Markov's Prize

by Mark Barber

  “You know as well as I do that the real achievement is starting a campaign as a commander, not finishing it,” Tahl said. “I’ve finished two campaigns as a strike commander, and it’s because everybody above me was dead. But being selected for promotion on merit, rather than because you’re the only one left? That says a lot about you. You’re going places. You deserve it.”

  Mosse waved a hand dismissively at the compliment.

  “How’re things back home? Your dad talking to you again?”

  Tahl shook his head.

  “No, I seem to have a real talent for upsetting people. But you harvest what you plant, right?”

  “You’ve changed.”

  “What?” Tahl asked.

  “You’ve changed,” Mosse repeated. “When we broke up, I said you could never change. I was wrong.”

  An unseen command filtered through the drop company shard and the surrounding troopers stood and picked up their kit bags, heading toward the transmat pad just outside the bar exit, which would take them back to their ship. Mosse smiled in apology.

  “That’s us.”

  “It was good seeing you again,” Tahl said. “I’m back at Markov’s Prize in a few days. Maybe we’ll bump into each other.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Mosse finished her beer. “You take care, Ryen.”

  “You too.”

  Mosse slung her kit bag over her shoulder and walked two paces away after her troopers before turning to face Tahl again. She walked back and re-arranged a lock of hair at his fringe.

  “You’ve grown your hair out a little bit,” she said. “Looks good on you.”

  Tahl watched her join the queue of soldiers who moved onto the transmat pads to disappear in groups of four. Ignoring the growing feeling of fatigue, he straightened his stance and sucked in a lungful of air.

  “Devil’s Own!” Tahl yelled, and the bar fell silent as the drop troopers all turned to face him. “Give ‘Em Hell!” Tahl finished the formation’s traditional rallying cry.

  The company of troopers roared a response, a few whistles added to the bravado. Tahl continued to watch as the men and women disappeared from view from the transmat. He wondered how many would survive the carnage of a campaign facing the Ghar. Mosse waited until she had ensured all of her troopers had successfully transported back to the ship before she stood on the pad, dropping her kit bag down next to her. She looked up at him and flashed a warm smile before she faded from view.

  ***

  Southern Hemisphere

  Settlement Urban 127

  Western Outskirts

  L-Day plus 30

  “They landed about five hours ago,” Strike Captain Borras explained as he walked alongside Mandarin Owenne. “They came down in pods in the plains to the east of the city.”

  Owenne’s pace did not slow as he walked briskly toward the Formation HQ building, which up until only a few days before had been a schoolhouse in the settlement’s suburbs. The night sky was mostly clear, broken by thin strands of almost neon green gasses which were visible to the naked eye in the stratosphere only after sundown. The planet’s rings were clearly visible, a diagonal line of faded grey which cut up across the sky as if it had been flicked over the panoramic view by an artist with one brush stroke. A gentle, warm breeze blew in from the equator, rustling the dry, blue foliage which grew up around the surrounding buildings. Van Noor walked a few paces behind the NuHu alongside Cane and Kachi, the other members of his company command unit. Borras, a shaven headed soldier of some eighty years of age, was the formation’s most experienced strike captain; his company had arrived at Settlement Urban 127 only a day before Van Noor’s but had already established a strong perimeter. An artillery battery made up of a trio of towering x-howitzers were dug in next to the Formation HQ; on the other side of the road, a repair depot had been set up where droids were busily at work on a pair of C3T7 transport drones.

  Van Noor had already given orders to his squad leaders to set up a base of operations. There had not been time to bring in engineering drones to set up proper accommodation, so for now the troopers would have to make do with whatever empty buildings could be occupied. Such buildings were certainly not in short supply; after a warning to the civilian population, Settlement Urban 127 had been bombarded by naval gunfire in orbit in the opening rounds of the Concord invasion; and whilst the city center was a desolate wasteland of concrete and rubble, much of the surrounding areas still survived, intact but deserted.

