by B. V. Larson
“Veteran!” I shouted. “Who told you to pull out?”
He frowned at me.
“You’re still alive, McGill? I thought I shot you my damned self.”
“You must have missed,” I told him with a tired grin. “Now, answer my question.”
He came close and put an arm over my shoulder. “Graves has ordered us to pull out. The whole cohort is moving back from the front. They’re rotating another cohort from the reserves to stand in this hellhole.”
“Seriously?” I asked. “This is over?”
“Hell no, not by a long shot,” he said, clapping me on the back. “But we did good! We held the line. We held while others broke!”
I could tell he was truly happy about that. I mustered a nod of approval.
Within an hour, we’d been pulled off the front lines entirely. Walking as straight as I could, I marched with my platoon to the rear of the army.
In camp, I found a bunk somewhere with a water bottle and a package of insta-rations on it. I drained the water dry and tried to open the rations packaging. The plastic seemed too difficult for my fumbling fingers—why did they always make these things so damnably hard to get into?
With that final thought, my fingers slipped away from the bag, and I allowed myself to topple over and pass out.
-42-
Waking up in serious pain was a good thing for a legionnaire. It meant you weren’t dead yet.
Groaning awake, I forced myself to get up and shake it off. I rose from my bunk and took careful steps to go have a look outside. Rain dribbled down my face.
“McGill,” Carlos said from behind me. “You’ve got an infection. I can’t clear it—but I can ignore it. If you want to feel better, you’ve got to go to the med center.”
Forcing down some coffee and a little food, I nodded. “Yeah, I figured. I can’t fight like this.”
I dragged myself to the bio tents with trepidation. Everyone knew where a trip to that part of the camp might lead. They were mandated to make judgment calls on the wounded. If you were too far gone, well, they just pushed you over the edge and made a new copy. For that reason, troopers often hid serious injuries until it was too late or their real status became obvious.
Deciding I wasn’t going to play the chicken this time, I marched down into their bunkers and signed in. They looked at me with pitiless eyes. I had to wonder just how many soldiers they’d already put down today.
When I was finally seen about an hour later, I was pretty annoyed.
“You guys can’t just run a wand over my ass and say yes or no, can you?” I demanded to know. “Making a man wait an hour in pain for the verdict—well, that’s plain torture.”
The bio was a centurion. Since I was an officer, I’d drawn an officer as my doctor. She gave me a cold stare.
“Are you volunteering for a recycle, soldier? That would speed things along.”
“No, dammit. I’m complaining about how long this is taking.”
Shaking her head, she kept running instruments over me. She didn’t move one fraction of an iota faster as she did it, either.
Without warning, she jabbed me in the arm with something sharp. I felt a surge of liquid pumping. It was a sick feeling.
My hand immediately grabbed her wrist, pinning it. I’d been killed by bio people before.
“What’s that you’re pumping into me?”
“Adjunct, you’re on thin ice,” she said, shaking me off. “You’re assaulting a superior.”
“Not if you’re assaulting me first.”
She pursed her lips tightly. “If it was lethal, you’d be in a fetal ball by now, dying on the floor. It’s an antibiotic with some surgical nanites. They’ll patch up the hole in your guts. You must have caught a few pieces of shrapnel out there. You’ve got a standard case of peritonitis.”
“Oh…” I said, taking a deep breath. “And you’re really curing me? Seriously?”
“We lost thousands on the line today. Under normal circumstances, a recycle might be in order, but today we’re tight on resources. We need you to fight. We’re patching up anyone who can be returned to the front as quickly as possible.”
“I see. Sounds like you’re doing your jobs for once. I like the change.”
After several more long minutes of harsh, cold fingers and tests, she pronounced me fit for duty. I climbed painfully off the table, and she cleaned her hands.
“What’s it like out there,” she asked suddenly, “on the lines? How are we doing?”
“Varus held,” I said. “Others didn’t. They’ve driven wedges into our trench lines and broken it in places. But so far, they haven’t managed to push all the way through and overrun us.”
She nodded as if she’d heard much the same all day. “The higher-ups are worried, you know. I patched a primus today. She said the enemy has come close to breaking us a few times already. She said, so far they’ve only sent probing attacks against us. Small forces to test our strength.”
“Small forces?” I asked, both alarmed and amused. “Didn’t seem that small when I was up there. We must have killed two thousand of the enemy in a few hours.”
“Yeah,” she said, “but when you have millions, a few thousand is small.”
She had me there. I looked her over with new eyes. To tell the truth, she was a fine- looking woman. She was tired and scared, and I liked her better when she wasn’t all business. I began to entertain thoughts of a date—but then she was called away to another ward, and my chances were blown.
Shrugging and straightening my kit, I left the med center. It was still raining outside. Bur the rain had turned cold like it was almost snow.
When I got to our unit’s assigned bunker, I found Graves waiting for me. He looked me over with a calculating eye.
“You’re the same McGill,” he declared.
“That’s right,” I said, “but now I’m full of piss, vinegar and drugs. Ready to fight, sir!”
“Good. Get back to your platoon. They’ll need some morale-boosting.”
“Why’s that?”
