by Gregg Vann
As soon as the lift’s sensors detected the impurities in the air, the ventilation system started working to draw the gas out. But the machinery was taxed well beyond its capabilities, and the small space was still thick with chemicals. The mixture caused a burning sensation wherever it came in contact with Barent’s exposed skin, so he covered his face with his sleeve, and took in shallow breaths through his nose to minimize exposure. But each painful inhalation burned even more than the one preceding it, and his watering eyes felt like they were on fire. Through blurry vision, Barent noticed that the vents were drawing the gas up to the ceiling, so he dropped down to the floor, hoping to find a lower concentration of the noxious chemicals. It also gave him the opportunity to look for the keys to the manacles so he could free himself.
Barent located them in the pants pockets of the second soldier he searched. And after removing the restraints, he scooted over to the last guard to retrieve his blood-soaked pistols. As Barent slid the second weapon into its holster, the Collective soldier kicked out with both legs, catching him by surprise. He struck Barent solidly in the neck and chest and sent him flying back into the wall. Barent struggled to stand up, but he slipped on some blood and went right back down again, striking his head hard against the floor. He caught a glimpse of the guard’s face through the thinning mist and saw that it was Brek.
Despite his injuries, Brek hopped up and tried to stomp Barent’s face into the floor with his boot. But Barent saw the attack coming and rolled off to the side. He grabbed one of Brek’s feet and pulled it out from under him, sending the soldier back down to the floor again where he landed in a seated position.
The kick to Barent’s chest had knocked the wind out of him and he was struggling to breathe. And the residual gas in the lift was only exacerbating his troubles, making each hard-fought draw of air far less satisfying than it should have been. But Barent soon realized that he had an even bigger problem to deal with. He looked over and saw Brek reaching for the pistol at his side—the strap was already undone, and the gun halfway out of its holster. Barent instinctively grabbed for one of his own pistols, beating Brek by a fraction of a second to put a bullet through his left eye.
Barent fell back against the wall in exhaustion as Brek’s lifeless body toppled over—just as the door opened up on the top floor of the building. He saw that the large room beyond was filled with mechanical equipment; the type normally required to distribute electricity, air, and water, throughout a building this size. A low and steady hum signaled that the machines were active, mindlessly performing their intended functions.
But the only feature Sergeant Barent was interested in was the pair of doors on the far side of the room, leading out to the roof. The door started to close again but Barent reached over and locked the lift in place, and then he braced himself against the wall and pulled himself to his feet.
He searched the bodies for anything useful before stepping out of the lift—taking a few conventional grenades and one of the dead soldier’s rifles. Then Barent shuffled his way through the deserted utility room and pushed the exterior doors open, stepping out onto the roof. He sucked in a deep and welcome breath of the frigid night air.
Barent walked over to the edge of the building and looked out over the city, checking two other sides of the structure before he finally spotted what he was looking for. Then he backed up to get a running start.
He ignored the overwhelming pain and fatigue, running toward the edge of the building just as fast as he could go.
And then Sergeant Barent leapt…
Out into the evening sky of Le’sant.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
War
“Damn it!” Sergeant Dura yelled. “Get your asses back here!”
He jerked his head away from the corner of the burning APC just as fusillade of bullets flew toward his voice, bouncing harmlessly off the vehicle’s armored skin.
As he’d feared, and against Dura’s explicit instructions, the Exile troops were rushing at the Collective full-bore—and they were getting cut down for their efforts by bullets and plasma blasts. But while the Exiles may have been borderline feral, they weren’t stupid. As soon as they understood what the Collective weapons were capable of they became much more cautious, heeding Dura’s warnings.
Well, most of them, anyway.
Their current target was a long convoy of thirty APCs, escorting several thousand Collective infantry through the Common Ring as they attempted to root out the invaders. It was an impressive and deadly force, and Sergeant Dura knew there were many others just like it on the way, some probably even larger. According to his forward scouts, the Collective had called out all three divisions. They were assembling every unit they had for a march into the Common Ring to quash the uprising.
Exactly as Dura had predicted.
The coalition had offered little resistance at first, allowing the enemy to drive deep into this part of the city unchallenged. But the time had finally come to strike, to put enough pressure on the Collective troops in the Common Ring to lure those still massing in the Middle District into the trap as well.
Dura watched as the battle unfolded in front of him, noting the unique composition of his forces. Many of Le’sant’s residents had simply run away and hid as the Collective army advanced, but others had gathered to fight alongside the coalition—joining the downtrodden, Exiles, and Olin, as they fought to free the city. The added manpower gave Dura hope that even more citizens might join them as the battles progressed throughout Le’sant, bolstering their numbers into something much more formidable. He’d also been encouraged by the coalition’s initial success when they first launched their assaults, catching the Collective army off guard, and killing dozens of their soldiers in just the first few minutes. But the tables had turned quickly when the enemy brought their impressive firepower to bear, and Dura knew that the majority of the dead since had been his own troops.
“Now!” he yelled into his comm unit.
