by Ian Douglas
"Target lock!" Kingfield yelled in her mind. "Take it, Captain!"
She could see the dazzling point of reflected laser light where Kingfield was painting the target. "Trigger hot! Fire!"
Rockets slammed from the weapons pod in a rippling cascade of flame and smoke. Thunder erupted downrange; the first rocket homed on a spot of laser light thrown on the target by Kingfield. Nine more homed on the detonation of the warhead in front of it. The crag-broken Lokan plain lit up with the barrage, as pieces of Xeno machine, white-hot and trailing smoke, arced through the sky.
Katya glanced at the damaged Battlewraith. Two other striders were already dousing Nicholsson's machine with NCM fog, as a third began burning fragments of shattered stalker.
"Let's move," she told Dawson. The dome was just ahead.
The hole in the side of the dome was large enough to admit a warstrider the size of an RS-64, though Dawson had to flex the knees sharply, stooping to maneuver through the tight and jagged-edged entrance. It was as dark inside as out, though infrared showed a lot more color and detail. The dome's interior glowed in an eerie mosaic of colors painted in Katya's head. The stilting, two-legged form of Carlsson's Ghostrider glowed in oranges and yellows, with dazzling white patches marking hot weapon muzzles, exhaust ports, and leakage from the power plant. Together the two striders plunged into a cavern of ghostlike, nightmare shapes, lost in a blue-green murk that had the wavering, surrealistic feel of an undersea landscape.
"Nano count going up, Captain!" Mitch warned.
She glanced at her own readouts. Point four-three and climbing, with some erosion on the Warlord's armor. "I see it. Keep moving!"
In combat, nanotechnic disassemblers drifted free in the air by the tens of billions. Concentrations could be especially high in craters, hanging above nano-damaged wreckage, or, as in this case, inside confined spaces.
"Hit the lights!" she ordered. The infrared image of the dome interior was confusing, tangled and deceptive. The Warlord's external lights snapped on, and she stared into rawest nightmare.
The dome was open to Loki's carbon dioxide atmosphere, and any colonists still on this main level must be dead by now. But the bodies were still moving. . . .
They'd been caught in poses of horror, dozens of people, men, mostly, but several women as well, struck down and strewn across the room like rag dolls. The steel deck, the roof support pillars, the walls, the tables and chairs, all looked deformed, softened, as though they'd been carved from plastic and were melting now in blast furnace heat. The bodies, too, were melting, blending into deck and furniture as though becoming a part of it.
Katya knew what was happening. The intense concentration of nano-disassemblers in that room was dissolving everything—deck, walls, bodies—and as they disintegrated, they tended to run together. Directly in front of her, Katya saw a man's upper body settling into the deck, his head thrown back, his face locked in a soundless shriek of agony. Thank God he's dead. . . .
"Katya!" Dawson cried. "Threat! Left nine-five!"
She sensed the danger in the same instant as Dawson's warning. A nightmare shape lunged forward, vast, flat-headed, somehow dragonish in form, trailing tentacles and flame. That weaving, discoid head identified it as a Cobra.
Katya fired, both CPGs searing the air with crackling blue flame. The Cobra's hazy, soft-glowing shield absorbed the bolts as bodies and furniture flared and shriveled in white heat. Katya fired again, hoping to cripple the monster before it could fire. Lightning arced, snapping between the weaving Cobra head and the ground. The protective shield dissipated in a swirl of vapor. Flakes of silver metal scattered, burning.
Then the Cobra fired, and the sound was the screech of some hideously wounded animal. Lumps of metal hurled by gaussfields from the thing's sinuous body melted in their brief flight through resisting air, then struck Katya's Warlord with a slam-slam-slam that toppled her backward in a flailing tangle of metal legs and arms, a shrill, echoing scream ringing in her brain.
Dazed, she wondered if it had been she who'd screamed. She felt pain, a dim and distant ache enfolding her arms and chest, but she could not at first decide whether it was the Warlord's autonomous systems alerting her to severe damage to the strider, or leakage from her real body, strapped and wired in the Warlord's commander's module. Her flesh-and-blood body wasn't supposed to hurt while she was linked, but she'd heard stories. . . .
