Read The Year’s Best Military SF & Space Opera Online
Authors: David Afsharirad
The Year’s Best Military SF & Space Opera (4 page)
As she fanned the windows, the live feed opened with the triple concussion of three grenades going off one after another. She bit down on her lip, anxious to engage, but she needed an overview of the situation first. Locating the squad map, she scanned the terrain and the positions of each soldier. There were five personnel besides Shelley: a sergeant, two specialists, and two privates. The map also showed the enemy’s positions and their weaponry—field intelligence automatically compiled from helmet cams and the squad’s surveillance drone.
The map showed that Shelley’s squad was outnumbered and outgunned.
With little shelter in a flat rural landscape of dusty red-dirt pastures and drought-stricken tree farms, they protected themselves by continuously shifting position in a fight to hold a defensive line north of the village that was surely the target of this raid. The insurgents’ ATVs had already been eliminated, but two pickup trucks remained, one rigged with a heavy machine gun and the other with a rocket-launcher pod, probably stripped off a downed helicopter. The rockets it used would have a range to four kilometers. Shelley needed to take the rocket-launcher out before it targeted the village and before his squad burned through their inventory of grenades.
The sound of the firefight dropped out as her get-acquainted session was overridden by Deng’s windows sliding to the center. A communication had come in from Command. Deng’s request to split the squad had been approved. Karin forwarded the order, following up with a verbal link. “Deng, your request has been approved. Orders specify two personnel remain with the wounded; four proceed to the settlement.”
“Thanks, Delphi.”
Karin switched to Holder. His ambush would go off in seconds. She did a quick scan of the terrain around him, located no additional threats, and then switched focus to Valdez. Cities were the worst. Too many places for snipers to hide. Too many alleys to booby trap. Karin requested an extra surveillance drone to watch the surrounding buildings as Valdez trotted with her squad through the dark streets. She’d feel more secure if she could study the feed from the seekers, but there was no time—because it was her new client who faced the most immediate hazard.
Lieutenant Shelley was on the move, weaving between enemy positions, letting two of his soldiers draw the enemy’s attention while he closed on the rocket launcher. The truck that carried the weapon was being backed into the ruins of a still-smoldering, blown-out farmhouse. The roof of the house was gone along with the southern wall, but three stout brick walls remained, thick enough to shelter the rocket crew from enemy fire. Once they had the truck in place, it would be only a minute or two before the bombardment started.
Not a great time to switch handlers.
Karin mentally braced herself, and then she opened a link to Shelley. The sounds of the firefight hammered through her headphones: staccato bursts from assault rifles and then the bone-shaking boom of another grenade launched by the insurgents. A distant, keening scream of agony made her hair stand on end, but a status check showed green so she knew it wasn’t one of hers. “Lieutenant Shelley,” she said, speaking quickly before he could protest her intrusion. “My codename is Delphi. You’ve been transferred to my oversight. I’ll be your handler tonight.”
His biometrics, already juiced from the ongoing operation, surged even higher.
“What the hell?”
he whispered.
“Did you people get rid of Hawkeye in the middle of an action?”
“Hawkeye took himself out, Lieutenant.”
Karin remembered her earlier assessment of Sarno’s breakdown.
He had made a mistake.
What that mistake was, she didn’t know and there was no time to work it out. “I’ve got an overview of the situation and I will stay with you.”
“What’d you say your name was?”
“Delphi.”
“Delphi, you see where I’m going?”
“Yes.”
He scuttled, hunched over to lower his profile, crossing bare ground between leafless thickets. Shooting was almost constant, from one side or another, but so far he’d gone unnoticed and none of it was directed at him.
Karin studied the terrain that remained to be crossed. “You’re going to run out of cover.”
“Understood.”
A wide swath of open ground that probably served as a pasture in the rainy season lay between Shelley and the shattered farmhouse. He needed to advance a hundred meters across it to be within the effective range of his grenade launcher. There were no defenders in that no-man’s-land, but there were at least eight insurgents sheltering within the remains of the farmhouse—and the second truck, the one with the machine gun, was just out of sight on the other side of the ruins.
She fanned the windows just as the lieutenant dropped to his belly at the edge of the brush. Bringing Shelley’s details to the top, she checked his supplies. “You have two programmable grenades confirmed inside your weapon. Ten percent of your ammo load remaining. Lieutenant, that’s not enough.”
“It’s enough.”
Karin shook her head. Shelley couldn’t see it; it was a gesture meant only for herself. There weren’t enough soldiers in his squad to keep him out of trouble once the enemy knew where he was.
