I spun the turret south to locate the approaching Kroerak. Obscured by terrain, I had difficulty seeing the warriors that my reticle highlighted at six and eight kilometers. The turret was connected to the massive power supply that ran throughout the base, but I wasn't about to waste the charge and start firing indiscriminately. I swung north and didn't find anything.
"Lead pack is to the south at six clicks," I said. "They're twelve minutes out."
"How many?" Tabby asked. I located her as she ran across the base, carrying a mangled fuel tank from a Piscivoru machine. Idly, I wondered how she'd managed to remove the entire tank but knew better than to ask.
"A lot," I said. My AI estimated five thousand, but I wasn't about to say that out loud.
"We're only going to have half a tank," she complained as she banged the side of the tank against my Popeye, dumping precious solid fuel into it.
"Sendrei, how's that weapon coming along?" I asked.
"I've loaded the crystals," he said. "But I'm having trouble getting it going. Jonathan, I need you down here."
Jonathan was in the yard, pulling frantically on a machine. I'd never seen him look frazzled before and it surprised me. "Understood," he answered, releasing the unmoving fuel tank.
I continued to scan the surrounding area until my HUD highlighted a target within range and I instinctively swung over. A pair of warriors raced across the open field, hopping over the mangled corpses of their brethren. The mounted turret easily acquired a lock and I squeezed off a single shot. I scanned for another target, found two more and cleared them.
A third target became available when I spun the weapon north. For several minutes, I continued to acquire stragglers and fire, moving fluidly from one to the next. Several times, I caught a glimpse of the huge force that approached from the south and tried unsuccessfully to tamp down a growing sense of hopelessness.
I startled when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I glanced back quickly and then continued locating and plucking off the loose targets. "Liam, I will relieve you," Sendrei recognized I wasn't ready to hand over the turret. The fact was, I was terrified to stop my assault lest one – or several – got past me.
"There's no time." At that point, I was moving as quickly as I could, picking up targets and dispatching them.
"We need you in a Popeye, Liam," Tabby’s voice urged. "Let Sendrei have the turret."
"Frak. Okay. Slide in from the left," I said.
Sendrei stepped up next to the chair and with a quick bump, pushed me out of the way. Under other circumstances, I might have complained at the brusque treatment, but all offense evaporated when the turret burped out fire at an increased rate.
"How much fuel?" I asked. Tabby had already loaded into her Popeye and stood on the north side of the compound, flanked by a row of small, focused Piscivoru, all holding staves.
"I have forty percent, you have forty-two," she said. "Just how it worked out."
I slid into my Popeye. The nanobots that kept it clean had completely given up and it reeked of sweat, mud and worse. The fact was, I didn't care. The suits were our only real hope of surviving against the Kroerak. At the same time, I think we both knew forty percent fuel wasn't going to cut it. We would leave an indelible mark on those that came against us for as long as we could.
"I've got the south," I said, joining a line of brave Piscivoru. I wasn't sure what I despised more: that the Kroerak were likely to put us down or that they would very likely finish their task of destroying the Piscivoru species and I'd had a hand in that outcome.
Fire from Sendrei's blaster streaked over my head and intensified. I braced, anticipating the arrival of the huge mass of Kroerak. We'd done our best to push the corpses from our previous fight into barriers that would slow the new wave, but in doing so, we'd also obscured our vision. I took it as a kindness that we couldn’t see the masses of bugs that shook the ground as they raced toward us.
The first warrior that crested the debris and made my sight line was killed instantly by one of Sendrei's bolts. That Kroerak was quickly replaced by five and just as quickly dispatched. Those five were replaced by twenty. Not really even understanding what I was doing, I screamed in fury and unleashed the deadly blue spray of blaster fire from my Popeye.
Daylight gave way to evening as we fought. The empty, twisted pit of my stomach soured as we circled, jumped, clawed through, and killed the inferior enemy that so vastly outnumbered us. I recalled once hearing a quote, suggesting quantity maintained a quality all its own. Nothing could have been truer in our desperate fight. It was not enough to simply kill the Kroerak; we had become responsible for directing where the bodies would land or else there was a chance we might end up buried by them.
