Their Master's war

by Mick Farren

  The communicator ran through the message for a sec ond time. Rance straightened up. The shore looked down at him.

  "You hearthatr

  "I heard it."

  "So I guess you can get back to moving your men out."

  The full story didn't come out until they were back on the ship. Some of the old-timers, the sweetgassers, had made a pact. Just like Renchett, they had bought a homemade bomb from one of the women subversives. Unlike Renchett, they hadn't used it to try to blast their way into worm territory. One of them, probably a sapper-there were a couple of sappers among the dead- had rigged a situation fuse. After exactly seven minutes of the recall siren, the bomb had blown them all to an afterlife or none, depending on their beliefs. The women in the area must have been in on the plan. There were no women casualties at all. The suicide plot had overshadowed all other messdeck tales of the liberty.

  "They must have had earplugs."

  "That, or they were gassed out of their minds."

  "Had to be gassed out of their minds."

  "I wouldn't mind going that way, if the time was right."

  "And when exactly is the time right, smartass?" "They must have known."

  Rance, when he heard that, looked around at his men. The topman in him knew that suicide talk had to be squashed, but somehow he just didn't have the strength. He wondered how many of the men around him would even make it to the light-year stare. Would he make it there himself?

  The aftermath of a liberty was a topman's nightmare. The men were hung over and sullen. They'd tasted a little of what could be, and they now resented what was with a slit-eyed poison. The suicides and the fact that the liberty had been cut short had wiped out any benefit to morale that might have come from the break. If there needed to be any other reason for resentment, it was the general assumption that a jump was coming up, even though there had been no official announcement as yet. Rance had made a mental note to get Renchett and the others out of the pods if a jump was called. Despite what he'd said, he didn't want to lose them.

  He knew that the liberty had done no good, when the time-honored suit-superstition came to the surface. Even though the men were bleary and out of shape when Rance ran them through the first shakedown drill, they blamed everything on the suits. The suits were acting up. The suits were jealous because their men had been with women. Rance had never really made up his mind about the legend. He could remember, as a trooper, how his suit had seemed stiff and unyielding after a liberty. His best idea was that the suits got pissed off at the assortment of poisons that were being sweated out of the troopers wearing them. Rance was ever the realist.

  Eleven

  What was left of the twenty crouched on the crest of Hill 3837. It was the perfect vantage point from which to watch the big push up the Ten River valley, although nobody was relishing the advantage. The valley was a wide sweep, curving north from where the Ten ran into the gulf. It had cut a deep, steep-sided path through a range of young jagged hills. On either side of the slow, passive river was thick fungoid jungle, walls of gray, fleshy growth like luxuriant death. The jungle was so primitively virulent that it had climbed most of the way up even the most precipitous slopes. What was left of the twenty waited on their bare hilltop well above what was ^! oosely called the tree line. As soon as the order was given, though, they'd move on down, burning their way into the dank heat of the pallid leprous jungle that was almost certainly concealing a full menu of Yal rearguard nastiness.

  All terminology on this planet was loose. The expanse of brown soup that rolled along down to the equally brown sea could scarcely qualify as water. The men hated this forsaken planet. They had fought in both its major theaters of war and taken serious casualties in each. They'd started out on the permafrost, and now they were in the jungle. Siryn, one of the new intake, had started coughing. The air was also only an approximation.

  The troopers now and again cracked their facemasks for a brief respite from the metallic taste of canned air. Siryn had left his mask cracked for too long. The native spores, microorganisms, and all kinds of other unknown crap had their hooks into his lungs. He'd probably get sick. That was the trouble with new meat-they kept finding new ways to act dumb. Hark ignored the kid, who was still having spasms. He'd been around too long to jump each time a newcomer fouled up. There had been so many replacements in this campaign that they had to be with the group for a good while before any of the longtimers even bothered to remember their names. He checked that his MEW was still charging, then he rolled back his suit from the front of his body and lay back on the rocky ground. There was no way anyone could wear a full suit in this heat unless he was actually in the middle of a firefight.

