Wholesale Slaughter

by Rick Partlow

  He stood over Reyes, grinning broadly. The man glared up at him, still able to summon the energy for rage despite his injuries, tried to kick at Magnus’ legs.

  “Oh, Jessie,” Magnus said, shaking his head in affected sadness. “You were a good man in a fight, but you never learned to keep your head.”

  He slammed the prybar end of the breaker through Reyes’ face and the kicking and coughing and thrashing all ceased. The crowd had gone silent, but when he raised the bar over his head, dripping with the blood of the vanquished, the cheering began again, more fervent this time.

  Sungurlu came forward, screaming his name over and over, fists pumping in the air, and Magnus tossed the breacher at him. Sungurlu wasn’t a weak man, but he stumbled back a step at the weight of the massive weapon, finally cradling it across his chest while Magnus stepped into the center of the courtyard. Bloodlust was strong in the faces of the crowd, fevered by the ferocity of the combat, but fear warred for a close second place, and he sensed a desperation behind the fervor of the cheers and the chants.

  “We have wasted enough time here!” he yelled, drowning out the clamor. The noise stopped as if he’d flipped a switch, though some of the fists stayed raised in the air, as if they were afraid to lower their hands, afraid of being seen as unsupportive. “Get the drop-ships loaded! We take off in two hours and anyone who isn’t on board gets left behind!”

  He met each of the stares, scanning across their faces with one biological eye still afire with adrenaline and one cybernetic ocular, always cold, always neutral.

  “If you’re with me,” he roared at them, “then kill our enemies with me! Take what they have and leave nothing behind!”

  This time, the enthusiasm was real, and universal.

  It had damned well better be.

  15

  “You risked using the nuke in the first place, so why not go all the way and just kill them with it?”

  Lyta Randell suppressed a sigh, then had to suppress the yawn running hard on its heels. She hadn’t slept much on the trip back from Clew Bay, and while part of that had been Osceola’s fault, mostly it was because every time she closed her eyes, all she could see was an Omni-Alert posting in every military outpost across the Five Dominions with all their faces on it and the notice “Wanted for War Crimes.”

  “We risked it because it was the only way to guarantee they’d go through with the attack on Piraeus even if they noticed our preparations,” she explained, grabbing for patience with both hands. “But if we had actually managed a ground burst, well, I’m not sure we could guarantee even our own crew might not have reported it to the military. Still, we might have risked it except there was no way in hell it was going to work.”

  Arachne’s Chief Councilor was a lion in a cage, pacing restlessly in the tiny, ten-meter room and making Lyta feel even more tired sitting hunched over on a well-padded chair at the central table. It was dimly-lit and stuffy in here despite the air conditioning, but Garrett had insisted on it, said the room was the only place in the whole Palacio she could be sure they wouldn’t be overheard or bugged.

  And isn’t that all reassuring?

  By all rights, Jonathan should have been here with her, explaining everything to one very agitated head of state, but he was supervising the unloading of the heavy-lift cargo shuttles and the outfitting of the mecha, which left the task to her and one sullen and conflicted Terry.

  Is it daylight outside? she wondered. Did we land at dawn or dusk, local time? I can’t even remember, if I even knew.

  “Why wouldn’t it have worked?” Garrett demanded. Lyta wanted to label her as petulant, but she knew she was being unfair; the woman was terrified. “It was a nuke. They can destroy whole cities!”

  “Fusion weapons aren’t magic, Councilor,” Terry snapped, sitting on a small sofa wedged into a corner of the room. “Their yield is determined by the quantity of deuterium and tritium you pack into them, and they can only propagate their blast wave so far.”

  “And it’s not really possible to get them closer with current technology,” Lyta explained. She couldn’t really blame the woman for not knowing. Out here, nuclear weapons were about as mythological as unicorns. “The ECM—Electronic Counter Measures—even someone like Magnus has access to is enough to shut down the best guidance systems most military weapons have. Fusion weapons or, hell,” she shrugged, “any munitions not guided by a human operating a laser designator are only good against unprepared targets, which makes them useless militarily except as weapons of terror.”

