by Dan Davis
“She doesn’t remember me?”
Milena patted him on the armored forearm.
A series of distant thuds rocked the floor and vibrated through the walls. People around them stirred, afraid. Ram did not blame them. They were only scientists, administrators, engineers.
“Come on,” Milena said. “Let’s just get by her and you can try to make friends with her after the attack.”
When they reached the door, Sifa blocked the way through.
“You’re him.” Her voice sounded the same. She was not smiling. Sifa had always been smiling, even when she was fighting. Especially then. “Rama Seti.”
“The one and only,” Ram said, grinning. “World famous, right?” She looked confused, irritated maybe. “Sorry, I’m just kidding. You’re Sifa. We were friends. Before. Back on the Victory. I’m glad you’re, you know. Here.”
“I have no memory of your time. But they showed me video of you and I fighting. Training. Conversing. They said you were dangerous. To stay away from you.”
“Sure,” Ram said, glancing at Milena. “Listen, Sifa. We need to get through that door. Me and Milena. We have to go help, okay?”
“I have orders,” he said. “No civilians to come through this door. Captain Cassidy’s orders. Sergeant Gruger told me so. I’m sorry.”
“You’re a Marine?” Ram said, brightly, even while she shook her head in response. “Me too. Come on, Sifa, let me through. It makes no sense that I’m stuck in here. You hear those explosions? Come on, Sifa, that’s our people out there, taking fire. In fact, why are you here? You should come with us.”
“I’m not a Marine.” Sifa hesitated. “And I’m not allowed in combat,” she said.
“What?” Ram said. “Why? That’s crazy. You’re one of the best fighters who ever lived. You should be out there. Why not fight?”
“I’m just not allowed, that is all.”
Ram’s patience was wearing thin and irritation at the giant woman’s demeanor began bubbling up. Milena’s stance indicated that her reserves of calm were similarly dwindling. And in fact, he could tell, somehow, that Milena was irritated at him. At Ram. Irritated because he was failing to resolve the situation swiftly.
Ram leaned down a little and peered into Sifa’s visor. “Will they not let you fight because you’re no good at it anymore?”
She glared at him, a touch of her old fire behind the whites of her eyes. “Do not threaten me.”
Ram did not back down. “Move aside, please, Sifa. I don’t want to have to move you.”
She held up a hand and stepped away. “Alright, you can go through but not her. She is a civilian.”
“She’s coming too,” Ram said. “She’s a medic. People are probably hurt.”
Sifa shrugged, sidestepped and dropped her ass onto a crate beside the door, waving them through,
On the other side, smoke drifted down the corridor. It was far worse in this wing, the north wing, than it had been in the opposite side of the outpost. Emergency lighting glowed along the edges of the route ahead.
“You weren’t kidding,” Ram said to Milena as she came through beside him. “She’s not the same woman, is she.”
The sound of a battle rifle, firing on full auto, echoed from up ahead.
“Maybe you should wait here after all,” Ram said to Milena.
“Just hurry up,” she said and he set off toward the explosions and rifle sounds. Ram had come through the south wing of the outpost, where there were storage areas, the power station and science labs. Here, in the north wing, they walked by the communications room which he knew had a cluster of antennae and dishes on the roof. Then an administration area, a workshop, sleeping quarters. All empty. Up ahead, figures moved in the darkness. Beyond them, obscured by smoke, he was sure he saw glints of sunlight. Or maybe it was fire.
A Marine lay against the wall of the corridor, with another crouched over him. Milena pushed by Ram and knelt by the injured man.
“What happened?” Milena asked, flipping open the cover on the man’s wrist screen and checking his stats. “His suit seems intact?”
“One of those fucking wheelers tossed him against the wall,” the other Marine answered. “Like he was a sack of meat. Mashed his guts, maybe.”
“Definitely broken bones,” Milena said, checking the screen. “Internal bleeding, looks like.”
“That’s what I said,” the second Marine said.
Shouting came from further up. A burst of rifle fire.
