by Rick Partlow
The blast was powerful enough to nearly knock Kurtz’s mech off balance backwards and he gritted his teeth and lurched forward against the controls, the motion relayed through the neural contacts in his helmet to keep the Golem on its feet.
“Armor One,” Figueroa said, his transmission garbled and broken from the curving of the canyon. There were no relay satellites in orbit, not since the Jeuta had shot them all down, and the shuttle relay only worked if you were in line of sight of the shuttle. “Do you read?”
“I’m here, Alpha One,” Kurtz grunted, swinging the Golem around the curve into the side canyon. The walls were closer, the ground less even and it took concentration to keep the mech from slipping.
“I don’t suppose there’s any way you might want to wait for the rest of us to catch up, is there, sir?”
“You suppose correctly. Hopefully the commotion distracted the Jeuta, but I ain’t counting on it. Get here as quick as you can. Armor One out.”
The side canyon curved and meandered, and narrowed as it did, and if it made things trickier for Kurtz to walk his mech down it, the upside was he wouldn’t have to worry about any of the assault vehicles making it through the uneven terrain. He barely had a moment to spare from the task of keeping his balance to watch the tactical sensors, but he did notice the yellow flash when the audio processors warned him that they’d detected the sound of gunfire ahead. The readout beside the flasher estimated less than a kilometer to the source of the gunshots, which would put it just around the next bend.
A sense of desperate urgency churned in his gut, the feeling he had to get to the battle immediately, and he wondered if it was intuition or simply guilt for not being here when the Jeuta had hit the planet. Either way, he wasn’t about to fight it. He leaned into the curve, slamming the mech’s footpads into the slick rock, cracking it beneath them and giving the machine more traction, moving forward almost in a skating motion.
The scene laid out before him as he rounded the curve was at once better and worse than any nightmare scenario he’d laid out in his head. Almost a company of Jeuta infantry was dug in behind debris left from rock slides, firing up at what seemed like only a handful of human survivors up the slope in a depression in the canyon wall about thirty or forty meters up the side. It was better in that he hadn’t found only butchered bodies, worse in the painfully small number of defenders he could detect. Only three or four were firing back at the Jeuta, picking their shots, not spraying ammunition despite the proximity of the enemy.
Maybe it was the acoustics in the canyon or maybe it was their own gunfire battering their ears, but the Jeuta didn’t seem to notice his approach until Kurtz had come within fifty meters of them. Someone at the rear, perhaps their company commander, turned and yelled to the others, swinging his rifle toward Kurtz and firing off an impotent shot. Kurtz didn’t even hear the ricochet of the rifle round off his armor.
Baring his teeth, Valentine Kurtz toggled his weapons selector to the machine-gun turrets on either side of the mech’s chest plastrons and held both triggers down, slewing the torso of his mech back and forth in a hosing motion. The stutter of the guns was barely audible inside the cockpit, but the results were satisfyingly evident.
Many of the tantalum-core 6mm bullets cracked sandstone rock or died in puffs of sand, but dozens more tore into the Jeuta infantry troops, their bodies jerking in a very human way at the impact of the rounds. At least ten were left slumped motionless on the rocks, but the ones who remained were trying to jump up, trying to run, and Kurtz knew he couldn’t afford to let them.
He hit the jump-jets and skimmed the ground, just a meter up and leaning forward as he flew, hosing the running Jeuta with machine-gun fire, exulting as each of them fell. When he reached the front of their lines, he spun around and touched down, not quite letting off the pedals until he was sure his mech’s footpads had a stable position.
The Jeuta were trying to scatter, but the canyon was too narrow for that, too steep for them to climb out. Two of them tried anyway, and he leaned the Golem’s torso back and sliced through the Jeuta soldiers with a long burst. The internal hoppers for the guns were big, thousands of belted rounds of ammo and he wasn’t being stingy with it.
A few tried to get tricky, tried to close in with his mech’s legs, get below the firing arc of the guns, which was just fine with him. He slammed his footpads up and down in almost a dancing motion, demonstrating to the Jeuta exactly why mech-jocks called infantry troops “crunchies.”
