War World: Cyborg Revolt

by John F. Carr

  “Die, damn you. Die!” Laxsor cried.

  Zold struck him a solid blow to the abdomen and tore the pistol out of Laxsor’s hands before he could fire again. “Why? Why?” he asked, it seemed important that he understand his underling’s treachery.

  One of the women Soldiers fired from under a chair, aiming upward. At ten meters Sauron armor wasn’t proof against an assault rifle, nor was Cyborg physiology proof against having the whole upper half of your heart shredded. Laxsor toppled backward, landed with a thump, and lay with his arms outstretched.

  Somehow it was immensely important to Zold that he not step on Laxsor’s hand, or on his foot, or on any part of the Cyborgs who sprawled in the corridor. His face was numb and half his cheek was gone, but the bleeding had already stopped.

  The Cyborgs all seemed to be down. The claymore couldn’t have done it, could it? Then Zold saw Soldiers crouching in the corners, shooting into the fallen Cyborgs. The Soldiers didn’t see him until he was on top of them.

  He crushed two skulls with his fists, then broke a spine over his knee. By then other Soldiers were shooting at him, and he thought they were making hits. It did not seem to matter very much. It did not matter, either, when somebody threw a grenade and it exploded. Zold was quite sure fragments hit him, but most of the blast appeared to be spent blowing a hole in the wall.

  He saw stars through the hole—no, through the doorway—and stumbled toward them. As he reached the doorway, Zold had to grip the stone in order to stay on his feet. Somehow his hands were too slippery for a good grip. He stumbled and fell, then tried to roll over so that he could at least face his enemies.

  He heard one of the Soldiers mutter, “The best you can say of them, is that they die hard.”

  Zold got halfway over before his strength faded. But that was far enough to see something that bothered him. The stars were gone, and the sky was blazing with yellow light. Surely he had not been out here all during truenight watching the sunrise?

  He had not settled the question when four Soldiers came on to the balcony and fired bursts into his head.

  III

  “First Citizen,” the Communications Ranker called out over the noise of the rotors. “I have just received word from Citadel Communications that Cyborg Rank Zold has been killed and that the rebellion is finished. The surviving Cyborgs have surrendered.”

  “That is good news, the first good news today,” Diettinger said as he stared out the window, looking for Firebase One. We should be approaching the base soon, he thought. They had departed Firebase Two upon notification of the Cyborg uprising, taking one of the platoons—which was all they could squeeze inside the tilt-rotor—with them. Shortly thereafter news of the Haveners attack on Firebase One had arrived. It had been a well-organized attack, most likely led by Brigadier Cummings; their first target had been the communications bunker.

  Diettinger had no idea of what to expect. His forces were stretched thin enough as it was and they did not have the reserves to counterattack where needed. Most of their forces were tied up in the Citadel fracas and it would be some time before they recovered from the Cyborg revolt.

  It was Lady Althene who caught sight of Firebase One first. “Look, Galen! The cattle must have made an all-out assault.”

  As they approached, Diettinger could see several breaches in the walls. The command bunker was gone, probably mortar fire he guessed. There were hundreds of dead bodies littering the inner courtyard, both Soldiers and human norms, most of them wearing the butternut uniforms of the militia. All the bunkers and buildings had been destroyed, even those that were merely storage facilities. The fury displayed here reminded him of what he had seen during the battle of Sauron. We had better be careful, we are not going to survive too many more attacks such as this.

  The Communications Ranker interrupted his thoughts with another message. “First Citizen, Outpost B reports massive attack upon the outpost fortification line by at least two or more battalions of militia backed up by several thousand irregulars.”

  “Weapons, how are we on ammunition?” he asked.

  “Ready ammunition storage area is full, First Citizen.”

  “Good,” Diettinger turned to the pilot. “Make for the outpost line. Estimated time of arrival?”

  “Under five minutes, First Citizen.”

  “Excellent. We will hit them from the rear.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  I

  Zold died without recognizing the flares the Citadel was sending up. For at a time, they poured light down on the approach to the Citadel, the outpost line, and the mob of female escapees streaming downhill toward the line.

