Terry looked at the determined faces, wondering how many would make it. “You saw the defensive systems that surround this place. It looks intimidating, but don’t be afraid. We work from a position of power. Anything fires from inside there, mass the railgun firepower against it. Take it out and move on. Keep your helmets on your heads and present the lowest profile target you can. Make yourselves small and deadly.”
Terry drew in the dirt to create a map of what they were up against.
“Timmons, werewolf it in from the right flank. Marcie, go with Aaron, take your people and weretiger your way from the left flank. Joseph, vamp it up behind us and try to keep Bundin from getting wiped off the planet. We will need you to tap the minds of the Crenellians in case they don’t see things our way, so don’t get yourself killed on the way.
“We don’t have much time. I expect the tank that Kaeden attacked isn’t the only one out there. There’s probably a fleet of behemoths destroying entire Pods. I won’t allow a genocide, not as long as I’m still breathing. I can’t ever hate anyone that much, except maybe some Forsaken, but even that hatred burned me up inside...”
“Then we need to win this one,” Marcie said. “And fast, too. Kimber, carry those guys. We run in two minutes, V formation, two up, one back, all out. It’d be nice to get there before it’s completely dark out here.”
“Let’s not burn any more of our precious daylight. OORAH!” Kim shouted. The platoon replied in kind with a hearty round of battle cries. Joseph talked constantly with Bundin, but gave the thumbs up that they were ready. Petricia nodded slightly, hesitating as she hadn’t bought into the plan.
Timmons, Sue, Shonna, and Merrit stripped, bundled their clothes and threw them inside the shuttle before changing into werewolf form. The weretigers and Christina followed suit. She chose her Pricolici form, since it was deadlier than the werewolf. That form allowed her to carry the railguns to add firepower to the attack.
Terry, Char, and Dokken took the point and started jogging toward their objective. The Were and their teams flared out to the flanks, building speed and increasing the distance between the three groups. The platoon members carried the nine Crenellians, who seemed to enjoy the ride, although they didn’t show it on their faces.
“There might be some hope for the Crooners yet.”
“Crooners?” Char said as they slowly accelerated.
“You know I can’t do three-syllable names and four is out of the question. So, Tik, Ankh, and Crooners.”
“So let it be written,” Char intoned. “So let it be done.”
* * *
“Get up there!” Kaeden yelled. “Put me down and get in the fight.”
Kae’s suit had enough juice that he powered up, so he could carry the power supply as it charged. The cloud of slugs that passed over the tank suggested that the Podders were fighting back against the dead tank, mistaking the mechs for Crenellians.
Or not and they were attacking anyone not from Poddern.
“We saved your dumb asses!” Kaeden bellowed using the suit’s external speakers. He found his way to the tank, but the Podders were streaming around the sides, firing their slug-throwers. The slugs were pinging from the power supply and Kae couldn’t risk that getting damaged. He shoved it between two road wheels of the massive tank’s tracks and leveled his railgun, but hesitated to pull the trigger.
The volume of fire increased. His suit withstood it all. He turned off his microphones from outside the suit.
“I gave you a chance,” he whispered and started to fire, aiming center mass on the Podders’ shell in an attempt to take them out with one shot.
There were too many of them, and Kae opened up in rapid-fire mode. If he had his microphones turned on, he would have discovered the rest of his team was doing the same thing.
* * *
Terry played with his JDS as he ran, dialing it back and forth between three and eleven.
“Be careful with that thing. You’ll put an eye out,” Char said, laughing.
They ran at a pace that would quickly eat up the distance.
“I can’t just dial it to eleven and destroy the entire headquarters. That would be the easy answer, but the Crooners aren’t going to make it easy on us. I detest their thinking, although I’m doing it, too. Destroy them all and be done with it!”
“They are detached from reality. They don’t look their enemies in the face. From a computer’s standpoint, isn’t the best option to eliminate an enemy? They’ve removed the humanity from the process, which means that their sense of justice is distorted,” Char explained.
“That’s what I was thinking. They simply don’t know, and it’s up to us to educate them. I wonder what this bunch will have to say to their fellows.”
“Does our whole plan rest on our boys here playing nice?” Char asked.
“I have co-equal plans in mind. I want to get Smedley into their system. I also want this bunch to inform the headquarters people about the errors of their ways.”
“I’m counting on Smedley,” Char replied.
“As am I, lover.”
Terry and Char had a millisecond to react as the plasma beam lashed toward them. Their random direction changes on their approach saved their lives. They both sped up, zigzagging as they accelerated as if the fires of damnation were licking at their feet.
The plasma beams were probably hotter.
The platoon broke apart, aimed their railguns, and fired at the weapon platforms that materialized from beneath the dirt. As Terry spotted the towers popping up, he dialed the JDS to ten and let loose. With each shot, a tower was vaporized. He stopped running, took a knee, and braced himself to fire.
Chapter Twenty-One
Finally, the Podders stopped coming. Kae picked up the power supply and climbed atop the tank. He set it next to Praeter and plugged him in. Kaeden shined his suit lights around the area. None of the Podders had made it onto the tank. They’d remained on the ground as they fired at those on The Beast.
