by T. R. Harris
Bullock was quick on the trigger and dispatched half a dozen Antaere who appeared at corridor intersections, hoping to take out the ill-trained RC. Rounds from his M-101 assault rifle penetrated the thin walls at the corners, ripping through yellow flesh and sending others scurrying away in panic. Bull rushed up to a cross hallway and laid a burst of hot lead into the backs of the fleeing Qwin.
Then he was off again, shooting and advancing with deadly determination.
He came to a closed door and blasted through it without even trying the knob. It was a warehouse, with roll-up doors leading outside. He sent some of his people to open the doors while he and a sergeant provided cover. They were rewarded with a low loading dock and wide alleyway between the buildings. No Antaere were present, and the lane passed between the buildings for some distance, leading back toward the main gate.
Bull led the way, hurrying his people along as the sounds of battle raged all around. Up ahead, he saw columns of Marines sprinting to his left, following the wide avenue that ran along the outer wall of the enclave. Shots ricocheted off the pavement and building walls nearby, fired at them by the retreating Marines.
“Hey! We’re friendlies,” he shouted as the remainder of this team reached the intersection.
A Marine major ran up to him. “Where’s the rest of your team?” the man asked as he panted from the quick sprint.
“This is it for this element,” Bullock answered. “There may be four more coming from the south.”
“And your Marine escort?”
“Unknown, sir. They were in a fight for their lives when I last saw them.”
The man grimaced. “All right. Join in the retreat, master sergeant. We’re pulling back as fast as possible.”
“What about our REV?”
“You tell me, Bullock. We can’t get him, and apparently neither can you. He’s a lost cause. Now go. The Qwin are right behind us.”
Bullock didn’t have to be told twice. He waved his team into the flow of retreating Marines, many of which were running sideways while still firing their weapons at the advancing Antaere. Bull blasted one last Qwin before joining the parade. He made it to the gate, with only nine of his nineteen-member team still alive. And that didn’t include Pete Savage.
The Marines were in full retreat, with explosions erupting from within their ranks and hundreds of armored Antaere troops pouring from the buildings and laying down an incredible wall of both ballistic and flash fire. Dozens of Marines lay dead along the roadway, as both phalanxes of Human assault troops were bunching up while moving relentlessly toward the main entrance.
Captain Lofton glanced at the third screen, the one with the drone images of the recovery team. They, too, were under assault from the buildings. A number of them lay dead on the pavement, with less than half of the team using their gangly exo-skeletons to crash into the nearby buildings for cover.
This was not good. Pete Savage was on his own.
“It’s a trap,” someone stated the obvious from down the line.
But he was right. From the vantage point of the drones, Lofton could make out hundreds—if not thousands—of Antaere fighters, many more than the seven hundred they’d been told were there. Suddenly, all the ramifications of ‘it’s a trap’ came to Lofton. Not only was Pete stranded and with no chance of recovery, but all the Humans on the surface were vulnerable to being wiped out. And the fleet. The Antaere would not have set such an elaborate trap on the surface and not have enough assets to take out the ships in space. The Antaere operation had been well-planned. Every contingency would have been covered.
ES-7 was not to become the first step in Earth’s eventual redemption within the Grid. Instead, it could be the Human’s greatest defeat in the war.
“Sir, sorties coming in, targeting our cover fighters.”
Lofton pushed back from his station and swiveled the chair until he could see an ashen-faced General Diamond behind him. “Sir…you wanted command. Well it’s all yours.”
11
Pete was injured, yet instinct drove him on. The arena was surrounded by a twelve level ring of concrete and stone, supported by elaborate arches designed to mimic the Coliseum in Rome, but on a smaller scale. The structure was community property for the enclave and all residents were welcome at no cost. As a result, the stadium was open to the outside without entry gates or security stations. It could seat twenty thousand people, which was most of the adult population of the enclave when the Humans occupied it.
Now it was full of running Qwin, rushing to avoid the hobbled and bloody Human. A few considered engaging him, but they changed their minds when their version of a REV appeared close behind. The NOV inside the mechanical suit had no reservations about killing its own kind, acting more like a traditionally revved-up fighter. It was firing its flash weapon into the crowd while swinging the other clawed arm at any creatures who came within range. Even so, it was obvious the machine itself was being controlled by others and not the NOV. The mechanical beast continued after Pete, even when there were juicier targets all around. The controllers were after the Human and not their fellow Antaere.
Pete limped to a stairway and took it to the next level up. Although the NOV ran on tracks, there was a good bet it had means of climbing stairs, but Pete didn’t make his move to avoid the robot. He had another goal in mind.
He moved to a point at the floor, stopped and then hunched down. Then with a powerful thrust of his legs, he jumped into the air, reaching the ceiling twenty feet above with ease. He extended his arms and pushed off, propelling his body down to the floor with tremendous force. The concrete splintered and cracked as he landed. He bent down again and repeated the procedure. This time, there was a prominent depression in the floor, and the ceiling below began to crumble. Timing his next jump to when he estimated the NOV would be moving below him, the third hit shattered the floor, starting an avalanche of debris raining down to the level below.
