The Dead Fields, Sun-Side Plains

Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge

4453.2.25 Interstellar

Janus was thrown against the straps as Koni swerved to avoid a rocket, and the buggy dug into the soft shoulder and almost started to roll before she got it back under control. The slap of tall grass against the cattle guard was like the sound of hail.

“We need to—”

“Shut up, Janus! I know!” Koni said, downshifting and turning back toward the road.

Heavier explosions cratered the road, and another stream of chasers reached out from the hilltop.

“Janus? Koni?” Mick called out.

The buggy hit a berm and jumped back onto the road at an angle. The rear tires skidded, but Koni got them back in place, with Mick only three hundred meters ahead and the two rangers closer to Koni.

Another rocket came right for Janus’s vehicle—he didn’t have time to comprehend it, just a dot in a circle of bright, and then a ranger buggy blocked his view, and the car was slammed again.

Koni changed gears and redlined the engine.

The ranger buggy peeled away, ruined and on fire.

Only three buggies remained in their convoy.

“Make for the gap!” the ranger leader in the one remaining Verazlan buggy said as his turret gunner returned fire.

They were only thirty seconds away.

Fortunately, it looked like they’d made it out of the primary ambush area because the massed fires fell behind them. Sporadic flashes came from the trees—too many for Janus to register, and he heard something snap through one of the sides of the vehicle and rattle around.

They’d caught up to Mick. They were only a car length away.

Janus fought the urge to puke in his helmet.

Fury howled.

The forest closed around them.

Mick, Ryler, and Lira’s buggy blew up. There was fire, and the front of it lifted and slammed down, digging in to the right, and Koni had to swerve to the left before jamming on the brakes.

“Lira! Mick!” Janus said, unstrapping and opening the door as soon as they’d skidded to a stop. “Ryler!”

He hadn’t completely lost his mind. He had his pistol drawn, and he threw a pair of smoke grenades toward the right side of the road as he ran, but his entire focus was Mick and Lira’s beacons. He had to twist aside to avoid kicking a vehicle mine—likely the same kind that had blown up Mick’s buggy.

“Janus!” Koni yelled after him.

“Check on Fury!” he shouted, stopping himself by slamming into the side of Lira and Mick’s buggy.

The jungle was quiet except for the hiss of the gas canisters, the burning of the buggy, and the shouts of the last four Verazlan rangers as they spread out and deployed into the trees. The mad bastards were actually counter-attacking.

“Get your people in the remaining buggy and get clear, Invarian!” the ranger leader snapped. “Use ours if you need it. We can walk home.”

Janus shook his head at the bravery and idiocy of soldiers, climbing onto the tilted side of the stricken buggy. Ryler was moving in the back, struggling with his straps, while Lira was unconscious in the driver’s seat.

“Help me get her out!” Mick said, his way out blocked by Lira on one side, the ground on the other, and the burning hood to the front.

Janus wrenched the door open and reached for Lira’s straps. With a combination of pulling on his side and lifting by Mick, they managed to get the two of them out the driver’s side while Ryler climbed out through the rear window.

“Why aren’t they attacking?” Ryler asks.

“Packs and asses off the road!” Mick said, grabbing the cultist by the collar.

Janus obeyed instinctively, not even taking the time to question as he tore Mick and Lira’s field packs from the roof of the car and dragged them toward the left side of the road, away from the enemy.

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He heard a loud whine.

“Get down!” Ryler shouted.

A hail of tracers came down through the canopy and riddled the rangers’ vehicle, Mick’s buggy, and Janus’s buggy with holes before cutting off.

“Keep moving!” Mick said, dragging him up as Janus’s heart fell.

Fury and Koni.

But Koni’s beacon wasn’t in the vehicle. She was in the tree line. She was alive!

Gunfire rang out up the hill, in the direction the Verazlans had gone.

“Hurry!” Koni said over the comm. “Hide!”

“No comm signals!” Ryler said urgently, ducking down behind a small rise as Mick directed Janus to do the same. “Go autonomous!”

With a mental flick, Janus closed off his wrist comm and all its associated implants from outside signals. The world instantly got darker as the light-amplifying effect of his retinal implants shut off, and he lost his digital connection to his team.

It was unnerving to be so self-contained. Most people never used the mode unless they were being hacked, and then only as long as they had to. Janus was suddenly more aware of the feel of the soil, mulch, and roots he was laying on, how tight his left boot was, and the slight smell of almost-throwup in his mask. The gunshots from up the hill seemed sharper and more frequent, making him flinch, and then the buzz as the pair of combat drones came back down the road the other way, flying slowly and scanning for them.

“I’ve got a shot!” Mick said from somewhere to Janus’s right.

“Don’t move!” Ryler snapped. “If the comps are going to break the rules, I get to take the gloves off.”

The drones came into view lazily, like predatory fish weaving back and forth and among each other to confuse their prey. A single red eye twisted and panned under their noses.

