Chimera Company: Rho-Torkis. Issue 1.: A sci-fi adventure serial Page 3

  Osu didn’t like what he was hearing. The newts had force shields. What other surprises had they in store? It was one thing to take an inexperienced officer out to fix the drains, but this had become a serious battlezone.

  “Seeing as I’m off-grid,” Osu said, “I’d better stick with you, sir. De Ketele, take my place. The men are yours now.”

  They made it safely across the half-built ice bridge without incident, abandoning their wagons with ramps sealed tight and false smoke now billowing from both of them.

  With eyes and weapons covering every potential avenue of attack, including from below the ice, they initiated a tactical withdrawal to the north.

  When they were half a klick from the far shore and the lure of cover in the trees there, the Littorane army made its move.

  And it was an army.

  The newts emerged from the trees and crossed the southern shoreline onto the lake. Osu estimated four hundred RILs protected by armored pads and armed with blaster rifles. Their tail tips were fitted out with maces or slingshot holders like catcher’s mitts in which they held homemade bombs. With their six limbs splayed out from their heavy, low-slung bodies, they dashed across the ice with menacing intent... and high speed.

  “Reckon they bought it, sir,” said Osu.

  Littoranes were masters of close quarter combat. If they had force shields that allowed them to close with impunity, they wouldn’t need their firearms to wipe out the legionaries.

  “Let them close,” said the lieutenant.

  “If they’re shielded,” Osu advised him, “we need to secure our egress across the north bank. We need to do it now.”

  “You’re right,” replied Stuart, bringing his rifle up to his shoulder. He fired three rounds. A klick away, two of the RILs went down, sending ripples of disruption as the tightly packed newts stumbled over their fallen comrades.

  “Shields don’t seem to be a problem,” stated the lieutenant cheerfully, and Osu began to believe that this might still be the one-sided contest they’d all hoped for. Sure, the RILs were heavy-duty bruisers, but their complete disdain for spacing revealed they had the tactical awareness of an unruly mob. This was going to be a turkey shoot, just with oversized turkeys armed with blasters.

  “Nonetheless,” said Stuart, “take four armored men and secure a route off this lake into the northern tree line.”

  Tapping the shoulders of Zy Pel, Heidl, Bulmer and Urdizine, Osu led his team across the ice to the north bank a few hundred meters away.

  “I’m hoping you can see through the trees, Urdizine,” said Osu through external speakers. “I can’t see a thing.”

  The Zhoogene sapper gave the trilling laugh of his species. “Your human sight is limited, but that’s why legionaries wear helms.”

  “Maybe,” said Zy Pel, “but some of us humes have eyes in the back of our heads. Everyone else, keep scanning the north bank. Sarge, you need to look behind.”

  Osu turned and saw.

  Shit!

  The enemy was raising dripping equipment through the gap in the ice they had blown when they’d first revealed themselves. The contraptions looked like large portable solar panels angled back and mounted on ski sleds.

  The RIL column advancing from the opposite shoreline flowed around this gap in the ice and formed up behind the equipment panels, which had closed into a line and were being pushed at speed toward Stuart and the main mass of legionaries.

  PA-71 volley fire raked the enemy mass. Bright flashes sparked in front of the panels, but the RILs behind were completely unscathed.

  “Portable shield generators,” murmured Osu to himself. “Who’s supplying them with this? Even the Legion doesn’t have this tech anymore.”

  And it got worse. Some of the RILs had detached from the main group and were trying to gain access to the abandoned beetles. If the enemy could get into the turrets…

  “Movement,” said Urdizine. “In the trees to the north.”

  The legionaries didn’t wait to get a clearer look. PA-71s spat hypersonic darts into the trees, shredding needles, bark, and Littorane flesh.

  Screaming blaster fire scorched through the air from the trees. Tchewww… tchewww… tchewww.

  At this 300-meter range, the deadliness of the enemy blasters was blunted, but amid the blaster whine came the crack of slug-throwing rifles.

  “I’m hit,” said Heidl. “Arm wound. Bullet. Non-critical.”

  The return fire from the trees ceased abruptly.

