Battle Beyond Earth - Box Set (Books 6-9)

by Nick S. Thomas

  “Ahh!” Jones fell back.

  The shot ricocheted and clipped his chin. It cut down to the bone, cutting his lip and burning flesh from his cheek before passing by. It hurt like hell, but he was back on his feet in no time. The weight of fire was pouring in now as shots landed all around him. He pulled out two HE grenades, primed them both, and launched them towards the enemy.

  He primed his rifle, waited for the charges to blow, and threw his rifle up and over the wall, opening fire. There were so many targets he could barely decide which one to pick. He fired rapidly. Most of his shots found their target, but far fewer seemed to have an effect. He could see several teams dragging support weapons into place, large enough that they looked like they would tear the whole ship apart. He took aim at one of the creatures hauling the nearest one into place and fired. He first shot bounced right off, so he fired two more. One didn’t penetrate, but the other seemed to pierce the joint at its shoulder.

  It was enough for the soldier to lose its grasp, and the weapon fell to the ground. To Jones’ amazement, it picked it up with its other arm and kept on running.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said in astonishment.

  He couldn’t believe how much he sounded like Taylor, but that was somehow heart-warming right now. He took aim at the same creature’s head rather than centre body mass and squeezed the trigger. The single shot struck and killed the creature instantly, sending it tumbling. It crashed into two others and fell to the ground with them as the weapon collapsed with them. Jones was quick to capitalise on it. He took aim at one of the other gun crew and fired, but he couldn’t get a clean shot as the soldier tried to pick the gun up with three others. He fired and fired, and finally the sixth shot caused it to lose its grip and focus on him. That was all the opportunity he needed. He took his shot, and shot it between the eyes.

  Gunfire rained in once again, and he ducked down for cover. He pulled out another grenade and launched it towards the enemy. He didn’t need to be accurate. There were so many of Bolormaa’s elite warriors pouring over the deck he couldn’t miss.

  “Much longer and they’ll be all over us!” Sommer yelled.

  Turan and the Krys soldiers among them fought on without question. They may be more human than Taylor used to know, but in this regard, they were true to their heritage. They showed no fear and bowed to no enemy. Jones took a few more shots. The enemy dead was piling up, and it was starting to slow their advance. The rest of his unit had followed his example and pelted the advancing enemy with grenades, but it was not something they could keep up. He only had one left. A few more shots, and he was empty once more. They kept coming relentlessly. He knew this was how Taylor must have felt in the Krys war, and that just made him glad to have them onside now. Another magazine in, and he kept firing. From behind the cover, he barely had to show himself, and yet five of his own platoon lay dead at the cover beside him.

  “Keep firing!”

  He knew he didn’t need to say it, but felt he had to offer at least some words of encouragement. He watched another dozen or more of the enemy be cut own, and all the while he could hear the screams and groans of pain from his own people being hit around him. They were giving the enemy a hell of a fight, but not without paying a heavy toll. He couldn’t help but feel they could have organised the defence better, barricades, defences, arcs of crossfire, but that was not their purpose. It was supposed to look like a desperate defence, and that is precisely what it had turned out to be.

  “Captain, we have to pull back. We can’t keep this up!” Sommer shouted.

  An energy pulse ricocheted off the wall behind them and struck Sommer in the thigh. She screamed out in pain and dropped to the ground. Jones scurried over to her side, making sure to stay in cover. She was hurting badly. He checked the wound. The shot had blown off part of her exoskeleton suit and gone through her leg, stopping at a plate of armour on the far side.

  “You’re okay, you’re okay,” he insisted.

  She didn’t look convinced.

  “We’re getting slaughtered out here, aren’t we?” she asked.

  “Yeah, and today that is our job.”

  “Worst job in the world.”

  “That’s a fact. But we have a duty to do this right, are you still with me?”

  She nodded in agreement.

