Read Online Orphan's Triumph (Jason Wander) by Robert Buettner - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Robert Buettner
Tags: Fiction, General, Science-Fiction, adventure, Fantasy, Fiction - Science Fiction, Orphans, War & Military, Science Fiction - Adventure, American Science Fiction And Fantasy, War stories, Space warfare, Human-alien encounters, Soldiers, Science Fiction - Military, Wander; Jason (Fictitious character), Extraterrestrials, Science ficiton
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unfriendly, man-sized, armed, and armored maggots, lay two hundred yards to our front. Inside my armor, I shivered harder.
FOURTEEN
HOWARD AND I lay side by side in the snow while gusts now measuring one hundred thirty miles per hour rocketed snow above us, and the outside temperature remained two degrees below zero, Fahrenheit. The wind chill wasn’t worth checking, though my armor would have calculated it. My armor had lost its heater, not its brains.
Therefore, I heard Howard perfectly when he whispered over the intercom, “We won’t be able to shoot our way through the Pseudocephalopod lines.”
Actually, with our M40s, the two of us, like any human infantry, could shoot our way through many times our weight in Slug Warriors. But once they realized where we were, the Slugs would pour onto our trail by the thousands, blizzard or no blizzard, brain-dead or not.
Stealth was our only option. I fingered the trench knife on my belt with numb fingers. “I know. On a normal Slug perimeter, the Warriors spread out twenty yards apart. I’ll low-crawl up to the perimeter, take one out, then we’ll tow the blob through the gap and disappear into the storm before they realize they’re down a maggot.”
Howard jerked a thumb back at our prisoner, wobbling in the wind. “Even disconnected from the Ganglion, Warriors will react to the disturbance.”
“They won’t notice a disturbance. They see in the infrared spectrum. They know human soldiers give off heat, and that’s what they look for. My armor’s stone-cold. And I’ll knife the maggot, so there won’t be any firearm heat flash.”
“Then what?”
“Then we’ll find shelter. When the storm breaks, they’ll find us by our transponders.”
Through his visor, Howard frowned. “What if your plan goes wrong?”
I shrugged inside my armor. Over the decades, I had salvaged more disasters than I had caused. However, including this fiasco, my track record with plans wasn’t so great. “Then we’ll do what we always do. Run like hell until we think of something. You have a better idea?”
“If we break through the perimeter, we’ll be running through a blizzard for days. Our prisoner may not even survive. And your armor heater’s broken. We’re too old to try this, Jason.”
“If we don’t try this, we won’t get older.”
I cross-slung my rifle over my back, maxed my optics so I could see a yard in front of my face, and low-crawled through the snow.
Twenty minutes later, I paused, panting, behind a drift. My arm and leg muscles burned, my knee and elbow joints throbbed, and I sucked wind so hard that my visor’s med readout flashed amber. According to the medic who had doped me before we landed, I was supposed to feel great. We were too old for this.
The wind swirled snow away from the area fifteen yards to my front, and I glimpsed an angular black peak that rose a foot above the drifts. Hair stood on my neck. As expected, a Slug Warrior, faced away from me, was hunkered down in defense. Unlike GIs, Slug Warriors didn’t share fighting positions with another soldier. Slug Warriors were more like sophisticated white corpuscles than individual soldiers, and they needed neither companionship nor a buddy to take watch while they slept. I closed the gap between me and the Warrior to five yards, drew my knife, then chinned my comm bar. Behind me, Howard, presuming he hadn’t fallen asleep, would see the “go” light in his visor display, feel the vibrate alarm on his cheek, and crawl forward with the Ganglion in tow. I fingered my knife. There was no “book” on fighting mano-a-maggot. Few Earth troops had done it live, despite the Slug War’s duration. Slug body armor was easily penetrated by a bullet or a broadsword swung by a six-foot-five Casuni. But a knife wielded by a guy so old that his joints creaked when he rode an exercise bike?
Slugs’ armor ended in a skirt at ground level, because they traveled on one bare foot, though they
FOURTEEN
HOWARD AND I lay side by side in the snow while gusts now measuring one hundred thirty miles per hour rocketed snow above us, and the outside temperature remained two degrees below zero, Fahrenheit. The wind chill wasn’t worth checking, though my armor would have calculated it. My armor had lost its heater, not its brains.
Therefore, I heard Howard perfectly when he whispered over the intercom, “We won’t be able to shoot our way through the Pseudocephalopod lines.”
Actually, with our M40s, the two of us, like any human infantry, could shoot our way through many times our weight in Slug Warriors. But once they realized where we were, the Slugs would pour onto our trail by the thousands, blizzard or no blizzard, brain-dead or not.
Stealth was our only option. I fingered the trench knife on my belt with numb fingers. “I know. On a normal Slug perimeter, the Warriors spread out twenty yards apart. I’ll low-crawl up to the perimeter, take one out, then we’ll tow the blob through the gap and disappear into the storm before they realize they’re down a maggot.”
Howard jerked a thumb back at our prisoner, wobbling in the wind. “Even disconnected from the Ganglion, Warriors will react to the disturbance.”
“They won’t notice a disturbance. They see in the infrared spectrum. They know human soldiers give off heat, and that’s what they look for. My armor’s stone-cold. And I’ll knife the maggot, so there won’t be any firearm heat flash.”
“Then what?”
“Then we’ll find shelter. When the storm breaks, they’ll find us by our transponders.”
Through his visor, Howard frowned. “What if your plan goes wrong?”
I shrugged inside my armor. Over the decades, I had salvaged more disasters than I had caused. However, including this fiasco, my track record with plans wasn’t so great. “Then we’ll do what we always do. Run like hell until we think of something. You have a better idea?”
“If we break through the perimeter, we’ll be running through a blizzard for days. Our prisoner may not even survive. And your armor heater’s broken. We’re too old to try this, Jason.”
“If we don’t try this, we won’t get older.”
I cross-slung my rifle over my back, maxed my optics so I could see a yard in front of my face, and low-crawled through the snow.
Twenty minutes later, I paused, panting, behind a drift. My arm and leg muscles burned, my knee and elbow joints throbbed, and I sucked wind so hard that my visor’s med readout flashed amber. According to the medic who had doped me before we landed, I was supposed to feel great. We were too old for this.
The wind swirled snow away from the area fifteen yards to my front, and I glimpsed an angular black peak that rose a foot above the drifts. Hair stood on my neck. As expected, a Slug Warrior, faced away from me, was hunkered down in defense. Unlike GIs, Slug Warriors didn’t share fighting positions with another soldier. Slug Warriors were more like sophisticated white corpuscles than individual soldiers, and they needed neither companionship nor a buddy to take watch while they slept. I closed the gap between me and the Warrior to five yards, drew my knife, then chinned my comm bar. Behind me, Howard, presuming he hadn’t fallen asleep, would see the “go” light in his visor display, feel the vibrate alarm on his cheek, and crawl forward with the Ganglion in tow. I fingered my knife. There was no “book” on fighting mano-a-maggot. Few Earth troops had done it live, despite the Slug War’s duration. Slug body armor was easily penetrated by a bullet or a broadsword swung by a six-foot-five Casuni. But a knife wielded by a guy so old that his joints creaked when he rode an exercise bike?
Slugs’ armor ended in a skirt at ground level, because they traveled on one bare foot, though they
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