by Leo Champion
Sirens wailed around the base.
* * *
“Madam Colonel,” said one of the techs in the conference room. She, a Spanish woman, didn’t look up from the laptop she was intent on.
That was fine by Lavasseur. She respected focus.
“Yes?”
“Major incident at East Vasimir. Sources are lighting up. The base went to red alert – about five minutes ago. Orders going out to arrest all Foreign Legion troops there. It’s confirmed by our watcher, who says there’s been unusual activity and they’ve shut down the airfield.”
“So Doom’s tried something,” observed Bujold. “And it’s failed.”
“Or,” said Lavasseur, “it’s already in motion.”
She reached for the phone on her desk.
* * *
The C-175 was shaking like a badly-maintained carnival ride and was probably less safe. From the cockpit, Doom watched rugged ground three miles below racing past under them. The two pilots, Chip and Glass, were focused intently on simply keeping the plane going on in a straight line, and he didn’t envy the men piled into the back.
“Sir,” Chip said without looking away from his controls, “we’re approaching the Diamond North cleared area. If you want to talk to Croft, we’re going to have a non-jammed window of a few minutes.”
“Yes.”
Doom took a microphone.
“Bravo Six, this is Gambler Six Actual. Come in.”
“Bravo Six here,” said Croft. “What’s up, sir?”
“All exfiltrated elements are to get ready. No need for those elements to confirm. Something is happening.”
“Are we cleared to know what, sir?”
“Just to get the exfiltrated elements ready to go. Exfiltrated element, be ready to move on my command.”
A smooth, measured female voice came onto the channel. In accented English, she said:
“You know we’re listening, Doom.”
Doom turned to look at Faden, raising an eyebrow sharply. The captain’s own expression was more what-the-fuck.
“Arlene Lavasseur,” he said. “An honor.”
“It was my little brother your men killed, Doom,” Lavasseur said. “Bravo Six – Lieutenant Croft, the interrogation notes imply. I’m going to offer you one chance.”
“Ma’am,” Croft said, “I request you get off the channel.”
“Lieutenant, hand over the man who killed my brother. The man who operated that grenade launcher, and I will call off the attack. The rest of you will live if you turn over that man, alive.”
“Ma’am, whoever you are,” said Croft, “get off the channel. If you’re a high-ranking European, ma’am, be advised that your people are breaking the law by their presence in American territory. There will be consequences.”
“Lieutenant Croft,” said Doom, “you’re talking to Colonel Arlene Lavasseur, one of the top-ranking Department officers on this planet.”
“And now we’ve been properly introduced,” said Lavasseur acidly, “I am going to repeat my offer. My brother would appreciate it if he could personally execute the man who killed Andre. Hand that man over and the rest of your people will live.”
“We have what reason to trust lawbreakers?” Croft shot back.
“You can trust her,” said Doom as the plane rocketed through the air. “The Department is honorable enough when they have to be.”
“I am not going to surrender one of my men to die horribly, Colonel,” said Croft.
“Oh, he probably won’t die horribly,” said Lavasseur. “Julius isn’t into torture for its own sake; despite your propaganda, we’re not sadists. But he’d appreciate having the man to kill personally. By his own hand.”
“Ma’am,” said Croft, “Godfrey holds. Bravo Six out.”
Faden was nodding, a slight smile on his face.
“Good kid,” he said.
“That good kid,” Doom said evenly, “has about a fifty percent chance of surviving the next half-hour now that Lavasseur knows we’re onto her.”
“They’re about to come under attack with everything she has, aren’t they?” Faden asked.
Doom just nodded.
“Probably.”
* * *
In a northern part of the old city of Kandin-dak, in a dusty stone room looking out onto a narrow street, Mullins and his group had listened to the exchange. Weapons were cocked and ready, with Alvarez minding the Black Gangers. Everyone was primed to go, and the nervous energy was getting to Mullins at least.
“Shit’s about to get real, sounds like,” said Hill.
Lennon gave a terse nod. Janja murmured something.
A grin spread across the fireplug corporal’s face and he nodded approvingly. Tired of waiting, Mullins figured.
“It’s about time we got to fuck something up.”
“Exfiltrated element,” came over the radio, “this is Gambler Six Actual. Go! Take out their stingers, repeat, take out their stingers!”
* * *
“Attack,” Lavasseur’s voice came through to First Lieutenant Hecht in his command post, on the wall of the old city overlooking the half-mile-distant fort. “I repeat, Hecht; attack immediately with everything you have.”
“They gave orders to an external force,” said Hecht.
Someone in the city. To suppress the stinger elements, which were mostly in the city.
“Possibly a distraction,” said Lavasseur. “But possibly not.”
“Karlsen,” Hecht turned to a burly blond sergeant-major third-class. “Take a party and secure the city. Everyone in the city is to stay in place and be ready.”
That was mostly just the stinger-armed nomads, who were mostly older ones. A little under a hundred of them, if you included their guards.
“Sir,” said Karlsen with a crisp salute.
“Vozhar,” Hecht turned to the bannerman.
“Do we attack? Now, rather than wait for Axhar and the main horde to arrive?”
