The Animus Gate (Book One of The Animus Trilogy) Page 16

  “What are you planning, Bakari?”

  “A present for our friends. Keep her steady, Chandra!”

  “Copy...”

  Darius activated the infrared scope on his visor with an eye gesture and slid the side door open. He didn’t expect to see the Shiza clearly because of their low-temperature blood—but the exhaust on the hoverbikes was another matter.

  The incoming flank was less than 50 meters away and closing fast. Darius found his lead pip, activated the full-mag firing mode of his rifle, and took a shot at the lead bike. It was a bullseye. The force of the discharge knocked Darius back to the far wall of the APC, and he scrambled to get back into position.

  “Boone,” he said, “I’m grabbing your rifle.” It was on a magnetic gun rack nearby. There was no time to wait for his own rifle barrel to cool down.

  There was another burst of fire from the turret as Boone sighted the other flank.

  Darius lined himself up in the doorway again—just as the remaining right flanker closed the gap. He and the Shiza fired at the same time. Darius aimed at the lizard’s face, and the lizard aimed at the APC’s tires. There was no time to warn the squad. The impact from the Shiza's weapon blew a wheel off the APC, and Chandra lost control. The vehicle flipped at speed. Now belly-up, it went skidding about 30 meters across the desert floor.

  Darius was thrown around like a ragdoll, and he found himself in a daze amid the groaning of the injured. He ended up with a long crack on the outer layer of his face shield, but he'd managed to escape any broken bones. Suit integrity was showing yellow. Darius looked down at what had been the top of the APC; the turret had been sheared off in the crash, along with the antenna.

  His squad had trained a couple of times for a crashed ground vehicle, so they were able to get on their feet fairly quickly. Masasi got Darius up, handed him her rifle, and drew her sidearm.

  “Chandra, Boone,” said Darius,” stay here with the injured. Masasi, you’re with me. We’re gonna try to lead the other flank away.”

  “On foot?” asked Masasi.

  Darius shook his head. “Not exactly. Just come with me and follow my lead.”

  ✽✽✽

  Darius tossed Masasi’s rifle back to her, and they made a run for the nearest downed hoverbike. It was about 40 very long meters away. Ordinarily, this would be an insane stab in the dark—but the brass had been smart enough to train their grunts on some enemy vehicles and weapons, just in case.

  “Darius,” said Masasi, “what's your plan?”

  “So far? We take off on a bike to lead the Shiza away.”

  “Which bike? There aren’t any nearby.”

  “Not yet.”

  A Shiza hoverbike had not been part of the training program, but Darius had driven one of their pickup truck-like vehicles a couple of times in the sims, so he was banking on the basic controls being more or less the same—assuming that the hard-won operational intel fed to the mindworms was up-to-date.

  He and Masasi were halfway to the bike when the remaining flank took a pass at them. He hit the deck as soon as the shots rang out. Darius returned fire with a short burst, but the enemy was already going lateral to throw off his aim. On the bright side, there were only two hostiles left now. Boone had apparently tagged one just before the APC flipped.

  Darius glanced back at Masasi. She had been hit in the left shoulder, but her armor plating had absorbed most of the impact. “I can still shoot,” she told him as they ran.

  “When they come around again,” said Darius, “visor-tag one and go full-discharge on your rifle. I’ll take a shot at the other with my sidearm. He spotted a waist-high boulder to their left. “Here! We take cover here. If we try to line up these shots while we’re exposed, it’s game over.”

  The Shiza came barreling back towards them now—but from separate directions. Smart. That would make it impossible to get them both with a single grenade. Masasi tagged the right-hand one and sent the info to Darius’s visor. He scoped the one on his left and prepared to fire his entire mag at once. It was about the only way that his sidearm would be powerful enough to stop a creature of that size.

  And this meant that the shot had to count. Which meant that the enemy had to get pretty close before he could squeeze off his shot.

  “Not yet,” he told her. “Wait for it...wait for it...Now! Fire!”

