Trial by Fire - eARC (43 page)

“I’m Trevor. Now, what’s the situation around here?”

Tygg shrugged. “We arrived in-country three days after the bastards landed, gathering tactical intel, organizing resistance. Some of your lot was here as well. Marine Force Recon, I think. We kept separate. You know the drill: stay small, hard to catch, harder to see, and if they got one unit, then the other could still carry on.”

“How’d that go?”

“Fine, for a while. Then the exos started coming out into the bush. It was like bloody fox and hound, after that. We’d organize a hit, and out they’d come after us, the Arat Kur pushing their Hkh’Rkh hounds to the hunt. They got your lot—Force Recon—first. Killed them all, unless our intel was wrong. Got a big bloody nose doing so, I hear. Got us next, about two weeks later, and I think they had help.”

“What kind of ‘help’?”

“Human help. We were operating over near the mass-driver, gathering intel on the rate of continuing construction. We had some unexpected visitors. I suspect we tripped some of CoDevCo’s ground sensors in the area, and they sent word to their new landlords. Lost the captain, all of first squad. Ripped up half of the other before we could break contact and get into the deep bush.”

“And since then?”

“Educating the locals. Real talent here for jungle insurgency, but we already knew that. On the side, we’ve been compiling tactical intel for the infiltration units we might eventually have contact with.”

“What kind of intel?”

“You name it. Everything from a list of known exo bases to the technical specs on their equipment. For instance, there’s a weapon the Arat Kur break out for special occasions: their little coil gun.”

Stosh cleared his throat. “You mean, like the rail guns used on warships?”

Lieutenant Robin nodded. “Same principle, yeh—but portable. We call it a needler. It’s a support weapon that the Arat Kur sometimes mount in a separate housing on the back of their armored exoskeletons, and sometimes issue to the Hkh’Rkh ground troops as a vehicle or crew-served heavy weapon. Slows the wearer down, but it’s absolutely lethal out to three kilometers. Only four millimeter projectiles—like overgrown needles—but they’re traveling four or five times the speed of sound. Ruler-straight trajectory and they must have one hell of a scope slaved to the weapon; we took our last two casualties after I thought we’d given them the slip by putting four klicks between us.”

“What are the Hkh’Rkh like in combat?”

Gavin shook his head. “Bloody tough, is what they are. If you’ve got a dustmix weapon set for high velocity, you can usually take ’em down with a single shot. But if you’re using caseless or most of the old brass-cartridge rifles, forget it; you’re going to have to bash ’em a few times before they stop getting up.”

“Their armor?”

Tygg frowned. “Pretty much like ours, but thicker. And they routinely hump a ninety kilo ‘light’ pack.”

“And they’re still quick?”

“In the open, they are like greased lightning. But in the jungle, not so good. They’re heavy, tall and broad and get tangled in brush that we slip through. And you can hear them coming a mile away. The only time they ever surprise us is if they’ve been lying quiet, observing from a distance. Then they pin us down with long-range systems like the needler, and send assault infantry after us on the double-quick. But if we have native flankers and scouts with us, we see them first—every time. Our real problem is long-range communication.”

“Why? The EMP bursts?”

“No, not so much. They didn’t light too many of those off over Java. But their jamming is absolute. We can’t find a channel that isn’t being used or fuzzed by them. So we have to go with jury-rigged LOS systems: usually old target designators converted into crude lascoms. And to keep things short, we sent prerecorded compressed messages, usually in Morse code.”

“That’s no good for tactical ops, though.”

“During ops, we use pagers, linked by ground repeaters.”

“Don’t they find the repeaters, destroy them?”

“Sure, but then the locals plant a few more. They’re seeding them into projected ops areas all the time. Particularly farmers.” He leaned back with a smile. “Welcome to the shit, Captain. Now, what was your objective when you almost got yourself killed by blundering into us?”

Trevor smiled back. “‘Killed by blundering into you,’ eh?” He lifted his hand in a surfer sign.

Tygg raised an eyebrow. “You were planning on feeding yourself to the sharks?”

Gavin stared and then grinned. “Lieutenant, you’ve got something on your shoulder.”

“Eh? What—?” Tygg looked, and saw a bright red dot painted directly on his clavicle. He swallowed.

