Andromeda’s Choice

by William C. Dietz

  After a couple of ranging shots, one of the fieldpieces scored a direct hit on the south end of the trench. Four legionnaires were killed and another was wounded. That was nearly 25 percent of McKee’s bio bods, and she had no choice but to fall back and notify Dero that she was doing so.

  Larkin and the T-1s stepped up to provide the legionnaires with cover fire as they scrambled uphill. McKee waited until all of the surviving soldiers had completed the journey before leaving herself. The skirmishers had returned, and their bullets kicked up geysers of dirt all around McKee as she high-stepped her way up the slope and fell into trench two.

  Then, conscious of the speed with which the column was advancing, she struggled to get up on her knees. It was almost too late. The first rank of Naa had passed through trench one by then, and members of the second rank were muscling the fifty around so they could fire it uphill.

  Seeing that, McKee fumbled the remote into the open, slid the safety cover out of the way, and mashed the red button. The mines went off with a mighty roar. Bodies, and parts of bodies, were thrown high into the air, and the machine gun was destroyed. Having lost four men, McKee felt a grim sense of satisfaction. The Naa knew about the mines now . . . Maybe that would slow them down.

  It didn’t. They kept coming. And some of the warriors had grenades. They threw them. Most fell short. But one bounced and landed in trench two, where it killed one legionnaire and wounded another.

  McKee swore and spoke over the platoon push. “Maintain fire but prepare to pull back. Over.”

  Then, having switched to the command frequency, she put in a call to Dero. “Charlie-Eight to Zulu-Two. We lost trench one, we’re in two, and about to pull back. Over.”

  The reply came quickly, and McKee could hear the rattle of auto fire to the south. “Roger that Eight. Pull back when you’re ready—but hold there until I give the word. Zulu-One has been working on Operation Hammer—and preparations are complete. Over.”

  Suddenly, McKee had reason to hope. Maybe, just maybe, they would be able to salvage a few lives. Thanks to a hail of bullets from the T-1s, the pullback went smoothly. And as she surfaced in trench three, she saw that the first rank of Naa were piling into trench one in order to protect themselves from a second blast. And farther down, the column had gone facedown on the ground.

  McKee grinned and thumbed another remote. On her orders, the mines that had been planted in the bottom of trench two had been moved to a spot five yards in front of it. Close enough to kill most of the Naa who were hiding in trench one.

  There was another series of explosions, and more mayhem, followed by a red rain. The entire slope was strewn with dead bodies. Would that stop them?

  The column rose as if from a grave and continued to climb. Victory was only yards away. The legionnaires fired, but the enemy kept coming. “Eight to Two . . . We need to pull out. Over.”

  That was when Hasbro’s voice boomed over the company push. “This is One. Prepare to fall back on the FOB. The cyborgs will provide covering fire until the rest of our personnel are inside the perimeter. At that point, they will withdraw as well. Execute. Over.”

  “You heard the major,” McKee said over the platoon push. “You will pull back but do so in an orderly manner. Sergeant, take squad two. Squad one will prepare to pull out. The rest of us will try to slow the bastards down.”

  McKee and members of the first squad threw every grenade they had downhill and fired short bursts from their assault rifles. Holes appeared in the front of the column but were closed from behind as the drums continued to roll. They were close now, very close, and she could hear the equivalent of noncoms urging the warriors on.

  Then, McKee ordered the rest of the legionnaires to leave. They got up, zigzagged over open ground, and disappeared between two rock formations. The FOB lay just beyond.

  With that accomplished, it was time for McKee to depart as well. She scrambled out of the trench, found her footing, and began to run. What she needed was some cover. A place from which she would be able to see the Naa crest the hill. That was when she would detonate the very last row of mines.

  So she ran toward a likely-looking rock, or was trying to, when a bullet passed through her right calf. She fell forward and hit hard. Where was the fire coming from? McKee was desperate to know as she rolled over and felt for the AXE. A burst of bullets kicked up snow all around the weapon, and McKee jerked her hand back. Then she saw Vickers. The other woman was fifty feet away and about to fire again.

  McKee threw herself to the left, heard a burst of auto fire, and rolled to her feet. The pain was intense, but she managed to hobble forward and dive behind some scrub. Then, moving on her hands and knees, she scuttled south. Bullets tore through the brush. One of them hit a boulder, and she felt bits of rock pepper her cheek.

  Then, as she propelled herself through some scrub, the hammer fell. Somewhere up in orbit, an order had been given, and a salvo of space-to-surface energy bolts had been fired. The first round made a screaming sound as it passed through the atmosphere and struck the ground. That was followed by another, and another, all overlapping each other so as to kill everything in the area. First the Naa in the east, then the Naa on the mesa itself, then the Naa off to the west.

  The process was something akin to suicide. The only chance to survive the bombardment was to dig deep holes and dive into them. And that’s where the rest of Force Zulu was. In bunkers under the FOB.

  But McKee wasn’t, and that meant she had two things to worry about. Vickers and the energy bolts that were raining down from the sky. McKee’s knees were bloody by that time, but she barely noticed. She could see a dead legionnaire up ahead. One of Dero’s people. And there, right next to the corpse, was an open fighting position.

  There was no time to plan or do anything other than crawl forward and plunge into the hole. The ground shook as a bolt landed on the mesa, and McKee struggled to turn over. Her pistol . . . She was reaching for it when Vickers loomed above. The agent smiled as she pointed the AXE downwards. “Good-bye, Miss Carletto.”

