The man’s words irked Eric—because he was right. Eric and his men had been dawdling, watching the mesmerizing explosions on the plain. As the fires died, Eric’s infrared showed him two more lines of trolls advancing. Minute flashes indicated the launch of several missiles.
“Move!” Eric shouted. “Get away from the edge!” He’d only advanced a few steps when he was thrown to the ground by an explosion. Chunks of rock showered the back of the suit. His display went completely dark, and for a moment he thought he’d become another white dot. But then the display flickered to life, and he struggled to his feet, rocks and sand sloughing off the suit. Dazed, he staggered after the others.
They moved as fast as the marines could run, staying behind them to keep the armored suits between the unshielded men and the machines. Hrafnlingr flew silently overhead. Missiles continued to explode around the Norsemen, showering them with sand and rocks but doing minimal damage; the bluff was now blocking the machines’ line of sight, preventing accurate targeting. At last the barrage ceased, but Eric suspected this was only because the trolls had reached the foot of the bluff. He knew from training exercises with this type of machine that the trolls could scale a sheer stone face. The golems could do it even faster, but they would probably wait for the heavy infantry. At best the men had bought themselves a few minutes.
“Platoon leader,” said a voice in Eric’s ear. “Where’s the extraction point?” It took Eric a moment to realize it was the sergeant, addressing him by radio.
“About five miles ahead,” Eric said. “Where the valley widens. How did you know?”
“What the hell else would you be doing on this [bleep] rock?” The suit had an annoying habit of replacing profanity with a short tone rather than attempt to translate it. The voice was silent for a few seconds. Eric tried to identify the sergeant out of the group of men running ahead of him. The suit could identify the men by rank, but they were too close together for him to make sense of the labels. Then it said, “How big is your ship?”
“It’s called Varinga,” said Eric, not sure how else to answer the question.
“[Bleep] me,” said the sergeant. “I thought those looked like the Series Four suits. When does she land?”
Eric asked the suit and then repeated the answer. “Twenty-two minutes from now.”
“[Beep]. How many more suits are aboard?”
It struck Eric as strange that the man wasn’t even breathing heavily, although they were running at a near-sprint, but then he remembered he wasn’t listening to the man’s voice, but rather a translation of it. Panting would be lost in the ordinary delay between his words and the suit’s rendering of them. “Eight hundred in all,” he said.
“There are more infantrymen aboard?”
“No. Only us.”
“[Bleep]. I guess you’ve got room for two hundred civilians?”
“I… suppose so,” Eric said, confused. “There are civilians here?”
“Who do you think ran this place before the machines moved in?”
“We thought they had all been killed.”
“Then why… wait, did you come here to get us?”
“Marines, yes. We expected an entire company.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” said the suit, translating unnecessarily. “We had a full company until four days ago, when the Izarian reinforcements arrived. With the number of those KW23s they sent, they must be really hurting for helium-3. We’ve been lying low since then. When we saw the machines on the move, we figured the cavalry was here. Why the [bleep] did you go to the refinery without making contact with us first?”
“Bad information. We were told it was only golems—I mean, the general duty machines. We were going to eliminate them so they wouldn’t interfere with the evacuation. I had three squads looking for you, but you found us first.”
“And a good thing we did. Where are you from, Captain? My comm says your suit is translating from something called ‘Norse.’ I never even heard of that language.”
“My men and I are from Earth.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” said the suit again. “Fine, don’t tell me. Glad you’re here in any case. I’ll buy you a beer when we’re aboard Varinga.”
“Where are these civilians?” Eric asked.
“Heading to the extraction point now,” said the leader. “I sent them the coordinates as soon as you gave them to me. Have to sign off. Falling behind. Sergeant Macron out.”
The men had slowed to a jog, unable to maintain their pace, and one of them—evidently the sergeant—was now lagging the others by a good twenty yards.