  “I see you have already deployed drones to scout the enemy positions,” Owenne observed as they approached the HQ building. “I need to know what we’re facing. Numbers, locations, I need intelligence. We need a ring of surveillance around their entire staging area.”

  Van Noor nodded to Cane and Kachi to remain outside as he followed Owenne and Borras into the HQ building. The ground floor had been stripped of all previous décor, and now a number of command consoles projected holographic images across a clear space in the center of the room, showing maps of local terrain, Concord force disposition, and lines of resupply and communication. The Formation HQ staff consisted of Strike Commander Orless and a handful of troopers and drones.

  “Hello, sir,” Orless greeted as Owenne walked over. “Glad to see you’ve arrived safely. Any updates on what’s coming across to reinforce us?”

  “12th Assault Force, including the 3rd Drop Formation,” Owenne replied. “Beta Company is setting up alongside Alpha Company’s accommodation areas. We’ll get them sorted in the next hour and then out on patrols. The T7s are on the way to pick up Cian Company, who will be with us tomorrow night. The other three companies won’t be far behind. In the meantime, I want every spotter drone in the formation out to the east and gathering data on the Ghar staging area.”

  “Understood. I propose we get strike troopers out in the eastern suburbs, so we’ve got a second line of warning in case of any advance elements of Ghar trying to probe our positions. Nothing too extensive, I don’t want to fatigue our people with long night patrols which drones can cover. But I do advocate something as a second line behind unarmed spotter drones.”

  “Concur,” Owenne said. “Senior Strike Leader Van Noor will assemble a roster of squads for patrols from Beta Company. I would suggest you get Alpha Company out there now to enact your plan.”

  Van Noor walked over to the holographic projection of the local area. Ghar forces were amassing only a few thousand yan to the east of the city, in a narrow ravine, giving them cover from artillery. If the Ghar were quick enough and had the inclination, they could be within weapons range before dawn.

  ***

  Her teeth gritted, Rhona kept a steady pace as she jogged alone through the rubble strewn street, shattered buildings casting eerie shadows in the moonlight to either side of her. Her plasma carbine held across her midriff, she followed the waypoints on the viewscreen which acted as stepping stones to lead her back to her squad. Her situation report to Van Noor had gone as predicted. Even though she had followed her orders to the letter and set up a line of three observation posts behind the main detection line of drones, the senior strike leader still managed to find fault in every decision she had made and sent orders to her troopers to set up an entirely new line. The seemingly obligatory raised voice reprimand did, at least, feel far less soul destroying than the last one.

  Rhona reached a familiar corner and looked to the east to where her first two trooper observation post was set up in the rubble of a burnt out residential block. A green light appeared in the corner of her viewscreen to indicate that the troopers had seen her and transmitted a message across the squad shard to inform her that she was cleared to approach them. Rhona jogged up to the building and then slowed her pace, mindful of the noises made by her armored feet so close to enemy positions. Picking her way through the rubble, she emerged through a jagged gap in an interior wall to find Gant and Sessetti propped up against the far wall of the building, their armor automatically having faded to a dusty grey to perfectly
blend in with their surroundings.

  “Y’aright?” Rhona greeted as she dropped to one knee next to Sessetti, peering out toward the Ghar positions to the east.

  “We’re good,” Gant replied. “One of the drones picked up movement near marker ghia about twenty minutes ago, but we couldn’t get visual. Could be a stray animal for all we know. We’ve logged it and sent it back to HQ as a possible sighting, but right now we’re monitoring.”

  “Good job,” Rhona said, patching into the spotter drone and utilizing the shard connection to send real time images of its surroundings straight to her viewscreen.

  Nothing. Just yan after yan of desolated buildings.

  “Okay, buddy,” Gant turned back to Sessetti, “patch into the spotter near marker beta. Bring the thing up to about waist height, carefully now, and fire out a passive sensor sweep to see if you’ve got anything.”

