Last Life (Lifers Book 1)

by Thomas,Michael G.

  “Inside!” Cage screamed.

  He recognized the craft immediately as they staggered up the ramp. After all, he’d faced them in battle before. This was an Ares Gunship, one of the aircraft unique to Mars. It was quite small, a little under eighteen meters in length, and very narrow. The shape was sleek like a fish and with two winglets jutting out from its flanks. The rear extended into a bird like tail, with long, stretched out angular rudders. Smooth and elegant looking engines were fitted to the winglets, and directly below them on each side a weapon mount carrying an M61 20mm heavy railgun. Under the chin was a low-tech motorized 13mm APHE chaingun of similar design to the weapons carried by some Lifers. Though similar in shape to the PAAF Vulture, it was no more than half the size, with tiny wings and much heavier weapons. Like everything on Mars, it was smaller, better built, and much more dangerous. Cage raced to the cockpit to spool up the engines and get off the ground. Cataldi leapt into the starboard gunner’s seat and reached for the gunnery controls.

  Bullets smashed into the fuselage, and he shouted to Cataldi to open fire.

  “They’ll rip us apart unless we knock them down before they get close! Not even this thing can hold back railguns.”

  “You’re damn right. Problem is, there’s some kind of security layer that stops the…oh, yeah, I got it.”

  To Cataldi’s amazement, Cage placed both hands on the craft and closed his eyes. It looked like he was trying to meld with the machine, but in reality it was merely low-level communication between two computer systems. Cage was much more than just a man with enhancements; he carried abilities to communicate with systems that he would never fully understand.

  “Hang in there. I’m...”

  The stuttering shudder of the gun drowned his voice, and Cage watched the onrushing troopers stagger as the hurricane of bullets smashed into them. The APHE rounds did terrible things to the Martian soldiers, and he nearly looked away as so many of them were cut down. The return fire faltered as men dove for cover or fell to the thick dust, some gasping for air from their ruined suits.

  “Keep shooting.”

  He counted less than ten men left alive, and then the engines hit full power. He adjusted the controls to take off, and the aircraft lurched upwards. There was less than half Earth gravity on Mars, but with the thin atmosphere the engines had to work that much harder for lift. A barrage of incoming gunfire from another enemy gunship rocked the fuselage. They were unscathed, but the lift that had taken them off the ground ended abruptly, and they sank back to the dust.

  “We’ve been hit!” Cataldi shouted from the gunner’s position at the front of the nose, “The powerplant is in shreds.”

  “No shit. Take out that gunship now, or we’re toast.”

  He tried to turn the gun around, but a fusillade of railgun shots hammered the nose, tearing off the mount and punching holes in the armour.

  “But…”

  “Hit it!”

  “He’s moving around to port. We'll have to take him with the door guns. If I leave this position, those troopers are still out there, and they’ll fry us.”

  “I’ll handle it. We’re not going anywhere.”

  He catapulted from the pilot’s seat and raced through the cabin to the closed door. He slammed his metallic boot against the frame, and it swung open. Like most aircraft, there was a secondary railgun hanging on a bracket next to the frame. Just behind it an armored plate and a display unit showed a magnified view, along with lead indicators for the moving targets. He hit the control stick and took aim at the approaching target.

  “Okay, I’m ready.”

  The RedCorp gunship came in, like a hungry predator closing on its prey. They would have seen the wrecked powerplant and damaged nose, and knew their target was helpless. A sitting duck; couldn’t get off the ground, a bird whose wings had been clipped, but not its claws. He stabbed the fire button, and a stream of heavy slugs spat from the muzzle, arcing into the sky. They’d made it easy. The screen displayed the incoming ship and indicated the required trajectory. A twitch of the controls, and he curved the stream in toward the enemy ship, and they met. He was observing the screen, making certain of the hit, when the ship disappeared, then reappeared in a jumble of electronic noise.

  He glanced through the viewport, and the wreckage was spinning through the air. The burst had hit something critical, maybe the ammunition or power compartment, and the explosion blew apart the Martian vessel. Plastic and metal fragments fell from the sky, and some clanged on the roof of their craft. Intermingled with the wreckage, bright red fragments of biosuit were bright splashes of color. But the victory was no more than a temporary setback for the Martians.

