by Michael Ryan
Lieutenant Gooulling called me over the platoon comm. “Sergeant Ford.”
“Sir.” I hunted for the platoon leader’s icon on my map. He was one block over to the south and had a dozen TCI-Armored suits with him. The system also indicated the presence of an infantry company, but I didn’t have the time to check their numbers.
“I need you to bring your squad to my location,” he said.
“Negative, sir,” I said.
“What do you mean, negative?” he said. “Get your ass over here. That’s an order.”
“Sir, if I move now, we’ll all be killed. You’re ordering us to commit suicide. So, no. Respectfully, getting killed won’t solve anything.”
“We’re under heavy fire from a platoon of TCI-Armored Teds,” he said. “I need you to move here. It’s only a block away.”
“We’re fighting a mini, sir. It’s targeted us specifically, so we’ll be there right after we kill it.”
“I have no idea what a mini is, Sergeant Ford. You need to learn to use the proper terminology. I need to explain to you the–”
I cut off the platoon comm. If he lived, I’d deal with whatever problems he caused with the senior staff. I’d probably have to report to the mess hall to help cook or maybe scrub toilets. Both options were better than death.
“Abrel, talk to me,” I said.
“The mini is in the building across the street. I can’t track it, but it’s logical that it’s seeking higher ground.”
“Okay. Callie, are you set?”
“I need two minutes.”
“Roger. Mallsin?”
“I’m ready. I think we should be defensive for the next volley. No offense. Then we play like a bollencat.”
“What the hell is that?”
“Bollencat. It’s a rodent-like–”
“She means play possum,” Callie said. “We pretend we’re dead.”
“Oh,” I said. “Why didn’t she just say so?”
“Never mind,” Abrel said. “It’s a good idea. No offensive missiles, and save your MQs. When you can, detonate a few HE rounds so the mini thinks it scored a hit.”
“Sounds logical,” I offered. “But the way things have been going, something’s sure to go wrong.”
“Don’t be so pessimistic,” Callie stated flatly. “We can at least try. What can it hurt?”
“Roger,” I said. She was probably right, but it would require a lot of coordinating. Relying on too many factors exponentially increased the odds of failure, but I supposed it also meant a greater chance of confusing the enemy. “You have a position on it yet?”
“No,” Abrel said. “But why wouldn’t it go to one of the top floors?”
“Or the roof?” Mallsin said.
“Hold tight and observe,” I said. I scanned each of the building’s windows. There were frightened Rhans in some of the offices, while others were empty. Some had been destroyed already and were nothing but burned-out shells. I finally saw movement in a penthouse window.
“I see something,” I announced. “Top floor, far left window…wait…shit.”
“I don’t see anything,” Callie said.
“Activate camo and lock down tight,” I ordered. “I want no surprises if we can help it.”
I turned on my camo system and froze my suit, but not before setting a drone on the windowsill. Without any movement, I hoped the drone wouldn’t get destroyed, and if it was still there in five seconds, I could use it for my eyes. I programmed the view to wide angle and watched the entire building.
“I have a shadow on the fourth floor,” Mallsin said.
“A shadow?” I asked.
“Something I don’t like.”
“Keep an eye on it.” I moved the drone’s view to the fourth floor and zoomed in. I saw nothing unusual, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something locked down like we were, running a high-tech camo system of its own. It could be something new – Errus engineers had surprised us before. I suspected the Meckos were developing cutting-edge tech as well, which was why the Teds had been so quick to militarize the planet.
A missile warning flashed.
I fired chaff and a flare.
The missile struck somewhere below me.
Then another hit.
I had an uneasy feeling, so I stayed focused on the fourth floor. I trusted Abrel and Callie were keeping track of the mini, and I wanted to know what was giving me the creeps about the shadow Mallsin had found.
<
<
Damn! I had to shift my focus back to the new problem. I fired a counter-missile exploding nano-screen round that I set to blow instantly. It created a barrier right outside the window, but it also destroyed the drone. The enemy’s projectile was a superheated explosive, and it turned the permastecrete box that was my sniper’s nest into an oven. My suit adjusted the internal temperature of my gel, but not before I felt my skin burn. It reminded me of the time I’d sat too close to a bonfire as a kid. I knew that if I survived until tomorrow, I’d have what looked like a bad sunburn for weeks.
“Check in,” I said over our four-way comm.
“That thing coordinates its offense and defense too well. It’s like it’s not alone,” Abrel said.
“I’m good,” Mallsin said.
I waited for a beat and then said, “Callie?”
“Sorry,” she answered. “I was thinking about what Abrel just said.”
“And?”
“Can you each put up a split-screen view on your DS, please? Zoom in on the shadow and on the window where we suspect the mini to be hiding.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll have to set another drone on the window.”
“Can you fly it there?”
“Can I fly it there, she says…” I directed a drone to the sill without giving away my position and landed it so I had a good view of the building across the street.
