Authors: Mark Kalina
The
mournful ping of the linkage to the rear-most trailer failing was just loud
enough to hear from the driver's cab of the mover. Private Cal Piper cursed as
trailer rolled to a stop amid a dissipating cloud of dust.
"We've
lost the rear trailer!" he called into the comm system.
"Stop
the train," came the reply from Dave, up in the gun cab, and Cal applied
the brakes, slowly cutting speed. Dave had warned him that the ATV-train
handled like a giant, angry, pregnant pig. Not that Cal had ever seen a giant,
angry, pregnant pig, but Dave's words had a certain resonance even so.
The
mover was a simple enough thing to drive; a big all-terrain tracked utility
vehicle. It was the addition of four trailers, linked one by one behind the
mover, that was the problem. Stop too fast and they'd crash into the back of
each other and jack-knife all over the desert.
Or
rather, three of them would. The last one had broken loose and was now a couple
of hundred meters behind the ATV-train.
"What
now?" Cal asked into his comm.
"Now
we get out and haul that bastard back up here, fix the link, and drive
on," Dave replied.
"Can
I try to back up so we don't have to pull a ten ton trailer a quarter
klick?" Cal asked.
"No
chance. Backing an ATV train just doesn't happen, unless you're on smooth,
paved stone. No, we have to do this the hard way. We disconnect the mover,
drive it over to the last trailer, fix the link, tow the last trailer up to the
other three, then push it into place and get the mover back in front. Figure
about two, three hours."
"Shit,"
Cal said.
"Welcome
to the Auxiliary Corps," Dave replied cheerfully.
It
took Cal and Dave about half an hour to disconnect the mover and drive it over
to the "lost" trailer. It would have been faster, but Dave insisted
that one of them keep a gun in hand and one eye on their surroundings as they
worked.
"We're
within twenty klicks of two camps. Their scroungers could have seen us. It's
not like they usually shoot on sight, but there's no sense in getting
careless," Dave had said.
Which
meant, for the most part, that Dave stayed in the gun cab with the 6.7mm MG-61
light machinegun, and Cal had to work with heavy equipment under the searing
hot desert sun.
The
jingle of chains gave the ambush away.
Cal
was trying to fix the hitch linkage; the metal had sheered right off, but Cal
figured a few loops of carbon-fiber through the center of the linkage would be
enough to hold it for a day or two. That meant getting out the plasma cutter
and burning a hole through the steel, but there wasn't another way to do it...
not that he or Dave could think of.
The
sound of the plasma cutter was an electric hiss, loud enough to hide anything
short of a shout or a gunshot. Maybe that's why Cal hadn't heard the gun-boys
get close as they moved towards him, darting from rock to rock.
But
when he shut the cutter off and set it down to cool —the little fucker
got hot— the sudden jingle of chains from behind a big rock, about
fifteen meters to his left, caught his attention.
"Hey
Dave, what's that noise?" he asked into his helmet comm-link , pointing
towards the sound.
The
refugee gun-boy rose up from behind the rock and leveled a blocky-looking black
rifle from the hip, and all Cal could do was stare in utter, horrified surprise.
The
man was dark-skinned, his face covered in swirling tattoos, dressed in a vest
layered with thin steel chains. His teeth, barely lighter colored than his
skin, were bared in a mad, triumphant rictus.
"
En poola chappu
, you DF
okkala-oli!
Die!" screamed the man,
and opened fire.
The
rifle went off with a shattering roar and bullets kicked up pulverized desert
dirt all around Cal. Something tugged for a fraction of a second at his loose
uniform tunic. Bullets slapped the air all around him and pinged violently off
the trailer behind him. A bullet smashed into the cutter at his feet, sending
the tool spinning.
For
a long second, Cal was too horrified to even remember the G60 rifle slung over
his shoulder. Then he began to fumble for it.
The
gun-boy was still shooting, not even fifteen meters away, screaming in an
incomprehensible language, eyes wide in a face twisted by a grimace of rage or
shock.
