Episode 28

Incoming!

You know, you don’t really think laundry is a big deal until you spend a few days sweating through a uniform you can’t change without going naked.

The hotel had a great laundry facility, though, and I was pleased as punch to send my one-and-only uniform through while I took a shower, then lounged around in a towel with my borrowed e-reader.

Park and Ace had set up a game system in the pair of rooms we were splitting and were noisily machine-gunning guys. You laugh, but I’ll tell you what: the best way to unwind from shooting lots of people in real life is to shoot them on the screen.

Getting set up in a decent location with some secure supplies made me feel better about this mission. I still wasn’t sure exactly what our final objective was, but I was pretty sure it had something to do with that cargo freighter we nabbed, not this petty war between two backward nation-states.

Jock wandered into the room hauling two 20 kilo dumbbells. “Lookee I found,” he announced, curling one of them.

“Where’d you find those?” Four-eyes said, looking over from the desk where he was perusing local news on his tablet.

“Gym downstairs,” Jock said, putting the weights by the bed.

“Ah,” said Four-eyes, going back to his reading.

“Well, Tommy,” Jock said, punching me in the arm. “You feel like taking a ride in your hoverjeep and hunting down a liquor store?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think I’d like to wander around town all that much. Better to stay on base. Ulimbese aren’t happy with us and I’m sure the Corwistalians aren’t either.”

“Aw, they’ll forget soon enough,” Jock said. “Especially with us being so handsome.” He paused and looked thoughtful. “Come to think of it, though—we may have to go foraging sooner rather than later. And not just for liquor.”

“Yeah?” I said. “I thought we got a huge load of stuff from the Ulimbese.”

“We did, but not as much as you might think when you divide it across a battalion of guys. Scuttlebutt is we’re going to run out in a few days.”

“Great,” I said. “And no word on our own supply line?”

“No,” Four-eyes chimed in. “Litigation is in progress, or some such nonsense. Our stock price has gone down eight percent over the last week. Someone leaked to investors.”

“If we go below 200-day moving average I’m selling,” Park said.

“There goes my cushy retirement,” Ace said, jabbing buttons down as he machine-gunned a squad of laser-spraying xenos inside a dark warehouse.

“So what’s going to happen?” I asked Jock. “Are we gonna get help from the Ulimbese again.”

“Probably,” he said. “They’re talking. General Stratarchy or whatever his name is overreached a bit. Apparently the Empire isn’t happy with us but they never authorized cutting us off.”

“Yeah,” said Park. “We should kick everyone’s ass on this whole planet.”

“Not without supplies,” Four-eyes said. “Or higher tech.”

“You’re no fun,” Park said, then killed another half-dozen people with a flamethrower.

Jock’s intuition on the Ulimbese was right, though. They did decide to back us up again. And of course, it didn’t work nicely. Instead, it was a total clusterfrag.

I mean, it started normally enough. “We’re gonna have a drop come in, countryside where we don’t risk any hand-held surface to air,” they told us. Then they said, “We’ll send a squad to retrieve it, real quiet like.” Then it was “And that’s you.”

And “Since you found a couple of hoverjeeps, you see our reasoning.”

And now I was driving through the countryside with nine other Wardogs.

The drop was tagged with an encoded beacon we could track. The hoverjeeps let us roll over land and water, though they were sketchy when you got into brush or really rocky areas.

The weather was idyllic as we cruised along on a sunny morning. Four-eyes was watching his tablet and giving me directions. Behind me was the second jeep. Other than Four-eyes, I had Leighton, Jones and Park. Jones had recovered from his concussion nicely and insisted no one was going to cut him out of his share of the action.

“We’re getting close, Falkland,” Four-eyes reported, pointing towards the gently rolling peak of a nearby hill. “Should be just on the other side there.”

I followed his finger and readjusted. Floating over the grass was novel. We went up and over the hill, then down again. Behind me, the second jeep followed, a good 50 meters back.

“Where is that thing?” I asked, looking down at the sloping grassland below but not seeing the cargo.

“Should be more than one thing,” Four-eyes said. “A collection of things.”

Then I saw them. A string of lumps sticking out on the next hillside. The parachutes were pale green, as were the packages. They were big, too. The size of small shipping containers, with bolts of fabrics draped around them.

It made sense to pick this area. It was some sort of national park with no local population, except for campers and hikers. Of those, we’d seen no sign. Camping probably lost its appeal when your nation was invaded.

I pulled up and parked, then the second hoverjeep did the same. Out stepped Jock, Ace, Ward, Leighton and Corporal Howland. I missed Rocky, dammit.

I watched as Four-eyes scanned and inventoried the cargo. Ace, Leighton, Ward and Park set up a perimeter at four corners. We’d switch later, but for the next six hours I had nothing to do. I still remember the sound of the birds, the warm breeze, the fluffy clouds overhead.

And then Jock’s radio burst to life, along with the chatter of gunfire somewhere just out of sight.

“Incoming,” yelled Ace. “From the East. I’m under fire—I’m–”

Then the radio went dead.