“If your master wants me,” I said, trying not to be fazed by this grim pronouncement, “marerra o-tajun civaqari eza velenamuri ti-koun!”
Tell it to come and take me!
That said, I took three great halting steps forward, blade raised and pointed at the enemy, ready to strike. Then the most incredible thing happened: the Cielcin turned and ran. Perhaps they realized they were outmatched. Perhaps there was no way they might take me alive. Perhaps they meant to lead me into a trap and hoped I’d charge after them. Acting fast, I drew my plasma burner and fired left-handed. The violet arc lanced out. Too late.
They were gone.
* * *
I found the others on the tram platform. Bassander only nodded when I emerged from the darkness and the rearguard put up their guns at the sight of me. Valka sniffed and turned her head.
“Are you hurt?” she asked stonily, still caring.
“They ran,” I said. “Didn’t like their chances against a shielded man with this.” I waved the unkindled sword.
The Tavrosi woman made a clicking sound with her tongue.
“There’s no tram,” said the vulgar soldier from earlier.
Bassander jumped down from the platform to the rails below. “Then we carry them.”
The soldier was not alone in swearing.
“Pass the payload off where you can. Fresh arms. Double time!” And to Lin’s credit he stowed his own blade and helped a brawny decurion muscle the first of the canisters onto the tracks. “Marlowe, guard the tunnel mouth.” There was a flash of the old Lin. The heat of the moment had driven his holy terror of me from his mind a moment, and he added, “We’d know if they’d breached the tunnel at the other end, right?”
“It would be on our sensors,” Lorian confirmed when I relayed the question. “Hurry, Pallino’s men are getting it hard.”
“If this doesn’t distract them,” I told the good commander, “I don’t know what will.”
In a matter of moments, Bassander’s men traded the canisters down to their fresher comrades on the tracks below—save where a few of the hardier volunteers kept going. The Mandari captain and his men vanished into the darkness, and we had only the slow rattle of their armor to keep us company on the platform. There were little more than a dozen of us, and we were alone in the eye of the storm.
“This is all too easy,” Valka said.
“You call this easy?” I asked, unable to keep the pain from my voice. I knew what she meant, but my encounter with the Cielcin in the hall was still with me, and my blood was cold as the sounds of Pallino’s men fighting rang constant in my ear.
“Bastards got behind us!”
“Fall back! Fall back!”
I kept waiting to hear the two messages I feared to hear most of all: that Pallino was dead, or that the Cielcin had gotten into the tram tunnels between the starport and the Storm Wall. I felt that one or both was inevitable, and that one or both must come soon. I kept reviewing the starport map in the corner of my vision. If we went by the main concourse, we could rejoin Pallino in minutes.
“The fuckers are breaking off!” came one voice. “They’re pulling back.”
“Hit ’em hard!”
I glanced at Valka, brows contracting beneath the mask. “Pallino.” I pressed fingers to reseat the bone conduction patch behind my ear. “What’s going on?”
“Not sure, Had! They’re pulling back deeper into the terminals.”
“Into the terminals?” I asked. “Toward us?”
“Might be! Might be they just got enough down here now they’re spreading out. It’s thick as hell here!”
Fingers still on the patch beneath the undersuit, I said, “We’re almost there. Just need a little more time.”
“Damn it!” the chiliarch replied. “Damn it. Had, I think they found the tunnels.”
My blood—already cold—froze over. Bassander had left a small rearguard detachment with the refugees when he mined the tramway tunnels, and a few hoplites with hard shields and a plasma howitzer or two could hold a narrow way against a horde, but not forever. I had visions of the Cielcin and their nahute chewing their way down those tunnels like lightning down a wire and clenched my jaw. I thought of the soldier, Renna. She was going to die.
“We have to get them out of there,” I said. And there was still the matter of Bahudde’s siege tower to consider. What had the vayadan-general called down from its master’s dark fortress?
Valka massaged her neck. “We can’t do anything for them. The Storm Wall is full. There’s nowhere to go. We have to hope this,” she nodded at the tramway and Bassander’s makeshift bomb, “will distract them.”
