“Now what are we supposed to do? Oh Gods, what a cave-in,” said Cannon, panic in his voice.
“Trickster’s asshole,” said Daggeira.
Sabira’s visor flashed a warning: hover-fields detected.
“Right arm, hold steady. Keep your eyes up,” commanded Arrow.
“Now what? Oh Gods, now what?” asked Cannon.
As if in answer, blinding white light poured down from the sky.
19.
SABIRA AND DAGGEIRA blasted the sentry into melted slag. It fell from the sky, streaking sparks and flames, and crashed into a building downslope from them. Orange and blue fires spilled along its roof.
More sentries appeared overhead. Blinding white light everywhere. Sabira and Daggeira darted to opposite sides of the street. Sabira took cover under nearby awnings, Daggeira under a low balcony, each firing at the incoming sentries.
“Take them down! Take them—” Arrow’s command cut off and transformed into piercing feedback. Sabira muted the comms before firing again. The powerful glare of the spotlights made aiming impossible. Sizzling, red bolts disappeared into a wall of light.
“They jammed our transmissions!” yelled Daggeira from across the narrow street, barely audible over the screeching alarms.
“They’re coming!” Sabira yelled back and fired again. The sound of plasma searing through metal crackled overhead, and another sentry fell. But others remained hovering in the sky above, engulfing them in light.
A string of percussive hits rattled the cobblestones at her feet. Stabbing pain swept her right leg from beneath her, and she fell on her back. Screaming, she fired blasts of plasma wildly into the air.
“Sabira’s down! Sabira’s down!” screamed Daggeira, firing into the light. No response other than the rattle of return fire and the sizzling blasts of palukai from farther away.
Focusing through the pain, Sabira spied an armor-shaped silhouette passing overhead, tracked its hover-field signature, aimed, and fired. The crackle of bolt hitting target. A heartbeat later an armored vleez dropped from the sky headfirst into a nearby wall, bounced off and flopped into the street only meters away.
“Good shooting. Next time try not to get shot first.” Cannon slid beside her, staying close to the wall and under the awning. “The vermin are firing encased acid rounds. I’ve got to get to your leg while you’ve still got one.”
Wisps of smoke curled up from the stones where the vleez bullets had struck. A quick glance at her leg revealed a thin line of vapor rising from her thigh armor. The acrid scent of flesh and armor plating dissolving into fumes. But she couldn’t see the hit itself. She had fallen on the wound.
“Godsdammit!” she grunted.
Another rattle of percussive hits along the pavement drove Cannon back against the wall. They hid in a three-meter-wide gap between two buildings. Sabira lay with her feet toward the narrow street and Daggeira. Her head pointed at the back end of the gap where the walls of two buildings extended toward each other and met to form an archway.
“We’re too exposed here,” Cannon said. “Next time take cover behind a grank before you call a medic.”
“Godsdamn that hurts. It’s burning through,” Sabira hissed, pain spiking into her right thigh.
“Aim high and cover me. I’ve got to clear the arch.”
Sabira shot up into the light as Cannon pivoted and ducked under, facing opposite, palukai trained on the archway.
“Clear.” He pivoted back under the awning’s cover. “Turns into a downward ramp after about two or three meters. Limited sight lines. This has to be fast.”
“Come on then, driller, let’s go!” Tracking the hover-fields her visor detected, Sabira fired into the blinding sky. A sentry exploded in the air above them, its fiery crash echoing down the street. A moment later Daggeira nailed another. The ceiling of light dimmed noticeably, making it easier to visually track the individual sentries and the darting silhouettes of the airborne guards.
Sabira continued blasting covering fire as Cannon ducked under the barrel of her palukai. She was wedged against the base of the wall, her injured right leg beneath her. Cannon grabbed hold of her hip and twisted her onto her back. On the outer side of her thigh plate, a small black impact hole smoked and sizzled. Just below it was searing agony. Before she knew it, Cannon popped off the plate’s quick release and was cutting away her jumpsuit with his knife. He tossed the acid-splattered plate and cloth into the street. Where the suit was cut away, she saw purple bruising with a sizzling little, red hole in the middle. The wound’s edges rippled with melting skin.
