by J. N. Chaney
“We’ve got to make sure none of the bastards got away there at the end.”
38
Rev pushed through a thick stand of fart trees, grateful for his combat suit. While the serrated leaves couldn’t penetrate his spider web, they could do a number on his skin. Already, his face was scored and itching.
He signaled Tomiko to shift right.
“No one here to hear you speak,” she said, but she moved over another ten meters.
With Tanu KIA and the Gunny evacuated, that left Rev as the element leader, albeit an element of two Marines. He and Tomiko had the same date of rank, but Rev was twenty-two slots in front of her.
It wasn’t as if they were all alone out in the planet’s wild, however. About 150 meters to their left, Sergeant Nix and Hussein, the entirety of First Element, were paralleling their patrol, which was a nice security blanket, and a couple of hundred meters to their right would be the Frisian flight.
Rev was just grateful for still being with Tomiko and the other two. It had taken some strenuous convincing to have the doctor clear him for duty. Even with his preventative treatment, he’d still had a concussion and a dislocated shoulder. With those injuries, the medical SOP would be for a week on light duty. But with the casualties, the task force was short on bodies, and the needs of the service—
He idly rotated his arm. It didn’t hurt—and after all the injections he’d received, it shouldn’t, but it felt weird.
He hadn’t noticed it in the battle two days ago, but after raising his AI’s PQ to fifty percent, it had taken a more active role. Nagging, might be one way to describe it. Rev wasn’t sure he liked that, and he’d been considering lowering it again. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t right. After the stress of the battle, if his mind wasn’t in the right place, that was dangerous. If he was low on O2, that would have an effect on him.
As could the lingering effects of a concussion.
“Got it,” he said as he positioned the cannula to maximize the O2 reaching his nose. No use taking any chances.
The Centaurs at the objective had been defeated, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any more left. The entire AO was being crisscrossed with whatever scandrones were left, but that wasn’t many. And the few remaining could be spoofed or knocked out of the sky just like all the rest had, which was why the CG had ordered out patrols. Going back millennia, it took boots on the ground to secure an area.
Rev had a topo of the area, and he was trying to compare that with what his eyeballs were seeing. If there were Centaurs nearby, where would they be? But there were none of the sudden bursts of understanding that the actors in the holovids had, usually seconds before the bad guys struck.
Sighing, he trudged up the slope. With visibility limited by the trees, he’d be too close again to use his Yellowjacket. He’d survived that twice now, but the gods of chance were fickle, and he’d never be that lucky again.
Maybe I’ll be able to see more at the top.
But at the top, there were just more trees.
He signaled for a halt. It was a few minutes early, but he needed the mental break.
Tomiko came up and asked, “You see something?”
“Nah. Just a normal break.”
He pulled his tube down and took a huge swallow of XL12, waiting for the hit. But there wasn’t one. Darcy had warned them that the XL12 energy supplement could be overused, his body getting used to it for it to have much effect.
“You think any got away?” Tomiko asked yet again. “I mean we’ve been out here for twenty hours, and we haven’t seen any sign of survivors.”
“No, I don’t think any got away. Or at least, if one or two did, they wouldn’t be hanging out here. But the CG wants us to make sure, and that’s why we get paid the big bucks.
“You tired?” he asked Tomiko, switching gears.
“Not really tired. Fatigued. No, that doesn’t make sense.”
“Yes, it does,” Rev said.
Rev knew he could keep on moving. He had plenty left in the tank for that. It was just that he felt lethargic and weak, as if each movement took more energy than it should. Maybe it was lingering effects from his concussion. Maybe it was just working in this oxygen-handicapped world.
“You’d think our augments would keep us all juiced up,” Tomiko said.
“We still get our power from food, just like any leech. At some point, we’re going to run out of calories. All our augments do is enable us to keep the throttle open until we run out of hydro.”
“Yeah, when any sane person will stop and rest before they get sucked dry.”
Rev sighed, then pointed down the slope. “Enough jaw-jacking. Let’s move out.”
Tomiko gave him a mocking salute and started down at an angle to give them their dispersion. Rev adjusted his cannula again, then started down himself, the footing loose beneath him. Leaves and loose dirt tumbled down with each step, which would alert any Centaur lying in wait below.
But there wouldn’t be any, he knew, so no harm, no foul.
Rev managed to stay upright, half walking, half-sliding, until he reached the bottom, right at the edge of the trickle that was the creek. Evidently, it wasn’t always a trickle. The water had eaten a meter and a half into the forest soil. At only two or three meters wide, it would be an easy jump to cross it.
He checked on Tomiko to his left then started to set himself when something in the trees caught his notice. It took him a moment to figure it out. There was too much light coming through a ragged section of the canopy.
“Does that look natural?”
“A downed aircraft?”
“Mech?”
