Steel World

by Larson, B. V.

  At the back of the line, I felt vaguely sick. When I’d first learned how we were expected to deploy, I was shocked. How could such a dangerous, complex system be the best method?

  The answer was simple: it did the job as fast as possible.

  Ships cost money—a lot more money than any legionnaire was worth. The legion didn’t want their ships low over the planet for one second longer than absolutely necessary. The lower a ship was, the more vulnerable it was to defensive fire. That’s why they usually didn’t land in a hostile environment—they didn’t want to get blown up. They didn’t want to linger in low-orbit and give us ample time for a safe drop. They wanted to fire us out the aft port like machine gun bullets so their lifters could escape as fast as possible back up into far orbit, where they would be safe.

  And if we did screw up, if we did go splat—that was no big deal to the officers in charge. They thought in terms of equipment and missions. There was nothing more expendable than our flesh in their equations. They could always reconstruct us from stored data, or just recruit fresh bodies on Earth if we managed to get ourselves permed somehow.

  My turn came up surprisingly fast. The troops were marching forward, firing out of the ship at a consistent rate. At the last moment, Sargon the weaponeer spoke to me over his shoulder.

  “Just drop straight in the center. Don’t try to hold back or put out your hands to protect yourself. Trust the machine. If it screws up, you’re meat anyway.”

  With those words, he took a final stride out over the opening and disappeared into it. I heard the ship clang a shell around him and a split-second later the deck shuddered with the recoil as he was fired down toward the planet.

  The light went green again, and I realized numbly it was my turn.

  I gripped my snap-rifle tightly against my chest and gave a little forward hop into nothingness.

  -6-

  I dropped into the black, circular hole in the deck. My heart was pounding and strange, loud clanging noises greeted my ears.

  Time seemed to slow down. I was only aware of the scene below the deckplates for a split-second, but I saw a lot. Under the deck, the lifter was wide open. On each side, I could see impossibly bright stars dotting the blackness of deep space. Below me was Cancri-9, a mottled world of brown, patched by green spots and occasional drifting clouds.

  Closer at hand, huge robot arms moved with blurring speed. All around me, other legionnaires were dropping obediently into the waiting machinery. Pairs of arms clapped together, enclosing each soldier within capsules. They beat together with such fierce regularity, I thought they resembled a robotic audience giving a standing ovation.

  There was a blur of motion as the two closest arms swung toward me. I was caught like a bug, two halves of a capsule slamming together around me. I was instantly cocooned. The noise was deafening, and I felt an instant jolt of claustrophobia. I could see how rookies might well panic and screw up at some point during this procedure. They might have hesitated, messing up the timing. Or, they might drop with their arms out as the slamming hands came together like cymbals performing a crescendo. Any such mistakes would have proven fatal.

  The sickening motion didn’t stop once I was enclosed. I felt like a ping-pong ball between two desperate opponents. Inside the pitch-black capsule, I was viciously shunted to the right and spun around. My head slammed into my helmet during these maneuvers, and I grunted helplessly in pain. I could tell my feet were now aiming upward and my head was aiming down toward the target world. I knew this intellectually, but I had no way of seeing anything from the interior of my tube-shaped coffin.

  The big gun loaded me into the breach. I thought I heard a tiny click, and I would have put my hands to my ears, but I couldn’t move my arms, and my ears were buried inside my helmet in any case.

  The gun fired, and a surge of crushing pain rushed through me. The acceleration was horrible. It wasn’t like a rollercoaster or an elevator. It was more like falling from three stories and slamming your boots into the dirt.

  Fortunately, my legs were slightly bent when the jarring impact came. Otherwise, they couldn’t have taken the shock, and I might have popped a knee. We’d been warned of this, but I’d forgotten all about it. I’d gotten lucky.

  After that, the long fall began. I knew I was rushing down into the atmosphere of an alien world, but, for the moment, I only felt relief. I wasn’t dead yet, I hadn’t even seriously screwed up, and it would be another minute or two before I had to do anything that required thinking.