“Haven’t you heard? The hogs on our left flank were broken. The regular troops there couldn’t take it. I swear, if you kill any more than half of a hog line, it will break every time. I told the primus that, but he didn’t seem to care.”
Frowning, I looked out toward the front. The signs and sounds of battle were out there, of course. All night long, the sky had lit up in flashes. It was as if lightning strikes were landing all over. The sounds of heavy artillery and beamed energy never seemed to let up.
“Out west?” I said. “I thought they were hitting us harder in the east.”
“They’re hitting us hard everywhere. They only waited a few hours after that first push to mount another, stronger attack. The hog commanders are shitting themselves. They aren’t used to fighting and dying on a line.”
“What are your orders, centurion?”
“We’re moving out in twenty. We’ll catch a low-flying transport and drop off at the breach point. We have to push them back.”
“I’m on it,” I said, and I trotted to my team.
They were all lounging and complaining. I started right in, kicking ass and shouting. Harris leapt to his feet and joined me, taking revenge on any trooper that looked like he was slacking.
Harris was funny that way. He might plot my death one day but then help me do my job on the front lines the next. As unprofessional as he could be in private matters, he was always supportive when he was doing his job.
Soon, a small transport showed up. It was a skimmer, a vehicle that only flew in atmosphere. The back of it was almost flat, but it had a thin railing and some wimpy looking straps to hold onto.
Our unit and two others piled aboard. The lifter took off with sickening speed. It slewed around, and we hung on for dear life.
The front was very far from our base camp. Less than ten kilometers zoomed by, and we were out in the open. Smoke hung everywhere, barely masking the scent of death.
We reached our LZ and landed in a blast of mud, wind and incoming fire. Right off, I could tell the enemy assault was different. The enemy wasn’t made up of simple heavy troopers rushing our lines like angry ants. Instead, there was what we called “star-fall” artillery. These weapons sent bolts of energy in glimmering arcs that moved at a surprisingly low speed to splash down in our midst. This kind of artillery seemed to be immune to the various fields that protect both sides from missiles and aerial assaults.
These star-falls looked like crashing meteors in slow-motion. They rose high before falling to the ground again, smashing everything they landed on. The ground was fused into glass and radioactivity levels spiked, setting off warning buzzers in our helmets.
We were dumped by the transport onto the ground quickly. The pilot seemed to be in an all-fired hurry to get back to the reserve points and load up fresh troops.
“Hustle up!” shouted Graves to the entire unit.
In one minute flat we were all sorted out and trotting behind Graves through the mud and broken trenches. We spread out into a skirmish line and advanced as fast as we dared.
“Listen up,” he said, “because I’m only explaining things once. The enemy has already pushed past this spot in the line. We’re going to patch that spot, therefore pocketing their advance behind us. We can’t allow fresh support troops to take this ground and hold it. We’re to keep the enemy at bay from both sides until the regulars come in and crush the troops that broke the line.”
I wanted to say something. So help me, I really did, but this time, some angel from above caused Leeson to beat me to it.
“Centurion?” he asked. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying? That we’re going to be smack-dab in the middle of thousands of enemy troops?”
“Your powers of interpretation are amazing, Leeson,” Graves said with unaccustomed sarcasm. “There’s a hole in this line, and we’re going to fill it. Get over it.”
“Fucking loser hogs…” I heard Leeson mutter before he cut his transmitter.
I could echo the sentiment. We’d held our spot on the line. We’d done our jobs. As a fitting reward, we’d been called in to clean up someone else’s mess.
-43-
When you’re in the middle of a battle involving a million troops, it doesn’t look like a million-man battle. Sure, there might be more smoke and booming on the horizon than there usually was, but you don’t care much about that. You only care about that one rifle bolt that jumps up and bites you in the ass. The rest of it… well, that’s somebody else’s problem.
That said, we were really in the shit this time around. There was mud, death, smoke and dribbling rain everywhere. We crunched over the burnt carcasses of the fallen, both ours and theirs, for over an hour before we met up with anything other than yesterday’s destruction.
“Keep moving!” Graves ordered. “Steady pace, don’t get too winded, now. Victrix is on the far side. A cohort of their heavies is coming to link up with us.”
I strained my eyes and my helmet’s optics to look for them but saw nothing. Somewhere out there in the cold, gory slop, our comrades were on the way. I’d never much liked Victrix guys, but today I was willing to kiss the first one I laid eyes on.
“Movement spotted!” Leeson shouted over the unit channel. “Look south!”
A big red arrow darted down on my HUD, and I realized Leeson must have added it. I’d been so busy staring due east, hoping to see a Victrix banner that I hadn’t bothered to turn my head.
But there they were, at least a thousand of the enemy, advancing in a ragged line.
We saw heavy troopers moving slowly with many gaps in their squares. Some were dragging their legs, weapons and even their bloody fingers in the mud. They looked as haggard and beaten as we did—but they also looked determined.
“Don’t fire on them!” Graves ordered. “It’s not our mission to enrage and engage. Let’s kick up the pace!”
