by Aeryn Leigh
Amelia secured the backpack, tying its way strap securely, and then flashing her teeth, took a run up at the charger, jumping up, landed one foot in the lowered stirrups, using her momentum to spring off that stirrup and then up, her hands grabbing sidesaddle, and then she was up. Amelia beamed. Volfango was only halfway up his own charger, Marietta still shocked at Amelia's prowess when Amelia leaned forward, and whispered to the horse. "Let's go!"
The warcharger shot forward, sparks flying off its shoes on the cobblestones, and the charger briefly lost traction, as it tried applying all that beautiful horsepower. The horse adjusted intuitively, and then, with a wild neigh and pumping heart as big as Phar Lap, Amelia and the pack thundered down the narrow, wall lined street.
They took the gamma route this morning, a long, winding path, circling south towards the river before looping back up north, past the tanneries and fertiliser pits, the smell atrocious from the fertiliser gunpowder beds, lye, and all, before arriving at the cavern.
The warcharger's flanks steamed in the morning, fresh cold, and Amelia dropped down, and patted her horse on the rear legs. "Good girl, Buttercup” she said, "that was awesome." Two guards stood at the entrance. Without waiting for the adults, still thirty yards away, Amelia raced inside waving at the guards, the pack of puppies following.
Amelia ran all the way to the back of the cavern, and dropped down in front of a large stone, to where all the things she assembled sat. The fish from yesterday was gone. She pulled out sardine, placed on the ground, and started singing German nursery rhyme she'd she learnt as a small child.
Little spiky creature did not appear.
Puzzled, she sang some more. All it would take would be for some music, and the little creature would appear. But there was no creature.
She stood up, hands on both hips, and chewed her bottom lip.
Athena found a stick, precipitating a multi-pronged tug-of-war. Skippy fell to a drop position, regarding Amelia, ears twitching.
Amelia walked around the flat rock, to the rear side, where the cavern finished. Plop. Plop. The sound of swollen water drops falling into water. Footfalls of approaching adults. Marietta and Volfango at last joined her, each of them holding a torch. Amelia looked up at them, in the flickering light. "It's not here," said Amelia.
"What's not there?" said Marietta, thoroughly enjoying herself. She must take stocktake breaks more often.
"My little spiky friend," replied Amelia. "I found it on the beach, and it was wounded, and even though it spiked me, it seems friendly enough." Marietta and Volfango shared a look.
"You mean your imaginary friend is a creature?" asked Volfango.
"Sure is," said Amelia, turning back to the rock crevices, peering in and out of every single one. "It has a hand and everything, well, it should have two hands, but it's left front arm seems to be broken off, so it only has the one."
Silence. "A hand," said Marietta, eventually.
Adults. Such simple creatures, Amelia thought. "Yes," with the sarcasm of a ten-year-old going on seventy. "A hand. With a thumb and three fingers and all. I've been feeding it fish but it's not here this morning – can I borrow your torch?"
Marietta passed to the torch, and Amelia redoubled her search. She stuck the torch into every single dark crevice, singing the same nursery song. Now hands and knees, she put the flaming torch down onto the stones, and looked inside the last mountain crack, a space no wider than her foot, and about two feet deep, faint air blew over her face. She moved her head up and down.
There, she thought, and twisted her shoulder and stuck her left arm all the way in, singing. Something spiky stabbed her left index finger. "Ouch," she said. "You little. Bugger." She strained just a little bit more, until her fingers took full hold, and with a determined effort pulled the stuck alien back out of the crack.
"There," she said. "See?"
Marietta and Volfango's eyes opened wide. And both Marietta and Volfango reached for their swords. It looked positively evil. Something out of the deepest, abyss of your nightmares.
"Isn't it cute?" said Amelia. She turned it around hand, and saw it held a glowing, blue stone.
She reached with her other hand and carefully took the stone. It looked like stone, but it felt like metal, the surface warm in her palm. Amelia was just about to ask the adults what it was, when the cavern started shaking, the whole ground vibrating, just like an earthquake. Spears of stalactite formations grown over Lord knew how long shattered into the ground from thirty feet above.
