Til Valhalla

by Richard Fox

  “Rupert?” Roy asked.

  “FNG,” Payne said. “The cherry.”

  “OK. I get it now,” Roy said, wishing the Australians could see his eyes roll.

  “Wouldn’t do to go back to the front as another supply clerk. Payne got me a shot at plugs and I took it,” Digger said. “Worked out for him as his mind started to do a walkabout soon after he found me.”

  “I’m here, Digger,” he said. “Always here.”

  “Good on ya, mate,” she said. “Stay frosty.”

  An alert pinged on Roy’s HUD and he opened and closed his hands within the pod, feeling a rush through his blood as Sigmund brought their Armor base systems online.

  “Got it,” Sigmund said. “Seventeen degrees off our nose, down elevation two hundred meters…pretty sure that’s the Damocles.”

  “‘Pretty sure’?” Digger asked.

  “Its screens are still up.” Sigmund shared camera footage from the cargo ship to their HUDs. They were miles above the surface, the curve of the Earth obvious, the surface washed out by layers of clouds. A spinning diamond icon hung in the distance. “But Ibarra’s tracker locked on to that spot, and the resonance frequency matches.”

  “Could the Chi-com have a decoy out front?” Roy asked. “Maybe an advance scout feeding intel back to the weapon platform?”

  “Decoys should be obvious, not stealthed,” Sigmund said. “That’s the target. Prep for drop.”

  “We’re going to drop on an invisible target?” Digger asked.

  Payne began a prayer to Saint George.

  “We get close enough, the two fields’ harmonics will cancel each other out. Least that’s what Ibarra’s people told me,” said Sigmund. “Otherwise…yeah. Hope will become a method when we drop. Fix your Q-11 packs during the fall. Worst-case scenario…dry land. Anyplace dry. Armor don’t swim.”

  “I can think of a lot worse case than that,” Digger said. “Just get us close enough, you pom. This suit can’t swim.”

  Roy felt the cargo ship angle down and accelerate. He accessed the manual release commands. A single mental tap of a button would override the clamps fixing his Armor to the ship’s internal locks and activate hydraulics that would shoot him out the forward doors. Ibarra’s techs had removed a number of safety features to jury-rig the Telemark’s ejection…which hadn’t been tested in the real world. The technicians had been very confident in their computer models, however.

  “Kind of wish I’d gone to Airborne school,” Roy said. “Not sure if I’ll still be a dirty nasty leg after this.”

  “Who calls you that?” Digger asked.

  “No one since I got my plugs,” Roy said and then quickly prayed as the icon grew larger in the video feed. Within the diamond, a haze appeared over the clouds beneath, wavering like air over a campfire.

  The haze ripped away, revealing an off-white dome bigger than any stadium on Earth, a giant red star trimmed in gold at the center, with blue, glowing bands running down the sides. The anti-grav impellers warped the air around them as twin massive metal arms unfolded from beneath and slewed up to aim at the Telemark’s ship.

  The Damocles had unsheathed its main weapon: a rail gun the size of an apartment building.

  “Think they know we’re here,” Payne said.

  “We’re within defilade of the main gun,” Sigmund said. “Worry more about the anti-air emplacements coming up out of the dome top.”

  A band of lightning ran down the twin vanes of the rail gun, and Roy felt an icicle of fear slip into his chest.

  “You want to get moving?” Digger asked.

  Tapping into a camera mounted below the ship, Roy saw nothing but a long drop beneath them. If they ejected now and managed to reconfigure and then get their Q-11s mounted and…he dismissed the thought. God might deliver one miracle, not several in sequence.

  “We’ve almost cleared the edge,” Sigmund said. “Stand by for—”

  Lightning crackled down the rail gun and a shell shot out. It hit the thin upper atmosphere so hard, the air ignited, as if the round had come from an old-fashioned cannon. The hypervelocity shell missed the Telemark’s ship, but that didn’t matter. The turmoil following in its wake slapped the cargo gondola aside like a boat hit by a rogue wave.

  Alarms blared across his HUD and in his ears as the ship rolled over and over.

  “I’ve lost all control,” Sigmund said. “Eject. Eject!”

