Earth Unending

by M. R. Forbes

  Isabelle looked at it. “M47 IAR.”

  That didn’t mean anything to Hayden, either. He picked it up, testing its weight. “Gus!”

  It took a few seconds for Gus to appear in the RV’s doorway. “What’s up, Sheriff?”

  “Take this,” he said, passing it to him. He dug out three included magazines and handed them over too.

  “Nice,” Gus said, bringing it up and sighting down it. “Good feel. You need me to shoot something?”

  “Liberators are on their way. We can’t outrun them.”

  Gus enthusiasm vanished. “Oh. Shit, Sheriff.”

  “Sheriff,” Isabelle said.

  Hayden glanced over at the case the robot had opened. There were two weapons in it. Neither one of them looked like they were made on Earth.

  “HVRG,” she said, pointing to the rifle-sized weapon. “CRG.” She pointed to the other.

  “RG?” he asked.

  “Railgun. The magazines are interchangeable, but the HVRG has a higher velocity barrel. Fires an alloy flechette that can punch through almost anything. It’s the best set in Loki’s collection.”

  Hayden took the offered weapons. “Grab something for yourself, and let’s go.” He turned around and looked back at the town. They needed a more defensible position.

  “What about in there?” Pyro asked, pointing to the building the soldiers had been parked behind.

  Hayden examined it for a moment. There were no windows on the sides, but there was probably a door at the rear, and it was near a bridge leading over to the other side of a narrow river. There were some trees along the riverbank that would offer limited protection if they needed to make a move.

  “I don’t want us bunched up.” He eyed the other buildings, wishing they had comm links. “We have to take them by surprise. Pyro, Gus, head into the trees near the river. Get a clean line of fire to the road from there. I’m going to try to get onto the roof of that building there. Isabelle, stay with the RV. They come in, take them out.”

  “Pozz,” Isabelle said.

  “Sheriff,” Gus said. “I’m not sure this is a great idea.”

  “Do you have a better one?” Hayden asked. “We can’t run. We’ll be grouped together with no shot at getting the upper hand, and I’ve already seen what the Liberators can do. If they send that aircraft with the cannon on it, we’d be as good as dead trying to ride off in the RV.”

  “Damn it, P, what’d you have to shoot them for?” Gus complained. “We could have snuck past them, or hid while they drove off.”

  “You didn’t see what I saw.”

  “Come on, P. It doesn’t matter—”

  “It does. Go over into that building if you don’t believe me. I’ve seen the look that bastard had on his face before. Satisfied and smug and superior. I know what they did in there.”

  They were going to die, anyway.

  Hayden had a feeling he did, too. He couldn’t be angry at her for shooting them. If his hunch were right, he would have done the same thing.

  Chapter 12

  Hayden sprinted to the building he had pointed out while Pyro and Gus made a break for the tree-line. He tried to watch the sky as he ran, keeping an eye out for the additional drones he knew would arrive any second now.

  The whole thing was a bad situation. Like the Liberator had said, wrong place, wrong time. If they had shown up ten minutes later, the soldiers would have been gone, returning to Fort McGuire after releasing their prisoners.

  Hayden didn’t need Pyro to spell everything out to know what she had seen. He wished he knew if Tinker condoned rape and murder or if these soldiers had gone rogue, thinking their secret would go undiscovered. Hayden could accept that Tinker had taken women to create his virus. The man had a goal, and he believed in it. It didn’t matter if Hayden did or not. There was logic to that. There was a measure of understanding. And when he didn’t need the women anymore, he was willing to let them go. Maybe he expected them to die anyway, but at least they would die free.

  The problem was that he could negotiate with someone who thought they were doing the right thing, even if it was questionable. He could talk to that version of Tinker, and maybe they could fix the world together. The other version?

  There was only one thing he could do with the other version. He wouldn’t hesitate to do it if it came to that.

