Stars Rain Down (25 page)

Jack couldn't see anything ahead but tall plants, and rushing through the dense crops made it feel like he was moving as fast as a motorcycle. His boots crunched in the soil, and the sound of his ragged breathing filled his head. Then the distant artillery thumped again.

Rifles cracked from behind them, cutting the artillery fire short. More stars streaked from overhead, but before they landed, Jack and his team were already down on their bellies, ready to wait them out.

The first went off far behind them, but number two was close. Too close. Jack's head rattled, his ears rang, and for just a brief second, he was somewhere else completely.

Silence.

Then he came surging back into the present, like surfacing from a deep-water dive. Someone tugged at the back of his poncho, and he heard Albright's voice barking, "Back on your feet, soldier!"

He cleared his head and climbed up. More artillery fire awaited them and the situation wasn't going to get any better. "Break right!" he called out. "Head for the rocks and find cover."

"Jack?"

"I'll be right behind."

More rifle shots sounded, and in response, two streams of bright blue tracers streaked overhead. His support crew had caught the rhinos' attention.

"Flash left, rush right," Jack said to himself as he produced one of the Molotov cocktails. He pulled a micro-torch lighter from his pocket and lit the bottle's wick, then cranked his arm back and chucked it as far as he could. An instant later, the light of a bright fire crackled some thirty meters on.

One stream of enemy fire swept away from his support crew and towards the flame, while Jack ran the other way.

Jack had forgotten how mind-numbing a long run could be. Empty of any thoughts at all, he pounded his feet non-stop straight past the buildings and back to the craggy stone hand where the jeep was stashed. The sky was finally dark when he got there, and he slowed to keep his footing.

After a couple steps, he heard weapon safeties clicking. "Wind," a voice said.

"Stone," he replied. It was a pass phrase, one of a dozen challenge-response sets used to check for friendlies.

"Good to see ya, Jack!"

"Hustle up," he said. Now that he had his head on straight, he had a plan. "We don't have much time. Grab some cover in the rocks, and Chase... lean on that horn."

Chase pulled the tarp back over the jeep and hit the horn, while the others hid. It was another cattle call, and they didn't have to wait long for the stampede.

The rhinos moved in quickly. They weren't cautious or subtle creatures. They were brute force personified, with as much armor and firepower as a light tank.

They slowed as they came to the rocks, while the insects on their backs produced glowing stalks to light the way. The behemoths grunted to one another in their weird language, and moved further into Jack's trap. Then the time came.

The two rhinos stepped in front of the jeep and the headlights came on, blinding them. They each raised their set of thin central arms to guard their faces from the light, all the while preparing to fire their huge autocannons.

The rhinos' opportunity vanished when Trash and Albright opened fire into their backs. Bullets tore the insects to pieces, but sparked and ricocheted off the armor plates beneath.

Cozar lit a Molotov and flung it into the air. It arced down and struck with a crash barely audible above the hail of small arms fire, then exploded in a shower of yellow-orange flames. The monster at the center of the blaze roared in agony.

Jack lit his own Molotov and cranked his arm back, but before he could throw, a high-pitched crack sounded in the distance and the bottle exploded in his hand. Flames engulfed his arm, and he roared in pain. He dove to the ground and tried to smother his arm while another shot rang out.

His right arm sizzled and popped beneath him, and he chewed on his lower lip while fighting the pain. He didn't even feel the heat anymore, just the sheer hurt. All the while, one of the assault rifles continued to rattle off rounds, and the rhino spun to aim at its attacker.

Jack yelled to get down in half-formed barks, but his team knew what they were doing. They were crazy as hell, but they had a plan. The rhino opened fire and angled its autocannon upward, the stream of burning blue rounds biting chunks out of the rock face, while Albright leapt down from her hiding spot and rushed up behind it.

The nimble little woman sprang into the air and latched onto the monster's back. It spun around and futilely reached back to grab her, but she was faster. Her knife flashed out and slit its throat, spraying black blood all over the earth.

