Infinity Squad (24 page)

"Stop running when you hear us start to fire!"

"Yes. Do not shoot the females."

"Which ones are the females!" I screamed.

"White spots on fur."

Shit. And then the wave slammed into us.

A hundred frightened boazelles burst into view fifty yards away. Our four machine guns opened up as one, in short, controlled bursts. Boazelles started dropping, their chests exploding and their momentum carrying them to slam into trees and rocks or just tumble. My eye and mind and trigger finger all worked as one.
Fire-fire-white spots-fire-fire-SHIT!

A boazelle leapt my log and swiped at my head as it passed. I ducked away from the tusk then turned to catch it in the back with a three-shot burst to drop it.

The herd drove forward, right into our kill zone. Sometimes bullets from both sides would take a beast down, blue blood flying everywhere. They had never seen guns before, they were scared to go forward but terrified to go back, and didn't stand a chance. Some squirted through, mostly those with white spots on their fur, and then it was quiet.

What was left of the herd thundered away behind us and I stood up, panting, with a sore trigger finger. In my log was a gash the boazelle's tusk had gouged when it tried to take my head off. The gash was three fingers wide and two deep.

"Clear on right," I said.

"Clear on left," Zaz answered.

"It's clear Red-Stripe. All clear."

Black shapes came forward out of the leaves, to inspect the fifty by fifty yard box that ran blue with blood. They finished the boazelles still alive, knifing down with their claws as they walked. There were at least seventy bodies on the ground. I looked up to see Red-Stripe standing in front of me, his razor claws dripping blue.

"We found only two females dead," he said, looking at me. "This was an excellent strategy, and executed well."

That was more than I had gotten from Oakley, ever. Ridley used to say things like that to me, and until then I hadn't realized how much I had missed the simple joy of being praised by my superiors.

I swallowed. "Thanks."

"Who taught you the 'wheel left'?"

I leaned on my log, still panting. "A Civil War leader named Chamberlain, once used it at a great battle, to repel the enemy, just before his forces ran out of ammunition."

"Ah. I would have liked to meet this Chamberlain. But I see from your thoughts he is long dead."

"Yes."

"It is a good tactic. We often use something similar, but your metal-spitters make it much safer to execute."

"Safer hell!" Zazlu spat, coming up to us. Juan and Ann-Marie were behind him, but it was Zazlu who had a bleeding tusk cut on his bicep and a swollen lip and cheek. He spat blood then smiled at me. "Didn't you remember what Rommel said? 'It's better to be the hammer than the anvil'?"

"I'll consider that for next time, Zaz. And let Butcher take a look at that arm. Oh, Red-Stripe, one of yours is hurt too, back there, with a Blue Wave on his skull..."

"Yes, some are helping him walk back home now. He will heal." The spider looked at me. "This Rommel. Another great hunt leader?"

"Some say the greatest."

"And also long dead. Yet you all remember his words."

I laughed, thinking of how to explain OCS to him. "We went to a special school. One that taught us about all the greatest hunt leaders in our clan, stretching back hundreds of generations. There are many, many stories I could tell you."

He looked at me, just like Three-Spot had. "I would like to hear these stories sometime."

Three days later Red-Stripe asked our help to hunt a type of monkey that jumped from tree to tree in the north part of the valley but had a horribly painful, poisonous stinger at the end of its tail. Zazlu wheedled one hundred yards of cargo netting out of the Flightline crew and we dropped it on tree full of surprised monkeys from the helo and then cut down the tree, capturing all the monkeys alive. Red-Stripe was very pleased since this was apparently a rarity in Hell-Spider hunts, and Three-Spot later told us that Red-Stripe couldn't stop talking about it all night back at the village.

The next night Omega Squad went patrolling near the north edge of the valley and wandered into an area they hadn't told us they were going to. They cut off a hunting party returning with a fresh catch of tree-monkeys, which started squirming and trying to escape the net as the party waited for the Omegas to get bored. Two monkeys had escaped and one spider had already been stung in the leg by the time Red-Stripe asked me what to do, relayed through Three-Spot.

Are they all wearing little bands around their head with green lights on them?
I thought, eating dinner in cafeteria.

Three-Spot and I waited a few seconds for the response. "My scouts say yes."

I turned to Butcher. "Did the Omegas take night scopes with them?"

She shook her head. "It's a full moon."

I shrugged.
Wait for a large cloud to pass over the moon and then kill them.

"This would not cause unbalanced scales with your clan?" Three-Spot asked on Red's behalf.

Let's say you'll owe us one.

"Very well."

That night, all ten Omegas woke up in the res tanks cursing. Or so I heard.

Two nights later we were up for 'patrol' again but there was no prey to be found, so we returned to the village with the hunting party and passed three hours sitting around Red-Stripe's fire with his friends, eating the last of the sheep and tree-monkeys.

We learned the spiders didn't have a religion per se, but were very thankful for the bounty of the jungle and treated its upkeep with almost reverent respect. We learned that the spiders did have industry, with certain members specializing in making wooden plates for eating and cooking, jewelry for females, or herbal medicines when they got too old or injured to hunt.

We learned that there were other smaller spider clans in the rolling grasslands to the south, which sometimes traded and sometimes warred with Red-Stripe's, or had members leave one for the other. We got to meet those clans a few days later, to propose the same type of peace treaty as we had with Three-Spot.

We learned there was also another, much larger, spider clan past the mountains to the north. This clan did not let its members vote on laws, own property, or leave its borders. There, the ruling alpha male used a ruthless band of enforcers to claim the spoils of all hunts for himself, and fed his inner circle well before doling out the remains to the hunters and their families. He would terrorize the weaker hunters and force the stronger hunters to join his enforcers, so that there was almost no hope that his reign could ever be ended. Red-Stripe could not express his disgust at that practice strongly enough, and the other spiders around the fire agreed.

