“Please pay attention to your heads up display.” It said, and Moses noticed again the red and blue outlines around the crashing and battling armored figures. His team won, but not through any superior skill or tactic as far as Moses was concerned. By the end, two of their opponents were chopping at one another with their swords, one yelling that they were allies, the other one, apparently blind with whatever passion had claimed him in the battle. Either way they’d been easy to overcome, and they’d only had three people lose their hands, all to bolts from the shoulder turrets when they’d let their hands leave the protective umbrella of the shield’s belly. When it was over Kyra raised her sword with a shout of victory.
“Those turrets are terrifying.” Maxwell said as he accepted a charge from the generator pillar afterwards. The whole squad was gathered around the station waiting for their next match. Maxwell had lost his hands when he’d attempted a wild and totally rash overhead cut at an opponent.
“They’re supposed to be.” Moses replied.
“Hard to keep your hands out of their line of fire when there’s that many.” Maxwell said.
Their second melee went much the same, and the third, and the fourth. In each, Kyra shouted some directions for the attack, who was going where, whether of not to get behind them on this or that flank. It seemed to be her preferred tactic, and to her credit it usually worked. After calling them out she always rushed in, headlong, just as she had in the dueling pits, forcing the rest to keep up with her speed or be left behind. Each time Moses opted to stay back with his pistols out and his turret up to survey the fight and take potshots from a distance. At times he worried if maybe he was supposed to be in the middle of the fight learning to trade blow for blow, but his strategy was working. There wasn’t a melee where he didn’t manage to shoot two or three through their wrists with the flechette pistol, ducking low where the belly couldn’t protect them while his turret provided valuable support across the field on fronts where the enemy seemed to be making a push against the thin line of his team mates. In the single instance they did break through the line after Maxwell and a few of the men Moses had grabbed from the street went down, Moses was there to hurl himself into the fight and push them back, holding the line long enough for Kyra to come up behind his opponents and cut them down while he held their front with his sword.
In between matches Kyra wandered amongst the melees, taking notes, so she said, while the rest of the team got to know one another.
Marloque was the twenty some year old son of a Settlement prospector from Quinn city who’d signed up when fifth battalion was being formed. “I ran away from home to join. Father said no son of his would fight for the bloody corporations, and, well, I just wanted to see a little more than the city had to offer. Figured this would be the only way. Not much on the planet, after all.” He was a smiling youth, one of the rare few without a beard, but to make up for it he kept a wild mustache that must have spent as much time in his mouth as out of it while he had his helmet on. While the helmet was off he was always twirling at the mustache with his fingers. Marloque had been there for five days, and the extra time he’d spent training was obvious in the way he handled his sword.
“How come fifth battalion’s been here longer than ours?” The man with the knife on his chest asked in that baritone voice.
“Battalions are called up by county.” Marloque replied. “The Battalion’s from the city were just formed faster.”
“Then how come you’re stuck with us?”
“Well, my fine friend.” Marloque said. He swaggered as he put a hand on the baritone’s shoulder. “I was to occupied with your sister to fall in when the Battalions were getting organized. So here I am, while your sister is at home, alone and pining.”
The baritone introduced himself later as Pete Small. A ridiculous name since he was taller and broader than Maxwell, though when he took his helm off to eat he revealed small dark eyes in a small bald head that seemed to scowl perpetually. The knife on his chest had a name. “It’s my Suthera. My sweet one. Got her on the fast water.” They couldn’t get much from him except an occasional grunt, and, when they asked him why he’d joined he told a long disjoined story about a fight between two whores at the brothel he either lived at or worked at, and something about a mug of beer he’d been unable to buy, and how the whole stinking lot could be swallowed up by the “fast waters” and be sold by the river boss. Whatever his dark history, and clearly slow wits, he was brutal on the melee field. He knew how to use the armor’s enhanced strength to great effect. Kyra usually kept him with her, letting him crash through the enemy so that she could dart through to take them from behind.
The others were all men who’d bested Kyra in the dueling pits. A fencing instructor named Durigg from a small hamlet nearer the river than Carmichael who wanted to see the real thing and “To rewrite the fencing manuals for this kind of warfare.” Why anyone read fencing manuals in the first place, Moses couldn’t see except that now he was glad they had. Three of the others were homestead boys like himself, Ray Bobgan, JD Ainsworth, and Chanthan, whom everyone decided to call Chan. All of them were strong, one was there for the pay, one for the cause, and the other because “my mother is a bitch.” Edwin Casana’s wife had just died, and Jonathon Dyrland’s father couldn’t remember his son’s name anymore. “Figured it couldn’t hurt to join up, seein as he won’t know to cry or anything. And We could use the money. Got to pay for someone to take care of him, now that Ma’s gettin older.”
The two men whom moses grabbed off of the street made a good account of themselves, although clearly the poorer of the thirteen fighters, with the exception of Maxwell who could not seem to make it through a melee without losing his hands and was beginning to get discouraged about it.
