by Aeryn Leigh
THE COCKPIT of Aries was standing room only. Instead of the War Briefing being held in the command bunker, all leaders recognised the command control abilities of the Nordic gunship, so it was a no-brainer to move the briefing to the gunship.
"Proceed Captain," said General Sarah Versetti, sitting in the pilot’s chair. The two German corporals, flanked each side of the central projection two metres across.
"We are in the shit," said Laurie. "Aries counts one point six million hostiles."
Major Wolfgang, in the group of German commanders on the other side of the cockpit, questioned the corporal's translation. "You heard correctly," said Laurie. "I don't believe it myself, but there it is."
"How long do we have until they reach close-quarters combat?" said Marietta.
"Thirty-eight minutes," said Laurie, "at their current speed." Commotion spread across the room. Laurie continued. "It's gonna be a hard fight, no questions there. Run the simulations a dozen times. It's a shit fight either way. We have the offensive capabilities to kill eighty-five to ninety-four percent of their forces, expending every round of ammunition. And for those of you who can't do the maths, five percent of 1.6 million is still a lot."
The battalion commander of the 2nd Mechanised Panzergrenadiers spoke. "But what about the great Valkyrie and her weapon? Surely that is a game changer?"
Laurie waited for the translation. He looked at Ella, chewing her fingernails in the back row. He caught her attention, and nodded slightly. "Yes, it would. But the only person capable of operating it is a child.
"If our lives depend on it," said the commander, "then she must try."
"I understand your frustration, Commander," said Laurie, "but I doubt we could, even if we wanted to. Not even sure we could morally do so. We're not the fucking Inquisition, remember that." He didn't break eye contact with Ella for one moment as he spoke. Her expression spoke volumes. That and how she hadn't spoken up either. A bad sign. If the commander pushed that angle one more time, Ella was likely to cave in his face.
"Enough," said General Sarah Versetti. "How accurate are these calculations, Captain?"
"I trust them, General," said Laurie matter-of-factly.
"Merrion? Marietta?"
A voice piped up from the back left. "I would concur, General." Her daughter nodded.
"Very well," said General Versetti. "Can we retreat?"
"The odds are a lot more favourable. It still ends in a bloodbath. Even with utilising every mechanised asset the Seventh and 501st has available, at top speed, even towing dozens of vehicles with the Aries, the enemy can move just as quick, if not faster, as we are only as fast as our slowest vehicles. We would be overtaken and destroyed within four to six kilometres of the closest naval assets," and a small orange circle appeared on the projected map, where the Germans landed. "We wouldn't have a chance of making the Republic Armada. As I said, we are up the creek without a paddle."
General Versetti stood, and turned towards Major Mauss. "So, Commander, which will it be?"
"We fight," he said. "But I have an idea."
THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES. Pigeonhawks set off for the Republic Armada, carrying orders to rendezvous on the western coast and join the German transports. The hill resembled a knocked-over anthill.
German and Republic defences re-formed, using the break in artillery to pull infantry further uphill, behind the German battalions. The 501st Battalion spread along the front, taking point. The first line of defence and offence. Taking a leaf from the Roman tactical playbook, the defenders alternated anti-aircraft companies and anti-tank platoons in the checkerboard formations along its breadth. Self-propelled artillery filled out gaps in the third defensive row, supported by Republic batteries and legionnaires, artillery pieces attached to horses, their ears stuffed with wool.
Each of the twelve Königstigers was in turn supported by platoons of MG 34 and 42 equipped panzergrenadiers, rounded off with a pair of StuG assault guns and a company of Pak 37s and 40s.
TWENTY-SIX MINUTES. Aboard the Aries, Amelia was huddled under the mess hall's main table, surrounded by puppy dogs, and the abandoned daemon sat folded up in her lap, upside down, allowing Amelia to stroke its belly.
"It's scary, Mummy, Griffin," said Amelia in a low voice. "She is angry. Very angry. It wants to go to battle, but it can't."
"We know," said Ella. The not blooded part hung unspoken in the air, heavy and thick. "A lot of things get angry in this world. Just because something is angry, doesn't mean you should take it personally or that it's directed at you. They can be angry at something else."
