By Other Means Page 23

  I never took my eyes off the oncoming horde, but I assumed the movement to my left meant he was checking the newest autodoc to make sure it was keeping up with his leakages, seepages, cuts, burns, contusions, radiation-saturation level, and pain. It was doing its best, but there was only so much that could be done. Worse, the soldiers—who understandably didn’t even want to find two armed soldiers in any of these spider holes—were falling behind as the tanks entered the center of my prepared area. Just like that, I very calmly and rationally decided to commit suicide, because there was only one way to make them bunch up again.

  “Run, Kendel.” I said.

  He started to protest, but I shouldered the Mk4 Oberon and he limped toward the back escape route as fast as his wounded leg would allow. I counted twenty shuffling steps before I unleashed one long burst into the front end of the closest tank.

  The front end of a main battle tank is made of laminate armor composites the likes of which man could only dream of a few centuries ago. The net effect of my concentrated packets of energy was to scuff the paint. Maybe. If it was crappy tank paint.

  More importantly, it drew a straight line from me to the front of the lead tank, and thus inconveniently drew a line back to the half basement window from which I was shooting. That’s why I didn’t wait even a second to blow through the door perpendicular to the route Kendel had taken, dropping a fog grenade in my wake. It took only three seconds before the room behind me disintegrated under a plasma blast meant to breach said main battle tank’s frontal armor.

  The overpressure wave of concrete being heated into vapor sent me tumbling up the stairs onto the street, but under the cover of wrecked vehicles, I scurried across the street to the next building in the row. Instinctively, I clawed for altitude, rocketing up the steps as the tanks continued to batter our former hiding spot with magnetic bottles containing temperatures normally found inside of suns.

  Trust me when I say tanks fear soldiers. Soldiers hide in the cracks and crevices of the world like rats. They carry explosives in nice, compact containers. One man costing thirty thousand to train and given a ten thousand-credit anti-tank charge can kill one of the armored beasts. From the first day of training, the tank commander taught that his half a billion credit device can be reduced to wreckage by forty thousand credits of fanatic. That’s why they bring soldiers with them since the nearly prehistoric days of the Nazis. So when I opened fire from the second floor of the next building, they could not really be sure I was the first guy. Safer to assume I was a second enemy.

  So as they brought guns to bear on the new position, just as two more fog grenades went off just in front of the building, I used the concealing vapor as I jumped the alley from the skeleton wreckage of one office building to another. The second story behind me also absorbed the hurled stars of fifteen tanks, but another gnat was stinging from a third building.

  Now the commander decided he had risked enough of his own hide, and brought up the foot soldiers to cover him from what could be one, three, or fifteen men. The soldiers enveloped the tanks with guns much more suited to swatting flies like me, entering the area I had prepared this morning when I had learned they were chasing us.

  I leapt from the second story to the ground as the cover behind me quickly became a conflagration. I hit wrong, twisting an ankle and rolling into a pile of rock as I saw the area around me sizzle as if from acidic rain. I popped a gas grenade to hold off the hail of laser fire and then I snatched the detonator from my belt and smashed the button like I had hated it for all my life.

  All around the enemy soldiers the corpses of corporate titans shook as tiny demo charges, placed on stressed and lonely supports, took miniature bites from bones that could not afford the loss. The forgotten bodies of concrete huffed out clouds of dust and sagged, sliding into the street with the awesome power of weight and gravity. By the time they met steel and flesh, they had formed millions of angry fists, a singular cresting tsunami of bleached concrete and rust.

  The ground trembled at the horrible loss of life, but I was already up and limping away. I found Kendel a few streets over, pale and gasping.

  “There’s goes our pickup site.” he said.

  “At first you complained about having to climb to the top of the building, now I bring the roof to the street and all I get is more bitching.” I smiled tiredly. “There is just no pleasing you.”

  But he was deadly serious as he looked at the gobs of clotted blood seeping from underneath his bandage. “You should leave me.”

