The Drift Wars (2 page)

A
tall, flat boulder loomed in the mist ahead. Perched on top was a
short, muscular tree, its roots running down the stone like melted
wax. It was exactly the sort of place where Peter would set an
ambush, and he figured that a Riel sniper would think the same. He
crouched low and gave the rock a wide berth, watching for a trap.

A
yellow light pulsed on his visor—a warning from his Life Control
System that he was breathing too quickly. The planet’s atmosphere
was poisonous, so running out of air here would be as deadly as it
was in the vacuum of space. Peter stopped and took slow, measured
breaths. Then he saw movement in the corner of his eye. He whipped
around and fired.

The
impulsor ray from his pistol was invisible, but it burned a line
through the air, hissing and leaving a trail of curling smoke. The
gun sliced through several plants and charred the trunk of a tree,
but there was no one around. The movement had only been water
running down his visor. Peter cursed, dropping low and peering back
at the rock, seeing nothing.

He
backed up, turning a slow circle and jerking his gun from target to
target. His heart thrashed wildly and the oxygen warning light
turned orange, then red. Unable to control his fear, Peter sprang up
and raced through trees, slashing with his arms to clear the
foliage, careless of the racket he was making.

His
only thought was to reach the rendezvous point and the safety of his
platoon.

—   —   —

Peter
was watching his map, following his blue dot as it approached the
green rendezvous point, when his legs tangled and he fell forward.
He face-planted, scattering leaves and knocking into something
solid. He jerked his gun out, but it was another marine, dead,
half-buried from impact. Shards of red-stained metal jutted from his
chest, and a stump of an arm rose as if saluting the sky.

Peter
crept forward on his elbows, lay his pistol down, and pushed up to
peer into the corpse’s visor. The face inside was still and ashen.
Peter didn’t know him.

“I’ll
shoot you my damn self, Garvey,” Mickelson snarled over the comm,
“if you keep making all that goddamn noise.”

The
sergeant stood over him, glaring with anger, Peter’s gun clenched
in his hand. He leveled the gun at Peter’s face, his finger
tightening, but then changed his mind. He let the gun drop to the
ground.

“Strip
off your rocket and get over here,” he said, walking away.

“Yes,
sir,” Peter said. He hopped up, holstered his gun, and pulled a
catch on his shoulder; the spent rocket clattered to the ground. He
considered grabbing the rocket off the corpse but shied away. He
piled his own on a small stack over by Mickelson; if they won the
battle today, the rockets would be collected, refurbished, and
reused. Peter joined the men who were already there. Their names
were stenciled on their backs, but Peter recognized none of them.

As
if reading his thoughts, the battle computer broadcasted a
full-channel update. The regiment had arrived 48 percent
operational, which was the optimistic way of saying that 52 percent
of them were killed before they even reached the ground. Of Peter’s
platoon, only Mickelson, Saul, Ramirez, and himself had survived the
landing. Four of twelve. A thousand miles away, back on the
commandship, that was just a figure on a spreadsheet. But down here
they were men, like Peter, with families and friends who hoped and
prayed to see them again. Now most of them would not, and the battle
hadn’t even started.

The
attack would go ahead as planned, no matter the casualties. There
was no choice. The transports couldn’t land until the marines
eliminated the Riel’s anti-ship defenses. If they could eliminate
them. Only Command knew the odds, and they wouldn’t bother to tell
anyone down here.

—   —   —

Twelve
men gathered at the rendezvous point, an ad hoc platoon assembled by
the battle computer from those who had survived the drop. Peter
fidgeted with his pistol as men trickled in, relaxing only when Saul
appeared, strolling out of the jungle as if he were arriving at a
party. He moved through the men, exchanging hellos and learning
names. His presence calmed the others, infecting them with his air
of indestructibility.

“The
good news,” Saul said, settling next to Peter, “is that we
landed in the middle of the regiment. That means we’re completely
safe. The bad news is that we’ve got a long walk before we get
ourselves killed.”

