Turning Point (Galaxy's Edge Book 7)

by Jason Anspach

  Besson stumbled over to the far side of the trench, firing, and then sat down, or rather was knocked down onto his butt. He motioned with his hand for the others to keep moving forward past him, then he unloaded on the zhee behind the barriers. Firing to keep the heads of the defenders down while his men ran forward, legs pumping hard. The sergeant major sprinted past the mortally wounded captain knowing the wound was just that. And knowing what the captain was doing.

  The zhee returned fire, targeting Besson, who kept firing at them despite the world inside his vision irising down to a tiny black circle.

  Sergeant Major MakRaven, the last in the rushing line, had just made the side trench when the zhee decided to switch targets and go for the rushing legionnaires. By that time, Captain Besson was gone.

  ***

  Task Force Whirlwind

  Assault Carrier Hurricane

  Landing Zone Near Fortress Gibraltaar

  The zhee marauders came out of the desert wastes of Ankalor on light mobile technical speeders. Souped-up hyperchargers, covered in zhee graffiti, allowed them to move fast and get in close on the carriers’ defenders. Some of the speeders were configured to bring irregular infantry in close, while others carried mounted Night Market–acquired heavy blasters or missile packs.

  The loadmasters and crew chiefs of the assault carriers were all trained to repel boarders, and each carrier had emplaced swing-mounted guns on either side of their massive ramps. Indirect fire from the top side artillery fell out on the drifting desert sands, and the speeders raced through the plumes of artillery strikes to get their troops close. Within moments a firefight had erupted in front of the rear cargo loading deck of the Hurricane, the center anchor of the three carriers.

  One of the HK-PPs had been recalled from the battle inside the trenches to defend the carriers, but it was still a long way off. At extreme range it began to lob heavy blaster fire into the swarming zhee, to little effect. One shot might kill dozens, but there were thousands streaming toward the rear bay, braying and ululating their war cries.

  Within the assault carrier’s lower decks, crew chiefs—now turned into heavy gunners—dealt out a steady stream of blaster fire. Zhee speeders were hit and went flying off or exploded in bright showers of fireworks. Sometimes a cacophonic explosion indicated heavier ordnance had been on board that particular transport. But the zhee moved forward in coordinated teams, alternating their fire with their rushes. The situation at the rear decks was deteriorating quickly.

  One of the carriers’ support SLICs came in low, blasters spooling up high-cycle fire and chewing a line of sand volcanoes across the ragged advancing zhee front, when a missile sidewindered in from off-site, coming from behind some low hills in the distance. It struck the SLIC, which nosed over and exploded in the sand, killing the crew in addition to several zhee on the ground. A shock wave of sand and destruction raced out across the swarming line.

  “Direct the artillery to triangulate and switch to counter-battery fire!” shouted Commodore Rist inside the Hurricane’s CIC. The zhee were now within two hundred meters of the rear main loading ramp and firing as they advanced. “Bring our engines online and tell Sirocco and Tornado we may have to execute an emergency lift-off. I want engines at standby in two minutes.”

  23

  Dog Company, Second Team

  Fortress Gibraltaar

  Trenches

  “Follow the trench, and watch for bad guys!” shouted the sergeant major over the L-comm. “Traffic from ops says a Legion company is coming down the trench after us to at least keep the zhee pinned while we take Oscar Whiskey. Run and gun, boys!”

  The few remaining legionnaires of Second Team followed the trench along a series of angled turns most likely developed to allow small teams, supported by squad-designated marksmen, to bleed off zhee assaulting the main trench. The trench was essentially a series of straightaways that abruptly cornered, and it was from these corners that the marksmen would reduce the zhee. Fortunately, the zhee hadn’t bothered to capitalize on this design feature, and instead seemed to be more interested in hunkering down inside the impressive squat bunkers that watched over the trench lanes, or kills zones, throughout the base.

