Depths of Blue Page 28

  “Get yourself to an aid station, soldier,” she ordered curtly.

  “I’m fine, Sergeant,” he protested. “I want to stay.”

  “Not going to happen,” she replied. “You need to get your ass to the doctor before you infect the rest of your squad with whatever creeping crud you have in your lungs. I’ll inform your platoon commander.”

  The soldier sighed, which prompted another coughing fit. He pushed his way past the massed men, still hacking, and made his way to the back of the trench system. Jak had no way of knowing if he would actually follow her order. He could easily join up with another group waiting to repel raiders and she’d never know. She smiled ruefully. In his shoes, she would probably have made the same decision.

  She went back to scanning the fence for any hint that it was about to drop. Her mind wandered back to the sendoff she’d gotten from Torrin that morning. Her face heated as she remembered how the smuggler had pinned her against the wall of her room and slipped a hand down her pants. As usual when Torrin was around, she’d already been wet and ready. She snatched her mind away from the memory. Every time Jak left Torrin’s bed, she vowed it would be the last time. And every time Torrin came near her again, Jak’s resolve crumbled and she stepped willingly back into her arms. She was so confused, her mind and upbringing telling her one thing but her body and heart dragging her in the opposite direction. She’d thought it would be easier, that she would be absolved of some of inner turmoil when Torrin knew the truth, but it had only gotten worse.

  Her eyes prickled with unshed tears, and she blinked rapidly to clear them before they could spill over. She concentrated on the view through the scope. There was movement on the other side of the fence. It was difficult to see through the shimmering blue curtain of energy, but something was definitely happening.

  “Heads down, boys,” she grated. “Things are shaping up.”

  As if on cue, mortars whistled over the barrier, exploding with sharp concussions. Soldiers to either side of her ducked their heads, allowing their helmets to shield them from flying shrapnel. An artillery shell exploded directly over their heads, shaking the ground all around them as the shock wave hit. It drove the breath from her lungs, but she kept her eye trained through the scope. There were definitely men massing outside the fence.

  Over the concussions of exploding shells, she heard far-off reports as their own artillery returned fire. The Orthodoxans hunkered down on the other side to wait out the answering barrage. She watched them through a gap in the sandbags, her rifle at ground level while the metal roof of the shelter rattled with the shrapnel’s angry rain. One of the men to her left went down with a yell as hot metal sliced through his shoulder and out his back.

  “Medic!” one of his compatriots screamed as he knelt in the muck next to the fallen soldier, one hand trying to stanch the flow of blood while the other scrabbled in his pack for first aid supplies. The soldier’s blood mixed with the blue mud, dyeing it a crimson-streaked muddy purple.

  The barrage continued for an eternity, men around her succumbing to explosions and shrapnel. The injured men were removed by medics and stretcher-bearers who had to shoulder their way through as more soldiers pressed forward to take the places of the fallen.

  “Heads up,” she yelled hoarsely as the blue barrier dropped. “They’re coming!” The barrage of mortars quit as abruptly as it had started, and a wall of men rushed toward the trenches. Jak mechanically squeezed off shot after methodical shot as Orthodoxan soldiers filled her scope, but her attention was trained on the opening in the barrier. If their intelligence was right, this assault was merely cover for enabling a team of Orthodoxan raiders to slip through to wreak havoc behind their lines.

  Devonite soldiers had their weapons out and were firing over the walls of sandbags at the oncoming men. Orthodoxan soldiers dropped in waves as walls of rifle and machine gun fire raked their ranks. Still they came on, the fallen men trampled into the churned mud by those behind them.

  Jak kept her eyes peeled for any small groups peeling off the main charge or sneaking through the fence behind them. She hoped she would see what she was looking for before the charge hit their position. Once the charge arrived, she would be too busy to keep watch.

  The ground behind the front ranks of Orthodoxans began to explode, heaving men and earth into the air with equal abandon. The charge faltered slightly, then redoubled, the Orthodoxan soldiers realizing that the Devonite trenches were the only place they might find relative safety. In a distant part of her mind, Jak wondered if it was their artillery or the Orthodoxans’ driving the men on. If it was the Orthodoxans goading their own men on with artillery shells, it wouldn’t be the first time.

