Infinity Squad (38 page)

I burst out a side door and started running for the farms.

"We're only going to get one shot," I told the farmers lying on the crest of the hill. "So make it count."

Tornier was there, and seven other older men who had seen action somewhere in their past and knew how to calm their nerves. But we also had about ten kids, maybe eighteen, who had first fired their .308 hunting rifles on the one day we had trained them. The kids' rifle tips were shaking like paintbrushes.

I was in the middle of the line next to Tornier, looking down the iron sights of the rifle they had lent me, a rifle I had stolen to give to them in the first place, at the two idling troop helicopters 200 yards away. The door to the hangar opened and ten cloned soldiers started jogging toward the helos.

Two hundred yards isn't impossibly far. Revolutionary marksmen with smoothbore muskets would get kills from that distance regularly. If they had years of hunting experience. And could get over the mind-numbing adrenaline of firing at another human who may fire back. And had been trained. For more than a day.

"All together now," I said in the most reassuring voice I could manage. "We're going to do it all together. Inhale. Exhale. Two, one,
fire
."

All nineteen of our rifles cracked at the same moment and eight out of ten clones fell. I jumped to my feet and fired four times to bring down the other two as they ran for cover.

"Charge!" I yelled, sprinting down the hill.

No one followed.

I heard Tornier spit and say, "Aw hell." Then he yelled, "Tully, with me! The rest of you stay!"

The three of us ran towards the flight line. I slowed to let them get closer.

"You don't get to say 'Charge!'," Tornier yelled, running next to me. "Only I get to say 'Charge!' to my boys."

"Sorry!"

"Some of us have to live on this planet after all this is over, you know," he said, and right there, in those thirty seconds it took us to close distance to the wounded clones lying on the ground, was the first time I really thought about it.

What
was
my plan for afterwards? After all this?

We knocked away the rifles of the Omegas and Phoenixes too wounded to use them and shot the hands of the ones still reaching for theirs. But we didn't kill them. That would defeat the point.

I blindfolded and tied the soldiers up with some of Tornier's duct tape and then hopped into the two auto-piloted choppers and hit the GO button to send them on their way, empty. That would tie them up for fifteen minutes, too.

I reached for my throat mike. "Zazlu, it's set! Atta-"

Shit. I wasn't on the same implant channel as the squad anymore. And it would be a fun task to try and get a base tech to put me on it.

"Tornier, I suggest taking your guys back to the farms. If anyone else comes I don't want your involvement known. Like you said, you have to live here after this." He nodded, and I caught him before he and Tully started jogging back to the ridge. "Oh, and no matter what happens, try and seek out a large Hell-Spider with a bright red stripe across his face. Just thinking about him for ten minutes will be enough. He's one of the friendlies. If you offer him some sheep, I think you and he will have a lot to talk about."

Tornier gave me a strange glance, then he and Tully raced back to their group. A few seconds later I heard the sound of four-wheelers driving away.

I loaded up on grenades from the wounded guys and then took up position behind them to get anyone else coming out the door.

As I waited for ten seconds, then twenty, then thirty, I wondered. At the spider village, we had seen Omegas and Phoenixes and even a few Immortals, but not Hector or Samson. What were the head Immortals doing this whole time?

And then I got my answer, as a human-piloted helicopter circled to land with four Immortals hanging out the sides of it. They started firing on me even as they made their final approach, because I wasn't hard to spot. I was the guy standing next to ten tied up, bleeding soldiers, using them for cover.

I ran for the hangar door, their bullets following me and dove through, but not before I saw what they were bringing back in the helicopter.

A huge, dripping mass of seaweed.

Okay, I had to tell the Squad what I had just seen. And to attack in this lull, before the
next
wave of clones were sent out. And to come save my ass. Without tac implants or going to Comms. There was only one way.

I sprinted to our barracks and tried to push away the naughty feelings of rifling through Ann-Marie's trunk as I looked for a very personal item. Her cellphone. I hit the speed dial for Juan's number.

It rang ten gut-wrenching times until he picked up.

"Butcher?"

"Juan, it's me, Lieutenant Forrest!"

"Oh, sorry, sir! I know I'm not supposed to-"

"Shut up Juan. Tell Red-Stripe to attack."

"But we just heard two choppers land."

"They were empty! Tell Red-Stripe to send the siege-breakers, now!"

"Okay. I'm telling him." A pause during which I heard the sound of constant gunfire. "Done."

I loaded and stuck my spare Colt .45 in my belt as I asked, "How's it going?"

"It's rough, sir. Two more hit but not dead. The spiders helped us throw them back a few time-FUCK! Whew. Okay. It was getting really hairy right when you called."

"Why the hell did you pick up the phone then?"

"I thought you were Butcher," he said.

"You can
see
Butcher."

"Oh. Yeah."

"Tell everyone NOT to die," I said, opening the door to our barracks and peeking out. "The Immortals are bringing the slugs back here. I bet they're going to put them in the tanks. If you die you could wake up infected."

"Okay. Oh shit- it's happening!"

"What!"

"The spiders are charging!" he yelled. "Fuck yeah!"

"What's happening? Tell me!"

"They're all like, fucking mowing them down! From over there! And there too!"

"Damn it, Juan. Put Zazlu on the phone!"

Sounds of bullets, running.

"Zazlu."

"Zaz, what's happening? Juan couldn't narrate a silent movie."

