Archaea 3: Red (28 page)

Nothing moved across the lane I was scoping from my post at the corner, so I rotated arou
nd the corner and angled towards the next gap. Not far ahead, a low line of tanks lit with red hazards looked like a likely place to find my next target, with a great LOS to just about everywhere across this section of the settlement. If I didn’t find him there, I would definitely find him from there.

I took a moment in shadow of the next alley to let my image amps adjust to the ground clutter, and was glad I did. The screamer was even better hidden than the last one – I wouldn’t have seen it at all, if the swirling winds hadn’t uncovered a portion of it. Now that I saw it, I wasn’t sure what to do about it. As close as I was, the last thing I needed to do was kick a screamer, but it was directly along my route to the tanks.

I took a sip of water and considered my options… this looked like the best route back to those tanks. I really didn’t have a luxury of time, if I wanted to make it back. As it turned out, I also didn’t have any other options, so it was a short break.

When you can’t do the unexpected, do the expected –
doing something like that on purpose is the last thing someone will expect.

I tossed a rock at the screamer and took a knee.

*****

Sudden movement caught my eye through the scope, as one of the snipers leaped to his feet and started advancing along the catwalk at the top of a long line of low tanks. I shouldn’t have been able to spot him on the move, with his mimetics, except he was passing in front of the red lights
across the towers, and the flickering pattern gave him away. Below him, the pulsing flash of a screamer lit the bottom of the tanks.

I wish
ed there was something I could do. At this range with the dust blowing, my light chemser just didn’t have the range. That didn’t stop my trigger finger from itching, but there was really nothing I could do. I watched in horror, powerless.

*****

“Yak, be advised: your position has been compromised”, Janis said, in the most understated comment in military history.

The screamer was blaring
, and sounded like someone scrubbing a teacup across a chalkboard while a Belgian Malinois growled one of those deep, throat-ripping growls that make it hard to breathe. Accompanying this brutal assault, syncopated flashes of off-green light strobed deep into my eyes, bright enough to cause instant headaches and nausea even through my visor shielding.

I centered myself, forced my eyes to focus on the line of tanks, and took a deep breath. This close to the screamer,
it was all I could do to breathe, but I reminded myself that pain is how we know we’re still alive. I was determined to stay that way.

Movement along the top of the tanks caught my eye, and my scope followed. Before I even had time to consider it, my finger had squeezed
tight enough to crack a knuckle, and the sniper dropped into the swirling dust like a shadow.

I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will...

*****

“Captain, it looks like Yak just dropped one of the snipers”, I called out on comms.

“That’s great news Shorty… so why don’t you sound more happy about it?” he replied.

The flashing strobes of the screamer in my scope blurred momentarily from the tears in my eyes. “He’s been compromised, sir. The sniper had a screamer set, and Yak tripped it.” I swiveled to check the ambush at the tether. “Additionally, sir, it looks like the ambush at the tether has cleared out.”

“Well, that’s something…” he replied, trailing off into silence. It was, but it wasn’t something I wanted. My heart felt like it was breaking in half.

*****

“We have to get moving.” I heard myself say, as if from a great distance. “Our only hope of helping Yak is getting aboard the Archaea. What’s the status on the remaining sniper, Shorty?”

“Captain, I lost him. He is no longer at the same position.”

“Do you see him anywhere?”

I waited until the count of ten for a response.

“Jane… do you see him?”

“Negative, sir – he’s
just gone.”

“Well, if you can’t see him, then that means he can’t see us, right?” I asked as confidently as I could.

“It’s possible… that they’re not looking this way, sir.”

“
Very well… cover me, Shorty. I’m going to take a bit of a stroll.” I said, sounding far more nonchalantly heroic than I felt. “Gene, unwind your tether and pass it over. Pauli, do the same and clip to Gene. Shorty, when Pauli passes by, hand him your clip, dear.”

“Yes, sir”, she replied quietly. None of us wanted to move from the relative safety of this ravine, and the winds were tearing along at that point. Hopefully with our mimetics, and staying low, the dust will hide us. I tried very hard to not think about our thermal signature. Even with the mil-spec suits
and a very low radiant heat signature, on this landscape, any heat at all is more than enough to see.

We only live once, right? I told myself this, and all manner of other encouraging homilies, while clipping Gene’s tether securely to my hip ring and giving it a yank.

“On belay, Gene”, I said mechanically.

“On belay”, he replied.

*****

I was on the move, in a semi-crouch looking down the sights. My life had become mechanical, a transit from corner to corner, a complex ballet of lean, look, rotate and move. That I was being tracked, I had no doubt. The remaining sniper was nowhere to be seen, but I wasn’t really hunting him. My
primary function at this point was evasion and exfiltration.

The winds were helping, but they were also hurting. Visibility was dropping rapidly, and the ground-blizzard of dust and sand made it nearly impossible to see where I was putting my feet. Complicating matters, I was nearing the perimeter of the settlement, and increasingly being tripped up by
guy wires and anchor lines.

It was chaos
unleashed; my only consolation was, if it was hard for me to make my way through, it would be hard for those who were hunting me as well. A strong gust funneled down between two stacks of containers peeling the sand off of the desert, scouring the tunnel of plasteel. As I shot the gap, running upwind just in case I was blown off course, the winds accentuated the point I was making, by hurling me off my feet and skidding me into the side of a microdome.

