Behind Enemy Lines
Follows from: 2/20/2017, 9/1/2016, and 5/8/2016.
Day 117: Only certain men are fit for service in the Koro Kirim. You have to have a shell against loneliness. I don't think I have that shell, but I'm faced with the conundrum that if I fail, I die."
— From the journal of Sargént Jarl Gabán
— From the journal of Sargént Jarl Gabán
The Scandinvan Wilderness
March, 2027
Kabanis didn't speak much anymore, not more than what was necessary, not since the day Níalis died.
They waded across tall grasslands and trekked through thick forests in silence, and Kabanis spoke only if it was truly necessary. Gabán wondered whether the komsargént would even warn him of a nearby enemy. He wasn't sure if the man cared whether Gabán was dead or alive. Certainly, the journey south was a solitary one.
It had been a long time since he had thought of his life before this one. Every soldier must come to terms with the loss of an old identity, but few soldiers lost it completely. Most keep enough of it so that when they go back home it doesn't seem alien to them, as if they had never lived that life to begin with. Elite soldiers have it the worst, and it's a consequence you sign up for, but still, you always have a connection to the real world. Having not a soul to speak to, having not a friend to recount memories of the civilian world, Gabán was losing his mind. The constant paranoia and the hot, boring days contributed their fair shares to his ever-growing madness as well, but it was the loneliness that shaded the most.
Sometimes they would take position on a low hill outside a random town, uncharted on the incomplete maps available to them, and they would sit there for hours looking at people come and go. A hard working people the Scandinvans were, and pious. And like all humans, all things in the universe, really, they had patterns. For days, perched on a hill there, another one there, peering from the forests, or hiding within tall stocks of stalk, they observed and recorded. At night, they crept up to the perimeter of the town, traveling to spots they had seen groups of people travel to repeatedly, and they left minuscule sensors that would relay their voices to Gabán and the man who seemed to hate him more than the Scandinvans themselves. From where they observed they would track and, when possible, record hand motions. Slowly they built up a small, elementary, and incomplete vocabulary of the local language, building their database in hopes that soon their devices would break the language.
That's what they were told to do, so they did it through long hours worth of tedious observation and by scanning any texts they found along the way. This was somehow to pay off in the grand scheme of things, but probably in ways whose dividends would never land on the men who did the work.
Every so often they would raid into the towns they passed by, but it was a rare thing. If they did, it was mostly to access books and other documents. Risky missions were avoided altogether, ever since Níalis' death at least. For food, they hunted and foraged. For ammunition, they kept shooting to a minimum. For everything else, they stole, and only from the easiest targets. There was no sense in taking risks when there were already so many other times where the risk was unavoidable. Surviving on the Scandinvan mainland would require grit, not foolhardiness. Foolhardiness caused men like Níalis, good men, to die.
Not everything could be scavenged for, though. Ammunition for the weapons they landed with and the technology necessary to do the job came from the empire. But how to deliver that sort of equipment into a hostile country where, for all they knew, not a single friendly soul shared the same soil?
A supply drop. Yet, they had no working communication equipment. No way to coordinate.
South they marched, saying only the most minimal words to each other. They traveled along a narrow country road, barely wide enough for a horse-drawn cart or a small tractor. Down its center ran untamed weeds and grasses, with broad paths on either side which were a product of long decades of use's wear. They traveled mostly by night, observed by day. If the sun was up and an errant farmer happened upon them, they would hide if they were not already camped and sleeping. For months it likes this, making their way along one rural cart path and then another, nearing towns only if in need of supplies or in an attempt to gather more data.
The road they were on now was flanked on either side by tall trees in full, green bloom this spring. Ancient and mangled, the ancient copse extended down the length of the countryside passage for quite some time, obscuring vision beyond ten feet to both the left and the right all the way. It was a surprise, then, when the sun's bright rays flooded through thining branches and the small forest ended to reveal a two-lane paved highway that raced dangerously close to the dirt road and then ran parallel for about a klick of flat land.
Kabanis planted a closed right fist in the air and then crouched where the edge of the treeline abruptly transitioned to the short grasses of the plain. Gabán came to a position to the komsargént's right, taking a knee and revealing a small device that he handed to Kabanis. The latter raised it to his eyes and started to survey the terrain. To their left, the empty paved roadway went on straight for quite some time, but the dirt path they were on veered left again back into the dark depths of the forest, which had simply receded and left this stretch of cart path uncovered. Between the two roads were tall stocks of reeds that grew along a short dip-floored embankment that ran its length. With the naked eye one could hardly see what lay on the other side, and even with the ocular device the komsargént could not have seen much, but he seemed satisfied enough when he returned the sights back to Gabán.
"Let's follow the treeline and go the long ways around," said Kabanis before rising.
There was no time for Gabán to respond. The other man was already up and was marching through the thicket to go around the long patch of uncovered space. Just as the sargént was about to rise himself and follow, the music of the birds and the light whistle of the wind were broken by the low hum of an engine. A big engine.