  “Which is why all of the Five Dominions proscribe them,” Terry put in, the words raw and bitter. “Using nuclear weapons is a war crime.”

  “No one is going to bring in a cross-border military intervention into the non-aligned systems over an airburst over a semi-habitable moon being used as a pirate base,” Lyta assured Chief Councilor Garrett. “Particularly when it didn’t even kill anyone. We’re not going to tell anyone about it, you’re the only one in your government who knows about it.” Which was a backhanded way of telling her “if it gets out, we’ll know it was you.”

  “The only one we have to worry might talk is Magnus,” she concluded, “and he won’t be telling anyone anything after we kill him.”

  “Assuming it worked, and he does what you think he’ll do,” Garrett interjected, “and comes after you here.”

  “We could see his ship heading back in to Clew Bay before we jumped,” Lyta told the older woman. “He’s going somewhere, in a hurry. And given we just did something I found distasteful and personally abhorrent, and put ourselves at risk of becoming fugitives all the way across human space, I certainly hope it was worth it.”

  It felt good to be back inside a mech. Even if the cockpit was dark and dripping with humidity and oppressively, mind-numbingly hot. At least the mosquitos couldn’t get in through the transparent aluminum canopy. Logan could see them in the dim, green-tinted glow of the few instruments he’d left active, running on battery power. They bounced off the canopy with bloodthirsty persistence, more determined than any soldier he’d ever met, showing him exactly what would happen if he gave in to the almost manic desire to crack open the cockpit and let in some fresh air.

  This was your idea, genius.

  And it had seemed like a good one, at the time. Their biggest worry was Magnus catching sight of their defensive posture and taking off, living to pillage another day. He’d done the sensible, tactical thing and arrayed his company of mecha under the tree canopy, along the riverbanks, powered down and waiting. The Shakak was hiding out as well, tucked behind Arachne’s small moon, biding her time until the bandit ship had moved into orbit and launched her shuttles and landers.

  They were taking a risk there, as Chief Councilor Garrett had repeatedly pointed out; the bandit ship might open fire on the city from orbit, and she could cause a lot of damage before the Shakak could intercept her. But he, Lyta, and Osceola all believed someone like Magnus wouldn’t be able to resist the lure of plunder. He’d send his people down first, to take what they could get before he blew it up. And once his forces were on-planet, he wouldn’t chance orbital strikes.

  But they had to be in place before the bandit ship was in visual range, which meant spending hours inside a closed mech with no air conditioning, nothing more than the fan you could run from the battery backups and an occasional hit from the on-board oxygen line. He couldn’t even use the radio. They didn’t want to chance any thermal, microwave, even laser signal from the hidden mecha. All he could do was wait for the incoming transmission from the command bunker in town.

  And sweat. He’d been doing a lot of that, and the padding of his easy chair was soaked with it. The smell was the worst part: the cockpit was starting to remind him of the locker room at his High School gym.

  Gonna have to get the crew to hose it out, assuming I survive.

  “All Slaughter units, this is the Slaughterhouse.”

  The transmission made him jump, even though he’d been
waiting hours for it. It was Lyta’s voice—she and her Rangers were staying at the Palacio, ready to deploy anywhere in the city if needed, and she had been monitoring the sensor data from there.

  “We have drop. I say again, we have drop. All Slaughter units power up.”

  “Oh, thank Mithra,” he muttered, smacking his palm against the control to ignite the fusion reactor. A cold startup took a few minutes, which meant still more heat as the charged capacitors powered ignition lasers and magnetic fields instead of the air conditioning, but at least the end was in sight.

  “Enemy drop-ships inbound,” Lyta announced. “ETA fifteen minutes. Shakak is moving to engage.”

  Once Osceola moved in on the bandit ship, Magnus wouldn’t have the option of aborting the landing and returning to orbit. He’d have to dig in and try to establish a beachhead on the planet, make it too difficult for them to dig him out. It was a simple plan, but the best ones usually were.

