by John F. Carr
Smoke from the grass fires was now spreading all around them, blinding to the human norms and terrifying their mounts, but not impeding Sauron fire accuracy at all.
Sergei winced when one of the gunships came down and raked three yurts with its cannon fire, blowing two of them up as ammunitions stores exploded and another burst into flames.
While they were moving, two of the nomads dropped from their saddles and another went down when his horse was hit. “We have to hold them off until the storm hits,” Sergei yelled to the riders about them. “Then we can cover the withdrawal for the yurts and the militiamen.”
One man, Putin, nodded and roared: “Da, but then what? No more helicopters, but their ground troops still have us surrounded.”
Sergei kneed Anya’s flank, as he leaned to one side, signaling her to change course even as he fired a burst into the grasses to his left. He ducked and winced in the saddle as one of the militiamen’s SLaGs—a shoulder-launched guided missile—shot less than three meters over his head, lighting the faces of the men around him as it leaped across the sky toward a Sauron helicopter gunship.
Sergei’s reply was lost in astonishment as the helicopter ducked under the missile at the last second: the Sauron pilots were not—could not be—human!
“Shit,” Putin amended. “If they can fly like that, they can keep their helos up in a storm, too!”
“Shut up!” Sergei roared, as a runner from the Haven Volunteers dashed up to the horses shouting: “When the storm hits, those choppers’ll have to land; you push hard against the line of Saurons at the yurts… break out. We’ll fire off the rest of our SLaGs and destroy any helicopters that are hanging around…maybe then we’ll have an edge in mobility.”
Putin barked a laugh at the plan and Sergei knew he was right. One look at Anya’s frothing lips told him that none of their horses could keep up this pace much longer. What they needed was something that had been in very short supply on Haven for a very long time. They needed a miracle. Even so, he nodded at the militiaman on the ground who, he now saw, was leaving a red trail from a blood-filled boot.
“Da,” Sergei nodded at the militiaman, and without realizing it; he saluted before riding off.
III
Natalya had made her way to the Danilov’s yurt. The Danilovs were all dead, but the two militiamen within their yurt were laying down a withering crossfire from a twin anti-aircraft mount. As a result, the area around their tent was a killing zone for any Saurons who had dared approach. She only saw two Sauron bodies; evidence that they learned as quickly as they moved.
The Haven Volunteer troopers, a husband and wife, had been overjoyed to see Natalya, immediately placing a weapon in the young girl’s hands. Now she sat atop the yurt with a SLaG of her own, an old Imperial weapon called a Viper. Despairing of ever hearing the lock-on signal when matching the Viper against the counter-measure systems of the Sauron-modified gunships, she resorted to aiming and firing by eye. The troopers had provided a considerable supply of rockets for the Viper, and judging from the roar of automatic weapons underneath her, their own views on ammunition usage were just as liberal.
She watched as one of the helicopters, buffeted by the growing winds, turned to bear down on the last small knot of Cossack horsemen. Firing, she watched as the missile closed on the chopper, which suddenly dropped to avoid the rocket, and in so doing lost its aim on the horse riders who passed safely underneath.
“Ha!” she cried, quickly slapping in another missile. Returning the Viper to her shoulder, she began tracking it across the grass fields, waiting for another helicopter gunship to pass in front of her field of vision. If she was patient enough, she would have to get lucky sometime.
Suddenly, over the din of battle, Natalya thought she heard a bird cry until she realized it was from the Viper’s radar detector going off. She looked up and there, some hundred kilometers away in front of the Atlas Mountains, were four Sauron fighters. She recognized them as the same four that opened the attack on her people. Three of them were being targeted by the Viper’s targeting sensors.
She didn’t know why the Viper was getting through the fighters’ counter-measures, while being stymied by the helicopters defenses, nor did she care. Either it was the gods at work, or fate. All Natalya knew was that she had a wonderful surprise waiting for those fighters when they got in range.
Chapter Thirteen
I
Besides having reached the relative safety of the militia-held yurt, Natalya’s great piece of fortune was simply this: The Sauron fighters’ counter-defenses were not defeating the Viper’s sensors because they were not operational. Stahler’s squadron had been running low on fuel when Over-Assault Leader Bohren recalled them and unleashed the helicopter gunships. Having only encountered small arms fire previously, Stahler’s wingmen had seen no point in draining their already depleted energy supplies further by running their deflectors against such primitive, if robust, weaponry as those displayed by the nomad cattle. Stahler, as a matter of course, was running his deflectors at full power. He had always been a cautious pilot which was one of the reasons why he was still alive.
“Units three and four,” Stahler instructed, “break right and slow to ten knots ground speed. Destroy remaining mounted force. Unit two, stay on me. Target that tent with the anti-aircraft unit.”
Stahler glanced at his long-range sensor screen. The storm front would be on top of them in minutes and that would pretty much decide the issue. His fighters could not stay up much longer than the rotary-wings, but by the time atmospheric conditions were bad enough to force a break-off, his fighters could wipe out the Haveners completely.
