Spirit of Empire 4: Sky Knights

by Lawrence White

  Havlock shouted back at him over the continuous pounding coming from Guarl’s gun, “This will be over by then.”

  Turmae shrugged. “It will be what it will be. They’re moving as fast as they can.”

  Havlock closed his eyes, shutting out the presentation and mentally imagining things from a big picture point of view. The core of his command was still strong. The inner wall would not fall easily or quickly. If it did, civilians inside would suffer horribly. He absolutely had to hold the inner wall. Farther out, gleasons swarmed, though the curtain wall had done its job and seriously depleted their numbers. Farther out yet, a second wave of gleasons might be gathering.

  He started there, calling M’Kind. “Have you started in on the second wave?”

  “Momentarily. I just finished tuning down the lasers. I have to lift the ship to fire.”

  “We really need your lights.”

  “I understand. I’ll make certain the lights stay on.”

  “Very well.”

  He moved his mental picture of the battle in closer, then had a thought and opened his eyes to check the display. Yes, gleasons were still coming from the far side of the clear area, though not in large numbers. Guarl’s heavy weapon continued its remorseless pounding.

  He called Hawke again. “Can you crush gleasons with the shuttle?”

  “I can try. It might be hard on the shuttle, sir.”

  “Give it a try. If it works, I’ll consider getting others to do it.”

  Havlock closed his eyes again and considered the gleasons’ next impediment—the inner wall. How could he better defend it? He wished he had given the idea more consideration. He had really believed he had the firepower to defend the outer wall.

  He left the hologram and went to a window to look out on the real battle. Turmae joined him there, shaking his head to clear it as Guarl's weapon continued pounding away.

  “I like it out here better. This is where I belong,” Turmae said. “I feel like a different person inside there with the mental painting.”

  “Your orders are saving lives, General.” He pointed to a shuttle bouncing along outside the cleared area. “We’re trying to crush them,” he said.

  Turmae’s eyes widened as the concept hit home. He grabbed Havlock by the arm, yelling, “Can you crush them at the bottom of the inner wall before they’ve had a chance to climb?”

  Havlock’s lips thinned, and he called Hawke. “How’s it going?”

  “Weird, sir, but effective. I’ve called for backup.”

  “Okay. When they’ve thinned out there, I want you to stand by to do the same at the base of the inner wall.”

  “Sir, it’s all blown up in there. It won’t be as level as out here. We might damage the shuttles.”

  “Do the best you can. I just need to buy a little time while we reinforce the inner wall. If it gets really bad, I might ask some of you to press a little harder. We don’t need every single shuttle to be space ready, but some of them need to be.”

  “Understood, sir. I’ll pass on what I’ve learned to the other pilots, then I’ll try it myself.”

  “Stay in touch. And Hawke, we’re going all out on this. The gleasons might win.”

  He heard the hesitation in Hawke’s voice before he heard, “Aye, sir.”

  Gleasons began pouring out of the streets and buildings at the base of the inner wall, forcing the defenders to shift their firing from the outer wall to the base of their own wall. Havlock notified the men to be certain to use stunners as well. He did not know how long the stun effects from the shuttles would last, and if the gleasons restored their invisibility, there would be no hope of stopping them.

  Red lances suddenly appeared in the night sky, flickering on for a millisecond, then off, repeatedly reaching out silently into the night. Explosions lit the darkness in the far distance wherever those lasers struck. He nodded to himself—M’Kind’s lasers had begun thinning the ranks of the second wave of gleasons.

  Blaster fire and arrows rained down on the gleasons who were not only climbing a higher wall but were climbing a smoother wall. This wall had been constructed by expert craftsmen. Stones fit tightly together, and the gleasons’ claws had trouble finding purchase. Any gleason who was missing arms or legs eventually fell, knocking gleasons below them from the wall.

  Some of the gleasons had armed themselves with swords and knives taken from dead defenders, and the occasional blaster sounded from within their ranks. Concentrated blaster fire from his marines quickly silenced them.

