ARISEN, Book Fourteen - ENDGAME

by Michael Stephen Fuchs

  “Get them inside and off the street,” Pred said. The man nodded. “But stay in the courtyard.” Another nod. While once again reloading without looking, Pred shouted over his shoulder at the two HIC soldiers, Andrew and Miranda. “Let these ones in! Then guard the gate.”

  Reload finished, Pred rose to his considerable height and faced back up the street – toward guys he could no longer regard merely as innocent bot-jackers.

  They were now Cali-killers.

  He brought his rifle to his shoulder.

  And he accelerated to his considerable top speed.

  * * *

  Homer looked across at Rob, who was holding the SEAL’s pistol in both hands and breathing hard. They didn’t have to debate it – the necessity was obvious. What had been “heavy contact” in this stairwell had turned into a meat locker. There was no way of getting up any higher. Shooting wouldn’t help, as it couldn’t clear out all the bodies, even if they had unlimited ammo, which they definitely did not.

  “Yeah,” Rob said. “Different stairwell. There are others.”

  Homer nodded and pushed out onto the hospital floor, taking a few careful shots to clear the immediate vicinity.

  “Go right!” Rob yelled from behind him. “Fifty meters, then left, then another fifty!”

  Rifle to shoulder, Homer led the way through the flashing lights and chaos – but when he reached the left turn, he ran into a torrent of gunfire coming down it from the other direction. He stole a look around the corner, but not a long one. On the upside, that hallway was getting cleared out of dead. But the incoming rounds doing it were way too much to march into the teeth of. As Homer withdrew, Rob stuck his own head out, without evident fear for his safety.

  When he pulled it back in, he shouted to Homer over the gunfire. “SC and O Nineteen – armed police officers.”

  Homer couldn’t help but smile. Two common British expressions few Americans had ever heard were “armed police officer” and “detached house” – because a house was a freestanding structure, and a cop was a guy with a gun. He figured he’d tell Rob that joke if they got out of there.

  “Way around?” he asked.

  “Not a quick one,” Rob said. “Leave it with me.” He flipped channels on his radio and started hailing – “Met Control from India Romeo Five-One” – but gave up after a couple of tries, his pained eyes meeting Homer’s. “I should have comms with their control room. Guess they’re a little busy.” But then the smile returned to his eyes. “Fuck it. They won’t shoot me. Coppers love LAS – every Friday and Saturday night we make injured drunk morons stop being their problem.”

  And he just marched around the corner, hands up, yelling.

  In seconds, the shooting stopped. When Homer turned the corner, Rob was still on his feet. The green uniform must have done it. But then both of them saw it had a crimson-and-flesh-colored patch below the shoulder. He’d been creased in the upper arm, and the wound was soaking his sleeve with blood. Homer got out a pressure bandage and slapped it on.

  And the two of them took off again.

  * * *

  Charging into the teeth of the bot-jacking marauders’ fire, Predator was now a one-man fire-and-maneuver team. But sometimes one man is all it takes. He was still facing a good ten guys under the solid cover of two trucks, down at the end of the block. But it could have been a hundred guys.

  It didn’t matter in the least.

  Pred was huge, he was startlingly fast, he was absurdly skilled with every one of his weapons…

  And now he was seriously pissed.

  This was a completely one-sided fight, like Michael Jordan taking on Stephen Hawking in one-on-one basketball. Or ten Stephen Hawkings.

  Pred had already shot the first two from farther out than they could hit him. Now he was shooting them from closer in, but doing so running straight at them flat-out, fomenting a panic that made it impossible for the untrained civilians to hold their ground, to make their shots, or in fact to maintain bladder control. Zulus didn’t panic when you just kept coming at them, but humans sure as hell did, which is why Tier-1 guys trained relentlessly to do it. They also trained to shoot, with perfect precision, while moving fast.

