by B. V. Larson
She made a rude sound of dismissal. “As if anyone would believe that.”
“I’m feeling harassed already.”
She stepped away from me and marched nearby, sulking.
“Ah come on,” I said. “I was joking,”
“But I wasn’t. I’d like to join your team.”
“I know.”
She looked at me again.
“Are we ever going to see our daughter again, James?” she asked me suddenly, unexpectedly. “It’s been years for me. Maybe I shouldn’t have left her. I’ve been thinking about that. It’s very distracting.”
“You can stop worrying about it,” I said. “I’ve got it all covered. We’ll see her soon. We’ll end this, and then we’ll find the time. Wars don’t last forever. Only legionnaires do.”
My line of crap seemed to give her some comfort. We marched together for about two dozen more steps before I turned to say something else to her—but she was gone.
That’s how life had always been with Della. She was part she-wolf and part ghost. I could only imagine how our daughter Etta would turn out when she grew up.
We marched into the trees until we reached some point on the compass that had been preselected by people back at Central. I could see it on my HUD, a beam of light was superimposed upon the forest, lancing down between the dark tree trunks and pulsing there. The rest of my team couldn’t see it, which was probably just as well.
“Okay,” I told them, “this is it. Spread out and take cover. Kivi, get the pig robots up here to dig foxholes.”
“This is what?” demanded Carlos.
“This is as far as we’re supposed to drive into the forest until we receive further orders.”
He made disgusted sounds and moved off to set up camp. We were deep in hostile territory, but other than nanites, we’d yet to meet up with any resistance from the enemy. I felt this couldn’t last long.
According to the maps I’d studied back at Central, Varus was at the center of three legions that had pressed ahead of the main army. Our task was to probe and locate the enemy lines. The fact that we hadn’t met up with them yet wasn’t a bad thing in my opinion.
I was sure there would be plenty of battles to be had when we did find the enemy.
-36-
Sometime after midnight, my tapper woke me up. There were alarms going off all around the camp alerting the troops.
We automatically closed our faceplates and steamed up the inside of them. It got cold up here in these mountains at night.
“What’s up?” I asked on team chat.
“I don’t know,” Sargon said. “I was on watch, but I didn’t see anything.”
Using infrared, we scanned the environment. There didn’t appear to be much other than a few bugs and a lot of cold trees.
“Adjuncts,” Graves said on command chat, “I’ve got word from Central. They’ve detected large troop movements in our area via satellite. We’re to stay in our holes and not engage. Repeat, stay fixed in your positions. If you must move, stay on your bellies. Stop all transmissions, too. I want radio silence and audio silence until dawn.”
Under normal circumstances, our suits were automatically linked up via a local stealth network, a system that intelligently transmitted our voices as code that was designed to look like background radiation and general RF. The idea was that even if an enemy did detect us, we’d look like nothing important and certainly nothing dangerous on their scanners.
The trouble with tech like that was that it depended on the relative capabilities of the enemy, who I knew were pretty advanced. The safest bet, therefore, was to shut down the entire system when in close proximity.
After relaying Graves’ orders about the shut down, I switched off our com-link system. Unless someone flagged an emergency, it wouldn’t allow them to transmit again.
For the next thirty minutes or so, we waited in our holes. Unlike most of my men, I used this time to sleep. It wasn’t a full-on sleep, but what I liked to call a “paranoid sleep.” A state from which I could be easily awakened.
Something went wrong about ten minutes after I began dreaming. I dreamt a young woman was crawling to me, worming her way across the dark ground from her foxhole to mine. She was buck-naked in my dream, and her bare hips glistened with frost…
Startling awake, I reached for my rifle. Whoever it was, it wasn’t a naked girl. I could tell by the shape that it wasn’t a girl at all.
A gloved hand reached out and pushed my gun down. That was a mistake. I reversed my weapon on reflex and bashed the face in front of me with the butt of my rifle.
“Oh fuck—McGill! I think you broke my nose!”
It was Carlos. He was bleeding and cursing like a drunk after a fight.
“Shut up!” I ordered him in a harsh whisper.
Reaching out with both hands, I dragged him into my foxhole with me. He kept making hissing sounds of pain.
“Sorry,” I whispered, “you woke me up.”
“Woke you up?” he demanded in a low voice. “How could you be sleeping? They only told us we were about to be overrun a few minutes ago.”
“Not everyone pisses themselves when they hear bad news.”
He heaved a deep breath and rubbed ointments on his face. Nuskin, pain-relievers and the like went to work, sealing his nose and filling the air with a chemical scent.
“I hate this stuff,” he grumbled. “And you’re a dick, by the way.”
“Specialist?” I demanded. “What the hell are you doing away from your post?”
“I came to tell you that Hoskins is gone.”
“What?”
“You remember Hoskins, the new guy they just bumped up from the light cohorts?”
“I know who the hell he is, what do you mean he’s missing?”
“He was in the hole next to me, and I wormed over to him so I could bum some extra rations. He’s new, so I figured he was probably too nervous to eat.”
“Uh-huh. Did you find him dead or something?”