Pete fell with the river of broken stone and concrete, followed by a toppling of the arches on the second level, as well as others above it. The effect snowballed, until this entire section of the stadium was collapsing. Pete’s timing had been right. The pile of rubble landed on the NOV and his mechanical transport.
Pete was buffeted by large blocks of falling debris, but as he landed on the NOV, he pushed off with his legs, sending his body flying horizontally away from the growing mound. He hit the smooth, hard floor and skidded twenty feet before coming to a rest in the center of the corridor and safely away from the crumbling section of the stadium.
The NOV was obscured by a cloud of dust rising up from the pile of broken material now filling the corridor. Pete didn’t ponder the scene. Instead he raced after the still fleeing Qwin until he burst back into the bright light of the open arena. A few of the remaining drones followed him, relaying their sad images back to the Eldorado.
There were Qwin still in the seats, watching him. They didn’t move, which caused Pete to stop and stand still near one of the goal lines. With nothing to chase, his mission was over.
Captain Lofton pushed the button that would send the Twilight drug into Pete’s system. A moment later, the courageous young REV lay still on the ground.
The Run had lasted fourteen minutes, forty-eight seconds, by far the longest Run in REV history.
The people in the control room were aware of this fact, but they’d been so busy with all the other things going wrong with the operation that they hadn’t voiced their shock. But now they knew what was coming. Without a way of retrieving the fallen REV, Lofton would send the detonate signal to the small explosive charge in the suit. The already gathering Qwin wouldn’t get a chance to tear his body apart as revenge for the hundreds of their kind he’d killed. But the captain would wait until a few of the more aggressive aliens came closer.
Just then, the image from one of the drones shifted, focusing on the huge mechanical device that had appeared from the shadows of the surrounding structure. It was the NOV, sti
ll encased in the exo-skeleton, although the device was now broken and bent, dragging one of the arms behind it as it rocked forward and back on a badly deformed track. The bronze shield covering the passenger compartment was gone and the alien inside was visible. Blood covered his head and stained the torn uniform. The eyes were still the hypnotic yellow and red of an activated warrior, and they were focused unblinking on the unconscious REV thirty feet away. It continued to advance, still controlled by unseen operators.
Just then a dark shadow crossed over the arena, momentarily countered by a brilliant flash. The NOV and his mechanical armor exploded as a powerful flash cannon bolt buried him in a ball of plasma flame. The bolt was of starship grade, much stronger than anything carried by land troops. The people in the control room blinked from the blinding flash, confused by what just happened.
The drone panned across the seats, showing row upon row exploding from a barrages of projectile fire, ripping stone and flesh to pieces. The surviving Antaere ran for their lives.
A huge gray spaceship settled down in the open area of the arena, filling it with a cloud of white smoke from the landing jets and obscuring the view of the observers for several seconds before being expelled from the stadium by the last of the down bursts. Captain Lofton recognized the vessel as an Eagle-class corvette, small, extremely fast and usually reserved for escort duty. Although one of the smaller ships in the fleet, it still filled up most of the interior space of the arena, coming to a rest fifty feet from where Pete lay on the brown grass.
A side hatch cycled open and two tall, lean men ran out. One had a BM-8 minigun held by a strap over his right shoulder with a belt of ammo dragging behind. The other had an M-91 sniper rifle pressed against his cheek. Both men were firing at every Qwin they could see, and with deadly accuracy.
A third man—unarmed—emerged from the spaceship and ran to Pete. He took hold of the armor on the REV’s shoulder and began to drag him toward the hatch. Although half the armor was gone, it still added weight to the inert body. For an activated REV the weight didn’t matter, but for a normal man, it made the job of pulling Pete the fifty feet over dead grass into a chore.
The two gunmen were making mincemeat out of the aliens. The minigun—designed to be mounted on a thick tripod and pad—was like a toy in the hands of the operator, who strafed the stands with ease and accuracy. But soon the ammo belt was exhausted. The man discarded the weapon and ran to Pete. He bent over, scooped the REV up in both arms, and ran for the starship. The unarmed man beat him to the hatchway, and both disappeared inside, along with Pete.
The sniper was still firing, aiming and shooting in a blur. It was incredible to watch…and the man never missed. But soon he was walking backwards toward the corvette, still firing until he was inside the ship. The hatch slid shut, and a breath later, the playing field was filled with more smoke as the starship angled up and raced into the sky.
“Get that ship some cover!” General Diamond ordered.
The image of the rescue was being displayed in the ship’s CIC, so Diamond’s words were heard by those controlling the air cover. They would do what they could, which wasn’t much. What assets they had left to command, were covering the landing craft and the retreating Human troops.
The Marines—what was left of them—were boarding shuttles for the short hop into space. The recovery crew had abandoned their medical shuttle and were crowding into the first ship—any ship—they could find. All reserve air and space fighters from the small fleet had been sent to the surface to cover the evacuation. They were holding their own against the ever-increasing number of Qwin ships entering the fray but that wouldn’t last much longer.
