Revelation Run

by Rick Partlow

  A fire team of Marines patrolled the street outside the warehouse and she knew another team was inside. Not many to guard the thirty-some mercenaries, but Salvaggio’s Savages were unarmed and locked up. Grieg had talked of killing them after Salvaggio’s escape and she wondered if he would do it. He had the authority, as Lord Starkad’s personally appointed representative and he had shown no reticence using it. It seemed almost inconsequential now, executing a few mercenaries, beside everything else she’d seen happen.

  Something exploded. She stumbled backwards, reflexes guided by the post-traumatic stress of Terminus, tripped and fell into a pile of scrap wood, an empty spool that had once held superconductive cable. She landed hard, but didn’t look down to check if she was injured or determine whether the wetness beneath her hands was water or her own blood. Her eyes were locked on the end of the street, on the black cloud rising from the blast.

  The harsh percussion had rumbled up the street, rattling windows, but it had faded nearly as fast and been replaced by the deep, thunderous drumbeat of automatic weapons fire. A heavy caliber machine gun, she thought, probably not from a mech. Her first thought had been that one of the mechs had found a holdout and tried to root them out, but this gunfire was low to the ground and undercut with the harsh, anachronistic growl of an internal combustion engine.

  A technical, that’s what Kuryakin had called them, a civilian cargo truck or off-road vehicle rigged with armor and mounting a crew-served weapon. It was her best guess and she thought her old commander would have approved of her reasoning.

  The Marine guards didn’t ask her opinion, didn’t pause to check on her or offer to help her up. They simply took off running toward the sound of gunfire, which she supposed was commendable for Marines but a bit short-sighted. Hot on their heels were another fire team, this one careening down the street in an appropriated civilian flatbed truck, one in the cab and the other three hanging on for dear life in the back, weapons ready.

  Two more of Grieg’s troops wandered out through the open, sliding door of the warehouse, checking both ways down the street. One, then an eyeblink later the other, fell before the sound of the shots reached her ears. Snipers. On top of a nearby building. And if they were exposing themselves now, that meant…

  Boots scraping over the pavement. She heard them and there was a subtle tone to their impact, something qualitatively different from the soles of the Starkad Marines. Boots made somewhere else, just a slight difference in manufacture. Black-clad, armored, moving with tightly-wrapped urgency in an arrowhead wedge as they crossed the street. They swept in through the front door of the warehouse, pausing to check the two downed Marines, quickly and efficiently stripping the magazines out of their weapons before they tossed them away. Two of them stayed at the door to stand watch and, for the first time, she noticed they weren’t wearing helmets, just balaclavas and goggles.

  No ordinary ground troopers, then. These were Spartan Rangers.

  The hoarse stutter of a suppressed carbine sounded several long bursts reverberating out the front entrance. You could channel the expelled gas from a gunshot, change and reduce its sound signature, but you couldn’t completely silence it, and there was nothing at all to be done about the bullets travelling at supersonic speeds. Suppressors merely turned what would have been something loud enough to deafen into a sound on the edge of the comfortable.

  Silence now, though, uncomfortable in the absence of return fire. There was no one left alive inside to shoot back. When the Rangers emerged, it was at the lead of a ragged cluster of Salvaggio’s mercenaries, running free with a gleam in their eyes promising revenge and profit. They’d no doubt seemed intimidating and suitably martial to the colonists here, but to her, they looked like a pack of vagrants playing soldier, and spending a few nights sleeping in a warehouse with no showers hadn’t helped.

  She made no move for her pistol, just stayed where she was, afraid to move lest she attract attention, lying in whatever wet, trash-strewn mess she’d stumbled into, watching them abandon the warehouse. They weren’t running out of town, though…they were going up the street. Toward the stockyard.

  The mecha, she realized.

  She should get on her ‘link, call Grieg and warn him, warn the Marines guarding the stockade. She should. It was her duty.

  Slowly and painfully, she got to her feet and backed into the alley until she was sure none of them were still waiting, watching, ready to put a bullet through her. Then she turned and ran back toward the temple.

