Nakamura nodded. “Well, if Beyzit is convinced of it, that’s good enough for me. The Thunderbolt is rarely wrong about such things.”
Agrippa regarded him, tight-lipped. “That is a fact, sir.”
6
The assault began precisely according to plan. Very quickly, though, everything went off the rails.
Tamerlane was dispatched to round up the elements of First Legion that were already planet-side, while Nakamura met with General Beyzit in Third Legion headquarters for a quick strategy session. Once plans were agreed upon and in place, Nakamura returned to his army and ordered them into positions.
“Beyzit was not happy to see me, I can tell you, Ezekial,” the general reported in confidence as they waited in their temporary headquarters tent for the time for the attack to arrive. “I got the impression he quite liked being the ranking officer on Adrianople.”
“I’m sure,” Tamerlane replied. “Of course, I’ve never heard of him being in a good mood—about anything.” Then, “It does seem rather odd, though, General.”
“What’s that?”
“Having both of you here, on-planet, at once.”
“The Thunderbolt expressed a similar view,” Nakamura replied. “That’s why he is currently on his way up to his base ship in orbit.”
Tamerlane reacted to this little announcement with surprise. “Cutting and running?”
Nakamura gave him a sidelong glance. “You should say that a little louder, Ezekial. I’m sure there are some few loyal Third Legion troops around us right now that didn’t hear you.”
Chagrined, Tamerlane pursed his lips and looked away.
“But it doesn’t seem that strange to me for us both to be here,” Nakamura went on. “It is, after all, the main theater of the current war.”
Tamerlane noted that the general, while trying to convince him, didn’t seem terribly convinced himself.
“What?” Nakamura asked, seeing that Tamerlane was visibly conflicted.
“It’s like Kampong all over again,” the colonel groused. “We keep being sent to locations where we’re most likely to get killed.”
“Or locations where the best soldiers in the empire are needed,” the general said. Again, he didn’t sound entirely convinced.
Minutes later, the signal arrived: all forces were ready.
Nakamura stepped out of the tent, Tamerlane just behind him. The darkness was almost overwhelming; it was nearly midnight, local time. He inhaled the chilled air, then nodded to a signal officer. “Give the word.”
The word was given. The assault to break the siege of Adrianople had begun.
7
The lynchpin of the hastily-constructed Chung fortifications on Adrianople was a bowl-shaped valley only a few kilometers west of the major city on the major continent. Since the bulk of First and Third Armies was deployed within a hundred kilometers of there, and since even their ground transportation—hovertanks, levitating troop carriers, and the like—could travel very quickly when necessary, only a few minutes passed between the order to attack and the arrival at the valley of the vanguard.
The first strike came from above, from the Lagos, still high in Adrianople orbit. The debris of the enemy ships it and its cohorts had defeated upon their arrival had been cleared away, and now Lagos targeted the center of the enemy’s valley stronghold. Cloud cover was dense, and accuracy could not be guaranteed. If successful, however, this first gambit in the battle could swing both momentum and the odds in the Empire’s favor from the very start.
It all happened in less than a second: the huge warship fired a high-powered energy beam from its snout that streaked down like a lightning bolt and struck the center of the Chung defensive fortifications. Before the air could cool along that line—indeed, before the vacuum it created could be re-filled by the surrounding air—the ship launched a tiny missile that streaked down through the cylinder emptiness it had left behind. Moving in a vacuum, the missile thus achieved incredible speed and carried with it devastating kinetic power. It struck, and when it did, it vaporized everything within a quarter-mile radius of impact, leaving behind a crater never more than a hundred meters deep at its center point.
The blast wave washed over First and Third Armies, and Nakamura immediately signaled the attack. The hovertanks were unleashed first, their heavy metal shapes zooming over the smoking landscape, picking out important targets and blasting them with their massive particle-beam cannons mounted atop low swivel turrets. Then the troop carriers rushed forward, swinging into positions of cover and erupting with soldiers who instantly fanned out, blast-pistols and heavy quad rifles at the ready.