  Davies turned one of these corners and saw the access stairs leading up to the second level of what looked to be a four-level bunker. He also saw three zhee with N-20s and armor. Without thinking, he stopped and hosed them from the hip with the N-42. Zhee blood painted the wide clean surfaces of the bunker. Davies was incredibly accurate even when hip-firing. He would have told you it was a calling of his.

  “Stack on the door, boys!” cried the sergeant major wildly, as the rushing legionnaires took the stairs two at a time. “I’m first in. We got six minutes until they order the assault. This is do-or-do-not time.”

  The leejes stacked quickly. On the second floor they got a brief view of the battle going on all across the trenches. Squads and platoons of legionnaires were everywhere and pushing forward all at once. Cascades of explosions ripped across the soundscape as leejes flung grenades into fortified bunkers or rocketed heavy blaster emplacements. And the zhee were fighting back for all they were worth, not going gently into the paradise of pleasures they’d been promised.

  “Go!” yelled the sergeant major.

  Huzu kicked the door with his armored boot, landing the kick just where he’d been taught to in basic. The locking mechanism smashed and the door gave way with a sudden burst. Huzu danced backward while the sergeant major raced through the gap, following the barrel of his N-4. Stacey reached out and balanced Huzu with one hand while at the same time following Davies through into the darkness.

  As they entered the bunker, all of their HUDs started to fritz in washes of static like waves rolling on shore. Three slow rolls of white static in which signal and telemetry returned and then disappeared once more. Then they went offline altogether.

  There wasn’t even a boot message.

  “Quick!” shouted the sergeant major, his band saw shout cutting through the muffled dead silence of the buckets in order to be heard through their helmets. “Buckets off!”

  But it was too late. The first assassin came in from the ceiling. He planted an industrial diamond-forged blade right in Davies’s back. It slid through the hardened legionnaire armor like it was cutting butter.

  Huzu pulled off his helmet and stared at the pitch-black darkness all around him. He heard the rustling of cloth, then a hoof smashed into his face and sent him reeling into a wall. Stars exploded, and it felt like he’d just broken his nose.

  “We got blind assassins, boys!” shouted the sergeant major somewhere off in the darkness. Davies moaned. Stacey shouted, “Weapons don’t work!”

  In the darkness all around was a near silence. Near because there was something soft moving all about them.

  Someone got hit. Went flying. Smashed into something.

  The sergeant major muttered through gritted teeth, “Gotcha!” and a horrible crack followed—the distinct sound of a bone snapping.

  “That’s one, but there’s another in here. Don’t use your eyes, boys. Listen and smell and that’s—”

  Something knocked the wind out of the sergeant major. The sound of his boots shuffling across the floor indicated he was hit but not down. He grunted something inaudible, then came back over the soundscape, his hectoring and ragged old voice breathy and labored.

  “That’s when you can tell they’re close.” He coughed and spit. In the near silence Huzu might have heard a tooth go skittering off into the dark.

  Stacey let out an involuntary grunt. Not like he was being hit, but like he was suddenly swinging a bat. The sound of air being displaced could be heard.

  “Thought I felt one,” he gasped.

  “Probably did,” replied the sergeant major. “He’s close, this one. I broke his brother’s neck, so he won’t let this go.”

  Huzu levered himself up the side of the wall in the dark.

  Stacey got hit next. And whatev
er hit him knocked him out cold, because nothing was heard from him again. Except now someone was gurgling.

  A moment later Huzu got kicked in the head for the second time. As he fought not to go down into the unconsciousness that was trying to take him, he heard the sergeant major swear and say, “All right, boys, one last trick, and this ain’t gonna be fun! Banger out!”

  Three seconds later the world exploded in a sudden concussion of noise and light. For a brief, star-stunned moment Huzu saw a malformed albino zhee, almost a runt, hanging upside down from the ceiling like some kind of nightmare mutant vampire bat, the whites of its eyes rolled back in its head, its donkey ears pinned and listening. And then, as the negative image faded to black, the last thing he saw before he blacked out was the sergeant major, his old face hard-set and angry, white hair standing out like a ghost, long mustache flowing like some ancient gunfighter, charging in at where the stunned zhee was.