The komsargént stopped in his tracks and turned around. Gabán arched an eyebrow. A tractor? Unlikely. This sounded heavier. Neither of the two spoke a word. Instead, Gabán signaled that he was going to take up a position along the embankment to peer at whatever it was that was coming as it passed by. He moved out before Kabanis had a chance to reluctantly nod his head. The komsargént waited nearby, under the cover of the forest, scanning the copse's perimeter along the roadside clearing just as much as he peered at the road itself. Then, they waited as the hum gradually grew louder, until finally it roared above them.
Its tracks clinked as it slowly made its way from one length of the graveled highway to the other. Through the reeds, Gabán could see the head of a helmeted soldier — the commander, most likely — poking out from one of the vehicle's hatches. The thing looked like a squat armored personnel carrier, much like a steel box on treads. As it noisily drove on the commander turned his head to sweep the side of the road with a quick check, the soldier's eyes alert, but they gazed past Gabán without noticing a thing.
The sargént let a heavy breath out.
He was muttering under his breath about not liking being that close to danger when there was a hiss from the other side of the highway and the world seemed to shake where it stood.
Gabán's eyes glued themselves to the rocket-propelled grenade as it screamed through the air. His mouth barely had time to fall and hang before the missile struck the side of the vehicle, its commander wide-eyed and in mid-yell. The explosion ripped the exposed soldier in half, flinging his torso and head into a backward roll until it hit a tree and slid down its truck, coming to a gruesome resting position on the ground.
On the black asphalt highway, the armored personnel carrier was smoldering, black smoke from out its exhaust and from the impact area itself. All movement was dead for just a second, enough for Gabán to recover his senses and quietly slip out his assault rifle from his pack. There wasn't the least bit needed minimum of ammunition in his supplies, but if this is where he was going to die, he'd die fighting. Kabanis had done the same, he saw. Suddenly, there was a creak and then the slap of a metal ramp striking the ground. Three soldiers hustled out from within, heads down. They were dragging something. A body, it looked like. Someone who was wounded inside, perhaps? Behind them, the two crewmen emerged as soon as they had room to exit the narrow rear hatch. Cautiously and too slowly, they started to move toward the side, the one opposite where Gabán lay in hiding. Much too slowly.
A sudden burst of machinegun fire knifed the sky like the sound of a jackhammer and it was followed by scattered small arms fire. One of the crewmen went down right away, spasming on the road while the others fought on. A trail of blood was coming out of his mouth, spilling onto the black pavement as his eyes finally settled and grew empty. As if his soul had transcended...or simply died along with him. As the crimson blood trickled down the cracks, away from his body, another soldier's head cracked against the gravel like a watermelon, spraying red all over the dead crewman's cold, lifeless face. One by one they were killed. They fought back, but if it was effective Gabán could not see, and most certainly it wasn't helping them from dying.
Finally, the gunfire settled down and the smoke began to clear. Six bodies lay on the floor, the forest quiet again, although the birds had long left in fear and so their music no longer colored the air.
Gabán had forgotten all about the komsargént, but when he turned where the man had been crouching just a few minutes ago Kabanis was already right by his side. It would have startled him, if the man hadn't done it to him before. They both remained silent as they continued looking at the site of the massacre. A pit started to form in Gabán's stomach, and he wasn't sure if it was fear or anticipation.
Three soldiers dressed in a strange mixture of local clothing emerged from the otherside of the road, scrambling of the embankment and swarming the corpses on the ground. They started to pickpocket the dead, taking weapons, ammunition, boots, armor, and just about anything of use. They probably would have tried to take the vehicle if it wasn't still sizzling from the missile strike. Just exactly how much damage had been done to the vehicle Gabán could not see, as it was on the opposite side of the armored car, the one facing the opposite embankment. They may have worn local clothing, fired local guns, and looked nothing like professional soldiers, but these were Koro Kirim.
Aparently, Kabanis was already thinking the same thing. "Dagger," whispered, almost, the komsargént.
The tension multiplied. Three heads turned suddenly, surprised, on edge, and all looked in the same direction — toward the two men hiding behind the tall reeds that hid embankment on the forest's side. They continued looking for a few seconds, as if calculating their next move. And then one finally replied, questioningly, "Blade." Behind him, the other two raised their rifles and pointed them in the direction of the voice.
The komsargént nodded at Gabán. He nodded back and rose, slowly walking up the short slope that led to the side of the highway. From where they were perched around the knocked-out armored personnel carrier, the other three just looked at him approach. He realized then that he was wearing just as strange as a 'uniform' as them, with more local rags than the original clothing he had come in. Except for the identifying words — which, for all any of them knew, had already been compromised by the enemy —, neither side knew who the other truly was. That made the sargént a little bit more nervous as he walked up to the group. The two in the back still hadn't lowered their weapons. It made him step a little bit more cautiously.
"What unit you soldiers from?" he asked, after no one else had volunteered to speak.
