Lieutenant (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 3) (22 page)

“Let’s try and hit them,” he told the others.

They were at least 500 meters off, and that was long range for an HGL.  They each fired, but without hitting anything.  Below them, 350 meters and closing, the bulk of the capys advanced toward the three Marines.  They each fired two more times at them, hitting two and knocking one of them down and out of the fight.  None of the others came to the wounded one’s assistance.  It just sat there in the grass as the others passed by it.  It tried to lick the stump that used to be its arm, but evidently capy physiology wouldn’t allow for that, so it quit trying and simply sat.  Ryck had hoped that a wounded capy would take two more out of the fight as they helped the wounded one, but that wasn’t happening.

“I want a string of mines here.  Give me another five.  No, give me two here, then two more over there,” Ryck said, pointing to some trees another 50 meters in back of them.

Gutierrez and Caruthers hurried to comply as Ryck glassed the capys below them.  As before, they didn’t show an emotion recognizable to him.  Ryck didn’t want to anthropomorphize them, but he couldn’t help but think they were soulless, mindless creatures based on their demeanor.

“Done,” Gutierrez said as he slid back next to Ryck. 

“OK, another shot, then we move back again.”

Both Marines fired, this time getting two hits, both effective ones.  Two more capys were down.

Ryck jumped up and started to run when Gutierrez shouted out “Stop!” and grabbed him by the arm.

“There’s the trip wire!” he shouted, pointing to a spot just a meter in front of Ryck.

Ryck gulped.  He lost concentration, and that almost cost him his life.  He carefully stepped over it, then continued on.

“Crutch, where’re your trip lines?” he shouted out as he came up to where he sent the corporal.

“Over here.  You’re OK,” Caruthers yelled back, carefully coming back towards them before turning to face uphill.  “This is clear.” 

“Let’s head further up, then move over to the left a bit and see what they do.”

They were masked from the capys below them, so they jogged upright.  After only 20 meters, a tingle raised the hair on Ryck’s head. 

“Misters on!” he shouted, flipping the feed switch.  He didn’t know what would run out first:  the compressed air or the liquid misting agent, but he had turned his off after they reached the level spot.

He turned to see the far group of capys, now more than 700 meters away.  It looked like four of them were firing on the Marines.  This was beyond their range, at least as far as Ryck had been briefed.  Either they had developed a better energy ball thrower, or all the human conjecture was worthless.

They made it to the trees, out of sight of the far off capys.  Ryck motioned the other two to slow down.  They didn’t want to outrun their pursuers.  Two hundred meters from the second line of mines, they turned, using tree trunks as cover, and waited.  The capys weren’t showing.  Surely they could have climbed the first slope by now.

“At the brief, they said the capys were from the plains, the grasslands.  You think they’re having problems climbing, what with their short legs and all?” Caruthers asked.

“Of course!” Ryck agreed as he considered.  “I think you’ve figured it out. Good thinking, Crutch.”

“Yeah, but a broken clock is still right twice a day,” Gutierrez said, unwilling to concede too much to the corporal. 

“We should have thought of that.  We could have sent the civvies up the slope.  There’s got to be someplace a shuttle can land up here,” Ryck said, looking at his map, then scanning the area.

“I think I see it.  Look, over there, by that second hilltop.  According to this map, it’s a flat spot, and from the photos, there’re no trees there.  We need to get our folks up there, and in two-and-a-half hours.

“No comms, and even if we turn them on, and if they work, Bobbi won’t be listening,” Gutierrez said.

Ryck thought about it for a few moments, then asked, “Crutch, how’s your ass.  Can you still run?”

“Not sure, Toad.  I mean, I can move it, but it’s numb.  How long I can run, I don’t know.”

Caruthers was a long distance runner, so he should have been the logical choice.  Ryck contemplated Gutierrez, but the sergeant was built for power, not speed.  It had to be Ryck himself.

