30


“Cain for Locke,” I said through the local communication network.
“Go for Locke,” he responded.
“Are you on the wall? I don’t see you,” I asked.
“It’s a long wall. I’m en route to your location by air ship,” he said. “We’re spread thin. I started your way as soon as Barnard reported contact.”
“If your people have any of those grenades, now is the time to use them. You can’t allow the Archangels inside the walls. They’ll be unstoppable,” I said.
“I’m calling everything we have from other parts of the city, but for now we’ll have to make do. They’re called Archangels?” he asked but didn’t wait for an answer. “All teams, deploy grenades, mortars, and whatever else we have in position. Fire at will!”
The charging Archangels spread out to avoid the worst of the defensive measures, barely slowing as the ground exploded all around them.
Then Locke’s airship swooped low. His door gunner opened fire with a chain gun that vibrated the entire ship. The noise was deafening. The craft was a helicopter with short wings where clusters of rockets hung. The pilot fired these at the Archangel assault force, possibly taking one out of the fight.
I aimed, looking for the best shot possible. One of the Union jerks pulled a slim tube from his back and aimed it at the airship hovering over his companions.
I shot him in the knee, causing him to fall and send his surface to air missile wide.
“Excellent shot, Reaper Cain,” X-37 acknowledged. “I will log it.”
“Yeah, great. What can you tell me about their armor?” I asked, moving along the wall looking for another way to help Locke, whose ship was getting hammered by the Archangels.
“My analysis suggests you can penetrate their armor with eighteen to twenty direct hits on the same spot,” X-37 said. “No armor is perfect.”
“That sounds easy,” I snorted. “Make sure Elise and the others know to just keep slamming rounds into them.”
Locke’s ship wheeled away from the fight, smoke pouring from its engines and listing badly to one side. His door gunner slouched over his now silent weapon. I thought Locke’s pilot would be able to land the brutishly ugly airship, but nothing was guaranteed. It disappeared inside the complex without crashing and exploding.
“The Archangels are falling back, possibly to regroup with reinforcements from the other Union carriers,” X-37 advised.
“Log that as a win for us,” I said. “Round one complete.”
“I’m way ahead of you, Reaper Cain. I have also included footnotes regarding your excessive use of profanity during this engagement,” X-37 said.
“I don’t remember that,” I said, looking for the next attack.
“You wouldn’t, Reaper Cain. That’s what I am here for,” X said.
I checked with Elise, Path, and Locke. The first two were uninjured and attempting to acquire ammunition from our new allies. Locke was dazed. He sounded distracted and seemed to be consoling one of his soldiers over the death of the door gunner.
“It is time to prepare for the second wave,” X-37 advised us.
“Understood, X,” Elise said. “Path is with me and he also heard you.”
“Make sure Locke and the other defenders know,” I said, looking for double the number of Archangels. I hadn’t seen the other shuttle put down, but I assumed they would bring as many friends as possible.
“CSL Locke and his companions are moving crew served machine guns from the armory to this position. They weren’t prepared for this attack, Reaper Cain, but they are very efficient once they choose a course of action,” X-37 said.
“I hope it’s enough,” I said as I saw an Archangel team moving toward us. “Listen, X, they’ve tried to rush us once—probably as a test. Now they’re creeping. Check with the locals and see if they have any night vision or infrared.”
“Of course, Reaper Cain,” X-37 said.
Locke’s voice came through my earpiece. “Thanks for the heads up. We’re going to give them a surprise.”
“Make it a good one,” I suggested.
In the last hours before dawn, it was especially dark. The Archangels moved slowly. They were professionals and trusted the superiority of their equipment. I watch them stalk closer and closer.
“Locke and his people are gutsy,” I said.
“Agreed,” X-37 said.
“Locke for all gun teams,” the CSL for General Karn broadcast. “On my mark. Three, two, one, mark!”
Mortar tubes thumped. Seconds later, flares descended slowly to the surface, lighting up no man’s land. A half dozen belt-fed machine guns opened fire, sending our own tracers into the approaching Archangels. Bright green, the Wallach streams crossed incoming lines of red Union tracers.
“Give them everything we’ve got!” Locke ordered.
Security David Howard Barnard repeated the commands for other units. The night glowed with gun fire, mortars, and shoulder-fired grenades. Smoke clouded the battlefield. When it all ended, the Archangels had either fled or been destroyed.
“Locke for Reaper Cain, do you read me? Do you think they’re gone?” the CSL asked. The tone of his voice suggested he didn’t believe his new enemies were defeated.
“They’re still out there. Make sure they don’t have another unit sneaking around the back or trying something else devious,” I warned.
“Good call, Cain. I’ll get my people on it at once,” he said.
“X, I think we owned round two. Log it. Someday I’ll rub it in the vice admiral’s face,” I said.
