“Movement on the east side,” Taia said, calling up the video feed from the turret’s optics onto his HUD.
Nolan tensed, every sense on full alert, hands tightening around his rifle. Motion flickered in the left-hand corner of the camera feed. The Black Crows approached the cabin from the northeast, just as he’d predicted. They advanced with caution, almost hesitantly, using the hill and trees for cover and avoiding the line of sight with any windows. Not just a ten-man team, as Nolan had anticipated. The enemy force now numbered over thirty, all armed with heavy IAF-grade assault rifles.
Damn it! Nolan’s heart sank. Reinforcements got here bloody fast.
“Anything on the other sides?” he asked.
“Negative,” Taia said.
Nolan grunted acknowledgement. The presence of the anti-personnel mines and the sudden comms silence of the southern team had deterred the Black Crows from sending more men around that way—or at least forced them to make a slower approach.
That left only the thirty-man team coming from the northeast. They’d likely split up to hit both the northern front door and eastern back door simultaneously. Probably packing breaching charges, he decided. The teams would stack up against the walls of the cabin as one of their number planted, then detonate and rush in.
But those few seconds of waiting were all Nolan needed.
“On my signal,” he said, rising from behind the barricades and moving into the kitchen. He crouched just within sight of the back door and locked his eyes on the tiny glass half-window. A mental command to Taia set his helmet’s auditory receptors onto maximum sensitivity, and he strained to hear even the slightest sound. This next part of his plan relied on the Black Crows being competent enough to synchronize their attacks.
There! The faint sound of moving armed men—creaking straps, clicking metal buckles, and the quiet shuff of heavy boots on the grass—reached him. His heart hammered against his ribs and his hands tightened instinctively around his rifle. He had to time this just right.
He called up the footage from the east-side turret camera, but it was pointed in the wrong direction. Closing his eyes, Nolan listened and played it out in his mind: The Black Crows moving in a tight, straight line, advancing along the eastern side of the house toward the door, all eyes fixed on the motionless turret. Nervous tension stiffening their spines, sweat dripping down their faces, adrenaline coursing in their veins as they stacked up against the wall.
The moment the sound of the advance stopped, Nolan began the count.
Five, four, three, two, one.
“Now!” he shouted.
The video feed from both turrets’ optics sprang to life on his helmet, giving him a clear view of the carnage that ensued. The guns’ spinning barrels swiveled toward the armed contractors, locking onto the two Black Crows kneeling to plant the charges against the eastern and northern doors. A loud, hissing hum echoed from beyond the doorway, then everything became a blinding mess of light as the turrets opened fire.
The Black Crows never stood a chance. The M964 Minis spat hundreds of blaster bolts that tore into the contractors with overwhelming force. A single low-caliber bolt couldn’t hope to punch through their armor, but at six thousand rounds per minute, the machine guns shredded the Black Crows like an Echoblade through tissue paper. The contractors kneeling to plant the breaching charge exploded in a spray of blood as they caught the opening burst full in the head and chest. The next two in line seemed to disintegrate a heartbeat later, but Taia was far from done. Within just five seconds, her raking fire had shredded both fifteen-man teams along the northern and eastern sides of the house. Not a single contractor remained alive by the time the rotating barrels of the M964 Minis slowed to a stop fifteen seconds later.
Nolan had seen men slaughtered in battle before. Far too many times to count. It never got easier, even when it was the enemy. Seeing the blood spattering the side of the cabin and the shredded corpses sprawled on the crimson-soaked ground brought revulsion welling up within him. That was butchery on a level that no soldier should ever find acceptable or comfortable.
He banished the video feeds with a mental command and moved toward the door at the rear of the kitchen. He pulled it open just long enough to deactivate and remove the three breaching charges the Black Crows had planted. Without a glance at the soupy mess of horror splattered across the cabin’s wall, he retreated back inside and slammed the door shut.
It took him two minutes to repeat the process on the cabin’s northern door. That left him with six explosives more than he’d had before. He’d waited until the charges were planted before opening fire for precisely this reason. The Black Crows had just given him a leg up.