“I’m going on ahead,” Ram said to Milena, who waved a hand at him, shooing him away.
He left her bent over the wounded man while she ordered the other one to assist her in getting him back to the communal panic room.
The sight filled him with something, some feeling he could not place. A bittersweet ache. She was so decisive, confident. She exuded competence. Why was it bitter as well as sweet? Ram had been dead for a close to a year and so they had been robbed of almost a year together. Perhaps. It could be that she had only spent the night with him that one time because he was bound to be killed in the arena. She might, for all he knew, have no intention of picking up where they left off. In fact, that was probably it. She had probably felt sorry for him. Given him a going away present.
Still, it didn’t mean he couldn’t try with her again.
A blast rocked the corridor and Ram ducked by the door into a bathroom, ready to throw himself sideways through it, should any death or destruction come down toward him.
Ram’s heart raced in his chest as the sounds of battle grew louder.
He wished his augmented systems were operational but most of the benefits came from being networked and the wheeler interference was blinding him to the Marines data. Still, his suit’s systems fed local audio information and it was through that which he heard the sound of the men ahead shouting at something. Acting on instinct, he rushed on to where the sunlight poured in above.
The roof of the outpost had been ripped open. The uppermost of the double layer had been pulled up and outward by something and the inner, bottom layer was forced in. The open section was about four meters a side.
Beneath it, a pair of Marines stood aiming their rifles up and out.
“Friendly coming up,” Ram shouted at them. “What happened here?” Ram realized he had one hand resting on his sheathed sword.
“Sir?” one of them said. “The wheelers broke in here. Few minutes ago. We pushed them back, though.”
The other one spoke over him. “Where are the reinforcements, sir?” he demanded.
“Last I saw, they were attacking the flank,” Ram said.
“What fucking flank?” he said, irritated.
“Back at the—”
A dark shape appeared in the sky, along with a roar and Ram flinched, ready to defend himself.
“Holy shit,” one of the Marines said but with a tone of wonder and not fear.
Ram looked again through the jagged roof section and saw that the dark shape was, in fact, a shuttle. A human shuttle. Their own shuttle. It was flying low toward them, as if it was coming in to land on the east wing, over the wheelhunter attack itself.
“What the hell are they doing?” Ram asked.
The Marines were dumbfounded. “They’re going to get blown all to shit,” one said.
The other nodded. “We’re going to be stranded on this fucking piece of black shit planet.”
Right before it passed from view, a mounted weapon fired from the open rear of the shuttle, churning out high caliber shells down at the unseen aliens. Muzzle flare streamed out like pulsing white fire from a dragon’s mouth. The broken ribbon streaks of bright tracer glowed and the sound of it tearing into the ground, tearing into the unseen attacking wheelers, thrummed through the ground.
“Woo!” one of the Marines shouted, raising his rifle one handed.
The other Marine laughed. Both of them stood directly under the hole in the roof.
Ram didn’t notice the sound at first, not over the cacophony
of weapons fire and grinding metal sounds.
But then he heard it.
The roof above resounded to the sound of a heavy, multi-limbed monster scurrying toward them.
“Is that—” was all Ram managed before the sunlight cut off.
A black shadow filled the space.
The Marines shouted a warning and they pulled back, moving away as the gigantic wheelhunter dropped down inside the corridor in between Ram and the Marines. It fell hard. Massive. A gigantic thing like a monstrous spider from a nightmare. It unfolded itself.
Back on the Orb, Ram had fought a yellow skinned, giant wheel. Six legs acting like spokes, six feet joining to make a wheel rim. Two arms ending in a bony, three clawed hand.
This one had all the same limbs and hub, it was the same species and yet it was different. It was black, for one thing. The yellow skin hidden beneath a smooth, sleek, black suit, seemingly skin-tight. It landed with a thump, in a flurry of whirling limbs and unfolded itself, not like a wheel but like a squat spider. Three legs to a side, the lumpy hub in the center and the arms pointing at Ram, one from the top of the hub and one from underneath. Instead of claws, it’s gloved hands held a straight edged, pointed blade in one and the other gripped what Ram knew to be a one-handed projectile weapon. A wheeler pistol.
