A tracked robot buzzed by at forty miles an hour, rattling the crate under Jama’al. His hand went to the recoil pistol lying beside him but stopped. If they knew he was up here, they would use the noise of the robot as cover for an attack; but if they didn’t, the sound of the pistol charging up would give him away. So his hand hovered over the grip as the robot passed below his perch, high atop a fifty-foot stack of crates in the crowded, endless warehouse.

It was a standard stockroom robot, with rubber tracks six feet apart and a thin body comprised of a multi-stage hydraulic cylinder with two spiked arms. It could extend to fifty feet to retrieve the plastic shipping containers from their stacks, which it would balance on its head as it raced back to the fulfillment center. The containers were big—eight feet on a side—and could weigh several tons. A loaded robot shook the earth like a freight train.

The robot faded into the distance. Jama’al counted to five, then relaxed, withdrawing his hand from the pistol. He turned back to the bullets, which were slotted inside a thermal container. He pulled his sleeve over a gloved hand and drew one out, then slid it gently into the breach of his rifle. Wisps of condensation rose from the barrel, which clicked softly as the metal contracted. The bullet’s explosive tips were unstable; they had to be kept well below freezing until used.

After he had loaded three bullets, he closed the case and slipped it into a black pouch on his belt. He wore black from head to toe, his face covered but for a strip across his eyes.

He planted a hand and rotated up to his knees, then slid the rifle’s telescoping legs to the edge of the crate. He eased forward, pressing his eye to the scope, and aimed the rifle down. They were still there, five stories below: three large rats.

—   —   —

Jama’al was an exterminator—pest control—just like his father and his father before that. His grandfather had started the business with money he had earned by running black ops in Africa for the CIA. It was nothing to be proud of, but Jama’al found it reassuring that soldiering was in his blood, even if it was two generations back.

He had grown up working for the family business and, when his father passed, took charge. These days, their single biggest client was FOODex Direct’s Staten Island storage facility. It was the largest food repository in the world, a massive warehouse that stretched four miles in both directions and was loaded with enough groceries to supply the company’s four million customers for a week. It had been steady, easy work until this latest batch of rats had arrived. The damage they were causing was excessive, egregious even, and Jama’al was in danger of losing the most lucrative extermination contract in all of New York. And all three of his exterminators had failed—and failed hard—to remove them. So, for the first time in eight years, Jama’al had been forced to suit up himself. Jama’al didn’t like working alone, but he didn’t have the money to hire anyone else. And in this business, you paid up front—fees and insurance. But if Jama’al didn’t like it, his wife liked it even less.

“Look at yourself,” she had said, poking the bulge in his gut. “Thirty-five years old and flattering yourself you can still handle field work.”

She had a point, Jama’al knew it, but if he couldn’t get rid of these rats, FOODex would hire someone who could.

—   —   —

The warehouse seemed endless in the dim light, and was nearly silent in these early hours. Three-thirty, Jama’al guessed. Around five the orders would start rolling in and more robots would come online—five thousand at the day’s peak. It would be chaos then, dangerous, but for now the scant few were easy enough to avoid. And that was when the rats came out. The smart ones, anyway.

The three Jama’al was looking at now were facing away, breaking into a container stenciled “EGGS.” Two of them dug at the plastic shell with their claws, but the third had a pry bar the size of a butter knife. That would be the leader; Jama’al targeted him first.

He thumbed a small dial on the gun’s stock, zooming the scope until he could see the rat’s greasy gray-brown hair. Despite the explosive power of the bullets, there were only two guaranteed kills: the heart and the brain. Since his target was profile, Jama’al aimed for the head. He needed a kill on the first shot, and he needed a second kill before they could react. Without the element of surprise, one rat was the most he could hope to handle.

He drew a breath and released it slowly, squeezing the trigger. The gun gasped and the bullet flew though the air, catching the rat above the ear. It was a perfect hit; the rat’s head vaporized with a flash.

Jama’al swung toward the next rat as his rifle whirred gently, chambering the next bullet. The rat turned as he yanked the trigger; it saw Jama’al and leaped into the air. The bullet caught its foot, blowing it clean off, but that wasn’t enough. Both rats scurried from sight, no doubt heading his way. It was time to move.

Jama’al fired his third bullet into the egg container, which puffed out and sprayed yellow goo from its seams. The damage would be deducted from his fee, but it was suicide to carry a gun loaded with explosive bullets.

He rolled onto his back, pointed the rifle up, and flicked a tab on its side—the barrel slid into the stock, shortening the gun by half. He slung it over his shoulder into a Lycra holster, the stretchy material holding it fast. He snatched the recoil pistol, which hummed to life, and leaped off the container into the five-story cavern of stacked crates.

He controlled his fall by bouncing between the two sides and shoving upward with his legs. It felt good—the rush of blood, the burn in his muscles—but then his foot slipped. He plunged fifteen feet and his back slapped against the cement floor, forcing out a groan.

He snapped the pistol up, gripped in both hands, and aimed at the container from which he had just leaped. The rats would be there by now, and maybe one of them would be dumb enough to look over the edge. He could use a little luck.

