Silence assaulted Christine’s ears.
“Fifth Platoon, assemble over here!” She stood, looked around for her troops. Through the woods to the left, she could see movement. She raised her carbine, but recognized Lieutenant Squires a second before he called out.
“Third Platoon here! Don’t shoot!”
A few seconds later, Third Platoon was gathered beside Fifth, which had coalesced around Christine. Stray rangers and marines walked by along the line, looking for their squads.
“Holy fuck! Am I glad to see you in one piece.” Squires’ eyes were bright in the darkness.
Normally, Christine hated the attention from Squires, but at this moment, she thought she could kiss him. She knew Ryan would understand.
“Are we clear on that side?” Christine thrust her chin from the direction Squires’ troops had come.
“We left nothing breathing.” Squires said. “Damn! When we saw those mortars hit—”
“We called the artillery.” Wilcox emerged from behind Squires, pistol in hand. “Did it help?”
Christine looked around her at her platoon, knew immediately that they weren’t all there. “Yeah,” she answered at last. “It helped.”
Chapter Fourteen
Tom winced where he lay in the grass as the distant thunder of explosions carried over to him from the barracks complex. From the sound of it, the military had brought artillery. It wouldn’t be long now.
Seven hundred warriors…
There wasn’t time for mourning now. Their deaths would buy a brighter future for his people, for all the Alliance. He couldn’t waste their sacrifice now by fucking up, not when he was so close.
Tom peered up the slope of the hill, could just make out a machine gun turret traversing slowly, the muffled whirr of its motor drifting over from the fort’s superstructure. He looked over his shoulder, past the tense faces of the sixty or so people with him and down into the far away woods where the rest of the force was waiting. This was a huge gamble. If they were caught, the fort’s guns would shell the woods and his entire force into oblivion. The Supervisor could say what he wanted, but warships were nothing without infantry to take and hold the target.
Tom looked ahead again, then continued his crawl up the slopes of the fort’s outer wall, the weight of his rifle pressing through the thin cloth of his shirt. The smell of ashes filled his nostrils, made his throat tighten. They’d taken handfuls of the stuff from their campfires in the barracks and coated themselves with it before they’d begun the crawl up to the fort. It was the best camouflage they could get.
He reached the crest of the slope, peered down into the ditch. The ditch’s retaining wall, made of white stone, was a light-colored blur in the darkness. Tom could barely make out the dark shape of a counterscarp bunker in the distance and the broad outline of one directly below. Tom turned, looked at the woman who was closest.
“Rope.” Tom mouthed the words.
The woman nodded, passed the message pack. In a second, the coiled end of a long rope was passed up the slope and into Tom’s hands. He tossed one end over the edge, saw his comrades grab hold of the other. The machine gun turret whirred again and traversed over where they lay. Tom’s insides froze as he held completely still. He looked past the turret at the observation dome, willed whoever was in there to overlook them, to turn away. If they didn’t… His gaze moved farther up the fort to one of the huge artillery turrets.
Don’t panic!
The turret kept traversing, and Tom breathed a sigh of relief. Grabbing hold of the rope, he slipped slowly over the edge, not wanting to catch the eye of the observer with quick motion. He dangled in space, then slid downward, the rope burning his hands. He passed in front of the face of the counterscarp bunker, pushed his feet slightly against it to swing himself to the side. If Smith’s intelligence had been wrong, if the bunkers were fully armed… Tom didn’t want to come down directly in front of its gun ports.
He reached the ground with a soft thump just to the right of a gun port and next to a steel access hatch. Tom let go of the rope, turned slowly to look at the other bunkers further down the ditch in either direction, expecting them to open fire. But they remained silent. Tom scooted along the outside wall of the gallery to the steel door, put his ear against it. When he heard nothing, he placed his hand against the door and pushed. Locked, as he expected. He moved back the other way, expecting to be shot any second when the other bunker spotted him. He took a grenade out of the bread sack he’d tied around his waist, then carefully bent over, peeking in through the gun port. The room inside was completely empty. He turned and looked at the other bunkers, realized that they too must be empty. He stared into it, giddy satisfaction surging through him. The Supervisor had been right. Perhaps this was not going to be the slaughter he feared.
