He dove for the bottom of the trench, twisting around onto his back and activating the teeth at the end of his carbine.
Just in time.
Three Hardits tried to jump him, but instead of grabbing him and knocking him to the ground, they fell onto the teeth – monofilament blades rotating at 1000 rpm.
It took Arun two seconds of a raking motion to turn his attackers into a bloody mess of fur and chopped flesh.
Allowing himself no more than a quick grin of triumph, Arun got to his feet and took stock of the situation.
He shot the Hardit who had snatched his carbine, turned, and saw his original assailants were hesitating a short distance up the trench. Each individual trying to hide in the group.
“Who’s going to try to take me first?” he yelled after them. “No one? Too bad. You lose!”
Two short dart bursts later and the Hardits who had so nearly drilled open his skull were heaped corpses in the trench.
Once satisfied they were truly dead, Arun turned to Curtis.
“If we’re gonna go,” he told her, “I’m damned if we’ll go easily.”
But Curtis was on her butt, looking down with uncomprehending eyes at her bloody guts spilling from her abdomen.
Her killer stood over her in triumph, a snarl on the Hardit’s lips, and human flesh dripping from its claws.
Arun perforated its stinking monkey body with a long burst of darts.
“Thanks for your warning,” Arun said weakly to the dying camp survivor. But Curtis was too far gone to hear.
The dead Hardit slumped forward over Curtis, draping itself over the resistance fighter as if lovers.
The sight sickened Arun. He wrenched the dead Hardit away. “Keep your filthy paws off her,” he screamed.
But he didn’t like the sound of his own voice. His anger was tainted with dismay.
He forced a little calm to return, enough to check the battle status.
Individual struggles of life and death were raging along the second defensive line. Of the third line trench… Arun was the only defender left alive.
Shit!
Panic shot through him like a meson bolt.
Steady!
He took deep breaths and, once again, regretted his inability to take on combat drugs.
He risked standing up for a moment to get at the baby bunker. Rohanna had sagged against the wall, holding the babies, who were wide eyed but silent. A large med-patch covered her belly. By the blood seeping through the patch and the torrents dried and mixed with mud on her thighs, a Hardit had broken through some time earlier and tried to disembowel the woman. But Rohanna hadn’t gone the same way as Curtis.
The reason was clear to see. Shelby had a Marine carbine resting on the lip of the hole, looking for targets. Her left hand had been melted into fleshy club by a plasma bomb but she showed no sign of noticing as she let off three shots that felled three Hardits about to leap into one of the firing holes in the second line.
With immediate evac and medical attention, these brave mothers would recover. Here in this battle, they had no hope of survival.
There was still time for him to rescue something of value from this disaster.
“Laskosk!”
“What?” snapped Stopcock, adding a reluctant, “Sir.”
“Make your way to my position.”
“I can’t leave Cusato and Chung.”
“I don’t ask this lightly,” replied Arun. “But I need you here, and that’s an order.”
When Stopcock didn’t reply, Arun bit his lip. Did the big guy still recognize Arun’s authority?
When Stok replied: “On my way.” Arun gasped in relief. His authority still held. Barely, but that was all he needed.
It took Stopcock three minutes to work his way over to Arun from where his Heavy Weapons Section were engaged on the left flank. Arun laughed to see Stok had carried his missile launcher system all the way. Of course he had.
“Sorry, Stok, you’ll need to leave that behind.” Arun pointed at the launcher.
Stopcock shook his head. “Can’t do that, sir.”
“I have an even more precious load for you, Laskosk. You’re the physically strongest Marine here and I want you to use your strength to extract the infants. Slip away to the southwest before the Hardit noose tightens on us. Our position is hopeless, Marine. We’ll cover your escape.”
“Can’t their mothers take them away?”
“See for yourself,” Arun replied grimly.
They both looked over at the baby bunker. Rohanna was still breathing, still holding the babies, but her eyes had closed. Shelby’s carbine was still resting on the lip of the hole, but she had collapsed, holding her ruined hand, unable any longer to keep down the primal screams of pain.