Silence greeted him at first, but finally it was the man closest to him who spoke. "Doesn't matter anymore, our units are long gone. Hell, I think mine suffered ten out of ten casualties. I was the only exception, the only one to hit the ground in one piece." Looking at him, and then toward where he had come out from behind the reeds and where Kabanis still waited, he added, "You two a unit?" There were some chuckles from the two guys farther behind the talker, obviously also the leader.
Kabanis rose from where he was not very successfully hiding. Gabán wondered how the Scandinvan commander had missed him. He sidestepped the snark. "I haven't met a single local who speaks Díenstadi half as well as you do, guy, so I guess that marks us as friendlies. That means you boys back there can lower your weapons and get back to scavenging."
The leader turned his head and nodded, and it was only then that the two other soldiers lowered their rifles. They didn't go back to what they were doing, though, their eyes frail with wariness and alarm.
Looking back at Gabán and then the komsargént, the leader asked, "Only two of you? No companions?"
Gabán lowered his eyes. Kabanis' voice, though, boomed. "Just the two of us. I'm Komsargént Kabanis. This is Sargént Gabán." He paused to take a look at all three of the soldiers, his eyes stopping on the two other ones especially. "Look," he said finally, "we could work together or my comrade and I can just keep moving. I obviously prefer the former, but I ain't about to have a debate about it. Obviously, we're all who we say we are, so I trust we can resolve this little run-in peacefully. I need all my bullets for the enemy, I can't afford to waste them on you folk. What'chu say?"
Glancing one more time at the two men behind him, the leader finally nodded and reached inside a deep pant pocket. He removed from it a small device that looked turned off. Gabán recognized it. He had lost his in the drop and the chaos that came from it. Without it he had been completely starved from supplies. "You two might come in handy, actually."
At the sound of that, Gabán smiled. It was about time there was someone to talk to other than Kabanis. Or, someone who would talk at all, rather.
Outside of Cinmer
July, 2027
An arid wind entered from the east in the early hours of the mid-summer morning. Birds chirped and leaves rustled as the sun slowly climbed toward its position at the apex of the sky. Sweat dripped off of Gabán's face, his long, wet hair falling loosely along the back of his neck. It had been a long hour since the last time he cut it. Since landing, he realized.
"You know, I don't know how I feel having a Zadaka with us. You tell us all these stories about killing Macabéan's in the March, it's like you're proud of it. How can I really trust you have my back, Gonzales?" Abruk meant it facetiously, certaintly, but his cold tone and expressionless face suggested otherwise. Still, the joke was well worn out. Apparently, Abruk and Tenobi had been bullying the kid since the day they first met each other. The day after the landing, they said. And since the very first hour, Gonzales' heritage became a running gag that Gabán was not sure he appreciated, and not because he liked Gonzales.
Gabán had been sent to the Zarbian March for bloodying after graduating from infantry school. By then the fighting had become more limited and the clashes smaller, yet he could never forget his legs dragging through the knee-dep mud of Zarbia's western forests during the rainy season. The synchronous bright reds and oranges of erupting firefights as they cleared a trench line still painted his memories as vividly as if it had all happened yesterday. He remembered how young most of the soldiers he killed were. Some were no older than thirteen. They said that Zarbia's fathers had died in the first years of the civil war, that's why her children now how to fight. Years of harsh jungle warfare had honed young men like Gonzales into hard rocks that, with the right training, turned out to be diamonds in the rough. A Zarbian in the Koro Kirim, a regulare unit, was a testament to that. Even Kabanis, the gristled thirteen-year veteran, showed the young boy a respect usually reserved for more veteran operatives.
Gonzales was only 17. His first day of combat was not long after his 11th birthday. "Fuck you, Abruk," the Zadaka — a pejorative term, to be clear — said. "Remember to sleep with one eye open." He winked.
Sargént Abruk smiled back with a toothless grin that was more murderous than anything else. The two of them enjoyed a sadistic friendship that Gabán struggled to understand. It was nice to have them around nonetheless, and if Kabanis never talked to him anymore, at least these two did. And despite their shortcomings, having comrades by your side was a priceless comfort forty-thousand kilometers from home.
"Abruk, tell me again, how did you lose your teeth?" Gabán taunted more than asked, giving a quick upward nod with his head.
"Your mother knocked 'em out last night, after I made her squeal in delight and tremble in ecstasy." Behind them, Tenobi barked a laugh. The Gi'Sargént was walking with Kabanis, who remained silent. His face was still stone hard and when Gabán turned to look at him, the Komsargént did not look back. Six months it had been, and the man still hadn't forgiven him for the death of Níalis. That pressure of never being able to redeem himself in front of Kabanis' eyes weighed heavily on Gabán, just as heavily as the silence and loneliness of the long months before stumbling upon the others. It made him grim when Abruk and Gonzales had found a source of happiness despite their situation.
He gave the sargént a wry look. "I thought that was you masturbating last night. Man, there are some hotter women out there to think about. Shit man, your girl even, I let her smother my face with her double d's when I dream. Shit, just might pursue that in reality when we get back home. Maybe you should stop showing me those pics you got of her before I go pay her a visit."
