by M. R. Forbes
"Have you seen Shank?" Mitchell asked.
"No, sir," Zed replied, using her loudspeaker.
Damn. He hoped the Rigger was still alive, somewhere.
"Zed, take point. Go! Now!"
Zed's Zombie moved out ahead of the two trucks and began to run, heavy feet leaving small indents in the hardened pavement. The cargo trucks trailed behind her, fifty to a hundred rebels on each, along with the gear they had managed to salvage.
A car raced around the corner behind them, followed by a second and third. A drone was low behind them, cannon swiveling and firing. One of the cars blew out, its reactor struck by the blast. Bodies were thrown around it.
Mitchell cursed and raced towards the cars, his fury reaching its apex. As he neared them, he fired his thrusters, moving up and over, into the path of the drone.
There was a reason he had been assigned to Greylock. He was one of the best, and he put it on display as he twisted the Zombie, reaching out with big hands and catching the drone as though it were a ball, dropping his thrusters and tugging it to the ground as he fell, turning it perpendicular, so the dangling cannon was on the opposite side. He spiked it into the pavement, crushing it.
He turned back towards the fleeing caravan, moving into a run behind them. Perseus hung alongside, aiming back with his lasers and firing on the chasing drones.
There was a rumble in the sky.
"Faster," he said, even though they couldn't hear him. They moved down the streets, gaining speed, heading southeast away from the city. Without the communication channels, he didn't know if Cormac and Tio had survived. If Shank had survived. He had underestimated the Tetron again, and he wasn't sure he was going to live to get another chance.
They kept moving, each second feeling as though it lasted an hour. The rumbling grew louder and the clouds began to dissipate, burned away by the heat that was pushing down towards them. The sky was bright around them, lit in an ethereal glow, a harbinger of destruction.
The cruiser was visible now, the rounded face aimed towards them, the heat flowing around it. Streaks of secondary engines flowed from it as it neared, its missile batteries emptying, firing on the ground ahead of it.
The impacts shook the area around them, chunks of pavement and buildings and earth flowing out from the hundreds of strikes, pieces of debris clanging off the sides of the mech and leaving the exposed rebels ducking for cover on the back of the trucks. The drones weren't spared from the carnage, missiles tearing into them, blowing them to pieces and raining still more fragments down.
They cleared the edge of the city. The cruiser was close. So close. It blotted out the sky over Angeles. A massive, man-made asteroid that would crash into the earth, the impact sending it deep, deep underground, into the tunnels below the city. If anyone had tried to wait it out there, they would die.
The echoing sound of wrenching metal and crumbling infrastructure exploded into the night, as the falling cruiser hit the top of the Bennett Building. The skyscraper entered the ship, tearing into it like a spear, twisting and bending and finally collapsing beneath the weight. The cruiser continued its unstoppable flight downward, hitting the ground with a deafening roar, setting off secondary explosions that rippled across the city and across the surface of the vessel.
Three hundred. That was the minimum crew for an Alliance battle cruiser. Who knew how many had actually been on board? Who knew how many were still in the city?
It continued to crumple into the earth, pressing down, folding the ground beneath it. It was an eternity rolled into moments, the massive superstructure sending up a spray of debris as it vanished from their sight, the shockwave launching out around it and rippling towards them.
Mitchell watched it approach, timing his thrust to rise above it, seeing the earth quiver beneath him, the two trucks shaken but stabilized by their repulsors.
Silence followed, an instant of silence before the roar was renewed, the displaced air rushing outwards, growing in volume until it drowned out all else. The blast picked up Mitchell's mech, throwing it away from the city, lifting the trucks and hurling them ahead, casting them aside as nothing more than rag dolls. Mitchell shouted as he was shifted in the chair from the rolling of his mech, feeling the warmth of his blood spilling out through reopened wounds.
His Zombie came to a stop face down, and he pushed it back to its feet. His overlay showed Perseus and Zed, still safe in their protective cocoons. The exposed rebels weren't as lucky, and a quick visual showed they had been dispersed by the blast, thrown hundreds of meters. Had any survived without injury?
The silence returned.
The rain resumed. Only it was no longer drops of water, but dust and debris, pieces of metal and stone and dirt thrown up by the collision returning to earth. It splattered against the Zombie, coating it in a layer of grime within seconds.
A tone in his ear signaled a knock on his p-rat.
"Colonel," Zed said. "Are you okay?"
The impact had knocked out whatever the Tetron had been using to block them.
"I've been better. I'll survive." He looked down at the tourniquet around his waist. The blood was soaking through. "I think."
"This is Perseus. All systems operational. I'm unhurt."
"Shank? Firedog? Are you out there?" He sent the knocks out to both of them.
"Colonel?" Cormac's voice crackled in his head. "This is Firedog. We're okay. Got a bit windy out here, knocked over some trees. I think I might have a broken rib." He laughed.
"Tio?"
"He's good, Colonel. Body armor saved his ass, again."
They should have all been wearing armor. A real military would be.
"Shank?" Mitchell repeated. There was no answer.
"Perseus, check on the rebels. See if anyone is alive."
"Yes, sir."