"Like you?" said Amelia. "You get angry all the time and say it's something else."
Griffin suppressed the urge to laugh.
"Yes beautiful, just like how I get sometimes." Verdammt. From the mouths of babes.
"You need to show it who's boss," said Griffin, interjecting hurriedly. "We control these armour suits, and even if they do have a mind of their damn own, they can't do anything unless we say so." He patted Athena, glad to see her too. "But for the sake of the puppies, and all of us, baby girl, we need the defensive capabilities of your Valkyrie. It's pressure, I know." He looked at Ella. He stroked his chin. "Now it's a bit like that situation you had in the emergency caverns, isn't it now? You stood up to the bullies, and look how that made you feel. Your Mom and I, and all the others, will have your back. You have our promise."
"Okay," said Amelia, lifting the spiky creature off her lap and putting it right way up on the floor. She climbed out from underneath the table, and stood. "For family."
"For family," said Ella and Griffin, together.
THIRTEEN MINUTES. Aries lifted up from the hilltop, and hovered in a stationary position 350 metres above them. Amelia, piloting the Valkyrie, and doing her best impersonation of a stern Humphrey Bogart mixed with Mick, strode over the hill, and kneeled behind the 501st. On her left shoulder, a makeshift wooden platform had been built, and Volfango laid prone on it, behind the 0.60 calibre anti-material rifle found in the gunship's armoury.
Odin's Warriors ran through their weapon readouts yet again, by the Norse numbers, set up equidistantly around the defences. They would do well with the other five sets of armour, and the much bigger combat walker still in the transport bay, but they'd never found the time to try and figure out their pilots.
Perhaps, thought Ella, as she warmed up Painkiller, that might prove a fatal mistake.
FOUR MINUTES. Major Wolfgang Mauss stood in his tank, as the daemon swarm's frontal edge reached the nine-km mark, under the pale moonlight. The scene otherwise, would have been beautiful. That's it. He was done with all this. Once his men were safe, free, and clear, Wolfgang was going to start his own winery.
THREE MINUTES. Threat of alarms flared on board the Aries. The Korellians fired. The point defence batteries on the gunship responded. Metal slugs tore into incoming shells. A great cheer went up from the troops below. The cheers turned to pain as the shell shrapnel rained down.
Andrew analysed the incoming shells with horror. Designed in such a way to be lethal, whether destroyed by the gunship or not. Packed inside every shell, amongst a tiny amount of highly refined, unstable high explosive, thousands and thousands of tightly packed alien spikes. Spikes which upon impact with human skin, caused excruciating pain and if not treated within a narrow time frame by advanced medical technology, caused death by neurotoxin overload. In the fields below, biological flechette blasted every square foot of ground.
TWENTY SECONDS. Every sentient being within a 400,000-light-year radius, leaned forward to their screens.
THREE SECONDS. Laurie looked up into the heavens, and said, "Fuck you."
NINE-POINT-EIGHT NANOSECONDS. The targeting AI wrote the Nordic runes in fourth dimensional space. Combat systems activated, and the sentient intelligence, indistinguishable from an Greek God of Old, revelled in that eternal moment.
THE FULL MIGHT of gunship weaponry and artillery batteries of the German battalions fired. At 8,
400 metres, humans poured the destructive equivalent of a fire hose straight across the front Korellian ranks. The first two ranks of daemons became metres-high walls of green blood and Rob sent out sets of macro commands, one after the other, coordinating the Aries weapons with instructions for the German gun batteries, taking into account flight time for ordinance.
Multiple tens of thousands of the creatures were obliterated in the first strike and still the swarm pressed forward.
Meter by meter, the range narrowed. Panzer anti-tank and anti-aircraft batteries added their firepower, at six-thousand metres. Gun crews slammed clip after clip into 20mm, 40 mm guns, the gunner's right foot stomped flat on the firing pedal. A shower of metal and alien debris tinkled off every metal surface, now falling in concentrated clumps as Rob moved the interceptors forward as far as possible, minimising the damage. Not enough. Not nearly enough.