"Just remember to run fast when I chase you down, 'else you might find yourself castrated with your bloody balls in your mouth," Abruk shot back, chuckling.
Gabán was about to retort when Kabanis snarled, "Shut the fuck up, or I'll kill all three of you. Undoubtedly the Gi'sargént and I would do better fighting the Woodards who will come at the sound of your shouting ourselves." He talked low so that his words carried only to them. Still, Kabanis' commanding voice cracked like a whip and they shut their mouths immediately. It was easy to forget them because they were so sparse in the areas they marched through, but the Woodards — as the Scandivans were known to them [ed. borrowing from the meaning of the archaic word 'wood,' standing for mad or insane] — were an omnipresent threat that was best always at the forefront of one's mind. Especially here, so close to civilization.
Sometimes, the evening's dry, high summer winds would blow in the noise of Scandinvan townsmen to the east. Conversations in a foreign tongue flowed in as if from all directions, rarely audible enough to understand, even for the machines strapped to them that listened and analyzed. Not too far, less than eight kilometers away, sat Cinmer.
It was, for its size, a quiet city that seemed more scholastic than commercial, as were most towns in this country, as it turned out. They tried not to skirt too close to it, lest they be discovered by farmers on their way to the field or by police patrols. Since the APC incident, the Scandinvan military had made itself scarce, making that an isolated event. That seemed suspicious on its own, and Kabanis had brought it up more than once. But, it wasn't the first time Tenobi and his men had come across the enemy's soldiers, apparently. That only made Kabanis more suspicious, if anything. Gabán was inclined to agree with him, although he did not actually speak in support in fear that the komsargént would rebuke him even in agreement. Still, they had seen no enemy armor or soldiers for over three months, a third of which they had spent here, in the vicinity of Cinmer.
In the city's center sat the beautiful Cathedral of Cinmer, with its brilliant rose window that sat like the stunning remnants of a shattered star, pieces of tinted glass glittered under the sun. Cathedral of Cinmer was how it was categorized as in the data they'd send back to Kríermak 'Gholgoth' Kommand, at least, for its true name they did not know — guesses aside. Around it sat other squat buildings with beautiful clay tile roofs and decorated with the occasional buttress and column, like the regal cathedral that towered above it all. Drums banged deeply in the distance, strong-armed monks calling the city's people to prayer.
Despite its timid demeanor, Cinmer was by no means a small city. Gi'Sargént Tenobi estimated that over a million lived in the city itself, with another ten to twenty million housed in its surrounding suburbs.1 Not a small city, by any means. Moving in and out of it was tricky and only two of them attempted it at any given time, the group rarely running a mission more than once a week. They took time to prepare, long hours of observance, finding patterns in the city's routines that could be exploited for discreteness. Every city has its own flow, its own metabolism, like a complex organism with veins, organs, and muscles, breathing and acting. It was this they studied, to learn how to best exploit it. When they succeeded, which was not on every attempt, the Koro Kirim men sought books and films, when there were any. Everything was scanned or recorded, then put back in place, minimizing dislocation and evidence. Only in the direst of moments were they allowed to use their weapons in self-defense, and such dire circumstances had not come yet — even when Kabanis and Gonzales had been cornered by unsuspecting gendarme personnel making a routine patrol.
It had been by a cat's short whisker that they exited the city at all, let alone without being detected.
Sometimes they could be in there for three or four days. It depended on how the city was behaving. Local customs were largely unknown, making random spikes in activity too likely of an uncertainty to risk. Therefore they moved carefully, ready to take all the precautions necessary, even staying put for most of the day for as simple a sake as remaining undetected. It was not always easy.
Only four weeks ago Gabán had been sent in with Abruk. The second day of their mission, as they were readying to extract themselves through one of the main arteries that led to the western countryside, the area was swept by some sort of ceremony. Of what nature the two of them did not know. These customs were not like the ones from home; they were fascinating to observe. However, as they fortified themselves in the attic above an abandoned top-story apartment, they soon found that the apartment was not abandoned at all and that its occupants made frequent use of the attic. Hiding in the dark had been hard enough; creeping back down, making their way across rarely empty and always narrow streets, was the far more difficult task, for certain. That they had not been seen had been a miracle, if it was true that they hadn't. There was never any way of confirming one way or the other, of course.
They had collected far more data than they ever expected and it was not long before there was a general mood that it was time to move on. Thus, they found themselves on a dusty dirt road headed in a generally southward direction. Cinmer was on their left shoulder, behind rolling hills covered with tall green trees that were beginning to dry in anticipation of autumn. To their west was nothing but farmland and the occasional stone-building town.
Southwest of their position was a broad plain that they had been observing in passing. Pastors used it for their herds to graze, but there are large parts of it going completely unused for long enough periods of time. Certainly, long enough in between for them to retrieve supplies from a capsule.