Would it be tonight then? she wondered. Would this be the night she lost someone?
“I advise you to retreat.”
“Can’t do it, Delphi.”
It was the expected answer, but she’d had to try.
Nervous tension reduced her to repeating the basics. “Expect them to underestimate how fast you can move and maneuver in your exoskeleton. You can take advantage of that.”
The shooting subsided. In the respite, audio pickups caught and enhanced the sound of a tense argument taking place at the distant farmhouse. Then a revving engine overrode the voices.
Karin said, “The other truck, with the machine gun, it’s on the move.”
“I see it.”
A check of his setup confirmed he had the feed from the surveillance drone posted on the periphery of his visor display.
He used gen-com to speak to his squad.
“It’s now. Don’t let me get killed, okay?”
They answered, their voices tense, intermingled:
“We got you . . . watch over you
. . .”
Valdez’s window-set centered, cutting off their replies.
“Delphi, you there?”
Her voice was calm, so Karin said, “Stand by,” and swiped her window-set aside.
“. . .
kick ass, L T”
Shelley’s window-set was still fanned, with the live feed from the surveillance drone on one end of the array. Motion in that window caught Karin’s eye, even before the battle AI highlighted it. “Shelley, the machine-gun truck is coming around the north side of the ruins. Everybody on those walls is going to be looking at it.”
“Got it. I’m going.”
“Negative! Hold your position. On my mark . . .” She identified the soldier positioned a hundred-fifty meters away on Shelley’s west flank. Overriding protocol, she opened a link to him, and popped a still image of the truck onto the periphery of his visor. “Hammer it as soon as you have it in sight.” The truck fishtailed around the brick walls and Karin told Shelley, “Now.”
He took off in giant strides powered by his exoskeleton, zigzagging across the bare ground. There was a shout from the truck, just as the requested assault rifle opened up. The truck’s windshield shattered. More covering fire came from the northwest. From the farmhouse voices cried out in fury and alarm. Karin held her breath while Shelley covered another twenty meters and then she told him, “Drop and target!”
He accepted her judgment and slammed to the ground, taking the impact on the arm struts of his exoskeleton as the racing pickup braked in a cloud of dust. Shelley didn’t turn to look. The feed from his helmet cams remained fixed on the truck parked between the ruined walls as he set up his shot. The battle AI calculated the angle, and when his weapon was properly aligned, the AI pulled the trigger.
A grenade launched on a low trajectory, transiting the open ground and disappearing under the truck, where it exploded with a deep
whump!,
enfolding the vehicle in a fireball that initiated a thunderous roar of secondary explosions as the rocket propellant ignited. The farmhouse became an incandescent inferno. Night vision switched off on all devices as white light washed across the open ground.
Karin shifted screens. The feed from the surveillance drone showed a figure still moving in the bed of the surviving truck. An enemy soldier—wounded maybe, but still determined—clawing his way up to the mounted machine gun. “Target to the northwest,” she said.
The audio in Shelley’s helmet enhanced her voice so that he heard her even over the roar of burning munitions. He rolled and fired. The figure in the truck went over backward, hitting the dusty ground with an ugly bounce.
Karin scanned the squad map. “No indication of surviving enemy, but shrapnel from those rockets—”
“Fall back!”
Shelley ordered on gen-com. Powered by his exoskeleton, he sprang to his feet and took off.
“Fall back! All speed!”
Karin watched until he put a hundred meters behind him; then she switched to Holder, confirmed his ambush had gone off as planned; switched to Deng, who was driving an ATV, racing to cut off her own insurgent incursion; switched to Valdez, who had finally joined up with another squad to quell a street battle in an ancient desert city.
“Delphi, you there?”
Shelley asked.
“I’m here.” Her voice hoarse, worn by use.
Dawn had come. All along the northern border the surviving enemy were in retreat, stopping their exodus only when hunting gunships passed nearby. Then they would huddle out of sight beneath camouflage blankets until the threat moved on. The incursion had gained no territory, but the insurgents had won all the same by instilling fear among the villages and the towns.
Karin had already seen Valdez and Holder and Deng back to their shelters. Now Shelley’s squad was finally returning to their little fort.
“Is Hawkeye done?”
he asked her.
She sighed, too tired to really think about it. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“I never liked him much.”
Karin didn’t answer. It wasn’t appropriate to discuss another handler.
“You still there?”
“I’m here.”
“You want to tell me if this was a one-night stand? Or are you going to be back tonight?”
