by Mel Odom
“It’s locked!” Goldberg yelled.
“Veug,” Kiwanuka said. She swayed around an overturned dropship, caught herself before she fell, and kept going.
“I’ve got this, Staff Sergeant,” the elint specialist answered.
By the time Kiwanuka ran past broken and slagged dropships to reach the one Goldberg had found, Veug was already working on the dropship’s security system. Those systems weren’t overly complicated, primarily there to keep unauthorized personnel, usually bored soldiers, from joyriding, which had happened. The dropships didn’t need tough security because they were usually filled to the brim with Terran military soldiers outside of a hangar.
“Got it!” Veug stepped back and pressed a keypad on the dropship’s side.
The cargo hatch opened.
“Get in,” Kiwanuka ordered.
Her HUD showed her the Phrenorian gunship jockeying for position at the open bay door.
Warning, the near-AI said. Hostile is scanning surrounding environment.
Kiwanuka followed her troops inside the dropship and laid Morlortai on the deck in front of Goldberg. “He was asphyxiating when I found him. If he’s alive, keep him that way.”
“Copy that, Staff Sergeant.” Goldberg dropped to her knees beside Morlortai, who was already showing signs of coming around.
“Veug.”
“Yes, Staff Sergeant.”
“Get us locked down and pressurize this cabin.” That was in case Goldberg had to perform medical procedures that weren’t covered by Morlortai’s suit.
“Copy that.” Veug crossed over to the cabin controls, switched on lights on either side of his helmet, and set to work.
Low light filled the cabin and indicators near the air vents turned green. Environmental systems were set up to run off batteries, not just the dropship’s generator.
Kiwanuka made her way up to the front of the dropship. The two cargo ship pilots who had delivered the team to Kequaem’s Needle at the beginning of the mission hustled into the ship’s cockpit ahead of her. Kiwanuka was at their heels.
“Strap in!” one of the pilots bellowed.
Both of them pressed buttons and flicked toggles on the complicated array in front of them to bring the dropship’s engines online.
Kiwanuka took the small navigator’s seat behind the pilot’s and copilot’s seats.
“This isn’t going to be pretty,” the pilot said. “Or by the book.”
“If we survive and get down to Fort York,” Kiwanuka said, “I’m going to mark it as a win.”
“Copy that,” the pilot said.
The ship’s thrusts came on immediately. The pilot engaged the drive.
“That Sting-Tail pilot knows we’re in here,” the copilot said.
As if in response, the Phrenorian gunship opened fire. Plasma bolts and nuclear-tipped rockets ripped through the dropships still anchored to the deck. Explosions threw brief fire all around them and buffeted the dropship.
“Corporal Veug,” the pilot called over the comm.
“Yes, Lieutenant,” Veug answered.
“Have you accessed that emergency release?”
Kiwanuka resisted asking what they were talking about. On the monitor, the Phrenorian’s bombardment hammered dropships. The reinforced armor glowed cherry-red and ablative armor blew off in chunks. Two of them nearby remained only as broken stumps of the spacecraft they had been.
“Got it now, Lieutenant,” Veug assured her.
“Decouple,” the pilot ordered.
“Decoupling now.”
At first Kiwanuka didn’t know what Veug had done or what the pilot had been talking about. Then the dropships on the various monitors available to the dropship showed the other dropships floating up from the deck. The docking clamps holding them in place had opened. The dropship containing the Kequaem’s Needle’s crew and the soldiers lifted from the deck as well.
Immediately, the pilot engaged the thrusters. The dropship shot forward and banged into the two dropships in front of it, which collided with four or five more dropships. By the time they reached the bay doors, the pilot was pushing at least a dozen of the boxy spacecraft out into the black void at the Phrenorian gunship.
The Sting-Tail pilot fired his weapons. Hit by plasma bolts and rockets, the empty dropships bounced like billiard balls on a well-executed break. Driven forward, deflected by the Phrenorian gunship’s weapons, the unpiloted dropships ricocheted in several directions. Another barrage altered their paths and increased their speed, adding to the confusion.