  Lyta Randell hadn’t fired her weapon yet, and she was good with that. It had taken getting beaten up, blown up and battered over the course of the last few weeks, but she finally thought she was ready to accept the business of delegating the whole walking point and soaking up damage thing to younger people.

  And of course, there was the whole business of having to ride herd on “Captain” Salvaggio, which took up far too much of her attention.

  Shit, if that woman was ever more than a Sub-Lieutenant in anyone’s army, I’ll buy her a new mech.

  First platoon thundered across what she’d been informed was imaginatively named Main Street as Second laid down covering fire against the Starkad forces firing from the cover of the stock pen gates. 6mm slugs punched through wooden fence slats and smacked into metal posts, driving the Marines behind cover as First moved into positions behind a line of cargo trucks parked in the street outside. The platoon leader, Lt. Wayne, made a familiar hand signal and…

  “Move, now!” she urged the mech commander, pushing her forward.

  Salvaggio was still favoring her leg, even though the Ranger medics had rebandaged the wound and given her a good dose of painkillers. Enough she probably shouldn’t have been operating heavy machinery, but oh well. She slowed down the command group, which was a fancy name for Lyta, one of the medics and another enlisted man who was officially her aid but in fact was tasked with making sure she didn’t get herself killed. Which was harder when they were crossing a free-fire zone at a fast walking speed, but if they didn’t get Salvaggio to the stockyard at the same time as her mech-jocks, the whole issue was moot.

  “You could have given me a damned gun,” Salvaggio complained, grunting as she fell to a crouch behind the wheel well of a flatbed truck.

  “We’re fighting the same enemy,” Lyta told her, peaking around the edge of the cargo bed. “That doesn’t mean I trust you.”

  “You’re about to put me in the cockpit of a damned mech,” Salvaggio reminded her, amusement rich in her tone, though Lyta wasn’t bothering to look away from the enemy positions.

  “Then stop bitching.” Lyta tapped the button on the side of her ear bud and spoke into her ‘link pickup. “Lee, you guys almost here?”

  “One mike, ma’am.”

  One minute…which seemed like no time at all until someone was shooting at you.

  “Don’t take time to stop and sight-see,” she advised him. “And don’t let any of those idiots get themselves shot.”

  “Those are my idiots,” Salvaggio told her, overhearing her end of the conversation.

  “Lt. Grant,” she yelled to the woman instead of transmitting because the First platoon leader was only three meters away. A burst of return fire from the stockade slammed into the rear end of the flatbed not far from Lyta’s head and she ducked instinctively.

  “Yes, ma’am?” Grant called back, not coming out from behind cover to answer. Smart woman.

  “The package is less than a mike out. You are a go.”

  “First platoon!” Grant bellowed almost before the echo had died from Lyta’s command. “Prep the target!”

  Half a dozen grenade-launcher equipped carbines swung upward almost simultaneously, as if it were a rifle drill competition and then fired with nearly the same precision, the six thumping reports blending into one. They were firing frags, anti-personnel rounds, which weren’t quite as loud as you’d figure they would be, just snare drum reports and then a handbell choir of ricochets as wire fr
agments bounced off metal too thick to penetrate. And the screams. The screams were almost louder than the explosions, and reached further into Lyta’s mind.

  She’d made peace with the necessity of killing the enemy well over a decade ago, and if she were being honest with herself, she’d enjoyed some of them, the ones who seemed to deserve it, the bandits and pirates who tortured and raped and enslaved. But the screams of the wounded and dying, those she’d never come to terms with, never managed become inured to.

  “Move!” Grant yelled, standing and leading the way, the way Rangers had always done.

  Lyta straightened up from cover and saw one of the squad leaders fire off a door-breacher round into the latch on the main gate, the blast smashing through the simple, mechanical lock with a flash of sparks, sending the swinging metal doors fluttering inward. Grant rushed in shoulder-to-shoulder with a junior NCO, carbines stuttering covering fire, and the rest of her platoon flowed through behind them.

