Homefall: Book Four of the Last Legion Series

by Chris Bunch

  Monique Lir, curled around the kingpost, blew him in half, grinned, found another man, killed him, and methodically continued her slaughter.

  • • •

  Sopi Midt scuttled from the circus’s pay tent across the arena floor, a large red box under his arm.

  He saw the woman with a pistol.

  “No!” he shouted. “I’ll share … don’t … you can’t …”

  The woman, having no idea what Midt was screaming about, shot him in the chest, then again as he writhed in blood.

  The box hit the floor, smashed open, and credits spilled out.

  The woman dropped her pistol, scooped up money, and Lir killed her from above. Three others tried for the treasure, and Lir lobbed a grenade down.

  After that, the circus’s cashbox was left completely alone, bills and coins spread across the arena floor amid sprawled bodies.

  • • •

  “Come on, Ticonderoga,” Emton coached. “Come on with the rest of us so we can find a place to hide, where we won’t get hurt.”

  Ticonderoga, crouched under Raf Aterton’s podium, lashed his tail, looked in another direction, pretending not to hear.

  The other five animals were already huddled in a large, wheeled carrier.

  “Come on, you horrible animal,” Emton pleaded. He heard a noise, looked up, and saw two grinning Mobiles coming toward him, one with a club, the other with some sort of hook on a pole.

  “Oh, go away you silly creatures,” he said, pulling one of the small pocket pistols the late Sopi Midt had procured from an inner pocket. He pointed the pistol at the men, squinched his eyes closed, pulled the trigger twice.

  He heard a scream, and a thud. Emton opened his eyes, saw one man laying motionless, the other writhing, clutching his stomach.

  Emton got up, went to the wounded man, put the pistol to the man’s head and, again with closed eyes, pulled the trigger.

  By the time he got back to the podium, Ticonderoga was in the carrier, with the others.

  • • •

  Rudi Kweik’s horses were surging against the ropes keeping them in the big room used for a cage. One gelding slammed into the rope netting, and it tore away, and the horses ran for freedom.

  Kweik and his wives, shouting, waving their arms, were almost trampled.

  A gunman saw Kweik hobbling into the arena after his vrai, shot him.

  Jil Mahim saw Kweik go down, dropped the gunman, then darted out, grabbed Kweik by the neck of his voluminous shirt, dragged him back into an entryway where Fleam crouched, weapon ready.

  “If any of the bastards get close … tie a knot in their tails,” she said.

  Fleam actually smiled. “They won’t even get close.”

  She opened her aid pouch, tore Kweik’s shirt open, winced as she saw the hole in his chest, close to his heart.

  Shaking her head, she felt his back, found an exit wound. It wasn’t a lung shot, she thought hopefully.

  Kweik opened his eyes, smiled at her peacefully, then his body contorted, and he was dead.

  Mahim pulled his shirt back in order, glanced at Kweik’s wives as they began wailing, put them out of her mind as she scuttled along the wall toward another casualty.

  • • •

  A dozen men froze as Alikhan came out of a passage, a devourer-weapon in one upper paw, a waspgrenade in his other. He shot two men, thumbed the wasp-grenade, and tossed it into the midst of the Mobiles.

  They screamed as the grenade went off, and the pseudo-insects hummed out of the shattered box, stinging as they went.

  Alikhan shot two more, and the others panicked, seeing the huge bullets strike, and then the maggotlike creatures inside spill out, expand, and begin eating.

  None of them made it back down the passage to the stairs they’d come up.

  • • •

  Running Bear, sensibly clad in a coverall, ran at the head of fifteen troupers into the rear of the Mobiles.

  He shot a woman with a bloodstained butcher knife, then realized he was shouting aloud.

  To his eternal shame, it wasn’t one of his people’s half-remembered war cries, but the circus cry of “Hey, Rube.”

  • • •

  Maev ran into the bear handlers’ position, saw the two robots standing immobile, their handlers sprawled in death.

  “Son of a bitch,” she said, pulled one body out of the way, put a helmet on as she got behind the controls.

  “I think I almost remember this,” she muttered, and Li’l Doni came alive.

