by Richard Fox
“Dropping anchor!” He stomped a heel down and the drill spun into solid rock. “Good point!”
“Wait, you detected a void?” Gideon asked. “Like a tunnel?”
Santos extended the twin rail vanes of his rail gun out of his back and angled them toward a disk the size of a barn on the outer wall.
“Nice of them to give me a bullseye,” Santos said.
“Santos, what did you—contact!” Gideon shouted and Mauser rifles fired.
The wall ahead of him collapsed and a Sanheel leapt over the rubble, a spear clutched under one elbow. Santos tested his anchor’s grip; it was solid as the last of the drill worked into the bedrock.
He snapped his rifle up and hit the Sanheel in the chest. The round blew out its back and the Kesaht stumbled forward. Santos caught the dying alien by the throat and tossed it to one side.
Through the collapsed wall, Santos saw more Sanheel and Rakka foot soldiers clambering out of an open tunnel once hidden by metal sliding doors in the floor of an adjacent building.
“Cover! Need cover!” Santos shouted.
Rotary cannon fire peppered the Sanheel as Gideon kicked down a wall. The smaller bullets sprang off Sanheel armor and ripped through the brutish Rakka.
Gideon emptied his Mauser, killing three Sanheel, and then grabbed it by the barrel. He swung it like a club, crushing the sternum of a Kesaht centaur as it jumped out of the tunnel.
“Take your damn shot!” Gideon bellowed.
Santos primed the rails and electricity crackled down the lengths.
A thunder crack slapped dust across his vision as a nearby Armor from another lance sent a hypervelocity bolt at the city. A line of ignited oxygen traced from a shield emitter to the right of Santos’s target to a firing position off to his right.
The shield wavered, green waves like an aurora washing over its surface.
A green reticule blinked over his target.
“Rail shot!”
The building blew apart as a wave of overpressure from his bolt shattering the sound barrier hit his surroundings like a giant fist. Santos began retracting his anchor, waiting for all the dust to clear to see if his rail gun had brought down the shields.
“No…”
The disk he’d fired on was lit with energy, a shield swirling over it. The force field over the dome was still active.
His vision jumbled as a Sanheel blindsided him. The alien, bleeding freely from its eyes, ears, and mouth, pinned him to the ground with its weight. A wretched howl came from open jaws and blood dribbled onto Santos’s optics.
He swung a hand and connected with nothing but air as the Sanheel reared back. It drew a dagger and lifted it over its head. The edges lit up with power, and Santos got the distinct impression it could pierce right through his breastplate and the womb beneath.
The Sanheel’s head vanished into a cloud of red mist. The crack of a Strike Marine sniper rifle followed a split second later. The dead alien went limp and slouched to one side.
“God bless the Marines. Especially the snipers,” Santos said as he popped to his feet.
“Help!” Cha’ril called out.
She fired her Mauser one-handed into the open tunnel, and her other arm gripped Gideon by a carry handle behind his helmet.
A lance had impaled his torso and electricity snapped around the haft where it penetrated the Armor.
“Brace for impact!” General Laran broadcast.
There was a whoosh of air as an energy bolt streaked overhead and impacted behind Santos. The ground roiled, sending him into a wall. A column of smoke and ash rose into the sky, melding into the darkening sky as night came for them.
Marine and Ranger IR beacons on Santos’s HUD blinked off.
Santos spun around. The Kesaht battleship was still distant on the horizon, but growing larger with each passing second. A point of light emerged from its prow.
“Retreat!” Laran ordered. “All forces ret—”
Another bolt hit even closer. The blast wave picked Santos up and hurled him to the ground. Debris rained down around him as he fought his way out of rubble. He got clear and saw both his rail vanes sticking out of a wrecked building.
“Santos!” Cha’ril stood, broken masonry sloughing off her back. The haft of a Sanheel spear still stuck out from Gideon’s chest. She’d covered the captain with her own Armor to protect him from the blast.
