by Dan Davis
“What about the civilians?” Ram called to Ensign Tseng. “The ones in the shuttle. Milena and the engineers?”
The Ensign froze for a moment. “No one mentioned them to me. Not my responsibility. One of the other teams must be escorting them into the outpost.”
Ram looked through the debris clouds at the fire teams advancing toward the enemy, making a staggered line between the shuttle and the outpost. The command team under Captain Cassidy was closest, a couple of runners streaming between the commander and the fire teams to relay orders the old-fashioned way due to the dampening effects of the wheelhunter jammers.
I should be out there. I should be armed and taking the fight to the enemy.
“We’re the closest team,” Ram said. “If we don’t get the civilians from the shuttle, they’ll be cut off.”
“It’s not your concern,” Ensign Tseng said. “Harris, you’ll drive this vehicle and Cooper, you take the other one. The moment it is operational, head directly for the evacuees—”
“Take one of them,” Ram said, turning to head up into the shuttle. “But do not move this ETAT until I get the civilians from the shuttle.”
“Stop,” Ensign Tseng said. “Seti, stop. That’s an order. You’re under my command and I order you to stop.”
“I’ll be back in under five minutes,” Ram said, as the Ensign’s objections broke up and died away.
Whether the Ensign would listen was another matter but Ram had to try.
He strode up the ramp, jogged through the almost-empty cargo hold and jumped up the steps through the hatch. By the side door looking out stood Milena, unmistakable even in her EVA suit from the way she held herself, tilted her hips, one arm leaning high on the frame, and the two engineers and the biologist standing behind her.
“Milena,” Ram said and they all jumped like they’d been shot. The group of four turned almost as one.
“Ram,” Milena said, a rare smile appearing on her face. “Our suit comms don’t work outside the shuttle. Lieutenant Xenakis said she’s about to turn it around and to disembark but we couldn’t raise Captain—”
“I know,” Ram said. “Come with me. Your chariot awaits.”
I hope.
He had to help the civilians down the hatch ladder, all but Milena. They struggled as if they had never worn an EVA suit before.
You’ve never worn one before, either.
“Come on, hurry up,” Ram ordered then, herding them down the cargo ramp.
One of the ETATs was bouncing away toward the outpost. The other was just starting to crawl away, two Marines in the front, one in the back. The explosions continued, throwing pulverized rock into the air.
“Hey, wait,” Ram shouted and ran toward them. “Stop, wait for passengers, wait.” He hoped the wheeler interference would let the signal through.
The ETAT slowed and Ensign Tseng’s voice sounded in his ear, sighing. “Alright, hurry them up, Mr. Seti. Stirling, Cooper. Hold it there.”
The four civilians climbed into the rear seats and Ram started to get in the flatbed section at the very back.
“Hold on,” Ensign Tseng said. “You can’t get on, Seti. You’re too heavy. Wait here.”
Ram glanced at him. “On Arcadia, the Extraterrestrial All-Terrain vehicles are rated to carry five hundred kilos in the rear cargo section, so there’s excess capacity for supplies and gear. In fact, hold on.”
“What the hell are you doing?” Tseng said. “We’re going to go without you.”
“Just wait.” Ram hoped they would not drive off while he ran to the stacks of boxes, searched for the one he needed while Tseng shouted at him and grabbed the weapon crate. He ran to the buggy, threw it in the back and pulled himself into the open rear flatbed.
“Alright, let’s go,” Ram shouted as he jumped on. The ETAT suspension creaked under his weight.
Private Cooper, in the driver’s seat, was a fit and handsome blond-haired American. The kind of man that Ram had grown up being jealous of. The private looked back at the Ensign, who gave the order and the ETAT whirred into life, Cooper accelerating rapidly across the plain, heading for the distant outpost. Ram crouched and held on to the roll bars above his head, hands either side of the empty mount for the crewed weapons.
Explosions burst around them as the buggy raced toward the walls of the outpost. Towards the stream of civilian walking wounded coming toward the shuttle for evacuation.
