Darwin's Soldiers

by Ste Sharp

  As they neared, John made out a group of twenty humans and Sorean hiding behind rocks, while several well-armed Brakari tried to surround them and blast the cover away. One of the Brakari ventured wide to get around the open side of the defenders but was sent scuttling back by a laser shot that ripped off a forearm.

  John recognised Li’s rifle.

  ‘We need to distract them!’ John shouted and started spinning shapes in his gun’s chamber.

  His stomach tightened and he retched. This was it. Into battle. Time to fight.

  A shape to the right came into John’s view and he turned to see a swathe of tocka rushing with it across the plain at a speed greater than Millok could manage. Lavalle rode at the head, splendid in his black armour, sword raised and visor pushed up. As their speeding paths closed, John could see Lavalle’s eyes were lit with anger and his tocka bared a mouth bursting with razor-sharp teeth. A memory of his grandfather came to John: his red face and foaming mouth as he recounted a cavalry charge. Now John was really doing it!

  He couldn’t help himself. ‘Charge!’ he shouted, willing Millok on.

  Millok sped up and John braced his gun-arm on the cart side. His heart was racing as they neared the Brakari, who were turning to face them. John started spinning bullets: long and pointed to fly far and produce less heat, he hoped. He held his breath as Lavalle’s tocka met the first Brakari. Lavalle hung on as his steed weaved and leapt at the Brakari with the prowess of a lioness. It took a slash on a hind leg but was too quick for the lumbering Brakari and was on its back in a flash. Lavalle was slashing his heavy broadsword, cleaving limbs from sockets and parrying blade-legs from below but, as John and Millok passed, the Brakari rolled over, sending Lavalle and his tocka flying.

  John couldn’t look back. Millok was heading straight for another Brakari, who flashed green like Doctor Cynigar. John aimed and fired a stream of bullets. It was harder than firing the old gun because he had to build the bullets as fast as he fired them, but he soon caught the knack and threw in a few corkscrew shells to tear at the Brakari’s thick shell. It wasn’t working though.

  The Brakari fired back, releasing a ball of light, the cart exploded with a flash and everything stopped. The ground and sky sped past, one after the other and, when he stopped rolling, roaring sounds and flashes filled John’s mind as he struggled to pick himself off the ground. Apart from his dazed head, he was uninjured. Millok was nowhere to be seen and the battle raged around him. Tocka dashed past. The blue shells of the Brakari were near, as were the rocks where the soldiers had hidden, who were out now, attacking.

  He saw a woman – was it Euryleia? It looked like her but John’s head was spinning and something seemed wrong with her body. He blinked and turned to see Millok fighting. It was the first time he had seen her in her element. Released from the cart, she was nearly as fast as Althorn. It was obvious she was on the allies’ side and her grey colour set her apart, but John still worried someone might fire at her by mistake.

  John dug his metal foot into the dirt and pushed off his gun-arm to stand. Now he could see the fight more clearly. Lavalle’s tocka had regrouped and were charging three Brakari who had created a defensive position against the rocks, while a party of Sorean were spinning and dancing around a cornered Brakari as they fought in their energetic way. A laser shot flashed as it pierced a Brakari head shell, frying its brain. John followed the beam back to Li’s rifle and was surprised to see someone else holding it.

  ‘Bowman?’

  The fight was nearly over and, for a reason John couldn’t understand, he felt sad. He felt left out. He hadn’t done anything to help this group effort and he felt like he had to be part of the group. He headed towards the three Brakari and pictured corkscrews spinning in the gun chamber. He added barbs and fine points and found himself running as the group of tocka attacked the Brakari. Two tocka were brought down, sliced to pieces by the Brakari blades, and John saw an unsaddled rider hammered into the ground with a rock-like claw, yet John ran faster. One of the Brakari saw John and ran at him: claws raised and mouth blades slashing. It let out a screech as it charged. John didn’t think about what to do next because it came naturally. He slowed, planted his feet, raised his gun-arm and fired an infinity shape, crossing over at the Brakari’s head.

  But the Brakari still charged.

  Puffs of dust were exploding behind the Brakari, who sped up.

  Thirty paces away; twenty-five.

  Had he missed? John created and fired new bullets. More tiny explosions ripped the ground behind the Brakari.

  Twenty paces.

