Solomon waited, breathing shallowly. No signs of pursuit. No shouting voices or screams. No fizzing of particle beams being fired against them.
“Good.” He looked back to see that Karamov was next, with a gaggle of about five Proximian refugees. It seemed that in his absence, Arlo had already organized his squad into one Marine traveling with groups of five. Maybe Menier really should have been a commander after all, Solomon thought, but it was once again time to move, and they ran across the grass to the next bank of lavender as Karamov’s group moved up to their vacated position behind them.
They leap-frogged like this down the palace gardens, with Ratko and Willoughby bringing up the next teams of five and six respectively into the umbral darks of plants and landscaped lawns.
That left just Arlo, with about another fourteen people to bring up on his own.
“Menier! Where are you? Have you made it into the grounds yet?” Solomon said. He, Jezzy, Ochrie, and Rhossily were at the final patch of cover—a line of pruned trees standing on their own island of raised mounts before the open lawn with its wide dirt patches of landing zones. The exact same place where Solomon had first stepped foot on Proximian soil.
“One team with Wylie has, I’m still with the remaining seven at the grotto,” Menier whispered back.
“Why are you attempting to bring up so many on your own?” Solomon asked.
“Because these fourteen want to stay. On Proxima,” Arlo said, and Solomon realized that Arlo had purposefully put himself last of all the groups.
“You’re a good Marine, Menier,” Solomon said after a pause.
“No, I’m not, Lieutenant. But I should tell you thank you. For believing in me,” Arlo said, just as there was the sound of scraping and a sudden, startled yell over both the channel and the night.
“What was that?” Solomon stood up in a half-crouch, peering into the dark.
“It’s one of Wylie’s lot. They tripped over the flagstones…” the Outcast heard Arlo say, and then saw the large shadow of the Frenchman break from the distant grotto to race, hunched, in front of the garden lights, skidding to grab a shape on the floor, drag it to its feet, and shove it into the waiting bushes—
But by then, it was already too late.
FZZZT! A bolt of purple-white light banished the darkness, clearly illuminating the half-standing Arlo in his power armor, as the bolt sailed past him to bust into burning fragments as it blew apart the upper branches of one of the trees.
Wylie’s group panicked, screaming and jumping up to run toward the next position.
“No! There’s only room for one group at a time!” Solomon was fully standing now, watching the mayhem ensue behind them.
Most of Wylie’s group skidded to the bank of lavender, displacing Willoughby’s group that was already hiding there, while other Proximians decided to just make a break for it entirely, running straight across the lawns to the rear of the palace grounds.
“No, stay down!” Jezzy said in alarm.
FZZZT! Another purple-white line of light found one of the running Proximians, throwing her from her feet and illuminating her like an angel, before she fell to the ground, dead.
“Too late now,” Solomon said, taking aim with his shotgun. “Get the ambassador and imprimatur out of here, Jezzy!”
“I’m not leaving,” Jezzy said.
“That’s an order, dammit!” Solomon fired and saw the bullet spark as it hit one of the patrolling cyborgs, and the force of the heavy shell flung it back against the wall. He had no doubt that it would get back up again in a minute, but he might be able to keep them down—
“YAAAAS!” Arlo Menier, apparently, had pretty much the same idea as Solomon saw him striding out of the dark to shoot his own shotgun at one, and then pump it to shoot again. He was laughing victoriously as he did so.
He’s insane, Solomon thought. But maybe it was the sort of insane they needed right about now.
“Sir!” It was Karamov, sliding to a halt beside him as he managed to keep his small team of five mostly together. But it appeared that he was the only one, as the Proximians were now all breaking cover in their panic and running freely across the open, exposed lawn toward the rear of the grounds.
“All Outcasts, rear-guard action! Covering fire!” Solomon snapped, taking another shot at a further three-man cyborg patrol that rounded the palace walls, before slamming to his side and rolling out of the way as he fumbled at his belt for more shells.
BOOM! BOOM! Karamov’s shotgun took up the slack, as did others of the Outcasts as, one by one, they broke their concealed positions to fire up at the terrace balconies and the cyborgs coming out of them.
“Reload!” Karamov called, throwing himself behind the tree roots as Solomon now knelt up, looking for the next target.
There are too many up there, Solomon saw. Already there were three teams of three—several of them limping or stumbling as various parts of their bodies had been blown away—but they were too far away to perform accurate headshots with these ancient weapons.