  As the centripetal force of the rolls sloshed him around the womb, Roy keyed the emergency release and a new force slammed into his Armor. The camera feeds cut out and he had a brief sensation of weightlessness.

  He sent an impulse to transform his Armor out of the boxed-up configuration, and his arms snapped off his chest and came away from his helm. His optics activated and he could see…see that he’d come out a bit short of the Damocles. He was falling with some forward momentum, but his brick-like aerodynamics weren’t going to let him glide much farther. He reached down and grabbed the jet pack locked to the bottom of his sabatons and flipped it over his head and onto his back.

  Magnets activated and snapped it into place. His Armor hummed as the pack screwed into mounts on his back and a meter popped onto his HUD as it powered up.

  A line of tracers snapped out from the dome edge. So not only was he in a free fall, but the point defense systems were drawing a bead on him.

  “Workworkworkworkwork!” Roy banged an elbow against the jet pack and “Q-11 ONLINE” flashed across his HUD. He kicked his legs down and twin columns of flame sprouted out of the pack and sent him hurtling forward.

  Roy’s arms pinwheeled in a manner undignified to the Armor Corps and he flew through converging paths of anti-aircraft fire. He felt a hit against his chest and the blow sent him spinning.

  He cut the power to the jet pack and got a good look at a tip of the star painted on the dome just before he crashed into it. He hit shoulder-first and the impact rattled him inside his armor. His HUD fizzled as his system compensated for the shock.

  He made out the off-white surface of the dome and saw rivets in the metal passing his vision. He was slipping down the side.

  Roy punched metal digits into the dome and the surface deformed as his hands bit into the material, the camo screen malfunctioning from the damage, passing on errors to the surrounding material like a finger pressed against a flat screen.

  His fall stopped and Roy swung one shoulder back to look around. The air defense guns were still shooting, the tracers lowering with each burst. Payne was nearby, clinging to the dome like a cat on a screen door, his jet pack still spurting.

  “You OK?” Roy asked.

  “How do you turn this fucking thing off?” Payne shouted through his speakers, foregoing the IR connection between their Armor.

  “Open your external command port,” Roy said, tapping his helm and opening a connection to Payne’s suit. He sent a shut-down signal to Payne’s jet pack and the rockets cut out.

  “Payne…where’s the bomb?” Roy looked the other Armor up and down. “Weren’t you supposed to bring it?”

  “Nah, yeah…think it got left behind on that tub,” he said.

  “If the enemy hits it, then—”

  Explosives, particularly high explosives like the mining charges on the cargo ship, were shock-sensitive. A hard-enough hit would set them off, and the bullets from the Damocles’ air defense guns were more than up to the task.

  As if his thoughts had made it so, the cargo ship erupted in a bright flash of light and the shockwave—a gentle tap compared to the force of the rail cannon—slammed Roy against the dome. Hunks of debris peppered Roy, careening off his Armor. A flaming hunk of what remained of an impeller arced toward the Damocles, then twisted toward the lit rings running down the sides. The impeller hit the anti-gravity field and tore apart in the sheer of force, keeping the weapon platform airborne.

  A shudder ran through the hull.

  “Uh oh,” Payne said.

  The Damocles listed to one si
de, then back again. Roy looked down and the distortion field from the anti-grav roiled like a choppy day on the ocean. There was a low groan…and the platform stabilized.

  “That good or bad?” Roy asked.

  “Bad…as we came here to wreck this bloody thing,” Payne said. “Good…as we’re still alive to do it ourselves.”

  “Payne, Roy, where are you?” Sigmund asked through the IR link.

  “Hanging on for dear life,” Payne said. “You?”

  “Digger’s up here with me. Move.”

  “There’s an idea,” Payne said as he reached up and tore a handhold out of the hull. He paused, then swung his arm-mounted cannon down and blew up the air defense platforms. “Arseholes.”

  Roy lifted a foot and kicked it into the hull, then tested his new foothold. He made his way up the steep slope of the dome edge, smashing out rungs of an ersatz ladder. He and Payne cleared the upper edge and found Sigmund and Digger standing back to back a few dozen yards away, arm cannons raised and ready.

