Sentenced to War

by J. N. Chaney

  Rev was on his feet, right on the gunny’s ass as they sprinted ahead. This wasn’t the nice, controlled fire team rush, with each one advancing ten meters then going to the deck to cover the next Marine. This was a mad dash to the station, a high, one-story white building with conduits leading into and out of it.

  “Cover Second,” the gunny told them before giving Staff Sergeant Montez the signal to advance.

  Rev swung his attention forward and almost immediately spotted a Centaur moving under the steam pipes up ahead and to the left, its legs a blur.

  “Paladin, eleven o’clock, one hundred meters,” he called out as he brought his Yellowjacket to bear and fired.

  The little missile ran true, hitting the pedestal, but it bounced off, going high.

  “Did you get it?” the gunny asked, crabbing over to his position.

  “I hit the bastard, but the damn Yellowjacket didn’t detonate.”

  He pulled out another missile, but the Centaur had passed out of sight.

  “There’ll be more,” the gunny said.

  “Yeah, that’s the problem here, right? There’s always going to be more.”

  Another low explosion sounded, this time from farther away.

  “That makes two that I’ve heard,” the gunny said, trying to look around Rev.

  Two out of a hundred-and-fifty, and how many of us have already bought it?

  Second Element reached the building, and the gunny motioned for them to force entry.

  “Marines, coming in!” Kel shouted as Hussein kicked open the door. Both disappeared inside, followed by Nix and Montez.

  This was SOP, the same SOP taught for centuries, well before the Centaurs showed up on the scene. Rev thought it was stupid. First, if there was a Centaur inside, then what were they going to do? Even with the adjustments, the Yellowjacket wouldn’t arm, and their small arms would have no effect. This should be a job for a mech Marine. At least they had the firepower to possibly drop a paladin.

  There was no sound of a fight, and a minute later, Sergeant Nix shouted, “All clear.”

  Gunny motioned for Tanu to enter.

  “Coming in right!”

  Next was Gunny, then Tomiko, and finally Rev, shouting “Coming in left!” Once again, he thought it was overkill, although he realized it might make sense if they went farther into the complex and were entering buildings that might have Marines or Frisians in them. No one could mistake them for a Centaur, but itchy trigger fingers sometimes reacted before the brains they served.

  The interior was filled with conduits that disappeared under the flooring. The complex was powered by the planet’s internal heat, with injectors drilled over eight klicks down to tap that energy. This juncture didn’t house those heat exchangers but rather forced toxic byproduct gasses back into the mantle. The hum of the pumps was evidence that even with a battle going on, the system was still working, still nudging the planet to be habitable for humans.

  Or tin-asses?

  With the pumps and conduits, there wasn’t room for a riever inside, much less a paladin. But there could be a minidrone that Staff Sergeant Montez and her element had missed. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her. Far from that—she was the best Marine in the team, in his opinion. But even a Centaur minidrone could do a number on a Raider, and with his skin at risk, he didn’t want to leave the check to someone else.

  “Pelletier, don’t just stand there gawking. Get your hole punched!” the gunny shouted.

  Rev stopped scanning for any Centaur sign and selected his position three or four meters from Tomiko. He placed a section of D-5 cord in a twenty centimeter-diameter circle on the wall and set it to Three. He placed a funnel patch over it, then set the fuze.

  “Fire in the hole!”

  He stepped back. The patch should focus the power away from him, and at a Three, the D-5 cord would cut more than blast, but patches had been known to fail, to the detriment of the Marine standing behind it.

  The cord detonated, and while the patch bowed, it held. He peeled it back, revealing a clean hole cut into the flimsy plastifoam wall of the building.

  The rest of the team was giving out their own “Fire in the hole” warnings as Rev stepped up to look out his peephole. He had a view across a fifty-meter open area before it gave way to a tangle of conduits and pipes. Until further orders, this was his fighting position. After their mad dash into the complex, this didn’t seem like much of a mission, to him, even considering that the point of main effort was going to shift from tanks to the mech-heads in clearing out the Centaurs.

