Steel World (31 page)

It was my turn to shrug. “I got inside and helped open the gates, that’s all. Carlos was with me. We didn’t do the hard fighting and dying like the people outside did. I would say the real heroes were the guys who charged into that gate after we opened it. They’d already watched a lot of people die ahead of them.”

Sargon nodded slowly. “Still, I think you did good. If you don’t piss off too many people, I bet they’ll fast-track you to specialist.”

I didn’t tell him that Graves had already hinted as much. It wasn’t time to brag, I figured. But I
was
happy he wasn’t calling me “splat” any longer.

“I don’t know about that,” I said. “I have a gift for pissing people off, especially brass.”

Sargon gave me a loud, hitching laugh and thumped me on the shoulder. I gave him a pasted-on smile.

We didn’t have long to wait before reaching the spaceport. This was technically a combat jump, even if no one was shooting at us. Apparently, that had something to do with the rules, too. If they fired anti-air flak and missiles at us, we had the right to bomb them. Neither side wanted to escalate in that direction.

I recall reading of complex rules of engagement back on Earth in the past. They were pretty common in history. In the Napoleonic days, troops would line up neatly and spray lead at one another. Just the simple expedient of hugging the ground and seeking cover was considered dastardly.

There were always rules to war between nations, and my time was no different in that regard. The Empire had added the twist of applying a penalty for breaking those rules. We had the Galactics sitting on the sidelines, observing.

We didn’t know which Galactics were watching, or what they thought. Most people didn’t even know what one looked like. We knew they weren’t all from the same species, but that’s all we knew.

We could do whatever the hell we wanted on our own worlds—as long as we didn’t break their rules. But when it came to invading other worlds, things became tricky.

The lights changed and buzzers sounded. The lifter went almost dark, filled with red light at first. Then the ramp dropped, and there was a sliver of gray radiance coming from it.

Night had fallen outside. I couldn’t see any stars yet, but I knew they were out there. I gripped my snap-rifle and checked the magazine for the hundredth time.

This was it. My guts squeezed up, and I felt like I could use a trip to the head—but I knew that wasn’t going to happen now.

Veteran Harris came through the rows, climbing over legs with his boots banging into our knees. He whacked men and women on the helmet as he passed by, marking who was going out the door first. I wasn’t surprised when he passed Sargon by and thumped my helmet. The light troops usually were sent in first. We were faster on our feet and infinitely more expendable.

I slapped my belt buckles off, got up and envied Sargon with his big black tube he had to lug around. It kept him at the rear of the line.

Less than a minute later, I was running over the tarmac again. I could hear the thumping tread of a thousand boots around me. There were whispered prayers and hitching sobs. Some recruits were having trouble with this. I didn’t blame them. This place held nothing but terrible memories for most.

The last hundred meters, we broke into a sprint. No one told us to—we just did it, like a herd crashing for the safety of the tall grass. Our leaders didn’t complain, they were running, too. No one wanted to be last guy to reach the gates.

There were figures all along the wall-top, I could see them now. Shadowy hunched forms that blotted out the starry sky. Those had to be the heavies that had been assigned here. There were a lot of them, and for that, I was glad.

Somehow, out of the crowd, Carlos managed to find me as we rushed through the gates. “Just like old times, eh, McGill?” he shouted.

“Yeah, I’m feeling real homey about now.”

We were directed by veterans with screaming voices and wild hand gestures. We poured into the compound and separated by unit and squad. Soon, I found myself standing with my team, looking around at the high walls around us. Every inch was pock-marked and scorched.

“What about the Nairbs?” I asked. “I don’t see them.”

“Didn’t someone tell our famous hero?” Carlos asked loudly. “The man who single-handedly took this spaceport? The guy who stands ten feet tall, and—”

“Cut the crap, Carlos. Do you know where the aliens went or not?”

He shrugged. “I heard they left. They probably didn’t like the stink of so many primitive humans around. I bet we made them nervous. For them, it was like sitting in a monkey house full of heavily-armed gorillas, wondering when we were going to go crazy.”

“Well, without the Nairbs, is this still a strategic objective worth holding?”

“That’s not our problem,” he said. “But I think it definitely is worth holding. Think about the symbolism of it—it’s embarrassing. People who protest right in the middle of your town always get noticed. Remember those clowns who chained themselves to the last living trees in Central Park a few years ago? They were on the news every night.”

I frowned at him. “You’re not much for causes, are you?”

He stuck out his thumb and jabbed himself in the chest. “I’m always down for one cause…the only one that matters.”

I nodded, unsurprised. My eyes wandered up to the walls, where the dark shapes of the heavies were moving now. “Hey, are they coming down from their posts?”

“Yeah, didn’t you listen to the reports?”

“Maybe I was too busy…” I said, thinking of my long night pawing Natasha.

“That’s what we’re here for, big guy. We’re relieving the heavies. These walls are strong, and they gave us back a few of our weaponeers. We’re supposed to hold here until someone else is assigned to relieve the cohort.”

I watched in alarm as the heavies made their way to the front gates and clanked away. They could only walk or trot, such was the weight of their armor. I knew that without a helping exoskeleton, they would barely be able to move.

Feeling left behind, I watched as the heavies marched away back toward the lifter we’d come down on. Wherever they were going, they seemed like there were in a hurry to get out of here. I couldn’t blame them. Without Nairbs to keep the combat in check, the lizards could do just about whatever they wanted to take this fortress back.

-23-

“You two are coming with me,” Veteran Harris said. He seemed happy, and that was almost always a bad sign.

