by J. N. Chaney
Gunny Thapa was short, stocky, and immensely strong. Rumor was that his ancestors were Gurkhas, and the mythology about that ancient tribe of warriors rubbed off on him, giving him instant credibility.
But he was also deliberate and sometimes took a while to make a decision. Rev knew time was running out, and he impatiently waited for an order.
“Probability that’s a Centaur?” he subvocalized.
“Shit,” he whispered.
A nine-percent Probability of Error was too big to ignore. Rev wanted to switch to an active scan to make sure, but even if the Centaur, if there was one, hadn’t blanketed the area with a stasis field, an active ping would assuredly catch its attention.
Finally, the gunny pointed to the right and said, “See that striated boulder over there at the base of the cliff?”
Rev nodded.
“I need you to low-crawl to that and try to get a better reading. We need to know if it’s a tin-ass or just a ghost.”
If it were a Centaur, then that would put a huge kink in their mission, and the gunny was right. They had to find out more.
The boulder was at the top of a small finger, more like a raised spine that carried on down the hill from the cliff-face. That spine would give him some cover as he crept up to it.
Rev slid over the edge of the creek bed, then slithered over the scree, sending too many small rocks and gravel sliding down the last twenty meters of slope. Rev felt naked and exposed, and that pushed him harder, which sent down even more gravel.
With a gasp of relief, Rev reached the boulder. He took several calming breaths, then slowly raised his head . . . only to drop right back down.
He frantically signed to the gunny. Down the hill, right at the edge of the scree field where the trees began, was a solitary Centaur paladin. It wasn’t obviously powered up, but that didn’t mean anything. Paladins were the heavy Centaur soldiers, armored and loaded with weaponry. They were a little slower than the lighter rievers, but they could dish out—and take in—a lot of punishment.
The gunny signaled him to wait, and he disappeared back up the creek bed.
“Did it see me?”
Rev strained to listen. Something that big and heavy couldn’t cross the scree without making any noise, but he heard nothing. The paladins could fly, but that was even noisier.
“Which model was it?”
He’d seen it, but it hadn’t registered in the brief second it was in his sight. His augments didn’t include photographic memory, something he’d welcomed. He could recall the recording and play it back, then figure out which type of Centaur it was, but it was just easier to ask his AI.
Which meant its main gun was the meson beamer. That was neither good nor bad. Anything a paladin carried was death to a Raider.
The beam cannon was hidden inside the pedestal, probably to protect it until needed. When it wanted to deploy the weapon, it would rise straight up until the bottom of the projector cleared the base of the pedestal. Then the nozzle of the beamer would swing down, and the bulb would swing up, looking like a child’s drinking bird toy. But this toy had a bite—a big bite.
Rev’s hand drifted to his thigh holster where his two Yellowjackets were secured. They were not the preferred weapon to take on a riever, much less a paladin, but they were the only thing he had that could possibly take one out.
Well, he had his Phoenixes—MG-3 Incendiary Mine—small grenades that could burn through anything, including paladin armor, but he doubted the Centaur would just let him saunter right up there and place one on it.
Gunny popped his head back in sight and gave Rev a series of signs. They were about what he expected. They were shifting the mission.
They had to take the paladin out. Its presence wasn’t a coincidence. It had to be there to protect the array, which was about fifty meters farther, and it was too much of a threat. Even if they didn’t manage to destroy it, the fight should give Second Element the diversion they needed to get to the array.
Gunny told him to keep an eye on it while they crossed over to him. He pulled the Optisight-mini out of the slot in his left greaves. Bending the lens at the end ninety degrees, he raised it until it just crested the top of the rock. He should have used it the first time, he knew, instead of raising his head, but it didn’t look like that had cost him.
Some of the bigger Optisights could be jacked, giving far better vision and acuity, but this was the standard infantry version, with no magnification or Night Vision Device capabilities. He didn’t need anything more here. He had his own organic low-light vision now with his augments. The paladin hadn’t moved. It could have been a statue.
“Riever?” Tomiko whispered as she took her position beside him.
“Paladin,” Rev said, keeping glued to the eyepiece.
“Shit. Of course, it would be.”
She shuffled farther down the slope, keeping below the top of the spine.
Within a few minutes, the gunny and then Tanu joined the two of them.
“Hasn’t moved,” Rev signed, taking his eye off the Centaur. “Paladin,” he added, realizing he hadn’t passed the vital bit of information to him.
Gunny grimaced, then signed, “Eighteen minutes. Attack.”
Rev checked his timer. The original assault by both elements was to kick off in Twenty minutes, forty-three seconds. He was about to question the gunny before he realized why he’d moved it up.
Both elements in the team were to assault together, based on the time. However, with the chances of taking out the paladin poor, they had to at least draw its attention away from Bravo Element. Part of their training was to react to the fluid situation in any battle, and if Bravo Element was in position, they’d kick off the moment they heard Alpha kick it off.
Rev pointed back to his Optisight, but the gunny waved him off. Instead, the gunny deployed his and took a short look. He pulled it back, softly shaking his head. He didn’t change the plan.
“No! Hell, no.”
