Transcendent (9781311909442) (27 page)

“Negative,” Sunshine replied. “My sensors
cannot penetrate the dirt.”

Lily scowled again and stepped forward to
the edge of it. She knelt Sunshine down on one massive knee and
then dug the metal fingers of her left hand into the loose dirt.
She clenched and pulled it, unable to feel like she would have with
her hand, and watched as dirt and rocks fell in a stream. A larger
form dropped and landed on the ground, only to be partially
obscured by the rain of dirt.

“That’s a body!” Jessa whispered over the
comm link.

Lily kept her own gasp of horror to herself.
She was staring at the person. A woman, she guessed, considering
the dark blue skirt she wore beneath her blue and white top. Lily
stared for a long moment and then had Sunshine rise back up to
stand.

“Captain.” Sergeant Mallory’s voice pulled
her out of her shock. “We’ve moved through half the town and there
are no survivors.”

“How many?” Lily croaked. She winced at the
sound of her voice and cleared her throat before repeating, “How
many bodies have you found?”

“We’re up to eight so far,” he said. “There
should be more people here, though. Maybe some got away? Some of
the buildings are empty.”

“Negative, Sergeant. The rest are located in
a mass grave east of the colony,” Lily said. She took a step back
and turned enough so that she wasn’t staring at the dead woman. “As
soon as you’ve cleared the village, proceed to my location. These
people need to be dug up and examined.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said in a flat voice.

Lily didn’t blame him. It was a horrible
thing to ask anyone to do.

“Captain! Fourth Squad is und—”

Lily frowned. Staff Sergeant Beth Turin
sounded excited before she’d been cut off. “Sunshine, did my comms
just die?”

“Negative. Transmission ended abruptly. No
post signal sequencing detected.”

“It was cut off?”

“That solution has the highest
probability.”

“Yes, Sunshine. A simple, ‘Yes,’ would
suffice.”

“Acknowledged.”

Lily swung Sunshine around to look back at
the town. The apple trees cluttered the view, preventing her from
making out details. “Second Squad, fall back to Fourth and somebody
tell me what’s going on! Hawkins, stay at the grave. The rest of
First Squad, follow me!”

“Captain, should I go?” Kray asked.

Lily considered sending him ahead but didn’t
want to further separate her unit. “Negative. We move
together.”

“Captain, this is Bidaro. I’ve lost contact
with my two western tanks.”

Lily scanned her overhead display quickly
and shifted her plan. “Have the remaining three meet us at the edge
of town and we’ll proceed together.”

The four biomechs pushed through the forest,
bending and breaking branches as they moved. As they came up on the
edge of the village, Sunshine cut out the background noise in
Lily’s helmet and spoke. “Lily, statistical analysis points towards
Fourth Squad’s communications being disrupted by electronic
countermeasures.”

Lily bit back her flippant retort and
continued to pilot her biomech through the trees. After several
seconds, they emerged within a hundred yards of the eastern edge of
the colony. She saw the two light tanks from Second Squad racing
towards them, one in the north and one in the south. The final
tank, a medium MT-34 mounting a seventy-five-mm auto cannon, was
rolling up from the southwest.

“Lily.” Sunshine interrupted her thoughts
again.

Lily ignored the biomech’s voice as she
stared to the west. Smoke was rising from the far side of the
village. They were under attack and she’d played right into their
hands!

Lily fought the urge to scream in
frustration. This wasn’t how things were supposed to happen! She’d
trained for this and dreamt about it for months. She was not going
to let some ignorant rebels ruin her chances! “First Squad, full
speed. Engage the enemy at will! Second Squad, circle the town and
flank. Now!”

Lily stared at the remains of her two
transports. They’d put the fires out but the air still reeked of
burning chemicals that Sunshine’s filtration systems hadn’t or
couldn’t remove. Alex showed up in his juggernaut, completing the
squad of five biomechs.

“Sorry I’m late,” Hawkins mumbled.

Lily was considering putting Sunshine in
standby so she could investigate the wreckage. The casualties had
been light since the attackers broke off after scoring hits on both
transport vehicles. She wanted to see it firsthand but with their
enemy still out there, she knew where she belonged. “Sunshine, scan
area for any power emanations or other sources of radiation,
electromagnetic or otherwise.”

