“What’s your status and, well … are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
“Our ship’s out of commission, but we’ll make it,” Riot said, looking over at Wang, who was helping a now-conscious Doctor Miller into a sitting position. “And yes, I’m seeing what you’re seeing. Our allies have joined the fight.”
“Roger that,” Colonel Harlan said. His voice sounded half-stressed, half-full of wonder. “We’ve taken more damage than we have a right to. I don’t know how the Titan is still in the air. We’ve lost forward thrusters and have to set down inside the city walls.”
Riot understood what he was saying without actually saying it. Colonel Harlen and the Titan would not be able to make it to pick up Riot and her crew. They would have to trek through the jungle on their own, back to the city.
“Roger that.” Riot eyed the Scarabs that seemed uncertain what to do next. “We’ll make it back. You hold that city.”
The four Scarabs floating above Riot seemed to have received their own orders in the interim. As one, they raced toward the group of dragons, who were maneuvering through the air, turning their flames and claws on the Scarab ships.
“You there, Sorceress?” Ketrick’s familiar voice sounded in Riot’s ear. His voice was distant and strained, but strong.
“You joined the party just in time,” Riot said, unable to keep a smile from her lips. “Looks like you managed to convince a few of the dragons to join the fight.”
“We’ll hold them for as long as we can,” Ketrick grunted. Wind whipped through the comms, making his voice static-laced and almost unrecognizable. “I saw the Valkyrie go down. Get to the city.”
As much as Riot wanted to stay on the comms with Ketrick, she understood he was in the fight of his life. Even with a dozen full-grown dragons at his command, he was still vastly outnumbered.
“We’ll be fine,” Riot said. For a second, she considered not saying what she wanted to next. Who knew who might be listening over the comms? A second later, she was reminded of her regret as the Valkyrie crashed to the jungle floor. “You get yourself back safe. We have a date to go on.”
“Yes, we do,” Ketrick said.
Riot could picture the goofy grin on his face as he mouthed the words.
Evonne, returning from the smoking Valkyrie, tore Riot from her fond memories of the man she knew she was beginning to love.
“I gathered helmets, weapons, and as many supplies as I could carry—I could carry,” Evonne said, twitching as more sparks erupted from the back of her neck. “Shall I go in to collect more supplies—collect more supplies?”
“No, you did good,” Riot said, looking down at the pile of items Evonne had brought. She had carried as much as three Marines’ worth on her single trip. “Wolves, let’s gear up and head out.”
“Roger,” Vet grunted as he tore out the piece of blood-soaked metal from his leg.
Wang, Vet, Rizzo, and Doctor Miller grouped around the pile of supplies. Helmets were placed on heads, weapons checked, and supply packs shouldered.
While the group geared up, everyone’s line of sight was on the battle taking place in the sky. Ketrick had brought his dragons to bear on the enemy more than a mile from the Savage Trilord capital. Winged serpents ranging in color from burnt orange, to deep purple, to ebony black, maneuvered through the morning sky like no ship ever could. Fire erupted from their mouths. They caught Scarab ships in their claws and tore them apart.
The green blaster fire from the ships that managed to find the dragons did nothing more than infuriate the beasts. It seemed dragon hide was able to withstand even a ship’s blaster. How long the dragons would be able to battle against the overwhelming odds was something else entirely.
Riot placed her warhammer on her back and hefted a Villain Pulse Rifle. Sleep was something to be envied at the moment. With the city under siege, who knew when any of them would get their next chance for some shut-eye?
Worry and fear scratched at the back of Riot’s mind. She knew how to quell their screams of insolence, but there was an old enemy she still struggled with.
“Vet, see if you can get Sparky over here to stop repeating her words.” Riot nodded to Evonne, who was blinking like a maniac. “Wang, check out Doctor Miller one more time before we move out. Rizzo, hit up Rippa and tell her what’s going on.”
Riot moved back into the ship as her men began performing their duties.