It was over. Jack was in more pain than he could swallow, but he was smiling. He must have looked right loony at that moment, as he grinned and looked at the two dead monsters in the dirt. One was still burning on the ground, and the other lay in a lifeless heap with tiny Lisa Albright triumphant atop it.

They didn't have time to celebrate, though. They needed to get out of town and fast. Jack stumbled back to his feet, slobbering in pain the whole way, and with a breaking voice said, "Chase! Start the engine. We're getting out."

The engine sparked to life and rumbled. Everyone came out of their cover, while Albright cleaned and wrapped Jack's hand and gave him a shot of morphine to take the bite off his excruciating pain. The others removed the rhino's head with a fire-axe, and heaved it into the back of the jeep, beside the creature's similarly liberated autocannon.

When they were all loaded up, Chase pulled the jeep out and headed for Nikitin and Hartnell's post. Jack sat in the back, slumped over to the side, and he managed to slip into a nice, deep sleep for the rest of the ride.

In the dim shafts of sunshine that managed to seep into his tent, Jack looked down at his gauze-wrapped hand. Six weeks had passed since the fight, and the roasted skin never stopped itching and aching. He knew the burns could have been a lot worse, but it still left him short a hand. His right hand, nonetheless.

He made do. He started carrying a forty-five caliber handgun and learned to shoot one-handed. His left hand felt damn near useless and learning to aim reliably was a struggle, but after a bit of practice, it started to come around.

He stretched his burnt fingers then made a fist, and had to grit his teeth against the pain. He had no room to complain, though. It took the surgeons a week to dig all the shrapnel out of Nikitin's side, and he was still recuperating in a medical tent somewhere. He'd be back on the frontlines soon with a little luck.

Rebecca Hartnell didn't fare as well; she got caught in direct fire that night, and one of the rhino's autocannons took a fist-sized chunk out of her shoulder. She survived, but it was a safe bet her arm would never work right again. Despite her best protesting, she was taken off active duty and given a desk job in the armory.

Considering all of that, Jack had made out okay; his hand would do its job once he got the bandages off, even if his opportunities as a hand model were shot. Streaks of scarred skin twisted up towards his elbow like permanently etched flames, serving as an ugly and permanent reminder that the situation was never under control, no matter how simple it appeared.

He stepped outside and into the full light of day. The sun hung directly overhead, and a dusty canyon stretched off in two directions beneath him. Their camp was on the Sinai Peninsula, in a known high-traffic area thirty klicks east of where the Suez Canal met the Red Sea. His troops were spread out along the top of the canyon in three-man groups, and his own was the furthest south.

Lisa Albright stood a few meters off with her rifle held across her chest. Stories of her exploits on the Gaza Strip spread quickly after their return, and she'd become a minor celebrity... the first person to ever kill a rhino in hand-to-hand combat. Of course, rumors grew and twisted as they spread, and half the resistance thought she'd faced the beast down and snapped its neck with her bare hands. That was just the way rumors worked, Jack supposed.

She wore a dark red beret that someone had given her, and with her face painted, she looked less like a physician and more like a very tiny commando.

There were stories about Jack, too, but nothing like Albright's tall tales. The brass were talking about his quick thinking and ability to stay cool under pressure, and in an organization starved for leadership, a lot of eyes were on him all of a sudden. His only option was to pick up the ball and run with it.

The resistance had scored a few small victories over the previous weeks, minor annoyances at best, but Jack thought it time to start really pissing the invaders off. He wasn't content to skulk around the night setting booby traps; he wanted to do something bold and noisy. Something the enemy couldn't ignore.

The Bravos, whose ranks had swollen to a few dozen soldiers, hid along the canyon for three days straight. They watched the alien walkers sprint through it at two-hundred KPH, and managed to sketch out a rough schedule. Around noon, single walkers tended to come through every forty-two minutes, and there were never any security sweeps or air support. The enemy foolishly considered the region safe.

"Whaddya think, hero? Today the day?" Albright asked.

He nodded. "We'll hit the next one that comes through."

"Good," she said. "I'm tired of squatting in this shit hole."

