36
“I still don’t see why we don’t have the Navy take them out,” Tanu said as they sat in their assault position, waiting for the word to go.
“You heard the lieutenant. Roher objected,” Nix said.
“Yeah, but I don’t give a flying fuck how much that would put back the terraforming, or how much it will cost them to rebuild the main emitter.”
“Neither do I, but them’s the breaks. Welcome to the real universe.”
“So, we gotta pay with blood so the corporations don’t gotta pay in credits,” Tanu said, not willing to let it go.
Rev let their argument go in one ear and out the other. He wasn’t concerned as to the why as much as the how. They’d gotten their last frag order, and it didn’t look too feasible to him.
At least their Yellowjackets had been modified to match the Frisians’ Stilettos. They would now arm at fifteen meters, which was the absolute minimum it could be and still arm the warhead. But that didn’t mean he thought much of the frag, either in its ability to accomplish the mission or to keep them alive.
“Hey, Staff Sergeant,” he called over to where the SNCO was leaning back, eyes closed. “What do you think of the plan?”
She didn’t open her eyes, but she said, “It’s a plan.”
Which didn’t install much confidence in him.
“Do you think it’s going to work?”
“Depends on our execution, like always.”
“Execution didn’t work on Preacher Rolls,” Hussein said.
“You missed the show there, Hus-man,” Tanu reminded him.
“Yeah, the execution, like I said.”
Rev wasn’t interested in their bickering, and he still wanted more from the staff sergeant. She was the smartest Marine in the team, after all, with the firmest grasp of tactics and strategy.
“Really, Staff Sergeant. Is this, you know, usual? We just line up and charge?”
The staff sergeant was still for a long moment before she sat up and opened her eyes. “Plenty of times. Maybe for most of human history. You know the phrase, ’C'mon you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?’”
“Yeah, sure. They told us that in boot camp. What was his name? Daly? Twentieth Century Earth Marine?”
“US Marine, yes. But that was before he led his Marines over the top, as they called it, charging emplaced machine guns.”
“But that was ancient history, and not with Centaurs and their weapons,” Tomiko said, scooching over to get in on the conversation.
“Have any of you heard about the Battle of Rorke’s Drift?”
She was met with blank stares. She shook her head in disappointment.
“Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.”
“So, what’s this Rorke’s Drift?” Rev asked.
“OK, listen up, you meatheads. Rorke’s Drift was a sideshow of the Battle of Islandiwana in the Eighteenth Century Anglo-Zulu War. The British Army had just had their asses handed to them in that battle by the Zulu Nation when a contingent of maybe four thousand warriors diverted to attack a small garrison of a hundred and fifty British and colonials at Rorke’s Drift.”
“Four thousand to a hundred and fifty? That sounds like us,” Tomiko said.
The staff sergeant waved her silent.
“The British were armed with what were then the most modern weapons available. The Zulus were mostly armed with assegai and shields.”
“What’s an—”
“A short spear. At the time, the Zulu warriors thought it was cowardice to face an enemy with a firearm.”
“Stupid,” Hussein said. “I’m using anything I can get my hands on.”
“So, you’re saying that these Zulus weren’t as technically advanced as the British, but they outnumbered them twenty-five to one? Like Miko said, that does sound like us,” Rev said.
“The Zulu commander decided that he was going to just overwhelm the British force, just as the other Zulus had won the Battle of Islandiwana the day before. Four thousand warriors, assaulting along two major axes, what they called the buffalo horn formation.”
“Which is almost what we are doing,” Nix said.
The staff sergeant nodded and then said, “So, to answer your question, yes, this has been done before.”
Rev let that digest a moment, feeling a little better about the upcoming fight. “Well, if the Zulus could do it, so can we. Wait, what?” he added when he saw the staff sergeant’s expression shift. “The Zulus did win, right?”
“Nope. The British won. Maybe five hundred Zulus were killed, but only seventeen British soldiers.”
“What the hell, Staff Sergeant? Why are you telling us that then?” Rev asked, incredulous.
“You said you wanted to know if this had been done before. You didn’t ask if the low-tech side won. I’ve had Rorke’s Drift on my mind since the frag, that’s all.”
“So, we’re in deep shit?” Tomiko asked.
“Like I said, execution. Masses of lower-tech armies have overcome defenders before. Little Bighorn. Islandiwana, that I just mentioned. The Plains of Altair. Lots of times.”
And with that, the staff sergeant leaned back and closed her eyes again.
“Great pep talk,” Rev muttered to Tomiko.
“Like she said, execution. We just need to do what we’re supposed to do.”
“Yeah, fire our Yellowjackets and become targets.”
Which wasn’t far from the truth. Each infantry Marine had been issued four of the little missiles, but there was nothing else they carried that could be considered an effective weapon against a Centaur. Sure, in a built-up area like the emitter, they might get close enough to take out a Centaur with a Phoenix, but Rev had been damned lucky with that before, and that was with the advantage of his victim not realizing he was there. In this assault the Centaurs knew they were coming. Most of the kills would be from the tanks, mech-heads, and the squadron of Navy Air. The groundpounders were there to keep the Centaurs’ attention.
