by Tim C Taylor
Move! cried Solara.
Annalise didn’t need to be told. A Hardit somewhere up in the pillar had found its mark and was sending rounds slamming into Annalise’s shoulder.
She rolled hard, using her suit’s motor and muscle assistance to come up forty feet away in a cloud of HUD alerts detailing the damage to her armor and the tissue of her shoulder.
Tell the suit it can alert me when I’m dead, she instructed Solara while she prepared a Type-62 ‘Muck Spreader’. Until then, it can shut the frakk up.
One of the great advantages to the PLS-11 Personal Launch System was the flexibility of its load out. Annalise had 82 munition types available to her, and triple that number when you considered major blast and fuse configurations. But she carried her supply tank on her back, not in a convoy of carts following behind her, which meant that if she didn’t have a missile type already in the pipe, the payload had to be mixed, inserted, and configured in the tank.
The GX-cannon was raking the top pyramid with fire. Boss Man and Sashala were finishing off the survivors of the perimeter guard, and the dragoons were still gradually pushing through the force shield.
But Annalise had to wait while her Muck Spreaders were being readied.
A line of Hardit automatic fire spilled plumes of dirt out the ground as it sped toward her.
She waited. Then the targeting overlay turned blue and three Muck Spreaders flew out at the pillar. They burst twenty feet from the target – far enough out to defeat the Fermi beams – sending out black clouds, which were opaque across much of the electromagnetic spectrum. They wrapped around the stone walls, racing up and down like black fire until the lower five-hundred feet were wreathed in the roiling layer of darkness.
Annalise thought they looked more like a demonic cloud conjured up by a dark magician than muck, but she didn’t stop to see for herself until she had jumped away from her firing position.
“I think you will find this facility is defended more strongly than you realize,” said Dine-Alegg. The muck cloud had enveloped the force shield at the west entrance, revealing it to be a curving canopy that extended below ground, judging by one of the digger Trogs who was attempting to tunnel underneath.
“The anti-air defenses alone are the highest concentration on this planet,” taunted the general. The speaker converting her words to human-intelligible form seemed to be coming partway up the obelisk.
Solara, pinpoint her position. Let’s hope the monkey keeps yapping…
“This last escapade will be your final one, McEwan,” said Dine-Alegg obligingly as Annalise mixed a triple-shot cocktail in the tank. The first projectile would deliver a narrow beam blast from twenty feet that would burn a hole into the wall. Then a double-header would follow up, the projectile at the rear playing the part of a launch vehicle that would push the front round through the Fermi beam grid, and carry it on through the hole where its dumb mechanical fuse would ignite the biggest blast in her recipe book.
“General Dine-Alegg to Reserve Brigade…”
Annalise… warned Solara.
The PLS countdown ticked down. Two seconds to fire.
Why is that filthy creature letting us hear its orders?
“Take McEwan alive. Kill all the others.”
Annalise shrugged inwardly and unleashed the devastation she’d readied in her launcher. Sometimes your enemy was plain dumb, especially when it came to Hardits and their gloating over lesser species.
Where the two types of stone met, a third of the way up the west wall, a jet of plasma shot out from her first missile before dying in the blue Fermi beams. But it had done its job, and a moment later, the remainder of her cocktail sailed through the burning hole and blew out the wall. Shattered stone rocks fell out of the thick black cloud, but the pillar did not topple.
“All the others,” said Dine-Alegg, giving that Hardit laugh like a vibrating band of rubber, “kill them!”
Her voice was coming from the pyramid at the very top of the pillar.
“I’ll get you,” whispered Annalise as she mixed the same cocktail to fire at the pyramid.
Incoming! warned Solara and snapped her human’s head away from the pillar’s peak and over to the enormous screen to the north on which countless underground Ultra Janissaries stared out of blank faces.
The screen shook. Then so too did the ground beneath Annalise’s feet. But that was nothing to the screaming noise that drove out all other sounds. Dark projectiles soared over the back of the screen. Thousands of them.
