Opus X Series Boxed Set Four

Chapter 5

Chapter Five

September 10, 2230, Gliese 581, New Samarkand, Sogdia

“It’s like the worst damned concert in the world,” muttered Lieutenant Cabrina Pena.

The drumbeat of explosions and gunshots continued, and despite the audio filters in her helmet, the vibrations seeped from the ground into her exoskeleton and then to her body. Her ears would probably be ringing for a day, and her muscles would ache for a while.

She’d never complain about long stretches of boredom again.

Her ears also itched. That was an exo design flaw they needed to address. If a soldier was in the middle of the battle and couldn’t disengage their arms from the exo’s interface, he or she just had to suffer the annoying distraction.

A small irritation in battle not only could but would kill. That was what she would write in her recommendation form.

“LT,” transmitted one of her soldiers on the right of her loose formation. “All the evac flitters are loading and almost ready for lift-off. They’re reporting all civilians accounted for and taking off in five minutes per HQ’s orders.”

“Five minutes is a damned eternity,” Cabrina complained. “And they’re staggering the launches to make sure they have one-to-one air support in the next sector.” She glanced at her HUD. “But that doesn’t help us. I can’t believe they let us get flanked like this.”

“You’re preaching to the choir, LT.”

“If we’re the choir, let’s make this a concert,” Cabrina replied.

Command wanted all the civilians from this neighborhood to move to a more defensible position while they drew the attention of rebel forces off with counter-offensives in other sectors.

At least an earlier wave of Dragons had pounded the s**t out of the rebel arty, but now their ground forces were moving in, clearly not as distracted as HQ had predicted.

“We’re not losing a single one of those flitters,” Cabrina announced. “We’re the best squad in the 919th, and we’re going to show all those other losers how it’s done. We’re probably outnumbered. What’s that mean?”

“We’re out of shits to give!” the squad shouted back.

“Exactly. Let’s show them what Army Assault Infantry can do.”

Cabrina’s eyes darted to a drone feed projected on the corner of her faceplate.

Her squad had barely been able to maintain their aerial recon assets between the jamming and rebel gunfire, but the last of her little flying spies zoomed close to a building, highlighting a mass of advancing unmounted rebel infantry. She was less concerned about them than the rebel exos rapidly closing on their position and the six-rack surface-to-air missile launcher they’d hauled in the back of a hovertruck.

Three exos guarded the missiles, loosely surrounding the truck. There was no indication that they knew they’d been spotted.

Relying on the enemy to make mistakes was a bad strategy for winning a war, but she’d take it for a battle. The mercs were a lot tougher than the rebels, but she knew all too well how a couple of real battles could train a man or woman up far quicker than weeks in a simulator.

The cynical side said it got rid of the chaff efficiently, leaving you with raw material with natural talent.

“We’re moving now,” Cabrina barked. “We’ve got five minutes to take out those missiles unless we want to be responsible for dead civilians. Now, move, move, move!”

She surged forward in her exo, raising her machine gun and rocket launcher, her shield fully expanded. The rest of her six-person squad kept pace in a loose line, no one too far forward or back.

A flash in the drone feed preceded its termination. She’d been expecting that, but she now knew the enemy’s position. Her squad would protect the civilians or die trying.

“Alpha Four through Six, break off and pressure them on their left flank,” Cabrina called. “Maybe we can peel off some of the missile guards. Two and Three, we’re going over the top to take out those SAMs. Stay on my ass. Once we’re clear of the building, unload on the missiles.”

The two sub-squads broke apart. Normally, exos charging down a street could easily be heard, but with all the background battle noise from the surrounding neighborhoods, their advance wasn’t noteworthy. Cabrina concentrated on the two buildings blocking her path to the SAM launcher, one shorter than the other, a few stair steps before falling into death.

There were at least forty people on each cargo flitter. Her unit couldn’t and wouldn’t lose. She owed that to herself, the Army, all the civilians on New Samarkand, and her brother.

God rest his soul.

