35
It took two long days, but finally, the Centaurs started moving, and that gave the Marines their chance. They advanced in a diamond formation with Rev in the middle, the sacred cow.
Or sacrificial cow.
Neither image made Rev comfortable, but he guessed sacred was better than sacrificial.
Centaurs weren’t noted for coordinated assaults, but every fight so far had been recorded and studied ad infinitum, and this looked like one of their classic maneuvers. Four of them—three paladins and the riever—were advancing together, the riever acting as a point or scout. Another paladin was following in trace, well behind the other four. There were cases where the trail Centaur acted as a reserve force, ready to move in where necessary, and other cases where it acted as a base of fire in support of the others. For the Marines’ purposes, it didn’t really matter. What did matter was that it was separated from the rest, and between the terrain and heavy forest, the foot Marines would be quicker and far more maneuverable.
The laggard would be Rev’s target. The plan was to get Rev to it as fast as possible before the other Centaurs could react. If things went according to plan, the mission would be over and the Marines long gone before the four could engage them.
The plan was a repetition of one of the scenarios they attempted at Nguyen—one that had resulted in a kill. Hopefully, that was a good omen.
The Marines’ assembly area had been on the defilade-side of a ridge with enough open space for good visibility. As they crossed the ridge, however, they entered the forest. Seismic fractures had knocked down sections of trees, but for the most part, the trees stood tall. Good for limiting the Centaurs’ mobility, but bad for limiting the Tarantula Hawk’s effectiveness.
The thirty-six Marines and Navy corpsmen moved silently through the trees, bypassing the faults that created mini-gorges ten to fifteen meters deep. It was as if some giant dragon had gouged the earth with its claws, and the trees had sprung up around the gashes. The formation warped and bent with each terrain feature, but it remained intact.
“Everything green, Pelletier?” the lieutenant asked over the net.
“Still green and ready to go.”
“Keep me apprised.”
“Uh, we are green, right?” he asked Punch a moment later.
<Since you just told the lieutenant we’re green, it would be good if we are. But yes, we’re green.>
“Sorry. I know you’d tell me if something had changed.”
What’s with me? Getting nervous? Come on, Reverent. This isn’t like me.
He came to another gash in the ground, the raw dirt red in the sunlight that reached through the branches. It was longer than most faults, and he didn’t want to go around, so he half slid, half dropped down the edge, flailing his arms for balance. Pashu’s mass still threw him off balance sometimes, and he could feel his harness tighten under his skin as it kept Pashu firmly anchored. It was a weird feeling, and not one he was used to yet.
Going up the other side was easier—he just jammed his toes into the dirt as if they were pitons and scrambled up. He stood there a moment, getting his bearings, then stepped off again.
“Hey, Punch. Can you bring up the seventh training run again?”
A moment later, the recording of the similar mission back on Nguyen popped into his vision. If he wasn’t needed for security, he might as well go over the mission one more time. Walking almost on autopilot, which is not something he would ever normally do, he went over each step of the exercise and tried to relate those to what he now faced. It probably wouldn’t help much, but it was a better use of his time.
“Halt and form a hasty defense,” the lieutenant passed, breaking into Rev’s concentration.
Rev almost went down to one knee before he realized he was in the middle of the formation. He was the package, so-to-speak. He stood there until the lieutenant opened the platoon command net, into which Rev was inserted as well.
“Any ideas on why they’ve stopped?”
Rev gave a guilty start. He’d been so deep into his training mission that he hadn’t even noticed that the Centaurs weren’t moving.
“Nothing that my battle buddy can pull up,” Gunny Lupe passed. “No discernible trends, at least.”
“Nothing here, either,” Lieutenant Harisa from Second Team added.
“They know we’re here, so it looks like they want us to come to them,” Lieutenant Omestori said, mostly to himself. “I’m not sure that’s the best terrain for them to defend. Not horrible, but not the best.” He paused for a moment, then said, “And if we were assaulting the four of them, I’d be concerned. But that’s not our mission.”
