Awakening to Judgment

by P. R. Adams

  Gwambe looked away, lips quivering.

  “Steven, please.” Rimes’s voice broke.

  “They were still on post when the attack came, Colonel. Many of our people were trying to get them out, but…” Gwambe sucked in air. “They were captured.”

  “Were they—”

  “The attackers, they put some of the prisoners in the tower.” Gwambe looked back toward the post. “Alive. Before they burned it.”

  Rimes’s heart thundered, and his vision blurred. Ever since the attack on Sahara he’d been struggling to control a sense of overwhelming panic and fear. The struggle ended with amazing quickness, and he found himself gasping for breath. Finally, he dropped to his knees. Cold chills erupted in his gut and ran along his spine. He doubled over, vomiting violently, and then he stayed there for several seconds, spitting to clear away the foul taste. After a few minutes he stood on unsteady legs. The world came to him through a haze, as if he were waking from a deep slumber.

  He left Gwambe and returned to the prisoners. He could feel his men’s eyes on him.

  They know. Everyone knows now.

  They’d known all along. Like him, they’d hoped. But the hope was gone, evaporated into the heavy night air.

  Rimes stopped in front of the man who’d tackled him and squatted to look him in the eye. Blood trickled from between the man’s chest plate and left arm, the only obvious sign of injury. The armor had done its job. Rimes could see deformities in the armor where other bullets had been stopped.

  The man was darker than Rimes, with a slightly hooked nose and black hair. Indian or Pakistani, Rimes guessed, and probably somewhere shy of forty. The man was handsome, or once had been. Scars laced his umber skin, making his neatly trimmed beard and mustache something of a lingering vanity. The mercenary’s long, black hair nearly covered a tattoo on his neck. His dark eyes were angry and defiant. And dilated.

  Stims.

  Rimes brushed aside the man’s hair and examined the tattoo for a moment. It was a stylized, clenched, armored fist rising up in front of an “X” made by a combat knife and a pistol. He’d seen it before: the Brotherhood of Arms.

  “Why?” Rimes slowly pulled his hand back. “What do you hope to gain?”

  “You attacked the post,” the mercenary said. “Of course we would pursue you.”

  Rimes lowered his head and shook it slowly. A numbness settled into his gut that disturbed him at some level that he couldn’t readily identify. “Why the attack on Plymouth? Why the attack on Sahara? Why the executions?”

  The mercenary snorted. “It’s what we were paid to do.”

  “Who’s Commander Kapoor?”

  “He commands Group One. My unit reports to him. It was his strategy that took your post so easily.”

  “And Commander Talwar?”

  “Group Two. He is as fierce as a lion, like Commander Kapoor.”

  Rimes looked up into the forest canopy, noting the black shadows there. Then, he turned to examine the prisoners his men had lined up neatly along the path. They were bound but not uncomfortably so. Unlike on Sahara, they were exclusively men. Most were Indian or Pakistani, maybe Afghan, but a couple appeared to be Indonesian or possibly Malaysian. They all had the look of hardened veterans.

  “Commander Kapoor never explained his reasons for the tactics?” Rimes was surprised at the calm that had returned to his voice. A part of him was dying, but he seemed not to miss it. In fact, he seemed to be feeding off the last of its energy.

  The mercenary smirked. “You are the enemy.”

  Rimes pointed at the tattoo on the man’s neck. “Brotherhood of Arms. That used to be a respected mercenary force. Honorable. Decent. About twenty years ago.” He looked down the line of prisoners. “Are you all from the Brotherhood?”

  “Those who are worthy are members.”

  Rimes saw several of the others smiling smugly at him. He nodded, acknowledging each one. “You’re all worthy in my book. You probably heard me say earlier we don’t execute prisoners. I meant that. Unfortunately, we don’t have the capacity to keep prisoners either. That creates a bit of a quandary.”

  A sneer crept across the scarred mercenary’s face. “You cannot frighten us. We’ve made our vows. We’re at peace.”

