“Rai,” Kylie pleaded. “Please.”
Something in Kylie’s voice almost made Rai say yes, then she remembered that she was more than a friend right now. She was a leader, and she had more than just Kylie’s life and the life of her unborn child to consider.
“Stow that, trooper,” Rai yelled at Kylie and then switched to the general channel again. “Everyone be ready. It’s time to earn our pay.”
The remaining CASPers drew up back to back, weapons aimed at the ridgelines above them. Nothing moved but the shadows, and they were a malevolent sort that danced and swayed to the beat of the drums.
The pounding of the drums grew louder and more violent. Rai scanned the shadows for anything that resembled movement, the gleam of an eye or the shine of a tooth. But even with the CASPer’s advanced optics she couldn’t see anything. It was like staring into a vat of tar.
“What the devil are they up to, LT?” Summers asked. “Are they just trying to freak us out?”
Rai raised an armored hand in Summers’ direction, silencing him. “Eyes on the trees,” she ordered. “They’re out there. We need to be ready.”
Opening a secure channel to Colonel Hendershot and the Hellhound’s distant APCs, Rai uploaded the data on the natives’ positions.
“Bring the rain,” Rai whispered as the data package finished uploading. Then she shouted over the general unit comm. “Hold tight. We’ve got arty inbound!”
The pounding of the drums suddenly stopped, and the woods fell eerily silent. Rai tensed up as her CASPer’s systems detected the rounds flying in toward their targets. The ridgeline on both sides of the riverbed erupted in explosions stretching up and down their length as far as she could see. Black smoke climbed toward the heavens in the wake of the destruction she had called down upon their enemies. For a moment, she allowed herself to believe it would be enough. Then the gates of Hell opened, and the demons were loosed upon them. It was like a dam holding back all the evil on this planet had been destroyed by the bombings, and the resulting deluge was one of savages bent on their destruction.
Rai saw what was rushing at them, but held her ground and called for everyone else in the group to hold theirs. The creatures came pouring over the sides of the canyons by the hundreds in a sudden surge. Snarling faces and burning eyes were everywhere. Enormous hands clutched spears, axes, and knives as the creatures charged the column of CASPers.
It was a terrifying sight, like something out of a primitive nightmare. Rai couldn’t help noticing that some of the fiends had the heads of fallen humans mounted on their pikes, like trophies meant to intimidate and frighten. She hated to admit it, but the severed heads achieved their intended effect. The sight was terrifying.
“Cut the bastards to pieces!” Rai screamed. “Let’s slice and dice!” Her armored hands raised the barrel of the heavy machine gun she carried at the charging monsters and let them have it. Heavy fire broke the front lines of the creatures’ charge on both sides of the riverbed. Bullets ravaged the unprotected flesh of the monsters, spilling guts into the dirt and filling the air with sprays of dark blood. The creatures fell by the dozens, but there were just too many of them. One CASPer fired a barrage of rockets from its shoulder launcher at the ridge line. Rocks and body parts spun away from the center of the blast in a flash of fire and shrapnel. Another CASPer fired a laser at the charging creatures. Its beam cut one monster in half, then swung to burn through the skull of a second. The air was heavy with the stench of guts spilled in the heat and the acrid odor of gunpowder. Mercs called it “CASPer cologne”.
Despite their heavy losses, the creatures didn’t break or even slow down. They leapt over the corpses of their brethren and continued their charge. One threw a spear that embedded itself in the chest of a CASPer. The CASPer staggered backwards, its armored hands trying to yank the spear free from its body.
What the creatures lacked in technology and discipline, they made up for in cunning and fearlessness. They should have been terrified of the rockets, belt-fed machine guns, and lasers that sliced through their kin, leaving bits and pieces of them in the glowing wake, but if they feared for their lives, they showed no sign of it. Death didn’t seem to mean anything to them, and the result was the endless torrent of maniacal faces that rushed at the CASPers from deep in the canyon. They had kicked over a hornet’s nest by calling in the artillery, and now the swarms of hornets were fighting back, stinging anything and anyone who got in their way.
