by M. D. Cooper
Her voice was still echoing off the walls when everyone split in several directions. Minx, Kim and Stasia were handing out rifles and light armored vests as quickly as possible. The three rear guard mechs were still showing a clear passageway for the return trip, but that could change at a moment’s notice. Captain Fell’s second-in-command, Lieutenant Briggs, came running up with a weapon and a vest for his team leader.
Glancing around, Adira noticed that only five of Fell’s Vanguard crewmates remained. Placing her hand on his shoulder, she gave it a squeeze.
“Sorry for those you lost...I know how much your team means to you,” she said softly.
She wanted to apologize for sending him to protect the Hope in the first place. However, they both knew that she would do it again in a heartbeat. They were warriors, meant to protect the innocent.
Fell gave her a gentle smile. “I know my people died for a mission they believed in. Now let’s get this show on the road. I will split Vanguard between the two flanks, since your dragons can’t cover the sides.”
Adira gave him a nod. “Most of us will dismount, but I am going to send Trina, Locke, and their dragons to help cover Vargas and Barrow. That will leave us with five dragons and five SMIs. If we can’t take out a battalion of Niets with that...well, we might as well hang up our guns.”
The whole time that they had been reuniting with the Hope’s crew, Arni had been giving her running updates about the other two battles. Major Bella’s ground force had gotten a little aggressive in the initial assault, and the Niets were experiencing some widespread power and life support issues that had them even more off their game. Bella’s force had also arrived at their objective, but Arni reported that the Nietzscheans had begun to kill some of the prisoners when the soldiers were closing in.
Needless to say, the Niets had been eliminated with extreme prejudice.
Meanwhile, the egress point at the dock hadn’t met with any major resistance, and the Trenton and the Beowulf had obliterated most of the small docks with missiles and rails. There had been five casualties in Major Bella’s group thus far, and Adira could only hope that the number would remain low. That hope was quickly squashed, however, when Arni chimed in again.
Adira clenched her jaw in frustration. Sliding her helmet back on her head, it took her a second to get used to the three hundred and sixty degree view.
Pulling her rifle over her shoulder, Adira marched quickly toward the door, updating her local battle net with the new threat. Within moments, they were moving out. Prentis’s massive bulk was leading the way.
SkyScreams weren’t meant for indoor use, much less walking. Even the fifteen-meter ceilings felt tight for the giant mechs, and Adira could tell that it was grating on him to be grounded like he was. He was actively scanning for threats, with Kim and Stasia walking on his right side, and Adira on his left.
Every intersection was a threat, and the whole group was tense as they moved down the hall.
She was hoping to catch the Niets in a pinch between the groups. His response, however, was a few seconds in coming.
Adira cursed quietly.
Switching over to Vargas, she asked him the same question.
Before anyone could reply, the closed shop to the left side of the group exploded outward as railshots exited. Screams filled the air, and Maggie, who had been the mech dragon behind the group, bellowed and blasted a prolonged electron beam into the shop, followed by several bursts from her chaingun.
Adira barely registered the ambush at the front being sprung, as Prentis and her SMIs opened fire from their position at the barricades. She was focused on the several small bodies down on the ground. Never again to laugh, never again to play. The anguished cries of their parents somehow reaching her ears, despite the gunfire around them. Adira felt her blood run cold, and then hot. Her anger, so much anger from the last few years of warfare and atrocities, finally coming to a head.
Her inner demon broke its chain. With a spin on her left leg, she was sprinting toward the Nietzschean front line. It only took seconds for her to reach her blistering top speed. Almost without thinking, she swung her rifle onto its maglock and drew her new melee weapon from its spinal mount. With a guttural roar, her warhammer sparked to life. Its electrically charged exterior, along with its grav driven kinetic enhancers, made it a weapon of brute force and destruction, and she would bathe her hammer in the blood of these child-killers.
Vaguely, she heard Fell and Arni yelling at her; she ignored them. Her rear vision clocked Stasia and Kim joining her in a charge, their rifles and GNRs sending blasts to either side of Adira. With a leap, she cleared the left side barrier.
A heavy-armor Niet tried to turn his railgun toward her, but her hammer was already on its decent. The micro-grav drive assisted the downward kinetic force. The result was devastating. His helmet crushed like it was made of tin, and her hammer continued into his torso. Both of the enemy’s legs saw their servos fail, and the now lifeless husk hit its knees with a sickening crunch.
The Niets to either side, covered in liquified brain matter, barely had time to gasp before Adira tore her hammer free and plowed into the thickest group of enemies. Blue lightning arced between her weapon and its targets.
Between crushing blows from her hammer and kinetic rounds from her GNR, the enemy fell before Adira’s onslaught. Her anger was consuming, but her battlefield clarity was flawless. Sidestepping blows and parrying strikes, she almost felt as if the Niets were moving in slow motion. She realized that she had been swearing and screaming as she fought, and her demonic voice, paired with her gruesome visage, was causing as much havoc as her weapons. After two more heavy armor units were dismantled in a flurry of blows, the remaining light armor Nietzscheans turned and fled back down the corridor.