Cleaning that shit off is going to be a bitch. I’ll have to remember to buy the maintenance crew a few beers for this one.
The survivors up on the rock ledge had moved out from the cover of the depression and were adding their gunfire to the effort, being more liberal with their shots now that help had arrived. Kurtz worked the machine-guns out, then in, making sure none of the foot soldiers made it past the curve in the canyon, not wanting to leave any threat behind them. It felt like painting a wall in his parents’ old house as a boy, even strokes, up and down, and after a while, it was complete. A Jeuta writhed on the ground and Kurtz put a burst into him and was surprised when the warning flasher lit up red.
He was out of ammunition.
Wow. I must have fired off four thousand rounds.
He scanned carefully, watching for any movement, but all he saw, all he could hear, was the humans. They were pouring out of the depression and he nearly used his public address speakers to tell them to wait until reinforcements arrived in case there were more Jeuta somewhere, but then he stopped, realizing that it wasn’t a depression, it was a cave. And there were more than a handful of survivors, there were dozens.
Children. There were children out there, a few, maybe more inside. Something unclenched in Kurtz’s gut, not quite relief but just a bit of satisfaction that they hadn’t totally blown it, that some of the population had made it through this.
And maybe Katy’s one of them.
He didn’t see her, but then, he wasn’t going to see or hear much from inside the damned mech. It was reckless and he knew it, but he stiffened the Golem into a resting pose, shut down the controls and popped the canopy. Burning, still air hit him with the impact of an oven. He’d almost forgotten the heat, as impossible as that was.
He swung out of the cockpit and grabbed at the handholds, scrambling down with practiced ease, if not quite with the agility he’d seen Logan show climbing down from his Vindicator. They were waiting for him at the feet of his Golem, sweeping him into a hug, pounding him on the back and crying and it took him nearly ten seconds before he even recognized them.
“David?” he asked, pushing the man out to arm’s length. Kurtz squinted at the woman beside David Bohardt, her face coated in dirt, hair tangled, utility fatigues ripped and stained. “Josephine?”
“Sweet Mithra, Valentine,” Salvaggio said, shaking her head. “I’m so fucking desperate, I’m even glad to see your ugly face.”
She wasn’t crying, clinging to the cynical sarcasm Kurtz was used to from her, the armor she put between herself and everyone she knew except Bohardt, but he could tell it was a close thing. Bohardt wasn’t bothering with the tough act, just sobbing openly.
“Val, it’s been bad here,” he admitted. “I’ve never seen worse. I thought we were all gonna wind up impaled in the town square like the others they caught.”
Kurtz’s lip twisted into a grimace.
“I ain’t been to the city yet,” he told them. “We just went straight for their main mecha force and then came here.”
People were crowding around him, pushing to get close enough to touch him, as if they needed to prove to themselves he was real and this wasn’t just a dream. Except Chloe. He recognized her, even though she was thinner than before, hardened, and just as coated with dirt and grime. She stood apart, watching him with a jaundiced eye, one arm around the boy Alec, Lana Kane’s brother. He didn’t seem any more traumatized than he’d been before, but then, Kurtz barely knew him. A young teenaged girl Kurtz didn�
�t recognize stood beside the two of them, arms wrapped around herself, her expression as stunned as a cow being led to the slaughter.
“I didn’t think you’d come back for us,” Chloe said. It might have been a grateful exclamation, spoken in wonder, except it wasn’t. It was uttered in a flat, bleak tone, as if she’d expected to be abandoned, forgotten.
“We would have come back sooner, if we could have,” he assured her. “Things have been nuts back in the Dominions, and we were pretty much cut off from communications until a couple weeks ago. The first thing we heard was that the Jeuta had nuked you guys and everyone was dead. Then we got another report saying that there might be survivors and Logan sent us after you right away.”
“They nuked enough of us,” Bohardt allowed, devastation written across his face. “The spaceport, the shuttles, half the battalion.”
