Again, the beasts came head on into the line and while they poured out their black fire up into the Marine lines, the return plasma fire from the Alioth rifles and the turrets were devastating. Graham scanned between the multiple reports streaming into his wrist tablet. The reports were all the same. The centaurs were paying a price for their assaults, but the marines were exchanging it with their blood. Cairn C was still moving north along the coast and had yet to encounter any resistance. Graham didn’t know how long they would be able to hold out there.
“Artillery online,” one of the commanders standing next to him said.
“Finally,” he said, just as the first shots, from about a mile back, rang echoes through the forest. The Marines had with them two batteries, four Yowitsers. They were old-fashioned shelling artillery, used mainly on backwater planets to subdue rebels. They were house busters if anything, but in this case, they needed everything they had. Graham turned and peered out from behind the building, just as the telltale whistle of shells screamed through the sky and came crashing down in devastation twenty feet east of their line. Marines ducked under cover as shrapnel exploded through everything, tearing all the remaining trees and buildings apart.
The shells rained down for a few minutes and then there was a break as commanders called back to get reports. Graham peered into the hellish scene. The whole area in front of the ridge had been cleared of standing trees. As the smoke and dust cleared, he could see hundreds of globs of black goo, either in pools on the ground or splashed over the debris. Yet more centaurs continued to emerge from the trees beyond the devastation. That is also when he saw the first of the big ones.
The calls rang out up and down the line. Graham could see Marines ducking back and moving into new cover positions. The turrets opened fire on the new enemy, and for a moment, as the plasma bolts exploded brightly off of the new foe, Graham couldn’t see what it looked like. When the turrets stopped to cool down, Graham saw it clearly. It was a giant sphere, rolling easily over any and all debris. On either side of the sphere were two long extensions pointed forward. It didn’t take long for Graham to guess what those were, as the sound of whooshing air was followed by a house directly behind him exploding. It had been the impact of whatever it had fired that had destroyed the building. Graham picked himself up and looked back down the ridge. All along the tree line, these rolling spherical tanks had emerged through the debris and were opening fire on the Marine line. They were firing some kind of invisible shell, for all he heard was the whooshing air and then dirt and body parts were flying through the air. The plasma turrets rained purple bolts down on the spheres to no avail. These things were not made of the same liquid goo as the foot soldier centaurs.
“We have to break now!” a commander screamed over the com.
Graham agreed. They had done what they could. He gave the order to start pulling back to the secondary line when he saw the charge. Hundreds of the centaur creatures had broken out from behind the sphere tanks and were galloping towards the Marine line. Plasma fire rained down on the surge, but it was a matter of moments before they were on the line. Even with the renewed artillery fire splashing down in the no man’s land between the ridge and the existing tree line, dozens broke through the line.
Graham watched in horror as some Marines retreated while firing and yet others remained to fight. The centaurs moved with a newfound speed and determination. Their arms had formed into bladed spears as they tore through the men. The Marines fought bravely, easily taking many of the centaurs down. Black liquid goo mixed in with the human blood.
The sub commodore was being dragged away by one of the Marine commanders, when he saw a shell hit one of the sphere tanks and it shattered and cracked like an egg. The insides exploded with their black blood, but were mostly hollow. He then saw, as he retreated through the buildings, one of the tanks reach the top of the ridge and began spewing some kind of gas. Marines caught in the gaseous blast screamed out in agony. Graham was caught by the commander again and was dragged out by his arm. As he ran past one of the towers, he looked up and nearly fell back, dizzy. He stopped for a moment to regain his balance and then looked back up. There were objects up in the sky flying past the tower. Hundreds of them. He couldn’t tell what they were, but they were flying east.
And they were not black.
“Commodore,” the commander reached out to him. “Look!”