“No, he’s just gone. I asked the lookouts, but they hadn’t seen him. I even checked around in case he was taking a leak—nothing. No one has seen him, so I crawled here to make my report. You’re my commander, by the way.”
“Yeah, yeah. Okay, get back to your post. I’ll kick this up to Graves—wait, on second thought, I want you to worm your way over to Graves’ hole. If he doesn’t kill you, you can tell him all about it.”
Grumbling, Carlos crawled away. My foxhole was in the middle of a rough circle that was inhabited by my platoon. We were downhill from the rest of the troops, on the edge of the group.
For a few minutes, I looked around with night goggles. It was just like Carlos said. Dead quiet. If Hoskins had vanished under these circumstances, then…
Suddenly, I was struck with an idea.
“Della,” I whispered. “Damn you, girl!”
The more I thought about it, the more I became fixated on the possibility. Hadn’t she just said she was thinking about getting into my platoon? It would be just like her to do it this way, even after I’d told her not to.
My relationship with the girl was beyond weird. We might kill one another or make love, on any given night of the year. Sometimes, we went for broke and did both.
She was a Dust Worlder and had her own way of thinking. She wasn’t like girls from Earth. She was tough, stubborn and only half-civilized, in my opinion. That made her fun but troublesome. Sometimes you had to take the good with the bad.
Muttering curses, I got out of my hole and wormed my way across the landscape toward her platoon. They were uphill about a hundred meters from our position.
Instead of locating Toro’s group, however, I crawled to Kivi’s spot and tapped her on the helmet until she popped up with a knife in her hand.
“It’s me,” I said.
“The answer is ‘no’ McGill,” she said hotly.
“What? Oh… no, no, that’s not why I’m here.”
“The answer is s
till ‘no.’”
“Yeah, okay, I got that. Have you seen Della, or Hoskins?”
I quickly explained the situation. She was concerned.
“I understand why you’re asking about Hoskins, but why did you mention Della?”
“Because she might have something to do with his disappearance.”
“Ah,” she said, laughing quietly. “I didn’t know about that. The girl is active, isn’t she?”
She had completely missed the point, but I didn’t think it was worth explaining to her. She and Della had a past, and telling her that the girl might be working to kill off one of our platoon just so she could get closer to me wasn’t going to fix anything.
“Have you got any buzzers on you?” I asked.
“Always. But they use radio, and they fly. Deploying them would be against orders.”
“Yeah, I know. Can you reprogram a few to crawl only and run them around the area? It will take them longer, but hopefully we’ll get some stealthy intel. Put them on full-automatic, and when they come back we’ll see what they got us.”
“I can do that,” she said, and she went to work.
She’d had her tapper repaired by now, and she connected it to a bigger computer in her ruck. After about five minutes, she launched six little crawlers. They were about the size of big beetles and they scuttled off in every direction.
“They’ll find something,” she said, “I have great faith in them.”
We waited about nine minutes until the first one returned. The vids in its tiny memory would normally have been transmitted back as a live feed, but she’d made sure to disable that option.
Together, we watched her tapper display the boring data. Set to locate movement and organics, the drone displayed a few mouse turds, an owl fly-by and lots of sticks.
The rest of the drones came back about one every minute after the first. We checked them all. It wasn’t until the last one came in that we got the shock of the night.
“Is that what I think it is?” gasped Kivi.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a slaver.”
A huge form loomed. It looked like a very tall, very thin man. It sort of was a man, but one that had been genetically altered to serve a special purpose. I hadn’t seen one of these freaks since Dust World, and I wasn’t happy to see one now.
Despite being easily four meters tall, he moved with unnatural stealth. His huge, splayed nose quivered. I knew firsthand he could follow a scent like a bloodhound and didn’t really need much light to get around in a forest.
What really caught our attention was his net, however. He had a prize inside. A human form. Whoever he’d caught and slung over his back, the poor guy wasn’t moving.
“Hoskins,” I said.
“Yes, I think we found him. But that slaver isn’t done yet. He’s looking for fresh game.”
I nodded, unsure as to how to proceed. “I think I’m going to contact Graves,” I said at last.
“You can’t. He ordered you not to.”
“They know we’re here anyway, Kivi,” I said.
“Then send me as a courier.”
I looked at her, thinking about it, but then I had a better idea. I tapped her bag of tricks.
“Get out another drone. Have it run to Graves position and tell him.”
“What if he smashes it?”
“Send more than one!”
She got to work on it, and after about a minute, she released the buzzers. They ran off into the leaves, rustling and clicking like mice in a barn.
About two minutes later, my radio beeped, and Graves’ voice came into my ears.
“What took you so long to notice one of your team was captured, Adjunct?” he demanded.
“You told me not to break radio silence, sir. That slows everything down.”
“Hmm,” he grunted, “all right. Let’s wake everybody up. We can’t let that slaver get home. He’ll pinpoint us to his commanders. McGill—move your team to his position and take him down.”
“On it, sir!” I said, happy to be doing something again.
I stood up, signaling my platoon to do the same. Around me, the ground heaved up and troops popped out of their holes. It was like watching a mass of armed gophers all waking up at once.
