The Siege of Earth (The Ember War Saga Book 7)

by Richard Fox

  “That’s gate four,” Bodel said.

  Elias took a running leap and climbed half the hillside with a single bound. He came over the crest and opened up with his rotary cannon, annihilating the circling drones.

  A walker construct the size of a three-story house pounded against the aegis-reinforced doors to the gate. Both arms were fused into giant clubs that it bashed against the gate. One door was already bent against the hinges, the second badly dented. The blasted remains of Red platoon littered the roadway leading to the gate.

  Elias skidded down the side of the ravine, one hand balancing him against the slope, the other holding up his cannons. Elias fired a burst of gauss cannon shells into the walker’s knee. Black fragments of obsidian-colored armor sprang out of the impacts. The walker’s leg buckled and it stumbled back from the gate.

  Elias unsheathed his pike and hit the ground. He sprinted toward the construct and leaped into the air. The walker swung a massive arm at Elias, who flipped his heels over his head and gained an extra foot of height with the acrobatics and a push from his anti-grav linings. He landed on the walker’s arm and stabbed the pike into its arm. The spike burst through the opposite side of the arm with a crack.

  The walker’s other arm morphed into a cannon, a deadly red beam already forming at its core.

  Elias wrenched the pike to the side and cracked the walker’s arm like a rotted log.

  The walker swung its cannon arm toward Elias. Sparks and hunks of armor flew off the cannon as Bodel and Kallen pounded it with fire.

  Elias pressed his heels against the cracked arm and tried to wrench it away, but the Xaros’ metal reformed around the puncture, trapping him in place. Elias strained against the hold, then released the pike from the housing and flew back, smacking against the side of the ravine.

  Dust and rocks showered around him. The walker punched its broken cannon arm straight at Elias. The Iron Heart lurched out of the depression in the soft soil and felt the walker’s arm swipe through the air as it pounded the ravine.

  Elias fell at the walker’s feet and rolled to the side before it could stomp the life out of him. Elias thrust his forearm cannons against the thing’s knee and blew a gaping hole into the joint.

  The walker stumbled to its side. Elias saw a sudden shadow in the corner of his eye and caught the walker’s other leg against his entire body. The kick hit Elias like he’d stepped in front of a freight train. He hit the ground hard and bounced twice before coming to a sudden stop against the damaged gate.

  His vision swam. His armor was alive with damage warnings. He pushed himself to his knees and raised his cannons.

  Kallen was on top of the walker, one hand gripping the edge of a gauss bullet hole while the other plunged her pike into the Xaros’ head and shoulders over and over again.

  Bodel hung onto the Xaros’ chest, his cannon arm jammed between the walker’s plates and firing point-blank.

  The walked lifted an arm over its head and knocked Kallen flying.

  “Desi!” Elias got to his feet.

  Bodel tugged at the walker’s cracked armor plate and ripped it away, exposing glowing pyrite beneath. He let go and fell to the ground just before the Xaros beat at his chest and almost crushed the Iron Heart.

  Elias fired his forearm cannons and hit the walker in its exposed core. Red cracks broke across the construct’s surface. It leaned back, propping itself up on an arm, then froze in place. Armor plates fell into the red soil with muted thumps as it broke apart.

  “Bodel?” Elias stumbled toward him, his balance still shaky after the kick.

  “Fine,” Bodel said as he stood. “I’m fine.”

  They saw Kallen lying on her side. One arm pushed her body up, then she collapsed into the bloodred soil.

  “Kallen?” Elias ran to her, Bodel a step behind.

  He rolled her onto her back. One arm had been crushed; sparks and hydraulic fluid poured out of the fragmented armor. Her helm had a deep dent against the side and her breastplate was malformed.

  None of the damage came through to Elias’ suit.

  He pushed her helm to the side and clicked a button just beneath her chin to reset her telemetry settings. A flood of data came to him. Kallen’s heartbeat was slow, her blood pressure dangerously low. The fluid in her womb was full of blood.

  “Desi…what did you do?” Elias asked.

