Into the Black: Odyssey One (47 page)

The guided ability of the M-112 gave the humans the advantage however, since they didn’t have to be perfectly on target, with every shot. A near miss without guidance was a bulls-eye with even the minimal course corrections that each bullet was capable of. If the admittedly minimal intelligence of the scram-jet propelled round was capable of seeing the enemy, the enemy was already dead.

The problem was when the drones hid within building and alcoves and forced the humans to approach too close for the guidance system to be effective.

The heavy little rounds were lethal killers at any range of course, but the M-112 was designed for the modern battlefield, not the sort of close quarters, room clearing that this fight was starting to turn into. At short range, the weapon’s effectiveness was less than half what it could do at its optimum engagement range.

Of course, the fact that each round was explosive armor piercing tended to compensate for any shortcomings from a lack of a kinetic kill.

In short, it was a good thing that the squad was wearing full environmental body armor.

An explosive blow back and incidental shrapnel from your own bullet was a bitch of a way to die.

*****

“All right, Boss. Looks like we’re clear.”

Savoy nodded, “thanks Mehn. Burke…, you’re up.”

“Yes Sir!” Burke said eagerly.

“Could you at least TRY to not sound so happy about it?” Savoy groaned.

“Sorry Sir.”

Bullshit,
Savoy thought, but didn’t comment. “Mehn, get those locals over here and under cover!”

“On our way, boss.”

Good. One less thing to worry about,
Savoy thought as he looked around for a likely spot.

There was a solid looking building a short distance away that looked tough enough, so he jumped over to it and checked the area behind it.

“This’ll do. Hey Mehn, those locals got one of their ray guns?”

“Sure do, Sir. What’s up?” The response came back.

“Bring ’im here,” Savoy grinned.

Mehn acknowledged the order so Savoy turned his focus to Burke, as the explosives man finished up the last minute preparations.

*****

Nero Jehan grumbled as he listened to the reports that were coming in.

Less than half of them were from his soldiers, the rest were being routed to him from various other sectors and were almost entirely composed of complaints from the civilians.

He didn’t have time for this!

The big man’s fist cracked the obsidian surface of the console in front of him and half his staff shrank away in fear, as he growled in his annoyance.

The rest were more used to him, it seemed and didn’t do more than jump a little, but it was enough for Jehan to calm himself and turn back to his work. He grumbled as he wiped the complaints from his screen.

Let someone else handle that idiocy.

“Reassign Fourth Squad to the Promenade in Calisma,” he growled, glancing over at one of his staff.

“Make sure that they are careful to announce their arrival. I don’t want them killed by our allies.”

“Yes Sir.”

“Are you all right, Nero?”

He looked around to see Rael approaching. “Shouldn’t you be busy?”

“I have no fleet to command and the alien ship has left orbit…, to fight for us.” The small man completed, his tone a little bitter.

“Welcome to my hell Rael,” Nero growled.

“Why, I wonder, does it feel like we are paying the price for millennia of peace?” Rael asked, mostly rhetorically.

Nero just snorted.

“You don’t agree?”

“I’m from the outer colonies,” the big man responded. “My people left the inner systems because we couldn’t handle the ‘peace’. I’m probably not the best person to ask.”

Tanner nodded, “I understand that… This is why you are in charge of our ground forces…”

“Ground forces!” Nero snapped voice laced with disgust. “Is that what you call them? Tanner, my friend, they are no more ‘ground forces’ then your ships were a ‘navy’. They are, at best, police playacting at being soldiers. If the Drasin were parking their ships illegally, or perhaps stealing trinkets on the street, then they might know what to do. They aren’t soldiers, Rael. No matter how well you dress them up.”

“I think you are letting your frustration get the best of you, Nero,” Tanner told him mildly. “And it is bothering your staff.”

Nero looked around and grimaced.

Tanner had a point. If nothing else, he should be keeping his mouth shut in front of the others. There was no reason for them to lose hope, as he was.

Nero Jehan nodded, “You are right, my friend. Perhaps I’m just tired.”

Tanner nodded, but stiffened as the big man moved past him and leaned down to whisper.