“I wouldn’t have thought of something like this,” Kiwanuka said. “I guess it’s worked before or you wouldn’t be here.”
The pilot juked the dropship in a fair imitation of the other dropships. Uncertain which target was truly the one he was looking for, the Phrenorian fired at everything that lit up his targeting software.
“How many times do you think someone would get caught out like this?” the pilot asked in disbelief. “This is my first time. I grew up on a ranch in Arizona and have seen cattle stampede. Let’s just hope it works.”
Once the vessel reached the outskirts of the expanding knot of dropships, the pilot kicked in the large thrusters and headed directly for Makaum through a minefield of debris.
Outside Fort York
0728 Hours Zulu Time
“This way. Hurry.”
The gruff man who addressed Leghef was one of Tholak’s men. Usually he stood as a bodyguard for Tholak. Today, she supposed, the man served as a kidnapper.
He and three other men, all dressed in offworlder armor, stood beside a battered crawler covered in mud that sluiced away under the driving rain. Several dents showed in the crawler’s armor and Leghef knew it had been near at least one firefight.
They’d waited at the back of the fort for Throzath and her to arrive, away from the battle lines that had been drawn. Most of the Terran soldiers were busy holding the fort against the Phrenorian forces.
“I told you my father would come,” Throzath growled at her. He limped at her side.
Leghef made a show of looking around. “Where is he?”
Throzath cursed her and sped past her as he headed for the armored crawler. Once there, he slipped inside.
Around them, crowds of Makaum people and offworlders ran for the shelter they thought the surrounding jungle offered. The women and children screamed in fear, and some of the men did too. Others howled curses and hurled threats at the Terrans and the Phrenorians.
All of them ran.
Leghef pitied them. Most of them were not hunters and had seldom gone so deeply into the jungle as they were headed now. Staying and entering the jungle without proper training and provisions both offered death.
A group of offworlders spotted Tholak’s men loading onto the crawler.
“You there!” the biggest of the group shouted. “Give us that woman!”
The demand surprised Leghef until she recognized Garendy and Tindrau, two hunters who had chosen to work with the Phrenorians as guides and consultants, walking behind the offworlders.
“That’s not going to happen,” the man in charge of Tholak’s group said. Leghef thought she remembered his name was Osler.
The offworlder brandished a weapon and raised it to point at Osler.
One of Osler’s men shot the man in the head with the rifle he held. Without pause, even as the dead offworlder fell, the man shot two more of the group but failed to kill them. Tindrau went down with a bullet in his shoulder.
The offworlders turned and ran. They left their dead comrade behind in the mud. Garendy helped Tindrau get to his feet and run. The crowds flowing around Leghef and her captors gave them a wide berth.
Leghef looked back at the fort and her city, took in all the damage that had been done, and knew that her people would never be the same again. They’d all lived their lives as though the jungles held the most danger.
That wasn’t true.
A large mass screamed from the heavens
and slammed into the ground and a group of people a hundred meters or more away. Mud, broken trees, shattered bushes, and corpses erupted from the impact area in a wave that fell only twenty meters short of Leghef and her captors.
For a moment, emptiness rang in her ears and she realized she’d gone deaf from the thunder of the explosion.
An armored hand closed around her upper arm with bruising force and yanked her into motion.
The man, Osler, she thought, shoved her into the crawler’s rear seat. He sat on one side of her and another man sat on the other side of her. They were there to ensure she didn’t get away.
Leghef had no intention of getting away. Not until she was taken to her granddaughter. Once she had Telilu, things would be different. She stared ahead as the crawler chewed through the mud and headed into the jungle as the war raged around them.
Under her silks, she held on to the comm Halladay had given her to use while she was at the fort. She didn’t know what kind of range the device had, but it was military issue and she hoped that meant it would transmit for a long distance.
Tholak would be far away from the battles now.
