The Golden Horde (The Revelations Cycle Book 4)

by Chris Kennedy

  Before the two junior enlisted could come over, Smith already had the cover off the CASPer’s missile pack and was carefully removing one of the missiles from it. He held it up and inspected it. “Aye, ‘twill do just fine, methinks.”

  “All right you clowns,” Walker said to the rest of the squad, “get back to work. You look like you’ve never seen a missile pack disassembled before.”

  “Actually, Staff Sergeant, I haven’t,” Private Mark DeWayne noted.

  “Well, if we live through this, I’ll have him show you some other time when there aren’t enemy fighters coming!” Walker finished with a yell. “Until then, get back to work! We need to build some revetments and make some cover!”

  “But this is a beach, Staff Sergeant,” Private Enkh said. “What are we supposed to use for cover?”

  “Let’s pull some of the CASPers up off the sand,” Walker said. “We can use the two operational CASPers to help drag them.”

  “But we don’t know which side the MinSha will be coming from,” Private DeWayne complained. “How will we know what side to dig the holes on?”

  “You’ll have to dig them on both sides then, won’t you?” Walker asked. “Get to work—we’ve got less than ten minutes to prepare.”

  “Hey, Staff Sergeant,” Sergeant Loftis asked. “Do you suppose all of our suits are messed up? I mean, like all of the other squads’ suits, too?”

  “Yeah, if all of ours are, theirs probably are, too. Why?”

  “Because Third Squad is setting up positions like they think they’re going to use their CASPers.”

  “Damn it,” Walker muttered. One more problem to fix. “Thanks.” He broke into Third Squad’s net. “Third Squad, this is Staff Sergeant Walker from Fourth,” he transmitted. “I’m sure you got the word that the MinSha are coming. I just want to make sure you’re not planning to shoot at them with your integrated CASPer weapons.”

  “Don’t shoot at them?” one of the troopers asked.

  “Is he fucking stupid?” asked another.

  “Fuck him,” said several others; this seemed to be the general consensus.

  “Seriously, you assholes,” Walker said. “Do you see that most of our suits are dead? There’s some kind of bug in the fire control system. When you try to fire a second round with an integrated suit weapon, your suit will shut down.”

  “Colonel, this is Staff Sergeant McCarthy, are you up this frequency? If so, is that true?”

  “Yes, it’s true,” Sansar said. “Don’t use your suit’s weapons. A handheld weapon is fine, though. Right, Staff Sergeant Walker?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Walker agreed. “If you don’t have a handheld, keep your head down and stay out of the way.” He shook his head; he knew some of them would try it anyway. There were going to be more broken suits after the fight, but at least he had warned them.

  Five minutes remaining. He went to check on Corporal Smith, and the trooper was helping VVR put the missile pack onto his shoulder mount.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Walker asked. “You’re going to bust VVR’s suit now, too.”

  “Och, no I’m not,” Smith replied. “He’s just somethin’ tae mount it on.” He held up two wires. “He points it at the enemy, and I get tae light it off. I didn’t have time tae get much done, but it will ripple three missiles when I fire it.”

  “Incoming!” Third Squad’s scout yelled over the common frequency. “Three from the south!”

  VVR knelt on one knee behind a pile of CASPers, facing north.

  “South’s the other way!” Walker yelled.

  “Aye, ‘tis all right,” Smith said. “I’m using heat-seekers; and we want to get them from behind.”

  Before Walker had time to issue any further orders, missiles were landing in their midst, and Walker had to dive for cover. He turned in time to see huge clouds of sand and machinery thrown into the air as the last of the missiles exploded. The fighters continued inbound, lasers firing, and a solitary missile leapt up to greet them. Walker’s eyes tracked back down the smoke trail to the missile’s point of origin, and he watched as a CASPer fell forward with all of its systems shut down.

  Third Squad’s CASPers were affected then, too. Great.

  The CASPer missile streaked past the fighters without guiding on them, and then they were in range. Walker fired, along with the rest of the squad, as an explosion announced the death of another Third Squad CASPer. Walker thought he might have hit one of the fighters, but all three roared past, seemingly unaffected.