He tugged twice on the rope, then crouched as, one by one, his people crawled over the edge and down the line, the whir of the panning machine gun turrets audible over the distant booms from the barracks compound. When the entire group had made it down into the ditch, Tom selected Theresa, a short, skinny woman, to climb through one of the gun ports. It was a tight fit, but they managed to grab hold of her legs and push her through.
Malnutrition had its upside.
How fitting that the horror Tom’s people had faced before the Legion began should give them the tools they needed to bring justice.
Tom listened to Theresa scuffling around in the room, looked in, saw her searching a control panel against the wall. She pushed a button, and Tom heard an electric buzz and a soft click as the door locks disengaged. A second later, the access hatch swung open, and they were inside. The interior of the bunker was smaller than Tom expected, and there were no machine guns, empty bolt holes drilled into the concrete floor the only sign that their tripods had been here. A short corridor went off to the left, a staircase at its end.
Tom took his rifle off his back and into his hands and ran into the corridor, padding down the steps as quietly as he could, the footsteps of his people echoing softly off the walls. Tom couldn’t help but think of a cave. At the bottom of the staircase, the corridor turned left again. Tom peeked around the corner with his rifle. Seeing no one, he stepped out and moved down the tunnel, ducking his head slightly to avoid scraping the ceiling. He tried to picture where they were moving in relation to what he’d seen outside the fort, figured they were walking under the ditch and toward the superstructure.
The passageway was narrow, only four feet wide, and a shade too low for Tom’s tall frame. Tom glanced behind him as he ran, saw how tightly packed his team was behind him. If someone caught them like this and opened fire, it would be over in seconds.
They passed a pair of steel doors, each labeled, “AMMUNITION — COUNTERSCARP — NORTH” and then came to another staircase, at least twice as tall as the last one. Tom took the stairs two at a time, coming to a halt at the short landing. He signed for the people behind him to stop. Ahead, the corridor split three ways. Tom squinted, reading a directional sign on the wall directly ahead. One arrow pointed down the corridor ahead next to the words, “MAIN LEVEL,” while another pointed left, saying, “MG TURRET 2.” Still another pointed right with the words, “MG TURRET 1.”
Tom held his breath, peered around the edge of the landing and into the corridor. He saw someone at the end of the hall to the right turning around a corner and out of sight. The other ways were clear. Tom moved back down the stairs, turning to face the dark, sooty faces of his group.
“Two of you with me. I need three others.” Five people stepped forward — Eugene, Harold, Delphine, Peter, Jennifer, and Oliver — good warriors, all of them.
“Harold, Peter, come with me. Oliver, Delphine, and Jennifer, you will go right, to the next turret. Be silent. And remember, our goal is to take prisoners. We’ll need their help to run the fort.”
They nodded.
Tom led the way back up the stairs, checked again to make sure the hall was clear, then turned left and
ran down the corridor. Perhaps seventy yards ahead, the hallway bent to the right, and just a few yards ahead and to the left was another junction. One way continued forward, another went left under the sign, “MG TURRET 2.” Tom turned left, finding himself in a small room with an open ammunition closet, belts of bullets glinting silver from the overhead light bulb. On the other end of the room the corridor continued and turned to the right, a metal ladder leading up through the ceiling straight ahead.
The observation dome.
Tom tiptoed toward the ladder.
“Harry, did you see that?” A voice echoed down from the hole in the ceiling. Tom froze.
A speaker crackled. “No, what?”
“They’re really kicking ass at the barracks,” the voice continued. “Oh! There’s another one. Look at that flash!”
The speaker spit and crackled again. “Bob, how about you do your job and actually observe.”
Tom crept up to the ladder, considering for a moment as the conversation continued. Then he took the corridor to the right, Harold and Peter close behind. The corridor continued past more ammunition closets, then turned left again.
