CHAPTER SIX
Mining Quadrant, 14H15, 19th of April, 2771
The convoy lumbered steadily onwards, the trail’s degraded surface causing each vehicle to bounce and shudder in turn. The trucks bore no emblems, but their antique lines recalled the modular transport vehicles once popular in the 2030’s. Their gray panels were battered and scratched in a way that suggested they had seen extended service in harsh conditions.
The trucks were preceded by a light tactical vehicle, its chassis, comprised of a framework of metal tubes, bounding along gracefully as the exposed suspension system mopped up vibrations. Four men in civilian attire manned the buggy, the driver and his wingman strapped into their seats with three-point harnesses, the other pair squatting on the rear-mounted engine and firmly gripping the metal tubes.
They appeared to be having the time of their lives.
The men came upon the clearing carelessly, the tactical vehicle galloping over the treeless expanse as the engine noisily cleared its throat. As it reached the clearing’s opposite end, the buggy slowed down and then executed a tight about-face, abruptly ejecting the lesser prepared of the rear passengers. He rolled over the sandy soil to the laughter of his comrades, only to laugh himself once he recovered, taking a moment to slap the sand out of his generous head of hair.
He clambered back on board and the buggy set off slowly and deliberately, the second rear passenger spraying a fluorescent orange line onto the ground as it rolled in the opposite direction. The trucks turned towards the line as they arrived and toed it in turn. Before long, eighteen heavy transport vehicles were resting side-by-side in a neat line.
The clearing was soon teeming with people. All wore civvies, the younger workers wearing colorful clothing of all sorts, the older men preferring conservative earth-colored wares, making them look as if they were wearing different versions of the same crappy old uniform. Those men seemed the more diligent workers of the lot as well, and they set about removing equipment from the trucks, recruiting the nearest and most cooperative youths to assist them. The remainder took to the clearing like children to a playpen, and soon their laughing voices could be heard as they crossed the grounds at a run.
One of the running boys suddenly stopped as if something unusual had caught his attention. He peered down at the depression at his feet, and no doubt there must have been a curious expression on his face as he considered the pattern stamped there. He hollered towards a group of passing boys, and soon they were doing some staring of their own. Then one of them took off towards the remaining workers and spoke briefly with them. All work was abandoned as the workers began to spread out over the field, and their shouts of excitement soon became clearly audible.
“That’s right, natives, worship the spoor of the gods,” Deadhand whispered, the briefest of smiles alighting on his face.
The convoy had been picked up by drones well before their arrival, and the clearing was presently being covered by three mobile Suits. Mentally opening the appropriate comm channel, Deadhand updated his commander for the day.
“Lippard, this is Deadhand, over.”
“Lippard here, inform.”
“I don’t know if you see it from your vantage point, but these natives are civilians. I repeat, they are civilians.”
“My vantage is good enough to see that, kinder. That is not the issue. Their chances of survival depend on whether they suspect our presence here. First appearances are not encouraging.”
Deadhand didn’t like the way she stated that last part.
He preferred Kaiser in such operations. If the Bavarian had been born with a personal totem, it would most definitely have been a fox. He was sly, calculating and wise beyond words. Lippard’s totem, however, would have been just like her nickname. She was a leopard to the core. Her tail twitched nervously all the time, and she was always ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. To a leopard’s eyes, the most innocent of gazelles was fair game. As long as she was hungry and conditions were fair, she was fated to ambush her prey, and she would never feel an ounce of shame in the aftermath of the carnage. Lippard was his number one choice of commander in a stand-up fight, but as soon as he had seen the boys playing in the field, he found himself missing the old fox.
“Looks like it’s going to be one of those missions, boss,” he remarked as the stick-figures beside the trucks began to raise a communications antenna.
“Moose, Deadhand, standby. I will establish a link with Ebony Tower,” she declared.
Whatever his misgivings, Deadhand nevertheless opened his tactical eye and focused it on the clearing. Each vehicle had appeared to carry a driver and two workers and, factoring in the buggy, that put about fifty eight civvies on site. The vehicles were parked as neatly as beer bottles upon a wooden fence.
“Any chance of taking prisoners, boss?” Deadhand inquired.
It took a while for her to answer, and when she did her voice had steel in it.
