He was marching straight into the teeth of the oncoming enemy element determined to take back the station with everything they had. It would take a miracle to come out the other side. That was for sure. This was not a fight… it was that other thing. That thing he’d been contemplating before the weekend seminar at the airport Marriott.
Funny how all the old things come back around. No matter how hard you try to avoid them.
The Animals were moving in wedges, supported by marksmen fire. Coming straight at him according to the tac map overlay in his HUD. All of it glowing a ghostly white, reminding him of old first-gen computer games. Text adventures. That blocky white overlay where you were supposed to imagine the living breathing world of the game. Except that too was an illusion.
Over four hundred of them, heavily armed Animals, clogging main access to get at him. He was holding the 1000 rifle down and ready to engage. Loaded now with the high-explosive five-shot, as were all the ready mags in his carrying system.
He could damage the station. Not enough to blow the thing. Just enough for the reactor to protect itself via emergency blast doors and bulkheads. He could damage it and hoped they pulled back to avoid being sealed within.
Like he would be.
That was the only chance he had.
For honor and glory, right?
But he was banking on something different. On a hope. A hope that the Animals were confident enough in their numbers not to expect a frontal assault from a lone Savage marine. He’d done it to them once… he could do it again.
Not Uplifted. Not anymore. He’d become what they were afraid of now. He’d accept, and embody, their darkest nightmare.
The Savage.
A thing from the outer dark. The stellar boogeyman. He would be that to them now. He would embrace who he really was. The Savage. That’s what he would become in this last attack. He’d shed the polite term of Uplifted. He’d become their nightmare. The Savage that carried away their women and ate their children. He’d embrace that now, here at the last. If just to save himself a few seconds longer and kill just a few more.
They’d be thinking they’d have to dig out defenders all the way to their objective. The last thing they’d expect was a single boogeyman straight from the Nether. Coming right for them.
He sighted the lead element of the Animal’s main assault down the narrow central corridor. Targeting and data feed came in from the 1000, and he steadied himself, then pulled the trigger and fired. Full auto. Releasing an eighty-round mag in seconds. Caseless six-point-fives shot through the air between Savage and Animals, five-round groups flying almost as one, and smashed into the lead element. The explosive inside each round fired and another dumb slug launched itself forward at two thousand five hundred meters per second. It was like shooting a hurricane of nails.
The armor recorded multiple secondary and tertiary hits. No station damage yet.
Crometheus flung himself against one of the angular walls, covering behind a bulkhead, and reached for a new mag. His fingers doing the work of automatically releasing the dead mag. His muscles trained perfectly in sim for this unthinking task. His mind busy plotting his next killing move. He would go forward and drive on them. He would push them and push them again until they had to fall back.
That was what he’d do now.
The unexpected. Here at the last.
Within the HUD he watched the whole sensor layout of the advancing force come to a sudden halt. Someone opened up with heavy automatic pulse fire, and the corridor turned into a world filled by a thousand angry flaming hornets.
The moment there was a pause in the fusillade, Crometheus dove forward out into the corridor, not bothering to aim, and let the weapon fire with one hand as he scrambled for another bulkhead ten meters ahead. Closer to the enemy. Push them, he thought.
He landed against the wall on the opposite side of the access tunnel. He’d used up half a mag of HE for his own covering fire. Stopping them now was more important than worrying about collateral damage to the reactor. It could be repaired, but it couldn’t be retaken. There just weren’t enough of their force left. So he’d switched to high-explosive munitions.
Over the comm he could hear their ponderously slow NCOs freaking out that he was advancing on them. Which was perfect. They swore in disbelief that he was actually attacking.
He shucked the bando of frags from around his neck, pulling it over his helmet, and activated its daisy-chain mode. A long depress of the last grenade in the string gave him three flashing green lights indicating the mode was operative. He lobbed the bando down the corridor at the attacking force. Halfway between him as his targets.
Useless if it exploded just now.
Deadly if proximity mode was activated and someone came at him.
Which it was.
Which they did.
Already the element commander was ordering a charge forward to overrun. Covering fire turned up in volume and Crometheus hugged wall, feeling his chest within his armor heave like a desperate bellows, hearing their boots thumping-thundering to close with him. They were pressing forward and only the cracks of designated marksmen fire, farther down-tunnel and far too careful, announced their impending meeting with Death.
I am Death.
Because that’s what a Savage is. Death personified.
He needed to give them something to be distracted by so they’d didn’t see the bando. He stepped out into the corridor and cut loose with the 1000 again, firing from the hip, letting the HUD show him where his impacts would land.
Rounds slipped through men and smashed into a second line coming behind. But there were a lot of them. Some threw themselves to the deck or hugged wall and targeted him with return fire. Incoming pulse fire was inaccurate at first as both sides collided with each other. On the one side, four hundred in a narrow cone, funneling straight at him with high-grade military weapons throwing everything they had at him. And on the other, a lone Savage marine, working the 1000 dry and ejecting the mag. By the time the latest magazine clattered to the deck, empty, his perfectly trained body’s muscle memory had a new one in. The weapon auto-racked the first round and began to spit forth relativistic death into the faces of the oncoming Animal horde.
