Knox's Irregulars Page 5

  Randal murmured a thank you, walking back to his post, already preoccupied with planning a route southward. Providence, the only sizeable city on the isthmus, was over three hundred kilometers away. He wanted to have suggestions ready for whichever sergeant showed up to take charge. Randal didn't envy him the task — it would be a difficult passage even without the added worry of air strikes.

  ***

  By dusk, he'd lost hope of an NCO arriving to assume command. There was no sign of one, or anyone else for that matter.

  His mind ran through the alternatives. There were precious few. He could simply refuse to take charge, but that wasn't really an option. A military unit could not function as a democracy. He could ask Van Loon to take command, but he knew the man wouldn't usurp even if asked. It was Randal's responsibility.

  All his life he'd felt an inevitability pressing in upon him. Being the child of Cameron Knox, he was picked for leadership in everything from sports to student government. For years it was just assumed he would go into politics. Not that anyone ever asked him, it just seemed predestined. Joining the military as a grunt had looked like his only means of escape. He was beginning to scan how Jonah felt when he got tapped to go to Nineveh.

  Gathering the others, he sighed resignedly. "I'm sure you've heard, we've been ordered to exfiltrate south to Providence. We'll move out at 2300 tonight. Meantime, Lance Corporal Cho will swap out your suit batteries for fresh ones and resupply you with ammo. You can pop the chests on your LANCER suits and cool down, but don't get out of them. We could still get pounced. Jeni, when you're finished with that I want you in harness, keeping an eye out for enemy aircraft."

  Jeni raised a hand. "Um, Corporal Knox? I know you're doing the good soldier bit and all, but I'm military intelligence. I answer directly to the battalion commander, not corporals. It's GMLC Article Nine, paragraph two, subsection A if you need to check."

  Barracks lawyer, Randal thought, resisting the urge to choke the girl. She was one of that breed of soldier who memorized chapter and verse of the General Military Legal Code expressly to find ways to circumvent it. Jeni knew every conceivable loophole in the regs.

  After everything that happened that day, the pettiness of her protest exasperated him. "According to Article Twelve, in the absence of a cohesive command structure, ranking soldier takes charge. The battalion commander is dead, along with everyone else."

  For once, Jeni didn't have an answer. Likely she never imagined he knew the regs well enough to call her on it.

  "Further, Lance Corporal, question my orders again and I will send you back to report to the Battalion Commander. What's left of him, anyway." His voice came out low, anger a throaty undertone.

  The girl wisely held her tongue.

  "If there are no other questions then rack out for now. We've got a long walk ahead of us. Corporal Van Loon and I will stand first watch."

  ***

  Randal padded back to his spot after a fourth attempt to quiet Lebedev's enthusiastic snores. "You still have those maduros in your personal box, Jack?" he asked in a hoarse whisper, stretching out on the ground. One kept an eye to the northeast, the other northwest.

  "I was just thinking about those cigars," Van Loon said, reaching to pat his suit's integral backpack. "I could really go for one after a day like this."

  "I'd ask you to break them out, but they'd look like signal flares on night vision."

  "Plus that Pyatt guy would start preaching. He's a First Centy, you know."

  "A First Centy? Heaven help us." The term was a misnomer if he'd ever heard one. In the name of the "Early Church" the First Century movement tossed out an educated clergy, rejected any type of liturgy, subordinated Scripture to experience and was suspicious of anyone with an advanced degree.

  A lot of the Greek and Latin Randal translated at Athanasius Academy was early church texts. It amused Randal that in their rejection of the physical world and their anarchic approach to church life, the First Century types much more resembled the Gnostics of the First Century than the actual primitive church. One way this manifested was in their total abstinence from wine, fermented drink, or tobacco in any form.

  Van Loon cleared his throat, asking carefully, "How you holding up, man?"

  "I'm okay."

  "Really?"

  Randal hesitated. "No, not really. Leading a team is one thing. But this... You want the truth? I wish to God you'd been the one to pin on corporal first. Then you'd be in the hot seat."