“Follow the Trogs,” commanded General McEwan. “They’re digging you a bunker.”
The projectile trajectories had reached their maximum height and were splitting as they fell onto the Legion’s position.
Annalise ran for the spray of dirt and insectoid limbs but knew she wouldn’t make it in time.
But she had underestimated the phenomenal digging ability of the Trogs. Already, the giant aliens had disappeared within their fresh tunnel.
The air churned with the screams of the incoming projectiles, and as she covered the final few strides to the Trog’s hole, the ground shook with a new rumble of protest. One she recognized. Tanks. Big ones.
As she threw herself down into the shelter, she twisted in mid-air to see tanks tear through the northern viewscreen, ripping jagged breaches as they roared their way.
But it was too late anyway. Annalise was in the hole but was just a few feet short of safety when the cluster munitions exploded.
Her suit registered six hits.
Which was odd. Because if she was around to be notified, it meant she wasn’t yet dead.
It must be… started Solara. Be… be… bzzzrt!
Annalise’s suit failed. Completely.
Her visor was pressed against freshly tilled soil, but she could see it die because the HUD went out.
Her suit had locked out completely, rendering her immobile. If she was getting out, someone would have to unlock it from the outside. And they’d have to be quick. Already, the air in her helmet tasted stale, and the power cell in the small of her back felt very warm.
And she had lost Solara.
The ground shook with the approaching tanks.
Then a thunderclap punched through the air and screamed so loudly that without the active acoustic dampening in her dead helmet, Annalise screamed with it.
But it wasn’t another salvo of the EMP projectiles.
This was something different.
— Chapter 43 —
Arun McEwan
Stuck below the Tawfiq Monument
Dane tensed his body and redoubled his efforts to push through the force bubble before the screaming black rain fell upon them. Arun felt his mount try to shake his way through and then… he felt a brief suction on his back and he was inside, but for Dane there was no hope.
The projectiles bounced off the invisible bubble. On Dane’s abdomen, which was caught on the outside, they found their target. They were black disks that tottered on his carapace like oversized game counters, but then extended spider-like legs that gripped Dane and held on.
And did nothing.
Or so it appeared to Arun at first, but then he looked around the battlefield. Tanks were bursting through the viewscreen to the north, supported by waves of Janissary infantry. Scipio’s Marines had no reply, having dropped lifeless. Their suits were not reporting the Marines had died; the suits had gone off-line altogether.
I’m okay, said Barney.
“As am I,” Dane confirmed.
Gunshots shifted Arun’s attention to the interior of the obelisk. Escandala was firing a pistol up the ramp, which curved away out of view to Arun’s left. A volley of Hardit rifle fire answered, ricocheting off Leon’s head shield.
Frakk it! They needed to break free and kill the Hardits inside. Dane pushed even harder, but it was like walking through almost-set glue.
Hardit shouting came down the ramp. The tanks and infantry support outside were moments away from being able to s
hoot the stuck Trogs in their insectoid backsides, and that annoying analytical machine in his head couldn’t stop wondering how Dane had just answered him as if he could hear Barney speak in the neck port that plugged into Arun’s brainstem.
To cap it all, with the noise descending from the heavens, it sounded as if the Janissary tanks and infantry had just called in air support.
Hyper was throwing lance blasts up the ramp, but the Hardits were hugging the outer curve of the ramp as they fired, and the clone warrior couldn’t get the right firing angle.
Arun’s first veteran sergeant had taught his cadets that when it all goes to drent, Marines put their faith in the two sturdiest pillars of reliability in the galaxy: their comrades, and their SA-71. Well, Arun wasn’t toting a carbine these days, but he was packing some old favorites. “Flash bang,” he warned, as he began tossing grenades up the ramp from a collection he’d strung to the attachment points that grew from Dane’s thorax.
Springer was also following old Sergeant Gupta’s advice, and had used the cover of the flash to jump from her mount, her lance clipped to Gretel’s flank, so she had both hands on her SA-71, which weighed a ton without the muscle amplification of a combat suit.
