Actually, fuel was mostly stored in tanks buried underneath the hangar and pumped up through the floor, but the hangar level also housed many ready-filled fuel canisters, used for auxiliary supply on long–distance flights, or in case the fuel pump system failed.
It was that fuel that had lured the Marines out of the tunnel network beneath Detroit and up through the human levels, evading Hardit patrols until they arrived undetected at the hangar. Without that fuel, they’d never get off the planet.
They had been fortunate enough to locate a fuel store at the back of the hangar that was out of sight of the Hardit sentries. Xin and the four other Marines were quietly loading the trollies with the fuel canisters now, while Springer and Umarov watched the sentries.
Actually, it was not luck that caused the fuel store to be unguarded. From their stance, the Hardits were here to guard the aircraft ordnance, not the fuel. And that was just as well because she was wary of the Hardit sentries. These weren’t the reluctant conscript militia who would pretend they hadn’t noticed you if they thought it would avoid a fight. The hangar was guarded by the same uniformed elite who had killed Kalis in the underground depths of the Labor Camp.
Kalis had died trying to free Spartika. Or Adrienne Miller, to give the heroic Resistance leader her real name. Well, Adrienne had died anyway, along with everyone else, in the Fall of Detroit. Frakk load of use she had been! Good to know Kalis’s sacrifice hadn’t been in vain.
No, she corrected herself. Del-Marie was the one fighter who had gotten out alive, although he’d been in a coma since they’d rescued him a few days ago. Romulus and Remus too, who were inseparably attached to Lieutenant Nhlappo. Scuttlebutt said poor Zug had been Nhlappo’s son. If so, then she was sorry for the lieutenant. Tirunesh Nhlappo was a hard person to like, but the idea of losing a child pierced Springer’s gut with venomous horror, almost making her grateful that she could never have children of her own.
One of the distant sentries stiffened suddenly. It began sniffing at the air. Moving as silently as she could – stealth mode was far from perfect – Springer aimed her carbine at that sniffing nose.
The sentries wore helmets and plates of body armor over their shiny uniforms that were themselves woven from impact absorbent material. It wasn’t armor on the level of a Marine battlesuit, probably intended as protection against rival armed Hardit groups. For a start, the armor had gaps – more than enough for accurately aimed fire. She’d already agreed with Umarov to aim at the noses. What better way to ruin the scent–oriented creatures?
The sniffing sentry barked a warning.
Damn!
The Hardits went to ground, some crawling to the nearest cover, while others aimed their rifles… Not east at Springer and Umarov. Nor northeast where Xin’s group was loading the fuel.
Whatever had spooked the Hardits was to the north.
“Trouble,” Springer told her commander, bouncing her comm signal off the hull of a Stork shuttle. For some bizarre reason there were several of the ruined shuttles arranged in the center of the hangar. “The Hardits are acting as if they’re under attack, but I don’t believe they’ve seen us.”
“We’re not finished here,” said Xin. “Deal with it.”
Springer didn’t bother replying. Every word that issued from Xin’s lips felt corrupted by the filth of betrayal and death. Springer still didn’t fully understand why she hated Xin with such gut–churning intensity. Didn’t need understanding to know that she wished the lieutenant dead.
Damn! Damn! Damn!
The other group of sentries, just a few paces to her front, crouched in a Hardit equivalent of taking a knee, covering the danger area with their rifles.
What had gotten their attention so?
Springer held her fire a little longer – hoping the tension would evaporate. That this would prove another false alarm.
It didn’t look as if that was going to work this time. The sentries looked confused and panicked, both trios now shifting their arcs of fire to cover every direction.
They think something’s out there, but don’t know where.
This was bad. The worst possible outcome. Could Springer and Umarov eliminate the sentries?
Probably.
But the six Hardits they could see weren’t the true threat. There were barracks set into the mountain at either side of the hangar, containing dozens more elite Hardit soldiers. If the barracks opened up and soldiers spilled out, Xin’s team would have to run a 500 meter gauntlet of fire before jumping out through the waterfall.
And they would be carting highly explosive aviation fuel all the way.
Springer felt a prickling sensation on her back. The door to the eastern barracks was right behind her. Had it opened yet?
“Death to the Monkeys!”
Springer didn’t have time to work out whence the human battle cry had originated. She shot her Hardit target through the nose. AI-assisted and at a range of only a hundred meters, she couldn’t miss. The supersonic dart tore through the enemy’s snout, shattering its upper jaw.
Bite on that, monkey.
Beside her, Umarov would be bringing out his poisoned combat blades, and slicing through the two guards nearest to him.
Springer trusted her buddy to keep the nearby Hardits busy while she took care of the other group. But she found her next target was clutching its neck. Someone had already shot it. Springer put a dart through its nose anyway. The last of the trio was slumping to the deck without needing any assistance from Springer’s railgun.
Their killers emerged from cover: three humans in Marine battlesuits who were now covering the dead Hardits with SA-71 carbines while pulling on a heavy cart, a platform loaded with equipment cases that dwarfed the fuel canisters Xin’s team were stealing.
Who the frakk were they?
“Springer!”