  “They’re coming again, ground attack. Christ, they’re all around us!” Cataldi shouted, “PDX carriers, I have at least eight of them coming in from the east. Watch your front, Cage.”

  “I see them. I have four moving toward my quadrant, and multiple drones in the sky. Four, no, there’s more. Sixteen of the bastards, they’re coming in for the kill.”

  He searched for the controls for any more onboard weapons. He found the touch screen buttons on the tactical screen and hit them all. The choice for autonomous defense popped up, a simple confirmation of the immediate targets.

  “Set the weapons to automatic target select,” he shouted to Cataldi, “We’re getting out of here. Abandon ship!”

  “Copy that.”

  The last action by Cage was to boost the engines one last time to swing them around to face the approaching targets. The IFF system onboard should have stopped the shooting, but he was one step ahead and had disabled that functionality.

  Seconds later, they took a rolling dive from the entry port and emerged into the open. A nearby clump of rock offered the sole cover on the floor of the barren valley, and they snaked across the dust to reach its fragile security. One hundred and fifty meters from the oncoming carriers, they huddled behind the solid rock. The gunship was now alone, but it fought on like some demented metallic monster. Though the nose gun was gone, the winglet-mounted railguns blasted continually, releasing the hypersonic 20mm slugs with relentless savagery. Drones exploded, and at least two PDX vehicles vanished in a flash of flame and smoke.

  Noah cried out as a third PDX overturned, throwing its occupants to the ground, but then a barrage of missiles from an unseen assailant swept down from high and tore the Ares Gunship apart. Then they turned their attention to the two rebels. Incoming fire from the carriers and massed troops racing ahead on foot lashed the ground around them. Cage glanced around and knew they were facing the end. They were crouched in a small, natural basin surrounded by rocks, and there was nowhere to go as the gunfire tore their barricade apart. Escape was impossible, without walking into the full glare of the RedCorp military.

  It could have been the same ground as they’d fought on four years ago. It looked just the same. History repeating itself, and this time he wouldn’t survive. He glanced at the other man.

  “You know we can’t get out of this.”

  Cataldi ducked as another storm of fire from an autocannon on the leading carrier crashed around them. The Martians had slowed their rush, knowing their prey was trapped. No need to take risks, it would be a turkey shoot. He nodded. “I know. We gave them a good fight, took a few of the bastards with us. What do you think, a full frontal attack?”

  Cage smiled. He couldn’t fault it. “You think we’ll scare them off, make ‘em run?”

  He chuckled. “Probably. I’ve got another problem. Cage, when I took that bullet, my suit sealed, but there was damage to my air supply. I think it may have damaged the feed from the filters, but I don’t have long.”

  “What about the backup supply?”

  He grimaced. “Wrecked, it’s gone.”

  “How long do you have left?”

  “Ten minutes max. Cage, I don’t plan to go out choking out my last air, rolling in agony on the dust. That frontal attack, I wasn’t joking. Either we fight and die, and t
hat means my suit doesn’t matter, or we win and we get somewhere secure.”

  “No. When we go, we go together.”

  “Thirty seconds?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “Been nice knowing you, Cage. Who knows, maybe we’ll make it out of this one.”

  “You, too, Cataldi. We did well; their weapons technology is better than anything I've come across. I’ll…’

  He stopped. Another of the Ares gunships was swooping down toward them, in a furious attempt kill the men who’d inflicted humiliating damage on their mighty forces. And then they made a mistake. Some RedCorp gunner on the ground must have assumed the ship was the one they’d taken over. Assumed they’d got it off the ground, and he ended his own career at a stroke, guaranteed a long prison sentence or even death. His crime was to launch a salvo of three missiles. Two missed, but one detonated meters from the craft and punched it off course.

  It spun in the sky, dropped to the dust, and then lined up toward the only section of flat land to been seen for a kilometer in any direction.

  “Stay down!”

