Glory Main (19 page)

He selected a smooth stone that was almost too large for his hand, and raised it dripping from the stream just as the thing made its leap. Completely at home in his surroundings, Mortas turned in a lazy, athletic arc and smashed the giant eel in the side of the head while it was still in the air. The blow made a revoltingly moist sound when it landed and the serpent, one of the smaller ones that had probably missed out on the latest meal, dropped into the stream. It was badly injured, and jerked spasmodically as it tried to get away.

“No you don't, you fucking coward. You start something, you finish it.” He spoke under his breath, tossing the stone behind him and seizing the slimy scales near the tail. A quick twist put the thrashing tube on his shoulder, where he clutched it in both hands and dug in his fingers. Without looking back, he marched straight up onto the sand, dragging it with him as it weakly whipped and rolled and tried to break free. It was dead before he let go of it, several yards out of the water, and he dropped it with true loathing before looking out over the stream.

The dark plane eddied as if moved by a natural current, and then the others were gone.

He'd taken both of Cranther's knives and now had the long one tucked in the back of his trousers and the small one in his boot the way the scout had carried them. He reverently took the skull cap and folded it neatly before storing it in his breast pocket, believing that Gorman might want it. He arranged the small man on his back with his feet toward the water and his arms by his sides, and then slowly covered him with the stones. Most of them had dried off by then, but for some reason a few of them stayed damp.

With that done, he slung the Scorpion rifle across his back after determining that it contained only five rounds. Bowing his head, he tried to remember the words of the various funerals he'd attended as a boy and then as a teenager. They'd all been state occasions, ­people his father had known, and he wasn't surprised to find he remembered little about them. A more recent memory came to mind, and he tried to recall the words.

“Father. Mother. Sister. Brother. Son. Daughter. All are one, from the beginning of time until its end.” He wiped his eyes and noted that the sun wasn't too far below the horizon. It was time to get moving, something he felt Cranther would understand. “Thank you, Tel. Thank you for everything. I'm glad you're finally free.”

Mortas walked up the bank and took hold of the oddly deflated serpent before dragging it down to the water's edge. The spire where he hoped to meet up with Trent and Gorman was on the other side, and even though he couldn't see it yet he still knew exactly where it was. Gripping the man-­sized monster with both hands, he began to turn in a gentle circle. At first it dragged across the sand, but then it slowly rose into the air. Moving faster now, feeling the coolness of the breeze he was generating, he timed his throw and heaved the thing through the air in a gracefully rotating arc that landed it far out in the stream.

The others were on it almost immediately, a riot of splashing and flailing and ripping, but still he didn't hurry. Unslinging the rifle, he held it at the ready as he waded out and plodded across.

H
e moved down the ravines with care, recognizing that the Sims were combing the area and that he was traveling alone. It was a strange sensation, being by himself, and with a touch of guilt Mortas remembered his fantasy about abandoning his ragtag group of survivors just a few days earlier. Cranther was now gone and he had no way of knowing if the others were alive, but the genuine desire to see them again quickened his step.

Mortas had heard one last flurry of Sim gunfire just before the sun came up, and his heart had jumped when he envisioned Trent and Gorman as its victims. He immediately pushed that away, telling himself that the headshrinker and the mapmaker had learned to move with stealth and would not have walked into an ambush. He then hoped, without remorse, that it was part of the group so ineptly commanded by Major Shalley or some other equally incautious human element. It was impossible for him to know how much of the original assault force was still left alive, but they'd had a full company of walkers with them and he hadn't seen too many of those the night before. Given his experiences with the friendlies he'd encountered so far, he had no desire to meet up with any of them—­or to wish them well at the expense of his own ­people.

All I need right now is to find Trent and Gorman. After that, everything's going to work out.

Mortas felt forced to acknowledge the chance that the other two might not have survived the night, but he found it impossible to envision a plan that didn't include them. It was almost as if he were willing them to still be alive, and he superstitiously told himself to stop even considering the possibility that they had perished. Even so, banishing the thought didn't reduce the anxiety and he honestly didn't know what he'd do if they weren't at the rally point. The enormous task of evading the Sim forces, gaining access to one of their ships, and escaping the planet now paled to insignificance when compared with the monumentally important act of merely finding the others.