Rai figured two hundred or more of the creatures were dead by the time the fastest of the surviving creatures reached their lines. The creature tackled a CASPer on her left flank, taking the combat suit to the ground beneath it.
Rai watched in disbelief as the creature somehow held the CASPer’s gun hand to the dirt as it plunged a knife into the suit with its other hand. The CASPer bucked and twisted about under the creature, struggling to get free even as the creature drove the knife’s blade deeper. The CASPer’s armored form gave a final jerk and then lay still. The creature rose up from it, and Summers blew a gaping hole through the monster’s torso with his suit’s cannon.
Despite their almost superhuman strength, the devils weren’t tough enough to survive a shot at point blank range. While the situation had gone south in a hurry, at least they knew the savages could be killed. That was some consolation.
One of the creatures screamed a battle cry as it ran toward another CASPer that had just annihilated a line of the devils, cutting them down like wheat. The fiend brought the axe it carried around in a wide arc, severing the pilot’s arm from its shoulder. The creature kept moving toward the next merc in line while blood fountained from the suit as it collapsed. The CASPer whirled around to meet the monster, hosing it with its MAC. The remnants of the creature’s upper torso splattered onto the dry dirt of the riverbed.
Another of the creatures leaped onto the back of the CASPer. The CASPer reached up over its shoulders to grab the savage and slam it into the dirt in front of it. The creature growled as it lashed out at the CASPer with the knife it clutched in its right hand. Sparks flew as the blade met the metal armor of the CASPer’s leg. The blow was just a glancing one, but the force of it still staggered the CASPer. Its pilot fought to regain his balance as the beast hauled itself up, grabbing hold of the suit’s arms. The savage yanked the CASPer to the ground and rolled on top of it. Rai could hear the pilot screaming amid the cries that filled the general comm channel as the creature rammed the blade of its knife through the CASPer’s chest.
In that brief moment, she realized a basic truth about these fiends. They had primitive weapons. They had virtually no organization. What they did have was strength and numbers, and that would be all they needed to end this. Who needed rockets and machine guns when you were strong enough to ram a simple knife through an armored suit that was supposed to protect against radiation, gunfire, and hand-to-hand combat? Who needed CASPers when you outnumbered them by fifty to one…or more?
Summers’ heavy machine gun was blazing at the mass of creatures racing down the sides of the riverbed. He swept the gun from left to right like a scythe, and it left a trail of bodies in its wake. “We have to fall back, LT!” Summers yelled at Rai. “This riverbed is a deathtrap!”
Rai barely heard as a nine-foot-tall, hulking beast came charging at Kylie from behind. There wasn’t time to call out and warn her, since Kylie currently had her hands full with three of the devils coming at her from the left flank.
She had to do something. Kylie was her friend. It was too close to her to use any of her suit’s primary weapons. Tossing her machine gun aside, she popped her arm blades and ran to intercept it. The creature saw her coming. It swung a weapon like an Earth-made tomahawk at her. Rai blocked the swing with her left blade, and slashed through the tomahawk’s handle, sending a burst of splinters flying, as she struck at the creature with the blade on her right arm. The creature grunted in pain as her right blade sank into its shoulder, cutting all the way down its body at an angle to
its sternum.
Rai yanked the blade free of the creature’s corpse as two more of the things closed in on her. She turned her CASPer to meet them head-on. One carried an axe, and the other held a knife in each of its hair-covered hands. Both creatures were snarling at her with bloodlust in their eyes.
The one with the two knives made the first move, leaping at her. Pouring power into her CASPer’s jumpjets, she leapt into the air. The shoulder of her CASPer slammed into the creature’s chest, knocking the breath from its lungs. There was no time to finish it as the other charged her, swinging its axe at her chest.
Lashing out with her right blade, she severed the thing’s hand in a spray of blood, while simultaneously driving her left blade through its chest. The blade protruded from the thing’s back as the beast twisted about on it, shrieking, trying to free itself. Rai jerked the blade in the creature’s body upwards, cutting it in half. Instinctively, she spun to find the third creature coming toward her from behind. She brought both swords together through its skull, producing a splatter of brain matter and bone shards.
