Children No More-ARC Read online

  I smiled despite the ongoing insults. I can't help but like machines that don't merely like their work, because all machines are built to do that, but that love what they do, that are truly passionate about it. I admire the same passion in people.

  I shrugged out of the harness and tossed it out of sight into the trees. Others had joined me and were doing the same.

  I checked the tops of the trees around the clearing for IR beacons. None. Good.

  More team members coasted down, hit the ground, and vacated the area. I'd felt pretty good about my landing, but as I watched the others I had to admit that none of them moved as far off the target before recalling their chutes as I had. I hoped none of them had noticed my landing.

  I told the helmet to open and disengaged it from my suit. It was strictly a sport jump cover, not even a little armored, so it would be dead weight from here on. I engaged my contacts, and a heads-up display of the jungle ahead of me appeared in my left eye. Switching to IR, I scanned the area and counted eleven people.

  The last three landed in the clearing and headed toward the rest of us.

  When they'd reached us and tossed their harnesses into the jungle with the others, we spread into our ground formation, staying in groups of three, each one making sure we had three-sixty coverage and could easily see one another.

  I motioned everyone to stay still. We weren't in a rush, so we could afford to take a few minutes to calm ourselves and, more importantly, to focus on the world around us. Each environment possesses its own background sounds and smells and sights, and being in tune with them can help you more quickly detect when something is wrong. I hoped for an uneventful approach to the complex, but we were better off being ready for bad things that never happened than assuming all would be well and being caught off-guard.

  Even without turning to IR, I could see better and better as my eyes adjusted to the minimal light. The very thick canopy had resulted, as is usually the case, in sparse underbrush that peaked at about a meter and half in height. None of the thick, tall trees had branches below three meters, which gave us a reasonable line of sight in all directions. Birds chirped and sang now and again, their cries always brief. I couldn't see any animals, but that was to be expected; any smart creature would have run at the sounds of our landing and gathering. Plus, the hunters in this village had probably killed everything in the area worth eating. The night air was cool but humid, its smell fertile and rich and full of life.

  After two minutes, my vision was completely stable and we'd seen nothing at all alarming. We'd gotten all we could from this pause.

  Time to work, I thought.

  I motioned us forward into the jungle.

  Chapter 23

  In the jungle not far from the rebel complex, planet Tumani

  I hated being a protected high-value asset in an operation, but because I was the primary contact for Lobo and one of the leads, Lim had insisted that I accept that role this time. So, as we moved forward, Black Two's three-person team took point and led us onward. Two was so short and wiry that from a distance he looked no different than the children we were here to rescue. Up close, though, you couldn't help but focus on his eyes, which never settled. He was a long way from childhood.

  The jungle was dark enough that even with the light-enhancement feature of our contacts on high we sometimes had to slow to make sure we didn't bump into anything. Despite that issue, we averaged a good pace while constantly maintaining perimeter surveillance. We'd hoped to sustain a fast-walk speed but had allowed enough time in our schedule for far slower movement.

  After thirty minutes of great progress, it looked like we could continue to advance at a good clip the rest of the way and arrive quite a bit early.

  I should have realized it wouldn't be that easy.

  "Four three-person squads have left the complex," Lobo said in a burst to all our comms, "one from each of its sides. Heading into the jungle. Risk regular communication?"

  Per our plan, at the first communication from Lobo, Black Two held up his hand, and we all stopped.

  Lobo was the only ship in the area, the others having already headed back to the hangars. He stayed because he could both do a good job of hiding himself and also detect and get out of potential trouble quickly. He was thus the only source we had for data on what was happening at the complex. If we didn't stay in touch with him, we couldn't receive real-time updates and so would not know exactly where these enemy patrols were. If we did maintain our link, and if the rebels were monitoring comm transmissions at all carefully, they'd spot our traffic.

  I'd hoped the combination of the cease-fire and the relatively small number of adult troops in the complex would lead the rebels to stay close to home and not send out patrols, but I wasn't surprised at their actions. In their shoes, I would have kept teams in the forest near the complex at all times, just because it was a smart policy.

  I recorded a message for Lobo. "Not yet. At two-minute intervals, send us your course projections for the rebels and where you estimate they'll be. Correct as necessary with bursts. Take each of our teams straight to those squads." I started to send the message but added, "Can you tell if any of them are children?" I triggered the comm, which shot my recording as encrypted data upward to Lobo and, via a very quick, low-power IR transmission, relayed it to receptors on the others in the unit.

  Lobo would relay my response to Lim and wait for her final decision.

  A little over a minute later, another burst hit our comms. Two course projections appeared on my left contact: ours in a faint black, and the path of the enemy trio closest to us in red.

  "Command agrees to your plan," Lobo said. "Neutralize your rebel squad as silently as possible. All twelve enemies outside the complex show adult-sized IR readings. Respond only if you have issues."

  Black Two looked over his shoulder at me.

  I waved him in.

