CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Kade

W hen it came time to board the transporter back to Hon the following afternoon, I found myself quite surprised by Associate Nors. I spotted her striding across the docking bay with her two aides in tow, looking like a completely different woman from the fashion-conscious diva of the night before. Now, she was wearing sturdy trousers and a plain t-shirt, with walking boots and a jacket that was clearly designed for warmth, rather than fashion. Her two Solof aides were dressed in a similar way, and I could see only three medium-sized luggage cases lined up next to the transporter. Associate Fi Nors knew how to travel light.

“I’m so sorry about the delay,” Associate Nors said to Bryce, as he checked off the pre-flight preparations for the transporter. We had originally been meant to leave early that morning, and it was now getting on for three o’clock in the afternoon. “The Parliament announced an emergency meeting regarding the Nwandu. Given how important our negotiations with them are, I couldn’t afford to miss it.”

“I completely understand,” Bryce said. In the past day, I’d developed a keen respect for his no-nonsense leadership style. “I don’t envy you the responsibilities you’re juggling.”

Associate Nors smiled. “Shall we board, or are you still getting things ready?”

“You go ahead and board,” Bryce told her. “We’ll be a few minutes yet, but you can make yourselves comfortable.”

Associate Nors nodded and waved her aides up the boarding ramp ahead of her. “Good morning, Corporal,” she said to me as she passed, looking delighted to see me. “I hope you enjoyed the meal, yesterday. I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to you then.”

There were two reasons for that. One was that I had deliberately avoided speaking much, for fear I would say the wrong thing, and the other was that Bryce had commandeered much of the conversation, trying to avoid any topics that were too politically sensitive or that brushed too close to confidential military intelligence. He’d been largely successful, and the evening had passed without incident.

“It was a delightful meal,” I said, picking a bland, middle-of-the-road comment as a reply. “We’re all very grateful to have been invited.”

Her smile deepened a fraction, and I could see faint flickers of violet swirling in her silver eyes. “Perhaps we might have a chance to do it again in Hon. I’m desperately hoping I get to see at least a little of the city while I’m there.” She straightened her jacket and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.

I nodded respectfully, but said nothing else. Did this woman understand that we were soldiers? That we were here to work? Thankfully, she boarded the transporter, and Vosh hurried up the ramp after her, gathering the luggage cases and our military packs, stowing everything safely inside the luggage compartments. I kept half an eye on my master, as I always did, but the rest of my attention was focused on Bryce, responding promptly when he ran through the list of checks to be performed on each of the rocket launchers; fast loading ammunition, full range of motion, clean and clear sights, secure and undamaged safety straps. We checked all four guns, while my master spoke to the pilot about the best route to return to Hon. A weather system was moving in off the ocean, meaning we were going to have to divert a little to the west. The good part about that was it took us further from Geshtoch territory. The bad part was that it made the trip longer, and everyone was of the opinion that the less time we spent in the desert, the better.

Finally, we were ready to go, and the four of us put on our suits and strapped ourselves into the gunner seats. “Rotors activated, doors sealed,” the pilot informed us, as the engines ramped up and the transporter started vibrating more vigorously. “Gunners ready?”

“Ready one,” Bryce replied.

“Ready two,” my master said.

“Ready three,” I confirmed, feeling at once light-headed and profoundly calm. This was what I had always loved about combat training; the hyperfocus of achieving a singular goal, the sometimes razor-thin line between life and death that kept my attention fixed firmly in the moment. Perhaps it would have sounded ridiculous to say any of that out loud. But I loved it.

“Ready four,” Vosh said, the final member of our team to check in.

“We are clear for take-off,” the pilot said, and then the transporter was lifting into the air.