“How’s a man supposed to fight without his hands?” He asked Moses when they were alone at the edge of the pit. “Oh sure, we might win the melees, and i helped, and that’s great and all, but how’s a man supposed to fight without his hands? They won’t spare me just because I’ve got just stumps where they used to be. They’ll cut me down, and even if I do live, what’s a man supposed to do without hands!”
Kyra’s strategy stopped working just after the break for lunch. The other teams began to deploy their own rear guard, like Moses, and the tactic of rushing forward to get behind and slaughter them from every angle became a really great way to commit tactical suicide. Moses tried to keep the enemy reserve gunner busy with his own bursts of fire, but it quickly became clear that the balance was evening against Kyra’s commandos.
They lost their sixth melee and Kyra flew into a rage. “How are we supposed to stay alive on a battlefield where we’re outnumbered when we can’t hold our own in a melee!” She shouted.
“Maybe if some little lass wouldn’t go sprinting in like she had a death wish every round we’d last a little longer. ” Maxwell growled.
“Maybe if you’d start to pull your weight and push through so we can get their back people we wouldn’t have this problem.” She snapped back.
In the next round she yelled for Moses to follow her as she charged and Moses obeyed. He felt the aches along his sword arm sing as he and Maxwell took on the same opponent, knocking him out in as little as three seconds while Kyra danced with another opponent amidst a haze of bright red cation bolts. After four seconds a reserve gunner shot Maxwell’s hands and Maxwell tried to back out, but someone appeared behind him and by the time thirty seconds were up their whole team was dead.
No one spoke as they waited for their next round and Kyra fumed and brooded as though the whole world were against her. The next time the shield went up and the guns began to thunder Moses grabbed Maxwell’s arm and told him to stay back with him. “Aim for their hands.” He shouted,and the two sprayed fire at the enemies trying to force their way through the weakened center. Kyra found herself alone facing three opponents and Moses was pretty sure he could hear her cursing as she dueled with them, her sword a blur as she snapped it
in their faces and aimed for their exposed hands, a strategy rare for her. “Together.” Moses shouted to Maxwell, and the two trained their guns on the men harrying Kyra cutting them down one by one.
Kyra’s shield failed before they could take down the last one and his body ended up falling on top of her even as she went down. The two downs left a huge gap in the center of the field which Moses had never seen before. He hit Maxwell’s shield with a fist. “Keep them busy!” He shouted, then hurled himself through the gap, holstering his pistols and unsheathing his sword as he ran. The opposing team’s gunner wasn’t looking when he emerged from the gap. By the time he noticed he had a half a second to drop his pistols and go for his sword and by that time Moses had him pinned by all three javelins and was sawing into the shield’s power source with his sword. The shield popped, and Moses owned the entire back field.
“You left me alone in the center!” Kyra shouted when the match was over.
“And we won.” Moses said. Kyra had her helmet off, the better to glare her displeasure into Moses’ visor, revealing in the process a very young girl, perhaps not even twenty, with a shock of short cropped brilliant red hair that looked like nothing Moses had ever seen on a person before.
Moses left his own helmet on as she glared at him. He found it deeply disconcerting to be yelled at by a girl, his only experience with women being with Lisa and his mother, neither of whom were ones to rage as Kyra was. He’d never even seen Lisa angry, just discouraged or frustrated, and his mother’s anger was a slow smoldering thing that made his father walk on his tiptoes. He hoped the faceless mask of the helm would disconcert the girl in front of him a little while he held his peace. He knew he was right. That was enough.
“I would be dead out there!” She said with a shove to his chest. He said nothing. “Next time give me some support.” She pouted, then walked away to watch the other melees and “take her notes”.
“Girlfriend’s unhappy.” Maxwell said.
Moses gave his comment no answer, but when he’d watched Kyra stomp away he pulled off his own helm in order to breath. “You did good in the back.” Moses told him.
Maxwell wiggled his fingers. “Got to keep these this time.”
The leadership shifted after that. Kyra would still shout her orders and rush in, but they looked to Moses to confirm them, and he re-arranged their teams, strengthening their weak right side by switching some of the less experienced fighters with some of the better ones. He pulled Maxwell to the back and began to charge in to support flagging fronts when it looked like one was about to collapse, filling the gaps in their line as they formed. Pitched battles, he began to realize, were less about the talent of individual fighters, than the overall strategy. Their record flattened, taking another win, and then a loss after one team decided to try fighting with only their pistols, leaving two men up front to slow Kyra and the rest of their team while they picked them off from the rear. The strategy was devastating for both lines, and extremely fast. By the end only Maxwell and Moses were left facing three opponents across the field, and Moses was only able to take one with him. Maxwell never stood a chance. After that, the victories began to pile up again.
“Yes but if they try to do that again.” Durigg was saying of the two man line team. “I think we ought to all go on the offensive. Our pistols don’t do that much to shields. It’s the swords and Javelins that really eat through them. Pistols are more for taking hand shots.”
“But they won’t do it again. They lost almost their whole team with that gambit. Anybody with half a brain will realize it won’t work on the field. We’re shock troops, we do hand to hand.” Moses said.
“So long as we’ve hand’s to go with.” Maxwell said gloomily.
