The hesitant dawn was crisp and clear. Out on the impossibly bright snow, Wilkes arranged the troops into a defensive formation.
“There’s every chance the Irians will launch an ambush on the way down,” Talbot said severely. “If one of you lets the formation lapse, everyone is vulnerable. You read me?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Then move out,” Talbot said. “Fielding and I will take vanguard positions. Wilkes will comb the rear. Remember what’s at stake. We had a good first day but we’re at war. This can’t last. That’s all.”
The host began following the deep footprints left the previous day. Talbot let Laura roam ahead, content to sit in a central position so he could provide support fire as necessary. His devil-may-care attitude from the previous day had all but dissipated. Here, descending a freezing valley with a vastly outnumbered force, knowing the enemy was lying in ambush, Talbot felt every inch of what was at stake. It felt heavy enough to crush him into red paste.
There was still something surreal about the notion that this whole enterprise had come down to him. The process-driven obsession of Terran High Command was out of control. How on earth did scoring well on some abstract test make him remotely suitable for this massive, massive task?
Talbot had never lacked for self esteem, but right then he was filled with a blizzard of doubt. The hours dripped by slowly and he forced himself to concentrate on Fielding’s poised, alert figure through the blood-red forest. At length a realization stared him in the face as if it had always been there - he didn’t want to lose her.
All this time he’d told himself that if the Terrans lost the Virtual War he could hole up in some remote trading hub and drink himself into an elongated stupor for a decade or two. But everything was different now. He couldn’t pretend to be so disengaged. Laura Fielding was the nexus of his fear, his desire, his doubt. She believed in the Terran Republic more than he did and he wanted to honor that loyalty. The best way to do that was win today. Which made this descent - with the extreme sun glare, energy-sapping knee-deep snow and constant threat of violence - so nerve-shredding.
With each hard-won, pain-staking step, Talbot knew that ambush awaited them. Ashby was too smart not to try. But Talbot didn’t regret climbing the mountain. Those beacons up there were unlikely to be re-taken, and what was the alternative? He didn’t have the troops to attack Ashby on the plain. The Terrans would’ve been picked off out there in the open. At least here they had some cover to work with. Plus, they had a strong wind at their backs. Not nearly enough to even the ledger against thirty Irians, but it was something to hold onto.
Fielding turned to Talbot from her position thirty yards downslope. She winked. Talbot grinned like an oaf, his heart well and truly ensnared for the first time in his life. Then she slowed and waved Talbot down.
“We’re close to the trip wires,” she said. “If the Irians haven’t triggered them we’ll need to deactiv -”
She didn’t need to finish. A vanguard of Irian foragers appeared around the dog-leg bend two hundred yards downslope. They approached cautiously, clearly sensing the Terran presence. Within seconds Talbot and Fielding would be seen. Talbot realized his only chance was to draw the enemy through the trip wires to his current position. It was now or never.
“Fire!” he bellowed, squirting plasma at the distant foragers. He was barely in range, but Fielding was comfortably in the “red zone”. She dropped to one knee and lined up her first target. The forager’s head disappeared in a cloud of fine red mist.
The rest of the Irian force rounded the bend and sprinted toward the Terrans. Talbot scrambled to his own cover, a half-buried slab of rock to his right. Thankfully they’d left the snow behind, otherwise mobility would’ve been an issue. Talbot took care not to waste ammo from long range. Besides, he wanted to entice the enemy through his trip wires. He squeezed off the occasional shot while he waved his comrades into cover. Frowning, Wilkes joined him.
“They’ll have twice our number,” he said. “Once they pass through the wires, I don’t like our chances.”
“Defensive positions!” Talbot bellowed. “When the Irians engage, prepare to break their line!”
It was the only way they could possibly survive this situation. Hopefully the grenade-rigged trip wires broke the attacking line and allowed opportunities for breach runners.
The Irian foragers hit the first wire and triggered the bore grenades. Tongues of flame and acid lanced the enemy ranks. At least three foragers crumpled to the ground, but the rest were undeterred. The Irian vanguard broke through the second wire, then the third.
