“What about the cities to the north and south?” Sparks zoomed out on the map. “Any idea of enemy concentrations there, or how many civilians may be left?”
“We weren’t able to find out anything about any other Kreelan forces, sir, but from what we heard from some of the civvies, there are still quite a few people around the cities. But it seems like most of the Kreelans are concentrated here.”
Sparks zoomed out more, with the display now showing the entire continent. “We’ve got recon boats searching all the other major population centers, but so far they haven’t reported back.”
“Sir...”
Sparks pinned him with his eyes. The general was a thin, wiry man of average height, but the intensity of his gaze commanded respect from every man and woman who encountered him. “Spit it out, first sergeant.”
“One of the warriors here, sir. The leader, has...I don’t know how to describe it without sounding like I’ve lost my mind, sir, but she’s like a bloody witch.”
“Like the one who rearranged your face on Keran and again on Saint Petersburg?”
Mills nodded. “Yes, sir, but not the same one. I don’t know much of what she can do other than what one of the civilians...” He had to bite his lip at that point, thinking of Allison’s face, looking back at him as the Kreelans swarmed over her. “...what one of the civilians told me. That she can pop out of thin air right next to you. But I believe her.”
“Is there anything I can do about this warrior except blow her to bits?”
“No, sir. I just wanted you to know.”
Sparks nodded. “Then we’ll have to hope that a frag round will do the job when the time comes.”
“There’s something else.”
Sparks stared at him.
“Valentina Sikorsky and Stephanie Guillaume-Sato were...” Mills hesitated, unable to say the word that he knew had to be said. Killed. He couldn’t say it, because doing that would have somehow made it real, and it was a reality he simply wasn’t prepared to deal with, a reality that he refused to acknowledge.
Sparks saved him from having to cross that abyss. “Damn. I’m sorry, son.” He looked toward the town, his expression hard as the armor of the tank on which they knelt. “I guess I’ll have to inform the commodore. And Valentina…I’m sorry.”
“Yes, sir.” Mills felt himself choking up. “General, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble-”
An alarm sounded, a piercing siren that wailed from several of the boats and brought all activity in the landing zone to a dead stop.
His comm unit chimed before his operations officer came on. “Sir, we’ve got an inbound air attack!”
A wave of red dots appeared on the miniature tactical display Sparks was holding.
Then the sensor feed went dark and the red icons disappeared.
Disgusted, Sparks tossed the display into its bin inside the turret and keyed his comm unit. “All units, air action west, I repeat, air action west!”
That broke the spell. Everyone in the landing zone leaped into action, trying to get the last of the Marines unloaded before cramming in the civilians. Boats began to lift off, staying low as they turned away from the approaching Kreelan ships.
The Wolverine tanks of the brigade’s armored regiment moved forward, turning to face the threat. The muzzles of their fifteen centimeter guns elevated as the crews prepared for the attack.
The Marine infantry around them fanned out, aiming their own weapons in the same direction. Every one of them knew that their assault rifles probably wouldn’t scratch the Kreelan boats, but they would fire if he or she got the chance.
Sparks turned to Mills. “You’ve done enough here, first sergeant.” He gestured to the nearest boat. “Hop aboard and get the hell out of here.”
“Yes, sir!”
As Sparks turned his attention to managing the battle, Mills quickly climbed down the Wolverine’s flank and headed in the direction of the assault boat.
They’re dead. The words kept ringing in his head as he trudged toward the boat. He was tortured with the image of Valentina disappearing into the mass of warriors, trying to defend Allison and Steph as warriors swarmed around them like water flowing past a rock in a river.
The scene played over and over in his mind. He slowed his pace, then finally stopped, staring at the boat’s gaping hold as Marines continued to stream out of it.
You didn’t see them die. It was an easy rationalization to make, even if it made no sense at all. Steph was down, Allison helpless beside her, and Valentina couldn’t have fought so many warriors. It was impossible. There was no reason the warriors swarming into the compound wouldn’t have killed them.
No reason…except for the warrior leader. She had let Allison live. She must have known that Mills and his team were hiding at the farm, but she didn’t come for them right away. When she did, she took the women and children prisoner when she could have easily killed them all.
It didn’t make any sense.
Then his encounters with the huge warrior on Keran and Saint Petersburg came back to him. He had never really understood why she had let him live when she could so easily have killed him any time she pleased, both times they’d fought. The fights had almost been like Saturday night brawls in a pub.
Then it dawned on him. The Kreelans didn’t care about winning as humans thought about it. For them, the pleasure was in how the game was played, and the tougher the opponent, the better.
And who could be a more formidable opponent for the warrior with the dead eyes than Valentina?
“You’re just making this up, you fool.”
Perhaps. But looking at the hold of the boat, he realized that he had nothing to live for, no future but a violent death. He wouldn’t have any cushy retirement, reminiscing at the pub with a bunch of other old codgers. No one would in this war. His pension would be the blade of a Kreelan sword through his gut.
He accepted that he was going to die in this war. But if he was going to give his life, he wanted it to be for something that mattered to him. Even if it was only a lunatic idea about an alien’s motivations.
