by Graham Brown
James used the distraction to move again, escaping just as several rockets hit the very spot they’d been standing in and showering the MRV with chunks of rock and shrapnel.
“They’re getting closer,” Bethel said.
“Not close enough,” James replied.
Outside the freed slaves were firing at will, but their weapons were designed to be used against infantry rather than armor. With a great deal of luck they might cause light damage on a few of the attackers, but their most important role was distraction. With fire coming from all angles, the attackers had to spread their own fire out instead of concentrating solely on the MRVs.
In the distance, one of the attackers was weaving to the right in an uncontrolled motion. James let it go rather than waste time on a damaged machine. Instead, he lit up the vehicle that came in behind it.
By now, his wingmen were firing almost as rapidly as him. As if to make up for lost time, Tango Four unleashed all its missiles at once and followed that with a hailstorm of cannon fire that cut across the fields until the heat limiters cut in and shut down the system.
To James’s surprise the tactic was quite effective, taking out two of the approaching MRVs and causing a third to change course and collide with a fourth. As he watched this the truth dawned on him.
“They’re not trained all that much better than our people,” he said.
“But there’s a lot more of them,” Bethel called back, grasping a handle as James maneuvered the vehicle.
James peered through the smoke of the battle. The incoming fire was picking up. The ridge they were hiding behind was getting obliterated piece by piece. During a brief moment of clarity, he spotted one of the enemy rigs hanging back. He guessed that was the commander directing the battle from the rear.
He wanted to take a shot at the bastard but the blowing smoke quickly obscured the machine once again. With enemy fire coming in from all directions now, they would have only moments before being overrun.
In quick succession Tango Four was hit with missiles from the left and the right. Like a stunned boxer it teetered for a second before a third missile blasted through the armor and sent it tumbling down the ridge.
A second later, cannon fire engulfed James and Bethel. The big plates of armor held together but the beating was intense.
Out on what was left of the ridgeline, huge explosions were blasting apart the defenders’ lines, hurling bodies and soil skyward with impunity.
James tapped the comm. “Kamahu,” he shouted. “Get your men out of there. Pull back. I repeat, pull back! I’ll try to cover you.”
Out on the surface, Kamahu heard the message and began running along the front line, shouting at the top of his lungs and waving for the men to retreat. They pulled out quickly and began scrambling down the hill, racing headlong toward the armory.
“Get back to the depot!” Kamahu shouted. “Go now!”
As the foot soldiers of the small army ran, James crossed in front of them firing at will. “Tango Three, get back to the barn if you can.”
Tango Three tried to turn but it was unable to raise its left leg. Caught in one place it was a sitting duck.
“We can’t move!”
“Get out!” James shouted.
It was too late. A river of cannon fire tore into the machine and its own remaining ordinance exploded.
“How many are left?” James asked.
“Only one besides us,” Bethel replied. “They’re running. And I think we should be too.”
“Agreed.”
With the abandoned and the defenders racing down the road past the armory, James yanked the controls to the side and the MRV turned and lumbered down the hill in huge pounding steps. Ahead of it, the slaves were running for their lives.
CHAPTER 41
From his vantage point behind the main force, Gault had been watching the battle with a mixture of surprise and horror. He’d seen a dozen of his machines destroyed and two others knocked out of commission. But they’d pressed on and destroyed the enemy’s front line, taken out at least three, perhaps four of the defending MRVs and were in the process of turning the battle into a rout.
Still, there was something disheartening about his men’s voices as they tried to coordinate their attack on the radio, a frantic, sometimes overwrought sense of each hit and miss. Then again, these weren’t really his men, Gault reminded himself. They were just what he’d been given to work with.
“They’re backing off the ridge.”
“At least three of the MRVs are down.”
“The others are running. They’re trying to escape.”
Gault smiled and nodded to the driver. “Go! This I don’t want to miss.”
Gault’s driver increased their speed, took them past the burning wrecks of the other MRVs and toward the ridge.
“Bravo Units, stay up on the plateau,” Gault ordered. “Everyone else converge on the armory and finish them off!”
On the far side of the ridge, the surviving slaves were running along the dirt track of a road that cut between the buildings of the armory and the steep canyon beyond.
James followed. Despite knowing he could pick off a few of their enemies as they crested the ridge, he didn’t swing the cab around. It had to look like a collapse, like an army in disarray. The last thing he wanted was for their pursuers to slow down.
And they didn’t.
The mercenary MRVs poured over the ridgeline as soon as they reached it. They came down seven abreast, blasting at everything in sight. Their missiles struck the warehouses of the armory. Their cannon fire scattered the fleeing slaves like a broom might sweep away a stream of ants.
James kept moving, racing past the far end of the armory and veering to the right, as if he might take the MRV deep into the desert beyond.
The attackers quickened their pursuit, charging forward with little sense of caution.
Using the rearward-facing camera, James tracked their progress. “Come on,” he whispered to himself, “Just a little further.”
As the others pressed forward, he noticed the command MRV stop at the top of the ridge to direct the battle. For it to come down would have been too much to ask for.
