Gun Runner

by Larry Correia

  The enemy were in exos camouflaged with rags and Swindle plants stuck all over them. It looked as if they’d come out of the forest to the north and opened fire on the harvesters. They were armed with a wide variety of weapons, most of them regular old civilian hunting guns.

  The Big Town harvesters were a tough bunch, because Jackson noticed a few of the camouflaged attackers were down, and not from the mech’s guns, but by small arms, and one had a pickaxe stuck through his helmet.

  Jackson took all that in during the brief seconds before Warlord rained hell down on the Originals.

  The Thunderbolt 4 came flying out of the trees, powered by an insane leap. One massive steel foot drove an exo to the ground and crushed the life out of the human inside of it. Before the other attackers could react, Warlord had turned into them, firing cannons, machine guns, and grenades as he ran. Men died.

  Some of the attackers started trying to engage Warlord, but Jackson could already see how that was going to go. The analysis, processing, and engagement time of fly-by-mind had to be experienced to be understood, but by the time the first gun was pointed his way, the man holding it was getting blown to pieces, and Warlord had already moved on to the next.

  When bipedal mechs were first used in battle, they were vulnerable because they stood so tall. As a rule of thumb, the lower to the ground the better. The higher, the more things could see you. They were only used in terrain that tanks couldn’t easily traverse. But that had all changed when mankind had figured out how to truly plug in. With the right mind in control, a mech no longer moved like a vehicle, but a giant, superpowered athlete doing parkour.

  The antique Thunderbolt bounded between the trees, dodging fire, sliding prone, crawling, and firing accurately every time a target popped up. Then he was up and running, flinging a line of grenades across the treetops to kill the snipers that Jackson’s regular human eyes hadn’t even seen. Bodies fell from above. A giant armor-piercing rifle was fired but missed. Warlord dove and rolled tons of steel across its shoulder and one arm. He landed behind a massive log.

  A rifleman took aim at Warlord and let loose a series of rounds. It was powerful enough to punch through the thick wood to send splinters flying. But Warlord just swung one arm around the corner of the log and fired a 75mm explosive round into the general vicinity of the rifleman. It detonated, and the shrapnel tore him to bits.

  “He’s good, isn’t he?” Tui asked.

  “Professionally speaking…Yeah, really good.”

  And then they hurried off the hilltop, because they didn’t want to silhouette themselves and draw any fire. The security team was descending as well, firing at the Originals, or anything that looked suspicious.

  “What’s that sound?” Katze asked.

  Jackson realized he’d been hearing an eerie bugling, punctuated by chuffs.

  One of the security guards looked at the woods, eyes wide with fear. “Goat-shagging Originals.”

  “They’ve put out a caliban caller!” another one of the guards shouted.

  “A what?” Bushey said.

  But the guard had got on his radio. “Sir, they’ve put out callers. We’ve only got minutes before a big one arrives!”

  “Then you’d better help me kill all these whoresons before they get here,” Warlord responded.

  The obviously terrified security team kept moving down the hill, but Tui signaled for the crew to take cover.

  “Isn’t a caliban what bit the Warlord’s foot off?” Katze asked. “Why would someone be calling one of those?”

  “It’s like dropping artillery on your own position. They lost and they know it,” Tui said. “I don’t want to take sides in someone else’s war, but we aren’t getting eaten by monsters. Get down by the transports and take up a defensive position until we can catch a ride out of here. Got it?” He waited for everyone to acknowledge that, then jerked this thumb toward the bottom. “Move!”

  The four of them ran down the hill with augmented strides. There were a bunch of smaller vehicles, lightweight cargo lifters and tankers, which had ridden down on the dropships. Tui gestured at one, and they took cover behind a little tractor.

  Down on the battlefield things had gone nuts. A harvester was beating a fallen raider over the head with a big wrench, but then someone blew a massive hole in his chest and the worker went down. Another harvester was trying to detach a gun from the exo arm of a fallen Original. The dirt around the man danced as bullets hit. He looked up, gave the approaching raiders the finger, tried to bring the stolen gun around, but got shot instead.