  A single shuttle came in close to the inner wall with its weapons firing non-stop. The shuttle came to a stop, then dropped like a rock onto the rubble at the base of the wall. It sprung back up a moment later and repositioned, then dropped again.

  Turmae reported to Havlock that some gleasons had been killed and many maimed, and Havlock passed the word to Hawke and the rest of his shuttles. Soon, shuttles ringed the inner wall, stomping repeatedly. Gleason ranks were being devastated, but the inner wall was much, much shorter around than the curtain wall which meant smaller numbers of gleasons still resulted in swarms. Defenders fired non-stop, and when reinforcements from the curtain wall began filling in, defenders literally stood shoulder to shoulder. A wall of energy poured down on the gleasons. The sound of so many blasters firing at once, added to the constant pounding of Guarl’s big gun, made it hard to think in the command center.

  Suddenly, the gleasons pulled back, racing back into the streets and buildings between the two walls. Havlock ordered shuttles to stun the area through the roofs of the buildings in hopes of restoring any weakened stun effects.

  The retreat was brief. Gleasons returned, but now they concentrated on just two sections of the inner wall, all of them swarming at once. Havlock leaned out his window and felt like he was looking at a disturbed nest of spiders racing up the wall.

  A shuttle lifted to the top of the wall and jockeyed right up to the wall, errant blaster shots ricocheting off its top and sides. It was so close to the wall that defenders could have stepped onto its roof. Suddenly the shuttle sank to the ground, scraping gleasons from the wall and crushing them. It rose again and repeated the process.

  Havlock called him. “Is that you, Hawke?”

  “Busy, sir,” came back a breathless reply.

  Havlock called in more shuttles to copy the process. Gleasons died, but more still swarmed up the wall without pause, some of them reaching the top and leaping into defenders.

  Havlock called across the room to Turmae. “Where’s the queen?”

  “She’s in the keep.”

  “You’d better send fighters.”

  Turmae shook his head and yelled, “I need them on the wall. Our women will have to protect themselves. I left weapons.”

  Havlock’s jaw fell. “You said the gleasons would never take the inner wall. Why would you leave weapons?”

  “In case I was wrong. Surrender is not an option.”

  Havlock shook his head and called Galborae. “Where are you?”

  “In a tunnel. I believe I’ve almost reached the inner wall.”

  “Gleasons have breached the inner wall. Atiana is in the keep.”

  He could hear the shock in Galborae’s voice. “You’ve lost the wall?”

  “No, but there’s some hand-to-hand fighting.”

  “You cannot lose that wall, Gar. She’s defenseless in there. I thought she was on the transporter.”

  “I think she’s better at giving orders than following them.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Galborae sealed the tunnel as he exited, then he found Tennisol. “Gather your men and follow me,” he ordered, ignoring the fact that Tennisol was his king.

  Tennisol did not hesitate. A third of his men had fallen on the outer wall. He formed up the remaining 200 and followed Galborae into the inner ward. There they ran into a barrier of swords, pikes, axes, and spears wielded by women prepared to fight for their very lives.

  Tennisol grabbed Galb
orae by the shoulder and turned him. “Your sword. They’ll come to your sword,” he shouted over the sounds of fighting from the walls above them.

  Galborae nodded grimly. “Move the women away from the walls. Give the gleasons a clear route to the keep.” He then strode toward the main door of the castle and turned to face the women in the inner ward with his back to the door. He drew his sword from its scabbard and activated it, then held it high. Tennisol and twenty of his knights formed up behind Galborae.

  Atiana appeared in front of him with her blaster drawn. Galborae shook his head, then roared at her, “Get inside!” He sent a mental message to Limam: “stay with the Queen, protect her.”

  She took one look at the gore covering Galborae, Tennisol, and their men and knew this was not the time to argue. Besides, she had not been fully trained with the new weapon and knew she could not fire it toward the packed people in the courtyard. This would be a battle of swords and axes.

