Empire of Man Read online

  The point gave him a glance of thanks and hurried to get in front of the pack beast again.

  The company moved through the jungle at a trot. It was virtually impossible to maintain that pace, but they were doing it anyway. For the most part, the flar-ta were breaking trail, but occasional larger obstacles had to be cleared the hard way. That meant the point squads were kept busy hacking through the thicker lianas and finding ways around the occasional deep valleys which had begun to appear, none of which was designed to make people who’d survived the first ambush happy at the distraction from keeping an eye out for future ambushes.

  The ground was rising towards the hills they had glimpsed by the river. Somewhere on the edge of that range of low mountains were the ruins of the city of Voitan, perched, according to reports, on the shoulder of a small peak. And somewhere—either at those ruins, or in the jungle—they were going to be hit again by the Kranolta. Better for it to be in the ruins, where there were places to defend, than in these open, defenseless woods.

  Roger leapt a small fallen trunk that hadn’t yet been smashed to splinters by the caravan of flar-ta and helped the squad leader to his feet.

  “No lying down on the job, Julian,” he said, and continued on without a pause. Cord, who’d just caught up with the prince, clapped his hands in frustration and trotted off in pursuit.

  Julian wasn’t sure if the prince was joking or not. The tone had been dead serious, but it could have been a very dry joke. Very dry.

  The NCO shrugged and reformatted his multitool to fit into its pouch. If they survived, he might figure it out; if they didn’t, it wouldn’t matter anyway.

  Pahner nodded to himself as his toot flashed a time alert.

  “Second Platoon, onto the pack beasts. First Platoon, point!”

  Humans, especially Marines, could almost certainly have outrun the flar-ta over time and in open terrain. In the jungle, it would have been a toss-up, at best. The company already had several badly sprained or broken ankles, and the strain of jumping logs and dodging limbs slowed them badly.

  But the Marines got a breather by cycling the platoons onto and off of the big beasts. It was hard on the flar-ta, and Pahner hadn’t needed the mahouts to tell him that they would have to rest for at least a couple of days when they reached Voitan, but it was the only way to ensure that the troops would be in any reasonable sort of shape if it dropped into the pot.

  Pahner saw the prince pull himself up the ropes onto the flar-ta he’d christened Patty, and nodded. Roger had stated that for purposes of rotation he was in Second Platoon, and he’d apparently stuck to that. Which was good. The kid was coming along.

  “Captain!” Gunny Lai called. “We’ve got movement front!”

  Cutan Mett heard the tramping sounds of a herd of flar-ta and waved his warriors to a halt. They were the vanguard of the Miv Qist tribe, and he felt their hungry anticipation as they realized that the honor of first contact with the invaders was about to be theirs.

  “Fire on the contact,” Pahner said. Normally, he would have waited for more than a sensor reading. That was not only doctrine, it was also common sense . . . normally. But not here. Whether it was a bolting damnbeast or the vanguard of the attackers, it was time to “plow the road.”

  “Roger,” Lai responded.

  The Imperial Marine M-46 was a forty-millimeter, belt-fed, gas-operated grenade launcher. The advanced composition of the grenades’ filler gave them the destructive force of a pre-space twenty-kilo bomb, but despite any advances in explosive fillers, the chemical-powered launcher had an old-fashioned kick like that of a particularly irritated Terran mule. Ripping off an entire belt in a mass of fire, as the prince had done a few days before, was the action of an idiot or someone who was very good with the weapon and big enough to handle the recoil.

  Lance Corporal Pentzikis was neither a fool nor particularly massive. So when given the order to “flush” the detected Mardukans, the experienced Marine settled the big weapon into her shoulder, made sure the forty-round belt fed over her shoulder without a kink, and started a slow, aimed fire.

  The rounds impacted with a deep jackhammer sound that raised the hackles on experienced troopers’ necks, and the remainder of First Platoon spread out around her as she fired grenades into the area where the sensors had detected movement. Moments later, the ground and trees flashed white.

