“Hail Mary full of grace, hail Mary full of grace,” Gordon chanted with a grin of fear and pain on his face as he fired on full auto into the uncountable Merki troopers.
Racks of missiles erupted into the air and rained upon the gravsleds where they ducked and dived with their pulsers raving. Her people scrambled to reload the artillery, and fire on the Merki troops running and dying amid the minefields. Hundreds of AARs were firing constantly from all over the camp. Tracers zipping through the air scythed the enemy down literally cutting them in half. Automatic grenade launchers were firing so fast that their ammunition hoppers were in danger of running dry before they could be reloaded. The barrels of sentry guns, set to kill anything in front of them, were glowing red hot and threatening to melt as they swung back and forth killing Merki troopers by the score. There were Shan cowering, screaming, frothing at the mouth. Shan warriors dying upon the ground half buried in mud and bodies. Warriors grappling with Merkiaari still biting and clawing as they took their enemies down into death with them. There were lines of Shan standing side by side with vipers or Marines as they were overrun. Blood ran like a river along the bottom of the trenches. Bodies and pieces of bodies rained from the sky. Bodies buried by explosions and trampling feet, were launched skyward again when another round of explosions dotted the camp.
“Zack!” Gina screamed over the noise but he didn’t hear her. He didn’t seem to know that he was dying.
She fired another burst over the top of the trench. She jacked a grenade and fired it. Then again and again until the launcher locked open on an empty chamber. She didn’t have time to reload. She reached Gordon and grabbed him. In a blur of speed, he rounded on her still chanting his prayer, and pulled the trigger. She froze. The barrel of his weapon looked like a howitzer in that moment. Gordon fired again and she realised she was still alive. Unbelievably, he was out of ammo.
She struck the rifle aside and grabbed him. “You crazy fuck, it’s me!” She threw him onto his back.
“What… what…?” Gordon panted. He was still in melee mode (boosted to the max) and didn’t seem to know where he was. He reached for his pistol, but a crunching punch to the jaw woke him up a little. “Ow! Christ Gina, what the hell did you do that for?”
“That was for scaring the shit out of me, now let me fix this.”
She ripped open his pants and clamped a hand over the arterial bleed in his thigh. His bots needed a little help to deal with this. They could heal anything given time, but long before they got a handle on the wound, Gordon would have dropped into hibernation. If he had been paying attention, he could have ordered his processor out of melee mode back into combat or even maintenance mode, long enough to seal off the vessel until it could be fixed, but no, he was too busy killing Merkiaari!
A viper’s natural inclination to heal damage was suppressed in melee mode, its resources shunted away from maintenance in favour of combat. That’s why monitoring diagnostics was so important. Being forced into hibernation for essential repairs in the middle of a battle would be a death sentence. That was one reason she didn’t like using it. Melee mode felt almost godlike, and it skewed her reasoning. It was too easy to ignore natural caution while boosted to that degree. She preferred combat mode and allowed her processor to repair damage on the fly. Sergeant Rutledge had taught them that most vipers felt that way, and only ever used melee mode as a last resort. If she hadn’t been checking on her people’s stats and noticed that Gordon wasn’t dealing with the problem… but she had been checking.
She grabbed one of the aerosols out of her medikit and sealed the wound in plastic. She watched as his blood pressure formed a bubble in the plastic, but it held. There were no leaks. She grabbed the nano-injector.
“How many times have I told you to watch your god-damned diagnostics?” she grumbled as she pumped the bots into him directly over the wound as Lieutenant Hymas had taught them. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a dozen times. You have got to watch your diagnostics.”
Gordon looked sick. “I didn’t even notice.”
“Keep an eye on it,” she said packing her kit and stowing it back in its place on her webbing. “I mean it, Zack. If you puncture the seal before the artery is fixed, I’ll kill you.”
