“Who gave that order?”
“Major General Targen, Sir. He wanted this communication outage taken–”
“Get those patrols reassigned to their normal routes, effective immediately,” Cabre said. “We’re blind as a bat here without our comms and without patrols out there. They could be marching a thousand clanks into their enclave right now.” He paused, then said, “Or out of it.”
The Captain saluted and made a quick departure, heading over to a Humvee with one of his men in tow.
“General, you don’t think they could be advancing right now, do you?” the Major said.
“Our defences are far stronger than theirs,” Cabre said. “They would be out of their minds to come at us. By rights, their only chance of winning this fight is to fortify themselves in their enclave as they try to thin out our numbers. But if they came at us, it wouldn’t be the first crazy thing the Marauders have ever done.”
Cabre reached down to the radio on his belt, but when he lifted it and adjusted the volume there was only garbled interference.
“Someone salvage what they can from this pile of shit,” he said, pointing vaguely to the smouldering wreck. “We’ll see what we can learn from it.” He began striding back toward the Humvee. “In the meantime–”
Suddenly there was a sudden series of bright lights over toward Ascension City, and Cabre stopped in his tracks. The others stopped too, like a herd of deer in the headlights, and moments later the sounds of distant explosions echoed across the wasteland. The soldiers raised their heads to the sky and stared, as if they couldn’t believe what they were seeing.
It reminded me of a fireworks display of old, with luminescent red and yellow flashes scoring my retinas as loud pops and crackles shook the air around us. Unlike those times of old where I’d stood and admired the spectacle, on this occasion I only felt dread.
Cabre was the first to move.
“Goddammit,” he said, reaching the nearest Humvee. “They’re already here.”
17
The ride back to Ascension City was even more jarring than the previous trip had been, as the Lieutenant at the wheel pushed the Humvee to its limits. Careening through a particularly deep ditch, my head bashed painfully into the seat in front of me, and the Humvee almost flipped coming out the other side, banging back down into a horizontal position with such force that my teeth clacked together audibly.
“Don’t let up, Lieutenant,” Cabre said grimly, urging him onward.
“Yessir.”
We wheeled around toward the old highway, seeking to retrace our path from the earlier trip, when the soldier in the front passenger seat, a corporal named Trac, pointed out through the windshield.
“Holy shit, would you look at that!”
Ahead there was a massive horde of shapes seeping across the wasteland like roiling black fog. In amongst the seething mass I could see vehicle headlights and the intermittent flash of discharging firearms punctuating the dimness. I rolled down the window next to me, and over the roar of the Humvee I could hear their deafening clamour even at this distance.
“That’s a lot of clanks out there,” I shouted at Cabre. “I’m guessing they’re not leaving anyone at home for this one.”
“No, most likely not,” Cabre said quietly. “This is it. This is where it all ends.” He turned to the Major. “And this is not five hundred Dusters we’re up against.”
“Our intel might have come up short, General.”
“Our intel is fucked,” Cabre growled. “I’m going to want answers once this is all over, Major.”
Trac had raised a pair of binoculars and was now scouring the scene before us, as the contingent of Marauders bore down on Ascension City.
“They’ve breached the perimeter in the South-west,” Trac said. “The wall’s blown apart.”
“Take us through the breach, Lieutenant,” Cabre said calmly. “They’ll squash us like ants if we try to go through the guts of their main force.” He leaned forward. “Trac, can we raise anyone on the horn yet?”
Trac fiddled with the radio unit before him, but was greeted by more high-pitched interference.
“Nothing, General.”
“General,” the Lieutenant said, pulling sharply on the steering wheel, “if they get in between us and the city we might have to throw smoke and double back.”
“That’ll be a last resort, Lieutenant. We’re not going to last long out here on our own.”
As we curved away from the mass of Marauders east of us, a number of dirt bikes peeled off from the pack and began to veer in our direction. The two Humvees that were travelling with us responded immediately, altering their course to intercept the invaders, soldiers ready at the roof-mounted turrets. As we neared the broken wall, a Marauder on foot ahead of us turned and fired off a couple of ill-directed rounds from a shotgun before diving for cover. We thundered through the wall, bouncing and sliding across the rubble, and now the city loomed not far away.
“There!” Cabre said, pointing to our right. A short distance away, three Marauders were clustered around what looked to be some sort of mortar. “Take ’em out!”
The Lieutenant responded, changing course rapidly and bearing down on the Marauders at a rapid clip. Intent on their task, the Marauders responded to the danger too late and were thrown in all directions, their bodies pounding off the Humvee’s chassis with bone-shredding force.
“Put it on the floor, man!” Trac said. “Move it!”
“We’re at full tilt already,” the Lieutenant responded.
Further to the east, the checkpoints were being overrun and torn apart by the invading Marauders. Gunfire rang out, and the sky was lit by more explosions as the Marauders swarmed over everything in their path like hungry meat ants. In the upper reaches of the city, more fiery eruptions indicated that other mortar crews had successfully found their range and were beginning to pepper the nearby buildings.
“Where did they come by this kind of ordnance?” the Major said.
