by Peter Nealen
Well, at least they’re not invulnerable. If he’d had more time to reflect, Gaumarus might have been surprised at the thought. But he reached Tillens and Verlot and started helping the sergeant drag his friend toward the scorched wreck of their halftrack.
Something he couldn’t see rushed at them with a vicious, dopplered buzzing, and then Tillens shuddered as he was struck with a wet thwack. A moment later he was convulsing, screaming in pure animal agony, as blood started to leak from his mouth and nose. He wasn’t just in pain; he was squirming and thrashing as if something was eating him from the inside.
Maybe something was. There were other horror stories about M’tait weapons, more stories that he’d always taken to be embellished exaggerations.
Verlot had let go of Tillens and grabbed Gaumarus by the arm. “He’s dead!” the Sergeant croaked harshly. He ripped Gaumarus away from Tillens as the big man shuddered the last of his life away and shoved him hard toward the wrecked vehicle. “Get to cover, now!”
Gaumarus stumbled toward the hulk, fumbling for a reload with his free hand. Behind him, he heard another buzz, followed by a wet thwack and a grunt. He dove past the ramp and into the scorched troop compartment, falling on what was left of Mertens’s remains, and pivoted around, starting to panic again as his coilgun barrel jammed against a charred seat. He fought to bring it around, and only once he got the weapon trained on the back hatch did he see Verlot.
The sergeant was quaking on the ground, his teeth gritted together, blood seeping between his lips. He thrashed in agony, but kept his mouth tightly closed, his eyes fixed on Gaumarus, refusing to make a sound even as the awful weapon killed him as slowly and cruelly as possible.
Gaumarus could only stare helplessly at the man who had been the terror of his days in the PDF. Strangely, he found that here, at the end, he saw no condemnation or sourness in Sergeant Verlot’s eyes. There was only an intensity that had always been there, but now was transformed into something else. If a man’s expression could be said to speak, Verlot’s did, in those final moments of his life. He didn’t dare make a sound, but with his eyes, he ordered Gaumarus to stay where he was and not to give up.
Then the writhing metal worm that had hit him burst out through his throat with a spray of blood. Verlot choked, spewing blood out of his mouth, and thrashed for a few more seconds before going still.
Gaumarus realized he hadn’t quite reloaded. He still had the replacement drum in his hand, and he hastily swapped out. Dragging himself as close to the enclosed driver’s compartment as possible, trying to ignore the stench of burning and death, he crammed himself into a corner and aimed the coilgun at the back hatch. He could see the shadows of movement outside, and he knew that the M’tait knew he was inside. They were gathering. Sooner or later, they would fire a bunch of those metal worms inside, or simply turn one of the bigger war machines loose on the halftrack.
A shadow moved closer and he ripped off a burst at it, the snarling report of the coilgun deafening in the enclosed space of the halftrack. If not for his still mostly intact helmet, he was sure he would have been deafened. The shadow retreated a little, but it did not disappear.
More harsh voices buzzed and clashed outside. A shadowy, smoky beam swept the inside of the hatch, burning into the armor plating. Shadows moved closer.
They were coming.
8
A resounding boom thundered outside, and a M’tait voice scratched and buzzed. Maybe it was his imagination, but Gaumarus almost thought the voice sounded surprised. Then another series of booms rolled across the Plain, and he saw more movement outside. A M’tait body, pale fluid leaking from a massive crater gouged in its armor, fell in front of the ramp, spasming and shaking.
At first, Gaumarus couldn’t move. He just stayed in his tiny, fragile redoubt, his coilgun pointed at the hatch, trying not to shake so hard that he wouldn’t be able to hit anything that appeared in the hatchway. He didn’t think for a moment that it was safe to venture out. A smoky, hazy beam struck the metal near the hatch coaming, making the remainder of the interior paint smoke and crackle, validating his assessment. The harsh buzzing of those terrible, flying metal worms that had killed Tillens and Verlot snarled around the wreck of the halftrack, and Gaumarus shrank as far back into his corner as he could.
