The Mammoth Book of SF Wars

by Ian Whates

  With a final whip of its body, the headless serpent slammed into the mud and vanished below the surface. Black waves leaped above the boat and rained sludge over the deck and Soz.

  “Gods,” she muttered. This planet deserved to be shoved into a black hole.

  “Are you out of your flaming mind?” someone shouted behind her.

  Now that the commotion was dying down, Soz turned around. Dale Yaetes, the racer’s captain, was standing there, soaked in mud, staring as if she had grown a second head. Rex Blackstone was leaning his towering, bulky self against a strut of the ship not far away, his brawny arms crossed, his Jagernaut uniform covered with mud. Yaetes was wearing a silver filter mask that covered his nose and mouth, but neither Soz nor Rex needed one; their physical augmentations included filters in their respiratory tracts that could deal with the atmosphere for short periods. As usual, Rex looked intimidating. But Soz felt his mood. He was struggling not to laugh. Honestly. She ought to throw him in the brig. Except their star-fighters didn’t have brigs, lucky man.

  “I don’t think I was ever in my mind,” she told Yaetes. “So I suppose I’m out of it.”

  “You can’t do that!” He waved at the revolting sea, which was still sloshing around. “Those serpents kill anything that threatens them.”

  “Didn’t kill me.” Soz hefted her gun, which unfortunately was drenched in mud. She’d have to take it apart to clean it properly. Damn. Dismantling a miniature particle accelerator was no small task.

  “It wanted to eat her,” Rex said. “The poor thing.”

  She glowered at him. “And you just stood there?” In truth, she knew Rex had her back. He had in all the years they had flown together in a Jag squad, from the days when they had been cadets at the Academy until now, when she commanded the squad and he served as her second.

  Rex grinned at her. “I felt sorry for the critter, the way it was so outmatched.”

  “Colonel Valdoria,” Yaetes said. “If you decide to kill every creature that looks at us cross-eyed, we’ll never get the colonists evacuated.”

  He had a point. Monsters infested this planet. She couldn’t get rid of them all; besides which, destroying the mutated wildlife here wouldn’t help what remained of the colonists. This world was too far gone.

  “We’ll set up a base as soon as we find a suitable location,” she said. Then she added, “I’m a Secondary, Captain. The rank is roughly equivalent to colonel, but not the same.”

  “Ah. Yes. Of course.” He looked as flustered now as he had yesterday when her squad had arrived with the rest of the ISC forces to help the beleaguered colony. He didn’t shield his mind well; she could tell he thought she looked too young for a colonel. Actually, he thought she looked like a sex goddess from an erotic holovid. What a bizarre thought. Some of his images were vivid enough that she picked them up even with her own mind fortified by mental barriers. No way could she contort her body into those positions. She wondered if he realized Jagernauts were psions. They had to be, given that they linked mentally to their ships. She hadn’t said anything because he was a good officer who genuinely wanted to help these people, and he’d be mortified if he knew she had picked up his, um, creative imagination.

  Rex walked forward with that easy gait of his, his jumbler holstered at his hip. Soz nodded to him, and he nodded back, acknowledging her thanks for his backup. Yaetes watched as if he were observing the tribal rites of some dangerous alien race. Soz supposed he had reason. ISC classified Jagernauts as a different species from Homo sapiens because they were human weapons with biomech systems in their bodies that let them think, move, and react faster and with more strength than normal humans. Soz thought it was absurd to call them another species, given that Jagernauts and humans could interbreed just fine. Regardless of how ISC labelled them, their function remained the same. Kill.

  Well, not always. Sometimes they ended up on missions like this one, cleaning up ISC messes. Not that ISC would admit they had screwed up royally here on New-drilling Day. The terraforming had become unstable, turning the supposed paradise into crud. Another few decades and the planet would be uninhabitable. Her squad had come with a recovery team assigned to help the colonists. Not many remained; most of those who had survived the miserable environment had killed each other off in a vicious civil war that erupted over the shortage of supplies and livable habitats.