  The massed resistance forces—the Falkenberg Irregulars, supported by several local guerrilla bands—suspected what the huge IR pulse might be. They’d been edging closer and closer to the Sauron outpost perimeter, which guarded the rocky scree leading up to the entrance of the Karakul Pass, in spite of orders from their officers.

  Not all of them got those orders, either. Both militiamen and guerrillas had lost women and children to Saurons. Both militiamen and guerrillas could hope that their wives and sisters, their daughters and nieces, might be in the crowd running pell-mell downhill toward them—toward safety.

  So a cheer went up when the flares began. Then it changed into howls of rage, as the machine guns in the outposts opened up. The breeders, women and girls, went down in swathes.

  The resistance forces were too far to see what was really happening. Under strict orders the outpost gunners were firing high. Very few of the escaping breeders were even nicked. They were dropping to the ground to find cover and concealment, not that there was much to find on the barren hillside. Every living thing and any rock big enough to conceal a stobor between the outpost line and the main gate had been removed. The only women actually in danger were those who hurt themselves falling down, or had fright induced heart attacks.

  This apparent mass murder of their women set off a series of screams and cries that built into a crescendo of agony. Most of the Haveners were part-time soldiers, but even a part-time soldier had plenty of the roughest sorts of training since the Saurons landed. They used fire and movement with great skill, and didn’t bunch up. Undermanned and damaged from just fighting off the Cyborg rebellion, the outposts might as well have been on Sparta for all they could do against the main attack of the Falkenberg Irregulars.

  Unfortunately for the resistance, they had to navigate the Karakul Pass to reach the Citadel. There were few usable, other than to Sherpa-like indigenes, pathways over and through the mountains to the pass.

  The Citadel had other resources as well. The flares kept blazing, now six at a time and all concentrated over the outpost line. Then the fixed weapons opened up, and finally a scraped-together mobile reserve of Soldiers manned the wall leading to the pass’s entrance and opened up with machine guns and long-range small-arms fire.

  The shells and rockets walked back and forth along the outpost lines. Sometimes they hit an outpost bunker instead of a Havener platoon, but the bunkers had been designed for just such an emergency. Nothing in the Citadel except the four 105mm howitzers could even dent them, and those were dropping their shells a thousand meters farther out in the darkness.

  Even so, three bunkers were surrounded and one lost Soldiers from grenades before its neighbors shifted fire. Machine guns and grenade launchers quickly sealed off the penetration; a counterattack was being mounted when the Deathmaster ordered the outposts to stay undercover.

  Where the outposts weren’t firing to defend themselves, four or five hundred determined or lucky refugees found a way though the line. They’d just joined with the left-flank company of the Falkenberg Irregulars when the outposts’ secret weapon went into action.

  Each eight Soldier outpost team included two snipers. As soon as the Cyborg attacks failed, Deathmaster Quilland had ordered half a dozen of the dozen snipers to take position outside the perimeter. “Targets of opportunity” was the only orde
r they had. It was also the only one they needed.

  Militiamen began dropping, apparently struck dead by Acts of God. The snipers wore black clothes and blackened faces, carried blackened equipment, and were almost impossible to see unless you stepped on one. The climax of the snipers’ action was the death of the Irregulars’ commander, Colonel Cahill.

  A sniper who had unusual infra-red sight, even for an augmented Sauron, shot Cahill through the head. Cahill’s death marked the beginning of the end of the battle of the Citadel.

  The Irregulars were too experienced to be demoralized by the loss of even a popular and beloved commander. But his death snarled the transmission of orders for a crucial five minutes. The loss of a company commander and two platoon leaders stretched the snarl to ten minutes.

  By then the left-flank platoons had decided their main mission was to get the women out of the line of fire. Some of the women had to be forcibly disarmed before they would go, but go they did.

  This left the whole flank of the Irregulars wide open, and in plain sight of the outposts. The outpost commander hurled his counterattack force against the open flank. Shifting fire from the fixed weapons and reinforcements finished the job.