Walking along and ruminating on these morbid thoughts, Mortas realized with a start that Cranther was the first soldier he'd lost under his command. Faced with the unchangeable reality, he now felt true shame at the realization that he'd always known he would lose ­people but that he'd never given it much thought. It had been an abstract notion when discussed with his fellow lieutenants, and even when veteran officers had lectured them on the topic they'd made the experience sound somehow ennobling.

Feeling the sun just peeking over the edge of the ravine but still enjoying the morning's coolness, Mortas decided that there was nothing noble about the pile of rocks he'd left behind him an hour before.

He walked faster, even though every step carrying him closer to the spire moved him that much farther from the Sim settlement that was his ultimate destination. In spite of his grief, or perhaps because of it, he allowed himself to gently mock the dead Cranther when he saw just how poor a rally point the scout had chosen. He mentally ticked off a few of the characteristics of a good emergency linkup site, and shook his head as the spire failed to meet many of those qualifications. No one in the group had ever seen it up close, so there was a chance that there was little or no cover anywhere near the towering feature. The vicinity of the tall rock might be bare ground, which made it even less attractive as a fallback position and even more difficult for him to explore if he had to look for the others. That thought brought another one to mind, even less pleasant, that such a prominent feature could have been selected as a reference point by the Sims as well.

That notion caused his eyes to start scanning the tops of the canyon walls for enemy lookouts. He moved along for some time in that fashion, alternating glances at the rock-­strewn ground to keep from tripping. Now aware of his walking, he took note of the balancing act required as one foot reached out and the other followed suit, the way that his feet, though bruised and swollen, still flattened and then arched and provided the bounce that kept him going. His arms might be taken up with holding the rifle at the ready, but even so his shoulders still swung as if they hung free. His lungs expanded and contracted, blood flowed through his arteries and veins, and the engine that was his whole body provided heat that kept him warm.

Though slightly damaged and very much overused, this body, this machine, was carrying him forward in much the same way it had from the very first day on the planet. How many days had they gone without food, walking the entire time, without their bodies failing them? Only the catastrophic wounds of the battle—­and the sacrificial damage when he'd killed the major—­had managed to shut off Cranther's engine. Not lack of food and not crushing fatigue. Only death itself had been able to stop the little scout.

And that was why Cranther had so ardently believed they stood more than a snowball's chance of sneaking onto the Sim base and stealing one of their ships. Not his special training, though that would certainly help, but something else. Something more. Something deeper. Something much more reliable than slogans, orders, or threats. Cranther had believed they would get to that ship and get out of there simply because he'd decided that was what was going to happen. And once that decision had been made he'd started walking. One foot in front of the other, eyes on the horizon even when that horizon had been the walls of the chasms through which they'd traveled so many miles.

The scout's example flowed easily into the myriad difficult tasks Mortas now faced. First he would have to find the others, as Cranther had told him to do. Together they would formulate some kind of a plan, something that would end with them blasting off this terrible planet and headed for a dead rock named Sere. And no matter what that plan turned out to be, its most important element would be the stubborn determination that Cranther had shown them. If they had to do it on foot, that was simply the way it had to be. If they had to do it without food, then they'd do it without food. What had he said about food and water?

“
No food, you die in weeks. No water, you die in days.
”

With those simple words he'd prioritized the search for water, and then they'd walked until they'd found it. Cranther had been almost certain at that time that they were the only beings on the entire planet, and that they were doomed, but he'd still gone in search of the water anyway. Mortas had little doubt that the Spartacan had seriously meant to find a high cliff from which to jump if no food could be found, but that talk had disappeared the instant they discovered that they were not, in fact, alone. Even the awful revelation that the Sims were present in force hadn't changed his resolve. In fact, it had been quite the contrary. He'd greeted the Sims as a source of the ship they would need in order to escape.

