Rann slept the deep and dreamless sleep of the truly exhausted. When he opened his eyes, seeing shafts of sunlight creeping into the bunker, he felt refreshed, almost peaceful. It took a few seconds for yesterday’s memories to crash upon him.
The nausea was instant and overwhelming. He levered himself up off his bedding, stumbled over the sleeping platoon to get to the doorway, and vomited a watery mess onto the barren mountainside.
He was still bent over outside the bunker, spitting out the last of his dinner, when a hand touched the small of his back. He flinched and turned in a panic. The shame was almost worse than the nausea.
Iva was standing behind him, a water canteen in her hand. She looked at him with worried eyes. “Here, sergeant,” she said quietly.
“I-” He wiped the acidic spittle from his mouth. “Thanks.” He took the canteen and drank deeply, letting it soothe his raw throat.
“Are you alright?” she asked him.
He nodded and passed the canteen back without looking at her. “Yeah. It’s nothing. The smoke. The smoke got to me.” As if that would fool her for a second.
She patted his back in an almost motherly fashion. “The others are still asleep.”
“Good. Wake them up, will you? I’ll just...level myself out.”
She nodded and ducked back into the bunker, leaving him wishing that he hadn’t dismissed her so curtly.
He stood in the early morning light with his eyes squeezed shut until the sickly tremors in his gut had passed. When Lidaro’s dead face threatened to flash into his mind’s eye, he forced himself to head back inside, where the ragged platoon was beginning to stir.
They rose in ones and twos, groggy, filthy and almost silent. The sergeants set to gathering their squads together, checking their gear, ensuring none of their numerous flesh wounds had worsened overnight. Rann found that his pistol had jammed during the battle, something irreparably broken in its action. He turned the useless thing over in his hands and threw it into the brush outside the bunker.
The platoon breakfasted as best they could with the rations they had left. The Esuloan radioman fiddled with his set, muttering curses as he tried to find a clear frequency. Rann heard snatches of coded talk from a dozen different units, most of it meaningless to him.
He spoke little to the others, beyond discussing immediate practicalities. They showed him the same courtesy, though he could see the concern in their expressions. The charade of stoicism, that tried and tested refuge of soldiers throughout history, was starting to fail him. The harder he tried to maintain it, the more obvious its hollowness became.
A sergeant who showed weakness in front of his men was a poor sergeant indeed.
He managed to distract himself for a few minutes by studying the topographic maps he’d been issued, looking for any obvious chokepoints or pitfalls on the way to the objective. It looked like reasonably level ground ahead – the mountain capped out in more of a hump than a peak. That just left them the small matter of the Salv to fight through. He wasn’t such an optimist as to think they’d killed all the defenders the day before.
“Sergeant!” The radioman gestured to him, the handset pressed to one ear. “Word from command.”
“What is it?” Rann walked over, with Iva and Geddan flanking him. The rest of the platoon looked up in tense anticipation.
“All platoons are to push into the complex immediately, as far as we can get. Eliminate any resistance, take prisoners where possible.”
“What the fuck do they mean, immediately?” one of the other sergeants snapped from across the room. “Look at us. We’ve lost Almighty knows how many. The Salv could have a fresh army under that mountain, for all we know.”
The radioman shrugged helplessly. “Dauman’s orders, they say.”
“Are we getting reinforced?” Rann asked, in the most level voice he could manage.
“Regulars are coming up behind us. Paratroops from the carriers have already cleared the outer defences. They’re under orders to link up with us for the push.”
Geddan shook his great head contemptuously. “Drabs and fly-boys. Fucking useless.”
Rann pretended he hadn’t heard the Forester. “What about resupply? We don’t have the ammunition for a sustained push. Some of us have jammed guns.”
“Airdrops are coming in. They’re sending rotorcraft from the carriers, since there’s no more flak going up. Should be here by seventh hour.” The radioman glanced in the direction of the distant bay, where the anchored fleet was a dense grey clutter on the sunny ocean. “There’s flat ground not far from the entrance. It’s been secured by the paras. The fliers will land there.”
Rann gritted his teeth. He could still taste the bile from throwing up earlier. “If we’re going into that complex, we’ll need specialists with us. Sappers, bomb-disposal, chemical warfare troops…it’ll be full of traps.” And I’m not losing another of my marines to a fucking trap, he added silently.
“They didn’t mention any of that,” the radioman said.
“Call them back. Find out.” Dauman’s staff might bristle at the rank-and-file demanding answers from them. Rann didn’t care.
“Yes, sergeant.”
They gathered their equipment and moved out into the brightening day, joining the other platoons working their semi-organised way towards the summit. It was a thin shadow of the force that had entered the shell-blasted valley bellow. Hodgepodge units had been formed from the survivors of decimated squads, led by junior officers who had hastily taken over command from their fallen superiors. Rann saw some marines who looked far too wounded to fight, wincing with every step, but tramping along uncomplaining.