There was a pop from behind a tree and then a flash, and Janus got an afterimage of something like a spiderweb among the tree branches. The drones stopped in midair, sparking and whirring before they went dead.

“Come on!” Ryler said. “Switch back on! We need to move!”

Janus turned his systems back on and immediately heard the Verazlan ranger leader on the comm. “—Invarian, come in, Team Invarian.”

“Go for Invarian,” Janus said, shouldering one of the packs while Mick crawled over and grabbed the other.

“—too many of them. Not going to be able to—” The transmission was cutting in and out, either because of the foliage between them or some kind of jamming. “—whole company. Run!”

Void, Janus thought as the connection broke. “How many people in a company?” he asked Mick.

“One to three hundred. Let’s regroup with Koni and keep moving.”

“That’s going to take us into the Dead Fields,” Janus said.

Mick nodded. “Maybe they won’t follow us.”

They found Lira first. She was disoriented—the straps had stopped her from slamming into the steering wheel, but she was bruised, and she’d passed out.

“Hey Allencourt?” Mick said with his characteristic grin.

“What?” Lira asked, worried.

“You wrecked another buggy.”

“Are you serious?”

“Not as serious as shearing a wheel off the axle. Again.”

“They mined the road!”

Janus shook his head. They might die in the next hour, but they’d do it in good humor, at least.

Koni’s situation was a bit more dire. She was sitting with her back against a rock. She’d managed to grab her pack, and she had Fury on a leash, but her left leg was a bloody mess.

Fury broke loose as soon as she saw Janus and ran to him, barking.

“It’s okay, girl. It’s okay.”

Koni smiled at him weakly. She’d managed to get a tourniquet tied above her knee, but a bullet had passed through her calf and blown through her tibia. Janus could see gristle and bone.

“You’re going to have to leave me,” Koni said.

“Don’t be stupid,” Janus said, dropping his pack and pulling the trauma kit from his hip.

“It’s not worth it,” Koni said. “Even if you stop the bleeding, I’ll slow you down. Don’t worry about the score; I already did my job. I saved your life again.”

Janus looked at Koni’s eyes. She was delirious from the pain. “Mick?”

“Yeah, boss.”

“Find Ryler.”

“I’m here,” the cultist said, loping over in a crouched run. “Crap. Can we move her?”

“She’ll move herself,” Janus said. He rinsed the wound with antiseptic, making Koni twitch and moan. “Hold her.”

Lira and Mick grabbed hold of Koni’s shoulders while Ryler held her thighs down.

Janus coated the exposed bone in biogel and cleaned out any stray dirt, leaves, and fabric, then he gripped her by the ankle and slowly but firmly pulled.

Koni screamed.

Janus tried to move slowly and steadily. He normally would never have done this outside of a sterile operating room. He wouldn’t have done it at all—that was what doctors were for—but Koni was right. If she couldn’t move, they’d have to leave her behind. It was a good thing he was a damned good medic.

The trick was putting her back together without snipping the tibial artery with the broken bits of shin bone.

“Stop, stop,” Koni said through tears. “Please stop!”

Janus got the bones as aligned as he could. He sprinkled clotting powder into the worst of the wound, applied biogel liberally, bandaged it, and ripped a splint roll from the trauma kit to wrap the injured limb tightly. A quick pairing and activation of the splint roll stiffened it, locking it to her upper shin and ankle.

It would have to be enough. “Mick? Combat Stims.”

“Got it,” Mick said, letting go and unzipping one of his pouches. He stuck an auto-injector into Koni’s arm.

Janus cleaned and stowed his gear. They might need it again. “How long do we have before they’re on top of us?” he asked Mick.

“I might be able to help with that,” Ryler said, eyes glowing blue. He connected whatever he was doing to the team network, and suddenly, Janus could see a top-down topographical map of the area they were in. Janus could see the plains they’d rolled across, the hill the compartmentalists had attacked them from, the ambush site, and even the area designated as the Dead Fields—one of the oldest known aberration zones on the planet.

More importantly, the position of the team, the enemy soldiers, and the two surviving Verazlan rangers who were holding them back.

“Wow,” Mick said. “Is this from—?”

“We have our own surveillance now,” Ryler said. “I’ve lodged a formal complaint with the arbitration committee, and they’ve allocated resources to us in compensation while they deliberate.”

“We’re being saved by a committee meeting,” Lira said. “Wish I could sit in on that one.”

Janus was focused on what the map was telling him. “Can our surveillance shoot or drop bombs?”

“It can,” Ryler said. “It won’t, though. The committee wants to restore the balance, not push it in our favor.”

“Great,” Janus said.

Koni gasped as the combat stims took effect.

“Can you walk?” Janus asked.

“I feel like I can run,” Koni said in wonder.

“Special cocktail, mate,” Mick said. “Let’s start by walking and try not to leave us all behind.”