  Soz was mad. This should never have happened. What the blazes had been going on at HQ? Oh, she knew. It was politics. She hated politics. ISC was in bed with the Newland Corporation that had bought and terraformed this world. Corporate hadn’t wanted to admit to such a spectacular failure because it would bankrupt them. So they pretended it didn’t happen, giving the colonists stupid assurances they would fix everything even while they scrambled to cut their losses. It had taken a special commission determined to investigate rumours of the growing death toll to blow apart the scandal. Damn it, ISC should have paid more attention.

  A ways behind Captain Yaetes, the hatch to the below-decks compartments opened, and a lanky woman with short yellow hair climbed out into the sticky wind, her face protected by one of the silvery masks.

  Who is that? Soz thought.

  Jen Foley, the navigator, the node implanted in her spine thought. It communicated by firing bio-electrodes in her neurons, which she experienced as thoughts.

  Foley. Soz committed it to memory. She was still learning names of the crew Yaetes had brought onboard today. She felt the navigator’s mood. Foley was more disturbed by the mud than the sea serpent. That was all Soz could tell, though; like most people, Foley instinctively raised natural barriers to protect her mind. Soz had them as well, but hers were more sophisticated given that she had trained for decades to use her mental abilities. Regardless of how shaken the navigator felt, she came forward with a steady walk, which Soz respected.

  “All secure below,” Foley said as she joined them.

  “You all right?” Captain Yaetes asked her.

  “I’ll live.” Foley grimaced. “I’m not so sure about the racer. It’s thick with mud, including the engines. You hear how laboured they sound? If they stall, we can use sails to travel, but I don’t like to depend on them. We need to dock and clean the engines.”

  Yaetes looked out at the sea stretching in every direction. “Dock where?”

  Foley pointed southeast. “Satellite maps say an island is a few hours that way.”

  Soz’s expertise was starships not water ships, but she could hear the uneven chugging of the engines. They should be cleaned now, not in a few hours. Surely they could find something closer. Locating the smallest settlements was a bit dicey because the atmosphere interfered with their sensors, all those particulates that saturated the air, a plethora of bacteria and microscopic insectoids. She could ask the flagship in orbit to step up their search, but Soz had an idea that could work faster and wouldn’t draw resources away from other rescue operations. Closing her eyes, she eased down her mental shields. Her awareness spread out, across the mud ocean with its teeming, putrid life. Nothing …

  Wait. A golden, clean warmth glowed amid the mess of New Day. Where …?

  She opened her eyes. Rex had a glazed look very different from his usual laser-focus. His gaze met hers.

  You catch that? Soz asked.

  Something, he thought. I’m not sure what. But strong.

  As Soz nodded, pain jabbed her temples. She raised her barriers again, protecting her mind, and lifted her arm, pointing northwest. “We go there,” she told Yaetes and Foley.

  “Nothing is out that way,” Foley said. “Just mud, mud, and oh gosh, more freaking mud.”

  Soz smiled. She could get to like this Foley person. “It looks that way. But something is close by. If we find even a small outpost, we can commandeer it and set up a base. And you can clean your engines.”

  Yaetes shook his head. “I’m no military officer, just a merchant serving what’s left of our outliers. So maybe I’m not used to ISC lingo. But wha
t will you commandeer? Most likely all we’ll find are dead people and shattered dreams.”

  Soz spoke quietly. “We’ll use respect, Captain.”

  “If you’re wrong about its location,” he said, “we’ll be even further from help.”

  “I’m sure it’s there,” Soz said. Why, she couldn’t have said. But she had no doubt.

  The door of the house was broken, the place had no power, and mud caked the living room. Soz wondered what had happened. It must have been recent; the mud was relatively fresh, if anything that disagreeable could be called “fresh”.

  She stood in the doorway of the damaged house and looked outside, checking the area. The sun glowed like a white-hot rivet overhead, and green-tinged clouds scudded across the dusky blue sky. She wondered who at the Newland Corporation had come up with the whacked idea of telling the settlers that the green came from chlorophyll. The colonists had scientists. They knew it was a lie. Every year more toxic compounds formed on New Day, including traces of green chlorine gas. It wasn’t much, and most gathered in low areas rather than high in the atmosphere, but it took very little to poison humans and it could cause violent reactions. That was only one of thousands of problems here.

