Date: 2013-12-26T18:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction
Description: No One Is Safe During a War of Extermination. Especially the Civilians. Rebecca Goldman was a bright and pretty child, a twelve year old with a loving family. Technology allowed them to live comfortably on the most dangerous planet in the Empire, Azure. And then the Ca'cadasans came, and it was suddenly survival of the fittest out in the wilderness. Losing everything, Rebecca has only herself to depend on in a jungle where everything is an enemy. Cornelius Walborski just wanted to killed Cacas. After losing his wife to the aliens on Sestius, he trains to become a Ranger, the augmented warriors

Exodus: Empires at War:

Book 5

Ranger

by

Doug Dandridge

She climbed the last meter, looking over the rocks while exposing as little of her face as possible.  There were now three people at the entrance, all male.  A fourth male was returning from the spring, a full water container in his hand.  She studied the men, still not sure what to make of them.  That they were using the refuge her family put together went without question.  That would not be a problem, since her family had not come, but she still needed it.

She saw another man come out of the cave, this one in partial light battle armor, the type the planetary militia wore.  That gave her a bit more hope.  If they were militia they would surely have an officer, or at least an NCO, in charge.  With that thought she scrambled up the last bit of slope and rose into sight.

The men at the cave all jumped and pointed, and some weapons made their appearance.  They calmed a bit as they saw that she was just a child.  She didn’t like some of the looks that came across the faces of the group.  They made her distinctly uncomfortable.

“Where the hell did you come from, girl?” asked the oldest looking of the men, one wearing the torso covering of light battle armor and a partial helmet.

“From the jungle,” she said, her eyes looking for a way out, just in case this had been as bad a decision as it was now looking.  She looked back at the man.  “This place was my family’s.  We set it up when the aliens came.”

“And where is this family of yours?”

“They didn’t make it.  Are you militia?  My father is a reserve officer.  Is there any way you can contact him?”

“We were militia,” said the man with a sneer.  “Until those sons of bitches wanted to throw us away trying to slow them down, for no damned reason.  Now we’re on our own.”

Deserters, she thought with a shudder.  What the hell did I get myself into?

“How old are you, girl?” asked another of the men, moving toward her.

“Ten,” she said, lying, hoping that they would decide she was too young for whatever game they wanted to play.

“You look a lot older than that, girl,” said the older man who seemed to be in charge.  “We don’t have any women here.  And you sure could fill the bill.”

Thoughts of gang rape started to go through her head, and she started to back toward the place where she had climbed onto the small plateau.

“You stop right there, girl,” said the man, pulling a pistol from the holster at his side.  “We won’t hurt you, not really.  You play with us, we’ll make sure you’re protected and fed.”

Rebecca knew about sex.  She had learned about it in biology courses.  And she knew she was too young, and didn’t want to have anything to do with it at her age.  She would become a sex slave to these men, all of them using her whenever they wanted.  Her internal nanites would keep her from getting pregnant, and protect her from disease.  Still, the idea of being used by these deserters was not her first choice, or her last.

“Stop,” said the man, pointing the pistol at her.  “If you take another step I will shoot you.”

And he doesn’t know I’m wearing a military class survival suit, she thought, looking at the pistol, then at the nearby rocks.  They also don’t know what kind of weapon I have.

With that last thought she dove for the ground.  Something smacked into her suit, which went rigid from the impact.  Rolling over she came to a stop behind the rocks and pulled her particle beam pistol from its holster.  A flick of her finger and the weapon’s accelerator started humming and whining.

“Come out of there and you won’t be hurt,” yelled the leader.  “Make us come for you and it will go hard for you.”

I can imagine, she thought, checking the pistol and seeing that the proton charge was up to full acceleration.

One man came around the rocks and caught the particle beam in the chest.  The nearly relativistic particles ripped into his body and vaporized kilograms of tissue, dropping him into a smoking heap on the ground.

Rebecca stared at the man for a moment.  She had never killed a human.  She had of course killed a Ca’cadasan, and many animals, but never another human being.  She thought that she should have felt shock.  Instead it was rage that was the dominant emotion.  Rage that these people had made her a killer of her own kind.

“Fuck you,” she yelled out, looking around the rock and leveling her weapon at the cave mouth.  A half dozen shocked looking men stood there, some pointing weapons her way.  A couple fired, the worst thing they could have done.

The girl pulled the trigger on the pistol and held it down, swinging the beam across the mouth of the cave.  Three men went down with catastrophic wounds while the others ran into the cave.  The beam tore into the rock, shattering large pieces that fell into the mouth.

“This is mine,” she yelled, still holding the trigger down even when the weapon stopped firing.  “I will be back, and I want you gone.”

She wasn’t sure that was the truth, but in her anger she wanted to panic them.  She looked down at the pistol, afraid that she had broken something, and was relieved to see that the blinking light indicated that the proton pack was empty.  She only had one left, and she cursed herself for a fool for letting her anger rule her.

Rebecca slipped back over the lip of the plateau and started down the slope.  Her shoulder blades cringed at the thought that the men might come out of the cave and shoot at her from above.  Her suit might protect her from a few shots, but with enough there was sure to be a hit to her head, or a penetration of the suit.

She reached bottom without incident, saying a prayer of thanks before she realized what she was doing.  Stopping for a moment, she looked back up at the mountain, wondering what she was going to do now that the refuge was closed to her.  I could wait and see if they leave, she thought, rejecting that idea as soon as she had it.  They might never leave, and she wasn’t sure she could force herself into another firefight.  Having to fire back was one thing.  Starting a battle in which she intended to kill other humans was quite another.

Rebecca shook her head, knowing that waiting here was not the answer.  But where to from here?  She checked the map and saw that there were several villages and a minor town within five days walk.  There was no guarantee that they were intact, or that she would be able to shelter there if they were.  Seeing no other option, she took a compass reading, set her location on the inertial navigation device, and started on her way.

Dedication

This novel is dedicated to writer Kevin J Anderson, whom I met at Dragon*Con 2013.  You are an inspiration to me, showing this writer that the future is full of unlimited promise to those willing to work for it.

Contact me at BrotherofCats@gmail.com

Follow my Blog at http://dougdandridge.com

Follow me at @BrotherofCats

Copyright © 2013 Doug Dandridge

All rights reserved.

Please respect the hard work of this author.  If you found this book for free on a pirate site, please visit Amazon and buy a copy of your own.  I feel that I charge a reasonable price for this work.

For more information on the Exodus Universe, visit http://dougdandridge.net for maps, sketches and other details of this work.

Acknowledgements:  I would like to thank all of my fans, especially those who sent emails or commented on blogs about how much they enjoyed the first four books of this series.  Your kind words gave me the impetus to continue through the not so kind words left in some reviews.  And special thanks to Ruth de Jauregui, who helped with the covers on all of the Exodus series.  Her changes improved all of the covers.

Note for Fans.

I have received some feedback from fans that stated they preferred space action to ground action.  I write both in this series.  I felt that Cornelius needed to have a book written about his entry into the world of Special Ops, where he will continue to rise through the war, as early in the series as possible.  I have big plans for the boy.  That said, the next couple of books in the series will be predominantly space action, which does not mean there will not be some political intrigue and ground combat.  Future books will focus on whatever aspect of the war I feel needs more development, but all will contain at least some space action.

Books by Doug Dandridge

Doug Dandridge’s Author Page at Amazon

Science Fiction

The Exodus Series

Exodus: Empires at War: Book 1

Exodus: Empires at War: Book 2

Exodus: Empires at War: Book 3: The Rising Storm.

Exodus: Empires at War: Book 4: the Long Fall.

The Deep Dark Well Series

The Deep Dark Well

To Well and Back

Deeper and Darker (coming Winter 2014)

Others

The Shadows of the Multiverse

Diamonds in the Sand

The Scorpion

Afterlife

We Are Death, Come for You

Fantasy

The Refuge Series

Refuge: The Arrival: Book 1

Refuge: The Arrival: Book 2

Refuge: Book 3: The Legions

Doppelganger: A Novel of Refuge

Others

The Hunger

Daemon

Aura

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Cast of Characters

Cornelius Walborski:  Former farmer on planet Sestius, where he distinguished himself by killing a score of larger, stronger Ca’cadasans in the jungle. Holder of the Imperial Medal of Heroism and currently a soldier in the Imperial Army.

Sean Ogden Lee Romanov:  Sean I, Emperor of the New Human Empire after the assassination of his parents and older brothers.  Supreme ruler of the Empire in time of War.

Doctor Jennifer Conway:  The Royal Consort, Sean’s lover, as well as his personal physician.

Rebecca Goldman:  Twelve year old resident of planet Azure in Sector Four, the most active sector of the war.

Benjamin Goldman: Rebecca’s six year old brother.

Captain Joseph Goldman:  Rebecca and Benjamin’s father.  A civilian Engineer on Azure with a reserve commission in the Imperial Army.

Sergeant Devera Sutton:  Imperial Army Physical Therapist.

Prime Hunt Leader Sybalis:  Leader of the Maurid contingent to the Ca’cadasan Ground Force on Azure.

Ted Stephenson:  Retired Naval Commando and Engineer, friend of Joseph Goldman, and a tracker and hunter in the jungles of Azure.

Brigadier General Walther Jodel:  Preacher.  Legend in the Imperial Army Ranger Community, and friend and mentor to Cornelius.

Doctor Lucille Yu:  Director of the Donut Project.

Sergeant Chantamurta:  Ranger Team Leader.

Staff Sergeant McAllister:  Ranger Squad Leader.

Sergeant First Thorwaldson  Ranger Platoon Sergeant.

Lieutenant Schwarz:  Ranger Platoon Leader.

Lt. Colonel Su:  CO, First of the Three Eighty-Seventh Rangers.

And many other minor characters.

Prologue

“To put it bluntly, your Majesty, they are beating the hell out of us,” said former CNO Gabriel Len Lenkowski.  “Until we can concentrate a large enough force to oppose them in Sector Four, we will continue to get beat.”

“What about the new technologies?” asked the young leader of the New Terran Empire, Sean Ogden Lee Romanov.  “What about the new ships coming off the line? Most of those will be hyper VII.  That should bring us up to parity.  And the wormholes should give us an advantage.”

“All very true, your Majesty,” agreed the Grand High Admiral of the Imperial Fleet, at least for the moment, until he took his new assignment as the head of the new Battle Fleet.  “But new tech takes time to integrate, and it doesn’t always work as advertised, at least not at first.  And we still have hyper VI ships coming off the docks.  Even our hyper VIIs won’t have the same capabilities as their ships.”

“So what about the wormholes?” asked Sean, looking at the faces at the table one by one.

“We don’t have enough of them to make that much of a difference, yet,” said Lady Hannah, the Minister of War.

Sean looked at her intently.  Lady Hannah had come up through the ranks in the Imperial Marines, unwilling to use her social rank to get ahead.  She had retired as a Lt. General before getting into politics, and from there to the Cabinet.  As such she was much respected by the military.

“Eventually, we will have enough of them to really use them to their advantages.  Right now they give us some advantages with long term com, and moving personnel from one place to another.”

“And what about the Stealth/Attack ships?”

“Those are working marvelously with their wormhole heat sinks and com,” said the Minister of War.  “But again, we just don’t have enough of them.  There are a hundred programs demanding wormholes, and we don’t have enough for all of them.”

“Any thoughts, Mishori,?” asked the Emperor of Grand Marshal Mishori Yamakuri, the Army Chief of Staff.

“There’s nothing much we can do, your Majesty, except reinforce those systems most likely to be attacked,” said the small head of the Imperial Army.  “Unfortunately, until the Fleet gets us to where we can launch invasions, we are pretty much helpless to do anything else.”

“And that won’t come for some years, if ever,” said Lenkowski, frowning over at his Army counterpart.

“Not meaning any disrespect,” said the Grand Marshal, bowing to the CNO.  “But it is a fact we will be fighting a defensive battle for quite some time.”

“I want to hit them on the planets they’ve already taken,” said Sean, turning all the attention in the room back to himself.  “The people on Sestius told me that they are not as good of ground warriors as we are.  So that is where we need to hit them.”

“The problem, your Majesty,” said Lenkowski, looking at the others for confirmation, “is getting troops onto those planets.  Any ships we tried to send into an occupied system would be destroyed before they could deliver the troops to the planet.  And they, meaning the ships, would never get away.”

Sean sat there for a moment, thinking, holding a hand up to let the others know he was not to be disturbed.  A smile crossed his face.  “Wormholes,” he said.

“But we don’t have wormholes on those planets,” said Yamakuri, shaking his head.

“Then we need to get them there,” said Sean, his smile growing wider.  “And I think I know how we can do it.”

*     *     *

“Attention,” yelled the Sergeant Major as the commanding officer entered the room.

Christ, thought Brigadier General Walther Jodel, The Preacher.  Never thought I would enter a staff meeting again.  And as a friggen general.  Preacher looked over the faces of the men looking back at him while they stood at attention.  The stances of the soldiers were not the best he had ever seen, but he didn’t expect such with men like these.  They were Rangers, just like himself, the elite of the elite, and not really into playing the kind of games the regular Army thrived on.

“At ease,” he said, walking toward the empty chair at the head of the table.  “Take your seats if you please, gentlemen.”

Preacher plopped back into his chair and again studied the faces around the table looking at him.  There was a full colonel, four light colonels, five majors and eighteen captains studying him, as well as the senior NCOs of the brigade and all the battalions.  The NCOs had the weathered faces of veterans, but to his eyes all of the officers looked like children, even though he knew most were well over thirty.

“May I say, sir,” said one of the light colonels, looking Preacher in the eyes, “how honored we are to be under the command of a legend.”

“That’s very flattering, Colonel Narovicki,” said Preacher, his implant tagging the men in his vision.  “Unfortunately, that kind of thinking can get you and your men killed.  I’m just a man, another officer in this Army.  I am enhanced in exactly the same way as the rest of you, which does not make me a God.”

“It’s just that we have all heard the stories, sir,” said Lt. Colonel Hattaway.  There were nodding heads all around the table.

“Well, again, forget the stories.  I’m not that young Ranger any more.  The young men under your command will be making new legends, and I will tell you how to use them.

“I have talked with the new Emperor, on the way back from Sestius,” said Preacher, trying to ignore the hero worship and get them on track.  “We talked about the way me and my young apprentice, and the civilians known as Freeholders, put a hurting on the Cacas in that jungle.  He wants to put us to use doing the same thing on other worlds.  Tomorrow I will inspect your units in battalion formations.  The Sergeant Major will give you the schedule.”

Preacher looked around the room and could see a bunch of unasked questions.  He looked at Narovicki, who looked like he was about to bust with his withheld question.  “Yes, Colonel?”

“How many of the Cacas did you get sir?” asked the light colonel.  All the faces looked at him expectantly.

“I got a couple,” said Preacher with a smile.  “The young man I was with got about twenty of the bastards.  It was unbelievable.  He had to be the best I’ve ever seen.”

“What was he, sir?” asked Hattaway.  “Ranger, Naval Commando or Marine Recon?”

“He was fucking militia, if you could believe that,” said Preacher, thinking back on the young man he had met in the jungles of Sestius.  “He had some experience as a hunter, but that was about it.”

“Where is he now, sir?” asked Narovicki.

“He’s in Regular Basic, if you can believe that,” said Preacher.  “He wants to become one of us, and I think we’ll be very lucky if he makes it through training.  Otherwise, the regular infantry will get that killer.”  Just keep your shit together, Cornelius, he thought, picturing the intense young man in his mind.  Just keep it together, and nothing will stop you.

Chapter One

A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.  Napoleon Bonaparte.

PLANET RUBY, SUPERSYSTEM, MAY 20TH-JULY 20th, 1000.

“One, two, three, four,” sang the men and women as they ran under the desert sun.  That globe had just risen above the horizon an hour ago, and it was still cold as shit outside.  Ruby was already a cold world, the fourth planet out from a K class star that was the fourth body out from the central black hole.  And winter was coming.

Sure beats the heat, thought Private First Class Cornelius Walborski, running at the front of his squad of trainees.  The gravity was a bit lighter than Sestius as well, though sometimes it was hard to tell with all the gear they were loaded down with.

Camp Determination was over eight hundred thousand square kilometers of military reservation, most of it desert, but also with substantial grasslands and some forest.  No real jungles, but there was another planet in the system for that kind of training.  Determination was a place to train soldiers in the basic military skills they would need to build on, and to toughen them.  And toughen them it did.  In his two weeks here Cornelius had put on five pounds of muscle, and while still not the strongest man or woman in the platoon, he definitely was the most determined.

The Drill Sergeant looked back at the platoon, his critical eye going over each man and coming to a rest on Walborski.  You’re not going to break me, you SOB, thought the PFC, glancing back at his own squad to make sure that they were all keeping up.  He was already somewhat of a celebrity with the Drill Sergeants, having been in more combat than most of them, and being a recipient of the Imperial Medal of Heroism for his part in the resistance on Sestius.  Even if I did abandon my unit, he thought, before falling in with Preacher and becoming a one man wrecking crew in the jungle.  Having a pregnant wife to take care of made the desertion an easy decision.  Unfortunately she died, right after giving the farmer a son.  Now there was no one alive who knew about his indiscretion except for Preacher, and he wasn’t talking.

“Bergstroms’s started to fall behind again, Walborski,” said the man just behind the PFC.

“Christ,” cursed Cornelius under his breath, jumping out of line and trotting to the back of his squad rank.  Sure enough, Michelle Bergstrom was again struggling.  She was the smallest person in the platoon, and was always having trouble carrying her weight, much less the equipment they piled her down with.  When they got to powered armor training her lack of strength would not make that much difference.  Here, it was killing her.

“Come on, Bergstrom,” said Walborski, putting the woman’s arm over his shoulder and helping her along.  “You can make it.”

“I can’t,” complained the woman.  “I’m going to fall out.”

“The hell you are,” yelled Cornelius, pulling her along.  “You volunteered for this shit, and you are going to make it through.”  Walborski looked ahead at the rest of the platoon that was opening the distance.  They need people, he thought, keeping his own breathing under control as he moved the puffing woman along. They’re going to have to start a draft going soon, but right now the volunteers are flooding the training facilities.  But even with a draft they’re going to need a lot of people.  Millions.  Hundreds of millions.

What to Walborski had been an easy run was now hell, him pulling another trainee along with him.  He wondered when the run would be over.  Only the Drill Sergeants knew for sure.  They called the shots here, not a PFC, no matter his record.   He could feel the sweat pouring down his face now, despite the cool temperature.  We’re going to make it, he thought.  Just to the next curve in the road.  “We’re going to make it, recruit.  You hear me?”

The woman nodded her head and kept going.  “Just to the next curve in the road,” said Cornelius, shaking his head to fling the sweat out of his eyes.  They reached that curve and kept going.  “Just one more, Michelle.  Come on.  You can make it just one more.”

Before they got to that next curve the platoon stopped and people started dropping off to the side of the road.  Some fell right on their butts, others walked for a moment to cool down.  They were still ten kilometers from the barracks, so Cornelius was sure the morning ordeal was not over yet.  After a few minute rest Drill Sergeant Martinez called everyone back into the ranks.

“Forward, march,” yelled the Drill Sergeant, and the platoon started to walk forward at a quick pace.  “And I don’t want to see any of you pussies falling out.  This ain’t no fun run or hike.”

Cornelius kept waiting for the command to double time.  He knew he could handle it, but he wasn’t so sure of Bergstrom.  Nor was he sure that he could continue to carry her along.  It might just be best to let her wash out, he thought, then shook his head at that notion.  His job as squad leader was to look after his people.  If he couldn’t do it then they would put someone else in the position.  Not something he wanted.

“Column left, march,” ordered the Drill Sergeant as they came up on a dirt path leading off the road.  There were vehicle tracks all through the dirt, showing that this way had already seen much use.  The platoon marched for about two kilometers and around a hill side until the red flag with black square in the center as visible.

All right, thought Walborski as he recognized where they were.  Maybe not the exact location, but the range flag was something that he was familiar with from his time in the militia.

“Today we’re going to familiarize you trainees with the basic infantry rifle,” said the Range Sergeant as he walked up to the column of troops.  “Have any of you ever fired a military class mag rifle before?”

Cornelius raised his hand, along with a couple of others that he knew had taken some Military Scout training in secondary school.  Cornelius stared as Drill Sergeant Martinez whispered something in the Range Sergeant’s ear.  The man’s eyes grew wide as he looked at Walborski, then he nodded his head and waved some more range personnel forward.

“You will follow the instructions of the range NCOs to the letter,” said the Range Sergeant.  “First squad, move to the firing line and receive your weapons.”

Cornelius moved up with his squad, taking the position to the far right.  Everyone here had already fired the weapons in the simulation chambers, so all knew the drill.  But for everyone else in his squad firing a real military class weapon was a first.  Walborski took the rifle that a Corporal handed to him, making sure to keep the weapon pointed down range.

“Everyone more to the firing line and assume the prone position.”

Cornelius did as ordered and was soon laying down with the rifle into his shoulder.

“Load a magazine into your rifle and set the acceleration for one thousand MPS.”

Cornelius loaded and set the weapon with an expert’s hand, looking over to see that Bergstrom had performed the maneuver to satisfaction, while some of the others were having trouble seating their magazines or setting their rifles.  The range personnel ran from position to position helping the trainees that needed it while making copious references to the intelligence or ancestry of the people in question.  The Range Sergeant took a quick look at Cornelius’ weapon and nodded.

“On single shot, take the targets that appear under fire.  The range is now hot.”

Several mag rifles fired, sending their supersonic rounds downrange.  Unfortunately, there were no targets yet making an appearance, and those who fired impulsively were again castigated by the range personnel.  Cornelius waited patiently, rifle to his shoulder, eye to the iron sight.  A man sized target rose two hundred meters away and Walborski squeezed his trigger, sending the seven millimeter round into the center of its head.  The target fell and another rose, this one a bit to the side at three hundred meters.  He sent another round into the head, the target fell, and another rose, this time much closer.

Cornelius glanced to the side and saw that Bennett was also hitting every target, if not in the head, at least at center mass.  That could not be said for everyone in the squad.  Walborski knew that the real weapons they would carry into battle would be much more accurate, and have various aiming and stabilizing systems that would make them much deadlier.  But the idea was to make the soldiers as accurate as possible without aids.

Cornelius kept knocking them down, and the Range Sergeant walked by and looked down at the PFC.  “You’re supposed to be aiming center mass, trainee,” said the Sergeant.

“I’m making sure they’re dead, Sergeant,” said Cornelius.  The NCO shook his head and walked away.

The next target to pop up was at five hundred meters.  He knocked it down in an instant.  Targets kept coming up, the ranges kept increasing, until Cornelius was hitting them through the head at twelve hundred meters.

Then it was the turn of the other squads, as Cornelius and his squad field stripped and assembled their weapons after learning these would be theirs for the rest of Basic.  The Range Sergeant approached Walborski after the third squad finished shooting.

“You’ve a hell of an eye, Walborski,” said the Sergeant, smiling.  “And I know from your record that you wouldn’t flinch if you had to take out an enemy.  Have you ever thought of going to sniper school?”

“I want to be a Ranger, Sergeant,” said Cornelius, seeing the suggestion as something that might sidetrack him.

“The Rangers need snipers too,” said the Sergeant, nodding.  “And if you get through Ranger school, sniper school will be a snap.”

“Anything that lets me kill Cacas,” said Cornelius, staring into space.

“You scare the hell out of me, son,” said the Range Sergeant, looking down at his feet, then back up at Cornelius.  “And with the shit coming down the pike, that’s a good thing.  We’re gonna need scary bastards for what’s coming.”

Cornelius reached up and grabbed the chain than hung around his neck under his shirt.  His fingers played with the wedding ring on the chain.  It had been his.  Katlyn’s had disappeared with her body.  It was the only reminder he had of her, beside their child.  And it reminded him of why he hated the aliens, and why it was so important to make them suffer for what they had done.

Air transport took them back to the barracks, where they ate lunch and then did some more time on the simulators.  Cornelius liked jacking into the machines, playing the part of an infantryman in combat.  The machines sped them through twenty hours of real time simulation in an hour, then switched over to hand to hand for another hour.  After that was an hour of real hand to hand, training the muscles to do what the mind had already mastered.

No one wanted to spar with Walborski, so again he found himself sparring with the instructor.  The man handled the trainee easily, though Cornelius did get in a few licks from sheer aggressiveness.  He welcomed the bruises he picked up, knowing that sparring with an expert would make him that much better at what he wanted to get better at, killing Cacas.

Before dinner came weight training, after the next in the series of booster nanite shots that were helping to put muscle on all the trainees.  Cornelius found himself working out with Private Markeith, the strongest man in the platoon.  Cornelius couldn’t do the number of reps that the bigger man performed, but he could handle the same amount of weight for fewer repetitions.

After dinner it was more training, including another run and some calisthenics.  When it was time for lights out all of the trainees fell into their racks and passed out from exhaustion.  All except Walborski, who, like most nights, was still of a restless state of mind despite the physical fatigue.  Katlyn was still on his mind, his childhood sweetheart and the love of his life, the mother of his son.  Killed by the Cacas on Sestius, and still his only reason for living.  His only purpose, revenge.

That was the last thought on his mind as he fell into a deep sleep.  He had a few dreams, mostly from the implanted routines the Army used to train their minds even while asleep.  He was field stripping a heavy beam weapon when Drill Sergeant Martinez strode into the barracks and knocked the two cans together that roused the soldiers from bed.  Cornelius jumped out of his rack ready to face a new day, one more getting him closer to his goal.

*     *     *

A month into training came their first introduction to powered armor.  Cornelius had worn the militia version on Sestius, a sorry form of protection thirty years behind what the Army wore.  Externally the Mark XII light combat armor was not the newest thing.  It was last decade’s armor, but with nano-upgrades it was internally as state of the art as any suit in service.

Drill Sergeant Martinez came striding out onto the parade ground wearing the very same armor they were being introduced to.  He moved easily, like a man who was wearing a normal nanoweave uniform, and not fifty kilos of armor and servos.

“Most of you will be wearing this form of armor in the near future,” said the Drill Sergeant, looking over at the standing trainees.  “Those of you going on to combat arms training will also be introduced to the other armors, the medium and heavy suits.  But for those who are assigned to light infantry units, as well as most supporting roles, this will be the armor you wear.  Those of you unfortunate enough to become REMFs may be allowed to work most days sans armor.  It would behoove you to make sure that you are up on your skills with this armor.  There is no telling when an enemy may force you to don your suits and go into combat.  Against our current foe you are very likely to find yourself in a battle situation.  Even if you are assigned to a position here in the Supersystem.  Even if you are assigned to a position on Jewel.”

The Drill Sergeant jumped into the air, going high enough to dunk a basketball if a net had been near.  He landed and turned back to the trainees. “Without armor, in modern combat you are dead irradiated meat.  This armor will give you limited protection against light amp and projectile weapons, as well as battlefield radiation.  It is still a good idea to not present oneself as a target.  Limited protection means just that.  A long enough blast from a laser, or a heavy enough round travelling at a high enough velocity, and you are dead.”

“What about particle beams, Drill Sergeant?” asked one of the trainees with a raised hand.

“The best defense against a particle beam is not to get hit,” said Martinez, the mask on his suit lifting and showing his face.  “The suit will protect you against a near miss, but a direct hit by any military class particle beam will fry your ass.  Is that understood?”

“Yes, Drill Sergeant,” yelled the platoon in loud voices, as they had been trained, the hard way, to do.

“Now the suit carries its own weight as well as your own, and will allow you to pick up an additional two hundred kilograms. It is incorrect to say that it will double your strength.  If you are exceptionally strong it will not double that strength.  If you are exceptionally weak,” said Martinez, looking pointedly at Bergstrom, “it might quadruple your strength, or more.

“To me, the most amazing thing about the suit is how it enhances your senses.  Hearing range and sensitivity increases, though loud noises will be damped before they get to dangerous levels.  Vision range is increased, delving into both the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums, and you can zoom your sight as if your eyes were twenty power lenses.  When you are in a hostile environment,” the mask came down on the helmet and sealed, “the suit will provide breathing gas.  It will also seal punctures, in its skin and in yours, and the autodoc feature will provide medical care, up to and including stasis shots.  If you are killed the suit may save your life, allowing for later resurrection.  Don’t count on that, though.  Secession of life functions is never a good thing.”

The Drill Sergeant took off in a run, moving much faster than a normal human being.  The Sergeant ran around the barracks, then jumped over a bench before coming to a stop in front of the platoon.  “Now, I want everyone to get into their suits and we will run the obstacle course.  Myself and Drill Sergeant Hazard will check you out before you are allowed to do anything with them.  So get into the suits and back into formation.  Five minutes trainees.  Fall out.”

Cornelius took off for the barracks, where the suit cubbies had been installed near their racks.  He hit the panel on the front of the cubby and the doors opened, then folded back.  Walborski looked over the suit for a moment, his critical eye not finding anything wrong.  With a nod of his head he stepped into the suit, remembering the difficulty of strapping on the militia armor that had been his only experience so far with battlefield augmentation.

The suit closed up around him like a second skin, the seams closing to form unitary armor that was difficult to penetrate.  The helmet closed around his head, all but the faceplate, which stayed up.  His implant linked with the suit and his smile widened as he noticed how much his hearing had improved.  He ordered the mask to close with a thought.  The dark room was now lit up like a spotlight had been shone into a window.  He looked at a spot on the wall and the image jumped out at him of a smudge, so sharp he could make out the fingerprint whorls.

With a yell Cornelius ran out of the barracks, faster than he had ever moved before.  He had an urge to continue out into the desert, but a glance at the two Drill Sergeants made him consider the wisdom of that.  They told us to get into formation, and when they say that shit they mean it.  So Walborski went to his position at the lead of his squad and snapped to attention.  The suit locked in place, and the PFC felt he could stand there all day, the suit supporting him.

The Drill Sergeants came around and checked their suits.  Walborksi was glad to see that Michelle Bergstrom passed inspection with ease. She’s a smart woman, he thought, watching as one of the athletes of the squad failed his once over.  Cornelius shook his head as the trooper was made to open is suit and get back in it, then close it up properly.  The man was then sent on a run around the barracks as punishment.  Many laps around the barracks.

“Should have known you’d get it right, Walborski,” said Drill Sergeant Hazard, her sharp eyes checking his suit.  “You’ve been in these before?”

“No, Drill Sergeant,” said Walborski in his best parade ground voice.  “All I’ve ever been in were piece of shit militia rigs.”

“And that’s what you were in when you killed all those Cacas?” asked the Drill Sergeant, her eyes widening.

“Yes, Drill Sergeant, until I had to leave the armor behind.”

“Platoon, right face,” yelled out Martinez.  “Forward march.  Double time, march.”

The platoon ran in a double time, covering the ground much faster than they could have without the suits. They ran for ten kilometers, reaching the obstacle course that had nearly killed them all in weeks past.   After forming up they were sent through the course by squads.

Cornelius ran flat out toward the first obstacle, leaping into the air and clearing the three meter wall.  He landed at a run at the other side, then took a dozen quick steps and jumped up the five meter wall, gripping the top and pulling himself over.  I could get used to this, he thought, trying to imagine what the medium and heavy suits would be like.

Next up was the cargo net, and again it was negotiated with the greatest of ease.  Cornelius was almost to the top when another suited figure passed him.  He recognized Bergstrom’s suit by its diminutive size.  Then she dropped down the other side and took off with the grace of one of the desert deer that lived on the reservation.  Now she’s in her element, he thought as he went over the top and let himself drop the ten meters to the ground.  The suit took up the impact, and he took off, determined to catch the woman.

It normally took a trainee a half an hour to get through the course.  Cornelius had done it in as little as twenty minutes.  The suit took him through in ten minutes.

They played with the light armor for another couple of days, then were back to training with just their own muscles.  Bergstrom was once again having problems, but training with the armor seemed to have increased her determination, and she fought through all the obstacles, as did all the rest of the platoon.

Finally the day came they had all been waiting for.  Graduation.  Everyone stood in formation on the drill field for a final time, the other platoons in the company lined up to their left, while the other companies of the battalion continued down the field.

Cornelius stood at the head of his squad, a position he had held the entire nine weeks of training.  He wondered if he would have lasted the regular twelve weeks of training, before it had been shortened so they could get more people quickly through the pipeline.  Of course I would have, he thought, looking toward the other side of the drill field where new barracks were going up, the expansion of Camp Determination proceeding at breakneck speed.

Every trainee was wearing their dress blues, each with a weapon qualification medal on their left breast.  Some had rank on their sleeves, private or PFC stripes. Only one other person had another medal, and Cornelius looked with pride on the Imperial Medal of Heroism he wore around his neck.  And much of that pride was that he had been cut no slack due to having that medal.  He had wanted to leave it in its box for this ceremony, but had been told in no uncertain terms that it was his, so he would wear it.

As he passed by the reviewing stand the General in charge of the base rendered the hand salute first, observing the protocol that went with the medal.  Every other platoon behind him had to salute first.

Normally there was a short leave that came with graduating basic.  That also had been dropped due to the contingencies of war.  Cornelius was just as happy to get on the transport to another camp across the continent, where he would undergo infantry training, and get him one step closer to his goal.

*     *     *

The Emperor sat with his head in his hands, thinking about what he had just learned from the staff officer.  Over a billion dead, he thought, looking again at the list of systems in Sector Four that had fallen.

“We’ve been able to get soldiers into most of those systems,” said Grand Marshal Mishori Yamakuri, pointing a finger at the holo map.  “The wormholes are working.”

“Yeah,” said Sean, looking at the map with a concerned expression.  “So we’re getting more young men and women into the firing line on planets the enemy has already all but taken.  But is that benefiting us?”

“We have had a favorable exchange rate so far,” said the Army Chief of Staff.  “I wish I could report some crushing victories.  Unfortunately, I would be lying.  But in a war of attrition we are accomplishing what we need to do. Their ground troops are dying, even in the places where we are fighting without control of the orbitals.”

“And what do you think we need to put on those planets?” asked Sean, running the casualty figures through his head.  “More heavy infantry?”  He thought of what he had seen of the Marine heavy infantry on Sestius.  But of course they had controlled the orbitals there.  The medium infantry on the planet had fought hard, but had still had its head handed to it, due to the fact that the enemy had air and space superiority.

“I think we need more special ops forces,” said the Army Chief of Staff.  “Rangers from my service.  Naval Commandos and Marine Recon from my sister service.”  Mishori nodded toward Grand High Admiral Sondra McCollum, the CNO.  “We need soldiers who can strike quickly and quietly, while not attracting undue attention from above.”

“So get those people where we need them,” said the Emperor, looking at both Chiefs, then over at field Marshal Betty Parker, Commandant of the Imperial Marine Corps.

“The problem, your Majesty,” said Parker, “is that those people are in limited supply.  It takes a special person to make it into special ops.  And due to the, adjustments, we make on them, they all have to be volunteers.”

“Not that we’ll have much trouble getting volunteers,” said McCollum. “The problem still lies in getting the right people.”

“So, how many do we have on hand right now?” asked Sean.

“Let’s see,” said Mishori, calling up some information on his flatcomp.  “I have seventy-six battalions, plus some reserves.  So let’s say eighty thousand Rangers.”

“We have three hundred companies of Naval Commandos,” said McCollum, looking up from her comp.  “Plus reserves. So maybe sixty thousand.”

“And thirty thousand for us,” said Parker.

“So a total of one hundred and seventy thousand,” said Sean, nodding his head.  “That seems like a lot.”

“The total manpower of the Imperial Military is well over two hundred million,” said Mishori, shaking his head.  “So it is a very low percentage, about point zero eight five percent.”

“Look,” said Sean, leaning forward.  “We’ve got shortages in everything.  Negative matter, wormholes, hulls.  But we can augment these people with some nanites and training.  So let’s get some more special ops people in the pipeline.  Without diluting the quality.  We’re going to have another three hundred million people in uniform before the year is out.  So surely you can get another two hundred and fifty thousand augmented soldiers out of that.”

“It still takes time to train them, your Majesty,” said Parker.  “I wish it didn’t, but it takes a year to train a Recon Marine.  And I’m sure as long to make Rangers and Commandos.”

Sean sat there, looking at his service chiefs in disbelief, wondering how many more billions of subjects he would lose in that year.

Chapter Two

You can't say civilization don't advance... in every war they kill you in a new way.  Will Rogers.

PLANET AZURE,  JULY 30th, 1000.

Dad is going to kill me, thought twelve year old Rebecca Goldman, looking into the blue tinted forest of Azure.  Why the hell did Benjamin have to go running off when I wasn’t looking.

The white F1 star was starting to slant to the west, and there were still six hours of the sixteen hour temperate day to go.  Rebecca looked up at the sun, glad for once that it was summer, despite the heat.  In the winter she would have only had a twelve hour day at this latitude, and a long sixteen hour night.  Not that the jungles of the class two planet, the second most dangerous of the life classifications, weren’t dangerous in the day.  They were just much more dangerous at night.

Her eyes started to hurt slightly from looking up at the star, despite her protective contacts.  Her skin was burning slightly as well, despite her dark brown skin.  That part didn’t worry her much.  At most she would get a slight sunburn from this day, and her skin nanites would heal that within hours.

“Benjamin,” she yelled out, looking into the jungle, with was writhing slightly as the plantimals moved, trying to get the most light they could reach around the canopy of the true plants.  “Where the hell are you, you idiot?”

They had Temple tonight, and mom and dad would know something was wrong if they didn’t show up before nightfall.  She checked the calendar in her implant, tempted for a moment to call for help.  She decided against the course of action, hoping she could still get the little twerp and not get into trouble for not watching him.

Why the hell did mom and dad have to get the little shit a kitten, she thought, remembering that she was actually looking for two children.  Shavu’ot was two months ago by the Galactic calendar that almost everyone used to track religious and Empire wide holidays across the huge expanse of space and time.  That same calendar was used to track official birthdays and ages, though the five hundred and ninety four day local calendar was used for planetary holidays and events.  Religious groups were allowed to use either scale as they wished, and Rebecca’s family, as Moderate Jews, followed the Galactic Calendar based on the old Earth measure.  And her parents had gotten Benjamin a kitten for the celebration.

She studied the life in front of her.  She wasn’t too worried about the plants, though there were some nasty specimens on the planet.  As long as she didn’t rub against any of the known hazardous ones she would be fine.  The plantimals were another story.  The fourth macroscopic kingdom of the planet, all possessed movement, some limited, some not.  There were carnivores, herbivores and omnivores among the strange creatures.  And of course there were the animals, some of which were truly horrible.

Rebecca steeled her courage and went over the fence into the biome beyond.  Nothing from the kingdoms of the planet were supposed to be able to make it past that barrier.  She felt the low level sonics as she passed, rattling her teeth.  Enough to discourage any animal or plantimal.  On the human side of the barrier the nanites would take over.  Anything from the plant and fungal kingdoms would be attacked as soon as it entered forbidden space.  She knew that right now she was being assaulted by the microorganisms of the planet.  Most would not find a foothold on her totally foreign cells.  The ones that did would be attacked by her own nanites.

“Benjamin,” she yelled walking slowly under the canopy of blue leafed trees.  “Benjamin, where are you.”

Some of the plantimals oriented to her voice and she stopped yelling.  None looked like carnivores this close to the human habitat.  Those were normally hunted out to keep from gathering in numbers so close, but she wasn’t willing to take any chances.  There was some rustling through the shrubbery, animals.  But were they trying to get at her, or away from her?

There was a squeal, and a plantimal of a type she hadn’t seen before hefted a struggling six legged animal up on a spiked branch.  The animal was small, less than ten kilograms, and had a smooth blue tinted skin.  It squealed again, and the plantimal moved it over a central orifice and dropped it into an ingestion chamber.

She was trying to find a path that wouldn’t take her near the carnivore when something else came along that made both the way and the danger moot.  The beast was at least four meters high at the shoulder, and must have weighed a couple of tons in the heavy gravity.  It walked up to the plantimal and started to munch on it, ignoring the spiked branches that bounced off its hard scaly hide.

Rebecca thought she had heard something.  She wasn’t sure, but she started in that direction, checking her pistol to make sure it was set where she wanted it.  Everyone on this developing world carried.  Everyone, as soon as they were considered old enough to be trusted with a weapon.  Six year old Benjamin wasn’t of age, and the most he would carry would be a sonic that was hoped to be capable of chasing any native animals away.

Rebecca moved on, through the shadows that still let in enough light from the white star to see clearly.  There were paths through the foliage, made by large herbivores that needed space to move their bulks.  And used by the large carnivores that hunted them.  Her heart was beating fast at the thought of running into one of the latter.

“Help,” yelled out a voice from deeper in the jungle.  The low hum of a sonic sounded as well, and then the deep roar of something that was not enjoying the touch of sound.

“Benjamin,” yelled Rebecca, breaking into a run through the foliage, trusting in luck to not rub against anything that might hurt her.  Why did I come out here, she thought, her eyes darting in all directions as she ran.  I should have called Rescue in on this one.  With that thought she sent a message through her link.  Punishment was the last thing on her mind now.  Survival was.

The yells were clearer now, along with more roars than could be accounted for by only one  creature.  The sound of the sonic was continuous, something really beyond the capability of the small device, which was sure to overload any moment.

Rebecca took in the scene in the small clearing as soon as she entered.  There were a half dozen hell hounds in the clearing, their lean three meter long bodies moving around a tree on the other side.  Muscles moved smoothly under their blue tinted skins, and their muzzles were retracted, showing an alarming array of sharp teeth.  One of them yipped and moved away, the victim of the sonic.  As it moved Rebecca saw her younger brother sheltering in the bowel of the tree, sonic on his right wrist swinging around, while his left arm held a small ginger kitten tightly.  She could see the tears rolling down the face of her little brother, and all anger was gone for the moment.

Rebecca had never shot a living thing in her life.  Her dad had made sure she had spent some time on the range, until she was proficient with the mag pistol.  Now she took aim at the closest of the hell hounds and squeezed, sending the high velocity round center mass into the carnivore.  The beast yipped as the round tore through its chest, then fell bonelessly to the ground.  She switched aim to another and squeezed, putting a round into its hind quarters.  Not a kill, but the wounded beast moved back.  She shifted her feet and fired at another, the round cracking by the head of the beast in a clean miss.

The pack reoriented on her, ignoring the small morsel they had trapped under the tree.  It was good that they were ignoring her brother, not so good that they were coming at her.  She knew there was no way she could take out the four beasts before they tore her apart.  There were no trees in sight that looked climbable, plus the beasts were good climbers themselves.  She said a quick prayer and shot down one of the beasts, then closed her eyes as the last three headed for her, blood in their eyes.

The crack of rounds sounded through the clearing, and Rebecca looked up to see a trio of armored humans falling from the sky.  Rescue had arrived, and a few shots chased the remaining hell hounds back into the jungle.  Moments later she and her brother, kitten in hand, were being lifted up to the large aircar with the Rescue logo on it.

*     *     *

“What in the hell were you thinking, little girl?” asked Joseph Goldman, looking down on his daughter.

Rebecca hated being called little girl, a term her dad was careful not to use on her, unless he was very angry.

“Well, answer me.”

“I messed up,” she said, trying to keep the tears out of her eyes.  “I wasn’t watching, and the little shit got away from me.”

“Don’t call your little brother that name,” yelled her mom, Sarah.  “How in the hell did that kitten get out of our yard anyway?  I thought the chip was supposed to prevent that.”

“It wasn’t chipped,” said Joseph, a pained look on his face.

“You gave your child an animal that wasn’t chipped?” asked Sarah in her most frigid tone.

“I assumed it was,” said Joseph, looking down.  “It will be, now.”

Rebecca smiled inwardly.  The pressure was off of her, for the moment, though her dad wouldn’t forget, and she would hear about it again.  That dad had gotten a kitten without the chip that kept domesticated animals and pets from wandering off of peoples’ property, and into the dangerous jungle, put him in the hot seat with her mom.

Finally the parents settled the argument, for the moment.  It was time for dinner, and her mom was not about to let the children go hungry just to continue a fight.  As Moderate Jews they didn’t keep a Kosher table, though her mom tried to keep it as close as possible.  There was corned beef, potatoes and a salad, and from the way he ate it was as if the little shit hadn’t been scared half to death just hours before.

The next day was school, and Rebecca thought she would spend some time playing with her VR console before bedtime.  She really didn’t like school.  She liked learning, especially about her home world, the planet that would be her own at least until she reached adulthood.  She just didn’t like the socializing, the main purpose behind still holding classroom instruction.

She had just plugged into the VR and was in a world of her own when she was booted out, and she turned toward her door to see her dad standing there.

“I am still angry that you let your brother get out of your sight,” said the man in a soft voice.  “I take some responsibility for it.   Shouldn’t have given him an unchipped cat like I did.  Still, you have some fault.”

“And I am very sorry,” said Rebecca.  Next time I’ll lock him in his room.

“I know you are, honey.  And I also want to tell you how proud I am of you.  You should have called Rescue as soon as you knew where he had gone.  But if you hadn’t have followed him when you did he would be resting in the bellies of those hell hounds.”

And they would have gotten belly aches from his proteins, thought the child.  Earth life was not nutritious to Azure forms.  Which wouldn’t prevent the dumb animals and plantimals from devouring any they could get their eating orifices on.

“Come here,” said her dad, holding out his arms.  She ran into them, and he held her in a tight hug.  “I don’t know what me and your mom would do if anything happened to either one of you.”

After her father left she decided to jack into the planetary net for a moment before going to sleep.  Most of the news was about the war, and almost all of it was conjecture and guesswork.  They knew the old enemy was back, and that systems had fallen in their Sector, IV.  Otherwise it was the same old propaganda about how they were not in danger and the military would protect them.  Does that include my dad, she thought, remembering that he was a member of the reserves.  He hadn’t been called up, yet, but there had been many conversations about that possibility around the dinner table.

Rebecca crawled into her comfortable bed as soon as the clock hit her bedtime.  It had been an exhausting day.  She set her wake up time in her implant, then set her reticular activating system to put her into a deep sleep.

Chapter Three

Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head.  Euripides.

PLANET RUBY, SUPERSYSTEM.  JULY 21ST-SEPTEMBER 20TH, 1000.

Camp Furious was almost indistinguishable from Determination at first look.  Same vastness of desert and grasslands, with a bit more forest.  Same barracks buildings that looked like they had been put up several centuries before, probably because they had been.  Cornelius’ curious eyes picked out some of the differences as the air transport came into the landing field.  There was a vast vehicle park to the north of the infantry training center, and to the south was some of the most chewed up landscape he had ever seen.  It reminded him of the blasted lands that populated the surface of Sestius IV when the Ca’cadasans came.

One more stop, he thought as the air bus came in for a soft landing.  He grabbed his duffle bag and followed the men and women from the forward seats out the door and into the cool air.  More than a score of air buses were on the field, men and women coming out of all of them, bags on their shoulders.  Sergeants started to yell, and the walking turned into running.  Other NCOs stood at different spots on the tarmac, holding up guidons.  Walborski glanced around until he saw one that was blinking red, meshing with the program in his implant to show him where he was supposed to be.

He ran over to the Sergeant, coming to a halt in front of that man.  “Infantry?” said the man, looking Walborski over closely, then down at the flat comp he was holding. “Walborski,” said the man as Cornelius gave him a loud acknowledgement.  The man looked at him more closely, and Cornelius knew his fame had preceded him.

Maybe when I get to Ranger school the looks will stop, thought Walborski, who wanted nothing more than to be just another one of the troops.

More people started gathering around, and the Sergeant pointed them to a line and ordered them to form up.  Walborski saw other people running to the other positions, people who would be training for armor, artillery or some of the different combat support jobs.  Walborski saw some of the other people from his old squad go to those other formations.   Some people from his platoon came over to the infantry group, and overall they were the biggest grouping.  More sergeants seemed to appear by magic, and they started motioning the newly arriving people into more formations, until a dozen platoons were formed.

Air buses took off, and more landed, and the groups grew.  This happened several more times, until what looked like a battalion was formed up by the infantry guidon.

When everyone was formed up to the Drills Sergeants’ satisfaction they started to march, every man and woman with their duffle bags on their shoulders.  When they walked through the gate to the landing field they executed a column left, then march on for a half kilometer, which Cornelius figured was what it took to get the entire battalion out of the gate and onto the road heading toward the barracks.

“Double time,” yelled the Senior Drill Sergeant, a tough looking man by the name of Master Sergeant Francois, identified on Cornelius’s implant, who walked at the head of the line. The man turned slightly as he called out the order, and Cornelius was thrilled to see the Ranger tab on the NCOs shirt sleeve.

The run was almost fifteen kilometers, and many of the soldiers were huffing and puffing by the end, most holding their duffles by the handles and dragging them along.  Cornelius was breathing hard, but was by no means out of breath.  And he balanced his duffle on his shoulder still.  Master Sergeant Francois looked back at Cornelius with an expression of approval, but didn’t say a word.

Cornelius’ platoon continued straight ahead, followed by three more platoons, while the other companies turned off to head for different barracks.  With a command the company slowed from double time and walked the last hundred meters to the small drill field in front of a quartet of barracks buildings and a headquarters’.  At the proper spot they were ordered to stop, then to execute a right face.

“Drop to pushup position,” yelled out a Sergeant First Class who Walborski’s link identified as Fukojima.  “Now give me a hundred, troops.”

Cornelius got down into position and started executing pushups to the count of the Company Senior Drill Sergeant.  Men and women were puffing away, some groaning.   A man to Cornelius’ left started to vomit on the ground, then fell from the pushup position.

“What are you doing puking on my drill field,” yelled a short woman with first lieutenant bars on her collar.  “Get your ass up and run around the field until you’re told to stop.”

The man stammered and choked, but struggled to his feet and started jogging around the field, while the rest of the soldiers continued to do pushups.  By eighty over half the platoon had stopped doing the pushups, most unable to push themselves up one more time.  By ninety only a half dozen men and one woman were still pushing.  By one hundred it was Cornelius and three other men.  Everyone was ordered back to their feet, and the running man was ordered back into the ranks.

The barracks were duplicates of the ones at Camp Determination, same racks, same wall lockers.  There were cubbies by each rack that were locked, and Cornelius was sure there were suits of light combat armor in those lockers.  A bed flashed red and Walborski headed for it, wondering at the efficiency of the whole process.

“Get your shit stowed away like they showed you in basic, then fall back out,” yelled a Staff Sergeant that the link identified as Ferguson, who was obviously in charge of this platoon.  “Five minutes.”

Cornelius needed three and a half to put up his clothing, then ran outside, pleased that he was the number two soldier out the door.  Others ran out, most of them within the time limit, some over.  The latecomers were sent on running missions around the drill field, while the rest lined up in front of the headquarters building and went through the time honored military tradition of hurry up and wait.

There were new uniforms issued, these infantry skinsuits much different from their basic issue, as well as other gear.  Cornelius was one of the first through, but then had to wait outside till the rest of the platoon was finished.  Then it was back to the barracks and putting up the gear, followed by an inspection.  Cornelius had some gigs, as did everyone else, and more pushups were doled out.  Finally it was over, and the soldiers were dismissed to get cleaned up and to bed.

“I thought we were through with this chicken shit,” said one of the trainees, a dark skinned man whose nametag said Abdulla.

“This is still training, trainee,” said a woman named Nguyen, who looked like she could take on any man in the barracks and win without breaking a sweat.  “They get to heap the chicken shit on you as deep as they want until you graduate and get to your assignment.  And then those people get to screw you.”

“Lights out in five minutes,” yelled Drill Sergeant Ferguson, striding into the large common room.  “When the lights go out there will be no talking until wakeup. You’re going to need your energy, troops.  Sunup comes early, and you’ll be up to see it.”

The Staff Sergeant walked out of the room to total silence.  The groans started as soon as he left, and Cornelius wondered if the trainers were listening in.  He decided it wasn’t worth risking, so kept his mouth shut.

His last thought that night was Katlyn, as it was most nights.  He played with the ring on its chain.  It won’t be long, honey, he thought, laying back in his rack. It won’t be long, before I’m out there killing the bastards that took you away from me.

*     *     *

Training was conducted for the most part in light combat armor, getting the men and woman used to wearing the ubiquitous suits.  There were some days when they worked in soft uniforms, at times when the armor would just get in the way, or when conditioning was desired.

In basic they had learned individual and team tactics, how to more as a unit of one, or fire and maneuver in a pair.  Now they learned to move as fire teams and squads, and more often than not Cornelius found himself as the team or squad leader.  At first the maneuvers were with simulated weapons, lasers, mag rail and particle beams in name only, firing a low intensity laser that interacted with the suits.

Cornelius did well in these maneuvers, far superior to most of his classmates.  He also learned that he was not invulnerable, laying on the ground with his suit locked up after a hit.  At times he felt the fear return that had lived with him when he had fought the Ca’cadasan landing, the terror of the retreat, the rage of the hunt through the Sestius jungle.  He learned to control those feelings, to use them to his advantage.

Then came the live fire day, after weeks on the range firing the real thing.  Cornelius waved his A team to the right, while he used the B team to provide cover fire.  He knew the situation was somewhat contrived, as the Drill Sergeants tried to keep everyone out of the line of fire.

Remote controlled mechs, using low energy lasers, opened fire on his A team, and two of the icons flashed with damage.  “Bring those bastards under fire,” he yelled through the link, and his B team obeyed, letting loose with a barrage of fire that shredded a trio of the machines.  The machines fired back, and Cornelius tried to keep his men in the battle without losing any.  One of his gunners was exposing himself, and only the fire coming at the mechs was keeping them from getting the man.  Cornelius ran over to the man, trying to stay low, then depending on his speed to get him there.  His mistake, as a wave of cold plasma washed over him and the other man, making them kills.  His suit froze in place, making him a trapped spectator.  Even his com link went down.  He was seething in rage, telling himself he wouldn’t get caught like this again.

He saw the B team start to maneuver as the remainder of the A team laid down covering fire.  The men in the B team started to dart and weave, and Cornelius could see it coming before it happened.  One of the men got up to run, and wandered into a particle beam that was sending an angry red line into the enemy.  There was a loud scream and the man’s left leg separated from his body.  He fell to the ground, and everyone’s suit stopped in place, frozen by the Drill Sergeants.

An aerial ambulance was there in minutes, and the man and his severed limb were loaded into the vehicle, while the Drill Sergeants called everyone from all the squads over to a conference. Cornelius watched the ambulance lift before he started over to the gathering, breathing a sigh of relief that the man was not killed.  Such happened every training cycle, sometimes soldiers even dying permanently, too badly damaged to be resurrected.

“This is a dangerous job,” said Drill Sergeant Ferguson, looking from face to face as the soldiers sat there with retracted helmets.  “It’s a very necessary job, especially with the war we’re in now.  You men and women are going to win or lose this war.  You may die, but don’t make it easy for the enemy.  And damned sure don’t get killed by friendly fire. That’s just adding insult to injury.

“Now, second squad, line up.  It’s your turn.”  Those soldiers started for the firing line, the range sergeants looking them over.  “Walborski, over here,” said Ferguson, waving for Cornelius as he walked toward one of the covered rest areas that the trainees weren’t allowed to use.

Walborski looked at the shelter, there to keep people out of the rain or snow, or the sun on one of the occasional hot days. And why in hell don’t they let us use them, he thought of the useless structure.

“What the hell did you think you were doing out there, Walborski?” said Ferguson as soon as they stepped under the roof.

“I was trying to get one of my people to take cover, Drill Sergeant,” said Cornelius, not needing Ferguson to explain what he meant.

The Drill Sergeant looked at him for a moment, shaking his head.  “Son, you are one of the most amazing soldiers I have ever seen.  I would take you into combat with me at this moment.  Hell, you’ve probably seen fiercer battles than I have.  I only had to face the Lasharans, and from what I hear, compared to the Cacas those skinny fuckers are children.  And you have something special in you.  You’re a natural born leader, and those are more important than a dozen killers.  But that was plain, outright stupid.”

“But, Drill Sergeant.  He was about to get shot.”

“And you really accomplished a lot.  Instead of him getting shot all by himself, you joined him in getting hit with plasma.  Luckily for the both of you it was cold plasma.  In the future it might just be a couple tens of thousands of degrees.  And then you’re in a world of hurt.  There’s no resurrecting you if you’re broiled at the cellular level.

“Another thing, son,” said Ferguson, looking straight into Walborski’s eyes.  “As squad leader you are more important than any of the soldiers under you.  You are the one who best understands the mission, and is best at controlling your squad’s fire and maneuver.  You try  keep your people alive, but not at the sacrifice of your life, understood.”

Cornelius nodded his head.  He could understand what the Drill Sergeant was saying.  He was the brain, the squad the body.  They could go on without him, but with a lesser brain.

“And if you weren’t frozen from being hit you might have kept your squad member from being injured.”  The Staff Sergeant looked away for a moment, then back at Walborski.  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to demote you to team leader.  Chesters will move up to squad leader, and you’ll take his team.”

Walborski stared at the Sergeant for a moment.  He wanted to protest, to tell the Drill Sergeant it wasn’t fair.  But life isn’t fair, he thought, remembering all he had lost on Sestius.  “I understand, Drill Sergeant,” he said.

“You’ll be an officer one day, Walborski.  And may God have mercy on your soul when that happens.  But learn your lessons here, because they become a lot more expensive out in the real world.”

*     *     *

Medium armor was a different animal altogether.  They could actually fly in the armor, at least to a limited extent.  Cornelius looked over the ground from the height of twenty meters, cruising at the head of his team as they moved over the harsh terrain that had been torn up by countless artillery barrages.

“Down,” came the order over the platoon net, and Cornelius’ HUD arrow shifted to the right, where another team was coming under fire.  He cut his grabbers with a thought and fell toward the ground.  The units cut back in when he was five meters up, slowing him enough for a landing the suit could take up on its servo powered legs.  He found cover immediately, jumping down into the hole and checking on the rest of his team on the HUD.

“Dammit,” he cursed, as he saw that one of his team was more than fifty meters to the side.  “Gonzalez,” he whispered over the com.  “Get your sorry ass over here.  And for God’s sake stay low.”

He picked up the red icons of advancing enemy on the HUD, the OPFOR coming out to play.  With another thought he launched one of his dozen drones from the top of his backpack and sent it into the air.  The view came in immediately, and he could see the troopers in medium suits coming his way, their cammo fields making them damned difficult to see.  In fact, if he wasn’t expecting them he might not have seen them at all.

Cornelius sent the signals to the rest of his team, then signalled up the line to the squad leader.  That should still be my position, he thought with a flash of anger, then got back to business.  The only way he was going to get the job back would be to prove himself a superior team leader.

The drone went off the link, knocked out by the enemy.  Cornelius thought for a second about launching another, then decided against it, sure it would give his position away.  He had a pretty good idea where the enemy was coming from, and he planned his attack, then kicked it up to the squad leader.  Approval came down rapidly, the squad leader really afraid to overrule the one man in the squad who had seen actual combat.

“Now,” whispered Walborski into the com, at the same time raising his suit on grabbers and bringing his rifle to his shoulder.

There was an entire squad of medium infantry approaching, and they were also ready for action.  Still, all of Cornelius’ troopers got off a first shot.  Mag rifles sent out subcaliber rounds that hit enemy armor and registered a kill, as if they had been full velocity regular sized projectiles.  The grenade launcher sent a stream of microgrenades flashing over three of the enemy, while the particle beam gunner took out another three with a sweep of his underpowered weapon.

After counting to three the team dropped back, except for the one rifleman who had been declared a kill.  Ten of the eleven OPFOR soldiers had been splashed.  And the HUD showed the lone survivor making his way off the zone.

I love this armor, thought Walborski as he ran through a quick after action diagnostic.  It had twice the strength of the light suit, twice the sensor suite, and three times the protection, with a built in electromag field that was both protection and camouflage.   He knew it had some flaws, one being that it put out a lot of heat and electromagnetic bleed.  It was not really a stealth platform, though it was enough of one to protect an individual soldier from a few enemies, at times.

“Move out,” came the command over the squad link.  “And stay low.  No flying.”

Cornelius sent his acknowledgement through the link, disappointed in one respect, as he enjoyed flying the suits.  But being up in the air after contact was just the way to become an easy target.  Now it was time for the grunt work for which the soldiers were named.

At two more points during the maneuver Cornelius launched drones.  As team leader he was the only one carrying them.  Both times they gave him a good look at what was ahead before they were shot down.  The last time the view was clear, but he did not like the look of the chewed up ground and maneuvered his men to the side.

“What are you doing, Walborski?” asked the squad leader.

Cornelius sent his reasoning over the link and got approval, then an override from above that told him to go through that ground.  He shook his head as he sent his acknowledgement, pretty sure he knew what was happening.  The OPFOR had set up an ambush, and the Drill Sergeants wanted them to set it off and see how they did.  Well, we’ll do it up right, he thought, arraying his team as best as he could.  He knew the OPFOR were trained soldiers, and the trainees really weren’t expected to beat them, so any victories they did get were like money in the bank as far as respect from the sergeants was concerned.

The ambush went off as expected.  The remaining three men in Walborski’s team went down without a shot, while he used his grabbers to rocket ahead while he shot down three of the OPFOR.  He was still shot down, but with the satisfaction that he had proven himself against trained medium infantry.

That night he had a dream about Katlyn.  Again he was in the jungle.  Again she had been shot down by the Cacas, and he had killed those who had done it, then left her body where it lay to go hunting through that jungle.  And again her body was gone when he returned to say goodbye.  And then she was there, standing in the woods, pointing an accusing finger at him.  He woke up in a cold sweat.  She’s dead, he thought, lying there in his rack, shivering.  She had to be dead.  He remembered the feel of her lifeless body, the glazed look in her eyes.  Of course she was dead, and the predators of the jungle had taken her.  Or had they?  Now he wasn’t so sure.  And there’s nothing I can do about it now, he thought, turning back over and trying to get back to sleep.

*     *     *

“You sure this is the kind of man you want in your school?” asked Drill Sergeant Ferguson, looking at the vid of the PFC waking up from his sleep to stare into space, sweat on his face.  “The boy has some problems.”

“But you’re willing to put him in the infantry,” said the Master Sergeant that sat next to him.

“Hell yeah,” said Ferguson, nodding.  “The boy’s a killer.  And that’s what we need at this point in our history.  Killers.  And he is also a born leader.”

“That’s not what his evaluation in the Militia said.”  The Master Sergeant looked at a flat comp screen that had Walborski’s face on it.  “They called him a slacker.”

“He might have been, at that time,” said Ferguson.  “And obviously you’re still interested in him.”

“I have more faith in the evaluation of the Preacher than I do any puke ass militia officer,” said the Master Sergeant.  “Plus, the Emperor himself is interested in the career of this boy.  So I guess the next question is, how are you going to evaluate him?”

“We still have another five weeks,” said Ferguson, looking back at the screen that showed the now sleeping trooper.

“And?”

“And in another five weeks he will most likely be our honor graduate,” said Ferguson.  “And then he can do anything damn thing he wants, as long as it involves killing Cacas.”

“And I think we can guarantee him that,” said the Master Sergeant with a smile.  “We’re going to make him into a hunter, and make those big fuckers fear the night.  Especially the ones that he can’t sleep through.”

*     *     *

Heavy armor really upped the game.  Cornelius looked at the suit he was going to wear for the week’s training in awe.  It was over a ton of armor, servos and electronics, a deadly weapon even without the attachments or carried guns of the infantry trooper.  He ran a hand over the armor, thinking of all the mayhem he could cause wearing the behemoth.

“I bet nothing can get through this,” said one of the trainees in his squad.

“There’s nothing that’s invulnerable,” said Walborski, looking away from the armor and at the man.  He recalled seeing the Marine heavy armor suits on Sestius that had been ripped open by enemy weapon’s fire.  They were much better than the crap militia suit he had been wearing.  They were also bigger targets, with all the liabilities that entailed.

“PFC Walborski is correct,” said an amplified voice, and one of the three meter tall suits came stomping onto the field.  “These suits give the infantryman unparalleled destructive power, and unprecedented defensive capabilities.  And if you get too cocky while in one you can take advantage of its large capacity to hold your smoking meat.”  The head of the suit rotated until the faceplate was looking at Cornelius.  “Did you see these suits in action on Sestius?”

“Hell, he saw everything else,” muttered one of the other trainees, to the laughter of his fellows.

“There was a Marine battalion stationed on the planet,” said Cornelius, looking back at the suit he had been examining.  “Their suits were much like these.  I didn’t really see any in action, but I did see some suits lying around with holes burned through them.  And yes, Drill Sergeant, there was smoking meat inside.”

“If you learn how to employ these suits well they will take you through most situations,” said the Drill Sergeant, walking up to one of the empty suits and lifting it into the air.  “But they definitely don’t make you invulnerable.”

The next several hours were spent with the Drill Sergeant showing the troops how to use the suit.  Ferguson jumped in the suit, clearing a twenty meter high barrier.  He ran the suit at a hundred kilometers and hour, then flew it at two hundred.  He low crawled it, using the powerful suit to dig quickly under a wall.  Cornelius thought the camouflage function was the coolest thing.  The suit changed colors, blending into its surroundings.  Then the instructor took it to the next level, and the chameleon function made it truly invisible.

“The suits will maintain power for up to six days,” said the Drill Sergeant, raising his visor with a thought so he could look at the trainees face to face.  “Unfortunately, in a combat situation, you can use up your entire charge of power in less than a day.  In intense combat six hours is not unheard of.  You have to be careful with your energy level.  The suit will warn you if it is about to run out.  That warning is worth shit if you happen to be in the middle of combat and all your shields are on the verge of failure.”

Next came the weapons demonstration, as the Platoon Sergeant first let loose with the built in weaponry, then the kind of arms a heavy infantry trooper would carry.  The mag pistols built into both forearms sent off a projectile that was on the same velocity level as a heavy sniper rifle carried by light infantry.  On auto fire they sent out hundreds of rounds in seconds, then came to a stop as they exhausted their ammo stores.  The lasers were also of the same power level as the rifles carried by medium infantry.  The suit hurled grenades from over the shoulder launchers, one at a time or a score in a second, and the miniature blasts sounded like the firecrackers children played with, only the same volume at five hundred meters distance that the child’s toy produced at ten.

The Drill Sergeant took apart a life sized dummy with his hands, then fought a human sized robot and punched it into scrap.  What Cornelius liked the most were the monomolecular blades that sprang from the forearms of the suit.  Each forearm deployed one fifty centimeter long blade, which the instructor proceeded to thrust and slice through various objects.  Cornelius closed his eyes for a moment and visualized himself doing that to an armored Caca, his blade pushing through the armor to skewer the creature.  Then swinging another blade into the throat of an oncoming Caca, trying desperately to save his comrade and only accomplishing his own death.

“Wake up, trainee,” yelled the Drill Sergeant, and Cornelius opened his eyes to see the huge suit towering over him.

Walborski jumped to his feet, knowing what was coming.  “Drop and give me a hundred, trainee,” yelled the Drill Sergeant, who turned and walked away, then restarted his lecture.

Cornelius went through the pushups, still listening to the Drill Sergeant telling the other troops the secrets of the armor.  As soon as he finished the push ups he jumped back to his feet, then sat back with the other troops, aware of the frowns of the other instructors as they watched him.  A hundred is just too easy, he thought, fighting to keep the smile off his face.  He looked down at his bulging arms for a moment, still having a hard time believing how much muscle he had put on, even on this lighter than normal gravity planet.  He had easily been the best runner in the company, and the extra bulk had not decreased his speed in the least.

“Go to the suit that is lit up in your implant and wait by it,” ordered Ferguson.  “Move like you’ve got a pair,” he roared when some of the trainees hesitated.

Cornelius was not one of those who hesitated.  He was on his feet in an instant, running to the field behind the demonstration area, where over two hundred of the large suits were standing.  One of the suits was covered in blinking light on the trainee’s implant, and he headed for that unit.  The armor normally had to be fitted to each wearer, within limits.  The training suits were built to a dozen standard sizes, and would adjust to a wearer that was in that size range.

“Walborski,” said the Drill Sergeant walking up.  “Stay alert, because this thing can fuck you up if you don’t pay attention.”  The Drill Sergeant sent out a cast on his link, meshing with Walborski’s and giving him control of the suit.  “You will control the suit through your implant and the muscle actuators of the armor.  There is no hard port in this suit.  If you are issued a suit for deployment you will have a jack to physically link you.  Now open her up and get in.”

“Yes, Drill Sergeant,” yelled Cornelius as he sent out the command.  Where they hadn’t existed before there were now seams, and the suit opened up, splitting into two halves. The back half rotated away, the bottoms of the boots remaining in one piece and accepting his feet as he stepped into it.  In many ways it was like mounting a medium suit, though he had to move up much higher to step onto the soles.  The suit swung shut, and he could feel the actuators touch onto the undergarment he was wearing that went along with the heavy suit.

As soon as it closed everything came online.  His hearing acuity increased and he was able to zoom in on distant objects with the visual system.  And as he took a step forward the suit moved like it was part of him, or he of it.  It moved smoothly, like it was organic, and not a construct of metal alloys and carbon fibers that he knew it to be.

“The suits are set to one quarter strength,” said the Drill Sergeant, walking from trainee to trainee.  “We want you to get a feel for them today without causing too much damage.  Now split into your squads and take the obstacle course.”

Cornelius had done this before in the light and medium suits.  It had been no sweat.  It was different with the heavy suits.  Even though they had more than enough strength to move themselves, they were still added mass, almost ten times his own.  He kept missing handholds, taking missteps, jumping too high, then not enough.  He cursed as he landed on his face, then fell on his back as he tried to get up.

It took the rest of the morning to get a grip on the use of the suit.  Most of the other trainees were still having trouble about the time Cornelius felt he had control.  It was still exhausting work.  He had thought it would be easy, with the suit servos doing all the work.  He found that he still did a lot of the work to make everything function properly.

The afternoon was more of the same, with a couple of hours at the firing range.  Then a long run back to the barracks in the suits, which spent the night in the armory recharging.   Cornelius was exhausted that night, and fell into a dreamless sleep.  When he woke it was back into the suits for more training, this time at half strength.

That afternoon they were working on tactical exercises, with the weapons systems at their lowest setting.  Cornelius swore through the afternoon as he took hit after hit.  It seem impossible to move without becoming a target, and almost every minute the suit buzzed as contact alarms indicated laser strikes, or rang with the impact of low velocity pellets.  Each time the suit froze in place for several seconds to let him know he was dead.

After the fiftieth hit the suit locked into place for minutes, and Cornelius tried to control his breathing as he hyperventilated on the edge of panic.  He was trapped, and the Drill Sergeant was soon there to let him know it.

“You may have been a super trooper in the militia, trainee.  But you’re just a fucking target here.  About the only thing I can say that you accomplish is you take a hit so a better soldier doesn’t.  Not a very good return for a twenty million imperial investment.”

The Drill Sergeant bounded away in his suit, and more time went by before Cornelius’ armor unlocked.  This isn’t what I wanted, thought the Private First Class.  Most of us won’t be assigned to these damned things anyway, so why all the fuss.

Things got better as the day went on, and he gained more control of the suit.  The next day they were at full power, and the suit really proved its worth as he negotiated the obstacle course like it wasn’t there, leaping over obstacles, engaging flight to zip through pipes.  And the range was also a treat, as they fired their full power weapons at the targets the government spent so much on to be destroyed.

There was another demonstration, intended to show them the power of their weapons against their own protection.  The suit mag weapons and lasers cut through the medium armor mock ups on the range, though they didn’t do much to their fellow heavies.  The carried mag weapons, particle beams and lasers were much more effective against heavy armor, and so were the suit launched and weapon fired grenades.  Mag pellets could penetrate at full velocity, at least partially.  Multiple rounds to the same area could blow through.  Lasers took several seconds to eat through, and this was against armor without built in electromag fields.  Particle beams ripped through like the suits were paper, though a demonstration of a pistol sized weapon left them with the impression that it took a very powerful beam to damage the armor.  Microgrenades damaged the armor, without blasting through, until there were several hits in a restricted area.

The next day was spent in suits that didn’t go anywhere, hung from moving scaffolding while the sensors ran simulations.  They got to test out the tactical abilities of the suits, firing all their weapons, running, flying.  Cornelius even got a shot at an aerial vehicle with a missile, then a tank with a hyper velocity projectile.  The simulated aircraft went down, but the tank shrugged off the hit and took Cornelius out of the simulation.  Moments later he was back.

The last day of the week was time to play with real tanks.  Thousand ton monsters that might have been the last generation, but still looked impressive as hell.  A dozen of the monsters came roaring toward them, their treads on the ground creating a terrifying rumbling that froze everyone in place for a moment.  Tank fear it was called, Panzershrek, the overwhelming terror of seeing something too damned big coming to crush you.  Cornelius got his suit out of the way.  Some didn’t, and were crushed into the ground by the tanks.  Cornelius cried out and stared at what looked like a disaster.  Within moments the suits were pulling themselves out of the ground, another demonstration of how tough the things were.

“I bet nothing could hurt those things,” said one of the trainees.

Cornelius shook his head, recalling that there were many heavy weapons made especially to destroy those huge vehicles.

They had a demonstration of mecha that day, six meter tall two hundred ton manned suits that were once used as heavy support weapons.  The Empire no longer used them, tanks had taken their job, being harder to destroy and harder to hit.  Some alien powers still did, and so the human soldiers had exposure to the systems.

Cornelius watched the what looked like large robots move across the field.  They were fast and agile, and deployed some fairly powerful weaponry.  They also made very large targets that were hard to miss.  And during a demonstration it was shown that they weren’t that hard to destroy.  A dozen suits putting concentrated weapons fire on the same spot took out the drone.

The night they were allowed weekend liberty.  Most of the platoon went out on the town.  There were women in the town that serviced this part of the base, and establishments made to separate soldiers from their money.  They didn’t have to be back until Sunday afternoon, and all were ready to blow off some steam.  All but Walborski.  He sat in the local rec center and watched the news.

We’re getting our asses kicked, thought the PFC, watching reports about planet after planet falling to the enemy.

“You coming, Walborski,” said Private MacArthur, his training squad leader.  “Come on man, you need to have some fun.”

“I’m cool,” he told the man, shaking his head while pointing at the trivee.  “This is important.”

“There ain’t a damned thing we can do about the war right now, Walborski,” said the other man.  “And until the Fleet gets some invasions going there really isn’t much we’ll be able to do.  Except wait on isolated planets until we get overrun.”

“Have fun,” said Cornelius, his eyes riveted to the trivee, if not his mind.  He was already thinking about some things he could do tomorrow to make himself a better soldier.  Lessons he could study, equipment he could practice with.  Not weapons or suits, but there was other equipment used by soldiers that he could use to perfect his skills with.

Moments later Platoon Sergeant Ferguson came into the center.  The man frowned as he saw Walborski, then he came over and plopped down on the couch next to the young man.

“Why didn’t you go into town, son,” said the Sergeant, a concerned expression on his face.  “This is going to be your life, and possibly your death.  You better enjoy the breaks you get.”

“I really didn’t want to waste my time drinking and playing,” said Walborski, looking over at the NCO.

