Standish

by Donald B McFarlane

  Standish was in awe of her surroundings. Gunfire was ringing out everywhere. There were screams, explosions, fires burning. Off to her left was the grand central park that dominated Curzon, now disgorging Coalition fighters. On her right were three towering blocks that stretched towards the boundaries of the city, perpendicular to her path.

  Intelligence reported that there weren’t supposed to be any forces inside those large buildings, but Standish knew that with enough time, the Coalition could move troops into them, and catch the Alliance forces in a cross-fire. To her rear, Standish knew that sooner or later, the mecha that had emerged from the underground station was going to press their attack. There was an endless list of possibilities about how they could get attacked. As soon as the commander of the local forces had a firm grasp on what was happening, they would slam the door shut on the operators, and that would be the end of it.

  Standish knew that until she got out of the system, not just off the planet, she was in grave danger. An attack was possible from any corner, and even if she made it to the space-port, there was no guarantee that the Coalition would allow any of the ships to get off the surface.

  After moving just two hundred metres, Bender used his helmet’s speaker to give a new set of orders, and what he said was to change Standish’s life.

  “Last section! Prepare to peel left, we’re making a run on that gun-platform.”

  Standish knew that included her. There was no doubt in her mind that she was inside that group, and she also knew that there was an excellent chance that Bender had just signed her death warrant. Standish knew that the gun-platform was their most immediate threat, and if they didn’t take it out immediately, it would shred them all the way to the sky-port.

  Ducking her left shoulder down slightly, Standish cut left and brought herself around until she was square on the large gun-platform that was trudging through across the open field in massive, ungainly strides. Crossing under the High-Speed Rail line, she quickly checked her left and right to make sure she was online with the other operators. To her left, she could see Bender in his all-white armour.

  “Increase to max attack speed.” Bender shouted.

  Standish knew the standard operating procedure for Dynamic Operations quick attacks. It was simple. Get to the target as fast as possible.

  No point in shooting now. Standish knew that the enemy infantry between her and the gun-platform was no threat. She could kill them just by charging into them fast enough. The only thing that mattered as she held her rifle tight in her hands, and pumped her legs inside her armoured cacoon, was getting close enough to the gun-platform to destroy the system with an explosive charge. If that failed, gain access inside the device, and drop in a high-explosive grenade.

  The minute the group operators cut left and started to close down the distance to the gun-platform, the infantry in the open field immediately shifted their focus from those attempting to flee to the on-rushing threat. Even though their weapons didn’t pack a punch to stop the on-coming armoured forces, they stopped, dropped into firing positions, and unleashed a wall of energy and ballistic rounds towards the Alliance forces.

  The real danger took a few seconds longer to react. The gun-platform had been busy targeting the fleeing column, but once it whipped its cannon around towards the approaching forces, it started to unleash a deadly barrage of weapons fire.

  Standish’s heads-up-display was quick to identify the new threat and ran the calculations on where the weapons of the gun-platform were aimed, she was in the clear, for the moment. When the first round came zipping out of the cannon, she didn’t have time to worry about where it was going, or whether it scored a hit. She needed to focus on closing the distance to the platform as quickly as possible and trying to do some damage.

  When she was twenty metres from the platform, she found herself amid the first wave of troops that were escorting the platform. Quick, well-placed shots, downed the infantry that was in her path, allowing her to keep charging towards the massive machine. She had already planned and calculated her attack manoeuvre, and when she reached the fifteen mark, she leapt into the air with all her force, firing the remaining fuel in her mini-thrusters, throwing herself through the crisp blue morning air in a perfectly timed jump towards the platform.

  Sailing through the air, Standish kept her feet to her front while staying in a low crouch, her rifle between her legs, trained on the top of the gun platform. As her black and red armour cut across the sky, some of the infantry on the ground looked up in disbelief, others started firing wildly upwards. Standish kept calm, and switched her weapon to maximum output, ready to get one decisive shot in at close range on the sensors of the machine.

  Halfway through her flight, when she just crossed over the peak of her arc, the gun-platform took notice, and suddenly started moving with a greater sense of urgency, shifting its barrel upwards towards Standish, while the systems support weapons opened fire wildly at her, most of the shots sailing wide. She knew that a direct hit, even from a secondary weapon system, could prove fatal.

  Luckily for her, the skill and undaunted courage of her fellow operators was there to get her out of the scrape she had gotten into. She wasn’t sure who reached the massive war machine first, but whoever it was must have had a spider charge on them, because when the machine’s front left leg was blown in half, just below the knuckle, Standish recognised the explosive signs of the charge. That put a smile on her face, and just as the giant machine started to tilt towards its left front, when she was only seconds from landing on the top of the machine, a micro-tungsten round, fired from the machine’s close-in-weapons-system, caught Standish in the right shoulder, cutting through her armour, her flesh, then out the rear of her suit.

  The impact of the round hitting her spun her around, so that instead of landing facing the gun-platform, she slammed into its top on her back. The force knocked the wind out of her, and if her armour’s AI hadn’t braced itself for the impact, she could have broken her back.

