Only too happy to comply, Chalmers worked the buggy into second gear as they blew past the last building of the village proper and out onto the beaten earth path that led toward the closest satrap city.
“The shooter!” Jackson’s shout was nearly lost in the CRUMP! of another shell exploding, but his pointing arm was clear enough.
The track they were on curved away from the enemy positions. Chalmers hadn’t driven this way and wasn’t sure how to get across the—he counted quickly—two canals to the stand of giant grasses Jackson was pointing at. Then he saw there was another canal that connected the two, like the cross of a giant H. The near juncture of the H was close, maybe two hundred yards. Conscious of the adrenaline pushing him to go faster, Chalmers tried to keep the buggy at a safe speed, but the noise of repeated gunshots and explosions made him want to crush the accelerator with the heaviest lead foot across seven star systems.
It looked like the far end of the village was the focus of the assault while this end was pinned down by a squad or war party or whatever.
“Where the hell you going, Chalmers?”
CRUMP!
“Gonna go out and around, come back at them from behind,” Chalmers shouted, the words carrying them almost to the place where the connecting canal ran under a wooden bridge. He went off road for a better look at the canal.
“Can we use it?” Chalmers shouted at Jackson.
“Shallow enough,” Jacks shouted back.
“The slope?” Chalmers asked, figuring Jackson was answering how deep the water was, not the slope.
“Oh. Steep, but where the wall meets the bottom looks gentle.” He cupped a hand to show Chalmers.
“Fuck it,” Chalmers said. Not wanting to roll the buggy, he slowed and angled the vehicle so as to drop into the canal as smoothly as possible. Even with his careful approach, the buggy nearly tipped. The violent change of direction made their shoulders slam together, the impact nearly launching the lighter Jackson out of his seat. Chalmers grabbed him one-handed by the web harness and yanked him back to safety.
The buggy chugged, nearly stalling as his foot came off the accelerator with no downshift. By some miracle he managed a gear change before they hit the sluggish flow at the bottom of the canal and watery mud rocketed up all about them. He let the water slow them to a walking pace as the buggy’s fat wheels pushed matching bow waves of stinking mud before them. With any luck, the bad guys would think they wrecked. Failing that, Chalmers guessed the canal would mask their engine noise, make it harder to tell where they were in relation to the attackers. Unless there was someone in the canal with them.
A wide-eyed and cursing Jackson rested his M-14 muzzle in the foot well and started putting the four-point restraint on. Steering with his knees. Chalmers followed suit, or tried to.
“All right, we follow this to the junction, then turn right and we’re behind the bastards,” Chalmers grunted. He lifted his ass to get at one half of the buckle he’d been sitting on. “We go straight at them and we nosedive into the next canal.”
Jackson nodded.
Chalmers clipped in and was suddenly breathing easier. Then the absolute absurdity of the feeling of safety he had from putting on a seatbelt on in the middle of a gunfight struck him, making him giggle madly.
Jackson spared him an old-fashioned look.
“Buckle up, bitches!” a smiling Chalmers brayed, hammering the accelerator. Rooster tails of sludge shot up, behind, and all around them.
Jackson, either buying into his madness or too busy holding onto the chicken bar to say anything, just nodded. Nodded and, once the acceleration steadied, raised his M-14 to rest the forestock on the roll cage’s crossbar.
CRUMP!
The crackle of gunfire was muted by the steep banks around them but still accompanied their progress. They soon reached the far juncture. Chalmers turned into it, decided this canal was too deep to push along the bottom, and forded it.
They’d covered maybe a hundred yards before Chalmers started looking for a way up. If his estimate was correct, they would now be about a hundred yards west of the position from where the sniper was firing on the villagers. Close enough to take the attackers under fire, but far enough to take full advantage of the M-14’s greater accuracy and higher rate of fire. He really liked the idea of coming in behind the enemy’s shooters.
Chalmers eyed a spot where more earth had settled into the canal, gentling the slope considerably. He needed that easy gradient because, as it was, he had to hit the gas hard to climb the sloppy surface. The engine gave a throaty grumble as he horsed the buggy up it, mud, gravel, and loose soil ricocheting from the far side of the canal in their wake.