Nolan didn’t bother planting the charges inside the doors—they’d do him no good there, as the Black Crows would be rethinking their breach plan now. Instead, he set them next to the door that led down into the basement.
“How are Jared and Roz?” Nolan asked Jadis over comms. Hearing her voice would help banish the images of carnage from his mind—or so he hoped.
“They’re fine,” Jadis said. “Roz is being very, very brave, aren’t you, love?”
“Yes,” came Roz’s voice over the comms, still tearful but echoing with a generous helping of her mother’s courage.
“Jared’s still unconscious. Or maybe sleeping. I can’t tell. He’s…” She trailed off and let out a breath.
Nolan heard the tension in her words. “How are you?”
“Nolan, this isn’t the time—“
“Just answer the question, Jadis,” he said gently. “I know this is way more than you bargained for. All of this mess…” He let out a breath. “It’s a goddamned lot, even for me. I wouldn’t blame you if you felt it was too much to—“
“Oh, shut up, Nolan!” Jadis snapped. “Aren’t you sick and tired of always trying to push people away?”
The question caught him off-guard. “W-What do you mean?”
“Please, you’re smarter than that!” Jadis snorted. “This is far from the first time you’ve asked me this question, as if you’re expecting me to walk away. Maybe even hoping I will.”
Nolan had opened his mouth to protest, but the words stuck in his throat.
“Get it through your thick skull, Nolan Garrett: I’m not going anywhere.” Jadis’ voice held steely defiance. “Shit’s bad, sure, but that’s just for now. And that’s part of what it means to be with someone. Being with them, even through the bad shit. So next time you think of asking me if I’m sure about you and all the mess that comes with your life, maybe keep your mouth shut and say something else. Like how pretty I am or how beautifully made that barricade is or how marvelous my ass looks in your old armor.”
Nolan half-choked, half-laughed at that. “It really does look marvelous,” he said. All that and she’d managed to get Jared and Roz to safety—she was a one-in-a-million woman, no doubt about it.
“Of course it does, silly man.” Jadis gave a light laugh—Nolan could almost believe it was genuine. Such a strange sound to hear given their surroundings and dire situation. But that was just one of the many things that made Jadis a truly spectacular human being. “I always had a feeling there was something different about you. Odd, for sure, but special. I’m just glad I was right.”
“Jadis—“
“Nolan!” Taia said through his comms. “We’ve got one hell of a problem on the north side!”
Nolan spun in the direction indicated. His heart leaped into his throat at the sight of a heavily armed vehicle rumbling up the access road. But this was no improvised, nonstandard tactical truck or lightly armored fighting vehicle.
The Black Crows had brought a goddamned tank.
Chapter Thirty-One
The S-A3CT Mameluke had been outmoded two years after Nolan first enlisted in the Silverguard, but it still packed one hell of a punch. Two general-purpose blaster machine guns sat mounted on either side of its main plasma cannon, and the one-point-eight-centimeter durasteel plating could shrug off
anything sort of an anti-tank rocket. Worse, it had continuous tracks instead of wheels, making it a beast on the battlefield and impervious to all but anti-tank mines.
Which, of course, Nolan didn’t possess. The Mameluke could roll right over the anti-personnel mines guarding the cabin’s south side without a scratch. Hell, the damned thing would have no trouble plowing through the rainforest itself—whatever trees it couldn’t avoid or navigate through would simply be run down.
How the Black Crows had gotten their hands on a tank—much less learned how to operate it—mattered far less at the moment than the fact that the S-A3CT Mameluke was just reaching the top of the access road and swiveling toward the cabin.
Nolan hit the deck just as the two machine guns opened fire. The opening salvo ripped into the north-side M964 Mini and blew it into tiny shards of metal. Then the guns turned on the house. Blaster bolts tore through everything—the carbon nanofiber-reinforced glass windows, the commercial-grade titanium strengthening the walls, and every appliance and item of furniture within the cabin—like the Wildstorm ripping up a field of ripe rushgrain.
The cacophony of destruction proved deafening even through the helmet’s soundproofing. Wood chips sprayed, glass shattered, and metal shrieked as the Mameluke’s twin guns unleashed a hellstorm at eighteen hundred rounds per minute.
