The Heart of Matter: Odyssey One (77 page)

▸“THIS SUCKS, LT!”

Jackson couldn’t agree more, but he didn’t have time to say anything about it. His tri-barrel was dry, now parked back in its clamps since there were few things in the world more useless than an empty gun. The ticking sound of the laser capacitors firing, inaudible to him within the armored shell of the EXO-12, was counting down the depletion of his reactor pile as well.

When that went, he’d be locked down and able to move only on battery power, which wouldn’t last long enough to get him very far with the Drasin soldier drones crawling all over his back.

“Just grab some bullets from the resupply crates and get back on the line, Davis,” he ordered. “We’ve got five minutes before the demo team arrives, and then the real work kicks off.”

“How much longer can that tin can of yours fight, Boss?” PFC Davis asked. “’Cause my armor is under 20 percent.”

“Powerpacks are in the crates, too, so stop asking questions and move!”

“Should I grab you one?”

“Not compatible, Davis. Just get,” he snapped, waving with his free hand in a manner that looked frighteningly natural on the immense robot form.

The EXO-12 used a fission pile. What he needed was a half hour of downtime to recharge his capacitors to full strength, but he wasn’t going to get that anytime soon. Once his men and those of Bravo Team were restocked, however, Jackson would reload his tri-barrel ammo from the resupply and at least be able to cut back on laser expenditures. The power-intensive beam weapon was currently the highest-single draw on his power system, taking more than 80 percent of his total power alone.

It wouldn’t make any difference, however, if they didn’t find a way to shift the tide of battle soon. The long game played out in the Drasin’s favor, no matter how he cut the cards. The absolutely impossible way they reproduced meant that letting up on them for even an hour was probably fatal.

We really need to figure out how the hell they do this, because it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.
He’d spent most of his military career around various top-secret projects, working with things that made bleeding-edge technology seem quaint by times, but none of that had prepared him for anything resembling this. If it weren’t happening, he would have sworn that their reproduction speed alone violated the laws of thermodynamics—or at least common decency.

The only thing that came to mind when he looked for something to compare it to was the old “gray goo” scenario from the early days of nanotech. Obviously, these things weren’t nano-sized—and Crowley paused for a moment to thank the fates for that—but that was what they most resembled.

Come to think of it
, he thought as he opened fire again with his laser,
why
aren’t
they nano-sized? Wouldn’t that be a more cost-effective payload?

Of course, if they had actually evolved like this, he supposed that might account for it. Crowley really didn’t want to see the kind of environment that would cause a species to naturally select for
this
insanity, though.

“We’re locked, LT!”

“Take up the slack while I reload,” he ordered.

“Roger. Wilco.”

Crowley fell back from the point he’d been holding, finally able to let up on the laser discharges, and stomped over to the resupply crate and pulled a one-meter-long box magazine from it. He ejected the spent mag, the heavy metal case hitting the ground with a thud that registered on the local seismographs, then reached up over his armor’s helm piece so she could drop it into place and drive it home.

As his weapon cycled the rounds into place, he watched the computer display shift from red to yellow as it checked the munitions supply. When it finally flashed green, Crowley pulled the tri-barrel forward again and flipped the safety cap up to start the weapon spinning.

He turned and stomped back to the line. “How’s it looking?”

“I don’t know.”

Jackson frowned. “Pardon?”

It was then that he looked around and realized that the entire line was quiet, suddenly, causing him to widen his scan to the entire overwatch network. The fighting had dropped off across the entire line. “What the hell is going on?”

“Worry later!” Bermont cut into the line. “Evac the wounded now while we can!”

Crowley shook himself, then instantly nodded. “Right! Gather the wounded in the center of the perimeter. Command! Send every medevac drone available. We have a lull in the fighting!”

“Roger, medevac units dropping in.”

Overhead, the circling drones stopped circling, dropping out of the sky like stones as they zeroed in on the center of the perimeter. When they landed, the squad members not on the line of fire scrambled, hooking up as many people as they could, as fast as possible. The whole operation took only seconds before the drones started lifting off again, with men draped below them.

“Wounded clear!”

“Good timing,” Bermont growled. “Seismo readings are getting weird here.”

“Define
weird
?” Crowley asked, toggling into the seismo readings.

“They went quiet a couple minutes ago. Now I’m seeing movement—a lot of movement.” Bermont said. “Command, Bravo Actual.”

“Go for Command, Bravo.”

“ETA on shuttle with demo team?”

“Three minutes.”

“Not enough time. Request priority dust off. I say again, request priority dust off,” Bermont snapped out fast, calm, yet with an undercurrent of the tension that was growing.

“Roger, dust off dispatched. What is the situation?”

“I think we’re about to be overrun.”

“Understood. Time frame?”

“Imminent.”

“Understood. Hold tight, we’re coming.”

“Roger,” Bermont said, eyes on the seismographic signals. “Be aware, I think everything to this point was just to keep us busy.”

“Understood. We’re watching the seismographic readings now. Concur with your assessment. Advise you withdraw immediately.”

Bermont checked the topography of the area, considering withdrawal routes. “Crowley, how well can that thing of yours navigate this mess?”

“Almost as effectively as your armor,” Jackson responded. “I can hang, Sean.”

“Understood,” Bermont said, already mapping out an egress path. “We’re hauling ass in thirty seconds, people! Check your HUDs for new waypoint data!”

They fell back from the fixed positions, grabbing more ammo and gear from the resupply crate. They loaded up what they could carry, then left the rest as they jumped clear of the perimeter and began a fast egress from the area.

“Command, Bravo Actual.”

“Roger, Bravo, go for Command.”

