Steel Sworn

by Richard Fox

  Lars’s rotary gun slewed from side to side on his shoulder, taking out any Rakka dumb enough to show itself.

  “Target’s a mobile power pack,” Lars said. “Should have a clear shot from over there.” He pointed to a clear patch amongst all the supplies.

  “What’s that one doing?” Ely pointed to a Rakka in a filthy white uniform clinging to a second level of stacked containers. The container was different from the rest, with rows of small barred windows across the top.

  “Ah…shit.” Lars put a hand to his thigh and his MEWS hilt popped out of the holster and into his hand.

  The front of the container burst open, crushing the Rakka against the side.

  A metal beast that echoed the atavistic physique of the Rakka, but with cybernetic limbs and a mouth built like a steel trap, burst out of the container and landed out of sight from the Armor.

  “Take the shot!” Lars snapped his MEWS out and it formed into a short axe. A kite shield unfolded from his forearm and he banged his weapon against it. “I’ll handle this.”

  +Get moving!+

  Ely didn’t wait for Aignar to tell him again. He took off, glancing over his shoulder.

  Lars made more noise, then braced himself against the ground, his shield against his forward knee, his axe held high. There was a blur of metal and Lars was knocked out of sight. The crash of steel on steel echoed through the supply yard.

  “Is he going to be OK?”

  +He’s a big boy. Worry about the mission.+

  Ely slid to a stop in the spot where Lars had sent him.

  The power station was on wheels, a land whale of a vehicle as wide as three cargo trucks. Battery blocks lined the flanks and a wide, dome-topped cylinder sat in the middle. What looked like maroon-colored robots floated around the dome. They had bucket-shaped heads, and their arms and legs ended in spikes.

  +These assholes.+

  “Huh?”

  Spikes snapped up at Ely, and he dove behind a container. Jagged bolts of electricity struck the ground and danced across the dirt toward him, like it was alive and seeking him out.

  +Don’t let it touch you!+

  Ely kicked at the arc and it faded away as dust passed through it. Power arced against his heel and a jolt of pain shot up his leg.

  +You take a direct hit, you’ll redline. Goddamn Naroosha are a pain in the ass that way.+

  “Maybe lead with that information next time.” Ely moved down the side of a container. A Naroosha flew down a pathway and came to a slow stop, its legs swinging out in front of its body.

  Ely hit it with double barrels and it exploded into blue liquid and broken metal. It fell to the ground, then lightning crawled out of the wreckage and made for Ely.

  “Nope. Nope!” Ely ran the other way and dove through a gap in the rows. He landed on a shoulder and slid into a container, which rang hollow at the impact. Ely looked up. This one wasn’t in a stack.

  “Are you done yet!” Lars shouted through their IR connection. The crack of steel on steel carried through the connection.

  “I’m working on it.” Ely pushed the empty container with one arm to test the weight. “Yeah…this’ll work.”

  “Less talking, more blowing shit up!”

  Ely jammed fingers under the container and lifted it up and over his head. He walked awkwardly toward the power station, then bent at the knees and hurled it away with all the strength his Armor could muster.

  The container sailed through the air. Naroosha opened fire on it, ripping it apart like it was made of paper.

  Ely sprinted forward and slid feetfirst into the open. He locked on to bright-orange boxes on either side of the reactor dome and fired twice, shattering the boxes. Sparks showered the nearest Naroosha.

  Ely twisted round and slammed his fingers into the dirt. He pulled hard and launched himself onto his feet and into a run.

  “Take cover!”

  Light grew behind him, then there was a snap like a grand old oak being broken in half. The power behemoth exploded and the shockwave picked him up and blasted him forward. Ely threw his arms in front of his head a split second before he crashed into a container.

  There was a cacophony of light and sound…then a low light across Ely’s optics.

  “Are we…are we dead?”

  +No. Dying hurts more. Hold on…+

  There was a groan of metal and the container peeled open over Ely. Lars was there, his Armor battered, his MEWS axe head stained with blood.

  Lars looked to one side, then back to Ely, then back out again. “What the hell did you do?” he asked.