  A hundred meters away, a camouflaged figure broke from the woods and ran for one of the supply vehicles. From the size of him, he was only a boy, but he climbed into the driver’s seat, got it started, then stomped on the accelerator and began driving away. The transport bounced over the uneven terrain and roots.

  “Little dude isn’t going to make it very far,” Katze said.

  “They’re trying to steal provisions!” Bushey shouted to be heard over the gunfire.

  Jackson could already see how this was going to go down. He’d been that kid, swiping food and medical supplies from the army. The young raider was never going to make it. “Bail out!” Jackson shouted in vain.

  Bullets pinged up the side of the transport, then struck the boy, who slumped over. The transport continued in a slow arc then slammed into a boulder, jolted to a sudden stop, and rolled onto its side.

  Jackson reflexively stood up and started that way, but Tui grabbed his exo by the pack. “Stay down!”

  The security detail reached the transports and began to shoot at the Originals in the trees. Bullets came flying back. One punched a hole in Katze’s exo, just missing her arm. “Screw this, Chief! I’m jumping in.”

  Katze got on her radio. “We’ve got an overlook position. What’s the priority target?”

  A guard responded. “Five o’clock! Five o’clock!”

  They all turned to look, just as something enormous shook the trees at the woods’ edge. The ground vibrated beneath them, and both sides stopped shooting.

  And then it came out into the open.

  “Good lord,” Tui said.

  It was a huge beast, standing on four powerful legs. It was easily four meters at the shoulder and twelve meters long, covered with mottled ridges and spikes. Its face had a long muzzle full of teeth, and like many of the animals here, there were two eyes on each side of its head. As it moved into the open, they saw that it had a whip tail that ended in a club.

  The harvesters began screaming, “Caliban!” and even the ones who had been fighting a moment before ran for their lives. Warlord’s men started shooting at the caliban as the raiders fled into the forest.

  The giant was fast. Like Jackson-couldn’t-believe-his-eyes fast.

  Muzzles flashed. Tracers flew, some hit, but some the caliban dodged, lighting quick, springing to an outcropping of stone. It immediately leapt to another spot, a huge distance, then again right onto the wounded Jackal mech. With its front claw, it grabbed one arm and ripped it completely off.

  Even as bullets and shells were hitting it, the caliban bit the head of the mech suit, wrenched, wrenched again and succeeded in pulling half the pilot out the hole.

  “Open fire!” Tui bellowed at his crew.

  Jackson had already been pulling the trigger. Bullets tore off chunks of spikes. Bolts were embedded in the thick skin. The caliban was engulfed in a chain of small explosions.

  It turned toward the crew and growled.

  “I hate this planet!” Bushey shouted as he reloaded his gun. “I really hate it.”

  The caliban crouched, giant muscles gathering power, and then it leapt at them.

  Warlord hit it in midair.

  The 75mm round caught it in the leg, and the explosion and flinch were enough to send it off course. The caliban hit the dirt and slid, plowing through a tanker.

  The force of the collision was so violent, the side of the tanker ruptured, and orange, go
oey CX spilled everywhere.

  Meanwhile the caliban thrashed, a huge gaping wound in its front leg, then struggled up onto the other three.

  “Get the harvesters on the remaining dropship and dust off,” Warlord said over the radio as he reloaded his cannon.

  “Door’s jammed, sir. We’re working on it.”

  “Get it open, or I will personally feed you to a sabolar. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  If Jackson had been thinking more clearly, he would have realized that a power-hungry narcissist wouldn’t be going out of his way to order an evacuation if the only threat was the monster that had just been terribly wounded…But then again, Jackson was running on just regular old eyes and ears, rather than a mech’s sensor suite, so he’d not realized just how screwed they were about to be.

  A second caliban sprang into the clearing, cleanly biting one harvester in half. The exo soldiers turned to shoot at it, but it lashed them with its tail, sending two of them flying.