“We need to hit them hard,” I said.
“How?” she demanded.
I cast about for an answer, circling where I stood, but there was nothing. Growling, I looked back along the tramway. “Lin, tell me you’re almost done.”
“Nearly there!” came the Mandari captain’s groaning reply. It sounded as though he was carrying one of the fuel cells himself. “This had better work.”
Silently, I agreed with him, and seized Valka’s hand. She did not pull away, not even when the sounds of hurrying feet slapped the concourse in the dark ahead, back the way we had come. I took a half-step forward, ordering the small knot of exhausted men around us to form a cordon, hoplites in front.
“Done!” Bassander’s voice crackled in my ears. “On our way back.”
A full squad of Cielcin appeared, running hunched and bow-legged, clearly hunting.
“Yukajjimn!” one said, jostling its brother. Whatever had made the Pale in the tunnel retreat had no effect on these. The Cielcin fanned out, circling our little knot. Bassander would be back in moments. How long should it take for his men to run back? Five minutes? Six? Less, if all they needed was to be within firing distance.
I let go of Valka’s hand, raised my sword.
“Run, little worms!” one of the xenobites said. “Run and hide!” Its brethren all laughed.
“Veih ioman!” I called back. “No more!”
I felt strangely naked without my cape, but drew myself up to my full height all the same, the better to stand as near to eye-to-eye with the enemy as was possible. The Pale leaped from either side, fast as cavalry. There must have been thirty of them, more than twice the number of men who’d remained on the platform. I heard a cry as one of ours went down, crushed beneath the bulk of two inhuman berserkers. Pressing forward, I sliced clear through one of the attackers, sinking into a low guard, blade thrust straight out.
“Stick close!” I said to Valka, throwing an arm between her and the Pale. Plasma arcs burned around me, violet cutting the air and boiling it even through the insulating layers of my suit. The Cielcin retreated, losing four or five of their number in the brief conflagration. Behind me, I heard the tinny sound of a spent heat sink clattering to the floor.
“Your time is almost up! Not long! Not long now!” one of the xenobites said, teeth gnashing beneath the lip of its mask. “Velnuri mnu.”
But the lull in combat lasted only so long as it took the Cielcin to half-encircle us again. Again they leaped, pincering from either side. Again I rushed forward, hewing at their weakened center, trying not to think about the noise one of our men had made as the creatures felled him. There must have been just over twenty of them remaining. There were perhaps ten of us. Flames smoldered on padded benches, and the cherry-red glow of plasma scoring arced on the walls.
Not long indeed.
Valka went down beside me. Something had caught her ankle, and whirling I found one of the berserkers crawling across the floor, dragging a leg that left a black smear on the tile floor. Even as I turned, Valka kicked it mightily in the face, knocking its mask off. I had a brief impression of round, hollow eyes beneath the smooth ridge of brow. Before I could get to her, Valka got the muzzle o
f her antique repeater between her and that face. Fired.
Then it was left to me to haul her out from beneath the monster.
Fire rained about us, and I turned my head in time to see a squad of men returning up the hall, Bassander Lin at their head, firing his lance, bayonet flashing dully in the red gloom. They made the platform in seconds.
“We need to move quickly!” Bassander said, already brushing past. The Cielcin lay dead and dying about us, bodies mingled with the bodies of our own fallen men. The captain stepped blithely over human and inhuman alike, lingering only to wave to the survivors—leading from the front. “This way!”
We had to put distance between ourselves and the blast, had to close distance with Pallino’s survivors, because the minute our makeshift bomb went off, there was no telling what the xenobites would do.
Then came the call I feared most that bloody day.
“They’re in the tunnels!” said one.
“Must have cleared the rubble!” said another.
I swore an oath to make even Valka blush. “Bassander!”
“Not yet!”
