The Last Charge

by Jason M. Hardy

  The streets were filling with smoke, and smoldering wreckage seemed to be on every block. Vedet heard nothing except for gunfire and heavy metal footsteps. But he was only a kilometer away.

  * * *

  Roderick was pinned down, fire coming from two directions. He edged behind a building, looking for cover. He knew he should charge, but the way this battle was going, he could afford to wait.

  Sure enough, in less than a minute the weapons fire died down. The Silver Hawks were on the move, responding to fire from some other attackers. Roderick moved, charging down the street, laying down autocannon fire to keep the path ahead of him clear. There were blips all over his scanner, but he kept his eye on one—the one he was pretty certain was Duke Vedet. The duke was moving quickly toward the spot where the motorcade was supposed to have stopped. Roderick had to get there too.

  He sprinted through the streets, and beams of energy grazed him as he went by. He slowed, getting ready to turn right, when a barrage of fire poured down toward him.

  * * *

  Vedet was almost there, his ’Mech’s firepower keeping the path clear for him. The Silver Hawks were tiring—even though he was almost on top of the motorcade, the defenders seemed to be pulling back from him. They had probably had enough.

  Vedet was mostly relaying on his pulse lasers now, melting the windows of nearby buildings at least as often as he hit an enemy ’Mech. But he was keeping the path clear in front of him, which was all that mattered.

  It was close now, very close. He scared away a tank that dared show its face, then turned left. And there it was.

  A string of black cars, stopped in the middle of the road. Waiting for him.

  “Get some infantry here!” he bellowed. “Get these people out of their cars!”

  * * *

  “Roderick, he’s there! He’s at the motorcade!” Trillian’s voice was calm, but Roderick could hear the urgency in her tone.

  “Little busy right now, Trill,” he said. He was being pushed back by two ’Mechs, a Vulture and a Locust, and was waiting for help from one of his lancemates. He’d moved back nearly two blocks to find cover tall enough to protect him.

  “Take care of yourself,” Trillian said. “But hurry!”

  Roderick waited, then watched the Silver Hawks make a mistake. They wanted to flush him out from his spot, so they split up.

  Roderick made sure they got far enough apart, then charged toward the Locust. It couldn’t react quickly enough, and his autocannons practically ripped it in half. The Vulture turned to engage him, but Roderick was already gone, moving north. The motorcade was not far away.

  * * *

  Infantry filled the block ahead of Vedet. He had secured the area with ’Mechs at each end keeping an eye on things, and the Silver Hawks were still keeping their distance. Part of this, Vedet had to grudgingly admit, was due to the efforts of Alaric Wolf and his attack from the rear. Vedet would never speak those words aloud, though.

  An infantry squad was at the door of the first car. But they weren’t doing anything. They were just looking.

  “What’s going on?” Vedet demanded.

  “Sir, it doesn’t look like there’s anyone in the car.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “We don’t see any—”

  Those were the last words the squad commander spoke. There was a flash, and a roar, and the first car was nothing more than shrapnel. Hot yellow fire exploded outward, shattering windows. The impact of the explosion bent the beams of nearby buildings.

  Vedet was blind and deaf, or at least he thought he was until he heard another roar. Then another. The whole world was exploding around him. Alarms were growing more and more urgent, but he couldn’t read them. He couldn’t see anything.

  * * *

  The sound was unearthly, so deep Roderick felt it rather than heard it. He saw a globe of fire erupt, towering over buildings less than a kilometer in front of him. Then the impact hit, and his Rifleman staggered backward. The gyros kept him upright, giving him a good look at the next explosion. Then the next.

  “What the hell is going on?” he yelled over the comm. He didn’t check the channel, so he had no idea who he was talking to.

  “I don’t know!” It was Trillian. “It looks like—oh God, the entire motorcade is going up! The motorcade is exploding!”

  Roderick checked his scanner. The remaining Silver Hawks—few as they were—were already running in full retreat to the center of the city. They had pulled off one more deception.