Umarov’s warning came just in time for her to dodge backward and to her left, taking her no more than a fingerwidth out of reach of the last Hardit sentry’s bayonet lunge.
She nearly laughed at the idea of her adversary trying to penetrate Marine armor with a metal knife attached to the end of a wooden rifle. But her proto-smile died when she noticed the coruscating lilac-white glow on the bayonet’s tip. The Hardit was coming at her with plasma cutter, a weapon upgrade surely designed specifically to cut through Marine armor.
She charged at the Hardit with the Marine version of the ancient bayonet: monofilament teeth rotating into a blur on the end of her carbine.
“For the Legion!” she yelled.
The monkey shot her in the chest.
Then it seemed to remember that its bolt-action rifle had been upgraded to a semi-automatic, and fired short, controlled bursts, emptying its magazine into her.
Hammer blows cracked Springer’s ribs and, worst of all, toppled her backward. That ancient sense of balance in the pit of her stomach told her that she had gone past the point of no return – she was falling and there was nothing she could do about it. She was about to topple onto her back, helplessly exposing her belly to that plasma-tipped bayonet.
But instincts inherited from a time when her distant ancestors still lived in trees took no account of artificial intelligence. Saraswati felt the panic in Springer’s gut, and immediately expended every last joule of the suit’s energy reserves to power its motors just enough to nudge Springer back onto her feet.
Down here in a gravity well, you couldn’t fly around like a frakking fairy, not like you could in the void. Movement was always difficult on planets, but the nudge and jumps that a suit could manage could still make the difference between life and death.
And in this case, it spelled death for the Hardit, who seemed so mesmerized that this human it had shot was now springing back to life, that it was making a hash of swapping in a fresh ammo magazine.
Whatever!
Recovering its wits, the Hardit finished snapping in the new mag and brought its rifle back up to fire again, but it had wasted too much time gawp
ing at the immortal human.
Springer parried away the Hardit’s rifle with its lethal plasma tip, and then thrust her spinning monofilament teeth through the veck’s gut, chewing through flesh until her carbine’s teeth began separating the vertebrae of the alien’s spine.
That’ll teach you to shoot at a Marine!
It was the last one. On both sides of the hangar, the sentries were now all dead. Umarov had been ready to intervene with his blades in Springer’s fight with the bayonet-wielding Hardit. Now he sheathed his blades and detached his carbine from his back.
On the far side of the hangar, the three Resistance survivors (assuming that was what they were) hurried for the waterfall exit dragging the heavy hover cart with them.
Xin’s team emerged from the northeast corner of the hangar.
But they weren’t out of danger yet! On the far side of the hangar, Hardit soldiers were spilling out of their barracks.
Springer spun around. The hatch to the other barracks was already open and Hardits were charging out, brandishing plasma-tipped bayonets. Springer sprayed them with a burst of railgun darts that made them dive to the deck. Then she took her time to aim shots at the enemy who showed the most fight. She made every shot count. Umarov’s carbine spat death alongside her.
When the Hardits behind the hatch to the barracks rallied, and made another rush out into the hangar, Springer fired off the flash grenade that had been ready all this time in the launcher beneath her carbine’s barrel. Saraswati temporarily darkened Springer’s visor and dampened her hearing. The enemy had no such filters, and the stunning effect of deafening noise and searing light hit them full strength. She’d seen the effect close up of a flash bomb rubbed in Tawfiq’s face. Hardits sure didn’t like light and noise.
Without waiting to see the results, Springer reached for the next grenade in the sequence she’d readied on her hip attachment patch. She fired the nerve gas grenade through the hatch to explode twenty meters inside the barracks. Then she fired off another nerve gas round primed to explode in the hatchway.
Umarov should have been adding his own fire support, but instead he was firing at the barracks at the other side of the hangar. Her buddy had better be keeping the monkeys’ heads down, or they’d shoot her in the back.
According to tac-display, Xin’s team were halfway to the exit. They might still make it out even if she and Umarov didn’t.
Springer kept her opponents busy with another burst of railgun darts before firing two frag grenades. Even if the Hardits had gas masks that were proof against the nerve agent, the frag shards should ruin any gas seals. There would be no escape from Springer’s vengeance. All she could hear from behind the doorway was coughing and retching. Saraswati reported that the threat to her front had been eliminated.
That’ll teach you to mess with the Legion.
Springer turned around, feeling pings as she moved: rifle rounds hitting her shoulder and flank.
She rolled away and took a new position behind an armored equipment crate.
Suddenly, she felt a stab of pain through her wounded shoulder, and an agonizing grip of fire reaching in through her chest, squeezing the breath from her. For several heartbeats, the pain incapacitated her so much that she nearly dropped her carbine. Then Saraswati’s upped dosage of combat drugs dulled the pain and focused Springer’s mind on the task at hand.
On the far side of the hangar, Hardit corpses were heaped high, but some had survived everything the humans had hurled at them. Now they were behind cover and sniping at the Marines hauling the fuel carts.