“A hands a hands a hand.” Pete said, as though it were all that needed to be said. Silence greeted the cryptic phrase until Marloque asked if Pete thought the pocket knife on his chest was going to be able to cut through a man’s armor. Pete only grunted as though in acknowledgement and turned away from the group, apparently unsure of his answer, and therefore unwilling to give it, though possibly he hadn’t understood.
“Officer.” Dyrland said, and everyone turned to see the Lieutenant Colonel riding through the crowd of men on the back of a pitch black automata. He wore armor, like the rest of them, but had his helmet off, replaced by a stiff hat with small square green monocle that fell over one eye. Two flags rose from the automata’s flanks, each bright red with a dark “II” stenciled onto it in cloth so fine Moses thought it a pity to do little more than hang it form a flagpole when his mother could have made fine shirts from them. Two other officers in similar garb followed behind him on packmaster of their own, minus the bright red flags.
“He was watching our last fight. Off a ways behind us.” Dyrland commented.
The officer pulled up in front of the group gathered around the charging station and looked down at them. Moses could see lights flickering in the green monocle as he surveyed them.
“You are fourteenth squad.” The Lieutenant Colonel Fyker said.
“If you are so kind as to say so.” Marloque said from his seat by the charging station.
The officer frowned. “Congratulation.” He said. “You’re top of the class so far”
“Wasn’t us.” Moses said. “Kyras the one put the team together.”
“You learned the reserve trick early.” The officer replied. “I saw you. You and O’neil.”
O’neil heaved himself to his feet to stand next to Moses. “Jut followin Moses’ lead sir.” He said.
“Just watched the other melees yesterday.” Moses replied. “Didn’t take much.”
“It was smart.” The officer replied tersely. He scowled at the whole group. “You won’t need it once you’ve been combined with the gunners, but it was still smart.” He looked around, scanning his monocle over them. “Where is this Kyra?” He asked. “I’d like to hear her excuse for finding the best swords in the battalion for this team you say she put together.”
“Off taking notes.” Chan offered.
“She’s watching the other melees.” Moses said.
The officer nodded. “She always charge like she did in the last fight?”
Pete Small laughed, a sound like an earthquake when it boomed from his suit’s speakers.
“Yessah.” Moses replied.
The officer nodded again then patted his packmaster on the “neck” in front of him. “You’ll be glad for one another on the battlefield.” He said. “Alright, carry on.” The packmaster turned and the whole party of officers moved off into the crowd of men.
“Maybe we won’t be Kyra’s team after all.” Maxwell said, sitting down again.
“We’re fourteenth team.” Marloque said. “Or didn’t you hear him?”
Chapter 12: Charles // Reviewing ranks
Charles surveyed the boy that had come into his office and knew that he didn’t want this responsibility. “Why are you bringing this to me?” Charles asked.
Irenaeus had been frowning, serious and intense since he came in. “Falkye said I should talk to you about it.”
“And Mom?” Charles asked.
Irenaeus rolled his eyes. “Mom will say no, and Dad will say yes. I thought Falkye could help me get a good position but he said to talk to you.”
Charles rubbed the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. He didn’t need this, this family drama, amidst all the other political maneuvering, not to mention actual military emergencies he could do nothing about without stepping over Falkye’s command. More crash factories had landed along the Sunset River and were proving more resilient than the previous landings had been. On top of that he’d uncovered what he suspected were three attempts by the Kidawas to get their own people highly placed in the army and had to decide what, if anything, he wanted to do about it, since Falkye would certainly not do anything. The Quinns had their own people, of course, but the Kidawas would ask for the positions if he squeezed their people out and then he would
be facing the Avakoffs and every other major dynasty working on sinking their stakes into the fledgling army. If that happened he would be forced to fill every new position in their army with men more politically qualified than qualified by experience in order to satisfy the other dynasties unless he wanted to bar them from the war effort and alienate the Quinn’s true base of support. To top it all off their oldest and most productive copper mine was playing itself ou,t which meant that unless he wanted to see their war production falter he would have to replace it, and quickly, before the Kamele began to really seriously target the Marain infrastructure with their orbital arsenal. The fact that they had not yet done so still bothered him. It was the obvious move, and it hinted at a game being played he wasn’t aware of, another surprise in a war that seemed full of them. Another mystery he didn’t have time to solve in order to understand how the opportunity could be used. He sighed.
“Everyone wants to do their part.” He said, more to himself than his youngest brother.
“Everyone else has something.” Irenaeus said. “No one has been in the military. No one except great great grand-dad but he didn’t even fight. They only used hounds.”
Charles opened his eyes and studied the young man. It occurred to him that Irenaeus could be the answer to his problem with the Kidawas, but he hadn’t hoped to drag his brother into this whole charade. Everything was moving so fast. Then again, Irenaeus had asked, but, “You said us.” Charles said. “You said I could help, us, how many of you are there?”
“Four.” Irenaeus said.
“Who?” Charles had only a very vague knowledge of the circles his brother moved in. He knew he had dynasty friends, but he didn’t know who they were. There was almost a twenty year gap between the two brothers. It reminded him how young this brother was, how unready for a war. No, he couldn’t use them.
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