Galactic Frontiers: A Collection of Space Opera and Military Science Fiction Stories Page 34
Tombstone was a long term campaign, and we were billeted in firebases scattered all around the Alliance-controlled sections of the planet. Each one covered a designated sector and was located within supporting range of at least two others. My platoon was stationed with another from our company in base Delta-4, which was dug into the side of a rocky mountain along the edge of a long range of jagged peaks. We’d replaced two platoons that were being rotated out after four months’ on the line. They were 100 strong when they got there; 41 of them marched out.
We lined up in single file in the ingress/egress tunnel and marched slowly toward the main hatch. The corridor had been cut into the rock and then coated with a high density polymer that insured the tunnel was airtight, even against the planet’s corrosive atmosphere. One whiff of Tombstone’s air was enough to kill you. There was a double airlock system, but only one of our sections at a time fit in the outer chamber, so half the platoon had to wait. My squad was part of the rear group, and we stood around in the inner chamber for a few minutes while the other section marched through the outer airlock. The doors back into the base wouldn’t open again until both airlocks were closed tight and the cleansing/decontamination procedure was completed. The contaminants on one Marine’s untreated armor could endanger the entire installation. Tombstone was no joke. It was death itself, waiting for an instant of carelessness to strike.
When we finally got outside we deployed in two long skirmish lines, one positioned about half a klick behind the other. If there was one thing they taught us in training, it was not to bunch up. It makes it too easy to pick us off in groups, and if the enemy decided to go nuclear, they could take out a densely-packed force with one or two warheads.
I was a newb, so the lieutenant palmed me off on the most seasoned squad leader. The sergeant positioned me between one of the team leaders and an experienced private. There were only three raw recruits in the whole platoon, so it was pretty easy for the lieutenant to make sure we were looked after. Years later, when I got my own lieutenant’s bars, we were in the middle of the Third Frontier War and getting our asses handed to us. My first platoon command had 36 new recruits out of 50 total strength, and there’s no doubt in my mind we suffered heavier losses because of that. I’m grateful that on Tombstone I was surrounded by veterans…experienced men and women who pulled me through the nightmare of combat on that hell world.
The terrain was surreal, jagged exposed rock as far as the eye could see. Nothing could live on Tombstone, at least not beyond some exotic and highly dangerous bacteria. As far as the eye could see there was nothing but sulfur-crusted rock and bubbling pools of fluorosulfuric acid, heated to the boiling point by subterranean lava flows. The atmosphere was hazy, with dense green clouds of corrosive gas floating close to the ground.
We were moving up toward a long ridge where we could get a good look at the low, rocky plain below. Normally, we’d be able to detect any enemy within 50 klicks, but between the radiation, the unstable atmosphere, and the almost constant magnetic storms, our scanners were unreliable. The two sides had been fighting here a long time, and both had figured how to calibrate their ECM, to maximize the cover the planet’s thick atmosphere and heavy radiation offered. But fancy electronics were only part of our arsenal, and the captain wanted us to scout the old fashioned way. We were heading for the high ground with the best visibility to get a better look.
You could say we were scouting, but it was really a search and destroy mission. We were out there to find any enemy troops who had come into our sector and wipe them out. That was the reality of the fighting on Tombstone, lots of scattered actions aimed at taking out as many of the enemy as possible. The war – excuse me, “situation” – was almost purely attritional. Neither side had enough strength to win conventionally nor the willingness to risk massive escalation, so the idea was to break down the other side’s will to fight, primarily by inflicting losses. Only an idiot could have embraced that kind of strategy…precisely the kind of idiot that ran the governments of both powers.
I didn’t think too much about why we were there, at least not back then. I’d gotten my blood up for the landing, and I was scared to death on the way down, but once we’d made it to the ground the tension subsided. We marched right to the firebase and we’d spent the last week sealed in, my biggest concern the inadequate number of showers and the consequent effect on the livability of the place. We were bored stiff, and we played cards or hung out in the media center to pass the time.
Now I was out in the shit, armored up and tramping through the alien landscape looking for enemies. Enemies I was supposed to kill. Enemies who would try to kill me. That adrenalin that had faded after the landing was back. I was edgy and tense, imagining someone hiding behind every rock we passed, just waiting to take a shot. I had to force myself to focus on my training and what I was supposed to do. I knew my best chance to stay alive – and help my comrades do the same – was to do as I had been taught. But that was easier said than done…especially in a place like Tombstone.
Tension can be good in a combat situation; it keeps you focused and attentive. But it can also be dangerous. If you step too aggressively in powered armor you may find yourself jumping three or four meters in the air, offering some enemy sniper a juicy target. Move forward too quickly and you end up out of position and ahead of your team…alone and exposed. The suit does so much of the work, it you aren’t paying attention you can lose track of how far or fast you’ve been walking.
