Blood of Heroes (The Ember War Saga Book 3)

by Richard Fox

  Out of bullets, Elias scooped up a dead banshee and hurled it at the armed enemy like the corpse was a fast ball. The disintegration beam hit the body and diffused inside the banshee, making it glow like a bulb.

  Elias ripped the cannon arm from the banshee and kicked the mortally wounded enemy away. The banshee hit by the beam was nothing but a pile of armor plates. Elias, his body buzzing with adrenaline, felt a part of his mind mark that observation as being very, very important.

  “Elias! I need help!” Kallen called out.

  The Smoking Snakes, now a few dozen yards away, shot down any banshee that got too close to Kallen and where she stood over Bodel’s felled armor. Elias sprinted over and found Bodel’s chest armor open, his armored womb leaking fluid. Elias peeled the inner tank open slowly. Bodel thrashed against the womb, his eyes rolled back in his head as he convulsed.

  “He’s spiked in a feedback loop,” Elias said. “If I don’t unplug him, he’ll have a stroke and die.”

  “Isn’t there—”

  “Splash, over!” Hale’s transmission came as a warning. They had five seconds until hundreds of mortar rounds came raining down around them.

  Elias grabbed the wires leading into the base of Bodel’s skull.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He tore the wires out of the womb and flipped Bodel’s armor over, sheltering the stricken pilot from the coming storm. Elias then laid himself over Bodel.

  “Hit the deck!” Elias got the warning out a split second before the first mortar hit.

  The ground shook as blast after blast churned the surface of Takeni into a hellish moonscape. Elias felt the tiny stings of shrapnel bouncing off his armor, the mosquito whine of jagged metal zipping around them.

  Elias waited thirty seconds after he felt the final round explode. There was nothing but broken banshee bodies and scorched earth absorbing gray blood that smelled like rotting flesh. Shorn limbs twitched in the dirt, and for the first time in his life, Elias came to hate war.

  Kallen and the Smoking Snakes picked themselves up from the dirt, looking over what remained of their foes.

  “Bodel?” Elias lifted the armor onto its side and Bodel tumbled out of the womb and rolled into the dirt. He vomited out clear fluid and curled into a ball. Elias reached for his friend, now just a skinny man with a mop of dark hair plastered over his face.

  “Don’t…” Bodel said, his voice ragged and weak, “don’t leave me behind.”

  “Never, Iron Heart.” Elias scooped Bodel up and cradled him like a newborn.

  “No,” Bodel reached back to his armor. “Don’t leave me! Go back! Go back for me!”

  Elias unfolded the treads from within his legs and morphed into his travel configuration. His treads tore over tortured ground and broken bodies back to New Abhaile. Bodel begged to go back to his armor before he lost consciousness.

  ****

  Hale fired a shot blast into a banshee climbing over the ramparts. The rounds punched the banshee back off the wall and sent it tumbling into the roiling mud below. He didn’t know if the fall would be enough to kill the banshee, but it was one less thing he had to deal with.

  “I need Crimson Squad to the intersection of…route Puller and route Mattis ASAP,” Hale said into the IR, praying someone heard him. The entire defense of New Abhaile fell apart when the construct blasted a giant hole in the other wall, then took out an interior wall that cut off most of the city’s frontlines from reinforcements.

  Hale saw the white flashes from scattered pockets of Dotok and Marine resistance as their gauss rifles tore into the banshees. The city’s communications had dissolved into frantic cries for help from isolated outposts and civilians holed up in landed ships begging for rescue.

  Individual Dotok may have been proficient in the ways for war, but they’d never bothered to prepare to actually defend the city, and everything was falling to pieces around Hale.

  “This is Raider Six. Can anyone—” A bright white flash of light burst into being in the sky. Hale leapt onto the cobblestones and tucked himself against a rampart. If a nuke had gone off in the upper atmosphere, the blast wave from the explosion wouldn’t be far behind. He covered his head and waited…but nothing happened.

  He got up on his knees and saw burning wreckage tearing through the sky like torches cast through fog.

  “Please don’t be the Breitenfeld,” Hale said.