  “Hold position,” Osu ordered. “If there are still hostiles active, closing only makes their blasters more effective.”

  He took a knee and scanned the shoreline and the forest a short distance beyond. There was no sign of the RILs, but he spotted movement a hundred yards east of the position the Littoranes had fired from. A couple of small cylinders rolled out of the trees and onto the ice. One flashed gold, the other red.

  The colors of the Legion.

  “Hold your fire,” said Osu. “Friendlies are in control of our exit route.”

  Finally! It’s begun.

  “Keep any wounded RILs alive!” shouted Zy Pel into the trees he’d been shooting at moments earlier. “Moving down range,” he added for the legionaries as he sprinted for the shore. “Try not to shoot me.”

  Osu let him go. “Heidl, what’s your status?”

  “Full range of motion. Hurts like it’s been sat on by a lardy Jotun.”

  He took a look at the black column of death thundering toward the lieutenant’s position behind their impenetrable line of force shields. The weight of the RIL mass was making the ice crack like thunder. It would be tempting to call in a fire mission to blow the ice beneath them, but there were legionaries too on the ice.

  Even so, he downgraded the RIL threat. “Heidl, report an update to the lieutenant and seek assistance from medics.”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  “We will advance to the tree line,” Osu told Bulmer and Urdizine. “Confirm targets before firing.”

  “Sergeant,” called Heidl, “the LT wants you with him.”

  He’s not the LT, thought Osu angrily. The LT died on Irisur. As good as murdered by the Militia but it was me who failed his mission.

  “Sergeant?” prompted Urdizine.

  Osu waved on the Zhoogene legionary. “Go. Take Bulmer with you and don’t let Zy Pel do anything too stupid.”

  “Captain Estrup just sent us her compliments,” announced Lieutenant Stuart when Osu jogged over to him. “I’ve been invited to the 302nd’s mess tonight.”

  The RILs were close enough now that in order to be heard over their battle cries, Stuart’s external speakers were cranked so high they were distorting.

  The legionaries had their knives fixed to their PA-71s as bayonets, waiting for the onslaught. The momentum of the newts, though... if they slammed into the legionary line, they would sweep through the 27th’s detachment like a bulldozer.

  SOTLs were beginning to glance anxiously at each other. He didn’t blame them. De Ketele would be steadying them, though.

  The lieutenant didn’t appear concerned. In fact, he sounded pleased with himself. And with good reason. Captain Marianne Estrup, 2nd battalion, 302nd, was notoriously difficult to impress, but that hadn’t stopped the 27th’s CO, Major Cartwright, from trying ever since the squadron had arrived on Rho-Torkis.

  Osu cursed Estrup silently. What the hell are you waiting for?

  Throughout the Federation and beyond, the Legion had a reputation.

  The truth was that the Legion’s federal budget had been assaulted by the Militia and their political allies since the dawn of time, in theory to bolster the People’s Army, as the Legion’s enemies liked to call the Militia when they wanted votes in the Senate, but mostly to line their own personal accounts.

  The reality was that the Legion operated ancient equipment kept going by cannibalized parts, duct tape, and fighting spirit. Powerful weapons from ancient times were hoarded and kept secret from the Militia. Or
maybe that was just a rumor.

  And since the scandal of corruption at the very top of the Legion’s own ranks a decade before, the death grip on the Legion’s funding had tightened.

  But none of that had been enough to take away the Legion’s reputation. If you crossed the Legion, you die.

  A very simple equation.

  No warning. No mercy. And even without the equipment it deserved, the Legion was highly effective at killing its enemies.

  The RILs on this planet had forgotten that.

  A lesson had to be taught, and the Federation must see its delivery.

  No one had expected the RILs in such numbers, or to be so well equipped with precious equipment that the Legion would dearly love to claim for its own.

  No one had been sure the party of sappers would be ambushed on their mission to fix the drains.

  But it had been judged a possibility, an opportunity for the Legion to kill its enemies. And so the 302nd brigade had deeply embedded its 1st battalion in the area around the 27th’s maintenance mission, and 2nd battalion around the route from Camp Faxian.

