The Heart of Matter: Odyssey One (76 page)

The team acknowledged, and they broke from their position by squads, falling back while covering one another. In
pairs, they dropped out of the firefight, giving ground as they fell back under fire. The exchanged bursts of plasma, and explosive rounds split the air around them, so they kept low to the ground and as much behind cover as possible while covering each other’s movements.

“They’re rallying!”

“Where the hell are they coming from? We’ve spread dozens of them across the whole area! They can’t possibly have many more!”

“Can the chatter!” Bermont cut in, shutting the group down. “I don’t know where they got the numbers, either, but right now, I don’t care! Just take them out!”

“We’re trying, LT! But they just keep coming! Where’s the demo squad?”

“They’re delayed,” Bermont growled, feeling like the whole conversation had an air of déjà vu in it.

“Delayed? Why? By what?”

“If I knew that, Matt, I’d tell the colonel to shoot whoever delayed them and they wouldn’t be delayed any longer. Now, shut up and fight, damn you!” Bermont snarled, opening the local channel to Gamma Team. “Crowley, how are you holding up?”

About fifty meters away, Jackson Crowley was the sole member of his squad standing in the open. One problem with the EXO-12 unit, he was now noticing, was that it made taking cover somewhat more difficult, given the fact that it was just over twelve
feet
high. Thankfully, the armor itself was commensurately tougher, so the plasma bolts off the smaller dog-sized enemy did only a little worse than scorch the surface.

The vibration dampeners in the suit were getting a solid workout; he hadn’t let up on the tri-barrel in so long he was actually starting to worry about munitions. By comparison,
the steady
tick-tick-tick
of the laser’s capacitor discharging was completely lost in the chaos of the situation.

“We have casualties over here, Bravo,” he answered Bermont’s call when he had a moment. “But the fire is too thick to risk evac. Any word on reinforcements?”

“Negative. They’re ‘delayed.’ Unknown cause.”

Crowley just grunted in response. Honestly, he wanted to whine about where the backup units were, but he just didn’t have the time. Unlike simulations, he had men bleeding around him, and they weren’t going to be able to fall back any farther.

“This far,” he said on the open tactical net. “No farther.”

“Sir?”

“Hold line!” he ordered, stepping forward. “We can’t fall back with our wounded, we can’t medevac them in this mess, and we sure as
hell
can’t leave them behind. This far! No farther!”

A short distance away, Bermont rallied his squad. “You heard Gamma, boys. They’re pinned down worse than we are. So here’s what we’re going to do. Let’s plot a breakout. We’ll punch through the north flank and circle down to Gamma’s location and hook up with them. That’s where we’ll make our stand. Got it?”

The men acknowledged, most of them now too simultaneously tired and hyped up to do more than ping the “acknowleged” icon on their HUD.

Bermont slung his rifle and pulled a matched set of grenades from his kit, keying both to his armor computer before chucking them underhanded toward the north flack of the Drasin offensive.

The twin thunderous explosions were the signal the team needed; they broke cover with rifles chattering. The normal
sonic booms of the weapons were completely lost in the general melee. Bermont took up the rear as he shoved one of his men along when things were going a little too slow.

His rifle locked on an empty chamber, but he’d been expecting as much, and so he just slung it back and pulled his sidearm in the same motion. The standard-issue hand cannon didn’t have the power the 112 rifle had, but it was respectable enough in the close quarters of the debris-strewn battlefield they were fighting in.

“LT!”

“What is, Matt?” Bermont growled, his pistol barking twice.

“You have a location on any of the militia types?”

That stumped him briefly. The last time he’d see one of them had been a while back. “Come to think of it…”

“I don’t see any on my HUD, either. Where the hell did they get to? Did they bug out on us?”

That didn’t make sense to Bermont. The guys he’d worked with seemed good enough sorts as a rule. Granted, he was almost as happy that they weren’t around, as he would be able to have a few extra guns, but that was because they weren’t trained in close quarters fighting like this and he didn’t feel like being shot in the back by a gravity-propelled diamond. More to the point, they knew the stakes here as well as he did, so while some of them might have panicked and ran, he didn’t buy it that they
all
had.

“Keep moving. We’ll figure it out when we have some breathing room!” he decided finally.

“Right.”

Navigating the fallen buildings and debris was oddly like playing an old-school video game from over a century earlier. They could see themselves on the overwatch network, moving through the mazelike mass of fallen debris, with red glaring
hotspots showing the enemy units that were moving to cut them off.

All we need is a powerup so we can munch those bastards’ ghosts before they munch us.

“Bravo, Bravo, Gamma.”

