by J. F. Holmes
No one asked him if he’d gotten his target; he wouldn’t have come back if he hadn’t. Or if he was dead. Instead, Keith sat down, cleaned his rifle, and got some sleep. Around him the basement of the ruined factory was a beehive of activity, men and women gearing up for that night’s action, but he slept a deep, restorative sleep. His time would come again, soon enough.
*****
“Ain’t nothin much bothers him, do it?” asked the young communications specialist.
Her commander glanced at the sleeping sniper and shook his head. “Someday you’ll be just like that,” Colonel Kayode Arendse said to the teenager, “old, and bitter, and able to sleep through just about anything.” His dark face scowled at her, but there was a lilt in his voice, his Nigerian accent slipping through.
“Hell, I hopes not. I ain’t never gonna git old like that,” she said, and went back to trying to connect the landline to the Republic of Texas Armed Forces Headquarters, five miles outside the city, deep underground.
Arendse shook his head, amazed that the militia had sent him a hillbilly, who spoke worse English than he did, to be his commo specialist. Well, make do with what you have. At least they accepted him. More often he’d gotten shit about being a “goddamned Yankee from Noo Yawk” than an immigrant. They were good people, and fought like tigers. The CEF had done well to assign his team here amid the hills of Central Texas.
Tonight’s mission, though, was going to be tough. The Austin Invy garrison was preparing to break out, to head south and cross the 30th parallel, and he intended to let them. Two days into the war, and many of their vehicles had suffered extensive damage, enough that quite a few of the three hundred Wolverines would be moving on foot. Arendse had slowly been withdrawing soldiers from the entrenchments to the south, knowing the hammer blow would fall there, down I-59. He intended to use his own company, some hundred militia supplemented with his CEF Main Force heavy weapons, to execute an ambush ten miles down the road. The Nigerian had an ace up his sleeve, an on-call flight of A-10 Warthogs from Arnold Air Force Base, taking a break from pounding Nashville.
Of course, no plan survives first contact with the enemy, and all the stupid Dragons were dead, killed early in the war. Now only the smart ones survived, and they were getting better, even as they lost territory in their retreat south. Austin was the final stop before San Antonio, and 30 degrees north, where no human could follow.
“Colonel, I gots Rebel on the horn, breakin radio silence!” called Specialist McCarthy, her voice excited. “They’s under fire, trying to break contact!” She flipped on the speaker, taking off her headset, and the whole room could hear the bark of rifle fire and static as plasma beams interfered with the transmission. It was echoed across the valley by the distant, barely heard sounds of war.
“Volunteer, this is Rebel Six, we are under heavy fire, being…” and the transmission stopped.
“Rebel Six, this is Volunteer actual,” said Colonel Arendse, “SITREP, over.”
It was picked up again a few seconds later, a different voice, extremely stressed, “This is Rebel Seven, we are attempting to break contact to the east, estimate twenty plus Wolverines, Rebel Six is dead, have wounded, requesting extrac—” and then the radio fell dead again.
“I ain’t got nothing, Colonel,” said the commo tech, flipping through the FM channels. “They’s gone off the airs.”
*****
Irregular Scout Team Seventeen, call sign Rebel, was supposed to be watching the Invy HQ, but they were being run to ground by a large Invy patrol. Their on-watch Observation Post had committed the cardinal sin of the infantry, two of the three falling asleep after three days of continuous ops, and now paid the price with their lives. A pair of Wolverines had been stalking them for the whole day, skillfully sneaking through the brush, patient like the predators they were. Neither wore any gear or carried weapons; they were on the hunt, in the traditional way.
The rear guard woke when a ripping claw entered his gut, under his armor, and died when another slashed his throat. The second Wolverine charged over the corpse and stabbed the other sleeping soldier deep in the kidney. His companion, the smell of human blood driving him wild with excitement, landed on the back of the last Scout, who’d been watching the airfield. They rolled over in the dirt, and the woman thrashed on the ground, her throat torn out by glistening teeth, choking her life out.
