But they hadn’t counted on that tank. That had been pretty brilliant on the part of the Animal commander, dropping armor right into the middle of a base.
Crometheus moved first and quickly, targeting the dark shadows coming down his side under the curving walkway that encircled the massive shaft. Enemy targeting lasers danced neurotically across every surface as rounds from both hand cannons, fired in succession, smashed into that advancing group of Animals. A second later, a hail of pulse fire, bright blue and almost like lightning moving in a thundering plain’s herd, erupted out across the darkness in response.
Crometheus had multiple tangos down, according to the HUD. But the Animals had reinforcements and they weren’t busy with the casualties he’d caused them.
Crometheus covered behind a pillar, poked one hand cannon around the corner, and fired without aiming. A blur of heavy caliber on full auto. Thirty rounds exploded down the walkway and it was anyone’s guess how many found a target. That wasn’t the point. The point was keeping their heads down while Marz shifted positions.
The other Eternal raced like a shadowy blur past him, firing and sprinting for the next pillar forward of his position.
Men… Bad Thought… just Animals really… were screaming in the darkness ahead as Marz shot them down.
An Animal came rappelling down the shaft nearest Crometheus, holding a subcompact pulse rifle in one hand. Crometheus hit him with five shots from his off-hand sidearm. Excessive, but why not make a point? Maybe someone coming down the lift shaft above the dead Animal would think twice about being tricky.
The operator died, dangling and bleeding in the well of the shaft, and more Animals dropped down beside him and fired through the lift’s exit onto that level. But Crometheus was already gone, shifting for the next firing position as Marz covered.
They were in it now. Mixed in and among the Spilursan troops swarming the walkway. Within seconds, and faster than he’d expected, Crometheus was firing point-blank into the startled faces of the Animals as both sides unexpectedly met. One tried to deploy a grenade, and Crometheus batted at him with a powerful strike from the augmented cybernetic arm of his armor. The Animal soldier went stumbling back toward the tank, and the explosive device he was carrying went off against a defensive barrier.
Someone attacked Crometheus with a knife in the dark.
Pulse fire streaked past his helmet from close at hand.
He felt someone use their rifle to butt-stroke his armored midsection. The Animal’s rifle shattered.
He fired back, riddling that one with wild fire that tore holes in his chest.
A dark shadow grabbed one of his hand cannons. Suddenly. Desperately. Crometheus tried to shake the man off, while firing with that same weapon into the face of another Spilursan soldier who’d pushed forward and tried to bring his pulse rifle to bear. The round from Crometheus’s sidearm took that man’s head off.
The dangler on his arm continued to try to drag the weapon down and out of the firing arc to no avail. His twisted rictus of a face was snarling, fear-struck, and angry all at once that he was helpless against the incredible strength the Eternal armor provided. The Animal knew that he was in the worst of all possible positions as Crometheus rammed his plated knee forward and broke the man’s ribs. Gasping for air, the Animal collapsed into the other bodies along the floor.
Crometheus took a step back, steadying one hand cannon forward to engage any targets ahead and dropping the other to fire off finishing shots into the man on the ground.
That was when the tank opened up, filling the battle space surrounding Crometheus and Marz with an intense and overwhelming amount of fire.
Gods: Chapter Thirty-Two
There are things that happen in battles. Amateurs get lucky. Grenades explode directly underneath something and fail to kill or even maim anyone. Artillery falls indiscriminately, mindlessly killing one while leaving another nearby standing. The trained and the untrained can both become corpses in a battle, and though reason at times has something to do with it… at other times, it matters not at all. Who can say what will happen when the shots start flying?
Such are the vagaries of war.
As the darkness of the recessed corridor that ringed the heavy-duty lift platform filled with the intensity of pulse fire from the Tiger’s quad-linked turrets, Crometheus turned to see Marz literally disintegrate, the bright blue pulses tearing him to shreds in half a second.
Game-overed. No doubt about that.
In the sudden ghostly blue starlight created by the tank’s fire, Crometheus saw all the Animals that had surrounded him in shadow… now revealed. Their twisted and leering and, yes, even haunted features made clear in that terrible moment. Determined to kill. This was a snapshot of a kind of the last seconds of the battle there at the main lift. A memory he would carry away—of them, the Animals, the worst of humanity, surrounding Marz, the best of what humanity was capable of becoming. Homo deus.
And everyone was torn to shreds.
All of them.
Save Crometheus.
The tank’s turret operator cut a wide swath of searing bright destruction across that entire section of the corridor.
The pulse fire missed him for no discernible reason.
Such are the vagaries of war.
He hadn’t ducked. Hadn’t dodged. Just some fault in the timing of lethality meets target that caused the four bright streams of destruction to miss him entirely when everyone else was ruined in the same moment.
A moment that may have lasted, at best, seven seconds. A moment of apocalyptic blue hell.