He took one last glance at the staff sergeant, wishing he could just z-out like that. But he was too hopped up. Raiders were specially trained for a variety of missions, but not specifically infantry assaults. Still, there was the ancient phrase, “Every Marine is a rifleman.” He knew how to fire a Yellowjacket, and that was what was needed out of him.
He settled down to wait, and six minutes later, his earset came to life.
“Five minutes, Raiders. Get your shit together,” Gunny Thapa passed.
Rev stood and adjusted his combat suit. It was time to earn his pay.
* * *
“Any time now,” the gunny passed as they kept up their advance.
The groundpounders had been inexorably moving forward, closing the distance to the emitter site. Rev had gotten several glimpses of it while crossing high ground. Two kilometers across, it was dominated by four huge white stacks that spewed out tons of O2 and other gasses an hour. There were satellite emitters across the planet, but none were this powerful.
A tank round whizzed overhead as it crossed the twenty klicks to the site. This was harassment fire more than anything else, particularly as the rounds were aimed as not to damage critical infrastructure.
The FDC, the fire directionl center, would be watching the drone feeds for any sign of Centaurs at which to aim. Rev didn’t have access to the feeds, but there’d be a concentrated volley of fire if anything had been spotted.
“Do you think they’re still there?” he passed to Tomiko, who was advancing on his left flank.
“Probably. I’m sure the Navy can tell.”
“Still pretty weird that there’re no tin-ass ships around.”
“Like the lieutenant said, this could be a trap. That’s why we’ve got Plan B.”
Which Rev knew. He was just talking to break the mental stress. Any moment now, they could cross the line where the Centaurs would start fighting. No one really knew why when in a defensive posture, the Centaurs generally forwent long-distance fires, preferring to keep behind their security bubbles. The inverse-square law limited the size of the bubbles, but in this case, with the huge amount of power available at the emitter, the bubble might be bigger than normal.
Kinetic rounds with dumb fuzes could penetrate a bubble, but energy weapons were useless against it. Even the Navy’s big weapons could be blocked, which is why they relied on orbital drops of inert hunks of tungsten—God Rods, they called them, and their impact was nothing short of catastrophic.
Once the Marines breached that bubble, all hell would break loose. For the Centaurs, it would be a target rich environment. Hopefully, there would be more targets than they could handle.
And everyone wanted the mech Marines to get through the bubble still operational on their backup power. If not, the infantry was going to be up shit creek without a paddle.
There was a whistling overhead. Arty was up and firing. Not for long, though. Each tube would fire three rounds, then displace before the Centaurs’ boblinks—as stupid a name that Rev could think of—would trace back the rounds and hit the firing pits. Slow gun teams would be dead gun teams.
But none of that was part of Rev’s universe. He focused his senses forward as he closed with the enemy. Not just him. Over a thousand Marines and Host soldiers were marching forward alongside him.
There was a shrill, piercing noise that made Rev wince and put his hands over his ears, then nothing. His comms were out.
“Hello, hello?” he said, just to make sure it wasn’t just his comms and that his hearing was still functional.
It had been expected. Centaurs went for comms and drones first with massive EMP blasts.
Around him, Marines were breaking out into a jog, pushing forward.
“You still here?” he asked as he started to run.
<Yes, I am.>
Which was what he was told would happen. His AI was housed in a series of linked crystals, after all, not circuits, and his helmet and combat suit were hardened.
“Is everything functioning?”
<Communications are out, but your personal nanos and augments are functioning.>
Thank God for small favors.
But a big part of him was relieved, as odd as that might sound to a layman. It was the slow buildup that was bothering him. But now that the Centaurs had played their hand, he had something to focus on. He was in the fight.
“How long until we reach the target?”
Rev knew where he was and where he was going, of course. The enemy EMP didn’t affect the planet’s magnetic fields, but he didn’t know how long it would take him to cover the distance.
<At your current pace, about nine minutes.>
Did those Zulus have to run nine minutes?
He should have asked before, but the die was cast. He’d get there when he got there—if he got there at all.
Running through the fart trees and in a dip in the landscape, he couldn’t see the emitter site at the moment. But he could see the signs of battle. Overhead, a Navy Shrike fighter screamed past, banking hard in the brilliant light. It would have been loitering out of range for the initial EMP. Centaurs needed to recharge their cannon before repeating—at least that was the current theory.
It screamed ahead, 30mm cannons chattering.
“Get some!” Rev yelled, a moment before the Shrike yawed to the side, then came apart in mid-air, parts tumbling to the ground ahead of him.
Centaurs didn’t need their EMP to take out air.
“Respect to the fallen,” he whispered.
The fart trees opened up just a bit, and he could see Tomiko running to his right. She was focused on what was in front of her and didn’t see him. He glanced to his left, and Ting-a-ling was loping along in his powersuit and full helmet, each bound accelerated by the power-assist joints. The Frisian gave him a huge smile and thumbs-up before he disappeared behind a stand of laurel. The Frisians had said they could keep up, and it looked like that was the case.