The Piscivoru fought valiantly and I mourned each one that fell beneath a lucky strike from the invading Kroerak. By the time we'd cut the invasion force in half, the fifty brave souls that had stood with us had been winnowed to fewer than twenty. I felt guilty when I panicked at the flashing warning indicating my fuel was almost depleted. Tabby's reservoirs were even lower than mine and soon we would face the Kroerak in a substantially more even fight.
"One percent!" Tabby warned. I'd been watching her levels and pushed toward her so I would be nearby when her shutdown actually happened. We'd considered sailing above the fray with our grav-suits, but on several occasions when we'd climbed too high up the side of a body pile, we’d drawn incoming fire from ground-mounted lance throwers in the distance. Without the protection of the Popeyes, there would be no defense.
The end was approaching and yet I had no desire to give in. We would go down together. I hated the bitter taste of failure. With our backs to a pile of metal that used to be a shed, Tabby and I tossed aside a Kroerak body and enjoyed a short lull. I turned around to check our six and then clawed at the metal structure, an idea forming in my head.
"What are you doing?" Tabby asked.
"Keep 'em off me a minute," I answered, sweeping my hand through the corner of the small shack. My gloved hand came away with a thick piece of reinforced steel rod. With a quick visual measurement, I pulled the multitool from my leg armor and swung the sharp edge down, snapping off a meter-and-a-half length. I looked around, but Tabby was handling the few Kroerak that had scrabbled through the piles of bodies to get to us. I opened my suit and dropped the Iskstar crystal I had at my waist onto the ground. Closing the suit back up, I ripped wire from the debris and wrapped it around the crystal and the end of the staff. It was crude, but it would serve as a bo-staff. With the Iskstar end, it would be deadly in Tabby's hands. I stabbed the end of the staff into the ground and rejoined the battle.
"Better than nothing," I grunted as I noticed Tabby looking over at the weapon.
"It'll do," she answered, ejecting from her suit only a moment later.
"Work your way back here," Sendrei ordered. "I'll provide as much cover as I can." We'd been fighting further and further out from the turret, trying to give him room to work. He was right, though, we were about to need all the help we could get. Tabby was an amazing warrior in her own right, but we were up against thousands and about to go hand-to-hand.
I cleared a path back to the base of the turret. My fuel reservoir ticked down.
Tabby, like the Piscivoru, was a blur as she fought — stabbing, slicing and jumping through the fray. I positioned my Popeye so when it finally gave out, I would at least cause the greatest disruption in the flow of the overrunning Kroerak.
"I'm out," I finally announced. I spied the staff of a fallen Piscivoru. It was small for me, but like Tabby, I didn't have much of a choice in secondary weapons.
"Don't even think about getting out of that suit, Hoffen," Tabby said, reading my intent. "You won't last two minutes out here."
Her words hurt at a level hard to describe. It wasn't that she was being cruel, rather, it was a simple recognition of truth. I was too slow and too weak to survive for more than a few minutes amongst the Kroerak.
"Ugh," she exclaimed a
s a lucky strike caught her beneath the ribs and tossed her away from the relative safety of the knot of remaining Piscivoru. We'd seen the same thing happen to a number of the Piscivoru and it typically didn’t end well.
I ripped at the seams, causing the suit to release me. As I slithered from its mechanical grip I grabbed up the Piscivoru staff. The Iskstar crystal glowed brightly as I leaned over, using my grav-suit to propel me to Tabby's side I caught a Kroerak by surprise and sliced through it like grease.
Only momentarily stunned, Tabby recovered and turned to peel off a kill strike from a warrior behind me. "Back to back. You shouldn't have come," she growled.
"We do this together," I said, resignation in my voice as I watched a fresh wave of hundreds crest over the fallen and race toward us. Having watched this same battle play out time and time again that day, I knew exactly how Sendrei would respond. His weapon would sweep the group, killing a quarter in the first pass. He'd follow up with a second pass with about as much effect, but then they'd be on us. In the Popeyes, it was manageable. Unarmored, we only had few moments left. No amount of expertise on our part would allow us to escape so many.