Yeah, stupid question, he thought, suddenly embarrassed for asking that of his AI . . . which embarrassed him even more for his reaction.
Rev didn’t know where all the maneuvering elements had approached the emitter station from, but a Disk Marine or even the Frisian scoot made sense. He turned and gave Tomiko the signal to halt so he could check out what might be a downed Marine.
With comms still fried, he couldn’t report who it was, but at least he could note the location for a later recovery. Alive or dead, the Marines didn’t leave anyone behind.
“I’d say maybe twenty or thirty meters ahead, right around the bend in the creek. Concur?”
Rev hopped the creek and pushed through some eye-level laurel. The death during the battle had been horrific, something with which he really hadn’t come to terms yet, but the thought of one more Marine, lost on this empty world, filled him with a sense of melancholy.
He got past the laurel, then around a fart tree, and saw a hint of metal ahead, just peeking past a shattered trunk.
So, it’s probably a Frisian. Too big to be a Disk Marine.
The thought didn’t make him feel any better. No matter what he thought of the Frisian Mantle, the Host soldiers had proven to be good comrades-in-arms.
He turned around and just spotted Tomiko over the top of the laurel, watching him. He signaled a downed Frisian, then for her to come join him.
The Frisian had landed in the creek bed and was covered in mud. Rev took another few steps forward, angling away from the shattered trunk to get a better look . . . and dropped to the ground.
“Get back!” he shouted to Tomiko, heedless of the noise as he pulled out a Yellowjacket.
The hunk of armor not ten meters away was a Centaur riever.
Rev waited for the Centaur’s shredder to blow him away, but there was nothing except for the sound of his heart pounding in his chest. He rais
ed his head, but the thing hadn’t moved.
Again? Another tin-ass? What god of war did I piss off?
He looked at the Yellowjacket in his hands. Just like last time, he was too close for it to arm. He had to get some distance between them.
“What is it?” Tomiko called out.
“Take some cover in the creek bed,” he shouted despite how close he was to the riever. That should protect her if the Centaur lit off its shredder.
And that’s where he wanted to be, too. He scooted backward on his belly, sighing with relief when he clambered down into the creek bed. Finally, after too many heartbeats pounding in his ear, he sat in the trickle of water, hugging the forward edge of the bank.
Tomiko was eight or nine meters away, frantically signaling him, asking what was up.
“Centaur,” he signaled.
Her eyes rolled for a second as she sunk a few centimeters deeper into the creek bed. “Paladin or riever?”
“Riever.”
She started to signal again, then shook her head and low-crawled through the flow. Some things shouldn’t rely on hand-and-arm signals.
“What the fuck?” she hissed.
“Around the bend. It’s a damn tin-ass riever.”
“What’s it doing?”
“Just sitting there.”
Tomiko shook her head. “And it saw you?”
“I don’t know. It had to have, right?”
“And it didn’t light you up?”
“Just give me a sec to get my mind straight. That scared the crap outta me.”
But she’d hit the nail on the head. Why hadn’t it lit him up?
“I didn’t actually get up on it. And I was in the laurel up there. Maybe it didn’t see me?”
It sounded lame when he said it, but what other excuse was there? The paladin he’d taken out on Preacher Rolls hadn’t seen him, after all.
But that was because I was in a spider hole.
He knew he could have missed something, however, and he did have another tool in his toolbox.
“Did you see anything?” he asked his AI.
“I mean, anything, you know . . .”
But Rev didn’t know what he was asking. He didn’t understand enough of what was going on to ask the right question, and he wanted help.
With a mental sigh, he ordered, “Increase PQ to eighty percent.”
There was a slight pause, then it said,
“And that means exactly what?”
Rev took a moment to consider that. By studying scans of Centaurs, usually before they blew themselves up, and by close examination of the traces after they detonated themselves, humans had long determined that Centaurs were not some robots or androids but rather oxygen-breathing beings inside of their armor. And, like humans, they exhaled CO2. If there were no traces of CO2, then what did that mean?
“And that means what? It’s dead?”
“I see your lips moving. What does your battle buddy say?” Tomiko asked.
“That there’s no trace of CO2 around the thing.”
Her eyes lost focus for a moment, then she said, “Pikachu says that means it’s probably dead.”
“So, why didn’t it self-detonate?” Rev asked.
There was a pause while she consulted her AI, and then she said, “I don’t know. But that’s the most logical explanation.”
She looked to her left. Somewhere out there, as close as a couple hundred meters, Sergeant Nix and Hussein were patrolling.
“I think we need to report this before we do anything else,” she said.
“How? Comms are still fried.”
“We can go track down Nix.”
Rev shook his head. Oh, he wanted to put this on someone else’s shoulder, it was so far above his pay grade. But they couldn’t just leave the scene. There was no proof that the Centaur was not just playing possum, doing the equivalent of holding its breath. Who knew what they could do?