Charlie Hernandez came bounding up the slope a moment later. Most of his black, bug-like armor was hidden under overlapping pieces of ragged cloth, and he looked like some kind of vagrant grasshopper.

The higher-ups wanted someone to observe and report back on the viability of Jack's tactic, and Charlie was between posts at the time, so he volunteered.

"The chain is set and ready to go," Charlie said in his mechanically altered voice. "The forward team's just waiting for their target."

"What about Trash's group?"

"Locked and loaded."

There was nothing left to do but take cover and wait.

Eight minutes later, they spotted a dust cloud at the northern end of the canyon. Jack raised his binoculars up and could see the alien walker galloping in at full speed.

"Here she comes," he said.

From his vantage point, he could hardly see the forward team's position five hundred meters on, and he couldn't see their chain at all. That's how it was supposed to be.

Then, just as the walker was about to pass the forward post, the thick metal chain snapped taut eight meters above the ground. The walker saw it at the last moment and tried to stop, but it was too late. Its front legs buckled and snapped, and the vehicle lurched forward, tumbling end over end through the narrow canyon, then skidded along the rocky soil.

It ground to a halt amid a thick cloud of kicked up dust right under Jack's position. Trash's team immediately went into action.

"Fire one!" Trash hollered, and a rocket propelled grenade raced down from the rocks with a hiss, followed by a trail of white smoke. The shot struck the back of the walker's body and exploded in a ball of fire and debris.

"All clear!"

It was time for Jack's team to move. They rushed down the side of the canyon, interspersing quick hops with controlled slides through the loose soil. By the time they came to the bottom, the smoke had cleared and the walker lay face first in the dirt with its cracked ass in the air. It was broken and twitching, with a massive singed hole where its back-end used to be.

Chase and Trash came down the opposite side and found cover above the walker, with their rifles trained on the wreckage. "Got your back, chief!"

Jack and his team moved. They clambered up the side of the vehicle and swept their barrels across the opening, ready to take down anything still moving, but there was no motion inside the vehicle; only strangely colored blood and carnage. "Sweep through and put a round in every skull. No survivors. Charlie, you documenting this?"

"Recording," Charlie said. "We'll have plenty of footage."

"Good. Albright, pick out two good specimens of each kind."

"Roger that," she said.

The creatures were strapped to the walls with tendril-like harnesses, rather like the inside of a leviathan. Jack quickly pushed the thought out of his head before anything approaching sympathy occurred to him.

They moved through the crashed vehicle row by row, finishing each occupant with a single round to the head. It was mechanical work, and they did it quickly and without passion.

"Take a look at this," Albright said from the front of the cabin.

Jack strode over to meet her, and found her standing before a creature they hadn't seen before. Its body was thin and spindly as if it had no skeleton, and the flesh was shiny and off-white like uncooked scallop meat. It had six tendrils, a finned tail, and a bulbous head with a thin mouth and a glowing, blue-green eye.

It sat in some kind of cradle with its arms hooked into fleshy cavities, alive but badly wounded, and mewling in pain.

"Must be the pilot," Albright said.

Jack nodded. He thought back to the first village back in China, and remembered the floating, six armed creature that directed the operations there. Its shape was right, but all of the details were different. "Sounds about right," he said. "I think they wear some kind of armor when they go outside."

The thing was twitching uncontrollably, and whenever it jerked, the ruined walker quaked. It looked up at Jack with pleading in its giant eye, and it whimpered.

Jack had his forty-five in hand the whole time. He raised the weapon to the creature's head and pulled the trigger, splashing grey and green on the wall behind. The creature went silent.

Albright grimaced. "You're a cold son of a bitch, Jack."

"You should talk," he replied. "Take this one too, if you can get it out in one piece."

"Yes, sir."

Jack heard the rumble of their troop transport outside; that meant the forward team had packed up faster than expected. Good news, because they needed to get out before the next walker arrived.

In silence, Jack and his team carried the alien corpses out, loaded them into their transport, and left for Al Saif. They left the broken walker out in the open where it would be found in the next half-hour, and Jack hoped the message came through clear.