Kaeden took a deep breath and surveyed the damage. Fleeter was down,lying in a pool of blood. Cantor lay dead on top of her. Kae carefully moved the man to the side. Fleeter was ashen and breathing shallowly. He looked at the field tourniquet but didn’t touch it. He didn’t want the stump of her leg to start bleeding again.
“Report,” Kaeden said wearily.
Gomez replied first. “I need to recharge. I’m flashing red.”
“Me, too,” Kelly added. “I don’t know how many Podders are down, but it’s a lot.”
Kae heard the clump of armored boots as someone walked across the top of the tank. “Duncan is okay, just needs to be charged up. He’s been trapped in there for, well damn, I don’t know how long,” Gomez said.
Capples walked up next to Kaeden. He powered down and climbed out of his suit. He ran a hand through his tangle of hair as he looked at Cantor’s body.
“Invincible, just until we’re not,” he whispered.
“Are we clear? There is no threat?” Kae asked.
“They’re gone, but they didn’t retreat. I think they’re all dead. My suit light shows a blue sea with nothing moving. I don’t know where they came from, and if any retreated, I don’t know where to,” Kelly said, sounding exhausted.
“Bring it in. Fleeter could use some company,” Kaeden ordered. “You can get out of your suits, but stay low. I’ll stay armored up.”
The mechs moved close, faced outboard, and powered down. The individuals climbed out, shoulders hunched and heads sagging. Even with the suit augmentations, the warrior within still had to move and engage.
Kae kept his suit light on, having it act almost like a campfire, but there was no singing. There was no joy.
“The Bad Company mech platoon acquitted itself well, but there will be no battle streamer from this fight. We left one of our own on this battlefield. We’ll carry another off. We ran out of power before the battle was joined. What a debacle.”
“That didn’t get Cantor killed. T
he fucking Podders attacked us as if we were the bad guys! We just killed their enemy, but still they came. Fuck those blue stalk-heads.”
“I have to agree. We’d been running all out for two days? Three days? I don’t even know anymore. You ran out of power twice,” Kelly said, pointing to Kaeden.
“If there ever was an untenable position, ours was it, yet we still managed to pull through. Fleeter is a fucking hero. She climbed in the guts of that thing and killed it,” Capples added. “And Cantor, too. His suit died, but he didn’t stop fighting. He climbed out to help her and you saw it when you came up here. He used his body to shield her. That’s what a real fucking warrior does. Honor. Courage. Commitment. He lived that and so did she.”
“We all do,” Praeter suggested. “We didn’t back away from the fight, sir. We took it to ‘em.”
Kaeden nodded, and a tear trailed down one cheek. “Cantor is the first of the mechs to die, and he won’t be the last, but let it be said, he died with honor, in the service of his fellow mech warriors. I say it’s time to call in the drop ship, get the medical supplies we need for Fleeter. Then we’ll bed down there for the night and go find the others first thing in the morning.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Capples replied.
Kae’s suit comm crackled to life. “Kae, we’re kind of pinned down and could use a little of your horsepower. Are you able to join us?” Char asked her son.
“On our way, Mom. I’m sure our ship has the coordinates.”
“Smedley will bring you right to us,” Char said. Kae could hear railguns barking in the background. “You may have to do an air drop as the Crenellians have a robust three-dimensional engagement zone over top of their headquarters. We can’t destroy the building or the computers, only the weapon systems.”
“Understand. We lost Cantor and Fleeter lost her leg. I’m down two, but the rest of us will be there. Look for the flares and you’ll know we’re on our way down,” Kae reported before signing off and summoning the drop ship.
“Time to go, people. Load up as much power as you can get because we’re going back into combat, only as soon as humanly possible.”
* * *
Dokken crouched to the ground as Terry and Char stayed low on either side of him. After Terry’s decimation of the towers, the low-profile guns came out. They fired parallel to the ground using a rapid fire, like a machine gun. In the darkness, the muzzle flashes and zings, and the bullets whipping past, put everyone on the ground. Timmons had stalled on the right flank for the same reason, while Marcie’s group on the left flank were trying to take advantage of a shallow runoff channel to crawl into the compound and attack the guns from behind.
In the interim, everyone was dug in, trying to worm their way into the best covered positions. The Crenellians watched with great interest, while the Podder found a shaft and disappeared underground.
Bundin asked Joseph to tell the others not to follow him because the tunnels could be dangerous. This wasn’t his Pod and he couldn’t be certain of the stability or hospitality.
Joseph and Petricia waited by the hole.
Char reached into the Etheric dimension to see what there was to see, if anything was hiding underground, but she found only one Podder moving slowly and assumed it was Bundin.
Terry couldn’t lay still. He twitched and moved. “Get some rest,” Char said, realizing that it was a useless thing to say as soon as the words left her mouth.
“I hate this,” Terry said as he carefully aimed his Jean Dukes Special, waited for a muzzle flash, and fired. He gave his best evil laugh when the weapon station exploded with spectacular fireworks.