There were advantages. The fact that he was facing vastly superior numbers in such a narrow space meant only so many could get an engagement window on him at a time. Lots of friendly fire. And the HE ammo was a game-changer. It tore through anything and everything.
But those advantages… weren’t enough.
Crometheus took a pulse fire blast in the gut, and it burned like hot fire. The next one, or maybe the first one, they hit so close together it was hard to tell, smashed into his armored leg. It deflected, but the leg was surely broken. He knew that for sure even as he collapsed onto one knee, his mind roaring red murder.
The third round smashed into his helmet. The HUD cracked and sounded like an old-school television set hitting a parking lot after being thrown from a seventh-floor balcony.
He knew that sound.
From his rock and roll days.
He remembered the hotel entertainment system’s arc and long fall off the presidential suite’s balcony. And some perpetually unhappy bandmate, the bassist maybe, finding some small joy in that momentary destruction they’d shared together.
He stopped firing and pulled his fractured helmet off, wondering how badly he was hit in the head. Hearing nothing but a dull ringing in his ears and wondering if half his skull was blown off.
What did you think would happen? he asked himself in some subroutine of his mind. That you’d actually beat four hundred to one odds?
Rounds streaked past him, but it was clear the enemy was having a problem figuring out what the hell was going on. The front rank of dead were torn to pieces, the wounded were struggling away from the onslaught, and for a moment the troops at the rea
r weren’t sure who was friend and who was foe.
And then the first Animal soldier reached the bando’s sphere of detection.
He tripped all thirteen grenades at once.
Streaking hot needles exploded in every direction within the passage. But the attacking element bore the brunt. Micro-packed needles, over six hundred in each explosive device, thirteen devices in all… walnut shell and temple bells worn around the neck… streaked away from the device at incredible speeds, shredding flesh and tearing out eyes and ripping arteries and organs to pieces. Literally turning the closest bodies into nothing but raw hamburger while ranks of Animal soldiers as far back as sixty meters suddenly found white-hot shards of metal sticking out of their skin or armor or going straight through a helmet and destroying the fragile brain matter beneath. And the mind within.
It sounded like someone had dropped a thousand ornate crystal chandeliers all at once while setting off some serious high-grade fireworks. And the carnage wrought was incredible. Over a quarter of the attacking force was torn to shreds.
When he opened his eyes he could only see out of one. The other had been destroyed by a fragment. Some linked system within his mind, still talking to the armor’s AI, told him he’d been hit by three other shards across his body.
The armor was busy pumping him full of painkillers and compressing wound punctures to stop the bleeding in the most heavily damaged areas.
He got to his feet, barely, one leg ruined forever. But the armor had doped that appendage to full and tightened it to allow some restricted movement.
He pulled the trigger on the 1000 at a distant Animal soldier staggering, armless, down-corridor away from him in the aftermath of the tremendous explosion.
He got a dry click from the 1000’s receiver indicating the rifle’s mag was empty. His fingers, not working too well as his mind tried to stabilize and find balance, found a new mag and slipped it in, covering it in his new blood. Then he set off, stumbling and limping through the field of ruined bodies and bloody pulp that had become this section of the corridor. Firing at distant targets running away from him.
The enemy force was reacting slowly. Not sure what had happened or why over a quarter of the force had suddenly gone off comm. Clearly something had gone horribly wrong as far as those in command were concerned. The lead element had just suddenly… disappeared.
Vaporized.
Poof.
A team of enemy soldiers, Animals, was coming forward cautiously, targeting lasers searching through the smoke and ruin. Maybe they thought he was one of theirs… one of them without the helmet. The profile of his image messing with their targeting acquisition. He didn’t wait to find out and instead hit the heavy gunner at the tip of their spear with a burst from the 1000. He worked the weapon over this new threat as they scrambled for cover and when it ran dry of rounds he dropped to the deck and crawled behind a mass of ruined bodies, many of them still smoking from high-velocity needle-sharp wounds of the daisy-chain explosion.
To his right was a narrow intersecting maintenance shaft. He crawled into it, dragging his useless leg behind him, dropping the empty 1000 as a fusillade of pulse fire shot down the corridor he’d just left. Through his ruined armor’s comm system, coming over a secondary speaker not connected to the helmet, a backup feature, he could hear Commander Zero, broken and distorted, telling him something. Something important.
But his ears were still ringing.
On his gauntlet a small panel lit up. The armor was trying to help him. Its secondary comm panel and downloaded training surfaced through his blasted mind and senses, reminding him he could use this to connect with his… tribe.
Uplifted? No.
Eternals… yes.
He raised the opposite gauntlet, saw one of the frag needles sticking out of his wrist, through his wrist really, and touched the comm contact. Then he pulled out the needle. There was no pain, but his muscles were shaking. Again the armor was probably doing its job. But it was clear this body was ruined.
