Terminus Cut Page 9

  “Fuck it.”

  He switched the targeting reticle to the missile pod and fired. Three of the four missiles in the launch pod streaked out, crossing the two hundred meters between the Vindicator and the Sentinel in less than a second and striking just where he’d aimed them, in the massive, plodding machine’s right knee. A wave of heat and concussion radiated outward and armor was stripped to the metallic bones, the joint giving way, sending the mech lurching off to the right, its leg ending above the knee in a ragged, molten stump.

  Three of the missiles had launched. The other stuck in the pod, and Jonathan knew exactly what the ear-splitting screech of the alarm and the flashing red warning meant. It was about to cook off. He bit down on his mouthpiece and yanked the ejection levers with both hands.

  He had only ever ejected once, in training, and only because no one graduated from mech training without a successful ejection. A “successful” ejection could still involve broken bones, a concussion and internal injuries. An unsuccessful ejection meant you were dead. His practice run under ideal conditions had been successful, in that he’d survived with cracked ribs and a broken left wrist.

  This wasn’t practice and the conditions weren’t ideal. The canopy tumbled away on explosive bolts and the cockpit pod punched forward with a gentle chuff of compressed gas. The solid-fuel rockets ignited an acceleration somewhere north of ten gravities and when Jonathan passed out, he figured it was probably for the best.

  8

  “Am I in Hell?”

  The dark, faceless figure hovering above Jonathan could easily have passed for a demon, but as his vision swam slowly into focus, he discerned he was actually staring up at a Ranger helmet visor.

  “I should take that as an insult,” Lyta Randell’s voice replied. She’d been down on a knee, hovering over him, but now she stood and offered him a hand. “But considering your condition, I’ll let it slide.”

  His condition was, he quickly discovered, bruised all over. He took Lyta’s hand and let her pull him up because he sure as hell wasn’t going to be pushing himself up on his own. She must have already unstrapped him from the ejection pod, because he hadn’t done it. The edges of the pod were still smoking, the parachute flapping in the breeze, stretched out behind it. He could barely believe he’d reached a high enough altitude for the flimsy-looking synthetic silk to brake his descent.

  “How the hell did you get here?” he wondered, a twinge in his back turning the question into a pained groan. He slowly and gingerly pulled off his helmet, the neural halo coming free with the reluctance of medical bandage adhesive. “How long have I been out?”

  “Not too long,” she informed him, waving around them demonstratively. “We got here just before the missiles started flying.”

  Mecha loomed over him, their footfalls sending rhythmic vibrations through the ground as they shuffled into a protective perimeter. Flames ate away at the scaly thorn trees, spreading quickly up the hillside across the grass and underbrush, the smoke merging with the low clouds but the fire remained painfully visible in the darkness.

  “Are you okay, boss?”

  The voice boomed down loud enough to startle him and he spun to see it had come from the external address speakers on Paskowski’s Scorpion. The strike mech was incredibly intimidating from down at ground level and enough heat was still radiating off its plasma cannons he could feel it from thirty meters away.

  “Yeah,” he said, waving in case the mech’s audio pickup couldn’t make out his voice. “I’ll survive.”

  He remembered something, looked around and found the remains of the Sentinel he’d used his ill-fated missiles to take down. It was lying on its side a hundred meters away, the remains of its right leg still smoking, and its canopy yawning open.

  “Where did the pilot go?” he demanded, spinning around to direct the question to Lyta. “From the mech I hit with those damned missiles?”

  “He took off before we could get over to you,” she confessed. “I tried to have him taken out, but we didn’t have a clear shot with…” She gestured. “…all this shit.”

  His head was clearing and he noticed she had her people deployed in a defensive perimeter out at the edges of the saddle, where she could be sure their own mecha wouldn’t accidentally step on them. He also noticed there were only three squads, and light squads at that.

  “How many people did you lose?” he asked, dread clenching at his stomach.

  “No one,” she said, lifting her visor up so she could look him in the eye. “I’ve got some walking wounded and I left a squad with them and the other casualties we picked up along the way.”