“Our target is still more than two hundred meters away from the other four. That’s enough space, with First Team as a blocking force, for Pelletier to do his thing and then for us to diddi ho out of there,” the gunny said.
“Top?”
“I agree with the gunny. I think we’re still a go.”
“Me, too. OK, nothing’s changed,” the platoon commander said.
Rev was only in the net as a courtesy, but there wasn’t much he wanted to say anyway. He couldn’t fault what either the gunny or the master sergeant just said.
A moment later, his map chimed, and he brought it forward. New positions had been added for the fixing and blocking forces, as well as the assault force’s avenue of approach. Rev asked Punch to pull an overhead view of where his target had stopped, but it was well under the cover of the trees.
“Can we get a live topo?”
A ground image popped up. The spot was on a gentle slope with two small seismic gashes. The tree trunks would impede his approach, but it would impede the paladin more. It was surprising that it could even maneuver in there at all.
This wasn’t Centaur country, which made Rev a little uneasy. If they were waiting for the Marines to attack, a more open area would have suited them better. But that unease didn’t mean he wasn’t going to take advantage of the terrain and forest.
At a klick out, just after a series of light tremors, the formation broke up. Second Team, along with Top Thapa, branched to the left, while Third and Fifth drew in to a wedge with Rev and the lieutenant in the middle. First followed in trace.
Second Lieutenant Harisa led her team toward the four Centaurs as a fixing force. She seemed capable, but she was still a boot on only her second combat mission, and Top Thapa was moving with the team. Their mission was to engage the four, but at a distance, keeping them occupied and in place. If they could get the Centaurs to chase them, all the better.
As Third and Fifth approached their target, First Team, led by Gunny Lupe, split off to the left to interspace itself between the four Centaurs and the fifth. If the Centaurs broke away from Second Team, First was to slow them down long enough for Rev to finish, and then everyone would break contact.
Whatever nervousness Rev had started to fade as his warrior-self began to emerge. As always, he wondered if Punch was goosing up some sort of adrenaline spike, but it didn’t matter. He was getting excited, ready to tilt at the opposing knight.
Ha! I guess a paladin is a kind of knight. Surprised I hadn’t made that analogy before.
He was glad it was a paladin, though, instead of the less-powerful riever. He’d done much better against the heavier and less-mobile paladin stand-ins during his training exercises.
They closed the distance, and his target hadn’t moved. He hoped it stayed there. No one knew just what capabilities the five Centaurs, cut off from their forces, had. They hadn’t knocked out comms, for example, something that was usually the first thing they did upon a Marine landing. They knew the Marines had landed, but could they pinpoint their positions? And if that lone Centaur could detect the two teams heading at it, would it run?
If it retreated, Rev was certain they could run it down. But if it tried to link up with the others, that would be a big fly in the ointment. They just had to move quickly enough to block that possibility.
The platoon commander stopped them about 150 meters from their target paladin, spreading the two teams out farther, with him and Rev in the middle of what was now a line. It was almost go-time. Rev checked Pashu once more, reassured by the tiny green LED that he was ready to go. Like an athlete getting ready for a match, he rocked back and forth, stretching his legs.
Now that he had the jousting knights image in his mind, Rev couldn’t shake it. He imagined the paladin up ahead in the trees, waiting for the signal to charge. He felt the urge to just charge, at least, to join in combat, and while no one knew what a Centaur actually felt, it just seemed to fit.
“Just a few moments until First Team is in position,” the lieutenant passed to Rev on the P2P.
Rev plotted his way forward while he waited. The way was fairly clear for the next twenty or thirty meters, and then the laurel and other undergrowth took over, looking like it went all the way to the bottom. The laurel was a little lighter to his left, which would make his advance quicker, but would give him less cover.
“Lieutenant, we’ve got something that looks like a trail here,” Gunny Lupe passed on the command circuit before Rev had made up his mind which would be the best way forward.
He then sent over an image. There was a definite . . . something there. Not a cleared trail like an access road, but more like a large game trail. But there was no game to have made it.
“Could it be seismic?” the lieutenant asked.
“Doesn’t look like it, but it could be the ground settling after those last tremors.”