“Where’re you going Riot?” Doctor Miller asked as she lowered her head for Wang to examine.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be right back,” Riot said, not answering the doctor’s question. She made her way up the open cargo bay ramp and through the now-less-smoky interior of the ship.
With the exterior ports open to allow the smoke to escape and the emergency system back online thanks to Evonne, the fires were now out with only the smell of smoke on the air.
Riot shoved out of her mind the idea of what she was about to do. Her steps carried her through the interior of the ship and to the mess hall, where she touched the screen of the food dispenser closest to the door. She cycled through the options until she reached the alcohol list and punched in her order for the mind-numbing liquid.
I just need one drink to set me straight, Riot said to herself. One drink will be fine, and I’ll be back outside. I deserve it. I need it.
A glass full of the amber whiskey appeared in the cove below the ordering screen. Riot’s mouth watered as her hand hovered above the cup.
Motion in the doorway to the mess hall made Riot shift her attention. Vet stood there with his ever-present scowl. His right eye wearing the metal eye patch was covered with black smoke that made him look like a pirate.
For a moment, Riot stared at Vet. Vet looked from the glass next to Riot, and then to her.
“Vet, I—”
Vet shook his head, looking down at the floor. “I just came to say that Evonne is ready to go, as well as Doctor Miller. Rizzo reached Rippa. Her mech is in bad shape, but she’s making do with what she’s got. I was going to see if you wanted me to grab anything else from the ship before we began the trek to the city.”
“Good,” Riot said, feeling heat rise to her face. If she was honest with herself, she was almost happy she was found out instead of having to sneak around. “I’ll be right out.”
“Roger.” Vet turned like he was about to leave, and then turned back, his scowl present while he stared down at the floor. “You’ve saved all of us now. All of us owe you our lives. Rizzo would be dead if you hadn’t pulled him out of that crashed chopper, Wang would still be in the brig, and I’d be in the ground, too, if you hadn’t saved me during the Afghanistan campaign.”
“Vet, you don’t need to bring up the past,” Riot said, wondering why her XO was talking about these events in the first place.
“I’m saying all of this because you’re the strongest person I know. By that, I mean Marine, alien, or whatever else we’ve come into contact with.” Vet’s single eye began to water like he was about to cry, yet his voice never faltered. “I’m saying this, because you’re the best person I know by yourself, without the help or comfort of anything. You’ve always been enough. Rizzo, Wang, me, even Doctor Miller, would die for you, because that’s the example you’ve set—you.”
Riot stood, thinking on Vet’s words and what they meant. The need for alcohol had dulled in the midst of the conversation.
“That’s … that’s all.” Vet really turned to leave this time, still not looking at her.
“Hold up. I’ll come with you,” Riot said, leaving the glass of whiskey untouched, still in the alcove. “And don’t give me too much credit for saving you from that anti-personnel mine. I didn’t save your eye.”
“It could have been a lot worse.” Vet grinned as the two left the mess hall and traveled back through the ship toward the rear cargo bay. “I could have lost a hand or a leg.”
“Well then, you could have just been a pirate for Halloween,” Riot said, covering the emotion she fe
lt like she always did—with humor. “Hey, I bet we could get a new eye made for you. I mean, you would know better than I would, with the Syndicate tech we have. Would that be possible?”
Vet shrugged, rubbing his steel eye patch with his left hand. “I don’t know. I’ve kind of grown used to this thing. I like pirates.”
Riot couldn’t help laughing out loud as they exited the ship to join the rest of the unit. Her laugh died on her lips, however, as she saw the worry in their eyes.
87
Riot turned to follow their gaze. The fight in the sky was still taking place between Ketrick and the Scarabs, but the Karnayers were pushing a new frontal assault, not on the dragons or on the city, but offloading ground troops via their bulky transport ships.
The city lay behind Riot and her unit to the north, while the aerial combat took place to the south, and an armada of Karnayer transports were still making their way to the east. There was no way of knowing how many troops they were going to land on the ground, but by the size of the crafts, it looked like thousands.