The rebels and their merc buddies might have taken the local garrison by surprise, but the Army was pushing back now. It was time to show the ruthless assholes that a single soldier was worth five of them.

An alert flashed in the corner of her eye. One of the flitters was taking off early. They were out of time.

“Engaging left flank,” reported Alpha Four.

The background noise became a foreground cacophony as the roar of machine guns and rocket explosions added their bone-shaking contribution. Cabrina confidently focused on the task at hand.

“Two exos breaking away from the SAM to lay down cover for the infantry,” reported Alpha Four.

“Good. They took the bait. We’ve got this. Alpha Three, neutralize the last guard once clear.”

Cabrina continued her forward dash, her exo sprinting across the uneven surface and knocking loose rubble out of its way with its heavy feet. Her two squadmates stayed close as the first building loomed in front of her.

Gritting her teeth, she launched the exo into the air. It’d all come down to the next minute. A perfect angle. She landed on top of the building and sprinted forward a couple more meters before jumping again. The other two exos bounded with her in almost perfect unison as if they’d practiced this every day, all day.

Her team cut their speed when they reached the edge. The SAM launcher was spinning into position, but as predicted, only a single enemy exo stood near it. The rebel infantry had spread out behind the makeshift barriers of destroyed vehicles, trying to escape the wrath of the rest of her squad. Their feeble return fire bounced off the exos’ heavy ballistic shields.

One of the rebel exos charging in to support their troops was so sloppy he didn’t have his shield expanded. Two rockets struck him square in the chest and blew him apart.

The greatest weapon in the galaxy meant nothing without the ability and confidence to use it properly.

The sole guard exo near the SAM truck at least had his shield expanded, but he was not smart enough. He’d turned toward the other ground action, leaving his back wide open. Alpha Three sidestepped for a better angle before firing three rockets in rapid succession. They screamed toward their target, leaving a trail of smoke.

Cabrina didn’t wait for them to hit before she and Alpha Two let loose on the SAM truck with their own rocket barrage. Small explosions rippled across the truck and the large SAMs, then a massive plume of fire rose from the truck, consuming it like a hungry demon. The shockwave rocked the nearby buildings, cracking walls and windows and knocking the exos on the roof back.

It flattened the closest rebel infantry.

“Damn it,” Cabrina muttered. “That was a bigger explosion than I thought we’d see, but it got the job done. Everyone pull back to the initial defensive line. All we need to do is keep them pinned down.”

Dedicated air support to defend the flitters flew in the distance far beyond easy view from her smoky, ground-filled battlefield.

A quick push off the rooftop got her exo back on its feet. Her rearview camera feed marked a flitter lifting into the air and flying in the opposite direction. She held her breath, praying there wasn’t another hidden SAM, ready to take them out.

She allowed herself additional oxygen as the flitter disappeared into the distance.

“They’re clear,” she announced as she jumped back to the first building. “We just have to keep it up. Status?”

“All nearby enemy exos neutralized,” reported Alpha Four. “The rest of the infantry is pulling back. They’re not even picking up the guys the blast knocked down. I think we won this one, LT.”

“We won’t hold the party until every last one of those flitters is clear,” Cabrina insisted. “But that should be pretty easy to call if the rebels are running.”

“LT, three o’clock, above the buildings,” Alpha Two reported.

Cabrina frowned and turned her head that way. A black dot was rapidly approaching. She magnified the image on her visor and hissed in frustration. It was a slender, short-winged aircraft with a flexible-looking three-barrel turret on the bottom and two large, nasty rocket pods. She didn’t recognize the design, but besides the surprising thinness, the profile didn’t differ radically from an Army Dragon.

“This is Alpha Platoon at evacuation checkpoint Foxtrot 4-4,” she transmitted. “Incoming enemy light gunship. Request air support.”

“Hold position, Alpha Platoon,” replied HQ. “All air assets in your area are currently engaged. Routing mobile AAA to your area, ETA four minutes.”