“How can they be soldiers, old friend,” Nero asked in a whisper as he moved past. “When the person they look to for leadership, doesn’t even know what a soldier is?”

*****

Sean Bermont threw himself up against a wall, as he checked his gun’s status in the HUD and grimaced.

“I’m out!” He said over the Link, taking a few deep breaths to relax as a few stray ray gun blasts whined around him.

“Hold for reload,” Brinks’ voice came over the Link, but all Sean could do was nod his head uselessly.

The powered armor increased a soldier’s endurance practically exponentially, but Sean always seemed to get winded in combat, just the same. Something about the adrenaline rush, perhaps, or maybe it was the fear, plain and simple.

He didn’t know what it was, but when he started to come down from the battle rush, it was like he’d run a marathon, even when it was the suit taking up most of the slack.

A scraping hiss startled the former JTF2 Soldier into action, as he turned against the wall and fell into a crouch, with his empty rifle braced against his knee. He poked the muzzle around the corner, linking his HUD into the rifle’s camera and swept it around in an attempt to locate the source of the sound.

When he found it, all thought of a post battle ‘crash’ was gone, as another surge of adrenaline that struck him.

“Oh fuck.”

*****

Savoy looked up as the group of local military came around the corner at a dead run, Mehn’s easy loping ‘jog’ placing him at their rear, as his rifle swept their ‘six’.

“Here,” Savoy snapped, slapping his rifle into the arms of the closest of the locals, startling the man into grabbing for it as he appropriated the man’s laser rifle.

“What…?” The man blurted, but Savoy ignored him.

The Terran Lieutenant stepped back away from them and examined the rifle for a moment, comparing it to the log recordings of Bermont’s ‘experimentation’. In a few seconds, he had the controls more or less figured out and, if he was right, it was already set to maximum power.

That done, he levelled the weapon at the ground and triggered the firing stud.

The rifle whined in his hands and its beam cut into the ground. Savoy held it steady for a couple seconds, and began to play it along the ground in a straight line. Acrid smoke rose around him, but he ignored it, as he watched the glowing of the heated ground through his thermal overlay.

He was finished with the test a few seconds later. Savoy shouldered the rifle easily and walked back to the group, even as he thumbed in an order for one of the ‘chutes’ that was floating above them.

“Here,” he tossed the rifle back to the man he’d taken it from, and nodding to Mehn who had come to the front of the group.

Mehn reclaimed Savoy’s weapon from the startled man and glanced skyward as one of the Cee Emm packs descended. “You doing what I think you’re doing, El Tee?”

“Yup.”

“Cool.” Mehn smiled easily under his armor as he held both rifles against his shoulders and leaned back against the building.

Savoy didn’t respond as he settled the pack over the still glowing trench and walked over to it. The heat coming from the superheated ground was searing, but his suit could handle worse if it had to, so he ignored it and pulled a panel off the ‘chute’ so he could access a couple of its controls.

In a few seconds he’d shunted the power circuits to the Cee Emm field and stepped back as he tapped in a command.

The resulting burst of energy slapped him like a fist, actually sliding him back along the ground a few inches, but he’d been expecting it. It also drove all the air molecules back for twenty feet around, leaving the entire area engulfed in a miniature vacuum.

The ground at his feet cracked, though he could only feel it through the suit and not hear it, as it cooled under the sudden chill. A short while after, the Cee Emm pack failed and the air rushed back with an impressive thunderclap.

Savoy checked the ground temperature and nodded. “All right, everyone get into the trench and keep your heads DOWN.”

*****

The heavy smack sent Bermont’s M-112 flying before he could pull it back, leaving the soldier barely enough time to roll clear before the heavy blow cleaved into the structure where his head had been.

The drone gave an odd hissing whine as it rushed around the corner, striking again at Sean as the armored soldier rolled desperately, then slapped his right hand down into the ground with a full powered strike.

The slap cracked against the smooth, glassy material of the promenade floor, its force lifting Sean off the ground, as another cleaving strike landed where he had been. He tucked his arms into his torso as he spun in the air using his feet and legs to control his spin as he landed back on his feet.