Rev watched the lieutenant as the team leader took in the information. He visibly nodded to himself, then passed, “Make sure you have someone keeping eyes on it, but we’re still a go. I’m sending Pelletier forward now.”
He switched to the platoon net and passed, “We’re on. Third and Fifth, move out. Second, get ready to engage on my command.”
Rev almost jumped forward like a racehorse at the gate.
“Easy, Pelletier. Don’t outrun us,” the platoon commander told him. “And don’t start your attack before telling me so I can give the order to Second.”
Rev gave him a thumbs-up, and he slowed down. A knight didn’t go into battle without his squires, after all. And he knew he had to take it down a notch.
“Get ready.”
<I am ready. Just listen to what I tell you.>
“So, you’re in charge now.”
<I want to keep you alive.>
“Ah, you care.”
<If something happens to you, I power down, so yes, I care.>
Rev laughed, and that took some of his excited edge off, allowing him to focus. He guided those Marines on either side as he went down the slope, into the denser mixed-laurel undergrowth at the bottom, then started up the other side, all his senses trying to pierce the trees to where he knew the Centaur was waiting.
“Our tin-asses are moving out!” the second team leader broke into the platoon net.
Rev hadn’t been watching them, so focused was he on his target. But yes, he could see them starting to head north, toward them. And then, his paladin started moving, not toward him, but in a line to the others, which would intersect his fellow teammates.
Rev wheeled to the platoon commander, who was ten meters behind and to his left. “I’m going.”
Lieutenant Omestori didn’t hesitate. “Second, engage. Make them turn back. Pelletier, go for it.”
But Rev was already moving. With the thicker trees down at the bottom of the slope, Third Team might not be able to engage the paladin with their Yellowjackets and Morays. They’d be cut down unless Rev could intercept the Centaur first.
But it was moving too quickly, as if it were out in the open. Shouts arose from the team as Rev bolted past Strap and Nix. Ahead, trees burst into splinters and smoke, and there, ahead, Rev caught a glimpse of the thing. This was no time for fanciful dodging. Rev bulled forward.
Yazzie, twenty meters ahead, and Tomiko, another ten past that, stepped forward with their Yellowjackets, firing in unison, and an instant later, Yazzie seemed to come apart in a puff of mist.
“No!” Rev shouted as he caught another glimpse of the paladin barreling through the trees at full speed.
Tomiko pulled another Yellowjacket from her holster at the same time that Rev fired. He knew he was too far away for a kill even if the trees didn’t block his shot. He might not have been close enough for a kill, but he was sure close enough to gain the Centaur’s attention. Instead of firing at Tomiko, the pedestal started to rotating toward him as it seemed to jump sideways.
“They’re using the damn trails!” Gunny Lupe shouted over the net, but Rev barely noted the fact. He had to nail the bastard in front of him before more of his team was killed.
Rev’s capacitors whined, charging up his beamer as he dodged around the trees, trying to close in and get a clear shot. A Moray exploded near the Centaur, but it kept coming.
<Right.>
Rev reacted without thinking, and a tree in front of him exploded into splinters. Too close for comfort.
Not once had Rev trained in a heavily wooded area, and that could cost him. This cat-and-mouse in an old-growth forest added another dimension to the fight.
It limits that asshole, too.
He angled to his right, hoping to pull the Centaur away from the team, and he crossed a trail, although he almost didn’t recognize it as such. Suddenly, Gunny Thapa’s warning sunk in. That was how it moved so quickly. But with Rev’s lighting it up, it had stepped off the trail and was just to his right, breaking through the underbrush as it tried to orient its gun on him.
“Range?”
<Seventy-two meters.>
As the Centaur stepped forward, Rev had a clear view of the thing, the pedestal coming around to bear on him.
<Left.>
But Rev had already started sprinting right, down the trail. He knew this was risky and didn’t even know if this would work or not. But playing hide-and-seek in the forest was going to end up with him being fried. This was a real Centaur, a living, thinking opponent, not a de-toothed simulation.