The Karnayer transport ships weren’t as bloated as the ones they had taken down on the Zenoth planet of Raydon, though they were still massive, each as large as the Valkyrie with extra room in the cargo section to hold Karnayer soldiers or whatever other alien species they had bent to do their bidding.
We’ve got to make it to the city before the ground troops do, Rizzo signed. We’ll be caught out here if we don’t.
“I agree with my brother from another mother.” Wang turned his helmeted head to Riot. “We’re going to have to hump it to make it to the city in time.”
“Let’s do it,” Riot said, hating that the only thing to be done at the moment was running instead of fighting. “I’ll take point. Vet, you and Rizzo bring up the rear, with Doctor Miller attached to Wang’s hip.”
“May I take point with you?” Evonne asked, her white-and-grey uniform streaked with smoke and torn in a dozen places. The skin on her face was still peeled back, showing the metal underneath. She tried to smile, but it just looked like something from a nightmare about to chew Riot’s face. The manic blinking she did wasn’t helping, either.
“Yes, okay,” Riot said, irritated, as she placed her own helmet onto her head. She gripped her weapon and began a light jog down the lane of battered soil the Valkyrie had created as it slid to a stop in the jungle. “We really have to work on that blinking thing.”
“What? Am I doing it wrong?” Evonne asked as she kept pace with Riot. “Please let me know if I should be blinking a different way.”
“You’re blinking way too much. No one does that unless they have lint in their contacts,” Riot grunted as she kept her eyes open and ears alert. “Blink, like, once every ten or twenty seconds.”
“I’ll set an internal timer to do so,” Evonne said.
“Good,” Riot said as she ended the conversation and increased her pace. Her heads-up display was showing the distance of the Savage Trilord city still nine miles from their current location.
Riot took a look behind her and to her right to try to get a reading on how far back the Karnayer transport ships were landing. Her heads-up display rolled though information on a narrow column to her right. It said the transport ships were landing only two miles behind them.
Riot turned back to keeping a steady pace and sweeping the jungle in front of them for any threats. Hypothetically, they should have a clear shot back to the Trilord city, but tombstones were built on hypothetical situations.
“Cardio,” Doctor Miller breathed hard from the middle of the pack. “Why does there always have to be so much cardio?”
“Welcome to the Marines,” Wang said beside her. “I can’t remember a day we didn’t have some kind of run involved.”
Evonne stopped in her tracks, and Wang and Doctor Miller nearly ran into her.
“Let’s go, Sparky,” Riot said, also coming to a halt. She didn’t try to hide her annoyance. “Clock is ticking.”
Evonne stood still as though frozen in time, a very serious expression on her face.
“What’s going on?” Vet asked, arriving with Rizzo by his side.
“I don’t know,” Riot said with a shrug. “Your terminator just decided to stop in the middle of the run and take a breather.”
“We should run now,” Evonne said in a hard tone Riot had never heard from the AI before. “They’re coming quickly.”
“Who’s coming?” Riot asked, looking behind them at the shell of the Valkyrie. “The transport ships are still a few miles behind us.”
“The Karnayer troops are not the ones who will be able to catch up to us,” Evonne said quickly. “They have brought a species of apex predators capable of running great distances at high speeds. These creatures will catch us before we reach the safety of the city walls.”
GREAT, Rizzo wrote across everyone’s screens.
Riot stayed still for a moment longer before realizing Evonne had no reason to lie, and she had never been wrong in the past.
“Let’s go!” Riot motioned for everyone in the unit to go ahead of her. “Double time. I’m bringing up the rear. Vet, Rizzo, set a strong pace. Evonne, you keep talking. I want to hear how you know this and what we’re going to be dealing with. Move!”
At once, everyone began to run. A panicked calm was in the air only hardened soldiers could comprehend. They understood both the urgency of the situation and that they needed to rely on their training.