He waited five, six seconds. Nothing. He rolled to his feet and sprinted away.

He moved randomly through the maze of containers, turning as often as possible. His shoes were soft, padded with two centimeters of foam, and his thick cotton mask muffled both the sound and the smell of his breath, but that wouldn’t fool the rats, just slow them down.

He turned into a hallway so long and straight that the walls seemed to meet in the distance. His legs were already stiff and he was breathing hard—he kept in shape, but it was still a lot harder than it had once been. He knew he couldn’t outrun them; he needed a decoy.

Still running, he holstered his gun and pulled a motorized car from his belt—a child’s toy, but with flat spots filed on two of the tires. He set the car down and stopped hard. The car continued down the hallway, tires thumping like footsteps.

Jama’al pulled out two explosive charges, liquid in thick foil pouches. One side was camouflaged with shipping labels, the other was adhesive. He pressed them to crates on opposite sides of the passage, then slipped around the corner and scurried up a column made from a heavy I-beam. The tips of his gloves and the points of his shoes were coated with gecko-like microfibers; they clung to the metal when pressed flat, then released when rolled upward.

He was exhausted by the time he was twenty-five feet in the air, unable to climb any farther. He was exposed, but fortunately most rats didn’t think to look up—it was against their nature. At least, it used to be. The only thing Jama’al was sure of was that each rat would be tougher and more cunning than the last.

—   —   —

Rats have plagued New York City since the first barn was raised on Manhattan. They are a pestilence, universally despised, but difficult to eliminate and, all in all, harmless. Or they had been.

Twenty years ago, a genetics lab in Brooklyn made a shocking discovery. It wasn’t their research—their progress had been slow and steady, boosting the strength, endurance, and intelligence of lab rats with an eye toward applying these techniques to humans. But what they found wasn’t under their microscopes or on their dissection trays, it was in an old closet: rats’ nests. Hundreds of them.

The lab had been infested by wild rats.

At first drawn by the food, the wild rats had mated with those in the lab. By the time the nests were discovered, it was too late: their offspring had already found their way back to the sewers.

These genetically jacked rats were a Darwinian no-brainer. They dominated the gene pool, mixing their augmented traits, growing smarter and bigger. And bigger rats meant bigger appetites. Soon they ventured into the streets, invading grocery stores and mini-marts in broad daylight.

For the first time in decades, the sound of gunfire was common in Manhattan. Human casualties, mostly police, racked up. The city poisoned the sewers and sent in armed robots, but succeeded only in weeding out the weak—thereby accelerating the rats’ evolution.

People avoided stores and groceries were delivered in armored vans. The mayor banned food storage inside the city, and mega-warehouses were constructed across the harbor on Staten Island. These facilities were fully automated—robots were expensive, but the work was simply too dangerous for humans.

The largest and most expensive of these warehouses belonged to FOODex Direct. It was a fortress, with three-foot-thick walls of steel-reinforced concrete and a two-foot cement slab for a floor. High-voltage electric fences, thirty-feet tall and buried ten feet underground, surrounded the building. The fifty yards of no-man’s land between the fence and the building was patrolled by an army of robots armed with military-grade weapons. It was meant to be impenetrable, but this was a rat’s paradise. The best of them found a way in. And once they did, the only way to get them out again was to kill them. And that’s what Jama’al did.

The work was more dangerous than that of his father or his grandfather, but it was still the extermination business. Times had changed and Jama’al had evolved. And if the work was harder, the rewards were higher—if he walked away now, his fee for just the one rat would keep his company in business for a month. But he wouldn’t walk away from a job unfinished. More to the point, they wouldn’t let him.

—   —   —

The toy car was long gone and still no sign of the rats. Too long, Jama’al thought, but he didn’t move. He had played his gambit and could only wait.

A shadow appeared. Jama’al took a breath and held it. Stay loose to stay fast, he recited, clamping his teeth on the edge of his tongue. A hint of fur appeared at the corner, then withdrew. Does it know I’m here?

In a blur, the rat zipped to the next corner and disappeared. It crept back into view, flattened against a crate opposite Jama’al. Jama’al held rock still; the rat didn’t look up, but peered down the hall where the car had gone. Looking, but not following.

The rat rose onto its hind legs and nibbled its paw thoughtfully. Not so long ago, you could just wait a rat out. Stay out of sight and it would go back to its business. But the new breeds were smarter. They knew if you got away, you’d come back. They knew to hunt you to your death.

Jama’al drew a shallow breath, fighting the urge for more. The more he breathed, the farther the smell of his breath would travel. But he was suffocating.

The rat pondered the hallway, took a couple steps, then stopped. It was still too far from the explosives, but there was no more time. Jama’al pressed a button on his belt and the containers blew apart.

Jama’al had forgotten to put in his earplugs. The concussion pierced his ears and then there was silence. He watched crates dissolve, the stacks above them toppling like demolished buildings. Tens of thousands of dollars in food scattered over the floor.

The rat stood dazed as a container dropped forty feet and shattered on its head. It fell and the rubble piled over it.