Hecht had been around Qing nomads for long enough, now, to get a sense of their emotions. Vozhar was enthusiastic.
“Blow the horns and signal the attack,” said Hecht. “Now.”
Vozhar turned to one of his hornsmen as he headed toward the steps that would lead down to the wall. He said something and the hornsman fell in behind him, blowing his horn.
More horns, from around the fortress, echoed. Short-long.
Signaling the attack.
From his position on the wall, Hecht watched the nomads begin to move. It would look good for Vozhar son of Venzhen if he could take the fort before the main horde arrived, on his own.
The Americans had been overestimating their strength over a radio network they apparently knew all along had been listened to. They said they were strong, so they were weak. Possibly under a hundred and twenty men. Perhaps under a hundred.
While Vozhar, not counting the ones in the city with the stingers, had almost a thousand.
* * *
“They’re coming,” said Dunwell to Croft. They were standing on the top of the blockhouse, with MacGallagher personally present with the backpack radio he’d spoken to the battalion commander and that Frenchwoman on.
Nomads were moving into the trenches, coming forwards. Horns blew from all directions. Sniping fire was coming from the forward positions.
“I may have figured that one out myself,” said Croft dryly.
So had everyone else in the fort, all hundred or so effectives he had left. In their reflective vests, blue shirts and desert-yellow uniforms, people were coming up to the battlements, getting ready. Sergeants and corporals around the fort shouted orders.
Parties of nomads appeared carrying more ladders, pushing their way forwards over the ground. Croft lowered himself to a squat as the incoming fire became a fusiliade, one man crying out as bullets and jezzail-balls hammered the battlements in a lethal storm of suppressive fire.
Horns blew as the nomads poured out of their trenches and attacked.
; Chapter Thirty-Two
Shots rang out from the direction of the fort; the horns had started a minute ago and now they were joined by more than just sporadic gunshots. It sounded like a full-scale battle was starting.
“This looks like our signal,” said Lennon. “In fours, go!”
Mullins and Jorgenson were teamed up with Bogdanov and a Black Ganger named McGinty, all with M-25s. Bayonets were fixed – this was going to be a close-up fight.
In two groups, Hill in charge of the other one, they were going to split up and work through the city, going for positions on the walls. From the high positions there – at or above the level of most of Kandin-dak’s roofs – they could suppress the stinger fire.
Now, ready for trouble with rifle raised to his shoulder, Mullins followed Lennon through a narrow street, heading for the north wall.
* * *
“Spare your fire!” Sergeant Garza shouted as the nomads came, raising ladders to the walls. “Make your shots count! Make ‘em count!”
Gartlan looked out, aimed this time, fired a pair of shots into the nomads. One of them staggered backwards. He chose another target, fired and missed, adjusted his aim and hit.
He’d been hoping it wouldn’t come to this. He’d really been hoping, lately, that this attack wouldn’t come. Because he was down to his last spare magazine once this one was done.
As the first nomads appeared at the top of their ladders, leaping through onto the battlement, that may have become irrelevant.
“Godfrey holds!” Blanket shouted as he parried a swinging blade and struck back, bayoneting the nomad through the face.
Gartlan shot the nomad in front of him in the chest, a solid burst that doubled the attacker over. But there was another one, who fired a blackpowder pistol at Gartlan’s head. There was a deafening explosion and a blinding flash, but somehow Gartlan lived, although his head rang.
He wasn’t so dazed that he didn’t shoot that nomad – what was going to be a multiple-shot burst but was only a single round, his rifle bolt clicking home on an empty chamber.
“Godfrey holds, men!” Garza shouted. “On me!”
Nomads were all over the battlements; they’d taken some areas and were coming down into the courtyard.
“On me!” Garza repeated.
Gartlan shoved a new magazine into his M-25 – his last, and his six-shooter was already in his belt ready for when his rifle was totally out – and looked over at Blanket, who was desperately fighting a particularly tall nomad.
“On the sergeant!” Gartlan shouted, whacking the tall nomad in the side of its head with his rifle bayonet. That sent it – him? The hostile ones were all just eatie scum to the Texan – reeling, giving Blanket the space to shoot him.
Or would have, if the man hadn’t been completely out of ammo.
Gartlan shot the alien himself, a burst through the head.
“Ammo?” Blanket asked hopefully.
Gartlan shook his head. “Last mag too. Come on, on the sergeant!”
Blanket using a rifle that had been reduced to an ungainly spear, the two men cut aside a pair of nomads and joined the group gathering around the sergeant, nomads everywhere.
* * *
Lance-Corporal Eric McMahon, of the Army combat engineers, didn’t like being relegated to sick bay while his buddies stuck it out on the walls. He didn’t know who the family connection was, that had requested he be put in the safest place possible; McMahon was inland-California trailer trash and he’d been surprised to hear anyone in high places knew of his existence. He knew he should appreciate it more and a part of his mind knew he was being ungrateful, but he still didn’t like it.
Still, orders were orders and it wasn’t like Second Lieutenant Kirby didn’t have work for him. There were dozens of wounded, so badly hurt they couldn’t fight, in various stages of consciousness, some of them dying. Lieutenant Kirby and his medics might have been Air Force, whose toughness the Army had never had much regard for, but they were working their asses off here. Saving lives. McMahon had helped out to the best of his ability, bringing water to thirsty wounded men lying on dining-room benches and tables, on the floor.