“Fuck,” Jackson said without heat, wiping the M-14’s receiver clear of muck.
Unsure whether to blast out of the canal or ease his way, Chalmers dithered so long he did neither in the end. The front of the buggy dropped flat as they crested the top and bounced down onto the field, revealing three men crouched behind a tripod-looking thing Chalmers required a moment to identify.
“Mortar!” Chalmers bellowed, flooring it.
Two of the men, mouths round Os of surprise, reached for their weapons as the partners bore down on them at twenty-five and accelerating. Chalmers couldn’t tell what the third guy was doing.
Jackson pointed and fired a few rounds, but only succeeded in giving his partner an earful, as far as Chalmers could tell.
Chalmers redlined it. He didn’t bother to shift into second. Best not to if you were about to hit something. He tried not to think about what he was about to do.
Two of the mortar men figured it out, though, and tried to jump aside. One made it, though it didn’t make any difference as the buggy crashed first into the rest of the crew, then into the mortar, which, in turn, was flung off its plate, crushing the third man’s chest. He went down in a welter of blood, an oblong, finned object spinning in a lazy arc from his hands.
Chalmers slewed the buggy into a hard left, a last-ditch effort to keep himself between Jackson and the expected explosion. He was only partially successful as the dead loader’s burden struck the ground and exploded with what Chalmers hoped was the final CRUMP! of the afternoon. Hot, hard needles traced lines along his arm, cheek, and shoulder closest to the blast, while his chest rattled with the shockwave.
The buggy, which he decided deserved a name after today’s action, barely slowed. Something sounded wrong, but Chalmers couldn’t be sure if it was just his abused ears shrieking their death song to his brain or actual damage to the motor. It wasn’t until he tried to draw breath to laugh in relief that he realized what was making that alarming rattle: his own breathing. Well, maybe the motor was fucked up, too, but he was really having trouble getting his wind.
“Threat right!” Jackson shouted.
Chalmers turned the buggy—had to decide on a name for her, and sooner rather than later—hard in that direction. His estimate had been off: they were about four hundred yards from the mill and closer to two hundred from the tree-grass stand from which the attackers had started their ambush. Five or six warriors were still sheltered behind the rootballs of the stuff as they fired at the village, but were turning to face the growling mechanical beast that had done for their mortar team.
He watched one warrior raise his rifle and saw the puff of smoke. Chalmers supposed the shot was a miss, given the lack of a whistle, thump, or thud. Then again, his ears were truly fucked, so there was no telling.
The field was a reasonably flat couple of acres on a mild diagonal approach to the enemy position, allowing Chalmers to build some speed. He slammed the buggy—or maybe “The Beast?” Naw, sounded too masculine—into second gear, gathering speed despite the atonal complaint of steel on steel somewhere in either the gearbox or engine.
Taking advantage of the comparatively level ground, Jackson took aim as best he could and started shooting.
The guy who’d made a try for them fell. Whether shot or stumbling as he scrambled fo
r cover, Chalmers couldn’t say.
“Rumblekins,” Chalmers muttered.
“What?” Jackson said, reloading with a speed and skill Chalmers knew he couldn’t have matched. Hell, Jackson himself would probably be amazed at how smoothly he was able to manage the process once they got through this.
“Name—” Chalmers coughed. The pain was excruciating. He decided this coughing thing was excessive and unpleasant. He would not allow it to happen again.
“What?” Jackson asked again.
“Names for the buggy,” Chalmers answered, sure his partner wasn’t listening, because the sergeant was busy servicing targets again. “Beefeater,” he muttered to himself past wet lips. He licked without thinking, tasting copper and salt instead of the muddy water he’d expected. “Nah,” he decided, patting the wheel. “You ain’t ginned up, are you, girl?”
Oh!
“Man-eater!” The mad cackle that followed the thought ended on a painful cough that left him slumped in the seat, wondering where the last little while had gone.
