Those words were a bald threat when they came from your commander, and Harris knew it. He finished fussing with his leg, slapped the plates closed over his shin and bared his teeth as he struggled to his feet. He walked around gingerly for a moment, testing it.

  “Right as rain, Centurion.”

  “Good. Go count your heavies and patch them up. We’re moving out within the hour.”

  “Moving out? To where?”

  “You have your orders, Harris.”

  Grumbling, he limped away and started shouting at his men.

  Kivi watched him go. “Where are we going?” she asked me.

  I stood up and brushed my suit off. “That drone you’re dissecting is Imperial-made, right?”

  “Yes. I guess it must be.”

  I pointed toward the dome. “Where do you think it came from? How do you think it got into the middle of Manfred’s gully without him expecting it, or seeing it coming?”

  She stared at me for a moment. Then she stood with me, looking toward the dome, which was a shining glassy bubble in the night. Then she looked toward the gully where Manfred and his men had perished.

  “You think there’s a tunnel or something? In the middle of that ditch?”

  Nodding, I looked over the landscape. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to move out right now. If the enemy really was coming out of there, we didn’t have much time to lose.

  Contacting Harris and Barton, I spoke into their headsets directly. “I’m canceling that last order, Harris.”

  “Ah, jeez. That’s great news, sir. You had me worried.”

  “What order?” Barton asked.

  “The centurion was talking about marching out of here,” Harris asked. “I’m glad you’ve come to your senses, sir.”

  “You might want to hold back on that feeling, Harris. The part I’m changing my mind on is the bit about waiting for an hour. We’re moving out right now.”

  “Um…” Barton said. “Where to, sir?”

  “The gully. Let’s find out who killed Manfred, and how they got in there in the first place. With any luck, we’ll find some of them are still alive and squirming down there.”

  “Seriously?” Harris exclaimed. “Why don’t you just shoot me right now?”

  “That can be arranged, Adjunct.”

  He fell silent for a few moments. “Sorry, sir.”

  “Apology accepted. Barton, advance with your lights. Scout Manfred’s pit. When you sound the all-clear, I’ll move up the rest to support you. If you encounter stiff resistance, skirmish and fall back to this crater. Don’t expect support.”

  “On it, Centurion!”

  She bounced up and began kicking her lights into order. Wide-eyed recruits scrambled to obey her. A minute or two later, Harris and I watched from the crater rim as they raced off into the dark. No one was running suit lights, but they had their night vision faceplates engaged. If they ran into more machines, they’d be sure to take the worst of it—but that was the job of light troopers in the legions.

  It always had been, even back in Roman times.

  -26-

  To tell the truth, I half expected a firefight to erupt out there in the darkness. If it did happen, I knew Barton’s team would be slaughtered.

  Breathing shallowly, tense and watching, we gave it five minutes. Then five more.

  I wanted to call out to Barton, but I didn’t do it. At this range, radio silence was impossible. We could dampen and hide our signals at close range, especially when in line of sight, but there was a limit to that stealth tech.

  “Kivi,” I said at last, “get ready to send up some buzzers again. Have them fly nap-of-the earth, and—”

  “Sir!” Harris called out, pointing downhill into the dark. “I see movement.”

  I turned up my night vision, and I saw it too. Our uniforms were designed not to emit much heat, of course. They were as thermally neutral as the environment around them, reflecting whatever was on the opposite side of any point on a troopers’ suit. But with light-gathering turned way up I saw what Harris was talking about. Figures were racing in our direction.

  “What are those things?” he asked.

  “Kivi, send the buzzers now.”

  She released several, but by the time they reached the approaching targets, we were able to identify them ourselves.

  It was Barton’s platoon, running for all they were worth over the broken stones and ashes.

  When she sprinted up the slope and dove between Harris and me, we grabbed her, expecting she was wounded, but she was hale and whole.

  Harris flopped down on his back, breathing almost as hard as Barton was.

  “Damn, girl, we almost lit you up. What were you running from, anyways?”

  “Sir,” she said, addressing me between puffs. “We spotted another of the machines. It was poking around, coming out of the gully. It seemed to be scouting the area, counting the dead.”

  “Just one machine?”

  “Yessir.”

  I nodded, thinking that over. It confirmed all my suspicions. If the machines really had come out of that hole, they were clearly thinking of doing it again.

  “Dammit,” I said. “Why isn’t anyone from headquarters talking to us?”

  Harris and Barton looked at each other.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Uh… sir?” Harris said. “I don’t think there is a headquarters. I think 3rd cohort is all out here, huddling in the dark, waiting for Santa—but he’s not coming.”

  I eyed them both. “All right… Kivi!”

  She came hustling over. She’d been poking at her dead drone again.

  “Get out the com gear,” I told her. “We’re going to start transmitting.”

  “Wait a second,” she said, scrambling with her equipment. “How about I send an automated buzzer—no streaming back data—to every landing spot we know of? They’ll come back in thirty minutes, and we can count the number of dead in the cohort.”

  “What if those spots are overrun?” Harris complained. “What if the unit assigned to each position has found better ground, or retreated, or—?”