Which only makes me wonder why the hell we didn’t play it this way in the first place? Stahler wondered. But, after a moment’s reflection, he knew the answer to that. The Citadel desperately needed quality human-norm females, needed their horses…and needed their men, come to think of it. The Saurons lacked for nothing but more Saurons; a lack that would soon doom the Race if it were not remedied.
So we’ll have to contain them while our men on the ground close in and take them prisoner in the rain. For Over-Assault Leader Bohren’s sake, he hoped the battle would be finished in time. He did not have clear information on the battle’s status, but simple visual observation that in terms of captives gained against Soldiers lost, this operation was already running at a deficit.
The yurt that Stahler and his wingman were approaching was the primary source of suppressive fire pinning the majority of the Sauron ground force. He began blinking to activate his targeter when he saw an impossibly familiar figure turn slightly toward him, then disappear in a cloud of smoke and a flash of light.
“What in the hell—”
Fighter Rank Arias, his wingman, shouted something over the comm that sounded like a denial, then he was gone. An explosion along Arias’ starboard wing batted his fighter aside like a toy to smash into Stahler’s own craft.
The intakes on Stahler’s machine whined, their pitch rising crazily as the stabilizers sought to keep the fighter level on its vertical thrusters. They would have been equal to the task despite the damage his craft had suffered in the collision, but at that moment the storm broke.
The force of electrical storms on the steppes of Haven and the ruination they were capable of visiting upon any known product of human endeavor was best left to the imagination. No parallel existed for them on any other world settled by man. The destructive energies released at their height had made prudence in bad weather part of the Havener steppe dwellers’ character—to say nothing of fostering an intimate familiarity with the principles of lightning rods.
At least three dozen lightning strikes heralded the forward edge of the storm, nine of them within a kilometer-wide area centered on the combat zone. One struck the wreckage of Fighter Rank Arias’ craft, skipped across thirty meters of air and discharged into Stahler’s fighter before scorching a thirty-meter diameter area of grass.
Stahler’s craft
bucked, the engines whined and spurted again, then the jet plowed into the ground in a sudden burst of speed that ripped apart the fighter and two yurts that happened to be in its path. There was just enough kinetic energy left in the smoking mass of metal to overturn the Danilov’s yurt, spilling Natalya to the ground for the second time that day. The impact bounced the inhabitants and their weapon mount off the inside wall several times before the tent came to a rest, axles up, half covering the wrecked fighter craft.
Stahler no longer had to worry about living down the ridicule of his fellow Saurons.
II
“Who is commanding this debacle?” Cyborg Rank Sargun asked in a voice that was very nearly a snarl. “If the First Ra—, I mean the First Citizen does not order his eradication, I will do it myself.”
Eradication was the ultimate punishment for a Sauron. Not limited to the mere execution of the offending Sauron, it extended to the sterilization of his progeny and the utter removal of his genotype from the societal gene pool. Valuable aspects of such a Sauron would, of course, remain, but the DNA molecules which comprised him and his offspring, which defined them and would have proclaimed their line’s achievements to future generations, were destroyed.
Forever.
“Unknown,” Cyborg Rank Stern answered. “But the operation is not going well.”
Sargun signaled Cyborg Rank Philomon to bring up the Mark VII. “Even for a cyborg, Stern,” Sargun announced in a jesting manner only another cyborg could appreciate, “that is an understatement.”
Philomon was at his side instantly. “Cyborg Rank Sargun?”
Sargun looked again through the OpEn. The monstrous waste of Soldier assets he was now watching was a godsend for Cyborg Köln’s position on the release of Super Soldiers from Breedmaster Caius’ control. Whomever First Citizen Diettinger had assigned to command this assault was botching it up so badly that what was happening here might be the cause of permanent damage to the fledgling Sauron colony here on Haven. Surely we could not be blamed for intervening, which could not fail to turn the tide of battle and win the day.
He turned to Philomon. “The Mark VII is fully charged?”
“Yes.”
“Move in and destroy the Haveners. Staggered series of three shots at ten meter intervals to break up their mounted formation as we close.”
“Engagement parameters?” Cyborg Rank Stern asked for the squad.
“Deploy and kill at will.”
The Cyborgs took no joy in such an order, no satisfaction; they had as much eagerness for the coming battle as they had fear of it: Which was to say, none at all. If they felt anything, it was relief at a break in the monotony of their salvage operation. Battle was their true field of expertise, and like any intelligent creature, they were most content when doing what they knew best.
Sargun’s unit of Cyborgs was a kilometer away from the fighting. In less than a thirty-second run they would be in the midst of the Haveners.
The Cyborgs—taller, broader then their Sauron counterparts—rose up from the ground like wraiths in gray, moving so rapidly across the steppe as to appear as if the squalls of rain were now flowing around them. In fifteen seconds they were halfway to the battle. At two hundred meters, Cyborg Philomon discharged three shots in rapid succession from the Mark VII manpack fusion gun, each shot precisely ten meters apart, each shot a blinding, roiling mass of heat and light, burning into the body of Cossack horsemen with a fury that the few survivors would remember in nightmares for years to come.