  Masasi hit her target on the shoulder, and he went flying off his bike, which landed just a few meters away. Darius missed his target altogether, and the two soldiers ducked behind the boulder right before returning fire blanketed their position.

  The remaining rider flew over a dune and out of sight.

  “Let’s grab that bike,” said Darius.

  “Right behind you.”

  They scrambled to the closest one. It took both of them to get the enormous thing upright. It was nearly the size of a car.

  As Darius struggled with the bike’s controls, the biker they had just forced off his ride emerged from behind a boulder of his own.

  “Shit,” he said, “I’m not gonna get this thing moving before he’s on top of us. Take cover!”

  They crouched down, using the bike to shield themselves.

  “Masasi, hand me your pistol.”

  She slapped their last remaining ranged weapon in his palm. The injured Shiza lumbered towards their position on foot, pelting them with suppressing fire.

  “We need to put him down,” said Masasi, “before the other one comes back from the opposite direction and pincers us.”

  “Agreed. Lob a grenade at him to interrupt his fire, and then I’ll take the shot.”

  “Copy. Fire in the hole!”

  It didn’t have to connect. The lizard just had to see it blinking through the air, then it would stop firing to evade.

  The suppressing fire halted, and Darius peeked over the bullet-ridden bike. The Shiza was scrambling. Darius had to move out of cover to get back in range for his shot.

  “Get the bike going!” he said to Masasi. “Just power it up and go! Don’t sweep back! Draw the last one away!”

  “Roger.”

  The scrambling Shiza had dived into a cluster of stone pillars. Darius reckoned that it had caught some shrapnel from the grenade. And sure enough, his visor was showing a trail of yellow blood.

  Got you now, he thought.

  Meanwhile, Masasi’s new ride roared to life, and she blasted off in the general direction of the rendezvous point. If she could lure the remaining biker, that meant that it was just down to this one last lizard—unless they were spotted by another enemy detachment. The faster he could track down and eliminate this last Shiza, the sooner he and his team could focus on repairing the APC and getting back on the road before more hostiles crossed their path.

  “Try your best, wormling,” said a voice inside his mind. “I could use a story to amuse my clan.”

  Darius stopped dead in his tracks. That voice definitely had not come in over the radio. With a few eye gestures, he quickly navigated through his message logs. Nothing had come through.

  “What the fuck,” he breathed. Was this some kind of previously unknown weapon? But by what mechanism?

  Regardless of what this shiza wielded, it had to be confronted and taken care of before reinforcements arrived. So Darius steeled himself and pressed forward.

  He also figured that if this one thought it could take him, it would have tried already. The blood told the story.

  He checked his mag one last time. It was ready to go. He detached one of his two grenades from his armor and pulled the pin. It wouldn't activate until he let go of the lever that the pin had been holding in place.

  A sudden stirring in the scrub to his right sent him leaping reflexively to his left, just in time to avoid the Shiza as it lunged from behind a pillar to take a swipe. Its leathery claw was large enough to palm a small child. Before Darius could get on his feet, the Shiza was on top of him and rearing back for a killing blow.

  “You at least died like a
warrior,” said the voice.

  He aimed and squeezed off his entire pistol mag into its upraised arm, severing it in a shower of yellow blood that splashed all over him. Even this creature couldn’t take a point-blank blast.

  It reeled and roared in pain, but it did not relent. Darius seemed only to have made it angrier. It thrust its massive jaws forward to return the favor, and he had no doubt that it could crush his arm like a breadstick. The only move he had left was the grenade in his hand, and as the Shiza’s mouth bit down upon his arm, he jammed the explosive as far down its throat as he could. Its teeth were like burning knives on his arm, but it could not bite down all the way. The gag reflex was too strong.

  The Shiza stumbled back, one hand reaching into its mouth while another slapped uselessly at its neck. Darius covered his faceplate with his arms as the grenade detonated, and he was splattered with steaming viscera. The remains of the Shiza fell into a gory heap at his feet.

