Incursion: Shock Marines

by Gustavo Bondoni

The man surprised her again. He led her into a row of still-inert headless walkers and from there between their legs in a diagonal pattern. Finally, he parked her under one. “There. They shouldn’t be able to find us too easily. And even if they do, they won’t be able to get to us without pushing all the rest of these things out of the way.”

  “The wings can shoot us from above.”

  “I’m not sure about that. I think they want us alive. How hard do you think it would have been for that big thing to kill us? All it really needed to do is land on top of us instead of ahead of us. Instant pilot jelly.”

  “That makes no sense. Why would they want us alive?”

  Ian shrugged. “Search me. I just hitched a ride on the wrong Recon flyer. Now let’s turn these lights off.”

  They sat there waiting, listening, stationed underneath one of the headless suits, hoping that it would hide their thermal signature. But other than the sound of creaks and groans from the metal giant stationed at the door, they heard nothing.

  Then, all of a sudden, they heard a rush of air from above and the clang of metal on metal. The legs they’d taken cover under suddenly lurched.

  “Oh, shit. They’re activating this one,” Melina yelled, turning on her light.

  She was right. Towering above them was a winged helmet, black as the space between galaxies. She half-heard Ian scurry away, but she couldn’t move. Her hands searched for a control stick that wasn’t there.

  A huge claw reached out for her. Ian thought that the enemy wanted to take them alive, but she knew better. Those enormous digits would crush her to a pulp, cracking her bones like toothpicks. She watched them get closer, a prey animal mesmerized by the predator’s gaze.

  A deafening sound exploded through the chamber, coming from the side of the entrance. The robot about to grab her turned its winged head to look in the direction of the cacophony.

  The vampire controlling the suit suddenly shattered into a million pieces and huge holes appeared in its chest armor. It fell onto the one behind it, knocking it off its feet and starting a chain reaction that toppled six or seven of the fighting machines.

  Melina stood there, stunned by her close escape, watching the dominoes fall.

  Suddenly, a hand gripped her by the arm. “Come on! We don’t know if there are more of them.”

  Ian pulled her back the way they’d come, running towards a light which was much brighter than the weak illumination from her helmet. Under that light stood the most beautiful shape she’d ever seen: Tristan’s mutilated marine exoskeleton, friction smoke still pouring from the muzzle of its high-energy cannon stood over the shattered ruin of the vampire who’d been guarding the door.

  “Man, am I glad to see you,” she said when they reached him.

  “Don’t be. We still have a few minutes to go before we make it back to where the rest of the marines are holed up. I’ll try to hold them here until you make it back, but it might not be feasible. I suspect I only dropped these two because we caught them by surprise. Get a move on.”

  They lost no time in sprinting through the final five chambers. At the end, they saw a blue light and were unsurprised to find themselves staring down the muzzle of twenty-odd marine guns.

  At that moment, Melina couldn’t have cared less if they all opened fire and cut her to ribbons. She collapsed onto her knees. Her burning calves simply unable to hold her weight any longer. She panted, just concentrating on breathing.

  Clanking sounds could be heard from outside the chamber, and all the marines tensed. Two of them took positions on either side of the entrance and pointed their cannons into the gap.

  The sounds got closer, and in moments, Tristan’s suit flew through over the threshold. He dove for cover behind one of the walls.

  “Can’t tell for sure, but I think they’re a chamber or two behind me,” he reported.

  They were much closer. The marines at the door opened fire mere seconds after Tristan entered. Melina couldn’t hear what they were saying—they had their helmets closed and were conversing over the Tacnet.

  “Close call there, pilot. If Tristan hadn’t volunteered to go get you, we would have left you behind. We don’t have a hell of a lot of time.” The lieutenant stood over her.

  Melina looked around. She saw immediately that it was similar, though not identical, to the room that held the obelisk, but her heart sank at the prospect of climbing the ramps to exit at the top of the room. “Time? Where are you going to go? Why bother to keep running? We’re stuck on the planet with them and with no food.” Something else was bugging her, and in her addled state, she blurted it out. “You said you knew they were coming. If you were buried all the way down here, how the hell could you possibly have known that?”

  “About five minutes before you called us, a blinking red light lit up on every one of those suits. It scared the living crap out of us until we realized that they can’t move without the top half.”

  “Oh.” She hadn’t seen any red lights, but that was possibly because she was too preoccupied with what might be above her. “And what are your plans? Are you going to make one of those patented marine last stands?”

  Cora looked at her strangely. “Why? What would be the point? Even if we didn’t have a better way out, I’d order my troops to escape out the top of this room. We don’t die for no reason, no matter what the popular conception might be.”

  “Better way?”

  The lieutenant pointed towards the arch that stood where the obelisk had in the other chamber. “That’s a portal of some sort. Probably some modification of the space fold drive. We know how to turn it on, so we’re planning on going out that way.”

  “Out that way? Where does it go?”

  Cora raised an eyebrow. “At this point, does that really matter?”

  Chapter 21

  “Why didn’t you leave?” Ian asked Tristan.

