by Thomas Webb
The peristeel buttstock shattered on impact, cracking the woman’s face shield and sending her down, hard, to the deck. Hale dove and rolled, grabbing up his own rifle and coming up to a knee. He fired, putting the lone chambered pulse round straight through her helmet.
Hale’s breathing became more labored. He checked his HUD for vital stats—his heart rate was through the roof. The biometric indicator on his screen hovered between amber and red. His armor’s power reading had fallen to fifteen percent. Hale collected his dropped magazine, shoved it home, and charged his weapon.
He looked out on an empty battlefield. The enemy here had either been repelled, or more likely rejoined the main force at the front gates for a final push. Between the team and the perimeter guns, they’d defended the airfield well. But Enemy mortars rained down at the edges of the tarmac, tracking toward the hangar deck. There had to be multiple enemy mortar positions on target. Probably all set up somewhere in the jungle beyond the front gate. They were working on finding their range, and it wouldn’t be long before they did.
Hale raced back to where Zombie was holding.
“What the hell took you so long?” she asked.
“Ran into some trouble. Anyone got a fix on Kris?”
“I think she’s out of Jarret rounds,” Zombie said. “Probably already fallen back to the TOC.”
“That was the plan,” Hale said. “Kris can take care of herself,” he added, desperately hoping it was true. “What about you?”
“They’ve fallen back to regroup,” Zombie answered. “They still have plenty enough mechs to wipe us out, though. It’s just a waiting game now.” She shrugged. “As for me? I’m out of rockets, if that’s any indication of how things are going.” She jerked a thumb in the direction he’d just come from. “How’d it look back there?”
“The rear of the base looks clear.” Hale eyed the quickly regrouping soldiers, the mortar rounds moving increasingly closer, and the menacing mechs in the distance. “But it’s not the rear we gotta to worry about. I’m fresh out of ideas here, Zombie. The suggestion box is definitely open.”
“Well, I don’t have so much a suggestion as an estimate.”
“I’ll take it.”
“Even if we fall back to the TOC, we won’t last ‘till nightfall, boss. Not at this rate.”
Zombie was right. This place had just become a pulse round sponge.
“Wait,” Zombie said. “You hear that?”
“Hear what? I—”
Then he did hear it. The enemy fire had ceased. The mortars had stopped, too.
“Unconditional surrender on their part too much to hope for?” Zombie asked.
“Probably a little premature,” Hale said. “My guess? The mortar teams are reloading. Or moving, maybe. The next wave they send at us will be the hardest. They already got us on the ropes—they’ll go for the KO next.”
“Let’s fall back to the hangar while we got a breather.”
“Roger that.”
Hale and Zombie darted to the front access door. Hale covered while Zombie pulled her gauntlet to key in her biometrics.
“It’s jammed,” Zombie said. Visible battle damage marked the door. “The mechanism’s blown.”
“Can you get us in?”
“Yeah. I can pull the wiring and try to do it manually. It’ll be a minute, though.”
“Do it.”
Zombie got to work while Hale stood watch. From his peripheral, he heard a dread-inducing sound. His stomach dropped.
“Shit,” he uttered.
The whining servos of an approaching mech grew louder. He watched as the war behemoth, it’s knee servos as big around as dinner plates, ambled toward him. No way they could both make it inside in time.
“Get this door open,” Hale ordered. “I’ll draw its fire, then catch up.”
Zombie looked Hale in the eye. “Ok, boss,” she said. They both understood what was happening. This would most likely be the last conversation they had in this life. “Hey,” she began. “These last couple of years. . . I— “
“Now whose turn is it to make speeches?” Hale said, cutting her off. “Just get this door open. We’ll worry about the rest later.”
Hale never was one for long goodbyes. Without another word he turnd and raced across the open airfield, toward almost certain death. The mech opened up with its twin pulse cannons, the barrels spooling in a deadly blur of pulse energy. Hale tapped into his armor’s dwindling power source and redlined it for speed. With the mech’s rounds chewing up tarmac, he shot behind a duracrete shed.