Troubled, Talbot watched in tense silence as the foragers sprung every trip wire in the valley. Fielding took care of the survivors with calm efficiency. That left the main Irian force, advancing through the cleared valley with calm authority. Ashby and some twenty dragoons in a tight phalanx formation, long-range harpoons poised.
Suddenly the rocks and stunted shrubs seemed hopelessly inadequate as cover.
“Laura, we should -” Talbot began, peering downslope.
The scout was kneeling, but there was something wrong. At first Talbot thought it must be a glitch in the game, but she slumped to ground. Her head had been blown clean off.
Through the shock he gradually became aware of sharp explosions all around.
“Get down!” Wilkes screamed.
Talbot ducked behind the rock as a harpoon bolt clipped the top edge and shattered most of the top half.
“What the fuck …?”
“Incendiary tips,” Wilkes said. “They’ve upgraded their harpoons.”
The engineers were firing from cover, but their pistols were still out of range. The Irian phalanx advanced smoothly, the leading dragoons preparing for another lethal long range volley.
“How do we break that formation?” Talbot asked, only just keeping the panic from his voice.
Wilkes paused, his face ashen.
“We don’t,” he said with soft finality, receiving a harpoon bolt to the head. The explosive charge removed half his face and threw him back several yards.
“Wilkes!”
Talbot sank against against his rock, huddled over like a fugitive child. A quick glance confirmed the Irian phalanx had move into pistol range.
“Keep firing!” he shouted into the eerie silence that was punctuated by whistling harpoon bolts. “Take down as many as you can!”
He stood and fired himself, willing to burn through his ammo in a last ditch attempt to save lives. Keeping his arms steady to control recoil, he side-stepped to the central Terran position. His engineers were under heavy fire. No one seemed able to sight their pistols long enough to make sure of their shots.
Harpoon bolts whistled in thick and fast, a blitzkrieg of deadly precision. A panoply of explosions suggested too many were finding their mark. Navy-suited engineers leaked blood into the rocky slope as they gave their last breath. Talbot almost screamed in disbelief and rage as he watched Sanger try to crawl across the slope to him with both her legs blown off.
Shaking himself from the paralysis caused by Ashby’s brutal attack, Talbot noticed Corbin’s corpse at his feet. He lifted the body, using it as a shield against incoming harpoon bolts. Knowing he had less than twenty seconds before the ecologist’s body was ripped to shreds, Talbot advanced, lifting Corbin’s harvest sack along the way. He also grabbed Fielding’s sniper rifle, unwilling to leave it for the Irians.
Incoming fire tore away several chunks of Corbin’s flesh. Gritting his teeth against the storm, Talbot kept moving, knowing he couldn’t be more than forty yards from the Irian phalanx. He noticed the bore grenades hooked to Corbin’s belt and shoved them into the harvest sack, realizing he had fashioned the crudest bomb imaginable.
All that mattered now was timing. Talbot waited until Corbin’s body had been shredded before letting it go and swinging the sack high over his head.
“Get down!” barked a guttural voice. It was Ashby, instantly seeing the threa
t Talbot posed.
Talbot hurled the sack with all his might. The bore grenades sailed through the air and landed straight on top of the enemy formation, scattering dragoons like nine pins. Talbot didn’t have time to watch the show. He was already sprinting down the slope, desperate to reach the bend before he was skewered.
Figuring he’d make a smaller target if he was seated, he leaped onto the loose scree and was carried forward over the shifting surface. Whistles to either side suggested he was dangerously close to losing limbs, but he ploughed on, only yards away from relative safety. Heart in his mouth, he turned his body sharply to avoid hitting a rock only to be confronted with the chassis of the Irian quad.
Talbot struck at it speed, taking the impact on his left side. He was thrown over the back of the vehicle, landing in the back seat. For good measure he hit his head on the corner of a long box. Dazed, he struggled to get his bearings. His rib cage felt like it had been shattered. A harpoon bolt thudded into the back of the quad - a dragoon had already rounded the bend.
