Merkiaari Wars: 01 - Hard Duty (2 page)

Blinking blue icons on Eric’s display witnessed units down, in hibernation or dead he couldn’t tell, awaiting pickup. Dozens and dozens of his comrades were falling to Merki fire and indirectly to the dangerous environment of artillery inspired shrapnel, but there were hundreds more leaping over the debris of civilisation, leaping high to climb buildings like crazy alien spiders in an effort to gain good firing position, or leaping craters and mounds of bodies to rend their enemies. It was chaos.

Eric reloaded his rifle and screamed his hate at the enemy again. He selected full auto and poured fire into them. Grenades. He used his entire supply as soon as the thought occurred; his borrowed launcher using his targeting data in a lash up that worked only because it pointed the same way along the rifle’s barrel. No way to use range data. Just point and shoot and adjust on the fly.

Someone leapt passed him and was blasted back, taking a shot that would surely have killed him if it had hit. Blood sprayed over him, and he wiped his face on his already dripping sleeve. He spat the coppery taste out of his mouth and stepped over the still twitching body of his comrade as another blinking icon added itself to his sensor grid. This time, he noted, the unit was definitely in hibernation. Not dead. The thought should have been a relief, but every emotion except hate was a weak and distant thing. The thought uppermost in his head was taking the injured man’s ammo supply. He used his knife to cut away webbing, and then tied it roughly across his chest like a bandolier. It didn’t seem out of place; there were others already hanging from his armour. Most empty now. He didn’t bother cutting them away.

Grenades and power cells. Good.

It meant he didn’t have to stop yet. He gave no other thought to the downed unit behind him. He was in hibernation and that was all that could be said. Nothing but evac would help him now, and that wouldn’t happen until the Merki were cleared out.

The street ahead was blocked, one of the towers had fallen filling the street with debris. The retreating Merki bunched up and artillery control took full advantage by hammering them in the tight confines of the blocked street. The aliens, starting to panic now, turned to enter a side street. Eric turned aside without a second to consider the danger and ran through flames. The partially collapsed building was fully engulfed; the heat unbearable on exposed skin, but he was a Viper and any amount of pain could be endured if it meant he could kill more Merki.

Damage and warning alerts flashed upon his display as the temperature soared around him. He wanted to hold his breath against the smoke and pollutants in the air as well as the heat that seared his throat and lungs, but he couldn’t. Not and run. His armour smoked in the heat, and he had a moment to worry about the power cells and grenades so recently acquired. What was the flashover temp of the regiment’s power cells again? He didn’t have the time to check. Nothing to do about it anyway. He smashed through an already burning door, shot away a partition wall that divided offices, and saw windows overlooking a street. He dove toward them as the ceiling gave way above him.

Other Viper units noticed his new direction and followed, but they were fighting their own war and Eric didn’t have any advice they would listen too. It was every unit for himself this late in the battle.

Eric crashed onto the street gasping and choking on the pollutants released from burning synthetics, but TRS (Target Recognition Software) didn’t care about anything other than its programming. It acquired the Merki without his input and he opened fire on automatic even as he rolled into the road. The entire action took milliseconds, and he didn’t intervene. He poured fire into the snarling aliens; other units bursting into the street did the same. The shrieking of dying aliens blotted out the roar of the nearby blazing buildings for an instant. Return fire hammered the street and buildings around him. The Merki troopers were in such a panic, their fire discipline was shot to hell.

Eric got to his feet, dodged left, right, left and jumped reaching for a handhold on a building ahead. He crashed into the wall, missed his grip, and fell toward the ground far below. He reached for another hold, anything to arrest his fall as the wall rushed by. Failed again, and kicked hard at a ledge as it flashed passed him, launching himself away toward the next building over. He grunted as he hit the target building awkwardly. Damage alerts flashed, but it was nothing serious. Left shoulder only, but it hurt and made his arm tingle. The arm felt slower of a sudden, but usable. The building had taken damage, the wall blasted to ruins, and he had smashed down on jagged broken plascrete. It was well though. A better firing position and one with better handholds. He hung by one hand, kicked and shoved himself up until he could hook an elbow in the nearest cavity blasted into the wall by RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade) attack, and rained fire onto the Merkiaari. He emptied his rifle into them and then pumped grenades as fast as he could. Slowly the enemy withered away to nothing. Eric snarled as Vipers ripped and bludgeoned the bodies in a berserk frenzy, reducing them to bits and red paste. He wanted to join them in that, but he was sane enough to realise he couldn’t kill the Merki any deader than they already were. The last few red icons on his sensors winked out one by one.

It was done.

Eric let himself fall to land in the street. He reloaded his rifle and noted its power was low. He swapped cells taking a pair off the charred bandolier across his chest, and shoved grenades into the launcher he had taped under his rifle. He wished he had a properly integrated weapons system, but the new rifles were still in development. The standard Alliance rifle and launcher couldn’t accept targeting data from a Viper, and output was lower, but even so he would have like to have one. His temporary lash up worked, but that was all that it had going for it.

“Burgton to all units,” the cold, deadly voice of the General was clear on Eric’s comm, and every Viper within Eric’s range paused to listen. “Operation Clean House complete. Proceed with Operation Annihilate. Burgton clear.”

Eric turned as did every surviving Viper, and pushed himself to a ground consuming lope, heading south. Behind him, the artillery paused for a moment, and then it thundered again at a new target. South. Operation Annihilate was the codename for the endgame of this entire campaign. Burgton wanted to teach the Merki a lesson they would never forget. As he had said in the meeting where it was conceived, they would turn San Luis into the Merkiaari’s vision of hell... it was already Eric’s.

