by J. J. Snow
Forward of the picket were field upon field of deep space sensors, most of them armed and capable of defending themselves for short periods if attacked. Gaps in between the sensors were often filled with extensive minefields to prevent undetected ingress. Between the planets, fleet space stations and patrols were used to defend their flanks. The planets themselves were armed with light turrets to provide viable surface and upper-atmosphere defense when occupied. The ice planets, having very thin atmospheres, tended to have less atmospheric attenuation, allowing their laser weapons to travel farther and still have a significant impact. At least they have that going for them, Reilly noted grimly.
The deep-space sensor system showed up like a sea of fireflies, red and green lights indicating broken and functioning detectors around them in the void. Reilly opened her book and jotted down which ones were working and which ones needed to be upgraded or repaired. She looked over the minefields and identified locations for additional mine-laying operations. With any luck, she’d be able to use the sensors and the mines to channelize a large attacking force, forcing them into several chokepoints that would aid in the planets’ defense. Reilly opened her handheld and began to set up a list of tasks to distribute to the wing.
Five hours later, she paused, realizing how much still needed to be done before they would be really ready for a fight. Items that would take months but needed to be repaired in days topped the list. Reilly sighed and closed her data sheets out before shutting her handheld. Sleep was also on her to-do list, although it wouldn’t be for more than a few hours. She trudged back towards the ship, crunching through pockets of ice on the concrete and metal floor plates. The interior bunker temperatures were warm enough but just barely, at 58 degrees. Reilly refused to increase the temperature and risk drawing off power that could be used for other functions. Only the living quarters were kept warmer, so people could get adequate sleep. Exterior temperatures frequently stayed in the negative twenties during the day. Reilly stopped to check the mission board. Security patrols had begun surveys of the surrounding areas. Ty had set up overwatch positions outside the bunker, just in case they had any unexpected visitors. The deep-space sensors, even when fully operational, still had been known to miss single alien reconnaissance birds and the occasional raiding craft. Trying to track a tiny ship in the void that was space was a difficult challenge. The sensor net was designed to provide warning of multiple raiding craft of squadron-or-larger-size formations heading towards the picket. But one or two small spacecraft could slip through without detection, especially if they had skilled electronics operators on board.
Two young sergeants walked by her, shouldering rifles and pulling on snow gear for the evening watch. Reilly didn’t envy them that job. She had stood security duty many long, cold nights on this planet, peering through the snow and ice as she paced to keep warm. At least the light was constant. The ice planets were part of a trinary solar system, so they never got completely dark. Instead, they tended to vary in shades of gray as the planet rotated. Morning was bright gray. Evening was more of a smoke gray or a stormy gray, depending on the wind and snow.
Reilly could hear the wind, even though she was underground in a bunker. It made a continuous whine that reverberated through the thick slab ceiling as she entered the gunship’s side hatch and headed up towards her room. The whine became a howl, accompanying the dread she felt towards her next task. She reluctantly tossed her gear aside and made her way over to the wall across from her bunk.
On the bookshelf sat an older log book, dirty and smudged, coated in salt from sweat and no few tears. Reilly took it down with even measures of love and hate for the memories it held. She opened it carefully and shifted through the pages and her old notes. It was all here. The first day she arrived as a young lieutenant until day 467 when a gunship finally pulled her and what was left of her team out of the frozen hell that still occupied her nightmares. The aliens had been relentless once they had figured out the gunship raiding parties had been launching from the nearby planets. Every day, sometimes multiple times in a day, her team would come under fire on patrol as they were ambushed or snipers sought to pick them off. Storm days were the worst. Visibility was less than a foot, and attacks came with very little warning. A routine patrol could go downhill fast as humans struggled to outmaneuver aliens who could see and breathe in the planet’s thin, cold atmosphere. One minute you were all walking, the next half the platoon was laid out dead, hacked to bits by alien weapons as the monsters lunged out of the snow banks to kill whoever was left.