The move left him facing the wrong direction when he landed, but the three hundred and sixty degree panorama the suit afforded him kept him informed of what the enemy at his back was doing, just in time to sidestep another strike and spin as he pulled his carbon steel Kukri from the sheath in the thigh of his armor.

The blade was curved and honed to a fine, though not razor, edge and it actually hissed as it parted the air, as the armor- assisted strike went through. The blade bit into the drone’s mandible, causing it to jump back reflexively, before it hissed again and lifted its leg up over twelve feet, above Bermont’s head.

He saw the blow coming, his mind already running at that insane speed combat seemed to induce, but his own motions felt as sluggish as the fluid motion of his foe. He let go of the Kukri, bringing his right hand up to block the blow, as the leg came crashing down into his shoulder with force enough to rupture the carbon fibre armor and dig deep into his shoulder.

His HUD went wild, but Sean didn’t hear it except on a visceral level, as he screamed both in pain and outraged exertion. He kept his right arm moving, by some force of will and locked it onto the carapace of the leg that had impaled him.

He screamed at the drone, anything to distract himself from the torturous pain he felt, as he began twisting the leg away and to the side. The leg gave way slowly but surely, as his armor enhanced muscles continued to pressure it down in a twisting motion like one might use when breaking off a lobster’s claw at a fine meal.

There was a sickening crack as the leg gave way and the drone hissed and squealed in shock or pain, Bermont didn’t know or care which. He ripped it loose, twisting his entire body back and yanking until the leg burst from the main body in a spray of steaming fluids.

Then the two combatants fell apart, the human collapsing to the ground, and the alien staggering slightly as it tried to balance itself on a limb that was no longer there.

Sean screamed wordlessly yet again, as he pulled the impaling limb from his shoulder, while feeling the cooling hiss of the suit’s automatic foam systems sealing the wound.

For a moment he looked at the limb in his hand, especially the tip where it was coated in his own blood, giving the carapace a sinister oily appearance. It was shaped like a spear point, with jagged edges that he assumed were to aid it in climbing, but also knew had done a wicked job on his flesh.

Then his attention was brought back to the real world, when the creature hissed and charged at him again.

He growled, covering his pain with sound, as he drove upward and flipped the alien limb over in his wounded hand, then passed it to his good one.

He met the charge like a pikeman from some long forgotten war, grunting in pain and exertion as he drove the alien’s own leg deep into its guts.

It screamed this time and Bermont grunted in satisfaction, as he gave the limb a twist and fell back. The steaming and sizzling fluid that filled the aliens hissed around him, bubbling against his armor and the ground, but he didn’t have the strength to get up, so he fell back where he was and lay on the ground.

“One…, this is Five. Scratch the rearm and send me a medevac” he grunted into the net.

“Confirmed, Five. You all right, Sean?”

Bermont grimaced as a rough chuckle echoed through him, “I’ll live. Probably.”

“’Chute’ is coming in now.”

“Good.”

*****

Savoy and Mehn had finished herding the locals into the makeshift trench he’d cut, when Burke made his appearance again.

“We ready?” Savoy asked glancing up as the other man approached.

“On your order Boss,” Burke told him, glancing at the trench.

“This good enough?” Savoy asked simply.

Burke eyed the cut in the ground with a critical glance. It was deep, as such things went, over four feet down, in fact and was coated with a glassy substance he’d never seen, but it looked like it would suffice to keep everyone clear of the worst of the blast.

He nodded, “it’ll do, Boss.”

“Good,” Savoy said, making a notation on his battle log to state that he had cleared the four GBU-98s for immediate deployment. “You’re clear to launch.”

“Best get your head down,” Burke told him, and Savoy grimaced at the grin he heard in that self-satisfied voice.

“Everyone - down!” Savoy ordered, reaching out and hauling a couple of the locals down as Mehns’ did the same.

The rest got the idea and they all hunkered down, as deep as they could in the still warm trench, while Burke stood up above with a silly smirk plastered across his face, where no one could hope to see it.