Ruined Terra (Book 11 of The Empire of Bones Saga)

by Terry Mixon

  Kelsey shared a few words with Jared and Talbot before they headed out. Neither one of them outright told her to take every precaution imaginable, but she knew that they wanted her to be careful. She’d do her very best and see what the circumstances brought.

  The trip back to the crash site wasn’t too hard. There were a couple of times that she stepped where her footing wasn’t that certain, but they arrived near the crash site just before the sun began peeking over the horizon without any injuries. They’d made excellent time. Better than she’d hoped. The marines really could move quickly when they needed to.

  Corporal Boske dispatched some short-range drones to take a look and began determining what the locals were up to.

  “It looks like they’ve put all of the horses into a picket together off to the side,” the pink-haired woman said after a few minutes. “There are a couple of people keeping an eye on them while everyone else is either moving through the tents or circling around the pinnaces. I count maybe a dozen people keeping watch over the camp as a whole.

  “If you approach along the path that we made departing, you’re going to encounter two of them. I don’t see any concealed sentries, so I’m not worried about an ambush. Whatever their response is going to be, we’ll be able to see it coming.”

  “Sounds good,” Kelsey said. “Now remember the plan. I’m going to walk up on them slow and easy, then they’ll undoubtedly take me into custody. As long as they’re not being overtly violent, just let it happen.

  “Once I’m their prisoner, they’ll be more inclined to at least talk with me, if only to get me to answer some pointed questions. We need information, and these people are the best source we’ve found to get it.”

  With that, Kelsey left the marines to settle into good locations to either act as snipers or to rush in to defend her as she retreated. She really hoped that none of that was necessary, but she wasn’t ruling it out. She’d been in situations that she thought would work out one way and seen them go completely wrong. She’d play this by ear and see what happened.

  If she got lucky, they might find some allies that would tell them what lay ahead. If she got unlucky, she’d get into a fight.

  Well, time to see how her luck turned out this time.

  She walked into the area around the pinnaces about ten minutes later. The sun wasn’t behind her, but it was near enough that she got damned close before the guards spotted her. Both of them raised bows and covered her with their arrows while shouting for her to stop in recognizable Standard.

  She did so in as relaxed a manner as she could and kept her hands out to her sides with her palms exposed.

  “I’m not here to fight,” she said almost conversationally. “I just want to talk.”

  Before they could respond, her internal com came alive. Kelsey, this is Talbot. Our drones just picked up a large group coming from a different direction. It’s about three times the size of the group you’re looking at, and they look pretty pissed off. They’re riding hard and should be at the crash site in about half an hour. Maybe this isn’t the best time to initiate contact.

  It’s a little late for that, she said dryly. I’m already talking. Maybe we’re going to need some of that backup you were talking about after all. Work with Jared to figure out what the best response is if there’s a fight, because it certainly sounds like there’s going to be one.

  I don’t know which side I should be fighting with, but I’ll do my best to figure that out before the others arrive. Try to get me any information you can on them while I deal with the situation here.

  Will do. Make friends fast, or they might think you’re with the other party. That probably wouldn’t be helpful. You might also be able to use the impending attack to get them to see you more as an ally.

  I’ll see what I can manage, she said as one of the guards approached her warily. I have to go. Our new friends need my full attention, and I need to pass the word to Corporal Boske so she can prepare. Don’t do anything hasty, okay?

  Who? Me? I would never cut into your act.

  His quip made her smile, which it probably wouldn’t hurt to allow the man coming her way to see. Her humanity and passivity would help speed this along.

  She could’ve let Talbot warn Boske himself, since the armor had the com range to reach him, but this was her fight to coordinate. She needed to do so quickly, because time wasn’t on her side and there were so many ways things could still go wrong in the next few minutes.

  Boske, she said over the short-ranged com, we have about ninety incoming horsemen. It sounds like they’re not going to be hugging things out with this group or us. Work that into your plans and be ready to give me some cover if things go south. Things just got complicated.

  7

  Jared thought about Kelsey’s unfolding situation and considered sending the rest of the ready response team after her but rejected the idea. There was no way they could get to the area around the pinnaces in time to make any difference, and they might need them here. If his sister broke away from the first group and avoided the new people completely, she and the marines could make their stand in powered armor and not be in any significant danger.

  He’d leave Talbot in charge of the tactical situation while he focused on the strategic. They now had two separate sets of players, and he needed to know as much about them as he could before they started shooting at his people or each other.

  “Talbot, what do we know about the second force?” he asked the marine when he stepped out onto the ramp.

  The sun was over the horizon, and the scent of the air seemed to be changing in a way he couldn’t describe. As a Fleet officer, he’d never been one for camping, so nature was going to take some getting used to. He approved of the cool breeze coming in from the northwest, though. It somehow smelled of water.

  The marine officer shared a virtual display with him. It showed a map of the general area, and part of the lower screen was taken up by video from one of their drones. It showed a large force of people on horses, moving quickly over open ground.

