Hold the Line (Chimera Company Book 5)

by Tim C. Taylor

  Thirty minutes. That’s what he gave it before the Panhandler drains were so badly blocked, their barracks would fill with the odor of stagnant sewage.

  “Lima One, ready to move out,” he said once the hose had retracted.

  “Roger, Lima One,” the squad leader replied. “Activating RF comm jammers. Cutting power.” Urdizine heard a crack of explosives as the power conduit blew. “Good work. Head for Location Blue with caution. How do the Humans say it, Lima One?”

  “‘Stay frosty.’” Urdizine’s mind briefly touched memories of his Legion comrades and wondered if he would ever see them again. “Even here on this ice world, they say ‘stay frosty.’”

  They marched through the woods on the outskirts of town, their number swelling as the sub-teams joined them after the successful psyops mission.

  It had been partly Urdizine’s plan. He knew the Humans better than the Littoranes did. Hit them too hard, and the enemy would grow angry, the viciousness of their reprisals fearful.

  Judge things just right, however, and the resistance squad would join forces with the planet itself and grind the PHPA occupiers down in endless misery. Unremitting cold, terrifying winds, and the isolation combined with roads blocked, communications blown, and now the drains.

  In the depths of winter, once Panhandler morale had been crushed to its lowest level, that’s when the resistance would come in for the kill.

  A flurry of blaster bolts cut through the forest about half a klick away.

  He froze, lifted his hat flaps again, and listened.

  Another volley of bolts. Screams and shouts. Boots crunching snow.

  The bolts said it all. There was a bass growl to the plasma inducers that was distinctive of Levinger, the defense manufacturer on Cora’s World that had become the dominant supplier to the Worldies after the arms embargoes from more civilized members of the Federation had begun to bite.

  “Cora’s World! They’re everywhere!”

  “Save yourselves!”

  Urdizine had to translate the Littorane cries coming over the radio. He thought they were coming from the main part of the resistance company who’d been keeping watch over the exits from town.

  Whiskey Sierra Five barked a reply too fast for Urdizine to translate, then she added, for his benefit, “Be specific.”

  “They’ve already flanked us,” a resistance fighter replied in Terran words. “It’s a trap. They knew we were here!”

  The sounds of battle spread in an arc ahead of Urdizine’s position. He could hear the screams of dying resistance fighters and spiked Littorane tails striking Human legs, the impacts muffled by padded clothing but strong enough to crack bones.

  What he wasn’t hearing were orders.

  He bent down for the bullpup Levinger LV6 on the gear sled and felt a stab of pain from his exertions so far that night. He grabbed the weapon but hesitated.

  To his shame, he hesitated.

  If he so much as twisted sharply, he knew the scar tissue stitching his abdominal bands together would unknit.

  He wasn’t fit for duty, but he would carry it out anyway. He slapped the charge pack to activate it.

  “Lima One,” he announced on the microwave channel, “I can hear the Worldies working around us to the southwest. Form on me and advance to block them.”

  “Roger, Lima One,” Whiskey Sierra Five confirmed, “but keep to our rear. Use those sharp green ears to listen out for anyone trying to work behind us.”

  The radio channel opened up again; it was the company commander. She seemed to be telling Urdizine’s squad to leave while they still could. She switched to Terran. “There are too many of the Humans. No point in losing you, too. Whiskey Sierra Five, acknowledge!”

  The young Littorane commander hesitated just as Urdizine had. He didn’t fully understand the relationship between the two Lael Clan females, but it ran very deep. Would she disobey?

  “Whiskey Sierra Five, Roger. We are bugging out. The goddess awaits you. I hope I am worthy to join you in her embrace when my time comes. Die well.”

  Urdizine launched curses sharp enough to turn a Zhoogene yellow.

  “Urdizine,” a Littorane voice said into the crisp night air, “ditch the sapper’s toolkit and follow us to Vanishing Point 3.”