“Because you’re on a mission?” said the Sergeant, a frown on his face.

“Is there anything wrong with that, Drill Sergeant?”

“Nothing that the Army will find wrong,” said the man, shaking his head.  “They want killers right now, and you fit the bill.  But something the people around you might have questions about.”

Walborski turned a cold eye on the Drill Sergeant.  My damned wife died.  My hopes and dreams died with her.  What more do you want with me?

“You do what you want, son,” said Ferguson, standing up.

“Drill Sergeant?” said Walborski before the man left the room.  The Sergeant turned and looked a question.  “Will I be going to Ranger training after graduation?”

“You will be going to Ranger training,” said the Sergeant with a nod.  “But not right after infantry training.”

“Why not?” asked Cornelius, jumping to his feet.  “What could be more important than Ranger school?”

“Some damn fools thought you might make a good NCO,” said the Drill Sergeant.  “Maybe even an officer someday.  But the only way you’re going to get there is by taking some leadership courses.  Rangers are still gearing up to take on more trainees.  There’s a waiting list right now.  We can get you in a month after infantry graduation, and the basic NCO course lasts exactly one month.  Is that OK with you, PFC?”

“I guess so, Drill Sergeant,” said Walborski, sitting back down and staring at the trivee.

The Drill Sergeant shook his head, then walked out of the room, leaving a tortured young man to think about what he would do to the enemy that humanity needed him to hate.

*     *     *

The second to the last week was jump and space training.  First it was up into the air in specialized aircars used by the light and medium infantry.  It was a day of up in the air, then down, jumping out of the aircars through the side doors to a combat assault in light armor.  The next day was rappelling out of the same cars, still in light armor.  The troops marched back to the barracks exhausted.  Cornelius thought he would not make it, and knowing how fit he was he was sure most of the other trainees felt worse.

Day three was real high altitude jumps, using medium armor.  They popped chutes at a thousand meters, then cut them at a hundred and floated down on grabbers.  After five repetitions they went through some ground work on a tower, without the suits, then spent the afternoon jumping without armor, coming down all the way with the chutes.

Cornelius almost laughed as he saw the expressions on the faces of other trainees as they boarded the shuttles on the next day.  They disembarqued on an old spaceship and spent the day working in zero gee and vacuum.  There were some upset stomachs that day, and the trainees learned that the suits could handle vomit, absorbing it before it became too much of a hassle.  They were dropped on an airless moon for a day and night of vacuum combat exercises, learning the ins and outs of fighting in low gravity with no air resistance.

Mid-morning of the next day they did their combat drop.   Cornelius did not like being shut up in the capsule they put his suit into.  He preferred the open, even if he was in a heavy armor suit while in it.  The worst part was the waiting as he was queued up.  And then the rush of the capsule through the launch tube.  Inertial compensators kept things from getting to a crush point, but the fluctuations were nauseating, and for the second time in three days Walborski felt himself vomit.  When he left the tube there was no motion at all, until the capsule hit the atmosphere and started moving in eight directions at once.  Cornelius waited for it to smooth out like he was told it would.  A couple of minutes into the ride he decided that they had lied.  It was the most disorienting thing he had ever experienced, and at that point he decided that he had made the right choice in going spec ops.

At thirty kilometers above the planet the capsule burst open, and Walborski found himself tumbling through the air in the suit.  The grabbers took over almost immediately and he was falling backwards, the rear of his suit acting as a heat shield.  The view on his faceplate straightened out, showing him the ground as it appeared to his rear camera.  At ten kilometers up his suit reoriented and popped its chute.  That slowed him considerably, enough so that five kilometers later, when the chute released, his grabbers took over without a hitch.  He still fell too quickly toward the ground, following doctrine of not making himself a target.  At one hundred meters the grabbers increased their pull and lowered him gently to the ground.

There was one more thing to do, and Cornelius wanted to get to it, and get it out of the way.  He bounced his suit to the nearby landing strip and waited for the rest of his squad to come bounding in.  Then it was into the assault shuttle, the suit locking into a cubby and the aircraft lifting into the sky.  It rolled over and made an approach to the field.  As the light on Cornelius’ HUD went from red to green the hatch above him popped open and his suit was ejected into the air.  Compared to the orbital drop this was cake, and moments later Walborski was on the ground.  A run back to the barracks and the week was over.  There was training over the weekend, simulators and classroom, but the troops were allowed to physically rest over the weekend, so they would be ready for the last week.

*     *     *

“Remember to hit the objective, and don’t let us catch you,” said the Drill Sergeant, holding up a finger.

“What if you catch us after we hit the objective, Drill Sergeant?” asked Walborski, glancing over at the men and women in his squad.  He had thought he would be under someone else in this last exercise, but the man ahead of him had screwed up another exercise, royally.

“After you hit your objective it doesn’t really matter,” said the grinning Sergeant.  “At that point, after you have accomplished the objective, it’s nice if you make it back, but not necessary.  Remember, the mission is the most important thing.  Not you, not your troops.  Mission comes first.”  And with that the Sergeant jumped back into the transport and it took off.

Cornelius looked around for a moment, getting the lay of the land, then pulling up the map on his HUD.  They were in light armor for this exercise, so they would be walking.  Everyone had military class implants, but the rules of the game were no use, by either side.  The Opfor couldn’t track them, though the judges could, in case there was an emergency.

The map showed him a general lay of the area, and he cursed as he noted that it didn’t give his exact location.  He could be anywhere on that map.  There was no GPS access for the exercise, simulating a planet that they were either invading, or defending, with the network out.  It was still daylight, and he could get a track on the sun, but to get a fix he needed two objects.

“Let’s get under cover of those trees,” ordered Walborski, pointing to a stretch of woods to his right.  If it was the forest he thought it was, there was a stream on the other side reaching into the next valley, a perfect avenue to their target.  And he realized that Opfor knew that as well.

As the sun went down some close bright stars came into view.  Walborski looked at those stars, letting his suit computer get a fix on them.  After crunching the data for a few moments the map on his HUD gave him a blinking cursor on the map.  Now that he knew where he was the suit would keep track of his position through dead reckoning.

“Bronson, you’ve got point,” said Walborski, motioning in the direction of march while sending a route outline onto the other trainee’s HUD.  “Yang, Coltour, you’re flank.  Mechum, rear.”  Now he had two fire teams of four each in his center, and he set one ahead of the other.  “Move out.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to follow that stream?” asked Yang, pointing to the running water twenty meters away.

“You’ve got your orders.  Now move.”

The squad moved with a little bit of grumbling.  Cornelius ignored it.  As long as they did what he said he was satisfied.  After about two hours of march they had covered four kilometers, not the fastest march on record, but fast enough to get them where they were going.

Walborski motioned for everyone to get down when all hell broke loose a kilometer or two to the north.  Laser light shined, the crack of hypervelocity rounds sounded through the night.  Cornelius looked that way for a moment, then over at his troops lying on the ground out in the open.  He knew it was another squad getting ambushed, just as he realized all the sounds were simulations.

He got to his feet and motioned for everyone to run, to get off the open grassland and to the next stand of trees.  Now would be the best time to get moving, instead of lying here worrying about something going on kilometers away.  If only we had a continuous woods to maneuver through, he thought.  Of course, then he would have to worry about ambushes in the woods.

They just made the trees when a pair of aircars came sweeping over the open lands, and he breathed a sigh of relief that they had moved and got under cover.  One of his soldiers made to shoot at the car, and Cornelius got there just in time to knock her rifle down.  “What the hell are you thinking, Mechum?” he hissed, then got everyone moving.

The night seemed to go on forever, and the squad had several near misses with ambushes.  Others were sprung in the night, and Cornelius started to think that no one in the training company was going to accomplish the mission.  Well, I am, he thought as he checked his location, and saw that he was only a kilometer from the target.

Calling the squad together, Walborski set their goals.  Fire team B was to be the decoy, going around ninety degrees, finding the enemy perimeter, then fixing them with fire.   Cornelius would go through on a straight line as soon as they heard the firefight, and strike at the command post that was their objective.

He watched B Team move out into the night, wondering if he was doing this right.  The sky was starting to lighten, and he knew that dawn was not far away.  He had one chance to do this, and he wanted to get it right.

Fifteen minutes after he sent them off the sounds of an engagement sounded in the night, located by flashes to the south.  He hoped they had taken on the enemy as planned, not as part of an ambush of which they were the target.  “Move out,” he whispered to his people, leading the seven troops himself, knowing he was the best at moving quietly and picking up movement in the night.

There was an outpost on the way in, and Cornelius picked it up, just as he had hoped.  Motioning the rest of the team to stay down, he moved in until he could spot the two troopers in their position.  Pulling his blade simulator, he crept up on the position, then stood and leapt the last five meters, swinging the blade and connecting with one of the Opfor soldiers.  As soon as the blade struck the man’s suit froze, registering him as a casualty.  He hit the second surprised soldier with a back swing, then waved the rest of his team through.

They came under fire less than four hundred meters from the target.  His team laid down fire while Cornelius readied the rocket.  He popped up and sited it in on the flag that designated the HQ, then pulled the trigger of the simulator.  A bright flash appeared across his faceplate, right where it was supposed to be.  He gave out a quick whoop as he fell back behind cover.  One dead HQ, he thought, knowing if this were real a ten kiloton blast had just killed whoever was in charge of the Opfor.

He motioned his men and women to get away, and they all ran flat out for the assembly area, three kilometers back.  They had almost made it when the last ambush went off, and everyone’s suits rang with the alarm that indicated they were hit, while the armor froze up.

Ferguson came walking out of the woods with a smile on his face as the suits activated again.  “Good job, trainees,” said the Sergeant, his helmet retracted and a smile on his face.  “You were the only squad to accomplish the mission.  Of course you all died, and your commanding officer is going to have to compose beautiful letters to your family.  But you took out the enemy HQ, and that’s what counts.”

The next day was spent on displaying their skills, demonstrating to the training staff what they had learned.  Taking apart and reassembling weapons, first aid and suit maintenance, using all the built in gadgets that required an infantryman to be as skilled as any technician.

That night they set up in positions that they dug and camouflaged, then spent the entire night repelling attacks from the Opfor, men and women who had already been through training and were part of a forming division on the planet.  Nobody got much sleep, though Cornelius did figure that they passed the night better if only the person on watch returned fire, while the other person slept.

The next day was more of the same, tactical exercises, made more difficult because the trainees were exhausted.  None were allowed drugs or nanites to alleviate their fatigue.  This was part of the test, to see if they could function under the multiple stresses of the battlefield.  And stressed they were, marching, attacking, defending, walking into ambushes, setting them up.  That night they bivouacked and prepared their own meals over open fires, and everyone got at least some hours of sleep.

The next morning was the road march, something the rumor mill had been hinting at for weeks.  First they had to get out of their light armor, and Cornelius was amazed at the odor that rose from the trainees after almost seventy hours in the suit.  Then they were given packs which were conveniently heavy, helmets that reminded Walborski of what he wore in the militia, and of course their rifles.

Then it was down the road, hour after hour, a ten minute break each hour.  They ate as they marched, and Cornelius wondered when they were going to stop for the night.  They didn’t, and soon the darkness had enveloped the world around them as they marched on.  Cornelius could feel something liquid in his boots about five hours into the night, and he knew that the fluid had to be blood.  I’m not giving up, he thought, and he encouraged his team members to keep marching.

“Just around the next corner,” he told them, telling himself the same thing.  “Just around the next bend in the road.  You can make it.  Just the next one.”

On rest breaks it was hard to get back on one's feet.  Cornelius almost wished they wouldn’t take breaks.  Mostly they seemed a lie, and they were just as fatigued when they got back up as they had been when they fell to the ground at the start of break.  And then the Drill Sergeants decided to add a new wrinkle, ordering double time for ten minutes, then back to quick time, back and forth.  At midnight they were still at it.  A couple of troops dropped out of the company, and Cornelius was glad he wasn’t one of them.  Recycles they were called, the people who had to go through the whole training cycle again.  If they failed a second time they would be assigned other duties.  Very few failed the second go through, which didn’t mean Walborski wanted to do this again.

As the sun was rising he could see the barracks area ahead.  A band started marching in front of them, picking up their spirits, and some high ranking officers stood by the side of the road watching them come in.  “Look at them,” said one of the officers to the others.  “Marching twenty hours and looking like they just started.”

You try it, son of a bitch, thought Walborski, glaring at the high rankers.  Then he thought about it, and realized that they probably had, at one point in their careers.  He saw the Ranger flash on one man’s sleeve and realized that the man had been through much worse.  The much worse that Cornelius hoped to make it through.

The band marched them into the barracks area, where food was on, steaks and eggs, bacon and sausage.  And beer.  As they fell out of their formation the Drill Sergeants started tossing them beer, and many cans were opened and sprayed before any was drunk.  But soon the party was on, packs dropped, helmets flung to the ground, only rifles still held on shoulders.  The Drill Sergeants moved around with the trainees, drinking and eating with them.

“You are all infantry now,” said Ferguson, hoisting a beer in the air.  “Tomorrow, when you march in graduation, you will wear those gold ropes proudly.”

All Cornelius wanted to do was to drink, eat and then crawl off to sleep.  They were allowed to do that, then woken back up at nightfall so they could get their uniforms ready for the next day, graduation.  Cornelius got something to eat, then fell back into a deep sleep, until the Drill Sergeants woke them the next morning.  This was a different process though, no banging of cans.  The troops were woken gently, and filed in for a breakfast, then told to get into their dress uniforms.

Ground cars took them to the base parade ground, where reviewing stands had been set up.  Everyone was arrayed in dress blues, gold ropes hanging from their left shoulder tabard, qualification ribbons on their chests.  Each man and woman had rank on their sleeves, at least Private Second Class, though there were also some PFC stripes, including those worn by Walborski.  Again there was a band, and some men and women had been told off to form a color guard.

Cornelius was thrilled to be picked as the standard bearer for the Imperial Colors.  He knew that privilege went to the honor student of the company, not just the platoon, and he proudly held the colors as he marched behind the band.  As he marched by the reviewing stands and the high rankers saluted the standard, he realized that they had solved the problem of his Imperial Medal of Heroism very neatly.  They had to salute him first, and they had to salute the flag.  After the pass in review was over they stood in formation for a speech.  When that was finished everyone threw their hats into the air, then retrieved them.  Some few then met with family members, those who could travel to the planet, which weren’t all that many.  Still, everyone wanted to introduce Walborski, the most famous man in the company, to mom and dad, brothers and sisters.  He listened politely to many stories, and multiple conflicting pieces of advice, before excusing himself to catch the first vehicle back to the barracks.

Orders were posted when the troops got back from the parade.  Cornelius looked at his name, and the words NCO Academy next to it, with a jaundiced eye.  He had known it was coming, but still had held out hopes that he might be given a reprieve.

“You’re a good soldier, son,” said Drill Sergeant Ferguson, walking up behind Walborski.  “Probably the best I have ever seen come through Infantry Advanced.  Remember what I told you.”

“Don’t just concentrate on becoming a killer?” said Walborski, turning around to look the Sergeant in the eye.  “Even though there are billions of creatures out there that need killing?”

“And when you’re in a position to take them out, don’t hesitate,” said Ferguson, a concerned look on his face.  “But when you’re not in that position remember, you are still a human being.  With human wants and desires.  And in a position that will probably not lead to a wonderful retirement in the distant future.  So enjoy it while you can.”

Cornelius saluted the Drill Sergeant, then waited for the man to walk away before he headed into the barracks to pack his gear.  It was Thursday, and he had until Monday to report to the NCO Academy.  He had thought to stay on base until Sunday, then take the wormhole to Orange, Sanctuary B IV, the fourth world of the second star out from the black hole, so he could settle into the barracks that night.  Now the words of the Drill Sergeant struck home.

Why not, he thought, linking with the com system and sending a request.  Travel through the wormhole was restricted to militarily necessary transport.  But he was the holder of the Imperial Medal of Heroism.  It came with certain privileges, including priority transportation.  Within moments he had a reply to his request.  Approved.  With a smile he finished packing his bags and called for a taxi.  Now that he had a destination he was ready to go.

Chapter Four

It seems like such a terrible shame that innocent civilians have to get hurt in wars, otherwise combat would be such a wonderfully healthy way to rid the human race of unneeded trash.  Fred Woodworth.

AZURE, SEPT 20TH-25TH,  1000.

“Set and match,” yelled the coach, who was also the referee of the game.

Rebecca jumped up and down on the court, her feet clearing almost twenty centimeters.  “We won,” she yelled, raising her fist in the air.  She really didn’t like the personal part of school, except for gym.  She was very athletic, at this period when girls were bigger and stronger than boys.

Her teammates clapped her on the back.  Her ace serve had won the fourth set of the match.  Many of her serves and spikes had won two of the three sets prior.  Volleyball was her favorite, though she also liked basketball just fine.  Of course they played those sports differently on lower gravity planets.  Azure had one point four one gravities at the surface.  Jumping was difficult, and led to sports injuries, which could be healed fairly quickly, but were still painful.  It was easy to generate artificial gravity as long as there was enough energy.  Reducing gravity was a different proposition.  Objects could be shielded from gravitons and raised, at a huge cost.  Lowering the gravity over a large surface, like a playing field, was just too hard to accomplish without many disturbing fluctuations.  At least for children’s sports.

“Congratulations,” said Margo, the captain of the other team.

Rebecca could tell by the other girl’s expression that she really didn’t mean it.  She knew Margo was jealous of Rebecca’s athletic and scholastic abilities.  She was jealous of Margo’s looks, but wasn’t sure she would trade her two talents for Margo’s one.

After gym was biology lab.  Most subjects could be studied at home, and were, but labs were thought to be too hazardous without hands on supervision.  So they worked in a lab that kept the native life from interacting with them in a harmful manner.

Today they were dissecting a plantimal that was a small time predator and scavenger.  There were nanite fields in place to prevent any of the creature’s materials from getting into the environment shared by the students.  There probably wasn’t any danger, but the adults weren’t willing to take chances.

Rebecca sliced into her specimen with a laser scalpel while her partner, Timmy, took notes and recorded the procedure.  She traced the rudimentary nervous system from the tiny node that was its brain.  She opened the creature up more and got a look at the two chambered heart that propelled fluids through its body.  They observed and noted, and Rebecca and Timmy received an A plus, as always.

“See you Wednesday,” said Timmy as Rebecca got into the aircar her dad had driven to pick her up.   Rebecca smiled back at the boy, then stepped into the car.  She thought Timmy liked her, and she liked him.  He wasn’t the strongest or handsomest boy in the class, though he definitely wasn’t weak or ugly.  And he seemed to be on the same mental level as Rebecca.  She didn’t think she was that pretty, even with her long dark hair and blue eyed combination.  Like everyone on Azure she was dark skinned.  Some were darker than others, but fair skins didn’t do well with all the ultraviolet, so they were enhanced with greater pigmentation.

“We’re not going right home,” said her dad as he lifted the car.  “I have to stop by the job site for a little while.”

Rebecca smiled as she heard that.  It meant that she didn’t have to watch her little brother, which meant that the little shit was with a caregiver, probably their neighbors.

“How did school go today?” asked her dad when she didn’t say anything.

“Fine.”

“Who was that little boy?”

“That was Timmy, my lab partner,” said Rebecca, thinking again about the boy’s smile.

“What faith is he?” asked her dad, looking over at her as the car took over the flying.

“Dad,” said Rebecca in her you’re kidding me voice.  “I’m not about to marry him.”  Not yet, anyway.  And I really don’t care what church he goes to, or if he goes to any at all.  She really wasn’t sure about the God thing at all, and thought there might be some better choices for practicing faith if she ever developed any.

Her father was quiet for most of the trip to the worksite, and Rebecca thought he might be embarrassed by his question.  Nah, that’s not like him.  He’s worried about something.

Her dad circled the aircar over the job site. He was an assistant project engineer for a company that installed underground shelters.  Below was the newest shelter to be installed on Azure.  They used the same kind of protective central capsules that were installed in warships, a large cylinder of hard alloys and carbon fiber armors, with multiple floors for quarters, messing facilities, and clinics, with lots of storage, power generating units and recycling tanks.

She had seen this one when they were digging the hole.  Two kilometers straight down, and then the destroyer central capsule was put together and sealed into a single unit by nanotech.  The cylinder was one hundred and fifty meters long by seventy-five in diameter, and had room for over twenty thousand people in not quite comfort.  Many more than the town it was being installed for.  Jeffers was only home to ten thousand, though it was growing fast enough to warrant this kind of shelter.

Massive robots were layering the dirt back over the three hundred meters of ferocrete that had been poured over the shelter.  To her eye it looked impregnable, though from what her father said it was anything but.  He had told her that it would hold up to medium scale nukes or minor kinetic penetrators.  And that anything big would blast right through.  Shelters were to protect against pirates or raiders.  Any real military force would be able to find them, fix them, and kill them.

Dad landed the car near one of the lift entrances to the shelter.  He motioned for her to get out, then led the way to the lift which was waiting for them.  The two kilometer trip straight down did not take long, and soon the lift was opening onto a chamber that led into the shelter.  The heavy door was retracted, and they walked into the first real chamber of the shelter, an entry in which refugees were processed before being assigned to quarters.

The cylinder was a hive of activity, with workers and robots installing equipment and moving supplies. Rebecca had been on other shelters at this stage, but this one had the signs of being rushed into service.

For several hours they walked around the cylinder, taking a lift up to the top level, then down thirty floors to the bottom.  They walked through room after room, quarters, corridors, supply rooms, even a couple of armories.  Her dad signed off on some paperwork at several locations after making an inspection, and then led the way back to the entrance and the lift back up.

“What’s the matter, dad?” she asked him as soon as they were back in the air.

“You know about the war?” asked her dad, a concerned look on his face.

“Of course,” said Rebecca.  “It’s just about all there is on the net.”

“I’ve been called up,” said dad, who she knew was an engineering officer in the Imperial Army Reserve.  “We’re going to try and fortify the planet as much as possible.”

“Will that help?”

“Maybe.  Probably not.  I really don’t know.  It depends on how much they hit us with, and how much of the Fleet we have in the system.”

“But, they have to protect us.  Don’t they?”

Her father didn’t answer, and she realized he didn’t want to say what he had to say if he was to be honest.  And he was the most honest man she knew.  She looked out the window of the car, watching as small villages and farm fields passed below, the terrestrial support lands that allowed them to live on a planet where the natural life had a cell form that wouldn’t sustain them.  At least without heavy nanite augmentation.  There were cows down there, and horses, and other animals that were not nutritious to the native life.  Not that such would stop native predators from killing and eating them, if not for the colony defenses.

“I want you to go camping with me this weekend,” he said after the silence had grown for too long.  “I want you to know how to survive if you have to.”

“What about the shelters?”

“Those are death traps if the Ca’cadsans come.  I know it and your mom knows it.  I will try to get back home if they come, but that might not be possible.  It will be up to you and your mom to keep yourselves and your little brother alive.”

Rebecca didn’t know what to say, so took the option of not saying anything at all.

The next day her dad was in full uniform, a Captain in the Imperial Army, and left the house, not to be seen for several days.

He appeared again Friday night, and loaded up Rebecca and their camping gear for a weekend campout.  Rebecca had been camping before, but felt that this was going to be something more.

*     *     *

The campsite was on a hillside, more or less out in the open except for the shade of a couple of trees.  The actual camp was in a cavern, where they would sleep after dad’s friend Ted had made sure it was clear.  That had been accomplished by shooting the large predator that had laired there.  Now they had their campsite covered by a pheromone screen that kept all native animal forms away.  Ted showed her how to make a fire that would keep her warm without giving out a lot of light.

“Of course, if it’s summer you really don’t have to worry about heat,” had said the man who moved like a cat and seemed to know everything about the wilderness on this world.

Rebecca wondered what the man did for a living.  She only knew that he was a member of the reserves who didn’t have a family, and she was sure that he was not working as an engineer.

He showed her how to apply pheromones to her body that would keep animals away from her, as well as many of the plantimals.  She practiced sharpening a knife, then figuring out directions from the star patterns.  He also taught her how to use rope, both regular and nanoweave, the kind of rope that attached to itself in unbreakable loops for any kind of use.  With the standard rope it was knots, and she learned a number of them.  It was late at night when she went to bed exhausted, not even needing to kick in her reticular activating system.

Dawn came early.  She knew because she saw the sun come up over the trees, having already been up for an hour, while Ted taught her the morning calls of the jungle, then how to make a cold breakfast with dry rations and water.  After that he led her on a recon through the jungle at the time when the night hunters were going to cover, and before the day hunters were out.  She learned the names and habits of some plantimals she was not familiar with.   Knowing those habits could keep her safe from the bizarre creatures, or give her a trap to use against an enemy.  He introduced her to the safe trees at this time, large plants that kept most other life forms away with their chemicals, which, while inimical to most native life, was harmless to Earth creatures.

Later in the morning they visited a stretch of grassland, where large herbivores grazed on the grass like plants while the harsh sunlight reflected off their silvered hides.   Ted told her to shoulder her rifle and shoot one of the placid looking animals.

“I can’t shoot them,” said Rebecca, staring in horror at the man.

“I’m telling you to shoot one.  Now shoot one, or I will shoot all of them, starting with that baby over there.”

Rebecca looked helplessly at her father, hoping he would intervene.

“Do it, Becca,” said her dad, who then looked at Ted and nodded.  He looked back at his daughter.  “If you’re out here trying to survive you’re going to have to kill food without thinking about it.”

“I killed the hell hound,” squealed Rebecca, staring at her father.

“And it was good that you did,” said Ted, putting his rifle to his shoulder and aiming at the baby.  “Now show me you can kill something that’s not trying to kill you.”

Rebecca was shaking with anger, tears in her eyes as she raised her rifle and aimed it at the adult.  She didn’t want the beast to suffer, so she sighted in carefully, then squeezed the trigger.  The rifle bucked into her shoulder, and blood that was almost black under the harsh light of the sun spurted from the hit.  The beast bellowed and went down on its front knees.

“Finish it,” ordered Ted.

The crying girl raised her rifle again and finished off the beast.  Then Ted showed her how to butcher it.  They ate the flesh of the animal for lunch and dinner, after taking booster shots of gut nanites to help them digest it.

Ted showed her some tricks to get food from the vegetable kingdom as well, while warning her away from trying to gain sustenance from the plantimals.  “Too many of them are poisonous.  Even if your nanites protect you, it’s just not worth the risk.”

That evening they fired more weapons, including some that most civilians did not have access to.  Another night in the woods, part of a Sunday, and they headed back home.  Ted gave her a lot of homework, readings and vids, as well as a promise to her dad to take them out the next couple of weekends.  She knew that dad was determined that his little girl would survive, no matter what.

Chapter Five

I have never advocated war except as a means of peace.  Ulysses S. Grant.

SUPERSYSTEM, JEWEL AND OTHER WORLDS.  SEPTEMBER 21-24th, 1000.

He walked into the wormhole room on Ruby in a building on the grounds of a large military landing field.  There were people in uniform everywhere, and a long line leading into the wormhole room.  It looked like a long wait, until one of the armed sentries noticed him.  His medal had been of use before, and was so again, as a First Sergeant escorted him to the beginning of line and through the hole.  Walborski was aware of the stares of the people he bypassed, including some officers.  There were murmurs, which died as soon as people saw the ribbon around his neck leading to the medal on his breast.

Cornelius had felt this before, the somatic experience of wormhole travel, so it came as no surprise.  Still, it was a disorienting experience.  A step through the silvered surface and he was transported into a place where time had no meaning.  He seemed to float for hours without a body, nowhere and everywhere.  And then he was stepping out of the wormhole, on the other side, his implant clock telling him he had spent one ten thousandth of a second in transit.

The only disorientation came when there was no karat in his vision showing him the way to his next destination.  It should have been there.  Some of the guards in this crowded room looked at him, while people kept moving around him from behind.  A naval officer, a Lieutenant Commander, approached and rendered a salute to the award.  Her name tag said her last name was Okeke, which Cornelius saw on his link was of African origins.

“You need to move out of the way, PFC,” said the officer, pointing to posted signs that said Keep Moving.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” said Cornelius, trying to call up a cursor on his implant.  “I seem to be experiencing a malfunction on my plant.  I’m not sure where to go next.”

“That is because I am your cursor for the moment, PFC,” said the officer with a smile on her pretty face. “Dr. Yu wants to talk with you a moment, if that’s OK with you.”

“There will be someone waiting for me in the Hexagon,” said Cornelius, not sure what the director of the largest station in known space would want with him.

“She’ll be here in a moment,” said the Commander, gesturing for Walborski to follow her. “We don’t see a lot of those around here,” she continued, pointing to his medal.

“You’ll probably be seeing more of them in the near future,” said the PFC.  “If anyone gets back.”

“I’m afraid you’re correct,” said the officer, leading the way through the door and down a corridor.  “I’m hoping for a Fleet assignment myself.  It’s hard to sit here knowing that others are doing the fighting.”

Cornelius smiled and nodded, understanding completely where the woman was coming from.  A minute later they were stepping into a small conference room, and a tall blond haired woman stood up and offered her hand, while a small Asian man stood behind her.

“I’m Dr. Yu, Cornelius,” said the woman, grasping both of his hands in both of hers.  “I don’t know if you remember me from the time you last came through here.”

“I do, ma’am.”

“And this is Senior Agent Jimmy Wu of the IIA.  He’s my bodyguard, as if I need one.”

“That you most definitely do,” said the man, holding out a hand that Cornelius grasped.  “Dr. Yu is very important to the war effort.”

And she means more to you than that, thought Cornelius, noting the look between them and feeling a bit of depression at the thought of the love he was missing.  “I would guess more important than any grunt,” he said with a smile.  “Without what you give us we don’t have a chance.”

“I just wanted to tell you how much we appreciate you,” said Yu, motioning toward a seat.  “Even if you are just a, grunt.  It’s not everyone that could do what you did, go through what you went through, and train to get back into it.”

“We’re going to need everyone we can get on board the military,” said Commander Okeke, taking another chair.  “As odious as it sounds, you’re going to become a poster child of the recruiting effort.”

“Shit,” spat Cornelius, to the laughter of the others.

Yu took about fifteen minutes of his time, asking him questions about the Ca’cadsans, then his plans.  She had a sad look on her face as their time came to a close.  “Enjoy that baby of yours while you can,” said the woman as they parted.  “You’re going to head into harm’s way, and you don’t know how much time you’ll have with him.”

“I’m ahead of you there, Doctor,” said Cornelius as he made to leave.

The Commander escorted him to the proper gate, the busiest he had seen in the station, leading to the Hexagon.  She led him to the front and gave him another salute, then watched as he walked into the mirrored surface.

On the other side of the wormhole the scene was repeated, as people made their way out of the guarded chamber and to their assignments.  Another officer, this time an army major, waited, and escorted Cornelius to an aircar on a landing on the outside of the building.  The man had the insignia of the Imperial Protection Corps on his jacket.

“I could get used to this,” said Cornelius to the officer as the man opened the door to the aircar.

“Well, don’t,” said the laughing officer.  “It’s good to have friends in high places.  Just don’t push it.”

“I won’t,” said Cornelius before the man closed the door and jumped into the front passenger seat of the car.

Cornelius looked out the window as the car lifted and headed for the palace.  He had gotten a brief glimpse of the city on his way through.  Now he got a good look as kilometer after kilometer of tall buildings passed by to both sides.  Around the Hexagon were other skyscrapers, reaching over a kilometer into the air.  Further to the south was a line of megascrapers, reaching five kilometers straight up, while to the north the city in a building arcologies sat in a line.  Past the central business and government district was block after block of smaller buildings.

They crossed to the north of Constance the Great Spaceport, where huge shuttles were coming and going each minute.  Ahead was the famous mansion district, a ridge of hills with the manor houses of Lords and Ladies, the rich and famous.  Before they reached that spot both famous and infamous the aircar dropped down, heading for the twenty-one hundred square kilometer Imperial Palace grounds.

Cornelius really wasn’t too interested in looking at the ostentatious palace.  He had seen such before, when his father had worked as a hunt master for the local duke on New Detroit.  But there was something he was interested in seeing, someone special.

“He’s in here, PFC Walborski,” said the nanny, Marlena, leading Cornelius into a large room where a number of children were playing.  There were a couple of cribs in the room, and one crying baby.  “That’s Kelsie,” said the nanny who had been left in charge of Cornelius Jr.  “Junior is a happy baby, overall.”

Cornelius walked over to the other crib, the one that wasn’t emitting shrieks of displeasure.  “Hey there, little buddy,” said Cornelius, looking down on the infant that was twice the size of the one he had left here.  Over five months old.  He put out a finger and the baby followed it with his eyes, then grasped it in a pudgy hand.  I’ve missed so much.

“Can I pick him up?” he asked, looking at the woman.

“Of course.  He’s yours, after all.”

Cornelius put his hands down and picked up the child, looking lovingly into the blue eyes that were so like Katlyn’s.  He moved a hand to the neck, then noticed that the baby’s head was not wobbly.  He cradled the baby against his shoulder and rocked him.  “Who are the other children?” he asked, looking at a couple of toddlers playing in a corner, and some slightly older children who were engaged in a simple board game.

“The children of some of the staff,” said the nanny, smiling.  She pointed at one of the toddlers, a little boy.  “That is the son of Lady Janice, one of the Imperial cousins.”

“He is so beautiful,” said Cornelius, looking back at his own child, holding him out so he could look into his face.

“He’s a smart one, too,” said Marlena, smiling down and touching the baby on the cheek.

“I want to take him with me, tomorrow,” said Cornelius, gently jiggling the baby in the air.  “Do you have a harness so I can carry him on my chest?”

“Of course.  And you remember that you have dinner with his Majesty tonight?”

“How could I forget that,” said Cornelius, still finding it difficult to believe that he could be of any importance to the ruler of a trillion beings.  But the evidence was here in his hands, the baby that Sean had insisted be raised in the palace.  And Cornelius knew that if anything happened to him, the child would be well cared for, as long as there was an Empire.

He spent the next couple of hours playing with Junior, and learned under instruction how to change the child.  He had not realized how dependent a baby was on his caregiver.  He slightly remembered taking care of the infant while evacuating Sestius.  The child was completely helpless at that time, not able to even roll over.  The baby was still not very mobile, but he could roll over and grab things, and needed to be kept in environs that precluded him getting into trouble.  Finally the child wore out, and Cornelius left him with the nanny while he went to prepare himself for the dinner.

In full uniform he approached the red room, a small dining room near the Emperor’s private quarters.  He felt nervous at the entrance to the room, and the servant who had been guiding him seemed to sense his unease.  She looked back at him with a smile on her face.  “His Majesty is no threat to you, PFC,” she said, gesturing toward the doorway.  “I am quite sure you are not on the menu.”

Cornelius let out a short nervous laugh, swallowed, and walked into the room.  There were two people already in the room, and neither of them were the Emperor.  The PFC looked over those two, recognition coming quickly.  He snapped to attention, but before he could salute Grand Marshal Mishori Yamakuri jumped to his feet and rendered a precise hand salute.  Field Marshal Betty Parker got to her feet in a more sedate manner, waiting for Walborski to salute before she rendered her honor.  That was when Cornelius noticed the Imperial Medal of Heroism hanging from her neck as well.

“Have a seat, PFC Walborski,” said Yamakuri, motioning to a chair on the other side of the table from he and the Marine Commandant.  “His Majesty will be along shortly now that you are here and the staff can inform him of the fact.”

“He waited for me?  Sir, ma’am?”

“It’s a matter of protocol,” said Parker with a smile.  “The Emperor waits on no one.”

“All rise for the Emperor, Sean Ogden Lee Romanov,” called out a Herald.  “All rise for Sean the First.”

Sean came sweeping into the room in full dress uniform, Doctor Jennifer Conway on his arm.  Cornelius was struck by the beauty of the red haired physician, and from the attentiveness of the Emperor in seating her, he realized that to Sean this was no casual dinner companion.  As soon as he had seated the woman, next to Cornelius and on his own left he took his own chair.

“So good to see you, Cornelius,” said Sean, looking over at the PFC.  “I have been hearing good things about you.  I hope you don’t mind my inviting Mishori and Betty to dinner?”

“Not at all, your Majesty,” said Cornelius in a choking voice.

“Don’t worry about us at all, Cornelius,” said Parker, picking up her wine glass.  “You can speak freely here, and nothing will get back to the military.  Right, Mishori?” she said, elbowing him in the side.

“Be at ease, Cornelius,” agreed Yamakuri, smiling.  “His Majesty invited us along so we could get a sense of what fighting the Ca’cadsans is like.”

“It can be hard, sir,” said Cornelius, choking on his words.  “Very hard.”

“I am so sorry about your wife, Cornelius,” said Jennifer, leaning over and putting a soft hand on his forearm.

He kept his arm still, but still felt some of the guilt he had possessed at lusting after this woman before his wife was killed.  Of course she had brushed him off, but he had still propositioned her.

“There will be a lot more widows and widowers, and orphans, if we don’t stop these devils,” said Sean, looking around the table.

The food came and the talk stopped for a moment.  Cornelius had to admit that he had never eaten food better than the seafood lasagna served that night.  There were tender shrimps, scallops, oysters, crab meat and other things he wasn’t familiar with.  He wasn’t sure if it was Earth stock or local surrogates, and really didn’t spend much time wondering, just enjoying.  It was served along with a salad that was crisp and fresh beyond belief, with fresh baked bread and sweet butter.  And a wine that Cornelius could not afford with a year’s salary.

Jennifer excused herself after ten minutes of after dinner conversation.  And Sean invited his guests to another room, where he activated a holo that showed the entire Persius arm.  At a command the view zoomed to the New Terran Empire, then further into Sector IV.

“I know this is above your classification level, Cornelius,” said Sean, swirling the fine whisky in his glass.  “I am raising your clearance, unilaterally.  I want your input on this.”

“On what, your Majesty?”

“We’re not winning this war, PFC,” said Mishori, pointing to the holo that now showed the red dots of conquered worlds, along with the orange of those threatened by the aliens.  “We need time.  And his majesty has made a proposal on how to buy some of this time.”

“Remember, Cornelius, as we tell you this, there are other contingencies on the planning boards,” said Sean.  “We will only talk about this one, but I don’t want you to leave here thinking this is all we have going.  That would be enough to depress anyone.”

Cornelius gave the Emperor a questioning look.

“What would be your thought about taking on the Cacas on a planet surface.  With no air or space support, and very little in the way of logistics?  Just you and a small unit?”

“I think it would be suicide, if you mean to put regular infantry units on the planet,” said Cornelius, seeing the frown that came over the Grand Marshal’s face as he said that.  “But I believe small units of hunters could really hurt them.”

“And you had experience with this on Sestius?   Is that correct?” asked the Field Marshal.

“Yes, ma’am.  And when we had the Cacas in the jungle, the Freeholders and myself, and men like Preacher, they were at a real disadvantage.  We move better in heavy foliage, and they were not able to track us or call in air support.  Not until we had already struck and moved away.”

“So you see, my Lord and Lady.  Cornelius has been there, and he thinks my plan would work.”

“Are you willing to put your life on the line again, hunting through a jungle or forest with no support?” asked the Grand Marshal.

“If I can kill Cacas, then yes sir,” said Cornelius, turning a cold eye on the Grand Marshal.

“We just need to get more men like Cornelius here to go on those missions,” said the Emperor.

“You’re going into the Rangers?” asked Mishori, putting down his own glass.

“So I have been told, sir,” said Walborski, nodding.  “Right after the NCO Academy.  But I know how things can change.”

“Oh, you’re going to Ranger school, son,” said the Grand Marshal with a smile.  “I can guarantee that.  Getting out successfully will be up to you.”

“I will make it, sir,” said the PFC.

“Of that I have no doubt.  We need men like you.  And before you say anything, Betty, he’s mine.  You can go get someone else for your Force Recon.”

Cornelius left the room almost giddy, both from the alcohol he had consumed and the elevated company he had rubbed elbows with.  The last thing he remembered was shaking hands with the most powerful man in human space and two of his Paladins.  Then he fell into a soft bed after ordering his implant to wake him for breakfast.  He had three and a half days of leave, and he intended to use it well.

*     *     *

The center of Capitulum was the busiest city Walborski had ever seen.  He hadn’t always been a farmer.  He had grown up on New Detroit, a core world with five billion people, whose capital city was an impressive forty million.  And it could be dropped into Capitulum seventy five times.

The soldier was in civies this day, wearing the baggy trousers and button down shirt that was the fashion.  Junior was attached to his chest by a baby carrier.  The child looked at everything with a concerned expression, and his dad couldn’t blame the child.  Everything was crowded, and to a less than year old baby it had to be overwhelming.

It was a beautiful day, the sun bright in an almost cloudless sky.  It glinted off the glass sides of the skyscrapers that framed the thoroughfares.  This was walking only territory.  People who needed to get someplace quickly could take the subway or the airbuses.  Since it was near noon there were a lot of people out shopping, heading from their offices to eat, whatever.  It was as if all the big buildings around them had emptied for several hours.

Cornelius made his way across the street to the large square where so many were lounging on benches.  Across that square, which seemed enormous from ground level, was the Reformed Catholic cathedral where Sean had been crowned, and his father before him.  Birds, mostly pigeons, fluttered and landed, looking for food.  A few of the native birdlings were also in evidence, and Cornleius wondered how many Earth forms had invaded the wilderness areas of the planet.  Programmed nanotech was supposed to keep that from happening, but Cornelius had seen it on New Detroit despite the precautions.

The cathedral was open, as it always was, and the soldier walked in, his hands over the baby’s chest.  He looked at the massive columns of the nave reaching hundreds of meters straight up to the ceiling.  He kept walking, his footfalls sounding on the walls.  There were some people in the church, kneeling in pews and praying.  He wasn’t sure how he felt about prayer.  It hadn’t seemed to have helped him much.  He and Katlyn had been trying churches on Sestius before the invasion.  They had both been raised Reformed Catholic, and both had strayed from the Church after being married in it.  He wasn’t sure how he felt about it now, but he was sure that Katlyn would have wanted what he planned, and that was good enough for him.

He continued to walk toward the altar, looking up at the two hundred meter wide dome that reached almost a kilometer into the air.  He knew the building was meant to overwhelm the worshippers, to impress them with the might of God.  Again, he wasn’t sure if there was a God, but he had to admit the size of the building, the sculptures and paintings inside, were impressive as hell.

“Father,” he said in a low voice, waving at a priest that was bustling about the altar.  “Can I talk to you?”

“Of course, my son,” said the smiling Priest, walking down the steps from the high platform.  “What can I do for you?”

“I would like to have my son baptized into the church,” said Cornelius, unstrapping the baby from the carrier.

“And does his mother agree?”

“She’s dead, Father.  Killed by the enemy.”

“I am so sorry, my son.  I am sure she is with God.”

And I’m not so sure, but I’m not willing to take a chance with my baby.  “I’m in the Imperial Army,” continued Cornelius.  “My baby is being raised by friends, and I don’t know when I’ll see him again, so I wanted to make sure I got this done.”

“Of course.  Let me get a few of the people here to witness.  That is my wife over there,” said the Priest, pointing to a woman in clerical garb.  “I’m sure she would be happy to help with the ceremony.”

Cornelius held the baby, who was looking from him to the Priest as if he wasn’t sure about this thing, while the Priest dipped water out of the baptismal and sprinkled it on the child, at the same time saying a prayer.  After it was over he thanked the priest and took the baby out into the city.

“You really are a happy baby,” said Cornelius to his son as he strapped him back into his carrier.  The baby made some noises, not speech, but the practice needed to speak.  Cornelius ambled and walked to a nearby restaurant.  Soon Junior was in a high seat sucking on a bottle while his father ate a sandwich.  Then it was time to tour the central part of the city.

There was really too much to take in on a day trip.  He got a look at the Parliament building, and walked for several hours through the Imperial Museum, a place he couldn’t take in fully in his lifetime.  After that he had dinner, then settled into his hotel room with his baby, just spending the evening enjoying the little one’s company.  At times he looked out the window of his one hundred and fortieth floor room at the amazing city outside.  The city seemed to stretch forever as a sea of light, while a constant string moved across the sky, aircars on their way home or to a night on the town.  It looked too big to ever fall.  And the soldier knew that was a lie.

The next morning found the pair on an aircar to the south, passing along the curve of the city as it fronted the huge Capital Bay.  Twenty-five hundred kilometers further south was Rio, home to another three hundred and fifty million people.  They weren’t going quite that far, only a hundred kilometers from the southern boundary of Capitulum.  To the most unusual city in the Empire.

Earth Town existed for one purpose, and one only.  It was an amusement park with a history, the past of the old human home planet.  Nothing so impressive as what was built in Capitulum, it still was a part of their heritage.

The aircar landed in the center of the five thousand kilometers of park.  From the landing zone Cornelius could see the Eiffel Tower, standing in the center of Parisville.  To the south was a gaggle of skyscrapers, New Yorkville.  Not even sure where he wanted to go, the soldier took his baby to the French monument.  They went to the top of the open tower, getting a good view of the park.  After several hours on a reproduction of the Seine River he headed to the reproduction of New York.  He bought the baby plenty of gifts at many of the shops at street level.  He took some of the smaller toys, mostly stuffed animals, with him, and gave the stores an address to send the larger.  Most looked at Cornelius curiously as he gave them the Emperor’s address, but took the orders.

The day was spent going from city to city.  Romeville, Cairotown, Beijing City.  The last thing he saw was a reproduction of the Great Wall of China.  After that they headed back to the capital, and another night in the hotel.

Sunday morning he spent in the city, going to church at the cathedral, praying for his wife and the people of the Empire.  He felt it couldn’t hurt.  Then it was to the Capitulum Mid Stadium, where he had an invitation to sit in the Emperor’s box.

“I really like the other kind of football better,” said Sean as they sat watching the Mid-Capital Sharks of the Capitulum Professional League take on their rivals, the Northeast Capitulum Bears.

Cornelius enjoyed the match, which the home team won with a goal in the eighty-fifth minute.  “I have to admit, your Majesty, that though I like soccer, Northam football really fires me up.  We had some big time leagues on New Detroit.”

“Whenever you are back in the Capital feel free to use any of my boxes,” said Sean.  “I really feel like I’m slacking when I watch sports, or operas, or really anything else.  But the people expect to see their Emperor out in public, normalizing things.”  The Emperor was silent for a moment, then looked over at the PFC.  “We really need men like you, Cornelius.  And I know what this war can do to you.  Even if you survive you may never be the same.”

“As long as my son doesn’t have to go through it,” said Walborski, holding the baby in his lap.

“I can’t guarantee that,” said Sean, patting the baby on the head.  “But I will try my best.  And anyone who wants to hurt your son will have to go through me.”

Cornelius nodded, knowing the Monarch meant what he said.

Saying goodbye was hard, harder than he thought it would be.  He clung to the baby till the last minute, then handed him to Nanny with tears in his eyes.  “I’ll be back when I can,” he told Junior, knowing that the baby didn’t understand what he was saying, but having to say it anyway.

The flight back to the Hexagon was cheerless.  He was still in a funk when he was ushered through the wormhole and back to the Donut.  From there he had to wait a half an hour for the traffic coming from New Terra to stop so they could continue through.  Cornelius thought it bizarre that he had travelled many billions of kilometers to shortcut a trip to a planet that was only ninety thousand kilometers from the world he had just come from.  From the military transport hub at Concordia he took an aircar to New Kiev, where he landed on a base fifty kilometers outside that city.

New Terra was the oldest of the terraformed worlds, almost nine hundred years old.  It was a dominant Earth life world, and Cornelius was pleasantly surprised to look out over the grasslands from his temporary quarters and see the large forms of bison walking with the sun going down behind them.  An hour later the sun was down, and Jewel, permanently in the sky in this hemisphere, lit the sky as the sun rose upon it.  Cornelius had a little touch of spirituality at that point.  He still wasn’t sure what God was, but thought that something must exist to fulfill that function.

Chapter Six

Sweat saves blood.  Erwin Rommel.

IMPERIAL ARMY NCO ACADEMY, NEW TERRA, SEPT 25TH- OCT 12TH, 1000.

“Get the fuck out of those racks,” yelled the harsh voice of the instructor as introduction to the newest class.

Why am I not surprised, thought Cornelius, jumping out of his bunk and coming to attention.  A short ugly looking man stalked down the center of the barracks, the stripes of an E-7 on his jumper collar, turning his glare left and right.  That glare showed more than words his disdain and disgust for these people who were presumptuous enough to think they could enter the exalted ranks of the NCO corps.

“What a bunch of pussies,” said the NCO, shaking his head, then looking over at one of the female trainees.  “Or in your case, dicks.  You think you can lead soldiers?  I doubt it, but you can try and prove me wrong.  That should be quite a show.”

This guy’s good, thought Walborski, trying not to smile.

“You think you’re something special, trainee,” yelled another sergeant, this one female, getting right in Walborski’s face.

“No, Sergeant,” yelled Cornelius in his best trainee voice.

“Drop and give me a hundred,” yelled the Staff Sergeant, whose name tag said Zemba.  Her eyes unfocused for a moment, indicating that she was accessing the datanet.  “You want to be a Ranger, huh?  So why not make it two hundred.”

Walborski stepped back into the space between his bunk and the one to the right and dropped into a pushup position.   He started doing the pushups and calling out each one.

“Don’t count them out trainee,” said the Platoon Sergeant.  “When I want to hear your shit I’ll squeeze your head.”

The E-7 walked back down the center of the barracks.  “I am Sergeant First Class Chu.  If you want to be an NCO in my Army you must get past me.”  An evil smile split his face.  “It is my job to break you, to make sure you bitches and bastards don’t pollute my NCO Corps.”

And so it went for the next fifteen minutes, while Cornelius did his pushups and others were dropped to do theirs.  He was back on his feet well before the time was up.  He wasn’t even out of breath, though a few of the others were after a lesser number of pushups.

“Get dressed in PT gear and fall out in two minutes,” yelled Sergeant Zemba.  “And don’t be late, or you will pay.”

Walborski was ready in one minute.  He had spent the money to get his face depilated, so he didn’t have to scrape the stubble off his cheeks and chin like so many others.  He straightened up his bed, then ran from the barracks, not the first, but nowhere near the last.

They went through ten minutes of warm up calisthenics, then went for a ten mile run.  To most of them a ten mile run, especially on a planet with slightly less than Earth normal gravity, was easy.  Cornelius, who had been studying military history on his own time, knew that the thinking behind all the running was that soldiers could get from point A to B and arrive ready to fight.  He had also read of many past militaries that hadn’t been marathon runners, and they had fought, and fought well.

After the run they headed for breakfast.  They allowed them all they could eat, letting them pile up the calories, as there were no overweight people at this juncture of their military careers.  Then they fell back out.

“We will have an inspection of the barracks in five minutes,” said Chu, turning his glare on the trainees once again.  “You will have your areas squared away and be in a clean undress uniform.  Fall out.”

Cornelius ran into the barracks, listening to the complaining of the other trainees.  He felt what they were saying, but really thought it did no good to voice them.  Sometimes they were counterproductive, as was proven moments later when the sergeants went through the barracks and threw what some of the trainees had said back in their faces.

Of course no one passed.  Cornelius had fewer gigs than most, and some were assigned extra duty that night.  Then they were shown the proper way to prepare their gear for inspection, where everything had to be in a certain place and time.  After they were shown how they could wear their gear in a more individual manner for stand up inspections.  Still as uniform as possible, but allowing the individual soldiers to choose the manner that made the most sense to them.

“Uniformity for the sake of uniformity in combat is bullshit,” said Sergeant Zemba, walking in front of the formation.  “Equipment is made to be used when it is most necessary.  Making your soldiers wear their gear in a manner that makes it difficult for them to use, that might have a negative effect on their health and safety, is stupid.  You will run into officers, mostly high rankers, who have not been in the field for decades, who will insist that you follow the rule of uniformity.  Your job as NCOs is to find a way around this nonsense, at least when you are out in the field.”

Most days had the same round of exercise and inspections, but in the afternoons they alternated between the range and tactical exercises.  They switched between the position of soldier and team leader.  On the range exercises they linked into a tactical com net, and the team leader fired at targets while at the same time they designated targets for their team members.  It was a real challenge to hit the moving targets while controlling the team.  Cornelius had no problem seeing the reasoning behind this exercise.  It was important to make sure some targets were not being serviced with overkill while others were allowed to take up a firing position and take the squad under direct fire.  And it was important that the team leader continues to put fire onto the targets, since not firing would mean taking a fifth of the team’s firepower out of the equation.

Tactical exercises involved moving through the field and engaging hidden targets or Opfor forces with weapon’s simulators.  Cornelius loved these exercises, moving with his superior woodcraft through the wild training areas, finding and fixing the enemy, avoiding ambushes.  He was therefore surprised after one such exercise when he was taken aside by Sergeant First Class Chu.

“I’m going to have to fail you on that exercise, Walboski,” said Chu, looking the PFC straight in the eye.  “Do you know why?”

“No, Sergeant Chu,” he said, feeling a combination of depression and anger coming over him.  “I moved past those Opfor people like they were deaf and blind.  And I took out the target.”

“But that wasn’t your job, PFC Walborski.  Your job was to lead your squad into the area and utilize their firepower to take out the target.  Instead, you went off on your own, and lost two squad members who moved up without direction and got caught in a crossfire.”

Walborski’s shoulders slumped as he thought back on the exercise and realized that the Sergeant was correct.  He had known he could get through the perimeter, and so had put his squad in place and moved in himself.  It was a no com exercise, meaning they weren’t in link, and when he hadn’t reported in to his assistant squad leader for ten minutes that woman moved the unit forward, right into an ambush.  Her own quick thinking had got them out of it with only two casualties.  It could have been worse, should have been worse, so Specialist Catherine Bennett was awarded a meritorious pass on that exercise, while Cornelius got a red mark.

“Look, Walborski, you are a fantastic soldier.  You move like a shadow, you see everything, and everything you see you kill.  I would take you into any unit I led in a heartbeat.  Unfortunately, you would always be on point.  But skill as a soldier is not what this course is about.  This course is about leadership.”

Cornelius nodded his head with a quiet “yes, Sergeant.”  He did see the point of the course.  In fact, he was not sure he wanted to be a leader.  The allure of being a free agent, on the hunt to take out the enemy, was great.  He wasn’t sure the Army would allow him to do such.  In fact, he was pretty sure they wouldn’t stand for him being a free agent.

As if reading his mind the Sergeant continued.  “I know you’ve applied for Ranger training, and you’ve been accepted.  Maybe you think you will just be allowed to go out and hunt the evil aliens on your own, once you get that tab on your sleeve.  That may happen, if everything goes to shit.  But in most situations you will be expected to play as part of a team, and that means taking care of your responsibilities first.  I think you will make a fine NCO.  Dare I say you might even, heaven forbid, become an officer.  But you need to start thinking as a team leader to do either one.”

On another occasion Cornelius overheard a conversation between Zemba and another Specialist.  The man was not in combat arms, if Cornelius remembered right he was in supply and logistics.

“So how is this combat stuff going to help me in my job,” said the E-4, an angry expression on his face.  “I’m in supply.  I’m not going to be leading troops into combat.”

“And how do you know that?” asked Zemba.  “If it hits it, you might find yourself in combat, leading ill equipped troops who are not the caliber of trained infantry, or who might have forgotten all the lessons they were taught in basic concerning battlefield skills.  And they will depend on you to lead them, to give them a chance to survive and win.”

“In that case I don’t think we will survive or win, Sergeant.”

“I don’t think you will either,” agreed Zemba, nodding her head.  “But would you rather go down as sheep, or as wolves fighting with their last breath.  Even if you die, you may help your fellows in the rest of the division achieve their goal, even if that’s only to live and fight another day.”

“I just think it would be more helpful to train us in things that help us in our day to day jobs.”

“So you would rather we had everyone inventory supplies for a day.  Or pass them out from a simulated supply room.  Sorry, Specialist, but that isn’t going to happen.”

By the second week they started having more classroom instruction into the theory and history and leadership.  How to motivate people.  How to lead from the front, and convince people to put their lives on the line for something that might not be that personally important to those soldiers.  He noticed that the instructors were becoming more respectful of the people they were training, almost as if they were accepting them as colleagues.

On the third week they were taken up to a training station in orbit around New Terra.  The station was an actual centrifugal type, one that had been made obsolete with the invention of artificial gravity.  Cornelius really couldn’t understand why such a thing was still in existence until he was brought aboard in the central, nonspinning zero gravity section.

The class was brought up to the first ring, which simulated a half gravity.  The ring was almost entirely a wide track, and someone commented on the rich mixture of the air.  Cornelius took a deep breath and had to agree.  The air was thick, which meant they were getting more oxygen per breath than otherwise.

“Start running,” yelled Sergeant First Class Chu, waving the soldiers forward.  “I’ll tell you when to stop.”

The soldiers started running, around and around the ring, the artificial reverse horizon moving with them.  Cornelius was breathing easy the whole time.  It was an energizing experience running in low gravity within an oxygenated atmosphere.  After ten kilometers they were stopped and herded toward the lift.

The next level was almost normal gravity with a slightly thicker than normal atmosphere.  Again they ran, another ten kilometers, and again it was an easy run.  Same with the next level up, one point one gravities with slightly thinner air.  It was a bit more difficult, but still not a problem.  They went through another level, and this time it was torture.  But not as much as the last level.

This time it was one point five gravities with a very thin atmosphere.  Cornelius felt like he was running through water because of the gravity, while at the same time pulling the thin air into his lungs.  It wasn’t enough.  After a kilometer he was gasping, his lungs hurt, and cramps were starting to work their way up his legs.  At two kilometers almost a quarter of the class had fallen out into gasping piles to the side of the track.  At four kilometers half the class was down.  At six only Cornelius and one other person were still on their feet.  Cornelius felt like he was going to fall down any moment, but he was determined that he was not going to be the first one to fall.  The other guy, who was already a buck sergeant, looked back at him, and he saw the same determination on that face.

Well too bad, asshole, thought Cornelius, his lungs on fire.  Because you’re the one who’s going to fall.

The instructors did not let it come to that.  As they came back around to the start line Sergeant Zemba stepped in front of them and held up a hand.  “OK, super troopers.  Time to move on to something else.”

The class rode the lift down to the first level, and the lessening of gravity and increase in air pressure was a relief.

“Now when General China Gordon was under siege in the Sudan,” said Sergeant Chu, stepping in front of the class, “the British Government, under pressure from their people, sent a relief expedition from the cool wet climate of England to the hot dry desert of Egypt and Sudan.  Gordon really needed these people to get a move on and break the siege.  Instead, the British soldiers spent over a month getting acclimated to the climate.  Can anyone guess why they did this?”

A hand went up quickly and the Sergeant pointed at the soldier, a young woman.  “Because they knew that to send troops that were not used to that hot dry environment into combat would doom the expedition.”

“Correct,” said Chu, nodding.  “Now imagine what it is like to land soldiers on a strange world with strange gravity and unusual atmospheres.  The men may be helpless in certain environments.  So it is best to acclimate them to that environment, preferably before they arrive.  That should be the job of the unit commander, but sometimes that doesn’t happen.  And when it doesn’t, it is up to you, the NCO, to make sure the men and women under you are physically ready to perform.”

Finally came the day of graduation.  Cornelius knew that he didn’t make honor graduate this time around, but still graduated high in the class. With graduation came a promotion of one rank.  Everyone appeared on the drill field in their dress uniforms with new stripes on their sleeves.  There were two new staff sergeants, a dozen buck sergeants, and the balance new corporals.  Cornelius felt a glow of pride when he looked down on the two new stripes on his own sleeve.  I made it over another hurdle, he thought, realizing that he only had one more to jump, though it was also probably the highest.  But right now he felt on top of the world, and reality was not going to intrude on this day.

After the pass in review there was a speech by the NCOIC of the school, Sergeant Major McCarty.  The man had all the stripes and rockers of his rank on his sleeve, and over a dozen four year service hashes on his forearm covering.

“You are the backbone of our service,” said the long service soldier, looking out over the field of a dozen platoons of newly promoted NCOs.  “At the top are the generals and the marshals, then the colonels, on down to captains and lieutenants.  But they cannot perform their jobs, or win the battle, without the NCO.  Without you to turn the soldiers over to them in a prepared stated, to advise them on the morale and readiness of the troops.  In some cases to help to train the junior officers that are established over you.  So hold your heads up in pride that you have been chosen for what may be the most important job in the greatest army in the Galaxy.”

Of course it was a rah rah kind of speech.  But it was the kind of speech this ceremony called for, to the men and women who would be going into service during time of war.  They needed that kind of encouragement.

After the ceremony was over there was a party.  Cornelius stayed for a few drinks and some talk, then headed out to the transport field for another trip to a wormhole.  He was supposed to report to Ranger school the next day, and he was damned if he would be late for this one.

Chapter Seven

There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.  Sun Tzu.

HEAVEN, SUPERSYSTEM, OCTOBER 13TH-NOVEMBER 30TH , 1000.

Ranger School Phase I was on the planet Heaven, Sanctuary F II, the second planet of the sixth star out from the central black hole.  The planet was on the inner edge of the goldilocks zone, and received a more than sufficient amount of light from the K7 star Citrus, and its point nine gravity surface pull was considered almost perfect for human habitation.  Six point nine billion people called the Earth terraformed world home.

The military reservation was set in jungle terrain near a range of low mountains that were among the highest on the planet.  The north side of the reservation was bounded by a tributary of the Amazon, the Congo, which itself was a mighty river.

Cornelius was ready the first morning to begin as had the other mornings of his various training assignments.  He had met many of the men, there were no women in this course as they lacked the upper body strength of males, the night before.  Most were Private E2s and PFCs, though there were several Specialist 4s and Corporals like Cornelius, and two buck Sergeants.  All had heard horror stories of Ranger training, and all agreed that the first day would be a bitch.

So wake up was a surprise, as the instructors walked into the barracks and in calm and moderate voices woke the men up and told them that formation would be in ten minutes.  Cornelius got ready along with everyone else, waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Instead they stood for roll call, and then were given the rules of the school.  The most important one was they could quit at any time, no questions asked, and would be transferred back to their military specialty without any negative mark upon their record.  It was understood that Ranger training was not for everyone, and that many a fine soldier had been removed, or removed themselves, only to go on to distinguished careers of long duration.

They fell out for breakfast, again discussing among themselves the horror stories they had heard, though no one had heard one of these stories from someone who had actually been through the course, successfully or not.  Cornelius was beginning to think that it wouldn’t be so bad, feeling a sort of sense of disappointment.  He had expected a hardcore experience that would turn him into a killer, not what appeared to be an encounter group.

After breakfast they went back to the barracks and put on their gear, including the personal weapons they would carry through most of the course.  There of course would be no powered armor in this training.  Rangers didn’t use powered armor, the electronics of which detracted from their stealth.  Instead they were issued uniforms that were a combination impact armor and passive stealth technology.  Military Survival Suits were their name.

The chief instructor, a Master Sergeant Martinez, walked beside them calling out cadence.  They had not been told where they were going, only that there would be training when they got there.  Everyone was in a good spirits.  The air was clean and fresh, birds were singing in the trees bordering the road, and the day looked to be trending toward a beautiful if hot afternoon.

The gas grenades came flying from out of the jungle without warning, trailing a cloud of choking stinging smoke.  Most of the soldiers stood there in shock.  Some looked around, trying to gauge from the reactions of others what to do.  A few, like Cornelius, headed into the jungle, looking for cover.

Low velocity rounds came flying out of the jungle, striking soldier after soldier center mass.  Men cried out and fell, their impact armor keeping them from serious injury, but not from bruising and pain.  Those who hit the ground lay there choking and hacking, all thought of resistance gone.

Cornelius escaped all but a whiff of the gas.  He crashed through the brush, feeling good about the reactions that took him out of the frying pan.  As a figure rose up in front of him he realized he was now in the fire.

The man swung a hand so fast that Cornelius was not sure he had really seen it move.  The open hand hit him in the chest and knocked him back, at the same time driving the breath out of his lungs.  He was forced to suck a deep breath back in, and got a lungful of the hurtful gas.  The man grabbed him, and Cornelius tried to fight back.  It was as if he was a small child fighting a strong adult.  The man carried him back to the road and dropped him there.  Cornelius lay there hacking, looking up at the people who were moving about the road without any kind of breathing gear, sucking in the gas with each breath and showing no ill effects.

“Get the fuck on your feet,” yelled Martinez, running up and kicking one of the downed soldiers in the butt.  The other Rangers were moving around on the road, yelling, screaming and kicking.   Cornelius pulled himself to his feet before he caught a boot in his posterior.  That didn’t prevent him from catching one once he was one his feet.

“Get the fuck down this road, you pieces of shit,” yelled another Ranger. “To think that such a group of sorry ass pussies could think they might become Rangers.”

The soldiers staggered down the road, some stopping to vomit and being hit and kicked for their lack of progress.  Cornelius got to the point where he didn’t think anything else could come out of his stomach.  That didn’t stop the vomit response from manifesting.  When he thought it couldn’t get any worse a different form of gas was popped on the trainees.  Now it was a burning gas, skin, eyes, mucous membranes.  Walborski staggered down the road trying to relieve his eyes of the burning, not really doing anything positive.

This went on for hour after hour, the instructors calling the soldiers to run when they could barely breath, allowing no breaks.  Those who fell by the wayside were treated to a barrage of screaming, and if they didn’t move they were jerked to their feet and given a kick in the ass.

They came to an open field with a hill at the back near a flowing stream.  “Get to that fucking hill,” yelled a lieutenant who seemed to be the assistant instructor.  The soldiers groaned and turned that way, then they started on a slow run around the field.

It came as another shock as the sonics swept the group.  Soldiers fell to the ground groaning, or yelled out and fought through the low level stun effect.   A foul odor permeated the air, the smell of bowels releasing.  Cornelius was struck full on by a sonic, falling to his knees and groaning as he felt his own bowels and bladder release.  In fury he staggered back to his feet and trudged on toward the now obvious stronghold they were meant to take.

Cornelius saw a hole in the ground ahead, then a number of them, positions that had been invisible from the road.  He thought it a good idea to jump into that hole, which would allow him to rest and take the hilltop under fire at the same time.  He wasn’t sure what good that would do, but if they were playing an assault game this seemed like the right thing to do.

Something fell into the hole, an object that made a whistling noise.  Cornelius recognized the noise as the sound of an artillery simulator, something that had been used on them many times in basic and infantry training.  It wouldn’t kill him, but he knew it would hurt like a bitch.  He scrambled out of the hole, more pissed off than frightened, and started trudging toward the hill.

Before anyone got there the instructors called the exercise and sent everyone back toward the road.  They were directed to the other side of the road, where a bunch of long logs sat on the grass.  Everyone groaned as they saw the heavy objects, realizing what they for.  “Ten people to a log,” yelled the Master Sergeant.  “Get them up people.”

Cornelius found himself on the forward end of his log.  From this position he was tasked with setting the pace, not an enviable place in the line.  “Move out,” yelled the Master Sergeant, and five groups of prospective Rangers started to move down the road.

At first it wasn’t too bad.  The log was heavy, but not unmanageable.  In the short term.  After fifteen minutes the log felt much heavier.  “Double time,” yelled the Master Sergeant, and Cornelius knew they were in for it now.

Cornelius started running.  He was soon pulled out of the pace and rhythm that he wanted to set by someone further down the log.  Cornelius cursed, but slowed his pace, realizing that it was beneficial for the other people in his squad.

“You people run like my grandmother,” yelled the Lieutenant.  He charged up and pulled on Cornelius’ web gear.  “Move your asses.”

Cornelius picked up the pace, and they moved that way for about ten minutes before the people in the back slowed it down again.  The log was starting to become unbearably heavy.  One group staggered under the log and several dropped to their knees.  Moments later the log hit the ground, and the instructors were on those soldiers like they were coyotes worrying a flock of sheep.

After another hour they were brought to a stop and allowed to fall out by the side of the road.  The men opened their lunch rations and tried to eat.  Some failed, and a few vomited up what they tried to put down their throats.  There were a lot of whispered complaints.  Remembering Preacher’s super sensitive hearing he thought it a really bad idea to complain anywhere near the instructors.

Cornelius felt tired and filthy in a way he hadn’t experienced before.  Most of the men had also soiled themselves, and had not been given a chance to clean up.  He realized that the horror stories he had heard about Ranger training were true, and he rejoiced in that fact.  Only fifteen percent of those who went through it completed the training, and now, more than ever, he was determined to be one of them.

“Everybody back on your feet,” yelled the Master Sergeant.  “Get those logs back on your shoulders.”

The groaning soldiers got up and moved to the logs, lifting them and starting forward.

“Stop,” yelled the Lieutenant.  “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“Turn around,” called out the Master Sergeant.

There was more groaning and some griping.  The Master Sergeant moved to the front of the first log at a speed that seemed unbelievable.  “Turn the fuck around.  How the hell do you think we position the logs for the next group?”

The day went on from there.  More physical torture and degradation.  When Cornelius fell into his bed that night he didn’t even have time to think about the events of the day before he was out.

When he woke in the morning three soldiers were missing.  He knew they had quit.  He realized as he thought about it that the powers that be wanted to cut people in the first phase of training, before they went on to Phase II and augmentation.  Again it was a gentle wake up followed by a day of hell.  By the end of the first week the platoon had been reduced to thirty-eight.

*    *     *

There were no weekends off from training.  It went on seven days a week, and could be called at any time of the day or night.  The platoon did two overnight exercises that first week alone, roaming the nearby jungle in the darkness trying to avoid their instructors. Those caught experienced prisoner of war camp for the rest of the night, where they were questioned while being beaten and battered.  Cornelius was proud to say that he had only had to serve one of the two nights in prison camp, and that only a few hours of the early morning before sunup.

Every day there was an hour of hand to hand training, which included training with knives and clubs.  Cornelius was surprised that the instruction did not go much beyond what they had learned in basic and infantry training.  He asked Master Sergeant Martinez the reasoning behind that one day after the man had thrown the Corporal to the ground and pulled an elbow strike into the downed man’s throat.

“We teach you the basics until they become a hardwired part of your nervous system, Corporal,” said the older man.  “We don’t have time to teach you a bunch of fancy martial arts.  It’s more important that you know some techniques you can execute to perfection that are there when you need them.”

“So it’s not important to master a martial art?”

“I didn’t say that, Corporal,” said the grinning Master Sergeant, motioning for Cornelius to come at him again.  This time the big man hit Cornelius in the chest with a side kick.  He reached a hand down and helped Walborski back to his feet, then motioned to the next soldier to come face him.

“We encourage all of our people to study at least one martial art,” said the Master Sergeant before he let Walborski leave the mat.  “I’m a high ranker in five different arts, and you’ll meet many people in Spec Ops who know more.  We just don’t have time to teach you much more than mastery of a couple dozen effective techniques.”

The second week started off with waterborne operations.  They began with using boats, rubber rafts, canoes, primitive craft that could be used to cross rivers or move on river and lake systems.  Then had come diving.  At first it had been snorkelling and free diving.  Then had come a variety of breathing apparatus and learning how to work under the surface.  The final part of the course had been underwater movement with weapons and equipment, using the nanobubble system to survive the long period they would be under water.

Cornelius injected the nanobubbles into his arm under the supervision of a Ranger medic.  It was most important that the diamonoid bubbles be injected into a vein, so the billions of tiny oxygen tanks would go into circulation through his system immediately.  They were akin to the nanobubble system used by spacers on deployment.  Those systems were kept permanently in the bodies of the spacers, giving them a reserve of life giving oxygen in case of a low or no atmosphere event.  There was still the problem with CO2 buildup, but the bubbles also scrubbed those particles out of the bloodstream.

Cornelius went under, reminding himself that he did not need to breath in or out, something his body would want to do from reflex action.  His body slipped easily into the water, the survival suit he was wearing configuring itself to provide the least amount of resistance possible.  He swam with easy strokes, the memory plastic his boot bottoms, in a flipper configuration, pushing through the water.

There was some disorientation in the murky water.  There was nothing to clearly mark his path, and he was cut off from the navigation link.  He looked at the compass of his wrist unit and adjusted his course.  To pass this objective he needed to surface in the shallows of the target beach, a narrow strip of sand along the river bank.  It was a kilometer long swim, with many chances to get the approach wrong.  All Cornelius could do was hope that he hadn’t made a major mistake.  It wouldn’t be a disaster if he did, only a blow to his pride.  That was enough to make it a serious matter.

The bottom started to slope up, and as Cornelius followed it the murky darkness started to lighten.  He took his time, knowing he still had almost fifteen minutes of air according to his internal clock.

Here goes, he thought when he got to a point where the depth was no longer worth swimming in.  He thrust up from the water, his weapon at the ready, and took in a breath.  That breath came out as a sigh of relief as he saw that he was almost in the center of the beach.

Cornelius hurried out of the water, looking around to make sure he wasn’t being set up for some kind of ambush.  He didn’t see anyone as he walked onto the sand, and he started wondering if this actually was the beach he was supposed to penetrate.  With a shrug of his shoulders he moved off the beach and into the jungle.

“Good job, Walborski,” said the instructor, speaking out of the shadows of the jungle.  “Move up the path to the rally point.”

There were several soldiers already at the rally point, and Cornelius nodded so several men that he knew were his competitors for the top student in the shrinking class.  After he took a seat another came in.  Over the hour more people came in, a function of them starting off at different times.  A few looked down shamefaced as they entered the clearing, and Cornelius had to guess that they had come out of the river in the wrong location, or had been spotted at the surface trying to find the proper area.

That night was a river borne assault in boats.  The Opfor was a unit of light infantry that was getting ready for deployment.  As such they were trained soldiers without a surfeit of practical experience.  What they had was high tech equipment and the ability to use it.

The platoon came ashore in five rubber rafts and faded into the jungle, leaving one man per raft to guard it.  By this time Cornelius had gotten comfortable with this jungle, his experience as a hunter translating into this different environment.  He led his squad on a roundabout approach to the target, one that would bring them in from an orientation perpendicular to the river.

It was a good strategy.  The approaches directly parallel to the river were heavily guarded, while the inland approach was not.  Cornelius sent his two best infiltrators ahead once they located the outer guards by their electronic signatures.  The two best other than himself, but as squad leader for this exercise he knew better than to take the job himself, much as he wanted to.  His troopers were all wearing survival suits with passive heat masking systems, including hoods and gloves, as well as the very low energy cammo exterior.

The men moved in with ghostly silence, their simulated monomolecular blades in hand.  One struck, a second later the next, and both light infantrymen went down as their suits went offline from the simulated kill.  He motioned the rest of his unit through the gap, then slowed them down thirty meters in.  The enemy would know something was up when the sentries didn’t report in.  By that time he hoped to be in position to hit the target.

The enemy camp was starting to stir just as they came in sight of it, a squad of soldiers moving out to the breached perimeter.  The Ranger trainees let them go by, a pair of soldiers detailed to keep them under close watch, while the rest moved toward the target tent that was lit up like a small town on infrared.

