by Terry Mixon
“This definitely shortens our timetable. We’re going to have to get into the city tonight, if we can. By tomorrow, there will be search parties all through these woods and it will not take them long to find the bodies, since we have no tools to bury them. We’d be better off expecting the horde to seal the area sometime tomorrow. If we can get in tonight, find what we need, and then get back out before dawn, that would be best.”
“We’ll just have to make this work,” Kelsey said glumly. “Chloe, make sure that everyone gets up here safely. We’ll move the bodies into the woods and hope that buys us a day. Then we’ll follow the path and see where it leads.”
The clock was running out far faster than Kelsey had hoped, but their goals hadn’t changed. The chances of failure were huge now, but they’d make it work. They had to.
Julia followed Captain Beauchamp as she made her way along the path that the two dead men had been traveling. The two of them were scouting ahead to see where it led while the rest of the party took care of the bodies.
They didn’t have a lot of water to clean up the blood that Talbot had spilled, so she wasn’t sure how well they’d do, but that was someone else’s problem.
Beauchamp moved slowly, taking deliberate steps, and making certain that her feet didn’t land on anything that was going to make noise. Julia tried to follow her example, though with less success. A lot less success.
The forest around them was filled with unidentifiable noises, and she felt her eyes darting back and forth, always concerned that what she was hearing meant more men coming to attack them. None materialized, however.
It took them half an hour to make their way to a hill that gave them a decent look at the horde city. Shorter than the abandoned megacity beside it by a significant margin, it was still somewhat larger than she’d expected.
Definitely low tech, but with high walls made of stone and wood, and patrolled by what looked like a strong force of armored warriors. Outside the walls in the cleared area between it and the forest, groups of horses rode along the perimeter of the city, either to keep intruders out or to make certain that the populace stayed inside. She wasn’t sure which.
There were fortified enclosures along the wall that she suspected held weapons, based on the way they could be opened outward. That might mean low tech weapons, but Julia suspected there were advanced technology killing devices behind the covers. Hopefully, they wouldn’t find out the hard way.
The two of them found a place to crouch behind the ever-present underbrush and observe the operations around the city without being visible themselves. Beauchamp was obviously watching what was going on with the guard patrols, but Julia found her attention focused on the dead megacity.
It was an amazing thing. She’d seen the implant tour of Imperial City from the destroyer’s library as part of her preparation for this mission. The abandoned megacity seemed very much like it. Innumerable buildings reached impossibly high into the sky, and it dwarfed the collection of primitive structures beside it.
The megacity, whatever its name had been, wasn’t as big as Imperial City, but it was far larger than anything on Avalon by many orders of magnitude. She could only imagine what her home world would look like when they’d advanced to that point. If they survived the oncoming war with the Rebel Empire.
“Getting inside isn’t going to be easy,” Beauchamp finally said. “They’ve got a lot of guards on the walls, and those roving patrols are going to be a real pain in the ass to get by. You can bet they’ve got observers watching everything from those towers spaced along the walls, too. I’m not sure how we’re going to slip in.”
Even as they watched, a group of pack horses accompanied by warriors was approaching the massive gate set into the intimidating wall. They couldn’t hear anything being said from this far away, of course, but whatever exchange there was, it was brief. The pack horses and riders were passed into the city with barely a glance.
“Maybe we need to find one of the groups with some of our salvaged gear, kill them, and go in disguised as them,” Julia said thoughtfully. “They’re expecting those kinds of groups and aren’t checking for identification. People tend to see what they expect to see, after all. The guards at the gates can’t possibly know everyone.”
“There is some risk in doing that,” Beauchamp said after considering the idea for a minute. “Though I will admit that I like the audacity of it. If we try an ambush, we can’t let even a single person get away. If they do, they’ll spread the alarm, and the hunt will be on. This close to the city, they’ll find us in short order.”
Julia nodded. “As I see it, we don’t have a lot of options. Whatever we’re going to do, we need to do it quickly. Any type of stealthy insertion is going to take time to set up, and even more to execute. We need to be inside the city today. It seems to me like the most direct path to success is walking in right under their noses.
“Besides, they’re going to take the cargo right to where we want to go. That means we’ll be able to find what we need much more quickly. If we have to search for where they’re holding it, we might never find it in time. If we’re expected, they’ll let us right in.”
The warrior sighed. “We’re going to have to convince your compatriots of that, but I think you’re probably right. If we can get our hands on a group of pack horses, we can probably bluff our way in. Getting back out is going to be a lot more difficult, but perhaps not impossible. Now all we have to do is find a group that we can eliminate.”
Julia heard a noise coming from off to the side of the area they were hiding in. It wasn’t coming from the path they’d taken to get there. She strained to see what was making it but couldn’t see anything through the trees.