  Lyta kept a hand on Salvaggio’s shoulder, ready to hold her back should the woman show any signs of being a big enough dumbass to charge on in before the Rangers cleared out the opposition, but it proved unnecessary. Josephine Salvaggio had shown herself to be quite adept at self-preservation, and she seemed quite content to wait out the infantry battle.

  Quick bursts of suppressed fire marked the Rangers’ contribution, answered by ragged chattering. Not necessarily an indictment of the Marines’ training as much as their panic and surprise. More controlled bursts until the return fire ceased entirely.

  “Clear.” Grant’s voice was tight and strained and Lyta knew something was wrong. “Get me a medic up here.”

  She hauled Salvaggio up and hauled her along through the gate past the perimeter Second platoon was setting up. There’d been an entire squad defending the Savage mecha. She could see six bodies sprawled out, some having taken cover behind the legs of the row of banged-up Hopper scout mecha with just their feet sticking out into the open now. Starkad Marines worked in fire teams of four, so there was at least a squad’s worth of bodies here. She trusted Grant to have made sure of all of them; this wasn’t the sort of mission where they could take care of wounded prisoners and Starkad Marines didn’t surrender.

  Grant was sitting against the tree-trunk leg of a Reaper assault mech, her balaclava pulled off to reveal an anguished grimace on her lean face, one hand pressed against the upper part of her right shoulder, near the joint with the neck, where the armor was the thinnest. She’d taken a round there and blood was seeping though her fingers while one of her NCOs was fishing in his thigh pocket for a field dressing. A medic shouldered the platoon sergeant aside and pried her fingers away from the wound, slapping a smart bandage over it, coated with a chemical to stop the bleeding as well as painkillers.

  “Is she going to be okay?” Lyta asked the medic before addressing Grant directly. The Sub-Lieutenant would tell her what she wanted to believe and she needed the truth.

  “Doesn’t look like any major arteries hit,” the young enlisted man judged. “She should be fine, but we should get her back to the drop-ship, use the full diagnostic scanner on her as soon as possible.”

  “I’m afraid that’s going to be a while.”

  “I can still fight, ma’am,” Grant insisted, trying to push herself to her feet. “I can lead First.”

  The medic shrugged, looking helplessly at Lyta.

  “The smart bandage should keep it closed as long as she doesn’t get into any hand-to-hand combat.”

  “No promises,” Grant smiled tautly, pulling her enhanced vision goggles and balaclava back on.

  “Captain Lee is here with the mercs, Colonel,” Lt. Wayne, the Second platoon leader, called in her ear from outside the fence. “And I have reports of enemy mecha headed this way, ETA less than two minutes.”

  He’d barely said the words when the first of the mercenary mech-jocks stumbled in through the front gate, nearly tripping over his own feet as he slowed from all-out sprint to a walk to avoid running into a feed trough. He was an older man with streaks of grey through the wild, black mane of his hair, and there was a manic quality to the set of his eyes, particularly when he spotted Salvaggio.

  “Momma!” he said, grinning. “I knew you’d get us out of this, especially since you’re the one who got us into it.”

  “I love you, too, Yuri,” she said, making a rude gesture. “Now get in your damned mech and get ready to get the hell out of here.”

  “All of you get in your machines,” Lyta snapped, motioning impatiently as the rest of the pilots pushed through the gates. They weren’t much to write home about by the sight of them, but all she needed was running bait, and she hoped they’d serve for that. “We have Starkad mecha incoming and you won’t stand a chance against them if you get caught in here flat-footed.”

  “Hell, we don’t stand a chance against them out on the street either,” the man called Yuri opined, moving far too slowly to one of the Hoppers.

  “Just trust me,” Salvaggio told him, told all of them as she limped toward the side of her Reaper, grabbing onto the handhold on the left leg and pulling herself up. “When have I ever let you down?”

  “Is that a fucking trick question?” Yuri called down from the torso of his Hopper, yanking the release for the canopy to climb inside.