Ignoring the pain, she waited for Dawson to bring the Warlord back to its feet. It took her a full second to realize that one small part of her mind, which had been occupied moments before by Mitch's cephlink feed, was empty now, an aching, black void that might mean equipment failure . . . or something worse.
"Mitch!" she called over the ICS. "Damn it, Mitch, talk to me!"
The Cobra struck again. Warnings scrolled across the edge of her vision, telling of systems failures, power overloads, circuits cut. Lying on her back, she levered her left arm up and fired as the Cobra unfolded above her, slashing across the Cobra's relatively slender neck. Kingfield triggered the hivel Gatling in the same instant, sending a stream of deplur slugs into the drifting body. The Cobra staggered, then dropped writhing to the ground, its flat head separated from the body and flopping helplessly on the steel floor a few meters away.
And then Carlsson's Ghostrider was next to her, firing his chin turret laser into the smoking pieces, slagging down Xeno nano-metal and steel deck into smoking, molten puddles. Swinging around, he doused the fallen Warlord with NCM fog. Huge chunks of armor had already been eaten clean through.
Shakily Katya took over control of the Warlord. Levering its feet beneath the fuselage, she managed to rise, feeling the tug of the gyro as she wobbled unsteadily. "Mitch!" she tried again.
"I'm sorry, Captain," Kingfield told her. "He's dead."
Outside the dome, the battle was sputtering to an end. Streaks on the ground glared white-hot radiance where lasers or charged particle bolts had turned sand and gravel molten. Warstriders moved in pairs across the ground, hunting down bits and pieces of Xeno war machines and incinerating them with lasers or chemical flamers.
An hour later, six big Typhoon combat carriers from Asgard Orbital settled to the valley floor beyond the killing ground, disembarking a full company of Imperial Marine striders. The gleaming machines, lumbering Katanas and Samurais and nimble recon Tachis and Tantos, all jet black and bearing the rising-sun emblem of the Empire, swiftly secured the perimeter. A tai-i in a black Daimyo command strider curtly relieved Katya and ordered her to assemble her platoon and board the VK-141s. No thank-you, no well-done . . . just a sharp "I relieve you," and a brief string of orders.
Right, Katya thought. Where were you when we needed you?
In the valley, men in combat armor were probing the wreckage of the enemy machines, searching for the clues to the Xenophobe psychology and biology that never seemed to be there after a fight. Katya doubted that they would find more than the inevitable mysterious technology and rotting organics this time; the remains of Xenophobe battle machines were rarely very helpful in the human quest to understand the enemy.
The gods of war had noticed after all. Mitch was dead.
Never again, she promised herself. Never again am I going to get close to a living soul!
Chapter 5
After three centuries, we're still coming to grips with what it means to have machines smarter than ourselves, in some cases, as symbiotic partners. Lots of people never do learn to handle it.
—Man and His Works
Dr. Karl Gunther Fielding
C.E. 2488
"Hey, Suresh!" Dev called out as he entered the barracks lounge. "I hear you're not the only Nihonjin on Loki anymore!"
Suresh Gupta grinned, his teeth startlingly white against the black skin of his face. "About time," he replied. Somberly he placed one hand over his heart. "To think, a man of my culture and breeding, alone on a world of barbarians."
Cynthine Dole kicked him. "Just remember, Americans made it
to the Moon first!"
"You were the first," Gupta replied. "But that was before we Japanese grabbed the space-industrial high ground."
The others in the room laughed. Gupta was Terran, a native of Andhra Pradesh, a state that had been part of the Japanese Empire ever since the Indian Federation's self-destruction in the mid-twenty-first century, but which was no more ethnically or culturally Japanese than Singapore or Hong Kong. Still, a running joke pretended he was the only Japanese in Holding Company 3/1, and he affected a good-natured sense of racial superiority over his barracks mates.
Planetography and history had brought the six of them together, out of the forty-two men and women who currently occupied Barracks Three of the Midgard Hegemony Guard Receiving Station. Dole and Castellano, both originally from New America, Gaffet, who was from Rainbow, and Jacobsen of Liberty were all of North American descent, while Gupta and Dev both were from Earth itself. The fact that Dev was both Terran and American had made him an instant celebrity with the outworlders; New America, Rainbow, and Liberty all had strong cultural ties with an America that no longer existed on Earth, save in romantic ViRdrama.