—   —   —

Sixteen
minutes after touchdown, the newly formed North-58 platoon rolled
out. Their target was three and a quarter miles away, and their
orders were to be there in seven minutes, so they had to hump it.

Even
though this section of the jungle had been declared clear, the men
stayed in formation, guns at the ready, wary of ambush. In the
field,
clear
was a relative term. More than once, men had
stumbled onto Riel encampments right in the middle of their own.

“Let
the suit do the work, Garvey,” Mickelson growled. Peter’s oxygen
light was glowing yellow again.

Running
should be easy—he just needed to guide the artificial muscles with
his own. Peter had run literally thousands of miles during Basic,
but while he could remember the motions, his body seemed to have
forgotten. His legs struggled against the suit, tiring him out and
wasting precious air.

Thankfully,
they soon reached the no-man’s land, and Mickelson motioned to
slow down. “Stay low,” he warned. “The Riel see you first,
you’ll never even know it.”

—   —   —

The
platoon took up an arrowhead formation with the seven general
infantry marines forming a V on the perimeter and the three
heavy-weaponry specialists—including Saul—just behind them. As
the platoon’s sniper, Peter walked to the center with Sergeant
Mickelson.

The
platoon crept forward, the GIs expanding and contracting to maintain
their field of vision through the trees and underbrush. One of them
glanced at Peter with bloodshot eyes, a side effect of Battle Heat.

Heat
was a drug cocktail administered by the suit’s Life Control System
to maximize a marine’s effectiveness in combat. Peter knew it only
by reputation—it was never issued to snipers for fear of impairing
their aim.

They
arrived at their target three minutes late. There had been no
resistance along the way, and when they saw what they were up
against, they understood why. Who would skirmish in the jungle when
they could hole up in a fortress?

—   —   —

The
Riel stronghold was an oblong shard of reddish rock that towered
over a wide clearing. Its rough-hewn walls tapered to an impossibly
narrow base, like a massive spike balanced on its tip. A few green
patches were scattered around the rock face—trees and plants that
somehow found purchase. In several places sunlight glinted off
crystal shields, Riel fortifications impenetrable to even the
heaviest rifle in the marine arsenal.

Mickelson
brought the platoon to a halt and moved to the front. His face
distorted as the glass in his visor thickened and reformed,
magnifying the distant rock. Peter tuned his visor to Mickelson’s
to see what his sergeant saw.

Each
of the crystal shields—a half dozen in all—protected a gun nest,
either armed with a heavy-caliber recoiling rifle or twin machine
guns. Rocket batteries were spread over the stronghold, unmanned,
either sentient or operated by remote.

All
these Riel had to be guarding something important, and Peter guessed
it was a Delta-class heavy-impulse blaster, which was exactly the
sort of antiship weapon they’d have to destroy to get back off
this planet.

Mickelson
tracked along a recessed walkway cut into the rock face, spotting a
patrolling Gyrine.

The
Gyrine was the smaller of the two Riel species. It was several feet
taller than a man, but from this distance its squat body made it
look short. Its black skin was dry and scaly, like the skin on a
bird’s legs, and its face was pinched, with squinting eyes and the
heavy jaw of a bulldog. Thick white fangs jutted up on either side
of its flat nose, the effect more cartoonish than ferocious—not
that Peter cared to put it to the test. This particular Gyrine had
no cybernetic augmentation, which made it an officer.

“There’s
your first target, Garvey,” Mickelson said; a yellow dot appeared
on Peter’s visor map.

Peter
unlinked from Mickelson’s video feed and crept off to find a good
vantage point. Two GIs peeled off and followed him, his own personal
guard.

More
likely
, Peter thought,
their orders are to recover my rifle
when I get shot.

After
five minutes of scouting, Peter found a small boulder among some
scrub ferns. He had been warned not to use rocks as cover, but he
couldn’t remember why. Meanwhile, Mickelson berated him
impatiently. Absurdly, Peter was more worried about getting bawled
out than getting shot.