  The troopers were dressed in what was known as the dense-atmosphere combat suit, the DAC. They were supposed to be lighter than the full vacuum kit, and technically they were, all else being equal, but since dense-atmosphere planets invariably had higher gravity than those with light or no atmospheres, the kit actually presented the men with a greater relative burden. The bulky helmets, although they still contained communicators and brainlink displays, were modified so that they didn't completely enclose the head. The dark visor was only half-face, entending to just below the eyes; the lower half of the face was covered by a transparent breathing mask. In the back, the protective shell extended to the cushioned neck ring but wasn't sealed to it. The backpack was actually larger than that of the full vacuum kit. Since, in this theater, the troopers could expect to be out in the bush for days on end without ever coming in to a service base, the pack had to incorporate air and water tanks, recyclers, spare energy pacs, minimeds, F-rations, and' even a deflated one-man bubble environment. The podlike casing of the backpack did come with a small floater in the base that offset the weight, but its bulk and inertia still made it a cumbersome piece of equipment. Most of the men had modified their kits for safety and comfort. The suits themselves had been persuaded to roll back, leaving arms and, in some cases, legs bare. Helmets were decorated with camouflage scrim, decked with fungus and foliage. Some of the troopers had hung small combat souvenirs around their necks. Taken as a whole, the effect, particularly among the longtimers, verged on the barbaric.

  Although the medians steadfastly refused to say as much, the Therem troops were bogged down on this planet. They had been on JD4-1A for over two hundred days. It was supposed to have been a relatively simple operation. The Yal had a large ground garrison dug in on various parts of the planet, but they had withdrawn their large battleships and left only satellite weapon systems and smaller interplanetary craft. In the beginning, it had all gone according to the book. The cluster had moved in, and the small Yal space force had been wiped out in a matter of minutes. The larger ground installations had been pinpoint nuked, and Therem troops had gone down to mop up the survivors.

  It was at this point that things started to go wrong. More than just survivors waited for the ground troops. The Yal had seeded the planet with every kind of booby trap and sleeper weapon. Large forces of specially adapted chibas had been concealed in the most difficult terrain. Packs of vicious semiintelligent miggies roamed the ice fields and the jungles, making random attacks on the Therem forces. What had looked like a routine occupation quickly turned into a slow, painful planet clearing, a war of attrition that the Therem would win in the end by sheer firepower and weight of numbers but that would cost them dearly before the last Yal surrogates were destroyed.

  The suspicion began to spread through the ranks that they had been maneuvered into a trap. JD4-1A wasn't a poorly protected garrison planet but one huge sucker bet, a piece of bait that the Anah command had swallowed whole. There didn't seem to be a way out. If the cluster withdrew, the action would constitute a major retreat. The Therem couldn't allow a Yal-occupied planet to remain in a sector that was otherwise under their control. The only alternative to the bloody, protracted warfare was the total destruction of the planet, something certainly within the cluster's power to do. The only reason that t
he thirteen big ships didn't stand off and pound this world into a brand-new belt of asteroids was that it was against the only basic rule in this eternal conflict: A planet with natural indigenous life must not be destroyed. The rule was a legacy from the early period of the war, when planet smashing had been carried on wholesale. Both the Yal and the Therem had begun to see the eventual outcome of this behavior, and almost spontaneously and certainly without any formal communication, they both had stopped the practice. Even though, on JD4-1A, the Yal were using the rule to their advantage, the planet could not be blown to bits without a major change in policy-and it was a policy that wasn't likely to be changed. Even in this ultimately destructive war, there seemed to be a need for some limit on the destruction. In the meantime, the troopers fought and died.