For every creature that went down, another took its place. One stepped up and showed her its curved teeth as it shook another tomahawk at her. Rai waited for it to come to her. The creature did as expected and ran straight at her. She swung her right blade in an arc at its throat. The creature ducked her swing and countered as the blade of its tomahawk thunked into the chest armor of her suit.
Alarm lights began to flash all over her tactical display. The blow had done more damage than she’d thought possible. Rai retreated several steps as the devil continued to press forward and raised its tomahawk for another strike. Metal arms wrapped about the creature from behind, lifting it from the ground as Kylie joined the fight. She used the enhanced strength her CASPer gave her to throw the creature several feet away, sending it bouncing and rolling across the ground.
“Come on, LT!” Kylie shouted. “We have to make a run for it!”
Rai looked around them and saw that most of her men were dead. Broken, battered, and spear-impaled CASPers filled the riverbed. A quick check of the command data her suit fed to her tactical display told her that all but seven of her CASPers were down, most of them completely offline, with their pilots likely dead inside them. Running seemed to be the only logical move left.
“Peterson!” Rai yelled over her comm. Her only answer was static. She looked over at Kylie.
“No word from them,” Kylie told her. “No idea how many of them are still breathing either, but you can bet they’re under attack too, or soon will be.”
A creature came sprinting toward Rai, throwing a spear at her as it ran. She used her right blade to knock the spear away. Summers came up beside her. His CASPer was smeared with the blood of the creatures, and there were several gashes and dents in the suit’s armor.
“Kylie’s right, LT,” Summers shouted. “We have to move. Now!”
Summers powered up his suit’s jumpjets and propelled himself over a group of creatures between him and where Peterson’s infantry had made their own stand. His CASPer crashed down amid the bodies of hacked up and beheaded infantry troopers and bullet-ridden alien corpses. Summers wasn’t waiting on them to catch up. Rai could see he was determined to put as much distance as he could between himself and the creatures. She didn’t blame him.
“Let’s go!” Rai yelled at Kylie, activating her CASPer’s jumpjets to follow Summers. As her CASPer thudded onto the floor of the riverbed close to where Summers had landed, she looked back to see one of the creatures leap onto Kylie’s CASPer as it made its jump. The impact knocked Kylie sideways.
Kylie and the creature that clung to her thudded into the side of the cliff, and rocks tumbled down onto them, bouncing off her armor. One came crashing onto the head of the creature she struggled with. The savage’s eyes rolled up to show only bloodshot whites as it slumped at her feet.
Kylie kicked the thing for good measure. Her CASPer’s heavy, armored foot folded the creature’s ribcage inward and sent it bouncing away from her.
“Kylie!” Rai screamed as another creature left the chaos of the still-raging battle to ram the spear it carried through the chest of Kylie’s CASPer, pinning it to the bank of the riverbed. The creature twisted the spear. Kylie’s suit was smoking as several of its systems blew.
“Rai,” she heard Kylie plead weakly over her comm, but Rai knew she was too far away to do anything, save watch her friend die. Tears welled up in her eyes as she turned and sprinted in the direction Summers had disappeared.
As Kylie fell and Rai watched a huge part of her life fall with her, she thought about their conversation only a few hours prior, what now seemed a lifetime ago. Kylie’s life had been on the brink of change.
No doubt, her career as a merc had been about to wind down. In fact, this might have been her last mission, after the way she’d questioned if what they were doing was just. Rai thought about it. Were they the real monsters here? They had come to this place to earn a few credits, in exchange for the blood of these savages. The savages hadn’t waged war on them until their home was invaded. Would she have done any differently? Were they truly at fault?
Rai felt a strange shift take place inside her as she realized that maybe Kylie had been on to something. She regretted that it had taken Kylie’s death to make her realize they never should have come to Zala IV. That feeling of regret was quickly overcome by one of vengeance. She would make these beasts pay for what they had stolen from her. She would exact revenge for Kylie.
