Fire in the Deep
Angel on the Wind
Christopher DiNote and Philip Wohlrab
1.
Go time.
Colonel Shaun “Mojo” Harvey took a breath, spoke into the mic, and his words were converted simultaneously into text and machine-to-machine instructions throughout the UN forces. “Three, two, one, time hack 0203 Terra-Zulu, time to go, push defensive counter aerospace.”
Instantly, his screens showed a dozen Sentinel fighters flow from their racetrack-shaped holding patterns high above their home airfields and leap across the skies of Grainne. They looked high and low for any rebel air-to-air or space-to-atmosphere surprises. For the pilots, this mission seemed wasteful, and as procedural as a training sim. While doctrine called for constant air superiority sweeps, the UN had done a very thorough job of destroying Grainne’s limited aerospace capabilities during the initial strike. Still, there were many colonial spacecraft unaccounted for, and the colonials had proven themselves to be obnoxiously resourceful. For all the UN’s vaunted intelligence capabilities, the colonials could still have entire fighter squadrons stashed away underground somewhere, just waiting for the UN to get complacent. Hence, the very well-armed if also very underutilized aerospace superiority fighters converted millions of credits worth of fuel into noise.
Meanwhile, an equal dozen Avatar multirole fighters, loaded down with air-to-surface weapons and electronic warfare packages, scoured the surface. They hunted the rare but still occasionally active rebel surface-to-air missiles, and the much less rare and always active anti-aircraft gun-trucks. If any pointy-nosed aircrew were going to get some action today, the Avatar drivers were it, and of course they would earn the glory as well. However, their success and survival belonged to Mojo.
He sat back in his chair at the MOB Unity Peacekeeping Combined Aerospace Operations Center, nicknamed the “Peacock,” and watched his screens intently, waiting for first contact with the enemy. He listened to the latest orders update recording for the umpteenth time. He’d been briefed on Operation KESTREL HARVEST exhaustively. Repeatedly. In fact, he could quote the briefing in his sleep. KESTREL HARVEST, the UN’s “midspring offensive,” was a “sequel” of Operation MIDNIGHT KESTREL, the UN’s overarching plan for the occupation and reintegration of Grainne colony.
He began his practiced scan technique across the sector sensor feeds. The depiction of each battlespace awash in various colors and alphanumeric data codes indicated smooth but slow going so far. The plan called for a massive sweep across the Plains District of Grainne, with the intent to flush out the insurgents, as well their official military special ops enablers, into open battle where the peacekeepers could defeat them in detail. At least that was the theory as of 0205 Terra-Zulu. After several months of trying, aerospace operations had given up on converting to local time standards and reverted back to Earth Universal Time. It didn’t seem to help anyone’s circadian rhythms, but they all enthusiastically ditched the locally procured timepieces which had proven susceptible to hacking.
Mojo cycled through the few sporadic fights that had already broken out, and synthetic audio recreated the sound, direction, and intensity of makeshift anti-aircraft weapons targeting “his” platforms. Thankfully, the demand for aerospace support was manageable. As the first night’s Senior Aerospace Duty Officer, the “Aero,” his job was to assess the need, assign a priority, re-task an asset if required, nod smartly for the debrief camera recording him, then “hmmm” into the mic, swipe “approved” or “disapproved,” and keep his boss, Brigadier General Nigel “Adder” Blumly, appraised. Mojo welcomed the little bits of action; they kept him sharp and mentally engaged.
“LYNX 1-1, control released to your own discretion.”
“One-one copies.” The flight lead of an Avatar four-ship acknowledged Mojo’s call, nonchalantly tipped his left wing in a steep, slicing bank and popped a dozen flares, defending against a probable man-portable missile that didn’t even track on him or any of his flightmates. After the obligatory strafing run, the hubbub quieted quickly, so it was a good time for Mojo to catch a break. He’d really overdone it on coffee this morning, a bad habit he picked up years ago from the Americans, who apparently ran on the horrid stuff.
“OR-A-CLE.” Mojo liked to drag out the syllables of his usual Senior Intelligence Duty Officer’s callsign. It annoyed the hell out of the extremely twitchy Intel lead, NorthAm Lieutenant Colonel Ryan Fitzpatrick. Almost no one called him “Oracle.” Instead they liked to use “Fizz,” which Fitzpatrick hated with a passion.
“Mojo, Oracle here. What’s up?”
“You have my station. I need a bio break.”
“Roger, Oracle has it.”
Mojo made a show of exiting the ops floor and made a beeline to the prefab gender-neutral facilities, whose basic design had not changed much over hundreds of years. He unzipped his flight suit but felt a slight vibration against his leg. Oh, not now. From a near-skintight inseam pocket, he withdrew a highly specialized, handcrafted data stick, one that required a thumb prick and blood sample to access and decrypt transmissions. Unlocking procedure complete, he pulled up the coded message displayed just for him.
“ORME OVERRUN. EMER CASEVAC SURVIVORS. EXFIL MI6-00 ASSET TO FOB WTRLOO.”
Oh shit. There goes the planet. Mojo’s day was about to get interesting after all. He hated “interesting.”
2.
Specialist Molly Aujla went to ground beside a Badger that miraculously wasn’t on fire, making it one of the few. Instead, the vehicle had been turned into Swiss cheese by an autocannon, and the engine compartment smoked. Beside her were two of the Irish soldiers she was tasked to support.
“Sergeant Owens, we have got to get out of here!” shouted Private Keene.
“I know that, Private, but you do see that we are under sustained artillery fire, correct?”
At least the private was asking to run, not like the others. I wonder what the sergeant’s plan is, wondered Molly.
Sergeant First Class Owens grabbed the private and shoved him forcibly behind the smoking Badger. The cold, early spring damp that chilled her evaporated in the sudden heat of combat. He then motioned to Molly and two other privates near her to move to his location. She began to inch back to him, dragging her aid bag when Private First Class MacNulty was struck in the face by a bullet. MacNulty tried to scream, but half his face had been blown away. Molly got up briefly, for once thankful that the UN made her wear the bloody Red Cross brassard on her left arm and plastered it all over her helmet. So far, the insurgents had never directly targeted her, but artillery didn’t discriminate.
She grabbed MacNulty’s harness in one hand, and in her other she hauled her aid bag. At a hundred and fifty-eight centimeters tall, she didn’t look large enough to pull the trooper, but looks were deceiving. She worked hard to be prepared for situations like this, which made her uncommon compared to many of her compatriots. She was in excellent shape; Owens went so far as to call her a “PT beast,” and she had acclimated well to the higher local gravity. Molly was still winded by the time she got MacNulty back behind “her” Badger and began to work on stabilizing the wounded private. She carefully wrapped what was left of his jaw in place with some sterile gauze, applied clotting foam, and then cleared a lot of that away to ensure that his undamaged nasal airways were clear. She then inserted a nasal-pharyngeal airway to keep air flowing and then administered a mild painkiller via autoinjector. Not so much to sedate him, but to hopefully keep him from completely losing it to panic and shock. Somehow, over the din of combat, her instinct demanded that she look up.
A Grainnean rebel stared back. His mismatched uniform was drenched in blood, but his nametag remained readable, and proclaimed him as “Hanrahan.”
Molly yelled in surprise. “Well fuck me, of all the . . . a fucking Irish.”
The rebel Hanrahan’s face was covered in dust and debris, his headgear lost, and his back propped up against the side of the Badger, legs splayed out in front of him. His eyes were unfocused, but his lips moved as he tried to speak, a bubble of foamy, bloody spittle popping on his lips. He held a pistol in his left hand, and his right, well, his right hand was missing, as was much of his right forearm. By Hanrahan’s left leg, an autoinjector lay on the ground, the needle point bent.
Molly swore to herself, “Goddammit.” Nevertheless, she checked MacNulty one more time, broke out one of her few remaining slap-tourniquets, and started to treat the Grainnean. Thankfully, the moist environment didn’t affect the adhesive the way she feared it would.
Almost immediately, another wounded Irish soldier was dropped beside her, and then another. The battle raged around Molly Aujla but she couldn’t care less; her battle was with death itself, and she worked furiously to save the lives of the soldiers under her care, friend and foe no matter.
“Specialist . . . DOC . . . DOC!”
“What?” asked Molly in an exasperated tone, only then she realized she was talking to S1C Owens.
“What is the situation on the wounded?”
Molly took a moment to compose her thoughts before responding, voice dry and steady.
“I have three urgent surgical cases, one urgent ambulatory, and three more priority ambulatory wounded. We need to get those two cases out of here now.” She pointed to two of the Irish soldiers that were lying a little too quietly. MacNulty, thankfully, was breathing, but his breath came hard and wheezing. Molly spoke softly to him as she worked on him, to try and calm him, also to get him to relax the incredible grip he had on her arm. “And . . . one enemy urgent surgical, amputated right arm, tourniquet time stamp . . . shite, I don’t know local time!”
