“Got ’em. What are they?”
“Some of the monitoring stations reported seeing these things from time to time. Harmless. They call them Snow Squids. You need to read the briefing materials better, newb.”
The pod slid out of sight, and even though they were obviously abandoning the area to the armored intruders, Ayliss shivered when she realized their patrol route went in the same direction. “That was revolting.”
“All teams, move out.” Tin came back up on the net. “Keep your eyes open.”
“Not if I have to look at those squirmy things,” Cusabrina muttered, and it took Ayliss a moment to realize her partner had only spoken to her. “Hey, Rig. Let’s stay put for a few. Give the octopus tribe plenty of time to clear out.”
“Making final approach. Everybody in position?”
Ayliss listened to Sergeant Pelletier, the leader of the squad tasked with the actual reconnaissance of the summit. On a high peak to her east, intermittent electronic signals had been detected by passing Force ships. The Sims were well known for emplacing stealth navigational beacons throughout the war zone, and that was what the Banshees expected to find here. Most of the space lighthouses were unmanned, but there was always a possibility of enemy contact.
Tin’s squad, having found no sign of the Sims on their assigned ridge, had then spread out in pairs to form part of a ring of Banshee teams surrounding the target area. Cusabrina had selected a good hide position for them, halfway up the slope where they could observe the distant mountain and the low ground between them.
Stretched out in the snow, Ayliss felt a rush of accomplishment when Cusabrina told her to unclip her Fasces from the back of the suit. She now alternated between looking through the weapon’s scope at the white valley below and checking the overhead imagery provided by orbiting ships and stratospheric drones. The trees stood out on top of the target mountain as they presumably had for millennia, and no readings of any kind—heat, electronic, or otherwise—indicated there was anything there.
Pelletier’s squad had separated into two elements, carefully working their way up the final hundred yards of the summit using the forest for cover. Although the suits dissipated their heat signatures, Ayliss could easily make out the reddish glow of each Banshee against the frozen ground.
The footage of the mountaintop changed abruptly, with a dashed line of red spurting down the slope toward the approaching teams. The heat dots indicating the Banshees immediately jumped left or right, seeking cover from whatever was firing at them. Looking across at the peak, Ayliss heard the subdued rumbling of a heavy weapon even though she couldn’t see any of the action. The recon squad quickly filled her in.
“Contact on the crest! Sim machine-gun emplacement! Marking target!”
Going back to the imagery, Ayliss saw a digital cross appear where the stuttering red line began. As for the line itself, it was sweeping back and forth while the Banshees down the slope pulled back in a pre-rehearsed response. Pelletier spoke, and Ayliss thrilled at her composure.
“Fire control, fire control. Requesting bunker busters on pre-set target Purple One. Camouflaged emplacements, obviously been here a long time. Double the volley.”
“Banshee, this is fire control. Rockets on the way. Get your heads down.”
“Everybody open your eyes,” Tin coached her dispersed squad. “Sam’s no fool. That gunner knows we’re about to drop the boom-boom on him. He’s attracting attention while his buddies scoot. They could pop up anywhere.”
Ayliss felt her heart thudding against the armor. Tonguing the imagery aside, she searched the ground with her rifle. Nothing moved, but in her mind she imagined a host of Sim soldiers, clad in snow-camouflaged combat smocks, fleeing right toward her.
“This is fire control. Twenty seconds to impact. Twenty seconds to impact.”
Snow fell in clumps from the trees on the far side of the valley, and Ayliss gasped in anticipation. Movement.
“Stay cool, Mortas,” Cusabrina purred. “Let’s see what it is before we light it up.”
The veteran started reporting the unidentified motion to Tin, but Ayliss’s entire world shrunk down to the gunsight reticle before her eyes. The Fasces was tied into her suit’s systems, and the reticle told her the range as she shifted her view.