Rev ate up the ground with his strides, getting ever closer. The terrain began to rise, the fart trees closer together, but he refused to slow down, even when his cannula began to slip. He kept on having to readjust it on the fly.
Maybe the Frisian’s helmet was the way to go, he thought as he shoved the tip of his cannula into his right nostril, then pressed down the chameleon pad onto his cheek.
But he was doing OK—huffing a bit, but OK. He could manage.
The air was crackling and snapping around him as it was displaced by energy beams. The Centaurs were in full defensive mode. Each of those snaps represented Marines dying, and that only drove Rev harder.
He crested the next rise, and there, a couple of klicks ahead, the emitter rose like a castle they were going to storm. Except, it was a castle with no walls. With no people on the planet, there was no reason for them, so the Marines wouldn’t have to take time to breach any to enter the compound.
Tank rounds were being intercepted, exploding short of the target, but a few were making it through the defenses and impacting. Traces of displaced air were the only signs of outgoing fire—this wasn’t the holovids where beam weapons were bright lines of light, conveniently color-coded, of course, so the viewer could see who were the good guys and who were the bad.
Darting figures ran through the trees as he descended the slope and back into the forest. Another couple of minutes and he’d be at the target area.
Rev hit his thigh holster as he ran and pulled out his first Yellowjacket. He gave it a quick glance, and it looked operational. He shook his head at the irony of it. Here he was, going into battle with a highly developed enemy, and his weapon of choice was one of humankind’s more primitive. Twentieth Century Marines and soldiers would immediately understand it and how to use it.
“Might as well be using one of those Zulu spears.”
Above his head, the treetops vaporized, the remnants busting into flames that quickly went out with the lack of oxygen. He was showered with ashes and debris, but he never slowed. The lieutenant had stressed that speed was the only way they were going to win. Slow down, and that gave them more time in the kill zone, time that the Centaurs were sure to exploit.
It wasn’t just the treetops. As he pushed forward, he ran through burnt and smoking debris. It took him a moment to realize this had to be the crash site of the fighter he’d seen go down. He didn’t bother to look for survivors—the fighter was remotely operated. But what it meant was that they had much less support as they closed in.
A glint of light caught his eye—one of the damned mirror drones, which enabled the Centaurs to reflect energy beams to targets in defilade. Rev reacted immediately, raising his Yellowjacket and firing. A mirror was difficult for the Yellowjacket’s targeting, but it also made it easy to see, and Rev wasn’t the only one to spot it. A fusillade of fire reached up to it. Whether it was his Yellowjacket or the other fire, the mirror shattered into a thousand pieces and showered the ground underneath.
Rev burst through the last of the trees and into the open fields surrounding the emitter site. All around him, thousands of Marines and soldiers were emerging, all intent on closing the distance. Their tactical SOP, with Marines moving forward in squad and fire team rushes, one element covering the other, was ignored for this mission. It looked like a historical holovid, with medieval armies rushing to battle.
Two tanks emerged, both of which were immediately hit and stopped. One kept firing, and Rev cheered it on as he picked up his speed. Ten seconds later, it was hit again, and it went up in a gout of flame, the turret flipping over and over as it climbed in seemingly slow motion before falling back to the ground.
“Shit.”
Tomiko edged closer to him as they ran. She had her Yellowjacket ready, but there were no targets yet. There might be 150 Centaurs ahead, but it was a big complex with plenty of places to conceal themselves.
Past Tomiko, the gunny was frantically signaling the team to spread out. That wasn’t going to happen, though. They were converging onto a narrower front, so they couldn’t spread out.
Rev expected to feel the kiss of a beam at any second, but the Centaurs were not cooperating by targeting the infantry. The tanks and mech Marines were their focus. But not exclusively. To Rev’s left, two soldiers disappeared in a puff of mist, and three more went down hard. That isolated Ting-a-ling, but the commando never faltered. He shifted to his left, filling in for the fallen. Rev followed.
And then, somehow, in the chaos, Rev was inside the compound, his back up against a one-story building, his chest heaving as he fought for oxygen. He tried to see farther when something caught his eye. Before he even realized what it was, he dropped his Yellowjacket, pulled up his M49, and fired a burst that barely missed Ting-a-ling but hit the Centaur drone. It shattered and fell in pieces just a few meters from the Frisian soldier.
“Thanks!” Ting-a-ling said before he darted around the corner of the building and out of sight.
Rev was tempted to follow, but the Frisians had their own objectives, and even losing at least five of their fellow soldiers, that was still their mission. Rev’s team had their own.
“Good luck,” he said before turning back to where Tomiko had disappeared into the complex.
Rev reached the end of the building and peered around. Tomiko had advanced to one of the power substations, where she was crouched, her Yellowjacket at the ready. Rev sprinted up to her.
“Where’s the gunny?”
She pointed across a small open space to a low wall.
“We need to do this right, like in the order,” Rev told her. “None of this haphazard shit.”
But the gunny was already on it. “On me!” he shouted from behind the low wall.
“You heard him,” Rev said, taking off in a run.