“Roger.” Cabrina jumped down and backed her exo closer to the corner of the building, followed by her squadmates. At least the craters, half-collapsed buildings, and destroyed vehicles gave them some chance of not being torn up, but exos weren’t renowned for their ability to take on aircraft.

The enemy hadn’t been beaten. They were getting the hell out of there so their friends could cut loose without the risk of collateral damage.

“LT, what’s the play?” Alpha Two asked.

“Spread out, but everyone keep moving from cover to cover. Don’t bother with rockets, we’re not going to get that lucky. We need to survive until the AAA shows up and blows that wannabe Dragon out of the sky. It’s probably being flown by some rebel i***t who has a total of an hour in the air.”

The squad shouted their understanding and rushed into craters and behind large chunks of rubble. Cabrina didn’t like working with timers, but a soldier didn’t always get to pick her battles. She knew one thing that day, and that was the most important. As the last surviving child of the Pena family, the Devil would need to do a lot better than becoming a cocky rebel if he wanted her life.

An explosion not far in front of her announced the arrival of the gunship. Her spread-out squad fired in such near unison that it might have been a practiced, coordinated volley. They vomited bullets during the first pass of the blurred black aircraft, unsure if they hit it.

Mild smoke from its thrusters followed.

The enemy spun with a quick thrust as if physics were a mere recommendation. Cabrina almost didn’t believe what she was seeing, but she didn’t let that stop her from charging out from behind her current barricade into a crater and squeezing off another burst.

Her opponent lurched and wobbled like a leaf in an ever-changing wind. She’d never seen a piloted atmospheric craft move like that. There was only so much grav fields could do with abrupt changes of direction.

Biology asserted itself at the most inconvenient of times.

“The bastards don’t even have the balls to face us,” she hissed. “They’re remote-piloting the damned thing.”

A string of rockets hit the ground, scalding the shield of one of her squadmates but causing no serious damage. Her gaze flicked to her squad’s vitals, which showed elevated heart rates and mild damage to their exos but nothing else.

They could do this. They could stall. Even better, they could win.

As long as the gunship focused on them, they’d be fine. Another flitter lifted off behind them and zoomed away.

With a defiant yell, Cabrina changed positions again, this time risking a jump from the crater into another as she tried to nail the maneuverable threat above. She landed and hurried behind a half-melted hovertank, her jaw tightening when a rocket struck close behind Alpha Three. His exo tumbled to the ground, but his vitals stayed solid.

“I think I lost primary actuator control,” he reported. “Weapons still good, but I’d need someone to push me up.”

“Get the hell out of there and hide,” she ordered. “Otherwise, he’ll pick you off next pass.”

The exo opened and the soldier crawled out, the back of his tactical suit disintegrated, his skin red and bubbling. He scrambled into a pile of rubble that must have come from the street. Cabrina’s prophecy came to pass as the enemy gunship sent another rocket into the downed exo and blew it apart in a fiery explosion.

Cabrina let out a breath. Equipment could be replaced. Her soldier was hurt but alive. She’d count it as a victory, but the fight wasn’t over until the enemy was defeated.

“Keep the pressure on,” she ordered. “Support is on the way.”

The last evac flitter lifted into the air and sped away. It’d been one minute since she called HQ. In normal life, a minute was nothing. People wasted them all the time on the most trivial things and got nothing out of them, but when the thin line between life and death lay in front of a person, they appreciated how long not only the minutes could be but the seconds.

A minute later, two more squad exos were disabled, their pilots safely hidden but wounded. With the fifty-percent reduction of deadly lead pollution in the sky, the insane maneuvers of the gunship became more ridiculous, including abrupt drops for ground-scraping strafing runs. At this point, he was taunting them.

“That’s impossible,” insisted Alpha Five. “How are they piloting that thing remotely and pulling off moves like that?”

“No way a drone moves like that,” Cabrina countered. “It doesn’t matter. All we need to do is not get killed by the damned thing. The civilians are clear, so let’s concentrate on saving our own lives.”

