“Umarov!” she shouted, reaching out for her comrade. But she was trapped inside the waterfall’s unbreakable grip that was yanking her downward through the clouds of spray to be dashed into the churning river below.
— Chapter 69 —
“I’m picking up weapons fire inside the hangar,” reported Puja, who was hidden amongst the riverside trees to the left of Arun’s position. “Movement headed toward the hangar opening. Over at our Stork, the status is unchanged – it’s crawling with monkeys.”
“Damn!” snapped Arun. “You hear that, Lieutenant?”
“Acknowledged,” Nhlappo answered. “If the Hardits in the Stork’s vicinity are militia, we should be able to clear them with ease.”
“And if they aren’t,” Arun finished for her, “we’re dead anyway. Secure our ride out of here, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll make sure the motor’s hot. I’ve a feeling we’ll be leaving in a hurry.”
Arun trusted Nhlappo to get on with her part of the plan: to lead the bulk of his surviving forces out of the Troggie tunnels and secure the Stork. Despite the seriousness of their situation, his mind couldn’t resist teasing with a vivid image of the grizzled veteran in her armor, toting in one hand a flenser cannon blazing with fire, and cradling the two babies she’d adopted in the other. Babes in arms. When his imagination placed a smoking cigar between her sneering lips, he shook his head, bemused. No one could have predicted the way Nhlappo had fixated on the infants. That was why he’d left Sergeant Gupta with Nhlappo: to free Majanita to keep an eye on her officer.
Arun cast his gaze around his small team dispersed in cover near the riverbank. Corporal Puja Narciso was swapping her sensor tool for her carbine. Heavy weapons specialist David Ho had his launcher ready. Marine Kolenja Abramovski had braced her carbine on a branch. He didn’t know Abramovski well. Her pale hair and skin invited barbs about her icy nature. Arun could understand the taunts: he’d never heard Abramovski say anything loose or unguarded. But she was the best shot in the Legion, and that was his only selection criteria. Arun was himself one of the Legion’s best sharpshooters, which was why the same selection criteria meant Arun found himself watching for Xin’s team to emerge with the fuel, and not staying with the main party heading for the Stork.
Barney must have overheard his thoughts about shooting through the waterfall into the hangar entrance over a klick away. The AI magnified Arun’s view of the target area. Sunlight reached through a gap in the steep mountain peaks and touched the tumbling, bubbling jewel of a waterfall. But of Xin’s team… still nothing.
Where are they?
“Prepare to fire,” Arun ordered his team. “Remember, if your target’s ugly and hairy, it’s one of theirs. If it’s ugly and smooth, it’s a Marine. Wait for our party to get out first.”
As he brought his carbine to bear, cylinders began tumbling through the waterfall’s flow. Arun wouldn’t have seen them if Barney hadn’t artificially colored the plummeting fuel canisters bright blue. Following the precious fuel were the even more precious Marines, gripped by the inescapable power of the waterfall and pulled down to the churning water nearly a hundred meters below. Accompanying the Marines, were rectangular panels: the hover trollies they’d used to haul the fuel.
As they emerged from the hangar, the battlesuits joined BattleNet. The Marines inside were too busy caught on the waterfall to report in, so their suit AIs handled that for them. Bettencourt, Dada, Bizzy Sesay, and then Springer – thank goodness – was seriously wounded but not critical. She’d jumped gripping Umarov from behind. He was unconscious! Arun’s heart leaped when he saw Springer lose her hold, flinging her arms out helplessly when she lost her buddy to the waterfall’s grip.
Xin followed, tumbling through the falling water, catching a glancing blow from one of the hover trolleys. He couldn’t worry about Umarov now. He had to protect his Marines from the Hardits in the hangar.
“Get ready,” Arun ordered his team, flicking off his carbine’s safety.
“Hold your fire!” shouted Xin, still in the grip of the water.
“Hold,” Arun confirmed, but he didn’t know why they should. All of Xin’s team were accounted for. If she had intended to explain herself, she’d left it too late, because they heard her gasp as she entered the billowing clouds of spray, followed an instant later by a grunt as she impacted the water.