I was glad at least I could not hear the screams. How many had Lorian packed back into the Storm Wall? How many were left squeezed into that tunnel, close as fugue-sleepers? Ten thousand? Twenty? There had been hundreds of thousands in the starport when the attack began, and the tunnels beneath the Storm Wall were already well past capacity, and Lorian’s efforts to save everyone could as well damn them to a slow death safe in the bunkers. Too little air, too little water, too much heat. They might hold ’til the fleet came, but if they failed? Starvation, pestilence, and thirst would claim us all.
“Now!” The captain produced a detonator wand. He drew to a stop, the better to ensure he made no mistakes. He flicked the cap up, and his thumb down.
Thunder. White heat burned even so far down the hall. I felt the wave rush over us, saw the distant glow of fire. And then?
There was another explosion, deeper, darker than the first. Lorian hooted in my ear, and I guessed the plan had worked. On the surface above, the earth split, heaving two of the siege towers skyward as the vaults below erupted. One rocket crashed quiescent to the earth below, the other buckled and burst as it fell, erupting in a nimbus of fire that consumed the other downed vessel and the hundreds of scahari about them.
As above, so below.
As Hauptmann’s fleet had been the victim of a runaway matter-antimatter cascade, so the destruction of those two siege towers fanned out, breaching fuel containment in three more of the ships around. In moments, a full third of the Cielcin landing craft were reduced to burning slag, and thousands of the creatures nearest were swallowed in the firestorm.
Underground, I knew nothing of this.
Underground, I knew only the strange hollering of the Pale as they got the message. Something in the air twanged, and the tenor shifted as the enemy reeled, confused. We’d struck them a mighty blow. Thus we returned to the chamber where the colossus had broken through. Its leg had shifted, splayed out so that it made a shallow incline from floor to earth above. There the survivors of Pallino’s unit clustered in the midst of that hall, pressed into knots about the foot of the fallen colossus.
Bassander and I fell into step beside one another, each of us cutting a swath through the enemy. Swords that once had clashed with one another rang then side by side, and the enemy fell back, parting before the onslaught of those unstoppable blades.
“Took you long enough!” Pallino shouted, sounding the whistle that made his men shift ranks, rotating fresh men to the front.
“We ran into some trouble!” I shot back. “Is this all there is?” I gestured at the knot of men about him, mingled hoplites and peltasts standing—each bracing the man in front of him—in a box formation against the wall and the ruined machine.
The chiliarch shook his head. “I sent Oro and three hundred men after them into the tunnels, and there are some that got cut off nearer Terminal G, where the first breach is.” He pointed. I pulled Valka through the defensive lines, ducking a blow from one Cielcin screamer as we went. The creature fell a moment after, struck down by the hoplites at the front of the line. “We can’t stay here!”
“We can’t abandon the refugees!” I shouted back, clambering onto the lip of the machine beside.
Pallino seized me by the shoulders. “We’re no good to them dead. We need to move.” He pointed up the leg of the colossus and out onto the surface.
“Over the top?” I asked, echoing the words Valka had said were madness.
“Over the top.”
CHAPTER 83
NO MAN’S LAND
I REACHED THE LIP of the tarmac just behind the first wave, scrambling hand over foot to clear the titan’s leg and allow the men behind to clamber up. Below, I could see the last rank of hoplites holding their ground against the horde below. Still a knot of the grenadiers held forth upon the hip of their downed colossus, keeping the space about them clear enough for us to establish a beachhead on the surface.
“Back to the wall?” Valka asked, sticking close to my side, gun drawn. She fired past me.
“Yes!” I said, trying not to think about all we left behind in the tunnels below. Still, I knew Pallino was right, knew we needed to stay alive, to fight. Wind tore around us, and looking up once more I saw the shape of clouds boiling across the sky. Soon even the black sun would be obscured. Looking past the ranks of the enemy, I saw the ruin of their fleet. Angry flames burned orange against the sky, and even half a mile off bright cinders floated on the breeze before my eyes. And there—ahead and apart from the main body of the enemy—stood the massive landing tower I had seen.