There was no sign of the enemy, but Eric was not hopeful they had broken off pursuit. Most likely they were less than a mile back, hidden by the narrow canyon’s twists and turns. It occurred to Eric—somewhat belatedly—that he could release the hrafnlingr from their tight overhead formation now that the Norsemen were no longer concerned about stealth. After some frustrating fiddling with the controls—all done with eye movements and voice commands—he managed to assign the hrafnlingr to a wide area surveillance program. The drones flew higher and spread themselves out ahead and behind the Norsemen. Soon they picked up a group of twenty-six trolls and thirty-one golems. The hrafnlingr reported that over half the trolls were still armed with missiles.
They came to the place where the canyon opened up to the wider valley where they had landed. The extraction point, marked on their overhead displays with a blue X, was less than a quarter mile ahead. A crowd of people, wearing masks and what Eric assumed was mining gear, had gathered nearby. He couldn’t imagine how these people had stayed alive this long, even with a company of marines to help them. Did they sleep with their masks on? According to Dornen the air had enough of what the Truscans called “oxygen” to be breathable, but the other elements in it would kill a person in minutes.
Sergeant Macron ordered his marines to halt, and Eric’s men came to a halt behind them. The sergeant, panting in his mask, walked up to Eric. He gasped something that the suit translated as “Fourteen minutes.” Eric nodded, assuming Macron had the correct time until Varinga landed. “How long…?” He motioned toward the canyon through which they had just come.
Eric checked the bird’s-eye display. The enemy machines looked to be about half a mile back and moving at a fast walking pace. He guessed the machines would be on them in about five minutes, but he sensed the marine was hoping for a more precise answer. He said, “Suit, how long until the enemy gets here?”
“Five minutes, thirteen seconds,” the suit said.
He repeated the answer.
Macron gave him an odd look. “Did you just…?” He started. “Never mind.” He turned to face his men. “Thetus, get those people back from the landing zone. Make sure they’re ready to move. The rest of you, come with me. We’re going to buy them some time.” He began trudging back the way they came. “You coming?” he said to Eric.
Eric stood in front of the other mech-suited men, watching the marines head toward the narrow canyon opening. They were armed only with machineguns, which would be —at best—a minor annoyance to the trolls. “Wait,” said Eric. “You can’t hold off those tro… KW23s with machineguns. My men will do it. Get your men aboard the ship.”
“No can do,” said Macron, still walking. “This is why we’re here. I wouldn’t mind some help, though.”
Eric raised his arm. “Ready machineguns,” he said. “Single shot, intelligent targeting.”
“No enemies in range,” the suit said.
“Target Sergeant Macron. Override warnings. Override safety protocols.”
The marines, unable to understand Eric but hearing the machineguns whir to life, stopped and leveled their guns at him. The sergeant, now some ten paces away, turned to look at him. “Just what in the [bleep] do you think you’re doing?”
“You and your men will be in the way,” Eric said. “Our mission is to get you off this world. I do not have time to argue. Join the civilians or I will shoot you.”
; “You must be [bleep] me. What the [bleep] kind of unit are you, anyway? You sure as [bleep] aren’t marines.”
“I told you,” Eric said. “We’re Norsemen. We come from Earth. I thank you for your assistance, but now you must go. I would rather not shoot you, but I will do it to get the rest your men on the ship.”
Macron stared at him. “You’re serious. You really came from Earth.”
“Aye,” said Eric. “We heard you folks needed some help. Maybe we can’t save all of mankind, be we can get you on that ship. I beg you, as one warrior to another. Do not make me shoot you. There is nothing left for you to do here. Go. Help your people.”
The sergeant stood for a moment, staring at Eric in wonderment. He reached into a pocket and produced a small black box, which he held out to Eric. “Do you know what this is?”
Eric’s men had used the devices in training. “Radio detonator.”
“There’s a boulder about fifty yards into the crevice, wired to blow.”
