War Criminals

by Gavin Smith

  ‘And?’ Miska knew what was coming next.

  The woman couldn’t meet her eyes.

  ‘Your people,’ she finally said.

  ‘You knew?’ Miska demanded through gritted teeth. She glanced at the man she’d shot. It went some of the way towards explaining why he was so frightened.

  She was aware of the Cyclops ‘tensing’ next to her. Again it was too human a move for the war droid. She suspected that her dad was readying himself to stop her executing this woman.

  ‘When they give you what you want, you stop,’ Nyukuti, her stand-over man bodyguard told her.

  ‘Thank you,’ Miska said, then she holstered the Glock and walked away. Nyukuti and her dad fell in beside her.

  At first she thought it was snow caught in the lights of the mechs. Then she realised it wasn’t so much falling as just drifting through the camp, sticking to whatever surface it landed on. It looked like pollen, only larger.

  ‘Tell everyone to cover any exposed cyberware, goggles, ear protectors, gloves,’ Miska told her dad as she slid her own goggles down and they adhered to her skin. She did the same with the ear defenders on her half-helm.

  Then the screams started. They began human, but quickly became inhuman and were cut off by a wet tearing sound. Then came the flat hard staccato of metal being propelled by old-fashioned explosive chemical reaction. Tracers in the air to the north. Then fire. All the fire.

  Chapter 15

  Just for a moment Miska was transfixed. The two flame-cannon-equipped Medusas were dragons breathing fire as they lit up the night, and the treeline to the north of the camp burned. Then she was heading towards the flames. The carved wooden stock of the AK-47 nestled into her shoulder. With the flame gun bolted to it the weapon had become bulky, a struggle for even her boosted muscles to hold in position.

  Miska could hear the faults being reported in the mechs, in the shuttles, in the combat exoskeletons. The crosshairs for her smartlink to the AK-47 were blinking on and off in her IVD. She brushed some of the pollen fall off the weapon with her left hand.

  ‘Hangman-One-Actual to all call signs, unless crucial keep reports of your faults off air. If you are combat ineffective then fall back to exfil area three. Switch off your smartlinks, go to your optical sights,’ she said over open comms and it quietened down. She didn’t like the way Pegasus 1 was wobbling around overhead, however.

  Something was slithering across, no, through the earth towards her. Nyukuti had seen it as well. She heard the flat, hard staccato of his slugthrower SAW. Saw the earth ripped up in the light of the flickering muzzle flash.

  ‘The defoliant!’ Miska shouted at him. He glanced at her, clearly none the wiser. ‘The fucking squirter!’ she told him. She moved her hand from the AK-47 to the flame gun and squeezed the trigger. Fuel shot through the blue pilot flame and ignited into a line of dripping fire. She played it over the ground. An inhuman squealing noise filled the air. Nyukuti let the SAW hang down his front on its sling. The SAW’s cassette magazine was too bulky to allow the squirter to be attached by the mounting rails. He sprayed the burning ground with the powerful defoliant and an acrid chemical stench filled the air but the thick vine or creeper that had been burrowing through the earth towards them was now whipping around above ground. Suddenly it disappeared as though yanked back.

  Miska reached up to the gas mask on her helmet and slid it down the groove that ran between the goggles’ lenses. She pulled it over her nose and mouth. It clicked into place and then she felt the suction as it adhered to her skin.

  ‘Masks on!’ she ordered over the comms. ‘Spray the ground, deny it to them!’ She was looking around trying to see what was going on. She could see the Cyclops doing the same thing. The war droid just wasn’t armed for this fight. Nyukuti was watching her back.

  It was clear that they were being attacked from the north. The entire treeline was burning now. The pollen fall was a black rain silhouetted against burning, skyscraper-sized trees. Even the mechs, gushing flames, were dwarfed by the wall of fire. She could hear slugthrower fire and see muzzle flashes all over. It was self-evident that the perimeter had been breached. Flame guns squirted fire all over, and bits of the camp were burning. Other than the two Medusas configured for bunker busting and their flame guns, the other six mechs were pretty quiet. She heard the occasional hypersonic scream from their 30mm rail guns. Their rate of fire didn’t sound right, but other than that they seemed to be searching for targets.

