chat. Upload it to the whole cohort.”
The fire turned out to be coming from several directions. There was more than just one large AI-driven turret out there. The bullets were small caliber, but they were coming at us in silent and deadly sprays from multiple angles. It was a good thing we’d landed in the cover of this crater.
Deciding it was time to report in to my primus, I called Graves.
“Sir?” I said, “we’ve got a problem. We’re pinned down already in that crater.”
“How many have you lost?” he demanded.
“Seven, sir, including splats.”
“That’s pretty good, as it turns out. The enemy has set up numerous small stations to pick off anyone who isn’t under cover. You’re one of the closest units to the dome, but you’ve actually suffered the least.”
“What are my orders, sir?” I asked.
“To perform your mission, McGill. Knock out the turrets and report back when it’s safe to move up my rear units.”
“Will do, Primus.”
My heart sank as I looked over the tactical situation. The techs had pinpointed fourteen small turrets, and that wasn’t even counting the big gun a kilometer off. I didn’t want to know what that was going to do to us.
“Natasha!” I boomed. “Over here! Kivi too.”
They were my two best techs. I let them w
ork on a solution while I placed my troops along the rim strategically. In case these so-called “lab workers” had more surprises for us, I wanted to be ready for anything.
“Ladies,” I told them a minute or so later. “I need a miracle.”
“We haven’t got one,” Natasha said, “but we have a risky strategy.”
“Give it to me.”
“We have to weaponize our drones. Normally, that wouldn’t work as they’re too small to carry a charge that could kill an armored man. But this is different. If they can reach those small guns and blind the AI’s sensors, we should be able to move forward.”
“Are we talking buzzers or those wormy things?” I asked.
“It has to be buzzers—and they have to reach the targets very fast.”
“All right… I’m working on a backup plan—but it’s not going to be popular.”
They worked to reconfigure their buzzers to carry small explosive charges. While they did so, I met with the unit weaponeers. We were down to five of them, since we’d lost Sargon.
While I explained my plan, I dug Sargon’s belcher out of his capsule. I tried not to look at the mess inside. Carrying the belcher and some charging pods with it, I led the weaponeer team up to the lip of the crater. We crawled there, and we didn’t dare do so much as peep over the rim.
“Now,” I told them, “this is phase two of the plan. We’ll have to be quick and accurate. When the buzzers fly, stay down. If the techs say the buzzers are getting hit, we’ll pop up and fire at the turrets. One shot, that’s all you get. I’ll mark your targets on your HUDs. You won’t be able to hear them, but you should see a puff of smoke. Aim there, fire once, and duck.”
When Kivi and Natasha were ready, they released their buzzers. The tiny black robots swarmed up and split off in multiple directions. For several seconds, nothing happened.
Then, Kivi called out. “One has been destroyed—two!”
“Now!” I shouted. “Up, aim, fire, cover!”
We surged over the lip of the crater, putting the long heavy tubes of our belchers on it. Finding a puffing spot, one that looked like it was pumping out pulses of white smoke, I fired and immediately dove back down.