  Indicators began to light up red across his board, moving to yellow before finally flashing green as systems came online and finally cold air began to rush out of the vents like the sweet breath of the Spenta Mainyu spirits, washing across the exposed parts of his face. He grabbed at an already-soaked towel hanging off a support strut and wiped the sweat away from his matted hair before he settled his helmet on and fastened the chin strap. It wasn’t just for comfort: the neural halo had to have a clean connection. Trying to operate a mech through manual controls would have been next to impossible. He’d read once there had been experiments with haptic skinsuits, but the problem with those had turned out to be a very practical one. The suit required freedom of motion, and safety concerns required the pilot to be strapped in securely.

  The whole board was green and the sensor display was active. He grinned, activating the company’s communications network.

  “All Slaughter units, this is Slaughter One. Arbalest Platoon, move to launching positions and target their drop-ships. Fire as you bear. All other platoons, move into attack positions and prepare to engage enemy forces. Sound off by platoon.”

  “Arbalest Platoon, roger.” Lt. Mandy Ford’s voice was steady and clear, though he knew this would be her first actual combat. Colonel Anders had thought she’d be a good selection, though, and he knew soldiers.

  “First Platoon, roger.” Langella. Sub-Lieutenant no longer, he had his own platoon and the thought made Jonathan nervous. Marc Langella was a great mech pilot and the best friend and wingman a guy could have, but unproven as a leader.

  And you’re not? He shrugged admission to himself.

  “Second Platoon, roger.” Lt. Valentine Kurtz drawled. The man was reserved, soft-spoken, intelligent, at least when it came to technical stuff, textbook tactics. He was from the backwoods, some colony Jonathan had never heard of, and usually the backwoods rednecks took to combat well.

  “Third Platoon, roger.” Lt. Alliyah Hernandez. He knew her, casually, someone he’d drunk coffee with in the Battalion ready room before briefings. Confident, even as a Sub-Lieutenant, always ready for a fight. He remembered she had family back on Sparta and wondered how they’d take her being away this long.

  “Fourth Platoon, roger.” The last, and the oldest. Gerald Paskowski was a lieutenant who would have been promoted to captain in another month if he’d stayed, but he had his heart set on leading a strike mech platoon, and none were coming open. Except in Wholesale Slaughter. He was piloting the Scorpion one Lieutenant Logan Conner had captured on Ramman, before that particular officer had been sent off on a long patrol and gone incommunicado… officially.

  “Arbalests moving into firing position,” Ford added.

  The HUD in a company commander’s cockpit was considerably larger than the one in a platoon leader’s mech. It had to be to have room for the IFF displays from twenty-five separate mecha in five different platoons. It had taken him weeks of practice in the simulator before he could make heads or tails of the damned thing in battlefield situations, but he thought he had a handle on it. He recognized Ford’s machines trudging slowly and steadily up the bank of the river, out into the open where the twin missile launch pods mounted on their hunched shoulders could have a clear view of the night sky.

  The other platoons were marching upriver, still under the tree cover, Paskowski walking his strike mecha straight up the center of the waterway, mud be damned, counting on the sheer power of the huge machines to keep them from getting stuck. It was a bold move, and the water could help alleviate overheating in a fight, but it could get them killed if he was wrong about the depth and consistency of the mud.

  He watched them moving past his position, fighting an urge to run out in front of them. A platoon leader could get away with that, but not a company commander. He waited until the strike mecha and Langella’s platoon had passed, then took a cautious, probing step forward, making sure he had solid ground to stand on.

  “Slaughter One, this is Cover One, over.” Katy’s transmission rang in his helmet’s headphones, nearly sending him off balance.

  “Go,” he snapped, too caught up in trying to move his own mech and coordinate all the others to observe proper radio procedure.

  “They have four converted passenger landers, armed up and armored, configured for air support. They’re not military craft, but they have numbers and it’s going to take us a while to get rid of them. I don’t think we can hit the drop-ships before they land. Over.”