  The young trooper followed Gant’s instructions, using the shard connection to send an activation signal to the drone which was camouflaged in the rubble somewhere off to the east.

  “Good, that’s it. Take your time with moving these things, because whilst the drone’s AI is pretty much sentient and capable of learning, remember that these things still process their decisions from a flow chart so they don’t have your tactical flexibility. Just be careful about giving them too much independence because stealth and survival are not top of their priority list, data acquisition is.”

  Rhona listened to the seasoned soldier patiently tutoring Sessetti and again wondered why she was leading the squad instead of him.

  “You guys seem cool here,” she said, “I’m gonna go check on the others.”

  “We’ve got a good connection from here,” Gant said. “Just get ‘em on the shard. It’s safer than wandering around out there on your own.”

  “Nah, I’d rather check on them face to face,” Rhona said as she carefully crawled back to the other side of the room. “There shouldn’t be anything this side of the surveillance line anyway.”

  “Some of their scouts could have got through,” Gant warned. “Stay here with us and coordinate the op from here.”

  Rhona shook her head.

  “I wanna make sure the others are okay. Keep on top of things, and if you get even a scent of anything wrong, you gimme a shout.”

  Back to the street intersection and another few minutes jog through the night, Rhona closed with the second observation point in the center of her line. Another green light through the shard to signal that it was safe to close with the post, and Rhona crawled through a narrow gasworks tunnel to where Jemmel and Rae lay half covered in rubble and debris at the edge of a bombarded power station.

  “Kat’s here!” Jemmel declared happily. “That’s all the girls together! Yay!”

  “Don’t,” Rae warned, “don’t start singing that…”

  “Tonight… is the night for love! Tonight, me and my ladies are feelin’ alright! Feelin! Yeah, feeling al-right!”

  Rhona blinked in confusion as Jemmel powerfully sung an instantly recognizable, fast paced electronica classic which had been popular several years before any of them had been born.

  “She’s been singing that damn song all night,” Rae growled.

  “I’m bored, I’m lying in a gas pipe in the middle of a bombed out city, and the only thing keeping me going is the thought that right here, right now, I’m on a night out on the town with ma ladies,” Jemmel replied. “Tonight… is the night for love!”

  “You guys detected any movement?” Rhona asked.

  “Nothing,” Jemmel replied, tapping the butt of her plasma lance impatiently. “We’ve got three drones set out in a standard surveillance pattern and we’re rotating through passive sensor sweeps every five minutes. Nothing there. We haven’t even picked up a stray badger.”

  “Badgers are rural animals,” Rae said.

  “Not all of them,” Jemmel corrected, “could be a city badger.”

  “Look, I’m gonna go check on the other guys,” Rhona said as she began crawling back down the pipe. “Stay sharp and call me if there’s anything to report.”

  “Got it,” Jemmel nodded before shoving her armored face next to Rae’s head. “Tonight… is the night for love!”

  Picking up her pace once she was clear of the power station, Rhona continued her run down to the south to the end of her squad’s area of responsibility in the surveillance line. Van Noor had set up the third observation post in a transport hub, atop a burnt out public transport station. Rhona closed to within visual range and stopped. No green light. She looked up at the top of the station but could see nothing. She sent a request to approach the post through the shard. There was no reply.

  Bringing her plasma carbine up and ready, Rhona dashed across the street to the bottom of the station. Her heart pounding, she looked up at a servicing ladder which seemed to be her best route up to the observation post. She quickly patched into the shard’s short-range communication frequency.

  “But the thing was,” Qan managed to blurt out between bouts of laughter, “it wasn’t even my sister! She was my cousin! Still really snaggy, though.”

  Rhona let out a frustrated breath and slung her carbine over her shoulder listening to Qan and Clythe’s hysterical laughter as she climbed up the servicing ladder.

  “What the hell are you two doing?” She demanded as she jumped down from the ladder and into their observation post.

