"What?" Watson said, and poked his head up. I grabbed him and pulled him down as the rockets slammed into the boulders we'd been using for cover. We were pelted with newly formed gravel. I looked up just in time to see a chunk of boulder the size of a bowling ball twirling madly down toward my skull. I swatted at it without thinking; the suit went hard down the length of my arm and the chunk flew off like a lazy softball. My arm ached; in my other life I'd be the proud owner of three new, short, likely terribly misaligned arm bones. I wouldn't be doing that again.
"Holy shit, that was close," said Watson.
"Shut up," I said, and sent to Viveros. What now?—
Hold tight—she sent and took her multipurpose tool off her belt. She ordered it into a mirror, then used it to peek over the edge of her boulder. Six no seven on their way up—
There was a sudden krump close by. Make that five—she corrected, and closed up her tool. Set for grenades then follow up then we move—
I nodded, Watson grinned, and when Viveros sent Go—we all pumped grenades over the boulders. I counted three each; after nine explosions I exhaled, prayed, popped up and saw the remains of one Consu, another dragging itself dazedly away from our position, and two scrambling for cover. Viveros got the wounded one; Watson and I each plugged one of the other two.
"Welcome to the party, you shitheads!" Watson whooped, and then bobbled up exultantly over his boulder just in time to get it in the face from the fifth Consu, who had gotten ahead of the grenades and had stayed low while we mopped up its friends. The Consu leveled a barrel at Watson's nose and fired; Watson's face cratered inward and then outward as a geyser of SmartBlood and tissue that used to be Watson's head sprayed over the Consu. Watson's unitard, designed to stiffen when hit by projectiles, did just that when the shot hit the back of his hood, pressuring the shot, the SmartBlood, and bits of skull, brain and BrainPal back out the only readily available opening.
Watson didn't know what hit him. The last thing he sent through his BrainPal channel was a wash of emotion that could best be described as disoriented puzzlement, the mild surprise of someone who knows he's seeing something he wasn't expecting but hasn't figured out what it is. Then his connection was cut off, like a data feed suddenly unexpectedly shut down.
The Consu who shot Watson sang as it blew his face apart. I had left my translation circuit on, and so I saw Watson's death subtitled, the word "Redeemed" repeated over and over while bits of his head formed weeping droplets on the Consu's thorax. I screamed and fired. The Consu slammed backward and then its body exploded as bullet after bullet dug under its thoracic plate and detonated. I figured I wasted thirty rounds on an already dead Consu before I stopped.
"Perry," Viveros said, switching back to her voice to snap me out of whatever I was in. "More on the way. Time to move. Let's go."
"What about Watson?" I asked.
"Leave him," Viveros said. "He's dead and you're not and there's no one to mourn him out here anyway. We'll come for the body later. Let's go. Let's stay alive."
We won. The double-bullet rifle technique thinned out the Consu herd by a substantial amount before they got wise and moved to switch tactics, falling back to launch rocket attacks rather than to make another frontal assault. After several hours of this the Consu fell back completely and fired up their shield, leaving behind a squad to ritually commit suicide, signaling the Consu's acceptance of their loss. After they had plunged their ceremonial knives into their brain cavity, all that was left was to collect our dead and what wounded had been left in the field.
For the day, 2nd Platoon came through pretty well; two dead, including Watson, and four wounded, only one seriously. She'd be spending the next month growing back her lower intestine, while the other three would be up and back on duty in a matter of days. All things considered, things could have been worse. A Consu armored hovercraft had rammed its way toward 4th Platoon, Company C's position and detonated, taking sixteen of them with it, including the platoon commander and two squad leaders, and wounding much of the rest of the platoon. If 4th Platoon's lieutenant weren't already dead, I'd suspect he'd be wishing he were after a clusterfuck like that.
After we received an all clear from Lieutenant Keyes, I went back to get Watson. A group of eight-legged scavengers was already at him; I shot one and that encouraged the rest to disperse. They had made impressive progress on him in a short amount of time; I was sort of darkly surprised at how much less someone weighed after you subtracted his head and much of his soft tissues. I put what was left of him in a fireman's carry and started on the couple of klicks to the temporary morgue. I had to stop and vomit only once.
Alan spied me on the way in. "Need any help?" he said, coming up alongside me.
"I'm fine," I said. "He's not very heavy anymore."
"Who is it?" Alan said.
"Watson," I said.
"Oh, him," Alan said, and grimaced. "Well, I'm sure someone somewhere will miss him."
"Try not to get all weepy on me," I said. "How did you do today?"
"Not bad," Alan said. "I kept my head down most of the time, poked my rifle up every now and then and shot a few rounds in the general direction of the enemy. I may have hit something. I don't know."
"Did you listen to the death chant before the battle?"
"Of course I did," Alan said. "It sounded like two freight trains mating. It's not something you can choose not to hear."
"No," I said. "I mean, did you get a translation? Did you listen to what it was saying?"
"Yeah," Alan said. "I'm not sure I like their plan for converting us to their religion, seeing as it involves dying and all."
"The CDF seems to think it's just ritual. Like it's a prayer they recite because it's something they've always done," I said.
"What do you think?" Alan asked.
I jerked my head back to indicate Watson. "The Consu who killed him was screaming, 'Redeemed, redeemed,' as loud as he could, and I'm sure he'd have done the same while he was gutting me. I'm thinking the CDF is underestimating what's going on here. I think the reason the Consu don't come back after one of these battles isn't because they think they've lost. I don't think this battle is really about winning or losing. By their lights, this planet is now consecrated by blood. I think they think they own it now."
"Then why don't they occupy it?"
"Maybe it's not time," I said. "Maybe they have to wait until some sort of Armageddon. But my point is, I don't think the CDF knows whether the Consu consider this their property now or not. I think somewhere down the line, they're going to be mightily surprised."
"Okay, I'll buy that," Alan said. "Every military I've ever heard of has a history of smugness. But what do you propose to do about it?"
"Shit, Alan, I haven't the slightest idea," I said. "Other than to try to be long dead when it happens."
"On an entirely different, less depressing subject," Alan said, "good job thinking up the firing solution for the battle. Some of us were really getting pissed off that we'd shoot those bastards and they'd just get up and keep coming. You're going to get your drinks bought for you for the next couple of weeks."
"We don't pay for drinks," I said. "This is an all-expenses-paid tour of hell, if you'll recall."
"Well, if we did, you would," Alan said.
"I'm sure it's not that big of a deal," I said, and then noticed that Alan had stopped and was standing at attention. I looked up and saw Viveros, Lieutenant Keyes, and some officer I didn't recognize striding toward me. I stopped and waited for them to reach me.
"Perry," Lieutenant Keyes said.
"Lieutenant," I said. "Please forgive the lack of salute, sir. I'm carrying a dead body to the morgue."