His statement was not entirely true — the Hardits had shown they had drones and aircraft — but his words were close enough. The Legion did have a chance. So long as they kept their nerve and their belief in themselves.
When no one queried his decision, the tension in the gunship slackened off. For now.
“You know,” Xin told Arun over a private channel, “sometimes it’s right to surrender tactical advantage for strategic gain. Battles are won by heroes, but to win the war, even heroes need a commander who’s a ruthless bastard with a heart of tempered steel.”
“True,” replied Arun. “Though we commanders don’t get to know whether our decisions are right until long after the event. After the blood price has already been spent.”
“I never said it was easy, Twinkle Eyes.”
“It’s not. But… thank you for your support. That makes command a tiny bit easier.” He hesitated before deciding to continue with the question he burned to ask. “So, do you think I did the right thing to go after that Hummer, and send Beowulf off to the moon?”
Even from across the other side of the hold, Arun recognized Xin slumped in her battlesuit draped in med-patches. She suddenly twitched in fury. “How the hell should I know?” she snarled. “I don’t even know what we’re really doing on this planet. How could I? Do you know the biggest mistake of my life, Arun? It was to believe that you and I were allies, the two of us destined to face and win the galaxy together. That night, two years ago, that we spent together on Antilles… it meant something to me. The thought of having you at my side set a flutter in my heart. But you? Since then you’ve been as tight-lipped with me as a deep-frozen asshole. Which, for the record, is exactly what you are, Major.”
“Incoming!”
Arun was so shocked by Xin’s sudden outburst that he struggled to properly register Dock’s warning.
“Hold on tight,” said Dock, sounding as if he was having the time of his life. “This is gonna get rough.”
Arun double-checked his harness was tight, grateful for the respite. He’d rather face getting shot at than Xin’s anger any day.
— Chapter 65 —
The Stork shuddered as it spent freely of its supply of defensive munitions. The gunship twisted and looped in an effort to escape the surface-to-air missiles, but in comparison to the evasive maneuvers Arun was used to in void combat, the turns felt agonizingly slow.
Noisy though! Jinking in an atmosphere threw up a cacophony of wailing and screams from the craft, and from the air they were bullying their way through.
“Brace!” screamed Dock, just before the deck below Arun’s feet started humming with the Fermi defenses.
The first missile clanged harmlessly against the hull.
Then another.
Arun laughed. Xin had kitted out the Stork with just the right configuration: heavy armor and anti-missile defenses. If she were in the next seat, he’d undo his harness so he could put his arms around and hug her, no matter how angry she was.
The next missile exploded against the starboard beam, right behind Arun’s back.
Arun could feel the ship shake, pushed out of its flight path by the shockwave, but he was still alive.
Then another explosion ripped apart the sky, tossing the Stork around like a child with a toy grenade.
“We’re going down,” said Dock. From screaming histrionics, his voice had calmed and taken on a sly quality. He sounded more like a poker player than the pilot of a stricken gunship that was plummeting down for a violent confrontation with the ground.
Everyone had their way of meeting death, Arun supposed. Dock’s was to laugh his doom off as a game. Arun’s was to be paralyzed by a sense that he had left duties unfulfilled, of opportunities and lives wasted.
Barney accepted a channel from Springer. “Arun, if there’s an afterlife. Come look me up.”
Before Arun could think of a reply, Dock spoke again. “Ladies and gentlemen, will you please remain calm. All you heard was a little bang from the missile payloads. No more than an explosive fart, really, and this bird’s armor is rated 100% fart-proof. The missiles were supposed to have punched through our armor with a shaped charge and atomized you lot inside. Our Fermi field fragged all that.”
Arun almost felt hope… until Barney whispered how rapidly they were giving up altitude. “He’s talking drent,” Arun told Springer hurriedly, while he still could. “I’ll look you up in the next life I promise.”
They were only 200 meters above the ground.
“Venting fuel tanks,” said Dock.
