by Leo Champion
Heavier weapons were set up here and there, most of them – including no doubt the mortars that had killed fifty-plus nomads in the city not long ago – on the blockhouse.
von Kallweit wished he had an artillery section of his own. Mortars, plunging fire on the fort, antipersonnel rounds set to thirty feet along the battlements and the top of the blockhouse – it would save a lot of lives. But there was no point dwelling on assets that weren’t available and couldn’t be made available.
A shadowed figure came up to him. Axhar, with his entourage.
“The bands are ready,” the new khan said.
Horns blew, from members of the entourage. Each bannerman had a hornsman; as khan, Axhar had several. If there was a difference between them, the German couldn’t tell.
“You will not be leading the attack,” said von Kallweit. Because the first wave was going to get butchered, and khan succession after Axhar was a lot less clear.
Reluctance was clear in the young khan’s tone, but the words were what von Kallweit had hoped for and expected: “I will not. Let the others have a chance at glory in my name.”
“Let them have their chance. Axhar son of Tenzhen is already covered in glory.”
Horns blew, loudly.
* * *
Along the walls of Hubris, men moved to their stations. Black Gangers were in the courtyard, armed with hand weapons and available as a reserve. A few had been detailed to the battlements, easily identifiable in their orange reflective vests. Their job was to keep magazines filled and pitch in.
More horns blew, piercing Croft’s ears from the top of the blockhouse. In the distance all around, dark forms were moving. He wished there was more moonlight, but it wasn’t needed.
“They’re definitely massing, sir,” Ortega said. “Hit them while we can, I say.”
Atkinson nodded in agreement with the master sergeant.
“Star shells first,” Croft said. “Give us some light to see by.”
“Got it,” said Ortega. He turned to the mortar crews. “You heard the lieutenant.”
“Got it, Master Sergeant,” said the sergeant in charge of the mortar section, a young man – to Croft’s own young eyes, this sergeant couldn’t have been old enough to drink Stateside – with copper skin and a pencil-thin moustache. His name, or the name he’d given the Legion, was Stafford and now he turned to the others of his section.
“Star shells.”
The mortars popped, and shells arced up into the night sky. Several hundred feet up they burst, actinic magnesium flares lighting up and illuminating the gathered horde.
“Sure are a lot of ‘em,” Atkinson remarked.
“Gonna be a few less in a minute,” said Ortega. “Stafford, I want rounds there. Antipersonnel.”
* * *
Mortar shells exploded above the nomads as they moved forwards on foot, carrying ladders. Sean Gartlan readied his weapon, conscious of Sergeant Garza behind him, of Pantaleo to his left and Blanket to his right. They were coming out of the ruined city straight for the gate, which missiles had been fired into.
Jezzail shots burst as the masses surged forwards, carrying what the men of Hubris had originally thought to be ladders. Instead they were lattices twenty feet across, suitable for a bunch of nomads to climb at a time and not as easy for the defenders, with the heavy poles – originally built and issued as scaffolding – they had on hand for the purpose.
They were shouting, the nomads, as they began to come into range.
“We’re all gonna die tonight, aren’t we?” Blanket asked.
“We’re all gonna die sometime anyway,” Gartlan replied. He looked over at the fish, who – Gartlan realized – had never seen combat until now. Well, he’d been scared shitless his first time too, in the train.
You never stopped being scared shitless when people were trying to kill you, in Gartlan’s experience; you just got better at dealing with it.
“Just hold your position and we’ll do fine,” he reassured the other man.
Blanket nodded tersely.
More flares went up, smaller ones coming from flareguns rather than the busy mortars. Machine-guns started to fire, first the heavy weapons in the blockhouse and then the squad guns along the parapets. Nomads were cut down; others kept coming, taking the dead ones’ places carrying the wooden lattices.
“Fire when ready,” Sergeant Garza’s voice came.
Looked like ‘ready’ was about now, as Pantaleo called to the team.
Gartlan raised his rifle, looked down the scope and started to shoot. Nomads fell – they were being cut down in swathes – but they kept coming, firing now themselves as their jezzails came within their effective range. Someone on the battlements was hit, and amidst the din of the shooting began to scream.
They were dying, but they kept coming.
* * *
“They’ve got a ram,” Atkinson pointed at the mob heading for the gate. Fire was lashing in around the blockhouse, two men already down. The 40mm grenade launchers had done a fine job stopping the first ones, but now the grenades were running dry. One of the .50 gunners had been killed, his loader taking his place; a Black Ganger had taken over the job of feeding ammo to the gun. From the way he handled it, he’d clearly done the job before.
“Kill the ones with the ram,” Croft shouted back. His M-10 submachinegun was unslung and ready.
“What,” Dunwell demanded, “do you think we’re doing?”
Another hammering burst of machine-gun fire drowned out conversation. The nomads seemed to be attacking from all sides at once, and they had ladders. Croft wondered if they had a reserve to exploit their first breakthrough.
No time to worry about reserves, any more time than there was to think about conservation of ammunition. No time to worry about anything but the immediate task of staying alive another few minutes.
Grenades exploded around the nomads as they reached the wall, starting to push their climbing lattices up against them.
