Survival Aptitude Test_Hope's Graveyard

by Mike Sheriff

  The mongrels had destroyed the aeroshrike with sonic rounds launched from the quad-cannons dotting the southern border. Had the mission been compromised before it even started? Were they plunging to their deaths?

  Thousands of feet below, an indistinct carpet of muted lights outlined Havoc’s southern sector. Their movement suggested vehicles—levicarts, perhaps, converging on the drop zone. Would they be met on the ground by hundreds of mongrel shocktroops?

  The lights intensified as they moved, their hue changing to blue-white. After a moment, it dawned on him.

  They weren’t ground-based lights. They were sonic rounds, streaming upward in clusters of four, bending in sinister curves as their energy bled off from atmospheric friction.

  Four blue-white blurs whizzed past, close enough to touch. Laoshi swore he heard their savage hiss as they streaked by his faceplate.

  Another blue light flickered in the corner of his right eye. This one was different.

  Months of training snapped him back to the moment. For the first time since exiting the aeroshrike, his mind caught up to his body.

  The blue altitude-indicator signaled they’d fallen through ten thousand feet. At this height, the air contained enough oxygen to support consciousness if they deployed their deceleration canopies early. The next light signal would be amber. It would activate when they passed through four thousand feet, marking the start of the separation sequence. He remembered the training acronym—ARTTA.

  Amber light.

  Release the connector rings.

  Turn one hundred-eighty degrees.

  Track for two seconds.

  Activate the deceleration canopy.

  The ARTTA maneuver provided adequate separation for all six jumpers, but its success rested on a delicate balance. Too little separation and the team risked entangling canopies and thundering into the ground at bone-shattering speeds. Too much separation and they risked scattering themselves throughout the southern sector. A lone Jiren in Havoc had a life expectancy of minutes.

  Laoshi braced himself for the amber glow, elated to be anticipating a sequence for once. Thirteen seconds later, the light illuminated.

  He released the connector rings and dropped his right shoulder. The change in body position changed the relative airflow—he spun to the right. Unlike the windtube in the training facility, the gauzy ground-clutter provided no visual references for gauging rotation. He stopped the turn by leveling his shoulders, relying on instinct alone. He extended his legs and folded his arms across his chest to begin tracking.

  The mental count of One-Daqin-Guojin, Two-Daqin-Guojin seemed to stretch to eternity. The instant it ended, he twisted the firing pin on his chest harness and waited for what Dominus had described as a savage kick to the groin.

  A deceleration kick didn’t come. Airstream still roared in his ears and buffeted his body.

  He twisted the pin again.

  Nothing.

  Ice flushed his veins. No sooner had the emergency registered in his mind when a red light flashed beside his right eye.

  Ground-proximity warning.

  He’d plummeted through one thousand feet and had five seconds before hitting the ground. . . .

  Laoshi abandoned the firing pin and found the emergency handle next to it. He reefed the D-ring from its seat.

  His body whip-snapped from belly-down to feet-down in a heartbeat. The chest harness squeezed tighter and tighter, expelling a slug of air from his lungs. His feet hit the ground before he had time to inhale.

  Laoshi crumpled onto his side, rolling to absorb the shock. The deceleration canopy collapsed over top of him like a burial shroud. He tried to unsling his sonic rifle, but its muzzle snagged an errant canopy line. Seconds later, foreign hands groped at his neck, tugging at the canopy.

  His heart froze. Had a mongrel stumbled upon him, finding a hapless target hopelessly tangled beneath a canopy? He reached for the dagger sheath on his webbing.

  The canopy cleared from his faceplate.

  Dominus gazed down at him. Behind his illuminated faceplate, amusement back-lit his eyes. “That’s no way to fight.”

  Laoshi released a whooshing breath.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” he said, more embarrassed than hurt.

  Dominus drew his dagger and helped cut away the canopy and cords. He pulled Laoshi to his feet.

  “My thanks.”

  “You’d do the same for me. Now unsling your weapon and come muster with the rest of us.”

  He marched off. Laoshi unslung his sonic rifle and gathered his bearings.