  He turned as they passed, firing as quickly as he could, and was in a good position to see the missiles launch from the pack on VVR’s shoulder. Three missiles streaked after the fighter on the left, which jinked and fired off a massive amount of chaff and flares. The first missile chased down one of the flares and detonated, destroying the flare without damaging the fighter.

  The second missile fell prey to another round of flares from the fighter. It flew through the flare’s position without exploding, but the pilot had pulled the fighter to the right, and the craft was outside the missile seeker’s field of view; it flew several more seconds before self-destructing harmlessly.

  The pilot tried to keep the fighter low to the ground, but it was his undoing. The third missile had locked onto the fighter, and its seeker had narrowed down its field of view to where it was looking only at the engine’s hot exhaust; it wasn’t distracted by the flares.

  Walker could see the pilot was screwed. He couldn’t climb, or he would highlight the craft against the cloudless sky, and he didn’t have any altitude below him in which to maneuver. The pilot saw the missile at the last second and tried a last-ditch bump maneuver—he pulled up and then immediately pushed back down again—and it worked; the missile flew over the fighter and exploded. The craft was swatted from the sky, as though an invisible hand had slapped it down. It hit the top of one of the dunes, ingesting sand into its motors, skipped across the tops of the next several dunes, then dug into the sand on the fifth hill, stopping itself.

  “Woohoo!” yelled VVR. “I got him!”

  “Och,” Smith said, “sure’n I might say, ‘we’ got the wee craft, but either way, the bastard’s down.” He looked at Walker. “What now?”

  “Well,” Walker said, waiting for an explosion that didn’t happen, “I guess we go check it out and introduce ourselves to our visitor, if he or she survived the landing.” He turned to VVR. “Give me a ride?”

  VVR scooped up Walker, took several steps toward the crash site, and jumped.

  The rest of Fourth Squad raced after Walker, running or jumping from dune to dune in their haste. As Walker soared from the last dune prior to the one where the fighter lay, movement at the craft caught his eye—a figure was crawling from the cockpit.

  Walker had planned on landing short of the craft and approaching it cautiously, but when he saw the pilot—a MinSha, as expected—lean back into the cockpit, he changed his mind. Not today, bug!

  “Land as close to the MinSha as you can,” he transmitted to VVR, and the trooper goosed his jets, angling toward the cockpit and the alien. Walker didn’t know if the alien intended to destroy any of the information the craft held, or the fighter, itself, but he wasn’t going to allow that to happen—the salvage value alone on the fighter would net him a healthy bonus!

  The MinSha stood up from the cockpit as Smith landed next to the craft with a bone-jarring slam and set Walker down. The alien had a round, black object in its hands with a couple of small knobs on it—grenade!

  “Freeze!” Walker yelled as the MinSha adjusted one of the knobs. It dropped the grenade into the cockpit and dove to the side.

  Before he could think about it, Walker stepped up to the craft and looked inside. The grenade had fallen onto the pilot’s seat. He reached in, grabbed it, and threw it out of the craft in the opposite direction…right into the path of Sergeant Morgan as he landed on the other side of the fighter.

  “Fuck!” Walker said, realizing his m
istake. “Look out!”

  Morgan was already watching, and he saw the weapon coming. As the grenade neared him, he swung his rifle like a cricket bat and drove the grenade over the hill. It vanished over the next dune and exploded in a gout of sand and smoke.

  “Gee thanks, Staff Sergeant,” Morgan said. “What the hell was that for?”

  Walker wished for his CASPer so Morgan couldn’t see how red his face was. “Uh…oops,” was all he could muster. “Sorry.”

  Crashed Fighter, Trigar 2-A, Trigar System

  The rest of the squad arrived within seconds of Sergeant Morgan and looked back and forth between the craft and the MinSha pilot at whom Walker was now pointing his rifle. Walker knew that, for many of them, it was the first time they’d seen a live alien up close, and eventually the alien became the focal point for most of the troopers. Giant praying mantis analogues, the creature stood almost seven feet tall and had ruby-red compound eyes and iridescent blue chitin. Walker hated them.