Hale scrambled, low crawling to the opposite side. He popped out and sent several pulse rounds of his own into the mech. He may as well have thrown rocks at the damned thing for all his rifle did. He imagined he heard the operator inside, laughing. No wonder they’d stopped the mortars. They didn’t want to tag the mechs.
Hale paused behind his meager cover. Was it just him, or was the laughter he imagined in his head getting louder? No, that was just the sound of a second mech approaching. He’d have preferred the laughter.
So far they’d thrown a platoon of soldiers, several mortar teams, and a squad of mechs at them. United Les Space had pull, but he never imagined they could bring all this firepower to bear. Hale had been in combat for most of his adult life. He’d been in hairy situations before. Even thought he might actually buy it a few times. But he couldn’t immediately recall a situation quite this bleak.
Oh well, he thought. If he was going out, he was going out hard.
“Screw it,” Hale growled.
He took all the frags he had and set them on the deck. He’d pop them all, then point his pulse rifle at the nearest mech and unload into the thing as the frags exploded. He’d be microwaved chunks of meat and peristeel, sure—but at least he could take one more of them along for the ride when he went.
The boom from outside the shattered front gates caught him off guard. The voice on his comms was even more of a surprise.
“Comms are online!” Lima shouted. “Does anyone copy?”
“This is Razor One,” Hale said. “I copy. I’m-” A torrent of pulse cannon fire cut him short.
“Damn, boss-sounds like you’re in the thick of it,” Zombie said.
“Razor Two—are you secure inside the hangar?”
“Affirmative,” Lima answered for her. “All Razor elements have fallen back inside the hanger. You are the last one left.”
“One, this is Two. Hang tight. We’re headed out there right now to get you.”
“Negative,” Hale said, shaking his head. “It’s suicide, Two. Alamo up inside. I’ll be fine.”
“Bullshit, Razor One!” Zombie said. “We are on our way out to get you, right effing now!”
“Standby Razor Team,” Lima said. When he came back on, the tone of his voice had changed dramatically. “I don’t think anyone will have to go anywhere.” He was once again the calm and collected Silvio Lima they had come to know. “Razor One—hold position and hunker down. You have incoming close air support. And be advised—it will be danger-close.”
-8-
“TOC this is Valkyrie! Come in, TOC!”
Nothing.
“Dammit!” Shane swore. She keyed the comms again. “Valkyrie to any Razor element! Come in Razor team!”
Shane had hauled ass to get home, going so far as to make an unauthorized pass through a jump gate above North America in order to vector closer to Brazil. She’d left over three hours ago, pushing at full burn the whole time. She’d first tried to contact the local Sao Paulo authorities, who assured her they would send units to check on her story as soon as they were available.
“Don’t you know that the festival is in town?” They’d asked her.
She’d been pretty preoccupied of late, and somehow one of the biggest parties in Earth’s southern hemisphere had somehow slipped her mind. Whoever planned this attack on her team hadn’t forgotten about it, though. Whoever it was had done a masterful job. But who was
Shane kidding?
She knew exactly who’d planned it, and who’d bankrolled it.
Shane hadn’t been able to raise ASI During the entire trip, even running an automated hail on continuous loop. She could only pray that she wasn’t too late.
Shane blazed back into atmo, emerging at a different vector from where she’d began. The illegal jump placed her closer to Sao Paulo, beating the traditional route by an hour and costing a tremendous amount of resources and a stolen military authorization code in the process.
So what? She thought.
What was that, compared to the lives of her friends and the woman she loved? She’d deal with the fallout later. She made straight for Sao Paulo, hailing the team on a repeat loop the entire time.
“ASI this is Valkyrie! Come in ASI!”
Nothing but static. ULS and their Separatist allies had to be employing a wave blocker. It was the only explanation. And given ASI’s comm bandwidth, it had to be a relatively powerful one.