50 meters…
The gunship bucked and roared as Dock fired every thruster he could orient downward, squashing Arun down into his seat.
20 meters…
The sly veck. Dock had planned this all along!
With a dull thud, the gunship crashed into the ground. It was a rough landing, but the harnesses could cope with a far more sudden deceleration, and the Stork’s structure looked undamaged as far as he could tell.
“This service has terminated,” announced Dock. The exit hatches retracted and passenger harnesses released. “We hope you’ve had a pleasant journey. Please ensure you take all your equipment with you when departing the shuttle.”
Despite the strangeness of exiting a vessel on a planet’s surface, deploying from a gunship had been drilled into the Marines all their life. Within moments, they were out into the woods surrounding the crash site, following the orders of their NCOs to secure the area. Even the three Resistance fighters emerged unscathed and in good time, bringing their missile launchers with them.
Arun was proud of the Resistance fighters. Without battlesuits, they looked so vulnerable, but they displayed just the same spirit as their armored comrades.
A pang of concern hit Arun. No suits! Hardits would smell them from miles away.
“Smear mud on yourselves,” Arun ordered them.
“What?” asked Boon.
“Mask your scent. Find the stinkiest drent you can, and roll in it.”
They dropped their launchers — Stok would not be impressed by that — and started rolling through the undergrowth.
Arun looked for the diminutive figure of the pilot. He knew that Dock wore perfume of all things. Arun didn’t like to waste his time judging the strange ways of Navy personnel, but that perfume would be like a beacon to Hardit snouts packed with scent receptors.
Dock was nowhere to be seen.
Arun scanned the crash site. The Stork had come down in the woods to the southeast of Detroit’s human levels, not far from where Arun’s Marines had entered the Troggie tunnel network. In fact, as Arun got his bearing, he realized that Dock had put them down almost at Detroit’s secret back door.
From the hold of the gunship, its descent had felt vertical, but a swathe of destruction had been carved by the Stork before it came to rest, a fifty meter trail of snapped trees and scragged undergrowth. The torn foliage glistened with… with fuel!
The gunship too was covered with the fuel Dock had vented. A last dribble was still being pumped out, pooling on the ground beneath the ship.
“Stay clear of the crash site and destruction trail,” Arun warned over BattleNet.
“Understood, sir,” replied Gupta, in a voice that sounded like he’d already worked that out, thank you very much, and would the officer kindly let him get on with his job?
Dock chose that moment to jump down from the flight cabin and walk briskly away. He threw something Arun’s way.
It was a personal processor block.
“Check its map function,” explained Dock. “You’ll see the location of the aircraft that evacuated from Detroit. I pinged it while we were being shot at. It’s about 200 meters away.” Dock crashed his ancient white eyebrows down into a frown. “Ever so sorry I didn’t quite bring you door to door.”
Dock wasn’t in a battlesuit, but he did wear a light pressure suit over his fatigues. Incredibly, he was unfastening the front of his suit.
�
�Hey, Dock! Seal that suit back up. And that goes for the helmet too.”
“Don’t worry, Major. I’ll give us something to mask our scent.”
As he hurried away from his bird, Dock reached into a breast pouch on his fatigues and drew out a pocket plasma cutter.
He regarded it wistfully. “Shame. I’ve nothing to light cigars now.” He shrugged. “I don’t suppose I can smoke anyway. Not behind enemy lines.”
With a melodramatic sigh, Dock tossed the lighted plasma cutter behind him, setting it spinning through the air in the direction of the Stork. The instant the plasma cutter clattered against the gunship’s hull, the vented fuel erupted. The sudden surge of heated air threw Dock headfirst onto the ground, and hurled a fireball high into the air.
Indiya’s voice came over the FTL comm. “What the fuck was that?”
“That’s your junior officer showing off.”
“Have you lost the Stork?”
