Markov's Prize

by Mark Barber

  “Then I’ll come along, too,” Van Noor cut off Owenne’s reply, “if only to stop the two of you getting your heads blown off.”

  ***

  Pariton

  Capital City

  Markov’s Prize

  L-Day plus 58

  Van Noor exhaled in disgust as he cast his eyes slowly across the horizon. On some of the views available through his visor, it was actually possible to see the clouds of pollution wafting through the city’s moonlit, empty streets from its centuries of archaic industrial output. The ugly, angular buildings jutted out from the flat ground in clinical rows, as if deliberately contrasting the flowing, curved lines found in most Concord cities. The buildings were relatively intact as the Concord Assault Forces had not attacked Pariton during the initial landing; the only combat which had taken place in the city was between the Ghar and a few isolated bands of resistance and, judging by the surroundings, that fight had been brief and one-sided.

  Allowing himself a smile, Van Noor glanced down at the small model soldier in his hand. One package had made it across the galaxy to him from his children to wish him a happy birthday. His daughter Alora’s artistic skills continued to amaze him; the package contained a beautifully painted soldier wearing the flamboyant dress uniform of a bygone era. His son’s drawings of spaceships touched him just as deeply. Van Noor used a small compression box to carefully shrink the soldier down to the size of a thumbnail before safely stowing it in one of his utility pouches. He mentally chastised himself – if he caught any of his troopers carrying personal possessions which could be used against them in the event of capture, he would have torn them to pieces.

  “Looks clear,” Tahl said from where he crouched at the street corner. “Let’s keep going.”

  Tahl, Van Noor, and Owenne moved silently across the broad street and down a narrow alleyway between two buildings that reached up perhaps fifty stories to touch at the dark sky above. Van Noor patched in to check the scanner sweeps from the trio of spotter drones they had positioned ahead of them. Still nothing.

  “How close do you want to get?” Van Noor asked the pale mandarin.

  “Close enough to see what we’re up against,” Owenne replied crisply.

  “Judging by the strength of what we’ve already sneaked past to get this far, I’d say we could use some help here,” Tahl offered.

  “The 12th Assault Force is holding the line at the Nienne Desert,” Owenne responded. “We wont be getting any help here. It’s just us.”

  “Is there any reason we’re not with the 12th, amassing our assets to give the Ghar one almighty kick in the nuts, instead of scattering ourselves thinly across the planet?” Van Noor asked as the trio stopped again at the edge of a road intersection.

  “Leave the strategy to me, Senior Strike Leader,” Owenne grumbled. “You just worry about making sure your troopers are clean shaven and have shiny boots or whatever it is a senior strike leader does.”

  An alert flashed across Van Noor’s viewscreen from one of the spotter drones. He immediately patched in to the drone’s optical sensor array. Four spindly Ghar stood in a loose group at a road junction, their faces hidden beneath thick helmets. Bulky packs were strapped to their backs with small scanner dishes revolving slowly above their heads. Each Ghar held a long rod with a control box at one end.

  “Tectorists,” Owenne identified the group.

  “Why have they got a scanner unit on patrol in the dead of night a good hundred yan behind their first line of defense?” Tahl queried. “We’re near something.”

  “Whatever we’re near, they’re not expecting us,” Van Noor added, “so they’re looking for MAA resistance.”

  “My interest is piqued,” Owenne remarked dryly. “Let us go take a closer look.”

  Van Noor held up a cautionary hand to stop the mandarin.

  “Tectorists do one thing – scan for the enemy. You remember the intelligence briefing on Ghar forces? The one the two of us delivered to the company? There’s no point in us blundering any closer, they’ll detect us and raise the alarm.”

  “Fine,” Owenne smiled tersely. “Ryen, go do your nin-kwan-fu or whatever it’s called, sneak up to them and break their necks.”

  “Contrary to what movies will tell you, martial artists can’t actually turn themselves into smoke and sneak around undetected,” Tahl replied. “I suggest we skirt around and find a gap in their defenses to sneak through.”

