Andromeda's Fall

by William C. Dietz

  Nola-Ba paused at that point and his space black eyes probed the faces around him. “If they return,” he continued, “there’s reason for concern. Especially if they are able to muster a force superior to our own. And there’s a secondary threat as well. In order to stay and fight, we will have to maintain a long supply chain that’s twice the length of theirs.

  “But,” Nola-Ba added, “in spite of those challenges, there are ample reasons for us to stay and complete the task before us. I believe that Lance Commander Horba-Sa is ready with the most recent intelligence summary.”

  Ona-Ka, who was still standing with his back to the portal, made eye contact with the officer in question. “Please proceed.”

  Horba-Sa had a reputation as a plotter and a schemer. Talents that made him ideal for the position he held. His eyes glittered. Opportunities to show War Commander Ona-Ka how smart he was didn’t come along every day, and he planned to take full advantage of it. “As Admiral Nola-Ba suggested, we have some significant advantages, beginning with the nature of our adversaries. There are two races to contend with—the humans and the Droi.

  “The humans who were brought in from off-world are equipped with weapons equivalent to ours but are relatively few in number and hold a single city. And since their fleet withdrew, they are vulnerable from the air.”

  “What about the local humans?” Ona-Ka inquired.

  “There are a couple million of them spread out across the surface of the planet,” Horba-Sa replied. “But they are in the midst of a civil war and therefore divided.”

  Ona-Ka nodded. “Go on.”

  “The Droi are more numerous,” Horba-Sa continued, “but relatively primitive and lack a centralized command structure. Because of that, I believe we can ignore them for the moment and concentrate on eliminating the off-worlders first.”

  Commander Urlo-Ba was a tough, no-nonsense ground pounder with a reputation for getting things done. And having been a soldier for more than twenty years, he was no fool. He had been wounded in the throat years before, and his voice was permanently hoarse. “You say we should focus on the off-worlders. What do we know about them?”

  Horba-Sa had a ready answer. “The Legion, as they call themselves, is comprised of murderers, thieves, and misfits. All sent here because they are considered to be expendable. We will crush them.”

  Ona-Ka cleared his throat. “Lance Commander Horba-Sa is factually correct. But there’s someone I want you to meet. Once you have, I’ll allow you to draw your own conclusions.”

  Horba-Sa didn’t like the possibility that he was going to lose face in front of so many senior officers. But there was nothing he could do about it as the door to the command center whispered open and a human appeared. He was unshaven, dressed in a tattered uniform, and had clearly been beaten. A guard gave him a shove. He stumbled, caught himself, and looked around. “What a fucking freak show . . . You should charge admission.”

  The words were translated by a computer and played over the PA system. More than one officer rose in response to the insult, but Ona-Ka raised a hand. “Who are you?”

  The legionnaire looked the Hudathan in the eye. “I’m Staff Sergeant Harvey Hill. Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m in command here,” Ona-Ka replied mildly. “Tell me something, Staff Sergeant Hill . . . What will your comrades do when we attack Riversplit?”

  Hill grinned. His skin was dark, and his teeth were extremely white. “They’ll rip your fucking heads off and piss down your throats.”

  “Because they are loyal to Empress Ophelia?”

  “Shit no. We like to shoot freaks. Especially big ones. They’re hard to miss.”

  Ona-Ka nodded and looked at a guard. “Eject him from a lock.”

  Having heard the translation, Hill took three running steps and dived through the air, his hands reaching for Ona-Ka’s throat. The Hudathan stepped to one side as two stunner bolts hit the human. There was a thump as his body landed on the floor. Guards came forward to drag it away.

  Once they were gone, Ona-Ka’s eyes swept the room and came to rest on Horba-Sa. “Remember Sergeant Hill over the next few days. There are more where he came from. Dismissed.”

  CHAPTER: 15

  * * *

  There’s nothing like a common enemy to create new alliances.

  AUTHOR UNKNOWN

  A Dweller folk saying

  Standard year circa 2300

  PLANET ORLO II

  A lot of things had changed. The prisoners had been freed, and since Spurlock was MIA, Avery had assumed command. And, because of the many casualties the Grays had suffered, there was no one with sufficient authority to object.