“Bravo and Gamma Teams are withdrawing from AO now.”

“Roger that.”

The men jumped clear by teams, with Crowley taking up the rear. He kept the seismographic sensors on his HUD, and his eyes widened as the teams were almost clear.

“Move! Move! Move!” he ordered, jumping straight up as the ground under his feet began to explode in pockets of dust and debris.

Jackson swung his tri-barrel downward, spinning the weapon up as he fired his jump thrusters. A ripping sound filled the air as he fired off a long burst, tearing into the drones as they burst through the ground. His thrusters carried him to the top of a debris field just west of the teams’ retreat path,
and he landed on the precarious perch in a low crouch with the armor’s free hand holding tightly to the debris as a stabilizer while he fired off another long burst.

“Is everyone clear?” he called, still firing.

“All accounted for. Good call, Crowley,” Bermont replied from ahead. “They must have noticed us pulling out.”

“I’ll cover your withdrawal,” Crowley announced. “I’m in a good position—have 90 percent ammo on my tri-barrel and my reactor is slowly recovering from red status.”

“Are you sure it’ll hold?”

“As long as I don’t waste power on the laser,” he said, “I should be good.”

“All right, roger that. Don’t get dead.”

“That’s high on my list of priorities. Just get my team clear.”

“You got it.”

Jackson shifted the position of his armor, using the computer to stabilize his aim while he continued to fire into the Drasin that had dug out the teams’ previous position. He still couldn’t believe how many of the damned things had grown out of a single impact sight.

This is like some kind of nightmare!
He wondered at the sheer number, still unable to wrap his mind around the situation he found himself in. He was still firing and boggling when the seismograph display blinked urgently, turning red in the corner of his HUD.

Crowley was about to shift over to it when he heard a loud groaning noise actually drown out the sound of combat. He froze for a second, then kicked off again on instinct. Thrusters flared as he hung over the battle space, the groaning sound growing louder until an earsplitting crack filled the air and the ground below him began to shift slowly as it fell into a sinkhole.

“Holy…” he swore, angling his thrust to carry him to the edge. “I hope you guys are getting clear!”

“Not fast enough!” Bermont came back. “We’re trying to outrun an earthquake, here!”

“Damn!”

“Couldn’t agree more,” Bermont called, “and we’re about to be too busy to talk. Good luck, Crowley.”

Jackson looked for a place he could safely land, but beneath him, the entire section of the city was coming apart. He vectored for a partially stable-looking section of a building, and dropped.

Forty odd meters away, Bermont was leading the remnants of the two teams as they scrambled up a rapidly steepening incline. The shattered buildings around them were crumbling further as they abandoned their rifles to their slings, leaving them to clatter against their backs as they were often reduced to scrambling on all fours as they tried to outrace the collapse.

Bermont keyed into the command channel, careful to not broadcast where the men could hear.

“Command, Bravo Actual.”

“Go for Command.”

“We’re not making it out of here, Command. The collapse is going to beat us.”

“Understood. Keep together. Hold on. We have shuttles inbound.”

“Roger, Command,” Bermont answered, knowing that if something didn’t change soon, the shuttles wouldn’t matter.

He didn’t bother saying any more. Command now knew what they needed to, and he was going to need to conserve his
breath. The ground was behaving in a distinctly un-ground-like way, tilting wildly as they kept trying to hop up the incline. Under them, the ground teetered wildly, causing the teams to throw themselves down and dig in where they could.

A man slipped, sliding wildly down, so Bermont just managed to snag his rifle as he slid by, swinging him around until they both wound up holding tightly to a shard of what used to be a building as the world went topsy-turvy.

“Hold on!” he yelled, hugging the only purchase he could as the ground began to slide below him.

They did just that, but each had his suit’s imaging systems looking down in the direction they were sliding, where they could see the ground
crawling
.

“What the
fuck
are these things?” Corporal Matthews screamed as they began to slide down into the crawling pit.

“I
fucking
refuse to go out like this,” Bermont snarled, palming one of his remaining grenades. “I will not be eaten by some bastard alien movie rip-off!”

He armed the grenade, and his HUD showed more prime, as others did the same. He knew they were thinking the same thing he was: it was one thing to die in a fight, but he wasn’t going to let them turn his body and armor into more of those things.

They were tilting dangerously at over thirty degrees, the slab of concrete or ceramic or whatever it was they were on sliding on its own. Sliding down, down into the pit that was crawling below them.

He closed his eyes, shutting out the HUD for a moment.

“Well, guys, it’s been fun.”

“Lying bastard,” Matthews muttered, priming a couple of his own grenades.

“I only regret that we don’t carry enough firepower to take these fuckers all to hell with us.”

A few more grenades primed, all of them waited on signals from their controllers to detonate.

“This is gonna suck.” Bermont sighed.

“Uh…LT…”

“What do you want, Matt?”

“You might want to look up.”

Bermont opened his eyes and found himself staring at a quintet of Priminae orbiters hovering above them, and buildings were being pulled up into the air all around them. Bermont looked down and realized that they weren’t sliding downward anymore; instead, they were moving up and away from the crawling mass below.

“All right, who prayed for the miracle?” he asked softly.

Three guys raised their hands.

“You’re all promoted. Nice work.”

“Bravo Actual, Command.”

“Go for Bravo, Command.”

“Stand by for extraction. We finally found out what the Priminae were doing with all their shuttles.”

“Let me guess,” Bermont muttered, “they were slapping tractor beams on them?”

“They call them ‘excavation equipment,’” Colonel Reed replied, sounding a little peeved but a lot relieved by the turn of events. “How’s the team?”