  Vanishing Point was a Littorane hideout, accessed by diving beneath the chill water of the lakes and streams that abounded in these parts. From there they could push on to the underground burrows. For a Zhoogene like himself, that wouldn’t be so easy, although the Littoranes had built a burrow especially for their adopted humanoid.

  They fled through the snow, Urdizine’s heart pounding with shame as much as exertion as they left the screams and minds of the firefight behind in the woods.

  To run and hide, to attack from stealth and run away…the asymmetric warfare of the resistance meant hiding more than you stood firm. That wasn’t the Legion way.

  But to leave comrades behind on the battlefield was going too far.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” said the Littorane running beside him.

  He looked to his right. It wasn’t Hrish-Ek. Urdizine struggled to tell the big, six-limbed aliens apart, but he could smell this one was male.

  “Is that so, unidentified Littorane? In fact, who are you? Are you a Cora’s World infiltrator?”

  The Littorane reared his head, a sign of high amusement. Nonhumans had no place in the extremist progressive ideology of Cora’s World, except as slave workers. Or dead.

  Urdizine halted and turned around to face the way they’d come. “Quiet!”

  Something in the air was wrong.

  They were in the open snowfield, which gleamed in the moonlight. They were caught halfway between the woods and the safety of the stream that led to the Littorane hideout.

  He could hear people moving toward them through the woods, much closer than he’d thought. The sounds of boots in snow carried the wrong rhythm, two melodies slightly out of time with each other.

  They weren’t going to make the stream.

  “Get down!” he shouted.

  A volley of blaster fire seared through the night air, throwing up sizzling columns of steam where bolts landed in the snow.

  Urdizine fired bolts back from his captured weapon.

  The rest of his team opened up in a random mix of a plasma pistol, some slug-throwing rifles, and HC2 blasters.

  It worked, though. A scream of pain came from the woods.

  It was answered by a Littorane groan nearby that fed into a long, gurgling death rattle.

  “I’ll never make it,” Urdizine said loud and clear, “but you can. In a moment, they’ll rush us. When they do, I’ll unleash my best mad minute of fire. You run for the water and get away. Don’t look back.”

  A cry came from the woods. “Purity! Purity! Purge and purify!”

  Thirty Worldies in black armor rushed out of the woods.

  “Hold the line!” Urdizine roared. “Hoorah!” He sent bolts downrange with a masterful blend of accuracy and speed. The Worldies began to fall. The weapon’s action grew so hot he could feel his cheek burning, but he didn’t care. If he could pick his final moment, it would be years from now, but this wasn’t a bad way to take his permanent retirement.

  The Levinger blaster rifle was no PA-71, but it was a decent weapon, and Urdizine had been a competition marksman for his brigade.

  He grinned at the sight of so many Worldies getting dusted. “Going out in style, Stryker! Yergin and I will save some afterlife for ya.”

  The grin lasted for about a second, then he swapped it out for a grimace of horror.

  It wasn’t his fire alone that was felling these Worldies. His resistance comrades hadn’t abandoned him. They were still there!

  No, there was more to it even than that.

  Many of the Cora’s World soldiers had fallen forward into the snow. That was unsurprising, but the backs of their winter uniforms were shredded.

  Shot in the back! How? By whom? A line
of figures emerged from the tree line. Some of them were non-humanoids, so it couldn’t be Cora’s World factionalism. Urdizine didn’t recognize their weapons.

  They fired a volley, filling the air with what looked like cones of buckshot, of all things. The moonlight glare coming off the snow made it difficult to see.

  More of the Worldies went down. They were wheeling in confusion, trying to figure out who was attacking them. The shouts went up from the panicked Humans. “Zombies!”

  No kidding.

  “Go!” Whiskey Sierra Five said. He recognized her voice and obeyed.

  He got to his feet and ran for the stream.

  The bank’s aroma of damp vegetation reached his nose. Urdizine latched onto that scent, leaning on it to pull him forward, adding the fire to pick up his knees and pound the snow in a frantic sprint. His chest burned with pain, though, begging him to slow.

  The water was close enough for him to see its surface ripple. A score of Littorane heads emerged.