Ram backed away from the first swipe it gave him, almost falling but hitting the corridor wall before he did so. The wheeler’s legs pistoned against the floor and the walls and rolled itself the other way as the Marines on that side of it yelled and fired their rifles in rapid bursts. His suit suppressed the noise of the firearms but rounds ricocheted off every surface and his own body armor. The wheeler leaped at the men, propelling itself along the walls, and fired its weapon, discharging a series of white blasts which banged louder even than the assault rifles. From behind it, Ram watched the wheeler’s blade rise, spraying red blood, then whip down again at the man.
Sight of the blood spurred him to action, at last, and he drew the sword from his hip. The grip felt odd through the gloves of the suit but it was a weapon he had wielded for thousands of hours inside Avar when his cooperative had climbed the rankings in Shield Wall, the Avar that had pretentions to historical accuracy. His weapon of choice had been what they called a Viking longsword. The weaponsmiths on the Victory had done a marvelous job recreating the aesthetics of his old virtual weapon, here in the real world. As he drew it, it even appeared to have the same point of balance and overall feel, despite being a larger weapon, to match his larger body, and being constructed of some special alloy instead of high carbon steel. It felt familiar in his hand, somehow.
Charging at the rear of the thing, he pulled the sword back at his side. Whenever anyone untrained picked up a sword, they tended to swing it around in big scything arcs or hacked down as if they were using an axe to chop wood. And, with the big, heavy Viking sword, that would be pretty effective for an unarmored human target. But Ram knew to thrust with the point of the blade for maximum force and he drove it at the center of the wheeler’s central hub, where its brain and important organs were located, probably. He remembered pulling ribbons and gelatinous lumps of tissue from inside the one he killed, at least.
He thrust the weapon from waist height, driving it straight with all his considerable weight and momentum behind it. He knew, somehow, that a blow that powerful would skewer the murderous alien.
The blow never landed.
Instead, one of its rear legs shot out, whipping back with incredible accuracy and smashed him in the shoulder with a huge foot, which was sheathed in a hard shell. An alien boot. The impact knocked him off his feet, knocked him down and knocked the wind out of him.
It doesn’t have eyes, you idiot. It can see you no matter what way it’s facing.
The wheeler, with feet braced on either side of the corridor, rotated its arms on the hub, bringing the knife to bear in its top arm and the pistol weapon in the arm slung underneath.
Ram rolled to his feet, sword still in hand, and charged again. The pistol was the primary danger, he assessed and smashed the blade into the alien’s lower wrist. The weapon discharged in a shower of white sparks and noise. Ram whipped the sword up and deflected the wheeler’s own blade that scythed down at his head, stepped inside and drove the point into the wheeler’s hub. His blade met a moment’s resistance as the alien’s EVA suit flexed in before it slipped through like a knife punching a boiled potato.
The alien convulsed and drew back but Ram followed and bore it down to the ground, the powerful legs thrashing and pounding on the walls, on the floor. Ram leaned his weight on the sword and held on. The creature succeeded only in tearing its wound into a larger gash. Red blood welled out of it, frothing up and poured over the surface of the alien’s suit, dark red on gray-black.
It died. Lay still. Legs and feet twitching. He pulled his sword out and wiped the blade on the rubbery suit of a jutting leg. Even taking into consideration that the alien was lying flat, it was certainly smaller than the one he had killed in the Orb Arena. Still, it was big enough.
Beyond it, one of the Marines was shredded, bloody gashes in the armor around his throat and neck. The other had smoking holes in his chest.
He climbed over the wheeler and checked them, flipping open their wrist screens to see their vital signs.
Both dead. No chance for recovery.
The distant roaring of the Victory’s shuttle sounded overhead and he caught a glimpse of it coming in low once again, a dark triangle against the blue background. Those pilots were crazy, they were risking destruction in a giant fireball by using the orbital shuttle as a gunship. They were asking for trouble.