Jama’al yanked his feet loose and slid to the floor, drawing the recoil pistol from its holster. He sprinted forward, reaching the rat just as it burst from the debris, leaping toward him. He thrust the pistol to its chest and fired.

A hodge-podge of metal shot from the pistol’s two-inch barrel, everything from buckshot to razor-thin caltrops. Different ammo worked with different rats, so the idea was to blast it with everything. The shrapnel ripped through the rat—its back arched, and it went stiff.

Two down, Jama’al thought, but then pain seared through his body and he was jerked backward.

The final rat had attacked from behind, leaping onto his back and sinking its broad front teeth into the place where the shoulder meets the neck. Jama’al’s carbon-fiber vest cracked open, exposing the flesh underneath. The rat drew its head back to strike and Jama’al knew he was dead. But instead he was slammed from the side.

He flew through the air, crashing head-first through the side of a crate. A thousand vacuum-packed breakfast cakes exploded around him, their crumbs like snow. Jama’al passed out.

—   —   —

A terrible racket woke him—a grinding noise Jama’al couldn’t place. His mask was lopsided; he ripped it from his face and tried to push upright, but the gash in his shoulder screamed in protest. He rolled to his side instead, feeling his broken ribs rubbing against each other. He grabbed the rim of the hole he had made coming in and pulled; there was a sucking sound as he came free of the breakfast cakes’ jam filling. He peered out.

A stockroom robot lay on its side, mangled, its tracks spinning in the air. Not just spinning, but stopping and turning; the robot ran its program as if nothing was wrong. It was blind, directed through the warehouse by RF positioning. It wouldn’t have known Jama’al and the rat were in its path, and the two of them had been too shell-shocked to hear it coming.

The rat stood over the robot, wavering drunkenly on its hind legs. It growled at the machine, a paw held to its blood-matted head.

The rat was bigger than he remembered, the size of a large dog or an adolescent bear. Its fur was short, a coat of gray velvet over bulging muscles. The creature balanced on one leg, using its thick pink tail as a crutch. Its other leg was just a stump, coated in that ridiculous red of fresh blood. The rat growled louder, as if arguing, and bared its teeth at the robot. It hadn’t seen Jama’al yet.

The recoil pistol was gone, and his hands were too shaky to load the rifle. So instead he pulled an eight-inch Bowie knife from his boot, its channeled blade gleaming in the dim light. It was an impressive knife, but a fool’s weapon against the monster in front of him.

When was the last time someone had killed a rat by hand? he wondered. Ten years? Fifteen?

Jama’al eased a leg out, probing for the floor, but a piece of the container snapped off in his hand. The rat turned, its eyes narrowing at the sight of him.

He saw now how badly the rat had been wounded. Half of the skin on its face was gone, exposing skull, jawbone, and glistening red teeth. It advanced.

Jama’al dropped from the container and raised his knife, making the meanest face he could. The rat coiled, arms wide, claws outstretched. Jama’al crouched, pointing the knife forward.

“Come on!” he bellowed. The rat leaped.

The injured rat was just slow enough that Jama’al got his damaged shoulder forward, sacrificing it to save the good one. Teeth cut through his flesh and cracked the bone beneath.

Jama’al swung for the skinless cheek, aiming between jaw and skull, driving into its mouth. The tip sunk in and the rat reared back, slipping on its bloody stump and tumbling backward onto Jama’al. Jama’al was knocked to the floor. The rat crushed his ribs, its putrid fur grinding into his face.

Jama’al brought his arms around the rat’s head and grabbed the protruding knife in both hands. He flexed his arms, pulling the knife toward himself and forcing it in. The rat bucked, pounding Jama’al against the floor. Fluid poured into his lungs and he coughed violently, spraying blood and gasping for breath. He made one final pull and the knife slid in, its hilt catching on the roof of the rat’s mouth.

The rat clamped its jaw, its teeth grinding on Jama’al’s hand. The pain was excruciating. He couldn’t pull free. But the rat slowed, stopped, and lay still.

Warm syrup poured over Jama’al’s chest—either of their blood or both. He levered the carcass with his elbow, rolling it off, then wedged his knee into the rat’s jaw and withdrew his hand. It hung limply inside the glove; he was glad he couldn’t see it.

He worked himself to his feet and stumbled down the hall. It was a good mile to the operations room, the nearest place he could get help. He smiled despite the pain, proud. He had killed three rats—one of them with a knife. And he had saved his family’s company. Even his wife would have to admit . . .

Jama’al’s legs buckled and he fell, getting his hands up just in time to keep his head from cracking against the cement floor. The room was spinning, growing dark. One last expense, he thought, reaching for the emergency call button on his belt.

>>> Read on for a sample of The Drift Wars <<<
the new novel by Brett James...

[19.17.4.1::7743.4569.619.1D]

“No recon!”

“What?”

“No recon!” Saul’s voice was barely audible over the metallic vibrations of the ship. After three hours of traveling through the eerie calm of space, the ship had slapped against the planetary atmosphere and was skipping violently. In a few moments, Peter would make his first combat jump. He hoped it would go better than in training. His helmet still smelled faintly of vomit.