KNEELING, Amelia rested the planet-killing rifle against her right hip, and engaged the one system she had access to. She held out her left hand, and triggered the magneto system within the palm. Within a fifteen-hundred-meter radius of the suit, it sucked every single enemy projectile into a sphere no bigger than a beachball, dazzlingly blue on her palm, vaporising on contact.
THE ROLLING WALL of bursting green liquid hit the Königstigers optimal range. Tank crews targeted daemon gun platforms, and the long string of 88s fired. Roared. Thirty seconds later, every Panzer IV 75mm and all the remaining assault guns and Hummel self-propelled artillery added their weight.
The enemy pushed forward, relentless and unfazed by the absolute carnage being brought against them. Streams of green blood formed into shallow pools in craters that quickly filled up and overflowed, becoming rivers and lakes the Korellians waded through.
Damage inflicted by the falling spray of neurotoxin spikes reaped souls, soldiers unable to man guns or perform their duties as pure pain consumed them. Medics operated from mobile triages on the backs of lorries, trucks, and horse-pulled waggons, all set up under Sergeant Mick Ward's instructions, treating as many as the injured as they could, and it still wasn't enough.
The enemy broke the 3,500-meter mark. Manipular legion by manipular, company by company, battalion by battalion, they retreated uphill to the next arranged fall-back position, and so the two armies fell back. With each passing line of retreat, the line of battle shrunk, falling further and further under the protective shield of the gunship. At the fifth fall back, the German Nebelwerfer rocket batteries unleashed. Dozens upon dozens of metric tons screamed from the rocket batteries mounted on Hanomag half-tracks. The sound they made upon launching was diabolical, a high-pitched keening of rushing death, that sent a shiver down the spine.
One million daemons broached the 3,000m mark.
Chapter Fifty-Six
TEMPER
THERE WAS TOO many of them. Ella expended the last of the plasma gun's reserves, the torpedo-shaped weapon the same she'd used for the stronghold rescue. Coils of twisting orange energy torched daemons in vast quantities. There were just so many. She remembered Laurie's words. Wear them down, grind them down, long enough to reach the troop transports.
She selected another tactical grenade, and with the under-slung grenade launcher fired the weapon. Twelve grenades remaining. The grenade soared over the front ranks and landed five-hundred metres beyond their front line, and became a miniature star, decimating twenty-thousand plus daemons in an instant. The tsunami didn't blink.
THE DEFENDERS RETREATED to and along the west coast, trying to reduce their area exposed to the enemy's tender ministrations to a minimum. The steady loss of lives perversely helped. But the tidal wave of alien death seized on this opportunity to try flank and encircle the harried alliance. More and more precious heavy ammo was expended denying the enemy their breakthrough, and soldiers and crews were additionally assaulted with fatigue. Move back, establish fire control, wait for the forward unit to leapfrog you, move back again, rinse and repeat.
No darkest hour had ever come close to this rearguard action in the history of Elysium or on any combat worlds in millennia.
Cannon barrels overheated. Machine-gun crews pissed on their heavy weapons to cool them down faster, adding ammonia to the stink of close-quarter battle, the cordite from their guns mixing with ozone sinking from the gunship overhead. Fields turned into the lowland plains of scrub forest, then into forest, for parts of the defenders, yet other trailing edges of the armies remained in golden wheat fields.
Marietta, up on the gunship by her General’s command, not by her choice, oversaw the Nordic weapon and ammunition crates being pushed off the dropship ramp, as instructed by Andrew's calculations and real-time ammunition reserves from all of the Nordic units, as the eight Valkjur Warriors burned through their arsenals, the manufacturing facility aboard Aries operating at 110 percent capacity. Soldiers on the ground tasked with one job, and a single job, of retrieving the fallen crates and delivering them to the eight.
Griffin's greatsword was strapped to his armour's back. In each power-fist he held a nine-foot long tri-barrelled 12.5mm minigun, belt fed, from the ammo storage bin on his back. Or in his back. Griffin wasn't sure which. Every four, maybe five minutes tops, he stopped, and re-armed. In those precious seconds, the wave grew closer, before runic indicators flashed green. He'd seen firefighters put out burning bombers, and buildings, back in England. Hose left to right, right to left. Instead of water, he delivered high explosive and fearsome incendiaries. It was awesome. Awe-inspiring. He felt like a god, such destructive forces at his fingertips. Untouchable.
