Across the street, a building lit up. For just a moment it looked like the red bricks along its walls had turned to glass, revealing a bright light in its heart, then the building collapsed to its foundation. The destruction was so fast and so clean that it appeared as if the whole thing imploded.
I did not have time to think about what was happening behind me. Marines continued to charge into the gap we had created. We fanned into the enemy lines and spread behind them. The Avatari seemed more interested in bludgeoning their way across the street than stopping our charge.
One Avatari soldier aimed its rifle at the Marine beside me and fired. I managed to shove the man out of the way, and the bolt struck another Avatari, searing through the big alien the way it might pierce a tank or hill. The wounded Avatari turned stiff and fell.
I caught a quick glimpse of Philips and Thomer leading a squad deeper into the Avatari line. A flash of green struck near Philips, missing him by inches. Philips ran on without noticing.
There were no Avatari where that particle beam hit, just men. As I looked back, I saw Moffat, his particle- beam pistol extended in Philips’s direction.
“Moffat,” I said.
He did not answer.
Three Avatari moved toward me. There was a flash. One of them fired at me. Running on instinct, I dived for the powdery ground, somersaulted, and came up firing. I hit two of the Avatari. Someone else hit the third. I never saw who.
There was a flash across the street, coming from the spot where we had begun our charge. I looked over in time to see another building take on that glassy appearance and collapse. The whole thing happened so quickly that the tint shields in my visor did not react before the flash had imprinted itself on my brain. A negative image of the collapse replayed inside my eyelids.
When the tint cleared from my visor, I saw dust and rubble and the twisted remains of the rocket launcher. I looked for enemies to shoot, but the only survivors around me were Marines.
This part of the battle had ended. We held our ground, but the Avatari had still managed to destroy the rocket launchers. We were screwed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Before we suspected it was there, the noose had tightened around our necks.
To hear the other generals talk about it, the entire debacle was Newcastle’s fault. I suppose it might have been his fault in a “the buck stops here” way, but he did everything by the book.
He set his soldiers up with a specking five-to-one advantage. Granted, they were all old men, but there were so damn many of them.
The big mistake was authorizing the techs to work on the rocket launchers with the enemy on the way. In a show of no confidence and a play for power, the two Army generals under Newcastle authorized an investigation into the error. We were trapped on a planet, fighting an enemy we could not hurt, cut off from the rest of the galaxy, and the brass was still wrangling for power. I should have seen it coming; these men were career officers, not soldiers. They thought like politicians.
The investigation only took a day. The men in charge concluded that the rocket launchers were complex pieces of machinery that required routine maintenance after every battle—maintenance that generally required a minimum of four days to complete. With the Avatari attacking every three days, finding a good time to disassemble and repair the batteries was pretty much out of the question. The investigators also discovered that Newcastle had nothing to do with the maintenance of the rocket launchers. The order to work on the batteries had come from Brigadier General Samuel Hauer, the tough little weasel who was number two in the Army chain of command. As Hauer was the one who called for the investigation in the first place, the matter was dropped. Hauer resigned his commission the following day.
Even after the investigation ended, whenever General Glade referred to this battle, he inevitably called it, “Newcastle’s speck-up.” He also referred to the ruins along Vista Street as “Newcastle’s sandbox.”
I heard all of this secondhand. Generals like Glade and Newcastle did not invite me to their high-level meetings unless Sweetwater or Breeze asked for me by name.
I had it better than any of my men. At least I knew about the Science Lab. I knew that the government had assigned great minds to this planet. My men heard nothing about Sweetwater and Breeze. They heard about the infighting among the generals and saw the costs of incompetent command, but they heard nothing about the mines, the spider-things, or whatever discoveries the scientists might make. Not that it mattered. The generals distracted most of their men with bounties for dog pelts and other entertainment. And then there was the work. We had an embattled city to maintain.
I didn’t allow myself to worry too much about incompetent leadership as I fell into the rhythm of life without the protection of Vista Street. Within hours of the battle, the brass placed all personnel on a new duty schedule. We had a twelve-hour work detail, followed by a four-hour shift in which we could do whatever we liked, then an eight-hour sleep period.
The brass enforced this new schedule with a vengeance. We could loaf around the base or slum around town during our off hours; but, to a man, anyone not present and accounted for during work shifts and lights-out would find himself in the brig.
I spent my first work detail driving into the forest with Philips, Thomer, and eight other men looking for survivors. I did not think we would find anyone with a pulse, but I was wrong.
It was a cold, miserable shift. By the clock, it was 2200 when we arrived on the spot. The time did not matter as far as daylight was concerned, not with the ion curtain smothering the planet in a blanket of light. But ion curtain or no ion curtain, Valhalla became colder at night. The rest of the men wore combat armor; the lucky bastards had climate-controlled bodysuits to keep them warm. My dislocated shoulder already hurt from the last time I’d put on my armor, so I came in fatigues with an interLink piece clipped to my ear.
We found our first bodies along the highway, just a scattering of men the Avatari had killed as they headed toward town. Once we went off road, we found large pockets where soldiers had died trying to make a stand. They were everywhere, and it quickly became obvious that once shot, no one survived. We found a few wounded who had fallen behind because of broken legs or other injuries.
Philips and Thomer took turns loading survivors into jeeps and chauffeuring them back to town, while the rest of us stayed back to “smart tag” the dead. Smart tagging meant painting a laser beacon onto the bodies. This was not about burying the dead; it was about accounting. By scanning the bodies with lasers, we cataloged how many had died.
Burial was not a high priority. Right now we had more important things to do. With any luck, the winter chill would keep the bodies from decomposing too quickly. Once the spring thaw began, we’d probably set the forest on fire to cremate the remains.
So there we were, bright ion curtain light dissolving anything even resembling a shadow under the thick canopy of trees. I was cold and wishing I had worn my armor, bad shoulder or no, when Phillips said, “There are a lot more humans than Mudders out here.”
“I heard the Mudders evaporate after you kill ’em,” Thomer said.
Part of me wanted to say, “At the Science Lab, they refer to it as degrading, but these creatures are not ‘Mudders,’ they are ‘Avatari,’ and they don’t die, they break.” I wanted to tell them the truth. They deserved to know what they were up against. Instead, I followed the party line and played dumb. I said, “Yeah, I heard that, too.”
“How many do you think we’ve tagged so far, sir?” Thomer asked. He brushed aside the ferns and made a gagging noise as if he was about to vomit. Even Philips grimaced.
“Six of ’em down here,” Philips said. “Hey, there’s barbecued brain poking out of this guy’s skull.” Philips was faking the old bravado. That was a good sign. I found myself watching Philips constantly, looking for signs of him recovering from the shock of losing Huish and White in our first encounter with the Avatari.
He had not yet reverted back to the reckless, obnoxious Philips of old, but some of his former swagger had returned to him. I could push him more now, but I didn’t dare mention Moffat or the Hen House.