  “This is it! This is the end!” a Dotok soldier screamed from behind Hale. He dropped his rifle and tried to wrestle off his helmet.

  “Hey!” Hale grabbed him by the armor and shook him hard enough to dislodge teeth. “It’s never over. Pick up a weapon and defend yourself!”

  The Dotok got a grip on himself and grabbed a weapon lying against the ramparts. A dark shadow rose up from behind the wall’s edge and plunged claws through the Dotok’s chest. The soldier looked down at the claw tips, then at Hale with confusion writ across his face. The banshee pulled the soldier back and tossed him into the hot springs like a child’s toy.

  Hale shot the banshee in the face and didn’t wait to see if it fell away. More climbed up the walls around him, their talons chittering against the stones. He turned and ran back toward the intersection, the sandbag fighting position abandoned by the Dotok defenders.

  He caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye and felt a hammer blow against his legs. The world went spinning as he tumbled across the cobblestones. His head slammed against a raised rock, cracking his visor.

  Hale looked up and saw his rifle lying at the feet of a banshee. The monster picked it up and broke it in half. The wrecked capacitors sent bolts of electricity up and down its distended forearms, which had no effect on the banshee. More banshees vaulted over the walls, their hungry yellow eyes on Hale.

  Hale drew his pistol from its holster and got up to one knee.

  “You’ll kill me, but I’m going to make you earn it,” Hale said as he snapped his bayonet out from his gauntlet housing. The banshee with his rifle tossed the parts aside and howled.

  “Sir, drop!”

  Hale went prone as a Gustav heavy cannon unloaded on the banshees. Gauss rounds snapped over Hale and smacked into the aliens. Rounds blew through the first banshees and killed the next rank of foes. More rifles joined the fusillade, tearing through the banshees without remorse or pity.

  The Gustav cycled down as the last banshee died.

  Hale turned around and saw Orozco braced against the street, the barrel of his cannon glowing white hot. Marines and a handful of Dotok soldiers formed a firing line beside him, each hastily reloading the batteries on their rifles.

  Gunney Cortaro was to the right of the line, the barrel of his rifle smoking.

  “Heard you needed help,” Cortaro said.

  Hale got to his feet and tried to open a channel, but error tones buzzed in his ear. He took off his helmet; his transmitter was cracked and useless.

  “Gunney, get on the command net and pull every Marine off their air-defense positions and tell them to sweep toward the east,” Hale said.

  “Already done, sir. We’ve got air support coming in from the Breitenfeld now, should be here in minutes,” Cortaro said.

  Orozco went to a rampart and aimed his Gustav over the edge. He fired off peals of thunder, shouting, “I love my job!” between bursts. He stepped back from his firing point and looked at one of the Dotok, who was laden with ammo canisters. The soldier unsnapped the empty case on Orozco’s back and reloaded a fresh box of ammunition. Orozco returned to the job he loved so much.

  Hale picked up an abandoned Dotok rifle and saw a banshee sprinting along a distant wall. Using an unfamiliar weapon, he missed with the first two shots, but the third round hit home and sent the banshee sprawling to the ground.

  “Come on,” he said to the defenders, “let’s finish this.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Hale and Torni carried a stretcher up a Mule ramp, bearing a wounded Marine. The left half of his face was covered i
n bloody bandages and he had a compression stump over his left hand. He’d lost most of his hand to a banshee’s bite, but had kept fighting until Yarrow caught up to him.

  Two more walking wounded sat in the Mule’s cargo hold, both with broken bones and concussions. Hale and Torni lifted the stretcher onto a rack and helped the crew chief secure it for the long, bumpy ride back up to the Breitenfeld.

  Bodel was already onboard, locked in a tube filled with the same fluid as his armor’s womb. A mask over his face fed him air; his severed plug wires wrapped around the tube, connecting him to his life-support systems. Bodel twitched, like a drug addict in the throes of withdrawal.

