Old Habits Die Hard Pt.6
16 Sep 2017Desert Fox CXVII
The stink of mud and rotting vegetation wrap their cloying tendrils around me as I crawl through the undergrowth. I’d covered twenty kilometers in a couple hours, but these past few dozen meters had taken me twice that long. Slow and steady; there’s no point in moving fast if you’re dead. One broken twig, one rustled bush, and the jig is up. They’d find me and they’d come out shoot and me. Even worse, they’d find the Tide and commandeer her. So I’m crawling along, my belly in the dirt, nose full of the smell of mud, and dragging a satchel full of explosives.I can hear them. I could hear them for the past half hour; moving about, setting up gear, making food, laughing and joking, making their space as comfortable as they can. Things men do when they’re in a tough situation. Things men do when they know they’re not quite safe, but need to take their minds off of it.
They’d been stranded on this planet for a few days now, and I hadn’t hit them yet. I’d been too busy making sure Cass didn’t bleed out onto the jungle floor. Poor thing; shot out of the sky and savaged by some ugly space demon with too many teeth, all in the span of one mission. It had taken all of my rather negligible medical training to keep him alive.
Working on someone you care about is never easy, but when it’s someone who’s… well…
What I mean to say is, it wasn’t the same. It’s still not the same. Not with Cass. There’s just… I don’t know. He’s so much better with words than I am. He’s probably got it all figured out by now. Got it all wrapped up in a nice white bow, the high-born prick.
But none of that’s important now; I’ve got a job to do. Most of my ducks are in a row, but I’ve got to get this last one in line before I can get off this stinking, soggy rock.
It’s time to go hunting.
I come up on the first sign of resistance after about an hour; a lone sentry, patrolling a hundred meter patch of jungle between me and the camp. Doesn’t look like a spook or special forces. Too bored, too tired, and too under equipped. Makes sense; the big dogs are probably guarding the arch-spook himself. That makes my job both easier and more difficult at the same time. On one hand, these guards will be relatively easy to sneak past or take out, but it also means I’ll have to fight multiple highly trained operators at the same time.
Pushing that thought aside, I focus my attention on the man in front of me. He’s dressed in standard Federal combat gear built by the lowest bidder. Probably a marine or a crewmember who got a field promotion. He’s young. Maybe nineteen or twenty, and has a line of spots on his forehead where his helmet rubs up against the skin. He’s got the complexion of someone who spends most of their life in space without unfiltered sunlight, so he’s most likely not a marine. Crewman, then. Maybe he enlisted to get away from some backwater frontier world, or for the tuition. Maybe he’s destined to change the Federation as we know it.
Maybe a lot of things. But he’s in my way.
I watch him for a couple minutes to get his pattern down. It’s the most basic patrol in the galaxy; back and forth, back and forth, with a pause at each apex of his sweep. No change, no deviation, no randomization. Just the same forty paces over and over again, back and forth. A child could ambush this guy. Once he turns his back, I creep up behind him as slow and quiet as possible and wrap my hand around his nose and mouth. I can feel the delicate bones in his face crack and splinter under the servos in my fingers. He tenses up and starts to fight against me, his pained and panicked cries muffled by my steel palm. With a violent tug and a kick to the backs of his knees, I pull him off balance and down to the ground, before burying my knife into the base of his skull. All at once, he stops struggling, like someone had flipped a switch inside him, his life snatched away like a toy from a petulant child.
I stay like that for a while, his body draped over me, waiting to see if anyone noticed. When no bullets or shouts of anger come snapping my way, I heave his dead weight off of me and climb to my feet. A cursory glance around reveals an adequate bush for my purposes. I drag him over to it as quietly as possible and roll him under. Almost as an afterthought, I retrieve a grenade from my bag and pull the pin. Taking great care to make sure his weight keeps the spoon in place, I hide it under his torso. Anyone who finds his body will also find a nasty surprise waiting for them when they try to move him.
With one last furtive glance around, I melt back into the underbrush to look for my next victim.
Three dead and booby trapped guards later, I’ve worked my way into the center of the Fed encampment, setting even more traps as I go. It’s not much. A some ratty old pop-tents with shipping crates stacked around them into haphazard fortifications with a few campfires dotted around the place. At the center of the compound are their stocks of food and ammunition, piled up next to a standard issue distress beacon. A small blinking strobe at the tip of the antenna indicates that it’s transmitting. For how long I don’t know, but if I want any chance of surviving this mission, it has to go.
I creep forward, slipping past a patrolling guard as he makes his rounds, and roll behind a couple crates of ship rations. After taking a heartbeat to make sure I hadn’t been seen, I reach into my pack and pull out two fist-sized plastique charges and fix them to the side of the beacon. With practiced motions, I pair them to the transmitter on my prosthetic so I can detonate them remotely when I’m safely out of the blast radius. I’ve always found that timers leave too much room for error. Leave it too short and you risk getting caught in the explosion. Leave it too long and the charges might be found and disarmed before they have the chance to go off. Remote triggers are the way to go.
