16
Rev hugged the ground. Centimeters from his face, the dirt was rich and loamy, filling his nostrils with the scent, something he’d rarely noticed before.
Technology. It still amazed him almost six months after his augments. Humanity was advancing by leaps and bounds. It had to. The Centaurs were not going to let up in their attempt to eliminate humanity.
A pebble bounced off of his helmet, and he turned to see the gunny giving him the hand-and-arm signal to keep alert, his face rigid in anger. Rev nodded, then turned his attention back to the valley below.
The irony of that was not lost on him. Human technology was advancing by leaps and bounds, but they were relegated to using hand-and-arm signals, much like the Babylonian armies used. No matter how far humanity advanced, the Centaurs were ahead of them, and the Marines’ comms had been cut for over ten hours now. No comms, no uploads, no downloads.
Rev had his AI and knowledge library, but he was cut off from the rest of the Marines, forced to rely on ancient techniques.
It wasn’t a good feeling.
But this was the face of modern warfare, and he had to concentrate.
“How long until we move?” he whispered.
<Four minutes, thirty-six seconds.>
At least he was meshing better with his AI, and it had almost become natural. Almost. He still felt like he was sharing his brain to an extent, and while he could supposedly put it to sleep when he was off duty, he couldn’t escape the nagging feeling that it was still there, listening and recording. For what, he didn’t know, but he didn’t like it.
His heart was beating hard, almost loud enough to be heard. In a little over four minutes, they’d be leaving the hide to complete the mission—and they had to complete it. The entire regiment was inbound, and if the array was still functioning, then the carnage would be devastating. Failure wasn’t an option.
He checked the charge and the safety of his M-49 for the tenth time in the last twenty minutes. Raiders had more of a choice in their weapons, and he could have picked any number of them, but he was still more used to the 49 than anything else.
Not that the personal weapons were of much use against a Centaur. It could knock down a Centaur’s drone-eyes, but the 8mm round could only penetrate the enemy armor if it had already been severely compromised. Still, the powers that be decided Marines should carry them, if for nothing else than as a security blanket.
Rev was all in for that decision.
And then it was time. Gunny signaled for them to rise. Rev, Tomiko, and Tanu—Lance Corporal Bintang Tanuwijaya—got to their feet. Somewhere over on the next finger, Lieutenant Omestori, their new second lieutenant team leader, and Staff Sergeant Montez would be leading her element forward.
The key in fighting the Centaurs, even in discreet operations as were the Raiders’ usual modus operandi, was for multiple prongs of attack. But without comms, the Marines had to depend upon timing and planning. If the gunny and the staff sergeant had this down, then both elements of the team would arrive close to the same time, ready to kick off the assault.
In a single file, with Rev on point, they slipped through the dense evergreen forest. Rev kept his head on a swivel, looking for any sign of the enemy. If they were spotted, however, chances are he’d never know it. One blast from a Centaur beamer, and the entire element would be toast.
Rev shifted his shoulders, nudging his PAL-5 (Personal Armor, Light-5) combat suit back into place. It never seemed to fit him right, always shifting, and it didn’t provide the best protection, but it was both “slippery” and light camouflaged. Unless a Centaur was specifically looking for them, or it had its gammasearch on narrow lobes, they should be able to get to the target undetected. Most Centaur scan waves would either slip to the side or be absorbed.
Or so the manufacturer said. But the CEO of Ryndyne Industries was back on Titan, not out with the Marines in combat.
From a visual aspect, the hundreds of thousands of optical-grade nanotubes woven into the suit would reroute light around him, revealing whatever was behind him. It was somewhat effective, giving a Marine a chameleon effect, but no one could say with any certainty that the Centaurs used vision in the same way that humans did.
<Come right eighteen degrees.>
A right-pointing arrow flashed five times across his right eye—rather, it seemed as if it was flashing across his eye, being dumped right into his optic nerve. With the mods to his hippocampus, Rev knew where he was within about twenty-five meters. His AI, combining a simple gyroscope with what Rev saw on the ground, was accurate to one meter. In a case like this, where the terrain was accurately mapped out and imaged, it was better to rely on his AI.
Rev turned around and held a hand out, pointing in the new azimuth. The gunny nodded.
Rev led them down the steep slope, working to maintain his footing. He gave the command to extend his pitons vertically. Sixteen pitons, eight on each boot, extended three centimeters, digging into the loose soil. If he hit rock, the pitons’ tips would react by retracting. They made for slower going when extended, but it was better than losing his footing and sliding to the bottom of the slope.
His inner map told him they were just over five hundred meters from the objective when he reached the bottom, a seasonal creek, now dry, that would give them a little more cover as they approached. The creek would emerge from the hills a scant 180 meters away. That was when things would get interesting. They would no longer have the hillside to block any Centaur’s gammasearch, and they’d have to rely on their PAL-5s to keep them invisible.
The sides of the hill closed in around them, transforming rocky cliffs. Rev kept scanning the cliffs. Not because he thought a Centaur would be sitting on them, but to keep an exit plan in mind. A Centaur riever could fly over, and that would be a problem. Even with their augments, it would be difficult to scale the cliffs now. If they were spotted, they really had only one way out, and that was back the way they’d just come.