The cabin was sweltering; the hull glowed from the friction of atmospheric entry. The ship’s engine screamed, pushing them even faster.

The hull was 95 percent effective at these speeds—it would fail one time out of twenty, vaporizing the ship and its passengers. This would be unacceptable in civilian spacecraft. Only marine transports played such odds.

“You ever heard of a drop with no recon?” Saul yelled over a closed channel.

“No,” Peter shouted into his helmet mic.

“Me neither. I bet no one lives to talk about it.”

Peter knew better than to let Saul psych him out. “Command put the satellites on the other side of the planet,” he yelled back.

“Misdirection.”

“Smart.”

“Smart is being tucked away in the commandship,” Saul shouted. “I don’t see any generals lined up for this drop.”

“Dispersal altitude,” the captain said over the intercom. He was calm and relaxed, piloting the ship from ten thousand miles away.

Men stirred throughout the cabin, prepping weapons and themselves. The ship held a full regiment: twenty-four hundred men in ash-gray combat suits packed in shoulder-tight rows along the curved floor. They were all recruits, privates on their first mission. Their suits shone like they had been made this morning—all but one, that of Colonel Chiang San, who watched his men from a raised seat up front. His suit was dulled and chipped from use, and even though they were inside, the protective silver coating was down over his visor, masking his face.

Anonymous in the crowd, Peter pressed his hand to his chest, where, beneath his suit’s hard crust, hung a locket containing a curl of soft, silky hair.

Saul started to speak, but the ship’s floor fell away and wind roared through the cabin. The men, clamped in by the backs of their suits, were rotated to face the green world below. It was drawn with the clarity of distance—the sharp-edged mountains and lakes, and an ocean of jungle as soft as cotton.

The clamp behind Peter snapped open, and a blast of compressed gas shot him straight down. The other men disappeared in a blur.

Six transports screamed through the white sky overhead, their massive impulsor engines burning the air in a trail of roiling orange and black. They spit out fifteen thousand marines in five seconds, staggered just enough to avoid collision, then arced back toward the safety of space. The sky was poked with little black dots—men plummeting to the surface.

—   —   —

The first time Peter tried out for football, the varsity players took the hopefuls out for a little bonding session. Several jugs of fiery moonshine were passed around, and then the young players, mostly freshmen, were taken to Culiver’s Gorge. The gorge had a high dirt bank that overlooked murky, green-coated water. A narrow iron pipe crossed between the banks some fifteen feet over the water. The hopefuls were told that the unwritten requirement to make the team was to walk the pipe, blindfolded. They didn’t want to, but the older boys insisted.

As his classmates hemmed and hawed, Peter stepped to the front. He figured that since he couldn’t get out of it, he might as well try to look enthusiastic. He was blindfolded, balanced on the pipe with drunken steadiness, and then pushed forward. He managed two wobbly steps before he went over the edge. Though terrified, he kept his mouth shut as he fell through the air and flopped into the water.

Not one of them made it across, but Peter was the only one who didn’t scream when he fell. Back then, that was brave. Back then, walking blindfolded across a water pipe was scary.

Now, plunging through the high atmosphere of an enemy-occupied planet, he knew that while the stakes were higher, the setup was the same: no matter how scared he felt, there was nothing to gain by showing it. Screaming wouldn’t bring the ship back; it would only make him look bad.

Peter fell freely at first, but as he descended the atmosphere thickened, pushing his arms and legs backward, and pressing against his chest as he slowed to terminal velocity. Frost crystals formed around the edge of his visor, and the wind settled to a dull rush. He brought his legs together, drew his arms to his side, and angled into a dive.

The green world approached rapidly, its topography rising as his angle lowered. Red lines drew out over his visor, the computer in his suit marking the target landing area.

He felt a jolt as he punched into the lower atmosphere, and a red light flashed in the corner of his visor: incoming fire. Below him, the green jungle faded under a gray cloud of bullets that rose to meet the men.

Peter angled his hands like fins, corkscrewing. He wiggled his fingers, weaving his body randomly and crisscrossing through the other men, who were all doing the same.

Something crashed into his back, knocking him end over end. He flailed, slapping at the air, but that only made it worse. Then his training clicked in: he tucked his arms in tight and fanned his legs to drag at the air, angling him back into his dive.

Peter was breathing hard and trembling with adrenaline. Sideways collisions were expected during evasive maneuvers, he reminded himself. Even at this speed, they were nearly always harmless.

He looked up and saw Saul flying overhead, an enormous white grin beaming through his visor. Saul had hit him on purpose. Saul was like that. Playful—bored even—no matter that they were plummeting into hostile territory at three hundred miles an hour. Peter had grown used to this attitude back in Basic Training—five intensive months meant to hone men into deadly weapons. Frankly, they’d had much greater success with Saul than Peter.

Peter turned back to the incoming storm of bullets, forcing himself to relax. Just like falling into the river, he told himself. Of course, he didn’t make the team that year. He might have impressed the older kids, but they didn’t decide who made the cut.

