by Richard Fox
“Prep for drop and follow me,” Hale said.
The light blinded Hale, then faded away in a heartbeat.
Outside the shuttle bay doors was Earth. White bands of clouds crossed over a tan desert. Hale made out Baja California and the Pacific Coast. They were right where they were supposed to be.
Hale took a running leap out of the shuttle bay, fired the thrusters attached to his boots and rocketed forward. A red dot appeared on his visor, his beacon to the landing zone just south of Phoenix. Wide red rings joined the red dot, marking his flight path.
Just stay in the rings, he thought.
He looked back at the Scipio and counted Marines as they followed him through the upper atmosphere.
“All clear,” Cortaro sent. “Had to throw Allen.”
“He’ll get over it,” Hale said.
“Hale, this is Lafayette. I’m taking the Scipio to the Crucible. Gott mit uns to you.”
“Wait, you’re not coming with us? Why are you taking that wreck?” Hale asked. He wiped condensation from his visor and twisted to the side to re-center his flight path.
“Tell Steuben that I am shol mar cul when the time is right. He will understand,” Lafayette said.
“Laf, what does that mean? Lafayette?”
The channel shut off.
A gust of wind buffeted Hale to the side, rolling him over and over. He snapped his hands and arms to the side, steadying himself in the thickening atmosphere. A yellow strip flashed on the right side of his visor. He looked over and saw the rings of his intended flight path hundreds of yards away.
“Um, sir? Is our flight path changing?” Jacobs asked.
“No. Got bad air. Keep to the beacon while I correct,” Hale said. A wave of embarrassment welled up in his chest. Telling Marines to follow him only worked if he went the right damn direction.
He tapped the thrusters on his left hand and heel, edging him closer and closer to his flight path. The path went right over his head, and he was losing altitude too fast to ever close the gap.
Hale entered a cloud. Rain patted against his visor and ran down the sides.
“Crimson, Slate, this is 6. I’m off path and will hit south of the landing zone,” Hale said. There was no answer. He looked around and saw nothing but the cloud that was absorbing his transmission.
He shot through the cloud ceiling. Phoenix spread out ahead of him, far larger than he ever remembered with highways spoking away from Euskal Tower. Red flashed from Xaros beams, striking buildings south of Camelback Mountain east of the tower.
There was sparse desert below, miles from the edge of the city. Hale realized he was in for quite a hike once he hit the ground.
“There he is!” Bailey shouted.
“Told you he went through that big miles-wide cloud,” Orozco said.
Hale twisted around. His Marines were right behind him, sticking out like sore thumbs against the backdrop of the gray cloud.
“Before you get mad,” Standish said, “we figured you didn’t want to be all by your lonesome out here, especially not with all the drones. Also, First Sergeant told us to follow you.”
“Cortaro?” Hale looked to the ground and swung his feet down.
“Last thing I heard you say was ‘follow me,’ sir. Everything after that was broken and unreadable,” Cortaro said. “Rest of the teams are still on course. Steuben’s got them.”
Hale mumbled under his breath. Cortaro’s story didn’t pass the smell test, but he was glad to have his team with him.
The captain got a solid grip on his ripcord and watched his altimeter blink from amber to red. He pulled the pin, releasing a clear foot-wide ribbon of composite polymers from his backpack. The ribbon-chute twisted into a corkscrew, spinning rapidly as it stole Hale’s speed. He activated his boot linings and slowed to a complete halt inches over the ground.
Hale thumped to the ground and hauled the chute out of the air. He found a capsule full of liquid at the base of the ribbon and crushed it with his fingers. The clear chute melted as the released chemicals ate through the material. Hale ripped the harness off his back and tossed it beneath a spiky ocotillo tree. Steam rose off the disintegrating chute.
“Sound off,” Cortaro said. All the Marines checked in.
Hale took his plasma rifle off his back and zoomed in on Phoenix’s distant spires. Xaros drones flit through the towers, hounded by plasma bolts and gauss rounds from the ground.