“Go for Bravo, Gamma,” Bermont said quietly as the team weaved through the debris.

“I see you coming in from our south flank, confirm.”

“Confirmed, Gamma.”

“Intend to hook up?”

“Like prom night, Gamma.”

“Roger that. I spent mine at home studying.”

Bermont rolled his eyes. “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me, Crowley.”

“Yeah, yeah, and yet I’m the guy driving a tank and you’re not. Who wins?” Crowley told him wryly. “We’re adjusting our flank. Take up the slack on the south and east.”

“Roger that, Gamma. Wilco.” Bermont chuckled. “We’re light on munitions. Call for resupply?”

“Can do. Secure the perimeter. We’ll have some bullets and bombs dropped.”

“Just make sure they drop each on the right targets, Gamma.”

“Yeah, sure. Which is which again?”

“Smartass,” Bermont growled, dropping back to the team comm. “All right, we’re taking up the slack in Gamma’s south and east flank. Move into positions and secure the perimeter while we call for resupply.”

The team acknowledged the order and spread into position as they arrived at Gamma Team’s perimeter.

“Control, Bravo Actual,” Bermont signaled.

“Go for Control, Bravo.”

“Bravo has hooked up with Gamma, established new perimeter. Request resupply, ASAP.”

“Roger Bravo. Medevac possible?”

“Negative. Fire is too thick.”

“Roger. Resupply dispatched.”

“Thanks, Command. Any word on the demo team?” he asked as hopefully as he looked about it. The battlefield was getting a bit messy, and he would be really quite grateful for anyone who could clear the way.
Nothing quite clears the way like high explosives.

“We shook a shuttle loose. Demo will be on-site in ten minutes.”

“About time, thanks. One thing, Command…” Bermont hesitated for a moment.

“What is it, Bravo?”

“We’re missing our militia.”

“Excuse me? Say again.”

“Bravo and Gamma both lost track of local militia, Command.”

“KIA?”

“Negative, or no sign of that on overwatch, but we don’t have time to backtrack, either. Suggest you look into it.”

“Right. Wilco. Hold the line, we’ll get you some backup ASAP, Bravo.”

“Roger. Wilco,” Bermont signed off the command channel and returned his focus to the fight at hand.

Something was wrong—well, something beyond the obvious, that was—he could feel it. The militia guys wouldn’t have run out, not all of them, that was for certain. They knew the risks here, what was at stake. Some of them might have panicked, but Bermont didn’t believe for an instant that they all would.

So where the hell are they?

COMMAND AND CONTROL BUNKER

▸“WHERE THE HELL are they?” Colonel Reed demanded, glaring openly at the overwatch maps that were playing out on the secondary repeater displays.

When Bermont had tipped him to the absence of the militia in their area, he’d immediately set his gear to backtracking the battle. The overwatch system maintained a complete recording of everything it saw, tracking anything moving inside the battlespace and correlating it with IFF signals to keep track of soldiers and engagements. This time they were able to track the militia as well, since while they didn’t have IFF transponders, they did exhibit human heat signatures and the enemy didn’t.

That made a digital search easy enough; tracking the movements of any non-IFF human was an easy tag to run through the system. What he found was that they’d been separated early on, likely due to the capability and mobility of the armored units, then at some point were clearly ordered to withdraw from the area.

What the hell is going on here?
Reed scowled, turning from his screens to head over to where his liaison was standing.

“Ithan Chans, what’s going on?”

She frowned at him, puzzled. “Excuse me?”

“I know something is up. All your orbiters go missing, and now the militia in the active AO vanish?” He glowered. “Don’t take me for a fool, Milla. I know your military is up to something, and I don’t like being kept in the dark. I have men in the middle of this. What the hell is going on?”

As a member of the Special Forces, and as an SF trainer, specifically, Reed knew how to read people. He had to cultivate this talent. It was a necessity born of literal life-and-death crucibles, particularly when an “ally” was lying to him. Usually that happened right before someone tried to put a bullet in his back, often the very same ally.

Ithan Chans, however, was pretty easy to read, and she was mostly just as confused as he was. She seemed genuinely puzzled by the situation, which gave him some hope that there wasn’t another aide waiting in the wings to put a bullet in the back of his head.

Unless she just doesn’t understand a word I’m saying because this damned translation software is screwing up again.

“Look,” he sighed, softening his tone, “call your command and control, find out what the hell is going on. We’ve got a major problem here, and we really need to communicate better, or we’re all going to lose.”

She nodded jerkily. “Yes. I understand. I will call.”

“Thank you.”

BRAVO AO