by Isaac Stone
“One other thing,” the pilot told them. “I’m not going to be able to put us down inside the fortress. We’ll be landing on the Olympia side of the battle.”
Chapter 12
Harlo felt a sudden lift as the shuttle dipped and moved upward to the sky. Unable to see what took place outside, he felt his stomach become queasy and then the shuttle headed back down. He assumed this was some kind of controlled dive, but had no idea of the pilots’ objective. He grabbed the crash bar in front of him and held on as he listened to the sound of his own breathing inside the helmet.
There was a quick bounce and the shuttle spun in several different directions at once. Harlo and the rest of the Volunteers held onto their bars and tried to remain conscious. After thirty seconds, the shuttle came to a rest at a slight angle. He took one breath and turned to look at Sergeant Bey.
The red lights came on inside their area before he could say a word. The next thing he knew the roll bar was up and the lights began to flash. The flash was followed by a warning siren they could hear in spite of the helmets.
“Let’s go!” Bey yelled over the radio and jumped out from his chair. Every other Volunteer followed him as they grabbed their gun from the sleeve next to the chair. Then they grabbed the packs kept under each chair.
Before Bey could issue another command, the rear doors of the shuttle began to move. They opened slowly at first and then jerked open all the way with a hiss of hydraulic pressure.
“Move it move it move it!” Bey shouted as he pushed Volunteers in front of him as they ran outside. “This isn’t a video, now go!” Harlo was third in line, right behind Corporal Tulpa as he tumbled out of the shuttle.
Outside, Harlo joined the rest. He looked around. This wasn’t the place they were supposed to be, but at least they were alive. Harlo looked back at the shuttle and saw that parts of the fins were gone, the victim of ground fire.
He didn’t see the pilot who sat in the cockpit while he shook his head over the dead co-pilot. The dead man was sprawled back in his chair.
What Harlo did see was another shuttle behind them as it successfully landed in the field near their shuttle. He watched the dirt from the ground swirl as the jets kicked it up in the air. A few minutes later, it rested firm on the landing gear. The rear doors to it also flew open and another contingent of Volunteers poured out to join them.
The third shuttle wasn’t quite so lucky. Harlo watched as it veered out of control and went near the ZR battle lines. It tried to find the correct path, but didn’t make it. As he stood there, Harlo saw the shuttle explode from a direct hit. It scattered over the no man’s land between the battle lines. One hundred men, just like that.
“Drop your packs!” Bey yelled to the volunteers. “They’ll be brought along later. I just heard from the marshal, they want us on the move right away. Drink some water from your suit stem and start walking. Make sure your safety if off because we are following them!” Bey pointed in the direction of a group of regular Force troops who scrambled over the nearest trench and into no man’s land. The barbed wire was already cut away by the sappers on the first wave.
Harlo hurried to drop his pack and slung his rail gun over one shoulder as he joined the others. From what he could figure, only one shuttle was lost in the drop.
“Give me a column of four!” Bey yelled. Tulpa stuck his fist up in the air and the Volunteers put themselves into order based on height.
Harlo was in the middle with some of the large guys behind him and shorter ones to his front. The name of each was stenciled on their suits along with a symbol designating the syndicate of origin. The man in front of him had a cow symbol on his suit; obviously, he was from an agriculture syndicate.
He turned to one side and noticed Jack was to his right. His friend acknowledged him with a nod and looked up. He too had seen the shuttle blasted out of the sky. Harlo couldn’t help but wonder what the men in that shuttle had felt right before their gruesome death. They had done everything asked of them and more. Their reward was on the warhead of some guided missile.
“Let’s move,” Bey announced, “on the double. We need to support that unit which just went over the trench wall.” He pointed as the last of the regular Force vanished over the top.
The pilot of the shuttle that landed hard unstrapped his seat belts and opened the hatch from the cockpit. There was an emergency hatch that emptied into the trooper area. He pulled himself inside it and slowly walked down the doors that were still open. He still wore his flight suit with the sealed helmet and saw no reason to remove it. Once outside the shuttle, he looked up to the sky and wondered when the final shuttle would arrive. If they wanted to get more Volunteers on the ground, they would have to do it without his drop shuttle. It was damaged severely and he doubted if they could use it for anything other than the scrap heap.
“Drop Shuttle Six to Battle station Deleon,” he transmitted. “Volunteers landed and safe. My co-pilot not so lucky, he took a round at the end and is dead. Shuttle Six out of commission from ground fire. You will need to send a pick-up for her.”
He found a rock to sit on and waited for a response from the battle station.
Chapter 13
The trench was still soaked from the latest rain as they climbed over it. Harlo was glad he didn’t have to spend much time inside as the trench looked disgusting. All he could see were endless piles of food canisters and trash. Getting the place clean wasn’t something the troops weren’t too concerned about. It was even worse that they had to crawl down into the trench and climb up the other side. He turned briefly and saw the dugouts that the troops had occupied while they waited for the next engagement. He had no idea how long they’d been there, but it still looked hideous.