  “Keep your eyes on a swivel. And make sure to fucking identify your targets. No friendly fire, you hear?” the gunny bellowed.

  Rev nodded and brought his Yellowjacket to bear. He didn’t have much of a field of view, but twenty centimeters was more than big enough to aim and launch the missile through his peephole.

  But he needed a target, and with the dust and smoke that started to blow through the complex, his visibility was being compromised.

  “Shift to infrared,” he ordered his AI, wondering if that would make it better.

  That lasted all of ten seconds before he shifted back.

  “Can you see anything?” Tomiko asked.

  “Not much. Wait . . .” Rev said as faint movement caught his eye. He readied his Yellowjacket, his forefinger on the firing stud.

  “I’ve got it . . . no, it’s mech,” Tomiko said.

  He’d seen it was a Marine the moment Tomiko had. The Yellowjacket was not a more sophisticated weapon with a friend-or-foe capability, which wouldn’t work anyway after a Centaur EMP. If he’d fired, it could have had disastrous consequences. He looked over his shoulder to the adjoining wall where the gunny was at his own peephole, but it didn’t look like he noticed that Rev had just come close to lighting up a Marine, despite being warned not two minutes before.

  Focus, Rev!

  He settled down, scanning for a target as the sounds of battle kept on. Another low blast, this one from nearby, made the walls shake.

  “That’s another. How many are down, I wonder?” Tanu asked.

  Rev wondered, too. They were temporarily out of the fight. With only a small peephole to the outside, he didn’t have a feel as to how the fight was progressing.

  But then a stray thought hit him. “Can you tell by the explosions how many of the tin-asses have detonated?

 

  The fact that his AI could determine that was only somewhat surprising, but forty-two or forty-three?

  “Why can’t you tell between the two?”

 

  That gave Rev a moment’s pause. He’d begun to take his AI’s capabilities for granted, and he never imagined they could be limited by his own senses.

  “My AI says maybe forty-three,” he said.

  “You mean Cobra can tell that?” Tanu asked. “I never knew that.”

  “Quit the jaw-jacking,” the gunny yelled. “Pay attention.”

  For the next twenty minutes, Rev stood silently, watching for any sign of a target. His hands were sweating, holding his Yellowjacket as he itched to contribute to the mission.

  The battle was raging full force, with explosions and signal horns attesting to the ferocity of the fight, but in their little cocoon, it was almost as if they were merely observers, watching some holovid. Marines and soldiers were dying, but they were safe in their building.

  But the gods of war were a fickle bunch, and the tides could change in an instant. Rev was watching when he heard the gunny shout “fire!” He heard three Yellowjackets fire as he desperately tried to find a target. Seeing nothing, he turned just as the entire north wall burst into chunks of plastifoam, followed by a paladin that bowled over Tanu and the gunny. The paladin seemed to shake itself like a dog, then backed up, dragging down the rest of
the wall as Rev and Tomiko fired their Yellowjackets. Rev’s hit low, right at the knee of the third leg. The paladin must have been just within arming range because the missile detonated, breaking the leg in two.

  Rev pulled out his third missile, expecting the Centaur to detonate its shredder, but it fired its main cannon into the center of the building before it swiveled and dashed off.

  Rev was already moving, dashing forward. Gunny Thapa was on the ground, covered in white dust, struggling to sit up. His right arm and leg hung useless.

  “Find Tanu!” he gasped out.

  Rev stumbled over the rubble, spotted Tanu, and stopped. The lower part of his body was covered with the same white dust, but the upper part, or what was left of it, was turning a bright red.

  Rev and Tomiko reached him at the same moment. Centaur kills didn’t look like this, and it took him a moment to realize what had happened. For all the weapons a paladin had, it had simply crushed Tanu with its bulk. Tanu’s head and chest were flattened, with bits of brain matter and bone spread out in the rubble.

  “Fuck,” Tomiko said quietly.

  “How is he?” the gunny asked from where he was still struggling.