It was blown to pieces immediately.
“Shit.”
“I got something,” Mallsin said.
“What?”
“A tiny disturbance from the shadow when you positioned that drone.”
“So what is it?”
“My guess,” Abrel began, “is that the reason the mini-mechas do so well is that they have an outside operator. Whatever’s on the fourth floor is linked with the pilot. So everything they do is coordinated.”
“Let’s put a hurt on that spot,” I said.
“Roger.”
After a brief discussion, we transferred our fire-control systems to Mallsin. She had the best view, which would enable her to program an effective firing sequence and control a four-way attack from one vantage point. I watched on my DS as she manipulated code and linked the firing of missiles from my equipment pack to her actions, as well as those of Abrel and Callie. Normally my partner was the one inside my system. I was used to how she programmed, and I got confused a few times as Mallsin used different shortcodes and other ways of making similar things happen. When she completed her setup, I waited with minimal optimism.
The first missile she launched streaked from her EP. The projectile was aimed at the upper floor. Mallsin’s program then fired at the slightest deviation of light in the lower window, using the missiles from the rest of us. The mini fired downward in an attempt to defend whatever was on the fourth floor, which was confirmation that we’d figured out one of the enemy’s secrets. The first two missiles were destroyed, but the third incinerated the room in a wash of white-hot phosphorous.
Mallsin fired a kinetic-energy round into the spot where she suspected the camouflaged enemy was hiding.
She struck gold.
The pilot and copilot theory seemed proven – the shadow was a spotter. When the round hit home, the unit’s camo failed, revealing a black and silver armored soldier. The mini-mecha leapt out of the building, and for an instant it seemed like it was going to drop like a stone. Then it extended a set of wings, and although it couldn’t fly, it shot across the s
pace between the buildings using a form of jet assist, and smashed through a window several floors below while being chased by two missiles that Abrel and Callie had launched.
“We’ve got company,” I said. “Nice job with the copilot, Mallsin.”
“Thanks. Looks like it’s going to be close quarters,” she said.
“Contact!”
Abrel was being attacked.
I raced downstairs. A wall exploded in front of me as I ran down a hallway. My sensors were temporarily blinded by dust and rubble, but I could see Abrel’s icon on my DS. He was twenty-five meters away.
“Avery, over here,” Mallsin said.
I followed her and Callie through a rent in the permastecrete. The mini-mecha was too tall to fight from a standing position, but it had tackled Abrel, who was on his back taking a beating. The mecha was pounding Abrel’s chest plate with metal fists. It stopped when we entered the room and lifted its hands up as if we’d come to arrest it.
“Don’t fire,” it said through an external speaker.
I was shocked but didn’t stop the launch sequence I’d initiated. Missiles shoot vertically from our EPs, so I had to drop to my hands and knees before the kinetic round could launch. Because I was so close to the target, I was forced to override my weapon control system – it couldn’t compute a firing solution at a target that was only five meters away from me.
Mallsin, thinking faster than me, fired HE grenades.
Callie put an MQ round through the mini, center mass.
My missile launched. The AP round, unable to reach the velocity it needed to puncture the armor, ricocheted and hit the exterior wall.
Abrel sat up, eyed the mini-mecha, and said, “Shit.”
It took me a second to realize what the problem was, but when it dawned on me, I leapt into action.
Abrel was a step ahead.
We hoisted the mini-mecha and threw it out the window. An instant later, an explosion ripped through the building, and the floor below our feet trembled like a transport on a rocky road. Abrel and I were blown backward by the force of the shock wave from outside, and I slammed into Callie. Mallsin, farther from the window than any of us, endured the least damage. She was still lifted off her feet and flung against the nearest interior wall, which disintegrated when her suit slammed into it.
My display screen went white.
The medical program instructed the system to prepare my body for shock. Over the whiteout in my DS, system pop-ups continued flashing warnings and notices.
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I was barely conscious, so I couldn’t make selections to open new windows. I could feel a tightening as the gel that surrounded my body was put under higher pressure. The system’s failsafe program had auto-locked the armor the microsecond after the explosion, saving my life. My display screen blinked off with a hiss. I switched on night vision but saw nothing, and then realized I was buried beneath rubble, so there was no light. I turned on a high-intensity lamp, but the wreckage from the destroyed permastecrete had packed around me so densely that the light did no good.
I tried unlocking my system so I could move.
<
Because of the pressure being applied by the gel and the nano-augmentation the suit had infused me with, I wasn’t sure what the extent of my injuries was. Unless I applied an override hack that Callie had supplied, I was stuck. If I chose to unlock my suit and my injuries were extensive or there was a suit breach, doing so could kill me. I tried reaching out to my friends, but our comms wouldn’t connect. After several moments running my options, I decided to risk further injury.
<
I selected Y and hoped for the best.