“But… sir! Babies can’t fight! How can they be more valuable than my launcher?”
“Symbolism, Laskosk. They’re a symbol of a better future. It’s the best we can do now for those left in Detroit and on Beowulf.”
Stok was impassive, unreadable and silent behind his visor. Arun knew exactly what was going through Stok’s mind: once again the lance corporal was weighing how strongly the bonds of authority still bound him.
Arun’s right to lead had always been wafer thin, and now he had led the bulk of the Marines into a foolish escapade from which most would never return.
But Stok wasn’t ready to give up on Arun just yet. He started to detach the launcher targeting equipment that was clamped to his back.
Arun dove into the baby bunker and took the babies away from Rohanna.
She hadn’t seemed conscious, but the mother had enough strength to growl her defiance.
“Let Stok take them now,” he told her gently. “He’ll keep them alive.”
Stok had joined them, hands stretched out, ready to take on his precious load when Barney flashed up an urgent tactical update.
What the frakk was it now?
Someone had appeared on WBNet. The scale confused Arun for a moment. The new BattleNet node was 110 klicks away.
That was nearly as far away as Detroit! But the newcomer wasn’t coming from home; it was coming in from the opposite direction. And at such speed that it would reach them within minutes.
“Hurry up, McEwan,” urged Stopcock.
“Hold a moment,” Arun replied. “Either the monkeys are about to rub our noses into the dirt, or… or we might just live to fight another day.”
“Who the frakk could help us now?” sneered Stopcock.
There was only one person in the galaxy Arun could imagine pulling them out of the fire now.
His heart fluttered. Could it really be her?
— Chapter 42 —
While Barney figured out what the hell was going on, Arun ordered Stok to stay in the trench while Arun put the infants back into Rohanna’s arms. The incoming BattleNet node wasn’t giving the right network security credentials, but claimed to be a Human Legion craft. It was probably a false reading, part of a Hardit cyberattack. But their position was so desperate that when Barney reported an incoming comm request, Arun accepted it.
“Can we join in, Twinkle Eyes?”
Arun replied with hearty laughter. A cyber mirage? Not likely! Not even the most advanced cyber systems in the galaxy could convincingly simulate Xin Lee.
Arun fully accepted Xin into WBNet. “Roger that. We’ve room for a few more. And that’s Major Twinkle Eyes to you, Lieutenant Lee.”
She laughed too – an intoxicating honey-sweet sound laced with fiery spices. Arun let out a tortured sigh. Dare he hope? “We’re pinned down by enemy positions on our flanks to east and west. Take them out. Sergeant Gupta has a better view of enemy positions. He will direct your fire.”
“Negative.” A new node appeared on WBNet about half a klick to the northeast. It was Puja. She was still alive! “I have best view of the east, updating now.”
During her scouting mission, Puja had recorded locations of the enemy positions that were pinning the Legi
on down on the hill, ready to upload them to BattleNet when she came back online. The enemy had deployed auto cannons and homemade catapults to lob the plasma bombs, all of which were being operated remotely.
“Looks like they’re trying to avoid casualties and let the militia take our heat,” said Puja. “I hardly saw any Hardits, but those I did see were wearing the uniforms of the elite we encountered at the labor camp.”
“Which means they can’t get their heavy weapons out of our way in a hurry,” added Xin. “We’ll be there in 70 seconds. Will that do, Major?”
“We?” breathed Arun. If Xin said she was coming in at the head of a hundred gunships backed by orbital batteries, he wouldn’t have doubted her. She was incredible.
“Marine Rebecca Windsor is piloting this bird,” said Xin. “Scored highest in your Marine retraining program. I brought another friend to the party too. We were bored waiting for you on Beowulf, so we formed the Human Legion Air Arm. We could hardly call ourselves an air arm with just the one bird.”
A second incoming craft appeared in Barney’s picture of the wider battleground. Now that Barney was picking up on Arun’s trust for the approaching craft, the AI had widened his comm bandwidth and bombarded the aircraft AIs with questions. They were Stork-class shuttles from Beowulf, heavily modified for a ground-attack role.