He heard Jackson shouting, but his partner wasn’t in the passenger seat anymore. There was a flurry of shots from his left, not the sharp cracks of the M14’s 7.62 NATO ammunition, but the more throaty booms of Jackson’s .45.
Chalmers wanted to help, tried to get out, but found he couldn’t. Reality kept blinking in and out, like a light switch played with by a sadistic five year old. He struggled mindlessly for far too long before realizing what the problem was. He fumbled with the buckle on the four-point restraint, his shaking fingers strangely cold.
He looked for Jackson, waiting—no, wanting—to hear a crack or two about how shitty his coordination was, and instead saw his death standing a few yards away. It was the warrior that had first shot at them a million years ago but less than five minutes of clock time. The raider dropped the great yawning blackness of his gun’s muzzle to point at Chalmers’ chest.
Reality stuttered again.
The warrant smiled redly. “Fucking shoot straight.”
“Fuck you!” Jackson shrieked, leaping out from between two monstrous blades of grass. Chalmers watched, fascinated, as the pistol in his partner’s hand barked and bounced, its big slide racking back and forth.
A great blossom of pain bloomed and grew to a full flower of agony rooted in the left side of Chalmers’ chest. As he closed his eyes against it, he really wished his last words had been something pithy. Something worthy for his partner to remember, if not with pride, then at least with a smile. Not something that would piss the little guy off. Chalmers had done enough of that. He was trying to do better.
* * * * *
Chapter Forty-Three
R’Bak
“Do better!” Jackson’s angry shout was muffled.
“I’m doing muh best, Sergeant,” the man’s accent was pure Missouri redneck, “But do you see an X-ray machine here? We barely know what we’re dealing with when it comes to the alien fungus ‘n shit. An’ that shit they’uns did to close up’n his wounds don’t quite track with what’n I learnt in school, unnerstan’?”
Alien fungus? A cold thrill of fear ran down Chalmers’ spine. He tried to clear away whatever was covering his ears, only to discover he couldn’t move his arms. He tried to speak, at least mumble, but found his mouth full of something.
“Fuck you, man,” Jackson shouted. “Worst Army doctor ever!”
“Imma corpsman, not a doctor, boy.”
“Boy? Boy?” Jackson’s voice went very high, very fast.
Chalmers’ grin made something wet and hot trickle down the side of his head. He kept grinning anyway. From the ascending tone of Jackson’s question, someone was about to get very messed up. Just because he was short, people tended to think they could get away with shit around Jackson. They were wrong.
He heard a clatter and a surprised yelp. Then, far more quietly: “You apologize, you cracker motherfucker or I’ll break every bone in your goddamn hand.”
“Look, I ain’t even a doctor, just a corpsman!” the other man whined, the last parts of the sentence run together by both pain and a fervent desire to end it.
“Apologize, Cracker.”
“I’msorrysosorryplease.”
“Sorry, Sergeant.”
“SosorrySergeant,” the man moaned.
“That’s better. See how easy that was?” A faint noise, another moan, then, “See to my partner, you cracker, or I’ll see to you.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
There followed a few minutes of fussing and tending from the medic, corpsman, whatever, whom Chalmers dimly remembered as some Vietnam-era redneck with a full set of tattoos and teeth that hadn’t been a full set since shortly after his twelve year molars had come in. The medic or corpsman or whatever left quite quickly after that.
Chalmers tried to say something again, but not only had his mouth been stuffed, they’d wound something around his jaw. He didn’t remember anything hitting him in the head enough to break any bones, but then the boxer never saw the punch that knocked him out, did he? Fear made his heart race. Was he gonna look like the Elephant Man? Uglier? He’d never considered himself model-pretty, but he’d known himself to possess a certain dark, rakish charm.
He heard what sounded like a stool being dragged over, and then Jackson’s voice, clearer now that he was closer. “Hey, partner. You awake?”
Chalmers’ attempt to answer came out more like a whining moan than the manly grunt he’d been trying for.
“Hey, that’s good,” Jackson said.
Chalmers could hear the lie in his voice.