  She steered him out of the position, toward a cluster of Mobiles bent over a couple of bodies.

  One man turned, saw the shambling creature, and screamed. A woman shot the robot, saw her round impact, then Doni’s claws ripped her throat away.

  The Mobiles ran in all directions.

  A few made it to safety.

  “Now, let’s go looking for somebody else to mess with,” Maev muttered and, out on the arena floor, Li’l Doni shambled about at her bidding.

  • • •

  “The question is going to be,” Sir Douglas said in a reasonable voice to Njangu, “whether we can put the pussies back where they belong, afterward.”

  “Yeh,” Njangu agreed, keeping his blaster ready, again remembering Garvin’s story, long ago on a burning rooftop, about why he’d joined the military, after setting a circus’s cats on a crowd during a big clem.

  “Well, nothing ventured,” Sir Douglas sighed, and began opening the doors of the lifter-mounted cages.

  The animals hesitated, and Sir Douglas went to the rear of the cages, began firing his blank pistol into the air.

  “Come on,” he said. “Help me.”

  Njangu obeyed, clanging his blaster barrel along the bars.

  The cats reluctantly surged out of their cages and went down the passageway toward the arena floor.

  • • •

  “I’d suggest,” Sir Douglas said, “you get in here for a few minutes, where it’s safe.”

  Njangu thought that a very good idea.

  The cats, angry, scared, came into the arena crouched, tails lashing.

  Mobiles saw them, moaned in fear.

  Possibly if they’d charged the cats, they might have frightened them back down the passage. Instead, people made one of two very fatal choices: they either stood frozen in fear or they ran, both perfectly familiar behavior of animals’ prey.

  Roaring, bounding, the beasts pounced, killing, killing again, and bloodlust built.

  A few of the Mobiles had the courage to shoot at the cats, but only one hit, searing a bolt down one lion’s side. A moment later, a smashing paw tore his head off.

  The Mobiles were in full flight, back toward the side entrance they’d broken through.

  “I guess,” Sir Douglas said reluctantly, “we’d best go and tuck our friends back where they belong.”

  • • •

  “I have one … three … five launches,” an electronics officer reported. “Maybe more. Patrol ships of some sort. Medium-size.”

  Liskeard stood in the center of his bridge, considering his options.

  There were none.

  He waved to a talker.

  “Is Boursier ready to launch?”

  The talker asked.

  “Sir, Boursier One is ready.”

  “Launch!” Liskeard ordered. “Try to give any close support you can at the stadium, and take out any of those patrol ships that get in your way.”

  The aksai in the hold dropped from its mag-couples, wobbled on its antigravs toward the open lock, was out into the open air.

  Liskeard took a deep breath, made a decision.

  “Close the lock and stand by to lift.”

  • • •

  The stairwell to the exit was packed with pushing Mobiles, trying to get out of this arena of horror.

  Njangu appeared at a landing above. He held a sack in one hand.

  “Hey!” he shouted.

  A few heard him through the din, looke
d up.

  Njangu thumbed one of the grenades in the bag to life, dropped the bag in the center of the throng below.

  He ducked back out the door he’d come in through, deciding he didn’t want to see what happened in four … no, three seconds.

  • • •

  The Mobiles boiled out into the street, just as Jacqueline Boursier, swearing madly, fought the aksai, never intended for low speed close air support, down the avenue toward the stadium.

  She saw people running, starting to shoot at her, gawping in horror, and she toggled a sensor.

  Her chaingun churned 35mm collapsed-uranium bullets in a six-thousand-round stream into the street below, red tracers, red death.

  She lifted into an Immelmann at the end of the avenue, came back, trying not to notice the buildings just a couple of meters below, very close to her wingtips.

  • • •

  Garvin was in a room, trying to help Knox keep the showgirls from complete hysteria when his belt com buzzed.

  “Gaffer … this is Big Bertha. Stand by for pickup.” Garvin forgot about the women, ran hard for the main entrance.

  • • •

  Big Bertha, bigger than the stadium, bigger than any building in the city, banked overhead, then its nose lifted.

  “He can’t do that,” Danfin Froude said.