  “Rangers!” Lyta barked, feeling a load lifting off of her shoulders without the duty of babysitting Salvaggio. “Police up all traces of our being here and clear the area to Rally Point Alpha. We want those Starkad mecha focused on these…” She pointed up at Salvaggio’s Reaper, already beginning to hum and vibrate as the reactor fired up and power began flowing to the servos. “…not on us. Don’t be seen, don’t give them a reason to stick around town.”

  “Ma’am!’ Captain Lee shouted, jogging up through the main gate and pointing off to the west, toward the main street. “Here they come!”

  She followed his gesture and saw the glint of the morning sun off of metal just above the rooftops.

  “Get out!” she roared, waving up at Salvaggio’s cockpit. “Go! Go! Go!” Then to Captain Lee and the others. “Everyone! Out of sight now!”

  Everything was chaos and clamor and men and women were dodging the swinging pendulum legs of mecha as they headed out through the main gate. Salvaggio led with her humanoid Reaper, faded white and tarnished silver like a tired, battle-worn warrior striding off to some ancient war. The mech’s massive legs smashed through the stockyard gate, crumpling the metal into twisted uselessness and stomping it beneath her footpads.

  Lyta stayed on her feet until everyone else had found a hidey-hole, a shadow to crawl into, in back rooms and storage sheds and beneath feed troughs, until her aid actually grabbed her arm and yelled into her ear over the thunderous stomping of mech footpads on the hard-packed dirt.

  “Ma’am, get to cover!” the junior NCO insisted urgently. “I promised Colonel Conner I wouldn’t let you do anything else stupid!”

  “Oh, you did, did you?” She laughed. She couldn’t help it. The kid really was blossoming into a real commander. “Well, let’s not make our fearless leader angry then.”

  She ducked behind a thin, metal feed trough. It probably wasn’t as solid a cover as the boy sergeant would have liked, but it was the only one around with a view of the street, and she needed to see. The last of Salvaggio’s mecha were bounding out through the ruined gates, each seeming to take the extra moment to stomp on the crushed metal doors as if making some sort of philosophical statement on their captivity. They were picking up speed, overworked and aging servos whining in protest as a trot turned into a full-tilt gallop, not heading for the center of town or towards the seaport, but instead straight out, taking the rough, gravel and packed-sand track out into the wilderness.

  They were a pack of mangy, flea-bitten horses stampeding off with Lipizzaner stallions in pursuit. The Starkad mecha didn’t quite glitter in the sun, their camouflage paint protected against reflection. But they had the air of the new
, of having come off the assembly lines at Stavanger only months ago and marched right onto the Sleipner; their jaunty stride seemed to match the overconfidence of their pilots, of their commander.

  It’ll work, she prayed. It’ll work.

  Two of the Starkad mecha lumbered out into the center of the street, an Agamemnon and a Valiant, looking for all the world like two hesitant soldiers, debating whether to pursue the enemy or stay at their posts.

  Go, she urged them silently. You know you want to go. You’re mech-jocks, all balls and no brains, even the women. You want to chase after the rabbit like the other doggies. Just go.

  As if she’d whispered the words into their ears, the two assault mecha headed off after the others, following the Salvaggio machines, leaving the town for the Marines to defend.

  And Marines, we can handle. She smiled the smile of a stalking wolf. Maybe Mithra’s listening after all.

  21

  Josephine Salvaggio had never been happier to be inside her Reaper. She’d nicknamed it Battle-axe after one of her former mothers-in-law both for its violent temperament and balky interface, but today, the easy chair and neural halo felt like the embrace of an old lover. They meant power over her own destiny, something she hadn’t had since she’d been stupid enough to get involved in all this shit with Starkad.

  Should have just minded my own business and let the Supremacy have those two kids.

  That was the problem with always having an eye to the next big score: you wound up sticking your fingers into too many mousetraps trying to get the free cheese. Maybe this time, she’d learn her lesson, play it straight for a while.