  He jumped over the broken glass at the bottom of the doorway and into the building. It was a store of some kind, long cleaned out, with nothing but empty packaging deteriorating on the floor. The roof had an apparent leak, leaving standing water in the corner. The remains of a trife was lying in it. It hadn’t been dead too long, and it was obvious wild animals had fed on it. Probably that dog he saw outside.

  He went to the back of the store, through an open door to the rear. There was an access ladder leading up to the rooftop, and he grabbed it and pulled himself up, unlatching the cover and flipping it open. He climbed out onto the roof, wrinkling his nose at the smell. There was more standing water in the middle, and another corpse resting in it. This one was human. An old hunting rifle was on the ground nearby.

  Hayden only spared him a glance before returning his attention to the sky. He caught sight of it now, a small black dot in the distance, zipping toward the small town. He grabbed the HVRG from his back and flipped it on, causing the weapon to hum softly as the electromagnets charged. He circled the water to the edge of the rooftop, and then lowered himself behind the lip. He wasn’t like Isabelle. He couldn’t hit the small drone from a kilometer out.

  The silence began to break a few seconds later. He heard the rumble of engines in the distance, and when he looked south he could see a small haze of disturbed dirt and rubble where he imagined the roadway went.

  Closer to him, he heard a sharp yelp. He rose slightly from his position to find the source, and a moment later that same dog that had tried to bite him ran from the grass and across the street, vanishing into another line of brush.

  Hayden responded with a half-smile. The dog was a mongrel. He was a mongrel. They were kindred spirits.

  The smile faded when the trife moved out from the grass, leaping to the side of the nearest building and scaling the wall. It wasn’t chasing the dog - trife only attacked humans. But it had scared the animal away.

  Another one joined it a moment later. They had most likely been drawn in by the gunfire. If there were two, there had to be more. He brought up the HVRG, turning it toward the trees and looking into its digital scope. He swept it across the treeline, pleased Pyro and Gus had managed to hide well enough he couldn’t find them, and at the same time unhappy he couldn’t find them. At least he didn’t see any trife near…damn it.

  He spotted a dark shape moving among the growth. Then another. And another.

  He wished again he had a transceiver. Did they know the trife were there?

  A new sound managed to rise about the growing rumble. The whining buzz of the drone. It was getting close. He spun back to where he had seen it. The machine was a few hundred meters away, hovering over the city, facing directly toward him.

  He raised his rifle toward it.

  It fired a missile at him.

  He saw the flare from the rocket motor first, shooting out behind the black tip that launched from one of its stubby wings. Then he ran, turning and pushing off, trying to put some distance between himself and the projectile. He only made it three steps before the missile hit the side of the building and exploded.

  The impact threw stone and debris sky high, the concussion tossing him forward into the standing water. He landed face first, the smell of the muck overwhelming his senses. A good deal of the blasted debris came down to hit him in the back. He didn’t hesitate, gathering himself and pushing back to his feet with his powerful right arm. He looked back, finding the drone circling the rooftop to get a better angle of attack on him.

  The roof beneath him collapsed.

  There was no warning. One moment, he was taking a step forward. The nex
t, he was falling, along with the water, along with the corpse, tumbling through a sudden hole. He cursed as his back slammed into the side of a shelf and he bounced off, landing on top of the body that had fallen into the shop with him. It was wet and slimy beneath him, and he fought against a round of nausea as he tried to roll away from it.

  He rolled onto his back, looking up through the fresh hole just in time to see the second missile streak through the opening and slam into the back wall of the shop.

  More debris flew through the air, the heat and fresh missile wash blowing over him. His bodysuit protected him from the worst, but something managed to sneak past to his face, slicing open his cheek. He cursed a second time, aiming the HVRG up at the damn thing and squeezing the trigger.

  The flechettes were small and narrow, like tiny nails. A hundred of them launched within half a second, spraying in a circular pattern that made their coverage extremely effective. It only took one of the high-velocity rounds to strike the drone and power through it to cause it to start smoking and collapse, vanishing from Hayden’s view.