  He knew that if he could have smelled it, he would not have been able to keep his lunch down. The sound of it was still enough to make his stomach flip.

  “Bakari,” said Chandra, “the injured are stabilized, coming to reinforce, over.”

  “No...no need, Chandra. Area has been secured. But...I could use a stiff drink right about now...”

  “Yeah, your vitals are off the charts. You sure you don’t need me back there?”

  “I’ll be fine. Just...just need a minute to collect myself. What happened to the other biker?”

  “I did. This sniper rifle isn’t just for show. Coast is clear. So gather yourself up and get on back to this heap. I wanna make it to the FOB in time for dinner. I hear they serve a mean clam chowder.”

  Darius groaned to his feet. Now that the adrenaline was receding, every part of him felt like it had been hit by a rock the size of a fist. He looked down at what was left of the Shiza, and he was struck by the fragility of life. He had to lean against a pillar for a minute to steady both his body and his mind. It was not mere fatigue that sapped his strength.

  His suit was beeping. Integrity had been compromised. He was just squishy meat and crunchy bones inside this fancy-looking getup. He hoped Boone still had some medical sealant.

  Although the APC was too heavy to lift, the frame could be raised and lowered to give its six giant wheels enough clearance to operate even if the cabin was upside-down. The squad also took advantage of the vehicle's ability to accommodate the quick swap of a wheel from one axle to another, since the front right one had been blown off. Then Chandra jacked the vehicle controls into his suit and used its integrated wristpad to steer, accelerate, and brake.

  And that’s how they rolled into the forward operating base, one nerve-wracking hour and a half later: upside-down, short one wheel, and missing the turret and windshield. With Darius covered in the enemy’s blood and guts.

  If this didn’t earn him consideration for promotion out of the PMU, then nothing would. It was a crucial step towards solving the real problem: finding Nadira and figuring out what to do about the portal and the emperor’s dirty secret. If the empire trusted him now, maybe they wouldn’t see him coming.

  A few hours after Darius had settled in at the FOB, his visor notified him that one of the division commander’s aides, a Lieutenant-Colonel Maxine Gao, wanted to talk to him about his after-action report at 0600 tomorrow—in person.

  It sounded like just the kind of opening he’d been hoping for.

  -10-

  Darius reported to the briefing room ten minutes early. It was a mobile sealed unit painted olive drab that could be stacked for easy transport and even parachuted in, if the atmosphere and gravity were substantial enough.

  At precisely 0600 hours, a 2nd lieutenant came out of the unit’s airlock and ushered Darius inside.

  An off-white plasteel conference table dominated the room. A glowing holo map of the current planetary operation took up most of the far wall. The other walls were dotted with compact domed windows shaped to withstand high pressure while still providing a decent and potentially valuable tactical view of the exterior. But not much light came in. The holo provided most of the room’s illumination.

  The briefing room was fully pressurized, and Lieutenant-Colonel Gao’s helmet sat on the table next to her holoscreen. Darius removed his helmet and saluted. “Private Bakari reporting as ordered, ma’am.”

  Gao turned from the map and returned the salute. They sized each other up in silence. She was tall and rawboned, and her gaze was unnervingly steady and calculating. Even for someone like Darius who had lost count of his brushes with death over the last 12 hours, the look unnerved him.

  In addition to the survival knife on her hip, she had a retractable blade mount bolted to her right left forearm, with an extension that went several inches past her elbow. He suspected it was not for show.

  “Have a seat, private.” Her voice carried the low timbre of one accustomed to giving tough orders. She glanced over at the 2nd lieutenant. “That will be all, Ibarra.”

  The airlock whooshed behind Darius as the lieutenant exited, and then he was alone with Gao. He still felt outnumbered.

