Jim Baen’s Universe
Page 28
If I'm around to make the recommendation. If she's around to get it.
Badly aimed rifle fire had been zipping overhead since the beginning of the breakout, but now a machine gun on a fixed mount cut branches nearby. Ruthven rotated his tribarrel to the right. Bullets whanged off the car's high side. The machine gunner was part of the unit that'd been waiting down the road for the Royalist garrison. He was bloody good to hit a moving target at 600 meters, even with the advantage of a tripod.
Ruthven fired a short burst. His tribarrel was stabilized, but the lurching car threw him around violently even though the weapon held its point of aim. His bolts vanished into the night, leaving only faintly glowing tracks on their way toward interplanetary vacuum.
Ruthven took a deep breath, letting the car bump into a small depression. When they started up the other side, into a belt of canes trailing hair-fine filaments, he fired. This time his shots merged with the muzzle flashes of the rebel machine gun. Plasma licked a white flare of burning steel.
Got you, you bastard! Ruthven thought. Three rebels with buzzbombs rose out of the swale ten meters ahead of the car.
Ruthven swung the tribarrel back toward the new targets. The rebels to left and right fired: glowing gas spurted from the back of the launching tubes, and the bulbous missiles streaked toward the vehicle behind quick red sparks.
The car's automatic defense system banged twice, blasting tungsten pellets from the strips just above the skirts. They shredded the buzzbombs in the air, killing one of the rebels who happened to be in the way of the remainder of the charge.
Ruthven shot before his gun was on target, hoping his blue-green bolts chewing the landscape would startle the rebels. The remaining rebel fired. Because the car's bow was canted upward, the third buzzbomb approached from too low to trip the ADS. The warhead burst against the skirts, punching a white-hot spear through the plenum chamber and up into the driver's compartment.
Several lift fans shut off; pressurized air from the remaining nacelles roared through the hole blown in the steel. The car grounded, rocked forward in a near somersault, and slammed to rest on its skirts.
The first impact smashed Ruthven's thighs against the hatch coaming; pain was a sun-white blur filling his mind. When the car's bow lifted, it tossed him onto the bales of rations and personal gear in the roof rack. Ruthven was only vaguely aware of the final shock hurling him off the crippled vehicle.
He opened his eyes. He was on his back with the landscape shimmering in and out of focus. He must've been unconscious, but he didn't know how long. The car was downslope from him. One of its fans continued to scream, but the others were silent. Black smoke boiled out of the driver's compartment.
He tried to stand up but his legs didn't move. Have they been blown off? They couldn't be, I'd have bled out. He'd lost his helmet, so the visor no longer protected his eyes from the sky-searing bolts of plasma being fired from the knoll above him. The afterimages of each track wobbled from orange to purple and back across his retinas.
Ruthven rolled over, still dazed. Pain yawned in a gaping cavern centered on his right leg. He must've screamed but he couldn't hear the sound. When the jolt from the injured leg sucked inward and vanished, his throat felt raw.
"It's the El-Tee!" somebody cried. "Cover me, I'm going to get him."
Another buzzbomb detonated with a hollow Whoomp! on the right side of the command car. Momentarily, a pearly bubble swelled bigger than the vehicle itself. The jet penetrated the thin armor, crossed the compartment, and sprayed out the left side.
Ruthven started crawling, pushing himself with his left foot and dragging his right as though the leg were tied to his hip with a rope. He couldn't feel it now except as a dull throbbing somewhere.
He wasn't trying to get to safety: he knew his safest course would be to lie silently in a dip, hoping to go unobserved or pass for dead. He wasn't thinking clearly, but his troopers were on the knoll so that's where he was going.
A rebel ran out from behind the command car shouting, "Protect me, Lord!"
Ruthven glanced back. His sub-machine gun was in the vehicle, but he wore a pistol. He scrabbled for it but his equipment belt was twisted; he couldn't find the holster.
The rebel thrust his automatic rifle out in both hands; the butt wasn't anywhere near his shoulder. "Die, unbeliever!" he screamed. A 2-cm powergun bolt decapitated him. The rifle fired as he spasmed backwards.
One bullet struck Ruthven in the small of the back. It didn't penetrate his ceramic body armor, but the impact was like a sledgehammer. Bits of bullet jacket sprayed Ruthven's right arm and cheek.
He pushed himself upward again, moaning deep in his throat. He thought he might be talking to himself. A skimmer snarled through the high grass and circled to a halt alongside, the bow facing uphill. Nozzles pressurized by the single fan sprayed grit across Ruthven's bare face.
"El- Tee, grab on!" Rennie shouted, leaning from the flat platform to seize Ruthven's belt. "Grab!"