—   —   —

Moments later the cloud of bullets collided with the swarm of men. Most of the bullets rattled harmlessly against the heavy armor on the marines’ shoulders and helmets; they had spent most of their power on the long climb up. The bullets were mainly intimidation anyway, broadcasting the size of the force waiting below. But they also provided cover for the rockets that followed.

Thunder came from all sides and great orange fireballs filled the sky, shattering the unlucky and knocking around the rest. The explosions came one after another, their black smoke choking out the light. Someone—or some part of someone—struck Peter’s shoulder and ricocheted away.

Sergeant Mickelson had advised them to have some sort of distraction on hand for the dive. Loud music, particularly metal, would drown out the noise of battle and pass the time. “Pornography is even better,” he said, “but it’s against policy, so don’t let me catch you.”

Neither idea appealed to Peter, so he hadn’t brought anything. Instead, he tried to think about home, and about Amber. It had been seven months since he’d seen her, seven months since he’d felt her arms around him. His memory of her had been his strength, but he couldn’t bring it up. Not while he was careening though the thick smoke and dull pounding of rockets, wondering if the next one was meant for him.

Having no other distraction, he started to hum.

—   —   —

The explosions stopped. Peter dropped below the smoke and saw only the plush treetops as he crashed into them. A charge on his back fired with a loud bang, flipping him upright. His rocket pack roared to life, its long flame licking his feet as it strained to slow his descent.

The leafy canopy closed overhead, sealing Peter into a murky world of long, spidery tree trunks. As Peter strained to pick a clear landing site, a leg-thick tree branch caught him square in the chest. He was knocked over and his rocket drove him straight at the ground. His suit’s stabilizers tried to right him but, designed for the weightlessness of space, lacked the power.

His rocket sputtered out thirty feet from the ground; he slammed into it headfirst.

—   —   —

The jungle floor was thick with leaves, cushioning Peter’s fall and sparing him serious injury or death—effectively the same thing this deep inside enemy territory. He scrambled out of the crater made from his own impact, ran for the cover of the nearest tree, and tucked himself into a protective ball. Shrapnel and debris drummed the ground. It tapered off after several minutes. He eased to his feet and looked around.

The trees were as straight as pencils, their white cabbagey trunks rising a hundred yards into the air, then sprouting into a green roof. Down at ground level, the trunks split and tangled together. Low scrub, like moss magnified a hundredfold, circled the trees in wreaths, wisps of steam billowing off their crowns. In the dim light, the wet ground was the color of blood and dented by debris—parts of rockets, parts of men.

Alone in the jungle, Peter felt exposed; the enemy seemed to lurk in every shadow. He retreated further into the tree, ducking into the cave of its high roots, and waited.

It was fifty long seconds before the satellites moved into place. Peter’s visor lit up with information, and he studied the translucent map that appeared in the corner. There were blue dots to indicate the other marines, but no red dots yet—the satellite’s sensors couldn’t detect the enemy through the thick foliage. It fell on the marines to dig them out here on the ground.

Peter’s regiment was spread over several dozen miles, and he was a thousand yards from the nearest friendly. The rendezvous point was a mile and a half away, labeled by a green circle. He did a quick visual inspection of his suit, then tested his arms and legs. The artificial muscles in his suit whirred smoothly.

Everything seemed okay. He drew his sidearm and crept out from his cover.

—   —   —

The thick foliage cast dark shadows in the haze, providing the enemy ideal camouflage for an ambush. The jungle was dead quiet, with no sign of the indigenous otter-like creature that supposedly thrived there. Maybe they were hiding from the coming battle. Or maybe they had been slaughtered.

Fog condensed on Peter’s visor, making beads of water that jiggled as he walked. His suit was climate controlled, insulating him from the jungle’s heat and humidity, and its smell. The air from his tank was scentless and filtered, and gave no sense of the world around him. But his mind brought the jungle inside, the sense of danger, the presence of the Riel.

His eyes darted around, hunting for anything that seemed out of place. His suit had a battery of sensors, everything from emission scopes to wide-band motion detectors, but the dense jungle overpowered them. Even his thermal imagers were useless—the Riel were cold-blooded, so their body temperature matched that of the air around them. Despite his complex array of sensors, the best tools he had were his own eyes.

A tall, flat boulder loomed in the mist ahead. Perched on top was a short, muscular tree, its roots running down the stone like melted wax. It was exactly the sort of place where Peter would set an ambush, and he figured that a Riel sniper would think the same. He crouched low and gave the rock a wide berth, watching for a trap.

A yellow light pulsed on his visor—a warning from his Life Control System that he was breathing too quickly. The planet’s atmosphere was poisonous, so running out of air here would be as deadly as it was in the vacuum of space. Peter stopped and took slow, measured breaths. Then he saw movement in the corner of his eye. He whipped around and fired.

The impulsor ray from his pistol was invisible, but it burned a line through the air, hissing and leaving a trail of curling smoke. The gun sliced through several plants and charred the trunk of a tree, but there was no one around. The movement had only been water running down his visor. Peter cursed, dropping low and peering back at the rock, seeing nothing.