We followed him down a long passageway that ended in a steep saurian stairway. We’d learned the lizards usually got down low on stairs. With their long, powerful hind legs they could take big steps and didn’t need handrails. The other reason their stairs were big was because both juggers and raptor types had to use them. They had to fit both types of lizard.

In practice, this meant we had to hop from step-to-step going downward. We followed Harris. Carlos, Natasha, and I, as well as a half dozen others, hopped and cursed steadily.

I could tell none of us wanted to be here. It was dark, and the walls ran with moisture. They were arched and uneven—tunnels cut through steel, rather than smooth concrete walls. The lights weren’t really lights, either. They were glowing patches along the walls.

When we reached the bottom of the tunnel, I managed to get close enough to Natasha to talk to her.

“I guess the lizards like it this way,” I said. “This is kind of like the mines we had the joy of exploring. Must seem natural to them.”

She gave me a worried look. “Do you think this place is safe?”

“You mean from collapsing, or from lizard-invasion?”

“Either.”

“No,” I said.

Veteran Harris finally called us to a halt.

“This is it,” he said, tapping with his snap-rifle on the door.

This is what?
My mind asked. I’m sure everyone was thinking it—but no one else said anything.

After a minute or two, a code pattern came up on the door. It shone with red letters and numbers. Harris typed something into the keypad and the door chimed and opened.

“Red?” Natasha asked. “Isn’t that the color the lizards can’t see?”

I nodded. They were supposedly colorblind in some parts of the spectrum. Troops joked that the twin Cancri suns had burned their retinas out over the years.

“Now here, see this lock?” Harris asked, pointing. “That’s a special anti-alien job. How it works is by presenting a series of symbols that are familiar to humans. The pattern is random. You must memorize it, then type the same pattern into the keypad within five seconds.”

“What happens if you screw up?” Natasha asked. “Does it fry you or something?”

“Fry you?” Carlos echoed. “She’s kidding…right, Veteran?”

“For you, Carlos, the door will make an exception,” Harris said. “It will strike you as dead as a cooked hamburger if you’re one second late.” He laughed then, and it was a rough, unpleasant sound. “You just have to try again,” he explained at last, “but it will warn the occupants and after three tries, if you keep screwing up, it will shut down for a few minutes, alerting security to come investigate.”

“What’s inside, Veteran?” I asked.

He smiled at me. “Nothing, right now. But later on this vault will have our most prized possession.”

We all looked at him quizzically.

“If you haven’t guessed by now, this is where the revival unit is being deployed.”

“What?” Carlos demanded. “Are you telling me that there isn’t one on site yet?”

Veteran Harris frowned at him. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I just told you, Recruit. The unit the heavies had went up with them. Yours is an older model. It will be sent down soon.”

Older model…
those words rolled around in my head and seemed to echo. Could that be why they had trouble and “bad grows”? They gave light troops the worst of everything.

I raised my hand, and Harris jabbed his finger at me. “What?”

“Why are we here now, Veteran? Ahead of the machine?”

“Because you’re going to help carry and deploy it,” he said. “It weighs abouta thousand pounds—and it’s a little gross when you have to move it.”

Everyone turned and craned their necks, looking back up the tunnel and the long, steep stairway.

“This just keeps getting better and better,” Carlos muttered.

“Gag yourself, Ortiz, before I do it for you.”

I could see Carlos had a rude retort in his mind, but he held it back with difficulty. Harris was known for cuffing recruits who mouthed off too much, and Carlos was one of the supreme mouths in the unit.

“What do we do in the meantime?” Natasha asked.

“Wait here, or look around. Guard and secure. It shouldn’t be long. The lifter that brought you brought all your gear, too. I’ll call you back together when they’re ready to slide the machine down that stairway.”

He left, and we all looked at one another in disgust.

“Typical,” Carlos said. “Absolutely typical. Nobody gives a shit about recruits in Legion Varus. We climb walls, fall over cliffs and die like lemmings for the cause, you would think—”

“Shut up, Carlos,” Kivi said, kicking him in the rump.

The two jostled for a moment, and I lost interest. I walked to the door with the lock on it. I could see it had been cut very recently. The door was old, but the lock and bolt were new. I tugged, then had to heave. The door was very heavy and creaked the way only thick steel can when I opened it.

A few of the others nosed close behind me. Natasha was first in line. I wasn’t surprised by this. She was kicking around to become a tech, which took special training and legion investment. She had to display an interest in anything the real techs and bios did. In her case, however, I figured the curiosity was real.

“Look at that stuff on the floor!”

Our suit lights played around the chamber as we walked in. It was obvious the heavy cohort had kept their revival unit down here. The walls were stained with colorful gore. The floor was—puddled.

“Is that blood?” Carlos asked from the back.

“Not just blood,” Natasha said, “looks like lymph and other stuff. Gross.”

They’d pulled out in a hurry. I had to wonder what kind of special horrors this room had seen over the last few days. There had been deaths among the heavies, but not too many of them.

“I would guess that they revived some of the light troops down here, after they set up. They died assaulting the walls, and our own units were overwhelmed. They had to use every revival machine in the legion to get us all back on our feet.”

“Yeah,” said Kivi, looking around. “I came back to life in here.”

We looked at her, and she shuddered, remembering. “I didn’t remember it until just now. Seeing this place—it’s like finding something you thought only existed in a dream. A bad dream.”

Besides the biotic waste, there was a pair of large generators and a few barrels of raw materials. Protoplasm, tanks of pre-grown skin and the like.

The call came in from Harris a few minutes later, and we all jumped. The buzzing in our helmets startled everyone.