  “Bloody hell!” Owenne snapped. “That’ll take an age! Why can’t our drones jam them?”

  “Good question, well presented,” Van Noor said as he checked the feed from the drones to find an alternative route. “For some reason, all of our kit struggles to deal with Ghar equipment because it is too primitive, so we can’t jam them. You would have thought older stuff is easier to bugger about with, but that’s a question for you to take up with C3 Design and Procurement. Which, if memory serves, has a lot more NuHu working in its ranks than strike troopers.”

  “There’s a route,” Tahl said, drawing a yellow line along the shared map on the trio’s shard display. “We double back for a couple of minutes, head north, and then dive through this gap toward this open area.”

  The three made their way back along the alleyway and diverted their track to the left of the tectorists and their detectors. The spotter drones continued to slowly move forward to paint the way ahead, finding another unit of tectorists a little way to the north. Slowly, painfully, over the course of the next thirty minutes, the three Concord soldiers crept through the Ghar line toward the open square to the east. Tahl ordered one of the spotter drones to move to the square and give them an idea of what lay up ahead. The visual feed which was projected back to them made Van Noor feel sick with fear and rage.

  “What are those bastards up to?” He hissed.

  A group of a dozen Ghar Outcasts, their skinny bodies clad in black armor, herded a group of perhaps fifty women and children into Pariton’s city square. Mothers carried crying infants, older children clung to each other’s hands, as the hunchbacked soldiers shoved and pushed them toward the tall wall of the old city hall.

  “Bry, move up to the left and take down the pair at the front of the column,” Tahl ordered curtly through gritted teeth. “I’ll take center. Owenne, go right and…”

  “No,” the mandarin said firmly.

  “You’ve got a better plan? We need to hear it quickly,” Tahl replied.

  “We skirt around and push on,” Owenne said evenly.

  “We push on, they die!” Van Noor growled. “Can’t you see what’s going on here? The Ghar have taken all of the able-bodied men into slavery and this is what’s left! The women and children who don’t have the strength to last long as slaves, they just put them against a wall and shoot them!”

  “I know precisely what is going on,” Owenne held up a hand to stop Van Noor, “and it’s all very sad. But it’s a handful of lives compared to far bigger stakes. It’s sad, but I’m not willing to give away our position and jeopardize the safety of our own forces back at our hold up position. We move on.”

  “Then I’ll do it without you,” Tahl replied assertively. “Bry, go left, I’ll go right.”

  “You realize that I could use my superior shard connection to activate the drugs dispensers in both of your battlesuits to effectively sedate you and follow my orders?” Owenne threatened.

  “Use your superior shard connection to check how powerfully I feel about saving the lives of those women and children,” Tahl stared back at Owenne. “All the drugs in the world won’t override that. We’re going in, now.”

  “And your plan to extricate the survivors if you succeed?” Owenne snapped.

  “Through the sewers,” Van Noor tapped his foot against a metal grate in the cracked pavement beneath him.

  “It’ll still alert the Ghar to our presence at this city!” The mandarin clenched his fists in rage. “It still risks our position and the lives of the men and women under your command, Ta
hl!”

  “We’re Concord soldiers,” Tahl retorted, “our job, our oath, is to protect the lives of our citizens. This is a Concord planet, and even if it came to it, I would extend that oath to any woman and child. I am prepared to give up my life, and the lives of soldiers under my command, to protect women and children. And yours, Mandarin. I’ll gladly sacrifice you to save them. Now I’m done debating, Bry and I are going in. So either help us, or try to gun me down. If you opt for the latter, I guarantee you that I’m faster and you’ll come out of this far worse.”

  Owenne swore and checked his pistol.

  “You pair of overly sentimental pricks! Come on, let’s go and be heroes!”

  ***

  Even with the Ghar’s grotesque face hidden beneath its helmet, Tahl could see the surprise and alarm in the little humanoid’s body language as it span to face him. Still a good dozen paces away and now caught out in the open, Tahl raised his carbine neatly to his shoulder and fired a pair of aimed shots into the Ghar, puncturing holes in its torso and sending it crumpling down into the rubble. Screams echoed from the crowd of civilians as Van Noor opened fire to the left, lancing bursts of plasma through two of the Ghar soldiers before they had a chance to react. To the right, a single shot issued from Owenne’s pistol, decapitating one of the hunchbacked soldiers.