Marietta darted forward and lifted Amelia with one stride, Skippy picking up Message Bear in her mouth, and humans and canines alike ran for their lives straight for the cavern entrance. Mighty stones fell from the ceiling, smaller rocks the size of a fist enough to cave your skull in, slamming into the fine, grit-filled floor.
They made it outside, coughing and wheezing in the smoke and dust.
The hillside in which the cavern sat collapsed in onward itself, the ground still shaking, as those that could held tight onto the trees forty yards away, right next to the horses, the jagged, severe tremors settling into a regular, even rumble beneath their feet.
Volfango saw it first.
He shook his head.
Rising steadily up from the collapsed crater, surrounded by billowing clouds of dirt and stone dust, a metal ship rose from its grave, the platform upon which it sat grinding inch by inch out of what was Fairholm's emergency shelter.
Amelia squirmed in Marietta's arms, Marietta letting go, and still holding the spiky alien, dashed forward, Volfango's fingers just missing her.
Amelia ignored the cries for her to stop, and dashed towards the rocket ship. It was huge. She bounced up and down. Pointed, shaped like a triangular arrowhead yet with stubby, shark like fins protruding from its rear end, bristling with gun barrels and mammoth rectangular jet turbines either side that would swallow the fuselage of an Me 262 whole, the dust began to clear.
Oh yeah, she thought. Just wait till Mummy sees you! She is going to die and go to heaven. She clambered up onto the landing platform, as faint tendrils of blue spirals blossomed out over the ship's pale-grey, camouflaged hull, radiating outwards, the blue metal stone in her right palm pulsating, not even noticing the small spikes of pain in her other. The enormous gun turret on the port side moved. It swivelled, pointing right at her. The barrel started to spin. The barrel, noticed Amelia, pointed right at her left hand. "No," she said. "It's a friend." The barrel, three-foot long, reached whatever obscenely-high rpm it sped up to, and then sat there, unchanging, the unmistakable whine of imminent death.
The others joined her, stopping yards away to her right.
"Amelia," said Marietta, quite slowly and clearly, "put the creature down and step away."
Amelia clenched her fingers around the stone even harder. "No," she commanded in old Norse, the words forming from nowhere in her mind. "Stand down."
The gun barrel slowed spinning, a dozen heartbeats later, coming to rest. Volfango gave a worried look at Marietta. They both shook their heads.
Amelia suddenly knew what was. Images, scenes flashed in her mind. Without knowing why she knew, or how she knew, or the fact she just spoken an ancient language, Amelia walked around to the back of the Aries-class gunship, and the rear hatch opened with a hiss, the hatch door bigger than a church steeple lowering down onto the ground.
"It's okay," yelled Amelia, waving to the adults. "It won't hurt you." Amelia started towards the drop ramp, and she put her right foot on it. A tiny, little awareness blossomed inside her mind.
"Hello," she thought. The consciousness pulsated red, danger. Not at her, but at the creature she carried. Amelia felt its well-intentioned but murderous pull. No, she thought, her mind beginning a mental wrestling match with the ship's intelligence.
She clambered up the metal grate, and disappeared inside.
One hundred yards away, Skippy and the others sat, still at Stay. Skippy twisted her shaggy head, regarded her pack, and
gazed up at Buttercup, and the two species shared the same thought. Survive.
Eight canines and three horses bolted for the gunship.
Volfango and Marietta jumped out of the way as the animals thundered past, up the gentle incline of the platform through the stone rubble, and they too disappeared into the rear of the weird and wondrous and frightening craft.
"Ah hell," said Marietta, and both her and Volfango sprinted to the gunship's ramp, as the engines came online, the air thrumming with energy, the purr of its engines the finest silken rumble, and the adults barely reached the access ramp when it began to lift up, and then shut.
The two remaining security officers could only stare open mouthed as the high-pitched scream intensified, the massive engines either side rotating, aiming perpendicular at the ground and unleashed a sonic blast fit for the Gods, watching, complete spectators by this point, the alien ship lift off into the sky, catapulting upwards like a bat out of hell.
Chapter Sixteen
THE DRUMS OF VALHALLA
ON THE REVERSE side of the Milky Way, Major Wolfgang Mauss took his own inventory as the Seventh steamed out of the Polish harbour, two minesweepers and a destroyer escorting the eight transport ships. Around them, Russian shells increased, as now the city itself took direct hits, minute after minute.