  "Now don't wish that. God wasn't surprised by anything that happened here today. All of this is part of the plan, even down to which lowly corporal got himself promoted first."

  "I know... I know. It just would have been nice if He'd stepped in today while His people were being slaughtered."

  Van Loon drummed armored fingers on the hard-frozen ground. "I'm going to say something and you just be quiet and listen, okay?" He seemed to take Randal's silence for assent. "You do everything on your own. You were saved by grace, but you've never really lived by it, have you?"

  "This seems like the time for a sermon?"

  Van Loon gave him a hard look. "This seems like exactly the time. You talk a good game about faith, but you gut through everything. We can't afford for you to crack."

  ***

  At 2300 the team formed up to begin the trek to Providence.

  Given the narrow trails they would be following, Randal put the team in single file. They'd be ducks in a row in the event of an ambush, but there wasn't room for a more dispersed formation such as traveling overwatch.

  Both he and Jeni were concerned that the PSV might draw unwanted attention, so the skimmer would keep well ahead of them, stopping at preassigned way points to meet up. At the waypoints he could give fresh orders and the PSV would update the team on anything spotted along the way. This would allow them to maintain commo silence while on the march.

  "All right. Van Loon, you take point. Pyatt, you're first on rear watch. Mireault, I want you close enough for me to hit you with a dead cat, got it?"

  "Yes, Corporal." Ariane's voice was shaky and her face had a blanched quality to it.

  Randal knew he should say something encouraging to her, perhaps even pull her aside a moment. But women were ciphers to him even when in an equable mental state, let alone at times like this.

  Pyatt cleared his throat. "Say, Corp? My father was a wildcatter up here - I grew up in these mountains. Put me on point."

  "We can do that. Van Loon will bring up the rear instead." He gave a thumbs up to Johnny and the PSV lifted off, cruising southward on vectored thrust. "Let's move out."

  In spite of the man's religious eccentricities, Randal was glad to have Pyatt on the team. He set a good pace as they traveled and was careful to pass back warnings of treacherous footing with hand signals. Randal valued his experience. He'd spent a fair amount of time in the mountains himself, but his knowledge of mountaineering was the kind one picked up while thunderboarding at resorts.

  Randal surveyed the terrain ahead of them. They were still in the piedmont of the range; the low ridges covered in stands of linden, hornbeam and ash. It would be another day until they reached the serious mountains.

  Several hours into the march they came upon a creek. A moraine of rocky debris had partially damned the stream, forming a pool. A watering flock of partridges burst into flight at their arrival, the sudden movement causing Randal to raise his weapon. Chuckling sheepishly, he said, "Okay, we'll go down in groups of two and fill up. Everyone else stays under cover, got it?"

  The team went down in pairs and refilled the internal water bladders of their suits, all of which were close to empty. The designers had needed practically every centimeter of space to jam in the assortment of microprocessors, servos, synth-musculature, electronic-countermeasures, electronic-counter-countermeasures and the other tech that modern warfare demanded. Life-support, weapons and ammunition took up much of the remaining space, leaving little room for water or waste elimination.
<
br />   The team was filing back into line when Van Loon whispered from the rear, "Got movement."

  Calling up a ground surveillance sensor window on his HUD, Randal noticed it too. It was a ghost of a contact; the target was likely stealthed. With hand signals he put the team into a 360-degree perimeter. He and Van Loon waited in the prone for their stalker to come into view.

  A silhouette glided over the ridgeline.

  "Halt. Who's there?" Randal's voice was tight in his ears.

  The figure froze, keeping hands out at its side in a disarming gesture. "Private Nabil al-Hise, Seventh Dragoons Light Cavalry Troop."

  Randal kept his autocannon trained on the figure. It was more than a little suspicious — the man's voice carried traces of Abkhenazia and he was very late. "Tungsten."

  "Albatross," the newcomer answered.