That had taken a long discussion. All five of them had stayed up during the night, debating whether to call for a supply drop. Tenobi and his men had done it only once before, with no unwanted surprises when they arrived to retrieve. Apparently, the drop had been conducted undetected. Good omens that brought and it was them three who were the most ecstatic about the possibility of calling a second one. Kabanis was less sure. Gabán did not think they needed one. It was the wealth of data that came from Cinmer that pushed Kabanis toward the ledge, and Gabán's opinion held little value if Kabanis did not ask for it.
"We must do it, Kabanis, for the good of our brothers who will strike the beach," said Tenobi, Abruk and Gonzales nodding approvingly behind him. "That data is indispensable. And we can download any updates to the database that any other unit out there may have uploaded. It's well worth the risk. It may even crack the language for us, imagine the possibilities then."
The komsargént had groaned then. Up where the stars sparkled, something suddenly flashed. Perhaps another shuttle blasting from out a Skyan airport toward Greater Díenstad. The flash of the afterburners was a common sight in the clear Scandinvan nights. Gabán sometimes wondered what the Scandinvans, so seemingly out of touch with the world outside, thought of those colors that stroked the dark sky all so often when another shuttle boomed into lower orbit. He wondered if the Scandinvans were ambitious enough to one day reach the moon and what lay beyond it. The truth was, he realized, all five of them still knew very little of the country they had spent seven months in already. "The invasion is a year off, Tenobi. Uploading our data can wait. Besides, the city is still too close. What if they see the capsule land? What if they too go to it? To see what it is, what it contains, or perhaps to anticipate us."
"What if we all die, Komsargént?" replied Abruk. "Who will upload the data then? All of our work, for nothing."
"We need more ammunition, more weapons, too," followed Tenobi, who shot a glare at the sargént. This was a discussion between the two senior team members. Gabán stayed out of him, studying his hands as the glare of the dull embers danced across his hands, which lay in his lap. "The time to call the drop is now, and another one in a year, when it comes time to head into the marsh. That gives us enough time to ready ourselves for what is to come."
The komsargént was not persuaded. This back-and-forth continued well into the morning hours, and it seemed they had hardly slept at all when they awoke at four-thirty in the morning. Finally, though, Kabanis relented. The supply capsule would be called. They'd request lightweight anti-tank ordnance, more rifle munition, grenades, and even explosives. Medicines they asked for too, including freeze-dried plasma, drugs — including painkillers —, and disinfectants. And new communication equipment, as well. That was the most important of all; most of them had lost all of their electronics in the landing when they lost their power armor to the impacts.
Now it was three days later, and toward the drop point they marched.
They arrived as the sun was still yellow, but hanging low to the west. It would soon begin to darken until the only light was the one reflected off the moon and the stars. It was a shallow valley nestled between four low-rising hills. Those short they were, the knolls hid the location fairly well from human sight, which made it the best candidate for the actual drop zone. Looking for a good place to wait, they set up position beneath the crisp, brown branches of tall pines which provided little shade, if any at all. The brown rags they wore blended in nicely, however, and from where they crouched they had an excellent view of the valley before them.
It was not long before they heard the whine of an inbound object that made them all look sharply upwards. The sun still hanged in the sky, no matter how low now, and white plums were hardly visible against the clouds as the pod entered the atmosphere. If its trail did not draw attention, though, surely the ball of fire gathering around it as it burned and plummeted toward the earth was enough to draw wandering eyes. Gabán wondered whether they could see it from Cinmer, and he tisked when he realized that they could likely see it all over Gholgoth. The metal capsule came down like a meteor, slowing only when it shed metallic skin from the top. It continued to hang from the bottom, such that when the slabs of meta turned downwards they were caught at a position perpendicular to the bulbous body of the shell. These made the thing flare even more, and the flaps soon snapped off, all of it — pieces and main body, together — hit the ground with a heavy thud.
When the dust settled, they moved out and closed in on the contraption. Long wisps of smoke rose into the air like twisting serpents that slithered and turned with every movement, as if the thing were steaming. As they moved closer, it shed another narrow sliver of metal skin, this time making a small door big enough for only their head and torsos, it seemed. It was a port to access what was inside, according to how Gonzales had once described it to Gabán.
Then, when they made another step forward, something creaked in the treeline to the right. "Did you guys hear that?" whispered Abruk.
"Get down," ordered Kabanis, who fell into a prone position below the abysmally low cover of the valley's wild grasses.
A spurt of gunfire abruptly erupted from where they had all heard the noise and then it ceased as quickly as it had come. Then it started up again and this time a machine gun followed suit, clipping the dirt around them. "Shit, why the fuck are the Woodards here?" swore Gonzales. "Too coincidental to be coincidence, don't ya think?"