“That’s another question I’ll be asking of our intel gatherers,” Cabre grated. “I’m starting to think they had more intel on us than we had on them.”
We ran down another two Marauders on foot, sending them bumping through the undercarriage of the Humvee, before reaching the final checkpoint that led inside the city. It was ablaze, surrounded by rubble, and there seemed to be no clear path through.
“Stop here,” Cabre said. “We’ll need to make our way forward on foot.”
The Humvee slid to a halt and we scrambled out. Soldiers rushed past, diving to the ground as they attempted to find cover from the incoming fire. I bustled toward the checkpoint with Cabre a step ahead, the other soldiers from the Humvee flanking him on either side. Casting an eye over my shoulder, I beheld the blood-curdling sight of a thousand or more Marauders bearing down upon us in all manner of vehicles and on foot.
Closer, only about fifty metres away, I saw a Marauder squinting through an eyepiece in our direction, something large and round and black on his shoulder.
As I watched, it turned red and flared brightly in the gloom.
“Down,” I yelled, spearing forward and knocking Cabre off his feet. The rocket went whizzing above us and I felt the heat of it on my back, and then it slammed into a building not far away, engulfing it in flames and sending a spray of rubble raining down on us like hail.
Cabre rolled onto his elbows and looked back at me, bewildered. His normally neat and clean visage was covered in dirt.
“You underestimated them, General,” I said. “Didn’t you?”
Before he could answer, strong hands clutched at him and pulled him away over the rubble and through the ruined checkpoint that led into the city. I went scurrying after, expecting a Marauder bullet to lodge between my shoulderblades any second. Their raucous cries and the rumble of their machines intensified with each passing second.
I didn’t look back again.
By the time I made it through the checkpoint, Cabre
had already gone. Ascension soldiers pushed up from within the city as they tried to re-establish some control of the perimeter, and many of them had scaled the scaffolding to man the defensive structures that had been built into the nearby towers. I recognised several of the soldiers from earlier in the day, and evidently they remembered me, for on this occasion they let me pass without incident. I wondered what fate I might have suffered had I been unknown to them. Most likely they would have dispatched me on the spot, assuming that I was in league with the Marauders.
I made haste away from the checkpoint, not really knowing where to go or what to do. It was chaos. Fire rained down from above in the form of mortar shells and other projectile weapons, setting buildings alight and smashing into concrete pathways and roads with great destructive force. The civilians I had seen hustling around the streets earlier had already fled to parts unknown. Without much knowledge of the city I wasn’t sure where I would find somewhere safe to hide out.
I thought of The Midway and the heavy fortifications that surrounded it. That building would invariably be the major target for the Marauders, the most important trophy they sought. As such it would be subject to a great deal of attention from both sides. If it fell, I imagined the Marauders would most likely emerge victorious from this battle.
On the other hand, Ascension would be providing more protection there than in any other part of the city. It was certainly the most fortified area I’d seen. From that perspective it might well be the safest place I could go.
Recalling the path on which Malyn had led me a few days previous, I set off in search of The Midway. Even though I had been denied entry only a few hours before, many things had changed since then. First and foremost, Cabre now had an understanding of my value. I was no longer just another anonymous face in the crowd. He knew that I could help him restart the Grid. That might be enough to get my foot in the door, as long as I could pass the message through to him.
The sound of the Marauders outside had been baffled by the towers that ringed the perimeter of the city, but it was still disconcertingly loud, the noise scattering across the city and filtering down to street level like rancid precipitation. A Humvee up ahead had crashed into a wall and been abandoned, its doors hanging open and a radio crackling inside unattended. A crater in the road nearby indicated that it may have been struck by a random mortar.
Ducking through the door, I searched the cabin for a gun or some other weapon with which to defend myself, but there was nothing.
As I backed my way out there was an explosion in a tower above me, and I crouched beneath the Humvee for shelter as fragments of steel and mortar rained down on the street. There was another strike a couple of streets over accompanied by a scream of pain.
This place is going to look like Perish soon.
I hurried away from the Humvee, knowing that I wouldn’t be safe until I made it further away from the edge of the city, then stopped. Two clanks emerged from an alleyway across the street, one with short dark hair and the other tall and bald, both cautious and uncertain, seemingly as lost as I was. I opened my mouth to offer a greeting, then stopped.
They turned to me as one, the scars on their cheeks glistening like mercury.
They’re already inside the damn city.
I turned and dived behind the Humvee as a shot rang out, smashing into the chassis of the vehicle next to my head. I got to my feet and kept going, keeping low and vaulting through a doorway into an adjacent building. I found myself in a small foyer, and in the low light I could see a staircase leading upward, which I took three steps at a time. Out in the street I could hear them coming after me.
“Woooo, fresh meat, Caf!”
“Fresh meat, yeah!”
I kept going past the first floor, stopping briefly at the second to try a door, but finding it locked I continued on upward. As I went past the third floor I heard my pursuers thumping up the stairs behind me.
“I get the first one, ya big lunk.”
“First one, yeah.”
Just like the old days, I thought with grim humour. On the run from Marauders again.