It was a tough climb up to the no man’s land. Harlo slung his gun over his back as he dug into the bare earth with his gloved hands and boots. He was grateful again for the suit rebreather, as the place had to smell like quick death. It only took him a few minutes to get to the top of the wall, but he had men below him pushing up and more at the top grabbing him. Once he was up there, he turned around and helped the man beneath him to reach the top, then took his place with the rest.
It took him a few seconds to catch up with the column as they advanced across the barren wasteland. He tried not to look at the nightmare scenes around him. Men and parts of men were scattered all over the fields. He couldn’t understand why no one had come forth to collect the dead. Later he would learn it was done only when there was a lull in the fighting. He saw an identity tag wrapped around the neck of corpse and looked away immediately.
“Let’s keep it together,” he heard from Bey. “Don’t focus on what we’re walking through unless you want to join them. The advance has thrown the entire front line of the Z-boys into confusion. It won’t last long and we need to get under their guns as soon as we can.” He maintained a five-point lead while walking to one side of the column.
The Blue Lotus Fortress loomed in front of them. It was quite a different thing to see it on the ground as opposed through a helmet display. The fortress was vast and looked formable. It would not be easy to take and the craters in the ground showed them the result of those who tried. Some of the craters were filled with water from the recent downpour.
It was surrounded with barbed wire at least four hundred yards out. Behind the wire stood artillery and missile launchers. The ZR was determined to keep it from being seized by the Olympians at all costs.
Harlo followed the Ninth across the barren landscape as they made their way towards the fortress. It rose up from the landscape, protected by an entire army. Behind that was the moat where the ZR troopers hid and waited.
He continued to march in stop with the rest of the column, his boots crunching over the dirt of the ground. There wasn’t much of anything else left as the constant cannon and gunfire from the opposite sides had melted or blasted everything else to cinders. There were the remains of huge concrete pylons, but they’d been blown to p
ieces. Every so often, he would have to crawl over a blackened stump. He had audio feed inside his helmet, but all he could hear was the howling wind and the distant explosions of fighting. The sun was clouded after he climbed up from the trench, so the visibility wasn’t that good.
“Not the kind of place I would want to raise some kids,” Jack smirked next to him. He’d turned on the external speaker so that Harlo and he could have a private conversation.
“In truth, it’s as cold as hell,” Harlo agreed after he’d activated his speaker. He spoke in a low tone because they were still together in formation, two hundred members of the legion that landed on Mars less than an hour ago.
“Keep it quiet back there, rocket man,” Sargent Bey snapped over the transmission. “It’s not down to freezing yet and I’ve seen worse battle fields in my time out here.”
They were still in formation when the sound began to emerge from the right. Bey ordered a halt and all the rest of the legion turned to face the direction from where it emerged.
It became louder by the second. Everyone turned on their exterior microphones and listened to the noise as they tried to locate the source. It resembled the combined roar of a storm mixed with a cloud of bees. The Volunteers raised their rail guns in expectation. A few of the Ninth turned to Bey and Tulpa. They wondered what to do.
Soon they could see the source of the noise on the horizon. From where the Volunteers stood, it appeared to be a series of tiny dots in the distance. In the dead zone, there was nothing to block the appearance, but the clouds made them hard to see. Eventually, a few of the Volunteers had the right idea and activated the telescopic lenses in their helmets. Not all the legion had this ability, but both Bey and Tulpa possessed it. Harlo watched as their helmets sprouted lenses and began to zoom in on the objects in the distance.
They were motorcycles.
These were not the normal kind of motorcycles people used for quick troops or weekend rides; these were the heavy military version.
At one point, someone had decided armored cavalry had made a big difference in the medieval world, so why not bring it back? With each side in agreement not to use aircraft against ground targets, troops were no longer easy prey for helicopter gunships. The motorcycles became gunbikes and were built with armor and supplied with the older style chain-fed machine guns. Some of them had a sidecar mount where the gunner sat. These were driven chariot-style by the attached motorcycle. Why not? It worked for archers in the distant past. It was a simple matter to adapt the idea to modern times.
Each bike was equipped with its own radio system and computer-enhanced battlefield ordnances. Some had grenade launchers up front; others had flame throwers mounted to the back. They were used to scout enemy positions and harass the front lines. A good group of harrier gunbikes would appear out of nowhere in a battle and rip apart any isolated enemy units.
They were still vulnerable to ground fire and could over-turn with ease if the driver was preoccupied. Even with computer augmentation, it was difficult for most people to fire the bike guns accurately for any length of time. It was as hard to hit a target while in motion as it was to hit a moving one from a stationary position. The standard procedure was for the lone bikes to form an escort for the sidecar gunbikes as they moved slower. If they came under fire, the gunbikes would retreat or stop and fire from a stationary position. Bikes with sidecar guns could circle around a target and unleash the full power of their machine guns, but they were difficult to coordinate.
“Appears to be twenty-five of them,” Bey transmitted. “Give or take. They don’t seem to be doing anything right now. I think they’re sizing us up. Don’t fire unless I give the order.”
Bey focused his lens and noticed something. “Holy shit,” he swore. “This bunch is with the salties. This could get fun.”
