by B. V. Larson
Her eyes roved over the mechs hungrily. Had Sixty-Two already been blown to fragments? She hoped not, she didn’t want to miss such a moment of triumph.
“So many losses,” said a voice beside them. “We can’t win the battle if it goes on like this.”
Nina craned her neck around in shock. It could not be! There stood Sixty-Two, unmistakable in his tattered cloak, scarf and hat.
“You!” she shouted, pointing out into the charging mass of mechs on the field. “Why aren’t you out there with your troops, leading them?”
Sixty-Two tilted his head to one side, a gesture not unlike that of a shrug. “You two are commanders, as am I. Why didn’t you lead the charge you ordered?”
Nina turned away in a fury.
“They’ve reached the alien lines,” Aldo said. “It is time, Baroness.”
Thousands of knights surged out of the suntrees. Nina realized, to her rage and horror, that it was Sixty-Two who was now going to watch her make a suicidal attack from a position of safety and comfort. Seething, Nina Droad screamed for her troops to charge. She might have refused Aldo’s order, but for her own code of honor. She’d sworn to follow a reasonable command from him, and this attack had been her own plan. To disobey now would be to dishonor herself and Droad House. Nor was it possible to sit out the action as Sixty-Two had done. On Ignis Glace, able-bodied nobles led their troops personally.
Ahead of her, she saw the ragged line of knights reach the canyon rim and fly out into space. They plummeted, and those that lost their nerve or who were less than masters of their mounts inverted and plunged to their deaths.
Nina soon came to the rim herself and felt her guts squeeze up tightly within her. She went over the edge and began a wild fall to the dark streets below. Wind rushed up, buffeting her and threatening to knock her from her saddle. Her mount bucked and twisted under her rump, and she fought the controls with every ounce of skill she had. Bright flashes showed enemy fire coming up at her, twice scoring the steel flanks of her mount.
She noticed her mount’s vid pickup was glowing red. Someone was using her cameras to watch the battle remotely. Perhaps it was Sixty-Two himself.
Life was anything but fair.
#
The watchtower of Lavender City, which had been converted to a hotel and back again to a fortification, was among the last places in the city to succumb to the alien assault. The Duchess Embrak had prepared for this moment, and possessed a slim laser pistol that was custom-shaped to fit her small pale fist. She drew it from the dressing table drawer and checked the energy pack, making sure it was fully charged. Soon, the aliens were hammering on the door. They struck the metal with such alarming strength and rapidity that it shook the walls. The Duchess trembled in shock. How many were out there? Was this the end?
She drew herself up and placed the tip of her weapon under her chin. Four pounds of pressure on the trigger, that was all that was required. She began to squeeze—relented—then began squeezing again. Her eyes shut tight and she bared her fine teeth.
The door buckled. An upper corner of the metal surface curled inward, as if it were folding paper. Her last two bodyguards glanced at her. She nodded to them in salute. One’s face streamed with tears, the other man’s face was locked in an animal snarl. She reflected how differently each person faced a horrific finish to their own lives. She was glad the bodyguards were here. If they had not been present, she doubted she could have maintained a calm exterior. Since there were witnesses, she did not want them to see her collapse over the velvet furniture and bawl like a jilted schoolgirl.
The door came down. Still, the Duchess didn’t fire her weapon and end her own existence. Partly, she was curious about what these aliens looked like in the flesh. There had only been flickering hints from the battlefield pickups. Since it was her final moment, she had decided to indulge that curiosity.
Gray creatures, vaguely man-like, rushed into the room. They moved with unnatural speed, like a vid that was played at high speeds. The two bodyguards fired and the first alien that entered the room went down, flailing. It bounded back up, but was blasted down again. Such vitality. The Duchess was impressed and fascinated.
Two more followed it. The bodyguards were expert marksmen and veterans of many conflicts—reasons for their employment. But they did not concentrate their fire this time, and the killbeasts reached them before they could be slain. One man was decapitated—the one that had been crying. The second grappled with the killbeast for a moment. But it was an uneven contest. The man had a barrel chest and a savage snarl, but he could not face the power of alien musculature. He was bent back double and gargling within seconds. His spine snapped audibly. The Duchess winced. Helpless, he lay on the floor, panting and raving, still alive.
The Duchess took her gun from her throat and fired at the killbeast that had broken her last bodyguard’s back. She held the button down, and the sleek weapon lanced a hole through its tough exterior. The carapace smoked and grey steaming liquids gushed out. The beam came through the far side and the thing staggered. Aiming carefully, she burned three more holes into its carapace and it sagged down.
It was the next killbeast that changed matters. It bound close and swept the weapon away—taking her hand off at the wrist. The gun clunked on the floor, her small bejeweled fingers still gripping it. The Duchess stared at her lost hand in shock.
She passed out then, and when she awakened, she found herself on the back of a table-like creature with a heavy claw holding her down. Her wrist stump had been clamped with some kind of organic blob—it resembled a leech made of gray glue. It had obviously been applied to prevent her from bleeding to death. The thing on her stump pulsed and appeared to be alive. She suspected it was feeding upon her pumping blood, even as it staunched its flow. She could not remove the thing on her wrist, in fact, she could barely move at all.