The Knight stepped carefully ahead. Debris was still raining down around them, coating the stricken fighters. A few had managed to get themselves into a sitting position. Very few.
Mitchell scanned the beginning of the Preserve ahead of them. The entire front line of trees had been decimated beneath the blast, leaving the forest bare for kilometers. He looked back towards Angeles.
All he saw were ashes and smoke.
It was a miracle any of them had survived.
45
"What do we do now?" Tio asked.
Two hours had passed since the Tetron had brought the battle cruiser down into Angeles. There was still debris floating down from the atmosphere to their position, nearly forty kilometers from the city. It was past the initial rendezvous point, deeper into the forest canopy where the drones would have trouble spotting them.
They had been a ragged bunch before. Now they were a disheveled collection of the walking dead, fifty-six remaining from an original headcount of nearly a thousand.
Fifty-six. Ninety percent of their forces, gone in a single blow.
They had been stupid.
Mitchell was laying on the ground with his flight suit around his waist while Zed used an emergency patch kit to seal up the knife wounds and set his broken wrist. Perseus' Knight loomed over them, shifting every few seconds to survey the surrounding forest. The other rebels worked nearby, going through the gear they had salvaged and picking out whatever they could. ReadyMeals, ammunition, clothing. It was a meager remains for what was a meager force. A force that had given its all and was on the brink of collapse.
"Way I see it, we don't have a lot of options," Cormac said. "Get to York and bust that frigging alien open. That's what I think."
"Get to York?" Geren said. "How do you suppose we do that? Three mechs, four cars, and fifty-six people? We only have guns for half of them."
"Not to mention, there's probably an army of our own people coming this way while we're sitting here." The comment came from a muscular younger man with bushy hair. A civilian fighter. A college kid. "We need to head back to the rig and wait this out. It will leave eventually."
"No, it won't leave
," Tio said, shaking his head, his eyes smoldering. "And there is no rig to go back to. The cruiser hitting so close to shore will have caused a small tsunami at the generation point. We're all that's left."
"What?" the kid said. "All that's left?" His lip quivered. "There have to be other cities, other fighters."
"There may be. How are they going to help us? How are we going to help them? They are thousands of kilometers away."
"My kid sister was back on the rig." He was practically crying though like Tio, there was a tinderbox of anger behind his pained expression. "We're so few."
"I hate to say it, but Firedog is right," Mitchell said. "We need to get to York and deliver the package. Once we break the enemy's hold on our people, it will be easy to destroy it." He was sure that "easy" was inaccurate. It sounded good.
"First we need to get to York."
"The size of our group is a weakness, but it's also a strength," Mitchell said. "Especially out here. We can stay hidden better this way, and move faster. We need to get over the Lincoln Pass."
"Easier said than done, Colonel," Tio said. "Do you remember our earlier discussion?"
They had been working on the same problem when they had a much larger force to rely on.
"I remember. The enemy doesn't know how badly depleted we are. We can use that to our advantage."
"You're assuming we can keep anything a secret," Geren said. "Colonel, we have no idea if any of these people are in communication with the enemy. I saved General Cornelius. I would never have expected he would be one of them."
Mitchell grimaced when Zed straightened his wrist and placed a clamp over it, which shrunk into a solid brace.
"All done, sir," she said.
He sat up, pulling his flight suit up and zipping it before putting his hand to the torn hole. "There's no way to know who is or isn't human. They barely even know."
"Then we should assume everyone here is a threat."
"How can we do that, Sergeant? We've got nothing left except one another. Nothing left to believe in or trust. There are fifty-six of us. It will take a massive, fifty-six person effort just to get to York, never mind fight our enemy."
"Sir, all it takes is one to ruin every effort we make."
"What do you suggest?" Mitchell asked. "What can we do?
"I don't know, sir. I know we can't afford to lose any more."
"We might have to, all the way down to the last man. The war isn't just happening out here, Sergeant." Mitchell waved at the small camp, at the men and women trying to reorganize their militia. Then he pointed at his head. "It's happening in here. It wants us to question. To distrust. To turn on one another. To become paralyzed with fear of what it might or might not know or be able to control. I'm sure it would be very happy to let us beat ourselves, or for us to stand here and do nothing."
"Riiigg-ahh," Cormac said.
"We might not look like much, but we're here, we're alive, and we're free. I don't know about you, but I'm going to keep fighting until I'm either standing in York with my brothers and sisters bringing hell to that thing or I'm dead in a ditch somewhere out here. And I'm going to do it with you at my side." He pointed at the college kid. "And with him at my side."
"And with me," Cormac said. "Frigging Riiigg-ahh."
"And with me, Colonel," Zed said.
Mitchell smiled. Geren's lips made a tight line, and then she smiled too. "And with me."
"Good."
Mitchell got to his feet, stretching his side. He could feel the patches pulling, fighting to hold the skin together. It would take a few days for the wounds to heal below it, and he was going to be feeling it the entire time. Right now, that pain was a deserved reminder. There had been a moment in time when he had thought about giving up on these people to save Christine. There had been a moment when he might have made the decision to bring her to safety and wait for Origin to rescue them.