  Reacting faster than Tahl would have given them credit for, an order was barked out from one of the diminutive creatures and the nearest three Ghar span to face Tahl and fired their lugger guns, the primitive weapons held low at their hips as they sprayed long bursts of fire in his direction; panicked women and children scattering amid the firefight. A handful of the hastily aimed shots impacted with the hyperlight shields projected from Tahl’s armor as he sprinted towards the Ghar, flaring up purple tinted hexagons of light around him. One or two of the shots managed to penetrate the protective energy shield but deflected from the physical plates of his armor.

  Hurdling the remains of a brick wall and closing the final few paces, Tahl reached the closest Ghar and swung his carbine around, connecting with his adversary’s chin and lifting it off its feet with a sickening crunch of broken bone. The second Ghar let out a yell and leapt toward him; Tahl spun on his back leg and brought an armored foot sweeping around into a hook kick to connect with the Ghar’s face, sending the shrieking monster twirling around to land in a twisted heap in the dusty rubble. The Ghar was already clambering back to its feet when a third creature ran at Tahl, swinging its lugger gun around its head like a club. Tahl effortlessly blocked the first attack with his forearm before snapping a clenched fist out into his opponent’s neck, crushing its windpipe and sending it choking to its knees. The second Ghar rejoined the fight instantly; Tahl beat the shorter creature to the initiative and knocked it back to the dirt with a front kick before rushing over to drop a knee into its chest, pinning it in place as he beat it to death with his carbine.

  The four Ghar who had occupied the center of the column of prisoners now eliminated, Tahl quickly glanced to his left and right to check on Van Noor and Owenne. Van Noor was dispatching his final assailant whilst Owenne backed away from a trio of Ghar, his stave flailing around viciously infront of him whilst he fired off a salvo of ineffectual shots from his pistol. A Ghar raised his lugger gun and unloaded the remainder of a magazine into Owenne from close range – the mandarin span around with the force of the blast and fell back to the ground. He fired his pistol as he fell back, stitching a line of plasma across the gut of one of the Ghar and killing it where it stood. Tahl raised his carbine and took careful aim before blowing a hole through the back of another of Owenne’s adversaries. The final Ghar panicked and ran, scrambling off into the nearest alley as Tahl ran over to Owenne.

  The mandarin staggered to his feet, swearing viciously and looking down distastefully at the spreading red smear that marred the sleeve of his jacket.

  “Well, I hope you’re happy,” he sneered through gritted teeth.

  Tahl checked the mandarin’s vitals through the shard and, content that he was stable, figured that sarcasm would probably be more comforting to the NuHu than compassion.

  “Just honored to fight by your side, sir,” Tahl smirked. “The way you backed away from those terrifying midgets whilst trying to swipe at them with your little stick. Inspiring.”

  “When you’ve finished with the crap banter, I could do with a hand over here,” Van Noor called over the shard. “I’ve stopped a couple of rounds.”

  “Anything serious?”

  “No, not really. But it bloody hurts.”

  “And what’s your plan with these?” Owenne cut in, gesturing to a ragged group of four children who cowered in the one remaining corner of a bombed out building.

  Tahl’s smile faded. He took off his helmet and walked slowly over to the children, his hands outstretched passively as he crouched down next to them.

  “You’re coming with us now,” he said softly, “we need to get you somewhere safe.”

  ***

  “What the hell happened here?” Strike Leader Rall exclaimed as he walked out to meet the ragged column of people.

  One arm looped around Tahl’s shoulders for support, Van Noor continued to limp at the head of the line of refugees, pain flaring in his hip with every step, despite the medication. He looked over his shoulder at where the fifty women and children were silhouetted against the amber glow of the horizon as the twin suns neared their morning ascent. The rest of Rall’s squad was in position behind the feint blue glow of their kinetic barriers, although the spotter drones on sentry duty had alerted the company about the return of the mandarin’s patrol – and their addition.