The Wardens were the only members of his force equipped with comms, so they’d been spaced throughout the coalition to relay Dura’s orders. Seconds later, the efficiency of that system went on full display.
Above them, hundreds of Olin archers leaned out from windows on both sides of the road, sending a flurry of arrows down though the air. And most of those projectiles found their marks, slicing through the few sweet spots in the armor of the Collective troops. The enemy forces were desperately trying to find cover but were pinned down in the middle of the road, and taking fire from both sides at ground level as well.
Plasma beams shot out from the Olin fighting in the street, joining the thousands of bullets fired by the downtrodden and other civilians. But as soon as the Collective identified where the destructive beams were coming from, they responded with overwhelming force, blowing apart whatever structures the Olin were hiding behind in an effort to get at them. The plasma rifles were powerful, and dangerously effective, but they also painted their users as prime targets for retaliation.
The Exiles used the confusion caused by the barrage of arrows to make another run at the APCs, rushing out to plant explosives on several of them before withdrawing again to the safety of the alleyways. The munitions were in short supply, and the coalition couldn’t risk just throwing them and hoping the magnetic seals took hold. So the Exiles had been tasked with fighting their way straight up to the vehicles to hand-place the charges. An enraged Exile could mount a ferocious assault, and Dura respected the way they plowed through the enemy, absorbing tremendous amounts of weapons fire while still continuing to move forward. But despite how hardy they were, nearly half the retreating Exiles were cut down before they made it back to the alleys—but not before inflicting a serious amount of Collective casualties with their longblades.
Then the charges detonated.
Three more of the APCs were completely destroyed, but the others the Exiles targeted were only damaged or disabled. The doors on a couple of those vehicles opened up, and
Sergeant Dura saw the heavily armed troops they were ferrying rush out to join their brethren—working to repel coalition attackers on the ground, or slicing through the Olin bowman above them with plasma beams.
On the top floor of the apartment building across the street, Dura saw an archer standing in one of the windows get cut in half—her head and a large portion of her torso falling down to the street below. But he suspected that most of the Olin dead were out of sight, hidden behind the walls they were using for cover between arrow volleys. Dura’s mind conjured up unpleasant images of bisected bodies dropping to the floor as the Collective plasma beams sliced through the wooden structures, cutting building and body alike as if they were both made out of paper. The scars etched across the front of the buildings bolstered Dura’s suspicions about heavy casualties among the archers, as did the marked decrease in the number of arrows now flinging down toward the street.
“Disengage and move out,” he ordered over the comm, knowing his instructions would be relayed to every one of his soldiers within moments.
The coalition forces began disappearing from the street and nearby buildings almost immediately, taking their injured with them as they returned to the alleyways and moved to the next staging area. Soon, the Collective forces were all alone—left to regroup and pick up the pieces after the engagement.
Dura counted seven APCs destroyed, and hundreds of Collective soldiers dead. But as reports began coming in from the Wardens, he realized it wasn’t nearly enough to make up for the losses suffered by the coalition. And this was only a single enemy unit. For all that effort and loss of life, they’d barely made a dent in the entirety of the Collective army.
From his hiding place, Dura watched the enemy collect their dead and injured into makeshift triage areas, leaving medics and soldiers behind to treat and guard the wounded until they could be safely extracted. Then the convoy began moving forward again, chasing the decoy force Dura kept dangled in front of them to draw the Collective deeper into the Common Ring. He dropped further back into the alley and checked his gear, and then Sergeant Dura rushed off to coordinate the next attack.
Twenty minutes later, they hit the Collective convoy again.
Less than an hour after that, they struck a different unit.
Dura’s forces kept the tactic up for two more hours, briefly attacking the Collective’s forward units and then retreating—working to draw their army further and further away from the city center. He was getting reports now that the enemy’s rear units were advancing faster, hurrying to meet up with the groups he’d been harassing so they could quash this uprising once and for all. And though Dura was gratified to hear that his strategy was working, the level of attrition the coalition was suffering was horrendous. They needed to launch the second part of the plan soon—using all of their forces to surround the Collective army so they could start chipping away at them—or the coalition wouldn’t even have enough troops left to make it work. Dura’s headset chirped, signaling an incoming message. He toggled it on and hoped for good news.
“This is Tana,” he heard. She was whispering…like the enemy was somewhere nearby. Then Sergeant Dura realized that they probably were. “All three divisions have crossed the Middle District and moved into the Common Ring. We’re done here. I’m heading on to the Ministry building.”
“Acknowledged,” Dura said. “Good hunting, Tana. And bring us back a prize.”
“I intend to,” she replied, and then the channel went dead.
Tana had led the first wave of coalition troops into the Outland when the outer wall was blown open, and then she’d promptly turned command over to Sergeant Dura and left to rescue Barent. This was the moment she’d been waiting for since—when the Collective army was gone from the center of the city, concentrating all of its forces in the Common Ring. Sergeant Dura had been anxiously awaiting this moment as well.
But for different reasons.
