When All Seems Los lotd-7

by William C. Dietz

  But it was claustrophobic inside the module, and Santana was extremely conscious of the way the hull pressed in around him, so much so that DeCosta’s prayer came as a welcome distraction. And even though the platoon leader wasn’t a religious man there was no denying the beauty and power of the ancient words.

  “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

  I will fear no evil: For thou art with me; Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. . . .”

  And as the words went on, Santana’s thoughts turned to Vanderveen, and the very real possibility that he would see her soon. But what if he didn’t? What if it turned out that she was dead? That possibility brought a lump to the legionnaire’s throat as the prayer came to a close.

  “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,

  and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.”

  “After I kill every frigging bug on this planet,” squad leader Husulu Ibo-Da put in, his words serving to drown out DeCosta’s “Amen.”

  There was a chorus of laughter, and Santana couldn’t help but smile knowing that the response would drive DeCosta crazy, assuming the little bastard was sane to begin with. The major started to speak but was cut off for a second time as the Thraki pilot overrode him. And the words were familiar since Santana had been required to write them at DeCosta’s behest. “All personnel stand by for launch. . . . Check onboard nav functions and reset if necessary. . . . The ship is now in orbit. . . . Stand by for launch in thirty seconds. . . .”

  And so it went until Santana felt the pod start to move, followed by a sudden bout of nausea as the module fell clear of the argrav fi?eld, and the steering jets fi?red. Because there were thousands of pieces of space junk circling Jericho, the offi?cer was fairly confi?dent that the pods would be lost in among them. But if the Ramanthians took issue with the sudden appearance of twenty-one additional blips on their tracking screens, then the Solar Eclipse’s pilot would admit to dumping garbage and accept the inevitable tongue-lashing. Then, having delivered a cargo of delicacies that the Ramanthian command structure hadn’t ordered but was unlikely to refuse, the freighter would depart.

  In the meantime the computer-guided drop pods were following trajectories calculated to reinforce the impression that they, like the hundreds of other objects that entered the atmosphere each day, were about to burn up. Santana felt the pod begin to vibrate, and even though he couldn’t see the three-thousand-degree envelope of plasma fl?owing around him, he knew it was trying to fi?nd a way in through the capsule’s thermal protection system. And the offi?cer could feel the heat start to build up inside the pod as the vehicle shook violently. The legionnaire chinned the intercom. “Snyder? How are you doing?”

  “I was taking a nap,” the cyborg lied. “Until you woke me up that is.”

  Santana laughed. “Sorry about that. . . . Go back to sleep.”

  And, had such a thing been possible, the next few minutes would have been the time to try. Because once the pod lost a suffi?cient amount of altitude, parachutes were deployed, and Santana felt a distinct jerk as the vehicle slowed. That was followed by a gentle swaying motion—

  and the sure knowledge that they would be on the ground soon.

  However, pod Bravo Two-Four, which carried bio bod Jamie Ott, and cyborg Bindi Jasper was in trouble. Both legionnaires felt a jerk, followed by continued free fall, as a buzzer began to sound. The NAVCOMP triggered the reserve chute, which turned into a streamer, as the capsule continued its plunge toward the jungle below. Ott took over at that point, fi?red all of the drop pod’s retros, and was still punching buttons as the vehicle hit the ground. There was no explosion, but the impact crater was fi?fty feet across, and at least fi?fteen feet deep.

  But the jungle had covered other secrets over the ages, thousands of them, and the force of the impact brought long dormant seeds to the surface, where the sunlight could fi?nd them. And even before the wreckage could cool, vines had already begun their slow-motion advance in from the margins of the newly created clearing to reclaim what was rightfully theirs.

  The sudden loss of Ott and Jasper was immediately visible to the entire team as the Integrated Tactical Command (ITC) system threw a revised TO chart up for the legionnaires to see. But there was no time to mourn for lost comrades as their pods hit the jungle’s topmost canopy of vegetation, where they paused for a fraction of a second before crashing through a second layer of foliage to land on whatever lay below. Which in Santana’s case was soft loam.

