Jon kept stepping backwards, arms raised protectively, trying to fend off the assault. Desperately, he lowered his guard and fired his rifle. The bullet sparked off the thurible, not even slowing its spin, and whizzed off into the distance. The cardinal kept closing the gap, casting out flame and red-hot ashes. He was so fast. Jon couldn't aim.
His back hit enemy troops. They did not attack him, merely formed a barrier. There was no way out. George was fighting nearby, trying to cast off a dozen enemy soldiers. He was a whale trapped among sharks. He could not help Jon now.
I'm cornered, Jon realized.
The cardinal realized it too. His rheumy eyes lit up like more embers. He stormed forward, shrieking. His jaw unhinged, fell lower and lower, soon dangling halfway down his chest, revealing a chasm full of sharp teeth, rows and rows of fangs leading into a red gullet. Jon thrust his rifle, prepared to fire into that hellmouth. But the jaws snapped shut, shattering the steel barrel like a branch.
"What the hell are you?" Jon cried.
He dropped his mangled rifle. It had fired its last bullet. The cardinal swooped toward him, jaws wide.
A cry rose from behind.
Enemy soldiers tumbled back.
George was barreling through them, twice their size.
"Jon!" the giant cried, tossed off two enemy soldiers, and pointed. "Get to the mecha!"
Jon looked and saw it. An enemy mecha. The colossal machine was standing there in the field, immobile. The steelglass canopy had shattered on the chest. A Bahayan hung inside from straps, dead.
He looked away from the Red Cardinal for only a second.
That was enough.
The cardinal seized his chance and lunged at Jon.
Twisted, knobby fingers tightened around Jon's arm. They crushed him like a vise. Crimson fingernails punched through Jon's armor and pieced the skin beneath.
He howled in pain.
The creature's jaws widened, bathing Jon with the reek of death.
Jon roared, swung his fist, and pounded the old man's head.
The cardinal grunted. The talon-like fingers released Jon. The beast snapped his jaws like a piranha. Jon pulled his hand back, nearly losing his fingers.
He turned and ran. The cardinal laughed behind him. Jon raced through the opening George had created among the enemy troops.
The Bahayan troops were closing in fast. They dared not attack Jon—perhaps they had orders to leave him for the cardinal. But they were leaping over George, swarming like wolves over a bison, pulling him down into their midst. The giant roared, hurling them off, only for more to dogpile.
Jon wanted to run to his friend. But he was unarmed. He needed that mecha.
With the cardinal hot in pursuit, Jon reached the mecha and began climbing the humanoid machine.
The cardinal grabbed his leg. Jon kicked wildly, freed himself, and scurried into the cockpit—a cavity inside the machine's chest.
The dead Bahayan, the original operator of the mecha, still hung there. A grenade or shell must have shattered the canopy. Shrapnel and glass shards bristled across the dead man.
The cardinal shrieked and leaped toward the cockpit.
Jon unstrapped the dead Bahayan and shoved the corpse out. The body thumped into the cardinal, knocking the creature onto the ground.
Jon replaced the dead Bahayan at the controls. There were four tubes to stick his limbs in. He thrust his arms and legs into place. Controls snapped shut around his limbs, tightening like gripping hands. Sensors descended and wrapped around his head.
Suddenly Jon felt twenty feet tall. He was not just Jon anymore. Not a mere man.
He became a mighty machine.
* * * * *
The colossal body awakened.
Jon's nerves tingled, connecting to sensors across the machinery. He could feel everything. Stones beneath his metal feet. Wind against his gargantuan head. The weight of cannons mounted on his shoulders.
The mecha felt like his own body. He pulsed with energy, towering and inhumanly strong.
Earth had some mechas in its arsenal, smaller ones, barely larger than the men inside. Jon had always wanted to try one. Now he got to operate something much bigger and stronger.
How do I fire the machine guns on the shoulders? he thought.
The Red Cardinal rose from the charred ground, shoving off the dead Bahayan. The old man swung his thurible.