  At least he knew the proper password. "Advance and be recognized."

  Nabil approached slowly, his walk punctuated with stagger steps. Randal rose to his feet, motioning with the muzzle of the LMG. "Pop your helmet."

  With a hiss of pressurized air, the helmet slipped back on its hinges. The man's wheat-toned complexion was visible even in by moonlight. His eyes were very dark and he had what looked to be a thin build. He appeared older than Randal, maybe twenty-three or so. There was not a hair on his head, not even eyebrows.

  "You're Abkhenazi and you took sixteen hours to get here," Randal observed flatly. He tensed, ready for the foreigner to try something rash.

  Nabil's eyes narrowed. "I was followed. I led them away first." His knees buckled, but with visible effort he forced himself back straight.

  Randal readied another question, but just then the man dropped to his knees and sprawled forward. Ariane pushed past Randal and knelt beside the fallen trooper. With a strained grunt, she flipped him onto his back.

  Looking over his suit, Ariane spoke, as much to herself as to the others. "There's an entry hole, low on the torso." She opened her medic kit, taking out a slim electronic key. After feeling under Nabil's arm, she inserted the key into a slot hidden beneath. The suit's breastplate opened with a whir, the gel packs draining into their reservoirs.

  Pulling a thermal blanket from the kit, she spread it on the frozen ground. "Help me get him out," she said, waving over Lebedev. Together they slid Nabil from the suit, laying him out on the crinkling blanket. His fatigue blouse was matted and sticky as the wound seeped from his lower abdomen. She cut away fabric to take a look.

  The entry wound was small. When she turned him to the side, Randal saw no exit wound. That made him comparatively lucky. Survivable wounds for powered armor wearers were rare, since anything powerful enough to punch through layers of armor would wreak havoc on the thin-skinned human inside.

  Ariane sopped the oozing blood with an antibac pad. "I need more light," she said, activating the small UV lamp on her helmet. The rays were invisible to the naked eye, but seen through low-light vision it lit the patient like mid-day.

  She probed the wound gently with a fingertip. Medic suits used only a thin ballistic weave for the gauntlets, which allowed the medic most of his or her tactile sense and dexterity. "The wound is deep, well into the bowels. I think he'll get septicemia if it isn't taken care of now."

  Randal frowned. Field medics didn't have anything like that sort of training.

  "Oh hell," she said, a sigh coming across her suit's speakers. "It's a flechette. It needs to come out right away."

  Lebedev looked between Randal and the girl. "This is possible to you?"

  At this her composure slipped. Apparently she was asking herself the same thing. "I-I don't know. I just don't know. I'm going to run my suit's emergency surgical AI, but it can only give me advice. We're only supposed to stabilize the wounded for transport, the field hospital does the real medicine. This isn't supposed to happen. . ." Spreading her instruments on the blanket, she leaned over the patient. From the hitching breaths coming from her speakers, Randal thought she might actually be crying. It wasn't right; she shouldn't have to make such decisions.

  Ariane's hand shook as she took up a laser scalpel. Quaveringly, she admonished Lebedev, "Do exactly what I tell you and nothing else."

  Two hours later, the super-dense metal dart lay on the ground beside Nabil. Ariane and Lebedev slid the patient back into his suit. She pressed a sequence of buttons on the electronic key and then reinserted it into the underarm slot. The breastplate closed, the gel packs refilled and the central processor shifted the suit into a supine position and immobilized it.

  Ariane wiped each of the instruments clean and lined them up. She passed a handheld device over them, irradiating any bacteria. Only then did she look back to the others. "I did everything I could. The rest is between him and God." Replacing the surgical tools in the Doc-in-a-box, she added exhaustedly, "I locked his suit in place and gave him a sedative. We should be safe to move him."

  The party traveled on until dawn, taking turns by twos hefting the fallen trooper. Pyatt led them to a narrow canyon where they set up camp. A rocky overhang shielded them from observation and a cold, swift-running stream ran through the canyon's center. The PSV went to ground not far upstream, in the shelter of some trees. Johnny and Jeni joined the group, reporting that the Abkhenazi didn't yet seem to have moved south.