"The spiders caught them from behind like perfect siege-breakers. Two groups, galloping up silently, got most of them before they could turn and fire. If they did, we got them. Two spiders hurt, but... there…they got them all! There's still a Heavy in the woods, but we're looking good for now, sir."

"Okay, great," I said, exhaling. "I think the Immortals are infecting the tanks, Zaz. Don't die or you could wake up Hector's best friend."

"Roger."

"And, uh, any chance you could come get me? We've got to stop the next wave of clones from being infected. And the next."

There was a pause. "We've got wounded."

"Leave Steve there with the wounded and bring the rest here."

"Steve
is
one of the wounded."

"God damn it! How does he always- never mind," I said. "Okay, leave one healthy private to talk to the gray shells about triage and bring the rest here with all the hunters Red-Stripe can spare."

"That will just be me, Butcher and Juan. And about five spiders."

I sighed. Against 45 soldiers, 30 BlackShirts, and thousands of psychic brain slugs.

Lighter, smarter, faster.

I guess it had to be this way.

I did my best Flores walk and checked two Stinger missiles out of the armory. I don't even know why we had those here.

Then I snuck outside, waiting for the next set of troops to run out to the returning auto-piloted helicopters. As they took off, I locked the shoulder-fired anti-air missile onto the first helicopter and then let the Stinger loose. The first helicopter exploded, giving 5 clones the second shortest mission of the day. I did the same to the second helicopter, as I imagine the soldiers were screaming at the auto-pilot to climb faster. Sometimes machines just aren't the answer.

That left only one working troop helicopter on the entire planet, the one still wet from the Immortal's cargo. I let that be and climbed on the roof of the cafeteria to watch the cavalry come in.

I noticed that they weren't sending clones out that same hangar door anymore. Real Flores in TacOps must have learned. Or maybe the freshly resurrected soldiers just had other prey on their mind.

"Come on guys, hurry," I said into Ann-Marie's cellphone, thinking of Doc Murphy or Dakota running from a horde of infected.

"Almost there," Zazlu answered. "Riding Hell-Spiders is actually pretty soothing. If we made the right saddle, it'd be smoother than a luxury car."

"On the trip home,
we
will ride
you
," Blue Wave answered him, as I saw them at the edge of the Cleared Zone, three humans riding three spiders, followed by two other hunters.

I squinted to make them out. "How come Ann-Marie got to ride Red-Stripe?"

"She is the prettiest," the knives-on-knives voice said. The group paused before the Cleared Zone. "Lieutenant Forrest, how are we going to do this?"

I sighed. Had Ridley ever been asked that question this many times in one day? I took a breath to think.

"Okay, the base is laid out like an 'H'. The clone rooms are at each end of the H, and we have to take all four out. We're too few to do them all at once. But the first thing we need to hit is the armory. Come in through the cafeteria."

"I sense a growing number of brain-slug hosts inside," Red-Stripe said. "That is troubling."

"We're going to reduce that number," I sighed. "First rule: anyone you sense infected with slugs, kill them with a blow to the head, not the spine, or knock off their buffering band first. That goes for us too, Zaz, Butcher, Juan."

"Hoo-ah."

"Anyone in a black shirt, wound first, kill if necessary, but leave their band on. Same for anyone with the 2nd Chance logo. Don't chase anyone who runs from you, they're desk pushers, not a threat. And don't kill the females."

"How do we tell which ones are the females?" Blue Wave asked.

We all shouted "Shut up Juan!" before he had a chance to say anything.

I made the cooks and busboys clear out of the kitchen, ordering them to lock themselves in their rooms and say no to slugs. Then I brought the team in. The humans went first, the spiders following as I led them out the same glass cafeteria door I had kicked in what seemed like a lifetime ago.

We moved down the hallway fast, almost to the armory when Red-Stripe said, "Two humans with hostile thoughts are approaching, from our left."

"Spiders forward," I hissed. "Remember the rules. And do it quietly!"

Two hunters took position around the corner, and when the BlackShirts turned it, claws flashed and cut the shotguns from their arms and stabbed their knees almost faster than I could see.

"Black shirt, no kill," I felt the hunters think and both knocked the BlackShirts heads into the wall before the guards were even reacting to what they saw.

They hit the ground unconscious, in less than two seconds after they had turned the corner.

"Holy shit," I said to Zaz. "We may win this thing."

That's when ten Omegas fresh from the tanks came pounding down the halls and we ducked into the armory as bullets came our way.

Now, of all the places to be trapped, the armory is a pretty good one. You've got all of the guns, bullets, grenades and flamethrowers you need right in the room with you. But we were trapped; armories usually only have one door.

Zazlu knocked the stunned desk sergeant out as he was still trying to breathe from seeing five Hell-Spiders and four war criminals burst into his office.

I closed the armor plated door and locked it as we tried to think.

"They didn't have many weapons," Butcher said. "Just sidearms. They were probably coming here for rifles."

"They've got the BlackShirts' shotguns now," Juan replied.

"They were infected," Red-Stripe said. "I could see it in their minds. And even now I can hear them telling the slug network of our position."

"Then we're not staying long," I said. "Zazlu, flamethrowers."

"I'm not walking around these tiny halls with a flammable gas tank on my back," he shot back. "Besides, I think we'll need these more." He was holding up bullet-proof riot shields. Why did we even have all this stuff?

We got ready, then I asked Red-Stripe, "Are they looking at the armory door right now?"

"Yes."

"From which side? Left or right?"

"Right."