and then nothing. “All right,” McKay looked to the others in the room. “Vinnie, you and Jock head into the forest and find the platoon with the investigation team, get them back here and set up a defensive perimeter here until you hear from me…”
Jock spun around at the sound of running footsteps behind him, but lowered his carbine when he saw it was friendly… two NCOs from the
“Sir!” The senior of the two-a tall, rangy young man with olive skin visible through the faceplate of his helmet-ran up to McKay, clutching a submachine gun nervously. “We were assigned to guard the outpost… do you know what’s going on?”
“You two,” McKay jabbed a finger at him and the shorter, stocky sergeant with him, “come with me… we’re under attack and we’re heading to the landing zone to make sure the shuttle is secured. Podbyrin, you come with me too, unless you’d rather stay here and take your chances by yourself.”
“No, I think I will come with you,” the Russian shook his head, much calmer than McKay thought he would be. “I don’t suppose you have a spare gun…”
McKay was about to tell him no when Jock surprised him by pulling his sidearm from its holster and handing it to the Russian. “Don’t shoot anyone important,” the big Aussie cracked.
“We’re going, sir,” Vinnie said, motioning for Jock to follow him. Once out of the building, the two of them broke into a run, heading into the forest.
“All right, come on,” McKay motioned to Podbyrin and the two security guards. “I’m in front; Podbyrin, you stay between them and everyone maintains a ten meter interval. Stick to the side of the trail and keep your eyes open. Go.”
He could tell the senior security NCO wanted to argue with him, but he was the one with combat experience and Colonel or no, he was taking point. He just wished he’d brought his helmet with him from the shuttle; when he’d taken the others on the scout for the infiltration site, he’d thought it was more important to be able to use all his senses and get a feel for his surroundings.
He wanted to run as they headed back up the dirt path to the landing zone, but he held himself to a cautious trot, both to keep the little group together and to avoid running headlong into enemy fire. That gunfire seemed to grow more intense as they approached ever closer to the LZ, punctuated by explosions at intervals that sounded like the detonations of grenades. McKay snuck a quick glance at his ‘link and saw that they were less than a kilometer from the LZ… he could already see smoke billowing into the air, the dark cloud just starting to reach over the trees.
At five hundred meters, he began hear the solid smack of bullets hitting the trees around them and he wordlessly led the group off the path, heading into the forest to the left and increasing his speed. Fifty meters in, they came across a pit where a redwood-size tree had been uprooted in a storm and pulled up tons of dirt with it. The dead tree was down next to the pit, its tangled network of roots hanging over the three-meter deep depression and nearly hiding it.
“You,” McKay pointed at the lower ranking of the two security guards, “get into this hole with Colonel Podbyrin and stay here until I come and get you. Don’t fire unless the enemy sees you, and if they do, un-ass the area and head back to the outpost.”
“Aye, sir,” the man acknowledged. Podbyrin didn’t seem comfortable with being left behind, but the position was concealed and defensible, and McKay knew he was going to have to move fast.
After the two men had scrambled down into the hole, McKay led the other security guard in a gentle arc that took them around the opposite side of the LZ from the main path, increasing his speed as the noise of battle drew closer. As they ran, hurdling roots and tangling vines, McKay began to see flashes of movement through the thick veil of trees and brush: figures in camouflaged armor, firing weapons, too far away for any other details to be made out.
More trees, thicker, hiding the clearing of the LZ from his view, a haze of thick, dark smoke that turned humanoid figures into shadows and seemed to muffle the jackhammer gunshots. McKay felt as if he were in a nightmare, running through an unending battle yet never able to see any of the combatants clearly or fire a shot himself… and then, as if they’d crossed a threshold, he and the security guard were suddenly in the thick of the fight. McKay almost tripped over the back of a Marine rifleman as the man crouched behind a dead tree, his carbine at his shoulder, firing off controlled bursts at a cluster of three figures partially hidden in the smoke fifty meters ahead at the edge of the clearing.
Dropping to a knee beside the Marine, McKay added his own carbine to the volume of fire, while the security man stood to his left and shot from the hip with his submachine gun, using the HUD display in his helmet linked to the gun’s sights to aim it. The trio of enemy went down and McKay slapped the Marine on the shoulder and yelled “Heading downrange!” before sprinting over to them. He had to know…
Their armor was familiar, large and clunky compared to what he and the Marines used, camouflaged in brown, green and grey where it wasn’t punctured and stained with blood. The troopers were over two meters tall and broad across the chest, but the armor made them seem even more imposing. It was all made from designs over a century old, copied over and over in nanotech replicators built by long-dead aliens on an unknown world. Using the barrel of his carbine, McKay pushed the helmet off of one of the downed humanoid forms, revealing the face that had haunted his nightmares for the last five years.
The skin was the shade of pale blue that reminded him of a cyanosis victim, the nose flat to the face and the brow protected by a heavy, bony ridge. Yet it was the eyes that truly horrified him. They were black and lifeless, like a shark’s, soulless and inanimate. He had to remind himself that the thing was built from human DNA, yet somehow that seemed to make it more horrifying rather than less.
“Sir!” The Marine grabbed his arm. “Sir, we should get moving!”
“Where’s the rest of your platoon, Corporal?” McKay asked him.
“Last I saw, they were falling back to the shuttle, with some of your special ops guys, sir. I got cut off with a couple other Marines and had to run.”
“Then let’s find them. Follow me, both of you.” Before the Marine could object, McKay took off at a sprint back towards the clearing, the Corporal and the security guard trailing behind.
Louder than the cacophony of battle, louder than the crack of bullets breaking the sound barrier in their passage, McKay could hear the ragged pant of his own breath in his ears and he knew he should have been feeling the exertion, but he was riding a wave of adrenaline and pure, unadulterated fear and felt nothing. Somewhere in the depths of his conscious mind, the part of him that remembered the two times he’d been shot was screaming at him to take cover, but his body may as well have been a machine.
Two of the Protectorate biomechs appeared out of the smoke to his left, just meters ahead of him, firing their rifles from the shoulder as they trotted across his path, shooting at someone to his right that he couldn’t see through the haze. Without slowing, McKay fired a burst that cut across both of the hulking figures, slicing through the neck of the first before punching through the second’s faceplate in a spray of blood and shattered plastic. The biomechs collapsed, crashing to the ground in a heap, but McKay had already rushed past them and was scanning for the next target, because to stop in the killing ground was death.
McKay rushed through a thick, black whirlpool of smoke and dug in his heels as a blistering wall of heat loomed before him. One of the Marine assault vehicles that had come down on the shuttle was consuming itself in an urgent rush of flame, the source of the billowing clouds of smoke that covered the area. He didn’t know what could have set it ablaze, but all the possibilities seemed very, very bad for his current situation.
The Marine corporal and the security guard came up behind him, and McKay turned to waved them to a halt… and brought up his carbine as he saw two more running figures coming out of the haze behind them. His finger was putting pressure on the trigger when he saw that the two were Marines: a skinny, painfully young private and a female sergeant.
“Jesus, Bill,” the Sergeant gasped, panting with exhaustion, “where the hell did you go?”
“I got cut off by the Gomers, Sergeant Manuel,” Bill, the Marine Corporal explained. “I thought you guys were dead!”
“Enough with the family reunion,” McKay interrupted. “You’re all with me now. Wind’s blowing that way,” he pointed behind them. “Once we get clear of the assault car, we’re going to lose the smoke pretty quick, so stay low and look for cover.”
At their nods, he circled around the burning hulk, emerging from the smoke into the clear, and immediately
