The entrance to the approach canyon is still there, with some of the “wall” of piled stone across it intact, enough to recognize what it used to be. But the approach canyon approaches nothing now, just rolling barren rubble dug out from a series of four or five discernible giant craters that scooped out the middle of the spine of what was a ten-klick-long mountain. Rock and gravel looks like it flowed and flooded the approach canyon all the way out to the wall, which was partly blown away by the blast waves. All the green that had been on the mountain slopes and in the canyon has been erased. It reminds me of a series of explosive volcanic craters, somehow all detonated in a relatively straight chain. (I can’t help but think of a child’s game of “Battleship”.) But even the worst they could do didn’t entirely erase the mountain, as if Mars is defying them. (So did deeper or more peripheral sections of the Keep survive? And if so, does Asmodeus still have a base somewhere under this devastation?)
I can also see eight ASVs perched up on whatever reasonably-level high ground they could find, roughly surrounding the center of the site, covering it with their gun turrets and missiles, as if they’re certain that Asmodeus is buried in one of the middle craters. (And they would be right, if he’s still there in any form at all.) They’re keeping their engines spinning, but have set down to conserve fuel. And out in front of the “gates” of the broken and half-buried approach wall are parked a line of a half-a-dozen AAVs and what I now see are definitely troop ships, as they’ve discharged their cargo: I see maybe a few hundred soldiers, most in H-A shells that have been painted over in greens like their ships. A squad’s worth of troops are holding their main landing zone, while a too-thin line is spread out over a klick from west to east just on their south side to hold the still-forested perimeter. The rest—about a hundred suits—are moving north-northwest, through the “gate” gap and onto the talus surface that’s replaced the lush canyon floor. They fan out and slowly advance, scanning the rubble underfoot with whatever gear’s been designed to detect Mods like mine. They look like they’re minesweeping, covered by the guns of the surrounding aircraft. It seems like they’re being cautious enough, but I know better.
I get back to running, gaining speed by the grace of the downhill. Only a few more klicks…
I’m starting to see the green get thin, starting to see the remains of the mountain again, when my systems flash a proximity alert and a figure steps out in front of me, holding up a hand for me to
“Stop! Stop, Colonel. Please…”
It’s Lyra. She’s wearing an issue L-A uniform, mask, goggles and sun-veil cap, but I know her voice.
“You can’t be here!” she pleads in urgent whisper. “They can detect you! I helped make the gear they’re using.” She holds up a handheld piece of gear that sports a small parabolic dish. “I was able to pick up your signature incoming.”
That explains why she’s out here: Who better to debug the gear in the field than one of the team that created it, especially if she’s expendable?
Another L-A uniform steps up behind her and raises an ICW at me. Her ID tag says “Sharp, L” and she’s wearing Spec-4 chevrons. I don’t know her, which means she’s new-drop. She’s as jumpy as I expect, but doesn’t just shoot me.
“Lynn… It’s okay…” Lyra tries. I see she’s also wearing Specialist insignias. She’s either borrowing the L-As, or they’ve pressured her into enlisting, maybe in hopes of controlling her, containing what she knows.
“I’m here to help,” I offer insistently. “This is a trap. You need to pull everyone out now. Right now.”
“What’s this?” I hear a more authoritative voice. Another uniform steps up and raises a gun at me. (They have to know how useless a gesture that is, like the dumb criminals in the old movies trying to shoot Superman.)
“Major Corso,” I greet sourly, recognizing her by the perpetual scowl of disapproval on her face. “How did you earn yourself such a shit field mission?”
She winces involuntarily at my “vulgar” language. Even saving her sorry life hasn’t seemed to have earned me any acceptance. But last time I saw her, she was assigned as Richard’s “aid”, and very likely his watcher. Why is she out here? Unless babysitting Lyra and whatever she’s made for them is a UNCORT priority.
“Colonel Ram…” She sounds like she’s found shit on her boots. At least she calls me by my old rank, but probably only because “Lord Ragnarok” wouldn’t come out of her mouth for anything (and for that, I can’t blame her).