But nothing interrupted their movement, and with thirteen minutes to spare, they reached their assembly point, right where the creek bed tumbled past the cliff walls and out into the open. Rev went down to his belly. Up ahead, over some loose scree and into the forest, was their objective.
The gunny crawled up alongside him to get the lay of the land. The array itself wasn’t in sight, so they’d be assaulting blind.
<There’s an anomaly on the Lido, bearing zero-zero-nine.>
The gunny’s head whipped around to the right as if linked to Rev’s. He’d gotten the same message.
Being in the ravine had made them more difficult to detect, but it kept their scanners blind as well. The Lido was their most sensitive passive scanner, and it could pick up a gnat’s fart, but as with all passive scanners, it could be spoofed. Not only that, but it could also simply make a mistake.
“What do we do?” Rev asked the gunny.
Gunny Thapa was short, stocky, and immensely strong. Rumor was that his ancestors were Gurkhas, and the mythology about that ancient tribe of warriors rubbed off on him, giving him instant credibility.
But he was also deliberate and sometimes took a while to make a decision. Rev knew time was running out, and he impatiently waited for an order.
“Probability that’s a Centaur?” he subvocalized.
<Sixty-three percent with a nine percent POE.>
“Shit,” he whispered.
A nine-percent Probability of Error was too big to ignore. Rev wanted to switch to an active scan to make sure, but even if the Centaur, if there was one, hadn’t blanketed the area with a stasis field, an active ping would assuredly catch its attention.
Finally, the gunny pointed to the right and said, “See that striated boulder over there at the base of the cliff?”
Rev nodded.
“I need you to low-crawl to that and try to get a better reading. We need to know if it’s a tin-ass or just a ghost.”
If it were a Centaur, then that would put a huge kink in their mission, and the gunny was right. They had to find out more.
The boulder was at the top of a small finger, more like a raised spine that carried on down the hill from the cliff-face. That spine would give him some cover as he crept up to it.
Rev slid over the edge of the creek bed, then slithered over the scree, sending too many small rocks and gravel sliding down the last twenty meters of slope. Rev felt naked and exposed, and that pushed him harder, which sent down even more gravel.
With a gasp of relief, Rev reached the boulder. He took several calming breaths, then slowly raised his head . . . only to drop right back down.
He frantically signed to the gunny. Down the hill, right at the edge of the scree field where the trees began, was a solitary Centaur paladin. It wasn’t obviously powered up, but that didn’t mean anything. Paladins were the heavy Centaur soldiers, armored and loaded with weaponry. They were a little slower than the lighter rievers, but they could dish out—and take in—a lot of punishment.
The gunny signaled him to wait, and he disappeared back up the creek bed.
“Did it see me?”
<Unclear.>
Rev strained to listen. Something that big and heavy couldn’t cross the scree without making any noise, but he heard nothing. The paladins could fly, but that was even noisier.
“Which model was it?”
He’d seen it, but it hadn’t registered in the brief second it was in his sight. His augments didn’t include photographic memory, something he’d welcomed. He could recall the recording and play it back, then figure out which type of Centaur it was, but it was just easier to ask his AI.
<Bravo Model.>
Which meant its main gun was the meson beamer. That was neither good nor bad. Anything a paladin carried was death to a Raider.
The beam cannon was hidden inside the pedestal, probably to protect it until needed. When it wanted to deploy the weapon, it would rise straight up until the bottom of the projector cleared the base of the pedestal. Then the nozzle of the beamer would swing down, and the bulb would swing up, looking like a child’s drinking bird toy. But this toy had a bite—a big bite.
Rev’s hand drifted to his thigh holster where his two Yellowjackets were secured. They were not the preferred weapon to take on a riever, much less a paladin, but they were the only thing he had that could possibly take one out.
Well, he had his Phoenixes—MG-3 Incendiary Mine—small grenades that could burn through anything, including paladin armor, but he doubted the Centaur would just let him saunter right up there and place one on it.
Gunny popped his head back in sight and gave Rev a series of signs. They were about what he expected. They were shifting the mission.
They had to take the paladin out. Its presence wasn’t a coincidence. It had to be there to protect the array, which was about fifty meters farther, and it was too much of a threat. Even if they didn’t manage to destroy it, the fight should give Second Element the diversion they needed to get to the array.
Gunny told him to keep an eye on it while they crossed over to him. He pulled the Optisight-mini out of the slot in his left greaves. Bending the lens at the end ninety degrees, he raised it until it just crested the top of the rock. He should have used it the first time, he knew, instead of raising his head, but it didn’t look like that had cost him.
Some of the bigger Optisights could be jacked, giving far better vision and acuity, but this was the standard infantry version, with no magnification or Night Vision Device capabilities. He didn’t need anything more here. He had his own organic low-light vision now with his augments. The paladin hadn’t moved. It could have been a statue.
“Riever?” Tomiko whispered as she took her position beside him.
“Paladin,” Rev said, keeping glued to the eyepiece.
“Shit. Of course, it would be.”
She shuffled farther down the slope, keeping below the top of the spine.
