“He’s dead!” Coyle snapped. “Look at this, for Christ’s sake,” she said, sweeping her arm around them. The entire block where the division command post vehicles had been hidden had been pulverized, with every single building reduced to ashes and chunks of brick no bigger than her fist. The hammering her own platoon had received from the Kreelan ships had been a love tap by comparison. She knew that it was remotely possible that someone could still be alive in their vehicle, buried under the rubble. But there was no time to search. “The corps CP won’t be any different. Face it, el-tee, we’re on our own.”
The younger officer was about to make a fiery retort when Yuri, her gunner, shouted from his open hatch in the turret, “Coyle! We’ve got a laser-link from the fleet!”
“Hot damn,” she said as she jumped up on Chiquita to reach her cupola. Normally she would have been able to take the call through her helmet’s radio, but with all radio communications knocked out she had to physically plug in a cable from the helmet.
“This is Sergeant...scratch that,” she said hastily. “This is Captain Coyle of the 7th Cavalry Regiment. Go ahead, over.”
“Coyle,” a woman’s voice said quickly, “This is the Alita. I only have about ninety seconds before we lose you. The good news is that carriers are inbound for extraction of Terran and Alliance troops, but you have to reach one of the landing zones. The closest one to you will be...” she read off some coordinates that turned out to be near their original combat positions. “You’ve got forty minutes until the assault boats land.”
“Forty minutes?” Coyle cried. “There’s no fucking way we can get back there in forty goddamn minutes!” It had taken over an hour to get this far, wading through the tide of civilian refugees and fighting off the pursuing Kreelans.
“There are two other zones at-” the woman read off more coordinates as if she hadn’t heard Coyle’s outburst. Neither of them was even close to Foshan. “Forty minutes. Pass the word. Be advised that there is also a second wave of Kreelan ships inbound. Expect them in...”
The signal suddenly broke off.
Yuri was looking at her with disbelieving eyes. Tearing off her helmet, Coyle looked up at the sky, which was still a witch’s brew of smoke and ash from the burning city center. “Give us a fucking break, will you?” she yelled at any god or God who might be listening.
“What happened?” Krumholtz asked, following her gaze to the dirty gray smoke overhead.
“They’ve recalled the carriers and are bringing down the boats to extract us,” she told him through gritted teeth, “but we’ve only got forty goddamn minutes to make it back to the landing zone, which is right fucking where we started from. And as if that weren’t bad enough, more Kreelans are on the way.” She slammed her helmet against the cupola in frustration, then stuck it back on her head. “Have your people ditch everything they don’t need, lieutenant. They’ve got to be able to move fast. Drop everything: body armor, water, and anything else they won’t need to survive for the next forty minutes, except for weapons and ammo. Put out a dozen guys up front who can move fast and be our eyes and ears so my tanks don’t get bushwhacked. If there are Kreelans around a corner or sneaking around in buildings, I want to know before they start lobbing those fucking grenades of theirs.”
“You won’t leave us behind, Coyle, will you?” he asked uncertainly.
She looked at him hard. “You’ve got to keep up, lieutenant.” Then, softening slightly, she said, “Listen, I’d have some of your guys ride on the tanks, but we’ve got to keep the turrets and engine decks clear when we run into Kreelans. Otherwise we’ll either kill your guys with the muzzle blast if we have to fire the main guns, or get killed waiting for you to clear off. Now get going. We don’t have a second to waste.”
“Garry Owen,” he replied as he and his platoon sergeant dashed off, frantically shouting orders at the infantry. Many of them hadn’t started the battle as infantry, but if you had your vehicle shot out from under you and you were left on foot with nothing but a rifle, infantry is what you became.
Normally Coyle would have asked the other tank commanders how they were doing on ammunition and taken some time to redistribute as best they could. She was down to ten rounds of main gun ammunition, all of them armor piercing rounds that were totally useless against infantry. Worse, the close-in defense mortar was out of ammo, and she only had a couple thousand rounds for the coaxial gun and her gatling gun: enough for maybe twenty seconds of continuous firing. But there was no time now. None at all.