  “I don’t want to frighten you.” Rimes stood. “We can’t keep you as prisoners, but we can’t just let you go, either. What we can do is relieve you of your weapons and armor. And stims. You’re only a handful of kilometers from post.”

  Rimes walked down the line of prisoners, inspecting each one. “A lot of you are bleeding. That’s really unfortunate. We’ll have to leave you bound, obviously. Some of you might make it back. Of course, that’s not very likely. Some of the nastiest predators are out at this hour. The river’s just about four hundred meters down that way. It’s full of things that make crocodiles look like geckos. They’re fast and quiet, like most of the predators here. The only thing that keeps most of these things from attacking a human normally is the fence or guns. Sadly, you won’t have either.”

  Rimes waved Gwambe forward. “Sergeant, collect their weapons and armor. Oh, and tie any corpses to the wounded so they can drag them back to post.” Rimes looked at the mercenary he’d interrogated. “We believe in caring for the dead.”

  Gwambe waved his squad forward. Dunne joined them. Moments later the rest of Dunne’s squad joined in.

  While his men worked, Rimes squatted again before the mercenary he’d interrogated. He removed the mercenary’s armor, relishing the fear he could see building in the man’s eyes. As he pulled the chest plate off he leaned in and asked in a hushed voice, “Did T-Corp promise you a new life? Take Plymouth and the rest of your contract you’d have a proxy body? It’s sort of like reincarnation, isn’t it? Is that what you believe in? Rebirth? A new life?”

  The man spat at Rimes.

  “You’re about to have that new life,” Rimes said, his body shaking with fury. “It just may not be what you were expecting.”

  15

  13 December, 2173. Plymouth Colony.

  * * *

  Rimes watched the post’s southern edge from his position, curled in the protective boughs of a towering tree several meters inside the forest border. From his vantage point he could see northwest across the clearing to the breach his team had made in the south perimeter fence. A dozen mercenaries now milled about inside the breach. They feigned boredom—guns lowered, backs turned to the forest, some even leaning against the fence—but it was an illusion, same as Rimes’s stillness. Observers would see none of the tension and anxiousness, the fear and fury coiled within, waiting to explode. The mercenaries were just as watchful as he was.

  He closed his eyes just long enough to taste the night air, to suck in the musty heat and smothering humidity of the planet he’d made his home. He licked sweat from his lips, heard the rasp of his tongue, louder than the chatter of the forest.

  Tracing a straight line from the breach to the forest, Rimes marked the point the mercenaries would exit. They would make it. Thirty minutes earlier there had still been four alive, three of them able to run, even dragging the tattered remains of fallen comrades. Rimes had twice been forced to drive off larger predators that would have ruined his plans.

  From his roost he watched and waited and hoped the mercenaries wouldn’t disappoint him. He knew what sort of effort the will to survive could coax from someone.

  The post seemed surprisingly quiet for it to have just suffered what amounted to an attack. If he’d still been in command he would have been analyzing ways to improve the SAM battery positions, reassess the gun emplacements, and increase patrols. Instead, the post seemed almost completely devoid of life.

  They’re either arrogant fools, or the proxies are still down. Possibly both.

  Movement at the forest exit point caught Rimes’s eye. He scanned the tree line, hoping to catch whatever it was that had drawn his attention.

  He saw it again. A heavy leaf waved lazily, its branch
bobbing ever so slightly. Rimes raised his carbine and sighted on the bush the branch protruded from. It took a moment, but he finally made out what had caused the movement and cursed.

  An urwolf was squatting not ten meters from the trail the mercenaries had been following. Although not Plymouth’s largest predator, the urwolf—named by the locals for its grizzly-like size and wolf-like form—was probably its most dangerous. Two of his ERF soldiers had been seriously wounded in five years by the creatures. Urwolves were smart, especially the ones that hunted in packs. He’d encountered a family of six once and had been lucky to escape with a ruined suit of armor and a dislocated elbow.

