29
“No batteries for me?”
“Sorry, Rev. No,” Tomiko said.
“Shit! How the hell do they expect me to fight if I don’t have freakin’ power!” he shouted into the treetops.
“What are you at now?” Tomiko asked.
“Sixteen freaking percent.”
“How long will that last you?”
“If I don’t have to use Pashu? Maybe a day. A little longer. If we engage, who knows?”
He could ask Punch for some numbers, but Rev didn’t want to hear what they were just now. He’d ask later for various projections, but for the moment, it would just piss him off more.
When the food, water, and munitions caches were made, there was no such thing as an IBHU, and the developers of the system didn’t take power into consideration. If they had, they would have made the system work on standard battery packs instead of a unique design with different specs. There wasn’t even a way to jury-rig anything in the cache to make it work.
“Take six of the Morays, and, if you can, husband the power. Don’t use your beamer unless you have to.”
Rev shook his head. Pashu supposedly cost almost as much as a Shrike, and that was a lot of money and effort for a Moray launcher. Here he was, attached to a certified Centaur-killer, and he was afraid to use her and run out of all power.
He took the Morays, putting two in the rails and the other four in the holster on his back, then refilled water and combat rats. He sat on a fallen tree and closed his eyes for a moment.
He hurt. His body was telling him he needed a break. Two weeks with Pashu attached was in some ways more difficult than the time he spent in the EVA suit on the asteroid. True, here he had fresh air and sun in his face, but gravity was making him resent his IBHU. She’d kept him alive during the fights, but now, she was dragging on his shoulder. The jolt she’d taken at Tensing Station hadn’t helped either. Punch said everything was back to green, but he was sure she was out of whack. So, now, even more than before, he was sore and inflamed at the sleeve. Not only that, but his harness was pulling so that every step felt like a mouse gnawing at him from the inside.
“How long since my last neuralgia block?”
<Two hours, forty-six minutes.>
He grimaced. He knew it hadn’t been long enough, but he’d hoped for something a little later. It was the only thing that helped, but he couldn’t take it at closer intervals than eight hours, or his reflexes would suffer—not something a Marine wanted while fighting Centaurs. Doc Paul might be able to hook him up with something that his nanos weren’t equipped to give him, but for some reason, he didn’t want to let anyone know he was suffering. It was stupid, he knew. The master guns, as his team leader, and Tomiko, as his element leader, deserved to know if he wasn’t at a hundred percent. But he still hesitated.
“OK, let’s form up. We’ve still got time, but I want to be in place long before the tin-asses get there,” the master guns said.
With a barely suppressed sigh, Rev got to his feet and moved to the front of the column, where he waited until the team leader gave the order to move out. On every movement, he was point, which made a lot of sense. He was able to react quicker than anyone else on the team, and while the rest of the Marines could take down a drone with their M-49 or attached grenade launcher with the shotgun round, that still took aiming and possibly several shots to hit it. With Rev, a single measured pulse with his beamer was enough to seal the deal.
The ambush location was only eighteen hundred meters from the cache, an easy hump. And this entire AO was exquisite, Rev had to admit. The combat engineers had done an amazing job, as always first with subtle barriers that would nudge any Centaurs heading toward the Grace Canyon resorts toward a deceptively difficult path, then progressively canalize them into a sweet kill zone that sappers and engineers had riddled with booby traps and some impressive mines. The Raiders had been told that there was even a deadfall that the engineers were betting could take out a riever for sure, but maybe even a paladin.
This spot had been ready since the second day of the battle, but no Centaurs had moved in that direction until now. Three had been spotted by two different CWV teams as they headed up Bluetop Road as it wound up Bluetop Creek, and if they kept coming, they’d be walking into the ambush.
Despite his physical discomfort, Rev started to feel his old friend, adrenaline, start to make its presence known. He could feel his warrior coming on, and the ache faded away. With their gats expended, this was a kill mission, pure and simple, something the team could sink their teeth into.
A Raider team against three paladins certainly wouldn’t be an easy kill, even with Rev and Pashu. But even one would be a moral victory, if nothing else. With the Centaurs still holding Swansea, the Marines needed all the moral victories they could get.
Rev led the team cross country. Centaur drones could be anywhere, but they tended to follow the roads. Particularly in the foothills, that made sense when fighting armor. The gullies and slopes cut by years of snowmelt and rainfall pretty much limited armor mobility. But mechs could traverse the terrain, much less ground pounders. For an enemy so highly developed in so many ways, sometimes they could sure be dumb.