“What’s the butcher’s bill, David?” Kurtz asked him, dreading the answer, wishing he could push the duty off on someone else.
“It’d be easier to tell you what’s left, Val.” He waved around at the people milling about, some of them in Wholesale Slaughter uniform fatigues, checking the Jeuta corpses, making sure they were dead, stripping weapons from the bodies. “We have eighteen military personnel including the two of us, and most of them are maintenance crews. Not a single Ranger left and only three other mech-jocks besides me and Josephine.”
Kurtz found himself beginning to sway backwards and had to catch himself to maintain his balance. It was no worse than what he’d imagined but still, hearing it pronounced aloud…
“As for the civilians, well…” Bohardt trailed off, looking over to Chloe. “Chloe’s been kind of in charge of the civilians since her parents died in the initial attack.”
“There were ten thousand, five hundred and twenty-three civilians on Revelation before the Jeuta came,” the young woman rattled the figures off as if she’d been dwelling on them every day, every hour. “There may still be other survivors holed up in the more isolated settlements, but as far as we can tell, there are two hundred and fifty-three of us left.” She met Kurtz’s disbelieving stare with cold, hate-filled eyes. “And there are three or four who won’t live out the day unless you get them some medical attention soon.”
“The shuttles are landing nearby,” he rasped, barely able to speak. “They’ll have water, medical supplies, food…we’ll get all of you on board the Shakak and get you the hell out of here. But…”
He turned back to Bohardt and felt as if the gravity of a dozen worlds was holding him down, keeping him from asking the question.
“I need to know about Katy.”
Bohardt and Salvaggio exchanged a forlorn glance and Kurtz’s heart sank into the center of the planet.
“We should show you,” Salvaggio said, her voice uncharacteristically soft.
The cave was like dozens of others in the Run, barely more than a depression into the sandstone. Nowhere near as large as the one where David Bohardt and the others had taken refuge these past two weeks. One thing set it apart from the others, though: the two-meter-long rock cairn cobbled just beneath the ledge, the head of it marked with a crudely-fashioned cross made from local wood and stuck into a gap.
“We knew he was a follower of the Old Religion,” Bohardt explained, motioning toward the cross. “It seemed right. The two Rangers who’d gone in the car with them were down the ways a little.” He waved back up the short, narrow slot canyon. “We gave them a more traditional funeral, as much as we could.”
Kurtz nodded wordlessly, not looking away from the pile of loose rock covering the grave.
“I can’t believe it,” he murmured. “I can’t believe General Constantine is dead.”
“He was a legend,” Salvaggio allowed, nodding. “Everyone in the business had heard of him.”
“He lived his whole life serving the Guardian,” Kurtz said. “And I guess he died that way, too. But Katy…?” He gestured at the grave, seeming as if he needed to ask the question but didn’t want to.
“She was with him when they ran from the encampment,” Bohardt told him. “And we found this up in the cave.” He dug in his pocket and came up with a small, gold ring. The last time Bohardt had seen it, it had been on Katy’s left hand.
“Her wedding ring,” Kurtz said, taking the gold circle from him. “Why would she have taken it off? Why would the Jeuta make her take it off?”
“They didn’t,” Salvaggio snapped, seeming impatient with his lack of imagination. “Think about it, man. She left it there on purpose so we’d know she was still alive. They took her. They took her with them when most of them left.”
“The Jeuta don’t take prisoners, Josephine,” Kurtz reminded her, his face grim.
“Katy’s no ordinary prisoner,” Bohardt protested. “She’s the wife of the ruler of Sparta. She’s pregnant with his child. That’s got to be worth something politically, strategically. Even the Jeuta can see that.”
“That’s not like anything they’ve done before.”
“Neither is this,” Salvaggio pointed out. “A target this far in, using a force this large, staying this long, exposing themselves to retribution? Something’s changed.”