“Get the people out of there! Fall back!” Solomon commanded, firing two shots and slumping to the ground. “Reload,” he shouted, knowing that Karmaov would take it as his signal to stand up and fire his two shells. This way, they could keep up a constant barrage of covering fire as the group ran.
Which they were doing. Solomon looked back over the lawn to see the thirty-odd Proximians already racing over the packed-earth of the landing pad. Streaks of purple-white light shot through the night and claimed a further two lives, three…
Is Jezzy alright? Did she make it to the end? Solomon thought desperately. Did the ambassador? Or were they one of the stilled human forms that were now scattered across the imprimatur’s lawn?
“Reload!” Karamov ducked, as Ratko, Willoughby, and Menier continued their assault.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Ratko and Willoughby had managed to make it to the nearest cover to Karamov and himself, Solomon saw, and were performing the same tandem two-Marine barrage he and Karamov were doing.
Then where is Menier? Solomon scanned the dark garden as one of the cyborgs fell over the balcony, apparently dead, but it wasn’t enough.
“Get some!” Solomon heard the dulcet, savage tones of the large Frenchman as he strode out of the bushes casually, firing off one shot towards the balcony and then the next. “Come and get me, tin-cans!” He was laughing.
“He’s drawing their fire, silly fool!” Solomon cursed. “Jezzy? Malady? What’s your status?” he hissed over the squad channel.
“I’ve got them, sir. On board and quickly filling up with Proximians,” Malady intoned. “Engine ready for escape-burn.”
“On my command,” Solomon said. He knew what he had to do. He turned to Karamov beside them, keeping the general Gold channel open so that all of those in the courier ship would be able to hear his final commands as well. “Rear-guard firing with Willoughby and Ratko to get yourself to the ship. Check Wylie is alive, and tell him to leave with his people, now.”
“Now, sir?”
“Yes! As soon as Wylie’s group have made their move, you tell Malady and Jezzy to take off,” Solomon said.
FZZT! BOOM! The battle continued, with purple lines of fire arcing over the heads, answered by shotgun bangs.
“Sir, what about you and Menier?” Karamov looked wide-eyed at him from inside his helmet.
“Just get off-world. Tell the Confederacy what you saw.” Solomon said, breaking from his cover into a run—back towards the Palace.
FZZT! A bolt of purple-white raced past Solomon’s side as he swerved from the upraised cyborg hand ahead of him.
In a surreal moment of slow-motion, he ran past Ratko and Willoughby running the other way, skidding to a halt beside Karamov behind him as they took up his orders, too.
FZZZT! Another shot exploded the shrub beside him as Solomon zigzagged forward. The particle lasers were getting more accurate, and Solomon remembered something that Asquew had me
ntioned, what seemed like an age ago. ‘The most highly-developed machine-learning circuit’. These cyborgs knew how to adapt while engaged on their murderous mission. It wouldn’t be long before—
FZZZT! It was like being kicked by a horse, Solomon thought, but as he had never actually been kicked by a horse, his twisting body, thrown by the hit to his shoulder-pad by the particle laser, thought that it was probably more like being hit by Malady.
“Ooof!” He landed with a skidding thump, his senses spinning, wondering if he was dead or not.
Nope. Not yet. There was pain in the shoulder that had been hit, but nothing that felt life-threatening.
Warning! Suit Impact!
Location: Right Shoulder.
Analysis: External Armor Plating Reduced Efficiency: 65%
Loading Stimulant Injector… Activated.
Loading Painkiller… Activated.
Solomon saw the small holographic display light up inside his helmet and show a simplified green image of his power armor, with the right shoulder plate and the upper arm sheath pulsing a danger-red, and then two pinpricks of pain near his abdomen as the belt harness deployed the automatic injector pens, reacting to the armor’s medical scans of Solomon’s body.
All of this happened in a fraction of a second, and Solomon was already rolling to one side as he felt the warm wash of the painkillers, followed by the electric excitement of the stimulant flood through his body.
FZZZT! Another purple-white beam burnt the patch of grass he had landed on, and Solomon pushed himself up to his feet, raised his shotgun, and—
Click. It was empty.
Frack!
Luckily, however, Menier’s shotgun wasn’t empty. BOOM! He fired up at the balcony beside Solomon, pumping his shotgun for it to click uselessly as he, too, ran out of shells and then threw the shotgun to the floor in disgust, instead taking the rifles from his shoulder and throwing one to Solomon.
