by Terry Mixon
“There have been incursions in the past, including people in incredibly powerful armor. The horde has weapons capable of killing them. I don’t know whether they brought any of those with them or not, but if you’re counting on technology protecting you from them, I suggest you disabuse yourself of that notion.”
Momentarily horrified, Kelsey sent a quick message to Boske. Corporal, the locals say the attacking group may have access to antiarmor weapons. I don’t know what kind, or if they have any with them, but if they do, your people are in danger.
Don’t take any chances. Put them down as fast and hard as you possibly can and stay under cover if you can’t. Do what you have to do to protect your people, and I’ll see what I can do to get our potential allies clear of the firing zone.
Copy that, Boske said. The enemy is just about to you. Good luck, Colonel.
At that moment, a wide line of men on horseback crossed over a low rise and looked down on the camp. There were an awful lot of them. Ninety didn’t sound like a large number, but seeing them arrayed like this made her heart quiver.
She’d expected them to talk, but one man in the middle of the line raised his spear and shouted something unintelligible. The rest of the men raised their own spears and shouted in return, then all of them charged forward, their spears lowered as they thundered toward the camp.
The attack was on.
Talbot already had his people scattered around upstairs and on the ramp leading down to the basement, so it took no time at all to have them ready to defend the building. He watched the forces headed their way over the feed from the drones around the ready response team. The riders vanished briefly as they left the area under observation and then reappeared on the drone network surrounding the building a short while later.
Like the first group, the video feed showed that these were warriors mounted on horses. Men and women in armor, with primitive weapons, riding single mounts. No remounts with them at all, so they seemed to have only one task in mind: to fight.
It took a few minutes to have the drones zoom in as much as possible without revealing themselves, and he examined the riders carefully. All of them wore leather armor with strips of metal attached to critical locations. They had hard faces, determined expressions, and their weapons looked well used. These were people that knew how to fight and considered it their business.
At the speed they were traveling, it only took them fifteen minutes to arrive in the vicinity of the building. They circled around it and passed on the other side, staying outside of easy bow shot, he would imagine. From their expressions, they were looking to see if the trail continued past the building.
They stopped perhaps five hundred meters away from the building and had a brief consultation before the group split into four parts. Each went around the building to cover a different cardinal compass point.
A minute later, one of the men wrapped a white cloth around the end of his spear, raised it high, and rode toward the building. He halted perhaps seventy-five meters away from the ramp. From his expression, he was content to wait there for someone to come to him.
Talbot walked up the ramp and started out toward the man on the horse. He was in his armor, of course, but had his helmet nestled in the crook of his arm.
His appearance caused the man to react. He must’ve pulled back slightly on his reins, because his horse danced a little bit.
The man’s expression, which Talbot could clearly see with his ocular augmentation, went from passive to grim. He eyed Talbot for one long moment and then, without saying a single word, turned and rode back toward the group that he’d come from.
That wasn’t good.
Talbot watched the man remove the cloth from his spear and put it into one of his saddlebags as he was having words with others in the group. There was lots of gesticulating and some elevated voices that were almost loud enough for him to understand.
After a few seconds of that, the group turned to stare at Talbot. Their expressions were just as grim as the man’s had been. Since they didn’t know him, it almost had to be the powered armor. He wasn’t sure how that could make such a stark difference in their reaction, but these people had been suppressed by the System Lords.
Perhaps Rebel Empire marines had landed on Terra at some point. Perhaps even recently. Maybe they’d been involved in the fighting and these people had a long memory. If so, Talbot and his people were in for a fight, because these people didn’t look like they were in a mood to negotiate anymore.
A single rider left the group and raced around the building. He stopped at each of the other groups and spoke for just a few moments before racing on to the next. A couple of minutes later, he’d returned to his original group, which then began spreading out in what was obviously an attack formation. They were going to make a run at the building.
Talbot didn’t know how well the windows of the building would stand up to arrows, but they’d resisted the elements thus far. Only a few of them had shattered. His people would break as many as was required to defend themselves, but the people on the horses were going to be moving fast.
If he was any judge of how the battle would play out, they’d race in circles around the building, using their mobility to stay at a distance while they fired arrows toward his people inside the building. Since they knew the ramp was the most likely entrance, that would undoubtedly be their main target for breaching the defenses.
Talbot backed up to the ramp, clapped his helmet on, and opened a general channel. “All marines, be prepared to repel an assault. They’re going to force an entry above ground, if they can’t get in through the ramp. We have to hold them off until the ready response team gets back. Stick with stunners if they get close enough. Remember that horses are larger targets than people.”
Kelsey wouldn’t like that he’d targeted the animals, but she’d understand the tactical logic. She’d still tear a strip off him, but he had lives to protect.
He checked the drone feeds and decided that they had to keep the attackers occupied for between fifteen and twenty minutes to allow for the armored marines to return. This was going to be ugly, no doubt about that.