  One thing began to bother me, however: the HUD in my helmet had yet to light up. It was supposed to automatically connect with the drop-pod and provide a steady stream of data as I fell. Was I trapped in a defective pod? Was I about to be driven into the ground at six thousand miles per hour, without the pod even performing the courtesy of firing a retro? I knew such accidents happened at least once during any legion drop. The delivery systems were workable but far from perfect.

  After about ten long seconds, the lights flickered on. I had no idea why they’d waited so long. Maybe Veteran Harris had rigged it as a joke. Maybe this short blackout period was normal, and no one had seen fit to tell me about it. Whatever the case, I could now see that I had about two minutes left before I reached the ground.

  The capsule was already reducing its speed. After initial acceleration, most of the journey to the surface was spent braking so the capsule wouldn’t plunge into the ground. The trip was further lengthened by the fact that I was coming in at an angle in order to reduce the friction created as the pod encountered the atmosphere. A direct entry would burn up the drop-pod.

  Two minutes isn’t long, but when you’re in a polymer tube rushing to your death, time seems to crawl by. At last, the final warning buzzer sounded, and the pod spun itself around so I would land on my feet, rather than my head. I braced for impact.

  The landing itself was surprisingly mild. I was shocked with a jolt, which was mostly absorbed by the pod, but after that the capsule fell over and sort of rolled until it came up against something hard, and stopped. I was shaken but unhurt.

  I was down, lying on my back in a polymer tube on an alien world. I had no idea what I would encounter when I exited the pod.

  I gritted my teeth and squeezed the stock of my rifle. I took a deep breath and I punched the release button.

  This was the moment of truth. I might be at the bottom of a lake, or surrounded by alien troops, or maybe submerged in a pool of lava—a fairly common natural landmark on Cancri-9. There was nothing to do, however, but risk it. Sitting in my cocoon wouldn’t save me for long if any of these things were the case.

  The capsule fell apart into two halves. I scrambled up and almost pitched forward onto my face. I had to grab hold of a tree to steady myself…A tree?

  In all the sims I’d played on Cancri-9, there had never been a tree. But here it was; a tall, lush growth that firmly fit the description. True, the plant was odd-looking. It had fern-like spears firing out at the crown, and nothing else. No branches or leaves. It looked like a palm, but with fronds that were big and feathery, like the largest of soft forest ferns.

  I ripped my eyes from the tree and looked around. It wouldn’t do to be shot down while admiring the scenery.

  I didn’t see any of my people in the immediate vicinity, but I did see more capsules coming down. They were falling out of the sky, causing trees to crack and split when they were hit.

  It occurred to me that I wasn’t out of danger yet. If one of these capsules happened to land on me—well, it would be time for my first revival.

  To protect myself as best I could, I hugged the tree my capsule had rolled up against. I waited until several other troops were out and walking around before leaving this position.

  Not everyone made it down alive. I met the woman who seemed to be in charge and checked her nametag, which identified her as Bio Specialist Anne Grant. She had severely short dark hair and small features. Her eyes were careworn, but her face was p
retty. She had the look of someone who was continually hurried and stressed. I could only imagine what doing revivals all day long must be like.

  Grant knelt down to open a capsule that lay inert after it landed. This one looked burned outside. A brown residue coated the exterior, a stain resembling boiled sugar or oil.

  The mess turned out to be burnt blood. The recruit inside was female, and part of her head was missing.

  “She must have screwed up somehow when she was encapsulated,” Specialist Grant said. “There are always a few splats.”

  She looked at me then, running her eyes up and down once. “You look fit. Get up in that tree you’ve been hugging like momma and see if you can spot an officer. I’m going to call in this splat. If they can transmit her data now, we can revive her down here and get something useful out of her.”