  Time froze, and in that moment a bolt landed a hundred feet away, and Vickers ceased to exist. The explosion was so loud that McKee’s eardrums would have been ruptured had it not been for the dampening effect of her helmet. Then, after sending a powerful shock wave outward, air was sucked back into the momentary vacuum with another clap of thunder. McKee saw a blizzard of debris pass over the fighting position. It paused as pressures were equalized, and fell. All she could do was roll into a ball while dirt, small rocks, and a gobbet of bloody meat rained down on her.

  McKee wanted to escape the hole but knew it was best to remain where she was until the bolts passed over and moved on to pummel the west side of the mesa. As the explosions continued to march away, she used her knife to hack a section of pant leg off, winced when she saw the holes, and fought the dizziness that tried to claim her.

  Fortunately, the bullet hadn’t touched bone, she didn’t think so anyway, but she knew she’d have another scar. The kind of blemish the previous her would have agonized over. McKee laughed manically as she pulled a premedicated pressure dressing out of a pouch on her chest protector and ripped the package open. The dressing began to writhe as it sought blood and wrapped itself around her calf the moment she brought it near. She felt a comforting sense of heat as the bandage sealed itself to her skin, applied pressure, and began to pump a cocktail of chemicals into both wounds.

  Satisfied that the leaks had been plugged, and refreshed by whatever stimulant had entered her bloodstream, McKee stood. Then, having crawled out of the hole, she struggled to her feet. The wounds hurt, but not as badly as before. So, by gritting her teeth and uttering every swear word she knew, she managed to hobble over to the slope. The remote was ready, in case there was a need to blow the last row of mines, but it quickly became apparent that McKee could throw the device away. All of the explosives had been detonated by a
direct hit. And the huge star-shaped crater overlaid most of trenches two and three as well.

  As for the Naa, there wasn’t much left to look at. Just bloodstained snow and a scattering of body parts and weapons. Farther downslope, the corpses were piled in drifts. And beyond that, out on the plain, she saw what had to be hundreds of craters and a carpet of bodies that stretched for as far as the eye could see.

  The energy bolts had ceased to fall by then, and as McKee removed her helmet, Hasbro appeared at her side. “I knew you were alive,” he said. “I could see your icon on my HUD.”

  “And the others?”

  “Everybody who made it to the FOB survived. Twenty-seven people in all. Vickers’s missing though.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “Yeah.”

  McKee looked out over the desert. As the sun arced into the west, a crack appeared in the overcast and a single ray of sunshine touched the ground. “So we won.”

  Hasbro was silent for a moment. And when he spoke, his voice was grave. “We survived.”

  McKee nodded. And that, she decided, would have to do.

  EPILOGUE

  It ain’t over till it’s over.

  YOGI BERRA

  Standard year 1973

  PLANET EARTH

  A shaft of sunlight slanted in through an arched window to splash Tarch Hanno’s old-fashioned desk with gold. But even if the furniture in his generously proportioned office harkened back to an earlier era, there was nothing retro about the ghostly-looking matrix that curved in front of him.

  Still, a report was a report, no matter how it was delivered. And this one was from a case officer named Maximillian Rork—the man in charge of the Andromeda McKee investigation. The image on the center panel of the matrix had short hair, eyes that stared out from under craggy brows, and a nearly lipless mouth. It opened as Hanno touched the screen, and the voice that came out of it had a deep basso quality.

  “The following report pertains to a subject known as Andromeda McKee and the investigation detailed in BMP file 87.21.06. Because McKee was present during the Mason assassination, and acted in a manner that could suggest prior knowledge of the attack, I received orders to initiate a Class I Reliability Review.”

  Hanno took note of the words “could suggest prior knowledge of the attack” and nodded approvingly. McKee was under suspicion, but she was also a war hero, and it was important to keep that in mind. The report continued. “In order to carry out the review, it was necessary to recruit a legionnaire who could get close to McKee. I placed him under the supervision of the BMP’s sole agent on Algeron. Unfortunately, the agent was assassinated before he could provide us with backdoor access to the Legion’s personnel records or make any progress where the McKee review was concerned. The investigation into his death continues.

  “At that point, I sent a second agent, but both agent two and the legionnaire assigned to gather information about McKee were killed during a major battle on Algeron. McKee and twenty-seven other people survived. Subsequent to that, McKee’s battlefield promotion to second lieutenant was confirmed, and her name has been submitted for another decoration.”

  The PR people will like that, Hanno mused. The war hero gets promoted. Perfect.

  “With those facts in mind, I am requesting further orders,” Rork continued. “The original question remains unanswered: Did McKee participate in the Mason assassination or not? The investigation uncovered no evidence to suggest that McKee has any knowledge of the Reliability Review, murdered agent one, or is plotting to overthrow the government. So should I continue the investigation? Or consider it to be closed?”

  Hanno made a jabbing motion, and the video froze. What to do? Order Rork to continue or close the investigation down? Lady Constance Jones and the Department of Internal Security were still trying to crush the increasingly dangerous Freedom Front, and they were the ones who claimed credit for the Mason assassination. So why did he continue to have misgivings where Sergeant, now Lieutenant, McKee was concerned? It was a hunch, that’s all . . . A feeling that something wasn’t right. But his hunches had been correct in the past.

  He touched a control. “This is a memo for Maximillian Rork. You will continue to work on Reliability Review 87.21.06 until you succeed or receive further orders. There has to be more information about Lieutenant McKee out there. Find it.”