  The twenty had greatly changed. There were a lot of new faces. Dyrkin and Renchett were still there, seem ingly indestructible. Helot was still hanging on. Kemlo, because of his prosthetic foot, had been retired to ship duties, but when the losses had started to build, he'd been brought back into the line. Elmo had also been brought back as overman, and he was one old-timer no one was pleased to see. Following the return from the recstar, Elmo's performance as a noncom had gone right down the tubes. The situation had deteriorated to the point where the twenty who were supposed to be under his control simply wouldn't take him seriously. Rance, out of a sense of loyalty, had covered for him as long as he could, but the time had come when it was no longer possible to hide Elmo's mistakes without endangering the men. Rance had organized a little computer trickery, and Elmo had been removed to a post in the supply center where he couldn't do any harm. As the war on JD4-1A dragged on, however, the easy, rear-echelon jobs were eliminated one by one. The fatalities among non-coms were particularly high, and according to. the records, Elmo was a perfectly able overman. He was therefore returned to his old unit to replace Overman Macin, who had been killed by chiba fire out on the plains in front of Range 27. He'd arrived only a day or so before the push up the Ten River, and as Dyrkin put it, he hadn't had time yet to foul up. None of the veterans in the twenty, though, doubted that he would.

  Renchett walked over to where Hark was lying with his eyes closed. "Taking it easy there, boy?"

  "Taking it while I can." Hark opened his eyes and raised his head. "Any sign of the task force?"

  Renchett shook his head. "Nothing."

  Hark let his head flop back. "I ain't in no hurry."

  Renchett didn't say anything-he probably was in a hurry. Hark accepted that Renchett was completely unbalanced. He was part of the crew-what, for Hark, was the original crew. A man had to be true to his crew. Be sides, Renchett was very good at killing, and the more he killed the enemy, the less enemy there was to try to kill Hark.

  "What about goddamn Elmo?" "What about him?"

  "You realize we may have to do something about him?"

  "I'm doing one minute at a time, and right now I'm lying down."

  Renchett shrugged. "Suit yourself."

  Elmo was sitting apart from the others and staring fixedly down the river. Since he'd arrived at the unit, he'd hardly communicated with the men except to give a few curt orders. He looked burned-out.

  One of the replacements pointed down river. "They're coming!"

  "It's the big dynes," someone said.

  Hark pushed himself up on one elbow. The dynes were the biggest land fighting machines in all of the Therem Alliance. He wearily stood up. No matter how many of them he saw, he couldn't help being awed. A dyne was over a hundred meters tall, an ovoid body supported on three long spindly legs and packed with every imaginable kind of weapon. It wasn't clear whether they were composite beings or machines manned by very complex creatures. It was probably an academic point.

  "Just look at those suckers!"

  There were four of them wading out of the gulf and up onto dry land. Their huge feet effortlessly crushed the fleshy jungle. Hark knew that there were human troops down in that jungle, advancing behind the dynes. He was profoundly glad that he wasn't one of them. It was the worst place to be in this kind of operation. The dynes were preceded by a flight of drone ultralights, which were supposed to trigger any buried Yal weapons that might run on the command of a simple mass detector.

  The gunsaucers came next, moving slowly just above treetop level. They tended to stay close to the dynes, floating in among the legs of the enormous machines. Their task was to fire on any movement on the ground. They were supposed to be the first line of spot and destroy, taking care of chibas that broke cover or miggies that started massing for a suicide attack. The problem was their skittish crews, whose fear of a ground blast or a delayed-action mine made them destroy first and spot second. They were notorious for firing on their own infantry.

  Simultaneously, four mild explosions erupted out of the jungle directly under the line of ultralights. The drones had triggered a baby mine cluster, probably the kind that crawled blindly around inside deep cover. One ultralight was flipped into a stall and went down like a stone. It was only an opening salvo, but the Therem task force immediately responded. The saucers lifted quickly away from the trees like a flock of nervous birds. The dynes halted. They were powering up. Dyne weaponry was all projected from what could only be described as a ruby-red eye in the front of its ovoid body. The multiple pupils of that eye slowly began to glow. Renchett stood fingering his knife. "Think we're getting under way here."