  Squat structures surrounded him. Their black, nullglass panels rose thirty or forty feet above the hard-packed sand. Red, low-intensity lighting traced the angled walls. Generous horizontal separation between the structures made for a less-confining layout than he’d imagined. He knew from earlier briefings that the mongrels favored building down rather than up. Some structures extended miles beneath the surface.

  The rest of the team gathered next to a vertical wall studded with humming ventilation piping. Jiren Tor kneeled over a prone Jiren at the wall’s base. Laoshi didn’t recognize who it was until he got within five feet.

  It was the Asianoid Jiren. He moaned and writhed, teeth clamped onto his lower lip. His right leg took a grotesque seventy-degree turn midway between his knee and ankle.

  Laoshi shuddered. He must have clipped the structure on his descent.

  Tor patted down the Asianoid’s leg. She worked her hands lower and lower, pausing to examine her palms every so often. “No blood or protruding bone.”

  The Asianoid muffled a cry with his hand.

  “Can you give him something for the pain?” Commander Nehjal asked.

  Tor removed a medkit from her web pouch. She administered an auto-injector shot to his right thigh.

  The Asianoid stopped writhing a few seconds later. His jaw relaxed. He sat up, back propped against the wall. “My thanks.”

  “Just doing my job.” Tor glanced up at Nehjal. Even in the gloom, her grim expression was unmistakable. “He can be moved,” she said, “but not far. This kind of fracture can lead to a fat embolism if it’s not immobilized.”

  “Is that fatal?” Jiren Vandarian asked.

  “It can be.” Tor scanned the surroundings. “He’ll need a lay-up point that’s out of the open. We can come back for him once we’ve completed the mission.”

  Nehjal activated the chronoglyph on her wrist. Its square screen splashed muted blue light across her faceplate. She dropped to a knee beside the Asianoid and placed a hand on his shoulder. “How’s the pain?”

  “Better, sireen. I’ll be fine.”

  Nehjal nodded. Her other hand went to her hip. It reappeared holding a dagger. Its crystal blade glimmered before plunging into the Asianoid’s throat.

  Laoshi recoiled, unable to stifle the visceral reaction. Dominus gasped.

  The Asianoid stiffened and released a thick, gargled moan. It grew thinner and fainter. He slumped onto his side. Blood pooled on the hard-packed sand beneath his neck.

  Nehjal retracted the blade and glanced up at the rest of the team. “We can’t risk capture. Each of us knows too much about tomorrow’s attack.” She wiped the dagger’s blade across her sleeve. “In Havoc, a wound is as good as death.”

  She stood and sheathed the dagger. “The only path home lies through achieving our objective and rendezvousing with the aeroshrike. Is that clear?”

  The rest of the team nodded in funereal silence. Laoshi followed their lead. He dare not do otherwise.

  “We’ll need to move his body under cover,” Vandarian said.

  Nehjal nodded at Vandarian and Tor. “Establish a security perimeter.” She pointed at Laoshi and Dominus. “Move the body.”

  They obeyed without hesitation. Laoshi took up the Asianoid’s torso. Dominus crouched by his legs. He yanked the broken limb into a better alignment for lifting. Bone creaked and scraped, triggering a grimace.

 
Laoshi met his friend’s sickened gaze. “This mission is suicide.”

  “Quiet!” Dominus whisper-shouted. “Or you’ll end up like Szeto here.”

  Laoshi squeezed his eyes shut. Szeto. That was the Asianoid’s name.

  LAOSHI PRESSED THE sonic rifle’s crystalline stock into his shoulder. He trained its muzzle back and forth, sweeping the gloomy intersection, and peered through the optical sight.

  Its thermal sensor returned an indistinct haze of blue-tinted structures. As poor as the resolution might be, it far exceeded the level of visible light.

  He couldn’t say what the mongrel’s valued, but illumination didn’t appear to be high on the list. He lowered the rifle after sensing no movement. Since touching down in the southern sector an hour ago, they hadn’t encountered a single mongrel.

