The Defense of Provenia: A Military Sci-Fi Series (The Unity Wars Book 2)

by Peter Nealen

  “I am Knight Companion Kan Tur, Corporal Gaumarus Pell,” the Knight said. Despite the inflectionless tone of the translator, the courteous words suggested that this was the same scarred Knight he’d met before. “And while we are still trying to make contact with anyone else, it appears that we few might be the only survivors of the Battle of the Monoyan Plain.”

  Gaumarus just stared at him. That couldn’t be possible. An entire Corps… “Are you sure?” he asked. He had to repeat the question, as the wind of their rapid passage through the canyon snatched his nearly-whispered words away, to be lost in the noise of the fans and the echoes off the stone walls.

  But the Knight nodded. “As sure as I can be, given what little comm traffic I have been able to send and receive,” he said. “There is still a detachment of the Order at Cators. But I have been unable to contact any of the others who joined us back there on the Monoyan Plain.”

  If that flat, mechanical voice could get grimmer, it did. “Given what we saw on the way out, I doubt that any of your forces fared better. Any survivors who were unable to get clear with us will doubtless be hunted down and captured or killed by the M’tait in short order.”

  “What do we do, then?” Gaumarus asked, suddenly realizing what it meant that he was the senior Provenian PDF noncom present. He thought back to Verlot, shuddering and bleeding, and wished for the first time that the man was alive, breathing, and right there with them. Verlot would have known what to do.

  “You know this country better than we do,” Kan Tur said. “The best hope we have is to get to Cators. The M’tait have besieged the city, but there is still a detachment of Knights there. Unfortunately, as near as we can tell, there are thousands of M’tait between here and Cators. They are swarming off the Monoyan Plain, moving far more quickly than we had imagined they could.”

  Gaumarus nodded jerkily. Of course. The M’tait were the stuff of galactic nightmares for a reason. He briefly thought of how he had dismissed the stories as mere exaggerated campfire tales with a shudder. “Where are we?”

  Kan Tur drew a small device out of an equipment pouch at his belt and flipped it open. A grainy holo appeared in the air; Gaumarus blinked at it. He’d thought a tank was necessary for a full hologram.

  The holo depicted a three-dimensional map of the wrinkled hills above the Monoyan Plain. They were currently running down a canyon that led into the maze of similar passages back in the ridges above where the Corps had staged for the disastrous attack on the Plain.

  Unfortunately, from what he could see, they were going in precisely the wrong direction to get to Cators. The towering, knife-edged Boleus Ridge was already between the skimmer and that city. And even Gaumarus didn’t think the skimmer could make it over that.

  Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff was suddenly at his side, though he could have sworn that the scout had been several bodies away a moment ago, and that the troop compartment had been too packed to change positions at all. [What is happening?] the chief scout signed.

  [We are looking for a way to get to Cators,] Gaumarus replied. [But there are too many M’tait in the way.] He looked at Kan Tur.

  “Have we escaped the M’tait?” he asked.

  But the Knight shook his helmeted head grimly. “There are still at least ten heavies and an unknown number of slayers behind us,” he replied. “We are managing to keep our distance, but they have not slowed either.”

  Which meant that as soon as they tried to turn toward Cators, they could be cut off more quickly. And given the blurred horror of their escape so far, they would not last long.

  He translated what Kan Tur had said for Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff, and the scout seemed to ponder it for a moment. [There is another way,] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff signed. He pointed a clawed hand at part of the map ahead of the skimmer’s glowing dot. [If we continue down this branch canyon, it leads to a high pass. On the other side, there is a great rift valley that leads straight toward the Badlands. We could go there.]

  Gaumarus stared at the map for a moment, his mouth going dry again. The Badlands and the mountain tribes who lived there had been a far more immediate fear than the M’tait for his entire life. But he looked up at the other indig in the troop compartment, noting that all of them, except for Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff, were quite obviously mountain tribesmen.