Trevor lowered his index finger. The dot disappeared. Robin breathed again.

Stosh smiled. “Oh, it’s still there, Lieutenant. You just can’t see it. Lieutenant Winfield just snapped the laser designator—and scope—over to UV wavelength with preset frequency modulation. Even with a UV scope, you wouldn’t see it unless you’re wearing goggles that are set for the same pattern of frequency-hopping that the beam is using.”

“And Lieutenant Winfield is—?”

Trevor decided to pick up the story. “Another of my men, about three kilometers behind us, with a ten-millimeter liquimix Remington M167 long-barrel assault gun. I’m sure you know the specs, so I won’t bore you.”

Tygg nodded, smiled. “I guess I underestimated you. But then again, you may have underestimated us.” He raised his left hand, all fingers spread wide.

The bush wavered. At least half a dozen previously invisible Indonesian villagers stood, the closest no more than six meters away. Half of them carried Pindad caseless bullpup carbines, the other half AK-47s. Tygg’s smile became wolfish. “I don’t want to bring the Arat Kur down on us, so I won’t send a pager signal to the group I have waiting four klicks behind you with Corporal Holloway. But they might have made Lieutenant Winfield’s afternoon a little more interesting.”

Trevor smiled. “I daresay they might have.” It was going to be good working with Aussies again. “Bonzer good show, mate.” Tygg rolled his eyes at Trevor’s broadly accented Hollywood Aussie slang. “Now, if you’ve got a few dozen strong backs and local boats you can whistle up, I’ve got some interesting equipment cached back on Pulau Panaitan—”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Near Gunung Klabang, Central Java, Earth

Opal heard the hoarse growl of a Hkh’Rkh tri-barrel eight millimeter and ducked lower; it was closer than she’d expected. She had heard the first reports of a firefight five minutes ago, had moved in their direction, estimated that she was now within a kilometer of the point of contact. But that sudden blast of angry rotary fire had been less than three hundred meters away. Whatever shit was hitting the fan, it was flying in her direction—and fast.

She low-ran forward, stopped just beneath the crest of a small ridge, and crawled up closer behind a particularly dense thicket. Taking care not to stir any of the vegetation, she lay on her back, flipped on the monocular data screen, double-checked that it was jacked into the line-out feed from the scope, and lifted the weapon up so that it could peer downslope over the tips of the fronds and spatulate leaves.

The picture’s a little too wobbly. Zoom out—ah, that’s better.
A handful of locals were retreating in good order, moving in two groups. The front rank fired a few rounds, ducked and ran while the second rank covered and then headed even farther rearward. At first she couldn’t see the Hkh’Rkh pursuers, but it had to be them. That eight-millimeter rotary was their signature squad support weapon, from what she had seen. After a few moments, she detected the thrashing bush tops and vines that signaled their approach in dense vegetation. Their long, powerful dog-jointed legs and immense lung capacities marked them as open country predators possessing both superlative speed and endurance.
But we bald-assed monkeys evolved here in the jungles. Welcome to our humble home.

As if to underscore that welcome, a man in a Kopassus uniform popped up from a wide thatch of ferns, just as the Hkh’Rkh drew abreast of his position along the human route of withdrawal. He blasted half a magazine of caseless at them and went prone. The Hkh’Rkh closest to him caught at least eight rounds in the right trunk and was knocked sideways, a reddish-maroon mist persisting a half second along the trajectory of his fall. Hurt, probably dead.

The Hkh’Rkh pursuit stopped, and their weapons hammered the jungle around the ferns. If the Indonesian commando was still there, his remains wouldn’t fill a rice bowl.

With the Hkh’Rkh attention suddenly rotated ninety degrees to their right flank, one of the irregular insurgents reversed course, sneaking back toward the Hkh’Rkh line, evidently intending to catch them by surprise from what had been their direction of advance. She rose up to fire, her AK-47 snugged under her cheek—

Fifty meters behind the Hkh’Rkh contact line, there was a quick sputter. One projectile tore the woman’s right arm off just beneath the shoulder; two more hit her in the chest, exiting her back with explosive sprays of bright red. Just because the Hkh’Rkh were bold didn’t mean they weren’t competent tacticians: their overwatch marksmen knew to watch for tricks such as the one the woman had attempted. However, the destination of her fellow insurgents’ retreat remained unclear—to Opal no less than the Hkh’Rkh. Their route of withdrawal led into a narrow gorge, about two hundred meters farther on. The sides were wooded and steep, and the back was a sheer wall of black volcanic rock. A dead-end. Literally, if they kept heading that way.