  “Fuck.” Was all she could utter.

  The wind was knocked out of her, but she was almost entirely unscathed. The nano-bot med-unit inside the armour quickly went to work dressing the wound, and while the flesh may have healed, there were going to be longterm consequences of being hit by a tungsten shell.

  Rolling onto her front, Standish checked her position, and found that she was looking at one of the primary data sensors for the giant machine, and without hesitating, she brought up her rifle, and fired off a powerful blast directly into the component, and seconds later, the entire machine shut-down with a loud groan.

  Letting out a deep breath, Standish pushed herself up and sucked in a deep breath of now foul-tasting recycled air. A medical warning flashed on her heads-up-display, letting her know that she had in fact been wounded, and while that wound was healed, there was a ninety-five percent probability that she was going to have blood poisoning from the tungsten shell in the next ten hours. That didn’t bother her too much, she knew that she’d be dead or safely back in the Etelainen in that time.

  Looking around the dead hulk of the gun-platform, Standish spotted Bender in his white armour, standing just a few metres away. He approached the machine and looked up at Standish, who was still two metres off the ground.

  “Good work.” He said dryly.

  Standish didn’t reply but worked her way down to the edge of the platform, then dropped down to the ground. When her feet hit the ground, she suddenly felt dizzy, and bent over, clutching at her right shoulder as her grip on her rifle loosened.

  Bender was the first to reach her.

  “What hit you?” He asked.

  Standish flipped up her blast shield. “Tungsten round.” She replied, her blue coloured eyes focused on the white blast shield of Bender’s helmet.

  “Can you shoot with your left?” He asked, blast shield still down.

  “Yes.” She replied as best she could.

  “Good.” He gave her a pat on the back and
helped her transition her rifle into her left hand. “We need to make our way to AO Sky at best possible speed.” He pointed towards the west where clouds of smoke and flashes from explosions could be seen. “The only way off this rock is over there, and that is where we are going.”

  Standish watched as Bender took charge of the survivors of the attack on the gun-platform. “We’re going to form a wedge, you four out front, I’m in the middle, you four in the rear wedge.” He stopped and looked at Standish. “I want you with me.”

  Standish nodded and flipped down her blast shield. Standish knew that Bender was putting her in the safest place in the formation, but she also knew that there wasn’t any place safe for any of them on Qera.

  While the operators formed up in the two wedges, the surviving Coalition troops were doing their best to ignore the nearly invincible operators in their splendidly coloured armour. The infantry that had emerged from the woods had been shredded. Standish wasn’t sure how many bodies littered the field, but it was well into the hundreds, and now that the gun-platform was down, the infantry had lost interest or the will to carry-on getting slaughtered. Those that were still alive moved among the dead and injured, offering help where they could.

  Just before Bender gave the order to move off, Standish walked over to a nearby wounded female Coalition trooper. Her left arm had been cut off below the elbow, and most of her left pelvis was gone. The only reason she was alive was because the uniform she was wearing had cauterised the injuries, and she hadn’t bled out, but she was in a severe state of shock, twitching and writhing on the ground, her eyes blinking uncontrollably looking up towards the sky.

  A male, perhaps a good friend, ran up to her, and dropped to his knees, tears in his eyes. He pulled off his helmet and cradled the head of the wounded female in his arms and screamed at Standish in a foreign tongue. She must have been the devil incarnate in her red and black armour. Kneeling next to the pair, Standish pointed to the pistol on the male’s hip.

  His eyes were blank, unable to understand the suggestion she was making, so she made it again and got the same reaction. Finally, she reached forward and pulled the pistol out of the man’s holster with one hand, grabbed his free hand, and stuck the weapon into it.

  “Move.” Bender ordered.

  Standish stood up, checked her grip on her weapon, turned, and started to follow Bender and the first wedge. After ten paces, she heard a single shot, a pause, then a second shot. Activating her helmet’s rear camera, she could see the male’s body slumped over the female’s.

  Focusing her attention back to the front, Standish knew that they had several kilometres left to travel, and glancing off to her right, she could see mecha lurking on the other side of the HSR, ready to launch their attack at any moment. It didn’t make any sense to her why the final push hadn’t come yet. Either the local forces commander didn’t want to commit his valuable Sentinels or some other factor that she couldn’t surmise.

  The formation was moving quickly away from the park back towards the HSR. They could still get contact from the park or from the forces that had emerged from the underground station at AO Throne, yet nothing had presented itself as a significant threat other than the gun-platform. Until the second wave from the park presented itself.

  “Contact rear-left!” Came a loud shout from one of the operators in the first wedge.

  Standish quickly snapped her head around to look at the park, spotting the imminent threat that was emerging from the forest-line park, and this time it wasn’t a gun-platform that they had to deal with, instead it was up-armoured infantry, and several four-metre tall battle suits piloted by Coalition troops.

  Standish might have had some tungsten neuro-toxin running through her body, but her mind was still sharp, and her body was still operating at a high level of efficiency, and the moment she spotted the mech-suits, she brought up her left arm and fired off a mini-missile at one of the contraptions.