  “I guessed.” Ely raised an arm and a chalky yellow substance fell off him. “I guessed where the power converters were. I destroyed those and the reactor overloaded the batteries. Maybe I caused a sine wave inversion and—”

  “You blew it up.” Lars grabbed Ely by the front of his breastplate and dragged him out of the yellow fluff. “Good job. Maybe you can be trained.”

  Ely bent his limbs and tried to brush off the chalk. “Do I want to know what this is?” he asked.

  “Rakka food. Tastes like shrimp.” Lars looked skyward and an antenna lengthened on his helm.

  “All you had to do was disable the generators,” Santos said. “Geist didn’t miss that cooking off. Fall back to the tunnel.”

  “Lillebror went above and beyond.” Lars knocked a fist against Ely’s shoulder and the two went running toward the tunnel.

  The Rakka monstrosity that Lars had fought lay dead, its head cleaved from its body. The head lay upside down, the eye lenses still lit from within, the jaw opening and closing slowly. Dead aliens were everywhere, bloody heaps scattered across the ground.

  Ely’s gaze went from body to body, soaking up the carnage.

  Santos and Pulaski were at the tunnel. Santos held a Sanheel spear in one hand, ribbons and battle trophies hanging from rings welded to the shaft.

  “Good job, sir.” Lars stood atop a slab of metal over the hole and stomped a foot. The metal collapsed and he vanished into the dark.

  “Did you go rolling in the daisies?” Pulaski asked Ely.

  “He’s in one piece.” Santos nodded at Ely then stomped at the edge of the hole.

  Ely looked into the abyss…and dropped in.

  Chapter 18

  A blast wave beyond Lieutenant Haddar’s trench slammed his helmet and sent his ears ringing as burning dirt fell over him. Tiny embers stuck to his light battle armor and the smell of fire and smoke made him cough.

  He put an eye to his field telescope that bent over the parapet and gave him a view of the city’s outer wall, where gray smoke billowed from several breaches. The shield dome flickered overhead but held.

  “Permission to open fire?” Watkins asked over the company radio. The weapons platoon sergeant was with the crew served machine guns in the trench line behind Haddar. The rotary gauss cannons could lay down heavy fire and were Haddar’s best asset to hold his sector.

  “We don’t have the ammo to be so generous. Wait until we’ve got targets.” Haddar took a sip of water from a tube on his shoulder. “Shouldn’t be too long.”

  He looked down the trench section. His soldiers were exhausted, but they’d been in the fight for so long that this enemy assault had become part of the routine.

  Sergeant Daly took a small cross from beneath his collar and gave it a quick kiss. “Call in the Armor, LT?” Daly asked.

  “Don’t have a threat to call them in to fight.” Haddar turned the telescope from side to side. There were more breaches up and down the wall, all obscured by smoke.

  “Flyers or hooves?” Daly asked.

  “So long as it isn’t the damn beasts.” Haddar’s mouth went dry.

  A plasma bolt struck out of the smoke and hit the parapet a few yards from Haddar. The blast punched out the trench wall and a hot slap of overpressure fouled his footing on the firing step.

  Cries for a medic rang out.

  “4th Provisional!” Haddar readied his gaus
s rifle. “For the Lady! For us all! Fight until you die!”

  He stood up and slid his barrel between a gap in the sandbags. Shadows roiled in the smoke and he opened fire. The rest of his company followed his lead and gauss shells snapped over him from the rear trenches.

  A roar came from the breach as a wave of Rakka came roiling out. They fell to the Crusade’s fire, slaughtered within a few dozen yards from the breach in the wall.

  Haddar dropped behind the trench and swapped out magazines. The constant din of gauss fire was almost soothing, but something was bothering him. He looked through the telescope to the other breaches blown out of the wall. Only one was being used by the Geist attack.

  “Why bother making so many holes if—”

  Flying Vishrakath boiled out of breaches on either side of the Rakka assault.

  “Lift and shift fire!” Haddar stuck his head and shoulders over the trench to wave at the machine-gun nests. Two of the weapons stopped firing for a moment, then reengaged the other breach points.