Talbot wished he could’ve talked the others out of an outright attack, but they hadn’t to try. They’d chosen to fight, so the bleeding was on their heads.
He only hoped he and his marines could get this situation under control quickly, and that his wife was having a better time of it than he was.
11
Julia had only just made it behind the hills and was racing toward the other side of the pair when the larger group attacked. She could hear shouting as the invaders charged toward the camp.
That spurred her to run faster, which in turn caused her to trip over something and skid onto her face, before rolling over and stumbling back to her feet. She’d never practiced this kind of thing in armor, and she wasn’t very graceful in the heavy suit, even with her artificial musculature. One more weakness.
The tenor of the budding battle changed almost immediately, and she knew that Corporal Boske and the others had revealed their presence and opened fire with their stunners. She couldn’t see any of the blue bolts from where she was, but she wasn’t sure that she would have anyway. At their wider aperture, the stunners didn’t really fire bolts at all. More like fans of energy that only went a short distance before petering out into nothing.
As she was moving between the two hills, though still far away from the battle itself, she was able to jump up into the air and see over the rise enough to glimpse the mounted forces milling around in chaos, firing their bows at the marines. If that was the best they could do, the battle would be over fast.
She put on as much speed as she could and made it to the other side of the second hill just in time to have two men on horseback race over the rise directly for her. She pulled her stunner, raised it, and fired at them. The blue beam was still set to narrow aperture and only struck one of them a glancing blow. Or perhaps it missed him by a very small margin.
She couldn’t tell.
Seemingly, whatever it was wasn’t enough to knock him out. He wavered in his saddle, but his trained reflexes seemed to pull him down, where he held onto his horse while his compatriot raised his spear and charged directly at her, screaming at the top of his lungs.
She tried to sweep the spear away before the man could strike her, but the surprising speed of his horse threw off her timing. The spear shattered against her armor, causing her no harm, but the horse running into her with its shoulder sent her flying. She landed in a heap, and the rider raced past her.
With a grunt, she rolled onto her stomach and fired her stunner at the retreating horseman, striking him squarely in the back. He spasmed and tumbled from the saddle.
She started to roll over onto her back and engage the remaining rider, but he’d been a lot quicker closing the distance than she’d thought possible and brought his horse’s front hooves down directly on her back before she could move.
The impact was blunted by her armor, but not stopped completely. The incredible force of the blow drove the air from her lungs, and she gasped. Apparently being pinned between a huge animal and the ground was not the kind of place that even a Marine Raider in powered armor wanted to be.
With an effort of will, she rolled away from the animal and raised her hand to fire again, only to discover that she’d somehow lost her stunner. She jumped to her feet and scanned around for it, but it was lost somewhere in the tall grass. Just perfect.
The rider turned and tried to use his horse to ram her as he drew his sword and struck at her. She thought the sword was less of a threat than the horse, so she dodged to the side and exposed herself to the strike. Her raised arm deflected the blade, snapping the length of steel in two when he struck.
That seemed very disconcerting to the rider, and he stared at his broken weapon in shock for a few seconds that he didn’t really have to waste.
She took advantage of his lack of focus and dragged him out of the saddle. Once he hit the ground, she carefully metered her strength to strike him with the lightest worthwhile blow she could manage. It was sufficient to knock the air out of his lungs and made her confident enough to strike him in the face. That knocked him out. And broke his nose, which she hadn’t intended to do.
Off to her left about seventy-five meters away, three more horsemen raced out of the fighting and headed toward the wider grasslands. A loud explosion on the other side of the hill announced that her doppelgänger’s warning had been spot-on. Some of these bastards had heavy weapons.
She turned her enhanced ocular implants up to maximum and looked around until she spotted her stunner lying in the grass by the output of its power pack in the ultraviolet range. It wasn’t very bright, but it was distinctive at this short distance.
Julia snatched it up and considered how best to chase after these people. She could run faster than a normal person, but they were on horses. She wasn’t that fast.
With a sigh she decided she was going to have to do this the hard way. She raced over to the horse standing near its fallen rider and vaulted up into his saddle—it was definitely a male—with more grace than she’d actually expected to have. Perhaps all of those riding lessons were finally paying off.
She’d never have been able to do such a thing without her augmentation, but she’d always been comfortable around horses. Such gentle creatures that always seemed to be such a pleasure to ride.
That experience was not replicated when she landed on this horse. She was able to quickly grab the saddle horn and stuff her feet into the stirrups, but the horse immediately spun in place and tried to bite her leg. Of course, her armored thigh was invulnerable to his teeth, but he didn’t seem to care as he kept trying.
Julia grabbed the reins and pulled his head around. “Calm down, boy. I’m your rider now.”
