by D. J. Holmes
Moony knew that the Indians had defeated them. It was time to fall back and if he didn’t act now then Samuels would be left behind. Jumping to his feet, Moony sprinted towards Samuels, firing his plasma rifle from his hip as he ran. When he got to her side he skidded to his knees, throwing his plasma rifle over his back. In one swift movement, he put his hands under Samuels, rose to his feet and charged towards the second defensive line calling out, “Fall back,” to the rest of the defenders.
*
Sergeant Briar had been organizing the second line of defenses. He too had heard Samuels cry out in pain. As he watched Lieutenant Moony race to her side he raised his plasma rifle and sighted on two Indian soldiers as they hurdled the first defensive line right beside Moony. His first bolt hit the first soldier right in the chest. Not having time for a follow up shot he switched his aim. His second bolt tore through the second soldier’s face armor, knocking him to the ground dead.
Briar swore as he glanced at the first soldier and turned his plasma rifle back to fire another bolt. The soldier’s armor must have deflected his first shot for he was bringing his weapon to bear on Moony. Just before Briar squeezed his trigger a stream of bolts leaped out of the Indian’s rifle.
*
Moony heard rather than felt the two bolts impact his back. His legs gave out. He could feel himself falling and he knew he only had a few more seconds to live. With one last effort, he summoned all the strength he could and hurled Samuels towards the second line of defenses.
*
As Moony fell, Briar was already pumping three more plasma bolts into the Indian soldier, sending him toppling back over the first line of defenses. Then, to his amazement, he saw Samuels flying through the air towards him. Dropping his plasma rifle, he stood and caught her as she came plummeting over the second line of defenses.
“Here,” he said to the nearest Havenite defender. “Help her up, get her out of here, make sure she gets out of the caves. Her enhancements will stop the bleeding soon enough; you just make sure she gets out of here.”
“But I’m here to fight,” the Havenite protested.
“You’re here to do what I say, now get going before I feed you a plasma bolt myself,” Briar shouted, his anger at Moony’s death and Samuels’ injury giving strength to his voice.
In a much gentler voice he turned to Samuels, “I think you’ve given enough today private, but don’t think I’m going to let something as small as a missing foot keep you from active duty. Once you are healed up I expect you to fight alongside the rest of us.”
“Aye Sir,” Samuels managed to say. It looked like she wanted to say more but no more words came out.
“Get going,” Briar ordered the Havenite, knowing the chances he would see Samuels again were slim.
As soon as the fighter had Samuels on the move, he picked up his plasma rifle and prepared to face whatever the Indians had planned next. With Moony dead, he was in charge of the defenses. He was under no illusions; the second line of defenders would soon fall, just like the first.
Chapter 10 – Left for Dead
There has been more than one famous General Johnston in human history. Perhaps none have won more personal glory than General Johnston of the Battle of Lesthutu. In many ways it was the beginning of the end of the War of Doom.
-Excerpt from Empire Rising, 3002 AD
11th July, 2467 AD, Haven
As a pang of intense pain rippled through his side, Johnston woke with a start. Sitting up in bed, both his hands went to his side. As soon as he touched the burnt flesh and gaping wound he let out a loud cry. Then the noise of plasma bolts, explosions and gauss cannons brought his mind back to what was going on.
The last thing he remembered was one of the medics at the triage station applying some kind of cream to his burnt flesh. The pain must have knocked him out. As he looked around the triage station he could see no one. It must have been evacuated, he told himself. That means the Indians have breached the cavern. Thankfully, whoever had left his helpless body had at least left him a plasma rifle. With a groan, he picked himself up, grabbed his rifle and then paused. The system of caves that went deeper into the mountain after the large cavern was a maze of winding twisting passages. Some of them weren’t even wide enough for a man to walk through.
As Johnston looked at the three tunnels that led out from the triage area, he realized he didn’t know where any of them led. He had spent most of his time on Haven in the forests or the city of Liberty fighting the Indians. He hadn’t spent time learning the maze that was the layout of the caves beyond the large cavern.
The sound of fighting seemed to be coming loudest from the middle of the three passageways. That’s where Johnston headed. As he progressed along the passageway he came across bodies, most of them Havenite, but he was happy to see a couple of Indian soldiers in combat armor lying dead. With an effort, he picked up his pace, the sound of fighting ahead of him was getting quieter. Whatever was happening, it was moving away from him.
The tunnel Johnston was in opened up into another small cavern slightly larger than the one used as the triage station. Somehow, despite all the fighting, at least one of the main power generators must have been operating for three of the lights in the small cavern were working.