Cornelius sighted in on a man in front of the tent.  His firing would be the signal for the others to engage.  He squeezed his trigger and the rifle sent out the simulator beam that froze the target’s suit.  The rest of the squad opened fire, and within moments the area outside the tent was occupied by frozen statues, while a couple of rifle launched grenades went into the small structure.  Behind them a firefight erupted as his two rear security men took on the relief patrol, pinning them down.

At the count of ten seconds they started extraction, moving at an angle to their path of entry, not wanting to give the enemy any chance of picking them up retracing their path.  Once clear they moved a couple of hundred meters further into the jungle, then paralleled the river back to their insertion point.

Walborski felt calm for the first time that night as they pulled away from the shore into the darkness of the river.  He moved them two kilometers up river before crossing, then to the other shore.

“Good job,” said Master Sergeant Martinez as they came off the boat.  “You really caught them off guard with that maneuver.”  Of course the training staff had been tracking them by their implants, which had not been accessible to the Opfor.

All the men had lowered their hoods, taken off their gloves,  and opened the front of their suits.  Many were panting, and Cornelius could feel the sweat running down his face in the high humidity.  He looked at the Master Sergeant and nodded his head, feeling exhausted after the night of fun.

They spend a couple more days doing water borne, this time on the coast.  They swam in underwater from submarines.  They parachuted into the water and swam in.  They planted real demolition charges on boats and then blew them out of the water.

On one of the exercises Walborski saw what looked like a shadow moving through the water around him.  He didn’t know what it was, and really didn’t want to find out.  He headed for the bottom and found some cover in the rocks on the floor of the bay.  He opened the zipper of his survival suit and played with his wedding ring, taking comfort from the physical symbol of his pledge.  The shadow moved over him, and he caught a glimpse of a very large ocean creature.  The Corporal never did know what the creature’s intent had been.  It left him alone when he got into a space it couldn’t, and he felt that it probably would have enjoyed a feast of human that night if he hadn’t have been sharp.

*     *     *

Heaven did not boast any really high mountains.  There was a range running down the center of the double continent that ran across the equator of the planet.  The tallest peak was just a bit over twenty-five hundred meters.  The range was an old one that was worn down through millions of years of erosion.   Heaven was a low level tectonically active planet, without significant mountain building through those same millions of years.

Looking at the cliff they were expected to climb, Cornelius thought the Apalian Mountains were more than high enough, thank you.  He wasn’t terrified of heights.  Such were not passed on to Ranger training.  Then again, he was not overly fond of them.  He had heard once that people were afraid of heights because they had a death wish.  He liked the other explanation, that people realized that the stop at the end of a long fall could kill you.

They spent the first morning learning how to use the ropes, pitons and other equipment they would need for scaling the rocks.  Then it was to the tall wooden towers to practice going up and down a sheer surface.  Up was easier as far as the Corporal was concerned.  All he had to do was keep his feet on the wall and walk while he moved his hands up the rope.  Down was a leap of faith as they were taught to rappel, first with feet on the wall, then freely hanging.

That afternoon they made their first real climb, what the instructors called an easy one.  Walborski was not so sure about that.  They still had to haul their bodies up and over hard rock that scraped and pushed and bruised.  They were wearing safety harnesses that would activate if they changed position in a downward manner more than a meter a second.  There were some stumbles and falls, and embarrassed people floating slowly down to the ground.  Cornelius avoided such himself, mostly through holding on for dear life as he scrambled up the rocks.

They spent the night in quiet repose, everyone sore and exhausted.  Cornelius doubted there would be many nights like this, evenings of ease.  That wasn’t in the vocabulary of the instructors.  He lay back in his bedroll and looked up at the cloud of stars in the sky, enjoying that ease.  They were in wilderness, in a star system that was in the center of a densely populated arm of the Galaxy. The sky was multiple close constellations backed by a horizon to horizon river of stars and numerous bright nebulae.   He fell asleep with the image of that starscape in his mind.

Dawn came early, and they headed for the task of the day, an ascent up a sheer cliff face, almost a four hundred meter elevation.  For this task they needed the pitons, and the morning rang to the sound of rock hammers pushing hard rods into the surface of the cliff.  The thirty-one men who had made it this far fought their way up the cliff.  Most made it up to the spot where straight wall became overhang.  Everyone attempted the overhang, and half fell back to hang from their ropes.

Cornelius fought his way around the overhang with multiple pitons.  He was feeling good about himself, and the knowledge that he was going to make it, when the vibrations of a sonic made him slip to two points of contact.  He looked up to see a smiling instructor sweeping a sonic stunner over all the men who had made it.  That was his last sight of the man before his last foot slipped and he concentrated on holding onto the rock with his one remaining hand.  The rest of the men had fallen, and the lift harnesses were set to let them fall twenty meters before they kicked in.  The result was fourteen men coming to a jerking stop on the end of fifteen meters of rope.

“No you don’t, Walborski,” said the instructor, waving the sonic back his way.  Walborski felt his hand freeze up and his grip loosen. Then the panic of falling back to jerk to a stop at the end of his rope.

He took a moment to calm himself down, telling himself that he had redundant safety systems deployed, lift belt and rope.  It still took a moment to calm the terror of having fallen with almost four hundred meters below his back.  When he had gotten himself together he pulled himself up the rope and across the overhang, then onto the top.

“You did good, Walborski,” said the instructor as he sat down a couple of meters in from the edge.

“Scared the hell out of me,” said Cornelius, looking up at the Sergeant.

“That’s the idea,” said the instructor with a smile.

Cornelius shook his head as the man moved on to talk with another soldier.

The next morning two more men had dropped out of the class, unable to handle the stress of mountaineering.  That day was more of the same, climbing up sheer cliffs.  Only this time as darkness fell they went on night maneuvers through the mountains, and by necessity they could not show lights in the wilderness terrain, as that would have allowed bad habits to develop.  There were a few minor injuries that night, but overall the men did a good job of navigating the treacherous terrain.

Fourth day they flew by way of hypersonic transport to the southern hemisphere, and the other continent of the western hemisphere.  While it had been summer in the north, it was winter down here,  and they found themselves in a snow covered landscape.  They soon found that was not the only difference.  Icy mountains were even more treacherous, and they had another dropout during the two days of winter training.

The last exercise in the mountains was a squad navigation to a target across the mountain terrain of the snowy landscape.  Three squads went out, and this time Cornelius served as the point man for his unit under the command of another soldier.  He really didn’t feel comfortable in the snow.  He had hunted the equatorial lands of New Detroit, and Sestius had been a hot planet with very little frozen water on the surface.  To compound problems was the necessity of keeping the survival suits buttoned up to avoid the heat differential between body and environment that would illuminate them like spotlights in the dark on infrared.  It was snowing as they moved, an event with both positive and negative impact on the exercise.  Cornelius found it difficult to see, and any tracks in the snow were covered almost immediately.  Conversely, the Corporal knew he was hard to observe.

Cornelius thought he was leading them on a safe path, and was sure they would reach the target area without a hitch.  That was the last thought he had before the Opfor caught his squad in the ambush he had walked through without incident.  He himself was able to get away, not that he thought it would do any good as far as an ass reaming went.  With that in mind he continued on to the target himself.  The trainers hadn’t signaled him to cease, so he would try to achieve the mission on his own.

Checking against the map he saw the last approach to the target, a high pass.  He couldn’t see what was on the other side, and wouldn’t be able to until he got there.  And he was sure that there was no way through the pass.  It had ambush written all over it.  With that in mind he lay in cover and looked over the approach, trying to decide on a course of action that might accomplish more than his simulated death or capture.

I must be fucking crazy, thought the Corporal, looking for a path up the steep cliff that would lead him above the pass.  He had one length of rope, some pitons and a hammer.  The hammer and pitons were out if he wanted to get to the top without being located.  Cursing once again he grabbed a handhold and pulled himself up.

Cornelius had no trouble pulling himself up.  He had gained almost ten kilos of muscle since he had started Basic.  He had doubled his bench press, pushing almost double his own weight.  His biceps had developed to the same extent.  Still, the slick rocks were treacherous, and he didn’t have a lift harness on for this climb.  It would have been so easy to just give up, walk up the pass, and get captured.  You didn’t have to be successful in every exercise to pass the course.  In fact, the instructors wanted every soldier to have some failures, so they could evaluate them on their ability to face adversity.

Well, this is one I’m not going to fail, thought Cornelius, positioning his entire body on the vertical and starting on the way up.  He kept a tight grip on every hand hold and made sure he positioned his body with a lean that pushed his weight into his feet.  Sweat was pouring own his face despite the cold, and he knew that he was risking everything for a stupid training exercise.  That knowledge didn’t lessen his resolve, and he kept moving up the cliff, shifting one point of contact at a time.

After what seemed like hours, and registered on his internal clock as twelve minutes and change, he reached the top.  The snow was really coming down, and visibility was horrible.  Still, he picked up movement just below the top of the pass, and realized he had been right about the ambush.  With a smile on his face he moved along the heights and bypassed that ambush.  The way down on the other side was not near the trial that the way up had been.  In fact, it was a gentle slope that almost defeated him as his feet slipped on the ice despite his snow cleats.  He regained his balance and footing before it became a disastrous roll and angled down to some rocks that would give him cover.

He could hear the soldiers talking in the pass as he checked out the area.  He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but the included laughter had him thinking that they weren’t taking the situation seriously.  And why not, he thought with another smile.  They must have caught all of us except me, and what can one man do?

With a shrug of his shoulders he moved out, keeping to the shadows as he made his way toward the target compound.  He was determined to show them what this man could do.

The compound was just as lax as the pass security.  Men were sitting around, eating, joking, essentially not taking their job seriously.  Cornelius crawled through the snow until he was within throwing range on the compound.  He detached his three hand grenades, set them all for impact detonation, then checked his rifle.  When he determined that all was a go he threw the grenades, one after the other, into the compound.  They went off in sequence, simulated blasts along with sonics that crippled the suits of the Opfor, and he was on his feet, running at the compound and sending beams into anything that was still moving.  He jumped the low berm and landed in among the troops, most of whom were down by this time.  He shot down the rest, then ran into the tent and pointed his rifle at the officer within.

“What the hell is going on here?” growled the Major in the tent, staring at the rifle pointed at him.

“You are my prisoner,” said Cornelius.  “Don’t bother calling for help.  All the rest of your men are down.”

“Impossible.  We got all the rest of the Ranger trainees.  There was only one man out there.”

“That would be me,” said Cornelius, holding the Major at gunpoint until his amazed instructors showed up at the compound.

*     *     *

The final week of regular training was really more of a refresher of Basic and infantry training, with some instruction in air assault operations using a variety of combat aircars.  The whole time they were being made ready for Hell Week, the last week of training for Phase I, and the one that would determine if they made it to augmentation and full Ranger status.

There were a lot of rumors about Hell Week.  A lot of the men thought they were exaggerations.  Looking around at the men who had made it this far, men he now knew well, and realizing what tough and motivated individuals they were, he wasn’t sure.  It was said that less than half of these men would make it through that week.  That would have to be a real week of hell to make any of them quit.

Cornelius didn’t sleep much the night before Hell Day, the first of the five they would face.  He didn’t think anyone else did either.  Still, everyone looked awake and alert when the instructors came for them the next morning.

There was no talking as the soldiers filed into the mess hall for what promised to be their last good meal for the next five days.  Everyone was too tired while at the same time bursting with nervous energy.  After breakfast it was a trip back to the barracks to gear up, then to the nearby landing field where they were split into teams of six and put on aircars.

The passenger compartment of the car was sealed, and the men rode with no idea of where they were going.  Their implants were disabled for this exercise, sans the emergency locator.  They had no way of knowing their destination, or even if all the teams were going to the same location.

The internal clock function was still working, and Cornelius could tell they had been flying for three hours before the car started its descent.  He estimated that they had travelled at least six thousand kilometers, which meant they could be over just about any point on the planet.

“Everyone out,” yelled the instructor as the doors came open.  A blast of cold air came in along with a view of almost pure white.

Cornelius was one of the first out of the car.  He had been assigned point again for this day.  They would switch positions on a daily basis, everyone filling each position but one during the exercise.  The Corporal found himself standing on a flat field with a layer of deep snow under foot.  His feet sunk into the powder, and he quickly configured his boots into wide bottom snow shoes.  The world was flat to the horizon.

“Here are your maps,” said the instructor, handing the plastic sheets to the soldiers.  “You are to be at the rally point by midnight.  Failure to get there on time is a fail.”  With that the instructor got back into the aircar and closed it off.  The car then jumped into the air and moved away.

Now they had a good view in all directions, and saw that they were in fact standing on a featureless plain.  Cornelius looked at his map, noting that their position was marked.  He pulled out his compass and took a bearing on their location as compared to the target.  “That way,” he told Sergeant Dillard, the leader for the day.

The men spread out and started on the indicated path.  It was a trudge across a desolate landscape, with snow flurries all through the rest of the morning.  At times the snowfall grew thick enough where they had trouble seeing one another, and then they closed ranks.  At one point in the afternoon some dark objects ran across their path, then through their formation.  Dillard called out an order to not shoot, and soon the animals were identified as caribou.  They had to wait in a compact group for over an hour for the herd to pass.

Despite the survival suits it got very cold, and the temperature fell as the sun started to descend in the early afternoon.  Cornelius was pretty sure they were above the arctic circle based on the shortness of the day.

With nightfall came a secession of the snow, and with it a glorious star field in the sky.  Cornelius shot the azimuth of several of the more notable stars and got a fudge factor of where they were located on the globe.  He presented his findings to Dillard, who grunted and said nothing, then started the party on their way.

Cornelius was put off a bit by the snub, but thought about it as he walked through the snow.  It really wasn’t important where they were on the planet.  The only thing that really counted was getting to the target before midnight.  And to do that they just needed to keep putting one foot in front of another in the right direction.  Their only real enemy was the cold, and they could defeat it short term, which was all that was needed.

It was late into the night when they approached the campsite.  They could see the tents in the distance by the lights within them, and the big fire in the center of the circle.  Cornelius felt good that they had made it within the time frame.  He could see the smiles around him as everyone else realized it too.  The first day of Hell Week hadn’t been so bad.  They had gotten cold, and tired, but other than that it hadn’t seemed such a big deal.

The six Rangers seemed to come out of nowhere, wearing winter cammo that blended them perfectly into the snow.  Each sought out a target and none of the soldiers could do more than move or shout before they were down in the snow.  Cornelius struggled against the Ranger that had pulled him down and turned him over. He might as well have been a toddler fighting against a strong adult.  Plastic cuffs were placed on his wrists and he was jerked back to his feet.

“What the hell is going on here,” yelled Sergeant Dillard.

“Shut the fuck up, prisoner,” hissed one of the Rangers into the Sergeant’s face, then slapped him across the cheek.  “You speak when you are spoken to, and only then.”

The men were led away from the fire to a compound they hadn’t seen.  They were made to strip down to their long underwear, enough to keep them from freezing instantly, not enough for them to stay warm.

They huddled on the snow while Sergeant Dillard was led away.  Moments later they heard shouting, then screaming.  This went on for minutes, then stopped, then started again.  The screaming rose in volume and seemed to go on for an hour, though Cornelius’ internal clock told him it was about twenty minutes.

“What the hell are you doing to that man?” yelled another of the soldiers.

A stream of water came out of the dark and struck the man who had just spoken, some of the splash hitting all the others.  “You were told not to speak,” yelled a voice.  “Now shut the fuck up.”

The screaming went on for a few more minutes, then cut off.  A minute later a Ranger came and took another man away, and the same scenario repeated itself.  Cornelius was the fourth man to go, to be led to another small fenced area where a couple of hard looking men gave him cold stares.

“If you cooperate this can go easy on you,” said one of the men.

Cornelius shook his head.  He knew that way was a quick fail.

“Very well,” said the man, pointing a small device at Cornelius.  He pushed a button on the device and Walborski was wracked with agony, running through seemingly every nerve in his body.

“If you cooperate this will stop.”

Again Cornelius shook his head, and again the pain came.  This time the snot ran from his nose, tears from his eyes, and his scream came past his clenched teeth.  The pain relented for a moment, then came back two fold.  He screamed and screamed, his bladder releasing.

“Talk.”

What the hell do they want me to speak about, he thought through the haze of pain.  They aren’t asking for anything at all, just cooperation.

The torture seemed to go on forever, though his internal clock again told him it was about twenty minutes.  Then he was led away to another compound, where two of the three who went before him were gathered together sharing body heat.

“Where’s Chung?” he asked, joining the cluster on the ground and contributing his body heat while taking theirs.

“He failed out,” said Dillard with a frown.

The other two men came in at their times, and the soldiers continued to huddle together through the rest of the night.  Just before dawn they were freed and given back their equipment.  Then it was back on the aircar, without breakfast, and a one hour flight to another location.

This time it was a mountain range, another of the low ones that dominated the planet.  Off the car they were made to pick up heavy boxes to carry up a steep path.  At the top of the path they were given climbing equipment and told to get the boxes to the top of the cliff to their front.

That task was a pure bitch, and several of the men fell on the way up, one of them several times, swinging on the end of their ropes until they could reclimb the lost height.  Finally they all made it, only to be matched with a heavy log they had to carry down a steep path.  This was even more difficult than carrying an individual heavy weight, as they had to move as a team.  They slipped, slid and fell down several times.  There were scrapes and cuts, and fortunately no broken bones, partially a result of the bone augmentation they had received in Basic.

Night was falling when they reached the bottom.  Again they were set on an orientation course, this time alone.  Cornelius wanted to ask why they were told they would switch team positions when they obviously hadn’t done anything of the sort.  He finally decided it wasn’t worth the energy.  Instead he started on the course, wondering what was in store for them this night.

Again they were captured, and again they were questioned, this time without physical torture. Instead they were subjected to sleep deprivation and sound overload.

In the morning they were flown to the coast and made to carry a fully loaded rubber raft over coral reefs and mud flats, over and over, then up a river for riverine operations.  They were harassed all through the day, hit from the jungle, while they were on the river, while they were trudging through the jungle, while trying to take a break.  More hardship, more sleep deprivation, and another day passed.

Cornelius was able to get some food through this, the middle day of the ordeal.  There were berries and palm shoots and even some lizards he grabbed and ate raw.  It wasn’t enough, but it was better than nothing.

The next day it was the desert, and on the final day the steppes.  Both had different challenges.  And both had the same people harassing them as they trudged through their missions like sleep walkers.  By the last day Cornelius was not even sure if what he was seeing was real.  There were some obvious hallucinations, and some that made him question what he was seeing.  He was just glad they were not on the mountain course through these last two days.

When the sun came up over the endless grasslands the fourteen men left knew they had made it.  Hell Week was over, and they had all passed.  Ten good men had not made it through the trial, either by failing out or just plain quitting.

The aircars came for them for a lift back to the base.  Cornelius stared at the gaunt faces around him as they waited, men who had gone through days of starvation and sleep deprivation as well as hard calorie burning work.

As they got aboard the cars they tore into anything aboard that might contain food.  The next three days, while not really a leave, was down time, and they slept and ate as much as they wanted through that time, knowing that their next stop was a secure medical facility, and full augmentation.  They were told they were an exceptional class.  Normally only ten to fifteen percent of those who entered the course passed.  A full twenty-eight percent of this group had made it through.  Cornelius looked at the other men at one meal and felt a flush of pride that he was among such, and would serve with such.  He was almost there, and soon he would be turned loose to kill the creatures who had taken his wife from him.

Chapter Eight

There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever.  Thomas A. Edison.

SECURE MEDICAL FACILITY, PLANET DAIMON, DECEMBER 1ST, 1000 - JANUARY 5TH, 1001.

The secure medical facility was in orbit around the planet Daimon, Sanctuary C-II, another Earth terraformed world.  The sun was called Citrine, a star of the G3 variety, and the third out from the central black hole.

Cornelius came aboard the Class I fort, two hundred million tons of defensive station, that contained the medical facility.  Two hundred and fifty-four Ranger trainees, the successful graduates of twenty two Phase I platoons, came with him.  They were assigned individual quarters that each contained a suite of sensors to monitor their biologies during the process.

That evening they reported to the mess hall for dinner.  All were in undress uniforms, and as they sat over the meal they introduced themselves.  Cornelius knew that these were the men he would enter Phase III training with, and that he might eventually be deployed with them to combat platoons.

There were other men in the mess hall, military personnel with different uniforms.  Walborski noted the uniforms of Fleet and Marine Corps personnel, all young men trying to become a part of the special ops community.  He didn’t see any of the people who were on track to become special agents of the various security and intelligence agencies.  They were supposed to have their own facility, the location of which was not even common knowledge.

A large viewing screen on one wall of the mess hall showed the globe they were in orbit around, a blue and white world of oceans and clouds, with the forms of continents and large islands peeking through in numerous places.  There were some large brown patches on those continents, deserts, but fewer than on most worlds.  The greater part of the landmasses were forest and jungle, with some very large areas of grasslands, all populated by genetically altered Earth life.  Altered because of the heavy gravity of the planet, one point three gees.  Some of their Phase III training would take place down there, using that heavy gravity to help to toughen their bodies.

Before hitting his rack Cornelius read up on the process he was about to go through.  The changes they proposed making were astonishing, and just a little frightening.  Changes in almost every system of his body, all coordinated to make the whole of him superhuman, or at least as much as an organic being could be, given the current state of technology.

The next morning they were again in the mess hall, eating a high protein breakfast.  The medical personnel joined them and encouraged the men to eat all they could.  Cornelius had no problems with that.  He had lost five kilos of body weight during Hell Week.  He was still ahead of the game, ten kilos over his enlistment weight.

“Candidates report to the scanning rooms,” came the call over the implants of some of the men, Cornelius included.  A cursor appeared in the air to his front, and he got up and followed it from the hall, going down a long corridor.  Other soldiers were heading into rooms along the corridor, and Walborski got glimpses of what looked like surgical tables and sensors mounted on arms.

The cursor stopped at one of the doors, which opened as he approached.  A man and a woman in medical suits were waiting for him to enter the room that looked identical to the ones he had seen on the way there.

“Corporal Cornelius Walborski?” asked the woman, the insignia of an Imperial Army Captain on her collars.

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered, snapping to attention.

“Be at ease.  Disrobe and get on the table, if you please.”

“What is going to happen?”

“We’re going to do a complete soma scan on you,” said the woman.  Cornelius wasn’t sure if she was a doctor or a nurse.

“You already did that before I was allowed into Ranger training,” said the Corporal, feeling just a bit of embarrassment as he pulled off his uniform and folded it over a chair, then pulled down his underwear and tossed them on top of the other clothes.  He was not ashamed of his body, but was not really comfortable getting naked in front of a woman he didn’t know, despite the exposure he had in Basic and infantry training to coed bathing facilities.

“We want to make sure there were no changes we need to be aware of,” said the woman.

Cornelius settled in on the table, moving until he was centered.  The male member of the medical team pushed a spray hypo into his right arm, then again into his thigh, then his neck.  He shifted around and did the same for the left side of the soldier’s body.

Both med personnel stepped back and the sensor arms started to move over his body.  The two people were looking over some screens that were not visible to him, and making quiet comments to one another.  According to Cornelius’ internal clock the scan took twenty minutes, after which the woman looked down on him with a smile on her face.

“You check out perfectly.  In fact, you have a very unusual genome.  A very favorable one.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means, son,” said the man, who also had captain’s bars on his collar, “that you will probably live a good long life, despite the effects of augmentation.  If you survive your term of service you will easily live over two hundred years, possibly all the way to three centuries.”

Cornelius thought that over for a moment.  Augmentation robbed most people of from two to four decades of normal life.  The Imperial line had a genome that transmitted some of the effects of augmentation down the generations.  And they still lived a normal life span of around two hundred and fifty years.

“We just need to verify that you still want to undergo the process,” said the man, pulling a screen over and positioning it in front of the Corporal’s face.

“I didn’t know I could opt out at this point,” said Walborski, reading what was on the screen, then affixing his right hand print.  “Of sound mind and body, I agree to the terms of this contract,” he said as the screen scanned his hand.

“Very well,” said the man.  “You understand there will be some temporary side effects of the process?”

“Yes.  Blindness, deafness, paralysis.”

“Then don’t panic when they happen,” said the woman, patting him on the arm.  “That’s a common reaction that we see.”

“Now lie still,” said the man, pulling out some needles and attaching them to large bags of fluids.  He positioned the bags on poles, then started to push the needles into the Corporal’s arms, two to each, then another set into his legs.

“The bags contain nanites and the materials they will need to work with,” said the woman, looking at a monitor.  “The first stage will be to reinforce your bones and tendons with carbon fibers.  Then the specialized nanites will work their way into each of your cells to ennact changes on your genetic structure, so that the physical changes will be maintained by your protein generation.”

“I recommend that you eat as much as you can tonight,” said the man.  “Your body will demand the nutrients, so you shouldn’t have any problem with appetite.”

An hour later the bags were changed for fresh fluids.  They observed him until it was time for lunch, at which time they brought in a large pudding of protein rich glop and allowed him to sit up and eat.  He had to admit that as unappetizing as the food looked it tasted very good.  After he had finished it some more was brought, and he set to with a still unsatisfied appetite.

The afternoon went much the same, and he was released to go back to his quarters in time for dinner.  Again food was brought for him, and once again he set to with a great appetite.  Afterwards a great weariness overcame him, and he fell into bed and went under as soon as his eyes closed.

When he opened them the next morning he was greeted by darkness, and no sound reached his ears.  “Don’t worry,” came the voice of the woman who had worked with him the day before through his implant.  “It will take a couple of days to rework your eyes and ears into their new configurations.  You will also have some trouble with balance and movement as your nerves are rewired.”

Cornelius nodded his head, not attempting to speak.  The woman sat down next to him and started to spoon feed him some more of the high protein pudding.  She then helped him into a powered chair that started to move as soon as he was comfortably seated.  He couldn’t see or hear, but as he was helped onto the table he was pretty sure this was the room he had started the process in the other day.

That afternoon he heard his first sound.  It wasn’t much, just a slight humming.  He could feel more needles being stuck in his arms, more from slight pressure than anything else.

The next day his hearing had almost returned to normal, though his vision was still dark.  Again he was wheeled into the room, this time to be tested.

“His nerve conduction rate has increased by four hundred and thirty-one percent,” said the voice of the man.  “That’s right at the top of the scale.”

“Adrenal capacity has increased by over five hundred percent,” said the woman.  “Mitochondrial structures have increased by four times.  I think we have a real gem here.”

Day four Cornelius woke to a cacophony of sounds.  Not only the normal sounds of a complex in space, but voices from the hall and high pitched sounds he could not interpret.  He thought that this kind sensitivity to noise could drive him mad, and he made that known to the woman Captain when she entered his room.

“It would, if we let it,” she agreed. “Part of your training will be to control your receptive hearing, tuning out what you don’t need.”

On day five he could see, somewhat, a blurry world of shadows.

On day six the images were the sharpest he had ever experienced, and he was astounded by his ability to look into the shadows and see like it was brightly lit.  On this day he was subjected to a series of tests, senses, strength and reaction time.  He felt clumsy when he moved, when he reached for things he moved too fast, and many times overshot his target.  Sometimes the object he was looking at would blur before his vision, before focusing again into crystal clarity.

“Your new vision is better than twenty/five,” said the woman, who he had learned was a Doctor named Jenn Norwood.  “When everything is working properly you will be able to look at distant objects as if you had fine field glasses to your face.  You will see at night better than any animal.  We have increased the number of rods and cones in your retina, and changed the arrangement to where they are much more sensitive to light.  Your cornea has also been improved.  But it will take time to get used to the new functions.”

The strength tests were just as amazing.  Previously Cornelius could at best bench press a little over twice his body weight.  Now he could hit a stack of four times his weight and push it for a dozen repetitions.  He was told he would get stronger still with work, and that was the incentive he needed to hit the weight room each night.

One of the last major alterations made to his body was to implant a micromesh of carbon fibers beneath his skin, a coating of armor that would stop low velocity rounds and most blade weapons.   His implants were upgraded and he was fitted with an improved bionanite system that was both a better immune response and tissue repair mechanism than those carried by all civilians of the Empire.

The first week out of the med facility was spent basically relearning how to do all the things he could do before the augmentation, and that now vexed him.  He was now a clumsy superman, unable to control even his basic body motions.  To that aim he and the others trained ten hours a day, running, climbing, practicing hand to hand.  They spent another two hours in simulators, hardwiring their brains and nervous systems.  And then two hours in the weight rooms, turning the massive amounts of protein they were consuming into hard muscle.

Week two continued with more of the same.  Cornelius ran around the track with the rest of the men, from all of the services that were on the station for the augmentation process.  Even the slowest of them was faster than the best Empire Class athlete, and Cornelius was far from the slowest.  There were only a couple of the men, both from other services, who could challenge his speed.

In unarmed combat he was also in the top ten of the five hundred men that went through the rotation. He even held his own against the instructors, and could see the day coming when he would be their superior.  The techniques were still simple, and a trained Ranger or Commando could pull moves on him that always got through his defenses.  This instilled the desire to learn an advanced fighting technique, and with this in mind he approached one of the Marine instructors who practiced a very graceful form of Asian origin martial art.

“Of course I’ll teach you some moves, Ranger,” said Gunnery Sergeant Forrestal of the Marine Force Recon.  “I won’t be able to teach you much in two weeks, but I can give you the basics to start on.  The first thing is the stance.  This is Tae Kwon Do, and we do most everything out of a side facing fighting stance.”

Cornelius spent two hours a day training and sparring with the Gunny, and could feel a noticeable increase in his ability in battling the other special ops trainees.  At this time they were also introduced to weapons fighting, knives and clubs and staffs.  The idea was to make them deadly with anything and everything that might come to hand, and empty hands if there was nothing they could use.

Christmas came and went without a break.  This Phase was too important for leave, and they all knew they were needed by the Empire they had sworn to serve.  There were several trees in the facility, and everyone was given some presents by the staff, mostly things they would need on deployment, shaving kits, monomolecular blades, some personal jewelry.  Even those who came from backgrounds that didn’t celebrate the holiday.  Some received items from home.  Cornelius didn’t think he would be one of these, until his name was called out and he found a present pushed into his hands at mail call.  He checked the address, amazed that Sean would remember to send a present, then remembering that the nobility had staff to shop for them.  He opened the package and found a perfect carbon fiber chain coated in platinum.  The card said for your memory, and Cornelius knew this had been sent to him as a holder for his ring.  And Cornelius realized that this present had been sent by a man who kept close tabs on him.

By the fifth week all of the men were moving like dancers, perfectly balanced on their feet.  Cornelius was not surprised on a weigh in that he massed one hundred and five kilos, twenty-eight kilos more than he had at enlistment.  Some of that was the increased bone density of his body, reworked so that the increased muscle would have something to attach to.  And he could bench over four hundred kilos ten times without problem. They told him he was just scratching the surface, that most augmented warriors saw impressive gains throughout their first year, and smaller increases afterwards.

Cornelius was not surprised when they gathered in the hangar at the end of the fifth week to see that all of the Rangers had made it through the augmentation process.  He had heard that it was rare for the process not to take.  He also realized that most of these men had given up decades of living, a combined over seven millennia of life, to become super-soldiers.  He had not mentioned to any of them that he had not paid that same price.  It was better to let them think he had, that he would be accepted among them.  And it’s not like many of us are going to make it to retirement anyway, he thought as he waited to board the shuttle.

The flight down to the planet was uneventful, and spirits were good among the men.  No one really knew what waited for them in Phase III of the training, and no one really cared.  They were all sure that they would make it through from here.

Chapter Nine

When the war of the giants is over the wars of the pygmies will begin.  Winston Churchill.

AZURE, JANUARY 5TH- 8th, 1001.

The first sign that anything was happening were the bells going off at school.  Rebecca was working in the chemistry lab, thinking about the camping trip they had planned for her this weekend.  This would be her fifth, and she was getting a good handle on how to survive in the jungle of the planet.  Enough where she would be able to go into it without fear?  No.  She didn’t think she would ever get to that level of confidence.  But enough where she was sure she would have a fighting chance of living.

She had asked her father why they didn’t just evacuate the planet, and her dad had laughed.  “There are over a hundred and twenty million people on the planet,” had answered her father.  “It would take over six thousand large liners, all crammed to overload, as well as the escort ships required to get them to safety.  There are over fifteen hundred inhabitant planets in this sector, some with much denser populations than Azure. You really think the Empire can turn those kind of resources, in the middle of a war, to the evacuation of planets, when they don’t even know which system is next to be hit?”

Rebecca jacked into the planetary net at the same time as the lab instructor, Mr. Jaquari.  The net was crowded, more than she had ever seen.  But there was one constant message blaring on the emergency band.  Ships had been detected in hyper VII.  A large number of very big ships, as well as a similar number of smaller escorts.  They hadn’t been positively identified yet, but most indicators pointed to them as being the ancient enemy.  The Ca’cadasans were about to arrive, in force.

“Children,” said Mr. Jaquari from the front of the class.  “We have been ordered to go down to the shelters.”

“But,” said Rebecca, looking at the teacher in horror, “they won’t even be in the system for some hours.  Then it will take three days to get to our planet.”

“They might fire missiles at us,” said Margo, giving Rebecca the look one gives an idiot.

“And those would still take about a day to get to us,” said Rebecca, returning the look.  “Twelve hours at the earliest.”

“The administration has ordered that I take you children down to the shelter,” said Mr. Jaquari, as if that ended the argument.  “From there you can meet your families.”

“My dad is a Captain in the reserves,” said Rebecca, hands on her hips and refusing to move.  “He won’t be coming down there.  And my mom and little brother won’t be coming down.”

“Why ever not?” asked the teacher, his eyes wide.  “The shelters are made to protect us from attacks from space.  And we don’t need to be out on the surface and in the way of the military.”

Because those things are death traps with the Ca’cadasans coming.  And why aren’t you in the militia, getting ready to stop those things from taking the planet?  Of course she couldn’t voice those thoughts.  Most people had faith in the shelters, and would just think she was a little defeatist for saying they were death traps.  And of course on a developing world service in the militia was not mandatory, like it was on frontier worlds where manpower was more limited.  There were still millions in uniform when the call went out.

“You will come with us, young lady,” continued the man, from his body language not ready to take no for an answer.  “Right now.”

Rebecca lowered her head in resignation and followed the teacher out of the room.  She considered trying to run for a few moments, then discarded that idea.  Respect for adults and authority had been ingrained into her.  She really couldn’t think of anything else to do than to allow herself to be herded down into the depths.

She was silent the entire way to the shelter landing strip by airbus.  Some of the other children tried to engage her in conversation, but she had too much on her mind.  The bus landed and they were herded toward the line waiting to get in.  There were entire families waiting their turn to go down, the children looking scared half to death.  Rebecca gave one little girl a smile, and getting one back made her feel better.  The situation, almost to the level of panic, was more than the little ones could take.  She knew they would feel better once kilometers of earth were overhead, and the promise of safety.  Even if that promise was a lie.

It was a little bit of a wait and the line moved slowly.  Many people had their pets and what belongings they could gather.  Pets were allowed, if small enough, and there were a number of dogs and cats, and even something as exotic as a miniraptor.  There were still some arguments, mostly with people who wanted to take an entire lift load to bring down their belongings.  The people in charge were adamant, and the citizens rode down with the allowed amount or not at all.

Finally their turn came, and the entire class was fitted into the car.  They rode the lift down, a trip that took about a minute.  This shelter was over three kilometers under the ground, and was a much larger central capsule than the one she had toured with her father, that of a heavy cruiser.  It was four hundred meters in length, two hundred and fifty in width, with over a hundred floors and room for thirty thousand people when packed to the limit.  The outer wall was over four meters thick, seemingly impenetrable, but Rebecca knew from what her father told her that a very fast moving heavy object would tear through it with disastrous effects to the people inside.

“I’ll stay here,” said Rebecca to Mr. Jaquari, pointing to a room that was already half full of people waiting for family to come down.  “My mom and little brother will be here any time, and I want to meet up with them.”  She had contacted her mom over the net after a dozen futile tries, and knew she was on the way.  And then they’ll get me out of here, you jackass.

“OK,” said the teacher.  “But don’t wander.  This is like a small city down here.”

Rebecca simply nodded and walked into the waiting room, catching one last glance of Timmy.  Why doesn’t his mom and dad see sense and get him out of here? she thought as he was walked away.

Rebecca jacked into the local net and looked over the map of the shelter system.   Gauge was the capital city of the planet, with over two million inhabitants.  There were over forty of the shelters beneath that city, not all of them as big as this one, enough room for just over a million people.  More had been planned, but the city always seemed to grow faster than the plan, and there were other population centers.  All of the shelters under the city were connected by tunnels, both walkways and an underground tram.

She watched the local net, which had more than enough capacity for the people who would use it, and was aware when the enemy ships jumped into normal space.  There was still no visual of the vessels, that would not come for over three hours, the distance from the planet to where the ships had left hyper at the edge of the barrier.  But the signs were clear.  This was a large force, thirty battleships in the twenty-five million ton range, along with sixty-five smaller vessels, from five hundred thousand to four million tons.  And their resonances matched the information they had on the ancient enemy.  The Ca’cadasans had arrived.

There was little enough in the system to try and stop them.  She had studied the defenses of the system, under the commands of her father, who believed a person should know what they faced.  There was a small force of interplanetary warships.  All of the interstellar ships that had been based in the system on a rotating basis were gone, pulled out so that they could deploy with the Sector fleet.  The only interstellar capable ships in the system were commercial vessels, and a half dozen couriers.  Two of those ships were stationed out by the hyper VII barrier and had translated out as soon as the enemy ships had come in.  Two more were on their way out to the barrier, while the last two left Azure’s orbit.  They would leave the system when it seemed that to stay would be to risk destruction.

Missile launches were detected, from both sides, as the graviton emissions of the fast accelerating weapons sped through hyper VIII.  The insystem ships fired first, their missiles moving at the enemy at five thousand gravities accel.  The enemy fired back as soon as they located the launching platforms, their own weapons accelerating at eight thousand gravities.  Theirs would strike much sooner than the human weapons, and the Imperial ships would never know if they scored a hit or not.  Rebecca almost cried as she thought of those brave men and women who had to know they were already dead when they fired at the enemy.

“She’s in here,” said the voice of one of the shelter staff, and Rebecca looked up to see her mom hurrying toward the waiting room.

Rebecca smiled to see her mom, a small woman who wouldn’t take no for an answer.  Her father was a large man, and it looked like she and her brother were going to be much larger than their mom.

“I want to check her out, immediately,” said her mom, looking up at the staff member.

“You’re both safer here, ma’am,” said the staff member, looking semi-military in his black uniform.  “The shelters will fill up, quickly, and if you leave here I can’t guarantee you’ll be allowed back in.”

“We don’t intend to come back,” said her mom, crooking a finger at Rebecca.

“I must insist for your own safety that you stay.”

“And I insist as a private citizen that we are going to leave,” said her mom, pointing a finger at the man.  “Look, my husband is a Captain in the Imperial Army.  Do I need to call him away from what must be important duties just so he can tell you to back off?”

“No, ma’am,” said the staffer, his look telling Rebecca that he thought they were both crazy.   “I just need you to acknowledge a release, specifying that you understand the risk of leaving.”

Her mom gave a nod and closed her eyes for a moment, linking with the local system and giving her authorization.  “Come on,” she said the Rebecca when she opened her eyes, then led the way to the entrance and out into the lift.

It was empty going up, and Rebecca could feel the stares of the people they pushed past at the top, those waiting to get on the lift so they could go down to what they supposed was safety.  They walked quickly to the landing lot, past a long line of concerned looking people who seemed to want in as soon as possible.  Even though the earliest the missiles could get here is over half a day, she thought, shaking her head.

The aircar was a standard civilian model, using high speed fans to lift from the ground.  Grabbers used rare supermetals, and those were required for military applications, as well as civilian space shipping, from surface to orbit to interstellar.

“I’ve got her,” said her mom into a com, and a small holo popped up over the car’s dash.  Her father was on the holo, in light military armor.  In the background she could see other men in the same armor moving.

“You know what to do,” said her father, looking out of the holo at her mother.  “I’ll join you if I can.”

“And do you think you can?” asked her mother with a catch in her voice.

Rebecca knew he wouldn’t be able to come, not while he was fulfilling his military duties.  Later he might not be alive to come.  And she realized that her mom and dad really loved each other.  Still, things had appeared that might separate them forever, things that were bigger than all of them.

Her dad shook his head and grimaced, and Rebecca knew he didn’t want to lie, or to tell a truth that might hurt them both.  “I’ll try,” he finally said.  “That’s all I can promise.  Now get to safety before too many other people get the same idea.  I’ve got to go.  I love you.”

“I love you, too,” said her mom as the holo went dead.

“Where are we going?” she asked her mom.  Her parents had talked about several options for sheltering, but she had never been apprised of which one they thought the most likely.

“We’re going to your Uncle Saul’s cabin,” said her mom, setting the coordinates.   She was trying not to cry, and not completely succeeding.

“I like Uncle Saul,” said Rebecca, just to break the silence.  She did like her mother’s brother Saul.  He and Aunt Esther and several cousins had a getaway cabin in the Jagged Range, about a hundred kilometers from Gauge.  They had several children, and all were fairly well behaved.

The bright sun glinted off the glass of the skyscrapers of Gauge, the tallest on the planet.  Rebecca had seen vids of the megascrapers of the core worlds, to which these were as babies.  They seemed big enough to her, reaching almost a kilometer into the sky.  And she wondered what they would look like after the city was hit from orbit.

They swung by the house on the way, their dwelling in a smallish suburb ten kilometers from city center.  They picked up her little brother there, and relieved a nanny who looked like she very much wanted to be on her way back to her own family.

“We’ll be there in forty minutes,” said her mom, letting the autosystems take over as soon as she gained altitude.  Rebecca looked back at the city behind them, wondering if she would ever see it again.

*     *     *

“Get those lines hooked up,” called Captain Joseph Goldman to his soldiers, all reserve engineers called up to active service.  Around them stretched the forest of Azure.  Several clearings had been cut into the woods with robots that ignored the attacks of animals and plantimals. A several thousand ton mobile shore gun was lowering itself into one of the clearings, while two more were on slow approach to the other clearings, each five kilometers from this one along an equilateral triangle.  In the next valley were a pair of portable missile launcher and the fire control center for the battery.

The men were hooking the hard wired lines to a three ton jammer unit.  The control center would be able to use the device no matter how much other static was flooding the atmosphere.  It might give them a couple of more shots than expected, he thought, looking up the hillside where an electromag projector was being installed.  Or it might not, and then that screen will handle a shot or two.

After a half an hour’s work the company was back in their vehicles, heading for the next work site.  This was a series of bunkers looking over a large clearing that would be a perfect landing zone for the enemy.  If the bunkers survived the initial bombardment that enemy would find this a hot LZ.  We have two days before they’re overhead.  And then me and my men are just riflemen.  There won’t be any more engineering work at that time, not when everything we try to build will be blasted from space.

*     *     *

Rebecca was looking up into the night sky when the first of the Ca’cadasan missiles reached orbit.  The first signs were the glows of gigaton range kinetic strikes on the far side of the moon, the flash reaching around the curvature of the body.  Bright pinpoints appeared out in space, the counter missiles trying to kill the incoming.  There were several brighter flashes as some of those missiles were taken out.  Then came the eye hurting flashes of hits on the orbital stations.  Moments later the sky lit up with thousands of streaks of light as pieces of stations and missiles hit the atmosphere.  The ground rumbled moments later, and a bright light flashed on the horizon as something big enough to make it through the atmosphere hit with the force of a multi-megaton range nuclear weapon.

As suddenly as it had started it ended, and Rebecca knew there was now nothing in orbit capable of contesting near space with the aliens.   Now it would be up to the shore batteries and ground forces to fight a landing.  And from what her father had told her that would be an exercise in brave futility.

“Looks like the show’s over,” said Uncle Saul after the ground shocks stopped.  He led the way back into the cabin, which was more crowded than intended with three families staying there.  Mom’s sister Kimberly had also come with her kids, while her husband served in the militia.  Four adults and seven children made for crowded quarters.  Aunt Kimberly and her two small children were staying in the basement, where the mass of storage had been shifted around to make a bedding area.  Still, it felt comforting to be among family, and Rebecca had no trouble getting to sleep despite the images in her mind of tens of thousands of people dying above the planet.

Sunup came early, and the noise of people moving around the cabin woke her.  She wiped the sleep from her eyes as she stumbled into the main room.

“At least we won’t starve for quite some time,” said her mom, reaching into a cabinet to withdraw some military rations that the family had stockpiled.

It will mostly taste like crap, thought Rebecca, accepting  ration pack from her mom.  She opened the seal and felt the plastic box heat up in her hands.  Steam was rising from the packet as she spooned eggs, potatoes and sausage into her mouth that didn’t taste as bad as she had feared.

The next show came soon after nightfall two days later, as the enemy ships slid into orbit and the space to surface battle started.  It began with more bright pinpoints, as the ships took out the smaller defense satellites that had not been taken out by the long range bombardment.  And the ships took a some hits from hyper v missiles and particle beams fired by the satellites. Weapons on the surface took over.  Bright red particle beams linked surface with ships, at point nine c looking like instantaneous transmission.  Flashes appeared in space, the fast moving protons converting their kinetic energy into blast and heat.  Beams reached back down, flashing from ship to ground.  The earth rumbled, and bright flares appeared on the horizon.  This went on for many minutes, until it seemed as if all the planetary defenses had been silenced.  And then it started again, with even greater fury, the explosions of missiles before they reached their targets adding to the show.

Now the light of lasers was added to the show, visible through the dust that was rising into the atmosphere.  It was a display of a planet fighting for its life against those who would kill it.  It went on into the night, quiet at times, picking up in ferocity in others.  The ground rumbled almost continuously, sometimes the slight tremors of distant hits, sometimes the shaking that almost knocked people from their feet.  There was a constant play of flashes on the horizon.  Rebecca had read about the wars in the past, the land wars of ancient Earth, and how artillery barrages and massive bombing raids would light up the night.  This made her think of those old displays of firepower.

By dawn the battle was all but over.  Very few beams and missiles reached up to orbit.  Those that did attracted a firestorm of response.  Rebecca knew there were still weapons on the planet.  They would stay hidden until the next stage of the fight, where they might accomplish something, if still not enough.

“It’s time to leave, honey,” said her mom as the sun was rising.

Rebecca turned around in a daze, seeing her Uncle and Aunts coming from the house, herding the children in front of them.  Benjamin was rubbing sleepy eyes and holding his kitten in one hand.  The little animal was almost panicking in fear, and Rebecca felt so sorry for it.  The tiny thing didn’t understand this world that was coming down around its ears.  She followed the adults around the house where they had been moving things all night.

Four aircars were waiting on the back yard.  All were packed tightly, leaving only enough room for their passengers.  The trunks were full, and there were containers strapped onto the tops.  Everyone old enough to carry one had their personal weapon, and an assortment of rifles were packed within reach if needed.

They rose into the air and turned to the east, toward the cavern that had been prepared as a refuge.  The cavern was already stocked with supplies, brought there by her father and uncles.  It was fitted out with lighting and water systems, made as habitable as a house, if much more secure.  Once they got there it was hoped they could hide out for the months it took for an Imperial expedition to recapture the planet, if that did in fact occur.

Rebecca was looking back toward the capital city when the first flash hit.  Minutes later the mushroom cloud rose into the sky, reaching for the stratosphere.  More flashes and more clouds, and Rebecca knew that hundreds of thousands of people had just died.  Those had been big blasts, from powerful kinetic weapons, and any shelter under them was now gone.  The flashes and mushroom clouds kept coming.  The roar of the hits reached them about nine minutes after the first flash, then the turbulence, which rocked the car in flight.

Rebecca turned back to her mom, tears in her eyes.  “Timmy.  Mr. Jaquari.  Everyone.”

“I know, honey,” said her mom, reaching over and giving her a hug.   “I know.  But now we’ve got to survive, so that the memory of those people lives on.”

“They’re coming down,” said Uncle Saul over the short range com.  “I knew we should have left last night.”

Rebecca and her mom looked out and up to see the streaks of aircraft in the stratosphere.  Their contrails were everywhere.  Some were enemy, some friendlies gone up to contest their passage.  Particle beams again rose from the ground, along with missiles.  Beams came down from above, almost as a replay of the night before.  There were some hits on the ground, the Ca’cadasan ships seeking out the ground batteries that were trying to knock enemy craft out of the air.

“We left too late,” said her mom, shaking her head, echoing what Uncle Saul had just verbalized.  “We should have left last night.”

“Look out,” yelled Uncle Saul over the com.

Rebecca’s mom sucked in a breath, and the child looked up to see a large aircraft come swooping out of the sky, trailing a thick cloud of smoke.   Another aircraft of unknown design followed.  It wasn’t shooting at the assault shuttle, and was obviously an escort, though what it was accomplishing couldn’t be determined.

The shuttle plowed into the lead aircar of their convoy, crushing the civilian vehicle out of existence.  The shuttle continued on to the ground, where it hit with a massive explosion that rocked everything in the air above it.  The escort took out the second car in the convoy, its particle beams reaching out and cutting the vehicle in half, to fall in two burning pieces into the forest below.

Rebecca put her hands over her face as she saw two bodies, one adult and one child, fall from the shredded car.  There was no hope for the two, who fell five hundred meters onto a ground that was now churned up with as the burning body of the tough shuttle rolled down the hill and the impact wave moved in all directions, tearing trees up by the roots and starting fires that would burn for days.

“Hold on,” yelled her mom, just before something hit their car, hard.  The vehicle fell off to the right, her mom fighting the controls and trying to right the vehicle.  It was soon obvious that nothing was going to right this ship, and the aircar was heading for a group of burning trees, fast.

The foam came out of the vents just before impact, hardening as soon as it was in place.  Then that impact struck, Rebecca’s teeth snapped together and the car stopped moving forward, then stopped sideways motion with a crunch.  The smell of smoke was the last thing she remembered before blackness enfolded her.

*     *     *

“Here they come,” yelled out a voice over the com circuit.

Captain Joseph Goldman thought for a second about his family, who should be to safety by now.  If they made it.  He came back to the here and now, checking his rifle and making sure that everything was working, for the fifteenth time that morning.  Time to play infantryman, he thought, walking to the firing port of the bunker.  There were no more engineering tasks, for the moment.  What was needed now was firepower.

The open field was before him, stretching out over several kilometers.  Running down the center was a hard landing field.  And beyond.  Beyond?  Beyond was the horror that had been the capital city of Azure.  There was not an undamaged building in that metropolis.  The hard alloy bones of skyscrapers still reached into the air in places.  There were some smaller buildings that were almost intact.  Almost.  If there were live civilians in that city the Captain would have been surprised.  Some of the shelters still undoubtedly survived, now buried, all access to the surface cut.  Before they could be opened and evacuated the enemy would be here.

He knew heavy infantry was at work in the city, digging in and making the city a death trap for the enemy.  He had requested that his unit be allowed to work with them.  That request had been politely turned down.  The regulars that were heavy infantry thought they had no need of the services of part time light engineers.

Two large shuttles were on approach to the field, escorted by a quartet of support craft.  The support craft were there to draw fire and then suppress it.  No one fired.  The shuttles were what they wanted, not the guard dogs.

The first shuttle was at the end of the field, moments away from lowering itself for a landing, when a pair of hyper-v rockets came from positions on the hillside overlooking the strip.  One rocket was taken out of the air by a defensive laser.  The other hit an engine with a thunderous crash, and the shuttle tilted to that side and fell into a slide.  Beam weapons reached out to strike the tough armor of the shuttle, none doing much more damage than some scarring of the hull.  Some explosive rounds hit with better results, blowing small holes in the armor.

More rockets reached out for the second shuttle.  Two struck, and the ship fell to the ground and hit on the grass beside the hard landing strip.  Earth flew into the air as the ship turned over.

Very large creatures in battle armor came jumping from the hatches of the ships.  They were taken under fire as soon as they were visible.  Some died as particle beams and heavy high velocity rounds struck them.  Others took cover beside the shuttles and returned fire.  For a moment it looked like the remnants of these two platoons of Ca’cadasans were doomed.  The attack craft swooped over the shuttles and fired rockets and beams into any human positions they could find.  They knocked out one bunker, but had a tough time of taking out any of the others, which had been built to withstand this kind of an attack.

They had not been built to take the kinetic penetrators that now struck from the sky.  In moments half the bunkers were gone, while more shuttles came in and deposited their troops, until there were hundreds of the big warriors fighting their way to clear the perimeter of the field.

When it was apparent that the humans would accomplish nothing more here the retreat began, through the tunnels that led to a rallying point in the forest outside the city.  A glance up through the trees showed more shuttles coming in for a landing.  The Ca’cadasans had gained their first foothold outside the capital, along with a dozen others around the globe.

*     *     *

Rebecca groaned from the pain before she opened her eyes.  Her head was cloudy, though the ache was receding, and she knew that her nanites were taking care of the concussion that must have occurred during the crash.  The foam padding was dissolving away, and she guessed from the state of the stuff that they had been down for over ten minutes.  Looking at where the pain was coming from her arm she saw an injury which would require more attention than nanites alone.  Her left ulna was protruding from the skin.  It must have been protruding from the foam when they hit.  There had been some bleeding, but the nanites had stopped it before there had been much loss.  She choked back a scream as the pain of the injury hit with her movement of the arm.  She gave it a thought and the nanites blocked that pain.

“Mom,” she croaked, looking over at where her mother had been sitting.  She screamed as she saw what was left of her mother.  That side of the car had struck a tree and caved in.  Her mom’s head was crushed, and red and clear fluid was leaking out of an ear.  She didn’t need to touch her to know that her mother was dead.

Rebecca wanted to just sit there and cry.  Her mom was dead, and most of her extended family was gone.  She had seen two of the four aircars destroyed in the air.  Her’s had been downed.  She had no idea what happened to the fourth car, but based on what she had seen and experienced it had probably not made it either.  So why the hell should I care if I live or die?

A sound from behind broke her free from her self-pity.   “Mommy,” came a soft whine from the back seat.   Gritting her teeth she turned in her seat to look into the back.  There sat Benjamin, tears rolling down his cheeks.

“My kitty cat is hurt,” said the younger child, looking up into her eyes.

The tiny kitten lay still in his lap, her tongue lolling out of her mouth.  The cat was dead, and Rebecca thought, looking at where the cat was laying on the seat, that it had been asphyxiated by the protective foam.  The tears started to flow freely down her face from this new small tragedy.

“Help her,” cried the boy.

I need to be strong for Benny, thought the girl.  She was alive, her little brother was alive, and it was up to her to keep them both that way.  “Hang on, Benjamin,” she said, reaching for the first aid kit that was attached to the dash of the car.  She opened the kit and pulled out the airgun injector.  She shifted the dial  what she wanted, then pressed the injector into her neck over the carotid artery. She changed the setting and did it again.

“This is going to hurt like hell,” she whispered, pulling out an adjustable cast.  She worked the cast around her arm, set the control panel on the device to her specifications and body part, then hit the engage button.  The cast pulled itself into shape, slowly pulling the bones of her forearm into place.  The drugs she had injected dulled the pain.  It still hurt enough that she grunted as it pulled the injured limb into its natural position.  “It’s OK, Benny,” she said when she heard the child whimper.

She set the injector again and pushed a booster shot of nanites into her veins.  After repacking the kit she crawled over the seat and checked out her little brother.  She couldn’t find any injuries on the child and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Help my kitty cat,” said the little boy in a soft voice, picking up the limp form of the kitten.

“She’s dead, baby,” said Rebecca in a choked voice.  “I can’t do anything for her.”

“Maybe mommy can help her,” said the little boy, reaching a hand up for his mother’s hair.

“She’s dead, Benny,” said Rebecca, her voice barely audible.  “She’s dead.”

“I want my mommy,” said Benjamin, regressing to the emotional age of a four year old.

“Me too,” said Rebecca.  “But we’ve only got each other.  And we are going to get out of here.”  She wrapped her little brother into a tight hug, holding back her own tears.  I must be strong.

Ten minutes later she had the in-cabin rifle ready and was opening the door of the aircar. Outside was a hell of smoke and ash, and Rebecca closed the door and rethought her strategy.

“We need to get into our survival suits,” she told Benjamin, glancing over at her mother’s body, which was starting to smell.  She helped her brother into his suit, checking all the seals, then donned her own.  After making sure that both hoods were working she opened the door again.

It was even smokier out there now.  She used the visor on the hood to look through the smoke, gasping at what was revealed of the small valley.  Toward the center, a couple of kilometers away down slope, was complete devastation.  The assault shuttle had hit there, and every bit of vegetation around it was incinerated.  The tail of the shuttle stuck out of a fifty meter wide crater.  From where she was she couldn’t ascertain the condition of the rest of the shuttle, but from the other evidence she was sure it wasn’t in good shape.  For a kilometer beyond the circle of total destruction was a wasteland of tumbled trees and broken wood, much of it still burning.

Where the aircar was sitting against the edge of semi-intact trees, its one side caved in against a towering giant it had snapped on impact, was a stand of forest that displayed broken branches and smaller fires.  These stands extended for kilometers, growing thicker with distance from the impact, until, at the tops of the hills, the forest looked strong and healthy.

Rebecca tried to link into the planetary net, wondering why she hadn’t thought of that before.  Probably because I was concussed, confused and in shock, she thought.  She attempted the link, and found nothing.  As far as she could tell the net was no longer in existence.

She looked up as a pair of aircraft flew over the valley, rumbling along above the sound barrier.  They did not look like human aircraft, and they slowed and made a large circle over the valley.

“We need to get going,” she told her brother.  She opened the back of the car and started putting together some survival packs.  When they were ready she strapped Benjamin’s on him, then shouldered her own.

“We can’t just leave them,” protested Benjamin, struggling against her pull.

“We have to go, Ben,” said Rebecca, watching as a slow moving aircraft came in over the hills and started to drop toward the shuttle.  “Benny,” she said, kneeling down and looking him in the face.  “We have to go, or we will die.  Do you understand?”

Benjamin nodded his head and she pulled him into the woods, then started to move through the brush toward the other side.  Behind them the aircraft came to a landing at the edge of the crater, and she could hear the sound of hatches opening, then guttural voices.  She kept Benjamin moving, knowing that this whole valley would not be safe in a very short period of time.

There was a break in the woods of about twenty meters.  To Rebecca it looked like some kind of beam weapon had just eaten a long swath of forest away.  What it represented was an obstacle to cross.  Not so much a physical obstacle as a barrier to their stealth.

She looked carefully up, then to both sides, then up again.  She pulled at Benjamin, then started across at a run.  Benjamin stopped, looking confused, and she had to step back and grab his arm, pulling him over to the other side.  Almost too late, as an alien aircraft came flying over the opening just after they had gained the cover of the other side.

“You have to move when I tell you to, Benjamin,” she whispered to her brother as they made their way up the hill.

“I’m scared,” whined the young boy.

“I’m scared too.  But I need you to be brave for me.  OK?”

Benjamin nodded his head, and Rebecca smiled at him, then led the way through the forest.  Everything was strangely quiet.  There were no motile life forms in evidence, none of the songs of bird forms, the squeaks and squeals of tree dwellers.  Everything that could get away had done so.  Everything that couldn’t had gone into hiding.

It took a little time, but they made it to the top of the hill.  Rebecca removed her hood and looked down into the valley through the field glasses she had taken from the car. There were large figures down there, moving around the downed shuttle and walking toward the aircar.  Figures in armor, with long horns sprouting from their helmets.  Those near enough to the car were given enough scale to show that they were huge.

Ca’cadasans, she thought, now sure in her identification.  A couple opened the car and looked inside.  Moments later they stepped back about thirty meters and took the car under fire with particle beams.  The car exploded with the second hit.  Rebecca felt some closure at that sight.  She couldn’t bury her mother, but the body had been cremated.

“We need to move, buddy,” she said to Benjamin, motioning for him to crawl backwards with her.  As soon as they were out of sight on the other side they stood up and moved into the comforting cover of one of the deadliest jungles in human space.

Chapter Ten

In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.  Winston Churchill.

PLANET  DAIMON AND ORBITAL TRAINING STATION,  JANUARY 6TH – 30th, 1001.

“Fall out,” yelled the First Sergeant in charge of the training company as he walked through the barracks.

Everyone jumped out of their beds, snapping to attention, then turning as the command penetrated sleepy brains to grab uniforms and get dressed.  The senior NCO was out the door and headed for the next barracks over at a quick pace.

The men ran out of the barracks, not really knowing what to expect.  The Ranger instructors were waiting for them, not saying a word and pointing to the area where the platoons were to fall in. As soon as they were set a youngish looking Captain walked up and accepted the salutes of all the instructors.

“Welcome to Phase III, Rangers,” said the Captain in a voice that carried despite its conversational tone.  “In five more weeks you will be officially Rangers.  As far as I’m concerned you are already there, having passed through Hell Week and augmentation.  It is our job to put the finishing touches on your basic Ranger skills.  You will be treated as men here.  I see no need to yell and scream at you like you were raw recruits.  The lowest ranking of you is a PFC, and I see NCOs in the ranks.  You know why you are here, and you know how important it is for you to get through the training and get deployed.  There is a great need for your services out there in the Galaxy.  So work hard, train hard, and you will soon be serving the Emperor and the people of the Empire.  Now fall out for chow.”

There was a lot of conversation on the way to the mess hall.  Whatever they had been expecting, this was not it.  Breakfast was the same good food they had been used to getting throughout training.  Cornelius had always heard stories about military chow, how bad it was.  But he had found that not to be true.  And breakfast was his favorite, all the eggs, bacon, sausage and biscuits he could handle.

After breakfast they took a run out to the range.  Where regular troops jogged anything over a couple of kilometers, these men took off on a run, what most would have called a sprint, though it was nothing of the sort to them.  They covered the ten kilometers in about twenty-five minutes, about what one would expect of a very good athlete who wasn’t carrying a full load of equipment on a heavy gravity world, like they were.

The range looked different from any that Cornelius had seen thus far.  There were the regular pits from which the targets issued, plus what looked like barriers set here and there.  A Sergeant Instructor stood in front of the range as they stopped and did a right face to orient on the NCO.

“Welcome to tactical shooting,” said the NCO, walking back and forth in front of the platoon.  “I am Staff Sergeant Mustafa, and I will be your trainer on this range.  You may think you have learned to shoot in basic and infantry training.  And you would be wrong.  Rangers are rarely given the luxury of engaging the enemy from prepared positions.  Rangers fire on the move, using all available cover and concealment to close with and destroy the enemy.  Now pay close attention to Staff Sergeant Whitecloud as he negotiates the course.”

A tall man with copper colored skin nodded to the range controller, holding his rifle in a comfortable grip.  He then sprinted to the first barrier, laying down fire from his weapon, squeezing off a round with each step.  Two targets popped up on the way, and both fell back before they could fire their simulators.

Whitecloud fell to the ground behind the barrier, then crawled to the side while the bright beams of simulators struck the top of the structure.  Looking around the side he took down two more targets, then sent a burst of full automatic toward a couple of other pits.  He jumped to his feet and performed a rolling jump over the barrier, knocking down another target three quarters of the way through the roll.  Landing on his side he rolled to a position behind another barrier.  This time he crawled to the other side and took down another target.  He pulled the magazine from the rifle and pushed it into a pouch, extracting a new one with the same motion, then slamming it into the rifle.

This time the Sergeant jumped to his feet and sprinted around the barrier, moving in a blur.  He fired as he moved, knocking down a couple of targets.  He jumped over the last pit and turned to face the Ranger trainees standing a couple of hundred meters away.

“We will teach all of you to move and shoot like Sergeant Whitecloud,” said Staff Sergeant Mustafa.  “How well you do this will go a long way to determining whether you die in bed as a retired Ranger, or on a battlefield.  I won’t lie and say that many of you will reach that point, especially with the war we now face.  But of even greater importance to the Empire you serve is how much you bleed this enemy.”

The Sergeant pointed at Cornelius.  “Why don’t we let our combat veteran tell us how he killed all of those Cacas.  Well, go ahead, Corporal.”

“I stalked them through the jungle, Sergeant,” said Cornelius with a flush.  “I got the bastards one at a time when they weren’t prepared.”

“That was smart,” said the Sergeant, pacing in front of the class.  “I highly recommend that strategy myself.  Of course, it won’t always be possible to sneak up on them, and at times you may find yourselves in a war of attrition, or even a stand up fight.

“You go first, Walborski,” said Mustafa, pointing his finger at the Corporal.  “Show the rest of these men how to do it.”

“Yes, Sergeant,” shouted Walborski moving forward.  He really didn’t like being put on the spot like this, but there was no way out of it.  Mustafa handed him a couple of magazines of caseless ammunition.  Cornelius put one mag in a belt pouch, then slammed the other into his M36 rifle, careful to keep the barrel downrange.

He looked down at the rifle, the low tech weapon they would be armed with in the field.  It was a bullpup weapon, the magazine going in behind the pistol grip and maximizing the barrel length of a purposefully short rifle.  There was a very good noise and flash suppressor on the front of the barrel, and a fine optic sight on top.  And no electronics whatsoever, nothing to give the weapon away to the high tech sensors of the enemy.  The only really high tech gear the Rangers took into combat were their survival suits, which used nothing but chemical energy, and their bodies.

Cornelius moved to the start line and locked a round into his rifle.  “Go,” yelled Mustafa, and Cornelius sprinted for the first barrier.  The ping of a near miss by a beam sounded in his ears, and he swung his rifle to his shoulder.  A squeeze of the trigger and the target went down.  He landed hard into the barrier, grunting from the impact, and waited a second.

“They’ll toss a grenade at you if you wait too long,” yelled out Mustafa.

Cornelius cursed.  They weren’t even going to let him do things his way.  He got to his knees and looked over the barrier, and was greeted by a trio of beams, two striking his helmet.  His survival suit froze up and he knew he had been tagged as a kill.

“Did anyone note the error our intrepid killer made?” asked Mustafa from behind.

“He looked over the barrier instead of the side,” said one of the other soldiers, to the laughter of the rest.

Cornelius listened with a face flushed with shame.  He was still frozen in place, unable to move, or to defend himself.  He realized it was more than the suit.  Somehow they had immobilized  vocal cords through his implant.

“OK, try again, Corporal.”

He was able to move again, but he hesitated, and that almost cost him as beams speared by right and left.  He fell behind the barrier by the expedient of letting his muscles relax completely. After that he crawled toward the left side of the barrier and positioned himself.  With a push of his feet his head was looking around that corner, his rifle to his shoulder.  There were no targets visible for the moment, but he kept his patience.  By the rules of the game if there were no targets visible they couldn’t see him as well.

Two targets popped up at the same time, and he serviced them in two one second windows.  He scooted back and waited a few seconds, then scooted back into firing position and took down another target.  A beam almost speared him before he got back under cover, and he was pretty sure they would nail him if he took the same position again.  With that in mind he repositioned himself and gathered his legs underneath. With a spring he came up and out of the right side of the barrier, his eyes scanning to his front.  Sprinting to the next barrier he took out two targets from the hip on full auto.

Cornelius slid into the back of the next barrier just as three more targets popped up.  He knew that this one would be a lot more difficult, that these targets would be waiting for him no matter which side he came around.  Time was ticking, and he knew he had to move, or they would toss a grenade simulator at him and he would be dead.

This time he went over the top, deciding it was a risk worth taking.  He tracked on one of the targets as he went over, knocking it down, then froze in mid jump as two beams intersected his suit.  His frozen body fell the rest of the way to hit hard on the ground.

“That was a fail,” said Mustafa, walking toward him across the range.  “We gave you some leeway because it was the first time, but from now on, any time you get hit on the range is a fail.”

Cornelius felt his suit relax and he got back to his feet.  The rest of the class was looking at him, some nervously, some laughing at his discomfiture.

“That was actually a good move there at the end, Walborski,” said the Sergeant in a quiet voice.  “With some practice you might be able to pull it off.  But not at this time.”  The Sergeant looked back at the rest of the platoon.  “Everyone else will run through this course today.  I’m betting that those of you who laughed the loudest will be the biggest fuckups on the course.  And the rest of us will have a chance to laugh at you.”

The rest of the platoon cycled through the course, one at a time.  Everyone was killed at least twice, some more, except one soldier, a PFC Janikasta, who was hit only once.  Cornelius looked the man over closely, knowing that this was his competition.  He realized that by going first he had not had a chance to learn from the other soldiers, as Janikasta had.  He still didn’t like losing, and made a promise to himself that he would be the top of this class, like he had been in Basic.

*     *     *

The rest of the week passed with more exercises on the ranges.  They went through the same one as the first day.  They went through ranges that were set in jungles, and some in built up areas.  One of the ranges had life like targets, and not all of them were enemies.  Some were in the likenesses of civilians, children, and the soldiers learned how to assess a target almost instantaneously and not kill the innocents.  Sometimes that meant being hit themselves, and most of the troopers spent a lot of time frozen in their survival suits.

Cornelius was proud that he did not spend much time in a frozen state.  His shame came from the fact that he killed too many of the innocents in the exercise.  The instructors didn’t seem to think that was such a big deal, not with a war of extermination being waged.  It seemed that as long as he killed a lot of the enemy they were willing to tolerate the possibility of some collateral damage.  He was sure that he was willing to tolerate the same.

By the end of the week they were rappelling down cliffs and out of aircars while firing at ground targets.   It seemed that there was no situation where they were not expected to be able to hit an enemy, quickly and accurately.  Cornelius really thought that most of them would die if they had to go up or down a cliff under fire.  He also thought it was better to fight back than to just die quietly.  So he did his best in those exercises, hoping he would never have to be in any of those situations.

Week two started with a trip into space.  They practiced in battle armor in zero gee and vacuum, then in variable gee within a spaceship.  It was difficult shooting, and the soldiers had to constantly remind themselves to position their bodies where the recoil wouldn’t push them out into the open.

“Why are we doing this?” Cornelius asked Captain Zhukov, the company commander.  “I mean, isn’t this a job for Naval Commandos?”

“And that it is, Corporal,” said the officer, nodding his head.  “And that is why we will only spend a couple of days on this kind of training, just basic familiarization.  The Commandos spend over a month in variable and zero gee, but sometimes they might not be available, and we’ll be called on to get our asses shot up in null gee.  That answer your question, Corporal?”

“Sure does, sir,” said Walborski, grinning.  It was yet another lesson in what might happen to him due to military misplanning.  He realized no matter how stupid the training might seem to him, it was still important for his survival that he perform as well as possible on it.

On day three disaster struck.  Cornelius was in a zero gee battle room, maneuvering easily through the obstacles.  Targets popped up and were knocked down by low velocity rounds from the rifles of the Rangers.  Cornelius was approaching the hatch that was their target.  He landed on the wall, grabbed a handhold and hung on when his body rebounded, and hit the hatch button with his other hand.  The hatch slid open and Cornelius swung himself through feet first, getting ready for whatever was waiting there.

One of the soldiers had his rifle set too high, or maybe it was a malfunction in the velocity setting of the weapon they were not all that familiar with.  Whatever the cause, a round was moving at the maximum velocity the mag rail could put out.  If it had hit a person it would have torn through their suit.  Instead it hit a glass steel window and tore through.  It wasn’t that bad a hit.  It would have taken minutes for the entire roomful of air to evacuate.  The hatch emergency system didn’t know that and it slammed the door down, fast.

Cornelius still had an arm through the door when it slammed shut.  The suit arm went rigid, enough to prevent most penetrations.  Not enough to stop the door from applying crushing pressure to the arm.

Cornelius screamed as the door crushed his arm just below the elbow.  The carbon fiber reinforced bone resisted the crush, only stress fracturing in a half dozen places.  The muscle was not so lucky, and much of it was torn by shearing forces.

Walborski almost passed out from the pain.  He sent the mental signal to his pain pathways and turned them off.  Then he opened his eyes as the pain retreated and stared in horror at the space between the door and the jam.  That space was only about a third the width of his arm.

“Get that goddamn hatch open,” yelled an instructor, flying up in the zero gee and grabbing a handhold next to the Corporal.  “We’ll have you out in a moment, son.”

Cornelius nodded his head, thankful that part of the augment process was voluntary control over the pain pathways.  Otherwise he would still be screaming.  Still, his thoughts were on the edge of panic.  An injury like this would take at least a week to heal, and maybe longer for him to return to one hundred percent.  That could mean recycling to the beginning of Phase III training, something he really didn’t want to think about.

The door swished open, and he could see how flat that section of his suit was.  The medics were around him and one used a laser to cut through the suit and expose the arm.  There was blood floating in the air, not as much as would normally be expected by such a heavy wound.  The nanites had done their job and stemmed the blood flow.

Within a minute he was in the local infirmary, the medical staff hovering over him, getting his arm into a bionic cast that would hold the injured area still and allow his arm to work at the joint.  He was given booster shots of nanites, protein solutions, and a cocktail mix of drugs.  Soon after he was fast asleep, his last thought how unfair it was to be injured in such a freak manner.

“You OK, son?” was the first thing he heard the next morning.

Cornelius opened his eyes and looked up at the face of Captain Zhukov, looking down at him with a concerned expression on his face.

“No pain, sir,” he said in a disappointed voice.

“Not your fault,” said the Captain.  “Maybe no one’s fault.”  The Captain was silent for a moment, looking at the wall, then back at his prize trainee.  “You worried that you might have to recycle?”

“Yes, sir.  That I am.”

“Let me see what I can do about that,” said the Captain, patting Walborski on the shoulder.  “I might be able to swing something.  You won’t graduate with this company, but we may be able to get you into one at this stage of training.”

“I would appreciate that, sir,” said the Corporal.

“You just work hard at rehabilitating, son,” said the Captain, patting Walborski again on the shoulder, standing up, and walking away.

The rest of the day was spent with medical personnel hovering over him, scanning, probing, making sure that the first stage of the healing process was going according to plan.  If the first stage was accomplished without any problems, the rest would just occur without much need for supervision.  By day three he was declared ready for rehab, and the bionic cast was removed.  The arm was still tender to the touch, and the muscles didn’t look quite like they were supposed to, but it was definitely an improvement over what he had seen right after the accident.

That afternoon Cornelius jacked into the simulator program, becoming a whole and hale soldier going through combat.  The simulator took all his concentration, running him through what seemed to be real time simulations that compressed a day into every hour.  The trainer would help to complete the hard wiring of his nervous system, while giving him more experience.  Part of that experience was dying.  Several times he made mistakes, and those times he was killed.  One was relatively painless.  The other.

In the other he had an arm taken off by a laser beam.  The pain was almost unbearable, and only kicking in the pain block of his system allowed him to deal with it.  The simulator did a perfect job of making the illusion real, and the wounded trooper didn’t get to cover in time and caught a projectile through the stomach.  He lay there on the field in an agony that no pain block could handle, feeling the life seeping out of him despite the efforts of the nanites.  Blackness started at the edge of his vision and moved in, until all was dark.  He woke from the simulation with an indrawn breath, knowing he didn’t want to undergo that in reality.  And that’s why they throw that in there, he thought as he lay in the bed sweating.  He lay there for a few moments, catching his breath, then jacked back in for another go.  He was still at it when the medical personnel interrupted him for dinner, then back at it until they activated his reticular system and put him to sleep.