We went from a trot to a steady running pace. That would exhaust us in time, even with our exoskeletal suits aiding our legs. As an armored cohort, we had gear that wasn’t meant to be carried through mud at a frantic pace. But we hustled and covered some ground anyway.
The heavy troopers halted, and for a second, I thought they were just going to watch us all slide by. But then, a row of much bigger figures loomed up behind them. These were real giants.
Cephalopod-bred giants were taller than slavers and several meters taller than the heavy troopers, who were extremely large to begin with. Their bare skins were unarmored except for a grungy tunic, but they each had a blurry field of energy protecting them. A large pack rode on each broad back, and I had to assume the pack held the generator for their artillery-sized weapons and their personal shielding.
Like the heavy troopers, the giants didn’t fire on us. It was odd, but nothing I hadn’t seen before. These specially bred humans the cephalopods sent to war had never seemed overly bright, and they rarely took the initiative. I figured their orders came from squid officers, and they didn’t do crap without orders.
If you shot one, of course, they had standing orders to attack. But we weren’t doing that. We were running along right in front of them trying to get past them to link up with Victrix.
Had that fact confused this banged-up horde of invaders, or were they just thinking things over in those slow, vicious minds of theirs? I didn’t know, but I was running pretty fast now. The entire unit was way beyond a trot, and complaints had ceased all along the line. The only thing I heard from anyone was panting breath.
Stopping his run, Carlos bent to put hands on his knees.
“What’s that over there?” he demanded, sucking air. “McGill, is that one of your beloved squids?”
As the rain slowed, he pointed, and I looked. There, on the hillock, was a squid commander. He stood on the highest ground he could find. His troops were assembling on all sides of him, forming a line.
Like a crystal bolt of lightning, I knew what was going on. Squids liked order. They liked things to line up in a neat little row before they acted. That’s what this officer was doing. He was gathering his full strength around him before directing them to advance and destroy us.
“Graves?” I called over command chat. “I see their commander. Permission to take him out?”
“Permission denied,” Graves snapped back. “I know you can’t get enough blood and guts, McGill, but they’ll just blitz immediately.”
“Yeah, but they’re going to anyway. Better to do it without a leader and without their full strength facing us.”
“Again, permission denied!”
Grumbling, I stopped transmitting. Kivi trotted up next to me. Her short legs were really pumping, but she was carrying less weight, allowing her to keep up. I fell in and we advanced at a fast trot.
“You should do it anyway, McGill,” she said between breaths. “We’re as good as dead anyway. They outnumber us ten to one.”
I glanced at her, shaking my head. “You shouldn’t be listening in on command chat, Specialist.”
“You always did it when you were a non-com.”
“Yeah, but that was different—people expected that kind of crap from me.”
She made a rude sound with her lips and slackened her pace, falling back into line behind me.
The truth was, her words weighed on my soul. The old James McGill, the young guy that couldn’t get enough of the stockade and public whippings, he would have gone and done it. But I was older, wiser and more serious now—not to mention an officer. The new McGill could control his frequent urges to disobey orders… most of the time.
“That’s it!” Graves shouted. “See that fortification dead ahead? That’s the redoubt. We’ll make our stand there.”
Out of the mists, a dark hulk materialized. It had walls, mostly earthworks with puff-crete beams holding it together. The top of the walls had big bites taken out, blasted holes with craters behind them.
“We ran six kilometers fo
r this?” Carlos complained. “Looks like a frigging death trap.”
Right about then, the commanding squid officer must have realized we were going to be harder to kill inside that wrecked fort than we were right now, running around in the mud. A strange, warbling cry went up, and hundreds of muskets fired.
Explosive pellets like small grenades flew into our midst and popped all around us. Kivi spun around with a cry and did a facer in the mud. Without thinking about it, I stopped, took two steps back and hauled her onto her feet again.
“Let me die,” she said, “just let me die.”
“How bad are you hurt?” I asked. “I need a tech.”
“I don’t know.”
Deciding we could figure it out later, I pretty much dragged her by the scruff up a rise and toward the nearest breach in the walls. Carlos ran up to help, and we each grabbed an arm. Together, we hauled her butt into the fort.
For just a second, when we stumbled into the muddy interior, I thought we were well and truly screwed.
There were troops already there. My mind saw invaders—but then my vision cleared. It was a unit of Victrix soldiers. They looked like they had yet to suffer a scratch.
“About time you got here, Varus,” their Centurion said.
Her name was Olsen, and she was dark-eyed, dirty-faced and just plain mean-looking. Right off, I found myself disliking her, and it was plain as day she felt the same way about me.
“Where’s the rest of your cohort?” I demanded. “I thought we were linking up with some real strength from Victrix.”
Olsen narrowed her already narrow eyes.
“They’re out there,” she said, waving vaguely to the west. “Behind us. Victrix has stopped at every strongpoint and fortification, manning them. We were sent on ahead to meet you.”
I nodded, understanding at last. They probably didn’t like Olsen back at HQ, either. They’d marched her to the end of the line hoping she wouldn’t make it back.
It occurred to me then that Graves wasn’t popular with the brass, either. That meant there was a good chance Primus Winslade or some other rat back home had put up his name to spearhead the very tip of Varus’ advance from the east.