  “It’s locked from the inside. I’ll join my people in the courtyard.” She did not wait for a reply, she just ran to the nearest edge of her people who had moved as far from the knights as they could.

  She was none too soon. Galborae’s sword did, indeed, act like a beacon to the gleasons. Only five gleasons made it past the wall and into the courtyard, fortunately all of them still visible from the effects of stunning.

  The sword appeared to take on a life of its own, his wrist and arm moving far faster than it could have with his old, heavy sword. Gleason bodies flew apart, torn torsos and heads impacting hard against the knights and covering them with gore. Galborae suddenly went down hard, his head hitting the stones of the landing and the light in his sword extinguishing. Tennisol and his men finished off the two remaining wounded gleasons as Atiana rushed up to them. She pulled pieces of dead bodies from Galborae while Tennisol and his men kept watch over her, then she sat down beside him and pulled his bloody head to her lap.

  The fighting ended as quickly as it had begun. One minute everyone was fighting for their lives, then suddenly the wall was clear.

  Defenders looked at each other in awe, amazed they had lived through the onslaught. Utter silence fell over the castle, broken only by occasional blaster shots into dying gleasons that moved at the bottom of the wall.

  A single cheer broke the silence, then suddenly everyone was cheering and dancing. Knights and civilians embraced aliens who had become brothers in the heat of battle. Bells rang in towers, and the doors of the keep swung open. People peered out cautiously, then they worked their way around Tennisol and his knights to join the others in the courtyard.

  Atiana called urgently into her comm unit for a medic, but to her amazement, Galborae stirred, then opened his eyes, though he appeared to have trouble focusing. Tennisol handed her a shawl borrowed from a passing woman, and Atiana wiped the gore from Galborae’s face.

  “Just rest, Knight,” she said to him. She hugged him as she looked up at Tennisol. “Thank you,” she said.

  He knelt down beside her and took the rag to wipe gore from his own face. “Is it over?”

  Atiana called Havlock and received the all clear. She said to Tennisol, “Tell your men they have fought a great battle and won. You saved Tricor.”

  * * * * *

  In the operations center, Havlock and Turmae looked at each other in silence, then Turmae reached out a hand.

  Havlock grasped the hand in both of his own. “Congratulations, General,” he said solemnly.

  Turmae’s lips thinned. “We’re not done yet, but I have to get out to my men. Will you take over?”

  “Of course. Go!”

  Turmae left and Havlock spoke to his men. “Congratulations, each of you. We’ll celebrate later. There’s still work to do.” To Lieutenant Guarl, he said, “Keep an eye out. I wouldn’t be surprised to find a gleason hanging onto a wall somewhere.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “You might want to downsize your weapon while you’re at it,” he said with a grin.

  Guarl returned the grin and set the modern, high tech, gun on the ancient stones of the floor.

  Havlock called Lebac and M’Kind. “From here it looks like it’s over. What do you see?”

  Lebac’s brow furrowed. “I don’t understand. They fought to the very last man. We saw no retreat at all.”

  “Nor did we. It tells us something about them, but I’m not sure what. If there was someone in charge, he’s ruthless.”

  “He might have been with them,” M’Kind said. “We’ll probably never know. Our men on the ground need to stand down,” he added. “It’s been a horrible ordeal for them. I’m not including the three of us. Our jobs just got harder. We have to run constant surveillance over nearby cities to see if the gleasons retaliate somewhere else.”

  “You don’t think they’ll come back here?” Havlock asked.

  “No, sir. We created a dead zone with our lasers. We took out a lot of the second wave in the process. Those that weren’t killed turned back. There are still a few lurking around Tricor, but we can take them out at our leisure. I plan to enforce the dead zone for a while longer.

  “I can’t release the men yet,” Havlock said. “There could be gleasons hiding out in the city. We have to search every building before letting people go home.”

  M’Kind’s upper hands stopped their preening for a moment, then started back up. “Very well. We’re marines. We’ll suck it up.”