“Done,” X-37 responded.
Locke, David, and several other front-line commanders met with me near the main gate. Locke took the lead. I sensed that this wasn’t actually his command, but they respected him enough to let him call the shots. I thought this was something different from the formal activation of all of the army’s squad leaders to follow him.
“You need to continue strengthening the entire perimeter of the power plant complex,” I advised. “Vice Admiral Nebs wants to finish what the centipede monster started.”
“Why would he do that?” one of the men asked.
“I recommend you do not tell them the exact truth,” X-37 advised. “If I were them, I would forcibly encourage you to turn yourself in given the circumstances.”
I thought about my answer. These people deserved honesty, but it was also a very complex and dynamic situation. Having a clear enemy might be more important than having full transparency of my motives.
Locke stepped in and saved me from the moral dilemma. “It doesn’t matter. We all know what Cain and Elise did for us.”
“And you,” said the man. “They wouldn’t have been able to find that creature without your help.”
“Don’t embarrass me, Chans,” Locke said. “Let’s just keep it simple and kill the people who are trying to kill us.”
Locke pulled me aside from the others.
“Good answer,” I said.
“I’m not an idiot, Cain. I know they want you to surrender. I also doubt they will treat us gently even if you do give yourself up,” he said. “There have been two Alon invasions during my lifetime. They’re not as technologically advanced as your enemies, but I know what war is like.”
“Who or what are the Alons?” I asked.
“Two systems over,” he said, eyes glazing over at the thought of his people’s enemies. “Some people think we were all one civilization back before anyone can remember, but I don’t see how that’s possible. I’ll tell you all about it later. Right now, I think we should take one crisis at a time.”
“Agreed,” I said.
* * *
The next attack came from the air, just as I had expected. The micro fighters strafed us as the Union ground forces consolidated with their reinforcements and planned their next move. The air attacks kept us busy. We were only able to disable a few of their ships. They didn’t have a lot of firepower but were also hard to hit as fast and small as they were.
The Union ground troops made another run at the gate. I scanned the sky for what I knew was coming.
“You’re making me nervous,” Elise said.
“Phase three is going to be a high-altitude, low opening assault,” I said. “I’m not sure how many Archangels they have, but I think they’ve saved something nasty for us.”
Locke and his defenders maintained a steady stream of fire at the ground troops. He even managed to find vehicles with surface-to-air rockets that were keeping the micro fighters honest.
I sensed the frustration of the gun crews. What they didn’t understand was the level of technology and the skill of these pilots. The men and women of Wallach were actually doing a decent job, even though they hadn’t shot one of the ships down yet—only winged them and driven them out of the fight.
Something came out of the sky. I counted the seconds before the parachute deployed and noticed with satisfaction that my estimation had been correct. What surprised me was the size of the parachute.
“What the hell is that?” Elise demanded.
“Could be an armored vehicle,” I said, but I was distracted because three of the dropships that had landed in the forest rose into the air and raced forward. Archangels and other Union soldiers hung from the rails, ready to hit the ground running.
This was the big offensive. They were determined to win and were pulling out all the stops.
“I blame you,” Elise said, pointing at me, then she raced to intercept the war machine about to touch down inside the walls. The closer it came to landing, the easier it was to see it was a lot like the Presidential Guards, except that it was more than just an exoskeleton. The fully functional battle mech smashed a small crater in the ground when it landed.
The Union death machine was five meters tall and supported twin chain guns on its shoulders. In one hand was a hammer that looked more than capable of smashing apart the front gate, and in the other hand was a double-edged blade.
“That looks a lot like your Reaper blade but bigger,” X-37 said. “My recommendation is to go for the soft kill.”
“That would be fantastic if I had anything capable of sinking it or blowing the ground out from underneath it,” I said, looking around for one of the surface-to-air rockets and trying to calculate whether or not it had enough blast power to get the job done.
Three of the crew-served machine-gun crews turned their weapons toward the new threat, which allowed one of the assaulting dropships to slip through the perimeter untouched.
Wallach tracer rounds screamed into the Union mech as it sent a glowing red barrage back in return. On another part of the wall, a pair of the Archangels climbed up and began battling the outgunned defenders. The defense of the Wallach power complex was coming apart.
Elise, Path, and I spread out, but all headed toward the same objective—stopping the five-meter-tall war machine that was wreaking havoc.
I stopped for a downed Wallach soldier and dragged him behind cover. He groaned in pain and held his wound, but that was the best I could do for him. He’d have to self-triage.
I lost track of Elise and Path in the smoke and flying debris. The occasional tracer round flashed near me, illuminating the dust all around its path. Near the Union mech, I found two more Wallach soldiers who needed help and carried them one at a time to their medics.
“We need to bomb that thing!” one of the medics shouted as he applied a pressure bandage to a badly injured soldier.