  “I feel cold,” she said.

  “You’re bleeding out.” Bodel knelt next to her and touched the side of her breastplate. He was about to lift it away when her good hand pushed his arms aside.

  “This is it, Iron Hearts.” Her helm swung to the side as her damaged optics stared up at Elias. “Need to…see you.”

  Elias flipped the view port down on her chest and grabbed her good hand. Bodel put his palm over their hands.

  Kallen looked up from the slit, her pupils wide and unfocused. She looked at Bodel, then Elias, then sank away.

  “Just hold on,” Bodel said. “We can get you inside, to an aid station.”

  “No. This will be over before you can get my tank out. This is how I wanted it. I love you, Hans, but this is the end. Love you…Elias. You fight. Keep…fighting.”

  Her heart stopped beating.

  Elias laid her hand across her chest. Wind skirted between the three, blowing a thin shroud of dust over Kallen’s armor.

  “Elias…”

  “Get her ammo. Batteries. The fight’s moving into the cannon.” Elias stood up, made the sign of the cross, and went back to the gate. He scooped up his pike from the last remnants of the walker and snapped it back into the housing.

  At the damaged outer doors, he wrenched aside a loose piece of metal and made an opening big enough for his armor to squeeze through. The inner doors were undamaged.

  Bodel was still at Kallen’s side.

  “Hans. Hans, battle calls.”

  Bodel took Kallen’s ammo pack and her spare battery. He trotted over to Elias and handed over the ammo.

  “She was the best of us,” Bodel said.

  “I know. We’ll come back for her when this fight is over. Now keep moving.”

  ****

  Elias and Bodel made their way through a hallway scarred by gauss rounds and Xaros beams. Dead Marines and doughboys lay every few yards and Elias took care where he stepped.

  The sound of fighting echoed around them, shouts and the zap of alien weapons growing stronger as they neared an intersection. Elias clanked around the corner and found a haphazard barricade of aegis plates. Marines and doughboys fired over the top.

  “Friendlies coming through,” Elias boomed. A Marine sergeant saw Elias’ helm and waved him over. He ran to the armor before they could reach the barricade.

  “Boy am I glad to see you guys,” the sergeant said. His breastplate was heat warped from a Xaros beam and Elias couldn’t make out his name. “Got the entrance to cannon control on the other side of the barricade. Damn Xaros have been trying to get through there for the last ten minutes but we fight them off every time they push. We’re low on ammo, was about to switch to harsh language before you showed up.”

  “Where are they?” Elias asked.

  “Next cross-hall over. What do you want us to do?”

  “Move your men back and stay behind us,” Bodel said. The armor went to the edge of the barricade and waited for the defenders to fall back.

  Elias waited until the thrum of Xaros drones grew louder, then charged through aegis plates, knocking them aside like they were twigs. Elias destroyed a drone attempting to cut through the control room doors and ran forward. He swung one leg in front of him and slid to a stop in front of the next cross-hall.

  A dozen drones floated in the air. His rotary cannons snapped up next to his face and ripped through the drones. Bodel came in a heartbeat behind him and added his cannon to the fire. With no room to maneuver, the drones didn’t last long.

  “Clear,” Bodel said.

  “You wrecked our fighting position,” the s
ergeant said, kicking at one of the plates.

  “Rebuild it around the control room doors,” Elias said. “We’ll help.”

  Hydraulic whines emanated from the control room door. One side popped loose. The door shifted slightly, like someone was trying and failing to open it. Elias grabbed the edge and swung it aside slowly.

  A small, plump woman in a tech’s environment suit stuck her head through the door. She pointed a finger at Elias.

  “I need you,” she said, shifting her finger to Bodel, “and I need you. The rest of you, don’t let the Xaros in.”

  “What do you think we’ve been doing out here, Mable?” the sergeant said as he grabbed a doughboy and pushed him toward an aegis plate to pick up.

  Elias gauged the door, then got down on his side. “We’ll have to crawl in.”