  He’d sighed in relief at her pronouncement she hadn’t lost anyone, but his eyes narrowed at the mention of other casualties.

  “Who?”

  “Katy and her copilot, Acosta. They crash-landed their assault shuttle out in the badlands and Acosta had to carry Katy out.”

  The dread hit again, twice as hard, and he was in the middle of an urgent question when she raised a hand to stop him, answering before he could get the words out.

  “She’s got a concussion, along with a separated shoulder and a badly sprained knee, but I think she’s going to be okay if we can get her to the ship’s med bay.” She cocked an eyebrow. “If there's a med bay and a ship to get back to,” she amended. “Otherwise, we’re all dead.”

  He nodded, forcing the fear down, boxing it away for later. The best thing he could do for Katy was to finish this mission. He patted himself down, but whatever had happened to his ‘link, it wasn’t on his belt anymore. Lyta noticed and handed him a spare from one of her equipment pouches and he nodded gratefully.

  “Slaughter Units, this is Slaughter One,” he said. “The objective is three kilometers that way.” He stabbed a finger in an exaggerated motion in the direction the enemy mech jock had fled. “They know we’re coming, so there’s no point in trying to sneak up on them. Paskowski, I want your strike mecha up front. Kurtz, you circle around the other side of the perimeter and work your way inward. Kill any of them you see.”

  “What about the hostages, sir?” Kurtz asked him.

  “That’s why the Rangers are here, Lieutenant,” Lyta informed him. “They know you’re here, but they won’t know about us.”

  “I’m walking in with you,” Jonathan told her. “No argument, Lyta,” he cut off the words he knew were trailing her arched eyebrow. “Trying to kick one of the others out of their mech would slow us down way too much. You got a rifle I can carry so I at least look dangerous?”

  She regarded him with a scowl, hefting her carbine demonstratively.

  “Yeah, I’m carrying an extra one around in my pocket, just in case.”

  “Well, shit,” he murmured, pulling his handgun out of its chest holster. “I guess I should practice more with this thing.” He touched the control on the ‘link to address the entire force. He didn’t want to sound cheesy and gung-ho, but he was quickly finding it seemed to come with the job.

  “All right, Wholesale Slaughter, let’s go get our people back.”

  Jonathan thought it might be getting near dawn. It was more of a sense of grey behind the darkness than any real hint of sunlight, but might be as much of a dawn as they got around here. Fog and smoke clung to every hollow, floating through the intertwined branches of the thorn trees, and the only hint he had of the Jeuta base was a faint, yellow halo lingering above the pockets of fog in the hollow just ahead.

  “How do you stand it?” he asked Lyta, keeping his voice low but not whispering. She’d taught him that; a whisper carried further than a normal tone spoken softly.

  She didn’t look back at him, her eyes scanning carefully around even though they were in the center of a double-wedge formation and her Rangers in the lead arrowhead would spot danger long before she did.

  “Stand what?” she asked, her voice even lower than his, but still clear enough to understand. “Mech jocks who don’t know when to shut up?”

  “Very fu
nny. No, being this low, not being able to see anything.”

  “It’s a trade-off. We don’t see them, they don’t see us.” She jabbed a finger to their right. “They can see your people well enough, though, and I’d rather be down here.”

  He didn’t have the thermal and infrared filters built into her helmet visor, but he could still just make out the glint of a distant floodlight off the matte grey metal of a mech, just barely hear the impact of footpads on the hard-packed soil. Something shot upward at the mech, a segmented streak of light, tracers from a heavy machine gun or light cannon, a crew-served weapon on a vehicle or in a bunker. Impacts sparked off the chest plastron, lighting up the mech and revealing it as Paskowski’s Scorpion in the brief moment before he returned fire with the lasers flanking the mech’s pod-shaped torso. Coherent light burned air into a plasma in a shimmering line and something on the ground burst into flames, ammo cooking off with spiteful pops, and the firing stopped. For a moment. It started somewhere else three seconds later, and the mech moved on.