  They had a determined look about them and were moving very fast. He also noticed that they didn’t have extra horses like the first group had come with.

  “My guess is that the second group is responding to the intrusion of the first,” Talbot said. “You’ll notice that they don’t have any remounts. They know exactly how far they’re going to go, and they don’t expect to do a whole lot of riding after that. They’re running toward a fight.”

  That didn’t sound promising.

  “What kind of scenarios are we looking at?” Jared finally asked. “Should we be getting everyone ready for a forced march?”

  “We wouldn’t get there in time to make any difference. Kelsey and her people have powered armor, and if they get caught in crossfire, they’ll be able to take care of themselves. Even if somebody out there has advanced weaponry, our people are trained and ready to deal with them. They’ll be fine.

  “Our best plan of action is to position ourselves to deal with the fallout. Let’s say the worst-case scenario happens and the two groups start fighting and catch our people in between them without us being able to determine who the good guys are. The marines will be able to put down any direct attacks. What we need to worry about are the political consequences.

  “Or I should say, that’s what you need to worry about. I’m setting my people up to make this building more defensible in case there are other groups out there coming to see what all the fuss is about.”

  Jared didn’t like thinking that his sister was outside his ability to help, but she was more than capable of taking care of herself. She wasn’t the same woman that had started out with him on the original expedition. She was tough, resourceful, and more than capable of shooting back at someone that wanted to make her a target.

  Her doppelgänger could handle herself in a fight too, he suspected. Julia was tough, even if she didn’t think so. What really concerned him was the fact that there might be more than one
group making for the crash site. While he hadn’t been on the ground when Kelsey crashed the pinnace, Jared was certain that she’d made quite a show coming in.

  If it had been as visible as he suspected, anyone within a hundred kilometers or more might know about their presence. If that was the case, the wrecked pinnaces might become the center of attention for a large number of potentially hostile groups. That could lead to a brawl that he desperately wanted to avoid becoming part of.

  “Is there any way we can minimize the chances that they’re going to track us to this building?”

  “I’m not sure how,” the marine officer said. “We had a lot of people hiking through the tall grass to get here. That’s going to leave the kind of trail that anyone can follow. Add in the marines in armor, and the arrow pointing directly at us is unmistakable. Since they know where we landed, they won’t have any difficulty zeroing in on us.”

  So, anything they left here was likely going to be taken as loot. Perfect. They might as well have left it all at the pinnaces and tried to make better time.

  Worse, even after they left this place, anyone that came across their trail would be able to track them down and attack them at will. He had to figure out if it was even possible for them to evade discovery by the locals. If not, this mission might be over long before they made it to the Imperial Palace.

  “What about once we leave?” he asked slowly. “If we abandon everything except the absolute essentials, are we going to be able to get our people off the radar of any pursuers?”

  “Possibly.” His brother-in-law didn’t sound optimistic. “The forest isn’t that far away. Once we get there, there’ll be a lot of undergrowth and overhead shielding that will help. There are things that we’ll be able to do to disguise our tracks and to minimize our trail. Once we’ve done that, it might be possible to break contact with any pursuers, though I wouldn’t count on things being that easy.

  “A more likely scenario is that we can have the majority of our people go into the forest while some of us hang a little bit behind in order to dissuade anyone on our six. If we can show them that chasing us is a bad idea, they’ll stop.

  “Hell, if Kelsey makes a big enough impression on the people back at the pinnaces, they might not pursue us at all. It’s going to depend on how things work out there.”

  “What can we do to support her?” Jared asked. “I doubt she’s going to be challenged to the point that she needs to retreat, but that situation could turn into a bloodbath for the locals.

  “Just the fact that there are two sets of unknowns coming in means there’s almost certainly going to be a fight. If we add in other groups, there’s going to be a war over the crashed pinnaces and anything they can salvage from them. How do we deal with that?”

  “We’re going to have to let Kelsey do what she does,” Talbot said simply. “That boat has sailed.”

  Jared could almost hear the marine’s mental shrug. He was right though. The best they could hope for was that Kelsey found them some friends. If they could turn one of the local groups into allies, that would make their mission a lot easier.

  If they made nothing but enemies here, that was probably going to be a death sentence for them, the mission, and the human race. He’d just have to hope that Kelsey did all the right things because she was the one on the ground and she’d be making the calls.

  He trusted her, but her track record was a bit daunting. She might succeed and still give him grey hair. And that was if everything worked out.

  If not, well, things would really get ugly really soon.

  Julia cursed under her breath as Kelsey passed on the warning about the new group. This was just what they hadn’t needed. More incoming natives and what certainly looked to be a brewing fight.

  With ninety potential hostiles inbound, it was a virtual certainty that they’d be fighting very shortly. The group inside their former camp was going to defend it against this new set of people, and her doppelgänger would be right in the middle of it.

