Before answering, Ash drove her bayonet deep into an alien that had reared up before her on its hind legs. She eviscerated it.
“Pretty sure that was Plenitos’ walls,” she said.
Ash was between Jake and Tommy. Three more Quatro emerged from the trees, then, all converging on her.
Jake ran as fast as he could toward her, but as he approached, she fended off one with a savage swipe of her bayonet while peppering the next with her heavy machine gun.
The first Quatro balked, giving Ash a window to turn her gun on it, planting her next round into its skull. When the third Quatro charged, she ducked low, and the alien soon found itself flipping through the air.
By the time it hit the ground, Ash was already opening fire with both autocannons.
“Damn,” Jake said as he reached her. “Nice going.”
“Oh, that? I was just blowing off some steam.”
“Hey,” Tommy said. “Maybe that can be your nickname, Ash. Steam. You sure moved through those Quatro like you were steam, or smoke or something.”
“Steam.” Ash’s mech cocked its head to its side. “Could be worse.”
“Uh huh,” Jake said. “We need to get to the walls, you two. Pronto.”
The trio dashed through the trees, and when they emerged from the tree line, they found Gabriel Roach standing just outside it, massive hands at his sides, staring at a quickly emptying field.
A wicked rent had opened in the city walls, splitting it almost in two, with only the topmost portion still joined.
The gap was wide enough for three Quatro to charge through abreast, and the massive horde was bunched at the walls, waiting their turn to enter, ignoring the smattering of gunfire from those defenders that had managed to retain their posts.
But that wasn’t what caused Jake’s ears to start ringing with rage. It was the fact that Roach just stood there, staring, not even bothering to fire on the bunched-up Quatro.
“Come on!” Jake growled, barreling toward the gap, both autocannons spinning up to send twin streams of hot lead across the field.
Chapter 50
A Losing Engagement
Commander Benjamin Clifford fought to regain his battle calm as Quatro after Quatro poured through the opening they’d made with their endless rocket barrage.
The original plan had been for Clifford’s battalion to push out of the city gates once Roach and his team had managed to neutralize the Quatro rocket launchers. They’d expected that effort’s success to enrage the Quatro, turning their focus on the mechs.
But when they’d overshot their mark, Clifford had known immediately that the walls would be breached. With that in mind, he made the snap decision to keep his battalion inside Plenitos, ready to deploy to wherever the Quatro managed to break through.
And so here they were—a significant portion of Darkstream’s reserve forces, known through the company as the Force Multipliers, all arrayed in a wide arc to gun down the Quatro as quickly as they came through.
Or at least, to attempt that. The aliens were proving just as resilient as always. At first, the combined fire of five mortars, ten heavy assault weapons, two tanks, and three platoons’ worth of soldiers with fully replenished kits had managed to keep the Quatro at bay.
Soon, though, the aliens began to use their dead fellows as cover, crouching behind them to fire on the defenders.
One of the tanks tried switching from kinetic penetrators to explosive anti-tank rounds. Clifford thought that seemed like a good idea, on the surface at least. The Quatro certainly had tank-like qualities.
And the first round did significant damage to the massive Quatro, obliterating one of them in a spray of viscera while debilitating two more.
The second shot missed its target, however, hitting the city wall instead and widening the gap even further. That made Clifford curse under his breath.
Just what we needed.
It was especially vexing, since Darkstream’s tanks were known for their pinpoint accuracy, especially at relatively close range like this.
That means the gunner screwed up.
A Quatro with a rocket launcher made it through, then, getting off two shots before Clifford’s people put the thing down.
The first shot went high, crashing into the upper floor of a supply depot, but the second took out a squad’s worth of tightly bunched soldiers.
That seemed to do it. The Force Multipliers were highly trained, and they’d seen plenty of fighting during the initial colonization of Eresos. Hell, a lot of them had once been UHF soldiers, with long histories of fighting insurgents in the Milky Way’s Bastion Sector.
Still, they knew a losing engagement as well as anyone, and as more and more Quatro made it into Plenitos, the line started to buckle, and the Force Multipliers began to lose their superior firing arc.
If I don’t do something right now, this is going to turn into a rout, and I’ll be commander of nothing but a corpse pile.
“Fall back!” he screamed over the battalion-wide channel.
The reserve forces did not need to be told twice. They began retreating to the protection of the buildings behind them, the tanks rolling backward while firing off round after round, and the soldiers inching backward, doing their best to keep the Quatro at bay all the while.
Chapter 51
Attack Angle
They’d chosen the angle of their approach to Habitat 2 carefully, and as the Daybreak force neared, Andy inched the beetle backward through a shallow valley, gradually picking up speed.
The valley was already completely dark, and within minutes, so would be the rest of Alex. Parallel rows of hills comprised the valley, one side higher on average than the other, which formed a corridor between them. It was through that corridor that Andy now accelerated backward.
The drug lord’s cronies obliged them by following.
“You’d better get going,” Andy said. “If you wait any longer, they’ll have a firing solution on you. Plus, the beetle’s only picking up speed.”
