The Dogs of God

by Chris Kennedy

  He disconnected and turned toward town.

  Hank lost track of time as the memories flowed over him. Years of combat, and friends dying, and killing bastards—alien and otherwise—who would inflict themselves upon the innocent and take what they could. He felt the old ire rising within him. He shifted and flexed inside his dōrydō, loosening up, and the suit gyrated and moved with him. He had to admit, it felt good to be back inside again. There was a part of him that hated how much he enjoyed doing what he was so good at, but he pushed that aside and reveled in the power that thrummed around him. There were six considerably more modern dōrydōs out there. But they’re only Azteks, Hank thought with a smile. His Mancuso Assault Unit was old, but even an old Mancuso was feared by drivers in lesser suits.

  “No mercy for the wicked,” he said out loud, and then he turned to see his friends carrying out the two heavy guns for his truck.

  The first was a twin laser cannon for the front hardpoint plugged directly into the Masahaki power plant. It would burn through energy quickly, but Hank was certain it would be more than enough for the coming fight. The weapon had a ninety-degree traverse left and right, and could elevate to about thirty degrees. The other was a Mizuki swivel-mount chem-laser, with belt-fed charges ignited by a power-feed from the truck.

  He watched them quickly drop the weapons into their hardpoints, and then Kenny hefted the heavy ammo-case and belt into the back of the truck. He locked it down, and Felicia connected the belt mechanism and actuated the weapon like she’d been doing it her whole life.

  “Felicia,” Hank said over the comms, “you look pretty comfortable with that. You want the duty?”

  “Hell yes,” she said. “I can make this thing sing and dance,” she added enthusiastically.

  “Sam, you operate the twin instead of the swivel,” Hank said. “Marovar still drives the truck, while Yobani takes the flitter. You two are hell on wheels in those things.”

  “Yes, sir,” they both said. Anyone who knew the Mumbassa family knew Jodai had taught his boys how to drive just about any vehicle, and they clearly had a gift for it.

  “Alright,” Hank said. “Everyone mount up. I’ll ride on the hood. Kenny, you’ll set everything in motion just like we discussed.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kenny said. Hank picked up just a hint of nervousness in the boy’s voice, but not enough to worry him.

  “It’s just like shooting wild game, son,” Hank said. “All you have to do is not miss and then do what I told you.”

  Kenny swallowed once and gave a quick nod.

  Hank moved around the truck, leapt up onto the hood, and went down into a crouch, gripping one of the turret barrels.

  “Move out!” he ordered, and everyone scrambled for their positions.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 6

  Hank clumped across the bottom of the river as everyone moved to their positions. He sloshed out of the water and made his way up the steep bank. He couldn’t help but wonder how many of his friends might be dead soon. Would they get lucky and not lose anybody? Or had he led them all to a messy death? Only a few of them were soldiers. The others were just pissed off farmers and kids. It’ll have to be enough, he thought. Us collies are tough by definition.

  “I’m in position,” Hank said over the comms. “Who isn’t?”

  “Gimmie thirty seconds,” Marovar replied from the truck. “We’re almost there.”

  “No sign that they’ve spotted you?” Hank asked.

  “I didn’t pick them up on thermal or enhanced with these optics you gave me,” Marovar said. “The trees provided plenty of cover. I can’t see them, so I have to hope they can’t see us.”

  “If you’re not taking incoming fire, they haven’t spotted you,” Hank said. “And remember, if you see a dōrydō, get the hell out of there. They should come to me once I’m spotted, and send the troopers out to fill the gaps, but we won’t know until they’re engaged.”

  “Understood,” Marovar replied.

  “Yobani, remember not to jump the gun. You don’t head in until I say, no matter what you hear on the radio. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” the young man replied.

  “We’ll be fine, Hank,” Cleve assured him. “Just do what you do. We’ve got your back.”

  “Copy that,” Hank said.

  “I’m in position,” Marovar said.

  “We’re ready to rock and roll,” Sam added.

  “Charged and ready.” Felicia sounded hungry for blood.

