by Tim C Taylor
I’m not afraid, she told herself as the ship began shaking her head so violently that she had to abandon her inspection.
Like most Jotuns, Aelingir preferred open skies and firm ground beneath her feet. Even during the most unopposed landing she had experienced, dropping headlong down a gravity well in an oversized kinetic dart still turned her intestines into ribbons of fear.
She felt the bulkheads glowing hot behind her back as the atmosphere they were drilling through grew ever thicker. Would the craft disintegrate, leaving her burning briefly like a star as she fell to Earth?
Your anxiety is counter-productive, her AI advised before administering a carefully targeted hormonal effector package into her endocrine system, and gently reminding her that generals had more important matters to check on than the readiness of their personal weapons.
Shame forced Aelingir to open her mind to her surroundings.
She sat in a Type-32 dropship, in the lowest of six rings of Marines who faced inward to the deployment ejection system. Ten Marines waited in each ring.
She knew nothing of the Legionaries above her but was sure that within the privacy of their helmets, the ears of her closest companions would be flat with fear against the side of their heads. It was up to her to do something about that.
“Bumpy ride, eh?” she shouted over the roar of their descent.
Some of her comrades looked up and jiggled their heads in agreement. Most, though, ignored her, so she switched to BattleNet comms and addressed everyone in the dropship.
“Without a doubt,” she said, “the drop through an atmosphere is the most fur-tingling, gut-knotting experience in this life, and that’s not to mention the less pleasant bodily reactions to such a terror. My Jotun comrades, no matter how tightly the fear grips your resolve, it is of paramount importance that the humans never know of your fear.”
She paused, to give a chance for the five rings of human Marines above her to translate and take interest in her words. “The sweet, little four-limbed children need to think of us as immutable, as unworried by external danger as an overwintering Tallerman. You know how difficult humans find sleep if we Jotuns are not there to tuck them up in bed.”
There came an awkward pause, then laughter and banter erupted from all tiers of the dropship. What exactly was being said was unintelligible over the cacophony of the dropship’s plummet, but the words didn’t matter. She had given them permission to acknowledge their fear, and she preferred that to the brittleness of warriors who tried to deny it.
Major Knudsir took up the challenge of distracting the inhabitants of the dropship while Aelingir used up the precious FTL comm bandwidth to connect to the battle grid updates provided by Admiral Indiya herself aboard the flagship.
The reports were good – better than Aelingir could have hoped for. The first wave had already landed almost unopposed and were supporting Major-General Sarwar’s assault division in securing the landing zone.
Two dropships in the first wave had been lost, victims of Hardit surface-to-air missile batteries that had been smeared out of existence seconds later by Legion counter-battery fire from orbit.
The second wave in which Aelingir was dropping herself had yet to suffer casualties. Yet.
“Now is our chance,” she told the dropship Marines, and the three crew in the upper compartment. “We shall stain these sands forever red with New Order blood. Freedom!”
“Freedom!” came the refrain from every helmet, even the other Jotuns for whom the liberation of Earth was only an early step towards freeing their kin, who remained in servitude outside of the Human Autonomous Region.
Hidden air cushions suddenly blew into existence, filling every available space in the dropship and ripping the general’s mind from her battle grid connection. The dropship braked hard for a bruising fifteen-second burn that ended when the heat shield below crumpled beneath them as it hit the desert sand of Earth.
Their landing craft shuddered and began to topple over.
Tethering cables shot out, stabilizing the dropship while exterior hatches flipped outward throughout the hull.
The air cushions had transformed into a litter of spent bags by the time Aelingir had released her harness straps, grabbed an egress hook, and readied to deploy.
Knudsir was in charge of the deployment. “The area has been sterilized,” he told the dropship occupants, “but we’ve landed on the side of a dune. We will form up at its base. Go!”
Aelingir stepped out onto the exterior ledge, hooked over the tethering cable that doubled as a zip wire and launched herself out.