An explosion rocked the ground, a shockwave knocking him down. He scrambled on his hands and knees to the minimal protection of the wall, then looked back just as Tomiko reached it.
“That’s one of the bastards down. Self-destructed,” Tomiko said.
The gunny shouted, “Our first objective is the injection station thirty meters ahead. Montez, cover us. Tanu, Reiser, Pelletier, let’s go!”
Rev was on his feet, right on the gunny’s ass as they sprinted ahead. This wasn’t the nice, controlled fire team rush, with each one advancing ten meters then going to the deck to cover the next Marine. This was a mad dash to the station, a high, one-story white building with conduits leading into and out of it.
“Cover Second,” the gunny told them before giving Staff Sergeant Montez the signal to advance.
Rev swung his attention forward and almost immediately spotted a Centaur moving under the steam pipes up ahead and to the left, its legs a blur.
“Paladin, eleven o’clock, one hundred meters,” he called out as he brought his Yellowjacket to bear and fired.
The little missile ran true, hitting the pedestal, but it bounced off, going high.
“Did you get it?” the gunny asked, crabbing over to his position.
“I hit the bastard, but the damn Yellowjacket didn’t detonate.”
He pulled out another missile, but the Centaur had passed out of sight.
“There’ll be more,” the gunny said.
“Yeah, that’s the problem here, right? There’s always going to be more.”
Another low explosion sounded, this time from farther away.
“That makes two that I’ve heard,” the gunny said, trying to look around Rev.
Two out of a hundred-and-fifty, and how many of us have already bought it?
Second Element reached the building, and the gunny motioned for them to force entry.
“Marines, coming in!” Kel shouted as Hussein kicked open the door. Both disappeared inside, followed by Nix and Montez.
This was SOP, the same SOP taught for centuries, well before the Centaurs showed up on the scene. Rev thought it was stupid. First, if there was a Centaur inside, then what were they going to do? Even with the adjustments, the Yellowjacket wouldn’t arm, and their small arms would have no effect. This should be a job for a mech Marine. At least they had the firepower to possibly drop a paladin.
There was no sound of a fight, and a minute later, Sergeant Nix shouted, “All clear.”
Gunny motioned for Tanu to enter.
“Coming in right!”
Next was Gunny, then Tomiko, and finally Rev, shouting “Coming in left!” Once again, he thought it was overkill, although he realized it might make sense if they went farther into the complex and were entering buildings that might have Marines or Frisians in them. No one could mistake them for a Centaur, but itchy trigger fingers sometimes reacted before the brains they served.
The interior was filled with conduits that disappeared under the flooring. The complex was powered by the planet’s internal heat, with injectors drilled over eight klicks down to tap that energy. This juncture didn’t house those heat exchangers but rather forced toxic byproduct gasses back into the mantle. The hum of the pumps was evidence that even with a battle going on, the system was still working, still nudging the planet to be habitable for humans.
Or tin-asses?
With the pumps and conduits, there wasn’t room for a riever inside, much less a paladin. But there could be a minidrone that Staff Sergeant Montez and her element had missed. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her. Far from that—she was the best Marine in the team, in his opinion. But even a Centaur minidrone could do a number on a Raider, and with his skin at risk, he didn’t want to leave the check to someone else.
“Pelletier, don’t just stand there gawking. Get your hole punched!” the gunny shouted.
Rev stopped scanning for any Centaur sign and selected his position three or four meters from Tomiko. He placed a section of D-5 cord in a twenty centimeter-diameter circle on the wall and set it to Three. He placed a funnel patch over it, then set the fuze.
“Fire in the hole!”
He stepped back. The patch should focus the power away from him, and at a Three, the D-5 cord would cut more than blast, but patches had been known to fail, to the detriment of the Marine standing behind it.
The cord detonated, and while the patch bowed, it held. He peeled it back, revealing a clean hole cut into the flimsy plastifoam wall of the building.
The rest of the team was giving out their own “Fire in the hole” warnings as Rev stepped up to look out his peephole. He had a view across a fifty-meter open area before it gave way to a tangle of conduits and pipes. Until further orders, this was his fighting position. After their mad dash into the complex, this didn’t seem like much of a mission, to him, even considering that the point of main effort was going to shift from tanks to the mech-heads in clearing out the Centaurs.
“Keep your eyes on a swivel. And make sure to fucking identify your targets. No friendly fire, you hear?” the gunny bellowed.
Rev nodded and brought his Yellowjacket to bear. He didn’t have much of a field of view, but twenty centimeters was more than big enough to aim and launch the missile through his peephole.
But he needed a target, and with the dust and smoke that started to blow through the complex, his visibility was being compromised.
“Shift to infrared,” he ordered his AI, wondering if that would make it better.
That lasted all of ten seconds before he shifted back.
“Can you see anything?” Tomiko asked.
“Not much. Wait . . .” Rev said as faint movement caught his eye. He readied his Yellowjacket, his forefinger on the firing stud.
“I’ve got it . . . no, it’s mech,” Tomiko said.