We were moving forward slowly, carefully. The lieutenant was a pro. He’d been a private who came up in the Second Frontier War, and he’d fought in the Battle of Persis, which was a bloody mess and also the climactic event of that war. His unit ended up cut off during the final days of the campaign, and all the officers and non-coms were killed or wounded. He was the senior private, and he took command of the remnants of the company, maybe 30 Marines in all. They’d been given up for lost, but when the Alliance forces finally broke through days later they were stunned to find 13 survivors, starving and exhausted, but still holding out – and tying down enemy forces ten times their strength. That got him his sergeant’s stripes and, later, an invitation to the Academy.
My suit’s AI controlled my internal climate perfectly, but I was still sweating. I could feel the slickness of my arms sliding against the cool metal sleeves of my armor. I was a little lightheaded – I still wasn’t used to the oxygen-rich mix my suit fed me during combat operations. We’d used it a few times in training, but I think I was a little sensitive to it, and it was taking me longer to adapt completely. The suit had given me the standard pre-battle stimulants which, combined with my own adrenalin – and a healthy dose of fear – really had me on edge.
We’d just reached the ridgeline, and my com started beeping. It wasn’t any kind of communication; it was something else my AI picked up. I was just about to report it to Corporal Clark when his voice came through. “Everybody down.” He was in control, as always, but his tone was excited, urgent. “Now!”
My body responded to his command before my conscious mind had processed it. I’ll never know for sure, but I’d wager the stimulants they give us before battle saved my life that day, because an instant later the spot where I was standing was raked with fire. I was behind a spiny rock outcropping, maybe two-thirds of a meter high…just enough to hide me if I lay very flat.
I was the lowest rung on the chain of command, so I didn’t have a data feed on the rest of the platoon or squad, but I could tell from the chatter on the com that we had some people hit. Getting shot on Tombstone was especially bad, because if the breach was more than your suit’s auto-repair system could handle you were as good as dead. A scratch on the arm could be fatal if your suit couldn’t fix the hole in a few seconds.
The armor does have a significant self-repair capacity. The AI will respond to any suit breach in a hostile environment by immediately increasing the air pressure to keep toxic atmosphere from leaking into the suit. The climate
control adjusts, attempting to minimize the effects of any excess heat or cold. While these systems are keeping the Marine alive, at least for a few seconds, the suit deploys a wave of nano-bots to attempt to patch the breach with self-expanding adhesive polymer. It is an extremely workable system, and fast too. As long as the hole isn’t too big.
They’d laid a trap for us. The beeping was coming from a series of transponders they’d set along the ridge, powerful enough to send a signal through the dense atmosphere, giving them a precise firing solution. Now we were caught in interlocking fields of fire – they had heavy auto-cannons hidden in multiple locations. It was bait and destroy instead of search and destroy, and we were the targets.
The heavy auto-cannon rounds tore into the rock wall that was shielding me, sending shards scattering in all directions. My body was pressed down against the front of my armor, an instinctive but pointless effort to get farther away from the deadly stream of fire just over my back. My mind raced…what should I do? I looked for a spot where I could get a view out over the ground in front of the outcropping, but I couldn’t find anything. I couldn’t move up and fire over the ridge; I’d get cut to pieces before I got a shot off.
I just lay there, thinking, I’m going to die here. Six years of training so I can come here and get killed in my first skirmish? I was scared for sure, but even more, I was angry at the waste of it all. But I couldn’t think of any way out. I was starting to panic, to forget all the training. Then I heard the lieutenant’s voice on the com.
Chapter 2
2243 AD
Abandoned suburbs
North of the Ruins of Old Houston
Texas, USA, Western Alliance
The Corps got most of its recruits in unorthodox ways, and it had a tremendous track record of turning cutthroats and gutter rats into top notch soldiers. But I’d wager they found me in the strangest way of all. I was stealing from them.
I was a thief, a damned good one. I’m two meters tall and then some, and I look like a big clumsy oaf. But looks can be deceiving. I can sneak around without anybody hearing me, and I can strip everything valuable out of a warehouse in the time it takes a guard to finish his rounds.
I was only sixteen, but I already had my own crew. We had our base in an old suburb outside Houston. The fringe areas of the city had been mostly abandoned by the government, and when the police and other services went, so did the residents…or at least most of them. Anyone who tried to stick it out gave up after Houston was nuked during the Unification Wars; they built New Houston about 50 klicks west of the old city, and the fallout-contaminated exurbs surrounding the radioactive ruins of the old metropolis sat almost totally empty for a century.
The radiation hadn’t been a major hazard for years, at least this far out, and the place made a great base of operations. None of the monitors and detection devices that were so thick in the inhabited areas. No regular patrols, not even any nosy, pain in the ass residents. We practically had the place to ourselves.
We hijacked freight shipments moving through the area, and we raided the Cogs living around New Houston. Since the original city had been destroyed, New Houston didn’t have the ancient factories and decaying slums most of the other metro areas did. The Cogs lived in cheap prefab housing units and tent cites set up around the big plasti-crete and chemical plants the megacorps built there. They had it a little better than the lower classes in some other cities. There was crime, certainly, but there wasn’t as much of an organized gang presence as in other places. It was more a series of company towns, and while the inhabitants lived just above sustenance levels, they were a little more prosperous than Cogs elsewhere. They had a bit more material wealth, a few modest luxuries…and we tried to steal it all.