But two more weapons opened up and honed in on Terry’s position. He draped an arm over Dokken as he tried to become one with the dirt, while Char did the same thing on the other side.
“I really hate this,” Terry reiterated.
* * *
Marcie crawled forward at an agonizingly slow pace. She had her arms far in front of her, pulling herself along while pushing with her toes. She scraped along, digging a small ditch where her equipment was dragging. Her pack was in a hole at the rally point that she’d designated well to their rear. Her railgun was over her arm as she had the sling wrapped between her thumb and forefinger.
She maintained a profile that didn’t stick up more than eight inches from the ground, about the depth of the channel she crawled through. Behind her, the weretigers crouched and stayed still. The four warriors were dug in around them. If Marcie had been able to run, she would have covered the ground in seconds, but crawling was a miserably slow way to travel.
But the withering fire that the Crenellians had set up would have put a damper on any direct assault.
It already did, but it would have ruined a lot of people’s days had Terry tried to press the attack instead of going to ground and waiting for the mechs to show up.
“Can I use your comm?” Terry asked. Char handed over her device to link her to the drop ship.
“What happened to yours?” Char asked. Terry pointed to the pocket on his flak jacket where the slugs had torn it apart. “You kept it out in the open?”
“Why are you surprised? It’s the same place I’ve kept it for, well damn, two hundred years, I guess.”
“About how long it’s been since you last took a shower. You stink,” Char added lovingly.
“I’d bag on you for werewolf smell, but then my chances of getting a two-person shower when we get back to the ship will probably be vastly reduced,” Terry replied.
Char nodded, while surreptitiously smelling inside her shirt and finding that it wasn’t all Terry.
I could have told you that, Dokken interjected.
“Don’t you start!” Char cautioned, ducking her head as a new wave of incoming fire swept over their position.
“Kaeden, are you airborne yet?” Terry asked into the small comm device.
“We just loaded up. We have four suits that needed to be carried, and two people,” Kaeden said sadly.
“We’ve seen people die before, but we can’t lament their loss until after the battle has been won,” Terry suggested.
“It’s not just our people, Dad. We wiped out an entire army of Podders. They didn’t stand a chance.”
“Did they give you any option?”
“Not really. After we killed the tank, they kept coming and we were running out of power. I don’t know what they could do to a person inside a dead suit.” Kae replied.
“Justice is not an easy export, and those on the receiving end may deserve it more than others. Or they may deserve it less. It is incumbent upon us to protect those who shouldn’t be on the receiving end at all.
“If I understand the Pod boundaries, the one you destroyed is the same one that wiped out the Crooners who were mining according to the contract they had with those very same Podders. When they did that, they headed down a path of self-destruction. It is my opinion that this Pod committed suicide, using the Crooners and you as their weapons. Does it make any sense to keep attacking an enemy down to your very last man, using the same tactics and ineffective weapons?”
Kaeden didn’t answer right away. Terry started to wonder if they’d been cut off.
“On our way. ETA is fifteen minutes. The drop ship is accelerating toward the upper atmosphere. We’ll be there soon, Dad. Whaddya say we end this thing and go home? I’m looking forward to some private time with my wife.”
Terry looked toward Char. She peeked one sparkling purple eye over the top of Dokken’s long hair. “I hear that. See you soon.”
All hands, all hands. Colonel Terry Henry Walton coming to you live with a mouth full of dirt. The mech platoon is on their way in. They are going to jump into the middle of the enemy compound and take out those weapons. Do not expose yourself before then. When the all-clear is sounded, run like hell and rally at the headquarters entrance. I suspect it’s buried in the middle there somewhere, but we’ll find it, and then we’ll go have us a little conversation. Team leader
s, report, Terry said using his comm chip.
The team leaders reported in, one by one starting with Timmons, then Kimber, Joseph, Aaron, and Marcie. Ramses piped up too, although he wasn’t a team lead at present. He was in charge of making sure the small support crew of Cory and Auburn were safe.
Ten minutes to touch down, people. Stay frosty.
“You love saying that,” Char added.
“It’s one of the best Space Marine lines ever!”
“Said by actors who weren’t Marines,” Char countered.
“Said by a Marine in combat with actual aliens,” Terry added definitively, pressing his face into the dirt as an energy beam raged overhead. “Where did that thing come from? I thought we killed all of those.”
Terry waited and then looked over the small berm he’d pushed in front of his position. From the muzzle flashes, he could make out a new tower, or newly repaired old tower. He couldn’t be sure.
“I’ll be damned. The little fuckers have some resilience. Check that. Their equipment has some resilience. I can’t wait to hear how Kae and his people took out that behemoth of a tank.” Terry slid his pistol to the front, checked the setting, aimed, and turned the JDS loose.
He chuckled as the tower erupted in a gout of flame.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Bundin found a way in. We can join him through the tunnels, Joseph said.
Terry tried to look behind him, but the darkness was absolute. He couldn’t see where he needed to run, and there was too much open space. The mech unit would be arriving soon, and Terry expected all hell to break loose.
You and Petricia go, take any you need from the platoon who are close enough to you to minimize their exposure to fire in addition to your own warriors, Terry replied.
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