So that was how they would need to act now. They needed a simple plan, made up of basic steps like using the ravines to move undetected. And when they got close enough to finally see this settlement, this promised land, this fucking mirage, they'd come up with the next step based on what they saw. Even if it meant crawling on their bellies across the ground in the dead of night, exhausted and starving. Even if it meant sneaking up on whoever might be guarding the ship they meant to steal and opening his throat with one of Cranther's knives. Even if it meant holding off the enemy firing a weapon taken from that very guard, buying the time Gorman would need to punch in the coordinates for this dead rock named Sere that supposedly held the main headquarters of the entire Glory Corps.

Glory Main.

 

CHAPTER 9

M
ortas studied the spire from only one side before deciding where Trent and Gorman would be. The sun was well up by then, and he'd climbed a brush-­covered finger on the ridge closest to the rock obelisk in order to see the ground around it. Flattened on his stomach, the Scorpion cradled in his arms, he scanned the plain beyond the spire for the ravines that had hidden them so many times before.

Strangely, this piece of dirt wasn't cracked and fissured like the expanses they'd crossed coming from the other direction. It even hosted a few short trees, gnarled things that looked dead from a distance but were probably nourished by an underground tributary of the stream not far behind him. Mortas idly envisioned the serpents swimming around in that darkness beneath the soil until realizing that there would be nothing for them to eat down there except one another. And although it hardly made sense as a steady source of nutrition, he found the image amusing.

The stone steeple itself was a wonder of nature, with no explanation for its existence. Just over five hundred yards away, it didn't appear to have once been part of the ridges that formed a semicircle around it. The striations on its shaft didn't match the lines of the nearest cliffs, and up close it didn't seem half as tall as it had appeared from a distance. Narrow and alone, it looked to Mortas as if it had stood through the years just to prove it could.

Unable to spot a hole big enough for both Trent and Gorman, he began searching the tip of the next ridge over, where it tapered down to the flat like the one where he lay. If they'd made it here and found no obvious depression to hide them, they might have opted for the high ground in order to see him coming. After all, they weren't just trying to stay out of sight. They were hoping to link up with someone who was, like them, being hunted and who would be creeping around the area with great stealth. They would want to be able to observe the ground on all sides in order to wave him in.

Him and Cranther.

A cooling breeze had come up with the sun, and it now shifted to a constant wind that moved the brush around like an unseen hand. For the first time since arriving on the planet he thought he could actually detect an odor from the bleached-­out vegetation, but he soon decided that was wrong. The wind was coming from the direction of the settlement, and the scent he was picking up was the smell of battle. Smoke, fuel, the chemical components of spent explosives, and even the stench of rotting flesh. Luckily it was coming from a distance, but he had to wonder just how many humans had perished in the night just past and the days previous.

His eyes settled on an oddly shaped white stone on the spine of the opposite ridge, and it was only when he shielded his eyes with a dirty hand that he saw it wasn't a rock at all. It was the weather-­stripped remains of what must have been a substantial tree before something had knocked it over. Any branches it might have once had were long gone, but judging from the width of its base it must have been supported by an extensive root structure. When it toppled over, months or perhaps years before, it probably left a considerable hole. And no matter how that hole might have filled in since then, the dead tree and the weeds that had grown up near it would probably provide enough concealment for two ­people.

Mortas took some time to look around before moving, alerted by the smells from the previous night's fighting. The enemy was still here, still hunting, and their sudden appearance only hours before proved it was unwise to simply assume they weren't in the vicinity. A pair of birds flew overhead, bracketing the spire as they headed out over the plain, and he took their unhurried winging as proof that the Sims weren't nearby. He slid back down the side of the finger on his stomach, only coming to a crouch once the brush was thick enough to hide him. His knees ached as he duckwalked forward, but he still forced himself to move slowly as he worked his way around the inclined ground that connected the two ridges like the webbing of a human hand.