“I don’t think so. With luck, the Hardits will think we went up in that blast. We need fuel, though. We’re going to… Indiya?”
It was no use. He’d lost FTL comms for good. The link had finally run out of juice.
Every time that voice or other data traffic passed over the FTL link, it used up its limited supply of chbits entangled with the sibling devices. Perhaps they could build another, but that was a priority for another time.
Dock was by Arun’s side now, having zipped up his suit, but leaving his helmet unsealed. Better he did that than talk through an easily traced radio signal.
“My bird looks a burned-out wreck, doesn’t she?” Dock chuckled. “It’s fine, though. I’ve put it in lockdown mode. Complete power down. Will look dead, and unless the enemy can blast their way through the hull, there’s no way they can get inside. It will only wake and reopen on my voice order.”
“What if you die?”
“Then you’ll have a difficult conversation with young Captain Indiya. Sorry, I didn’t design the system. That would be your freakish friend, Mr. Finfth.” He drew his eyebrows into a frown. “No need for such worry, Major. Come to think of it, I’m certain young Mr. Finfth could also wake up my bird.”
Arun didn’t want to, but he couldn’t help but smile. “You’re a strange one, Dock. I’m still not sure whether Captain Indiya was right to have stayed your execution for mutiny. Just take care to stay alive, ensign. That’s an order.”
“Happy to comply, sir. We’re heading for interesting times. Wouldn’t want to miss any of it.”
“Maybe. But first.” Arun lifted the processor Dock had given him. “We’re headed for the evac plane. If we can find survivors, the boost to morale will be vital. Maybe the difference between getting off this planet and having our guts ripped out by Hardit claws like poor Esther.”
When Dock didn’t answer, Arun glanced his way. Dock had sealed up his helmet to reduce his scent trail.
Yes, Arun mused. I’ll probably regret it later, but I’m glad Indiya didn’t execute you.
— Chapter 66 —
Hecht glanced up from the fallen Marine lying across the hatch opening into the downed transport. “It’s Lance Corporal Sandure. He’s alive.”
He moved aside to allow Puja access to the diagnostic port in Del-Marie’s suit.
While Arun awaited the medic’s verdict he tried again to take in the tragedy of this scene.
The transporter Del had flown out of Detroit’s waterfall-screened hangar was a true aircraft, unlike the Stork, which could operate both in atmosphere and in space. Lift had come from the aircraft’s broad delta wings. But when a Hardit missile had blown off one wing, even Dock’s fancy flying couldn’t have saved the aircraft.
A still-smoldering scar cut through the ground behind the plane’s final resting point.
It was painfully easy to guess the course of events after the crash landing.
Del had opened up the exit hatch and urged the dazed survivors to grab what they could and make for the shelter of the trees. He might have been operating as a pilot, but Del was a Marine through and through; his carbine would always be in easy reach. He would have grabbed his SA-71 and covered the survivors’ exit, using the hatch as a shield. The mound of spent sabots where Del had fallen was testament to the volume of fire he’d poured into the woods. And the hundreds of small caliber bullets – many of them having ricocheted off his armor before embedding in the fuselage – was also evidence of the enemy’s implacable numerical superiority. Del’s luck had run out today: he must have crashed straight into an enemy unit.
A trail of human corpses led from the aircraft deeper into the woods where a heap of broken bodies told of a hopeless final stand made against overwhelming odds.
Arun sighed, a long and trembling exhalation of grief. Zug’s body had been among the corpses, his body hauled there on a stretcher. Another friend gone.
Worse even than Zug had been the sight of two women sprawled over each other at his feet, one still gripping her carbine, and the other’s arms locked by rigor in front of her, as if she’d died carrying a precious burden.
It wasn’t difficult to guess what that burden had been.
After all the fighting these past two years, Arun thought he’d seen so much death and pain that he wouldn’t be affected by such scenes. That he wouldn’t feel the gorge rise in his throat, making speech impossible.
