Battle Calm

Badger is the greatest soldier alive. He knows to never celebrate victories,
no matter how hard-won, because the enemy never stops.

Dystopian Military Hard Science Fiction

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The Glider was making a low sweep — high enough to be out of range of thrown weapons and accurate use of sidearms, low enough to use short-range scanners that were less likely to be picked up by enemy Bases. It was looking for grunts — like me — its long, metal wings keeping it in the air just as much as the weak agrav field that emanated from the easily recognizable mech bulging out of its belly. It looked inefficient: wing span of a good twenty or twenty-two meters, body probably eight meters long, but only two meters wide. Was it carrying troops or surveillance mechs or its own weapons? It did not seem big enough to hold any two from the list, let alone all three. Maybe that was why it was taking its time ....

I shoved the thought aside to focus on more important things. It was no secret that high ground was an advantage, so I would take it away. Not too far away were some I-beam skeletons, one of them tall enough that it might work. So I scaled it to its peak, the third row of I-beams that had once been horizontal, but now angled to the wreck-age-covered ground. Once there, I looked over the top of an ocean of three-colored wreckage, silver, rust, and dark gray. The dark-gray shadows were formed by trenches plowed through the mounded devastation. The Glider continued to make its soundless approach. An idea was forming in my head and, if I could pull it off, maybe we could start making some aerial patrols, too, and see how much the Reds liked it! But the Glider was still taking its time. Apparently, when I was in the open, its active scans were still directed away from me, so I sat down behind a rust-pitted I-beam as broad as my shoulders, hugged my photon rifle against my chest, my cheek against the wrist-thick barrel, and closed my eyes.

Queasiness startled me alert, the agrav field just touching me, which meant the Glider was about five meters away. I swung around the I-beam with my photon rifle, and sighted along the barrel. My estimates of the Glider’s dimensions had been pretty accurate: the body was no more than two meters wide, definitely less than I was tall. I laid my finger on the trigger and my rifle muzzle painted a target on the Glider’s glasteel windshield in a specific light frequency that was invisible to normal vision in day or night, undetectable by night-vision or infrared, and focused into a beam small enough that short-range scanners could pick it up, but only if looking for it specif-ically. I could see it because proteins or something like that had been used to modify my eyes so that I could see that specific frequency of light. I knew I was the only one, because Nurse and Red Skin invent-ed the tech, and no one else received the same modification. I was the first field test and, if successful, they planned on repeating it on others in the Base, starting with Trinity. Of course, getting Iced had a way of crushing even the best of intentions.

With the windshield painted, I squeezed the trigger. The invisible burst of energized photons made the glasteel glow yellow-white for a split-tick, then it exploded in a cloud of slicing shards, leaving me with about three ticks to jump in through the hole I just made before the pilot — if he was still alive — took evasive action and got too far away for me to jump across. If the pilot was Iced by the blast, then I had more time.

I took two running steps and jumped from the sloping I-beam. Once in the air, I pulled my arms and legs in tight against my body, like a ball of black psdeudoleather, and covered my head with my arms and rifle. Tiny mechs hardened my battle gear where I struck the jagged edges of the windshield, then I opened my body again to land on my feet and experienced a rare tick of surprise. I was not shocked to see that the pilot’s face was no longer distinguishable as male or female — or even human! — after being shredded by so much glasteel shrapnel. What did surprise me was that, even though the Glider body was only two meters across on the outside, it was nearly that size on the interior. I knew that glasteel was almost as strong as steel, but much lighter and transparent. So what was the Glider made of for such thin walls? I did not have time to think on it, because the real reason for appreciating the breadth of the interior was bearing down on me: five Reds, all running, either to take over piloting the ship or to kill the invader, with even more coming from behind them. Judging from the dry muck on their battle gear, they had been picked up from a foot patrol. When they recognized me for what I was, their narrow, almond-shaped eyes went almost round within their brownish faces. Considering that their eyes were a brown so dark it was almost black — I was always impressed by how well they communicated their hatred with just a look. Already, those in front were dropping to a knee, allowing those behind to also take up firing positions, and my plan to capture the Glider winked out. There was no way I could shoot every Red before I got shot, but I could still Ice them.