Shane shot into the troposphere with a quick reentry flash. She dropped altitude at a dangerous rate, skimming the big war bird low over the ocean along the coast of South America. The reduced altitude allowed Shane to avoid most of the detection measures Brazil had in place—no reason to cause anymore incidents getting Brazil thinking they were being invaded.
Her plan was to cut inland, just north of Rio De Janiero. She left a spray of ocean and a shower of leaves as she zipped from just above the waves up to treetop level, making sure she hugged the contours of the mountains. Within minutes the city of Sao Paulo came into view, clear enough that Shane could see the revelers flooding the city below. She pivoted south, toward the airfield outside the city proper. A split second later she throttled back, slowing the big bird to an anti-grav hover.
“Ok,” she said, drumming her fingers impatiently on the console. “Where is that wave blocker?”
Her hands flew over the holo, entering commands. She needed the onboard nav, targeting, and communications module to find not so much where the wave blocker was, but where the communications signal wasn’t. Her hope was that the blank space in the local communications net would stick out, like a puzzle with a missing piece.
“C’mon,” she urged the system.
Soon the results of her search appeared. Her eyes darted back and forth, devouring the data. A grim smile split her face.
“Gotcha,” she said.
Shane slammed the throttle forward, sending the craft leaping toward the spot on her topo map. She brushed the top of the rainforest and lurched to a hover, the onboard grav compensating for the abrupt start and stop.
For a moment Shane floated silently above the jungle, adjusting her ground view to penetrate the foliage. It wasn’t long before an enhanced picture materialized. Below was a mobile wave blocking unit, complete with a pulse generator for power, the vehicle pulling the unit, and a full armored security detail.
The ULS logo shone prominently on the side of the vehicle. “Bastards didn’t even try to hide it, did they?” She flipped the safety off her space-to-ground cannons. A flutter of activity below told Shane she’d been spotted. She shrugged it off, knowing they didn’t have anything heavy enough to take down an Attack/Cargo platform the size of the one she now flew.
“No problem,” she uttered. “They’re not hiding who they are? I’m not even gonna try to hide this.” Shane squeezed the twin triggers.
The gunship opened up with eighteen-thousand pulse rounds per minute, cutting through the small anti-communications post like a plasma buzz saw. The power station went up first with a flash and a boom. The transport followed quickly. Last of all, the armored troops were no match for the stolen, massively armed cargo-turned-attack craft Shane commanded. Within a minute the area was reduced to a scorched jungle clearing full of impact craters, smoking hulks of equipment, and peristeel and flesh confetti.
Shane held her breath, praying the comms worked. They had to work. “TOC this is Valkyrie,” she said, her voice shaking. “Come in TOC.” Please come in.
“Valkyrie?” Lima sounded incredulous.
Her heart leapt. Thank God! “Affirmative, TOC!”
“Can you confirm ID?” Lima asked. Shane thought she heard explosions in the background.
“Ident kilo sierra two-seven-niner,” Shane spat out. She was already pivoting toward the airfield only a few klicks away. An ominous cloud of smoke rose from that direction. “Status, TOC? How’s the team? Over.”
“Almost everyone is inside the HQ,” Lima said. “Razor three is injured, but all other elements are up. Enemy combatants are attempting to breach the TOC. We are defending.”
“I’m on my way,” Shane said.
“Valkyrie-be advised they have taken the airfield. Razor One is out there. . . outside the hangar. He is pinned. Am I correct in assuming you can provide air support?”
“Affirmative, TOC.”
“Copy, Valkyrie. Also be advised—the enemy has a mech platoon.”
Mechs? Christ in the stars.
“How copy, Valkyrie? Over.”
“Copy, TOC. Hold position. And tell Razor One to stand by. I am ten seconds out.”
It sounded like Gina was ok, at least for now. Shane gave silent thanks for that. Now she had some cleaning up to do. She slammed the throttle for a split second, sending the big craft jumping over a section of jungle. She emerged above a copse of trees on the edge of the familiar air & space field. She killed the main engines to maintain stealth, switching to anti-grav and maneuvering thrusters only. A chaotic scene greeted her.
