They were traveling at fifty miles per hour, so it didn’t take long to reach the base of the mesa. Having activated her helmet cam, McKee decided to circle the formation in a clockwise direction and gave the necessary orders. But what if it was a good deal larger than she thought it was? They’d have to turn back if the plateau was too big and would be difficult to defend.
The sides looked good, though. They were sheer for the most part and far too steep for a dooth to climb unassisted. And given the advantage of height, a force stationed on top of the mesa would be able to hold it against anything short of a battalion-strength infantry attack. Especially if they had sufficient artillery and airpower. There were some weak points, of course—but no gaps that couldn’t be reinforced with mines and earthworks.
In order to capture the scene with her helmet cam, McKee had to keep her head turned toward the mesa. So it was Sykes who spotted the enemy first. “This is Eight-Four. I have what could be two, maybe three, hostiles located to the southeast of us. They are closing fast. Estimated time of contact ten minutes from now. Over.”
McKee said, “This is Eight. Roger that. Stand by. Over.”
They had arrived at the southern end of the mesa by that time and were about to make the necessary turn. Should she abort? And make a run for the tunnel? Or keep going?
McKee allowed herself a glance to the southeast, saw the dust plumes, and knew the warriors were pushing their dooths hard. Too hard. Because no animal can compete with a machine. That was the deciding factor. “This is Eight . . . Continue to monitor the enemy and keep me informed. We’re going to complete our mission. Over.”
McKee heard a series of clicks as she turned back to the mesa. Because all of the transmissions had been over the squad-level push, Hasbro couldn’t hear them. Should she report in? No, McKee saw no reason to do so, not yet anyway. If she told Hasbro, all he could do was worry.
The south end of the mesa was lower than what McKee had seen so far. But, as they completed the turn to the north, McKee saw the sides begin to rise again. “This is Four,” Sykes said. “The Naa have fallen back a bit. Over.”
“This is Eight-One,” Larkin interjected. “At least half a dozen riders are closing on us from the northwest. Estimated time of contact six from now. Over.”
McKee swore under her breath. She was facing a difficult decision: Fight or run. Could the four of them take on something like ten Naa and win? Probably. But the outcome was far from certain—especially given the likelihood that the enemy had weapons taken off the dead legionnaires.
So maybe they should run. But where to? The riders approaching from the northwest were positioned to cut them off from the tunnel—and if they went in the other direction, they would have to confront more Naa. And what if they had a rocket launcher? The memory of Tanner’s death in Doothdown was still fresh in her mind.
All of those thoughts and more flashed through McKee’s brain as the seconds ticked away. In desperation, she turned back to the mesa and searched its flanks for a route to the top. Except that it was more than an academic exercise now. It was a matter of life and death.
As her eyes scanned irregularities in the cliff, looking for the right opportunity, she thought no, no, and maybe. The “maybe” was a place where a minor landslide had created a ramp that led to the plateau above. Once there, the legionnaires would have the advantage and stand a better chance of keeping the Naa at bay.
But was the ramp too steep? If it was, and the war forms weren’t able to complete the climb, they would become vulnerable when forced to turn and make the trip down. Still, something was better than nothing. Or so it seemed to McKee. “This is Eight . . . Head for the slide area. We’ll run up it, turn, and grease the bastards. Over.”
It all sounded so certain, so sure, without any possibility of something’s going wrong. Never mind the fact that a T-1 could slip and fall—or that a rocket could strike a bio bod between the shoulder blades. But, as was so often the case, Larkin had no such doubts. He uttered a long, drawn-out war cry, held his AXE over his head, and yelled, “Charge!”
It was the kind of foolhardy exuberance that annoyed McKee except in situations like this one. Then she admired Larkin for the quality of his careless bravery and his wild fighting spirit.