Reilly had learned her lessons well. She had the scars to prove it. Others were not as lucky. Thirteen good men and women she lost in the first six months. Even with careful planning and all the luck in the world, if it was your time, then that was it. The battles were harsh and bloody for both sides. By the time they finally pulled out, the aliens had been forced to retreat, thanks in no small part to Commander Zain’s bold strategies. Rime was a place of bad memories for all of them. Ty had lost a full platoon to an assassin, barely surviving the encounter himself. Chang had been a sergeant then, training the troops in ground combat and leading some of the more technical mission in the field. Every day he had to watch the ranks thin, as their losses climbed when the aliens tried for a final push to gain the mountain and then the bunkers. To be back here again was like being forced into an old nightmare, except this time there were new faces. Reilly knew she would be seeing them in her dreams. She saw all of them after they died, as if they were reluctant to leave, as if they wanted an explanation for why it had to be them.
In her mind, she recalled each patrol entry. The first attack was still the worst. The sleet was driving sideways and she could barely make out the shadowy soldier trudging up the hill in front of her. Then suddenly she felt a gush of air as the white stuff billowed up in front of her, blinding her briefly. She froze, waiting for the soldier behind her to run into her. Finally, when someone did, it wasn’t the sergeant who had been following her. The silence was torturous and they didn’t dare to breathe, even though the full-face-mask re-breathers hid the sounds under the blackened rubber and goggles. The click of fire selectors being turned to burst or auto sounded like loud pops. As she turned, scanning through the sleet, a shiny object flew away from her, drawing her attention for just a second. Before she could react, the sergeant had thrown her back and jumped on the grenade at her feet. Everything turned pink, and then the aliens were on them and amongst them. The silence broke under the sounds of explosions and gunfire and screams from both sides. When it was over, they gathered up the bodies they could find and made their way back to the bunkers. And then they went back to do it again the next day and the day after that until all the attacks and deaths and fear and hate blended together into one never-ending way of life. Reilly had hated it, and more than that, she had hated that she loved it too. The rush she felt every time she survived was only matched by her hatred of the enemy and her desire to kill more of them to avenge those she had lost. It became an addiction, a vicious cycle that was impossible to break until the day they finally let them leave. Then they all had to learn how to live again. Until the next war zone or the next battle was thrust upon them.
The knock startled her. She set down the log and walked over to the hatch and opened it. Chang looked at her and stepped in at her invite. He saw the log book and was about to speak when Reilly cut in.
“Tunnels. We need them.”
Chang smiled a tired sort of smile. “So we change the style of fighting. They will still need to patrol outside to keep them back. We must have a perimeter and outer defense to complement the interior.”
“I know. But if we push out our perimeter underground as well and make them fight on our terms, then maybe, just maybe, we’ll win a few more and lose a lot less. Can we do it?”
“I think so. The generators checked out and the geothermal power system is still in relatively solid shape. Lee Roy and Marek got into the old maintenance area once we
finished clearing the collapsed tunnel. They found the robots and are working on getting them running again. That will be a significant help to us.”
Reilly sketched the main bunker complex from memory and then began to add on spokes radiating outward. She drew in some cross hatches and adjoining areas, along with a few stairways and tunnels to the surface. Then she added in blocking positions. She shoved the rough sketch over to Chang.
“This could work very well for us,” he said, tracing the drawing with an index finger. “These blocking positions can be wired up with explosives ahead of time, and we can either manually detonate them or centrally detonate them from the command center to close off any compromised areas.”
“We can move patrols out this way too. Instead of wearing them out trying to get them to the more remote sectors, they can travel most of the way underground without having to be on guard constantly. We don’t have the numbers to be able to accommodate high ambush losses. I’m thinking several well-disguised hide sites to cover the entrances, and we back them up with security cameras so they can see what’s outside before they open up.” Reilly tapped her pen on a few possible locations.