“If she is alive,” Kurtz said, eyes still fixed on the grave, “if they did take her…” He chewed on his lip. “You know how the Jeuta treat humans. I don’t know if she wouldn’t have been better off buried right here next to General Constantine.” He squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head. “And I know I don’t want to be the one to tell Logan Brannigan that the Jeuta have his wife.”
16
Aaron Starkad, Lord Prime of the Starkad Supremacy, absolute ruler of the largest of the five human Dominions, the most powerful man in all of the galaxy, with the authority to declare wars and ravage planets, would have given anything to get out of attending staff meetings.
Oh, he supposed he could get away with skipping them if he pushed it. No one was going to tell him he was required. But a perceived lack of involvement in the day-to-day functions of the Supremacy government would lead to a perception of a disengaged ruler, and it was only a couple steps from believing the Lord Prime wasn’t involved with his government to believing he wouldn’t take notice if someone began plotting a coup.
And coups were things that happened to other people, usually because he was arranging them. So, despite a carefully-cultivated reputation as an often vindictive, sometimes brutal, even occasionally petulant bully, Aaron Starkad sat in the sterile blankness of the largest conference room in Stavanger Castle and listened to his Minister of Finance drone on and on about how vital it was to the health of the Dominion economy for the Supremacy Resource Commission to continue the expansion of asteroid mining into new territories.
No shit, genius…why else would I be spending all those troops and ships and all that fucking money to consolidate our hold on the Modi border systems?
“…and if we don’t continue a five percent growth in Gross Dominion Product for the rest of this quarter, then confidence among the chief shareholders will be shaken,” the man concluded, pausing at the finish of his lecture as if he expected applause.
Starkad clapped slowly, momentously, in what he sincerely hoped was obvious irony.
“Thank you so much for that fascinating summary, Minister Nordegren. I think I speak for all of us assembled here when I say we will not soon forget your grave and wise warnings. In fact,” he said, clapping again, this time with a tone of finality, “I believe we should conclude the day’s meetings with your briefing and give ourselves time to reflect. I know I, personally, will feel much more comfortable formulating a response after having given myself a day or two to simply think about what you’ve said. Do all the rest of you not feel the same?”
Starkad looked at the faces of the other ministers, ambassadors, and secretaries gathered around the huge, oval table, daring them to disagree. Since he made it a personal policy not to retain anyone in his government too stupid to live, not a single one of them did.
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“Then we are dismissed for the afternoon,” he told them. “For those who didn’t get the chance to deliver their briefing, I look forward to hearing from you tomorrow after lunch.”
He stood, mostly because he knew it would force the rest of them to do the same, and waited, staring down anyone who dared to venture too close, making it clear from his stance that he did not intend to meet with any of them privately. They all took the hint except Ruth Laurent. She stood near the door to the room and, when the last of them was out, she pushed it closed and began walking around to his side of the table.
If he didn’t know her so well, he would have let himself suspect she was trying to seduce him, but that wasn’t Colonel Laurent’s game. She was a professional, strictly business and, beyond that, he wasn’t sure if she could ever let her guard down long enough to take a lover.
“And what makes you so special?” he asked her, raising an eyebrow. “Didn’t I just kick everyone out?”
“You did, my Lord,” she acknowledged, “but the difference between my briefing and theirs is, you actually enjoy dealing with intelligence and strategy, whereas you merely put up with the other areas of your rule.”
“Mithra’s bloated ass, woman, I’m your damned ruler, you’d best not be running one of your little intelligence profiles on me.” He chuckled, falling back into his chair. “Because you’re so fucking right.” He waved a hand in invitation. “Go ahead. But don’t be too long, I have plans for dinner and she’s absolutely delicious.”
“It’s the matter of the Jeuta incursion into the Dominions, my lord.”
“Those barbarians?” He snorted derision. “I’m shocked they can even get a spaceship flying, as backward as they are.”
“Possibly, sir, but this is a large-scale military maneuver, the largest incursion into human space we’ve seen in a century. They’ve laid waste to Revelation and Logan Brannigan has formally requested aid via the Mutual Defense Agreement we negotiated on Punica.”