  Rimes confirmed there was only one of the creatures, then he thought through the situation. A detached coldness settled over him with disturbing ease. If three mercenaries were still alive and capable of running, one should escape the slaughter. The corpses would actually distract the urwolf.

  The stims are going to be a complication. How much will still be in their systems? And stims or not, can they continue on after all they’ve been through?

  Yes.

  The urwolf rose off its belly and leaned forward, hungrily sniffing the wind. Rimes focused on the trailhead and waited. Tension slowly coiled in his core.

  He took his eyes off the trailhead for just a moment and scanned from the base of his perch to the clearing and the fence beyond. There were no mercenaries to be seen, no defense or monitoring systems. He needed only a distraction to have a chance to make it across the open ground.

  A scream shattered the stillness. Rimes pivoted his view back to the trailhead in time to see the urwolf leap. It landed atop one of the mercenaries, easily bearing him to the ground with its two hundred kilo bulk. The scream came again, then went silent.

  The other two mercenaries surged, darting out of the forest, shouting. One drifted into the other, causing the second to stumble slightly and fall behind. Shouting rose above the urwolf’s roars.

  Rimes tracked back to the breach and saw the men who’d been lolling about. They were clearly alert now, turned to the forest, frozen, drawn by the shouts and screaming. They ran toward their comrades, stopping when the urwolf leapt from the forest and tripped up the trailing mercenary by leaping on the ruined corpse he was dragging. The mercenary screamed and kicked as the urwolf closed. The mercenaries from the post charged and opened fire on the beast.

  Rimes dropped from his position and bolted for the fence, maintaining as low a profile as possible. He reached the fence without any indication he’d been detected and skidded on his knees, ignoring the pain in his ankle.

  He pulled a strand of thermal cord from his hip pouch and formed a meter-high semicircle with it, then planted and activated the detonator with a single motion. A flash of heat momentarily overwhelmed his suit and flooded his BAS’ thermal imagery display, but it wasn’t enough to stop him. He cautiously pulled the segment of fence free and crawled through the opening, listening as he did to the ongoing battle between the mercenaries and the urwolf. Even over the gunfire, Rimes could hear shouts for help.

  No fear, huh? He laughed.

  The closest structure to his position was the ruined security building. As he jogged toward it, he pulled up an overlay of the post. He’d integrated the recon data from the other squads but had worried that the data they’d all gathered during the landing might already be obsolete. Now that he’d seen the relative inactivity at the post’s perimeter, he was more confident the data would have some value.

  His main target was the comm uplink, which was nearly 150 meters away. Fortunately, there was a lot of cover: ruins and new, temporary structures.

  When the gunfire died, silence settled over the post. Rimes imagined the urwolf had fled with its first kill rather than deal with the mercenaries. Even it couldn’t stand up to sustained gunfire.

  Using the BAS’ ambient sound amplification Rimes could locate and listen in on casual conversations up to two hundred meters out. He crouched behind the security building and directed his suit’s sensors toward the uplink. Voices were audible over the channel.

  Rimes jogged low across the compound, occasionally stopping to check on the conversation. It continued.

  He stopped behind what looked like a semi-portable generator and listened again.

  There were two speakers, apparently discussing the earlier gunfire. After a few seconds, Rimes realized they had turned their attention to the proxies. Apparently, the proxies were recovered but still disoriented.

  Rimes checked the BAS display, quickly identifying the two men as red dots positioned eighteen meters from him. They were positioned beyond and to the left of the pale-green wireframes of the generator and the communication uplink.

  Sentries.

  Rimes stood and glanced over the generator. He spun in a slow circle and saw no movement, no indication of other people nearby. He dropped low again and snuck toward the sentries. The low hum of electricity emanated from the giant uplink dishes. It was enough to drown out the soft noise he made as he moved.

  Pale moonlight painted everything in a wan, silver light. Behind Rimes, the ghostly gray dishes pointed skyward. To his right, shadows cloaked a small maintenance shed in twilight black. The sentries were on the opposite side of the shed, not even five meters away. They stood close together.