“Gideon!” Santos crunched through broken rocks and got to his lance commander. He reached for the crackling spear.
“Wait. Don’t!” Cha’ril tried to stop Santos, but he gripped the spear before she could intervene.
His arm flared with sympathetic pain as the spear sent a jolt up his Armor. He tossed the Kesaht weapon aside and Gideon sat bolt upright.
“—port! Where is…I was off-line.” Gideon’s helm ticked from one side to the other.
“General?” Cha’ril touched the side of her helm and looked back to a wall of fire a hundred yards away. “She was there.”
“I’ve got anchor!” Aignar called out. “Reading rail shot.”
“Sir, what do we do now?” Santos asked as he looked around but couldn’t see Aignar.
“Fall back.” Gideon lurched to his feet and touched the hole in his chest. Speakers on either side of his helm whined with feedback as he cranked up the volume.
“Fall back! Get to Gold Beach!”
“What?” Santos pointed at the intact city. “This was our only—”
The blast of a rail cannon felt like a summer breeze compared to the energy strike from the Kesaht battleship.
“Incoming!” Aignar shouted.
Another blast wave hit Santos from behind, slapping him to the ground like a toy. He got onto his knees, his HUD awash with static.
“Getting tired of that.” He looked to the horizon, and the Kesaht battleship was an expanding fireball. “Good shooting, Aignar.”
No response.
“Aignar?”
Where once had been a decaying city was now a hellscape of small fires and ash.
“Go.” Gideon emerged from the gloom, Cha’ril by his side. “Get back to Gold Beach.”
“We do that and we…we’ve lost,” Santos said.
“Can’t breach the city. We need a new plan.” Gideon reached out and clamped a hand against the bottom half of Santos’s helm. He pulled the younger Armor’s optics close to his own.
“Retreat. You understand me?” Gideon snarled.
“Yes, sir.” Santos pulled back and took off at a jog. “What about Aignar?”
“Off-line,” Cha’ril said. “He…he was over there.” She pointed to an impact crater.
“Laran is dead,” Gideon said. “Command falls to me. I have to do what’s right for every survivor, not just our lance. Get our people back to the beachhead. Pick up any wounded you can. We’ll search for the missing later…if we can.”
Santos stopped, his sensors active for any trace of Aignar, but he came up empty.
A pit opened in his stomach, and it grew deeper as he and the remains of the assault force limped away. Broken and beaten.
****
Santos rolled to a stop just outside the field hospital inside Gold Beach. Medics rushed over to him and unloaded the wounded Marines and Rangers strapped to the skirts on top of his treads. He handed over the last, a Ranger he’d carried in his arms missing her lower leg and most of an arm.
Santos watched as the wounded went into a tent set up outside the building, and he wondered just how much radiation the casualties would take. If they survived surgery…it may have just bought them another day or two of pain-filled life.
He was about to transform his treads back into legs, when he saw just how much blood had pooled against his Armor.
He leaned over to one side and scooped up a handful of soil and rubbed it against the stains.
“Stop.” Cha’ril walked over to him, her legs similarly stained. “You’ll look weak. Blood doesn’t bother us.”
San
tos transformed back into his walker configuration.
“I can’t believe we made it out of that,” he said, and a realization hit him. “Aignar! Aignar’s still out there. We need to—”
Cha’ril bumped her knuckles against his chest, sending a thump that went through his womb.
“General Laran is out there too. So are four full lances of Armor. They may be listed as missing in action, but they are not coming back, Santos.”
“Don’t say that. We are Armor, we can take the rads and—”
“We are not invincible. Aignar is gone. Captain Gideon needs us right now. Needs us sharp. Needs our iron in this fight. You understand?”
Santos lowered his synch rating and pulled into a ball within his pod, a mountain of fragmented memories from the fight at the city gates and the retreat back flooded through him. He tried to remember the moment Aignar died, but it wouldn’t come to him.
