by Leo Champion
In the distance, silhouetted by the dawn sun, the staggering Dmitri Bogdanov saw a rock spire. It was the highest point around, the only thing at that distance – many miles – that he could see.
But it was a rock spire. Those, he recalled from his desert acclimatization training from long-ago Chauncy, sometimes held water. Rain got trapped in rock pockets in the shade and didn’t entirely evaporate.
He wanted water. He would have killed any number of people for a drink, and the thought of that made his hand, clasped around the gun, twitch slightly.
James Bellis says.
To Jessica Cantrell.
He put his boots forwards one after the other.
Of West Palm Beach.
It was cold, but as the sun rose it was going to get hot. But he was not going to stop walking. He had a message to deliver for his friend. He had to get the message through to someone who could deliver it. Even if it killed him. The message had to get through.
Jimmy always loved you.
And he’s sorry.
Bogdanov adjusted his course slightly. That distant rock spire would be his aiming point now. Eventually he’d make Vasimir or the mountains it led through. If he could find water, he’d make it.
Eventually. And Jimmy Bellis’ last wish would be achieved.
As he’d promised.
* * *
“Fuck you,” Kaggs snarled at the bucking zak. He was bigger than the animal’s former rider, and the beast didn’t like it. “Fuck you.”
Slowly the animal’s bucking subsided, as it tired.
“Yeah, shithead,” he said, flicking the reins.
The exoskeletal Qings didn’t need saddles for more than carrying capacity – this one had big empty, looted-through bags on it – and weapons, but humans needed more. Someone had worked out that a folded-over-repeatedly blanket would do the job, but a few minutes in Kaggs was already getting saddlesore.
The other men watched. Their leader wasn’t the first to try riding a zak, but one of the others had been kicked off hard enough to have possibly broken something. Whether Kaggs tamed this one might be the question of whether the rest of the group would have the balls to try themselves.
Suddenly the zak reared up, its long neck turning to bite at its rider. Kaggs saw the movement and gave the animal a vicious slap across the face, his boots digging into the adjusted-for-humans stirrups.
“Fuck you,” the shot-caller spat as the animal turned back. “Now get moving. Forwards.”
He kicked it in the ribs.
Suddenly the zak lurched forwards, sprinting through the main avenue of Diamond North between the warehouses. Running men followed as Kaggs held on for dear life.
It ran out into the desert, going a few hundred yards – almost as far as the eastern sentry post, where two men with a scope were dug in waiting for anyone to come from the wells that had been planted between Diamond North and Vasimir – until it started to tire.
The one good thing with being that far away was that Kaggs wouldn’t lose face if he were bucked off now. Not that he was going to let that happen.
He flicked the reins, pulling the animal’s head around to the left. Slowly it turned.
“Good zak,” he said. “Now go.”
He dug his heels into the side of the zak, the way he’d seen cowboys in movies do. On four long exoskeletal legs, the zak headed back toward the waystation.
“See,” he told the men. “They do what they’re told if they respect you. Now get to work learning to ride ‘em unless you feel like walking.”
Not wanting to risk the embarrassment of being kicked off after saying that, Kaggs dismounted, tying the reins to a railing someone had set up – maybe for that purpose? – outside the blockhouse.
There was food here, plenty of water, and comfort-causing supplies other than that, like tents and stoves. Diamond North was a nice place, and it was a good rest.
Yeah, they were definitely going to stay here another couple of days. With luck they might even score more weapons or men, if someone else wandered along.
* * *
Leon Smith trudged forwards, relieved that at least the carts were no longer an issue. With the wells poisoned there was no likely way they’d refill them, and the heavy cumbersome things had been as much a bastard to wrangle across the rough ground empty as they had been full.
They’d ditched the supply carts too, since there wasn’t enough food to carry in them anyway. Its remaining content had been distributed through the men’s packs, with whip-wielding Corporal Alonzo threatening to flog any Ganger who touched a ration bar without permission.