Graham looked ahead of him. Behind the tower was a large plaza of sorts. Three large avenues joined together, from the north, south and west. From the western road, the largest and widest of the three, came a strange spider-like animal. Graham was initially shocked and about to bemoan his terrible luck when he saw the Gadoni warriors perched on top of the creature. They were hollering and screaming. It sounded like cheering. And from between their legs, scurrying like ants, were enormous bears. They were being ridden by two or three warriors. Behind the first were hundreds more, streaming down the avenue. It was a sight unlike any he had ever seen.
“Now I know I'm dreaming,” he said. He left his mouth wide open at the end of ‘dreaming’.
As they entered the plaza, the Gadoni army spread out. With the giant spider were several far smaller ones. As the retreating Marines ran past, the smaller spider-like vehicle creatures began to drop down ropes and netting and the warriors up above beckoned and called out to them. Instinctively, many of them began scurrying and climbing up into these. Reports were coming all over from the retreating line of the Marines being escorted to safety or joining up with this new force.
Graham and the commander continued running out into the plaza. As they ran under the largest spider, dozens of netting ladders rolled down amongst them. The commander looked back as his leader. Graham reached out and grabbed the netting.
“It’s their world. Let’s help them any way we can,” he said, then began hoisting himself up.
Halfway up, as the spider continued to move, Graham looked forward. They were seventy feet from the towers and he began to wonder how this large creature would be able to pass between them. It was then when he saw the first black centaurs coming through the gap between the towers. Just as the first one came through, one of the bears and its rider met it head on. The Gadoni warrior leapt off his beast with not a weapon to be seen and both he and his bear crashed into the centaur. The bear tore at its legs and Graham swore he saw sparks flying from the warrior’s hands as he tore into the centaur.
Graham found himself laughing out loud as he saw the image that would forever be etched in his memories.
“Dream or not, fantasy or not…” he began, and then let out a wild scream.
***
The centaurs were crossing the river now. They had found a spot almost directly in front of their makeshift fort that appeared to be shallow enough. While on the other side of the river, they had just been firing occasionally, now they were pouring it on hard. Gheno and his band of warriors were biding their time. Two of the local Gadoni lay dead on the ground and six more were bleeding heavily from various wounds, although they continued to peer over the metal crates and kept firing when they could. Gheno himself had cuts and scrapes everywhere and had been lucky enough not to take a direct hit.
Every time he ducked back behind the makeshift wall, his mind began to think. They could still go back into the ship and take off. For some reason, the centaurs were not targeting his ship at all. Karai had reported in a few times from inside the ship that everything was as quiet as it could be, except for the Threadweaver who was still fully in his drug induced trance. He just kept mumbling about chaos and darkness.
The only problem was that if they did fall back, then there would be nothing left to stop the flow of the dark creatures. They would pour across the river and hit the rear of the fleeing civilians. With that in mind, Gheno checked the charge on his rifle, popped back up, took aim, and fired off more shots.
He tossed the rifle back down at the charger and called for another rifle. The man in charge took one
off the pod and tossed it up. Gheno caught the rifle, looked at the charge, and saw just enough for two shots. The charger wasn’t keeping up. Gheno turned and looked over the wall. Two more centaurs had crossed over and were now just twenty feet away. They were more than close enough for him to see their faces, or what he considered their faces. One solid red line ran up and down the middle of the head, and it was constantly flashing in apparently random patterns. Gheno took aim and splashed one’s head off. He turned to aim at the second one and saw out of the corner of his eye that the first was already regrowing his head. It was a losing battle. He fired off his second shot, hitting the second centaur right in the torso. The top split off from the bottom four legged section and the whole being turned to the black goo that was running off the banks and into the river.