And then the quad turret ceased and everything it had touched had turned to melting ceramic, smoking plastic, burnt flesh, and charred bone. Armor and weapons. Cooked flesh. Original and synthetic. A damaged power conduit flashed and erupted in a sudden shower of sparks. Damage control lights went off around it signaling a fatal rupture in the system it fed, or operated, or diagnosed.
Crometheus ran.
Dashing for the exit that led to flow control, their established fallback point.
The quad turret was not silent for long. The gunner allowed the guns to cool down and the barrels to finishing their firing spool, then spun it all up again to engage Crometheus as he sprinted for the exit.
Crometheus used both hand cannons to pull for all he was worth, arms and weapons dragging him forward and away from the arc of the four barrels of the quad turret and their hot fire that sprang at him once more. Legs pumping and heavy armored combat boots thumping, running from the battle that had just been lost, he made the opening and slammed the panel to shut the emergency blast door behind him. It knifed into place, sealing him off from incoming fire.
Moving forward through the infinity of cross-shaped sections that was the master flow control for reactor three, Crometheus opened the comm to find out who was still operational in the Chaos team. His HUD was getting signal interference and failed to provide squad bio readouts.
“Status report,” he demanded over the ether.
After a pause, Zur came in.
“Low on ammo, Cro. We’ve ceded the access well and are dropping back to reactor three external venting. Going to set up a kill zone there. Smaug is hit bad but says he can hold.”
“Copy,” replied Crometheus, falling back into their pseudo-military gamer chat that had long ago evolved into the lingua franca of the Uplifted marines. “I’m in flow control but it’s a bad loc to hold. May have to fight from reactor control. Alantra, what’s your ten?”
Her voice was low and whispery. Breathy almost.
“Completing hack on their comm. My area is overrun. I’ve crawled into the outer hull of the station with one of their dead. Dissecting comm and should have an analysis of their traffic shortly. Stand by.”
Crometheus heard plate cutters going to work on the blast door behind him. It wouldn’t take
the Animals long to get through. Then they’d breach in force. But the one thing he had going for him was that they couldn’t get the tank in here. The tank would protect their access point in the lift well, but that was all it could do. The quarters were too tight for it to move deeper into the station. If he could fall back and link up with Commander Zero, he might be able to acquire an anti-armor one-shot. They’d brought a few with them in the long trek across the ocean bottom, but many had been used up to knock out hardened points of Animal resistance on the lower levels.
“Crometheus to Commander Zero.”
He waited. The station’s electromagnetic shielding to protect the cloud had made comm traffic between the levels spotty at best. But a moment later she came through, her voice tinny and far away.
“Zero here. What’s your status, Crometheus?”
“We’ve disrupted their main assault. Marz and Immaculus game-overed. Hacking enemy comm at the moment… For now, we’re holding at reactor three.”
It was quiet as he ran along the cliffs of flow control. Four massive blocks that linked up to the reactor jutted out into a central well. The power that pulsed through them was ominous. And not for the first time did Crometheus wonder if the shielding was enough to deflect the high-explosive ammunition they were getting down to. He’d need to use that soon just to stay in the fight.
He checked his HUD. He was still on six point five. And down to half on the fifty cal for the Automags.
“Acknowledged, Crometheus,” replied Commander Zero. “We’re receiving satellite uplink traffic from the sensor grid we installed out on the lakebed. Our ships are in-system and commencing the assault. We don’t have to hold much longer. But we do have to prevent the Animals from tracking down Maestro if they decide to go looking for what we did to their cloud while we had access. Which they will. Also… their special operations teams have just dropped submersibles via airborne assault group. They’ll try to take us from below. I can’t spare anyone to relieve you at this time. We have to hold the core. Hold in place until our allies breach the station from the surface. I need you to hold your position and keep them out of the main core.”
In other words… they were surrounded on all sides without much room to maneuver. If they failed, the Animals were familiar enough with their own cloud core system to run a sweep and find Maestro. Then everything they’d attempted would have been for nothing.
“We’ll hold,” he said over the comm.
There was a pause.
Then, “For honor and glory, Cro,” she said, as if it were she who had found the right answer. Fake it until you make it.
“For honor… and glory,” he replied. Telling her she’d found it. The next step along the Path. Maybe the last. Maybe this was his last message to his tribe.
Then the comm went dead.
Gods: Chapter Thirty-Three
Within minutes Alantra had created a live feed from the incoming enemy comm traffic. It was clear the Animals were sensing their moment of victory in retaking the station. That resistance on level eight had been less than expected was considered a sign that their enemy was reeling. And though there had been casualties, there weren’t as many as expected. They were going to push hard now.
“What next, Cro?” asked Alantra as they both listened to the hacked feed. Crometheus said nothing as he swapped out new mags. She was working her way through an internal duct system to reactor three. Zur was pinned down in a vent under a furious crossfire from two Animal elements. There was no way to relieve or rescue him without leaving reactor three undefended.