They reached the far side of the ambush site, a thirty-meter-high cliff on the far side of the creek. With Bluetop Road blocked two hundred meters back, thanks to an engineer-created rockslide, the flat grassy area on the near side looked like an easy way forward. But a small diversion in the creek now soaked the ground with water, which would make the paladins’ twenty-two legs sink deep into the marshy soil.
Slow movement and no way forward meant the Centaurs would either try and cross the creek and scale the cliffs—which was possible but not probable, even for a paladin—die in place, or retreat. And Rev’s mission was to make sure they would pay the price for trying to run. The Morays weren’t proving very effective, but his cannon could kill, and if they hit one of the mines, that should be enough to tally a couple of Centaur kills.
Rev took his position at the front of the ambush, where he had clear lines of fire into the kill zone. When the Centaurs moved through, he was going to let them pass. The ambush would be kicked off beyond him, and if they tried to retreat, then he would open fire with his beamer first, Moray second, hoping to cut them down.
The team would immediately pull back whether any Centaurs survived or not and try to put some distance between them and their position before the inevitable response.
Rev settled into place on his stomach, then pulled his tarp over himself. He should be essentially invisible to outside observers, just another piece of the forest floor. Now it was just time to wait.
* * *
The beetle trundled across Rev’s line of sight, just centimeters from Rev’s tarp. It reached the chunk of wood Rev had placed there to break up his outline even more. Its iridescent green shell almost sparkled in the late afternoon light as it tried to climb the wood until it toppled over backward.
Just go around.
But with legs flailing, it finally righted itself to try again, and with the same results.
Stupid beetle.
Once again, it flailed its legs until one caught on the edge of the branch, and it turned over.
This time, as it started forward, Rev broke protocol. He reached his hand out from under the tarp and lifted the branch. The beetle didn’t seem to notice and marched on, oblivious of the giant who was clearing the way for it.
You’re welcome.
He brought his hand back when a soft scruff caught his attention, and he froze. There was nothing in the kill zone. Then, there it was again, but behind him.
“What do you need, Miko?”
“Hell, I knew I couldn’t sneak up on you.”
Rev smiled. It could have been the master guns, but whoever it had been sounded smaller, and that left Tomiko as the only other Marine who might have broken her position.
“You holding up OK?”
Rev didn’t bother turning around. “My damn diaper’s full, but other than that, yeah, I’m still alert and ready.”
Tomiko chuckled. “That’s what you get for being an oversized gorilla with an oversized bladder. I’m still pretty dry.”
Rev’s crystal pouch had some absorption capacity left, but that would be gone if they were stuck in the position much longer. In an ambush, he wasn’t going to back off his position and take a leak. He’d actually been surprised that Tomiko was crawling around, element leader or not.
“Master Guns says we’re gonna stay until nightfall, and if the tin-asses haven’t come, then pull back to Checkpoint three-oh-six. So, when you hear the signal, start off, and we’ll follow in trace.”
“Got it.”
“OK, I’m heading back. Just be ready.”
“Where were they last spotted?” Rev asked before Tomiko could back away from the ridgeline.
“Team Six Twenty-One saw them at the bend in Turtle Road at zero-seven-twenty this morning.”
Rev pulled that up to his retinal display. If the Centaurs were at that spot that early, they should have been here at least three hours ago, given their normal rate of advance. Either they were moving much slower than normal, they’d stopped for some reason, or they’d turned back.
“OK, thanks, Miko.”
He listened to her crawl away as he deflated. This looked like it was going to be a bust. They hadn’t had contact now for three days, and Rev was itching for action. The sooner they could end this, the sooner the planet’s survivors could start to rebuild.
But maybe, just maybe, the Centaurs would still come. Rev tried to project his senses forward, seeking any sign of the enemy. But even the birds were quiet.
Along with his disappointment, his aches returned. Add being flat on his belly and his body weight pushing down, his harness was digging into his skin. He could take another dose of the blockers now, but if they were going to lie in wait for another two hours, he decided to wait until then.
The sound didn’t register with him at first, just a little background noise, but it grew in intensity until he noticed it. It took a few more minutes before he realized what it was. A ship was descending in the distance with the nerve-numbing whine of a Centaur vessel.
Ambush forgotten, Rev pulled back his tarp and looked up, but the trees blocked his view. Twenty meters away, Radić was doing the same.
“All hands, on me!” the master guns bellowed.
Rev jumped up and ran along the ridgeline, aches no longer relevant. His mind was racing. The Centaurs were sometimes known to reinforce planets they took, and if they were landing more fighters, then Rev didn’t see how they could possibly fight them off.
“I’m canc’ing this,” the master guns said as Rev, the last one in the line, reached him. “Corporal Pelletier, take point, and push it. We’re going back to the last cache. I need to get on the comms and find out what’s going on.”
