by Richard Fox
“Starting our attack run,” Durand said.
Brrrrrrrrrrt!
The Gatling gun on Durand’s Eagle shot the same bullets as Orozco’s heavy cannon, but at 4,200 rounds per second. The sound of the rounds firing melded into one continuous tone. Durand’s bullets tore through the jungle, kicking up mud and Toth bodies like the hand of an angry god tearing up an imperfect creation.
Brrrrrrrrrrt!
The next fusillade hit the tree line, shattering giant trees into kindling and sending gouts of soil into the air. A dozen Toth menials followed by a warrior made it into the clearing. Hale aimed his rifle at the warrior.
A Mule roared overhead, the blast from its engines staggering Hale and sending his shot wide.
Brrrrrrrrrrt!
The Toth vanished as dozens of small explosions ripped through their advance.
“Damn, I love that sound,” Orozco said.
“You’re all clear!” Durand yelled. Two Eagles zoomed over the clearing and pulled into a steep climb.
Hale spun around and saw two Mules idling in the clearing, their ramps opening far too slowly for Hale’s taste.
“Torni. I want you, Standish, Cortaro, Bailey and Yarrow in the port Mule. Everyone else on starboard,” Hale said. “Man the turrets and let’s get the hell out of here!”
Hale waited until the last of the Marines had boarded, then he ran up a Mule’s ramp. Orozco was already climbing into the bottom gunner’s turret.
“Button up!” Hale turned his suit IR to broadcast, hoping the pilots heard him. He slammed his fist against the bulkhead and the ramp rose from the ground. The pilot didn’t wait for it to close before taking the drop ship into the air.
Hale grabbed a handhold and looked back to Anthalas. He saw the white pyramid just before the ramp clanged shut.
“If you don’t strap in you’re going to have a really rough ride,” the pilot said over the IR.
Hale snapped out of his reverie and grabbed a seat strap just as the Mule banked hard.
“Steuben, man a turret. I need to call the Breitenfeld.”
Steuben looked up at the cramped space within the turret, then down at his considerable bulk.
“Should I take your ridiculous notion as an insult to my current relevance or as a compliment to my perceived skill?” the alien asked.
“What? Oh ….” Hale stumbled toward the middle of the drop ship and pointed to the dorsal turret. “Lift me up.”
Steuben grabbed Hale by the waist and hoisted him into the air. Hale slid the turret door aside and pulled himself up and into the gunner’s chair. He strapped himself in and tested the controls.
The twin gauss cannons could cover almost the entire upper half of the drop ship as he spun the ball turret to and fro. The cannon automatically swung over the tail fins and upturned wing tips—it wouldn’t do for the gunner to blow off parts of the ship he was in. Full ammo cans and two reloads were ready for him. He slapped a button on the side of the seat and the turret door sealed shut.
The only video game allowed on the Breitenfeld was a VR turret simulator, and Hale held the second-highest score on the ship. He was positive Standish had found some way to cheat, but Hale hadn’t caught him in the act … yet.
Anthalas’ golden skies thinned as the Mule ascended, giving way to darkness. Lightning cracked through distant, towering thunderheads, their tops ripped aside by trade winds. It always surprised Hale how peaceful a world could look from orbit.
“Sir?” Orozco said through the ship’s IR.
“Go.”
“You good up there?” Orozco asked.
“Field of fire checks out. Guns read green.”
“That’s not what I mean. That was the worst I’ve ever been in, ever even heard of. You kept it together real good for us. You ever need to charge hell with a bucket brigade and I’ll carry your water.”
“Thanks, Orozco. But we’re not home free just yet,” Hale said.
“Hale, this is Captain Valdar. We’re secure over IR. What’s your status?” the Breitenfeld’s master asked him.
“Sir, we’ve got one wounded. I don’t know how to classify his injuries but he’ll need to be quarantined once we’re back. The entire Ranger squad is Missing In Action, but presumed dead,” Hale said.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Ken,” Valdar said. “What about the Omnium? Did you find anything?”
