A dull rumble vibrated the plates of Mortas’s torso armor, and he was just thinking that he’d heard much louder explosions in other places when the main charges went off. To drop a tree that size required an enormous amount of force, directed at specific points, and the cumulative blast was like a hurricane wind. The ground seemed to leap under him, and Mortas cringed when the shock wave ripped across the jungle. Branches fell all around, and rotted trees collapsed as if melting. The vegetation for hundreds of yards was slapped and shot with flying debris, the greenery jumping and bouncing.
At last it was done, and Mortas looked up to a scene he barely recognized. The small clearing was covered in debris, from severed branches to a confetti-like rain of leaves. Man-sized clods of dark earth stood up, wrenched from the ground by the root systems of the trees that had been pulled down when the big one went.
As for that, a brilliant window of light had been cut in the jungle overhead. The giant tree had torn down the concealing foliage, and now men began moving in preparation for the Extractor. A pile of Third Platoon troops nearby dissolved and scrambled in different directions, revealing the wounded man whose body they’d been shielding with their own. Elsewhere, armored and helmeted forms in mud-smeared camouflage grabbed up the detritus from the blast and dragged it out of the way.
Moments later, guided in by a homing beacon and its own sensors, the Extractor sailed out of the sky and through the hole in the foliage. It moved at incredible rates of speed, so one moment it was a dot in the sky and the next it was on the ground, a gust of wind following it. Three times the size of a coffin and shaped like a sailboat hull, it could operate in planetary atmosphere as well as in space. When medical shuttles couldn’t reach a wounded man, the Extractor was the best answer.
Heat blasted off of its sides, and steam rose all around the vessel as its top lifted off automatically. Inside, a cushioned space shaped like a human was surrounded by gauges and medical instruments that could deliver medicine, stop bleeding, and perform a full-body scan long before the stricken individual reached medical help.
Vossel and Third Platoon’s medic gently lifted the wounded man from his stretcher and began strapping him into position. Other soldiers brought up his rucksack and weapon for evacuation, the backpack stripped of important items and the rifle too damaged to keep.
“Stand back,” Vossel ordered, and the nearby soldiers moved away while still watching with concern. The medic activated a switch inside the Extractor, and the lid slowly lowered and locked shut. The entire vessel began to tremble, and Mortas gave the warning that it was about to lift off.
“Extractor outbound.”
The box gave off a low hum and slowly levitated a yard off the ground. Turning in place, it pointed its prow toward the open space in the jungle.
“Rockets inbound.” The signal came at the last moment, as distant crumps sounded where the missiles were landing. The hovering vessel stopped vibrating, and launched into the sky as if shot from a bow.
“Casualty evacuated,” Mortas reported to Dassa. Anticipating the company commander’s order, men all over the perimeter were preparing to move. They would have to carry the three bodies and assist the two other wounded men to the top of the ridge for shuttle evacuation.
“Good job. I’ve marked the route that we used, but stay alert. Sam’s sneaking around out here, and we’ve had enough surprises. The company is forming a new perimeter at Broadleaf.”
The main building at Broadleaf looked like it had been stomped on by a giant, then set on fire. Its roof had fallen in, and what was left of its white walls were blackened. Smaller outlying buildings had been badly damaged by the rocket barrage intended to save their inhabitants, and all for naught. Mortas had seen reconnaissance imagery of the site, a multistructure military station with extensive antennae inside a double fence of antipersonnel wire. The antennae were either completely gone, blown down the side of the ridge, or lying twisted where they had once stood. Dassa had cut through the fence when he and Second Platoon had reached the summit early that morning, but that breach was nothing when compared to the enormous breaks on the northern side of the ridge. Entire sections of fencing were simply missing, and it was hard to tell if that work had been accomplished by the Sim attackers or human support fire.
Shuttles had been coming and going for some time, taking the dead from Broadleaf up to the Dauntless and bringing in technicians to inspect the damage. They also carried supplies for B Company, and so First Platoon was finally able to refill its canteens. Second Platoon and the Marine platoon from the Dauntless manned a perimeter against another sneak attack, allowing First and Third Platoons to conduct resupply.
Having savored his first drink of water in many desiccated hours, Mortas poured a green powder into one of his canteens before refilling it. It was a fruit-flavored mix, loaded with vitamins and caffeine, and most of the Orphans considered it a necessity on long missions. An armed drone cruised over the clearing just then, a comforting sight after the events of the previous evening. The noise all over the clearing was an additional relief. The Sims on Verdur had run out of mortar ammunition years earlier, and the troops knew there was little chance that they would be able to lob anything up onto the heights. As a result, work parties swarmed all over the plateau.
Standing under the trees near the edge of the hilltop, Mortas overheard two soldiers who were breaking down crates of rations. One was from Third Platoon, and the other was a veteran machine gunner from Katinka’s squad named Catalano.
“Hurry up and wait, same old stuff,” the soldier from Third Platoon remarked in a bored fashion. “Rush over there, then saunter over here. It’s like that whole alien scare eight months ago, the one your el-tee bumped into. One second the Force is on high alert, everybody getting scanned to make sure we’re human, and then what? Not another word about it.”