  After stashing the deceleration canopies and Szeto’s body in a drainage culvert, they’d set out for the relay center in a tactical column. Laoshi had taken the lead—yet another downside to being the team’s newest recruit.

  Lead scouts encountered more frequent contact with the enemy. They died more frequently as a result. Dominus had the next rotation as lead. Keeping that thought front of mind made the task less onerous—Laoshi would gladly take a sonic round or glass dart in the chest if it meant his friend could return home to his wife and daughter.

  Commander Nehjal’s voiced hissed in his earpiece. “Take the next left once you’re through the intersection. It should be fifty feet ahead.”

  “Understood,” Laoshi said, maintaining the whispersilent protocol.

  The quiet was both welcoming and unsettling. He’d expected to be fighting off mongrels from the moment they landed. They’d been comprised during the descent, after all.

  Jiren Vandarian had cleared up that misunderstanding before they’d embarked on the tactical advance. According to him, the ground fire had been directed at the aeroshrike. The mongrels lacked high-resolution lidar. A group of free-falling Jireni wouldn’t be detectable, much less targetable, by their sensors. Besides, Vandarian had said, the mongrels preferred to fight inside their structures. It favored the defender.

  Laoshi cleared the intersection and reached the left-hand turn Nehjal had mentioned. He raised the rifle’s scope to his faceplate.

  The laneway resolved amid an eery wash of blue light. The structures to his left mirrored the others he’d encountered. How the mongrels navigated the colony’s surface maze was beyond him. He trained the scope onto the right-hand side.

  Only one structure resolved. It stood twenty-feet high. Notched walls angled upward at a sixty-degree angle before meeting at a level apex. Nullglass frames lined its surface, their joints jutting like the bones of a ribcage. What made this structure different was its length.

  Laoshi increased the scope’s magnification with his index finger.

  The structure ranged south for at least three miles.

  He dialed in the highest magnification setting and scoped its farthest reaches.

  The dull blue glow of nullglass panels faded. Beyond them lay featureless black mire.

  He lowered the rifle. Why would a single structure reach as far south as the border? What could it contain to warrant such an extreme size?

  Laoshi dismissed the questions as quickly as they formed—the structure posed no obvious threat. He raised a hand and waved the others forward. He drew a deep breath and held it.

  A murmur snared his attention.

  His raised his hand and made a fist. “Tarry!” he whispered.

  The murmur seemed both proximate and distant. It pulsed, ebbing and flowing in a discordant rhythm.

  He closed his eyes and turned his head from side to side, trying to isolate the source. The technique worked.

  The sound was coming from the long structure.

  It wasn’t an alarm or the hiss of a ventilation system. It was deeper than that—rising from a subterranean source and conducting itself through the nullglass panels.

  “What’s the delay?” Nehjal asked.

  “I can hear something, sireen.”

  “What is it?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “Hold there,” she said. “Vandarian up.”

  Laoshi held in place. A minute later, hard-soled boots crunched the hard-packed sand to his rear. A gloved hand fell upon his shoulder.

  “Report,” Vandarian said, close enough to whisper the order in Laoshi’s ear.

  “I’ve scanned the laneway,” Laoshi said. “No mongrels are visible, but I can hear something.” He pointed at the long structure. “It seems to be coming from—”

  “Shut up so I can listen.”

  Laoshi fell silent. Vandarian tilted his head and closed his eyes. He rotated his head the way an operator might pan a tele-optic sensor. He opened his eyes and snorted. “It’s their breeding farm.”

  “Their what?”

  Vandarian scowled. “Their breeding farm. Don’t you remember the briefing before the insertion into Decay?”

  “I didn’t make that insertion.”

  Vandarian’s brow furrowed behind his faceplate, as if the revelation countered a preconceived notion.

  Laoshi masked his irritation. Vandarian’s mistake in the training serial had been responsible for the accident. Had the fid already forgotten?

  Vandarian’s brow smoothed. “I’d forgotten you were injured. It’s how the mongrels sustain their population.”

  Laoshi glanced at the nullglass structure. Without the scope’s thermal imaging, it was little more than shade upon shadow. Its presence asserted itself nonetheless. “It’s so long.”

