"Come on, come on," Walker said to himself through gritted teeth as he slewed a third reticle. The main display flashed another entry next to the gun graphic: TRACKING 3. "Good enough," he said to himself. He squeezed the trigger. His guns stuttered and jerked as the tracking computer zeroed them in on the first vehicle. The frame creaked and swayed back as the gun opened fire. Steel bolts shrieked through the air and turned the carrier it into a glowing sprawl of shredded molten metal.
Compressed air hissed through lines on the back of both legs and pistons inside surged with fluid to stabilize the Cat's stance after the shot. Even as the first vehicle burned, his guns zeroed in on the second and another volley of steel spears flashed from the second cannon. After the second carrier was turned into a pool of burning metal, the others began to change course, turning and weaving in an attempt to throw of the Cat's aim. His third salvo fired and dug into the ground just behind the third target.
Most of the occupants of the first two targets were incinerated with their vehicles, but a few charred bodies lay where they were thrown to the ground. He tapped another button which showed a thermal display of the bodies lying on the ground slowly cooling. His only thought was whether or not they were still a threat. Determining that they weren't going to get up, he looked through his canopy to watch more carriers disintegrating from the volley of fire from the rest of his Cats.
As his center display monitor flashed the READY banner, the remaining vehicles split evenly into two separate groups and veered off to either side of his formation while the tanks raced directly towards his Cats.
"Tail end charlies, start your turns now," he called over his headset. He watched the Cats at either end of his line start the painfully slow process of clomping around to reorient themselves to face out towards the flanks. He punched the button on his center display to reset his reticles and slewed the first one over one of the carriers scampering to get on their flanks. Already, the others had drifted out of the firing arc of his weapons as they raced along a course perpendicular to his line. He pulled the trigger and the gun hesitated almost long enough to lose the lock before it fired, then sheared the rear of the vehicle off and sent it spinning across the ground. Bodies spilled out, but this time some of them stood back up.
"Heaters!" he yelled, switching off the arm switch on the weapons control stick. His hands flew over the display bezel, punching the sequence of buttons to command the anti-armor guns to release the weapons control system and unhook from the power system. It would take a full minute for the systems to switch the guns - the carriers closing the distance with every second that ticked by.
His cockpit shuddered when a tank round crashed into the left leg of his Cat and shattered. It scorched the armor plating of the leg, but the repair patch held and the Cat kept moving forward under the guidance of its stabilizers.
The systems timer on his monitor continued to wind down the seconds before he could switch to his plasma guns when another round pounded the right leg. He winced at the squeal of metal burrowing into the frame. He eased the right control lever forward and heard the screeching wail of grinding metal. Half a dozen warning lights on the top of the console deck clicked on as the effects of the damage cascaded through hydraulic and control systems for the leg. Trying to ignore the squeal from the wounded leg as he forced the Cat to keep moving forward, Walker punched another button along the bottom of the monitor and the display showed a label next to a graphic for each plasma gun: PRIME. Another clock next to each gun graphic wound down as the rounds were heated to mix thermite and plasma ignition fluid.
The Cat took another stomp forward and beads of sweat popped out on his forehead as the tanks closed in on his formation. They would have to take whatever the tanks dished out while they worked the troops with their plasma guns. Already, he felt the battle slipping away from him as the enemy moved according to its own will instead of following him into the trap.
Finally, the clocks ran down and the banner flashed: READY FOR ARM. Walker jammed the arm switch forward and slewed the reticle onto the line of troops from the carrier lying broken on the ground. He pulled the trigger once to designate the area inside the reticle as the target. The indicator beneath reticle read ACQUIRED and he pulled the trigger again. He waited while the ballistics computer worked out the solution, taking into account range, wind speed and temperature as it made final minute adjustments to the guns. Both barrels flashed and filled the air with the screech of thermite plasma canisters streaking across the ground.
The canisters hit the ground, ignited their plasma and ejected the outer casing, lighting off a wall of bright blue haze. Every Terran Guard soldier within 50 meters was incinerated into nothing more than a wisp of vapor.
The Cats at the end of the line pawed at the ground, struggling to turn and face the incoming troops. The whine of servos and hydraulics filled the air as they stomped back in a wide circle while troops dismounted from the carriers and swarmed in around their feet. Walker stared at the Cat on his left flank, transfixed as a Terran Guard underneath crouched and pointed a black tube at its frame. A cylinder with clamps protruding from one end shot out from the tube with thick cables trailing behind it and latched onto the frame. The Cat stopped mid-step and started shaking. Its servos whined and clunked as they strained against the surge of electric current pumped through its frame and then stopped. The Cat froze in place. The troops scattered and flung themselves to the ground. A moment later, a tank angled its gun and loosed a steel slug from its magnetic rail launcher. The Cat's frame buckled just below the cockpit and the Cat, unable to move its legs to compensate for the impact, leaned over and toppled to the ground.