“We can’t leave it.”
“OK, I can wat—"
Rev held up his hand, stopping Tomiko.
“It can’t do anything to a tin-ass.”
Now it’s using similes? What’s next?
But once again, his AI had a germ of an idea. The Gnat was a tiny, multipurpose drone, able to extend his field of view, act as an OP, retrieve anything lighter than 500 grams, and act as a small weapons platform, firing up to three two-millimeter darts with explosive warheads—which, while it could kill an unarmored soldier, would do absolutely nothing against a Centaur. Because of the nature of their enemy, the Gnats had fallen out of favor but were still part of every ground-pounding Marine’s battle kit.
“So, I use the Gnat to give the tin-ass a poke?”
His AI remained silent.
He turned on his side to Tomiko and said, “I’m going to use my Gnat to see if we can stir that thing.”
“Your fucking Gnat? Are you high? That useless piece of crap? If it isn’t even fried.”
“One way to find out.”
Rev removed the little drone from his left thigh holster and took off the protective wrap. With the wrap, and as it had been powered down, there was a chance that it had survived the Centaurs’ EMP blast. A small chance. He could ask his AI for the percentage, but it would probably depress him. Better to just try and power it up.
He thumbed the power button, and to his surprise, the little green LED lit up.
“Crap,” Tomiko said. “Of course, of all our battle kit, that has to be what still works.”
Rev lowered the Gnat well below the top edge of the creek bed, listening for any motion. As low-powered as the Gnat was, it could still be picked up by a Centaur. But there was nothing from over the laurel bushes.
The Gnat had a very primitive brain with no inherent AI capability. It had to be programmed. Rev pulled a Y-connector from the sleeve of his combat suit and plugged it into the Gnat, and via that, through his jack.
The Gnat was only as capable as its programming, and the more input, the better it performed.
Rev told Tomiko, “I’m moving forward. I want you to stay here with your head down. If anything happens, find Sergeant Nix.”
Tomiko grabbed his arm before he could move. “You sure you want to do this?”
“I’m sure I don’t want to do this.”
“I’ll go.”
Rev didn’t hesitate. This wasn’t a case where a company commander sent a lance corporal on a suicide mission. He was in charge, true, but he wasn’t in command of over a hundred other Marines. And he couldn’t send her in his place.
“I’ve got it. You just keep your ears open.”
“As if I could miss it if you go and get yourself waxed,” she said. She gave his arm a squeeze, then let go. “Don’t go doing something stupid.”
“This is stupid,” he muttered as he crawled over the edge of the creek bed.
He’d dug up the ground under the laurel bushes when he’d retreated. SOP was to never use the same path twice, but he decided to ignore that. He low-crawled forward, centimeter by centimeter, every sense trained forward. It seemed to take forever, but finally, he could just see the top of the Centaur. From this vantage, he wondered how he’d ever mistaken it for something else. The grayish sheen alone should have tipped him off, much less the obvious pedestal.
“Still got the connection?”
“OK, what do you think? Give it a look-see, then hit it with the darts?”
Which was the real question. The Gnat had the ability to make a low-powered broadcast—not that Rev, with his blasted comms, could receive it, but up in orbit, the Navy should be able to.
As would the Centaurs, either this one or any others. Rev could wait until the Gnat returned and he could jack it again to download the feed, thereby keeping what he was doing as stealthy as possible, but if he was about to awaken a sleeping troll, then the more he got out the better.
He really didn’t have a choice.
“Broadcast.” Then a moment later, he said, “Priority Five.”
Rev wasn’t sure why he lowered the priority, but it just felt right. His AI didn’t argue.
Rev hadn’t exactly put it that way, at least not to those specifics, but he couldn’t fault what his AI said.
“Roger. Do it.”
The faint green light flashed three times. Rev disconnected it, and the little drone took off, almost silent as it maneuvered through the brush. He knew he should take cover back in the creek bed, but he couldn’t.
He had to watch.
The Gnat was almost invisible, its pylene covering absorbing light rather than reflecting it, but Rev had it locked in his sight.
Thank God for my augmented eyes.
It emerged from the laurel and hovered over the Centaur for a moment before it slowly circled the thing. Once, twice, three times. The Centaur never moved. The Gnat returned to hover above it, and Rev flinched as there were three sharp reports and flashes of light as the exploding darts struck the pedestal and main body.
Nothing. No movement, no reaction.
The Gnat dipped down and returned to Rev, coming to a halt on the ground in front of him. Rev reconnected it and told his AI to download the feed.
He scrambled back, not even watching the feed, half-expecting the Centaur to blow. He tumbled into the creek bed and lay there for a moment, taking deep breaths to calm himself.