“SITREPs,” Mackey yelled.
Thavy was first on the net. “I’m a few minutes out, Chief. The last of the rocket launchers are bugging out to the north.”
“This is Gooden. Taber is down. Second squad’s at sixty percent. Both heavy-weapons are operational, but they’re already amber on ammo. The enemy is still pouring out of those holes.”
“Third is at fifty,” Mara said. “I lost three men and one crew-served in the blast. Two others are wounded, and I’ve got two on the roof. I can’t see shit through the dust.”
“Roger all,” Mackey said. “We hold until Thavy arrives with First Squad. Thavy, drop your squad to the east in order to flank them and then close those holes with the 20mm.”
“Get ready to have guests, Chief,” Gooden said. “The heavies need to reload.”
First one and then the other of Second Squad’s crew-served weapons cut out. Mackey pushed himself up onto his elbows. His wrist and hand were numb, but his fingers still worked—sort of. Awkwardly, he checked the magazine, and sighted down the rifle. The thermal sight was broken, but at close range he wouldn’t need it. He fumbled the sight free and tossed it aside, leaving streaks of blood wherever his injured hand went.
Out of the dust, the enemy came at them with feral determination. Mackey pulled the trigger again and again, firing two-round bursts that cut through armor and bodies. There was no shortage of targets. Bullets pummeled his position as the rebels gained ground in front of him. Mara’s remaining crew-served weapon thundered next to him, the sound deafening in the semi-enclosed space. It was simple math. The enemy was fighting bullets with bodies, and it would continue until one side or the other ran out.
As if prophesying the final results, Mackey’s weapon clicked empty. He slid back and searched for another magazine.
“Here, Chief,” a soldier yelled and threw one toward him.
He missed the catch with his bad hand, and it tumbled away and down the pile of debris. “Mother fucker!” he shouted and worked his way to where it landed. The fumble saved his life.
An explosion knocked Mackey off his feet just as he slammed the magazine in place. The soldier who’d thrown him the magazine landed next him and didn’t move. Somebody on the other side wasn’t playing nice. Mackey rolled to face the top of the rubble. He put a round through the eye of the first fur-covered rebel brave enough to clear the top. Around him, the remains of Third fell back to positions behind tool bins and lockers. Mackey had maybe half a magazine and one grenade left. The others couldn’t be doing much better. They would never hold like this.
“Mara, get ready to send your men below.” Mackey pointed at the ladder leading down to the transfer station. “We need to buy a few seconds to get down the rabbit hole. If anyone else has a grenade left, get ready to use it in front of the breach. Thavy, disregard your last order. Once we are clear, get around to the south and clear these fuckers off of us. Gooden, get anyone close to the building out of the way before she gets here.”
Mackey yanked his remaining grenade free and pulled the pin. “Now!” he called over the net and threw the grenade. It arched over the rubble and disappeared. Three more sailed with it. He didn’t wait for an explosion. He ran for the gaping, square hole in the center of the room. A soldier swung over the fibercrete lip in front of him and disappeared. He was followed by a second. Mackey had his weapon ready to cover their escape, but the enemy hadn’t reorganized yet. A soldier jumped down from the roof and landed next him. An instant later, he too disappeared down the hole. In seconds, only Mackey and Mara remained.
“You’re first,” Mackey said.
Thankfully, Mara didn’t have time to play brave and argue. Any moment, the little bastards would be on them. Mara slung his weapon and swung himself over the edge, sliding away into the darkness fireman style with his hands on each side of the ladder.
Mackey tried to close his injured hand. It didn’t work, and there was no time to use the nanite spray in his medkit. It would be difficult getting down the ladder, and it wouldn’t be fast. That was why he’d sent Mara first. He started to sling his weapon, but it was too late. A host of rebels cleared the top of the rubble. Mackey dove behind the fibercrete lip surrounding the hole as a hail of bullets peppered his combat armor. He was lucky none of them found a seam between the plates, but that didn’t mean there was no pain involved. Every impact to his armor felt like a mule kick. He would be sore for days, but for now, adrenaline let him ignore the pain.