  He heard the buzz of wings before he felt the claws. A Vishrakath struck him from behind and sent him face-first into the bottom of the trench. Claws pressed into his back armor like spikes.

  Daly switched his rifle to FULL AUTO and fired from the hip. Bullets ripped the winged alien to pieces and tore up the trench wall as they punched through the Vish. Haddar rolled over and swept the ant-like body off him, his chest and arms smeared with pale-green blood.

  As more Vishrakath swarmed overhead, dozens were shot out of the sky by the defenders. A silver pill the size of a canteen landed in front of him.

  Daly kicked it into a hole dug into the side of the trench. The ground stretched like a balloon and exploded, the blast slamming Daly into the wall.

  Dirt half buried Haddar. He dug himself out, fighting for air. Daly lay slumped against the trench, his head crushed and one arm bent at an awful angle.

  “LT, you OK?” a soldier asked as he helped him up. Haddar shook dirt off his rifle. The swarm of Vishrakath was gone.

  “All stations,” Haddar said, tapping the side of his helmet, “engage targets as you see them. Forward trench, prepare to fall back and reinforce the machine guns.”

  A howl rose over the din of battle. It was lower than a wolf’s and carried a metallic edge.

  “Oh no…” The soldier that helped him up stuck the butt of his rifle to one shoulder and pushed Haddar behind him. They walked backwards to a trench connecting to the rear lines. More soldiers grouped around him, their rifles pointed at the edge of the trench.

  A nightmare jumped in. It had been a canine once, from Earth, but its body was covered now by matte-onyx metal bands. As tall as Haddar, it had wide shoulders and a square jaw. Its red eyes glared at Haddar as the war hound sniffed at the air.

  It leapt forward so fast that Haddar barely registered the attack. The hound clamped massive jaws onto the shoulder of the man in front of him and shook from side to side, knocking soldiers away with the flail of limbs.

  Haddar fired from the hip, striking the augmented war hound in the legs. The beast tossed the dead man in its mouth over the side of the trench and came at Haddar. It knocked him to one side like he was a child and tore the throat out of another soldier, snorting human blood out its nose onto the still twitching corpse beneath it.

  “Go!” A soldier pushed Haddar away and his men opened fire.

  Haddar turned and ran. Screams followed as he tried to find words again. “Watkins, get a machine gun out of the bunkers! Do it now!”

  He stumbled into the back wall of the second-line trench and finally noticed blood running down one arm. There was no time to tend to it. A metal door burst open and Watkins came out, the heavy machine gun slung at his hip. Nakir was behind the gunner, carrying an ammo line that fed to the weapon and a box with more bullets.

  More war hounds howled around them as the rumble of heavy paws sounded down the connecting trench.

  “Get down,” Watkins said and the barrels on his weapon spun up.

  The hound—its maw red and eyes glowing bright—came around a corner. Watkins bent his knees slightly to brace against the ground and pressed his thumb to the weapon’s trigger.

  The barrels spun faster but fired no bullets. Nakir dropped the ammo line and backed away, a smirk on his face.

  The hound jumped against the side of the trench and launched itself over Haddar and onto Watkins. It ripped the gunner’s arm off then punched a paw into Watkins’s eye and out the back of his skull.

  Transfixed by the horror of it all, unable to process what was going on, Haddar didn’t see the second hound that came from behind. It clamped its jaws on either side of his face and ripped his head clean off his shoulders.

  Nakir motioned to the bunker door and the nearest hound stormed inside. The screaming didn’t last long.

  The Commissar went to the hound with Haddar’s head in its mouth and scratched it just behind the ear. The hound sat on its haunches, its eyes level with Nakir’s. It spat the head out and a serrated tongue licked blood from its lips.

  “Woof.” The hound pawed playfully at the ground.

  “Such a good boy…but I have a different need of you.” Wield flowed out of Nakir’s fingers and into the war hound.

  The beast whimpered as armor plates pried away from its body. Nakir shaped the metal into a mask with muted features. He fixed it over his face as his Wield tore the war hound apart.

  Chapter 19

  Roland stood in a soccer field, the nearby school damaged by shells. Communication towers were still functional, and they connected to his Armor through lasers, which flared against his antenna as his helm looked from side to side. His bodyguard lance stood on the periphery.