Shadows moved outside, and he heard more of the distorted M’tait speech. Then another boom sounded, deafeningly close, and a M’tait staggered into view, sweeping its beam weapon through the compartment, leaving a redly glowing line in the armor just above Gaumarus’s head. There was yet another thunderous report, and the M’tait fell, a hole as big around as Gaumarus’s thumb blasted through its head.
He didn’t know what was out there. He had no idea what could hurt the M’tait like that, but it didn’t sound like any PDF weapon he knew of. He kept his place, his coilgun’s muzzle visibly wavering, his finger resting on the trigger.
The faint clicking, hissing, chirping speech was almost too quiet for his abused hearing to pick it up, and when part of a head slid around the hatch coaming to look inside, he almost blew it off. Only his own nerves and the quavering of his weapon, along with the head’s owner’s reflexes, saved him. A crackling burst of coilgun fire tore into the blackened turf beyond.
The clicking words that no human throat could pronounce came louder that time, and a long-fingered, clawed hand, covered in short, bristly hairs, appeared in the hatchway, waving. No, not waving. Signing. It was making the sign for “friend” in the Provenian-indig sign language.
He sagged back against the corner, letting his coilgun droop. He was exhausted enough that it hit the deck with a loud bang, even as he started to shake. The head appeared again, four completely black eyes peering out of that vaguely arachnoid face.
The indig ducked to get through the hatchway, moving quickly and surely, turning to look back and point the large-bore lever-action repeater in his hands back out the opening. Clearly, the threat was not gone, just regrouping. The indig hissed and clicked out the hatchway.
Suddenly relieved, Gaumarus was able to start to really listen. He couldn’t ever speak the indig languages, but by being around Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff and the other scouts, he had come to understand a little of theirs. And he could pick out a few words, but not enough to tell what this particular indig fighter was saying.
A moment later, another indig appeared, also carrying a rifle. This one moved carefully through the wreckage to the back and leaned over Gaumarus.
[Are you hurt, my friend?] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff asked.
Gaumarus knew that he was; at the very least he had a concussion. But none of his injuries were so bad that he couldn’t move. [I’m all right] he replied. [What’s happening?]
[We managed to surprise the invaders] was the reply. [But it will not last. We must withdraw quickly. Are any more of your section alive?]
[I don’t know] he answered. [I don’t think so.] If there had been, Verlot would have found them. Unless he’d just managed to find Gaumarus and Tillens first, and hadn’t had a chance to search more widely.
The first indig hissed something, lifting that big repeater to his shoulder. The boom of its report was even louder in the enclosed space of the halftrack’s troop compartment. The long barrel spat flame and the slender-limbed fighter rocked slightly under what had to be the weapon’s savage kick. He worked the lever smoothly and fired again.
[They are coming back] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff signed. [They are moving more quickly than we had hoped.]
More booms echoed outside. It sounded like the indigs had formed a firing line around the wreckage of the halftrack and were volley firing at the M’tait. Gaumarus briefly wondered where they had gotten the guns. They didn’t look like anything he’d seen produced on Provenia. In fact, if he looked closely, they looked like they had been tailor-made for the indig physiology.
[How did you find me?] he asked, as Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff reached down and hauled him out of the corn
er, looking him over.
[We came to fight] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff replied. [We arrived too late for the battle, but we heard gunfire, and saw you and the sergeant trying to save Tillens.] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff did not actually use Tillens’s name, but used the lengthy moniker the scouts had given him, Big Laughing One With The Sun’s Bristles. Oxidanese names did not translate to sign language.
[You are the only other one we have found alive in time] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff explained as he turned back toward the hatchway with his own repeater. That was when Gaumarus noticed that he, too, was carrying one of the big, long-barreled lever actions, instead of the old surplus PDF rifle he’d always carried.