The first twenty minutes required nothing in particular of us. We were travelling over the city, and then over the jungle, and the real work wouldn’t start until we reached the desert. Vosh had mentioned yesterday how much she loved looking out over the city, whenever she got to fly like this, and I was fairly sure my master spent most of his time admiring the view as well. But my attention was fixed on my master. It was fascinating, seeing the difference between him at work and him at home. Here, he was decisive, focused and confident, apparently entirely comfortable in giving me orders, and in receiving orders of his own from Bryce. Back home, though, he was so often hesitant or apologetic for anything he asked of me. I hadn’t known him long, but so far, I hadn’t been able to reconcile the two apparently conflicting sides of him.

Was it ironic that I felt more at ease here as well? I had clear objectives and firm orders to follow, no second guessing about how to behave in social settings – dinners with wayward Associates aside – and the firm knowledge that I was good at my job. For all that we were literally dodging bullets at times, this was the easier part of my life.

Below us, jungle abruptly gave way to desert, and I saw my master tighten the straps on his harness and sit up straighter, his eyes beginning a slow, sweeping scan of the beige sand. I swivelled my own rocket launcher so that it was in front of me and followed suit.

This time, the first encounter happened only ten minutes into the desert. It was a small group of five Geshtoch on hoverbikes, and my master and I quickly took them out. The pilot radioed back to the Adavi base, letting them know how close to the city the Geshtoch had come. They would likely send out a few patrols to clear the area.

The next hour and a half was filled with a smattering of encounters, none of them serious, and mostly consisting of small groups of two or three travellers.

“They might just look like nomads,” Bryce commented at one point, “but HQ is working on the theory that they’re actually scouts, looking for new places to settle, or testing the Alliance’s defences. The instant we let them be, they start swarming in greater numbers.”

“Biggest mistake we ever made, signing that treaty,” my master muttered.

“The alternative was to annihilate the lot of them,” Bryce said. “And the Parliament was trying to avoid an all-out war.”

“And look where that got us,” my master said.

“Movement, eight o’clock!” Vosh’s frantic voice called, interrupting the conversation.

“Fucking hell!” Bryce yelped, and the rapid boom of rockets being fired rattled the transporter. “Bidge, get us the hell out of here!” he instructed the pilot. “Kade, six o’clock! There’s a swarm of them.”

I swung around, trying to find something to aim at, but the Geshtoch were lingering directly behind the transporter, making it near impossible to shoot them. The pilot swung to the right. That gave me a clear shot for only about two seconds, but it was enough to make good use of it. I fired twice, seeing at least three hoverbikes disintegrate into scrap metal. Then I was slammed against the straps of my harness as the transporter veered to the left, the engines thrumming as the pilot tried to gain height.

On the far side, the boom of the rocket launchers didn’t stop, while my master and I scanned the desert below us frantically, searching for a target to shoot at.

“Incoming!” Bryce yelled, and then a deafening boom cracked over the tail end of the transporter. Instantly, the string of curse words flowing through my helmet speaker stopped, as the comms went dead. A moment later, the churning rumble of the engines dimmed, the rotors slowing as the electronics on board were fried by the powerful EMP the Geshtoch had set off. The transporter lurched, my stomach dropping as we began to lose height rapidly.

Following the protocol from my brief training last week, I shoved the rocket launcher away, spinning my chair to face outwards from the transporter. The sergeant had been both thorough and insistent in the small group’s training on transporter emergencies. In addition to that, I’d been through numerous drills of this type back on Eumad, the principle the same, though the details had been different.

The seats inside the transporter were equipped with airbags and shock absorbers, giving both the passengers and the pilot a reasonable chance of survival, in the case of a crash. But the gunners were an entirely different matter. Depending on how the transporter landed, and on what debris was around, we could so easily be slathered across the ground like jam. I focused on breathing, slow and deep, as my heart pounded in my chest. My right hand gripped the eject release handle located over my right shoulder, and I spared a split-second glance over at my master, to make sure he was doing the same. With the comms dead, it was impossible to talk to him, but I saw him sitting in the correct position, his hand fisted around his own release handle.

Good. There was nothing more I could do to help him right at the moment, so I turned my attention to the ground rushing up beneath us. Transporters didn’t fly high enough to warrant parachutes in the case of needing to eject, so we had to time the release carefully. Too high and we’d hit the ground too hard. Too low and we wouldn’t be thrown far enough to clear the crash site.