“Where’d you learn the term ‘firing solution?’” Lisa said, grinning at him.
He smiled back, and this time it wasn’t as half-hearted as before. “Maybe I’ve been listening in on your sessions with Tessa.”
She laughed, surprised to find herself enjoying a conversation with Andy. “I imagine that was tiring all by itself. All right. Crack open the hatch.”
Double-checking her pressure suit, she made her way to the vehicle’s rear, where a sliver of waning sunlight had already appeared.
She’d tried to seem nonchalant to Andy, but she’d used her joking to cover up how terrified she felt. Her stomach was performing flip-flops as she grasped the handholds halfway up the beetle’s hatch and hoisted herself up.
Head emerging, she swallowed hard as she eyed the terrain, which suddenly seemed pretty far below.
What if I screw up the landing? What if my suit gets compromised?
But she couldn’t wait any longer. If she did, it wouldn’t just be her suit that got compromised.
Pulling herself up the rest of the way, she balanced on the lip of the beetle’s hatch before leaping sideways, plummeting two meters before tucking into a roll and coming up unscathed, other than an aching shoulder—the one that had borne the brunt of the fall, since she’d had to lean that way to prevent the sniper rifle strapped to her back from digging into the ground and botching the maneuver. Still, the forward momentum had spared her any serious injury.
No time to stand around congratulating myself.
She sprinted toward the nearest hills under the cover of what was now total darkness, to find a suitable vantage point as fast as she could.
The Quatro were distributed all along the hills on both sides of the valley, though Lisa didn’t encounter a single one as she slipped out of sight of the approaching enemy.
She swept the terrain with her gaze, spotting at least three places that offered good cover.
None of them held the hulking aliens.<
br />
Maybe those places don’t offer quite enough cover for a giant quadruped.
That was possible. But the fact that she couldn’t see any of her allies only heightened her tension, making the base of her throat clench, as it usually did when she felt extremely stressed.
Of course, Tessa had stressed her out plenty of times—during PT in the cramped beetle, during target practice, and especially inside the panicked lucid sims she was so good at concocting.
This is just like that. I didn’t let Tessa get the best of me. And I won’t let Quentin Cooper, either.
Instead, she ran for the cover closest to the approaching enemy, unlimbering her sniper rifle from where it was slung across her back—they’d recovered it from one of the thugs she’d killed in the firefight out in the middle of Alex’s nowhere.
She also had her SL-17, though she hoped to prevent the enemy from getting close enough to make her use that.
Carefully raising her head just enough to see the approaching soldiers, as well as the modified beetle they surrounded, Lisa settled the rifle directly on the rock, peering into the scope and covering one of the lead soldiers with her crosshairs.
The enemy was nearing the location that she, Tessa, and Rug had identified as the optimal spot to engage them.
Lisa’s first shot would serve as the signal to the others to commence firing. But if the Quatro had truly abandoned her…
If that had happened, Lisa would surely die.
But she had to trust someone, and she knew she didn’t trust Darkstream quite as much as she once had. She loved her job, and she loved the work the company did, but she’d truly expected them to help the people of Habitat 2. Instead, they’d done nothing. So far, at least.
And she knew if she let fear prevent her from firing, or even just from firing on time, this battle would not end well.
I need to trust someone. Don’t I?
She exhaled steadily, slowly squeezing the trigger, just as Tessa had taught her.
Her bullet took the soldier in the neck, and he dropped like a sack of rocks. That caused the other soldiers to tense up, peering around wildly.
Some of them drew closer to the beetle, but they didn’t seem to know which direction the shot had come from, so they couldn’t figure out which side of the beetle offered actual cover.
As Lisa smoothly switched targets and fired again, the enemy began to figure out where the preparation fire was coming from.
Where are the Quatro?
The answer to that question came as quickly as she asked it. Crackling beams of energy lanced out from multiple directions, lighting up the darkness all along the hills. Five soldiers went down in quick succession, their pressure suits charred where they were struck. With any luck, the suits were also compromised.
Energy weapons. So that’s what those strange guns were.
She was relieved that the Quatro had begun to engage, and also pleased by the disorienting effect it was having on Cooper’s fighters, who milled around the beetle, firing wildly into the hills at random.
Her relief was short-lived, however, as the enemy beetle’s main gun turned toward her.
They figured out my location, she realized, just as the beetle began to fire.
Chapter 52
Beating Heart
Jake pounded through the city streets, frantically searching for Quatro to kill. He’d just finished dealing with a group of five of them, but it had taken way too long, and he’d narrowly dodged a direct hit from a rocket in the process. Even though the MIMAS mech had withstood a close-proximity grenade blast just fine, he still wasn’t eager to find out whether it could endure quite the level of punishment a rocket would provide.
I can’t believe this. They’re inside Plenitos…
The city was the de facto capital of the Steele System. Sure, maybe an argument could be made for Valhalla claiming that title, but no one outside the space station was likely to accept that.
No, Plenitos was the place that had the most ordinary people, living together, working together—and now, dying together.