James pressed the comm switch. “Now!” he ordered.
In a bunker disguised as a garbage pit, two former slaves in body armor crouched beside a bank of controllers and plungers. At the sound of James’s order, they leaned forward and began slamming their hands down on the plungers, one after another.
Out on the road, massive explosions blasted skyward, blowing apart two of the MRVs at the rear of Gault’s armada, and carving a deep, un-crossable ditch from the side of the warehouse all the way to the edge of the canyon.
Another series of explosions took out the lead MRV and blasted a similar ditch at the front of the column. One of the MRVs tried to cross it only to find the width and depth too great. It tumbled forward and face-planted into the far side, effectively neutralized if not destroyed. The rest of the column ground to a halt.
“They’re trapped,” James called out, holding the comm open. “Finish them.”
“Go,” someone called back.
Almost immediately there was another rumble. But this time the explosion blew out part of the wall around the armory. From inside the warehouse, a phalanx of the huge bulldozers came rushing forward, shoulder to shoulder, monstrous blades raised and locked like shields.
The mercenaries reacted slowly and in a disorganized fashion. Some of them turned and fired, others tried to run back toward the ridge only to be blown apart by more hidden explosives.
As the mercenaries panicked, the bulldozers kept charging; side-by-side they formed an unstoppable wall of steel.
They slammed into the remaining MRVs like a tsunami, knocking them sideways, crushing some under their giant metal treads, forcing the rest of them backwards toward the canyon and then shoving them off the edge and into the abyss where the remaining stacks of explosives waited for them.
A
wave of monstrous explosions flashed through the canyon, creating a fireball that mushroomed hundreds of feet into the air.
From the inside of his MRV, Gault struggled to see through the smoke and dust.
“What happened?” he shouted. “What the hell happened?”
There was no response.
He toggled the radio and called again, but it was silent. Only static came over the comm.
“They’re gone,” his driver muttered, as the smoke began to clear. “They’re all gone.”
“They can’t be.”
“I’m telling you,” the driver said. “They’re not there anymore.”
Gault could not muster a response. His mind was spinning, but despite his disbelief, he could soon see that the driver was right. His army had been annihilated, slaughtered by the outnumbered, worthless slaves. Aside from a few stragglers and the rigs he’d ordered to stay on the plateau, there was literally nothing left. Five machines out of forty.
He saw the slaves coming out from their hiding spots and opening fire. The two remaining MRVs were emerging from behind the armory. Both of them taking aim at him. The odds had turned.
“Get us out of here!” he shouted. “Get us out of here now!”
CHAPTER 42
James saw the carnage in the gorge from a higher vantage point than most. The majority of the mercenary machines had been destroyed on impact, crushed under their own weight in the fall. The explosives had simply been the exclamation point, designed to inspire fear and leave no doubt.
He glanced toward the ridge. The command MRV was turning and making its way up the switch back of the slope.
Impulsively, James gunned the throttle and the big rig began to accelerate along the road. He raced toward the ditch and used the wrecked mercenary MRV as a stepping stone, clambering across to the other side. At full speed he raced between the craters left by the mining explosives and set his sights on the ridgeline.
To the foot soldiers of his army the move came as a surprise and several groups had to run and dive out of the way to avoid being crushed by the pounding feet.
Trying to target the fleeing rig, James dialed up the plasma guns and unleashed several shots. They raced toward the fleeing target, hitting all around it but nothing direct enough to put it out of action.
“What are you doing?” Bethel asked.
“That’s the leader,” James told him. “I’m not letting him go.”
A series of bursts came back at James and Bethel as Gault’s rig neared the top.
James switched to missiles.
“Missile bay exhausted,” the computer informed him.
“Damn it,” James grunted. He switched to the cannons. They had only a hundred or so armor piercing rounds remaining in the massive ammunition drums but if he could get close enough they would do the trick.
Up ahead the mercenary MRV directed a last shot down into the valley, crested the ridge and disappeared.
James held the throttle of his own machine to the stops, causing it to leap as it reached the other trench and kept going. At sixty miles an hour the huge metal beast ran toward the ridge and leapt onto the slope of rubble, soil and stone. Unlike Gault, James avoided the switchback, using the speed and momentum he’d built up to race straight up the hill.
The huge claw-like feet dug and churned, pounding and straining as they propelled the rig upward. James tilted the shuddering cab forward to keep the momentum going.
“You don’t have to do this,” Bethel said. “We’ve won.”
“You don’t understand,” James insisted. “This is our chance to finish it. We get this guy, they’ll be in disarray. The war might be over.”
“James, he’s beaten already.”
With James urging the MRV on like a stallion, they surged over the top of the ridge.
In the distance, Gault’s MRV was fleeing, racing headlong back toward Olympia, dashing between three other MRVs that stood like sentinels with their guns waiting and trained on James and Bethel.
“Oh my God,” Bethel shouted.