  When we were so close we were almost touching, I whispered, "Hold our formation until we're half a klick away. Once we are, spread, flank them, and take them when they pass our front edge. Knives?" We couldn't make our guns completely silent, but our shots would probably be quiet enough that no one in the complex would hear us. Probably. I didn't like relying on probably when we had other options, however, because soon enough we wouldn't. Working so close that we could use knives carried its own risks, including that one of the rebels would get off a shot, but with two of us taking down each one of them, it seemed the safer plan.

  Black Two nodded and sent a local IR transmission. "Six of us on them, one pair per, one hits, one silences and cuts. Smooth and silent. I'm on right; Black Three's on left. His hit; mine cut. Center trio: monitors in sights and fire—suppressed—if we fail."

  I gave him a thumbs-up and whispered, "Put Black Four's trio on center. Mine'll back hers from the right." Lim would have vetoed any plan that put me in the direct line of fire of the enemy squad, so rather than put Black Two in an awkward position by trying to buck her, I followed her orders.

  Black Two returned to his trio and motioned us forward, but at a much slower, quieter pace.

  Now that I knew an enemy might hear us, every footfall, every brush with a branch, every long exhalation of breath sounded loud. Our contacts showed us and the enemy squad drawing closer and closer.

  When it looked like the gap between us was a little under a klick, a comm burst from Lobo hit us. "Update. They sped up and are closer."

  The overlay in my contact changed to show us less than half a klick apart.

  Black Two and I held up our right hands at the same time, him correctly and me by habit. He motioned us to spread. We did. When we were a few meters on either side of the path Lobo showed them as taking, we adjusted so neither side was in the other's line of fire and dropped to the ground. No side trio should be shooting, but there was no point in taking any unnecessary chances.

  On my contact, the dots representing the enemy trio moved ever closer.

  We could hear them now, walkin
g toward us as if they owned the jungle, as if nothing here could hurt them.

  Black Two signaled us to move to our knife attack positions.

  I didn't see what the other trios did, because I focused completely on hitting my mark silently. My and the other rear group stepped behind trees that would offer some protection if we ended up shooting. We lowered ourselves onto the ground. I readied my weapon and checked the rest of the team; we were good to go. I hoped we didn't have to fire, but if somehow any of the rebels made it past our other nine, their luck would run out with us.

  I switched to IR and strained to see as far as possible. I could barely make out three warm shapes moving in and out of view.

  I returned to normal vision and focused on breathing. The already warm, damp air had turned thick and hard to breathe, a sure sign my body was amping for battle. I inhaled slowly through my nose, counted to thirty, and exhaled just as slowly. Another full thirty count, through my nostrils. Part of my mind knew I was almost certainly going to end up being a spectator, but I'd spent enough time fighting in situations like this one that most of me was readying itself to have to kill or run.

  The three rebels appeared in full view about fifteen meters in front of me. They were talking and chuckling and had their rifles slung over their shoulders.

  They walked closer.

  Dark shapes rose from the ground behind them and accelerated toward them. So quickly I couldn't make out all the actions in the dark, our six hit them both low and high, controlling their arms and their mouths so only murmurs escaped. The three clumps of bodies disappeared onto the ground.

  I aimed at the air above them, just in case.

  One mass separated itself from the rest and stood. Black Two. He signaled "all well" and motioned us toward him. Black Four, a thick woman barely taller than Black Two and the color of wet sand, led her covering trio in first. The rest of us followed.

  The three rebels were facedown on the forest floor. The stench of their blood and deaths hit us before we reached them. Black Three, a huge man taller than I am and nearly half again my weight, threw away their rifles, patted them for additional weapons, and rolled them over. He searched each of them for comms and found only a single small in-ear unit. Either they really were relying on very limited tech, or we had missed something, but we couldn't afford more time to figure out which it was. At some point, they would fail to check in, and our risks would go way up. We had to hope they were evening patrols reporting only hourly or possibly, given the late hour, less often. If not, well, we'd deal with that problem when it hit us.

  Black Three finished and backed away.

  In the dim light and the shadows we all cast as we stared at them, the dead men appeared to have second mouths, their upper, original ones small, the new, lower ones wide and large. A few of our squad stepped off, and a bit of moonlight hit the face of one of the dead. He was just a kid, a tall one, less than a head shorter than I am, but with no trace of facial hair.

  Unless you're completely lost, all traces of your humanity buried under the psychic residue of repeated violence, there's a moment after a fight when you first see what you've done that you're tempted to react normally, with horror and revulsion and sorrow and an aching sense of how wrong it all is. If you let yourself fully experience that moment, you will not be able to go on, and those around you, those who are counting on you, will pay for your weakness. Yes, the weakness is a healthy, normal reaction, a completely human one, but in those times of violence you cannot be normal, and you certainly cannot be fully human. So you make a joke or perform a necessary task, and you go on about your business, which in those times is almost always the business of more violence.

  I stared at the dead young man and knew I could not let myself dwell on his death or that of the two other rebels on the ground. He was an armed enemy, we'd had no way to know he was younger than the others, and we'd done our job. He would have shot us if he had a chance.

  Satisfied that the job was over, Black Three rolled the corpses back onto their stomachs so the ground could absorb more of their blood. We all detoured around them, none of us wanting to get blood on our boots and end up leaving easy-to-follow trails.

  "Leave or bury?" Black Three said, looking at me.

