by Terry Mixon
“Hang on,” she said grimly. “This might get a little rough.”
She brought the ultralight down as low as possible and reduced its speed to just above a stall as she came in to land near the forces there. She spotted Krueger just before she was about to set down and goosed the throttle enough to bump them further along and brought her aircraft down about ten meters away from her partner.
The landing was just as rough as she’d expected. The ultralight had barely touched down before one of the wheels dropped into a hole and the entire thing flipped over. Thankfully, even though it was a rough landing, it was one that both she and Sandra managed to walk away from.
Throwing her helmet back at the wrecked ultralight, Jess raced over to Krueger.
“Where is he?” she demanded.
Without speaking, he gestured toward a group of men huddled around something. Someone.
A couple of steps and she dropped next to Harry. He was breathing, so that was good. His arm was a mess though. It looked like he’d been shot in the shoulder, and there was blood everywhere. The massive wound had lots of bone splinters in it, too.
She scanned the faces of the people working on him and saw one of them was a medic. “How’s he doing? Is he going to live?”
The man shrugged as he tried to do something with the wound. “We’re doing our best, but I’m not sure. It’s bad. We need to get him some better care immediately. Even if we do, he’s going to lose this arm.”
She was about to speak when a gasp went up around her. The air car was coming down with Brenda waving at them. Someone must’ve spread the word that these were friendlies. Thank God for that, because she hadn’t thought about it at all.
As soon as the air car was on the ground, Brenda jumped out, and a number of soldiers followed her. She marched right up to Jess.
“We need to get him and his medical team into the back of the air car. If I push it to max, we can be back at the gate in half an hour. Move.”
Jess didn’t even hesitate, ordering the men around her to find a stretcher to carry Harry and get him into the air car. The clock was ticking, and she had to get him back to the sarcophagus before he died. She only prayed that they’d make it in time.
43
Brenda watched as a group of medics loaded Harry Rogers into the back of the air car and secure him as well as they possibly could. He looked bad. Really bad. She was concerned that he wasn’t going to survive the trip back to the hill.
Once they’d finished loading him, Jess, Sandra, and a host of soldiers and medics climbed into the back of the air car. Jess took the co-pilot’s seat while the rest of them settled in.
Without further ado, Brenda brought the air car back to life and took it up into the air. She set the course toward the decaying Asharim city and the hill where the gate was located. She increased the speed as high as she dared.
Even with her obvious concern for her partner, she watched Jess stare at the controls. The other woman shook her head slowly. “I can’t believe that these implanted memories tell me how to operate this thing. That’s crazy. How can they do that?”
Brenda shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter, does it? What matters is that we can fly things like this air car and control their spaceships. It gives us a bit of leverage to try to stop them from sending their minions to eliminate us.
“Not that they’re that dangerous in their degenerate state. Honestly, I think even regular army troops without the special weapons might have been able to take out these forces if we’d had more time and gotten a little bit more help from the US government.”
“Do you think Queen will ever give us any meaningful assistance?” Jess asked. “The man is a snake. All he wants to do is get one over on us so that he can smugly claim to his boss that he’s gotten alien tech all by his little lonesome.”
“You must not have heard,” Brenda said with a rueful smile. “The president forced Queen to turn in his resignation. He’s no longer the secretary of state. Now he’s just a working schmo. Sadly, a working schmo that I’m responsible for over the next five years, but it got him to release a lot of the stuff that he’d promised.
“I’ll get you all the information I can once everything settles down, but he did loan us an infantry battalion to stick on the hill and provide overwatch. As soon as we can turn our attention back to the city, I suspect that we’ll have the force to take it.”
As they’d been speaking, Jess had shot glances back at the medical team working on Harry. Based on their activity, it certainly didn’t seem like he was out of the woods. In fact, it seemed to Brenda as if the medics were doing what they could to keep him alive and perhaps not succeeding completely.
She focused her attention forward. She needed to be concerned about getting to the hill as quickly as possible, and that meant not going off course. A couple of minutes might mean the difference between life and death for Harry Rogers.
“We have company,” Sandra said.
She looked back and found the woman standing behind her with her night-vision goggles on. She held a second set that she slipped onto Brenda’s head and activated. The darkness became green, and she could suddenly see much further away.
There was something ahead of them.
“It’s an air car,” Sandra said. “I can’t see what kind, but considering that only the Asharim have stuff that flies, this isn’t going to be good. How capable is this thing of evasive maneuvers without dumping everyone out the back?”