Reacting more on instinct than any real calculation, I yanked on the release. My seat popped out of the side of the transporter, flung outwards and slightly upwards, while at the same time, a series of airbags deployed, effectively encasing me in a thick cushion of air. The fall took longer than I had expected, and I chalked that up to the adrenaline rushing through my veins. I’d done this sort of manoeuvre in training dozens of times, and so I had a fairly accurate expectation of how long it should take to land.

The impact came a moment later, bouncing me to a skidding stop on the hard sand. I thumped the chair release on my chest the instant I came to a stop, freeing myself from the deflating airbags and ripping the top half of my wind suit off at the same time. The less encumbered I was, the better.

I looked to my left, relief washing over me as I saw my master freeing himself from his own chair. With a nod to him, I sprinted back towards the transporter, which was now embedded in the sand some fifty metres ahead of us.

The Geshtoch would be closing in fast from behind, but with no obvious cover around, the best thing I could do was get back to the transporter and retrieve my rifle. I could only hope that Bryce and Vosh had been as successful in ejecting as my master and me.

Evidently, they had, I saw, as I got closer. Bryce was already stationed behind a rocky outcrop, firing shots at the Geshtoch with his pistol. If nothing else, that would slow them down while the rest of us got organised. Vosh was detangling herself from her seat, apparently unharmed, so I kept going, my master close behind me, until we reached the transporter. The port side was half buried in the ground, but that was fine for the time being. I vaulted up onto the starboard side and grabbed my rifle from its bracket, next to where the gunner seat had been. We each had a pistol in a hip holster, but the rifles had to be stored securely while we were in flight.

Seeing my master arrive just below me, I tossed my rifle to him, then light-footed my way across to the rifle next to his seat, claiming that one as my own. He took off around the front of the transporter, while I clambered up the side and over the top, taking the time to assess the incoming Geshtoch.

I felt a small amount of relief as I realised there weren’t that many of them – or if there had been, Bryce and Vosh had already taken them out. There were maybe four or five of them, darting in and out around the rocks, trying to come closer, but forced to take cover by Bryce’s well-timed shots. His ammunition wasn’t going to last forever, though.

“Fuuuck…” Vosh’s voice below me got my attention, and I looked down to see she was standing motionless, gaping at the transporter. Now was not the time for stunned inaction. I slid down, landing lightly on the sand, then turned to look at the damage… and to be fair, I could see why she was in such a state. The transporter had hit a rock outcrop as it came down, and the entire left side had been sliced open like a tin can, with a substantial section of the metal ripped away entirely. Bryce’s rifle was accessible, but my master was already fetching it, so I glanced towards where Vosh’s seat had been… and instantly gave up on that idea. The rear left o f the transporter was buried, much of the weight of the vehicle resting on that corner.

“If we help the passengers, can you back up the Commander?” I asked my master, deliberately phrasing it as a question. Regardless of the current threat to our lives, it was not my place to give him orders.

“Got it,” he said, charging off towards Bryce, the second rifle in hand.

I swung myself into the exposed interior of the transporter, careful to avoid the sharp edges of the torn metal. The left side had taken the brunt of the impact, and…

“Oh, fuck me,” I muttered, as I got a look at the two bodies, still strapped into their seats. Or what was left of the bodies, at least. One of them no longer had a head, and the other was missing a large chunk on the left of her torso.

A whimper got my attention. I looked up, seeing Associate Nors still strapped into her seat, and it was only luck that meant she’d been on the starboard side of the transporter. There was a smear of blood on her face, but other than that, she seemed unharmed.

“Are you injured?” I asked her, grabbing onto anything I could reach to haul myself up beside her.

A wavering yelp made me look back, and I saw Vosh climbing gingerly into the transporter, her face a grimace as she took in the sight of the two aides. “Vosh, go check the pilot,” I instructed her. Hopefully, giving her something to do would stall her rising panic. I’d seen similar reactions in young trainees, back on Eumad, and learned that it was important to prevent them getting overwhelmed by their own spiralling thoughts. She nodded and began clambering towards the cockpit.

