So the NCOs had a plan, but they were uncertain about it—uncertain enough that one of them was floating it past me, a civilian—and as far as she knew, my only claim to fame was that I kept my head when the flechettes started flying. So that’s the first thing it told me about Wataski’s state of mind—she was uncertain.
But the second thing it told me was she wasn’t insecure about her own authority. If she had been, she wouldn’t have asked my opinion, because it might have looked like weakness. But she knew who she was, she knew who I was, and she didn’t really give a damn what I thought of her. She just wanted to know what I thought of the plan.
I brought up the map TheHon had snagged for me on my helmet display. We were about three hundred klicks west of T’tokl-Heem, and almost twice as far from the uBakai colonial border due north, quite a bit farther from Haampta, the uBakai colonial capital almost due west of us. The map showed a lot of jungle-covered mountains to the south and to the northwest, some prairies and scattered hills to the west, and jungle-covered lowlands most other directions. Jungle, jungle, jungle. Didn’t these people have farms? What the hell did they eat? Then I remembered the bubble-covered greenhouses I’d seen out the window of the maglev, that and the buildings with all the plumbing fixtures that shouted hydroponics. The leather-heads were growing all their stuff artificially. It was a good thing the maglev conked out where it did—this settlement was in one of the few fairly good-sized prairies around—ideal drop zone for the Mikes.
When I cranked the magnification on the map, it showed a thin trace of roads and trails through the jungle, connecting a handful of small, scattered settlements. Not only was there a lot of jungle, there were a lot of little rivers and streams, too—not big enough to navigate, but big enough to be a pain to get across, and I was willing to bet that a lot of the jungle lowlands were swamps with overhead canopy. Swell. There weren’t a whole lot of different ways to skin this particular cat, it was beginning to seem. I’d looked at it a dozen times already, before Wataski buttonholed me, but it gave me something to look at while I came up with an answer.
“Sounds better than anything else I’ve heard,” I said, and that was—strictly speaking—the truth. After all, I hadn’t heard my own thoughts.
She looked at me, and I think she suspected that there might be more to that statement than just the obvious meaning.
“So. No suggestions?” she asked, eyes boring right through me.
If the Marines went due west, they’d be a great diversion for us, because we sure as hell weren’t going that direction. They’d take the other civilians along, and there was a good chance the bad guys wouldn’t spring to the crowd being a little thin. No one would notice us, because the Marines would keep making lots of noise—until they were all dead. All we had to do was break away in the confusion and head the right direction. Piece of cake.
I hadn’t told the kids the plan yet. I looked over at Tweezaa talking with four other Varoki children, survivors of the massacre. I’d met them . . . hadn’t meant to, hadn’t wanted to, but had. Two of them were missing their folks—probably dead out in a ditch by the road. Tweezaa looked up, from ten meters away, looked in my eyes, and from that serious, accusing stare I could tell she knew exactly what I was thinking. She reached out and took the hand of the little girl next to her, her eyes still locked on mine.
And then I closed my eyes and sighed, because I am foolish and soft and unprofessional, and I know it, but I can’t seem to do anything about it.
“You taking all the civilians with you?” I asked Wataski.
“That’s the job,” she answered.
I nodded.
“Okay, here’s my opinion. Actually, three opinions for the price of one.
“First opinion: there’s no magic solution that’s going to bewilder the bad guys and get us all out of this in one piece. No matter what we do, most of us are going to end up dead, and you may as well get your head around that. There are too many of them, and they’re trying too hard to kill us.”
I paused, and a flicker of fear danced across her eyes. She hid it well, but she wasn’t some emotionless killing machine, any more than any of the other Marines were. They were kids—well-trained kids, but still kids. They had nice long lives still ahead of them, and none of them were ready to lie down and die just yet. Unfortunately, it wasn’t really up to them, and Wataski was starting to realize that.
“Second opinion: north is better than west. The jungle closes in tight and the roads have triple canopy overhead cover. It won’t make it impossible to track you, but it will make it harder. And it’s closer to uBakai territory and their air-defense umbrella.”
