Voices of the Void by Leitzen Patrick

Author:Leitzen, Patrick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-09T00:00:00+00:00

Like every trooper claimed by the jungle, we left him where he lay. His identification cards were taken by a squadmate, along with a genetic sample. His team leader secured his weapon, and the patrol went on as the smoldering remains of what had only recently been a man were reclaimed by the fungus around him.

I am glad I bore no witness to whatever remained of the boy’s chest cavity after that acid wrought its wrath. I felt no guilt for his passing, at the time; only the relief magnified by recalling that I had checked the seals on my own body armor. Though my arms and legs were still exposed, I wouldn’t be falling victim to an acidic demise. Extremities could always be regenerated in an orbital lab. Survivor’s guilt could wait for another day, or even better, another planet.

As my mind rose away from jungles and fungus and death, I lost track of time. By the time we stopped to make camp, I was certain we’d been walking a full nine hours—half a day on Anz. There was no sense patrolling during the daylight hours, so we took shifts sleeping and watching, sleeping and watching, on and off until the scant daylight that managed to make it through the black canopy started fading to red. I shouldn’t have been able to sleep or eat—no sane man could have—but sleep took me like an eager lover between my assigned sentry shifts. Nobody remained quite within the technical parameters of sanity if they spent much time on Anz, especially if they spent any time at all in the jungle.

As the sun set, so we rose again, twenty-nine of us now.

We were twenty-seven troopers strong by the time we rested again: A microfusion grenade dropped from somewhere distant overhead landed directly between First and Second Squad, incinerating the furthest right and left members of each element, respectively. Of these, there was little left to mourn, and we took only their identification chits for solemn remembrance.

By daybreak, we had reached the outskirts of our target: a vast Anzi clearing, nearly a mile in diameter, surrounding a fortified village. We fanned out in a cautious semicircle, no trooper closer than five yards from where the edge of the jungle abruptly ended, and began our initial duty of observation.

The village was a typical instance of Anzi engineering: about four hundred yards from the woodline, the scarlet lichen suddenly veered upward ninety degrees from the ground, forming a natural encircling wall nearly two yards tall. The internal structures seemed to be a mishmash of modular components from a dismembered, pre-Coalition starship; all in all, the village probably could have housed 3,000 Anzi, though its actual population had probably dwindled to a tenth of that since the start of the war.

“Y’ever wonder how they make the lichen bend to their will?” the hushed voice of a trooper came across the squad comms.

Probably not far off from Syndicate bioengineering, I thought, rolling my eyes in anticipation of whatever outlandish rumor was about to be spouted.

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