  “Holy mother,” Katze said and raised her twenty.

  “Nine o’clock!” Tui shouted. “Nine o’clock!”

  Jackson turned. Racing through the forest toward their overlook was a third caliban. It wasn’t as big as the others but seemed to be moving twice as fast. And it was heading right at them.

  “Katze, light it up! Jackson, me and you wait until it’s closer so these damn pneumatics can have maximum effect.”

  Katze brought up the huge rifle. She didn’t waste her ammo in a wild spray, but began firing rapid, aimed shots.

  The little caliban began darting side to side, impossibly fast for something the size of an elephant. Katze tried to adjust for the jerking back and forth. The caliban took the hits and kept coming. Bits of horned skin flew into the air. A purple splotch of blood appeared. Jackson was waiting for it to be within a hundred meters before emptying the Wakal into it, but suddenly the caliban snarled and sprang into a gully.

  “How the neuken does something that big friggin’ disappear?” Bushey screamed.

  Jackson turned to make sure something wasn’t charging from another direction, when he felt the earth tremble.

  “Did you feel that?”

  The earth trembled again.

  “The rebels are using bombs,” Katze said.

  Except the rebels were busy escaping. Warlord was firing on one of the other caliban and his men were concentrating on the crippled one. A cold ball of dread formed in Jackson’s stomach. The vibration had a pattern to it. “Those are footsteps.”

  Trees cracked and fell in the distance. That sound was followed by a low thumping rumble that penetrated right to Jackson’s core. A vibration that made him tremble.

  A vocalization, he realized.

  “Something’s out there. Something big!”

  The first caliban was down, probably dead. The second was wounded and running away. But the Big Town troops were worse off. The bodies of exo soldiers lay strewn and bloody around the site of the battle. As for the harvesters, they were piling into the remaining dropship.

  The rumble beat through Jackson again. “The caliban aren’t running from us. They’re running from that.”

  “We’ve got to move,” Tui said.

  One of the security men said over the line. “Gorgon. Three klicks out and closing fast.”

  “Cover me!” Warlord ordered as the mech ran into the forest in the direction the Originals had retreated.

  “But sir, he’s got our smell!”

  “I said cover me. I want information.”

  It was obvious the man was terrified, but he managed to stammer, “Yes, sir.”

  Warlord flung a javelin as he moved into the brush. It took a running man in the back, who fell. Two other rebels, a woman and a girl, tried to help him up, but the mech charged them. They saw it and ran, but they never had a chance.

  A few guns fired from the forest’s edge, but the security detail let loose with a buzzing barrage that sawed through the brush, cutting down the last of the Originals’ stragglers.

  Warlord caught up to the two rebels. The closest was the woman. She raised a rifle, but he knocked her down with a fist the size of her torso. It was a gentle blow by mech standards, so he probably didn’t kill her. “Fall back, three hundred meters north of the vehicles,” Warlord said as he slung both prisoners over his shoulder and ran back toward his men.

  Another thump made the ground tremble.

  “Fall back,” the security man repeated.

  “There’s a third caliban out there somewhere to your ten o’clock,” Katze warned over the radio.

  “We’ll go in rotation,” Tui said. “Katze, you first. Go!”

  Katze ran a quick fifty meters down the hill in her exo, then took up a covering position with her fifty.

  “Go!” Tui said to Jackson.

  Jackson turned and sprinted for Katze’s position. He was there in five strides.

  “Next!” Katze said.

  Bushey turned and ran.

  The smaller caliban that had been coming for them suddenly rose out of the gully to their left. It narrowed its four eyes and growled at them.

  Katze opened up with her rifle, but the caliban ducked back down, and the rounds only kicked up dust.

  “Run!” Jackson yelled at Tui.

  Tui stretched his strides, exo humming. But the caliban suddenly sprang out of the gully farther down to cut him off.

  Jackson opened up with his Wakal. It made a steady thump, thump, thump, as he planted a stream of bolts into the creature. Most of them glanced off the caliban’s thick skin, but a few sunk into its belly.

