by Gavin Smith
Take your time, she told herself, exhale, squeeze. The popping sound. The AK-47 slamming back into her shoulder as she fired. The grenade missed but exploded close enough to one of the tree-creatures to send it flying. She was aware of more explosions. Corenbloom and Raff missing. Panicked fire. No help from technology. The tree-creature that she’d knocked over got up. Something about the cast of its wooden face told Miska it was angry. They charged. They were really fast.
There were more explosions behind the sprinting creatures as Raff, Corenbloom and now Nyukuti missed again. Miska took her time and aimed before firing. Her wired reflexes slowed everything down to slow motion. The grenade in the air was heading straight for the charging creature closest to her. It was dead on target. It would hit the creature’s chest cavity and blow it apart. Then the creature moved. The grenade exploded harmlessly behind it as it closed. Miska aimed again and squeezed the trigger. The feed mechanism on the grenade launcher jammed. Miska moved her right hand from the AK-47’s grip to the flamer and squeezed that trigger. Flame squirted out of it, engulfing the wooden figure. It kept coming. Miska’s left hand worked the slide on the grenade launcher and ejected the final HEAP grenade. She knelt to pick it from the dirt. The burning tree figure reached for her. Miska pushed the grenade back into the launcher and worked the slide to chamber it. Burning root-like tendrils wrapped around her throat and lifted her into the air. Her unprotected chin burned. The tendrils were crushing her armoured neck protection. Then Nyukuti was there. He fired his grenade launcher at point-blank range into the creature’s chest cavity. Due to her wired reflexes, Miska had the luxury of thinking: Shit! Then the grenade blew.
There was a lot of strangely resilient wood and armour between Miska and the explosion. Her inertial armour helped deaden and distribute the force of blast to minimise the impact. She was still thrown backwards, head-over-heels, to bounce off the dead Cyclops before sliding back to the ground, landing head-first. She was barely conscious, in fact unconsciousness seemed quite a welcoming idea. She was vaguely aware that the force of the blast had blown Nyukuti into Corenbloom, taking them both to the ground in a tangle of limbs. She heard that inhuman screaming noise again. She saw the burning, one-armed head and torso crawling towards her.
‘Oh c’mon!’ she shouted as she forced herself to move, knowing that whatever she did it wouldn’t be fast enough as she tried to roll into a crouch.
The ground shook. She was thrown into shadow. The huge chainsaw bisected the burning wooden torso and head of the creature and drove down into the earth, spraying dirt everywhere.
Miska sat back against the Cyclops and looked up at the Medusa-class mech. Friendly rounds sparking off its armour, roots growing up around its legs, the pollen fall coating it, but somehow Heavy-One-Actual was still moving.
‘Thanks, Mass,’ she told him over direct comms.
‘Told you, boss, when your time comes …’ the Mafia button man replied. His comms link was a mess of static.
Raff finished off the remaining tree-creature with a HEAP and then sprayed it with defoliant to be on the safe side. Corenbloom and a very dazed looking Nyukuti were getting to their feet.
‘Nye, you good?’ Miska asked over direct comms, taking the time to look around, get an idea of the broader picture.
‘Yes boss,’ the stand-over man replied.
‘You and Raff spray down Heavy-One-Actual with defoliant, get him back in the fight,’ Miska told them. Raff moved to obey, as did Nyukuti, albeit somewhat slower.
What little exposed skin that hadn’t been burned and blistered felt like it was full of splinters. She suspected that her gas mask had partially melted to her skin. Her body felt like one big bruise. Again. But the excellent Martian-made body armour they had stolen had absorbed the majority of the blast. Her head throbbed and she felt sick, possibly a concussion. She suspected she wasn’t thinking as straight as she might but she could move.
The wall of fire behind her illuminated the scene. Up on the landing pad she could see bursts of fire from the flame guns and railgun fire from Pegasus 2 and the two Harpy heavy drop shuttles. It was difficult to tell from this distance, but it looked like one of the Harpies’ domed engine housings was buckled. She could see figures around all three shuttles. She was pretty sure they were using squirters to wash down the Pegasus and both the Harpies.