Gordon grinned weakly but a second later his eyes popped wide in alarm, “Behind—”
Gina spun snatching her knife free as she turned and plunged it into the Merki female’s belly. She sawed upward probing for the monster’s heart then pulled it out in a gout of blood that covered her from head to foot. The female toppled, dead before she hit the ground.
“—you,” Gordon finished shouting.
“It’s bloody dangerous around here,” she muttered wiping her knife clean on her thigh. She grabbed her rifle. Gordon was already reloading his. She took a moment to load her grenade launcher. “You okay here on your own?”
“No,” he muttered as he popped up to fire at a gravsled.
Gina didn’t hear him as she jogged away.
It was a miracle they had managed to hold out so long, she mused as she ran in a crouch along the zigzagging trench connecting the dugouts for the sentry guns with the fighting pits. Her people were too busy to notice her passing behind them. The enemy had been repulsed no less than three times already with massive casualties. Their gravsleds no longer attempted to draw near the camp. They didn’t dare. The evidence they were no match for viper gunnery lay smashed and broken all over the landscape. The remaining sleds were reduced to sniping at the camp’s defenders from a distance. Not that distance meant safety, far from it, but it was at least a little safer for them. The sentry guns were set to kill anything in front of them within a certain radius of their positions. The same with the grenade launchers and mortars. They were set to provide area denial to the Merki ground troops, but they would still attempt to knock down a gravsled if it came within their area of responsibility. Such kills were rare now, but they hadn’t been at the start of the action, as evidenced by the still burning wreckage of so many vehicles.
As the battle progressed, she had felt the need to reassure herself with direct observations of what her sensors and TacNet were telling her. It wasn’t logical, she knew that, but that was how she felt. She justified her need with the knowledge that is was good for the morale of her troops having her appear to fight with them. Maybe it was a holdover from her time in the Corps. Whatever the reason, she was still most comfortable fighting side by side with her troops. Being a captain, even one temporarily raised to the position, didn’t change that. With a viper’s abilities, she could indulge herself without guilt. With instant access to comm, TacNet, and sensors, she didn’t have to remain at a fixed CP to give her orders. Anywhere would do. From the front line trench was her preference.
“How goes it, James?” she said slipping into position beside him. She tried to ignore the number of dead Shan warriors and enemy corpses heaped around him, and added her fire to his. The Merkiaari just kept coming. “James?”
James glanced at her then back to what he was doing. The lost and empty look in his eyes sent a shiver down her spine. He was looking more and more like those he led. The warriors fighting with him had lost everything and everyone they loved. They had seen so much death that it almost seemed to fill them up until there was no room for anything but killing. No hope left, just the grim determination to make the enemy pay dearly for their deaths.
James popped up and fired both his beamers repeatedly. “I heard our fighters heading north a little while ago,” he said without inflection. “The Merkiaari didn’t knock them all down. Maybe we should tell the Admiral to bomb the camp now.”
“It’s not time for that yet,” she said emptying her grenade launcher at the enemy lines. Bombing the camp would kill a lot of the enemy, but it would kill all of the defenders too. “We’re not that desperate yet.”
Gina sank down behind the cover afforded her by the trench to reload. There were empty munitions boxes scattered all over the place, b
ut she found one that still had a few grenades left in it buried beneath the others. While she hurriedly reloaded her rifle, she sent an urgent message over TacNet requesting fresh supplies be sent to James’ sector. The acknowledgement flashed upon her display a moment later.
She stood to rejoin James, and picked off a few troopers that were getting a little close. Some of the sentry guns had fallen silent now, either destroyed by enemy fire or out of ammunition. The Merkiaari were too close to overrunning them to risk sending a squad to reload those guns. That meant there was a gaping hole in the defence of James’ sector with nothing to plug it with but bodies. She quickly accessed her comm and reinforced the line with vipers taken from other areas. Changing channels, she informed the General that she expected a major Merkiaari push here very soon.
There was no acknowledgement.
She ducked as a gravsled opened up on her but too late. “AEiii,” she screamed as something buzsawed through her shoulder and her right cheek.