The entire action played out in less than an hour. Nakamura announced he was going in to personally inspect the results and nobody objected. The Chung lines had collapsed; their positions had all crumbled and the fight was going out of them in record time. The first strike on the center of their formation had decapitated their command structure even more effectively than anyone on the other side of the fight could have hoped. Now, leaderless, any chance for an orderly retreat had devolved into a rout as far less able and less experienced junior officers issued conflicting and contradictory orders. Legion I overran the western lines and kept going, while Third Legion blasted away at the Chung in the east. Nakamura watched it all play out on the displays in his camp and prophesied that the two forces would link up just north of the valley, beyond the new crater. That, he declared, was where he would meet them.
The heavily-armored command hovercar zipped over the blasted battlefield, a phalanx of escort vehicles that included three hovertanks in close formation around it. Nakamura stood on the front deck, an odd and antique-looking device held to his eyes. The local Aether had been horrendously disrupted if not intentionally jammed during the main part of the attack, and he didn’t trust it yet to offer him a true enough image via his ocular implants. So he did it the old-fashioned way—with a pair of binoculars.
The vanguard of each army had signaled moments earlier that the Chung had surrendered—or been eradicated—across the entire line. There should be little danger now. Even so, Tamerlane stood just behind his general, seeking any potential dangers, his eyes as keen as a hawk’s. Behind them, Agrippa towered like some lost oak, in constant contact with his Golden Phalanx company and occasionally dispatching messages to his immediate superior, General of Third Legion Abdul-Rashid Beyzit, aboard his flagship in orbit. The Thunderbolt, for his part, had made his preferences clear: He was not coming down to the surface of the planet under any circumstances short of a direct order from the Emperor or Nakamura. No one had the courage to ask him why that should be.
After circling about the massive crater and reaching the north side of the valley, Nakamura signaled a halt. His big vehicle slowed and stopped, the support units continuing to curve around.
Nakamura climbed down, his black boots crunching on the ashy, barren ground. Nervous as always when his commanding officer insisted on visiting a still-”hot” battlefield, Tamerlane hurried after him.
“The Golden Phalanx, serving as vanguard of the Third Legion, will arrive in approximately thirty minutes, General,” Agrippa called down from the observation platform. “First Legion is about five minutes beyond that.”
“Thank you, Colonel. I look forward to seeing your ‘Kings of Oblivion’ once again.”
Agrippa grinned at the general’s use of the entirely unofficial but cherished old nickname for the Phalanx.
Nakamura strode across the wasteland, the soil crunching as he stepped. Clouds of dark smoke and dust rose up as he moved, dirtying his camouflage uniform—it was mostly a tan and green pattern, but with a tiny bit of red along the cuffs and collar to indicate Legion I.
Tamerlane caught up with him and started to speak when the first of the explosions struck, heralding the ambush.
The hovertank off to the west exploded in a blinding flash of explosives and fuel. An instant later, the one to the east did likewise. The third and final one,
to the south and moving along the rim of the crater, survived for one more second before it joined its brethren.
With the third one, Tamerlane managed to actually see the beam that struck it. He pointed and cried out, “High-powered energy cannon—there!”
“Back aboard, General!” shouted Agrippa, even as the big man issued orders to his subordinates to fire up the engines and prepare to move out with all possible haste.
Nakamura recovered from the shock quickly and hurried back toward the vehicle. Tamerlane tried to help him, only to be rebuffed: “I’m fine, Ezekial. See to yourself!”
Tamerlane noticed then that the air cover was gone. The first thing the Anatolians had done after the lightning strike from orbit was to blanket the area with atmospheric fighter planes, in order to maintain air superiority over the battlefield—but not a single aircraft could be seen now. What exactly is going on?
He turned to point this out to the general—and all hell broke loose around them.
Explosions, a hail of bullets and a barrage of blinding energy beams rocked the air.