“Move it, Marines! We’re lifting!” The boat’s loadmaster was windmilling one arm as if he were making an underhand softball pitch, urging the Marines to get off. His eyes were glued to the western horizon.
Mills made his decision. Turning and running after the last batch of Marines that had passed by, he caught up to the one he wanted. The platoon’s sniper. If his lunatic speculation about the warrior leader was right, there could be only one place she’d take Valentina and the other women. The arenas. And for him to help, he’d need a weapon with a long reach.
“You there, Marine!”
“First sergeant?” The Marine, a sergeant, stepped out of line, his eyes darting to the west as the defensive barrage opened up. Tracers from the Marines’ weapons and point defense lasers from the boats arced toward the small but rapidly approaching shapes of the Kreelan ships.
The sniper’s squad leader turned and was about to give Mills an earful when he saw that Mills was a first sergeant. Not only that, he was covered in mud, blood, and had a wild-eyed look.
The young Marine snapped his mouth shut.
“Your rifle.” Mills pointed at the sniper’s weapon, a twin of the one he had used earlier. “Give it to me. And your ammo. Now.”
The Marine turned to his squad leader, a helpless look on his face.
“Now, old son. I don’t have time to argue or explain.” Mills held out his hands.
“Do it.” The squad leader had to shout over the racket of the gunfire and roar from the engines of more assault boats as they rose into the air, trying to flee. “I hope you know what the hell you’re doing, first sergeant.”
“I do, too, lad.” Mills took the weapon and slung it over his shoulder, then clipped the ammo bandolier to his combat belt. “Believe me, I do, too.”
With that, he turned and ran through the formation just as dozens of Kreelan attack ships screamed i
n over the trees from the direction of town.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
Ku’ar-Marekh opened her eyes after blinding the humans’ electronic eyes. It was not something she could accomplish on her own, but she acted as a conduit for the power and will of the Empress. It was a role that only high priestesses such as herself could fulfill, for the surge of raw power through the Bloodsong would kill even the hardiest of her warriors.
Other than the small force guarding the humans for whom Ku’ar-Marekh had special plans, all the warriors here had gathered to welcome the human warriors.
Sensing the approach of her attack ships, Ku’ar-Marekh turned to Esah-Kuran. “Let it begin.”
As the attack ships soared overhead, ten thousand warriors charged from the tree line along the edge of the landing zone.
* * *
Lasers and cannon fire from the incoming Kreelan ships tore through the assault boats that were still on the ground, turning half a dozen into flaming pyres of debris in mere seconds. Three more boats were shot down as they tried to lift, and a fourth was brought down just before it reached the relative safety of the low hills to the east.
Sparks stood on his seat in the turret of his tank so he could see out the commander’s cupola. He had always preferred to see the battlefield directly, and hated it when he had to button up and close the hatch.
“Anti-air round, up!” The tank’s gunner, who was also acting as its commander while Sparks worried about the conduct of the battle, was tracking one of the wasp-like Kreelan ships with his main gun. “Firing!”
The tank rocked back on its tracks as the gun fired with a deafening roar and a huge tongue of flame from the muzzle.
The anti-air round the tank had fired was a huge shotgun shell that was set to go off when it came close enough to a target. It was a relatively primitive weapon compared to the much smarter missiles that the tanks were designed to carry, but Sparks had insisted that each tank carry some. In this war, he had discovered, simpler was often better.
The other Wolverines fired the standard anti-air rounds, small smart missiles that were almost impossible to evade or spoof.
“Son of a bitch.” He watched as every one of the missiles followed a ballistic trajectory from the tanks, flying “dumb.” None of them maneuvered or came close to hitting any of the Kreelan attackers. “All units, use the anti-air rounds!”
The attacking ships were now close enough that the smaller weapons like the gatling guns mounted on the tops of the tanks and some of the other vehicles began to open up.
One of the ships, then more, started taking hits. The anti-air round Sparks’s gunner had fired went off, and they were rewarded with a bright yellow fireball as the target ship exploded.
Sparks was sure the enemy ships would try to evade, but they didn’t. They flew straight into the curtain of fire from his Marines.
A chill ran down his spine as he realized what they were doing. “Kamikazes!”
He was partly correct. A third of the ships didn’t make it through the defensive fire, and Sparks grimaced as they plowed into the landing zone, killing dozens of Marines and reducing eight Wolverines to burning slag.
The rest of the ships, most of them damaged and streaming smoke as the Marines continued to fire at them, streaked overhead.
Sparks thought they were pursuing the departing assault boats. Then he saw a cloud of black objects leap from the ships, which were about half the size of the assault boats.
Warriors.
His Marines didn’t need any orders from their general. The air over the landing zone was filled with thousands of weapons firing at the aliens gliding on thin parasails toward the ground. The enemy wasn’t content to just use swords this time around. They had rifles, too, and were lethal shots.
The tanks and infantry combat vehicles swept the sky with their gatling guns. Firing at over a hundred rounds per second, they killed warriors by the dozens while they were falling toward the ground.