In the meantime, alien warcraft had engaged the fleet in orbit. The smaller Human ships clustered around the battle-carrier, using its impressive array of weapons and shields for cover. There were a lot more enemy ships than before, but even so, there was nothing in their arsenal that could take out the carrier, at least not in a single attack. But the other ships were vulnerable. Six of the thirteen warships that had made it to Kaus were destroyed, with more taking fire and suffering major damage.
The thin line of shuttles coming up from the surface were being harassed by dozens of Antaere fighters. There were eleven in flight, and three bought it before the rest came under the protection of the carrier. Open landing bays were quickly filled with transports entering at reckless speed. Several crashed into bulkheads, but the integrity of the pressure chambers held.
The last ship to enter was the unnamed corvette from the arena. It caught a landing skid on the outer door frame of the landing bay and whipped around, bouncing off other ships before slamming into the far bulkhead. Even before the metal walls had stopped reverberating from the collision, the double hangar doors rotated shut, allowing several fires to flare up once the oxygen-based atmosphere was added to the room. Damage control teams rushed in to extinguish the flames, along with dozens of medical personnel with gurneys and crash-carts.
The REV medical crew—those who hadn’t been part of the landing party—rushed for the gray ship carrying their REV. Captain Lofton and General Diamond was with them.
The hatch cycled open and three men exited, stepping out of the way of the entering med crew.
“There’s another REV in sickbay,” said the smaller man in khakis. He was a Marine captain. Lofton stepped up to him.
“Captain Isaac Lofton, REV ops.”
“Silas Drake, the same, but from Unity.”
General Diamond stepped up to the men. Drake knew who he was—everyone in the REV program did, even if the general didn’t know them. He looked the junior officer up and down before focusing his attention on the two enlisted men next to him.
“Ross and Johnson,” Diamond stated. “You can imagine my surprise that you’re still alive.” His bland tone didn’t match his words .
“Good to see you, too, colonel,” said Kyle Johnson, just as emotionless.
Diamond tapped the star on his collar with a finger. “It’s general, now, gunny. I wondered what happened to you after ES-6. I heard your escort was attacked.”
“It was, but we made it to the Unity Enclave. The Qwin have had us cut off from the outside for several months. We couldn’t get the word out.”
“And now you’re here.” The general sounded disappointed.
The men watched as the first REV was carried from the starship on a narrow gurney. It was Pete Savage. It was hard to make out his features from all the blood. So much for indestructible armor, Lofton thought.
The next gurney carried another man. He appeared to be uninjured yet unconscious. Captain Drake filled them in.
“This is my REV, Sergeant Larry Hand. He’s been without NT-4 for over two months. We’ve had him in a coma to preserve some of his residual. He’s in pretty bad shape. I hope we can bum some NT from you.”
Lofton looked at General Diamond. The flag officer had confiscated all the NT-4 aboard, leaving only the experimental NT-5 for Pete and his Run.
“Of course,” said Diamond, his eyes locked steadily on Lofton. “We have plenty.”
“Thank God,” said Captain Drake. “Gunnery Sergeants Johnson and Ross were going to risk flying Sergeant Hand off the planet and into Human space in search of NT-4. That was until they realized neither one of them knows how to fly a starship. I came along as their pilot. We were getting ready to go when squawk came in about the fleet entering the system. Of course, we thought you were coming for us—so did the Antaere—so we put our flight on hold.” He looked at the general with angry eyes. “But then you guys pulled a fast one and went to Bountiful instead. What was that all about?”
“We were asked by the natives to drive the Antaere out,” said Lofton, answering for the general. “It turned out to be a trap.”
Drake gave a knowing nod. “When we realized Unity was being passed by, we made a run for the fleet. Then word came over about the massacre taking place on the surface. That’s when we came to help.”
“And we’re glad you did. We’d already written Pete off until you showed up. That was damn heroic of you…all of you.”
Drake looked at the two REVs standing next to him. “Yeah, shit like that seems to follow these guys around. Now, if you don’t mind, general, I’d like to get to sickbay and see about my REV.”
“Captain, he’s not your REV. He belongs to the Corps…just like all of you.”
Lofton was taken aback, not knowing if Diamond was intentionally trying to be an asshole, or whether it just came naturally. All teams considered their assigned REV to be theirs. That’s just the way it was, and no one had ever questioned the practice before. If this was Diamond’s way of marking his territory, he was going about it all wrong.
Captain Drake stared at the general for a long moment before responding. “Of course, sir. Forgive me. Even so, may I be dismissed?” he asked softly.
“Carry on, captain.”
Drake led the parade from the landing bay; Lofton and the two REVs didn’t ask for permission, they simply followed.
General Diamond remained in the chamber. Alone.
12
The moment the last of the incoming ships was recovered, the Eldorado and her remaining escorts bolted away from the planet, engaging full gravity drives early on with no regard for anything around them. The Antaere continued to attack until the survivors were out of the system and in deep gravity-wells. Out of an original force of nineteen, only five vessels made it out of the Kausian system in one piece.
Colonel Sam Daugherty was beside himself. Of the fifteen hundred Marines he’d deployed to the surface, only four hundred twenty made it back to the carrier. And the medical facilities aboard the ship were filled with even more wounded and dying Marines. The count would surely go up.