  “Mind your step.” Digger motioned to an Armor-foot-sized hole in the dome near her. “The surface isn’t as sturdy as it looks.”

  “Spot of bad news,” Payne said. “That fuck-all explosion was me bomb.”

  “We gathered,” Sigmund said. “They know we’re here…if they reengage the camo screens, we can shoot the dome up to wreck their stealth. So the Union should have picked up where this damn thing is from satellites…”

  Roy walked up the dome, finding a spar beneath the screens that would take his weight and that led directly to his lance commander.

  “No good,” Digger said. “The Union’s not going to risk all-out war by breaking the Treaty of Pretoria. Ain’t going to use nukes to take this thing out…no fighter can operate this high up, and if they could, there’s no way they could get close enough to hit this bastard with a cruise missile or something big enough to scratch the paint.”

  “Our Armor on the ground will get the Damocles’ location…soon as that disseminates down through the satellites and a couple layers of command authority,” Sigmund said.

  “So if we have rail guns well north of Brisbane and if they get the right targeting info before this shit pot blows them or a city with millions of civilians in it…this might work out?” Digger asked.

  Roy looked around. The thin air muted any sound his audio receptors could pick up. Bands of Earth’s atmosphere stretched out over the pronounced curve of the horizon, and he realized he had a bird’s-eye view from almost three times the height of Mount Everest.

  “We’ve got about half an hour before the Damocles is in range of civilian targets,” Sigmund said. “Less to our forces on the Brisbane front.”

  “Plenty of time,” Payne said. “Let’s find something to break.”

  “The impeller rings are delicate,” Roy said. “Some debris from our ride over nearly disrupted the field keeping this thing up.”

  “Like that time Smitty did a body breach through the razor wire at Taipei,” Payne said.

  “We are Armor, not wooden shoes,” Sigmund said. “We’re not going to throw ourselves into the works just yet.”

  “Then we find an anchor point.” Digger stomped a heel against the dome. “Point-blank rail shot can do the job.”

  “That’s suicide,” Roy said.

  “That’s our brothers and sisters out on the front lines.” Digger pointed south. “A city full of children. Doesn’t have to be all of us. You can jump clear of the anti-grav field with these bollocks rocket packs and—”

  “And burn off all our fuel in the process, leaving us nothing to slow our fall when it comes time to make an ‘air-ground interface,’ as the pilots say,” Sigmund said, tapping his Q-11. “We were supposed to set the bomb and leave us enough time to—”

  “That’s enough talking.” Payne bent over and tapped a fist against the dome. He reached both arms back as far as his pack would let him, then drove his metal digits into the screen. There was a shower of sparks and he gripped something beneath the dome. He stood, ripping out a holo emitter almost the size of his torso.

  “Payne, wait!” Sigmund held up a hand. “We need to think this—”

  “Mullygrubber or up’n’under?” Payne kicked the emitter and it went sailing over the edge, breaking apart into a thousand pieces before it disappeared.

  “You never were much for the rugby pitch,” Digger said as the Damocles listed slightly. “Let’s break something bigger and throw it overboard.”

  “Sir?” Roy asked as the two Australians began ripping up spars and crossbeams beneath the screen material.

  “Do it…do it until I think of something better,” Sigmund said. “Finding an anchor point for a rail shot is our last option.”

  “Roger,” Roy said, then a spot of movement caught his eye to one side of Sigmund, back and farther up the dome. He zoomed in, and the lance commander caught what he was doing.

  Sigmund turned around as the head and shoulders of a Dragon Armor popped up out of the dome and fired. Bullets hit Sigmund’s chest, exploding into brief fireballs as they shattered against the Armor.

  “Contact!” Rushing forward as Sigmund fell to one side, Roy opened up with his forearm cannon, spraying the Dragon and ripping out long gashes in the screens around the hole the Dragon ducked back into.

  “I’m hit…it’s not bad.” Sigmund pushed himself up onto all fours, then reared up, displaying deep divots in his chest.

  “How many access points does this dome have?” Roy asked as he shot off another two rounds at the Dragon’s helm that peeked up from the same hole.