  Hank tasked Jodai, Borda, Treat, and Abigail to take up positions just outside of town with assault rifles and snipe any mercs who tried to run out of town. There would be no mercenary prisoners.

  “Kenny,” Hank said, “it’s on you now.”

  Hank moved up to the edge of the river and looked up at the high riverbank and thick line of trees that rose above him twenty meters. He unslung the autocannon, flipped the safety off, and initialized his weapon systems with a thought.

  Combat Mode initialized, Miranda piped into his thoughts. All weapons armed.

  “Three…” Kenny’s voice came in. “Two…” Hank went down into a crouch. “One.”

  A single, massive gunshot tore through the night air.

  “Get out of there, Kenny,” Hank ordered, and then he leapt.

  His boot and back thrusters activated, sending him rocketing straight up into the air. He launched all three recon floaters as he cleared the trees and the town came into view. His targeting system picked out the nearest threats as the six-centimeter floaters raced forward into the darkness.

  In Hank’s HUD, a dōrydō was highlighted in red, and the two troopers who had taken cover behind the corner of the building were a yellowish green.

  The dōrydō, a slightly different Aztek design than the one that had been there previously, was clearly fixed on identifying where the shot had come from as it strode forward, an autocannon aimed toward the trees. Hank could see a scorch mark, and part of the armor bent outward on the chest plate, dead center. Nice shot, Kenny, he thought as he reached the top of his arc.

  Hank’s railgun tracked with his helm, locked onto the dōrydō with a flash, and Hank heard the lock tone. The enemy dōrydō shifted, his weapons tracking toward Hank…too late. Hank willed the weapon to fire.

  CRACK!

  Miranda shuddered around him, and his trajectory was altered as the first hypersonic round, magnetically accelerated to Mach 7, slammed the dōrydō to the ground. Thermals registered a massive heat bloom as the energy dissipated across the enemy dōrydō. It wasn’t moving, and it looked like the armor had been breached. Hank let his body fall, locked onto the dōrydō’s helm, and fired again.

  CRACK!

  Another round pierced the night, this time into the dōrydō’s helm.

  The resulting explosion of neutron-dense metal streaked out like a grenade going off. Shrapnel peppered the nearby buildings, and undoubtedly passed through at least several walls. It also caught one of the two troopers across the street and sent him to the ground in a heap.

  Hank was halfway to the ground. He targeted the remaining trooper, raised the Aggressor Mark V, and fired a single round that caught the trooper in the midsection. The man’s abdomen exploded in a splash of fire and blood as his body was slammed backward into the building.

  “One dōrydō and two troopers down,” Hank said as he hit his thrusters and landed.

  He stagger-stepped just as an enemy lock tone blared in his ears and heavy laser-fire streaked down main street. Miranda immediately identified the source of the lock-on and lit up an APC coming down the street.

  A single blast impacted upon his right thigh plate, burning away enough layers of the dense, semi-reflective armor for him to feel the heat. The energy released spun Hank slightly. He instinctively lowered to a crouch, hit his thrusters, and fired two missiles from the pod on his shoulder as he jetted to the side.

  More heavy laser fire filled the space where he’d been a moment before, and he
took cover behind the building.

  The recon floaters, small fan-lifted drones full of sensors, transmitted an overlay of the town with all threats identified.

  Hank leapt straight up, using the power of the suit rather than his thrusters, and landed on the nearest wall. If he put the full weight of the suit on the flat roof, he’d probably crash through, but the chromaplas outer walls were strong enough to take the weight.

  In the HUD, he identified four dōrydōs coming from the edges of town on foot, moving from cover to cover. There were also seven troopers moving from the perimeter into town. The APC that had shot him was halfway down Main, while the other one remained parked in front of the courthouse, but it was shifting its position, so the nose was also pointed down Main. There was a dōrydō climbing into the turret, and Hank recognized it as the leader’s suit.

  A flash of motion to his left sent an alarm blaring. Hank leapt forward as blasts from a laser carbine splashed against his suit. He barely registered the impacts and realized the dōrydō firing at him only had a light weapon. Hank crashed down through the roof of the building, hit the floor, and leapt back up through the hole in the roof as the APC shot round after round into the building. Hank cleared the roof, aimed at the dōrydō, and let his autocannon do the talking.

  BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

  High Velocity Armor Piercing rounds spat from the barrel and slammed into the dōrydō that had been standing two buildings away. In a burst of explosions, it tumbled over the side of the building and disappeared. Hank leapt, jetting after it in a low arc.

  CRACK!

  Something slammed into his left shoulder just beneath the missile launcher and sent him spinning. Miranda’s auto-recovery system kicked in as he dropped beneath the wall, landed on his feet, and faced the dōrydō that had shot him just as it was getting to its feet.

  Hank kicked out, slammed the dōrydō through the nearby wall, and then stepped forward with the railgun to find the dōrydō still standing as the driver leveled his laser rifle. Hank’s targeting system locked, he fired, and, as several laser blasts splashed into his chest, the center of the enemy dōrydō broke apart into three sections and bounced off the walls.

  Hank realized there was going to be a hell of a mess to clean up once this was all finished.

  Nothing I can do about it now, he thought.

  Checking the inputs from his floaters, Hank stepped out through the shattered wall, turned, and leapt straight up into the air. He got an instant lock on a dōrydō coming toward him across one of the roofs. The system gave him a tone, and he cut loose with the railgun. The round caught the dōrydō in the shoulder joint. There was an explosion of energy, and an arm went sailing sideways as the dōrydō tumbled into the next street.

  “Three dōrydōs down,” he said as he dropped back to the street. “The others are on me. Marovar, start your run.”

  “Copy that,” the young man said, and Hank could hear the power plant scream as Marovar hammered the accelerator.

  Hank checked the floaters and saw his hovertruck enter the theater on the far side of the airfield, headed straight for the cargo ship. He picked up a handful of trooper blips exiting the cargo ship. There was a brief volley from the truck, illuminated on his HUD by dashed lines that flickered, and then the enemy blips went dark.

  He also saw a squad of troopers moving with a dōrydō only a couple blocks away to the southeast.

  You’re next, he thought.

  He raced down the street at a dead run, his feet hammering into the ground in a straight line toward the enemy squad’s right flank. Hank stopped dead in his tracks halfway past the building he was using as cover. He quickly backtracked as quietly as he could as the buzz-crack sounds of more laser fire filled the air, all of it coming from the airfield.

  Miranda, plot a targeting solution around the corner to hit that squad, he thought.

  The micros will not do appreciable damage to the dōrydō, she replied.

  Acknowledged.

  Hank moved forward along the curb. He got a tone when Miranda’s solution was locked in. He fired, and a half-dozen missiles streaked out and darted around the corner. Explosions and people screaming filled the night. Hank leapt forward into the street, the autocannon leveled, and fired into the smoke and dust that filled the area, emptying the mag. He heard the telltale crack of two rounds hitting a dōrydō. The floaters showed him where the enemy unit stood, and he fired the railgun without a lock.

  CRACK!

  There was an explosion within the cloud that pushed the dust and smoke aside.

  The dōrydō now lay in the street, one leg torn away, as the driver flailed his arms helplessly, and great gouts of blood spraying from the severed limb. To his credit, the driver managed to raise his weapon, an autocannon similar to Hank’s, but he fell back, and the weapon lowered to the ground before he pulled the trigger. Hank dropped the empty mag from his rifle and slipped a new one into place.

  “Four dōrydōs down, and a full squad eliminated.”

  “We think we’ve cleared out the troopers around here,” Sam chimed in. “How’s it look from your end.”

  Hank checked the HUD and saw one more squad now grouped around the APC in the center of town. Another dōrydō stood beside the vehicle, and the commander still sat inside the turret. The other APC was moving toward the airfield, however, so Hank needed to do something about that.

  “Marovar,” Hank called out urgently. “You’ve got an APC incoming. It’s running along the northeast side of town. Get around to the southwest side of that cargo ship and stay put.”

  “Yes, sir.” Marovar’s voice was cool and calm.

  “Yobani.”

  “Yeah, Mr. Combs?”