The
sound of a burst hammered from behind Cal, almost lost in the thunder of the
gun-boy's fire. Three or four puffs of dust rose from the gun-boy's chest, as
if he was an old rug that had been hit hard with a stick, and the gun-boy
crumpled to the ground.
Cal
had his G60 in his hands now, but there was suddenly no more shooting.
"Holy
shit!" shouted Dave from behind him. "Are you hit? Are you OK?"
"Holy
shit!" Cal shouted.
"Fuck!
Are you hit, man? Are you hit?"
"Uh,
no. I don't think so," Cal managed to say. There was no pain, and a quick
look down at himself showed no blood, no injuries.
Dave
let go of the grips of his machinegun and jumped down from the gun cab,
fumbling with the sling of his own G60 as he ran over.
"Let
me look at you," he shouted, patting at Cal's chest.
"Fuck...
me," he said at length. "You didn't get hit."
"Yeah,"
Cal managed to breath.
Dave
was shaking his head in amazement. "The fucker missed you from less than
twenty meters. He just missed you. Or... wait. No. Shit," Dave said,
pointing to Cal's tunic.
Cal
looked down to where the tunic had been neatly cut open by a bullet, less than a
centimeter from his left side. Suddenly he could feel a crawling sensation in
the skin over his ribs.
"Fuck,"
Cal breathed.
"Yeah,"
Dave agreed. "Remind me to never play cards with you, man. I didn't know
anybody could get that lucky."
"He...
he was trying to kill me."
"Well,
yeah. That's why we carry these rifles. Dumb fuck, though. I guess he didn't
seem me in the gun cab. Figured you were alone, or something."
"I..."
Cal started to say, and stopped, suddenly feeling more than a little sick to
his stomach.
"Hang
on," Dave added, "let me take a look."
Perhaps
unwisely, Cal followed him.
The
gun-boy was still alive, but dying messily. Blood was pooled on the hard-packed
desert ground all around him. The man's chest was bathed in red gore, but
Cal could see bubbles forming in three
distinct spots as the man tried and failed to gasp for air.
The
dying man met Cal's eyes for a second, and then went still, eyes glazing over.
"Fuck,"
Dave said.
"Oh,
god," Cal said.
"It's
cool, man," Dave said, putting a hand on Cal's shoulder. "It's cool.
Take it easy."
"I..."
Cal started to say.
"It's
cool," Dave repeated. "Man, it's normal to feel sick... it's ugly,
but it turned out OK. You spotted the bad guy and pointed him out to me. You
did OK. Bad guy's dead; good guys are both alive. It's all good, OK?"
"Yeah,"
Cal managed to say, sucking in deep breaths to keep a sense of nausea from
rising.
"Just
hold on while I take a look around," Dave said, holding his G60 ready.
"Might be more of the fuckers hiding. If you see something again, sing
out, man, OK?"
Cal
nodded and tried to keep his own rifle ready, trying to watch in all directions
as Dave jogged out at an angle to get a look behind several of the larger rocks
close by.
It
had happened so fast, Cal thought. So fast. One moment, nothing except the hot,
hard work that he can come to expect from his time in the Defense Force, and
the next moment, someone was trying to kill him; bullets coming so close to him
that he could hear them buzz past. So fast.
"Huh.
Man, look at this," Dave said. He'd come back to crouch next to the dead
body and now stood up, lifting the dead man's rifle.
Cal
didn't respond.
"Hey,
Cal! Take a look, man, this is important, I think."
"What?"
"The
rifle, man. Look at it."
Cal
looked at the gun that had almost killed him. It was a compact, black weapon,
polymer framed and lethal looking, not too different from his own G60, save in
details.
"Do
you know what model this is?" Dave asked.
"No..."
"It
kinda looks like... wait a minute..." Dave said, looking at the side of
the weapon. "No markings, but I'd swear it looks like a Beretta AR-250.
That's... weird."
"What?"
Cal asked.
"This
is a modern gun, man. The shit-for-brains didn't know how to shoot it, but this
looks like a UEN standard issue light infantry rifle. They adopted it a few
years back and we got a briefing file sent out on it on the Defense Force data-cloud."
Cal
managed to nod, though none of it made sense to him.