  “We were waiting for you,” Tristan replied. He didn’t want to tell the pilot that it had been a close thing, and that he’d only managed to convince Cora to wait by going out to get them back himself. He knew that the lieutenant wouldn’t leave without him. Hell, if it came to that, he didn’t want to leave without her, either.

  He also didn’t want to be the one to break the other reason to them. He’d leave that one to his officer. Let her earn her pay.

  “What’s it look like out there?” Cora asked over the Tacnet.

  One of the men holding the door responded. “Not great. There are about twenty of the wings flying overhead. They haven’t attacked us yet, and they’re not getting too close. We managed to hit one.”

  “Are any more coming through?”

  “No, ma’am. This looks to be the extent of the force.”

  “An advance team, then. To keep us pinned down.”

  “Yeah, I suppose.”

  “All right. Keep me posted if they do anything.” Cora walked over with Melina in her wake.

  She addressed the two pilots. “Here’s the situation. That arch over there is built to take us… somewhere. We don’t know exactly where, but we’re sure that the wings and their big armored suits can’t activate the device.”

  “How do you figure that?” Ian asked.

  “Two reasons: the first is that you need to have a very specific appendage to open that thing. It varies depending on what species you are, but the robots don’t have it. The second is inductive. If they could get through, they would be on the other side already. I don’t think anyone stays in prison voluntarily.”

  “Unless what’s on the other side is even worse.”

  Cora shrugged. “In our case, it’s moot. We stay, we die. If it’s worse, we can die over there, as well.”

  “So what’s the holdup? Why don’t we just leave now?”

  “We need someone to volunteer to keep the portal open so the rest of us can leave. That person has to stay behind.”

  “Stay behind?”

  “Yeah. They also have to blow themselves to bits.”

 
; “What? Why?” Ian said.

  Cora sighed. “Because, for whatever reason, that’s the way they designed this place. Or maybe they didn’t, but we haven’t been able to figure out how to make it work any other way. The problem is that, for the portal to be open, someone has to have their hand pressed to the activation panel. If you take your hand off, then the portal closes.”

  Tristan glanced at the panel again, just to be sure. It was too far away from the opening for a human to keep their hand on the switch and get through. Even if they could, what would happen when the hand was removed? Would any part of the person’s body still on this side simply be sliced off by the closing portal?

  “So someone has to stay behind.”

  “It’s worse than that. They have to blow themselves up once the rest of us are through.” She held a hand up to forestall Ian’s protest. “Think about it for a second. If they capture that person alive, they can simply hold them against the panel and march through the portal. That’s why they didn’t shoot you when they were chasing you before.”

  “And that’s why it was so important to go save you,” Tristan interjected. “We wouldn’t make it very far with those things behind us. Our problem is that no one wants to volunteer to stay behind. We were about to draw lots when your call came through.”

  Cora looked towards the door. “And it’ll have to wait. Incoming.”

  The marines at the door opened fire as Tristan listened to their conversation over the Tacnet. “They’ve mounted the walkers. They’re all coming towards us at once.”

  “Why aren’t they shooting?”

  “I think they want to take one of us alive.”

  “I get that. But they only need one. They can shoot the rest. So be careful.”

  It was as if the enemy had heard her. A sudden barrage whistled through the opening and pinged off the rear wall. No one was hit, and Tristan saw that the vampires had also managed to avoid hitting the arch itself. They must really, really want the portal.

  He was close to one of the marines holding the door. “How’s it going, Tom?”

  “Badly. They’re using the front row of suits for cover. Not only is it hard to get a good shot at them, it’s nearly impossible to even see where they are. Uh, oh.”

  He was about to ask what was the matter when something that looked like a black thundercloud burst through the door. Three of the enemy walkers charged past the sentries, simply deciding to absorb the gunfire directed at them as they went past. Before anyone could react, they were in the room, shooting at anything that moved.

  Tristan rolled to one side as the nearest took a bead at him. Shards of concrete flew up from where he’d been standing. He fired two rounds at the behemoth and then rolled again. The shots missed wide of their mark.

  Two of the giant enemy suits were struggling with something while the third lay down a carpet of covering fire. It took him a second to understand what it was. They had grabbed a marine in a suit and were dragging it out.

  “Oh, shit. That’s Cora!” he heard over the Tacnet.

  And then they were back outside.

  “Cover me!” he shouted. And, against every instinct, he jumped through the doorway after them.

  It was a mistake. As soon as he crossed the doorway, he felt an impact to the back of his suit and heard a hissing sound. He hoped he hadn’t lost anything too important, because he knew he was going to have to fight his way back into the room behind.

  He threw himself flat and then turned and fired a continuous stream from the floor. One of the enemies holding the lieutenant took most of the barrage in one leg and collapsed without releasing Cora’s suit. That effectively halted their progress.

  While the enemy were trying to sort themselves out, two more marines emerged into the larger storage room and opened up with everything they had. Tristan saw one of them lob a charge over the three enemies they were engaged with in the direction of the rows of suits and then they all jumped back on the other side of the entrance. It was good thinking: that was where the enemy reinforcements were likely hidden.

  Tristan pressed his head against the floor.