  “Damn them to hell!” Roderick said. He stepped forward, moving closer to the burning rubble where the motorcade had been.

  “Vedet was right there,” he said. “Is he all right?”

  “I don’t know,” Trillian said. “It looks like everything near those cars was flattened.”

  * * *

  It was the roaring of a surf that only rolled in, never out. Ocean water on a black night, black black, with no stars.

  But then there were stars, a few of them. Pulsing stars. Stars that didn’t twinkle; they flashed, red and yellow. And beeped.

  Beeped? Beeping stars? What the hell kind of stars were they?

  “…will keep trying. Need to get him away from the fire,” a voice said. “Duke Vedet, can you hear me? Are you there?”

  Stupid bloody question, he thought. I’m right here.

  But where was here? Maybe things weren’t as simple as he thought.

  He opened his eyes and saw blue sky. With a few clouds. So it wasn’t night after all. So what were all those stars?

  Lights. Lights flashing around him, telling him that almost nothing was working properly. He might be able to move if he really put his mind to it, but that was about it.

  He was flat on his back, lying in the middle of a New Edinburgh street.

  “What the hell happened?” he said. He hoped his hand was turning on the comm, but he couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t really aware of his body yet.

  “Duke Vedet! Is that you?” a relieved voice said, which meant that Vedet had gotten the comm to work.

  “It’s me. What happened?”

  “Booby traps, sir. The cars weren’t carrying anything but explosives. They…they did a lot of damage.”

  “Anson Marik…”

  “Probably at the palace still.” There was a pause. “Unless he left on the DropShips.”

  “DropShips?”

  “We have reports of several DropShips lifting off from MacDonald.”

  Vedet could feel his hands now. Both of them. They were shaking. His fingers curled, clenching into fists, digging sharply into his palms.

  “The palace,” he said. “Get to the palace. Find Marik. Find him!”

  “Sir, there may be more DropShips preparing to take off from MacDonald. Perhaps an effort to stop them—”

  “The palace!” Vedet screamed. “Rip Anson Marik’s goddamned throat out!”

  29

  New Edinburgh, Stewart

  Marik-Stewart Commonwealth

  5 June 3138

  The screen showing the location of ships orbiting Stewart winked off. Then the continental overviews—Lanarkshire went off, then Aberdeenshire, then Argus and so on. One by one, they all went dark.

  Daggert watched them all until the walls of the situation room were blank. He should leave now. This would be a good time. But instead he stayed and stared at nothing.

  “Daggert, get the hell out of here.” Anson had been in the room for a few minutes, watching the screens as the fake motorcade went up. Neither he nor Daggert had spoken when it was happening. “I didn’t buy you enough time for you to sit on your ass.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “They’ll be coming here next, and they’ll be howling mad.”

  “Did the bombs work?” Daggert asked.

  “They bought us time, and they got them where we wanted them to be. Plus, we took a few of them out.” Anson almost smiled. “Yeah, they worked.”

  Dag
gert nodded.

  Then Anson really did smile. “Did you see? The goddamned duke was right there when they went off. Almost on top of them. I wish I could’ve seen his face when they went off. I wish like hell.”

  “Did he…”

  “His ’Mech’s down. But he might have survived. He had plenty of protection around him.” Anson shrugged. “Cockroaches survive almost anything.”

  Daggert nodded again.

  “All right, quit bobbing your damned head up and down and get out of here,” Anson said. “Duty calls and all that shit.”

  Daggert stood. “Maybe you should come too,” he said.

  “We’ve been through all this! You know what we’re doing as well as I do, and you know what happens if we turn into pussies now. I’m staying. You’re leaving. Get out.”

  Daggert thought he should say something, but he had no idea what. He searched for words while watching Anson’s face grow redder and redder.