  He took a rifle from one of the dead beside them and dropped the magazine. He placed the rifle alongside her leg. She winced in pain, but he took out two restraint bands and lashed them around the rifle and her leg to create a splint.

  “You ready to move?” he asked.

  “Just get us the hell out of here.”

  Jones got up and laid down fire again as he surveyed the scene. That is when he spotted what they had been waiting for. The ramp to Bolormaa’s vessel dropped down, and the creature herself stepped out in plain view to them all. It was a horrible sight, although also a relief.

  “I got you, you bastard,” he said.

  He knew he couldn’t kill her himself, but he could play a part. He took aim at her and fired a singe shot. The round bounced right off. She immediately pinpointed the origin of the shot and flared at him. He took aim again at her head and pulled the trigger. Bolormaa’s hand shot up, and the round appeared to absorb into her hand. She seemed untouchable. Several others took shots at her and achieved no more than he did, but her troops soon closed ranks to protect her from any more fire. They then continued to advance.

  “Come on, Captain, we have to go!”

  “Fall back, fall back now!” Jones roared.

  He helped the Lieutenant to her feet, and she wrapped one arm over his shoulder for support.

  “Come on, let’s move!” He fired a burst from the hip and ran on. Gunfire struck the archway beside them as they rushed to retreat. They could hear others drop behind them, but they couldn’t afford to stop and try to help.

  “Did we do it, did we do enough?” Sommer asked.

  He thought back to the mounds of enemy dead they had left in their wake.

  “Sure, we did it,” he replied.

  He ran on with her at a jogging pace. The fastest they could with her leg wound. He didn’t need to check the route. He could do it blind now. He knew exactly where to go and how to get there. They made it half way when he stopped and propped the Lieutenant against a girder support. He then readied his rifle to give covering support to those following. A little over fifty made it past them, and that meant they left a lot behind, or others were scattered to other parts of the ship. The enemy were hot on their trail. Turan was the last in the column and was reloading as he reached them to bring up the rear.

  “They sure hit us hard, didn’t they?” Jones asked.

  “They didn’t get off lightly either,” he replied, as if defending their efforts.

  “How many you think she has left?”

  “Maybe fifty.”

  Jones groaned. “I’d hoped for less. For an all powerful being, you’d think she could do her own dirty work.”

  “Why do it when you don’t have to?” Sommer joined in.

  The first of the enemy warriors came into view ahead of them. Jones pulled a stun grenade and launched it towards them, ducking back into cover. The flash lit up and pulsed past them. Jones was around the corner and opened fire at one of the creatures stumbling around. Turan launched an HE grenade towards them and opened fire himself. They cut down another two before the grenade exploded, but they didn’t wait around to see the results.

  Jones grabbed hold of Sommer and ran onwards. He was breathing hard now. He hadn’t been breathing properly under the stress of the situation. He hobbled onwards as best he could while supporting Sommer. Turan kept firing to cover their retreat.

  Bolormaa is hot on our tail, but she doesn’t seem in any rush to reach us. Is it arrogance or confidence? Maybe I don’t want to know the answer to that.

  The sign for the arena was up ahead, and that was the best thing he had seen all day. Turan was still blazing away at their bac
ks, but Jones didn’t look back. He had to keep moving forward.

  He rushed in through the entrance to the arena and found all the lights were on as though it was ready for a game. It was a surreal scene. The rest of his people were at the far edge of the arena and making their way out of the opposite side exit. Up on a balcony above was a silhouette of a man, and as they drew nearer they could see it was Taylor in an AR2 suit.

  “You okay, Jones?” Taylor asked.

  “Just about.”

  Sommer’s leg was dragging badly now, and Jones looked down to see blood dripping from her other leg. She’d been hit in both and he hadn’t even noticed. She was hiding the pain, had her pistol in hand, and still looked keen to use it. They reached the edge of the arena and turned back in time to see five of the Morohtan warriors enter. He and Turan opened fire, and Sommer laid down fire, too. The first one was killed under a hail of gunfire, but an explosion rang out on either side of the walls of the opening archway, and the enemy there were blown apart. Dust blew out into the arena, and the scene fell quiet. They reloaded and waited for the next wave.