She picked a handy tree whose species she couldn’t identify and climbed up as far as she could get. She’d become a much better climber over the last few years. She credited all the exploration that she’d done inside the ships she’d been on. The maintenance tubes had lots of ladders, and navigating those translated well into climbing trees, so long as she made sure that the branches weren’t going to break under her weight.
The climb gave her a view of the area just on the other side of the strip of forest they were in. Crossing through that open space were two dozen horses packed high with gear, shepherded along by six riders.
That seemed like a small number of people to be escorting something as valuable as that, but it suited her purposes better than what she’d been expecting. As Kelsey had once said—with a phrase that was oddly appropriate for this situation—“never look a gift horse in the mouth.”
Whatever that meant.
The group she was watching would have to go around to the right-hand side of the woods to get into the cleared zone around the city. That would take them an hour or so at their current pace.
If she could convince Mertz and Kelsey that they could take this group out without making too much noise, they could then use the pack horses as cover to get inside the city. This might be their best chance to make something happen.
Unfortunately, they wouldn’t have time to retrieve their horses. That meant some of them would have to stay outside the city. That might actually be a plus, because the noncombatants could go back to the horses they’d stashed and have everything ready for them to retreat once the deed was done.
Or to get away when their last stand made the horde go nuts.
“We need to get back to the group,” Julia said once she’d climbed back down, her hand still resting on the rough bark of the tree. “I think I see an opportunity coming our way. If we take advantage of it, we might just be able to get inside the city undetected and get what we need.”
Of course, if they screwed up any part of this, they wouldn’t get another chance to try again. This was going to be one of those things where they had to succeed on the first try. Like skydiving.
Talk about an incentive to do one’s best.
There was always the chance that someone in the city would realize that
they didn’t belong. Every word they said, every gesture they made, was an opportunity for someone to figure out that they were outsiders. If that happened, they were all dead.
In a lot of ways, she was facing something very close to what she’d faced with the mad computer on Erorsi. If the horde got their hands on her, they’d torture her just as badly—or possibly even worse—than the AIs’ damned electronic henchman that had implanted the damned augmentation into her without anesthesia.
And unlike in the machine, the horde would then set her on fire. While the end would be relatively quick, it would be horrific beyond measure.
She’d do anything to make certain that didn’t happen. They all would.
As rough as this first leg of the journey had been, how difficult was it going to be when they got closer to the Imperial Vault? Or even partway there?
This mission was just like one of the adventures she’d read when she was a kid. As her father had told her, adventure was something very bad happening to someone else, very far away, or a long, long time ago. Even so, she’d always wanted to go on an adventure.
Her younger self was an idiot.
“We need to get back to the rest,” she finally said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do if we want to capitalize on this, and we’ll need every second to make sure we don’t screw it up.”
With that, the two of them headed back to where the rest were going to be as they followed along the path behind them. She’d seen a decent ambush spot while up in the tree. All she had to do was convince the others to back her play.
30
Jared listened to Julia’s plan, but started shaking his head before she was halfway done explaining it.
“That’s too risky,” he said when she’d finished. “Anything can go wrong, and then we’d be totally screwed. First of all, if even one person escapes the ambush you propose, we’re dead. Second, if the gate guards don’t recognize someone in the party, they might have us right there. If that’s the case, we’d never get away, and once again, we’re dead.”
He took a deep breath and continued. “Third, after we get into the city—if we’re that lucky—then any interaction at all will be dangerous. The chances of us being discovered go up dramatically with every word we speak or gesture we make.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Julia said firmly. “Within a day—perhaps two at most—this entire area is going to be swarming with people looking for us. We have to plan on that happening sometime tomorrow, or we’d be crazy. That means we’ve got to get inside the city today, and preferably get out before dawn with what we need.
“If you can come up with another plan that accomplishes that, I’d be happy to hear it. Unfortunately, I don’t think you’re going to. The city is heavily guarded and well patrolled. We’re not going to sneak inside without someone seeing us. That means we have to go in under their eyes. I think my plan is probably the best option to do that.”
At that point, Kelsey stepped in and put her hand on his shoulder. “She’s right. This situation requires bold action, and she’s come up with a viable plan. Perhaps the only one possible at this point.”
Talbot sighed and nodded. “We don’t really have any choice, Admiral. We need to get inside that city today, and if they lock everything up at night, that means we’re limited to just a couple of hours to make the magic happen. We have to go for it.”
“Just give me a second to think about this,” Jared said tiredly, rubbing his eyes with his right thumb and forefinger.
As much as he wanted to reject this crazy plan out of hand, he knew that they were right. They’d run out of time and options. They had to have the Imperial Scepter, and they really needed Lily’s spare surgical kit to reactivate their implants and augmentation.
Everything else they could do without, but those two things would make or break their chances of making it to the Imperial Vault and then getting inside it.
He was going to have to go with Julia’s plan. He had no choice.