More figures tumbled out through the waterfall, haloed by splashes from poorly aimed rifle fire out of the hangar’s interior. More? Who were they?
Barney gripped these new targets in flashing red targeting brackets. The suit AI didn’t use words, but Arun felt Barney urging him to fire.
Now! Barney seemed to be saying. This targeting solution isn’t going to hang around.
Look again, Arun willed his AI. They’re in battlesuits.
Worried that Barney would take the matter in his own hands, so to speak, Arun took his finger off the trigger. Then his mouth dropped open as he saw the unidentified newcomers were pursued by a heavy duty loading trolley to which large crates were securely attached. Whatever the hell that was, it wasn’t a stack of fuel equipment. What was Xin up to?
As if hearing his thoughts, Xin butted in. “Brought us some heavy fire support,” she said, “with help from Spartika and two of her pals. That’s us all out. Met some bad guys on our way out. Give them hell, Major.”
Barney’s urges grew frantic, but Arun no longer needed to be told.
“Fire!” he ordered.
Arun and Puja fired a burst blindly through the waterfall. Then Ho released a barrage of four frag missiles, aimed to mark out four corners of an imaginary square inside the hangar, set fifteen meters above the deck. Anyone caught beneath the burst area would be cut to shreds by the hail of frag shards.
Abramovski waited, the sniper preferring to pick her targets rather than fire blindly.
There was no response from inside the hangar. With luck, every Hardit in there was dead, but Arun didn’t believe that. Luck hadn’t been on his side in this campaign so far.
This action by the hangar wasn’t the only game in town. Now that the shooting had started, Nhlappo’s force no longer cared about keeping quiet. From her position near the Stork, a klick or so away from Arun, Barney reported three missile launchers firing a stack of ordnance into the air. They would be firing blinders to counter the threat from anti-air defenses. What else they needed to do to secure the area around the Stork was Nhlappo, Gupta, and Madge’s problem. Arun was too busy to follow their fight.
Leaving Abramovski to cover the hangar entrance, Arun, Puja, and Ho raced for the tree-lined river bank. Arun kept watch on the bank while the other two made for the narrowest point of the river across which they had already stretched a cargo net pilfered from the ditched transport plane that Del had piloted.
The first of the floating fuel canisters was nearly upon them. The shells of the canisters were gas injected to provide enough buoyancy so they didn’t simply sink to the bottom when filled. But Arun hadn’t expected the containers to be so buoyant that they were floating atop the fast-flowing river.
The first canister was caught on the crest of a wave and bobbed over the net, continuing downstream without even slowing.
Frakk!
“Lift the nets higher!” Puja shouted.
Ho, who was already in the water, raced for the far bank, Arun clamped his carbine to his back and attended to the net on the near bank where it was hooked around an underwater root that protruded onto the water, the bottom of the net set to grip the river bottom.
By the time he and Ho had hauled the top of the net out of the water enough to reach shoulder height, a clump of canisters was sweeping along the river, about to hit the barrier.
Finally, everything went according to plan.
The fuel cylinders were caught and held by the net. Rushing into the water, Puja began retrieving the containers and stacking them on the bank.
A short distance upstream, the Marines ha
d righted the hover trollies and were using them as rafts. Anyone without a battlesuit would have been thrown off the rafts as they tossed violently around in the rapids, but this was an impressive display of human-AI symbiosis that reminded Arun why he was proud to be a Marine. Using the tension in crouching human legs as a shock absorber, AIs kept the suit legs in constant motion so that the hips were a stable firing platform for the Marines aiming their carbines at the opening to the hangar. Only when the rafts span around in eddying currents, did the Marines temporarily lose their firing solutions.
So far there was no sign of threat from the hangar.
Xin and Springer had managed to fish Umarov from the water and were hauling him onto the largest raft, the one that held Spartika’s mystery equipment. Umarov’s suit reported he’d lost a lot of blood but had stabilized. Spartika herself, along with Boon and Deacon were in the water beside their raft, trying to stabilize its gyrations.