“Frederickson,” she said to one of the other tank commanders, “you’ll ride shotgun with me up in the front. Have your tank cover the right side of the road and I’ll take the left. Hoyt, Gagarin, you guys bring up the rear. We’ll keep the bulk of the infantry between us, and I’ll have the lieutenant run out a skirmish line of whoever he’s got who can move fast to scout in front of us. For God’s sake, don’t run over anybody, but don’t let the infantry guys slow you down, either. Keep ‘em moving. If we fall behind schedule, we’re gonna miss the bus, and I don’t need to tell you what that means with more of those blue-skinned bitches about to fall out of the sky on us. Questions?” There were none. “Then let’s haul ass.”
* * *
Steph felt like she was in a surreal nightmare as she struggled to keep up with the tanks. The cavalry troopers had offered to let her ride with Colonel Sparks and Sergeant Hadley in the civilian van they’d picked up along the way, but she’d given up her spot for a trooper whose hip had been sliced open by one of the Kreelan flying weapons. There were others who were wounded, but they had to do their best to keep up. They realized that there was no surrender. So they walked, ran, and shuffled as best they could, troopers who were uninjured helping those who were.
She wasn’t in the military, but she had seen the elephant, as the ancient saying went, and it had changed her life forever. Her vidcam was still recording every moment, and she even muttered notes now and again when she came across some new vision of horror. But she clutched her rifle to her shoulder, imitating the more experienced infantry soldiers around her, and watched every window and door on her side of the street. She had even killed a number of Kreelans that the other soldiers had missed: being a journalist had given her a lot of experience in noticing small things that others often didn’t see. The infantry squad that she had arbitrarily become attached to had at first looked at her as a burden, but after she blew the first Kreelan out of a window as she rose unseen to throw a grenade, they had shown her more than a little respect.
But she was tired, so tired from what seemed like an endless battle. She was tired of trudging through these cursed streets, littered with abandoned cars, dead civilians, glass and rubble, only to reach a dead end, and then to have to turn around and run-walk back the way they had come. She was in decent physical shape, largely thanks to Ichiro’s intense interest in fitness, and had been able to keep up so far. But she was winded from this agonizing running shuffle behind Coyle’s armored behemoths, her eyes stinging from the smoke and grimy sweat, her tongue feeling like it was coated with dust. Her shoulders burned from holding the rifle, which was like a lead ingot in her hands, and she was constantly stumbling on rubble or other bits of debris. And bodies. So many bodies.
But she refused to stop. She would not stop.
* * *
Li’ara-Zhurah paused to catch her breath. Her body trembled, but not from exhaustion or pain: her heart and muscles fluttered from a sense of pure exhilaration, the likes of which she had never known. Leading a small group of warriors, she was hunting some of the massive human vehicles that were shepherding a group of human warriors through the city. Curiously, the humans had come some distance into what was left of the metropolis, but then had turned around and were retracing their steps.
She had been hunting them since shortly after her earlier encounter with a group of different armored vehicles, the smaller ones with wheels, when Tesh-Dar had gone her own way. The humans had fought bravely,
and after their last charge a few had even escaped; Li’ara-Zhurah and her warriors could have hunted them down, but she had let them go so that other warriors might have the honor. She was yet young and sometimes impetuous, but was already wise enough to understand the dignity of sharing the honor of the kill with her sisters.
When that battle was over, Kamal-Utai had gone to rejoin Tesh-Dar on whatever mission the priestess had set for herself, leaving Li’ara-Zhurah to seek out new challenges. She had been drawn to the sound of heavy guns firing in the nearby fringe of the city, and had run toward what was clearly a savage battle, marked in her blood by the joyful chorus of Her Children as they fought and died. Other warriors had the same idea, and it had become a spirited race to see who might first reach the source of the excitement.
