by B. V. Larson
The monster didn’t even bother to halt. It crashed right into our lines, wildly smashing the 88s that had so tortured his brothers. In one hand, a stocky figure was snatched up and hurled to the ground again with fantastic force.
I could sense the anger in that throw, the rage. The killed gunner bounced a few meters into the air, flopping and thumping down near me.
It was Sargon, and he was deader than yesterday.
-29-
One might wonder what in the nine hells I’d been up to until this point. Well, I wasn’t asleep at the switch. I’d been holding my fire for the right moment.
When facing the Wur, I’d learned a well-timed, well-placed bolt of energy was far better than a thousand pin-pricks. When you fought one of these abominations, you were either going to kill it, or you were going to get busted up and die. So, it was best to choose your moment wisely.
Around me, my troops scattered, naturally giving ground. The towering figure in our midst, easily twelve meters in height, was hard at work. He stooped, bending at the waist, and grabbed up a fleeing man with either hand. Bringing the two together, he smashed their heads to pulp. Bits of helmet, brains and gore flew down in a rain that made the leafy undergrowth patter.
With the aperture open about a quarter-turn, I nailed the sensory fronds on its right side first. They burned like dry grass hit by a blowtorch.
The Wur shivered, and the fronds on the left side were sucked up into its body. I tried to nail them as well, burning a streak across the trunk—but I didn’t get there in time to blind it completely.
“Shit,” I said.
Several other weaponeers were joining me now, firing from multiple directions. What’s more, Harris was leading his armored troops back toward my position. Even Barton was getting in the game, showering the surviving beast with snap-rifle fire.
Small-arms couldn’t do much against a walking tree, but they could distract and madden it, giving those with heavier gear a chance to finish the job.
In the end, the Wur was left crawling. One arm was blown off, and it couldn’t walk, but it was still dragging itself around the field of battle, making grasping motions. Snap rifles had shredded what was left of those weird sensory organs when they had reappeared.
Blinded and dying, it managed to crush one more light trooper who’d gotten too close and overconfident before it too, died like the rest.
After it was over, my unit began hollering. I let them, as it had been a good fight, and we’d won in the end.
Reporting in to Graves, who was running all the patrols, I relayed my after-action-report and uploaded all my data back to camp. A few minutes later, he called me personally.
“Grandstanding again, McGill?” he asked.
“Whooping tail, sir!” I said.
Carlos slapped me on the back as he went by. “That was cool. Hardly any wounded to worry about, either.”
I grinned at him. Carlos was a bio, and he loved battles where people either died or survived unhurt. That kept him from having to do a damned thing.
“McGill?” Graves was saying. “Centurion, can I have your attention, please?”
“Yes sir. Sorry, sir.”
“I’m seeing two damaged 88s… who requisitioned those expensive units?”
“Uh…” I said, thinking it over.
It was Leeson, after all, who’d really wanted to bring them along. I could have tried to blame it all on him—but that was a chicken-shit game, the kind I didn’t play. After all, Leeson had been right to bring them.
“I did, sir,” I said. “Without them, the Wur would have knocked out my entire unit.”
“Is that your opinion, McGill?”
“That’s right, sir.”
He grumbled a little more. Graves always had valued equipment over manpower. After all, it was easier to grow a fresh soldier than it was to requisition a new artillery piece.
“All right,” he said at last. “You’re cleared to withdraw to the walls.”
“Really?” I asked. “The day is young, sir. I’d like to finish my tour.”
“Say what?” Harris demanded.
He had to be a good thirty paces away, but he’d still overheard me. Or maybe he’d been listening in on command chat. Either way, I tossed him a sour glance which he promptly returned.
He stumped toward me, putting his hand over his mic and glowering.
“We did our tour. We’re still breathing—most of us. Let’s go back in!”
I turned away and walked a few paces over the mud and slimy muck that served the Wur for blood.