He could put a name to these corpses: Rohanna and Shelby. He’d been perplexed, irritated, and frankly in awe of these mothers who had forced an expeditionary force of armored Marines to adjust their plans so that their infants were protected.
The part that made Arun gag, made him yearn to shout out his fury at an unjust universe, was that Rohanna and Shelby had been proved right not to name their babes.
This was the moment Arun nearly succumbed to despair. Only the knowledge that the others, those who still survived, were depending on him kept him going. He had returned to Tranquility promising liberation, but now the abyssal depth of his failure was laid out starkly at his feet.
Of their infants there was no sign. A tear dropped from Arun’s eye. They would be out there in the woods somewhere. The scouts had reported no survivors, but hadn’t identified the dead. Arun was spared the sight of the broken little bodies, and he was ashamed to say that he felt relief at that. It was cowardly, he knew, but he couldn’t bear to see such young corpses.
“Del’s coming round,” said Puja. She wouldn’t use Lance Corporal Sandure’s given name if she weren’t as badly affected by the scene as Arun. “I’d say the enemy had two machine guns trained on the hatchway and kept them trained on him until he went down. Major, he drew their fire to give the others a chance.”
“Corporal Narciso,” prompted Sergeant Gupta, “Will the lance corporal live?”
“Yes, Sergeant. His suit armor wasn’t breached, but he’s had a helluva pummeling. Severe concussion, broken bones, internal hemorrhaging. Essentially, he’s been beaten to within an inch of his life. A Homo sapiens would be dead, but when we evac him to Beowulf, he’ll live.”
“Thank you Narciso,” said Arun. He was about to rest a comforting hand on Puja’s shoulder but hesitated when he noticed Nhlappo was listening in on their conversation. He would have expected the veteran to be the most resilient of them all, but she had been acting weirdly since hearing Brandt’s final message, and even more strangely since coming across the downed plane.
The lieutenant had developed an emotional connection to the infants, and was probably taking their deaths badly. He couldn’t blame her for being human. It was what they were fighting for, after all.
“We’re done here,” he said. “Get Sandure ready for evac. Beowulf will have to wait for now. We’ll hide out in the Trog tunnels.”
When they headed off for the nest a couple of minutes later, the dead pulled at him like an irresistible gravitational force. To abandon their fallen without burial or ceremony made perfect tactical sense – they wanted the Hardits to believe the Stork’s passengers had perishe
d, after all – but still left him feeling tainted, dirty in a way that could never be cleansed.
He couldn’t resist any longer: he turned and looked back. His gaze was drawn to Rohanna and Shelby huddled together, friends comforting each other in the face of death. When he was a cadet, Arun would have offered the dead an oath to avenge them. Avenge their babies too.
But Arun had seen too much death, issued too many empty promises that he couldn’t keep and bitterly regretted making.
Without any parting words, he shook his head sadly and hurried after the remnants of his expeditionary force.
— Chapter 67 —
Tirunesh Nhlappo lay buried half a meter under the forest floor, gripped by moist soil, pressed down by dirt and leaf litter.
She’d been trapped like a corpse for over a day now, unable to move without revealing herself. Just like her Serge.
No solid food, no latrines, and worst of all no scratching her ass. No matter how many times she told herself this was no different from taking up a position in the black of the void, her body kept screaming that she’d been buried alive.
But this wasn’t an ambush position. If it were then she could fold her conscious mind away and switch to a mental standby state until awoken by a threat.
This was a recon post. Other than scheduled sleeps, the recon team had to keep fully alert, watching the cameras and other passive sensors hidden in the area and connected to the recon Marines by buried strandwire, flexible ceramic data cables the width of a human hair. Signals sent along strandwire were undetectable. In theory.
How much longer would she have to endure this? According to the last message sent along the strandwire from Detroit, it could be several more days before they grabbed the fuel and made a run for orbit.
And to think she’d volunteered to lead the recon team. Insisted on it, in fact.
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