There was another advantage of heading north, but she didn’t need to know it yet.
“Third opinion: if you stick together, you will all die very quickly.”
“You’re talking as if you won’t be with us,” she said right away.
“That’s right. My people and I are going our own way as soon as possible. You better start thinking along those lines as well.”
“Bullshit,” she spat back. “We’re trained to fight and survive as a team. That’s our best asset.”
“Then do it,” I answered. “No skin off me. But the Sammies have tac air and artillery rocket systems with area kill submunitions. Right now we’re in too close to their strikers for them to hit us. But once we all break away, if you guys stay together as one big target, they will flatten twenty hectares of jungle just to make sure you are good and dead.”
She thought about that for a minute or two, scowling and chewing on the inside of her cheek, and I could tell it was sinking in. Then she looked back at me.
“And you think you’re just going to sneak away while nobody’s looking?” she asked, her voice heavy with sarcasm.
“Nah. I figure I can count on you Marines for a violent and noisy diversion. Break things and hurt people, right? It’s sorta in your DNA.”
“Oo-rah,” she growled, and she smiled a little, although as smiles go it was a pretty sour one.
Then without another word she turned and walked back toward the other Marines. After all, she had what she wanted from me, and I got the feeling Wataski wasn’t really big on idle chitchat.
TWENTY-FOUR
A different Marine sergeant came around to fill us in on the final plan. He introduced himself as Marty Gomez—short, dark, stocky, and broad-faced, with a lot of Native American blood showing in him. I got the feeling that he’d emerged as the group leader, just the way he talked to us—respectful but confident, serious but relaxed and friendly, all the things that make people comfortable with listening and following.
There were four squads of Marines down, although one of them was banged up and they’d folded Wataski’s detail into it, with her taking over. Wataski’s improvised squad was going to make a lot of noise—“duplicate the fire signature of a platoon” was how Gomez put it—while the other three squads hijacked enough transport to lift us all out. Then everyone would disperse, the basic unit being a single vehicle and its occupants. Gomez looked square at me when he explained that part, which I guess was his way of saying they’d decided I wasn’t a total asshole.
When the Mikes came down, the Fitz also dropped seven loaded RTM “twelve-packs.” The RTMs—Remotely Triggered Munitions—were short-range artillery rockets. They were dropped in modules of twelve rockets—hence the nickname—and they went inert as soon as they landed and deployed, hopefully hidden by the surrounding jungle and brush. The Marines could call them in singles, pairs, or pretty much any multiples up to a twelve-rocket salvo, and they’d either fly a pre-plotted course to a fixed target point or home on a laser reflection. They were the closest thing the Marines had to artillery actually down here on the dirt, and Gomez planned to fire all of them in a box barrage around the settlement as soon as we cleared the perimeter. That should slow up the pursuit.
“We’ll try to make sure there’s at least one Marine or Varoki MP in each vehicle,” he went on
. “That way there’s a helmet uplink communicator with every group, and the Fitz can track each party on the ground, feed us instructions and updates.”
“I still got Private Coleman’s helmet,” I put in. “No need to send a Marine with us, although I wouldn’t mind an MP.”
Gomez looked back at me, and his eyebrows went up a little.
“Nothing personal,” I added. “It’s just that a Varoki in a uniform—any uniform—will blend in better.”
“Okay, fair enough,” he agreed. “We’re stretched thin as it is. Your Excellency,” he said, turning to TheHon, “I’ll have two Marines ride with you, including one of our surviving NCOs. That’s all I can spare, and any more would probably just attract attention.”
“Thank you, Sergeant Gomez,” TheHon answered, “but it is not necessary. Mr. Borro and I will be traveling with Mr. Naradnyo’s party.”
Gomez looked at TheHon for a second or two, then he turned and looked at me, then back at TheHon. He didn’t say anything, though. He had other fish to fry, and we’d just made his staffing decisions a lot easier. But I bet he was dying to ask what the hell was going on. TheHon and I were not exactly two guys you’d expect to find bumming around together.