Within a few minutes, the gunny and then Tanu joined the two of them.
“Hasn’t moved,” Rev signed, taking his eye off the Centaur. “Paladin,” he added, realizing he hadn’t passed the vital bit of information to him.
Gunny grimaced, then signed, “Eighteen minutes. Attack.”
Rev checked his timer. The original assault by both elements was to kick off in Twenty minutes, forty-three seconds. He was about to question the gunny before he realized why he’d moved it up.
Both elements in the team were to assault together, based on the time. However, with the chances of taking out the paladin poor, they had to at least draw its attention away from Bravo Element. Part of their training was to react to the fluid situation in any battle, and if Bravo Element was in position, they’d kick off the moment they heard Alpha kick it off.
Rev pointed back to his Optisight, but the gunny waved him off. Instead, the gunny deployed his and took a short look. He pulled it back, softly shaking his head. He didn’t change the plan.
<Your heartrate is accelerating. Do you wish a suppressant?>
“No! Hell, no.”
That was all he needed now, a downer. He was nervous, no doubt about it, and his heart was racing, but one way or the other, this would be over in about six more minutes.
A pebble hit him, and he glanced back at the gunny, who was glaring at him.
“Pay attention,” the gunny signed, before quickly going over how he wanted to assault the thing. There weren’t a lot of options, not in the time they had left. This was going to be a frontal assault, hitting it hard before it had time to deploy its cannon.
“How long to get that bad boy . . . uh, meson cannon into position and firing?”
<Approximately four seconds.>
Not as long as I hoped.
The gunny was still passing his op order. Rev was to immediately fire first as they rose in unison and rushed forward. The other three were to take more measured shots. Upon firing the element’s eight Yellowjackets, if they were still standing, they’d scatter and try to loop back to the creek bed and hold, either to retrograde or continue the mission to the array.
He ended his order with the interrogatory sign. No one asked anything.
And then there were three minutes.
Rev armed his Yellowjackets, then slipped one back into the holster, but loose, not latched in. He kept the other in his hands, ready to use.
The seconds ticked down, and at one minute, Rev shifted around, face forward. The others followed suit.
His timer approached zero, but the order to go was on the gunny. Rev’s legs bunched underneath him, his eyes on his team leader. This was it.
The gunny held his hand in a fist, catching the eyes of each of them, then he unclenched, tilting his hand forward. Rev scrambled over the berm, deploying his Yellowjacket, Tomiko on his flank. Ahead of him, the Centaur spun on its base to face him. Rev didn’t have time for the textbook position. He brought the Yellowjacket to his hip and fired. The missile flashed forward, covering the eighty meters in a split second. It hit with a flash, but the beam cannon continued to deploy, rising on the pedestal, while the projector jackknifed down to take them under aim.
Tomiko fired, her Yellowjacket hitting at the juncture of the projector and pedestal. The projector stopped for a moment.
“We’ve got the bastard!” Rev yelled as Tanu knelt, his Yellowjacket on his shoulder.
Rev pulled out his last Yellowjacket . . . and his vision faded to black.
“Son of a bitch!” he yelled out, fumbling for his jack. He yanked the cable out, and his helmet visor cleared.
The four of them were standing on their motion pads, looking around the CST in confusion.
“Gunny, we weren’t done!” Tanu yelled in frustration. “We coulda got the bastard.”
“I don’t know what happened. Hang on.”
“Well, that’s the shit,” Tomiko said, taking off her helmet. “I wonder if we’re going to have to reboot and start from the beginning.”
“Hell, I hope not,” Rev said.
Simulation or not, the training mission still took real-time, and the physical exertion was actual. Every step they took up a hill might be in the Combat Simulation Trainer, but with the motion pads tilting under their feet, it was real. Every slam on the ground as they took cover was real—it was just in the CST training pod.
“Take a seat while I find out what’s going on,” the gunny said as he headed for the door.
The STA pods were all automated. There wasn’t an operator there to ask. The three Marines headed to the back where along the bulkhead and took a seat on the bench there.
Rev unclasped his PAL-5 and reached inside to adjust the harness. “We can fight a fucking tin-ass, but they can’t design this armor better. It keeps sliding down on me.”
“Oh, so now you think it’s real,” Tomiko said with a laugh. “What about those jackheads you keep complaining about?”
“Bite me,” Rev muttered.
To his surprise, he was coming around to the idea of immersion training, if not immersion games. He’d just been in a fight with a Centaur, and it was real, for all intents and purposes. He’d been there. He’d smelled the dirt, for God’s sake. And if he’d been killed, well, there was always next time.
Over in Second Element, Staff Sergeant Montez had evidently been a big-time gamer in her past, even winning a planet-wide title. And even for a boot like him, it was obvious that she was hot shit, destined for bigger and better things.
He still thought most immersion gamers were wasting their lives, but if the staff sergeant was a product of the culture, then maybe it wasn’t all bad.
The door into the pod opened, and gunny came in, his face set in stone.
“What’s up, Gunny?” Tanu asked. “Why’d they stop the mission?”
“Training’s over. The Centaurs are on the move, and we’ve got forty-three hours to embark. It’s time to get back to the shit.”