  He sat down without a word. Gao turned back to the map and inspected an animated loop of the Liebowitz descending into the atmosphere, as seen from the Artemis’s tracking modules. Her eyes still on the map, she said quietly, “Interesting encounter you had out there, Bakari.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Gao walked slowly over to her chair and placed her hands on the back of it. “Do you know how many casualties the 201st suffered last night? How many injuries?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Including the effect of the self-destruction of the Liebowitz, nearly 60 percent of your battalion is dead or injured, private. It’s been nearly five years since the division lost that many personnel at once. And it would have been even worse, if not for the quick thinking of your squad.”

  She sat down and absently regarded her holoscreen. “But more than quick thinking, the group demonstrated...grit.” She peered at him inscrutably. “Though you should have deferred to PFC Chandra instead of taking command. Why didn’t you?”

  “Ma’am, I have the deepest respect for Private First Class Chandra, and I would be proud to fight alongside him any day of the week. He saved my life back there, and for that, I owe him a great debt. My actions and words were not meant to undermine his authority, but to operate as efficiently as possible in the interest of carrying out Sergeant Rustova’s orders. Ma’am.”

  Gao permitted herself a smirk. “A good answer, private. Maybe a little too rehearsed, though.” She got up and resumed her inspection of the holo map.

  The silence stretched to where Darius’s ears began to ring.

  Just as he was beginning to wonder if he’d lost his hearing, she continued. “I’m looking for answers that you haven’t been practicing in your head all night. You see, the major-general told me to evaluate you for your next assignment. I told him that you acted like you were hot shit out there—but that your decisiveness probably saved 17 of the lives under his command.” Her eyes bored down on him again. “Would you say that’s accurate, private?”

  “Ma’am, to the extent that I am qualified to address your conclusion, I cannot disagree.”

  She smirked again. “Bakari, with answers like that, I think your capacity may be wasted in the ranks of the PMU. In which case, you may indeed be able to handle what came across my desk. At the least, command has determined that you have shown sufficient adherence to army values to qualify for probational reassignment. In other words, we are prepared to reward you for your loyalty...if you are prepared to demonstrate it to the fullest.”

  “Ma’am, if this is about the Baloneth situation—”

  She waved her hand. “This is a separate op, private. I am not privy to the specific details of either one, but I can disclose that the potential intelligence value of the second target is determined to be at least as significant. Given that you were presen
t at Baloneth, you know the implications of that statement better than I do.

  “But if it’s valuable enough for command to be willing to scrape you off this rock, I recommend accepting the assignment. Because the reward is likely to be substantial enough to earn you a much easier tour going forward.” She glanced out the window and added wryly, “Not that it would take much.”

  She turned back to him and said, “If you continue to perform, you may be able to return to civilian life with a clean slate at some point.”

  Darius heard the message in between the lines: If you start talking, we can treat you well—or we can let this planet keep pounding on you until you break.

  He decided it was time for them to think he’d seen the light. “Ma’am, if command believes I am capable of assisting on this assignment or any other, I am proud to serve them to the best of my ability.”

  Gao grunted. “Well then. We may make a true soldier out of you yet. You ship out on the Menelaus at 1300 hours. Any questions?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Then you are dismissed. Send the lieutenant back in on your way out.” She went back to her holoscreen as though he’d never walked in the room.

  Darius bumped into Chandra on his way back to barracks.

  “Hey Bakari, what’s shakin’?” he said over comms. “I heard you might be getting a new assignment. Already too good for us lowly grunts?”

  “Gods, word gets around fast. Yeah, they gave me an op, and I accepted. All I can say is that I’m not lizard lunch anymore. Wish I could say the same for you.”

  “I’m choosing to interpret that in the best way possible.” Chandra slapped Darius on the shoulder and began to head off. “Hey, when you become a war hero, don’t forget to send me a postcard. I’ll frame it for the whole unit to see.” He shed a mock tear. “They grow up so fast...”

  “Chandra, you’re like the brother I never had.”

  “Did you eat yours in the womb?” asked Chandra. “That would explain a lot.”

  “I’m switching you off now.”