So having been inspired by Larkin’s example, McKee waved her own weapon, shouted defiance at the sky, and felt the cold wind tear at her clothing as Sykes ran. He was the closest and going to arrive first. The slide area was too narrow to zigzag across, so he went straight at it in hopes of building enough momentum to carry him at least halfway up.
The distant pop, pop, pop of rifle fire signaled the enemy’s attempt to stop them. The Naa could see the danger and were trying to prevent the legionnaires from reaching the mesa. But they were firing from moving platforms at moving targets. And as far as McKee could tell, none of their bullets came close.
Servos whined as Sykes’s legs rose and fell with the regularity of pistons. Every fiber of McKee’s body was willing the cyborg up the slope but, other than lean forward to help the cyborg maintain his balance, there was nothing she could do to help. He stumbled, caught himself, and continued to climb.
McKee heard Larkin swear over the push and turned to look over her shoulder. Sykes’s efforts had sent a number of rocks tumbling downwards, one of which had apparently come very close to the bio bod behind her. To her credit, Shinn had taken a different approach to climbing the hill. Having passed her fifty to Larkin, she was using her “hands” as well as feet. That gave her more traction and explained how she had been able to get so close.
The Naa hadn’t given up, however. And now, having dismounted, they were firing from standing positions. Bullets kicked up geysers of dirt all around as Sykes neared the top, and McKee heard a telltale ping as a mostly spent slug flattened itself on armor.
Then they were up and over as Shinn neared the end of her climb as well. “Aim for the dooths,” McKee said coldly, as Sykes turned to fire. “Make the bastards walk.”
Though generally fired in two- or three-round bursts, the Storm fifties were capable of firing one shot at a time, and quite accurately in the right hands. Especially if those hands were guided by perfect vision and an onboard computer. So when Sykes pulled the trigger, the first slug flew straight and true. A dooth jerked, stumbled, and keeled over. That caught the Naa by surprise, but they wasted no time swinging up into their saddles and kicking their animals into motion.
But since the war party was about fifteen hundred yards out, they couldn’t outrun the slugs that followed them. The next bullet struck a dooth in the spine just forward of its rear haunches. It pancaked in and slid for what might have been six feet before finally coming to a stop. A third animal fell seconds later.
“The warriors,” McKee said. “Switch to the warriors.” The cyborgs obeyed and dropped two Naa before the others could vault up onto the surviving beasts. They rode double as the dooths thundered out of range. It was a murderous process, but it had to be done. The sun was setting in the west—and the Naa would return under the cover of darkness. That made it crucial to improve the odds in any way that she could.
“Okay,” she said, “cease fire. We’ll have to spend the night. Larkin, Shinn, take a look around. See if you can find something we can defend. There aren’t enough of us to keep them off the plateau. I’ll check in with Major Hasbro.”
Larkin and Shinn took off, and as the light continued to fade, McKee used her helmet cam to pan the top of the mesa. Once that activity was complete, she chinned her mike. They were overdue, and the response was immediate. Hasbro had clearly been waiting for a report. “We heard shots. What’s your status? Over.”
McKee delivered her report in the flat unemotional style favored by professional soldiers everywhere, and concluded by saying, “So it looks like we’re going to be stuck here for the next couple of hours. We’ll see what the situation looks like at
sunup. In the meantime, I’m going to send some recon footage your way. Based on what I’ve seen so far, the mesa still looks like a good site. Over.”
“Roger that. Watch your six. Over.”
McKee used a series of voice commands to label the feed and send it. The range was less than two miles, so there was no need for a relay. A confirmation arrived quickly. TRANSMISSION RECEIVED.
As the sun dipped below the western horizon, and hundreds of stars dusted the sky, something howled out on the plain. The long hours of darkness had begun.
• • •
In a move reminiscent of ancient warriors like Hannibal, the southerners had accomplished the impossible by marching thousands of warriors over Lowback Pass in the midst of a snowstorm. How many had frozen to death? No one was keeping count. Although Bodry felt sure that the bodies of frozen warriors would be found for hundreds of years to come.