  “They must not have any mecha left,” he guessed. “If they did, they’d have them in a last defensive position here.”

  “Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean they’re helpless.” She raised her visor and shot him an annoyed glance. “You’re the CO, sir, but my advice to you in this situation would be to shut up and soldier.”

  Abashed, he did as he was told and stopped talking, following her as she trailed her first squad and the point of their arrowhead formation, Private Cobb. He was used to the long, ground-eating strides of a ten-meter-tall mech and to him, their pace seemed a crawl. Lyta was keeping them moving at what was almost a reckless speed for her. She probably felt the same sense of urgency he did, the intuition their friends being held captive didn’t have much longer.

  Finally, they cleared the curve of the hill, past the tangled forest of thorn trees and emerged slowly and cautiously into the hollow. The Jeuta base was smaller than it had looked in the orbital images, the buildings squatter than he’d imagined, and much of the storage was out in the open, covered by camouflage tarps rather than enclosed in one of the sheet-metal warehouses they’d thrown together. Empty, barren patches of flat ground, burned clean of all vegetation, marked the landing zones for their assault shuttles, while their cargo bird rested a few hundred meters away, ungainly and unarmed.

  Why haven’t they just flown out on the heavy lift shuttle? he wondered. He wanted to ask Lyta what she thought, but didn’t want to get scolded again. Somehow, it would be even more embarrassing now that he was the commander.

  The answer to his question came seconds later in a rolling peal of thunder, the scream of turbojets whining overhead and the glow of an assault shuttle’s engines only a few hundred meters up. It had to be Lt. Lee and he felt an irrational fury at the man. He had no idea how Katy had wound up being shot down, but he’d listened to her complain about Lee’s tentative flying in combat before and it didn’t take too much imagination to figure out what had happened.

  Still, he was here now and he was keeping the cargo shuttle grounded and that might be the only thing keeping the hostages alive, so Jonathan was willing to cut him a break and let Katy take care of him personally once it was all over.

  Though maybe that’s not cutting him a break, after all, he thought with a shudder. Katy was not someone you wanted to have pissed off at you.

  The ripping-metal stutter of Vulcans and the snap-crack of lasers echoed off sheet metal walls and rolled over the open plain; he had to scan the length of the installation twice before he spotted the mecha striding purposefully along, moving up in a pincer movement from both sides and pushing the Jeuta ahead of them.

  “Where they’re falling back to,” Lyta told him, pointing with the barrel of her carbine, “that’ll be where they have the hostages.”

  “Let’s go!” he urged, almost pushing past her. She stopped him with a hand on his chest, casual yet strong enough that he couldn’t have moved it if he’d tried.

  “Slow,” she said. “We need to let your people do their work, first.”

  He nodded, but chafed at the pace, imagining Marc Langella and the others waiting for rescue, maybe injured, dying and he was dragging his feet, waiting for the others to kill off more of the enemy. He gripped his pistol so tightly his fingers began to cramp and he was forced to switch it to his left hand and shake out the right, hoping this wasn’t going to be the exact second he needed it because he couldn’t shoot for shit left-handed.

  Of course, Mithra heard him and small arms chattered only fifty meters ahead of him. He dropped to the ground and Lyta crouched beside him, the barrel of her carbine still at low port. He followed her example and kept his handgun pointed down, trying not to sweep friendlies with his muzzle. The gunfire sputtered out and he thought it was over, but another burst erupted to his right and seemed to flip the switch again, lighting up the whole perimeter with muzzle flashes.

  He couldn’t see a damned thing, much less anything worth shooting and he had to relax his jaw to stop from grinding his teeth. This was so much worse than being in a mech.

  How the hell does Lyta do it?

  It took another ten seconds, but the firing died away and Lyta pushed up to her feet, motioning for him to follow. She said nothing and he assumed the squad leaders were communicating with their throat mics, but it made the coordinated movement seem haunting in the dim light, a platoon of spectral soldiers moving across the battlefield in supernatural synchronization.

