The Fires of Yesterday (The Silent Earth, Book 3)

by Mark R. Healy

  The RPG soldier loaded and fired another round, this time striking the armadillo dead on and stopping it in its tracks, its forward section ruined and ripped apart and bleeding oily black smoke.

  The Marauders on foot fanned out, hiding behind the cover of the downed armadillos and anything else they could find. The firefight began in earnest then, as Ascension picked away at their targets and the Marauders returned fire, their numbers swelling considerably as reinforcements piled into the street from the south. Some encroached far enough to launch more grenades, and several went off in close proximity to my location, causing my ears to ring painfully from the loud and abrasive noise.

  Peripherally I was aware of more soldiers falling to stray bullets or explosives, and the soldier manning the RPG was only able to fire away one more round before he was blasted to bits by a well-aimed grenade from below. There was no sign of panic yet from the soldiers but it seemed clear that the superior numbers on the Marauder side were chiselling away at our defences.

  Suddenly a Marauder appeared above us on the blockade, a ghastly apparition of thick, ropey muscles and torn flesh, a hideous sneer on his face. Before anyone could react he had blown a hole in the nearest soldier’s face, emitting a jubilant, tribal ululation. He turned again, searching for his next target as he reloaded, but before he could find one, Top knot sent him spinning back away from the wall with a burst of shots to the chest.

  “That was one of yours!” she shouted, never moving her attention from the street, but I could tell it was me that she was addressing. I glanced sheepishly at Malyn beside me, and she simply shrugged.

  “What do they want us to be?” she said. “Psychic? That guy came out of nowhere.”

  It went on like that for what must have been hours. The Marauders would push forward and land a few hits, then we would pick a few off and the rest would fall back. We received some help from The Midway with snipers on its roof taking out targets here and there, their shots booming in the distance at our back. Being several blocks away and slightly on an angle, their visibility was limited, and their contribution meagre at best. In reality, the bulk of the work fell to those of us in the front line.

  Eventually the Marauders fell back, the last of them limping and scattering away into the shadows, leaving the street quiet and still for the first time in what seemed like an age. In their wake they left a multitude of dead clanks splayed out across the asphalt and in the shadows of the armadillos.

  The chatter of distant gunfire still sounded out in the city, as other parts of the perimeter were tested by the invading force.

  “That’s it?” Malyn said, wearily leaning with her back to the blockade. “Not so bad, huh?”

  “They aren’t finished yet,” Lunn muttered, his eyes fixed on the darkened end of the street. “Not by a long shot.”

  “So what are they doing? Having a coffee break?”

  “They’re probing for a weak point,” Lunn said. “Maybe they decided this wasn’t it.”

  “So if they break through somewhere else…” Elias said.

  “Then we’ll be fighting them from in front and behind,” Lunn said.

  Nearby, Top knot was walking along the blockade to inspect her troops.

  “Ammo check,” she said briskly. “Don’t get caught short, people. Keep on top of your game. The peace and quiet won’t last long. Don’t book your holiday tickets just yet.”

  “This must be eating you up, Lunn,” Elias remarked, releasing his grip on the wooden club and working his stiff fingers. He nodded at Top knot walking away. “Fighting alongside your enemy.”

  Lunn pursed his lips. “Right now Ascension are the lesser of two evils, Elias. I’ll do whatever it takes to stay alive, just like I’ve always done. There’s always time for me to hate them again after the Marauders are gone.”

  “Or maybe they’re not so bad after all. Y’know, there’s really something…” Elias trailed off, glancing curiously toward the sky. I turned my head and saw it too – a bright speck arcing across the rooftops to the south. I’d seen ones just like it earlier outside the city.

  “Incoming mortar!” I bellowed, then tried to grab Elias and Malyn and push them to safety. The soldiers scattered too, leaping away from their positions and abandoning the blockade as the mortar came whistling down. I saw Top knot screaming something at her troops and then the mortar impacted, landing just across the street with an ear-shattering crash. I covered my ears and pressed myself to the ground as one of the soldiers stumbled on top of me.