Rev sprinted ahead, not at the Centaur, but at an angle, as the pedestal kept tracking him. He was closing the distance, but indirectly. The question was if he would ever get close enough sticking to the trail. The Centaur was on the move, too, which put that up in the air.
<Sixty meters . . . fifty-five meters . . . fifty meters.>
Shit!
He was close enough, but he had no shot. Too many trees in the way.
<Forty-five meters.>
As if a reminder, the paladin detonated its shredder and devastated the surrounding area, but the same trees that blocked Rev’s shot kept him from being hit.
The shredder blast also cleared out most of the undergrowth and some of the smaller trees, and still running full speed, there was the tiniest of openings, giving him a window of opportunity.
Rev didn’t have to aim and fire. All that practice paid off, and he thought the shot, aiming and firing in an instant. The paladin had seen the opening as well, and it detonated another shredder blast, but the split second it took the Centaur’s blast to reach Rev made the difference. Rev was past the opening, back to where he had some of the forest’s protection.
Rev’s shot hit the Centaur dead on, not at the side vents. But at only forty meters, it made no difference. The braided beam ate through the armor, and the paladin went up in a volcanic blast.
“Miko, you OK?” was the first thing he asked.
“Damn, that was close. But I’m here. I don’t think T2 is, and Nix is—”
The lieutenant overrode her. “Pelletier, is it dead?”
“Roger. That explosion was it going up.”
“At least we’ve got that. Yazzie is KIA and Nix is down hard. First Team’s engaged.” He switched back to the platoon net. “Reiser, recover what you can of Yazzie. Hussein and Gantz, get Sergeant Nix. Break contact, Break contact. All teams, break contact . . . oh shit. First Team, break fucking contact now!”
Rev could hear a crescendo of fire come from the south. Rev shifted his field of view, and First was mixing it up with the four Centaurs. From what he could see, two of the Marines just went down, while the rest were in one of the seismic faults. There was no sign of their Tarantula Hawks.
“Can’t break contact. We’re locked together tight,” the gunny passed, then calmly added, “Suggest you break contact.”
Rev was already moving, taking the trail.
“Pelletier, what are you doing?” the lieutenant yelled over the net. “You need to get back. Let Second Team take it.”
There was no way the team could hold off four Centaurs, and Second was too far back to offer support. Rev had a hollow void in the pit of his stomach. The bastards had set a trap, and the Raiders had walked right into it.
But the trails they had used to set the trap could be used against them, too. Rev bolted past Tomiko and charged down the trail.
“Pelletier, turn around.”
“Can’t hear you, sir.”
<You can hear him fine.>
“I can’t after you erase that transmission.”
A modern Olympian can cover 400 meters in just under 40 seconds. Rev was augmented beyond those athletes’ capabilities, but this wasn’t a running track. “Trail” was a generous term for the clearing in the trees that allowed for the bulky Centaurs to pass through. The footing, while acceptable for the sixteen-legged Centaur mech, was treacherous. Over fifty seconds after he started, Rev reached the beleaguered Marines, but not before another, Bambam Sinclair, had fallen—but one of the paladins had been hit, and either from the Moray or by self-destruction, it had been destroyed.
That left three: two paladins and a riever.
The surviving First Team Marines had made their stand about seventy meters off of the trail Rev was on. He couldn’t see them, but he could see a paladin through the trees. Rev angled off the trail and into the undergrowth. The Centaur was intent on the Marines, its cannon belting out a blast.
<Sixty—,> Punch started, but Rev was moving too fast.
He didn’t wait for Punch to tell him to fire. Pashu belched out a blast, hitting the Centaur in the side vent. The explosion was spectacular, a piece of Centaur or wood scoring Rev’s cheek. He didn’t feel his normal exultation. He wasn’t done yet.
Rev scoured to his left, searching for the next target, while his cannon recharged.
“Hurry up,” he urged it. That would be all he needed—getting a target before it was ready. But ten seconds later, the LED went green.
He kept running as another explosion sounded in front of him until he saw a fifteen-meter-long gash in the forest floor. A tree with half of its roots exposed had fallen over the crevice, and next to the wood, he caught sight of a helmet.