He twisted the selector switch on his weapon to automatic. There was only one way out of this, and he had no idea whether or not he would survive the fall. He took a deep breath, preparing to jump, and came up firing. He swept the weapon back and forth without aiming. The closest rebels fell screaming.
A bullet skimmed the top of his helmet, snapping his head back until he found himself looking at half a ceiling and the broken winch. A hook swung lazily back and forth from the winch cable. “Worth a shot,” he said to himself. He fired the last of his ammo at a pair of rebels. One dove safely away. The other was punched from his feet.
Mackey dropped the rifle and jumped for the cable. His good hand closed over the hook. The cable unwound, and he dropped like a stone down the shaft. “Thavy, we are clear!” he yelled, wondering if the words would be his last—he had no idea how far down it was to the transfer station.
There was a whining screech of metal above him and his descent slowed before jerking to a halt. The snap of the cable slammed him into the hard fibercrete wall. He tried to hold on, but mass, speed, and blunt trauma won out over the strength in his hand. He tumbled down the hole. He had a quick glimpse of a polished floor rising to meet him. This was not the way he’d expected to die.
Instead of a hard, metal floor, he slammed face-first into painfully hot water. The surprise nearly tore the breath from his lungs, and the weight of his armor pulled him rapidly to the bottom. He flailed his arms around for anything he could use and felt something long and thin. He pulled himself toward it and found himself holding the frame of a ladder. His lungs burned, and panic threatened to overwhelm him, but rung-by-rung he climbed until, at last, his head broke the surface. Gasping and coughing, he hugged the ladder tight and rested his head against the wall. A loud hum filled his ears, and it took him a moment to realize the sound wasn’t coming from a shorted out com system.
“Give me your hand!” Mara yelled over the hum.
Mackey reached up without looking, and for the third time of the night, Mara pulled him to safety. They were at the end of a long, wide tunnel with a walkway along one side and a drop down into the water on the other. Dim lights ran along the length of the ceiling, leading the way toward where the maglev station must be located. If he’d fallen any closer to this side, he would have broken his neck hitting the walkway. As it was, he’d landed in the large cistern of water used to cool the maglev generators. Those generators explained the hum.
Next to him Mara peered back up the shaft. The other three soldiers who’d made it down before them were well behind him, making their way down the tunnel.
“We need to move,” Mara yelled over the hum. “They are climbing down. We need to find a better spot to hold them off, but first you need a weapon.” He fired off a burst of rounds up into the darkness and stepped back.
Projectiles rained back down.
Mackey slid a little father out of the way and climbed to his feet.
When the rounds stopped, Mara leaned forward and did it again. His effort was rewarded with a scream followed by a rebel tumbling out of the hole. There was a loud crack when it hit the walkway.
Mackey shivered. A half-meter difference in his fall, and that would have been him.
Mara eased himself close to the dead rebel while keeping an eye up above him. He grabbed the body by the ankle and dragged it clear. It wore a small suit of combat armor that only covered the torso—more like a vest with plates—and a short chemical rifle was slung over its back. Mara stripped it away, along
with the bandolier of magazines clipped to the vest. He passed them to Mackey.
Mackey turned the weapon over in his hands. It was a simple thing, with a short heavy barrel and iron sights. There was a switch he assumed was for safe and fire, and a single button for releasing the magazine. He had to take his armored glove off to fit his finger in the trigger housing. Holding it up to his shoulder it felt like a toy. He pulled the trigger and automatic fire stitched a path along the water where he aimed. A very deadly toy.
He nodded to Mara. “Let’s move out.”
The five of them moved quickly along the walkway, passing pipes and grates that offered little cover. The air grew hotter, and the hum grew louder the further they went. The water beside them now churned and bubbled, and steam rose in wisps from its surface. Mackey’s goggles fogged up, forcing him to pull them up onto his helmet in order to see. After they had gone no more than 100 meters, the cistern and walkway ended. Stairs led down into a large room filled with twisting pipes, cables, and machinery. They had reached the maglev generators.
