“I have seen it!” Isra snapped. “I saw what they did to unarmed people outside the city. This is different. These people carry weapons like nothing you have ever seen.”
The Houston took a step forward so that he stood inches from the edge of the stage. “The Venganto are invincible. They are the wrath of the Kompanio!”
“They are people!” countered Isra, partially addressing the Houston and part the crowd. “Just like you and me. They can bleed. They can be killed and they will fall. Just like—”
Several soldiers marched up the stairs on either side of the stage and surrounded her. They closed in, took her by the arm and shoulders and led her toward the stairs. They were not forceful or aggressive in this, but something in the way they moved told Isra that they were prepared to carry her off the stage if she resisted.
She struggled, but the soldiers held her firm and kept walking her away. Behind her, The Houston smiled.
“Let me help you!” Isra cried in English, “I can negotiate a truce. I can save your city.”
The Houston didn’t pay the slightest attention. He turned back to the crowd and raised his arms. The frenzy of the crowd reached a crescendo and he spoke again in the people’s language, “Go now! Meet the enemies of the Kompanio on the field of battle! Rejoice as the Venganto strike our enemies! Honor the Kompanio with the spoils of battle!”
With those words, he pivoted and marched off the stage with the cadre of dignitaries following close behind. The crowd started to disperse. The speech had accomplished what it was meant to, the air practically buzzed with the elation of the crowd as they marched to their deaths.
Isra stepped off the stage and away from the soldiers. Althea and Viekko pushed their way to where she stood.
“Didn’t go as well as expected, huh?” asked Viekko.
Isra brushed her hair back. “I would say it went exactly as well as I expected. One does not rise to the top of the Ministry by being an optimist. You mentioned some artillery being wheeled out, Viekko?”
He nodded. “Yes, ma'am. Four mini railguns. Course’ mini is a relative term. One of them could level a city like this given enough time.”
“And what are the chances of stopping them before that?”
Viekko glanced in the direction of the wall. “Assuming I can get behind ‘em, pretty good.”
Isra nodded. “Do that then. Althea, go with him to the city gates. There will be wounded coming in by the hundreds. I want you to see what you can do for these people.”
Althea stammered, “I’ll do what I can.”
“Good,” said Isra. “I am going to keep an eye on the Houston. On the off-chance we can stop this war, I need to know what he plans to do.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The initial attacks against the Corporation were little more than terrorist actions; guerrilla warfare perpetrated by a handful of radicals in order to lure the mercenary stormtroopers into an unwinnable war.
All great civilizations fear being seen as weak in the eyes of their enemy. Hundreds of great empires throughout human history have ripped themselves apart just to avoid being seen as weak.
-from The Fall: The Decline and Failure of 21st Century Civilization by Martin Raffe.
Viekko stood atop the wall again, looking out over the grassy plains. In the sky over the trees, the sun crept behind the rings of Saturn. The refracting light caused a kind of surreal shimmering effect across the field below. A whole army gathered there now, at least a thousand marines and Perfiduloi warriors by Viekko’s estimation, standing in formation in the open field. The Perfiduloi units were easy to pick out. Their rough, brown clothing and loose formations stood in stark contrast to the tight lines of marines in the Corporation blues that surrounded the railguns. The Perfiduloi warriors made up the front lines and were organized in groups of a hundred or more. They lined up in several formations twenty wide and three or four deep. Viekko saw the glint of metal from the peasant guns in the formation that stood front and center. The rest had spears and bow and arrows, the same types of weapons Viekko saw on the dead outside the spaceport.
Looking at the way the army amassed outside the gates filled Viekko with a kind of sadness. Whatever they had done to the people of the city over the years, whatever needless slaughter occurred over the centuries between these two people, nobody deserved this. The marines were using these people as sacrificial animals. To them they were just hunks of raw meat to be thrown into the grinder of war so that a handful of people sitting in gleaming towers of metal and glass could reap the rewards. He was quickly taken with the urge to protect the Perfiduloi armies along with the City.
