Kill Zone

The pod hit hard enough to rattle Walsh's teeth. He bit down on the bite-guard. The harness rams slammed his shoulders. The retro-burn kicked the pod up and then dropped it again. He hit the deck plate, came off it, hit it harder, and the gel pack between his spine and the wall did about half of what it was supposed to do. Retro-burn smoke filled the pod, dry and chemical, and it stripped the moisture out of his mouth. The door blew. "Out, out, out!"

Reyes. Not a shout. A flat command, three syllables at the same pitch, the way a sergeant who has done this nine times tells you that the tenth is exactly the same as the first. Walsh hit the release on his harness, came out of the pod sideways, and was on the basalt before his rifle had cleared the rack. He scanned. Canyon walls. Brown rock, red rock, a chip of blue sky a kilometre overhead. The river was somewhere to his right. The other three pods of his drop wave had landed in a cluster fifty metres off. He could see Marsh climbing out of pod two and Chen out of pod three. Pod four was further out, half on its side, but the door was open and Vasquez was already up and moving. A round cracked overhead. Walsh dropped. The round had come from the canyon wall, high up, somewhere on the eastern shoulder. The rock above his head took a chip and threw it past his face. "Down. Find cover. Move."

Reyes was already at the lee of a basalt boulder twenty metres in. Walsh ran, kept his head below the line of the boulder, slid in beside the sergeant on the gravel. Marsh hit cover ten seconds behind him. Chen, who never ran when she could walk and never walked when she could lie down, was already prone with her marksman rifle up on its bipod, looking for the shooter through her optic. Chen said, "One shot." "East shoulder. About four hundred. He's bad."

"Or he's bait," Reyes said. A second round cracked. It hit two metres in front of Walsh's boulder and threw gravel into his face. He spat. Marsh said something obscene about the shooter and his mother. "Pod five," Vasquez called over the squad net. "Pod five is still in atmosphere. I can see the burn. They're a hundred and eighty seconds out."

"Copy," Reyes said. "We hold the boulder line until pod five sets down. Chen, eyes on the east shoulder. Walsh, river side. Marsh, west wall. Vasquez, wait for the door blow and get the new arrivals into cover before that spotter sights them in."

Walsh rolled left along the boulder. The river side of the canyon was quieter. He could see the water, fast and brown, the gravel bank cluttered with what he had taken at first for driftwood and now realised was the remains of someone else's drop. The pods were old. The colour was wrong. Whoever had dropped here before the 47th had not survived the day. "Sarge."

"What," he said.

"Bank's been used. There are old pods."

Reyes shifted closer. Walsh did not turn. The sergeant looked over his shoulder at the bank, at the wrecked pods, at the river. He went still. "How old?"

"Years," he said.

Reyes spat once into the gravel. "That is not light contact, Walsh."

Reyes keyed the squad net. "Aldana, this is Reyes. Confirm one shooter on east shoulder. Confirm old wreckage on the river bank. Confirm."

The shoulder of the canyon lit up. Not one mortar. Six. The flash-and-crump came together, the tubes had been pre-laid, the tubes knew the range. The first round went long, the second went short, the third walked onto the pod-cluster and the fourth, fifth, and sixth opened the cluster apart. Pod three went up. Chen was rolling away from it before the airburst caught her, came up into a low crouch behind her boulder, the marksman rifle still in her hands. Pod four split along the seam. Vasquez, who had been moving toward it, threw himself flat and let the blast carry over. "Pods," Reyes said over the net, very quietly, "are now compromised. Repeat, pods are now compromised. We are infantry on the ground."

The mortar fire walked east. The east shoulder was the spotter. The west shoulder was the gun line. Walsh, watching the river side, saw the muzzle flashes light the eastern wall in a flickering row and counted them. "Six tubes," he said. "Maybe eight."

"Eight," said Chen, who had a better angle. Reyes said, "Eight." "Squad, listen. The pass is the kill-box. We do not stay in the kill-box. Marsh, on me. Walsh, take the river bank. Chen, give Vasquez covering fire and bring him up. We move on my mark."

"Copy that."

Walsh looked at the eastern shoulder. He looked at the bank. He looked at the old pods half-rotted into the gravel. He keyed his microphone. "Sarge, listen. The shooter on the east shoulder was alone."

"And?"

"He's the cataloguer. The mortars are the kill. The shooter just made us bunch up so the tubes knew where we were."

Reyes did not say well done. Reyes did not say good thinking. Reyes keyed the squad net in his flat sergeant's pitch and said, "Walsh is right. Tubes are pre-laid. The shooter was the spot. Move on my mark."

Then he keyed the LT. "Sayed. This is Reyes. Light contact disposition is now invalid. Mortar position is pre-laid. Repeat: pre-laid. We are taking fire from positions that were waiting for us. Request comms confirmation on extraction route and request escalation."

Static answered him. Static answered him a second time. Reyes tried the relay. Static. He tried the alternate. Static. He swapped to the backup frequency. The carrier whined and died. "Sayed, come in."

"This is Sayed." The lieutenant's voice was tight. "Reyes. I can see the carrier wave but I'm getting nothing back from FOB. We're not jammed by the canyon. Something is sitting on our frequency from above."

By the time the eighth round threw Walsh off his feet, the mortars had begun walking back across the gravel toward the boulders. He came up on one elbow, spat blood, and looked east. Three more flashes lit the shoulder above him.