  The bridge was beyond repair, so Avery ordered what remained of the battalion to rig ropes enabling the bio bods stranded on the south side of the river to join those on the north bank. After consolidating his troops, it was time for Avery to salvage what he could. One of the 8 X 8s had been just short of the bridge deck when the span blew. So it was necessary to winch the truck across the river. A tedious process made even more so when legionnaires were forced to lever a couple of small boulders out of the way.

  Meanwhile, the rest of the legionnaires were in the river, trying to salvage what they could from the wrecked vehicles. It was a very difficult task that involved wading waist- or even chest-deep through cold water, risking injury from jagged pieces of metal, and staggering ashore with heavy boxes. It was backbreaking work that left the participants exhausted. But thanks to their efforts, cases of food, ammo, and medical supplies were piling up on the shore. All of which were doubly precious given the fact that the unit was on its own.

  Meanwhile, McKee and a tech named Forelli were on the south side of the river fighting a tense battle to save seventeen lives. Because if they couldn’t get the T-1s up and running within the next nine hours and eleven minutes, the cyborgs would run out of emergency power, their life-support systems would shut down, and they would die. McKee tried not to think about that as she worked to find a solution.

  They had chosen to work on Hower first. The T-1 stood frozen in place as McKee tried to reboot his distributed processing swarm (DPS). One of his inspection ports was open and she and Forelli were peering at a status display. It was unbearably hot, and McKee’s clothes were soaked with sweat as she stared at the tiny screen. The onboard computing system was self-healing, or it was supposed to be, but the pulse from the EMP bomb had fried something. But what? The readout listed all of the T-1’s critical components as REQUIRING MAINTENANCE. But McKee didn’t believe that because she had spent the last hour isolating the subprocessors and testing them. And all of the subs were in the green.

  So what remained? “I think we’re dealing with a software glitch,” McKee said. “If we can find and isolate it, the DPS will heal itself.”

  “Terrific,” Tech Sergeant Forelli replied doubtfully. “But how are we going to do that?” Forelli had a plain face, a sturdy build, and a reputation as an above-average poker player. She was a good if unimaginative tech.

  McKee wiped the sheen of sweat off her brow with the back of a forearm. “I think the problem is hiding between two computing swarms. So I’m going to write new code for the interface. We’ll splice it in, and, voila, problem solved.”

  Forelli stared at her. “Really? You can do that?”

  McKee thought she might be able to do that. But Hower was listening, so it was important to be positive. “Sure . . . But I’ll need to borrow your cybergloves.”

  Forelli removed a pair of field-programmable nanomesh gloves from her tool bag and handed them over. They were composed of nanomesh computing cores that could interpret microgestures as information and transmit it to any DPS. “You sure know a lot about T-1s for someone who never went to tech school.”

  “I used to work at a Carletto Industries factory,” McKee said truthfully. “Okay . . . Let’s see how much I remember.”

  The problem was that she hadn’t hacked any code since graduating from college. So it
took some doing to bring the necessary knowledge up, funnel it through her fingers, and send it streaming into Hower’s DPS. The effort consumed more than ten minutes, and once she was done, McKee felt anything but confident as she gestured the last shapes into the hacked interface. Her eyes were fixed on the images rippling across the fabric in front of her. But rather than the result she hoped for, the words SYSTEM MALFUNCTION blinked on and off.

  McKee swore softly and bit her lower lip. A glance at her chrono confirmed what she already knew. Time was melting away. “What now?” Forelli inquired.

  “We try again,” McKee replied, as she took a swig from her canteen. “I made a mistake, but I’ll put it right. Then, once we have Hower up and running, we can transfer the same code onto the others.” It sounded good, but bullshit isn’t code. Still, all she could do was try, and keep trying, until she succeeded or Hower and the rest of them died.

  So McKee tried again—and again. With each attempt, she inserted small changes that she hoped would do the job. But none of them worked.