  Finally, the captain-general erupted. “Damn it, Daggert, we don’t have time for you to stand there trying to put some fancy words together. There is a vehicle waiting for your ass! You better be in it! Get moving or I will drop-kick you in front of the car, tell them to run you over a few times and then drag whatever’s left of you behind them when they go to MacDonald!”

  “Yes, si—”

  Anson’s roar approached epic volumes. “Don’t ‘yes, sir’ me! Move! Get out the door and have enough guts to follow your own goddamned plan! Run through the hallways like your ass hasn’t turned to oatmeal sitting behind a desk for so long!”

  Daggert moved, and Anson was right behind him.

  “You can move faster, you bastard! Get those rickety stilts you call legs into a run and get the hell out of my palace! Get out! Get out!”

  The captain-general stopped walking behind Daggert at some point, but he never stopped yelling. As Daggert walked out of the palace, he could still here Anson’s shouts echoing through the halls. It seemed a fitting exit.

  * * *

  That was it. It was done. The motorcade had done its job. The DropShips were launched, at least most of them were. Most of the Silver Hawk Irregulars were off the planet, and Daggert would be right behind them. They’d go to New Hope. Then they would see what they would become.

  The hard parts were over. Anson Marik had only one thing to do, and it was a task he had been looking forward to ever since he finally understood just how this fight would go.

  He had picked a spot. It hadn’t been difficult. He didn’t want to hide in the palace, cowering like a dog. He wanted a room he knew, a room he would typically use. A big enough room so he and a few other people could move around.

  The formal throne room was the obvious choice. That was where he was going to be.

  Most of the other rooms of the palace had been emptied out. His office, his personal quarters had been stripped bare, his belongings either taken off-planet to people who might want them or packed away in hidden rooms. His new office, however—the forgotten room he had briefly made his own—he left mostly as is. There didn’t seem to be a need to dismantle it.

  The throne room was also left mostly intact. Marik regalia hung from the ceiling, purple silk adding color to the black stone overhead. His steel and oak throne had been cleaned and polished, and the dais it sat on was spotless.

  Most of the other furniture in the room, the chairs and tables for counselors and visitors, had been cleared away, leaving an empty black floor with a red and purple rug running down the middle of it.

  The walls were lined with guards. Not the ones Anson would have picked—most of his elite personal guards had already shipped off the planet. These were younger troops, a little more raw, but they would not need polish for their assignment. They were all volunteers, and Anson appreciated their presence.

  He walked past them toward his throne and felt their eyes on him. He was used to it, so it didn’t bother him in the least. His footsteps were the only sound in the room, so he consciously stepped harder, making a pounding echo. Then he climbed the steps to the throne and sat down. He put a case he had been carrying on the floor next to him.

  The guards in the room were still looking at him. You should be looking at the door, you idiots, he thought. That’s where they’ll be. But his silent order went unheeded.

  They wanted a speech. They wanted him to inspire them, to give this moment some meaning. Damn them to hell.

  So he spoke.

  “I don’t know if anyone will ever remember you,” he said. “I don’t know if history will record your names, or tell your stories, or sing your goddamned praises, or any shit like that. And I don’t bloody care.

  “This isn’t about history. This isn’t about anything noble. This is about Lyrans and Clanners on our soil. They will be coming through that damned door. And they will try to kill each one of you.

  “This is simple. You are Marik troops. They are invaders. You will make them pay. Right now, there is nothing, nothing else besides this room. There is no massacre on Helm. There is no Commonwealth, no planet, no city. There is this room. This is our land. They are invaders. And they will damned well pay!”

  A roar went through the troops, and they lifted their weapons in the air. Anson waved his arm to silence them, but they decided to yell some more. He scowled, and let them shout themselves to silence.

  “Now let’s watch the show,” he said.

  There had been an addition to the throne room, two large screens above the entry door that would let Anson track the progress of the battle, right up until it came to his door. Looking at it now, Anson could see the invaders pounding toward the palace on three sides. The most relentless advance was from the forces to the east, the Clan Wolf troops on the highway. They had troops on the road as well as alongside it and, like gangrene, they were slowly moving down this artery toward the city’s heart.