As Johnston poked his head into the cavern he saw four Indian soldiers in combat armor crouched behind a number of crates and other pieces of equipment. They were hiding from a hail of gauss cannon rounds coming from someone deeper in the cavern who was crouched behind a large machine. It looked like some kind of ore processing unit. All around the machine were bodies, some of them looked like bodies of women and children. The Indian soldiers had seemingly trapped a group of civilians in this cavern before they managed to escape. There was only one survivor still fighting.
Just to his right, Johnston saw another passageway leading out of the cavern, one he could duck down to avoid having to engage the Indian soldiers.
As she raised her head above the machine, there was no mistaking Councilwoman Pennington. She was dirty and bruised but the fierce look of anger in her eyes was unmistakable.
I could just leave her here, Johnston thought, though a wave of shame almost forced him to open fire on the Indian soldiers immediately. Over the past two months he had witnessed Pennington’s leadership skills in action. She was the one who was holding the Havenites together. He knew that if and when the British forces arrived and tried to set up Haven as a British protectorate, she could prove to be a big problem. If she chose to oppose British rule, she could turn the population against Duchess Somerville and the whole idea of a British protectorate.
On the other hand, he knew that after today’s fiasco, the resistance would need her. She would provide the figurehead for the remnants of the resistance to rally around. There were still plenty of other groups out there who were ready to continue the fight against the Indians. If they heard Pennington had been killed or captured, their resolve would wane.
Cursing himself for even thinking of leaving someone behind, he sprang into action. With their backs to him, the four Indian soldiers were easy targets and they quickly fell to his plasma rifle before the last one even had time to turn around.
“Come on,” Johnston shouted to Pennington as she stood up. “There’s no time to wait.”
Pennington looked down at the bodies scattered around her feet. The rage in her eyes drained. With a sob, she dropped her gauss cannon.
“Come on,” Johnston shouted again.
When Pennington didn’t even look like she had heard, he let out a sigh of frustration. He had put enough stubborn women over his shoulders for one day. Here he was with a large hole burnt into his side, no doubt he had multiple broken ribs as well, and yet it looked like he was about to have to drag Pennington to safety.
In six quick strides, he approached her. As he got close, she made a move to grab her gauss cannon off the ground and bring it to bear on him. Sensing that she wasn’t really aware of what she was doing,
Johnston acted fast. He snapped the weapon out of her hand. With his other hand, he scoped her up and put her over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold. Before she could protest, he sprinted down a tunnel in the general direction he thought they should be going in.
He struggled to carry her deeper into the cave systems. Twice he came to forks in the tunnel and, not knowing which way to go, he simply chose at random. As he came to the third, he began to worry. He was losing all sense of direction. Setting Pennington down he gave her a firm shake.
“Snap out of it,” he almost shouted at her. “Your people still need you, and I need you to get us out of here. Come on, snap out of it.” he said again as he gently slapped her in the face.
“What?” Pennington asked distantly.
“I said, I need your help.”
“How did you get me out of there?” Pennington responded.
“Never mind that for now,” Johnston answered. “We have more pressing issues, the Indians have made it into the rear passageways. If you can’t get us out of here, we’re going to run across more of them sooner or later. Do you know where we are?”
Pennington took a few moments to look around, in the near dark of the passageways it was almost impossible to know just where they were. Yet as she peered intently towards the one or two lights that were still working in the distance, she rose to her feet. “I, I think so,” she said. “If we keep going down this passage it will bring us to another small cavern, from there we can head towards the passage I had my engineers working on. If they managed to get the last sections blown in time, there should be a way out for us.”
“Then you had better lead on,” Johnston said. “There’s no time to waste.”
“This is it,” Pennington said when they got to the new cavern. “I’m sure I know where we are now,” she added with a smile.
“You’re sure now?” Johnston said. “You mean to say, you weren’t sure before?”
“I was pretty sure,” Pennington replied. “But I didn’t quite have my bearings, now I do.” Striding confidently into the cavern she made her way straight to the second of three passageways that branched off from the cavern. “Those other two lead to dead ends,” she said, pointing to the other two passages. “This is the one we need.”
“Well at least there aren’t any signs of fighting in this cavern,” Johnston said as he looked around. There were no signs of any plasma scorch marks or bodies. “Hopefully that means most of the civilians made it out.”
“And that the Indians are lost in the passageways behind us,” Pennington finished.
*
An hour later Johnston finally saw daylight. Spurred on, he picked up his pace. For the last thirty meters he had been crawling on his knees. They were in the new section of tunnel Pennington’s engineers had blown, obviously they hadn’t been able to make it high enough to walk down. When he got to the point where he was finally able to stand, despite the pain throbbing from his side, he half sprinted into the daylight. As soon as he was out of the cave he looked around to make sure that there were no threats in the forest. Satisfied, he paused to take a deep breath of fresh air. It tasted truly wonderful.