  Mett shouted as the trees around him started to come apart in eruptions of thunder and lightning, and splinters flayed the warriors of Miv Qist.

  “Forward!” he bellowed. “This land is ours!”

  There were times when Ima Hooker felt like a distilled potion of fury. Whether that was nature or nurture—the father who’d given her her name had been cruel in many other ways—she neither knew nor cared. All that she cared about were the occasional moments when the Imperial Marines gave her an outlet for it.

  Like now.

  As the scummies burst out of the concealing foliage, she snugged the bead rifle into her shoulder, placed the laser targeting dot on the body of the leader, and flicked her rifle to its three-round burst setting. Time to get some back from the universe.

  Pahner glanced at his tactical display and made a decision.

  “They’re trying to close the route,” he snapped over the command circuit. “First, stay in place, screening our flank. As we pass, roll in behind us. Everybody but sharpshooters off the pack beasts. Third to the point, Second in the body. Pick up the pace, Marines. Let’s go!”

  Roger started to slide off Patty and got slapped on the leg by Sergeant Hazheir.

  “Stay up there, Your Highness!” the acting platoon sergeant said. “You’re probably who he meant by sharpshooters.”

  Roger laughed and nodded.

  “Okay! “ he yelled as the staff sergeant slid off the beast and trotted forward. “I’ll try to remember who the good guys are!”

  Corporal Hooker put another burst into the vegetation and cursed. The bastards were figuring out to stay behind cover.

  “Behie! Flush those bastards for me!” she snapped, highlighting the cover with her target designator for the grenadier.

  “Roger!” Pentzikis had just finished attaching a new belt and pivoted slightly, letting the launcher’s sensors search for the target. “I need more grenades; I’m short.”

  “Roger,” Edwin Bilali acknowledged. The NCO shot at a patch of gray and was rewarded by a scream. “Gelert! Get to the pack beasts and bring back three strings of grenades!”

  “On my way, boss!” The newbie private put a burst into the vegetation in front of him and reared up to run for the passing beasts. He thought he knew where he could find the ammunition.

  Ima Hooker popped out her first magazine and had just started to reload another of the half-kilo plastic packs when a scummy reared up from behind a log and hurled its javelin.

  “Heads up!” she shouted, seating the magazine, and took aim.

  The spinning HE grenade beat her to the shot, exploding a meter above the Mardukan’s head and turning it into red jelly, but the burst also threw two more targets into her view. The fury within her howled like an enraged beast, for she’d seen the result of her momentary distraction, and she unleashed her rage and flicked the three-millimeter bead gun onto full automatic and cut the unfortunate natives in half.

  “Bastards!” she screamed, and swept the muzzle onward, seeking still more targets and fresh vengeance.

  Sergeant Bilali ran to the rifleman, but he knew he was too late. The private from St. Augustine scrabbled at the muck and loam of the jungle floor, choking on the blood that poured out of his mouth. Bilali pulled off the private’s helmet and tried to roll him over, but the javelin pinned him to the forest floor, and the movement jerked a scream through the bright, scarlet flood.

  “Ah, Christ, Jeno!” The NCO’s hands fluttered helplessly over the wounds. Bullets didn’t transfix their targets like specimens in some alien entomologist’s collection, so all his training meant nothing. “Ah, God,
man.”

  “Move!” Dobrescu was suddenly at his side. The warrant officer had already learned all he cared to know about wounds like this one. He figured the kid had about one chance in twenty, max, but it was worth going for.

  “It’s got to come all the way through,” the medic went on as he pulled out a monomolecular bone cutter. The scissorlike device sliced open the chameleon suit and snipped the javelin shaft flush with the private’s back effortlessly, with absolutely minimal movement, yet even that tiny twitch evoked another scream.