“There’s still acid in the wound. The field bandage will neutralize it.” He drew out the bandages from his pack as he spoke.
Across the way, Daggeira dropped another sentry, and the street grew darker still. Acid rounds popped all around her, pecking the balcony and the windows above her. She returned fire but didn’t hit.
“You’re clear and set,” Cannon said, reaching down to pick his stick back up. “It’ll hurt like a prod in the ass, but you’ll keep your leg. In two shifts, remind me to change the bandage.”
He pivoted up from her bandaged wound. “Time to find the ranks and get the hell ou—”
Cannon’s visor shattered inward mid-sentence. Countless rounds fired through the archway nailed his chest and face, threw him on his back. His legs spasmed and kicked. He died screaming, hands clawing at his melting face.
Sabira wanted to scream, but her throat clenched tight, throttling the sound into an airless rasp. Enemy rounds whispered past her head through the archway, pelting the wall across the narrow street. A volley slammed Daggeira in the chest, and she collapsed to the ground.
“Get clear! Get clear!” Sabira yelled, waving her hand, wishing she could get to her.
More rounds whisked through the arch and tore up the cone-tiled wall above Daggeira. Chalky debris drifted down from the bullet holes. She dragged herself from out of the archway’s line of fire but also exposed herself to the enemy above.
Sabira tracked shadows in the sky and fired at blurs, covering her. “Get across to the awning,” she yelled between volleys, “and pop your armor!” She wanted to run to her, pull her to safety. Tend her wounds. Save her. But all she could do was lay there, pinned like a mine rat in a trap, and fire blindly into the sky.
Cannon’s armor triggered its self-destruct. In moments it was obscured in greenish flames. Sabira struggled to see Daggeira through the thick, noxious smoke and had to crane her neck at an exposed angle. Volleys of acid rounds shot past dangerously close to Sabira’s helmet.
Daggeira was out of the archway’s line of fire but still had to crawl across the street to the awning. Once she made it, they could get to each other without being exposed to fire. Daggeira made it halfway across when the rattle of gunfire tore down the middle of the narrow road. Plumes of small debris jumped from the stones, drawing a line straight toward Daggeira. Rounds pelted into her back.
Sabira screamed and fired wildly into the sky, unable to track and target the airborne shooter. But the shooter tracked her. The vleez swooped around for another firing pass, this time at her. Back to the wall, Sabira couldn’t roll away as plumes of dust raced across the gap, drawing a line straight for her belly. Every impact clear, starkly detailed, as fear gave way to the clarity of coming death.
Plasma seared the sky. A loud crack and flash of light. A crash nearby, echoing down the street. The plumes of dust drawing a line straight at Sabira settled back to the street. In the distance, the persistent wail of alarms. Nearby, a human voice, shouting. Closer still, the whisper of bullets racing past.
Caller Arrow yelled at her from the street corner, opposite from where Daggeira lay. The voice had been him shouting her name. He couldn’t get to her without crossing the archway’s line of fire. He gave the hand signal to indicate he had her in his sights.
Using hand signals, Arrow commanded her to stay against the wall but crawl her wa
y to Daggeira and pull her undercover. He would tend to the archway shooters.
Sabira faced the wrong way to crawl in Daggeira’s direction. She sat up, swung her legs out into the exposed walkway and back as fast as she could. Every movement spiked agony into her thigh. She kept her back pressed against the wall, her stick trained on the arch, and pushed herself forward with her uninjured left leg. The vleez continuously fired through the archway. Some rounds ripped past her less than a half meter away.
Caller Arrow stalked in on the other side. He kept tight to the wall and posted in the corner where the building and the wall of the archway met. He unhooked a grenade from his belt, armed it, and tossed it through.
Like a drum silenced mid-rhythm, the gunfire ended in a flash of boiling light. A newly formed crater dripped smoky vapor into the sky. Lives turned to steam. And all around, buildings and vines transformed into flames and ash.