By Tyndall, this heat was going to scorch her fur off.
Aelingir allowed Command Company NCOs, who had already deployed in the first wave, to usher herself and her team into the waiting command post that had been erected and dug in while she was dropping. It was a good omen that she had landed only a few hundred paces away. With Legion operational security so obviously compromised, Command Company had been divided up into small groups and assigned random dropships in the final moments before the drop.
Halfway to the command post, movement in the near distance caught her attention, and she slowed to a jog to observe properly.
At first, she thought it was one of the sandstorms the planners had warned could be a worse foe than the New Order, but when she magnified the image she saw the sand was being flicked up from dark channels that were spreading across the desert valleys.
They weren’t sandstorms: that was spoil being thrown up by the fastest tunnelers in the known galaxy.
Hardits were excellent engineers, natural tunnel borers and dwellers, as the Legion Hardits who served under Aelingir had proved. But only the insectoid race the humans called Trogs could swim through dirt like that.
Tawfiq’s Hardits knew that every tunnel wall could turn in an instant into a portal through which scores of Troggish warriors erupted. The abominations would learn the outer limits of their capacity for terror. And then they would die.
“The enemy is fleeing,” Aelingir said, breaking from a jog into a run. “Let us ensure they find no place to hide.”
— Chapter 40 —
“Move! Move! Move!” urged Sho, but it was no use.
Burned, dehydrated, and exhausted beyond belief, former Gunner Wokmar fled through the tunnels as fast as she could, but her muscles were running on terror alone, and that wouldn’t be enough for much longer.
Zayk’Z’s suffering was even worse. She didn’t complain, but when they’d fought their way into the supply tunnel, she’d taken a dart through her right arm, which was now flapping uselessly at her side.
Wokmar watched in horror as Zayk’Z slowed down.
“No,” Wokmar begged. “Keep running!”
“I will,” said Zayk’Z. “But this is slowing me down.” She reached awkwardly behind with her left arm to unsling her rifle. “Help me,” she begged.
“No!” roared Sil-Sfhanikel. “Drop your rifle and I’ll drop you.”
“We would all be shot as deserters,” explained Sho. “But I shall aid you.”
Wokmar drained the last of the water canteen while Sho took spare ammunition and anything portable but heavy from Zayk’Z to add to her own load.
The delay robbed them of only a handful of seconds, but that was enough for the scurrying sound behind the tunnel walls to catch up with them, and they all knew what that meant.
Fatigue evaporated, and they fled along the tunnel in blind panic, running around the bend and straight into the barricade bristling with Janissary machine guns and rifle barrels.
“Cowards!” spat a scent leader in a meticulous uniform of black and white dazzle.
“No, sir,” answered Sil-Sfhanikel. “Our battery commander ordered us to defend the tunnels at all costs.”
“Really?” The infantry officer glared down at them from the top of the barricade, derisively flicking her tail. “So you were instructed to resist the enemy by valiantly running away. Is that your story?”
The scent leader ordered an NCO to usher the gun team through a narrow baffle entrance. They endured a gauntlet of kicks, curses, and phlegm, but emerged unharmed to be thrown at the feet of a full scent captain.
“If you value your lives,” said the field officer, “speak of what you have learned. How many of you gunners are here?”
“Only us,” answered Sil-Sfhanikel. “We are the only survivors.”
“And how is it that you are the only survivors out of six batteries?” accused the scent leader.
Sil-Sfhanikel pointed out Sho with her tail. “This individual was a veteran infantry soldier before transferring to the hellspewers.”
“That could explain much,” said the scent captain. Her uniform was soiled and the odor of command subtle, but the sense of dominance and leadership emanating from the officer was so intense that it was all Wokmar could do to stop herself groveling at her feet.
With leaders such as this, we can still win the fight against the humans, thought Wokmar. She waited while the officer sniffed at Sho.
“I can still smell her officer’s scent markings,” the scent captain announced, her tail flicking in surprise. “Well, Brigadier? What are we facing?”