Screwing the cover back on and shaking the container vigorously, Mortas saw Captain Dassa speaking with Lieutenant Kitrick off to the side. Both officers had shed their helmets and goggles, which was an infantry signal that a private conversation was taking place.
Catalano, sitting in the shade and clipping the bands on a ration case, replied to the Third Platoon man’s observation. “You already know why those bad-ass shape-shifters haven’t come into the war.”
“Don’t even try that.”
“It’s true. He said he did it himself.” Catalano glanced at Mortas. “That first alien musta been a scout of some kind. My lieutenant gave her some of that first-class First Platoon lovin’, and she telepathically told the others all about it. If those chickenshits at Glory Main hadn’t killed her, we’d have a bunch of shape-shifter allies right now—war’d be over.”
Looking around, Mortas observed a curious gathering beneath a makeshift awning that had been rigged up on the remains of one of the fallen antennae. The camouflage fabric rippled over the heads of several seated soldiers, all muddy from the jungle, all working intently with handhelds. Captain Pappas, the battalion’s intelligence officer, sat at their center with his own device, apparently directing the work. Fingers stabbed repeatedly at buttons while others ran across screens, and Mortas decided they were reviewing stored tapes of some kind.
“Pappas thinks he’s come across some interesting footage from the past few months of satellite imagery.” Dassa’s words startled Mortas, who turned to find the company commander standing next to him. “I gave him part of my command group and a couple of the more tech-savvy troops to help him sort through it.”
Mortas nodded, his mind so full of questions from the last few hours that he didn’t know which one to ask first. Remembering Dassa’s just-concluded conversation with his fellow platoon leader, he decided to start there.
“Wyn was really torn up about what happened. He knows he made a mistake.”
“We talked. Don’t worry about him.”
“He fee
ls guilty about being evacuated from Fractus just before things got rough. And he was really close to Noonan.” Captain Noonan had been B Company’s aggressive commander before Dassa. He’d been killed, along with his entire command group, fighting a much larger number of Sims.
“Oh, that’s not it. Wyn thinks he should have been given command of B Company after Fractus. He has a right to feel that way a little bit, considering how many open slots there were at the time. It doesn’t help that I’m so much younger than he is, or that you and I are old buddies.”
“Did you tell him I broke your arm once?”
“Everybody knows that. Let’s find a seat.” Mortas followed him to the side of what had once been a storage building, switching off his own radio as they walked. Sitting down, he lifted his helmet from his head and unstrapped the hard frame of his goggles.
“We’ve got some major developments to deal with, Jan. The Step has been indefinitely suspended, for reasons unknown. All over the war zone, Command is reshuffling the ships as best it can.” Dassa shrugged slightly. “Normal propulsion doesn’t stack up to the distances out here at all, so without the Step everybody’s pretty much stuck where they are. The Dauntless is staying with us, so we’ve got her firepower and, if necessary, we can be evacuated by shuttle.
“Right now I don’t see a need for that. Cordvine is asking to have its personnel taken up to the ship, but I think that’s because of what happened to Broadleaf. Whether they stay or go, part of the company is going to have to secure their station. Luckily, Almighty isn’t interested in leaving, or working with us. So that makes things a little simpler.”
“We going after the Sims who did this, sir?”
Dassa’s dark eyes drifted off toward the ruins of the main building, where ship technicians were sorting through the wreckage. “To the best of our ability, yes.”
“Sir?”
“We have a minor supply issue, Jan. Unbeknownst to me, a long time ago somebody developed a protocol for handling the infantry-specific items for this mission. Just in case the cruiser assigned to support the infantry had to go somewhere in a hurry, they always transferred those supplies to Broadleaf. Makes sense, in a way, because Broadleaf was a Force station and they could just as easily send the drones to us as could a ship in orbit.”
Mortas felt an uneasy feeling creeping into his innards. “So all those infantry-specific items were here when Broadleaf got hit.”
“Exactly. You must have attended one of those prep schools for gifted students.” They shared a smile. “Yes, everything the Dauntless sent down appears to have been destroyed in the attack. A lot of it can be made up from ship’s stores, but there’s one item that we can’t do without—those tiny batteries that go in our goggles. And as of right now, the only goggle batteries we have are the ones we’re already carrying.”
Mortas looked at the dirt, running over the ramifications of this blunder. Without the goggles, B Company could only view overhead imagery using its handhelds. The devices gave off a dull glow in darkness, and it was ludicrous to think of infantrymen patrolling in the jungle using them to navigate the terrain. Most importantly, without the goggles, the Orphans would be unable to see in the dark. The range-finding and targeting capabilities the eyepieces shared with the Scorpion rifles, the chonks, and the machine guns would likewise be lost.
“How about the Marines? They must have a stockage for their goggles.”
“Different goggles, different batteries.”
“The security platoon at Cordvine?”
“They were issued the same goggles as the Marines—so they could get resupplied with batteries by any cruiser that was nearby.”
“How about our friends at Almighty?”
“Their rigs are the next-generation stuff. Different batteries.”
