Five by Five Page 12

  Both hatches surrendered at the same time, and on the visual monitors he watched the remaining members of the hunter squad move with brisk efficiency through the corridors up to the cockpit. The humans were wearing mirrored armor, which would reflect the beam of his laser rifle.

  “I’ll take out as many as I can, but I doubt I’ll get them all,” he said. “Sorry we didn’t make it all the way.”

  “We made it this far, Rader, and now we are dead.” Click’s voice was strangely emotionless. “But so are they.”

  Rader identified an expression on the alien face that no other human would have seen. Click punched a sequence into the navigational computer, and the observatory asteroid shifted its position in front of them. “Our engines cannot outrun the fighterships, but we have enough power to drag them along.”

  Rader nodded approval. “A Deathguard’s mission is to cause mayhem.”

  “Yes, I believe we have caused a fair amount of mayhem,” Click said.

  “I just wish we had accomplished something more than that.” He wondered if the Commissioner would take the medal of honor away from his family … but that would be admitting something had gone wrong.

  The six members of the hunter squad advanced up to the control deck.

  Rader darted a farewell glance at his comrade. After setting their collision course, Click crouched in motionless silence, not even trying to fight. Instead, he hunched over a shining image, studying his last holystal. The glowing shape was a dazzling, perfect sphere.

  Rader took a quick breath. “What does that mean?”

  “It means that we have run out of alternatives.”

  The hunter squad let out a chorus of shouts as they stormed the final corridor. Rader opened fire, placing a neat, centimeter-wide hole through the head of one Jaxxan.

  Now the Werewolf Trigger clamored in his mind, but as he fired on the advancing squad members, his arm jerked and spasmed, spoiling his aim. The Jaxxans took shelter against door wells in the corridor, and Rader’s energy blasts reflected off the mirrored armor, ricocheting down the hall. The fractured beams dissipated, but he kept firing.

  Rader’s leg gave out beneath him, and he tumbled over like a mannequin. He tried to aim his laser rifle as momentum carried his body in a clumsy roll, and he lay face up on the deck.

  An energy-web hurled by the two remaining Jaxxans engulfed Click in luminous tangles. Click cried out as the web completed itself, but his words turned to scintillating shards of sound. His holystal dwindled to a last spark of light until that, too, vanished.

  The human fighters targeted the Deathguard and rushed forward, while the Jaxxans ran past him, urgently trying to reach the shuttle controls in time. Rader stared at them through his visor: A band of humans and aliens working together, to destroy a human and alien who had dared to work together. He wondered if they understood the irony.

  He looked past them to the cockpit to see the observatory asteroid rushing toward them. The cargo shuttle was going to crash into the spiny missile batteries instead of the telescopes … not that it made any difference.

  A short time was better than no time—and he had spent it with a friend rather than alone.

  –15–

  Sobel grinned, ready to celebrate the news. “Well, Kiltik—we did it!”

  “Yes, not even one of your Deathguards could resist the two of us.” The Warlord sat across from him in the conference room on the Détente Asteroid. Kiltik had shuttled over to the Earth League embassy at Sobel’s invitation, so they could await the final report.

  The Warlord seemed troubled, however. The Commissioner would never have noticed it before, but now he could detect subtle differences in the alien’s moods. “You don’t seem as overjoyed as I expected.”

  “Perhaps I grieve for the loss of your … astronomical facility.”

  “Oh, that!” Sobel brushed the matter aside. “It was obsolete. We can always build another one—astronomy is low on our priorities.”

  “But it did provide a good hiding place for your weapons stockpile. Either astronomy is quite a volatile science, or your supposed observatory was merely a camouflage.”

  Sobel felt flustered and embarrassed, especially in his moment of great victory. “I could lie about that, but you’d be able to detect the truth, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes.” For his own part, unfortunately, Sobel couldn’t tell whether the Jaxxan was lying. The Warlord said, “We will need to discuss this further—at the appropriate time.”

  “I’d be happy to talk about it with you, but right now, this calls for a drink! Would you care for some refreshment?”