Before turning to go, I glance at the crate next to me. It’s already been cracked open, and “Naval rations, field, individual,” is written along the side above a small yellow square. Figures they’d start on the best ones first. Shrugging, I reach into the box and grab a handful, shoving them into my cargo pockets. Once I’m done stocking up, I poke my head out to see if the coast is clear, and then start working my way back out.
I’m almost to the perimeter wall when the first explosion goes off. From the sound of it, it was one of the traps inside the camp, and had hopefully taken out at least one guard.
Almost immediately, the camp explodes into a flurry of activity. Men shout back and forth to each other and sentries dart between the tents as portable floodlights burst to life. Not wasting any time, I coil up and spring into a flat sprint, no longer worried about being discovered; the confusion and chaos would cover my retreat, hopefully helped along by another explosion.
I vault over a pile of crates and meet the ground with a roll. As I bounce back to my feet, a half naked man stumbles from his tent brandishing a rifle and rubbing sleep from his eyes. I draw the pistol from its holster on the small of my back and drive two rounds into his throat. He crumples to the ground like a drone with its uplink cut. I continue on my way, tearing around a corner at top speed, leaving him to drown in his own blood behind me.
It’s not much farther to the perimeter, and I reach it without any further resistance, followed only by the occasional sound of a grenade detonating. The guards must have consolidated themselves to the inner rings, so as to protect vital equipment and personnel. Good for me, bad for them, as the density of my traps was higher near the center of the camp.
Grinning, I clamber up onto one of the crates that form the wall. As I move to drop down on the other side, I feel the a brush of air past my face followed closely by a buzzing snap as something small and fast passes inches from my head. The rolling boom of a rifle report arrives a half-second later, alerting me to my exposed position atop this wall. I must have cut a silhouette against the treeline. Doesn’t matter now; they’ve seen me.
I slide over the edge of the crate into the dense jungle beyond the wall and take off into a flat sprint. My path would be easy to track, but I can take it slow and cover my retreat later. Right now, I need to create as much distance as possible between me and any pursuers who might be sent after me.
Another round cracks over my head, then another, and another, zipping away high above me, slapping aside leaves and branches as it cuts through the thick and soupy air with no more effort than a knife through fabric. The rounds chase me into the underbrush, their razor song the whip that spurs me ever faster. Shouts follow me where bullets can’t; I can hear the Feds organizing themselves for a pursuit. Not wanting to give them any more advantage than they already have, I bring up my prosthetic’s interface and lock onto my demo’s transponder signal. With a quick flick of my finger, I send the ‘detonate’ command.
A gout of flame erupts from the camp behind me. A millisecond later, the blastwave hits; I can feel it in my lungs as the supersonic wall of air washes over me. Must have been more than just food stores around that beacon.
No longer pursued by gunfire, I resume my flight into the underbrush, intent on breaking contact before a proper search party can be formed.
It’s not long before the dull glow of the inferno and the disjointed shouts of panicked men disappear behind me, replaced by darkness and the ambient chatter of the jungle, which is occasionally interrupted by the muffled whump of a grenade exploding. I slow down to a brisk trot to get my bearings and devise my escape and evasion. In short order, I have a plan in mind and move to execute, creeping off into the bush while erasing any sign that I had passed. With some luck, my trail would abruptly vanish into the very thick air.
The trek back to the Tide is much longer than my journey to the Fed encampment, owing to meandering nature of my route. I’d backtracked, deviated and veered off the most direct route to make it as difficult as possible for anyone tracking me to follow me back to the ship. I’d probably still move her, just in case. When fighting a guerilla war, you always need to keep the enemy on the back foot. Keep them searching, disorganized and spread out. If they’re focused on searching for you, as opposed to chasing you, it’s easy to attack them from a position of strength. The key to a successful guerilla is keeping the enemy guessing.
Finally, I slide down into the covered canyon I’d stowed the Tide in, and she emerges before me from the foliage and low hanging fog. Her red tinted hull is covered in severed branches, patches of transplanted moss and a thin veneer of moisture which would all hopefully camouflage her enough to fool any airborne surveillance.
The planet’s red sun had started rising a short while ago, but the gloom of pre-dawn still hangs over the narrow fissure in the rock face. The gangway extends as I approach, keying into my IFF transponder, and I climb up and into the primary airlock. As it cycles, I shed my gear into a haphazard pile beside Cass’ bug-out safe. I’d found it several hours earlier, but unable to open it, I’d left it in the airlock. He could open it when he came to.
Once the lock is done cycling, I step into the ship proper and beeline for my cabin. My bed takes up most of the available floorspace, with clothes, assorted gear, and a rumpled bedroll taking up the rest. In the bed, swathed in my crimson sheets and snoring lightly, lies the bruised and broken Cass.
I stand there for a while, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest. He looks so weak and vulnerable, kept alive by the tubes and wires snaking in and out of his body. Only the ghost of his strength and confidence remain, overshadowed by this mumbling and fevering state forced upon him.
He shifts in his sleep, muttering something broken and unintelligible; probably another nightmare. He’d been having them in an almost unbroken string since he fell unconscious.
With a sigh, I collapse onto the bedroll and stare up at the bulkhead above me. I have one final thought before I drift off to sleep:
Anna, what the fuck are you doing?