"I'm glad we're together," Tabby said, her voice husky with regret.
I braced. I would not go down without giving it my all. It was a futile gesture, but it was all I had left.
"Get down!" Sendrei screamed over comms.
I desperately wanted to question him, as prostrating myself in front of the bugs only meters away was suicide. Between the urgency in his voice and the trust we shared, I complied, throwing myself onto the ground and bringing my gloved hands over my head.
No sooner had I made it to the ground than my backside felt the prick of light blaster fire. My grav-suit diffused it, but I turned my head, trying to catch a glimpse of what had shot me – from behind, no less. What I saw was a stream of hundreds of small blaster bolts flying more or less over us at the wall of Kroerak. What had been an annoying prick in my backside devastated the charging Kroerak. While the accuracy of the fire could have been improved, there was no denying its efficacy.
"Jaelisk! Sklisk!" I yelled into comms as I turned, still crawling on the ground, to look at our saviors. The sight of hundreds of Piscivoru firing pistols into the quickly-receding Kroerak brought a lump to my throat. I'd taken their silence on comms to mean they'd been killed, and was ridiculously overjoyed to see them alive – almost as thrilled as I was at their last minute save.
"How?" Tabby was nearly speechless, her voice tight with emotion.
"They must have found the pistols in the bunker," I said. "We talked about it, but I didn't think they'd figure it out."
The line of Piscivoru advanced and overtook our position. By my count, I'd been shot no less than five times. I'd have scorch marks on my skin to prove it, but a med-patch was all that'd be required to fix the damage. As the line of Piscivoru pushed past us, Tabby and I finally stood.
"Liam. What's going on?" Tabby asked.
At first, I wasn't sure what she was asking, but I soon felt a low vibration transmitting through the ground. "I'm not sure."
The answer to our question was soon answered as a broad, blue beam illuminated the night sky, piercing the clouds above us, cutting off only seconds later. Someone had fired the city's defensive weapon.
"Sendrei, was that you?" I asked.
"Copy that, Captain," he answered. "Here’s another one for you."
I felt the same vibration as before. A second bright blue beam, this time at a slightly different angle, illuminated the sky and then cut off.
"What are you firing at?" I asked.
"Wait one," he answered, just before a third bolt was launched skyward.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned. Tabby pointed out over the battlefield. The line of Piscivoru had fractured into dozens of smaller squads and tiny blue bolts dotted the landscape as they fired at an enemy we could barely make out. "They're taking back their home," she said with pride. "They're winning."
"I just can’t fathom how they figured out those pistols," I said.
"The more interesting question would be why the Kroerak were unable to see us coming," Engirisk said. I hadn't realized he was on the comm channel. I was just as surprised by his correct pronunciation of the species name.
"Sure, I suppose that's right," I answered. "Where are you?"
"I have joined Jonathan in the control room," he answered. "It is your communication devices the Kroerak track."
"We're on our way," I said and muted my comms so that only Tabby could hear. "Would it have killed them to tell us they were going all radio black-out?"
"It's good information," she said. "But yeah, I might have liked to know they were still up."
Sendrei joined us as Tabby and I worked to cut Kroerak away from the excavated bunker entry doors. We finally made it inside and ran down the stairwell. As we burst into the control room, Engirisk, Ferisk, and Noelisk, three of the Piscivoru elders, sat on open-backed stools conferring with Jonathan in front of a broad array of vid-screen displays. Sendrei took a seat next to the elders. While operating the turret, he’d seen the same bunker displays which showed ship signatures in orbit over Picis. Four ships were showing, although lacking the detail I was used to seeing since we had no orbital sensors to fill in the details.
"That's just like the other three," Sendrei explained to Engirisk who was looking at him earnestly. "See how it adjusted course? That means it's still operational."