  He fired more.

  Fifteen paces.

  He noticed a change. The rhythm of the Brakari’s pace became disjointed as one leg stopped moving in time with the rest. Then another leg. It didn’t slow down, but its legs were dropping limp one by one. John fired more as the huge blue-shelled beast closed in on him, shaking the ground. Then a front leg fell, tripping the next, sending the Brakari into a stumble and roll. With a piercing scream and wildly slashing claws, it rolled past John.

  Only when the Brakari stopped did the dark blood spout from the myriad holes created by John’s bullets. He stood in silence, staring at the dead soldier. Had he done that? He looked around. The rest of the Brakari were dead.

  A scuttling sound behind him made John turn and raise his gun.

  ‘Well done, John.’ It was Millok. Her sides flashed blue and her spiracles gasped for air.

  ‘I–’ John panted for breath as well.

  ‘You can lower your weapon now,’ she said. ‘The fight’s over.’

  ‘Oh.’ John let his gun-arm swing down. ‘Sorry, I just…’

  Lavalle arrived with a clatter of tocka feet. ‘Your weapon is working now, John?’

  ‘Yeah.’ John smiled at Euryleia, who sat behind Lavalle.

  ‘And the box? Did you get it?’ the knight asked.

  ‘Well, yes.’ John gestured back at the cart. ‘I tried working it but nothing’s happened.’

  ‘I’ll let Mihran know,’ Lavalle said and closed his eyes to thought-cast their commander.

  While he waited, John watched Bowman help injured Sorean onto the cart and coaxed a tocka over. Euryleia was bending a bow and stringing its tight cord. Didn’t she already have a bow during the fight? John thought.

  Lavalle opened his eyes. ‘John, join Bowman on the cart and hold back with…’ he cast a glance at Millok.

  ‘Millok,’ John said.

  ‘Millok, yes. Then follow us.’ He turned the tocka in the direction of the main Brakari army.

  ‘What are you doing?’ John asked.

  ‘We’re attacking of course!’ Lavalle’s eyes glinted and he kicked the tocka into a gallop. ‘With me!’ he shouted to his cavalry.

  As they paced away, John had a clear view of Euryleia on the back of Lavalle’s tocka. She had two quivers strapped across her back and held two primed bows. John blinked and looked again.

  She held two bows in her four arms.

  ***

  Why didn’t Belsang just finish these weaklings off? Panzicosta’s plates snapped in annoyance as he galloped across the grassland. Everything was in Belsang’s favour: a weak, unprepared enemy; a battlefield of his choosing; the power to bring back the first army; even a platoon of unexpected allies for Brak’s sake. With all this, Belsang still let the humans crawl away undefeated. Victory was there for the taking, so why didn’t he grab it and be done with it? Did he want the ‘perfect victory’? That kind of talk got you killed in Panzicosta’s day. War was ruthless and unforgiving. You won or lost.

  ‘Get out of my way!’ Panzicosta bellowed at a pair of young Brakari who veered into his path.

  He might not be manoeuvrable or slim like other Brakari, but when he got moving nothing could stop him.

  ‘General.’ They submitted and parted.

  Up ahead a stack of broken towers loomed: a safe haven for the humans. The dull sun was still high, so they had time, but what if dar
kness fell before a victory was established? Would they still win? And why did Belsang insist on sacrificing the one-eyed human in front of the enemy? There were far better ways to intimidate them.

  Ahead, a group of Brakari captains were feasting on slaughtered humans and Panzicosta felt his hunger rise as he watched them rip into their abdomens and gorge themselves on the foetid bowels within.

  It gave him an idea.

  ‘Cease!’ he ordered and, with great effort, slowed his hulk of a body to a trot and curved a path round to face them. ‘Cease your feeding.’

  The Brakari officers looked up.

  ‘You are welcome to your portion, General.’ A sleek Brakari captain pushed a corpse forward.

  Panzicosta closed his spiracles and fought the urge to dig in. ‘No, I have a better use for these.’

  One of the officers, his mind fogged by bloodthirst, stood to his full height and approached Panzicosta with both claws raised.

  ‘We are in battle, Sergeant,’ Panzicosta roared, ‘hand the corpse to me or face instant punishment!’

  The sergeant snapped its shells without slowing its stride. Its mouth-pieces gnashed rhythmically against each other, forming a foam of human blood, which dripped from his mouth.