Once Gomez moved along, we huddled up to make sure everyone knew the plan. The Marines would grab as many trucks and cars as they could, we’d take one vehicle as a group, load as many civilians in back as we could manage, and haul ass.
“Who can drive?” I asked.
Borro nodded right away, which figured. Wheel man can be a pretty important skill in executive security.
“I can drive, too,” Marfoglia said.
“Yeah, so can I,” I said. “I learned in the service, but I’m a little rusty. Nobody drives in the Crack. And whatever driving we do here probably isn’t going to be all that sedate, so let’s leave the wheel to Borro.”
“That’s fine,” she said and nodded to Borro. “I’m sure he’s an excellent driver. But if necessary, I can manage difficult driving as well.”
“Take a course or something?” I asked, imagining some kind of weekend survival driving retreat, complete with lots of controlled pyrotechnics and actors in bad-guy costumes.
“No,” she answered coolly. “But two years ago I finished seventh in the Monaco Grand Prix.”
Across the circle of faces TheHon looked at me and smiled. I almost said that wasn’t the same thing as combat driving, but I decided to shut up and just nod instead. After all, I hadn’t done any real combat driving, either, and I hear European drivers can get pretty rude.
* * *
The “fire diversion” and raid for vehicles had all gone as well as anyone had a right to expect. Waiting in the alleyway behind the warehouse with all the civilians and MPs, I didn’t see a lot of the actual fighting, but we could hear it, and once the vehicles showed up we saw its evidence in flechette holes and blood spatter.
“In the trucks! In the trucks!” I yelled, and the Varoki MPs shouted the same in a couple different languages. The Varoki civilians ran, fell, crawled, dragged, and pulled themselves up into the truck beds. All of a sudden there were rounds coming into the alley from every direction, and a grenade exploded against a concrete wall, throwing fragments everywhere. Screams, sobbing, cries of pain all mixed up with the snap of flechettes and a babble of Tac chatter over my helmet limk. Another grenade went off closer. I instinctively put my head down and tucked in my hands, and felt the concrete chips and wire fragments pepper Private Coleman’s helmet and body armor. In the distance, I heard more explosions, short zips of flechette bursts, and the deep, rhythmic hammering of a Marine two-fifty-four thud gun in autofire mode.
I looked around and tried to see who was firing down the alley, and I saw an MP slump back against the wall and slide to the ground. Gauss weapons are flashless, but I saw a flicker of movement in a window in a storefront down the alley to my right and across the street, a window that all of the glass was gone from. I selected the grenade launcher on the RAG-19, lased the window and got a solid reflection off the back wall of the store, backed the detonation point five meters back, and hit it with a can of nails. Then I switched to the serial flechette system and unloaded twenty rounds into the smoke and dust.
I banged on the truck cab’s door and pointed down the alleyway, and the truck started moving. A couple more had already pulled out—just three left, one for my folks and two for Wataski’s crew.
“Okay, last serial, haul ass!” I shouted. The warehouse back door had been ajar, and now it flew open and Borro came out with his gauss pistol up, checked my orientation, and covered the opposite direction. Marr came next, her arms around Barraki, and TheHon ran behind her with Tweezaa in his arms. There were about two dozen Varoki civilians in the group as well, scrambling and stumbling out of the doorway and piling into the three light trucks. I checked the Varoki MP who’d gone down earlier. He was bleeding from a chest shot that had punched his armor, and bright red blood bubbled up out of his mouth, but he was still alive and conscious.
“You two, get this soldier into that truck.”
The two Varoki civilians piling into one of Wataski’s truck didn’t even break stride, and thinking back I’d say the odds are they didn’t hear me—very common in the stress and confusion of combat—or probably even understand English, but at the moment I got really mad. The Marines and MPs were dying to get these people out of this alive, and by God they were not going to leave this guy all alone to drown in his own blood in a dirty alleyway. I grabbed one of them by the belt as he was trying to climb up into the truck, pulled him back hard, and almost threw him toward the wounded MP.