  The Jaxxan rattled his dry cough. “Water would be nice.”

  “Nothing more festive?” Sobel frowned. “As you wish, Warlord.” He placed ice cubes in a glass and filled it from a pitcher.

  Kiltik broke out in a spasm of raspy coughing. Sobel ran to help him. “You really should have that cough taken care of. Would you like one of my medics to check you out?”

  The Jaxxan breathed deeply, expressing his thanks. “No, it would do no good. The dry air of Fixion has ruined my health. I have spent years in this climate—it is a wonder I’m still alive, so far from home.” In a distant, dreamy voice, Kiltik described his warm humid planet with steaming jungles and crystal cities, where rain fell in syrupy drops and sluggish rivers were choked with sweet algae.

  Sobel tried to picture it. “After our great victory over the two deserters, can’t you use the political mileage to request a transfer back to Jaxx? For a short while at least?”

  “I do not plan to report this matter to my superiors at all. I will be here for the duration of the war.” He looked up. “How long are you to be stationed here?”

  “I have a year and a half left of my three years.”

  “A year and a half.” Kiltik sipped his cold water. “These facilities on the Détente Asteroid are used ineffectively.” He paused for a long moment. “Would it be possible for me to visit you from time to time, friend Sobel?”

  Still deciding what his celebratory drink would be, the Commissioner finally sat down with his own glass of ice water. “That could be arranged.” He chuckled. “Friend Kiltik.”

  The End

  SHORES OF THE INFINITE

  An ICAS File

  Loren L. Coleman

  –1–

  Making planetfall in an Alliance dropcraft was one of Sergeant Marcos Rajas’ least favorite experiences. Pounding turbulence shoved his heart into his throat and slammed a headache behind his eyes. Violent flashes of atmospheric ionization blanked the craft's smartwalls with washes of bright light and static, followed by complete, disconcerting darkness. And the drop. From insertion to hard contact—eighty-three klicks this fall—in less than four minutes, wrenching his guts into a tight, hard ball. The experience rated right behind taking overwhelming combat fire from a Cyborg assault force.

  Making the fall through combat fire? A descent into hell.

  Plasma bursts roiled and burned in the lower atmosphere, creating fiery clouds which spanned a half kilometer each. Concussive waves overlapped, mercilessly battering the dropcraft as forces threatened to overload its inertial stabilizers.

  Lower, laserfire slashed and stabbed at the edge of the craft's shields, searching for flaws. Most of the energies washed over them in sheets of sharp-edged color—yellows and pale greens and brief, flickering orange. Converted to heat.

  Even in his Interservice Combat Assault Suit, Marcos sweated as interior temperature pushed upwards of forty degrees Celsius.

  Or maybe that had little to do with the heat.

  “Gotta be a better way,” Big Mike said through clenched teeth. Same thing the lance corporal said each and every drop.

  Maybe there would be a better way to insert ground forces. Someday. Star jumpers making precision orbits. Punching out ICAS troopers in individual drop pods, disbursing the team through a planet’s upper atmosphere with enough high-end jamming and effective chaff to make defensive
fire from the ground an exercise in futility. Every soldier’s dream come true.

  Filed on the Alliance’s to-do list right behind the invention of personal defense shields and hunting down a unicorn.

  In the meantime, dropcraft were what they had.

  This dropcraft was the same as any of a hundred others Marcos had ridden into hot landing zones. Stripped of almost anything flammable, fragmenting, or sharp-edged. A narrow, steel box with deep benches running down each side. Restraining clamps which locked into sockets at the back of each armored suit. And “chicken sticks” bolted to the craft's walls over each shoulder which no self-respecting combat soldier would ever use even if their hands weren't already clamped around an assault rifle. The malfunctioning smartwalls attempted to update the twenty-four man platoon with a constant stream of information imprinted over an outside “window” view. Bearing, attitude and rate of descent was information either lost on Marcos or facts he really didn’t want to know. Weather, tactical overview and strategic objectives might update seven or eight times between orbit and contact, and still not be correct. He would rely on his own tactical feed once Ensign Dillahunty, ship’s pilot, dropped the craft’s OVERRIDE.

