The Weird Wild West (The Weird and Wild Series)

by Faith Hunter

  “I’m sorry, Captain,” he said, spitting blood from his mouth. “I just got so mad. I…”

  Mungo stared him down. Under normal circumstances, a court martial would be in order. But this was not a normal circumstance, and although the Corporal’s suicidal actions could have backfired, if he had struck with the knife, this whole matter could have been settled before it started.

  “Don’t fret it. You almost had the bastard.”

  Corporal Johns smiled, dribbled out a loose tooth, but stood taller. “You aren’t seriously going to retreat, are you, Captain?”

  Mungo shook his head. “Of course not. He knows that too. There is no alternative now, Seamus. We will stand and fight.”

  Even as Mungo said the words, the mountain of his fear grew taller and taller.

  ~*~

  “Arjukadembo is strong, intelligent,” Mungo said to the gathered officers, “but arrogant. He hasn’t suffered enough defeat to make him respectful of determined defenders behind emplaced positions.” He spread a map of the complex out on the table and pointed to the front gate. “He’ll make a frontal assault first, thinking that his numbers will simply overwhelm us like the ocean tide.”

  “Will they?” Lieutenant Bolton asked, his expression a confusion of anxiety and attempted boldness.

  “No,” Mungo said, hoping he was right. “The wall is strongest there. It’s made of mortar and solid rock. Fifteen feet high. It’ll hold, so long as we stack them up quickly and pile bodies in front of the rear ranks. It’ll take them time to clear their dead and keep moving.” Mungo offered a smile, remembering his history. “It’ll be like the French cavalry at Agincourt.”

  “But they don’t have heavily armoured knights, Captain,” Sergeant Williams said. “They have skinks that can climb walls.”

  Mungo nodded. “That’s the only question mark remaining in my mind. By my quick survey of his lines, he has two hundred, maybe three hundred. That seems like a lot, but as we saw in Kansas, once a skink is dropped, its rider is a fair soldier at best. They fight like Napoleonic cavalry. They can scale the wall, yes, but I don’t think he’ll use them on the initial assault. He’ll hold back, assess as he goes, and then deploy them, which I assume will be in rear assaults with his Arapaho and Pawnee allies. It’s what I would do, anyway.”

  “Last time I looked, Captain,” Corporal Johns said, winking his good eye through caked blood. “You ain’t no Scalie alien.”

  That drew a few muffled chuckles around the table. “No, I’m not, Corporal. If Arjukadembo has learned anything from his time here on Earth, he should respect and appreciate general tactics of warfare.

  “I want all able-bodied men, women, and children on the walls,” Mungo continued, “especially the rear gate. It’s the weakest and requires more attention. I want wagons, crates, barrels, rocks, whatever you can find, piled high to the ramparts, behind the gates. Find every seam in our walls and choke it with debris. Leave room for gun barrels, of course. And hand out blasters every third or fourth man. I want blaster coverage around the entire complex, interspersed with carbines, percussion caps, and any personal sidearms. Use the blasters sparingly. We’ve got plenty of regular ammunition, but when the plasma runs out, they’re gone. That applies to his force as well, I’m assuming, but I don’t think they’ll hold back. They’ll hit us with everything they’ve got. The first two waves will be the hardest.”

  The silence among his officers was nerve-wracking. Mungo studied their faces. He wished he could give them all personal assurances that everything would be all right. They wouldn’t believe him if he did. They were all veteran soldiers with experience against the Scalies; they knew what awaited them.

  Mungo looked around the room one last time. He smiled and nodded his appreciation. “Okay, you all know what to do. Dismissed!”

  ~*~

  Mungo squeezed the blaster trigger, feeling its powerful recoil through his whole body. The shot struck true, its high velocity magnesium bullet and plasma tearing through the skink rider as it tried scaling the wall. He fired again at the skink itself, for it too needed to be put down; its bite was poisonous and painful. He fired at another, and another, heedless of his own advice to conserve blaster rounds. The alien weapon was too lethal not to find comfort behind it. Good sense finally came to him, however, and he holstered the piece, drew his 1860 Army Colt, aimed carefully again, and sent a conventional round into the soft underbelly of another skink, putting it flat on its back to be crushed beneath the incessant charge of its companions.

