“Well done,” Santana said. “That’ll teach the bastards a lesson!”
That was true, but as Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st REC continued to follow the CVA unit up the wreckagestrewn road, the impact of the barrage was clear to see as Santana and his T-2 rounded a curve. A half- track loaded with civilians had taken a direct hit, killing most of those on board, and reducing the armored vehicle to little more than a pile of burning scrap. A survivor, the only one from all appearances, was kneeling next to a dead body. His hat was gone, and one arm was bloodied, but he didn’t even look up as a medic arrived to treat him.
A hundred yards farther on, Santana saw eight marines laid out in a row along the left side of the road where two androids had paused to inspect them. Both robots had the initials “GR,” painted on their alloy bodies, which meant they were members of a graves registration team. Each machine had a scanner that could be used to read the bar codes inked onto each clone’s forehead and the back of each marine’s neck. Data regarding the casualties would be uploaded to a satellite in orbit above and stored on the android’s CPU. Later, assuming that everything worked the way it was supposed to, trucks would travel the length of the highway and collect the dead. In the meantime bodies from both sides were routinely stripped of clothing, weapons, and food so that piles of partially clothed corpses were a common sight. It was growing dark by then, and it was dangerous to travel at night, which meant the company was going to need a place to bivouac, just like all the rest of the allied units strung out along two hundred miles of bloody road. So when scout Suresee Fareye spotted the turnout, and the jumble of burned-out vehicles that had been pushed into it, he was quick to alert Santana. “Alpha Six-Four to Alpha Six. Over.”
Santana looked up the road, toward where the Naa and his T-2 should be, but couldn’t see either one of them through the swirling snow. The front portion of his body was toasty warm, thanks to the heat produced by his cyborg, but his ass was ice-cold. A strange phenomenon—but one the bio bods were already getting used to. “This is Alpha Six. Go. Over.”
“I have what might make a good bivouac,” Fareye said, as a track loaded with miserable looking CVAs ground past him. “It’s on the left side of the highway. Over.”
“Good,” Santana replied, as he eyed the display on his HUD. “We’ll be there in ten minutes or so. Don’t let anyone take it. Over.”
“Roger,” the Naa confi?rmed. “Alpha Six-Four, out.”
There was no such thing as a sunset in the wintry At-Sak Mountains. Just a quick fade into darkness. And the light had already started to dim by the time Santana arrived at what had probably been a scenic lookout back during better times but had since been transformed into a nightmarish salvage yard piled high with scrap, much of which had been mangled by explosions and blackened by fi?re. As Deker carried the offi?cer over to where Fareye and his T-2 stood waiting, Santana saw that a frozen Ramanthian, his face obscured by a mask of ice, still sat at the controls of an alien crawler.
“There isn’t much room,” Santana observed cautiously, as he eyed the area around him.
“That’s true,” Fareye agreed. “But what if the T-2s were to rearrange this junk? They could use it to build defensive walls and windbreaks.”
Santana directed Deker around the pile and over to the edge of the road. But rather than the steep drop-off that Santana had been hoping for, he saw a long, gentle slope, that led to the valley below. It was diffi?cult to see, given the blowing snow, but it seemed logical to suppose that a river lay somewhere below. The incline looked innocent enough, but as Akoto and his troops had been forced to withdraw across Tow-Tok Pass, groups of fanatical warriors had been left behind. And, having gone to ground for days or even weeks, they could attack at any time. Often from above, which gave the bugs a tactical advantage, but sometimes from below. Which was the scenario that Santana feared as he looked down across the pristine snow. Fareye and Nhan had come around to join Santana by then and stood two feet away. “I think you’re right,” Santana confi?rmed. “We can make it work. But this slope bothers me. Take a couple of bio bods down and check it out. See if you can fi?nd a good spot for an OP. Something with a clear line of retreat.”
Like all Naa, Fareye had been born and raised on wintry Algeron, and was covered with fur to boot. So the prospect of taking a downhill stroll through the snow didn’t bother the legionnaire in the least. But when the noncom ordered two members of the fi?rst squad, fi?rst platoon to join him, there was plenty of good-natured bitching as the threesome disappeared over the edge.
With that process under way, Santana directed the rest of the fi?rst squad to set up a security screen around the company, while the rest of the legionnaires went to work carving out a place to camp. And, thanks to how strong the T-2s were, it wasn’t long before an oval-shaped enclosure had been created, with a quad anchoring each end of it. Special attention was paid to securing the outside slope, which, given the sheer cliff wall on the opposite side of the highway, was the point of greatest vulnerability. Then, as darkness settled over the mountains, and traffi?c dwindled to almost nothing, the fi?rst squad of the second platoon took over responsibility for security as the rest of the company began to settle in.
And that was the moment when the legionnaires were grateful to be cavalry. Because even though the quads carried tons of ammo and supplies inside their cargo bays, there was still enough room for two squads of bio bods to get in out of the cold, and grab some sleep. For a few hours at a time, anyway, because people were constantly rotating on and off guard duty, which meant that cold air fl?ooded into both cargo bays on a regular basis. But all of them knew that the occasional wintry blast was nothing compared to the subzero temperatures the infantry had to cope with. Still, if the legionnaires were privileged in some respects, those benefi?ts were offset to a great extent by the maintenance the cyborgs required. Because fl?uids that fl?owed freely at thirty-six degrees, became viscous at sixteen degrees, and started to clot at ten below. And metal parts that would normally last for years would sometimes weaken and break as they were heated during the day and allowed to cool by as much as thirty or forty degrees at night. So once a variety of carefully shielded fi?res had been started, and the bio bods had been given a chance to wolf down some half-warmed MREs, it was time to pull out the tools and get to work. Because, having been served by a T-2
all day, it was time for each bio bod to return the favor. Some of the legionnaires were certifi?ed techs, but all of them had at least nominal skills, and were expected to inspect their cybernetic mounts looking for worn actuators, leaky hydraulics, and loose fi?ttings. Then, assuming that everything was in good working order, it was time to rearm their T-2s. That activity included replenishing each cyborg’s magazines, cleaning the Trooper II’s .50 -caliber machine gun, and running diagnostics on any other hardware their particular unit was packing, including energy cannons, fl?amethrowers, and missile launchers if such were authorized. All of this sucked up at least an hour and a half each evening, and was carried out with very little light, and half-frozen fi?ngers. Meanwhile, the med techs were expected to keep an eye on all of the cybernetic life-support systems, tweak them if necessary, and give medical care to their fellow bio bods on top of that! This was why the techs were rarely if ever assigned to guard duty. Nor were the NCOs and offi?cers exempt from such duties. So Santana was kneeling in the snow, fi?tting a new coupler to Deker’s left foot pod, when Private Volin emerged from the surrounding gloom. “The colonel wants to speak with you, sir. He’s on channel two.”
“Roger that,” Santana said, as he came to his feet and stuck both hands under his armpits. He had gloves, but it was diffi?cult to perform fi?ne motor tasks while wearing them. Santana knew that the persistent needles-and- pins sensation in his fi?ngers was a warning of impending frostbite.