“A rebel? Fuck him, let him bleed!”
“I can’t do that.”
“Worry about our people, Specialist!” Owens shouted at her, sounding incredulous that she’d waste valuable supplies on the enemy.
“He’s my patient now, Sergeant! I will not abandon him to die out here!”
Molly stared at Owens, daring him to challenge her.
“Understood, I will get the call out,” replied Owens.
3.
Things had gotten blissfully boring over the last couple of hours. The intel feeds were full of idle chatter, like “Hey is this really a ‘sequel plan,’ or a ‘branch plan’?” Fizz finally had enough and reprimanded the talkative analysts, reminding them that everything in the chatrooms, over open voice, keystrokes, everything was recorded for debrief and disciplinary action. Not to mention the enemy hackers were sorcerers. Some of the most surprising intel leaked from the most secure channels.
Of course, Fizz’s reverie, really his daydreaming, was then rudely interrupted by a nagging beeping sound. He tapped the icon, and a wall of block text visible only to him appeared smartly: “WARNING: SPECIAL PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS” greeted him. Lovely, barely stopping himself from saying it out loud. If that had slipped out, he would never hear the end of it when it came time to debrief today’s work. The icon sat on top of a blacked-out, irregularly shaped blob of surface-to-infinity-restricted air space. It was the Plains, around the otherwise useless and insignificant town of Orme. There’s a pretty big logistics base out there, he reminded himself, with a badly hidden, completely obvious Special Peacekeeping Operations Task Force compound right in the middle of the damn place.
He knew nothing good could come from this, since the special ops task force was currently led officially by Earth Russian Spetsnaz. In actuality, they were mostly Novaya Rossiyan “contractors” with a shit-ton of attachments from all over Federal Europe and the British Union. Access to their area of operations, including the Orme Logistics Support Area, was restricted to certain briefed personnel and units only. No open feeds. No intel craft cleared to operate there. No satellite passes overhead. No conventional air or ground allowed in or out without special coordination first. Meaning, no one had the slightest idea what was going on in there and hadn’t for weeks. Everyone knew, though, that if the Russkies were involved, you were better off not knowing what was going on in that chunk of Grainne roughly the size and shape of Belgium.
Scrolling text, video, and electro-optical stills filled Fizz’s screens, showing mass carnage both in and around the logistics base. The stay-behind TOC-roaches and REMFs were getting slaughtered. I don’t think I’m supposed to see this, again thankful he didn’t say that out loud. Fizz realized that Mojo had been in such a hurry, that when he transferred control to him, the fool hadn’t set the retinal scan “for your eyes only” screen security lock.
“Fizz, Mojo is back, and I have the stick,” Harvey sounded off as he marched back to his command chair. He didn’t even bother with the polite pretense of saying “Oracle.”
Oh shit. “Mojo, all yours.” Fizz backed out of Mojo’s shared screen, but not quite fast enough.
* * *
Mojo slid into his screen and realized his mistake very quickly. “What were you doing . . . ” FUCK! I didn’t put my retinal lock on the damn feed! “Fizz, what did you see?”
The North American gave Mojo a hard look, and Mojo shook his head to say, You don’t want any part of this, trust me.
Before, the conversation progressed further, Adder broke in abruptly. “Major Kournikov, Mojo, in my office, now please,” Adder boomed across the main Ops Floor channel. This caught everyone on the floor’s attention, the desired effect. Idle chatter ceased; headsets came off, and faces turned. Screens collapsed as technician eyes turned towards the trim, dark-haired British officer, and then towards an obviously peeved Russian “liaison.”
Harvey and the lithe special operations major silently stood up from their chairs and walked purposefully toward Adder’s office.
When securely inside, Adder loudly greeted them while still inside his private bathroom and asked them to sit down in front of his desk while he finished up, but the Russian continued to stand. Kournikov had his arms folded, and made his displeasure known. “What do you want?” No customs or courtesies. Mojo was appalled by the Russian’s uncouthness.
Mojo wasn’t about to let him get away with that. “Your little outpost buried inside the Orme base isn’t doing so well, is it?” He stifled a smirk but let a little posh sneak through.
“Fuck you.” The Russian turned to leave.
“Your whole contingent out there is dead. There are some Irish and British survivors, support troops mainly. There isn’t one Spetsnaz survivor. The insurgents are very thorough. Sword thrusts; you’ve seen some of the imagery of course? You kept us all in the dark while you’ve been off killing civilians for fun, in addition to occasionally killing guerillas and running a nasty little black market with some of the quartermasters. Very bad form.”
“That’s enough, Mojo!” barked Adder, now in view but still buttoning himself up. “You.” He pointed at the Russian, “Out. I already heard everything I need to hear from you. Get out of my Ops Center, and off my planet within twenty-four hours.”
Without so much as a word or acknowledgement, the Russian left.
Adder turned to Mojo. “Now, I received an encrypted message, directed my eyes only, to call you in here and discuss a new tasking, let’s get on with it!”
Mojo said, “We need to put an immediate aero casualty evacuation mission into Orme, sir.”
“What in the fucking hell do you mean, I’m going to direct a CASEVAC into the middle of that ass-fucked AO?” Adder finished buckling his belt, and in a practiced pinch, singlehandedly buttoned his entire blouse without missing a button, his beret now neatly tucked under the right epaulet in a croissant roll.
“Home Office directs, sir. There are survivors in the base, and a special asset near the Russian compound. We are to recover them, forthwith, and move the asset to FOB Waterloo in the Hinterlands.”
“Forthwith? Why not reinforce Orme, repulse the attack?”
“Well, Home Office seems to feel that the Russkies can ‘get fucked,’ as the saying goes.”
Adder slumped. “Not that I’m particularly bothered. Right, then. I saw the codes. I saw the messages. Maddie Kornberg confirmed them.”
Mojo smiled at that last bit. When Adder retired to his office behind the Battle Cab after the morning commander’s update briefing, everyone on the ops floor pretended not to notice that his only company was a rather lovely officer known to be from the inspector general’s office. Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “you may not love the fucking IG, but the IG sure loves fucking you,” Mojo thought, not at all in line with the latest human relations training standards.
His poker face dropped into a sullen frown for the remainder of the conversation. The Irish were still steaming over the Russian “hostile takeover,” but they had doubled-down on maintaining their troops and operational control of Orme. They couldn’t endure the loss of standing (and funding), in both MilBu and GenAssem that a full withdrawal would spark. The political cost for Sinn Fein’s fragile coalition government was too steep for them to walk away.
What Mojo really didn’t like though, was how this mess also sucked in a contingent of British advisors, mostly medical but also a very deeply, quietly, and exquisitely concealed intelligence asset. This part of his mission briefing took place in Adder’s office three nights ago. Adder made it clear, that while the British Union maintained a close relationship with the European Federal Union, in practice this fell well short of full integration. The Protectorate kept the continent in the dark when it came to certain intelligence activities, mainly British “incidental” spying on their European “partners,” only because it couldn’t be really helped you know, old boy? Absolutely unavoidable, of course.
Mojo laid out his plan, it wasn’t much of one, given the paucity of assets nearby due to all the restrictions on the Spetsnaz area. “There’s one Werewolf gunship out on the hunt, and a lifter well within earshot of him. The last of the insurgent anti-air gunners seem to be accounted for.”
“Seem? Seem? Mojo, you’d better be right about this. Our little Home Office asset boosted a signal that the Russkies don’t know is compromised, and I guarantee you Kournikov suspects something.”
“Nothing’s certain, sir. Orme, if you’ll excuse the North American patois, is a ‘shit show.’ We need to pull certain assets home, because this fight is lost, we’re conclusively fucked and far from home, and we’re better off planning for the cleanup than trying to stop it.”
Neither officer looked at each other, and both fell silent, but they didn’t get much chance for contemplation.
“Adder, Sir,” Fizz’s voice broke up the conversation, “we have a CASEVAC request in-vicinity-of a spec ops compound, Plains.”
“Bollocks.”
4.
“Bad news, Specialist! We don’t have a CASEVAC asset close by. We have to move to an alternative site for evac.” Sergeant Owen’s voice was brittle as he relayed the news to Molly.
Molly was more focused on doing what she could for Private Second-Class Oliver, one of her fellow Brits, than on what Sergeant Owens was saying for it to register at first. She finished getting an artery to stop bleeding out before she bothered to look up at Sergeant Owens. Her face was splashed with Oliver’s blood, so she did not notice that when she wiped her brow, her sleeve deposited another smear of it just under the brow of her helmet. The misty air caused the blood to bead and drip down her face, but she ignored that too. If she could just get a little more time, she was sure Oliver and MacNulty were savable.
“What’s that, Sergeant?” she enquired.
“We have to move the wounded out on foot. The Badgers are all shot to hell and none of the Eels survived. It seems like the insurgents are leaving us alone for now, and from what I can tell they are pushing their final assault in on the Spetsnaz compound. We need to move now before they turn their attention back to us!”