  There! A group of maybe eighteen men skirted between the edge of the kill zone and the fence. They were well camouflaged and moved quickly through the downed portion of the barrier. Shockingly, the barrier went up behind them, blocking any retreat for the Orthodoxan soldiers still on the Devonite side. She’d never seen that before. Why on earth would they trap their own men on the wrong side of the lines? Were the Orthodoxans insane or just that desperate?

  She didn’t have much time. The much-reduced mass of men was nearing the trenches. They’d slowed as they negotiated the razor wire obstacles, but she didn’t have long. In her sights, she focused on the first man of the raiding group as he turned to urge the men behind him on. Hopefully he was an officer or at least a non-com. Exhaling, she bit down on the tip of her tongue and took her shot. The Orthodoxan raider collapsed as a bullet obliterated his right kneecap. One of his men ran over to pick him up and went down with a bullet through the forehead. Panicked and with nowhere else to go, the rest of the raiding party broke into a run for the nearest cover. Calmly, Jak picked off two more before they could get to the dubious shelter of a small artillery crater.

  She barely had time to react when a blur filled her viewfinder and she pulled the trigger through sheer reflex. An Orthodoxan soldier dropped right above her, his ankle mangled by her shot. She pulled her eye away from the scope and looked through the gap in the sandbags as she lined up for the kill shot. Her second shot caught him in the chest and he stopped trying to crawl away.

  The Orthodoxans topped the Devonite trenches a heartbeat later. She had time to sling her rifle over her shoulder and to pull out her pistol and combat knife.

  “Come on, boys,” she hollered. “Let’s give ’em hell!”

  Teeth bared, she squeezed off a shot with her pistol, stopping an Orthodoxan soldier in his tracks at the top of the sandbags. He tumbled headfirst into the trench to lie motionless in the mud. Two more Orthodoxan soldiers took his place, and she took out one before the other launched himself over the edge. He slammed into her, his superior weight driving her backward into the muck and slime with a splash. The soldier sat on her rib cage and raised his rifle over her. Before he could bring the butt down into her face, she drove her knife into his side. He froze, gaping at her, giving her time to pull the knife out and sink it in again, desperately seeking out his vital organs with the knife’s tip. A Devonite soldier, noticing her predicament, brought his trench club down on top of the Orthodoxan’s helmet. The man spasmed, his eyes blank as he slid sideways to lie twitching at the bottom of the trench.

  Jak pushed the man’s remaining bulk off her and tried to push herself up. She slid a little in the muck before righting herself. Over the shoulder of the Devonite soldier who had just saved her ass, she saw an Orthodoxan raising his rifle.

  “Get down,” Jak yelled. The Devonite dropped and she put a bullet into the left eye of the enemy combatant.

  Abruptly, it was all over. A deafening silence fell across the battlefield, broken quickly by the moans and cries of the wounded. Here and there a single shot rang out and a voice raised in pain was silenced. Wounded Orthodoxans who were too badly injured to treat were being put out of their misery. Some of the wounded men could have probably been saved, but in the heat of the moment after the battle had concluded, men
tended to follow their instincts and not their conscience. Any moment now, the area would be flooded by medical personnel.

  Jak traded nods with the man whose life she’d saved and who’d saved her. She recognized him as Collins, the overly friendly soldier from her insertion team. He didn’t seem like such a bad sort now. It was in rare times like these that she felt a kind of connection with other Devonite soldiers. They’d been through the same horror and had both come out of it because they could count on each other. Cautiously, she poked her head over the top of the trench wall, ready to duck if anything out there moved. The ground in front of the sandbags was littered with corpses and wounded men. Already the air had taken on the charnel house smell of a battlefield. The combined scents of blood, excrement and burned flesh were unmistakable. Jak grimaced at the stench. Normally, she wasn’t anywhere near these kinds of scenes. She dealt death in a much more clinical, surgical way.