The first figure broke from the tree line, and adrenaline shot through her just before Ayliss saw that it wasn’t a Sim. Ice-blue and majestic, it looked like some kind of stag. Curved antlers rose up from its head, and long aqua fringes hung down from its neck. The beast stopped as soon as it came out in the open, and Ayliss saw more behind it. Smaller versions of the stag, some with antlers and some without, skidding to a halt inside the trees.
“They don’t like the gunfire. They’re clearing out,” Cusabrina explained.
The leader sniffed the air while the fringes fluttered as if caught in a breeze. Ayliss watched in wonder as the feelers stretched away from the creature, obviously testing for some indication of a waiting enemy. The test didn’t last long.
The far peak exploded in flashes of fire, the first throwing snow everywhere and the others coming in behind it at one-second intervals. The startling concussions stampeded the animals below, and they surged across the valley in a wild-eyed mob. Perhaps thirty in total, all sizes, they kicked powder all around before hitting the dead center of the low ground. For an instant Ayliss thought they’d broken the ice of a snow-hidden stream, as the ground under their powerful hooves cracked and flew up around them.
It was only after the herd had disappeared into the far trees that she detected the wounded motion in the snow, the damaged tentacles reaching for the sky and then dropping, while the whiteness changed to a soupy gray that darkened into blackness. She watched as the surviving squids slowly dragged themselves away, many of them lurching on obviously shattered tentacles. The sight nauseated her enough that she looked away.
And wished she hadn’t. Many yards up the valley, a light blue figure surged and struggled as if caught in a tangle of white underbrush. Panicked by the explosions just like the others, it had separated from the herd and run across the squid creatures all by itself. No antlers, no fringes, it looked like a doe. Kicking madly, it leapt into the air only to be yanked back down. More and more of the tentacles wrapped around it, and Ayliss saw its wide-eyed terror as it craned its head back to bellow a call for help that she didn’t hear.
The others didn’t hear it, either. The doe fought on for just a little longer before slowly freezing in place, quivering as if its muscles had turned to stone. Ayliss dumbly wondered if the Snow Squids had some kind of poison in them that had paralyzed the beast, just before the knot of twitching muscle pulled it down.
“Contact to the south!” Pelletier called out from the summit. “Blast doors opening. Looks like a hangar. Marking target.”
Ayliss gratefully switched back to the imagery, seeing the new designator on the southern slope. The snow was crumbling away, showing heat that registered as a narrow slit probably fifty yards wide.
“Shuttle inside. That’s gotta be their escape craft. Can we have a gun drone?”
“Already inbound.”
More heat slid out from the wintry hill, and then it detached into a tiny rectangle. Ayliss’s suit systems automatically targeted it, surrounding the emerging craft with a blinking circle that identified it as a Wren shuttle.
The pilot was smart, diving instead of climbing, banking down the mountainside. Pelletier’s squad didn’t bother shooting at it, because the drone gunship had appeared. A jet of exhaust shot from its belly when it fired the missile. The Wren swept around the western side of the mountain, appearing five hundred yards in front of Ayliss and Cusabrina just before the rocket caught up. It exploded in an immense fireball, flaming chunks falling into the trees while a starburst of smoke blossomed in the pale sky.
“Target destroyed,” Pelletier reported. “The hangar doors are still open. Wanna toss one in there?”
“Negative. Intell
igence wants to examine the site. Security cordon, remain in place. Reconnaissance squad, continue your mission. Evaluate bomb damage on the peak and enter the site if possible.”
Acknowledgments flowed over the radio, but the feed stopped in mid-sentence. Ayliss turned troubled eyes toward Cusabrina, knowing the veteran had muted the link.
“Can you imagine being assigned here? Hilltop in the middle of a frozen nowhere?”
Ayliss tried to come up with a snappy response, but the dead doe filled her mind. So frightened, so helpless, doomed by forces beyond its understanding.
“Yeah, I guess this was a really lousy assignment, even for Sam.” she offered.
“Naw, that’s not what I meant.” An armored hand lightly swatted her. “I was asking, what do ya think the odds are that Command might make us stay here?”