"Hey,
man, are you good to go? 'Cause we have to get this trailer linked back up and
get these supplies up. Tell you what, Cal. I'll finish the link-up, and you sit
in the gun cab for a bit. But keep an eye out, man. I think this guy was
probably stoned off his ass and wandering alone, but we can't be sure of that.
Let's get this rig fixed and get the fuck out of here, huh?"
"Oh,
yeah!" Cal replied, walking back to the mover and trying to climb up the
strut-ladder into the gun cab. He could feel his hands trembling and shaking on
the ladder rungs, hard enough to almost make him fall. It made him blush with
shame in the face of Dave's calm, matter-of-fact manner, but he couldn't stop
himself.
Dave
finished the jury-rigged repairs and Cal climbed back out of the gun cab and
into the driver's cab, pulling the trailer back to where the other three
trailers were waiting. Getting it back into its proper place in the train took
another fifteen minutes, less time than Cal would have guessed.
"Hey,
Dave?" Cal asked as they finished connecting the trailers to the mover and
began to climb back to their respective cabs, "what do we do with the...
you know, that guy?"
"He's
dead, man. We do nothing. If some intelligence types want him, we can tell 'em
where to find him. He'll still be here. Meanwhile, we push on. But when we get
to where we're going, we'll tell those Armored Corps guys about this."
"Right,"
Cal said, trying to get a grip on himself.
"Hey,"
Dave added, "you did OK, Cal. It's cool. Getting shook up when someone
shoots at you is normal, man. Just don't try counting on that sort of luck
again, OK?"
***
The
man who called himself "Ren" —and whose actual name was UEN
Peace Force Special Operations Sergeant Li Ziming— cursed as the
newly-made anti-tank rocket clicked and failed to fire. The enemy ATV and its
trailers started up and began to move off. Ren reset the firing controls and
tried to shoot again. Again a click.
He
thought about using his rifle, but the ATV looked at least somewhat armored and
its machinegun would give it a massive firepower advantage over him if it came to
a firefight.
Silently,
he cursed. He cursed himself for taking so long to track down the idiot who'd
stolen the rifle; he cursed the defective rocket and the substandard
field-manufacturing gear that had produced it; he cursed the drug-addled idiot
who'd stolen the rifle and gone out on his idiotic would-be one man raid. Last
and most emphatically, he cursed the mission that had put him here, trying to
turn these useless gangsters into irregular soldiers.
He'd
worked with even worse before, he admitted, in Africa and in Central Asia. But
then he'd had his whole twelve man team with him. This time he had only a three
man team; just him and two others, and it wasn't enough to keep the gangsters
in line.
This,
he thought, was bad. The Arcadian Defense Force soldiers had found one of the
newly made rifles, and now they had escaped. If they brought the weapon to
someone clever, they might deduce things from it that would make the mission
much harder.
On
the other hand, it was unlikely that they would deduce what was about to happen
to them. And in any case, there were only a few days left before it would be
too late to matter.
From
fifteen kilometers away, the glare of the twenty-five launching Chinese
boosters was brighter than the sun. The thunder was deafening even inside the
control bunker. It was the biggest space launch in human history, and Major
General Jose Salvator Bannerman was in charge!
Even
Major Hafez looked awed, an expression Bannerman had never before seen on his
aide's face.
Dozens
of Chinese Space Agency operators were monitoring the launches. Bannerman
didn't understand a word of what they were saying, but it didn't matter. The
huge screen showed him everything he needed to see; the huge Glorious
Prosperity rockets rising on pillars of fire, full of his troops, ready to
boost into orbit and rendezvous with the long-disused orbital Tannhauser gate
leading to Arcadian orbital space.
Compared
to the surface gate, the orbital gate was far bigger, and needed far more power
to generate. On the other hand, the generator station —re-tasked to this
operation from its usual work of opening new exploratory gates— had no
shortage of power. The real trick would be the complex dance of orbital
maneuvers required to send the twenty-five huge cargo vehicles and the
supporting orbital warship through the orbital gate. Once that was done, the
huge cargo rockets would come back down... on Arcadian soil.