Ruthven turned on his side and reached out. He got a tie-down in his left hand and the shoulder clamp of the sergeant's armor in his right. Rennie was already slamming power to the lift fan, trying to throw his weight out to the right to balance the drag of Ruthven's body.
The skimmer wasn't meant to carry two, but it slowly accelerated despite the excess burden. Ruthven bounced through brush, sometimes hitting a rock. His left boot acted as a skid, but often enough his hip or the length of his leg scraped as the skimmer ambled uphill. A burst of sub-machine gun fire, a nervous flickering against the brighter, saturated flashes of 2-cm weapons, crackled close overhead, but Ruthven couldn't see what the shooter was aiming at.
The skimmer jolted over a shrub whose roots had held the windswept soil in a lump higher than the ground to either side. Ruthven flew free and rolled. Every time his right leg hit the ground, a flash of pain cut out that fraction of the night.
A tribarrel chugged from behind, raking the slope up which they'd come. Ruthven was within the new perimeter. Half a dozen Royalists huddled nearby with terrified expressions, but E/1 itself had enough firepower to halt the rebels. They'd already been hammered, and now more shells screamed down like a regiment of flaming banshees.
Firebase Groening was northeast of Firebase Courage, so the Hogs were overfiring E/1's present perimeter to reach the rebels. Somebody-Sergeant Hassel?-must be calling in concentrations, relaying the messages through the command car. The vehicle was out of action, but its radios were still working.
Rennie spun the skimmer to a halt. "Made it!" he shouted. "We bloody well made it!"
Ruthven found his holster and managed to lift the flap. Beside him, Rennie hunched to remove his 2-cm weapon from the rail where he'd clamped it to free
both hands for the rescue.
A buzzbomb skimmed the top of the knoll, missing the tribarrel at which it'd been aimed and striking Sergeant Rennie in the middle of the back. There was a white flash.
The shells from Firebase Groening landed like an earthquake on the rebels who'd overrun the Royalist camp and were now starting uphill toward E/1. In the light of the huge explosions, Ruthven saw Rennie's head fly high in the air. The sergeant had lost his helmet, and his expression was as innocent as a child's.
****
"Good afternoon, Lieutenant Ruthven," Doctor Parvati said as he stepped into the room without knocking. "You are up? And packing already, I see. It is good that you should be optimistic, but let us take things one step at a time, shall we? Lie down on your bed, please, so that I can check you."
Ruthven wondered if Parvati'd put a slight emphasis on the phrase "one step." Probably not, and even if he had it'd been meant as a harmless joke. I have to watch myself. I'm pretty near the edge, and if I start overreacting, well…
"Look, Doc," he said, straightening but not moving away from the barracks bag he was filling from the locker he'd kept under the bed. "You saw the reading that Drayer took this noon, right? I'm kinda in a hurry."
"I have gone over the noon readings, yes," Parvati said calmly. He was a small, slight man with only a chaplet of hair remaining, though by his face he was in his early youth. "Now I would like to take more readings."
When Ruthven still hesitated, Parvati added, "I do not tell you how to do your job, Lieutenant. Please grant me the same courtesy."
"Right," said Ruthven after a further moment. He pushed the locker to the side and paused. The garments were new, sent over from Quartermaster's Stores. The gear on the command car's rack had burned when they shot at rebs trying to get to the tribarrel. The utilities Ruthven had worn during the firefight had been cut off him as soon as he arrived here.
He sat on the bed and carefully swung his legs up. He'd been afraid of another blinding jolt, but he felt nothing worse than a twinge in his back. Funny how it was his left hip rather than the smashed right femur where the pain hit him now. He'd scraped some on the left side, but he'd have said that was nothing to mention.
"So," said Parvati, reading the diagnostic results with his hands crossed behind his back. The holographic display was merely a distortion in the air from where Ruthven lay looking at the doctor. "So."
"I was talking to Sergeant Axbird this afternoon," Ruthven said to keep from fidgeting. "She was my platoon sergeant, you know. I was wondering how she was coming along?"
Parvati looked at Ruthven through the display. After a moment he said, "Mistress Axbird's physical recovery has gone as far as it can. How she does now depends on her own abilities and the degree to which she learns to use her new prosthetics. If you are her friend, you will encourage her to show more initiative in that regard."
"Ah," Ruthven said. "I see. I'm cleared for duty, though, Doctor. Right?"
He wondered if he ought to stand up again. Parvati always used the bed's own display instead of downloading the information into a clipboard.
"Are you still feeling pain in your hip, Lieutenant?" the doctor asked, apparently oblivious of Ruthven's question.
"No," Ruthven lied. "Well, not really. You know, I get a little, you know, tickle from time to time. I guess that'll go away pretty quick, right?"