That was all he needed now, a downer. He was nervous, no doubt about it, and his heart was racing, but one way or the other, this would be over in about six more minutes.
A pebble hit him, and he glanced back at the gunny, who was glaring at him.
“Pay attention,” the gunny signed, before quickly going over how he wanted to assault the thing. There weren’t a lot of options, not in the time they had left. This was going to be a frontal assault, hitting it hard before it had time to deploy its cannon.
“How long to get that bad boy . . . uh, meson cannon into position and firing?”
Not as long as I hoped.
The gunny was still passing his op order. Rev was to immediately fire first as they rose in unison and rushed forward. The other three were to take more measured shots. Upon firing the element’s eight Yellowjackets, if they were still standing, they’d scatter and try to loop back to the creek bed and hold, either to retrograde or continue the mission to the array.
He ended his order with the interrogatory sign. No one asked anything.
And then there were three minutes.
Rev armed his Yellowjackets, then slipped one back into the holster, but loose, not latched in. He kept the other in his hands, ready to use.
The seconds ticked down, and at one minute, Rev shifted around, face forward. The others followed suit.
His timer approached zero, but the order to go was on the gunny. Rev’s legs bunched underneath him, his eyes on his team leader. This was it.
The gunny held his hand in a fist, catching the eyes of each of them, then he unclenched, tilting his hand forward. Rev scrambled over the berm, deploying his Yellowjacket, Tomiko on his flank. Ahead of him, the Centaur spun on its base to face him. Rev didn’t have time for the textbook position. He bro
ught the Yellowjacket to his hip and fired. The missile flashed forward, covering the eighty meters in a split second. It hit with a flash, but the beam cannon continued to deploy, rising on the pedestal, while the projector jackknifed down to take them under aim.
Tomiko fired, her Yellowjacket hitting at the juncture of the projector and pedestal. The projector stopped for a moment.
“We’ve got the bastard!” Rev yelled as Tanu knelt, his Yellowjacket on his shoulder.
Rev pulled out his last Yellowjacket . . . and his vision faded to black.
“Son of a bitch!” he yelled out, fumbling for his jack. He yanked the cable out, and his helmet visor cleared.
The four of them were standing on their motion pads, looking around the CST in confusion.
“Gunny, we weren’t done!” Tanu yelled in frustration. “We coulda got the bastard.”
“I don’t know what happened. Hang on.”
“Well, that’s the shit,” Tomiko said, taking off her helmet. “I wonder if we’re going to have to reboot and start from the beginning.”
“Hell, I hope not,” Rev said.
Simulation or not, the training mission still took real-time, and the physical exertion was actual. Every step they took up a hill might be in the Combat Simulation Trainer, but with the motion pads tilting under their feet, it was real. Every slam on the ground as they took cover was real—it was just in the CST training pod.
“Take a seat while I find out what’s going on,” the gunny said as he headed for the door.
The STA pods were all automated. There wasn’t an operator there to ask. The three Marines headed to the back where along the bulkhead and took a seat on the bench there.
Rev unclasped his PAL-5 and reached inside to adjust the harness. “We can fight a fucking tin-ass, but they can’t design this armor better. It keeps sliding down on me.”
“Oh, so now you think it’s real,” Tomiko said with a laugh. “What about those jackheads you keep complaining about?”
“Bite me,” Rev muttered.
To his surprise, he was coming around to the idea of immersion training, if not immersion games. He’d just been in a fight with a Centaur, and it was real, for all intents and purposes. He’d been there. He’d smelled the dirt, for God’s sake. And if he’d been killed, well, there was always next time.
Over in Second Element, Staff Sergeant Montez had evidently been a big-time gamer in her past, even winning a planet-wide title. And even for a boot like him, it was obvious that she was hot shit, destined for bigger and better things.
He still thought most immersion gamers were wasting their lives, but if the staff sergeant was a product of the culture, then maybe it wasn’t all bad.
The door into the pod opened, and gunny came in, his face set in stone.
“What’s up, Gunny?” Tanu asked. “Why’d they stop the mission?”
“Training’s over. The Centaurs are on the move, and we’ve got forty-three hours to embark. It’s time to get back to the shit.”
17
Max pulled up in his Gazelle. Rev pursed his lips but didn’t say anything. It had taken his stepdad three weeks to get it back—and six-hundred-and thirty BCs. Max hadn’t asked for Rev to repay him, but he was sending Max a quarter of his meager salary until he paid him back.
The passenger door slid open, and Rev threw his assault pack into the back seat before slipping inside.
“Thanks for picking me up. Where’s mom?”
“She’s back at the house, making dinner. Says you are going to want your favorite.”
Both men chuckled. Rev’s mom had gone on a cooking spree some years back, determined to get back to our roots. But she’d never mastered the art, not even coming close to the family’s run-of-the-mill autochef. Rev didn’t even know what his favorite was supposed to be, and who knew what he’d be getting?
Hovers crowded inside the parking lot, and his stepdad took control of the Gazelle, maneuvering it carefully as he made his way to the exit.