  “Fine, just hurry up.” Mable retreated to the control room as Elias pulled himself through, like a grown man trying to fit through a doggy door.

  “OK.” Mable reached in and waved her hands at Elias to get him to hurry up. “I don’t know how much you know about magnetic induction coils, but the number twelve inferometer shit the bed eight minutes ago and we’ve got a fire mission in the queue.”

  Elias got his legs through the doorway. The control room was full of enough technicians, holo screens and operations tables that it made the bridge of the Breitenfeld look like a lazy street corner. Reinforced glass wrapped around the outer section of the control room. The Nerio cannon lay beyond—a long barrel the size of a frigate covered by induction coils rested in a great cavern. Frames with giant cranes crossed over the cannon. Giant actuators shifted the cannon to the side at the rate of a few feet per minute.

  One of the frames was bent at the corner, blackened.

  Elias got to his feet and stared at Mable, who had her hands on her hips. Elias shrugged.

  “Drones got into the chamber and fragged the number three crane before the doughboys managed to nail it. They also managed to clip inferometer twelve, which wasn’t an issue until we did the pre-charge and saw it go tits up,” Mable said.

  “You needed something?” Elias asked.

  “Naturally crane three services inferometer twelve, god damn Murphy’s Law. I need you and the other one to get out there and replace the inferometer so we can shoot. I’ll guide you from here.” Mable pointed to an access door leading to a set of stairs that ran to the bottom of the cannon.

  “Spare’s already broken out. Whatever you do, don’t touch the live coils.” She reached up and slapped Elias on his metal rear end. “Good luck.”

  Elias grumbled and crawled through the next door. Once through, he jumped out and let Mars’ lesser gravity take him to the bottom of the cavern. The rest of the facility was under Earth standard grav. Working in Mars’ natural environment made sense to him from an engineering point of view—less effort to move large heavy things.

  He thumped against the bare stone floor and found an induction coil the size of a small car with a pile of packing material next to it.

  Bodel landed next to him and surveyed the weapon.

  “Ideas?” Bodel asked.

  “Gross weight on the packaging is a lot less than us,” Elias said. “The cranes can carry that thing. The frame should hold us both and the coil…probably.”

  “Just one of us take it up?” Bodel asked.

  There was a muted slap against the glass wall above their heads.

  “You two want to get your thumbs out of your asses and get moving?” Mable asked over IR.

  “I’m not sure if she has a death wish or is just unusually brave,” Bodel said.

  “You go up first.” Elias went to the induction coil and grabbed it by a thick metal handle attached to one end. He lifted it up with one arm and tested the weight. “I’ll carry it.”

  The struts leading up the side of the damaged crane were several feet apart, just wide enough for Elias to use as a ladder. He climbed up with one arm, holding the coil behind him with the other. The ascent was slow, but steady.

  “Admiral Garret just called and asked why he has to wait so long for fire support,” Mable said.

  Elias growled into the IR.

  Bodel waited for him at the top of the cross frame; the top bar was just wide enough for him to stand on it.

  “Ready.” Bodel held his arms out. Elias swung the coil up and Bodel grabbed the handle on the other side. The two lowered the coil very gently to rest on the top of the frame.

  “You move the coil. I’ll get the crane,” Elias said. He looked down at the broken crane and realized just how high he was. Elias’ hands slapped against the side of the frame.

  “Elias?” Bodel asked.

  “Moving.” Elias crawled onto the top of the frame and reached down to the crane, but his hands were a few inches too short to touch. He snapped out his pike and pushed the crane along the runner bar. The crane jiggled against the bar, testifying to broken parts within.

  “You need to go forward another fifty meters,” Mable said.

  “At least the broken part isn’t clear on the other side of the barrel,” Bodel said.

  Elias guided the crane forward until their guide ordered them to halt.

  “OK, you see that black smoking induction coil directly beneath you? Get down there and remove it. Don’t touch the coils next to it or the world ends in a giant white flash.”