  His heart leaped enough to push through the pain and keep running. This must be Red Squad, here to cover their retreat.

  The rearguard awkwardly ascended the bank and raised the front of their torsos in a centaur stance that left their forelimbs free to shoulder their weapons, but they weren’t blaster rifles. These were the same weapons the zombies were using to mow down the Worldies.

  Urdizine fired from the hip, sending bolts into the dripping zombie Littoranes.

  He downed one and winged another, but then they fired a volley.

  The survivors of Urdizine’s squad caught the blast full on.

  Cuts nicked his face and throat. It felt like he’d stood next to a glass window of a building shattered by an explosion.

  He looked down and saw fragments of shot scattered across the snow. They were shards of brilliant-blue crystal.

  But he shouldn’t be looking down. He should be looking up! Firing his Levinger. Firing it at himself, because he’d rather be tortured to death by the Worldies than turned into a zombie.

  Urdizine collapsed into the snow.

  A few moments later, a Littorane tail flipped him onto his back, then dragged him across the snow. The Littorane dumped him onto the heap of Worldie bodies.

  He was numb. It was difficult to hold onto thoughts. He tried anyway.

  They’d shot a paralyzing agent into him, but he was still awake. The not being dead part meant they didn’t want to kill him, but no one really understood what the zombies wanted.

  Urdizine strained his senses to assemble a picture of what was going on.

  He smelled something familiar.

  Littorane. Female. Whiskey Sierra Five. Lael Hrish-Ek.

  His hearing was muffled, his sight blocked. He fought for breath beneath her crushing weight.

  His abdominal bands should protect his lungs, but they been torn to shreds by Yergin’s exploding bike the first time he’d encountered the zombies.

  Everything was black and numb.

  Urdizine couldn’t tell if he’d fallen unconscious, was dying, or had merely been stripped of sensory input.

  He guessed it didn’t make much difference any which way.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Ten: Urdizine

  Above, dark clouds are circling,

  But baby sleeps a-safely,

  Beneath the spreading Sforza boughs,

  Rich, warm loam between his ta-ta-ta-toes.

  Urdizine basked in his mother’s lullaby.

  He was at peace. Safe. A feeling he hadn’t felt in an awfully long time.

  The crabmen march acr-cr-cross the fields,

  Tiny spears, banners unfur-ur-urled.

  No! This stumbling lullaby…it was a lie!

  The rumble of his mother’s song had been the hum of a vehicle engine all along, one that needed proper servicing, he realized as his mind came back online. Power distribution was uneven, meaning one of the wheel motors was intermittently cutting out.

  Urdizine was alert now, but he kept his eyes closed while he used other senses to investigate his surroundings.

  A bitter taste he didn’t recognize clung to the back of his throat, probably the knockout drug the zombies had shot into him.

  Bodies were all around him, but none were speaking. Two nearby Littorane males were snoring.

  The vehicle had trapped the stink of unwashed bodies, but behind that were the odors of fur and urine. Animals.

  He opened one eye.

  They were in a cattle truck, a vehicle so rare on Rho-Torkis that he wondered if it had been brought from off-planet. Stalls divided the back, with a few heaped figures in each one. Along with his resistance comrades were Littorane civilians and Worldies. The Littoranes were stirring, but the Worldie Humans still slumbered.

  Urdizine wasn’t surprised he’d woken first. Zhoogenes were resilient against toxins in general, and he had a hormone suppressor embedded during active tours so he wouldn’t come on heat in the middle of a battle. A happy side effect was to clear his body of toxins even more efficiently, which made getting drunk a pleasant challenge.

  He heard other engines outside. A convoy, then.

  Great. He’d have plenty of company on the way to zombie hell.

  Zombies!

  A flash of panic opened his other eye. He stared at his body.

  Have I been turned into one of them?

  Some of the zombies had fangs they’d rake across your broken flesh. In a few days, your body and mind would begin the change.

  He felt bruised, but in a normal kind of way. Otherwise, he felt as good as he ever had in the year since he’d been cut off from the Legion.