It worried him because he knew that the slightest miscalculation or bit of bad luck would see them dead in minutes—if they were lucky. Hell, even success might still mean that most of them died before the rest got away. This was easily the grimmest situation he’d ever been in, and that called for taking an insane risk for even a slim chance to get away.
He tilted his head back for a moment and stared up toward the hidden sky. The intertwined branches overhead formed a green canopy that mostly blocked the sun from getting through, except in dappled shadows. How he wished he had time to enjoy the scents, sounds and sights of nature, but he didn’t.
Putting the almost wistful thought from his mind, he looked at Julia intently. “Tell me where the ambush has to take place. We need to get there as quickly as possible, because we’ll need every second to improve our chances of taking them down. Do you have any ideas on how to most effectively do that?”
Julia crouched down and brushed the dead leaves and branches away from a small area, leaving a spot of open ground. She picked up one of the sticks and began drawing on the earth with it.
“This is the outline of the forest as I saw it from up in the tree. This ‘X’ is where the enemy was. They were coming around this section of the woods to get to the cleared zone around the city. Do you see this indentation in the forest right here?”
Jared nodded when she looked up. “You think they’re going to go inside there? That would be odd.”
She shook her head. “No, but if we put some of our archers on the far side of this gap, they’ll be hidden in the woods right next to where the enemy is going to pass. If we spring a trap at the right moment, I think that there’s a better than fifty percent chance they’ll dodge into this cul-de-sac and be trapped inside.
“What I’m recommending is that we put our archers here to take out the outermost riders while we have a couple of our own troops move to block them from going forward. They only have six riders in total. If we can take out half their number at one go, and they also see a blocking force in front of them, they’re going to try to get away.
“We’ll post archers at the back in the first section of forest that they’ve already passed as well, so that if anyone tries to reverse course, they can take them out.
“It makes me sad to say this, but horses are easier to hit than human beings. We can take our initial shots directly at the people, but they’re armored and our best chance of stopping anyone from getting away is to remove any possibility that they can outrun us. We don’t have the horses with us, so we have to target their mounts. I’m sorry.
“Also, with only six riders, we can only take that many people inside. Our horses are too far away to be of help. They’d spot people on pack horses right away and think that was too odd to pass unremarked. These people know horses and riding.
“We’ll already be taking a risk just having any of us that can’t ride along. We can’t chance it. The ones we leave behind can head back to our camp and wait for signs of our success or failure.”
“This situation just keeps getting worse and worse,” Kelsey grumbled. “I get the possibility of hurting or killing the horses. I don’t have to like it, but I get it. If that’s what we have to do to survive, that’s what we have to do. We should get moving.”
Jared watched his sister stalk back down the path. He was no happier than she that they might have to kill innocent animals, but he understood the stakes just as well as she did. The horses were combatants in their own way, at least while the enemy was on their backs.
They’d do whatever they had to do. Far too many people were counting on them for them to cut any corners. There’s be time for regrets later.
Talbot crouched just inside the tree line and waited. He couldn’t hear the approaching horses yet, but he suspected that they were close. It wouldn’t be long before they were fighting. He and Chloe were going to be the non-ranged response force in front of the group. The admiral and Commodore Meyer were doing the same thing on Kelsey’s side of the openi
ng.
Kelsey had given Jared her other sword, so if they had to fight, they’d have that one advantage. They had to keep the riders from getting past them at all costs. Her swords gave them an edge—if one could forgive the pun—that the enemy wouldn’t expect and couldn’t counter.
He’d made certain that the admiral knew about the dangers of directly blocking a sword swing. Kelsey’s weapons would shear off the other blade in a heartbeat, and it would just continue on flying toward him.
That reminded him of his arm wound, though that wasn’t how the injury had occurred. His arm still throbbed where the enemy’s dagger had cut him earlier. They had no medical supplies, so he’d washed it out as well as he could, wrapped it in cloth, and then put his vambrace back over it.
Lily was worried about him getting an infection. Without his medical nanites or access to his pharmacology unit, that was a very real possibility. One that could render him unfit to fight in short order, or even kill him. If it got that bad, they’d have to take his lower arm off without any anesthesia, probably using one of Kelsey’s swords.
Kelsey hadn’t figured out that she needed to be worried about that, and he had no intention of telling her. They’d either have access to the medical supplies soon, or they’d be dead. Losing his arm to amputation because it was infected was the least of his worries. He had to focus on the moment.
Looking out into the area that the small caravan would be passing through, he could see how Julia’s plan might play out in a perfect world. While this wasn’t a chokepoint by any means, their enemy’s options would be severely limited during the attack. The enemy would be pinned between the forest he was hiding in, the forest a hundred meters away on the opposite side of the open area, and the forest on the other side of the cul-de-sac, with only three paths to ride away in.
It was possible they’d manage to ride around Chloe and himself, and make a break for the city, but Captain Beauchamp, Elise, and Olivia would do their very best to make sure they didn’t get past them in the front with their bows.