  “You’ve done enough. Get out of here,” said Taylor.

  They refused to move. The dust began to settle, and that is when they saw it, the bright beaming eyes of Bolormaa through the smoke. She stood there glaring at them for a few moments as the smoke cleared, before finally striding into the arena.

  “Your work here is done. Now get out of here,” Taylor ordered.

  Jones looked at Bolormaa and realised there was nothing more he could do. He raised his rifle towards Taylor as if to salute.

  “She’s all yours,” he said wearily.

  It hadn’t been a long fight, but nevertheless he was exhausted.

  “Give her hell, Colonel!” Sommer yelled.

  “I sure will, now get out of here, all of you!”

  They did as ordered, but Turan remained to cover them. He wasn’t budging.

  “You, too, that’s an order, go!”

  He still he didn’t move and remained rooted on the spot.

  “Move it!”

  He growled begrudgingly and eventually left with the other two. The door soon slid shut behind them. Bolormaa hadn’t moved at all, as if waiting for them to make their peace before the end. She was cocky and arrogant, and her body language stank of it.

  “It was always going to come to this, wasn’t it?”

  She didn’t respond to Taylor.

  “Defeating me is just that important to you. You want to be the superstar that takes down the star player?”

  Still nothing. Silence.

  “Well, it’s your lucky day. You see these cameras?” Taylor pointed to the stabilised camera gimbals mounted around the room.

  “You see them? Every single detail in perfect clarity, one thousand frames a second for super smooth instant replays! That’s right. The whole Alliance is watching. Check back with your people if you want. This is going out on every channel we know. No secrets, no tricks, no bullshit. It’s you and me for the universe to see. It ends here.”

  Bolormaa began to laugh. It was the sickening chuckle that he had never got over.

  “You may fight me, if you can prove yourself worthy!”

  Through the smoke another two figures appeared, far larger than she was, and on four legs. Taylor knew precisely what they were, even if he did not know their names.

  “You would not face me? You are pathetic!”

  And yet there was not a word from her, as if she couldn’t justify herself, or merely didn’t believe she had to. A dozen more of her elite soldiers poured in after them.

  Outside the arena, Jones stopped and propped Sommer against a wall. He brought up a newsfeed on his Mappad. It was one of the premier Alliance news networks, and cut and moved as a fully professional sports match would, as it focused on Taylor and tracked all those he was facing.

  * * *

  “What the hell! This is no fair fight,” said Jones.

  “You think the Colonel expected it would be any different!” Sommer gritted her teeth and tried to fight through the pain. Jones didn’t know what to say. He had expected her to play fair and now felt very foolish, “Why would she do that?”

  “We have to go back in there. We have to help him.”

  He turned around to go back in but found himself facing Turan blocking his path.

  “You are not going inside.”

  “Look!” Jones shouted, holding up his display for Turan to see, “He needs our help.”

  Turan shook his head. Jones tried to push through, but he would not be moved.

  “Let me through!” he demanded.

  Turan would not budge. Jones was getting desperate. He took a step back and lifted the muzzle of his rifle to Turan’s chest. The Krys officer didn’t respond at all. He didn’t even flinch.

  “I won’t let anyone stand in the way of helping a friend, you should know that. Step aside or so help me, or I will shoot you!”

  “The Colonel said you would do this.”

  “What?”

  “Taylor knew you could not let this go, and he made me promise that I would not let you back into that arena.”

  “But if we don’t help him, he will die!”

  “Do you have faith in the Colonel?”

  “Yes, of course I do.”

  “And that is what he told me. He said if we had faith, we would follow his orders and let him do this his way.”