Tamerlane leapt forward into Nakamura’s back, driving the general down into the dirt just before the deadly hail could strike them both.
They rolled over and Nakamura was staring, wide-eyed, at nothing. “A trap,” he managed at last, focusing on Tamerlane’s face, coughing from the cloud of ash they’d stirred up. “It was a trap!”
More gunfire, this from much closer. Tamerlane rolled to his feet and, crouching, gazed across the gray landscape. Soldiers were advancing—and they were moving very, very quickly. Too quickly, he realized. Inhumanly quickly.
Tall and lanky, they loped across the barren field like antelope. They wore body armor seemingly composed of glass, colors flashing and swimming across the surface. They carried what looked like long, skinny rifles in one hand and blades of similar shape in the other. Their voices were high-pitched, their language incomprehensible.
“Dyonari!” Tamerlane called out.
From above them on the vehicle’s deck, Agrippa cursed. “There have been rumors in this sector that the Chung had actually made alliance—or at least entered into some sort of non-aggression pact—with alien powers.”
“Astonishing,” Tamerlane replied. “Our fights are our fights—human fights. How could they get involved with xeno-forms?”
“I don’t much care,” Agrippa replied with a shrug. “Enemies are enemies. Once you’ve killed them, they’re pretty much dead. It never seems to matter then what they used to be.”
Nakamura spat ash, then growled. “I should’ve known there was more going on here than met the eye,” he muttered. “They want to capture us alive. They want hostages.”
“We’ll see about that,” Tamerlane responded. His blast pistol was in his hand as he helped Nakamura into cover behind the big slabs of broken concrete. “Get ready!”
And then the aliens were upon them.
The first Dyonari warrior to reach them, nimble as a gazelle, leapt over the concrete blocks and over their heads as well and confronted them from behind. It brandished its deadly-looking sword—a gleaming, transparent curved blade that looked as much like glass as did the armor it wore—and screeched something at them in its own language. Tamerlane brought up his blast pistol to fire, when suddenly with a bellow Agrippa leapt from the top of the transport and crashed down on the alien with savage fury. He punched it in the face once, twice, then drew his pistol and, as it staggered back, disoriented, he fired point-blank into that same rage-contorted face. The alien dropped, lifeless.
“You have to shoot them where they’re vulnerable,” the big man explained. “Most energy-blast shots to their armor will just deflect away.”
“I was fighting the Dyonari before you were born, son,” Nakamura replied. “If you—”
Whatever else the general was going to say was lost as a second and third Dyonari arrived, blades swinging.
The transport hatch had opened in the interim and the dozen First Legion soldiers inside boiled out. They rushed around to take up defensive positions in front of their officers, and the now half-dozen-strong crowd of alien attackers crashed into them. The humans never had a chance; the Dyonari were taller, stronger, and far more agile, and they danced in and out of the formation, not even bothering to fire their guns but relying entirely on their blades. Within half a minute, the soldiers had been carved to pieces.
Tamerlane looked on, aghast, firing his own pistol whenever a target presented itself but rarely managing to connect with the incredibly fast-moving enemy—and, of course, when he did, the blast usually deflected away. He realized full-well that, had the Dyonari not been there to take them captive but instead merely to kill them, they all would have been dead by now. Even Agrippa wouldn’t have lasted terribly long, though he was certainly giving a good accounting of himself; the big blond soldier was about as powerful and nearly as fast as the aliens, and on two occasions he managed to grasp a Dyonari by the arm and sling it down to the ground, where a shot or a series of punches put it out of commission.
A wave of coldness passed over them then, and Tamerlane heard a voice that at first seemed to be coming from all around, but which he quickly realized was inside his head: Humans. Officers, it said. Surrender now. We have no wish to slaughter you as we have your soldiers.
“Get out of my head, aliens,” Agrippa cried, rushing to attack the nearest Dyonari and smashing it in the glass-armored gut with his fist.
You are surrounded. You cannot defeat us all. Cease your resistance.
Tamerlane looked to Nakamura; the general scowled.
