Portal Wars 1: Gehenna Dawn (3 page)

Father begged me not to go, swearing
empty promises that we could find another way. Mother cried
hysterically when I told her I was going to do it, her grief
turning to unfocused rage as she grabbed at me and beat on my chest
in a tearful fit. I listened to Father’s entreaties, though I knew
they were without substance, and I held Mother in my arms until her
anger burned itself out into whimpering sobs. But my mind was made
up.

What else could I do? Stay and watch
my family slowly starve in the urban free zones? See my baby
brother grow up a gutter rat, picking through the garbage for food?
Let my little sister sell herself for scraps of bread?

No, I didn’t have a choice. I was
scared, screaming inside, dreaming of days long gone, when I was a
child and felt safe, when a mother’s hug could make everything
better. Memories I’d thought long forgotten came rushing back to
me. Simple things…picnics and family dinners and walks by the
stream. Experiences I suddenly realized I hadn’t truly appreciated.
The little joys I took for granted as a child now seemed a distant,
lost dream. I ached to go back and relive those days, truly valuing
them this time. I was sad and terrified and longing for a life I
could feel slipping away…like water through my fingers. But I
signed the papers anyway and bonded myself to a lifetime’s
service.

I was a laughable choice as a
soldier, unsuited in more ways than I can easily list. I'd always
been a weak, skinny kid, prone to illness and without much stamina.
I was gentle by nature and not at all aggressive. Not until the
government taught me to hate.

Firebase Delta was built into a rocky hill on
the edge of Erastus’ biggest desert. The 213th had rotated in a
month before, after a year’s posting in the jungle belt. They’d
gotten used to the steamy humidity of the planet’s equatorial zone,
no less unpleasant than the desert, but different. They were still
re-acclimating to the searing dry heat, and Taylor felt his
section’s performance was suffering as a result. They’d get used to
it eventually, but Taylor wasn’t going to wait…he was going to give
them a day’s rest after the heavy fight they’d just been in, and
then they were going to do midday maneuvers. More than anything,
winning a fight on Erastus meant staying sharp and alert despite
the intense heat.

The battle at Blackrock Ridge the day before
couldn’t be classified as a win, not by any reasonable measure.
They’d inflicted heavy losses on the ambushing Machines, far more
than they had suffered, but that was only normal. The Machines were
relentless attackers and highly tolerant of casualties. They always
lost more. In the end, the human forces were forced to flee the
field, and they barely got away at that. It hadn’t been the
disaster it could have been, but it was nothing anyone was going to
write any songs about.

Still, the 213th survived, at least some of
it did. For a while that had seemed like an impossibility. Even
Taylor had almost given up hope. By the end, he had everyone on the
line; he even took most of 2nd Team from the eastern flank, leaving
Just Bear and one private to protect against an attack there.

Taylor still had the images fresh in his
memory. The Machines looked a lot like humans, especially from a
distance. The plain in front of the ridgeline was covered with
their dead. They launched two all-out assaults, and the second came
close – too close – to breaking through. The 213th had been a
hair’s breadth from being overrun. For a few seconds, Jake thought
they had been. He still wasn’t sure how they’d managed to beat back
that last charge, and he knew just how tight it had been. Taylor’s
section had 11 casualties, 3 of them KIA. That was half the
casualty rate of the rest of the strikeforce. His people remembered
what he’d been telling them, what he’d been pounding into their
heads.

The evac finally came – closer to 30 minutes
than 20 – and it would have been too late except for the pair of
Dragonfire gunships escorting the transports. The big antigrav
craft strafed the line just as the Machines were launching their
third assault. The heavy autoguns tore into the advancing enemy,
massive hyper-velocity projectiles tearing the Machine’s flesh and
steel bodies to shreds.

Two or three more passes might have shattered
the enemy force, Jake thought, but the gunships withdrew after one
attack. The fire from the ground was too heavy, and the Dragonfires
were too valuable to risk. The 2 gunships were worth more to the
high command than every man in the 213th, so one firing run was all
they got.