They marched with rifles at the ready. They saw no sign of the enemy, aside from the occasional sprawled corpse. Wace made a point of prodding each dead Salv they passed with his bayonet. “Making sure they’re not play-acting,” he explained coldly.
Not far from the bunker, they came to a broad shelf of rock that rose gently towards the summit. It offered a grand view of the mountain range beyond, the forest-cloaked peaks clear and bright under the rising sun. The wind was strong and chilly, enough to make Rann shiver when he paused to take in the sight. At least it was blowing away the lingering smoke of yesterday’s battle.
The Salvators had built a grand causeway across the valley to the west, a towering concrete structure sitting on massive square pillars. It emerged from high on the mountainside and sloped down across the landscape for kilometres, until it linked up with a cliff-walled highway that had been blasted through the mountain range. That highway, Rann knew from the ordnance charts, snaked across the island towards one of the fortified harbours in the bay. From there, the Salv had brought in the army of machines and slave-workers needed to construct their buried complex.
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Like the harbours, the causeway had long since been destroyed. Its concrete spans had been neatly severed in multiple places, covering the valley floor in great drifts of rubble, over which the supporting pillars stood like gigantic gravestones. It was clear that it had been sabotaged, not bombed – there was no way the Kauln bombers could have hit the spans so precisely.
Rann thought back to the briefing in the encampment. Dauman had not been joking when he said they would have to fight their way in.
“To think, if we’d gotten here sooner, we could have just driven along that thing instead of climbing the whole fucking mountain,” Iva said ruefully, when she noticed Rann gazing at the monumental ruin.
“Aye, and then they’d have blown it up when we were halfway over,” Geddan said.
Rann studied the remaining spans of the causeway, inaccessible islands atop their pillars. “It’s wide open to their guns, anyway. We’d have been slaughtered.”
Wace snorted humourlessly. “What would you call yesterday, if not slaughter? Dinner at the Dawn Palace?”
They moved on uphill, crossing a sloping field of scree broken up by tufts of hardy greenery. The radioman spoke into his handset as he walked, cursing the poor reception, then called to Rann.
“I asked about those specialists, like you said. There’s a couple of sapper teams among the paras,” the Esuloan said, with the embarrassed tone of a man who knew that what he was describing was inadequate. “And we’ll get fresh gas masks with the resupply.”
“Do they know any more about what’s down there? Atomics give off traces, don’t they?” Wace asked, scratching the pale scar on his chin.
“They said the radiation counters are showing negative so far. Though that might not mean anything. Those tunnels go down for miles.”
“Hope there’s no firedamp,” Geddan muttered.
They rounded a leaning stone outcrop, and the entrance to the Salv complex finally came into view. It looked much like the strongpoint that had defended the beach; a huge block of sheer grey concrete dug into the mountain rock, with smaller bunkers and casemates flanking it. The slope in front of it had been flattened and paved over to create a wide forecourt. The causeway had once terminated there, but the connecting span had been among those demolished, leaving only a twisted mass of steel reinforcement bars jutting out into empty air.
The paratroopers were waiting for them. Rann had never thought he’d be glad to see those aloof, camouflage-clad flyboys, who always held themselves so superior to the king’s marines. Their discarded parachutes lay draped over the scree like great canvas jellyfish. A few had caught on the protruding concrete overhang above the entrance to the fortress. One, jarringly, still had a paratrooper hanging from it. Rann could see, by the unnatural tilt of the man’s head, that the botched landing had broken his neck.
Most of the paratroopers had made it down safely, though, and they’d clearly done their job well enough. Bullet-riddled Salvator corpses lay piled together on the forecourt like ghastly sandbags. Rann saw a single prisoner under guard, an ashen-faced young man kneeling in handcuffs.
“Should just fucking shoot him,” Wace growled as they walked past the captive. “Back of the head, like a rabid dog.”
“We’re not Salv, Wace,” Iva chided him. “He’s no threat any more.”
“Neither were my people. But his lot hanged them anyway.”
The paratroopers offered the marine platoons a terse greeting. They were not quite friendly, but there was a sort of weary understanding, an acknowledgment of shared suffering. They were all fighting the same war, and none of them was much enjoying it.
For the moment, there was nothing to do but wait for the resupply airdrop. While the others lit cigarettes or re-checked their guns, Rann found himself eyeing the entrance to the Salv fortress. The massive steel doors were scorched and bullet-scratched, and apparently sealed shut. They were watched over by two machine-gun teams, nervously alert for any Salvators attempting to sally forth. Armoured sappers were wiring up thermal charges at the seam of the doors.
“We’re going in there, eh,” Geddan said, a cigarette poking from the corner of his mouth. His big bronze face was impassive beneath the lid of his helmet.
“Yes,” Rann replied. “As far as we can go.”
“Tough enough fight with five of us. Even tougher with only four.”
Rann nodded, trying to ignore the sickening wrench of guilt and failure that welled up inside him. He looked down at his chest, at the dogtags dangling from their little chain. He thought of the corpsmen collecting Lidaro’s body, identifying him by the name and number stamped on the cheap metal. Sorting and cataloguing the boy who’d still been alive this time yesterday. One more body for the pile.