He turned, and strode along the length of the SS Akira, the ship verily overflowing with personnel, equipment, basically anything and everything that could be unbolted and carried away. He came up to the Second Mechanised Reconnaissance of the 501st, the same company that had joined him in defending the mountain pass. "Gentlemen," he said, squatting down to where the company's sergeant sat on an upturned wooden crate, digging out piles of straw of the open grenade crate.
"Would you get a load of this. Take a look, Mouse," said Sergeant Bismarck. He picked up a grenade and casually underarm threw it to the major. The major caught it in his right hand, and his eyes widened.
"Cardboard? Concrete?"
"New grenades, Major," said the sergeant, disgusted. "Fuse attaches separately, then twist the handle."
Wolfgang couldn't believe it, his face a sea of crinkles. How far the mighty have fallen. No potato-mashers, not even simpler egg grenades, just bits of metal scraps set in concrete surrounded by a cardboard tube. He pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger. "Corporal," he said to the enlisted man following him with a rather thick clipboard, "where is this in the inventory?"
The corporal flipped over pages of paper, murmuring slightly, until he found it. "Volkshandgranate 45. One hundred and eighteen cases of this grenade, sir."
He stood up, leaving the infantry company, beckoned the corporal over until they stood at the side rail, the sea spray whipping into their faces, and more importantly, so he couldn't be overheard.
"Mein Gott," he said. "The people's grenade?" And they expect us to win a war throwing bits of concrete? He amended himself. Delay the war. That's all it was about now, delaying the inevitable. "Clipboard, corporal." He turned his back to the spray, then flipped the papers back to the start, and went down the columns, line by line.
They had forty-four Königstigers on paper, three companies worth, the sum strength of the 501st. Twenty-three were on-board. Of those twenty-three, only twelve were fully operational. Including his new command tank. For his 501st, things looked a little bit better – for 1945 standards, that was. A mere shadow compared to years previously. Thirty-eight Panzer-IVs, most of the later models. Twelve Sd.Kfz 251 Hanomag half-tracks. Companies each of anti-aircraft, artillery, tank destroyers, a decent number of 35 and 37 mm PAK guns, the reconnaissance platoon and mechanised infantry platoons also near full strength. And last but not least, the Workshop company mechanics were happy, having been supplied with precious new parts.
They passed the mouth of the bay, passed out of range of the Russian shells, and out into the Baltic Sea.
Two hours later, Major Wolfgang Mauss slept in his hammock, his dreams roiling, quartered in the officers’ decks below, when klaxons jolted him from sleep. The ship jolted side to side, up and down, in heavy swell. He entered the corridor full of running, yelling men, and went up the metal gangway two steps at a time, until he reached the deck.
The skies were black, jagged pieces of lightning flashing all around. The very drums of Valhalla in the sky. He fought his way to the bridge, to find the Navy Captain barking orders for full reverse, as what Wolfgang saw through the porthole windows snatched his very breath away. Reaching high into the heavens, from one horizon to the other, a flashing wall of roiling thunder and lightning.
Bearing right down on them. The SS Akira stopped then reversed, knot by knot, as futile as death itself, and then the storm smote them.
Mist swirled through the bridge, as visibility was reduced to mere hundreds of yards. Lightning struck the ocean, thunder roared, the staccato a war tempo inside Wolfgang's skull. They caught glimpses of the other ships, mere flashes of rusting, grey painted steel, the fog cold in their throats, the air electric, hairs standing on end - and then the storm vanished, in the barest blink of an eye.
Calm ocean waters.
Wolfgang breathed hard, as did the rest of the bridge crew. Wolfgang raced down the stairs and found Haplo and the gunner waving to him with their arms. Every single man on the ship stood on the deck, every inch jammed full of people trying to find out what just happened.
All the ships in the convoy seemed intact. But all the ships were jumbled, mixed up, close.
Too close.