Her mouth filled with blood and diagnostics flashed a warning to her display, but the damage was not too bad. It was bloody and it hurt, but she wouldn’t die or anything close. Her processor automatically began repairing the damage. A warrior next to James wasn’t so lucky. He was blasted back to fall amid the corpses of his people, dead before he landed. James blinked at the alien blood running down his face and continued firing. Gina spat blood and dirt, raised her rifle to her injured shoulder and squeezed the trigger.
* * *
Approaching Charlie Epsilon
Major Papandreou of the 7th Marines cursed the bad luck that had dogged his heels on this march. He had just been informed that yet another mech was out of commission. The road to Charlie Epsilon was littered with equipment and broken mechs. Marines numbering in excess of two platoons were already dismounted due to mechanical failure, and they had a way to go yet.
Something streaked by him and into the underbrush. He muttered under his breath and lowered his AAR. With thousands of Shan along on this march, it was little wonder the local wildlife was running scared. He had been informed that this entire area was some kind of nature preserve. They were called Sanctuaries, but there was nothing safe about this one now.
Charlie Epsilon was maybe ten klicks ahead as the crow flies. Even surrounded by hills and trees, he could tell Burgton was already engaged. The air was leaden and smoke hung thickly just beyond a line of hills ahead. He couldn’t see much—the occasional rocket contrail was about it.
“Dragon this is Sword, come in Dragon.”
“Dragon copies,” he replied. Sword was the call sign given to his forward-most element. His recon platoon.
“I have the objective in sight, sir, but I think we’re too late. I can make out Merkiaari already within the perimeter.”
Dammit! “Can you estimate numbers?”
“Too many to count, sir… maybe a couple of hundred in the camp? I dunno for sure. I can still see some fighting. The defenders have pulled back to make a stand at the CP. I don’t think we can get there in time… oh shit!”
He listened to the open comm line. “Sword? Answer dammit!”
“Wait one.”
Papandreou fumed for a few seconds then turned his thoughts to the coming battle. If Burgton and his people were already dead, he would be a fool to lead his men into the trap that Charlie Epsilon had become. On the other hand, vipers were tough bastards. If anyone could survive being overrun by Merkiaari, Burgton was that one. He throttled his mech into a lumbering run. He needed to see the situation with his own eyes before making a decision.
“Dragon this is Sword. I have a situation here. The goddamn Shan are advancing independently. They’re charging straight in. I can’t hold ‘em!”
Papandreou checked his sensors. It was worse than Sword had reported. “Hold your position. Repeat, hold your position.”
“Copy.”
He checked his sensors again. Shan warriors were pulling ahead of his mechs. Not just those accompanying Sword, but all of them. All over the map, thousands upon thousands of them dropped to all fours and streaked away. He stared at his display in disbelieving silence. They were advancing upon Charlie Epsilon at a flat out run. They would engage the enemy scattered and unsupported. He could feel a disaster looming. He had only two options. Advance at flank speed in foolhardy support of the crazy bastards, or retreat and leave them to die.
“Oh shit…” Papandreou whispered, making his decision. He opened a channel. “Throttle up Marines!”
Papandreou and his Marines charged into battle.
* * *
Camp Charlie Epsilon
Repairs complete.
Diagnostics: Unit fit for duty.
Deactivate beacon… Done.
Initiate reactivation sequence…
Gina awoke covered in soil and debris not sure where she was or what had happened. Her chest hurt… no it didn’t. It was just the memory of pain. Her hand wandered over her armour and paused at the hole it discovered. She probed through it and felt smooth skin. Her uniform ended in a burnt and tattered hole that matched her armour in its shape, but her body was whole. Healed? Her chrono said that she had lost time. How much time? Hours at least. She lay quiet looking up at the sky and listening to the silence. Why was it so quiet, was she deaf? Not according to her diagnostics. According to her processor, she was one-hundred percent operational.