Rev started down the backside of the ridge when a break in the trees revealed the entire plains across to the Rusty Mountains. And in the distance, where lingering smoke obscured most of Swansea, a Centaur ship was landing. Rev and Radić paused for a moment to look before Tomiko told them to move on.
Rev bounded down to the bottom, then led off at a quick pace. They still didn’t know where the three paladins that were heading their way were, and if that ship was an indication of reinforcements, then the planet couldn’t afford to lose a single Marine to a stupid loss of tactical concentration.
The movement to the ambush site from the cache had taken eighty minutes. The trip back took seventeen. Rev pushed to the far side and took a knee, Pashu trained outboard. He had a better view of the plains now, but the ship wasn’t in sight.
The master guns went straight to the hidden receiver. Rev’s focus was forward security, but he couldn’t help himself from trying to pick up what the master guns was saying on his end of the line.
Finally, the team leader said, “Everyone, listen up. That ship we saw has landed at the university athletic complex. We don’t know anything else at this time. Our orders are to stay here until the situation becomes clearer.”
“Do we know what happened to the three paladins that were heading our way?” Radić asked. “That might tell us something.”
Rev turned to look at the private, surprised that no one else had thought of that. Including the master gunnery sergeant. He nodded and got back on the line. Thirty seconds later, he put the receiver back and announced, “They reappeared, hightailing back the way they came at eleven-fifteen. So, about half an hour after we got into position.”
They could have gone back because the ambush had been compromised, but Rev’s gut told him that wasn’t the case. If not that, though, then what?
The sun slipped past the peaks of the Rusty Mountains, and Swansea faded away in the shadows and smoke. Lights that would normally appear remained dark.
No one spoke. If they were like Rev, their minds were whirling with possibilities. Not knowing what was happening was excruciating.
The master guns kept picking up the receiver every five minutes or so, but he had nothing to relay to the team until a full hour later. “There’s an open message on the line. If any tin-asses are encountered, we’re ordered not to engage and let them proceed.”
“What do you mean, Master Guns?” Hussein asked. “Just let them attack us?”
“I don’t know what the message means. I’m just relaying it.” He paused as he considered it, then said, “OK, this is what we’ll do. If they attack, fight back. If they’re attacking any citizen, fight back. Otherwise, keep your heads down and let them go do whatever the hell they’re doing.”
“What the heck is going on?” Rev muttered.
“Do you have any ideas?” he asked Punch.
<I don’t have enough input to even give a possible explanation.>
“What about that ship we saw landing. You know what it is?”
<It had the characteristics of what we designate as an AS-40.>
“Which means what?”
<It is just a class of ship with the same outward characteristics. What that might indicate in this case is unknown.>
Well, that sure cleared up things. So glad I asked.
Rev’s shoulder was aching, so he shifted to the right and knelt by one of the benches, letting it take some of Pashu’s weight. He caught Tomiko watching him closely, but she didn’t say anything, and he didn’t volunteer anything.
“Go ahead and give me the blockers.”
<Roger. Starting delivery.>
Even with a nano infusion, it would take at least ten minutes for it to take effect. Rev was counting down the minutes when the whine of the Centaur ship twinged his inner ear. He stood and looked toward Swansea. The enemy ship rose out of the smokey darkness, crabbed away from the mountains, and with unnatural acceleration, shot into the night sky. Nine sets of eyes watched until it disappeared from sight.
Eight of those sets of eyes swiveled to stare at the team leader. The master gunnery sergeant picked up the receiver and listened.
“What are they saying,” Hussein asked. The team leader held out his hand, palm forward, to shut him down.
The team members started to edge closer to him, but the master gunnery sergeant was intent on what was being said on the other end of the line. Finally, with the entire team clustered around him, he lowered the receiver and looked up, his mouth half-open.
“Well?” Hussein prompted.
“Uh . . . our orders are to stay in place. We’ll have more specific orders soon.”
“And? The tin-ass ship?”
“They’re gone.”
“Yes, we saw the ship leave,” Rev said.
The master guns turned from Hussein to Rev and said, “Not the ship. The tin-asses. They mounted up and left. And not just here. All over the planet, their ships have come in to pick them up,” he said, his voice becoming animated.
“The command is urging caution. They don’t know where the ships were taking them. It could just be a redeployment of forces, and we’ll be fighting again tomorrow. But from all appearances, they’re abandoning New Hope.
Rev’s mind was numb as he tried to grasp what the team leader was saying. It didn’t seem possible. Someone took his hand, and he turned to see Tomiko standing there.
“Can it really be true?” she asked.
“Did you hear what I just said?” the master gunnery sergeant asked before shouting out for everyone to hear, “We won! We took back New Hope!”