It was too late for James to even utter a curse. They’d lost so much speed on the climb that they’d reached the top like a man exhausted, barely moving. The MRV was a sitting target and he knew it.
Flashes from the mercenary rigs caught his eye and the whole cabin shook as the first impacts tore into the machine. The rig shuddered from the blow and almost toppled back down the hill. James steadied it and moved it forward returning fire for a second before a new wave of impacts staggered them.
Under relentless assault from three sides, the machine was rapidly bludgeoned to death. It staggered forward until a missile hit the hip joint on Bethel’s side of the rig, caved in the armor and toppled the mortally wounded machine. It fell sideways and crashed into the red soil like a dying animal collapsing in the sand.
Inside the mangled wreckage, James fought to breathe. The cabin was filling with smoke and flames were licking around the edges. Bleeding and battered, with his head ringing from the missile impact, James fought a weird sense of disorientation.
Broken panels fell about him, dangling on their wires. Only then did he realize that the rig was over on its side. Frantically, he grabbed for the seatbelt release. As it let him free, he slid out of the chair, grabbed a support rail and pulled himself up to where his friend lay unmoving.
“Bethel!” he shouted.
The doctor was a ragdoll hanging in the belts. James punched the release and pulled him free. They tumbled back and came to rest on what had been the starboard bulkhead.
James dragged Bethel along it, found the hatch and hit the emergency release. The top hatch was blown open by a series of explosive bolts, and James pulled Bethel through it.
Outside now, he crawled forward, still dragging Bethel along with him. He quickly located the ridgeline and began moving that way, trying to keep the smoke and the wreckage of the MRV between them and the mercenaries.
Bethel began to come around. “You had it won,” he mumbled.
James grimaced in pain and slid forward. He could feel the soil vibrating as if a big bass drum were being struck. He looked up as the last of the slaves’ MRVs crested the hill.
“No!” he shouted. “Go back!”
It was too late. Just like he had, this last MRV walked into firestorm.
It took a series of missiles to the cab and exploded. The concussion wave threw James backward and he landed in the sand only semi-conscious at this point.
As his senses returned, he realized all too keenly what he’d done. He’d taken certain victory and turned it into utter defeat. He wanted to throw up, wanted to fall face first into the sand and die, but he remembered Bethel and crawled back towards him.
As he reached his friend, one of the mercenary MRVs began shouldering its way through the smoke.
It made it past the wreckage of James and Bethel’s machine and stopped. It sat on its haunches in perfect killing range. But instead of tilting the cab down to target the two men on the desert floor, it stared out beyond them, looking into the distance.
What are you waiting for? James thought. Finish us.
Then, without warning, the MRV turned around and took off running, sprinting back through the smoke and heading towards Olympia.
James stood awkwardly and as the smoke drifted he caught sight of all three machines racing away in a sudden retreat.
It made no sense. He should have been dead. The slaves in the valley behind him should have been getting obliterated by now, but instead the mercenaries were turning tail and running for the hills.
James watched them go, noticing that the smoke on the battlefield had begun to blow sideways. Sand began pelting the back of his legs and the plateau grew dark as a menacing shadow passed over them.
James turned to see a massive wall of red dust rising up behind the armory. Two miles high and as wide as the horizon, it obscured the sun and bore down on them like a nightmarish wave ready to crash.
As James watched, the
leading edge of the storm whipped past the armory, and aced up the hill hitting him with the fury of a hurricane.
CHAPTER 43
The surviving rebels huddled in the undamaged sections of the armory as the violent winds shook and sandblasted them. The sound of the wind alone was fearful, it was made worse by the wrenching sound of items being torn loose from the outer structures or the sudden echoing bangs that shook the buildings as items, picked up and thrown by the wind, slammed headlong into the thin metal walls.
Because of the endless noise, it was several minutes before anyone recognized the sound of a fist banging on one of the steel doors.
Finally realizing what he was hearing, Kamahu, ran over to the door. He looked through the small viewport and saw a man with his face wrapped carrying another man over his shoulder. He unlatched the door allowing a blast of sand and wind to whip through, all but shoving James and Bethel inside.
For his part, James was barely breathing. He all but collapsed lowering Bethel to the floor. “Get one of the medics,” he croaked, pulling the cloth away from his face. “Hurry.”
As Kamahu ran off, James looked down at Bethel. “Hold on.”
He tried to peel some of Bethel’s clothing from his body, but it had been burned and melted to his skin.
“It’s too late,” Bethel said looking up at him.
Looking around, James spotted an oxygen tank with a mask. He grabbed it, set it down and turned the valve. As soon as the oxygen was flowing he placed the mask over Bethel’s nose and mouth.
Bethel took a few shallow breaths and then pushed the mask away. “It’s too late,” he repeated, in a wheezing, gravelly voice. “My lungs are gone. Burned up. I can feel them… filling…with fluid.”
James looked up. “Get someone over here!” he shouted.
Bethel shook his head. “There’s nothing to be done.” The words were a painful whisper.
“I shouldn’t have taken you with me,” James said. “You should have been here with the wounded.”