  Three more of the shitbirds dropped from headshots, despite being under cover, and by that time Pred was right in among them, their lines broken, and any unit cohesion they had gone. And then he was shooting them point blank, and then his rifle was empty and, not bothering to draw pistol or knife, he just started kicking their asses with fists and boots.

  The last four survivors dropped their weapons, fled, and disappeared, limping and whimpering into the night.

  Pred reloaded his rifle, scanned the area, and patted Gordon on the head. “Good robot. Got your six, man.” Looking back down the street, he could see the last of the civilian group disappearing in through the gate. He squinted and hit his radio.

  “Hey Juice, brother.”

  “Send it.”

  “Uh… yeah, there’s just a tiny little handful of civilians I let inside to take shelter in the courtyard.”

  “Goddammit, Pred. You had ONE job.”

  “Sorry. Look, just try not to shoot any of them, okay?”

  “Copy. I’ve got the mission objective and am on my way out. Get your ass back in that courtyard so we can pop smoke.”

  “Copy, wilco.”

  Pred paused for one second just to breathe – and to smile.

  That had felt good.

  From two feet away, Gordon started firing a long rolling burst, mowing down a pack of runners coming from the north.

  “Good man,” Pred said, patting it again. “Now cover our six.”

  He hefted his rifle and jogged away.

  * * *

  Ali had no trouble guarding the helo’s one working engine, despite also being on her own. As with the samurai for whom they were designed, the katana meant she was never really alone. The living up there kept getting taken down by the dead, which Ali then in turn took down with efficient decapitations and face skewering. But the living kept getting reinforcements, fleeing up the stairs, and the dead kept following them.

  And Ali couldn’t be on all sides of the aircraft at once.

  So now, when she smelled smoke, she had to go check on the engine on the other side, the one that had flamed out – due not to a bird strike, but a damned runner strike. When she rounded the nose of the bird, she could see it wasn’t merely a write-off – it was also on fire. And that had to be dealt with.

  And there was still only one of her.

  Radioing Homer first to warn him in case he was in there or about to be, she baseball-threw a couple of grenades through the open doorway, hoping that would buy her a few seconds. While waiting for them to go off, she took off two dead heads, then stuck her sword upright in one of the fallen bodies. As the grenades crumped off and smoke and body parts whooshed out of the stairwell, she climbed up on the cowling of the Apache, reached inside, and came out with the cockpit fire extinguisher.

  When she dropped down again, she had to quick-draw her pistol to defend herself, dropping two more runners who liked the look of her. On the upside, she was just one of about twenty living up here, and maybe the dead would pick safer targets for long enough for her to get the fire out. But as soon as she turned her back and started deploying the extinguisher, she got tackled from behind.

  Goddammit.

  She got her knife out, stabbed her attacker through the eye, bounced to her feet, and fought her way back to her sword, still sticking up where she left it. As she wrapped her left hand around it, the engine exploded behind her, knocking her to the deck again, hard, and dazing her long enough for more bodies to land on her. She still had her knife in her right hand, so she used it to dispatch the dead bastards pressing her down, which were also trying to eat her, and wriggled out from under them. As she crab-crawled away on her back, looking up, she could see the shape the right engine was now in, which wasn’t good.

  It was peeled open, and
blazing away jauntily.

  So much for structural integrity.

  A bit later than she would have liked, she also noticed the exploding engine had sprayed flaming jet fuel out across the rooftop, which also now burned in a lively fashion, though that didn’t seem to dissuade either the living or dead from continuing to run up there from out of the now rather smoky stairwell. Between her and it, and all around, flaming bodies ran in every direction, and she just lay there where she was for a second, trying to develop a plan of action before she got back to her feet, which would probably just get her tackled again.

  Looking up, she could see the engine fire was spreading to the rest of the aircraft. And she could both hear and feel the rooftop creaking underneath her, now not only bearing the 15,000 pounds of the Apache – but doing so while being consumed by fire. This clarified her plan of action.

  She hit her radio.