“Doesn’t look so bad,” Hale said.
“Not down here, but look east,” Egan said.
Explosions blossomed over the horizon. Energy blasts stitched across the sky in a dogfight that must have stretched for miles.
“Can we hurry?” Yarrow asked. “We need to get to Phoenix. My—the civilians need us.”
“Traveling over watch, let’s move.” Hale took off running.
Hale set a punishing pace for anyone not wearing powered armor. His suit could keep moving for hours at a pace of five minutes per mile, taking much of the burden off the wearer.
“I think I remember this place,” Standish said. “Didn’t we land around here when we pulled Ibarra out from under his tower? The Midway was over on the left, crashed in the mountains.”
“It was a little south,” Cortaro said.
“And we had Stacey Ibarra with us and she would not stop breaking noise discipline. Then we had to take her to the Crucible where—”
“Standish,” Hale said.
“Yes sir, shutting up.”
CHAPTER 24
The maniple of drones between Earth and Mars contracted, fusing deep within its center to form a pointed oval shape the size of a small capitol ship. Inside the new construct a conduit to the rest of the Xaros network formed. Lumps of the surrounding chamber pulled away and formed into the General’s armor over the plinth.
The General’s being arrived soon after. He reached back to the gate that was under construction over Pluto…and felt nothing. Abaddon…nothing. Data from his drones showed a small human strike force destroying both.
No matter. His drone force over Mars would keep the main human fleet tied to the planet and unable to aid Earth once his armada arrived. The battle was as good as won.
The chamber darkened as an inky mass spread from the top and worked down the walls. Bright-colored nebulae arose through the darkness and contracted into stars, the work of billions of cut into mere seconds. Constellations known to the Xaros home world surrounded the General.
+Keeper.+ The General failed to hide his disdain.
+I thought this issue would have been decided by now,+ came from all around the General. +The vessel you used to travel from the nearest gate…where are the rest of your drones? There should be more drones.+
+There was a complication on the way. The humans will be extinct soon and why are you distracting me from my purpose? I do not visit the Apex and fret over the geode’s energy balance.+
The stars swirled around the General, settling into a new pattern of constellations once visible from a destroyed paradise world of islands and shallow seas.
+You asked me to awaken the others because of this anomaly with a vagrant species. I came to see it resolved…but it is not,+ Keeper said.
+It will be soon.+
A macro cannon shell from Mars clipped the outer net of drones traveling to Earth. The loss of several hundred drones fed into the chamber.
+Your service to the Apex has been flawless…until now,+ Keeper said.
+This solar system will be purged.+ The General rose off the plinth, his body burning white hot with anger. +When this galaxy is ours and it comes time to choose our domains—all worlds that I secured—this will be where I rule. This insignificant species will be the last that dares stand against us. I will broadcast their final agonizing moments to whatever species still cower in worlds untouched by my drones and show the futility of standing against my armies.+
The General formed a hand into a long blade and touched the point against the conduit.<
br />
+Now you can either leave before I destroy this conduit and spare myself from your prattling or stay for the rest of this campaign and watch me work,+ the General said. +Choose quickly.+
The star field along the walls drew into a point over the conduit and vanished.
The General hacked at the conduit, breaking away chunks and severing his connection to the rest of the Xaros network. If there were to be any more embarrassing episodes, he wouldn’t let Keeper see them.
CHAPTER 25
In a low crouch, Hale ran past a burning car. He stopped against a wall and took a quick look around the corner. A walker construct the size of a two-story building swept ruby beams across the sky.
The walker clipped a squat-high rise, slicing a corner away. The corner crashed to the ground and exploded in a cloud of pulverized quick-crete.
“Are we too late?” Yarrow asked as he hit the wall behind Hale. “I don’t see anyone. No civilians anywhere.”
“Look at the walls, any of the buildings,” Hale said. “No beam holes. Xaros picked through civilians and killed them the first time they attacked. Civvies must have evacced to bunkers.”