“Fi, I’m going to get you down. Are you injured?”

“Are they…? Oh, poor Lin. And Pel… she was so young…” A moan left her as tears gathered in her eyes, and unfortunately, Associate Nors didn’t even have basic military training to keep her mind focused. “Fi,” I said, more sharply this time. She was half-hanging from her harness, the right side of the transporter thrust up into the air, and getting her out safely was going to be difficult. “I need you to listen to me. I’m going to undo your harness and lower you down to the bottom corner of the room. But I need you to hold onto the-”

“Are they dead? Oh god, where’s her head!” she wailed. I got my face in front of hers, to try and focus her attention. “Fi, listen!”

“Bidge is alive,” Vosh called from the cockpit. “He’s got a broken arm, but he’s alive.”

“I killed them!” Associate Nors continued to wail, flailing her arms towards her aides’ bodies.

I hoped that Vosh would be able to help the pilot out of the transporter herself – Wasops were strong for their size, after all – while I tried to figure out how to calm Associate Nors down. But before I could make any progress on that front, I heard a yell. “Kade! Get out here!”

That was my master’s voice, and even if that hadn’t been a direct order, I would have dropped what I was doing and gone to his aid. The Geshtoch had already proven themselves to be deadly, and if things were going badly…

I slid down the floor and leapt out through the sliced metal, Associate Nors’ shrill voice calling after me to ask where I was going. A quick look around revealed that my master and Bryce were pinned down, with good cover behind the rocks, but the Geshtoch had started lobbing grenades at them. They were too far away to do any damage yet… but that wouldn’t be the case for long. But if I simply went and joined them, I wouldn’t be able to do any more good than they were doing themselves.

I took a quick glance around, then vaulted back up onto the side of the transporter, racing over the corner that was now the ‘top’, and flattened myself to the metal shell. Here, I had a higher vantage point, and a wider angle of view than my master. I set out the rifle, flipping down the stability stand and lining up a shot to the place I’d last seen one of the Geshtoch.

They were odd looking creatures, like evolution had got halfway through turning them into bipedals and then just given up. They walked on two legs, but with a hunched posture, their arms too long for their bodies, and at times, they reverted to walking a few steps on all fours. Their skin was a pale, blotchy colour, like someone had mixed cream with dirt, and their faces sagged at the sides, wrinkles plentiful in jowls that swayed as they moved. They wore pants, but no shirts or shoes, and according to the files my master had asked me to read, that was normal for them. But for all their primitive looks, they were well known for having access to advanced weapons.

At the same time, though, they weren’t known for having any particularly clever battle strategies. Predictably enough, the Geshtoch I’d pegged popped his head out of cover, and in the half a second between him lifting his arm and lobbing the next grenade, I nailed him between the eyes. He dropped to the ground… and three seconds later, the grenade blew, sending rock shards and body parts flying.

“Nice!” Bryce yelled, from his position behind a reddish boulder. There were only two more targets left now, and I shifted my aim to the right, seeing a flash of movement as another Geshtoch darted between two rocks. He was in safety for the moment, but that meant the second one would be following him, right about…

My finger squeezed the trigger before I actually saw the creature move. It was nothing more than an instinctive sense of timing, built off years of the very best training money could buy. But a split second after I’d fired, a small figure darted into the gap between the rocks, and a high pitched yelp proved that I’d hit him. Though perhaps I hadn’t killed him.

I heard a guttural cry, and my translator whirred for a second, before spitting out the word, “No!” The last uninjured Geshtoch stood up, hands in the air… though a long gun was still gripped firmly in his right hand. “No!” He yelled again. I had the fleeting thought that if he was going to surrender, he should have put down the gun first. Lining up the shot was easy, as he stepped slowly towards us. But only half a second before I pulled the trigger, Bryce beat me to it, and the single shot sent the Geshtoch dropping to the ground, dead.