Brigadier!
“Dirt Swimmers, sir,” answered the disgraced former officer. “With Assault Marines in support to mop up points of resistance.”
The scent captain gave a little squeak of horror before regaining composure and issuing orders. “The platoon will form a sphere defense anchored on the barricade. Signal operator, inform regimental HQ that we are facing Dirt Swimmers.”
The junior officer hovered nervously at her superior’s side, bowing and dropping her tail to the dirt. “Sir, is that wise? We only have the words of deserters pleading for their lives.”
“Can’t you smell the fear on those gunners?” asked the captain. “Only Dirt Swimmers inspire such terror, but all of you listen to me carefully. We can prevail. Dirt Swimmers are a deadly foe, but I have defeated them before and I will do so again.”
She pointed at a machine gun team on the upper level of the barricade. “You, reposition your gun to train it on the ceiling. Scent Leader, I want guns pointed at the ground too. The swimmers will come at us from multiple directions, but if there’s one direction they favor, it is through the ground beneath our feet. Get ready!”
The scent captain was correct. With the unit still racing to redeploy, the enemy erupted out of the ground, leaping high out of the dirt as if fired from air cannons. And the instant they were free, they were slicing with their claws and gouging with their horns.
Some of the machine gunners must have moved fast, because they opened up from the top of the barricade, sending streams of bullets ricocheting off the chitinous armor of the insectoid creatures, many loose rounds wounding the defenders. The armor of these seven-foot long Dirt Swimmers was tough but not invincible. Insect bodies began disintegrating in sprays of chitin and viscous, purple ichor.
A fresh batch of Dirt Swimmers flew down through the ceiling. Wokmar raised her rifle and fired at the one racing for Zayk’Z. Her bullet struck its armored head, stunning it, but only for a moment. Sil-Sfhanikel fired too, making it flinch when her round embedded in the soft underbelly of its thorax.
Sho didn’t fire. Rifle still slung over one shoulder, she advanced on the alien warrior with a whip-like sword with which she began calmly cutting away the creature’s legs while it stood stunned.
Despite all the violence inflicted upon it, the Dirt Swimmer had selected its target – Zayk’Z – and cared for little other than making its kill. Its advanced slowed as its limbs were cut away. Even with just a single foreleg remaining, it still tried to drag its bulk along the tunnel floor, now a mess of blood, ichor, spent cartridges and bloody fur.
Once fixated with its target, this barely sentient variant of Dirt Swimmer would not cease until its victim was dead, or it was. But there were many other variants of Dirt Swimmer, other stages in their complex life cycle, and some were cunning tacticians.
But not this one. Wokmar finally managed to ram her rifle through its ear hole and blow its brains out.
An explosion shook her to the ground, and stuffed the tunnel with dust, smoke and flames. The barricade, wreathed in flame, now lay three-quarters buried under the tunnel floor, its dazed and wounded survivors dispatched mercilessly by insects dropping down through the ceiling.
“Run!” screamed Sil-Sfhanikel, grabbing a dazed Zayk’Z by her good arm and struggling away deeper into the tunnels.
Wokmar hesitated, not wanting to abandon this chance to stop the Dirt Swimmers, or to be shot as deserter. But Janissary fire had been all but silenced and the position would be overrun within moments.
That hesitation saved her life. As she stumbled after Zayk’Z and Sil-Sfhanikel, the floor erupted in front of her and a Dirt Swimmer shot out, flinging her back onto her tail.
The alien flicked its fore-claws through Sil-Sfhanikel and Zayk’Z, cutting cleanly through their torsos in multiple passes, slicing them like sausages.
Its selected foes dispatched, the Swimmer dove back through the floor and out of sight.
“Keep moving!” Sho screamed.
With a last look at the sliced horror of her comrades, Wokmar threw down her rifle and ran for her life.
— Chapter 41 —
The Hummer observed everything, as always, but said nothing.