  While Rex and the crew carried in equipment from the racer, Soz checked the house. The crew could bivouac in the living room. She needed a separate area for a command centre to coordinate the rescue efforts for this area. They hadn’t found this homestead in time, but they might be able to help other survivors out here.

  How had everything unravelled so badly on this world? She meant to find answers, and she didn’t care whose politics she ruffled. So fine, she was no diplomat. But the people had come here with such dreams, and they deserved so much more than what Newland Corporation had handed them.

  Foley came over to her. “We found a room for your office.”

  “Good.” Soz could tell Foley was upset, but not why. “What’s wrong?”

  The navigator took a breath. “There are dead people in there.”

  Damn. “Show me.”

  Foley took her to a bedroom. It had a desk, a recliner on wheels, a bed, a mesh table with a glossy tech surface that had gone dark – and two bodies on the flex-metal floor. The men were of average height and similar age, possibly twins, one of them thinner than the other. Dried, caked mud covered them both.

  Doctor Carlon, the racer’s medic, was kneeling by the thinner man. Looking up, he pushed a lock of his tousled red hair out of his eyes. “This one is unconscious,” he told Soz.

  Relief sparked in her. Maybe they hadn’t been too late after all. Her makeshift command centre could easily serve as a makeshift hospital, too. Kneeling by Carlon, she touched the man’s neck. His pulse felt weak but steady. He had the face of a gaunt angel, with high cheekbones, a turned-up nose and a full mouth. His light brown hair had yellow sun-streaks.

  “Can you help him?” she asked.

  “Maybe,” Carlon said, as laconic as always. “He looks nearly starved.”

  “He is.” Carlon slid his arms under the man’s body. “We should put him someplace better.”

  Together, they carried the man to the rumpled bed. After they laid him down, Carlon went to work, injecting nanomeds to replenish his patient’s depleted body. He set med-strips on the man’s torso, and holos were soon rotating above them with displays of the fellow’s muscles, skeleton, neural systems, and more, as well as large macro-molecules in bright colours that turned while Carlon examined them. Oddly, despite the man’s critical condition, something about him seemed right. Soz couldn’t figure it out. Something warm? No, not warm.

  She drew in a sharp breath. “He’s a psion.”

  Carlon kept working. “I thought you couldn’t tell when someone was unconscious.”

  “Normally, no. But his mind is so strong, it comes through even now.” She stroked the man’s forehead. His skin felt gritty, and green-brown flakes of mud scattered on the bed. In his gaunt face, his high cheekbones looked finely carved, as if he were a statue rather than a living man. Flustered, she pulled back her hand. Enraged mud-monsters she could deal with, but handsome empaths were a different story. She had no problem with Jagernauts like Rex; he was as cocky as they came, and she understood that fine. It was the shy, gentle ones that disconcerted her. Why she thought that description applied to this man, she didn’t know, but she felt certain about it.

  “Will he live?” she asked.

  “If he makes it through the next few hours.” Carlon glanced at the man’s legs. “In a manner of speaking.”

  That didn’t sound good. “Speaking how?”

  “Something is wrong with his legs.” Carlon shook his head. “Fungus, virus, something. Native to this planet, I’d say. Attacked his body. And it’s getting worse.”

  She scowled. “The colonists were supposed to have immunizations.”

  “Supposed to have a lot,” Carlon said. “A lot failed. Hell, the blasted planet failed.”

  Soz had no answer to that.

  Hypron opened his eyes into darkness. He drowsed for a moment – until he remembered.

  Oxim was dead.

  It all rushed back, the shock, the grief, the misery. He hadn’t expected to wake again, but here he was, alive, still trapped in this cursed body.