  There was cannon fire from Pegasus 1, and moments later the assault shuttle fired two missiles. They shot overhead. Exploding plasma blossomed in the north between the perimeter and the wall of fire. Moments later Heavy-One-Actual, Mass’s Medusa, fired its plasma cannon, twice, in the same area. Miska heard screaming coming from all over the camp.

  ‘Gunny!’ she shouted. The Cyclops’s head swivelled round to look at her. ‘Get the survivors into groups, then move back to back, three-sixty coverage, fold into the defenders in the north. They lay down the defoliant, deny the ground.’

  ‘Understood,’ he said. His modulated voice didn’t sound right and he was moving strangely. She watched as more and more pollen drifted towards him.

  ‘Wash him down,’ Miska told Nyukuti.

  The stand-over man turned his squirter on the Cyclops and started spraying the war droid with the biohazardous defoliant.

  Miska glanced up. Pegasus 1 kept veering from side to side, as though the pilot was struggling to keep control of the assault shuttle.

  ‘Hangman-One-Actual to Heavy-One-Actual and Pegasus-One, what are you shooting at?’ she asked over direct comms. She was aware of her dad giving orders over open comms.

  Screaming nearby. Miska spun round to see one of the Offensive Bastards yanked up into the air by vines dangling down thousands of feet from the huge skyscraping trees. The vines ripped the man apart, his innards raining down. Higher in the trees she saw one of the Machimoi caught in the vines like a fly in a spider’s web.

  ‘Gunny, they need to watch above!’ she told the Cyclops. The war droid was moving better now. She knew that he would pass on the warning as soon as he could.

  ‘Fuck! Shit!’ Mass snarled over comms. She could tell he wasn’t subvocalising.

  ‘Heavy-One-Actual, get a grip,’ she snarled back. The shoulder-mounted plasma cannon on Mass’s mech didn’t seem to be folding away down his back the way it should.

  ‘Heavy-One-Actual here, apologies but I’ve got system after system going down …’

  ‘Pegasus-One to Hangman-One-Actual, we’ve got things in the perimeter,’ McWilliams told her.

  ‘Can you be more specific?’ Miska demanded. She was still making her way towards the northern perimeter. She watched as roots exploded through the ground and impaled one of the Offensive Bastards. Moments later the roots and dead Legionnaire were engulfed in flame. She saw Corenbloom and Raff sprinting towards her.

  ‘… no,’ McWilliams offered. ‘Miska, I’ve got vines trying to wrap themselves around the shuttle. I’ve got systems going down all over. I’ve either got to put her down or get out of here.’

  ‘Get out of here,’ Miska told him, ‘meet you at exfil point three.’

  ‘Sorry boss, call if you’re gonna evac,’ he told her. Above her the shuttle pulled up, tearing away from the writhing vines that were trying to entrap it.

  Trying to evac would just get messier. They needed to get things under control.

  About three hundred feet to Miska’s left a Satyr scout mech appeared as its pollen-covered reactive camouflage failed. Roots burst from the earth all around it and dragged the mech to the ground. Miska was gratified to see legionnaires sprint towards the mech and begin spraying it with the defoliant. Screaming vines were sucked back into the earth.

  Raff and Corenbloom reached Miska, both of them gasping for breath. Corenbloom was doubled over but Raff was attaching one of the defoliant squirters to his carbine-configured M19. She noticed that the ‘journalist’ had liberated two o
ther canisters of the defoliant. She also noticed that Corenbloom was watching Raff’s practised ease as he handled the weapons.

  ‘What have we got?’ she demanded. They’d come from the north. Raff was just shaking his head. So much for the intelligence professional, Miska thought, somewhat uncharitably.

  ‘They’ve come for the heads,’ Corenbloom told her.

  ‘Who?’ she demanded. They were still moving towards the north. Small groups from all over the camp were doing the same. She heard the whipsnap of passing bullets. Tracers shot by too close for comfort.

  ‘Gunny, tell them to only use the squirters and the flamers in camp, until everyone reaches the north perimeter, and everyone needs to check their targets!’ Moments later she heard that going out over open comms. She turned back to Corenbloom. ‘Who?’

  It was clear that he didn’t know how to answer her question. He was covered in sweat and shaking.

  ‘Women,’ Raff told her, ‘made of wood.’

  Corenbloom was nodding.