Exhaustion clawed at her and she wanted to tell him
no.
No, I will not be back. There wasn’t enough money in the world to make this a good way to spend her life.
Then she wondered: When had it ceased to be about the money?
The war was five thousand miles away, but it was inside her head too; it was inside her dreams and her nightmares.
“Delphi?”
“I’m here.”
In her worst nightmares, she lost voice contact. That’s when she could see the enemy waiting in ambush, when she knew his position, his weaponry, his range . . . when she knew her clients were in trouble, but she couldn’t warn them.
“You want me to put in a formal request for your services?”
Shelley pressed.
“I can do that, if you need me to.”
It wasn’t money that kept Karin at her control station. As the nightmare of the war played on before her eyes, it was knowing that the advice and the warnings that she spoke could save her soldiers’ lives.
“It’s best if you make a formal request,” Karin agreed. “But don’t worry—I’ll be here.”
PERSEPHONE DESCENDING
by Derek Künsken
Sabotaged, tossed down through the toxic atmosphere of Venus, Marie-Claude, armed only with her spacesuit and her wits, must outsmart a political faction that wants her dead—and a planet bent on destroying her.
SIXTY-EIGHT KILOMETERS
above the surface, in the thin yellowed haze of the photochemical zone of Venus’ atmosphere, Marie-Claude emerged onto the roof of the floating factory. Yellow-brown cloud curved away below her in all directions, while the stars poked through a sky whitened by a big sun, inviting an artistic soul to make something of it. A dumb maintenance drone, one of many on the factory, floated by, wiping the glass of the roof.
Her suit battery status blinked from green to yellow. She jiggled the pack. Yellow to green again. An environment laced with acid bred all sorts of shorts and power leaks. The
colonistes
called all these irritating maintenance problems
bebbits
, after the little biting flies of Québec’s wilderness.
She leaned on the wing of her plane, just for a quick break from the life of cramped factory to cramped habitat. The fast, empty wind caressing her suit was a doubtful thing, an experience at a remove, a ghostly touch that froze the bones. The
colonistes
did not touch Venus. They experienced the idea of her through their suits. Venus wrapped herself in clouds deeper and heavier than an ocean. Marie-Claude could only stand on the shores they’d built and watch Venus, as she might watch a movie, something to be left behind when she returned to the floating habitats. Venus isolated them from everything except the violence with which she touched them, bathing them in hotly cancerous solar radiation, suffocating them with thin, anoxic air, reaching up for them with tongues of sulfuric acid, delighting in marking them with acid scars where she gnawed through environmental suits and protective films.
Her battery toggled from green to yellow again. She whacked the
bebbit
. Back to green. She opened her plane and climbed in.
“Renaud,” she radioed her supervisor, “Marie-Claude here. I’m taking off from plant six.”
Take-off from a factory was a bit like the short and long seconds at the peak of a roller coaster. A ramp simply led off a lip and into the yawning atmosphere. She started her engine, taxied to the top of the ramp and rolled down, faster and faster.
At the edge, a loud snap shook the plane, and a shrieking hole opened in the side. The plane spun. A glimpse of the factory spun by, showing, at the edge of the ramp, a cleaning drone, with a part of Marie-Claude’s wing in its grabbing claw.
It shouldn’t have been there. It shouldn’t have grabbed at her plane.
She spun away. Dashboard darkened. She plunged toward the yellowed cloud deck. Marie-Claude’s heart thumped too loudly. Thoughts loud, useless. Pilot training dragged her fingers to scrabble under her seat for the ejection switch, but the cockpit floor had bent, jamming itself against her seat. She couldn’t reach it.
“
Merde, merde, merde
,” she whispered.
“Marie-Claude! What’s going on?” Renaud’s voice crackled in her helmet. “You’re losing altitude!”
No ejection seat. Busted plane. Flat spin. Sulfuric acid clouds. “
Câlisse!
” she swore.
“Marie-Claude! Do you read me?”
Terror froze her lungs with cold fingers. Jerk harness free. Plane shuddering. Move to gaping hole in the cockpit. Too loud. Fingers gripping seat. Jump. Thin air whipped. Clouds below, racing up. Scream. Tumble away. Small parachute yanked lightly at her. Voice in her ears. Hands searching for parachute cords. Parachute above her. Parachute above her. Breathe. Breathe. Answer.
“Plane blown. I’m on my secondary chute.” The small parachute barely slowed her. Only a fraction of an atmosphere resisted her descent. The air would not thicken to a full atmosphere for about ten kilometers. By then, it might be too late for rescue.