Not going to anyway, Smith thought bitterly as he walked. We’re all in this together, don’t you idiots see?
“Onwards,” the hyperactive lieutenant-colonel urged again from the front. “We’ll make Diamond North by this morning if we keep it up! Forwards, you fuckups!”
It was only a couple of hours until dawn.
* * *
Three men could definitely move faster than a whole group, and Mullins was fairly sure he wasn’t the only one of his three who’d thought of heading off on their own. But with his friend Reuter lying wounded on a stretcher, it was an option he was ashamed had crossed his mind.
Mondragon had been 996th Training Regiment with Mullins and Reuter, and Lennon had been the man’s team leader since they’d joined the battalion. They were about as likely to run off and abandon their friend as he was.
They hiked west-northwest through the wastelands, alert for trouble that never came. All three men had compasses that they checked regularly, and now as dawn started to glimmer the landmark spire towered on top of them.
“Slow down and be careful,” Lennon told them as they started toward the high rocky outcrop.
It towered starkly a hundred and some feet into the air, solid white-yellow rock that millions of years of wind erosion had left standing. All three moons were high in the sky, the mid-sized orange one in a position that silhouetted the top of the spire against it.
Lennon crept forwards, the other two covering him with rifles at their shoulders. There was no sign of life in the area, no sign of human activity – other than the jamming array Mullins was one hundred percent sure, now, had been built on the spire.
The corporal turned, gestured for the other two to come forwards. Crouching with weapon held high, Mullins moved.
“We’re looking not just for stay-behinds but for booby traps,” Lennon said. “Germans love to booby-trap their shit. Watch out for mines.”
Slowly the three men made their base around the rock tower. The ground here, around the higher ground the spire sat on, was rocks and not sand; not ideal for burying mines in.
But there were a hundred other ways an inventive enemy could make this area dangerous, and from all Mullins had heard, the Euros could get almost as inventive as the Chinese when it came to devising tricks to kill you.
“Look!” Mondragon pointed as they came around a corner. A couple of prefabricated huts had been set up by a steep face of the spire, the huts the same white-yellow as the rock around them. You couldn’t have spotted them from more than perhaps a hundred yards away.
Of course, the fact that the aerials built along the spire were emitting north of a hundred kilowatts on every usable frequency, made visual camouflage a little irrelevant to anyone with a radio receiver. Mullins with his field radio had been able to triangulate it, although a bit of that had been map guesswork to the effect that this spire would be the most likely place.
An orbiting warship with a few radio-seeking missiles could end the jamming problem in minutes. For that matter, one might appear in-system any second to do just that. In which case, it occurred to him, being anywhere near the blast radius would be a bad idea.
There was no reason to think a warship would appear anytime soon, no reason at all. And here he was. Time to take a look at this thing.
“Cover me,” he told Lennon and headed to the nearest of the two huts. Its doo
r, to his slight surprise, was open.
A man lay on his face just barely inside – it looked to otherwise be an empty shed, maybe one that had been used during the construction of this place – with a snub-nosed pistol in one hand. He wore filthy black pants and an orange reflective vest.
“Clear!” Mullins said, calling the others forwards.
“He dead?” Lennon asked. “Mondragon, check out the other hut. I got your back. Mullins, look this guy over.”
The first thing Mullins did was to gently prise the Black Ganger’s pistol out of his fingers. Then he checked for a pulse, although he’d had the impression the man was probably alive. He’d been moving slightly.
Yes. Alive.
He turned the guy over, and his eyes opened.
“Where’s the rest of your crew?” Lennon demanded as he returned.
Nowhere around, thought Mullins, or we’d see signs of them. This guy looked to be a successful runner – one who must have jumped a guard, because otherwise where would that pistol have come from?
“Jessica Cantrell,” the man gasped. “She’s in West Palm Beach.”
Mullins and Lennon looked at each other. Heatstroke?