  A new wash of bright yellow energies flooded the wall’s output, and the craft groaned, bucked hard, pressing Marcos and his men hard against their benches. A smartwall plate opposite him cracked under stress, spitting violet sparks over Three-Joe and a sleeping Princess.

  Marcos’ faceplate polarized as the ICAS technology read the spitting fracture as a possible threat.

  “Dante's elevator.” This from Books, Able’s corporal, seated at the far end of Marcos’ starboard-side bench. With his thick, Savannah III accent, it sounded more like Doantie’s elevayer. “Ah think we’re about the fourth circle a hell right now.”

  “Yeah,” Rabbit agreed as the dropcraft slewed right. “But at least the pay sucks.”

  Like Big Mike, both men had dropped into STANDARD VOICE comms—all the platoon would be allowed until thirty seconds before hard contact. Reserving bandwidth for the spacer pukes.

  “Ninety seconds,” Ensign Dillahunty informed the platoon on his OVERRIDE frequency. He sounded positively cheerful, despite the beating taken by his stubborn little vessel. “Grid Epsilon, Square one-niner-five. On target.” A pause. Then, only slightly less cheerful: “Hostile forces have flanked Third Company at the city’s edge. Cybs are bleeding through our position.”

  “Location, location, location,” Jeremiah Gravel sang in his perfect tenor. Before getting pulled for active Interservice Duty the PFC had enlisted with the Choir of the Angels. If he wasn’t also a deadly shot, Marcos would have considered Gravel’s move to combat duty a waste of talent.

  “And we’re hot,” Marcos called out as an UPDATE warning flashed across his retinas.

  Sixty seconds to contact. His suit’s DATA STREAM burned with strategic updates and new tactical intel. Twenty-four amber status icons lit up in a standing column along the edge of his faceplate as every soldier in Second Platoon auto-registered. Marcos swept them all into a single glance and blinked them into the VOID, all but Princess who’s icon flashed dimly at two-second intervals. He sagged forward, still asleep despite the gut-busting ride and a continuous trickle of burning sparks bouncing off his right shoulder.

  At contact minus forty-five seconds Marcos queued up and reviewed his standing orders in a quick scan. Nine … now ten … prioritized from Command by what some egghead once explained was “a non-deterministic or ‘greedy’ algorithm.” A concept which Books or maybe Squelch might understand, but the math usually lost Marcos within a few pages.

  It worked. That was enough.

  He swept through the top five orders which generally accounted for, in his experience, eighty-plus percent of all likely tactical situations. Secure and defend immediate area now rated higher than Support forward maneuvers. A result of the Cybs flanking Third Company’s position. Deploy for hostile intent came next but would fall off the queue entirely within two minutes of contact. Then, Maintain unit discipline. That one always remained in the top four.

  Fifth: Preserve AID assets. Meaning their lives. It was nice of Command to show they cared. At least down around the twentieth percentile.

  And then there was the big question. The one not directly reflected in his standing orders at any priority, but which every officer and senior non-com were asking among themselves. Why this world? Not that the Cyborgs needed a reason beyond their need to harvest. Usually. But if that was the case, why were the Cybs still here?

  The dropcraft shook violently as it began final braking maneuvers, shaking Marcos from his thoughts. BANDWIDTH added three more golden bars to its signal strength. He swallowed dryly.

  “Thirty seconds,” he said through clenched teeth. “Check your networks. Light up targeting.”

  Icons glowed on his “Christmas Tree” display again, this time in ready-green. All but one.

  “Someone give Princess a kiss.”

  From either side of the sleeping ICAS trooper, Three-Joe and Ash slammed the butts of their CAR-7 field-enhanced combat rifles into Josh Armstrong’s armored chest.

  “Wuzzit?” Princess yawned, straightening. “Five-by.”

  Princess’ icon burned into a steady green and Marcos cleared the tree again. “You’ll all be relieved to know that Command has once again directed us to survive. So nobody dies without orders. Clear?”

  “Clear!” Second Platoon shouted in one voice.