And now, as angry Qing nomads appeared in the doorway, McMahon was glad he’d kept his M-31 ready. And loaded, when the assault started.
One medic screamed. Lieutenant Kirby fumblingly moved to draw his pistol.
Eric McMahon stepped protectively in front of the Air Force people as he shot the pair of nomads down, crack-crack. More were coming, and as he moved toward the door he fixed his bayonet. He had only the thirty rounds – minus the burst he’d just fired – left in his rifle.
But he’d die before the nomads got to massacre the wounded.
As shouts, clashes and shots came from all around the fort, it seemed like he was probably going to die anyway.
“The window!” Kirby shouted as a nomad burst through the glass. The nurse had gotten his sidearm out and shot that nomad, as more came toward the doorway. One of the senior medics had picked up a submachinegun and a tech was coming toward another window with an M-25, holding the empty rifle’s bayonet high.
But if Lance-Corporal Eric McMahon, United States Army Corps of Engineers, was going to die today? Then by damn he was going to hell with an entourage.
* * *
MacGallagher had, under his rifle, had a small flamethrower. When nomads had boiled up the steps to the top of the blockhouse, as men in the blockhouse desperately fired through the slits at them, the signals chief had flicked a switch and engulfted the first few in flames. On fire they’d tumbled down the steps, but there was more and MacGallagher had soon been out of fuel.
Since then it had been desperate bayonet fighting, the last of the ammunition gone, as the surviving men on top of the blockhouse defended their positions.
Croft now stepped back, letting Ortega move in to spear a nomad through the throat, then viciously boot the one coming up the steps after him, in the face.
Shouting and fighting came from all around the fort. They’d been thoroughly overrun; nomads were everywhere. The walls were a long-lost cause; the surviving defenders had clustered into groups around the corner, the entrance to the sick bay, one group of about twenty men slowly fighting their way toward the blockhouse.
They’d been thoroughly overrun, and nobody was going to live much longer unless the colonel executed his plan soon.
* * *
“Muls, above you!” Jorgensen shouted amidst the fight.
Mullins looked up, rifle raised to his shoulder and moving with his eyes, just as a nomad with a blade in each hand leapt down at him from the rooftop. He pulled the trigger out of reflexive terror, riddling the attacker.
Not far away, a grenade exploded.
“Clear! Room’s clear and we got one!” one of the Black Gangers shouted.
That probably meant another stinger missile taken out of commission.
“This way,” Lennon shouted, gesturing.
Mullins fell in on him, hearing shots behind and around him as they fought their way through the city.
The thirty-foot walls towered over them now. All they needed was a way up.
“There!” Bogdanov pointed at a crumbling stone staircase.
“That way!” Lennon repeated, pushing forwards.
Another knot of nomads appeared, swinging their blades in a way that had already gutted one of the Black Gangers and given Senechal a vicious, tourniquet-requiring slash across the leg; the chopper pilot was limping badly now and walking only with a Black Ganger’s help.
These ones were cut down by close-ranged bursts of rifle fire before they could reach anyone. A jezzail banged behind them from up an alley.
“Go!” Lennon shouted. Boots pounding on the ancient stones, the group charged up the stairs and onto the wall.
* * *
“Brakes on,” Glass reported as the C-175 descended.
“Brakes check,” said Chip.
“Lowering flaps, spoilers split, all
of that?”
“Roger.”
Glass turned to Doom.
“Starting descent.”
There was a series of sharp tones from something on the control panel.
“ECW panel says we’re being pinged by approximately a million targeting radars,” Chip reported.
“We must be over the main horde,” said Doom. He looked out the window; two and a half miles up was far too high to spot riders, of course, but he could see pinprick glints of sun on metal, through the dust that was being sent up.
They were moving fast. But then his plane was over them, past them.
Bleeding speed, the pilots using every trick in the book to bring the C-175’s stressed airframe down to as slow as possible, the plane angled into an approach path.
* * *
“Report from von Kallweit!” Bujold said, reading from his laptop. “The main horde got into radio communications range a while ago, and – plane, looks like a C-175, coming in. He’s bringing in a plane, ma’am!”
“I did not,” Lavasseur observed to her aide, “think he was bringing in a boat.”
“Satellites have the horde within thirty kilometers, madam colonel,” reported the Greek captain. “Fifteen minutes, twenty at most from the fortress.”
“Air support,” said Lavasseur. “Have you gotten through to Landsfarne yet?”
A junior aide handed her a phone handset.
“Group Captain de Klerk, ma’am.”
She took the phone.
“Group Captain,” she said. “You have that flight circling by the border. I want them to cross now, de Klerk, and engage the transport coming in. Blow it out of the sky.”
“I’m sorry, Colonel,” de Klerk said in his guttural Dutch accent, “but that’s illegal. I am not going to start a war.”
“It can be an accident,” Lavasseur insisted. Technically she didn’t outrank him, but he was a conventional-forces officer while she was the god damned Department!