Charles Ingrid - The Sand Wars 04 - Alien Salute

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2024-12-24 1 0 533.21KB 204 页 5.9玖币
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Alien Salute
The Sand Wars 4
Charles Ingrid
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Prologue
^ »
Where in the hell was their transport? What had happened to recall? Jack
fought the maddening impulse to scratch inside his armor, as sweat dripped
down, and the contacts attached to his bare torso itched impossibly. To
scratch now, the way he was hooked up, he'd blow himself away.
Damn. Where was that signal? They couldn't have been forgotten, could
they? If the pullout had happened, they would have been picked up…
wouldn't they?
As sweat trickled down his forehead, he looked around.
Sand. They had been dropped in a vast sea-gulf of sand. Everywhere
beige and brown and pink dunes rose and fell with a life of their own. This
was what the Thraks did to a living world. And the Knights, in their suits of
battle armor, trained and honed to fight a "Pure" war destroying only the
enemy, not the environment, were all that stood between Milos and his own
home world lined up next in a crescent of destruction that led all the way
back to the heart of the Thrakian League.
So far, they'd been lucky here on Milos. Only one of the continents had
gone under… still, it was one too many as far as the lieutenant was
concerned. The Dominion Forces were losing the Sand Wars. And he was
losing his own private struggle with his faith in his superior officers. They'd
been dropped into nowhere five days ago and had been given the most
succinct of orders, gotten a pithy confirmation that morning and nothing
since. Routine, he'd been told. Strictly a routine mop-up. You don't treat
Knights that way—not the elite of the infantrymen, the fastest, smartest and
most honorable fighters ever trained to wage war.
Jack moved inside the battle suit. The Flexalinks meshed imperceptibly
and the holograph that played over him sent the message to the suit and, in
turn, the right arm flexed. Only that flex, transmitted and stepped up, could
have turned over an armored car. He sucked a dry lip in dismay over the
reflex, then turned his face inside the helmet to read the display.
The display bathed his face plate in a rosy color and his eyesight flickered
briefly to the rearview camera display, just to see which of the troops were
ranged at his back. The compass wasn't lying to him. "Five clicks. Sarge,
have they got us walking in circles?" His suit crest winked in the sun as he
looked to his next in command.
"No, sir." Sarge made a husky noise at the back of his throat. Sarge wore
the Ivanhoe crest—a noncommittal comment on what he thought of his
lineage and his home world, but it made no difference to Storm. The men
who joined the Knights came from every walk of life and the only criterion
was whether a soldier was good enough to use a suit. If he was, and if he
survived basic training, his past became a sealed record, if that was the way
the man wanted it.
The sand made Jack thirsty. He waved his arm. "All right, everybody
spread out. Advance in a line. If the Thraks are here, that'll flush ‘em. Keep
alert. Watch your rear displays and your flanks."
The com line crackled as Bilosky's voice came over in sheer panic. "Red
field! Lieutenant, I'm showing a fracking red field!"
Storm swiveled his head toward the sound, cursed at the obstruction of
the face plate, and re-turned a fraction more slowly so that his cameras could
follow the motion. "Check your gauges again, Bilosky. It's a malfunction.
And calm down." The last in a deadly quiet.
Bilosky's panic stammered to a halt. "Yes, sir." Then, "Goddammit,
Storm—those Milots have pilfered my suit! Every one of my gauges is
screwed. I'm showing a red field because I'm running on empty!"
Storm bit his tongue. He chinned the emergency lever at the bottom of
the face plate, shutting down the holograph field. Then he pulled his arm
out of the sleeve quickly and thumbed the com line switches on his chest
patch so that he could talk to Bilosky privately. Without power or any action
to translate, his suit stumbled to a halt. The Flexalinks shone opalescent in
the sun.
"How far can you get?"
Not listening, Bilosky swore again. "Goddamn Milots. Here I am fighting
their fracking war for them, and they're pirating my supplies—I ought to—"
"Bilosky!"
"Yes, sir. I've got… oh, three clicks to go, maybe. Then I'm just another
pile of junk standing on the sand." He turned to look at his superior officer,
the black hawk crest rampant.
Storm considered the dilemma. He had his orders, and knew what his
orders told him. Clean out Sector Five, and then stand by to get picked up.
The last of Sector Five ranged in front of him. They could ration out the
most important refills for Bilosky once they got where they were going.
"We'll be picked up by then."
"Or the Thraks will have us picked out."
Storm didn't answer for a moment. He was asking a man with little or no
power reserves showing on his gauges to go on into battle, in a suit, in full
battle mode. Red didn't come up on the gauges until the suit was down to
the last ten percent of its resources. That ten percent would carry him less
than an hour in full attack mode. Not that it made any difference to a
Knight. Jack sighed. "We're on a wild goose chase, Bilosky. You'll make it."
"Right, sir." A grim noise. "Better than having my suit crack open like an
egg and havin' a berserker pop out. Right, Lieutenant?"
