The Condottiere jerked. Jerked again, but weaker. And then was still.
Blood erupted from the sword wound, but the sword itself wouldn’t come out. He pulled again, but he just shook the CASPer suit with the dead merc inside.
“Detach your blade,” said Sergeant Pak, hopping down to Branco’s level.
To his surprise, the veteran sergeant placed a metal hand on Branco’s shoulder while he was unsnapping the blade from his left arm. “Are you all right, son?”
“No. I’m out of jump juice and my torso armor is badly damaged.”
Pak removed his hand. “I didn’t mean your CASPer. I meant you.”
Branco frowned. “I think so. I’ve learned that I’ve a lot left to learn. I’m scared as hell, and I don’t know if I’ll still be alive in ten minutes. But I reckon I’m good to go.”
The sergeant removed his hand. “Good lad. I had to check. The way you were screaming for your mother had me worried.”
“Was I? When?”
“When you were playing chase games with the autocannon. Don’t worry. It’s very common.”
“I have no memory.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“I mean I have no memory of my mother. Why would I scream for somebody I don’t know?”
“Trooper, if I knew the answer, I’d be making a ton of mega credits explaining how the galaxy worked, not earning a living blowing it up. We own the warehouse now, Branco. Let’s go up top and make good use of what we’ve paid for.”
* * * * *
Chapter 69
The remains of the warehouse roof were a mess of jagged holes ripped through the ceramo-crete material and littered with fallen CASPers and spent casings. The scout squad had lost Thompson and Blacks taking the roof. But they’d won the high ground. And the autocannons.
Steadman and Corporal Vasu had already repositioned one cannon, Osuru and Pusher another, aiming it to the east where the battle still raged.
“Branco, Osuru,” said the Sergeant, “hop down and lend your muscle to the Hornet. We’ll give those traitors to the east something to think about. We’ll be ready to cover you when you…”
Branco turned his view to the sergeant’s CASPer and his exterior cam that was angling downward. Then he saw why. Smoke was curling up from the roof below the sergeant’s feet.
The kind of smoke when something’s being burned through by a laser.
And it was powerful. Hell, that wasn’t a handheld laser!
The sergeant hopped away with a light pump from his jets, but it was too late. The fuel in his boot exploded, tumbling him flat on his face. As he fell, he passed through the laser’s beam, which sliced down the top of his torso with ease.
Pak!
The laser’s fire spiraled away. Branco realized the sergeant had been unlucky. Whoever was firing the laser was trying to deny them the roof; killing Midnighters was just a bonus. He ignored the laser and darted over to Pak. He stuck his hands into the gap sliced through the top of his CASPer and ripped the torso open.
The captured autocannons fired at the building in which the heavy laser was emplaced. The laser cut off. But the autocannons kept firing.
Branco peered inside the wrecked CASPer, hoping that impossibly the sergeant had survived. He hadn’t. The laser had sliced through Pak’s head and halfway down his neck. It was the ugliest thing Branco had ever seen.
“He’s dead,” Corporal Vasu admonished him. “Your suit would have told you that. Now go join Osuru and follow the sergeant’s orders.”
“Yes, Corporal.”
With the autocannons firing eastward, and counter fire hitting them from the main Condottieri position, Branco jumped down the levels of the ruined warehouse and out to the riverbank to wait for the arrival of the Midnighters’ secret weapon: the Wingless Hornet.
* * * * *
Chapter 70
“Come on, you weaklings. What are you? ElSha invalids?”
The two humans sent to help Tatterjee said nothing but put their CASPer shoulders beneath where the dropship’s wings had once been mounted. Osuru and Branco tried to stand up, the motors in their knee joints whirring, and the hydraulic rams in their waists hissing with effort.
At the rear of the stripped dropship, Betty was getting restless. “You could help too,” said the Tortantula.
“I am helping,” Tatterjee snapped back angrily. “I’m supervising, aren’t I? Someone has to be in charge. Come on, all of you. Put your backs and other body parts into it.”