"Stop talking and lay down fire," snapped Teboni, who was already shooting back. He had his rifle to his shoulder and he took calm shots, squeezing the trigger in a long, steady rhythm that seemed calculated. Most soldiers in this situation might have fired without discipline, just for the sake of overwhelming an enemy that had quite evidently ambushed them, but these responded with an order true to the Koro Kirim. As soon as Tenobi and Gonzales took some of the pressure off of them, forcing the enemy back behind cover, Kabanis pointed at Gabán and directed the sargént to come to him
The komsargént whispered, "Do you see where the two hills come together, where the trees recede a little?" He looked toward the northern and western knolls, at a junction that corresponded to the assumed flank of whatever enemy force had caught them out cold. When Gabán nodded, Kabanis went on, "Take point and lead me there. We'll regroup for our next move there. Understood?"
"Got it," replied Gabán, but by then the komsargént was hassling with his gestures to move out.
And so Gabán did, Kabanis tightly behind him. Tenobi, Abruk, and Gonzales maintained fire in the direction that the enemy had fired from as the two other men made their way across the exposed northern end of the valley. Fire came down upon them, but the enemy was too far or they were under too much pressure from the other three Koro Kirim. Their rounds struck hollow, allowing Gabán and Kabanis to reach the wooded orchard, where they kneeled against the thick, gnarled trunk of a tall, ancient oak. There, hidden behind crisscrossing branches and the gray-brown bodies of trees, was a line of perhaps twenty Scandinvan soldiers. They were the garb that Gabán had learned to associate with the gendarme, meaning that they had most likely come from Cinmer. Perhaps they were on patrol and had seen the capsule come down, deciding to veer off their route to see what it was that had made all the commotion. Perhaps they were here to report back to their commanders in the city.
Whoever they were, they broke off as soon as they caught sight of Kabanis and Gabán to their side. Three or four of them stayed behind to cover the others' withdrawal. Kabanis hit one in the arm with his rifle. Gabán clipped another in the leg, and this one toppled over and cried out in pain. One of the withdrawing soldiers managed to run back under fire, haul the man Gabán had hit onto his shoulder and escaped into the thickening woods. The one Kabanis had shot was still sobbing, his yelps ringing from one hill to another. He whimpered as the two operatives slowly walked to him, staying in a low crouch unless these fighters turn around and attack once again.
They waited for some time, the Scandinvan's complaints had grown meek now, out of fear. It may have been fear of death or perhaps fear of what these foreigners were going do to him. When they were adequately sure that the enemy was not returning, Kabanis rose and went to stand beside the dying man. The Scandinvan started to mutter in his language. The komsargént revealed the scanning device they had been using to read local books and he flipped it on. It recorded the soldier as he jerked his muscles and spat his strange words. Kabanis must have been pleased with the footage for he turned the device off, placed it back into a pocket along his pant leg, and unholstered his sidearm.
He pointed it at the man, the harsh steel muzzle looking at the forehead. The Scandinvan quieted as if resigned to his fate, almost as if welcoming it. Kabanis pulled the trigger and a loud bang resounded. In a flash, the soldier's face was a bloody mess, and the dying mas was finally out of his misery. Despite the circumstances, Gabán hoped him a peaceful transcendence to the afterlife.
Out in the valley, Abruk fell on his back and lay with legs and arms sprawled. He let out a long sigh.
"Why the hell were they out here?" asked Gonzales.
"No idea," answered Tenobi. "All I know is that we've been caught, so we better extract what we came for and get the hell out of here." All three of them got up and continued making their way to the center of the valley, where the shiny pod patiently awaited their arrival. Two immediately began to reach in and pull out weapons, pouches full of medicines, and other assets, while the third linked his device to the capsule. Gabán and the komsargént caught up with them soon after. Gabán scanned the tree line as they revealed weapons, ammunition, and plenty of other goodies from inside the steel supply crate, and a certain tingle of warning never left him as they made their way back out of the valley, southwards, as day became night.
The Ambush
Early-August, 2027
As the valley stretched between the southern and western hill, the land reached a point where the knoll ended in the form of a terraced cliff. The dirt road circumscribed this cliff along the upper tier, its right side ending abruptly at another sheer drop. This pathway too was only wide enough for a horse-driven cart. Not even a farmer's tractor could have braved it.
It was there that they first caught a glimpse at what was coming for them. Off in the direction from whence they came, where Cinmer lay, the sun glinted off the steel hull of some sort of armored vehicle. When Tenobi looked through his binoculars he reported mid-sized hulls with heavy cannons protruding from turrets. Infantry fighting vehicles, from the sound of it. There were four of them, he related, moving as a patrolling force. There was no trail of dust behind them. They moved along the paved highway that serviced the city. Suddenly, they turned on to a small rural dirt road, heading straight toward the operatives who observed them on the move.
"Keep on," had said Kabanis, bruskly, lightly pushing Gabán forward. The sargént obliged, but he grumbled under his breath.
The komsargént's animosity hadn't lessened and now Gabán was returning some of the same syrup. It was a dynamic that could not last long, but one that both men put up with while they marched on. They saw not a single new enemy until one week later as July transitioned to August, when they found themselves traversing one hill that rose above its sisters in the area. As they crested it, Abruk peered down to the west and with suppressed surprise when quietly exclaiming, "Enemy, four o'clock."