Gheno ducked back just in time to catch the next rifle being tossed back up to him. A one shot charge was all it had. He popped up over the wall. Seven more centaurs had crossed and one was just ten feet away. It was looking directly at him. Both of its arms had joined into one and it was aiming right at him. In a split second reaction, he ducked back behind the wall as a loud hiss filled his ears. The air around him heated up considerably. He slid off the wall and onto the ground. As he looked back up, he saw a vapor come venting over the top of the wall. One of the Gadoni had not fallen back behind the wall and screamed out in anguish. His face and shoulders, exposed to the vapor, crackled and bubbled up and blistered off. He fell backwards and onto the ground, landing dead. Gheno saw the rest of his burned face and turned away. He looked up just in time to see a centaur begin to climb over the wall. Gheno aimed up and hit it in the upper part of the torso, what would be its chest. Black goo splashed all over the walls. The Gadoni returned fire from the bottom of the fort as more centaurs began to climb over. Two of the men dropped their rifles and ran out of the back of the fort.
“No!” Gheno shouted after them, but it was too late. He barely saw their bodies as shards of black metal hit them like hail. He didn’t see them fall. Rifles were dropped as their last shots were fired. As another centaur climbed up to the top of the wall, it looked down at the ragged group. Its two arms swung forward and fused together. Gheno aimed and fired, but no plasma came out. He was out of charges. As the two arms fused, Gheno nodded his head in understanding.
“Oh, well,” he said softly. He closed his eyes and waited.
There was a whoosh and a ferocious growl.
Gheno quickly opened his eyes and the centaur was gone. There was screaming and hooting beyond the walls coming from all directions.
“Um…” he found himself uttering. He stood up quickly and scrambled up the slippery goo-coated walls of their fort. Gheno had seen many things in his life, and even more in the past three years as a part of Kale’s crew. What he saw next was unlike anything he could have imagined.
“They have war bears?” he said softly, then yelled out as loud as he could, “WAR BEARS?!?!”
He couldn’t initially process everything he was seeing. There was a brief moment when he thought he was dead, or dreaming, or a combination of the two. From the west and the north, along the edges of the park, large bears, like the kind he had ridden to the Vahe fields, were rushing towards the river and the centaurs. Unlike the ones he had ridden in, these were covered in armor and were being ridden by two or three Gadoni warriors, also in head to toe brown leathery armor. As he stood up tall on the top of the wall, he looked down below him. A Gadoni warrior with large and deformed forearms was savagely beating at the centaur that had collapsed under the weight of the war bear. He watched in awe as sparks flew out from the warriors punches and a sickly smoke rose up from every hit.
Gheno gazed out over the battlefield. The war bears and their riders were leaping over the river in bounds, crashing into the centaurs. The riders, many more with deformed forearms, were leaping off the backs of their war bears and directly onto the centaurs. Many were cut down in mid jump as the centaurs returned fire on them, but for those that completed the leap, they would plunge their arms into the goo, sparks flew and smoke poured out from their wounds.
A roaring sound sent Gheno nearly crashing off the wall. He looked up and saw hundreds of flying Vahe, also coming out from the west. These Vahe were shaped like a V, with a flimsy netting between the two sides of the V. There were many different sizes. The smaller ones flew on past at dizzyingly fast speeds. Gheno mostly just saw a blur. Far larger ones flew on by slowly. Gheno watched as men jumped off the back of the larger Vahe and glided down in flying suits straight into the trees ahead of him to the east. He watched as one of the smaller ones circled around the bigger one, slowing down for a moment. It had feathers, or streamers, coming out of the back of the V, and was wildly colorful.
The centaurs had the firepower, but were quickly overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of warriors on their war bears. Gheno sat down on the wall, suddenly exhausted. He wiped away sweat and blood from his face and his arms. His shirt was mostly in tatters and as the adrenaline began to subside, he could feel the countless cuts on his body. Amidst it all, he was suddenly very thirsty. He tried to stand up again and found his legs simply not working. He glanced up and into the forest city ahead of him on the other side of the river. More and more war bears and their riders were streaming into the woods. There were no living, or functional, centaurs that he could see. He looked down at the puddle of goo that had been the centaur that would have taken his life. He squinted when he saw some sort of electronic device.