Riot pumped her legs as the unit ran forward. She chanced another look behind them. To her right, a shadow in the morning light caught her line of sight through the jungle foliage. Was it a shadow, or was her mind playing tricks on her now that she suspected they were being tracked?
Riot couldn’t be sure, but whatever she may have seen was gone now. Nothing showed on her heads-up display. It would have been impossible for anything to cover a stretch of two miles so quickly anyway. Riot directed her attention forward, focusing on the run as she listened to Evonne relay all of the information she had on the topic.
“As you all know, the Karnayers have traveled from planet to planet, weaponizing the fiercest warriors and creatures on each world they have visited,” Evonne said as she ran with the rest of the unit. Her voice never sounded exhausted despite the pace she was moving. She spoke as if sitting at a dining room table. “It seems they have offloaded a pack of apex predators called Osylots from their transport. These animals would be most similar to a cross between a tiger and a cheetah on your planet.”
“How do you know all of this?” Wang asked from his place in the middle of the group. “Are you guessing, or have you seen them?”
“I am still connected with the Valkyrie, and as such, I am able to tap into the ship’s long-range sensors. They have picked up the approach of the Osylots.”
“How many?” Riot said, concentrating on her breathing. She didn’t mind cardio, but she hated having these full-on conversations while she ran. She never understood how people were capable of running while still talking about their frappuccinos that morning. “How many Osylots do you see?”
Evonne ran quiet for a moment. A look of concentration passed through her eyes. “The sensors on the Valkyrie have picked up ten signatures, but there may be more. The Osylots possess a keen trait that allows their skin to meld with the colors of their surroundings.”
“Awesome,” Vet huffed from his spot in the front. “Hunted by camouflaged aliens. This is great.”
“Save your breath for running,” Riot gasped. Although their armor was made of lightweight material, running in the muggy heat of the jungle was far from easy. Riot’s cooling system worked overtime to keep the temperature even.
Soon, the Marines had reached the end of the dirt lane they had used to run, the one the downed Valkyrie had cleared for them through the dense jungle. Vet took the lead as the group was forced to run single file.
Strange birds chirped their alien cries. Something that looked like a monkey with massive, round eyes a
nd a small, furry body gawked at them from a tree limb.
Look, Rizzo typed on his forearm as he ran. It’s Wang’s last girlfriend.
Riot couldn’t help chuckling, and Vet’s laugh also sounded in her helmet.
“Helen was a beautiful woman!” Wang’s voice was on the verge of frustration. “How many times do we have to go over this? It’s part of their culture; they don’t shave.”
“Helen had a mustache, dude,” Vet said.
“Helen was a beautiful woman,” Wang growled through the comms.
Riot could picture her friend’s face right now, and the image made her laugh again, despite the stitch in her side. The idea of stopping for a break crossed her mind, but as soon as the thought had appeared, she pushed it down again.
Riot ran at the back of her pack, searching the area behind them as often as she dared. The footing on the jungle floor was tricky, and more than once, she nearly fell as she scanned the closed-in jungle behind her. Every time she looked over her shoulder, her imagination would play tricks on her.
Bushes would move despite the lack of breeze, or the sound of something moving through the jungle opposite them would catch her attention. But each time, nothing showed on her heads-up display.
They ran like this for another half-hour, the sounds of the battle still taking place overhead between the dragons and the Scarabs becoming fainter and fainter the farther they traveled.
“I can’t … I can’t run anymore,” Doctor Miller gasped as she came to a stop. Hands on her knees, she bent over double. “Just … just a minute.”
“Evonne, how much longer to the city?” Riot studied the area behind her, getting the familiar feeling of being watched.
“Just under a mile,” Evonne informed her. “If it weren’t for the dense jungle canopy, we’d be able to see the city right now.”
“They’re out there,” Riot said more to herself than anyone in her unit. “I can feel them.”
War Wolves: Boxset 1-3 Page 44