We snuck into the city sometimes and stole there too. We always targeted the middle classes, never the rich. Going after the upper classes was a fool’s game. The wealthy have power and influence; become too much of a problem for them and your days are numbered. But what is some engineer going to do?
I was prosperous, at least my own version of it. I set myself up in a big old abandoned house. It must have been a politician or executive who built the place, because it was huge. There was a big double staircase right inside the entry and a high ceiling – at least six meters. It looked like the floors had been marble at one time and the walls covered with paneling, but there were only a few bits and pieces left; the rest had been stripped long ago by some scavenger who got there a few generations before I did.
I’d traveled a long way to get where I was. My father’s name was Gregory Jax, and I have no idea what possessed him to name me Darius. He was a Cropper, a Cog recruited by a megacorp to work on one of the big agricultural preserves. The labor was difficult and dangerous, but no worse than working in one of the factories, and the farming campuses were a little safer than the outer ghettoes of the cities. I think he took the job because he thought it would be better for me. At least I’d grow up away from the gangs, which were really bad in the Louisville slums where I was born. He’d convinced himself it was the right thing to do, and it was only after we got there he realized he’d just gone from one trap to another.
My mother was gone. I never really knew her. She died when I was young; I’m not really sure how. My father couldn’t even talk about her without getting upset, even years later. I know her name was Risa, but that’s about all. I always meant to ask him to tell me more about her, but the days went by and I never did. Then, one day, he was gone too, and I had no one to ask. I was alone, and my questions about the past would go unanswered.
He died in an accident on the farm. They never told me exactly how it happened, but the machinery was mostly old and poorly maintained, and mishaps were common. It was easier and cheaper to replace workers than it was to inspect and maintain the equipment. The Megacorp was owned by the government, and they established a production quota and a budget. The Corporate Magnates who ran the thing got to keep whatever was left unspent, and they weren’t going to lose sleep over a few dead or crippled Croppers. Not as long as profits were rolling in and their skim kept coming.
I was only twelve, but I was already taller and bigger than most of the adults, so they assigned me to take over my father’s workload. Technically, he still owed the corporation for transport and housing, so I had to work off the debt. It was all bullshit; the whole system was a scam run by the megacorp. No one ever got out of debt, they just passed it on to the next generation, who became as trapped as their parents before them. They just kept working on the farm until they were too weak or hurt to continue, and then they were discharged, which meant they lost their housing and probably starved to death.
I did the work for a while, but I had no intention of spending the rest of my life in those forsaken fields. One of the supervisors rode me constantly – I think he had been in some sort of quarrel with my father, and now he took it out on me. He was a miserable bastard, and he was relentless. I tried my best to put up with it, but I blamed him for my father’s death and one day I’d had enough. He was giving me a hard time about nothing, and I just grabbed him and twisted his head. His neck snapped like a dry twig. I can still remember the feeling of his body jerking around, then going limp while I still held him…and the hideous stench as his bowels released in death. It was the first time I’d ever stood up for myself, the first time I’d ever killed anyone.
After the initial adrenalin rush, I panicked. The other supervisors backed away, but they were all calling frantically for security. I knew I’d be lucky if they gave me the formality of a trial before gassing me…most likely they just shoot me down on sight. So I ran. I ran, and somehow I got away, past the checkpoints and over the perimeter fence.
I was alone, hiding in the rugged ground east of the farm complex, terrified, frantically trying to think of what to do. I knew I had to get my implant out or it would lead them right to me. I sat for what seemed like a long time, working up my courage. Finally, reaching behind me, I sliced in
to my back, digging for the implant. I didn’t have a knife, but I’d found a jagged shard of metal when I was running – probably part of a broken farm tool. I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew the chips were implanted somewhere in the lower back. I couldn’t see; I couldn’t even get a good grip on the makeshift blade as I dug it into my flesh. I gritted my teeth against the agony, and I could feel my hands getting slick with my own blood. I got nauseous and almost threw up, but I managed to stay focused. I knew I was as good as dead with the damned implant still inside me broadcasting. I can’t remember how long it took – it seemed like hours, though it could only have been minutes – but I finally found the thing and got it out.
I lay there a long time, tears streaming down my face. I’d never been in so much pain. The bottom of my shirt was soaked with blood. I’m going to die here, I thought. But I finally managed to get control of myself and think clearly for a few seconds. I smashed the implant with a rock; it wouldn’t be tracking me anymore. But it would lead them there, to the last known position it had transmitted. I had to move on, and I had to do it immediately.
I tried to get up, but I was dizzy and it took me a while to steady myself. I took off my shirt and tore it into long strips, wrapping it around me the best I could to bind the wound. I thought about just lying there until it was all over, but again, something inside me drove me to live. I staggered my way over the rocky hills in the fading light until I couldn’t take another step…then I collapsed and passed out.