  Rev just shook his head as the staff sergeant and the others ran over.

  The staff sergeant’s mouth shifted to a grim line as she saw Tanu.

  “Is there anything we can do?” Tomiko asked.

  Staff Sergeant Montez shook her head. “Nothing. If the crystals are intact, they’ll be downloaded for analysis, but he’s gone.”

  She immediately stood straighter and said, “All of you, back to your positions.”

  “I don’t have one anymore,” Hussein said.

  “On your belly, then. Take whatever cover you can. Now all of you, there’s still a fight on.”

  Rev hurried back to his peephole. His wall was still up, but with most of the north wall gone, it seemed superfluous. He looked back to the staff sergeant, but she was now kneeling by the gunny. She asked him something, then took out a red airhorn and gave three short blasts. If Doc Lindermen could, he’d cross to their position from his with Third Team. She gave the gunny a pat on the arm, then moved forward into position.

  “Nothing’s changed, Marines!” she shouted. “Wait for the signal.”

  Rev gave one more glance at Tanu’s body, and anger flared. Determination flowed through him—there was no other option than to win this battle, whatever it took.

  A fire team of mech Marines thundered by, their tread knocking a few loose pieces of the north wall to the ground. One lowered his M133 and fired a blast, but Rev couldn’t see their target. The M133 had a hellacious range, however, so it could be firing at Centaurs outside of the complex, for all he knew.

  “Coming in right!” a voice called out, and Rev spun around, Yellowjacket ready to fire before he realized who was there.

  Shit. Maybe this SOP has a purpose after all.

  Deen LaPete faltered a moment as she took in the damage to the building, not just the north wall, but the line of transport pipes and conduits the Centaur had slagged. Water geysered up from one of the pipes.

  As if remembering her mission, she ran forward, calling out for the gunny.

  “What do you need, LaPete?” the staff sergeant asked.

  LaPete spared one glance at the gunny, who was still lying down, probably full to the gills with nano happy juice. The gunny pointed to Montez, and LaPete said, “Change of plan. Be ready to move to One-two-two. Three short on a Nancy.”

  Rev immediately pulled up Objective One-two-two. It was a power station, housing one of the big condensers. It hadn’t been one of their original planned objectives, but battles went where they would. Rev didn’t know if this change reflected something good or bad.

  The signal was three short blasts on a “Nancy,” one of the five airhorns in use. Each of the horns had a different pitch, the Nancy being higher and somewhat bleating.

  “Got it,” the staff sergeant said.

  LaPete took in Tanu for a moment, then she turned and ran back to the front door. “Coming out!” she shouted, and in an instant, she was out of sight.

  “You heard her. Mark the objective, and if we get split up, that’s our rally point.” She started to say something to Tomiko, then seemed to change her mind before sizing Rev up.

  “Pelletier, take Gunny Thapa to First so Doc can look at him.”

  “But . . .”

  He wanted to say he needed to stay with the team, but he realized that the staff sergeant was right. The gunny wasn’t huge, but while Tomiko was augmented like all the rest, she didn’t have Rev’s strength. And knowing her, the staff sergeant knew Rev had only a single Yellowjacket left.

  “Keep your head down,” he told Tomiko as he passed her on his way to where the gunny was lying.

  “Come on, Gunny,” he said, hand down to pick up the Marine.

  “Not going anywhere, Pelletier.”

  “All due respect Gunny, but you’re all kinds of messed up. You need to see Doc Lindermen.”

  “And all due respect back, I’m not going anywhere. And my rockers say that’s what’s happening.”

  A building exploded across the way, making Rev duck and use his body to cover the gunny as debris pelted them. He waited for the worst to be over, then looked up as a cloud of dust rolled over them.

  “But Gunny, you can’t move your arm or leg.”

  “Thanks for letting me know. I wouldn’t have guessed.”

  Rev was at a loss for words. Staff Sergeant Montez had taken over the team, but he was still the gunny.

  “Staff Sergeant,” he called out, and when she turned to look at him, added, “Gunny says he isn’t going anywhere.”