Pa, look at me now.
DAWN BROKE, and shone light upon another woodcut of Dante's Inferno. Swirling clouds gathered above the battlefield, lightning flashes forked down from the heavens. Mighty tributaries of green blood and smaller estuaries of red flowed down into the lake.
At their current progress, Andrew calculated the port would be reached in under five hours.
And also calculated, being overrun in four.
"Where's your sense of optimism?" yelled Laurie, feeling good about himself. Despite himself.
Mick muttered something about the Old Man's perverse connection between his mood and the near-inevitability of death, as he lifted up a Panzer IV stuck in a deep rut by the front underside and rotated it right, on the far eastern side of the defences.
Beowulf and Magnus continued singing 'Row row your boat', delivering carnage worthy of Odin, mercifully on mute.
Making matters worse, quite soon the forest would engulf them. To get to the port, the only access to the ocean without towering high cliffs in any usable direction, was via the vast, deep forest, and a minor dirt road that wound its way around the island's perimeter, interconnecting the stone garrison battlements.
At some point, within the graceful, lush, elegant green-ferny woods, the cove in spitting distance, the Alliance would fall. The armies would be bottlenecked, governed by the physical limits of how many vehicles could traverse a dirt road in a certain amount of time. The road could be widened, using Nordic weaponry to fell the giant trees, German tanks to push over the lesser saplings and great-ferns, but doing so diverted crucial offensive resources the alliance couldn't spare.
But they would have to.
Or would they? Ella knelt down, her ammo exhausted. Legionnaires emptied the shell casing bins, removing them outright, to be taken back to the gunship and reused. Nothing offensive? She couldn't believe she hadn't considered it.
"Amelia?" said Ella, using the laser point-to-point communication.
"Yes?" replied Amelia, trying not to look at the death happening all around, without much luck.
"You say as it stands, the Valkyrie is limited to non-lethal actions, yes?"
"Yup."
"Do trees count as sentient lifeforms?"
"Um, I'll check?" A long pause. "Nein. But it might be lying."
"Err, excellent. And your weapon, particularly the chain-blade. Is that operational?"
"Yes?"
/> "Fantastic. Okay beautiful daughter of mine, clear us a path. From all the way from here to here. Go play gardener."
DEFYING THE LAWS OF PHYSICS, particularly the Square Inverse Law, the Queen Valkyrie strode off, leaving half-metre deep imprints in the ground from each step. In the cockpit, between the shoulder blades, Amelia fought the sentient intelligence to a draw. "You want to be angry, fine. But don't take it out on me! It's not my fault I'm not even ten!"
In response, the Eviscerator's six-metre long chain-blade burst into life, idling throatily, the sound not heard in millennia. Amelia stopped at the boundary of the wheat-field and the forest, standing above the dirt road. The constant rumble of war echoed from behind. Amelia consulted the map projection, in front of her retinas. She looked at the line her Mummy had drawn.
It wasn't going to be fair to the trees, but she promised she'd plant new ones in their honour. She knelt down, grasped the closest tree, a cedar-elm, seventy metres tall, around its base, and used the whirring blade to cut it off neatly at its base.
On her shoulder, Volfango tracked wild daemons attracted by the noise, and put them down, one by one.
MACHINES BROKE DOWN. Gearboxes lost gears, driveshafts failed, motors seized. Gun barrels war out. Jammed on their three thousandth round. No time to fix them. They were abandoned, their crews joining the mass of soldiers walking a fast pace alongside troop transports, dangerously overloaded with humans. All following the dirt road. Autocannons chittered high above, and again the comforting steady thump of the rotating concussive din of their own self-propelled artillery, mortars, and tanks, firing round after round after round.
The gunship diverted ammunition production to clones of the German 75 mm and 105 mm shells, their stock piles running low. A constant, never-ending ballet of juggling ammunition reserves, the rope ladder dangling below like a jellyfish suspended in water. Troops hooked crates and bins full of brass shells to the ladder to be hauled up. What went up, also came down.