Even as the dust billowed out from the impact, the troops got to their feet and swarmed over the Cat's frame. Another puff of smoke burst out of the cockpit as they blew the canopy open and hauled out the pilot. His legs flailing as they dragged him down off the frame, the pilot yanked his sidearm free from its holster and shot one of his captors point blank, splattering blood and bone over his own face. Before he could get off a second shot, one of the other troops smashed his face with the butt of his weapon. The pilot's body went limp and the pistol fell from his hand as they dragged him away.
Walker felt another bolt slam into the frame of his own Cat, but he couldn't look away as they dragged the pilot's body to the carriers forming a skirmish line on his flank. More troops ran towards the next Cat in line. Its plasma guns swung as far left as they could and fired, blanketing the ground next to the troops charging for its undercarriage. The fringes of the plasma blast caught some of the troops, but most of the blue flame torched a swath of scrub and dirt, missing most of the troops as they charged in.
"All units, back up. Now!" Walker slammed the control levers back and his Cat reeled forward in mid-step, gyros whining as they strained to keep it from toppling over. The frame swayed hard and then the left leg stepped back, shaking the cockpit as clouds of dust billowed out from the foot. The cockpit tilted hard as the wounded right leg slid back across the ground. Every air line on his Cat snapped and hissed and hydraulic pistons slammed to their limit as they struggled to compensate for the wounded leg.
He slewed the reticle on another gaggle of troops swarming towards one of his Cats. He pulled the trigger and waited. Too many seconds ticked by while the ballistics computer struggled to compensate for the staggering limp of the wounded right leg. The plasma cannons reeled and another pair of canisters screamed through the air, landing wide of the troops. Another black tube flew up and clawed at the Cat's undercarriage. Gripped by a seizure from the electric shock, it shuddered and froze in place as another tank loosed its bolt and knocked it down.
That They Shall Not Perish
Lt. Simmons stood with her fists on her hips, trying to ignore the noise of the battle behind her as she watched her men struggle to raise the air control dish antenna on top of her carrier into position.
"It's banged up pretty bad, Lieutenant," one of them said as they strain
ed to swing the pole up into position. "The mounting bolt is bent."
"Rough ride," Simmons said, squinting at them. Three of them pushed hard to try and shove the pole up far enough to latch it into place, but the bolt kept them from moving it the last few inches.
"It's not gonna' latch, Lieutenant."
"Yeah, well then you guys are gonna' have to hold it in position."
"It's kind of heavy," one of them said, his voice straining with the effort of holding the weight of the pole.
"Take turns," she said.
Grunting from the strain, another said, "Yes ma'am."
Simmons ducked into the carrier. Jommy and Shahn'Dra sat wide-eyed in their seats. "You kids doing alright?"
"Can we come out yet?" Jommy asked.
"It is almost time," Shahn'Dra said.
"It'll be over soon. Just hang tight," Simmons said. She climbed inside and sat down in front of the communications console behind the passenger seat. "It'll be over soon."
She extended the cables from the panel Sgt. Preston had prepared and wired it into the communications console. Setting it aside, she flipped on her console's power swtich and waited while its LED displays and myriad of lights flickered to life. She checked each one, brushing her fingers over the switches and checking to make sure the LED displays could withstand the injury of tapping them. She could have started a series of tests for each of the subsystems, making sure they would be able to detect aircraft and ground vehicle transponders and send them messages - but any that would actually need such services were long in the past. She simply didn't want to look at Preston's console. As long as she didn't see it, it could be in the proverbial quantum state of both working and not working without reality dictating for sure which state it was in. She took a breath and held it, then forced herself to look at Preston's contraption. She let out a sigh when its lights blinked back at her and the warning indicators along the top remained dark.
She flipped a switch on her own panel marked AUX, tying in Preston's fire control panel to her carriers communications system. Since the commands were hard coded in the circuit board Preston had assembled, all she had to do was press the transmit button on her panel and it would take care of the rest.
Never in her life had she felt so completely at the mercy of somebody else's work. As a recon officer, the regiment depended on her to make the right decisions at the right time and give them the information they needed to accomplish their mission. People depended on her. Now, everything depended on pressing a button and hoping the handiwork of a now-dead Marine did what it was supposed to. There had always been one more route to patrol, one more angle to explore, one more place to set up an ambush. There had always been one more piece of information to find and an option hidden somewhere behind it. Now, there was only a button.
She thought of Dekker and how he had to rely on people like her and Preston to provide options that came together to give him a finite universe of choices. She realized the burden of comand wasn't about being right. It was about trusting everyone else to be right. And he had managed to find a path for to this moment despite all the different ways the world had tried to push him away from it. What had been her contribution to keeping him from finding the way?
She checked her watch, got up and climbed out of her carrier. Dekker was lying prone on the crest of the ridge as he watched the battle through his field glasses. As helpless as she felt, something inside her settled into place as she watched him. Even now, he wouldn't quit. More than that, it was a thought that never entered his mind. She had seen many thoughts cross his face in the past few days, but doubt, fear and hesitation weren't among them. All there had ever been, she realized, was the mission. And it wasn't the mission he had been assigned. It hadn't even been a mission he had known about until they had all paid a price for it to be revealed. It had chosen him, hadn't it? It had sifted through the scant remains of their ranks, found Colonel Dekker and said, This one.