  “But he is,” Ristori said.

  He was. Liskeard backed Big Bertha on secondary drive toward the sort of vacant lot. Its landing fins, then the ship’s bulk itself, smashed down on the ruined building.

  Smoke-blackened facing fell away, then the building’s steel framing bent, broke, and Big Bertha was safely down, even if canted at a bit of an angle.

  Some of the Mobiles chanced shooting at the transport, but a hidden port opened, and a pair of chainguns yammered, smashing buildings open as if they were cardboard.

  “That’s a good kitten,” Sir Douglas soothed, as a tiger and two lions, growling, went past him back in the cages.

  “Nice kitties,” Njangu said nervously. A lioness bounded down the passageway, and into the cage.

  • • •

  “That’s all but one,” Sir Douglas said.

  “And here he comes,” Njangu said.

  Muldoon, dark stains on his black coat, prowled down the passageway. He paused, eyed Njangu thoughtfully, licked bloodied jaws, went inside.

  “All right,” Sir Douglas said. “Now, let’s get these cages in the air.”

  He banged the cage door shut, and Njangu started breathing again.

  • • •

  The stadium PA crackled on.

  “Big Bertha is here! Everybody to the main exit for loading! Don’t hurry, don’t panic,” Garvin’s voice said. “We’ve got plenty of time, and nobody will get left.”

  • • •

  Jiang Fong, his wife and child, the other acrobats trailing, were the first to reach Big Bertha, trotting up the ramp and through the lock.

  “Names … quickly,” Erik Penwyth called.

  Fong answered, and Penwyth made check marks on a list.

  Next came the horses, trotting together, Darod Montagna and Kweik’s widows behind them, chivvying them up the ramp, back toward their safe houses.

  Darod turned back, unslinging her blaster.

  “You’re supposed to stay aboard, once you make it,” the officer told her.

  “I’m still not through doing paybacks,” Montagna snarled, and went back across to the stadium.

  • • •

  “Tails up! Tails up!” Sunya Thanon and Phraphas Phanon were chanting and, obediently, the elephants, in a long line, streamed out the main entrance toward the steps, following Sir Douglas’s cat cages.

  One brushed against the ticket booth, collapsing it.

  Thanon and Phanon darted to the front, their blasters ready.

  Thanon saw a man with a rifle, shot at him, missed. The man fired back, and Thanon screamed, went to his knees.

  Phanon was beside him. Thanon stared at him, not recognizing Phanon for a moment.

  “I wish,” he tried. “I wish …”

  He coughed blood.

  “Perhaps I am now going to Coando,” he said. “I will wait for you there.”

  Phanon’s eyes were blurred as he heard his lover die.

  He looked up, saw a bottle spewing fire spin toward him, smash down, and explode. The flames took him, and he screamed, tore at himself as his flesh blackened, fell across Thanon’s body.

  The elephants were milling, Imp screaming, close enough to the molotov to have gotten burned.

  Two women with improvised spears ran toward the bulls. The spear was yanked away from the first by one raging bull, and the beast’s rolled trunk shot out, smashing her skull.

  The second tried to run, was taken, lifted, and hurled, almost casually, against a building.

  Alikhan ran out of the stadium, eyes red in rage, a devourer-weapon in each paw, firing, and then there were no attackers left alive to shoot.

  “Tails up! Tails up!” he called, and the elephants swayed back and forth, hesitating, then remembered the command, even if it came from an unfamiliar voice.

  Obediently, once more in line, the elephants followed Alikhan, Imp and Loti close at his side, across the street and up the ramp into the starship.

  Alikhan led the elephants back to their area, wished he had time to soothe and feed them, knew better.

  He found a lift, went to the top of the starship, found Dill buckling himself into an aksai, Kekri Katun trying to help.

  “Come on, partner,” Dill said. “I want some blood.”

  “I alssso,” Alikhan hissed, normally perfect Common lost a bit in his rage as he opened the canopy of his own ship. “In bucketsss and barrelsss.”