  People celebrated as well as they could where they were. Every medic had been on the walls with their squads, most of them fighting for their lives as much as treating wounded. Now they treated what wounds they could right there on the walls and sent the most seriously wounded to shuttles for the brief ride to the transporter.

  When the sun came up, lazy tendrils of smoke curled into the air above the remains of burning buildings. Parts of the city and several sections of the outer wall had been devastated by shuttles, but the vast majority of the city escaped unscathed. Soldiers swept through the city looking for gleasons, always accompanied by melds. Townspeople suffered through the horror of carting away their dead, then with carting away gleason remains. They dumped dead gleasons outside the city beside the main road where the transporter would incinerate them later.

  When Turmae declared the city free of gleasons, M’Kind brought the transporter as close to the main gate as he could get. The immense, burnished disc had to hover above the structures to each side of the road. Atiana led a crowd of friends and relatives up boarding ramps to assist with the exodus, and at her insistence most of them carried brooms and mops. People and livestock began coming down the ramps, and as areas inside the ship emptied, her people cleaned up behind themselves.

  The city had suffered losses which were grievous to such a small population, some 300 dead and many more wounded. Havlock had lost a similar number of men. Damage to the city would take years to repair. Manpower was available to do the work, but building materials were scarce, and going outside the main gates to get those materials was not high on anyone’s list at the moment. Atiana’s people mourned and celebrated at the same time.

  Havlock took temporary responsibility for defense of the city, meaning all of his squads and some of M’Kind’s crew members stayed on the outer wall, freeing the locals to deal with personal issues for a few days. Soldiers and shuttles guarded the route to the cemetery, and the bodies of dead defenders were interred in one massive ceremony.

  Havlock released large quantities of food, and the people finally got their chance to really celebrate. Atiana held private celebrations for King Tennisol and the surviving knights from his city and hers, then shuttles ferried Tennisol and his men back to Shanlock.

  Havlock sent off a full report to General Stymes via drone. Included with that report was a request for replacement marines and supplies, additional marines and shuttles as soon as they were ready, and as much food as he could send.

  * * * * *

  Atiana and Havlock ran into each other as she was walking
the walls to thank his men. When she saw him she stopped dead in her tracks, as did he. They stared at each other, then Atiana approached him. Without speaking, she took his upper arm and led him into a nearby watch tower for privacy.

  She stopped and turned to him, then threw propriety to the wind. She wrapped her arms around his waist and lay her head on his chest. Havlock, of course, responded, pulling her close and running a hardened hand through her golden hair. As soon as he did, she snuggled closer.

  “I so needed this,” she mumbled into his chest.

  “Consider me always available for more,” he said softly into her ear. “I wish circumstances were different. I’m so sorry for what happened.”

  “Hmm,” she mumbled. Then a little stronger, “Still blaming yourself for bringing the gleasons to Tricor, are you? We already had this discussion, so stop it.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  She squeezed him harder, then leaned back to look into his eyes. “I mean it. Tranxte’s future rests in your hands. You’re just the right person for us, but we need steady hands, not guilty hands. I’m not going to relent on this issue, so get over it. And don’t forget, regardless of the cause, you won a great battle and saved my kingdom.”

  “I’ll agree that I helped. It took every single one of us, your people and mine.”

  “Turmae is a changed man. It’s been generations since anyone here fought a battle on that scale, if ever. I’ve confirmed the new title you gave him of general.”

  “He is a general, Your Majesty. You’re lucky to have a leader such as him.”

  “When time permits, we’ll craft a memorial of this battle. Your sky knights will hold a place of honor.”

  “I need to move on. What do you need from me before I go?”

  She lay her head back on his chest, saying, “More of this.” A little later, she said, “That depends. I intend to be a part of whatever comes.”

  “I hoped you’d say that. I have a specific task in mind for you. I need you to introduce us to the rest of your province, then to other kingdoms. As for myself, I’m going to start with getting to know our enemy. I’m going to capture a gleason.”