  Debris rained down on me like a passing shower, and with my senses addled by the noise and confusion I lay there for a few moments with my head spinning. Gathering my wits, I pushed the soldier away and got back to my feet. Further along the blockade, a whole section of concrete had cracked and fallen away, creating a yawning breach in the blockade wall.

  Down the street I could hear the Marauders coming again, their vigour renewed, their footsteps rapidly booming along the roadway. Looking around at the soldiers in disarray, I realised we would not be able to mount a defence in time before they reached us.

  “Fall back!” Top knot was screaming nearby, her face covered in grey dust. She pointed toward The Midway. “Back to the next blockade!” Her eyes fell upon me and she nodded. “Do it now,” she said.

  I helped Malyn to her feet and gave her a shove in the right direction, and then my eyes fell on the olive carry case in which the explosives had been stowed. Lurching toward it, I wrenched it open and pulled out one of the spitballs, ripping at the tab to activate the adhesive and then planting it firmly on the wall of the blockade. My fingers punched shakily at the keypad and I set the timer for the minimum sixty seconds, then gathered up the carry case and began to run.

  “What are you doing?” Malyn screamed, turning back to me.

  “Just keep going! I’m right on your tail!”

  Elias, Lunn and the others pushed on ahead, with several of the Ascension soldiers lingering with their rifles pointed at the blockade to allow us some extra time to escape. As I ran, I heard the Marauders begin to push through the blockade, the soldiers peppering them with a spray of bullets, and then something large and very loud came smashing through behind us.

  I kept running, not really wanting to see what it was, knowing it couldn’t be anything good.

  I located the next blockade a hundred metres or more away, but as bullets whizzed overhead and explosions went off around me, I felt as though I was running through quicksand. With every step I took, the safety of the blockade only seemed to edge further away. I saw Top knot and some other soldiers reach it and some of them disappeared over the wall. Others stopped to lay down suppressing fire. I still had another fifteen or twenty seconds left before I would be able to join them. It seemed like an eternity.

  Just then, a grenade fell not far from Malyn and she was cast to one side with a cry, where she lay unmoving in a pile of rubble. I looked back over my shoulder and saw what had thundered through the blockade – an armadillo – and it was closing in on top of us very quickly. I realised that if I stopped to help Malyn, it would reach me before I could make it to the blockade.

  Without really knowing why, I dumped the carry case in the rubble and dived toward Malyn, attempting to pull her out of the path of the oncoming armadillo. She opened her eyes and looked up at me groggily.

  “My hero,” she said vaguely, reaching up to clasp me behind the neck. “And a damn fool, too.”

  As the armadillo bore down on us, the explosion that I’d set back at the first blockade went off, sending a huge shockwave along the street and pulverising concrete, Marauders, and anything else in the nearby vicinity. Distantly I hoped that it had taken out a hundred of them, or more if that were possible, but the explosion was too late to stop the armadillo. I grasped Malyn’s arm and attempted to pull her away, but there was nowhere to go.

  “Just go,” Malyn said, but as she tried to push me away there were loud footsteps behind us and something launched over m
y shoulder toward the armadillo. In quick succession there was another just like it, and then another, and as my eyes focussed I saw that it was a group of large clanks bearing down on the armadillo fearlessly.

  No, not clanks, I thought. Something else.

  I looked up, and standing above us was a large humanoid machine, its chassis comprised of a series of smooth and shiny blue interlocking segments that covered it from head to toe. As it leaned toward me I could see a familiar grizzled face inside the helmet, and then Targen’s voice blared out from a loudspeaker that was built into the visor.

  “Stand back, kid. The big boys are here.”

  20

  Through the confusion I vaguely recalled seeing these exosuits in combat footage a long time ago, during the White Summer. They were referred to as Stoneskins. From what I remembered they had been built for certain elite clank soldiers during the conflict, but, like the other vestiges of the old world, I assumed they had all been lost or destroyed since. Evidently Ascension had come into possession of them somehow, and as Targen and his three companions leapt into the fray I could only gape in wonder.