Another barrage of warnings sounded. My heart rate spiked alarmingly and then slowed. I tried moving my arms. They worked. Next, my legs. Success. I wiggled and squirmed until I was able to move some of the larger chunks of debris out of my way. The darkness on my screen wasn’t only from being buried; the air was filled with thick black smoke.
Something was burning.
I stood and tested my knees, elbows, and my ability to walk.
“Callie?”
I received no answer.
“Anyone?”
Still nobody.
I wondered if I was unconscious and what I was experiencing was a hallucination.
The smoke grew thicker.
<
My exterior temperature readings increased until I moved to a landing that appeared to be part of what had once been a hallway. I stepped away from the thickest smoke, and the exterior of the building across the street came into focus. Most of the exterior walls for several floors above and below me were gone. Looking down, I could see the street. It was littered with the bodies of office workers who’d been blown from their desks like dates from a palm tree in a hurricane.
I spotted Callie. She’d landed three floors down. Her suit was still in lockdown mode. I lowered myself through a gap in the floor and climbed down an exposed girder until I reached her.
“Callie?”
She didn’t answer, but her medi-port indicated that she was still alive.
“Avery,” Mallsin said. She approached me slowly, her movements awkward and unstable.
“You look hurt,” I said. “You need to lock yourself down.”
“Abrel,” she said. Then she fell over.
I connected to her system. She was alive, but unconscious and in auto-lockdown.
I scanned the area for threats. The few enemies remaining on the street below were all light-armored infantry, and the bulk of them were injured.
I pinged the lieutenant.
“Avery, goddammit!” he said in response. “I told you to get your ass over here. Why did you go off-line?”
“Look, Lieutenant. I’ve got injured SDI here. We need a medi-heli, and I mean now.”
“I think you have the chain of command backward, Sergeant,” he said.
“I think you fail to realize that if my people die because of your incompetence, I’ll fucking kill you myself.”
He was silent.
I would have called for a medical-heli myself, but in its infinite wisdom, Command had created a protocol that required a ranking officer’s authorization. By the time I created a workaround, I would have wasted too much time. And time wasn’t a luxury I had to waste. Which was why I was ready to hunt down the lieutenant and choke the life out of him.
“Sir?”
“You realize I’m filing charges, Sergeant Ford?” he said.
“You realize I don’t care?”
“You’re insubordinate.”
“You’re risking your life here, Lieutenant.”
“I’ll get back to you when a medical transport is available using the proper channels.” He cut the comm.
Versus!
I hunted for Abrel.
He was buried in dust, but alive. I logged in to his system and verified that he wasn’t in any immediate danger, and then I left him and went back to Callie. She was in the same state.
<
I felt fine, so I turned off the warnings.
Without another choice, I fired up my sat-comm and tried to ping the Taihō-Sazanami. I had a few friends in senior Command positions that would at least listen to me if I could get hold of them.
Which was easier said than done.
At least my ping was answered.
“This is Corporal Liensoor,” a communication clerk said.
“I need to be patched through to Major Solppuret,” I said.
“Sorry,” the corporal said. “He’s not available. You’re on a restricted comm, Sergeant.”
“I know,” I said. Another of Callie’s little hacks. “Is Lieutenant Colonel Franks available?” I asked.
“I don’t have the authority even to ask, S
ergeant Ford,” the corporal said in a snooty voice. Sometimes I love Support and Logistics. And sometimes I wish I could drag their sorry asses to a battlefield so they could understand how much their arrogance bothers those of us who watch our friends die while they sit in comfortable offices on a relatively safe starship.
“I need a medi-heli, stat,” I said.
“You need to go through the proper channels, Sergeant,” he said. “You know this, and I’ve got a backlog of communications to deal with. Out.”
He cut my link.
I was about to call someone serving under the lieutenant, hoping I could find another workaround, when my comm pinged.
“Avery here. Go.” I was expecting someone from Command to be on the line.
A voice I recognized came over the comm. “Avery, it’s Major Balestain.”
“You’re on a Gurt comm,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ve got sources.”
“How can I help you?” I said, trying to remain respectful. “I’ve got my hands full.”
“Yes, I know,” he said. “I’ve been observing.”
“What?”
“I was linked into that type six mecha you defeated,” he said. “Impressive work.”
“It’s not like we’re walking away unscathed,” I said.
“I see that. I’m sending a medical team to pick up your friends,” he said.
“What?”
“You have two choices,” he said. “Stand down, or die.”
“I can’t let you take them. It’s a violation of–”
“I know the regulations, Avery,” he said.
“Then you know I can’t–”
“Never say never, Sergeant Ford,” he said. “Here’s my offer: A non-armored, peaceful medical heli-jet is about to land. It’s not directly linked to Tedesconian forces. You’ll be in the clear if charges are stupidly suggested by one of your insanely legalistic superiors.”
“And if I don’t comply?”
“I’ll drop a PX-77 on that building, and not only will you and your friends be dead, but I also estimate we’ll take out four thousand six hundred Rhanskads. Not that anyone will care.”