  Hale had gone through armor selection, passing all the tests but the last where he’d panicked in an isolation chamber. He’d come so close to earning his plugs and joining the ranks of the mechanized armor. Failing had gnawed at him for years, driving him to become a Strike Marine, the elite of the Atlantic Union’s spaceborne infantry. Now, seeing Bodel suffer erased all regret he’d once had. A Marine’s death on the battlefield would be quick. Bodel might suffer for months before succumbing to his injuries, or end up trapped in a suit like Elias.

  “We’re wheels up in three minutes, sir,” the crew chief said to Hale.

  “How’s he?” Hale motioned to Bodel.

  “Sedated. Stable. I’m not allowed to do anything else for him. These guys are fragile little snowflakes when you get them out of their suits. We’ve got specialists on the Breit that might be able to keep him alive.”

  “Pass on to Dr. Accorso that I want regular updates on everyone,” Hale said.

  “No problem, doc’s good about stuff like that anyway,” the crew chief said.

  Hale gave the injured a reassuring touch and words of encouragement before he stepped away; most were so drugged up with painkillers they could barely register Hale’s presence.

  Torni pointed to a shelter set up at the end of the landing zone with a Marine standing guard at the door. Hale steeled himself. There were many tasks as a leader he didn’t enjoy, and this was the worst.

  Within the shelter were six matte-black body bags, and all but one held a dead Marine. The last had a single small lump within it. Hale zipped each open to look at the face of the departed within. All his Marines, all dead under his command. His emotions had been worn to nothing in the past few months, but he could still feel sorrow for the loss of good men and women.

  “Cittern and Huey are still missing,” Torni said. “They went down in the rubble from the second big hit. Dotok and the armor are picking through the area now.”

  “And Vogelaar?” He pointed at the mostly empty body bag, the only one he hadn’t opened.

  “We found her helmet…with her in it.” Torni looked away. “We’re looking for the rest. She’s Jewish—being whole is important for the funeral.”

  “Have them sent up on the next transport,” Hale said.

  “Sir, they need you on the Canticle, ASAP,” Cortaro said over the IR.

  “On my way.” Hale slid his new helmet over his head and left the makeshift morgue.

  ****

  Hale felt like a barbarian when he got to the conference room. His armor was dented and scuffed, stained with gray banshee blood. The three Dotok council members were as pristine as ever. Even Un’qu sported new fatigues to go with the bandages wrapped around his forehead.

  Lafayette and Steuben stood along the walls.

  Valdar’s hologram flickered to life.

  “Ken, you look like hell,” Valdar said.

  “The situation was in doubt for a few minutes, captain,” Hale said.

  “Here’s the situation in orbit,” Valdar said. A Dotok map of the Great Expanse, with English translations of landmarks written next to the Dotok alphabet, replaced his image. “The compromised ships managed to drop their escape pods at two points.” Red pins popped up at the end of two tendrils snaking away from the New Abhaile’s valley. “They managed to do it at just the right, or wrong, time—one of the hemisphere-wide dust storms is coming in. It’s already covered landing site Alpha. It’ll be over New Abhaile and Bravo in a few more hours. Orbital bombardment is useless so long as the dust storms are up. Can’t see what we’re shooting at.”

  “How long do we have until they get here?” Hale asked.

  “Nineteen hours, depending on how long, or even if, the banshees stop for the storm. Both groups will arrive at roughly the same time,” Valdar said.

  “It will take us another twenty-two hours to have the Canticle ready for liftoff,” Lafayette said.

  “And how many banshees are we looking at?”

  “Each drop site had roughly three times as many banshees as the last assault,” Valdar said.

  Hale kept his face devoid of expression as he heard the devastating news.

  “The defense of this city will be impossible,” Wen’la said. “We suggest evacuating every Dotok that the Breitenfeld can carry and leave the system immediately.”

  “What about the Burning Blade?” Hale asked.

  “That fire in the sky you saw was the Burning Blade ramming the last cruiser. Ty’ken had the choice of letting that cruiser hit New Abhaile or him,” Valdar said. “We’ve got one ship left in orbit, and we’ve got our own problems to handle.”

  “Wen’la is correct,” Pa’lon said. “We save what we can and we leave. It is a hard decision to make, but necessary.”

  Hale looked over the map. He leaned toward it and pressed his lips together in concentration. There was a chokepoint along one of the routes the invaders had to take to reach New Abhaile.