  And then the darkness took the young private. His last thought was that he didn’t want to fail… not now… not as a leej. The thing he’d always wanted to be. He couldn’t ever fail at that.

  He was sure he hadn’t been out long when the sergeant shook him awake. “PFC, you got to get up! Now!”

  Huzu immediately pushed forward, up off his back, driven to alertness by the urgency in the senior NCO’s voice.

  The lights in the guardroom were on now. Two dead zhee were on the floor. Stacey was bleeding out from a slashed throat, and Davies had a knife sticking out of his back. Turnbull was out cold.

  “I disabled their EMP generator,” said the sergeant major to Huzu as though giving a sitrep. “But I got to deal with these two men before they die. So I need you to get mobile and get that forty-two up to Oscar Whiskey overwatch. Lay down all the cover fire you can on the door so our boys can get good and close. They go in three minutes.”

  Huzu shook his head to clear the double images. Then he nodded.

  “They’re depending on us, boy. Gotta move now.”

  Huzu got to his feet, forgetting his bucket. He staggered over the N-42 and hefted it up. For a moment the room swam. He shook his head once more, and it cleared. He grabbed his bucket and fitted it back onto his head.

  The sergeant major was already working on Stacey. Pulling out skinpacks and trying to get the ragged wound on the man’s throat closed.

  “You good, boy?” shouted the sergeant major at Huzu. “I can’t leave these or they’ll die. But I will if it’s what I have to do to save those other men. So you got to go now, son, if you can.”

  “I got this,” said Huzu, and he staggered off toward the tight stairwell that led up to the turret’s top.

  ***

  Warlord One

  Above the Battle

  The SLIC lurched to the side as the pilot threw it into a hard bank. Out the down-side cargo door, the door gunner raked a zhee trench. The zhee were counterattacking into one of the pincers staged to take the base’s main door.

  “Traffic from Hurricane Actual,” noted the command operations officer over General Hannubal’s L-comm channel. “Situation at the Hurricane deteriorating. Zhee are at the main cargo deck and they’ve knocked out one of the engines with an anti-armor rocket. They’re about to be overrun, General.”

  “Acknowledged,” replied Hannubal tersely. “Reply inbound to stabilize the situation.”

  “Sir,” responded the ops officer. His tone was definitely not just cautionary, but downright urgent. “Counter-battery fire has not located the surface-to-air enemy asset. We advise you not to enter range. We’ve lost three SLICs.”

  Hannubal disregarded and switched over to the Ops SLIC’s inter-ship channel. “We need to fall back and clear the donks off our carriers. We got anti-air. Any problems with that, Captain?”

  “Negative, sir. Thrusters full, inbound and over in thirty seconds.”

  The door gunner facing the general grabbed the cargo doorframe as the ship powered up and shot off from the battle over the trenches.

  ***

  Dog Company

  Fortress Gibraltaar

  Trenches

  Huzu made it up to the fourth floor of the overwatch bunker that had been designed to provide flanking fire on any direct assaults on the main blast doors at the base of Gibraltaar Rock. From here, he could see the entire battle as it unfolded below.

  Across the wide central ramp that led down into the base, artillery craters had left their mark in the hardened duracrete, but no single strike had managed to knock out either of the two main bunkers. The legionnaires would have to take those bunkers with a direct assault, getting close enough to use explosives and blast their way through the main door.

  Assault teams were already moving down the feeding trenches, firing and engaging the zhee defenders before the main gate. Most of the zhee were centered around the bunkers, both reinforced and sturdy. From out of these, at least two N-50s, among other weapons, were firing at the legionnaires, who were headed right into the teeth of the blaster hurricane. And they had at least fifty meters of open ground to cross before they would even get close enough to use fraggers. Fifty meters in which to be casually murdered by the working N-50s with excellent fields of fire on every approach.

  Huzu raised the blast covers that guarded the firing positions, hoisted the N-42 into a firing slit, and began to fire down into the bunkers.