“I’m sorry, Lily. There’s nothing
indistinguishable from background radiation available.”

Lily pressed her lips together. She noted
the continuing evolution of Sunshine’s artificial intelligence and
how it communicated with her, but it wasn’t enough of a priority to
distract her. There were rebels nearby who had just cost her all of
her supplies and most of her Fourth Squad.

“Do you still believe the lack of
communications was caused by jamming?” Lily asked.

“The probability is in the upper ninetieth
percentile. Once visual contact was established with the lost
elements of Second and Fourth Squad, communication was acquired
using tight-knit beam communications.”

“But nobody saw anything,” she mumbled to
herself. “Just the shells striking the transports and destroying
them.”

“Lily, private communication from First
Sergeant Bidaro incoming,” Sunshine warned her.

Lily had no time to react after Sunshine’s
warning. Bidaro’s voice filled the silence before the last echoes
of Sunshine’s voice faded. “Captain, what are your orders?”

“We’re going fishing, Sergeant.”

“Fishing, ma’am?”

Lily’s grim smile went unseen in her pod.
“Lieutenant Blain and your light tanks are going to spread out.
Maintain visual contact with at least one of us at all times on a
secondary comm channel. Keep your primary comm system in use to
communicate with Lieutenant Blain and the light tanks.”

“Ma’am, I thought they had some sort of
signal jammer?”

“They do,” she explained. “As long as your
tanks and the scout biomech can’t talk via the primary system, we
can pinpoint where they’re at.”

“A sensor net,” Bidaro muttered.

“Exactly.”

“Good idea, ma’am,” he agreed.

“Find those terrorists, Sergeant,” Lily
ordered. “Find them and make them pay.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Lily relayed the orders to her squad and
then started them moving to the north, where the shots had come
from. After a few minutes of travel, Sunshine reported, “Lily, my
sensors are malfunctioning.”

“Show me,” Lily grunted.

A rapid stream of numbers and characters
filled her field of view. In less than three seconds, Lily grunted
and said, “Enough. I can’t make sense of that!”

“Neither can I.”

Lily felt her brow furrow. Had her biomech
just gotten snappy with her? She pushed the thought away and almost
laughed. The biomech’s control system possessed an artificial
intelligence but it was limited and did not include any emotional
capabilities. “Can I still communicate with the forward
elements?”

“Confirmed. Line of sight communications are
unaffected by the interference.”

“But the sensors are scrambled, so we can’t
identify any elements, friendly or enemy, beyond visual range?”

“Confirmed. Terrain is included in this
list.”

Lily nodded. “Cross-reference movement with
visual identification and the existing topographical data we have
for terrain.”

“Acknowledged.”

“Captain, we’re losing anything beyond mark
one optics,” Bidaro commed to her.

“Acknowledged,” Lily said. “Widen your net
until your sensors work on the outside of the net. That will tell
you that you’re at the edge of the jamming. Keep your mark ones
looking into the net.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

A few minutes passed with minimal comm
chatter other than the forward elements finding the edges of the
jamming field. Once they’d identified their proper positioning,
they kept moving forward.

Lily studied the overlay as they moved
across fields of varying crops, from rows of vines to sugar cane
and fruit trees. They’d pushed almost ten kilometers but the
terrain kept the terrorists hidden from visual confirmation in
spite of a distance of just under a kilometer separating the edges
of the jamming field.

“Lily, in three point four kilometers, a
system formed by lava flows before Venus’s terraforming will allow
the enemy elements ground cover.”

Lily zoomed out on her map and saw the
canyons and caves that Sunshine was referring to. She growled in
her throat and studied the alignment of her forces again.
“Sunshine, open comms to all pursuit units.” She paused for a
breath and then relayed her order. “Jessa, you’re with me. We’re
going to jump in and try to get ahead of them.”

“I’m all yours, ma’am,” Jessa responded.

“Captain, be careful, those tanks have
forty-five mill dual auto cannons that can rotate up to
seventy-five degrees,” Bidaro warned. “They’re designed to handle
threats from all vectors.”