  Okay, let’s set working protocols. I’ll assume I’m still Zhoogene, 100% green. Still gonna kick zombie butts, and still Legion. Azhanti, guide my hands so I act like it.

  With a slow turn of his head, he built up his tactical assessment.

  He was about halfway down the compartment. By the rear doors, three guards watched over around 35 captives, sorted in the stalls according to species. Urdizine was in his own.

  The Littorane and one of the Human guards were armed with cheap blasters, but the other Human carried a PA-71, a captured Legion railgun.

  She was the most dangerous, he decided.

  The woman’s features were oddly distorted, as if she’d had extensive plastic surgery, and then stood too close to the fire. White tufts for eyebrows and cartilage-heavy nose and ears suggested a mature age, but she looked strong to him.

  She unzipped her thickly padded outer garment to reveal tattered Legion battledress underneath. On her collar was the arrowhead of the Second Legion.

  The Second Legion? The Spear Heads, as they were better known, were stationed on the other side of the Federation.

  Wait, they had been stationed here in the Tej Sector…40 years ago. Azhanti! How long had the zombies lain in wait?

  An anomalous noise interrupted the mostly hypnotic hum of the truck engine. It was Whiskey Sierra Five, tapping her tail to get his attention. Her nostrils flared with anger.

  He nodded back to Hrish-Ek, as he decided he might as well call her now.

  She lifted her tail and curled the end in a sign of Littorane query. She was asking him what to do.

  The answer was obvious. The captives weren’t bound. It seemed such an oversight that Urdizine wondered if he’d missed something.

  If so, he’d have to discover it along the way, because he wasn’t about to sit here quietly and wait to get zombified.

  He caught Hrish-Ek’s gaze. “We’ll never get a better chance to escape than now,” he told her in a loud voice. Everyone could hear. Including the guards.

  “Quiet!” the Human with the railgun yelled.

  “Move!” Urdizine screamed, shooting to his feet. “Now!” He charged the woman in the Spear Head clothing.

  A determined snarl came across her face. She activated her PA-71. He could see in her eyes that she knew he wasn’t going to be fast enough. The barrel hummed as its helic
al rails charged.

  Urdizine dove for the floor. Railgun flechettes screamed over his head.

  Ignoring the pain from his old wounds, he rolled and prepared to leap on the former Human.

  He didn’t need to. A Littorane captive had knocked the PA-71 out of her hands and was grappling with her.

  A bolt flew at him, searing a burn across his upper shoulders, before hitting a Littorane behind. The Littorane screamed, but there was nothing Urdizine could do for her. He launched himself across the back of the truck, aiming to grab the blaster the zombie Littorane had just fired at him.

  He seized it and held on with all his strength. The Littorane didn’t give up, though, and had a firmer grip.

  With a furious melee going on all around, it was just him and the zombie newt—and the newt was winning. It edged the business end of the blaster relentlessly toward him.

  Suddenly, the world lurched. They were falling out of the moving truck into the brutal cold of the night. In the confusion, someone must have knocked open the door control.

  That little nugget of pointless information surfaced briefly in his mind before he slammed into the moonlit snow.

  Luckily for him, the zombie Littorane took the brunt of the impact, but zombie or not, Littoranes could take a lot of punishment, and this one kept an implacable grip on the blaster as momentum rolled the two of them along the snow.

  Twin lights blazed into Urdizine’s eyes, the headlights of the following truck in the convoy. The zombie with the blaster didn’t seem to have noticed, or had, but didn’t care. The ground was shaking with the truck’s rumble. From the cab, the driver peered down at the falling bodies, unable to grasp what he was seeing.

  Urdizine released his grip on the blaster, letting the Littorane fall back into the snow. He reached for the zombie newt, hands spearing over his head like a plunging diver. He stuck two fingers of each hand deep into each of the Littorane’s nostrils. He felt soft, spongy flesh, warm and wet. When his fingers met resistance, he pulled them to each side, unzipping the front of the Littorane’s snout.