The plan had been to float the hollowed out Wingless Hornet up to the jetty at the foot of the warehouse.
But the moment Branco stood on the rotten wood, the jetty had disintegrated into a cloud of mold. So they brought the dropship about, snagging it against the hydroelectric system, which seemed like a good idea at the time. But the river current was strong as it was squeezed through the artificial weir. Even the CASPers and Betty struggled to keep their feet.
Thanks to the Hornet’s captain, who knew how to get the best out of the lumbering beasts of lesser species, it was finally lifted out of the water and shuffled onto hard ground to the south edge of the warehouse.
Due to a certain Tortantula’s overenthusiastic stripping of the former dropship, the rear section of landing gear had been lost somewhere in the swamp, but the front gear was down and even gave a limited ability to steer. Most important of all, the capacitors for the craft’s main armament showed full charge.
“Onward!” Tatterjee screamed, but that annoying Zuul, Sergeant Hrrn, had taken charge of operations to the west of the town and called on Tatterjee to halt.
“Attention Zuul troopers and you humans with the autocannon,” ordered the sergeant. “Suppressive fire on my mark.” Hrrn growled and, though he’d never admit it, the Flatar’s guts knotted to hear the naked sound of a predator. “Tatterjee, get ready to burn them to hell.”
That’s better, thought the Flatar. “And to think I get paid for this,” he said gleefully, to no one in particular.
Hrrn gave the order and rockets, autocannon fire, and railguns hammered the Condottieri barricades to the east, while at the foot of the warehouse, Betty and the two humans pushed hard. Nightmare Hells! Those human suits pack a lot of power! From an achingly slow start, Wingless Hornet was soon bumping along the ground at such a pace that Tatterjee could barely control it. He veered around south of the ruined building that had housed an enemy heavy laser and slid into the open area beyond that led to the rear of the Condottieri barricade. He opened fire.
Wingless Hornet was hardly a heavily-armed battlecruiser. The pulse laser was rated for a peak of only 250 megawatts, but it made the handheld chemical lasers of the CASPers look like children’s flashlights.
The nose-mounted laser cannon had limited traverse. Elevation was achieved by telling Betty to bend down a little. But that was all Tatterjee needed. He lit up the rear barricade, finding the bumpiness of the ride effective at stitching lines of fire that burned through the defenses and the Condottieri troopers behind.
“Keep going!” he shouted at his beasts of burden.
Incoming Condottieri fire pinged off the Hornet’s armor like hard rain. He shut down the lasers to allow the capacitors to recharge from the Hornet’s fusion plant, which was operating at maximum output. “Keep pushing! Don’t stop!”
One of many annoying facts about humans was their belief that they were cleverer than Tortantulas. They weren’t. They mistook their unpredictability for intelligence. Nonetheless, Branco and Osuru proved wise enough to listen to Tatterjee’s orders and slammed the Hornet into the barricade at full tilt.
The barrier was constructed from sheets of poly-ceramocrete cut from the nearby buildings and propped up by a rusty old heap that looked like it had once been a flat-bottomed boat. But his laser had sliced through the sheets, and the nose armor of a dropship was tough enough to come screaming down from orbit while protecting its contents from small arms fire.
So there was a good chanc
e he wasn’t going to die instantly on impact.
Tatterjee swallowed hard and braced in the flight seat. The Wingless Hornet crashed into the barrier, metal screaming as its nose pushed through. Its fuselage was raked by the talons of the half-cut barricade.
The Hornet wedged itself three-quarters through the obstacle – the perfect target for the waiting hoard of angry human CASPers.
Tatterjee hit the firing stud and screamed.
* * * * *
Chapter 71
The Hornet’s laser pulses were visible now in the smoke, dust, and debris being thrown up. So were the enemy lasers.
With the front camera view shot away, Tatterjee traversed the laser blindly from left to right and hoped he was hitting something vital.