That sent a cold chill down Storm's back. He didn't like his troopers
repeating ghoulish rumors. "Bilosky, I don't want rumors like that bandied
around. You hear?"
"Yes, sir." Then, reluctantly, "It ain't no rumor, lieutenant. I saw it
happen once."
"Forget it!"
"Yes, sir."
"Going back on open air. And watch your mouth." He watched as the
other lumbered back into position. Then, abruptly, Jack dialed in his
command line and watched as the miniscule screen lit up, his only link with
the warship orbiting far overhead. The watch at the console, alerted by the
static of their long-range comm lines, swung around. The navy blue uniform
strained over his bullish, compact figure. He looked into the lens, his nostrils
flaring. The squared chin was cleft and its line deepened in anger. A laser
burn along one side of his hairline gave him a lopsided widow's peak.
"Commander Winton here. You're violating radio silence, soldier. What's
the meaning of this? Identify yourself."
"I'm Battalion First Lieutenant," he said. "Where's our pullout? We were
dropped in here five days ago."
"You're under orders, lieutenant. Get in there and fight. Any further
communication and I'll have you up for court martial."
"Court martial? Is that the best you can do? We're dying down here,
commander. And we're dying all alone."
The line and screen went dead with a hiss. Suddenly aware of his own
vulnerability, Storm pushed his right arm back into his sleeve and chinned
the field switch back on. His suit made an awkward swagger, then settled
into a distance eating stride. Fighting wars would be a hell of a lot easier if
you could be sure who the enemy was.
Bilosky and Sarge and who knows who else were talking about
berserkers now. The unease it filled him with he could do without. He
squinted through the tinted face plate at the alien sun. Strange worlds,
strange people, and even stranger enemies. Right now he'd rather wade
through a nest of Thraks then try to find his way through the rumors
surrounding the Milots and their berserkers.
There was no denying the rumors though. The Milots, who had
summoned Dominion forces to fight for them against the Thraks—those
same low-tech Milots who ran the repair centers and provided the war
backup—were as despicable and treacherous as the Thraks whom Storm
had enlisted to wipe out. And there were too many stories about altered
suits… suits that swallowed a man up and spawned instead some kind of
lizard-beastman who was a fighting automaton, a berserker. Rumor had it
the Milots were putting eggs into the suits, and the heat and sweat of the
suit wearer hatched those eggs and then the parasitic creature devoured its
host and burst forth—
He told himself that the Milots had a strange sense of humor. What
Bilosky thought he'd seen, whatever every trooper who repeated the gossip
thought they were talking about, was probably a prank played at a local
tavern. Knights always took a certain amount of ribbing from the locals,
until they were seen in action, waging the "Pure" war.
Ahead of him, the dunes wavered, sending up a spray of sand. His
intercom burst into sound.
"Thraks at two o'clock, lieutenant!"
Storm set his mouth in a grim smile. Now here was an enemy he could
deal with. He eyed his gauges to make sure all his systems were ready, and
swung about.
Thraks were insects, in the same way jackals were primates or ordinary
sow bugs were crustaceans. They were equally at home upright or on all
fours, due to the sloping of their backs. Jack took his stand and watched
them boil up out of the sand from underground nests and launch
themselves in a four-footed wave until they got close enough to stand up
and take fire. Thraks were vicious and dedicated to a single purpose… at
least, fighting Thraks were. Diplomatic Thraks, so he had heard, were as
vicious in a far more insidious way.
He cocked his finger, setting off a burst of fire from his glove weapons
that slowed the wave. The line of Thraks wavered and swung away, even as
they stood up and slung their rifles around from their backs.
On Milot, they had the slight advantage, having gotten there first and
having begun their despicable planet transforming. Even a slight advantage
to the Thraks was disastrous to the Dominion. Milot was already as good as
lost. Battalions had been wiped out, forced into the deserts, to make as
graceful a retreat as possible. Inflict as many casualties as they could, then
pull out. Jack's job, as he understood it, was to make the toll of taking Milos
so heavy, so dear, that the Thraks would stop here.
Storm's grim smile never wavered, even as he strode forward, spewing
death as he went, watching the gauge detailing how much power he had
left. Bodies crunched under his armored boots.
They were mopping up. They were to distract the Thraks and the enemy
cannon long enough to let most of the troop ships—almost all of them
cold-ships—pull out, and then they would be picked up. That was the
promise…
He strides through the line, knowing the wings of his men will follow,
and seeing that the front is not a front, but an unending wave of Thraks.
What was reported as a minor outpost is a major staging area, and he's
trapped in it, wading through broken bodies and seared flesh. He sweeps
both gloves into action, firing as he walks, using the power boost to vault
walls of fallen bodies and equipment.