She’s joined by two other guns: A Spec-3 named Sung and a First Sergeant Horton, R.
“Is that you, Randal?” I greet more civilly.
“It is, sir,” he answers, trying not to sound too pleased to see me in front of his fellows.
“I didn’t think Sleeper Vets were allowed out,” I toss at Corso.
“Rehab,” Lyra answers impulsively when all I get from Corso is more scowl-face.
“Took a Silverman spearhead through the shoulder at Nike,” Horton tells me with a mix of pride and self-deprecation, shrugging his left shoulder as if to prove it still works.
“Forge,” I correct, levering the conversation with trivial intel. “The Cast call them Silvermen. The Katar call them Steel. They call themselves The Children of the Forge, the Disciples of Wayland Smith.”
Something about the topic seems to particularly unsettle Sharp, but I’m not sure what.
“And who’s Wayland Smith?” Corso plays, like she’s deciding what to do. “Someone from the colonies?”
“Wayland The Smith. A figure from Norse and old English mythologies. Famous for his legendary swords, armor and magic rings.”
The mention of such pagan things seems to embitter her even more than my presence. I suppose I’ve just done the Forge a disservice, labeling them as apparent idolaters. I really must learn to filter better around these self-righteously petty fucks.
“Now you really need to get out of here,” I repeat my priority. “Fast.”
“You realize anything you say is suspect,” Corso regurgitates Jackson’s paranoia, “but asking us to quit a priority search for the enemy leader Asmodeus or his networked nanotech agent?”
“Trap,” I insist urgently, using few and small words. “Harvesters. Everyone out. Now.”
“The EMP would have fried their modules,” Lyra argues, though I can hear her start to doubt. “We tested it thoroughly.”
“Even if they’re buried under two meters of regolith,” Corso reinforces. “That pulse killed every drone for five klicks in any direction.”
“I’m assuming you know what a Faraday Cage is,” I risk bigger words.
Lyra instantly looks sick. She reaches out and pushes down Sharp’s weapon.
“Asmodeus has his drones buried inside metal tubes,” I finish my explanation. “You may have seen a few lying around after you blew the mountain away. I’m betting they provide insulation against EMP.”
I hear Horton sigh. He turns to look in the direction of the advancing search force.
“We need to call a retreat,” Lyra eagerly agrees, turning to sway Corso, but I can see the situation is starting to sink in. They have seen the tubes.
“Major, I may be trying to con my way into your confidence,” I play into the paranoid game, “but if I’m doing it by saving hundreds of lives, take it and doubt me later.”
“Is he telling the truth about the tubes?” Corso wants Lyra to say it. Lyra nods imperatively.
“Corso to Mission!” she barks into her link, forgoing code. “Corso to…”
Gunfire interrupts us. First a few bursts. Then, within seconds, it’s all around us, echoing across the blasted landscape.
“I’ve got signals!” Lyra announces, just this side of panic. She sweeps her device. “Everywhere! They’re all around us!”
And here I am running again.
I sprint across the relatively clear field approaching the canyon mouth, figuring the remaining bowl of the canyon or the craters themselves will be the likel
y killing grounds: catch the targets in the low ground. I know I’m putting myself right in the sights of Earthside’s turret guns, but I’m hoping they’ll grow some sense and realize friend from foe when their lives are on the block. I think I’m wrong for an instant when those turrets start firing, but it turns out they’re not firing at me—they’re sending bursts down into the canyon and craters, probably covering their vulnerable troops. I hear retreat orders across the link channels, and panicked shouting as they break comm protocols.
“They’re all over! They’re coming up out of the ground!”
“Targets in the rocks! We’re in a crossfire! Need covering fire!”
“…hit! I’m hit! Oh God…”
“…darts! And AP ammo, we’re…”
“Look out! Flight Five, on your six!”
I look up at the high ground in time to see one of the ASVs explode, bay blowing apart, splitting the ship in half and sending the cockpit section sliding down-slope. I can see shapes up on the high ground, doing the telltale staggering of corpse drones, shooting opportunistically; oblivious to the return fire aimed their way. But they’ve got more than small arms. I see rocket launchers.