*     *     *

“Corporal Walborski?  I’m Sergeant Sutton, your physical Therapist.  And how are you doing today?”

Cornelius looked at the vision that appeared before him with an open mouth.  Katlyn, he thought, immediately making the comparison.  She had the same strawberry hair, the same dusting of light freckles over her nose, a nose that was so much like hers that to see it made his heart ache.  The eyes were the same color and had the same twinkle.  He adjusted that comparison with a second glance, seeing the differences as well as the similarities.  Her face was a little rounder, she was taller, though the contours of the body that showed through the tight uniform were similar.

“Are you OK, Corporal?” asked the woman in a concerned voice.

“You just reminded me of someone,” he said in a choked voice. “Someone important to me, once.”

“A breakup,” she said with a frown.  “You’re a good looking guy.  I’m sure you won’t have any trouble attracting another woman.”  She flashed him that heart stopping mile again.

“It wasn’t a breakup,” said Cornelius in the same choked voice.  “It was my wife, and she was killed by those bastard aliens.”

The beautiful blue-green eyes opened in shock.  They closed, and her jaws moved as she went through the motions that Cornelius knew was a link.

“My God, but I’m sorry,” said the Sergeant.  “I had no idea.  I checked your file on the way over, but only the parts that were germane to my job.”  The woman pushed the words out in a rush, the tone of someone being apologetic but not knowing how to apologize.

“It’s OK,” said Cornelius, touching her forearm with his good hand.  “You had no way of knowing.  I’m Cornelius, by the way.”

“I’m Devera,” said the woman, an embarrassed smile creeping onto her face.  She closed her eyes again, linking into the database.  “My God.  The Imperial Medal of Heroism.  And you only just started your career.”

“I told the Emperor I really didn’t deserve it, but he refused to take no for an answer.”

“You spoke with the Emperor?  You know the Emperor?”

“Yes to both,” said Cornelius with a smile.  “He’s a really great guy.  Let me keep my baby at the palace and everything.”

A look of what could almost be called adoration appeared on the woman’s face.  Cornelius almost said something to bring her back to reality, then thought better of it.

“But, I remind you of your wife,” she said, the smile disappearing from her face.  “I am so sorry, but I am not her.”

“Of course you aren’t,” said Cornelius, realizing that he might have blown any chance he had with this women, who is was suddenly very important to get to know.

“Let’s get to work,” she said, motioning for Cornelius to get out of bed.  She left the room for a moment to let him get dressed, then led him down the corridor to a therapy room.

Cornelius got to work, using the machines that pushed his muscles to the limit.  His forearm was still weak, though stronger than that of a normal man.  He was determined that it would again be superhuman in the shortest possible time.

“It’s time for a break,” said Devera after hours of sweaty work.

“I could keep going,” said Cornelius, not wanting to quit despite his fatigue.

“You need to get something to eat,” she said, tossing him a towel.  “That’s the problem with you supermen.  You always want to push past your limits.  Nanite boosters and protein shots are all well and good.  But you also need solid food.  And some rest for tired muscles.”

Cornelius followed the woman to the mess hall and got a full tray.  She sat down next to him and talked the entire time.  Mostly the conversation was business, but Devera could not keep herself from asking questions about the Emperor and the palace.

“Perhaps I could get you an invitation the next time I visit,” said the Corporal with a smile.

“Don’t you think that is getting a little too personally involved?” she asked, the smile leaving her face again.

I really don’t need to get involved, he thought, looking into the eyes that said anything but she didn’t like the idea of personal involvement.  I need to keep focused on the prize.  He sat there for a moment, thinking, and she looked at him with a curious expression.  It’s only been eight months.  Not even enough time to grieve.

“What are you thinking?” she asked, placing a hand on his forearm.

But Katlyn wouldn’t want me to be miserable.  She’s gone.  I’ll never see her again, whether she went to heaven like the preachers say, or just ceased to exist.  If there is a heaven, I don’t think I’m destined to go there.  “I’m thinking that you’re not in my chain of command, so there is no regulation against my asking you to accompany me to see the palace.”

“I’m, not sure about that,” she said, shaking her head.  “It’s time to get back to work anyway.”

Cornelius nodded and followed her back to the therapy chamber.  His mind wasn’t totally into the workout now, but he went through the motions.  That must have satisfied the Sergeant, because she kept giving approving comments, though her mind didn’t seem to be totally into the workout either.

“See you in the morning,” she told him after she had walked him back to his room.

Cornelius lay awake part of the night, thinking about this woman he had just met.  Love at first sight?  I don’t really believe in that.  I knew Katlyn most of my life, and our love grew through that knowledge. He wondered for a moment when he had become so philosophical.  A result of the augmentation?  They had told him that his thought processes would be much faster than before.  Didn’t that mean an increase in intelligence?  How much of one?

The Corporal lay there for a moment more, linking into the military net and sending a com request through.  Prior to the deployment of the wormholes what he was trying to do would have taken days to reach the target of his com.  Now it got through almost instantaneously.  He was not surprised when the person he was trying to contact wasn’t available.  Of course he had more important things to do.  That he would get the message he was sure.  He wasn’t sure of the response, but he was hopeful.

The next morning the Sergeant was again at his bedside when he woke.  Cornelius wasn’t sure she would be there.  It would have been easy for her to swap assignments with another therapist.  That she was here was a sign of interest?  Or just that she took her duties seriously?

The day passed with him working out and their talking, mostly about his progress and plans for the future.  That was a topic that really didn’t make much sense to him.  The Army was in charge of his future.  Then the conversation turned to more personal things.

He learned that she was to be married in the recent past, to an officer.  Said officer was assigned to occupation duty on a former Lasharan world, populated by fanatics who had no concern for lives, their own or others.  Her fiancé’ had been one of the many lives lost on that world.  And so she had joined the Army, giving up her own studies in premed to become a physical therapist, working with men and women who had undergone regrowth and had a need for experts to help them get back to full function.

On the fourth day Cornelius finally received the reply he had been hoping for.  He sent the original message on to Devera’s personal mail, so she could see the origin and know that it was fact.

“How in the hell did you do that?” asked Devera the next morning when she came to get him for his day of therapy.

“I told you, I know some people.  And it seemed like you really wanted to meet the Emperor.  So this is your chance.”

“I don’t know,” said the women, looking at Cornelius out of narrowed eyes.  “I have a job to do here, as do you.”

“And the invitation comes with an Imperial command that orders everyone involved to expedite our travels.”  He saw that the woman was still uncomfortable.  “Look, you want to meet the Emperor.  I know you do.  And it’s not like I’m taking you off to a private rendezvous.  This is the Imperial Palace we are talking about.  The most protected place in the Empire, with the heaviest surveillance assets known.”

“This doesn’t feel right,” she said, a blush coming across her fair face.

“Look, are you going to disobey an Imperial Order?  That doesn’t sound like a loyal soldier to me.  I have no choice but to go.  Do you want me to tell Sean the First that you decided he was not important enough to take a day of your time and meet him.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” said the woman, putting her hand up to her mouth.

“Then it’s agreed.  We leave tomorrow morning.  We’ll tour the palace in the afternoon and have dinner with the Emperor that evening.”

“I guess I can’t refuse,” she said, a smile breaking out on her face.  “So I might as well enjoy it.”

It took an hour the next day to get to the gate.  From there it took five minutes to get through the Donut and on to Jewel.  The next stage was something that lit up the eyes of the Sergeant up like nothing before, not even the technological marvel of the wormhole gates.  They were escorted by Secret Service agents to a luxurious aircar that was as roomy as a small bus.  A staffer served them drinks as the car lifted and headed on a roundabout path to the Palace.

After the car landed they were ushered into a room with Secret Service agents and some medical personnel.  “We need to check you out,” said one of the Agents.  “Can’t tell you why, but it is important.  And very secret.”

“No problem,” said Cornelius, letting a med tech take a deep tissue sample from his arm.  There was no pain, and he smiled over at the woman he had brought here, letting her know that it was OK.

“You both check out as you,” said the lead Agent with a smile.  “We’ve arranged a tour of the Palace.  Starting with some of the public areas, then the private.”

“Public areas?” asked Devera with a surprised expression.

“Of course,” said the Agent, who was a cute woman with a completely harmless look about her.  “This building is a public resource of the Empire.  Most days there are tour groups from schools, civic organizations and just plain citizens going through.”

Cornelius watched the woman carefully.  She did a good job of masking her movements, something that had to come with a lot of training.  But he could see the signs, the fast movements of the eyes, the way her ears perked up at sounds that were out of the normal range of hearing.  Sounds he could hear.  She was augmented, as he was sure most of the nonmilitary security was.

They first went through the public areas, where masterwork portraits of past Emperors and other members of the Imperial Family were hung in ornate frames, and jewels and symbols were encased in shatterproof containers.  It was a display of the past of the Empire as seen through the lives of the ruling family.  Cornelius understood that many of these same objects, or at least their copies, were on display in one of the buildings of the Imperial Museum complex in the center of the city.

The private display was even more impressive in its own way.  They toured the actual rooms where Imperial policy was formulated before it reached the official parlors and meeting halls.  Then it was to the gardens, or at least a sampling of the gardens.

Devera stared in wonder at everything they saw.  Cornelius had seen some of it before, and he was not as fascinated with history as was his date.  The Ranger was into the here and now, and what he could do to affect it.  But it felt good to be in the company of a beautiful woman who was obviously having the time of her life.

They spent the last couple of hours playing with Walborski’s son.  Devera obviously enjoyed playing with the smiling baby, who had grown beyond his father’s belief.  Could she end up being your mother? he thought, then dismissed that train as going much too fast in his own mind into what was only a nascent relationship.

Then it was time to go to their rooms and get ready for dinner.  Their rooms were separate enough to pay homage to propriety, but close enough that he could always hope for a liaison.

When they entered the dining room, a different one than where he had eaten before, they were the only ones there.  Cornelius let out a calming breath as he took his seat on the side of the table, Devera seated across from him.  Last time he had been here two thirds of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had been invited as well.  Not that he had minded talking with them, giving them his impressions of the enemy that he had fought in such intimate quarters.  But tonight that would have been a bit much.

“The Emperor Sean Ogden Lee Romanov, Sean the First, and the Imperial Consort, Doctor Jennifer Conway,” announced a voice.

Cornelius and Devera both came to their feet to positions of attention.

“At ease,” said Sean with a laugh.  “I’m just the ruler of human space, not your company commander.”

Cornelius smiled and accepted the grip of his liege and friend, then kissed the back of Jennifer’s hand.  He had to admit that the Doctor had never looked better, and she had been an exceedingly beautiful woman when he had known her on Sestius.

“And such a gorgeous woman you bring to my house, Cornelius,” said Sean, taking Devera’s hand and kissing it.  “Welcome, Devera.”

“Your Majesty,” she said, her face reddening.

“Call me Sean,” said the Emperor.  “Tonight you are among friends.  Tomorrow we can get back to the bowing and scraping.”

Devera laughed, and Cornelius smiled as he saw how she was being caught up in the charm of Sean.  Jennifer looked him over with what Sean saw as a Doctor’s eye, and it didn’t take a genius to know what she was thinking.

“You're no longer the skinny little farmer,” she said, touching his chest.  “The military has really changed you.”

“Augmentation probably had something to do with it,” said Sean.  “Though I’m sure hard work and good food played its part.”

“But the cost,” exclaimed Jennifer, a painful expression on her face.

“No worries there,” said Sean with a shrug.  “I happen to know that Cornelius has a very unusual genome.  His life span shouldn’t suffer from the augment process.”  The Emperor looked Cornelius in the eyes.  “Your son shares the genome, thanks to all your dominant genes.”

“He has his mother’s eyes,” protested Cornelius.

“But the important genes came from you,” said the Emperor.  “I want to look into your family tree.  I have a feeling that someone in the Imperial line jumped in there somewhere.”

That left Cornelius with something to think about.  If it could be proven that he was a distant relative of the Emperor he might be entitled to some small patent of nobility.  Not that it really mattered much to him, but it would be nice if Junior had some privilege in this society, in which, though it espoused the ability of people to rise above their birth, heritage was still important.

The rest of the evening was magic, with Sean and Jennifer making the two junior NCOs feel welcome in the hall of ultimate power.  Cornelius studied the Emperor during the evening.  Through the smiles and the laughs he could see the stress that the young man was under.  He also saw the strength of the man, and knew that no one in the Empire was better suited for the task.

Finally Sean had to excuse himself, apologizing for having a busy day coming.  He pulled Cornelius aside for a moment before he retired.

“I am so happy to see you moving on, Cornelius,” said the Emperor, his arm around the younger man.  “It’s good to have balance in our lives.  I was so worried that you would destroy yourself with an obsession.”

“I still want to kill Cacas, your Majesty,” said Cornelius, the smile leaving his face.

“And the Empire needs you to be killing them.  But we don’t need you out there with a death wish.  I’ve talked to Preacher about you, and he thinks you have big things ahead of you.  So do your job, end as many of the big bastards as you can, but try and come back from your mission.”

“I, will try, to make it back,” said the Corporal.

“Please do.  And it was very good to see you again, Cornelius.  You are genuine.  I feel like you are a person I can be myself with, without having to worry about who you might be reporting to, or working for.  I’ll want to meet with you when you come back from your first deployment.  So don’t disappoint me.”

“I had a wonderful time,” said Devera as Cornelius walked her to her room.

The Corporal nodded, feeling light headed from all the alcohol he had drunk tonight.  His internal nanites had taken some of the edge off, like most people he could never get completely out of control unless he wished it.

“I did too,” he said, opening the door to her room.  He thought for a moment, then leaned down to kiss her, expecting her to pull away.  Instead she moved into the kiss, then grabbed his hand and pulled him into the room.

It was not the best sex that Cornelius had ever had.  He had early feelings for this woman, but not the deep ones he had held for his late wife.  Still, it was good, and he felt his feelings deepen for this woman he barely knew.

Afterwards they lay in the guest bed that was as comfortable as any either had ever occupied.  Cornelius held Devera in his arms, while she played with the hair on his chest.  Her fingers touched the ring he wore on a chain and she grasped it, looking up into his eyes.

“My wedding ring,” he said to her unasked question.  “It’s the last thing I have of my wife.  Well, except for Junior, and I can’t carry him around on deployment.”

“And you still love her deeply?”

“Of course.  We were childhood sweethearts.  But she’s gone.”

“And the ring?”

“It reminds me of why I want to kill Cacas,” he said in a flat voice.

“And what am I to you?” she asked in a quiet voice.  “Just a diversion?”

“No,” said Cornelius, pulling her close.  “You’re the reason I have to come back.”

Chapter Eleven

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.  Voltaire.

AZURE.  JANUARY 10TH –17th,  1001.

“This is so pretty,” said Benjamin from across the clearing.

Rebecca turned quickly, not liking the sound of that.  On Azure pretty often meant deadly.  “Get away from that thing,” she yelled as the great flower came into her view.  It was beautiful, all blues and whites, large petals, all suspended from a thick stem.  It was a wonderful specimen of vegetable life, only it wasn’t vegetation.  It was a plantimal, and a very deadly one.  Dad’s friend Ted had shown her one in the jungle, before destroying it.

The blossom started to move, centering on her little brother.  The dots on the fleshy petals opened, giving the plantimal a view of its target.  And then it spit out a trio of darts in a cloud of propellant gas.

Rebecca screamed out as she brought her rifle to bear, pulling the trigger three times quickly and sending a trio of high velocity rounds into the center of the flower.  Pieces of plantimal exploded outward and the flower collapsed in on itself.  She lowered her aim and sent another three rounds into the center of the plantimal’s stalk.  One of the shots hit the fluid pump of the beast, and bluish liquid shot out, as the stalk leaned over like a drunken man.

Rebecca saw the form of her brother lying on the ground.  With a cry she started to move toward him, stopping for a moment to check the rest of the area for further dangers.  Seeing none, she knelt by her brother, expecting the worst.  The darts contained a deadly poison that started the digestive process going, even with the alien proteins of humans.  Then the plantimal would move onto the prey and sink digestive feelers into it.

She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that the darts had all hit on his survival suit.  The suit was basically a garment of impact armor with an outer covering of passive camouflage, not quite as good as the military version.  The darts were low velocity hardened living matter, something that had no chance of penetrating the suit.  Benjamin had been lucky that none had hit the open flesh of his face or hands.

“Is it gone?” asked the child, rolling over and looking up at Rebecca.

“I killed it,” said Rebecca, taking another glance around.  She grabbed Benjamin by the arm and shook him.  “You need to stay close to me.  I need for you to not wander off.”

“I was just across the clearing from you,” complained Benjamin.

“And you almost died.  If you hadn’t said anything about the flower I wouldn’t have even known you were in trouble.”

“My suit stopped it from hurting me,” protested Benjamin.

“And a damned great bear or a pack of hell hounds still would have ripped you apart.  You’ve got to understand.  We have to stick together at all times.  Once we get to the cavern you can have a little more freedom.  You understand?”

“I’m sorry,” said Benjamin, tears in his eyes.  “I don’t mean to be trouble.”

“I know you don’t, Benny,” said Rebecca pulling him into a hug.  “I know you don’t.  Now let’s get going.”

An hour later they were trudging across a large open area, a prairie.  Large herbivores grazed on the blue tinted grass.  Rebecca charted a course across the veldt around the herbivores, who tended to ignore them unless they got too close.  What she was mostly looking out for were the predators that hunted these herbivores.  Humans really weren’t nutritious to them, but they didn’t know that.  They wouldn’t realize that until the proteins in their stomachs were poisoning them, which really didn’t do the human they had eaten any good.

Halfway across the prairie she became aware that they were being stalked.  The high grass hid them from the shoulders down, and hid the predators from them as well.  Their survival suits were masking most of their pheromones.  But the predators were tracking on them somehow, by sound, vibrations, movement of the grasses or something.  The survival suit alerted her to their presence by their pheromones, despite their coming in from downwind.

“Stay close, Benny,” she told her little brother as she checked her rifle and then looked for some spot that would give her the advantage.  She saw it straight ahead, about one hundred meters, a hill with a tree rising above the grass.  The predators, which the suit system had identified as a pride of prairie cats, were close in around them now.  Rebecca thought about running to the hill, then vetoed that idea.  There was no way they were going to outrun the speedy cat surrogates.  Their only hope rested on making the cats think their stalk was going well, until their prey were on the top of the hill.

Twenty meters to go, and the prairie cats in front started to curve in.  One moved onto the hilltop for a moment before it realized it was now in the open.  The beast growled low in its throat and it slunk off the hilltop on its six legs.  The four eyes narrowed, looking straight into hers, the harsh sunlight glinting off its dappled blue hide.

Rebecca fired a couple of rounds its way, not really caring if she hit it, just trying to drive it from their refuge.  The rounds cracked by over the head of the beast, which crouched, roared, and sprang off the hill to land in the high grass.

“Come on,” she hissed at Benjamin, hustling him up the hillside.  As soon as they were at the top she put her back to the tree, making sure that Benjamin was standing beside her. She crouched down, her eyes scanning the grass around the hill.  The tree was wide enough that she felt secure from the rear.  Anything coming at her from that direction would have to come around the tree.

The grass rustled to her left, followed a moment later by three hundred kilos of predator springing from the cover.  Rebecca swung her rifle that way, pulling the trigger and hoping that she could scare it off.  She really didn’t want to kill any of the magnificent animals.  Killing too many of them could doom the pride.  She also didn’t want to let them kill her or her brother.  Her third round hit the cat, into the meaty part of its right center leg.  The beast roared and jumped back, a dark reddish blue blood staining the limb.

“Make them go away,” yelled Benjamin, his frightened eyes looking up at hers.

“I’m trying, honey,” said Rebecca.  She felt like her nerves were about to explode from the tension.  She saw movement and swung her rifle that way.  The cat was barely visible when it slunk back into cover.  That gave another cat the opening it wanted, and it sprung out onto the hilltop and reared up over the pair, its four front limbs outstretched, claws exposed and ready to bring them in with a killing stroke.

“Get away,” yelled Rebecca, swinging her rifle back and trying to get a shot into the animal.  She started pulling the trigger before she got it in her firing arc, hoping that she could scare it away. A claw struck out and hit the rifle, knocking it from her hand, and Rebecca was looking up at death for her and her brother.

The cat roared and fell back a step.  The high pitched sound of a sonic weapon sounded from nearby.  Rebecca acted in that instant, pulling her pistol from its holster.  As soon as it was leveled she shot rapid fire into the center of the beast.  It roared again, this time the sound dropping into a death rattle.  The sound of the sonic kept rising and falling as it was waved around the area.  Rebecca looked down to see her brother sweeping his sonic pistol around.  Roars of displeasure sounded from the surrounding grass.  The roars started to move away, the pride defeated by the two small morsels standing upon the hilltop.

Rebecca stepped up to the dead cat and around it to the side, keeping her weapon trained on it.  The beast didn’t move, and as she moved back around to the front of the mighty predator she could see that the four green eyes had no life to them.  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, bowing her head, not really sure if she was asking the animal’s forgiveness, or God’s.  It was a beautiful creature, a killer, but as Ted had told her, that was what they did.  It was them or her and her brother, and she had to make sure it was her family that survived.  At least it was only one of them, she thought, looking up and scanning the grasslands.  One kill would weaken the pride, but not fatally.

Rebecca spent a few more minutes watching, then checked Benjamin’s sonic weapon and made sure it had a fresh power pack.  She then led the way down the hill and back into the grass, heading east on a bearing toward the cavern where all their needs would be met.  She figured in her head it would take them a week to get there from this point.  Maybe five days, but Ted had taught her that it was always better to estimate on the pessimistic side.  So one week and they would be there.

They made the other side of the prairie an hour later.  Again they entered another realm, a world of shadows broken by bright beams of light penetrating the gaps in the canopy.  Different predators, animal and plantimal.  Different vegetation.

Rebecca led the way down slope, where she was pretty sure they would find water.  When they reach the stream she made a complete check, then filled a inflatable water container and poured the water into her brother’s backpack bladder.  The filter would remove all impurities, while the secondary nanite filter would make sure there were no biohazards.  Not that there should be, but it didn’t make sense to take chances when there was a technology to avoid it.  After filling his she scooped water and had Benjamin fill hers, making sure they would have enough water for several days travel.  It was starting to get darker, and the night predators were even worse than those who stalked by day.

Rebecca started to search the area for what she needed.  It took about twenty minutes, but when she found one she found several.  Ted called them safe trees.  They were not poisonous nor did they have any thorns.  It was an easy climb for creatures with hands like humans, with many handholds, but the bark was resistant to claws.  Thirty feet up were the first branches, and where they joined the trunk they widened, forming hollows large enough to hold a reclining human.

The older child sprayed the pheromones that would keep insects and flying hunters away, then settled down to eat some ration packs with her brother.  The food was hot and filling, the pack heating as soon as they pulled the tabs.  Each contained enough calories for an adult for an entire day, so the children were well nourished.  With full stomachs they settled down to sleep, Rebecca’s last thought that they had seven days ahead of them, and enough rations for four.  She couldn’t do anything about it now, so she closed her eyes and willed herself to sleep.

*     *     *

Three days later Rebecca made a kill.  She thought the animal was beautiful, standing on it six slender legs, its four green eyes turned her way.  There was a look of curiosity in its eyes, but no fear.  It had obviously never learned to fear humans.  We need food, she thought as she fought past her inclination to not kill and raised her rifle.  We need food, she thought as she pulled her trigger.  They only had one more day of rations, after that they would go without eating.  And at the rate they burned calories by moving cross country they would need more than that food, and so this was necessary.

The animal fell with a short scream that tore at her heart.  She put a second shot in its head, bemoaning the use of the ammunition.  She only had one whole clip and a partial in her rifle, a little under a hundred and fifty rounds, plus the two hundred rounds for her pistol.  That seemed like a lot, until she factored in how many rounds she had to use every day to keep animals and plantimals away.

“Come over here, Benny,” she said as she knelt down by the small herbivore and pulled out her monomolecular survival knife.  She had to work fast, before the smell of the kill attracted other life forms, carnivores and scavengers.  She sliced into a hindquarter of the animal, cutting off a large hunk, then another, until she had harvested about three kilos of meat.

A hooting sound made her look up, to see a quartet of plantimals moving toward her, sending their root legs ahead and pulling themselves along.  They didn’t seem to be moving very fast, but they were closing the distance at an alarming rate.  Benjamin aimed his stunner at the creatures.

“That won’t work, Benny,” she said, stuffing the meat steaks into a bag and grabbing her brother’s arm.  She watched to make sure that her brother didn’t fire.  The sonic wouldn’t have an effect on the primitive nervous systems of the creatures, except in a provocative manner.  She had no reason to provoke these creatures that already had their next meal in front of them.

She backed away and into the jungle, heading for the small cavern they had used the night before.  Upon arriving Rebecca put some fresh fuel in the fire pit, then started it going with her laser igniter.  Quickly setting up the steaks on spits, soon she had the meat cooking and dripping liquid into the pit.  An appetizing smell rose from the meat, but still the odor was slightly wrong.  Rebecca and Benjamin, like most citizens of the planet, had nanite augmentation of their digestive systems that allowed them to eat the food produced by the planet.  There were still some difficulties, but they got some of the nutrition and didn’t die, so the tech worked enough to be useful in survival situations.

“Take this, Benny,” said Rebecca, handing Benjamin a small pill that was made up of nanites.

Benny made a face but took the pill.  Rebecca was thankful that the child was obeying without any kind of conflict.  Several brushes with death, from which his older sister had rescued him, seemed to have crushed the child’s rebellious nature.  At least for now.

After eating, and putting the rest of the meat in the self-sealing travel bag, they started off for the day.  They walked for several hours, Rebecca on alert for anything that might be a danger and moving them around it.  Once they stopped before what looked like a clearing, Benjamin wanting to go ahead, but Rebecca, noting the bushes on one side of the open space, stopped him before he could set off the carnivorous plant’s ambush.  Both cringed slightly whenever a faint boom or rumble sounded, evidence that the battle was still joined.  She thought about her dad at such times, wondering how he was, or even if he were alive.

A little after noon they came upon an aircraft that had crashed through the canopy.  The craft was well made, showing no damage from crashing through branches and even taking down a large tree with a wing striking through the trunk.  The scars of particle beam weapons on the hull showed how it had been downed, and that it was not invulnerable.

There was a hole in the side of the ship, melted on the sides, reaching into the pilot’s compartment.  A plantimal had pushed a tentacle through the hole, and Rebecca was sure she knew what was going on in that compartment.  Plantimals were a bizzare form of life, able to digest just about any kind of organic matter except for the hard cellulose of woody vegetation.   She looked at the plantimal, careful to keep her distance, and could see the pulse of the tentacle that showed it was pulling material into it.

The aircraft had a double cockpit, forward and back.  The rear cockpit was not penetrated, and she looked through the canopy at a crewman who had died when some of the inertial systems had gone out and he had been subjected to killing stresses.  Rebecca moved to the panel that covered the canopy controls and put her ear to the cockpit to ascertain if she could hear anything.  There was nothing, and she was pretty sure that the compartment had not been breached.  She looked over to make sure that Benjamin was with her, his sonic pistol out and covering them both against animal attack.  Then she lifted the panel and pushed the opening switch.

The cockpit moved back, jerking a bit and actually stopping for a second before moving.  The plantimal on the other side of the craft made some questing movements, and its eyespots shifted to look at the open cockpit.  Got to move fast, she thought, climbing up the foothold that had appeared and looking into the compartment, gagging a bit from the smell, her stomach also queasy from the sight of the blood splattered interior.  Moving quickly she reached under the seat that was meant to carry the crewman out of the craft in an emergency, and found the survival pack that was there.  She pulled the quick release and dropped the pack to the ground, then dove back into the cockpit to find every other packet she could locate.  Rebecca unbuckled the crewman’s pistol belt and slid the holstered weapon off.

She caught a movement out of the corner of her eye, and ducked down and away from the plantimal tentacle that thrust into the cockpit.  It touched the body of the crewman, then moved along the hard impact suit until it found the opening at his face.  The tentacle pushed through the flesh and into the face, and Rebecca moved back down the footholds and to the ground.  She picked up the packages and moved away, then dropped them to the ground again and plopped down next to them.

The packages yielded up a treasure trove of survival equipment.  Ration packs, pheromones, a laser lighter, battery packs, a medium range com, another monomolecular blade, and some proton packs.  The last excited her more that all the rest, and she unsnapped the holster and pulled a particle beam pistol out.  The weapon was highly illegal on this world for civilians, being only authorized for government and military.  Ted had shown her several of the weapons, and she hadn’t seen one exactly like this, but she understood the principles behind it.

After belting the pistol on she gave Benjamin her mag handgun.  She was willing to trust him with the weapon at this time, after having proven himself with the sonic.  She divided up the other supplies and started them on their way.

An hour later she was very happy that she had found the particle beam.  They were moving through another clearing, staying at the edge as they moved around, as moving through the center was an invitation to detection by something they wouldn’t want to attract.  The clearing smelled wrong to Jennifer.  It smelled of decay and rot, and death.  Not a sound to be heard.  Her eyes were searching every which way, looking for the thing that was lying in wait.

When it came it was still a surprise, as hard woody tentacles erupted from the forest from their side and from the ground underneath.  Several struck Rebecca in her survival suit and bounced away as the fabric hardened into impact armor.  A few hit Benjamin with the same result, then the main attack came, as a wall of plantimal came out of the brush and threatened to fall on them.

“Get back,” yelled Rebecca, pushing Benjamin toward the other side of the clearing.  She stumbled back in his wake, putting out some fire from her rifle and seeing no effect against the bulk of the creature.

It was an ambush hunter, and they had been ambushed.  A tentacle that couldn’t penetrate the impact armor wrapped around Benjamin’s ankle and pulled him to the ground, where other tentacles attacked his suit.  The child beat at the tentacles with his gloved hands with frantic motions, while the pseudopods of the creature attacked just as frantically.

Rebecca let her rifle drop on its strap and pulled out the particle beam pistol, pushing the arming switch.  She aimed it at the mass, disengaged the safety, and pulled the trigger.  An angry red beam sprung from the barrel of the pistol and struck the mass of the creature with a loud buzzing sound, while the plantimal was coming down on them like a wave.  The beam struck the living mass and vaporized almost a meter into it with a flash of fire and steam.  She swung the beam across, cutting into the creature like it was an infinite sword blade.

The plantimal stopped in its tracks for a few moments, the tentacles went still, and Rebecca set the pistol to maximum.  As soon as she had it set to a wide aperture the plantimal started toward them again.  She fired the beam into the mass and moved it slowly from left to right.  This time the beam burned meters deep and almost a meter wide, vaporizing biomass as the fast moving protons converted their kinetic energy to heat.  The creature fell back, while the tentacles withdrew into the earth.

“Come on,” yelled Rebecca, grabbing Benjamin by the hand, pulling him to his feet and moving him away.

“Is it dead?”

“I don’t know,” she said, glancing back at the writhing mass of the plantimal.  “But we sure hurt it, and I don’t want to stay around to see if it’s alive or not.”

They stopped a kilometer further on, and she checked the pistol to see what condition it was in.  Heat was still coming off the barrel, and the proton pack was still one third full, meaning she had used over four hundred grams of protons.  The power pack was still at three quarters charge.  She grunted in satisfaction and motioned Benjamin to move on, keeping the pistol out until it had cooled enough to holster without burning her.  She thought the suit might protect her from burns, but decided it was best not to test that theory.

Later that day they saw another of those ambush hunters, something she was sure the people of the planet had never heard about.  At least it was something she had never heard of.  It had trapped a hell hound, and the rest of the pack nipped at its fringes, trying to free their mate.  They didn’t accomplish that objective, and they left yet another pack member to be digested by the horrible creature.

That night they found another safe tree, but this time Rebecca checked out the area around the tree thoroughly, making sure there were no hidden surprises.  Surprises on this world were deadly, and she didn’t want any more sneaking up on them.

Rebecca was woken in the morning by the screaming of Benjamin.  She jumped up to see the child writhing and screaming in the hollow.  She reached out to him and grabbed him, then screamed herself as she saw a line of insectoids running up his suit and into the opening at his neck.  She looked over and saw where the line originated, coming down the trunk of the tree and going through what must have been a gap in the pheromone shield she had put up before they went to sleep.

She brushed the insectoids away from her brother, then pulled out a laser igniter and shined it on the line of little creatures as they came down the trunk.  The small bodies burst as their liquid converted to steam.  She ran the light up the trunk for ten meters, then dropped the lighter and pulled out a pheromone sprayer from her belt kit.  First she sealed the barrier.  Next she sprayed her brother’s suit with the pheromones, which forced the insectoids to fall off and look for some kind of refuge.  He was lying on the floor of the hollow now, spasming.  She looked at his vitals on her med scanner and saw that he was going into a toxic shock.  She pulled the multispray syringe and gave him a shot of nanites and chemicals in the neck, then started opening his suit.  She gasped as she saw his skin covered in swelling bite marks.  She set the syringe and gave him another shot, then proceeded to complete disrobing the child.

It took her almost half an hour to make sure all the insectoids were off his body.  He was still unconscious, going in and out of convulsions.  She wasn’t sure if she should give him another shot, but thought it was the lesser risk. They stayed there during the day.  Several times Benjamin went into respiratory distress, and Rebecca was afraid she was going to lose him.  She prayed to the God that recently really hadn’t seemed to do much for her family or people.  She grabbed the Star of David she had on a chain around her neck, a gift from her mother, and looked up to the canopy covered sky.  She didn’t know what else to do.  The little shit was the only family she had left.

Toward nightfall he seemed to stabilize, and a couple of hours into the darkness she felt he was past the worst.  She struggled to get him into his survival suit again, made sure the hollow was covered against another attack, then fell into an exhausted sleep herself.  She woke when it started to get lighter.

“I’m hungry,” said Benjamin, lying still and looking over at her.

Rebecca hugged him as the tears rolled her down her face, deliriously happy for the first time in a week.

Chapter Twelve

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.  George S. Patton.

FEBRUARY 1ST -APRIL 14TH, 1001.

Azure, thought Corporal Cornelius Walborski, looking at his orders through his implant. Actually the orders assigned him to the Third Battalion of the Three Fifty-Seventh Rangers.  But said unit was to deploy to that planet within the next couple of months, along with the rest of the regiment.  They were to take the place of a battalion that had been chewed up and spit out on one of the smaller continents of the planet, less than twenty percent of its front line personnel coming home.

“We prefer giving new Rangers three to four months with their units before deployment,” said the Master Sergeant who stood at the head of the briefing room, looking out over the room of new special ops soldiers.  “That way you become real Rangers, men with the training and knowledge of the unit and men they are to fight with.  Then, we prefer that you train in the environment you will be deployed to for another couple of monts.”

Cornelius knew there had to be at least five hundred men in the room, all with brand new Ranger flashes on their left upper sleeves.  He had graduated with his new Phase III group on time, not at the position he would have preferred, but well enough to make it into the top three.  He looked over at Sergeant Chantamurta, the man who had made honor graduate of the company.   The man had tried to intimidate Cornelius when he had appeared at the unit, replacing one of the few drop outs of Phase III.  Cornelius had taken the warning to heart, and proceeded to do his best to unseat the man from his position.  It had not been enough in the three remaining weeks of the course.  It had been enough to earn the respect of the Sergeant.

“Unfortunately, we have a war to prosecute, and the demand for enhanced soldiers is greater than our ability to train them,” continued the Senior NCO.  “I have no need to tell you why that is so.  A briefing on the planet of your assignment has been downloaded into your implants.  Study them. You will train on that environment in as much time as we can give you.  Believe me, it will not be enough, so it is important that you start learning right now.”

Cornelius had worked as a hunt guide on New Detroit, leading trophy expeditions made up of mostly useless nobles wanting to prove their courage by killing animals with high powered weapons.  And he had hunted the Cacas through the jungles of Sestius, a Class III threat planet, really a 2.5 or less, much more dangerous than New Detroit or any of the terraformed Earth type worlds.  Azure was a Class II world, the most dangerous that the Imperial Colonizing Commission would authorize for colonization.  He knew it would take more than a month to learn all there was to know about the biome, which would be as much his enemy as it was the Cacas’.

Devera met him outside the briefing room.  She had attended his graduation, and they had hoped to steal some time before his deployment.

“It’s not to be,” he said to his lady love.  “I will try to make it back.  That’s all I can promise.”

“I’ll pray that you do,” said Devera, crossing herself in the Reformed Catholic manner.

Cornelius nodded, still not sure what he thought of the concept of God.  He doesn’t seem to be on our side if he is there.

“We need to go, Walborski,” yelled Sergeant Chantamurta, who had also been assigned to the same battalion, long with a hundred and thirty-four other men from this training group.  He had been tasked with taking charge of their deployment.

Cornelius looked over at the man and nodded, wondering why they really needed someone to run herd on them on the short trip to the station in orbit around Heaven.  “I’ve got to go,” he told his lover, then leaned down to kiss her.  Her arms held him in a tight embrace, and she seemed unwilling to let go.  Cornelius pulled her arms away from him gently, then kissed her again.  “Look in on Junior for me, if you would.”  She nodded her head and he kissed the tears from her eyes, then turned away, to see some of the other men looking at him with smirks on their faces.

“You’re just jealous,” he said with a smile.

“Damn right,” said a PFC, his eyes scanning the lovely Sergeant.

“Let’s get going,” said Chantamurta, giving the PFC a glare for his effrontery to someone who was obviously important to the Corporal.

Cornelius studied the file about Azure on the flight to the wormhole gate.  It seemed a fascinating place, and he would have loved to have gone there on a hunting expedition.  One with all the comforts and security measures that his high tech society could provide.  Instead, he would be out there with only the protection of his survival suit, his senses, and his ability to fight.

The animals were fascinating, and deadly.  The kind his former employers would have loved to have hung the heads of on their walls.  The vegetation was also fascinating, and some of it deadly as well.  And the hybrid forms known as plantimals?  Well, those were something else entirely.  A man could crawl into a patch of the things without realizing what they were, until they attacked.  He shuddered at the thought, which fueled his resolve to learn as much as he could about the place as soon as possible.

The wormhole gates were crowded with traffic, more than he could remember from his earlier trips.  They had a fifteen minute wait for the traffic pattern to switch, then another ten for their place in line to get through.  Cornelius used that time wisely, while the rest of the men chatted and gossiped about the war.

“Not the sociable type, are you?” asked one of the PFCs, the lowest rank any of the newly graduated Rangers held.

“I know we don’t have a lot of time,” said Cornelius, looking into the man’s eyes and reading the fear there.  Well, I’m scared too, he thought.  But trying to hide in banter is not going to help me.

“Some of the men would like to talk with you,” continued the PFC in a rush of speech.  “You know, you’re the only man we know who has actually faced the enemy.”

“So?”

“We want to know about the Cacas,” said the man with a pleading look on his face.  “Don’t you understand?  They’re the boogie man to us.  The unknown monsters.  You can put a face on them for us.”

“OK,” said Cornelius, letting a smile cross his face.  “PFC, Anderson?”

“Clifford Anderson,” said the man.  “You might have heard of me.”  Cornelius gave him a shrug.  “I was a novelist.  I guess I still am, but on hiatus at the moment.”

“Maybe I’ll read some of your stuff in the future.  What do you write?”

“Fantasy,” said the man with a smile.  “And now I’m caught in the all too real world.”

Cornelius went forward in the line and talked with the men, who all seemed to hang on every word with expressions of awe.  “Just remember,” he said in finishing, just before it became their turn to jump into the portal.  “I took out the bastards as a normal man.  A driven normal man, true, one who really wanted to kill as many of the assholes as possible.  Now I am like you, augmented, and I for one can’t wait to start hunting.”

Again the Donut was crowded.  Given the size of the thing that was hard to comprehend, though the Corporal knew it had to have a lot of still empty space.  He imagined that eventually that would not be true, the station would truly be fully occupied, with however many billions of beings that took.  From the Donut it was another short walk to another world, then a shuttle flight up to yet another station.

They could all feel the change in the gravity field as they walked aboard the station.  Cornelius figured it was not double normal, probably about one and a half times.  He could feel the strain on his muscles.  Nothing that he couldn’t handle.  All of them were almost four times stronger than they had been before augmentation.  That included bones and tendons that were even stronger.  The second thing that struck the Ranger was the light, a harsh bluish tint that was hard on the eyes.  The air was also different, thicker, with high humidity and an energizing level of oxygen.

“This must be where we’re going,” said PFC Anderson, smiling.

“Not my idea of heaven,” said Sergeant Chantamurta.  “A warm day on my home is a brisk eighteen degrees.”

“It’s something you had better get used to,” said a Major, walking out of a room and stepping in front of the line of men.

The men snapped to attention, and the officer waved them to ease.  “Better get that garrison shit out of you.  You men are Rangers, the best of the best.  We don’t expect you to jerk to attention like puppets.  Plus, I for one don’t want you telling some asshole on the other side that I’m important just because of the body language of the men around me.”

Cornelius smiled.  He really hadn’t liked the chicken shit formality of the Army, though to him the almost cartoonish posturing of the Fleet was much worse.

“I am Major Igor Stravinsky, the XO of this outfit.  Hopefully you won’t see me much out in the bush.  If you do, you really know that the shit has hit it.”

The Major waited a moment, thinking of what next to say.  “We will spend the next month and a half on this station, getting a feel for the environment we’re going to live and fight in.  You will be assigned to your squads and teams, and get familiarized with the people you will be working with before deployment.   I wish it was more.  We normally like to work the new people in for three to six months before going to war.  That’s not possible at this time.  Sergeant Major.”

An older Asian man stepped up from behind the Major and looked over the troops, an expression of disapproval on his face.  “What a bunch of momma’s boys they sent me,” he said, shaking his head.  “I know we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel, but this is ridiculous.”  The Senior NCO looked back to the group, craning his neck and catching sight of Sergeant Chantamurta.  “At least we have some real soldiers here, even if they haven’t proven themselves as Rangers.”  Then he caught sight of Walborski, and his eyes narrowed as he stared directly at the Imperial Medal of Heroism around the Corporal’s neck on its ribbon.

“You all will follow the cursors popping up in your implants to your squad assignments.  The squad leader will introduce you to the other men in the squad, and the platoon leader and sergeant.  We start training tomorrow, though I would suggest that all of you men spend as much time as possible tonight learning about the hell hole we’re deploying to.  Dismissed.”

Cornelius waited for the cursor to appear while all the other men started on their way.  It refused to appear, and he knew that something was up.

“Corporal Walborski,” called out the Sergeant Major, whose name tag said Takei.  “If you will come with me.”

Cornelius followed the short stout man down a corridor and into an office.  The door slid shut behind him and the Sergeant Major gestured him to a chair.

“I have two things to say to you, son,” said the Senior NCO, planting his butt on his desk.  “First, I want to welcome you aboard.  Your record shows you to be a warrior.  Hell, you have more combat experience than most of the men in this battalion.  I know for a fact that you have more kills than just about anyone here.  That makes you an asset.”

The Sergeant Major was silent for a moment, looking down at the floor, then turned his intense gaze onto the corporal.  “That said, I also understand that you have powerful friends.  People who are willing to bend the rules, and have the power to make that happen.”

“Sergeant Major,” interrupted Walborski.  “I would never think…”

“Of course you would,” said the Senior NCO.  “You’re only human, despite your new enhanced abilities.  And let me warn you about them as well.  Being stronger, faster and smarter does not make you invulnerable.  But back to the original matter.  I will not have a soldier in my battalion pulling strings at the top to get what he wants.  If you want priority transport someplace, that’s one thing.  But if you plan to try and get special treatment in this unit, I want to know.  So I can ship your ass off to some other unit before you become a liability I can’t afford.”

“Sergeant Major,” said Cornelius, coming out of his chair.  “I won’t beat around the bush.  I know the Emperor, on a first name basis.  I really don’t think I deserve the kindness he has shown to me and mine, but he seems to have adopted me in some manner.  That said, I will never call on him to get me out of any dangerous or shit detail.  I trained to be a Ranger.  I want to fight as a Ranger.  I want to kill Cacas.”

“And I don’t want anyone with a death wish either.  Your chances of dying on this deployment are very good as it is.  I don’t need someone who wants death, and brings that same death to his squad mates.”

“I have something to live for, Sergeant Major,” said Cornelius with a smile, seeing the image of Devera, then Junior, in his mind.  “I definitely don’t have a death wish anymore.”

“Very well.  Then good to have you aboard, son.  And I expect you to keep the people around you focused on the mission.  Most of them are going to get caught up by their surroundings, like puppies in a field of butterflies.  I want you to keep them focused, so they have a chance of coming home too.”

Cornelius was happy to see that he was assigned to the same squad as Sergeant Chantamurta, who was the A team leader, while he took charge of B.  Anderson was in Chantamurta’s team.   The squad leader, Staff Sergeant McAllister, seemed like a good guy, as did Sergeant First Thorwaldson and Lieutenant Schwarz, the leaders of the platoon.

The next day they got down to training, the dual task of learning to move in the environment and getting used to the ways of their squad.  It was just as grueling as Ranger school, more so in some respects.  They walked holographic jungles and dodged animatronic beasts while learning how to keep their eyes out for the mission objective.  That was always the most important part.  Mission.  Everything else took second place, even their lives and the lives of everyone around them.

The month and a half went by quickly, as time does to those who are kept busy.  The regiment had been split before the arrival of the new men, calving another regiment that was also filled with new men.  The Army was in a hurry to deploy the Rangers, but like the British Empire in the days of Gordon, they were not ready to send unprepared men to their deaths without the chance of a payoff.  Finally the day came when impatience to deploy was greater than the caution not to waste.

“We move out in the morning,” said the Sergeant Major on the night before the deployment.  “Everyone make sure everything is packed and all your equipment is functional.  We will pick up our additional mission gear and load out at the Donut.  Any questions?”

“How long is this deployment, Sergeant Major?” asked Sergeant Chantamurta.

“Your guess is as good as mine, Ranger,” said the older NCO.  “It may last a month.  Or we may be there for the duration.  Just remember this.  As valuable as we are, as much time and money went into our training, we are expendable.  Make no mistake about that.  Try and get back, if the mission makes that possible.  Go out with the knowledge that those in charge will try not to waste you.  But in the cold hard equation of a war of attrition, if you take out the enemy, your death is not meaningless.”

The next morning they were aboard the ships with their full load and boosting for the planet they had orbited.  All felt too light in the lower gravity of the planet as they waited to enter the wormhole.  “Don’t get used to it,” warned the Lieutenant was he walked down the line.

‘What keeps the air from coming across?” asked Anderson as they waited their turn.  “I mean, material objects are moving across all the time, so why not the air?”

“There’s a thin cold plasma field across the opening on both sides of the gates for that reason,” said Cornelius, remembering when he had asked Doctor Lucille Yu, the Director of the Donut, that very question.  “Of course they don’t need it for vacuum gates.”

Finally the battalion made it through and onto the Donut, then down the corridors to another large gate room.  Rolling carts waited for them here, loaded down with all the gear, rations and ammunition they would need for a month long deployment.  More would come later, if needed.  Looking at it Cornelius hoped that future loads were just as large, as that would mean there were still a lot of soldiers in the battalion.

They finally got the go ahead.  Cornelius was in Lima Company, the last in the Third Battalion.  His was the third platoon, so there really wasn’t much behind him.  He grabbed the handle of a cart and pulled the load on its antigrav lifters through the gate, again experiencing the feeling of great time passing while he stretched across the Universe.

And then he was in a large cavern, with high gravity pulling him toward the floor.  The air was dense, though not as humid as he expected.  Probably because I’m in a climate controlled system, he thought, pulling his cart and getting out of the way.

It struck him then that he was finally here, on a planet on the front line.  And outside this complex was an enemy that wanted to kill him.  The same he wanted to kill, until there were no more of them in the Galaxy.

Chapter Thirteen

What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.  Henry David Thoreau.

AZURE.  FEBRUARY 3rd - 14th, 1001.

She thought they should have been at the caverns by now.  She looked at the map on the hand comp she had packed.  Unfortunately, the net and its GPS system were down, so she couldn’t see where she was on that map.  She had been navigating by dead reckoning and guesswork, and it was obvious that she had not gotten them where they needed to be.

“We need to get into the open tonight,” said Rebecca to her brother as it started to get dark.  “I think there is an area of prairie a couple of clicks to the right.”

“Is that safe?” asked Benjamin, his eyes wide.

“Probably not,” said Rebecca, shaking her head.  “But wandering around and hoping we just happen upon something is not safe either.  I need to get a look at the stars to tell where we are.  We’ll just have to locate some shelter on the edge of the jungle that we can get to afterwards.”

Her brother’s expression showed that he really didn’t like that idea, but he nodded his head to show that he understood.

“Great,” said Rebecca, taking his hand.  “And tonight we’ll try out this com and see if we can pick up any signals that might tell us what’s going on.”

She had almost forgotten about the portable com she had picked up from the aircraft.  She didn’t think she would use it to try to get a signal out, that might lead something to them she didn’t want.  But she could still listen.

They reached the prairie just before the sun went down.  The high mountain peaks on the other side of the grasslands reflected the orange of the setting sun off their snowcapped peaks.  They were beautiful, and Rebecca found herself wishing that she could just sit down and enjoy the natural beauty.  Which was something she could not afford to do.

There were animals moving out on the prairie before them, some really large herbivores.  They were preparing for the night, getting into their defensive positions to protect the calves during the night.  There were some really large predators that came out with the night, and they would take any prey of opportunity, including humans.

“Keep a close watch,” she told Benjamin, looking down at the child as he donned his night vision glasses.  He nodded back and started to look around the twilight world.  She also had the glasses, but did not wear them as she needed to fix the stars first.

It seemed to take forever for the first star to shine.  One was not enough, and it was an even longer wait for more to become visible.  Beasts were moving around them in the darkness, the huffing of breath of the large bulls audible as they patrolled the areas around their groups.  Rebecca prayed, waiting for the darkness to keep deepening.

This should be enough, she thought as there were over a hundred stars in the sky.  She held up the small comp and let it take a picture of the sky, then waited a moment while it computed the visible stars against its database and the time.  A second later it displayed the holographic map, with their location marked on it.  “Shit,” she said, seeing where they were compared to where they needed to be.  And they were way too far to the north.  In fact, she thought, plotting a path to the caverns, We would have to backtrack three days and then walk four more days to get there.  So seven days.  Shit.

She looked at the map, zooming out and looking at the larger area.  This looks promising, she thought, seeing a small village marked two days walk to the northeast.  And if it doesn’t pan out we can walk around this range and up this valley, getting there in five days.  She thought about talking it over with Benjamin, then decided against it.  He was still a young child, almost seven years her junior.  She understood from her developmental courses that she had almost an adult mind, while he still thought as a young child.  It was up to her to make sure that they made it, not him.

“Let’s get back to the tree,” she told Benjamin as she put on her night vision glasses.  She led the way, making sure to check to both sides and behind as well, not totally trusting him to locate all threats.  Nothing materialized, and they moved to the safe tree, which was marked with a glowing dot.  She retrieved the dot, then started the climb under the soft light of her flash.  They reached the hollow where branch met tree without a problem.  The area had already been isolated by pheromones, and she freshened them up after checking the area with her flash.  She checked the survival pack and frowned as she saw they only had six pheromone sprays left.  We’ll just have to ration until we make it to safety.

After they had set up she broke out the com unit and activated it.  It was made to function by finding a satellite and linking with it, or the general wireless net if that wasn’t available.  But it was also designed to be of use if those resources no longer existed, and the military net was reduced to using broadcasts.  Of course those would be encrypted, and she hoped that her unit was still up to date enough to get some sense out of what they would pick up.

At first there was only static after she activate the unit.  The electronic war was still going strong, waged by both sides.  She could hear some words here and there, and was tempted to cut back on the gain so she could get rid of the static.  But that would also get rid of anything that she could hear of any clarity.

Hearing voices, human voices, let her know that the fight was still going on, since she doubted the conqueror would allow those they conquered to communicate over the air.

“Daddy,” said Benjamin, sitting up as a couple of words came through.

“That is him,” said Rebecca, a smile crossing her face.  “He’s alive.”

“And we’re going to point orange three three,” came a particularly clear transmission, and she knew it was her father, Captain Joseph Goldman.

“Dad,” she Rebecca, keying the unit to transmit.  “Dad, it’s us.  Rebecca and Benjamin.  We’re OK.  We’re alive.”

“Rebecca, is…..you?”

“It’s us, dad.  It’s us.”

“You need to…..off……..now.”

“What was that, dad?”

“You need…..off…..transmission…..”

“Dad, can you hear me?  Dad?”

“Off……”

“Daddy,” yelled Benjamin.

Realization came to Rebecca, and she turned the set off.  The military was transmitting from hard lines to multiple transmitters so they wouldn’t give their locations away.  They, up here in this safe tree, were not.  And had they been on long enough for something to get a fix?

“Why did you turn it off?” whined Benjamin.  “That was daddy.  He could come and get us.”

“We need to leave,” she told Benjamin, pointing to their gear.  “Pack up.  Now.”

“But, we’re in a safe tree.”

“Don’t argue with me.  Do it.  Now.”

Benjamin looked frightened now.  He started putting stuff into his pack, while she grabbed what she wanted in hers.  She then led the way down the tree and onto the prairie.  They would have been able to hide better in the jungle, but she knew that was suicide at night.  So they would take their chances on the open field.

She picked out several large huddles of animals from their body heat, herds of herbivores settled down for the night.  Further out she picked out single moving forms that had to be stalking predators.  She moved them to the side away from those dots, trying to stay upwind at the same time.  “Keep moving,” she said to Benjamin, her hand on his back.

A search light came down on the grassland.  Rebecca urged Benjamin to run, getting them to a small hill where they ran around and set up on the other side.  Rebecca placed her small comp at the top and shimmied back down, watching the take from the unit on her glasses.

The herbivores, those closest to the hovering aircar, started to get restless and lowed in the night.  One group got to its feet and started to move away, and the searchlight followed them, then swung back into the jungle.

“Back,” hissed Rebecca, putting her hand on Benjamin from where he had crawled up to the crest of the hill, pushing him backward as the light swung their way.  The aircar continued to drop toward the ground and a second one appeared over the trees.  Warriors were getting out of the first aircraft, about a half dozen of them, and started to move into the trees, heading for the general area of the safe tree they had sheltered in.  She was sure they would find the tree, based on the chemical markers of the pheromone tubes they had used.  Normally that would not be a concern, but the Cacas would have their transmission location pinpointed within a score of meters, and a slow chemical search of that area would definitely pick up the pheramones.

“Make sure the pores on your suit are closed and your hood is up,” she told Benjamin, doing what she said to herself.

“It’ll make it too hot,” complained the boy in a whiny voice.

“Do it anyway,” she hissed, reaching up and pulling down her small comp.  “We can’t let them pick us up on heat sensors.  So we’ll just have to deal with it.”

Benjamin nodded his head and fastened his hood.  She put the small comp in her belt pouch and motioned for him to back down the hill with her.  At the bottom she started them on their way and headed for the next small hill.  Halfway there they heard one of the aircars taking off.  Rebecca grabbed Benjamin’s hand and pulled him along at a trot. They went around the small hill and dropped down to the other side.

Benjamin pulled his hood off.  With her night vision glasses Rebecca could see the sheen of sweat on his face and the hot air rising from his mouth.  “Down,” she hissed, pulling him to the base of the hill.  “Breath close to the ground.  Only close to the ground.”  She pulled off her own hood and did the same.  The light from the aircar swept close to them, and then on.

Rebecca waited for a moment, waiting for the light to again move on, till it was centered on a restless herd of herbivores.  Rebecca wondered why they didn’t just use infrared vision, then decided that they most likely were, but still wanted the spotlight to identify what they had found.

She waited until Benjamin had cooled down enough and repeated the procedure of getting them to another small hill.  Moments after they quitted their last position the search beam speared it in artificial brilliance.  With that it turned off and the flashing strobe of the aircar moved away.

“I think it’s safe now,” said Rebecca, folding her hood and putting it in its belt pouch.  She checked her chronometer and saw that there were still hours of night left, at least five of them.  She didn’t think it was a good idea to wander into some unknown jungle at night.  Instead she bedded Benjamin down on the top of the hill and stayed awake until the sun was coming up over the jungle, sweeping the darkness with her glasses to make sure that nothing tried to sneak up on them.  The herbivores stayed restless, and the carnivores decided to take a night off after smelling and hearing the strange creatures that had moved among them that evening.

He’s alive, was her recurrent thought through the night.  Her father was alive, somewhere out there in the world.  She didn’t know how she would find him, or if he would be able to search for her.  But now she had the hope.

*     *     *

Three days later they were at the village, half way to their refuge along the new path.  Rebecca had been hopeful on the final approach, but still cautious.  Now she had a feeling of hopelessness, and was glad she had made that cautious approach.

Smoke was rising over the village, which had been the home of almost a thousand people.  There were homes that had been smashed flat, and structures that were still mostly intact.  She recognized the signs of a place that had been taken quickly, without much of a fight.  The enemy had taken this place, and had hit it hard enough to make what they thought of as the roaches to scurry.

“You think there’s anyone there?” whispered Benjamin, laying down beside her in the cover of the jungle.

She zoomed in with her glasses and swept the couple of kilometers she could see across the area that had been clear cut and isolated by nanotech.   She could see where plants from the jungle were creeping into that area, a sure sign that the nanites had been destroyed by high level EMP.   She swept to the north and saw movement, then zoomed in to see a couple of plantimals crawling along on their walking roots toward the village.  In an hour they would by at the final fence, which probably didn’t work as well.

She looked for another hour, while Benjamin squirmed next to her.  “Keep a watch, Benny,” she had to say periodically.  He would nod and gain some semblance of alertness, holding tight onto his sonic weapon.  She was really concerned that something might sneak up on them while she was concentrating on where she wanted them to be.  But she had to make sure that village didn’t still contain the creatures who had visited it.

“Let’s go,” she said, getting up and taking a quick look around them.  She had her particle beam pistol out, and the mag rifle hanging around her neck.  She hoped there wasn’t anything that needed the particle beam to put down, but she wasn’t ready to discount the possibility.

The fence was easy to cross, no longer functioning as an electromag barrier, now just dead wires.  Rebecca pushed one down and pulled another up, letting Benjamin cross first, then she squeezed her own less than adult body through.  It was a quick run to the wall of the nearest building, a residence that reminded the child much of her own.  She looked around the corner, up the avenue that led away for several tree lined kilometers to where she knew the center of the village was located.  Most of the trees, of Earth stock, looked to be in good condition.  She could see a couple that had fallen across the road, probably blasted by weapons fire.

They passed several houses that had completely collapsed on themselves, fire blackened plasticrete with alloy beams sticking out at all angles.  Doors had been blasted in on many otherwise intact houses, some windows were broken, some outward, some inward.  There were some structures with no apparent damage, their doors ajar or completely open.  There were some blood stains on walls and the walkway, and the heat scaring of beam weapons.  The one thing that was missing were bodies.

Then it’s true, thought Rebecca, her gaze constantly moving across her surroundings.  The bastards eat us.  They came in here, wiped out this village, and harvested it.

The village was laid out like most, with rectangular blocks framed by streets and cross streets.  There were probably a little more than two hundred dwellings, most of them the rounded structures favored on this world.  There were parks with playground equipment, playing fields, or just shady spots to sit taking up whole blocks, or even double sized areas, scattered around.  As they neared the center the blocks changed to businesses, small store fronts, markets, all the things that made a village a living entity.

Rebecca stopped Benjamin from running into the central square.  It seemed deserted.  There was no movement in the park, and the village hall seemed empty.  It also looked like a warzone, with many downed and scorched trees, holes in walls, burned out aircars.  Rebecca replayed what must have happened in her mind.  The screaming people running for cover as enemy transports came out of the sky.  Rockets and beam weapons coming down and striking buildings, aircars, and some of those running screaming people.  Militia and armed citizens firing back, taking a small toll while totally outclassed by the firepower of the opponent.

“This place is dead,” she whispered, looking for signs of human life and finding none.

“Doggies,” said Benjamin.

Rebecca turned to see a pack of feral animals, reverted in almost no time to a wild state, coming across a park toward them.  She knew that to Benjamin they looked like animals to play with.  To her they looked like wild animals looking for a quick meal.  She pulled her own sonic from its vest pouch and aimed it at the dogs.  As she pulled the trigger the dogs whined, howled and turned around to crouch away with their tails between their legs.

“Why did you do that?” asked Benjamin, looking up at her with an expression of shock on his face.

“Listen to me,” she said, crouching down to bring her eyes to his level.  “This isn’t like the place we came from.  Things are dangerous here.  Those dogs were feral.  They looked at us and only saw food.  I didn’t want to hurt them, but I also didn’t want them to hurt us.”

Benjamin nodded his head, still looking unhappy with her decision.

“Let’s see if we can get cleaned up some, and maybe a hot meal,” she said to her brother.

A crack from above took all focus off of seeking comfort for the moment.  A sextet of tiny dots moved high in the sky, the shock wave of a hypersonic wave radiating outward from them.  She didn’t know whose aircraft they were, but was willing to bet they weren’t friendlies.

“Down,” she told her brother, grabbing him by the shoulder and pulling him to the ground.  Puffs of smoke appeared around the aircraft, moments later the cracks of the explosions came to their ears.  Some other aircraft came sweeping in, and the original craft went from level flight to the darting, circling motions of a dogfight.

We’re still in this thing, she thought, watching the fight and having no idea who was who.  There were several bright flashes that appeared where aircraft had been, the vehicles being blown from the sky.  The explosions happened to what she thought were craft of both sides.

It looked like an equal fight.  Until a number of craft exploded, ending the fight, and the remaining craft, three of them, all flew off in a straight line.

They control the orbitals, thought Rebecca, clenching her fists in frustration.  It had been a fair fight until the ships in orbit had joined in.

“Let’s go clean up,” she said, helping Benjamin to his feet.  She felt as depressed as she had for days, and felt like her feet were made of heavy elements as she walked back up the street, looking for a likely house.  A couple of blocks off the main square she found a likely looking one that didn’t have any apparent damage.  The door was ajar, which partially explained why it was not damaged.  The enemy had been able to get in after the owner came out to see what was happening, or to fight what he knew was there.

The house was in good condition inside.  As soon as they entered the lights came on, showing that the crystalline matrix batteries were still functioning, since the normal power grid had been down for almost a month now, if not longer.  Rebecca searched the house after telling Benjamin to stay put in the living room.  It looked as if it was still occupied, most things in their places, some clothing still out, over chairs, on the floor.

She came to one room that must have belonged to a child of about Benjamin’s age.  There were stuffed animals on the shelves, both fanciful and representations of real beasts.  The bed was made with a spread depicting a popular football team from the capital.  Rebecca felt her chest tighten and tears stream down her cheeks as she thought of the young person who had once lived here, and had probably become food for alien monsters.

“There’s water,” she told Benjamin as she walked back into the living room.  “Why don’t you take a shower, and I’ll get some food together.”  The pantry and food preserver she had checked had been full, enough food to last the two of them for a month.  There had to be more food in other houses, and she was starting to think that this might be just the place to hide out.  After all, this place had already been checked out by the aliens, and she didn’t see any reason for them to return.  And the family hideout was still at least four days journey through a dangerous environment, one that tried to kill them on a daily basis.  There was no family there waiting for her anyway.

When Benjamin was out of the shower and dressed in a clean robe she set the cooker and got into one herself.  She luxuriated in the hot water, taking her time to relax.  She had checked the house power and water levels and knew that she had plenty to waste.  The clean feeling was something she had almost forgot about.  Memory was coming back, and the feeling was wonderful.

Minutes later she was sitting down with her brother eating a delicious meal of stew beef, vegetables and potatoes.  Both ate double portions.  Rebecca didn’t need to urge Benny to eat more. Both had lost weight during their journey, walking through a jungle that required more than double the daily calorie intake of civilized living, especially within a heavy gravity field.  Later they watched some popular entertainment shows and a movie.

Rebecca felt really tired.  It was probably partially due to the feelings of relaxation from the food, cleanliness, and most importantly, the lack of tension from being in constant danger.  She carried Benny to the child’s bedroom and tucked him into bed, then retired herself to the adult room, which contained a house control board.  As soon as her head hit the pillow she was in a deep sleep.  The dreams came, some remembered on waking, some not.  The best one remembered had her at home with her family, and no invasion by aliens out to kill them all.  When she woke up and realized it wasn’t true she started to cry again.

Several nights later they were in the nearest park, looking up at the tens of thousands of bright stars.  Both were wearing clothes that fit, and were as relaxed as they had been since the word came that the Ca’cadasans were on the way.  After several days of exposure to sonics the dogs had started to leave them alone, and Rebecca had left some dog food out for them as well, and some cat food in places where the smaller animals could get to it but not the canines.

“What’s that?” asked Benjamin, pointing up at a moving light in the sky.

Rebecca looked where he was pointing and noticed that there were several of the lights.  Some were blinking and moving quickly through space.  These she thought were vehicles moving through the air.  The others, moving much more slowly, must have been out in space, in orbit around the planet.  The one he was pointing at was one of the slow moving ones.

“That’s a spaceship,” she said in a flat voice, knowing exactly whose it was.

“I hate them,” said Benjamin, a look of pure anger on his face.

The bright dot flashed, then flared, then expanded in a wave of light.

“Get down,” yelled Rebecca, grabbing Benjamin by the shoulder and pulling him to the ground, then shifting them both under the bench.  The entire park was washed in a harsh bright light that cast deep shadows everywhere.  The light brightened for several seconds, then lessened for an equal time and faded away.

“What happened?” asked Benjamin, eyes wide.

“It blew up,” said Rebecca in a hushed voice.

“Did I make that happen?” asked Benjamin, his eyes getting even wider.

I wish you did, thought Rebecca, shaking her head.  But at least one of the bastards got hit by something that was bad for its health.

Chapter Fourteen

War does not determine who is right - only who is left.  Bertrand Russell.

AZURE.  MARCH 12TH – APRIL 10TH, 1001.

Rebecca had found it more convenient to just bring food from other houses they had explored that were more or less intact.  The house still had power, and water, and she really saw no reason to leave.  She wondered if that was just because she feared the jungle.  If she was just rationalizing that they were safe because they were now comfortable.  They had now sat here for over a month, and except for some sightings of high flying aircraft and ships in orbit, they had not seen any sign of the enemy.

They listened to the com unit every night, being careful not to transmit and give away their own position.  Every night they heard the very brief transmissions of military units, every night fewer and fewer of them.  It was obvious that the enemy was winning the battle for conquest of the planet.  How could it be otherwise, when they controlled space, and could bring in reinforcements any time they wanted.  And the humans were isolated.

“Why don’t our ships come?” asked Benjamin as they listened.

“I wish I knew,” said Rebecca, frowning as she listened to the com for the casts that came about every quarter hour through the static.  She didn’t want to tell him why she thought aid had not come.  Because maybe the Empire was getting its butt kicked and didn’t have anything to send to a mere developing world.

For almost two more weeks the transmissions lessened, and Rebecca’s heart fell with the scarcity of human military transmissions, until finally came the night when there was nothing on the military com net.  She went to bed that night feeling totally hopeless.  Her world had lost, utterly and completely.  She started thinking again about heading for the sanctuary that her family had established just for this possibility.

The next week she spent getting together what they needed for that trip.  She gathered weapons, ammunition, battery packs, rations, pheromones, everything she could think of.  She put together multiple boogie bags and set them up at the different compass points of town.  By now the jungle had encroached on the former clear area around the village, and scrub trees and bushes had grown up in abundance.  Some of the vegetation had encroached into the village itself, and on several instances she had found plantimals feeding on Earth trees, and in one case a dog.

Rebecca was determined to keep the village safe for her and her brother as long as possible.  She had found several particle beam weapons while searching the village, along with a number of proton packs and crystalline matrix batteries that fit the weapons.  She spent several days walking around the perimeter of the village and burning out the invasion of the jungle.

The angry child derived great satisfaction in watching the red beams vaporizing the weird creatures that were the plantimals.  They writhed and hooted and tried to get away as she burned into them.  Not a one got away, and soon the perimeter was cleared, at least for a few days.  She shuddered as she thought about facing a jungle full of those creatures again, so once again she delayed their departure.

Then one night the com erupted with a loud, clear transmission.  It was the Sabbath, and though they weren’t Orthodox Jews who would rest for an entire twenty-eight hours, still they observed the spirit of the thing.

“Oscar Charlie Delta November Niner,” said the voice over the com.  The signal, according to their com, was coming from scores of sources and rotated around them.

“What’s it mean?” asked Benjamin, looking up from the book he had been reading through the reader interface.

“I have no idea,” said Rebecca, shrugging her shoulders.  “But it must be important.”

An hour later they got an idea what it meant, as the ground rumbled underneath for over a half an hour.  She could tell by the alternation of vibrations, both in strength and in duration, that it was not a single event.  At the same time deciding to risk a look outside she left the house, and the sight in the sky that met her eyes was truly amazing.

The red of particle beams reached into the heavens, or back down to the ground.  Bright pinpoints of light appeared in the heavens, at times blossoming into the expanding light of massive explosions.  Flashes also flared on the horizon toward the capital.  Benjamin joined her outside, his face showing his fright.

“What’s happening?”

“I think we’re striking back.  I don’t know how, or with what.  But there’s definitely a battle going on.”

“Will they chase the bad guys away?” asked Benjamin, reaching over and grabbing her hand.

“I don’t know.  I hope so.”  She really didn’t believe that.  She did not think her world’s military could have stashed enough away as a reserve during the first battle for the planet.  Yet there was a serious escalation here, more than she would have felt possible.

The next morning the sun was a fiery orange ball in the sky, the result of the dust that had been kicked up through the night.  Rebecca led Benjamin to the nearby playing field, where they had a clear look at the sky.  They sat on the small bleacher that occupied one side of the field and watched the sky.

A short time after sunup something exploded in the sky, the explosion reaching their ears as a dull boom.  The sounds of fighting echoed from the nearby mountains, not telling them exactly where the fighting was, only that it was close.

“I want us in our survival suits, now,” she ordered her younger brother.

“You think they might come here?”

“They might, and I can’t tell you which side they’ll be on.  So I want us ready to go at a moment’s notice.”

Benjamin nodded, and they both headed back to the house they occupied and made ready.  Then it was back to the park where they could get the best view of what was going on, as sorry as that vantage was.  By nightfall nothing had approached the village, and Rebecca decided it was safe enough to retire to the house, hoping that is anything did arrive in the night it would make enough noise to wake them up.

*     *     *

Captain Joseph Goldman swept the valley with his glasses, making sure that he was far enough back in the cavern to not reveal his position.  In the valley below there was a fortified camp of the invaders, with bunker like constructs that were barracks and storage buildings.  There was a landing field in the center of the base, with a score of aircraft and shuttles arrayed along the edge.

Not really smart to put your base on the low ground, thought the Captain, shaking his head.  He thought if the aliens had studied human history they would know better, and he was glad that they hadn’t.

“We’re ready, Captain Goldman,” said the officer in the heavy infantry armor in the tunnel behind him.  “All of my men are in place.”

“We’re just waiting for the signal, Major,” said Goldman, understanding that the man was feeling impatient, and knowing that if they jumped too soon they might spoil the element of surprise for the other operations.  He looked back at the man in his one ton combat suit, which weighed even more on this world.  The suit was powered down, as were all the suits in the two companies of the rump battalion the Major commanded.  It was only moveable at this point using the low powered emergency actuators that allowed the wearer to move the suit at a slow human walking speed.  They didn’t want powered up suits possibly giving them away before the attack could be launched.

The Major nodded, his heavy particle beam rifle gripped in both oversized metallic hands.  The weapon was also powered down, and the unit’s com net was not active.  Everyone was tuned into the planetary command com, and would know the same time as he did when they had a go.

“Oscar Charlie Delta November Niner,” came the voice over the com, followed by a burst of covering static as the jammers came online all over the planet.  The Major’s suit powered up, along with his rifle, and he ran out of the tunnel with scores of other heavy troopers on his tail.

As soon as they had cleared the tunnel Goldman moved to the entrance and looked down into the once peaceful valley.  Now particle beams and lasers reached down into that compound, followed moments later by hyper-v rockets that streaked like rays of light down onto the landing field, destroying the parked shuttles and aircraft.  Soon after the compound was swarming with large figures in combat armor.  That was what the rocketmen were waiting for, and a quartet of nuclear tipped rockets flew into the compound and exploded with fusion fury, each detonating with forty kilotons of destructive power, sweeping away most of the Ca’cadasan infantry.

The heavy infantry troopers took to the air, sliding down the side of the mountain, just above the surface, moving at high speed and shooting at anything that moved.  The compound was overrun in less than a minute, and Goldman’s men moved in after them to plant demolition charges to take out the bunkers.

After striking their primary targets all of the units in the attack, an entire heavy infantry division, moved on to secondary and tertiary targets and took them out.  With sunup they were still on the offensive, but the enemy had sorted through the targets and was starting to hit back.  Jammers and obscuring dust hid some targets, and the general assault went on for almost a week before the heavy forces were bled out.

Goldman watched one of those attacks come back, men in battered and damaged suits, moving slowly as they tried to conserve energy.  The slump of their suit shoulders showed an attitude of defeat.  The Captain counted the suits and was shocked to see that only a third of the reduced company was returning.  Behind the men mushroom clouds reached into the sky, the signs of kinetic hits that had hammered the attack.

“We’re retreating from here,” said the Major who had at one time commanded almost four hundred troopers, and now had a little more than thirty.  “We’re ditching the suits.”

Goldman nodded his head, a sinking feeling in his stomach.  The attack had shot its bolt, and even though more people and materials were coming through the wormhole, from now on it was again hit and run and guerilla tactics.

Chapter Fifteen

In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons.  Herodotus.

AZURE, APRIL 12TH-APRIL 22ND, 1001.

“When are we going to go to where daddy is?” asked Benjamin as they sat down to breakfast.

How the hell do I answer that? thought the older sister.  I don’t even know where dad is, or if he’s even alive.

“I want daddy,” said the six year old, tears rolling down his cheeks.

“I know you do, Benny,” said Rebecca, reaching across the table to pat his hand.  Benjamin pulled his hand away before she could touch him.  Such a little shit.  He cries for our parents, but doesn’t want to be treated like a child.

“I say give it another week,” said Rebecca, hoping she could play that another week card as long as possible.  With luck I can keep him going for two weeks, maybe even a month.  But when it came down to it, she was in charge, and she would make the decision on whether to leave here or not.  The surroundings were comfortable, they had plenty of supplies, and they weren’t in danger from the life forms of the planet or the Ca’cadasans.  Until that changed she really didn’t see any need to trek cross country to their refuge.

And besides, none of the rest of the family is there, she thought as she speared a piece of roast beef with her fork.  Except for the possible exception of her father, the rest of the family was dead, at least all of those who were in on putting together the refuge.