“I’m coming your way,” Renaud said.
He radioed orders to the rest of the team, to the habitat platform five kilometers higher.
Marie-Claude tasted black on her tongue. She gritted her teeth, willing herself not to puke in her helmet. Shock. Probably shock. Her stomach churned harder. Do something.
She patted her suit. Adrenaline might mask leaks or injuries. Seals and fabric and coatings okay. Heater and heat exchanger running. Oxygen pressure a bit low, but green. Main battery still green. Sealed pockets on the arms and legs of her suit contained bits of her tool kit. Breathe. Renaud was on his way. Be calm.
The plane dragged a trail of smoke through the haze. About five kilometers below, the smoke column bent sharply. In that moment, in the vast clouds, relative movement was born. She and the habitats and factories lived in the super-rotating layer of the upper atmosphere, in winds that circled Venus every four days. Her plane had dropped into the slower-moving cloud deck beneath and was slowly falling behind her.
“
Merde!
Renaud, the transition layer is higher today! I’m going to fall out of the super-rotating winds.” She did not add,
and out of your reach until you’ve circled the planet
.
“How soon?”
“A few minutes.”
Where the bottom of the super-rotating winds touched the top of the lower clouds, the smoke column had been torn into a string of eddies, dark berries on the stretched lines of yellow clouds beneath. She rode nothing more than a bit of resined fabric on thin carbon cables. “The turbulence will shred my chute.”
“I’m on full throttle, Marie-Claude. We’ll get there.”
She looked up into the yellow-white sky. She couldn’t see any planes. Sixty-one kilometers separated her from the surface of Venus. She had a few minutes before it would become very dangerous for Renaud or any of the other crews to rescue her.
The factory shrank to a toy-like gray stub far above her, but another shape was growing, resolving into a repair drone, descending on two propellers whirring behind it. Coming toward her. It wasn’t programmed to do that. It was not programmed to do anything but clean and fix simple leaks, unless engineers gave it more specific repair tasks.
“Renaud! Did you program one of the repair drones to come get me?”
The radio crackled, echoing lightning from the deep deck of the lower clouds. “No. I didn’t think we’d have enough time to do that. I’ll see if I can have someone on it.”
“That’s not why I’m asking. On take-off, I collided with a repair drone. It shouldn’t have been anywhere near the launch ramp. I think it grabbed part of my wing.”
“Are you sure?”
She hesitated to tell him over the radio. Drones wouldn’t grab her plane unless they were programmed to. Sabotage. Whoever had done this would be as likely to hear. “I think someone tried to kill me, Renaud. I think they reprogrammed the drone. Plant six was added to the inspection route late and my name was put on it. And now this drone is following me down.”
“What? Hang on. I’ll access it from here.”
Marie-Claude waited, time ticking below her as the smog thickened and the drone approached.
“I can’t get in. Its antenna is offline.”
“I can’t get away,” Marie-Claude said.
“I’m almost there.”
The drone neared, only three hundred meters from her. Its grasping claws were open, capable of tearing her parachute. Only a half kilometer below her, the smoke of her plane was a thinning gray streak. She took a deep breath.
“It’s not going to happen, Renaud. The suit can keep me alive in the upper cloud deck, but without a chute, I’m just going to drop until I cook. I’ve got to save the chute.”
“Marie-Claude! What are you doing?”
Instead of pulling on the brake loops of her parachute, she pulled all the suspension wires on one side until the canopy spilled. She fell. Her stomach leapt. Arm over arm, she pulled her parachute close until she hugged it, and only its edges slapped frantically at her arms in the wind. She tucked her legs and tumbled.
Thinly glowing clouds above. Darkness below. Spinning. Two sides.
“Marie-Claude!” Renaud yelled.
Turbulence hit like a fist. She was spinning dust. If she blacked out she was dead. Yelling in her radio. Droplets of sulfuric acid rain streaked the glass of her helmet. The world darkened. The buffeting and spinning wanted to tear her apart, but finally the bumping stopped and she fell again. She let her chute go. The canopy flapped and bloomed and yanked her upright.
A voice spoke in her radio, nearly overwhelmed by static.
“I’m through the transition,” she said. “My parachute is okay. The pressure is a tenth of an atmosphere. Temperature is about minus twenty Celsius. I’m not dead.”
Yet.
