by Jay Allan
“OK, Axe.” Sid Wentz was one of the settlement’s oldest residents. He’d been part of Jericho since the start. Axe knew Sid had been over 35 then, but he remained fit and strong, almost immune to the effects of radiation and hardships.
Axe knew Wentz had gotten a serious dose of radiation; he’d been a lot closer to ground zero than most survivors. But year after year, he’d failed to show symptoms. It was a game, a race between genetics and random factors. Axe himself had been relatively immune to side effects from the blasts, even as he’d watched hundreds die over the years. Now, he knew his luck—or his genes—had finally failed him, but Wentz was almost fifteen years older and still going strong.
He was making more masks as quickly as he could, handing them off one at a time as he finished. He knew he only had a few minutes, but he was determined to get one to everybody before they left the infirmary. He knew the attackers would wait until the gas attack had taken out as many of Jericho’s people as possible before they moved in. That gave them a short while at least.
He could hear the sounds of more gas grenades impacting, closer now, right outside the door. The infirmary was a half-assed structure, thrown together like everything else in Jericho from whatever could be scavenged. He had no idea if it would keep the gas outside long enough—or if his primitive gas masks would even be effective at all. But he couldn’t think of anything else to do, so he didn’t waste time worrying about it.
Ellie kept passing through his mind, but he knew he couldn’t get to her now. Hopefully, she had gotten away. If not, he knew his best chance to save her was to stay on his feet. And one breath of that gas would take him out of the fight.
“Alright, let’s go,” he said as he pulled an elastic around his head, fixing his own mask in place. “Grab anything that looks like it can be a weapon, and let’s move. We need to get an idea how many attackers we’re dealing with.”
He moved toward the door. “Make sure your masks are on. And try not to breathe near any of the white clouds…even though your masks.” He put his hand to the door, but he paused and turned his head back around. “But that doesn’t mean you’re safe if there are no clouds near you. That gas is probably effective even when it is dissipated and invisible. Breathe slowly, carefully.” He looked at the small group stacked up behind him. They looked terrified, almost panicked into shock, but they were still there. They weren’t warriors. There were a few people in Jericho who knew how to fight—Jack Lompoc was one of them for sure—but none of them were with him now. For all he knew, the fighters were all captured already, or dead.
“He pushed open the door and slipped out into the street. The darkness was lit by a series of fires. Part of Jericho was burning, and there were clouds of dark smoke mixing with the wispy white plumes where the gas grenades had hit. Axe pushed his mask against his face, taking a tentative breath. He didn’t know how effective it would be, but it was all he had.
“Let’s go,” he yelled, his voice muffled by the mask. He moved down the street, staying close to the wall. He stopped after about ten meters and looked around. He didn’t see anyone, no invaders, none of his own people, but he could hear sounds in the distance, from around the corner.
He crept up to the edge of the building and peered around. There were more fires, and he could see people running in the flickering light. There were bodies covering the ground. He couldn’t tell if they were dead or alive, but he saw half a dozen more drop as he watched. A few seconds later he saw a shadow fly through the air, and everyone still standing fell immediately. Gas grenade. A few seconds later he could see half a dozen armed men run into the scene.
“Let’s go.” He turned and gestured back the way they had come. “That’s a dead end.” He ran back, past the infirmary and the rows of grain storage buildings. His mind was racing, trying to figure a way to get to the armory. Ellie. She was there. Or at least she had been. Wherever she was, he had to find her. He could gather up whatever survivors he found and try to escape to the north. But not without Ellie.
He paused just before the main intersection, looking carefully around the corner. There were more armed men running through the streets. They were throwing gas grenades, targeting anyone still standing, but then a shot rang out, and one of them fell.
The others reacted immediately, opening fire on something off to the side. Axe couldn’t see what they were shooting at, but he knew one of his people had taken down an attacker. He felt a surge of satisfaction, even as he realized that act of defiance was going to cost the shooter his life. There were half a dozen enemies firing, and it only lasted a few seconds. When they stopped, Axe knew another one of his citizens was dead.
He froze for an instant, as he watched the scene. Then he ducked back, but it was an instant too late. One of the attackers started yelling and pointing in his direction. Three men began moving toward the corner of the building, assault rifles at the ready.
Fuck. “They saw us. Everybody, run. Head for the north side of the village, and make for the woods beyond the wall. We’ll meet up at the waterfall.” He saw they were all hesitating, reluctant to leave him. “GO!” he roared. “Now!”
He peered around the corner and fired with his pistol. “Go,” he repeated. “I’ll hold them off.” My life’s not worth shit now anyway. I’ll be dead in a few months, even if I get out of here. He ducked back as return fire slammed into the wall. He dropped lower, crouching, trying to stay as much in cover as he could. The shelter was flimsy, a combination of logs and thin sheet metal. He knew damned well those bullets could penetrate all of it with enough force left to blow his head off his shoulders.
He ejected the spent clip from his pistol, reaching around to the back of his belt for another. Last one, he thought as he slammed it in place. He leaned forward, hearing a volley of bullets blast through the building and whiz by just above his head. He had to move, make a dash for the other side of the street. It was dangerous, desperate, but he was in a death trap where he was.
