by B. V. Larson
“Okay,” I shouted up and down the line. “1st Squad hugs my ass, 2nd squad hugs Harris’ ass. Break for cover the second we’re on the dirt and that ramp goes down.”
Carlos looked worried. “Is it going to be that bad?” he asked.
“Look on the bright side,” I told him. “You could use a little slimming down, anyway.”
I could tell that he wanted to punch me, but he didn’t. Being an officer had its moments.
When we came down in a swirling cloud of dust and torn-up weeds, the ramp dropped fast. There was nothing gentle about it. Someone had just cut the cord and SLAM! It went down.
“On your feet!” roared Harris.
I felt the urge to obey, although I was in command now. I hadn’t quite adjusted to the idea I was his superior officer. I don’t think he had, either.
There were two units ahead of us in line. They trotted off at a good clip. I didn’t hear any incoming fire, but I knew from Graves that they expected resistance at any moment.
We rushed off the ship and into a clearing. The area around us was heavily forested and there were rolling mountains in every direction. The land looked like it had been wadded up and let go so that there were wrinkles everywhere.
Intermixed with trees were plenty of big, gray granite outcroppings. The region had been carved up by glaciers thousands of years back, and the wounds were still showing on the landscape.
“Platoon leaders,” Graves said on command chat, “we’ve got strange reports. People are being attacked by some kind of effect when they land and scramble. Get away from the lifter. It’ll be taking off the second we’re all on the ground.”
Frowning, I hustled toward my assigned position. Graves, or maybe the primus above him, had marked waypoint positions that showed up inside my helmet. To my eyes, a pyramid-shaped pile of granite with a scraggly tree on top had a green arrow on it.
The effect wasn’t enabled for every helmet, just squad leaders. It was distracting and could make it hard to aim. To increase combat effectiveness, it was a burden only Harris and I had to deal with.
Off about a hundred meters to my left, Harris had his group moving at a dead run. I decided he was doing things right and picked up the pace as well. My people ran after me like a pack of dogs.
All around the field, groups were spreading out and taking positions. Most weren’t moving fast, however, and only half of the cohort had disembarked before things went wrong.
At first, I didn’t get it at all.
“What the hell is that?” Leeson demanded. “What’s wrong with you, boy?”
His platoon was bringing up the rear of our unit, and he wasn’t running. He led his men at a trot, looking this way and that for danger. I couldn’t blame him, but I’d been tipped off by Harris. When it came to staying alive—or even outright weaselry—I always adopted Harris’ more experienced approach over Leeson’s.
I couldn’t really see what Leeson was complaining about. Sure, there was a sort of gray cloud around his troops. It was a dust-devil-like thing. I listened for more details, but Leeson had dropped out of the command channel. I assumed he was talking to his people on the tactical line.
Breathing hard, I reached the rocks we were assigned to. Everyone hugged the big rock and looked around in every direction.
Looking back at Leeson’s crew, I saw they’d stopped advancing. I zoomed in with my helmet’s assistive optics to take a closer look.
“What’s going on with Leeson, Vet?” I asked Harris.
“I don’t know, sir. I think they ran into a nest of bees or something.”
He was right, that’s what it looked like. I tuned into Leeson’s platoon channel to see if I could help.
What I heard was chilling. His people were screaming incoherently. There wasn’t any speech at all, as far as I could tell.
“Harris,” I said, catching on at last, “those aren’t bees. They’re nanites.”
“Oh shit,” Harris said with feeling.
Years back on Dust World, we’d fought with squids who’d come in a big slave ship. They’d had some exotic weapons, one of which was clouds of what looked like metal shavings lying on the decks of their ship. When a trooper got too close to one of the swarms, it would rise up and begin eating glass, metal, plastics and flesh.
My eyes dropped to the ground. I saw something I hadn’t noticed before. The clearing we’d landed in wasn’t a clearing—not exactly. There had been trees here recently. You could see depressions and mounds of mulched wood on the ground everywhere. The nanites had been seeded here, and they’d eaten the trees, forming a perfect trap.
Without further hesitation, I switched to the cohort-wide command channel. As a lowly adjunct, I had the authorization to do so, but I wasn’t really expected to say anything. I was expected to listen in, and possibly make a report, if I’d been ordered to. There was nothing a pack of centurions liked less than a junior officer mouthing off on their private line.
But I did it anyway.
“Cohort,” I said, “this is Adjunct McGill reporting. We’ve got nanites. I repeat, we’ve got nanite swarms out here! This clearing is not natural—it’s a trap!”
That was all I said. I didn’t tell them what to do, I just reported and shut up.
“This is Primus Winslade,” our glorious leader said, finally speaking up. “I’m afraid those that have disembarked are on their own. The lifter crew is scrambling. Graves is in command of the survivors.”
My jaw dropped as I watched the lifter pull up into the sky again. There were still troops on the ramp, marching down as it took off. The poor men flipped and tumbled down to their deaths in the clearing. Nanite swarms rose up to eat them as they crawled around in the dirt. The tiny machines weren’t picky. They liked the taste of troops and armor, dead or alive.