“This complex is something we haven’t seen before.” An unseen speaker narrated the video as it played on a large screen back aboard ship. “The Sims don’t usually leave troops with their covert navigation beacons, but this installation was meant to be permanent.”
Ayliss had already seen the footage, shot from the cameras of the Banshees who had entered the wrecked position. The antennae and tracking equipment had been destroyed by the rockets, which had blown the top off of the hollowed-out peak. Looking up from the counter where she was cleaning her disassembled Fasces, she saw the beams from the suits’ shoulder-lights playing over the darkened interior.
“Living quarters, a mess area, and even a room for physical training were dug into the rock. Most interestingly, four different hangar doors were created and camouflaged so that the escape shuttle could launch in the safest direction.”
“Didn’t do ’em any good,” Dellmore commented. The counter where the squad members were working on their weapons was L-shaped, and the veterans were seated together. A seasoned Banshee, Dellmore used her size to intimidate the new arrivals. She’d been paired with Lightfoot because the dark-skinned rookie had demonstrated a talent for deflecting her barbs. “All that hard work, just so they could get smoked while running away.”
“Sam knows we’re stretched thin out here. They didn’t used to put that kind of effort into one of those sites.” That came from Zuteck, seated next to Dellmore. Medium-sized but well muscled, she’d been paired with Bullhead, the natural leader of Ayliss’s Basic Training squad.
“While this particular site was far more extensive than the normal setup for a navigational outpost, Command stresses that this does not represent an escalation of Sim presence in this sector.” The briefer finished the presentation, and the screen went dark.
“Sounds like the very definition of an escalated presence.” Legacy offered, from the leg of the counter where the rookies were working.
“You catch on fast,” Dellmore replied. “You figured out that Command lies to us.”
“Hush now, Dell,” Tabor cooed, attaching electrical leads to her rifle’s control system and viewing the readout on her handheld. “My newbie did just fine today.”
“How about yours, Bree?” Dellmore called to Cusabrina. “Was Minister Mortas worth anything without a team of reporters?”
Ayliss felt her face flush, but didn’t respond. Dellmore had a particular dislike for her, made all the worse by the battle fought on a planet known as Quad Seven. As the newly appointed governor of a colony of discharged veterans, Ayliss had fought alongside them when they’d been attacked by smugglers. A brief clip of a blood-and-dirt-covered Ayliss had received a great deal of circulation on the Bounce network, aided by Reena Mortas’s propagandists. Ayliss sensed that Dellmore’s real problem with Quad Seven was that their squad leader had been there. Ayliss had carried the wounded Tin off the battlefield herself.
“How about it, Bree?” Dellmore repeated.
“I’m sorry, Dell. As usual, I wasn’t listening to you. What did you say?”
“I was saying—”
“Don’t bother. I’m not listening anymore.”
“Okay. So how’d you like it, Mortas? Just a dull operation where we all did our jobs and nobody got featured on the Bounce.”
“I learn something important with everything we do.” Ayliss responded, well aware that as a newcomer she had almost no status among the Banshee company’s veterans.
“Glad to hear it. Can’t tell you how much we like being saddled with five pups who didn’t even complete Basic.”
“Speak for yourself, Dell,” Zuteck growled. “Stop saying ‘we’ like that.”
“We were doing fine in Basic.” Bullhead spoke flatly. Though much smaller than Dellmore, she stared across the compartment in obvious challenge. “You know they sent us to the fleet because Zone Quest tried to murder us all on that jogging trail.”
“Relax, Bontenough. I’m not worried about the three of you who were already in. I’m just wondering why they put all five of you in one squad.”
“You ever happy, Dell?” Cusabrina asked. “You bitched when we were understrength, and now you’re bitching because they gave us replacements.”
“Replacements? Trading seasoned fighters for these babies?”
“Weren’t no trades at all,” Tabor murmured. “Harter’s new pancreas never did fit right. We were kidding ourselves, thinking we were going to keep her.”