He switched frequencies. “Corporal Mitte. It’s time. Ring the bells. And ring them fucking hard.”
“Yes, sir.”
Finally, Dura thought to himself.
Finally, we can get some of this heat off of us.
He peered around the edge of the building where he’d teamed up with another Warden and two Olin archers to battle the Collective. The streets were choked with dead bodies and twisted metal—detritus from the latest engagement—and Dura identified dozens of combatants from both sides of the struggle. Despite their best efforts, he knew that there were probably some civilian casualties in the area as well.
When coalition forces took over buildings to attack the Collective, they sent the residents out of the structures and away from the battle. But some refused to leave, placing their lives in grave danger. And unfortunately, that peril was growing—as each successive battle seemed to go worse for the coalition. Partly because the Collective troops knew what to expect from them now, and were more prepared when the attacks came. But mostly because Sergeant Dura had far fewer troops than when he’d first started out.
Further down the street, he saw a fire spring to life where a Collective plasma beam had sliced through the facade of a building, joining several other blazes that had broken out during the intense fighting. But Dura had neither the equipment nor the manpower to do anything about it, and he just hoped that the residents were able to put the fires out when the fighting shifted to another area.
He watched as what remained of the Collective convoy wound its way through the destruction, turning down a side road leading further east. They were still pursuing the group of fighters Dura had tasked with leading the enemy from encounter to encounter—striking and retreating in plain sight to string the convoys along. But the Collective were unwilling to follow Sergeant Dura’s playbook this time, and some of their troops split off into the alleyways, searching for the soldiers hiding there. They understood how the coalition army was moving around unseen—striking from the shadows and falling back—and they intended to take those safe avenues away from them.
Dura toggled his comm. “Wardens. Send riders down through the alleyways behind the convoy and instruct them to engage the Collective forces there. Let’s try to make those routes so unpleasant that the enemy sticks to the main roads from now on. And make sure you tell them to catch the Collective patrols from behind, or the horses will be cut down. Those narrow spaces will help us bottle up the enemy and take them out quickly if we play this right, but they’ll also turn against us if we’re not careful.”
Dura knew the horses could move fast through the small spaces, giving them an immense advantage. It was how their troops had managed to stay one step ahead of the Collective so far. But a horse and rider also presented a large target in the constricted passageways, and if the Collective spotted them first—before the coalition soldiers could fire off their own weapons and neutralize the patrols—they’d be slaughtered. But it was out of Sergeant Dura’s hands now, and there was nothing he could do to affect the outcome.
He looked down the road in the opposite direction as they prepared to move out, and Dura saw another Collective unit headed their way—even larger than the one they’d just fought.
Sergeant Dura understood the importance of remaining optimistic in battle, especially when you commanded others. Your troops looked to you for guidance and strength, and a commander always had to appear confident—even if he wasn’t. In fact, that was often when it was most critical. But doubt was beginning to creep into Dura’s mind now. There were just so many of them, and the Collective army was far too powerful to make any headway against them with these tactics. This rag-tag collection of people he led was outmatched in every single way that mattered.
And Sergeant Dura damn well knew it.
But before the growing uncertainty in him could take root it was shoved aside, violently displaced by two simultaneous explosions ripping through the city walls. The detonations were so powerful that the ground shook beneath Dura’s feet, and everyone stopped what they were doing to
look around in uncertainty. Dura peered over the tops of the nearby buildings and saw smoke rising up through the air in the distance, black and grey clouds billowing high into the night sky. He could make out two distinct plumes, easily visible on both sides of the brightly lit city, and Dura knew that large numbers of coalition troops were now flooding into Le’sant. Soon, Renik and S’to would be leading those soldiers south to meet up with Dura’s own beleaguered forces. And where just seconds ago there had been despair, Dura now felt a growing sense of confidence. The Warden was reassured by the knowledge that reinforcements were streaming in behind the Collective divisions—eager to engage the enemy, and open up several new fighting fronts.
Sergeant Dura just hoped that this one didn’t collapse before they got here.
* * *
Tana watched the small patrol move cautiously in the street below, warily surveying the alleyways and darkened alcoves as they marched past them. Even from the rooftop she could see the apprehension in their movements, and Tana had never witnessed Collective soldiers so spooked before. Even when responding to the occasional riots in the Outland the soldiers were never this cautious. And those situations were dangerously unpredictable, and volatile in the extreme. But the sudden arrival of an unknown enemy had surprised the Collective, throwing them off balance, and Tana could tell that these troops were actually worried. It showed in their excessive diligence to duty. Tana was one of the few people in Le’sant who knew the true scale of this invasion, so maybe the soldiers weren’t overreacting after all.
The coalition’s surprise attack in the Outland had certainly confused the Collective army, but it had also made them more dangerous. And Tana knew they wouldn’t make the mistake of overconfidence in any engagement now. If anything, they’d be expecting the absolute worst of every situation…just like this patrol. Tana noted one of the soldiers glancing overhead and slid further back into the shadows.
