by Tim C Taylor
“What the hell use is an ally who attacks us on sight?” yelled Lance in frustration.
Keep up with the program, snarked Xena. These giant ants won’t attack us on sight, they’ll attack us on scent.
Nice try to distract me, Xena. But that’s not what I want to know. Any sign of General Bighat?
Negative, Lance. Dumbass General Veckface was all mysterious and vague beyond saying he’d meet us here at the LZ. Seemed to think the Hardits might be listening in – as if I of all AIs couldn’t establish secure comms. Idiot.
I’m beginning to think we’re the idiots here, Xena. Where the hell are you, McEwan?
The sound of Sashala firing a burst of darts from her carbine brought Lance back to the here and now.
Xena too, who thought to add the tac-display overlay to Lance’s HUD.
Sashala had just dropped a party of monkeys into the sand, but more of them – about six – had worked their way around Lance.
As smoothly as he could, so as not to spook the Janissaries who thought they’d gotten the drop on him, Lance drew his void-black sword made from a material strong enough to cut through six inches of ceramalloy armor plating.
His mind flashed through what he would do. He would drop suddenly into a crouch, and then use every ounce of augmented strength in his power armor to back flip high into the air, and land behind the confused Hardits, slashing and stabbing them before they could put enough firepower into him to penetrate his armor.
In reality, he did leap backward, catching a stray Hardit bullet that deflected off his armored butt, but when he landed it was directly on top of the enemy. Human and Hardits collapsed in a rapidly shifting heap of tails and limbs, of daggers stabbing at the joints between armor plates, of gunshots, and Lance’s sword and fists.
But the Hardits were pinning Lance down and he couldn’t get in any telling blows with his sword. Even so, as the clumsy melee continued, with Hardit and Legion gunfire exchanges close by, Lance felt the strength of the Hardit grappling progressively weaken.
He took a chance and threw them off, pushing himself up to his feet, even though that would present a better target.
Sword in both hands, he readied to deal killing blows.
But he was too late.
The Hardits were already dead. Sashala stood over them as she retrieved her throwing knives from their corpses, while giving an ear bashing to the Command Section Marines who were supposed to stop that kind of attack from happening.
Xena faded out the sound of Sashala’s voice and replaced it with her own. Hey, hero, there’s a grasshopper battery signaling it’s ready to fire. You want me to link them in?
Grasshoppers. Mobile artillery platforms that would fire a salvo, and then hop hundreds of feet away to a new firing position. From there, they could fire almost immediately before hopping again to the next battery site.
They will do nicely…
Lance directed the grasshoppers against the nearest behemoth, not to smash through the armor and force shield protecting the super-tank – because the armor had shrugged off everything the Legion had thrown at them so far – but at the desert ground beneath the tanks.
The battery commander understood exactly what Lance was asking for.
Shells rained down in a narrow spread in front of the behemoth’s path, carving out a deep pit that flung rust-red clouds of dirt high into the sky, to merge with the outer wall of the sand tornado.
When the super-tank ran into the pit, it hit so hard it might as well have crashed straight into a granite mountainside. With any luck the crew would be smashed to a pulp in that brutal crash.
Not trusting to such good fortune, the battery commander sent a second salvo screaming down onto the behemoth, this time ordering the shells to fan out in a semicircle behind the tank.
So much dust debris and sand was being thrown up, Lance couldn’t tell what was happening, until the network of battlefield surveillance drones supplied a radar-enhanced image showing a deep pit had been gouged out by the battery fire. And there, at the base of the pit, tens of feet below the surface, the behemoth stood immobile, like a venomous hornet trapped beneath an upturned glass.
The sides of the pit were not quite sheer, but surely they were far too steep for the tank to climb.
“Get out of that,” he sneered.