  “Homer, Ali. Urgent sitrep. Bird is lost, HLZ overrun. Proceed with mission objective to secondary exfil – alone. Repeat, helo is lost.”

  The roof gave way beneath her.

  The burning sixty-foot aircraft, twisting and bending and groaning, crashed through the cracking and splintering rooftop, taking everything down with it, including dozens of bodies, living and dead, flaming and fighting.

  And including Ali.

  She slid fifteen feet as the ground canted at an obscene angle, then managed to dig in with her left hand, her body hanging and then swinging out over the edge – over the collapse, chaos, fire, screaming, darkness, and death below. With her free hand, she hit her radio again. “How copy?”

  Tumbling and screaming civilians slid and bounced down the sloping roof and over the edge, grabbing and tearing at Ali as they fell, while pursuing runners followed them over, also grasping and clawing, dead hands latching onto her body, the accumulated weight finally breaking her grip.

  And she fell into blackness and bedlam.

  Only Fight Left to Run

  CentCom – CP

  Yeah, Wesley thought, holding his rifle. I’m definitely gonna need this thing pretty soon.

  He stood out on the front railing of his CP, looking down the line and out over the fight. He no longer flinched from the roar of the guns and grenades. He was under an overhang, but the rain was lashing down now, and a wind from the north blowing it right in his face.

  Just as it blew in all the defenders’ faces, everyone standing out exposed to the storm on the walls. But that was the least of their problems. And the least of what was coming for them from the north.

  Even after everything Wesley had seen in the ZA, all the wonders and horrors, he could hardly believe how quickly everything had gone to shit again. The outrageously destructive main-gun barrage from the tanker squadron, followed by their head-crushing tactics, had no doubt bought them some space and time. And the suicidal acrobatics of the Apache pilot had temporarily relieved the immediate pressure on the walls. Finally, without question, the fearless heroics of the Gurkhas in rescuing the tankers had given everyone in CentCom a huge morale lift.

  But the morale lift was about as temporary as the relief.

  And the reinforcements – twenty-four tankers with carbines – weren’t going to make a damned bit of difference in the end. They were now slotted in with the Gurkhas in the center, all of them brothers now, and firing flat out – as were the Royal Marines to their left, and the USOC operators to the right.

  They were all firing flat out again because the dead had flooded back in to fill the channels that had gotten carved, and done so with breathtaking quickness. They were filling up no-man’s land again and racing toward the walls. And while the defenders were dropping them in huge numbers, and as far out as they could, still they were starting to pile up at the base of the wall. Before long, they would be up to the level of the ramparts, and then over. And Wesley realized there was no end to them, and perhaps never could be. The dead were not just legion – they were infinite. Now that they knew the living were in there, they would never stop coming.

  And there could never be enough bullets to stop them.

  All Wesley and his friends could do was put off the end.

  And not for a whole hell of a lot longer.

  He raised his eyes and searched the skies for a helicopter or plane, although he knew he wouldn’t see one through the storm even if it were there. And with all long-range radio traffic taken out by the EMI, they weren’t going to get any updates. For all he knew Alpha team was already dead, both their missions failed.

  And the rest of them were holding on here for nothing.

  He considered moving up the line, but realized right here was as good a position as any – there were plenty of dead to go around, visible from every part of the north walls. He raised his rifle and took a couple of shots to make sure the weapon still worked, but then lowered it, and checked to the right again. Everyone was fully engaged, and things were bad.

  But the dead weren’t high enough to jump up and over again – or to simply climb over, as they eventually would be. Things were definitely going to get worse. And now Wesley had a funny feeling he should go check on his RMPs and conscripts on the other walls, particularly to the south, while he still had a chance. Maybe it was because he still felt a responsibility to those people, his original command. Maybe it was that they had been left all on their own.

  Maybe it was just too quiet down there.

  He radioed Fick for a sitrep (“Wet.”) and to let both him and the JOC know what he was doing.

