Steel World (38 page)

I looked at him like he was crazy. We all did.

“You heard the man,” Harris said grimly. “Stay low. Flank them while staying under cover. Spray fire at them from the sides.”

We deployed and did as we were ordered. Unsurprisingly, it was a slaughter. Every time they got a bead on one of us, we were splattered. Our chattering snap-rifles raked them, but did no damage.

“With all due respect, Veteran,” I shouted when he hunkered down nearby. “We can’t get through to those troops. Why are we doing this?”

We were taking shelter behind a broken wall that was about three feet high. The top was black with soot and smoldering.

Harris reloaded his gun methodically. I couldn’t help but notice that he had kept his head down and only taken a few pot shots at the enemy now and again.

“We’re here to engage and distract, McGill,” he said. “That’s the real purpose of light infantry in any serious fight. You should know that by now. Don’t worry, the revival machine on
Corvus
is operating just fine.”

“I understand we’re cannon fodder, Veteran. I just don’t understand why we’re throwing away troops.”

He shook his head and chuckled. “We aren’t. Leeson is organizing the weaponeers. They’re the only ones who can take out these saurian heavies. We have to give him the time he needs to get them into position.”

I thought of Sargon back in the tunnels. I wished I had him with me now. Even if I only had his plasma tube, it would be an improvement.

“I understand, Veteran,” I said.

I got up from my hiding spot and sighted on the nearest saurian.

The alien looked resplendent at night. Such fine armor! He had a full body-shell with a sheen of powered force-shielding over it. In the dim light, the surface of his fields reflected like rippling water. I heard my gun chatter, and saw sparks light up his shield with a score of hits. Staggered a step, he turned and swept his weapon toward me. It looked like a fire hose of gushing orange light.

I stumbled and went down. I thought I’d lost a leg—but then I looked and saw Harris had his hand on my ankle. He’d pulled me down at the last moment.

“You’re eager to die, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Only if it’s for a good cause,” I replied.

He snorted and slammed my bad shoulder. I winced and gritted my teeth. I worked hard to give him a smile.

We both heard heavy movement then. The pile of broken rubble we were hiding behind was no longer lighting up with plasma. Harris and I looked at one another with wide eyes. We both knew the saurian was marching over here in his heavy suit to finish us off. Like two trapped rodents, our heads swiveled looking for an escape route.

“He’s onto us, Veteran,” I said.

“No shit.”

“Have you got a grenade?”

He nodded and pulled it off his belt, staring at it. “After this, I’m out. They don’t issue a lot of these beauties.”

It was a strange situation. We both knew there was nowhere to run. The second we stepped out of cover the alien soldier would burn us down. But we weren’t panicking, not really. When you know death will be quick and temporary, it’s more of a feeling of personal defeat and honor than it is a matter of terror and desperation. At the same time, I found I still didn’t want to die.

Harris lifted the grenade and put his finger on the timer. I saw him reduce it to zero. My eyes widened.

“Going to wait until he’s right on top of us?”

He nodded. “You and I are going to Hell together tonight, McGill.”

The impossibly heavy tread grew louder and closer. I felt my guts tighten and churn. My throat burned as my stomach tossed acid up into it. Despite my intellectual certainty that I would live again, my body was beginning to get worried. I guess you can’t erase a million years of instinct with a few months of training.

Harris got up into a squatting position with one hand on the grenade. His thumb was hovering, and the shell of the device was already leaking power. In order to build enough of a charge for an instantaneous reaction, I knew the grenade had to cycle up before you triggered the ignition.

“Want me to stand and distract?”

“Go for it, Recruit!”

I waited until the last possible second. I stood up and there was a shout in my helmet from other nearby troops. Then, a blinding flash went off in my face. My only thought was one of regret: I hadn’t even gotten to shoot the dino in defiance.

For some reason, I had enough time for a follow-up thought:
Why am I not dead yet?

I was standing there, blinded, but I could still feel my rifle so I pulled the trigger and held onto it. I fired at where the saurian had been—where he had to be.

Something kicked my calves. There it was. I’d finally been hit, I figured. I probably had no legs by now.

I went down, and a hand shook me. I was shouting hoarsely.

“McGill! Shut up, you idiot. He’s gone.”

I stopped struggling. I could feel my breath hitting my faceplate inside my helmet and bouncing back, warming my face with steamy puffs.

“What?” I asked. “Who’s gone?”

“The saurian. The weaponeers blew him away. Pull yourself together, man.”

I tried, I really did, but it took a few minutes. My vision slowly returned during this time, and I figured out what had happened.

When the saurian had walked up to us preparing to burn us down to slag, the weaponeers Leeson had been organizing had burned him instead. The blinding flash hadn’t been his weapon burning me, it had been their heavy tubes hitting his force field. The resulting energies that had been released had caused a blinding flash of radiance.

When I could think and see again, with purple and green splotches occluding much of my vision, I saw Harris. He was leaning against the slag heap, toying with his last plasma grenade.

As I watched, he thumbed the timer back up to five seconds again and put it back onto his belt.

-29-

The latest phase of the battle was soon over. They’d hit us hard and hurt us—but they hadn’t taken us out. The saurians had sent up six drilling machines, each loaded with a team of heavily-armed lizards. Altogether, they must have killed hundreds of us, but our weaponeers had killed all of them.

I was in a ruined bunker with Leeson, Harris and a dozen other fighters. None of us had eaten or bathed today. Our survivors were scattered around the compound in small groups, waiting for the saurians to start a new attack.