  The caliban sprang at Tui, trying to slash him with its massive claws.

  Tui sprang back. Dodged. But the thing had a wicked, reflexive speed and jumped in front of him. Tui tried to reverse, but the massive force Tui sent through the exo’s foot simply plowed a groove in the earth instead.

  Jackson fired at the thing’s belly. It lunged at Tui, but then the bolts hit, making the beast wince, giving Tui just enough room to duck beneath its slashing claws, get his footing, and sprint back toward the crew.

  Katze’s next round hit the side of its horn-skinned muzzle, and she walked the following bullets up its head, bloodying its face up past its eyes. The caliban sprang away, then thwacked the ground with its tail, sending dirt and a barrage of stones the size of dog’s heads at them.

  Bushey dove to the ground. Jackson wasn’t as quick, and a huge stone whistled past his face. Other smaller rocks and chunks of earth pelted him. One stone hit his hand, smashing the bones.

  Tui sent a burst of bolts at it, then ran to join the others.

  The caliban leapt at him.

  Desperate, Tui dodged left.

  The caliban landed where he’d been, not a pace behind.

  “Run, Chief!” Bushey shouted and fired from the ground.

  Two of the Warlord’s security force opened fire on the thing.

  Jackson discovered he couldn’t pull the trigger with his index finger, so he used the middle one. More bolts struck the creature. 20mm rounds clobbered its face. Tui reached them and yanked Bushey to his feet as he passed.

  The caliban roared and whipped its tail around, whipcrack fast, the club portion of the tail struck Warlord’s security men and sent them flying into the brush.

  Jackson kept hosing the monster. The bolts pin-cushioned its neck, and now they were so close they were sinking deep. He walked his projectiles up its head and into its mouth, then back a bit. His last bolt sank deep into one of its eyes.

  The caliban screamed and whipped its long tail around again.

  SNAP!

  It was like getting hit by a truck. Jackson flew forty meters at least. The exo took most of the impact, Raj cushioned more, but then he hit the dirt, bounced, flailing over the lip of the gulley. An awful second later he slammed painfully into the far side, then tumbled down to the bottom.

  He landed hard.

  Head swimming, Jackson slowly realiz
ed he was still alive. He groaned.

  Above him shots were fired.

  He had to get up, although he couldn’t quite remember why. He tried to rise, but was too dazed, and his legs didn’t seem to work.

  A voice came over his radio. It was Warlord. “Get my guests to the dropship. Quickly!”

  Jackson tried to rise again, but the sky began to slide, so he lay on his back in a dizzy heap.

  “The last guy’s not here,” one of the security men said.

  “I’m down here,” Jackson croaked.

  There was another tremble of the ground. Another one of those deep rumblings that made Jackson’s heart flutter in his chest.

  “I can’t see him,” another security man said. “There’s no time!”

  Jackson rolled over. The sky was spinning, and Jackson closed his eyes, hoping it would stop. Hoping he could get his bearings.

  “We have to launch, now!”

  Jackson heard the security men call to each other. Heard the buzzing of bullets. Heard the high-pitched whine of a dropship engine. Then it was all consumed by a thunderous roar.

  “Tui,” Jackson said. Or at least he thought he said it. “Tui,” he repeated again.

  But there was no response, and then Jackson’s world sank in and out of blackness.

  That thunder became louder, closer. He opened his eyes. There were little pieces of gravel next to his face. Each time the thunder sounded, the pebbles shook.

  Suddenly he was covered in falling rocks and a cloud of dust, as a vast shape clambered down the slope. There was a crocodilian face, bigger than his entire body, with three eyes, because the fourth had a Wakal bolt stuck into it. Terror seized his body as Jackson tried, feebly, to get away from the caliban.

  It spotted him. Angry, it stalked toward him.

  Jackson couldn’t move. He thought he was paralyzed. Had the fall broken his neck? But then he realized he was straining futility against the broken and depowered exo. He tried to get his thumb around the quick-release buckle, but it was stuck.