Andromeda's Fall (Legion of the Damned) (10 page)

It was on one such crossing that the company came across an abandoned village located near the center of a shallow lake. It wasn’t clear whether the surrounding body of water served the frogs as a natural moat, a ready source of food, or both. Hasker and Fox were out front and approached the seemingly lifeless island very carefully, knowing that such places were often booby-trapped.

But after circling the village and inspecting the huts, Hasker pronounced the island safe. Two squads were ordered to guard the perimeter while the rest of the troops broke out MREs and ate lunch. The area smelled of rotting fish, but it was dry, and that made up for the stink.

McKee hurried to eat her meal so that she would have time to inspect one of the huts before taking her turn at guard duty. She was sitting slightly apart from Pachek and the rest of them with her back against a log and her legs crossed when a group of recruits approached from the right.

What happened next occurred quickly. One of the men threw something. The object was already twisting and turning in the air when McKee recognized Larkin and heard him laugh. The snakelike animal was about three feet long and weighed a couple of pounds. It landed on top of McKee’s lunch, whipped around, and snapped at her unprotected face.

She scrambled to her feet, spilling both the MRE and the reptile to the ground as Larkin and his toadies laughed and exchanged high fives. Rather than slither toward the water as she expected, the snake-thing came straight at her. So she grabbed the L-40, brought it up, and fired. The slugs tore the reptile apart.

Like most fully automatic weapons, the AXE had a tendency to rise. But rather than take her finger off the trigger, or force the barrel down, McKee allowed the bullets to draw a line that led straight to Larkin before letting up. The last geyser of mud shot up an inch from the toe of Larkin’s right boot. “Oops,” she said. “That was close.”

Pachek and half a dozen other members of the second platoon had witnessed the entire incident and laughed uproariously as Larkin’s face turned beet red. He didn’t say anything,
couldn’t
say anything, as Hasker arrived on the scene, but the hatred in his eyes was clear to see. He had been humiliated. And that was something he couldn’t bear. “What the hell were you shooting at?” Hasker demanded.

“A snake,” McKee said calmly, with her eyes still on Larkin. “It came straight at me.”

“Good shooting,” Hasker observed approvingly as he toed the bloody corpse. “Don’t forget to recharge that magazine. We wouldn’t want to come up short, would we?

“All right, people . . . Enough sitting around. Get off your asses and relieve the folks on guard duty. Stay sharp now. There’s more where the snake came from.”

* * *

The afternoon was much like the morning, only warmer. Eventually, after wading across a shallow pond, Hasker and Fox led the recruits up a muddy bank and onto dry land. There were trees, but most of them were dead, as if from a blight. So there wasn’t much foliage. Just a litter of fallen branches.

There was something spooky about walking through the maze of skeletal tree trunks. At first, McKee wasn’t sure why it felt that way. Then she realized that the feeling had to do with the brooding silence that hung over the area. There were no trilling birdcalls, hooting noises, or any of the other sounds she was accustomed to.

On the other hand, it was a relief to be up out of the water, with clear visibility all around. So she was tired, but otherwise in reasonably good condition, as Hasker and Fox led the column along a game trail and into a clearing. And that was where both of them disappeared.

It took Pachek a moment to absorb what had occurred before alerting Anders. “Charlie-Twelve to Charlie-Two . . . Charlie-One and Charlie-Six fell into some sort of hole. Over.”

That brought Anders and his T-1 forward at a run. When he arrived, it was to find that Pachek had already established a defensive perimeter. Having jumped to the ground, the noncom went over to inspect the trap. McKee was there, along with half a dozen other recruits, all of whom were wondering what to do.

Dead branches had been laid crosswise on top of each other to create a matlike structure, strong enough to support a two- or three-inch-thick layer of soil plus another hundred pounds or so. Anything heavier would break through the brittle branches and plunge down into the bottom of the pit. The trap was at least twelve feet deep, four feet wide, and six feet long. Carefully sharpened stakes pointed upwards from the bottom, and Fox was impaled on a couple of them.