Ram had a moment of exhilaration. A feeling of joy at the fact of what was happening. The black ground rushing beneath the wheels of the Marine Corps’ extraterrestrial transport vehicle as it bounced hard on the suspension, jerking his view around. Above, the turquoise sky and pink-tinged white clouds of an alien word. It was like being back in Avar, in a military game racing toward the combat area and he almost let out a whoop from the sheer thrill of it. He recalled his old colleagues in Rubicon, the Avar coop he had founded and he wondered how they were doing. Whether they were still competitive in the rankings without him to lead them.
The ground in front of the ETAT exploded in a black plume of debris. Private Cooper swerved the vehicle hard to the left, throwing the buggy onto two wheels and Ram leaned to his right, stopping it from tipping all the way over. It crashed down hard and bounced. Still, the explosion smashed a shower of stones into them. The vehicle was constructed of hollow tubes and was completely open, offering no protection from the shrapnel. There was no time to do anything other than instinctively duck and weather the impacts. They rang his helmet and his armor and pinged against the frame of the vehicle.
And they were through. Clear air ahead to the outpost.
The other ETAT-24 bounced toward them and then went right by, heading the other way, back to the shuttle. The rear of the large buggy filled to bursting with wounded civilian staff being evacuated. It rode low on the suspension, with eight or nine EVA-suited people in the seats and hanging on to the frame. Private Harris, driving the other vehicle gave an elaborate, lordly wave to Private Cooper, who waved back as they passed each other a few meters apart.
Private Harris was another American, as dark and ugly as his countryman was blond and handsome. Both seemed to be treating the current situation lightly. Ram wondered what action they had seen before where they would be so relaxed. Maybe they had been conditioned to enjoy combat, as Ram supposedly had. Maybe they were just a couple of arrogant assholes.
“Few more for you back there, sir,” Private Flores said from the other ETAT as it went by. She jerked her thumb back at the outpost. She was young and stocky, which probably meant she was taking huge doses of steroids or she had undergone some gene editing.
It wasn’t much further to go when a blast erupted over them. Showering them with pinging shards of stone. Again, the damage seemed superficial.
“Jamie!” One of the civilians shouted. “Oh, Jesus, no.”
One of the civilians in Ram’s ETAT was slumped over, his helmet resting on the seat in front, limbs flopping from the bumpy ride in a way that declared the man was unconscious. Or dead. Stone shrapnel from the explosion must have struck him, caught him in the face.
Ram watched from the rear while Milena helped the other civilians to drag the unconscious one upright and his head rolled back, exposing the smashed visor and a face inside covered with blood. Breathable air would be rushing from the helmet and if the man was not dead from his wounds then he would suffer from the low oxygen atmosphere of the planet.
“What do we do?” The engineer, the wounded man’s colleague shouted.
Sergeant Stirling, in the front passenger seat, turned. “Just cover the leak,” he said, his big face twisted in contempt. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Cover it with what?” the engineer shouted back.
“Anything,” Stirling said, turning back to face the front as if he could not have cared less. “Use your hands. We’ll be there in a moment.”
“My fucking hands?” the engineer said. “We need to go back to the shuttle, now. He�
�s losing air.”
“He will be fine,” Milena said, her voice perfectly level. “Plenty of air left in his suit. We need sheeting. Something like a bag to wrap over his head.”
The ETAT-24 had been wrapped in a dozen square meters of impermeable sheeting but they had left it all back at the shuttle, blowing away in the Arcadian wind. Surely there was something else they could use?
An explosion hit a few meters to the east but the few stones that struck them had lost most of their momentum. The buggy slowed as it approached the line of fleeing civilians in their EVA suits. Most were on foot, one was on a stretcher and another was half-carried between two others who helped her along.
“Someone help us,” the engineer said, trying to hold his hands and the hands of the other civilians over the smashed visor.
As far as Ram could make out, the evacuating civilians seemed pretty much uninjured. Perhaps they had sustained injuries inside their suits. He knew that wheelers had broken into part of the outpost during the previous attack on the outpost. Ram would have to ensure that if they did so again, he would be ready to defend himself and Milena and the others. Defend them as best he could without the rifle they had made for him.