She frowned and tried to remember what she was doing. She had fought beside James and his people for a time but had moved on to Cragg… was that right? She didn’t have time to consult her log, but she thought that was right. The time legend on her display was telling her hours had gone by since then. Long enough for reinforcements to join them? Possibly, but where the hell were they?
She staggered erect pulling her rifle free of the mud as she did. For as far as she could easily see, there were Merki corpses lying in heaps. It was as if a bunch of hills had reared up out of the ground. The landscape was utterly different to what it had been. Craters dotted the ground. Trees and smashed vehicles still burned and smoke hung thickly upon the leaden air.
Gina turned in a circle trying to get her bearings. Everything looked different. She stooped to drag a half buried and broken rifle out of the bloody soup the soil at the bottom of her trench had become. She ejected her empty magazine and replaced it with the half spent one from the broken rifle. She didn’t know who it had belonged to. She didn’t want to know. He was most likely dead. That was the only way to separate a viper from his or her weapon.
She dropped the useless thing, and dragged herself out of the trench only to throw herself flat at the sound of gunfire. Her rifle was up and ready, but the noise died away again. It was simply someone finishing off a wounded Merki. She struggled tiredly to her knees, and then back to her feet trying to orientate herself. There were a number of craters with the mangled remains of Shan field guns still jutting into the air just ahead of her.
“If that crater is… was Battery 201, and for some reason I think it was, then that means…” she muttered to herself trying to match what she was seeing with the map glowing in front of her eyes. “That must be the CP then.”
She made her way toward the greatest concentration of people and smoke.
As she walked, more and more people began struggling out of their dugouts some of which had collapsed in upon them. Many of the trenches were full to the brim with corpses. She had no idea how many vipers lay among them. During the battle, communications had become fragmented as more and more squad leaders fell off the net leaving individual vipers to fight on alone. She hoped time would prove that many of those now silent units were only wounded. With their squad and platoon leaders out of contact, individual vipers had fought and died holding whatever line they could. She had done her best to keep everyone fighting as a unit by assigning at least one viper to each battalion to relay her orders, but it was only partially successful. Sometimes it seemed that almost as soon as she put a unit in charge of a position, he would g
o offline and she had to begin again.
According to her sensors there were still Merkiaari alive both within and without the camp’s perimeter. None of them were fit to fight, and slowly the red icons inside the perimeter disappeared as the surviving warriors sniffed them out and killed them. She couldn’t care less about the Merkiaari. She was more concerned with the blue viper icons that her sensors had picked out and were displaying. Most of them were blinking on and off denoting a unit either dead or in hibernation awaiting recovery. She was willing to bet that she had been one of them not long ago.
If they were dead… she refused to believe so many could be dead, but if they were dead, then the battalion had been reduced to a single company of effectives, and her company to almost zero. She refused to believe that—categorically refused.
Gina wanted to know where the General was. She wanted to know if he was all right. She wanted to know if Eric was alive and all her friends. Was James dead, was Rutledge? What about Gordon and… she took a deep breath and stopped where she was. She had just survived one hell of a battle. She wasn’t going to pieces now.
She watched the survivors picking through the debris and tried to formulate a plan. There were Shan frantically digging among the wrecked dugouts and pieces of equipment. As she watched, they pulled out those lucky enough to be alive and hurried them to the field hospital for medical attention. Marines in mech armour dragged themselves out of craters and began assembling. So, the Marines had made it after all. This couldn’t be all of them. She turned to the north in speculation. It was the logical place for them to be.
If Major Papandreou had arrived to push the enemy back, there would be fighting to the north. She couldn’t see any sign even with her sensors at max range, but that didn’t mean much. He might have pushed them all the way back to Masaru by this time. It wasn’t impossible. She would check the satellite feeds, but later. She sighed in relief when she began seeing vipers wandering around the camp.
Merkiaari Wars Series: Books 1-3 Page 79