“My men are eager to finish our tour, sir. We’ve got ninety-percent effectives.”
“Yeah,” Graves said, “but what are you going to do if you run into another angry tree dropping pods? Your 88s are out of commission.”
He had a point, but I had a counter.
“I’ve got an excellent scout now, sir. Cooper is trying out for the new specialist rank of ‘ghost’. I’ll use him to make sure we don’t walk into any more ambushes.”
“Really? He didn’t do shit to keep you out of the last one.”
“Uh…” I was in a spot now. I really didn’t want to tell him Cooper had been useless—that would hardly help the kid get rank.
On the other hand, I could tell him what really happened. After a long second of indecision, I decided to go with the God’s-honest truth. That hurt, but I knew it was the right thing to do. So I swallowed hard, and I did it.
“The truth is, sir… I drew the charge. Cooper would have probably died if I hadn’t.”
“That’s a genius move, Centurion. You saved one man, but you half-crippled your unit and got another dozen killed.”
“Excuse me, Primus,” I said. “Maybe I’ve made a mistake, but I thought we were here to do more than sit inside our walls and play with our dicks.”
It was harsh language, but Graves was beginning to piss me off. He didn’t seem to be gung-ho to win this war—no one did, not since I’d gotten here.
“Good point,” he sighed. “All right, here are my orders: complete your patrol. Do not lose more than another ten percent of your force or gear. Report to me personally when you get back. Oh, and don’t take too long, another damned storm is likely to blow in tomorrow.”
“That’s good news, sir,” I said. “I was thinking I would die of thirst out here.”
He laughed and closed the channel.
When I turned back to my unit, I faced my three adjuncts. They’d all gathered around, and they’d apparently been listening in. Leeson looked glum. Harris looked pissed, and Barton looked determined.
Of the three, I liked Barton’s reaction the most.
“Good news!” I announced to all three of them. “We’re going to continue the hunt. First off, strip the bark on this tree, full circle. Make sure you kill it. Then let’s do a few minutes of clean-up. Gather up any lost gear you can find, and be ready to march in ten minutes.”
I heard some grumbling, but I ignored it. Dumping water in my face, I sighed and drank my fill. Battle always seemed to make a man thirsty, even on Storm World.
Cooper came up to me a few minutes later. I noticed him on my HUD inside my faceplate first, as he was wearing his stealth gear.
My officers’ HUD had features most of the troops didn’t have access to. The inside could light up with all kinds of arrows, symbols and text. That could be quite distracting, particularly in battle, so they didn’t outfit regular soldiers with the full info-systems.
But in this case, I saw a green dot very close. The word Cooper was written on it in a tiny, slanted font.
Stopping suddenly, I pretended to yawn—sweeping my arms out to my sides.
My left hand grazed Cooper, who was standing there invisible.
Letting out a war-whoop, I whirled, grabbing the smaller man. He almost got away, no doubt dancing madly to escape my outstretched hand, but I managed to hook a finger into his collar. I yanked him back hard and dashed him to the ground.
> Ripping out my combat knife, I grinned when he screeched and flailed to get his stealth suit off.
“By damn!” I said. “Is that Cooper? I thought one of those trees would have shat you out by now!”
Cooper’s eyes went from fear to disgust. He’d read my shitty grin correctly.
“That was a funny one, sir.”
“Would have been funnier if I’d gutted you.”
“That’s just what I was thinking.”
I offered him a gloved hand, and he took it warily. I yanked him off the ground and stood him on his feet. Then, I began walking again.
“Hey, Centurion? I just wanted to say… well.”
“I love you too, man,” I said.
“Right. It was cool what you did back there. I feel kind of bad for Sargon, though.”
Turning around, I looked him in the eye.
“Don’t,” I said. “Sargon did his job. Leeson’s the only one who screwed up slightly. He took too long to order those 88s to fire. Not that I would have done any better, but it was his job to time the sweep.”
