So Carlos swept the beam over another knot of enemy and annihilated them. An officer rose up from their ranks and shouted orders. From his gestures alone, we could see what he was planning.
“They’ll pull back a squad and hit us from the side,” Carlos said, “while the rest keep firing at the troops coming in the front gates.”
“I think your next target has marked himself,” I said.
Carlos swiveled the cannon. I grunted with the shifting weight, trying to keep it steady. He unleashed another beam, and I was impressed by his accuracy. The officer was swept off his feet and turned into a sparkling mass of slag within seconds.
Still, the damage had been done. The enemy was maneuvering in response to our attacks. They were moving to flank us.
“Turn, turn!” screamed Carlos. “They’re going left!”
The big tube banged into my helmet. I saw what he wanted: six of the enemy had jumped up and were racing away from their entrenched positions. They were going to take a safe firing position behind a heavy crawler with treads three meters high. From there, due to the angle, they could safely kill us without risking hitting the Nairbs.
I struggled to swivel the heavy gun without dropping it or losing my balance. I was on my knees, having taken that position to provide a good gunnery mount to Carlos. It’s hard to quickly rotate while on your knees with a huge weight crushing your shoulder. I already knew that there was going to be a bruised indentation over my right clavicle for a week—given that I survived this battle, which seemed unlikely.
I pitched forward under the weight of the tube and threw out one long arm to stop my fall. The other was curled around the tube, keeping it on my back.
“Just fire from there!”
I hadn’t needed to give Carlos any encouragement. He pulled the trigger the second the tube was lined up with the saurians.
He came as close to killing me then as he ever had. I was pretty much down on all fours, and part of my helmet had gotten itself between the muzzle of the weapon and the enemy. The side of my helmet was on fire.
A roaring sound rang in my ears. I thought I was hit—and in a way, I was right.
“Shit! Sorry man!” Carlos said.
I did my best to drop my head and get it out of the way.
“Keep firing!” I shouted.
The gun sang and trembled on my back. It felt strange, like getting a low-level electric shock.
I could smell heat, burning plastic and even cooked flesh now. There must be a hole in my helmet, letting it all in. I held my breath in case it was a toxic brew. It wouldn’t do to pass out at this point.
Carlos was a good gunner. He did better than I could have, I think. He killed three of the lizards that were trying to flank us and one more the second he came around the crawler to engage us.
The battle sort of disintegrated after that. With their officer gone, and rattled by having been hit from behind, the enemy didn’t know what to do. They didn’t keep enough fire on the front gates, and our people outside got smarter. They threw in plasma grenades and blue flashes first outlined, then devoured, the enemy.
Another charging group of light troops came into the smoking ruins of the barricades that had been protecting defending saurian troops a minute ago. I got to watch as my comrades swept over the last of them, got in close, and pulled them down with sheer weight of numbers.
To their credit, the saurians never called a retreat. These were dedicated foes. They fought until the last of them was pulled down and killed. I could see that our veterans were trying to get them to run or surrender—but these weren’t wild naked juggers running around in the jungle. They were heavily armed and trained regulars.
They didn’t run. They fought to the very last.
-21-
“My men improvised and broke the enemy defenses,” Centurion Graves told Primus Turov calmly. “I apologize on behalf of my entire unit if heroic actions don’t meet with the approval of Legion Varus.”
The Primus glared at him with narrowed eyes. Her mouth was a thin, lipless line of disapproval.
“We’re not discussing the Legion, nor are we discussing the battle,” she said.
I could tell she was struggling to keep her cool. Her voice was even, but her face revealed the depths of her anger.
“That’s unfortunate,” said Centurion Graves, “because I have some questions about the tactics we employed during this operation.”
“Take your questions and suggestions directly to the Tribune. I’m sure he’ll be interested in your sage advice.”
My eyes slid from Graves to Turov, then back again. That was all I dared before returning them to stare at the wall in front of me. I stood in a line with the rest of my squad—all those who’d survived, or who’d made it back from the revival units by this time. I’d heard the systems were backed up for hours and were going to have to run at full capacity all night long to get every lost member of the legion back on their feet again. I’m sure the bios were working hard and hating their career decisions about now.
Although this was technically a dressing-down by a superior, I wasn’t feeling overly stressed. This time it wasn’t my posterior that was in the spotlight. Somehow, when the report had gone upstream from Graves concerning my squad’s actions, he hadn’t specified my personal involvement. I suspected it was to hide the fact I was at the heart of the problem—again. After all, he’d just gone to great lengths to un-execute me, after duping a certain Galactic Inspector. He didn’t want me to be a screw-up because that would reflect badly upon him.
I’d already determined that if Turov did get around to questioning me personally, I was going to be as evasive and vague as humanly possible. I figured it was the least I could do for Graves. I’d learned my lesson the last time: there were situations where a member of Varus had to apply some good, old-fashioned stone-walling.