“Spin up!” I hack into their channels. “Get your flights in the air! Evasive action now! Set up evac points and secure your LZs!”
“Colonel Ram! Get off this channel now!” Jackson shouts at me.
“You have eyes on this?” I challenge him. “They’ve got you from all sides! Heavy ordnance! Surface to air…”
“Get off this channel or I’ll tear you apart!” Making his threat convincing, he orders one of the ASVs to strafe a few rounds at my feet as I run.
“Friendly fire!” I hear Lyra yelling on the channel. And behind me. I turn to see she’s running after me, following me. Into the valley of the shadow…
“Get back to the AAVs!” I order her. “Coordinate evac! Everybody…”
Another ASV explodes, this time as it’s lifting off. The smoking wreckage lists and tumbles into one of the craters.
I draw my pistol and take aim, start popping the heads of the drones I can see, but soon there are too many, spread out all over the blasted mountain, stumbling sloppily—almost comically—toward what they must scan as the highest-value targets. And the Earth Force troops prove just as sloppy as they panic, break and run for their drop points across the treacherous blast talus. I see several go down and scramble back up again, having simply tripped or slipped, but I see others go down with permanence, their bulky H-A shells holed by armor-piercing rounds. When they try to shoot back at the drones, it’s painful to watch: They waste precious ammo, even with their AI-assisted weapons taking most of the burden of aiming, and completely fail to thin the disarrayed force coming steadily down on them because they’re not managing the necessary surgical shots. They’re tearing up the animated corpses, but entirely missing the control modules.
And that doesn’t make any sense. Even the aircraft turrets won’t drop one effectively. From what I’m seeing, the targeting algorithms look like they’re still set to aim for center-of-mass instead of the brain stem. They can’t possibly have been stupid enough to send troops into Harvester-occupied territory with their weapons set to…
Oh.
“You’ve been hacked!” I dare Jackson by getting back on the link to warn as I figure it out. “Your targeting algorithms have been reset to default!” Then I start shouting at the troopers: “Switch to manual! Head shots only! Brain stem! Base of the skull! Conserve your ammo! No auto-fire!”
I have to appreciate the brilliance of the move: If Asmodeus just disabled the UN smart weapons, the hack would have been detected as soon as the safety locks engaged. This way, they spent precious time and ammo shooting non-critical meat, and with the added demoralizing effect of watching those rounds have very little effect on the recently-human enemy. And now they have to aim manually, managing pinpoint accuracy on a moving target as they collectively panic. But that hope that they have a chance at shooting back slows their retreat, and that’s both a blessing and a curse.
“Shoot for the nose! If you can’t hit a target that small, run!” I order. “Those that can, provide covering fire!”
Jackson doesn’t have a turret shoot at me again for usurping his command, but most of the fleeing troops aren’t listening to me anyway. Worse: no one else is giving orders, including Jackson, and that hesitation proves devastating.
The retreat devolves into a stampede. Only a few of the troopers try to hold ground, and fewer still can manage the accuracy needed to do anything other than piss away ammo. I doubt many of these new-drops had ever held a firearm before whatever rushed training they got before launching. Most of them look like they’re trying to hang on to blazing porcupines. Several of them just drop their weapons and run (and they don’t run well either, between the armor and the gravity they’re not accustomed to moving in). Unfortunately, the drones are smart enough to target the ones that can shoot first. This quickly crushes what little fight this “army” has left.
Even more demoralizing than the difficulty scoring a module-killing shot is the complete lack of reaction in the drones’ expressions and body language. It’s a chilling effect: The drones still appear human, but they display no fear whatsoever, no sense of self-preservation, no hesitation under any kind of fire. They just keep coming. And watching a human body torn apart by bullets and still keep advancing and shooting as long as it has enough of its limbs intact to do so (or takes a bullet in the right spot—even blowing off the top of the head doesn’t stop a drone unless the module itself is hit) turns this from a battle into a waking nightmare. I expect Asmodeus is laughing his fucking head off, wherever he is, watching the whole thing through more than a hundred drone eyes.