A thundering crash came from somewhere in front of them. Mara and his men dove for cover. Mackey cocked his head, listening to the sound. The crashing noise faded away. He laughed when he realized where it came from. “It’s the merculite being dumped into a maglev car. Our enemy is that way.” He yelled over the hum and pointed back down the tunnel. “We have to hold them here.”
Mackey went down the stairs and swung back around to a pipe at the base of the dammed-up end of the cistern. Climbing up, he could feel the water rushing through the hot pipe. Without armor, it would have burned him. Once on top, he had just enough height to fire back down the tunnel. The others spread out along the stairs, using the descent for cover, or climbed to the top of machinery to overwatch those on the stairs.
They didn’t have to wait long. Muzzle flashes and tracer rounds lit up the dim tunnel, and projectiles chipped away at the walls and tore up the water in front of Mackey. The remains of Third Squad returned fire. The reverberating thunder pounded Mackey’s eardrums, and the smell of chemical explosives filled the air. The tiny rifle bucked in his hands over and over as he targeted each of the muzzle flashes and then ducked to prevent return fire from taking his head off while he reloaded. He used up a second magazine in the same manner.
The madness continued around him, with both sides fighting relentlessly for a final victory, but there were lulls in the fighting. Short moments of quiet where the pace of the shooting slowed down to a trickle before picking back up to a roaring crescendo of gunfire. Mackey settled into a rhythm. Duck when it was the worst. Come up shooting when it tapered down. Duck again before return fire found his position.
One by one, Third Squad fell to the onslaught. A bullet found a seam on a soldier’s armor, right above his chest and below the ring of plates that guarded his neck. Mackey saw him slump on the stairs, his life bleeding out and down the steps. Another took a round just below the visor on his helmet and above his goggles. He tumbled from the top of a maglev generator.
With no cover, the rebels fared worse. While the muzzle flashes grew closer, it seemed to Mackey there were far less than when they started. He slid down from his position and crouched against the cistern wall. The echo of gunfire slowed to halt until the only sound remaining was the hum of the generators.
“This is Chief, can anyone hear me?” he called into the mic. There was no reply. He wasn’t even sure the damned thing was working after falling into the water. There were two bodies on the stairs. There was a body sprawled in front of a maglev generator. He couldn’t be sure, but none of them looked like Mara. If the squad leader was alive, Mackey had no idea where he was located. He was alone, with who knew how many rebels left coming for him and the transfer station.
He popped in his final magazine and let the bolt go forward. “Fight or die, Chief,” he said to himself. “Fight or die.” Well, he wouldn’t die here, huddled in a corner waiting for them to come. When in doubt, take the fight to the enemy. He took a deep breath and charged up the stairs.
Mackey had the small weapon up and ready to fire before his line of sight cleared the top step, and he was pulling the trigger before he even saw the cluster of a dozen or so rebels no more than ten meters down the walkway.
Surprisingly, Mackey noted, an “oh shit” face looked the same behind buckteeth and fur as it did on a human—eyes round and wide till the white is visible surrounding the whole cornea and the bottom jaw hanging slack and open. The lead rebel never had a chance to move, much less return fire. Mackey’s first shots punched into its gut just below the chest plate. He didn’t see the rebel fall. He was already swinging the barrel onto the next target. He put two rounds center mass of that one.
Mackey killed a third rebel before the remainder opened up on him. A slug smashed his torso armor, spinning him to the side and knocking the wind out of him. Another to his thigh armor nearly swept his leg out from under him. Still, he kept his weapon pointed forward and sprayed rounds into the tight formation. Two more rebels fell, only to be replaced by those behind them. A bullet hit Mackey in the center of his chest like a sledgehammer, knocking him backwards. It was only a matter of time before one of their rounds found a seam in his combat armor or smashed through his face. Mackey continued to fire. He would take as many rebels with him as he could before he ran out of ammo.