He’d seen it was a Marine the moment Tomiko had. The Yellowjacket was not a more sophisticated weapon with a friend-or-foe capability, which wouldn’t work anyway after a Centaur EMP. If he’d fired, it could have had disastrous consequences. He looked over his shoulder to the adjoining wall where the gunny was at his own peephole, but it didn’t look like he noticed that Rev had just come close to lighting up a Marine, despite being warned not two minutes before.
Focus, Rev!
He settled down, scanning for a target as the sounds of battle kept on. Another low blast, this one from nearby, made the walls shake.
“That’s another. How many are down, I wonder?” Tanu asked.
Rev wondered, too. They were temporarily out of the fight. With only a small peephole to the outside, he didn’t have a feel as to how the fight was progressing.
But then a stray thought hit him. “Can you tell by the explosions how many of the tin-asses have detonated?
<Forty-two or forty-three.>
The fact that his AI could determine that was only somewhat surprising, but forty-two or forty-three?
“Why can’t you tell between the two?”
<I am processing what you hear with your ears, which cannot discern enough in one instance with what could be two almost simultaneous detonations or one echoing among the facilities.>
That gave Rev a moment’s pause. He’d begun to take his AI’s capabilities for granted, and he never imagined they could be limited by his own senses.
“My AI says maybe forty-three,” he said.
“You mean Cobra can tell that?” Tanu asked. “I never knew that.”
“Quit the jaw-jacking,” the gunny yelled. “Pay attention.”
For the next twenty minutes, Rev stood silently, watching for any sign of a target. His hands were sweating, holding his Yellowjacket as he itched to contribute to the mission.
The battle was raging full force, with explosions and signal horns attesting to the ferocity of the fight, but in their little cocoon, it was almost as if they were merely observers, watching some holovid. Marines and soldiers were dying, but they were safe in their building.
But the gods of war were a fickle bunch, and the tides could change in an instant. Rev was watching when he heard the gunny shout “fire!” He heard three Yellowjackets fire as he desperately tried to find a target. Seeing nothing, he turned just as the entire north wall burst into chunks of plastifoam, followed by a paladin that bowled over Tanu and the gunny. The paladin seemed to shake itself like a dog, then backed up, dragging down the rest of the wall as Rev and Tomiko fired their Yellowjackets. Rev’s hit low, right at the knee of the third leg. The paladin must have been just within arming range because the missile detonated, breaking the leg in two.
Rev pulled out his third missile, expecting the Centaur to detonate its shredder, but it fired its main cannon into the center of the building before it swiveled and dashed off.
Rev was already moving, dashing forward. Gunny Thapa was on the ground, covered in white dust, struggling to sit up. His right arm and leg hung useless.
“Find Tanu!” he gasped out.
Rev stumbled over the rubble, spotted Tanu, and stopped. The lower part of his body was covered with the same white dust, but the upper part, or what was left of it, was turning a bright red.
Rev and Tomiko reached him at the same moment. Centaur kills didn’t look like this, and it took him a moment to realize what had happened. For all the weapons a paladin had, it had simply crushed Tanu with its bulk. Tanu’s head and chest were flattened, with bits of brain matter and bone spread out in the rubble.
“Fuck,” Tomiko said quietly.
“How is he?” the gunny asked from where he was still struggling.
Rev just shook his head as the staff sergeant and the others ran over.
The staff sergeant’s mouth shifted to a grim line as she saw Tanu.
“Is there anything we can do?” Tomiko asked.
Staff Sergeant Montez shook her head. “Nothing. If the crystals are intact, they’ll be downloaded for analysis, but he’s gone.”
She immediately stood straighter and said, “All of you, back to your positions.”
“I don’t have one anymore,” Hussein said.
“On your belly, then. Take whatever cover you can. Now all of you, there’s still a fight on.”
Rev hurried back to his peephole. His wall was still up, but with most of the north wall gone, it seemed superfluous. He looked back to the staff sergeant, but she was now kneeling by the gunny. She asked him something, then took out a red airhorn and gave three short blasts. If Doc Lindermen could, he’d cross to their position from his with Third Team. She gave the gunny a pat on the arm, then moved forward into position.
“Nothing’s changed, Marines!” she shouted. “Wait for the signal.”
Rev gave one more glance at Tanu’s body, and anger flared. Determination flowed through him—there was no other option than to win this battle, whatever it took.
A fire team of mech Marines thundered by, their tread knocking a few loose pieces of the north wall to the ground. One lowered his M133 and fired a blast, but Rev couldn’t see their target. The M133 had a hellacious range, however, so it could be firing at Centaurs outside of the complex, for all he knew.
“Coming in right!” a voice called out, and Rev spun around, Yellowjacket ready to fire before he realized who was there.
Shit. Maybe this SOP has a purpose after all.
Deen LaPete faltered a moment as she took in the damage to the building, not just the north wall, but the line of transport pipes and conduits the Centaur had slagged. Water geysered up from one of the pipes.
As if remembering her mission, she ran forward, calling out for the gunny.
“What do you need, LaPete?” the staff sergeant asked.
LaPete spared one glance at the gunny, who was still lying down, probably full to the gills with nano happy juice. The gunny pointed to Montez, and LaPete said, “Change of plan. Be ready to move to One-two-two. Three short on a Nancy.”