  When Hypron’s body had begun to fail, the process had been gradual. The doctors had helped at first, even reversing the withering of his legs for a time. In the same way, when this homestead had failed, it hadn’t happened all at once. Their life’s work had decayed slowly, and they had never believed it would be permanent. The process would reverse, the air would become clean, Newland Corporation would fix the problems. It had been miserable, yes, but bearable. Their bond as brothers kept them going, the partnership that had seen them through the death of their parents, their meagre survival on the asteroid, and the decline of their fortunes here. During it all, they had been each other’s strength.

  Now he had nothing except starvation.

  And yet … his hunger was gone, not completely, but greatly receded. He felt clean and fresh. The pain from his injuries and his nausea from the atmosphere had faded. In their place was a warmth so welcome, he wondered if he had died. Perhaps this was how it felt when your body gave up and death took you gently into oblivion.

  A memory stirred. He had sensed a mental warmth when he searched for Oxim. He felt it now, too, but no longer far away. It was all around him, powerful, luminous.

  He tried to say, Who’s there? but no words came out.

  Something moved behind him. A woman answered sleepily. Sorry … needed to rest a moment … floor hard …

  What the hell? Those words were in his mind. So he was dead. That was the only explanation why a woman would appear in his bed and talk in his mind. He hadn’t expected death to be in the dark, but at least he wasn’t alone. He rolled onto his back, wincing as pain stabbed his bruised, cut-up body. It didn’t seem fair that he still hurt if he no longer lived. His cheek came to rest against someone’s head, and she shifted position, her forehead rubbing his ear.

  Are you a hallucination? he asked.

  No response. Perhaps this was his dying delirium. Well, so, it was his delirium, and a pleasant one at that, given the lean curves of her body. Normally he was reticent with women; he would probably pause even if he found one in his bed. Not that such had ever happened in real life. But this was surreal, a creation of his mind, perhaps of his death. So he brushed his lips across her forehead.

  The woman stirred against him. He waited, but she didn’t protest, so he lowered his head, searching for her mouth. When his lips found hers, he kissed her, first softly, then more deeply. He knew for certain then that she was a creation of his mind, because she kissed him back instead of slapping him. Her lips felt unexpectedly warm for a hallucination.

  As their kiss deepened, though, her mood changed, going from unfocused sleepiness to a brighter awareness.

  With a start, the woman jerked away from him. “Gods almigh
ty!” she said, scrambling into a sitting position. “I ought to throw myself in the brig.”

  Well, damn. That didn’t sound like anything he would hallucinate. Her retreat had taken away the heat of her body, but her mind remained with its enfolding warmth. It somehow kept the worst of his grief at bay.

  “Why are you here?” he said.

  “I’m sorry.” She sounded mortified. “I didn’t mean to take advantage. I swear. I had only planned to rest for a moment. I hadn’t expected to fall asleep. Honestly.”

  He wished she didn’t sound so embarrassed. He’d rather enjoyed it. “Who are you?”

  “Soz Valdoria,” she said. “I command a Jagernaut squad assigned to this planet.” With apology, she added, “I’m afraid I’ve commandeered your house.”

  He must have heard wrong. Jagernaut? One of the elite, inhuman killing machines created by ISC? He wouldn’t hallucinate a monster in his bed.

  “For flaming sake,” she grumbled. “We aren’t monsters.”

  He hadn’t said that aloud. Gods, this person could hear him think. His eyes were adjusting to the darkness, and dim blue light leaked in from somewhere. He could see her profile, the small nose, the hair curling around her cheeks and shoulders, tousled and untamed. She didn’t look like a monster. She was pretty. Her soft face contrasted with her dark vest and pants, which smelled like rich leather. Her mech-tech gauntlets had scraped his arm when she moved and barbaric armbands glinted around each of her biceps. This seemed less and less like a hallucination. But if he were alive, that meant he still existed in a universe without Oxim.

  Hypron spoke in a low voice. “My brother?”

  He felt her recognition. She knew who he meant. He had never picked up another person’s emotions so well. Nor was it only her moods; a few of her thoughts came through as well, strong ones on the surface of her mind, including her misty image of Oxim’s body on the floor. His grief surged and he withdrew into himself.