Sergei watched the fireballs broiling towards the defenders, each detonating closer than the last, one of which embraced Putin and his brother-in-law less than three meters away. The two riders were suddenly lit up so brightly they appeared a rosy pink, then a summery-earth yellow-white, through which Sergei could make out details of their skulls, ribs—even the pocket watch that Putin carried under his left breast. He watched in silent horror as the two men and their mounts were but the faintest of outlines in the white sphere in front of them, then even the outlines were gone and the sphere dissipated almost instantly, leaving no sign that men or horses had ever been there at all.
Three seconds after the last shot from the fusion gun had detonated among the remaining horsemen, the Cyborgs reached the area where the first shot had impacted. Slowing, they were at the second impact zone five seconds later. About that time some noticed that the ground surface was doing something odd. In another five seconds, the Cyborgs, whose comprehension was as rapid as everything else about them, were aware they had made a grave mistake.
III
From the command helicopter, Over-Assault Leader Bohren monitored the events of the past few minutes with growing anxiety, culminating in the awful moment when he recognized the blast signature of the Mark VII and realized that a fusion weapon could only mean Pathfinder Cyborgs.
He watched in horror as the Super Soldiers charged across the burned-out, superheated steppe into the mass of surviving Cossacks. He saw them slow down to take up the circular formation which would, in typical Cyborg fashion, obliterate every resisting human norm or device it came in contact with.
And Bohren watched in shock as the ground beneath their feet abruptly collapsed, dropping six meters to the sunken water table as fast as it could fall. The surface suddenly darkening as the permafrost, melted by the heat of the fusion gun’s discharges, turned the crumbly steppe soil into a syrupy mass of slick, grasping mud, into which every Cyborg—and a few fast-thinking Sauron regulars who had decided to follow up the Super Soldier’s advance—instantly disappeared into a quagmire of their own making.
The horse nomads were spared by the grim coincidence that those not killed outright by the Mark VII’s contained-fusion effect were outside its blast radius, and thus the perimeter of the sinkholes it had created. Cossack horses screamed in terror, partly at the savagery of the weapons unleashed upon them, partly from the shock of finding themselves at the crumbling edge of an abyss and partly from the storm which was now upon them in all its fury.
Lightning strikes, far more severe than anything Bohren had experienced within the mountain-sheltered Shangri-La Valley, were tearing into the ground. Rain was coming down in sheets which utterly obscured vision and, as Bohren could see from the sensor screens, was adding to the nightmare of the quicksand in which at least a dozen of his men—and all but two of the damnable Cyborgs!—were now floundering.
Messages were flooding his Communication Ranker’s screen; the remaining fighters were breaking off to escape the storm; the gunships which had landed to wait it out were literally being held down by their crews, as Saurons began tying down the aircraft to steel poles driven hastily into the ground; ground troops were reporting that the surviving Cossacks were escaping, as it was impossible to engage them in the midst of the storm. While the Saurons trapped in the sinkholes began calmly requesting assistance, the Haveners were riding along the crater rim, firing down upon them to great effect.
Over-Assault Leader Bohren was an organizational genius. So long as events remained within the parameters he had anticipated, he could deal with any contingency. But, like many Saurons of his late-war crèche, Bohren was unable to do anything he had not been trained to do. And, while Sauron training encompassed a great many variables, its emphasis for the past twenty standard years had been on dealing with Imperials on known worlds. Sauron contingency planning had always revolved around combat on worlds someone actually wanted; it had therefore rarely anticipated fighting for an environment as hostile as Haven’s.
Faced with a situation obviously beyond his capabilities, Bohren’s training at least had told him when to cut his losses.
“Order a general disengagement, all channels.” He felt the command helicopter rock under him as a sudden gust of wind slammed into it. Outside, Soldiers hurriedly reset two of the stakes securing it to the ground.
“All forces,” he continued when the craft stabilized again, “to extricate themselves by paths leading past those sinkholes to
aid Cyborgs and Soldiers trapped there. Troops to rally to the helicopters, wait out the storm and aid in securing their ties.”
He had to shout the last order several times, as the crash of thunder on all sides was beyond even the Sauron ears of his Communications Ranker to overcome.
Chapter Fourteen
I
From a vantage point several kilometers north, Brigadier Gary Cummings watched the battle while Colonel Kettler watched the Brigadier.
Four days, Kettler thought. Four days riding dispatch horses, motorcycles and a stolen river-speeder, then eight hours of stark terror in a rotary-wing at three meters off the ground, just to spend another twelve hours driving like demons in a kidney-killing runabout to get here.
But as the self-appointed leader of the Haven resistance, Brigadier Cummings had been determined to see this first hand. The older man was silent as he swept the starlight scope back and forth across the distant carnage. Finally, he switched off the power pack and closed the unit in its case.
“All right, let’s go,” Cummings told him. They slid back from the rim of the low hill and rose into low crouches, making their way toward two small four-wheel drive runabouts. The driver saluted as Cummings and Kettler climbed in; around them six camouflaged troopers festooned with steppe grasses appeared from their firing positions and clambered into another vehicle of their own.
Brigadier Cummings’ runabout bounced away through the worsening storm, the driver seemingly oblivious to the near-zero visibility.