The roar of an Eagle fighter filled the air. Hale ducked away from the edge as the fighter’s gauss cannon ripped through the street next to him and traced a line through the construct.
“That pilot’s either a master who knew where we were,” Standish said, “or an asshole that just didn’t care about hitting us.”
“Maybe both,” Bailey said as she fit her rail rifle together. “Want me to take care of that thing, sir?”
“Nice big boom from your rifle would tell every Xaros in the city we’re out here,” Yarrow said. “Can we get past it? Let the big guns take care of that thing?”
“Yarrow, with me. Grenades,” Hale said, taking one from his belt and twisting the cylinder to activate the shaped-charge setting, “set for lance. Rest, take it out once we hit it.” He broke open a window with his shoulder and climbed through.
The building had rows and rows of robot fabricators. Spindly arms with many fingers bent over workbenches full of rifle components. Power cables lay on the ground, disconnected from each bench.
The two Marines shuffled along the outer wall, the electric crash of the walker’s beam sounding through the wall. The walker thundered past a window, the shifting metal of its tree-trunk legs shaking the ground with each step.
Yarrow touched a hand to the window, ready to break it with the slightest tap of his augmented knuckles.
“No,” Hale whispered, “need a few yards for the grenades to arm.”
The construct stopped and raised its twin cannon arms to the sky. Red light flashed through the factory as Xaros fired on a target high above.
“Now!” Hale smashed a fist through a window and swiped broken glass out of the way. He hurled his grenade and ducked beneath the sill. Twin thunderclaps from the Marines’ attacks shattered the rest of the windows.
Hale looked over the daggers of glass. The construct stumbled forward, two smoking holes against its back. The Xaros swung an arm toward Hale.
“Move!” Hale dove aside as a disintegration beam the width of a telephone pole ripped through the wall and destroyed the idle robots. Hale got his plasma rifle off his back. He stood halfway up when another beam cut through the wall just over his head and across the entire factory’s façade.
There was a groan of metal as the building tilted over, straining against a section of undamaged framework behind Hale.
“Back! Back!” Hale vaulted over a workbench and made for the growing tear across the outer wall. The building toppled over like a felled tree, raining shattered glass as the failing structure collapsed. A wave of dust and smoke washed over Hale. His world was nothing but a growing rumble and a purgatory haze.
He wiped at his face and air filters and spun around.
“Yarrow? Anybody?”
A ruby beam as thick as his arm stabbed through the fog, missing his head by a few feet. Hale dove to the ground and crawled away, looking for any kind of cover.
The ground shook—heavy footsteps on approach. A giant humanoid shadow loomed through the dust. Hale rolled to his side and fumbled with his rifle…and the shadow ran right past him.
The flash of a gauss cannon snapped through the haze. The sound of ripping metal filled the air. What looked like a bent log flew up and arced through the air, landing a few feet from Hale—one of the construct’s cannon arms, disintegrating rapidly in the dust.
Hale ran to the sound of metal pounding on metal and scrambled over a pile of broken masonry.
An armor soldier stood over the defeated construct. The armor’s shoulders shifted up and down, like it was breathing hard. Scorch trails and heat blotches marred the armor’s plate; antennae on half its helm were bent and broken.
As the dust settled, the armor turned to Hale. A red, bent faceplate with two slits for eyes hung over the armor’s chest.
“Hale.”
“Elias.”
“Steuben said you’d come through this way.” Elias raised a foot and slammed it against the construct’s chest, kicking up burning embers. “Where are the rest?”
“Captain!” carried through the fog. Hale heard the bricks knocking against each other.
“Over here!” Hale called back.
“I’ve got a spider hole for you a few blocks away,” Elias said, “that’ll get you to the mountain. Need to hurry, next wave will be here soon.”
“There he is!” Yarrow struggled through the wreckage as the rest of their team followed behind. “Sir, thought we’d be out here for hours digging for you.”