It was time to look for new tactical options. The enemy were taking cover amongst ordnance and fuel stores, which was maddening because the explosive targets were shielded too well. Springer didn’t have anything powerful enough to penetrate and explode them. Perhaps Xin’s team could roll fuel canisters at the Hardits for Springer and Umarov to blow up in their snouts… But, no, that was too complex to work in this chaos.
Without a better plan, she gave the enemy something to think about by firing her last grenade: smoke.
“Follow me,” urged Umarov.
She looked across and saw him run full pelt toward a Stork carcass that lay halfway between her position and the Hardits. With her smoke dissipating, she raced after Umarov and scrambled inside the shuttle’s hold without taking further hits. She didn’t like the idea of being trapped inside a static position, but the Stork’s armor was useful. She poked her carbine out of a side hatch and fired a burst of darts to keep Hardit heads down.
“Reckon we should charge them?” asked Umarov.
Before Springer could remind her buddy that combat blades weren’t the answer to every problem, Xin intervened: “Keep firing,” she ordered. “We’re almost out of here.”
Springer fired off another railgun volley, using the breathing space that bought to check the tactical situation.
Xin and the three unidentified humans in battlesuits were just inside the exit, putting out volleys of suppressing fire while the rest of her team covered the final few meters to the opening through the mountainside.
The battlesuited renegades… they were a mystery no more. Xin must have accepted them into BattleNet because Saraswati now identified them as Spartika, Boon, and Deacon.
From the shelter of the Stork’s armored hold, dark thoughts swept through Springer’s head. Spartika’s people had fought in the Fall of Detroit. Why hadn’t they died like Brandt, Zug and so many others?
“My turn to rescue you, violet eyes,” said Spartika. “You too, Old Grognard. Give the monkey vecks everything you’ve got and then make a break for it. We’ll cover.”
Springer needed no second bidding.
She and Umarov sent a final burst of fire at the Hardit positions, spraying supersonic darts until the recoil dampener in their carbines cut out. They waded out through the heap of spent sabots, and scrambled out the far side of the Stork from the Hardits.
Then they ran for their lives.
Once out and onto the deck, she drew confidence from the sight of Xin and the three armored Resistance fighters blazing fire at the Hardits. Once they’d left the covering bulk of the ruined Stork, Saraswati helped Springer to zigzag. It was hardly void jinking, but enough to confuse barely trained rifle-toting monkeys.
Suddenly an explosion behind her tossed Springer into the air, and then sent her skidding along the deck.
Where was it fired from? asked Springer as she sprang to her feet and ran for the exit.
Springer halted by skidding along on one leg, and coming out facing back the way she’d come. It was as well that she did, because a second explosion ripped a hole in the deck where she’d been headed. The blast sent Springer onto all fours, but she unbunched her limbs and launched herself in Umarov’s direction.
‘No Marine left behind’. I said I’d reclaim that maxim. Now’s my chance to prove it.
She hurried back to where Umarov lay like a broken toy. Stay alive, old man. Up ahead, scores of elite Hardits were advancing into the hangar from the main spineway corridor that led from Detroit’s interior. That looks bad.
A frag grenade burst over the heads of the Hardits, raining down ceramic shards and fragments of the overhead. It didn’t do much damage but made enough of a show to make them hit the deck. Frakk! There must be over a hundred of them by now, and more
streaming in every moment.
Springer clamped her carbine to her back, and grabbed Umarov’s weapon in one hand. With the other she rolled him onto his back, reached down and grasped the recessed grip set into Umarov’s battlesuit behind his neck. The handle was designed for exactly this kind of battlefield casualty evac. It was not designed for comfort.
“Hang on, Umarov! This is gonna hurt.”
She dragged her fallen comrade along the debris-strewn deck, bumping and thumping all the way. Gentleness was out; so too was any attempt to evade the ragged volleys of rifle fire that ricocheted off the deck at her feet. She put every last ounce of strength into hauling Umarov, and if the Hardits hit her, the damage wasn’t enough for Saraswati to mention.
The waterfall exit seemed to grow more distant, not closer. Springer had been shot, burned, bled, and shot again in the past few days. Even Saraswati’s combat drugs could no longer hide the fact that it was only sheer bloody minded willpower that kept Springer functioning.
Even that began to fail.
Springer stopped, still gripping Umarov.
In her mind’s eye, she pictured Xin, the cold beauty of her face pinched into an expression of wicked glee. With Springer dead, there would be no one to save Arun from Xin.
Hatred pulled another step out of Springer. Then another.
The prospect of wiping that smug grin off Xin’s face pushed Springer into a faltering run.
At long last Springer made it to the hole bored out of the mountainside. Her gasps of exhaustion that had sounded so loud in her helmet were now drowned by the thunderous roar of the waterfall. She put both arms around Umarov, lifted him from behind, and with her final reserve of strength jumped out of the hangar.
From inside the hangar, the falling water looked like a glistening curtain, an ephemeral veil that once parted would grant access to the outside and safety.
The reality didn’t work quite like that.
From within, the cascading water was a confusing maelstrom of noise and light that spun Springer into dizzied incoherence and snatched Umarov out of her grip.
Renegade Legion (The Human Legion Book 3) Page 27
