Subterrene War 03: Chimera (32 page)

“Nanako!” I shouted into the radio, but it was already too late. One of the
Gra Jaai
squeezed a burst from his flame unit and hit the things bounding toward him so they burst into moving torches just as one leaped into the air, after which it closed invisible pincers around his neck. The rest of the
Gra Jaai
fell without ever realizing what hit them. Within seconds Nanako and her patrol had been erased silently, her men and women lying in pieces and bleeding into the clay.

“What—” Jihoon started, but I cut him short with a whisper.

“Quiet. Don’t move.”

“But they’re gone.”

“I said quiet. They’ll be looking for others now. For us. Just take it easy, and we’ll get through.”

Ji sounded terrified, and I didn’t blame him but I couldn’t relate because all my fear had been replaced with the jungle’s program, where this was just what it was and it was too late to change the deal. Being scared didn’t help.

“They’re coming this way, Bug. I count two. The rest are moving back into the grass.
We’re fucking dead.
”

“I said quiet, Chong. They’ll hear you.” He stopped talking, which was fortunate for him because I’d drawn my knife so I could kill him if he refused to shut up.

They were easier to spot in the day. The morning sun broke over the mountains, and through the leaves we saw a pair of them moving toward our position, creeping in an
effort to evade shape detection, but their feet sunk into the clay and now they had a shadow. I tried to breathe quietly. The scouts reached the jungle and crept past us to my right, where they disappeared into the foliage. Still, neither of us moved. For over an hour we sat there, afraid to give away our hiding spot until the crashing noise of something bounding through the brush came from behind, fading to the east in the direction of the mountains.

“Jesus
Christ,
” I whispered, stretching my legs while I sat. “I can’t feel anything. It’s all gone to sleep.”

“They’re dead,” said Jihoon.

I looked toward the village again, where the locals had begun lifting the bodies and pieces to toss them into trucks. They stacked the
Gra Jaai
weapons by the river.

“Yeah.”

“That’s it?
Yeah?
” Ji yanked his hood off and then slid his locking ring open to remove his helmet so tears wouldn’t fog his goggles.

“I don’t know if you’re cut out for this gig after all.”

He finished and replaced his gear, so that I heard a muffled sob before Ji’s head vanished into its helmet. “I don’t think so either,” he said. “But I don’t know. I scored high in the academy and got the best scores in training scenarios; it’s not like my profile didn’t fit for this job. But we can’t even
see
these things, Bug, and it’s not like you and I are on some advising job anymore. This kind of shit wasn’t part of the training. You brought us into Burma so we could be the targets in some screwed-up hunt,
asshole
.”

“Yeah. I did. So get some rest, be quiet, and don’t move around. Swap out your fuel cells as soon as they start to get low. We’ll move into town tonight and steal one of those canoes so we can cross the river.”

“What if we can’t?”

“Then I’ll risk swimming across in my undersuit with a rope so I can pull you and my armor to the other side and to hell with worrying about their thermal imaging. This is what we do, Chong. Take risks to accomplish our mission. And besides, we wouldn’t want to go back to those days.”

“Fuck you,” he said. But I’d already started falling asleep.

Night fell to awaken the frogs, which croaked in a never-ending chorus that periodically went silent when a bird called with a haunting drawn-out sound, but within a few moments they’d start again. A splash from the river caught my attention. Peering out from the jungle, my night vision showed a bird with large wings lifting off from the near bank with a struggling frog in its beak so that I made a note: I never wanted to be a frog.

It took me a moment to find Jihoon and shake him awake. “Time to get going.”

“What time is it?”

“Twenty-one hundred. The villagers used their canoes for a while, but they’re back now.”

“How long have you been awake?” he asked.

I thought for a minute. “I don’t know. A couple of hours. Been going over the next steps and didn’t want to wake you.”

“I bet you didn’t. I can hack it, Bug.”

“I figure you can, kid.” I wanted a cigarette more than anything, followed by bourbon. It had been days now since my last drink, and my skin crawled from not having
had either, but I tried not to let my discomfort show. “You were right, too. This operation has been crap from the start, but it’s the one we’ve got. And it’s your first. The first one is always the worst, and the fact that they paired you with me for one this important means they have plans for you. All you have to do is make it out.”

“Who has plans for me?” Ji sounded curious, as if he hadn’t thought of the possibility.

“Come on. You think they hand out these things like candy? A few months ago and I’d never heard of Strategic Operations, and yet here you are, a part of them out of the gate even though your only experience amounts to a few years suspended in orange goo and working as a Peeping Tom for the Feds. You
can’t
screw this one up, kid, because they won’t read it that way; no matter what you do, it’ll work out.”

“What about you? What does a Bug do after an op this bad?”

I thought about that one too for a minute; it made me want a cigarette even more. My arms and legs were so sore and tight that even my toes cramped, the constant low-level agony from my wounded shoulder a reminder of the fact that there wouldn’t be anything more for me when this ended.

“I’ll figure that one out if we live.” I grabbed my carbine and rose inch by inch until I stood, taking one cautious step toward the jungle’s edge. “Stay low, move slow. Is your fuel cell good? Chill can full?”

He paused to check before clicking back in. “Plenty of power, I’m OK. My exhaust temps are green.”

We headed toward the village. At our speed, it took a half hour to reach the canoes, which were low and flat in
the middle with high bow and stern sections, and I pushed one into the water where Jihoon held it while I shuffled toward the pile of discarded weapons. Several of the
Gra Jaai
’s flame units had been damaged or were empty, but I found one that was around half-full and considered taking it; a villager or scout would see the thing as long as it wasn’t concealed by my cloak, and there wasn’t time to take everything off and arrange things so the cloak would cover it. But this was a risk worth taking—in case we needed it later. As long as part of me was visible, there wasn’t any point in moving slowly so I ran as fast as I could to the canoe, tossed the flamethrower in, and helped Jihoon push off.