Up ahead inside the corridor, someone fired a couple of bursts from their assault rifle, unseen through the smoke, startling him back to reality. He started that way, sword out and the point up and ready.
“Ram,” Milena called from behind him, beyond the dead wheeler. Her voice on his suit comms system distorted by the wheeler jamming. “Are you alright?”
She stood close to the alien corpse and under a jagged hole. Ram was afraid of what might come through it.
“I’m fine,” Ram said. “But you should go back, Milena. Go back to the panic room with everyone else. Be safe.”
“I can see injured Marines here,” she said.
“Those guys are dead. Get out of here. I’ll be back soon.”
“I can help up front,” Milena said.
“No, it’s not safe up ahead.”
“I’ll be safe with you, Ram. Safest place on the planet.”
“I won’t be able to fight and look after you at the same time, I’m sorry. You should go be with the others. Look after them. If we win, there’ll be plenty of wounded for you to help.”
“Okay, I’m going back.” Milena nodded. “Take care of yourself, Ram. Watch out for—”
Her words were lost in the electromagnetic jamming.
He headed forward, going to the noise. The endless, growing noise of battle. Rumbling detonations and the fire of automatic weapons. His suit augmentation was not displaying much external data, just his own biometrics.
Someone shot at him. The rifle fired and the rounds ricocheted next to him practically at the same time. Ram ducked, shouting that he was friendly.
The firing ceased.
“Is that Rama Seti?”
The voice was fractured and his AugHud barely functioning but it tried to bring up the name tags over his vision for the Marines up ahead. It said they were F Team. Ensign Tseng’s team.
“What the hell are you idiots doing?” Ram shouted. “I’m coming up there, alright?”
There was a moment before they replied.
“Come on up. We probably won’t shoot.”
The two Marines were from F Team he had been assigned to earlier. One was Cooper, the other Harris. They were crouched behind a barricade made from metal benches. Ram sheathed his still-bloody weapon and climbed over, crouching down beside them. Further up, more Marines massed a
nd sunlight glinted. He had made it to the northeast corner of the outpost. The point where the wheelers were attacking the hardest. The rifle fire was almost continuous, from multiple weapons, firing out through the smoking ruin where the wall had once been. Debris lay everywhere.
“What’s going on, guys?”
“Don’t know, sir,” Cooper said, looking at the open area in front of them.
“They’re breaking in, sir,” Harris said. “They’re everywhere.”
“Your orders are to cover this corridor?” Ram asked.
“They said you were a tactical genius, sir,” Harris said, nodding.
An explosion nearby rocked the whole outpost, the air pressure blasting the smoke and debris aside.
Ram pushed forward, stepping over twisted metal and found himself walking into a nightmare. He bent low and ducked back around the corner, looking out from cover.
The front wall of the outpost had been blown or torn away, leaving a jagged, chest-high remnant running along for a dozen meters. The front half of the roof was gone. Shelving and tables, computer cubes and cabling suggested it had been a lab or a server room before it was destroyed. A handful of Marines- six of them-stood in a line at the front wall and fired out at the enemy, sustained fire with fast single shots and in controlled bursts but all of them firing without let up. Two more Marines crawled behind. One handed up magazines to those firing while the other dragged an ammo crate toward them. Ram recognized the other members of F Team, plus a few others. The rear wall resounded with the cacophony of shooting.
The dense smoke outside cleared and Ram saw what they were shooting at.
Thirty or forty wheelers crept forward across the open space of the black, rocky surface. The alien’s yellow skin covered entirely by smooth, protective suits, matte black. The advancing enemies were folded over in that spider-like configuration. Each was armed like the one Ram had killed, with a pistol in the under arm and a blade in the over arm. Their weapons fired single shots rapidly, the alien rounds smashing all around the wall by the Marines.
But the wheelers were falling. All around the area in front, as far as he could see with the obstructions and tatters of smoke, lay the dead bodies of the enemy. Some still writhed and twitched, feet or a hand stretched up at odd angles. One dragged its way forward with one arm, bloody legs trailing behind.