“Expect incoming friendly support fire,” Arun told the Marines who would have heard some of the exchange but were still on the more secure LBNet. “Tell civilians to take cover and hold your positions. Get ready to break out to the east.”
But it was the Hardits who broke through the Legion defenses first, ten of them making for Arun. He shot one; Stopcock fired at another. The enemy dove for cover but kept coming. They were growing in confidence.
The militia advance had been lapping at the Legion firing holes for some time now. It was a drawn-out, meatgrinder of an assault. Each individual Hardit must have fervently wished that their comrades would be the ones to commit themselves to attacking the lethal humans. Their energies went into backing away, to hiding in the crowd and hoping the humans wouldn’t notice them.
A scream came overhead, ear-splittingly piercing even through his helmet. The flames over the trees billowed as the shuttle-gunships pushed the air before them.
Arun had expected the Storks to announce themselves with a spread of missiles. That’s how he would set up the craft, but Xin had a knack for thinking differently when it mattered. The Storks strafed the ground with cannon fire.
The ground to the east jetted up high into the sky. The air cracked with the hammer beat of a titan. Barney muffled the sound, but it was too much for the Hardits, who rolled on the ground, clutching their ears in burning agony.
The Marines took merciless advantage, shooting all of the militia who had been engaging them in close combat moments before. Arun and Stopcock cleared away those who had broken through the second line of defense.
When Arun surveyed the results of the strafing run, it looked as if a line of giants had dug out a channel running parallel to the stream, flinging the dirt high above them. Instead of missile batteries, Xin had installed a spine-mounted heavy railgun. He’d always thought of the weapon as only a scaled-up version of his Marine carbine. But there was no ‘only’ about it. Each round was like an angry god flinging a thunderbolt at the ground. Any target in its path would be vaporized.
Now she was twisting around to come for another run north-south.
The second Stork completed strafing the elite enemy positions pinning them down from the west, and flashed by to the north, twisting in crazy barrel rolls. The militia and elite soldiers still to the north flung fire up at this second Stork. Despite the pilot’s breathtaking acrobatics Arun heard hundreds of bullets and cannon shells impact against the gunship, making a white noise rattle. But according to Barney, Xin had configured these Storks with maximum armor upgrades, and for the militia to attempt shooting down a gunship with nothing more than a rifle only emphasized how amateurish they were.
The Storks climbed in readiness for another strafing run, slowing as they pivoted around for the next attack run.
From three positions to the north, multiple jets of flame pointed accusing fingers at the Storks.
SAM pods.
The Hardits might be hopeless soldiers, but the AIs controlling the SAM pods were ruthlessly proficient exterminators of anything flying overhead they took a dislike to.
The response of each Stork couldn’t be more different. One rolled and looped in a shower of countermeasures, pulling such tight turns that Arun’s eyes struggled to track the shuttle’s position. The pilot was incredible – Arun suspected it must be one of the seriously augmented Navy freaks.
The other Stork slowed as if inviting the attention of the surface-to-air missiles. The underside of the shuttle-gunship glowed blue, contrasting with the yellow flames of the burning trees and the orange-red of the thermal countermeasures flung out by the other Stork.
Multiple missiles clanged against the blue Stork’s underside and bounced off, not exploding. The blue glow was characteristic of a Fermi system operating in an atmosphere. The Fermi must have instantly scrambled the fuses and other control systems in the missiles.
“Hit those SAM pods,” barked Gupta. “Eyes on the threat, not on the sky show!”
Arun felt his cheeks heat with shame and rose to get a clear shot at the pods. He couldn’t see them, but Barney had gotten a good look, and added cross-hairs to guide Arun to their position. Arun gave one a burst of darts. Between the carbine’s recoil dampener and the more subtle recoil compensator that Barney effected by making slight battlesuit movements, Arun couldn’t feel a thing as the magnetic rails in his SA-71 repeatedly charged – sending out its charge of supersonic dart and spent sabot — reloaded – and charged again, the whole sequence lasting nine milliseconds per round.