Benjamin looked like he didn’t like the answer, but he continued to eat.  Rebecca was happy as long as she didn’t have an argument.  She knew she was in charge, even though she didn’t know what she would do if he decided to buck her authority and set off on his own.  Stop him, that’s what.  To do otherwise was to ensure his death.  There was no way he could survive in the wilderness by himself.

The next day they were out in the park.  Rebecca insisted that they stay under the trees as much as possible.  She had no way of knowing how well the surface was masked from space.  It was surely less than it had been.  It had been weeks since they had seen any friendly aircraft, or even the signs of an air to air battle, an indication that her side didn’t have any air power left.  Which itself was an indication that her side was being beaten, and badly.

Some aircraft did appear overhead early in the morning, coming over the mountains and flying high above the village.  Rebecca and Benjamin hid under the benches, hoping that the craft would fly over quickly and be gone.  That hope was shattered when one of them flew back over, low and slow, checking out all the open areas of the village.

“We need to move,” she told Benjamin, grabbing his hand and pulling him to his feet.

“It’s going to see us,” said Benjamin in a shaking voice.

Rebecca looked up to see the aircraft hovering over the playing field where they had been spending their time.  She was pretty sure there was nothing there that would give their presence away, but there was always the chance.  This isn’t the time to think about this, she thought, pulling Benjamin along as they ran for the nearest building.  They crossed the street and headed for the door.  Looking over her shoulder she caught a glimpse of the aircraft rising up and starting to turn their way.

“In here,” she hissed at Benjamin, pushing him into the shop and closing the door behind them.  The room started to light up, and her hand reached quickly to strike the control switch before it could finish.  She pulled Benjamin down behind the wall below the store window and held him tight.

Please, don’t have seen us, she thought, knowing the craft was now hovering over the park they had just occupied.  If it hadn’t seen them on the way here they were probably in the clear.  But she wouldn’t know that until they left.  She kept holding onto Benjamin, trying to calm herself while keeping him from squirming away.  Any moment she expected the door to open and a three meter tall alien to come stooping through.

Rebecca pulled her mag rail pistol from its holster, letting go of Benjamin for a moment to check the charge, all the while wishing she had brought the particle beam pistol with her.  She wasn’t sure her little peashooter of a mag pistol would do more than alert the Cacas that she was there, while of course pissing them off.

The time ticked by and nothing happened.  Rebecca was not sure what to do.  They can’t just be waiting for us, she thought, trying to decide what to do.  Finally she decided to wait for safety’s sake.

“I need to use the bathroom,” said Benjamin, reminding Rebecca that her bladder felt very full at this time.

“You’re just going to have to go in your pants.  Just like I will.”

“I have to do number two,” said the boy, using the age old code word for defecation.

“Go ahead,” said Rebecca.  “We can’t move from here, buddy.  Or the bad aliens might see us.”

Moments later the smell of feces caused Rebecca to gag.

“I’m so sorry,” said Benjamin with a cry.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Rebecca, feeling her own bladder release and warm fluid run down her leg and pool under her.  “We’ll get cleaned up later.”

Rebecca broke out what few rations she had, a packet of crackers, and gave Benjamin half of them.  That didn’t help with thirst.

“We need to get some water, buddy,” she said, motioning for him to crawl across the floor beside her.  She cringed the entire trip, fearful that the aliens would come to the window and look in to see them crawling.  And then they would be dead.

We made it, she thought as they reached the doorway to the back of the store.  Once through and to the side they got to their feet and made their way to the bathroom.  The sink provided all the water they could drink.  After satisfying their thirst Rebecca went back to the doorway.  She looked across the main storeroom and couldn’t see anything in the park outside.  It was starting to darken, and she was sure that nightfall was not far behind.

As soon as it was really dark she led Benjamin to the back door and through the alleyway.  They went the hidden ways back to their house.  She saw nothing to indicate that the aliens were still around, but thought it better to not take chances.

After checking out the house she realized that it was safe.  The windows were set to opaque, and there was no way someone outside could tell they were home.  She set the security systems and made sure that one of the particle beam pistols was at hand.  From now on I have to make sure one of these things is on me at all times.

“Get cleaned up, buddy,” she told Benjamin, who had an unhappy look on his face.  She knew how he felt.  She didn’t like having the filth of her own elimination on herself either.  The hot water of the bath felt good, as did the clean clothing.  After putting the dirty clothes in the washer she got dinner together.  They ate in silence that night, while she thought over the wisdom of staying in one place for too long.

*     *     *

Major Joseph Goldman really didn’t care about the promotion, or the elevation to the position of regular Imperial Army officer.  He was in charge of an engineer battalion that had approximately the same number of soldiers as the company he had once commanded.  He had been told that he would receive more soldiers, but had yet to see them.  And all the time he still had the worry about his children, who he hoped were still alive, though he had no way of knowing.

“Careful with that, Ferguson,” he told the engineer who was plugging the cylinder into the frame.  The woman nodded, then turned her attention back to injecting the negative matter into the magnetic field that kept the wormhole gate open.  The wormhole expanded a bit as negative matter pushed against it.

“Give me a minute before you inject any more into it,” said Goldman, looking at the control board.  He made some adjustments, and the framework around the hole expanded as well.  He checked the parameters, then signaled for the next engineer to add more negative matter to the field.  When it was finished it would double their transport capacity to and from the planet, which couldn’t hurt their efforts.

Goldman looked around at the huge chamber they had cut into the rock.  They were over three kilometers under  a mountain.  To the north another of his teams was cutting a tunnel through the rock, the flare of lasers burning into the hard material, while machines scooped up the molten strata and funneled it away.  It was quite the complex they had erected here, starting to work as soon as it was known that another wormhole was on the way.  The Major had not seen the wormhole come down to the surface, but he had been there soon after.  Some people had already come through before they started the expansion from personnel gate to cargo portal.

“This looks like quite the setup,” said a voice from behind, and Goldman spun around and snapped to attention.  “At ease, Major,” said Lt. General Hannah Demkowski, the military commander of the planet.  “I almost feel safe here,” said the officer.

“Hard to be safe anywhere, ma’am,” said the Major.  “Our only real safety lies in them not knowing we’re here.”  And that had been a task in and of itself, shielding the electronic and heat emissions of this base.  A couple of kilometers of rock had been helpful, but not sufficient.  They had to use hundreds of kilometers of superconducting wires, with thousands of further kilometers of nanite infused microcables to completely shield the electronics and lead the heat off to a nearby river.  And that had taken some care as well, since they couldn’t dump all of the heat into the river at one point without leaving a big look here sign that could be seen from space.

“And if they know we’re here, they just drop a big penetrator on us,” said the General.  “God, but I hate fighting without control of the orbitals.”

But there it is, thought the Major, nodding.  When a penetrator could be dropped that had the ability to go through the crust into the magma, then nothing built by man or nature was safe.

“It’s ready, sir,” called back Ferguson.

Goldman waved at her and checked the board, making sure everything was online.  He looked back at the General.  “Permission to send the signal through, ma’am.”

“Permission granted, Major,” she replied, looking at the five meter wide by four meter tall mirrored surface.  “Let’s get as much here as we can, while we can.”

Goldman pushed the panel over the send commit.  He pressed down and waited for the reply.  For the immediate duration the wormhole was one way only.  While it wouldn’t harm two objects passing through at the same time, the problem arose when one came out on the other side while the other was still passing into the hole.  Then there were two material objects trying to occupy the same space at the same time.  At the minimum the two objects would fuse together, really a bitch if they were two people.  And the maximum?  Subatomic fusion, which could be a real disaster for the people on both sides of the hole.

“Reply has come through, ma’am,” he told the General.

Moments later people started coming through.  At first scores of naval personnel, then the first of hundreds of big boxes of equipment.  Followed by hundreds of soldiers in medium combat armor.  The new arrivals were waved to different parts of the cavern, then into tunnels that would take them to control rooms or staging areas, depending on the unit’s function.  Goldman estimated a couple of battalions of the infantry had come through before a different kind of troop came forth, these in light armor and carrying heavy packs on their backs and more equipment in their hands.  Goldman saw the insignia on their armor, crossed shovel and pick, and almost danced for joy as he realized they were the engineers he had been promised.

A battalion came through, and the Major visualized in his mind what it must have looked like in the chamber on the other side of the wormhole, as soldiers and spacers were lined up to go through the gate.

The next unit through was not in armor, though they shouldered packs every bit as bulky as the armored troopers who had come through previously.  Each man, and they were all men, carried a duffle in one hand and a peculiar looking rifle in the other.  Each man walked confidently, and they moved quickly despite their burden.  That was when the Major noted the Ranger flash on the left sleeve of each man.

“Those are the boys I’ve been waiting for,” said the General with a smile.

One of the men in the line noticed the General and he came hurrying up, dropping his duffle and rendering a hand salute.  “Lt. Colonel Su reporting, ma’am,” said the officer.  “First of the Three Eighty-Seventh Rangers.”

“And the rest of the regiment?”

“They’ll be coming right after us, ma’am,” replied the muscular officer.

“Major,” said the General, turning toward Goldman.  “I have an assignment for you and about a dozen other residents.  From what I understand, you have some knowledge of the wilderness of this planet?”

“Yes, ma’am,” answered Goldman, wondering where this was going.

“Then I want you to bring Colonel Su and his men up to speed on the planet.  What they need to look out for.  And what they might be able to use to hurt the enemy.”

“I’ve only done a bit of hunting ma’am,” said Goldman, not sure what he could accomplish in helping the Rangers.  “And some camping with the kids.”

“And that’s more than I have done, or as far as I know any of the regulars.  I want you to put together a course on the wildlife, then guide them on a couple of missions.”

“Can he keep up?” asked the Colonel with a frown.

“It’s your job, Colonel, to make sure he does.  You men need to work together.  Meanwhile, I’ll try to locate some local pioneers to work with you out in the brush.  I would like your regiment to begin operations in three days.  The sooner we start teaching these bastards that the surface of this world is not where they want to be, the better.”

Goldman went fuming back to his quarters, which also served as his office.  Why the hell did I get this kind of duty.  Those men can take care of themselves just fine, without me having to show them how.  When he got back to his quarters he followed orders, and got together some interactive lessons on the planet that he downloaded to a number of nodes that the Rangers could learn off of.

As he walked into the area that had been set aside as temporary headquarters for the special ops troops he was struck by the equipment they had unpacked and stowed away.  All of it looked primitive, no armor, no electronics.  Generalized optics, strange looking rifles and grenade launchers, even some rocket launchers that looked like little more than telescoping tubes with basic sights on top.

A senior NCO was field stripping one of the rifles, and Goldman stopped for a second to look it over.

“Is that chemically powered?” he asked, looking at one of the magazines that was filled with paper wrapped tubes.

“Yes, sir,” said the Master Sergeant, holding up the receiver for the officer to see.  “We don’t take anything into the bush which might give us away by its electronic signal.”

“And that’s powerful enough to get through body armor?”

“Some of it.  I wouldn’t want to try to put a round through heavy infantry armor.  But through light, and even medium, the round travels at a high enough velocity and then punches through with a shape charge pushing a supermetal penetrator.  For heavier armor we use grenade launchers, or the rocket launchers, like those over there.”  The Master Sergeant pointed at one of the telescoping tubes.

“Major Goldman,” said the Lt. Colonel, walking into the room at a quick pace.  “What do you have for us?”

Goldman looked at the fit man, who was wearing only a military T-shirt over his hard frame.  “I’ve got some vids that we use to teach our children about the dangers of the wild.  They have to learn quickly before we let them near the wild areas.”

“What happens if they don’t learn quickly?” asked a Captain who had accompanied Colonel to the meeting.

“They die, Captain.  They die.”

He let the Ranger officers view the vid, looking at the serious faces as they stared at some examples from one of the most dangerous jungles in human space.  There were some frowns, a few grimaces, and widened eyes.

“Why the fuck would anyone want to live here,” asked the Captain.  “That looks like hell out there.”

“You have to be aware of what’s around you,” said Goldman.  “And be ready for anything.  But we do lose a lot of people to the planet every year.  And when you go out there and play hide and seek in the jungle you will lose people too.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” said the Colonel, his eyes focused on the holo that was showing a group of plantimals on the move.  “And possibly we can use the planet to hurt the Cacas.”

“There is that,” agreed Goldman, switching the vids to hell hounds attacking in their packs, then on to great bears, one of the most deadly of the solitary hunters.

Goldman sat and watched the Rangers as they viewed more vid, which was also being sent out to the quarters of the squads, where they could watch it at their leisure.  He noticed that the men were either completely still, or a blur of motion.  There was no middle ground.  And they give up twenty to forty years of life span to gain these abilities.  Could that speed be an increase in metabolism, that burns the candle faster than otherwise?  He was sure the experts already had the answer to that, but he didn’t know, and it wasn’t something he could have found on the planetary data net, even when it was up.

The Rangers also ran him through the motions with their equipment, since he wouldn’t be allowed to carry anything that might give them away.  It was amazing how the men shot.  They located aimed and fired in less than a second, and they always seemed to hit what they shot at.  When changing positions they were on their feet and moving in a blur to the next cover.  Watching them practice hand to hand he couldn’t see how a normal person could compete.

“Why are you bothering to practice?” he asked Lt. Colonel Su.  There were now three battalions of the soldiers on the ground here.  And more were on the way.

“New planet,” said the Colonel as if that explained everything.  When Goldman continued to give him a confused look he went on.  “We perform better if we have gotten our bodies used to the gravity field and atmosphere.  We can do some training in artificial gravity before we deploy, but it always helps if we do some on the actual ground we’re going to fight on.  I’d really prefer to get a couple of weeks tracking through that jungle before we actually go hunting, but I can’t see that happening.”

Goldman had heard the Rangers were the best, though Marine Recon and Naval Commandos were very vocal on that point.  He could believe that Marine Force Recon could equal what the Rangers did, but Commandos really weren’t land warriors, though they were sometimes forced into that role.  Their specialty was spec ops in space, something a ground pounder like the Major couldn’t imagine doing.

On day four he was walking with the Colonel and his command team through the jungle, pointing out dangers along the way.  There were plenty of plantimals in the area, and it didn’t take the men long to figure out that the mobile half animal/half plants were the deadliest things in the jungle, based on their ability to blend in with the vegetation just before they struck.

At one point a squad of Rangers walked right into a plantimal ambush.  Goldman heard their yells in the near distance, and was on the heels of the Colonel and his Sergeant Major as they ran.  Or at least he was on the heels for a couple of seconds before the speedsters distanced him and pulled away.

The yells and screams from ahead led him to think he would come upon a slaughter when he got within sight.  It was a slaughter alright, but not in the manner he expected.  There were dozens of plantimals going wild, flailing with vine like tentacles while trying to catch the Rangers.  One Ranger was down with a wound in his neck, and the Major thought there might be a good dose of poison in the man’s system.  That didn’t stop him from shooting at the plantimals, hitting one with each shot.

The rest of the Rangers were ducking and dodging, moving with speed and precision while swinging monomolecular blades that were slicing through the creatures like they were made of smoke.  More Rangers ran into the battle, no hesitation at facing what must have looked like monsters to them.  Within moments there were no more plantimals in action, only the broken and severed bits of them.

A medic knelt beside the wounded man and gave him an injection of nanites.  It was obvious that the poison from the creature was not having much effect on the man, but Goldman knew with native life forms it was better to be safe.  A moment later the unit was again on the move.

“We’ve got something ahead,” said the Colonel to Goldman, waving his hands to another man who was signaling him.  “This looks like it might be that first action we’re looking for.”

Goldman nodded, not really sure if he wanted to be out here in the jungle confronting the Cacas with no armor protecting his soft hide.  Any weapon they fielded could kill him.  And all he had to fight back with was a chemically powered rifle, the capabilities of which he was not really sure he trusted.

The Cacas had established a small compound in the jungle, just a half kilometer from a large town that was only ten kilometers outside a city.  It was a good spot to run patrols from, and they had the compound protected to the max with all kinds of sensors.

Goldman really couldn’t see the Rangers deploy.  They moved silently through the jungle, not disturbing a branch.  The Colonel was moving his hands in fast flicking motions, the men around him nodding and sending the same signals on to those in the chain.

One rifle opened fire with a muted phut.  Within a second a hundred other rifles followed suit, and every Caca in sight in the compound went down.  Some more came out of the bunkers within the compound, only to fall as soon as they became visible.  A string of rifle grenades exploded across the compound, then the Rangers moved, away from the target and back into the jungle.

“I think we can take it from here, Major,” said the Colonel when they made it back to the Ranger base camp.

“I believe you can,” agreed Goldman, happy that he did not have to go out into the jungle with the Rangers again.  And even more thankful that he wasn’t on their target list.

Chapter Sixteen

The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.  Friedrich Nietzsche.

AZURE.  APRIL 25TH-26th, 1001.

Cornelius put another foot down on the jungle floor, careful to step where there was nothing that made any sound.  Also careful to make sure there was nothing that might attack his foot or leg after he stepped.  He had been in this jungle for a week, and it was becoming familiar.  Or as familiar as hell could be.

His eyes darted this way and that, trying to pick up any threat that might be trying to sneak up on him.  It was dark under the canopy, but to his enhanced eyes it was as bright as day on most worlds.  Sniffing the air he caught the now familiar scent of an acidic poison.  He searched some more, until he spotted the form of a plantimal to his right front.  Wonder why the local animals don’t use that scent to avoid them, he thought of the hybrid creatures, knowing that there must be a reason.  His not evolving in this environment meant that reason did not pertain to humans.

Cornelius stopped for a moment, raising his left hand in the air and signaling the men behind him the reason for the halt.  This place still scares the hell out of me, he thought, as he tracked out a path that would take them away from the dangerous creature while not taking them too far out of their way.  He could just blast the damned thing out of existence with a spray of mini-shotgun pellets.  But they were trying to move through this jungle without calling attention to themselves, and that might cause problems.

About ten meters to the right of the plantimal was a likely looking path, but he had to wonder if that was distant enough to not set the thing off.  They had already lost five men in the company from attacks by the mobiles of the kingdoms on the planet.  And there had been literally hundreds of attacks that the Rangers had been able to fight off without loss, though some had been close.

The Corporal signalled the team to move forward.  He was at point, despite being the team leader, because he was the best at it.  His assistant team leader was watching himself and the other three men of the team, while the five men of Sergeant Chantamurta’s team were a hundred meters back, along with the squad leader, Staff Sergeant McAllister.  This was a single squad operation, just the eleven of them.  The rest of the platoon was even further back, preparing a surprise.

Walborski breathed a sigh of relief as he passed the plantimal without any reaction from the creature.  At closer look he could see that it was definitely an ambush predator.  Hopefully it would still be set in ambush mode when they passed this way again, and would not have moved into their path.  Normally they wouldn’t use the same path to retreat that they used to advance.  In this jungle that practice was out the airlock.

A hundred meters further on Cornelius could hear the movement and speech of creatures ahead.  He was not yet fluent in Ca’cadasan, though he could pick up words in their language.  He heard eat and food, and knowing what they ate, those were not comforting words.

Cornelius saw the outpost well before the two beings within it could have detected him.  Again he stopped, and gave hand signals to the men behind him.  He strapped his rifle to his chest with some quick release straps, then pulled his monomolecular blade, a Wakizashi, from its sheath and got on his stomach.  Again he felt some anxiety.  There were some dangerous insectoids and reptiloids that lived on the jungle floor.  He could only pray that his survival suit and the local pheromones would keep them away if they happened to come upon him.

The Corporal slowly crawled forward, stopping in place whenever he thought the enemy soldiers might be looking his way.  His survival suit was covered with a layer of active camouflage, using chemical energy to change its color to match its background.  It wasn’t as effective as the electromag light bending fields of battle armor, but had the advantage of not giving away its location by electronic emissions.

Something crawled over Cornelius’ hand, and he looked down in revulsion as a twenty legged reptiloid touched his flesh, then moved off quickly as it got a whiff of the pheromones meant to drive it off.  I wonder if the Cacas can smell the pheromones? he thought.  He didn’t have any of his own, and had to figure that they didn’t associate the local kind with humans.  At least that was the theory.  It might be safer to wear my gloves, he thought.  But the gloved affected his manual dexterity, and most of the Rangers prefered to work without them for that reason.

The Corporal was sweating profusely by the time he was within ten meters of the Cacas, who, while not really all that alert, were looking into the jungle on occasion.  They were still talking, with common words about food coming through, as well one word that made the Corporal shudder in horror.  Humans.

Cornelius watched the aliens carefully, hoping to establish a pattern he could use to his advantage. It took some minutes, but he found one.  One alien looked to the jungle to the right, while the other one looked down and put food in its mouth.  Then they switched off, then talked as they both looked back toward their camp.

The next time they went through this process Cornelius was on his feet and running at them.  One looked up and yelped at the bipedal creature that was coming at him with extreme speed.  Cornelius hit the mechanically powered jammer on his belt with his left hand, sending out static to interrupt any calls the aliens might get off before he killed them.  With his right hand he swung the blade into the neck of the first Caca.  The blade slid easily through the tough armor and into the flesh of the creature, severing its throat and spine as he pushed it in and pulled it out with a draw cut.

The second Caca grabbed at the rifle that was laying on the ground to his front.   Before he could level it at the human Cornelius brought the sword blade down on its helmet and punched through the skull and into the brain.

Cornelius looked down at the two dead aliens for a moment, adding them to his total.  He thought for a moment about taking a trophy from each of them, then realized that he hadn’t the time.  He imitated a local animal call, letting the rest of the squad know he had taken out a perimeter picket, then moved on.

Cornelius moved quickly now.  Time was of the essence.  As soon as the Cacas tried to com check those soldiers they would have to suspect that something was up.  He moved in fifty meters until he was at the edge of a clearing.  At ten meters from the edge he went back to ground, then waited for the rest of the squad to move up.

Ahead was a clearing about a hundred meters in diameter.  And in that clearing was a company of Cacas, building a fortified position around their lines of tents.  All the way across was a pair of aircars, with crewmen performing basic maintenance functions or rearming weapons.

“Good job, Walborski,” whispered Staff Sergeant McAllister, coming up beside Cornelius and dropping to the ground.  He turned and flashed hand signals in one direction, then rolled back over and sent the message to the men on the other side.

“Get ready,” said McAllister, aiming his rifle at the clearing on a firing line through the vegetation.

Cornelius nodded as he aimed his own rifle, targeting the closest of the Cacas, one who was lounging on the ground sans armor.

McAllister fired, his rifle giving a muted bark as it sent a round unerringly into the face of a Caca soldier.  The rest of the squad fired a micro-second afterwards, and there were eleven dead aliens in the compound falling to the dirt.  For the next ten seconds it was a pure slaughter, as nine of the Rangers fired a shot a second, each hitting a target with each round.

Cornelius swung his rifle onto the next target, placing the sighting reticle onto the back of the Caca running for cover.  He pulled the trigger and the rifle bucked hard into his shoulder,  recoil that a normal human without armor couldn’t have withstood without serious injuries.  The twelve millimeter round sped at five thousand meters per second to strike the armor of the creature.  Upon striking the small explosive charge within sent a half dozen needles of supermetal through the armor and into the flesh beneath.  The kinetic energy and shock wave destroyed hundreds of cubic centimeters of biomass, killing the creature instantly.

The two Rangers with auto-grenade launchers sprayed the compound, hitting their targets with an accuracy that was almost as good as that of the riflemen.  Small explosions popped throughout the camp.  Then the rounds tracked in on the aircars, blasting holes in their hulls and rendering them useless pieces of metal.

Five seconds into the firefight the enemy started to return fire, at least the best of them.  That made them the priority targets.  At ten seconds most that were still alive and uninjured were under what cover they could find.

Cornelius sighted in on one piece of cover he knew a Caca was sheltering behind.  As soon as he saw the movement of a helmet at the side of the stack of boxes he fired, scoring a hit that dropped the big male to twitching helplessness.

Sergeant McAllister blew his whistle as particle beams and heavy projectiles ripped through the jungle around them.  Cornelius crawled backward into the jungle, splitting his attention between the Cacas to his front and the jungle around him.  When he had moved back forty meters he got up into a crouch and started back at a faster pace.  Beams and projectiles were still zipping through the jungle, ripping into trees and in some cases exploding trunks from the transfer of the kinetic energy of protons into heat.  This filled the air with fast moving splinters of wood.

Cornelius winced as several large splinters hit his survival suit.  The fabric hardened from the chemical reaction started by the impact, bouncing the splinters off.  Cornelius ducked down, putting an arm over his face, hoping to protect his features.  An angry humming slashed overhead, a particle beam that would have hit him by chance if not for the timing of his duck.

“Anyone missing?” he asked Sergeant Chantamurta as he came to the rally point.

“Stranson got hit with a particle beam,” said the Sergeant with a grimace.  “At least he got it quick and clean.”

“Yeah,” said Cornelius, the image of the smiling PFC who had a talent for the guitar coming to mind.  Getting hit by a particle beam might have been quick, but being reduced to cooked meat was anything but clean to his way of thinking.

“Take point, Walborski,” ordered McAllister.  “Let’s lead our hunters a merry chase.  I think that plantimal might be a good first friend for our other buddies.”

Cornelius nodded and started off into the jungle. His anxiety was even higher at this point, with not only an enemy sure to come after them, but the need to move quickly made his every step all the more dangerous.  Because of that he almost missed the plantimal, which wouldn’t have missed him if he had stepped into it.  He stopped just before he entered the ambush range of the creature, which was the size of a small tree and sure to be as deadly as anything on the planet.

A hundred meters past the plantimal they heard the screams and yells of the tracking Cacas as they ran into the beast.  Cornelius wished that he had a scanner back there that could have shown him what was happening.  He was sure there were few casualties, considering the armor and weapons of the aliens.  But if even one of them was killed, while the rest were put on warning about the threat of traversing this jungle, the plantimal had served the purpose of the humans, if not its own.

“Slow down a bit, Walborski,” said McAllister as he hurried up to his point man.  “We want to make sure they don’t lose us.”

Walborski nodded, then picked his way through the jungle at a much more comfortable pace, checking his basic compass and the map on his wrist to make sure he was on the proper heading.

Cornelius could feel the ambush as he passed through it.  There was nothing visible, but he could feel the eyes on him.  He waved his hand in the air and flashed signals to the watchers and his own men, then continued to move a hundred meters further on.  At that point he raised his hand back in the air and ran his finger around in a circle, signaling the squad that they had reached the rally point.  The ten Rangers gathered in a circle, watching the jungle on all fronts.

And there they waited, for about two minutes.  They knew the ambush had been set off when the jungle to their rear erupted with the sound of thirty rifles and grenade launchers. There was a small flurry of return fire that fell off quickly.  Cornelius’ team led the squad back through the ambush zone, the other team behind his.  Large bodies lay everywhere among the shattered vegetation of the jungle.  Cornelius checked each alien as he came to it.  One was still moving, and the Corporal put a round through its head to stop all motion.

“All clear,” called out McAllister, and the rest of the platoon rose from their hiding places and made it into the kill zone.  Men started to loot the bodies of anything that might have intelligence or military value.

“Let’s move out,” said Lieutenant Schwarz, walking among the men.  “Let’s get out of here before they send reinforcements.”

Cornelius reached into his survival suit, fingering the ring on its chain around his neck.  He took a quick look at the bodies, adding the one he had just put down to his total, thirty-one.  All for you, honey, he thought, visualizing his late wife.  Now it’s time to save my ass for you, Devera, he thought next, stepping out into platoon point, moving them perpendicular to the path they had taken to come here.  Minutes later the ground shook underneath as objects came down into the jungle they had occupied, and worked their way along the path they would have taken if they had continued out the way they started.

*     *     *

“They are demons,” hissed the battalion commander, looking around him at the bodies of armored males.  “They move like shadows through this jungle, and strike like cowards from that darkness.”

The General looked at the distraught male as if he were mad.  What the hell do you expect them to do when we control the skies and orbits? he thought.

“It was more of these Rangers,” complained the lower ranking male.  “The survivors of the compound described them to me, how they moved like blurs and never missed when they fired.”

“Did you find a track of where they went?” asked the General, already sure of the answer.

“After they ambushed their pursuit they disappeared without a trace.  Isn’t there some way you can track them from space?”

The General thought about that for a moment, closing his eyes and calling up their best representation of the planet’s surface on his implant.  The world was still a mass of jamming and particulate matter in the atmosphere.  The average temperature had gone down by six degrees, and would go down much more within the year.  He zoomed in on the local jungle and switched the view to infrared.  Again the picture was blurry, but there were some dots of heat on that view. Actually quite a number of them, considering the mass of animals and plantimals even in this portion of the jungle that had been partially cleared by all the noise of combat.  He looked at one of the dots, which was actually a hundred meters of plantimal swarm.  Even the trees had a slight heat production adding to the mix.

“We really can’t track them under the canopy,” said the General, giving a head shake of negation.  “Are the chemical sensors working at all?”

“Not really.  For some reason these Rangers don’t show up on the chemosensors, not like the regular humans.”

Because they have been genetically altered, thought the General, looking down on the one body they had recovered from the enemy, lying on a stretcher.  Or at least what was left of one after a particle beam struck the soldier.  The General was still amazed at the plasticity of the human genome.  His own people had once tried to engineer their form, with disastrous results.  Now it was forbidden.  And there was no desire to improve the slave species.  That would just make them more of a threat to their masters.

“We will try to get you help, Battalion Leader,” said the General, turning to start back to his vehicle, his security detail falling in around him.  “We are expecting some special trackers.”  Who have already gotten to the system, he thought.

“Do you mean, Maurids?” asked the Battalion Leader, his voice a mixture of awe and fear.

“That is exactly what I mean,” said the General.  And the creatures were something to be feared.

The General thought about the humans on the flight back to his headquarters.  They were a problem that needed to be eliminated from the surface of this world.  His problem.  They had killed almost a hundred million of them, most of the population.  The ones left were the most dangerous, the survivors of the evolutionary pressure that war brought.  And then there were those who kept coming to the planet despite the total naval blockade.

The word from above was that the humans had somehow developed wormholes that allowed them to move from one planet to another without passing through local space.  He didn’t understand how they opened these holes, or how they got them to where they needed them.  All he knew was there had to be one on the planet, and he needed to find it and take it out if he was to win this battle.

“They’re here, my Lord,” said an Aide, running up to the aircar as it came to a complete stop on the landing pad.

“I will meet with their commander, immediately,” he ordered the Aide, walking toward the bunker entrance a hundred meters away.

He had only been in his office for a few moments when the Aide let him know that the commander of the special trackers was outside.   “Send him in.”

The creature that passed through the doors walked on all fours, its four paws touching their pads to the floor.  The creature massed about a hundred kilograms, making it much smaller than a Cacada.  But it moved with the grace of a true hunting predator, unlike the too civilized Ca’cadasans who had not been top predators for over a thousand of their long lived generations.

Whipcord muscles moved under an orange striped hide that was one variation of the species coloration.  A long tooth filled muzzle pointed up at the General, while almost glowing predator’s eyes looked into his.

The creature stood up, rising to its two meter height.  The paws unfolded into hands and feet, every one of the five digits on each four jointed member sporting the stub of a claw.

“My Lord,” hissed the creature in a sibilant voice.

“Prime Hunt Leader Sybalis,” said the General, giving a head nod of greeting.  “You know why you and your people are here?”

“To hunt down enemies of the Empire,” said the being, whose race called itself Maurids.

“To hunt down their hunters,” growled the General, pointing to a holo that showed a human.

“They look very weak to this one,” said the Hunt Leader.

“Most of them are weak, though all are intelligent and cunning.  But the ones you are to seek are much more dangerous.  Stronger and faster than the norm.”

“Still, you wouldn’t have us here unless you thought we could hunt and kill them,” said the being, extending the claws on his hands and running one across the desk.  The claws, which were the creature’s original equipment, augmented with monomolecular coverings, dug deep furrows into the hard alloy of the desk.

“There is a great complication,” said the General, scowling at what once had been the smooth surface of his desk.  “These special humans have no scent.  Or at least nothing distinctive.”

“That, is a complication,” said the creature.  “Still, we will find a way to track them.  Give us a week to get used to the local jungle.”

The General stared wide eyed at the creature.  It was bordering on insolence for a subject race to make demands.  But such were the Maurids, an arrogant race despite being conquered.  At one point there had been great discussion about ending this species.  It had been decided that they had value to the Empire.  “From what I understand, your planet is the most dangerous in the Empire.  Surely this planet should not be a problem for you.”

“And from what I have heard this planet is almost as dangerous as my homeworld.  And it has different dangers, as do all worlds.  If we just go thrashing around in an unknown jungle we will accomplish little.”

“Very well,” said the General, not really liking his answer, but seeing no other choice when dealing with the headstrong creatures.  “But at the end of the week I want you and your people to be in that jungle hunting down this enemy.  I have already lost too many males to them, and can ill afford to lose too many more.”

“Yes, my Lord,” said the creature through a toothy grin, dropping back to all fours, his hands folding back into paws, heading for the door.  The creature turned his head as he reached the portal.  “Please be sure that all information you have on these humans is made available to myself and my officers.”  With that he loped through the door and down the hall, while the General stared open mouthed at the Maurid.

Chapter Seventeen

All war is deception.  Sun Tzu.

AZURE.  APRIL 28TH – MAY 5TH, 1001.

“Alert,” called out the house alarm, at the same time as it sent the warning through to Rebecca’s link.

The child opened her eyes, groaning as she saw the time display.  The sun would be coming up in three hours.  She was tempted to turn over and go back to sleep.  But the house kept blaring the alarm in her mind, compelling her to get up.

“There’s something moving out there,” said Benjamin, sitting on the living room couch and looking at the holographic screens that were lined up in the air.

Rebecca looked at her brother in disbelief.  He was normally the one that slept like a rock, while she was on knife edge alert.  She could tell by the look on his face that he was scared, and she wondered if maybe a nightmare had woken him first, just before the alarm went off.

“Show me the threat,” she said to the house computer, which she had linked into once she had figured out the system.  The house was powered up, with solar panels recharging the crystal matrix batteries with which the dwelling was so abundantly equipped.  She thought the owner of the house must have been a preparationist, being ready for anything that might happen.  Then the Cacas had come to town and he had probably been cut down in the fight that developed here.

One of the holos expanded, showing a few shadowy figures moving through the dark in blurs of motion, then stopping and blending in till they were almost invisible.  Another holo switched places with the first, showing more of the figures.  She couldn’t tell what they were, but they didn’t look like Cacas to her.

The child played with the Star of David on the chain around her neck.  She said a quick prayer, wondering if the God her parents had taught her about was really there.  She had been told many times that they were God’s chosen people, but to her eyes she really couldn’t see how he was living up to that promise.  He didn’t seem interested enough to let us keep the Earth, she thought.  Or to keep the aliens away from this place.

The fourth holo screen came up, and Rebecca was beginning to wonder with a feeling of anxiety how many unknowns were out there.  The fourth holo showed her something different than fleeting shadows.  It showed her the monstrous creatures she was trying to avoid.  The horns sticking up from the helmets were too distinctive to miss.

“We have to move, buddy,” she told her brother as she jumped up from the couch.  “Get in your suit and grab your boogie bag.”

Benjamin nodded without saying a word, his frightened eyes letting her know that he understood what was going on.  The Ca’cadasans were here, and they needed to be elsewhere.

In less than a minute they were in their suits, sitting on the couch and pulling on the boots that would seal to the lower legs.  Rebecca had put both suits into the house fresher, where the nanites had repaired all damage to the garments.  She had also found plans for military style suits in the house database, and had worked those improvements into the coveralls.  They now boasted military grade impact armor and a layer of almost perfect reflective surface that would hold off light amp for several seconds.  There was also an outer layer that was active camouflage, helping to blend them into their surroundings.

Rebecca made sure that her particle beam pistol was charged and ready, then strapped the belted holster onto her waist.  Benjamin now had the mag pistol and its holster, while both had sonic stunners strapped to their left forearms.  Without a word they both grabbed the backpacks they had waiting, their boogie bags, and shrugged into the straps.

“You ready?” asked Rebecca, looking at the holo screens.  She could see the Ca’cadsans on one screen, and from the buildings in the background she could tell they were about three blocks away and moving in their general direction.  “Stay close to me and do what I do.”  Benjamin nodded again, his eyes wide with fright.  She looked once more at the screens, wondering where the human figures had gone.  Then she had no more time for viewing.

They went out the back door of the house and moved through the alleyway, in the general direction of the village border and away from the aliens.  They made their way a block.  Something moved in the shadows between two houses, and Rebecca pulled her pistol and took aim, holding her breath.  A large cat came sauntering out of the shadows and she let out her breath.  Then the cat looked behind, hissed, and took off.

What came out of the shadows next was her worst nightmare, and it was followed by another.  Rebecca tried to fade back into the shadows of the house she was near, glancing over at Benjamin and hoping he was paying attention to her.  He wasn’t.  He was staring in terror at the Ca’cadasans, then took off in a run that attracted their attention.

Both of the Cacas swung their weapons to track the boy, ignoring the girl they had probably not seen.   They yelled out something in a guttural language, then one raised his rifle to his shoulder.

Rebecca pulled the trigger on her pistol and swung the beam across the two aliens.  The first was hit in the side before he could fire, the beam eating into his armor suit and vaporizing a good thirty kilograms of his tissue in a catastrophic hit.  The second got off a shot with his mag rifle before the beam swung into his left arm.  The hit didn’t kill, though it essentially destroyed the arm, and the creature fell to the ground with a roar of agony.

“Benjamin,” yelled Rebecca, not really caring about noise after the sound of the short firefight.  She turned to see a small form lying on the ground.  Running for him, her mind panicking, she lost awareness of anything else going on in the alley.  She reached him, praying to her God that he was alright.  That prayer died on her lips as she saw the large wound in the back of his head.  With a cry she knelt down and turned him over, her vision blurred with tears.  The exit wound was worse, the entire front of his skull blown outward.  She knew the brain was completely gone, and no modern medical tech would bring him back.

A voice barked from behind, and Rebecca froze, sure that she was under the muzzles of many of the Ca’cadasans who had been attracted by the sound of the fight.  There was no way she was going to get out of this. They would kill her, especially since she was the only one who could have killed their comrade.  With that thought in mind she made ready to turn and fire, determined to take as many of them with her as she could.

Just as she was about to make that move she was interrupted by the sounds of muted gunfire, shouts, screams and a few distant explosions.  She turned to see the half dozen Cacas in sight falling to the ground, each bleeding from multiple wounds.  Some were already dead, a few were severely wounded.  More shots sounded, and those Cacas would never rise again.

Humans ran through the alley, all wearing survival suits that were shifting patterns to blend in with the buildings around them.

“Are there any more humans here?” asked one of the men, running up to her in what almost looked like a sped up vid.

“They killed my brother,” she said, unable to say anything else.

“I’m very sorry,” said the man.  “And it looks like you killed one of them, and wounded another.”  A shot sounded, and the man looked over to see one of the other humans standing over what had been the wounded Caca, his shouldered rifle pointing down.  The man turned back and grasped Rebecca’s upper arms.  “I need to know, are there any more humans here?”

“No,” she said in a choked voice.  “Just me and my brother.”

“Did you live here?”

“No.  We walked over a week through the jungle from where our aircar came down.  Then we found this place and just tried to survive.”  A wave of guilt washed over her, and she started crying uncontrollably.  “We should have left weeks ago.  My family had a place we could go, and Benjamin would still be alive.”

“And then you might be dead in the jungle,” said the man, shaking his head.

“Sergeant Cummings,” said a brown skinned man, walking up to the pair.  “Is this the only survivor?”

“As far as we know, sir,” said the man.  “She said they came here out of the jungle and made themselves at home.”

“I’m Lieutenant Froshman,” said the other man.  “We’re Imperial Army Rangers, here to make life hard for the Cacas, and death easy.  Where did you get that weapon?” he asked, looking at the particle beam pistol. “And that suit?”

“The pistol was in the house we were staying in,” she said, trying to get control of herself and wiping her eyes with a cloth she pulled from her pocket.  “The house computer had plans for a military survival suit, so I programmed the refresher unit to make ours over.”  She looked back at the body of her brother.  “It didn’t help us though.”

“You are one resourceful child,” said the officer, nodding to some of his men who were approaching.

“We’re not going to leave her here, are we, sir?” asked the Sergeant.

“We can’t take her with us, Sergeant,” said the officer, looking back at Rebecca.  “We’re on a mission.  We won’t be returning to our base for some weeks, if we make it back at all.”

“We can’t just let her go through that jungle, sir.”

“She made it here, from the city,” said the officer, shaking his head.  “Look, we’ll leave you a personal comp with a good inertial tracking program.  At least you’ll know where you're heading.  Do you have any family?  We could tell them we saw you if we find them.”

“Captain Joseph Goldman is my father,” she said, looking at the body of her brother again and wondering what her father would say if he knew she had failed him, not getting her brother back alive.  If he were even still alive.

“Get the men moving, Sergeant,” said the officer, looking once again at the child.  “You need to get out of here.  Now.  The Cacas will be here in force any minute.  We just took out a platoon of their soldiers.  They’ve got to know something happened, even if one did not get off a transmission.  So get your little butt into the jungle and out of here.”

Rebecca watched the men walk away, heading toward the village perimeter in the direction opposite where she needed to go.  After a moment’s hesitation she started away, then turned back to look at her brother’s body once more.  She raised the particle beam pistol and pulled the trigger, sending megajoules of energy into the body, vaporizing most of it in a cloud of superheated steam and ash.  I’m sorry, little brother, she thought as she turned away and ran for the jungle.  At least those monsters won’t be eating you.

In another minute she was walking through the jungle, listening to the sound of aircars coming into the village, bringing those Cacas the Rangers had warned her about.  She fingered the Star of David hanging from her neck, then jerked it off and threw it as far from her as she could.  You don’t exist, she yelled in her mind.  Or you wouldn’t have let my brother die like that.

Then she had no time for other thoughts as she made her way through the threats of the natural world, all senses alert, pistol in hand and wishing that something would come after her.  The first plantimal she came across had the worst day of its life.  It had sensed her coming and started moving its tentacle into the attack.  The particle beam vaporizing the central mass of the creature ended that attack.

That night Rebecca prepared the bole of the safe tree she had found before dark, carefully placing the pheromones she had replenished in the village around her sleeping area.  She wondered why she bothered, now that she was the only survivor of her family.  She decided that she just wanted to live more than she wanted to die.  She reached for the Star of David that had hung around her neck, then realized that she had thrown it away.  It had been given to her by her mother, and now she regretted that action, until she thought about the faith it represented.

I hate you, you son of a bitch, she thought at her God.  You’ve failed us for thousands of years.  You failed me.  So go to that imaginary hell of yours and leave me alone.

She woke in the night to the sound of something moving at the base of the tree.  Lying completely still she strained her ears to hear what was happening.  Something was talking in a language she had never heard.  It sounded a little bit like the sounds the Cacas made when they spoke, but with a difference.  Something scratched at the tree, then the voices faded into the jungle.  She didn’t know what it was that was stalking the night.  What she was sure of was that it was not native to this world, or to any human inhabited planet.  And from the feeling she had gotten she knew it was as dangerous as anything Azure had ever produced.

*     *     *

Almost there, thought Rebecca as she trudged through the jungle, stopping to take a look at her map and comparing it to the inertial navigation comp she wore on her left wrist.  She had been trudging through the jungle for over a week now, covering twenty kilometers on a good day, less than twelve on a bad.  She had tried to act like she wasn’t furious with grief, which had made her life a little easier, now that she wasn’t shooting at anything that moved.  After going through half her proton stores it had seemed like a good idea.

She walked to the top of the hill that the map showed overlooked a moderate sized valley that was marked as grassland.  That promised fifteen kilometers of easy walking toward her goal, with was on a mountainside about forty kilometers from her present position.

As she came to the top of the hill and looked through a break in the trees she stopped in shock.  The grassland was below, starting at the trees that ended at the bottom of the hill.  There was still some wildlife out there, on the ends of the valley.  But in the center was an airfield, hard plastic covering on the ground and a score of aircars sitting scattered about.  She could tell from their appearance that some of those cars were ground attack craft.  Several temporary buildings were set around the airfield, obviously barracks, hangars and workshops.  A fence with roving patrols was set around the field, and she could make out the forms of Ca’cadasans from the distance.

A kilometer to the north was another compound.  This one was a cluster of buildings, and was probably the barracks of a ground unit.  A ground car was driving around the valley floor, another patrol.

I need to get the hell out of here, thought the child, squatting down and watching the valley through the leaves.  That was the smart decision.  There was no way she was going to use that grassland to shorten her trip.  But this might be important.  She wanted to know what else might be down there, under the jungle at the edge of the clearing.

Cursing herself for curiosity that might kill her, she made her way down the hillside, moving slowly, placing each foot with care.  About halfway down she heard voices to her right, faint through the jungle.  She stopped in place, then went to a knee, her eyes riveted on the area the voices were coming from.  They came closer, and she started to panic.  If they came straight this way they would see her.  And if she started to move away they would see her all the sooner.

Then the voices started moving down the hill, along with the sounds of heavy feet walking through the brush.  She breathed out the breath she had been holding in, then started down after them, all the while cursing herself for an idiot.

Rebecca stopped again when she heard more voices.  These seemed to be stationary, and she thought it must be an outpost that she could easily avoid.  Unless they’ve got the damned jungle plastered with sensors, she thought.  Well, too late for it now.  If they have them out here, I’ve already been made.  She continued down at a slow rate, until she was almost at the bottom of the hill.

Now she heard a bunch of the beings talking and moving about.  She was pretty sure this was as close as she was going to get.  There was an awful lot of activity, leading her to believe there was a major complex at the base of the hill, of which the two compounds on the plain were just satellites of.

It took over an hour to back out of the area.  Once over the top of the hill she picked up her pace and started down the other side.  That almost led to disaster, as she didn’t notice the Cacas to her front until she had almost walked into them.

Rebecca resisted her impulse to run.  Her survival suit would blend her into the jungle as well as a chemically active system could.  Running would just attract attention.  She lowered her head so that only her suit hat was visible to the aliens, then stood perfectly still.  Sweat ran down her face, her muscles trembled, and she was sure they would spot her.  She didn’t dare look up, or she would be exposing her face, which didn’t have the cammo covering the rest of her, other than her hands, which she kept close to her sides.

The beings moved on, walking up the hill and away from her.  Rebecca waited till she couldn't hear them and moved down the hill, her muscles quivering from nervousness.   She didn’t feel safe until she had moved kilometers away, and even then she knew that she wasn’t secure.  This close to the obvious base there were bound to be patrols out through the jungle for tens of kilometers.

Which meant she had to move carefully, not just because of them, but due to the fact that using her weapons would be sure to draw them to her.  So avoidance was the only tactic she could use at this point.  By evening she had found another safe tree, and sat up in the dark watching the lights of aircraft landing and taking off from the airfield.  She wasn’t sure if the information she had discovered was of any use to the human side, or even how important it was if it did happen to be of any use.  Still, she marked the location on her map, just in case she got to tell someone where the enemy were based in this region.

*     *     *

“And where was this village located, Lieutenant?” asked Major Goldman, looking at the map of the region on the wall of the cavern.

“Right here, sir,” said the officer, pointing his finger to a dot with the name Catarsaville underneath it.

Goldman looked at the Ranger officer and felt the blood rising in his face.  “And you left a twelve year old girl, who had just lost her younger brother, my son, to walk alone through the jungle?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said the officer, snapping to a position of attention.  “We were on a mission, and the child would have slowed us down.  Mission…”

“Comes first,” growled the Major, shaking his head.  “I know.  You had Cacas to kill, so the life of a child was not important enough.”  Goldman slammed a fist into the map, the pain of striking the rock wall behind it like a penance to his dead family.

“Will there be anything else, sir?” asked the officer, clearly uncomfortable with spending any more time with the grieving parent.

Well too damned bad, thought Goldman, glaring at the officer.  He shook his head, knowing that there was nothing he could do to the man, who was not even in his chain of command.  Even if he was, the people above him would have told the junior officer he had done the right thing, and would have dressed the Major down.   “You can go,” he growled.  As the Lieutenant turned to go he put out a hand and grabbed the Ranger by the arm.  “Thank you for bringing this information to me.  At least I have a hope that she’s still alive.”

The Ranger nodded, then walked out of the room, leaving the Major with his thoughts.  Is this what we have become, where killing the enemy becomes more important than saving our own?  He knew that was the truth of the matter.  The Emperor and Empire had sacrificed his world, and were now using it as a killing ground to take out as many Cacas as possible, with no thought to the over hundred  million people who had called it home.

I don’t care what the Empire thinks.  I need to find my daughter and get her to safety.

The Brigadier in charge of the sector was in his office when Goldman knocked on the door.

“Come in,” grunted the General, looking up from his desk where he had been working on paperwork on his flat comp.

“Can I have a word, sir?” he asked, walking into the office and closing the door behind him.

“What is it, Major?  I’m kind of busy right now.”

“I just talked with a Ranger officer who said he had talked with my daughter at a village they attacked.”

“And did they bring her out?”

“No, sir.  The officer felt she would slow his platoon down.  So she’s out there in that jungle somewhere.”

“And what do you want to do about it, Major?” asked the General, turning his extremely tired looking eyes on the junior officer.  “I can’t send men into the bush for a search and rescue mission.  We have enough on our hands fighting a war of attrition with these bastards.”

“I know that, sir,” said Goldman, nodding his head.  “And I’m only asking for you to send one person out there.  Me.”

“You really think you’re going to find her out there in that shithole of a jungle, Major?” asked the General, giving him a disbelieving look.  “Forget about it.  You’re needed here.”

“Sir, I am accomplishing nothing here.  I am an engineer, and there are no large scale engineering projects for me to supervise.  The company commanders can handle what projects there are.”

The General didn’t say a word, but looked back at his flat comp.

“Do you have any children, sir?”

“I have two grown children, and some grandchildren, back on Heaven,” said the General, naming a world in the central Supersystem of the Empire.

“What would you do to protect them?”

The General looked up and glared at Goldman for a moment.  Then his eyes softened and he shrugged his shoulders.  “I think you’re going to get yourself killed out there.  But if you’re intent on committing suicide, then take what you need and get out of here.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Goldman, rendering a salute and turning to leave.

“And may God go with you, Major,” said the General before Goldman could leave the room.  “In answer to your question, I would do whatever I had to do to protect them.  Now you go do the same.”

Goldman went to supply and the armory and kitted himself out with the best equipment he could gather that would allow him to move through the jungle and survive, without giving himself away to the aliens.  Basically that was the same equipment as the Rangers used, military class survival suit, inertial tracker, and field kit of rations, med pack and repair tools.  For a weapon he chose the best particle beam rifle he could handle without battle armor.   He would have liked to have worn the armor he was used to, but was afraid it might give him away.

What the hell am I thinking? was the Major’s last thought as he left the complex and headed for the aircar park where he stored his personal vehicle.  This is going to get me killed for no good result.  But that’s my little girl out there.  What else can I do?

He wasn’t sure if taking an aircar was in the permission the General had given him.  But he was also sure that he hadn’t been forbidden taking his own personal property to go on his hunt.  And I’d rather ask forgiveness than permission.  If they want to court martial me when I come back with Rebecca more power to them.  And if I don’t come back, then I’m out of their reach, dead.

Goldman looked up to the sky, covered as it was by the cammo netting and a stealth field over the park.  He really didn’t know how effective the jamming field was at this time.  Probably not as effective as it had been in days past.  Hopefully enough that they don’t spot me from space.  There was always the chance that someone on the ground or in an aerial vehicle would spot him, and soon after he would be in a wreck in the jungle.  It was a chance he was willing to take.

Chapter Eighteen

Only the dead have seen the end of the war.  George Santayana.

AZURE.  MAY 6TH -  12th, 1001.

Cornelius still didn’t like being rained on.  New Detroit had been an Earthlike planet, with the same climate zones as most other Earthlike planets.  Some parts were wet, some were dry, and some alternated.  Sestius had been a forest world, with huge swaths of what had to be called jungle, and a hotter than Earthlike climate on the whole.  That meant a lot of rain a lot of the time.  Azure was even hotter, with even larger swaths of jungle.  He couldn’t say for sure that it rained a lot all over the planet.  He could say that at this time in this place it sure as hell did rain a lot.  And that meant he was getting wet on a regular basis.

The great thing about rain was it made it harder for the enemy to find them as they moved about through the bush.  The horrible thing about rain was it made it harder for them to find that same enemy.  Not just with its effect on visibility.  It affected the range of their hearing, and almost completely took away their sense of smell.  So moving in the rain was a nightmare in many respects.

Most of the animals were out of the rain, except for the hell hounds, a really nasty pack predator that seemed to like hunting in the wet stuff.  The plantimals were still out and active, opportunistic predators that took advantage of the rain to mask their presence.  That was almost Cornelius’ undoing.  He had almost stumbled onto one of the creatures before he knew it was there.  A tentacle snapped across his field of vision as the creature reacted too soon, probably moving to his motion but overestimating his speed.

A loud trumpeting sounded through the jungle, and Cornelius backed away quickly.  A large animal with heavy armored plates on his sides and back came lumbering out of the bush, its small eyes focused on Cornelius.  The Ranger sucked in a breath.  He wasn’t really confident that his rifle could stop this thing that had to weigh ten tons.

The creature trumpeted again, then turned its total attention on the plantimal, opening a large beaky maw and walking toward the hybrid beast.  The plantimal went into panic mode, striking with its tentacles across the armored face and body of the predatory herbivore.  Its small rootlike legs tried to pull it away, but it had no chance against the trunk legged beast that was coming at it.

The beak snapped onto the body of the plantimal, and the animal ripped loose a big bite and started to work it with its mouth.  Half the tentacles on the plantimal fell limp while the bluish body fluid of the creature pulsed from the wound.

“Will you look at that,” said PFC Jorgeson, one of the men on Cornelius’s team, coming up beside his leader.

“Yeah, nice to see that something likes to eat the nasty sons of bitches,” agreed the Corporal.  “A big boy too.”

“Biggest animal I’ve ever seen,” said the PFC, pursing his lips and whistling.

“I’ve seen bigger,” said Walborski, watching as the big animal took another bite and the plantimal stopped moving, dead.  “Sestius had herbivores in the eighty ton range.”

“Dinosaurs?”

“No, they were mammalians.  And about as placid as you could ask for, until a twenty ton carnivore came after them.”

“What’s the hold up here?” asked Lieutenant Swartz, coming up to the two men.  The officer stopped in his tracks, staring at the big herbivore that was now placidly munching on the body of the plantimal.  “Damn.  I can see why you stopped.”  The officer turned to the Corporal.  “Move out, Corporal Walborski.  We need to get on with this sweep and see if we can do unto the Cacas as this thing did unto the plantimal.”

Cornelius nodded and started forward, aware that the entire squad was now bunched up behind him.  And behind them the platoon.  He was the tip of the spear, and as such he was expected to get them where they were going without running into the enemy, unless it was on their terms.

A couple of kilometers further on he saw another of the big beasts.  This one was laying on its side, its soft underbelly ripped out, obviously fed upon by some predator.  Cornelius went to one knee and put his hand on a paw print the rain had not yet erased.  It looked like the print of a hell hound, only much larger.  Walborski looked around, wondering if the animal or animals were still around.  Seeing no sign he stood up and continued to move, keeping his eyes and ears peeled.  The rain started coming down again, and the Corporal lost what little auditory alertness he had.

Movement caught his eye, and he stopped and zoomed his vision in on that area.  More of the damned plantimals, he thought, cursing at whatever God had seen fit to put such monstrosities on the planet.  There were a bunch of them ahead, some damned gathering of one species.  He wondered if they were mating, making more of their damned kind.

“Shit,” yelled someone to his right rear.  Cornelius turned to see Jorgeson fighting with a plantimal that had tried to snag him with its tentacles.  Jorgeson was trying to get to his blade, but his arm was grabbed by a tentacle before he could reach the hilt jutting over his shoulder.  If not for the survival suit the creature would be injecting a deadly caustic poison into the PFCs arm.  His internal nanites might be enough to fight it off, but maybe not.

Cornelius dropped his rifle to hang around his neck from its strap and reached back for his own combat blade.  Like many of the Rangers he had acquired his own blade since joining a permanent regiment.  His was a finely made Wakizashi, a Japanese style short sword with a monomolecular blade.  It came easily out of the sheath that repaired the edge while the blade resided within.  He really liked the sword, which was really quite the combat weapon.  Jorgeson carried a Gladius style short sword, another deadly weapon in the right hands.  Unfortunately he couldn’t get a hand on it, straining as he was now against the three tentacles that had his right arm.

The Corporal brought his blade down in a chop that severed two of the tentacles.  Jorgeson tugged on the last one and got his hand on the hilt, then pulled his short sword from its sheath.  Cornelius cut that last tentacle on an upswing and freed Jorgeson, who turned and brought his own blade around to cut yet another questing member.

The plantimal went wild, whipping the rest of its tentacles around.  It started hooting, a sound that was answered from the jungle.  Cornelius shoved his blade into the body of the creature and pulled it to the side in a draw cut.  Blue fluid spurted out and the tentacles dropped.

“Here they come,” yelled a voice behind Cornelius, and he looked up to see scores of the hybrid creatures coming out of the jungle toward him, answering the call of their now dead compatriot.  It was that swarm he had seen just before the attack on Jorgeson, and they were moving in their slow lurching manner toward the Rangers.  They were obviously a different species than the one they had seen the herbivore eating earlier, distinguishable by the shape of their tentacles and the arrangement of spines on their limbs and bodies.

The Rangers fired, laying a killing blast of explosive rounds into the mass of life forms.  Blue fluid spurted out, and half the creatures went down.  Lacking more than rudimentary nervous systems and no intelligence, the creatures didn’t know when to stop.  The survivors continued on, and soon there were no living creatures.

“Fan out,” called out the Lieutenant, running up to the scene of the fight.  “Make sure we didn’t alert any Cacas that might be nearby.”

The men of second squad started to move, fanning out in all directions through the water soaked jungle.  Without warning a particle beam came out of that jungle and hit one of the men, converting his head and shoulders to superhot vapor.  The rest of the body dropped to the ground, along with all of the other Rangers.

Cornelius dove with the rest.  The mission was now a bust.  They had intended to find a Caca patrol and set an ambush, not get into a head on firefight.  But that was what they had, and if they couldn’t extract themselves quickly they might still be fighting when Caca reinforcements came up and surrounded them.

The Corporal was not under fire right now, and he looked around to see the other four members of his team were not pinned either.  The same could not be said about second squad, who was pinned down and taking so much fire they were having a hard time returning it.  He couldn’t spot the platoon leader and sergeant, or the third squad.  From the fire that was falling on the aliens it was apparent that they were fully engaged in the fight, as was the other team of his squad..

Walborski rolled over and flashed his hand signals to his men.  They all nodded, and he low crawled through the jungle, the rest of the men on his heels.  After thirty or so meters he got up into a crouch and turned to his men.  More hand signals, telling them what he wanted, and they were moving slowly through the jungle, to where he hoped to find the flank of the enemy position.

It was five agonizing minutes to cover the distance, listening to the firefight going on without them.  The muted phuts of Ranger rifles, the cracks of hypersonic rounds, the angry insect sound of particle beams.  Even a few alien roars and the screams of a couple of humans.  The Rangers were pinned down, despite their better training, and they were not equipped for a head to head fight with an armored and heavily armed opponent.  And all because some wildlife had by chance gotten disturbed by a passing Ranger.

This has got to be the flank, thought the Corporal, as he looked on at a couple of Cacas that did not seem to be doing anything but looking to the side.  Ready for us, I guess.  Cornelius flashed some more signals, then moved a little further along, until he was behind the aliens.

Cornelius flashed more hand signals to Jorgeson, and the PFC nodded, then drew his Gladius.  Cornelius pulled his own blade, now repaired by the sheath to pristine condition, and started his stalk.  The jungle gave him cover up till the last ten meters or so, and the Cacas had no idea something was coming up behind them.  It had started raining again, which helped even more, muffling all sounds.  As they got within strike range the Corporal nodded to his mate, then charged forward as fast as his legs could carry him, taking the ten meters in much less than the single tick of a clock.  He thrust his blade through the armor into the back of the creature, then pulled it with a draw cut.  Jorgeson hit his Caca in the neck with his blade, cutting through the thin flexible armor at that point.  The armor went rigid, which might have stopped a projectile, but did nothing to retard the ultra-sharp blade.

Cornelius returned his sword to its sheath and waved the other three men forward.  He gripped his rifle and ran forward, his eyes darting around to spot any Caca.  Their suits had limited cammo settings, but the rain was actually helping to outline them to the sharp eyes of the enhanced humans.

Two of Walborski’s men took out the next pair of Cacas, while he and the other two ran on to take out the next position.  They leap frogged in this manner, working their way down the line.  At one point they took out a heavy weapon emplacement, destroying the crew of the particle beam that was laying down devastating fire on the Rangers.

The Corporal ducked down as a particle beam flew by overhead, striking the trunk of a tree and exploding it in a shower of splinters.  Walborski took one in his cheek.  He pulled it free with a grunt and felt the flow of liquid down his face increase as blood mixed with rain.  The particle beam moved to take one of his men under fire, and Cornelius pulled a grenade from his webbing and armed it, then whipped it overhand at the enemy position.  It hit and detonated, blasting earth, leaves and the body of a Caca into the air.

“Hit them,” yelled Walborski, standing up and charging forward, firing his rifle from the hip and tracking on any Cacas that entered his line of sight.  He yelled at the top of his lungs, his men following suit, and overran position after position.  After about the fifth one the rest of the platoon attacked into the teeth of the enemy.

A half dozen Cacas broke and ran at the end.  Rangers took off in pursuit and they didn’t get far.

“Good work, Corporal,” said the Lieutenant after the mopping up.  “You really pulled our asses out of the fire.”

“If I had done my job properly, sir, they never would have come up on us.”

“Bullshit,” said the officer, shaking his head.  “We ran into something in the jungle that forced us to reveal ourselves.  Nothing more.”

Sergeant First Thorwaldson came running up to the officer.  “We got hurt, sir.  Bad.”

“How many?”

“Nine killed, ten wounded.  Four of them badly.  All the dead are unrecoverable.”

“We’ll help the wounded,” said the officer.  “Leave the dead.”

The Sergeant First nodded his head with a pained expression on his face.  The Rangers had a motto of leave none behind.  But they were also practical.  There were eighteen healthy survivors in the platoon, not enough to help the wounded and carry the dead, while leaving enough whole bodies to provide security.

“Staff Sergeant McAllister was not among the living, Walborski,” said the Sergeant First, glancing at the Corporal.  “And Chantamurta is wounded.  So you’re in charge of first squad.”

The Rangers moved as quickly as possible, the threat of the Cacas lending strength to their legs.  Cornelius took the rear this time, scouting behind, the most likely point of contact.  After ten klicks he was aware that something was tracking them.  He wasn’t sure what.  Only that something was moving. He caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye a couple of times, moving low to the ground.  Like a hell hound, but not quite.  He thought about what it might be while fingering his wedding ring on its chain.  Whatever it is, I’ll kill some of them, and dedicate them to you, honey.

A kilometer further on one of the Rangers on the flank cried out.  Cornelius ran to that position, to find one of the men from third squad dead on the ground, his throat ripped out.  The man would have been recoverable with the proper equipment, which they didn’t have, and they didn’t have the time to get him to such.

Something moved in the bush, and Cornelius brought his rifle to his shoulder and fired off a shot.  There was more movement, away.  Cornelius stared at the jungle for over a minute.  There was something out there, hunting them.  Something new, not of this world.

Three kilometers along the way Cornelius turned quickly, sensing something behind him.  He sniffed the air, picking up the smell of rotting vegetation that permeated the jungle.  And something else that he had never smelled before.

Movement flashed in his peripheral vision, and he turned with his weapon to see something from nightmare coming at him.  He snapped off a shot, hitting the creature in the chest.  It fell over, but was on its feet in a moment and running back into the jungle.

The platoon was really glad to see the base again.  They had lost another two men to the jungle, one wounded, the other the healthy man who was helping him along.  Cornelius was not really sure how secure they should feel.  If the things that had hunted them were allied with the Ca’cadasans, the base might now be compromised.  There was no way to tell if that were so, but everyone was now on high alert.

After a meal Cornelius was called to the Captain’s office.  He reported, not sure if he was going to be commended or dressed down, as he was still feeling responsibile for the platoon falling into the firefight with the Cacas.  Instead he found the Captain already with the Lieutenant, and a set of Sergeant insignia sitting on the desk.

“We’re bumping you up to Sergeant, Walborski,” said the Captain.  “Lieutenant Schwarz said it was your clear head and leadership ability that got the platoon out of a bad situation.  Since you were already an NCO, and the platoon needs someone to replace second and third squad leaders, it was an easy decision.”

“Yes, sir,” said Cornelius, saluting is CO.  He wasn’t about to turn down promotion, especially since this would now put him on even footing with Devera.

Three days later they were out in the bush again.  The platoon had been brought up to partial strength by the infusion of some replacements, all fresh out of training.  Again they were sweeping the jungle, looking for the enemy.  Cornelius would have preferred a real objective, someplace where they knew there would be Cacas, a place they could hit hard and get away.  Unfortunately no one had asked his opinion, so here they were, on another search and destroy.

They had never been to this area before, twenty kilometers to the north of the forward base.  The vegetation was the same, as were the animals, and of course the nasty plantimals.  Cornelius was again on point for the platoon.  Despite his new position he was still the best woodsman in the platoon, so his assistant babysat the squad, something the highly trained professionals really didn’t need, while he played scout.

Again it was raining, hard.  And again he could feel eyes on him from the jungle.  He stood there for a moment, fingering his wedding ring and wondering what he was feeling.  There were people with psionic abilities in the Empire.  They were rare, and the majority of them were very weak and erratic in their abilities.  The Imperial family had a strong line of psionics, especially in the precognition of dreams.  He had tested as a child, like all on the core worlds, and had been found to be above average, which really didn’t amount to much.  But now I’ve had my mental capacity boosted, with the augmentation of my nervous system.  Did that release some kind of latent ability?

It could have been imagination, though he was sure it wasn’t.  Which, as far as he knew, didn’t mean a thing if it was his imagination.  He dropped the ring back inside his suit to fall onto its chain.  I need to get moving, he thought, a shiver running up his spine at the thought of what might be watching him.

The feeling continued with him for kilometers further into the jungle.  But nothing happened, and he started to wonder again if it was just his imagination.

Something howled to his left, about fifty meters into the jungle.  Cornelius flashed a hand signal to the next man behind him and took off into the jungle, his rifle at the ready.  He slid to a stop as he entered a small clearing, the sight to his front enough to shock anyone.

A plantimal had claimed another victim.  Or at least it was trying to.  The large creature was caught in the grip of the plantimal’s tentacles.  The clothing it wore was much like a survival suit, with the same kind of cammo covering as their own.  The tentacles were not having much luck penetrating that suit.  The tentacle that was reaching down the throat of the creature did not have that problem.

The beast was shredding the body of the plantimal with the retractable claws of its hand like paws, both forward and back. There were only four of the paws, attached to as many legs, indicating that this was not a native beast.  Blue body fluid spurted from the plantimal.  The narrow but powerful jaws crunched down on the intruding tentacle down its throat and severed it.  The jaws then locked and the creature’s body went into convulsions.

“Get the Lieutenant up here, now,” he ordered one of his men.  The plantimal was finished, its tentacles falling to the ground.  The beast, which from its clothing had to be an intelligent animal, fell with it.

Cornelius walked up to the creature, looking down on the dog like head and the glazed eyes.  He noted the clothing, and the tools that were attached to it.  Some of the things looked like weapons, and he was sure this was one of the things that had attacked them before.  The things he had sensed in the jungle.

“We’re heading back to base,” the Lieutenant told his men after he had studied the creature.  “I think this is more important than a sweep.”

“There’s probably more of them out there,” said Cornelius, looking at his CO.

“That’s why we’re going back in a tight formation.  I don’t want these damned devils to pick us off on the way back.”

There was an attack on the way back, three of the creatures coming out of the jungle and trying to get the body of their compatriot.  That left them with one wounded Ranger and two more dead aliens to bring back.

Cornelius had never seen anything move as fast as the aliens, with the exception of his fellow Rangers, who were in the same class.  He was sure if there had been more of the creatures than this small hunting party the results might have been much different.

The men at the base were very excited by the bodies the Rangers brought back.  Battalion command was even more so.  Several squad sized patrols had disappeared in the last week, without a trace.  Previously this had been a game that only the Rangers were good at, the Ca’cadasans being big and clumsy in the jungle that was obviously not their natural habitat.  Now there was a new player that seemed to be fitted perfectly for jungle warfare.

All patrols were cancelled for the next couple of days while the medical staff went over the bodies.  Rumors started to circulate.  That these were genetically engineered life forms that didn’t exist in a natural state.  That they had been created to hunt humans.  That they were the real rulers of the Ca’cadasan Empire, come to clean up the mess that their inferiors had created.

Cornelius didn’t buy into any of the rumors generated by the mill.  He decided to reserve judgment until someone with some real knowledge briefed them.  With that in mind, he spent much of his time in his quarters, the small room given to an NCO.  There he recorded messages, for Junior, that might be read in the future, and for Devera, who hopefully had not moved on to something closer to home.  That fear was alleviated when a message crystal made it to the base in the mail bag.

“My dearest Cornelius,” said the image of the woman as she stood in the small holo.  “I have missed you so much.  I know you are in combat, and not always able to communicate back to me.  From the messages I have received you look well, and I was so happy to hear about your promotion.  At the rate you are advancing you’ll be a general in no time.”

The woman looked down for a moment, then back up, her eyes meeting his across the light years and the days.  “I miss you, Cornelius.  I tried not to fall in love with you.  I didn’t want to fall for another combat soldier, to see another man I cared for go off to war and not come back.  But despite my misgivings I did fall for you.  There’s nothing I can do to protect you.  All I can do is ask you to look out for yourself, and try your best to come back.  In your darkest hour, when all seems hopeless, remember that I love you.  So please come back.”

The message ended, and Cornelius found himself crying.  He had really given up on ever loving again after Katlyn had been killed.  All he had to live for was his need for revenge.  Now he had found someone, and the war had separated them.  “I love you too,” he said, trying to remember if he had put that in the last message.  Not sure, he recorded another and made sure that he said the words.

The next morning they had the briefing they had been waiting for.  The entire company was gathered in the briefing room, all the combat Rangers at this base.  All had been told that the bodies were no longer on this base, they had been sent up the line after the initial scans so that people with greater scientific skills could look at them.  From there they had been sent off planet through the wormhole.

A science type, someone who wasn’t really in the military, though they held an officer’s rank, stood at the front of the room, sharing the platform with a holo that showed one of the creatures in a rotating three dimensional view.

“We have tagged these creatures as Hunters,” said the man, pointing at the holo.  “As to what they call themselves, we have no idea.  As far as we can tell they are natural creatures.  The characteristic tags of genetic engineering are missing, which does not prove they weren’t altered in generations past.  But we find it unlikely.  Instead, it looks like the Hunters evolved on a very dangerous world, possibly a Class I.”

People mumbled and whispered to each other throughout the room.  Class I worlds were considered too dangerous for human habitation, despite all of their technology.  If the aliens actually evolved on such a world they would have to be as dangerous as the things around them, which was not a comforting thought.

“The Hunters are built along the plan of a pack predator.  Their bodies are long and lean, probably indicative of a speed hunter, though their lung capacity shows an ability of great endurance.  They have strong muscles attached to an optimal skeleton that gives them great leverage.  Their skin is covered with a fur that is the consistency of tough wire, giving them the ability to resist damage far beyond all but the thickest skinned of animals.”

The man looked at the holo and the image centered on one of the creature’s paws.  It closed and then opened, going from what looked like an animal paw with numerous pads to a hand with much the same dexterity as the human one.  And in both configurations it sported sharp claws.  “The Hunters seem to be equally at home running on all fours or standing upright.  And these claws, which are obviously an evolutionary construct, are able to pivot to where they can be deployed in both modes.  What is not an evolutionary construct are the monomolecular blades that have been bonded to the claws, making these instruments as deadly as any of the blade weapons you men carry.”

The holo shifted again, to the head of the creature.  “The jaws are also pure death, with each tooth sheathed in ultrasharp alloys.  The jaw muscles exert pressures in the same range as that of a Terran shark per square centimeter. The sensorium of the creature is also superior, with very efficient eyes and ears, though probably not in quite the same range as your augmented senses.  And here we come to the most terrifying aspect of the Hunters.  Their brains.  From the size and neuron density we can surmise that they are at least as intelligent as we are.  And the nervous system is on the order of the augmented.  In conclusion, you would be well served to keep a close lookout for these things while on patrol.  And I would kill them at range if possible.  Any questions?”

“Why don’t these things run the Caca Empire?” asked the Captain, raising his hand.  “I mean, they seem to be the superior life form.”

“All we can surmise is that they were still in a primitive state when the Cacas discovered them,” said the scientist.  “Like most cultures the Ca’cadsans have absorbed, they had little chance or choice when they were discovered.”

There were some more questions, mostly in the realm of speculation that the lecturer could not answer.  But everyone left the lecture with a new respect for what might await them in the jungle.  Or maybe that was fear.

Chapter Nineteen

We have war when at least one of the parties to a conflict wants something more than it wants peace.  Jeane Kirkpatrick.

AZURE.  MAY 9TH - 10th, 1001.

That’s it, thought Rebecca, looking at the rock formations on the side of the mountain and checking her position.  She had only seen the refuge from the air before, or on the ground right outside of it.  Nothing else she had seen on the mountainsides on the way here had looked familiar, not like this.

She lay there for almost an hour, using the field glasses she had packed to scan the area.  It looked unoccupied, which was how it should be, even if there were someone there.  A refuge that looked like it was occupied, especially from the air, was not much of a hideout.  She found a dark area on the mountainside, just behind the flat region that would have been the landing pad for her family.  It looked like a cave entrance.  They had planned to provide cover for that opening when they had started their habitation.  That it hadn’t been done was a sign that the cave hadn’t been inhabited.  Or had it?

Something moved, and she focused the glasses on that area, seeing a hunched over figure at the entrance to the cavern.  At this distance she couldn’t tell if it was human or Caca.  Caca meant the refuge was closed to her.  Human?  Maybe, maybe not.  She continued to study the figure, which stayed hunched down in a stance that didn’t allow her to see the number of its limbs.  She was also having problems with the scale.  Was it a less than two meter tall being, or one over three?

A second figure joined the first, and they squatted there, looking out over the area in front of the cave and beyond.  They were obviously talking, and one waved a hand at the open area, then looked up at the sky.

Come on, thought the child, the sweat rolling down her face as she continued to watch.  Move out where I can see what you are.

Almost as if in obedience to her thoughts the second figure stood up and walked out into the clear area, heading for the spring that was near the south end of the small plateau.  Rebecca almost whooped for joy as she saw the easily recognizable motion of a human walking.  She focused in the glasses and saw that the being only had two upper limbs, swinging with the walk, one holding an empty water container.