But with what army, exactly? He glanced back on the city side of the wall. The Houston’s people gathered behind the gates. Not just soldiers, but ordinary citizens arrived in droves to wait anxiously. Viekko had seen them on his way to the wall. The deadliest thing any of them carried were short blades and clubs. Most carried bola snares and nets. This wasn’t even bringing a knife to a gunfight; this was showing up at the gunfight with a sack and hoping somebody falls into it.
Viekko was on his own out there and that meant he needed to focus on the biggest threat and work down. The relatively small platoon armed with the Peasant Gun wasn’t the problem right now. With the right show of force, the untrained warriors would likely panic and flee. The railguns were another issue. He could clearly see four of them now, just a few hundred meters from the trees. They were well behind the lines of native soldiers and guarded by tight groups of Corporation marines. They wouldn’t expect the battle to break past the front lines which, to Viekko’s mind, made them vulnerable.
Viekko became aware that someone was climbing the stairs to the top of the city walls. He turned around to see Althea approach with a downcast, solemn expression as if she were walking up to view his corpse at his funeral. She gave Viekko a soft little smile that made his heart beat just a little faster. “You come up with a plan, then?”
Viekko turned back to the armies gathered out front. “Yep, charge out, single-handedly route the army, save the day and be back in time for pie. There will be pie, right?”
Althea approached the parapet. Her brow furrowed when she saw the army massed outside. “They are just lined up out in the open?”
Viekko adjusted his hat. “Carr must be in charge. Laban strikes me as the type that would wait and shoot an unarmed man in the back. But Sergeant Carr? If he’s got strength in numbers, he damn well wants to show it.”
Some commotion within the Perfiduloi army caught Viekko’s eye. A few runners sprinted from formation to formation and, wherever they went, the ranks of warriors tightened. From this vantage, it was like watching the muscles of a predator tense as it readied itself to pounce.
Viekko knew that his body should be flooding with adrenalin, his muscles should be tensing, and he should be basking in the rush of fear and anticipation. Instead, he felt nothing.
“Althea, you should go,” said Viekko, surprised at the monotone in his own voice. “But before you do, I need to ask you a favor.”
“Sure,” said Althea in a low, comforting tone.
“I need another shard of triple-T”
Althea rolled her eyes. “Really? Is that all you can think about right now? More drugs?”
“Triple-T makes me sharp. It makes me fast; how I move, how I react and how I think. Everything happens at a lightnin’ pace. When I’m on the ’T, it’s like the rest of the world waits for me. I ain’t going to survive down there without it.”
Althea grabbed Viekko by his broad shoulders and turned him around so she could look into his eyes. “You will be fine, you hear me? This is the first step. Once you realize that you don’t need that horrible stuff anymore, you can start getting better.”
Viekko started to protest, but he heard a distinct sound in the distance. Those rail guns took a few minutes to heat up and build enough charge to fire. During that time, the gun made a high-pitched whine that w
as almost beyond the range of human perception. The attack was going to happen at any moment.
Viekko grabbed Althea by the arms and started to lead her to the stairs. “It’s too late. Get down now. Run back to the pyramid. If this goes bad, you will need to get Isra and Cronus somewhere safe and get them out of this city. Go now!”
Althea looked like she wanted to argue, but she glanced at the army outside the gates and did as she was told. Viekko watched her descend the steps out of sight.
Viekko stretched his arms. He could feel the EROS suit underneath his clothing pulling on his muscles with every movement. It was a device made to make it feel like he was still on Earth, but it had its limits.
Viekko backed up on the platform as far as he could. Hopefully, Althea was right about him and the triple-T. He took a running leap off the edge of the wall.
He sailed through the air in a wide arc. That was the first limitation of the EROS suit. It could compensate for Titan’s lack of gravity, but it couldn’t change it. On this planet he could still move like a superhuman.