  ‘You risk death over a meal?’ Panzicosta was almost bemused by the behaviour and flexed a back leg. ‘So be it.’

  Panzicosta clicked a button with a foreleg and a silver tube emerged from his undercarriage and sprayed the advancing Brakari with white gas. The sergeant froze instantly. Panzicosta walked over with no rush, tapped the Brakari on its head plate and, with a sound like breaking glass, the large arthropod’s shell shattered and collapsed to the floor, followed by his warm innards.

  ‘Now.’ Panzicosta faced the other officers. ‘Load the bodies up and take them to the catapult.’

  ‘Yes, General. Victorio Brakarius!’ they chanted.

  Panzicosta flexed his plates and stretched his legs. ‘Yes, Victorio Brakarius.’

  He stalked away without looking back and cast a glance to where Belsang floated on his lumbering Vaalori, surrounded by guards and dragging the human sacrifice behind on a broken Lutamek. Around them, other sparking, collared Lutamek peppered the host of slave soldiers, hemmed in by Brakari guards. Light-blue clones mostly. Which reminded Panzicosta – where was that dried-up Skrift turd, Cynigar?

  General!

  Panzicosta reeled back as Belsang’s mental icicle drilled into his head. Yes, Dominus.

  Cease killing my officers.

  Dominus, his insolence needed reprimanding, Panzicosta replied.

  So will yours if you disobey me. The sharp pain pressed deeper into his head, then disappeared. Panzicosta swayed and opened every set of eyes as he fought a wave of nausea. He breathed deeply and caught sight of a troop of slave species carrying large metal canisters. These were the energy potions Doctor Cynigar brewed for Belsang. An idea formed and Panzicosta smiled, but a sudden flash of light made him turn with a gasp.

  ‘Brakarius!’ he groaned.

  Two sets of eyes were temporarily blinded but others compensated and focused. He could see a host of dead soldiers: the fastest Brakari and their last few Skrift had been destroyed by whatever weapon had released the light. Some humans and Sorean had been injured too.

  ‘Report!’ Panzicosta shouted at one of the nearest Brakari officers.

  ‘General?’

  ‘The explosion – what happened?’ Panzicosta asked.

  ‘A human detonation, General.’

  ‘It sacrificed itself?’

  ‘It’s not clear, General, but–’

  Panzicosta held up a front claw to silence the officer, who cowered, waiting to be relieved. The General ignored it and stared at the tall towers in the distance: the humans’ refuge. They must be getting desperate if they were sacrificing soldiers. Was that Belsang’s plan? To force them to use up their hidden weapons until they were broken and could fight no more?

  Panzicosta set off, striking the officer with a tail blade as he passed.

  ***

  The tocka pulled the cart faster than Millok had been able to and, despite the fear tightening John’s stomach as they closed in on the Brakari army, he felt exhilarated. The two Sorean clinging to the tocka’s back looked wide-eyed and happy too, with their fur flowing in the wind. A hundred paces ahead, Lavalle and the other knights were veering to the right.

  ‘What’s this then?’ Bowman strained his neck to get a better look from where he sat next to John.

  Their tocka followed its instinct and stayed with the herd.

  John peered back, past the injured Sorean who shared his cart, to see Millok keeping up with them.

  ‘That’s where we’re heading!’ Bowman pointed at the huge beasts.

  From this distance it was hard to make out individual Brakari soldiers but Belsang’s huge steed was plain to see at its core, as were the large creatures on the right flank. John squinted as a shape rose off the catapult on the back of one giant, lifted high into the air and smashed into the ruined fort with a hollow echo.

  ‘We have to help,’ John said.

  A whip-crack signalled a new bombardment, followed by another soon after.

  Bowman shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Lavalle said hold back.’ He smiled and patted Li’s rifle. ‘But this should make easy work of them, eh?’

  John nodded and stared at the flashing lights on the gun, which were as much of a mystery to him as the Lutamek box. ‘How did you get it?’ he asked. ‘What happened to Li?’

  ‘They picked her off,’ Bowman replied. ‘Then Ethan had the rifle… amazing shot he was.’

  ‘What happened to him?’ John wondered who in their army was still alive.