So, do I take the chance that they might let me in, or do I just go away? she thought.  Looking over her shoulder at the jungle behind her she shuddered.  She was surviving in that jungle, barely.  That could change any day now.  There had been some near misses in the last couple of days, and it would only take one hit by a native life form to kill her.  She glanced up at the sun that was beating down on her.  Clouds were gathering on the horizon, a sign that the afternoon deluge was gathering.  She thought it would be nice to be dry again.  The survival suit kept the rain off of most of her body, but the humidity went everywhere.

I’ll just be careful, she thought, getting up and moving back into the jungle to start working her way to the refuge.  It took several hours of hard going to work her way within earshot of the cave.  She was still a dozen meters down the mountainside, out of sight from the cave, conversely not able to see what was going on up there.

She climbed those last dozen meters, her muscles aching under the pull of gravity that wanted to deposit her at the bottom.  She could hear voices now, a couple of people talking.  She thought they were male voices.  The chances were greater that women would let her in.  Not that men wouldn’t, but as a, as of this day, thirteen year old with a developing body, there were other risks with men in a situation where societal norms had broken down.

She climbed the last meter, looking over the rocks while exposing as little of her face as possible.  There were now three people at the entrance, all male.  A fourth male was returning from the spring, a full water container in his hand.  She studied the men, still not sure what to make of them.  That they were using the refuge her family put together went without question.  That would not be a problem, since her family had not come, but she still needed it.

She saw another man come out of the cave, this one in partial light battle armor, the type the planetary militia wore.  That gave her a bit more hope.  If they were militia they would surely have an officer, or at least an NCO, in charge.  With that thought she scrambled up the last bit of slope and rose into sight.

The men at the cave all jumped and pointed, and some weapons made their appearance.  They calmed a bit as they saw that she was just a child.  She didn’t like some of the looks that came across the faces of the group.  They made her distinctly uncomfortable.

“Where the hell did you come from, girl?” asked the oldest looking of the men, one wearing the torso covering of light battle armor and a partial helmet.

“From the jungle,” she said, her eyes looking for a way out, just in case this had been as bad a decision as it was now looking.  She looked back at the man.  “This place was my family’s.  We set it up when the aliens came.”

“And where is this family of yours?”

“They didn’t make it.  Are you militia?  My father is a reserve officer.  Is there any way you can contact him?”

“We were militia,” said the man with a sneer.  “Until those sons of bitches wanted to throw us away trying to slow them down, for no damned reason.  Now we’re on our own.”

Deserters, she thought with a shudder.  What the hell did I get myself into?

“How old are you, girl?” asked another of the men, moving toward her.

“Ten,” she said, lying, hoping that they would decide she was too young for whatever game they wanted to play.

“You look a lot older than that, girl,” said the older man who seemed to be in charge.  “We don’t have any women here.  And you sure could fill the bill.”

Thoughts of gang rape started to go through her head, and she started to back toward the place where she had climbed onto the small plateau.

“You stop right there, girl,” said the man, pulling a pistol from the holster at his side.  “We won’t hurt you, not really.  You play with us, we’ll make sure you’re protected and fed.”

Rebecca knew about sex.  She had learned about it in biology courses.  And she knew she was too young, and didn’t want to have anything to do with it at her age.  She would become a sex slave to these men, all of them using her whenever they wanted.  Her internal nanites would keep her from getting pregnant, and protect her from disease.  Still, the idea of being used by these deserters was not her first choice, or her last.

“Stop,” said the man, pointing the pistol at her.  “If you take another step I will shoot you.”

And he doesn’t know I’m wearing a military class survival suit, she thought, looking at the pistol, then at the nearby rocks.  They also don’t know what kind of weapon I have.

With that last thought she dove for the ground.  Something smacked into her suit, which went rigid from the impact.  Rolling over she came to a stop behind the rocks and pulled her particle beam pistol from its holster.  A flick of her finger and the weapon’s accelerator started humming and whining.

“Come out of there and you won’t be hurt,” yelled the leader.  “Make us come for you and it will go hard for you.”

I can imagine, she thought, checking the pistol and seeing that the proton charge was up to full acceleration.

One man came around the rocks and caught the particle beam in the chest.  The nearly relativistic particles ripped into his body and vaporized kilograms of tissue, dropping him into a smoking heap on the ground.

Rebecca stared at the man for a moment.  She had never killed a human.  She had of course killed a Ca’cadasan, and many animals, but never another human being.  She thought that she should have felt shock.  Instead it was rage that was the dominant emotion.  Rage that these people had made her a killer of her own kind.

“Fuck you,” she yelled out, looking around the rock and leveling her weapon at the cave mouth.  A half dozen shocked looking men stood there, some pointing weapons her way.  A couple fired, the worst thing they could have done.

The girl pulled the trigger on the pistol and held it down, swinging the beam across the mouth of the cave.  Three men went down with catastrophic wounds while the others ran into the cave.  The beam tore into the rock, shattering large pieces that fell into the mouth.

“This is mine,” she yelled, still holding the trigger down even when the weapon stopped firing.  “I will be back, and I want you gone.”

She wasn’t sure that was the truth, but in her anger she wanted to panic them.  She looked down at the pistol, afraid that she had broken something, and was relieved to see that the blinking light indicated that the proton pack was empty.  She only had one left, and she cursed herself for a fool for letting her anger rule her.

Rebecca slipped back over the lip of the plateau and started down the slope.  Her shoulder blades cringed at the thought that the men might come out of the cave and shoot at her from above.  Her suit might protect her from a few shots, but with enough there was sure to be a hit to her head, or a penetration of the suit.

She reached bottom without incident, saying a prayer of thanks before she realized what she was doing.  Stopping for a moment, she looked back up at the mountain, wondering what she was going to do now that the refuge was closed to her.  I could wait and see if they leave, she thought, rejecting that idea as soon as she had it.  They might never leave, and she wasn’t sure she could force herself into another firefight.  Having to fire back was one thing.  Starting a battle in which she intended to kill other humans was quite another.

Rebecca shook her head, knowing that waiting here was not the answer.  But where to from here?  She checked the map and saw that there were several villages and a minor town within five days walk.  There was no guarantee that they were intact, or that she would be able to shelter there if they were.  Seeing no other option, she took a compass reading, set her location on the inertial navigation device, and started on her way.

*     *     *

Major Joseph Goldman looked down on the seemingly endless jungle below, starting to feel the fruitlessness of this search.  He had searched the village, and found nothing.  The Cacas had come and taken the bodies of their own with them.  He had found the incinerated remains of a human, which he thought must have been his son, Benjamin.  He took a sample that could be tested later, just to make sure.  But he had the testimony of the Rangers that a small boy who had been with Rebecca had died.  He could think of none other that it might be.

A couple of hours search in the jungle had revealed no trace of his daughter.  He knew he was no tracker, and that tracks that had been laid down almost a week before in an active jungle environment would be gone.  He had finally given it up as a hopeless task and had headed back to his aircar.

Flying over the jungle had been no more effective.  There was almost a hundred meters of vegetation from the top of the canopy to the ground, with an animal density not to be believed by anyone who had not encountered such a jungle.  The chances of spotting a lone child in that mass, no matter how sensitive the instruments, were truly astronomical.

On several occasions he had been spotted by something from the ground. The first time some projectiles and a brief particle beam had come up at him.  Only a good set of reflexes had saved him that time.  On the second a missile had come at him, and only a quick dive that had brought him under the canopy, and almost into a massive trunk, had saved him.

Now he was flying through a rainstorm, the daily cloudburst that sent torrents of water into the thirsty jungle almost every afternoon.  It was really the only safe time to fly, though it made his aerial platform useless for observation.

There’s only one way I’m going to find her, he thought, turning the car on a heading for a known point.  The refuge is the only place I have a chance of locating her.  And if she’s not there yet, I’ll have to stay until she comes.

An hour later he saw the small plateau come into view.  There was no mistaking the place where he had hoped his family would find shelter from the aliens.  A tear ran down his cheek as he circled over the place, feelings of lost hope running through him.  She’s got to be here, he thought, setting the car down on the plateau.  She’s got to be.

He went out through the driver’s side door and drew his weapon.  It would not do to take chances here.  Someone else might have found the refuge, and that someone might not be friendly.  A shot pinging off the aircar while another stiffened the shoulder of his suit let him know that his fears had not been groundless.

Goldman dropped to the ground and crawled behind the aircar, while shots continued to bounce from the hard shell of the vehicle.  He pulled his pistol, then activated the accelerator.  “Cease fire,” he yelled.  “I’m Major Joseph Goldman.  I’m looking for my daughter.”

“Christ,” yelled out one of the people who had him pinned down.  “It’s the little bitch’s old man.”

Little bitch, thought Goldman with a grimace.  That doesn’t sound good.  “What do you know about my daughter?”

“She took a long time to die,” said one of the men.  “And we really enjoyed her little body.”

Goldman shook with rage.  They killed her.  He thought about his little girl being molested by cruel men before being killed for sport.  He took a couple of breaths and willed himself to calm down.  They want me to lose control.  To go wild and attack them without thought for myself.

He crawled to the side of the vehicle and poked the pistol around where its optics could get a good view.  His implant was linked to the weapon, and he saw what it saw.  The weapon itself was a small target, one that might be easily missed.  The Major tracked the weapon around until he saw something, then leveled it to take a good look.  He saw the face of a man looking over the barrel of a militia class mag rifle.  That face seemed to recognize the pistol at that moment, and the rifle started to swing toward it.

Goldman pulled the trigger and sent a burst of protons in an angry red beam into the man.   With a burst of steam the face of the man and part of the rifle disappeared.

“Goddammit,” yelled another of the men while the third just cried out in horror.  “Does everyone but us have one of those things.”

“He’s going to kill us all.  Just like the little bitch did to the others.”

“Throw down your weapons and no one else needs to die,” he yelled out, moving the pistol and trying to track onto one of the remaining men.

“Bullshit,” yelled one of the men.  “He’s an officer.  And we’re deserters in wartime.  I’m not for going back to a firing squad.”

Then don’t, thought Goldman, tracking in on that voice.  He saw the man through the optics at the same time the man saw the pistol.  The deserter fired first, and the round bounced from the aircar not centimeters from the pistol.  If he had fired on full auto he would have hit for sure, but training had taken over, and the deserter had gone for a penetrating shot.  He got off one more, just a microsecond before the beam of protons converted his head and shoulders to steam and burnt meat.

“OK,” yelled the last man, standing up and dropping his rifle to the ground.  “I surrender.”

Goldman came from behind the car slowly, his eyes searching for anyone who might be hiding to take him unawares.  He couldn’t see anyone else, and he kept the pistol leveled at the last man, prepared to take him down if there were any tricks.

“What happened to my little girl?” he asked as he walked up to the man, who looked back with sullen and frightened eyes.

“She ran away into the jungle,” said the man, his eyes locking on the particle beam pistol.  “She killed Bill when he tried to fetch her, then hit Chan, Cliff and Jonesy when they tried to shoot her.”

“I thought you said you killed her.”

“I swear we didn’t,” stammered the man.  “Clarence, that was our leader, thought it might make you do something stupid if we said that.”

“And he got his brains vaporized for his trouble,” said Goldman, looking at the man and recognizing the partial militia armor he wore.  “You’re a deserter.  That means I can shoot you where you stand.”

“Please, sir.  We were just trying to survive.  Please don’t kill me.”

A coward dies a thousand deaths, thought the Major, staring into terrified eyes.  “I’ll give you one chance.  You can walk out of here and take that chance with the jungle, just like the little girl you chased off.”

The man nodded, then bent to reach for his rifle.

“Uh uh,” said the Major, waving his pistol.  “You go out in the jungle without that.  I don’t want you sniping at me when I’m not prepared.”

“But, I’ll die out there without a weapon,” stammered the man.  “Please.  Look, your little girl had a weapon.”

“No thanks to you.  Now get your ass moving, before I change my mind and just vaporize you.”

The man stared for a moment, then looked at the pistol, and Goldman was sure he was thinking about his chances of getting the weapon away from the Major.  He must have thought better of it, as he turned and ran away from the officer, moving toward the edge of the plateau and going down the slope.  Goldman walked over to the edge and looked down, following the man with his eyes until he disappeared into the jungle.

The entrance to the cave was a mess of melted and fallen rock, the signs of a particle beam weapon.  A mess left by his little girl.  The interior was in better shape, though the deserters had not been good housekeepers.  There was garbage scattered across the interior of the cavern that had been set up as a house.  The trash was in every room, though they at least hadn’t put sewage on the floors.

After setting the security system at the front of the cave, something that had seemed to have been beyond the capabilities of the squatters, the Major did a quick inventory of the supplies and found that almost seventy percent of what they had laid in was still there.  The battery packs were at ninety percent.  He was amazed that the deserters had not figured out how to turn on the pumps that kept the water tanks filled, and had resorted to carrying water from the spring outside, the same source the Major’s family had piped in.

The last thing he checked was the weapons stock, which was behind a hidden stone door in one of the bedrooms.  Something else the lazy fuckers who had taken the refuge for their own had not discovered.  In that small armory were dozens of different hunting weapons, and a few that were not made for hunting anything but other intelligent beings.  There were ammunition stores that would last for years.

If only they had made it, he thought of his family.  His wife, his in-laws and other family members, would have been able to hide here until either the aliens left or the Empire forces returned.  Why did you let this happen? he asked his God.  Why the fuck did you let this happen to good people?

The last thing he had to do was hide the aircar.  Originally they had planned to leave the cars in the jungle a couple of kilometers away.  He didn’t want to leave here, not with the last deserter still lurking in the vicinity.  So he powered up the car, set it on auto, and sent it on its way.  It would fly to the small clearing he had seen about ten kilometers to the north and land, there to wait for his signal if he needed it.  Then he settled down to wait, which was the only possible course of action at this point.

Chapter Twenty

War is a series of catastrophes which result in victory.  Albert Pike.

AZURE.  MAY 10TH – 20th, 1001.

“These humans were not what we were led to expect,” said Prime Hunt Leader Sybalis, looking at the other members of his team.  They had been stalking a human patrol, some of these jungle specialists the humans employed.  They had all rejoiced in the stalk, the hunting of creatures that were their inferiors.  Until it became apparent that they were anything but.

“We still make kills,” said one of the other Maurids, showing a toothy smile that his troubled eyes denied.

“Yes,” said another, “but the unfamiliar jungle also takes its toll.  As do these warriors of the humans.  Maybe it is time to abandon the small hunting parties and gather enough hunters to take out one of their larger bodies in a swift assault.”

The Prime Hunt Leader imagined that and liked the image.  They might still lose some hunters, but not in comparison to the human losses.  And if they destroyed enough of the superior humans they might stop patrolling the jungles and killing the masters.  And that would also accomplish their mission.

“I will send your idea up to the Supreme Hunt Leader,” said Sybalis, looking at the second male.  “If he gets permission from the masters maybe we can implement your plan.”  And maybe someday we will be free of the masters, and can do things the way we want them to be done.

*     *     *

Rebecca wandered through the jungle for days after leaving the vicinity of the refuge.  She really didn’t have a final destination in mind.  Any of the towns and villages on her map could be temporary refuges as well, or they could be dead ends, and she had no way of knowing without going there.  After the death of her brother and finding that the refuge their family had prepared had fallen to an unknown number of criminals, she had lacked the energy to make another decision.  So she had found a safe tree and set it up as a temporary home, placing a poncho up as a rain cover and counting on her height above the floor for concealment.  Then she had just existed, eating rations as she felt hungry, drinking rainwater when thirsty.  Otherwise doing nothing but thinking, sleeping when needed, crying at frequent intervals.

I can’t just make the jungle my home, she thought one morning as the sun came up.  I can eat native life as long as I have my internal nanites.  But I won’t like it.  I might even get sick at times, and getting sick could mean my death, if I can’t react to the jungle.  But, where do I go?

She knew that walking through the jungle was more dangerous than sitting in the tree.  There was always the chance that something would climb to the bole where she was and get to her, despite the chemical defenses of the tree.  But the odds were much greater if she walked through that jungle, as much as she had learned about it in the time since the invasion.  She was really an expert on it compared to most who had lived on this planet.  Ted had told her that knowledge of the jungle allowed people to survive in it, but knowledge didn’t guarantee survival.

Later that day she heard voices moving below her perch, thirty meters down.  They grew louder, until she could distinguish them as Ca’cadasans, out on patrol through the jungle.  They moved on, but several hours later there were more, and she realized that she was now in an area of their operations.  That made it even more dangerous, when she was finally forced to go foraging through the bush, and ran the risk of running into one of the Cacas, or, even worse, one of the new things they had brought to the jungle.

She slept one more night in the tree, eating the last of her rations before retiring.  She woke in the night to the sound of something scrambling up the bark of the tree.  Did I wait too long, she thought, cringing into a ball and hoping that whatever it was would just go away.

Suddenly there was shouting in the distance, human voices, and the sounds of weapons fire cracking the sound barrier below her.  The thing on the tree stopped scrambling up, and she was sure it must have dropped off and ran away.  The sounds of the fire fight continued for some minutes, then she heard a couple of voices whispering to each other below.  These sounded like human voices.

Before her run in with the deserters she would have let any humans know who she was and where she was located, hoping that they would help her.  Now she was afraid to do so.  These men might not be organized troops, but more riff raff wandering the jungle, with enough firepower to beat off a Caca attack.  She couldn’t chance it, and remained hidden until they moved off.

When the sun came up on a new day she packed up and climbed down the tree.  As always it was humid, though the daily rains were hours in the future.  She took a look at her inertial locator and compass, wondering if she was making a good decision.  Last night it had looked good.  Now, in the light of day, she wasn’t so sure.

Shrugging her shoulders she started on her way.  One way was as good as any after a moment’s thought.

The jungle was alive with the cries of animals and the songs of bird analogues.  Insectoids buzzed by on their tasks, while other creatures flew through the air hunting them down.  Rebecca moved easily through the bush, almost automatically finding the easy path that didn’t cross any obvious clearings.  She could hear the sounds of various herbivores going about their feeding, avoiding them both as the threats they represented and the attraction they were to predators.  She kept her particle beam pistol ready at all times, set to power that would kill a small predator and hopefully chase away a large one, not wasting her one remaining proton pack.

At one point she saw the signs of a plantimal ambush in the tentacles that draped across the ground like vines.  It took her a moment to realize how easily she had spotted the ambush while she moved around it.  Further down the path she found some fruit that was astringent to the native life, but not too bad for the humans it had never evolved to deter.  She pulled down a couple of the pear shaped bluish fruit, carefully avoiding the poison tipped thorns that speckled the branch.

Later she pulled down a leafy tube and dripped water into her mouth.  At the end of the day she checked her inertial finder and was surprised to find that she had covered twenty-five kilometers of fierce bush, while not having one encounter with any kind of ambush predator.  I’m getting pretty good at this, she thought as she located a safe tree and started to climb.  She shrugged away that thought, knowing that arrogance could get her killed, while a healthy amount of fearful respect would keep her alive.

The next day she only had to use her weapon once, two quick shots that killed the leading males of a hell hound pack.  The rest of the pack ran away, back to whatever place they laired in.  The morning after that she saw three cubs at play below her tree, under the watchful gaze of an adult, and realized that fearsome as the carnivores were, they were still social animals that had to feed their young, little ones that they cared for fiercely.  After that she vowed to only shoot them if she couldn’t back them down with a warning shot.

When she finally reached the village she had another disappointment to deal with.  This one was a total wreck.  Every building had been burned out, every vehicle shot or blown to pieces.  The jungle was doing a good job of taking back over the land it had lost when this habitat had been created.  Still she searched the ruins, carefully.  The only terrestrial life left in the village was a small population of now feral cats, able to eat the smaller native life due to their internal nanites.  She wondered how long they would survive when the jungle had completely taken over, despite their adaptability.

One building she searched, what was once a store, was still full of canned food that she could use as rations.  Fish, corned beef, basic protein puddings, she filled her pack.  What she was hoping to find was not available, proton packs for her pistol.  She did find some ammo for her mag pistol, and some spare batteries that would fit just about anything, and she packed them away.

Two days out of the village, heading for the next, she walked across the remains of a fight.  There were a couple of Ca’cadasan bodies and many more humans, all obvious victims of weapons fire.  Most of the bodies had been savaged by predators who had probably eaten some of the supposed bounty of proteins, then got a good taste and moved on.   Some plantimals had rooted themselves in some of the bodies, not as picky about taste as their animal cousins.  The bodies may not have provided perfect nourishment, but for the hybrid creatures it was enough.

Rebecca left the scene of the fight with a more cautious attitude.  She had thought originally that most of the fighting would be confined to cities, battles of attrition among the ruins.  Instead the war had moved into the wilderness areas as the humans used the cover of the jungle and the Cacas pursued them.

The next village she visited was much like the last, only there were a couple of buildings that were still standing.  She walked through the streets, avoiding all the native vegetation that was mostly opportunistic weeds that were known for their toxicity.  The first building she came to was complete only on distant examination.  On closer examination it was full of holes, from what had to be bullets, to the large slash of a particle beam, to a door that had to have been blown open by a rocket or grenade.  She shook her head, and moved up the street four blocks to the next one.

It’s intact, she thought excitedly as she looked at the closed door, untouched walls, and complete windows that fronted the street.  I hope it’s not locked, she thought, moving to the door with her pistol in hand.  The door slid open as she stopped on the stoop.  She looked cautiously inside as the lights came on, almost wanting to yell with joy that the house still had power.  She forced herself to spend the time to stand there and look, making sure nothing was waiting for her just inside the threshold.

Satisfied that the living room of the dwelling was unoccupied, she walked into the house. Weapon at the ready, she checked it out, kitchen/dining area, bathrooms, all three bedrooms.  It looked like the house of a common worker, filled with the mementos of a life of working and raising a family.  Holographic pictures of that family sprung to life as she entered various rooms, and she felt a wave of sorrow thinking of what must have happened to those people.

Rebecca made sure the outer door was secure and sat on the couch, contemplating how much her world had changed since the aliens had come.  Azure had been such a happy world.  Sure, the biome was hazardous, but people made lives here, in a technological civilization that saw to their almost every need.  And now we’re barbarians, hunter gatherers, fugitives, those that survived.

As she sat there thinking tears of sorrow flowed from her eyes.  As she continued to think, focusing on the aliens who had caused all of this, the tears turned to symbols of her rage, and her body shook with her feelings.  I’m going to pay you assholes back, thought the child, if it takes me my entire life.  You will suffer.  Rebecca laughed at that last thought.  She was still only a child. But I won’t be forever. One day I’ll be a soldier, or a scientist.  And then we’ll see.

*     *     *

Major Joseph Goldman had to admit that the refuge they had set up was very comfortable.  That said, waiting for his daughter to return, if she ever did, was not a comfortable feeling.  She’s not going to come back here, he thought once again as he stared mindlessly at an entertainment program on the trivee.  The refuge had been set up with all the comforts of home, and was completely shielded from detection.

She could dead out there for all I know, he thought, not liking the idea at all, but realizing that it was a realistic one.  The jungle was full of things that would just love to kill a small biped walking among them.  Ted Stephenson was the best woodsman I’ve ever known, was the next thought, trying to regain some hope.  He had met Ted through the engineering firm, a retired Naval Commando who had also worked as a naval engineer and had a wealth of experience.  Ted had liked to spend all his free time hunting the wilderness areas of the planet, and had eventually transitioned to a full time job leading those less gifted through expeditions, bringing them all back alive.  That was something to be proud of, as even the most experienced guides lost people on this world.  All but Ted.  And he taught my little girl about the wilderness.  She learned enough to get from wherever she had been to that village where the Rangers found her.  And she learned enough to get from there to here.  So she has to be cognizant enough of the dangers to survive,

The next moment he was wondering if that was just wishful thinking.  People with survival skills got killed in that jungle all the time.  And Rebecca, smart as she was, was still a child.  But she’s really bright, he thought, grabbing at the next morsel of hope.  She tested out in the top ninety nine point nine percentile.  Smart enough to go into engineering, or any of the sciences, and excel.

And smart people had been lost in the jungle.  That was the next thing to weigh on his mind.  Intelligence wasn’t always enough.

But she’s heavily armed, was the following thought.  From what the man he had let go said, as well as the characteristic marks on the entrance of the cave, she had a particle beam.  The most powerful piece of hand held firepower short of antimatter that human tech could build, it gave her killing power over anything that moved in the jungle.  As long as she gets it first.

Goldman got up and headed for the area they had designated the kitchen.  He pulled out a glass and a bottle of whisky and poured himself a multishot drink.  The good liquor went down his throat with a burn, and soon his head was swirling a bit.  He poured another drink, this time taking it back to the couch where he could sit and sip.  There’s nothing I can do tonight about anything, he thought as he let the alcohol calm him.  Tomorrow I’ll try and figure out what to do, because I can’t just sit here waiting.  I have to go find her, even if it kills me.

The Major drank some more, until the bottle was empty.  Soon the liquor had the effect on him he had desired, and he passed out on the couch.

Chapter Twenty-one

War is the unfolding of miscalculations.  Barbara Tuchman.

AZURE.  MAY 24TH, 1001.

This time the entire company was on the move.  A priority target had been designated about seventy-five kilometers from their base, something that might be the headquarters of a battalion or brigade of the enemy.  Patrols that had gone to that area had a tendency to not return.  Until one squad size recon element had located the enemy base and gotten back, due to the sacrifice of several of the members.  It was a shame that good men had to die to bring back the information, but as the Rangers had learned, mission came first.

Cornelius was the point of the company, despite being a squad leader.  The company had originally had one hundred and sixty operatives, the combat soldiers of the unit.  They were down to a hundred and twenty-one with replacements, and there had been some reshuffling to bring all the platoons to more or less the same strength.

Behind Walborski was his squad in a classic v formation.  Back and to either side were the two other squads in the same formation, with the platoon command team directly behind Cornelius’ squad.  The company command followed his platoon, with the other two lined up in the same kind of formation behind the Captain’s group.

Walborski realized that there was no way the entire company could move as quietly as the platoon alone.  That said, they were moving like a whispering wind through the jungle.  The real concern was that the enemy would have sensors out.  It was really impossible to move through an area with ground vibration sensors without setting them off.  That was why the whole company was involved.  When they were discovered they would fight their way through the resistance.  Then they would use the special weapons carried by Second Platoon.  As long as they got within ten kilometers of the target they had a good chance of hitting it.

The Sergeant had his senses stretched to the limit as he moved from shadow to shadow.  His eyes darted every which way, looking for any hint of a movement.  He only wore a bush hat, like most of the Rangers, allowing his ears complete access to the environment.  Those ears strained to hear every sound, while his brain categorized those noises, searching for a threat.  He sniffed the air every few seconds.  The air was alive with scents, some now familiar, some not, and he tried to figure which might be the sign that something dangerous waited ahead.

Something caught his eye, and Cornelius knelt on one knee and focused his vision.  The object zoomed into his visual field, and he cursed silently as he recognized the object as something of technological manufacture.  Whoever had placed it had tried to camouflage it, but some of the dead leaves had fallen away, and one side was now uncovered.  Fortunately for the humans, it was the side that was facing the point man.

Cornelius flashed hand signals to the man behind him that were relayed back.  Within moments the Lieutenant was up with him, and Walborski pointed out the seismic sensor.  The officer looked at him and nodded, then checked his map.  The Sergeant looked at the piece of plastic and noted that they were fifteen kilometers from the target, still out of range of the specials, even if they had a clear shot.  He fingered his wedding ring on its chain and thought about the situation.

So they know we’re coming, thought Cornelius with a shrug, looking at his platoon leader as the man flashed signals back up the line.  In less than a minute the signals came back and Cornelius read them along with his platoon leader.  We keep moving ahead, he thought, nodding his head in approval.  We know they know we’re coming, and can be prepared for it.

Men came up as the company shifted positions.  The platoon went to two squads forward and one back as a reserve.  Another platoon moved up beside them in the same formation, while the third platoon, First, stayed back as the company reserve.  Now that they knew there was no way they were going to sneak through doctrine called for them to meet the enemy on a wide front, where they wouldn’t have exposed flanks for the Cacas to take advantage of.  Hopefully.

Cornelius set the pace for the company at the head of his squad.  It wasn’t exactly a run, more like a quick walk, giving up some stealth or speed.  To Walborski’s ears they were not making much more noise than before, but to the sensors it might have sounded like a stampede.  He looked up to the canopy covering the sky every fifteen seconds or so, wondering if kinetic rounds would come down from above to wipe them off the face of the planet.

Despite the Cacas being in place and covered, the Rangers spotted them first and went to ground.  Cornelius dropped behind a tree, being careful that there was nothing in that spot that might make him regret his choice.  He looked around the tree and spotted the Caca he had seen, bringing his rifle around and taking aim, but not firing until he got the signal.  He placed his scope crosshairs on the face of the creature and froze in his stance.

A shot rang out, this one without any kind of noise suppression.  It was the sound of a chemically fired rifle, unlike any the enemy would have, and the agreed signal.  Cornelius pulled his own trigger and his rifle bucked into his shoulder, making a slight phutting noise as it sent the bullet at the enemy’s unprotected face.  There was a splash of red as the bullet went through the flesh and bone of the enemy, and the creature dropped its own weapon and sagged to the ground.

The Sergeant could barely hear the other rifles firing.  But he could definitely hear the return fire, as hypersonic pellets tore through vegetation and particle beams ripped with their buzzing sound through everything that stood in their way.

One of those beams hit the tree Walborski was sheltering behind, punching through two meters above the ground.  The trunk exploded down to the meter above ground mark, sending splinters in all directions.  Hot sap fell on the Ranger, and he flinched as one glob landed on his cheek and burned deep.  He had no thought for that inconvenience as the tree started on its way down.  It wasn’t falling his way, which didn’t mean he wouldn’t get hit by the damned big thing when it fell and bounced.

Cornelius was on his feet in an instant, running for another big tree and cover, firing his rifle from the hip and letting off a grenade from the lower barrel.  The particle beam fired again, swinging toward him, but dying before it could reach his position.  He wasn’t sure if one of his shots had hit the gunner, or someone elses, but he did know that he had escaped sure death at that moment.  Then he was backing behind another tree and getting into firing position.

He caught movement out of his eye, and turned for an instant to see two Rangers on the move.  One fell back, something exploding on his chest, while the other one slid down behind a large log.  That man grabbed a grenade, primed it, and threw it over the log to land thirty meters into the jungle.  It exploded in a spray of dirt and leaves, and the Ranger crawled to the edge of the log and started to fire around it.

“Move out,” yelled Cornelius to his own men, getting up and sprinting for another tree twenty meters ahead.  He landed hard on his chest and started to shoot, while the rest of his men came up under his covering fire.

Weapons grenades were now going off all over the area.  He could tell from their pops whose they were, and both sides were letting loose with everything they had.  The cries of dying and injured were even louder than the grenades.  Even as disciplined as the Rangers were, it was hard to not yell out when taking a serious or mortal wound.  The Cacas weren’t as disciplined, and they screamed like children, or roared like beasts when they were hit.

Cornelius moved forward, his rifle to his shoulder, looking for a target.  He spotted a pair of Cacas lying in prone positions, firing at some other Rangers, and he knew he had pushed through their first line.  He put a pair of quick shots into the back of one of the armored warriors.  The minishape charges burst through, and the Caca jerked as the metal flechets ripped into his spine.  The other Caca started to turn over, bringing his rifle around with him.  Cornelius double tapped him through the helmet before he could complete the motion.

“We’re through the front of their line,” said Specialist Murphy, one of Walborski’s grenadiers.

Two more men came up with him, and Cornelius wondered where the others were.  He was too much of a realist to think that his squad hadn’t taken casualties, but he could always hope.

“We’re going to work to the right and roll them up,” said Cornelius, looking at his three men just as a fourth came running up.  “Hashimoto, you watch our right flank in case they start bringing up reinforcements.  I don’t want us being hit in the flank.”

The Japanese descended man nodded, and Cornelius got them arranged the way he wanted, with Murphy close enough to control the grenadier’s fire.  He waved his hand forward and they started off.

This was really a fight for heavily armored infantry.  Despite the effectiveness of the Rangers’ chemically powered weapons, the Cacas had the firepower advantage.  And chemically powered meant heavier rounds, meaning they carried less ammo than they would have with mag weapons.  Rangers were better suited to hit and run, the battle of the ambush.  But they were here, as was the fight and the target ahead.  So they stuck it in and fought through the resistance.

They moved up the line, killing the enemy before they had a chance to react, freeing up the Rangers that were pinned down to get up and come forward.   Some of those men joined the attack while others continued to move forward, hoping to catch any coming reinforcements before they were prepared to fight.

“Dammit,” yelled Cornelius as they came to a group of Cacas that were not facing away from them, at least not all of them.  The heavy particle beam they had mounted on a tripod fired right into Murphy, and a good portion of the man went up in vapor while some of his ammunition exploded from the heat, throwing the remains to the side.  Walborski hit the ground as the beam passed overhead, swinging into another of his men.

The Sergeant screamed in rage as he fired his rifle launcher at the weapon.  The round struck the barrel of the gun and it died.  The other two Cacas facing his way starting trying to hit him with rifle fire, and he crawled back into a small hollow as his testicles tried to climb up into his body.  He was really scared, he realized with some shock, then wondered why he would think he wouldn’t be in this kind of a firefight.  Everything before this had been easy, with the exception of the ambush they had set off, and even that only lasted for about a minute.  Here they had already been fighting over five minutes.  And he had almost been killed several times, while seeing several men he knew cut down.

Cornelius pulled another grenade off his webbing, armed it, and threw it in a looping overhand toss toward where he thought the Cacas were who had taken him under fire.  The grenade went off and he popped up from the hollow, bringing his rifle to his shoulder and tracking onto the Cacas.  All three were on the ground, upper hands over their ears.  Two were badly injured, with blood rolling down their faces.  Cornelius put rounds through those faces and added to their injury, sending them into the permanent darkness of death.  Or maybe they have an afterlife to go to, he thought as he shot the one that wasn’t as seriously injured.  Unless it’s a fairy tale their priests tell them, like ours.

The fighting went on for what seemed like hours, but was only fifteen minutes on the Sergeant’s internal clock.  Still, it was enough time to lose half the company as killed in action, while there were a score more wounded.  The Caca body count went over two hundred, though the aliens had been the better armed.

The Rangers took a moment to take what they needed off the bodies of their dead, mostly ammunition, and say quick goodbyes before moving on.  The mission came first, always the mission above all.  Their overall mission was to disrupt the Caca command, and to kill as many of the Cacas as possible.  Secondary to that was to break the spirits of the Ca’cadasan warriors that were on the planet, the psychological aspect of the mission.  And by breaking the spirits of these warriors they could hurt the confidence of all of the aliens.

Walborski thought about this on the two kilometers they covered to the next line of resistance, this one a hasty defense line of reserves moved quickly into place.  It was another hard fight, costing the Rangers a dozen more troopers, but the Cacas hadn’t gotten set before they were hit, and suffered a total loss of that platoon.

They were now about two kilometers from the range of their special weapons.  Theoretically at least.  They still needed a line of sight to launch from, as just firing into the jungle and hoping they didn’t hit a tree was kind of out of the realm of possibility.  There was a nice hill with a rocky knob three kilometers from the Rangers, and the planners had thought that would be the perfect launch point.

All of the planning was rendered moot when the company was hit unexpectedly from the jungle, from behind and the flank simultaneously.  The creatures they knew as Hunters came running out of the thick vegetation, loping on all fours and attacking with tooth and claw.  When the Rangers knew that they were there the creatures changed their stances and came in as bipeds, with weapons in hand.  And they carried high tech weapons, particle beams and lasers, unlike the Rangers not self-restricted to equipment that didn’t give off electronic emissions.

Walborski was again at the head of the company when it was hit, and found himself outside the action for a moment.  That gave him a chance to see what was happening and get himself into position to hit the aliens from the rear.  He found that despite their survival suits and impact armor the minishapes blew through to their bodies just fine, though the creatures didn’t go down easy.  It took nine hits to kill two of them, and that left the Sergeant wondering how the rest of the Rangers were doing.

Cornelius was drawing a bead on a third Hunter when something slammed into him from the side, hard.  He felt a stab of pain from his left thigh and knew he had been hurt.  Cornelius tried to swing his rifle around and butt stroke the thing that was attacking him, and felt a rip through his left bicep muscle for his trouble.  Another paw knocked the rifle out of his hand, and the Ranger felt himself going down.

The Ranger flashed into overdrive state, willing the release of all of his adrenaline stores as his muscles went into double their normal rate of ATP use.  He hit the Hunter in the snout with his left elbow, while ripping his blade out with his right hand.  Twisting on the way down to his back he shoved the Wakizashi into the abdomen of the creature and pulled it up.  Landing on his back he was looking up at the snarling teeth of the Hunter.  It seemed to be moving in slow motion to his overdriven body.  He brought his left arm up under the creature’s jaw and pushed up, at the same time twisting the blade into its guts and pulling out with a draw cut.  The Hunter went slack, and Walborski shoved the creature off him and jumped back to his feet, just in time to take the charge of a second enemy.

He brought his sword up, then down onto the head of the creature as it hit him in the chest.  His blade cut into the skull at the same time as both paws of the Hunter sliced into his torso.  Cornelius felt his feet tottering on the edge of the drop he was backed up against.  The Hunter fell dead at his feet, its claws ripping into his flesh as they were pulled out of him.  Cornelius struggled to stay on his feet.  His people needed him.  He couldn’t let himself be taken out of the fight.

Then the combination of his wounds and the come down from his overdrive took the strength out of him, and he couldn’t fight the fall he was teetering on.  His feet slipped out from under him and he fell down the long slope, rolling over and over on the way down.  He hit a tree trunk at the bottom, more pain, this time in his ribs and shoulder.  Followed by complete blackness, and he knew no more.

Chapter Twenty-two

When you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.  Winston Churchill.

AZURE.  MAY 21ST- 24TH, 1001.

Rebecca hadn’t wanted to leave the intact house, not really.  But several aircars had flown over the village two days after she had arrived, and she had been spooked by the sight of those vehicles.  As far as she knew the only things still in the air were owned by the aliens.  There might still be human ground troops in the jungles, something she was not sure of, but the air and the space above it belonged to the Cacas.

She wandered through the jungle, wondering where she wanted to go.  Her map showed some more villages.  It didn’t show what she really wanted, frontier cabins or hunting camps that would be under the canopy.  Those might be on some of the high tech electronic maps that tapped into the planetary database, when there was such a thing.  But the cheap plastic thing she had, though detailed to topography, did not.

After a day of just wandering she decided to have a try at the village that she and Benjamin had first sheltered at.  That thought brought a pain to her chest, remembering how her brother had died at that place.  It was the only habitation she could think of where the enemy had been to recently, which in her mind meant it was more unlikely to be visited again, since the enemy had to know it was cleared.

It took her a couple of days going north to again pass the small valley which housed the enemy base.  She wasn’t sure if it was still there, but she wasn’t about to take any chances.  Because of that she worked her way a day to the west, then back north, depending on her inertial navigation device to keep her aware of her location.

At one point, when she was across from the northern end of the valley, she heard what sounded like fighting in the distance.  Climbing to the top of the hill the sound increased, the faint pops of explosions.  Though she stood there for twenty minutes, she couldn’t see anything, and the sounds faded away minutes after she arrived at the top.  Fighting meant humans, since the Cacas wouldn’t be fighting themselves.  She thought for a moment about heading that way, then dismissed the idea.  She didn’t know who those humans were.  They might be deserters like the ones at the refuge, people who had just haplessly wandered into trouble.  And they might be getting their asses kicked, a good chance considering what was in that valley.

Rebecca climbed back down the hill and continued north, walking around a couple of large stands of plantimals on the way.  She was finding walking through the jungle becoming easier and easier.  Her eyes automatically picked out the threats along the way, and she moved around them quickly and quietly.  She was also sure that there was not much of a Caca presence in this part of the jungle, or their new allies.  The combat had to have drawn most of them away.

Later she would realize that her arrogance had led her astray.  Something that looked like a hell hound came running out of the jungle in a charge.  She knew it was one of the new aliens from the survival suit on its body, as well as the bigger brain case.  The creature would have had her if not for the strangle vine that came up from the ground and wrapped around one of the alien’s rear legs.

Strangle vines were not plantimals.  They were definite members of the vegetable kingdom of the planet.  And the plants they were attached to, fertilizer trees, were not strictly carnivorous.  What they were was an opportunistic form of vegetation that caught small animals and dragged their bodies to the boles of their roots, where the rotting creature provided fertilizer.  The creature it had captured was a little too big for it, something the nonsentient plant could not help.  It simply attacked things that caused the ground to shake near its vines.

The alien creature ripped at the vine with a front paw, its claws slicing through the vine in four close locations.  The part still attached to the tree fell to the ground and slithered away, while that which held the leg of the creature unwrapped and dropped limply to the jungle floor.  The creature looked back up at Rebecca, its mouth open in a snarl as it crouched down to spring at the frightened child.

Rebecca fired the particle beam directly into that snarl.  The beam of fast moving protons incinerated the head in an instant, and the rest of the creature dropped with twitching nerves to the ground.  She looked around, wondering if the creature had company, hoping that it didn’t.  The vine had given her a chance against this one.  She wasn’t sure she could handle two or more of them.

As soon as the thought passed through her mind she was on her way, taking off in a jog, her eyes searching for any threat.  What she saw was a pit of darkness in the forest.  Running over she saw that it was a small cave in a rock formation.  Voices came from behind, and without hesitation she dropped to the ground and crawled into the opening, shivering at the thought of what might lair in the cave.  Nothing attacked her, and she slid backwards until she was a meter in, her pistol aimed toward the light of the opening.

The voices came closer, sounding like something growling and spitting, an animal sound that she had heard before.  They were snuffling around the entrance to the cave, sniffing, taking up her scent.  The entrance went dark for a moment, then the light came back.

They’re not animals, she thought.  They have weapons, and I’m a helpless target here.  The light was blocked again, and Rebecca knew she had to do something.  She aimed and fired before the creature could do anything.  The particle beam struck the rock at the top of the cave, and she brought it down into the creature.

The smell of burning flesh and fur flooded the cavern, and her skin burned from the steam that filled the air.  She knew that the cavern was now blocked, at least for the moment, and only for the moment.  The rest of the creatures would get their dead companion out of the way in an instant, and she was sure they wouldn’t line themselves up for another shot.  An explosive device down the tunnel might be their next option.

Rebecca started scrambling backwards frantically, hoping that she would come to some kind of bend or expansion that would allow her to get under cover before a grenade came at her.   The sounds at the dark mouth of the small cave were those made by something trying to pull the body out of the way.  Then the opening was again a source of light, and Rebecca knew the body had been removed.  She fired another shot from her pistol, then moved further back.

Panic gripped her as her legs came out into open space.  She couldn’t tell what it was, a short drop in the cave floor or the opening to a much larger cavern.  She knew it didn’t have to be a long drop to hurt her on this heavy gravity planet.  One of her hands gripped a hold on the side of the cave to keep her from going any further.  Her heart was pounding in her chest as she thought of her options, getting shredded in the cave or possibly falling to her death.  The voices outside rose in volume.  She didn’t know what they were saying, but she was sure that it concerned her and wasn’t an inquiry into her health.

A shadow fell across the openning, and she fired her pistol again.  This time the recoil of the particle beam pushed her back, and she dropped the pistol to try and get another handhold on the rock.  All she succeeded in doing was dropping the pistol.   She couldn’t stop the slide, and soon only her upper chest was still supported on the floor while her legs kicked in the open air.  She missed the grab, the hot pistol slid into her, and the next thing she knew she was out in the air falling, a short scream bursting involuntarily from her lungs.

*     *     *

Cornelius came back to awareness with the sound of something moving behind him.  He opened his eyes, and found that he was lying at the bottom of the hollow he had fallen into.  He did a quick check of his aches and pains and didn’t think there was anything broken.  That was the good news.  The bad news was still the movement behind him, from the sound of it getting closer, and on this planet that was never a good sign.

At first he wanted to pull his sword, then remembered that it had been in his hand when he fell.  There was no Wakizashi in sight, so he had to think he had dropped it along the way.  With that realization the Sergeant moved his hand slowly to the hilt of his combat knife, sheathed on his belt.  The scent of caustic acid came to his nostrils, something he had smelled before.  Plantimals, was his thought as a shudder ran up his spine.  Some species of the predatory creatures used an injectable acidic poison on the spines of their tentacles.  His suit would protect his body, but not his face, back of head, or hands, as he didn’t have his gloves on.  His system and nanites could withstand some of the poison, but an overload would start his proteins digesting so the creature could suck up his nutrients through its tentacles.

Cornelius rolled forward and over, away from the plantimal, coming to a stop facing it with his knife in his hand.  The blade was made of the same material as his longer sword, and boasted the same kind of edge.  He was ready to attack the questing tentacle with the knife, then get his ass out of here.

What met his eyes was not a single plantimal, but a score of the creatures, all creeping along the ground at him.  Five were within reach, a dozen tentacles each waving in the air.  Cornelius sucked in a breath, knowing that he was totally screwed.

A tentacle whipped in, and Cornelius intercepted it with his knife, slicing easily through the tough limb.  It sprayed fluid from the severed tip, and some hit Walborski in the face with a burning sensation.  He covered his eyes, knowing that getting that stuff in them would blind him, and then he really wouldn’t have a chance.  He started pulling and pushing himself away from the creatures at the same time.

A tentacle hit him on the shoulder, bouncing from the hardening impact armor.  Two more poked into his chest with the same result, while more of them struck his right leg. One wrapped around his leg and jerked.  Another wrapped, and the pair started to pull him toward the advancing plantimals.

The Sergeant flipped the knife to his left hand and sliced at the two that had him by the leg,  while grabbing at an exposed root behind him and pulling himself back.  The knife sliced through the two tentacles, adding more spurting fluid to the air.  As Cornelius cut through the last tentacle grabbing at his leg another wrapped around his knife arm.  He pulled at the tentacle, his only accomplishment fighting his own attempt to pull himself away.

A loud growl rumbled from behind Cornelius.  A paw came over him and planted on the ground near his head.  He looked up to see the underside of a large blue furred animal standing over him.  Another paw came into view, striking at the tentacle that held his arm, sharp claws severing the limb.

The beast roared again, then stepped back out of sight.  Jaws closed on Cornelius’s arm and clamped down with enough force to cut into his arm, if not for the impact armor of the survival suit.  He was jerked back as the carnivore tried to claim him for its meal against the plantimals.  Cornelius, for all his augmented strength, felt like a child in the grip of the half ton creature.

This thing is sure to kill me, he thought, planning how he was going to strike.  He gripped the knife tightly in his hand, the member shaking with tension.  He knew he had to strike quick and true or this thing would kill him.  The Sergeant twisted around, catching a look at the face of the creature that had gripped his other arm.  The head was as big as a large bear’s, with a much wider maw.  Two ice blue eyes glared at him.  That was all the time he had for a look.  The knife came down just where he wanted it to.  The point hit at the crown of the skull, and the ultra-sharp blade sliced through fur, muscle and bone like they were thin cardboard.  If Cornelius was right on his guess about anatomy it should have penetrated into the brain of the creature.  In a terrestrial animal it would have sliced into the Corpus Callosum.  But he sure didn’t know Azure neuroanatomy.

The animal roared and reared back, opening its jaws.   Cornelius held onto the hilt of the knife for dear life.   A normal blade would have been ripped from his grip regardless.  The double edged monomolecular blade tore free, cutting its way out through the face of the creature in a spray of blue blood.

The animal swatted at Cornelius with a claw filled paw.  Cornelius caught the paw on his left forearm, the claws failing to penetrate his suit, but still rocking him with its force.  He swung his knife at the animal’s throat, slicing in and through the windpipe that was a separate structure from the digestive canal.  The roar turned into a gurgle, and the carnivore stumbled forward.  A pair of plantimal tentacles came in over Cornelius and went for the throat gash, attracted by the scent of native blood. They must have injected poison into the creature’s bloodstream, as it collapsed immediately with quivering muscles onto the ground.

Cornelius tried to get out from under that half ton of flesh and bone, rolling away.  He almost made it, almost.  It came down on his legs and trapped him in the prison of its flesh.  The plantimals began to attack the dead or dying beast, sinking their tentacles into its flesh while pulling themselves closer.

Something stung Cornelius in the leg, where he knew there was a cut in his suit from the claws of the Hunters he had fought earlier.  The sting turned into a flash of agony, and he knew he had been penetrated and injected with the caustic poison of the plantimals.  His head swam as the poison spread through his body, and he felt his strength leaving him.

No fucking way, he thought, grabbing at the body of the creature above him and pushing, trying to pull his lower body out from under it at the same time.  It seemed hopeless, no matter how much he tried he could only pull himself out a centimeter at a time.  I won’t give up, he thought, picturing Devera in his mind, then Katlyn.  Neither of them would have wanted him to quit.  He gathered his courage and his strength and pushed with his arms while he pulled his legs.  He started to slide out, until the plantimal tentacle penetrating his leg pulled back.  With a grunt he pushed harder.  Something tore in his leg muscle, and through the pain he pulled harder, until with a supreme effort he pulled himself out from under the animal.

Cornelius lay there for a moment, catching his breath, then crawled a couple of meters away from the carnivore and the feasting plantimals.  He looked down at his injured leg, seeing the discoloration of his flesh through the slices made by the Hunter’s claws.  The smell of the acid reached his nose, and he almost coughed from the caustic odor working its way into his lungs.

Got to get out of here, he thought, seeing the plantimals continue to scramble over the animal, though some tentacles were definitely questing his way.  They hadn’t given up on him yet.  He crawled a little farther, then stopped to treat his wound, his head still spinning from the poison.

Cornelius reached into his belt medical kit and pulled out a small syringe.  He injected the contents into the exposed flesh of his leg, then pulled out a small sprayer and sprayed a mist over the skin.  He closed his eyes for a moment, letting the combination of nanites and drugs go to work.  His head started to clear as they added their attack on the poison to what was already in his system.  Shaking his head he opened his eyes and took another glance at the slowly advancing plantimals, then staggered to his feet and wandered away.

Ten meters farther he saw something metallic laying on the ground.  He almost whooped with joy as he saw it was his sword, and he picked up the blade and held it out while returning the knife to its sheath.  He looked along the way but couldn’t spot his rifle, and was pretty sure it lay on the side of the hill, or up near the top where he had fallen.  He was not about to go back up there at this time.  The enemy might still be up there, and he wasn’t sure any of his side was still around.

Instead he walked away from his personal battle against the wildlife of the planet, stumbling every couple of steps from fatigue and the poison in his system that was still being flushed out.  After walking a hundred meters he found a place where he could cover and rest for a little while, a small depression with roots overhead.  He checked for threats, then backed into the hole and let himself relax, at least his body, while keeping his mind and senses alert.  About a half an hour later he had noticed the effects of the poison were gone, and a look at his leg showed that the punctures and slashes had mostly healed.

Thinking about his next move he determined that staying in this area resting was not an option.  There was still a mission to perform.  If any of the company survived he needed to help them.  If not, then it was up to him.  He was only one man, he knew that.  But one man in the right place had been able to perform miracles in the past.

To perform the mission he needed something other than his sword.  As formidable as it was, it was not want he wanted to take into a firefight.  With that in mind he started climbing back up the hill from the hollow, his ears straining to catch any sound.  He heard nothing, not even the sounds of the normal wildlife that would be expected.  He climbed at a slow rate, both to minimize his own noise and to make sure he missed nothing that might be a threat.

At the top of the hill he found some cover and crouched, again listening for any signs that something was up here.  After five minutes he decided there was nothing here, unless the Hunters were waiting in ambush for him, which he thought unlikely.

Still walking cautiously he moved among the dead.  He recognized many of them.  Others were a total wash, their identifying features or uniform tags obliterated by weapons’ fire.  The worst were those hit by particle beams, the fast moving protons that hit with stunning kinetic energy that converted to biomass destroying heat.

Not having time for a complete search and body count, he couldn’t find every body.  But his preliminary count seemed to jive with his belief that the company was a total loss.  Weapons there were aplenty, and he soon had a working rifle and plenty of ammo, as well as a half dozen grenades.  What he didn’t have was one of the special weapons he needed to take out the target.  He found one of the men who had been equipped with a launcher, but the weapon and the package the special came in were both gone.  In fact, he couldn’t find a launcher or a weapon in the area.

Cornelius thought about that for a moment.  Without a warhead he was not likely to be successful on the mission. If he headed back to base no one would question his giving up on the mission.  But dammit, they all died in vain if I don’t finish this.  And I would die for no reason if I tried it.

Finally making up his mind he moved back down the hill to the hollow, determined to make it back to the base to at least let them know what had happened.  There was still a line of sensors to penetrate, but one Ranger actually had a better chance of doing that than a large group.  And if he stayed low and in the shadows he increased his chances of getting back.

Everything changed after he had walked a hundred meters of the hollow.   He came across the body of a Ranger, with several holes in his suit showing how he was killed, by hypervelocity rounds fired by a heavy mag rifle.  The shape pointing up from over his shoulder had Cornelius shaking with excitement.  He glanced at the name tag and saw that this man was not a designated rocket launcher gunner.  But there it was.  Cornelius turned him carefully over and his breath caught in his throat and he saw that it was not just a rocket launcher on the man’s back.  There was also the insulated cylinder like those used to carry special munitions.

It can’t be, thought Cornelius, popping open the container for a second and seeing the intact munition.  I can still complete the mission, damned if I can’t.  With that thought came the ambivalent feeling of conflicting emotions.  He could complete the mission, on the outside chance that he could penetrate the enemy defenses and get to a launch point.  In doing so he would reduce his chances of getting out of here and back to the woman he loved.   Duty was a higher calling than his own life though, and he had no doubt that he would try to complete the mission.

Cornelius unstrapped the launcher and the munition’s tube from the body and placed them on his own, then started walking down the hollow, plotting what path he would take to the target.

Chapter Twenty-three

The surest way to prevent war is not to fear it.  John Randolph.

AZURE.  MAY 26TH, 1001.

Even a fairly short fall on a heavy gravity planet like Azure could cause great harm.  One longer than short could result in death.  All this went through Rebecca’s mind as she fell, her arms flailing in the air.  She fell at almost fifteen meters per second per second.  That meant she fell a little more than a second.

The next thing she knew water was coming up over her head, and she couldn’t close her mouth or stop the scream fast enough to keep from taking a mouthful of liquid into her lungs.  She sputtered and coughed, then forced her mouth closed before she could pull more liquid in.

The water was extremely cold, obviously sourced from either a spring or ice, and there was a current.  She fought against it while trying to get her bearings.  Striking out for the surface, she broke through just before her lungs forced her to take a breath.  She sucked in air and coughed up water, then looked around to see if there was any kind of shore.

I guess I can forget about getting that pistol back, she thought, only darkness around her.  A boom sounded from above, one of the alien grenades that would have shredded her if she hadn’t had fallen.  Something else dropped into the water twenty meters from her, and she started swimming away from it as fast as she could.  The explosion was muffled by the water, and she thought it must have dropped fairly deep into the underground stream.

Rebecca floated for a moment, considering her options.  She could try to swim against the current, or she could strike out perpendicular to the current and hope there was a shore.  From that point she could try and find a way out.  Or she could go with the current, hoping that this stream would eventually break the surface.  That could happen soon, or much later, or possibly not at all.

Deciding that the best choice was to go with the flow, she spread out into a back floating position, letting the current pull her along.  She was not sure where she was going, but it had to be better than back there with those aliens who wanted to kill her.  To kill all humans.

The current was not all that fast, Rebecca estimated three to four kilometers an hour.  If she could look at her inertial navigation system she might be able to get a better handle on her actual speed.  Since she couldn’t do that, she at least could hope it would let her know where she was when she got out of this underground river.  Her internal implant clock of course still worked, and she could tell how long she had been floating.

After a little over three hours she was starting to feel the effects of hyperthermia, despite her survival suit.  The shivers started at first on a small scale, then progressed until her whole body was shaking.  Her nanites were boosting her metabolism, helping to stave off the effects, but mostly submerged in almost freezing water there was no way her body could fight it forever.

A little later, when she was just about to give up hope, she saw some light ahead.  It was faint at first, just allowing her to see a few meters in the direction she was traveling.  It grew a little brighter a minute later, along with a slight rumbling sound.  And she noticed that the current was speeding up.

I’m about to find out how this thing comes to the surface, she thought as the rumbling grew louder.  And I don’t think I’m going to like the answer.

She could see that the current was getting stronger, the sign that the water was being forced through a smaller opening than the stream she was in.  The rumbling grew louder, and she was sure there was a waterfall in her near future.  She tried to remember if she had seen any in this general region, but the only ones she was familiar with were small.

She tried to delay being fired out into the open, struggling to stay up and maybe grab onto the wall over the opening.  The area was now lit up, not quite to the level of daylight, but enough to see.  The struggle ended quickly as the current pulled her under and out into the stream of water plunging from the opening.

Her vision was obscured by the water around her.  Still, twisting and turning within the waterfall, she caught glimpses of the sky and the jungle.  She really wasn’t ready when she struck the pool.  Her velocity and the stream of water above her pushed her down till she hit the bottom, a covering of small rounded rocks that had been eroded away from the action of the falls.  The water falling into the pool kept tumbling her along the bottom, and she started to get really scared that she might not make it to the surface.  Finally she had been tumbled far enough away that she was out of the fall, and she fought her way to the surface, sputtering as she broke out into the air.  She took in a deep breath, then another.  She wiped the water out of her eyes and turned, looking up at the cliff from which the falls erupted.  It was at least two hundred meters tall, and the falls came out of an opening a little over a hundred meters up.  Rainbows formed in the mist around the pool, which was about thirty meters across and continued on in a stream that flowed away into the jungle.

Rebecca looked around for about a minute, trying to decide which bank of the stream she wanted to end up on.  She caught movement out of the corner of her eye as she was turning to look at the opposite side.  Something big was sliding into the water, and turning quickly she caught a glimpse of a big head with an array of sharp teeth sticking out of the sides of the long muzzle.  It fell into the water with a splash, then started for her with a powerful swish of its tail.  It dove, then came up next to her with its mouth opened wide.  She had time for one scream before it grabbed her in those jaws.

*     *     *

Cornelius had been walking for several hours, covering as much distance as he could from the massacre.  He had the means to complete the mission on his back, but really wasn’t sure how he would be able to approach the enemy base.  As a single Ranger he wouldn’t have the option of fighting his way through if he was discovered.  His chances were better than average that he could sneak through.  Or maybe that was just wishful thinking, considering these Hunter things that were out here now.

He stopped for a moment and glanced at his map, then looked up and checked his area yet again.  The run in with the big carnivore was still spooking him.  Normally, when they moved as a unit, quiet as they were, carnivores, even when they stumbled up on them, tended to run.  They weren’t willing to take on a number of large animals with unknown capabilities.  But again, he was a single soldier, and therefore a target most of them would take on without a second thought.

This looks promising, he thought, tracing his finger along the map up into the mountains.  It would give him line of sight to the enemy base, though it was still out of effective range of the chemically powered rocket.  That was a mistake, he thought of the weapon.  If they had carried the kind of hyper-v rockets that regular units deployed for antitank and antiaircraft use he wouldn’t have had this problem.  Those things had maximum ranges of a hundred kilometers, and could cover that distance in less than a second.  As long as it was powered down it wouldn’t have been detected, and he could have powered it up in seconds before launching.  Instead, he had a weapon that required him to get within twelve kilometers of the target at maximum range.  It would go in low and slow as compared to a modern weapon, and he would only have the one shot.

So maybe I can get up in the mountains and then climb down over here, he thought, looking at a proposed route.  Then I will have to cover this jungle back to the plains.  He shook his head as he looked at that path.  It would be easier just to walk through the jungle on a straight path from here, but they were more likely to be watching that approach, if they were still looking for any intrusion after wiping out his company.  Always assume that the enemy is watching, he thought, remembering the lesson they had pounded into him in Ranger school.

In fact, he thought with a start, there were eyes on him right now.  Cornelius folded his map and put it back into its pouch, trying to move slowly and not give his knowledge of being observed away.  Getting up from his crouch he started to move, keeping his rifle at the ready.

He had only taken a dozen steps when something jumped out of the jungle ahead of him.  At first he thought it one of the aliens, then breathed out as he saw it was a hell hound.  Of course one meant there were others, maybe more than he could handle at once.  So he did the thing he was sure would discomfit them the most and ran at the creature at full speed, yelling at the top of his lungs.

The hell hound yelped and leapt out of the way, and Cornelius was past it in a moment.  The yelps and barks of other creatures sounded from the jungle, the pack sounding off its displeasure and coming together to attack the prey that was trying to get out of its trap.

Cornelius ran flat out, keeping his eyes peeled for any threats that might get in his way.  Unfortunately, he couldn’t watch everything at the same time, and he missed the vine that rose up from the ground and caught at a leg, sending him sprawling ahead.  He landed and rolled back to his feet, the vine still wrapped around his leg and pulling.  His first thought was that a plantimal had attacked him, but his nose didn’t catch the scent of the creatures.

A trio of hell hounds came crouching in, baring their teeth and growling.  Another vine rose up from the ground, but the hell hound it targeted avoided it with ease, and then tore into it with its teeth.  With that it turned its attention back to its future meal.

Cornelius pulled his long blade from its sheath and sliced through the tentacle.  There was no splash of caustic liquid like from a plantimal, and he guessed it was vegetation, though from what plant it sprouted from he had no idea.  The first of the hell hounds leapt in, hoping to take advantage of his inattention.  He saw it coming and swung his blade into the chest of the creature.

It gave a short yelp that was interrupted as the blade reached its lungs.  Walborski slanted the sword up and it ripped out of the creature’s back, cutting it into two unequal pieces.  The head and chest flew over his head while the rest of the body fell at his feet.  There was blue tinted blood everywhere, and the smell, unlike terrestrial fluid, was almost stomach turning.

Cornelius jumped back to his feet, yelling and waving his Wakizashi.  Another beast appeared, backing up the two that were already facing him, and he thought he heard another moving through the brush at his side.  He saw the plan, and his respect for the creatures grew.  Three were keeping his attention on them, while one set up for the attack.  One of them hadn’t followed the instinctual plan, and had been selected out of the gene pool.  Of course, if they kill and eat me they might die, and then the entire pack would probably die out.  For some reason that thought did not bring any comfort to him.

Suddenly the ears of the beasts perked up and they raised their muzzles, sniffing the air, whimpering.  The one in the brush jumped out and landed among his pack mates, growling.  It was the largest of the pack, the leader, and it obviously had decided that the pack needed to be elsewhere.  With a last growl it took off into the jungle, the other three at its heels.

Something’s coming this way, and the boys wanted nothing to do with it.  Which means I need to get my ass moving as well.

Cornelius took a quick look, then ran in the general direction the hell hounds had taken off in, sure that they would have determined the direction the threat was coming from.  He jogged thirty meters into the jungle and crouched down behind a large tree.

Seconds after he stopped he heard harsh voices coming from the place he had just occupied. He didn’t understand the language, but the voices were familiar enough.  Hunters.  He didn’t think he had left anything behind that would have told them he was there.  Except a big flippen hell hound body that has obviously been cut in two by a modern blade.  He looked down at his suit and cringed internally at the blood all over his body.  He might not give off much scent, but the damned blood sure would.

Waiting around was not a good idea, so he started moving, his eyes constantly searching for threats.  He wanted to just run as fast as he could away from this area.  It was a sure thing the Hunters wouldn’t move after him at full speed.  They would be tracking by scent, and looking for native threats themselves.  But running full speed would probably run him into something he didn’t want to bump into.  So he forced himself to go at a walk, making sure his feet fell on the ground cover that wouldn’t leave a trace.

His ears picked up the sound of running water, and he headed that way, knowing one of the best ways to throw a scent tracker off his trail.  He couldn’t hear pursuit, but he was sure it was there.  And then suddenly so was the stream, a fairly deep pool that led into a more shallow wider rush over rocks.

He jumped into the pool.  His suit would repel most substances.  In fact, most of the blood had already rolled off the face of the survival suit.  A dunking in water removed what was left.  He came back to a stand and walked into the shallow area.  Which way to go? he thought, looking up and down the stream.  Upstream was the choice, as he thought the enemy would guess he took the easy route.  He ran up the knee depth water, trading the noise for the chance of getting out of sight before the Hunters got to the stream.

The Sergeant walked a couple of kilometers up the stream.  The seal of his suit was pretty good, and the only water that reached the inside of his boots was what had come through the tears in the garment.  It still sloshed around down there, but it was a comfortable wet, not cold at all.  He found a bank that was mostly rock, something that wouldn’t show his passage very well as the spray from the stream kept the stone wet.

Cornelius continued up the stream for five kilometers.  The stream narrowed and got deeper, and the sound of falling water came from ahead.  Soon he could see a hundred meter tall column of water falling down a two hundred meter tall cliff.  There were multiple rainbows in the air, formed by the sunlight shining through the mist rising from the falls.  Cornelius stopped for a moment, looking up at the beautiful sight.  The colors were a little off from his perspective, the result of different sunlight penetrating a slightly different atmosphere.

Something caught his ear, a sound that penetrated the roar of the falls.  It took him a second to recognize the sound of a scream, cut off suddenly.  He ran forward, not sure what he was doing.  His primary task was to get away from those who might be after him, while at the same time getting within firing range of his target.  He still continued ahead, coming through the foliage to see the deep pool that the falls were dropping into.

At first he only saw the large creature in the center of the pool.  Then it rolled over and he saw the human form it held in its jaws.  Those jaws were clamped down on the chest of the human, and he didn’t see how the person could survive.

It's fucking huge, he thought, trying to take in the scale of the river carnivore.  Its blue tinted fur glistened in the sunlight, making him think it was mammalian, not a reptile.  Its large, flat tail slapped the water, an indication that it was an aquatic creature.

It went under, then came back up, its victim still struggling in its mouth.  Damn, it’s still alive, he thought watching that human struggle.  Now he noticed that the human had a military class survival suit on, something that might have allowed him or her to survive the attack, so far.  That made up his mind.  Mission or no, he couldn’t stand here and watch another human being killed and eaten by that carnivore.

He raised his rifle to his shoulder, then lowered it as the creature kept rolling in the water.  There was too much chance of hitting the human.  So he dropped his rifle on its strap and started forward, drawing his long blade.  It almost struck him as funny on the run.  He was a soldier in a technologically advanced army, and here he was charging forward with a sword in his hand.  In fact, he had recently been using blade weapons much more than his firearms.

Hitting the water he dove forward.  Unfortunately, the missile tube on his back and the rifle hanging from his strap added water resistance, and he didn’t knife forward like he had planned.  It took a couple of powerful kicks and some arm motions to get to the creature.  He dove down and came to the animal from underneath, jabbing the Wakizashi up into its body and slicing away.

The animal went into a frenzy, releasing its victim and trying to twist around to get at its attacker.  Cornelius pulled his blade free and thrust it in again.  The water around him was cloudy with the blue blood of the animal, but the Ranger could tell he had yet to strike a killing blow.  He pushed it in again and again, while the jaws of the beast closed around his leg.  As a last resort he  turned and brought the sword down on the head of the creature, cutting into the area around its left eye and partially blinding it.

The creature released him, and he brought the blade up into the soft area underneath the lower jaw.  The blade sank deep into the animal’s head, going through its mouth and into its brain.  The creature spasmed in its death throes, tossing Cornelius away like a child.  He kept the grip on his sword and held on as it ripped out of the animal.

Cornelius came to the surface sputtering.  He had swallowed some bloody water during the battle, and now he coughed it up.  The animal floated belly up near him, and at first he couldn’t see the person he had committed himself to rescuing.  Then he spotted the human, sitting on the shore looking at him with a horrified expression on, her?, face.

“Thank you,” said the person, standing up as he waded ashore.  “I thought that thing had me.”

Walborski found himself looking at a child, her long black hair, soaked with water, flowing down her back.  She looked up at him with wide blue eyes.  He thought she must be between eleven and fourteen, and he wondered how someone her age had gotten out here in the jungle.

He looked back at the beast, floating with the current down the stream, and knew they couldn’t stay here.  “We need to go,” he said when she started to open her mouth to say something.  “You can tell me your life story when we’re safe.”

She nodded, and he led her off into the jungle, wondering what he was going to do with her.  She would slow him down, and mission came first.  But how could he abandon a child out here in this killing jungle?

*     *     *

“You are sure that you got all of them?” asked the General, looking down at the creature before him.

“We cannot be completely sure,” said the Prime Hunt Leader, giving a head shake of negation.  “As far as we know we got all of them, and we got their heavy weapons.  But there may be one or two still wandering through the jungle.”

The General looked at the rocket launcher and the chemically fueled warhead that came with it.  His experts had opened one of the warheads, and had estimated that it was a fusion device with a ten megaton yield.  Enough of a warhead to destroy the bunker with a direct hit, and powerful enough to gut all of the structures out on the prairie.

“Why could you not find the one or two you think might have gotten away?” he asked the Maurid.

The creature gave another head shake of negation, a bit of body language they had picked up from their masters.  “I did not say I think some got away.  I said that some may have gotten away, since these humans are so hard to track.  They give off almost no scent, and they move very well through the jungle.  Almost as well as we do.”

“So you don’t think any got away, but you can’t guarantee it?  Is that what you’re saying?”

“That is exactly what I am saying, General,” said the Prime Hunt Leader, his cold predator eyes locking with those of the larger Cacada.

“Then get out there and make sure that these men you are not sure are out there do not get closer to my headquarters.  Is that understood?”

The creature gave a head nod of acceptance, then turned and dropped to all fours, walking out of the office.  The General stood there for a moment, staring at where the Maurid had just stood.  He really didn’t understand the creatures.  He wasn’t sure anyone of his species did.  They made useful if maddening servants, and that was all.

With that thought he returned to his desk and took a seat, looking over the reports on his flat screen.  Human civilians were almost gone from this world, though they kept bringing in soldiers to take a toll on his forces.  And until we find that wormhole, they will continue to do so.  But where is it?

Chapter Twenty-four

Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war.  Donald Trump.

AZURE. MAY 26TH - 27th, 1001.

Rebecca was still very surprised to be alive.  She saw no way out of that death grip the Crocomycus had placed her in.  It was only a matter of time, and very little at that, before she was pulled under for the last time and she drowned, allowing the creature to eat her at its leisure.  Not that it would have enjoyed the meal.  She would have at least caused digestive problems.  At most she would have poisoned the creature, and she still would have been dead.

The last thing she expected was someone to come out of nowhere and rescue her.  She looked over and up at the man who had come to her aid.  He was taller than most heavy gravity planet dwellers, she would have estimated his height at a little over a meter and nine tenths.  She couldn’t see his musculature under the military survival suit, but from his general size she judged him to be heavily muscled.  His hair was covered under his bush hat.  He looked down at her and smiled, his blue eyes sparkling in his deeply tanned face.  And the way he moved.  She remembered how the Rangers she had met in the first village had moved.  She started to speak and the man held up a hand, palm out, telling her to be quiet.

The man started looking around, stopping in place.  Rebecca wondered what he was looking for, then came to the conclusion that he was looking for a place to stay.  He started to move, not noticing the vine that came down from the trees.  She grabbed his arm and stopped him, shaking her head when he looked at her.  Taking a stick she hit the vine, which immediately wrapped around the broken limb and pulled it from her grasp.  “Strangle vine,” she whispered.  The man nodded and continued to look around, and she pointed to a safe tree she had picked out close to them.

She led the man to the tree and started the easy climb up the trunk, which had numerous knots and crannies that could be used as hand and footholds.  He followed behind her as she passed the first two flattened boles and scrambled onto the third one, twenty meters above the jungle floor.  As soon as he was on the bole she pulled a spray bottle of pheromones out of her pack an sprayed the perimeter of the bole.

“This is a Safe Tree,” she told the man in a quiet voice.  “We’re safe from the wildlife here.”

“How?” said the man in a whisper, looking over the side of the tree, then at her.

“The tree puts out a chemical defense that repels most animal and all plantimal life.  It also masks our own scent from anything on the ground or surrounding trees.  And the pheromones I sprayed will keep the few forms of insect life that inhabit the tree away from us.”

“Who taught you this?  Or did you just make a lucky find.”

“Someone taught me,” she said, thinking about her father’s friend Ted, and all she had learned from him.

“Pity the guides they gave us didn’t do the same,” said the man, shaking his head.

Some sounds came from below, and the man perked his ears to listen carefully.  Her hearing wasn’t as good, of that she was sure, but she could recognize the harsh gutturals below and thought they were the aliens who had been hunting through the jungle.  She kicked back against the trunk of the tree, letting the obviously capable adult take care of things.

After a few moments the voices moved on, though it sounded like they were still arguing among themselves.  The man waited a few minutes, then turned back to her.

“So, tell me about this man who taught you.”

“Ted was a friend of my father’s.  I think he was a Marine, or maybe a Naval Commando.  He actually spent time living in the jungle.  That’s really unusual.  Most of the guides only go into the jungle during the day, and spend the nights in camps with prepared perimeters, or cabins.  Not Ted.”

“What’s he doing now?”

“I don’t know, but if I had to bet, and he’s still alive, then he’s out here hunting the aliens through the jungle.”

“Wish we’d had him with us this morning,” said the man, scowling.  A slight smile crossed his face and he held out his hand.  “Cornelius Walborski, Sergeant, Imperial Army Rangers.”

“I’m Rebecca Goldman,” she replied, grasping his hand.

“Where’s your family, Rebecca?”

“Dad’s a captain in the reserves,” she said, wondering if he was still alive.  “He got called to active duty when the aliens came.”

A cloud passed over the Sergeant’s face, and he looked down.  “What about the rest of your family?”

“Most of them were killed when the aliens shot down our air cars on the way to a refuge we had,” she said, sniffling a bit and wiping a tear from her eye.  “My little brother survived, for a little while, until the damned devils killed him.”

The Ranger shook his head, looking at her with sympathetic eyes.  “I am so sorry,” he said in a hushed voice, the fingers on his right hand playing with a ring on a chain around his neck.

“What’s the ring for?” she asked, thinking it might be a wedding ring, and having no idea why someone would wear one around his neck.

“The Cacas killed my wife on Sestius,” said the man, an edge creeping into the hushed voice.  “I wear this to remind myself of what happened.”

Rebecca stared for a moment, her heart reaching out to a man who had lost his family, just like she had.  “What was Sestius like?” she asked him to break the silence.

“Sort of like here.  Hot, with a lot of jungle.  Also a class two, maybe a three, though the animals were much larger.”

“How much larger?” asked Rebecca, not really able to comprehend animals larger than some of the herbivores and carnivores of this world.

“It had a lighter gravity, only a little bit over Earth normal.  The largest herbivore was about eighty tons, while the biggest carnivore hit twenty, maybe thirty.  And they were definite mammalians.”

“Did you hunt them there?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head, a wistful expression on his face.  “I was a farmer.  And in the militia.  I hunted plenty of Cacas after they killed my wife, then got off and became a Ranger so I could hunt some more.”