  I nodded and climbed my tree. Although they weren’t normally front-line combat troops, bio specialists were officially superior in rank to recruits—hell, everyone was. They usually didn’t give orders to my kind, but when there wasn’t a veteran or an officer around, they served in that capacity. I thought the specialist’s orders were a good idea in any case.

  I shimmied up the same tree I’d landed near, and crouched in the ferny crown. At a height of about thirty feet, I couldn’t see much more than I had from the ground. The canopy of fern fronds was thick, and it obscured the immediate vicinity.

  What I did see, however, was an imposing range of mountain peaks. The rock cliffs were black and sheer. There were jungle-type growths clinging to the faces of these cliffs. I recalled images I’d seen of volcanic lands back on Earth. The scenery here was similar.

  “No enemy in sight—no friendlies, either,” I shouted down.

  “Great,” responded Specialist Grant. “We’re probably off-target. What’s your unit, Recruit?”

  “I’m in the 3rd.”

  “The 3rd?” she asked, narrowing her pretty eyes. “I’m in the 3rd, and I don’t recognize you.”

  We soon figured out that we were from entirely different cohorts. All in all, there were three different units represented in the immediate vicinity. We’d all been misplaced.

  “All right,” said the specialist after she’d radioed in our position and requested instructions from the command centers. “I’ve heard back from HQ. We’re to proceed to the base of those cliffs. The mining op we’re supposed to be defending is a complex drilled into that black rock mountain. We can meet up and reorganize when we get there.”

  I climbed down out of the tree and watched the trees around us for any sign of the enemy.

  “Specialist Grant?” I asked.

  “What is it, Recruit?”

  “Why are we so far off target? Is this normal?”

  She shrugged. Like me, she didn’t have heavy armor. Bios were supposed to patch people up, and usually didn’t fight. She did have a large pack on her back, however, which I knew was full of medical gear and supplies.

  “Yeah,” she said, “sometimes this happens. There’s a gust of wind, or incoming fire, or a timing error—whatever. The system will group up all the lost capsules in an area and try to land them close to one another, so no one is left alone.”

  I counted heads. There were seven of us—plus the splat. There were two light troops, a weaponeer, Anne Grant in command and three recruits, including myself.

  Grant looked at me. “Take the point.”

  A weaponeer laughed behind me, and I tossed him a glance, realizing he was Specialist Sargon from my own unit. I hadn’t recognized him in his full kit. All the weaponeers looked alike when they were armored and carrying their heavy equipment.

  Sargon walked up to me in his grinding armor and put a heavy gauntlet on my shoulder. “Lucky you,” he said.

  I shrugged off his hand and turned toward the cliffs. I began walking, rifle ready, eyes wide. I tried to watch everything at once, and to stay in cover whenever I could. That part was easy, because there were a lot of fern-trees handy.

  Behind me, the rest of them gathered up and formed a line. They followed me, watching for any sign of the enemy.

  We didn’t make it all the way to the cliffs before things became interesting. I came around another tree—this one with a very thick trunk. The whole plant was shaped like a giant pineapple.

  As I rounded the spiky trunk, I froze. There were three theropods and several empty drop-pods.

  The dinos were huge. I’d seen these before, of course. They were juggers, fifteen feet high and covered in brightly-colored scales. Two were blue and one was sort of a magenta shade. They all wore steel collars encircled with spikes.

  As I watched for a moment in shock, the two blue ones dipped their heads down into the drop pods they were standing over. When the muzzles came back up, they dripped with gore.

  “Specialist?” I whispered into the local chat channel. “I’ve made contact. Three hostiles.”

  “What are they?” she whispered back.

  “Juggers.”

  That was as far as I got before the magenta jugger swung its huge head in my direction. I saw those eyes zero in on me. Damn, I thought, it must have heard me talking, right through my helmet. I hadn’t realized their hearing was that acute.