As it turned out, it was the worst possible move we could make.
-37-
By hiding in the cold ground, we’d made ourselves blind to the approaching enemy. As best I could figure, they’d been waiting for us to make any move that indicated we were aware of their presence.
We didn’t even get to form up or advance into the drifting night mists. Instead, the forces that had encircled us attacked in unison.
First there were flickering shadows. I didn’t know what they were. They looked like ripples in the air. But I knew these weird disturbances weren’t supposed to be there.
“Something’s coming!” I shouted in the clear. “Weapons up, fire if you see a target!”
“What are you seeing, McGill?” Graves demanded in my headset.
I ignored him, breathing hard and looking everywhere at once. The natural sounds of wildlife had stopped.
Then I saw the mysterious effect again. It was like a ripple, something that crossed my line of sight in front of me. I switched off my night vision—that both helped and hurt. I saw a dark hulking shape, but I couldn’t see much else. It was too dark under the trees in the cold, crisp night air.
Taking a chance, I unloaded a burst with my assault rifle. Plasma bolts lit up the scene, splashing fire over the trees and making that electrical cracking sound these guns were famous for.
Even in the light of my plasma bolts, I couldn’t see the enemy, but one of my shots must have struck home. The leaves on the forest floor burst up like a fountain. Something was down—something we couldn’t see. It was snorting and hissing and making an awful fuss.
“What’s there?” Sargon demanded. “Adjunct, I can’t see my target—”
He got about that far before a massive spear thrust out of the dark and skewered him. He was lifted up into the air on the tip of the weapon.
Punching through a weaponeer’s heavy armor and making a shish-kabob out of him was no mean feat. I was impressed and stunned. Sargon had been taken out, just like that.
I was even more stunned when his weapon discharged. He was carrying an old fashioned belcher, and he’d had the foresight to crank it open to a wide-angled beam. At point-blank range, it was hard to miss. He swept the region of empty space in front of him, and the invisible target lit up like a torch.
It was then that I finally understood what we were up against. The shape was unmistakable. It was tall and thin with powerful, dangling arms. The creature was visible inside the center of that gush of fire.
“Slavers!” I shouted. “We’ve got slavers in the camp, and they’re invisible. They must have some kind of camo tech.”
“I caught that, McGill,” Graves said, “have you got the situation under control?”
All around me, troopers were being engaged by these gigantic ghostly figures. It was the general instinct of every legionnaire to slide back into his hole and seek cover.
The trouble was, we couldn’t hide from invisible opponents. They stepped right up and plucked us out of our holes. Kivi was dragged from the ground and lifted high. Screeching, she was held aloft by one foot. She twisted around, howling and trying to get a shot.
I hosed the region of space I thought must have a slaver in it with plasma bolts. Some of them struck home, and Kivi stopped flying away. The air shivered, and I got the sense that—
Swish, a huge object came out of nowhere. I snapped my head to the left, and something big slid past my face. The slaver had thrown his spear at me. Its razor-sharp tip sliced open my cheek to the bone. Growling and feeling blood run down my neck, I fired more bursts until the monster went down.
All around, similar struggles were taking place. A few of the enemy used paralyzation nets, but not many. Maybe they didn’t like t
o use a weapon that would so clearly show where they were.
I lost six legionnaires then suddenly, it all stopped. Panting, I moved to Kivi and dragged her back to a hole. She couldn’t walk on her ankle as the slaver had twisted it badly when he’d picked her up.
“McGill,” she breathed, “they’re the same ones we fought back on Dust World. How are they invisible?”
“The squids must have taught their dogs new tricks,” I said. “Looks like they pulled back, though. We killed at least five.”
“I still can’t see them. Not even their bodies.”
“You should switch off your night vision for a second. You can see at least an outline then.”
She did so, and she was amazed. “I can see the bodies—a little. They must have designed these stealth systems to fool our night vision.”
“Tit for tat, when it comes to tech.”
“Hey, your face is bleeding.”
“Only a little.”
“Liar,” she grunted, calling for Carlos.
He made his way over to us and made hissing noises as he worked on my cheek. Soon, the bleeding stopped. All the while he dabbed and sprayed, Kivi and I stared with slowly rotating heads, looking for any sign of another attack.
“I’m totally paranoid,” Kivi said, “these things came out of nowhere. My drone saw the one that grabbed Hoskins, but none of the others. I wonder why?”
“Maybe the effect is of short duration,” I suggested. “They can stealth, but maybe not all night long. The one you saw with your drone was probably recharging his gear.”
“Could be.”
Graves showed up with a relief squad about then.
“Don’t shoot me,” he said. “I’m your commander.”
Kivi lowered her weapon with obvious reluctance. She and Carlos hadn’t been all that keen on Graves after he’d questioned and shot them a week ago.
Graves walked into the middle of our encampment and surveyed the damage. He took vids with his tapper of each dead slaver. With Kivi’s help, he switched off their camo units and had her analyze one as she hopped around.
He had with him a large satchel. He must have gotten it off one of the pig-robots. He never opened it, but he kept it with him everywhere he went.