Lily tried to keep her irritation out of her
voice as she said, “Thank you, Sergeant. As soon as we identify,
you are to close and fire when you have a shot.”

“Acknowledged, ma’am.”

“Ready when you are, Captain,” Jessa
said.

“Sunshine, deploy wings,” Lily said and felt
the biomech’s balance shift as they extended out.

“Acknowledged,” Sunshine said a moment
later.

“Follow me, Lieutenant,” she said before
using her implant to mentally trigger the flight process. Her
biomech crouched down and jumped half a second before the rockets
engaged and pressed her back into the warm padding of her pod.

A moment later, Lily felt weightless as the
biomech’s flight path evened out and began to decay. She looked
down, scanning across the almond trees that obscured her sight of
the ground. Sunshine highlighted areas in her field of view,
indicating items that visual scanning reported as suspicious. It
only took Lily half a breath to recognize the tracks through the
field from overhead.

“Incoming fire,” Sunshine warned as the
first of the shells cracked against the biomech’s shoulder.

“I’m under fire!” Jessa shouted through the
comm.

Before Jessa’s cry had finished, Sunshine
triangulated the origin of the anti-air fire. Lily sighted in the
target and confirmed the tank beneath the falling limbs of the tree
it had been hidden beneath. She shifted her balance back to drop
Sunshine’s feet and fired her jets to soften the landing. Slowing
her descent brought her back into the stream of shells from the
auto cannon and twisted her right shoulder back, but not enough to
threaten her landing.

Lily rose up from the crouched position and
pushed Sunshine forward into a run. She raised her gun and fired,
sending the electromagnetically propelled slug whistling through
the air at twelve times the speed of sound. It missed the tank and
struck the trunk of an almond tree behind it, shattering the wood
and continuing on to tear a rift in the ground behind it. She
jumped to her right to avoid the thumping twin cannons of the tank
while the capacitors in her rifle recharged and a fresh
armor-piercing round cycled into the magnetic rings.

“Landed in a tree. I’m down!” Jessa cried
out.

“Can you recover?”

“Yes, just—” The feisty lieutenant growled
over the comm line before continuing, “Give me a few seconds to rip
free.”

Lily frowned and counted as the charge meter
rose into the operational range. She slowed her biomech fast enough
to jam its feet into the ground and risk toppling to the ground.
She swayed and placed the yellow reticle on the red rank’s outline
and fired as soon as it flashed orange. The projectile went from
close to fourteen thousand kilometers per hour to zero when it
struck the sloped front of the light tank. Sparks and flames burst
from the point of impact and then were blown out as the tank was
twisted and split open by the kinetic energy of the strike.

Lily turned as she heard Jessa cry out. Her
myrmidon fell out of the tree she was twisted up in, thanks in no
small part to the other tank that was pouring shells into it. Lily
growled and switched to the rocket pods on her shoulders. She
turned and shifted forward to paint the tank in an orange
probability circle and released the twenty rockets. They raced
through the air at a fraction of the speed of her railgun but made
up for the lack of velocity with the high explosive warheads. When
the smoke cleared, the largest recognizable remains were of the
tank flipped upside down. The tree it had hidden under twisted and
crashed on top of it.

“I’m up!” Jessa cried a few seconds later.
“Hey, where’d they go?”

“Threat resolved,” Lily told her. “Thanks
for distracting them.”

“Lily, sensors and communications
restored.”

“Omega Platoon,” Lily announced, keying her
biomech to initialize communications. “Immediate threat eliminated.
Second Squad is to push ahead to lava flows and investigate for
additional terrorist activity.”

“You think there’s more?” Jessa asked.

“It took more than two tanks' worth of
people to butcher that town,” Lily said. “First Squad will rotate
support. Lieutenant Case, you drew the short straw.”

“Acknowledged, Captain!”

Lily turned to study the smoking remains of
her first two real opponents and felt a grim sense of satisfaction.
They’d paid the price for trying to stop her from avenging the
innocents who had been butchered. Just like her family and friends
had been. The lines in the sand as to who had done what didn’t
matter anymore. What mattered was that people who hadn’t been
soldiers had died because of those who were. That was what she had
come here to fix. So far, so good.