He was suddenly glad he’d already thrown up that morning.
“The little bugger had some balls. I’ll give him that much,” Geddan went on flatly. He didn’t look at Rann. “Brave. Stupid, but brave.”
“More the one than the other,” Iva said, swigging from her canteen. Her voice had a slight quaver to it, and Rann could see her jaw was tight and tense. “Damn it, we told him not to run ahead.”
“I’ll write to his mother, when this is all over,” Rann told them. Saying it out loud made it a promise, and he knew they would hold him to it.
If they survived.
“Aye, well. Don’t tell her what a lippy shit he was,” Geddan grunted. He patted Rann on the back, almost gently.
They lapsed back into silence, watching the sappers wire up their charges. It was bad luck to speak too much of a dead comrade, so soon after the fact. Every soldier knew that.
*
The resupply aircraft appeared on the horizon a short while later. Rotorcraft were another recent addition to the royal arsenal, not as quick as the jets but far stranger to see in motion. A few of the marines and paratroopers gave a hoarse cheer when they spotted the trio of dark silhouettes whirring in from the west.
“Just fucking three of them?” Wace said, squinting up with a scowl.
“Dauman probably doesn’t want to risk too many of them, in case the Salv still have flak guns hidden away,” Rann told him. “Those things are expensive.”
Wace gave a bleak chuckle. “Yeah, not like us. We’re cheap as dirt, aren’t we?”
The rotorcraft whomped closer, bizarre skeletal contraptions holding the air in defiance of gravity. Their huge rotors sat thrumming atop long outrigger booms. Their pilots, faceless behind rubber flight masks, were crouched inside cockpits that were little more than glass bulbs. As the machines lowered themselves tentatively onto the concrete forecourt, the downwash from the rotors rippled the uniforms of the waiting soldiers, jangling the gear attached to their webbing. The dead man swung on his snagged parachute.
The cargo pods secured to the rotorcraft’s bellies carried far more ammunition than was needed. Even when every marine and paratrooper present had taken all they could carry, there were boxes and boxes to spare. Obviously, the quartermasters had been expecting more survivors.
As Rann was tucking away a spare rifle magazine, he heard an urgent shout of “Stand clear!” from the fortress gateway. A furious orange-white flash lit the forecourt, casting long black shadows at crazy angles, and eliciting a chorus of startled curses from the soldiers. Atomic, he thought in a moment of irrational terror. Then, feeling deeply foolish, he realised it was the thermal charges detonating. Molten metal hissed and sparked amid billowing curls of white smoke as the great steel doors began to sag and liquefy along their closed seam. When the seething reaction had died down, a hole twice the height of a man was left in the battered steel, its ragged edges glowing and visibly bubbling.
Inside, Rann could only see darkness.
No Salvators charged out to defend the breach. The machine-gun units sprayed a few long bursts into it regardless, and a few rifle grenades were fired in for good measure. Rann overheard two of the sappers arguing over whether to also lob in some mustard gas. To the relief of all present, they decided against it.
An anticipatory hush fell over the mountaintop. There was no fixed plan for which unit was meant to spearhead the assault on the fortress. Rann realised that everyone was waiting for someone else to lead the way.
The hesitation was starting to become farcical, when a paratrooper squad stepped up to the smouldering breach and shone electric torches into the smoky interior. “Clear ahead,” the young lieutenant in charge of them yelled over his shoulder. “No bodies. Nothing moving.”
That broke the spell. The units began to proceed inside, filing through the blasted gates with readied weapons and tensed bodies. Rann motioned his squad into the morbid, shuffling queue. It reminded him of the muster aboard the battleship, two days and a lifetime ago. Here we are again, he thought, lining up to die.
Geddan began humming a song as he walked, low and deep. Rann didn’t recognise the tune. He didn’t think he’d ever heard Geddan so much as whistle before. The big man was surprisingly on-key.
“What’s that, Gedd?” Iva asked.
“Bloodsong,” Geddan replied. “My father taught me it. It’s an old one. Time was, Foresters would sing it before battle.”
“Bloodsong. Well, that’s reassuring,” Iva said flatly.
The Forester grinned. “Means the enemy’s blood, not ours. There’s a deathsong for our fallen.”
“Isn’t there a…good-luck song, or something?”
Geddan looked thoughtful. “Don’t think so. We Foresters never had much good luck to sing about.”
The eroded steel of the breach was still radiating heat when they passed through it. The concrete antechamber beyond the gates was dark, lit by the darting torch-beams of the squads ahead, but Rann could see faintly illuminated doorways up ahead. Machinery hummed softly behind the walls, pumps and ventilation fans still at work. There was power, and invisible though they might be for now, there would certainly be Salv.
When he glanced back to check on the others, he saw the bright glow of the morning sun through the breach, washing out his view of the forecourt outside. He wondered if it was the last daylight he would ever see.