That was it.
“I have something,” Ram said and dragged out the case he had taken. He popped the catches and there it was.
His sword.
The blade was wrapped in transparent plastic. He drew the weapon and unwound the sheet from it. The blade had a thin coating of oil over it, as did the plastic sheet.
“Here, use this. Quickly, take it. You’ll have to hold it in place, maybe.”
“Thank, you, Ram, thank you.” The engineer wrapped his colleague’s head in plastic and drew it in tight around his neck. “Hang in there, Jamie, hang in there.”
Ram held his massive sword, turned it over in his hands. The real-world, scaled-up replica of his favorite Avar weapon. How many hundreds and thousands of hours had he used the virtual version of it? He had used it against virtual Vikings and historically-dubious Saxons but now he would use it against aliens on a planet in another star system.
The very fact of his situation was almost devastatingly strange and disturbing. He backed away from the thought before it overwhelmed his sanity.
When they reached the group of six wounded civilians fleeing the outpost, the ETAT skidded to a stop.
“Marines and civilians out,” Sergeant Stirling called. “Wounded onto the vehicle. Quickly, please, ladies and gentlemen.”
Ram jumped off the back, clutching his sword and the tactical scabbard which he clipped to his armor’s webbing at the left hip.
“I’ll carry him in,” Ram said to the civilians in the back, indicating the wounded man, helmet wrapped in oily plastic.
“No way,” the engineer shouted, cradling his colleague in his arms. “He’s wounded. He must go back to the ship, on the shuttle.”
“No.” Milena spoke firmly, laying her hand on the engineer’s shoulder. “Jamie can’t go back to the ship. He’s been exposed to the atmosphere. He has to stay planetside.”
The engineer shook his head inside his helmet. “He wouldn’t have been exposed, all the air was still coming from his suit, it would have pushed the planet’s atmosphere out. No contamination possible. Come on.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Milena said. “The containment protocols will not be relaxed. If he goes up on the shuttle, they’ll never let him out of the Victory’s airlock. Even if he doesn’t die of his injuries, they’ll end up blowing him into space rather than risk contaminating the ship.”
The engineer was horrified. “They wouldn’t do it.”
Milena did not budge. “You know they would. You know their philosophy. They’re technoprimitivists to the core. The ends will always justify the means for them. They will never let Jamie on the Victory like this. He stays here, under quarantine. Come on, they’ll take care of him.”
The Marines helped the wounded onto the ETAT. Blasts of incoming fire continued. Rama looked at the pattern and discerned that the frequency had increased considerably but the area the wheelers were shelling was thousands of square meters and the chances of a direct hit remained negligible.
The engineer had not given up his argument with Milena. “What about all these people? There’s decontamination protocols. They’ve been here weeks, they’ll be far more exposed than Jamie—”
“Anyone found to have been directly exposed to the planet’s atmosphere, soil or water will face the same treatment.”
Ram sheathed his huge sword, stepped forward, gently but firmly pulled the engineer away and picked up the wounded man.
“Leave him alone,” the engineer protested.
Ram ignored him, instead speaking to Milena and the Marines. “We’re wasting time. Come on.” Compared to Ram, the wounded man in his arms was small and light as a sleeping child. A shell exploded close enough to make the civilians flinch.
The hulking Sergeant Stirling growled at the small group of wounded civilians. “Everyone get on the vehicle, now, come on, let’s go, people. Anyone want to drive?” A small, limping guy volunteered and the sergeant swung him into the driver’s seat. “You’re sure, sir? That’s right, you just push this button to accelerate and this one to brake. Don’t go too fast, it’s got some serious poke, alright, sir? Okay, give us a moment to get clear then straight line it back to the rear of the shuttle. Not too fast now, sir.”
The ETAT-24 whirred into life and surged away, an injured civilian in nominal control. A wheeler round burst five meters from them and it raced faster, the driver possibly panicking.
“Think they’ll make it back okay, Sarge?” Private Cooper asked.