Li’ara-Zhurah had been bested by several warriors, but her disappointment at losing the foot race was brief: incautiously rounding a corner, focusing more on winning than surviving long enough to take the fight to the enemy, the warriors disappeared in a bone-shattering deluge of weapons fire from a huge armored vehicle, much larger than those they had faced earlier.
Pitching herself behind a sturdy brick wall, Li’ara-Zhurah waited until the vehicle stopped firing. It paused, as if the humans inside it knew she was there and were waiting for her to show herself. But after a while, with much shouting and noise, the vehicle and its accompanying human warriors moved on.
Once the humans had turned a corner down the street, Li’ara-Zhurah stepped carefully out of her hiding place, and stood dead-still as she looked upon a killing ground the likes of which she had never before seen. Some few hundreds of warriors, Children of the Empress, lay slain in the street, their bodies torn as if by a great genoth, a species of monstrous dragon that inhabited the wastelands of the Homeworld. She and the other warriors who had followed her walked gingerly through the remains of the slaughter, their sandals awash in blood. They knelt here and there to honor their sisters, and gave the last rites to the few who were badly injured and claimed death as their just reward. For even as the daggers of their sisters pierced still-beating hearts, those who were given the gift of death could hear the call of the Empress to their souls, beckoning them onward to kneel alongside the Ancient Ones, basking in the eternal light of Her love.
Once they had finished the rites, there was no question of what must be done. Splitting up into hunting packs, they followed the human behemoth and its attending warriors. Li’ara-Zhurah felt no grief or anger at the carnage the humans had wrought upon her sisters. She felt instead a suffusing joy and a burning desire to take the beast, not in revenge, but as a prize. As on the Homeworld in ancient times, when warriors killed the genoth and won great glory in Her name, so it would be for the warrior or warriors who defeated such a beast as the one they now pursued. It was a challenge from which only the most courageous and ferocious warrior would emerge victorious.
The large group of warriors that had originally dogged the humans had gradually been whittled down, as those who were too young, inexperienced, or simply unlucky were culled from the pursuing pack. The effect had been similar on the humans, Li’ara-Zhurah knew: while several more of the great war machines had joined the group of humans, some of them were destroyed, and only the true survivors were left.
While other warriors had earned their honor in destroying some of the machines, none had yet survived the attacks. More important, the beast she herself desired, the one that she had first seen, remained alive. Its commander was cunning and skilled, and her death would be a great victory. The more difficult the situation, the greater the challenge, and all the greater the glory in Her eyes and soul. Li’ara-Zhurah’s spirit trembled on the threshold of a type of ecstasy that no human being had ever known.
The greatest challenge was to get close enough to use one of the grenades, although she would have much preferred to use her sword. But even the living metal of her blade was likely not a match for the vehicle’s thick armor. So a grenade it would be. She only had one, and would not risk throwing it unless she was sure of her target.
Leading her group of half a dozen warriors down a parallel street, she darted into a building ahead of where the humans were. They were moving faster now, as if they had to get somewhere at a particular time, and Li’ara-Zhurah was growing concerned that her opportunity may not come. She was unafraid of death, but she did not want to sacrifice her body without bringing glory to Her name. For Li’ara-Zhurah, more even than her spiritual sisters, this was paramount, for she was born from Her very womb, a blood daughter of the Empress. She had never met her mother in the flesh since the day she had been born, but she did not need to: she knew the Empress in her heart, in the Bloodsong that filled her spirit.
She had just crept up to a shattered windowsill that allowed her to peer down the street unobserved when another group of warriors began their attack.
* * *
Coyle’s ad-hoc task force had just entered a narrower street, trying to get around a glut of refugees that blocked their original path, when all hell broke loose.
“engine deck of Coyle’s tank and instantly began to glow white hot.Grenade!” someone screamed as a glowing cyan ball arced through the air from an upstairs window of a building. It landed squarely in the middle of the
Before it could explode into a shower of blue lightning, one of the infantry troopers following behind the tank threw down his weapon and climbed up onto the vehicle. Grabbing the grenade, the soldier screamed in agony as it seared his hands, but he somehow managed to pry it off before leaping from the back of the tank. The weapon detonated while he was still in mid-air, incinerating his body in a wild cascade of lightning that scorched everyone and everything in a three meter radius. Chiquita’s rear armor was blackened and even melted in a few spots, but the tank still survived.