“Yeah… but you advanced to contact instead of writing me off. That’s what I’m talking about.”
I shrugged. “Another mistake, I’m sure. Won’t happen again. But we’re not out here in this godforsaken rainforest to live forever. We’ve got a job to do. These casualties—they’re necessary.”
He narrowed his naturally narrow eyes and looked at me. “Are you saying the brass is holding us back?”
“Damned straight they are. Look at this forest. All it does is sit out here and grow, while we’ve been shivering and pissing ourselves inside our walls for a month waiting for the rain to stop. Well, let me tell you two things: the rain is never stopping, and this forest is going to keep growing.”
Cooper followed me while I checked on a dozen things. Soon, we were all marching again. I could tell he was thinking hard, so I didn’t order him out on point immediately.
“Why are they just sitting in their bunkers, sir? It does seem odd, now that I think about it. We can’t win this way.”
“That’s right. Now you know where my mind is wandering.”
“Hmm… what are you going to do about it?”
I stopped, scanning the horizon. We were deep in the forest now. We’d traveled deeply enough into the quiet interior to lose sight of the rocky hills we’d left behind.
“I haven’t decided yet,” I admitted. “Now, start scouting.”
Cooper trotted off without a word, vanishing completely before he’d taken ten quick steps.
I nodded to myself, thinking he was truly going to make a good ghost. He was a natural.
-30-
As we moved through the forest on our sweep, we came to some surprising sights.
“Centurion?” my ghost Cooper whispered into my ear. “Can you check out my visual?”
I switched over to his channel, which I’d built up as a permanently available thread to my helmet. A moment later, my faceplate displayed what he was seeing.
“Hmm…” I said, “is that stripped bark?”
“That’s right sir. Someone’s ahead of us, doing exactly what we’ve been doing.”
A tap came on my shoulder at that very moment. Glancing, I saw Leeson looking up at me worriedly. I turned away, refocusing my eyes on the images playing inside my faceplate. Leeson was always wetting his pants about something.
“If there’s no blood or fire, I don’t care, Leeson,” I said.
He stumped away, shaking his head.
“Cooper,” I said. “Give me a tree count, and if you spot who’s doing it, I want a visual.”
“Got it, sir.”
Cooper moved off, and a vid began playing that showed giant fern fronds waving as he pressed through them.
“McGill to Graves, come in, sir.”
“Channel opened. Talk, McGill. I’m busy. Have you gotten yourself slaughtered out there yet?”
“Negative, sir. Still working on that. But we have spotted a number of trees slashed through—is there another patrol in our vicinity?”
“No. One unit per zone. Unless you’ve gone outside your designated region—but no, I see you haven’t. I’ll check with the other commanders in the field. Maybe someone else has gone AWOL.”
“Roger, sir, thanks.”
I disconnected, worrying. Our patrol had two tasks, to spot enemy concentrations and do some harm along the way—but not too much harm.
The trouble was that the trees didn’t like getting slashed. They’d react. This was assumed, of course. They couldn’t grow pods quickly enough to defend themselves within a few hours, but there was always a tree now and then that did it in every region.
If we slashed too many, they’d all grow pods, sensing the pheromone release in the air. That could be dangerous, as thousands of pod-walkers could breach our walls.
Therefore, our patrol had been given orders to slash a tree every kilometer or so. Enough to do some damage and spark a half-hearted response later on—but not enough to ignite a widespread fury. It was a war of attrition tactic. We were just trimming them a little, keeping them in check.
But the Wur might react unpredictably if provoked too much.
Graves came back online a few minutes later. “No one is confessing. I’ve reviewed what you uploaded to me—this is a clear violation. No one is supposed to nail every tree they pass. That’s a clear violation of your rules of engagement, McGill.”
“That’s what I thought, sir.”
“So stop doing it, dammit! That’s an order!”