As long as my mind isn’t, he thought distantly, as Commander Zero came through. He could hear weapons fire close and personal. Things weren’t going too good down there either, or so it seemed.
“Cro … Uplift … allies here. Hold … at all costs!”
He nodded. Tried to say something. Nothing came out. His voice didn’t want to work. He tapped the confirm icon and slumped against the side of the tunnel in the dark. He could hear more of them, the Animal warriors, coming now, stepping over the dead. Wondering if they’d killed him. Hoping they had.
His old selves.
The Animals.
What they all once were. Had been. Once and long ago.
“Bad Thought,” he rasped, and laughed raggedly. Then pulled the Automags from off his thighs.
“Honor…” he croaked to no one. And… “Glory.”
He waded out into his last gunfight at almost point-blank range. Surprising them. Firing from just meters away. Knowing that even stopping them now, just for a moment, would slow their advance on the reactor, buy a little more time to protect the cloud. And if they could save the cloud… then when the rest of the Uplifted arrived…
Well then… That would… be… something.
He fired at the first soldier. A sweating black man carrying a pulse rifle. Three rounds smashed into the guy’s guts and Crometheus flung him aside.
… That would be something. Infecting all the Uplifted with the Path. If they held the cloud they could win. Would win. Everything.
The flung Animal hit another soldier and Crometheus swept the men close at hand with fire from both weapons, the hand cannons booming out quickly in successive concussions. Massive rounds smashing into flesh and bone. Puncturing armor. Dispensing death in violent impacts.
The Unity Virus was the win.
Animals NCOs were trying to organize for this new fight that had broken out in all the carnage of the blown-to-pieces lead element.
Someone behind this first bunch freaked out—wisely, thought some distant part of Crometheus’s tactical mind—and cut loose with a long burst of heavy pulse fire. Men were torn to shreds regardless of what side they served on. Crometheus crouched, fired back with his off hand and no targeting, and did a decent job of blowing off the heavy gunner’s head.
Now they were all freaking out.
Like the dumb slow Animals they were, and always would be, they panicked as a herd because he was willing to stand up to them with everything he had. Within the space of ten seconds they were being told to “Fall back!” again. Someone had falsely estimated they’d run into a main body of Savages. Unexpected. An ambush. Too many to deal with. Regroup and assess. Whatever.
Crometheus stumbled after them, firing into their backs and knocking them down onto their ripped chests and bellies. Crushing their skulls as he stepped over them. Dragging his leg, firing first one hand cannon and then the other. Dealing out death on this last battlefield.
“You’re facing a god!” he screamed at them. But all that came out was a ragged gasping croak. All he could see was seen out of one eye. The other ruined. And he was probably dying.
But he had really lived. He had become a god in the end. At the end.
And that was life. A real life.
Wasn’t it?
Could they, these fear-driven herd Animals, say as much? he thought as he advanced on them down-tunnel. Engaging as he went. They tried to set up a defense, but they were so panicked they lobbed a grenade first. He kicked it right back at them and it exploded within the perimeter of the control area they’d planned to defend. It went off and ruined them long enough for him to suddenly be in and among them, shooting them down at point-blank once more like some ruined savage horror from the nether where nightmares are real.
Both hand cannons were smoking when he exited the control station, hearing their boots thunder off down o
ther corridors just to get away from him.
He heard distant firing. The telltale rattle and cackle of automatic gunfire. Old-school. The Uplifted.
Savages.
His mind was fading, and he knew if they came back for him now all he could do was maybe fire a few shots before he was empty. Whatever adrenaline the new body had been able to manufacture was gone now. Fading. And with it… him.
He leaned against a wall along a processor-filled corridor. Standing over the dead he’d shot down just seconds earlier. He looked back down the tunnel the way he’d come. Not that long ago. Just a few minutes.
“Time’s a funny… thing…” he muttered. But really he just gasped a series of croaks no one would have understood.
Like the journey to the stars, from the Earth of long ago… that corridor was littered with the dead he’d left behind in all the long crossings from Reno to Rome.
And he didn’t feel too bad about it. Not at all.
That was life.
Kill your way forward to the next level. You only get one quarter. So make it count.
He’d done that.
When he had that last thought, he could hear the gunfire getting closer. Coming for him.
Or coming to help?
Hard to say now. And it didn’t really matter. He was done. That much was…
He slid down the wall, surely leaving his own blood, and lay with only his shoulders resting against it. Both massive sidearms resting on his legs.
… true. He could still kill a few more if they chose to come this way. But they’d need to come soon… because there wasn’t much time left.
His eye, the last one this body had, closed.
“Master Crometheus…”
It was Maestro.
“Mission accomplished, Master Cro. The base is now under Uplifted control. Our forces are advancing on the core to secure the data they’ve come for. It’s where I’m waiting to infect them with the Unity Virus that will show them the way to become what we all must be. Gods. Every one of us gods, Master Crometheus.”
The dying Savage marine mumbled something.
Gods & Legionnaires (Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars Book 2) Page 29