It struck Ruthven that the diagnostic display would include blood pressure, heart rate, and all the other physical indicators of stress. He jumped up quickly. Pain exploded from his hip; he staggered forward. His mouth was open to gasp, but his paralyzed diaphragm couldn't force the air out of his lungs.
"Lieutenant?" Parvati said, stepping forward.
"I'm all right!" said Ruthven. Sweat beaded his forehead. "I just tripped on the locker! Bloody thing!"
"I see," said Parvati in a neutral tone. "Well, Lieutenant, your recovery seems to be proceeding most satisfactorily. I'd like you to remain here for a few days, however, so that some of my colleagues can check you over."
"You mean Psych, don't you?" Ruthven said. His hands clenched and unclenched. "Look, Doc, I don't need that and I sure don't want it. Just sign me out, got it?"
"Lieutenant Ruthven, you were seriously injured," the doctor said calmly. "I would be derelict in my duties if I didn't consider the possibility that the damage I was able to see had not caused additional damage beyond my purview. I wish to refer you to specialists in psychological trauma, yes."
"Do you?" Ruthven said. His voice was rising, but he couldn't help it. "Well, you let me worry about that, all right? You're a nice guy, Doc, but you said it: my psychology is none of your business! Now, you clear me back to my unit, or I'll take it over your head. You can explain to Colonel Hammer why you're dicking around a platoon leader whose troops need him in the field!"
"I see," said the doctor without any inflection. "I do not have the authority to hold you against your will, Lieutenant, but for your own sake I wish you would reconsider."
"You said that," Ruthven said. He bent and picked up his barracks bag. "Now, you do your job and let me get back to mine."
Parvati made a slight bow. "As you wish," he said. He touched the controller in his hand; the hologram vanished like cobwebs in a storm. "I will have an orderly come to take your bag."
"Don't worry about that," Ruthven said harshly. "I can get it over to the transient barracks myself. They'll find me a bunk there if there isn't a way to get to E/1 still tonight. I just want to be out of this place ASAP."
He didn't know where the platoon was or who was commanding in his absence. Hassel, he hoped; it'd be awkward if Central 'd brought in another officer already. He wondered how many replacements they'd gotten after the ratfuck at Firebase Courage.
"As you wish," Parvati repeated, opening the door and stepping back for Ruthven to lead. "Ah? By the water pitcher, Lieutenant? The file is yours, I believe?"
Ruthven didn't look over his shoulder. "No, not mine," he said. "I was thinking about, you know, transferring out, but I couldn't leave my platoon. E/1 really needs me, you know."
He walked into the corridor, as tight as a compressed spring. Even before Axbird had come to see him, he'd been thinking of night and darkness and the faceless horror of living among people who didn't know what it was like. Who'd never know what it was like.
The troopers of Platoon E/1 did need Henry Ruthven, he was sure.
But not as much as I need them, in the night and the unending darkness.
****
Fantasy Stories
The Cold Blacksmith
c.e., first pass, 3-23-06, mmm
CE, second pass, 3-24-06, mmm
Elizabeth Bear
"Old man, old man, do you tinker?"
Weyland Smith rais
ed up his head from his anvil, the heat rolling beads of sweat across his face and his sparsely forested scalp, but he never stopped swinging his hammer. The ropy muscles of his chest knotted and released with every blow, and the clamor of steel on steel echoed from the trees. The hammer looked to weigh as much as the smith, but he handled it like a bit of cork on a twig. He worked in a glade, out of doors, by a deep cold well, just right for quenching and full of magic fish. Whoever had spoken was still under the shade of the trees, only a shadow to one who squinted through the glare of the sun.
"Happen I'm a blacksmith, miss," he said.
As if he could be anything else, in his leather apron, sweating over forge and anvil in the noonday sun, limping on a lamed leg.
"Do you take mending, old man?" she asked, stepping forth into the light.
He thought the girl might be pretty enough in a country manner, her features a plump-cheeked outline under the black silk veil pinned to the corners of her hat. Not a patch on his own long-lost swan-maiden Olrun, though Olrun had left him after seven years to go with her two sisters, and his two brothers had gone with them as well, leaving Weyland alone.
But Weyland kept her ring and with it her promise. And for seven times seven years to the seventh times, he'd kept it, seduced it back when it was stolen away, held it to his heart in fair weather and foul. Olrun's promise-ring. Olrun's promise to return.
Olrun who had been fair as ice, with shoulders like a blacksmith, shoulders like a giantess.
This girl could not be less like her. Her hair was black and it wasn't pinned, all those gleaming curls a-tumble across the shoulders of a dress that matched her hair and veil and hat. A little linen sack in her left hand was just the natural color, and something in it chimed when she shifted. Something not too big. He heard it despite the tolling of the hammer that never stopped.