  There was still work to do and she looked back down into the trench.

  “You, you and you,” she said, pointing at Collins and the two uninjured men closest to him. “We have work to do. Come with me.”

  Not waiting to see if they followed, she heaved herself out of the trench. The rifle would be more use on the battlefield than the pistol and knife so she holstered them and went back to her preferred weapon. The three men crawled over the trench walls with her.

  “We have some prisoners to pick up,” she told them. “Keep sharp. Let’s not lose anyone out here.”

  “Got it, Sarge.” They nodded and followed her, eyes moving constantly, examining everything, discarding it as a threat and moving on to the next object of suspicion.

  They moved slowly over the broken battlefield. Jak noticed the dispassionate stare in the eyes of the men and supposed that her face must look the same. Later the horrors of the day would come back to haunt her, but for now she had a job to do. She led her small band deeper into the battlefield toward the pathetic group of Orthodoxans marooned in a shell crater.

  * * *

  Torrin stood at the top of the battlement walls. She ran her fingers over her cold cranium. Her long, beautiful hair was gone, reduced to mere stubble, and she mourned its loss like the loss of an old friend. If she was being honest with herself, she would have acknowledged that she was obsessing over her hair so as not to go insane with worry over Jak. It was bad enough thinking of the sniper deep behind enemy lines, but she knew from firsthand experience that Jak was very much at home in the woods. Jak had admitted to her, though, that she hadn’t spent much time in the trenches. It certainly seemed more dangerous than stalking prey that didn’t know she was there.

  She stretched as high as she could to peer past the trees. The road into camp was swallowed by the gigantic trees that were ubiquitous to this part of Haefen. Trying to see through them was an exercise in futility, but that didn’t stop her from giving it a go. Turning, she paced back and forth and tried to work off some of the nervous energy that kept her going.

  “Didn’t figure you for a nervous one,” the corporal at her side said conversationally. She’d seen him around a few times in the sparring salle. He was one of the few who would still spar with her, though he typically got the worst of it. “You’re supposed to have ice water in your veins.”

  Torrin laughed. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” She returned to pacing. “I don’t want Sergeant Stowell to get himself killed before he can get my mission off the ground.”

  The corporal nodded wisely. “You won’t have much longer to wait,” he said. “There’s a big dust cloud heading our way. That’ll be our boys heading back in.” He grinned, but the humor didn’t reach his eyes. “If it was the Orthodoxans, we wouldn’t see them coming.”

  Peering over the wall, Torrin could see the cloud. She barely confirmed its presence before heading to the stairs. It wouldn’t do to appear too eager, so she restrained herself from bolting for the gate to watch for Jak. Instead, she walked back to her room at as sedate a pace as she could manage.

  Waiting made her feel like her skin was too tight. She didn’t wait especially well at the best of times, but not knowing if Jak was dead or alive gnawed at her from the inside. How did other people deal with this constant worry? This was why she didn’t get closely involved with her lovers and moved on before either of them could form any meaningful attachment. Being this emotionally dependent on someone else was torture. And yet, she already couldn’t picture her life without Jak. They’d only been physically intimate for a few days, but they’d formed a bond during their time of interdependence in the wilderness. In some ways she felt like she’d known Jak all her life, though there was plenty she didn’t know about the woman.

  Finally she heard the door to the next room open, then close. She sprang off the bed and out the door. No one was in the hallway so she slipped into Jak’s room.

  “Hey, babe.” Torrin stopped short when Jak whirled around, gun drawn and pointed unwaveringly in her direction, her face contorted in a snarl. Torrin raised both hands. “Jak, it’s me!”

  Jak’s face relaxed when she realized who it was, and exhaustion overwhelmed her face. “Geez, Torrin,” Jak rasped, falling into her old patterns of speech. She was filthy, covered in mud from head to toe. Patches of dark red streaked her fatigues. The only time Torrin had seen her looking more dragged out was right before she had fallen into bed after abusing stims for weeks on end.