A calmness settled around Mackey as he resigned himself to his impending death, when suddenly, up out of the water of the cistern came Mara like a hero from one of the old 20th century action movies. He’d dumped his combat armor, so he even had the shirtless part right.
Caught off guard from their flank, the short-statured rebels tried to regroup, but it was too late. Mackey and Mara had them in a crossfire that sowed death into their formation. When Mackey ran out of ammo, he charged forward and swung the small, heavy rifle like a club, smashing the head of one of the short-statured rebels. He swung the rifle over and over again, breaking the bones of anything that moved. After a blurry moment of blood and anarchy, he found he was the only remaining combatant standing on the walkway.
He turned to thank Mara and recoiled at the sight of the soldier’s skin. It was a deep red and covered with sagging blisters that draped down wherever Mackey looked. The heat of the water at this end of the cistern had cooked Mara like a well-boiled lobster back on earth. There wasn’t enough nano-spray in the whole platoon to save the man. “Mara, I—”
“Save it, Chief. There’s...nothing to say,” Mara said between clenched teeth as the strength left him, and he slid back down into the water. He made a last effort to keep his head above the water. His final words were barely audible over the hum. “Kill...the rest of these sons-a-bitche...for me.” His head slipped under the boiling water, and he was gone, leaving Mackey alone in the tunnel.
Mackey threw the bloody rifle down and made his way back down the walkway and up the ladder. There were no rebels left alive to try and stop him.
* * *
The dropships’ thrusters ignited, lifting the heavily-armored ships and the soldiers they carried toward orbit and a rendezvous with a guild transport ship. The contract was over. The rebellion was smashed; its leaders were dead. Only splinter cells remained, and those were not part of the contract’s terms. All payments were complete and final.
Two soldiers remained behind to watch the dropships climb to the heavens. Mackey and Thavy had taken their payment in the form of one well-armored and well-equipped flyer. They had business to finish and new titles to go with it—“Heroes of Transfer Station 17.”
“Now what, Chief?” Thavy asked. “Although the pay is better, I’ve no idea what the ‘Senior Military Advisors to the Geomide Council’ do exactly.”
“It’s simple, Thavy. We kill gophers.”
“But only the bad ones, right?”
“Yes, all the bad ones—for Mara and the rest of the platoon.”
# # # # #
THE KRA’DAAR by Chris Winder
&nb
sp; Tou’Ka City, Planet Kra
Nik’Thil peered out the porthole of the shuttle as it approached the landing pad. His once-small village now extended further than he could see. His birth home, if it still existed, was hidden by a grotesque labyrinth of cylindrical and conical buildings that glimmered unnaturally in the bright sunlight.
The forest, as far as he could tell, appeared to be healthy and lush, but it had been pushed back several miles. He felt sick to his stomachs. This was the price of progress, he knew, but that didn’t mean he had to accept it. Suddenly he became aware of his surroundings; something had yanked him out of his musings, and he turned his attention to it fully.
His olfactory glands detected something dangerous, something his species had, over millions of years of evolution, decided should be more important than anything else. He smelled smoke. A quick glance around him confirmed he was not imagining the odor. Several other Kra’daar onboard the shuttle were also looking around nervously. The other species, it seemed, either ignored their olfactory glands, or didn’t possess them.
Two Kra’daar one row behind him and on the opposite side leaned toward a window and pointed with their long fingers at something outside. Their mocha-colored skin became lighter and mottled, the equivalent to blanching. Nik’Thil glanced out his porthole, but didn’t see anything.
He erupted from his seat, stepped on several feet, tentacles, and talons, and apologized to their owners on his way to the center aisle. Then he apologized to the owners of other appendages and locomotion organs on the other side of the shuttle as he pressed his brown face to the opposite porthole.
Several dozen hover ships swarmed the area from which the smoke poured into the sky. The fire was not visible, but the evil, twisted finger of smoke and the lines of chemical fire retardant that streamed from the huge firefighting drones marked the beast.
For a Few Credits More: More Stories from the Four Horsemen Universe (The Revelations Cycle Book 7) Page 34