“What’s the hurry?” he asked.

“Move it. Someone may have seen me.”

I jumped in, and Jihoon handed me a paddle; we both dug into the water at the same time, trying to put as much distance between us and the village as possible, but someone shouted from the bank and I turned to look. A small boy ran after us. By the time he reached the bank, the boy was waving his hands and had started wading into the water as he shouted, and I imagined how strange it must have looked to see an empty canoe cross the river with two paddles that moved by themselves. But when lights from the huts flickered into view, I stopped smiling.

“Faster,” I said.

“I’m paddling as fast as I can.”

I grunted with the effort and looked back again; a group of men were already loading into canoes. “Not fast enough.
Faster!
”

“Why can’t we catch one stinking break?” Ji asked.

It was a good question. On a normal day I would have
laughed, but we’d made it halfway across the river by the time the others splashed after us, and they had more paddles. The men had clearly done this for a lifetime; their strokes fell in unison, and we wouldn’t have much of a lead once we reached the far bank. When we did, I pushed Jihoon onshore and dropped the flame unit at his feet.

“Take that into the jungle. Move fast, but once you get into the bush, slow down and keep your eyes open for booby traps.”

“Where are
you
going?” asked Jihoon.

“I’m going to take care of them.”

“They just want their canoe. As soon as they get it, they’ll probably turn back and go to sleep.”

I stared at the spot where I thought Jihoon’s head was. “I’m going to take care of them. Now get moving.”

The flame unit rose into the air and bounced as Jihoon headed west, soon passing out of range of my vision kit.

It didn’t take long to set up. My carbine rested on a rock near the bank, and when I touched the trigger, the gun camera’s image popped into my heads-up with a dim reticle that moved when I shifted to search for my targets. By now I heard the men’s voices, and Kristen started to translate their confusion into my ears, but I told her to give it a rest. There were three canoes, each with five men. I targeted the ones farthest away and fired, walking my tracers from front to back to watch the men crumple forward in their seats or slump over the canoe’s side and drag their hands in the water. The last two canoes started to turn. I took my time with the next, firing short bursts at each man so that by the time the last one had fallen, the ones in the third canoe decided to abandon their vessel and leaped into the warm river. One by one I picked them
off. When it was over, I checked my chronometer to find that a few minutes had elapsed and zoomed into the far bank where a crowd of villagers had gathered to watch. I did it without thinking. The tracers from my carbine cut them down without effort at that range, and I didn’t stop until my hopper had emptied, automatically detaching from my shoulder mount to fall by my side.

Two minutes later I’d found Jihoon. We moved deeper into the jungle as fast as we could because by now the Chinese scouts, if any were still in the area, would have noticed the shooting. I’d seen the Burmese boy fall to the mud, dead, and it didn’t bother me a bit; what bothered me
now
was the thought that something inside me had changed again, and I couldn’t pinpoint what it was, only that it made me feel strong.

T
he jungle didn’t care who lived or died. As soon as the sun set, its trees went to sleep and dreamed of things that would ensure its roots got what they needed in the dry times between monsoons, and war that had raged for so long on its borders had supplied it with enough death to make it grow thick and tall. Jihoon and I moved all night. We paused for as long as it took to strap the flame unit under my cloak and then continued up the long sloping mountain ahead of us, the one leading to the dot on our map showing Margaret’s last known position. I didn’t know if she’d still be there. But despite the uncertainty and the exhaustion that threatened to make me fall asleep on point, an exhaustion that made me hallucinate and see shapes in the darkness outside my infrared range, the urge was still there—to move and never stop. The jungle wasn’t against me and even asleep it still pushed; it was enough. We’d move through its maze and reach the spot by early morning, but without knowing where Chen was, it was hard to believe the mission would end, and in the monotonous bush it felt as though we’d never get there.

“Lieutenant,” Kristen said, “I’ve noticed something interesting.”

“Go ahead.”

“I’ve been monitoring your power consumption, and although the extra garment you have wired into the suit’s system has increased the draw, you still have enough fuel cells for two weeks of constant operation.”

“That’s very interesting,” I whispered. “Is that why you woke up?”

“I never sleep, Lieutenant. I only explained the power status because I decided to activate your sniffer units two days ago and draw random samples once you made contact with Chinese troops at Nu Poe.”

She had my attention, and I stopped to lean against a tree, punching the command for Ji to hold. “What did you find?”

“Their off-gasses are characteristic. They aren’t unusual for electric-powered motors but are atypical of organic life in combat suits.”

“You’re losing me, Kristen. Spell it out.”

“In this particular theater there are no units like the ones fielded by the Chinese, so any reading from them is well above background for tungsten and several other elements that their servos produce, and from the amount of nickel I’ve detected I would guess that some of their systems rely on metal hydride batteries. This is in itself odd, since those types of batteries are highly unreliable, and—”

“Stop. Are you telling me we can smell them?”

“I can try to
detect
them, Lieutenant. It’s an experimental procedure, but one, if it works, that could provide you with a warning before your next encounter. Given
visibility constraints in the jungle, the ability would give you an edge.”

“If we activate the chemical sniffer to run constantly, how much of a drain would that put on my power?”

“It depends on the intake draw, but I estimate that it would cut two or three days from your total supply.”

“Do it,” I said. “Maximum draw.” I clicked onto Jihoon’s frequency and told him about it, which made him laugh.