  Tunnels and observation posts had been prepared in secret during the dark of the night, no easy matter in this frozen ground, and requiring all of the 27th’s engineering skill. The 302nd had occupied them three days before.

  Hiding.

  Waiting.

  The ambushers were to be ambushed.

  So why wasn’t the 302nd firing?

  The force shield panels spread out, leaving gaps between them.

  A deluge of newt blaster fire flew out at the 27th, sizzling the air. But the fire was wild. The RILs were hellbent on closing and smashing the legionaries, tail to face.

  Osu picked a target and sent a burst of flechettes into the newt who dropped and spun along the ice, tripping the crush of RILs flowing through the narrow gap.

  Along the line, the result was the same, as legionaries – Lieutenant Stuart among them – poured accurate fire into the first of their foe to emerge from behind the force shields.

  But the gaps between the shields widened all the time, and behind them waited hundreds of the alien warriors itching to kill, mere yards away.

  Suddenly, the momentum leeched out of the enemy mass.

  Osu took out a RIL to his left who was upon them, swinging its tail at one of the SOTLs. The dead newt’s swing clattered the legionary onto the ice.

  It was the only foe to make contact with the 27th’s line.

  Thunderclaps punched the air from the distant north and south shores of the lake, a thunder god smashing his mighty hands together into the mass of RILs. Smiting them.

  The surviving newts at the front of the attack began looking behind to see why their comrades were no longer following.

  The sight they faced was of RILs being shredded by railgun fire. Farther out, at the western shoreline, they would see pinpricks of blue-tinged fire – the characteristic muzzle flashes of PA-71s ripping the air into plasma.

  It was the northeast and southeast edges of the lake that interested Osu most. They were also studded with PA-71 muzzle flashes, but from each direction there was one much larger gout of flame.

  “Captain Estrup sends her apologies,” remarked the lieutenant. “The southern GX-cannon jammed, and she deemed it necessary to wait until she could deliver the dramatic panorama she requires.”

  Azhanti! The 302nd had GX-cannon!

  Osu took out a lone RIL looking desperately for an escape route.

  There weren’t any. Not inside a GX crossfire.

  The fearsome infantry support weapons were relics of the Orion Era. Meticulously maintained, almost venerated, over thousands of years, the official report would make no mention of these legendary weapons lest the Militia claim them for their own. But the grim sight of their destructive effect... that would be shown throughout the Federation.

  There would be image capture experts working on this massacre as it was taking place. And in a day or so, they would take the sickening sight of frozen RIL corpses heaped on an ice lake and turn it into an iconic vision of the fate that befell all enemies of the Legion.

  The usual idiots would decry the Legion as evil, that legionaries gloried in slaughter. That wasn’t true, but the Legion wasn’t there to be liked. It was there to hold the line.

  And the images? They would serve to reinforce the Legion’s reputation.

  Cross the Legion. You will die.

  But who was really confronting the Legion here? The RILs had gotten what was coming to them, but someone had set them up.

  Whoever you are, you’d better start running.

  At least, that was what Osu tried telling himself, but he couldn’t quite believe it. Someone with deep resources and influence had instigated this.

  Someone with an agenda.

  Whoever that was, Osu didn’t believe they would be running. More likely, they would see this as an opening skirmish in a campaign. It would get much worse for the Federation before it got better.

  Osu’s spirits didn’t lift after they left the lake under the control of the 302nd and set off for Camp Faxian in the beetles.

  “It’s quite the mess, Sarge,” said Zy Pel, accosting Osu as he was passing through the mid-section on the way to checking on Heidl’s wound.

  “Speak clearly, SOTL,” Osu snapped back, in no mood for Zy Pel’s games.

  “What I meant to say, is that it would be easier if we knew why we were fighting. I interrogated one of the RILs. Didn’t get much, but you should see this. Privately.”

  They set a helm-to-helm deep-link and Zy Pel replayed a recording of his interrogation.

  A Littorane lay curled on its side among the red-stained snow scattered with green needles. Where the RIL’s torso thinned into tail, its flesh had been blasted away to reveal shattered tail vertebrae. It must have been in agony, but it was prepared to talk nonetheless.