  As predicted, Arjukadembo ordered a frontal attack shortly after midnight. Three rounds of spear fire, followed by wave after wave of Scalie soldiers hitting the walls, and breaching at least in one place.

  Mungo ducked a spear. It roared past his head, struck the door on the fort stable, and set it aflame. All the spears that had struck had set something on fire, some more ablaze than others, all choking the air with black smoke and soot. He could see that it was difficult for his defenders to breathe, but all they had to do was hold out; hold out long enough to force Arjukadembo and his mighty horde to realize their own mortality.

  It wasn’t going well.

  Another breach was announced a hundred feet from his position, down the right side of the wall, toward the roof of the hospital. Pawnees, taking advantage of the massive Killajunkur assault against the main gate itself. Mungo turned his attention to the breach, pulling his sword and firing his Colt into the mass of natives pouring over the wall. For a moment, he was rather happy to be fighting an enemy he understood. He fired again and took out another Pawnee, then checked himself as his own men came into view, firing and slashing and punching their way toward the breach.

  They were led by Corporal Johns, looking no worse for wear, his face bandage ripped from his nose and dangling on a loose thread. There was rage in his eyes as he struck foe after foe with his Highland dirk, driving the blade deep, cursing obscenities that would make an agnostic blush. Mungo joined him and drove the hilt of his pistol into the face of a Pawnee, feeling the crack of bone, the slime of spit. The man fell down the wall, striking an Arapaho ascending as he tumbled.

  A horn echoed through the dark. Three loud bleats that caught everyone’s attention. The Pawnee who had breached the wall fell back. A general retreat began around the entire fort.

  “Cease fire!” Mungo ordered. “Hold!”

  They watched as the last of the attackers melted away into the darkness. There was quiet, save for the death howls of the wounded Killajunkur and Indians writhing on the bloody ground below the gate. Corporal Johns pulled his pistol and was about to fire at one. Mungo stayed his hand.

  “Don’t waste the ammo!” he said.

  “Sir!” Corporal Johns’ face was a contortion of mixed emotions. “Blast that, Captain. We can’t keep them down there moaning all night. Besides, a wounded Scalie is dangerous. You know that…sir!”

  Mungo had watched a Scalie that seemed dead rise up and deliver a death blow to one of the Queen’s finest generals back in ’82. But no quarter? Had it come to that so quickly? And could they afford such savagery right now? They were still badly outnumbered. What would happen to human prisoners if and when Arjukadembo overran this fort? Mungo learned long ago that it was always best in the game of war to allow the enemy to refuse quarter first, thereby allowing your own decision to do the same to come from a more moral, dignified position. But was that policy correct in this situation?

  Mungo shook his head. “Very well, Seamus. Find a sharpshooter to take them out. One at a time. True shots. Don’t waste ammo, and don’t take long. For they’re coming back. As sure as I’m standing here, they’ll be back.”

  ~*~

  The spear that had struck the stable door had burned the building to the ground. No amount of water would douse the flame. The fire rose higher and higher into the night sky until there was nothing left of the wood but smoldering ash. A few other spears thrown in the first wave caused damage as well, but the stable was
the worst of it, taking the lives of two soldiers trying to rescue the horses inside. In the end, two soldiers died of burns, one soldier died of smoke inhalation, and ten horses died. Mungo nearly retched at the smell of burnt horse hair, hide, and meat. The first wave saw the death of an additional five soldiers. Mungo considered that fortunate.

  “We won’t be so lucky again,” he said, helping ladle out a cup of water to a wounded boy. He put his hand on the boy’s shaking head and smiled. “The first wave was a probe. The next will be a full assault.”

  “We’ll be ready, Captain,” Lieutenant Bolton said, hefting a Killajunkur spear with his bare hands.

  “Have the Scalie bodies been piled against the front gate?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When the next wave is fully ensconced against the wall, you set them alight. Understood?”

  “Sir, I—I’m not sure about this.”

  Mungo had struggled with such a deplorable act at first as well, but the smell of those horses and the sight of his soldiers charred black from spear fire, made up his mind right quick. “If they like fire, we’ll give it to them.”