  “Get ready. Set up just past the trees at the end of Main. The plan hasn’t changed. When I say go, you hit it hard.”

  “We got you, Hank,” Cleve chimed in.

  Just then, Hank’s comms rang with an incoming call. The ID said Elena Svodoba.

  “Stand by, everybody,” Hank said, and switched over to a secondary channel.

  “Elena?” Hank said. As he did, he saw a single new blip suddenly appear on the street behind the APC headed toward the airfield.

  “Stay put,” she said. “The idiot-gunner didn’t button up. I got this.”

  “What?” Hank said, stunned, as he watched the small blip move quickly up behind the APC.

  The vehicle came to an abrupt halt, and the threat-indicator of the APC’s field of fire started swiveling just as a dotted line of laser fire traced from the blip. The turret’s field of fire stopped moving, and the blip moved on top of the APC. There was the barest flash of laser fire on the HUD.

  “Two down,” Elena said. “I hosed the interior, so I don’t think this APC is going anywhere.”

  “Roger that,” Hank said. “And thanks for the assist.”

  “I enjoyed it,” Elena responded.

  “Now find some cover. There’s only the APC, a squad, and two dōrydō to take care of.”

  “Only?” Elena asked.

  Hank cut the connection and swapped over to the team channel.

  “—ank, do you copy?” It was Sam’s voice.

  “Don’t worry,” Hank replied. “I’m still here. Elena Svodoba gave us an assist on that APC. The airfield is safe.”

  “Elena?” Sam asked. “No shit?”

  “No shit,” Hank replied as he reviewed his HUD.

  The last APC hadn’t moved, which meant the enemy commander was too scared to move and wanted Hank to come at him where he could concentrate his firepower. The commander was undoubtedly still buttoned up inside the turret, manning the twin heavy lasers, and the other dōrydō now stood on the rear of the vehicle. The squad had taken cover inside the fountain, spread out to give them a 360-degree view of the center of town.

  There was no way Hank was getting in there unscathed. The dōrydō’s autocannon would be enough to put a hurt on him. The twin lasers, if they got more than a few hits in the same plac
e, would burn through in moments, and the concentrated fire of the squad would wear him down. All together, he was up against enough firepower to bring this little dance to an unhappy ending.

  Miranda just has to hold together long enough, he thought. There was only one thing left to do.

  The floaters provided the precise distance between himself and the courthouse. He factored in the required thrust and trajectory, and then calculated the expected acceleration of Yobani in the flitter.

  “Okay, folks, we’re about at the end of this,” he said. “One last Hail Mary, and it’s half-a-bottle of beer for everyone.

  “You ready out there, Yobani?”

  “And waiting.”

  “Good. On my mark, count down five seconds and then launch. Stay at the roof line and hit it just like we talked about.”

  “Copy that,” Yobani and Cleve said together.

  Hank took a deep breath and primed his systems for one last assault. “No mercy for the wicked,” he said, “and…mark!” Hank shouted as he leapt and hit his thrusters.

  The roof flickered by as he shot skyward.

  Everyone in the enemy ranks heard his thrusters fire, and as the APC and the fountain came into view, he saw all of them raising weapons in his direction. The railgun got its lock and toned just before the missile pod did. With both tones blaring in his ears, he pulled the trigger and fired both shoulder-mounted weapons as a wave of incoming fire filled his viewscreen. Alarms blared.

  The railgun let out its distinctive CRACK! as the hiss of missiles filled the air. Munitions passed each other mid-air.

  Light laser fire splashed into Hank’s suit, and he felt the armor warm against his skin.

  The dōrydō on top of the APC came apart from the railgun round that hit it in the center of its chest, and the fountain was lost in a half-dozen antipersonnel missile explosions.

  Hank felt three terrible impacts, chest, thigh, and knee, as his body spun in midair. The dōrydō had scored three massive hits with his autocannon. The world tumbled around him as he fell. Warning lights filled his vision.

  There was a terrific crashing of chromaplas and timbers as he broke through the roof of the courthouse, and then another as he hammered into the hardwood floor and sank into a crater a foot deep.