“Uh… wait a second! I’m not doing it! I’m reporting the activity—”
“Bullshit, McGill. Bullshit. This is just like you. I should have expected it, in fact. I was a fool to send out a hotheaded alien-hater like you into the field. No wonder you were so eager to go on patrol.”
I recalled the meeting. I had played the part of a man filled with excitement at getting himself killed—but Graves had taken it the wrong way.
“Primus,” I said, “I was bored, and I wanted to get out past our rain-soaked walls, but I’m not crazy. We’ve been cutting trees, about every third one so far. I’ll pass you the evidence. Check our GPS trail, if you don’t believe me.”
Grumbling, he went silent for a minute. I let him ponder the data. Graves was a “trust-but-verify” kind of officer. Fortunately, in this rare case, the facts were on my side.
“I apologize, Centurion,” he said. “My assumptions were off-base. Even you, working with Natasha, couldn’t falsify this much official data while in the field. I’m going to have to assume you’ve run into a Scupper patrol.”
“Uh… a what patrol, sir?”
“Didn’t you manage to stay awake through the entire briefing this time?”
“I resent that question, sir.”
“Right… you didn’t listen. The Scuppers are what we call the locals—weird-looking wet-skinned humanoids. They’re really ugly, but they’re on our side. This is their planet. The Wur are the invaders.”
“Oh…” I said recalling something about there being some salamander-type aliens crawling around on Storm World. “Right sir. The salamanders.”
“It must be them. They hate the trees more than we do, and they might be taking action. The problem is they’re hitting the same area we are, and they’re doing it too hard. McGill, I need you to do two things: One, stop slashing trees.”
“Got it, sir.”
“Two, find the Scupper war-party and tell them to return to the ocean.”
“Uh…” I said. “Can they talk?”
“Of course they can talk. They’ve been mapped by the Galactics for nearly a century. Give them a translator, tell them to knock it off, and don’t kill any of them. Graves out.”
Seeing my conversation had ended, I felt another tapping on my shoulder. I turned around irritably.
“What is it, Leeson?” I demanded, but I caught myself.
It wasn’t Leeson this time, it was Barton. She
was standing close, looking worried. Her eyebrows were dark lines over a pair of crystal-blue eyes.
“Sorry. What is it, Barton?”
“Sir, we’ve got a problem. I’m missing two of my light troopers. They’re not reporting in.”
“Huh? How’s that possible? Are there dead names on your list, or what?”
Every officer had a sophisticated HUD system. Dead troops showed as red names if they were in known positions and knocked out. Other colors showed various states.”
“They’re grayed out, sir. Beyond contact range.”
“But they were green a moment before?”
“That’s right.”
Frowning, I called the column to a halt. I huddled with my officers.
“I tried to tell you,” Leeson complained. “I had one tech go gray on me about twenty minutes back. I figured it might have been a malfunction, but nope. I checked—she’s disappeared.”
My eyes swept over the mushy ground we were crossing. Whatever was hitting my people, it had to be coming in hard and fast. There had been no warning. No one had witnessed anything.
“I don’t trust this bog,” I said. “Get everyone up on that big root system. We’ll climb it and get some height for spotting.”
“We’ll be easy targets up there,” Harris complained, eyeing the dark, humping roots.
The roots of these trees were just as over-sized as their trunks. They were often ten meters thick and gnarled with rampant growth. In order to support the massive mega-flora, the roots had to be commensurately huge themselves.
“If you want,” I told Harris. “You can squat right down here in the ferns alone. It would be a good test-case, actually. Are you volunteering for that special duty, Adjunct?”
“Hell no!” Harris said, huffing.
He marched off and gathered his armored troops. They were the first ones up into the tree roots, slashing away fronds that got in the way. They looked like a column of ants crawling up a wet tree.
“Don’t do too much damage,” I called after him. “It will start defensive responses. We’re out here to trim the lawn, not to scorch the earth.”
He waved at me without turning back to make any formal acknowledgement.