“This place is a madhouse. Traffic’s a bitch,” he said. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”
It should be pretty obvious what was happening. Marines were restricted to the base for the duration, and except for family visitation days, which happened once every two weeks, they had no contact with friends and families beyond calls from the USO.
With two major exceptions: just before and just after deployments. The regiment’s deployment was unplanned, so Rev had a grand total of eight hours outside of the gate.
And he was lucky. The poor bastards in Direct and General Support, and of course, the Ninety-nines, were getting squat. They were too busy mounting out the regiment. For the Direct Combat Marines, once they had their own mount-out ready, they could go on town leave. And as all of the Marines and sailors in the regiment were from metro Swansea, that meant they could all go home, if they so chose.
Rev fingered the house arrest bracelet on his wrist. The regiment was not relying on anything else to keep track of them. The bracelet continually broadcast their locations, and should they not return by pumpkin time, a cop would be dispatched to escort them back to base.
With the amount of booze many of them would be imbibing, that would probably be quite a few of them. But there were always a few runners, people who thought that by wrapping foil around their house arrest bracelets, to quote one unfounded rumor, they could avoid deployment. The drunks never paid much for their transgressions, but the runners went straight to MilDes 99.
Max drove the Gazelle past the ever-present group of Angel Shits—Children of the Angels—the worshippers of the Centaurs who thought they’d come to rescue humanity and uplift them to a higher plane of existence. They were harmless, but there was always a group of them outside the main gate, promising divine retribution if humanity kept fighting their gods.
Rev’s upper lip lifted in a sneer. Before, he’d just thought of them as fringe looneys. Now, he had a different view. How could people be so stupid?
“You look . . . different,” Max said as he pulled out onto Freeman Highway and turned control back to the Gazelle.
Rev gave him a hurried glance.
Does he know I’ve been augmented?
Nothing this big could be kept secret forever, and surely there were rumors by now. And in the Guild, it was possible that his stepdad worked on a project with military implications, and that could have put him in the know.
Rev just gave a non-committal grunt.
“More of a man,” Max said. “I guess the training was pretty hard?”
“Yeah, I guess you could say that,” Rev said in an understatement.
Eight months ago, he might have taken the opportunity to unload on Max, to complain, maybe looking for a little sympathy. But at the moment, he was satisfied to leave it at that.
“So, you’re deploying?”
The people in town knew the drill as well. With special circumstances exceptions, the Marines just didn’t get to swarm into the city unless they were coming or going.
Aside from broadcasting each Marine’s location, the bracelet was also tuned into certain keywords, recording them to check if anyone was discussing classified material. Which was stupid, he thought. What was his stepdad going to do? Rush to the Centaurs with the intel?
Well, maybe the Angel Shits would if they could, but as far as Rev knew, the idiots had no way to contact the Centaurs. But to keep the bracelet from pinging him, he just nodded. It wasn’t as if the situation wasn’t obvious, even to a non-military city like Swansea.
Not historically, at least. There had always been a reserve Marine battalion at Camp Alissa Nguyen. It wasn’t until war had broken out that the base was expanded, the recruit depot created, and the regiment stood up.
Even now, with the Marines generally restricted to base, the city still wasn’t much of a military town. If not for the fact that so many from the region had volunteered or been conscripted—and that so many sons and daughters had lost their lives serving—i
t might have been easy to ignore the regiment.
Rev put his mind on autopilot during the drive into town. Max was going on about how Grover, Rev’s younger half-brother, was tearing it up on the flipball field. Rev hadn’t been a bad player himself at left slot, and while he’d enjoyed playing, he’d never been driven as Grover evidently was, never pushing the offseason workouts. Idly, he wondered how he’d do on the field now. Augments aside, he was in the best physical shape of his life.
The Gazelle pulled into the parking lot, and almost before it settled on its skirts, a rocket erupted from the door.
“Rev!” the rocket screamed and blasted into his arms before he was fully out of the hover.
“Hey, Neesy!” Rev said, sweeping his little sister high off the ground. At ten, she was much bigger than the little girl who’d cried when he left for boot camp, but he had no problem holding her over his head. “Miss me?”
“Of course. What did you bring me?”
Rev laughed, then said, “I wasn’t away on vacation, Hamster. I was in training. Not much for me to get you there.”
“Oh, that’s OK. I really didn’t expect anything.”
Rev swung Neesy to his shoulder and marched up the walk.
Ms. DeCarlo-Moray from 1A slid open her window, stuck her head out, and said, “Welcome home, Marine. Your ma said you were coming back today.”
“Thanks. I won’t be here for long, though.”
“You getting ready to deploy outta here?”
Rev shrugged.
“I know, I know. You’d have to kill me if you told me,” she said with the ancient retort. “But you kick some Centaur ass, you hear me?”
“Sure will, Ms. DeCarlo-Moray.”
“You call me Mimi now, you hear?”
“She said ‘ass,’” Neesy whispered as he carried her through the door.
Rev’s mom frowned on coarse language, as she called it. Over the last eight months, well, Marines were not noted for polite speech.
“Don’t let me curse,” he subvocalized.
Which activated his AI, something he didn’t mean to do during his liberty.