  One of the Machimoi flew unsteadily overhead, tearing through the vines reaching for it. Something flew up from the ground and embedded itself in the combat exoskeleton’s head. Was that a fucking arrow? The blind Machimoi flew into the ground. Roots exploded out of the dirt all around it. They ran towards the combat exoskeleton. The Cyclops was there first but her dad didn’t have the tools needed for the job. Miska arrived second. There was indeed an arrow sticking out of the Machimoi’s head, though the arrow looked as though it had been grown rather than made. Miska saw where the roots had cracked the combat exoskeleton’s armour. She squeezed the trigger on the flame gun and played it all over the Machimoi. Moments later Nyukuti and Raff were squirting the defoliant all over the roots. The roots whipped around in the flame, accompanied by the inhuman screaming, but they released the Machimoi. The pilot, blinded by the loss of the combat exoskeleton’s head, was thrashing around on the ground, his finger still curved around the trigger of his Dory railgun. The Cyclops knelt on the Machimoi to stop the flailing.

  ‘Easy, son,’ her dad told the Machimoi pilot, as he prised the railgun out of the combat exoskeleton’s hand. ‘You need to unbutton.’

  Miska assumed her dad had a comms link with the Machimoi pilot as well. She was checking to the north, looking around the Cyclops towards the network of trenches and earthen ramparts. She heard the Machimoi unbutton.

  ‘Jesus Christ! Did you guys just flame me?’ the pilot demanded. He sounded panicked. He sounded young. Then he was screaming. Miska swung round. It took her a moment to work out what was going on. Roots had grown through the back of the Machimoi and into the pilot and were now dragging him down into the earth in a fountain of blood accompanied by the sound of rending flesh and snapping bones. The Cyclops stood up, one foot on the bucking Machimoi, and pointed the combat exoskeleton’s own railgun into the passenger compartment. He squeezed the trigger. At this range the hypersonic ripping noise was a physical force buffeting her. She went deaf as her implants and her helmet’s audio dampeners sought to protect her hearing. There was movement to her left as roots grew up around the Cyclops’s legs. The chain that fed the Machimoi’s railgun with ammo was severed from the, presumably, crushed ammunition hopper on its back. The Cyclops quickly fired off what remained into the ground at point-blank range. Dirt exploded into the air.

  ‘Move!’ Miska shouted over comms. She triggered the flame gun again, squirting fire all over the Machimoi’s bloody passenger compartment. The lines of flame were getting shorter and weaker. The Cyclops stood up but staggered as the roots around its leg tried to drag it back down. ‘Nyukuti, Raff, squirters! Cyclops’s legs!’

  They must have heard because they were immediately squirting the defoliant all over the staggering war droid as it tried to tear itself free. Corenbloom added fire from his flame gun as well.

  Something hit Miska in the chest hard. She staggered. Tried to remain upright but ended up sitting down on her ass, hard. She looked down at the hard armour breastplate that covered her chest. She could see the score on the plate where the bullet had hit her. Friendly fire. Suddenly the air was full of tracer fire from the north.

  Assholes! She had told them to just use flame guns and the squirters in the camp.

  ‘Contact!’ It was Nyukuti who’d shouted. It was followed by the sound of short burst after short burst being fired from his slugthrower squad automatic weapon.

  ‘All call signs, watch your fields of fire!’ her dad shouted over comms and then the Cyclops hunkered down, forming a barrier between them and the incoming bullets with its own armoured body. Raff and Corenbloom were also firing their M19s south. Miska pushed herself to her feet and then she saw the ‘contact’.

  She could sort of see why Raff had described them as women. They had a faintly female shape but they looked like living skeletons made of branch and bark walking slowly towards them. They wore natural crowns or crests of twigs, or had branch-like horns, or hair made of leaves. Their arms ended in root-like structures that writhed like snakes. There were five of the tree-creatures walking towards them. They were a childhood memory – twig figures Miska had made with her mother in those brief years she had been alive, given nightmarish form. They were out of range of the squirters and the flame guns.