The two Invy barked, and the rest of the patrol rushed past them, twenty strong, toward the ruined house where the other half dozen Scouts were. Their mission was to drive them away from the airfield, but their Hashut, their sergeant, had told them that each would get to eat what they’d killed, and after two months of siege, the Wolverines were hungry.
The guard at the house was on his feet, watching out the window, when he saw the grass move. “OP, SITREP!” he yelled in to his mic, then cursed as the first Wolverine burst out of cover, plasma weapon hissing on full auto. The window shattered, and the man was hurled back, his chest vaporized. The Team commander grabbed at his radio, started to transmit, and was cut down. His sergeant pulled the microphone from what was left of his boss and tried to get a glimpse outside for a threat estimate, ducked back down, and started to transmit. A hurried contact report was stopped by a dozen more rifles, accompanied by a heavy plasma cannon that opened up, collapsing the closest wall and setting the structure on fire.
The rest of the team, those still alive, rushed out the back, stunned and half awake, adrenaline starting to pump through their veins. They were met by the remainder of the Invy force, a Dragon in the lead, swinging a sword in each arm. The humans’ end was brutal and painful.
A way was open now for the Invy to break out, and the CEF besiegers had been caught unprepared. APCs lifted off the ground, swiveled, and followed the two remaining tanks, firing left and right as they moved east, an unexpected direction for the attack. Still, eventually, they would have to swing south.
Chapter 92
At almost the same moment the Wolverines broke through the brush and eliminated IST Seventeen, an Invy VTOL lifted off from the camp, fans running at full blast, ripping west, feet off the ground and ducking around the shattered buildings of Austin. Before the besiegers could react, it passed over their heads and bore down on the radio antennas that marked the command site. A shoulder-fired SAM rocketed at it, but the pilot was good, damned good, and it rolled the machine around the incoming missile, avoiding a direct strike and shrugging off the shrapnel.
Instead of launching missiles at the command post, the pilot slammed the VTOL down on the ground, and a full platoon of Wolverines spilled out of the already open tailgate, firing as they moved toward the ruined factory. They were met with a smattering of small arms fire, and several went down, but the remaining dozen howled with battle rage as they closed on the structure.
“What the he—” Specialist McCarthy started to say as the first Invy assault troop rolled down the stairs, firing before it even came to a stop. The plasma bolt caught her in the face, shattering her head and cutting off her last words. Colonel Arendse dropped down behind a desk and heaved it over, taking shelter behind the heavy surface. Leaning to one side, he emptied a full magazine from his M-6 into the figures spilling down the stairs. Plasma hissed back at him, leaving after-images burned into his eyes. He cursed as he changed magazines by feel, and popped his head over the top this time, taking aimed shots. The room descended into a chaos of red and blue streaks as tracers crossed paths with plasma.
Billy Keith had rolled out of bed as soon as the shots had sounded upstairs, grabbing his rifle in one hand and his body armor in the other, shrugging into it even as Specialist McCarthy gaped in surprise. He ran toward the stairwell, whipping the long steel shank of the triangular bayonet off his belt and feeling it click into place on the barrel. Now he had a five-foot-long spike in his hand, backed by solid wood and steel.
Yer gonna die, Billy, he thought to himself, cursing out loud. He waited, back up against the wall, as the rest of t
he Invy piled down the stairway. To his right as he crouched lower, the room became a series of intermittent exchanges in the dark, the Americans gathered at one end of the hundred-foot factory floor, the Invy at the other, bodies piled between them. An errant bullet shattered the concrete above his head, and he crouched even lower.
With a whistle and bark, five of the Invy sprang up and rushed forward, moving left and seeking cover behind downed furniture, while their comrades blazed away. Then two others jumped and ran right, incredibly fast. The remaining three crouched and got ready to rush as the others started to provide covering fire.
Billy stood and silently, despite wanting to burst out in a rebel yell, ran forward, trying to ignore the friendly fire zipping by him. A familiar calm settled over him, the same one that enveloped him when he was preparing to squeeze the trigger of his rifle on a target a thousand meters away. A sense of purpose, of absolute stillness, of seeing everything correctly laid out before him, the path of the bullet, the wind, the movement of his target. Only now, he was the bullet, and he felt like he’d been fired from a gun himself, straight and true at his goal.