  “Now comes the fun part,” Dobrescu added through gritted teeth. “Gelert,” he said firmly, applying a self-sealing bandage. “Listen to me. I got one way to save your life, and its gonna have to go quick. We are going to flip you onto your back. You’re probably going to pass out from the pain, but don’t scream. Don’t.”

  Even as he spoke, he was running a drainage tube with frantic haste. The wound was going to have to drain somewhere, and if it drained into the lungs, nanites or no nanites, the kid was going to drown in his own blood.

  Gelert was twitching and the blood was going everywhere as the company passed them by. Stopping for one casualty would get them all killed, but if Dobrescu couldn’t get this kid evacuated soon, the company’s advance was going to leave him behind the caravan.

  “Bilali, I’m gonna need a stretcher party.”

  “Who the fuck is going to carry it?” the NCO demanded as fresh firing started to the front and another cry of “Medic!” cut through the bedlam. “We’re getting hammered.”

  “Find someone!” the warrant officer barked. He wondered for a moment if he should just write the kid off and get him lashed to a pack beast until they could bag and burn him. But if he could get the holes patched and the bleeding slowed, the fast-heal nanites sometimes could perform miracles. Fuck it.

  “And while you’re finding somebody, we’re going to need security!”

  “Roger,” Kosutic answered. “Shit!” She looked over her shoulder. “Captain!”

  “What?” Pahner never looked away from his HUD. Second Platoon had just passed through in the leapfrog and reported that they were hitting signs of buildings and rock outcroppings. If they made it into the city, it was going to be by the skin of their teeth, and he could hear the howling of the Kranolta horns behind him. It was as if the Huntsmen of Hell had been loosed on their trail.

  “Dobrescu is trying to get Gelert stabilized to move. He’s already out of Third’s coverage!”

  That was enough to pull the captain away from his display, and he looked up in disbelief. The sergeant major looked as royally pissed as he felt, not that being in agreement made either of them feel any better.

  “Dobrescu!” Pahner keyed his communicator. “Get your ass out of there—now!”

  “Captain, I have Gelert stabilized. I think I can save him.”

  “Mr. Dobrescu, this is an order. Get your ass out of there!” He checked his HUD and realized that none of the private’s fire team had moved out. “Bilali!”

  “Sir, we’re pulling out as fast as we can rig a stretcher,” the NCO responded.

  “Sergeant—!”

  The company CO chopped off his furious command. Long, long ago at the Corps NCO combat leadership school, he’d been told something which had stood him in a good stead for fifty-plus Standard years: Never give an order you know won’t be obeyed. He never had, and he didn’t intend to start today.

  “We’ll be waiting for you in Voitan, Sergeant.”

  He knew he’d just written off their only medic, who was also an irreplaceable pilot, and a full fire team, but that was better than losing the entire company trying to cover them.

  The line of flar-ta was pounding up a slope and through a ruined gateway partially choked by the rubble of the gatehouse. The area beyond was too large to hold for long—a fifty-meter-wide plaza surrounded by overgrown heaps of masonry—but it was a good place to rally.

  “Hold it up on the other side,” he called over the general company frequency. “Third Platoon on the gate, First and Second in support. I want a headcount.”

  He stepped up onto a liana-bound pile of masonry that had probably been the wall of a house, and looked around. A quick count showed him that all of the pack beasts had made it through, most of them with bead rifle or grenade-launcher-armed Marines on top. Then he took another look at the riders.

  “Where,” he asked with deadly calm, “is Prince Roger?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Bilali triggered another burst and the group of scummies disappeared behind their log. He had them pinned for the time being, but he was also low on ammunition.

  “Sarge,” Hooker called, “you got any ammo? I’m dry.”

  He cursed silently. Hooker always put her rounds on target, but she always used too many of them.

  “I’m about out here, too,” he answered.

  “I’ve got some,” Dobrescu said. “Take ‘em.”

  The medic had the patient fully prepped and was working on a field expedient stretcher: the trunks of two stout young saplings with the wounded private’s chameleon suit stretched between them. It would be heavy and awkward and nearly impossible to get up to the city, but it was the only chance the wounded trooper had.