“I never thought I’d be glad to see your forests again,” Johnston said after gulping down another refreshing mouthful of air. “They are a nightmare to try and travel through, but I’ll take them every single day compared to crawling through that dark damp cave.”
“I think I know what you mean,” Pennington agreed. “But if the Indians have got lost in the caves, you can bet they know their way around the forest. I imagine they have patrols searching all around the mountain in case there is another way out.”
“I’m sure they do,” Johnston said. “But there’s nothing else for it, we have to press on. We have to get to the Gamma site. Clare should be there; I need to make sure she got out okay.”
After becoming confident they weren’t being followed in the caves, Johnston’s mind had turned to Clare. He had worried about her constantly. Not knowing whether she made it out, whether her body was lying somewhere back in the caves, or even if she had been captured by the Indians was driving him mad. He needed to see her and if she had escaped she would be at the Gamma rendezvous site.
“I sent my staff to the Gamma site as well,” Pennington said. “So I guess we’re traveling together. I guess I’ll let you lead, seeing as you seem to be more at home in the forest.”
For the next several hours Johnston slowly and carefully led them away from the mountain under which the resistance had been located. Once or twice they heard the tell-tale sound of a shuttle off in the distance. There was also the distant rumbling from howitzer shells exploding in the forest. They sounded more than ten kilometers away by Johnston’s reckoning, yet it was a bad sign. When they both heard it Johnston and Pennington shared a glance. They knew what it meant. The Indians had found at least one of the groups trying to flee the resistance hideout. There was nothing they could do for them now though, so they pressed on, hoping to find someone at the Gamma site.
Once Johnston was satisfied they were far enough away from the mountain that they were less likely to run into any Indian patrols, he picked up the pace. Given his injuries, he tried to not overdo it, but his desire to get to Gamma to see if Clare was there was too strong. More than once Pennington had to grab him by the arm and make him sit down and take a break.
“I’m amazed you’re still alive,” Pennington said to him during one of their stops. She was eyeing the wound in his side with a look of concern. “It looks like you took a full plasma bolt just above your hip, how are you still walking?”
“I’m not too sure myself,” Johnston answered. “I guess the Royal Marines built me to keep going, it hurts like hell though.”
“It looks like hell too,” Pennington said as she moved closer to stare at the wound. Johnston’s battle suit had been burnt away from the area above his hip along with his skin. His flesh underneath was charred and black and though his body had allowed a layer of blood to scab over much of the wound, pus and blood were still slowly seeping down over Johnston’s hip and leg.
“I have no idea what your government did to you to make you this way,” Pennington said. “It truly is amazing, but right now it seems rather cruel.”
“It’s better than being dead,” Johnston replied.
“It is that I suppose,” Pennington said. “And probably, so too would a lot of my people. I’ve never really thanked you and your marines for all they have done to help us. I want you to know, we owe you a great deal.”
“Nonsense,” Johnston said. “We are just happy to have the opportunity to take a shot at these Indians. We’ve had to listen to the bragging from their ranger forces for decades. It’s nice to finally get a chance to go up against them. But, if you really do appreciate our help, then you can show your thanks when Duchess Somerville arrives along with the rest of our Navy and Army.”
“We’ll see about that,” Pennington said, not wanting to be drawn into any political discussions while they were still trying to make their escape.
“We will,” Johnston said. “From what I’ve seen of you so far, you’re a formidable woman. But then so is Duchess Somerville. And I can guarantee you this, our Prime Minister is a determined man. I’d recommend you go along with their plan, especially if British forces are involved in the liberation of Haven. As much as my government likes to think of itself as being willing to stand up for the downtrodden. They never do something for free.”
“Like I said,” Pennington replied. “We’ll see, for now though, let’s just worry about getting back to our people and finding out what’s left of the resistance.”
*
They tramped through the thick Haven forest, taking more and more breaks as Johnston’s energy reserves gave out. Then, just as Johnston thought he could go no further, Pennington spoke the words he had been waiting for.
“We are here,” she said with more than a hint of relief of her own. Lifting her hands to her mouth
, she gave a series of short whistles.
A similar sounding series of notes came back to them through the forest and before they knew it, seven Havenite fighters appeared, all carrying gauss cannons. “Councilwoman,” the female who seemed to be in charge of the squad said as she ran over to Pennington. “You’re alive, thank goodness. We thought we lost you. The last survivors came in over two hours ago.”
“Well we’re here,” Pennington said with a smile as she patted the woman on her back. “Now,” Pennington continued as a more serious look came over her face. “How many of us are there?”
“Over two hundred and ninety,” the female resistance fighter said. “Three full evacuation groups made it here. A forth also made it. But they were attacked along the way. An Indian patrol ran across them. Only about one third of them made it.”
