Star Force: Survivor (SF52) (5 page)

Rio stepped in and moved it aside, revealing a nook in
the wall where six other people were sitting…four of which were covered in
bloody healing patches and the other two were younglings.

“Are they mobile?” the other commando asked, who
outranked Rio by 18 levels.

“If we have somewhere to go, yes.”

“We have a dropship standing by on the perimeter. We
can call it in once we get topside…assuming the air cover doesn’t change. Come
on, we need to get moving,” he said, glancing at Rio.

He nodded and headed back out, becoming point
man/skirmisher, and knowing that it was up to him to find and head off threats
before they could get anywhere close to the wounded…for they would make for
easy targets.

As he moved ahead he began plotting out an evac route
on the battlemap…which was when he saw the infiltration team coming up from
within and saw them near the underground lines. He quickly put two and two
together and reassessed their evac plan, knowing it would be slower but
infinitely
more safe
if they could take their wards
underground rather than flying them through the air…not to mention avoiding the
fighting up top.

Using his battlemap he got an open comm line to one of
the commandos in that group, thankful that the relay nodes in the city still
worked for they were a ways off, and inquired as to the status of the rail
cars. Once he got the availability confirmed he commed the other two commandos
with him and got the green light from them, then began working their route over
there, seeing a small pocket of subsurface combat ongoing with a section of the
infiltration team.

Knowing that they’d soon have that handled he set the
route directly there, then held up and kept within a reasonable distance of his
wards as they slowly walked out of their concealment, all of which were
malnourished and surviving off a handful of rations and med kits they’d been
able to scrounge. Rio knew not to expect anything out of them, so he began
making search patterns ahead of them, running back and forth through the
machinery and visually scouting out a wide area, hoping to draw out any
potential ambushes against himself rather than let them get the jump on the
others.

Nothing occurred on the way over, though he did come
across several bodies…mostly Human but a few Kiritas and Hobbits as well. This
area was too constricted for Skarrons to enter, given their size, which made it
a good place to hide…just not good enough for these few, and Rio wondered how
many others had gotten left behind and how. Star Force wasn’t sloppy, so
something must have gone seriously wrong here.

5

January 20, 2549

Reesi
System

Metropolis

Sally and
Dravis
ran up into
the hold of the
Eagle
-class dropship
with spurts of plasma fire missing behind them. A few moments later an Archon
in silver armor joined them, with the boarding ramp rising immediately and the
ship taking off before it had even closed halfway. The two dispossessed
mechwarriors had just gotten back into the city after their
morpheus
had gotten toasted and nearly left them stranded in the kill zone that the
outskirts had become. A nearby madcat had covered for them and they’d run
unarmored across the open ground to a checkpoint on the wall that had allowed
them inside.

After that they’d been sent directly to the improvised
spaceport that had numerous dropships coming in and
evacing
personnel. The Star Force counterattack had hurt the Skarrons badly, but
apparently they were committed to retaking the city and had been pouring
reinforcements in nonstop. Sally and the other mechwarriors had been chewing
them up to no end, but eventually the attrition wore down their mech and a
Type-5 had ended their three day campaign. There were still a handful of mechs
in deployment, but they were covering the pullback and would be the last ones
out via dropship.

Since Sally and
Dravis
no
longer had a mech they were sent with the various troops and civilians that
were being pulled out…and as she looked around she was having a hard time
figuring out why there would be any civilians here at all.

Not content to wonder she walked over to one of them
and sat down next to where he was leaning back against the wall, with a look
that said he wasn’t in very good condition.

“Hi there,” she said, getting him to open his eyes and
look at her. “I’m Sally, and I was wondering what you were doing here. I
thought all the civilians had been pulled out long ago.”

The man sighed. “We were supposed to be…name’s Chad,
by the way. I’m a maturia handler and this is the second time I’ve had to evac.
First was with my younglings, then I was supposed to move out with them again
and got caught up in an explosion and blacked out. By the time I came to and
dug myself out of the debris everyone had gone and the Skarrons were coming
in.”

Sally’s eyes widened. “You got left behind?”

Chad nodded. “I lost my
commlink
,
so I guess they had no way of finding me.”

“What kind of explosion?”

“Something big…inside the city.
It knocked out a huge crater several levels deep but with no shaft to the sky.
It made a mess of things. I don’t know how many people died, but I hid out from
the Skarrons in a restroom until you guys came back. Big thanks to that, by the
way. I wouldn’t have made it much longer.”