  “Shit!” Hooker spun to the west. “I’ve got movement between us and the Company!”

  “Calm down, Hooker,” came the prince’s voice. “We’re coming in.”

  Roger was positive that he’d killed not only himself, but Matsugae and O’Casey as well. Eleanora was shaking like a leaf, but she still managed to hold up her end of the heavily-loaded standard-issue stretcher. Matsugae was smiling, as usual, as he carried the other end, but the expression was a rictus.

  “Roger,” the valet told him, “this is quite insane.”

  “You keep saying that.” Roger ducked down behind a tree. “Doc, you’re going to have to take the other end for Eleanora on the way back.”

  He gripped the butt of the grenade launcher between his arm and rib cage, stood up, and ripped out a string of fifteen grenades. The end of the string traveled upward and off target, but most of them hammered into the area where the scummies had taken cover. The shrapnel and splinters of shattered branches scourged the cowering natives like flying knives, and drove them to their feet, screaming.

  While Bilali and Hooker blew their flushed targets apart, Roger ejected the mostly-used belt and picked another off the stretcher. The stretcher was covered in belts, as were his shoulders, and more of them bulged his rucksack.

  “We’d better move, Doc.”

  “Got it!” The warrant officer dumped the munitions off the stretcher. “Bilali, Hooker, Penti, get loaded.”

  Roger kept an eye on the woodline beyond the smashed lane where the flar-ta had thundered through the jungle while the remnants of the fire team gathered up the ammunition the civilians had humped in to them and Dobrescu got Gelert strapped into the stretcher.

  “Thank you, Sir,” Bilali said. “But this is goddamn stupid.”

  “My blood for yours, Sergeant,” the prince replied. “Why the hell should you try to save my life if I’m not willing to reciprocate?”

  “Break out the armor!” Pahner shouted furiously over the general circuit. “Roger, where the hell are you?!”

  “Ah,” Roger said as Matsugae and Dobrescu lifted the stretcher. “Our master’s voice.”

  Pentzikis was so nervous that she broke into giggles and put a few rounds into the woodline from the twitch.

  “We’re fucking dead,” she giggled. “If the goddamn scummies don’t kill us, Captain Pahner will!”

  “I don’t think so.” Roger lifted another belt of grenades out of his rucksack and draped it across the top. “Personally, I refuse to die today.”

  “Come on, you stupid hunk of crap!”

  Julian watched the power levels rise in his helmet HUD. The suit wasn’t even on completely, but he could feel the crash of grenades through the heels of his armored boots.r />
  Despreaux hooked on his gloves, working with furious haste as the crack of bead rifles got closer. A moment later came the furious blast of another string of grenades in the distance, and she knew that Roger, at least, was still alive.

  “You’ll make it,” she said.

  “I know I’ll make it. But will I make it before Pahner decides to just kill us and start over with scummies as bodyguards?”

  “It’s not our fault Roger went haring off!” Despreaux protested, furious with the prince.

  “No, but after we save ourselves, Pahner is going to kill us. We were supposed to be watching the little shit.”

  “Now that’s not fair,” the female sergeant snapped as she hooked up the gravity feed to the stutter gun. The quad-barreled bead gun hooked to an ammunition storage box on the back of the armor, but despite the mass of rounds in the box, it could still run through its ammunition in a surprising hurry. And they had only so many boxes. “Roger was trying to save a wounded Marine,” she went on. “And watch your ammo.”

  “I will,” Julian said. “And he was. But he’s still a little shit. If he gets killed, I’m gonna frag his ass.”

  “You’re up!” Despreaux made the last connection and flipped his visor up to give him some air. Until the things came online, the armored suits could be sweltering.

  “Still waiting for the God damned computer to settle down,” Julian snarled. Why the damn thing took so long to load was always a mystery to the Marines. It was worse than a pad.