Eric left the city and reached the rally point. The Wolfcub class landers were coming in hot; scores of them howling down upon Eric and his comrades as if stooping upon prey. One after another they came in, ramps already down and ready to accept the Vipers. Landing struts slammed down, and the Vipers raced up the ramps even as the dampers were recoiling. Moments later the landers went to max thrust and threw themselves skyward so hard that G-stress greyed even a Viper’s vision. Eric groaned as the seat edge cut into his thighs.

Behind them, navy shuttles crewed by Viper medics and navy corpsmen flew over the burning city on SAR (Search and Rescue) missions to retrieve the fallen. Eric watched a real time view by satellite as they homed on the beacons indicating downed Vipers awaiting pickup. He hoped most would be carried into orbit and back to the ship for repairs, but he knew many would go into cryogenic storage when they arrived to await their final journey back to base and a last appointment with the regiment’s archive.

He broke his link to the satellite and closed his eyes, trying not to see the faces of the fallen, but Vipers never forgot anything. Nothing at all.

Computer: combat mode.

The world sped back up as he dropped back to his default condition. Alerts began appearing upon his display, some flashing for his attention. Priorities. His processor wanted instructions. Did he want to enter maintenance mode? Hell no! He would be fighting again soon. He would rely upon combat mode for now. True, it would take longer to repair his damage that way, but it would be repaired and still let him fight. His decision caused a cascade of new data to be displayed. A shortlist of needed repairs and the wireframe graphic to go with it as if he didn’t already know where it hurt. The worst damage was to his left shoulder, but it wasn’t serious. The rest were burns and some loss of lung capacity. Damn smoke. All was repairable without need for outside intervention.

>_ Diagnostics: 87% combat capable

>_ IMS: Repairs in progress.

Eric glanced at the others, but none acknowledged him. They were all busy with internal business, same as he had just been. He was glad to see Ken Stone had made it, and Dick Hames. Both were good friends, and had been enhanced with him in the same group. Enhanced together, trained together, and often fought beside one another. Dick’s armour was heavily pitted and scarred from enemy fire, but he seemed essentially intact. He could see other faces he knew, all looked weary, and all were ready to fight again. He pretended not to notice the missing faces, preferring to imagine them safe and aboard the other landers.

“What happened to your hair, bro?” Stone said raising his voice over the noise of the engines.

Hair? Eric reached up and realised he was burned bald on his right side. His helmet hadn’t protected him from it, probably made it worse. It had been damned hot in that building.

“You like it?” Eric said. “New style I call Merki Barbeque.”

Stone grinned and some of the others laughed. “Hell of a thing. You think we get to go home after this one?”

Eric shrugged. “No clue.” The Alliance was still on the back foot and barely holding on. He doubted they would go home, but even if they did, it would be a short respite. “Don’t worry about it. You’ll get to increase your score—”

“Incoming Merki Interceptors! Brace for high speed manoeuvres!” the pilot shouted over the comm.

Eric tugged on his harness straps hard to tighten them. He hugged his rifle to his chest, clamping it there with folded arms as the Wolfcub lurched going to max thrust. It spun upside down, veered left and suddenly a gaping hole appeared in the floor between Eric’s feet. He looked through the hole, pursed his lips in thought, and turned to toward Ken who looked a bit sick. Well, it had been very close

“I don’t think we—” Eric began as the lander was hit again and fell out of the sky, already disintegrating.”

The pilot screamed, “Brace, brace, bra—”

>_ 0559:59 close archive file #0000063577982-3996-SL

>_ 0600:01 Deactivate maintenance mode... Done.

Diagnostics: Unit fit for duty

Activate combat mode... Done

TRS... Done

Sensors... Done

Targeting... Done

Communications... Done

Infonet... Done

TacNet... Done... Scanning... No units/stations found

>_ 0600:05 Reactivation complete

Eric’s eyes snapped open, and the dream faded away back to storage. He was in his rack aboard the tramp freighter, instantly alert as always. His programming wouldn’t allow anything else of course. His 0600 wakeup call was better than gospel as far as his processor was concerned. Not that it knew or cared. It was just following its programming. Some days, more and more as the decades rolled by, he thought he was just doing the same.

“All behaviour is programming one way or the other. Mine is just more so,” he murmured frowning at the thought.

He was a Viper. A cyborg soldier designed to kill Merkiaari in milliseconds, and he performed that task extremely well. They all did of course, the Vipers, the one hundred units that were all that remained of the once powerful SAG. The Special Assault Group had been created to augment the 501st Infantry Regiment’s offensive capability during the Merki War; it’s mission back then to seek and destroy the alien invaders wherever they were found. Eric and his comrades had done so with extreme prejudice, and their reward?

Continued existence.

Eric sneered at the familiar hurt. Existence. They were lucky the Alliance hadn’t decided to deactivate them all. They were feared and respected still, but mostly feared. No one was comfortable in a room with something that could kill three metre tall alien monsters in the blink of an eye. None would seek them out to get to know them, not knowing what they thought they knew of the cyborgs who won the war for them. That war was long over, or in hiatus if you believed General Burgton’s predictions. Unfortunately, Eric and the others did believe him; it wouldn’t be long before the Alliance needed them all again.

Eric swung his legs out of his rack and went through his routine.

At precisely 0620 he was groomed, dressed, and ready to debark the ship. His duffel was ready to go; he had packed it last night. There was nothing in it he really needed, but as a prop it added to his cover story. He wasn’t Eric Penleigh right now. He was Eric Martell, ex-merc looking for a cause. The clothes he wore and the kit in his duffel all helped with his image. He had aged his brown uniform coverall well, and it had no insignia—he had unpicked them all himself exposing the darker cloth beneath. It was actually a civ design, but it was the right type and no one could tell now that the insignia had been that of a cleaning company. It made him look like what he was pretending to be. A dishonourably discharged merc.