At first I heard only static. But once far enough inside I got through to the corporal and told him what was happening. The air grew heavy then, and my vision blurred so that I had trouble deciphering the damage report on my heads-up: three hits on my left leg. Funny, I thought, just before passing out, I never even felt them hit.
The battle ended almost as soon as it had begun. We held the first wave of mantes using a heavy volume of fire, but soon we had to limit our shots to short bursts, then singles when the ammunition had all but run out. One of the girls screamed. A mante had jammed its foreleg through a firing port, skewered her through the chest, and was trying to pull her outside where it would tear her to pieces. Lucy yanked out her combat knife and chopped its leg off, too late. The girl died before we got her below.
“Retreat,” I ordered, and punched the command into the net just in case my voice didn’t carry.
I wanted to go first. The urge to dive through the floor hatch nearly overcame me, so that I had to force myself to stand still as the girls disappeared through the hole. All around, mantes shoved their forearms through the ports, doing their best to get at me, and I noticed that with each push their claws dislodged concrete. What were those things made of? Whatever it was the stuff was strong enough that eventually they’d break through and I already heard them working at the roof hatch, slamming their claws on the steel. Finally it was my turn and I closed the floor hatch behind me, so that the sounds became muffled.
Heidi waited for me at the bottom of the ladder. “You want the good news or the bad?” she asked.
“Dammit, Heidi…”
“Fine, fine. The good news is that I finally got through and made contact with orbital. They’re sending an attack ship down, and it should arrive in twelve hours.”
The girls closest to us popped their helmets and grinned, hugging each other at the news. I didn’t feel so happy; it wasn’t clear that we would last twelve hours.
“The bad news?”
Heidi frowned. “We just lost the communications tower.”
“So now all we can do is stay alive.” I left and found Lucy on the other side of the chamber. “Move everyone down to the lower level, kids first. I want a four-man team positioned up here so they can fire on anything that tries to come down here from the bunker. Give them all remaining ammunition.”
Lucy passed on the order and then looked at me. “What will we use if they get us in the lower level?”
“Knives.”
Eight hours later we heard the mantes in the bunker above. I had stayed behind with the fire team and we sealed our helmets again, never taking our eyes off the tiny hatch a hundred meters overhead. The mantes pounded on it, sending bits of concrete to patter on the floor.
I wasn’t scared this time. On my orders Lucy had taken a Maxwell with a full hopper of flechettes, and if they broke through us she was to kill the children as quickly as possible—so they wouldn’t suffer. The rest of the girls would overdose on combat drugs. All I felt was a kind of happiness, that in a few hours either we would be saved or I’d have a reunion with my children and husband. It wasn’t a bad situation at all, I decided. Either way I won.
Three hours later the hatch slammed onto the floor next to us, and my team opened fire. Mantes fell down the ladder, their limbs clanking against the rungs, and collected inside the safety rings so that within ten minutes the ladder resembled a soda straw that had filled with gray crud. Then they got creative. The ones still at the top hacked at the steel rods connecting the ladder to the ceiling, the pinging noise so loud that it overloaded our audio pickups. My girls fired at them, carefully aiming at the exposed limbs. It didn’t matter. As soon as one was injured another took its place, and eventually the ladder groaned as it swung over in the huge chamber, smashing an entire row of bunk beds when it hit.
Mantes rained down from the ceiling. The fall injured most of them but one clambered over the wreckage and directly toward me. I fired my carbine on full auto, watching as the tracers cut into its head, punching through to the other side.
“Fall back!” I shouted, just before being knocked off my feet.
One of the things shrieked from above. At first I thought it was the signal for them to continue their attack, but no more dropped from the ceiling hatch and when a muffled blast sent chunks of concrete to the floor I realized what had caused me to fall. Bombardment. The attack ship had arrived, early, and was bombing the ground above us, clearing the topside of mantes. My girls stood as best they could amid the tremors, and moved through the remaining creatures, finishing off any that had made it down, and a few minutes later it ended. We were safe.
The shouts of joy from my helmet speakers made it hard to concentrate.
“Great,” I said, to no one in particular. “There’s only one problem.”
“What’s that, Grandmother?” Lucy had sneaked up from below, and one by one the others joined us.
I pointed to the crumpled ladder. “How do we get out?”
“Grandmother, I’m sure they’ll figure it out. But right now there’s a little boy down there who keeps asking to see you.”
I ran to the floor hatch, screaming for the girls to make a path, and all I thought of was that for the children it was just beginning, that living might be more difficult than dying. They’d be all alone now.
The corporal stood alone on the parade ground, his uniform gone and replaced by a dirty-white set of pajamas. Colonel Jordi, the base commander, read aloud from the podium.
“A casualty report from the 108th Training Battalion, resulting from enemy action at Nimes mining station twelve, on June twelfth, 2497, Earth calendar. Twenty volunteers from the heavy weapons section. Shinja Nikito, heavy weapons specialist, died of enemy fire. Francine Fillipovich, heavy weapons specialist, died of enemy fire…” As the colonel read through all the names I felt my knees begin to buckle. The doctors had allowed me to stand with my unit, but my leg injuries hadn’t yet healed and I leaned forward on a pair of crutches. He read Jennifer’s name. Cause of death? Drowning. I hadn’t noticed during the battle because of the chaos and terror, but even before the action had started Jennifer got scared and decided to run, making it about fifty meters before the berm collapsed beneath her. She rolled into one of the waste pools and eventually suffocated.
By the time he finished reading the names tears were streaming down my face.
“Corporal Fedorov, I accuse you of gross negligence and failure to carry out your duties in combat, resulting in the unnecessary deaths of Legionnaire volunteers. Do you dispute this charge?”
Wind whistled over the girls’ armor, and dust got in my eyes, making it hard to see. At first the corporal didn’t say anything. Then he looked up and met the colonel’s stare.
“No, Colonel.”
“Fine.” He tucked the digital pad into a pouch at his side and clasped both hands behind his back. The colonel’s kepi was jet-black. Its color fixed my attention because it looked as though the material soaked up the very light, a black hole so strong that it dimmed the air around us in an attempt to suck the life from Nimes itself. “You deserve death. But since your record speaks for itself, a lifetime of exemplary service, it is my decision that you shall serve four weeks of corporal punishment, followed by expulsion from the Legion and loss of all privileges. Dismissed.”