Constant automatic weapons fire into the air tended to have a deleterious effect on ammo capacity, even in exoskeletons crammed with extra ammo containers. Cabrina didn’t want to see what the gunship could do to them when no one was firing at it.

Another minute passed. The surviving exos avoided serious damage, but their fire was more sporadic. Their enemy’s attack patterns got more elaborate, including purposeful twirling stalls it escaped from with no margin for error. If he kept it up, he might crash the gunship without any help from them. His latest display of skill ended with him shredding the back of an exo’s leg with his cannon before zooming back up.

“I can still fight, LT,” the soldier insisted.

“Thirty seconds,” Cabrina announced. “Stay alive and let the AAA do its thing.”

Her eyes widened as a half-dozen black objects emerged from the gunship. She’d worried they were bombs, but when they darted away on serpentine paths, she realized they were drones. They circled overhead at a decent distance but were well within machine-gun range.

“Ignore the drones,” she ordered. “He’s trying to throw us off. We might have clipped him. Concentrate on the gunship.”

She didn’t understand the point of the drone array. He’d already proven he had no problem picking them off on the ground. Despite her suggestion, his continued quick movements and directional changes argued against damage.

A voice boomed from the air, the product of the drones all transmitting at once, “Oh, little tin soldiers, what it’s like to know you’re going to die? To know you’ve fought so hard and so long for nothing? I know you’re probably thinking this isn’t piloted, but I want you to know, I risked my life in this engagement. I’m here, and you could have killed a skilled enemy had you any talent. Instead, you’ll just be another pack of dead little UTC dogs, killed by a vastly superior foe.”

Cabrina snorted. She wouldn’t take the bait. He might or might not be inside the gunship, but either way, the asshole had a surprise coming.

“I… Oh,” the pilot continued. “That’s unfortunate. No fun at all. You’re not even dogs. You’re insects.”

A thunderous rumble filled the area, and a missile zoomed from behind the exos. The gunship jerked to the side to avoid the missile, but the projectile curved and circled back toward its target. A stream of small white orbs dropped from the back of the gunship and zoomed toward the missile, disintegrating in a storm of explosions. The secondary explosion from the missile rocked the entire area but didn’t even singe the gunship, which was already well away.

“That’s right, bastard,” Cabrina murmured. “You might be able to dodge that, but can you dodge what’s coming next?”

The back portion of the gunship vaporized, burned off by an invisible beam. A follow-up laser blast sheared off a wing. All the clever piloting in the world didn’t mean anything without engines and half the required wings. The gunship spiraled to the ground and crashed with a resounding crunch behind a nearby building.

“That was an unforced error,” the pilot continued, his drone array untouched by the earlier attack. “I’ll admit that. I always wondered what it’d be like to face death, but don’t be so confident, insects. I destroyed an entire tank platoon on my way here. It’s only that I let myself get carried away playing with you and underestimated your available reinforcements. You didn’t win. I defeated myself.”

Cabrina frowned. She cared less about his taunts than that he could still make them. The guy didn’t sound winded, let alone wounded. He’d gone down hard and survived without a scratch? That didn’t seem right.

She jumped away from her current barrier of hovertruck wrecks and sprinted toward the wreckage. An expanding roar announced another AAA attack.

“Pain is a gift,” the pilot continued. “I can see that now. Knowing you’re damaged versus actual pain. The feedback is impo—”

The latest missile released twenty smaller rockets that swarmed the drones, which exploded like victory fireworks and dropped a lengthy shower of small dark chunks upon the cracked and blasted ground.

Cabrina cleared the building, the other surviving exos close behind. The smoking wreckage of the gunship lay close. She kept her rifle pointed at the enemy vehicle, wondering if it was only a remote-piloted trick in the end.

She stopped. The vehicle was smaller than most light gunships. Now that she was closer, she was even more confused by its small, narrow design. It was no wonder they couldn’t hit it, but there was also no way a human being could fit inside it.

That was what she told herself, but it didn’t explain one important thing: the blood leaking from the side.

Who the hell is in there?