The barrage lasted for what felt like an eternity, but couldn’t have been more than twenty or thirty seconds. Nolan’s ears rang in the sudden silence, and when he lifted his head to peer out of cover, he found only a gaping hole where the cabin’s entire north side had been.
“Nolan!” Jadis screamed over comms.
“I’m okay!” Nolan called back. For now, he thought, ducking back behind concealment. There was no true cover, he knew, not from those machine guns. And the moment the Black Crows decided to use their plasma cannon—
Fuck that!
He leaped to his feet and darted out from behind the ruins that had once been his defensive position. It was a gamble—the tank operators could have their thermals activated and spot his movement even with digital cloaking activated—but he had no other choice. The only way to clear their line of fire was to get below ground.
Yet as he ran, he saw the Mameluke’s machine guns spooling up again. He barely had time to throw himself flat onto the ground before another barrage of blaster bolts tore through the walls. The cabin around him exploded in a shower of wood chips and ruined metal.
Shit!
The battle had just begun, and already he was being forced to retreat. But what choice did he have? His grenades wouldn’t do shit against the tank’s armor plating, even if he could throw them a full two hundred meters to where the Mameluke squatted at the top of the access road.
He thought back to his battle with Shadowspear on Paradise Isle. If he was fast enough, he might be able to draw a bead on the tank’s operators and take the fuckers out. The armor plating was thick, but his Balefire might be able to pierce it.
That “might” felt awfully thin. But what else could he do? His only other option was to flee into the basement, but it was too soon for that. The Phantasm was far from operational and the Scimitar wouldn’t arrive for another—he glanced at his HUD to confirm—twenty-three minutes and twelve seconds.
Damn it!
He racked his brain, desperate to come up with a solution that wouldn’t get him killed. Taking on the tank alone, with his current complement of weaponry, would be suicide. There was a chance he could wait out the barrage, but the tank would continue shredding the cabin until nothing but rubble remained. And if they brought that plasma cannon to bear, they’d be well and truly fucked.
So what the fuck am I going to—
“Someone call for air support?” Bex’s voice echoed in Nolan’s earpiece. “Heads up, motherfuckers!”
A thunderous BADOOM cut off the snarling machine guns. Nolan rose to his feet just in time to see the Mameluke blown to pieces by an explosion from within.
“Coming in fast and hard, Cerberus,” Bex said. “Just the way you like it!”
To Nolan’s surprise, Bex dropped from the sky to land in front of the cabin’s demolished northern wall. Gunfire crackled from somewhere out of sight, and blaster bolts whistled over her head. Bex actually turned to flip a rude gesture to her north and east before leaping over the rubble and into the cabin.
Nolan stared slack-jawed at the anti-tank grenade launcher in her hand. “Where the hell’d you get one of those?”
“Oh, they’ve just got them lying around everywhere!” Bex said, triumph echoing in her voice. “Well, maybe not everywhere. Had to strip it off a Black Crow’s corpse. That greeting party they sent after the Phantasm isn’t going to be—“
More enemy rifles joined in the chorus of gunfire, and now bolts and bullets whizzed dangerously close to Bex.
“Shit, right!” Bex dropped the expended launcher and darted for cover behind Nolan’s mostly shredded barricade. “Forgot to mention there was another couple of these fuckers on the way.”
To Nolan’s horror, two more heavy tanks appeared on the access road, rumbling slowly up toward the cabin and providing cover for more teams of Black Crows.
Goddamn it! One Mameluke had been bad enough, but two?
His mind raced. He had to find a way to even the odds somehow. Or, at the very least, buy them a chance to escape!
An idea struck him. Desperate, foolish, more than likely a bit suicidal, but he was all out of any safe or smart plans.
“The Mule Kick?” he asked.
Bex drew her thumb savagely across her throat. “And I didn’t even need to use my boom-babies! A couple of shots into the guidance system—through the clueless idiots barely bothering to stand guard—and that thing’s about as useful as a condom with ventilation holes.”