  He got to his feet, soaking wet and in pain. He made his way back toward the door and nearly earned a second wound on his face for his carelessness.

  He threw himself sideways, the trife’s claws catching only air right beside his face, at least until it tackled him while he was off-balance. It bit down on his metal arm, hissing when it couldn’t pierce the hardened shell. It ran its claws across his chest, slicing through the outer fatigues and scraping along the bodysuit beneath, digging through right before Hayden slammed the stock of the HVRG into its head and drove it up and back.

  Hayden swung around on a knee, firing the rifle and watching as the dozens of tiny flechettes tore through the creature, leaving it bleeding from multiple complete puncture wounds. It hissed and fell to the ground in front of him.

  He jumped over it, shooting a second trife nearby. More of them were coming from out of the grass and around the buildings, drawn to the sounds of the fighting. He heard gunfire further off too, further away than the trees. The Liberators had already encountered the creatures.

  Hayden moved out into the street, looking back to the RV. Isabelle was standing outside, a rifle in her hand. She fired single shots at the trife that got too close, each one hitting a demon in the head and bringing it down.

  He started for the trees. He could see muzzle flashes through the branches, along with the bright flashes of plasma bolts. Were Pyro and Gus shooting at trife or soldiers? He couldn’t tell.

  He heard an engine approaching, and he saw a car on the other side of the river, nearing the bridge and slowing to turn. It was like most of the Liberator’s vehicles, an old shell heavily modified with armor protection from trife. This one had also been upgraded with a larger engine, which rose out of the open hood. It roared with each small acceleration.

  Unlike most of the vehicles, this one didn’t have a front windshield. Instead, a pair of soldiers sat in the front with the driver, with a pair of gun mounts helping them aim their rifles past the engine to shoot ahead of the car. They started shooting the moment they turned onto the bridge, sending bullets tearing toward Hayden.

  A second vehicle came up behind the first and Hayden ran to the nearest cover, crossing the street and throwing himself through a door that was hanging open. He crouched in the doorway, aiming at the car as it reached the other side of the bridge.

  He heard a thunk to his left. An instant later, something streaked past his position and slammed into the car’s engine. It exploded, bathing the vehicle in a ball of fire and sending debris and hot metal around it. Hayden ducked further into the building to escape it, the heat of the fireball washing over him.

  What the hell had Isabelle just fired?

  He stood up, ready to go back out into the fray. There was a second Liberator car out there with more still coming.

  He froze as he realized which building he had entered. His jaw clenched, and his eyes started to water.

  He looked away. It was worse than he had guessed. King’s Scrappers had been cannibals, rapists, and killers. These soldiers made them look gentle.

  How could men like that end up in Tinker’s army without him knowing what they were made of? If he accepted men like that into his midst, what did that say about him?

  Was Edenrise even close to the paradise Tinker promised, or was it like so many other things here?

  One big fucking lie.

  Chapter 13

  Hayden didn’t linger in the building. He moved back to the doorway, keeping the HVRG raised and ready. The first Liberator car was still smoking, small bits of burning textile scattered around it. The trailing car had stopped on the bridge behind it, stuck there by the wreck. Two more Liberator vehicles were coming up the road. One of them was a truck, heavy and high, and capable of carrying an entire platoon of soldiers.

  Isabelle should have saved her rocket for that.

  Unless she had another one.

  It was wishful thinking. The good news was that the soldiers were stuck on the other side of the river. It wasn’t that wide, and they could get across on foot, but it would slow them down.

  Hayden came out of the building, sighting through the HVRG’s scope to the lead car. The Liberators were climbing out and crouching beside it, using it as cover as they made their way around the wreck. Hayden didn’t shoot. Not yet. He made a move of his own, running from the building to the first line of trees.

  A trife tried to tackle him as he reached the first trunk, coming from behind another tree and leaping at him. He caught its head in his big hand and squeezed, crushing it with too little effort. Bullets started chipping away at the tree trunk beside him, and he ducked low, swinging around to the back side of it to let the vegetation absorb the attack.