Opal lowered her rifle, thought.
I’m close enough to Jakarta to make contact with locals. But there might not be any of this bunch left in three minutes. So saving their trapped asses might buy a decent welcome and quick trust.
She rose up into a crouch, began following the backside of the slope she was on, which ultimately evolved into the near wall of the gorge.

Before reaching that point, she had to go over the top of the ridgeline: always a risky moment.
But I’m bulletproof. Gotta be. And besides, the best defense is a strong offense.

She snaked over the top of the ridge, was pleased to discover no one was shooting at her, and started angling down her side of the gorge, the one that led farther up into Gunung Klabang’s northern foothills. She could see the approaching insurgents being bunched together by the narrowing gap between the slopes. Behind them, the Hkh’Rkh, understanding that if they didn’t press the pursuit, the humans would escape up and over the slopes, steamrolled their way through the undergrowth. One more went down, but the rest kept coming. And behind, there was a rapid, irregular rustling in the undergrowth: one or more Arat Kur in combat suits, maintaining their typical serpentine. She looked for the inevitable remote units that hovered around them, saw about three of the flying pancakes and one larger aerial unit, possibly carrying a weapon. Arat Kur usually worked in pairs, but there was no sign of a second one or its remote units. Possibly it had been an earlier casualty. She continued to side-run down the slope.

Two more of the Indonesian irregulars had been hit—which, given the power of the Hkh’Rkh weapons, usually meant killed. However, one was still alive and crawling away through the weeds. His movement attracted the attention of one of the enemy skirmishers. Without breaking its stride, the Hkh’Rkh swerved in that direction, took a longer, higher leap, and landed with the calar talon of his foot striking down into the middle of the human’s back. The man—or, as Opal saw when his face jerked up momentarily, the boy—stiffened, then went limp.

Opal’s brow grew hot and then cold. She checked the range in the scope: ninety-two meters. She nuzzled into the stock. She had wanted to close a little more, but screw it.
For you, kid
, she thought, and squeezed off two rounds.

The Hkh’Rkh stopped in the middle of his next stride, looked down as if trying to see the eight millimeter hole where a tungsten-cored round had gone in, and then fell backwards, gargle-yowling and holding the spurting maroon crater that had erupted at the base of his long neck. Hkh’Rkh weapons—including the tribarrel—ripped into the tree that had been Opal’s cover.

But as soon as she had squeezed the trigger the second time, Opal had launched into a forward roll. Two somersaults later, she was eight meters farther down the slope: bruised, but the enemy counterfire was passing safely overhead. Half the Hkh’Rkh line, smelling a box ambush, wheeled to charge her old position, firing as they came, still looking higher up the slope.

Should’ve checked your thermal scopes first, suckers.
She let them close to within sixty meters, set the selector switch to three round bursts and started sprinting towards them, staying low, firing at any movement she saw in her front ninety-degree arc.

At first the Hkh’Rkh obviously had no idea where the fire was coming from. With Opal’s low posture and rapid approach through the dense foliage, they couldn’t track the muzzle flashes and simply would not have believed that a single human was countercharging straight into the middle of their skirmish line. The three skirmishers in the center had gone down before the rest realized what was happening, stopped, dropped into their own crouches and started lining her up—by which point she was only twenty meters from their line. She targeted the one straight ahead of her without slowing. She snapped off two bursts—the second for insurance—and ran past his thrashing body just as the other Hkh’Rkh started opening up.

And had themselves in a crossfire. With the center of their line gone, and Opal between their flanks, the ends of their line started pouring largely blind fire through empty space and into each other. Opal went low, looked for some solid cover as tattered foliage started raining down on her, saw a pair of parallel downed trees a few meters away. She raised her weapon into the hailstorm overhead, fired a few rounds. She waited for the sustained thunder of the magazine-emptying responses to end abruptly, then kicked up from the soggy ground into a two-stepped sprint and then a long dive, which landed her between the two tree trunks as the air livened with a renewed torrent of projectiles.