We learned that Blue Wave had fully recovered from his boazelle hunt injuries. And that he was a young, unattached male that everyone in the village knew was eventually going to 'make cave' with a certain young female who had the smoothest gray shell anyone had ever seen, if he ever got up the courage to ask her. Which Zazlu and I almost goaded him into doing that night.

But most importantly, we learned you don't have to be in your barracks to feel at home.

The night after that there was a terrible monsoon that grounded all helicopter flights but I hiked the short squad out anyway, under the guise of 'conditions training'. We met up with just two spiders and then knelt outside in the downpour for two hours, staring at the mouth of a cave. Red-Stripe was immobile statue next to me, not flinching from his watch as the beating rain collected on his back and poured down his legs like waterfalls. It seemed like enough rain to drown the world but he didn't move so neither did I. I just pulled my poncho tighter around me and waited in the hurricane for hours, just like he did, watching as the rain slowly filled the cave with water.

I felt Red-Stripe tense and then a huge black Hell-Spider burst from the cave. I opened up on it with my rifle as did Juan and Zazlu from the cave's right and Butcher from the left. We clipped his legs, as we had been instructed, and his shock allowed Blue-Wave to drop in front of the cavemouth, preventing retreat.

"Cease fire!" I yelled, because Red-Stripe was already surging forward like a spider possessed.

Even with two legs and a knee hobbled by our bullets, the fight was vicious. Claws flashed and met with cracks as loud as any gunshot. Worse was the sledge-hammer-to-car-door sound of a claw hitting home on a torso. I took off my night optics and watched with my bare eyes, because I knew I might never see this sight again.

It was a spinning fury of black on black in the pouring rain and thunder. Red-Stripe was large, but the other was a head taller and even wider through the shoulders. They both moved with supernatural quickness but also with precision and strategy, like two Speed Chess players who knew all of each other's moves. But in less than thirty seconds the other spider was wounded, tiring, and Red-Stripe slammed a shoulder into him with the fury and noise of six football players meeting head-on, rolling him over. He stabbed his razor claw through the spider's belly and chest, over and over, until the other one stopped making controlled movements. Red-Stripe stood, looking down at the twitching form as Blue-Wave came over to verify, and then they both cooperated to cut off his head. Which Red-Stripe carried over to drop in front of me with a splash.

"Here," he said, his knives-on-knives voice a little shaky. "This one I give to you with pleasure."

I looked up, shielding my eyes from the rain. "What did he do?"

"He broke our laws. The most serious ones. And then laid traps in his cave, daring us to come after him. If we had, many may have been wounded. Your help this night was appreciated."

I looked up at the panting Red-Stripe. There were deep gouges on his shins and shell, and one hole dripping a stream of blue out his side. "If you had waited, we could have wounded him more," I said. "Maybe enough to capture him alive."

Red-Stripe tapped the severed skull with his blue-bloodied claw, hard. "Bad ideas are like a plague. I did not want what was in here to spread throughout our clan."

"Sometimes I wish I could do the same," I said, packing the head into a carry bag.

Immortal Squad was pissed that we got more skulls than them, even on our 'training' missions. And it didn't help that I gave their First Lieutenant Hector a wink as I hung the skull in the cafeteria myself. It was the first one we had really helped kill, and the first one that deserved it. And it was the biggest one hanging.

The Immortals took a human pilot on their next patrol and deviated from their flightpath, catching two spiders in partial cover. Then they pulled our trick, firing rifles and shoulder-rockets from the helo as they followed the prey. Yellow-Sun and White-Sort-of-Boobs were hit by shrapnel but managed to duck into a cave system before taking any other damage. Needless to say, this caused a little friction with Red-Stripe before our next mission.

Which was unfortunate, because the next mission required we lay motionless for six straight hours next to each other.

"Why can you not control your warriors as we control ours?" Red-Stripe demanded in my head as the blowing snow continued to land on my cheek and melt. "Are they not of your clan?"

"Yes, we're the same clan," I breathed, still staring down the scope of my sniper rifle. "We're different squads- look, it's complicated." I was trying to keep my crosshairs pointed at a narrow gap between two snow-covered rocks 500 yards away, and his tone wasn't helping.

"Do you wish us to go to war with these other 'squads' and wipe them out? To leave your squad in charge of your clan?"

"No!"

"No movement," Ann-Marie said, quiet but firm. "No loud thoughts."

I dared flick my eyes left to try and spot her without moving any other muscles. I knew exactly where she was but even I couldn't see her anymore. The constant blowing snow on this high mountain peak north of the valley had swirled and covered her white winter parka and drape cloth until she was invisible. Which was the entire point.

Her view of me, fifty yards to her right, would be the same. Wearing a white snow-suit, holding a white weapon, draped in white cloth and partially covered in white snow, I should be damn near undetectable to anyone or anything that looked my way. Except that the thing we were hunting could also sense our thoughts.

It could hear our brain's commands to our muscles if we moved forcefully enough. Or even thought of something emotional enough, Red-Stripe had said. And it might be damn near invisible itself. Sniper school hadn't really prepared us for this.

We had arrived in the cover of night and set up on the ridge which overlooked the outpost Red-Stripe's clan had constructed years ago. We had dug in and covered ourselves in the pitch blackness, two rifles pointing at the one spot where anything walking to the outpost would be silhouetted against the dark blue sky for one vital moment. And then we waited. Just waited.