She wasn’t certain whether or not he was going to pay attention to what she’d said. He was a trained warhorse, and he was probably bound in some way to the rider she’d taken out, so it was entirely possible that she was wasting her time.
To her shock and pleasure, he responded to the reins, and she quickly had him off in hot pursuit of the fleeing riders. Her armor was heavy, but she wasn’t a large woman. She figured that even with her Raider armor, she probably weighed less than the man who’d been on the horse before.
With more assertiveness than she actually felt, she put her heels to the beast, and he responded by surging forward. Her experience with riding horses had been limited to a more sedate pace, and over even terrain. Here, she was racing at breakneck speed over grasslands that could conceal holes or irregularities that might send the horse and herself tumbling.
She’d probably survive that kind of thing, but the horse would be gravely injured or killed. She really didn’t want that to happen, but she had to catch up with those warriors. If they spread the alarm, everyone might be screwed.
The warriors ahead of her were aware that she was coming. At least one of them had glanced over his shoulder and spotted her, shouting a warning to his fellows as she closed. She hoped they’d turn and fight, because that would’ve made her job a lot easier. As it was, they really couldn’t hurt her, whereas, if she could get them into range, she’d stop them.
Unfortunately, it seemed that they were onto that particular trick and kept racing away as fast as they could. To her benefit, they didn’t split up.
After a minute of hot pursuit, she was finally getting into the range where she might actually be able to start picking them off with her stunner. They stayed glued to their horses, obviously trying to keep her from getting a decent shot.
She could shoot the horses, but the idea nauseated her. She had no desire to injure an innocent animal. If she could do this any other way, she’d avoid shooting them.
The riders ahead of her crested a small rise and disappeared momentarily from view. When she raced over the top of it herself, she found that they’d set a trap for her.
Two of the riders were still racing away at full speed, but one of them had dismounted and pulled some kind of object from his saddlebags. She didn’t really know much about weapons, but it was obviously a high-tech weapon, even if it looked cobbled together.
She was sure that her implants could tell her more about it, but she had no time to check them. The man was already kneeling on the ground, with his horse lying in front of him. The bastard was using it for cover as he fired at her.
There was a flash of light as something raced out of the tube and directly toward her. It was as bright as a star.
Julia did the only thing she could. She urged her horse to swerve as she launched herself into the air, using her legs to push off the horse and hoping she managed to pull her feet out of the stirrups.
She prayed that that would give her enough distance to avoid being struck by whatever that was, because the person who’d fired it seemed pretty confident that it would kill her.
The force of her jump was just enough to get her to clear the warhead. Even as her body arched, she saw it fly under her, missing her legs by no more than a handful of centimeters. Thankfully, it missed her horse, too. A detonation at this range might have killed her along with the beast.
It struck the rise that she’d just come over and exploded. The shockwave grabbed her out of the air and slammed her into the ground with more force than she dreamed possible in a nonlethal event.
For such a small device, it made a huge crater. If it had struck her, the weapon would’ve blown her armor apart and killed her instantly.
Julia figured all that out as she was tumbling to a stop. She’d lost her stunner again, but no longer cared. That son of a bitch had tried to kill her, so she was going to kill him back. She leapt to her feet.
Or rather, she tried to leap to her feet. What happened instead was that she staggered drunkenly upright, her sense of balance totally ruined by what had just happened.
The man who’d tried to kill her was busy reloading, and she realized that she h
ad to stop him before he finished, or she’d be dead. With her body not functioning correctly, that really left her with only one choice. She hated having to do it. Hated, hated, hated it. But she did it anyway.
She activated the combat controller built into her implants and ceded her body to the machine in her head. It was like a switch had been thrown because her own personal balance issues no longer seemed to matter as the computer compensated for them and made things happen. Things she no longer had any control over.
Unfortunately for the warrior, the merciless computer in her head had no overriding desire to take him alive. Her hand darted down to where her flechette pistol was holstered, drew it cleanly, and fired a short burst right through the center of his chest.
His reinforced leather armor was worse than useless against this kind of attack. Not only did the flechettes penetrate the boiled hide, they blew chunks off of the protective metal, which then also plunged into his vulnerable flesh. He fell back, dropping the weapon he’d been trying to reload, dead before he hit the ground.
The computer turned her now merciless eyes toward the fleeing horsemen and immediately determined that she wasn’t going to be able to catch up with them. They were outside her weapon’s range, and by the time she gathered her horse and pursued, they’d be able to elude her. They had gotten away.
That wasn’t what she’d wanted, but it wasn’t exactly like she’d had a choice. They’d ambushed her with a weapon she really hadn’t expected, even after hearing the explosion back at the main fight.
She deactivated the combat controller and shuddered in relief as she regained control of her body. Trembling, she found her horse, mounted him, and raced back toward the camp. She had to get there as quickly as possible. Every second counted now.
12