  “Brace the crane.” Elias retracted his pike and leaned down. He felt a brief wave of vertigo, then fell forward. He grabbed the thick cables running from the crane to the swaying hook below and held on for dear life. The hook extended a few yards down, nowhere near enough to reach the damaged coil. Elias looked at the hook, then to the crane, and gave the crane a punch against the side.

  The rollers inside the crane came loose and the hook plummeted toward the gun below.

  “Um…Elias?” Bodel said.

  The hook stopped over the broken coil, swaying from side to side.

  “I knew it wasn’t long enough to go all the way down,” Bodel said.

  Elias lessened his hold and slid down the cables. He stopped on top of the hook and reached down to the damaged coil.

  “The system’s meant to be interchangeable. Find the four clamps and get that thing out of there,” Mable said. “Also, don’t touch anything else. Because electrocution.”

  Elias unsnapped the clamps, breaking through warped metal and blackened carbon. He grasped the coil by the carry handle and lifted it up. The coil came loose with a tug and he pulled it clear as he stood.

  “Now you have to climb all the way back up with that broken part.” Mable let out a long sigh.

  Elias swung the coil back, then forth, moving his perch on the hook farther and farther each time. His swing brought him close to the control room, and he hurled the coil away.

  “What the hell are you—” Mable ducked away as the coil flew across the cavern and smashed into the wall just beneath the control room floor. “Or that. Fine. That was just fine.”

  Elias leaned away from the direction of his swing and killed the momentum.

  “I’m looking in the cradle,” Elias said. “Not sure if what I see is good or bad.”

  “Are the Faston tabs and field coils still viable?”

  Elias looked up at Mable.

  “Do you see glowing blue things on the long end of the cradle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are they covered in shit or are they clean?”

  “Clean.”

  “Good to go. Get the replacement in there so I can save the admiral’s ass.”

  Elias looked up at his fellow Iron Heart. “Drop it.”

  “Drop it?”

  “Drop it. I’ll catch it.” Elias held his hand up.

  Bodel lay down on the cross bar with the coil extended to Elias, scooted forward a few inches and let it go.

  Elias ignored Mable’s panicked screams and watched the coil fall toward him. Mars’ gravity brought it to him at a rate less than half of what it would hav
e been on Earth. The metal frame creaked as the coil fell. The damaged joints on the other end buckled and dropped Elias and his hook several feet before it came to a stop.

  Elias reached to the handle and found he was swinging. He shifted his weight to the side and tried to get beneath the coil. He stretched up…and missed by a fraction of an inch. He whirled around and almost lunged off the hook. He got a grip and lifted it straight up. The bottom handle whipped down and dipped into the empty space where the last coil had been. The cables twisted around, then unwound.

  Elias held the coil up like a kettlebell as the momentum to his swing faded away.

  “I’ll admit it,” Mable said. “I peed a little.”

  “Maybe we’re too heavy,” Bodel said.

  “Now you say that.” Elias bent at the knees and set one end of the coil in the cradle. The rest of the machinery snugly fell into place and Elias clamped it tight. An electric hum and snaps sounded from under Elias.

  “Now what?” Elias asked.

  “Now get your asses away from the barrel. My firing window closes in two hundred seconds and I’m sending this round before it closes,” Mable said.

  Elias grabbed a cable and shimmied up one side to the crane.

  “Pull the hook up behind you. There are rubber stops but I wouldn’t trust them to keep an arc off you,” Mable said.

  Bodel fished up the other cable with his pike and pulled the line to him.

  “You could have given us some warning,” Bodel said.

  “I don’t fire and the Twentieth Fleet dies to a Xaros leviathan, then Mars falls and all of us die. Or I fire and risk killing you two. There is no decision,” Mable said.

  “I can’t fault that logic,” Elias said.

  He got to the top of the cross bar and helped reel in the hook.

  “Ten seconds!”

  Bodel did a double take at the control room. “What happened to—”

  “Target moved. Hold on tight!”

  The coils beneath the Iron Hearts lit up. Electricity arced between the cross beam and the armor. Elias felt his teeth humming and squeezed his arms and legs around the metal.