“Borlov and Crater were bound to get transferred sometime.” Cusabrina picked up the litany. “Put themselves in the sick bay with their stupid dares—”
“Lay on enough salve, you can wear a suit over burns like those,” Dellmore responded. “They shouldn’t have been reassigned—”
“—for the third time,” Cusabrina finished. “They had to separate those two. So you saying you wanted a squad with only five live bodies?”
“I’m saying I want a squad with bodies I can depend on. Not some showboat rich kid who comes out here with her own babysitter.”
Lightfoot chuckled loudly. “I would love to hear you say that to First Sergeant Blocker’s face. You know he’s back in the bay with the support crew, cleaning up our suits even as we speak.”
Dellmore ignored her. “How’d you swing that one, Mortas? Get your old bodyguard sent to the war with you? After he already did two tours.”
Ayliss lowered her weapon to the counter. “It’s Rig.”
“What now?”
“Rig. That’s my name.” Ayliss pointed down the table. “That’s Plodder, Legacy, Lightfoot, and Bullhead. Just like we told you.”
“You are such a bunch of hopeless rookies. You’re not supposed to keep your Basic nicknames. You’re not supposed to like those names. They’re insults.”
“Not Bullhead,” Plodder corrected her. “See that scar above her eyebrow? That’s where one of those landscaping ’bots caught her with a leaf line. We fought them off with no weapons at all, flying at us with everything from saws to clippers.”
“Don’t forget the insecticide,” Legacy offered. “I’m still coughing that up.”
“You amaze me.” Dellmore stood, her size arresting the attempted banter. “Those things attacked you because of a beef between Zone Quest and the Mortas family. You almost got killed for a rich kid who only enlisted to beat a murder rap.”
“I didn’t kill anybody that day. First Sergeant Blocker and Sergeant Tin had to do that, and Ewing was forced to kill Rittle.” Ayliss stood as well, feeling a deep weariness instead of the expected fear. “The whole thing was my fault, though. They’re back out in the war zone because I made a mistake.”
“I’d say you just made another one.” Dellmore started walking toward the far end of the counter.
“Ladies.” The voice, calm and confident, came from the open hatch. All heads turned to see Sergeant Tin, dressed in fatigues. “Good to see you’re all so far along with cleaning your weapons.”
Dellmore gave Ayliss a meaningful stare before returning to her seat, and Tin walked into the center of the L. The entire squad wore their hair cut close to the scalp, but for a moment Ayliss saw Tin’s dark hair flying
as she delivered fatal punches and kicks to the Zone Quest security man who’d been guarding Vroma Rittle. Rittle had hired the smugglers who had tried to murder the veterans on Quad Seven, and Ayliss had sworn to kill him at the time. Tin spoke, driving away the shameful memory of how Rittle had actually died.
“We’ll have a detailed after-action review once all the equipment is stowed away. I was very pleased with your performance out there. For a first time in the suits, I’d say our newest members did just fine.”
An electric field of tension filled the room when no one responded, but Tin continued as if she hadn’t noticed. “From here on out, I don’t want to see you segregated this way. Old hands will sit with the newcomers, and vice versa. We’re one squad, and we have to depend on each other.”
“Even if half the squad has zero combat experience as Banshees, and two of them were civilians two months ago?” Dellmore presented Tin with an unpleasant smile.
“Breena.” Tin spoke while facing Dellmore.
“Yes, Sergeant.” Cusabrina answered.
“I’m reinstating you as a corporal.”
“I don’t think the skipper will like that, Sergeant.”
“Captain Breverton isn’t the skipper who demoted you.”
“Yes, but she knows I got busted for yelling at the old skipper.”
“Were you wrong?”
“No.”
“Well then Captain Breverton would have been on your side. I’m going to go clear it with her now.” Tin took a step forward, directly in front of Dellmore. Though dwarfed by the seated Banshee, she seemed not to notice. “Pardon me, Dell. Did you say something just now?”
“No, Sergeant.”
“I think we should all try a little harder at working together as a team. What do you think?”
“That’s a good idea, Sergeant.”
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