by David Ryker
That was fine by me. Let him be a hero. Let whatever was shooting at this planet find out what happened when you killed a blooded Belter. Hell, I was dying to find out. I was told it wasn’t good, but how much worse could things get?
Leka started coughing. She turned around to spit - it was probably blood, or something worse than that.
“What the fuck did you do to be put on circuit stripping?” I said.
“I wouldn’t stop singing,” Leka said.
“You what?” I can be caught by surprise. Something like that will tend to catch me by surprise.
“I wouldn’t stop singing,” Leka said. “I was on the smelting crew, because I’m smart and I could work the machines, but I was on there with a bunch of fucking other grief heads who wanted to kick my ass for some reason.” She cackled. “So I decided to convince everyone I was crazy.”
“Did it work?” I said.
“You tell me,” Leka said. “I didn’t think they could give me a worse job than smelting crew.” Another fit of coughing seized her body; she doubled over in the bushes and turned around while she spat something out. “Can’t really sing anymore,” she added.
“Come on,” Mr. Salter said, staring at her coldly. “Curtis says we have a mile and a half to go.”
“Man, let her rest,” Garcia said. “We’ve got plenty of daylight. Besides, we don’t know what’s waiting for us at the ceramics dump.”
“It’s probably bad,” Curtis offered.
Garcia gave him an irritated look.
“So we should rest,” Leka said. “Especially me. I’m one of the most useful members of this party when I’m at my full…”
“Well, right now you’re dying,” Salter said, “so…”
Garcia raised his gun and stepped forward.
Salter stood his ground and took the safety off on his. “If you kill me, the bio-tech in my blood will signal the Belters to…”
“Yeah, and I’m getting real close to the point where I’m willing to take my chances with them,” Garcia said. “Let’s see who they send out after a little shit like you.”
“I don’t think you know who you’re talking to,” Mr. Salter said.
“You don’t,” I said, raising my hand. “If it helps. I mean, there’s a reason I haven’t killed him.”
“Hey, listen to him!” Curtis said, pointing at me.
“You just wanna see your girls again.” Garcia frowned, but he lowered his rifle, which made Salter lower his. “He has your girls, doesn’t he?”
“No,” I said. “My ex has my girls. He just...he can make sure I never see them again,” I said. “So I guess you’re right.”
Garcia nodded and sighed. He put the rifle away and sat down on a log that had been pushed over by one of the giant ceramics haulers. “I kind of wonder if they’re gonna send some people down this road,” he said. “I mean, news of the attack has to be getting around.”
“It’s a big planet,” I said. “If it’s just a few vessels, they could be continents away attacking people and completely unconcerned with us.”
“I like that idea,” Curtis said.
“Sst.” Garcia waved a hand to shush him.
“And if he’s wrong?” Salter said.
“Well, then we’ll know about it well in advance,” Curtis said. “Whatever’s in your blood seems to make you hot shit in battle.”
Salter gave no reply, only a steely smile as he crouched on the ground with his rifle on his lap. “Indeed it does,” he said. “So I don’t recommend asking me any more questions about it.”
The last mile and a half wasn’t just steep, it was rocky. Here, the rain and the wind had washed the planet’s topsoil down and made the mountainside inhospitable to all but a few tough plants that were shorter than a man’s waist. In a way, that made it easier for our little party to progress through the tracks left by the ceramics hauler.
But we were moving without cover. No matter how smooth the ground is, it’s slower to move without cover.
“Salter!” I hissed as he got up to move out of cover. “Wait for the signal!”
“Remind me why we’re letting Leka lead?” he said.
“Because she’s been in the fucking army!” I pointed to the woman, who was crouching in a rockfall up ahead.
Salter rolled his eyes, but he stayed put. He knew as well as I did that when the going got tough, the Belters got bigger guns and just blasted the shit out of everything and everybody who got in our way. There was no real man-to-man fighting with us. Man-to-man fighting was what you did when you had rules, and Galactic Warfare Conventions and shit. We never bothered with any of that.
Leka raised her hand and gave the signal for us to move forward. I obeyed, as did the others in our party. We all had another piece of cover we were running for, half-crouched in the rubble of the mountainside.
I picked another bush, heavy with hard green fruit. It made me wonder how long a prisoner would last out here, if one escaped from the recycling op. And that made me wonder how many more of those things there were wandering this jungle, and if they’d been left there on purpose – a cheap backup to the guards and their guns.
“Get down!” Leka hissed.
We all dropped instantly as the sound of a quadcopter came over the next ridge. That thing had been buzzing us every ten to fifteen minutes. I wondered if it was part of a routine patrol, or a patrol looking for attackers, or a patrol looking specifically for us.
A quick glance at Leka’s face told me she was thinking pretty much the same thing.
We all waited silently while the quadcopter moved in an easy arc over our heads, waiting for it to open fire on us. I looked downhill for cover; it was probably a quarter mile to the treeline. We’d be shredded by those guns before we even made it halfway.
But the quad moved on, and Leka gave us the signal to move forward again.
“The dump’s right over that ridge,” Curtis said for the fifth or sixth time since we’d left the treeline.