The grasshoppers had shown one way to beat the behemoths. Elsewhere in the battle to secure the desert landing zone, the GX-cannon and anti-tank missiles that had failed to destroy the super-tanks were proving much more successful at taking out the protective swarm of smaller armored vehicles that shielded them. Strip them away and no matter how strong the armor of the super-tanks, once Lance could hit them with every weapon he had on the ground, and with Marchewka adding her firepower from space, then it would eventually fail.
Having issued orders he was confident would beat the behemoths, which were fortunately arriving piecemeal at LZ-Alpha, Lance took the chance to assess the wider shape of the battle.
McEwan had positioned his damned giant ants in a protective crescent that curved around the eastern flank of the LZ, where all the dropships had now disgorged their contents, and were waiting for his signal to climb back up through the sand tornado to dock with the troopships and embark the second attack wave.
Ideally, the dropships would wait until he’d taken out the behemoths and their massive railguns, but the Janissary infantry was already outnumbering his Marines, and a sea of enemy troop carriers on the horizon was streaming their way. He needed that second wave here now, but if he sent the dropships up above the protective tornado – assuming they could even do that without being blasted out of the sky by the wind and sand – then they would be shot down by the behemoths as soon as they emerged out the top.
Having a well-anchored flank was helpful, but the Trog guardians were just standing there. The Janissary mechanized infantry was streaming around the Trog crescent and deploying into the gap between the LZ and the mountain. Typical Hardits – if they couldn’t fight you in a tunnel, they would always move somewhere so they had their backs against something solid.
The prospect of tunnel warfare made him think of the Sangurian warriors he had brought with him from Tranquility. The war-obsessed aliens could dig beneath the Hardit position and collapse it, wreaking an underground slaughter as they loved to do.
One problem.
The Sangurians were still in space, waiting to embark on the dropships.
There were no easy options, but that was Lance’s role: to peer through the confusion and risk and make the big calls. He decided to risk sending the dropships back up, and was about to issue the orders, when garbled fragments of speech filled the command channel. “Scip… io… do you… ipio.”
What the frakk? Who is this joker, Xena? And how are they accessing the FC-1 comm channel?
Which question do you want answering first, o master? No, strike that. The signal’s strengthening and if I can just clean it… standby… voila!
“Lance Scipio. Do you copy?”
“McEwan! Where the frakk have you…? I mean, it’s good to hear you, sir.”
“Stow that shite, Marine. It’s these ants. They’ve no experience of voice comms. I’m having to speak with you using borrowed Earth Army kit.”
“Sir, the situation is critical–”
“I know what’s going on, Scipio. Just haven’t been able to speak with you until now. You see the Janissary infantry between your position and the big red rock to your west? I want you to pin them there, while wearing them down. Can you do that?”
“For how long?”
“I know Hardits. They will mass under protection of energy shields until they are at maximum strength. Only then will they have the guts to assault Legion Marines. You keep them in place until the last moment before they attack. Then I’ll hit them hard.”
“Lance!” Sashala screamed.
“Where are you…?” The words dried in Lance’s throat. He’d never before heard panic i
n Sashala’s cry
He wheeled round to see what she was pointing at.
Dust was rising from the edge of the pit the grasshoppers had dug for the behemoth. A chill shiver ran through Lance’s body as he watched this play out, his limbs refusing to move, his brain unable to think on anything other than that pit and what the dust signified.
“We’ll assault their rear,” McEwan was saying, but the Legion general had faded into insignificance in Lance’s mind.
This can’t be happening, he told himself.
But it was.
The mammoth armored vehicle levitated gracefully out of its grave, with barely a hum of power, its main turret traversing to bring that mighty railgun to bear on… him!
Sashala grabbed his arm and pulled.
“Run!” she screamed.
His paralysis snapped, and he used every last bit of juice in his power-assisted legs to run for his life.
— Chapter 29 —
Arun McEwan
Hidden Dragoon Army
Just a few moments more, Scipio… Keep it together just a little longer…
Arun had to face facts. The battleplan was turning to drent.