“OK, listen up.  The capys should be hitting that first crest any minute.  I want you to hightail it over to that side where you can cover the mines.  When the capys arrive, light them up, then activate your monocles.  I want you to lead this group as far in that direction as you can.  But leave a way to double back.  Give yourself a cushion, but get to that landing zone by 1700.  I’ve got one more roadside flare,” he said, giving it to the sergeant.  “If you see the shuttle land somewhere else, light it for a pickup.”

“What are you going to be doing?” Gutierrez asked.

“I’m going to chase down Sams and the civvies.”

Ryck hefted his HGL.  On impulse, he handed it over to Caruthers. 

“You don’t think you might need it?” the corporal asked.

“No.  Maybe.  It’ll just slow me down.  I’ve got my blunderbuss and Ruger, and that will have to be enough.”

“You understand?” Ryck asked.

“Got it,” they said in unison.

“Then take off.  You need to cover the mines from that direction.”

Both shook hands with Ryck, then started back.  Ryck stood up, adjusted his equipment load, and then started off, running parallel along the ridgeline.  The air pressure on GenAg 13 was a little higher than what he was used to, and that compensated for the slightly lower oxygen partial pressure, so Ryck felt comfortable as he ran.  He picked up the pace.  He tried to look through the trees on the slope to see either the column or the pursuing capys, but he couldn’t catch a glimpse of either.

Behind him, a mine went off.  The capys had finally made the ridge.  The blast was immediately followed by the unmistakable reports of the HGLs.  The boys were engaged.

Ryck couldn’t do anything about that now, so he tried to focus, to calculate where the column would be.  He didn’t want to pass their position before heading downslope. Twice, he almost turned, but each time second guessed himself.  Finally, he figured he had pulled abreast of the column and turned to start running down the hill.  He had to be careful, though.  Falling and twisting an ankle could spell disaster.

He reached the bottom quickly and was almost immediately into the more open teak plantation.  He felt better about opening up his pace, and soon he was breathing harder and he pushed his limits.

He jumped an irrigation line and rounded a pump house when he saw them. Two capys were crouched on their haunches in front of him, focusing further into the forest.  He slid to stop, his feet digging into the soft soil, not ten meters from them.  They turned around in unison, emotionless as always.  Both reached for their weapons as they stood up while Ryck fumbled for his blunderbuss.  Ryck was quicker, and he flipped off the safety to fire.  At the last second, he lowered his aim from the armored torso to the groin of the one nearest him.  He fired the harpoon, which struck true, just above the leg juncture.  It penetrated the shield and into the capy’s body before flaring open.  The capy collapsed in a heap.

Ryck had his Ruger, his grenades, and two toads, but the Ruger would be useless against the remaining capy’s shield.  Ryck hit the misters as he dove to the ground just as the capy fired.  Ryck was going down, so the misters were probably ineffective, especially at close range, but by diving, the energy ball flashed over Ryck.  Ryck felt the tingle, but nothing else.  There was a whine that sounded like something charging.  He knew he had to act fast.

His hand closed on his Hwa Win combat knife, the one he’d paid 350 units for at the Semper Fi shop back on Tarawa.  He jumped up and charged, immediately closing the distance between the two of them.  An energy ball appeared in the cradle just as he reached the capy.  Using one hand to push the gun up past his shoulder, he tried to stick the creature with his knife.  Immediately, as his hand penetrated the shield, his arm felt like it was going to sleep.  The knife’s tip skittered across the thing’s armor, pushing up past its left shoulder.  His legs whipped to the left, and that swung him around, almost past the capy.  He held on with his right arm, though, and that acted as a pivot point.  Somehow, Ryck ended up clinging to the back of the capy as it tried to turn and face him.