  For that matter, his eyes turned to the heavy-caliber repeater in Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff’s hand. There were questions starting to rumble at the back of his mind, but he realized that right then and there was hardly the time or the place.

  “What did he say?” Kan Tur asked.

  Gaumarus told him, unable to keep his own trepidation from his voice. He could feel the Knight’s eyes on him. But Kan Tur simply looked around the troop compartment at the assembled Provenians and indig, and said, “Then we will go that way.”

  10

  Night was falling, more quickly than Gaumarus had expected. He’d clearly lost track of time, which given that he’d been knocked unconscious once when the halftrack had been hit, and very nearly again in the skimmer, shouldn’t have surprised him. They were getting higher, and the gract trees were giving way to the taller, more massive castat trees and their smaller enflit cousins. The Plain was stretching out behind them, cast into shadow by the pall of smoke and dust still hanging in the air over the distant spikes of the Hunterships.

  All it would take would be one storm, and the smoke and dust would be gone. Leaving nothing but the wreckage and the corpses to show that the greatest disaster in Provenian history had happened there.

  At least, the greatest disaster in Provenian history so far, he reminded himself with a shiver. The M’tait were still on the planet. It could always get worse.

  The Provenians had always looked down on the Gdanese who had come as refugees. Now, Gaumarus had started to think that the Gdanese might have understated what their world had been through, just a little.

  The skimmer hadn’t slowed down on the way up the canyon; the dry riverbed had been wide enough and flat enough to allow them to maintain their lead over the pursuing M’tait. But as they got higher and the terrain got more difficult, they were slowing down. Not by a lot, but by enough.

  “I can’t see them,” Gaumarus murmured, trying to peer back through the dust cloud behind the skimmer.

  “They are there,” Kan Tur said grimly, his faceplate turned toward their rear. His helmet’s sensors must have been able to penetrate the dust. “And they are starting to gain. The heavies especially. They are beginning to leave the slayers behind.”

  “Is that what they’re called?” Gaumarus asked.

  “In the records,” Kan Tur’s flat, translated voice answered. He looked down at Gaumarus. “This is the first time I have fought them, as well.”

  One of the Knights spoke in their own language. Kan Tur asked a question and got a sharp reply in return. Gaumarus watched the red-armored men, their armor rather more scarred and battered than it had been. Kan Tur didn’t seem happy about something, but now that he really paid attention, Gaumarus could see that he wasn’t in command. The one who had spoken was.

  “What is it?” Gaumarus asked.

  “Do not worry about it, Provenian,” the other Knight said flatly. “Simply keep your eyes and your weapon outboard.”

  Gaumarus suddenly felt a flash of resentment. Weren’t these super-competent Knights, wielding tech far in advance of the poorer Provenians, also running from the M’tait along with them?

  “We have picked up a transmission from another group of survivors,” Kan Tur told him quietly. “Morav Dun has decided that we will rendezvous with them.”

  “While the M’tait are still chasing us?” Gaumarus asked. He had tried to keep his voice down, so as not to be heard over the still-howling fans, but several of the closer Provenians in the troop compartment turned and stared at the two of them, eyes widening.

  Kan Tur only looked back, through the dust. “He believes that more numbers and firepower
can only help.”

  Not if we get caught first. Gaumarus followed the Knight’s gaze, feeling the icy grip of fear clenching his insides. He couldn’t see the M’tait back there, but he could imagine them. The heavies, whirling and threshing their way across the ground, the swarms of “slayers” loping after them like some kind of huge, predatory insects.

  “We can’t make a rendezvous while they’re still following us,” Gaumarus said, suddenly slightly astounded and a little abashed at the words coming out of his mouth. Kan Tur turned to look at him, and he almost felt like shrinking back against the coaming. But he held his ground. He’d said the words, and now that they’d been said, he knew he was right.

  “Indeed,” Kan Tur said in reply. His own amplified, mechanically translated voice seemed quieter, as if he’d lowered the volume of his external speakers. Possibly because he didn’t want his commander hearing him contradict the plan in front of a Provenian militiaman.