Stirling snorted. “It’ll be a bloody miracle.”
“Alright, everyone,” Ensign Tseng called. “Just fifty meters north to the outpost, on foot, quick as we can. Cooper, you take point, Stirling at the rear. Seti, you will join the civilians in the middle group. Come on, let’s go, let’s go. Quick as you like.”
Private Cooper on point hugged his battle rifle and advanced straight toward the wall of the compound, with everyone following behind. “Hope they don’t have the Hive Queen with them, Sarge,” Cooper shouted.
“Shut up about the Hive Queen,” Stirling said. “No one finds it amusing, Cooper. Stay focused.”
Cooper laughed.
Ram, carrying the wounded and unconscious man, fell into step beside Milena. “How are you?” he asked her. He smiled in order to make her feel better.
She glanced up at him, arching an eyebrow. “Why do I get the feeling you’re enjoying yourself?”
“I don’t know,” he said, shifting the unconscious man in his arms. “I’m taking this seriously. And I’d rather be out there, weapon in my hand.” He nodded across the plain, to where the other Marines in their fire teams advanced to the front of the outpost. “But you have to admit, this is better than being dead. Pretty significantly better.”
I was dead. The wheeler killed me. Tore me apart. But if I died, what am I now?
“Well, don’t get too excited,” Milena said, as an alien explosive round smashed into the ground between them and the side wall of the outpost. The pieces rained down all around the small group. “You’ll have plenty of opportunity around here to become dead again.”
As if to underline her point, yet another wheelhunter shell exploded just beside them and they picked up their pace.
Along the route from the shuttle to the compound, hundreds of meters away from Ram, Captain Cassidy’s Marines still pushed forward, many of them firing at an unseen enemy. The battle had begun. It was frustrating that the enemy interference cut him off from speaking to Cassidy. Ram wondered if he should abandon the civilians and Lieutenant Tseng’s F Team in order to support the real Marines, out there fighting the enemy. Rifles snapped controlled bursts, support weapons kept up longer bursts of fire, and every now and then a long-range rifle would crack a high caliber supersonic projectile at the unseen wheelers.
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And then he saw them. At least, he caught a glimpse of a wheelhunter vehicle. Just the corner of one but he knew, somehow, recognized the structure of it from the shape and the angles of the alloy exterior. It rolled forward from behind a jagged outcrop, out of a shallow gulley, perhaps, already firing the long-barreled turret weapon on top of the squat vehicle.
A wheelhunter combat vehicle.
UNOP designation; Wildcat. Main weapon fires ultrahigh density plasma pulses.
How did I know that?
The Wildcat tank weapon whirred and flashed long streaks of white, shredded the Marine fire team that was nearest to it as they fell back. A Marine antitank weapon fired in return, streaking across the black surface of the planet leaving a plume of smoke behind it. The missile slammed into the front of the Wildcat, the hard explosion felt in Ram’s guts a moment or two after he saw it.
With barely a pause, the Wildcat plowed on, turning its turret toward the antitank weapon and firing along the line of the missile’s smoke trail, the wheeler projectiles dissipating the plume as it did so.
Ram caught a glimpse, through the haze, of alien infantry rolling behind the Wildcat tank. The wheelers on the planet were all clad in EVA suits of their own—tight, black, sleek—covering all their six legs, both long arms and the central hub. From this distance, it looked like a giant bug scurrying to cover from beneath a lifted stone or log.
How many of them were out there? How many vehicles like the Wildcat did the enemy have in operation?
Ram wished he had his rifle.
Ahead, the walls of the outpost loomed. Just five meters high, they were made from the walls of transport containers and parts of the Victory, dropped from orbit and assembled on site. In the far corner, an antenna jutted up many times higher than the roof of the structure. The team approached midway along where two sections joined, there was an airlock, door wide open and inviting.
“Everyone inside,” Sergeant Stirling ordered. “Right, sir?”
Ensign Tseng glared at Stirling, who looked down at the officer with a blank expression. “That’s right,” Tseng said, his voice a jagged growl.