  Jones sighed. He was distraught, but didn’t know what else to do.

  “It’s not like he hasn’t been wrong before.”

  “The last time we had a chance to hit at Bolormaa, it was ruined by someone else not sticking to the plan.”

  “CJ?” he asked.

  Turan nodded.

  “You can’t think…” began Jones.

  He stopped himself. He was at risk of messing things up just as badly as CJ had, and he remembered how he hated him for doing so.

  “We must trust in the Colonel now.”

  “I never stopped trusting in him. It’s her I don’t trust!

  * * *

  Taylor knew precisely what she was doing. She was trying to wear him down before stepping up herself, exactly as he had expected.

  “Do you not have the stones to face me yourself?”

  He hoped to bait her into a duel without having to face her henchmen, but she didn’t seem to give in.

  “This is the fight you wanted, for the whole universe to see. Isn’t that what you have wanted since all this began?”

  There was still silence.

  “I don’t care if I have to cut my way through a hundred of your kind to reach you. I will kill you, and that is a promise! Too long the free people of the Alliance have lived in your shadow. Forever in fear of what you might do next. You are no god, just a bitter and twisted monster that has no place in this life. You are about as far from a god as one could be. No compassion, no will to make things better. You are a destroyer, a plague, and infestation, and you will be routed out like the virus that you are!”

  The dozen warriors advanced to face him. They covered half the distance and then waited for him to come down to their level.

  “If this is how you would want to end your life, so be it. I will take great pleasure in it, and even though you may not respect me as an opponent, I have always respected you!” Bolormaa shouted across the arena.

  “Coming from you, that means nothing,” snarled Taylor.

  “Then why waste any more words. Come down and face your fate.”

  “With pleasure.”

  She was looking around at the cameras as if pandering to them. She was trying to strike fear into her audience, and there was no doubt it would have that effect, but that only made Taylor smile. She was distracted.

  “It will be my pleasure to end you here today for everyone to see. It will not be a god that falls here, but a worm that calls herself one.”

  The troops below him hissed in anger at his insults, and that only made him
smile further.

  “I’m on my way, Bolormaa.”

  His faceplate sealed shut on his helmet, and he stepped into the elevator behind him. The doors shut, and moments later a door at the edge of the arena opened. He stepped out into the arena to face his enemies. He did not say a word as he paced confidently forward and drew out his Assegai. The blade shot as he extended it to its full reach and drew his pistol into his offhand. He didn’t skip a beat or hesitate for one moment as he lifted his pistol and fired at the first. The rounds bounced from the creature’s armour, but it stumbled back. Two others opened fire on him, but he leapt aside in a flash.

  He was on top of them in no time at all. Not a single enemy shot had found their mark, and he was in arm’s reach of the one he had shot at. He thrust his spear up onto its torso. The blade pierced right the way through, but he did not stop there. He drove forwards carrying the dying enemy soldier with him until the blade pierced another of its comrades and skewered him, too, pinning them together. He drew out the blade as another took aim at his head, but in one quick slash, cut the weapon in half.

  Taylor thrust his Assegai into another’s face and turned back to the one still holding half a rifle. He cut down and severed both its arms, spun past, and fired a single shot into the back of its head. Finally, this shot penetrated, and the creature slumped forward. Taylor ducked and weaved, cutting and thrusting from one side to another. He fired until his magazine ran empty, lastly throwing his pistol at one of them. It struck one creature square between the eyes, and as its head snapped aside, he cut its neck with his blade and severed its throat. Blood spurted out over Taylor, but he slipped quickly past.

  The enemy soldiers provided little to no threat to him at all as he cut and thrust in every direction, cutting them down like Bolormaa would cut her way through a platoon of marines. Even as he carved a blood path through them, he noticed Bolormaa watching with a keen eye, and he knew precisely why. She was studying him, and marvelling at his speed and power. Finally, he came to a stop. Just two of the enemy warriors remained before him.