Speaking as much to Lorian and the command center as to Valka and the men about me, I said, “We’re going to lose everyone in those tram tunnels unless we can draw the enemy out. Can you open the rear of the tunnel?”
I could almost hear Lorian shaking his head. “The minute I do that, they’ll stampede one another and all the people inside.”
“Tell them to clear a space!”
“There is no space to clear, Hadrian!” the intus shouted. “The hypogeum is packed to bursting already.”
“Open the bloody gates, Lorian!”
The commander wasted no time. “If I do that, Hadrian, people will die!”
“If you don’t do it people will die, damn it!”
“I can’t do it,” Lorian said. “I can’t jeopardize the lives of everyone in this facility for the sake of a few more.”
“Damn your eyes, Aristedes! Do as I say!”
A hand touched my arm, and I started.
It was Valka. Her grip tightened on my arm. “He’s right.”
I tore my arm away. “Do as you will!” A dull concussion sounded near at hand, making me flinch. One of the grenadiers still taut on his line on the hip joint above us fired again, sending a pair of Cielcin sailing through the air. Whirling, I opened my mouth to give Aristedes a new set of orders . . . and stopped dead.
Doom.
Doom-doom.
A sepulchral drumming filled the air, deep sound echoing across that vast, empty plain. The Cielcin answered the sound, whooping and calling out on the wind in words not even I could understand.
“What’s going on?”
Clearly, some sign or command had been given, though what it portended was any man’s guess. The drumming continued, and all the while my men climbed from the depths below, pulled onto the plain beneath the shadow of the fallen colossus’s saucer-like body.
Doom.
Doom-doom.
The drumming grew louder, amplified by the addition of the Cielcin’s stamping feet, and one hundred thousand alien voices lifted up in chanting: “Te! Teke! Te! Teke! Teke! Teke!”
It didn’t make any sense. Teke meant jar in the Cielcin tongue, but that was nonsense.
&nb
sp; Unless it was some other language entirely. Like the yaiya-toh I had heard the Pale speak before, here was an invocation in a language wholly strange to me.
“What are they saying?” asked one of the soldiers. “Lord Marlowe?”
I could only shake my head. “I don’t know.”
We had an answer—of a kind—in the form of the sky falling. The great shoals of nahute still wove their nets above the siege towers and the burning wreck of the same. All at once great ribbons of them sped forward, soaring like the fingers of an almighty hand across the plain, so distant they seemed almost slow.
“Run!” Bassander Lin exclaimed, pointing his sword back toward the Wall and the safety of the colossi.
“Aristedes, we need reinforcements! Air support!” I cried, leaping to follow the Mandari. Lin ran ahead, sword upraised like a banner, and a thousand men ran after.
The commander’s voice was tight. “There aren’t many lighters left.”
“Send them!” I shouted.
Lorian signaled the affirmative before adding, “If you can draw those drones in nearer to the colossi, they’ll cover you.”
“Yes, thank you.” I ground my teeth, each pounding step hammering though me as I ran. “I was already doing that.”
Doom.
Doom-doom.
They were already firing. Rounds flew over our heads, chewing through the metallic swarm that hounded us across that vast, flat no man’s land. It was farther than it looked, a mile or more. But the colossi were marching once again, spurred by necessity. Their massive feet shook the earth, their every gun blazing. I kept seeing visions of that metal tide overtaking us, grinding us to paste with its jaws. And through it all that evil chant pursued us: “Teke! Teke! Teke!”
The colossi marched toward us. I could spy the men upon their crabbed parapets, gunners and grenadiers safe behind the shimmer of their shields. Looking back, I saw the Cielcin in pursuit, running after us through the flames. Then a hellion screech filled the air. Relief! Four lonely Sparrowhawks shrieked down over the Storm Wall, their single wings laid flat and sharp as swords. They fired, and fountains of dust and stone peppered the space behind as they shot through the slow-descending ribbons of nahute. Drones fell like flies. Valka flagged beside me, and I spurred her on. “Not far! Not far now!”
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