“Moose, suppression operation initiates at the end of this minute. You will launch an EDI streaker at the vehicles and initiate frequency jamming. You will set pulsed laser platform for anti-personnel and neutralize all indigenous persons. Deadhand, you will set your platform to anti-material and kill the vehicles’ engine blocks. Avoid the fuel tanks, we don’t want to send out any smoke signals. You will then join us in anti-personnel activities. All fleeing civilians are valid targets. Those who refrain from flight and are cooperative are to be taken prisoner. Inform if you copy, over.”
There was a long pause as they digested the communication, and fifteen seconds before the end of that minute both grudgingly copied it.
Deadhand cursed as he set his weapon to intermediate strength and shouldered it. He cursed again as his scope roved over the excited civilians, before resting his reticule on a vehicle’s principal heat source. It was the stationary buggy; any fool would want to neutralize it first.
The moment the mission clock added another minute to its elapsed time, a missile streaked up over the treetops and then swerved aggressively towards the parked trucks. It detonated at a respectable height above its targets, the report insignificant compared to the electromagnetic pulse it produced. As soon as Deadhand’s sensors detected the pulse, he fired upon the buggy and the engine incandesced and disintegrated, the vehicle doing a jumpy half-turn before abruptly bursting into flames. Fat smoke billowed from the wreckage, obscuring the trucks behind it and rising into the sky.
Oh, hell no, he thought.
He immediately directed his platform to the left and began to fire upon the vehicles’ engines one at a time, striving to destroy as many as possible before any more could become cloaked in smoke. Fifteen trucks were soon neutralized, but the rest became obscured and civilians began to run towards them.
“Deadhand, you dummkopf, shift your position and kill those vehicles!” Lippard snapped over the comm.
The Suit pilot leaned forwards and took off at speed, footpads colliding against the earth as the shouts in the clearing began to turn into screams. The cracks of low-powered pulse weapons suddenly increased in frequency, and Deadhand became aware that Lippard had changed her platform’s settings to automatic fire. He maneuvered out of the trees and pounded into the clearing, and the civilians wailed at his appearance as if the day of reckoning had arrived. Ignoring the scurrying figures, he moved to his left, trying to gain line-of-sight with the intact vehicles. The smoke enveloped them, however, and so he straddled the trail from the east and began to close the distance. The remaining mobile Suits came into view, Lippard’s unit striding and firing at the fleeing natives while Moose kept his distance, picking targets off from the plantation’s other side.
A shuddering truck leapt through the smoke and sped towards him, and without further thought Deadhand opened fire. The vehicle promptly gained entertainment value, swerving brusquely before it collided against the opposite side of the trail’s drainage ditch, and it then caught fire as pulse after pulse of lasered light disintegrated its front compartment an
d the people inside it. He fired one shot too many and the beam struck a panel above the fuel deposit, sending a shower of sparks through it. Flames enveloped the vehicle and set the nearest trees alight.
Deadhand began to groan.
“Deadhand! Avoid the fuel tanks is what I said, not aim at them. I –”
A loud chirp cut through her communication, making it clear someone had activated their comm channel’s alarm.
“Two vehicles escaping east, they’re beneath my line of fire,” Moose interrupted calmly.
Lippard’s Suit took quick aim and the mouth of her weapon platform strobed briefly, the light show quickly followed by the rapid snapping sounds of autofire. Deadhand vaulted forwards through the blaze and accelerated to a mad run, penetrating the smoky haze beyond to find a ravaged truck slowing to a stop as the other beyond it disappeared through the treeline. Not daring to slow down, he tore through the foliage, finding the trees too low for him to follow the vehicle at its pace.
“Lippie, I need overhead eyeball on the vehicle, over.”
There was a moment of silence over the comm.
“The next time you call me Lippie, I’ll detonate your Suit. Is that clear, schwarze?” she barked.
He swallowed the insult with some difficulty and reformulated his request.
“Apologies, boss. I need drone recon over the area, I can’t keep up with them in these trees.”
“Return to the clearing and help us clean up this mess, the drones will finish the fugitive vehicle,” she ordered instead.
Deadhand about-faced angrily, smothering his rage as he returned to the clearing. Once there, he stopped to take in the scenery.
Most of the vehicles had been flawlessly killed. So had the civilians, for that matter. Not a moan or cry for help could be heard, only the crackling fires as they consumed the remains of the badly killed vehicles, only the heavy footfalls of Lippard’s and Moose’s Suits as they padded over the terrain, nudging body after body for signs of life. A detonation to the east caused him to turn.
The luminous ball over the plantation beyond slowly morphed into a puffy mushroom, a cloud as dark as sin that ascended the sky as bodies burned beneath it.