Peter
motioned to his escorts, who took up positions on either side, far
enough that they couldn’t all be killed by a single rocket. Peter
clipped his pistol to his thigh, reached over his shoulder, and drew
his rifle from its protective case. He unlocked the gun’s barrel,
extending it from the stock until it was taller than himself, and
twist-locked it into place. He popped the rubber cap from the barrel
and inspected the lens. He withdrew the battery clip, checked the
contacts, and shoved it back in, seating it with a jiggle. This
would be a synchronized attack; there was no room for mistakes.

Peter
popped the cap off the optical scope, leaned against the rock, and
raised the long gun toward the Riel stronghold.

—   —   —

Peter
bent his arm and locked his combat suit’s artificial muscles,
making his hand a stable pivot for the gun’s barrel. He pressed
his visor to the rubber cone on the back of the scope, tunneling his
vision down the gun’s sights.

The
Gyrine officer had moved, but Mickelson still had eyes on it. An
arrow appeared on the left side of Peter’s visor, and he shifted
the gun up the walkway; he then centered on the Gyrine’s chest. A
second set of crosshairs appeared near the first—the battle
computer’s suggestion of where to aim. The computer took into
account everything it knew, from the video feed of every marine’s
combat suit to the atmospheric information gathered by the
satellites. Technically, the computer-generated crosshairs were the
more accurate of the two, but a good sniper could outshoot the
computer two to one. It was instinct, as all snipers have claimed
since the invention of the rifle. But Peter wasn’t feeling any
instinct, so he just split the difference between the computer’s
crosshairs and his own.

The
Gyrine was restless, pacing nervously, as if it could sense Peter’s
gaze. No doubt it expected an attack—this operation was far from
covert—but it wouldn’t know where or when. The UF satellites
were flooding the planet with so much interference that a Riel
couldn’t detect a dog humping its leg, much less a small platoon
three thousand yards out.

The
Gyrine’s black skin blended in the overhang’s shadows, making it
hard to track its movements. When Peter finally settled into his
target’s rhythm, he gave the trigger a light squeeze, signaling
that he was ready to fire.

“About
time,” Mickelson snapped. “Fire at zero.” A countdown appeared
on Peter’s visor. Ten seconds.

Nine.

—   —   —

Peter
would fire the first round, followed by Heavy Weaponry; their
countdown was just a quarter second behind his own. Getting the
first shot meant catching the enemy unaware, practically
guaranteeing a kill but also making his gun the first that the Riel
would register. He would draw most of the return fire.

Getting
the first shot right was critical; the marines had to kill enough
Riel to offset the advantage of higher ground and protective
shields. And officers, like Peter’s target, were of particularly
high value.

Something
is wrong
, Peter thought. The countdown had stopped; the number
seven was frozen on his screen. He waited one second, two, but still
it didn’t change.

He
tried to stay focused on his target, but his eyes were drawn to the
seven on his visor. He was holding his breath to steady his shot,
but his lungs began to ache. He took two quick tugs of air, and then
the number dropped:
Six.

Peter
instantly felt relieved, then foolish, no longer sure that the pause
hadn’t just been his imagination. He looked back to his target,
but it was gone.

Five.

Four.

The
countdown raced now. Peter panned his rifle side to side, searching
the empty walkway.
Where is it? Did it see me? Did it run?
The
green, computer-generated crosshair remained where it was, aimed at
nothing.

Three.

Salt
stung his eyes. He blinked, trying to clear them.

Two.

His
oxygen light pulsed red, the glow filling his visor.

One.

The
Gyrine popped back into view—it had been bent over, hidden by the
walkway’s low wall. It stretched lazily, gazed into the distance,
and scratched its chin, oblivious to both Peter’s panic and the
impending assault.

Peter
swung the rifle toward the Gyrine but overcompensated—the
slightest movement of the gun was yards at the fortress. He eased
the gun back, his muscles tight, working against each other. The
crosshairs found the Gyrine just as the countdown flashed zero.
Peter squeezed the trigger.

—   —   —

Peter
had never fired on a live target before. He closed his eyes, unable
to watch the results. When he opened them a second later, the Gyrine
was gone.
Did I kill it?
, he wondered.