“Now you see why they use those big track survees,” Garcia said. Even he was huffing and puffing as they clambered up the steep slope. “We call this ‘Holy Shit Hill’ for a reason.”
“You call it…”
“Everyone calls it Holy Shit Hill!”
Leka motioned for silence.
“That means ‘shut up,’” I said.
“Sorry,” Garcia whispered.
At least there was unlikely to be other foot traffic up here. I found my bush and tried to duck into it as much as I could. Around me, I could see the rest of the group doing the same. I looked for another.
Over against a rock, Leka motioned for me specifically. I scrambled across open ground to meet up with her.
As soon as I was behind her rock, she was pointing up ahead, just to our west and up the hill. “That’s a footpath,” she said. “Or maybe some kind of animal trail.”
“If it’s an animal trail, we won’t know where it leads,” I said.
“It leads uphill,” Leka said. “And that’s good enough for me.”
“So, what?” I said. “After all this time moving in a scattered group, you want us to bunch up and…”
“No,” Leka said. “I want you to get up to the top of the ridge and see what’s waiting for us at that ceramics dump. I want Salter to wait back here where I can see him.”
“You just can’t resist his animal magnetism,” I said with a grin.
She straight-up slapped me. It actually hurt quite a lot. “This is no time for jokes,” she said.
I put my hand to my cheek, impressed. “Okay,” I said. “Sorry.”
“You have ten minutes before that quad comes back,” she said. “I suggest you use it to go do some recon.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, giving her a sort-of earnest salute before turning uphill. “Shit, I hope this works out.”
“It will,” Leka said, “but you have to do it. I can’t, not with my lungs.”
And so I did it. The path looked like it h
ad been made for human feet. I had to wonder if this wasn’t an escape route, or maybe a secret path for off-duty guards to use in pursuit of illicit pleasures.
The rest of my group might have been out of breath, but my Belters’ blood was keeping me in good shape. Leka had probably figured that part out on her own. That was a reasonable conclusion, wasn’t it? Biotech, machines in the blood - shit, they’d been tampering with blood to make people stronger before they’d developed light speed travel.
But I was starting to wonder about Leka. Sure, grief was popular among smart kids, just like any other drug that made fast brains go even faster and take some interesting detours. But there was something in those eyes, something in that voice that felt like she was more than your average junkie. I wanted to keep a closer eye on her.
So why was I three quarters of the way up a game trail on her orders?
I slowed down as I reached the top, taking longer and lower steps. By the time I crested the ridge, I was moving more like a lizard than a man.
Curtis had been right: you could see the ceramics dump from here. It was a vast valley, stretching into the west as far as I could see. Some squat brick buildings on the far side looked like they might house prisoners: at least, that’s where I could see ranks and columns of men lined up, guarded by men on hoverbikes. More guards were patrolling the edges of the dump; I could see them using binoculars to search the sky above them.
They’d evacuated the habs, then. Good call.
And there was the fucking quad, coming back up from the other end of the valley. It was moving in a zig-zag pattern. It was moving back toward me.
“Shit,” I said quietly as I lizard-walked back toward the party. “Fuck. Goddammit.”
Once I was down to the point where I couldn’t see the quad, I ran like hell back for Leka’s position. I was even more glad of the trail on the way down than I’d been on the way up; my other options included eating shit on a variety of fun rocky surfaces.
I rejoined Leka behind her rock. I dropped to a crouching position and shook my head. “We gotta turn back,” I said. “That quad keeps doing sweeps over the whole valley.”
“Looking for anything in particular?” Leka said.
“Not yet,” I said. “But if we show up on that ridge, that will change in a heartbeat. I could see the hab structures across the valley. They’ve got all the inmates evacuated and lined up in front of the buildings.”
“Shit.” Leka turned toward Curtis and motioned for him to join us.
Curtis came crab-walking over to our hidey hollow, awkward with the weight of his rifle strapped to his back. It took him a second to find good enough footing to crouch in counsel with us.
From here, I could see that Salter was getting annoyed behind his bush. Good. If I could annoy him to death, I would.
“What do you know about the layout of the buildings out there?” Leka said as soon as Curtis was semi-stable.
“I know there’s not a lot of space for them,” Curtis said. “They’re all kind of built along this narrow ledge before the valley really plunges.” He put two of his fingers out to represent a vee shape and traced the area between his fingernail and first knuckle. “You’ve got the commissary at the wide end, where it’s easiest to access by vehicle.”
“So the survee track must go around the head of the valley,” Leka said, reaching over to draw a circular path between Curtis’s two fingernails.
“Yeah,” he said. “There’s a few roads leading along the valley walls to the different areas of the dump. Idea is to create even layers, load up the deepest end of the valley first.”
“Is there a way we could cross closer to the deeper end?” I said.
“I mean...in theory,” Curtis said. “The valley walls are pretty steep, and I wouldn’t put huge odds on getting across that much broken-up ceramic.”
“I don’t need huge odds of getting us across,” I said. “I just need odds that will work for a few desperate motherfuckers who are already prison escapees.”
“Well, in that case, yeah,” Curtis said. He gave me a wild grin that made me wonder just how old he was - or wasn’t. “Since we’re fucked anyway, going across over the deep end will work just fine.”