  Finally, with the sun going down and only two hours left to work with, McKee decided to take a shot at hacking the underlying protocol. Forelli held a flashlight as McKee went back to work. She was tired. Very tired. So much so that her mind seemed to be floating somewhere outside her body. But then, as she pushed ahead, the moment arrived when the code began to write itself. It was like music flowing from the fingertips of a pianist into her instrument.

  But just because it felt good didn’t mean that it was. So when McKee stopped twenty minutes later, she didn’t know what she had. Please, she thought to herself as she paused before the final finger flex. Please make it work.

  Her finger moved, boot-up symbols rippled across the video fabric in front of her, and Forelli uttered a whoop of joy. “You did it!”

  Something was taking place. That much was certain. But what? McKee held her breath as the loading sequence ended. There was a pause that seemed to last forever. Then Hower stirred, and as he did, the readouts for his various systems began to morph from red to yellow. “The power’s back on,” Hower rumbled. “And I can move again!” Servos whined as he lifted an arm by way of proof. “Thanks, McKee. I owe you.”

  “Quick,” McKee said as she palmed the program to a couple of data cubes. She put one of them in a pocket and gave the other to Forelli. “Load this into all of the T-1s on the south side of the river. I’ll cross over and take care of the rest.”

  McKee returned Forelli’s gloves, ran down to the river, and plunged in. The cold water was a shock, and rocks shifted under her boots. They gave unexpectedly, and would have dumped her into the current if it hadn’t been for the hand rope. It held her up as she floundered forward. “It was a software problem!” she shouted. “We hacked it.”

  A beam of white light found McKee as Avery waded out to give her a hand. He helped her up onto the beach, and, together, they ran for the nearest T-1. “Hower is up and running,” she told Avery, “and Forelli is loading the new code into the T-1s on the south side. But there isn’t much time.”

  Having arrived in front of a cyborg, she opened an access panel, fumbled the memory cube into place, and touched a button. Avery looked on as code scrolled, the war form came back to life, and McKee hit the eject button. After recovering the cube, it was on to the next T-1, and so forth, until all the cyborgs were fully restored.

  Even Trask was impressed. “You never cease to amaze me,” he said as McKee took a place on the other side of a crackling fire. “To say that you’re resourceful would be an understatement. Who are you anyway?”

  “She’s a corporal,” Avery put in as he materialized out of the gloom. “And all of our corporals are outstanding individuals. Please stand. From this point forward, you will be treated as a POW.”

  As bio bods appeared next to him, Trask looked left and right but remained where he was. “That’s where you’re mistaken, Captain,” he said confidently. “The Droi won’t allow it.”

  Avery smiled thinly. “Tell us, Insa . . . Will the Droi allow it?”

  The Droi stepped into the circle of firelight. His eyes were on Trask. “Sorry . . . But Avery right. Hudathans bad. We kill.”

  Trask stood. “I don’t make policy,” he said with a shrug. “The council does that. But, for whatever it’s worth, I agree with you.” The bio bods led him away.

  McKee ate an MRE after that, then crawled into a shelter and one of the salvaged sleep sacks. She was asleep seconds later. No one had to wake her. Filtered sunlight and the pressure on her bladder took care of that. And as she lay there, looking up at the fabric above, McKee knew something was different. But what? Then she remembered. After days of captivity, she was free! Or as free as any legionnaire could be. And hungry.

  McKee crawled out of the shelter to discover that the unit was much smaller than it had been. It consisted of the command car, a Scorpion, one 8 X 8 truck, and twenty-three bio bods. That was down from forty and reflected an overall casualty rate of roughly 50 percent. Much of which was due to Spurlock’s poor leadership. That was how McKee saw it—although she knew she was biased.

  In any case, the feeling was different, and in spite of the heavy casualties, morale was up. And if any of McKee’s fellow legionnaires thought poorly of her because she had gone AWOL, there was no sign of it in the cheerful greetings that came her way. Perhaps that was due to her lifesaving efforts the night before—or maybe it had to do with the Legion’s culture. Because with only a few exceptions, all of the legionnaires were guilty of something.