“Roger, sir. We’ve got a computer core that should have something on it. The Xaros are—” A wave of static filled his helmet and Hale shut off the entire IR net, his ears ringing from the assault. He switched channels to the ship’s network, testing to see if it was malfunctioning too.
“Pilot, what was that?” Hale asked.
“Don’t know. Transmissions along the buoys went down. We’ve got local IR and that’s it. I’m not going to open radio comms and have Xaros jump down our throats,” the pilot said.
“Bogies inbound!” Durand said. “Looks like three of those silver fighters we saw earlier. Coming in off our three o’clock.”
Hale swung his turret to the right and saw a glint of sunlight off an approaching fighter.
“Those are Toth ships,” Steuben said. “They are much faster than your Eagles.”
“I don’t think they’re coming over to say hi,” Durand said. “Mules, you haul ass back to the Breitenfeld. We’ll cover you.”
The Mule’s engines flared and Hale felt the push of acceleration against his body. Durand’s Eagle winged over Hale’s turret. He looked up and found her gaze as she passed. Most of her face was covered by her helmet, but he could see the concern and worry in her eyes.
He nodded slightly and tapped two fingers against his temple. Durand and Ma’s Eagles fell away beneath the Mule’s wings. With a new threat bearing down on them, he wasn’t sure if she was right or wrong to end their relationship. He set the holographic crosshairs of his cannons ahead of the Toth fighters and pressed his thumbs against the triggers. No matter what feelings he still had for her, it had no effect on just how much he wanted to kill the Toth.
Hale aimed for the center Toth fighter and pressed hard against both triggers. The turret shook as the gauss cannons flashed, the only sound the cycling ammo canisters rattling like old typewriters.
His first shots fell behind the Toth as they approached, their speed varying and fouling his shots. Orozco joined the fray, sweeping rounds across the Toth’s path. The three silver ships broke apart and weaved against each other before flying apart in a maneuver Hale could only imagine from an airshow.
The vibration from Orozco’s shots rumbled through the ship.
“Where’d they go? Call out targets!” Hale said. He swung the turret around and a Toth ship sliced through space just meters above him. He ducked out of reflex and tried to follow the fighter, his turret moving like a tortoise in comparison.
“Human,” a modulated voice came over his IR. “Human meat will stop. Meat will submit.”
Steuben got on the channel and spoke in the Toth language, vehemence and malice behind every sibilant word.
“What he said,” Hale said, closing the IR channel. He looked over his shoulder and saw a Toth fighter orient toward his ship.
Hale swung the turret over, nearly inverting himself, and opened fire. His cannon rounds crossed paths with blue laser blasts. Lasers annihilated his first burst of rounds and slashed over his turret, so bright they left an afterglow on his eyes.
The Toth fighter banked away, atmosphere and debris venting from it. The craft slowed down just enough for Hale to lead it with confidence, and he stitched rounds down its back. The fighter exploded in a blaze of blue light.
“Good shooting, sir,” Orozco said.
Hale’s euphoria was short-lived. Laser blasts shot up and past the engines. A bolt connected with the port engine, blowing it clear of its housing. The remaining engine spun the drop ship around so hard the centripetal force pinned Hale against the back of his seat, unable to reach the control sticks.
; The starboard engine cut out and Hale could move again. A Toth fighter blurred past the damaged Mule and flipped over. Its engines flared with red light and shifted its momentum toward Hale.
Hale twisted the control sticks … and nothing happened. He tried again, but there was no power. The Toth ship drew closer.
“Pilot! Reset the power! Reset the power!” Hale struggled against the dead controls.
Tracer rounds streaked past the Toth fighter. It banked over on its side then wobbled as it came closer and closer. The fighter lost speed and coasted past the Mule, riven with bullet holes. An Eagle streaked past it.
Two down.
“Pilot?”
“—working on auxiliary batteries until we can reboot the core,” the pilot’s voice finally returned to the IR.
“How long until you’re mobile?” Durand asked.