  The Stoneskins utilised an enhanced propulsion system, allowing them to move with astonishing speed and agility. As they moved amongst the oncoming Marauders I witnessed one of them leap across the breadth of the street and up onto the first floor of a nearby building, adroitly evading an incoming grenade with what almost seemed like disdain. As he dropped back to the ground he transitioned easily into a firing stance on one knee and felled a cluster of oncoming attackers with a burst from his rifle. In return, the Marauders’ bullets seemed to bounce harmlessly from his armour, making him rock slightly from the impact but causing no lasting damage.

  Two of the Stoneskins clung to the armadillo like leeches, ripping at the steel cladding as if it were paper. They burrowed their way inside, attacking and killing the occupants therein and bringing the vehicle to a sudden halt. Moments later they smashed their way back out through its exterior again and continued the fight with those on foot.

  Targen had not even bothered to bring a rifle with him. Instead he surged between the Marauders, grappling them in his huge armoured hands and ripping them apart limb by limb, bludgeoning them with fists and sending them scattering like tenpins. All the while his maniacal laughter rang out through his loudspeaker.

  “Stoneskins, rally!” Targen’s voice boomed, and the other three Stoneskin soldiers drew back obediently toward him.

  Turning back to Malyn, I helped her get to her feet and checked to see if she had sustained any injuries. Apart from dust and some tears in her clothing she seemed whole.

  “You okay?” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said shakily, clutching at my shoulder. “Just dazed. Damn thing knocked me clean off my feet.”

  “As long as you’re not missing anything, that’s all that matters.”

  “Maybe just my sense of balance,” she said wryly, clutching at my shoulder. “I’m fine. Let’s get out of here.”

  I set my sights on the blockade again, still a good distance away. There were Marauders streaming past us, but amid the mayhem of Targen and his Stoneskins we seemed to have gone unnoticed crouched in the rubble at the side of the road.

  “C’mon,” I said. “We have to get to that blockade.”

  As we started to move, more shots rang out from the blockade as the Ascension soldiers opened fire on the Marauders. Bullets whizzed overhead, dangerously close to us, and we were forced to dive behind the wall of the nearest building for cover.

  “Keep your head down,” I said urgently, lifting my arm to protect Malyn.

  In response she shoved me away, getting to her feet and putting a shotgun blast into the chest of a Marauder who had been charging at us, machete raised.

  “Or we could kill some of these of these creeps,” she said. She scowled at me. “You don’t have to worry so much about me, man. I can take care of myself.”

  “I’m sure you can, but just stay low and keep out of the crossfire,” I said, tugging her downward again. “Let Targen do his thing.”

  Out on the street, a Molotov exploded into Targen’s back and he was engulfed in a wreath of fire. As he turned I saw his grinning countenance leering demonically through his visor, not only unconcerned by the attack against him, but seemingly revelling in it.

  “Is that the best you got?” he roared, leaping into the air again and carving a fiery path through the oncoming Marauders. They shrieked and tried to evade his fury, but few were spared.

  “I normally hate that guy,” Malyn said over the roar of gunfire. “But right now I hate him just a little bit less.”

  We remained crouched amid the rubble, picking off stray Marauders where we could and keeping out of Ascension’s line of fire. I was still acutely aware of those snipers stationed on top of The Midway, knowing that from this distance they might assume we were Marauders and put a bullet through us by mistake. Malyn also became more circumspect and made no further attempts to move out into the street.

  Within minutes we had both run out of ammunition, but the tide was already turning. The Stoneskins had done their job, demolishing the throng of Marauders who had come pouring through the breach, and now the flow had reduced to a trickle.

  “Should we make a run for it?” Malyn said.

  “Not yet. I’m still worried that if they see a couple of clanks running around on the wrong side of the blockade that they’re going to–”

  I stopped, hearing something off in the distance. It was indistinct at first, but then began to filter through my senses like a half-forgotten nightmare, something that awakened a primal terror in me that I could not suppress. For a moment I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing, and I wondered if my overwrought senses were merely playing a trick on me, causing me to imagine something that wasn’t really there. But as the sound grew louder I knew that was not the case.