* * *
“Godfrey holds!” Garza yelled as the first alien heads appeared at the parapet. He shot one through the face as more climbed up – like Mexicans at the Alamo, Gartlan thought.
Remember the Alamo and… “Godfrey holds!” he echoed his sergeant reflexively, firing at his own nomad—
And click went the bolt as his rifle ran dry. There was no time to reload a new magazine as the exoskeletal nomad leapt at him, wielding a double-handed blade.
He raised his bayonet instead, parried the blow with a clang two inches from his head, a jolt that brought the two-handed blade sliding up Gartlan’s bayonet and sliding off.
Gartlan was shocked but the alien on the parapet was off-balance.
“Godfrey holds!” Blanket shouted nearby.
“Godfrey holds!” Gartlan yelled, and drove his bayonet through the alien’s gut. Bone gave way under his point and the alien let out a scream.
“Godfrey holds!” shouted someone else as more aliens swarmed up the lattice onto the walls.
* * *
From the blockhouse, Croft could see that all four walls were under attack. There seemed to be more of them on the north gate, but not many, and they weren’t being deterred by grenades. Killed by them, yes, but not deterred.
The blockhouse itself was fifteen feet above the rest of the fortress, its parapets almost twice the height of the main walls. The nomads couldn’t reach it with the lattices, and now most of them were so close that the heavy weapons were useless, well inside the mortars’, MPRLs’ and grenade launchers’ minimum ranges. Too low an angle for the machine-guns to depress.
So the place wasn’t under immediate threat and there was nothing for the men here to do except fire their personal weapons into the crowd mobbing at the gates.
At the dozens who were swinging a long battering ram again and again. Qings fell, but others were taking their place.
If they were going to break through anywhere, it would be there.
As he headed down, he
heard shouts:
“Stand clear!”
“Doors breaking!”
“On me!” Croft shouted, waving his hand in the air and tripling his pace.
“Everyone on me to the gate!”
“On the lieutenant!” Senior Sergeant Korval took up the shout. “To the gate!”
Men fell in to follow him, running down the steps from the parapet to the fort’s stamped-sand courtyard.
The gates were definitely giving. A Black Ganger reserve of about twenty men had been placed there by an overseer, another squad’s worth of Legion troops had come down from the wall. They were waiting with braced weapons, bayonets and the Black Gangers’ sharpened picks and spades, but a few of the Black Gangers were already looking over their shoulders as they might run.
The steel gates shook again as the ram struck, visibly this time shaking them.
“Get ready!” Croft shouted as he arrived. The men there looked visibly relieved.
“Godfrey holds!” someone yelled as the ram struck again—
And the gates’ left hinges gave way, the entire double-gate flying inwards and making men leap out of their way. Nomads began pouring through.
Croft fired, emptying his submachinegun from the hip. There was time to slam in a new magazine and cut down a Qing charging directly at him.
“Got you, sir!” a man with a bayonet-fixed rifle shouted as he charged in front of Croft.
He didn’t carry a rifle, but he did carry the bayonet he now pulled out, letting his M-10 drop. His left hand fumbled for his pistol as the brawl around the gates began.
* * *
“Godfrey holds,” remarked Hecht to von Kallweit. Through a high-powered directional microphone they could hear the battle as though they were in the fight, not a mile away in the ruined city.
“We already knew they were First Division,” von Kallweit said.
“Why are they shouting about ‘Godfrey’?” Axhar demanded. “They are defending what they call Kandin-dak.”
“Godfrey’s Landing,” von Kallweit said to the khan. “A city from another world. Men of this unit fought there in a much bigger war thirty-five years ago.”
“Did this Godfrey’s Landing fall in the end?”
“No,” said von Kallweit.
“Then this is different,” Axhar said.
* * *
A knot of sword-swinging nomads had managed to get a foothold on the wall. As fighting boiled all around the parapets, more started to join them.
“On me!” Sergeant Garza yelled. “Gartlan, Blanket, Khaliq – on me!”
Gartlan didn’t look to see if the other men were joining the sergeant; he could see the threat himself now it had been pointed out. With his ichor-slick bayonet raised high he followed the squad leader, charging at a nomad who saw him and dodged.
A gleaming blade came at Gartlan’s head from another nomad; then there was a boom behind Gartlan’s ear. The nomad fell with half of his head blown off as Hassan Khaliq appeared next to Gartlan, firing a huge snub-nosed revolver again at point-blank into another nomad. Then something knocked that man off-balance and down.
A nomad moved in to finish the job; Gartlan smacked him with his rifle-butt, feeling skull break as the nomad fell on top of the injured Khaliq.
Can’t have that, Gartlan thought and intercepted the body with his boot. The dying nomad tumbled off the edge of the parapet, which Gartlan hadn’t even realized was so close. But another one was on him, Gartlan swinging around in just barely enough time to stop the blow with the center of his rifle.
Someone to his left fell and Blanket appeared in his place, immediately lunging forward to spear a Qing through its throat. Someone was shouting, and Gartlan raised his own voice with the only words that came to mind:
“Godfrey holds!”
