Robert Buettner - Orphan's Triumph

The fifth book in the Jason Wander series, 2009

I stared where my godson was staring,

up at the Red Moon, which seemed smaller.

The Red Moon shrank in the sky, from basketball-size to melon-size.

The murmur spread to the Casuni and Tassini ranks, then to the more worldly Marini soldiers, and finally to my troops.

Overhead, the Red Moon, our key to victory, had become as tiny as a crimson pea.

Then it winked out altogether.

B LAM-BLAM-BLAM .

The assault rifles burst snaps me awake inside my armor, and the armors heater motor, ineffectual but operating, prickles me between the shoulder blades when I stir. The shots reverberation shivers the caves ceiling, and snow plops through my open faceplate, onto my upturned lips.

Paugh! The crystals on my lips taste of cold and old bones, and I scrub my face with my glove. Goddamit, Howard!

Im Lieutenant General Jason Wander, Colonel Howard Hibble is an intelligence Spook, and both of us are too old to be hiding in caves light-years from Earth.

Fifty dark feet from me, silhouetted against the pale dawn now lighting the caves mouth, condensed breath balloons out of Howards open helmet. There are dire wolves out here, Jason!

Dont make noise. Theyre just big hyenas.

Theyre coming closer!

Throw rocks. Thats what I did. It works. I roll over, aching, on the stone floor and glance at the time winking from my faceplate display. I have just been denied my first hours sleep after eight hours on watch. Before that, we towed the third occupant of this cave across the steel-hard tundra of this Ice Age planet through a sixteen-hour blizzard. This shelter is more a rocky wrinkle in a shallow hillside than a cave.

I squint over my shoulder, behind Howard and me, at our companion. It is the first Pseudocephalopod Planetary Ganglion any Earthling has seen, much less taken alive, in the three decades of the Slug War, since the Blitz hit Earth in 2036. Like a hippo-sized, mucous-green octopus on a platter, the Ganglion quivers atop its Slug-metal blue motility disc, which hums a yard above the cave floor. Six disconnected sensory conduits droop bare over the discs edges, isolating the Ganglion from this world and, we hope, from the rest of Slug-kind.

Two synlon ropes dangle, knotted to the motility disc. We used the ropes to drag our POW, not to hog-tie it. A Slug Warrior moves fast for a man-sized, armored maggot, but the Ganglion possesses neither organic motile structures nor even an interface so it can steer its own motility disc. Howard was very excited to discover that. He was a professor of extraterrestrial intelligence studies before the war.

I sigh. Everybody was somebody else before the war.

Howard would like to take our prisoner to Earth alive, so Howards exobiology Spooks can, uh, chat with it.

That means I have to get us three off this Ice Age rock unfrozen, unstarved, and undigested.

I groan. My original parts awaken more slowly than the replaced ones, and they throb when they do. Did I mention that Im growing too old for this?

Jason! Howards voice quavers. He was born too old for this.

I stand, yawn, wish I could scratch myself through my armor, then shuffle to the cave mouth, juggling a baseball-sized rock from palm to palm. Last night, I perfected a fastball that terrorized many a dire wolf.

As I step alongside Howard at the cave mouth, he lobs an egg-sized stone with a motion like a girl in gym class. It lands twenty feet short of the biggest, nearest wolf. The monster saunters up, sniffs the stone, then bares its teeth at us in a red-eyed growl. The wolf pack numbers eleven total, milling around behind the big one, all gaunt enough that we must look like walking pot roast to them.

But Im unconcerned that the wolves will eat us. A dire wolf could gnaw an Eternad forearm gauntlet for a week with no result but dull teeth.

I look up at the clear dawn sky. My concern is that the wolves are bad advertising. The storm we slogged through wiped out all traces of our passing and, I hope, kept any surviving Slugs from searching for us. But the storm has broken, for now. I plan for us to hide out in this hole until the good guys home in on our transponders.

If any good guys survived. We may starve in this hole waiting for dead people.

We dont really know how Slugs track humans, or even if they do. We do know that the maggots incinerated Weichsels primitive human nomads one little band and extended family group at a time-not just by waxing the whole planet, which the Slugs are capable of. And the maggots had rude surprises for us less primitive humans when we showed up here, too.

I wind up, peg my baseball-sized stone at the big wolf, and plink him on the nose. I whoop. I couldnt duplicate that throw if I pitched nine innings worth. The wolf yelps and trots back fifty yards, whining but unhurt.

Howard shrugs. The wolf pack doesnt necessarily give us away. We could just be a bear carcass or something in here.

I jerk my thumb back in the direction of the green blob in the cave. Even if the Slugs dont know how to track us, do you think they can track the Ganglion?

Disconnected or not, our prisoner could be screaming for help in Slugese right now, for all we know.

Howard shrugs again. I dont think-

The wolf pack, collectively, freezes, noses upturned.

Howard says, Uh-oh.

I tug Howard deeper into the caves shadows and whisper, Whatever they smell, we cant see. The winds coming from upslope, behind us.

As I speak, Howard clicks his rifles magazine into his palm and replaces it with a completely full one. Ive known him since the first weeks of the Blitz, nearly three decades now, and Colonel Hibble is a geek, all right. But when the chips are down, hes as infantry as I am.

Outside, the wolves retreat another fifty yards from the mouth of our cave as a shadow crosses it.

My heart pounds, and I squeeze off my rifles grip safety.

Eeeeerr.

The shadow shuffles past the cave mouth. Another replaces it, then more. As they stride into the light, the shadows resolve into trumpeting, truck-sized furballs the color of rust.

Howard whispers, Mammoth.

The herd bull strides toward the wolf pack, bellowing, head back to display great curved tusks. The wolves retreat again.

Howard says, If we shot a mammoth out there, the carcass would explain the wolf pack. It could make an excellent distraction.

Hes right. I raise my M40 and sight on the nearest cow, but at this range I could drop her with a hip shot.

Then I pause. The carcass might attract those big cats. Weichsels fauna parallels Pleistocene Earths in many ways, but our Neolithic forefathers never saw saber-toothed snow leopards bigger than Bengal tigers.

Really, my concern with Howards idea isnt baiting leopards. Saber teeth cant scuff Eternads any more than wolf teeth can. I just dont want to shoot a mammoth.

It sounds absurd. I cant count the Slugs that have died at my hand or on my orders in this war. And over my career Ive taken human lives, too, when the United States in its collective wisdom has lawfully ordered me to.