“Aignar saved us,” she said. “Rail’d that ship and killed it. It would’ve picked the rest of us off if he hadn’t dropped anchor and turned himself into a target out in the open. He died for us, Santos. He did it so we can keep fighting, you understand?”
Santos stretched out and reconnected fully to his Armor.
“Sorry, Cha’ril, just took me a moment. Captain Gideon…he took charge after Laran died. He was…really rose to the challenge.”
“A clear, confident voice goes a long way in combat,” the Dotari said. “We’re lucky he was in charge. Now let’s go live up to his expectations. Yes? Kid?”
“Don’t.” Santos shook his helm. “Aignar called me ‘kid.’ Don’t. Not right now.”
“We need fresh batteries and ammo. Let’s go find some.”
Chapter 17
Garret lay back on a narrow cot set up in his office beneath Camelback Mountain. His shirt was untucked, one shoe half off. He crunched three pills between his teeth and the hand holding the open bottle fell against the cot bar.
“Lousy…day,” he mumbled as the drugs took hold, smoothing out his thoughts and letting him drift off to sleep.
Or that was the plan. The very specific plan he’d given his Secret Service guards when he told them no disturbances for four hours. When the door burst open and the head of his detail jammed a hypo against his neck, he knew something had gone terribly wrong.
The substance in the hypo sent an electric jolt through his body and his entire mouth tasted bitter. His detail hauled him to his feet and began re-dressing him.
“Wha…” Garret drooled as his eyes struggled to focus.
A guard held a metal tube under his nose and his sinuses felt like he’d snorted fire.
“Ah, Jesus, not that crap.” Garret beat weakly at the men holding his arms.
“He’s up,” the head of his detail said and pulled a data slate with a red and white striped case from his coat. The screen snapped on, and Keeper, the controller of the Crucible over Ceres, came up. She looked like an elderly woman, but she carried herself with strength. That she was actually the mind of a dead Strike Marine named Torni trapped in a Xaros drone was known by only a handful of people in the Terran Union.
“Mr. President, we’ve a situation,” she said. “A Vishrakath hive fleet came through a wormhole near Mars. They’ve already launched attacks on Olympus and Deimos.”
“No…you said that’s impossible,” Garret said.
“The Crucible over Mars has been emitting a disruption field for almost a month now. The field will fluctuate as the gate recharges from dark energy and—my theory is that they’ve been able to monitor the fluctuations from the gate on Novis. I should’ve planned on this, but after the Ibarrans came through that gate, we’ve—”
“Mars! The Vishrakath are on Mars.” Garret broke out into a cold sweat, and he wasn’t sure if it was from the counter-narcotics or mounting terror.
“The planet’s holding, but Mars is the lynchpin of our macro cannon grid. If they manage to disrupt it, then—”
“Earth is vulnerable,” Garret finished. “Recall the assault from Kesaht’ka. Winning there won’t mean anything if Earth is lost.”
“That’s…I’ve lost contact with Admiral Lettow.”
“You what? Then…dear God.” Garret looked at the pills spilled on the floor; a deep ache yearned in his chest. He grabbed his head of detail by the shoulder. “Get the war council together. Now. Then convene the senate. We may have to consider…surrender.”
“No,” Keeper said. “We still have enough macro cannons to—”
Garret flung the slate into the corner and wiped his head down with a towel as he stormed out of his room.
Chapter 18
Marc Ibarra walked down a narrow hallway cut through solid rock. He moved with a false air of confidence, a small matte black case clenched in one hand. If his chrome body could still exhale air over lips, he would’ve whistled as he tapped in an access code on a door panel.
A vault door opened with the squeal of gears and Marc set off into a small room with a single box in the center. He waited for the door to close behind him, then ran a small data line from the case to the box.
Lights flashed across the box and a holo menu appeared on the top side. Marc ran his finger down a long list and stopped one space below the last entry. He double-tapped and a hidden field blinked twice.
He stepped backed and waited. And waited. Frost crept out from where his feet touched the floor.