“James Bellis says he always loved her. Tell her that. Tell her Bellis says he always loved her and he’s sorry.”
“You’ll tell her that yourself, James,” said Lennon. “Maybe. Where’s the rest of your crew?”
“Water. Just give me a drop of water and I’ll tell you everything.”
Lennon, Mullins’ gun staying squarely on the man, unclipped his canteen and handed it over. The Ganger took four long swigs and then with visible restraint stopped.
“Thank you. Oh God, thank you so much. Who are you?”
“Legion troops. What happened to your group and where did you get the pistol?”
When – Dmitri Bogdanov, his name turned out to be, not James Bellis – was done, Lennon cursed softly.
“Ciampa. They murdered Ciampa and his team.”
Those guys were First Squad, like Teams Hill and Lennon. They knew each other well. Had known. Like Mullins had.
“So to get this straight,” Lennon said to Bogdanov. “You jumped Ciampa and the others, you killed them, you took their weapons – and then you used them to wipe out another team.”
“Corporal, I swear I had nothing to do with it,” said Bogdanov. “I wanted nothing to do with it. Bellis and I tried to run, and they killed Bellis. I just want to serve honest time and get back to a blue shirt.”
“He ran from them,” Mullins observed. “Can’t deny that.”
“Do you know where these renegades were going to be going?” Lennon asked.
Thirty-six of them, Mullins thought. Two gangs, minus this guy, his friend and the two pursuers the pair had killed. Armed with two teams’ worth of weapons, plus assorted holdout guns and sharpened tools.
Just the ten guns, two submachineguns and eight rifles, would give them more firepower than Mullins’ group had. Add the holdout guns and hand weapons, and subtract three of the group’s nine fighting effectives from the main party… that was going to be trouble.
Wherever they went, and Mullins did not want to hear Bogdanov’s next words:
“Diamond North.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Almost there, just a few more miles!” said Newbauer. He cracked his whip in the air – a skill, Janja noticed, that the man had gotten good at. So far he’d kept his actual use of the thing to the Black Gangers, and they hadn’t given him much cause – or excuse – to use it.
Janja for his part was uneasy. Just a few more miles, into the only waystation for hundreds of miles.
They’d been briefed on the existence of Diamond North. The nomads would know about it. What if there was someone unpleasant there? The Legion had a protocol for approaching destinations there might be hostile company; it was in the NCO-level tactical manuals he’d been reading.
Now he exchanged glances with Hill.
“You thinking what I am, Rajput?” the corporal asked.
Janja nodded.
“Talk to the colonel.”
“Sir? Slow down for a sec,” Hill went to the front of the line, Janja tagging a few steps behind.
“We’re almost there! Slow down?” Newbauer demanded. “Lazy trash; the hell we will. Think of bunk beds, Corporal! To rest your convict asses in!”
“Sir, doctrine under these circumstances, when there may be hostiles at an objective, is to send a scout or two forwards first,” Hill said.
“There are no hostiles at Diamond North,” Newbauer scoffed, not pausing in his strides. Hill had to keep moving to keep up with him.
“Sir, there may be. I request we pause the group while I go forwards to take a look.”
Hill wouldn’t be the one going forwards, Janja thought – with Lennon gone he was the senior Legion man present – but someone would, probably Mandvi. The man was sharp-sighted and clever.
“You think I’m going to allow Legion riffraff to plunder my supplies unsupervised?” Newbauer demanded. “No, Corporal, and that is it!”
He flicked his whip in the air, lashing it past Hill.
“Sir, Legion doctrine—” Hill pleaded.
“Do I look like trash who follows trash doctrine?” Newbauer snarled, and lashed the whip past Hill again.
The corporal fell back to walk alongside Janja.
“Keep your eyes open,” he said. “Keep your eyes wide open as we approach.”
* * *
There’d been wired telegraphy equipment in one of the supply warehouses, and Kaggs had had a telephone run to his blockhouse from both the eastern sentry post and the western one. Now, a man – Vishni – woke him up.