"So what are Imperials doing on Loki?" Erica Jacobsen asked, brushing a strand of gloriously long, blond hair back from her face. "Slumming?"
"Kuso!" Castellano swore. "Didn't you guys hear? Friend of mine up in commo gave me the straight hont."
"Yeah, right," Dole said. Hont was military slang, stolen from the Nihongo honto no koto, the word of truth. The recruits had already learned that the "straight hont" was anything from exaggeration to wild fabrication.
"No, I mean it! There was a breakout at a place called Schluter, not very far from here. The Imperials pulled a hot landing and sealed it off."
"C'mon, Castellano," Ran Garret said. "We'd've heard if the Xenos were anywhere within ten thousand klicks of Bifrost."
"Ha!" Castellano grinned. "You think they're going to tell you goking anything?"
"Why not?" Dole asked. "After Lung Chi, if the Xenies came anywhere near a sky-el, word would spread damned fast."
Dev shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The conversation was hitting just a little too close to home.
He'd been in Company 3/1 for four days. Subject to the petty tyranny of military discipline, marched to meals, marched to the evaluation center where they were put through batteries of cephlink testing, he found the routine more boring than anything else. Mostly the hojies—the name was a corruption of the Nihongo word for "recruits"—were left alone, "until," as Cynthine Dole had pointed out, "they figure out what we're good for."
The one person in the group not awaiting assignment to a training slot was Phil Castellano, a five-year veteran who was waiting now for his release. The rest were new recruits, native Lokans, most of them. A few were newcomers to Loki, people who'd emigrated to the colony looking for work and ended up enlisting in the Hegemony Guard; or, like Dev and Ran Garret, they'd been shipcrew paid off at Asgard Orbital.
The vast majority of the holding company's recruits had signed on for technical service training—communications, ViR processing, AI systems, maintenance, or meditechnics. A few, including both Suresh Gupta and Erica Jacobsen, had palmed for a hitch in the strider forces, strange as that seemed to Dev. Why would anyone actually volunteer to extend their five-standard-year service requirement to seven and risk a washout to the infantry, all for the privilege of becoming a large and unwieldy target in a battle? Warstriders, Dev thought, were patently silly, lumbering, clanking brutes that were expected to get close to an enemy to fight him.
Give him the navy any day!
Of the others in the company, Ranan Garret was closest to a kindred spirit. A small, intense black from Crystalsea on Rainbow, he was determined to join the Hegemony Navy. Like Dev, he'd linked for several years aboard an independent freighter, and he saw a fleet hitch as a static-free line to a slot with a passenger carrier like Nipponspace. During the past few days, Dev and Garret had openly speculated about whether or not they'd be assigned to the same ship for training.
"Hey, Lung Chi can't happen again," Garret said, replying to Dole's earlier comment. "The navy's got it covered from orbit."
"Kichigai!" Jacobsen said, shaking her head. "You're crazy! They 'had it covered' at Lung Chi, too, didn't they? And what do they do on a hellhole like Loki? You can't laser targets through a cloud deck, friend!"
Garret snickered. "I suppose you think striders are the answer? Hey, the whitesuits provide the real firepower. You striderjacks are obsolete, right, Dev?"
"I guess so." He wanted to change the subject. "Anyway, Ran's right about them telling us if the Xenos get close. Something was going on four days ago—"
"Probably a drill," Dole said.
"Probably. But if Xenos had been anywhere close to the el, it would've been big news."
Castellano laughed, a sharp, harsh bark. "Kuso, Navy! You norkin' stupid or what?"
Dev frowned. Phil Castellano was the most enigmatic member of the little group. After five years with the Guard, he only held the rank of gocho, corporal, which meant he'd been busted at least once. Tough, arrogant, swaggering, he turned evasive when questioned about his experiences in the Guard. He had plenty of war stories, but he could never be pinned down on particulars. Dev didn't like him.
"What do you mean?"
"You really think you're going to get a navy slot? You'll be lucky to get the PBI."