  And then he slipped away alone, down the walls to the left.

  * * *

  Inside the JOC, Miller alone paced the aisles of tactical stations, stealing glances up at the wall-mounted screen, which still lit the ops center with its glow. Everyone in there was looking up at it. It was like car-crash theater – you could hardly look away. They couldn’t quite believe, any more than Wesley did, how quickly CentCom was in play again.

  Miller stopped pacing. As he reviewed the screens, he wondered what the hell they were all doing in there – exactly what operations they thought they were controlling. The Marines, Gurkhas, and USOC operators were more than capable of running their own fight, and had been doing so for a while. Fick and Wesley were the combatant commanders, out in the thick of it, much closer to the action than Miller’s ops staff. The EMI meant they weren’t going to get any radio traffic from either of the Alpha missions, or from anywhere else for that matter. And it went without saying the larger Battle of Britain they had been coordinating from in there was long over.

  And the living had lost.

  All they were really doing now was sitting around watching it all on TV. And waiting to die.

  So Miller turned and went into the unused office where they had stowed their personal weapons – which they had retrieved and put there during the calm before the current storm. When he came out with his rifle, and looked at the outside door, all the ops staff were looking up at him.

  “Where are we going?” Jones asked, breaking the silence.

  Miller nodded vaguely outside. “To the walls,” he said. “That’s the only fight left to run.”

  The others got up and filed in to get their weapons as well, then lined up behind him.

  “Not you,” he said to Jones.

  Because he realized at the last second there actually was one last important job that still had to be done in the JOC.

  And then the rest of them headed out to the fight.

  * * *

  “Draugur, Akuma – assault the compound. Suppress that plunging fire.”

  The fateful order had been given, and there was no taking it back. Now it just played in Handon’s head as he waited. This had been his call to make, and whether this was his first mission as team leader, or hundredth, made absolutely no difference – no more than it mattered whether this was these two young operators’ first mission out of OTC, or their thousandth. They’d been given a job, and had to be prepared to execute it. Handon’s job had been to
decide. Combat leadership was all about decisions – usually ones that had no well-defined right answer, but would still get men killed if made wrong.

  Now the rest of Handon’s small team was waiting for Draugur and Akuma to suppress the fire from the commanding compound that had them pinned down, to kill the dug-in shooters inside. Until they did, there was no way for them to break contact and exfil. The murderous fire they were subject to had just started to slacken, which suggested the two assaulters were getting it done. But Handon needed confirmation before they exposed themselves in a long run over open ground.

  He started breathing again when Draugur hailed him. But then he immediately heard the strain in his voice.

  “We’ve cleared about half the compound – but then walked into an ambush, a barricade. Akuma is KIA. And I’m hit. Don’t know if I can walk.”

  Handon stared into the darkness, disbelieving.

  God, that happened fast – in every way.

  He squinted his eyes nearly closed as spotlights flashed by, and gunfire ramped up. When he opened them again, he saw both were leaking in the window beside his bed.

  He was back in the med wing in CentCom.

  And, once again, there was a hulking figure sitting stonily in the chair by his bed, head lowered in shadow, tattooed forearms resting on his thighs.

  Sitting in judgment.

  “You need to stop lying there fucking the donkey, Yank – feeling sorry for men years dead. Feeling sorry for yourself. Because this job is NOT done.”

  Handon didn’t try to argue with him this time. He knew Henno was right. But he couldn’t seem to move his body.

  “You are not letting my country fall, not letting humanity wink out into nothing. Not while you still have breath. And most of all you are not fucking letting everyone who fell carrying this mission forward die in vain.”

  Handon had already seen the parade of faces of the fallen.

  “You’re going to get up and finish this thing. So Captain Ainsley’s lads weren’t orphaned for no reason. So they have a world and a future to grow up in – so they make it to Blakey Ridge, and get to have that pint at the Red Lion Inn. You get them there, Handon. You hear me?”