Molly looked down at Private Oliver assessing whether he would survive being moved. Then she looked around at the others. Sergeant Owens had managed to rally a total of twelve Irish Peacekeepers, not including the seven wounded soldiers at her makeshift casualty collection point. Her supplies were running low, and she only had two-fold-out litters scavenged from the Badgers that were not burning.
“We don’t have enough litters for all the wounded, we will need to make two improvised litters for those that can’t walk. We are going to be moving slowly, Sergeant. Do you think the rebels will leave us alone for that long? Should we not see if they will let us surrender?”
Sergeant Owens looked for a long moment at one of the burning farmhouses, and his gaze found the smoldering remains of burned bodies. Then he looked back at Molly and gestured in the direction he had been gazing.
“Look Spec, given what the Russians have done out here, I doubt the rebels will take prisoners, and given the screaming going on back there, they are butchering the Spetsnaz where they find them.”
“You’re right,” Hanrahan croaked from his spot behind the Badger. He coughed, cleared his throat, and tried again. “You’re right, we won’t take prisoners. If they see you, they’ll kill you where you stand.”
Molly spoke. “What do you mean ‘if’?”
“I mean I know a path out to your clearing that’s not typically monitored. I can lead you through.”
Owens sounded skeptical. “Why would you help us? Why should we trust you? You could have an ambush waiting to finish us off just inside the treeline.”
Hanrahan shrugged painfully. “Because she helped me. She could have let me bleed out, but she didn’t.” He winced and gritted through his teeth. “What choice do you have, Sergeant? Besides, we’re all Irish here, most of us? I think that should count for something.”
Owens’s voice had a tinge of disgust. “I’m from fucking Birmingham, me and Oliver there.” He put on his command voice. “We will move out. Alright, Troopers, get those litters rigged, follow Hanrahan here’s directions, we will exfil this area through the bush and run parallel to the river. There is a clearing between here and there, about seven klicks away that we will use for a Dustoff flight once a resource is freed up.”
Molly and the surviving Peacekeepers hurried to implement Sergeant Owens’s orders, thankful to not be under missile fire. The rebels absolutely loved fire-and-forget missiles with self-guiding terminal seekers, as well as good-ol’ fashioned unguided rockets fired by simple count-down timers. The peacekeepers moved cautiously to gather supplies for improvised litters. It took them a few minutes to rig up a pair out of uniform jackets and nearby branches that had been brought down by the barrage. Their clothing as well as the wood were made slippery in the soft and quiet rain that had come upon them unannounced. In the distance they heard a snarling cry from one of Grainne’s many predators, but none of the troops paid it much mind.
5.
Mojo was in Adder’s office for a long time. He saw that Fizz tagged the CASEVAC request and sent it direct to Adder’s station. The sheer complexity of the whole operation turned his stomach into a giant knot, and he wondered how they would execute their new miniature “war inside of a war.”
There was a lot at stake here. All over the Plains, UN forces advanced: clearing, fixing, tracking, engaging, and destroying. About three-quarters of all available UN aerospace in the Iota Persei system focused on an expanse the size of the Canadian Shield, and about as hospitable and underpopulated. The freshly rebuilt MOB Unity Operations Center was the primary command and control node, but the operation required forces scattered all throughout the system. It required technicians onboard Skywheel 2, the Combat Information Center of the cruiser Montevideo, and three gigantic, hypersonic, near-orbit command aerospacecraft whose sensor and transmitter footprint covered the whole of Grainne. However, the very real fear that the colonials had successfully compromised at least some part of the UN’s secured networks meant that things ran slower in reality than in doctrine and exercises. Not a little bit slower, but much, much slower, as manual checking and live two-person integrity were the norm once again.
Mojo finally convinced Adder to concur with his plan, really the best course of action they could manage, and pinged Fizz on the Ops Floor.
“Fizz. FIZZ!”
“Go for Intel!” Fizz stuttered, as Mojo caught him completely off guard and distracted.
Mojo went into full business mode, his usual sardonic wit completely absent. “I’m coming back down, standby for words.”
Adder boomed in both their headsets. “Aero, Intel. Execute the CASEVAC, and they’ll need overwatch. All special ops protocols around Orme have been removed, you’ll have full access to everything. Prepare to receive the databurst with the info and get them some intel top cover overhead.”
Sliding into his chair, Mojo pinged his enlisted data technician, “Get me a freq and something resembling a command element somewhere on the ground. Who called in the CASEVAC request?”
A headshot and bio file appeared right in front of him of an Irish peacekeeper NCO named Owens. Well, hopefully it’s actually him, Mojo prayed, as this data was coming straight from “body beacon” files which were supposed to be refreshed every ten seconds, when the rebels weren’t fucking with every data source they could touch. Let’s give it a try. Owens came up on the radio as “GEESE 1-7,” indicating that he was a platoon sergeant. Wow, the whole chain of command down there must be dead and gone already.
Mojo kept his voice steady. “GEESE 1-7, GEESE 1-7, copy CASEVAC request. We’re working something up now.” And very quickly, Mojo pinged the closest vertol with passenger capacity. Ah, here we go, TROIKA 1-1, conventional forces Russian trash hauler. God, I hope she’s up to this.
“TROIKA 1-1, TROIKA 1-1, this is Aero, standby to copy priority CASEVAC request.” Mojo’s transmission automatically “grabbed” TROIKA’s cockpit videofeed, and greeted him with the sight of an expressionless, combat-sealed helmet and oxygen mask combination. The visor slid up and revealed an ice-blue set of eyes and blonde eyebrows. She briefly looked at the camera before her visor closed again, and she acknowledged Mojo’s comms.
* * *
Lieutenant First Class Lyudmila “Wyvern” Vladimirovna shook her head and gave control to her copilot. “Aero, this is TROIKA 1-1, say again?”
“TROIKA 1-1, this is Aero, you are now DUSTOFF 3-1, prepare to receive databurst.”
Oh shit, this is real. “DUSTOFF 3-1 is ready to copy.” Wyvern acknowledged the request and clicked on her electronic kneeboard, which translated the databurst and displayed it on her heads-up display:
LINE 1: Landing Zone grid location: 10SGJ0683244683 (accompanied by a small map)
LINE 2: Comms: 106.3 MHz, Darjeeling, GEESE 1-7 (authenticated)
LINE 3: Number of patients by precedence: 5 Urgent Surgical, 3 Priority (AMPUTATION)
LINE 4: Special equipment: Ventilator, Resupply, 2 Litters
LINE 5: Number of patients: 3 Litter, 5 Ambulatories
LINE 6: Security at pick-up site; enemy infantry in area, escort required
LINE 7: Method of marking: Infrared panels
LINE 8: Patient nationality and status: 7 military, UN; 1 lawful combatant, colonial
LINE 9: Negative CBRN-E contamination: chems, bios, radiologicals, nukes, or EMP.
Wait. This is odd. Orme? Her trash runs never took her by there, but Unity had another surprise for her.
“Your escort is DRAKUN 2-6, also now mission commander, check-in when able.” Wyvern’s datalink was suddenly awash in icons and intelligence pings she’d never seen before.
DRAKUN? A Werewolf? This can’t be good. The databurst made it clear things were bad inside the special ops “container” as she and all the other conventional aircrew called it, but now her instincts screamed at her, get out, which she couldn’t, and in fact, wouldn’t have, even if she could.
“Aero, DUSTOFF 3-1 copies all.” She clicked over to inter-plane direct comms. “DRAKUN, what do you have for me?”
6.
Fizz swallowed hard as the new DUSTOFF ended her radio call. Something really bothered him. He and the other intel geeks had started to suspect that something was seriously wrong with UN sensor data and automated analysis algorithms weeks ago, but, lacking any hard evidence, that assessment received an official cold shoulder from the chain of command. Most of it. Mojo seemed more willing than most to consider it, but he wasn’t high enough in the food chain to make much difference.
Ah goddamn fucking stupid fucking piece of junk! Fizz ripped his headset off, clasped his whole left hand over the minicam bud on his collar, spun around, and dug his right hand’s fingertips into his temple./p>
“Alright, alright, alright. Let’s think here.” The relevant point, right now, was that the lockdown protocols were removed and special ops was actually sharing something useful, so he could see the IR signatures of the mobile survivors and also the wounded. The ever-present spring rain caused tons of problems with IR, but today was better than most. There were precious few survivors overall, from all sides of the fight, but he could also . . . maybe . . . just make out some “shadows” in other sensor bands, maybe they were false hits, but they seemed to be moving across the main engagement area, and . . .
“Oh no. Oh, dear God no.” Fizz smashed the comm button. “MOJO! INTEL!”
“Go?”
“You need to look at this, NOW.” Fizz shared his live feed to Mojo’s station.
“What the hell . . . what’s happening?” Mojo stared, then flipped his screen from false color to black-on-white infrared. Incredibly, the huddled and prone black-white silhouettes fidgeted, spasmed, and splashes of liquid white exploded and washed out his screen. He flipped back to color, briefly saw a “shimmer,” and heard Fizz cry out.