  It was the arrival of a helicopter gunship from the rear that ended the battle. Fired upon by the outposts at the front, by snipers on the flanks, the gunships’ rotary-cannons were the breaking point. Of the four thousand men of the Falkenberg Irregulars and guerrilla bands engaged against the Citadel, less than a thousand escaped. They took some of their wounded, most of their weapons, and more than five hundred women and girls with them.

  But none of these would rebuild the Second Regiment of the Haven Volunteers, and without the Volunteers resistance in the northeast area of the Atlas Mountains was effectively broken.

  II

  Brigadier Cummings was annotating troop-strength lists to keep his hands busy when Major Hamilton entered the HQ tent. The news from the Citadel had been about what Cummings had expected: the Saurons had quelled their internal problems and then had turned united to face the resistance. Now Colonel Cahill was dead and the Falkenberg Irregulars were decimated.

  The new commander of the Falkenberg Irregulars was Major Louis Farina, a very able commander who’d served under Anton Leung for four years. Now he was going to need every bit of that training and ability to keep the Irregulars together as a cohesive unit.

  Cummings had sent Farina orders to rejoin the Brigade in Novy Finlandia and had received an affirmative reply. Continuing to stay in the Atlas Mountains, after their failed attack against the Citadel, would be suicidal.

  The Fighting First had taken their casualties, too. Their attack outside Tampa had been going well until one of the Sauron fighters showed up and bombed Cummings’ position. Suddenly an almost sure victory had turned into a rout. Other than an alliance with Enoch Redfield, there wasn’t much that Cummings would not give these days for some air support.

  Major Hamilton cleared his throat for about the third time.

  “Yes, Major?” The Brigadier’s tone made it clear that he didn’t want to be disturbed for anything less than the return of the Imperial Marines or Byers’ Star going nova.

  “Message just in from the Silver Hills Volunteers,” Hamilton reported. “That’s one of the groups we worked with, chasing the Sauron patrol—”

  “I’ve heard the name before,” Cummings snapped. “What do they have to say?”

  Hamilton smiled and handed Cummings a message form.

  The General felt the tightness in his chest breakup like a frozen river during spring thaw as he read the flimsy. The volunteers were in contact with the Sauron patrol, in superior strength, and across its route to the lowlands. They expected to be able to destroy it as an organized force within the next few hours.

  III

  “The cattle have fire superiority,” Sargun said. “I did not expect that.”

  When they outnumber us five to one and almost every Havener has access to a weapon, thought Fourth Rank Roger Boyle. Really, Cyborg Sargun, I thought you had more tactical sense.

  “They don’t have clear targets, but we do,” Boyle pointed out. He gripped an outcropping and hoisted himself one-handed over a meter of near-vertical pitch.

  “That gives me an idea,” Sargun said. He plunged upward, covering the last twenty meters to the crest in a single rush. His feet and dislodged stones made enough noise to be heard in Castell City, if the Haveners farther along the ridge hadn’t been firing so heavily.

  Boyle wondered if they were hitting anything, except by chance, and when their officers would realize that their men were wasting ammunition. Before that happened, the Sauron flankers had to go to work.

  He scanned the hillside. The heavy weapons were coming up, a rocket launcher team and a machine gun. They were a thousand meters lower than they’d been while hunting Cummings’ militia, but that gave the Haveners as well as the Soldiers more oxygen.

  After the Citadel revolt and their support had been pulled, orders had come in to return to Firebase Three. Three days ago that would have meant by air, now it meant by foot. Sauron strength and night vision didn’t help quite as much as the cattle thought, not when a Soldier was traveling down steep slopes strewn with loose rubble. Nor at night when you couldn’t see the stone that turned underfoot until after it had you sliding downhill, ass over apex.

  At least all the Soldiers who’d started the climb to outflank the enemy had made it. Boyle saw that Sargun had withdrawn into one of his abstracted moods and took personal charge of placing the weapons.