Sabira’s head rang. Her eyes stung, went out of focus. An arm supported her. A male voice yelled over the never-ending sirens. Arrow. He held her up, guided her toward the street.
“Sabira! Cover us!” he yelled again and again.
Arrow posted Sabira at the corner of the narrow street and the pathway to the arch. She raised her stick and searched the sky. No enemy triggered her field detectors or rained down fire. Then Arrow and Daggeira were on the ground next to her, pressed against the wall. He struggled with the quick release on Daggeira’s back plates as she stifled her screams and clenched her fists.
Arrow popped off the armor plate at last. Acid splatter had dissolved crumbling holes in the dark plate, but her jumpsuit underneath remained intact. A small, transient relief. Arrow tossed Daggeira’s backup oxygen tank as well. It had taken multiple hits.
Sabira’s eyes darted back and forth between her crewmates on the ground and their lines of vulnerability. But after Arrow flipped Daggeira over to get a look at her chest wounds, Sabira could only focus on her.
Arrow handed her a pack of bandages. “Tend to her. Press them hard to absorb the acid. I’ll cover.”
Sabira met Daggeira’s pale eyes, tight with anguish. Seeing the fear and pain in her face sickened Sabira, but the ugly wounds eating away her chest and belly truly unnerved her. They hadn’t gotten to her in time after all. Three large holes punctured her armor. The acid rounds burned clear through, fusing armor to flesh as it devoured her.
For now, at least, there were no sentry floodlights, no incoming fire. Sabira gripped Daggeira’s trembling hand with her left, while her right pressed the bandage into the largest wound over her breast.
“Damn,” said Daggeira through clenched teeth. “Now they’re going to be calling me One Tit.”
“Attendant and I got separated from you three when the sentries found us,” said Arrow, scanning all around for the enemy. “Spear was still alive last I saw him. They managed to separate us. We need to get him next. We’ll just follow the trail of dead infidels. That’ll lead us right to him.
“He’s carrying more breathers. We find him, we find cover, and we wait it out until the invasion drops hell on these godsless vermin. That’s our mission now, Conqueror see us.”
Sabira packed more field bandages into Daggeira’s wounds. Microbial agents in the material neutralized and absorbed out the acid, while other microbes disinfected the area and clotted severed veins and arteries.
“Sabira, engage your yarist gem. Daggs’s too,” commanded Arrow. “We don’t stop until we find Spear.”
She followed his command, engaging Daggeira’s gem first, then her own. Daggeira’s back spasmed and arched up as she sucked in air with a quick, gargling wheeze.
Sabira’s armor triggered patches in her jumpsuit. The gem shards hidden within the suit’s fabric pressed tight over her chest. Waves of tingling heat rushed through her body. Her mind flared. The agony in her leg receded to a fading echo. She felt her body grow stronger, denser. Reaching down, she grasped a revitalized but still weakened Daggeira under her armpit and lifted her to her feet.
“Let’s move, skins,” urged Arrow. “Gods see us.”
Gods see us, thought Sabira, riding the furious bloodlust building within, let’s kill all the vermin we find on the way.
Arrow took point, guiding them up the narrow road. They stayed tight to the walls, taking cover under awnings and balconies. Sabira and Daggeira followed close behind, each with an arm supporting the other. Sabira scanned the dark skies while Daggeira watched their rear. The road led to the top of the slope and flattened out after a dozen meters. Peering through side roads and between structures, Sabira could see how the city dropped away along the hill’s far southern side.
Sabira’s visor signaled traces of hover-fields. “Caller!” she hissed.
“I know,” he said. “We keep moving. Stay sharp. Stay ready.”
A flood of blinding light engulfed them. In a blur of chemical reflex, Sabira tracked and slagged the sentry out of the sky. She wished it had been a vermin fighter, not just a machine, but it still felt satisfying to see it erupt and fall, setting yet another building ablaze.
Again harsh, white light poured over them, this time from directly in front, not overhead. Her visor detailed the vehicle behind the blinding glare, a compact armored transport designed for urban tactics.