I finally hear Jackson on the link, coordinating evacuation, identifying exfil points, moving his aircraft back far enough that they stand a chance at defending themselves from ground-fire, even though that reduces their effectiveness at covering their ground forces. (But if he loses those remaining ships, the survivors will be running all the way home, probably with drones on their tails the whole way.)
There’s at least one more skilled gun left in this fight besides mine: Lyra has joined me in surgically picking off the Harvesters, smartly using me as a partial shield in the otherwise open ground. She’s an exceptional shot, taught by the security officers of her parents’ UNCORT mission. When her ICW runs dry, she proves she can pop a module with her sidearm at fifty meters while she dashes for a fresh discarded weapon. But we’re two guns against what seems like an endless staggering tide, and they’re coming from all sides over the cratered landscape. Asmodeus must have had hundreds of infected bodies buried in the forest around the mountain, shielded from indirect rail-gun blasts and the EMP he expected they’d try, waiting for this, knowing they’d target the Keep and then move in to make sure it was clear.
(I’m sure he probably counted on me to tell Earthside he’d occupied the Keep so they’d strike it. He never meant to occupy and hold it as a base. Attacking the Pax was just a means to instigate this, and to provide more bodies for his drones.)
The Harvesters I can see are wearing a mix of Pax green and Chang black—probably the last of Chang’s PK and Zodangan army. (What will the next generation be wearing? UNMAC armor? Katar lamellar? Forge steel?) All are covered in dirt from digging out of whatever shallow grave they were in. Some are missing parts of arms or staggering on shredded legs because of the misguided turret fire they’ve taken. A few are missing parts of their skulls, shot away. I see one obliviously trailing its own insides.
With my neural processing accelerated up to bullet-speed, it’s all happening in sickening slow motion. And with Lyra relying on me for a shield, I can’t afford to dodge the rounds I see incoming. I swat a few with my armor and take a few more. My plate has adapted to defeat the penetrator cores of the ammo Asmodeus is using, but I’m still taking an infuriating beating as I barely whittle down the Harvester numbers.
The drones start to ignore me, concentrating their fire on the backs of the fleeing troops, though they still take the occasional pot-shot at Lyra: I have to get in the way of a spray of AP fire meant for her, and take another battering for it. Then I catch two darts flying at her. She looks at me wide-eyed when she sees me pluck them out of the air, my hand a blur that cuts the air next to her head like a bullwhip.
“You need to be running,” I tell her as I kill the offending drones. But then I see: We’re cut off. The AAV landing zone is being overrun just as the body of the panicked force is trying to pile into the troop bays. Two ships burst as they try to lift off, hit by RPGs. One manages to limp off, bay smoking, bodies falling out of it, but the other noses into the green and the fuel tanks go up in a succession of flash-blazes of hydrogen and oxygen, kicking mushrooms of bright fire into the sky. The other ships launch before they’re loaded, leaving troops behind on the ground as the Harvesters descend on them from all sides.
“Push through!” I shout on their channel, flashing the nearest designated exfil point into their HUDs. Then I spend a few of my remaining magazines killing Harvesters to start making them a hole. “Move! Move!”
Someone takes the lead, rallies others, and the rest fall in behind. They break through into the green, but take more losses as they go.
In their wake, the blasted landscape is littered with H-A suits. I wonder how many of these bodies will reanimate, adding to Asmodeus’ army of rotting corpses. I see a trooper pull a dart out of a gap between his plates, fall to his knees, pull off his helmet, say a quick prayer and shoot himself in the head. I know his body will still likely become a drone, but he’s spared himself having his brain eaten and sensor stalks slowly driven outwards through his eye sockets. I guess it’s becoming obvious to even the line troops that they have no “cure” for infection, other than slowing it, drawing the agony out.
The God Mars Book Six: Valhalla I Am Coming Page 12