He backed up, turning a slow circle and jerking his gun from target to target. His heart thrashed wildly and the oxygen warning light turned orange, then red. Unable to control his fear, Peter sprang up and raced through trees, slashing with his arms to clear the foliage, careless of the racket he was making.

His only thought was to reach the rendezvous point and the safety of his platoon.

—   —   —

Peter was watching his map, following his blue dot as it approached the green rendezvous point, when his legs tangled and he fell forward. He face-planted, scattering leaves and knocking into something solid. He jerked his gun out, but it was another marine, dead, half-buried from impact. Shards of red-stained metal jutted from his chest, and a stump of an arm rose as if saluting the sky.

Peter crept forward on his elbows, lay his pistol down, and pushed up to peer into the corpse’s visor. The face inside was still and ashen. Peter didn’t know him.

“I’ll shoot you my damn self, Garvey,” Mickelson snarled over the comm, “if you keep making all that goddamn noise.”

The sergeant stood over him, glaring with anger, Peter’s gun clenched in his hand. He leveled the gun at Peter’s face, his finger tightening, but then changed his mind. He let the gun drop to the ground.

“Strip off your rocket and get over here,” he said, walking away.

“Yes, sir,” Peter said. He hopped up, holstered his gun, and pulled a catch on his shoulder; the spent rocket clattered to the ground. He considered grabbing the rocket off the corpse but shied away. He piled his own on a small stack over by Mickelson; if they won the battle today, the rockets would be collected, refurbished, and reused. Peter joined the men who were already there. Their names were stenciled on their backs, but Peter recognized none of them.

As if reading his thoughts, the battle computer broadcasted a full-channel update. The regiment had arrived 48 percent operational, which was the optimistic way of saying that 52 percent of them were killed before they even reached the ground. Of Peter’s platoon, only Mickelson, Saul, Ramirez, and himself had survived the landing. Four of twelve. A thousand miles away, back on the commandship, that was just a figure on a spreadsheet. But down here they were men, like Peter, with families and friends who hoped and prayed to see them again. Now most of them would not, and the battle hadn’t even started.

The attack would go ahead as planned, no matter the casualties. There was no choice. The transports couldn’t land until the marines eliminated the Riel’s anti-ship defenses. If they could eliminate them. Only Command knew the odds, and they wouldn’t bother to tell anyone down here.

—   —   —

Twelve men gathered at the rendezvous point, an ad hoc platoon assembled by the battle computer from those who had survived the drop. Peter fidgeted with his pistol as men trickled in, relaxing only when Saul appeared, strolling out of the jungle as if he were arriving at a party. He moved through the men, exchanging hellos and learning names. His presence calmed the others, infecting them with his air of indestructibility.

“The good news,” Saul said, settling next to Peter, “is that we landed in the middle of the regiment. That means we’re completely safe. The bad news is that we’ve got a long walk before we get ourselves killed.”

—   —   —

Sixteen minutes after touchdown, the newly formed North-58 platoon rolled out. Their target was three and a quarter miles away, and their orders were to be there in seven minutes, so they had to hump it.

Even though this section of the jungle had been declared clear, the men stayed in formation, guns at the ready, wary of ambush. In the field, clear was a relative term. More than once, men had stumbled onto Riel encampments right in the middle of their own.

“Let the suit do the work, Garvey,” Mickelson growled. Peter’s oxygen light was glowing yellow again.

Running should be easy—he just needed to guide the artificial muscles with his own. Peter had run literally thousands of miles during Basic, but while he could remember the motions, his body seemed to have forgotten. His legs struggled against the suit, tiring him out and wasting precious air.

Thankfully, they soon reached the no-man’s land, and Mickelson motioned to slow down. “Stay low,” he warned. “The Riel see you first, you’ll never even know it.”

—   —   —

The platoon took up an arrowhead formation with the seven general infantry marines forming a V on the perimeter and the three heavy-weaponry specialists—including Saul—just behind them. As the platoon’s sniper, Peter walked to the center with Sergeant Mickelson.

The platoon crept forward, the GIs expanding and contracting to maintain their field of vision through the trees and underbrush. One of them glanced at Peter with bloodshot eyes, a side effect of Battle Heat.

Heat was a drug cocktail administered by the suit’s Life Control System to maximize a marine’s effectiveness in combat. Peter knew it only by reputation—it was never issued to snipers for fear of impairing their aim.

They arrived at their target three minutes late. There had been no resistance along the way, and when they saw what they were up against, they understood why. Who would skirmish in the jungle when they could hole up in a fortress?

—   —   —

The Riel stronghold was an oblong shard of reddish rock that towered over a wide clearing. Its rough-hewn walls tapered to an impossibly narrow base, like a massive spike balanced on its tip. A few green patches were scattered around the rock face—trees and plants that somehow found purchase. In several places sunlight glinted off crystal shields, Riel fortifications impenetrable to even the heaviest rifle in the marine arsenal.

Mickelson brought the platoon to a halt and moved to the front. His face distorted as the glass in his visor thickened and reformed, magnifying the distant rock. Peter tuned his visor to Mickelson’s to see what his sergeant saw.