“And you’re out here by yourself?”

“There were a hundred and twenty some odd men with me,” said Walborski, frowning again.  “The rest of them were killed in a firefight.  As far as I know I’m the only survivor.”

“That’s, horrible.  You must have been very good.”

“Or very lucky,” said the man, looking down over the side of the bole.  “Maybe just pure dumb luck.”

I don’t think so, thought Rebecca, studying the face of the man in profile.  Once, maybe.  But not on two different planets.  You’re damn good, and just what I need.

“I have to figure out what to do with you,” said Walborski, looking at her.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m on a mission child, and I can’t afford to let you slow me down.  I’m sorry, but that’s the truth.  You would get in the way.  So, is there any place nearby where I can drop you off where you’ll be safe.”

“Not that I can think of,” said the child, shaking her head.  “There’s the refuge that my parents set up, but some deserters took that away.”  She shook at the thought of what had occurred there, having to kill some people to keep something heinous from happening to her.

“How far?”

“At least four days from here.”

“Too long,” said the Ranger, shaking his head, then pulling out his map and looking at it.  “Look.  I’ve got to get to this spot in order to accomplish my mission.”  He pointed at the edge of the valley that was almost all grassland.

“I was there a month ago,” said Rebecca, recognizing the terrain features.  “I actually got almost to the edge of the jungle.  I saw the airfield here, and what looked like an infantry compound there.”

Cornelius gave her a look like he couldn’t believe her, then nodded his head.  “That’s there alright, though not marked on this map in case it was captured.  And you said a month ago?  How long have you been out here?”

“On and off about three months,” she said, and his eyes widened.  “Part of the time with my little brother.  He was handful.”  She could feel the pain in her chest as she choked out those words, and she looked down at the floor of the bole and tried to keep from crying.

“I’m so sorry,” said the Ranger, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder.  “I really am.  And I think it’s amazing that you have done so well.”  He was quiet for a moment, then looked back down at his map, all business again.  “I am thinking about climbing into the mountains right here,” he continued, putting his finger on the map.

“There’s no way you’ll get up at that point,” said Rebecca, shaking her head and pointing.  “That’s fifteen kilometers of cliff, even though it doesn’t show on your map.  It’s about two kilometers tall on average.  We call it the Slash.  It’s like someone cut it off the mountain with a huge sword.”

“So where can I climb?”

“This is an easy climb here,” she said, pointing to the mountainside a couple of kilometers to the south of the Slash.  “There’s an old road, well old for this world, that goes up to the ridge line that runs along these two mountains.  That’s about twelve kilometers,” she said, running her finger along the map.  “Then you can climb down to these foothills here.  It's only about two hundred meters, and it slopes fairly gently at the bottom.”

“That might work,” he said after a moment of studying the map.  “I can walk through these couple of kilometers of jungle and get into a firing position here.  Perfect.”

“And can I come with you?” asked Rebecca, hoping she could convince him not to leave her behind.  It might be dangerous, but it would be shared danger, and she was tired of being alone.

“I’m not sure,” he said, looking at her fom under hooded eyes.  “This is going to be dangerous.”

“And wandering through this jungle on my own isn’t.  Look, I know the wildlife, probably much better than you do.  And I know the path to the top.  If you want to leave me up on the ridge, that’s fine.  There are some caves up there, now that I think of it.  At least I would have shelter.”

“OK,” said the Ranger, flashing her a smile.  “Why not.  I could use some company myself, and if I could drop you off on the ridgeline I could be sure you’re going to be alright.  Especially if those caves are up there.  But is there anything to eat up that high?”

“I think so,” said the child, not really sure at all.  “There’s at least a back way from the ridge to the other side of the range.  If you want to get out it might be a good idea to come back up, pick me up, and go down the other side, where we can work our way around the range from the other side.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Walborski, holding up a hand for her to slap.  “Let’s start off in the morning, since it’s starting to get dark out.”

Rebecca checked the pheromone barrier one more time before going to sleep.  This night she slept very well, more secure than she had been in months with the deadly and capable soldier in the tree with her.

*     *     *

Cornelius was very impressed with the courage of the little girl, not even quite to puberty, surviving what had to be a terrible situation with losing her family and having to survive on her own.  He could tell that one day she would be a real beauty, as well as a smart and competent adult.  Today she was still very young.  I shouldn’t take her with me, he thought as he prepared to bed down.  But he had been looking for an excuse to do just that, and she had provided an argument he could grab onto.

The Ranger closed his eyes, knowing that his alert ears would tell him if anything tried to sneak up on him in the night.  Not that such a thing was likely to happen, up high in a tree that masked their odor.  But, as he had learned in training, not being alert because you thought you were safe was a good way to not wake up in the morning.

Morning came, and he felt more rested than he had in days.  The child was still asleep, and he couldn’t imagine how exhausted she must have been after yesterday.  She had told him about falling in the hole she had crawled into to avoid the Hunters, plunging into the underground river, coming out through a high falls, then fighting for her life against the big river predator.  Most adults would be hysterical after such a day, much less a child, but she seemed to recover fast enough to lead him to safety and convince him to let her tag along.

After a quick breakfast of high calorie food concentrates they climbed down the tree and started on their way.  Rebecca proved her worth immediately, leading the Ranger around several plantimal ambushes that he had not even seen.  She walked along quietly and confidently, picking out threats with an ease that impressed him.  She pointed out the signs that tipped her off, teaching the Ranger what he needed to know to survive this jungle.  He thought that with a week with her he would become an expert on this particular world, or at least this region of it.

“Hold on,” she said with a quiet voice, putting a hand on her arm.  “That clearing is death.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“Because there’s nothing to see.  The carnivore is below the ground.”

Cornelius nodded, still not sure what was there, but trusting Rebecca’s judgment.  They moved around the clearing and further into the jungle.  Five kilometers further on he saw what had waited for them under the ground as they came to another clearing.  This time he could see the open hole, and the large herbivore that had fallen into the pit.  Spikes penetrated its sides, and what looked like limbs had grown into its body.

“It’s a carnivorous plant,” explained Rebecca, pointing at a stand of unassuming looking shrubs on the far side of the clearing.  “It lures the herbivore into the clearing with the succulent leaves of the shrubs, which also perform the other functions of a plant, including photosynthesis.  Then, when it traps an animal, it gets the fertilizer.”

Cornelius stood for a moment looking at the dead beast.  He thought that his survival suit could survive the spikes, but not if they went into his head.  “Do you have any predatory fungus here?” he asked, remembering the large underground fungoid predator on Sestius.

“There is,” said the child.  “But I think I know their signs too.  Ted didn’t teach me about them, but I saw a small tree dweller caught in what looked like a fungus eating it alive.”

They walked on, Cornelius again following her while keeping his eyes peeled for threats.  He fingered his wedding ring while he looked around the jungle, learning from her the signs of what could kill him.  She led him to a plant that seemed to consist of tubular leaves.  She cut off the top of one and crouched down, tilting the plant to pour the pure water within into her mouth.  A little further on she pulled some berries and popped them into her mouth.  Cornelius did the same, but later, when he tried to pick some other berries that were a slightly different color she stopped him with a hand and a head shake.

“The red berries have a very high sugar content, and almost no protein,” she told him by way of explanation.  “The blue berries have a lot of protein, and quite a bit of cyanide, which is not a poison to most of the herbivores around here.”

“But might get by my nanites enough to injure or kill,” he said, shaking his head and memorizing the look of the deadly berries.  They moved on with partially filled stomachs and quenched thirst.

A little later his ears perked up, and he heard something coming from ahead.  A sound he really hadn’t wanted to hear, the noise that indicated the Hunters were coming toward them.

“We’ve got to find a place to hide,” he told her, looking around for one of the safe trees and not seeing one, right when he really needed it.

“Can’t you fight them?” asked Rebecca, her eyes wide.

“Too many of them.  And they’re tracking your scent.”

She looked up at him, her expression showing her fear that he might leave her.

“There was another of those clearings three hundred meters back,” he told the child, glancing back the way they had come.

She nodded, and he led the way back, looking at the jungle around him, making sure nothing was coming at them from the side.  They reached the clearing with no problem, and then came the next problem.

“Look, they’re probably tracking you, and if we go around this area so will they.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I’m going to throw you across the clearing into the bushes on the other side.  They’re not dangerous, are they?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head.  “Can you get me across there?”

“I’m sure I can,” he said, picking up the child and taking a step back.  He ran forward two steps and hurled her overhead, aiming straight for the bushes that were the surface manifestation of the carnivorous plant.  She flew over the hidden pit, and Cornelius was relieved to see that she didn’t scream.  He stepped back himself five paces and ran forward, jumping as he reached the edge of the pit.  For a moment he wasn’t sure he was going to make it, forgetting the heavy gravity he was dealing with, as well as the extra weight of the rocket launcher.  He came down right at the edge of the covered pit, his feet striking hard ground, and he fell forward and into the bushes.

“Let’s move,” he told Rebecca, grabbing her arm and pulling her through the bushes that did nothing to impede them, just as she had said.

He lowered himself behind the bushes, looking through a small gap that gave him a firing lane to the other side of the pit.  Rebecca lay down beside him, and he took aim with his rifle, waiting.  He didn’t have to wait long, as three long lean shapes came loping out of the jungle, their noses to the ground, nostrils working.

The creatures were hard to mistake for anything but Hunters, with their survival suits covering their bodies with the exception of heads and paws.  One was a solid black color where his fur showed, the other two were orange striped.  They stopped for a moment and sniffed the ground, looking across the clearing to the bushes where the humans sheltered.

Come on you bastards, he thought, wondering why they were hesitating.  Have you run into this thing before?  He thought that might be possible, though he hadn’t seen or heard of them in his unit’s normal area of operations.

Finally the three creatures started forward at a lope.  The first two were over the pit when it collapsed inward.  The two Hunters yelped like dogs and fell into the pit, while the third tottered for a moment before jumping back.  The two that went into the pit fell onto the spikes, which failed to penetrate the tough armor of their survival suits.  Unfortunately for one of them a spike had penetrated its head, killing it instantly.  Or maybe the other one was the least fortunate.  Spikes were through two of its feet, and it lay there in pain as a pair of mobile branches poked through its head, one into the mouth, the other puncturing an eye.  Either way, it was dead, but its ending was much more agonizing.

The third Hunter stood in place and stared down into the trap.  Cornelius couldn’t read the body language of the creatures, but he thought it must be shocked.  He put a bullet through its head and ended all feelings forever.

“Come on,” he told Rebecca, working his way around the pit until he came to the one he shot.  He kicked it forward a couple of times until it rolled into the pit, then grabbed the ground covering that had the creature’s blood on it and threw it in after the body.  If they were found it would look like they all three fell into the pit and died from the action of the planet’s wildlife.  At least until a forensic exam showed the cause of death for the third Hunter.

Moments later they were on their way again, walking until darkness again threatened.  Again Rebecca found a safe tree, and again they climbed up and spent the night.

The next day was fairly uneventful, with no more run ins with the Hunters.  Cornelius hadn’t thought they could be too thick on the ground, not with so much jungle to cover.  He had been worried that any that might have discovered the bodies, if they did, would be able to track them through the jungle from his charge’s scent.  The heavy afternoon rain ended that fear, as nothing could have tracked through that kind of cleansing downpour.

The next day they were on their way again, and from the top of a hill at midday the snow capped mountains were visible.  Cornelius stood there looking at those mountains, zooming in with his vision and seeing the Slash that the child had told him about.  It did look pretty much unclimbable.  If he had a complete climbing kit, including scores of pitons and several hundred meters of rope, he might have thought about trying it.  Even better would have been to have some climbing buddies.  As it was, it looked like a killing field for a single Ranger.

He swept his vision north and picked up the top of the switchback road that climbed to the heights.  He wondered why that road had even been installed, and figured it was not anything official, the reason why it wasn’t on his map.  In this day of aircars there really didn’t seem to be a purpose behind that high road, unless it was some private landholders attempt at a scenic route, or maybe something for recreational ground vehicles.

“We should be there by tomorrow evening,” said the child, and the Sergeant nodded.  Three more days, four at most, and those damned Cacas will be eating a nuclear desert for after dinner.

With that thought he led her down from the hilltop, then let her lead the way through the jungle, hoping to make another couple of kilometers before night shut them down.

*     *    *

Major Goldman cruised over the mountain range, looking down at the high road on the ridgeline.  He had taken the aircar out every day for the last week, risking detection while hoping to spot his little girl from the air.  For all he knew her bones were scattered along the floor of the jungle at the base of the mountains.  He didn’t want to face that possibility.  And he couldn’t just wait in the refuge for her to come back.  So he was out again in the heavy rain, hoping to use it for cover against detection.  At the same time it was hurting his chances of spotting anything.

Tomorrow I’ll take her up in the clear, he thought.  While tripling his chances of being discovered and shot down, it would also double his chances of spotting anything on the ground.  As  long as she isn’t under that jungle canopy.  If she is, I won’t be able to find her no matter what.

As the sun started to sink over the mountains and the rain started to slack off he turned back for the refuge.  And with the sun going down so went his falling hopes for finding his daughter.

Chapter Twenty-five

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.  Sun Tzu.

AZURE.  MAY 28TH- 29th, 1001.

“That looks doable,” said Cornelius.

Rebecca nodded, looking up at the gravel road that started in the jungle and ran through the vegetation up to the bare rock of the mountain.  It looked like it had been well maintained at one time.  Now there were weeds, including small trees, growing up through the gravel covering.  There was a small cabin a couple of kilometers in from the edge of the jungle, right next to the beginning of the road.  It was made of modern materials, plasticrete and hardened alloys, made to resemble log construction.  Such construction could sit here in the jungle for thousands of years without showing much weathering effect.  Plants trying to penetrate the walls with root or branch would bounce off of the impenetrable structure.

“I think we should see what is in the cabin,” said Rebecca, her stomach rumbling.  She had eaten enough calories the last couple of days, though some of it consisted of the pure sugar of the red berries they had found along the way.  And the rations were high calorie as well.  But there was a difference between eating enough calories and filling the stomach, and hers had shrunken in recent weeks, an uncomfortable feeling to be sure.

“Let me check it out first,” said the Ranger, motioning for her to stay put.  He walked to the door and looked over the touchpad that controlled the lock.  He attempted a couple of combinations, to no avail.  With a frustrated look on his face he stepped back and raised his rifle.

“Wait,” said Rebecca, stepping forward and waving the Ranger back.  She walked up to the touch pad, her mind searching for the emergency codes that Ted had given her, in case she ever came across one of his hidden cabins.  She couldn’t be sure this was one of those, but he had seemed well versed about the road that led up from here, so she thought there was a very good chance.  She punched in one code, and a red light blinked on the top of the pad.  Two more, she thought as she picked out the next code.  If she entered three without success the pad would lock down until an hour passed.  The pad would know that another operator was working on it through her DNA, so would not count the Ranger’s attempts as hers. Which one would Ted have used, she thought as the pad blinked red again.  He gave her eight different codes, the ones he used for the dozen cabins he had scattered through the wilderness.

She punched in the last code, holding her breath as her fingers moved across the plastisteel pad.  She hit the last numeric key, and the pad light turned green, just before the lock clicked open.  She let out the breath and smiled at the Ranger.  “Cake,” was all she said as she started to push the door open.

“Hold on,” said the Sergeant, holding her back, then pushing the door open with the barrel of his rifle.  She looked over his shoulder at the one room cabin whose lights were coming on now that guests had arrived.  He took his time looking over the room, then walked in to get a better look, finally turning around and motioning the child to follow.

The cabin was a single five by five meter room, with some comfortable looking furniture clustered in a ring around a faux brick fireplace.  A small kitchen was built into the wall opposite the fireplace, one corner had a standing fabric screen that sealed off what must have been the sanitary facilities.  A couple of windows were revealed as their coverings retracted.  The windows themselves were obviously not glass, but transparent plastisteel, pretty much impervious to any natural threat themselves without the coverings.

Rebecca immediately moved to the kitchen and opened one of the cabinets.  It was full, and she felt a sense of satisfaction that here was weeks’ worth of rations for humans.  Next she opened the food fresher and was delighted to find it filled with meats and vegetables.  “We eat good tonight,” she said, looking back at the Sergeant with a smile.

“I would like to keep going,” said the Ranger.

Rebecca frowned, and the Ranger’s expression changed.  “OK, you got me here much faster than I could have on my own, so I guess one night won’t hurt.  But can you close those window coverings?  It’s going to get dark in a couple of hours, and I really don’t want to advertise our presence.”

Rebecca nodded and walked to the control pad by the door.  A touch of a couple of buttons and the coverings lowered themselves over the windows.  After that she got to work in the kitchenette, putting together the best meal she could from the plentiful offerings.

“I wonder what happened to the people who own this place?” asked the Ranger while they sat down to steaks, potatoes, and steaming vegetables.

Rebecca chewed and swallowed the piece of steak she had been working on before she answered.  It was good natural beef, not vat formed protein, and must have cost Ted a pretty Imperial.  “I’m pretty sure that Ted owned this place.  It was one of the codes he gave me that opened the door.  And I’m hoping that he’s still roaming the jungle striking at the Cacas.”

The Ranger nodded, scooping some vegetables into his mouth.  “I would like to meet this guy someday.”

“I hope you can,” said Rebecca.  That would mean he was still alive.

After dinner, when both sat in front of the gas fireplace with satisfied expressions on their faces as their bellies were filled for the first time in many days, in Rebecca’s case for over a week, the Ranger pulled out his map and again went over the route.

“I think we can get up on that ridge by late morning, then maybe to the climb down point by nightfall,” said the Ranger.

“And then?”

“I’m thinking of a night descent.  It would make me harder to spot from the grasslands.  At least I hope it would, though they still might pick me up on scanners.  But not with their Mark I eyeballs.”

In some ways the man talked like Ted, and she was comforted by that similarity.  Unlike the deserters she had run into before she felt that this man would do nothing to hurt her.  She was also sure that he would let nothing short of death deter him from completing his mission, whatever that was.  That it entailed the destruction of the enemy ground HQ she was sure.  How, she wasn’t sure, when all he had was that low tech rocket launcher and one round.

After plotting out the next day he walked around the cabin, looking closely at the walls.  Rebecca was sure he was looking for something.  What, she wasn’t sure.  After completing a slow walk of the walls he motioned for her to get up from the couch and go to the kitchen.  He started pushing the couch to the wall, then pulled up the throw rug that covered that part of the floor.

“What are you looking for?” she finally asked, her curiosity getting the better of her.

“On Sestius a lot of the people had places in their houses where they hid things.  Survival equipment, weapons, you name it.  Just in case something happened.”

“Did you?”

“We had both a hidden closet and a basement that was like a small fort.  It kept my wife alive when the aliens threw a warhead at a nearby mobile shore gun.  I almost wish we had stayed in it.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because the Cacas were methodically digging everyone out as they went.  She still would have been killed, and I would have joined her.  And my son.”

“Did your son make it?” asked Rebecca, almost afraid to hear the answer.

“Junior is just fine.  Katlyn gave birth while we were on the run, just before the Cacas got her.  Hello.”  He knelt and put a hand on the floor, a section that looked no different than the rest of the wooden covering.  He tapped it with his hand, then put his fingers on some depressions.  Nothing happened.  “What was the code you used to get in here?”

Rebecca told him, and Cornelius pushed the depressions in a sequence.  With a hissing sound a half meter square section of floor raised up and swung away, revealing an opening leading down into the dark.   A moment later the room below lit up.

“Wait here a moment,” said the Ranger, lowering himself into the opening feet first, then climbing down.  “My God,” the man said before his feet reached bottom.

“What is it?”

“Come on down,” he said, and Rebecca moved to the opening and down into the basement room that was slightly smaller than the cabin above it.

In some ways the basement was another living area, with a couch and kitchenette, obviously made to be a final refuge for whoever was staying at the cabin.  But that was not all it was.  It was also an arsenal, with racked weapons along one wall and cabinets that probably contained ammunition and power packs.

“I carried one of those, before I lost it in the underground river,” said Rebecca, walking over and pulling a particle beam pistol from the rack.  She saw that the battery and proton packs were missing, and started to open the cabinets, looking for what she needed to arm the weapon.

“Can you use it?”

“I believe I can,” she said, turning a glare toward him.  “I killed four humans, at least one of the Hunters and a Caca, as well as a dozen or so animals and plantimals.  So yes, I think I’m qualified.”

“Didn’t mean to offend you,” said the Ranger, holding his hands out.  “It’s just that a pistol like this is deadly, to the operator as well as the target, if you don’t know what you’re doing.  It’s yours.”

Rebecca smiled and turned back to look in the drawer she had opened.  Not finding what she was looking for she went to the next drawer, another smile crossing her face as she saw it filled with matrix batteries and proton packs that were made for this pistol.  She opened the pistol and inserted the proton pack, then closed it smoothly.  She pushed the matrix battery into the grip, then checked the power setting.

“Just be careful where you point that,” said Walborski, looking at the weapon with a concerned eye.

“Don’t worry.  I won’t point it at anything I don’t intend to destroy.”

The Ranger nodded, his expression still anything but happy, then turned his attention back to the weapons’ rack.  He picked up a large rifle and his frown turned upside down to a smile.  “This is interesting,” he said, turning the weapon over in his hands.

“What is it?” asked Rebecca, getting a good look at the weapon, which reminded her of the pistol she now carried in a very superficial way.

“It’s a modified particle beam rifle.  Looks like whoever modified it knew what they were doing.  Larger proton pack, larger battery, more robust accelerator.”  He turned the weapon over in his hands with a loving touch.

“Why don’t you guys carry something like that?” she asked, thinking of the chemically powered rifle she had seen him use.

“We try not to give off any kind of electronic signature that can be tracked.  That’s why we don’t carry communications devices, except for the one the com man carries in each platoon, which is shielded and off when not in use.  A bunch of these things powered up would be picked up for tens of kilometers.”

“Then how are you going to get away using that thing now?”

“Because I’ll have it off until I need it, and when I need it the other guys are going to know I’m there anyway.”

The Ranger went through the other drawers, pulling out spare battery packs and a couple of proton stores, then called out in excitement as he opened another cabinet.  He reached in and pulled out an oblong object that Rebecca recognized as a grenade.  “I’ll just take a dozen of these boys along with us,” he said, putting one into a cloth bag he pulled from the same cabinet.  He followed that with eleven more of the weapons, then slung the bag over his shoulder.

The next morning they shouldered their packs, filled to capacity with water and food cans, and walked out of the cabin.  Rebecca set the lock after they were out, hoping that maybe Ted would make his way here and find use for what they had left in place, which was most of what they had found there.

The road stretched ahead, a couple of hundred flat meters under the canopy, then the start of the upward slope, about a kilometer still under the trees.  They had climbed about two hundred meters in altitude when the road came out of the jungle and onto the barren scree slope that led up to the cliffs six hundred meters further up.

It was not easy footing on the gravel road that had been blasted through the larger rocks of the slope.  And to Rebecca it felt like they were bugs walking across a kitchen floor.  They were much too exposed, anything that flew over would have a clear line of sight on them.  She looked at the Ranger, who also appeared uncomfortable, continually looking up into the sky.  She took a little bit of comfort in the way their survival suits were blending them in with the rocks.  Not quite as good as an electromagnetic cammo field, but still good camouflage.

Her feet slipped out from under her on the loose gravel and she almost went down.  Only a quick step over and a hand on her arm kept her up, and Cornelius gave her a concerned look.

“You OK?”

“It’s just a little steeper than I thought,” she said, wiping her arm across her forehead.  “I don’t think it’ll be as bad when we get to the switchback.  I…”

“Get down,” hissed the Ranger, grabbing her arm and pulling her down to the rocks while letting his body fall next to hers.  A shadow passed over, and Rebecca forced herself to keep an arm over her head and not look, hoping the cammo of the suit would cover her just enough.

The shadow passed, and she craned her neck to look up.  A dot moved in the sky away from them, curving over the ridgeline of the mountains and heading south.

“Let’s go,” said the Ranger, jerking her up to her feet.  “Hurry.”

“It’s going away,” she protested.

“I think it's turning to come back.  So hustle your little butt.”

Rebecca nodded and started off at a jog after the man, heading up.  The rocks underneath turned under her feet, and she felt herself a centimeter from going down on several occasions.  She was still ten meters behind the adult and falling further behind every step.

“Come on,” called the man, going off the road into the boulder field that was the scree slope.  “I can see it turning.”

Rebecca picked up the pace, going from a fast jog to a full run.  She felt the rocks turning under her feet, threatening to drop her to the ground.  Somehow she kept her feet and reached out an arm for the man.  He grabbed her by the wrist and jerked her off the road, then pulled her down under the overhang of the boulder he had chosen as shelter.

They lay there in silence, not moving for minutes.  The hum of an aircar’s fans came over the road, and the Sergeant started fingering the controls of his new rifle.

“What are you going to do?” she whispered, fear almost paralyzing her.

“Nothing, if they don’t land any soldiers,” he whispered back.  “If they do, I’m going to shoot the damned thing out of the sky, then try to kill the troops.”

“Do you think you can take them all like that?”

“Nope, but I might not have any other choice.  And then they’ll know something is up here, and they’ll come at us like a flight of vultures.”

“Like what?” she asked, confused.  But Walborski held up a hand to silence her.  The sound of the engine fans got louder.  If it had been a grabber powered aircraft it wouldn’t have made a sound.  But since the supermetals used for grabbers were expensive, it seemed that both powers used ducted fans for their air only craft.

The fans increased in pitch, then moved on, and Rebecca breathed a sigh of relief.  She started to crawl from under the rock but the Ranger put out a restraining hand.  They lay there for a few minutes, and then the sound of the fans returned, and the enemy air car came sweeping over the rocks off the road.  It came over slowly, and Rebecca tried to crawl deeper into the opening of the large rock that formed almost a small cave.

The sound moved on, and Walborski held them beneath the rock for ten minutes.  When it didn’t return he crawled from under the rock, looked around for a moment, then helped Rebecca out into the open.

“I thought they might come back,” he said, his eyes searching the sky.

“How do you know they won’t come back again?” she asked, trying to spot something he might have missed.

“I don’t.  But we can’t wait here forever.”  He looked at the gravel road and shook his head.  “That’s too damned open for my taste.  I want us to work our way up these rocks to the switchbacks.”

“That’s going to take a lot more time,” she answered, looking at the boulder field and not liking the idea of trying to climb through it.

“Better more time than no time, as in getting stopped,” he said, looking into her eyes.  “Do you think you can make it?”

“I think so,” she said, afraid that she wouldn’t be able to, afraid that he might leave her here if she said no.

“Then let’s go,” said the man. “I don’t think I’m going to get to the climb down point in time to do anything today, so we can take our time.  I would like to walk the switch back tonight, then we’ll rest for a few hours and take the ridgeline in the morning.”

The next three hours were a nightmare of moving around boulders, interspersed with some fairly open areas the child had to spring across to keep up with the Ranger.  Sweat was pouring down her face, and her heart kept beating faster whenever she thought she heard something that might be an aircar.

The afternoon rain came down as usual, cooling them off while providing some cover.  Walborski moved them back onto the road to take advantage of that cover.  Water was soon cascading down the gravel road, making it more difficult to keep footing, but it was still a relief after walking through the boulder field.

The rain stopped and the clouds cleared to show the sun dropping to the trees to the west.  Rebecca started to head off the road, but the Ranger stopped her.  “I think we can walk up the rest of the way on the road.”

“You think we’ll be safe?” asked the child, her hands on her hips, feeling as tired as she had ever felt in her life.

“I’m willing to chance it,” said the man with a slight smile.

Rebecca felt like hugging the man in thanks, but she was too tired to lift her arms.  Instead she trudged up the road behind him, going another half an hour until they reached the switchback that first ran up the cliff then over it to the slope above.

“We’ll stop here to rest and get something to eat,” said the Sergeant, finding a sort of flat area off to the side.

Rebecca nodded and moved after him without saying a word, plopping to the ground.  She shrugged off her pack, then pulled a ration can from it.  She popped the can open, letting it heat up for a moment.  The food didn’t look very appetizing, and she really wasn’t hungry.  Still she spooned it into her mouth, forcing herself to eat just to get the calories.

After an hour the Ranger got up and motioned her to follow.  She nodded, still too tired to speak, and followed him along the path.   A solid rock wall towered to the left side, a straight drop down to the rock field on the right.  As they climbed the cliff got shorter in incremental gradations, while the drop off to the boulder field got larger.

“Anything we need to look out for while we’re gaining altitude?” he asked as they walked the steep slope of the road.

“Not that I know of,” she answered, trying to remember if she had heard anything about life in the mountains.  “There are some animals that live up here, but dangerous?”

“So you really don’t know,” said the Ranger, slinging the particle beam and pulling his long blade from its sheath.  “Keep a look out for anything I might miss, and let me know immediately.”

They walked three kilometers of switchback, gaining almost a kilometer in altitude.  The temperature started to drop, whether from the increase in altitude or the normal night decrease she didn’t know, though it was probably a bit of both.  At several points they passed through cuts, and the mountain towered on both sides.  There were some sounds at other points, something scrambling over rock.  At one point something jumped onto the road, and the Ranger pushed the child back as he held his sword at the ready.  Rebecca caught a glimpse of the animal in the light of the now full moon.  It stared at them with one side looking eye, then scrambled off the road on narrow hooves and back into the rocks.

“I guess that’s Azure’s answer to a mountain goat,” said the Ranger, relaxing a bit.

“It looked like a herbivore,” she said, trying to remember if she had ever heard of the creature and coming up with a blank.

“Then we need to be alert,” said the man, looking back at her.  “Because if herbivores live up here, on God knows what, then sure as hell something hunts them.”

As soon as he said that something hissed out in the night and came running at them.

*     *     *

Major Joseph Goldman took his car up at dusk this day, hoping to maybe pick up something on infrared that night.  He had aborted going up earlier after seeing more than usual aerial activity that day, then had waited out the rainstorm, having learned that the severely limited visibility made flying useless at that time.  Then had come nightfall, and his only chance to fly that day.

And this is really completely stupid, he thought as he banked over the mountains, looking at the terrain below through the infrared scanner.   She’s not up here.  But he knew he wouldn’t be able to pick up anything over the jungle, where she most likely was.  So he had to play the odds and just hope she was someplace where he could pick her up.

What’s that? he thought, seeing two faint dots appear on his scope.  It was on the high mountain road that Ted and his friends had made in order to run their recreational vehicles up to the heights and hunt some mountain runners, this planet’s version of bighorn sheep.  He had asked Ted why he just didn’t take an aircar up to the heights, and with typical machismo the ex-commando had said it wasn’t the same.

His car was high in the air, several kilometers above the highest peaks, and he started to drop to a lower altitude to get a better look.  The scope exploded with red dots as he did, and he swore under his breath.  He had found a herd of mountain runners.  Then he looked closer, and saw that the runners were moving off the road, on the rocks of the mountain, while the original two dots moved straight up the road.  Could that be her?  If so, who is she with?

His tracker alarm went off at that moment, and he realized that he was way too high in a civilian aircar in enemy controlled airspace.  He dropped the car lower and banked, hoping that he might be able to lose whatever was up here with him.  That hope died as something slammed into his car and he started to flip through the air.

Something continued to slam into the car, and his systems dropped out one after the other.  Particle beams, he thought, seeing pieces of his car flying past his canopy.  His car was not armed, besides the personal weapons he carried with him.  And those would be of no help to him in this situation.

He almost righted the car, just before it slammed into the ground and slid forward on the rocky surface.  Gravel flew up around the canopy and bounced off of the hard plastisteel.  I’m on the high road, he thought with the detachment of shock.  The car slid to a stop, and he was almost about to celebrate the landing he could walk away from when something slammed into the canopy and plastisteel came bursting in and shredded his back and shoulders.

I’m not going to get out of this, he thought, looking up through the canopy to see a military air superiority craft like the Cacas used flying over, then banking ahead for another pass.  It wasn’t a transport, and had no way of dropping troops off to inspect his craft, and possibly take prisoners for questioning.  But he had no doubt that one was coming for him.

Chapter Twenty-six

It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.  Thomas Jefferson.

AZURE.  MAY 30TH, 1001.

Cornelius wasn’t sure what the animal was coming at them.  It reminded him a bit of a King Tiger from New Detroit, only much smaller, maybe a hundred kilos.  That it was the predator he thought might hunt the mountain runners he had no doubt.  That didn’t mean it was the top predator, but it was enough to shred most humans it came at.

He almost fired his particle beam but thought better of it.  That would give them away to the aircraft that had just flown over at high altitude, if it hadn’t already spotted them.  The Ranger had to err on the side that it didn’t.  He caught Rebecca out of the corner of his eye starting to pull her pistol from its holster.  Reaching back with one hand he grabbed her wrist, pulling her hand away from the weapon, while his other hand pulled the Wakizashi from its sheath.

He spun around to set up his stroke, then came back on a reverse spin that allowed him to bring the sword down on the neck of the creature as it leapt in, moving his body out of the way of the extended claws at the same time.  The blade sliced down into the thick neck of the almost feline creature and took its head off in mid growl.  His feet slid on the gravel and he found himself at the edge of the road, the long drop just a footstep away.

The body fell lifelessly to the ground, and Rebecca stood there staring at the dangerous predator.

“Do they hunt alone?” asked Walborski, his eyes scanning the night.

“I don’t know,” said the child.  “I don’t even know what it is.”

“So we’ll hope so, but act like it has a partner,” said the Sergeant, keeping his blade in hand and leading her up the path.  The switchback carried them higher into the mountain, reaching its extension to the north, then turning south to continue along the cliff.  It was only a couple of meters wide, and Cornelius noted how Rebecca hugged the cliff and didn’t look at the drop off.  He kept to the center of the road, having no fear of heights, it having been driven from him in training.

After another hour they got to the top of the switchback, giving them a view into the valley kilometers below.  Some of that jungle lay revealed under the bright moonlight, while much of it was obscured by mist.  A couple of peaks towered into the night, moonlight shining from the snow that capped them.  It was much colder up here as well.  Cornelius could feel himself shivering, and he looked over at his charge to see that she was shivering as well.

“Get out your survival blanket,” he told her, shrugging off his own pack to get the emergency gear out for himself.

“Won’t we give ourselves away without our cammo?”

“It’s night, and the blankets are dark non-reflective material, so I really don’t think it will make any difference.  But hypothermia could really hurt us both.”

Rebecca nodded and pulled the thin blanket out of her pack.  Normally the suits did a good job of handling the cold, but both of the pair were soaked to the bone.  The child covered herself in her blanket and Cornelius made sure she was wrapped tight, then wrapped himself up in his own.

“Let’s move,” he said, looking at the ridge road that stretched ahead.  “We’ll warm up some after we walk a bit.”

The child nodded her head, her teeth chattering, and followed him along the road.  A couple of kilometers up the road the Ranger motioned for her to get down and crouched himself.

He looked up as his ears picked up the whining of fans overhead.  “There’s an aircraft up there.  It doesn’t sound like a Caca car, but I really don’t know for sure.”

There was an explosion overhead, followed by the sounds of something ripping apart.  The angry bee sound of a particle beam came closer, and Cornelius saw Rebecca cringing out of the corner of his eye, wishing he could do the same.  An object whistled through the air, moving away from them to the north.  There was another explosion, followed moments later by the noise of something crashing ahead.

“Whose was that?” asked Rebecca, looking at him with wide eyes.

“I don’t know.  But guessing I would say one of theirs shot down one of ours.  And it sounded like it hit down on this road a couple of kilometers ahead.”

“So, what do we do?  Go back?”

“Nope.  We’ve spent too much time getting up here to just go back and start over on some other path.  If there is one.”  He looked ahead again, hoping to see what he might be able to discern, but the road curved around a hundred meters ahead and there was nothing to see.  “If it’s too crowded with Cacas then we’ll go to ground for a while and wait for them to leave, then go on.  Are you up to it?”

She nodded, though her eyes didn’t look like she was up to it.  He decided to take her at her word though.  It would be no kindness to just leave her up here on her own, but he couldn’t turn around and take her back down.  The mission comes first, he told himself.  He gave her a thumbs up and started forward, letting her take up the rear.  He trusted her enough to do that, and his ears were still alert enough to cover what she missed.

It took over an hour to cover that couple of kilometers, and then he turned the final corner, keeping low to the ground, his eyes scanning the moonlit night ahead.  He could see the shape of the aircar, definitely battered, silver light shining from the canopy.

“That looks like a civilian car,” said Cornelius, taking in the shape of the vehicle.  “What the hell were they thinking?”

“That looks like the model my dad uses,” said Rebecca, starting to move forward.

“Hold up there,” said the Sergeant, grabbing her arm and holding her back.  “That’s a popular model all over the Empire, a BMW-38.  So I doubt seriously it’s anyone you know.  But I’ll check it out and wave you forward when I know it’s safe.  OK?”

The child nodded, clearly not happy, but willing to follow his lead.  He nodded back, then started for the car in a crouch, moving silently over the rocks.

As he got closer the damage became much more apparent.  They really tore the damned thing up, he thought, seeing the holes with melted edges on the tail, and another on a fan that had been totally shredded.  The canopy was still in place, though he could see a couple of holes through it as well.

He moved over the short wing of the car, forced by the narrowness of the road to clamber over the wreck.  He could see the body of the pilot inside, not moving, and he sure the man was dead.  Until that man raised a hand and motioned him to the forward most hole in the canopy.

“Who are you?” asked Cornelius, putting his mouth to the hole after taking a quick look around.

“I’m, Major Joseph Goldman,” said the man in a hushed voice, coughing at the end of the sentence.  “And who am I speaking to?”

“Sergeant Cornelius Walborski, sir.  I’m a Ranger.”  Goldman, he thought, recalling Rebecca’s last name.  It couldn’t be.  “What were you doing up here?”

“Looking for my daughter,” said the Major, hacking up some blood as the last word left his mouth.  “Maybe you’ve seen her out in that damned jungle.”

Cornelius looked up and waved at Rebecca, motioning her forward.  “Can you raise the canopy, so I can get you out?”

“The canopy’s stuck in place,” said the Major.  “I think the last couple of particle beam blasts fused it shut.  And I don’t think I’m going anywhere anyway.  The last hit threw pieces of plastisteel into my back and shoulders.  I think it shredded my spine.”

Rebecca came running up and climbed over the wing of the car to plop down beside Cornelius on the top.  “Daddy,” she screamed out as she looked into the car and saw her father.

“Quiet,” hissed the Sergeant, his eyes darting around.  He knew the enemy would be here to investigate this car soon.  He kind of wondered why they weren’t here already.

“Hi, Princess,” said the Major in a soft voice.  “I am so happy to see you alive.”

“I lost Benjie,” she said, tears in her eyes.

“I know.  Not your fault.  You’re alive, and that’s all that counts.”  The eyes shifted to the Ranger.  “What are you bringing her up here for?”

“I have a mission, sir.  And your daughter agreed to lead me to a place from which I could strike the enemy.”

“New orders then, Sergeant,” said the man after a hacking cough.  “You are to take her down from here and get her to safety.”

Sir, I…”

“That’s a direct order, Sergeant.  Do you understand me?”

“No, sir,” said Cornelius, realizing that the man did have the rank, but not the position to countermand his mission.  “You are not in my chain of command, sir, and cannot give me a lawful order to ignore my mission orders.”

The Major shook his head, coughing again.  This time flecks of blood appeared on his lips.  “I don’t think I’m going to make it down from here to press charges.”

“They wouldn’t do any good if you could, sir,” said the Ranger.  “My orders come directly from the regional commander, who is a brigadier.”  Cornelius’ ears perked up as he heard fans.  “They’re coming,” he said, looking at Rebecca.  “We need to go.”

“We can’t leave you daddy,” cried the child, pressing her hand against the canopy.  “We’ve got to get you out of there.”

“There’s no way to get this canopy open, Baby,” said the Major.  “You got to get out of here before the monsters arrive.”

“We could burn through with the particle beams,” she protested.

“There’s not enough time,” said Cornelius, looking up to the sky.  “And if we do a rush job we’re just as likely to kill him.”

“He’s right,” said her Dad.  “Go.  Now.”  The man coughed, then locked eyes with the Sergeant.  “They can’t take me alive.  I know too much information, and if they can get it out of me it will be a disaster.”

Cornelius looked at the largest hole in the canopy, then pulled a grenade from his side pouch.  “Here,” he said, pushing the grenade through the hole.  “It’s the best I can do.”

“Thank you.  I’ll take some of the bastards with me.”  He glanced at his daughter.  “Go now, Honey.  Do what the Sergeant says.”

Cornelius grabbed the arm of the child and pulled her off the aircar.  She resisted for a moment, but didn’t have a chance against his strength.  She gave him an angry glare and let herself be led away into the night.  The Ranger hurried her along for fifty or so meters, then led her to a pile of rocks off the road that gave good cover.

The sound of fans were clear now, and a moment later the troop carrier was over the Major’s aircar.  A spotlight stabbed down, illuminating the scene below.  A second aircraft circled by higher up, visible by its strobes.  The first craft circled, then started down for the road about twenty meters to the south of the downed car.  It hovered above the road, and a pair of Ca’cadasan infantrymen jumped from it to the road.  The troop carrier slid over just a bit and two more soldiers came out of the other side to the ground.

As soon as all were on foot they started toward the aircar in single file, about five meters between them, the first reaching the car while the last was still stationary.  The first climbed onto the car and stared in at the occupant, soon joined by another of the Cacas.  The second started to work at the edge of the canopy, then reached into a bag to remove some tools.  Something flared, what looked like a laser cutter.

With a suddenness that seemed to catch everyone off guard the canopy exploded outward.  Both Cacas were blown into the air.  One landed on the road unmoving, while the other pitched over the edge of the road and fell screaming into empty space.  A moment later a particle beam stabbed down from the covering aircraft and hit the aircar.  It exploded once again, really accomplishing nothing but destroying the body of the already dead pilot.

Rebecca leaned into the Ranger, crying, and he put an arm around her.  The troop carrier came back down, shining its spot on the car.  The two troopers still on their feet went to their injured compatriot and picked him up.  The troop carrier touched down on one side and the two healthy troopers got the injured one aboard, then jumped in themselves.  As soon as they were aboard the ship jumped back into the air, circled once, and headed away, followed by the gunship.

Rebecca stepped from behind the rock and stared at the burning aircar that had contained her father.  “We’ve got to go,” said Cornelius, putting an arm around her and leading her away.  “They might return, once they get that injured one back for medical care.”

She looked up at him, the tears glistening in her eyes.  “I want to kill them.  I want to kill them all.”

“You won’t be able to do that now,” said Cornelius, shaking his head.  “But eventually?  I’ll try to get you back to civilization, and then you can work on killing them all.”

*    *     *

Twenty minutes later another aircar was over the sight of the crash.  It came down low on the north side of the carnage, and this time the forms that jumped from it were not Ca’cadsans in combat armor.  Instead, four long lean forms jumped out and landed on all fours, immediately sniffing the road.

“A human went this way,” said the leader in his growling native language.  “Maybe more than one.  But I only have the clear scent of one.”

“How far ahead?” asked the youngest and least experienced of the Maurids.

“A half an hour, maybe less,” said the leader, looking around at his teammates.  “I want this human, these humans.  So let us push on and bring them down, quickly.”

The other Maurids gave head motions of acceptance, then followed the Hunt Leader as he went into the loping run of his people, thirty kilometers an hour, a pace they could keep up for hour after hour.  The only thing missing was the hunting howl that their ancestors used to tell the prey they were being hunted, and that they would not get away.  They had learned as civilized beings that it didn’t pay to let the hunted know you were there until it was too late.

*     *     *

“Something’s coming,” hissed the Ranger, grabbing Rebecca by the arm and pulling her past him.

She was still in a state of shock, not really able to think about what was happening now.  The image of her father trapped in his aircar still dominated her thoughts, as did the sound of the explosion that had taken his life.

“Get down behind those rocks,” said the Ranger, drawing a blade with each hand.   The long blade was in his right hand, the commando knife in his left, and he crouched down in some shadows near a large rock.

Just a few seconds after he had gotten under cover the dog-like creatures appeared in the moonlight.  Rebecca watched them, then realized that if she was seeing them, they sure as hell were seeing her.  One pointed her way, and four sets of jaws opened in toothy smiles as they charged her.

As they passed the rock the Ranger was sheltering behind the long blade came out and hit the forward leg of the lead Hunter.  The monomolecular blade parted the fabric of the survival suit and went through the muscle and bone of the creature’s leg like an ax blade through a small branch.  The beast yelped and went down, and the Ranger moved into the open with both blades flashing.

The Hunters moved so quickly that the child couldn’t believe it.  Until she saw the Ranger move.  He blurred as he stepped and slashed.  The creatures slashed at him with their claws and missed, and another went down with a severed spine.  One caught him on the left arm for a superficial wound, and then fell with a cut throat.

The last beast backed off, then turned to run.  With a yell and a sprint the Ranger was on it, driving his short sword into its back and ripping it out in a welter or gore.

The Ranger stopped in place, panting, his lungs expanding and contracting quickly.  He looked at the creatures he had killed, then bent down and wiped his blades on the exposed fur of one of the creatures.

“This one’s still alive,” called Rebecca, pointing to the one missing a leg that was trying to struggle up onto its remaining three.

The Sergeant walked over to the surviving creature, holding his long blade at the ready.  The creature grimaced in pain while trying to swat at him with its remaining front leg.  He kicked it in the chest and knocked it over.  It got back to its feet, then continued on into a bipedal stance, trying to pull a weapon from a holster.  The short sword licked out, and the creature suddenly had no forepaw to grip its pistol.

“When are you expected back?” he asked the creature in English, then switched to Ca’cadasan, surprising the alien.

“I will not tell you, human,” growled the Hunter.

“I will kill you if you don’t.”

“Please.  You will kill me anyway, and I deserve death for my failure.”

The Ranger nodded, then slashed the creature’s throat with his blade.  It gagged on blood, falling to the ground, trying to draw a breath and failing.  After a couple of tries it stopped breathing, and its mouth fell open in death.

“Help me get these guys off the road,” ordere the Ranger, grabbing the hind legs of the one he had just killed and slinging it over his shoulder. In minutes they had all the creatures and pieces of them off the road, and the Ranger was busy stacking rocks on the bodies.

“Will that really hide them from the Cacas?” she asked, looking at the four small cairns.

“Probably from the Cacas,” agreed the man.  “From these things?  I think not.  But hopefully we will be long gone before more of them show up.”

The Ranger walked her along the road for another couple of hours, until she recognized the area round them as familiar.

“This is where you will want to climb down,” she told him, looking over the edge.

“Not in the dark,” said the Ranger, shaking his head.  “Not an unfamiliar climb.  Morning.”

He looked around, then headed for some boulders leaning against the wall of the mountain.  He looked back there and waved her over.  “We’ll eat and rest here.  There’s a couple of hours left till daylight.”

Rebecca nodded in relief and proceeded him into the hollow area made by the rocks and the cliff.  She tried to shake off the numbness she still felt that had nothing to do with the cold.

“Eat something,” ordered the adult.

“Not hungry,” said Rebecca, shaking her head.

“Eat something anyway.  You need to keep your strength up.  I know you’ve been through a hard time tonight.  Hell, the last couple of months.”

She was about to tell him he didn’t know what hard was, but seeing him playing with the ring on its chain froze the words in her mouth.  Of course he knows what it’s like.  And he fought his way through it to become a warrior.  She sniffed at that thought.  I’m just a child.  An older child, but still a child.

She sat there for a moment, wishing that the man would speak, would say something to get her mind off of herself.  But he wasn’t cooperating.  So she decided to ask him what was on her mind.

“I’ve never seen anyone move that fast in my life,” she said, looking up at him.  “I mean, when you killed those aliens.  They were as fast as anything I’d ever seen, until you attacked them.”

“Augmentation,” was his single word answer.  When she continued to look at him he shrugged his shoulders and spoke on.  “They improved my internal systems, even my genes.  But it comes with a cost for most.”

“Premature aging, right,” said Rebecca, still young enough that she really couldn’t imagine making it to thirty, much less two hundred and so.

“Normally,” agreed the man with a smile.  “But I was told I had an unusual genome.  Something about maybe having some genetic connection to the Imperial Family.  So the premature aging might not be a problem.”

“And if it is?”

“Then I still get to be a superhuman for a hundred and sixty or so years,” he said with a laugh.  “Still a great trade off in my opinion.”  The man looked away, obviously thinking, then back at her.  “Not that I really expect to see my thirtieth birthday.  So anything after that is gravy.”

“And what will you do tomorrow?”

“I’ll climb down to the valley and hit the Cacas.  I think it’s a day they won’t forget.”.

“And me?”

“We’ll see in the morning.  I’ll probably leave you up here, then come back for you.”

“And if you can’t come back.”

“Then it’s up to you to get back down from here.  I don’t think the Cacas will be patrolling the mountain after the morning, so you shouldn’t have any trouble.”

“Could I climb down with you?”

“Do you have any experience in climbing?”

“No,” she admitted, shaking her head.

“Without experience, you’ll never make it.  And I’ve got to get down that cliff quickly, before I’m spotted.  No, it would be better for all of us if you stayed up here.  You’ll be safer, and I won’t have to worry about you.”

Rebecca hung her head, trying to think of an argument that would keep her by the Ranger’s side.  The next time she moved the sky was lightening, and she realized she had fallen asleep.

Chapter Twenty-seven

The power to wage war is the power to wage war successfully.  Charles Evans Hughes.

AZURE.  MAY 30TH, 1001.

Well, this is fun, thought Cornelius as he found his next handhold on the cliff.  He only had a half dozen pitons, and no way to untie his rope from above him, so he was going without trying to use any kind of safety line.  A slip was a problem.  A major slip could mean plunging a couple hundred meters straight down to his death.

The Ranger could feel his skin crawl as he worked his way down.  He was facing the cliff, the standard orientation for working down a rock wall, which meant he really couldn’t see behind him, except when he craned his neck to get a partial view.  He didn’t know if someone was watching him, with their eyeballs, or possibly the scope of a weapon.

Cornelius shifted a foot after making sure his other three points of contact were steady.  He was constantly aware of the extra weight on his back, his full pack, but most of all the launcher and the container filled with the munition.  On a unit climb he would have left all of that weight at the top, letting other men lower it in relays to the bottom.  Instead he carried almost twice his battle mass down a cliff on a heavy grav planet.

He moved a foot, making sure that his boot toe was pushed into the rock, giving him a firm grip.  He leaned back a bit, using the weight of that lean to build friction with his toes.  It was really an unnatural position for those who weren’t used to climbing, and it still felt precarious to the Ranger who had some experience with it, though nowhere near expert status.

Maybe I should have left the pack at the top, he thought, looking down for a moment to gauge distance.  There were about a hundred meters to go.  He was more than halfway there.  The Ranger forced himself to relax and go slow.  Hurrying would increase his chances of falling, which would end the mission quickly.

He moved both his hands, one at a time, crunching up his body, then the feet, stretching himself out again.  He almost laughed at the thought that he was like a worm crawling down a wall.  He suppressed the urge and kept working his way down, praying that he wasn’t being observed.

*     *     *

Rebecca lay on the top of the cliff, her head over the edge so she could look down.  It was not a comfortable feeling looking straight down a drop of over two hundred meters.  At the bottom of that drop were hard rocks, body breakers for anything falling to them.  A few bushes were scattered among them, a tree or two, one growing right up next to the wall, seeds that had been lucky enough to find a gap to exploit.

I’ve got to find a way down there, she thought, watching the man slowly moving his body down the face.  She knew there was no way she could climb down that way, and the road ended at this point.  She had never been further on, into the sloping rock fields that continued along the top of the cliff.  Nothing showed on her map of that area.  So maybe there was just something there she might be able to exploit.

She pushed herself back from the cliff and stood up, the feeling of vertigo this close to the edge almost overcoming her.  Taking a few steps back made her feel better, and she turned to walk away from the cliff, angling to the north and the boulder field.  At first it was an easy walk, though it soon led to some monsters that she had to squeeze between, climbing over a large flat one at one point.  There were about fifty meters of boulders, then a slope that led to the east, away from the cliffs.  She wasn’t sure if that’s where she wanted to go, but decided to take the approach of water and follow the path of least resistance.

There was a bit of a mist rolling over what look like rolling hills that sloped downward.  Rebecca picked up the pace, hoping that this would lead down to the valley.  She walked on for an hour, following the downward slope.  The mist thickened, until she was working her way through a world that had shrunk to the ten meter diameter circle around her.  She kept moving downward, wondering how far she had walked.  She could see the time on her implant, but with no frame of reference it was hard to tell distance.

The child stopped in her tracks as she saw a deep shadow ahead.  She kept waiting for it to move, but it didn’t, and soon lack of patience overcame any fear of the unknown.  She took a step forward, then another, before she realized what stretched in front of her.  Getting down on her hands and knees she crawled forward, her eyes locked onto the shadow.  She reached out questing hands, feeling the rock and dirt beneath her touch.  And then her fingers felt, nothing, and she knew she had been right.  It was a drop off, going down to she knew not what.

If I had kept walking along I would have toppled into however deep a chasm that is, she thought, backing up and getting back to her feet.  She walked alongside the drop off, careful to stay well back from the shadow.  The mist closed in around her until she could only see a couple of meters in each direction.  The ground was still trending downward, until she came to a rock wall where she could go no farther.

What now, she thought, looking to the left where the chasm had been and seeing no shadow.  She walked carefully in that direction, keeping her eyes down.  She went past where the drop off had been further back, and then found herself on a steep slope going down.  This is more like it, she thought, just before her feet slid out from under her and she was careening down the slope.  She was hoping she could stop before she ran into something when the ground was gone and she found herself falling through the empty air.

*     *     *

“The Maurid patrol has not reported in, my Lord,” announced the Underofficer, stopping at the entrance to the General’s office in the bunker.

The commanding officer of the region that included everything south of the largest city on the planet, or at least the ruins of it, looked up from his computer screen. He had been scanning reports about the jungle campaign and scowling at his losses.  It is better to fight in the built up areas, he thought.  There he could use the air and space power of his forces to pummel the enemy.  In the jungle, not so much.  There they often didn’t know where the enemy was until contact was made.  Then it was impossible to bomb them from the air without endangering his own forces.  And the enemy would normally disengage at their own decision, and scatter into the jungle.  After that it was like trying to swat individual insect with a particle beam rifle.

“When were they supposed to check in?” he asked his subordinate.

“They weren’t on any kind of time frame,” said the lesser male.  “They were traveling com off so they wouldn’t give away their position to anyone that might be monitoring.  But it was expected they would get in touch by sunrise no matter what they did or didn’t find.”

“What does the Prime Hunt Leader say?”

“The Prime Hunt Leader led a half dozen of his people on a search pattern to try and locate his missing Maurids,” said the Underofficer.  “They have been gone since before sunup.”

“Send some aircraft to look over the mountains,” said the General, looking back down at his reports.  The one he had been reading had discussed the possibility of pulling out of this system due to the ground loses.  After all, the system was essentially neutralized as far as war related production went, and was unlikely to be a factor anytime in the near future.  He was not in favor of that policy though.  Ground Forces had paid the blood price to take the surface, and he hated the idea of leaving before they eliminated the pests completely.

“My Lord?” asked the Underofficer.

“Get some aircraft up and check out the mountains.  It’s probably just some human stragglers, but no use taking a chance.  If they’re a threat we can blast them off the mountain.  If they just cower, then we can assume they aren’t a worry.”

“Yes, my Lord,” said the Underofficer, giving a hand salute and running from the office, leaving the General to handle the most boring and important part of his job, logistics.

*     *     *

The Prime Hunt Leader looked up the gravel road that ran to the visible switchback high above and waved his first pair forward.  He had a half dozen Maurids with him, the most he could gather at a moment’s notice.  He had lost more than he had feared when he fought the human augmenteds.  And now two patrols had failed to check in.  His other Hunters were off on patrols, so he had what he had to see what happened to the four that had gone up to the top of the mountains.

The Leader let the first pair get fifty meters ahead and took off with two more, knowing that his final pair would take up the rear.  It was a long climb, but the Maurids were distance runners, able to keep up a high pace for a long period of time.  They hit the switchback in less than ten minutes and started up the road.  At the end of the hour they were on the ridgeline road and heading north, sniffing the ground as they ran.

It was a short time later that they spotted the crashed aircar they had been told about.  They explored the area for a few minutes and moved on, as there was nothing there to interest them.  A kilometer further on the lead pair stopped, one staying in the middle of the road while the other circled into the rocks on the side.  The male started picking up rocks while growling loudly.

“We have bodies under the rocks, Hunt Leader,” said the Scout in the rocks, as the rest of the group fell to picking up stones and throwing them away, all but two who provided security with readied weapons.

“Our men,” said the Prime Hunt Leader as the scent of corrupted bodies reached his nostrils.  He growled in murderous rage as the first body was revealed.  This one had been separated, his upper body from the rest, and the Leader looked down and paid close attention to the wounds. It was a clean cut, with no scorching along the edges.

“A blade weapon,” said the Leader, meeting the eyes of his Lead Scout.  “What do the others look like?”

“The same,” said the other male.  “Different wounds, in different places, but same kind of weapon.  Monomolecular blades.”

“These were not human stragglers then.  They were their elite soldiers.  But how many?”

“I’m picking up the scent of one human,” said the Scout on the road.  “Heading to the north.”

“There must have been more than one,” said another male in protest.  “One human couldn’t have killed four males with a bladed weapon.”

“We can’t track their superior humans by scent,” said the Prime Hunt Leader, looking to the north.  “At least not by the scent of their bodies.  So this was another human, along with them.  So there is bound to be more than one.”  Or this is one that is truly exceptional.  My pride is not so great as to not admit the possibility that there are some better at the hunt than we are, though most of my people would think I had gone mad.

“We will hunt them down and kill them all,” he told the rest of his party.  “But be alert, or we may be the ones buried under rock cairns.  Go.”

The lead pair loped off, moving quickly, but not at the run, sniffing and looking over everything.  The rest of the team moved out in their preferred formation, all eager to catch up to those who had murdered their brethren.

*     *     *

Only thirty more meters to go, thought Cornelius, trying to move a little bit to the side.  There was a tree down below, not directly, but with a little shifting he could make it so.  His thought was he could reach the twelve meter tall shrub before he reached the bottom, then climb down through the tree to get to the ground.

His hand slipped from its hold as he shifted, and he quickly gripped a rock that had not been his first choice.  He stopped for a moment and breathed out, then in, trying to relax himself.  He looked over at the next handhold, then started to move again.

The rock he was holding onto picked that moment to pull loose from the cliff, and suddenly he had only two points of contact, his other hand already on the move.  The Ranger dropped the rock and tried to get his hand back to another hold, but as he was doing that, failing with both hands to find a grip, his right foot slid from the wall and he was only attached by one point of contact.   That was a recipe for disaster, and he fell back with all three of his unattached members flailing in space.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy.  Sun Tzu.

AZURE.  MAY 30TH, 1001.

Rebecca stifled the scream that wanted to erupt from her throat as her bottom left the ground.   The sound of falling water came from her right, but with the mist she didn’t know if that was meaningful or not.  For a couple of seconds she was falling in open air through the obscuring mist.  Then she fell through the mist and into the open air, to the sight of a deep pool of water directly below her. Not again, was the one thought she had time for.  She caught sight of water cascading down a stair step pattern of rocks to her right, but was not really able to make much out before her buttocks and legs plunged through the water that closed over her head.  She hit first her feet, then her buttocks on the rocky bottom, and kicked off to go up.

Fighting back to the surface she broke out of the water and looked around.  She was in a sort of grotto with an open sky.  She turned in the water to see the falls, five meters wide of water working its way down a dozen or so steps.  The top appeared to be about fifty meters up.  There was a current pushing her out of the grotto and no observable shoreline for her to swim to.  So she let the current move her out of the grotto, toward the mountain stream that flowed from the pool.

Something hit her foot, and the child looked down in panic, remembering the river predators of this planet.  It was only a medium sized fish analogue visible through the crystal clear water, and she was a bit relieved.  It nibbled again on her boot sole with sharp teeth, and she wondered if she would fare badly if she hadn’t been wearing the survival suit.  More fish gathered around her, but none seemed to do more than look at her curiously.

The survival suit automatically inflated its air bladders, cued by continued contact with the water, and the stream floated her out.  She floated at what she figured was four or five kilometers an hour for maybe six hundred meters, when she heard the sound of a cataract up ahead.  That started another panic, and she looked frantically for a way out of the stream and control of her destiny once again.  There was a bit of shore to the north, and she pulled for it with a couple of strokes and climbed out of the water.

The shore was narrow and rocky, maybe three meters wide.  She stopped and looked around and up, finding the stream flowing through a narrow cleft in the rocks that must have corresponded with the chasm she had seen up above.  This should lead me out of the mountains, she thought, walking ahead to where the stream was falling ten meters to a lower elevation.  She couldn’t find any way around the cataract, but there was a pool below, and she solved the problem by stepping into the stream and jumping into the falls.

Below it was a repeat of above the cataract.  The stream continued, with some narrow shore on both sides.  She chose the south shore as being less rugged and moved on.  The stream widened, as did the shore, and soon the stream was bubbling over a shallow rocky bed.  Shrubs were growing on both shorelines, and she slowed down a bit to check out the bushes before she shifted past them.

At one bush something hissed at her, and she poked the shrub with a stick she had picked up a half kilometer back.  A small predator leapt out of the bush onto the stick, got a good look at her size, and jumped into the stream to swim across.

Rebecca laughed, then sobered quickly.  The cleft was widening, and there were real trees ahead.  And real trees meant other animals, some bound to not be so funny.  Now she was really on her guard, aware that things might be different here in the mountains compared to the lowlands.  She pulled the particle beam pistol and kept both hands on it, one on the pistol grip, the other on the upper assembly so she could activate it at a moment’s notice.  Remembering what the Ranger had told her, she didn’t want to activate the weapon if she didn’t have to, even though to her knowledge her old weapon had never given her away.

A couple of hundred meters further on the gorge widened into a small valley.  She caught the scent of plantimals here, something that had been missing up in the mountains.  She knew if she could smell them they were close, and she assumed that there was more than one if she could pick up their scent so clearly.  She crouched down, knees on the rocks, and looked ahead.  After a moment the distinctive rounded green shape of the creature appeared to her eyes.  It was standing under a tree, its tentacles drooped to cover a good portion of that side of the stream.  Behind it was another.  She thought for a moment about crossing the stream and going down the other side, until she spotted some more of them over there.

“Crap,” she muttered, looking at the ambush hunters who had seemed to have set up the perfect trap for anything coming up and down this gorge.  She considered trying to pass them close to the rock walls.  She dismissed that thought as she saw movement next to the wall.  What brought them all here? she thought, wondering why some of the big herbivores hadn’t come up here and cleared them out.

I’ll go between them, really slow and easy, she thought, stepping into the stream and starting to walk with short steps on the rocks.  The plantimals only had eye spots, able to pick up light and dark, and movement.  They had a lot of them though, as well as good hearing and other senses, especially for ground vibrations.

At first the creatures didn’t seem to react.  To her the steps she was taking in the water were thunderous in their noise producing intensity.  She tried to dismiss that thought, trying to be realistic.  They can’t hear me, she thought, at the same time imagining what the pack of hybrid creatures would do to her if they caught her.  It was not a pleasant thought.

She had gotten between the two plantimals which were closest to the stream.  Both just stood there, and Rebecca tried to determine if they were looking at her.  She basically had no way of knowing if any of those eyespots, so noticeable all over its body from close range, were looking at her or not.  One tentacle twitched, and she almost jumped.  She slid another foot and gripped her pistol tighter.  The tentacle twitched once again, then another one came looping over her arm and grabbed at the barrel of her pistol.

Rebecca tugged hard at the weapon, refusing to let go.  Her feet slid out from under her and she landed on her butt in the water, the impact jarring up her spine.  She shifted her left hand on the gun and activated the weapon, tugging back with her right hand.  The creature went into a frenzy, more tentacles whipping around, most going over the child, a few smacking against her survival suit and not penetrating.  She almost let go of the pistol, letting the creature have it so she could crawl away.  At that moment the activation light came on.  She pulled the trigger on the weapon and twisted it in the grasp of the tentacle.   The angry red beam sliced into the plantimal and through the one beyond it.  She pulled the weapon free from the dying creature and moved it over the rest of the group, burning them down and exploding a tree right behind them.

Tentacles came from the other side, slapping down at the girl, and Rebecca rolled over in the stream and brought the weapon to bear on the cluster on that side.  She pulled the trigger and sent the beam into the far right of the cluster, then waved it to far left like an infinite sword blade.  All of the creatures died, before a weapon their tiny brains really couldn’t understand.

Rebecca released the trigger and pushed herself up to an upright sitting position.  In front of her were many burnt and steaming plantimals, and pieces of the same, along with a couple of blasted trees.  She turned her head and was greeted by the same.  She had destroyed the entire group.

So much for stealth, she thought as she got back to her feet.  She looked back up the gorge, then turned and walked down, keeping to the stream bed.  The rest of the trip was uneventful, until she came out of the gorge and into the jungle proper.  One moment the cliffs were towering on each side above the vegetation, the next they were gone.  Rebecca looked back and saw the cliff extending in both directions with a big cleft in the center, the gorge she had walked out of.  She knew the prairie that took up most of this valley was ahead, and she started that way, staying alert.  She avoided some more plantimals, and chased away a pack of hell hounds with a short blast of her particle beam, cringing as she shot to miss.  Her main concern now was if someone was tracking the beam weapon’s electronic emissions.  She doubted it, since it was just one weapon, and no one knew she was here to start.  Still, she couldn’t rule it out as a possibility.

After a couple of kilometers the jungle ended, and the prairie spread out ahead of her.  She could see the line of the jungle on the other side, about fifteen kilometers away.  It rolled up over the hills on that side.  A bright sun was shining down on the mostly flat area, only interrupted here and there by lone hills and clusters of trees.  Some herbivores moved to her right, occupying the northern third of the valley.  There were dots scattered on the land to the far north.  She thought they must be more herbivores, though there was sure to be carnivores roaming that grassland as well.

Ahead was nothing but open land, unpopulated by animals.  About three kilometers in from the other side of the jungle was the compound that housed the Cacas, fortified and with clear fields of fire in all directions.  Just to the south of it was the airfield, recognizable by the vehicle coming in for a landing.

He’s south of here, she thought, looking that direction and trying to see if anything was moving.  She saw nothing, and took off at a jog, keeping close to the jungle while staying in the open.  She had a gut feeling that speed was more important than concealment, and that she needed to be close to the Ranger when he engaged his target.  She didn’t know why, it was just a feeling.  But she had come to trust her feelings since the invasion, and had no reason to doubt this one.

After jogging a couple of kilometers something flashed to her front, followed by a boom, and child dove for cover behind a rotting log that had fallen out of the jungle,  her pistol at the ready.  Smoke was rising from the ground about six hundred meters ahead and a couple of kilometers out on the veldt.  She brought her pistol up, extending the optical sight system.  All she could see was the smoke coming up from an otherwise clear section of the grassland.  She swung the pistol outward, and cried out as she saw the three gunships heading toward that spot.

*     *      *

Cornelius almost panicked when he was down to one point of contact.  The ground beneath was hard rock, on a heavy gravity planet.  His bones might not shatter on impact, but there was the possibility of enough soft tissue trauma to kill.   He went into overdrive mode just in time, slowing down his perception of events while increasing his strength and reflexes.

The Ranger allowed his body to go into the fall, his one leg still in contact compressing, then extending, throwing him to the left.  He spun around as he moved in that direction, back to the ground and not able to see where he was going.  He started to twist around so he could look down, and just before he completed that maneuver he hit foliage that flashed by on all sides.  Next came a branch that broke off as he hit it, slowing him some.  It also knocked the breath out of the Ranger in a woof.  He grabbed onto the next branch, tears in his eyes, and held on for dear life, trying to determine if he had taken any injuries beyond bruises.  His bones were almost unbreakable.  Almost.  He scanned his body with his internal senses and moved what he could move.  Everything still seemed to work, though some things hurt like a bitch.

Just have to deal with it, he thought, maneuvering himself so that his feet touched down on another branch.  From there he started his climb down, having to stop at times to orient the rocket launcher to get past limbs.  He hit the bottom limb about four meters above the ground.  An easy drop for his augmented body.  He hung from the limb and let himself drop the final two meters, congratulating himself on a successful, if not as planned, climb.

He grimaced as his left foot hit the ground before his right, all of the weight of his body and equipment landing on the member that hit on top of a rock that turned his foot.  He landed heavily on his side, falling over onto his ribs with a grunt.  He looked at his foot and didn’t see anything too out of place, but when he attempted to stand his ankle would not bear the pressure.

“Crap,” he muttered, sitting back down and removing the boot from the leg seal.  Pulling off the sock he saw that the ankle was starting to darken.  He felt the ankle with his fingers.  It was a little tender, but everything seemed to be in place, and he figured it must have turned and sprained when he landed.

“So I won’t be running for a little while,” he thought, replacing the sock and boot, then setting the high top of the footwear for greater rigidity.  I can still make it to where I need to be, and the ankle should be repaired in twenty minutes, tops.  He stood up, gritting his teeth while ordering a pain block on the ankle with his mind.  I already know the damned thing is hurt.  I don’t need a reminder every couple of steps.

He moved down the rocky slope, using a dead branch he had picked up by the tree as a walking stick.  After about thirty meters of rocks he reached a slope that was wooded, and his alertness went up by magnitudes.   Where there was jungle there was danger, and new areas meant possible new threats.

Cornelius worked his way through the couple kilometers of jungle, his eyes and ears alert for any threat.  He picked out some easily and moved around them, plantimals or animal ambush hunters that Rebecca had taught him about.  He was grateful for all she had taught him, and felt that she had more than paid back his rescue of her.  He felt bad about leaving her up on the cliff.  There was no way he could have gotten her down on the wall, but there might have been another way down if he had taken the time to look.  But I didn’t have the time, he thought.  And I’m pretty sure this is a suicide mission.  She’s better off up there.

He fingered the ring on its chain, thinking about his late wife.  At least I’ll be able to greet you in the afterlife with the knowledge that a lot of Cacas are heading to hell.  If there is such as either place.  His thoughts then swung back to Devera.  I’m sorry, Honey.  I had really hoped to get to you know you even better, maybe start a life that would last after this madness was over, if that ever happened.

The Ranger stepped around a clearing that look like the pit ambush plant.  Getting kind of maudlin, aren’t we, Cornelius.  I’m still alive, I’m armed, and I don’t know the future.  Many things could happen in the next couple of hours, and not all of them lead to my death.  He smiled a bit at that last thought.

The break in the jungle came suddenly.  One moment there was a foliage crowding in on all sides.  The next there were kilometers of open grassland ahead.  Cornelius moved about ten meters out of the jungle and lay down on a small hillock, focusing his eyes across the prairie.  It took a moment, but he could easily pick out the airfield, then the barracks to the north of it.  Neither were his primary target, though it would be a bonus to take them out as well.  He pulled out his map and lined up his position with the airbase, taking a grease pen and marking where he thought the headquarters must be, just inside the jungle on the other side of the plain.

Now, how do I get closer without being seen.  He was sure that the enemy was watching the area through both manned and remote sensors.  He noted the hills, the clumps of trees, a few gullies.  Anything that might get him within range of his shot.  I could take a high angle shot from here, he thought, dismissing that idea immediately.  The shot would drop the warhead back onto the target from altitude.  The problem with that was that whatever automated systems the enemy had in place would surely hit the rocket in any kind of altitude flight.  The rocket didn’t have the speed of maneuver to avoid, or the armor or electromagnetic fields to be able to take even one hit.  The odds were really against it reaching target, and the fusion warhead probably wouldn’t even go nuclear in the event of a hit.  Nope, I’ve got to get closer and take the HQ out with a ground following shot.

There was a gulley about fifty meters to his left, south.  He couldn’t tell much about it other than its shadow ran about four hundred meters out into the plains, running near to a trio of hills.  It looked like his best chance of making it.  With that thought he was on his feet and making his way south in a crouch.  The ankle was still a little tender, but he could tell that it had almost healed, and soon he would be able to run on it.

When he got to the beginning of the gulley he saw it was about five meters deep and had muddy water on the bottom.  Not the most savory of pathways, still, it would have to do.  He jumped down, careful to land on his good foot, and started off to the west along the gulley bottom.  It curved in places.  At one spot there was the stripped skeleton of a big herbivore.  Cornelius wondered how it had gotten there.  Had the animal come here to die?  Jumped in to get water and was unable to get out?  Or had a predator killed it here and the bones were all that were left after it fed and the scavengers got to it.

He made another couple of turns and came across another skeleton, this one looking like a predator from its jaws and the claws on its feet.  It was a bit more of a puzzle.  The predator looked like it had been an agile beast in life, and should have had no problem jumping from the gulley.  Yet here it was.  He took a close look at the bones and saw that all of them were intact, though there seemed to be strange marks on the long bones.  Studying them a moment he realized they were like those of the prey of river lampreys on New Detroit.  They had rasping tongues that took the last bit of flesh off of bones.  He wasn’t sure if native life had something like marrow in their bones, or if anything would try to crack those hard members to get to it.

Forty meters further there was another skeleton.  Actually a pair of them, a medium sized herbivore and a small carnivore.  Both had died here, and it was an even greater puzzle.  He had stepped through the muddy water, sometimes into the deep mud, and neither would have held these creatures in place here.

There’s something down here, he thought, pulling out his Wakizashi.  I don’t know what it is, or where it's hiding, but it is here.

He stepped around the next corner, every nerve quivering, eyes darting to each side, ears straining to pick up any sound.  He thought he heard something moving, but he couldn’t locate it.  Something is going down, he thought, holding the sword at the ready.

When it came it was a complete surprise.  He wasn’t sure what to expect, but a meter long, thirty centimeter thick snake rocketing from the mud was not it.  All he saw was the open maw with teeth running around it in a circle, three of the teeth longer that the others.  Fangs?  There were six short legs attached to the body, two behind the head, a pair at mid-body, and the final legs twenty centimeters from the tail.

The creature hit him before he could move, striking his chest, its teeth trying to dig into the suddenly rigid area of the survival suit.  The legs grasped for a hold, getting one caught on his web gear.

Cornelius cursed and grabbed the creature just behind the head with his bare left hand.  Spines erupted from the neck of the creature and pierced his flesh.  He yelled and jerked the creature away from him, tossing it into the air.  Swinging the short sword in his right hand he slashed the creature in two.  It fell into the mud, both ends writhing in pain.  He thought to strike it again, when the second one came flying up from the mud, aimed or his face.

He slashed this one out of the air before it got within striking range.  Two more leapt out while that one was falling.  Cornelius wanted to go into overdrive, giving himself a greater physical advantage.  But he used overdrive on the cliff, and his glands were still not running at full capacity, not even half way.

The sword met one creature in midflight at the head, the ultra-sharp blade cutting through tough skin and hard bone like they were cobwebs.  A quick duck sent the other one overhead, its rear claws grabbing for him and catching his bush hat.  Cornelius turned quickly and swung the sword down at the creature.  The blade caught it at the midpoint of its body and again two pieces of creature were writhing on the ground.