  The gunship hit the ground hard, tearing off part of a winglet, as well as the skids under the main hull. On it went, bumping and spinning before coming to a halt just a hundred meters away. The engines remained on, with their exhausts pointing directly to the ground.

  I could use that bird. Why not? Unless they have other anti-aircraft missiles, and I don’t see signs of any, I have to give it a try.

  “Cataldi, you can take my back-up air supply. It’ll keep you going for a couple of hours.”

  He began unfastening the hoses that connected the reserve system to his helmet. The other man looked at him in astonishment. “You’re crazy. Your main supply must be almost out.”

  He pointed to the grounded craft. “There’ll be plenty of air over there. The pilot made a reasonable landing. I can use it, but I need help.”

  He raised his head again, and three shots cracked into the rock. He ducked back, shaking the debris and dust from his helmet.

  “See?”

  “Yeah. So…the plan?”

  Cataldi took a deep breath from the new, fresh oxygen and then checked his weapon.

  “Cover me from here. I’m going out there. When I’m inside, I’ll signal you to join me. They’ll have a full complement of weapons on board.”

  “You’re insane. The moment they see you, they’ll hit you with everything they have. There will be crew inside, maybe more soldiers.”

  “Maybe, but it’s worth a try.”

  “I still say you’re mad.” But he removed the ruined feed hose and filter, and connected the replacement. Turned to speak to Cage, but he’d gone and was already sprinting like an Olympic athlete across the surface. A torment of gunfire smashed around him, chewing up the dust.

  Okay, I’m on this.

  He took aim with the captured Martian railgun and fired. The shot was true and struck a RedCorp soldier in the head. The puff of red put a smile on his face, simultaneously sending the other soldiers scattering to the rocks for cover.

  “Who’s next?”

  Noah ran inside the Ares gunship and hit the door seal. He raced into the cockpit and activated the powerplant, which had shut down under robotic control when the craft landed. The soldiers were all dead, six bodies littered the interior, and he shuddered at the macabre prospect of taking off with a crew of corpses. He moved into the cockpit and found just the pilot left alive, though badly wounded. In one hand he held a pistol and fired. The shot stuck Cage’s left arm, forcing it back and creating yet another breach in his ruined suit. He charged ahead and struck the man across the face. The pilot tried to fire again, and this time Cage could take no more. He struck the man hard in the jaw, cracking his neck with a sickening crunch. He then hurled the body backward, removed the air and filter supply, and connected them to his helmet. He punched buttons, and the gunship lifted off. He was rising above the Martian surface, and they were close. The enemy, gunships, carriers, soldiers. Targets.

  The incoming fire slackened, as if they weren’t certain whether the crew had survived the forced landing. Then someone overrode any concerns for the safety of their own men and gave the fire order. The gunship staggered as a score of hits rocked the hull, but the armored carapace survived, and so far, they hadn’t launched missiles. As long as they held off from launching them, he may get close enough to do some serious damage before the end.

  An end he had once wanted for so long; to pass that mythical threshold, cross the line that would end the agony of torture and betrayal. It was so easy, until he’d met Rose. His one regret was he wouldn’t see her again. It was finished, what mattered was to kill more enemy soldiers. The more he destroyed; the better chance it would give the rebels to get away. It wasn’t impossible Cataldi would escape, assuming he moved fast enough when the chaos and confusion hit them.

  A punch of a few more buttons, the autopilot kicked in, and the mounted railgun cannons moved to track the enemy carriers. Troops were diving for cover as he hit the fire button. The fuselage vibrated as the stream of fire from the autocannons smashed into the carriers, and he enjoyed for a fleeting moment the irony of their powerful weapons being turned against them. Then their targeting systems found him, and a storm of return fire smashed into the ship. It was one of theirs, and they knew the systems intimately. Gunfire hit the main powerplant, just like he’d grounded the first ship. A second later he might have lost main power.

  Move.