More rockets screamed into Fort York. A few exploded in the air, but several wreaked havoc on the structures within the protective walls.
Leghef hoped, when the time came, if it came, that there would be someone left to respond to her call for help.
FIFTY-ONE
Rothor Street
Makaum Sprawl
31916 Akej (Phrenorian Prime)
Zhoh caught a flicker of movement coming from an offworlder bodega to his right. Two of his warriors on his strike team, all ten of them working on a door-to-door sweep with him, closed in on the building as part of the effort to herd the fleeing populace back toward Fort York where they would become a human barrier Zhoh intended to use against the Terran military. No beings remained alive behind his warriors who weren’t loyal to the Phrenorian Empire.
Zhoh intended to take no chances on subversive elements striking his warriors from behind. Even friendly elements among the Makaum people and the offworlders hoping to strike a bargain were chased into the jungle.
They would return. Or he and his men would bring them back and enslave them.
The lead Phrenorian warrior closed on the bodega fearlessly. A moment later, an offworlder male with a portable Kimer particle beam cannon filled a shattered window. Before the warrior could move, the particle beam blast spread his remains over his partner.
The second Phrenorian warrior tried to dodge and fire at the same time. His blast ripped up pieces of the window frame and hurled goods over the beings inside the building.
Another male fired two rounds from a Kerch burster. Both shrapnel loads struck the warrior and knocked him down. Blood covered him as he tried to rise, but his strength failed him and he fell in the mud.
Zhoh swung his rifle over to aim at the bodega.
Inside the building, another being stepped forward with a Yqueu rocket launcher snugged over one shoulder and aimed into the center of Zhoh’s squad.
“Take cover!” Zhoh ordered his warriors.
The group broke formation and sought cover among the overturned vehicles, a large portion of what appeared to be the burned wreckage of a cargo ship that had fallen from space, and other buildings.
Zhoh threw himself behind an overturned cart only a few meters to his left. The primitive vehicle was hitched to the bloody corpses of two dafeerorg. Zhoh settled in beside one of them and tried to ignore the acrid stench of the beasts. He didn’t know if they smelled worse dead or alive.
The rocket detonated against the cart and the dafeerorg. Pieces of the animals and the vehicle blew over Zhoh. Bloody debris and mud covered him.
“Help me,” a weak voice cried out in the aftermath of the explosion.
Three meters away, a young Makaum male lay bleeding in the mud. He stretched an arm toward Zhoh. One of the being’s eyes was filled with blood and a flap of flesh hung from one cheek.
Ignoring the wounded being, Zhoh rose up and brought his rifle to bear on the bodega. Sheltering inside the structure wasn’t logical. It was one of the plascrete buildings that had been quickly extruded onto the site and filled with trade goods.
He fired plasma blasts at the windows and ran toward the door. Without being told, his warriors provided suppressive fire to cover his attack.
When he reached the door, he raised a leg and kicked. It didn’t move. Cursing, he reached into his tactical vest with one of his secondaries and located a shaped charge. He armed it, slapped it onto the door, and spun to the side as the beings inside tried to target him with their beam and projectile weapons. He grabbed another shaped charge.
The resulting explosion scattered plasteel shards in front of the bodega, but most of them were driven inside. Pained screams and curses immediately followed.
Zhoh slung his rifle and drew his pistol. He rounded on the door, kicked the superheated wreckage out of his way, and fired at everything inside that moved. A few beams and projectiles struck him, but his chitin and armor turned them away.
Two of his warriors followed him inside. They joined their attacks with his. Eight beings had taken cover inside the bodega. None of them remained alive.
One of the warriors drew his patimong and chopped the head from one of the dead beings. When he had the head free, he shoved a slim dagger through the head’s ears, pulled the cord through after it, and tied the head to his combat harness. The head swung there and smeared the warrior’s thighs with blood.
Zhoh stared at the warrior.