  The two troopers were sprawled out underneath the clear night sky, their carbines not even within reach.

  “All under control,” Qan said. “Three drones checking the perimeter. Nothing detected.”

  Rhona checked the observation post’s setup through the shard.

  “All under control?” You’ve got all three drones set to automatic with an alert signal to you if they have a confirmed sighting! I could have done that from back in our accommodation block! You’re supposed to be coordinating this area of the line and anything might get through!”

  “There’s nothing out there!” Qan said. “We’ve been here for hours and we haven’t found anything! The entire idea in spotter drones is so that they can do this nonsense and we don’t have to! They don’t get bored and tired!”

  “Whatever’s going down,” Clythe added, “tonight ain’t the night for a Ghar attack. They’re not up for fighting right now.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Rhona said as she mentally reinitialized all three drones and transferred their supervision to Qan, “because I could have snuck right up on you two and taken your heads off, and I ain’t a two man tall Ghar killing machine! Guys, pick up your weapons and get your eyes out! C’mon, do the job properly!”

  Grumbling, both troopers recovered their carbines and took positions against the low wall, looking out toward the east. Rhona began climbing back down the ladder before a shout from Clythe stopped her.

  “Hey! Kat!”

  “This had better be good,” Rhona warned.

  “Something we were talking about before. Who’d win in a fight between fish and birds?”

  “Which ones?” Rhona sighed.

  “All of ‘em,” Qan replied as if the question was ludicrous.

  “Birds,” Rhona said after a few pensive moments before climbing back down the ladder and setting off for the first observation post.

  ***

  A shrill tone inside his ear woke Van Noor from his slumber. Sitting up, he glanced around the darkened room in confusion, and in his half asleep state, he was numbly aware that he knew neither where he was nor what woke him up. In the space of only a few moments, he realized he was dressed in the form hugging body suit which formed the inner layer of his armor; the individual plates were on the floor next to him, ready to be quickly donned. He was in his quarters in the HQ building, a relatively comfortable bed made up of a blanket draped over a semi-opaque suspensor field that hovered only a few microyan above the floor. Cane and Kachi were waking up to either side of him, their sleeping arrangements were shared i
n one of the classrooms in the abandoned school building. Cane quickly set about attaching his hyperlight armor on over the top of his black body glove, a process quickly carried out through a series of mental commands to the individual armored plates.

  Van Noor mentally canceled the wake up signal which had been transmitted to him across the formation command shard. He quickly dragged on and secured his armor before slinging his carbine over his shoulder and walking down toward the Operations Room, Cane and Kachi not far behind him. A pre-dawn glow allowed a little light in through the windows of both sides of the corridor as he walked, illuminating a wall full of colorful pictures which had clearly been enthusiastically painted by young children. Van Noor’s suit alerted him to a shot of sedative being injected into his arm the instant he thought about his own son and daughter. He felt a little better.

  “What’s the alert, sir?” Van Noor called out to Owenne as soon as he saw the NuHu in the center of the ops room, regarding the local area map projection with interest.

  The mandarin stood with his pale hands clasped behind his back, in between Strike Commander Orless and a trio of other soldiers of the HQ staff.

  “The Ghar have begun testing our defenses,” the mandarin replied. “A few probing attacks against our northern perimeter. Strike Captain Borras’s company has reported several small scale pushes against their defenses.”

  “Shall I activate Beta Company, sir?” Van Noor asked.

  “No. Not yet. They’re only sending a few small bands of Outcasts to see how many guns we’ll hit them with. I think it more tactically sound to allow them to believe our defenses are weaker than they are, and keep the advantage of an entire company in reserve to bolster any part of the line at a moment’s notice. Have your squads assembled and ready to deploy, Senior Strike Leader.”

  Van Noor turned to leave, but a question forced its way to the front of his mind before he took a pace.

  “Reinforcements, sir,” he enquired, “any updates?”