“It’s the wildlife!”
Mojo hammered down his switch and overrode every other transmission on the net. “GEESE 1-7, you need to get moving, immediately!”
7.
The screams changed in tenor behind them. Molly was pretty sure she heard two different screams, one an animal’s, the other, human. She quickly put that aside when Private Oliver rolled his head to one side and threw up a great gout of blood. Molly moved from MacNulty’s litter to Oliver’s improvised one, almost slipping on the slick ground, and instructed the two peacekeepers carrying him to put him down. She was pretty sure she had found all of Oliver’s injuries but throwing up blood was a very bad sign and so she double-checked her interventions. Sergeant Owens moved up beside her.
“We have to keep moving!”
“I understand that, Sergeant, but if we keep moving, Oliver is going to die. Let me try to stabilize him,” Molly hissed through gritted teeth.
“We don’t have time. Higher is telling us there are things out here that will eat us. We have to get to the clearing for DUSTOFF.”
“I can’t let him die,” Molly replied exasperatedly.
Owens’s voice was cold and hard as he said, “Specialist Aujla, if we are to make rendezvous and survive, we have to keep moving. Do what you can for him but do it on the move. Let’s go, people.”
Hanrahan weakly grabbed a litter pole with his remaining hand. He met Molly’s gaze before scanning the forest again.
“He’s right,” he said urgently. “We have to keep moving. If we stop now, we all die.”
Sergeant Owens motioned to the two peacekeepers on the ends of the improvised litter to pick him up and keep moving. Molly fumed, but even through her anger she realized there wasn’t much more she could do for Oliver; he was just too badly injured for what supplies she had on hand. Maybe if those bastards had sent me to Sergeant’s Q-Course, I could do more. Molly sighed. She theoretically knew how to do a chest tube, but had never been taught, as that level of care was deemed to be beyond that of a junior NCO. The Americans probably trust their field medics to do this, she seethed. She knew the rebel military did.
That’s when she heard the human scream again.
The ragtag group of Irish and British peacekeepers pressed on, while Sergeant Owens kept radio contact with a flyer. The light rain finally stopped. After an hour, the band came upon the clearing and Owens directed three of the Irish to set up an impromptu landing zone. No sooner had the panels been set, they heard the unmistakable howl of an inbound vertol.
Molly looked up as the craft banked over the clearing. She thought she could make out the pilot looking down at them, but it passed out of sight. She heard the machine’s engines change pitch, and it reappeared. The big buglike machine was a Russian job, its distinctive paint job and a red star edged in yellow proclaiming such. It hovered another moment over the clearing before the engines changed tone and the machine touched down. The engines ran while the side doors opened, and a man motioned for the soldiers to stay put. He spoke into his comms before disconnecting his helmet from a line to the aircraft and jumped down to the ground. The flight engineer walked over to Sergeant Owens to deliver what Molly assumed were instructions. Nodding, Sergeant Owens ran to stage his people.
“Okay listen up! We’re loading the litters first with Specialist Aujla, then the other wounded. The rest of us will cover overlapping sectors of fire as we load up behind them. I will board last. Everyone understand?”
“YES, SERGEANT,” the group chorused.
“Good, let’s move out! And you!” he said, pointing at Hanrahan, “you’re sticking right next to me where I can see you!”
The team picked up the litters while the flight engineer directed them to load and in what order. The vertol engines were deafening, and Molly was sure she was going to have hearing loss, but she could deal with that later. She moved out with the last litter team, the one carrying Oliver. The man was somehow still breathing, but Molly wasn’t sure he would be for much longer. As the team approached the bird, she could feel the thrum of the engines in her chest, but then she was inside the vertol and donning a headset. She caught the pilot’s instructions to her mid-stream.
“ . . . And medic, this is not a MEDEVAC ship, but I do have a large first-aid kit beside the flight engineer’s station. If you need more supplies feel free to use them,” the female pilot said over the internal comms.
“Thank you, Ma’am,” replied Molly.
Molly was grateful as she had used up most of the supplies in her aid bag. She moved forward and expected to see a small kit. Instead, it was a rather large bag that looked similar to an Army folding litter kit. She wasn’t sure though, as she couldn’t make out the Cyrillic letters on the bag. Molly opened pouches at random on the outside of the bag and found various types of field dressings and airway kits. Opening the main compartment, she found the suspected folding litter. She motioned to a pair of soldiers nearby to help her unfold the litter, then transferred Oliver to it from the improvised one they were using. After doing that, she finished securing him to the deck of the vertol with the assistance of the flight engineer. After finishing with Oliver, she helped secure MacNulty’s litter as well. Molly and the flight engineer then jury-rigged an inner seat harness such that Hanrahan could sit up securely but without much weight on his wounded arm. It still couldn’t be comfortable for him, not by a mile.
“Pilot, everyone’s loaded,” called out the flight engineer.
Molly felt her stomach lurch as the vertol lifted straight up at speed, and viffed right. Looking around at the group it suddenly hit her that there were fewer than twenty peacekeepers left out of the company that had started the day, not counting the reinforced company of Spetsnaz. She wanted to be ill, and she could see the same shock dawning on the faces of the others. Everyone except for Sergeant Owens, who just looked grim. The aircraft banked slightly, and Molly settled in for the trip towards FOB Waterloo, the main Irish base on Grainne.
8.
:: BIGTOP, Hey Fizz, recommend you tell Aero to reroute that DUSTOFF on a different flightpath ::
Fizz squinted at the chat ID—BIGTOP? That’s a cyber analysis shop, on the Montevideo. Really hot lieutenant running it.
:: INTEL: Say again? ::
:: BIGTOP: Indications of possible suicide drones and auto-jumper mines stashed in the trees in that area, pretty reliable signatures, so better safe than . . . Crap! Look out!! ::
9.
Molly was checking the respirations on one of her patients when she heard the flight engineer scream something in Russian. Before any of the peacekeepers could react, the right side of the vertol’s troop compartment blew out, and several of them were torn to shreds or thrown out of the stricken bird.
“OH MY GO—” she started to scream.
There was a loud bang from outside the aircraft and Molly was nearly thrown out the gaping hole in the side. She was saved by a cargo strap that had somehow wrapped itself around her leg and by the motion of the deck as the pilot fought to save the doomed vertol. She guessed the source of the bang as their escort craft tumbled past the exposed gouge. Some type of explosion had completely sheared away its cockpit.
“HOLD ON, WE ARE GOING IN,” screamed the pilot.
A second loud bang, and a screeching noise filled Specialist Molly Aujla’s world, overpowering all her other senses. She managed to grab hold of another strap and pin herself down to the deck. She saw Sergeant Owens looking up at the roof of the cabin and muttering something, while the remaining troops tried to brace for impact. A third bang sounded from outside the aircraft, and to Molly’s horror she could see one of the craft’s two engines shear off, causing the ship to spin before Wyvern somehow managed to stop it. Molly looked toward the front of the cabin, but all she could see was sparks and smoke.
The vertol hit the ground nose up and slid. “Am I alive?” asked a dazed voice. It took Molly a minute to realize that she was the one who had spoken.
“Da, you are alive,” replied the shaken flight engineer.
A groan from Sergeant Owen indicated that he was also still alive, but there were precious few others. Molly looked over at her litter patients and could tell instantly that only MacNulty survived the crash. Looking at Private Oliver, she could feel her gorge rise at the sight of a metal splinter that had nearly gouged the man in half. Molly flexed her limbs cautiously, worried she might have a break or fracture. Feeling nothing amiss, she scrambled over to one of the few peacekeepers left and helped the woman unbuckle from a jump seat. The pilot emerged from the ruin of the cockpit, somehow miraculously intact although she had a nasty gash on her left upper arm. Molly pulled an emergency dressing from one of her pockets and bandaged the Russian pilot, who nodded her thanks.
The survivors exited the broken ship, gathering what supplies they could. Molly cut Hanrahan loose from his seat, noting that the improvised secure harness that she and the flight engineer concocted had probably saved the rebel’s life. Sergeant Owens pulled a datapad from his pocket and attempted to divine their location relative to Orme and Waterloo, while Molly did what she could for the survivors, including a thoroughly disoriented Hanrahan.
She could finally see the damage to the vertol. The craft had skidded along the ground through a clearing that the pilot somehow maneuvered the aircraft into. It had hit a patch of trees and come to rest on the stub of its left wing. Everything else had ripped off the fuselage.
“Where are we?” Molly could barely croak.
“We are about a hundred klicks from Orme, but about forty or so offset from Waterloo. Seems we covered some distance in the wrong direction,” replied Owens. “Any idea where our escort went?”
Molly spoke up, “I think I saw him go down. Cockpit looked like it was completely gone.”