* * *
Peterson led his infantry with the same cocky attitude as if they’d been outfitted with the same CASPers Rai’s mercs wore. They were an arrogant lot, those CASPer pilots, and Peterson resented Rai for the way she looked down on him. Oh, she would never come out and admit such a thing, but he knew she thought he and his men were much less capable, given the fact they weren’t CASPer pilots.
Of course, that was the same as saying a motorcycle might be less effective in a firefight than a Sherman tank. The comparisons were ridiculous. Obviously, a Sherman tank would outgun the bike in all-out war, but mount a sidecar on the motorcycle and outfit it with a Gatling gun, and there would be places it could maneuver that a tank could never go.
Peterson and his infantry were the bayonets that could pierce a throat or sever a jugular, while Rai and her CASPers were the mortar fire that paved the way. Both were deadly in their own ways and useful when the situation called for them. Each of them had their own role to play in this fight. Each of them also had strengths…and weaknesses, although Rai would never concede those points. Rai probably didn’t think so, but she needed Peterson and his men. Nothing drove that point home any more than when the CASPers from Rai’s group opened fire unexpectedly.
“Safeties off, men,” Peterson barked into his comm unit. “Black and Estes, take point with me. Stewart, Burroughs, Linton—take the rest of the men, fan out, and prepare to cover us if these monsters from under our beds jump out of the woods and try to eat us. It sounds like the bogeymen are home and not at all happy we’ve come to pay them a visit.”
Up ahead, explosions rocked the forest, and a fireball shot upward into the sky as one of the CASPer pilots activated the self-destruct command on their unit, blowing the suit, the pilot, and whatever was attacking them to kingdom come. Whatever had happened, it had happened quickly, and things were going to hell in a handbasket.
They were closing in on the savages’ home territory, and from the look of things, the CASPers were in the thick of it already. Under normal circumstances the CASPers would do all the heavy lifting, and the infantry would provide support.
However, it became clear very quickly that the CASPers had no clear advantage against the aliens they were facing. Nothing drove that home better than seeing one of the savages drive a pike through the chest of one of the CASPers, lift it up, and slam it down repeatedly on the ground, smashing the suit (and the pilot inside) against the earth over and over again, until the
mech was little more than scrap, and the merc was mush. Not only were these devils ruthless and bloodthirsty, they were also in possession of superhuman strength. Primitive weapons or not, this was a serious threat.
As the first wave of devils came at them, Peterson and his men readied themselves to fire. It was like watching a river of death rolling toward them. The wave opened and parted where CASPers blocked their way, but it kept flowing and moving nonetheless, advancing down the riverbed, annihilating everything in its path. They were fast and powerful and moved with a vicious grace. In short, they were terrifying.
“Burroughs and Stewart, flash grenades,” he ordered as the savages rushed them. The two troopers tossed them, and within seconds, everything was awash in brilliant white light. The beasts howled and covered their eyes while Peterson and his men unloaded on them, putting holes in dark, matted fur. The savages fell by the dozens, and for a moment it seemed that this threat wasn’t nearly as severe as it had seemed at first glance. Then they saw the true size of the savage force, and realized that what they had assumed was a group of hundreds was at least ten times that.
Peterson led the charge into the fray. “Don’t look at how many of them there are,” he barked into his comm unit. “Focus on how many you can send to an early grave. I’ll buy a drink for whoever can bag the most. Honor system everybody. Keep up with your own count.”
“I’ll be taking you up on that drink,” Burroughs said as he opened fire on a line of savages. “I just bagged six.”
“No way, Burroughs,” Estes said. “You can’t even hit a paper target. Forget about hitting the ones that move. I’ll be claiming that drink for myself.”
“Dream on, both of you,” Black added as he popped a fresh cartridge into his assault rifle and fired into a rush of savages, dropping them with ease. “Leave the killing to the grownups. I’ll have at least fifty before we’re done.”
“We get through this and we’ll all grab a drink together,” Peterson said. “How about that? But for that one soldier who rises above, I’ll give you a shot of my private stock. You’ve never tasted anything like it. I promise you.”
CASPer Alamo Page 16