  "Cover as you can," I said, "but as soon as we hear from the others, we leave. We're still a little ahead of schedule. Let's keep it that way."

  Black Two formed up the rest of us while Black Three's team used underbrush to hide the bodies.

  I recorded a message for Lobo and Lim. "Black Team done. Area clean. Will proceed on your command." I triggered the comm burst.

  While I waited for Lobo to respond, I strained to listen and see as deeply into the surrounding forest as I could. Birds still sang occasionally. Leaves still rustled. A few minutes ago, those three men—those two men and that boy—had been alive, and now they were not, yet nothing in the world seemed different for the loss. Somewhere, sometime in the future, someone, maybe several people, would learn of these deaths, and their worlds would forever be changed, but not any of us in this forest, not on this night. Here, all was as if nothing had happened.

  We held our positions in silence for five minutes, living ghosts standing above the dead.

  A comm from Lobo arrived. "All clear. No casualties. Resume and wait at target point for confirmation that all are ready to proceed." After a few seconds of quiet, his voice continued. "This part is encrypted for you only, Jon, in the spirit of minimizing the knowledge of others about what I can do. I'm now set to jam everything in this area that isn't coming from one of our frequencies. Right now, the complex is silent, but when the rebels realize their patrols are down, they may try to call for help. If so, I'll tell you. If they decide to handle the problem locally and non-electronically, however, I won't have any way to monitor them. You almost certainly already know this, but, as you like to say to me, just in case you don't: Assume the rebels back at the complex are aware you're coming. Out."

  He was right: I did know to do that, but I also didn't object to the reminder.

  I glanced at Black Two, who was watching me and waiting for my signal. He nodded in my direction, and I nodded back. He faced front and gave the go sign.

  We moved forward in the night, death now behind us, more death possibly ahead of us, and though no one spoke, we were all glad that we were the ones still walking.

  When we were ten meters from the tree line and could see the complex, we stopped and took a two-minute break. We'd yet to hear from Lobo, so we were probably the first to reach our marks. Everyone drank a little and took turns resting on the forest floor. I triggered the preset "in position" comm burst to Lobo and indicated we'd suffered no losses or injuries.

  No one shot at us. No one in the complex gave any sign that they knew we were there. Because Lobo hadn't called, we could safely assume no more patrols had exited it.

  I motioned to the team leaders; it was time to set up.

  Black Five, a tall thin man with the look and bearing of a high-ranking bureaucrat, fanned out his trio in front of us. They took positions on the ground, rifles at the ready, scanning the complex in case anyone came after us. With Lobo watching from above, we might have been able to do without our own guards, but I preferred redundant protections whenever possible.

  Black Four and her two teammates covered the rear and flanks, all of them on the ground, one watching in each direction.

  The other two guys in my trio set up the gas grenade launchers. Like the teams attacking from the other corners, we had brought five of these small but powerful devices, each capable of quickly firing ten small balls that would explode at various heights inside the complex. Two hundred gas grenades all hitting within a minute of each other was probably overkill, but we were using local ordnance, so we couldn't trust them all to detonate. Even if the did, we'd rather risk tranking the rebels for too long—or, if any of them were sick, possibly even killing a few—than leave resistance alive inside and have to shoot them. That w
ould kill them for sure. We'd trigger the launchers remotely, because we also couldn't be positive they wouldn't explode on us or fail to operate. I'd trust milspec gear I'd test-fired and understood, but this gear represented more risk than I liked.

  Black Two and Black Three had the most difficult jobs: readying the trees. As soon as the grenades exploded in the complex, we had to take off across the cleared zone. To do that safely, we had to remotely set off any traps that were waiting for us there. We knew from Lobo's scans and long-range photos that we weren't facing surface weapons, but what lurked under the ground was anyone's guess. Lobo couldn't detect any obvious IR signatures, but cheap mines or devices as crude as spiked branches on tripwires wouldn't leave any telltale signs he could detect from so far away.

  Dropping half a dozen large trees on that area, on the other hand, would both trigger everything in front of us and provide a solid, if rough, platform we could use to run to the complex.

  The tricky and thus time-consuming part of the operation was making sure we hit the ground with the right length of each tree. The trees here ran from a meter and a half to about two meters in diameter, so we'd be crashing a lot of weight onto the booby-trapped zone. If we hit it with a tree section that was too long, we could trash part of the wall of the complex or possibly even kill anyone standing or sleeping too near it. We would need the walls to hold in the rebels once we took over, and we didn't want to kill anyone, so running long was bad. On the other hand, if we cut and dropped too short a piece, we'd have to waste time clearing the remaining open ground, and that delay would leave us all exposed. So, short was even worse. We had to get it just right.

  Each of the six people on the tree teams carried logging sensors and line-of-sight measurers, and they were busy using those devices now. Each picked a tree, took measurements of both it and the distance to the complex, and used the sensor's computer to figure the cut point. The real work was climbing the tree and attaching the cutting tapes to that point. They had gecko shoes and gloves and were good at what they did, and the trunks were wavy and full of good handholds and easy to manage with that gear, but it was dark and time was short and so everyone was hustling.