As the soldier’s charred body slammed into the ground, several dozen Kreelan warriors surged out of the buildings along the right hand side of the street, tearing into the mass of weary infantry.
While Coyle’s soldiers were taken by surprise, they had been through this before and reacted instantly, blasting away at their enemies at point blank range as the Kreelans hurled their lethal throwing weapons and slashed and stabbed with their swords.
Steph was just taking aim at a warrior when she was viciously knocked to the ground. She struggled to turn over, but couldn’t: a foot was planted in the middle of her back, pinning her to the ground on top of her rifle. She could turn her head just far enough to see the Kreelan, the blade of her sword glinting in the smoky light as she swung it down to take Steph’s head from her neck.
The blade never touched her. The Kreelan’s chest disappeared in a spray of crimson as three rounds from Chiquita’s gatling gun blew her to pieces. With a passionate curse, Steph struggled to her feet through the muck that fell on top of her, all that remained of her would-be killer. She moved to the rear of Coyle’s tank, trying to offer it some protection from another grenade attack while the nearby infantrymen grappled with the alien warriors and the gatling guns on the tanks growled.
Without warning one of the tanks in the rear was suddenly lit by a corona of lightning after it was hit by a Kreelan grenade. The crew never had a chance to get out. The vehicle exploded, knocking everyone, human and Kreelan alike, to the ground. The turret flipped up into the air like a toy before crashing down on top of a still-wrestling mob of humans and Kreelans.
Steph could see that the other tank to the rear was also in trouble: it had stopped in the street, just ahead of the one that now lay burning. The hatches suddenly flew open and the crewmen scrambled to escape. All three were cut down by a flurry of Kreelan flying weapons.
“Keep moving, goddammit!” Steph heard Coyle screaming above the raging chaos. Indeed, Chiquita hadn’t stopped or even slowed down, and Steph suddenly turned and ran to catch up, shouting at her surviving squad mates to do the same.
* * *
The gatling gun mounted to the top of the turret had nev
er been designed as a sniper weapon, but Coyle was doing the best she could. The Kreelans had become so closely enmeshed with her own people that she couldn’t open fire without shooting her own troopers. She killed the Kreelan who was about to lop the head off the reporter woman, and managed to get a few more, but her tank’s power had effectively been neutralized: she couldn’t use her more powerful weapons without taking out half of what was left of her scraped-up battalion.
As if the enemy weren’t bad enough, the clock was still ticking. Coyle could almost hear it in her brain, counting down the minutes until they would be marooned on this world. They couldn’t afford to get bogged down. Missing their extraction would kill them as surely as a blade to the heart.
“Keep moving, goddammit!” she screamed at the troops behind her. “Mannie,” she told the driver, “don’t fucking stop for anything. Keep us moving or we’re dead.”
“Roger,” he said shakily. “Garry Owen,” he whispered, as if to himself. Coyle thought he was losing it. And she knew she wasn’t far behind him.
Chiquita was leaving most of the troops behind: they were too fixated on trying to keep from being killed by the Kreelans among them to worry about dying if they missed the boats.
Coyle turned on the loudspeakers for her tank again, her voice booming out, “Break contact! Break contact!”
Her order was rewarded by a surge of soldiers trying to break away from the close quarters fight. The ones on the fringes of the mayhem were able to turn and run after Coyle’s tank. But for many, there was simply no getting away from the Kreelans without killing them first. Most of the infantry soldiers were running desperately low on ammunition at this point, or were completely out, and the Kreelans had a decided advantage in any close-in combat: their swords were infinitely better than the bayonets and knives wielded by their human opponents, and their claws were as lethal as any edged weapon.
In Her Name: The Last War Page 38