  The Marshal was lost in data. Updates from frontline units poured into his feed, showing where the fighting was heaviest along the wall. Sector nine reported the enemy breach contained, and mopping up efforts continued. The scratch battalion in the secondary line had taken higher-than-anticipated casualties. Roland had an open line to the commander to figure out what had happened, but the chain of command had been broken and the survivors hadn’t reorganized yet.

  “Morrigan…move the 8th Cohort to relieve the 4th provisional,” Roland said.

  “That cohort is the reserve for sector seven, which covers the freeway to the spaceport,” she said.

  “I’m aware.” Motion at the corner of one eye caught his attention. “Morrigan, I need to go off-line for a minute. You know my alert criteria.”

  Roland cut his connection to the data feed and turned to face Santos. The captain carried the Sanheel command spear and stabbed the blade into the ground before Roland.

  “All you had to do was send a message that your raid succeeded. I would have believed you.” Roland raised a palm to the spear.

  “Aignar.” Santos’ hands tightened into fists. “Why did you send him to me?”

  Roland shifted his heels slightly. “He’s that aware? I wasn’t sure how much they’d let him keep…but there was no way Aignar would ever let go of what happened between us,” Roland said.

  “You think I’ve forgiven you?” Santos stepped closer, his helm bent slightly.

  Morrigan shifted from her spot behind Roland. The Marshal held up a hand and she slowed. Roland heard the gentle rasp of her ammo line shifting against her gun arm. She had a nervous habit of rolling her gauss cannon forearm before loading it.

  “I didn’t want to kill Gideon,” Roland said, shaking his helm slightly, “but he didn’t give me a choice.”

  Santos’ fist shook just in front of his chin, then he turned his head sharply with a click of servos.

  “Do you…do you ever lie awake at night wondering if the fight was only going to end with him or Lady Ibarra dead?” Santos asked. “Because I do.”

  “Gideon was poisoned by hate,” Roland said. “I felt that hate, and he was one of the greatest warriors I ever served with. He was my first lance commander and—”

  “Our.
He was our first lance commander and he made us into the men we are today.” Santos touched the faded lance insignia for the Iron Dragoons, then looked to Roland’s breastplate where his should have been.

  “Don’t think that killing him was an easy decision—or an easy fight! The guilt of action is mine to carry. You bear the guilt of doubt…want to trade?” Roland asked.

  “Well, you’ve done well for yourself for that ‘decision’…Marshal Shaw.” Santos gave him a quick Terran Union salute of his fingertips to his brow.

  “Something tells me you came here to swagger about one thing,” Roland tapped the spear haft, “and dig into some old wounds.”

  “Scars matter, and Aignar is part of the problem. The other part is Ely Hale, sir. He’s not Armor.” Santos transferred video footage of Ely in combat.

  “I ordered him to fight until he dies. He’s succeeded thus far.” Roland closed the video with a mental command.

  “He’s not Armor. He would never have made it through stage one of selection—or through the first week at Knox if he made it that far. He’s smart. Adaptable. But he doesn’t have the killer instinct. The cortisol levels in his blood have him on the verge of a nervous breakdown during combat. If his suit wasn’t flooding him with adrenaline and cycloserine, he’d claw his way out of his pod.”

  Roland examined a bio-readout Santos transmitted to him. He peeled readings away and looked through deep data until a voice whispered to him.

  “…not for you…”

  “Santos…exactly how much of Aignar is there in the ghost system?” Roland closed the file with a flick of his finger.

  “Aignar can speak through the boy.” Santos reached a hand up and a video screen appeared between them on their HUDs, a shared projection. Santos fast-forwarded through the footage to where Ely raised his anchor foot and stomped the drill head into the ground.

  “Look at the posture. The snap of his hips to test the anchor. You know him in his Armor. I know him. That’s Aignar.” Santos set the clip on a loop. “This seem right to you? For a ghost to use the soldier and not the other way around? I’ve just got the plugs like God intended Armor to have. I thought you could shine some light on this.”