FZZZT! One of the cyborgs had managed to shoot out Arlo’s knee and he spun to the ground, grunting in pain.
“Menier!” Solomon hit the safety button and fired three, quick-fire rounds before running to his squad member. “Can you walk?”
“I’ll be fine,” Menier spat, growling in pain as Solomon seized him by the shoulders and dragged him to the nearest cover of an ornamental rock and tree.
“Look at this mess.” Menier pointed at the blackened and mangled shape that had been his left boot.
“Stay down,” Solomon said, turning to fire several more shots back at the advancing, implacable enemy.
“Frack that!” Menier hissed, pushing himself to a standing position, wincing in pain. “It’s not too bad. Not broken, I think, and the stimulants sure are helping…” POP! POP! He added a few more shots to Solomon’s.
He saved my life, he remembered. Out there on Ganymede. I owe this man the same. But what weapons did he have left that could save either of their lives?
Without the rest of the Outcast Marines there to keep their numbers in check, the palace terrace was now starting to fill up with more of the cyborgs. At least three had clanked and stumbled their way down the steps and were advancing across the gardens towards them.
“We need cover…” Solomon gritted his teeth. He refused to die out here. He refused to let anyone else he was supposed to be responsible for die.
Flak System. Activate.
Solomon took a leap of faith. He didn’t even know if this tactic would work with things like cyborgs, but he did it anyway. It was all that he had left, after all. He took three lunging steps out from the rock, seeing the cyborgs raise their particle-gun hands to track his movements—
And he fired the power armor’s internal flak system.
This time, it was like getting tapped by Corporal Malady, as he felt multiple ruptures from the shoulders of his suit and deafening bangs above his head.
Micro-weapons ports had opened on the shoulders of Solomon’s suit and fired tiny rockets like fireworks into the sky around him, where they exploded with streamers of metal wire, coils of foil, and smoke.
The sound of the multiple booming explosions was disorientating enough, and the smoke released quickly obscured the image of the palace in front of him as flashes of silver filled the sky like metal rain.
FZZZT! One bolt shot through the white cloud and missed Solomon by a wide mark, but another hit one of the falling metal fragments, suddenly creating a real fireworks display as the super-charged particles discharged, forming a spider’s web of lightning bolts that expanded to all of the near fragments of metal flak in the air between Solomon and the advancing cyborgs.
“Run, Menier! Solomon was calling, starting to turn and jog backwards.
Arlo Menier couldn’t run per se, but he managed to hop and collide with Solomon as they ran behind their bank of dispersing cover, across the lawn and towards the brick wall—
PHWOOOSH!
PHWOOOSH!
Something—or two somethings, to be precise—screamed overhead and exploded on the terrace of the imprimatur’s palace, sending cyborg bodies everywhere.
It was Malady and the ambassadorial ship, rising above the wall and moving forward to hover over the two Outcasts as it fired its few weapons at the attacking cyborgs.
“You waited? You idiots!” Solomon snapped up at them.
“We’re throwing you a line. Hold on,” Jezzy returned over the Gold channel as two metal wire lines were extended from the belly of the wedge-shaped craft for Solomona and Arlo to catch a hold of—
“No, sir,” Menier said, and Solomon saw that the man he had just tried to save refused to take the line offered.
“What? Get on board right now, that’s an order, Marine!” Solomon said in alarm. He knew what Arlo was attempting to do.
“I said that I would stay and help Trade Minister Wylie survive. And fight.” The Outcast Marine was already hopping to the edge of the garden wall, following the line of retreating Proximians as they ran down the lanes and parklands beyond the palace. “I promised him, Lieutenant,” Arlo said with a shrug before disappearing.
“Lieutenant. Ship scanners indicate more cyborgs approaching from the city. If we’re going to go, we have to go now…” Jezzy was saying. “We have ten of the Proximians on board, and another ten went with Trade Minister Wylie.”
Solomon swore, casting one lingering look at the gap in the wall where Arlo Menier had so recently hopped through. Is that what this life is all about, this training? he thought. Learning how to keep your promises. Learning how to be an honorable man.
Solomon did not feel very honorable as he seized the wire rope and pulled. The internal winch system took up the slack and pulled him into the air, leaving Proxima behind.
THANK YOU
Thank you so much for reading Invasion: Proxima, the fifth story in the Outcast Marines series. If you could leave a review for me, that would be awesome because it helps me tell others about my books.
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Invasion- Proxima Page 13