  I met his gaze unflinchingly. “No.”

  With only two rifles, a few grenades, and one demo pack left, I could wrap his arm over my shoulder easily.

  My next words stopped Logan before he left the Cold Bay, “I promised him, Logan.”

  The huge, metal man turned, nodded once solemnly, and left.

  There were few things mercenaries could rely on. First, last, and everything in the middle, is that if you give your word, it must be kept. The only thing more sacred than the word of your teammate is the word of your Pair, and the only thing more sacrosanct still is the word of the commander.

  I had found a teepee made of collapsed walls with a rocky rather than dusty entrance so there was no trace of us coming or going. I snuck out at night and found the highest spot in the least burned-out building. I had collected sheets of metal that I wrapped around my position, hoping to focus the signal and cut down on how easy it would be to track.

  I couldn’t do it from memory I had to write in the dust:

  MY MOTHER LOVES ME EVEN THOUGH I AM A BASTARD

  Beneath it went a line of numbers, ticking off fingers as I laboriously converted base 26 to base 10:

  MY MOTHER LOVES ME EVEN THOUGH I AM A BASTARD

  35 350858 25259 35 5254 085178 9 13 1 2190184

  I triggered the laser that drew the keyboard on the ground, and then punched in the sequence of numbers onto the concrete. The sensor eye saw my finger, knew what I wanted, and relayed the numbers to the computer inside the piece. Another button extended the earpiece and mic.

  “Fox One to Hole, Fox to Hole. Do you read? Over.”

  “Hole to Fox One, what is your number? over.”

  “Two, say again Zero-Two, over.” Just hearing the voice from Deadly Heaven made my insides flutter.

  But they were not consoling words. “We have you. Hounds are running in your sector. Need to move. Over.”

  I had to clear my throat to be able to speak. I hoped I had moved the mic far enough away the operator didn’t hear it. “Negative. One kit cannot run. Repeat: One kit cannot run. Over.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Fox One, you are authorized to Escape and Evade. Over.”

  Escape and Evade. Just like that, they had told me I could leave Kendel behind, make my way to a more sparsely guarded grid coordinate, and get picked up. For a split second, all I could feel was overwhelming relief, and then crushing guilt. “Fox One to Hole, I did not read. Transmission garbled. Repeat: I did not read. Will try again in twelve hours, that is one-two hours. Over.”

  Somewhere in the vacuum of space far above me, Captain Arthur’s strong voice came over the channel, “Stop fragging around, Rook. Kendel is a soldier. Get yourself two klicks east and we can send a ship for you.”

  I did not know if they heard me whisper, and frankly did not care. “Fox One to Hole. Will try again in twelve hours, that is one-two hours. Over.”

  I cut off the comm unit and made my way back to the fake cave. Kendel was asleep inside. The last autodoc was humming softly on his leg, but it could only do so much.

  He awoke enough to grunt and ask, “Did you find any food?”

  “No.” I replied.

  “Did I ever tell you about my daughter?”

  “No.” I repeated, but he was already asleep, radiation poisoning pushing him further out of consciousness than even his wounds. I could feel it starting to infect me as well. I asked myself if I were willing to die just to have a c
hance to save him. I ignored the answer.

  Kaliningrad was such a bombed out, nowhere grithill that even I rated a face-to-face with the Head of Interplanetary Diplomacy. He wasn’t being very diplomatic, though. “Be aware, Rook, we have been alerted to the posting of your current mission at Haven. We know you are coming here. We remember the Radiation Angels took up arms against the lawful government of Kaliningrad 5 on the side of the traitorous vermin and should you set down we would be fully within our rights to arrest, detain, and confiscate any and all property in or on our claimed space.”

  I tried to smile, to be ingratiating. “Mr. Soukhomlinoff, that was just business.”

  Which was true, but not likely to earn points. Soukhomlinoff flushed as his long moustaches trembled. “What was ‘only business’ to you mercenary scum was the eradication of two generations of Kalininite men!”