  “Shut up, Harris,” I told him. “Launch your buzzers, Kivi. It’s a good idea.”

  She arranged the flock and set them off, one at a time. Soon a dozen of the little things were skimming over the landscape in every direction. They were programmed to fly to a certain set of coordinates, scan the area, then return and download their video. That was much safer than broadcasting our position to everyone in the region.

  We waited tensely for ten minutes. Then fifteen. Finally, the first of our automated scouts returned.

  Kivi caught it out of the air and drained the scans into her computer. I huddled with her to watch it play out on her pack-computer screens.

  The video was disappointing. The unit had found troops—but they were all dead. Apparently, less than half of the 4th had made it to their rally point. They’d then been destroyed by someone or something.

  The next buzzer came back a moment later. It was damaged, barely able to fly.

  “It’s been shot,” Kivi told me.

  “By what?”

  “Snap-rifle fire, if I had to guess.”

  We reviewed the vids, and sure enough, we saw what was left of a hunkered down unit. They were in a building of sorts, a ruin with the roof blown off of it. They fired at the buzzer first, asking questions later.

  “A least most of them are alive,” I said.

  In the meantime, Kivi had caught two more. I finally found something interesting when the sixth one came back.

  “Is that…?” Kivi asked. “Oh, no.”

  “Yeah… it’s a crashed lifter. That’s headquarters, right there. Now, give me your com-pack. I’m calling in.”

  She licked her lips, then nodded and handed it over. No one was ever going to call us. Not if the lifter carrying the brass had been shot down.

  “Wait!” she said, putting her gloved hand over the pickup. “How about this? How about we fly a buzzer to a bullshit location and transmit from there?”

  I nodded. “Make it quick.”

  She rigged up what she could, and I recorded a message. It was in code, and it reported our status, coordinates and casualties. Then I fired the buzzer off away from the dome to a position we knew was lacking any known formation of troops. I included a quick explanation concerning how we did the deception to hide our position.

  The buzzer flew, it transmitted, and we listened to our own message in silence. No one responded for a long time. After ten more minutes, I was about to try something more drastic when a message came in from someone else.

  “I might have known that Centurion McGill of 3rd Unit would be the first to lose his nerve and transmit an SOS,” said a familiar voice. It was Tribune Winslade, our legion commander. “Graves is dead, so I’ve taken over command of his cohort for the time being.”

  I sighed in relief. Sure, I kind of hated Winslade—everyone did. But it was better to have a bad living commander than no officer in charge at all.

  “Lest I get more of these panicky transmissions, be it known that although 3rd cohort’s lifter crashed, it was not entirely destroyed. Key members of the command staff—such as myself—are still alive and sheltering in a large complex of buildings near the reservoir to the southwest.”

  We all craned our necks around and gazed in that direction. Checking the coordinates he gave us next, we were surprised. It was quite a distance from the crashed lifter.

  “They must have high-tailed it a long way from the wreck,” Harris commented.

  “Further,” Winslade continued, “we have a single surviving revival machine in our possession. Here’s my new orders, to all units: withdraw under the cover of darkness and move to my position here. Winslade out.”

  That was it. Everyone clapped me on the back and congratulated me on stirring the pot. Harris in particular felt expansive.

  “That was a smooth move, McGill,” he said. “I couldn’t have done better myself. Your one message kicked Winslade in the pants and made him start doing his job.”

  Shrugging, I didn’t comment. I was thinking hard. There was at least one of those automated mini-tanks in the area. If we moved out in the open, we might be reported and inviting an attack.

  “Okay,” I said, coming up with a tactical plan. “We’re moving out in ten. Barton, put one squad on each side of us, and one out front.”

  “I don’t have that many troops left, sir.”

  “Right, right. Let’s see… you’ve only got one veteran left? Take Moller. She’ll run a flank with a fire team. Send another team to the other side with your vet, and you command the front line.”

  Barton rushed away to follow my orders. Harris looked after her wonderingly. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone more eager to die on a shit-hole planet than Adjunct Barton.”

  “She gets the job done.”

  “You think she’s still trying to earn brownie-points? I mean, to get out of Varus and return to Victrix?”

  I didn’t meet his eye. During the long flight aboard Dominus, Barton had suggested she was doing just that.

  “What’s it been?” I asked him. “A decade since she joined our unit? How long is she still going to be the new girl you suspect of everything?”

  “A decade…? Really?” he said. “Huh…That’s crazy, but I think you’re right.”

  He finally shut up, and we got the heavies and the auxiliaries up and marching. I had to shoot seven soldiers who couldn’t stand. Harris was limping, but he could keep up.

  Now that we knew we had at least one revival machine in service, I felt comfortable about recycling the wounded. It wasn’t a nice job, but someone had to do it. As the unit commander, the task fell to me. It was just another day in the life of a centurion.

  -27-

  On the way, things were dicey. We saw another unit about a kilometer north of us, and we signaled to them. It was the 9th.

  Just as our two groups were moving together, planning to merge up, something went wrong.

  “They’re getting hit,” Sargon said. “Are we going to rescue them, boss?”