  Randal asked Van Loon to stand watch, allowing the others to unsuit. He shed the armor shell he'd been trapped inside for thirty-six hours. All of his joints were chafed from constant contact with the pressure pads. Even with the suit's life support he smelled stale.

  The two girls went downstream to wash away the journey's grime. Meanwhile, the men skinned down to skivvies and waded in. Being late autumn, the water was cold enough to steal breath, but no one complained. It felt good to be alive.

  Afterward, the party stretched out on the sandy bank. There were only a handful of blankets in the PSV stores, so everyone huddled close against the chill. Randal's eyes closed of their own accord, mercifully ending the longest day of his life.

  CHAPTER 5

  Above all, we must realize that no arsenal. . .

  is so formidable as the will and

  moral courage of free men and women.

  —Ronald Reagan

  Teamwork is essential, it gives the enemy

  somebody else to shoot at.

  —Murphy's 15th Law of Combat

  Nightfall found the party on the move again. Progress was slowed as they left the foothills and entered the mountain range itself. The PSV was waiting for them at the first waypoint. Jeni smiled down from the cockpit, jerking a thumb skyward. "Bad news, Randy. They've got air patrols crisscrossing the isthmus at regular intervals."

  That was unwelcome news, to say the least. Reluctantly, Randal ordered his people from the trail. It followed the pass and there was too much chance of being spotted while using it. He consulted with Pyatt, both reviewing topographic maps on their viewscreens. They then set out a route which added to the journey's length, but also to their chances of surviving it.

  Transporting the wounded Nabil complicated matters since there were no ropes or harnesses among the team's gear. As they followed the new path, they were often forced to backtrack when faced with excessively steep climbs.

  Toward morning they scaled their sheerest cliffside yet. Randal was anxious to reach the top, because flickering light and a pall of smoke were peeking over the rim. He kicked into the rocky face, sinking a climbing spike into the brittle rock to brace himself. Van Loon stood on a narrow ledge below him, holding onto Nabil. Above, Pyatt and Lebedev waited to haul the wounded man to safety.

  Randal hung in between, a wrist and a foot spike in the cliff face, acting as the middle-man. The rock was making him nervous. It was some sort of compressed granite, and several times hand and footholds had snapped off while he climbed.

  "Send him, I'm anchored." He reached down for Nabil's suit, hooking a hand under his arm and hauling him up high enough for Pyatt and Lebedev to grab him. The two he
fted Nabil over the edge, but the shift in weight cracked the rock around Randal's wrist spike. Acting instinctively, he kicked the wall, catching himself at the last possible second. "I'm never leaving the city again," he swore as he crawled on to the plateau.

  From the plateau he could see what had flickered earlier in the morning sky. Across the valley was a village lit by flaming buildings. It rested atop a rounded spur which jutted from the opposing mountainside. With all the smoke he could make out few details, just the boxy forms of pre-fab buildings, a few of them burning brightly. On full magnification he could see tiny figures battling the fires.

  Calling up the map on his viewscreen, Randal identified the village as Burnley Gap. That put them a full klick from where they should be. When Abkhenazi sat-killers knocked down all of New Geneva's satellites they did more than just disrupt communications, they also rendered useless the global positioning system. Every soldier was trained in land navigation using only digital map and compass, but in practice everyone just relied on their GPS. Randal was getting a remedial lesson from hard experience.

  The mountains were full of settlements like Burnley Gap, each sustaining itself through either independent mining operations or "wilderness encounter" tourism. The party had passed two other settlements already, but this was the first they'd found unevacuated. "Looks like something pasted them pretty good," Van Loon said, walking to Randal's side.

  "It's too far south for ground troops, I'd wager strike craft got to them."

  "Banshees." Van Loon made the word sound like a curse. "We should see if our medic can help."