First the Tetron had deceived them. Then it dropped a battle cruiser on their heads.
The moment was over, and he was ashamed of himself for ever having considered it.
"Let's see what we've got."
46
They pooled the gear, sorting it into small piles. Fifty-six people, three mechs, four cars. Twenty-seven M1A rifles, seventeen AR-6 assault pistols, and three grenades. They also had four days worth of food and two days supply of water. Zed's railgun was down to a thousand rounds, and her missile stores were depleted. Mitchell was faring a little better, but not much. The Knight was in good shape overall, owing to its heavily laser-based ordnance.
Mitchell stood at the front of the piles. The survivors were assembled around it. They were all looking at him.
He had never wanted to be a leader. Even after he had aced the aptitude test he had chosen a career path that brought him as far as he could go, as far as Greylock Company, without having to be responsible for other people's lives. He didn't want to be the one they turned to. He didn't want to be the one who would send them off to die.
The universe had a sick sense of humor.
His eyes moved over them. They were dirty and disheveled. Their clothes were torn, their hair was matted. Cuts and bruises lined the exposed parts of their skin.
He could see it though. The spirit in them. It echoed in their posture, in their expressions, in their eyes. It burned into him from fifty-five directions. A few were old. A few were young. Too young to be part of this. They were men and women, military and civilian.
They wanted to fight. Win or lose.
Mitchell checked his p-rat for the time. Three hours had passed since their evacuation. It was early morning. The sun would be rising soon. The fastest Alliance mech, the Dart, could move close to eighty kilometers per hour. If any had been dispatched from York when the fighting started, it would be reaching this part of the Preserve within the hour.
They had to hurry.
Tio was standing next to him, removed from the equation. That had been an argument of its own, but the Knife was too valuable to risk on the front line. Not only did the Tetron want him, their secondary objective was stored in his head. If they couldn't get the package delivered, he would need to attempt to interface with the enemy and deliver the virus.
Not that there was any reason to believe that would work, either. It was their desperation move, their last ditch effort to save Liberty, the one that meant they were all going to die.
"Who else here has served in the military, besides Private Shen and Sergeant Geren?" he asked.
Eight people stepped forward. Six men and two women.
"Grab an M1A and two magazines each. Firedog, Geren, you too."
The soldiers pulled the weapons from the pile.
"Can I have a grenade, sir?" Cormac asked.
"Take two. Geren, you take the other one."
Cormac smiled. "Yes, sir."
"Does anyone else here have any kind of weapons training?"
The college kid stepped forward. "I've played a lot of combat virtuals."
"What's your name, son?" Mitchell asked, channeling General Cornelius. There was no denying the man's ability to inspire and lead.
"Jacob, sir."
"Jacob, grab a rifle and a pair of magazines. Anyone else here play a lot of virtuals?" Even if they hadn't played at combat, the games were designed to improve hand-eye coordination and reaction times. There was a rumor that the Alliance sank a lot of money into subsidizing development studios so they could help raise the potential soldiers of the future. He believed it was true.
Six more people came forward. One was older, in his seventies. The others were younger. The youngest couldn't have been more than fifteen. Mitchell gritted his teeth at the idea of sending her into the fight. He could argue all day about her not belonging there. He knew it wouldn't do him any good.
"Take a rifle each, two magazines. Geren, you're in charge of showing them-"
Mitchell paused. The entire group fell silent as the hum of a drone grew above the trees.
"Perse
us?"
"Tracking, sir. Three drones. Passing over in five, four, three-"
They all looked up. The leaves were heavy above them, covering their view of the sky.
The drones passed over without slowing.
"Geren, you're in charge of showing them how to handle the rifles," Mitchell repeated.
"Yes, sir."
"I'll need four drivers for the cars," Mitchell said. "We need to keep them close to the mechs, and by close I mean almost touching. It's going to be tricky with the terrain, but it's the only way we're going to keep them from being spotted from the air."
Six people volunteered.
"Who has professional experience?"
Three of the six raised their hands. Mitchell looked at the other three. All men. He picked the oldest. "You're number four."
"Yes, sir," the man said.
"For the rest of you, I'm going to be honest, and blunt. We don't have enough weapons or ammunition to go around. That means not all of you are going to be armed. There's really no nice way to say this, but if you aren't armed, you're bait." He waited for a reaction from the remaining group, surprised when they stayed quiet. "Your job will be to draw the enemy's fire. To distract them so we can get a better shot. We'll figure out exactly how once we get closer to the Pass. The bottom line is that we can hold a lottery, I can pick people personally, or I can get a dozen volunteers."
The civilians were still for a moment. Then they began to look around, sizing each other up as they negotiated silently.
"I'll volunteer," a middle-aged woman said. "My husband is dead. My kids had implants. If they aren't dead, they're out there, somewhere. My eyes are shit, so I won't be any good with a weapon. If I have to die to destroy that bastard, then so be it."
"Sir," Perseus said. "They're coming back around."
The whine of the drones returned. They swept over the area while the rebels waited, the newly armed raising their rifles towards the sky, ready to return fire. The drones passed over, leaving them safe once more.