The Duchess watched from this position on her back, being carried to an alien nest as ants might carry home squirming, living prey. She was at the north end of the valley, where things were relatively quiet. As they climbed the cobbled streets toward the valley exit and the assault ships that waited there to shuttle her to Gladius, she saw a battle erupt at the distant southern end of the valley, miles distant. It had to be Aldo. Why had he attacked the opposite end of the city?
There were no witnesses, so the Duchess allowed herself to cry.
Twenty-Five
Baroness Droad’s knights swept up toward the rear of the alien garrison at the southern entrance to Lavender City. The aliens unleashed withering fire in every direction, but they were surrounded and badly outnumbered.
The raging army of mechs reached the lines first. Many had been damaged by fragmentation bombardment from the ship above. Some were dragging themselves or the ruined bodies others. The bombardment stopped the moment they reached the canyon entrance, and the mechs fell upon the alien lines in a frenzy.
The aliens sent out a wave of culus and shrade teams to soften up the charge, while peppering them with laser fire from killbeasts in the rear. The tactics were very effective against humans, but much less so against mechs. The mechs grabbed up shrades, which twisted and lashed like grass snakes in their grippers. The shrades were on average seven feet in length and tremendously strong. They were no match however, for steel and servos. They were torn into lashing fragments and tossed aside. Expert fire and sweeping power-blades cut the culus numbers out of the air as well before they could return to the safety of their line.
The killbeasts, working laser rifles with precision, did better. They soon realized a single hit might rock a mech back on its servos, but did not finish them. In fact, a dozen random hits on the chassis of a perrupter did little to slow it down. The Imperial troops quickly adjusted their fire downward and focused on the ball joints holding together the leg struts. Three or four hits there reduced a charging mech to one that only crawled over the ground, dragging itself with its grippers.
This adjustment to their aim came
too late. The fast moving wave of mechs charged into them before more than a dozen were maimed. The mechs came into direct conflict with little fanfare or finesse. The laborers reached out, grabbed up killbeasts with one gripper and dismembered them with the other. The perrupters were even more effective, severing limbs with their flashing power-blades and firing lasers point-blank into the thorax of any exposed killbeast.
The vitality of the killbeasts was legendary, but in this situation that attribute just meant they took longer to kill. They slashed with their horn-bladed feet, kicking at the orbs and grippers. Steel being harder than flesh, bone or horn, they won very few of these fights once the mechs were in close. The mechs swept away the initial line and advanced into the streets. Every mech chassis was burned, scarred and dented, but they had not been stopped.
Nina watched all this with grim pleasure. She enjoyed every moment of the alien destruction. For years, she’d been watching vids of these creatures preying on helpless humanity—especially on distant colonies that had much lower mech populations. These creatures might be superior combatants when compared to other fleshly beings, but when faced with human-machine hybrids they could not stand.
Now, it was her turn. With a raging army of mechs assaulting their front line, Nina’s knights charged the alien’s flank. She felt a battle fury rising up within her. She’d come from a line of fighters, and unlike her father, there was a part of her that reveled in open conflict rather than quiet contemplation.
The knights encountered very little fire as they swept close. The enemy were too focused on the mechs that were destroying them so inexorably. Their lines were shattered completely when the knights were suddenly among them. Nina lay about her with both her swords, cutting down aliens from behind. Even though the fight was hopeless, she found they were still dangerous. When a killbeast recognized her presence and brought up a laser rifle, she ducked and more than once felt the heat of a passing beam. The enemy took such potshots in many cases, even if they were engaged with a mech in a final death struggle. Knowing their own doom was at hand, they switched to the easier human target and attempted a kick or an angled shot, even as they were being beaten to death by the mechanical monsters. One killbeast fired three shots at her, even at it was being dashed against the stone walls of a nearby building, spoiling its aim. Nina was alarmed at the quick viciousness of the aliens. They knew they were doomed, but there was no attempt whatsoever to run, or to beg for mercy. These beings knew nothing of surrender or fear. They fought like biological machines themselves.
The culus creatures however, did flee. Unlike the killbeasts, they understood the better part of valor when a battle turned into a slaughter. They took flight and a hundred circular shadows swept over the knights, making them wince and duck when their strange shadows passed by. The culus flock swooped, flying low overhead and then went deeper into the city. Knights and mechs fired up a score of lancing shots, and brought a few of them down to flop on the cobbles.
Nina, realizing the killbeasts were almost extinguished, fired with the rest. “Mechs, knights, form up!” she shouted, amplifying her voice with a boom mike in her helmet. “Come troops, after them! Kill them all for Twilight!”
A ragged cheer went up. A thousand throats and a thousand speakers took up the cry. The knights charged after the fleeing enemy—it was in their nature to do so.
#
As the nife traveled the ship’s tube-like steel corridors to meet with the Empress, his stalks drooped down below his maw. In his short life, he’d never had a worse day. He could barely open his cusps to reveal his orbs, which were sticky with dry fluids. His worries had grown by the hour. What had looked like a perfect assault on a reef packed with nearly helpless meat-creatures had turned into a pitched battle—with the Imperium troops on the losing side. They had every advantage, but could not employ many of them.