The holo map of the area below glowed red with clusters of enemy forces. Several full squads of armored troops waited in reserve at the edge of the field. A cluster of mortar positions were scattered to the south. A disabled mech lay not far from the hangar. Several more were on the move, and two active ones advanced on a lone position, firing as they went.
“Ok,” Shane said, pulling up the menu for her missile banks. “Playtime’s over, assholes.”
Shane locked on to the two mechs and released half her missile payload. The lumbering tanks on legs began to turn toward the sky, but too late. Three missiles apiece streaked toward the battle machines. All six impacted with a cascade of karooms, obliterating the two heavy weapon mechs.
“Valkyrie to all Razor elements. Got two more mechs, both hard down. Prepping for a bombing run of the airfield. Standby to cover.”
“Standing by to hunker down,” Hale came back. “Damn we’re glad to see you up there, lady.”
Shane smiled. “Roger that, One. Likewise.” She clicked off the transmission so she could focus on flying. No—so she could focus on destroying. Small arms and mech ordnance began exploding in the sky around her. She turned her attention to the reserve forces, like a spider turning toward a fly. “Now for the rest of you.”
Shane pivoted. She fired the main engines again for more thrust and altitude as she boosted away, before turning and then swooping back down. The attack/cargo craft screamed above the airfield, deploying bombs on the troops below and raking them with pulse cannon fire. She executed an improbable spiral, avoiding the arms fire and taking the big bird back to the sky,. A beeping indicator seized her attention.
“Target lock-target lock-target lock,” a matter-of-fact computerized voice warned her.
“No problem,” Shane said.
They’d brought up some mechs with shoulder mounted launchers. She should have seen that move coming. Shane popped chaff and flare, hitting another spiral that turned the sky around her into a fireworks tornado. The craft’s persiteel frame creaked, strained to the edges of its tolerances.
“Anti-grav compensators at ninety-seven percent capacity,” the computer warned.
“C’mon you big bitch,” Shane grunted.
The craft squirmed before she emerged from the spin, then shot off into the sky. The mobile weapons station looped and turned, gaining altitude until Shane was out of range of the mech’s weapons. She initiated a low orbit. Now
she could really bring the big bird’s weaponry to bear. She pulled up the sensors and visual feeds.
A squeeze of the triggers sent rails of pulse cannon fire streaking from the heavens, raking along the mechs and taking the missile launchers out. When the mechs were reduced to scrap, Shane hit them with a second wave. On her third volley, they’d had enough. What was left of the attackers broke and ran.
Shane shifted her field of fire to the rear of the hangar where several groups had massed, presumably to attempt a flanking maneuver on the TOC. A few thousand rounds from on high sent them running as well.
“Valkyrie to TOC—looks like we got a bunch of squirters out here. What’s your status inside? Do you need me to pursue? Over.”
“Negative on the pursuit, Valkyrie. Please remain on station at present altitude until we are clear. Then come on down. We have the situation here in hand.”
“Good copy, TOC.”
“We are very glad you made it, Valkyrie. I am looking forward to hearing how you secured an AC 260 mobile weapons platform.”
Shane frowned at the mention how she’d ‘acquired’ the AC. “Roger that, TOC.” She still wasn’t quite sure how she would frame that particular talk.
“Copy, Valkyrie. We will see you on the ground.”
Shane clicked off, then circled the skies above the hangar until the local Sao Paulo units began to arrive. The Brazilian air and space monitors had finally spotted her, going ballistic over the wave and giving her hell for being unauthorized. Shane answered with the standard apologies, using the old tried and true ‘training ops’ excuse. She hoped it was enough to keep the locals from scrambling suborbital offensive fighters.
A few minutes later comm waves came down from United Nations Air & Space command, Fort Wentworth in North America, and one from the UN Security Council, just for good measure. Shane ignored them all—she’d need Lima’s clout and then some before she could even begin to have those conversations.