It turned out to be enough. The Machines
suffered heavy casualties and were badly disordered. It took time
for them to shake back into an attack formation, and by then Jake
Taylor and Blackie were mounting up on the last transport. The
strikeforce was on its way back to base, battered but not
destroyed.

Now it was the day after. Most of the 213th
was sacked, trying to catch up on sleep after the grueling fight. A
lot of guys had trouble sleeping on Erastus; the relentless heat
was just too uncomfortable. But sooner or later, when you got tired
enough, you could sleep through anything. And most of the 213th was
tired enough.

Taylor was walking slowly down a corridor.
The passage had been dug into the solid rock, the walls smooth and
wavy, like part of a candle that had been melted and re-hardened.
The look was familiar, the tell-tale sign of the plasma drills that
had bored out this refuge.

He pulled a small cloth from one of the large
pockets on his fatigues and wiped his forehead. It was hot, even in
these subterranean passageways. The mind expected tunnels and caves
to be cool and damp, but Erastus was a different kind of world, its
crust and mantle wracked with geothermal activity. It was almost as
warm underground as it was outside, though at least you could get
out of the direct sunlight. You could even be in the dark inside,
something you couldn’t quite manage outside, even with your eyes
closed tight. That didn’t make it any cooler inside, but it helped
somehow. It was an illusion, perhaps, but on Gehenna, you took what
you could get.

The mission had been a search and destroy
that turned into a trap. The Machines were unimaginative and
tactically weak, but they were highly organized and uniquely able
to move rapidly to exploit an opportunity. And the 213th had walked
right into an ambush. It had been a poorly planned op from the
start. Too far from base, inadequate support, and a long march that
practically telegraphed the objective. It wasn’t Lieutenant
Cadogan’s fault…it was Battalion that screwed the pooch. They sent
a crack strikeforce into an unwinnable situation with insufficient
intel…and now it was all shot to hell.

It was without a commander too. The 213th had
suffered just under 50% casualties, and those losses included the
lieutenant. He wasn’t dead, not yet at least. But he was in bad
shape…or at least that was the rumor going around.

Taylor was on his way to the infirmary. The
pain in his chest had migrated to his back. He was pretty sure he’d
broken at least one of the cracked ribs, and he figured he’d have
to deal with it sooner or later. He was also hoping to get some
info on the lieutenant.

Cadogan was the only man in the 213th who’d
been on Erastus longer than Taylor. Jake looked like he’d make a
poor soldier when he first stepped out of the Portal into the
searing heat of Erastus. The skinny kid almost passed out, and he
certainly didn’t look like he had what it took to survive. But
Cadogan had been the same when he arrived, and he saw something in
Taylor, something that wasn’t obvious on a cursory glance.
Then-Sergeant Cadogan took the shaky new private under his wing,
teaching him how to survive, and later, how to lead.

Like most of the guys who’d been around a
long time, Cadogan had a nickname…Scholar, though it had largely
fallen into disuse as his original peers died or moved on to other
units. Taylor certainly never dared to call him that, though
Cadogan was fairly tolerant of informalities around base. The
lieutenant himself never called any of the men by their nicknames
either, usually referring to them by their ranks and surnames. When
he wanted to be more informal, he used first names, but almost
never handles.

Cadogan had been a teacher of some sort; Jake
knew that much. He’d been older than most of the recruits when he
first got to Erastus, and highly educated too. It was a mystery to
everyone how he ended up in the off-world military. As far as
Taylor or anyone else seemed to know, Cadogan had never talked
about it. At all. There were plenty of guesses, but no real
facts.

His age was another frequently discussed
topic. There were rumors – never spoken of in his presence - that
the lieutenant was over 30 years old. Most of the recruits who came
to Gehenna were 19 or 20, and some were even 16 or 17. Not many of
them survived their first year, and lasting a decade was unheard
of. The UN supervisors and appointed senior officers were older, of
course, but a 30 year old combat soldier was rare indeed.

Jake was 25 himself, which made him pretty
old too, at least on Erastus. He’d picked up the handle Mad Dog not
long after he arrived. No one seemed to know why…it didn’t match
his personality at all. But the mystery would remain
unsolved…whoever hung that tag around Taylor’s neck was long dead,
and Jake himself wasn’t talking.