“We’ve cut you free of the barricade,” said the human, Osuru. “Here we go again.”
“No, wait. I can’t see where I’m going.”
The human answered with static.
“Typical.”
A red light flashed, jerking Tatterjee’s attention to the co-pilot console, which reported the coolant line to the laser had ruptured.
“By the toes of the goddess,” Tatterjee mumbled as he hit the hatch release control. “I’m not going the same way as those damned Veetanho frigates.”
“It’s going to blow,” he warned Betty and the humans. He took a last calming breath as his harness released, and he shot out in full view of the enemy humans in their terrifying mecha suits.
Tatterjee was a Flatar. Without a giant multi-legged alien beneath him to attract enemy fire, his only defenses were intelligence, agility, and the willingness to shoot first and make introductions later. He scampered away at speed, dodging and diving, twisting and turning, and doubling back, flinging his tail out to keep from losing his footing in these high-speed turns. As he danced away, machine gun fire kicked up dust around his feet, then the gun’s firing line moved away from him and toward the Wingless Hornet, which was making its last charge without him.
Tatterjee didn’t watch, not until he’d jumped through the window of a burning building, swept it with the hypervelocity pistol he’d slung beneath his chest, and decided the room was clear. He risked a peep out the window. Betty and the humans were still pushing the Hornet toward the last Condottieri bastion, now a steaming heap of sliced metal and slag, though still hotly defended.
Idiots. Didn’t they know it was about to blow? Did he have to tell them everything?
But what could he do? Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t save the human race from its own stupidity. He gathered his nerves and darted west until he reached the shelter of the warehouse, its roof still smoking, and its walls peppered with shell holes.
Behind him, a huge explosion shook the ground, rattling a cloud of dust into the air inside the warehouse.
He didn’t like the sound of the clattering from the ruined floors overhead, nor the protesting screams of buckling stanchions and beams. He fled, jumping into the river and swimming away to safety.
* * * * *
Chapter 72
Feeling he’d done more than enough to contribute to this battle – which, frankly, seemed to be a human turf-war and none of his business – Tatterjee waited until the firing eventually died down before making his way back to the collapsed warehouse. There he started rummaging around for loot.
Betty found him a few minutes later, sitting over a fallen Condottieri CASPer. It had one arm sliced off, and a sword embedded through the open shoulder joint. It was a messy business, but the opening meant that Tatterjee had been able to simply reach inside and flick the emergency release to pop open the CASPer’s cockpit.
“I thought I’d lost you,” said Betty after a while. “I thought you were dead.”
Tatterjee interrupted the serious business of hacking the Condottieri CASPer systems, looking for anything that might prove valuable. “No, big girl. I’m not dead. Is the battle over?”
“Our humans are still squashing the last resistance. But, essentially, yes.” The Tortantula hesitated while her brain worked to frame a question. “What are you doing?”
Tatterjee ground his teeth in annoyance. He knew what was bugging her. Someone had ordered her not to eat the dead and injured mercs, and now she was in an awkward mood. She needed a little attention. Growling softly, he hopped out of the ruined CASPer.
“You know me, Betty; I travel light. Anything I like the look of, I eat, drink, or hump, and move on. But that’s only in the physical world. I hoard information, passwords, security protocols, anything that might add to my Yack or give me an edge in a dangerous galaxy. Maybe I can learn something useful about the Condottieri.”
“Good idea. I’ll tell Sergeant Hrrn. Maybe he can help.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Tatterjee snapped as he scampered back inside the CASPer. “Hrrn is an imbecile around electronics. Besides, we keep this to ourselves because knowledge is power. And power gets us nice things.”
“Like meat?”
“Like meat.”
“You get to work,” said Betty. “I’ll make sure no one disturbs you.”
* * * * *
Chapter 73
The Midnighters interred their dead in the terraforming unit sunk a short distance to the south of the town.