I stood up and slithered down off the transporter again. “We’ll go clean this up,” Bryce called over to me, then he and my master began moving towards where the last Geshtoch would be. By the way he kept his stance low and moved cautiously from cover to cover, it was clear that he was aware one of them might still be alive. I decided to leave them to it, knowing there were more problems to deal with inside the transporter.

By the time I got back inside, Vosh had the pilot out of the cockpit and sitting on what was notionally the floor, a metre or two behind the dead bodies. She was strapping a splint to Bidge’s broken arm, while calling soothing words up to Associate Nors, who was still dangling from her seat. I was relieved to see that she hadn’t attempted to remove her own harness, but whether that was a good thing or not really depended on whether she’d consciously chosen to wait for help, or was simply too shocked to even try to get herself out.

“Fi? How are you doing?” I asked, peering up at her. At least she’d stopped wailing now.

“I think I’m okay,” she said, her voice shaky but controlled. “Sorry about before. I’ve never seen someone get…” She trailed off, her eyes looking anywhere but at the dismembered bodies of the two women who had likely been not only her colleagues, but her friends.

“I’m going to come up there and get you down,” I told her, making an effort to sound calm and confident. Not that I wasn’t calm and confident, but it was important that she knew that. If I showed her that I had no reason to panic, hopefully she’d subconsciously follow my lead.

“Okay. Thank you,” she said, adjusting her weight against the straps a fraction.

I used the storage compartment to give myself a boost, vaulting up the sloping floor and grabbing onto the edge of her seat. I propped my foot against the leg of the chair, where it was bolted to the floor, to keep myself in place. “I’m going to release this strap,” I told her, indicating the first of the two, “and your upper body is going to want to fall sideways. So I need you to grab onto this handle and hold tight.” I put one of the stability straps into her hand, closing her fingers around it and giving her hand a squeeze. “ You’re going to be taking a fair bit of your own weight on that strap. Then I’ll undo this one,” I said, indicating the second part of the harness. “And then you’re mostly going to fall out of the seat. So get your other hand and grab onto my arm… around the wrist… that’s it,” I coached her through it. “I’ll catch your weight, and then you can let go of the other strap and I’ll lower you to the floor. Okay?”

She nodded, not looking terribly convinced about it. “What are we doing?” I asked her. “Run me through it again.” She repeated my instructions back to me without missing any of the important details. “Very good. Are you ready?”

She braced herself, then nodded. “Yes.”

I counted down from three, then undid the first strap. She slid down the seat a little, but didn’t move any further. Then I released the second strap, grabbing onto the back of the seat as her weight shifted fast, suddenly supported by nothing more than my arm. “Put your feet on the floor,” I told her, tense and wincing, not from how much she weighed, but rather from the entirely precarious position I was in. There weren’t any really good holds to make use of, given that what we were using for a wall was really supposed to be a floor.

“Vosh, can you guide her down from there?” I asked, lowering her as far as I could reach.

Vosh leapt up, her work on the pilot finished for the moment. But rather than making some foolish attempt to catch her, Vosh wisely chose to talk her down instead. “Put your foot here, on the crate… That’s good. Now, bring your right hand up here… When Kade lets go of you, you need to slide down here and land on the side of this seat. Okay, ready? Three, two, one, go!” I let go of her right on cue, and she slid in a coordinated tumble, to land exactly where Vosh had indicated.

“Nicely done,” I told her. “Just let me check where the other two are, then we’ll see about getting you out of here.”

“We’re back,” my master’s voice interrupted me before I could move. I slithered down towards the entrance, relieved to see them both arriving back in one piece. “All Geshtoch are dead. How are we doing in… Oh, fuck,” he cut himself off, catching sight of the two dead women.

“Bidge has a broken arm,” Vosh told Bryce. Our pilot was being rather stoic so far. He’d winced and gasped a few times when Vosh had been wrapping his arm, but he hadn’t complained aside from that.

“Let’s get these two outside,” Bryce said, nodding to Bidge and Associate Nors, “and then we’ll see what we’re left with.”