“What?”
“Eastern post reports someone coming. Looks like another gang and their guards. Definite reflective vests, and blue ones.”
Kaggs wasn’t shocked. There’d apparently been two more Gangs east of here, and it made sense for one to be showing up around now.
“Wake everyone,” he said. “Get to ambush positions, close in. Kill the armed ones first.”
* * *
Moonlight showed the way as Mullins, Lennon and Mondragon, their packs left behind at the transmitter for speed, sprinted south to warn the main party.
They’d been running for half an hour and Mullins was getting tired – aware of the unarmed Bogadnov following them, but nobody cared since he was unarmed and clearly not on the side of the people he’d fled from – but they had to intercept the main group, had to warn Hill and the others.
They crested a rise, Mullins a step behind Lennon, and—
“Look,” the former scout-sniper pointed.
Mullins could see his party, a group of about twenty-five figures making their slow way toward the cluster of buildings a couple of miles away from both Mullins and the main group.
“No,” said Lennon. “There. By the rock field just west of the place. Dug in.”
Mullins raised his rifle scope to see if that would help, focusing in—
Shit. Yes, now he could see it, from this angle, there were foxholes, rocks and sandbags piled up for them for cover. In them crouched men, right around the path – it was the easiest ground, anyone without care would have chosen that way – to Diamond North.
The main group wasn’t just walking into trouble. They were about to march right into a prepared ambush.
Two miles away. No communications. Even if the radio Mullins had left behind hadn’t been jammed, the main party didn’t have one to call.
“Do what you did to warn the chopper,” Mondragon suggested after a moment. “Open fire. It’ll at least warn ‘em.”
“From two miles I don’t know if they’d even hear the gunshots,” said Lennon. “And – there’s almost forty of them. We’re outnumbered four to one anyway, but it doesn’t look like they’ve posted anyone facing north.”
“There’s almost forty of them,” said Mondragon. “You seriously want to attack them? There’
s three of us.”
“Four,” said a breathless and exhausted Bogdanov as he reached them. “Give back that gun and I’ll help.”
Mullins looked at Lennon, whose call it was. So did Mondragon. On the one hand, the man was a convicted Black Ganger. On the other, he’d run alone in the desert rather than co-operate with mutineers. And another man would help right now with whatever they were going to do.
The corporal gave a short nod.
“Mullins, give him the gun back. Bogdanov, I’m going to keep an eye on you. Look like you’re going to try something funny, or make a run from legitimate authority, and you get it. Clear?”
“Clear, Corporal,” Bogdanov said without hesitation.
Mullins handed back the snub-nosed revolver he’d stuck for the time being in his belt. Bellis checked the cylinders.
“Got reloads for that?” he asked. If Lennon was fine with the man being armed, then Mullins could spare his machine-pistol for a bit. It wouldn’t do for the fourth man in their group to have only six bullets.
“Some.” Bogdanov fished in his pocket.
“That’s enough,” said Lennon curtly. “Just don’t waste your shots. Now, here’s the plan…”
* * *
“Keep your eyes peeled for trouble,” Jorgenson murmured to Cramer as they walked up a slight hill. Diamond North was in sight, or at least the flagpole on the place’s blockhouse was. They were within a mile.
“You really think someone else might have moved in?” she asked the medic.
“It’s possible,” said Jorgenson. “Doctrine says to check. It makes us uneasy in the Legion, ma’am, when we don’t follow protocols that exist for good reason.”
“Let me talk with the colonel,” Cramer suggested.
“This close, he won’t listen,” said Jorgenson. “He’s determined to be in a nice bunk in a half hour. Could be a nice grave.”
“You really think we’re walking into something unfriendly?” she asked seriously, chilled a little.
Jorgenson shrugged.
“Probably not,” he said. “But there’s a chance. And I didn’t survive two years in the Legion by taking chances. Just be ready. In case.”