"PBI?" Garret asked.
"The poor bloody infantry, sonny. Crunchies, the strider-jacks call 'em,'cause that's the sound they make when their CAs get stepped on by the big five-meter jobs." He grinned. "Or maybe you'll be tapped for the striders, God help you. Get to stomp around in a dual-podder with a great big target painted on your chest!"
"I've been promised my slot," Dev said, with more conviction than he felt. "By this time next week, Ran and me'll be navy."
Castellano laughed. "You've been living too many ViRdramas, kid. You need a reality test!"
With slow deliberation Dev stood up. "You care to explain that?"
"Yeah, sure." Castellano rose, topping Dev's 182 by a couple of centimeters. He was more massive, too, with muscle behind a layer of fat. "Yeah, I'll explain it, hojie. You think anybody gives a rusty jack about you? The bastards upstairs'll stick you wherever they've got a slot . . . and if you don't fit just right, they'll bend you until you do! And when they're done with you, they'll discard you like a spent casing." He snapped his fingers. "Just like that."
"Sounds like you're talking from experience."
"Maybe I am. At least I'm on my way out of this hellhole, eight more days and a wake-up. But you, boys and girls, have landed in a world of shit. Five standard years." His grin stretched his face, but his eyes were hard and cold. "Maybe more, if they decide you're dumb enough for shoko-school."
"I've got the sockets for officer school," Dev said evenly. "But I'll be a navy officer, not a muckgrubber grunt like you."
"Ah, you're nothing but fresh meat on the block for the shiseiji to feed to the 'Phobes." He looked Dev up and down, his mouth pulling into a sneer. "You ask me, the 'Phobes'll spit you back!"
Dev's hands balled into fists. He'd fought his share of battles in the grimy street canyons of West Scranton, where a challenge as sharp as this one was answered by an immediate attack. Dev took a step forward, his right fist drawing back . . .
"Psst, hold it!" Garret snapped. "Attention!"
Dev whirled, thinking for an instant that someone had just entered the lounge. At the far end of the lounge, the life-size, 3-D image of a Hegemony Navy lieutenant commander was materializing into near-solidity.
"Recruit Cameron," the officer said. He did not look up from his desk, and sounded bored. "Report in person to Office 50-A. Execute immediate." The image faded out again.
At first, Dev wondered if someone had seen the near-fight. It wasn't impossible that surveillance devices monitored all of the barracks spaces. Then he realized that the speaker's being a naval of
ficer meant that it probably had to do with his assignment. He glared at Castellano.
"We'll finish this later."
"It'll be a pleasure, hojie."
Dev checked the location of Office 50-A on the information 'face panel at the front of the barracks, then headed across the dome compound at a trot.
The pressurized habitat on the eastern outskirts of Midgard known as Tristankuppel, one of the city's forty-one interconnected domes, housed most of the local military facilities, including barracks, administration and support buildings, recruit training center, and technical schools. Most of the buildings were drab, Rogan-grown structures shouldering one another beneath the transplas sky, arrayed in a two-hundred-meter circle around a barren central field still called the grinder, a name backed by long centuries of military tradition.
Office 50-A was in Scandia Hall, the sleekest and most modern of the Tristankuppel's buildings. The lieutenant commander Dev had seen in the holoprojection was waiting for him in a windowless work space in the Personnel Office on the first level.
Another officer was there as well, tall, long-legged, and sexy in a hard-bodied way despite her brush-cut hair. She wore collar tabs on her skintights identifying her as a tai-i—the same as a navy lieutenant or an army captain. He started to grin appreciatively but was stopped by the emotionless appraisal of those hard, dark eyes.
"Sir!" Dev said, snapping to attention as his latest feed in military courtesy had instructed him. "Recruit Cameron reporting as ordered, sir!"
"At ease, recruit," the man said, looking up. He gestured to a chair next to the desk. "Dock yourself."
Dev was surprised at the informality. "Thank you, sir."
"I'm Commander Fisher. This is Captain Alessandro. She's company commander of one of Midgard's strider units." He tapped a small, flat screen reader on his desktop. "I've been going through your records, son. I see you want to follow in your father's footsteps."