He landed and rolled on the soft ground. He didn’t pause, but ended back on his feet and started sprinting as hard as he could. The suit tore at his muscles trying to resist them. It felt like sandpaper being run underneath his skin, but he pressed forward as hard as he physically could.
That was the second limitation of the EROS suit. It could keep a person born on Earth in check on Titan, but Viekko wasn’t born on Earth. He had grown up on a planet that had a fraction of the atmosphere that Earth had, and Titan had twice the oxygen of Earth. His muscles worked harder and more efficient than they ever had in his life. The suit could compensate for your average sedentary engineer, but not for a Martian warrior.
He saw a rock poking up among the grass and ran towards it. He sprinted to the top, pushed off and caught incredible altitude. He realized, at the height of his arc, that he had miscalculated his jump. He had hoped to get high and far enough to clear a group of Perfiduloi warriors. He could land, roll, sprint and jump again. The third jump would get him close to the first rail gun. Instead, he realized he was about to land right in the middle of those warriors.
He fell into the middle of the group, knocking over a few warriors as he rolled. He used the momentum to get to his feet and found himself face to face with a visibly surprised Perfiduloi man. For just a split second, the two men looked into each other’s faces. The warrior had a scraggly beard and long, unkempt hair. If Viekko imagined what humans looked like before cities, agriculture and civilization domesticated them, this is what he would have pictured.
Before either could act, a deafening boom drew both men’s attention. Viekko glanced back at the city to see a projectile from one of the rail guns rip through the high, grey city walls like a bullet through tissue paper. In an instant, a whole section of wall disintegrated into a spray of dust and rock. Behind that, a crumbling building shuddered and collapsed. Viekko could only imagine the chaos behind the walls now. Those weapons really could level the entire city in a matter of minutes.
He turned and slugged the Perfiduloi man in the face. The native warrior fell to the ground and Viekko started to run for the rail guns. A couple of warriors tried to stop him, but Viekko moved with a quick graceful ease that didn’t even break his momentum. He hit the first man with a right jab in the sternum. He stepped forward with his left foot, rotated his body and threw his right elbow into the next man’s throat. A third made a motion towards him and Viekko simply lowered his shoulder and ran at full speed. Viekko easily plowed through the warrior who rolled off into the grass. It was only a few seconds since the rail gun fired and Viekko was sprinting in open ground.
He reached a rounded rock and used it as another launch point. This jump was much more accurate and would bring him just a few meters away from ten marines clustered around the artillery weapon. At the height of his jump, he drew his guns. The marines were so focused on the weapon and the walls ahead of them that they didn’t see Viekko flying in the air toward their position. He only had a few moments before they did.
Viekko started firing. The first few shots were well-aimed and hit at least four of the marines, two of them fatally. After that, Viekko just started emptying the clips. These shots were not intended to injure as much as they were to cause confusion and fear and to keep the marines off balance until Viekko landed. Still, he managed to wound a couple in the process.
His guns clicked empty just moments before he landed. He rolled and holstered them. He saw a marine running in a blind panic a few meters ahead. At the same time, the soldier saw Viekko and raised his assault weapon to fire. Viekko was on him before he managed to get a shot off. He grabbed the barrel of the gun and landed a right jab on the man’s throat with enough force to collapse his windpipe. The marine staggered backward and released his grip on the gun. Viekko followed up by clubbing the man across the head with the butt of the rifle.
Viekko shouldered the weapon and moved forward. The marines around the rail gun were just starting to recover from the attack and swarmed around with their own rifles raised. Viekko saw them first and had time to aim and fire his weapon. Three bursts of automatic fire took down one, two, and then a third marine.
Viekko crouched in the grass and watched the rail gun. The immediate area was clear, although he did see a few marines retreating into the distance. Corporation military was famously easy to break. They looked tough but, when bullets started flying and blood was shed, they ran. The Corporation paid them enough to walk around with a big-ass gun looking tough; it didn’t pay enough for people to put their lives on the line.