  “I’d wager it’s even deeper. The mongrels learned long ago that subterranean structures had much better odds of surviving an aeroshrike’s barometric rounds.”

  “So they produce their offspring in there?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Vandarian said. “The women they capture and—”

  The comms circuit crackled. “Vandarian, report.”

  Vandarian lowered his chin. “All clear, sireen. You can move up now.”

  The rest of the team moved up. Dominus and Tor hung back ten feet, monitoring the eastern approaches. Tor wore Szeto’s bulky drop-pack on her back. Apparently, she was now responsible for the team’s comms in addition to its wound care. Commander Nehjal checked her chronoglyph.

  “How are we doing for time?” Vandarian asked.

  “Thirty minutes ahead of schedule.”

  Laoshi registered her comment. Their arrival at the relay center was timed to overlap a watch turnover. It marked the moment when the mongrels’ focus would be inward rather than outward.

  Vandarian pulled a glass flask from his webbing. He tipped it back and took three swallows. “Should we wait here or at the relay center?”

  “That storage complex a hundred feet back offered good cover,” Nehjal said. “We’ll lay up there.” She turned to Dominus and Tor. “We’re tarrying at the storage complex for fifteen minutes. Jiren Dominus, stand watch on its eastern approaches. Tor will relieve you in ten minutes.” She turned to Laoshi. “You remain here and monitor the western approaches. If you see anything, withdraw to our position. Do not fire your weapon.”

  “Yes, sireen,” Laoshi said. He watched her pace away with the others. She never mentioned whether he’d be relieved.

  LAOSHI CROUCHED BENEATH an overhanging protrusion on the left-hand side of the laneway. It offered a good view of the western approaches. It also placed him within fifty feet of the long structure’s northern entrance. His focus kept straying back to its darkened archway.

  A breeding farm, Vandarian had called it. Why would the mongrels construct a specialized structure solely for the birth of their children? Was it for protection? And why would the facility need to be so large? Havoc was home to twenty-two million inhabitants. How many offspring were born here every year?

  Laoshi shoved the thoughts aside. He needed to stay vigilant for mongrel patrols. A compromise here and now would spell t
he end of the mission and, most likely, their lives. He scoped the structures and laneways lining the approach. As usual, he detected no movement. Sound was another matter.

  The strange noise continued to leach from the breeding farm. It vied for his attention, tugging at his mind. He couldn’t be sure, but it sounded . . . human. Like a thousand tone-deaf vocalists chanting the agonizing chorus to an ancient lament. What had Vandarian said before Commander Nehjal interrupted? Something about the women the mongrel’s had captured?

  Laoshi pondered the incomplete statement. What would captured women have to do with sustaining the population? What special status or skills did they bring to a breeding—

  The answer gelled in his mind with sickening clarity. He immediately suppressed it.

  No. They wouldn’t. Not even the mongrels were capable of such depravity.

  The discordant hum wafted over as if daring him to test his thesis. The archway posed no obstacle for entry. He could march over and look. A quick glance inside and he’d satisfy his curiosity. He wouldn’t be abandoning his post. The entrance was part of the western approaches. Technically, he’d be clearing the structure to help protect his fellow Jireni.

  He found himself marching toward the archway before he’d registered the decision. The hum grew louder as he approached. By the time he reached the entrance, its amplitude equalled that of a forced whisper. Other distinctive qualities ebbed through, identifying the sound’s underlying source.

  Crying.

  Laoshi edged through the opening, sonic rifle at the ready, finger on its trigger. His heart pounded in his ears, but did little to mute the sound. He cleared the archway and halted at the top of a flight of stairs.

  The hum emanated from beyond the base of the stairs. A decision stretched his mind in opposite directions; descend and solve the mystery, or backtrack and return to his post? He boxed his breathing and debated the relative merits.

  Three inhalations filled his lungs before he made his choice. He descended the stairs.

  They terminated twenty feet below the surface. A short corridor led to another archway. Beyond it, subdued light indicated a larger chamber. He crept forward, rifle cradled, as the din pressed around him like a shroud. He broached the final archway.