“McGill,” Graves said on tactical, “I’ve lost Leeson’s platoon. I’m moving to your position if you think it’s safe. What’s your status?”
“We’re good, sir, for now. The nanites don’t seem to be climbers. We’re on top of a rock formation, and we’re staying here.”
“Excellent,” he said, then switched over to broadcast mode. Every man on the field could hear him—provided they weren’t screaming too loudly, or their eardrums hadn’t been popped by hungry bits of metal. “People, I want you to break formation and get to high ground. Preferably, you need to stand on top of the nearest rock pile.”
The reaction across the field was dramatic. Several hundred troops ran like rabbits in every direction. Soon, they formed panting islands of men on top of granite outcroppings.
A few more died, having already been dusted with the deadly metal. While they screeched and roared, they were rolled by their comrades off the rocks and down onto the ground, where they thrashed until they bled out.
“Okay,” Graves said calmly, “what’s the survivor count? What do I have left?”
After a few minutes, we accounted for ourselves. Several platoons were intact, like mine, but most of them had taken casualties and about half had been wiped out entirely. We’d lost three hundred out of a thousand, and five hundred more had fled in the lifter.
Graves reorganized us into two functional units of a hundred each. He put me in his unit as a personal sidekick. I wasn’t sure if that was because he happened to be hugging the same rock I was, or if he thought I’d done well so far. Either way, I felt good about it.
“All right,” he said once he’d finished getting us organized. “We’re sitting ducks on these rocks if enemy troops show up, and we have to assume they’re on the way. We have to get into the trees. Obviously, the nanite swarms aren’t in the forest itself, so we should be relatively safe there.”
So far, I followed him perfectly. But the next bit left me scratching my head.
“Unfortunately,” he continued, “the only way I can think of to get us out of this situation is to run for it. My plan is to use some bait first, however. I’ll ask for a volunteer from each platoon. The volunteer w
ill run for the forest and attract the swarms. The rest of us will race past him and, with luck a fair number will make it to the tree line.”
He looked around with gray, passionless eyes. “You,” he said, pointing to Carlos, “you’re my volunteer.”
“What?” he demanded. “I’m your bio. Your medic.”
“Do you see any wounded? They either stay clean or they die. I don’t need a bio, I need bait. Besides, you look slow on your feet.”
“Shit…” Carlos said. He looked like he was going to puke.
“Wait a minute,” Kivi said suddenly. She was frowning deeply. “I might have a better plan.”
“It’s got to be fast, whatever it is,” Graves said.
“I can improvise an EMP device. Give me some copper wire and a metal rod, preferably of iron.”
We hustled to help her out. There were half eaten legionnaires with their discarded kits all over the field. We cannibalized equipment as fast as we could.
Kivi was a tech, and she was a decent one. The job of techs in our legions was to solve any kind of science, communications or engineering-related problem. A need for such skills often arose while doing battle on alien worlds.
Working feverishly, she wound the copper wire that we pulled out of suit power-systems around a rod of iron—which was really part of a discarded snap rifle. Then she hooked up a small flash capacitor to the ends of her coiled wire. Wearing rubber gloves and carrying a battery to charge her capacitor, she looked at us.
“The EMP field will disable my suit, and my tapper,” she said, “but I’ve got a portable computer I can set aside, out of range, and I’ll take off my helmet.”
“Why waste a suit?” Graves asked. “Just go out there naked.”
She frowned at him. “An unnecessary waste of time,” she said, “stripping down will only—”
“You’re wrong,” Graves said. “Strip down. That way the only thing you’ll damage is your own tapper. You’re going to have to switch suits anyway after you wreck it, and it will make you move more slowly.”
Thinking about it, everybody knew Graves was right. If her suit’s exoskeletal system seized up, it would be difficult for her to move at all. We were in armor, after all.
Hissing in annoyance, she ripped off her clothes. Carlos reached out to give her a hand, but he was instantly slapped away.
At last, she stood there in her golden-tanned skin, looking pissed off but determined.
We watched, impressed, as she sprinted lightly out into the field. She hadn’t gone twenty steps before the air around her started to give off little reflective glints.
“Blast them, Kivi!” I shouted.
Carlos stood excitedly nearby. “She has great boobs, doesn’t she? I can hardly believe she’s mine.”
“Yours?” I scoffed. “Only when she’s in a charitable mood.”
“Either way, this has to be the best day of my life. A girl decided to save me, and she had to get naked to do it. I’m so happy!”
I chuckled. Carlos hadn’t changed much over the years. I think it was due to the effects of revivals. You knew more, but your brain was still in a youthful state because with each regrow, it came back structured as it had been the first time your information was copied into the system. Some people, particularly senior officers, liked to let themselves age a little more so they didn’t look and act like hormone-saturated twenty-somethings forever.
Kivi held out her copper-coil wand and set it off. There wasn’t any flash as I was expecting. The pulse was really a powerful magnetic effect. It was brief, but highly damaging to sensitive electronics.
I couldn’t imagine a more sensitive kind of electronic device than a nanite. They were tiny and delicate. They were difficult to fight because they were so small and there were so many of them. But an EMP didn’t have any problem with that. It simply flashed them all dead for about two or three meters around each time she charged the capacitor and set it off.