A lens flared to life and a holo of a gaunt, sunken-eyed President Garret appeared in front of Marc.
“Finally!” Garret reached for Marc’s arms, but his grip passed through the metal man. “We’ve been trying to reach you for hours. Earth is under assault. We need your help. Now!”
“Wait. What? I thought you just sent a fleet to the Kesaht home world to end this whole thing.”
“We lost contact.” Garret pulled a small bottle from a pocket and twisted the top off. He swiped at someone as they reached for his pills. He stuffed two into his mouth and chewed hard. “The attack failed. All ships lost. What can you send to help?”
“What do you mean ‘the attack failed’? That was the bulk of your reserves. If that’s lost, then how are you going to stop—”
“I don’t give a damn about stopping anything but the mass drivers the Vishrakath and the Kesaht are slamming into my planets!” Garret swallowed and wiped a sleeve across his mouth. “Iapetus is gone. Our macro cannons aren’t going to last much longer, and Mars is about to fall. We need you, Ibarra. We need your help, god damn it. Do you know how many lives have been lost? I don’t want to surrender Earth, but I may not have a choice.”
“I don’t…” He looked around the small room. “I don’t exactly have the keys to a fleet on me.”
“Then get Stacey!”
“She’s away. Which is why I called you in the first place. I can send her a message, but I’m not exactly much of an influence on her these days. If you can get word to her, with the same intensity and near-panic—okay, total panic—she might be convinced to help you.”
“You got me out of the situation room for this?” Garret’s left eye twitched. “Some hope is better than none. Where is she?”
“Nekara,” Marc said. “You can reach it through the Keystone at—”
A button on the quantum box pressed down of its own accord and Garret vanished. The button snapped up and the matte case went flying into the wall.
Air behind the box wavered then peeled away to reveal a legionnaire in combat fatigues and a pack on one hip. He held a gauss carbine trained on Marc’s chest.
“How…long have you been there?” Marc backed up to the vault door.
“Many hours,” Medvedev said. “I activated the Karigole cloak as soon as we realized you were on your way here.”
“I can explain.” Marc held his palms up. “I…I’m just worried about our Lady and her expedition. I thought the Union could—”
Medvedev switched his carbine to high power and a dull whine filled the room.
&nbs
p; “Okay, I’m not entirely sure what she’ll find on Nekara, and if the Union could send some help, then—”
“Stop her?” Medvedev raised an eyebrow. “That’s what you said to Garret.”
“Context!” Marc grabbed the vault handle and flipped it up, but the door didn’t move. “I’ll explain everything to our Lady as soon as she gets back. Let’s just forget all this and you can go back to hiding in the corner, yeah?”
“The Lady left specific instructions for what to do if you tried anything.” Medvedev put a finger on the trigger.
“You can’t shoot me with that! What…what if you miss? The bullet will bounce all over and then you’d be in a world of trouble. I’m looking out for your welfare, so I’ll just be go—”
Medvedev fired a single round that hit Marc in the stomach. Cracks broke through his body and it collapsed into a pile of shards like a shattered window. The legionnaire went to the remains and nudged the toe of his boot through the pile.
****
Admiral Valdar of the Terran Union Navy sat on the bunk of his Ibarra Nation prison cell, feet off the floor and tucked under his knees. He pulled a thin blanket tighter around his shoulders and shivered as his breath fogged. Ice clumped in his beard and tiny specks of frozen condensation clung to his eyelashes.
Freezing to death, he realized, was a horrible way to die.
In the other cell, a plastic box sat on the floor was encased in ice, where the guards had delivered it without a word to Valdar. Whatever was inside had sucked all the heat out of the cells within minutes.
Valdar’s teeth chattered and he realized all feeling had leeched from his face. He didn’t call out for help; he. He wouldn’t give his captors the honor of hearing him beg.
A chrome arm shot out of the box, sending shards of ice bouncing off the bars.