Still, there was the occasional misplaced hero. When Viekko approached the back of the rail gun, he found a young man cowering behind it. Viekko figured he had pinned him down and the soldier was still there out of fear. When Viekko got close, however, the man pulled his field knife and lunged at him. The blade clanged against the barrel of the gun and Viekko jumped back. The man pressed his advantage and slashed for Viekko’s chest. The Martian used his assault rifle to block the attack, but the force caused him to lose his grip on it. The man went to slash again but, this time, Viekko was ready. Before the soldier could lunge, Viekko grabbed his wrist and broke the man’s arm above the elbow with his other hand.
The marine yelled in pain and Viekko snatched the knife away and plunged it through the man’s rib cage. The soldier looked shocked, then his eyes rolled back into his head and he fell.
There was nobody around the rail gun anymore but it was hot and ready to fire. All it needed was a target. Viekko pulled the gun around, pointed it at the next railgun over and fired. The sonic boom was louder than a shuttle launch. The artillery kicked so hard that it pushed Viekko to the ground and knocked the wind out of him.
The shot was a direct hit. Viekko got up and smiled as the second rail gun disappeared in a plume of dirt and debris. Pieces of the weapon rained down around the field along with some pieces of the soldiers around it.
There was no time to celebrate his victory. He got this far by element of surprise alone. That had just been blown apart as spectacularly as the rail gun. He picked up the assault rifle and emptied the rest of the bullets into the electrical components. They exploded in a shower of white-hot sparks. It was unlikely that this gun could be repaired with the limited resources available on Titan. That was enough. Two guns down, two left.
He grabbed some clips from one of the dead soldiers, reloaded the rifle, and stuck a couple more in his jacket pocket. It was safer to move through the forest now. There was a lot more cover plus the chance to sneak up on someone. He sprinted for safety and heard bullets thunk against tree trunks. From there, he moved toward the next objective. Most of the marines were focused on the events in front of them.
There were two holes in the city wall now. Somehow, in the haze of battle, they managed to get a shot off without him noticing. Already, the front formations of Perfiduloi advanced into the breaks. Screams and gunfir
e were becoming apparent even where he was standing.
Viekko moved as quickly as he could through the dense foliage using the cover to his advantage. He killed marines looking for him and, when he could, he also picked off those too distracted by the events near the city wall.
He paused just behind the third rail gun to collect himself and reload. The forest around him grew darker as the sun started to disappear behind the ringed planet. Just a few minutes left of daylight before the eclipse plunged the battlefield into darkness. And only a few minutes before they’d find out if the Houston’s predictions carried anything but hot air.
He paused for a moment. He still didn’t feel the rush of pure adrenaline that he usually associated with battle. There was something cold and distant about the way he fought. There was no thrill, no sense of honor and glory. Just the cold, bloody reality of systematic murder. Still, it seemed to be effective. Maybe Althea was right. Maybe he didn’t need the drugs to fight; he just needed them to enjoy the bloodshed.
He emerged from the forest firing full automatic at the marines clustered around the third rail gun. Most were oblivious to him and fell down dead under the rain of bullets. Those who didn’t ran from their post. By the time Viekko emptied this clip, this railgun was abandoned as well.
Viekko examined the weapon. This one was recently fired and just beginning to charge again. He saw some movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned to see the last rail gun pointing in his direction. The distant, piercing screech told him that it was fully charged. He swore and bolted for the trees again but it was too late. There was a roar like Hell itself erupting from the ground. Then, for a few moments, there was nothing.
They were standing there. Why were they just standing there? The whole city held their ground in front of the gates that were still closed. Even when the shells from the railguns burst through the towering walls like a bullet through a watermelon. Even as the buildings around them collapsed and showered the crowd with chunks of concrete and steel. Even as the first of the Perfinduloi warriors ascended the rubble and began firing into the crowd, they just stood.
Saturnius Mons Page 16