“I would say we’re in an untenable position,” the colonel stated angrily.
“They’ve blanketed the Aether,” Nakamura told him. Of course, Tamerlane had already figured that out for himself, since he’d been trying to call for reinforcements from the moment the aliens had appeared, only seconds earlier, and to no avail.
Agrippa was about to be overwhelmed as three Dyonari advanced on him; quickly he beat a strategic retreat to where the other two officers had taken defensive positions behind the concrete slabs.
“The thought of surrender—and particularly surrender to aliens—galls me,” the big man barked, “but we can’t just allow the general to fall into their hands this way—” He trailed off, unsure of what to say or do next.
The Dyonari had regrouped a short distance away, behind a bit of cover, and were holding off on pressing the attack. Possibly they sensed via their telepathic powers that the humans were discussing the concept of surrender, and were allowing them time reach that decision.
“Surrender, hell,” Nakamura spat. “I’ll go down fighting, sooner than that.” He drew his blast pistol and held it up, checking its power charge.
“General, I don’t think—” Tamerlane began.
Nakamura ignored him. Before either of the other two soldiers could stop him, the general charged out into the open, aiming his pistol at the nearest alien warrior, firing shot after shot. Caught completely by surprise, the Dyonari warrior failed to move for a mere heartbeat—and a blast of super-heated plasma from the gun took it between the eyes.
Nakamura was already running past it, seeking the next target, as it fell to the ground.
Tamerlane gawked. He’d known the general most of his life, and knew how fiercely determined the man could be—and how reluctant to concede anything on the battlefield. But this—this was suicide. Cursing, he rushed out into the open, hot on Nakamura’s heels.
The Dyonari realized what was happening now. Three of their warriors emerged from their own patch of cover and raised their swords. The others behind them leveled their long, glass guns at Nakamura.
Tamerlane cried out—there was absolutely nothing he could do. He reached out for the general, seeking to grasp him, to pull him down, out of the way. His fingers stretched out—out, in the direction of the general—in the direction of the enemy—
Heat. He distinctly felt a wave of heat passing through
his body. Had he been shot? What was happening?
His fingers tingled. There was a burst of light directly in front of him. Ignoring it, his eyes focused beyond Nakamura on the enemy figures that were about to fire. He willed destruction on them.
There was a larger flash, this time across the gulf of open ground that separated Nakamura and him from the enemy. The flash was followed by screams—psychic screams, reverberating through his head.
An instant later, the three Dyonari warriors directly ahead burst into flames.
8
The telepathic backlash from the aliens’ surprise, followed by their pain—their agony—drove the three humans to their knees.
“What happened?” Nakamura managed to gasp, his eyes squeezed tightly shut as the fading echoes of the screams reverberated within their heads. “Did our… reinforcements… arrive?”
Tamerlane stood on wobbly legs as the psychic wave receded. His brain felt as if it were vibrating within his skull from the force of it. He looked around, seeing the hulking shape of Agrippa moving up next to them, shaking his head violently from side to side like a huge dog that has heard an uncomfortably high-pitched sound. Across the field, he saw the remains of the three Dyonari he and the general had attacked, now in the form of sizzling mush inside their half-melted glassite armor. Beyond them, the other dozen or so aliens were backing away slowly, warily, seemingly as uncertain of what had just happened as the humans were.
“Ezekial,” came Nakamura’s voice as he struggled to his feet. “Look.”
The colonel looked where the older man was pointing—at Tamerlane’s own right hand.
Flames flickered and danced along its surface.
Tamerlane cried out and jerked it back, waving it about. The flames fluttered but didn’t die.
He staggered back, clutching his hand to his middle and wrapping his other arm over it, desperate to snuff out the flame. He stood there a moment that way, the others looking on in puzzlement, then drew his hand out again. The flames were gone. The hand itself appeared perfectly normal, as if nothing had happened. No burn marks, no blackening, no damage whatsoever.
The Shattering: Omnibus Page 16