At
the same time, he would be supervising the transit of the rapid strike force
though the Mojave gate. If he could seize the controls of the gate, his forces
would be able to pour through to Arcadia, putting an end to the renegade
Arcadian Government once and for all, and making an unmistakable point about
the dominance of the UEN to every other colony and member nation; a mission
worth the literally astronomical price tag.
Of
course, seizing the gate control system would not be easy. The Arcadians had
been very clever, after they had seized it the first time. The power and
control equipment had been moved hundreds of kilometers from the gate
structure. It meant that a quick strike through the gate had no chance of
capturing the gate controls. The Tannhauser gate generators themselves could be
captured... or destroyed. But without the complex —and distant— control
equipment, they could not be used to keep the gate open. Nor could new gate
generator equipment be set up on the Earth side of the gate, so long as even a
trickle of power from the Arcadian side was being fed into the actual wormhole.
And anyway, setting up a duplicate gate generator on the Earth side would have
brought in the corrupt FSNA, not to mention being an unmistakable threat to the
Arcadians, which would have made surprise impossible.
As
it was, he expected surprise to work for him, despite the enormous scale of the
mission. So long as no one on Arcadia connected the gathering of old Chinese
boosters with the idea of using the long-shut down orbital Tannhauser gate, the
Arcadians would have no idea what was coming.
Bannerman
did not doubt that Arcadian spies knew about the gathering of the Chinese
boosters under UEN control. He suspected that they even knew that many Peace
Force military units were being readied for some major mission. Plenty of false
rumors had been sent out about the reasons; a new moon base; anti-separatist
operations in Tibet. But he was confident that they would never connect it with
an invasion of their world. It was, he admitted, a gamble. But he was holding
all the good cards.
The
tone of the Chinese ground staff suddenly changed, becoming more and more
shrill. That brought Bannerman's attention back to the here and now.
"What
is it?" he asked, looking at Major Hafez and the Chinese Space Agency liaison
standing next to him.
"A
moment, General Bannerman," said the Chinese Space Agency official.
"A moment, please."
On
the screen, the glare of rocket thrust seemed to be growing, and then Bannerman
saw what looked like flaming debris striking the ground.
"What
is going on here?!" he demanded.
"A...
that is," the Space Agency man said, "there has been a problem."
"I
can see that."
"We
are still trying to find out what is happening," the Chinese man said.
More
and more flaming debris was coming down. The screen abruptly went black, and
then flashed back to life, showing the field from a different angle. From the
new angle, the sight of flaming debris raining down was even clearer.
An
alarm started to howl inside the control bunker. A single technician screamed
and ran from his post, but all the others stayed put, though several looked at
the running man, and looked scared.
"What..."
Bannerman began again.
A
massive crash and a jolt shook the bunker. Some lights flickered and several
voices screamed, but the main lights stayed on.
A
man Bannerman took to be a senior controller began to shout to the other staff
in a commanding voice.
"There
has been a terrible accident, General Bannerman," said his liaison.
"We think that one of the Glorious Progress boosters suffered a total
engine failure. Unfortunately, debris from this failure impacted a second
booster. Very regrettably, both were lost. This facility is in the flight path
and some of the debris stuck the top of our bunker, but of course, it was
designed for such an eventuality, so we remained safe."
"...
Allahu
Akbar
..." breathed Major Hafez,
staring at the rain of fire on the big display.
Some
part of Bannerman's mind gibbered at the horror of two of the huge rockets,
each with more than a hundred people aboard, going down in flames. I should not
have pushed for the refitting of the twenty-fifth booster, he thought. Was that
the one that failed? Did I do this?
"And
the other vehicles?" he said, "the other twenty-three?"
The
liaison was silent for a moment.
"The
others have successfully launched," he said at length.
"They
are to proceed to their planned orbits," Bannerman said. "The
operation has not been canceled! Do you understand?! The remaining twenty-three
vehicles are to continue the operation!"
"Understood,
General Bannerman," the Chinese official said.
"I
wonder which ones we lost..." remarked Major Hafez, calmly.