She watched as vines tried to drag one of the Medusas up into the air. It was lifted off its feet but managed to cut itself free with its one still-working chainsaw. It dropped thirty feet to the jungle floor and made the earth shake. Another one of the Medusas was being pulled down to its knees by roots that had burst from the earth to envelop it. As she watched it managed to burst free as well.
‘We’ve got no weapon systems left,’ Mass told her over the static-filled comms link.
‘Mass, there are crates full of that defoliant over at the landing pad, get all the mechs over there. They smash it on anything they see growing out of the earth.’
Mass didn’t reply over comms, instead he made the huge mech nod its head.
‘Hangman-One-Actual to Pegasus-Two and Harpy-One and Two, what are the chances of you guys giving us danger-close air support in the form of missiles?’ she asked.
‘We’re grounded,’ Harpy 1 replied.
‘We can try,’ Perez told her from Pegasus 2. Again the comms connection was awful. ‘But we have systems glitching all over the place and our friendly-recognition system is down. We’ve only got active laser targeting left.’
That was bad news. The friendly-recognition system could locate every Legionnaire and Legion vehicle to ensure it didn’t actually get hit.
‘Okay do it,’ Miska told him. ‘Avoid the landing pads, the northern defensive area and the mechs.’
Harpy 2 had not answered but she was aware of the heavy drop shuttle’s engines firing up.
‘Hangman-One-Actual to all Bastard call signs in the northern defensive area, do not, I repeat, do not fire to the south, four friendlies inbound,’ she told the legionnaires in the trench system.
‘We have to move!’ Miska told Nyukuti, Raff and Corenbloom. They just nodded. Over on the landing pads she could make out the fire from Pegasus 2 and Harpy 2’s engines as they clawed their way unsteadily into the air. ‘Run!’ Miska told the other three and they did, heading around the fallen Cyclops and aiming for the trench system to the north. There was nothing tactical about it, just a straight sprint, moving as fast as they could. She saw roots burst through the earth, more of the tree-creatures seemingly growing out of them. The air filled with red light from the two now-airborne shuttles’ tertiary targeting systems.
‘Hangman-One-Actual to all Bastard call signs, prepare for danger-close air support, repeat, danger-close air support!’ she shouted over open comms. Get your heads down, she thought. Then tracers were flying towards her from the trench system. Which part of don’t fire to the fucking south was hard to fucking understand! she screamed inside.
Her legs went out from underneath her. She face-planted hard. Nyukuti was stood over her again. Spraying her legs down with the defoliant, sending the roots that had grabbed her squealing back into the earth. Over his shoulder she saw the missile engines light up in their cradles. Suddenly Pegasus 2 ejected one of its batteries. It hit the ground and exploded. The force of the blast bounced Pegasus 2 into one of the trees and knocked a nearby Medusa off its feet. Then the night air was full of missile contrails. Miska was back on her feet running towards the trenches, looking at the tracers arcing towards her.
Are they trying to kill me? It was all she had time to think before a round glanced off the side of her head, shattering her goggles on her left side. She staggered, almost went down, but Nyukuti was there by her side again, dragging her towards the closest trench. Then they were taken off their feet by the hot wind pushed by the shockwaves from multiple warheads exploding.
Miska landed on top of Nyukuti in the trench. Fire and force blossomed around her everywhere she loo
ked, plasma, high explosive, clustered area denial weapons that buried into the ground before exploding, anti-personnel sub-munitions that exploded into shrapnel at head height. Both the shuttles burned hard to gain height, buffeted by the rising shockwaves. The landing pad looked like an island amid the fire. She saw two of the mechs among it all. From her perspective it looked like they were wading through a sea of flames. It was beautiful.
It took her a moment to realise what she was seeing as her vision filled with rapidly approaching fire.
‘Move!’ she screamed at Nyukuti as she dragged him to his feet. All around her legionnaires scrambled as one of the burning skyscraper-sized trees fell towards them.