Nolan’s eyebrows rose. “So you’ve still got the three charges?”
“Damn right!” Bex nodded.
“Good, figure out what to do with them.” He darted toward the door to the basement, scooped up the six breaching charges he’d collected, and tossed the explosives to her. “These might come in handy, too.”
“Aww, Cerbie, you always did give me the best presents!” She ducked for cover as more Black Crows opened fire on the house. “Tell me you’ve got a better plan than sitting here and hoping these fuckers are all shitty shots!”
Nolan had to shout to be heard over the gunfire. “I’m working on it!” His mind raced. “I didn’t think you’d be done so fast.”
“Hey, that’s my line!” Bex retorted.
Nolan grinned, but it was a short-lived humor. She had made the trek to the Mule Kick, deactivated the missiles, and reached him—via boot engines and glider wings, he guessed—far sooner than he’d anticipated. But without the Phantasm operational, they couldn’t exactly bug out via the hover-train tunnel. The last thing they wanted was to be caught out on open ground with Roz and a still-unconscious Jared in tow, being chased through the rainforest by an army of however many Black Crows hadn’t yet been turned into meat soup.
Unfortunately, the presence of two Mamelukes eliminated his choice in the matter.
“Set the charges to blow the cabin,” Nolan told her. “But make sure to lure as many in as possible.”
“Copy that,” Bex said, giving him a nod. “I’m thinking trip-wire system rigged right here in the living room.”
“How long?” Nolan asked.
Bex cocked her head as if in thought. “Two minutes,” she said, holding up a pair of fingers from where she lay on the floor. “Three if they keep being pesky cunts.”
“Copy that!” Nolan leaped to his feet and, with a mental command, deactivated his digital cloaking and switched his Balefire onto burst mode. He charged toward the ruined front of the cabin and opened fire on the tank. As expected, his bolts bounced off the armor plating, but it served to draw the foremost tank’s attention. Inevitably, the two mounted machine guns swiveled toward him and began spooling up to fire.
> But instead of ducking back into cover, Nolan did the unexpected. “Boot thrusters!” he shouted as he dove forward. His ion engines roared to life and he rocketed out through the gaping hole that had once been the cabin’s northern wall. He soared straight up and to the west, flying out over the gorge.
The view of the Celestial Cascades was utterly breathtaking. Even from this distance, the falls’ roaring filled the air, carrying a fine mist that sparkled like a million diamonds in Solaria’s brilliant light and formed a multihued rainbow. The sheer brown rock walls of the canyon dropped away beneath him, plunging toward the crystal-blue pool at the base of the last waterfall.
Unfortunately, now wasn’t exactly the best time to revel in the natural beauty.
Nolan snapped out his glider wings and banked hard to his right, swooping around in a tight arc that carried him hundreds of meters to the east. Blaster bolts sliced through the air behind and above him as he dove toward the ground.
“You goddamned maniac!” Bex shouted over comms.
“What did he do?” Jadis asked.
“Trust me, smokeshow, you don’t want to know!”
Nolan pulled up hard, racing higher into the open sky with a full-output burn of his ion engines. Below and ahead of him, he saw the Black Crows had turned their guns on him, and one of the two Mamelukes was slowly maneuvering around to face him.
“You’re bloody welcome, Kali!” he shouted. “You’re the one who asked for two minutes!” At least diverting that one tank would buy her time.
“Make it five,” Bex laughed.
“Fuck you!” Nolan fired wildly at the tanks and Black Crows. There was no way to aim while flying at full speed, but he didn’t need to do any real damage. He just had to keep the enemy focused on him long enough for Bex to do her work.
The Mameluke’s machine guns lit up the air around him, forcing him to spin into a barrel roll that ended in a steep dive, then a sharp climb. He barely managed to stay ahead of the streams of blaster bolts and bullets lancing up from the clearing in front of the cabin. Yet he couldn’t risk getting into cover, not yet. The second Mameluke was still ripping the remaining cabin walls to shreds. Bex would have to stay low and move with caution to plant the explosives. The more time he bought her, the more—
Rampant Destruction (CERBERUS Book 10) Page 25