War is not a game, Tawfiq told herself. Even though my victory is assured, against a formidable foe such as the Legion, that victory is hard won. It is not only my soldiers’ blood that must be sacrificed, but my pride.
The Hummer observed her thoughts.
Damn the hideous creature.
The humans had won this first round. Even though Tawfiq had permitted them this last victory, allowing the Legion to flood its troops into the African invasion zone, she still felt the humiliation keenly.
The Hummer knew that. The Hummer also knew that Tawfiq knew that it knew. And it had undoubtedly known these things for days or years…
She choked off that line of thinking. Lesser beings had been driven insane by thoughts of the Hummers. They could kill with ease too. The two of them were alone in her personal bunker deep below the White House. Perhaps she should risk assigning herself Janissary guards to protect her from the Hummers, but with so many potential avenues of betrayal, it was difficult to judge the optimal path.
War is not a game. She took a calming breath and opened a command channel.
“Supreme Commander to General Dine-Alegg. Execute Phase 2. The humans have won themselves a little over two days in which they can believe they have bested the New Order. I also give you command of any remnants of General Ulmack’s forces who might survive. One way or another, she won’t be needing them anymore.”
“It will be done, Supreme Commander.”
Tawfiq cut the link and regarded the alien in its life support tank. Was it the same being who had stood behind her as she had laid final preparations this morning? The way they drifted in and out of her awareness made them impossible to track carefully. She couldn’t even say how many had accompanied her to Earth, a fact that made her brain itch painfully every time she thought of it.
“I’m still mortal,” she told the creature. “It is a phase I will soon overcome, but I shall not attain immorality until after this battle is over. All mortals have their weaknesses. Mine is pride. I know that, but I also know how to assuage it.”
“Through the humiliation of weaker beings.”
“Exactly. And I have just the human for the task.”
Governor Romulus was a confused, decomposed wreck compared to the arrogant young fighter pilot Tawfiq had bent to her will long ago. His humiliation was coming too easily of late to satisfy her as it once had. But Tawfiq decided to see that as a challenge.
What humiliation had she yet to wring from
him?
There must be something.
—— PART IV ——
THE VOICE
OF THE
RESISTANCE
— Chapter 42 —
Gin, sweat, and despair, with an undertone of mania: Tawfiq breathed in the scent of this human’s abject defeat.
Nearby, walking the edges of the so-called Reflecting Pool (these humans had such a propensity for remarking on the obvious) and enjoying a well-manicured parkland, she could hear nervous humans too scared to abandon their regular routine just because the Supreme Commander of the Hardit New Order was enjoying the smells and sights of what they had once called the Lincoln Memorial, but now bore her name. Behind her, a statue of herself brooded from a great stone chair that had once seated a human leader the inhabitants of this area considered significant.
Her carved form cut an imposing figure, clad in a stone uniform of her high office, and her tail pointing in accusation through the fluted columns at her inferiors below. Impressive. But how much more imposing it must be for the humans to see this statement of Hardit superiority carved out of flesh and fur.
She snapped open her eyes and stared at a group of humans who had dared to approach within a hundred paces. Sweating and wide-eyed, they gave feeble keening sounds of terror.
To avoid the supreme commander was an insult that would invite torture and death. To approach too closely suggested a familiarity, an equivalence in status that could not be tolerated. The pathetic creatures looked this way and that for an escape like the startled prey animals they were.
“Look at me,” Tawfiq ordered her translator system to say.
They did, holding her gaze, unwilling to even blink. They sank to their knees, not daring to break the connection between the eyes.
“That’s better,” she said. “Now look upon your governor.”
Head bowed before his mistress, Romulus stood at the base of the steps. He was flanked by Janissaries from Tawfiq’s personal guard, one of whom held the gilded chain linked to the golden collar around the man’s neck. With a click from Tawfiq’s fingers, the guard yanked down the chain and the Governor of Earth, Leader of the Free World on Behalf of the New Order, fell to his knees, snarling defiance.