This is a fucking maze!
Tom’s skin crawled with irritation. He was like a trapped animal in this concrete box, expected someone to burst around the corner any moment.
Thoughts on the mission, Petrarcha.
Ahead, a large room opened up. He stopped just shy of it, flattening himself against the corridor wall. The room ahead was tall and cylindrical, its walls smooth, white concrete. In the center of the room were two, circular steel platforms, one just above ground level, the other much higher. They were built around a large, vertical metal shaft with what looked like two mechanical arms at its bottom, each with a counterweight at its end. A ladder led upwards from the ground platform and through the floor of the higher platform, which was enclosed by a metal cage. Tom could see two pairs of boots and two pairs of legs up to the knee standing on the upper platform next to what looked like the base of a machine gun tripod and the legs of a stool.
Tom moved into the room, then walked carefully up the short staircase to the lower platform. A loud humming noise filled the chamber. Tom covered his ears and looked over the guardrail at the metal shaft, which went down to two huge motors in a pit in the floor. One motor, connected to a series of cranks that were in turn connected to the counterweight arms, was silent and still. The other was running a wheel that interfaced with a large metal cylinder at the bottom of the shaft, rotating it in place. Echoing off the concrete walls, the sound of the motor was deafening. Tom looked up, saw that the upper platform was rotating, and realized that the motor was what caused the turret to traverse back and forth. Silence came over the room as the rotation stopped. An idea popped into Tom’s head, and he slid over to the base of the ladder to the upper platform, where he held completely still.
“Looks like it’s all finished over there.” The voice of one of the two soldiers in the turret carried down. That must be Harry.
A second later, a speaker crackled, and Tom heard the voice from the observation dome.
“Yeah, wish our artillery turrets had at least fired. It’d break up the incredible excitement here.”
“Keep your shirt on, Bob,” Harry said. “Your shift is almost up.”
The loud hum of the motor filled the room again, and Tom started up the ladder, the soft metallic clank of his boots on the rungs drowned out by the mechanical noise. He emerged into the turret just as it finished turning. It was a small space, no wider than the interior of one of the factory’s supply vans, and just tall enough to stand up in. The bottom half of the room was a steel cage, while the top half was solid metal, several feet thick. The ceiling was slightly concave, like a shallow dome. In front of Tom were two men. One sat on a stool behind a twin machine gun, mounted on a fixed tripod. The other peered out of a small view port, a radio mic in one hand, a pair of binoculars in the other. The man with the binoculars began to turn around.
“What the—”
Tom kicked out, catching the man by the view port in the back of the knee. He crumpled backwards to the floor, yelping in pain. Tom bent down, snatched the radio from his hand, and tossed it back down the ladder. The machine gunner looked around, scrambled to his feet, but Tom turned and smacked him across the face with his rifle butt. The man fell sideways, and his head hit on the wall. Blood trickled from his broken nose as he slid to the ground.
Tom looked behind him, saw the man with the binoculars trying to stand, reaching for a series of buttons set into a control pad on the wall. Tom pinned the man to the floor with his foot, then struck downward at him with his rifle butt, careful to not hit too hard. The man shuddered at the impact, then fell limp.
Tom looked down the ladder, saw Harold and Peter gazing up at him from below, their rifles shouldered and ready to fire. He gave them a thumbs-up, then turned to look out the view port. He could just make out the counterscarp bunker they’d entered through below and the forest beyond. In the distance, the area of the barracks complex was silent now. Pushing any remorse out of his mind, Tom turned to the small control pad set into the wall near the view port. Studying it for moment, he saw two buttons, shaped like arrows, set next to a joystick. He reached out, pushed the lower arrow button. He felt the floor sinking beneath him and heard a motor grumbling below, the metal flooring to vibrating under his feet. Then the motor stopped, the turret having fully retracted.
Tom clambered down the ladder as the speaker crackled again.
“Harry, why have you eclipsed? Harry?”