The Russian pilot sighed. Molly got a good look at her for the first time, and the first thought that sprung to mind was tall, leggy, and blonde. Her nametape said “Wyvern,” and she looked feral, with a steady flow of blood from a jagged gash on her chin. The pilot gazed at Molly for a moment before continuing with Sergeant Owens.
“Gavno! Well, the ship’s completely dead so I don’t have a radio anymore. What about you, did yours survive?” Wyvern asked in clipped Standard English.
“Yeah, ah, yes, ma’am. I have one long range comm left with Private First-Class Elgin there, but right now all comms are out. Something is playing merry hell with all modes, and we can’t get a signal out.” Sergeant Owens sighed.
“Zadnitze. We know the rebels have been doing stuff to the comms, but command still hasn’t acknowledged it.” The pilot looked over at Hanrahan, now leaning unsteadily on Molly’s shoulder. “What do you have to say, bratan?”
Hanrahan said nothing, and merely grunted.
“Private Elgin see if . . . ”
A scream cut Sergeant Owens off and everyone turned to face its source. The flight engineer’s high-pitched scream turned to a mewling as he crumpled over. Molly now felt completely distant, removed as if watching the nightmare through someone else’s eyes. Her first impression was that something had splashed red paint all over the man, but then she realized that what she saw was blood. She perceived a blur in her peripheral vision and something big and sleek came out of the brush and grabbed the Flight Engineer, pulling him into the treeline.
“WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?” screamed the Russian pilot, in nearly accent-free English. Fear seemed to do that, but she slipped back into her native tongue just as quickly. “Chërt poberí!”
“I . . . I don’t know,” stammered Owens.
“Sarge, there is something over . . . ”
Private Keene did not get a chance to finish his statement as another creature bounded into the clearing. It was all slashing claws and gnashing teeth, and yet moved with the sleekness of a hunting wolf. It grabbed Keene’s throat in its jaws and shook its head violently. The young man’s head flew free from his body and the creature bounded back into the tree line with its meal. Molly threw up violently.
Sergeant Owens opened up with his rifle, blasting away into the trees where the creature had disappeared. When he had exhausted his magazine, he dropped it and inserted a second, but before he could pull the trigger the Russian pilot grabbed the end of his rifle and pushed it up into the air.
Hanrahan rasped, “Save your ammo, Sergeant. You aren’t doing any good and we have no idea how many are out there. That’s what we call a ‘dire yote.’”
Owens stared at Hanrahan, blinking several times, his grip on the rifle turning his knuckles white. “A fucking what?”
“A dire yote. They hunt a bit like Earth coyotes, but they’re much bigger, meaner and much, much harder to kill. Best to avoid them.”
Owens looked at Wyvern for a moment and then over to Hanrahan before nodding.
Molly moved closer to the others, looking around her fearfully. She was not armed, per the Geneva Convention, and was acutely aware that she had no way to defend herself from a wild animal.
“Sergeant Owens, I don’t have a gun.”
He turned toward Molly considering her for a moment.
“Have you ever used one of these?” Owens held up one of the bullpup-style carbines that the Irish favored.
“No, I came into the Forces as a medic, so I never went through weapons familiarization.”
“Stupid rule,” Owens muttered. “Okay, here is how it works. The magazine goes into the well here, the safety for the weapon is here, and you pull this to make it shoot. To aim it you put the red dot on what you want to kill and squeeze the trigger. Always face it forward.”
Owens went through the motions, pointing to various things on the rifle for Molly. For her part she was a little queasy at the idea of holding a gun but was violently opposed to becoming a snack for some forest predator. Owens picked up Keene’s fallen weapon and handed it to Molly.
“The round counter indicates that there are twenty-five rounds left in the magazine. Here is one more magazine of fifty rounds. Do not waste them, got it?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Okay, we need to keep moving. Corporal Walsh, you take point. Then you, LT and our medic carry MacNulty’s litter. Elgin will help Mr. Hanrahan, and then I will take up rear security. Hopefully, whatever those things were have been satisfied for now and will leave us alone.” Owens looked disgusted at the thought.
Hanrahan coughed and spat. “Satisfied. You’d better hope so. My folks don’t even operate out here if they can help it. Certainly not overnight. Not without leopards.”
Owens laughed coldly, “Heh, what is it with you fucking people and your fucking leopards?”
Hanrahan’s voice was gravel as he replied, “They’re smart and vicious enough to keep the local beasts under control. Somewhat.”
10.
Adder was apoplectic. “The fuck happened out there, Intel! Mines? Drones? How could it all be ‘completely automated’? What do you mean something’s jamming their comms?”
Mojo froze, Home Office’s asset should still be able to get something through. His gear is exquisite and specially made for that type of interference.
One of Fizz’s high-altitude drones, well above the altitude rebel drones and other threats could reach, collected just enough background infrared and other spectral bands on the crash site to issue a warning. “ALCON, multiple unknown contacts heading towards the survivors.”
Mojo sighed. Well, no time like the present to call in a favor.
11.
Molly swallowed her fear. She didn’t relish the thought of going into the trees. The ever-shrinking party left the clearing and blazed a trail southeast back toward Waterloo. It was rough going with Walsh having to frequently stop to cut through some particularly dense piece of foliage. Every fifteen minutes, Elgin attempted voice radio calls, beacon captures, and satellite uplinks. On the move, their odds of getting a good link were low, and worse, Elgin thought there was active rebel jamming in play as well. Elgin finally convinced Sergeant Owens to let them halt for ten minutes, so he could attempt to “burn through” the jamming.
Wow, he’s a brainy one, isn’t he? Molly thought. Seems a bit old for his rank. Gear is a lot nicer than the usual crap I’ve seen; must be nice to spend your life inside the wire.
“I think I got a couple of packets through the noise.” Elgin seemed pretty proud of himself. “When they hit one or more receivers, doesn’t matter what kind, they all have a little self-replicating instruction that will look for traces of the rest and reconstitute the message. Someone will hear that. It might take a while though. It’s not quick.”
Hours passed, but Molly wasn’t sure they had gone all that far when there was a scream from in front of her. She watched helplessly as Corporal Walsh was speared through the chest by something she couldn’t see, and the woman was lifted up into the air. Walsh continued to scream what air was left in her lungs out and then her attacker dropped her into a gurgling, moaning heap. Her reprieve lasted only for a moment before whatever it was came back and lifted the dying woman up into the trees. Canines shouldn’t climb trees, was all Molly could think upon actually seeing it. Is that a barbed tail?
Wyvern fired her wicked-looking submachine gun at the creature, and it dropped Corporal Walsh to the forest floor. Molly tried to move to the woman, but Wyvern held her back until Sergeant Owens was right beside her. Only then did the three of them move to Walsh’s side. Molly could see the wound was fatal and couldn’t believe she’d survived even that long. Walsh looked up at her pleadingly as if asking Molly to do something, but Molly knew there was nothing that she could do for the woman that was in the regs.
Fuck the regs, she thought as she pulled out three morphine autoinjectors. She jabbed Corporal Walsh with all three in rapid succession and watched as the other woman’s eyes closed for the last time. A moment later, Walsh’s labored gurgling and breathing stopped. Tears ran down Molly’s face and she angrily scrubbed at them.
“It was all you could do.” Wyvern laid a gentle hand on Molly’s shoulder. The medic looked up at the pilot, who was a head taller than she, and nodded silently.
“Dammit.” Owens sighed. “Okay we have got to kee—”
Molly gasped and stared in horror. Sergeant Owens was ripped in half. The look of shock on his face was the last thing Molly saw of him as two creatures dragged the halves of him into the underbrush. They didn’t go far, and she could hear the things cracking bones and eating the dead man. Thank God he was dead. She didn’t think the predators cared.
They were down to Molly, Wyvern, MacNulty, Elgin, and Hanrahan, who, missing limb or not, was plenty motivated by adrenaline and fear to keep moving under his own power. The three uninjured UN personnel took turns assisting MacNulty. With great effort he was able to walk, albeit slowly and leaning heavily on one of them at a time for support. It was slow going.
“Fuck this, I want to go home,” said Molly out loud. Wyvern chastised her for the noise, but with a hint of care in her voice. It had fallen to the young pilot officer to keep the group together, regardless of whatever side of the fight they’d started the morning on, and thus far she seemed up to the task.
Hours passed and the survivors struggled through the forest. The creatures that had decimated their party so abruptly seemed to have been sated by their carnage and left them alone. Wyvern navigated via her handheld comp, which now worked perfectly. Apparently, the jamming ceased during their battle with the dire yotes, and now she kept them heading generally in the right direction.
It was just one more nightmare for Molly, who had grown up in a prefab suburb of Winchester. She had thought the forest preserves of Britain were wild and magical places when she was a girl, but compared to the forests of Grainne, those were mere parks for playing in. I didn’t have to worry about being eaten back home, she thought.
“How far have we left to go, Leftenant?”
“According to my comp we have some thirty klicks. Wait.”