  McKee was one of the last people to eat breakfast. While she was at it, Larkin arrived with an armful of gear and an extra AXE dangling from one shoulder. “Here’s the smallest body armor I could find,” he said. “Plus an L-40 and a helmet.”

  The two of them hadn’t had a chance to talk previously, and as Larkin dumped the load onto the ground, McKee met his eyes. “I’ll never forget the canteen . . . The one you tossed into the bunker that day.”

  Larkin shrugged. “You’d do the same for me. We’re a team.”

  Then, having looked around as if to make sure that no one could hear, he lowered his voice. “Going AWOL was a good idea . . . But don’t leave me behind next time. I’m ready when you are.”

  McKee sighed. “I’ll keep that in mind. But, given the situation, I think we should stay. Echo Company needs us.”

  “Okay,” Larkin said reluctantly. “But it’s been a long time since I had a cold beer.”

  Once the company had broken camp and formed up on the road, it was time for another burial ceremony. All the Legion-issue markers had been used up by then, so pieces of scrap metal were employed instead. Given the demands of the war, McKee wondered if the graves-registration robots would make it to that lonely patch of road, or would the Big Green claim the bodies first?

  The T-1s were at the back of the formation, towering over all the rest as Avery spoke. Most of his belongings were still at the bottom of the river, and that included the book by Kipling, so the words were his own. “These men and women were our comrades and friends. They died fighting for us and we will miss them greatly. And when we fall, they will be waiting for us beyond the gates of hell.”

  The message was harsh, like the Legion itself, and judging from the expression on Trask’s face, different from what he had expected. But the legionnaires liked it and understood. Sergeant Boyce shouted, “Camerone!”

  “CAMERONE,” came the reply, and McKee emptied her lungs with all the rest. Then the troops were dismissed. A bio bod named Katica was the XO and the platoon leader by virtue of being the only lieutenant who had survived. Boyce was acting as company sergeant, and the T-1s had been divided into three squads. McKee was put in charge of the third. And as she climbed up onto a ’borg named Eason, she was reminded of Weber. She missed him and still felt guilty about being AWOL when he died.

  Thanks to the way McKee had brought the T-1s back to life, she was very popular with the ’borgs, and Eason was no exception
. His voice boomed over the speakers in her helmet. “Welcome aboard, Corp . . . I’ll take good care of you.”

  McKee thanked him, leaned back into the harness, and was pleased to discover that there wasn’t any pain. Her back had healed, but there was no telling what it looked like.

  The company left shortly thereafter with a squad of T-1s out front followed by the command car, the Scorpion, and the truck that was carrying both the wounded and most of the company’s remaining supplies. The second squad came next, followed by the third, which brought up the rear. It wasn’t until they were under way that McKee realized that she didn’t know where the company was going.

  The relationship with Avery had been close when they were prisoners, but he was an officer, and more than that, her commanding officer, and not likely to consult corporals. That made sense even if it rankled a bit, and served to point out a strange irony.

  The truth was that McKee had enjoyed the freedom she had experienced when she was AWOL—even if she had been on the run most of the time. The absurdity of that brought a wry smile to her lips as she swayed back and forth in the harness.

  Old habits soon took over, and it wasn’t long before she was putting her newly formed squad through the usual evolutions. Typically, they would march for a while, closed up behind the others, only to let the column get ahead. The best place to do that was around a blind curve, so that if they were being followed, the enemy would run into a trap.

  And so it went until the sun was high in the sky and the column turned off the road onto a track just wide enough to accommodate the big 8 X 8 truck. Then, once the company was well within the jungle’s humid embrace, Avery called a halt. Lookouts were posted and rotated so that everyone could eat.

  The company got under way again half an hour later. McKee’s squad was on point this time, with Insa and a party of Droi riding in the command car. It was a sturdy vehicle, and had to be, since the legionnaire behind the wheel used it to knock saplings over, drove through streams, and sent the car up hillsides. They were headed west, but why? Avery still hadn’t chosen to share that information. One thing was for sure, however—they couldn’t go very far. Because the tanker had been destroyed. And if they ventured too far into the Big Green, the company would be stranded there.