Free Alien Landscapes 2 by Kevin J. Anderson

brusque, nodding gruffly. “You’ll mend,” he said.
    “Thank you for saving me,” Barto answered. It was the closest thing they’d had to a conversation in a long time.
    “It’s my duty. I await the day when you can fight with us again.” He marched out, and the others followed him. Barto lay back and attempted to sleep, to regain his strength. Through sheer force of will, he growled at his cells and tissues to work harder, to knit the injuries and restore him to full health. . . .
    Day after day, lying in the infirmary and waiting proved far more difficult than any combat situation Barto had ever encountered. Finally, after a maddening week of intensive recuperation, directed therapy aided by medical technology and powerful drugs, he was released from his hospital prison and sent back to the front.
    Where he belonged.
    #
    The battlefield screamed with pain and destruction, explosions, fire, and death—but to Barto, after being so long in the sheltered quiet of the infirmary, the tumult was a shout of exuberance. He was glad to be here.
    The soldiers raced across the ground, each in his own squad position, weapons drawn. They had already driven back the Enemy, and now the fire of laser-lances grew even thicker around them as the others became desperate. They pressed ahead, deeper into enemy territory than they had ever gone before.
    Their helmet locators for sonic mines and shrapnel grenades buzzed constantly, but the reptilian part of Barto’s brain reacted without volition, hardwired into fighting and killing. He dodged and weaved, keeping himself alive.
    His point-man Arviq jogged close beside him, and Barto extended his peripheral vision behind the dark visor to enfold his comrade into an invisible protective sphere. He would assist his partner if he got into trouble—not out of any sense of payback or obligation, but because it was an automatic response, his own assignment. He would have done the same for any other soldier, any member of his squad—anyone but the Enemy.
    Precision-guided mortars scribed parabolas through the air and exploded close to any concentration of soldiers who did not display the proper transponders. Amidst screams and thunder, a massive triple detonation wiped out over half of Barto’s squad, but the others did not fall back, did not even pause. They drove onward, continued the push. The fallen comrades would be taken care of somehow, though no one knew how the bloodhounds would ever make it this deep into Enemy-held territory.
    This far behind the main battle lines, the Enemy numbers themselves were dwindling, and Barto fired and fired again. The laser-lance thrummed in his gauntleted hands, skewering a distant man’s chestplate and leaving a smoking hole.
    But it wasn’t really a man, after all. It was the Enemy.
    The chase continued, and the survivors of Barto’s squad ran in the direction of what must have been Enemy HQ. In his dry, dusty mouth he could taste the sweet honey of victory.
    But suddenly, unexpectedly, they triggered a row of booby-traps that did not appear on their helmet sensors. Camouflaged catapults popped up, spraying near-invisible clouds of netting, monofilament webs as insubstantial as smoke but sharper than the most deadly razor.
    The flying webwork engulfed four soldiers near him, and they fell into neatly butchered pieces. But oddly enough, so did three of the Enemy men rushing in retreat, as if they themselves hadn’t known of these defenses. But their own visor sensors must have been keyed to boobytraps they themselves had planted. . . .
    Though the questions astonished him, Barto did not pause. His job was not to analyze. Paraplegic computer tactitions and the invisible battlefield commanders did all that work. The voices in his helmet told him to push forward, and so he pushed forward.
    Arviq ran beside him, still firing his laser-lance—and numbly Barto realized that most of the other soldiers were dead. His squad had been decimated . . . but