Heads turned to look at a platoon-sized column that moved along the opposite side of a far hill's ridge. Their bouncing helmets were just barely visible as dark silhouettes against the morning's orange-red sky. Kabanis turned his head even further, peering behind them, searching for that tall column of dust that never seemed to leave them. It had followed them since they first caught the convoy from the cliffside path. His mouth twisted in the way when the komsargént realized something was sour. Despite the frigid depths to which their relationship had plunged to, Gabán knew that expression and was alarmed by it. "What's up, Komsargént?" he asked, with some concern in his voice.
"This ain't coincidence," he growled. "I knew we shouldn't have called that damn supply drop."
Tenobi turned and snapped, "Relax, you two are just paranoid." A drop of water struck him on the nose and he stopped to lock up. The one dropped turned to two, then to four, and so on while the sky grew gray and cloudy, until finally it simply began to our. "Great," the gi'sargént said, "let's keep moving. We'll go another hour and then we'll set up camp. Hopefully, the skies will clear by tomorrow morning."
Kabanis' mouth was deadset and grim, but he finally nodded. It was Gabán who spoke, "If they are chasing us, we better hope that does stop raining tomorrow, 'cuz there ain't no way we're going to see that armored column behind us as long as the roads are wet. And there ain't no way we're going to see them creeping up on us before it's too late. I recommend we turn the problem on its head and change course, take them off guard. If they're not looking for us, they'll be none their wiser and we'll but lose a few days. A fair trade for safety, I think. And if the komsargént is right, we'll have saved ourselves a whole lot of trouble."
"I don't know," replied the gi'sargént. "We don't know the land. We follow the roads and, when we can, a river. Those are the rules. We change course now, with this kind of visibility, who knows what we'll run into. An enemy patrol maybe." The skies were showering now and he had to shout. "There's worse we could run into," he yelled over the late summer's storm deafening drumbeat, "just hope its not those IFVs."
The three of them looked at each other for a few seconds while the other two, Abruk and Gonzales, looked around them, their bodies in a loose pose that seemed ready to flow into combat with rifles at hand. The Zarbian had a DNR-13 slung across his back, the strap hanging from his thick, short neck. Finally, Tenobi said, "C'mon, we have to keep moving. We'll talk on the go, let's move."
He turned and continued southward, Abruk and Gonzales tailing him. Gabán went when Kabanis started. The komsargént nodded at him approvingly. The sargént arched his eyebrow at Kabanis when the komsargént turned away. They started walking and, when a small distance had opened between the two groups, the senior operative fell back to march alongside the man he had essentially ignored for the past six months. Water ran down his face as Kabanis spoke, his eyes two blue daggers made of ice. "Listen, Gabán. We're walking into something here, you know it as well as I. Tenobi and his boys have been making noise since they landed. Hell, this wasn't their first drop call and those things ain't exactly stealthy. Think about it. That APC we ran into, that wasn't an accident. It was looking for someone, for them. We're being tracked down, closed on as we leave clues, and we may have just left the biggest one of all to an enemy who's been looking for it."
Thunder clapped across the sky and a bolt of lightning ripped through dark, humid clouds, followed by a trail of electricity.
The pattern of the rain's fall seemed to open before Gabán, like the curtains of a window being pulled apart, and he saw for a brief second Gonzales turned around, his mouth opening and closing in an exaggerated way. He was yelling, Gabán realized. He looked at the komsargént and gestured. Kabanis grimaced and plowed forward, closing the gap to reach the other group of Koro Kirim. Gabán hurried to follow.
"Keep the fuck up," roared Tenobi, who was looking back at them. "We can't afford to split apart and get lost."
As they kept moving, the rain began to come down even harder and lightning was prancing above them, thorned stems striking down at the earth at the command of the thunderous symphony. They descended down the hill into a narrow valley, traveling south against a rising wind that howled through the gnarled branches of the flanking forests. Perhaps hours went by, that's how long it seemed anyway, struggling against the elements to march on. Gabán's skin started to prick up with that same tingle he got a week before, after the firefight at the supply drop. Danger was near, he could feel it in his gut.
Shadows began to lurk in the heights as the light played tricks on his eyes. The hair on the back of his neck had raised, like a wolf with raised hackles. The valley had broadened and its perimeter was no longer visible through the storm's chaos. The five men continued on a straight path, a blind, but steady direction. Better than a blind and unknown direction.
Abruk was at point, leading the Koro Kirim column with Gi'Sargént Tenobi behind him. Gabán could see them clearly under the flash of lightning until they disappeared again behind the dark wall of rain. When a bolt struck across the sky the gi'sargént's body stood rigid for a brief second, the head seemingly was gone except for scraps of blood and bubbling flesh, until it fell limp. The night went black again. At the third bolt, Gabán could see Abruk still walking forward and Gonzales' shocked face. Kabanis was at his most natural, scowling. It was like a slow-motion movie, until a bullet slicked by Gabán's head, clipping his ear like a wasp's sting. The world began to speed up.