“Godfrey holds!” someone echoed, as the last Qing in front of Gartlan fell.
He moved back to the battlements as sergeants shouted directions. Unconsciously his hands had shoved another magazine into the rifle, and now he pulled back the bolt—
The Qings were falling back.
The Qings still on the lattice were scrambling down, and the ones at the bottom were running. Horns started to blow again.
* * *
“They’re falling back!”
Croft, covered in blood and ichor as he shot another Qing through the face, couldn’t believe it. The ones at the gate were fighting furiously, walking over the corpses of the ones who had come before – and more than a few humans.
“Godfrey,” he breathed at a Qing who came at him with a long blade in each hand, “holds!”
He shot the nomad through the chest, then brought his bayonet through the alien’s throat.
And then the nomads were falling back, retreating as men from the walls joined the fight at the gate.
“Good to see you,” he said to Lieutenant Henry, extending a hand.
Henry shook it. “No problem.”
“Close the gates!” Sergeant Korval shouted. “Get that damn gate closed!”
Croft turned. Yeah, there was more to do than express thanks.
Shooting came from the walls as the nomads fled. Steady shots, then the hammering of the machine-guns on the blockhouse.
“Clear those bodies out of the way!” Croft yelled. “And get the gates closed!”
They’d fallen back.
He was alive. He might live another few hours.
He wasn’t sure if he could believe it.
* * *
Fleeing warriors, broken warriors, hurried past von Kallweit in the night. They were well out of the range of the fort’s brutal weapons, which had left hundreds and possibly thousands of them dead under the walls or in the free-fire zone, but the survivors were still in flight.
“They’ll recover,” Axhar said to his advisors. von Kallweit couldn’t read the alien’s emotions, but there had to be shame in him right now. “They will regroup and recover. And we will try again!”
“You made a good-faith attempt to avenge your father,” Second Lieutenant Hecht pointed out. “Perhaps it could be time to move on the rich lands, for easy plunder?”
“Call the clan chiefs,” Axhar said to one of the bannermen. “Summon warriors to the horde to replace those who fell tonight.”
You’re calling for reinforcements? von Kallweit thought with exasperation. That would take even more nomads away from the Vasimir Way, from the Chongdin Empire beyond. Did anyone see him, von Kallweit, aggressively avenging his superior officer like that?
The Americans were achieving more than they were realizing, the German noted. Tying the horde, and now apparently its affiliated clans, down in the middle of the wastelands away from the uprising’s real objectives.
But the Americans had just proven they wouldn’t fall to a quick attack. It had cost, by von Kallweit’s estimate, easily a thousand nomads to ascertain that.
A thousand nomads, von Kallweit thought, that could be doing far more good east of the Vasimir Way.
* * *
“We lost another one,” Second Lieutenant Kirby, Air Force nurse and the senior medical officer – only medical officer – at the fortress.
“That makes seven,” Croft breathed. God.
“James, the best we’re going to be able to do for a lot of these men is ease their pain while they go,” Kirby said.
The fort’s sick bay had been expanded into the dining hall, with men on stretchers and makeshift beds lying on the benches and on top of tables. Medics in Air Force grey-blue and Legion blue-and-white uniforms – the Air Force medical team, Bravo Company’s medical section and the platoon-level field medics now – worked desperately on some of them.
A pair of Black Gangers came trooping back in, exhausted like every man in the place but ready to help.
“Very well,” Croft said. He’d already gone along the wounded men, the conscious ones, reassuring them that they’d make it. And that help would come soon.
Part III
Chap
ter Twenty-Two
Governor Wendy Evanston tried not to flinch as a distant explosion shook the bulletproof-glass windows of her office. This one, she estimated, had been outside the Imperial Zone but still somewhere in Vazhao. It scared her that over the last two weeks she’d gotten good at making those estimations.
The Imperial and Administrative Zones were safe, she’d been assured. Army, Marines and Legion troops walked their walls, sending out regular patrols to keep order in troubled Vazhao. To calm the capital of an empire being overrun.
That was being torched on her watch. This wasn’t necessarily going to destroy her political career, she’d come to realize – it was a crisis to be handled and used, like any other. Which was why she was in her above-ground office; the always-rolling cameras would note that.
She slept, of course, in the well-appointed bunker below, but it would have looked bad to the voters if an opponent mentioned that she’d retreated there to do her job – with military people available to state what they’d been telling her, that there was no threat to the Administrative Zone, or the Imperial or Military ones, of Vazhao.
That kind of thing – as though she’d signed up for risks like the military had! – would not play well in an election. Idiot voters would call it cowardice, or listen to her opponents call her a coward and agree. So she had to keep up appearances.
“It’s been two weeks now,” she said flatly to General Chalmers, who as Adjutant-General was the commander of all American military forces on Dinqing.
Chalmers was tall and balding, in his sixties with an active-duty Army rank of lieutenant-general. When his stint as A-G was up – a box senior Army officers had to check, Evanston realized – he’d go back to the Army as that rank. Reliable information said that he was being groomed for four stars, and Evanston had come to count herself as one of the man’s political friends.
“Yes ma’am. No reinforcements yet,” the general said, forestalling what would have been her first question.