  With speed that only a direct connection from mind to controls could perform, he rolled to the right. Gunfire streamed underneath so close that some of the rounds tore paintwork from the hull. He boosted the engines and then pushed away from the crash site, right into the heart of the RedCorp lines. Soldiers looked up at him, scattering as he blasted them. The nose gun did terrible work, but the wing-mounted cannons were the real guns. One by one he blasted his way through their ranks, destroying ground transports with ease. Three times he strafed their positions, killing and maiming scores of their soldiers, until two of the gunships moved up to attack him. Both came at him headlong, like a surreal version of a game of chicken. All three opened fired, the guns tearing holes in each craft. A lucky shot of his cut through the cockpit of the nearest, and it dropped down like a bird hit by a shotgun. The second kept on going, and this time it was Cage’s turn to suffer. One of the engines cut out, and then he was falling.

  Hold…on.

  The gunship dropped fast, and even with every ounce of remaining power in use, he came down hard. Emergency power came online, and he dropped under robotic assistance as he crashed into the surface. Cataldi’s position had gone quiet, so either he was dead, or he’d fallen back and away from the battle. He took out his weapon and examined it, as if he’d never seen such a personal handgun before. It would be the easy way to go, and yet it wasn’t his way. He’d wait to land, open the hatch, and storm out. Go down shooting. That was the way a Lifer fought.

  The ship slid to a stop. He looked around for one last time at the red dust, the dark, alien, Martian sky, at the distant mountains, rugged, harsh and threatening. Not as threatening as the troops surrounding the ship. Anonymous faces stared out through anonymous visors, guns leveled, and he climbed from the seat and went to the hatch, hit the button, and it opened. Standing in the full glare of the harsh, Martian light, he stepped out, bringing up his weapon to open fire; but kept his finger on the trigger as a man stepped out from the group and walked toward him. He stopped two meters away, and the features were clear inside the faceplate.

  Hard, cruel, fleshy, a devourer’s face, a man who would calculate Human life in terms of utility value, as he was doing so now. When he spoke, his mouth moved like a mechanical slot. “You’ve done well, son. You sure knew how to hurt us.”

  “What do you want?”

  He kept his hand wrapped around the pistol, ready for his last few moments.

  “What do I want? I want you to put down your weapons
. My people would like to talk to you. You could help us understand how to resolve our differences, and lead us to the other rebels.”

  It was so transparent he couldn’t even bring himself to smile. “Go screw yourself.”

  The man didn’t even blink. “You want to die?”

  “Better than spending another three years in one of your cells. That’s hard. Dying’s easy.”

  That made him blink. “You’re Noah Cage? You’re the one who’s caused so much trouble? The guy they came from Earth to kill?”

  “I didn’t cause enough trouble. More’s the pity.”

  A shrug. “You’re beyond redemption, Cage. So long.”

  His hand flashed a signal to the men behind him. He braced himself for the shattering burst that would consign him to oblivion. Instead a row of red shapes covered the man’s suit, and he dropped to his knees, blood bubbling from his mouth.

  What?

  The area erupted into a tidal wave of movement as the new arrivals came at a furious pace. Carriers, armed carriers, RedCorp carriers, except for the flags flying from their pennants, multicolored patches on a red background. They were rebels. Somehow, they’d commandeered enemy carriers, and they were charging into the attack. At the same time, it was as if the sand had morphed into Human figures as more rebels poured out from below. Clambering out of hidden cave entrances, fissures in the surface, thinly covered until they were needed. A horde of armed soldiers, all of them in biosuits, but not the red biosuits of the Martians; these were the patched suits of the rebels.

  Good timing, guys, damned good timing.

  Scores of them, and they kept coming, and they crashed into the scattered formation of RedCorp soldiers still reeling from Cage’s airborne assault. The PDX carriers poured massed fire on the Martians, and they started to fall back, stunned by the onslaught.

  Cage counted more than a hundred rebel fighters and began to race toward them, to join them. He stopped when a blast from an unknown weapon smacked into his leg. The heavy blow shattered part of the mechanism, and he fell as the leg collapsed, partially disintegrated. But he still had air to breathe, and he watched the growing battle with disbelief. They were like an army of multicolored locusts, and in such numbers the RedCorp troopers were for once outmaneuvered. It couldn’t last.