“You lost a lot of blood, and if it weren’t for another one of those Clarthu healers, we’d have lost you in those first hours. As it was, they had a hell of a time putting you back together. And now, Chalmers, there’s this whole other thing…” Jackson trailed off, clearly at a loss for how to tell his partner his face was being eaten by an alien fungus.
“Hwww lnnng?”
“How long? Well, let me think. Shit, better part of two weeks, more or less? Hard to keep track.”
More lost time. Chalmers thought about asking what his prognosis was, but hesitated, not really wanting to hear about how his flesh was being devoured by a mushroom.
Jackson helped distract him. “I bet you’re wondering what the hell happened?”
Chalmers managed an, “Mmmmmhmmmm,” that sounded a lot less emphatic than he liked. He was desperate for any kind of distraction, and his mind, never predisposed to dwell on bad news, leapt at the chance to learn what had happened in his absence.
“The hetman hadn’t been paying tribute to the top dog, so the platoon-level attack we interrupted was meant to tell them who was boss.”
Chalmers managed a tiny shake of his head.
“I know, right? None of the briefs said they kicked up to the satraps or their lieutenants. No, they all said Clarthu was more or less independent, that the people there could be relied on to a certain extent. And the briefs, they were correct, too—more or less—because the bosses they were supposed to be appeasing weren’t R’Baku at all, but top dogs for real. Which is to say, the SpinDogs—or rather, an isolationist faction among them.”
“Ergh?” Chalmers managed, unsure whether it was painkillers, blood loss, or simply native stupidity that was preventing him understanding Jackson’s explanation.
“Remember Murphy telling us there was a potential problem in that the SpinDogs were mostly backing us?”
“Mmmm-hmmm,” Chalmers managed. His cheek was starting to itch abominably, making him bite back a sob.
“Well, it stood to reason there was another faction, one that didn’t want us to interfere in their profitable and long-established dealings with the R’Baku.”
“Ergh?”
“Some people can’t be trusted with power,” Jackson said, then swallowed loudly and let go a sigh that was tired but satisfied. “Just can’t trust them at all. Want to stay there no matter what the cost is to their own organization. Appar
ently a group called the Hardliners are spearheading the faction that wants everything to remain status quo.” He chuckled. “That means ‘the same,’ Chalmers.”
“Fthk Uuuu,” Chalmers managed.
Jackson’s chuckle deepened, then became a laugh. Chalmers liked to hear it, though he didn’t feel much like doing anything other than scratch away the itch that was crawling along the side of his face like shark skin rubbed the wrong way. Tears welled as Chalmers considered they might actually have to use something like sharkskin on his face to scrape the fungus out of his wounds. No more man-eaters for Chalmers. Likely no companionship ever again. Not unless he purchased it. Self-pity made silent tears flow, or try to. The bandages soaked most of them up.
Another loud swallow was followed by the sound of liquid swishing in bottle. “Damn rude of me to be drinking without you, but you can’t have a drink in your condition. Something about it lowering your immune system.”
Chalmers didn’t even try and tell his partner to fuck off. He didn’t want to aggravate the itch any further than necessary.
“Where was I?” Jackson asked after a brief wait to see if Chalmers would rise to the bait. “Oh, yeah, the Hardliners. So these fuckers realized that their source for the drugs the healers used to fix your broken ass was about to either dry up or, worse yet from their point of view, end up in the hands of the Expansionist faction: their main rivals.
“So, the Hardliners decide to make sure we failed. Spectacularly. They contacted their people on the planet—apparently they’ve got a network like the main SpinDog liaisons have—and activated a couple of dead drops. Murphy is pretty sure—”
“Ergk?”
“What’s that? Oh, yeah, Murphy and me had a long chat after the battle and a couple of rather interesting discussions with some people here. Something went on up there, on all of the SpinDog rohabs; something heavy. Murphy was vague on specifics, but I got his drift: the shit they tried to pull here became known up there and bad blood boiled over. Anyway, the guys who attacked Clarthu may not have been following direct orders from the Hardliners—they may have had some motives of their own—but they definitely got the mortar and shells from them.”
Murphy's Lawless: A Terran Republic Novel Page 42