“You’re welcome, but nobody should have been left
behind. The counts…”

“I don’t know either, but it happened.”

Sally put a hand on his very thin shoulder. “Are you
going to be alright?”

“Now that I’ve got some foodstuffs
in me, yeah.
I think so.”

The mechwarrior nodded. “Kudos for staying alive as
long as you did,” she said, standing back up and working her way through the
crowd over to where
Dravis
was standing. When she got
to him she was slowly shaking her head.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“There were people left behind in the first evac. He’s
one that survived the Skarron occupation.”

Dravis
whistled. “That is
not supposed to happen.”

“I know,” she said, at a loss to explain it. “He said
there was an internal explosion and he blacked out. Nobody came from him.”

Dravis
frowned. “That might
partially explain it.”

“What?”

“If the explosion took down some of the internal
relays then their comm signatures wouldn’t register at range…and if they were
assumed to be dead from the explosion.”

“Still there should have been a visual inspection,”
she said in an angry whisper.

“During an attack?
If the
Skarrons were already in the city blowing things up then they probably didn’t
have time for more than a light recon of the area. If you want to hide from
that you can, fairly easily, and if he was knocked out that’s pretty much the
same as hiding, in so much that you’re not up, looking around, and waving your
hands to get people’s attention.”

“He wasn’t the only one.”

“We always check,”
Dravis
said firmly. “That doesn’t guarantee we always find everyone.”

“I’ve never heard of this happening before.”

“Nor have I, but we’re getting our asses handed to us
here for a second time. Messy fights don’t leave a lot of time to double check.”

“I still don’t like it.
At all.”

Dravis
sighed. “Nor do I,
but I doubt we dropped the ball. Sometimes bad things just happen.”

“Tell that to him.”

“We’re spoiled in that when a mech goes down people
immediately notice. A few people in a city of millions don’t show up when
something goes boom and they’re probably dead. You can’t wait around and count
corpses when the enemy is on your throat.”

Sally dipped her head. “You’re right…I. I just hate
that we left people behind, even on accident.”

“Anyone that felt otherwise would have to turn in their
good guy card,”
Dravis
pointed out.

Sally halfheartedly smirked. “Yeah, I guess so.”

Iden-202747 walked into the cockpit of the dropship
and stood just behind
Davi
who was intently watching
the control board as he flew the eagle in formation with two others, both
Falcon
-class
, with
him lagging a bit behind.

“What’s wrong?” the acolyte asked.

“This bird took some damage on the way in. A couple of
plasma hits to the hull, nothing major, but they hit on a patch from previous
hull damage and I’m not getting full speed out of the gravity drives. I’m not
showing any warning lights, but something is off.”

“What kind of damage was done?”

“I’m not
sure,
this is my 4th
dropship in 2 days. Everything was fixed, but I’m guessing those hits found a
crevice and seeped through. I don’t know, maybe just my imagination, but I’ve
flown enough eagles to know this one is a touch slow.”

“Don’t suppose there’s anything we can do about it in
flight?”

“Not unless you’ve got a tech back there?”

“I can check…”
Iden
said
,
half turning as a beep from the pilot’s battlemap pinged.
The Archon immediately brought
up his own in helmet
and saw the cause for alarm…Skarron fighters heading their way that had broken
through the skeet formations covering their tail.

“Oh shit, not again,”
Davi
said, having a quick conversation with the other dropship pilots.

Iden
checked the battlemap
at further range, seeing that there were no other friendly units nearby…then
suddenly the three dropships split up, each going a separate way. There were
only two fighters coming up on them, so this way, he knew, at best they could
only shoot down two, assuming the third got far enough away.

He watched the pair of enemy fighters continue forward
for a while, then they split up, one each coming at the middle and starboard
dropships…with theirs being the starboard.

“Don’t suppose you have any special powers that can
take down fighters?”
Davi
asked sarcastically.

“I don’t have the range, no,” he said, thinking hard.
“If we’re going to go down, find us some terrain.”

“I’d prefer not to go down at all,”
Davi
countered, trying to milk a little more speed out of
the smaller dropship. It was faster than a falcon, but this stupid drive wasn’t
cooperating.

“I’d shoot out the back, but our rifles aren’t going
to scratch their armor with its shields up,”
Iden
said, stating the obvious.

“Well, we’ve got about 2 minutes to figure something
out,”
Davi
said, seeing a thick section of forest
slightly further to starboard. It would take them further away from their
destination, but it looked like they weren’t going to get there anyway so he
took the Archon’s suggestion and altered course, guessing they’d make it there
in about 45 seconds.