“Fall back!” Arrow fired at the vehicle, barely singeing the heavy armor. Sabira and Daggeira, screaming, opened fire. The transport moved toward them, slowly but without deterrence.
“I said fall back!” Arrow commanded. He fired the palukai in his right hand as his left pulled free and activated a grenade. Before he could throw, the vehicle boomed, opening fire on him. Heavy caliber rounds obliterated armor, shredded meat, and sprayed blood and guts across stone and tile. Not a single round missed.
The women screamed again, all fury and terror, and blasted at the armored transport. It moved forward, undaunted. The two of them crept backward while chemical rage urged them to rush forward. They blasted out the transport’s spotlights, but it continued stalking them. Sabira’s visor detailed the swivel of the heavy gun as it locked in on them.
She remembered her brood-sister’s last caress. I see you.
A burning sphere of incineration blossomed in the darkness, Arrow’s last grenade igniting as the tank passed his mangled corpse.
The vehicle lay on its side in the middle of the street. Half of it incinerated to vapor, the other half blackened slag. Tongues of fire raced from building to building around the blast zone. The building that Arrow’s body had been smeared across now lacked the front of its foundation and first two floors. Inhuman wailing joined the cacophony of alarms.
The half-incinerated building creaked and popped, coughed smoke, and collapsed forward. Burning walls crumbled into the crater and crashed over the transport. Entombing the vapor and ash remains of their caller. Piling a heap of burning rubble between them and Spear.
Leaving them wounded, surrounded, and alone.
20.
IN A TANGLE of fear and mutual support, they fled the burning rubble. Thick clouds of dust and smoke hid their movements but also clogged their helmet’s microfilters. The smell left a harsh, metallic taste in Sabira’s mouth. They found a tight walkway between structures on the other side of the road, little more than two meters wide.
“If we get trapped in there,” gasped Daggeira, “we’re drilled.”
“We’re already drilled. We can’t stay in the street.” Sabira knew Daggeira wasn’t wrong, but the path had advantages, too. They would be harder to see from above, leaving only two directions for the enemy to most likely come at them. Directly in front and behind.
The mission clock display ticked down. Five and a half hours. Her crew wasn’t given the exact timing of the invasion, but Sabira knew it would be soon after their clock hit zero. They needed to find shelter until there was a chance to be recovered. How their own people would find them in the middle of a planetary invasion they could puzzle out later.
Now, survive.
With no time or patience for debating tactics, Sabira took point and led the way, palukai ready. Daggeira followed without hesitation, walking backward with one hand steadying herself along the wall, the other training her palukai on the way they came. Nothing followed.
The walls on either side of the pathway were four stories tall and mostly bare, vineless. Three stories up a row of small alcoves ran the length of the wall on Sabira’s left. They were spaced about every five meters, and in every third or fourth alcove, a yellow globe illuminated the pathway. The incessant wailing of the alarm grew fainter as they maneuvered farther in.
Sabira whispered for Daggeira to hold. Just ahead of them the pathway veered into a blind angle on their right. If any vleez were waiting to ambush them, it would be there. Sabira’s heart pounded. Her scarred breast throbbed. The accelerants, amplified by the gem, urged her to charge in, strike first. Kill first. But experience and discipline reined in fury.
Sabira gave Daggeira the hand signal to cover her. Crouching low, Sabira pivoted around the corner, ready to blast a smoking hole in any godsdamned vermin that might be lurking there, eager to do the same to her. She spotted a shape low to the ground. Vleez. Sabira aimed.
“Hold fire!” said Daggeira in a strained whisper. “It’s already dead.”
The corpse lay tucked against the wall just around the bend, out of sight from the street behind them. It lay on its side, crumpled into itself, corroded mandibles falling into its own face. Poison spray. Black viscera smeared the stone path around it. Someone had dragged the body here to hide from view.
“Grandfather,” whispered Sabira.
“Maybe,” Daggeira answered. “Maybe it was Arrow on his way back to us.”
“Either way, it means Spear likely went this way.”
Before the Shattered Gates of Heaven Page 12