Once the rafts had cleared the most violently roiling water near the waterfall, they were able to float above the water. The Marines used their suit AIs to pilot the hover trollies, making for the bank where Puja was stacking the fuel. With no obvious threat from the hangar opening above, they shifted their aim to the banks, scanning the trees and bushes on the shoreline for threats.
One of the Marines, Bizzy, was waving a greeting at Arun, or so he thought until Bizzy yelled: “Contact!”
What?
“Major, behind you.”
Barney was overlaying Arun’s visor with a hastily revised tactical assessment. It was pretty simple: Hardits were approaching from behind. Hordes of them. Bullets rustled through the undergrowth, moving ever closer to Arun.
Arun didn’t wait for the next burst of fire to find him.
He dove through the air, tumbling and grabbing his carbine as he flew. Just in time. The bank where he’d been standing spat miniature mud geysers as it was raked by automatic fire.
He hit the ground, rolled and fired as soon as he came to a halt.
A Hardit looked down in astonishment at the hole Arun had opened up in his chest. The alien dropped what looked like an automatic rifle, with a crude magazine slotted underneath that was fashioned from unpainted metal.
Arun shot the monkey a second time to ram home the message. Then he put a shot through the snout of another Hardit who’d halted in clear view, trying to understand why its comrade had taken a sudden interest in its chest.
More Hardits pushed past their comrades, past Arun’s position and into the fields of fire of the Marines who’d just emerged from the water. The dumb monkeys weren’t even trying to go to ground or seek cover.
Arun wasn’t about to make the same mistake. He dove and rolled for a new position farther from the bank.
He scanned the area. Arun’s first target was collapsing to the ground, the second clutching at its snout and screaming in agony. Then it too fell to the ground.
Arun felt the closest he had ever come to sympathy for the Hardits, but that only meant his whoops were shouted rather than screamed maniacally as he made short work of the hapless aliens. He lost count of the number of times his railgun spat death at the enemy. Other shots were coming from the Marines who’d jumped from the hangar; more darts hit the Hardits from the rear.
The Hardits learned nothing. They just kept on rushing into Marine firing arcs until their dead were heaped high. And still they came. They had no discipline, no leadership. No hope.
The time finally came when the Hardits stopped coming and the firing fell silent.
A few seconds after the last Hardit fell, an armored figure burst through the trees on the riverbank. Monofilament teeth, dripping bloody gore, extended out the end of his carbine. Blood flowed down the Marine’s chest. Hardit blood.
BattleNet identified this as Senior Sergeant Suresh Gupta.
“Reckon that’s the last of ’em, Major,” said Gupta, breathlessly. “The route to the Stork is clear. And, if you’ll excuse my Navy speech, Ensign Dock asked me to convey his compliments and ask you to hurry the fuck up.” Then he added as an afterthought: “Should have executed the overdramatic poser, if you ask me, but that’s the Navy for you. What the…?”
Arun sensed sudden fury coming off the sergeant in waves.
“Have you detected our Resistance friends who have risen from the dead?” Arun asked.
“Lieutenant Brandt died bravely,” said Gupta with menacing slowness. “He’ll never come back from the dead. How is it that Spartika and her spittle-licking friends didn’t fall alongside Brandt and the others?”
“That’s a question for later,” said Arun.
“Why aren’t they dead?” demanded Gupta. His stance suggested he was ready to inflict extreme violence.
“Easy, Sergeant,” said Xin.
Arun looked behind. The fuel-raiding party was loaded up and fast approaching. Four trollies laden with fuel, and a larger one laden with Spartika’s mysterious equipment crates and Umarov’s unconscious body. Movement was slower now: the fuel for the gravitic motors had run out and the Marines were reduced to pulling the trollies along the muddy bank on their wheels.
Arun joined in hauling the nearest trolley.
“You’d better explain to us, and quickly,” Arun told Xin privately.
“It’s our new heavy fire support,” said Xin, ensuring Gupta could hear too. “A heavy cannon dismounted from a gunship’s main armament, two portable zero-point power generators, targeting system, a mounting system to convert to an artillery piece, and specialist rounds.”
“Range?” growled Gupta, unwilling to be mollified easily.