The biggest problem was the Empress’ rigid rule against bombarding the human city. With a relentless barrage of missiles launched by Gladius, they could have made short work of the human army. But instead, they’d only managed to score a few hits as they charged into the city itself, thus forcing the missile batteries to follow their rules of engagement and break off the attack. It was almost as if these humans knew what absurd restrictions the Skaintz were operating under.
“My Highest Lady,” the nife began when he entered her fetid den. “I have grim tidings from the battle below.”
“Due, no doubt, to your incompetence?”
“Due to unforeseen events. Warfare is rarely a mathematical exercise.”
“You are wrong…again. It is a mathematical equation, and in this case you have miscalculated. I expect an immediate return to balance. I barely have enough meat-creatures to provide my person with sustenance. There isn’t enough for a breeding stock as well. They breed so slowly, these humans. We must procure many more.”
The nife had prepared a ploy for this situation. His stalks rose a fraction as he presented it hopefully. “You are correct! These creatures aren’t really suitable as a dietary staple. There are many other animals to taste, however. The world below is a veritable buffet of fresh flavors. I would recommend—”
“Don’t,” the Empress interjected. “I don’t even want to hear it. I’ve tasted their beef stews and rabbit dressings. Garbage. Greasy, flavorless swill. Humans dine on the finest of all the other species. I must have human meat, and it must have been raised upon a rich, varied diet throughout its life to maturity. Possibly, to the unsophisticated palate of lesser beings such as yourself, these nuances of taste are insignificant. Not so to a higher form such as your monarch. Feed trachs, juggers and hests your slices of bacon and your ham hocks. I want nothing to do with any of it.”
The nife’s stalks dragged even lower. He could not soften the blow any further. He had to confess to the true nature of the situation below. “The humans are driving our forces back. This process will continue without full bombardment to support our troops.”
“I don’t see how this is possible,” the Empress said, puffing herself a full two feet higher than normal. Her vast bulk loomed over the relatively tiny figure of the nife. “Just hours ago, you assured me we were on the brink of securing the entire city!”
“That was true then, but no longer. It turns out the enemy army was in the field, not home to defend its city. The army was recalled, and assaulted our troops who were unprepared and spread out over the landscape looking for pockets of resistance. They now have a foothold in the south, and are pressing northward with alarming rapidity.”
“Very well. You are to be punished for this incompetence.”
“My High Lady, I hardly think—”
“Do not interrupt as I pronounce the nature of your death. A simple spacing is too good for you. Your genes are corrupt.”
“You have no other commander with my experience. I must advise you to stave off such action for the good of the Imperium.”
The Empress scoffed. “The good of the Imperium? I should have squashed you as you were being whelped to the benefit of our entire species.”
The nife fell silent and brooding. The Empress gathered herself—literally, pulling in swollen bulges of flesh that tended to spread when she grew angry. She finally sighed and relented.
“Very well, you shall be spared until this campaign has reached stability, or until a replacement can be matured.”
The nife came back to life. His stalks rose, but he did not begin to strut, his confidence being a fraction of what it once was. “You will not regret this decision! I will avenge our dead, Empress, and the price will not be too great, I assure you.”
“The price? What price?”
“The enemy will grease the streets with their body fluids—be they oil from the inner tanks of their mechs or the blood of the humans. I promise you a breeding stock of fresh humans within the day. Simply give me full control of all our assets, and—”
The Empress slammed her tentacle onto the deck plates with such force the n
ife’s feet tingled afterward. “What price?” she demanded.
The nife recovered from his shock and stood as tall as he could. “We must level half the city. The southern sector shall be demolished to protect the northern half, which we still hold. A single low-yield warhead will do the trick, properly placed. The walls of the canyon will reverberate, throwing shockwaves back upon the point of initial detonation, magnifying the effect.”
The Empress was silent for a second or two. “Are you seriously suggesting we use a thermonuclear device on the city?”
“Yes, Empress. It is the best way. To use conventional warheads would be wasteful, and dangerous. Our own troops would be on the line with the enemy. If we simply nuke them behind their lines, the survivors will be rolled up easily by our counterattack on the ground. They will face our troops in front and a radioactive crater behind.”
“I had no idea you were insane,” the Empress said. “I’d thought you were going to ask to release the jugger reserves. Perhaps, in a wild fantasy, you might have believed I would authorize a conventional missile barrage from the ship. But nuclear bombardment? All that fresh meat destroyed? Never. I repeat, never shall that be allowed. I’ll see you on the front lines with a laser rifle in your mandibles first.”
The nife’s maw drooped again, along with his stalks. He didn’t know what to say. “I can’t defeat them any other way, my Empress.”
“I don’t care. If they retake the city, we shall breed a new army, and take it back again.”
The nife blinked his orbs in disbelief. He knew the Empress cared primarily about her own comforts, but to risk the entire campaign for her personal dining pleasure—he was appalled. “What can I use, then?”
The Empress waggled an appendage at him. “You may release the jugger reserves. All of them. But do not speak to me further about bombardments. That option is off the table.”