Ryck scrambled for a better position and  managed to shift into a standing rear naked choke.  He tried to pull back on the capy’s head with his left arm to expose the neck, but the thing was unbelievably strong.  The head wouldn’t move.  One of its hands reached down to grab Ryck’s thigh, and Ryck thought he was going to yank his leg right off.  In desperation, Ryck raised the knife and stabbed down, exactly as Sgt MacPruit had told them not to do back during MCMA training back on Alexander.  Overhead stabbing was just not very effective, but while hanging from the back of the capy, it was his only option.  The tempered durosteel blade slid into the capy’s neck. The creature started wheeling about, trying to shake Ryck off. Ryck plunged the knife again and again, hoping to find something vulnerable among the heavy neck muscles.  Ryck almost let go when the capy slammed him into a tree, but the creature was slowing, and the force was not quite enough to shake him.  Finally, Ryck hit something vital, and with a huge exhalation, the capy went down.  Still clinging to its back, Ryck stabbed it five or six more times for good measure.

The capy was still, but Ryck slowly pulled his left arm from under it and slid back.  He stood and gave it a kick, but it was dead.  He looked at the other one, and it was dead, too.  Ryck tried to retrieve the harpoon, but the extraction function wasn’t working.  The blades were hung up in the capy’s body.  Without hesitation, Ryck cut the thing out with his combat knife, wiped it in the leaves, and loaded it back into his blunderbuss.

The fact that the capys had their own kind of recon team deployed shouldn’t have surprised him.   And if they could communicate through their bioreceptors, as the xenobiologists thought, they had to have sent what was happening to them, and if they had eyes on the column, that would have been passed, too.  Ryck had to hurry.

He broke into a flat out run through the trees, trying to catch the column.  Caution was gone:  time was of the essence.  He finally just caught sight of them 200 meters away as they passed between the trees.  He called out, and in doing so, never saw the irrigation pipe.  His left boot toe went under it as his body plunge forward.  He shrieked as his tibia and fibula snapped.

“Mother grubbing fuck!” he screamed as the pain shot through him.

He looked back at his leg and almost threw up as shock set in.  If he was in his PICS, drugs would already be flowing through his body.  But he was in grubbing recon, where they were expected to grin and bear it.

He twisted to a sitting position, the pain of doing so almost making him pass out.  But his tendons and muscles brought his bent leg a little more into line.

Forget the pain.  The pain is nothing.  Get on with your mission!
He ran the mantra over and over in his mind.

He struggled to his feet and started walking.  The first step was torture as he felt broken bone ends scrape against each other. The second was better.  It hurt the same, but Ryck was beginning to compartmentalize it, to push it to a corner of his mind.  He still knew the pain was there, but the rest of his brain began to be able to function again.  Part of him wondered how much damage he was doing to himself, but his mission took priority.

Even with only one good leg, he started catching up to the column.  At 100 meters to their flank, he tried to call out, but only a croak emerged from his throat.  He swallowed, and then tried again.

“Stop!”

Miracle of miracle, someone heard him.  A woman wearing his blue skivvies (he noted in a corner of his mind), saw him and pointed.  The column stopped, and by the time Ryck had struggled forward, Sams had reached him. 

Ryck collapsed on the dirt, his leg no longer supporting him.

“Ryck, what’s going on?  We’ve got to move it!”

“Change of plans.  The capys’ can’t climb.  We need to get to another LZ up there,” he said, pointing in back of himself.  “I’ve got Shart and Crutch leading the main body of capys away, then they’re going to double back and meet us there.  But I ran into two capys in the woods back there watching you, and the rest of them know exactly where you are.  Even if you make it to the alternate LZ before them, unless the shuttle lands immediately, the capys will get there before you can load.”

“But I don’t know if some of these people can make it up a slope.”

“They’re going to have to.  Turn now, and head up.  Here’s the map with the LZ.  Get them there.”

“But what about you?  You can’t walk.”

“You heard him, Sams,” Tara said as she came up, now with a blunderbuss in her hands.  “We need to turn the column now and move it.”

As she moved off to the front of the column, Ryck had to ask, despite the situation, a simple “Sams?”

“Ah, it was easier.  She’s been pretty helpful.”  He looked up and shouted “McManus!”

One of the men hurried over and knelt beside Ryck, looking at his leg.

“Can you do anything about that?” Sams asked.