  “They didn’t send us the schematics,” Digger snapped. “Just keep their heads down until—”

  Roy’s knees went out as heavy-caliber rounds struck his shins and ankles, knocking him off-balance and pitching him forward. He landed on the dome and it depressed, like he’d fallen into a hammock. All he saw was a swirl of color as the screens malfunctioned, going an ugly brown as they tore away. He fell a solid yard before hitting a metal panel beneath the brown blanket of ripped screens, the ground humming beneath him.

  “What the heck?” Roy pushed against the ground, and one hand slipped down. He fell into a widening gap and plunged headfirst, the ripped screen engulfing him like a failed parachute.

  He fell a good deal farther this time, his optics picking up nothing but the screens over his helm. He landed hard against something metal and irregular, then bounced against a floor. All around him were shouts in Mandarin as he ripped away the screen.

  He was in a lift. A pair of Dragons, both carrying halberds, stared right at him, caught flat-footed by his arrival. A third Dragon struggled beneath the screen, pinned down by Roy’s mass. Overhead, an elevator shaft extended up to the dome’s surface, the hatch he’d fallen through opening fully with a snap.

  Roy raised his cannon arm up as a Dragon chopped down with his halberd, then he ducked to one side, his aim on the striking Dragon as his cannon fired. He hit the enemy three times center mass before the halberd struck his cannon and embedded in the breach, wrecking it.

  The stricken Dragon pitched forward and the other one swung a punch at Roy’s helm. The metal fist glanced off the side and Roy tried to get his arms up to guard, but the halberd held on fast.

  With the lift still moving, he ducked and drove his shoulder into the Dragon, pinning it against the lift wall, which ground against the back of the Dragon, sending off a horrible shriek of tearing metal and sparks. Alarms blared and the lift came to a sudden stop.

  The Dragon beat an elbow against Roy’s jet pack and Roy pulled back, afraid his only escape from the Damocles was about to be destroyed. The Dragon kicked out and caught him just above one knee servo, thrusting the leg out and dropping Roy to the ground, one arm propped up awkwardly by the halberd.

  The Dragon raised a boot to stomp Roy’s helm, but Roy rolled hard against the lift wall, jettisoning his broken cannon and the halberd with it. The heel slammed down and the Dragon’s anchor sp
ike pierced the metal like it was made of paper.

  Roy slammed his elbow into the Dragon’s knee servo, snapping it with a spray of hydraulic fluid, then he got to one knee and rose with an uppercut to the Dragon’s helm, knocking its chin skyward. The Dragon swung back and its leg severed at the damaged knee.

  Roy picked up the halberd and rammed the spiked end at the Dragon’s chest. His foe deflected the strike with a forearm, but the tip bit into the edge and sank home. Roy yanked back and the chest piece fractured, taking a hunk off as the weapon pulled free and leaving the pod within the Dragon’s torso exposed.

  There was a tug at Roy’s feet as something pulled at a screen he’d fallen through. Beneath the first enemy he’d killed, a third Dragon pushed the dead Armor aside and sat up, still shrouded by the screen as its cannon arm snapped up.

  Roy ducked as the Dragon opened fire, punching an arc of holes through the lift shaft and hitting the other Dragon in the shoulder.

  The screen fell away and the enemy lunged at Roy, who thrust the haft of the halberd forward and caught the Dragon at the base of its neck servos. The hit stopped its forward momentum, but the Dragon grabbed hold of the weapon and struggled for control with Roy.

  Roy’s and the Dragon’s helms locked optics as their shoulder servos whined with power.

  “All of you,” the Dragon said in heavily accented English, “we will destroy all of you. We finish off the Australian dogs, then we march from sea to shining sea.”

  Roy heard the damaged Armor struggling to get back up.

  “Let me tell you—” Roy snapped his helm back and slammed the metal plate on the forehead into the Dragon’s optics. The stylized bronze exterior crumbled and Roy knew the man in the other suit was going through hell as his system struggled with the damage.

  Roy wrested the weapon away and swung it back to one hip. With both arms, he rammed the blade into the Dragon’s chest and lifted it up off its feet. The Dragon gripped at the haft as it slid farther and farther down the blade, then collapsed against the guard.