A low and menacing growl from the undergrowth just to the right of the two women interrupted Wyvern. The sound differed from the dire yotes. This sounded bigger, madder, hungrier than the horrors they’d already faced. Molly felt an overwhelming need to piss herself and then the creature burst forth from the bushes. It streaked between the two women, knocking them both down. Wyvern reacted first, trying to shoot the creature with her submachine gun, but missed. The monstrosity effortlessly swatted her aside and then lunged for Molly. Molly brought up her rifle and pointed it desperately at the charging horror, and had just enough time to wonder if this was one of those “ripper” things that intel was always going on about, and pull the trigger. Nothing happened.
“Nooo,” Molly began to scream, but the ripper was thrown violently sideways.
Molly’s ears rang, and to her surprise a boy, no, teenager, stepped out of the bushes from where the ripper had come, holding a rifle. A really big rifle. She could tell he spoke, but through the ringing she could only hear some faint mumbling, as though he was speaking underwater. She thought he said, “You really shouldn’t be out here, Miss. This forest is dangerous enough for us, but you Earthers have no chance out here.”
“Who the hell are you?” asked Wyvern, nursing a gash near her hip.
Molly saw the injury and rushed to her side.
“How bad is it?” she asked as she probed the wound. Wyvern let out a hiss but allowed Molly to do her job. The boy made no move to interfere and actually averted his eyes as Molly bound the lieutenant’s wound.
“My name is Max. Max Goldbach. And as I said before, I really think you should come with me. Unless, that is, you have a better, and hopefully immediate way out of here, because right now the rippers are mating and that has driven them into fits of the old ultraviolence.” The boy wore a look of both amusement and fear.
12.
Adder sat behind Mojo in the front of the battle cab and watched as anger, confusion, and fear unfolded on his operations floor.
“WE’LL HAVE NONE OF THAT! Mojo, play that audio again!”
Mojo replayed a clipped, static-laden transmission for Adder’s ears once more: “REQU . . . IMMED . . . EVAC . . . EMER . . . FOUR UN SURVI . . . ONE COLONIAL . . . 44KM sou—est . . . WATERLOO . . . ”
Still alive, and our asset doesn’t disappoint. The rebel we saved is someone they’ll parley for. Wait. Over forty klicks from Waterloo? And the fix has aged out, shit. Mojo was amazed they’d made it that far. This transmission is old too, they could be even further along now. Still, it’s worth a shot.
“Sir, I recommend you authorize a rescue mission,” he said in a private channel in Adder’s headset.
Adder scoffed, “Into that mess, Mojo? It’s almost as bad as Orme.”
“It might be time to try and bargain with the rebels. We’ve saved one of theirs, and Fizz is about to tell us with his usual sources that they’ve saved our people as well.”
“What do you mean?”
Mojo then realized that he had to choose his next words very carefully. “I think we should ask for a ceasefire to retrieve the survivors and make an exchange. Fizz has some additional intel.”
“Go on.” Adder scowled at Mojo, but against his better judgement, decided to listen.
Mojo allowed Fizz into the channel, who spoke quickly. “Sir, the rebel survivor that our forces retrieved at Orme is someone the insurgents will want back. I’m positive of this.”
“I don’t trust this. How important can he be?”
Mojo reinforced Fizz, knowing that Adder needed the reassurance. “Sir, apparently, our medic saved a local civic leader. Family head of some sort. The rebels went so far as to send an operator out to assist our people a short time ago, and he was able to intervene and save the survivors.”
Adder shook his head, “And how did they find our people? I’m not fucking doing this. Do you know how much time and resources it’s going to take to build a rescue package? There’s only one assault strip long enough for it to land in that AO, I know you’ve seen it! That place is unacknowledged, and also under constant attack.”
“What do you suggest, sir?”
“Start writing posthumous medals for your survivors, I’ll be damned if I—”
A booming chime interrupted all communications on the floor.
“Adder, stand by for words from Kestrel Six Actual, prepare to copy.”
The clipped accent and impeccable diction sounded familiar to both Adder and Mojo, and the callsign “Kestrel Six Actual” belonged only to one individual in the entire system. Mojo remembered from the briefing that the London had redeployed to a high orbit, in order to transmit intelligence to General Huff and his senior staff.
“Actual sends, ‘Execute. With all speed.’” On a channel only open to Adder, Mojo, and Oracle, General Huff’s aide conveyed further instructions. “Tell them you want a truce, they’re listening.”
Mojo smiled slightly. Fucking well-timed, Sandeep. Huff’s been listening the entire time. Even he realizes this needs to happen. Maybe there is a God.
“Acknowledged.” Adder sighed. “All right, people, get to it. Mojo, Fizz, we’ll broadcast this over the open ‘Guard’ freq: ‘To the commanding officer, rebel forces in vicinity of FOB Waterloo, UN command requests temporary cease-fire to retrieve isolated UN and opposition forces personnel.’”
Fizz cut in, “Adder, sir, and Mojo, I have something you need, audio only.”
Without waiting for his superior, Mojo cleared Fizz’s response. “Roger. Go ahead.”
In a private channel, Fizz relayed his latest intel. “I just received a message force-fed through my terminal. I don’t want to risk forwarding it to you or anyone else, because whoever it is, they can do some scary shit. This tool is amazing, and I’m stunned the rebels would just burn it like this.” Fizz paused for effect, but Mojo wasn’t interested in the ins-and-outs of rebel cyber expertise at that particular moment.
“Fizz, get to the point.” Mojo pushed the brilliant but often scatterbrained intel officer, knowing that their boss was about out of patience, and that if Mojo didn’t move this situation along, Adder could unintentionally explode the entire situation, and no one would survive.
Fizz verbally relayed the enemy’s transmission, as fast as it came in. “Sir, they’re willing to trade safe passage to our designated MEDEVAC LZ, and they’re willing to cease artillery and rocket fires, stand down jamming, deactivate mines and drone kill zones. Break. So long as we care for their wounded and release him as soon as medically possible along with the individual guiding the survivors. Break. ‘The Freehold partisans are not to be detained.’ Break. They’re also willing to hold a POW exchange, as a sign of good faith. Break. There’s a warning too; ‘There are local forces in that area not under Freehold Forces command and control, conducting unsanctioned operations.’”
Adder laughed, dryly, and without humor. “Well this day just keeps getting more and more entertaining by the moment, doesn’t it?”
13.
“ . . . And that’s the honest truth, Ma’am.”
Lyudmila, by now Molly had finally heard Wyvern’s actual name, looked at the young man, her face a mask of skepticism. Molly, for her part, remained silent. Grainne’s predators had whittled down the group of survivors, leaving Wyvern in impromptu command of Molly, MacNulty, and Elgin. They were locked tight in a strange truce with the rebel Hanrahan and this boy dressed in khaki shirt and trousers, with what looked like hand-painted camo splotches and a patch bearing the words “KIBBUTZ DEGANIA ALEF.” Enemies, but not so different in that all wanted to get through this night alive.
According to Max, the group had to now cover only about seven kilometers due west, albeit away from Waterloo, until they hit a small UN firebase, one that wasn’t on the books as far as Molly knew. A rebel contingent, recognized by the UN as lawful combatants, would help retrieve Hanrahan, and then Lyudmila, Molly, and their survivors would get their ticket home.
Molly shook her head. This war gets crazier by the minute.
“How can we trust you?” Lyudmila’s face was a stone mask to Molly, but her voice hinted at tiny cracks forming in the ice-cold façade.
“The way I see it, ma’am, you’re just going to have to take a leap of faith. I’ve killed an Aardvark or two in my time, I ain’t going to lie. But we respect honorable enemies when we see them, particularly the medic here, and well, our leadership decided that you all deserve a chance at not dying today, especially for keeping our mate Mr. Hanrahan alive also. You could have easily let him die, or killed him yourself, but you didn’t. That makes you worthy.”
Molly wanted to kill him. She had no idea what to say, if she could say anything. Worthy? WORTHY?
Max glanced at a buzz on his wrist comm. He continued. “We’re going to your obscure Firebase Cobra. All recognized Freehold Forces have been ordered to stand down and clear us a path.”
Lyudmila looked at Molly and frowned, then drilled Hanrahan with her eyes. “Hold there, what do you mean, ‘recognized’?”
Hanrahan sighed and spoke with a gravelly voice. “Ma’am, you bunch have pissed off a lot of people since you arrived here, and not all of them were exactly ‘model citizens’ before all this started. They didn’t play ball with the Freehold before this war, but they like you even less than they like our government in Jefferson.”
Max nodded vigorously in agreement. “They’re even more fucked-up and violent now, and they would very much like to overrun that firebase. In fact, they might just pull it off, so I suggest we get moving now, just in case.”
Hanrahan strained, exhausted, and desperate to finish this parley. “Their actions are not sanctioned by Freehold Combined Forces, either Regular or Provisional. My Provos will meet us there and will do their best to maintain the integrity of the truce.”