  I clutched at Malyn inadvertently, my fingers digging painfully into her flesh.

  “Oww, what the hell, man?”

  My eyes drifted down the street and the noise intensified, jarring and abrasive, the sound of something moving closer and stomping heavily on the earth. The dreadful whir of turbines.

  “Mech!” I managed to scream at Targen and his crew, but they were oblivious to me. “They’ve got a mech!”

  It launched over the destroyed barricade, a nebulous black horror that suddenly appeared out of the darkness and thundered back down to earth with a deafening roar. It landed on top of one of the Stoneskins like a hawk descending on a fieldmouse, crushing it underfoot like a tin can and knocking everything near it aside, friend and foe alike. Dust and pebbles and debris scattered in all directions like a tornado, knocking both me and Malyn backward painfully against the wall.

  “Holy shit!” Malyn said, picking herself up, and this time she did not protest when I pushed her flat against the ground.

  “Stay down!” I hissed. “Stay out of sight.”

  I dropped beside her and lifted my face above the rubble. Not far away I could see the nightmarish machine swivelling this way and that as it surveyed the battlezone and mapped out its targets. It was massive, at least twice as tall as the Stoneskins and far more broad and heavy set, imposing itself on the battleground like a giant amongst children. Black smoke billowed from an exhaust on its exterior in great gouts. Distantly I noted that this must have been a modification by the Marauders to make it run on fossil fuels, as the mechs had always been built to run on nuclear power. Inside the protective grille of the cockpit I could make out very little apart from the bulk of a large clank and a shock of white hair.

  Doust.

  The mech took a shuddering step forward, flexing the claw on its left hand ominously. On the other arm a rocket launcher had been bolted to its wrist, and the weapon swung toward the blockade as it lined up its target.

  One of the Stoneskins launched a counter-attack, sending a flurry of bullets clattering harmlessly off the mech’s chassis, and then s
triding forward and leaping at the mech from behind. Doust turned the mech rapidly, reaching out with the claw and grasping the Stoneskin around the waist. As Doust returned his attention to the blockade he clenched the claw into a fist, almost nonchalant, and the Stoneskin soldier screamed horribly through his loudspeaker as he was crushed effortlessly under the immense power of the mech’s hydraulics. The shrieks did not last long as the Stoneskin was silenced and discarded like a piece of trash.

  “We need to hide,” I said to Malyn as the mech advanced further, but she didn’t respond. She knew as well as I did that there was nowhere to run, nowhere to find cover from the awesome power of this machine. Panicked, I spotted the olive carry case nearby where I had dropped it not long before.

  Could explosives damage that thing?

  Between the carry case and me were five metres of unprotected space – a void that would leave me entirely exposed to the mech should I try to cross it. If it happened to look my way in the couple of seconds it took me to cross, my chances of survival would be slim.

  But what are my chances of survival by staying here anyway? I thought.

  Before reason could set in, I dived toward the carry case and squirmed behind it to offer at least some camouflage should the mech turn toward me. Pulling the cover open, I clasped one of the spitballs and fumbled for the tab on back, then punched in the minimum sixty seconds on the timer.

  I nestled behind the scant debris around me and waited.

  “What are you doing?” Malyn whispered hoarsely, but I was too entranced by what was happening on the street to respond.

  Another Stoneskin landed before the mech, emptying an entire clip into its chest without result. As the mech reached out with its claw the Stoneskin danced away, dodging off the side of a building and flipping like an acrobat onto the mech’s cockpit. This time the mech’s claw found its target, gripping the Stoneskin by the leg and slinging him around like a cowboy with a lasso. It released him and sent him spiraling through the air, then brought up its rocket launcher and fired in one motion, blowing the Stoneskin apart mid-flight as if it were nothing more than a clay pigeon at a shooting range. Parts of the Stoneskin rained down across the street and a flaming chunk of what might have been a ribcage landed at my feet.