Tom motioned silently for Harold and Peter to follow, and they ran after him back down the corridor to the observation dome ladder.
“Harry? Are you there?” Bob’s annoyance was obvious. The thunk of boots on metal sounded from above.
“You’d think they’d just replace the telephones,” the voice was saying. “But no…” The man’s feet appeared through the hole in the ceiling, climbing downward. Tom slammed the butt of his rifle into them. Bob yelped and fell straight downward, smacking his head on the ladder as he went. He crumpled into a heap at the foot of the ladder, and when he made a shaky attempt to stand up, Peter punched him, sending him back to the floor, out cold.
Tom stepped over Bob and hauled himself up the ladder. He reached the top — a cramped little steel room with a swiveling chair bolted into the floor. Three view ports offered 180-degree views around the dome. Tom reached into his pocket, pulled a bright white rag from it, his sooty hands leaving splotches on the cloth, then draped one end of it out the center view port. Assuming the others had done their job, the rest of the attack force waiting down in the woods would know they could approach safely.
Tom climbed down the ladder and led Peter and Harold back to the main corridor, where Oliver, Delphine, and Jennifer were walking back towards him. Jennifer was massaging what looked like a bruise over her left eye. They nodded at Tom, and together they went back to the rest of the group, who were still clustered at the bottom of the staircase that led toward the counterscarp bunker.
“Okay,” Tom whispered. “We’re moving into the fort. Be on your lookout for any signs pointing us toward a command area or control room. Our brothers and sisters are on their way up from the forest and will reinforce us, but we must cripple the fort as quickly as we can.”
Tom led the way up the stairs, starting to relax. This wasn’t going to be as hard as he thought. This fort was rotted and frail, like all the Alliance. Tom reached the top of the stairs, his troops crowding around him, and he was about to follow the sign pointing forward to the main level when movement caught his eye. He turned to his right, saw someone rounding the corner, a soldier with a rifle on his back. The soldier saw them, shouted, then reached for his weapon. Tom shouldered his gun, fired, and missed. The shots echoed and reverberated off the concrete walls, a hundred times louder in the enclosed space. Some of Tom’s people covered their ears, cried out in surprise. The soldier backed away and
down the corridor, firing as he went. Tom saw Harold clutch his chest and fall, blood spreading beneath his fingers.
Some of his people started running after the soldier.
“No!” Tom shouted. “Leave him and follow me!”
Tom dashed forward, rifle at the ready, the thunder of his people’s footsteps behind him. The corridor turned to the right, then back to the left, opening onto a wide hallway. Doors dotted both sides of the hallway left and right, and four soldiers ran toward them from the opposite end.
“Shoot them!” Tom dropped to his knee, and fired, this time hitting his mark. The soldier fell onto his face while the others knelt and fired back. A grunt. A scream. Then an explosion of noise as Tom’s people fired back. The three remaining soldiers scattered, one of them seeming to trip and then lying still where she fell. The other two ran for the nearest doorways, sending wild shots into the group bunched around Tom. Another scream. Tom aimed and cut down one of the soldiers. The other jerked and cried out as the fire from the rest of the group hit him.
Tom ran forward again, flinching when an alarm klaxon began to sound. They wouldn’t have very long. As he moved down the hallway, Tom looked to either side, peering in the doorways as he ran. While signs above them declared they were barracks, their dark interiors, stacked with boxes, told Tom they were being used for storage. Tom’s heart leapt. It seemed the garrison here really was incomplete, just like the Supervisor said. Ahead, one of the doors was opening, and a woman stepped out wearing olive green uniform pants and a white undershirt.
Tom closed the distance between him and the woman, who gaped at him in horror.
“Back in the room! Now!” Tom thumped the muzzle of his rifle into her chest, forcing her back. He stepped inside the room to see some twenty-five soldiers, standing between the two rows of bunk beds and all in the process of frantically dressing themselves, their blinking eyes and groggy movements telling Tom they’d been asleep.
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