As Jake hunted through the city streets, he encountered an alarming number of human corpses. Most of them weren’t soldiers, either. They were just normal people who’d been caught outdoors when the Quatro breached the walls. Many of them wore clothes that were little more than rags.
If Plenitos falls, we lose Eresos.
Jake didn’t know that for sure, but it made a lot of sense. Sure, Ingress had the space elevator, but this was the capital. Plenitos was the beating heart of the human presence on the planet.
“Help us!” a voice cried out, echoing between the buildings. “Someone, please!”
He had difficulty discerning the source of the plea, but his implant dutifully assisted, indicating the direction by assigning a green haze to a nearby alley mouth while washing the rest of the world in blue.
Jake didn’t wait. He pounded toward the alley, turning the corner to find two Quatro trying to get at four survivors halfway up a fire escape: a family of four, with two small children huddled against their parents in fear.
The fourth flight of stairs had been blown apart, probably by a Quatro rocket, and the pair of aliens were trying their best to access the family, with one of them leaping and snapping with its jaws while the other attempted to squeeze between the narrow railings.
Both had guns strapped to their backs, but for some reason they weren’t firing. Probably, they were out of ammo.
Jake didn’t waste time trying to figure that out. Wary of damaging the fire escape further, he decided to forego his artillery in favor of bayonets, which he extended fully, locking them in place as he sprinted toward the Quatro.
He screamed as he ran, which served to divert the aliens’ focus onto him. The one that had been attempting to jump high enough to catch one of the humans in its jaws now turned to face Jake, squaring its shoulders.
Jake crashed into the beast, sending it back into the fire escape, which groaned worryingly.
So much for not endangering it. He still wasn’t as used to the mech as he would have liked. Nor was he used to its power.
Grabbing the Quatro by one of its forelegs, he swung it around, tossing it down the alley and forcing it to scrabble for purchase on the cobble before charging at Jake again.
He moved to meet its charge, but the other alien had extricated itself from the fire escape, pouncing on him from behind. For a moment, he was sandwiched between the snarling creatures.
His blade found the first Quatro’s leg, quickly cutting to the bone. It yelped, backing off enough for Jake to whip around and hack at the other.
The alien dodged the first blow, but Jake pivoted to plunge his bayonet deep into his adversary’s shoulder, following it with the other blade, which he buried in the Quatro’s head.
Wrenching both weapons from his defeated foe, he turned to find the other Quatro had left the alley, leaving a trail of blood behind.
Above, the adults studied him warily, while their children buried their faces in the folds of their clothes and refused to look at Jake’s mech.
“Come with me,” Jake said, as gently as he could. “I’ll see you to safety.” They hesitated, and he added: “Come on, now. We don’t have much time.”
Finally, they listened, the dark-haired mother and father carefully descending the stairs to join Jake on the ground. “Thank you,” the woman said. From their parents’ arms, the children still wouldn’t look.
Before the battle, Roach, Black, and Clifford had developed a plan for safeguarding Plenitos’ citizens, which had been based on a modified version of a scheme the council had already had. It involved shepherding everyone inside nuclear-hardened shelters, where they would hide until the Quatro were rooted out.
But no one had actually expected the aliens to breach the city walls, least of all its citizens, who had always felt more or less invincible inside Plenitos.
Not anymore.
And that wasn’t all. The city also had an
ample helping of homeless people, be they mentally ill, disabled, or just elderly and alone. It was highly likely that many of them hadn’t even been aware of the attack until the Quatro were already in the streets. They were Plenitos’ abandoned people, and now they paid the most dearly for the failings of the city’s so-called defenders.
The city council had certainly been well aware of the Quatro threat. Forty minutes before, Jake had spotted them leaving in an emergency evacuation rocket, bound for Valhalla, where they would no doubt wait in comfort until this was all over, one way or another.
The family he’d saved didn’t seem poor—just unlucky.
They could have been unluckier.
Jake had memorized the locations of the city’s ten shelters, and as he led them to the nearest one, they didn’t encounter any more Quatro.
“Thank you,” the mother repeated, just before they entered the safety of the shelter. The father just stared at him, hollow-eyed, and the children continued to cower.
“Make sure those doors are secure when I leave,” Jake said, turning to sprint through the streets in search of his next target.
Or, more likely, another family to save.
“Price,” Roach said to him inside the dream, and Jake could tell it was a reconstruction of his voice, derived from a subvocalization.
“Yeah?”
“You’re out of position. There’s a host of Quatro in the northwest quadrant. I need your help taking them out.”
Roach seemed to have recovered from the trance Jake had found him lost in, outside Plenitos. Around twenty minutes ago, Jake had glimpsed the chief across one of the city’s squares, engaging a group of six Quatro with a savagery Jake hadn’t witnessed from his commanding officer before.
“Sir,” Jake said, “there are people still outside the shelters. Families. I just helped a family of four to safety, and I was about to look for more.”
“Price, get your ass over here now. I’m aware you think you know battle better than I do, but if we waste our time trying to escort individuals to safety, the Quatro will burn Plenitos to the ground. Do you get that?”
Mech Wars: The Complete Series Page 20