Adira dropped prone just in time for the angry dragon to send a withering electron blast into the backs of the fleeing Niets. They cooked in their armor as he roared in anger. The roar sounded as if it was echoing, before she realized that two other dragon mechs were doing the same on the opposite side of the barricade.
Jumping to her feet, she started walking back down the side corridor to the main concourse, absently noticing the rivulets of blood flowing onto the floor. Her hamm
er was coated in the same. Sergeant Vargas’s tag appeared on her HUD, and the recon mech and a four-man fireteam turned the corner.
They stopped dead in their tracks, seemingly stunned at the sight of the massacre before them. There were thirty Niets in light armor lying dead on the deck. Another six in heavy armor were in various shapes of crushed metal.
Vargas seemed to mentally clear his throat before addressing her.
Adira took a deep breath, and her hand tightened again on her warhammer.
Reading the situation in a fraction of a second, Vargas was already spinning around and barking orders on their battle net. In less than a minute, all noncombatants and non-mech fighters were loaded up, the lightly armored fighters encircled protectively around the vulnerable people in the middle. The mechs would sprint beside the vehicle, providing another buffer against ambush.
As Adira walked back to the head of the column, she saw Fell give her a nod as he helped lift a child onto the transport. The carbon scoring on his chestpiece, and his torn and bloody right shoulder showed that he had been part of the firefight with the opposite barrier.
With a small shake of her head, she replied,
After a short pause, a drone shot forward and hovered a few meters away from Adira. Arni sounded subdued, and Adira imagined that the past few minutes had been eye-opening for her.
Adira took in a growling breath and then launched into her message.
“Nietzscheans of Ramstein. You have chosen to act like animals. You shoot unarmed prisoners. You target innocent children. Very well. The choice is made. Your lives are forfeit. MY DEMONS! NO QUARTER! HARVEST THEIR SOULS!” she finished in a grating shout while simultaneously sparking her warhammer.
Out of her prehipheral vision, Adira could see herself in all the monitors and advertising boards lining the concourse. Her armor was covered in blood, it dripped from her horns, and her eyes were glowing green. She looked like a vengeful goddess of war. If this image wasn’t going to give the Niets nightmares, then nothing would.
As the vid cut off, there was a roaring battle cry from the mechs and crew all around her. That same roar was echoed across the battle nets across the base.
Even as Adira was mounting Prentis to lead the escape, she noticed that the rear of Major Bella’s force, which had been covering the mass escape of the refugees, had sent fifteen mechs and fifty soldiers in a blistering counterattack that smashed into the pursuing Niets like a steel tsunami.
Arni was also watching and couldn’t help but comment.
Adira felt a moment of relief that Arni was joking with her. She had been afraid that, after her display of vicious fighting, Arni would be afraid of her.
With a quirk of a smile over the Link, she said,
Arni responded with a mental groan.
Adira could feel her mouth curl into a tight smile.
Arni took that moment to jump in.
Adira snorted in reply.
As they finished speaking, the dock came into view. Within seconds, the convoy had passed the outer perimeter, with Trina, Locke, and their partnered dragons standing sentinel on either side of the concourse. Another check on Major Bella’s progress showed that they would be at the docks within minutes. The massive bulk of the Beowulf was now inside the captured bay, and lines of crew and medical staff were hunkered down by the bay doors, ready to evacuate the refugees and the crew of the Hope.
Dismounting Prentis, Adira reached up and patted his thick, metallic neck.
Adira nodded her head.
After receiving a nod of understanding from the dragon, she strode off across the massive bay to link up with the rest of Second Platoon. First they would evacuate. Then they would plan. She wanted to know about this other mech force. Would they be willing to fight alongside the Demons? Because she wasn’t just turning over her people to anyone. They were her Demons, and she would battle any enemy all the way to the Core to defend them from harm.
As she walked toward the ramp of the transport, Fell materialized at her side, and she noticed that the now four remaining members of the Vanguard were flanking them like bodyguards.
Oh crap, she thought. If I have bodyguards, how am I supposed to get any fighting done?
As Fell gave her a wink, she felt a warmth spread through her chest.
On the other hand. Having one particular bodyguard around wouldn’t be too bad. Not too bad at all.
A NEW DIRECTION
STELLAR DATE: 10.12.8949
LOCATION: Former Nietzschean Empire Destroyer, Trenton
REGION: Sepe System (Independent)
The three large vessels dropped out of the dark layer just outside of the system’s outer beacons. Two warships and a massive hospital ship drifted into the edges of the system. Beacons were queried, news bulletins were scanned, and ten short hours later, the ships accelerated as one unit and made a quick transition out of the system.
Their vector appeared to have them heading for the fringe of Nietzschean space. The overworked Sepian scan officer at the system’s edge barely noted their arrival and departure, as he was overwhelmed with trying to direct vessels engaged in the clearing of the remaining Nietzschean warship hulls after the recent battle.
To be continued?
ABOUT JAMES R. HAUBENREICH
James Haubenreich lives in central Kentucky with his wife and two children. He is a long-time lover of science fiction and fantasy. When he isn’t working as a nurse in the ICU, or taking the kids to activities, he probably has his nose in a book. As a Marine Corps infantry veteran and former police officer, James enjoys action-filled stories and hopes to write in a way that reflects his interests.