“Five minutes,” the pilot said, “even then we’ll be slow.”
“We don’t have that much time until the rest of the Toth get here,” Durand said.
“What? Bring me up to speed.” Hale searched the sky and saw distant glimmers of Toth fighters. Dozens of them. There was no chance his ship could outrun them, or the two Eagles could outfight so many. They’d come to Anthalas on a mission, a mission too many had died for. And the result of that mission wasn’t on Hale’s Mule.
“Durand, I want you to escort the other Mule back to the Breitenfeld. Leave us behind,” Hale said.
“What? No way!” Durand shouted.
“The precious cargo is on the other Mule. It’s all that matters,” Hale said.
“Nag, get the other Mule back. I’ll cover the other one until it’s mobile,” Durand said over the IR.
“Gall, we’ve got new contacts coming in fast,” Choi Ma said. “On intercept to the Toth wing.”
“Fine, more Toth to the party. You have your orders,” Durand said.
“I’m pretty sure they’re Xaros,” Ma said.
“Well … merde,” Durand said.
****
Durand saw the mass of Xaros coming up from the planet, spiked oblong drones, their stalks already burning with energy.
“Nag, you moving out?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am. I don’t like it but I’m doing it,” Choi said.
Durand watched as all but two of the Toth fighters broke away and dove toward the Xaros. “That’s more like it,” she said.
She checked a clock on her control panel. At least four more minutes until the stricken Mule was operational, and that was if the system rebooted as designed. The likelihood it would start moving again depended on how well the lowest bidder decided to do their job on the day the ship was assembled.
“Come on, you bastards.” Durand hit her afterburners and flew to the oncoming Toth. Laser blasts streaked past her. She jinked her Eagle around the line of fire and put a hand on the emergency release for her rocket pods.
Durand inverted and jerked the handle. A bolt snapped inside her ship and flung the rockets into space, ejecting from their mount like a dandelion’s blossom. The rockets became caltrops to the advancing Toth, and one flew right into one of the tumbling munitions. The rocket exploded on impact and the Toth ship tumbled end over end through space, flinging damaged parts and hull plating into the void.
Durand pulled into a tight loop, g-forces graying out her vision as she searched for the other Toth. She glanced over her shoulder, then swung her fighter over into a barrel roll. Laser bolts singed her cockpit and left black scars down her fuselage.
She hit her retro-thrusters and the Toth flew ahead. She squeezed her trigger and a hail of bullets slashed through space. The Toth’s engines died and it hung limp in space, like a drowned rat.
“Splash four! Mule, what’s your status?” Durand brought speed back to her fighter and flew toward the drop ship.
“We’re about two—”
A black metal plug thumped against Durand’s hull. She frowned at it, then went pale. She looked back at the Toth fighter she’d just take out, but it was gone. The Toth know how to play dead, she thought.
Electricity arced from the plug. Discharge crackled through her controls and crept up her arms, stinging her so badly she gasped in pain. Electricity stabbed through her suit and she convulsed against her restraints. The last thing she saw before losing consciousness was a Toth fighter approaching her ship.
****
MacDougall wrapped a strand of explosives around a metal beam and pressed a remote control detonator into the clay-like substance. He triple-checked that he put the correct amount of explosive against the correct spot and annotated the diagram on his Ubi.
“How much longer?” Elias asked.
“Do not rush me. Never rush explosives!” MacDougall shot back.
There was a thump against the barred passageway. And another. A divot formed where a blow bent the metal into the engineering compartment.
“Tell that to them,” Elias said. “Bodel, go topside. Kallen, flank the door. Lafayette, you ready to blow this joint?”
“To what the what?” Lafayette asked. The Karigole was beneath the walkway, extracting the reactor’s control panel from the ship.
“You done yet?” Elias asked. Bodel attached himself to the wall above the doorway and Kallen took up her assigned position. They’d have whoever broke through that door in a three-way cross fire.
“Yes, there’s a significant delta in the tech used for the Omnium and the rest of the ship. Thankfully the interface between the two is easy to find and uncouple,” Lafayette said. “Need I remind you that this cube is full of very sensitive equipment that won’t react well to gunfire?”