“Look at that,” Standish said, pointing to the smoldering construct. “Captain took out the walker all by himself. Oh…hi, Elias.”
Three more armor soldiers rolled over on their treads.
“Sector twelve and twenty-three are clear,” Bodel said. “Air support says we’ve got clear skies for at least ten more minutes.”
“Climb on.” Armor panels on his legs lifted up and folded against themselves, exposing his treads. Elias shifted down to his travel form and motioned for Hale to come over.
Hale and Standish jumped onto either side of the armor.
“The worst ride is better than the best walk,” Standish said. “Hey…where’s Kallen?”
Elias’ treads bit into the rubble and drove them down a side street.
“Elias, did you hear me? Where’s Kallen?” Standish slapped his palm against the armor’s shoulder. There was no answer as Elias pulled to a stop in front of a Chinese restaurant, its tall double doors hanging by bent hinges.
“I’m talking to you, god damn it.” Standish reached up and struck Elias’ helm with the back of his knuckles.
Elias kicked the tread beneath Standish into the air and sent the Marine sprawling onto the road. The armor reared up to his full height and raised an open hand into the air. He slammed his hand toward Standish, pinning him beneath the armor’s fingers.
Standish stared defiantly at Elias, both ignoring the shouts around them.
Elias’ hand closed around Standish…and he lifted him gently onto his feet. Elias knelt in front of the Marine, bringing their heads level.
“She fell, Standish.”
Standish nodded slowly, then did his best to give Elias a hug.
“Did she tell you? How much she cared?” Standish asked.
“She did. Her and Bodel tell me what a help you were back when I was locked in my tank. I haven’t thanked you, have I? Thanked you for getting me out of that hospital?”
“You just keep on saving our ass, big boy,” Standish said, pulling away and slapping a palm against the helm’s enormous cheek, “and we’ll call it even.”
Elias stood up and pointed to the open doors.
“There’s a hatch on the kitchen floor. Passage beneath will take you straight to the mountain. Close it behind you or they’ll blow the whole tunnel after ninety seconds,” Elias said.
&nbs
p; “What about all of you?” Hale asked.
“We’re staying out here,” Elias said. “Need to pick a fight.”
****
A pair of double-barreled gauss cannons built into a turret greeted Hale and his Marines as they neared the end of the tunnel. Each flanked a vault door with no handle.
“What could go wrong here?” Standish asked.
“The cannons have to be manned,” Egan said, “won’t risk a program that the Xaros can hack. Soon as whoever’s supposed to be manning them sees we’re not drones, they’ll open up.”
“Go knock on the door,” Cortaro told Egan. The commo Marine did a double take at Cortaro, then walked to the vault door, his arms wide, rifle held by the barrel in one hand. Egan reached up to the door.
The cannons whirred to life, panning across the hallway quickly. Egan jumped back from the door, still holding his rifle at arm’s length.
“Friendlies!” Egan shouted.
The vault door cracked open, then swung slowly into the hallway. There was a thin layer of quadrium metal between the reinforced armor plates making up the vault door.
A Ranger in jet-black armor stood in the doorway, a pistol in his hand. There were two more soldiers behind him, rifles low but pressed to their shoulders.
“Captain Hale, I presume,” the Ranger said.
“That’s right.” Hale stepped forward. “Mind if we come in…”
“Major Dane, 25th Regiment, or what’s left of it.” Dane stepped aside.
Hale looked up and down the hallway. There was no one manning the cannons, or anyone else in the poorly lit area but the Rangers who greeted them.
“I thought those were active when we first saw them.” Hale pointed a thumb to the triggers and vision slits behind each cannon.
“I need manpower on the redoubts, in the air. Xaros haven’t figured out the tunnels…yet. Guess the quadrium linings do work as advertised, confuses the drone’s scanners,” Dane said. “Come with me. I need you on the walls.”
“We’ve been out of the loop for a while. What’s the situation?” Hale asked as he walked side by side with Dane.