  First he shot up the zhee who had taken up firing positions behind barriers. Then he fired directly into the bunkers’ firing slits.

  The two groups of legionnaire assault teams seized the opportunity. Both rushed the central ramp to the door. Huzu burned through an entire charge pack on high cycle before the N-50s began to fire on him.

  He pulled the N-42 out of the slit, dropped down onto the floor, and swapped out charge packs. Blaster fire smashed into the bunker all around him, and hot fused duracrete rained down. As solidly built as the bunker was, even it came to pieces under the high-power settings of the N-50s.

  Charge pack in, he stood to fire once more.

  In the last moment of his life he saw his brothers closing hard and fast to get within range to either put fire on the bunker up close and personal, or to use explosives and bust their way into the hardened emplacements. But they still had a few meters to go. The N-50s, plus countless light blasters, were firing directly into the legionnaires, with devastating effect. Killing some outright. Knocking others down. Stalling the assault.

  Huzu heaved the N-42 into the slit and fired. He unloaded on the bunker firing at the legionnaires instead of the one firing at him.

  The first shot that hit him should have knocked him down, but he held on for all he was worth and kept firing back. He managed to burn through the entire charge pack, killing the defenders inside one enemy bunker while keeping the zhee in the other bunker busy shooting at him, even as he took two more direct hits.

  It was the fourth shot that killed him. He had just enough awareness of this life to know that he’d fired the N-42 dry before he died. The weapon clattered to the floor as he fell to his knees and slumped against the wall beneath the slit he’d been firing from.

  ***

  As soon as the two assault teams had taken the remaining bunker, they set up charges on the main blast door. They blew it wide open, and stormed inside in search of their high-value target: Karshak Bum Kali, Grand War Leader of the zhee tribes.

  There was little resistance within the fortress itself. Holing up inside a rock wasn’t the zhee way. Not when there was blood to be spilled. But there were a few defenders, and the legionnaires even managed to take most of them alive. One of these captured zhee prisoners finally gave them what they wanted.

  It wasn’t what they were expecting.

  Karshak Bum Kali wasn’t at Fortress Gibraltaar.

  He was deep inside the slums. Slums that were now on fire and rioting. A place where their grand war leader would never be found.

  Where he would never be taken alive.

  ***

  Warlord
One

  Above the Battle

  The SLIC came in fast, thrust reversers kicking in and screaming bloody murder. The door gunners opened up on the zhee swarming Hurricane’s rear cargo deck. Marines were fighting hand to hand and lobbing explosives into the nearby zhee. A thin ribbon of smoke trailed away from one of the Hurricane’s main engines where it had been hit by an anti-armor round.

  The general stood up and grabbed onto the frame of the dropship, calling out concentrations of fire for the door gunners to target. The battle at the rear cargo deck was just seconds from being turned into a complete rout of the zhee. The SLIC had broken the zhee drive on the massive rear ramps of the assault carrier.

  But that’s when tragedy happened.

  General Hannubal spotted it. Inbound and burning like a banshee across the desert sands. Not a sidewindering missile, lancing in to knock the SLIC out of the sky, but a heavy speeder with one driver.

  Over the L-comm he shouted to the gunners and the pilot of his ship. “Got a bomb jockey inbound. Tagging him in your HUDs now. Do not let him reach the carrier. Repeat. Do not!”

  The SLIC pivoted, allowing one gunner a full sight picture to knock down the inbound speeder. From far too close and fast, the speeder came in across sands filled with ruined and dead zhee. The look on the driver’s face confirmed the general’s worst fears. It was otherworldly, as though the donk was praying to his one of his four gods to see his sacrifice through.

  The gunner ranged short, missing the swerving speeder and sending up plumes of sand.

  “Take it out!” shouted the general with bare seconds to go.

  The pilot, a killer who’d flown through hell the entire day and didn’t seem to mind much, dropped the speeder down to hover just off the ground. Whether he did this on purpose to give the gunner better stability, or because he knew this was the only way to stop the inbound suicide bomber, was never known.