Those frakking tanks were responsible. Scipio’s Marines were investing all their energy trying to neutralize them, which meant the Janissary infantry had arrived largely unscathed in front of Uluru and in enormous numbers. Occasional flashes bloomed over their monkey-wolf heads, revealing the outline of overlapping energy shields as Legion artillery shells and missiles were exploded prematurely, their energies dissipating harmlessly. To their front, the Hardits had erected ceramic palisades behind which they exchanged small arms fire with the Marines.
Outnumbering Scipio’s Marines, the Janissaries would be moving to the offensive soon. If the Marines had been ready to repel the attack, maybe they could prevail, but the behemoths had disrupted them so badly that Scipio’s position was in chaos… or at least, that was the impression the colonel was trying to convey to the New Order commander.
Scipio had better be in more command of the situation than it looked. There would be no second chance for the Legion. Not if they were going to stop Tawfiq before unleashing her new army of Ultra Janissaries. Arun had to win this battle and decisively.
Just a few more seconds…
“General McEwan,” said a voice from the back of Hansel’s crest.
How the frakk…?
The image of a Legion officer stared down at him, a Jotun dressed in a Legion black uniform with rank insignia Arun didn’t recognize.
“Marchewka?”
“Yes, General. I recommend it is time for you to act.”
“I am at the head of fifty thousand dragoons, about to lead them into battle. Trust me, I’m about to act.”
“Lead? You are like Scipio when I first met him, following your primitive instincts to lead from the front. That is not a commander’s place.”
“Negative, Marchewka. A commander’s place is dictated by the needs of the battle, and this one will not only be decided by shells, squad tactics, or those frakking Hardit tanks. The victor will be the side that possesses the strongest hearts because they have the most belief in victory. I will lead from the front because the Legion will believe in me. I am not just a field commander, Marchewka. I’m Arun McEwan. I am the Human Legion. Watch from high and support me as you see fit. I’m going to be busy for the next little while.”
Without waiting for a reply, Arun turned to Springer and asked, “Is it on?”
She grinned and gave him a thumbs up.
His heart fluttering with adrenaline, he smiled back. Patch me through, Barney.
Praying that this would work better than the voice link to Scipio’s forces, Arun cleared his throat. From the top of Uluru, the powerful radio transmitters, which Nest Hortez had liberated over the decades from Earth Army equipment caches, broadcast the sound to the armies below.
“You thought I was dead,” Arun said. “But I cannot die until my destiny is fulfilled, until I have won freedom for all the human races.”
On the back of Hansel’s crest, Arun replaced Marchewka’s image with spy drone footage of the battle scene. Hardit and human alike were looking around in confusion. Perfect.
“I’ve beaten the emperor of the White Knights,” he continued. “And now I’m going to beat Tawfiq and the New Order. I have one goddess by my side, and the avatar of another speeding here from Mars. But I don’t need divine help to win this battle. I’m Arun McEwan. And I was born to win.”
The wafer-thin frontage of the cavern, carved into the base of Uluru Ayers Rock over the past decade, now collapsed in a spray of rock dust. Neat lines of dragoons trotted out, fifty thousand lance-wielding children of Arun and Springer paired with the same number of Pedro’s children, human and Trog united in their desire to kill the New Order Hardits.
A quiet descended on the battle beyond as if a timeout had been called. Legion Marines and Janissaries turned to see what the hell was happening.
Arun grinned. He’d missed this. At the top of his lungs he yelled in a voice that would have made his old training instructor, Nhlappo, proud.
“CHARGE!”
— Chapter 30 —
Arun McEwan
At the head of the Dragoon Army
An ethereal blue glow emanated from the tips of the lances held high by the dragoons (Springer had pointed out that they should by rights be termed lancers, but Pedro would not countenance a change in their title). Pedro had designed these lance tips to resemble the glow from the monofilament teeth of an SA-71.
Hansel was running at full pelt now, as fast as any running Marine in fully charged combat armor, but the combination of the naturally cushioned seat set into his thorax, and the gripping rail that grew around it, meant Arun could do more than just hold on. Through the vision slit in Hansel’s head frill, Arun watched the Hardits before him lower their tails.