  The capsule bounced once, landed at something of an angle, and blew itself apart. Santana fell free, rolled into the shelter offered by a fallen tree, and brought his assault rifl?e up. Snyder broke out of what remained of the shell, shook off some loose pieces, and began to scan. If there was some sort of threat in the immediate area, the cyborg would fi?nd it.

  A variety of jungle smells fi?lled the legionnaire’s nostrils as he came to his feet and eyeballed the data provided by the ITC. The good news was that there was no sign that a Ramanthian reaction force was on the way to intercept them, and all of the surviving pods had landed safely. The bad news was that Team Zebra was spread out along a twenty-mile-long axis. But DeCosta had a plan—which the impatient offi?cer was quick to implement. “This is Zebra Six. . . . All team members will form on Bravo Six and myself. And let’s fi?nd those RAVs. . . . We’re going to need them. Over and out.”

  DeCosta’s reasoning was sound as Santana could see on his HUD. Because Bravo Six, which was to say Farnsworth, was closest to the coordinates where the POWs were being held. So it made sense for both the platoon leader and those fi?re teams closest to him to remain stationary, while the rest of the team hurried to catch up. The mission clock was running, and there was no way to shut it off.

  Now that Santana had a clear mental picture of how the company was deployed, it was time to look at the needs of his own platoon, and fi?gure out how to link up with his legionnaires. Since Gomez and the rest of the fi?rst squad were north of his position, and therefore closer to the fi?nal objective, the platoon leader decided to remain stationary while he waited for Sergeant Ibo-Da and his squad to arrive from the south.

  A decision that was further justifi?ed by the fact that according to the topo map projected on the inside surface of the offi?cer’s face shield, one of the RAVs was located only a half mile away. Which meant that he and Snyder could secure the robot while the second squad caught up. Having dragged the debris into the jungle and concealed it as best he could, Santana helped Snyder clamp the auxiliary supply module to her chest. With that accomplished, Santana sent two succinct radio messages. One to DeCosta, letting the major know what he planned to do, and the other to his squad leaders.

  Then it was time to climb up onto Snyder’s back and strap in. The T-2 could “see” the RAV on the topo map superimposed over her electronic vision, so there was no need for the bio bod to do anything other than duck branches and become more familiar with his environment as the cyborg carried him through the jungle. By that time the local residents had recovered from the violent manner in which the alien invaders had crashed through the upper regions of their largely green universe and were busy screeching, howling, and chittering at the ten-foot-tall, two-headed monster lumbering through their forest.

  Santana leaned backwards and let the harness accept his weight as he looked up through the sun-dappled foliage to patches of blue sky. Every once in a while it was possible to catch a glimpse of sleek bodies as they jumped from branch to branch and gibbered at each other.

  Water splashed up and away from Snyder’s blocky feet as she forded a shallow stream, made her way up the opposite bank, and followed a game trail into the forest. The RAV was right where it was supposed to be, standing near the remains of its pod, when the T-2 and bio bod entered the newly created clearing. The robot consisted of two eight-foot-long sections linked by an accordion-style joint and supported by four articulated legs. Though not intended for offensive purpose
s, each RAV was equipped with two forward-facing machine guns and a grenade launcher. Which, when integrated into a defensive perimeter, could be quite useful in repelling ground attacks. Having dismounted, and with the T-2 there to provide security, Santana gathered the pieces of the RAV’s specially designed pod together and carried them over to a natural depression, where he did what he could to hide them without killing any of the vegetation. And that was when the offi?cer came across an empty meal pak with Ramanthian script on it, plus more than two dozen pieces of broken shell, which suggested that whatever had once been inside the egg had hatched. That was interesting because the legionnaire had read all of Batkin’s reports at least three times, and therefore knew that thousands, if not millions of Ramanthian tricentennial eggs, had been transported to Jericho and “planted” by specially trained teams of civilians.