Tenobi's decapitated body was still writhing on the floor as Gonzales ran up behind Abruk to pull him down to the ground. Kabanis took Gabán by the collar and pulled him down. The gunfire came in a cadence, in a rhythm with the lightning, he realized. They needed to find cover, somewhere out of the line of sight. Behind them, up the valley's embankment, there was forestland. That's how had it had been as far as he could see, up until the first fall of rain, why would it change now?
It sounded as if the raindrops began to thud even louder against the wet soil they lay against, but then the sargént realized that it was the Zarbian and Abruk firing off into the distance. Gabán looked toward what they were attacking to see black figures in the heights around them with every strike of lightning. "We have to get out of here," he shouted. "We need to retreat into the woodline behind us, disappear into the forest."
Kabanis looked behind them. "I don't see it," he said.
"Me neither," Gabán shouted back. "But it's our best bet."
The komsargént nodded. He turned to Tenobi's men. "Ceasefire!" he yelled. "Ceasefire!" They kept firing. At the light of another rod of heavenly fire a bullet struck Gonzales in the shoulder. The rifled rolled away from his hands. Abruk kept firing as another round entered through the Zarbian's skull and out the neck, entering through back of his prone body. Darkness swept over them once again. The sound of war blended in with the storm's concert, a harmonious duo that played to hooves of hell's horsemen. Kabanis growled and yelled one more time, "Ceasefire!", before reaching out to rip the rifle right out of Abruk's hands. Gonzales was already dead, but another round punctured his body through his eye. Abruk's face contorted in horror and he saw what had become of his companion in this forsaken land. The komsargént planted himself directly before the terrified man and grabbed him by the back of his head. "Snap out of it, soldier, lest you meet the same fate as them."
Gabán's rifle was at his shoulders by this time. "Go!" he shouted, "I'll cover you."
Under the pounding rain, Kabanis and a shaken Abruk hustled across hidden terrain toward the back wall of the valley. Gabán followed, walking backward as he shot blindly towards where the thought the enemy was. Finally, when his heel touched the lower end of the slope, he turned to start the climb up. The komsargént and the shocked Abruk were already over halfway up, not too far from where the treeline was thought to be. The sargént struggled to pick up his pace, afraid to be left behind or to be picked off by an enemy marksmen at the next bolt of lightning. Gabán had almost reached them by the time they topped the rise.
This time, the thunder rolled on in a calamitous way, bolts doing their particular dance upon the earth like veins that crisscrossed the land like tendrils of a membrane. The skies opened up as if all the gods struck in anger at once and loud winds threatened to sweep them all away. Gabán turned his head left out of happenstance as he continued to climb.
There, illuminated by the ongoing electric storm, rose the profiles of the four IFVs they had seen one week ago. The same one that had been following them ever since. They rose from the far hill they had marched down just hours ago, their protruding cannons staring at him like cyclopses readying themselves for a charge. A bullet struck by his hand, which along the ground as he scrambled up the knoll, and his head snapped forward again. This time saw Abruk draped around Kabanis, his legs drooping as if threatening to give way beneath him. The komsargént gently lay on the ground and went prone, disappearing over the lip of the ridge only to appear again and reach down to Gabán. "Take my hand!" the komsargént yelled. "Take it!" Kabanis looked toward the hills where the IFVs waited and his jaw tensed. He looked down with that wintery gaze. "Let's go, Gabán. Grab my damn hand."
The sargént did so finally and pulled himself up over the crest of the embankment. Not two hundred meters away he could see the grim, vague shape of the forestland. Abruk was bleeding out under black clouds, his eyes red as the rain fell upon them. Red was trickling from his mouth as he lay on his back. They weren't going to move very fast bringing along a man in his condition.
Abruk seemed to realize the problem himself. "Go," he said. "I'll hold them off while you guys run."
"No," replied Kabanis. "We won't leave you behind."
"You have to," the wounded man shot back. "I'm no good. I'm a dead man. It's time to forget about me, leave me behind, and think about yourselves. You two are more valuable alive than dead, so you best get a move on." He gritted his teeth as the pain coursed through him. "Go! Go!" With pained determination he turned over to his stomach and crawled to face back down the hill they had come from. He grabbed his rifle and brought it to his shoulder. "Go!" he said one last time, then opening fire as he screamed. Kabanis and Gabán looked at him in pity, then at each other, and then turned to leave.
Abruk's scream haunted them until they reached the treeline. It cut off at the explosive boom of cannon fire behind them. Gabán looked back to see the edge of the hill light up in a display of fire only for his collar to be grabbed by the komsargént's large hand, pulled away into the depths of branches and roots, where hopefully the enemy would not find them.
Behind them, they left behind three of their dead. Another three men who had died in their companionship. Three to add to Níalis.
Kabanis and Gabán slowly crept through the forest in the dead of night, running away from fate as much as from flesh.
Notes
1. Cinmer's actual populations are 1.5 million city proper, 15 million metro.
[N.B. This post will be periodically edited for spelling and grammatical errors, as well as to improve flow. As usual, the substance of the post will not be changed.]