“Where are they?” he shouted. According to his display, the paladin had to be just to his right, but Rev couldn’t see it.
The head turned, and a hand pointed to where his display said the paladin was. At that instant, the tree over the gash exploded, and the Marine disappeared. Rev didn’t know if they were hit or not, and he didn’t have time to check.
Rev charged. There was usually a four to five second gap between shots, and if he could get off a shot, he might be able to take out another Centaur. And there it was, moving forward, the pedestal almost dead on him. Rev dove and rolled, coming to his feet as the blast went over his head. Thanking the training he thought was useless, and the fourteen percent rise in probability of success, Rev came to one knee and fired. The blast hit dead on. For a moment, as his beamer cycled, Rev thought the paladin had weathered the shot, but with a blast, the paladin went up, the shockwave knocking Rev head-over-heels. He came to a rest against the trunk of a ruined tree. Pal-5 or not, it knocked the wind out of him and rang his head.
“That almost got me.”
<If that had been its shredder rather than a self-detonation, the chances are that it would have gotten you.>
Rev picked himself up, looking for the last Centaur, but his display was intermittent. He couldn’t see it. The blast had knocked it out. But he knew about where it had been, about a hundred meters to his right.
He glanced at his beamer. The charge light was still red, and he realized he hadn’t heard it charge up.
“Check the beamer circuit.”
<The circuit is broken. No signal going through.>
“Can you fix it?”
<I don’t have that capability.>
“Shi—!”
Leaves and wood exploded, and Rev felt the slightest kiss of an energy beam. He was up and moving before he knew it, heading instinctively for a slight rise in the terrain. He might not have his beamer, but that didn’t cripple him. He sprayed the forest with his .50 cal, wishing it had been upgraded to the 20mm that had been discussed. He couldn’t see the riever, but he could hear it, and hopefully, the .50 would capture his attention.
A small tree fell forward, and there it was. Rev didn’t know how he’d missed it. The pedestal locked in on him as Rev darted to his right, firing the .50. Rounds pinged off the armor, but the riever darted in reverse.
“I need one of those gashes in the ground. Not the one First Team is in.”
“One hundred fifty-three meters to your zero-six-five.”
Rev didn’t need his display. His augments told him where he needed to go. He fired another belt, ran fifty meters, and fired again. A moment later, he was rewarded with the sound of the riever in pursuit. He blindly fired another burst, then ran on, leading the Centaur away from the team.
And there was the gash. Thirty meters long and about two deep toward the middle. It would have to do. He stopped, took cover behind a large tree, and fired another burst of .50 cal.
<You’re down to forty-six rounds.>
Hopefully, that’s enough.
And there it was. He caught glimpses of the thing as it picked its way forward. He needed a clean shot at the thing, but no closer than twenty-six meters. With the trees, that might be an iffy proposition.
He hugged the back of the tree and pulled out his Optisight, quickly bent it, and held it out until the tip was around the trunk. He was taking a calculated risk that the riever wouldn’t notice the three-centimeter lens, but he had to watch for his chance.
The riever had slowed down as it picked its way forward, using the trees for cover. It knew Rev was ahead, and it wasn’t going to rush in. Rev was trying to figure out how to use that for his advantage when forty or so meters out, the riever crabbed sideways to get around two trees, giving Rev a clear shot.
He switched from the .50 cal to his Morays and swung around the tree when another quake hit. Rev was caught off balance, and he fell face-first to the dirt. This was a stronger one, and as Rev scrambled to get a shot off, he kept falling. The riever, in full view, spread all twelve legs, bracing itself, and its pedestal started to zero in on Rev despite the shaking.
“No, this isn’t happening!”
Rev snapped off a prayer shot, but the quake jerked the missile high and to the left. Using both his right arm and Pashu, he got to his knees, but he couldn’t fire like that.
The riever had him dead to rights when a Yellowjacket shot in from the left and glanced off the top of the Centaur. That seemed to surprise the riever, and the pedestal shifted ever-so-slightly in the direction from which the missile came.