  I didn’t waste any more time. I fired a spray of bullets with my snap-rifle. Five or six of them pierced the monster, and it roared in pain but didn’t go down.

  That was it for me. I turned and ran for my comrades. Behind me, although I couldn’t see them due to my helmet, I heard the sounds of thunderous pursuit. I hadn’t expected I would be able to outrun these overgrown lizards, and I was right. They were clearly gaining.

  “Bringing home three juggers!” I shouted.

  I heard the bio specialist curse in response. She ordered our ragtag team to disperse, but I wasn’t listening to the details.

  There’s something special about being chased down by big predators that I can’t easily explain. The experience struck a primal chord in my body. Something from my distant ancestors, I suspected. The pack was on my trail, and my feet knew it. I’d never run so fast in all my life.

  Dodging between tree trunks and plunging undergrowth, I tried to put obstacles in their path, but it was pretty hopeless. They were native to this land, and they were twice my height. They easily went around trees, hopped over fallen logs and continued to gain on me.

  “Hit the dirt, McGill,” said a rough voice.

  I barely had time to comply. The weaponeer had set up his plasma cannon in the path of the onrushing saurians. A heavy thudding sound rang out, making every frond in the vicinity shake with the vibration.

  I flipped over on my back and aimed my rifle toward the enemy. The nearest one was a mass of walking meat. The left side of its body was gone, replaced by a foot-wide smoking hole. The plasma cannon had burned right through it.

  As a testament to the fantastic vitality of these creatures, the blue-scaled monster managed to stagger two steps closer, looming over me, before it toppled.

  The next one appeared, and everyone there lit it up with fire. I didn’t even have time to climb to my feet. I lay there on my back in a pile of rotting vegetation and saurian blood, shooting up at the second blue dino.

  In the end, I think it was the pain of our shower of fire that stopped it, rather than the damage we did. Its scales were lashed by bullets, and its flesh appeared to explode with bloody holes. It looked as if its skin was popping with a hundred small eruptions.

  It had been intent on biting me, but, when faced with such a withering amount of firepower, it reared up screeching.

  It turned to run but fell over and began thrashing instead. I got up and fired with the rest of the team.

  That was our collective mistake. I think, looking back on the moment, the older more experienced members of the group should have known better. After all, I’d reported that there were three hostiles, not two.

  The magenta lizard finally made its appearance. It did not charge in after the two blues, how
ever. This one was smarter. It had spent the last few seconds circling around and now charged us from behind.

  Specialist Grant went down first. The creature snapped her head right off, helmet and all. There wasn’t time for a scream—she was just gone.

  The beast turned its malevolent gaze toward me. As we scattered and fired at the monster in our midst, she picked me out. I think she was still mad about my ambush.

  She charged, and she almost got me. I was close enough to see that huge head, full of countless curved fangs. Many were broken, and some had shreds of hanging meat and tendons caught in them. But there were plenty left intact for me, enough to kill a man in a single chomping bite.

  Then the monster’s head exploded. Sargon had managed to recharge his plasma cannon and bring it to bear again. I was quite happy with him at that moment.

  I climbed to my feet again, and gave myself a shake.

  “You outlived a specialist, McGill,” he said. “That’s pretty good.”

  “I’m very glad you can aim that thing in close quarters,” I said, gesturing toward the huge tube he had rested on his shoulder. I knew that the weapon was really intended as light artillery, designed to rain down fire at range upon a distant enemy. But he’d used it like an extremely powerful rifle.

  He laughed. “I know my equipment. That’s how I became a weaponeer. You don’t get that if you can’t aim.”

  Sargon looked around and frowned.

  “Ah shit,” he said. “I’m in command now. Let’s report this. With luck, Grant will be waiting for us at the base camp. But look out, she’ll be pissed off.”

  “Pissed at who?” I asked. “We killed the lizards that got her.”

  “Oh, no,” he said. “We won’t get away with that. It will be our fault, somehow. Probably yours, to be specific.”