  When the debris stopped falling, he fired on the two vampires who were still standing. He got lucky and his fire tore the wing-shaped top off of one of them. Unfortunately, the other one shot the legs out from under him. Tristan’s suit toppled to the ground.

  I need to get out of this thing now, he thought as he struggled to pop the emergency release button. He tried not to think about the likelihood of survival of a soft, pulpy human body among the kind of ordnance he was going to encounter in a battle of suits. Even the smallest piece of shrapnel would have more than enough energy to tear a person to shreds.

  He huddled behind his suit and surveyed the field. The opening was about ten meters away, and an equal distance separated him from the remaining enemy walker, which was struggling to free Cora’s exoskeleton from the death grip of its companion. He watched in horror as it sliced the helmet off the marine suit and began to pull the lieutenant out through the helmet hole.

  She wasn’t moving, but whether she was unconscious or dead, he had no way to tell. Did the human hand need to be attached to a living human body to open the portal? Tristan didn’t know.

  A barrage from the doorway hit the black giant and tore its wing off. It collapsed one way, and Tristan was relieved to see that it dropped Cora the other.

  Ignoring the likelihood that there were more enemies hidden among the rows of inert suits, he ran to where Cora laid, half in and half out of her suit. She was bleeding from a thousand cuts—exiting a suit through the helmet hole was a tight fit; it was likely that apart from the scrapes, some bones had been broken in the squeeze—but he had no time to check whether she was still alive. Breathing or not, he was taking her back with him.

  Tristan grunted under the effort of lifting her onto his shoulders in the G-and-a-half gravity and nearly pitched over. He’d been in his suit since forever, and the movement of simply walking normally was strange to him.

  And he couldn’t lose time by walking. Movement behind him told him that he had to run as fast as possible.

  Tristan didn’t turn, but he imagined that every sound was a vampire behind him taking aim at his exposed back. Two marines appeared up ahead and fired a barrage over his head. The return fire, thankfully, was also above him as the enemy concentrated on the exoskeletons and ignored the unsuited humans. They probably reasoned—quite correctly, it seemed to him—that after they dealt with the dangerous exoskeletons, they could easily grab one of the unprotected people at their leisure. They only needed one.

  The final few meters were torture. It seemed like the opening would never arrive. Just when he was ready to scream, he got past the two suits giving him covering fire and stumbled to one side, careful not to let Cora hit the ground too hard.

  She opened her eyes. “You went after me?”

  “Of course. We’re the last survivors from our unit. Hell, for all I know, we’re the last survivors from the Minstrel. I couldn’t let them take you.”

  “Crap.”

  “What?”

  “That’s twice you’ve saved my ass now. You’re going to want a big reward.”

  “Yeah, I can think of a thing or two.” He leered at her.

  “Good. You’re finally learning.”

  Another voice broke into their conversation. “People, fall back, now.”

  Tristan turned to see Commander Tau Coloni standing at the console, pressing one hand against the portal activation quadrant and holding a charge suitable for blasting armored vehicles to pieces in the other.

  “Get through the gateway, now. That’s an order. You and you go through first, then the pilots and you two who lost your suits. March!”

  Ordnance was still coming through the entrance but none of it came near the gate, which made it possible for the first suits to get through unscathed.

  “Everyone who isn’t wearing armor, now.”

  Tristan was glad t
hat a fighter commander outranked a marine lieutenant, because Cora was struggling and ordering him to leave her behind to coordinate the retreat. He simply ignored her and stepped through the shimmering screen.

  There was a colossal tunnel on the other side. It seemed to go on forever. He followed the white lights on the ceiling as far as his eye could see.

  “Gangway!”

  He pulled Cora out of the way as another two suits came through and then watched as the rest of the marines filed across, one by one. The last two were facing back, clearly fighting a rearguard action against the approaching vampires.

  But it was the third-to-last trooper that caught Tristan’s attention. That suit was dragging a struggling figure that constantly attempted to break away and go back through the portal, which, from this side, was a shimmering gray blankness. It was Ian, and he was giving the exoskeleton a surprisingly good fight.

  Almost as soon as the last two shock marines were through, the shimmering grayness disappeared. Ian stopped struggling and fell to the floor. “Melina!” he shouted as he banged his fist against the metal grating.

  Tristan, however, was no longer watching him.

  Shapes were blinking into existence all around. Tracked vehicles twice the height of an exoskeleton, so large that they almost didn’t fit in the tunnel, materialized out of thin air. Each of them had cannons that wouldn’t have looked out of place as a starship’s main battery.

  There were dozens of them. In desperation, Tristan turned back to see that the portal had blinked out of existence and become transparent. There were more tanks back there. Every single gun was aimed at them.

  “Oh, well,” he said to Cora, who was struggling to sit. “We had a good run, I guess. Better than we thought we would when we signed up, anyway.”

  “We’re not dead yet.” She grunted and leaned on him as she stood. He could tell she was in pain.

  Leaning on Tristan every step of the way, Cora walked towards the nearest vehicle. She stopped about ten steps away, raised her head, and stared at it defiantly. “I am Lieutenant Cora Sirius Almir of the 243rd marine platoon of the Tau Expeditionary Force,” she shouted. “And I demand your unconditional surrender.”