I glanced over to Carlos, who was standing at attention to my left. He didn’t return my gaze. Veteran Harris did, however, and he gave me a stern frown. I flicked my eyes back to the center-locked position.
I’d told Carlos to shut up before the debriefing, but I was still worried about him. He’d been always a weak link when it came to keeping his mouth closed.
Graves and Turov were still making hate eyes at one another. That was nothing unusual, however. From what I could tell, the primus was always pissed off at someone.
“I’m considering disciplinary action for your entire unit,” Turov said.
“Really? We’d been hoping for a commendation.”
“Absurd. Yes, you took the spaceport. But your men violated Galactic Law while doing so—again.”
“That is a false allegation,” Graves said calmly. “It will be thrown out by the arbiters in the end.”
Turov walked to Graves and snarled up at him. “Oh, really? Has it occurred to you that the ones performing the arbitration are none other than the offended parties? How do you think the Nairbs will rule when they’re the ones who originally brought the charges?”
I had to admit, Turov had a pretty good point there. Graves didn’t have a quick answer and stood silently.
I watched as she forced herself to calm down and began to pace with her hands clasped behind her back. Her pacing caused my eyes to wander. She was a trim, small woman. Her body was pushing thirty—her real age probably being much older—but even so, she caught my eye. I’d never really noticed before, but I found her legs and rear to be worth a second glance—even a third—especially when she was strutting angrily in front of our lined-up squad.
A moment later my pleasant reverie was rudely interrupted by a jolt of pain. Harris’ boot had caught me in the shinbone. I grunted and looked at him in surprise, but he was already back to standing at attention. How had he done it? He was two men down the line and had to be at least five feet away. He ignored my shocked look, which for me was solid proof it had been him.
I knew the reason he’d given me a kick, of course—he’d caught me ogling the primus�
� rear. I did my best not to react to the throbbing pain in my shin. Harris really knew how to hurt a man, quietly or loudly.
Turov stopped in front of me, surprising me with her sudden attention.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“I was not killed in the battle, sir, I—”
“I don’t mean that,” she snapped. “You were recently executed in my presence. Clearly, it didn’t take the first time.”
I opened my mouth then closed it again. Was this some kind of threat? Or was she just in a vindictive mood? Maybe she was eager to start a witch hunt, and I was her first witch.
The Primus strode back to Graves, and I found was no longer interested in staring at her ass.
“Your trickery with McGill will come out during the inquiry, you know,” she told Graves. “Everything will come out. The Nairbs are obsessively thorough. They don’t care about right or wrong or circumstance. They care about the letter of the law. They will apply it with the power of the Galactic Battle Fleet if they have to. They would happily erase our species on a technicality. In the course of a single week, you’ve given them several.”
“Primus,” Graves said, his voice surprisingly steady, “the light troops were deployed to take the spaceport. We did as we were ordered. Upon your orders, there were no briefings given to the troops. These are raw recruits. They had no idea they weren’t supposed to use an air car or endanger the Nairbs. They did an amazing job given the fact they faced the enemy alone.”
“They were not alone. Heavy troops were deployed—”
“I was there on the field. The heavy troops hung back. The weaponeers did shower the walls with suppressing fire, which was helpful, but it was the light troops that stormed the walls again and again, eventually taking out the entrenched enemy due to the brave improvising done by my unit.”
“What’s your point, Centurion?” she asked.
“You are in charge of this cohort, Primus. The very cohort that took the spaceport, and the first one deployed. I have it on good authority that it was your idea to do this operation with light troops alone. It was also your idea not to brief the recruits.”
“Are you suggesting that I was attempting to hog glory?” she asked. “Because I don’t feel I’ve had my fill of it today.”
“I’m simply stating the facts as I know them.”
“What has any of this got to do with anything?” she demanded.
“Just this: according to Galactic Law, the ultimate party responsible for the actions of any soldier who is following orders is the commander who gave him those orders.”
Turov stared at him for a few seconds. “Is this some kind of threat?”
“Negative. It is only a statement of fact. Everything, as you say, will come out in the inquiry. The Nairbs are very thorough, and I’m sure their final arbitration will be a fair one.”
She stood motionless for several seconds, glaring at him. Then she drew in a full breath and shouted: “Unit, dismissed!”
We all fled as quickly as we could.
Natasha found me in the hallway and looked me over nervously. “You were executed? That’s what happened? You didn’t even tell me.”
“Sorry,” I said. “It was a secret at the time.”
“It’s all right. Hey, do you want to go to the park?”
I glanced at her. The park was what we called our small zone of greenery under a starlit dome on green deck. In the day hours, it served as a training ground. But at night, soldiers could go there to relax and pretend they were on an Earth-like world, rather than orbiting an alien globe or hurtling through space at relativistic speeds.
“Yeah, sure,” I said, smiling.
Before we even reached green deck, we were holding hands. Soldiers since time immemorial have had to move fast in the romance department. The recruits of Legion Varus interacted with even more speed than usual, I suspected. We never knew when we might die—literally.