Chapter 16
Everything is shit, was Miska’s first thought. It was raining dirt. On the other hand you’re not dead, she told herself. Somehow. She was looking up at an enormous tree trunk curving away from her. This particular part of it wasn’t burning but further along the huge trunk it was a one-tree raging forest fire.
Miska touched her eye and the glove came away sticky and red. The wound burned as well, presumably because of the defoliant that coated everything. She was pretty sure that her gas mask was no longer working. She pulled it off, and then screamed as some of the fused flesh came away with it. That was when she realised that not only was her eyesight a bit grainy, she could only see through one eye. It gets better and better.
‘You all right, boss?’ Kaneda had appeared, kneeling next to her. Kasmeyer was kneeling next to Nyukuti. Ash was falling from the sky like snow but at least the pollen fall had stopped. Miska stood up. Everything was on fire. Much of the earth had been burned to glass. There were pools of burning, bubbling plasma. There were huge craters everywhere. Pegasus 2 and Harpy 1 hovered, unsteadily, in the air overhead. She saw one of the Medusas being helped to its feet by another. Much of their armour looked like so much slag.
The air was filled with the acrid chemical smell of the defoliant. Her own internal filters would protect her from the worst of it but she felt her exposed skin, her throat, and her nasal passages burn. She tried to spit the taste out of her mouth but it wasn’t going anywhere soon.
‘We just got our asses kicked,’ someone said nearby.
Miska smiled, turned towards the source of the voice.
‘You see any tangos?’ she asked, meaning targets, the enemy. She climbed out of the trench and looked around at the devastation. Then she started giving orders.
Miska was frustrated at having to abandon Camp Badajoz when they’d fought so hard for it. She knew the forest fire would eventually burn out thanks to moisture and the inevitable rain but the tree fall had made using the base impossible and she simply didn’t have the resources to do anything about it.
Twenty were confirmed dead, five more missing and presumed dead. Frankly it was a miracle they hadn’t lost many more but they’d stuck together, watched each other’s backs and for the most part acted tactically sensibly. Other than the friendly fire, but Miska wasn’t completely sure that hadn’t been an attempt to kill her. After all, it would be difficult to find out who’d actually fired the shot with gun-and helm-cams down. Perhaps the shooter had been hoping that the pollen would somehow prevent the N-bombs from detonating and killing them all.
Somehow they hadn’t lost any of the mechs but all were damaged to some or other extent, and were reporting multiple system failures. The Satyrs had joined the Offensive Bastards in the trenches firing on the tree-creatures, occasionally having to be washed down with the defoliant mid-combat. They’d only lost the one Machimoi. Two had remained in the trenches and had to be treated similarly to the Satyrs. The rest had pulled back to exfil point three with Pegasus 1.
They’d washed the shuttles, the remaining Machimoi and the crouching mechs. Miska hated to think what prolonged exposure to the nasty defoliant was doing to her people. She now had those doing the washing wearing hostile environment suits. She hoped it wasn’t too little too late. They were setting up a decontamination station at exfil 3. It was a risk, they were still behind enemy lines, but she didn’t want them heading back up to the Daughter with any of that pollen on them in case they infected the ship. Somehow she didn’t think that Triple S or New Sun were terribly interested in Camp Badajoz any more.
Hogg was cleaning and dressing her eye. It hurt.
As an ex eco-terrorist, Miska knew that he must be appalled about what they had done to the jungle. In fairness it had been in self-defence. She was wondering why he wasn’t currently giving her a hard time about it.
‘You don’t seem very upset about what we’ve done to your beloved forest,’ Miska said.
He stared at her for a long time.
‘I understand what happened here,’ he finally said, clearly holding back emotion. ‘But this,’ he pointed all around. ‘This is a goddamned travesty, a disgrace to our entire species, and you enjoyed yourself, didn’t you?’ He was using tweezers from his medkit to remove splinters of goggle from her eye.
Something must have shown on her face, she decided. He was right, though, it had been pretty intense, even by her standards. But she kept on coming back to the friendly fire incident. Had someone been trying to kill her? One of the shooters who’d killed her dad?
‘Let’s just say you probably don’t want to push that line of questioning too far,’ she told him.