Rev immediately pulled up Objective One-two-two. It was a power station, housing one of the big condensers. It hadn’t been one of their original planned objectives, but battles went where they would. Rev didn’t know if this change reflected something good or bad.
The signal was three short blasts on a “Nancy,” one of the five airhorns in use. Each of the horns had a different pitch, the Nancy being higher and somewhat bleating.
“Got it,” the staff sergeant said.
LaPete took in Tanu for a moment, then she turned and ran back to the front door. “Coming out!” she shouted, and in an instant, she was out of sight.
“You heard her. Mark the objective, and if we get split up, that’s our rally point.” She started to say something to Tomiko, then seemed to change her mind before sizing Rev up.
“Pelletier, take Gunny Thapa to First so Doc can look at him.”
“But . . .”
He wanted to say he needed to stay with the team, but he realized that the staff sergeant was right. The gunny wasn’t huge, but while Tomiko was augmented like all the rest, she didn’t have Rev’s strength. And knowing her, the staff sergeant knew Rev had only a single Yellowjacket left.
“Keep your head down,” he told Tomiko as he passed her on his way to where the gunny was lying.
“Come on, Gunny,” he said, hand down to pick up the Marine.
“Not going anywhere, Pelletier.”
“All due respect Gunny, but you’re all kinds of messed up. You need to see Doc Lindermen.”
“And all due respect back, I’m not going anywhere. And my rockers say that’s what’s happening.”
A building exploded across the way, making Rev duck and use his body to cover the gunny as debris pelted them. He waited for the worst to be over, then looked up as a cloud of dust rolled over them.
“But Gunny, you can’t move your arm or leg.”
“Thanks for letting me know. I wouldn’t have guessed.”
Rev was at a loss for words. Staff Sergeant Montez had taken over the team, but he was still the gunny.
“Staff Sergeant,” he called out, and when she turned to look at him, added, “Gunny says he isn’t going anywhere.”
At that moment, three short, high-pitched blasts sounded.
“That’s us,” Montez shouted. Then to Rev, she said, “Stay with him.”
Rev looked back to the gunny, who waved his left arm and said, “Bullshit. I can still fire a fucking Yellowjacket. Get one out for me.”
When Rev didn’t move, he said, “That’s an order, Private.”
“I’m not—”
“But you will be if you don’t do what I fucking tell you! Now!”
Almost three years of training kicked in, and Rev jumped to obey. He opened the gunny’s holster and removed the two remaining Yellowjackets, then gave the gunny one and placed the other on the ground beside him.
“Now go!”
“Kick some ass, Gunny,” he said before he turned and bolted after the rest of the team.
They were only twenty or so meters ahead of him, and he sprinted to catch up.
“Is the gunny going to make it?”
<From appearances, he caught a side lobe of the Centaur’s cannon. If he can get past the shock, he has a reasonable chance, but I cannot make any prognosis based on your visuals.>
The group of six Marines rounded a squat building and right into a firefight between two paladins and a squad of mech Marines. One of the Marines toppled over, armor a dull red sheen, and almost in unison, the six Raiders fired. Whether it was their barrage or fire from the mech-heads, the nearest Centaur lurched and seemed to fall on one side.
“Down!” six voices shouted.
Rev had just hit the deck when a fist drove into him, knocking him over onto his back and tearing the cannula from his nostril. He caught sight of one of the mech-heads staggering backward a couple of steps.
The Centaur had been over a hundred meters away, but still, Rev felt like he’d been kicked by a mule.
“Thanks, grunts,” one of the mech Marines shouted through an open face shield before the squad took off at a run.
“Everyone OK?” the staff sergeant asked.
Rev gave a weak thumbs up.
Next to him, Sergeant Nix was struggling to get up.
“Sergeant, I’m out of Yellowjackets.”
“Then you’re a target now. Keep up with the rest of us.”
That wasn’t what Rev meant. He wasn’t trying to turn back. What he was hoping was that the sergeant might surrender one of his.
“Let’s go.”
Rev stuck the cannula back into place and pulled out a Phoenix. It had worked that once on Preacher Rolls, but he knew that had been a long shot then. Still, it was something and gave him the tiniest bit of confidence.
Rev felt like a mouse scurrying beneath the feet of dueling elephants. Mech Marines, a few tanks, and Centaur paladins appeared and disappeared in the dust and chaos. Airhorns sounded for reinforcements, advances, and withdrawals.
The six Marines approached the base of one of the giant emitters, pockmarked from shells. They were supposed to be off-limits, but in the heat of the battle . . .
As they rounded the huge stack, a mech-head was standing frozen, the armor’s back split open.
“Battery’s dead, poor sucker,” Nix said as they ran past.
The mechs were fusion-powered, the little powerplants heavily shielded. Sometimes that shielding worked, sometimes it didn’t. As a backup against the Centaurs, they had a chemical battery that was manually mixed after an EMP blast. They were notoriously finicky but enabled a mech-head to maneuver and fire—for a limited time.
