Danika, he discovered, was still trying to free herself from her safety harness. He reached down, pushed her hands aside, and depressed the lock release. She flicked a look of surprise at him and then glared. Shoving his hands away, she tossed the harness off and stood with an effort.
Then promptly fell back into her seat.
Grasping a handful of her suit, Seth hauled her to her feet again, trying to help her steady herself on the rolling, bucking deck.
“Line up to bail!” she bellowed.
He obeyed, hauling her around until she was in front of him, wedged between his belly and Dane’s back. They shuffled toward the gaping maw of the drop ramp that had been opened, fighting the rocking of the ship and the buffeting wind.
“Oh my god!” Danika exclaimed when they reached the opening where they could see the planet below them. “What the fuck are theythinking? I can’t make this jump!”
The wind whipped her voice away, but Seth had gotten close enough to gauge the distance to the ground, as well, and his calculations substantiated hers. The drop was too far for a human to manage without sustaining debilitating damage. He wrapped an arm around Danika and stepped off of the platform, allowing his legs to absorb the shock as they landed.
He discovered he had miscalculated having had insufficient data to correctly assess the snow pack. His considerable weight and the distance, combined with Danika’s added weight, resulted in him landing with sufficient force that he was driven waist deep into the snow and ice. He released her as he felt himself sinking and she landed on the softer pack of the surface with a grunt as the air was punched from her lungs.
A projectile struck Seth in the shoulder while he was assessing the situation and calculating the best way to free himself. A dozen more peppered the ground around Seth and Danika, throwing up fountains of snow as they furrowed.
Dimly, Seth was aware of alarm at the danger Danika was in, fully exposed and lying on the top of the soft pack, snow camo or not. Peripherally, he was aware that the entire battalion was taking heavy fire from nearly every direction. He was mostly focused, however, on the pain that had exploded in his shoulder and filled his mind as the projectile tore through the biological sheathing of his shoulder.
He had never experiencedpainbefore. He was so stunned by the reaction, in point of fact, that it took him many moments to comprehend what it was. There should have been nothing more than an alert of damage—followed by a damage report!
The second projectile that cut a burning path along the same arm finally shook him from his preoccupation with the intense new sensations and forced him to focus on avoidingmorepain. After pushing ineffectually against the shifting snow for a few moments, he finally drew the upper portion of his body downward since he couldn’t pull his knees up and used the force to propel himself upward.
He landed face down near his squad leader. Crawling forward, he managed to form a protective shield on one side. “Dane! Niles! To the squad leader! Form a barrier.”
He discovered Danika was gaping at him when he focused on her, trying to assess damage—or if she had damage.
“Getting my squad shot all to shit isn’t going to help me!” she growled.
Their com units squawked. “Forward squads! Lay down a suppressing fire. Rear squads fall back!”
“Shit!” Danika responded to the abrupt command that squawked over their com units. “We were last to drop. That makes us forward, damn it. Get your weapons up, squad! Fire! Fire! Fire!”
Reflecting that he could still shield her with his body facing away from her, Seth rolled away from her and unshouldered his weapon. To his relief, his malfunction didn’t seem to extend to his ability to calculate the trajectory of the projectiles flying at them. Unfortunately, also by his calculations, his own weapon range fell short of the enemy’s. Ignoring the lack of logic in firing on an enemy he could not hit in favor of the orders given, he zeroed in on a target and fired.
“Out of range,” Niles responded.
“Fire, damn it! They don’t know that!” Danika hesitated as she fired off several rounds, and then muttered, “Unless they have cyborgs, too.”
“Unlikely,” Seth responded. “There was nothing in intel to suggest it.”
“Like they’ve never gotten anything wrong!” Danika snarled, glancing quickly to right and left. “They’ve damned well got night vision and they’re closing.”
“They are also flanking our position,” Dane reported.
“Shit! They’re going to cut us off! What’s it looking like behind us?”
Seth scanned the ridge to the rear with his night vision and then the thermal imaging, discovering neither worked worth a damn under the current conditions. “The rearward troops have made it to the ridge. They’ve formed another line to our rear … fifteen meters.”
“Good!” Danika said. “Our turn to fall back! Move it!”
She leapt to her feet almost before she finished speaking and immediately caught a projectile that spun her around and threw her face down in the snow. “Niles! Dane!” Seth bellowed, surging to his feet and scooping Danika up with one arm. “Cover our retreat!”
Niles and Dane formed a body shield, jogging backwards and firing.
Seth caught a projectile in his thigh that brought him to his knees—from the front. ‘Friendly’ fire—human, he thought, knowing the cyborgs would have known not to fire on them—unless the enemy had already managed to flank them.
Trying to close his mind to the fresh pain, he struggled to his feet again with Danika and charged toward the line of troops. He managed to make it through the line without catching another round. Depositing Danika on the ground, he scanned her to locate the wound. “Medic! Human wounded!”