“Do their best? Do their fucking best? You fucking tosser, fuck you and your whole fucking planet. I’ve lost all me mates trying to fucking help you, you fuck!” Molly’s tears flowed, and she couldn’t stop them.
To her shock, Lyudmila took her into a full bear hug that lasted several seconds, and then took back control of the group.
“Again, from the top.”
14.
The team rehearsed their approach on the firebase one last time with sticks and dirt in a makeshift sand table, going over commands and signals, ensuring that everyone who could move under their own power was on the same page. Each member took their positions. Molly caught the final signal, a nod from Lyudmila to Max, and they moved out.
Max took point through the trees, with his rifle that was the size of a heavy machine gun at ready carry. Molly and Lyudmila carried MacNulty’s makeshift litter between them. Elgin supported Hanrahan, who seemed to be in the throes of infection finally. Infection, plus the wear and tear of shock, blood loss, the side effects of combat stims, and the moist, humid, shitty Grainnean “spring” conspired to break him at last. While traveling, they had wrapped him in as many field blankets as they could salvage from the dead, but their only ally now was speed. Elgin, ever ready to carry the wounded or haul extra gear, certainly didn’t seem much like a command post weenie and remained silent the entire time.
True to Max’s word, their trek towards the firebase went unmolested, at least by insurgent forces. Max deftly steered them clear of the damn-near invisible dire yotes, only once having to put one down with his giant game rifle before it could pounce.
They were less than a klick away now, close enough to smell and hear an active flight line, when the report of rockets and guns, really big ones, blasted the air and shook the ground.
Lyudmila motioned to Molly to lower the improvised litter. “I thought your people agreed to a damn truce!” She grabbed the boy by his collar, towering over him a by a full foot.
Max shook her loose. “Be quiet!” He squatted down and motioned for them all to follow suit. “These aren’t Hanrahan’s people, or mine,” he whispered. “I told you, we have a lot of ‘contingents,’ but not all of them listen to us. Some of them are really well armed.”
Starburst shells flashed overhead, and Molly could see not only the base, which had thankfully cut its lighting off, but also just how alive the woods were with animals and weapons, and presumably, crazed colonials, hopped up for a total assault.
Elgin spoke up, “Leftenant, I think you’d better send the code, see if your ride is ready.”
Wyvern clicked three times on the datapad she’d recovered from Sergeant Owens’s body and checked the screen.
“Inbound. Ten mikes. We’d better move, now! On three. One.” She and Molly grabbed the makeshift litter’s poles, MacNulty swaying gently between them.
“Two.” Max had slung his big rifle and brought up a small carbine, easy to handle while running.
“Three!” Elgin and Max flanked Hanrahan and made a run for it. With barely fifty meters left to the perimeter, two mortar shell explosions dropped haphazardly to Elgin’s left, then his right, and he slowed but kept going. The base’s impeccably aimed defenses lit up a swath of destruction, covering everything but a narrow strip. About thirty meters from the base, a patrol met them and took over carrying MacNulty’s litter while a pair of soldiers hand-carried Hanrahan the final distance. Then, mortar rounds impacted the base and all around it, and a rocket took down one of the guard towers.
Molly’s ears rang. She picked herself up and prepared to stagger-sprint her way inside to relative safety, when she saw MacNulty’s litter on the ground, his bearers either dead or otherwise absent. She crawled over to him and checked for new injuries. There was a lot of blood, but he was breathing. The laborious sound assured her that MacNulty had blast injuries. Molly saw where one of the bandages had been shredded on his chest, and frantically searched her pockets for an occlusive dressing, but all she found was a wrapper for a ration cookie. “Improvise, adapt, overcome,” Molly said to herself. She tore the wrapper to flatten it out and slapped it over the shredded bandage, taping it down on all sides. “Alright, Colm, let’s get you through that gate.” Although she never would have believed it possible, she managed to pick up and fireman’s carry MacNulty’s hefty frame step by painful step, until a UNPF ILAWAV with a light cannon gun mount pulled up alongside. Hands ensconced both her and Colm MacNulty away. Molly barely registered that her rescuers were mixed company; she saw both UN camo and rebel ersatz uniforms.
She finally had a few moments to relax slightly, when the Eel rolled up on the beautiful sight of a dropship, which had somehow survived a combat descent and come to a hover stop on the firebase’s frighteningly short runway, with an open ramp and a loadmaster waving them all aboard.
The last to board was Max. He said nothing but proceeded through the cargo bay and up into the cockpit. They didn’t see him for the rest of the journey that followed.
Projectiles and fragments pinged, and as the ramp raised up Molly caught the sights and sounds of both flame and death. Like a robot, she rattled off the condition of MacNulty, Elgin, Hanrahan, Lyudmila, and lastly, almost as an afterthought, herself to the flight engineer, assisted where she could while they stabilized the wounded, then strapped in and braced for the combat ascent.
They landed uneventfully at FOB Waterloo. The ramp lowered once again, and they were met by a trauma team from the base hospital, known to be some of the best on the planet. MacNulty and Hanrahan were taken away separately, and within minutes, MacNulty was in receipt of a planeside transfusion.
Max Goldbach walked down the ramp as if nothing had happened. When he reached the bottom, Molly saw him turn to face both Lyudmila and her. He smiled and touched the corner of his eyebrow in a lazy, casual salute.
15.
Waterloo’s lead surgeon wasn’t taking no for an answer. Certainly not from a pompous windbag like Brigadier “Adder” Blumly. “We’ve started a walking blood bank, or rather, the troops did. I’ve got one hundred soldiers lined up, and I’ve even got POWs who want to donate blood to save this guy. It won’t be enough, we need an urgent aeromedical evac, and the Level Three trauma team onboard Skywheel Two. My en-route Patient Staging System team is ready to build this mission whenever you are, Brigadier.”
Adder shook his head at the doc on screen. “Do you know what it takes to get a mission like that built? It’s never been done before. There’s nothing available in theater and won’t be for two full days!”
“He doesn’t have two more days.”
“There’s nothing we can do.” Adder was about to cut the discussion short, when his private channel popped open on his leftmost screen.
:: KESTREL SIX ACTUAL: I DON’T CARE HOW YOU DO IT, BUT YOU WILL MAKE THIS HAPPEN. ::
Well fuck me.
:: YOU WILL ALSO BE ONBOARD THAT SHIP TO PICK ELGIN UP AT WATERLOO. AND YOU WILL TAKE PART IN A REPATRIATION CEREMONY FOR SUBJECT HANRAHAN, AND SUBSEQUENT PRISONER EXCHANGE. SANDEEP IS SENDING YOU THE PROMOTION ORDERS AND MEDALS FOR LT VLADIMIROVNA, SPEC AUJLA, AND PFC MACNULTY. ::
Well, okay then. He sent a short text to Mojo. “Mojo, just make it happen, whatever magic it takes, just fucking do it.”
* * *
Mojo smiled behind his screen, “Right, let’s get to work! We are building a new critical care aerospace transport mission here. Break. From Waterloo, pick up urgent patient, fly him to MOB Unity for an orbital ascent to Skywheel Two, and no one has ever done this before. What’s that I see before me? An empty gray-tail coming home from the Delph’? Perfect! They’re now REACH 979, and they have a new job. Also, find us two extra crews and two refuelers.”
“Wonderful,” said the surgeon over the net. “Now here’s what I’m going to need: one each, critical care nurse, ultrasound tech, a physician, respiratory therapist, at least one extracorporeal membrane oxygenation specialist, that’s an ‘EMOC,’ and a lot of money for regen therapy.”
16.
Molly stood straight as a rod, uncomfortable as hell in a set of dress greens that someone had found, and that almost fit. She stood next to the bald, bulky, and extraordinarily black Brigadier General Blumly. He could barely keep a sneer off his face. He did not want to be here, that much was certain. Truthfully though, Molly didn’t want to be here either. Her skin itched where she knew she would be picking out bits of rock and shrapnel for years to come. Her joints were stiff with exhaustion; she felt dazed, relieved, guilty, and worn. Soul-worn. This is probably PTS, she realized, and rather than dwell on that, she tried to focus on what was now the most awkward event she’d ever attended. Who the hell thought this was a good idea?
She almost missed the call to step forward, though whether due to the tinnitus or just plain boredom, she couldn’t say. First, they tacked a new stripe on her sleeves, the adhesive making far too much noise in the otherwise silent room. Then, Molly performed the classic “shake, take, salute,” and even forced herself to smile as they pinned the medal on her. As she stepped back, with her peripheral vision, she caught a barely noticeable hint of satisfaction on Lyudmila’s face, and a slight nod of approval from the colonel aerospace controller who had accompanied the Brig to Waterloo.