Having cleared the pass, the invaders spilled into a narrow valley. Within minutes, they were confronted by northerners who had been warned by the Legion. Now the warriors from the south were stuck with the Towers of Algeron at their backs, Chief Lifetaker’s army on their right flank, and a brigade of humans on their left flank. The latter were situated on the western slopes of a formerly peaceful valley. And that’s where Bodry was, high on a ridge, where he had an excellent view of the battlefield below.
Unlike the other combatants, the Legion had flares, which they used to light up the area in front of them. Two shot up in quick succession, popped, and drifted downwards. They threw an eerie blue light over a killing ground littered with dead dooths, Naa corpses, and the detritus of war. As Bodry scanned the scene with his binoculars, he had a brief glimpse of a field gun that was missing a wheel, trenches that had been dug to prevent the invaders from breaking out, and the wreckage of a fly-form brought down by a rocket. Then, as a blanket of darkness fell over the scene, patrol attacked patrol. Bodry saw pinpricks of light and heard the rhythmic blam, blam, blam of rifle fire followed by a dull boom of a grenade going off. People were dying. But very few of them were legionnaires.
Though nominally aligned with the northerners, the truth was that the Legion was present for the purpose of protecting the tunnel off to the west. And that, Bodry felt sure, was why the southerners had attacked. They knew the tunnel could be used to invade their territory and hoped to capture or destroy it. What they didn’t realize was that the whole purpose of the tunnel was to facilitate a war between the north and south. Bodry grinned wolfishly as a battery of northern catapults launched fireballs into the sky. They fell like meteorites and exploded behind the southern lines, but it was impossible to gauge how much damage was done. The plan, his plan, was working.
“Excuse me, sir,” an aide said. “Chief Lifetaker has arrived. The security people are bringing him up from the valley.”
“Thank you, and Lieutenant . . .”
“Sir?”
“Is Sergeant Kumar on duty?”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“Tell the sergeant to search Lifetaker very thoroughly. He won’t like what I’m going to tell him—and he was given that name for a reason.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll tell her.”
The OP Bodry had chosen as his temporary HQ had been constructed by robots using the ruins of an old watchtower as a source of materials. It consisted of a chest-high stone wall topped by a rectangular opening through which people could observe the battlefield below. As Bodry peered through the open window, his back was turned to a blackout curtain that separated the so-called porch from the brightly lit com room. That was where half a dozen staffers were doing what staffers always do—which was to solve logistical problems, listen to field officers demand more of everything, and drink gallons of caf.
Rather than receive Lifetaker in the extremely busy com center, where he might pick up nuggets of intelligence, Bodry thought it better to meet with him on the porch. With that in mind, he had called for some Naa-appropriate refreshments. They arrived only moments before Lifetaker did. “I see you,” Bodry said, even though it was so dark the Naa’s features were hard to make out.
“And I see you,” Lifetaker replied gravely.
“Please, have some refreshments.”
“No, thank you,” Lifetaker responded. “I ate just before I came.”
Was that true? Bodry wondered. Or a fiction designed to cover up Lifetaker’s lack of trust? Politically motivated poisonings weren’t unheard of among the Naa. So Lifetaker had a reason to be cautious. “We are winning,” Lifetaker said, by way of an opening gambit.
“Yes, you are,” Bodry replied, careful to avoid the use of “we.”
“But the enemy is strong.”
“True,” Bodry agreed. “Amazingly so, given what they had to survive in order to get here.”
“The real battle will begin soon.”
“That makes sense,” Bodry agreed.
“We are allies,” Lifetaker added.
“Of course,” Bodry said. “That’s why we sent thousands of troops here.”
“But your troops don’t fight.”
That wasn’t true in the technical sense. The Legion had fought and suffered casualties. Dozens of them. But only when attacked. And that was the issue Lifetaker had in mind. “We find ourselves in a difficult position,” Bodry temporized. “If we are too active, all of the Naa will hate and fear us. Even those we help. Your people have a saying: ‘He who gives too much can never be trusted.’”