Holding the stock in his right hand, driving the rifle downward, his first blow caved in the neck of the center Wolverine, a Hashut who was intent on getting ready to make his own run. It snapped with an audible CRACK, and he let the momentum of his swing follow through and drive the foot-long chiseled point of Soviet steel into the one on his left. Keith felt it slide home into where a human’s kidney would be, which was the same on a Wolverine, probably the only organ in the same place, just under the edge of its body armor. Unable to even scream, the Invy pulled itself off the blade, rolling into a ball, but Sergeant Keith had already forgotten about it. He used his momentum to roll left, turning as he did, and fired at the right-hand Invy, which was less than a foot from his muzzle, ripping claws extended.
The Mosin was a design over a hundred and fifty years old, with a powerful round made to travel a thousand meters and still be able to kill a charging cavalry horse on the Russian steppes. The steel-jacketed slug blew through the top part of the Wolverine’s tough skull with a spray of blood and brains and buried itself a foot deep into the concrete ceiling. The still-twitching corpse landed at his feet, and Keith looked over the top of the scope, working the bolt with his right hand while aiming with his left. The brass cartridge glittered in the flickering plasma light, and before it had hit the floor, another joined it spinning though the air, the stock slamming back into his shoulder with the ancient rifle’s powerful kick. With smooth precision, just like at the range, he emptied the five-round magazine, one each into the left-hand group of Wolverines. Two went down, mortally wounded, and another was knocked flat when the round impacted square on its ceramic body armor. The fourth was a complete miss, and the fifth dropped, drilled through the throat as he started to charge at the NCO.
Time sped up again as he groped for a stripper clip. The one he missed bounded across the room at him. The rifle wasn’t designed for this type of combat, and in a split second, he changed his mind, dropping it and hauling out his pistol, the 1911 almost as old as the Mosin, but as lovingly maintained. The sniper fired three rounds, the last into its forehead, and the creature fell dead at his feet.
There was a burst of rifle fire, and a shout in English of, “BEHIND YOU!” Keith turned just as the huge bulk of a Dragon flowed down the stairs, heavy automatic pulser in its forelegs, gilded helmet not hiding the glow of the targeting computer slaved to the gun. He fired the magazine dry, the rounds sparking off the full body armor, and the Invy laughed, a hollow, hissing sound. Keith saw the barrel of the pulser swing, tiny flechettes chewing across the wall toward him. One ripped into his shoulder, tearing through muscle and bone, just as Colonel Arendse fired a three-round burst that caught the creature in an unarmored joint on its neck. Wounded, squealing in pain, it rolled around, crashing through the railing and onto the floor.
Sergeant Keith picked up the Mosin with his good arm, ran forward, and shoved the bayonet with all his weight behind it through the targeting shield and into the skull beyond, forcing it downward through the snapping jaw. A heavy tail whipped around and swept his legs out from under him, but he held onto the rifle, wrestling to wrench it free. It slid loose as he crashed to the floor on his back.
The Invy rose up on its two rear legs, dropping in an attempt to crush the soldier, and then screamed as its full four hundred pounds landed directly on the up-thrust rifle. Keith rolled clear, agony shooting up his arm as the Invy crashed down, pierced through.
As Arendse came up, the sniper pulled the rifle out, forced another five rounds in through the open bolt, rode it forward, and shot the Dragon through the body. “That’s for screwing up my sight alignment!” he muttered, reloaded, and fired again at the twitching body, this time in the head.
“And that’s for Texas, you son of a bitch.”
Chapter 93
The command post was in shambles, fires flickered here and there, with the smell of burnt plastic, burnt flesh, and coppery blood filling the survivors’ lungs. The raid had been devastating; most of the command staff lay dead on the ground, and their communications equipment was wrecked. Colonel Arendse made his way past the destruction, stripping magazines from the dead, hunting for a radio.