Eric nodded. “I saw it.” The boulder was the size of a house, and it rested precariously on the Eastern lip of the canyon, above a narrow passage. He had considered sending some of his men up to push the boulder down onto the machines, but they hadn’t had time.
“The transmitter isn’t directional, so you’ll have to be within a few yards to get through the jamming signal. There’s a five second delay. Trigger it and then get the [bleep] out of the way. Wait until they’re under it, and you might take out two or three of them—and slow down the others.”
Eric commanded the suit to open an access panel and reached out to take the device with his hand. He slid it into one of the holding brackets inside the suit and slid the panel shut. “We will hold off the machines,” he said. “You must go.”
Macron straightened and gave him a salute. “You heard the man,” he said. “Let’s get those people aboard Varinga!”
Chapter Thirteen
“E
ric’s men waited just inside the mouth of the canyon, having taken cover as best they could in the time they had left. Several of the men had managed to find cover on ledges partway up the canyon wall. Eric’s son, Haeric, who had proven particularly adept at climbing in a mech suit, had taken a precarious vantagepoint with the detonator. It was a dangerous assignment, but Eric was proud of his son for volunteering. They might have triggered the explosive charge while the trolls were some distance away, but this posed its own dangers: if the trolls saw the canyon was impassible, they would retreat to where the walls were climbable and go around the obstacle. Delaying them for as long as possible meant letting them advance. Eric hoped, too, to put a dent in the enemy’s numbers by taking out three or four of them with the boulder.
The thudding of the trolls’ heavy metal feet came to them from around the bend, growing slowly louder. Scanning the sky, Eric saw no sign of Varinga. He tried to hail her but got no response. The suit told him the ship was supposed to land in ten minutes.
From where Eric stood, he could just make out the contour of Haeric’s suit, some thirty feet up the eastern canyon wall. The rigged boulder was almost directly above him; the plan was for Haeric to trigger the bomb and then leap down and out of the way of the boulder before it exploded. Eric watched on the bird’s-eye display as the machines moved closer to his son’s position. The machines had wisely moved a contingent of golems out front; Eric worried that the smaller machines would spot the Norsemen before the trolls were under the boulder, but it was too late to do anything about it now.
The golems picked their way forward in pairs, the sensors hidden in the featureless globes that served as heads scanning this way and that for any sign of the enemy. Eric’s men were well-hidden and remained completely still, and as the first pair of golems came into view, he thought for a moment that their plan had succeeded. But one of the golems suddenly pivoted toward Haeric and let loose a burst with its machinegun. Eric, knowing that the machines communicated silently and instantaneously with each other, gave the order to open fire.
Bullets tore through the thin armor of the golems, cutting them down where they stood. The one that had fired on Haeric was destroyed before it could do any damage, and Haeric, half-hidden behind a vertical wedge of rock, blasted its partner to pieces. More golems advanced to take the place of their fallen comrades, firing their own guns at any exposed piece of armor. These were cut down as well, but still more advanced from behind. Slowly but surely, the machines were gaining ground. For the moment, the Norsemen remained mostly behind cover, but the farther the golems advanced, the more exposed they were. Eric’s display told him that the trolls, perhaps sensing a trap, had ceased moving, while golems streamed toward the front. The Norsemen were now taking steady fire. Individually, the small caliber bullets did little damage to the heavily armored suits, but the preternatural precision of the machines allowed them to fire hundreds of rounds at exactly the same place. The men had learned in training that if you stayed still for more than a few seconds, the machines would eventually wear holes in their armor through sheer persistence. Moving, however, meant giving up their cover. Eric suspected this was exactly what the enemy was waiting for.
Some of the men had chosen cover positions that allowed them very little freedom of movement, and the golems had a knack for identifying these and sending torrents of bullets at them until their armor gave out. One by one, men standing on ledges and outcroppings began to fall. Alive, but trapped in hobbled suits, they unloaded their guns at the golems or flailed at them with whatever limbs still functioned. But the downed men were immediately set upon by several more golems, who riddled their suits with bullets until the occupant was dead or the suit was fully disabled. All the while, the slow, steady advance of the golems continued.