  I held up my hands in the universal sign for ‘I surrender’. I smiled like a man who just lost the biggest pot of the card game, but wanted to be invited back to the table. “Sir, you got me. The Radiation Angels left some equipment on planet when we were driven off by your fine military. Perhaps for a…I don’t know, a finder’s fee, we could perhaps have it back?”

  I tell you this, though, if we were playing cards, I would not be the one losing. Soukhomlinoff’s face played out every little thought that flitted through the vacuum between his ears. “If you meet me on planet, in Capital City, then we can negotiate.”

  “Absolutely. I will be preparing to drop in sixteen hours when we reach orbit.” And after another dozen pleasantries neither of us really meant, we cut communication.

  Behind me on the bridge, Lyman let out a sigh of relief, but then remembered who I was. “You’re canceling the mission? You are going to meet with him?”

  My tone capitalized both words, “Hell, No.”

  The smell was enough to make you forget your last ration bar was five days ago. When I looked in Kendel’s eyes, I knew he could smell it too.

  “You should go, Rook.”

  I didn’t look at him, couldn’t really. “No.”

  “I don’t want to get you killed.”

  I denied the hurt, I denied the anger, I denied the tears behind my eyes. “If I can kill a company of men searching for your worthless ass, I can get you out of this.”

  “In war, men die.”

  “Not this war, not in this hellhole.”

  Deadly Heaven entered orbit at precisely the wrong time. The dropship that left the bay and entered atmosphere did so thousands of kilometers away. Soukhomlinoff protested, but at that point physics dictated the landing pad, not protocol. Still, we were flying over the abandoned battlefields of the Glorious Patriotic War Against Terrorism, and anything stealable had been stolen long ago. Our craft wasn’t exactly fitted for pirating work, anyway.

  Nothing would ever make The Angel’s Curse look like anything more than a beat-up junker. It dropped fast through atmosphere, doubtless giving Soukhomlinoff a smile at how hard times must have been for the team. The craft clipped the radiation zone over the bombed-out city of Smyrna and then overcorrected to the east. The overcorrection caused a blowout in one of the engines. The pilot seemed to get it under control, but twenty minutes later, as the craft was approaching the capital, the engine detonated, crippling the craft.

  The Seraphim’s Strike left the docking bay within seconds, also on the wrong quadrant of the planet, but preparing to render aid.

  Thirty minutes later, The Angel’s Curse landed on the predetermined pad. The welcoming committee was fully armed, and leveled their weapons the second the dropship loading doors started to open.

  There was a bright green beam of laser light that flashed from inside—laser scope or weapon nobody ever knew, but it was enough to cause the entire armed entourage, sent by Soukhomlinoff to arrest and ransom me and whoever else might be aboard, to open fire. They could not help but hit the canisters of Aeroline sitting in the middle of the junker craft.

  The explosion was memorable.

  He was feverish, but cold. His eyes had sunk into his head and he had stopped sweating due to dehydration. In this shell of a city, without even the shadow of survivors, there was no food, no water, no medicine. I had even traveled six hours back to the site where I had buried the tanks and soldiers, but I had done too good a job. Their tomb held their treasures tightly, and I had succeeded in wasting a full day’s worth of energy I could not replace.

  “You were the best partner I was ever assigned,” Kendel said.

  “I got you killed. What the frag did the other ones do to you?”

  But he wasn’t listening, not really.

  “Don’t let them bury me on this hellhole,” he said.

  “I promise.” I replied.

  As The Angel’s Curse had flown too low over the dead city of Smyrna, my handpicked team and I had leapt. As the autopilot continued on its merry way and the set charge on the engine continued to count down, the personal turbine packs slowed our descent, running cold on fusion-driven electric engines so they left little signature. Dependant on perfectly clean turbines and utter concentration to pilot, they were useless for front-line fighting. For a stealthy infiltration, they were just the thing.