  “Zoom in on…Ghostwind Pass, that the name?” Hale asked. The map shifted and enlarged on the pass. “You see this spur, this line of mountains jutting into the pass?” Hale asked. “We could blow the cliff face, bring it down on the berserkers or at least block the pass. They couldn’t climb over it without suffocating in the thin air, right?”

  “How would you destroy the cliff?” Taal asked.

  “Operation Yalu,” Valdar said.

  “Before the Xaros invasion,” Hale said, “the Atlantic Union had a plan to liberate Korea from the Chinese occupation. Beating what they had on the peninsula was never too much of a challenge. Keeping Chinese reinforcements out of the battle was the difference between victory and defeat. The plan was to nuke the mountain passes north of the Yalu River, block the heavy equipment like tanks and artillery from ever reaching the fight. My team and I trained for that exact mission for months before we got assigned to the Saturn colonial fleet.”

  “What is a ‘Yalu’?” Wen’la asked.

  “And a ‘Korea’?” Taal asked.

  Hale ignored them. “Captain, have you got a nuke onboard? Couple kiloton yield should be enough.”

  “I left for Anthalas prepared for most every contingency. I have strategic terrain nukes for you,” Valdar said. “I’m looking at the avenue of approach for the landing site at Alpha. No place for us to replicate what you’ve got in mind for Bravo?”

  “Why don’t you use your nuclear weapons against the invaders now? I am aware of the storm overhead, but nuclear weapons tend to be somewhat forgiving if you miss, correct?” Wen’la asked.

  Pa’lon cleared his throat. “Across many, many instances of the Xaros encountering species with nuclear weapons, the weapons proved useless. The Xaros emit some sort of dampening field that retards the fission or fusion properties of radioactive materials. The accepted hypothesis is that whoever controls the Xaros drones doesn’t want to live on an irradiated wasteland, so nuclear strikes against them are rendered useless.”

  “There were nukes used during the defense of Earth,” Hale said. “There’s still fallout in the atmosphere.”

  “There’s a limit to the dampening field, a few hundred miles from any drone.” Pa’lon folded his hands over the top of his cane. “I think you’ll succeed.”

  “What about the rest? All the noorla coming from site Alpha,” Wen’la said.

  “We ei
ther leave sooner or beat them at the gates,” Hale said.

  “Leaving sooner is possible,” Lafayette said. “The Dotok technicians are quite adept. They’re installing the anti-gravity plates four percent faster than I’d anticipated. Captain Valdar, if you can spare some crew, we can have the Canticle ready almost thirty minutes before the next wave of invaders are anticipated.”

  “Thirty minutes?” Valdar asked, his tone skeptical.

  “We only need to beat them by one minute,” Lafayette said.

  “I’ll send down everyone I can spare along with Hale’s nuke,” Valdar said. “Daylight is burning. Best you all get back to work.” His hologram sputtered out.

  Hale went to the two Karigole. “Steuben, the only other Marine trained to lead a nuclear demolition mission is Voglaar, and she’s…so just me. I’m going to take my team and a Mule to Ghostwind Pass and solve one of our problems. I’m leaving you in charge of the defense of this city,” Hale said.

  “A worthy strategy,” Steuben said.

  “If anything goes wrong, get my Marines and the Dotok off this rock,” Hale said.

  Steuben nodded, then enveloped Hale in a bear hug so tight Hale struggled to breathe.

  “Steuben…” Hale slapped at the Karigole’s arms. “Steub—”

  He released Hale and grabbed him by the shoulders.

  “Is that the traditional way human friends say farewell to each other?” Steuben asked.

  “Things were a lot easier when you were just a stick in the mud,” Hale said. “How do Karigole warriors say good-bye?”

  Steuben pressed the middle knuckle of his fingers against Hale’s left temple. Hale returned the gesture, then left the conference room.

  “Don’t humans also slap each other on the buttocks?” Lafayette asked.

  “That is reserved for athletic accomplishments, I believe. I will attempt that form of nonverbal communication when I see Gunney Cortaro again,” Steuben said.