  At that moment, three short, high-pitched blasts sounded.

  “That’s us,” Montez shouted. Then to Rev, she said, “Stay with him.”

  Rev looked back to the gunny, who waved his left arm and said, “Bullshit. I can still fire a fucking Yellowjacket. Get one out for me.”

  When Rev didn’t move, he said, “That’s an order, Private.”

  “I’m not—”

  “But you will be if you don’t do what I fucking tell you! Now!”

  Almost three years of training kicked in, and Rev jumped to obey. He opened the gunny’s holster and removed the two remaining Yellowjackets, then gave the gunny one and placed the other on the ground beside him.

  “Now go!”

  “Kick some ass, Gunny,” he said before he turned and bolted after the rest of the team.

  They were only twenty or so meters ahead of him, and he sprinted to catch up.

  “Is the gunny going to make it?”

 

  The group of six Marines rounded a squat building and right into a firefight between two paladins and a squad of mech Marines. One of the Marines toppled over, armor a dull red sheen, and almost in unison, the six Raiders fired. Whether it was their barrage or fire from the mech-heads, the nearest Centaur lurched and seemed to fall on one side.

  “Down!” six voices shouted.

  Rev had just hit the deck when a fist drove into him, knocking him over onto his back and tearing the cannula from his nostril. He caught sight of one of the mech-heads staggering backward a couple of steps.

  The Centaur had been over a hundred meters away, but still, Rev felt like he’d been kicked by a mule.

  “Thanks, grunts,” one of the mech Marines shouted through an open face shield before the squad took off at a run.

  “Everyone OK?” the staff sergeant asked.

  Rev gave a weak thumbs up.

  Next to him, Sergeant Nix was struggling to get up.

  “Sergeant, I’m out of Yellowjackets.”

  “Then you’re a target now. Keep up with the rest of us.”

  That wasn’t what Rev meant. He wasn’t trying to turn
back. What he was hoping was that the sergeant might surrender one of his.

  “Let’s go.”

  Rev stuck the cannula back into place and pulled out a Phoenix. It had worked that once on Preacher Rolls, but he knew that had been a long shot then. Still, it was something and gave him the tiniest bit of confidence.

  Rev felt like a mouse scurrying beneath the feet of dueling elephants. Mech Marines, a few tanks, and Centaur paladins appeared and disappeared in the dust and chaos. Airhorns sounded for reinforcements, advances, and withdrawals.

  The six Marines approached the base of one of the giant emitters, pockmarked from shells. They were supposed to be off-limits, but in the heat of the battle . . .

  As they rounded the huge stack, a mech-head was standing frozen, the armor’s back split open.

  “Battery’s dead, poor sucker,” Nix said as they ran past.

  The mechs were fusion-powered, the little powerplants heavily shielded. Sometimes that shielding worked, sometimes it didn’t. As a backup against the Centaurs, they had a chemical battery that was manually mixed after an EMP blast. They were notoriously finicky but enabled a mech-head to maneuver and fire—for a limited time.

  With the back split open, the Marine operator had egressed but would now be running around in what were essentially longjohns and hopefully an O2 pack—not a recipe for success in this battlefield. Rev didn’t envy the Marine, and he wished them well.

  Their target was on the other side of the huge emitter, and as they crossed a grating over access tunnels below, Staff Sergeant Montez turned to give them orders, but she never got them out. Like a whale breaching, a paladin burst through the grating, landing on the ground beside the gaping hole. The staff sergeant, Hussein, and Kel were thrown to the air with the grate, falling in a heap. That left Rev, Tomiko, and Nix on their feet.

  The Centaur started extending its pedestal, which had been retracted. They had to act now, so Rev immediately threw his Phoenix, which, without the chameleon pad, just bounced off. Both Tomiko and Nix fired Yellowjackets, but even with the shortened arming range, they were too close. Tomiko’s hit the pedestal and ricocheted up while Sergeant Nix’s struck the chassis and fell to the ground.