“We have a strike bomber inbound,” Locke replied, his voice steady over the radio. “But I’d rather not use that much ordnance danger close.”
Danger close was a term I remembered well from my time in the Union infantry. It meant firing on your own position, basically.
I moved among the wounded, stealing their grenades. Elise arrived a second later from another gap between buildings. I tossed her two grenades. “You know what to do.”
“Centipede,” she said.
“Something like that. At least this one won’t have poisonous critters all over it,” I said, already jogging toward the enemy.
“Yeah, it just has chain guns and a big-ass sword,” she answered, then moved away from me.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be the one that tried to jump on its back or the one to lure it away. Both jobs were dangerous, and I thought Elise was pushing her luck. She had the spirit and natural talent to augment her experimental biology, but this was war and she wasn’t actually a soldier. She could spar with Path for a thousand years and not be ready for this.
We tracked the advance of the mech without actually seeing it.
“The mech is clearing the way to the main lifts,” I broadcast. “If Union troops gain access to the lower levels, it’s game over.”
“Understood,” Locke responded.
Elise and Path also acknowledged my radio traffic.
The explosions and constant gunfire of the metal monster were hard to miss even if it was a street or two over. I thought I was going to get a crack at it, but when I turned the corner, I ran into a squad of Union soldiers. They weren’t the Archangels, but they had heavy gear and seemed fresh.
“It’s the Reaper!” the squad leader shouted.
I tried to shoot him in the throat but missed as he shifted positions and returned fire. His squad reacted quickly, taking good positions of cover and catching me in a deadly triangulation of fire.
After dropping and rolling, I scrambled behind a destroyed vehicle and sprinted. I jumped, pushed up the wall near the vehicle, and landed near the top of the vehicle’s cargo compartment. From there, I went up and over and jumped down into the middle of the Union squad. Pistol in one hand and my Reaper blade extended from the other, I started killing.
One fired at me. I dropped and rolled. His rounds caromed off one of his squad mates. I spun in a tight circle and sliced off one of his feet, ignoring him when he fell screaming. The other one quickly fixed a weapons malfunction and aimed.
I was a half second faster, shooting him several times center mass. His armor stopped the rounds, but he was knocked back, taken out of the fight for at least a few moments. He’d survive but be in a lot of pain. If he kept coming, I’d have to kill the man and I had better things to do right now.
I moved on, looking for the mech and Elise. The squad leader was screaming at his men and pulling them back together. Before long, I would be fighting the survivors and probably the reinforcements.
“My analysis of combat radio traffic suggests that Elise has located the Union mech,” X-37 said. “My recommendation is to hurry. She will need your help.”
When I came around the corner, I saw the mech but no Elise.
“I believe her stealth cloak is fully functional,” X-37 reminded me.
The mech saw me and opened fire with its chain guns. Even though the tracers were every ten or twenty bullets, the stream of glowing red ordnance looked like a continuous laser beam. The deadly stream slashed through the building next to me. I ran, and chain gun fire chased me, throwing chunks of concrete everywhere.
“I’m up,” Elise grunted over our comm link. “One grenade jammed into this thing’s gears. Take that, you asshole!”
An explosion knocked the giant killing machine off its feet.
“I really hope Elise jumped before that happened,” I said.
“I’m glad you care,” Elise said, but she sounded hurt and breathless.
“Locke, call off your strike bomber. The mech is down. Like a turtle on its back,” I shouted.
“Copy that,” Locke said. “I didn’t want to start saturation bombing the power plant we’re trying to repair.”
“It’s getting up!” Elise shouted.
I watched it face her, finally able to see where she was. The dirt and smoke hampered the cloak’s effectiveness. Limping forward on a damaged leg, it twisted its metal torso to get its sole remaining gun to aim at Elise.
“Legs,” X-37 suggested.
I charged, my blade arcing through the air as I built momentum. The legs were too thick to sever, but there were hydraulic cables exposed from the explosion Elise had caused. I slashed madly until the mech went down and didn’t get up.
“You should open the cockpit and kill the pilot,” X-37 suggested.
“Maybe later,” I said. “There are a lot of other enemies who need attention.”
Military troop transports, commercial trucks, and taxi cabs flooded the area, distorting regular troops, militia, and armed civilians.
“Elise, I’m coming to you. Are you injured?” I said, weaving my way through an increasingly chaotic battle.
“I’m a little banged up, Reaper,” she said.
“Path, report,” I demanded.
“I’m with Locke. We’re rolling back the last of the Union troops,” Path answered.
“Are you wounded?” I asked.
“Yes.”
The sword saint admitted to feeling pain. As soon as I checked Elise, we went looking for him, only to find him gluing a wound shut with no outward emotion whatsoever.
“X,” I said, “Log round three as a win for us.”
“Of course, Reaper Cain,” X-37 said, calm as ever.