Yeah, that’s the fear I want.
With fifty thousand armored nightmares wreathed in carbine blue charging at their rear, the sight must be terrifying. The sound too. Even through the din of battle, the thunder of the dragoon feet striking the ground was deafening.
Some of the enemy had moved beyond fear into the brain-emptying paralysis that could afflict Hardits in moments of utter hopelessness.
But Janissaries were bred for battle. While some froze, many more were rallying, spurred on by the sight of officers executing any who dared show acts or scents of cowardice.
Hardit rifles fired at the onrushing horde. Machine guns opened up. Plasma lances shot out. Grenades. Darts. Infantry support railguns.
And still the dragoons rode into the hail of shot and shell, the bombs and darts. The sloping head armor of these Trogs unique to Nest Hortez were chipping and cracking, but for now still protected mount and rider alike.
Crazed by fear and pain, the dragoons sped to an even faster charge, desperate to close and engage.
Lucky shots found eyeholes and blasted Trog brain matter over their human riders. Indirect fire blasted riders and steeds from above, while heavier ordnance ricocheted off the head armor of leading dragoons, to blast through the flanks of those who followed behind.
Tough though it was, the head armor of the leading ranks began succumbing to the attrition of steady small arms fire, breaking off in chunks to reveal unprotected human riders. Many of the horns that had curved over Trog eyes had been reduced to jagged stumps.
All it took was a stumble from a Trog steed taking a wound, or falling foul of the shell-pocked desert ground, and the rider thrown from their mount would be crushed to bloody pulp beneath the feet of the dragoons in the ranks behind.
Ever since Pedro had revealed he’d been playing alien god with his and Springer’s DNA, Arun had tried hard not to think of the clones as his children. But when he saw the drone camera images of the trail of broken young bodies that resembled Springer as he’d first known and loved her, and he saw her tight-lipped grimace of determination on the f
aces of the survivors, a heady mix of pride and grief forced itself into his heart.
Fortunately, the Hardits didn’t have the same drone coverage.
With the human riders hidden behind their steeds’ head armor, the Hardits only saw an anonymous horde of nightmare creatures bearing down on them. They couldn’t single out this human who would not die, their eternal nemesis: Arun McEwan.
The behemoth tanks fired on the charging dragoons. They were so close to the Hardit line now that the gigantic railguns tore bloody chunks out of their own troops as they fired their enormous kinetic rounds into the dragoons.
Railgun darts weighing several tons gouged lines of death out of Arun’s army, but they still could not find its general.
Marchewka could.
“Leave the heavy tanks to me,” said the Jotun face that had reappeared on the reverse of Hansel’s crest. “But you need to deactivate the sand tunnel first.”
Do it, Barney, Arun said in his mind, and then forgot Marchewka as he lowered his lance, sliding it into the grove cut into Hansel’s crest for that very purpose.
The Hardits were close enough for Arun to see their noses glisten with dampness, and their eyes go wide with fear.
Arun picked his target.
Meanwhile, Scipio had quickly rearranged his forces to spread into a dangerously thin line that lapped around the Janissary infantry, and ordered his Marines to extend the teeth on their carbines, leaving his mobile artillery to do what they could to neutralize the behemoths by showering them in sprays of sand.
High above, Marchewka looked down on the sight of a beautiful but deadly blue flattened ring forming as dragoons and Marines united with lance and teeth to surround the Hardit army. It looked perilously thin against the thickness of the Hardit forces. Could it possibly hold against the superior New Order numbers?
Arun skewered his first Hardit, couching the lance against his flank and gripping tightly onto the thorax hand rail as the lance tip passed as easily through the Janissary as a sharpened knife through tender steak.
Hansel kept charging ahead, not pausing or deviating from pushing deep into the Hardits. Even if Arun had wanted to slow, the momentum of the lines of dragoons pressing behind gave him no choice.