I sta
yed down for a bit and held on.

*****

Holding my position, I scanned back and forth across the dome as one by one, the captain, Gene and Pauli walked past into the howling dust. I was waiting to see if Yak was moving towards the last sniper, but desperately hoping he wasn’t. He needed to get moving.

A tug on my tether reminded me it was time
for me to get moving as well. I kicked myself out my drifted over position, and followed along.

“Shorty, I can barely see the tethers from here, should we get closer?” the captain called back on comms.

I thought for a moment. If we get too far away, we could lose the turn, and miss the blast pans entirely, and end up somewhere very desolate, and incredibly cold. On the other hand, if we get too close, we risk running into the group of mercs that are almost certainly either using the tethers to come in, or posted up along the tethers, or possibly both.

“I say keep them just barely in sight, Captain”, I replied. “We can’t afford to be seen out here, we’re completely exposed.” The dust aside, this section of Mars was as long, flat, and endless as anything I’ve ever seen, with
only the occasional knee-high boulder for cover.

“Very well… a little to our left then, folks”, he replied, and started us curving a bit farther afield.

“Dak, am I the only one that is wondering what we’re going to do when we get to the Archaea?” asked Gene.

“No, I was wondering the same thing”, added Pauli.

“I think we might all be thinking about it”, I replied, adding “but none of us can do anything about it, and we need to get there, first.”

“Well said, Shorty…
that’s putting the cart before the horse, folks. That’s step 20 in a 21 step procedure. We’re on step 4.” Captain Smith paused for a moment. “Though, once we get in comms range of Janis, I suspect step 20 will be something like ‘shoot everything, and win’… at least that’s what I am banking on.”

“How much farther do you think we have?” asked Pauli, for the millionth time.

“We should be there any moment, Pauli… so long as your definition of a moment includes a time range between ten minutes and forever”, Gene remarked with what was almost certainly an epic scowl. I couldn’t see it, but you just knew it was there.

“We’re about
two kay-ems away, I’m guessing” I added, checking the map on my visor. “That’s just a nice pleasant stroll, right?” I laughed, despite skidding along briefly on my toes during a particularly nasty gust. As we progressed across the plain, the wind force was definitely increasing. It was blowing at least 80, and much higher in the gusts. We were almost bent double by the winds at this point.

*****

The snap of a kinetic whickering past my helmet was enough to give me nightmares. For ten minutes, I’d been playing an incredibly dangerous game of hide and seek, trying to make my way around the perimeter of the settlement, but the squad of mercs were on to me now.

I am not sure how they spotted me, heat signature most likely, but I was dancing the dance, and making them work for it. They were in turn, using comms and movement to
hedge me in, to corral me or lead me into a killbox. As soon as I would spot one, he’d duck back and call in where I was, and I’d have to skitter around the flankers and move further in towards the inevitable.

I couldn’t go on the offensive, there were too many of them, and I couldn’t go on the defensive – there were too many of them. Janis couldn’t really help, though she was decrypting their comms and relaying for me, it wasn’t really that helpful; they were sticking to the book.

Unfortunately it was a book I knew all too well. It was starting to look like my options were starting to become very basic. Fight, or flee. I honestly didn’t much like my odds at this point in a fight. They knew where I was, and could afford to surround and wait for me to do something stupid… which I would almost certainly do if there was nothing else to do.

Flight, was about as bad. If their sniper was in position, as soon as I broke cover and ran for the wall of dust blowing by, he could afford to take a coffee break – I’d still be in range of his long gun by the time he came back. Added to that, there’s not much of anything out there.

My only chance lay in the fact there may not be a suitable position for a sniper to get overwatch for this grid. Not that I could poke my head up out of this hole I was currently in to check, but… well, it was a chance. We were a pretty long distance from the towers, and they were stubby things anyway. There were much better sightlines over the tether, than there were up here on the plateau.

With that, I came to the realization that whatever will be, will be, and if I wanted out of this mess, I needed to get out – or die trying. I waited briefly until the next huge gust of wind turned the area into a dense cloud of blowing dust, and ran
for the hills like my feet were on fire.

*****

“Hold!”

A moment of silence
pulsed through my aching head as we waited in the dark. Gene and I froze where we were, slowly dropping down to the ground. I felt a slight tug on my belt as Shorty repositioned herself behind us.

The captain continued after a short pause, “There are men along the tether, Shorty. I just saw one as clear as could be, just staring at me.”
I shivered as a cramp bent me nearly double.

“Did he see you?” she replied.

“Hard telling… all I see is dust now. Should we move back?”

“Yep,
everyone down, as low as you can get. Head back towards me”, she said quietly.

I tried to get my feet under me to turn around, but the blood in my body was being squeeze
d into my poor, screaming head and my boot skidded out.

“Come on Pauli, move son”, Gene said patiently.

“Trying… one moment”, I said, dragging my foot along the dirt to try to get it under me. The suit was not flexible enough; it was all I could do to keep the tethers from wrapping around my neck.

“Take your time”, he chided. Gravity sucks.

Finally, I had it all worked out. A tug on Shorty’s tether indicated she was headed out, and I did my best to slither along behind her. She was moving quickly though, and staying only a few inches off the ground. I had to really work to keep up. This low to the ground, we were completely below the layer of the dust blowing along, reducing our visibility to nothing. Not that I would be able to see anyway.