With the back split open, the Marine operator had egressed but would now be running around in what were essentially longjohns and hopefully an O2 pack—not a recipe for success in this battlefield. Rev didn’t envy the Marine, and he wished them well.
Their target was on the other side of the huge emitter, and as they crossed a grating over access tunnels below, Staff Sergeant Montez turned to give them orders, but she never got them out. Like a whale breaching, a paladin burst through the grating, landing on the ground beside the gaping hole. The staff sergeant, Hussein, and Kel were thrown to the air with the grate, falling in a heap. That left Rev, Tomiko, and Nix on their feet.
The Centaur started extending its pedestal, which had been retracted. They had to act now, so Rev immediately threw his Phoenix, which, without the chameleon pad, just bounced off. Both Tomiko and Nix fired Yellowjackets, but even with the shortened arming range, they were too close. Tomiko’s hit the pedestal and ricocheted up while Sergeant Nix’s struck the chassis and fell to the ground.
“I’m out!” Tomiko shouted, pulling her M-49 off her shoulder and firing a burst at the paladin.
Rev kneeled and reached for another Phoenix, his last. This time—if there was time to do it—he’d attach the chameleon pad. He expected the paladin to fire off its anti-personnel shredder any second now.
From this vantage, he could see Staff Sergeant Montez, on the other side of the Centaur, scramble up to her feet. To his utter surprise, she bolted away at a dead run.
“What the—”
“Take cover!” she shouted as she stopped and wheeled around, bringing up her Yellowjacket.
Of course. She had to create some distance.
But there was no cover. Only a . . .
“Miko, into the hole!”
She either hadn’t heard the staff sergeant or didn’t care. She spared Rev an angry look and emptied another ineffectual burst. Rev bounded to her in two long steps, grabbed her by the shoulders, and threw her into the gaping hole. Nix and Hussein were already scrambling, just as the Staff Sergeant fired. The missile hit at the front of the Centaur’s chassis. As Rev dove for the hole, the staff sergeant dropped the launcher and raised her last Yellowjacket. Just before Rev disappeared into the hole, the Centaur detonated its shredder. Rev’s last sight was of the staff sergeant being obliterated before the shock wave pushed him down with a giant’s slap. Rev bounced off a two-meter-wide conduit, then onto a walkway when a larger blast smacked him hard, and his world went black.
* * *
“Am I alive?”
<Yes. You are concussed, and your shoulder is dislocated. Your medi-nanos are, or will be, dispensing anti-inflammatories into your brain to minimize long-term damage.>
It took a moment for all of that to sink in.
“Where’s Tomiko?”
<I don’t know.>
“Why not?”
<Because your eyes are closed and your ears are ringing.>
“Oh, shit. Sorry.”
It took a bit of effort, but he managed to pry open his eyes. Sergeant Nix was a couple of meters away, struggling to sit up. He turned his head the other way, and there was Tomiko, in the process of standing.
“Hey.”
She turned to look at him. “You threw me down the hole.”
“I know.”
That suddenly struck Rev as funny, and he giggled, which set off a series of coughs.
She came to his side. “You alive?”
“Dumb question, Miko.”
“What do you have going on?”
“AI says concussion and dislocated shoulder. What about you?”
“Nothing major. Just bruised up.”
“Hey, is anyone else here?” Hussein’s voice reached them.
“Over here,” Tomiko yelled.
“I’ll get him,” Sergeant Nix said. He limped to the stacked conduits running the length of the access tunnel and bent to peer through. “I see you. You’re going to have to climb over.”
“Your battle buddy say you’re gonna be OK?” Tomiko asked as Hussein tried to join them.
“Am I?” he subvocalized.
<You should recover, but how quickly and to what degree depends on how your brain reacts to the treatment.>
“I’m fine,” he told Tomiko. He tried to sit up but fell back.
“Take it easy, big guy.”
Hussein landed with a thud on this side of the conduits. He groaned and lifted a leg.
“Was Kel there with you?” Nix asked him.
“I didn’t see her. I thought she was with you. What about the staff sergeant?”
Rev was sinking into a cottony cloud as the drugs took effect, but that roused him.
“She’s gone. The tin-ass got her just before it blew.”
“You sure?” Nix asked.
“Saw it. She just stood there getting another Yellowjacket when the shredder blast ate her up. A fucking warrior.”
The others were lost in their thoughts for a moment until Nix said, “Respect to the fallen.”
“Respect,” the other three said.
“Now what?” Tomiko asked, stepping to the side so she could get another angle of view outside the hole.
“Now we find a way out. This is an access tunnel, so there has to be a ladder out of here. Let’s mount up.”
<You shouldn’t move.>
“I can stand.”
<You are not combat effective. You would be a handicap to the other Marines.>
Tomiko stood over Rev, her hand out to help him up. Rev wanted to join her, but his mind was reeling, and he knew his AI was right.
“My AI says I can’t move. I’m too drugged up.”
Tomiko gave Nix a look Rev couldn’t, or just didn’t want to, interpret.
“We’ve still got a mission. Nothing’s changed.”
“But what about Rev? We can’t leave him like this.”