“HELP THAT MAN UP, YOU MOTHERFUCKER, OR I WILL KILL YOU MYSELF!” I bellowed.
For a moment, I thought the guy might have a heart attack staring down the barrel of my RAG, or at least wet himself, but after a second of terror paralysis he bent over to pick up the MP, and all of a sudden three more Varoki civilians piled out of the truck to help.
“Borro, get in the cab and fire it up. I’m going to cover Wataski’s back.”
He nodded and climbed in without argument, pushing the MP driver to the side. I saw Marfoglia’s face look back from the back of the truck, alarm mixed with outrage that I wasn’t right there protecting them. Couldn’t be helped.
“Marfoglia, get your head down! Everybody down in the bed of the truck,” I shouted.
“Wataski,” I called over the helmet’s tacnet, “the last group’s loaded. Have you dropped their recon drone yet?”
“Affirmative,” she answered. “Their drone is down.”
Good. We needed to blind them if we were going to get away with this.
“The train is at the station. Pull the plug and haul ass!” I told her. It wasn’t my call—I was just some guy in the alleyway, but there didn’t seem to be anybody else hanging around.
Then there was more fire from the other end of the alleyway. I heard the snap-snap-snap of a flechette burst, and then another, as they ripped through the length of the light trucks, shattering some of the windshields in front. People inside cried out in pain and terror. I felt panic claw at my throat—who had those rounds torn through?
I turned and let a long auto burst rip down the alley on spec. I didn’t hit anything, but somebody dove for cover and dropped his rifle. Dropped his rifle! Part of me wanted to run down there and shoot the stupid bastard just as a lesson, but more bad guys were showing up, and I knew the alley was turning into a death trap. If anyone put a grenade into the trucks sitting there, we weren’t going anywhere except on foot.
“Wataski, where the hell are you?” I called on the helmet’s tacnet.
“Coming. Five seconds.”
“Be advised, alleyway is red hot—AWiGs everywhere,” I transmitted back.
I changed magazines on my RAG. I hadn’t done much shooting until the last couple minutes, when everything started going to hell, so I still had half a dozen magazines, but I was out of grenades, because I’d been a dumb ass
and hadn’t taken any reloads. I was a civilian, after all, and smart civilians don’t get themselves into dirty little firefights like this.
Then a round punched me in the chest and slammed me back against the concrete, and my head whipped back and cracked the wall. The helmet did its job, but it still left me seeing stars, and the blow to my chest left me gasping for air. I slid down the wall to sit in the alleyway as more rounds tore chunks out of the concrete above me. I checked my chest; there was a frayed furrow in the cloth covering of Private Coleman’s body armor, but the composite plate underneath was intact, and there was no blood. The round must have been either spent or hit a very glancing blow, because the body armor wasn’t designed to stop a clean hit from a smart-head flechette at close range. Who was shooting at me? Where the hell was he now?
The door opened and one of Wataski’s Marines came out carrying a missile director in one hand and a RAG-19 in the other, and as soon as she took a step out, her face just exploded in gory red mist and she dropped lifelessly to the ground. Who shot her? I scanned right and left in near panic, and then a four-round burst sent another Marine tumbling back through the doorway. Two rounds must have hit the Marine, but one round hit the doorsill at about a meter up and one hit the floor right inside. How was that possible? Then I got it.
I looked up, and the son of a bitch was on the roof of the building across the alleyway. I raised my rifle, aimed, and when he showed himself to take another shot I killed him. I scrambled to my feet and looked over at the doorway. Wataski had been looking up, her own rifle raised, but now she looked at me.
“Nice shot!” she shouted.
“Get your people in the truck before we’re all fucking dead. NOW!” I emptied my magazine down the alleyway to suppress as much fire as I could and then sprinted for my own truck. Borro had it accelerating as my hand yanked open the right-side door and I pulled myself in, with the Varoki MP sandwiched between Borro and me as we took the corner out of the alley almost on two wheels.
How Dark the World Becomes Page 24