  I stared and used my HUD to zoom in. A squad of the enemy machines had found them. The Lord only knew where they’d come from. We couldn’t do anything from this distance, we’d have to get in close to be effective with belchers and missiles.

  Gritting my teeth, I shook my head. “We wouldn’t get there in time. If we rush over there, it will be several minutes. We might help, but it will probably be over before we reach them.”

  “Yeah, but what if—”

  A heavy gauntlet fell on Sargon’s shoulder. It was Harris.

  “The centurion has made his call, Veteran. Let’s move on. By morning, we’ll meet up with whatever hot date you’re thinking about from the 9th. I promise.”

  Sargon looked annoyed, but he didn’t complain openly. “Yessir,” he mumbled and wandered off.

  I knew it was rough on group morale to abandon troops in need. I felt that, too. But we had orders, and we were close to reaching Winslade’s position.

  Less than thirty minutes later, we were ordered to identify ourselves by pickets. We moved past them and kept marching.

  Winslade’s complex of large buildings turned out to be a shutdown manufacturing plant. We entered and as soon as I was announced to Winslade, I was summoned to his headquarters.

  Naturally, he’d set up camp in the safest spot in the region. This amounted to an underground bunker of sorts. It was really the basement of the plant, but it served him well.

  “Centurion McGill, 3rd Unit, reporting, sir!”

  Winslade didn’t even look at me. He was frowning down at a battle table. As we watched, formations of virtual troops moved around. The group labeled with a number 3 was inside the complex now.

  Winslade reached out a finger and tapped at the hologram. Another unit with the number 9 floating over it was still struggling over the rough landscape to the north of the complex.

  “You abandoned the 9th, I noticed,” he said without looking at me. “That was unexpected.”

  “Well sir, I figured we couldn’t make it in time to save them, and—”

  Winslade put a gloved hand up and spread his fingers wide to stop me. “Don’t misunderstand. I was impressed. It was the right thing to do—it just seemed uncharacteristically sensible.”

  I shrugged. “Well sir, I’m half-retarded on a good day, but our whole cohort is in a bad way out here. I didn’t think I could risk a rescue that was likely to fail.”

  Winslade looked at me at last, and he nodded. “We are in trouble. What have you seen?”

  I gave him all our buzzer vids from the front. I showed him the downed lifter, the mini-tanks in action, and a couple of unit locations that appeared to be overrun and wiped out.

  “This is startling, but it fits well with all the intel we have. You’re the first unit to get here that’s had a serious fight with these machines and lived to tell about it. I want you to brief all the commanders I pull together. We have to know what we’re up against.”

  “Uh… yessir. When would that be?”

  “Ten minutes, I should think. I’ll summon them. We have six centurions and a primus available at the moment.”

  Stepping aside, I began doing everything on my emergency list. The top item consisted of getting my dead troops on the revival queue. Unfortunately, that was a long line indeed.

  To my surprise, I saw several names being deleted almost as fast as I reported them.

  “What the hell is this?” I demanded. “My men are getting kicked off the list?”

  One of the officers had come close to look at the tactical displays. It was Primus Collins, a woman who’d never liked me. She’d argued with me more than once on Green World and Ice World, too. Today, she was yawning and stretching like a cat that had just risen from a long nap. That was irritating to me, as I’d just busted a hump coming across a wasteland to get here.

  “Get used to it,” she said. “Revivals are being rejected right and left today.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “We don’t have enough machines for one thing. More importantly, they’re being strict about it. If you don’t have clear evidence that a trooper is dead—he’s marked MIA.”

  That was a chilling statement. The worst thing that could happen to a legionnaire was to be lost, instead of found stone dead. If they couldn’t verify your death, they left you off the revival lists.

  I studied those who were being rejected. One name stood out in particular. “Adjunct Leeson? He’s my most senior man.”

  “Tough break, there,” Collins said, sounding like she couldn’t give two shits.

  “Sure, I don’t have a photo of his body, but his drop-pod went off-course and vanished. From the trajectory of the drop, it’s easy to see he hit the dome and was pulped. I lost a number of men that way—twenty of them.”

  Collins twisted up her lips and nodded slowly. She took out an apple and began chewing on it. Only a high-level officer would have something like fresh fruit in the middle of a hard campaign.

  I felt a surge of dislike and frustration. I wanted Leeson back. I wanted all of them back.

  Turning away from Collins, I marched over to Winslade and tried to get his attention.

  “Yes, yes, McGill. We’re not ready for your briefing yet. Can’t you see that only half the centurions are here?”’

  “Sir, why are my men getting rejected and kicked off the revival queue? They died hard out there.”

  “I’m sure they did. It’s very regrettable. But if you haven’t noticed, we have one revival machine in the vicinity. We might get more, or we might not.”

  “Yessir, I get all that. I’m not saying these men shouldn’t be prioritized against the needs of the legion but they’re being marked as MIA. That means they’ll never get a revive.”

  Winslade sucked in a breath and let it go. “McGill, your men aren’t necessarily permed. If you fight well—if all of us do—we’ll chase these mini-tanks back to the dome and—”

  “The dome, sir?”

  “Yes, of course. Where did you think they came from?”