Odd thoughts came and went as his fatigue caught up with him, and he remembered practicing a similar operation in a field maneuver months earlier. One of the most dangerous things to do in a war zone was bring two separated units together, even if they were part of the same larger unit. Unlike what he was doing now, such linkups were usually performed at night and so the danger of mistaking friendly soldiers for the enemy—­or vice versa—­was quite real. One group would be designated as the stationary base once the two elements were reasonably close, so that they wouldn't literally bump into each other, and radio reporting of the moving unit's progress would be almost non-­stop. There was still enough hazard in the final approach that a series of signals involving lights or blips from a strobe were prearranged to avoid ugly mishaps.

None of that applied here, of course, as they had no radios and unless Trent or Gorman had scooped up a weapon Mortas was the only one who was armed. Even so, he was recalling the exact sequence of recognition signals from that far-­off field problem when Trent's face appeared above the wall of dry grass in front of the dead tree's uprooted end. Time and the elements had scoured the dirt from the remaining roots, but the base was still dark and so it framed the captain's head even though she was covered with grime.

At first he thought she didn't see him, but that wasn't true at all. First her mouth dropped open in surprise, and next she simply hung there as if decapitated, a floating ghost-­face that stared at him in disbelief. Then, with a yelp that made him cringe to his very soul, she leapt up from the hole and dashed the few yards to where he squatted. It was the most natural thing in the world when he simply stood, the rifle lowering to his side, and caught her when she threw her arms around his neck and buried her face against his.

In a moment Gorman was there too, joining the embrace, and he brought up the arm that held the rifle to pull them both in. Trent was whispering a flood of words he couldn't make out, but Gorman was looking over his shoulder in search of Cranther. The chartist pulled back just a little, his eyes freezing Mortas's until the lieutenant gave the slightest shake of his head. The hopeful expression sagged, and this time when Gorman leaned against him Mortas pulled him in tight.

“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.” He had no idea why he was saying that, or why it felt appropriate. Trent stopped talking then, and in the silence that followed he whispered in a voice that was hard as iron.

“No matter what happens from here, no matter what happens to me, I
promise
I will get you out of here. We are getting off this planet.”

“Where are we going?” Trent's voice was low and child-­like, so close it could have been his own thought.

“The one place that we know is safe. Screw looking for any more friendlies here, or waiting for help. We're going to steal a ship from the Sims. And then we're going to Glory Main.”

“S
o you think you can do it?”

“Yes.” Gorman spoke with a hard certainty that Mortas didn't recognize. He'd adopted the tone just after being told that the location of Glory Main had come from Cranther, and so Mortas decided that was the reason. “The Sims copied our Wren shuttles so closely that the equipment is almost identical. Punching up a star chart and then selecting a destination will be child's play—­don't need to be able to read Sim to do any of that. But that doesn't mean we'll just be able to fly one away if we do manage to get aboard.”

“I know. But Major Shalley was right about one thing: When the Sim reinforcements arrive, that drome is going to be mass confusion. The trick for us is to be close enough to snag a Wren that's either just landed or just preparing to lift off. Which means we need to be close enough to observe the drome before they get here.”

“Long way off.” Trent looked back toward the ridges and the assumed location of the enemy settlement. “Shalley thought the reinforcements were going to arrive at any moment, so we'd better get moving soon.”

“I thought of that.” Mortas's stomach growled, angry now that it had been fed and reminded what it was like. “We're going to have to wait until dark to have any chance at all. There can't be too many more survivors of the assault force left, and there's still a bunch of Sims cruising around out here looking for the rest.

“Which also raises the issue of the route we're gonna follow. How did you two get across the river?” He hadn't told them how he'd distracted the serpents to make his own crossing.

“We got lucky and found a cut where the water flows under a partial land bridge. We had to jump across, but I think I can find it again.”

“Good.” Mortas's eyelids were heavy, and the quiet of their isolated nest was working on his fatigue. Time to work up a rest plan and get some shut-­eye until dark . . .

“What's that?” Trent asked, her head tilting upward and then freezing.

“What?” Mortas forced himself to come back to the moment. His hands reached for the Scorpion, and he turned on his side to face up the ridge.

“Listen.”