“It is a battle trophy, General Zhoh,” the young warrior said. His pheromones were strong over the stink of blood and munitions. “One of my first kills.”
Zhoh knew others among his warriors, those who had never been in battle before and those who had more pride than honor, were taking trophies. Tomorrow he would put an end to that. But today he would let it go.
But not without remark.
“Watch yourself, Rilb,” Zhoh admonished. “Take care that you don’t become overzealous in acquiring your trophies. Collect too many heads and they will become baggage that can get you killed. And if the procurement of one of your collections slows you or causes you to become inattentive, I will kill you myself.”
Rilb turned his primaries outward in supplication. “I understand, General. I will be careful. I will not fail you.”
Zhoh turned and walked out of the building.
Phrenorian aircars and gunships warred in the slate-gray sky against Terran military jumpcopters. As he stepped out onto the street, a ground-based rocket attack from a block over turned an aircar into an orange and black fireball that smashed into a half-demolished offworlder trade building. The plasteel and plascrete structure fragmented and toppled into the street below.
Zhoh triangulated the location of the ground attack and marked it on his HUD.
Others among his warriors now had heads of humans, Makaum, and other aliens tied to their combat harnesses. The street stank of bloodlust pheromones, and breathing it made Zhoh fill heady.
“General,” Mato called over the private frequency he shared with Zhoh. Mato rode in one of the large tracked vehicles and managed small ops that followed Zhoh’s battle plan.
Zhoh strode across the street to where the wounded Makaum male lay writhing. “Tell me you have found Sage.”
The rage at the loss of the fortress and all its war machines still beat within Zhoh. The way those weapons had been accumulated was dishonorable to the Empire, but they had been his until Sage had destroyed them. Zhoh cursed Rangha, but he recognized Sage’s skill and integrity. The Terran master sergeant was an accomplished opponent.
Zhoh intended to kill Sage and take his head. His skull would adorn Zhoh’s home in a place of honor.
“I have not been able to find out Sage’s exact location,” Mato said.
Zhoh curbed an angry response. Given all the tumultuous sorties taking place around him, and the fact
that battle was always heated and confusing, he understood that finding Sage was difficult.
But the master sergeant would be found.
“There have been new developments,” Mato said.
Zhoh looked down at the wounded Makaum male. Both of the being’s legs had been blown off. Shrapnel injuries covered his back. The being would be of no use as a laborer.
Zhoh slipped a knife free of his combat harness and drove it through the being’s eyes, ruining the skull so none of his warriors would be tempted to take it.
Zhoh wiped his knife clean of the dead being’s blood. “What developments?”
“A story is circulating about the assassination attempt on you.” Mato sounded hesitant.
“What story?”
“A recording of a Fenipalan assassin admitting he tried to kill you.”
“The Terrans hired this being?” Zhoh considered that and he immediately didn’t like where his thoughts took him. “They have their own snipers, just as we do.”
“According to the assassin’s confession, the Terrans didn’t hire him.”
That gave Zhoh pause. The whole attack on the Terran military had been predicated on that attempted assassination. It had been the secondary that had connected to the primary. That assumed guilt on part of the Terran military had kept the Alliance out of the Makaum situation.
If that attack were not perpetrated by Sage or another of the Fort York personnel, would that change the Alliance’s stance in the matter?
Uncertainty planted a small seed within Zhoh and he didn’t like it.
“Does this assassin say who did hire him?” Zhoh asked.
“Yes,” Mato answered. “There are even financial records that connect the assassin to his employer. I have sources within the Prime War Board that assure me this recording is being vetted to prove its veracity. After all, this could be a lie propagated by the Terrans.”
That didn’t make sense, though. In their own way, the Terran military was almost as honorable as a Phrenorian warrior.
“Who was the assassin’s employer?” Zhoh asked.
Mato hesitated, which was unlike him, and that weakness vexed Zhoh because he knew it wasn’t Mato’s way. Mato was guilty of trying to withhold the information to prevent injury to Zhoh.