‘This wasn’t why I signed on,’ he told her.
Miska chuckled. Then she thought of Torricone. It was like a knife between her ribs when she remembered what had happened to him. What Triple S had done to him.
But Hogg wasn’t Torricone. He was more like the Ultra’s pet vigilante, Rufus Grig. Hogg had found a cause that had made him feel good about those he killed. It was just another excuse as far as Miska was concerned.
Hogg applied medgel to the burns that covered most of the bottom part of her face and over her eye. ‘What would you have done?’ Miska asked nodding back towards the ruins of Camp Badajoz.
‘In fairness, probably the same as you,’ he told her, distracted as he adhered a medpak to the back of her neck to drive the medgels. ‘We were too late. We needed to try and communicate with them but I think that Triple S had already started this war.’
Miska couldn’t decide if he was being a little too pragmatic for someone as idealistic as he apparently was.
‘I need to speak to you,’ Hogg told her.
‘Go ahead,’ Miska said.
Hogg looked around at the other legionnaires nearby. Miska followed his eyes. As far as she could tell everyone was busy going about their business.
‘We could do with a degree of privacy,’ he told her.
‘Nobody is paying us the slightest bit of attention,’ she pointed out. If they were to walk off into the woods together then that would just draw more attention to them.
He leaned forward.
‘We’ll talk later,’ he whispered.
‘Hogg—’ she started.
‘Boss, we’ve got something I think you’ll want to see.’ It was Mass’s voice over the still-static-filled comms. They hadn’t been able to reach the Hangman’s Daughter since the attack.
‘Is it important?’ Miska subvocalised over comms, cursing that he couldn’t send images to her IVD.
‘Could be.’ Mass’s response was annoyingly non-committal.
‘Where are you?’ she asked. Mass told her.
‘Your right eye will try and compensate for the loss of the left. You’re going to lose between twenty-five and forty per cent of your depth perception until you get it replaced. You’ve got pretty high grade milspec artificial eyes, so it will probably be lower than higher,’ Hogg explained.
‘Cool, I’ll look like Snake Plissken.’
‘I’ve no idea who that is,’ Hogg told her.
Miska sighed and wished her dad were here. He would have known what she was talking about. She stood up.
‘Did you kill the captives?’ he asked her.
‘Only one of them,’ she told him.
‘He was part of the problem.’
Hogg watched her. She couldn’t read the expression. She gestured towards his crossbow.
‘Ready to go and kill some corporate scumbags?’ she asked.
‘I absolutely am,’ he told her.
‘So what am I looking at?’ Miska asked. She was standing in a partially demolished concrete bunker. It had been used for storing missiles for the gunships and transport when she’d been stationed here.
In a darkened corner of the bunker she saw two open-topped cars, each about the size of a small truck. The cars had armour bolted onto them. Four long telescopic legs, that looked hydraulically driven, were folded up underneath them. On the front of each car there was a 20mm cannon, plus what looked like a very old-fashioned heavy machine gun mounted on one side, and an automatic grenade launcher mounted on the other. A double SAW was mounted on the rear of each of the vehicles. All the weapons had that recently-printed look to them, all of them were protected by a ballistic shield, and all of them were old-fashioned slugthrowers.
‘That looks like the worst quad mech ever,’ Miska said. She glanced at Hemi and Mass. Hemi was grinning, she suspected mostly at Mass who was looking at the two open-topped mechs with reverent awe. Yep, Miska decided, Mass’s got armour fever bad. Even Kaneda, who’d apparently found them, had a slight smile on his camo-painted face.
‘They’re Waders,’ Mass told them.
‘It looks like a well-armed mule,’ Kaneda said. Miska was inclined to agree.
‘They’re modded agricultural mechs, they use them to get through the mangroves. Look what those sick bastards have done to them.’ Mass was clearly impressed. The two Waders were clearly very primitive bits of kit. It made sense to take machines like this north.
‘Why’d they leave them?’ Miska asked.
‘They didn’t,’ Kaneda told them. ‘Tracks in here suggest that there were at least ten more of them.’