A few hundred warriors managed to reach the ground alive, but they wouldn’t enjoy the sort of victory they had over the human forces deployed to Keran in the first major battle of the war. Most of the men and women with Sparks had seen combat, and weren’t surprised or terrified by the aliens. They met them with blazing assault rifles and, when the Kreelans got too close, unsheathed combat knives.
That’s when Sparks heard a roar like the rising wind before a storm.
“General!” His deputy commander was calling over the radio. He was in the command vehicle near the center of the landing zone. It was his job and that of the combat controllers with him to make sure that orders and reports made it to where they were supposed to go. “The southern flank, sir!”
Sparks turned and looked, and for one of the few times in his life, even during the desperate hours of the Battle of Keran, he felt a stab of fear. A massive line of warriors had emerged from the trees and was charging toward the brigade’s positions, the warriors howling as they ran, their swords drawn.
That wasn’t what frightened him. It was the warrior who led them, who was floating above the ground like a ghost, her arms extended out to her sides as if they were wings. As he boosted the magnification on the vision block in his cupola, it looked like she was staring right at him.
The entire brigade opened up in what should have been a hailstorm of death. Instead, every round, whether fired from assault rifles or the tanks, made a bright flare about a meter short of the line of warriors, then simply fell to the ground, molten or burning. The warriors, incredibly nimble in the black armor they wore, bounded over or danced around the spatters and pools of sizzling metal.
The Marine infantry moved forward while the Wolverines maneuvered back, trying to keep their distance from the oncoming alien horde. Had it not been for the strange shield protecting the warriors, the tanks could have gutted the alien charge. But now the huge vehicles were rapidly coming into range of the hellish Kreelan grenades and would be slaughtered if Sparks couldn’t get them clear, and the Marine infantry now had to protect the tanks.
Led by their own angel of death, the warriors ran behind their protective shield right up to the outermost Marine positions, when the shield disappeared. The line of warriors slammed into the Marines like a steel curtain, the air filling with the screams of the dying and those doing the killing, the crash of metal on metal and non-stop weapons fire.
Sparks knew there was no choice. He had to play their game. For now. He looked back toward the middle of the landing zone where the Kreelans had airdropped in. There was still a snarling fight going on, but a company of Marines could finish it. It had only been a diversionary attack.
He contacted his deputy commander. “Move every Marine who isn’t involved in the contact inside the LZ to the southern flank and get them into the fight.”
“Understood, sir.” His deputy’s voice was tight. “But if we get hit by more warriors on either end of the line, they could turn our flank. Or worse.”
“I’m counting on it, colonel.” Sparks saw with approval that the infantry units in the LZ were already moving forward toward the massive brawl. Part of the defensive line was already sagging where the lead warrior was cutting his Marines down like paper dolls, but more Marines piled in, fighting with assault rifles, knives, entrenching tools, and fists. “Just move our infantry forward so I can maneuver my tanks.” After a pause, he added, “And get me through to Commodore Sato in the fleet.”
* * *
With space above Alger’s World secured, most of the crew on Orion’s flag bridge was watching the secondary display showing a computer-generated depiction of the ground battle. Few could make heads or tails of it, because it resembled nothing so much as a battle between a huge force of red ants and a larger force of blue ants.
Sato allowed them that indulgence because he knew that the tactical and communications officers were fully focused on monitoring the fleet and the space around it, which was blissfully, almost disturbingly calm. For one of the few times
since the war had begun, a human fleet had complete and total space supremacy, at least for a time.
He saw the flag communications officer stiffen, then turn to look at Sato. Then he got up and handed Sato his headset.
“It’s a direct comm from General Sparks on the surface, sir.”
Frowning, Sato put on the headset. “General Sparks, sir?”
“A moment, commodore.” Sparks’s voice was calm, but Sato could hear a riot of sound in the background, voices shouting orders and reports, punctuated by the unmistakable crack of a large caliber weapon, a tank’s main gun. “We’re in full contact down here and I don’t have much time.”
Sato glanced up, seeing the entire flag bridge crew now staring at him. He pointed at the tactical officer and gestured him over. “We’re standing by to provide orbital bombardment, general, but it will be terribly dangerous until you can break contact and-”
“Your wife’s dead.” Sparks paused. “Sorry to sound like a heartless bastard, but there’s no easy way to say it.”
“General, I don’t understand.” Steph, dead? He couldn’t get his mind around the words. Even if it were true, how would Sparks know? Steph was back on Earth.
“She was on one of the recon teams as an embedded journalist, just like she was with my unit at Keran. First Sergeant Roland Mills just informed me that the enemy...got her. I’m sorry, commodore. Damn sorry.”
“Yes,” Sato answered weakly as the color seemed to drain from the universe around him. “Thank you for letting me know, general.” Forcing himself to put some steel back into his voice, he asked, “We’re standing by to support you, sir. Just give us the word.”
“I appreciate that, son, but right now this is a good old-fashioned slugfest. Godspeed, commodore. Sparks, out.”
“Sir?”
Looking up, Sato found his flag captain looking at him, a concerned expression on his face.
“Commodore, is something wrong?”
“No,” Sato lied. “I’m fine.” He forced himself to his feet, ignoring the vertigo that threatened to take him. “I’ll be in my day cabin.”
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