Reactor three was the failsafe in the Animal plan, according to the hacked traffic. If they couldn’t crack level nine where the cloud was being held by the rest of the force, then they’d det the reactor higher up in the station and solve the whole problem in one epic nuclear fireball. So holding reactor three until Uplifted reinforcements arrived was essential.
“The way I see it,” began Alantra in the absence of an answer, “they’ll be coming at you from sub-maintenance, main supply, and the dock on the starboard side. All three lead straight into the reactor. If they override the blast doors, or even just cut through them, they can come straight at you.”
Again, Crometheus could think of nothing to say. Everything she was saying added up. There were no easy answers or tricky plans. Options were nil to non-existent. It’s one thing to talk about death… it’s another thing to actually face it.
What did that feel like?
It felt like you were speechless and strangling on words that wouldn’t come. It was like having nothing to say and instead resigning yourself to the fate you’d so glibly chosen when the moment hadn’t been as real as the one you found yourself in.
Crometheus looked around at the space he found himself in. The reactor was state-of-the-art. Housed within a massive cavern, the central bulb of the nano-reactor hung four stories above his head. On the floor of reactor control everything was dark save the flickering lights and glowing panels of the control systems. Massive superconductor coils arced away from the reactor, transferring energy to the rest of the fortress.
At that moment the station was rocked by some explosion in the levels far below. No doubt the Animals were attacking with their submersibles. A mere split second later, anti-personnel explosions erupted in the corridors elsewhere on Crometheus’s level. Zur’s biometric feed, recently reacquired, flickered out. Signal was still good. Indicating… the Animals were coordinating their attacks. They had a pretty good idea of what they were facing and they were working together.
“He’s gone…” Alantra said forlornly over comm.
“I know,” Crometheus replied.
“So… again… what’s our plan now, Crometheus?” she asked after a long minute of silence. He could hear the fear trying to creep into her voice. He could also hear her fighting it back, not allowing it to get a claw hold inside her mind.
Crometheus couldn’t chance damage to the reactor. Which meant the HE ammo was out. Everything would be for nothing at that point, never mind that they’d all get cooked. Honor and glory tasted like dry things in his new mouth at that moment and he wondered why he’d ever volunteered for this. He licked his lips and thought about the sensation. It was real. Just as it had been long ago.
That was… good. Something good from a good time long ago. As simple as licking your lips. Imagine that.
He remembered candy and snacks you could buy at Little League games. Powder that you dipped a candy stick in and licked.
Life… life was good.
“I’m going to attack the main body,” he said. “I’ll try and do enough damage to convince them to pull back before assaulting the reactor. That’s the best I can do now. Give them something to think about and force them to reassess. Maybe that buys us a few more minutes for the main body to hit the station. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Okay… I’m in. We can link up at—”
“Negative. Get to the reactor and disable all the control systems. It won’t prevent them from destroying it, but it’ll slow them down when they do take it. Either way it gives us a little more room for reinforcements to arrive.”
“Cro… that’s over a thousand coming straight at you. It’s suicide.”
His last words to her were, “It… always was.” And then just before he cut the comm, “Do whatever it takes to stop them. If there’s a way disable their ability to melt it down… I’ll buy you as much time as I can.”
And then he was gone.
Gods: Chapter Thirty-Four
There was some song playing in his head. He couldn’t remember it completely. Only just barely. Some song from when he was a kid. Before he’d left the place he’d called home. When it had been a real place and not just a digital reimagining inside a massive MMO playground they’d decided was more real than that same reality itself was. From when he’d been real too.
Real.
The song was some determined march, or dirge, or ballad maybe by a synth-pop band. Something that had always made him think thoughts of gravitas… duty… and fate. Even when he was a kid.
Soldier thoughts, he’d always thought of them as.
Things he thought were important when he was a child. When I was a child I spake as a child he remembered a preacher preaching. Once and long ago.
Funny, he thought. Funny how at the end… old things keep coming back no matter how hard you try to forget them. Or keep them alive.
And…
Would Holly Wood be there at the end? He’d always had that fantasy. That there would be some kind of final reckoning between the two of them other than the one where he’d…
Edit.
… where she’d left. Some apology from him. Some final absolution from her. That she would show one last time at the end of everything.
But was that impossible.
That had been the script as it was written in his head.
But he was trillions of miles and centuries up time’s stream. And she’d stayed on lost Earth. Long ago.
No, he told himself, when you’re storming an ice station on an alien world trillions of miles from home, chance meetings of a serendipitous nature with long-lost loves aren’t very likely.
That should be a law right up there with gravity, he thought to himself.
So then, maybe a miracle—though he’d never believed in them. Some wise woman had once written something in a book he’d read between concerts. Halfway between Reno and Rome. Lying in a musty old hotel room waiting to come on stage. Waiting to come to life. She’d written… Sometimes you pray, even when you don’t believe.
Gods & Legionnaires (Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars Book 2) Page 28