Now all Molly really wanted to do was to check in on MacNulty. Instead, Molly watched now-Captain Second Class Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Vladimirovna step forward to receive her medal. Molly, like mostly everyone else in the room, couldn’t help but stare at the statuesque beauty. She figured that poor Lyudmila had probably dealt with that her entire life. It often accompanied the experience of being grossly underestimated in intelligence and ability. Now, Molly thought, they saw something different. The new scar on Lyudmila’s face, just below her lip and across her chin, burned red across her pale skin. The one visible mar seemed to suck all the air out of the room. Molly could almost see the controlled rage and contempt beneath Lyudmila’s façade, her body language just screamed “Fuck you all.” Nonetheless, Lyudmila was the picture of professionalism, did the shake-take-salute, and stepped back into the small formation.
* * *
Mojo couldn’t help himself and stared at the Russian ice queen. She’s beautiful, but terrifying, he thought. As proffer, Mojo narrated the entire event, and managed the proceeding as if it were nothing more than a boring end-of-tour ceremony back in garrison. General Huff himself, apparently, had conceived the brilliant idea of combining the awards ceremony with the POW exchange. The ceremony celebrated and applauded human bravery under extreme conditions. It demonstrated that both sides in this conflict could be humane and civilized. The Grainne remnants received a chance to demonstrate legitimacy. The UN got to save face. Mojo relaxed as Adder finally turned on the charm, the way he always did when pressed, as he presented an excellent, and thankfully short, set of remarks. Adder managed to keep any negative observations about the somewhat ragtag, but obviously dangerous group of colonials in front of them to himself. Instead, he, and the rest of the UN personnel focused on the nameless Freehold Special Warfare soldier flanking a relieved-looking UN command colonel wearing an obviously brand spanking new flight suit.
In front of the UN personnel stood Peter Hanrahan, all cleaned up, with his right arm stub in a regen cast. He wore a brand-new camouflage shirt, khaki trousers, and sported a surplus UNPF beret, but with a Freehold Provisional Forces flash. Behind him stood three of his kinsmen, dressed in hunting gear with the barest military accoutrements and a unit patch indicating their status as legitimate combatants. Mojo had seen their pictures before, in some of the very exquisite intel reports from Elgin that went only to a very small group of people, including himself and Adder. These three, the two men and one woman, were from large family homesteads around Orme, leaders of their own resistance cells, and they terrified him. All three carried the look that old war literature called the “thousand-yard stare.” Mojo would remember those three sets of blue eyes for a long time, and how they looked beyond him, beyond everything in that makeshift auditorium, and saw something else entirely. Behind them stood Max Goldbach and an elder from his kibbutz, their field-expedient uniforms capped off by yarmulkes. Max’s eyes scanned for any sign of threat, while the old man prayed, hands upraised, eyes closed, and rocked slowly back and forth.
Hanrahan saluted the UN delegation with his left hand, with the clenched raised fist the colonials used, and took one step back. The very thin and fragile-looking NorthAm officer stepped forward to the UN side, made an about-face, and saluted Brevet Colonel Hanrahan and the small group of Provos. He didn’t even attempt to look at the Special Warfare officer. No one exchanged words. Hanrahan, however, stepped forward, and pressed something small into the hands first of Molly, and then Lyudmila, giving them both a small smile. His rebels came to orders and marched out under flag of truce. As they exited the makeshift auditorium, one of Hanrahan’s people suddenly began to sing, “The minstrel boy to the war is gone” and joined by his fellows, bellowed, “in the ranks of death you will find him . . . ” Still singing, they boarded an armed aircar, and slowly lifted away. Max and his elder boarded a second car, and quickly did the same./p>
Mojo ended the proceedings with complete professionalism, announcing, “Please remain standing for the departure of the official party.”/p>
Adder simply said “Dis-missed!” The peacekeepers about-faced and fell out.
* * *
As they were dismissed, Molly finally looked at the coin Hanrahan had given her. One side showed a harp superimposed on the old Irish tricolor. The other depicted the Jolly Roger. She couldn’t decide whether to keep it or throw it away./p>
Not long after the rebel “guests” departed, the truce officially ended and the intermittent but everpresent indirect fire started back up. Against that backdrop, she finagled her way to stay by MacNulty’s bedside before he went into Waterloo’s main surgical suite. The UN brass awarded him his medal and promotion at his bedside. Brig Blumly made it through that, but only just barely, before disappearing into a bathroom for several minutes. The smell in the burn ward on the second floor above them permeated the entire hospital, despite the staff’s best efforts.
Assuming he survived the first round of surgeries, MacNulty would get a very expensive brand-new face, mostly grown from his own cells, but with a good solid frame of ceramic underneath to help it form properly. With that peculiar mix of love and crassness that only soldiers can really master, some of the other patients called out “Jaws!” as Molly and the nurses prepped him for surgery. All poor Colm could do, barely conscious, was knit his eyebrows in disapproval, flip a defiant, obscene gesture with both hands, and scribble “these still work,” barely legible, on Molly’s hand. The nurses had to pry his fingers loose.
MacNulty spent almost twenty-four hours in surgery. The operation was still underway when the transfer team rushed purposefully into the surgical ward, just as MacNulty’s procedure started to wrap up. The AeroMed Evac team lead approached the head nurse.
“ETA to transfer?” asked the young blonde captain 2nd. Her name tag read “McFarland.”
“They’re still working on him.”
“Well, plug him up and get him on the bird. We’re taking fire out there!”
The nurse relayed the message to the surgical team who finished their current sutures and packed his other injuries with as much sterile gauze as they could. There wasn’t much more they could do, anyway. The surgeons were exhausted, and supplies were running dangerously low. They covered the site with a sterile vacuum seal for movement onto the plane. Molly pushed herself up out of chair she had slumped over in, close to the surgical theater. She was exhausted but determined to see this through to the end.
A second nurse accompanied the team, verbally relaying all the information she could. “Jaw severed. Blunt force trauma injuries to upper chest. Over fifteen separate perforating injuries to both the large and small intestines, spleen completely severed and removed, lost seventy-five percent of the liver, and a large aortic aneurysm. Transfused with ten units of whole blood, five units of plasma, BP 98/45, pulse ox ninety percent.”
The FOB Waterloo medical team continued rattling off numbers and details, and followed the REACH team onboard, with Molly quietly tagging along at the rear. They maintained respiration and medication flow until the whole entourage reached the hard-interior door to the clean ICU compartment deep within the aircraft. Captain Sue McFarland stopped the Waterloo doctors at the door. “We’ll take it from here.”
Molly tried to push her way in, “That’s my patient.”
“Not anymore he’s not.”
“You don’t understand!”
“Look, Corporal. You’ve done a great job. He wouldn’t be alive right now without you, but we’ve got this. There’s nothing else you can do for him. Thank you very much and get off my plane.” Captain McFarland didn’t wait for a response. She physically turned Molly toward the ramp and gave her a gentle push. Molly resisted, and turned again, enough to get the attention of both the loadmaster and the security forces fly-away team who now seemed to take an alarmed interest in her.
“Wait, take this!” Molly cried and held out a small item to Captain McFarland.
McFarland waved off the security forces NCO, who was about to cold-cock Molly, and took the tiny item into her hand. It was a note, in what looked like Hebrew.
“That boy Max said to give it to him. He said it’s called ‘Mi Shebeirach.’”
McFarland nodded, and disappeared into the ICU to assist her team.
The loadmaster yelled at Molly to exit the plane immediately, or she’d eat duracrete. She complied but stayed as close as she could to the flightline to watch.
REACH performed a combat ascent under fire, and Molly feared MacNulty wouldn’t make it. The Waterloo medical team had been thorough in briefing his injuries, and they were just as severe as everyone had feared. It would be a miracle if he survived liftoff, let alone long enough to get him to a proper surgical theater.
17.
Aboard London, General Huff put down his journal, checked his watch, and pinged his aide-de-camp. “Sandeep, are they in orbit yet?”
“Yes, sir! It took two refuelings, one in high stratosphere, and one near-orbit. The plane was so heavy they had to top off as soon as they got airborne, and they had to take a circuitous route to avoid some of the recent hotspots. We were really concerned about computer systems security onboard. Sir, I’m sure you understand just how unbelievable this mission truly was. In addition to the eighteen medical folks, Adder’s people built a team of maintainers to install a highly sophisticated prototype airborne intensive care suite. This thing was sitting all wrapped up and forgotten about in one of Waterloo’s hardened aircraft shelters. Well, forgotten about by everyone except your command surgeon, sir. It was intended for all sorts of tests here planetside but lost its funding in GenAssem. Bloody amazing.”
“How about the orbital ascent? How did the patient fare?”
“Swimmingly, sir. They packed him into a cryo-couch, gyro-stabilized, covered in oxygenated ballistic gel. Really cutting-edge trauma care stuff. They stabilized him on the ground and he actually improved in low-g. So, he’s almost ready to come off the ventilator, but they kept him on it from launch through rendezvous with the Skywheel.”
“Excellent. Whatever else happens in this war, Sandeep, I hope both sides remember this. It’s something worth holding on to. Our humanity.”