25
Talbot scrambled into the front seat and remembered that Terrans couldn’t drive Irian vehicles. Or could they? Frantically pushing every button on the dashboard, he swore vehemently at the machine. The dragoons would be upon him in moments. The first one to arrive tapped mockingly on the side panel.
“Come, human,” he said in mangled Terran. “Nowhere to go.”
“That’s what you think,” Talbot said, watching the alien’s approach through the rear view mirror. He drew the combat knife from his ankle sheath and back-handed the weapon into the dragoon’s thin arm. Drawing the alien close, he held the thing’s hand over the ignition terminal. The quad’s dashboard lit up and its propulsion bulb roared into life.
Talbot kicked the dragoon away and took the controls. Careful not to accelerate too quickly and spin his wheels on the loose scree, he surged downslope. Several harpoon bolts impacted against the rear panel, their charges ripping chunks of steel free.
Looking to gain as much separation as possible, Talbot gradually increased his speed. The winding valley was difficult to negotiate at the best of times, but he had nothing left to lose. At length he dared to believe he’d outstripped the pursuing dragoons but yet another bolt strike, this one hitting the inner windshield, was an alarming reminder that dragoons were fast, much faster than humans. Worse still, the sapphire blue of the reservoir loomed ahead. And yet … weren’t these quads amphibious?
Hating the Irian symbols on the dashboard, he tried to imagine what an amphibious setting might look like to an Irian. He pulled a throttle that had wavy lines engraved on it and the quad was raised several inches by a self-inflating rubber cushion underneath the craft. It surged over the scree and barely lost speed as it reached the rippling water.
Talbot laughed manically as he pulled away from the scampering dragoons and bounced from swell to swell. He made straight for the supply cavity in the dam wall. The Irians would reach the western control tower in a matter of minutes, so there wasn’t much time. Talbot and the quad were consumed by shade as the towering dam wall loomed. As the vehicle rose on the platform, Talbot gathered himself and watched the Irians scurrying along the western shoreline.
The platform clattered to a halt and he allowed the quad to roll forward until it was nudging the dam’s southern balustrade. The wide expanse of the delta beckoned to the south, but how on earth was he going to get down there?
Refusing to panic, he turned his mind to logistics. He could cross the reservoir and find an eastern track to the delta, but it was already close to midday on the second day. As he pondered the situation, Talbot noticed the long box on on the back seat, the one he’d hit his head on earlier. Judging from the vague symbols, it appeared to have something to do with their thopter.
Talbot prised it open with his combat knife and found a parachute inside. It was a standard cord-operated affair and seemed functional. Talbot’s heart lurched - here was his ticket off the dam wall and down to the delta. He’d used parachutes in his early career, particularly during a stint as a paratrooper on Fidel VI, so he had familiarity.
And yet a problem remained. What to do with the quad? He had to destroy it, that much was certain. If the Irians could hound him across the delta in this thing he had no chance. The enemy dragoons would on the dam wall in minutes. Not enough time to torch the vehicle, and the waist-high balustrades prevented him from pushing it off. What if he crashed through?
Talbot instantly knew what he had to do. It was hardly the safest option but he was now alone against at least a dozen Irians. His mind made up, he backed the quad against the northern balustrade to give himself plenty of space. Then he deactivated amphibious mode, smiling when the quad sighed and retracted its thick rubber skirt.
The parachute came on next - it wasn’t a perfect fit but it would serve. Praying to every god he knew, Talbot gunned the machine to full acceleration before releasing the handbrake. The quad surged forward at high speed, breaking through the southern balustrade as Talbot had hoped. He was overcome with a delirious feeling of freefall as the heavier quad fell away below him.
Had he achieved enough separation to the wall? It looked awfully close. Talbot tried not to look, positioning his body so he’d have every chance of catching a zephyr away from the hard surface. He resisted the urge to engage his parachute, wary of cross-winds that might push him against the wall. He’d seen too many soldiers make that mistake.