The planes now had a relative wind speed difference to her of about one hundred and fifty kilometers per hour. And the planes were only rated for up to two atmospheres of pressure and about eighty degrees. After that, the sulfuric acid chemistry became too hostile. The
Laurentide
, the main habitat, had a few probes to study the deep atmosphere and its life forms, but none of them would be nearby. They could probably refit something with which to rescue her in a day or two, but by the time the
Laurentide
was back overhead, she would have descended well past finding.
Duvieusart Inquiry Transcript, page 772
3:30 P.M., CHLOÉ RIVERIN, CHAIR: We now have Monsieur Renaud Lanoix, who leads the
Nouvelle Voie
party, but who was also the engineering foreman on April sixth. Could you describe for the Inquiry your view of the events of April sixth?
3:30, RENAUD LANOIX, ENGINEERING SUPERVISOR: Thank you, Madame Chairman. At approximately 2 P.M., Mademoiselle Duvieusart radioed, as per procedure, that she had arrived at Plant Six and started her normal inspections and work planning for later technical crews.
3:30, SANDRINE GROGUHÉ, INQUIRY MEMBER: A question, Madame Chair?
3:30, CHLOE RIVERIN, CHAIR: Go ahead.
3:30, SANDRINE GROGUHÉ, INQUIRY MEMBER: Monsieur Lanoix, in a number of reports, the press contends that Mademoiselle Duvieusart was not even supposed to be at Plant Six that day, and that the shifts were changed to draw her there.
3:35, RENAUD LANOIX, ENGINEERING SUPERVISOR: The schedule had been changed a few days earlier. Mademoiselle Duvieusart was put on Plant Six for April sixth.
3:35, SANDRINE GROGUHÉ, INQUIRY MEMBER: Who had access to the schedule—to change it, that is?
3:35, RENAUD LANOIX, ENGINEERING SUPERVISOR: A number of people have access to the schedule. Changing it is a normal part of any week’s work, Madame Groguhé. I have access, as do most of the engineers, including Mademoiselle Duvieusart.
3:35, SANDRINE GROGUHÉ, INQUIRY MEMBER: You don’t have . . .
3:35, FRANÇOIS BEAULIEU, INQUIRY MEMBER: Madame Chair, Monsieur Lanoix is not able to tell his story.
3:35, SANDRINE GROGUHÉ, INQUIRY MEMBER: Monsieur Lanoix has neglected to bring up important details.
3:35, CHLOE RIVERIN, CHAIR: Go ahead, Madame Groguhé, but please be brief.
3:35, SANDRINE GROGUHÉ, INQUIRY MEMBER: Monsieur Lanoix, fine, many people have access to the schedules, but through accounts that identify those making the changes. Who made the changes to the schedule to set up Mademoiselle Duvieusart for the sabotage of her plane?
3:35, RENAUD LANOIX, ENGINEERING SUPERVISOR: We know who accessed the schedule, Madame Groguhé. My lawyers have suggested that I should not reveal what I know here, so as not to interfere with criminal investigations.
3:40, CHLOE RIVERIN, CHAIR: This Inquiry has the authority to compel witnesses, Monsieur, and our legal counsel suggest that the danger to criminal proceedings is minimal as the cat is already out of the bag, and on the top of blog feeds over most of the Solar System.
(REPORTER’S NOTE: In camera consultation between Inquiry counsel and witness counsel.)
3:45, RENAUD LANOIX, ENGINEERING SUPERVISOR: The schedule was changed by an override code from the
Bureau du Gouverneur
, masked behind a dummy admin account.
3:45, CHLOE RIVERIN, CHAIR: The press, especially the
nationaliste
press, has made much of this being a
séparatiste
plot to frame the
nationaliste
cause. What are your thoughts on that?
3:45, RENAUD LANOIX, ENGINEERING SUPERVISOR: I don’t think that theory holds water. The sabotage was amateurish, that is certain, but Mademoiselle Duvieusart was not supposed to have survived those first few instants to tell us that the repair drone was acting strangely, which allowed us to pull the curtain back on the plot.
Marie-Claude wiped the drizzle of acid from her faceplate. Her oxygen display had yellowed. Only a few hours of oxygen left. And she continued descending. She hung in a rain of sulfuric acid, fifty-eight kilometers above the surface of Venus. Nowhere to refuel or recharge or repair or even stop.
In the distance below, a flock of spherical, gas-filled photo-synthesizers blew with the wind like pollen. Blastulae. Sometimes storms brought them as high as the photochemical zone, where they quickly died from the changes in pressure. They were small and neutrally buoyant at this altitude. They were not buoyant enough to stop her descent. Maybe if she could put enough of them together?