“And explosives!” MacDougall added.
“Fine, you know how to say ‘Don’t shoot’ in Toth?” Elias asked.
The door broke off one of the hinges and another blow sent it tumbling toward Elias. Flashes burst from Bodel’s and Kallen’s gauss cannons. Elias’s first instinct was to dive out of the way from the multi-ton door flying toward him, but it would have smashed into the Omnium reactor and that would have complicated matters.
Elias held his arms out and slapped against the lip of the door as it spun toward him. He caught a glimpse of dead menials and a larger creature behind them. He stopped the door flat against him and its momentum pushed him back a yard.
Elias shoved with all the power his shoulder and elbow actuators could muster and sent the door flying back.
It impacted against the wall, crushing several menials like olives in a press. Yellow blood spurt from around the door.
Elias, with a straight shot down the passageway, unloaded with his gauss cannon at full auto. The mass reactive rounds, designed to penetrate Xaros armor and explode within, tore through the charging Toth. One of the larger warriors managed to make it over the threshold using menial bodies as a shield. It barely got the length of its body through the tunnel before Kallen and Bodel cut it down from their open fields of fire.
Elias sent single aimed shots into the menials hesitating in the passageway leading to another cube.
“Lafayette, you didn’t mention anything about there being bigger ones,” Elias said.
“Damn things don’t feel pain, do they?” Kallen asked as an ammo canister popped off her back and a fresh magazine loaded into her guns. “How can we—behind!”
Elias ducked as the forward arms of a warrior passed overhead. The middle arms of the charging warrior wrapped around Elias, pinning them against his sides. The impact snapped Elias from his magnetic lock and the two went spinning through vacuum.
Damage icons flashed against his display as the face of the Toth warrior pressed into his helmet camera, red eyes glowing with what must have been hate. They hit the bulkhead, Elias taking the brunt of the impact beneath the warrior’s bulk.
The warrior’s fore and rear arms slashed at Elias, tearing away the ammo feed to his Q-shell launcher on his left arm.
Elias shunted more power to his shoulder actuators and broke from the Toth’s gri
p. His hands dug into the warrior’s space suit. Elias ripped its suit open, exposing wide swaths of scaly flesh that bubbled and popped as the blood within boiled into the vacuum. The warrior stabbed its claws into Elias’s chest plate, embedding two inches into the armor.
Elias slammed his fist into the Toth’s arm, breaking it badly enough that a jagged spike of bone tore through its suit. He grabbed the Toth by the chest, shoved it almost arm’s distance away, then jerked the Toth toward him. The Toth’s helmet impacted with Elias’s armored helm and shattered.
He flung the dying warrior away and found Kallen and Bodel sniping at menials scrambling along the walls.
“Where did they come from?” Elias asked.
“There are two other passageways connecting this cube to others,” Lafayette said. “The probability of either is—”
“Are you done yet?” Kallen shot at the Karigole.
“I suppose now is as good a time as any. Shall I detonate?”
“Yes!” the Iron Hearts said in unison.
“Fire in the hole!” MacDougall shouted.
Demolitions work in a vacuum had a number of inherent advantages. With no oxygen, there was no risk of fire. With no atmosphere, blast waves were of little concern. The charges set up around the Omnium reactor blew with white flashes of light, rippling up and around the struts holding it in place.
The flash overloaded Elias’ cameras, shutting them down as a failsafe to save Elias’ brain from red lining. Elias opened the view port on his chest plate and saw that the reactor was gone. Struts that had held it place burned white hot from where charges had sliced through them like a red-hot scalpel. He ran to the edge of what remained of the platform and looked down to see a massive hole in the cube’s side open to space. The reactor spun end over end into the void.
“Did you see that? Bloody glorious!” MacDougall said from the ruined edge of the cube’s hull.
“Let’s get out of here. We need ….” Elias twisted his body to look around. “Where’s Lafayette?”