From up here inside the mecha, the cardinal seemed so small. But the cardinal began to levitate. Fire rippled and coiled around him. His red cloak billowed. The creature rose upon wings of flame, and hellfire haloed around his brow. From holy man, he became a demon, and his eyes burned bright with rage.
He swung the thurible at Jon.
Jon raised his arm. Motors hummed. And the mecha raised its arm too—a massive metal arm, as wide as a tree trunk.
The mechanical limb blocked the thurible. Sparks showered, and embers flew through the air.
Inside the tube encircling his arm, Jon made a fist.
With whirring gears, the mecha formed a metal fist the size of an anvil, and Jon drove it into his enemy.
The mechanical fist slammed into the elderly man.
The cardinal flew and hit the ground.
The blow should have shattered every bone in his body. But amazingly, the cardinal rose to his feet. Cracks spread across the ground around him. Cloak billowing like demon wings, the cardinal hovered upon swirling fire. He came at Jon again, mouth open in a furious roar, fangs gleaming.
Jon swung his arm. The mecha was a big, slow brute, its every movement sluggish. Gears whirred and motors hummed. The mechanical arm swung, but it failed to hurt the cardinal. The old man caught the metal limb, wrapped claws around its pistons and pipes, and began scurrying up the forearm.
The cardinal reached the elbow, kicked off the heavy joint, and came flying toward the cockpit in the chest.
The protective canopy was missing. Strapped into the mecha's chest, Jon was exposed. He could only stare in dread as the fiery demon lunged toward him.
The cardinal leaped onto Jon, gripped him, and shrieked. His eyes blazed with fire, and his teeth thrust like a hundred little daggers.
Jon moved his arm. Dented gears creaked, snapped back into place, whirred. He gripped the cardinal with fingers the size of baseball bats, then ripped him off like a leech.
For a brief moment, holding the cardinal at arm's length, Jon allowed himself to survey the battle. The carnage spread around him and the cardinal. Earthling and Bahayan forces were clashing with blood and fire and metal. Some turned to watch the duel, not interfering. They knew this must remain a match between two—a man engulfed in metal and a man engulfed in flame.
Good versus evil? Jon thought. No. That doesn't exist in this war. We're both killers. Both monsters. There is metal here and there is fire. There is no grace. But I must survive today. Because Maria is pure. She's the only pure thing I found in this goddamn war. And she makes life worth living.
If he could not proudly fight for his army, even for his planet—he could fight for her.
I must live to see you again, Maria. I am not good. But you are. And I fight for you.
Jon tossed the man—or whatever this creature was—onto the ground. He still didn't know how to work the goddamn shoulder guns. But he didn't need them. He raised his metal leg, prepared to stomp the cardinal. That should do the job nicely.
The cardinal rose to his feet.
The mecha's foot came down.
The cardinal grabbed it.
The mecha was bigger than a tank. Its foot alone probably weighed several tons, and its motors were whirring, exerting all their force, trying to crush the cardinal. The mecha should have crushed the man like a bug.
But the cardinal stayed standing, gripping the metal foot above his head. The frail old man howled, yanked the mecha's foot, and tossed the gargantuan machine like a rag doll.
The mecha flew across the battlefield, a meter above the ground. The enorm
ous machine drove through an Earthling platoon like a bowling ball through pins. Jon screamed, jangling inside the cockpit. He saw his fellow soldiers. Saw their terror. Saw them try to flee. Saw them splatter against the machine.
Their screams died in Jon's ears.
Then the mecha hit the ground. It plowed forward, digging a deep furrow. Jon dangled from the straps, coughing, the breath knocked out of him.
The mecha finally came to a stop, lying on its side.
Nearby, the cardinal laughed. A sound like snapping bones.
Jon moved his limbs, and gears screeched. Shedding dirt, dripping blood, the mecha rose to a crouch.
With a roar, Jon lunged at the cardinal—and the mecha lunged with him.
The Red Cardinal was already leaping toward him on an arch of fire.
Man and mecha slammed together.
The world exploded.
* * * * *
Metal bent and snapped and fury blazed.
The cardinal shrieked inside a ball of fire. Yet the flames did not consume him.