“So the tech-savvy humans are getting beat by the guys who are fighting with tree sap.” Mortas laughed with genuine amusement, but then stopped. “Once our goggles are dead, we won’t be able to see Sam’s heat when he’s nearby. If the aerial systems can’t detect him from above, we’re really in the shit, sir.”
“That sums it up nicely. But you did bring up the only piece of good news I have. Come with me.”
They rose, and walked across the clearing to a space in the shadow of two large trees. A morgue detail from the ship was photographing the remains of Broadleaf’s complement that had not yet been evacuated. The bodies lay in a row on camouflaged tarpaulins, many of them missing limbs from the bombardment. Dassa walked past them, to a single corpse off to the side.
“Sam knew we’d bring in the rockets to run him off, so he chopped holes in the fence, set the main building on fire, did a little shooting, and then ran for it. But this one didn’t get away.”
They stood over the body, human in every respect except for its uniform. Tattered Sim fatigue pants were visible under the worn covering of a Sim combat smock, and the dead soldier’s head was still protected by the flanged helmet of the Sim infantry. Mortas had seen this outfit up close on two other planets and immediately knew it had been modified.
Squatting, he noted dozens of finger-sized strips of metal that had been glued all over the shoulders, arms, back, and torso of the man’s smock. His helmet was likewise adorned, and on one large piece Mortas made out what looked like part of a stenciled serial number in human numerals.
“Is that what I think it is?”
“It is.” Dassa spoke with admiration. “Sam is the most adaptable guy in the universe. They must have chopped up every downed drone, every crashed recon ’bot, and probably a few shuttle wrecks we didn’t know about. Took the heat shielding and broke it up into little strips that they glued all over their helmets and their smocks. That’s why we can’t pick up their heat signatures from above. There’s still plenty of it, but it’s broken up, so it doesn’t register.”
Mortas lifted the smock and rubbed a thumb against the coarse black rosin holding the strips in place. “Well now we know what they were using the tree sap for.”
Mortas awoke with effort. Someone was shaking his arm, and yet he was so completely asleep that it seemed like minutes before his eyes opened. The sky overhead was losing its light, and it took a moment before he remembered where he was. Dassa had ordered him to take a nap after discovering he’d been on the go for the previous two days and nights, and he’d curled up in his field blanket after briefing Dak on what he’d learned.
“You with us, Jan?” Captain Pappas was sitting next to him, the lenses of his goggles raised up under his helmet.
“Yes, sir.” He moved his tongue around inside his mouth, surprised that the gummy paste was gone before remembering he’d drunk and eaten his fill before going to sleep. “What’s going on?”
“Your platoon is going to take me out to that spot near Almighty where the Sim heat signatures showed up last night. They scaled the cliff here and wrecked this place without once showing up on the scanners, while at the same time half a platoon of them appeared bright as day at a different location.”
“I thought we’d decided that was a diversion.”
“It was. I bet there weren’t more than three or four Sims over there, running some kind of torchlight show for us. But it sure looked real, especially the way they moved, and I need to see whatever might have survived the rockets.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but what could you find out that we don’t already know?”
“Look here.” Pappas took out his handheld and activated the screen. Mortas knew the entire company had moved into goggle-battery conservation before he took his nap, so he assumed there was a plentiful supply of power sources for the handhelds.
The screen was dark, with markers indicating the steep changes in elevation around the glowing rectangle of Almighty. Tiny heat signatures abounded in the blackness, the birds and animals that inhabited the forest going about their nocturnal busines
s. A group of lights appeared, and Mortas was about to assume he was seeing a replay of the previous evening’s bombardment when he noted that the cluster was in a different location and much smaller. The fireflies rambled across several hundred yards of jungle, then vanished.
Another clip started right after that, and the time stamp in the screen’s corner told him that this footage was from eight months earlier. A long column of fireflies flickered into existence against the blackness, but they didn’t seem to move at first. After close to a minute, the entire dotted line started lurching forward toward Almighty.
“Look at the signatures in the center. See how they keep their exact intervals? Nobody getting closer, nobody getting farther behind. Incredible discipline, right?”
“Incredible is the word. Nobody can walk through this crap without weaving left and right and getting hung up on every other vine. I’m guessing that line of troops was just a bunch of stationary heaters of some kind, with probably two live bodies at either end.”
“Very good.”
“On a prearranged schedule, the guy in the back extinguishes one of the heat sources while the guy in the front activates a new one. Looks like a whole column of moving Sims.”
“I believe that half platoon we saw last night was a similar arrangement.”
“Wait a second. Those clips you just showed me—nothing happened to them. No rockets, no gunships. How did the satellites miss that?”
“How indeed? I didn’t, and all I did was filter the footage using the exact same protocols the scanners use. There was no way they could have missed this. Cordvine routinely bombards the jungle, just on a whim, and Broadleaf wasn’t shy about dropping something on suspicious signatures like what we’re seeing here. But not our friends at Almighty. They seem to have been exhibiting a very live-and-let-live attitude these past few months.”
“They didn’t the other night. They nailed that concentration, or diversion, as soon as it appeared.”
“As soon as we called them about it, you mean.”
Dire Steps Page 13