Hasker, who was still strapped in place on the cyborg’s back, appeared to be unhurt. The noncom was shaken, however, as was apparent from his uncharacteristic silence as he worked to free himself. “Hold on, Sarge,” Anders cautioned. “Wait until we can drop a rope down to you. One wrong move, and you’ll land on top of a stake. Fox, what’s your status?”

“I took some damage,” the T-1 replied. “But judging from my readouts I’ll be able to walk. Assuming you can get me out of here, that is.”

“Don’t worry,” Anders replied confidently. “We’ll dig you out. It looks like the frogs were hoping to bag something big for dinner and got you instead.”

McKee wasn’t so sure about that but kept her reservations to herself as a rope was lowered to Hasker. Beyond the initial shock, the episode had a secondary effect as well. It served to underscore something that should have been obvious from the beginning. Hasker, Anders, and the T-1s were not the all-seeing, all-knowing gods she had initially believed them to be. They could and did make mistakes. Like walking on a game trail rather than parallel to it in this case.

McKee was still in the process of absorbing that lesson as they pulled Hasker up out of the pit. Then began the long, tedious process of digging a ramp that would allow Fox to escape the hole. Finally, when that moment came, it was obvious that the T-1 had a noticeable limp. The damage done to the cyborg’s hydraulic musculature couldn’t be repaired in the field. But, all things considered, the company had been lucky to escape the incident without suffering a fatality.

Darkness was falling by that time. So even though they were five miles short of their destination, the decision was made to bivouac in place and get an early start in the morning. And as McKee dug the fighting position (FP) that would become part of the company’s 360-degree defensive perimeter, she was forced to consider the night ahead. Up until that point, she had intentionally isolated herself from the others lest some slip of the tongue or other misstep inadvertently reveal her true identity.

The net result was that now, as the gloom closed in around her, she had no one to watch her back. And that was dangerous with Larkin lurking about. The bully had directed numerous dirty looks her way during the course of the afternoon, and there was absolutely no doubt that he would seek revenge.

There wasn’t anything that could be done, of course, since one could hardly strike up a friendship on a moment’s notice. But for the first time in her life, McKee realized that she was going to need help to survive.

Such were her thoughts as she banked loose soil to protect her flanks and checked to make sure that she could back out of the FP if that became necessary. Then it was time to eat an MRE and put in an hour of sentry duty before returning to get some sleep. Fortunately, she remembered what the burly instructor called Hasker’s Law, which was: “If something can crawl into your boots, jump into your pockets, or slither up your ass, it will.”

With that in mind, McKee directed a blip of light into her FP and saw that a coil of human feces had been left right at the center of the depression. She sighed. It was going to be a long night.

* * *

The sun had just broken company with the eastern horizon as the noncoms made their rounds. One by the one, the recruits stood. And because of the fog that lay like a blanket on the ground, they looked like zombies rising from their graves.

Once she was awake, the next step was for McKee to brush her teeth while waiting for a heat tab to boil the water in her metal cup. Then she ate a fruit bar, washed it down with scalding-hot tea, and began to pack her gear. She was one of the first people to report to the assembly area at the center of the encampment.

Fifteen minutes later, the rest of the company was ready to leave. The dimly seen sun was still only three fingers off the eastern horizon as Anders and Chu led the recruits into a foot of murky water. What promised to be a long day had begun.

The march took the column across a shallow lake and through a mile and a half of thick jungle before delivering them into a clearing. From the look of things, fire had been used to clear a landing zone, but time had passed, and tendrils of green were pushing their way in from all sides. Within a month, the open area would disappear.

There was a hillock off to one side, topped by three four-foot-long metal stakes, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that they were crude grave markers. A crash site was visible beyond that. Had the gunrunners been killed during a particularly difficult landing? Or attacked by frogs while on the ground? Someone had survived, or so it seemed to McKee, since the indigs weren’t likely to set up grave markers. So where were
they
? It was impossible to know. But the presence of a dilapidated shack perched on pilings suggested a rudimentary base of sorts. Perhaps the survivor or survivors had been rescued by another shuttle.