8
Something I’ve learned over the course of my life: if everything’s going smoothly, something’s gone desperately wrong.
I’m not talking about things going well. Things going well means you have a plan A, and a Plan B, and a Plan C, and a Plan D, but you lucked out and only wind up needing to resort to plans A and B.
I’ve only had one job where things ran smoothly, and they were running smoothly because my crew and I were being set up. It wasn’t Plan A, Plan A, Plan B, Plan A, Plan A, Plan B, Plan A, profit - it was more like Plan A, Plan A, Plan A, Plan A, Plan And You’re Going to Prison.
I never did find out how much Linata had been involved in getting me busted by the Coalition. I liked to think she had a hand in it. I liked to think that’s why they only ever brought up the grief-trafficking charges.
But in a real operation, things never went smoothly.
“So what happens if they do have guards posted here?” I pointed to the upper reaches of accessible ground above the hab complex. Garcia had helpfully used a piece of quartz to scratch out a diagram on a flat chunk of sandstone. It wasn’t much besides squares and lines, but it was a lot better than trying to use someone’s hand.
“I dunno,” Curtis said.
I knew. But nobody learned jack shit from someone else explaining it to them. “Okay,” I said. “Can you, uh, guess?”
“We don’t have time for this,” Salter said. “This vegetation isn’t going to hide us from that quad for much longer.”
Our first step had been to build a field shelter where we could camouflage ourselves against the aerial patrols. We’d found the greenest branches we could break off and found one of the most awkwardly-positioned rocks, but Salter was right. Aerial patrol was boring. Eventually someone was going to notice an anomaly that looked like several escaped prisoners.
“Guess fast, then,” I said to Curtis.
He stared back open-mouthed. I smiled.
“Um. Let’s see.” He blew an exhale out of his puffed cheeks and rubbed the back of his head as he studied the “map.” “Okay. So, uh, the plasma guns are better, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” Leka said. “Longer range, higher power. They’re just more expensive to fire, which won’t be our problem if we can strip them off corpses.”
“So then, we should be aiming for whoever’s shooting plasma,” Curtis said.
“Mm. And?” I kept looking at the piece of sandstone.
“And...shit, I’m not a soldier,” he said.
“But you’re halfway there. Come on.” I picked up a stick and pointed at a choke point between two of the hab buildings. “Tell me what you think about this area.”
“I don’t remember it too clearly,” Curtis said, “But I know it’s real narrow. Anyone trying to get through there is gonna get…” He looked up at me, understanding in his eyes. “They’re gonna get bunched up.”
“We call that a choke point,” I said.
“So, what does that have to do with...hmm.” Now it was Garcia’s turn to puzzle over the glyph map. “Okay,” he said. “Hear me out. What if we create a distraction using the solid-slug rifles?”
“Boom,” Tomlins said. “You guys’ll be up to speed with us in no time.”
“So if there’s guards up here,” I said, pointing to the ledge I’d seen above the hab structures.
“Which there shouldn’t be,” Curtis said. “I mean, look, we’re getting attacked from above, right?”
“And the guards on the cliff will be in range,” Garcia said. “Look, man, the chief’s right. We gotta have a Plan B here. The only way we’re gonna know for sure what’s waiting for us up at those buildings is to look at it ourselves.”
“Yeah,” Curtis said, slightly deflating. “Guess it’ll be too late then
to come up with a Plan B.”
As usual, having a Plan A and a Plan B and a Plan C wasn’t enough when you were doing your planning based off a sketch on a rock. There was no passable space above the hab buildings - someone had built a water purifying structure up there that made the area impassible past a certain point.
Too bad we didn’t figure this out until it was too late to get back across the valley to put most of Plan C in place. We were hidden pretty well under a leafy overhang by the side of the main road, about fifty yards from the nearest evacuated hab building. The survees in use up at the top of the valley were lighter than the big dumpers that came from the sorting line, and the roads were easy to run up and down on foot.
A couple hundred yards away from us, nearly every inhabitant of this structure was lined up outside the hab structures. Maybe they were waiting for an atmo-vee to come evacuate them. Maybe they were just hoping that the attackers would spare the expensive structures in their quest to kill all these cheap inmates.
Either way, I was getting the impression that this was a bad place to be.
“There’s no way we can get six of us across that bridge,” I was saying, pointing at a spindly length of metal grating that spanned the gap between two enormous tangles of pipe. “We’ll get shredded by the quad before…”
“We’re gonna get shredded by the quad anyway if we don’t get moving,” Leka said. “Come on. We’re gonna have to do this the hard way.” She was referring, it was about to turn out, to a combination of Plan B and Plan C that nobody but Leka had known about beforehand. As she spoke, she was reaching into the collar of her jumpsuit.
“What are you…”
“Fire in the hole,” Leka said, pulling an I380 flame grenade out of her bra and pulling the pin in one fluid motion.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I said.
Even as I asked the question, Leka was stepping up and hurling the grenade as far as she could into the hab structure. “Plan D,” she said. “Everyone’s gonna run out screaming, then we’re gonna go back into Plan B once we’re past the choke point.”