  Except for the one dumbass mech jock tagging along.

  He passed by the body of a Jeuta foot-soldier laid out along the route of their advance, his chest ripped apart by what had to be multiple bursts. Blood was splashed down the front of his armor, a testimony to how long it had taken him to die even under the hail of bullets. The Jeuta’s weapon rested beside him, already stripped of its magazine by the troops to the front, a simple automatic rifle with a basic optical sight, fabricated right here at their base, most likely. He didn’t know how many others were sprawled out across the wedge of the Rangers’ formation, giving their blood to the radioactive soil, but he figured there had to be more.

  Had they gotten all of them? Were others running back to warn the Jeuta troops guarding the hostages, to tell them to shoot them?

  Maybe Lyta was thinking the same thing, because she’d sped up the march and Jonathan had to run to keep up with her steady, surefooted jog. The buildings were closer now, lacking the sort of security fence he’d seen in the encampments of human bandits. He wondered if it was a practical thing, if they’d never considered anyone might threaten them here, or if it was something about the Jeuta psyche, an unwillingness to admit they might need fences to protect them from their enemies.

  They’d certainly grown used to being on the offensive during the Fall, and only fighting amongst themselves had kept them from sweeping through human space like a plague. No fences needed, no walls, no defenses but a hellacious offense. They’d learned that lesson well, and it had cost them tonight. The main warehouse was smoking and charred where missile strikes or cannon rounds had taken out crew-served weapons turrets and bodies—and pieces of bodies—littered the ground. He didn’t see a single Jeuta alive, nothing moving but for his own company’s mecha and the ghostly shadows of the Rangers moving smoothly from cover to cover.

  “Captain Slaughter.”

  Lyta had skidded to a halt barely a meter ahead of him and he had to dig his heels in and slide to avoid running into her. He couldn’t see her face, but he knew something wasn’t right by the sound of her voice over her helmet’s external speakers. And by the fact she was speaking through them at all; they weren’t exactly tactical. She paused, reaching up to pull back her visor.

  “I just had a transmission from Paskowski. He wants to see you up front.” She motioned forward toward a Quonset hut on the other side of the main warehouse, tucked between it and one of the camouflaged outdoor storage pallets.

  She didn’t offer to go with
him, made no move toward the building and a frozen lump of iron weighed down his guts, a chill of revelation. His mouth worked but no sound emerged. He wanted to tell her no, wanted to walk away.

  He couldn’t. He was the commander.

  Someone was trying to call him on his ‘link, but he ignored the buzz, simply placing one foot in front of the other, an automaton drawn to a task against his will. Jeuta corpses smoked and bled out on the soft, crunching soil only meters from him, but he didn’t look aside to them, made no move to check if they were still alive. His handgun hung forgotten in his hand, carried loosely at his side; only carefully ingrained habit kept him from dropping it.

  Paskowski’s Scorpion stood outside the open double-doors to the Quonset hut, crouched low as if its head hung, its canopy open. The man who should have been a captain sat forlorn in the open cockpit, one leg dangling, head buried in his hands. Lyta’s Rangers were stepping in and out of the building, having cleared it already, checking diligently for booby-traps before Jonathan entered.

  Inside, death waited for him.

  The hostages were bound hand and foot, gagged and blindfolded, lined up neatly from front to back. The front rank had been shot through the head, all six of them. They had slumped where they knelt, a couple still grotesquely stuck upright by the position of their arms and legs against the restraints. The second rank…he blinked. The first two men in the second rank had been shot as well, but sprawled over the top of the next in line was the body of a Jeuta. Most of the body of a Jeuta. Below the chest, all that was left of him was a charred skeleton, but there was something about the thing’s face he recognized…a small, golden ring passing through its nostril.

  It was Hardrada. The same obscenely large handgun he’d used to kill the hostage in his message to them was smoking and charred on the ground beside his right hand. Hardrada had been hit with a laser, and the same blast had killed three of the others bound and lined up beside where he’d stood, burned them down to scorched bone…but the rest were alive.