Outside, the Invy VTOL lay burning, struck by several AT-4 antitank missiles as it tried to lift off, and a dozen Wolverines lay at the entrance. A claymore mine had cut them down, a desperate measure by the one remaining human soldier that had survived the initial assault on the entrance. He lay on the ground, a stunned look on his dark face, as a medic attempted to push his guts back into his body. Arendse shook his head in the medic’s direction, and the woman stopped, took out a needle, and slipped it into a vein.
A PFC came running up from the encirclement, breathing heavily under the weight of a SINCGARS radio. “SIR! Sergeant Anatoli sent me to establish coms! I ran as fast as I could.” Then he threw up on the ground.
“Good job, son,” he said, taking the handmic. What followed was a rapid-fire exchange between the colonel and his subordinates, trying to coordinate a response to the breakout. Once they were across the thirty degrees north, no one would be able to follow.
His orders were interrupted by someone stepping on his frequency. “Volunteer Six, this is Lone Star Six, I’m taking command. Stand by for further orders. Out.”
What the hell? the astounded colonel asked himself. Out loud, he asked, “Who is Lone Star Six?”
“That would be the AG of the State of Texas, Sir,” said Sergeant Keith, who was standing by the CEF officer. “Lieutenant General Covington.”
“You mean Major Covington? Of the militia?” asked the Nigerian. He knew who all the players were within several hundred miles.
“Maybe,” said the laconic NCO; though he looked like he knew more, he didn’t elaborate.
What followed was a barrage of orders from someone, directing his own Main Force Company to maneuver westward. His XO contacted him on a different frequency to question what was going on, but Arendse told him to just go along for now. The plan he heard over the radio made little sense, since he didn’t know what units were involved, but didn’t put any of his Main Force people in much danger, ordering them to hold a blocking position to the west, withdrawing from their ambush on I-35. While he listened, he had a commo tech work on getting HF radio contact with CEF Southern Command in Vicksburg. “Saber, this is Volunteer, we have some kind of issue going on here, over.”
His boss, a major general, came back on the line immediately. “Volunteer, just stand by and do as Lone Star orders. We’re having some political trouble, over.”
Political trouble? In the middle of a shooting battle? “PFC, go get me a Humvee, I’ve got to see what’s going on.”
The kid arrived back with the truck in less than a minute, and Colonel Arendse took the wheel himself, driving the truck like a NYC cab driver, swerving around obstacles and tearing through back yards. The PF
C, thrilled and terrified, gave him directions, while Sergeant Keith held on for dear life in the turret, and two other troopers bounced off every sharp edge in the truck. They pulled up to where the Main Force unit had taken up position overlooking I-35. The two-hundred-odd men and women were digging in and sighting everything from captured plasma weapons to ancient TOW missiles.
“OK, Bob, what’s going on?” asked the colonel. His XO, Major Nyugen, gave him a quick back brief on the Invy advance, and their position, as dictated by ‘General’ Covington.
“It’s not a bad setup, depending on what forces he has at his disposal,” said Nyugen. His accent was pure Texan.
“Do you have any idea what’s going on here, Major?” The unit disposition seemed a little too good to be hastily thrown together.
“Well, Sir, we’re going to win this, and there’s going to be an afterwards. That’s all I can say.”
“I could have you shot, you know,” said Arendse, to a man he had worked closely with for more than five years. “This is pretty much treason.”
“You could, though I don’t know how well that would go over with my fellow Texans.”
“That widespread, huh?”
“Yep. Let’s just say that being part of the Confederated Earth Forces was just another layer of bullshit on top of the United States.”
Arendse said nothing else, just watched the battle unfold. The Invy were moving down the highway, dismounts escorting the armor, Wolverines flitting from cover to cover, hundreds of them.
A Humvee pulled up behind them, and a man got out, escorted by a personal protective detail, hard-looking soldiers wearing the flag of Texas on their shoulders. He made his way over to the CEF colonel and looked irritated when Arendse didn’t salute him, though he did see him glance at the three stars on his collar.
“So, Major,” said Arendse, just to piss the man off, “what’s your plan?”