  “But sir, the flames might ignite the front gate.”

  Mungo nodded. “We have to shock them. Try at least. Force them to recoil, thus giving us time to plug holes elsewhere. We’ll worry about the gate when and if the time comes. Did you set the cannon like I instructed?”

  “Yes, sir. They’re ready.”

  Mungo dropped the ladle into the bucket and stood. His legs hurt, his arms hurt. His shoulders too. Every muscle in his body yearned for rest.

  “Take your position.”

  This time, Mungo manned the rear gate, which comprised mostly survivors from the Pawnee Massacre. The few children capable of manning the wall were not given blasters; the recoil was too great for their small bodies. A few held pistols, a few carbines. The expression on Molly Dupree’s face told Mungo that she was not pleased.

  “Children with guns!” She shot Mungo a nasty look. “You should be ashamed of yourself, Captain.”

  Dupree was the head nurse and about as stubborn and opinionated as one could be. A useful disposition to have on the frontier, but not now. Not in the midst of war. “I don’t like it any more than you do, Molly. But what’s the alternative?”

  “We could have left,” she said, checking her own rifle. “Like others have been saying. A deal was offered by that alien monster. Do you deny it? You should have taken it.”

  Mungo nodded. “And this fort would have been overrun, and the entire South Platte river valley would be burning right now. At least if we stand, we have a chance to give General Davenport and his 10th Royals time.”

  “We have no time, Mungo! None. Whether we stay or go, it won’t amount to—”

  “Enough! I’ve given you a choice, Molly. Either man a weapon or serve the hospital. Choose…now!”

  He could see the muscles in her jaw tense. He knew she wanted to reach out and slap him, and he would allow it if necessary to guarantee her peace, but she would make her choice, one way or another.

  She held her anger, cocked her carbine, and leaned over the wall. “April can handle the hospital. No one’s gonna call me a coward.”

  Less than an hour later, the Killajunkur attacked the front and rear gates, this time trying to penetrate them both with spear attack. But the gates had been reinforced with overlapping iron bands and a lattice-work of high carbon filament taken from pieces of one of the alien starships back in ’83. The wood would burn, but it would take more than a few knocks from spears to bring it down.

  Blaster fire erupted along the walls, dropping attackers two, three at a time. They fired back, forcing those manning the walls to pin, wait, then shoot unaimed shots just to recover their positions.

  Mungo grabbed up a spear and thrust it deep into the heart of an Arapaho warrior who had made it past a little boy cowering in fear on the rampart. The tip broke off into the man’s ribcage. He yelped, clutched his pierced chest, then fell dead beside the boy. Mungo scooped the boy up and set him back down beside a ladder, saying, “Get to the chapel, son. Hide there.”

  The boy was so terrified he didn’t move. Mungo popped him gently on the head with an open palm. “Did you hear what I said? Go!”

  The boy finally found his courage and ran down the ladder, across the yard, and into the chapel.

  A Killajunkur warrior attacked Mungo before he could return to the wall.

  It seemed to appear out of nowhere, suddenly in his face, slashing with its large blue-black prehensile tail, trying to knock him from the ramparts. Mungo held tightly to a post, taking the tail blows to his shoulders. The pain was excruciating. He felt as if his shoulder blades would give out. His helmet was tossed aside, its broken strap flying one direction, the helmet in another. The tail struck his face, and he almost blacked out. His hand found his blaster, aimed it carefully beneath the relentless blows of the tail, and pulled the trigger.

  The beast fell back, half a leg missing, its screech penetrating the roar of the battle. Another shot rang out, this time from a carbine. Mungo saw Molly Dupree standing her ground before the crippled Scalie, pumping round after round into its chest. Tears streamed down her face, and she screamed as she emptied her ammunition into an already dead alien.

  Mungo gained his feet and stopped her, hugging her tight and bringing her down to sit below the protection of the sturdy stone wall. “Enough! It’s over. It’s dead.”

  She didn’t seem to notice his voice, or his face. Then she softened in his arms, smiled through tears, and nodded.

  When he was satisfied that she was okay, Mungo looked across the yard to the front gate and shouted, “Lieutenant Bolton! Give me fire!”