  “Are you okay?” Torrin crossed the room and cupped Jak’s cheek.

  Jak briefly rested her face against Torrin’s palm. “I’m fine.” She pulled away abruptly and began stripping out of her combat fatigues. “None of the blood is mine. Watch the door.”

  Torrin was more than happy to watch Jak disrobe. She reached behind her and engaged the door’s lock without taking her eyes off the sniper. Jak might be short, but she was perfectly formed. Her muscles were honed and defined to perfection. Torrin considered herself in good shape, but Jak’s body made her feel like a slob. The six-pack of abs topped by perfectly shaped breasts and balanced by gently swelling hips literally dried her mouth. When Jak leaned over to pull the mud-encrusted socks off her feet, Torrin licked her lips.

  “Enjoying the show?” Jak grunted.

  “You know I am.” Before Jak could get into the shower in the adjoining bathroom, Torrin stopped her. With hands on Jak’s shoulders, she turned her and covered her lips in a searing kiss. Jak kissed her back with equal intensity, hands slipping behind Torrin’s hips and pulling her closer.

  “Oh Johvah,” Jak groaned. “I wish I could take what you’re offering, but I don’t have time.” She pushed Torrin away with a show of reluctance.

  “Don’t you have a few minutes?” Torrin wheedled. “I could wash your back.”

  Jak laughed. “If you wash my back it’s going to take more than a few minutes. I need to clean up and go debrief.”

  “That’s fine, I’ll wait.”

  “I wouldn’t.” Jak shook her head in regret. “I don’t know how long I’ll be. There are prisoners to question.”

  Torrin’s heart fell. She’d been looking forward to stealing some time with Jak and these short minutes just didn’t hack it. It was true they needed to plan to get her back to the Calamity Jane. The closer they got to realizing her escape from the planet, the more her excitement waned. Jak was tying her to this place and to her.

  “It’s all right, I get it,” Torrin said, trying to hide the disappointment.

  “Hey, I’ll have some time to spend with you tomorrow.” Jak took her by the chin and gently pulled her face around. “And hopefully we’ll be that much closer to getting you home.” Her crooked smile held more pain than pleasure. Torrin was sure Jak didn’t want her to go any more than she wanted to. Not that Jak would talk about it or any other feelings. The woman was hard to crack. Every time she tried to get at some personal details, Jak either had to go or fell asleep.

  “I’ll hold you to that,” Torrin said and let herself out of the room.

  B
ack in her own room she amused herself by surfing on the Internet with the crappy little computer. Out of boredom, she’d started looking into Haefonian history. From what she could see, the civil war that embroiled Orthodoxans and Devonites had been coming on since the colonists had left Earth. She could see in the recounting of the trip where the divisions were and centuries of isolation on Haefen had only exacerbated their differences.

  She shivered. The Right Reverend Dobson sounded like a nightmare. He’d led the colonists away from the godless heathens on Earth. In his view, the proper worship of God had been abandoned. From what she knew of Earth from that time period, he was pretty much right. Years of secularism on humanity’s home planet had almost entirely erased the worship of any deity. Only a few had clung to any kind of religion. Reverend Dobson had amassed a fairly sizable cult and convinced them that their salvation was to be found in the stars. They would start a new society that followed the tenets of the Christian Bible. Unfortunately, he’d had a marked preference for the tenets of the Old Testament. Once they’d set up their new colony on Haefen, he’d ruled with an iron fist, especially over the women. He had instituted polygamy and had begun systematically stripping women of the rights they’d enjoyed back on Earth.

  One of his sons had disagreed with the severity of Dobson the elder’s changes. Devon Dobson had preached a more moderate view of his father’s teachings and had converted many colonists to his point of view. Father and son had a terrible falling out and Devon was excommunicated from Dobson’s church and exiled into the wilderness. Dobson had probably meant that to be a death sentence, but Devon’s followers went with him and they set up their own settlements hundreds of miles away. It was many generations before there was any intermingling between the two factions, but eventually the hurts of previous generations had been dulled by time and the two societies had been reintroduced.