“Do what you can,”
Iden
said, abandoning the cockpit and heading aft where everyone else was. There
were 36 people
onboard,
not counting himself and the
pilot, and only about half of them had armor.

“Listen up!” he yelled through his helmet’s external
mic. “We’re about to get shot down. Ready yourself, and grab whatever supplies
you can find. One way or another we’re going to be on the ground shortly.”

As soon as he heard the Archon Rio’s attention
immediately turned to the light cargo onboard the dropship, then his eyes
crossed over to the emergency kits imbedded into the walls. He ran over to one
and began to pull the panel off when a Knight came up on his left and detached
another. Inside Rio’s was foodstuff packets, highly concentrated, with a carry
satchel rolled up and stuffed in next to them.

He pulled it out and filled the bag up, then attached
it to the back of his armor. Inside the
Knight’s
were
weapons, several pistols of both plasma and stun variety. The taller man
pointed to his bag and Rio turned around, giving him his back while he stuffed
them inside. They could be passed out later if needed, but right now they
needed to be secured and Victor preferred not to have anything else to carry
aside from his partially damaged shield.

Elsewhere other commandos were tearing apart emergency
supplies and rifling through the crates onboard and salvaging what they could.
The Archon had all the unarmored individuals cluster together in the center of
the bay,
then
layered the commandos around them. If
the IDF held up they shouldn’t feel the crash/landing, but that wouldn’t stop
shrapnel from coming through. If it did hopefully it would hit an armored
person first, which was the basic idea, though in Rio’s mind it was probably
just a last ditch effort to do something when they really had no good options.
Dropships were maximized for speed and cargo carrying capacity rather than
multied
out to carry weapons.

Doing so would reduce their efficiency, and in truth
they were never meant to go anywhere dangerous unescorted…though right now he
really wished they’d installed at least one gun turret so they’d have some way
of defending themselves.

When he’d finished filling his satchel he joined the
ring around the unarmored, putting his back to them so to also shield his
supplies,
then
he activated his armor’s shields and
took a knee, waiting for the inevitable to come.

When it did it came in the form of a
hole
punching through the ceiling. One moment there was
solid metal, the next there was a shower of superheated fragments as a piece
blew apart from weaponsfire. The outside air sucked out the smoke and left the
hole visible, then more impacts could be heard, or more accurately more
explosions as the Skarron plasma hit and blew apart pieces of the hull. He
looked up, then sucked in a quick breath as the blue sky twisted to the side
and the ground became visible, with the gnarly trees growing closer at an
alarming rate…then the ground rotated out of sight and the sky returned, with
him realizing that they were falling in a death spiral.

The crash was noisy, but he didn’t feel any vibration
thanks to the IDF…until it was knocked out as the dropship rolled through the
trees. Suddenly he and the others were floating around inside the bay,
then
slammed up against a wall as it came to a stop. Bodies
and crates fell on top of him, but fortunately he had his armor to protect
him…not all of the others were so lucky.

He let the Knight work his way off him,
then
the man pulled up one of the crates and moved it aside,
freeing Rio’s legs and allowing him to get up. As he did he looked to the left
and saw one of the mechwarriors with a bloody gash in the side of her head
where a crate had hit. He moved over to her and pulled the crate off, only to
see that her head was caved in some two inches where the corner had hit and
punctured her skull.

The commando checked for vital signs anyway, but as
expected found none. He pulled Sally’s body up and off the man below and laid
it aside as everyone worked their way through the mess. Fortunately the bay had
been mostly empty and no large crates had been in play. That said, when the pilot
finally came out from the cockpit with blood streaming down the right side of
his face from a gash on his head, he realized just how important his armor
was…and how that he, one of the uninjured ones, had just become more important
to their survival.

“See to them,” the Archon said, passing Rio and trying
to open the rear hatch, which was now on its side according to the gravity.
When he couldn’t get it to open he tore open an emergency panel and hit a
manual release. That cracked it a few inches, but otherwise it didn’t move.

“Secondary exit?”
Rio asked,
walking up beside him as he began to wedge himself into the breach to widen it.

“No go,”
Iden
answered, with
Rio adding his own leverage and the both of them moving the big door more than
a foot when several blasts were heard overhead.

“My battlemap is down,” Rio noted.

“The front of the dropship is pancaked, including the
relay and emergency beacon. I’d guess that’s the fighter trying to finish us
off.”