  The most aggressive assault, though, came from the troops to the south. Vedet’s troops. They had been hit the hardest by the motorcade bombs, and if his luck held, they were incensed. Their anger would probably make them the first to Anson’s door. Which was how he wanted it.

  * * *

  Time passed slowly. Rapid advances that gobbled up blocks at a time became slow blinks on the screens. There were fewer dots than there used to be as the defenders threw everything at the invaders, knowing it wouldn’t be enough. What had been inevitable from the beginning was taking place.

  Then it happened.

  “We have troops at the gates of the palace,” the chief of security reported over a comm. “Infantry and a tank. Fire is heavy.”

  Anson didn’t bother to reply. There were no orders to give.

  The next update was not long in coming.

  “The front gate is down!” the chief reported. “We have disabled the tank, but Lyran infantry is in the perimeter, with more arriving.”

  Anson pressed a button on the armrest of his throne. One of the screens flickered and then displayed a floor plan of the palace. Pulsing red dots indicated spots where guards had pressed alarm buttons. There were four flashing now, all positions near the front gate. Then a fifth, then a sixth. The invaders were through the front entrance.

  Anson couldn’t hear anything yet. The walls were thick enough. But since the Lyrans were close enough, it was time to get ready.

  He reached into the case next to the throne and pulled out three pieces of metal. One was a Mydron pistol. The other two were a barrel and a stock that, when assembled, was a Rorynex submachine gun. Then he pulled out an ammunition belt that was long enough to fit around his generous waist, which meant it could hold plenty of clips and rounds.

  The guards in the room were all looking at their weapons—polishing this, nudging that—making sure everything was just right. The wait was almost over.

  The pulsing lights on the screen now numbered ten. The infantry had split up, marching down two separate hallways. One of them was only about a hundred meters from the throne room. For the first ti
me, Anson heard the distant clatter of gunfire.

  He stood, pistol in one hand, SMG in the other. The Lyrans couldn’t get here fast enough.

  A light flashed on a guard post only fifty meters away. There was an explosion outside that shook the doors to the throne room. The gunfire was louder, and now there were shouts. Anson bared his teeth.

  There were two guard posts outside the throne room. The lights for both started pulsing at the same time. Another explosion, this time denting one of the doors. There was a scream. The noise grew briefly quieter, then louder, louder, a surge forward toward the doors. Metal slugs fired into the doors, clack-clack-clack. Voices yelled without forming words.

  Then the doors flew open with a bang.

  Smoke blew into the room on the heels of troopers wearing Lyran blue and helmets with glass faceplates. Anson pulled the trigger on his SMG and held it, sending a burst of fire into the troopers. The metal tore through their armor, and the first soldiers through the door fell down on the edge of the red and purple carpet.

  Bullets came through, scattering some of Anson’s guards and bringing one of them down. Then a larger round flew through, burying itself in the wall. It exploded, sending black rock flying across the room. A shard struck Anson’s cheek, but he didn’t move. That was as close as they would dare get to him with an explosive—they didn’t want him dead. Not yet.

  Now more troopers came in, concentrating their fire on the sides of the room. Guards pressed forward, pushing the Lyrans back, but leaving some of their own dead on the floor. If this was a fight of attrition, the Lyrans would win it easily.

  Anson came down from his throne, jumping to the floor instead of taking the stairs. He ran ahead, squeezing off pistol rounds, keeping the Lyrans from the door. The clattering from the hallway was constant now.

  More faceplates appeared. Anson fired the SMG, moving it left, then right, then left, sending a spray across the doorway. The pile of troopers there was making it tough for others to come through. Good.

  Then a sustained burst, heavy fire from outside. The air seemed mostly metal, the heat from the rounds a hundred trails of fire. Anson felt a stabbing pain in his leg, followed by cold numbness, and he knew he’d taken a round. That was one.