Somewhere along the way, Bilosky lets out a cry and grinds to a halt, out
of power. He screams as his suit is slit open with a diamond cutter and the
Thraks pull him out. Jack ignores the screams and plows onward. He has no
choice now. The pullout site is ahead of him. He has to go through the
Thraks if he wants to be rescued. Ahead of him is the dream of cold sleep
and the journey home. The dream…
He lives long enough to fall into a pit, a pit ringed by Thraks, surrounded
by what is left of his troop, and by stragglers from other battalions. They
stand back to back for days, firing only when absolutely necessary, watching
the unending waves of Thraks above them. And he sees a suit burst open,
days after its wearer expired with a horrendous scream and the armor halted
like a useless statue in the pit. He sees the seams pop and an incredible
beast plow out, and charge the rim of the pit, taking fully a hundred armed
Thraks with it, even as it bellows, striking fear in those beyond its reach. He
knows he is dreaming that he has seen a berserker, and tries to ignore the
empty shell-like suit with the crest of Ivanhoe left behind in shards and
settling into the sand.
Even as he stands and fires, he thinks of what it is he wants to dream. He
wants to dream getting out of there alive, with his men. That is what he
wants most. Then he wants to be able to scratch. And he thinks he hears
something inside the suit with him, something whispering at his shoulder,
and he knows he's losing it. Aunt Min back home always said that when the
Devil wanted you, he began by whispering to you over your shoulder.
Storm is scared to turn around. All he wants to do is find his dream of going
home. And when the recall comes, he doesn't know if he's hearing what he's
hearing or not… or if he can even be found behind the wall of Thraks.
And then he realizes he is cold sleep dreaming, on an endless loop,
dreaming without beginning or end until someone finds and awakens him.
But that was then. This is now…
Chapter 1
« ^ »
The aged freighter hardly qualified as a transport ship, let alone a cold ship,
but none of the nearly five hundred people crowded into it complained.
They stood and shivered and talked quietly to each other in knotted groups,
looking pale and shaken as they waited for processing.
Only one man had an expression of triumph seized out of the jaws of the
defeat that had forced them into exodus. Tall, made massive by his
opalescent battle armor, he looked the crowd over now, and his eyes flashed
with eagerness even as he assessed the results of the evacuation.
"What if the emperor offers you the command?"
He made a noise of anger. "Kavin's hardly cold in the ground."
The woman with the questioning, gentle brown eyes remained
composed under the wash of his anger, tilting her head slightly to one side
as though to veer away from it. "But we have to consider it, don't we?" She
kept her hand on the Flexalink sleeve he supported her with. Beneath her
fingers, she felt the smoke and grime of battle, and her delicate nose still
scented blood faintly though most of it had been washed away. They'd both
witnessed the violent death of his commanding officer and friend. They
stood intimately close in the immense hold of the transport ship that
vibrated loudly under their feet. "And I need to talk to you… I need time to
tell you what happened." The man's helmet was off, hanging from an
equipment hook at his waist. Sweat darkened his sandy blond hair and
fatigue washed out his blue eyes. Even with his strong cheekbones, he was
plain-faced, ordinary, but there was something commanding in his features.
Tiny lines were etched at the corners of his eyes and into his forehead, for all
he appeared at the prime of his twenties. His avid gaze deflected from his
field command to her, and softened as he took her in. The reflection of her
image in his eyes was as intimate as an embrace. “You don't owe me an
explanation. I just thank god you came back."
A shiver swept over her, setting off the intricate blue patterning of the
tattoos that covered her—that made her alien from her lover. These tattoos
were only a small portion of what she had suffered, when the religious wars
had swept across Bythia and forced the Dominion settlers to flee. But she
knew Jack was most concerned about facing Emperor Pepys. "You've got
two months of chill time to think about it," Amber returned. "You'd better
have an answer for the emperor by the time we get home."
"If he offers it to me, I'll think about it."
"Not good enough," she said, and streetwise savvy edged her tones.
They were among the last of the evacuees to be processed. "You have to
accept, if Pepys asks you. You're the only one left who knows how to fight a
‘Pure’ war. Anyone can wear a suit—"
He looked down at her and his mouth twitched. "—well, not anyone, but
no one understands the warfare the way you do."
"I know," he said then, heavily.
The freighter seemed to groan around them as it picked up acceleration
speed. It would take days to hit warp speed, weeks in transit, and then days
of deceleration. Those days would pass as if in a dream to the vast bulk of
its passengers.
Amber pressed her fingers into his armor. "And then we can talk."
Storm shifted his weight uneasily. He did not like the prospect of cold
sleep, never had, never would. A nurse came by, still in sterile greens, and
Jack stepped out to block his passage.
"I don't want any of these people on a debriefing loop."
The nurse came to a startled halt. His face was narrow and his chin
pointed, giving him a feral look. "We take our orders from Emperor
Pepys—"
"Not now you don't. I don't want any of those evacuees stressed out.
They won't forget what happened." He felt Amber shudder at his side. As if
any of them could forget the bloody civil uprising out of which they were
being emergency lifted, compounded by the ever-present, ever-dangerous
Thraks and the rumors of war.
The nurse sniffed. "Of course, commander." He hurried past then,
skirting around the battle-armored man with caution.
Jack smiled. Too tired to do so, he couldn't hold it, and the expression
faded rapidly from his face.
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