  “You die why pointless?” said Zy Pel. “We Legion, Littorane. Human main allies from time of Shepherd-Nurture your-queen are. Together strong alliance make still. Why you try kill me?”

  The RIL stared up at Zy Pel, who seemed from the camera angle to be crouching in the snow. It drew in deep wet-sounding breaths but did not immediately reply.

  If Zy Pel hadn’t felt this footage was important enough to pass on, Osu would have assumed the RIL hadn’t understood the human words.

  When Far Reach Federation was first settled, widely available translator systems meant language had not been a barrier between Littoranes and other races.

  Now, however, successfully speaking to Littoranes involved a pidgin language stemming from the archaic versions of English and Littorane Standardized Military Dialect used in the time of the Exiles. With the furious rate at which Littorane groups had spun out from the original Exiles and diverged, even if anyone had understood how to reprogram the translators, it would be a challenge to keep up with the linguistic drift. It was so immense that Littoranes from different systems often used this human pidgin to converse with each other.

  The RIL gave a long, gurgling exhalation and spoke. “We truth have. Blasphemer terror men. We know. Know we do of evidence Khallini-man via.”

  “Evidence no no!” said Zy Pel firmly. “Liar Khallini-man. Lady Indiya of Goddess we follow still. Blasphemer no. Liar Khallini-man. Holy war good. You war stupid. You war blaspheme. Goddess angry. Tell evidence Khallini-man.”

  “Truthspeak now. You die. You lie. You death big.” The RIL shuddered, and then lifted itself up on its front limbs and spat blood over Zy Pel’s helm.

  “Your Indiya offended the Goddess,” said the alien in perfect modern human speech. “For two thousand of your years. All those who follow her will die. The Legion must die. This, at the lake, is just the beginning.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Zy Pel. “You’re being used.”

  But the newt’s only reply was to reach with a trembling limb for its blaster, which was several feet away in the snow. Might have been a lightyear away for the c
ritically wounded RIL.

  “Don’t!” shouted Zy Pel, lurching forward to kick the blaster away, but as he did so the Littorane reached suddenly for something slung beneath its torso.

  Two legionaries out of sight blew its head off with their PA-71s.

  The world looked even bleaker than normal to Osu. This had been only the second day since they’d arrived on Rho-Torkis when the planet hadn’t seemed to be actively trying to kill them with blizzards and rad-storms. The locals had taken up the weather’s slack, and if they were convinced that the Legion was the enemy, then today’s slaughter on the lake would only encourage them to further violence.

  “Good work, Zy Pel. I’ll pass this on to the lieutenant with my report. The RIL talked of Khallini-man. Is that the name of a person? Do you have any idea who that might be?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Osu gave a disappointed grunt. Sometimes Hines Zy Pel knew secrets no regular legionary had a right to. The man denied having ever been in Legion Special Missions, but it was a denial that lacked conviction.

  “You know more than you’re admitting, Zy Pel.”

  His expression changed to one that Osu had never seen before. One of awkwardness. Pain. Loss. Was this the real Hines Zy Pel he was seeing for the first time?

  “You’re right, Sarge. I have speculations. Nothing more than that. But speaking of them could get you killed real fast. Pass the footage up the chain and let others speculate. And, Sarge, whatever you might think you know about my past, it doesn’t mean anything. I’m a sapper of the Legion. Nothing more. I swear that to you on my honor and the honor of the Legion.”

  Osu held his gaze for a few seconds and then nodded. Zy Pel’s words would suffice.

  For now.

  ——

  The mood in the general chow hall at Camp Faxian was rowdier than normal, but Osu wasn’t ready to join in yet. He sat on the end of a table staring pensively into his empty food tray. Despite his hunger, he hadn’t joined the long queues for the food hatches that were still functioning. There was someone he was hoping to bump into.

  For the moment, he was glad that preparing an account of the day’s events had kept him apart from the men in his troop. There was so much going on – so much, he suspected, that had barely begun – that he needed to spend a little time working these dangerous thoughts through his head.