  The missile streaked through the air quickly, slamming into the thinly plated front of the nearest mecha, and exploded in a subtle, yet substantial enough explosion to kill the driver, and send the machine crashing face-first into the green grass.

  “On-line!” Bender roared.

  He didn’t need to tell them what to do. Everyone knew the drill. It was a react to contact left, too far to assault though, which meant everyone fired off a burst of laser fire, or a missile at the approaching attackers, then fanned out into a line and dropped down.

  The roar of fire being traded was deafening.

  This time, more guns were facing the Dynamic Operators, and the troops emerging from the park were wearing armour, giving them some protection against the energy weapons the operators were using. Worse still, the Coalition troops were carrying heavier weapons, making them much more lethal than the first group of attackers to emerge from the park.

  “First wedge, bound back!”

  Standish heard Bender because she was right next to him, but she wasn’t sure how well everyone else heard him. She couldn’t do anything besides continuing to put down accurate weapons fire towards the attackers. Body shots weren’t working against the enemy armour, but headshots were effective. That slowed Standish’s rate of fire, and firing left-handed didn’t help matters.

  When Bender gave the second bound command, Standish flipped her weapon to safe, rolled to her right twice, then pushed herself off the ground, turned while still kneeling, then took off sprinting to the rear, weaving as she moved. She could see that at least two operators had been gunned down while running back, and there was nothing she could do to help them. If she stopped moving, she was going to die.

  Racing past the line that the first wedge had established, she carried on for another twenty metres before turning, and throwing herself to the ground, quickly taking up a stable firing position. She flipped the safety off, took aim and opened fire.

  It was at that point that things turned from bad to worse.

  “Contact rear!” Someone shouted.

  Standish quickly brought her rear-camera image to her HUD, and spotted infantry, along with two Sentinels moving out from under the High-Speed Rail lines, firing wildly towards the operators that were now caught in a cross-fire.

  “Assault to HSR!”

  She knew Bender was right. They had to get out of the open as fast as possible and get some form of cover.

  “Target the Sentinel’s first!”

  Standish was on her feet, her legs pumping. This was it, she thought to herself. The end was near. There was no chance that they were going to be able to close the range to the two Sentinel’s and defeat them. She knew that her rifle might be able to destroy one of the machines, but it’d require a massive blast, and she only had a finite number of energy clips in reserve.

  As she raced forward, she could see a figure moving faster than the rest out of the corner of her eye. Once the individual was out in front of her, she could tell it was Bender from the colour of his armour. She watched as he closed down the distance to one of the Sentinel’s with a pace that she didn’t think possible, and when he was ten metres away from the ten-foot-tall war machine, he dropped his rifle, pulled his Dynamic Operations fighting knife, and lunged at the red coloured droid.

  The move was unlike anything Standish had ever seen before. The fact that Bender had dropped his rifle was shocking, but the wild, corkscrew-like movement that he made towards the machine was even more savage. The first strike that Bender landed was to the chest, but the second strike was lethal, as he plunged the knife into the side of the machines head.

  Standish didn’t have time to watch the machine slump face-first into the ground, she had her own threats to handle, a pair of armoured infantry directly to her front, twenty metres away. Not slowing her run, Standish notched up the intensity level of her rifle’s output and fired off two quick headshots, dropping the approaching fighters.

  Once the targets to her front were down, she kept moving until she passed back under the HSR, and only
then did she slow her run, scanning the area to her front, then to her right, then back to her left. What she saw didn’t encourage her. Fewer operators were standing to her right and left than there had been when they initiated their assault on the gun-platform.

  Turning around, she quickly dropped into a prone firing position and scanned the field all the way up to the park. The armoured infantry and mech suits were advancing with caution, but more worrying was the number of dead operators that had either been killed charging back towards the HSR or gunned down from behind as they raced away from the park. It didn’t really matter. They were losing numbers while charging from one threat to another. She didn’t want to say it, but she was starting to wonder if they should have just carried on running when the first gun-platform had emerged from the park, and not tried to take it out. As a result, they were now separated from the rest of the survivors from AO Throne, and only a fraction of the way to their destination.

  She didn’t know what the plan was, but they were in trouble.

  Reaching down, she checked her ammunition status, and that news wasn’t promising. Not only were they not close to the space-port, but she knew that everyone must be low on ammo. And just when she was starting to feel that they were doomed, the comms channel began to come to life.

  “Bender.”

  It was Reyn.

  “Go.” Bender replied over the open net.

  “AO Sky is secured. You are the only operators outside the perimeter.”

  “Understood. We are two hundred yards from building seven. Request extract from the roof as soon as possible.” Bender replied.

  “We’re going to start jumping ships out now.” Reyn replied.

  Bender stayed silent for a moment. “Do it.”

  With the conversation over, Standish looked over her right shoulder towards the towering building that was behind them. The massive structure was grey in colour and ten levels high. It was a perfect example of brutalist architecture. She couldn’t see any threats lurking between her position and the building, but she knew that the building had an underground link to the hub in the central park, allowing for rapid reinforcement if required.