  Sargun’s disengagement continued for a good five minutes. When the Haveners’ fire began to slacken, Boyle began to get uneasy. So far they had the advantage of surprise; ten Saurons against probably a hundred cattle needed every advantage they could get. Anymore of Sargun’s musing, and the cattle might notice—

  “Are the heavy weapons ready to move?” Sargun suddenly asked.

  Boyle managed to keep the surprise out of his voice. “They arrived five minutes ago. They are in position to open fire on your order.”

  “Position?” Sargun made the word sound obscene.

  “I thought—”

  “You didn’t think. You failed in both intellect and courage. From where we are, we can assault along the ridge. The cattle will fall before our weapons.”

  Roger couldn’t keep the surprise off his face. The plan had been to maneuver the flanking force into a position where the Haveners on the ridge would have to attack it. The heavy weapons should do enough damage to discourage that attack for a while. During that time the Soldiers below could disengage and withdraw through the pass. The last, or nearly the last, pass down into the lowlands. Probably the last pass the cattle could defend in force.

  “Let’s open fire before we risk moving,” Boyle suggested, more politely than he felt. “If we draw the cattle on to us—”

  “What’s the moral advantage to that? What, I ask you?” Sargun almost screamed, as if he’d forgotten the presence of the enemy.

  “Dead cattle are dead cattle—”

  “Sauron courage cannot die! We must feed it, with our blood if necessary! Tonight it is necessary!” Sargun loomed over the weapons crews. “Prepare to advance on my command. Marching fire.”

  Boyle swallowed three times before he was sure his stomach was going to stay down. That would be both an embarrassment and a waste of time.

  Even with a surprise flank attack, ten Saurons were at risk when facing more than a hundred Haveners on their chosen ground, at night, with all the potential for confusion darkness gave. At risk—and worse, if the Haveners realized how few Saurons they faced.

  All ten Soldiers could die, even if they destroyed the cattle on the ridge. Then the Soldiers below would be in danger, because they would be without more than a third of their strength and their two senior leaders. If the Havener resistance defended any more of the passes to the lowlands, the survivors of the patrol would be lucky to see Firebase Three again.


  He wasn’t about to wager the lives of eleven Soldiers on that slim possibility.

  “Open fire!” he shouted. He wanted to shock the others into action, before Sargun realized what he was doing. When the heavy weapons opened up, the assault along the ridge line would lose surprise. Even Sargun would have to see it was madness.

  Or would he?

  Little as Cyborgs dealt with emotion, Sargun was for a moment a picture of total surprise. In that moment the machine gun opened up, and the launcher loader slapped a round into the tube. The gunner sighted and shouted, “Fire in the hole!”

  “Mutiny!” Sargun shouted.

  That made the rifleman hesitate, and one man loading his grenade launcher turned to stare at his leaders. Boyle took a step backward. “Only executing previous orders. The tactical situation hasn’t changed enough to justify—”

  “Mutiny!” Sargun screamed again. He wheeled and aimed a kick at Boyle’s knee. If the kick had landed, the knee would have shattered and the fight ended at once.

  His knee wasn’t there to be shattered. He’d wheeled in the opposite direction and side kicked. Sargun whirled and caught Boyle’s leg, but not before the foot caught him in the lower ribs.

  Sargun gripped the leg, but Boyle kicked with the other foot, driving a combat boot into Sargun’s jaw.

  The Cyborg let him fall, and Boyle rolled downhill just far enough to make Sargun think he was out of control. Then he braked his fall and sprang to his feet again, to meet Sargun coming downhill.

  The way the Cyborg moved told him two things, both of them good news—life or death news. The Cyborg wasn’t as at home on rough ground as Roger, who’d grown up in the northern continent of Alberta. Also, the Cyborg’s head injury had affected his sense of balance. The two together might just give him the edge he needed.

  Make that a chance, he amended, as Sargun leaped three meters and nearly landed on top of his opponent. He risked a two-handed chop to the side of Sargun’s throat and got away with it, but that wasn’t enough to put the creature down.