  “We figured we needed a few more recruits to bolster the line, so these would do,” Van Noor grimaced. “Now stop asking stupid questions and get these people food, shelter, and medical checks.”

  Rall turned and began barking orders to his troopers as a second squad emerged from their accommodation dugout to assist in organizing the disheveled refugees. Owenne walked briskly over to Tahl and Van Noor, his stave tucked neatly under one arm and two bloodstained holes in the sleeve of his other.

  “Happy now?” He sneered.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact,” Tahl shrugged. “We’ve just rescued fifty people without so much as a mishap. Sure, you took a couple in the arm and Bry got shot in the bum, but I didn’t even get a scratch, so I’m feeling quite smug.”

  “It’s not in the arse, it’s in the hip!” Van Noor protested.

  “Keep telling yourself that, cupcake, sounds a lot braver,” Tahl smiled.

  Van Noor’s response was cut off as a young woman tentatively approached the trio. A grimy, blonde girl of perhaps five years of age clung to the woman’s neck, half asleep in her arms.

  “Are you the one in charge?” She asked Owenne.

  The mandarin glanced across at Tahl with a thin smile before facing her.

  “That would be me,” he confirmed coolly.

  “I just wanted to say thank you,” the woman said. “I don’t agree with what you are doing here, I don’t see what gives you people the right to just invade planets and force them to adopt your way of life. But those monsters would have killed all of us, including my daughter. I would rather we both lived out our lives partially lobotomized and duped by your IMTel, than be gunned down by those animals. For that, thank you.”

  “Yes, yes, you’re welcome,” Owenne looked uncomfortably down at the ground and waved a hand dismissively.

  He turned back to Tahl and Van Noor once she had gone.

  “Right. Back to work. The Ghar will either have found the bodies of those we killed by now, or at the very least will be looking for missing soldiers. Assemble the company, we’re attacking. I’m not giving them a single minute more than I have to to be prepared for us.”

  “You want to smash headlong against a Ghar force who is dug in defensively and we know very little about?” Van Noor exclaimed.

  “This city must fall!” Owenne snappe
d. “It is the key to everything! Now, I’ve danced to your sentimental tune tonight, I’ve done what you wanted. It’s time you two remembered the heirachy around here. I don’t hold military rank, but I do carry the authority of my status, and that means you are subordinate to me. Assemble your troopers, I want to be on the move in thirty minutes.”

  Van Noor watched the mandarin pace away, his hands clasped at the small of his back.

  “He’s not telling us everything,” Van Noor warned, “there’s something more to this.”

  “The thought crossed my mind,” Tahl agreed. “Come on, let’s get that slug out of your arse and a patch on you, so you can join in the next exciting episode.”

  “Well, I’m glad to see you’re having fun,” Van Noor gritted his teeth as he leaned on Tahl and limped toward the holding area’s medical dugout. “You’ve been happier than I’ve seen you in ages for a couple of days now.”

  Tahl smiled and nodded. He looked up at the dawn sky silently for a few paces before answering.

  “What we just did,” he explained, “that’s the best thing I’ve ever done. It’s the most I’ve ever achieved in my life. I don’t like killing people. I hate it. Sure, I feel no remorse for the Ghar and perhaps I should, but when it comes to these planets we invade, the Isorians, Freeborn, any of them, I often wonder why we’re killing each other in a nearly infinite universe where there’s room for everybody. But tonight, we did something good. Something really special. If we hadn’t done what we did, fifty innocent mothers and their children would have been murdered in cold blood. Jumping out into that, gunning those monsters down, for the first time I can remember, it really felt… exhilarating. I was happy to risk my life tonight because we were protecting the innocent and killing creatures whose motivation is so evil, that to me, they’re no better than two dimensional monsters from kids’ stories. If I have to fight and kill, well, tonight was worthwhile. It’s the first time I really felt I did something good.”