His claws lashed in a fury, emerging from the fire like the claws of demons.
Jon grabbed him with metal hand like a lifting clamp. But the cardinal kept swinging his claws, reaching into the broken canopy. A claw caught Jon across the chest, carving open his armor, cutting his skin. Jon screamed and leaned back, trying to dodge those lashing talons.
He's like a goddamn living chainsaw, Jon thought.
"What the hell are you?" he shouted.
The cardinal's sleeves had rolled back in the battle. Dark tattoos shone across his arms, shaped like coiling serpents. They glowed with black light. Some kind of sorcery? Alien tech? Was there a difference?
Whenever the cardinal snapped his teeth or lashed his claws, those tattoos glowed more brightly. Or perhaps more darkly. Jon couldn't explain it. But somehow those tattoos were emitting darkness.
They're the source of his power, Jon thought.
He winced, then loosened his grip on the cardinal, allowing him deeper into the mecha's chest turret.
The claws sank into Jon's shoulder, cracking armor, cutting flesh.
Though he screamed in pain, Jon waited until the cardinal's grip on him was secure.
The cardinal's arm was now exposed before Jon—skinny, bony, covered in the glowing tattoos.
Jon had no knife, no free hands. His limbs were all strapped into the mecha's control tubes.
As the cardinal gripped him, Jon lowered his head. And like an animal, he bit into the cardinal's arm, then pulled his head back, ripping off the skin.
Liquid filled Jon's mouth. Not blood. After months of war, he knew the coppery, hot taste of blood. This was something cold, slimy, fungal. He spat. Shreds of rubbery skin splattered the mecha's control panel. Bits of the tattoos still glowed on the scraps of skin. But as Jon watched, the glow dimmed. The tattoos squirmed like halved worms, then shriveled up and vanished with plumes of smoke.
The cardinal, his arm mangled, screamed.
The fire engulfing him died. His jaw returned to normal size. His claws retracted. He seemed even older now. Ancient and decrepit, barely alive at all. If a man could truly live to be four hundred, this one looked it.
He still had ink on his arm, but the tattoos had been broken, their strange circuitry shorted. The remaining ink twitched, glowed, dimmed again, unable to activate its power.
The cardinal fled.
He leaped off the mecha, landed on the ground with a thud. His leg snapped, and he screamed.
Just an old man, Jon thought, staring from inside the mecha. Not a demon after all.
Jon ran after him, his mecha's feet pounding the earth. But two other mechas, Bahayans inside them, stomped toward him. Machine guns swiveled on their shoulders.
Jon cursed and leaped aside. His mecha hit the ground hard. Bullets whizzed overhead. A few pinged off his mecha's body, thankfully missing the cockpit.
Hanging inside the hollow chest, Jon stared toward the Red Cardinal. The wretch fled behind his troops. His right arm was a bleeding mess. But tattoos still shone on the other arm, perhaps still granting him some power. The old man drew a wide circle with his hand, and a luminous ring appeared.
A portal, Jon thought. It looked like a smaller version of the wormhole Jon had flown through to reach Bahay.
The cardinal turned toward Jon, ringed with fiery light. He stared across the battlefield, his beady eyes flaming with hatred.
"Jon!" the Red Cardinal called. "I will find Maria. She will scream so beautifully before she dies."
Then the wounded man leaped through the portal. The ring of fire vanished.
* * * * *
The enemy mechas thundered towered Jon, their feet shaking the battlefield, their machine guns hot.
Cannons boomed.
Explosions blazed across the two mechas. Their canopies shattered. The Bahayans inside burned.
Jon, still inside his own mecha, spun to see Earth's last tanks rumbling toward him.
"Wait, hold your fire!" he shouted. "I'm an Earthling!"
The tanks aimed their cannons at him.
Jon twisted around, pulled hard, and finally managed to free his arms from the controls. He waved.
"I'm an Earthling! Hold your fire!"
The tanks lowered their cannons. Jon breathed in relief.
He looked around him. With the blimps burning, with the mechas destroyed, and with the cardinal gone, the enemy morale had shattered. The last few Santelmos dimmed and floated away like wayward balloons. Already the Bahayan infantry was pulling back from Camp Apollo.