I walked under the canopy of pine needles and leaves with Natasha beside me. I couldn’t help but wonder how this little date was going to end. Would I get lucky tonight? That was the unofficial reason why people went to wander around in the trees on green deck. They kept the lights low, I suspected for just this reason. There were other couples nearby, but we managed to find a spot to sit on a low hill and lie on our backs, watching the stars.
Natasha had probably already decided how this was going to end, how far she was going to let me go, but I knew she wasn’t going to tell me. Fortunately, I wasn’t dumb enough to blow it by asking. I played it cool and watched for cues.
We stared up at the heavens, and we tried to figure out where Earth was. This was a natural pastime for all human star travelers, and we were no exception to the rule. We pointed and reasoned, but in the end we weren’t sure. I was certain, however, that looking at all those overly-bright alien stars was making me homesick.
“You know,” I said, “I’m feeling lost right now. It’s funny, because I’ve been flying out here and fighting on an alien world for months. In all this time, I didn’t really miss Earth. I guess I was too busy to think about it.”
“I know what you mean,” Natasha said softly. “I’m feeling it too. Cancri isn’t a very bright star, but you can see it from Earth. But from here, Sol is just a dim smudge. We’re so far from home—we can’t even pick out where our star is.”
I worked my way up to kissing her, and she let me. But I quickly got the message from her body language that she didn’t want more than that. Maybe she was concerned about Kivi, or maybe she just didn’t like to move that fast. Whatever the case, I wasn’t bothered. I stretched out on my back again and stared at the stars.
“When you’re down there on the planet fighting,” I said, “you don’t have time to pine away for home.”
“We’re in luck, then,” she said.
“Why’s that?”
“Haven’t you heard? We’re going back down in the morning. We’re to help garrison the walls with the heavies.”
“The walls of the spaceport?” I asked in shock.
“Yeah.”
I sat up and frowned at her, not sure at first if she was serious. I could tell at a glance that she was. I groaned and flopped onto my back again.
“This is bullshit,” I said. “The deal was simple: the recruits went in and took the place. After that, we withdrew into reserve on the ship and the heavies set up to guard the walls.”
“That was the original deal. But the enemy is fielding a large force. They mean to retake their university, their government buildings and the spaceport. They intend to kick us off into space again. The brass wants us to guard the spaceport, as it’s the least important target.”
“They didn’t think it was unimportant a few days ago.”
“I know. But they have their grand strategy, I guess. They want to embarrass the lizards—which is forcing them to attack.”
I thought about that, and the more I thought the less I liked the situation. I’d really hoped to be moved to the university. The word was the fighting there was very light. The saurians didn’t seem to want to blow up their hallowed hive-like learning structures. But that damned spaceport—it was a deathtrap.
“What about those damned Nairbs?” I demanded. “Are they still there, cluttering up the place? It sucks to fight with them underfoot. You can’t fire a weapon without worrying about getting permed for hurting one of those nasty seals.”
Natasha laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard such bitter words out of you, James.”
“I’ve had a rough month.”
She laughed again. Then she seemed to have a sudden thought, and she propped herself up on her elbow.
“James?” she asked in a near whisper. “What’s it like to be executed—to know…or at least think you know, that you’ve been permed?”
I looked at her and shrugged. “You probably know already. You died in training, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. Most of us did. But that was differ
ent. It hurt and I was scared, but in the back of my mind I knew it wasn’t permanent. I knew I’d live again.”
“How about back in our very first exercise? When we were on the lifter, and they let the air leak out? Did you die then?”
She shook her head. “I was scared, but I survived. I sat in my chair and conserved my oxygen. I remember holding my breath and watching you spin that damned locked door open. I could tell you were doing everything you could—it looked like you’d tear the door apart if you had to.”
I chuckled, remembering the day. “I didn’t realize you were on that lifter with me back then.”
Natasha smiled. “I’ve been thinking of you since that day. It’s hard not to remember a moment like that.”
I’m not an expert with women, but I am an opportunist. I made another grab for her. She let me kiss her, but stopped my reaching hands short of any further goals.
“You haven’t told me how it felt yet,” she said.
“You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“It felt like the end of the world. In the end, I—I got really mad. That was my reaction. I wanted to kill someone, to take someone down with me.”
Her eyes widened and she studied me in the dark. “Did you try?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I went for the alien. I wanted to kill him a third time. If I was going down for the final count, I wanted him to feel a little more pain first.”
“Wow. What did he do?”
“He called me a barbarian. He said something about putting us all down, that we were wild dogs…I don’t know.”
“All of us?”
“All of humanity,” I said. “I’m sure that’s what he meant.”
Natasha pulled away and studied the stars with me. We were both quiet, and I could sense any kind of romantic mood we’d had going was gone now. I chided myself for having told the truth. I should have told her I wanted to smell a flower in my grandma’s garden one last time, or something like that. Damn.
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