Wolfgang and the others looked with horror as the Akira's Captain sounded the collision alert as the German destroyer frantically tried to swing to starboard but with a grinding, enormous crunch, rammed the SS Mustavo right mid-ship. More klaxons, as the convoy heaved to, trying to give aid and pickup survivors. It was late, too late.
The destroyer hit a fuel and ammunition compartment in the Mustavo's storage area. There was a blinding flash and detonation, the blast wave rocking the Akira. Fireballs fountained into the air like so many fireworks, raining down, as the forward gun apartment of the destroyer blew in sympathy.
It was all they can do, in the next few hours, to pick up survivors, in the calm, warm waters, as each respective bridge captain asked ever incredulous questions at their navigators, looking at their compasses spinning around and around and around.
Chapter Seventeen
ARMADA
THE REPUBLIC ARMADA followed the island chains, the long string of atolls seized by the Inquisition, built upon, forward airbases and supply depots – were abandoned. A small group of the fleet, his rebuilt recon force, was tasked with salvaging anything of value, wary of any hidden surprises the Inquisition might have left in wait.
Merrion did not expect much. The first few archipelagos he had already explored two moons ago, when the Inquisition initially pulled out. What the Inkas couldn't carry, they burned, or in their haste at least, tried to. Heavy rains prevented large-scale conflagrations, and so as they reached islands further out over the horizon, as yet unexplored, he gave the orders.
At the spearhead of the Armada, they had until the last ships to go past before they were to rejoin the fleet. Merrion tried to reassemble his First Reconnaissance Legion, but after the disaster of the truce accords, he could barely field a company.
Still, it would have to do. He lowered his English binoculars, it had been unfortunate he'd clean forgot to give them back to Marietta in time. He grinned, as he spun and walked along the deck of the Trinity, down the aft access railings and towards the general's cabin.
A pair of guards stood at the doorway, each carrying, Merrion observed wryly, a stamped-steel MP 40. Ugly sticks indeed. It had not taken General Sarah Versetti long at all to come around to the benefits of the captured Inka weaponry.
The guard saluted him, and he nodded. He gave his signature staccato across the wooden door.
"Enter," said the general.
Merrion entered, closing the door behind hi
m, and was not surprised to see Major Brutowsky, as always, leaning against the port cabin wall, cleaning his weapons.
"General," said Marion saluting, "my scouts are searching the Inquisition forward bases as we speak."
"Very well, Lieutenant Colonel Blackheart."
Merrion stared at her. "Never quite feels right being called that, General.”
"I can't believe the council voted it for you myself, Merrion. For all your idiosyncrasies, however, the title is well deserved. You have the map with you?"
He took the wooden tube that he'd carried under his left arm. "Yes General, I do." She gestured for him to come sit, the solid oak table completely sparse, save for her dagger, her steel engraved mug, and her folded, square, red and gold warbanner. Merrion unsealed the top of the tube, and pulled out the two-foot wide rolled up parchment, and putting it in the centre of the table, he held one end whilst the general took the other, and together they unrolled it, four-foot-long by two-foot-wide. She procured a couple of paperweights, and then the map looked up at them, its edges curled. General Versetti beckoned the major over.
"The Inquisition mainland," said Merrion. "I prepared this myself. Unlike the Emperor's stronghold, my intelligence a little more up-to-date."
The Inquisition mainland reminded Merrion of a crude double headed battleaxe, jagged on both sides, as if it had bashed against an anvil a few dozen times, the middle shaped inwards like an hourglass.
The Inquisition homeland stretched just over seven miles at its narrowest points between the seas. From the far northern edge of the industrial zone, main army barracks and its naval ports, the island stretched eighty miles to its southern coast, to where the capital city of the Inquisition laid, and the Emperor's Palace.
"What of the defences, Merrion?"
"They have been further upgraded since the truce accords. Gun emplacements ring the coastline every five to seven miles. A garrison within each. Here," Merrion said, tracing the map with his index finger, from the southern-most coast in a small parabola up to the Emperor's Bay at the two o'clock, "the Great Wall has been further strengthened." Farms and cropland lay on the south west of the island and as their eyes wandered north of the map, the island turned to plains, the dormant volcano off the eastern shores and mountain range, before turning into the mammoth industrial zone containing oilfields, the main army barracks, and the offshore oilfields.