The unit itself was a sealed box, and the portion Sun could see was the size of a two-story building. How much deeper it went below the ground was anyone’s guess.
Other than the guards at the surface entrance, all the Midnighters stood at attention between two raised conduits, which carried exhaust gases away from the terraforming box.
They’d raised the metal floor panels up between the conduits to reveal cavities into which the sixteen humans and two Zuul were laid side-by-side. Some had wanted to lay out the humans in their CASPers, but there’d been no room. And besides, the armorer specialists were busy cannibalizing CASPer parts donated by deceased personnel.
Her legs were like rubber, and her eyes prickled with the need to sleep, but there could be no rest until they’d said their farewell. Sun read out the eighteen names of the fallen before calling on those present to bow their heads in respect.
She lowered her own head and remembered not only the 18 lying at their feet, but those still lost out in the swamp, and her sister and the crew who’d gone down with Midnight Sun, from whom they’d heard no word. Her hands shook.
She often got the shakes coming down after an adrenaline high, but not like this. Not in public.
She lost her grip on the slate showing the names of the dead. It crashed the ground, its screen shattering.
Everyone looked at her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. And boy did she mean it.
How was it that she was so different from her sister? Blue would soak up the adrenaline and want more, more, and still more. Blue never crashed.
Captain Finn-Holt walked up to her. “It’s okay, ma’am.” His words were meant to soothe, but they had the opposite effect. “You can’t see it,” he continued, “but half the mercs in this room are shaking in their CASPers at this very moment.”
“Thank you, Captain. I’m aware of that. I know everything about my personnel, human and otherwise. From past mission statistics, I can even tell you the percentage who soiled themselves in the fight, but I must be seen to be above such things. It’s different for me.”
“Why? Because you’re a woman?”
Sun ignored him. To be small, female, and pretty meant she always had something to prove. Perhaps to herself even more than to her personnel. But that was a tiny matter compared to standing in the long shadow of her sister’s reputation.
She looked across the assembled faces. Some wore expressions of pity for her benefit; others tried to ignore her. Most were too weary to do more than wait patiently for this act to complete.
“We inter our fallen with honor,” she said. Her hands, clasped behind her back, were still shaking. “Our comrades and friends were and remain Midnighters. We are professionals wh
o get the job done. And that’s precisely what our fallen did. They did not fall in vain, because we dealt a stinging blow against a superior force. We taught the Condottieri to fear us, and we will continue to repeat that lesson until they leave Rakbutu-Tereus. We’ll be like the insects and leeches of this world, drawing blood from them day by day, weakening them until our reinforcements arrive, and we turn and crush them.” She paused and wondered idly whether the warmth of the gas conduits would mummify the bodies. She’d heard of ancient cultures burying the dead under the floors of the living. Sun bit her lip, using the pain to block her mind from traveling down such morbid channels. “Does anyone have words to say?”
“Yeah,” said one of the men. “What about the Condottieri dead? They’re traitors, remember? Collaborators. We want the enemy to fear us, so let’s send them a message.”
The group of Zuul started barking excitedly. “I have a suggestion,” said Hrrn. “I read about your species before joining the company. Your ancestors had an impressive way of dealing with this matter. Strip our enemies naked. Place them face down on the ground. Pull apart their rib cages, reach in and pull their lungs out their backs, spreading them out to resemble wings.”
“You’re talking about my ancestors,” said Branco. When Sun heard his voice, she realized how grateful she was that his wasn’t one of the bodies lying on the floor. “You refer to the blood eagle,” he said. “This Viking ritual probably never existed in real life and is definitely too disrespectful. Even if I were callous enough to enjoy the eagle, it would drive our enemies to seek revenge, and that’s not what we want.” He looked to Sun for confirmation. “Is it?”
She shook her head.
“I agree,” said Betty firmly. “Food and water will soon become serious problems, so let’s be practical about it. We should eat our enemies. Send a message that way.”
The Midnight Sun (The Omega War Book 2) Page 23