  Rimes edged along the shed wall until he saw them: two silhouettes in the darkness.

  They wore garrison armor, which only protected torso and abdomen. It was a practical decision, and one he would probably agree with—up until the first hint of hostilities.

  He listened for a moment longer, catching the rhythm and flow of the conversation. The sentries were more interested in their discussion than their duty.

  A good commander would perform random patrols to ensure the troops stayed sharp.

  A predator’s smile crossed Rimes’s lips, and he scanned his surroundings once more. No one else was within sight. The massive uplinks broke line of sight to the north; to the east, the building he was leaning against provided cover. The bulk of the post’s buildings cluttered the western landscape; the ruined and temporary structures he’d passed on his way to the uplink cluttered the south. Only the ground—a heavy, grass-like growth with intermittent burn patches—troubled Rimes. In the moonlight, he would have a hard time distinguishing between burned and living grass until he stepped on it.

  The conversation suddenly came to a stop, and Rimes tensed. One of the sentries shook his head and walked away from the other. His voice was raised as if angry. Rimes waited, ready to move. The angry sentry disappeared from sight, somewhere on the north side of the building. After a moment, the remaining sentry called out, apparently taunting the other before turning his back to face the south.

  Rimes edged back along the south wall until he could glance around the corner. The angry sentry stood at the fence surrounding the uplinks. His voice was low; it sounded like he was grumbling. He occasionally looked over his shoulder toward the other sentry. Rimes confirmed the sentries’ positions with his BAS, ensuring the intervening building would provide cover; it offered a little.

  It’ll have to do.

  Pressing himself flush to the building’s east wall, Rimes advanced. His movement was slow and measured. Each foot rose slowly but certainly, then stretched to the next position and descended more slowly and with extreme caution.

  Twenty meters separated Rimes and the angry sentry. With each intake of breath, Rimes crossed a meter. Three meters out, he stepped on a patch of charred grass. The crackling was a roar in the BAS’ audio system.

  Rimes froze.

  The sentry tensed, then turned. Rimes leapt. A single strike to the neck, and the sentry collapsed with little more than a whispered gasp.

  Rimes caught the sentry and lowered him to the ground, then twisted to locate the second sentry. Only the building’s black bulk was visible. A quick search, and Rimes located the unconscious sentry’s knife. Rimes drove the knife hilt deep into the sentry’s throat, the
n retraced his path to the building and around it.

  The second sentry was pacing now, apparently agitated. He stopped long enough to hurl an insult at the dead sentry. Rimes waited until he was sure the sentry was going to return to his south-facing position again. A moment later, the sentry did exactly that, muttering beneath his breath like his dead comrade had.

  Rimes slid forward quietly and struck the sentry in the neck. Rimes caught the sentry as he fell and snapped his neck before lowering him to the ground.

  Seconds slipped past. Rimes returned to the fence surrounding the uplink. Like the perimeter fence, the uplink fence’s electrical defense hadn’t been reactivated. Rimes used another length of thermal cord, and a moment later he was inside, cautiously approaching the uplinks.

  He knew the layout well enough that he didn’t have to consult his BAS.

  Overcoming communications systems defenses was part of the training Rimes personally conducted for his ERF team, so this part was easy for him. He popped a panel, exposing a circuit, then he went to work connecting a device Meyers had constructed aboard the Valdez. It would overcome standard communications security systems.

  Time seemed to race by as Meyers’s device first cracked the security, then synchronized with the communications signals. While the device worked its magic, Rimes laid explosive charges along three critical areas. The explosives weren’t enough to bring the dishes down, but they were enough to cripple critical electronics and shatter wire casings and the wiring within.

  A magenta light flashed on Rimes’s BAS display as he activated the final timer. Meyers’s device was now fully embedded into the communications system. Rimes headed back to the device and connected to it using the BAS’ near-field communications. His system filtered out thousands of inactive frequencies before identifying hundreds of active channels.