He cocked his head to one side, noticing the expressions of silly concern the other two had adopted. It was as if they'd been asked to mime consternation or confusion, and he decided he must have put on the same expression himself. He found it quite funny, and was on the verge of saying something when he heard the sound.

It was like soft snoring, a deep inhalation that somehow never ended. It also got louder, and without being able to identify it they all flattened deeper in the hole. The noise took on a mechanical note, the snoring changing to a low growl, and then the thing streaked by almost directly overhead.

Mortas flipped over onto his back to get a better look once it was past, feeling his empty stomach squeezing even smaller. It was a two-­seater Sim scout, twin exhausts trailing a thin white vapor as the triangular craft flew far out over the plain. It slowly banked when it was almost too small to see, and they watched it make a long turn before it came back miles from their position and disappeared over the ridges.

Long before that, the dwindling sound of the scout's engines had been replaced by a steady rumbling somewhere on the far side of the high ground. The roaring rose and fell, and Mortas quickly identified it. It was the sound of many spacecraft descending from orbit, throttling up or down or switching to a completely different set of thrusters now that they were flying in atmosphere.

The three of them stared at one another blankly, listening to the sound of doom and unwilling to put it into words. Another scout craft, or perhaps the same one assuming a standard patrol route, appeared far to their right and then disappeared over the ridges again.

“It's the Sim reinforcements. They're here.”

“No, they're not
here
.” Trent spoke glumly, her eyes in the dirt. “We're here. And they're there. The place where we needed to be. Before they got there.”

T
hey sat without speaking for a long time, but not in silence. The rumble of activity at the spacedrome continued at a lower level, but the enemy movement in the air increased significantly. The scout craft were more in evidence, passing nearby on what looked like the outside turn of a patrol arc that was bringing them closer and closer to the ground. At one point a much larger Sim gunship breasted the ridge before executing a slow turn, and moments later they heard its mini-­cannon roaring at some unfortunates who'd probably been spotted by the scouts.

Or by Sim troops. The scouts and the gunships wouldn't be out there alone, not with the network of ravines that the besieged Sims had found so terrifying. Part of the relief armada would be ferrying fresh Sim troops out into the wasteland, either as blockers or beaters to help find and kill the remaining humans. Those dismounts would now be scouring the ground between them and the settlement, heavily armed and in radio contact with the aircraft and the other patrols in case they ran into trouble or their prey seemed to be getting away.

“We're fucked, aren't we?” Mortas asked in a dry voice when the noise had settled down a bit.

Gorman looked at Trent with a weak smile, the exhaustion and defeat stamped on his withered face. “Fucked up and dying, Captain?”

“FUAD for sure.” Trent nodded solemnly. “But it's nice to hear you swear.”

They all laughed just a little at that, and then Gorman looked at Mortas with eyes that were nonetheless hopeful. “So what now, Lieutenant?”

What now. The eternal question of leadership. And what to say when there is no answer?

“I suppose we could wait for the next scout to fly over, stand on each other's shoulders and reach way up—­”

Trent's eyes stopped him when they widened in terror at something over his shoulder. She grabbed Gorman with one hand and pulled him to the bottom of the hole even as Mortas was rolling over onto his stomach and low-­crawling backward to get further out of sight. He knew what it was before he saw it, but he was still amazed.

A column of Sim soldiers walked down the draw between the ridges as if asleep. Their combat smocks were dirty and ripped, and dried mud was caked on their trousers and boots. The soldier in the lead wore the flanged helmet of Sim infantry, but many of the others were bareheaded. His rifle was slung across his chest as if forgotten, and one strap of his combat harness was held in place with several wraps of dark twine. His eyes were vacant, and fixed on the spire as he walked out into the open.

The Sims who followed appeared even less aware of their surroundings, as many of them were carrying stretchers laden with their wounded. Others walked with pronounced limps or only with the aid of their buddies, and bandages were a common sight. The column trudged forward slowly until the lead soldier stopped just short of the steeple. He signaled with one hand, an untranslatable command until the first stretcher bearers reached him and gently lowered their burdens to the ground.