Harlo wondered when they might encounter troops from the United Sultanates. There hadn’t been much discussion of them in the briefings as the objective was a position held by the ZR. From what he understood, the Sultanates were allies of the Zhong Republic, although they hadn’t been involved much in the fighting. Several times the United Sultanates had rushed to the Zhong Republic’s positions and helped out their allies. They saved the day for them often enough.
No one knew the exact nature of the relationship, but it seemed to be conditioned on the ZR giving the US more access to its territory. There were few cultural and political links between the two powers and everything seemed to depend on what one party received from the other.
Bey transmitted the images he received from his enhanced viewing to the helmet screens the rest of the Legion wore. Harlo could see the red, white and, green stripes that decorated the Sultanate bikes. He saw the banner of the Unites Sultanates of Arabia, which flew from a gunbikes in the rear. It was thirteen white and blue stripes on a field of green topped with thirteen white crescents in a circle. These were for the thirteen original sultanates that created the empire. Another bike had the image of the current Maharajah painted on its gas tank.
“Okay,” Bey announced to the legion, “let’s see what is happening on the other side. Tulpa, keep an eye on these rebels with a cause, I need to see what the Z-boys are up to. This has changed the game.” He turned in the direction of the fortress and focused the helmet lenses.
In the distance of the Blue Lotus Fortress, he could see rapid movement around the ZR lines. Troops moved in the trenches. He could see periscopes pop up over the trenches as the defenders tried to figure out what this new group represented. It was plain to him that the gunbikes’ arrival was not planned. They simply showed up in response to an order within their own units. He watched the ZR troops in the trench debate over what to do.
Their actions were mirrored by the observers on top of the fortress. On the battlements, he could see people scramble with telescopes and binoculars. They focused in on the gunbikes that sat idle in the distance. He watched a man in a ZR officer’s uniform have a deep and loud conversation with someone over the other end of his field telephone. The appearance of the gunbikes had upset something very important in the ZR plans.
“Legion Nine, this is Command,” a voice sounded over his helmet radio. “Why have you stopped your advance? The Force Units are on their way to the objective.” The voice sounded like an older Force officer and he was not pleased.
“Bey here,” he transmitted back. “Have you seen our new friends? They seem to have thrown a wrench in someone’s plans. I suggest you tell the groups ahead to stop the advance before they are hit from the rear.” He waited for the response.
It came back a few minutes later. “Hold the advance, ninth,” it said. “We have determined the presence of multiple armored cavalry in the battlefield. We will attempt to eliminate them with artillery, but they are a viable threat from the rear.”
“Thank you command,” Bey sent back as he tried to scratch an itch inside the helmet. “Did you notice the confusion on the Z-boy side?” The transmission was supposed to be a secure line, but he couldn’t be sure if the enemy had found a way to tap into it.
“We have spotted the confusion on the other side,” the voice said to him. “We believe the Sultanate gunbikes are not there because of a request by the ZR. From what we can tell, the ZR is confused as to why they have appeared and are trying to adjust their battle plans. Do not advance until you have the order. Do not fire on them unless the gunbikes attack. Keep us informed of any unusual activity you may see from your position.” There was a crackle on the line from some lighting in the background.
“Roger that, Command,” Bey told the voice. “We await further instructions.” He heard the channel click off and the connection was over.
“Stand down, boys,” Bey transmitted over the radio. “Command has decided the salty gunbikes are a wild card not expected. Appears it’s a card the Z-boys didn’t know about either. Remember to keep your helmet sealed; we don’t know what matters of bugs were sown out here or what kind of poison gas was unleashed.” The legi
ons began to unsling their rail guns and dropped down to one knee to rest.
“Question, Sarge," it was Jack. He seemed to have a lot as of late.
“Go ahead, rocket man,” Bey responded. He’d already found a name for the young Volunteer.
“I thought the salties and Z-boys were friends?” he asked. “Why are they sitting pretty if we’re on the battle field?”
“That was two questions,” Bey sent back. “As you might know, the salties don’t think much of the ZR. They look down on them and think they’re a bunch of softies. The only reason they’re allies is because the ZR paid for the treaty. My best guess is what we’re seeing in front is a sudden move by the salties to change the game. They want to see what happens if gunbikes start blowing shit up on their own.” He turned to the Blue Lotus Fortress and focused his lenses again.
“Oh, boy,” Tulpa whistled over the network. “This could mean we’ll be fighting two different groups at the same time.” He continued to watch the stationary gunbikes.
“Or we could be in the middle of the grand melee,” Bey responded. “All three sides attacking each other. What if the salties have decided they like that fortress? They might be in the perfect position to make a play for it.”
The rest of the Volunteers shifted their weight around from one foot to another. It hit Harlo that they were stuck in the midst of a no man’s land between three armies, the worst place in the world to be at the moment. Lighting flashed across the clouds and his external audio picked up the rumble of distant thunder. Great. Make it four different forces ready to do battle. Lighting tended to win in these scenarios.
Chapter 14
He wanted this lull to be over and soon. The last thing they needed was to stand out in the middle of a blasted field and wait for a plasma bolt to drop out of the sky.