  He saw more trife further south, moving through the trees. Pyro and Gus were closer to the riverbank, their weapons-fire still visible in spurts. He found the heavy truck again. The soldiers were jumping out of the back, one after another. There were already a dozen soldiers on the ground, and more were still coming.

  A portion of them broke off, turning south and shooting at the trife. A bigger contingent made their way to the riverbank.

  “Pyro! Gus! Fall back!”

  He hoped they could hear him shout over the rest of the noise. The first thing he was going to do as soon as possible would be to get his hands on a few transceivers.

  He peered around the corner of the tree again. He saw Pyro backing toward the road. He noticed movement out the corner of his eye. The RV was approaching from the west, getting closer to the action.

  What was Isabelle doing?

  He didn’t have a lot of time to think about it. The appearance of the trife and the collapse of the roof had ruined their chance to take the Liberators by surprise, and now they were getting overwhelmed. The only reason they might escape was because the enemy was on the wrong side of the water.

  Well, one of them was, anyway.

  Was that why Isabelle was advancing? Had her machine mind figured there was no way they would win this fight?

  “Gus! Pyro!” he shouted again. “Fall back!”

  He glanced back at the RV. It was continuing to accelerate down the road, approaching the remains of the first Liberator car and the line of vehicles behind it. He caught a glimpse of Isabelle behind the wheel, eyes forward, expression blank. What else would he expect from a robot?

  He still didn’t know what she was planning. She was speeding up, not slowing down. She was driving right toward the enemy, as though her path was clear. Was she going to ram the whole mess of them? What good would that do? They would lose their ride, their food and weapons.

  He reached into the pocket of his fatigues, suddenly worried he had lost the control device. If he had, she would follow him until someone else picked it up and used it.

  No. It was still there. Hayden lifted it out, ready to order Isabelle to stop. To use the device to override her logic circuits. He had told her to
protect them, and for whatever reason, she thought that’s what she was doing.

  He heard the thunder of the gunship’s large cannon before he saw it or the heavy artillery it started spitting down on the RV. The noise of it was unmistakable, the results of its attack instantly devastating. He watched the back of the RV start to crumple in, the sides blowing out. He looked up and saw the aircraft swinging around, the pilot keeping it steady while the Liberator aimed the weapon. He had half-expected to see the Iron General or even Nathan up there, but instead it was some soldier he had never seen, another generic figure in a dark green United States Space Force replica jumpsuit.

  He brought his rifle up, looking through the digital sight and getting a bead on the airship.

  A fresh round of small arms fire exploded to his right, and something tackled him, bringing him to the ground.

  He was ready to fight until he felt the metal arm beneath his Centurion hand, and looked up to see Pyro on top of him.

  “Damn, Sheriff,” she said. “You almost got killed.”

  The bullets were coming all around them. They were on the ground, halfway behind one of the trees, which itself was being chewed to pieces. He could hear the hard crackling of the heavy cannon still firing. He leaned his head to the side so he could see past Pyro, to where Isabelle was about to-

  The RV slammed into what was left of the Liberator’s vehicle, slowing only slightly as it shoved the metal wreck back and into the car behind it. The momentum kept it going, pushing the mass ahead of it as it screeched and whined and rumbled across the road and onto the bridge.

  The cannon stopped firing, careful not to hit any friendlies, the airship hovering in the sky, spinning back to get a better angle to restart the attack.

  The RV settled to a stop on top of the bridge.

  Then it exploded.

  The suddenness of it caused Hayden to flinch in surprise, and he grabbed Pyro and pulled her down closer to him, rolling over to take whatever impact followed. It was purely instinctive, his role as a protector so ingrained his consciousness never gave him a chance to do otherwise. He felt the heat of it at his back, but he didn’t see the outcome. He could guess what it would be. The explosion hadn’t been from damage.