Chang nodded. “Tiny can help with this. She has designed covert facilities before, so she will have some good inputs on tunnel placement and security. She mentioned wanting to emplace some booby traps on the surface as well. I’ll talk to her in the morning about it.”
“I’ll share our ideas with Captain Callum and Captain Slauson, too. Any alien forces, if they fought here before, will know these planets as well as we do. I want to make sure we have a few surprises for them that will make them think twice before barging onto our turf.”
“I agree. If we can make them pay for it up front, they will be forced to move more cautiously when they do come against us.” Chang took the sketch and put it in his pocket. “It’s a good plan.”
Reilly continued, “I want you and the crew to find some time to test out our haul from Vervian—discreetly. I think some of that alien tech might come in handy as part of our plan. Get Tiny to catalog the items she is familiar with, and see if she is willing to give us some train-up on them. But let’s keep it to a small group of special operators for now. I don’t want word to get out, in case we have any spies we missed. We’re going to need every little bit of edge we can get.”
Chang made another note and sent a quick message to Tiny asking her to take a look at the Vervian cache.
“Now, what did you have for me?” Reilly came back around and leaned on the front of her desk as Chang keyed up some forms on his handheld and then holo-projected them for the Captain to see.
“We have supplies to keep us well into the next month with appropriate rationing. Water isn’t a problem, since the filtration system is still running and all backup reservoirs are full. But food will become an issue. We will need to plan for supply runs every few months. Or we can try to take down some of Welch’s transports along the nearest transit routes.”
Reilly squinted at the numbers. “I’d like to do some supply harassment anyway, but we’ll have to plan ahead. Welch will only let us get away with a few of those before he tries to turn it into an ambush. Talk to Duv. He set up the plan we used last time out here, and we had some pretty good success with it. We’re going to need some new tactics, too—we can’t afford to be predictable.”
Chang flagged the item with Duv’s name and slid it aside. He continued reviewing medical, ammunition, parts, fuel, and on until Reilly had been completely updated on the status of the base. They discussed a final few items and then said goodnight. As Reilly closed up her hatch and crawled into her bunk, dousing the lights, her mind wandered back to the old log book. The memories were still fresh. She sighed and closed her eyes anyway. In the dark the wind howled, and she was back walking patrol. Off in the distance, she could see the small form of a little girl in a red dress with pigtails looking down on them through the sleet. A voice whispered under the wind.
“You can’t change what you are. Blood is your heritage.”
Reilly put her head down and walked on in the frigid sleet, waiting for the shadowy figure of the soldier in front of her to disappear like he always did right before everything turned into a fine pink mist.
—————
Life had taken a turn for the worse. It had become a pattern. Wake up. Work out. Eat. Patrol. Clean gear. Test gear. Clean weapons. Eat. Sleep. Somewhere in there were minor variations that included some card games, business with a guy who had set up an illegal still, fights, training, and a few practical jokes. And lots of guns. It was a battle zone, after all. But patterns were dangerous, they could become comfortable, safe, make you believe everything was okay when it wasn’t. Ty despised patterns.
He finished securing his tac-gear and slung his battle rifle. A few minutes later, he and Tiny were leading a platoon through the tunnels to one of the remote sectors for patrol. They had been on the ground for four months now, and except for the build-out of the bunker complex, not much had changed. The war was going slowly.
Duv had seen the majority of the action. He had led the first successful supply interdiction against Welch’s ISU run transports. After luring several of the ships into a nearby solar system, he sprung a gate on them, killing the implants and seizing the ships. The cleanup had not been pretty, but they had been glad that the gates had been strong enough to almost incinerate the bodies. That way the faces were unrecognizable. None of them wanted to think about fighting against old friends, although they all knew it was coming. Thankfully, the supplies they got would run them for another six months if they were careful. The Captain was planning to send out a few ships on a normal supply run, too. If they could avoid killing implants, they would, until it became necessary.