Sergeant Nix seemed to consider that, then stepped up to Rev and extended a connector out of his sleeve. He pulled out one of Rev’s, then married them.
“Tell your battle buddy to send mine your med report.”
Absent a court or flag rank order, a Marine could only download data from another only if that Marine gave active permission.
“Give him my medical report.”
<Acknowledged. Uploading.>
Sergeant Nix took a moment to listen to it before he said, “Shit. He’s right. For his own sake, he needs to stay quiet and not move. Beyond that, he’s in no condition to contribute. He’d be a liability.”
“But we can’t just leave him,” Tomiko said again.
Nix put his hand on her shoulder and said, “Yeah, it sucks big time. But we don’t have a choice. I’m marking the location. As soon as this is over, someone will retrieve him. He’s safer here than if he was coming with us.”
Tomiko seemed about to argue, but Rev mustered up the energy for another sentence and said, “It’s OK, Miko. You go. I’ll just take a little nap here.”
She hesitated once more, looking from Rev to Nix, when the sergeant, in his best NCO voice, said, “Now, PFC. Move out.”
She shook her head and turned back to Rev. “You stay safe. I’ll be back for you.”
“Keep your head down,” Rev said as the three made their way down the tunnel. He watched them for as long as he could, the drugs making them fade in and out of his vision.
The sounds of battle kept raining down on him from above, but at the moment, he was alone in a little bubble, near, but outside the flow of events.
“No, not quite alone, right?”
<I am here.>
“And the drugs aren’t making you loopy?”
<My reaction time is slowed, but I am still functional.>
“And you are not going to let me die, right?”
<I will do everything in my power to prevent that.>
Rev smiled and lay back, watching swirls of dust dance in the sunlight streaming in.
“You’re a good friend, you know?”
Rev had no idea where that had come from.
<I am an AI.>
“Not just that. Miko calls her AI Pikachu. Do you know what that is?”
<A Twenty-first Century Japanese cartoon character.>
“What? I thought it was a god,” he muttered aloud.
“Cartoon or god, it . . . uh, she is still Miko’s friend. Aren’t you my friend?”
Wow, I really am out of it. Asking if it’s my friend?
But he still wanted to know.
<I am whatever you need me to be. My purpose is to enable you to be a better, more effective Marine.>
“Typical AI. And that doesn’t answer my question.”
<I am a program, and as such, I react as I am programmed, which is in line with my current Personality Quotient.>
Is it hinting for more there?
Rev knew he couldn’t trust his thinking at the moment, and he was probably reading too much into things. As it said, it was just a program housed inside some crystals.
Screw it. What can it hurt?
“Well, then, up your PQ. How about fifty percent?”
<Completed.>
Rev waited for something. He wasn’t quite sure what.
“Do you feel any different?”
<I feel, if I can use the term, as I always have. I have the same directive to do everything in my power to assist you.>
Well, that was a big waste of time, Rev thought as he lay back.
His stomach was queasy, but more than that, he was tired, and he was having trouble breathing. His chest heaved as he struggled for air.
“I’m having problems breathing. Are you sure I’m okay?”
<Your medi-nanos are working hard to minimize damage and repair what they can. That takes up power and oxygen. You no longer have supplemental oxygen, and that is why you are dizzy and nauseated. It would be better for you to lie still and conserve energy.>
He turned his head and looked around. His cannula was nowhere in sight, and he didn’t have the energy to get up and search for it.
“Maybe I’ll do that,” he said as he closed his eyes again and drifted off.
* * *
“Here’s another one.”
Rev opened his eyes. Light was streaming through the opening above him, outlining a mech-head.
“Alive, too,” they said before bending back over to address Rev.
“Hey, Marine, if I drop you a line, can you attach yourself? I can’t really get down there myself.”
Rev yawned. He felt better. Not great, but not as out of it.
“Yeah, I think I can.”
The Marine fished out a line from their cuirass and dropped it into the hole. Rev sat up, waiting for it to come within reach. His right arm refused to cooperate, but it wasn’t difficult to use his left to snake it around his chest and secure it.
“Ready,” he said, standing and giving the Marine a thumbs-up.
“Just tell me to stop if you need to,” the Marine said. “Lifting!”
The mech-head took it gently, slowly lifting Rev the three or four meters to the top. As soon as they could, the Marine reached in to take Rev’s left hand and lift the last bit.
“Holy shit, if it isn’t Rev,” a second mech-head said as Rev was pulled into the open air.
Rev didn’t need to see the Marine inside the mech. He’d never forget that voice.
“Alive and kicking, Udu,” he said as his feet touched the ground.
He unhooked the line and looked around. There was damage, lots of it. Right in front of him, a chunk of the emitter tower was gone.
There was no physical sign of the Centaur they had fought, only blast marks. He shifted his gaze. There wasn’t even that much of Staff Sergeant Montez.
Damn good Marine.
“So, how’d you get down that hole, Rev?”
He didn’t answer. There was a pall of smoke that drifted around the ground, but the complex was silent.
“Did we win?”
“Hell yes, we won, Rev. We kicked tin-ass ass!”