He jumped off and stumbled as he landed on his legs, slipped in the goo, and fell onto his side. He crawled over the black liquid until he got to the centaur. He sloshed through the goo until he felt it. He pulled it out and was holding onto a small cube with three silver looking extensions. It reminded him of a spinal cord. It was clearly not organic. He nearly dropped it when he heard the thuds and explosions. They were coming from the east. He grabbed the cube, the spinal parts dropping over, and stumbled over around the fort.
“Cove, raise the ship up,” he said out loud, hoping his coms still worked.
He sighed in relief as the ship began to slowly rise up on its stilts. As he walked around the makeshift fort, thousands of holes punctured all along the metal crates, he stopped short. Directly in front of him was a large spider-like Vahe, with what he counted were seven spindly legs. He slowly looked up, putting a hand to his head to cover himself from one of the suns. He heard someone shouting and then a rope net dropped on his head. He shoved it aside as a body came sliding down the ropes.
He barely had a chance to react as she threw herself into him, hugging him. It was Blue Flower.
“You are alive,” she said.
“I think,” he said softly. Two more explosions rang out in the distance.
“I need to get to…” he started to say when an a shell came screaming through the sky, exploding north of the park. Gheno turned to see a small black orb, the lobbed shell, began to form into a centaur. It was on the far side of the park, alongside some houses. It immediately started to spew fire out of its conjoined arms, catching several war bears in its fiery path. Two men were tossed from their ride and rolled quickly on the ground. As the centaur continued to spew fire, some of the houses were caught in its path, and started to burn. Gheno watched intently as two war bears slowed down to attack the centaur. The fire splashed off of their armor, burning away the hair on the large creatures, but they seemed unaffected. They circled the centaur, like predators circling their kill. When the centaur spun around to focus on one of the bears, the other dashed behind him and two men jumped on its back, plunging their arms into the beast. It collapsed nearly instantly into goo.
The two warriors quickly got back on their bear and were lost in the charge.
The fire, meanwhile, continued to spread along the houses. Gheno wasn’t sure why, but he continued to watch the fire burn. The noise was thunderous at that time. War bears and the larger and much slower spider Vahe continued their march towards the east,
but Gheno could swear he heard something else. A cry, or a scream.
“Are there people in those houses?” Gheno asked Blue Flower, as he pointed over the fire.
“Everyone has left the city,” she said.
Gheno had his doubts. “Cove, can you pick anything up?”
“The heat is dampening the sensors. I can’t pick anything up. But I am singling out what sounds like human sounds. Cries.”
‘I knew it,’ he thought, as he tore off across the field.
Blue Flower shouted out after him but refused to run into the war bears at full charge. She clambered up the netting up to the top of the Vahe and directed the pilot to steer their transport towards the houses. Blue Flower watched from far above. The Vahe could easily step through the war bears below, but she watched in horror as Gheno avoided, mostly by sheer luck, being run over several times. He sprinted his way across the field and up and over the play mound. He reached the edge of the park and crossed the path towards the house.
He could hear someone crying inside. He panicked when he thought it sounded like a child. He tried to go through the front door, but the flames had already engulfed the entrance. He went around the side, right between the two houses. The flames were already spreading from the rooftops, but the side of the wall was still clear of flames. He unslung his rifle and looked. There was still one charge. He aimed at the side of the house and fired. The plasma bolt disintegrated a hole in the side of the wooden house and smoke instantly started pouring out. He covered his mouth and dove in through the hole.
Once inside, he started choking nearly immediately. He ducked down beneath the smoke. He was in a large room with a hallway down the far side of the room. He looked around and could now hear the crying clearly over the roar of the flames. He could feel the intense heat coming from above him.
“Where are you?” he shouted out, knowing the person wouldn’t understand him.
The Lost Tribe (Sentinel Series Book 2) Page 34