“Four thousand klicks. This baby can kick out sub-orbital trajectories. And the rounds, to answer your next question, are semi-intelligent, variable-yield fusion shells rated up to three megatons. Finally, we have some respectable fire support.”
The explanation satisfied Gupta sufficiently for him to keep his anger inside his helmet long enough to reach the waiting Stork shuttle, which was guarded by jubilant Marines.
Arun expected to battle with Ensign Dock over the weight of Spartika’s nuclear artillery piece. It was a battle he expected to lose, because if Dock stood his ground and insisted Marines would have to be left behind to compensate for the additional weight, Arun had no answer. As it turned out, Dock was thrilled at the idea of transporting a serious weapon, as he put it, but he fumed and cursed at the loss of the single fuel canister. A loss he made very clear he blamed squarely on Arun.
As the shuttle-turned-gunship’s engine spooled, and the hull throbbed with eagerness to lift off, Arun dismissed the pilot and his wild mood swings. He’d had doubts about the old Navy ensign, but Dock had hauled their collective asses out the fire more than once. He’d earned the right to his flamboyant Navy ways.
Dock interrupted Arun’s thoughts to relay a warning broadcast from Beowulf that a stream of enemy aircraft was lifting off from the continent of Serendine on the far side of the world.
“The dirty monkeys left it too late,” said Dock cheerfully. “They’ll never reach our bird in time to intercept. Not unless the fuel the major threw away means we can’t lift off. Lieutenant Nhlappo… if you please?”
With Romulus and Remus sleeping in the cocooning embrace of one poly-ceramalloy encased arm, Nhlappo ordered the blinders to be activated. There were only a handful of explosions: the Hardits hadn’t much advanced war materiel left in the area. The Marines didn’t have good enough sensors to be sure, but what they did have suggested that Tawfiq’s faction was still mopping up pockets of resistance in the Hardit civil war that still smoldered far below Tranquility’s surface.
With his flight path clear, Dock gave the Stork its head. It rose gently for a hundred meters, and then hurled itself into the sky.
Most Marines tapped into the external camera feed and watched their home planet recede beneath them. Arun hadn’t time for sightseeing: there were matters left unresolved. He unclipped his harness and made his way over to Spartika.
&nb
sp; “You’ve done well to bring us that cannon,” he told her.
Spartika removed her helmet and stared at Arun without speaking. Her features were gaunt, her eyes darkened by a toxic mix of fatigue, bruises, and disdain. In fact, he decided, he found himself looking into an echo of the Adrienne Miller who had first met Arun on the day he was forced to become an Aux slave, a punishment insisted upon by the cruelest Hardit of them all: Tawfiq Woomer-Calix.
“You’re safe now,” Arun told her kindly. “You can rest once we’re back on Beowulf.”
“The cannon isn’t yours,” stated Spartika. “We risked our lives and it was me who had the initiative to retrieve it. I…” She shrugged, her sneer softening a little. “I understand you have wounded to tend to. Return them to your ship. Then I expect you to set my team down a safe distance from Detroit. Our cannon goes with us.”
Arun ground his jaw and clenched his fist.
Arun pulsed hot anger that urged him to punch this ungrateful veck. The last vestiges of restraint were fraying when Spartika blinked, her eyes threatening to roll up in their sockets. She swayed for a few seconds before recovering her composure.
Her weakness saved Spartika from a smash to her mouth. Arun tried to vent his anger through his indignant glare instead. Spartika should have fought and died alongside Brandt’s Marines, not to mention her own people: the human slaves that so many Marines had died liberating.
“Of course, the weapon is yours by rights,” he lied. “What will you do with it?”
“Kill Tawfiq. We’ll lure her to a fixed position and then nuke her. I’ll make sure she knows her death is imminent. Just after it’s too late to get away.”
“And what will that accomplish?”
“Revenge. Look, McEwan, I’ve had it with raising false hopes. All this talk of winning human freedom is just so much drent. Even if either of us ever could have armed the human slaves, we’re out of time anyway. Tawfiq told me she’ll wipe every last human off the planet. I believe her.”
Renegade Legion (The Human Legion Book 3) Page 28