“I’d expected a big, organized battle,” I told Harris. “This is anything but. Why don’t they hit us with everything they have and finish this one way or another? They have the numbers.”

Harris chuckled and shrugged. It was Leeson who answered me.

“I wish they would just charge in here and finish this too, Recruit,” he said, “but they won’t play it that way. They’re trying to win everything right here, and it’s making things all the more painful for us.”

“Sir?” I asked, confused. “Win what?”

“The planet, the contract—the whole thing. This is it. That’s what the brass up on the ship suspects, and I’m pretty sure they’re right.”

I shook my head, still confused. I looked around at the devastation. Around us, the spaceport was in shambles. There were no more lifters coming and going. There were no troops in sight other than our reduced forces. A lot of dark holes yawned in the puff-crete walls.

Leeson looked at Harris wearily. “Should I bother to explain it to him?”

“Suit yourself, sir,” he said. He had his helmet off and had made a hat out of his smart-cloth shirt. He tipped his makeshift hat over his eyes and made himself comfortable on a pile of rubble.

“You see, troops,” Leeson said, addressing others who were listening in, “Legion Varus cheats—all of Earth’s legions do. How do you think we’ve won so many battles? Our weapons are good, are tactics are superb—but really, it comes down to not taking permanent losses. Our troops return to the fight, sometimes before the battle is over. That’s how we win so often. Tech at the level of our revival units is rare in our quadrant of the galaxy. As far as I know, only the Galactics and Earth forces have it.”

“Are the revival machines that expensive?” I asked.

“Yes, insanely expensive. But it’s more than that. Every world in the Empire only gets so many credits to spend from their trading. Each government must choose very wisely what to purchase with them—spending on frivolities is an easy a way to doom your race to low status in the empire, so most of the credits are reinvested. We bought this tech—revival machines—because it made our method of gaining credits more secure. Our soldiers come back to life when they die, surviving to become superior fighters. We might lose battle after battle, but we always win the war in the end. We never run out of troops, and that makes us the best.”

I wasn’t sure I got the message. I looked around at the rest of the recruits, and they looked as baffled as I was. Kivi was among them. She raised her eyebrows at me questioningly. I shook my head in return. I didn’t really get it, either.

“It’s about body count, that’s all,” Harris chimed in. “That’s what the Adjunct is getting at. That’s all the Galactics understand, anyway. They’re accountants at heart. If your troops are still standing when the dust settles and you took fewer losses, you won.”

“Carry on, Harris,” Leeson said. “I’m going to check on our firing positions.”

He got to his feet and left.

“Are you saying the Galactics are watching us and scoring this battle?” I asked Harris.

“Exactly,” Harris said.

“And they’re just trying to see how many each side can kill?”

“Right.”

I thought about that. Without revival units, we couldn’t win in the end. The saurians outnumbered us and they would just keep coming.

“So this is to the last man, sir?” I asked.

Harris finally removed his hat and looked at me with bloodshot eyes. “You’ve finally got it, kid.”

“But how can anyone tell if the Galactics are watching right now? Isn’t that just guesswork—unless you run into one the way I did? They’ve been watching several battles from what I could see.”

He nodded slowly. “Normally, that would be true. But things aren’t going normally. First off, you—and I do mean
you
here, McGill—have killed a Galactic. Twice.”

I shifted on my haunches uncomfortably. “I didn’t know what it was.”

“You think they care about that?”

“But how does that change the situation?”

He shook his head at me as if I was being slow. Maybe I was.

“The Galactics have it in for us. They have since the beginning. I tell you, the fix is in. They’re scoring
this
fight, the one where we don’t have the revival machines. So this time, we can’t make one troop come back to life over and over. We can’t make it look like he never died. We’ll have to confess our real losses.”

I thought about that. “Body count… You’re telling me we really do cheat to keep our position? We get contracts because it looks like we always win…because our troops are still alive when it’s over?”

“Yeah, that’s about right. It’s not that way on every world, but this is a tough one, with a tough local competitor. They’ve studied our methods for years. All those crazy contracts, asking us to protect every snot-nosed heir and mining complex… The saurians have rigged this game. We fell into it face first, too. We even pissed off the judges: the Galactics, the Nairbs—everyone. Now, when this mess is over, the Nairb accountants will come out here and count bodies, living and dead. We won’t be around to hide the evidence. The results will be clear. The saurians will have won with fewer losses.”

“But what about tech and firepower?” asked Kivi, suddenly. “Why doesn’t the tribune send down his heavies to relieve us?”

“He might, but I bet he won’t,” answered Harris. “He’s doing the calculus, too. He knows that the level of armament counts. The number we start with counts against us, as well. He could have sent the heavy units right away—but didn’t. If he relieved us now that would make the battle bigger and erase any claim we could make that we were outgunned. I’m sure he’s playing it the best he can, from his point of view. But no matter what, I think we’re screwed.”

I thought about the revival units in a new light after that conversation. They weren’t just insurance policies for the unfortunate few. Our commanders thought of them as vital equipment. Our legions never ran out of troops. It was like having magic magazines that never ran out of ammo—a huge advantage. This was especially true when it came to scoring who won battles and who was the most effective fighter. In order to stay on top, we had to prove we were the best over and over.

This time, however, we were going to lose.

The next attack came in daylight when the sun was at its worst. The two hot suns of Cancri were fully revealed overhead with no cloud-cover to provide merciful relief. Inside our suits, our air-conditioners whispered and whirred with fans that struggled to keep up.

In the early afternoon, I was dozing underground in a crater covered with slabs of leaning puff-crete. Harris came by, tapped my helmet and I jumped awake.