  We landed, and I used the Command and Control pad on my arm to activate the hardened microcomputer in my helmet. It sent out a ping—an interrogative signal. I got a response and the fist around my chest let go. Almost as one, the Angels leapt back into the sky, activating the turbine packs and turning a short hop into a five hundred-meter leap that ended as we gently lit to the ground. I sent out another ping.

  Half a second later, I had an exact position of the little transmitter I had left behind against my return. It guided us through the maze of broken stone, the feeble battery on standby for so long I had nearly lost hope that it would work. I had to pause as I kneeled down by the entrance to that damnable stone lean-to that had housed us for so many weeks. I had always known I would have to come back. Now that I was here, I could not even look in.

  I pointed at my demolitions man, “Door. Now. Be gentle.”

  Five minutes later, as an opening was made large enough for us to bring out Kendel, The Angel’s Curse burned and spread Aeroline across the landing pad. Ten minutes after that Seraphim’s Strike turned around from its rescue mission, hovering above us for scant seconds as we leapt from the sterilized soil up into the waiting loading door. I carried Sergeant Kendel myself. Once landed, however, I heard a cry.

  HWO Cole, unsure of the turbine pack and not wanting to overshoot the Seraphim’s Strike, had cut her power an instant too soon. She was trying to correct, and only overcorrected, slewing in midair as she lost control.

  I dropped Kendel’s feet, went to my knees, and lashed out with one arm. My hand slapped into her outstretched palm, and I heaved her aboard as the sounds of my joints popping filled my ears. But there was no time to be shocked. “Eject it all, Angels.”

  Cole and I detangled ourselves and joined the other members of the recovery team as they hit the quick-release buttons on their packs. The turbine packs went tumbling into the air, along with guns, oh-so expensive ammunition, helmets, and even boots. Smyrna had been a little radioactive the last time I had been here and it had been nuked several times since. Every piece of equipment we had now was poison, and going through radiation rehabilitation again held no attraction for me.

  We left everything that could carry radiation behind in the roaring slipstream. Last of all was our Nuclear/Biological/Chemical protecting suits. We closed the loading bay as the air became too thin to breathe. I hit the wall comm. “Pilot, this is Angels, Actual. Get us the frag out of here.”

  The pilot switched to the nuclear-reaction drive and we were soon out of atmosphere and far away from the decrepit Kaliningrad military. Soukhomlinoff would have cursed my name. Would have, had he not been standing on the landing pad, been the one to give the order to fire, and thereby burned to a crisp. It would have bothered me except that a m
an who does not plan to betray, capture, and ransom someone who lands under a flag of truce does not show up with a platoon of armed men at the landing site.

  Now there was just one more thing to do.

  Well, two things, to be precise.

  We landed on Hargus 4, engines cold and equipment stowed long before the civilians showed up. A lonely robotic lawyer exited one of the buildings across the field, and then headed for us with single-minded determination for easily five minutes. It arrived just as a personal transport flier circled our designated landing zone and settled next to the Seraphim’s Strike.

  A young woman, both beautiful and obviously barbed, climbed out of the cabin. She had his eyes. “My name is Captain Rook. Miss Kendel?”

  Immediately, she was off her game, wrapping her arms tightly against her chest. “Aline. Mindy Aline.”

  “Your mother’s name?”

  “What do you want, Captain?”

  And it was about that time the robotic lawyer rolled up. I stopped it from talking with an upraised hand. “I just need a genetic test to confirm you are Walter Kendel’s daughter.”

  And again, her hard exterior cracked for a moment, her eyes dodging around the tarmac as if searching for escape. “Look, my dad ran out of my mom and I a long time ago, and if it’s all the same to you I’d rather just forget—”

  Again, I raised my hand. “I don’t know what happened, but I know that Kendel’s will dictates all of his worldly possessions and his bank balance be transferred to you.” I beckoned at the cockpit of Seraphim’s Strike and the pilot opened the loading door, exposing six Angels in dress uniforms carrying Kendel’s coffin.