  “What is that thing?” Corporal Michael Burke asked, indicating the downed fighter.

  “I think it’s a Series 18 MinSha exo-atmospheric fighter,” Walker said looking at the MinSha pilot for confirmation. If it understood him, it didn’t answer. “Could be a series 19, too,” Walker added when no answer was forthcoming; “I always get them confused.”

  “That thing is a fighter?” Private Mark DeWayne. “I’ve seen refrigerators that looked more aerodynamic than that.”

  “The key word was exo-atmospheric,” Walker replied.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means the plane’s a space fighter,” Sergeant John Kane explained. “Since it doesn’t normally fly through a planet’s atmosphere, it doesn’t have to be aerodynamic. They can make it any shape they want.”

  “Good job, folks,” Sansar said as she joined the group, along with Third Squad. “Now they’re down to two.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Walker replied. “Unfortunately, though, our weapons don’t work, and they won’t be any good when the other fighters come back.”

  “Yes,” Sansar said. “They’re definitely going to be back.” A faraway look crossed her face as she studied the fighter sitting on the beach. “It would be really helpful if we could get that flying again.”

  “You actually want to fly that piece of shit, Colonel?” Private DeWayne asked.

  “It would give us an advantage the MinSha aren’t expecting,” Sansar replied.

  “There’s only two—no, wait, three—problems with that, ma’am,” Walker said.

  “Is that all?” Sansar asked with a small laugh. “Okay, I’ll bite. What are they?”

  “The immediate problem is the fighter is broken. We shot it down.” He gestured to the pilot with his rifle. “At least the bug couldn’t fly it anymore, anyway.”

  The MinSha bristled. “I am a member of the warrior caste of the MinSha race,” the alien said. “That race has been a galaxy-wide power since before you crawled from your caves. I am not some insignificant insect.”

  “Okay,” Walker said, “he couldn’t fly it, anyway.”

  “I am not a ‘he.’ Males in my society are often mindless drones. I see it’s the same in your society, too.”

  “All right, bug, that’s about enough out of you,” Corporal Burke said, putting the barrel of his laser rifle in the face of the alien. “Speak when you’re spoken to.”

  Walker looked back to the colonel and continued, “What I was going to say, though, is that the damage is probably the least of our worries. The pilot jinked as the missile blew up, and it detonated above the fighter. The blast pushed the horizontal stabilizer down, and the plane went nose-down into the sand, but at a pretty gentle angle. Not only was it a ‘soft’ crash—as far as crashes go, anyway—but that sand is also pretty soft; we may be able to get it back to base, clean it up, and get it working again. Maybe.”

  “Sergeant Major Price has been telling me for years that he’s the best mechanic who has ever lived,” Sansar replied. “He says he can fix anything; I’m willing to give him a shot with this. Assuming he can fix it, what’s the second issue?”

  “We don’t have anyone who can fly it,” Walker said. “I’m probably the only person we’ve got who’s ever even been inside the cockpit of one of these things.”

  “You have?” Sansar and the MinSha chorused.

  “Yes ma’am,” Walker said, ignoring the MinSha. “I was looking at buying four fighters for a job, and I got to sit in the back seat of the two-seat version of the Series 18.”

  “This is a Series 19,” the MinSha interjected, “and as everyone knows, only races like us can function as super-G fighter pilots.”

  “What does she mean, ‘only races like us?’”

  “Insectoid races, ma’am. They’re really the only races that are physiologically compatible with flying fighters at super-G’s. There are a couple of aquatic races that are close, but insectoids who have their hearts and heads close to each other are best, ma’am.”

  “Do you think you can fly it?” Sansar asked, also ignoring the MinSha.

  “Maybe,” Walker replied. “I had a pilot’s license a long time ago. It might all come back, but that leads me to the third problem, and that’s what I was trying to tell you—whoever tries to fly that thing is going to get squashed to paste if they have to fight anyone in space; it’s rated for way more Gs than the Human body can take and still stay conscious.”

  “How many more?”