On the fifth floor a gaping hole in the stairwell wall almost saw me make a quick exit from the building, the floor crumbling as my foot strayed too close to the fissure. Looking out onto the street, I could see the Humvee far below. It was a long way down, and though there was a possibility that I would survive the leap, I doubted that I would be in any condition to run away afterward. I would make an easy target for the Marauders once they realised what I’d done.
Looking upward, I knew there were only one or two more levels left to go. After that I’d be on the roof and there would be no more room to run. I decided I had to evade them somehow.
Shrinking back into the gloom in the corner of the stairwell, I pressed myself up against the wall and waited, hoping that they would be too distracted by the precarious drop to notice me.
“Hurry up, fatty,” I heard one of the Marauders say. They were getting closer, maybe only one level below me now.
“Hurry up, yeah.”
“If this prick escapes, it’s on you.”
I could see their shadows now on the stairwell, and then the first appeared, the shorter Marauder who was calling the shots. His foot slipped in the fissure as mine had done moments before, causing him to lose his balance.
“Yow… watch that, Caf,” he said, righting himself. “Place is falling apart.”
“Falling apart, yeah.”
As I’d hoped, the first Marauder continued on, his eyes already upon the next set of stairs leading upward. His taller companion then appeared, stepping gingerly across the breach with his handgun held with exaggerated care at chest height. To my chagrin, he moved with such sluggishness that it took him three or four seconds to pass, and as he was about to continue he looked right at me.
He opened his mouth to call out, the gun moving in my direction, but I was already in action, lunging forward and barrelling into his chest. He tottered backward with an oompfh and slipped through the breach, his flailing hands unable to find purchase, and then I was on the move, bolting back down the staircase at breakneck speed.
The first Marauder called out from above. “Caf!”
The only reply was the sound of something large and heavy thudding into the street below.
I had already dropped two levels when I heard the Marauder coming down after me, firing off a shot uselessly into the stairwell in frustration.
“Come here, ya piece of shit!”
In a matter of seconds I had made it back out into the street, and there lay Caf, struggling to climb off the asphalt to reach his handgun a short distance away. I strode easily past him and gathered it up.
He looked up at me, his face crumpled and missing a large patch of skin on one side. “Help me, yeah?” he said through broken teeth.
I raised the gun. “No.”
I fired twice, putting him out of his misery, then scurried away to find cover. As I disappeared into a nearby alley I heard the first Marauder reach his dead companion.
“Caf. You damn idiot.” He let out a piteous wail which became a shriek of fury. “Where are ya, ya piece of dirt?” he called. “Show your face!”
I was conflicted between continuing on toward The Midway and staying here to take out this second Marauder. After all, a Marauder I killed now was one less I had to worry about later. On the other hand, there might well be dozens of Marauders within the city already. Wasting time here would serve no useful purpose at all in the big scheme of things.
I was about to move on when I heard more footsteps in the street not far away. There were at least four or five of them by the sounds of it. As I peeked out from behind the wall, I could see the Marauder stiffen and raise his weapon uncertainly as he tried to identify the newcomers. They showed no such hesitation, unleashing a volley of bullets at him that dropped him unceremoniously at the side of his recently departed companion.
“Fish in a barrel, man,” I heard someone say
, and there was laughter from the others.
I realised I knew that voice.
“Malyn,” I said, boldly stepping forward into the street. The group turned to me as one and I recognised Elias and Lunn with her, among others. I couldn’t help but smile at the sight of them. “You got room for one more?”
She smiled broadly in return, casually resting a shotgun on her shoulder.
“For you, Cleanskin, I guess we can manage that.”
“You turn up in all kinds of places, huh?” Elias said, moving forward and clapping me on the shoulder.
“I guess so.” I glanced around at them. “Where’d you get the guns?”
“Ascension and the Marauders had a skirmish a couple of blocks back,” Malyn said, “and we picked up the leftovers. Figure there’s no point leaving perfectly good guns behind, even if they’re tagged. Not now.”
“Yeah.” I glanced down the street. “Where are you guys headed?”
“We’re heading to the perimeter, man,” Malyn said. “We’re getting out of here.”
18
“I think that’s a bad idea, Malyn.”
A couple of them simply shook their heads and began to walk away, but Lunn pushed through them and stood before me, his eyes intense.
“What have you seen, Brant? What’s out there?” he said.
I exhaled noisily. “It’s bad. There’s a huge contingent of Marauders pushing through toward the city. More than Cabre ever anticipated, by the looks of it.”
“How do you know that?” Lunn said. “Did you make it out of the city somehow?”
“In a way, yes. I was riding in a Humvee with Cabre at the time.”
“So you got to see him after all?” Malyn said.
“Yeah. I managed to get his attention over at The Midway a couple of hours ago.”
“How’d you do that?” Elias said, sceptical.
“I have some technical knowledge I thought I might be able to trade to get what I want,” I said, sparing the details. “Seems he’s interested in what I have to offer.” I scowled. “I was getting somewhere. For the first time it seemed like there might be hope. Then the Marauders showed up.”
The Fires of Yesterday (The Silent Earth, Book 3) Page 15