"We can strike it with this weapon?" Ferisk asked.
"Just as I did the other three," Sendrei said. "It is your planet and your weapon, though. These decisions belong to Piscivoru."
"You would have us use the weapon?" Noelisk asked.
"He's right," I answered. "Your people have run off the warriors in the field of battle. You can do the same with those in space."
"Ferisk, Engirisk, I propose we protect our home from the Kroo Ack," Noelisk said, stiffening in the chair and looking somberly to the other elders.
"The council agrees," Ferisk answered. "Engirisk, the honor should be yours. You have always believed. I was wrong to stand against you."
"Ferisk, you are the strength of our people," Engirisk answered. "You brought a thousand to fight and we have prevailed."
Ferisk nodded, pushing on a panel that Sendrei indicated. "Let the Kroo Ack feel the fury of Picis."
A now familiar vibration shook the ground around us and the weapon fired.
"It is still moving," Ferisk said, pointing at the ship as it tried in vain to avoid the weapon strike.
"Watch," Sendrei said. "The beam has just struck it. It will never turn again."
"Will it not slow to a stop?" Ferisk asked.
"No," Engirisk answered. "There is nothing to stop it."
Chapter 16
Stalemate
I slumped onto the floor next to Tabby and tossed an arm over her prone body. We'd been running hard for forty hours and no amount of adrenaline or stimulant would keep us awake. We'd found a small patch of open cement in front of a closet on the lowest level of the weapon silo. It wasn't luxurious and I knew I'd be sore in the morning, but my body was shutting down with or without my permission.
I've heard it called ‘sleeping the sleep of the dead’ – which was oddly on my mind as consciousness returned. I felt the passage of time but had no idea how long we'd slept. I just knew that while I was still tired, my body had developed urgent needs that required my attention. I blinked, indicating to my AI that I was awake and looking for status. Through bleary eyes, I found we'd been asleep for seven hours.
"Good morning, Liam," Jonathan's soft voice sounded in my ear.
I blinked in response. If Tabby could get a few more minutes of sleep, I wanted that for her.
"The last patrol to return has reported in with zero enemy contacts. There are also no Kroerak within one hundred thousand kilometers of Picis. Four hours ago, a pair of frigate-class vessels tested the upper range of the weapon. One was
destroyed, the other successfully escaped," he added.
I lifted from the ground, using my grav-suit to assist so as not to wake Tabby. The hallway was filled with sleeping Piscivoru, some who stirred at my movement. My heart sank as my eyes focused on the wounded. Hastily applied bandages wrapped many who lay on the ground and my mind was drawn back to the previous night's battle where so many brave Piscivoru died under the relentless assault of the Kroerak.
"Is the bunker accessible?" I asked, floating up a stairwell over the stoic wounded.
"Ferisk has organized a group to retake Dskirnss," Jonathan said. "We are in dire need of supplies."
"We need access to that medical tank and the replicators so we can make more med-patches. There are so many wounded," I said.
"That was the assessment of the elders as well," Jonathan said.
Despite the situation, I smiled as I cleared the upper doors and exited into bright sunshine. Death lay all around me, but hope had also taken root. The Piscivoru elders were making important decisions and taking control of their future.
Unable to look out onto the battlefield, I worked my way over to the edge of the cliff at the rear of the base. There were a few Kroerak husks, but I found if I stood just right, I could look out onto the forest below and not see anything resembling a bug. Having taken care of immediate biological imperatives I found it difficult to turn from the idyllic scene in front of me. I absolutely did not want to face the aftermath of the war, so I allowed the sweet-smelling breeze that wafted up from the valley to surround me.
"You should have awakened me," Tabby quietly said. After a moment of peaceful reflection, she continued. "It's a beautiful planet and the Piscivoru are an amazing species. Do you think they stand a chance? I mean, really, do any of us stand a chance?"
It was a reasonable question. Just last night, we'd stood back-to-back, certain we would die. It was only by the slimmest margin we survived and we both knew the Kroerak would not stop coming.
Fury of the Bold Page 18