Leaning down to pick up his bush hat he noticed that his left hand was red and swollen, with a black bruise spreading from where the spines had penetrated his skin.  He felt lightheaded, and his vision was starting to blur.  Pushing the point of his sword into the ground, he quickly opened his med kit and pulled out a spray syringe of nanites.  He sprayed the microscopic robots on his hand, replaced the syringe, and retrieved his blade.  The hand was still swelling, though the blackness had stopped spreading.  He grunted and moved on with wobbly legs.

Cornelius stumbled and staggered for two hundred meters, hoping he didn’t run into any more of the snake things.  His luck held, and he thought that group he had tangled with must be the only ones that had inhabited this particular gulley.  Checking his hand, he found that the swelling was going down, the black spots had almost disappeared, and the flesh was almost back to its normal tone.

Wonderful things, those little guys, thought the Ranger of the nanites.  His system had housed them from the time he was conceived, come over from his mother.  And he had received boosters all his life.  There was no possible natural contagion or poison that could get past the little guys, as long as there were enough of them to disassemble the virus, bacteriod or protein.

The gulley finally ended, about forty meters to the south of the triple hill he had seen from the edge of the jungle.  Getting onto his stomach he low crawled toward the hills, keeping his head low.  The grass was fairly high, tall enough to conceal him completely, unless something was looking down on him from above.  He made it to the hills and got up into a crouch, moving around the nearest one and to a position in between the two forward most.  Here he crouched in the grass and again located where he thought his target was.  There was another hill to the northwest that he thought was right in the extreme range of a ground following shot.

Cornelius was really tired.  His systems were better than human.  That said, he really wasn’t superhuman.  He still got tired as his body produced waste.  Even though his filtering systems were much better than normal, the last couple of days had taken their toll.  He leaned against the sloping ground of the hill and caught his breath for a couple of minutes.  He would have preferred to spend more time resting, but he thought that every second he wasted brought him that much closer to discovery.

With that thought in mind he started to low crawl toward the hill he wanted to set up the shot from.  It was slow tedious business, crawling, though it also entailed the stress and tension that came with the possibility of running face to face with a predator while he was hugging the earth.  He got there, sweat pouring down his face under the heat of the late morning sun.  The planet was supposed to have cooled five or more degrees from all the dust in the atmosphere, but from the heat he felt he wouldn’t have sworn to it.

Setting himself up on the top of the hill he started to get the rocket launcher ready.  He took another glance toward the target, and cursed as he saw a trio of what looked like gunships rise from the airfield and turn his way.  They were coming fast, and he was sure if they hadn’t spotted him yet it was only a matter of moments.

Something took off from one of the gunships and flew into the ground near the gulley, exploding and sending a spray of dirt into the air.  A couple of predators took off from the area, probably interrupted from stalking him.  But the ships were still on an intercept course with his hill, and there wasn’t much he could do about them at the moment.

*     *     *

“She must have gone over the cliff here,” said the Lead Scout of the group to the Prime Hunt Leader.

“And why would, she, do that?” asked the Hunt Leader, looking down his muzzle.  They had determined from further back, as they were following the track off the road and into the rocks, that what they were tracking was a female of the human species.  They had a slightly different scent than males, and it was unusual enough to make the differentiation.  And as far as they knew, female humans were not among their augmented warriors.  Which begged the question as to what she was doing out here?   Whatever the reason, if she was out here there must be a reason, and the Prime Hunt Leader intended to find out what it was.

He looked down into the mist, seeing nothing beyond five meters.  The sound of water running down a falls sounded to his right, and he thought the mist must be generated by the liquid hitting, something.  A bed of rocks, a pool, he really didn’t know what.

“Launch a drone to take a look down there,” ordered the Prime Hunt Leader.  “She is down there.  That is a surety, as her scent goes nowhere from this point.  And there is no way she could have jumped across this chasm.  So she either made it to the bottom in one piece and moved on, or she lies dead below.”

One of his party had deployed the drone by this time, a tiny robot that looked like some kind of four winged insect, supported on the ground by eight robotic legs.  The robot took off into the air with a buzzing sound, its wings a blur.  It flew over the chasm, then darted downward.  The Maurid that had deployed it watched the robot’s take on a small screen.  He turned it so the Prime Hunt Leader could see.  The falls were visible first, cascading down the rock steps from greater heights.  It went lower and the pool appeared.

“That looks deep enough to jump in,” said the Prime Hunt Leader, looking over at his lead team.  “Jump down and take a look.  The rest of us will follow, except for this pair,” he said, pointing with a hind paw finger at the trailing group.  “They will move back to the cliff and give us observation from the high ground.”

The ones he had ordered to jump gave him a dubious look.  He knew what they were thinking.  Maurids were muscle dense creatures who didn’t float well, which affected their swimming.  Water was fine for drinking and bathing, but for immersing the entire body for locomotion?

“You have your orders,” he told the pair.  They quailed before his glance, knowing the penalty for disobedience.  “Inflate your suit bladders before you jump, and you will have no problem reaching the surface once you hit the pool.”

The pair still looked unsure of the order, but did as they were told.  They inflated their bladders, situated toward the top of the suits, then, with a moment’s hesitation, jumped into the mist.

The Prime Hunt Leader waited a couple of moments, until his team reported in over the com.  He really didn’t like the idea of even using directional coms like they were equipped with, something an enemy could possibly track.   He also wasn’t about to jump the rest of his squad and his own precious neck into a situation where they might be killed for no return.  Especially himself.  Maurids were selfish that way.

“All clear,” came the call over the com.  “The pool is deep enough, though we did drop to the rocks when we penetrated the water.”

“We’re coming down,” said the Leader, motioning for his other two Hunters to jump.  He waited a minute after they jumped, giving them plenty of time to get out of the way, and followed over the precipice.  It was not a long drop, just long enough to remind him how he hated jumping into places he couldn’t see with his own two eyes.  And then he was through the mist and hitting the water.  As he was told, he hit the bottom of the pool, but the water took most of his falling velocity away and it was a gentle touchdown.

When he got out of the pool it was obvious which way they needed to go, as there was only one way out of the grotto, in the direction of the stream.  He took a moment to look at the falls, wondering if the female might have tried to climb up those steps.  He dismissed that idea as he saw how high some of the steps were, over twenty meters, and climbing them against the rush of water would be very difficult, if not impossible.

The group rode the current out of the grotto, then moved to both sides of the stream on the narrow shoreline, two Maurids to a side, with the Prime Hunt Leader to the right.  He really didn’t like the towering walls on each side of the narrow gorge.  If they were attacked there was nowhere to go but back to the grotto, where they would be trapped.  After a while the gorge widened, and they started to see more scrubby vegetation.

“She came this way,” said one of the Scouts, sniffing the ground.

As they came around a short bend in the widening gorge, to a section that looked like a small valley, with trees and everything, it became very apparent that their quarry had come this way, and that she was armed.  On either side of the river were still smoking plantimals and pieces of such, as well as some shattered tree trunks.

“So, she has a particle beam,” said the Prime Hunt Leader, baring his teeth.  That was bad news.  Projectile weapons could possible bounce from the impact armor of their suits, and if they penetrated would cause a wound that might not be fatal, depending on where they hit.  Monomolecular blades would cut through suits, but the wielder would be outnumbered by warriors who had similar weapons, if they didn’t just stand back and shred her with projectile weapons, or let the one particle beam gunner he had brought down here take the human out.  But particle beams were a different story.  One of them hitting the suit would blast through in microseconds and vaporize a good deal of flesh beneath.

Maybe I should have brought the other beam weapon down, he thought, looking at the carnage.  They had brought a heavy laser with them, but that weapon was with the team still at the top of the cliff.  Lasers were not quite as effective as particle beams, but still packed a punch.  Or, should he say, a burn.

They moved on, walking for several more minutes before the cliffs on either side ended and they found themselves in the jungle proper.  All of the Maurids were nose to the ground, trying to pick up the scent and determine which way she had gone, now that there were again multiple possibilities.  One of the Scouts flashed a hand signal and moved forward.  The Prime Hunt Leader hoped the male had a good track.  That worry was no longer a concern as something boomed over the plains just out from the jungle.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Secret operations are essential in war; upon them the army relies to make its every move.  Sun Tzu.

AZURE.  MAY 30TH, 1001.

Cornelius pulled the rocket launcher off his shoulder and set it to his side, then did the same with the particle beam rifle.  He expanded the launcher to its full length and pulled the sights up to their full extension.  Next he unpacked the munition from its container and looked at the directions.  He had a superficial knowledge of how to use the nuke, but there was no room for mistakes at this point, with only one of the munitions.  Glancing up he saw that the three gunships were heading directly at him.  An object dropped from one of the ships and sped his way.  At the last second it veered just a bit, locking on the tree at the top of the hill and sending a big ball of fire into the air.

Must have been a radar lock, he thought, putting his hands over his head as wood splinters rained down.  I don’t have time for this, he thought, reaching over and switching the particle beam rifle on.  He picked up the rifle, put the sight on the lead gunship, and squeezed the trigger.

He had thought about just firing the rocket, but the ships would have had a very good chance of knocking it down from above.  Having it downed before it hit the target would be a waste, both of it and his life.  And if on the off chance the fusion warhead worked, it would really ruin his day if it exploded within a kilometer of his position.  So he sighted in on the lead ship and tried to make them go into evasive maneuvers, where they might not be able to hit the missile.

He pulled the trigger and the rifle bucked hard into his shoulder.  Grabber units had extended on the barrel and pulled against the recoil, lessening it.  My fucking God, he thought as the beam seemed to link the rifle instantaneously with the nose of the gunship.  Who the hell built this bitch.   That it was much more powerful than a rifle its size should be was evidenced by the nose of the heavily armored gunship exploding into molten fragments.  He moved the beam upwards and sliced into the windscreen, which, though also armored, was slightly less so than the nose had been. The cockpit exploded out, blowing the windscreen and both doors into the air.  The gunship continued on for a couple of moments, then tilted over at went down to the grassland, hitting hard and sliding forward in a cloud of dirt and grass.

The other gunships to either side veered off, the reaction Cornelius had been hoping for.  What he hadn’t been hoping for was that they would recover fast enough to come around and open fire so quickly.  A particle beam hit the dirt several meters to his right, splashing molten dirt and the ashes of grass into the air.

One of the gunships let loose with another missile, and Cornelius cringed at the sight.  Missiles were smart weapons, and a miss was rare.  There had already been one, and he didn’t think the odds would continue to favor him.  I should have taken the rocket shot already, he thought as the missile bore in.

The missile passed overhead, missing by three meters, continuing on until it hit the jungle in a fiery blast.  Cornelius couldn’t believe it.  He looked at the rifle he had taken from the cabin with dawning understanding.  Where in the hell did this guy get this tech, he thought, realizing that the rifle had a seeker head jamming system, a very powerful and sophisticated one.

Aiming the rifle at one of the remaining gunships he took another shot, wondering how many this rifle had.  The shot missed as the gunship by chance veered to the left.  He swept the beam into its wing stub and watched as the craft twisted in the air.  I think I got a fan.  That would keep the pilot from having full control of his craft.  It could stay in the air on three fans, but it wouldn’t fly steady.

He switched his fire to the other ship, which was coming in and firing away with an automatic mag gun.  The unguided pellets were not the most accurate, the pilot had to try and walk them into the target by feel.  With the jammer on his rifle though, they were the best weapon to use against him, and as the gunship drew closer it would get even more accurate.

He placed the sighting reticle on the windscreen of the ship and squeezed the trigger.  The beam lanced out and hit just above the windscreen, splashing molten metal into the air.  He started to move the beam back down to the windscreen and a killing shot when the beam flickered and died.

“Shit,” he yelled, looking at the gauge on the side of the rifle.  He still had a half charge in the battery pack, but the proton store was empty.  The rifle was powerful, but it was a material hog, and he really didn’t have time to reload it.

The craft he had been targeting veered off for a moment, then turned back toward him.  He could only hope that the battery pack was still powering that jammer.  The rocket launcher fit comfortably on his shoulder, and he tracked in on where he thought the bunker must be in the jungle across the grassland.  A cluster of dots filled the infrared scope and he knew he had his target.  He pulled the first trigger, and the rocket seeker head looked at the target and locked it in. He pulled the second trigger, and the rocket popped out of the tube, going out twenty meters before the motor cut in.

The rocket accelerated at a furious rate, hugging the ground to avoid any antiair weapons the enemy might have deployed.  The Gunship that was heading for him turned in space, its nose moving onto the rocket’s track.  Cornelius shouted out in dismay, grabbing his chemical powered rifle.  But it was too late to do anything, and the gunship fired at the rocket with every weapon it had.

*     *     *

Rebecca looked through the telescopic sight of her particle beam pistol and scanned the hill where she thought the Ranger was.  She had difficulty picking up anything at all, and remembered that he wore active cammo with his survival suit, just like hers.  There was movement, or was it imagined?  No, a face flashed her way for a moment, and she knew where he was.

The tree on the hill above him was a smoking ruin, and she knew where that blast sound had come from.  As she watched a red beam came from the spot she knew the Ranger was lying, something boomed across the plains, and she looked up from the gun in time to see an aircraft falling into the ground with a shower of dirt and grass.

One of the gunships was firing at the Ranger, and for some reason missing.  He fired again and damaged that craft, but not enough, as it was still airborne.  He fired at the third one, a direct hit, but the beam cut out before he could sweep it down.  He ran out of protons, she thought with a frown.  The one he had just fired at veered off for a moment, but was coming back at him with minimal delay, firing all of its weapons.

Rebecca really wasn’t sure why the ship was missing, but it was getting closer, making the chance of a hit increase with each meter that range decreased.  And the damaged aircraft was starting to come under the control of the pilot, and would certainly soon be back in the game.

The Ranger fired the rocket launcher, and the weapon shot forward in a cloud of smoke, hugging the ground and moving around another hill.  The firing gunship swerved and turned to follow the rocket with its guns.  And as far as Rebecca knew, it had a very good chance of downing it.

Not on your life, she thought, sighting through the optics of the pistol and tracking onto the aircraft.  She pulled the trigger and held it down, sending a continuous beam into the tail of the craft. The beam didn’t seem to be having much of an effect, until something exploded with a shower of metal and the craft started to tilt, its shots arcing upward as the nose rose.  Her pistol stopped putting out the beam, the proton store spent, and the barrel was putting out tremendous heat as it glowed almost white hot.  The heat reached back to her hand and she dropped the hot weapon into the grass with a cry.  Grass browned, shriveled up, and caught on fire, and she crawled back a bit, hoping that the pistol was not damaged.  She had extra proton packs and batteries, but if the pistol was burned out then they were just dead weight.

She heard something behind her, and rolled over to see the terrible sight of Hunters moving toward her.  And then the world turned white.

*     *     *

“General,” said the panting messenger, running up to the regional commander as he stood outside the bunker.  “We have reports of human soldiers on the plain.”

“How many?” growled the General, looking at the smaller male.

“We’ve spotted one, but there could be more.  We have gunships headed out to engage him.”

“I doubt they are much of a threat,” said the General, giving a hand gesture of dismissal.  “But keep me informed.”

Some faint sounds came to the General’s ears, small explosions in the distance.  “It sounds like the gunships are taking care of the human problem,” he said with a toothy grin.  There were some more explosions, then something rising up briefly into the sky overhead caught his eye.  His mind told him what it was immediately, and he knew there was no way he could get under cover.  He wasn’t sure if that would have made a difference.  That was his last thought as the object flared brilliant white, and the General and everything around him burned to ash.

*     *     *

Cornelius saw the one gunship hit with a particle beam.  Why didn’t she stay where I left her? he thought, knowing who had to have fired that weapon.  The thought made him mad, even as he realized that she had saved his life and allowed him to make the shot with the rocket launcher.  The gunship that had been trying to shoot down the rocket continued after it.  But it was now a wobbly platform, its accuracy much degraded.  The other gunship was starting to head his way, its skillful pilot keeping it steady on three fans while its guns took him under fire.

Now, thought Cornelius, putting his face into the ground and his arms over his head.  And then the plain turned brilliant white, followed by a deafening crack.

The warhead was a ten megaton enhanced fusion weapon.  It went off a hundred meters over the bunker, sending its blast of heat, twenty million degrees worth, and radiation into everything within five kilometers, most of which were vaporized.  Plants, animals, vehicles, Ca’cadsans out in the open, all were sucked into the fireball, their molecules and larger burnt pieces climbing into the air.  The General died in a microsecond, along with hundreds of Ca’cadasans who were working or lounging outside the command bunker.   Animals had no time to even register that they were dead, and the Ca’cadasans in the inner perimeter were killed by heat and blast.

The bunker itself, being made of superstrong modern materials, would have weathered all but a direct hit.  Unfortunately for the occupants, all of the doors and window shutters were opened, including a pair of large vehicle doors.  This allowed the firestorm to push deep into the structure, killing hundreds more of the big aliens.   Not everyone in the bunker was killed.  Large automatic blast doors closed off the lower levels, and the hundred or so Cacada technicians and clerks working in the depths survived, albeit trapped for some days until rescue crews could dig them out.

The airfield was three kilometers from ground zero.  All of the techs out in the open were killed, along with those working in the thin metaled hangars.  Those in armories and heavy storage buildings survived, for the most part, except where doors had been left open for ventilation, which happened to be almost half of them.  The infantry barracks to the north also took considerable damage, hundreds of Ca’cadasan infantrymen killed, many more injured.  The infantry occupying fighting bunkers lived or died according to their luck.  The same was true of those on the outer perimeter in the jungle.

The grass on the plains caught fire in a circle ten kilometers out from ground zero.  The animals were knocked over onto their sides or suffered terrible burns.  Those that survived would be radiation casualties within the next couple of days.

Cornelius could feel the heat through his survival suit at the range of twelve kilometers from ground zero.  He had his gloves on, but could still feel the flesh on his body burning a bit.  He held his bush hat in place, protecting the crown of his head, though the flesh on his neck crisped and blackened.  He grunted in pain, keeping his eyes closed and his head down.  The blast wave roared over, and heavy objects flew by or struck the ground around him.  One of the gunships smacked into the ground about twenty meters to his right and started a rolling trip over the ground, going up the side of one hill and taking out the couple of burning trees on top.

The Sergeant could feel the nausea of radiation sickness, and knew that he had received a killing dose.  The EMP had most likely taken out all of his nanites, and damaged cells would now be dying.  As the wind dropped to a stiff breeze as he looked up to see the mushroom cloud climbing into the sky.  The fringes of the jungle were on fire, a nascent storm of flame.  There were burning vehicles and other unrecognizable objects burning where the bases had been.  Some buildings were still standing, but overall the scene was one of total devastation.

Cornelius rolled over onto his side and reached into his shielded med kit, pulling out a syringe of nanites.  Placing the nozzle against his throat he injected billions of working robots into his system.  His implant was still working, EMP proof as it was, and it soon had the nanites working to clean up the radiation damage.

Rebecca is out here, he thought, picking up the particle beam rifle, checking it quickly for damage, then slamming another proton pack into place.  She’s gonna be scared and sick, and I need to find her and get her some treatment.

With that thought he was on his feet, rifle in hand, walking north in search of the child whose stupid thinking move had allowed him to complete his mission.  He hadn’t moved more than ten meters when something hit him in the leg and he jumped to a covered position behind a piece of gunship that had come to a rest.  Something hit the metal and melted a hole, and he could see the track of the laser beam through the dust.

“Fuck you,” he yelled, aiming the rifle to the point the laser had originated from.  He saw two of the dog like Hunters, laying on the cliff top, frantically working on a heavy laser.  He aimed in on the gunner and pulled the trigger, sending a relativistic beam of protons into that Hunter, then swinging the beam onto the second.

I need to find her, he thought again, getting to his feet and moving again, hoping there were no more of the creatures up there sighting in on him.  A damned nuke couldn’t kill me.  Gunships couldn’t kill me.  So some damned aliens on a cliff aren’t going to kill me.

Chapter Thirty

The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.  Douglas MacArthur.

AZURE.  MAY 30TH-JUNE 7TH, 1001.

The bright light caught Rebecca by complete surprise, and she turned to look into the blast, realizing at the last moment that she had made a terrible mistake.  The pain in her eyes was searing, as was the crisping of her skin by the wave of heat.  She cried out in pain, while her mind reminded her that there was another threat nearby, one more immediate than the radiation that was sleeting through her body.

The blast hit, a hurricane wind roaring by, carrying debris, trees, even some animals that had been closer to ground zero.  Something clipped Rebecca on the shoulder, her suit going rigid with the strike.  Another object struck her in the head, a glancing blow that still knocked her senseless for a moment.

Her ears were ringing from the blast as she lay on the ground, blind and in extreme pain from the burns.  She couldn’t hear the Hunters, didn’t know where they were, until a hand grabbed her arm and turned her over.

“Where is the one who did this?” asked a voice she could barely hear.  She knew it must be yelling at her, but to her impaired hearing it sounded like a whisper.  Her stomach turned and she vomited, the smelly liquid rising up and running onto her face and body.

There was a sharp pain in her right arm, like the point of a knife had been pushed into her flesh through the survival suit.  She wasn’t sure if it was a claw of some other blade, and she thought it really didn’t matter.  They were obviously willing to hurt her as much as necessary to get what they wanted.

We really hurt you bastards, she thought in triumph.  Her very next thought was that she really didn’t want to die.  But the Universe, the cold and heartless bitch, really didn’t care what she wanted.  The pain in her arm increased to the level of agony, as if something was ripping through her flesh.  A scream bubbled at her lips, overridden by another round of vomiting.

The creatures were growling at each other, and though she couldn’t understand what they were saying, it was obvious that an argument was going on.  She couldn’t tell what it was about, but had an inkling she was the topic.

The argument was cut short by a yell, and the bone deep buzzing sound of what could only be a particle beam.

*     *     *

By the time he had walked a couple of hundred meters he was feeling better.  He knew it would take several hours for the nanites to complete repair of his cells.  The warhead had a tiny amount of fissionable material in its makeup, so long term radiation and fallout really wasn’t a problem.  The burst of initial radiation from the heavy pellet of compressed solid hydrogen had caused the cellular damage.

Cornelius looked over the blasted plain and to the total annihilation of the jungle up to the top of the hills that bounded that side of the valley.   Stick figure caricatures of trees stuck up from the ash that was still swirling around as the fireball rose slowly up to the stratosphere.  .The grassland as now truly treeless, and devoid of animal life, anything capable of still moving having run off into the jungle.

They don’t have nanites, thought Cornelius, feeling bad about what he did to the animal life.  As a former hunter and farmer he loved and respected animals, even the ones that wanted to eat him.  He deflected the blame onto the Ca’cadasans.  If they hadn’t come here and attacked the New Terran Empire, hell, all the human governments, this wouldn’t have been necessary.  He was happy that he sent so many of the cruel creatures to whatever hell they occupied.

Cornelius slowed and went into a crouch as he spotted what he was looking for, and more than he had planned on.  The small figure lying on the ground had to be Rebecca.  He wasn’t sure where the Hunters had come from, but five of them were clustered around the child, and from their stance he was sure they weren’t administering medical aid to her.  One reached down with a paw that was extended into an almost human looking hand, a single claw showing on the index finger, and did something that cause the child to cry out, then vomit.  He could barely hear the sound, his hearing not yet back to normal.  But it was enough to send him into a rage.  He almost charged forward at that point, screaming and yelling to get the attention of the creatures.  Wisdom controlled his rage, and instead he looked over the situation to see what the best course of action was.

I like the way those three are lined up, he thought, getting into a kneeling position and bringing the particle beam rifle up to his shoulder.  He sighted in on the forward Hunter, waiting a moment for the ones behind him to get in line.  It didn’t take long, and first one, then the other, shifted over into the perfect alignment.

Cornelius squeezed the trigger and the rifle bucked hard into his shoulder.  He realized at the last moment that he still had the weapon set for maximum power, the same setting he had used against the gunships.

The one second burst of protons connected rifle to target almost instantaneously.  The beam hit the creature, who was standing on all fours, in the head and shoulders.  Those areas of its body converted to vapor in an instant, all the way back to its tail.  The one behind it was in a bipedal stance and the beam hit it in the abdominal region.  That area vaporized into reddish colored steam and the upper torso fell away to the side from the groin/leg area.  The third was also standing upright, though crouching over, and received the blast through the chest.  The first Hunter was killed instantly, with no chance to feel the pain that Cornelius would have wanted to impart.  The second let out a short scream before his lungs stopped working, and the torso lay writhing on the ground for several seconds before it died.  The third fell to the ground in pain, but was unable to voice it without an upper torso, and soon died.  A cloud of superheated steam swirled around above the bodies, moved by the convection currents stirred up by the nuke.

The other two looked up with what must have been shocked expressions on their faces.  Cornelius swung his rifle onto the next one in line and pulled the trigger.  And nothing happened.  He looked with dismay on the weapon, not sure why it hadn’t fired.  The load gauge was dark, getting no power, and he suspected that something had burned out after that last shot.  That was all the time he had for speculation.  He dropped the rifle and started running toward the two surviving Hunters and his friend.   His right hand pulled his mag pistol, a weapon he had yet to use on the mission, from its holster, while his left grabbed the hilt of his Wakizashi.  He went into overdrive, the world blurring to his vision as he rocketed ahead, everything else moving in slow motion.  He aimed his pistol at the Hunter furthest from Rebecca and started to send shots into it.

The first couple of rounds hit the Hunter on its survival suit, without enough power to penetrate.  The creature brought its own rifle up to its shoulder and fired back.  The round hit Cornelius in the chest, a hard impact that didn’t make it past the stiffening armor of the suit.  He brought his arm up over his face just in time to catch a round that would have hit him in the head.  That round penetrated into the meaty part of his forearm, stopped by the impact armor on the other side.  His hand spasmed, and he almost dropped his blade.  Only through a supreme effort of will was he able to maintain his grip.

It hurt like a bitch, but even worse, he couldn’t see his target while trying to protect his face.  Another round cracked by his head, and he took the chance of lowering his left arm while his right hand flipped the pistol to auto fire.  The rounds would come out with less velocity that single shot, but it didn’t look like he would get penetration of the alien’s survival suit anyway.

The pistol chattered in his hand, going through twenty rounds in a second.  Most hit the Hunter on his suit, bouncing away.  Several hit the rifle and sparked off, spoiling his aim as he fired a shot that barely missed the Ranger’s head.  And one round hit perfectly in his face, blasting through an eyeball, blowing through the optic nerve and into the brain.  The Hunter got off one more shot from reflex action, missing badly, then dropping the rifle and following it into the ash.

“Stop,” yelled the other Hunter, holding Rebecca up with one hand while the other caressed her throat.  “Drop your weapons, or I will kill her.”

“And then you kill us both,” growled the Ranger.  “No thanks.”  This was a hostage situation, and doctrine called for never surrendering your weapons in such an event.  But I can’t let him kill her.  So what the hell do I do?  The pistol was empty.  He had two more magazines, but he really doubted the Hunter would allow him to reload.

“I will let you go if you let me go,” said the Hunter.  “But I must know that you will not shoot me in the back, so I must have your weapons.”

“What about loyalty to your masters?”

“We have no real loyalty to those creatures,” spat the Hunter.  “We do what we must to survive, and pray for the day when we are free of them.”

Cornelius stared at the creature.  He thought it might be telling the truth in that last statement.  But he was also sure that it would kill both of them if he disarmed himself.  Rebecca moved one of her hands, reaching for her belt until it was resting on the hilt of the knife he had given her before they parted.

“Be still, child,” growled the Hunter, tightening his grip on her throat.

Cornelius glared at the creature, but dropped his already useless pistol.  He started to slowly lower the short sword, his eyes locked on those of the Hunter.  And then Rebecca made her move.

The child jerked her knife from its sheath and plunged it into the leg of the alien that held her.  The ultra-sharp blade sliced into the survival suit and the muscle beneath.  At the same time she twisted her head to the right.  The claws of the creature, set to tear out her throat, instead gashed her on the side of the face, cutting down to the bone.

The Hunter threw her to the side to land hard on the ground, its other hand reaching down to grab the knife.  It looked over at the child with hate filled eyes and started to take a step toward her.

That was a mistake, and Cornelius took off in a run as soon as the child was out of the Hunter’s grasp.  The Hunter saw him coming and changed its stance, facing him, the combat knife held out in its right hand, the claws on its left hand extended.  The Ranger slowed his head in rush and crouched just out of reach.

The Hunter moved, a blur of motion, and one of the fastest things Cornelius had ever seen, faster than most Rangers.  Most being the key word.  Cornelius was still in overdrive, knowing the price he would later pay, and his reflexes were exceptional even for an augmented human.  He blocked the slash from the left claws with his right arm, then grappled the right wrist coming in with the knife.  Quickly leaning back he brought a side kick into the creature’s waist and pushed it back, then leapt in with a backhand to the face.

The Hunter went down to the ground and rolled back to its feet.  It leapt like a wolf at the man, and Cornelius moved to the side with a step and struck out with his sword.  The blade went into the side of the creature, and the Ranger pulled it out with a draw cut.  A moment later the hurtling creature hooked its rear claws into the deltoid of his right arm, ripping through the suit and deep into the flesh.

Cornelius grunted in pain, then looked at the creature as it landed on all fours and turned in place.  Blood was pouring from the wound in its side, and he wasn’t sure what was keeping it up.

“I could be of great use to you,” said the creature, moving forward slowly.  “I could give you information that would benefit your side.”

“I can see that,” said Cornelius, just before the Hunter leapt for his throat.  He swung his short sword in an arc and ducked, and the head of the Hunter went flying over his shoulder while the body slammed into him.  Lying on the ground, Cornelius pushed the creature off of him, stood up, and looked down at the headless body.  “I can also see the benefit it killing all of you lying sons of bitches.”

Rebecca moaned, and Cornelius was at her side in an instant.  His body was starting to shut down from overdrive, and it was demanding that he rest.  But he had things to do first, including making sure that this child who had done so much for him survived.

Her eyes were open, but from the looks of the cornea she had been blinded by the blast.  “We’ll fix that,” he told her as he sprayed the wound on her neck with nanites, then gently placed a self-sealing bandage on the gashes.  Next he injected more nanites into her neck, sending them on the way to clean up the radiation damage in her cells.

“What happened?” asked Rebecca, her blind eyes staring ahead.  “Are they all dead?”

“They’re dead, honey.  And I would be dead without you, even though I should put you over my knee for disobeying me.”

Rebecca smiled, despite the pain she must be feeling.  “You’re welcome.”

“Now hold still,” he ordered with a gentle voice.  He shrugged off his backpack and pulled the full med kit from its depths.  Once inside he found the patches he was looking for and placed them in a container where they would be programed for their task.  That done, he set them onto her eyes, one at a time, then wrapped her head with bandage to hold them in place.  “These might not do the whole job, Honey, but they’ll start the process.  OK?”

“Are we in danger out here?” she asked, turning her face toward him.  “Shouldn’t we be moving?”

“If there were any survivors of that hell I visited on them, I’m sure they have better things to do,” he said.  At least I hope they do, he thought, looking around and seeing absolutely no activity across the valley.  Someone might have survived in the bunker, or some of those hardened buildings at the base, but those are still hot spots.  Of course there always was the possibility that the Ca’cadasans would send a relief force here, to search for survivors, and he had no illusions what they would do to Rebecca or himself if they were found here.

“I’m going to pick you up, Honey,” said Cornelius, grabbing her by the waist and lifting her into the air, setting her buttocks on his back and her legs over his shoulders.  “Now, let’s get the hell out of here.”

It was a short walk to the jungle, which was mostly untouched behind the scorched front that the heat of the blast had caused.  Some trees were missing branches, some had toppled over or been uprooted, or broken off at some point on the trunk.  That made it hard going at first, and the Ranger felt like his eyes wanted to close on their own in mid-walk.  By willpower alone he forged on, until the jungle was again whole.  He noticed that there were no sounds in that jungle.  Every animal had gone to ground, and probably the plantimals as well.

There it is, he thought, picking out the safe tree.  At the base he lowered Rebecca from his shoulders.  She was snoring away, exhausted by her ordeal.  Just like me.  But I’ve got to make sure we’re safe first.  Putting her over his shoulder, holding her legs with his right arm, which was starting to stiffen up from its wounds, he began the climb.  Fifteen meters up was the first bole.  He would have preferred to go higher, but really wasn’t sure if he was capable of doing so.  He lay Rebecca again the trunk and pulled her sleeping bag out of her pack, then laid her on it.  He gave her another booster shot of nanites, then pushed the remainder in the syringe through his own skin.

One more thing, he thought, pulling out the sprayer of pheromones and circling the bole.  After that he lay down on his own bag and closed his eyes.  And was asleep before he knew it.

*     *     *

Rebecca awoke the next morning, at first panicked when she tried to open her eyes and couldn’t.  Memories came flooding back, the horror of the preceding day, from the nuke going off across the valley to the encounter with the Hunters.  She stifled a scream, putting a hand to her mouth.

“What’s wrong,” said the man who had carried her to safety.

“Nothing,” she said, a feeling of security coming over her.  “Just bad memories.”

“You’ll have to deal with those for a while,” said Cornelius.  “But it will get better.”

“Are we going to get out of here?”

“Yes,” said the man without hesitation.  “We will get out of here.  We’re just going to wait until you have your vision back.”

“And how long will that take?”

“A couple of days, I would think,” he said.  “I won’t lie to you.  The flash burned the hell out of your retinas.  I think you will regain some of your vision, but total reconstruction will have to wait until we get you to a medical facility.  Fair enough?”

“I guess I can live with that,” she agreed, grateful to just be alive.  “And what happens to me after that?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t have any family,” said Rebecca, shaking her head, her feelings shifting now to the realm of sorrow.

There was silence for some minutes, Rebecca lost in her thoughts.  Finally the man cleared his throat.  “I’ll make sure you have someplace to go,” he said.  “You will not be an orphan.  You have my word on that.”

But you’re a soldier with no family yourself, she thought, not voicing her worries.  How can you take care of me?

The next couple of days went by slowly.  Rebecca really had nothing to do but recuperate, while the Sergeant made sure that she was fed and protected.

On the morning of the fourth day after the nuke Cornelius removed her bandages.  She could tell something was happening to the good from the way the light was leaking around the patches.  Cornelius pulled the left patch off first, and Rebecca blinked the painful tears from her eyes as she tried to focus.  She could see the blurred figure of the man in front of her, and another blur, this one brown, that she assumed was the trunk.

“I can’t see much,” she told Cornelius, more tears rolling out of her eye.

“Just take it easy,” said the Ranger, patting her on the shoulder.  “We’ve still got one to go, and they may improve over the day.”

The next patch came off, to another blurry view, though somewhat better than the other eye.  Cornelius still looked blurry, though she could make out his features, and some of the bark of the tree behind him.

“That one’s better,” she told him, smiling.  “Still not good enough to shoot with, but I think I can get around.”

“Good enough to walk out of this hellhole?”

“I don’t know,” she said in a quiet voice, thinking about that dangerous jungle.  “I’m sure to miss a lot of the threats.”

“Now look, little girl,” said the man, putting his hands on her shoulders.  “You led me through the jungle with your eyes.  Now, let me do the same for you.  You just make sure that you walk straight and don’t trip, and I’ll take care of everything else.”

She nodded, all of her doubts about making it out of the jungle gone.  This was the guy, after all, who had single handedly taken on the mission his whole company had been assigned, and had completed it.  And survived.

The next morning they started out.  Her vision was a little better than the day before.  The left was still more than useless, though her right was almost normal.  Still, she could see enough to stay close to the Ranger, who also kept an eye on her the whole way.  They spent the nights in safe trees, and Cornelius was now an expert on preparation of the secure spot for each sleep period.  They spend several days walking to the village where Rebecca had spent time with her brother, where they hoped to spend a day cleaning up and replenishing their supplies.

Instead they found a grounded aircar in the center of the village, and human soldiers searching the buildings.

“We’re coming out,” yelled Cornelius from cover, looking at a soldier in light battle armor who stopped in his tracks and turned his weapon in their direction.  “We’re human.  I’m a Ranger, and I have a civilian survivor with me, a child.”

“Come out, but slowly,” yelled the soldier after talking into his com.

Cornelius grabbed Rebecca’s right hand in his left and raised both into the air, along with his other hand.  The soldier covered them with his weapon for a few seconds, then lowered it, his visor raising to show a smiling face.

“I am so sorry, Sergeant,” said the soldier.  “I’m Sergeant Klein.  Where the hell did you come from?”

“The valley to the south,” said Cornelius.  “You know, the one that blew the hell up some odd days ago.”

“That was you?” asked Klein.  “We wondered who did that when it went off so far behind schedule.  What happened to the rest of the company?”

“They were wiped out going in,” said Cornelius.  “I was the only one who survived.”

“Damn.  Well, we can get you from here to the base.”

“We’re flying now?  How the hell did you get away with that?”

“Of course you don’t know,” said the other man after a moment’s hesitation.  “The Ca’cadasans packed up and left.  After you knocked out their regional HQ, a fleet came into the system that outgunned their force and they took off.”

“Hot damn,” cheered Cornelius.

“So the planet is ours again?” asked Rebecca.

“Such as they left us,” said the Sergeant, frowning as he looked down at the child.  “We’re evacuating all remaining civilians through the wormhole gate.  Only a military presence will be left here, in case they come back.”

“You’re going to evacuate a hundred million people?” asked Rebecca, trying to imagine getting that many people off planet through the single wormhole.

“I’m sorry to say that only three million civilians survived,” said the Sergeant.

“Three million,” stammered Rebecca.  Out of over a hundred million people.  That many killed.

“Look,” said the Sergeant.  “We were here checking out the place, making sure the Cacas didn’t leave anyone behind.  The rest of my division is doing the same across this continent.  But we’re done here, so let us give you a ride to the base.  I’m sure they’ll want to debrief you, Sergeant.  And I think the docs would like to look over the both of you.”

“Sounds better than walking, eh, Rebecca,” said Cornelius, walking with her after the other soldier to the transport car.

She nodded her head.  “Clean clothes and good food sound wonderful,” she said, following Walborski onto the vehicle.  She looked out the window the entire trip back to the base, the natural beauty of the planet that was her home passing below in her still blurry vision.  She wondered if she would ever see it again, and made a vow to herself that she would.  I will be part of the fleet that takes this space back from the Cacas, she thought.

The base was a bustle of activity.  The transport came to a landing on a field that was now full of aircraft, a sure sign that the enemy no longer controlled the orbits.  Some were loading up with soldiers and taking off.  Others were offloading civilians, who were forming up an orderly line and walking into the subterranean structure.  Their vehicle landed at the edge of the field where there was open space.

“The brass will want to debrief you, Sergeant Walborski,” said another NCO, running up and saluting Cornelius.

Rebecca was surprised that one NCO would salute another, and she mentioned that to Klein.

“He’s a holder of the Imperial Medal of Heroism,” said the Sergeant.  “The highest award for bravery in the Empire, given by the hand of the Emperor.”

“Wow.  Then he may just be getting another one,” she said, watching the Ranger jogging after the other NCO.

Cornelius looked back, held up a hand to halt the other Sergeant, and ran back toward her, stopping in shouting range.  “Don’t go through the wormhole until I get back.  Understand?”

“Yes,” she said, nodding and smiling.

“You can wait with my unit,” said Klein, motioning her over to a tent off the field.

Rebecca sat in an offered seat and allowed herself to relax.  I’m safe¸ she thought, though she still wasn’t sure what the future held.  She found that out two hours later when the Ranger returned,  a smile on his face.

Epilogue

SUPERSYSTEM SPACE:  JUNE, 1001.

“Cadet Walborski reporting as ordered, Sir,” said Cornelius, snapping to attention in front of the Commandant’s desk.  He waited for the Colonel to salute him first, as was the custom.  The Colonel too had the ribbon for the Imperial Medal of Heroism on his dress uniform.  But Cornelius now had a star on his ribbon, marking him as one of the very few multiple award winners in the history of the decoration.

“We have heard good things about you, Cadet,” said the Commandant, rendering the hand salute.  The officer had a salad of ribbons along his left breast, but to Cornelius the most impressive thing was the Ranger flash on his left upper sleeve.  “Or, should I say, Sir Cornelius.”

Walborski winced a bit at that, another battle he had lost with the Emperor.  Sean thought anyone who had accomplished what he had on Azure, against all odds, should be rewarded, and that a knighthood was the least he should get.

“Preacher sent word about you,” continued the Colonel.  “But I must caution you.  OCS is a hardcore course, and you will receive no special treatment here.”

“I didn’t think that I would, Sir,” said Walborksi, no longer a sergeant, but now a Cadet Officer entering the yearlong Officer Candidate School.  He had no idea where he would be assigned afterwards, or even if it would be back with the Rangers, though that was the way he would have bet.  He was sure he would get a combat assignment though.

“Cadet Sempsin will show you to your quarters, Cadet,” said the Commandant with a smile.  “And good luck.”  The Colonel gave him another salute.

“Colonel,” said Cornelius as he was returning the salute.  “Couldn’t we just let me salute the officers over me?”

“Well, Walborski,” said the Colonel, his smile growing wider.  “That will teach you not to play hero in the future.  Your job as an officer in his Imperial Majesty’s Army is to lead other men, to get the best out of them.  But, from what I have read in your file, you earned both of those awards.  So you will accept the honor given to you, and you will like it, as long as you don’t let it go to your head.”

“Yes, Sir,” said Cornelius, snapping back to attention.

“If you’ll follow me, Walborski,” said the other Cadet, who Cornelius took to be an Officer’s Candidate near to graduation, and therefore his current superior.

“Yes, Ma’am,” said Cornelius, walking beside her from the room.  He played with the ring on his left hand unconsciously as he walked.

“How long have you been married?” asked the woman, looking up at him.

“Two weeks,” he said with a smile.  “I just came off my honeymoon.”

“Was it at a nice place?” she asked.

He barked a short laugh.  “You could say that.”  You wouldn’t believe how nice, he thought.  The Emperor’s own hunting lodge in the Alsacian Mountains of Jewel.  Just he and his bride for a week.

“All of your family there?”

“Hers was.  I really don’t have any besides my kids.”  And it had been a small ceremony, only Devera’s parents and her brother, and for witnesses the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  With the Archbishop of Capitulum performing the ceremony, and the Emperor as Best Man.  Cornelius had been horrified when the ceremony had been suggested by Sean with those luminaries as guests and minister.  He had tried to argue his way out of it, but Sean had told him to shut up and obey the orders of the man he had sworn his oaths to.

“What happened to the first wife, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“She was killed, by the Cacas.”

“Oh my God,” said Sempsin, putting her hands over her mouth.  “I am so sorry.”

So am I, thought Cornelius, shaking his head, almost reaching up to feel the ring he had worn around his neck since entering the service.  A ring that now resided in a box in his quarters in the palace.  “I had a real thing for killing the Cacas after it happened,” he told her, stopping and looking into her eyes.  “A death wish.  No more.  Now I want to kill them, same as before, but not at the cost of my life, if I can help it.”

The Senior Cadet looked over his ribbons and decorations.  “Looks to me like you know what you’re talking about.  I would really be interested in talking with you sometime about what combat is like.  I mean real combat.”

“What did you do before you ended up here?” he asked, looking at her lack of decorations.

“I took a test,” she said, leading him down a short corridor to a closed door that she opened.  “They thought I was officer material, so here I am.  And here we are,” she continued, gesturing to the small but nicely appointed room.

Cornelius looked over the room, a bed, desk, easy chair, and a window overlooking the drill yard.  “This will be just fine,” he said, walking into the room.  “Much better than living in the jungle.”

“Dinner is at six,” she said.  “Your training group starts tomorrow.  You made it just in time to miss having to wait a week for the next group.  I will be one of your Cadet Instructors, so let me know if you have any questions.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” said Cornelius, snapping to attention, but waiting for her to initiate the salute.  When she had left he sat on his bed.  His bags had been delivered to the room, and after a moment he started to unpack, starting with his family pictures, which he placed on the desk.  In one Devera held Cornelius Junior.  In another Devera stood with an arm around Rebecca, his and her daughter by adoption.  At least I made sure you were safe, he thought, looking at the child.  And I mean to keep all of you safe, no matter what.

*     *     *

“How’s the homework coming?” asked Devera Walborski, looking in on Rebecca.

Rebecca sat at the desk in her room, puzzling out the intricacies of hyperspatial calculus, a subject considered far beyond her tender years.  She had just turned thirteen standard years on Azure, still two years from the start of puberty.  But she had tested out in the upper one hundredth percentile in mathematics, and she was determined to get into the Fleet Academy when she turned the minimum age of twenty-one.  Having the Emperor as a Godfather might help her with her admissions, but even Cornelius told her that it wouldn’t wash if she didn’t make the grades.

“It’s tough,” she admitted to her adoptive mother.  “But I don’t doubt I’ll figure it out.”

“I have no doubts either, Honey,” said Devera, walking into the room and running a hand over her adoptive daughter’s shoulder.

Rebecca liked Devera.  She still had trouble thinking of her and Cornelius as her parents, though legally they were.  But she felt really lucky to have fallen into the situation she was in.  She looked up from the flat comp she had been working on through the windows to the beautiful day outside.  The green leaves and mostly harmless brown furry animals had been something to get used to, as did the fact that nothing on the palace grounds would try to harm her.  Her cat, how she liked the sound of that, her cat Duchess, lay on that windowsill absorbing the rays of the sun that still looked dim to her, even though she knew it was the kind of star humankind had evolved around.

“I have to get going,” said her new Mom, bending over and kissing the top of her head.

Rebecca looked up and saw that Devera was in her military medic uniform, staff sergeant chevrons on her collar.  Devera had been assigned to the military hospital in Capitulum so that she could help raise her and Cornelius Junior, while studying to become a Warrant Officer Medic, something she had always dreamed of.  And possibly a real doc from there.  If only Cornelius were here, she thought.  She knew the reason that he wasn’t, and at least he was safe for the next year or so while he prepared to become an officer.  She knew Devera missed him terribly as well, even though they were just off their honeymoon. She also knew that Cornelius was due to come home on a weekend pass in a month, something he hadn’t told his wife, planning to surprise her.  Rebecca had felt honored by his trust in helping to make that happen.

“Don’t spend all your time indoors,” admonished her Mom.  “Studies are important, but you need to enjoy your childhood while you can.”

Rebecca nodded, wondering if she would ever truly be a child again, after all she had gone through on Azure.  “I think I’ll go riding this afternoon.  Sonia has been telling me about the horses again, and it sounds like fun.”

The Palace boasted its own school, where the children of everyone from nobles in waiting to the servants were able to get a first class education.  That had surprised Rebecca, not that there was a school, but that there was no separation by social class.  With Cornelius knighted by the Emperor she was considered a Lady, as was her new mother.  But even the children of the servants were treated as equals at the school.  Something to do with Sean’s grandfather wanting the children at the palace to all be children, and not little adults.

“You be careful on those things,” said Devera, turning to walk away.  “I know they’re fun, but horses are big animals, and not to be taken lightly.”

Rebecca huffed at that as her adoptive mom walked from the room.  From what she had seen horses were big friendly beasts, so unlike anything she knew from Azure.  Now that she thought about it, she couldn’t wait to sit one of the beasts.  She might even get a look at the Royal Consort, maybe even talk to the woman.

She checked the time and realized she had another ten minutes before she needed to leave.  She took on another problem on the flat comp, but couldn’t get her mind around the math for the moment.  She decided to pack up and leave just a little early.  That would give her some time to talk with the other girls her age.  Slinging the pack over her shoulder, she walked outside to wait for the car that came around to pick up her.  While waiting she looked up into the sky, at the blue expanse she knew hid the array of stars.  One day I’ll be grown up.  And I’ll be coming for you, you alien demons.  I’ll be coming for you, and you will tremble, knowing who it is.

The End

Appendix A – Terms and Definitions.

Augmented:  People who have had their genome manipulated beyond that of the general population, often with negative effects.  Those augmented, which include Army Rangers, Marine Recon and Naval Commandos, as well as Special Agents and Intelligence Operatives, are retroactively genetically engineered by means of programmed nanotech, which alters their organ functions, while also increasing the toughness of bones, tendons and ligaments through the deposition of carbon nanofibers.

Battle Armor:  Various forms of armor worn by soldiers, marines and spacers in the services of all the human governments, as well as most of the alien powers.  Battle armor gives the wearer protection commiserate with the type of armor, as well as increased sensory feeds, computational power, and strength.  Most of it is fully encasing, sealing the wearer in a seamless unitary suit for maximum protection.  One of the major shortcomings of battle armor is its tendency to emit electronic static that can be picked up on sensors at a distance.  Battle armor comes in several varieties, such as:

Militia Armor:  Normally light battle armor that has outlived its usefulness with the regular and reserve forces and is assigned for the use of planetary militia.  Ranges in capabilities from strap on armor with no augmentation of strength and senses to fully encased light armor with doubling of strength.

Light Battle Armor:  Worn by Army Light Infantry and most support troops, including vehicle crews, the sixty kilo fully encasing suit doubles the strength and carrying capacity of the wearer and gives increased visual and audio inputs.  Light Armor does little to increase the observable size of the human/machine symbiote.

Medium Battle Armor:  Worn by Army Medium Infantry, Shipboard Marines, and Shipboard Naval personnel, the hundred and twenty kilo suit is fully encasing and quadruples the strength and carrying capacity of the wearer.  It also deploys limited flight capabilities, allowing ground troops to move quickly over the land and space borne personnel to move across gaps in a damaged ship or through space in the event of an evacuation, voluntary or otherwise.  Medium armor comes equipped with electromagnetic screens that aid in defense against particle beam and light amp weapons, as well as adding light bending stealth capabilities.  Medium armor does increase the size of the human target to a small but significant degree.  Medium armor can cost up to a million Imperials a set.

Heavy Battle Armor:  The luxury car of armors, massing a ton of metal standing almost two and a half meters tall.  Worn by Army Heavy Infantry, deployed Marines, and the Engineering Crew of warships, it increases strength and carrying capacity by a factor of twelve and supports full flight capabilities and electromagnetic screens.  In the case of Marine and Army Heavy Armor, the suit deploys built in weaponry, while the Engineering suits carry onboard cutting, welding and large object manipulation devices. Heavy suits come in multiple varieties, including heavy weapons versions that carry an extra three hundred kilos of equipment.  Heavy suits start out at five million Imperials and up for each set.

Cloning:  The growth of living material or an entire living creature from a single cell or cells.  Cloning is used to grow body parts for the repair of the severely injured or recoverable dead.  Cloning of a complete human or other alien sophont is illegal within the borders of any of the human governments.  The reason for this law is the fact that all attempts at cloning a human being have led to individuals with psychopathic tendencies, in other words, a lack of conscience. This has also held true for several alien species, thus the blanket ban over all intelligent species.  This effect has also been observed in over half of all en vitro births, making artificial wombs illegal as well.

Galactic Standard Calendar:  Standardized date and timekeeping for the Empire and all other human governments.  Based on the three hundred and sixty-five day Old Earth calendar without the addition of leap year days, it is used as the standard time scale or birthdays and Empire wide holidays. Time keeping between worlds with different length days and years is difficult in and of itself, without the added complications of relativity, slowing the internal clocks of spaceships in transit.  All inhabited worlds keep time based on atomic clocks, while spaceships keep time based on computer algorithms that keep track of relativistic effects.  Planets with different length days have compensation built into the calendar, adding days on planets with shorter day night cycles, and subtracting them from planets with longer cycles.  Planets of course keep their own year length calendars to track local holidays and events of interest.

Grabbers:  Also known as Aether Paddles.  Propulsion units made of artificially manufactured supermetals in an alloy that allows the gripping and pulling of the fabric of space itself.  Grabbers are used for space drives, allowing ships to accelerate at hundreds of gravities.  They also function as inertial converters, turning the inertia of the moving vehicle into heat, which they are uniquely suited to radiate.  Grabber units are also used for many military vehicles, recoil systems for particle beam weapons, and the fight systems of heavy and medium combat suits.  Civilian aircars and most military atmosphere only craft do not use grabbers due to the cost of supermetals, using ducted fans instead.

Human Life Span:  At the time of the Exodus from Earth, the human life span had been expanded to about one hundred and twenty years on average, with an outside range of about one hundred and forty, mostly due to advances in medical science.  Plans to manipulate the human genome were already in place prior to the Exodus, but had yet to be implemented with the exception of some test subjects.  These manipulations occurred via nanotech to the crew, passengers in cryosleep and all human genetic materials (eggs and sperm) during the voyage, and there have been minor improvements since.  Basically the Human Being Mark II has a faster nervous system, is stronger, smarter and has increased organ functioning.  Average gains were about twenty percent over baseline on all factors, though there are some exceptional genomes with increases up to fifty percent.  Genetic disorders such as most of the mental illnesses, retardation, diabetes and others were completely eliminated.   The human life span was also significantly increased, which also shifted the developmental stages of most humans.  Two hundred years is now the low end of expected lifespan, two hundred and forty is the average, with three hundred standard years being the extreme.  For some reason the human genome does not seem amenable to extension beyond this range.  Science has not been able to figure out why, and this fact has led to the resurgence of religious beliefs in human space. Pregnancies take an average of ten months, while childhood developmental stages pass at a rate of about fifty percent longer than pre-genome augmentation. Children reach the old school age of six at about eight standard years.  Puberty starts at fifteen to sixteen years, while adolescence lasts until about twenty-five, the legal age of adulthood on most planets.  Humans age very slowly for the first one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five years, looking much like preaugment adults did prior to thirty.  After that they tend to age at about one third the preaugment rate, appearing forty at 130 to 150, fifty at 150 to 180, and sixty for the remaining years, up until the last decade, when rapid aging and dementia takes place in all but a small percentage of the population.  Women become fertile about once a year, and remain fertile until they reach two thirds of their absolute maximum age. Due to the increased human life span, most citizens of the Empire undergo extensive education before entering the workforce.  Most people work a career for from fifty to one hundred years, then try something new.

Laser Weapons:  Also known as Light Amp Weapons, using a beam of photons in the electromagnetic spectrum, from gamma rays to infrared, to burn through a target.  Often used as heavy beam weapons for light infantry, or as standard or heavy weapons for medium and heavy infantry.  Advantages include almost instantaneous transmission and the ability to penetrate a variety of materials.  Weaknesses include the ability of some materials and electromagnetic fields to deflect the beams.  Light Amp weapons make up the main close range weapons of warships, with their ability to switch frequencies at short intervals.

Mag Weapons:  Short for Magrail weapons, guns that use magnetic push pull technology to propel a metallic pellet through a barrel to a target.  Mag rifles and pistols are the standard of civilian weaponry, used for both self-defense, law enforcement and hunting purposes.  Mag weapons can be set for variable velocities to match the target, from a hundred meters a second up to several thousand meters per second.  Military mag rifles are common equipment for light infantry and support personnel, and are carried by many medium and even heavy infantry troopers.  Military weapons are capable of throwing up to twenty millimeter rounds at ten thousand meters per second, achieving penetration against all but the toughest of body armors.

Man in the Loop Laws:  Imperial Law specifying the ratio of robots to organic overseers in Imperial industrial concerns, and outlawing the use of robots in a military capacity, with the exception of missiles and weapons that have a limited powered lifespan.  Humanity was warned by their neighbors to not deploy robots of war, but ignored these warning, believing they could solve the problem of robotic self-awareness.  Unfortunately, as had happened to most other species who had attempted the same thing, battle bots achieved awareness in the seventh century of the Empire.  The Imperial Fleet defeated the threat at the cost of six burned out planets and over five billion humans killed.  Because of that incident, any large or powerful industrial robots must have one on one supervision, while smaller bots require one overseer for from two to four machines.  Housekeeping and lesser robots can be supervised by the owner or operator, limited to five robots to the person.  This has also resulted in employment for many citizens of the Empire who would not otherwise have gainful employment.

Monomolecular blades:  Process in which  a single bonded molecule is used to edge the blade of a hard alloy weapon.  Monomolecular blades can cut through just about any material in varying thicknesses.  At times the molecule is damaged in use, and most blades are kept in special sheaths that use nanotech to repair and restore the cutting edge better uses.

Nanotech:  Robots of nanoscale measurement, able to disassemble and reassemble molecules at the atomic level.  Nanotech is the most ubiquitous technology of the human worlds, used in everything from material construction to medicine.  Humans are born with nanites in their systems, transferred from their mother’s bodies.  Internal nanites are used to clean up wastes, perform maintenance on organ systems, and fight foreign invaders, including other nanites.  They also repair physical injuries such as stress fractures and cuts, and internal cellular damage from radiation.  They are used to construct the implants almost all humans have attached to their brains to interface with planetary com and data nets.  These implants also coordinate the organization and functions of the nanites in the human system.  Some injuries require manipulation by means other than nanites, such as compound fractures or major artery damage.              Nanites also make humans almost impervious to biological and chemical agents, making explorers all but immune to unknown contaminants on new worlds.  Nanites are used to keep vehicles and machines in perfect working order, or to upgrade such vehicles and machines.  Nanites are used in the limited terraforming of alien worlds to sterilize soil areas where human crops are to be grown.  Human colonists are equipped with nanites in their digestive systems that allow them to derive nourishment from proteins and fibers not normally digestible by humans, or even those that would be deadly under other circumstances, though foods intended for human consumption are still best.

Particle Beam Weapons:  Weapons that use a beam of charged or uncharged particles in a fast moving beam to impart kinetic and thermal energy into a target.  Most deadly of the beam weapons, able to penetrate most armor and cause vaporization of the flesh underneath.  Infantry weapons use protons that are spun up to very fast speeds before being guided through the magnetic field of the barrel.  Hand weapons can develop velocities of up to ten thousand meters per second, moving a minute amount of material at this speed and into the target.  Heavy weapons can develop velocities of up to five hundred thousand meters per second, and control recoil through the use of mounted grabber units which act against the force of the recoil.  Ship weapons can develop velocities of up to point nine five c.  Ship borne weapons usually use neutrons, stripping the charge off of the protons through the transmission field, as neutrons are not repelled by electromagnetic fields, nor do they repel each other over space.  Anti-protons can also be used in ship mounted weapons, though they are normally avoided in troop carried weapons due to the threat of collateral damage.

Recoverable Dead:  Those living creatures, human or otherwise, capable of being revived after the secession of life functions.  Humans and most aliens are capable of being revived if the brain is not destroyed and life functions have not been absent for more than one hour, on average.  Due to nervous system deterioration some two to ten percent of memories may be beyond reconstruction, so though the person is essentially returned to a living state, there are gaps in mental functioning.  Because of regrowth technologies almost the entire body can be regrown with the exception of the brain, which, due to legal constraints, cannot be replicated (see cloning and laws against).  Because of this technology, casualties of battle or accidents are divided into injured, recoverable dead, and dead.  Recoverable dead are placed into cryostasis as soon as possible to prevent further deterioration prior to the regrowth procedure.

Excerpt From Exodus: Empires at War: Book 6: The Stand

High Admiral watched the main viewer in anticipation, literally sitting on the edge of his command chair.  Around him the bridge of his flagship bustled with activity, males manning the boards that ran the twenty-five million ton warship, and connected him to the rest of his command.  The other eleven battleships of his command were nestled in close, within light minutes by com.  A half dozen of his supercruisers were ranging deeper into the system, while the other ten and his escorts surrounded the star system in a bubble, ready to snap up any human ships that might try and escape.

“You’re sure this is what you want to do?” asked another male, the captain of the ship.  “The Great Admiral left implicit orders that non-human aliens were to be allowed to live.”

The High Admiral looked at his subordinate and growled.  I should be in command of this conquest, thought Kellissaran Jarkastarin, who was a third cousin of the Emperor.  Not that lower born lout.  All knew that Miierrowanasa M’tinisasitow was the son of a common officer, raised to nobility.  To the High Admiral’s way of thinking, birth should always take precedence.

“What would you have me do, Captain?” asked the haughty male, gesturing to the main viewer.  “Even if I sent an abort signal it wouldn’t get there in time.”

The other male gave a head nod of grudging acceptance, then turned to look at the Tactical Officer.  “How long till impact?”

“Another five minutes, my Lord,” said the lower ranking officer.

And we’re forty-eight light minutes away, you dolt, thought the High Admiral, glaring at his Flag Captain.  And you knew it.

The High Admiral continued to sit in his chair as the timer clicked down.  When it hit zero he knew the job had been done.  There would be no life offered to the aliens who had thrown in with the humans, if there had been any on that planet.

“Orders, my Lord?” asked the Captain, walking back to the High Admiral’s chair.

“We sit here and enjoy the show,” said the High Admiral, again glaring at his subordinate until that male dropped his eyes.  The High Admiral pointed at the screen with both right index fingers.  “I have waited all my life to pay these humans back for their treachery.”

“There is nothing else of interest in the system, my Lord,” said the Captain, raising all four hands palms up.  “Wouldn’t it make sense to order the force to start decelerating so we can leave this system.”

“I want to see it up close,” said the High Admiral, a feral grin on his face.  “I want to revel in their destruction.”

The Captain gave another head shake and moved away.  The High Admiral stared at the screen which showed the blue and white globe of a living world.  But not a natural world, thought the High Admiral, a low growl in his throat.  They had learned from the human prisoners, just before they killed them, that the world ahead had been terraformed from a dead body.  Nothing was more revered in the religion of the Ca’cadasan Empire than a life bearing world.  And nothing was more reviled than a world that had been artificially imbued with life.  That is only for the Gods, thought the High Admiral.

At forty minutes the viewer showed the first flash of what the High Admiral had been waiting for.  It was a bright flash, an eye hurting impact on one of the blue sections of the world, an ocean strike.  He didn’t see the object that had come in, which wasn’t surprising, considering that the missiles were moving at point nine c on impact.  The first flash was followed by others, until over twenty had appeared on the screen.

The High Admiral watched as each pinpoint turned into a tiny red circle, the magma coming through the penetrations of the crust and rising high into the air.  The cloud patterns changed radically as the blast waves radiated out from each hit.  In the oceans the clouds were pushed back from the circle at supersonic speeds, while the ocean floor became visible as massive tsunamis moved at almost a thousand kilometers an hour away from the strike.  Any islands and coastlines those waves hit would be inundated, probably to the high mountains.  On land the ring was not made up of water, but of fire, as forests and grasslands were consumed to ash by the fast moving flame.

The High Admiral sat there for hours, watching the death of a planet.  He sat there for half a day, until the other hemisphere was visible, and further missile strikes killed the few small areas that had not been destroyed by the death of the opposite side of the world.

*     *     *

“So,” said the Emperor Sean Ogden Lee Romanov, taking his seat at the head of the table so the others could take their own seats, as dictated by protocol.  “Give me some good news.”

“I’m afraid there isn’t any, your Majesty,” said the small woman sitting across from him.  “At least not militarily.”

“And that is not the news I wanted to hear,” said the Emperor with a grim smile, looking at the Chief of Naval Operations, Grand High Admiral Sondra McCullom.

“I know it isn’t, your Majesty,” said the woman who had replaced Grand High Admiral Gabriel Len Lenkowski, who had been demoted to command of the battle fleet, which had taken a beating under his command.

Not that it’s his fault, thought the Emperor, picturing the face of the man who had been CNO under his father.  I gave him a no win situation, and he has made the best of it.

“Battle Fleet, which includes the remnants of the Sector Four Fleet, has been reduced to fifty percent of its original strength,” continued the woman who was only one rank below the Emperor himself in the military chain of command.

“Any way we can bring it up to strength?” asked Sean, pretty sure of the answer.

“Not really, your Majesty,” said the CNO.  “Oh, we can keep stripping other fleets for units, and the new production is starting to come off the yards, though not yet at the level they will by this time next year.  The Crakista fleet will help, but they won’t be fully deployed in our space for some months, and we have yet to see any units from Elysium.  The bottom line is that battle fleet is being bled to death from a thousand cuts.”

“And it’s that, or let it be annihilated in a decisive battle,” said the Emperor, looking down at the table top, not really wanting the others in the room to see the doubt in his eyes.  And that decision is mine alone.  We can’t beat them in a stand up battle.  We can only snipe at the edges, and pick our battles carefully, which brings up the other problem.

“We have lost over six hundred worlds in Sector Four,” continued the CNO, as if reading his mind.  “Add to that three core worlds.  Estimated civilian losses are now on the order of over forty billion.”

“And that brings up another problem, your Majesty,” said Grand Marshal Mishori Yamakuri, the Army Chief of Staff, through the silence left by McCullom’s last statement.  “I have reports of desertions on many of the worlds the Cacas have taken.  The people are losing heart, especially now that the Cacas are not landing forces for them to take on.  The soldiers would rather run into the wilderness and survive than hold their positions.”

“That shouldn’t be too much of a problem then,” said Sean.  “If they aren’t landing, then we really don’t have much need of ground troops.”

“Except it will become a problem when the Cacas get enough infantry into the Empire to start ground operations again,” said the Army Chief of Staff.  “And many of the desertions have been among the troops who man our planetary defense artillery.  They see their units taking a pounding for seemingly no return, and they take off.”

“Any more bad news?” asked the Emperor, looking at his Prime Minister, Countess Haruko Kawasaki.

“There is brewing trouble in the Lords, your Majesty,” said the tiny woman, bowing her head.  “I am ashamed to say that some of my political rivals are discussing a vote of no confidence in your running of the war.”

“What kind of numbers do they have?”

“The entirety of their own block,” said the Prime Minister.  “That in and of itself is not enough, but they are starting to gain traction with some others.  And there is also talk in the commons.  The scholars are firmly in your corner, but if two houses vote no confidence.”

“Then I become a figurehead, and nothing more,” said Sean, slamming a hand down on the table.  “And some idiot takes your place to run the war.  Some idiot who will bang our heads against the military wall of the enemy.”

“People are starting to panic,” said the Prime Minister.  “They do not see the small victories that bleed the enemy.  They only see the big losses, and wonder when it will be their turn.”

“So we need a signature victory,” said McCullom.  “Something to show the people, so they will not continue to lose heart.”

“If we could defeat a major force of theirs in a battle,” said Sean, closing his eyes and feeling the stress he was carrying.

“The problem, your Majesty,” said the CNO, “is that if we get a large enough force together, we leave the rest of the Sector uncovered.  And if the enemy knows we have gathered a large enough force to win a battle, they will avoid that fight.”

“So we have to give them a reason to go where we want them to, when we want them to,” said Sean, rubbing his temples.

“But what reason could we offer them?” asked the Prime Minister, looking from face to face around the table.  “We would have to place something at risk that they couldn’t refuse to go after. What would that be?”

Sean looked up and locked eyes with everyone one at a time, then spoke one word.  “Me.”

Books by Doug Dandridge

Science Fiction

The Deep Dark Well Trilogy

The Deep Dark Well:  An Adventure 40,000 years in the making.  Pandora Latham was a Kuiper Belt Miner from Alabama.  She’s used to landing on her feet, even when the next surface is through a wormhole, halfway across the Galaxy and 46,000 years in the Future.  Pandora must discover the secret behind the end of civilization, and the enigma of the Immortal Watcher, the last survivor of the Empire that once ruled the stars.  Her decisions will set the path for Galactic recovery, or a continuation down the roads of Barbarism.

To Well and Back:  Pandora Latham is back, working Watcher’s plan to restore Galactic Civilization.  But first she has to deal with the Xenophobes of the Nation of Humanity, back in the Supersystem with their sights set on making the Galaxy their own.  Pandora is angry at the hyper religious Nation, and you don’t want to make a woman from Alabama angry.

The Exodus Series

Exodus: Empires at War: Book 1:  The introduction to the Exodus Universe.  Two thousand years prior mankind fled from the Predatory Ca’cadasans, traveling a thousand years and ten thousand light years to a new home.  Now the greatest power of their sector of space, things seem to be going well for the New Terran Empire.  Until the enemy appears once again at the gates.  And the years have not softened the aliens’ stance toward Humanity.

Exodus: Empires at War: Book 2:  The saga continues.  The Ca’cadasans attack at the moment when the government of the Empire is at its most chaotic.  There are other enemies as well, waiting for their chance to fall on the overwhelmed humans.  And a young man with no ambition for power finds himself in the position he most dreads.

Exodus: Empires at War: Book 3:  Sean is rescued, but he is not about to go back to the safety of the capital without striking back at the Ca’cadasans who have invaded his Empire.  But will his decision put the lives of thousands at risk, as well as risking the safety of his own Empire, by depriving it of its leader.

Exodus: Empires at War: Book 4:  Sean is crowned Emperor, and attempts to organize the Empire for war against the Ca’cadasans.  But he finds that planning battles and winning battles are two different things. Defeat follows defeat.  Can anyone snatch victory from the jaws of defeat?  Or will the new Emperor fail before his reign even really begins.

Other Scifi

Diamonds in the Sand:  When a perfectly healthy scientist falls dead of an apparent heart attack, it is up to Sarasota Police Detective Lieutenant Gary Lariviere to find out what really happened.  The scientist was working on Nanotechnology, a secret desired by everyone from the Government to the Mob.  There are too many suspects, including the woman that Gary comes to love.  The Army had made Gary better than human, but had they prepared him for the terrors that had been unleashed by the new technology?

The Scorpion:  The Scorpion had been the world’s deadliest living terrorist.  Kestral McMann had been in on the kill.  Now The Scorpion is back as a mind upload, using clones to penetrate the tight security of an isolationist United States.  McMann is the only man who can stop him.  But can McMann survive the threat of his own side, and the insane President who leads the Nation, in time to stop The Scorpion from plunging the Great Satan back into the Stone Age.

The Shadows of the Multiverse:  Something has been periodically wiping intelligence from our Universe through the ages.  It’s back, and it’s up to three unlikely heroes, the Captain of a Battle Cruiser, a Physicist turned Archeologist, and a Child, to save the intelligence of the Universe from Monsters from another Dimension.  Can they learn to use the powers of their unusual Quantum Minds to defeat creatures that have been playing the game for billions of years?

Afterlife:  What if you didn’t believe in the afterlife of the World’s Religions?  And what if science offered you the alternative, survival within the Virtual World of a computer, where your mental abilities are magnified and you can do anything you want?  And what if the World decided that your way was wrong, and declared war on you, meaning to destroy your reality?  What would you do?  Afterlife, a tale of survival at all costs.

We Are Death, Come For You:  When aliens strike the Tau Ceti colony, humankind knows that something bad is on the way.  They prepare as best they can, but will it be enough against superior technology?  The aliens are death worshippers, and only the extinction of the human race will satisfy their evil intent.  There are wonders of tech on the horizon, but can they be deployed in time?  Or will humankind have to depend on the smallest of their techs to save them?

Fantasy

The Refuge Series

Refuge: The Arrival: Book 1:  A nuclear war in Central Europe opens the gates between dimensions, sending millions of Earth Humans into a land of myth, archetypes and fantasy.  The Evil Emperor of the Ellala Elves sees the humans as energy to fuel his transformation to immortality.  But the humans have brought their own weapons with them, as well as a race of Demigods who will battle the fantastic armies of Refuge.  The war is on, and only one side will ultimately survive.

Refuge: The Arrival: Book 2:  The Ellala have a plan to destroy the human military and capture the civilians.  And the humans find that their weapons will soon cease to function.  So it’s use it or lose it for the Earth Humans, and they use it with a vengeance.  Tanks against Mages, Attack Helicopters against Dragons, and Nuclear Weapons against Death Gods.  And the other peoples of the planet come forth as allies to the humans that they see as the fulfillment an Ancient Prophecy.  But will it be enough?

Refuge: Book 3: The Legions:  The human invaders are now without their technologies, at least those using explosives and internal combustion engines.  But they still have knowledge of many other techs, especially the arts of warfare as practiced by the greatest infantry of the ancient world.  Will it be enough to stand up to the half lich Emperor and his magical forces.

Refuge: Doppelganger: Set thousands of years after the arrival, Kurt von Mannerheim, the Immortal Emperor of the Imperium of Free Nations, must give up everything to save his Empress, the Elfin Princess Gwenara Elysius von Mannerheim.  The world is at a crisis point as the Evil Tarakesh Empire, under its Immortal Emperor Heinrich Stuppleheim, prepares to overrun the world with its Nazi Ideology.  And Kurt must face a creature of legend that may prove too much for even his physical and mental abilities.

Other Fantasy

The Hunger:  Abused wife, drug addict, prostitute; Lucinda Taylor had been victimized by men all her adult life.  Left for dead by her pimp, Lucinda was turned by a passing vampire.  When he is destroyed she becomes a free agent, slaking her hunger for blood on the bottom dwellers of society, the type of men who once victimized her.  The crime boss of Tampa is her next target, and the City by the Bay is about to become a bloodbath.  But can Lucinda avoid those who are hunting for her; the Priest, the FBI man, and a pair of Vampires who would like nothing better than to send one Avenging Vampire forever into the dark?

Daemon:  A Steampunk Fantasy.  The world is dying, the victim of the magic used by society for the last three hundred years.  Daemon Corporation thinks they have the answer, stealing the life from other worlds, bringing from other dimensions the intelligences that inhabit them for sacrifice on Earth.  But something has come with them, a force that is killing the employees of Daemon Corp.  It is up to Forensic Mage Detective Jude Parkinson to find a way to stop the unstoppable, while keeping the head of Daemon Corp from silencing him to keep the dark secrets of the company out of the public eye.

Aura:  Triplets are born on a world where the magical Aura decides the fate of its owner.  Ariel is a girl with more than double the normal Aura, destined to become a mighty Priest or Mage.  Aiden has a less than normal Aura, and is destined to be a soldier or laborer.  While Arlen has no Aura at all, and is seen as an abomination in the eyes of the Church of Baalra the Dragon God, which has no power over those with Negative Auras.  Fate will rip the siblings apart, then bring them back together as they battle to defeat the Dragon God and leave the Evil Empire, before Ariel is taken as the Avatar of Baalra, his mortal vessel on Earth.

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Table of Contents

- Dedication
- Books by Doug Dandridge
- Cast of CharactersCornelius Walborsk
- Prologue
- Chapter One
- Chapter Two
- Chapter Three
- Chapter Four
- Chapter Five
- Chapter Six
- Chapter Seven
- Chapter Eight
- Chapter Nine
- Chapter Ten
- Chapter Eleven
- Chapter Twelve
- Chapter Thirteen
- Chapter Fourteen
- Chapter Fifteen
- Chapter Sixteen
- Chapter Seventeen
- Chapter Eighteen
- Chapter Nineteen
- Chapter Twenty
- Chapter Twenty-one
- Chapter Twenty-two
- Chapter Twenty-three
- Chapter Twenty-four
- Chapter Twenty-five
- Chapter Twenty-six
- Chapter Twenty-seven
- Chapter Twenty-eight
- Chapter Twenty-nine
- Chapter Thirty
- EpilogueSUPERSYSTEM SPACE: JUNE, 1001.
- Appendix A – Terms and Definitions.

- Excerpt From Exodus: Empires at War: Book 6: The Stand