  • • •

  In a holo studio halfway across the city, Fove Gadu was in mid-’cast:

  “Oh no, we of the Mobilization Party have found Abia Cornovil was not the only one corrupted by the aliens. We have a list of over a hundred men and women, high-rankers all, who’ve leagued themselves with these monsters.

  “Even now, as our fearless men and women are bringing down these offworlders, we have squads of the People’s Militia out, tracking down these traitors, to bring them to People’s Justice …”

  • • •

  Aboard Big Bertha, a com officer motioned to Liskeard. On an inset screen was the image of Gadu, pounding his fist on a podium.

  “Sir, I’ve got a perfect fix on him.”

  “You’re sure it’s not an echo antenna?”

  “Very sure. I’ve got all three of that station’s antennae plotted, and this ain’t none of them.”

  Liskeard smiled, motioned to a talker.

  • • •

  “Come, ladies,” Knox said as he chivvied the showgirls toward Big Bertha, weaving through engine-revving lifters waiting to go up the ramp. “Don’t panic, don’t smear your makeup, and I guarantee I’ll have the Gaffer issue a bonus for this whole day’s silliness.”

  One of the women shrieked as two aksai floated out of the starship, not a meter overhead, then climbed for altitude.

  • • •

  Darod Montagna gunned down three Mobiles crouched safely — they thought — in an entranceway, then jerked sideways as rounds pinged off the sidewalk around her.

  She rolled to her feet, dived for a solid-looking, only half-destroyed midway booth. The sniper’s bolts slammed in around her.

  “Pinned down, by all the hells,” she growled. “What a goddamned amateur thing to do.”

  She heard a roar, and went even flatter as a strange-looking patrol ship, not twenty meters overhead, flashed past, cannon winking along its stub wings.

  Gunfire chattered close, and she rolled over, blaster ready, as Garvin dived in beside her.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey,” he managed. “What’re you doing out here?”

  “The same thing you are,” Montagna said. “Being pinned down. You’re about a hell of a rescuer.
”

  “I’m sorry,” Garvin said. “I saw you getting your ass in a jamb and thought I could help. I’m short a Zhukov … all I’ve got is me at the moment.

  “Normally, enough. But now …”

  The patrol ship came back by, but this time Boursier’s aksai was on its tail. Someone on the ground put a burst through the aksai’s fuselage.

  Boursier’s ship fought for altitude, juddering, almost stalled, went inverted, corrected, managed to brake, and floated back inside Big Bertha.

  “Hope to hell whoever’s pushing that boat got that patrol ship,” Darod said.

  “Hadda be Jacqueline … and no, she didn’t,” Garvin said. “Here the bastard comes again, and I think we’re his only goddamned target!”

  “Go pick on somebody your own size, you bully!” Darod shouted.

  Obediently the patrol ship lifted, and began an attack pass on Big Bertha.

  • • •

  A weapons officer aboard Big Bertha toggled two Shrikes, and they flashed out, struck the patrol craft, and blew it into fragments.

  • • •

  Flame and fragments clattered down around Garvin and Darod.

  “Come on, you buttbreath Buddha,” Montagna shouted. “No goddamned friendly-fire casualties allowed here!”

  Garvin saw movement to his front, fired, and the movement stopped.

  “Forget about incoming friendly rounds,” he said. “There’s enough folks out there on the ground trying to get us killed.”

  • • •

  Five Centrum patrol ships drove toward the distant bulk of Big Bertha. None of them saw the two aksai and the pair of Nana boats until the first two patrol ships blew up.

  The surviving three banked away, two holding wing-mate discipline, the third going for the deck and full speed.

  “Come on, come on,” Ben Dill crooned, seeing one patrol ship dance in his sights. A Shrike beeped at him, and he let it go, switched his aim to the second patrol ship.

  It suddenly rolled, went for the deck, Dill’s aksai after it. He noted detachedly the first patrol ship bursting into flames, a ball of flame rolling down a wide avenue, flames spreading in its wake.

  The second ship was weaving back and forth. Dill found it in his sights, fired without the Shrike telling it was ready.

  The missile went off about ten meters from the patrol ship. The Centrum craft rolled and, still at full speed, crashed, tumbling, through a high-rise government-looking building.