  He said it twice to ensure the order was received, and then the Lieutenant barked back, relaying the order to three sharpshooters waiting along the wall. They fired flaming arrows into the pile of dead Pawnee and Scalies that smothered the front gate.

  Flames burst outside the long wall. Blue-and-green flames as dead Scalie muck-sacks popped inside their necks from the heat and poured bile into the fire. The smell was overwhelming. Mungo could see men manning the ramparts near the flames bend in disgust, empty their stomachs, and fall into the fort yard.

  It had the effect Mungo wanted. Those attackers who had been scaling the wall and trying to attack the gate were devoured in the flame. Some fell into the yard, screaming and burning, where they were quickly gunned down. The second wave fell back, and Mungo took a moment to breathe.

  ~*~

  Sergeant Williams was, again, the bearer of bad news. “It’s Seamus, sir, he…he…”

  Mungo pushed past him and ran to the hospital. Wounded were lying all around the entryway, some serious, some walking. He found his corporal lying on a stretcher, gut shot.

  “Thank heaven it wasn’t a blaster,” Seamus said, coughing through the pain.

  “Yes, thank heaven,” Mungo said. “Didn’t duck fast enough, eh?”

  The corporal managed a smile, nodded. “That was the problem, Captain. If I had stayed upright, it’d’ve hit me in the legs. Well, no matter. Just tell me…did we stop the bastards?”

  “We sure did. And we’ll stop them again too, I promise.”

  With the last of his strength, Seamus reached to his side and pulled his dirk from its scabbard. He handed it over with a bloody hand. “Take this, my friend. I know you’ll put it to good use.”

  Mungo hesitated at first, then accepted the blade with a nod. “Thank you, Corporal. I will indeed.”

  He shoved it inside his boot, and watched Corporal Seamus Johns die.

  Mungo stood, wiped sweat and blood from his face, then asked the sergeant, “What’s our status?”

  “As best as I can tell, Captain, we’re in trouble. The blasters are near empty. We still have ammunition for our conventional weapons, but it won’t last beyond another assault. I don’t know the exact numbers on casualties, sir, but as you can see, they’re piling up.”
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  Mungo looked around the room. More seemed dead than alive. None of these people could be expected to man the walls again.

  A private stepped through the door. “Sirs,” he said, winded, in shock, and clearly not wanting to utter the next words. “They’re coming.”

  The third wave hit in much the same fashion as the second, but with a double envelopment that threatened the left and right walls. Mungo had to shift everything around, including the guns, which sat waiting in the yard. Cries were made to bring them up closer to the ramparts, but he refused. “Turn the barrels,” he said, “four left, four right. And wait for my signal.”

  He fought alongside Molly Dupree again. They shared the same crook in the wall, one firing while the other loaded. Their blasters were spent during the first ten minutes. Mungo used his empty blaster once to crack open the skull of a Scalie that threatened to split Molly open from belly to brains. The weapon shattered on contact with the thick skull of the alien. Mungo quickly grabbed up the alien’s discarded spear, took out three more, than tossed it aside to regain the wall and fire his pistol again.

  All along the line, men and boys and women fired and fired into the swell of Scalie bodies writhing up the walls, and one after another, they fell dead or dying onto the hard ground, only to be trampled beneath the next wave. Just like Agincourt, Mungo thought, only these were not arrogant French knights, nor was this a vast field of France. This was America, Colorado territory. Everyone wanted it, and everyone was fighting and dying for it.

  Why?

  As he filled his revolver with the last of his bullets, and emptied chamber after chamber into tooth-snarled blue-and-green Scalie faces, Mungo wondered why. There were other places, other territories that the Scalies had shown no interest in occupying. Why not fall back, pull out entirely and leave it to them? He again remembered his history. It had always been that way with conquerors to their conquered. ‘We promise to stop here,’ they’d say, and the oppressed would retreat, and for a time, peace would ensue. And the conquerors would return, saying, ‘Now we want this land too, and this land, and this…” On and on it would go, until there was no place left for the oppressed, except some dry, untenable desert swath that held no life or promise for anyone. Is that the fate that lay before them? For humans? Were the Scalies now the masters, having turned the tables on a millennium of Earth history? In the midst of this chaos, it seemed so.