That was the break Rev needed. He pulled his legs under and through, so he was sitting. Without thinking, he raised Pashu, shouted “Get down” to whoever had fired the Yellowjacket, and fired another Moray.
He immediately rolled over backward into the gash in the ground and landed heavily on the bottom as the Moray hit. There was an explosion, followed a moment later by a larger explosion caused by the riever self-destructing. The shock wave rolled over the ditch, barely touching him.
“Did I do it?”
<It looks like it.>
Disregarding his Optisight, Rev raised his head. Leaves were settling to the ground. Where the riever had been, trunks were shattered, and there was a small crater.
He felt a surge of victory before he remembered the other Marine, the one who’d fired the Yellowjacket. And without whom, Rev might not have made it.
“Are you OK?” he asked, clambering out of the hole.
Some forty meters to his left, in a small depression, Sergeant Gizzy Incrit-Kole gave a shaky thumbs up.
* * *
The lieutenant shook his head in disbelief. “I just got my ass chewed for you taking out all five of the tin-asses.”
Rev looked up from where he was sitting. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“I shit you not. It was Trejo himself. Seems like they had other plans for the rest of them.”
Rev wiped some drying blood from his face. The near miss by the riever had done more damage than he’d thought at the time, and he was dead tired, so the lieutenant’s revelation didn’t elicit an angry outburst. He just didn’t have the energy.
He looked across the small clearing where Hussein had a black bag attached to his harness. Inside were parts of Yazzie’s skull and whatever else had been scrounged up. He doubted that everything there massed four kilograms.
To Hussein’s side, Doc Paul was kneeling alongside Nix and Minnow Krill. Minnow was in bad shape, really bad. And at the edge of the clearing were four bodies. Greenie Sjberic, Gunny Lupe, Cujo Lim, and Private Lena Ballesteri, too boot to even have a nickname yet. Nothing was recovered from Bambam.
“Screw them,” Top Thapa said. “Six KIA and two WIA? What the hell were we supposed to do?”
Tomiko reached over from where she was sitting and put a hand on Rev’s leg. It was such a small gesture but welcomed.
Rev had done this. No, he understood that it was the Centaurs, but it was because of Rev that it had been these specific Marines. They were going to send him to Second Raider Platoon, but no, he just had to push and blackmail to get back to First Platoon. These Marines beside him. If he hadn’t been so self-centered, Yazzie, Bambam, and the rest would be alive now.
He wasn’t foolish enough to believe that this would have worked out any differently if he’d been with Second Platoon. Marines would have died. Maybe even more. But the fact was that he barely knew them, and he knew all of these Marines. He was human, after all, and he mourned his friends.
“I have to see the general and the rest when we get up to the ship,” the lieutenant said.
“Better you than me, sir,” the top said. “But I wouldn’t worry too much. They can’t deny that what we did, what Pelletier did, was a success. None of those brass are going to let this be anything other than that.”
“I’m not worried. Like you said, screw them.”
Master Sergeant Thapa was probably right. They would be crowing about their success, and how the proof of concept was checked off the list. More and more Marines would be getting their IBHUs—maybe volunteering to get their arm hacked off to get them.
Gizzy Incrit-Kole had been watching Rev for the last five minutes from across the clearing. He could feel her eyes burn into him. The sergeant finally got up and started across to him.
Not now, Gizzy, please.
She hadn’t liked the mission from the beginning, and now she’d lost four of her team. She probably blamed him.
With a sigh, he turned to face her, but she sat down, picking a piece of grass and putting it between her teeth.
“You did good, Rev,” she said, to his surprise. “I thought . . . I thought this was some bullshit, you know. But you kept us alive. Gunny, he said he had to hold the line to let you all get away, and we agreed. If you hadn’t charged down like some fucking avenging angel, well, we all would have bought it.”
Tomiko stood and went to Gizzy to give her a hug. No words because none were needed.
A high whine reached them, and twenty-seven sets of eyes looked up.
“That’s our ride,” Top Thapa said. “Clear the LZ, and let’s get off this ball of shit.”