  But then the Knight was looking up and around at the hills above them. Gaumarus couldn’t be sure, but he thought that the other man looked pensive, as if he was looking for something. And thinking.

  “Xanar Dak,” Kan Tur called quietly. Another of the Knights, only a couple of bodies away, turned, looking over a Provenian militiaman who had slumped as far down in the troop compartment as he could, his helmeted head bowed almost between his knees.

  For a moment, there was no sound, but Gaumarus thought that somehow the two men were still talking. Did they have some kind of internal comm system, that couldn’t be heard outside their helmets? He had to assume so, as the Knight named Xanar Dak nodded.

  After a moment, the other Knight, the one who had to be Morav Dun, turned and looked back from his place near the base of the turret. He said something curtly in the Knights’ own language, then turned back forward.

  Gaumarus didn’t know what exactly had just transpired, but he was learning to read the Knights’ body language well enough, even through their armor, to see that Kan Tur was not happy. “We are going to go to the rendezvous anyway,” he told Gaumarus. “Morav Dun is confident that our heavy powerguns can hold the enemy back long enough.”

  [What is happening?] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff asked Gaumarus.

  Gaumarus translated what Kan Tur had told him. As always, the indig were unreadable, but several of the mountain tribesmen seemed to get more agitated.

  [Where is the meeting place?] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff asked. When Gaumarus told him, he began to sign rapidly.

  “What is it?” Kan Tur asked.

  “Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff knows the place where we are supposed to meet the other survivors,” Gaumarus told him. “He says it is a bad place to meet; he says it is a trap.”

  “The M’tait have never used human transmissions to bait traps before,” Xanar Dak said.

  “He doesn’t mean that the M’tait set the trap,” Gaumarus explained, shaking his head. “He means that the terrain is bad, that if we go in there, we can too easily be cut off. He says…” he paused and signed to Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff, who quickly signed back. “I think he’s saying that it is a box canyon. There is only one way in or out.”

  “Which would make it defensible in the worst-case scenario,” Morav Dun said loudly. “A single choke point can be held for a very long time. Now, Knight Companion Kan Tur, are you quite finished second-guessing your superior’s commands?”

  Kan Tur stared stiffly at Morav Dun, then nodded curtly. He said nothing.

  Gaumarus stared at Morav Dun for a moment, but the Knight didn’t even seem to notice that he was there.

  He suddenly wondered what Sergeant Verlot would have said about that. The fact that Morav Dun had said that with his translator on had been a deliberate and calculated humiliation.

  He could imagine what Verlot would have said. It would not have been complimentary, either about Morav Dun’s command style or his manhood.

  But there was nothing he could do about it, and apparently nothing that either Kan Tur or Xanar Dak could do about it either. And none of the other Knights seemed interested in getting involved in the conversation. Most of them were either ignoring it altogether or looking back at Kan Tur, as if wondering what was wrong with him.

  Of course, that might have just been Gaumarus’s imagination. He couldn’t be sure, not through those faceless helms and blank vision slits.

  Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff did not comment. That only confirmed to Gaumarus what he had long suspected; that the scouts understood a great deal more Oxidanese than the Provenians understood their language. They ordinarily stuck to the sign language out of habit and convenience, but he wondered how many “private” conversations the scouts had listened to and understood.

  And given the presence of the mountain tribesmen, how much information might have been passed to them.

  The skimmer turned aside from the main valley, heading up another draw that led toward a saddle several hundred meters above them. As the wind shifted and they moved away from the riverbed, Gaumarus looked back, the dust momentarily clearing.

  He almost wished he hadn’t. They could see the M’tait clearly now, even in the dying light of evening, a mass of movement squirming and writhing up the valley behind them.

  They were close enough that he wondered why they hadn’t started shooting yet. Maybe, for whatever inscrutable alien reason, they had decided they wanted the skimmer intact and its occupants alive. Or mostly alive. With the M’tait, there was no telling.