Except for the lieutenant, no one had been
onplanet as long as Taylor. He was a Five Year Man. He’d been
wounded three or four times and had a few close calls, but no
Machine had been able to put him down for good. At least not
yet.

Nobody could remember how the use of handles
and had become so widespread in the UN forces on Erastus, but the
tradition seemed to date back almost as far as the original
expedition. Sooner or later, nearly all the veterans picked up
nicknames. It didn’t take too long, usually just a couple months. A
new guy would survive a few battles, make a few friends…then
someone would pick something out - a personality or physical trait
- and pin a new name on him. Most of the time it stuck. It was OK
to call someone at or below your rank by his handle, even in
combat. In camp you could usually call an enlisted superior by his
nickname, though generally not in the field. It all depended on the
non-com. Things tended to be much more relaxed among the real
veterans, guys who’d been onplanet two years or more. With first
year casualties averaging over 80%, that was a small group.

Taylor reached the end of the rough tunnel
leading from the barracks area to the infirmary. The field hospital
was several levels lower than the main base, in the most secure
section of the facility. The 213th was lucky…they shared their HQ
with the battalion hospital. The other strike forces had only rough
aid stations. They had to get their serious casualties evac’d to
Base Delta, which was anywhere from 20 to 50 klicks from the other
strike force HQs.

There was a rough metal ladder built into the
stone wall, leading down through an opening. UN Forces Erastus
didn’t waste time on anything fancy. Everything needed for the war
effort had to come through the Portal, and it took a dozen nuclear
reactors on Earth to power the thing. Casualties brought in from
the field came through a larger tunnel that ramped down from the
surface, but lightly wounded grunts making their own way from the
barracks had to climb.

Taylor reached out and grabbed the first
rung, wincing as he felt the predictable pain shoot through his
chest. There were 36 rungs leading to the infirmary level, and
every one of them was going to hurt.

“I told you to stay off-duty, didn’t I?” Doc
Evans had what was generally considered to be the least original
handle on Erastus. He’d been there for a long time, so long that no
one Jake had ever met could remember a time when Doc wasn’t the
battalion surgeon. His handle was so ubiquitous, Jake wasn’t even
sure he’d ever known Evans’ first name. If he had, he’d forgotten
it.

Jake made a face. “It’s a damned good thing I
went, Doc.” Evans was a captain, an exalted rank that should have
precluded a sergeant like Jake from using a nickname. But everybody
called Evans “Doc.” Everybody. “Somebody really screwed the pooch
on that one. We’re lucky anybody made it back.”

Taylor sat on an examination table, gritting
his teeth while Doc slid the bone fuser across his back. The fuser
didn’t hurt, not exactly. But it was an unpleasant feeling, sort of
a cross between electric shocks and bugs crawling across your skin.
It was worth it, though. One short session was as good as a month’s
normal healing.

Jake had been in a lot of pain since the
battle, but he’d stayed away from the infirmary for over a day.
He’d always believed the first day was for the seriously wounded.
He couldn’t stand the idea of sitting around the hospital whining
about his sore ribs, while his boys where having their guts sewn
back together.

“Yes, I know you’re indispensable, Jake.”
Evans smiled. He had a pleasant disposition; even his sarcasm was
gentle. He was condemned to spend the rest of his life on Erastus,
just like all the grunts he put back together, but it never seemed
to bother him. Doc was the most liked guy Jake Taylor had ever
known. In five years, he’d never heard a negative word uttered
about the battalion’s surgeon. “But still, you should listen to
your doctor once in a while.” He paused, his smile broadening.
“Just to be polite.”

“OK, Doc.” Taylor didn’t mention he was
dragging his section out for unscheduled maneuvers in a little over
14 hours. “I’ll try to take it easy.”

Evans nodded, but he looked unconvinced. He’d
known Jake Taylor for a long time, and he didn’t expect his
suggestion would accomplish much. Still, he figured, at least I
tried. Doc had dealt with a lot of the old timers on Erastus, and
they were all pretty much the same. He wasn’t sure if they thought
they were invincible, or they just didn’t care. But not one of them
listened when he told them to take it easy.