  ‘Reloading,’ Miska told the other four over comms as she ejected the canister on her flame gun and kicked it away, replacing it with one of the spares. She brought the AK-47 up to her shoulder. Through the optical scope the tree-things didn’t look much better. They were taking their time closing with them. She took her time playing the scope over each of the five approaching creatures. Some had hollow sockets where eyes should be, others had fibrous or resinous growths that might have been eyes but there were too many of them and they were in the wrong places. She saw the impacts from Raff, Corenbloom and Nyukuti’s shots. The bullets blew splinters off the creatures, staggered them, but still they kept coming. She aimed at one of the figures. The crosshairs on the old-fashioned sight settled over the creature’s throat. Miska squeezed the slugthrower rifle’s trigger with the pad of her finger, firing a three-round burst. The wooden stock kicked back into her shoulder. The first round was a tracer, the phosphorescent tip making a line of light through the humid jungle night air. The round caught the tree-creature in the upper chest, knocking it back. The recoil made the rifle climb. The second round missed. The third round was a 9mm long, armour-piercing bullet of the type that had been developed during the war with Them. Designed to kill terrifying armoured alien bioborgs, the AP round hit the tree-creature in the face. The force of the bullet knocked the head back. Some splinters and sap went flying but that was about the extent of it.

  Well shit, Miska thought. She was aware of tracers hitting the Cyclops’s armoured body, which protected their backs from their own troops. The phosphorescent-tipped rounds went spinning off into the air. Then the Cyclops opened up with its back-mounted Dory railgun. One of the tree-creatures was snatched backwards by the hypersonic 20mm rounds and turned into so much kindling in mid-air. That’s more like it. Though the Dory didn’t sound right as it fired. She heard a sound from behind her. Something fast-moving and hard hitting armoured plate. She’d heard the noise before when large calibre weapons hit armoured vehicles, but it didn’t sound right somehow. She was turning around as she heard the sound again. The Cyclops’s legs went from underneath it. Horrified, Miska saw the arrows sticking out of the war droid’s head and its chest. Roots grew from the arrow crushing the Cyclops’s head, burrowing into its chest cavity to destroy its power source, its CPU. That is not your dad, she told herself, while still hoping he’d had time to evacuate his electronic ghost back to the Hangman’s Daughter on a tight beam uplink. Your real dad is dead.

  She turned back to the tree-creatures. Their slow movement through the heavy pollen bloom was an obvious power play. They were trying to intimidate the Bastards before they were in flame gun and squirter range. It wasn’t a completely ineffective tactic, Miska
decided. Though she was far more worried about the thing shooting the arrows. She switched the AK-47 to the grenade launcher manually. She had no real idea if the switch had worked because her IVD had long ago stopped talking to the AK-47’s smartlink. C’mon, c’mon, she thought. It had been a long time since she’d fired anything without using a smartlink and grenade launchers weren’t the most accurate of weapons. She allowed for the big projectile’s drop, aiming the weapon at the tree-creature’s head but hoping for the larger chest cavity. She squeezed the trigger. There was the popping noise of the 30mm under-barrel grenade launcher firing. The grenade hit the approaching tree-creature in the chest, the armour-piercing tip pushing through the branch-like ribs before the explosive charge detonated. It left a pair of legs and a wooden spine swaying in the humid breeze before it toppled over.

  ‘HEAP grenades work,’ Miska said over open comms. She was still aware of ‘friendly’ rounds sparking off the now-dead Cyclops behind them. ‘Nyukuti, you’ll lay down suppressing fire, Corenbloom, Raff, you’ll reload your launchers with HEAP grenades.’ She didn’t wait for acknowledgement. Instead she just knelt down and worked the pump on the 30mm grenade launcher, ejecting the other three grenades in the weapon’s tubular magazine into her hand. She pushed them into the drop pouch that rode her left hip to sort out later. Then she quickly reloaded the launcher with her last four HEAP grenades, working the slide to put one in the chamber. She aimed at another one of the creatures. A grenade exploded behind the advancing line.

  ‘Take your time,’ Miska told the other three over direct comms. ‘Aim for their heads to hit their chests,’ she said and fired. Another of the creatures exploded.

  ‘Reloading,’ Nyukuti told them. He ejected the empty cassette from the SAW, grabbed another from one of the large pouches hanging off his belt and slid the cassette containing two-hundred rounds of vacuum-packed caseless ammunition home. Then he was down on one knee, ejecting the grenades from his under-barrel launcher and replacing them with HEAPs.