Each of the crystal shields—a half dozen in all—protected a gun nest, either armed with a heavy-caliber recoiling rifle or twin machine guns. Rocket batteries were spread over the stronghold, unmanned, either sentient or operated by remote.

All these Riel had to be guarding something important, and Peter guessed it was a Delta-class heavy-impulse blaster, which was exactly the sort of antiship weapon they’d have to destroy to get back off this planet.

Mickelson tracked along a recessed walkway cut into the rock face, spotting a patrolling Gyrine.

The Gyrine was the smaller of the two Riel species. It was several feet taller than a man, but from this distance its squat body made it look short. Its black skin was dry and scaly, like the skin on a bird’s legs, and its face was pinched, with squinting eyes and the heavy jaw of a bulldog. Thick white fangs jutted up on either side of its flat nose, the effect more cartoonish than ferocious—not that Peter cared to put it to the test. This particular Gyrine had no cybernetic augmentation, which made it an officer.

“There’s your first target, Garvey,” Mickelson said; a yellow dot appeared on Peter’s visor map.

Peter unlinked from Mickelson’s video feed and crept off to find a good vantage point. Two GIs peeled off and followed him, his own personal guard.

More likely, Peter thought, their orders are to recover my rifle when I get shot.

After five minutes of scouting, Peter found a small boulder among some scrub ferns. He had been warned not to use rocks as cover, but he couldn’t remember why. Meanwhile, Mickelson berated him impatiently. Absurdly, Peter was more worried about getting bawled out than getting shot.

Peter motioned to his escorts, who took up positions on either side, far enough that they couldn’t all be killed by a single rocket. Peter clipped his pistol to his thigh, reached over his shoulder, and drew his rifle from its protective case. He unlocked the gun’s barrel, extending it from the stock until it was taller than himself, and twist-locked it into place. He popped the rubber cap from the barrel and inspected the lens. He withdrew the battery clip, checked the contacts, and shoved it back in, seating it with a jiggle. This would be a synchronized attack; there was no room for mistakes.

Peter popped the cap off the optical scope, leaned against the rock, and raised the long gun toward the Riel stronghold.

—   —   —

Peter bent his arm and locked his combat suit’s artificial muscles, making his hand a stable pivot for the gun’s barrel. He pressed his visor to the rubber cone on the back of the scope, tunneling his vision down the gun’s sights.

The Gyrine officer had moved, but Mickelson still had eyes on it. An arrow appeared on the left side of Peter’s visor, and he shifted the gun up the walkway; he then centered on the Gyrine’s chest. A second set of crosshairs appeared near the first—the battle computer’s suggestion of where to aim. The computer took into account everything it knew, from the video feed of every marine’s combat suit to the atmospheric information gathered by the satellites. Technically, the computer-generated crosshairs were the more accurate of the two, but a good sniper could outshoot the computer two to one. It was instinct, as all snipers have claimed since the invention of the rifle. But Peter wasn’t feeling any instinct, so he just split the difference between the computer’s crosshairs and his own.

The Gyrine was restless, pacing nervously, as if it could sense Peter’s gaze. No doubt it expected an attack—this operation was far from covert—but it wouldn’t know where or when. The UF satellites were flooding the planet with so much interference that a Riel couldn’t detect a dog humping its leg, much less a small platoon three thousand yards out.

The Gyrine’s black skin blended in the overhang’s shadows, making it hard to track its movements. When Peter finally settled into his target’s rhythm, he gave the trigger a light squeeze, signaling that he was ready to fire.

“About time,” Mickelson snapped. “Fire at zero.” A countdown appeared on Peter’s visor. Ten seconds.

Nine.

—   —   —

Peter would fire the first round, followed by Heavy Weaponry; their countdown was just a quarter second behind his own. Getting the first shot meant catching the enemy unaware, practically guaranteeing a kill but also making his gun the first that the Riel would register. He would draw most of the return fire.

Getting the first shot right was critical; the marines had to kill enough Riel to offset the advantage of higher ground and protective shields. And officers, like Peter’s target, were of particularly high value.

Something is wrong, Peter thought. The countdown had stopped; the number seven was frozen on his screen. He waited one second, two, but still it didn’t change.

He tried to stay focused on his target, but his eyes were drawn to the seven on his visor. He was holding his breath to steady his shot, but his lungs began to ache. He took two quick tugs of air, and then the number dropped: Six.

Peter instantly felt relieved, then foolish, no longer sure that the pause hadn’t just been his imagination. He looked back to his target, but it was gone.

Five.

Four.

The countdown raced now. Peter panned his rifle side to side, searching the empty walkway. Where is it? Did it see me? Did it run? The green, computer-generated crosshair remained where it was, aimed at nothing.

Three.

Salt stung his eyes. He blinked, trying to clear them.

Two.

His oxygen light pulsed red, the glow filling his visor.

One.

The Gyrine popped back into view—it had been bent over, hidden by the walkway’s low wall. It stretched lazily, gazed into the distance, and scratched its chin, oblivious to both Peter’s panic and the impending assault.