Haeric fared better than the others because any golem that fired at him was immediately targeted by half a dozen Norsemen. They all knew the only chance the people in the valley had of getting out of here was Haeric triggering the boulder trap at the right moment. As the number of Norsemen still standing continued to drop, though, Eric realized that a change of tactics was needed. The only way they were going to draw fire away from Haeric and tempt the trolls to come through was to give them a more attractive target.
“Retreat!” Eric shouted. “Everybody back!” He lay down several bursts of fire to cover the men leaping down from their perches above. Then he joined the others, bounding across the canyon floor toward the valley. As they ran, they were pelted with constant streams of bullets. Eric could only hope that the golems were too focused on the fleeing men to target Haeric.
Eric heard a rumbling overhead and looked up to see an elongated black triangle sliding across the deep violet sky: Varinga, on its way to the extraction point. Thank Odin! Eric had begun to think Dornen had seen the explosions below and decided not to risk his ship on a rescue after all. Eric’s display told him that the trolls were inching forward. Good. When the retreating men were clear, Eric would order the hrafnlingr to harass the golems to give Haeric time to trigger the bomb and get out of the way. With a little luck—
“Father!” cried Haeric in his ear. Haeric’s icon flickered, indicating that the suit was damaged.
Eric came to a halt, taking cover behind a boulder. “Haeric, are you hurt?”
“No, Father. But—” The transmission cut out, and Haeric’s icon went white. The suit was dead. And if his son wasn’t dead yet, he soon would be.
*****
“Commander,” said the comms officer, Clea Marinus, as Varinga slowly descended to the plain, “we’ve got Izarian ships in system!”
“Damn,” said Commander Dornen. The Izarians had beaten his most cautious estimate. Either they had more idle ships than he’d thought, or he’d underestimated their interest in Voltera. Dornen had hoped to be well on his way with a company of marines on board by the time the first Izarian ships arrived. “How many?”
“Fourteen… sixteen. They’re still coming through, sir. Nineteen.”
“My God.
Time until intercept?”
“They’re about a septhar out, moving fast. Must have hauled ass to get into jump position. They’ll have to arc around Voltera to intercept us.”
“Just give me a time estimate, Lieutenant.”
“Ninety-six minutes, sir. Assuming we maintain our current position.”
Dornen chewed his lip. Varinga’s only chance to escape would be jumping to hyperspace before the Izarian ships were in missile range, but it would take days for her to get far enough from Voltera to safely make a hyperspace jump. If he aborted the landing, they might be able to stay out of range long enough to make the jump. That meant leaving the Norsemen—and more importantly, the marines—on Voltera.
“Commencing landing procedure,” said the navigator, Delio Starn. Varinga had ceased its forward motion and began to descend to the valley floor.
“Have we made contact with anyone on the ground yet?”
“No, sir,” said Marinus. “The Vikings are still engaged in a firefight about a mile to the north, but we’ve got visual confirmation of about two hundred people near the extraction site.”
“Marines?”
“I don’t think so, sir. Most of them don’t appear to be armed. They look like civilians.”
The good news just keeps coming in, Dornen thought to himself. If there were no marines left on Voltera, there was no reason to risk his ship. On the other hand, the Izarians were on the verge of wiping out every known human world. If they found Earth, those two hundred people in the valley might soon be all that was left of humanity.
“How long until we’re on the ground, Commander?” asked Freya’s voice in his ear.
I should abort the landing, Dornen thought. If we leave now, we might still have a chance. But then what? Spend the rest of my life looking for remote human colonies that might not exist?
“Thirty seconds,” Dornen said. “There’s a group of about two hundred people at the extraction point. Get them aboard as quickly as you can. We’ve got enemy ships incoming.”
The War of the Iron Dragon: An Alternate History Viking Epic (Saga of the Iron Dragon Book 5) Page 12