At the same time, he noticed the first indig was wearing a short, fringed nukto-hide coat, with a thick band around each arm hole and across the shoulders, tooled with intricate designs. His eyes widened as he recognized the garment. He’d never seen an indig wearing one before; he’d only seen them in museums.
Museums, and war trophy rooms. That sleeveless coat was the traditional garb of the mountain tribes.
He felt a sudden chill of dread. Had he escaped the M’tait for the moment, only to become a prisoner of the mountain tribes? And what was Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff doing with the Badland savages?
Another volley of fire roared and thundered outside, answered by more hissing beam weapons and buzzing projectiles. Some faint chirps and clicks of agony announced that some of the indig had been hit. And a faint, thudding vibration in the ground heralded the approach of something else. Something big.
He suddenly thought of that massive thing that had torn the lead halftrack apart, and shuddered. Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff leaned out of the hatchway, looked around for a moment, snapped off a hasty shot, the repeater roaring and stabbing flame, and then he ducked back as a buzzing metal worm smacked into the armor plate only a few centimeters from his head.
[They have brought some of their heavies up] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff reported. [But they have not rushed us yet.]
Gaumarus suddenly thought of what he had seen already, of the wanton cruelty displayed in the execution of the wounded man, and even in the nature of those projectiles they fired. Something clicked, even past the quaking, nausea-inducing fear. If anything, the fear seemed to be receding a little. [I don’t think they are interested in just finishing this quickly] he signed. [I think they are going to enjoy the hunt as long as they can.] It was like some of the vukulf hunts he had seen, before he’d interrupted them with accurate rifle fire. The vukulfs were relatively small and fast, but had the jaw strength to snap a nuyak’s neck. But they wouldn’t. They’d nip at it and wear it down, slowly starting to eat it from the hindquarters forward, letting it thrash and struggle and scream as they slowly ate it alive.
The M’tait were acting like the vukulfs. They were enjoying their prey’s struggles as much as their pain.
It made him wonder. What kind of creatures were these things? They had advanced technology. They were starfaring. And yet in every encounter he’d ever heard of—the stories increasingly validated by what he’d seen in just the last few hours—they had acted like the worst of psychopathic predators, far crueler than even indigenous mountain tribes in the most nightmare stories told by survivors of the wars.
[Come] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff signed. [We will need your coilgun too, before this is over.]
Inching up to the hatchway, Gaumarus got the first good look at the battlefield he’d gotten since he’d lunged out of his hiding place to attack the M’tait. Without the adrenaline roaring in his bloodstream, he could see more.
The nearest Huntership towered over them, a massive, blackened spire seemingly growing out of the plain almost a kilometer away. The thing was huge; it had to be nearly three hundred meters tall. It looked wrong somehow, its asymmetry lending it the look of a crooked fang sticking up into the sky.
The fact that he could see it made him realize that whatever had destroyed the halftrack had also slewed it most of the way around.
The plain around it, blackened and cratered by the Hunterships’ drives and the battle that had followed their landing, was swarming with M’tait.
There had to be thousands, hundreds of thousands of them, loping on their long limbs that looked more like the arms of some arboreal ape than legs. More of the heavy things, the spidery beasts with too many writhing limbs, moved around among them. For all their activity, he couldn’t discern what they might be doing.
At least, not the more distant swarms. The ones closer in were clearly focused on the wrecked halftrack and the indig around it.
As he looked out, he suddenly realized that there were a lot more indig than he had originally thought. He’d thought the scouts were stealthy. Somehow, these fighters simply disappeared into the folds and craters in the ground, vanishing until they fired or moved.
And somehow, it seemed to be working against the M’tait as well, even with whatever esoteric detection gear they doubtless had crammed into their armor, if that was indeed what that rock-like material they were encased in was.
But the longer he watched, the more he realized that the indig’s skill was not working quite as well against the M’tait as he’d thought. One of the aliens would bound forward and draw fire. A moment later, dozens of the buzzing projectiles would home in on the muzzle blast, and the indig who had fired would die in prolonged agony, twitching and spasming as the borers tore through his flesh.