The use of a Naa folk saying was a clever strategy and one that Bodry had planned in advance. There was a momentary pause while Lifetaker considered the comment. A no-nonsense response followed. “We have another saying as well. ‘The ally who fights with his knife in a sheath cuts no one.’ I was at the tunnel when Oneeye’s war party arrived there. I saw what your thunderbolts can do. That is all we ask. There is no need for your warriors to suffer additional casualties. Bring the thunderbolts down on the invaders and end this battle now!”
Bodry was surprised. He’d expected Lifetaker to ask for air support. But an orbital bombardment would have the same effect. Either one would decimate the southerners and bring the conflict to a momentary close. The only problem was that he didn’t want to end the slaughter. “I’m sorry,” Bodry said, with all the sincerity he could muster. “Such things are complicated and require ideal conditions. I’ll let you know if such an attack becomes feasible.”
That was bullshit. And judging from the expression on the Naa’s dimly seen face, he knew it. “Since you are a student of our culture, I have another saying for you,” Lifetaker said, and delivered a short but seemingly heartfelt statement in his native language.
“Which means?”
“Fuck you.”
And with that, Lifetaker reached out to rip the blackout curtain down. As it fell, the chieftain went with it, making Bodry and the staff officers in the com room visible to Longsee Sureshot and his fellow snipers. They were hidden on the opposite ridge and had been watching the OP for days.
The range was more than twenty-five hundred yards or 1.4 miles. A long shot indeed. But the snipers had Legion-issue .50-caliber sniper rifles that were equipped with 10X telescopic sights. More than that, their weapons were already aimed at the right spot, and suddenly, they were presented with a bevy of backlit targets. Their orders were to kill everyone, and they did their best.
The first bullet, fired by Sureshot himself, blew half of Bodry’s face off. The officer’s body was still falling as Sergeant Kumar died quickly, followed by a supply officer.
Lifetaker couldn’t hear the reports as he elbowed his way under a second blackout curtain and entered the relative safety of the night. There was a scream, though, which was quickly silenced by a follow-up shot, as Lifetaker scuttled into the ruins. It took all of his strength to heave the flat stone out of the way. That exposed a steep flight of stairs. Once at the bottom of the
escape route, Lifetaker would exit through a carefully camouflaged trapdoor. The slick skins would have their slaughter. But they, liars that they were, would pay a heavy price for it.
• • •
The trouble was that Surestep Axethrow wasn’t any good at leading people, and knew it. But Longknife, Fastload, and Singsong were dead. All killed by the slick skins. So as the oldest surviving warrior, he was in charge of the survivors and honor-bound to lead them up onto the mesa.
The group was gathered around a tiny fire, the purpose of which was to boil water so that each warrior could have a mug of hot tea before going off to face death. It was also the moment when a leader like Longknife would explain his plan. But Axethrow didn’t have a plan. Not a clear one, anyway. So all he could do was tell them the obvious. Firelight danced in their eyes as Axethrow spoke.
“The slick skins will be expecting us. So we must be extremely quiet. That will allow us to get close. But the machines are much more powerful than we are—so we can’t fight them in the usual way. Strongarm, how many slick-skin bombs do we have?”
“Six.”
“That should be enough. Once we get close enough we will arm the bombs and throw them at the machines.”
“What if the machines are separated?” Metalworker wanted to know.
It was a good question and a possibility Axethrow hadn’t considered. “We will divide ourselves into two teams,” he said. “Each team will have three bombs. That way we can split up if we need to.”
“There are two machines,” Wordbender said. “But there are two slick skins as well. What about them?”
Axethrow struggled to accommodate the new variable. “That is what I planned to speak of next,” he lied. “Once the machines have been destroyed, each team will go after a slick skin.
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