He took a deep breath, and his lungs strained at the effort. He started coughing hard, but he took off anyway, running as fast as he could. He took his adversaries by surprise, but that only lasted an instant. If he’d been healthy, maybe he could have made it. But his tortured lungs strained for air, and he was too slow. He felt the round hit his leg like a sledgehammer. Then he was falling.
He spun around, trying to land on his back and bring the pistol to bear, but the impact of the fall was too much, and it knocked the weapon from his hand. He felt a wave of pain, first in his leg and then his back as he slammed into the hard ground. He was dizzy, half awake, but the adrenalin was still pumping, and he tried to reach to the side, to grab for his pistol.
His hand was almost there when a black boot came down hard on the pistol, kicking it out of his reach. “Got another one here,” he heard a gruff voice yell.
He was lying on his back, trying to focus, his mind racing for a way to escape. “He should be out by now, but he’s…oh, check this out.” The heavy boot swept across his face, kicking the mask away. “Some kind of homemade gas mask. This one gets points for ingenuity, at least.
Axe heard coarse laughter, but it was soft, far off. He felt his consciousness slipping away. He started coughing hard, the gas triggering a bloody spasm. He could feel the warm blood in his mouth.
He was drifting away, floating slowly into the darkness. The last thing he heard was, “Fuck it. This one’s sick.” Then he saw the shadowy image of the man extending his arm, pointing his gun. Pain. Then nothing.
Chapter 7
Dyracchium Plateau (“Dead Man’s Ridge”)
Planet Lysandria, Delta Sigma III
Earthdate: 2318 AD (33 Years After the Fall)
“Move it, Eagles! I want those things firing in one minute. You hear me? One fucking minute!” Lieutenant Dan Sullivan was crouched low along the top of the ridge. His people had paid for the miserable strip of high ground—they had paid dearly for it. And, by God, they were going to get eve
rything they could out of it now that they had it, and their enemies were the ones out in the open.
He could hear the high-pitched sounds of his troopers’ electro-magnetic projectiles, as more squads advanced to the ridgeline and began firing at the retreating Spears. The enemy had known as well as the Eagles how crucial the position was, and they’d fought like hell to hang on to it. Sullivan had begun the battle as a platoon commander, but Captain Hewitt had taken a bad hit early on, leaving him in charge of the 140 men and women of the 3rd Company.
“Get me battalion HQ,” he snapped to his AI.
“Connected.”
“HQ, this is 3rd Company. We are in possession of the ridgeline. Enemy is retiring in good order. Request immediate drone strike, coordinates 111.7 by 84.9 to 111.9 by 84.9.”
“Request approved, Lieutenant. Strike inbound, ETA 3 minutes.”
“Acknowledged. Sullivan out.” He flashed a thought to the AI. Put me on unit-wide com.
The AI responded immediately. “You are on the unit-wide channel.”
“Attention all personnel, we have inbound drones, ETA approximately two minutes forty five. Take position behind the crest of the ridgeline and maintain fire on retiring enemy forces. No one is to advance past the ridge without my express order.”
He flashed another thought to the AI—to cut the line and reopen the one to his heavy weapons teams. “Why the hell don’t I hear those things firing?” he snapped.
“Ten seconds, sir,” the first response came, followed by similar answers from the others.
It was almost ten seconds exactly when he heard the familiar sound of autocannons firing. Within twenty, all six of the guns were active, sweeping the broad plateau with six hundred rounds a second. Sullivan looked over the tiny ridge, watching as several dozen Gold Spear soldiers went down under the heavy fire.
“Cease small arms fire,” he roared on the unit-wide com. “Autocannons continue firing.” The enemy was almost out of effective assault rifle range. His people had fought long and hard to take the position, and he wasn’t looking to waste ammunition, not until he had a clearer idea of the supply situation.
“Drone strike incoming.” The AI’s warning was automatic, matter-of-fact. He glanced up at his display, and he could see the fast-moving formation moving onto the rear edge of the projection. It looked like two recon units and half a dozen anti-personnel drones.
Sullivan tried to imagine what warfare had been like before the Fall on Earth, where the need to move equipment across lightyears of space hadn’t been a concern. Those battles had involved tanks and planes and all sorts of heavy ordnance—artillery, hovercraft, gunships. But thirty years after the Fall—and fifteen after the Second Incursion—war had become a much more economical endeavor. The great battleships that had fought man’s wars years before were all gone, the last of them lost facing the First Imperium. The Black Eagles were the wealthiest and most technologically advanced military force in Occupied Space, yet they only fielded a fraction of the numbers that had fought in man’s Frontier struggles and the Shadow War. And they had little capacity in their vessels for anything but their armor and a few drones. Planes, tanks, trucks—they were from a past age, before 99% of man’s industrial capacity was turned into radioactive slag.
Sullivan watched the flight of drones zip overhead and fan out across the plateau. He knew the recon units were gathering information, counting the enemy, both casualties and remaining effectives. They were transmitting everything to HQ, and when they finished their sweep they would continue on, over the next ridgeline, scouting out the enemy positions beyond until they were taken out. The drones were one-shot tools.