  The possibility that someone would shoot her out of hand with one of those arrows or stick a sword through her was very high. If they came to the conclusion that Kelsey was somehow connected with the people attacking them—maybe assuming she was a distraction—they’d do their level best to kill her.

  Julia wasn’t certain how her doppelgänger could talk her way out of that, but she hoped that she could.

  Meanwhile, she and the marines had to deal with intercepting the incoming hostiles—if that’s what they really were—while still keeping an eye on Kelsey. They didn’t have the numbers for that, and they were going to have to improvise. Thankfully Corporal Boske seemed to be very competent.

  The pink-haired marine called everyone on the short-ranged com channel and informed them that the situation had just gotten ugly. She passed along the details of the incoming force, which wasn’t much. What they did know was that with ninety-odd hostiles incoming and thirty inside the camp, they were looking at worse than ten-to-one odds if all of the horsemen turned on them.

  Even with powered armor that rendered them invulnerable to primitive weapons, there was going to be a lot happening.

  The corporal turned to her. “What’s your plan, Highness?”

  Julia felt her eyes widen. “I’m not a good judge of military tactics, Corporal. You’d be better off making the decisions on how to deploy your troops than me.”

  “One learns by doing, Highness. The colonel told me to run anything past you, so that you can improve your education on combat-related matters, time permitting. How would you allocate our people to meet the incoming force and still provide cover for Colonel Bandar?”

  Everyone knew that she wasn’t a warrior, so why did they keep trying to turn her into one? It was damned irritating.

  Rather than argue, Julia accessed the map of the crash site and looked for areas they could use to provide extra cover and concealment. There were some low hills scattered around the area, but most of them weren’t close enough to provide effective covering fire for her doppelgänger.

  The marine weapons could hit someone at quite a distance, but precision when you had someone you wanted to keep safe mixed with potentially hostile individuals was a more complicated matter.

  She accessed the data that her doppelgänger had sent and saw which direction the new forces were approaching from. There were a couple of hills off in that direction that were fairly close to the camp. Those could provide concealment for a few marines without difficulty.

  Also near that side of the encampment, there was a single rise that was close enough to allow for a sniper or two to keep the people inside the compound under observation and still be of use against the incoming force.

  The beginnings of an idea started percolating, so she sent the map to the corporal with updates.

  “These two hills can hold a couple of marines each, ready to respond once the larger force gets past them and closer to the camp. The smaller rise right here can hold some snipers that can keep an eye on Kelsey or the others as the situation requires.

  “If the incoming troops pass between the hills like it seems they’re going to, they’ll be trapped between them and the camp if we decide to fight. With our superior armor and weapons, we should be able to use that constrained space to cause a lot of damage in a short amount of time.”

  The corporal nodded. “That’s a solid plan, Highness, though I’d move the snipers out of the pinch zone. Also, those hills are close enough to the camp that the first group might send a lookout or two of their own, after they process that they might have more than the colonel for company. What do we do if individuals from inside the camp attack her?”

  “Kelsey has to be our primary responsibility. If she’s in any danger, then we need to neutralize those threats. She’ll be able to communicate with us, so she can tell us what’s happening inside the compound.

  “If she thinks she’s safe enough, then we can hold off unless there’s an overtly hostile action to respond to
. If someone looks like they’re going to shoot a bow at her or stick a sword in her back, the snipers can take those individuals out. Otherwise, we need to leave what happens in the camp in her hands.

  “The biggest unknown is going to be how the first group reacts when a force three times their size comes racing in on them. Once the second group arrives, we can be pretty sure that the fighting will start.

  “These folks don’t seem like they’re going to be old friends. I hope that I’m wrong, but the second group isn’t moving like they’re expecting to join somebody for lunch.”

  Boske chuckled. “I think you’ve read that just right, Highness. Your basic plan is sound enough. What about our mobile units? We’re going to have to get mixed up in the fighting to bring a conclusive end to the engagement. We’ve got nine people in armor, counting yourself.

  “If we put four on the hills to be our backstop against this new force, put two on this rise to act as snipers, that leaves three of us: you, me, and one of the other marines.

  “We’re going to have to be the hammer that hits the anvil. Just shooting into a group of hostiles isn’t going to be enough. You’ve got to be able to fight hand-to-hand and break their will, or you’re not going to be as effective in stopping them as you’d like to be.”

  The corporal turned and stared out over the grasslands. “I know you don’t like fighting, Highness, so I’m going to leave the choice up to you. Where in all of this mess do you want to be?

  “Personally, I don’t think you’re the right person to be part of the blocking force on the two larger hills. You could act as one of the snipers on the closer hill, but I’m still not really sure that’s what you’re cut out for. Do you have the type of precise fire capability a sniper would need? Can you hit someone next to the colonel without hitting her? Could you even do that kind of thing? Killing at long range is a cold-blooded business.”