  The electronic chatter of battle started up inside Hark's helmet as the task force moved forward again. The saucer crews were apparently incapable of maintaining communication silence; they continuously yelled to each other, bolstering against their nervousness. There was also a subbass rumble, almost too deep to hear, that some said was the dynes talking. Another series of small explosions geysered out of the jungle. A herd of the big green lizards started bellowing in panic. They smashed their way out of the fungus, stampeded down the riverbank, and splashed into the oily brown water. One of the gunsaucers opened fire on them. Two of the lizards went down kicking and thrashing. Someone whooped. Hark scowled. There were too many assholes who thought it was funny to shoot at the big lizards. Hark didn't think it was funny at all. The green monsters were one of the few things he liked on this goddamn planet.

  The next explosion was huge. A broad expanse of jungle seemed to lift straight into the air before it disintegrated into a blazing roar of fire and smoke. Communication was swamped in a howl of static. The twenty-scattered, hitting the dust. They knew all too well what was probably coming next. Green fire was flashing from inside the pall of smoke.

  "They've sprung a firetower!"

  Although the jungle was still burning, the smoke had partially cleared around a cylindrical black tower almost as tall as a dyne. It was a Yal static robot. Until the task force had approached, it had lain dormant in a protective silo under a cover of jungle. It was only when the mines and blastpits that surrounded it had been detonated that it pushed its way upward and started blazing multiple fire. Yal firetowers didn't last long. Even without what was being pumped at it from the dynes' glowing eyes, it wouldn't have lasted more than a few minutes. The fire-tower was a blaze-of-glory device. It let go of everything at once in the hope of obliterating everything around it. The dynes were big enough to be equipped with rudimentary shields. They didn't have enough power to walk and keep their shields up at the same time, but it was better than nothing. Only one dyne was taken by surprise. It was hit in the knee joint by a blast of accelerator, and in an instant, the whole leg was melting. It stumbled, tried to right itself on two legs, and then crashed down, sprawling like a mighty corpse across jungle and river. The ovoid slowly began to sink. Th other three stood their ground and vaporized the tower with a saturation of energy weapons. To the men crouching on the hilltop, it seemed as if the whole river valley had been turned into a caldron of black smoke, colored fire, and pulsing energy. Their helmets were filled with an electronic scream, and the ground shook continuously. Each one coul
d imagine what it must be like to be one of the companies down in the valley, huddling below this battle of the giants, bellies pressed to the soft jungle floor, trying desperately to bury themselves in the fungus mold before they were fried or vaporized. It didn't seem possible that anyone could live through a hell like that-but they knew from experience that men did. That was why the war was still in business.

  When the firing stopped, there was a terrible silence, broken only by the patter of falling debris. The men on the hilltop peered into the smoke for any sign of further fire on the ground. It was always possible that the chibas had come out of their rat holes and were engaging what was left of the ground forces. All seemed to be quiet. The smoke was slowly being blown upriver by a lazy offshore breeze, uncovering what remained after the exchange. The firetower was nothing more than a dead melted stump. It was at the center of a burned and blackened area that extended over more than a third of the river valley. Two of the dynes still stood where they had fought. Despite the shields, their outsides were discolored by heat and radiation. The third dyne that was still standing had moved to where its comrade lay, legs stretching out of the river. It had extended a long umbilical into the water and was probing for the body section of the fallen machine. It was the saucers that had taken the worst punishment. Over half of them were history, and the survivors hung back behind the dynes as if unwilling to go on. The twenty were on their feet, staring down into the expanse of destruction. Elmo decided that it was the moment to assert his authority.

  "Don't bunch up there. You never know when you're going to come under fire."

  Dyrkin rounded on him. "What are you talking about? You think there's going to be a Yal air strike? Or maybe the chibas are going to come boiling out of the fungus — and hit us on open ground?"