“This is as far as we go,” Hasker said as Fox came to a stop well short of the clearing. “Do not, I repeat do not, enter the cleared area. It could be booby-trapped. And even if it isn’t, our footprints would be visible from the air. We want to ambush the bastards, not chase them away.

“Corporal Anders and I will select positions for you. Once placed, you will maintain radio silence, restrict your movements, and wait. If we’re lucky, the runners will put down in the middle of the LZ, and we’ll take them out. Over.”

What followed was interesting, to McKee, anyway, who was busy learning everything she could. The noncoms set up an L-shaped ambush that would put the gunrunners in a cross fire but minimize the chances of a friendly-fire incident. That part was easy. The more difficult challenge had to do with hiding so many heat signatures which, if spotted from above, would be a dead giveaway. With the emphasis on “dead” since an incoming shuttle could hose the entire clearing with cannon fire and kill most of the company in a single pass.

The key to avoiding such a disaster was thin pieces of high-tech material that the recruits could pull over themselves. They were called heat exchangers. Each “sheet” was equipped with a microprocessor that was woven into the fabric and capable of raising or lowering its surface temperature to match the air around it via thousands of tiny cell-like nanos.

Although these preparations were interesting, what followed wasn’t. Time slowed to a crawl once she was belly down in her FP. Insects invaded her clothes and bit her. And as boredom took over, situational awareness suffered. She woke up and was shocked to discover that she’d been asleep. A group of large weed-eating herbivores entered the LZ, paused to look around, and waddled into the jungle. The sun arced across the sky. And as the light began to fade, Hasker gave up.

“This is Alpha-One . . . It looks like the bad guys took the day off. The first platoon will continue to play defense while the second eats. Then we’ll switch off. The plan is to clear the area by 1600 hours local. We’ll camp a couple of miles to the west. Over.”

McKee produced an appreciative groan as she threw the heat exchanger off and stood. All sort of things hurt, but that was nothing compared to the need to pee. Once that problem was resolved, she hurried to break out an MRE, ate the scrambled eggs and ham cold, and was surprised by how hungry she was.

Twenty minutes later, it was the first platoon’s turn to scratch what itched, slather antibacterial ointment on their insect bites, and go on crotch patrol. Many people, McKee included, preferred to handle that chore privately. But there were some, like Pacheck and one of her friends, who paired off into teams.

Then it was time to go back the way they had come. But not
exactly
, so as to avoid any traps the frogs had put in place during the last eight hours or so. Darkness found them in a swampy area, where it was necessary to harvest reeds in order to have something to keep them up out of water. Hasker wanted to cut saplings and construct a defensive ring around the company’s position, but he knew it wasn’t realistic. The troops were simply too tired.

So the platoons were scheduled to sleep four on and four off with the T-1s patrolling the perimeter. Their sensors were set on max, and they had permission to “. . . grease anything that moves.”

And because there were lots of nocturnal life-forms on Drang, they were kept busy all night. The noise generated by their fifties firing on full automatic was strangely comforting and helped McKee fall asleep.

A few hours later, she rose to find that she and her fellow recruits were surrounded by a sea of dead bodies. The T-1s had not only killed anything that came close but all of the larger creatures attracted by the buffet of dead flesh. There was nothing scientific about it. Just the raw application of firepower. But effective though the strategy was, the recruits couldn’t rely on it for long. Not without a lot more ammo than they were carrying. McKee wondered if the frogs knew that.

All the humans could do was break camp and head for the firebase as quickly as possible. So as Chu waded out into the water with his fifty at the ready and Corporal Anders riding high on his back, the resulting waves caused dozens of dead bodies to roll from side to side and undulate. And as the second platoon followed, McKee was forced to go around the larger carcasses and let the others caress her legs as they slid past.

It was gruesome business, and McKee was about halfway across the pond, and passing under the branches of a tree, when the attack came. About 10 percent of the “dead” bodies suddenly came to life, frogs dropped from above, and two indigs arrived on the water-slicked backs of battle-trained herbivores. They made trumpeting sounds as they charged out of half-hidden grottoes and stomped some of the recruits to death.