The anti-personnel units were more interesting to watch. They networked with the recon units, and the AIs onboard each of them instantly used the realtime intel to generate optimal coverage patterns for their extensive ordnance. The drones each launched half a dozen rockets, targeted to specific groups of enemy troops. Sullivan could see the fiery trails as the weapons streaked to their targets and erupted into massive fireballs. The rockets were the longest-ranged weapons carried by the drones, and the units fired their entire complements immediately, to ensure they wouldn’t be lost if the drone was shot down as it approached the enemy position.
The units then swooped lower, their thrusters firing to change trajectories as they angled toward more enemy troop concentrations, dropping spreads of cluster bombs as they passed over. The packages of small explosives cut fifty meter wide swaths through the enemy formations, hundreds of tiny shells carpeting the area with destruction and wiping away even the fully-armored troops in their paths.
The soldiers on the ground were retreating, but they were veterans, and they maintained their discipline. They fired at the drones, taking out three of the deadly devices as they dropped their cluster-bombs. But the others swung around and came back across the plateau, their dual autocannons raining death on those who had survived the initial attacks. Dozens of enemy soldiers went down under the barrage, but the survivors maintained their AA fire and, one at a time, each of the remaining three drones was blasted out of the sky.
The air attack was over, but at least 200 of the enemy lay dead on the plateau, almost half the number who had initially pulled back from the ridge. The drones had earned their keep, and the added attrition helped justify the losses the Eagles had suffered taking the position. The enemy force that had held so grimly was all but destroyed.
Sullivan felt a wave of elation, and he was overcome with the urge to order his troops forward. The enemy hadn’t routed, and they were still moving back with some semblance of order. But they were a hell of a lot shakier than they had been, and he knew an all-out attack would send them flying in disarray. But he was a Black Eagle, and if there was one thing Darius Cain pounded into his soldiers, it was discipline. He knew from his training, HQ had a better picture of the overall battlefield. When it was time to advance, he’d get the orders. And until then Sullivan would stay right where he was.
But that wouldn’t stop him from enjoying the spectacle on the plateau. The Spears had made his men pay dearly for the ridge, and now it was motherfucking payback time.
* * * * *
“Lieutenant Sullivan and Captain Krieger both report the enemy forces in front of their companies have retreated beyond the next ridgelines. Both are requesting permission to pursue.” Antonia Camerici’s voice was soft, almost like a child’s. But Cain knew better than to read anything into that. Camerici was barely taller than a meter and a half, and she weighed about 45 kilos, but he’d seen her put two loudmouthed trainees, each more than twice her size, in the hospital the day she’d arrived at the Nest’s training facility. Her adversaries both eventually washed, but Camerici took everything her stunned drillmasters could throw at her, and they’d eventually had to concede that, against all initial indications, the tiny slip of a girl was in fact Eagle material.
Cain was crouched low, staring out over the very plateau his officers wanted to move across. It was quiet now. The survivors of the Spears’ force had pulled back beyond a line of hills, leaving only the dead behind, littering the scorched field. A lull had descended, and he knew his people were using the time to evac the wounded.
He was watching his display as the recon drone data fed into his system. “Negative, Lieutenant. They are to maintain position until further notice.” The snooper drones didn’t get far past the ridgeline before they were both blown away. They’d gotten some data through, but not enough. Cain didn’t like what he was seeing, and he was even less happy with what his gut was telling him. There were a few enemy formations in reserve behind the ridge, but not enough to stop a concerted attack. That seemed like good news, at least to someone less paranoid than Cain, but he wasn’t buying it. There was more out there than met the eye. He was sure of it.
“Lieutenant,” he said briskly, “Contact Eagle One. I want Vandeveer’s regiment in the tubes and ready for launch as soon as I send them coordinates.”
&n
bsp; “Yes, sir.”
He heard the click as Camerici closed the channel to call the flagship. He also caught the disapproving tone in her voice. She, like just about every other Eagle, thought he should be back at headquarters, if not still up with the fleet—and certainly not running around along the front lines without even a proper escort.
He glanced behind him at the two bodyguards he’d allowed to accompany him. His people wanted to surround his with guards, but they missed the point. Prowling around in a huge, self-important group was only advertising his presence. The Spears would go to almost any lengths to pick him off if he gave them the chance. But right now he was just another Black Eagle, out on point and behind decent cover. A target, certainly, but not one that would draw down all the ordnance General Ling’s people could muster.
The Eagles’ commander had a number of defining characteristics, but there was one that reigned supreme above them all. He did whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. Darius Cain did not like being told what to do, and he reacted very poorly to efforts to compel his compliance. He knew his people considered him irreplaceable, and he also knew that was nonsense. Erik Teller could run the Eagles if anything happened to him—and if Teller was lost too, someone else would step up. War was war. If he’d wanted a safe profession, he’d have learned accounting.
He flashed a thought to his AI to increase the magnification on his visor. He looked out across the plateau. The Spears had been hit hard. His best guess was barely a third of those who’d been on the line along the ridge had made it back. But he was still uncomfortable. There was something else out there. He had no real intel, but he’d learned to trust his instincts.