  He sighed. It had been a long-shot, anyway, but it would have saved them a ground fight. Their first ground fight as a unit, his first as a company commander. Maybe it was better to rip the bandage off quickly.

  “Roger that, Cover One,” he said, trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice. “Go take down their birds, we’ll handle the rest. Slaughter One out.”

  “Arbalests in position,” Lt. Ford announced, and he double-checked on the HUD to make sure she was, not because he didn’t trust her but because he knew the final responsibility for every shot they fired was his. Colonel Anders had pounded the truth into his head when he’d taken over as platoon leader and it was a hundred times more relevant now. “We have a radar lock on the drop-ships through the Palacio headquarters feed and I estimate they will enter firing range in thirty seconds. Over.”

  “Roger that, Arbalest One. Fire as you bear. Out.”

  He watched the feed from the headquarters bunker, enjoying it while he could. The bandits would jam it as soon as they reached the ground, if they had the sense Mithra gave a newborn. The drop-ships descended on pillars of fire, not the latest military models or even refurbished surplus jobs but slapped-together conversions from heavy cargo birds. Still enough to carry two full heavy companies of mecha and if those wouldn’t be the latest and greatest either, there would still be a hell of a lot of them.

  “Firing,” Ford announced.

  It was a formality; he could see it as clear as the primary star rising at dawn, hear it like the rumble of spring thunder. Smoke billowed out from their positions, engulfing the river and the machinery surrounding it in a shroud of white-grey, lit up from within by the missiles’ rocket engines as they arced upward, two from each mech. The sunbursts shrank to faint glows in the night sky, the rumbles punctuated by sonic booms as they accelerated past the speed of sound and were lost in the starfield overhead.

  The mecha stayed still, gargoyle statues guarding the land from the sky, as their pilots targeted the drop-ships manually, focusing a laser designator against their fuselage because they’d be able to jam a radar lock. His eyes flickered from the visual readout to the radar from the bunker to the thermal display and he began to see glowing clouds obscuring the drop-ships. It was ECM chaff, the same as they’d used on their nuke, cheap and easily fabricated and too damned effective.

  Lasers scattered through the clouds of chaff and locks were lost. Missiles corkscrewed out of control and warheads self-destructed in fireworks-blasts, a punctuation of a symphony of chaos. And still the drop-ships descended, low enough now for t
he city’s defenses to take over.

  He couldn’t see the coilguns firing, but he knew they would be. The drop-ships jinked and deked in response, winding random patterns across the sky. It wouldn’t work forever but maybe long enough for…

  “We have separation.”

  It was Lyta again, and it was unnecessary. He could see the flares of the jump-jets. Whatever mecha weren’t equipped with them would have had quick-burnout, single-use rockets strapped on at hard-points just to get them to the ground. Those were as cheap and easy to make as the missile defenses.

  “Do you want us to keep firing, Slaughter One?” Ford asked, her tone letting him know she’d guessed the answer.

  “Negative, Arbalest One,” he gave her the answer she’d been waiting for. “Hold fire and save your reloads for fire support. Take up defensive positions at the river.” He switched frequencies to Paskowski’s net. “Fourth, get your strike mecha in position to defend the Arbalests and act as a reserve.”

  “Roger, Slaughter One.”

  Paskowski sounded disappointed, but Jonathan wasn’t going to leave the missile launchers hanging out there by themselves. They had no secondary weapons except a couple of grenade launchers to discourage infantry; they wouldn’t last a second in a stand-up fight. And the strike mecha were slow and lumbering, most useful as stationary firing platforms for heavy weapons.

  Which is why I let him have that damned Scorpion.

  “First, Second, and Third platoons,” Jonathan Slaughter said over the general net, “they’re coming down on the west side of the city, two kilometers southwest of our position. Hit your jump-jets and get after them.”

  “Where are you gonna be, boss?”

  That was Langella, and he glanced quickly at the communications readout to make sure it was on a private channel.