When Arun followed up with a frag grenade, she edged around Gretel’s head crest and let her carbine do the talking.
“You’ve got to kill Tawfiq,” Arun shouted above the shattering din coming from every direction. “The Trogs are stuck and were not getting out in time.” Fresh Janissary corpses tumbled down the ramp. “Springer, take Escandala and Hyper, and finish this.”
Their two children obeyed, climbing down from their mounts, and covered the ramp with pistol and lance. Springer didn’t. She walked over to Arun and rendered her visor transparent as she looked up at him.
The scales on her face pulled taut, shrinking the concentric rings around her eyes into deep wells of compassion.
“You look ridiculous,” he told her. “Zombie Marine.” She didn’t, of course. Not to him.
“Later,” she said, and almost smiled. Then she turned and led their children up the ramp.
“Come on,” Arun urged the four Trogs struggling through the force barrier. “The Nest never gives up. Keep pushing!”
The dragoon mounts had hardly been slacking, but they jerked under his admonishment as if stung by squadrons of bees.
It seemed their efforts would be in vain, though. Because when Arun turned around he saw three tanks a short distance away on the edge of the Ultra Janissary ranks – who clearly hadn’t come alive enough to move out the way of an armored vehicle.
For some reason, their main armaments were elevating rapidly in their turrets, but it made no difference because Janissary infantry flowed around the tanks, cautiously approaching the obelisk. Some trained their rifles on the dragoons stuck in the force field like giant bugs in amber, but their main attention was on the hole the diggers had dug into the ground nearby. It wasn’t the Trogs they could see that terrified them. It was the ones lurking underground they could not. A flash reflected off the sloping armor of the tanks. Arun craned his neck and saw a gleaming spark break cloud cover and come in hot from the south.
“General Lee-McEwan to General McEwan, you copy?”
Arun grinned like a maniac. “Grace! You wonderful girl. You been wanting to say that since forever. I know you have.”
“I plead guilty. What do you need, Dad?”
“First task: waste this horde of angry Hardits to the northwest of the obelisk. Watch for their armor. It’s in anti-air mode.”
“Don’t worry. Sit tight and wait. I know what I’m doing.”
I hope so, he thought as a swarm of missiles broke cloud cover in hot pursuit of his daughter in Karypsic.
The Hardits outside began shooting at the vulnerable dragoon mounts. At the same time, the sounds of railgun fire, Janissary rifles, and screams revealed that their dismounted riders were engaged in hot killing work higher up the ramp.
— Chapter 44 —
Governor Romulus
Victory Monument
His eyes had lost the super-sharpness of the X-Boat ace he had once been, but Romulus knew a lost cause when he saw one, and the whatever-the-hell it was over the southern horizon, starting to line up for a strafing run, was not going to make it. Missiles were almost up its tail and that was just the start of it. Tawfiq was reveling in his reaction as she explained the giant viewscreen to the south of the obelisk was a concealment emitter. An armor-reinforced infantry company had hidden behind the northern shelter, but to the south were her hidden anti-air assets.
Hellspewers were charging up, ready to emit focused beams of pure energy mined from the quantum substrate.
“It’s hardly worth the bother,” said Dine-Alegg, “but I know the supreme commander appreciates despair in you humans. You see the hellspewer battery, but there are also SAM emplacements around the city. The air defenses around this position are the heaviest in the history of this planet.” To Tawfiq, she added, “Supreme One, there are further human air assets headed our way across the Atlantic.”
Tawfiq sat with her arms stretched along those of the chair in imitation of her statue. Her eyes were closed as if connecting to deeper planes of existence than the mundanity of space-time.
“Is there any need to delay?” she asked.
Romulus wasn’t looking her way. He made himself watch the crew of the brave Legion aircraft meet their end as the missiles converged on… empty air.
He blinked.
And the aircraft had transformed from a dark blob on the horizon to an attack craft coming in off the Potomac River with all guns blazing.