  All the time Marcos had to bolster morale. Their dropcraft slammed upward as it fired landing thrusters, adding two extra gravities of weight to each man as plasma burners filled the small vessel with a deep, throaty roar.

  Smartwalls—all but the shattered one which continued to spit and crackle—found the horizon, then filled rapidly with their first good look at the world labeled Rho VII on navigation charts but was called “Bountiful” by local Alliance citizens when referring to their world or their capital city. Maybe it had been, once. Before the Cybs found it. At a glance, those days seemed to be over. Thin forests of asparagus-looking trees burned to the south and west, filling Rho VII’s gray-green sky with thick, oily smoke. An ash-colored river pushed glumly through the conflagration. If there was anything left there to save, the fires would take care of it long before any AID forces could investigate. To the north, rocky hills grew rapidly into steep, scrub-painted mountains. Possible survivors. Estimated at a low-to-medium threat for encountering Cyborg Walkers.

  East. That was where the action was. A ruined city of gray stone buildings and black, fusion-smoothed streets. The tallest buildings—what had once been five towers of gleaming white stone according to pre-mission briefs—were now piles of smoldering debris. Nothing much over three stories remained standing. Six square kilometers of narrow, rubble-choked streets, blind corners, and what Command estimated might be as many as four thousand citizens cut off from the planetary-wide evac.

  Along the city’s southern edge a half dozen enemy flitters fell and then rose again as they delivered reinforcements and left with raw materials. Not even the deepest Alliance conditioning prevented Marcos’ involuntary shiver. Every soldier’s nightmare. Killed and rendered down for parts to feed the Cyborg military machine. Or, captured. Preserved. Your brain used as the mind of a new Walker. Possibly, in some fashion, still aware of what had happened to you.

  And maybe Command had it right, and questions in the ranks were all for nothing. Rho VII was being harvested right down to its core. An estimated ten thousand civilians killed or taken. Humans always wanted answers, but in Marcos’ experience the Cybs had no higher purpose. They attacked, and they gathered, until losses outweighed gains.

  His platoon was here to make damn sure that losses outweighed.

  The final ten seconds counted down through the DATA STREAM. Marcos tore his gaze away form the smartwalls. “Weapons hot.”

  Most of his platoon carried CAR-7s, and a cascading series high-pitched tones buzzed t
hrough the dropcraft as power supplies lit off, forming a brief interference pattern.

  Cowboy and Big Mike, issued plasma area-dispersion weapons, locked in their safeties. A deep, thrumming bass—almost too low to hear—squeezed at the back of Marcos’ skull as each man dumped their PAD’s high-energy capacitors into dispersion coils.

  A final, bone-jarring jolt as the dropcraft struck down on the planet. The banging release as restraining clamps unlocked all twenty-four ICAS troopers at once. Next to Marcos’ shoulder, the craft’s back end split open and out like a huge, threatening maw to vomit his relief force. Near the front, behind Books and Cowboy, auxiliary panels would be sliding open as well, allowing three-point egress for the platoon’s senior non-comms to hit the ground all at once.

  Before Marcos’ final “Go!” order could be transmitted, received, and acted upon by his command, half of them were already on the move.

  Spreading out on another, embattled Alliance world.

  –2–

  Tevin pressed back into the shattered wall behind which his most recent group of survivors hid. Echoes of gunfire rolled along the streets. There were calls, and screams, but faint. Blocks away. Heavy action had moved outside the city days ago—now a distant storm of bright, clashing energies and the sonic thunder of arriving Alliance dropcraft. Every few minutes the ground quaked from strategic weapons released on the city’s western edge, but none of the danger felt immediate.

  Nothing felt close.

  Tevin rubbed the gritty sting of smoke from his eyes. Taking one of his last two boomers from the canvas messenger bag slung over one shoulder, he pumped his right arm a few times to feel the weight. A half kilo of “flash” packed into a short, steel pipe, there was enough street-formula explosive in it to blow a small hole in the side of a building. Enough to make a Walker really angry. Maybe hurt it, if he could get close enough.