  “25? 30? I don’t know. The MinSha physiology is way different than ours. If I remember correctly, they can pull about 35 Gs for 15 seconds or so.”

  “Is that so?” Sansar asked the MinSha.

  “That our superior form can pull more Gs than the disgusting, fluid filled bags of excrement you call bodies?” the MinSha asked. “Without a doubt. Our ship is rated for 27.4 Gs.”

  “Not quite 35,” Sansar said, “but that’s still pretty darn good.”

  “That was 27.4 of our Gs,” the MinSha said. “The force of gravity on our planet is larger than yours. In your units of measure, we can pull 37 of your Gs.”

  “I see,” Sansar said, turning back to Walker. “Okay, so that’s an issue we’ll have to work out. The point is moot, though, if we don’t get the fighter back to our base, or if we find we can’t get it working again. Staff Sergeant Walker, get the two CASPer retrievers and see if you can bring the fighter back to base. We’ll let Price have a go at it and see where we are afterward.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Walker said. He turned to the MinSha and motioned with his rifle toward the beach. “All right, let’s go. And don’t even think of trying to fly off—”

  The ground fell out from under him, there was a sensation of falling, and then everything went black.

  Under the Crashed Fighter, Trigar 2-A, Trigar System

  Walker opened one of his eyes; the other seemed stuck. His head hurt. Badly. As did most of the rest of his body. He felt like someone had beaten him with rubber hoses. Wherever he was, it was dark and blurry. No, wait; his vision was blurry, but it was a lot darker than he remembered. He blinked several times and things came back into focus.

  A MinSha was pointing a rifle at him!

  He threw his hands up; the MinSha had him dead to rights.

  “Take the rifle,” a voice yelled. His hearing must have been damaged, too; it sounded like the voice was above him.

  “Here, take it,” the MinSha said. “Please. Before one of your primitive squad mates shoots me.” The MinSha held the rifle out again, and Walker realized the alien was holding it out to him butt-first—the MinSha was trying to give it to him. Oh, that’s different.

  Walker took the rifle and looked around. Although it was dim, he could see he was in some sort of room—there were walls, anyway, and a couple of places that looked like they might be doors. One was open, leading into the darkness while two others were shut. The entire room was coated in over a foot of sand that had fallen in with him when the roof co
llapsed.

  What the hell had happened?

  Walker made an effort to stand up. Everything hurt worse as he moved around, and he almost lost consciousness once he finally made it up.

  “Where the…hell are we?” he gasped.

  “We are in a subterranean facility of some kind,” the MinSha said. “You were damaged when the dune we were standing on collapsed. I have wings, so I didn’t fall the 20 feet like you did.”

  Walker rubbed the eye that was stuck shut. It felt like dried blood. He rubbed it gently and was able to get it open. Obviously, he had at least one head wound. That explained the headache.

  “Are you okay?” Sansar yelled down. He couldn’t see her; apparently she was standing back from the edge to keep from causing additional cave-ins.

  “Yeah, I think so,” Walker replied. “Do you know what the hell this place is?”

  “No, it wasn’t mentioned in our contract.”

  “How about you?” Walker asked the MinSha, who was walking around the room, inspecting things.

  “It is hard to tell anything about this room, as everything is covered in sand, however, it appears ancient. I do not believe anyone has been here in a long, long time.”

  “How long is a ‘long, long time?’” Walker asked.

  “Long enough for the planet to bury the room, and anything else the room is attached to under a large amount of sand. Thousands of years, at least.”

  “So, what is this place?”

  “That is unknown. I think—” Her voice stopped in midsentence, then she added, “We should leave before the ceiling collapses further, and we are either killed or trapped here.”

  Now that he had both eyes open and was up and moving about, Walker felt a little more energized at the mystery of it all and decided he wasn’t quite ready to leave. “You’re not even a little curious?”

  “No, I’m not,” the alien said. “We should go.” The MinSha spread her wings and flew up and out of the hole.

  After a few seconds, a rope dropped into the room. “Grab hold of the rope,” Sergeant Morgan said, “and we’ll pull you up.”