“It would be wise,” continued Dine-Alegg. “Interference from the hellspewers could–”
The aircraft had traveled ten klicks in an instant!
His vision had lost its sharpness, but Romulus still had the implants and gene programming of a Marine, and that meant his brain could appear to slow down time so he could properly evaluate his environment in order to select the best course of action. That was why Marines made the ultimate pilots, after all.
He saw the ionized gases streaming from the quad cannons in the aircraft’s nose. Smaller cannons mounted in belly turrets were spitting rounds at extreme fire rates. And he saw how beaten up this bird was, this… what was it, a souped-up dropship?
He could never forget pulling multiple sorties flying Phantoms off his old carrier, Lance of Freedom. While he’d grab a snack and a drink in the cockpit, the hangar rats would not just re-arm and re-fuel, but patch the worst of his X-Boat’s wounds until his flight was ready to rejoin the fray.
But if his Phantom had suffered this kind of damage, he would be told to park it out the way and get his ass in one of the spare birds. A scar along its fuselage had been crudely plated over, and a name had been hand painted near its nose: Karypsic 1.1. The aircraft was painted black – except for three stubby nacelles secured with weld patches that were still wearing their yellow primer coat. They hadn’t even had time to paint the dropship after a mission it looked as if it had barely escaped from. Where the hell had it been?
A ghostly hand reached out of the ether to twist and pull at his entrails. He would have vomited if the reflex hadn’t been removed. And he would have whooped for joy at this wonderful discomfort if it weren’t so painful. It was the same feeling he got from the trans-dimensional wash of an X-Boat.
He glanced at his tormentors – his turn to gloat for a change – but the Hardits hadn’t yet reacted. Hadn’t even realized the dropship had winked out of trouble and reappeared just where it needed to be.
Tawfiq still had her eyes closed, but Dine-Alegg was looking at the equipment on the table in front of her mistress that would transmit her scent and image to her new army. And Romulus had been around Hardits for long enough to know when one was up to something. What was Dine-Alegg plotting?
The Hardits showed no signs of experiencing the trans-dimensional wash, but the Hummer did. The orange fluid
in its tank reverberated as if a pressure wave had just ripped through it.
Then the sonic boom hit the room like a giant tiger clawing at the air and ripping at their lungs. Now the Hardits took note! They practically jumped out of their pelts.
Romulus ignored their panic, enjoying the sight instead of the Karypsic 1.1 flying over the north of the city leaving smoking ruins of tanks and infantry in its wake. She rose into an inverted loop. Surface-to-air missiles lifted from the city to greet her.
Hellspewer beams crackled through the air, vaporizing the screen the battery had hidden behind. They were the Hardit development of one of McEwan’s earliest innovations: dismantling the engine from an interstellar spacecraft and pressing it into service as an anti-aircraft weapon to devastating effect.
Beams lit the air in beautiful plasma shades of purple and blue. The energy lances converged, blockading the aerial intruder’s path with an interlocking lattice of high-energy death that no aircraft could possibly evade.
Karypsic 1.1 gave the hellspewers a wing-waggle salute and disappeared…
…To reappear a few klicks to the south, where she completed her loop and came in for a second run.
Your enemies are coming for you, Tawfiq. Romulus smiled. This is the last day of your existence.
His smile froze. Whoever was outside gunning for Tawfiq weren’t his friends either. Would it be his last day too?
— Chapter 45 —
Arun McEwan
At the base of the Victory Monument
“Dad, you still hanging in there?”
Explosions ripped through the ground to the south of Arun’s position. The hellspewer beams extinguished.
“I’m here,” he replied, and then added, surprising himself, “Your mother?”
“She’s too busy politicking in orbit to save the Earth. Where do you need me?”
The Karypsic streaked away to the north, her lower shield shrugging off the weak Hardit fire from the wreckage of the hidden unit Tawfiq had unleashed. Arun wondered how much of the relief he was feeling to see their destruction was really to hear that Xin wasn’t here.