To speed things up, we made more of the wands and prepped them as she found new swarms and got them churned up. When we’d cleared a pretty good path to the tree line, Graves ordered us to advance immediately.
“Don’t I even get to put my clothes back on?” demanded Kivi. Her legs ran with blood and sweat from her efforts.
Graves chuckled. “McGill, grab her suit and drag it to the forest with us. Let’s get out of here.”
Running hard, we made it to the forest without losing another trooper.
Graves turned to Kivi. “That was good work. It took too damned long—but it was a job well done. They told me I was crazy to recommend you for tech school, but I don’t regret it.”
“That’s right,” Carlos said, “pigs can fly.”
“You would know,” she replied.
After that, they messed with one another while she put her suit back on. I’d always found their relationship odd and a bit immature—but who was I to talk?
-35-
The next hour was a slog. We marched in the gloom of the endless forest, avoiding every clearing like it was diseased—which it probably was.
In the second hour, the gloom got seemingly deeper with every step. Night was falling. All along we’d only seen the sun in golden flashes through the treetops, but once it was gone entirely, we really missed it.
It didn’t help matters that I had some of the biggest complainers in the legion marching behind me.
“Hey, McGill,” Carlos asked, huffing more than he should have as we climbed another ridge. “So this is what a skirmish-line looks like? This is scouting? How are we doing? Is Winslade going to get another early promo for abandoning us in the middle of this shit-fest?”
“I’m sure he will, Specialist,” I said.
“I don’t even understand how that weasel is still alive. I mean, we were both executed, Kivi and I. How could he—”
“He was executed too,” I said, “and Turov was permed.”
“What? Really? No shit?”
“No shit—now shut up.”
As usual, those words didn’t work on Carlos. He was immune to them. He was like a dog who didn’t even know his own name, much less how to do tricks.
“That’s unbelievable,” he mused. “I mean, it’s totally cool that the witch is dead—but unbelievable. She should never have lasted this long. I thought she had some kind of frigging guardian angel on her shoulder, overlooking her wonderful rear-end like it was made of gold.”
“That is what it seemed like,” I admitted, “but her angel didn’t get her out of being arrested for straight-out mutiny. Now, she’s gone.”
“Wow… actual justice from Central. I can’t freaking believe it.”
“McGill,” Kivi asked. “If Turov was blamed and shot, what happened with Winslade? Why is he back on active duty?”
“Why not?” I asked. “We’re here aren’t we?”
She thought that one over. “You don’t think that this assignment—I mean, putting us on the front lines like this—that that had anything to do with our actions. Do you?”
I chuckled. “Whatever gave you that idea? No one in Central thinks like that. They’re not mean or petty or vengeful.”
She snorted. “Okay. We screwed up, and the legion is paying for it. But you still haven’t explained why Winslade is breathing again.”
“He’s slippery, that’s why.”
“But you are, too.”
I glanced back at her, and I found her studying me thoughtfully.
“That’s right, I am,” I admitted. “Winslade and I were of the same opinion: we were just following orders.”
Carlos coughed.
“That’s it!” he said. “I’ve got your message at last! Listen Kivi, Imperator Turov ordered us to attack Central. We were just being good, obedient soldiers.”
“It would be the first time in your life,” she said.
“That hurts. That really hurts.”
They went on like that for a while. They kept asking for details about how events had gone w
ith Turov, but I just shrugged.
Soon, they fell to talking among themselves. They were theorizing that I had some kind of hold over Drusus. It wasn’t anything that complicated, of course, but I let them think what they wanted.
Every good officer worked on making his own reputation as impressive as possible, and in my opinion a big part of that was keeping an air of mystery going to muddle important events. These two had big mouths. I knew they’d talk about whatever I told them, and soon the entire legion would be passing it around.
The next soldier that came up to talk to me was a surprise. It was none other than Della, who I hadn’t seen in days.
“Hello,” she said, falling into step beside me.
“Hey!” I exclaimed, reaching out a big arm to give her a hug.
She resisted at first, but then she softened and let me do it. She’d never been the type to enjoy displays of affection. Sex with her had always been fast and furious, but if you wanted to cuddle or anything like that, you were barking up the wrong tree.
“I survived the nanites,” she said. “Most of my unit didn’t, and we were folded into Adjunct Toro’s platoon. She seems like a fool to me.”
“Nah,” I said. “Toro is all right. Half her platoon survived the nanites, after all.”
She looked around at my group. “You haven’t taken a single loss yet. And your tech, Kivi, she got us off those rocks without anyone else being devoured.”
“Yeah, I’ve got a good team.”
She had a plan in her head. I could see it working up there. She was the kind of girl that always had a plan. Finally, she came out with it.
“Graves would probably put me into your group if you lost someone,” she said, looking around at my platoon again.
“Yeah, he probably—hey!” I said, catching on at last.
There was a look in her eye, a look I’d seen before. The woman could be a cold-blooded murderer when she wanted to be.
“None of that, now,” I told her. “Don’t you go and get any of my people killed. If you do, I’ll ask Graves to put you into someone else’s platoon.”