When he judged that he had just enough space to work with, he pulled the cord. The material shot out and spread like a butterfly’s wings. Coursing with adrenalin, he cruised south over the delta. The quad crashed violently below him, throwing up a billowing fireball crowned with acrid black smoke. Talbot coughed and spluttered but broke through the poisonous veil and sighted a suitable landing zone.
He cruised in for touchdown on a long, thin, stretch of dirt. He tumbled a couple of times to absorb the impact and detached himself from the chute. His left rib cage throbbed fiercely and his throat was bone dry. Alas, his canteen had been skewered and was useless. The water on the delta was brackish and foul - the fresh deluge had mixed with centuries of saline deposition.
It was likely that the Irians had stored water at their various beacon fortifications, but their infrastructure had been washed away by the flash flood. Talbot got down low to the ground and looked through his sniper rifle scopes. The nearest beacon appeared to be a couple of clicks to the southeast. He began at a trot, noting the warmth of the sun down here on the plain. The wrecked quad was still smoking to the north, obscuring his movement. The Irians would be hustling down a goat track to the plain - when they reached the salt pan Talbot needed to be in cover.
His breath caught in his throat as the south-eastern beacon came into view. The flood had certainly done its work - several palisades had been swept away. A sudden movement had Talbot scurrying behind a rock. There were three Irians guarding this location, dragoons from the look of them. Talbot groaned under his breath. Ashby was certainly no fool. These Irians were his contingency. He’d rightly guessed that any surviving Terrans would go straight for the nearest beacon.
The Irians had gotten a glimpse of Talbot but probably didn’t have a fix on his exact position. Which gave him time - but not much. He sank to his belly and commando crawled to a closer rock. This one was substantially smaller and provided poor cover, but Talbot was now within lobbing range.
He kissed his last grenade and pitched it at the clustered dragoons. It was a mistake to huddle together against an unseen assailant - a mistake that would be their last. The grenade crackled and fizzed, hopefully distributing its acid in an even circle. Talbot drew his assault rifle and peered over the rock. Two of the Irians were down, whilst the third was crawling away in agony. Talbot finished him off quickly and turned the beacon.
Grimacing from the pain in his ribs, he checked the bodies - the Irians didn’t carry water, but they did carry a strange saline solution in little purple tabs. He
poured one into his mouth and almost spat the bitter liquid out. With difficulty he kept it down, figuring any hydration was better than done. His stomach cramped a little but there were no other symptoms.
Sweating profusely in the sun, Talbot considered the changing scenario. He’d just turned the first of seven Irian beacons on the plain. He scurried back to his rock to scout the exact disposition of the main Irian force as they entered the plain. There was no movement through his rifle scopes. Ashby knew he had time on his side. A day and a half in which to hunt and kill Talbot.
Of course, Talbot could hide, but sooner or later beacons needed to be taken or the war was lost. No, Ashby held all the cards. An overwhelming advantage. Talbot would need to think outside the square if he had a hope of surviving. As he watched the distant, hazy northern foothills, he noticed he was due to level up. Killing those Irians and taking a beacon and substantially boosted his XP. He accessed his character screen and considered his options.
This choice was a critical one - there may not be another chance to level up. Talbot scanned the available skill trees, feeling like a queen in a game of chess. As leader he had a dizzying array of skills to choose from. In the end one in particular caught his eye - night-vision for the sniper rifle. Maybe, just maybe, he could pick off a couple of Irians at range when night fell.
If it was a cold, clear night, the delta was the perfect location to use such a skill. Sold, he selected the perk and checked how much ammo the rifle held. There were six bullets left in the slide release mechanism. It would’ve been nice to have grabbed Fielding’s ammo but there hadn’t enough time.
Talbot was ruminating on his sometimes lover when a flash of movement caught his eye. The Irians were entering the plain. Nine. Nine was the number. Ashby and eight dragoons, all of them armed to the teeth. As they set about heading in his direction, Talbot felt like he was in one of those films he liked to watch in his downtime on the Aurora. The ones where the hero had climactic showdowns on quiet, eerie streets in the middle of the desert.
Virtual War: Alpha Centauri (A LitRPG Novel) Page 16