Furthermore, it seemed as if the M’tait were very good at anticipating the shots. They always seemed to duck to cover or dodge out of the way just as the indig fighters fired.
Once again, he thought of the vukulfs.
A clicking, chirruping cry came from outside, and Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff turned to him. [Are you ready to move?] he signed. [If we are to break out, we must do so now.]
Just at that moment, another M’tait beam weapon swept the halftrack, and both indig ducked, Gaumarus a sluggish second behind them, as it crackled against the metal above their heads. Once again, it hardly had seemed aimed to kill, though it could easily have taken all three of their heads off if they hadn’t ducked.
Gaumarus crouched down, gulping past the lump in his throat, suddenly shaking again at the thought of rushing out into the open with those swarms of murderous M’tait out there. [We must move soon,] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff insisted.
Gaumarus gulped again, though he nodded. His palms on the coilgun were sweaty and clammy. The very thought of rushing out there…
But there was no other choice, and once again he thought of his father and his grandfather. He thought of the contempt on Waldenius Pell’s face as he looked down at the grave of his grandson, who had been slaughtered by the M’tait in the wreck of a halftrack, simply because he hadn’t had the guts to get out and fight.
He nodded again, a little more firmly. The nausea wasn’t gone, but he could think past it. And they couldn’t stay there.
[Let’s go,] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff signed, and then the other indig was leading the way, cranking off three more shots as fast as he could work his repeater’s lever before disappearing around the side of the halftrack.
Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff followed, and Gaumarus crouched down, shouldered his coilgun, and ripped off a long, crackling burst at the swarms of M’tait outside before he followed.
He hit the ground and tried to dive for the corner of the halftrack and the cover beyond. The churned-up soil slipped under his boot and he half-fell, landing on his hands and knees, and quickly scrambled up to his feet, kicking clods of dirt and debris up behind him as he surged for the side of the halftrack, expecting the beam weapon to burn him to ashes around his bones, or worse, the borer to find him and tear his insides to mush at any moment.
But he made it around and alongside the shattered track, slamming against the still-warm steel for a half a second before an indig grabbed him and dragged him down into a shell crater just a meter ahead. No
t a moment too soon, either; a beam weapon scraped a molten track in the armor plating above them even as they landed in a puff of dust and ash.
The indig moved with frightening speed, faster than he’d ever seen one of the scouts move, rolling away from Gaumarus and bringing his massive repeater to bear. The rifle thundered and bucked into the indig fighter’s deceptively frail-looking shoulder. No sooner had the muzzle come down from recoil than the indig was digging himself deeper into the shell crater, the dust seeming to blend with his bristles and the nukto-hide coat he wore.
Then Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff was next to Gaumarus, tugging at his scorched and torn sleeve. [We have to move,] he signed.
Only the faintest of movement made the other indig visible to Gaumarus from his vantage point, hugging the ground. Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff was pulling him toward the front of the halftrack, away from the rising spines of the grounded Hunterships. Beyond, through the haze in the air, he could just see the hills above Vatuse, little more than shadows on the horizon. And there were more M’tait in that direction, too. They were spreading out across the battlefield, combing through the burning wreckage of tanks, halftracks, and gun trucks. Even farther away, Gaumarus could see the rising plumes of ugly black smoke from the staging area; the M’tait had reached there, as well, and the artillery was either fled or dead.
The swarms of M’tait in that direction still seemed thinner though, especially in one direction, between the burning hulks of the PDF’s tanks. And judging by the way Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff was pulling him, that was the way the indig intended to break out. There were only a few M’tait in that direction, and none of them seemed to be paying the standoff at the wrecked halftrack much mind.
Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff pulled him slithering into another crater, then pressed him down into the dust. [Get ready,] he signed. A moment later, a dozen indig fighters rose up along the crater’s rim and opened fire.