At least what remained of it.
Some Earthlings began to cheer. "Victory, victory!"
But most were not cheering, even as the enemy retreated. The Luminous Army had failed to capture the camp, perhaps. But they had dealt a devastating blow.
Hundreds of corpses covered the land. Maybe thousands. Wounded soldiers crawled through the devastation, burnt, mangled, some crying out for their mothers.
"George," Jon whispered.
He leaped from his mecha, abandoning the huge machine, and ran toward where he had last seen George.
The giant was lying in a pool of blood.
Jon's heart shattered.
"George!"
He ran faster, leaping over corpses. Wounded men and women lay around him, begging for help. Jon kept running, ignoring them, hating himself for it.
He ran toward George and knelt by his friend.
"George? George!" Jon grabbed him, shook him.
George was covered in blood. For a horrible instant, Jon was sure he was dead. But then the giant groaned and sat up.
"I'm fine, I'm fine." He winced. "Just got the wind knocked out of me."
Jon looked at his friend's armor. Several bullets had hit the chest, denting the metal. Every one of those hits must have felt like a god's hammer.
George would be bruised. Maybe he had cracked ribs. Maybe other injuries too. But he was alive, and he was even able to stand up.
"We won the day," Jon said. "But the cost is so great. I don't know if we can recover."
"Jon, is it true?" George asked. "That the cardinal is your ancestor?"
"I don't know," Jon said. "He's a master manipulator. That's probably how he became the leader of this world. Even if it's true, I don't care." He hugged George. "I'm not leaving my friends."
George pulled him into a crushing embrace. They stood together, two friends in a sea of death and despair.
Chapter Ten
The Art of War
Maria hummed softly, sweeping the floor of Maison de la Terre. "The Last Rose of Summer" still lingered on her lips, a sad song of moonlight from a time when hope had shone brightly.
The officers had left the dining hall. The band was gone, the music silent aside from the last notes that Maria still hummed. The chandeliers were dark, and only a few scattered lamps illuminated the hall. Outside the windows, the cooks stood on the grass, smoking cigarettes. Every few mo
ments, they burst out laughing, perhaps over a dirty joke Maria could not hear through the glass.
It was a quiet time. A peaceful time. Maria was busy sweeping the floors, clearing the tables, replacing the tablecloths, tiding up the entire banquet hall. It would probably take her all night. Buddy had told her she would have to wash the dishes too. It was backbreaking work. But it beat singing on stage for a crowd of killers. It beat wandering the shantytowns. It beat bullets and bloodshed in the jungle.
She had the dining hall to herself. Maria could almost imagine that it was a palace, that all this splendor—the oak staircase, the chandeliers, the glittering goblets—was hers. That she was a princess in a palace.
But no, she was no Cinderella, and she did not crave to be a princess. She would give all the wonders in the galaxy to be home again.
As she swept the floor, Maria remembered her little home in San Luna, her village between the mountains and sea. As a girl, she would sweep the floor of her bamboo hut, and she had always enjoyed the task. Mother would be cooking chicken adobo in the cast iron pot, and Father would be husking rice outside, singing old songs. Maria had found joy in those times of toil. There had been honesty to that labor, a sense of purpose draped with the love of her family.
Her parents lay burned in the husks of the hut.
They had no faces.
Maria ran through the fire, screaming.
She paused, clutching her broomstick, and closed her eyes.
Don't remember that part, she told herself. Don't remember the fire and blood. Remember the good times. Remember your parents as they looked in life, not the faceless bodies among the ashes.
"Candy! Candy!"
A door banged open. Buddy rushed into the dining hall.
The maitre d' still wore his tuxedo, even this late at night. Maria wondered if he slept in it. He stomped toward her, coattails fluttering.
"I'm sorry, Buddy!" Maria took a step back. "I know I shouldn't have sung a Bahayan song. I should have sung just Earth music. But I think they liked it, they—"
Earthling's War (Soldiers of Earthrise Book 3) Page 8