  ‘We were caught back there.’ Bowman nodded back to the plain. ‘Whole bunch of us. You know how his skin was turning grey?’

  John nodded. He’d heard Dakaniha tell Mihran it was a skin disease.

  ‘Well he must have been absorbing light, that’s my guess. God knows how in this bloody cloudy land but, anyway, we were surrounded and defending ourselves. Lavalle and his lot were off chasing Brakari and Gal-qadan’s tocka were long gone.’

  John took another look at where they were headed while Bowman talked. More catapults were firing and he could see the red worms massing together to load more boulders.

  ‘He waited till they were near enough then he exploded.’

  John turned back. ‘A flash of light?’

  ‘Yep. Then he was gone.’ Bowman shrugged.

  It was the flash he and Millok had seen from the first battlefield.

  ‘He took out most of the Brakari and we finished off the rest,’ Bowman continued as the cart bobbled and jolted beneath them. ‘A few of us were caught in the blast though.’ He looked over to where Lavalle rode at the head of the pack.

  ‘Is that how they were injured?’ John nodded at the burnt cat-like soldiers who looked like children with their hair burnt off.

  ‘Yep,’ Bowman replied.

  ‘And Euryleia?’ John asked.

  Bowman’s eyes widened. ‘Yes, strange thing. Should be used to it now but, well, she was in a bad way and then these new arms grew.’ He stopped with a shake of the head.

  They were getting close and John saw more detail in the Brakari army: individual slave soldiers; Belsang on his beast; the enslaved Lutamek. John picked up the metal cube and handed it to Bowman. ‘If you can work Li’s gun you might know what to do with this.’

  Bowman frowned. ‘Just a load of flashing lights to me.’ He played one-handed with the lights on the panel John had found, pressing them in a random order. Then he laughed. ‘Funny how you turn them off and they turn on again like someone’s playing a game.’

  ‘Well it’s not a ga–’ John stopped mid-sentence. ‘Maybe someone is switching them back on again.’ John stared across the enemy army and spotted a green mass of thrashing vines. ‘Look, there’s Mata!’

  The Maori was in full battle mode on the edge of t
he army: covered in skin of a hard bark core, trapping anything in his path with thorn-ribbed tendrils as he stalked the prairie. He reminded John of the sea creatures they’d seen in the lake, as Mata reeled in his prey on tentacles and pulled the tough Brakari apart like Cromer crabs.

  ‘Looks like it’s our turn now.’ Bowman nodded to where Lavalle led his knights on the right wing.

  Bowman handed the Lutamek box back to John and got on his knees. ‘Ready for some target practice?’

  John looked at the box and saw a new section where Bowman had slid a panel back, revealing three new buttons. He didn’t know why but he held them all down with his thumb, then ran the muzzle of his gun over the lights. This time they stayed red.

  ‘John!’ Bowman shouted. ‘We’re getting close!’

  He saw the worms wriggling across the backs of the giant catapult holders, less than fifty paces away.

  ‘Okay, let’s do it!’ John shoved the box in his satchel and started spinning long-range bullets.

  Bowman attracted the attention of the Sorean on the tocka’s back and explained what they wanted to do: circle in, fire and speed off before the enemy could retaliate.

  John looked back at Millok and hoped she would understand what they were doing.

  ‘Fire at will!’ he shouted, pointing in the direction of the lumbering beasts, and the cart dashed in for their first attack.

  ‘Aim high,’ Bowman shouted over the noise of the wheels, ‘we’ve got a wind coming in from the right.’

  John felt the spinning air-bullets line up and aimed at the red worms on the nearest beast.

  ‘Bet I hit more!’ Bowman’s eyes were wide with excitement.

  ‘Let’s see.’ John gritted his teeth as they fired in unison.

  The flash from Li’s rifle startled John, sending his first burst of bullets to the right, knocking off one of the catapult loaders.

  ‘Yes!’ John shouted.

  As they closed in, John fired flat-nosed bullets that punched the worms off their platforms. One of the Sorean on the tocka’s back was firing a crossbow, while the other steered the tocka around the back of the enemy beast. John kept firing in bursts, trying to keep the temperature of his gun-arm down. He’d lost count of how many enemy he’d hit. One had been thrown backwards by his shot and tangled up in the catapult mechanism which fired prematurely, sending its lump of rock spinning into the Brakari army.