  A fi?rst, insofar as the experts knew, since it was believed that all of the previous megahatchings had taken place on Hive, where they had been responsible for social upheaval, prolonged warfare, and extended famines. Problems the Queen and her advisors were trying to avoid this time around. Santana put both the empty meal pak and a fragment of eggshell in his backpack and made a mental note to share both the artifacts and his conclusions with DeCosta. Sergeant Ibo-Da and the rest of his squad arrived shortly thereafter. Good-natured insults fl?ew back and forth between the cyborgs, and Snyder gave as good as she got as the combined force left the clearing. Darby and Nacky had the point, followed by Santana on Snyder, the RAV, Shootstraight on Ichiyama, and Ibo-Da on Kappa. The last two had the drag position, which meant Kappa had to walk backwards much of the time in an effort to protect the column’s six.

  But there were no threats in the area. None the T-2s could detect anyway—as the huge cyborgs made their way north. There was something about the rhythmic motion of Snyder’s body, the comforting click, whine, thud of her gigantic footsteps, and the now-familiar scenery that made Santana sleepy. But it wasn’t until Darby’s voice came over the radio that the offi?cer realized he’d been dozing. “This is Alpha Three-Four. . . . There’s a clearing up ahead—

  with a large corpse at the center of it. Six or seven dogsized things were gnawing on the body but took off once we arrived. Over.”

  “This is Alpha Six. . . . Hold your position,” Santana instructed. “We’re coming up behind you. How ’bout it Alpha Three-Three? Have you got video for me? Over.”

  Santana eyed his HUD, saw a box appear, and watched video roll inside of it. The fi?rst thing he saw was foliage, an opening, and the clearing beyond. The badly ravaged carcass was clear to see. But the predators, or scavengers as the case might be, were little more than a blur as they took off in a half dozen directions.

  Santana chose one of the images by focusing on it and blinking twice. The fugitive froze, grew larger, and began to rotate as the ITC system took the visual data and made an educated guess as to what the rest of the creature would look like. And the result looked very familiar indeed. Because like their human counterparts juvenile Ramanthians were known to follow what the xenobiologists called, “. . . a simple development pattern.” Meaning that nymphs looked like adults, except that they were smaller, and, judging from the video, a helluva lot faster. All of which served to confi?rm Santana’s hypothesis that the tricentennials were not only hatching out, but well into the equivalent of early adolescence, a stage of development the Confederacy’s scientists knew very little about. Especially in the wild since what little information they had pertained to nymphs hatched in civilized settings.

  Snyder paused next to Nacky, which allowed Santana to nod at Darby before directing his T-2 out into the clearing. The carcass was surrounded by a cloud of voracious insects, and big gaping wounds made it diffi?cult to tell what the creature looked like before the nymphs tore into it, other than to say that it had a relatively small head, a highly specialized claw-tipped tentacle that extended from what would otherwise have been described as its nose, and four short legs. Judging from appearances, the Ramanthians had swarmed the beast, opened its belly with their parrotlike nose hooks, and ripped its guts out. Not a pleasant way to die, but interesting, because it implied some sort of group cohesion.

  “Alpha Six to all units,” Santana said as he looked down at what remained of the jungle animal. “Be advised that a large number of Ramanthian nymphs have hatched out and are on the loose. They could be dangerous, especially if encountered in large numbers, so keep your eyes peeled. Over and out.”

  What followed came so quickly it was as if DeCosta had been waiting to punch the “transmit” button. And rather than utilize the command push, so his comments would be heard by Santana alone, he chose to broadcast them to the entire company. “I will be the judge of what does and does not constitute a threat to this team,” DeCosta grated. “Which means your role is to submit what you consider to be relevant data to me. At which time I will analyze it and notify the team if that’s appropriate. Understood? Over.”

  Ibo-Da and the rest of his squad didn’t approve of the rebuke and directed disbelieving looks at each other, but there was nothing they could do but glower and look uncomfortable as Santana gave the only response he could.

  “Yes, sir. Over.”

  “Good,” DeCosta concluded stiffl?y. “Zebra Six, out.”