He still had something that had drained from her almost entirely. It was the only thing that could carry them any further. The oath they had all taken had, as she now realized, many layers between its words and its true meaning. He understood that. He carried it deep down inside in a place that too many had forgotten about. He had faith that the mission was of its own right the only thing that still mattered - that ever mattered. It was, really, the reason he existed.
That they shall not perish.
She understood what that meant now. It was something that no Terran Guard understood. It was something that few Marines truly understood, but they had given over to the faith of this man to compensate for that. It was something that she was just now beginning to understand. 'They' included all of them - not just colonists; not just Shoahn'. It was all of them - even the ranks of the Terran Guard trying to kill the only real friend Colonel Dekker had ever known. What kind of faith did a man have that understood that? He had it. The Paladin had it. Shahn'Dra had it. Lt. Simmons felt like a child, just realizing that to walk was only the beginning. There was so much more to learn. And no time left to do it.
She paced up the shallow rise to stand behind Dekker. As the valley came into view, she gasped.
The smoking shell of a Cataphract lay on its side, its legs frozen in mid-step as smoke boiled out from its cockpit. Another leaned to one side, its leg sheared at the knee. The barrel of a Terran Guard tank recoiled and the Cat fell back, heaving up a billowing cloud of dust that curled away into the sky. Moments later, the muffled thunder of the frame crashing into the ground swept over her.
Another Cat stepped back as a gaggle of soldiers rushed underneath it. Its plasma canisters recoiled and a wall of blue flame erupted from the ground behind the soldiers as they climbed over its feet, one of them firing a black object into the bottom of the frame.
She saw it die as it shook from the surging current and then froze in place.
Lt. Simmons hadn't cried since she was a girl running from the Terran Guard as they gunned down her family on the slopes of the Highlands. Even as they were all screaming, she had caught the Paladin's Cats out of the corner of her eye - and Dekker's Foot Guard kneeling next to them, firing into the flanks of the Terran Guard troops. Even then, she had understood. It was at that moment, her legs aching from the strain of galloping down the hill and her chest burning as she gulped air, that she knew she would be a Marine. She would never run again. And she would fight next to men like Dekker. It wasn't a thought. It was something that came alive inside and rose up to consume the very soul of her.
But now, a tear splashed onto her cheek. She didn't even feel the urge to fight it back, because she understood. They had stood watch over them for almost a hundred years and now they were dying. The Cataphracts weren't machines. They were Marines, every bit as much as she. The ranks of the fallen would always be replenished by people like here, people who understood what it meant to stand and fight back. But the ranks of the Paladin's Cataphracts would never come home again. They were dying right before her eyes, and they would never return. There would never be their kind again.
That they shall not perish.
The swarm dragged another pilot from his cockpit. A soldier leveled his weapon at the pilot's head. The head jerked back and the body fell limp. As they dragged him away, something burst from inside and tears flowed down her face as she realized that she wasn't worth all of this. There were sacrifices too great and they were being made - here, now, when all an unworthy soul could do was watch and mourn the loss of those few whose departure would make the universe something less than it could ever be again.
She fell to her knees and a scream erupted from her. Apart from her, it ripped its way out of her soul and reached out across the desert sky, unheard and swallowed up by the wind.
"No!"
Dekker lowered his field glasses and craned his head around to look at her. "What are you doing?" he asked.
Simmons wiped her nose with her sleeve and took a shuddering breath as she fought back the rest of h
er tears. "This isn't right."
"Then what are you going to do about it?"
Simmons stood up and brushed the front of her field utility blouse. "Right."
"How much time on the shot?"
Simmons checked her watch. "Not long now, sir."
"Then you better get ready."
"Yes sir." Simmons stood for a moment more as he turned his attention back to the battle. She had a mission. Even if it was only to wait until the time was right and just push a button, she had a mission.
She turned back to her carrier and ducked back inside to sit down in front of the console. Something inside her pushed the sounds of the battle away and she counted the seconds away.
Faith
Terran Guard troops were swarming in from both sides as Major Walker backed up. The few Cats left cranked their plasma guns around as far as they could and fired. The troops were too close now and they impacted the ground behind the troops, throwing up a blue wall of flame that did little more than provide a backdrop to silhouette the faces straining with hatred for the men who had held them back from their calling during a lifetime of war. Every soldier was a martyr for his own cause, Walker thought. But he knew better this time. This time, it was different.
Forcing himself to ignore the sight of another Cat shuddering to a halt as an electromagnetic pulse surged through its frame, Walker slewed his reticle to another tank and pulled the trigger to designate the target. Disciplined in their focus on cutting down the crippled Cats, they seemed to ignore him as he pulled the trigger a second time and waited. Once again, the computer took longer than it should have because it had to compensate for the staggering limp of his Cat as it struggled to back away from the line. Finally, his cannons let loose their salvo of steel spikes and pushed the tank into a smear of orange stretching across the ground.
The Terran Mandate Page 24