Peter swung the rifle toward the Gyrine but overcompensated—the slightest movement of the gun was yards at the fortress. He eased the gun back, his muscles tight, working against each other. The crosshairs found the Gyrine just as the countdown flashed zero. Peter squeezed the trigger.

—   —   —

Peter had never fired on a live target before. He closed his eyes, unable to watch the results. When he opened them a second later, the Gyrine was gone. Did I kill it?, he wondered.

“Christ-all-fucking-mighty, Garvey,” Mickelson barked, and Peter knew he had missed.

—   —   —

Peter whipped his gun around, searching for the Gyrine, but it was gone. The rock face disappeared behind a cloud of dust, pounded by the giant impulsor cannons carried by heavy weaponry. He shrunk down behind the rock; all he could do was wait for further orders.

Distant machine guns cracked and rockets whistled in close, pounding into the ground and tossing up columns of dirt. Peter listened to the bullets rattle against the rock; then they stopped. The ferns around him vaporized and a nearby tree blackened like a match. The Riel were sweeping the area with lasers.

Lasers weren’t a direct threat. Even if Peter weren’t shielded by the boulder, his suit’s ceramic coating would easily disperse the heat. But the beams would burn away his cover, and once they could see him, the Riel had plenty of other ways to kill him. Peter grew anxious just sitting there; he queried the battle computer.

“Negative targets,” it replied.

We’re in the middle of a battle, Peter thought. How can there be nothing to shoot at?

He stood up and aimed his gun at the towering rock, searching. On the very edge of the left face, he saw the top of a Gyrine’s head sticking out over a crystal shield. It wasn’t much—not enough for a kill—but it was something.

The Gyrine worked a thick-barreled, turret-mounted gun that recoiled heavily with each shot. It fired in the opposite direction, which Peter found reassuring, since it meant there was at least one other platoon involved in this assault. Peter centered his crosshairs just over the Gyrine’s head, thinking perhaps to first draw its attention by shattering the rock.

His chest was warm. Not just warm, hot. Searing. He pulled back from the scope; the boulder he was leaning against was glowing red. Peter suddenly remembered why he wasn’t supposed to use rocks as cover.

While his combat suit was immune to lasers, rocks were not. They would become superheated and explode. A melon-size rock had the destructive power of a fragmentary grenade. This boulder was a hundred times that.

Peter felt the rock tremble and crack, expanding from the heat. He might have even heard the explosion before everything went black.

[14.08.2.14::3948.1938.834.2D]

A white light clicked on—bright, painful. Peter blinked, his eyelids scratching over the crust that coated his eyeballs. His head was fuzzy, and the room’s silence pressed against his ears. He heard footsteps—soft and light-footed—padding toward him. A pink blur slid into the light. Peter blinked again and saw a woman in a green surgical mask. She was leaning over him; he was lying down.

“There you are,” she said. Peter couldn’t place her accent. She wore a white smock with short sleeves that jutted off her shoulders like little wings, leaving her arms bare. The uniform was cut slim, but not as slim as she was. It dangled loosely over her body. Her dark brown hair was pulled tight, and a ponytail hung in a net behind her head. Gunmetal eyes inspected him from over the mask, faint wrinkles radiating from their corners.

The nurse settled onto a stool and raised a long finger, its nail trimmed short, with a dark stain under the tip that looked like dried blood. “Can you see this?” she asked. Peter nodded. “Follow it, please.”

Peter followed the finger up and down, left and right. The woman ignored him, watching the video monitor that hung over his head.

“How many letters in the alphabet?” she asked.

“Twenty-six,” Peter said.

“Recite them, please.”

Peter did, feeling silly.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” she asked.

“What?” Peter asked, confused.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” the woman repeated impatiently.

Peter thought back. First he was crawling through the mud on his elbows. Then he was being thrown from a ship into the black nothing of space. And then he was free-falling through a white cloud, his stomach tight and sore. And finally, he stood at attention with the rest of his platoon. They wore full dress, and a general spoke on a distant stage.

“Basic Training,” Peter said. “Graduation.”

“Good,” the woman said. She tapped around her monitor. “Anything else?”

There was something else, the memory of a memory. It felt important, but his efforts to remember it only pushed it farther away. His head ached from the effort, and he felt a sharp pain, like a hundred needles pricking his skull.

“No,” he said. He tried to rub his head but found he was strapped to the bed.

“Easy, kid,” the woman said, taking his wrist. “Don’t rush.” Her hand was searing hot; it burned his skin.

She flicked a finger at the crook of his arm, then dug her thumb in. A vein swelled with blood. The woman smiled warmly, raising a long syringe of oily liquid.

She slipped it in with practiced ease.

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RATS!

...is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rats! is copyright © 2014 by Brett James. It is free to distribute in whole, but not in part. All other rights reserved. Published at Smashwords

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My thanks to Jenna Kamp, Nicholas Sher, Bill Loeb, Ed Overton, Jeremy Roth, Skunk, Donna Bell, Danielle Hlatky, Jennifer Wilkin, Pablo Morales, and Robin Frohardt, all of whom kept this story from sucking eggs.

http://brettjames.com

print edition ISBN: 978-0-9850864-4-2
Published at Smashwords.