It took several minutes of careful manoeuvring to get the two of them safely over the jagged edges of metal. Bryce helped Bidge sit down on a flattish rock, while Associate Nors turned in awkward circles, trying to avoid looking at either the shattered transporter or the Geshtoch bodies littered about the desert.

“Okay, so where are we?” Bryce asked Bidge. He should have had a reasonable estimate of our location, based on our intended flight path.

“Twenty kilometres from the Honbin terraforming outpost,” Bidge replied, with reassuring confidence. “It should be directly east from here.”

“They’ll send a transporter to pick us up,” Vosh pointed out, but my master shook his head, glancing warily up at the sky.

“Not tonight. By the time it gets here, it’ll be well after sunset, and since none of us have working comms, they’d never find us in the dark. We’re on our own for tonight.” The Hon base would have been monitoring our location as we approached the city, and the sudden cut off of our signals would have alerted them to the fact that we’d been shot down. So despite the lack of any possible way to send them a signal, as of right now, they knew exactly where we were.

But given what was lurking in the desert all around us, that wasn’t going to be the case for long. “We need to move,” Bryce said, his mouth twisting in a grimace. “Any Geshtoch within three or four kilometres of here will have seen us come down and be headed our way. Bidge, can you walk?”

The older man scoffed. “You say that like I have a choice. Because the alternative is what? Stay here and become Geshtoch fodder? No, thank you.”

“Fair enough. We’re heading east, to the outpost. Vosh, you keep an eye on things out here. The rest of us will get our supplies organised.” He handed his rifle to Vosh and turned back to the transporter.

“Wait, should we really be going east?” Associate Nors asked. “If we’re heading straight for the nearest Alliance outpost, wouldn’t that be an incredibly obvious place for the Geshtoch to look for us?”

“Oddly enough, no,” my master said. “Geshtoch are surprisingly stupid. They have the intelligence of maybe a seven year old human? Or a ten year old Solof,” he added, though I didn’t know enough about either species to compare the two. “If we leave obvious tracks, they’ll follow them, but if we make sure we don’t leave a trail, they’ll just assume they’ve lost us. All we have to worry about then is any roaming Geshtoch who stumble upon us by chance.”

“What are the chances of that happening?” Associate Nors asked.

“Fairly high,” my master told her, choosing harsh truth over comforting lie. “But that’s why we’ve got guns.”

When there were no further questions, Bryce, my master and I climbed back into the transporter. Bryce opened a safety locker, retrieving several rounds of ammunition for the rifles and tossing them to me and my master. There were also two spare rifles, which would replace the one that had got buried, and give us a spare in case of emergencies .

Each seat had a blanket stowed underneath it – ostensibly for passenger comfort on longer flights – so my master went about pulling six of them out. Meanwhile, I retrieved our packs from the luggage compartment, and I was suddenly grateful that the Alliance insisted all its soldiers take emergency supplies with them on every mission. If we were going to be out all night, those meal packets and sleeping rolls would be very welcome.

Bryce also located a large canister of drinking water. He dragged it out of the transporter and rummaged in his pack to find a cup. “Everyone, take a good drink before we leave. The four of us have water canteens, but it’s going to be nightfall before we make it to the outpost, so we’ll be spending the night out here.”

“What about…?” Associate Nors made a vague gesture towards the transporter.

“A retrieval team will come and collect them,” Bryce assured her. “The Hon base knows where the transporter is.”

“Okay,” she said, her voice sounding watery.

Five minutes later, we were ready to leave. Nors made no mention of her abandoned luggage, made no complaints about being expected to walk a long distance, and even asked if she could carry anything.

Bryce shook his head. “We’ve got it covered. What you can do, though, is keep an eye on our surroundings and tell us immediately if you see anything move. An extra set of eyes is always a good thing.”

He wasn’t patronising her with the statement. The biggest threat out here was the Geshtoch, and if I’d had to make a bet on it, I would have put the chances of all of us surviving to the outpost to be only a little over fifty per cent.