  Had the bio bods been on foot, the next three hours of travel would have been exhausting, as Santana and half his platoon fought their way through vegetation so thick that whichever T-2 was in the lead had to use his or her energy cannon to clear a path. And on one occasion, the cyborgs were forced to ford a river so deep that the bio bods had to stand up straight in order to keep their heads above water. So thanks to the cyborgs, the bio bods were able to not only conserve their energy, but enjoy moments like the one when the legionnaires marched through a cathedral-like open space where shafts of dusty sunlight fed pools of gold, and jewel-like insects fl?itted through the air. But such moments were all too rare as the temperature increased, the bio bods’ hot, sweaty uniforms began to chafe, and time seemed to slow.

  Finally, as darkness began to fall, the second squad found itself within fi?ve miles of Sergeant Gomez. Santana was tempted to proceed, confi?dent that the T-2s could fi?nd their way through the dead of night if necessary, but DeCosta refused, insisting that each group camp and create its own defensive perimeter. That was stupid to Santana’s way of thinking, since a unifi?ed platoon could mount a better defense than two isolated squads, but it was not for him to decide.

  So the platoon leader chose a rise, where attackers if any would be forced to advance uphill, and ordered the cyborgs to clear a 360-degree free-fi?re zone. Though far from happy about it, the bio bods dug defensive positions before they sat down to eat. Then, once the T-2s were fi?nished constructing a barrier made out of fallen logs and sharpened stakes, it was time to settle in for the night. A scary business for any bio bod not accompanied by four battleready war forms. Especially given the strange sounds and continual rustlings that issued from the jungle. The hours of darkness were divided into four two-hour watches, and Santana had just completed his shift when DeCosta spoke over the command push. “This is Zebra Six. . . . Do you read me? Over.”

  The major sounded strange, or so it seemed to Santana, although the offi?cer knew he might be mistaken. “This is Alpha Six. . . . I read you. Over.”

  “How are things at your location? Over?”

  Santana frowned. The answer was obvious, or should have been, given the fact that DeCosta could access the ITC. It was as if the other offi?cer was simply nervous and wanted to chat. “No problems so far, sir,” the platoon leader answered. “What’s the situation there?”

  “We lost Frayley,” DeCosta replied harshly. “She went outside the perimeter to take a leak, fi?red three shots, and was gone by the time her T-2 arrived on the scene. Smith saw more than a dozen heat signatures but withheld fi?re out of fear of hitting her. Over.”

  Santana wasn’t wearing his helmet at that point, so he hadn
’t seen Frayley’s name and status pop up on the ITC, but he remembered the legionnaire well. A fresh-faced young woman with reddish hair and a scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. One of the few team members with a clean record, who, if rumors were correct, had volunteered in order to be with Sergeant Jan Obama.

  “Damn,” Santana said sadly. “How is Bravo Two-Six taking the news? Over.”

  “Obama went nuts, if that’s what you mean,” DeCosta answered clinically. “We had to restrain her. Over.”

  There was a long, uncomfortable silence, as if DeCosta was hoping that Santana would make sense of the incident somehow and thereby make him feel better. But the cavalry offi?cer didn’t have anything to say, other than it was stupid to pee outside the perimeter. A lesson Frayley learned the hard way. Eventually, when it was clear that the conversation was over, DeCosta broke the contact.

  “Zebra Six, out.”

  It was diffi?cult to sleep after that, but Santana fi?nally managed an hour or so and woke just before dawn, when standing orders required that all units serving in the fi?eld stand to arms. It was a tradition that went back hundreds of years and was based on the fact that predawn attacks were and always would be common.

  But no attack was forthcoming, which left the second squad free to brew hot drinks and eat their MSMREs before taking fi?fteen minutes to erase the more obvious signs of their presence. Then it was up and off, as the legionnaires made their way through a long, narrow gorge before climbing up over a thinly forested ridge and descending into the jungle below. And that was where Sergeant Maria Gomez and the fi?rst squad were waiting for them. There were the usual catcalls, insults, and other greetings, but the only person Gomez truly cared about was her platoon leader.