  And while he could see little in the way of individual slayers or heavies, he could see the movement as they shifted uphill, toward the ridgeline above them, moving to cross their path at the saddle. And they were moving fast.

  He tapped Kan Tur on the shoulder pauldron, unsure how light a touch the Knight could really feel, but he got a nod in return. Kan Tur saw them, too.

  Morav Dun looked back, then up toward the ridgeline. He said something to the driver, and the fans’ pitch got even higher, turning from a howl to a scream. The skimmer surged forward, blasting more dust and rocks behind its skirts.

  It was a race.

  And it was a race that Gaumarus realized might already be lost. They had no way of knowing what was on the other side of the saddle.

  The skimmer roared up the draw, the skirts skipping off rocks and logs with painful jars and deafening bangs and the shrieks of metal scraping on rock. Several times, as the terrain got worse, he was sure that they were going to go over too wide a depression or gap between rocks, and that the ground effect bubble would lose integrity, the skirts spilling too much air and grounding them.

  He didn’t need to be told that death would follow soon thereafter.

  He’d expected the fear to come back, once they’d gotten away from the battlefield and he’d had some time to come down from the combat adrenaline spike. But he still felt strangely detached, watching the M’tait with trepidation but nothing quite like the terror of before. He knew that death could be waiting for him in just the next few minutes. But he’d already seen far too much death that day. It had become a fact of life.

  He wondered if his grandfather had felt this way, fighting the mountain tribes all those years ago.

  The draw was getting narrower and rockier, the closer they got to the saddle. The M’tait were still surging up the ridgeline, visible only as brief glimpses of movement between the massive, sprawling branches of the castat trees. The forest seemed to be too thick for them to shoot through, but Gaumarus suddenly wondered just how straight a shot those borers really needed.

  The skimmer glanced off a boulder and almost threw two of the indig and a Provenian soldier out of the troop compartment. Then they were in the saddle, the crest of the ridgeline only a few dozen meters above on either side, driving hard for the next valley.

  That draw was considerably narrower and more choked with vegetation than the dry riverbed they had been driving through. Which, Gaumarus realized, might be an advantage when it came to conce
alment, but would only slow the skimmer down.

  He doubted that the M’tait would be slowed much at all.

  As the skimmer continued down the slope toward the bottom of the draw, however, Gaumarus began to see just how skilled the driver really was. He wove between the smaller enflit trees and bushes without bleeding any more speed than necessary, though there were several more close calls, as the skirts banged off a tree or a boulder. The slope was hardly smooth, and only the skimmer’s sheer raw power kept it from grounding out. Skimmers were not vehicles normally meant for mountainous terrain.

  He craned his neck to try to see the M’tait coming after them. He might have seen the frantic movement of more of the heavies through the trees, but visibility in that heavily forested draw was limited to less than a hundred meters.

  Then they were heading back up the slope, the fans laboring and screaming. And the first M’tait flyer that Gaumarus had ever seen went overhead.

  It was moving fast. He caught only the fastest glimpse of it as it went by with a faint and spine-chilling scream. But it had looked like a smaller version of a Huntership, only with additional dark spines jutting from its stern, swept forward like thin wings. Two more followed it.

  Gaumarus looked up at the flyers and then at Kan Tur. The Knight was also watching them, saying nothing. The other Knights and Provenians had also looked up, but there was no other reaction. Gaumarus wondered if that meant that the rest had simply become as overwhelmed as he felt.

  [We should go to ground and hide,] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff signed to him. [The flyers will guide our pursuers to us.]

  But when Gaumarus translated the scout’s advice, Morav Dun cut him off. “We are not some primitive abos hiding from the machines in the sky, Provenian,” he said. “Doubtless they hope that we will do just that, giving them time to close the gap between us. We will not give them that time. We will continue.”

  Gaumarus looked at Kan Tur, but the Knight said nothing. He subsided.