Despite the lack of sensation, he knew his carbine almost as well as he knew Barney, and could use his memories to superimpose on his senses the feel of raw power from an undampened railgun. He needed this. It felt good to be hurting the enemy.
But the SAMs weren’t done.
More SAMs launched — far fewer this time — controlled by an AI smart enough to learn from the last attack. The SAMs disappeared into the burning night. The attack plan would be like Stok’s against the ramp in the labor camp: the missiles would be spreading out in a sphere around their target. Then they would attack from every direction at once. Near-impossible to evade.
The Stork that had let off a Fermi defense soared, corkscrewing frantically.
The other had gone, having reached the stratosphere in its attempt to shake off missile pursuit.
The ground to Arun’s front erupted, followed by thundercracks. The Stork was still jinking in an attempt to shake off its pursuers, but had nonetheless managed to fire from the upper atmosphere. Barney reckoned the strikes had obliterated the remaining SAM pods. At least the ones that had so far revealed themselves. With a spine-mounted weapon, to shoot so accurately while under pressure was astonishing. Preternatural. Who the hell was piloting that thing?
The SAMs that had already launched no longer needed their AI controller. When they judged the other Stork was within their grip, they struck, illuminating the night as they fired up their motors for maximum acceleration.
An ethereal blue Fermi glow high overhead showed the Stork’s defense, but it came only from the vessel’s underside. A crackle of point-defense fire announced that the gunship had further defenses aimed in other directions.
But they weren’t enough.
Multiple explosions bloomed along the Stork’s upper surface.
The stricken craft sank from the sky.
Undamaged, the other craft came in for another attack run on the positions to the west, shattering the night sky with a final crack of its mighty railgun.
Arun took his chance to take in the battlefield, ignoring the Storks and using his own eyes to double check what Barney was tellin
g him.
Stunned by the noise of the heavy caliber railguns, the Hardit militia who had broken through the human defensive lines had been killed, but not before they had slaughtered many of the unarmed refugees. The Hardit positions to east and west, where the automated weapons had pinned the Legion to the hillside, had fallen silent.
To the north, the elite troops were quiet for now. A gap had opened up between the surviving Hardit militia and the human-occupied hillside, a dead zone filled with ruined, furry corpses. With the undamaged gunship turning around high above for another run, the deafening roar that so hampered the Hardits had ceased. The ship that had taken missile hits was still airborne, its stuttering engine trying to arrest its descent. Barney assessed it as critically damaged.
Temporarily freed of their tormentors, the militia rose from the ground like an army of the dead. There were still at least two thousand of them, Barney estimated.
Would these reluctant soldiers take this chance to flee the battlefield? Had the humans held out long enough to survive?
The aliens turned to face the humans. They did so directly, with heads high, where previously their approach had been curiously sideways oriented, their body posture cowed.
As one the Hardits snarled, the sound of hundreds or thousands of throats enough to make the ground shake. The growling cut off sharply, terminating with snaps of those many jaws.
The monkeys were riled. And they wanted revenge.
Bring it on. We’re not so defenseless now…
“McEwan to undamaged gunship. Hit those militia before they close on us.”
“Negative, Major. Situation is under control. Hold your positions.” That wasn’t Xin’s voice. It was distorted, but sounded like a man.
Whoever he was, Arun saw the truth in his words. The damaged gunship was coming in low from the east, picked out by the flickering fires of the burning trees, the sound of its damaged engines louder than the Hardits’ roar had been.
“Pick your targets,” shouted Gupta. “Controlled bursts. Open fire!”
Arun came to his senses and obeyed his senior NCO as faithfully as a fresh cadet. For a moment there he’d forgotten that, officer or not, he was still a Marine with his carbine, a weapon that was practically an extension of his body. And that made him something better than this rabble of Hardits could ever be.
Renegade Legion (The Human Legion Book 3) Page 15