Ty held his place at the back of the formation. Today there was a new lieutenant leading at the front. Cochran. Young, cocky, a bit mouthy, but had potential if he would just learn to listen. The real problem was he was complacent. In fact, a lot of the newer soldiers had begun to slack. Ty had roughed him up that morning in close-quarters combat training to make a point. The lieutenant had fallen for a simple trick because he had gotten lazy, and Ty had made him pay for it by taking him to the mat. He had gotten their attention, but he wasn’t convinced that it had made an impact. The problem was that war was a patient creature. It would wait you out. And then it would kill you in an instant. Ty knew. He had seen it happen. He didn’t want to see it again.
Tiny slid into the middle of the formation, her small stature disguising her incredible skill and strength as a warrior. Ty had been training with her regularly, patrolling with her, and at night sharing a room and sometimes a bunk with her. The relationship hadn’t progressed beyond a platonic one of two wounded warriors helping each other to get through the pain. They knew each other well enough now that a simple look took the place of words, a hand signal or touch provided the necessary guidance for action. Where nightmares had kept him awake in the past, confusion and indecisiveness ate away at Ty now. He had never known anybody like her before, and what they had was something that had become deeply important to him. The problem was he had never been in or wanted to be in a serious relationship before. Now that he was considering it, he was terrified of driving her away. So he kept his thoughts to himself and waited, hoping that maybe she would be the one to break the ice.
His earpiece crackled as the command post sent out a report. Suspicious activity had been reported in the sector they were headed to. Some interference and strange signals had sprung up and then disappeared. Tiny glanced back to meet his gaze. They had had comms issues before in the remote sectors, but signals were a new development. Not a good sign. Cochran looked back down the line, giving the signal to suit up. As one, they donned their black rubber masks and turned on their re-breathers, checking pressures and adjusting flows before giving thumbs-up to signal they were ready to head out. The masks gave off an eerie orange glow from the internal HUD that worked off of
the ballistic-tempered composite forming the eyepieces, while the black, ridged hoses hissed to life as they disappeared inside tundra gear and under body armor, snaking around each soldier to the air tanks hidden in their tactical patrol packs.
Instead of checking the camera feed before hitting the door release, the lieutenant mashed the button and stepped out into the blizzard. Ty growled a curse to himself, noting Tiny stopping to check the feed and then checking it himself before he locked the entranceway behind them. It was a stupid move to walk out into an area without even a look to see if anything was waiting. So much for the lesson on complacency. Ty reminded himself to make a point to bring it up in the mission debrief.
The snow and ice swirled around them under the dark gray sky as they moved out. Ty listened to the crisp snap of ice under boots, wincing at the tremendous noise it made in his mind. They plodded on, keeping their spacing even as they moved up towards the ridgeline. Several of the younger guys began to lose interest in their surroundings, staring at the ground instead of scanning. Ty wanted to scream at them to get their heads screwed on right, but this wasn’t the place. If there were enemies nearby, talking would bring in bullets and lasers faster than anything. He scanned left and right again, then looked straight up the line. Tiny had stepped out to the left and was looking at something. She turned towards him and signaled she was going to check it out, then disappeared into the drifts. Even though he knew she could handle herself, it still drove him nuts when she did that. Ty watched the lieutenant continue on along the narrow switchback that would bring them to the next pass and down into the valley as the others followed. As he came up to the spot where Tiny had diverted, the hairs raised on the back of his neck: marks in the snow, angular, like slats moving back off the trail before disappearing again. Ty had seen this before. An alien scout had been there before them, and not too long ago, since the wind and snow hadn’t hidden the sign yet. His gun came up automatically as his flipped the selector to burst. The private in front of him looked back and reacted as well, bringing his gun up to burst after seeing Ty’s stance. The kid was smart enough to know that if the sergeant was concerned about something, he should be too.