“I’m betting it sucks,” Brenda said grimly. “This isn’t a combat aircraft. It’s more like a transport. There are spots back in the back where cargo can be secured, but it’s not really made for passengers unless some kind of seats are installed. Seats that this unit didn’t have when I captured it.”
Sandra grunted. “Then we’ll just have to do the best we can. Let me get my rifle.”
It only took a few moments for the other woman to grab her rifle and step up between the control chairs, settling the barrel on the short windscreen that protected the drivers of the air car.
She knelt and stared through the scope at the oncoming air car. “I’m seeing two pilots and potentially a couple of people in the back. It’s a little difficult to tell from this angle.
“Hold it. The people in the back are standing up. They look like Peret. They’ve got flechette rifles. Based on the way they’re looking toward us, they can tell we’re here.”
Brenda watched as the other vehicle grew larger with unsettling haste. With the combined rate of closure, they’d be in firing range way before she could dodge out of the path of the other vehicle. They were going to have to do something about it.
“You need to take it out,” Jess said grimly. Obviously the blonde had been thinking the same thoughts that Brenda had.
“It’s going to be chancy,” Sandra said. “I can only get a couple of shots before we’re all tangled up with each other. We better get everyone else shooting, too. We’re going to need all the firepower we can get if they get to point-blank range.”
Without waiting for any further instruction, Sandra steadied her rifle one more time and fired. The noise was both startlingly loud and yet less than it should have been. That must’ve been because of the suppressor on the end of the weapon.
Brenda stared forward as Sandra continued to fire and saw that she could now discern individual people on the approaching craft. Since the pilots were behind glass like she was, she wasn’t certain how effective the shots would be.
Jess was shouting for the rest of the soldiers to get their weapons up and open fire as soon as the other craft was in range. At this pace, that would be in about ten seconds, and it was probably going to be brutal.
Brenda considered the 3D aspect of the encounter and the Asharim’s relative lack of experience in operating the craft. She might be able to use their degeneration from the master race of the galaxy down to people that didn’t really understand their own technology against them.
“Everybody h
ang on,” she shouted. “I’m going to raise our altitude and tilt us to the left. That should give you a shot down into the other craft as it passes. Don’t miss, because I think I’ll only get to try this once.”
And with that, the other air car was in range, and Brenda sent their air car shooting upward even as she started tilting it slightly to the left. She paid close attention to the angles, because she needed to tilt enough to give them shots but not so far that anyone fell out. Especially Harry.
Both groups exchanged fire. The Asharim and their slaves used flechette weapons. Jess had an equivalent weapon, but most of the soldiers in the rear did not.
In the end, that didn’t matter. The angle of attack made their fire devastating and the other air car spun before flipping over and smashing into the dark forest below.
Brenda quickly brought the air car level and resumed her course toward the hill. “I hope we don’t run into any more of those things. I really don’t want to have to fight in the air with this thing again.”
“You did just fine,” Sandra said with a cold grin as she clapped her hand on Brenda’s shoulder. “This might even count as an air kill. Get four more and we’ll call you Ace.”
Brenda laughed in spite of herself. That thought was ridiculous. “I’ll just be happy to get us on the ground safely.” With that, she turned her attention back to the task at hand, and the air car settled back into its course.
Twenty-five minutes later, the hill was in sight and they hadn’t spotted another air car. Brenda breathed a sigh of relief and brought the air car down onto the hilltop, where soldiers were waiting to get Harry through the gate and back to her base in Virginia.
Once they were there, they could get him into the sarcophagus and see if he was going to pull through. She sent her prayers for him, because there was nothing more she could do. His fate was in other hands now.
Jess sat by the sarcophagus and waited. She’d been there for two days now and expected that Harry would be waking soon. She’d been afraid they wouldn’t get him inside it in time, but he’d still been alive when they’d put him in, so she expected him to fully recover.
She’d spent most of her time sitting here, but she’d still managed to stay busy. People had been coming in waves to see her about issues over the last forty-eight hours, and she’d been guiding the situation on Volunteer World via remote control.
She’d released the Vidars from their oaths and returned them home, though she’d hated taking the time away from Harry to do so. They would talk to their high priest, and she nursed hope that they’d become her allies.
Susanna Adorno and General Norris had come to visit yesterday, praising Harry and his troops as patriots for shedding their blood in defense of the Volunteers. The people of the settlement were helping to gather the dead and care for the less seriously injured.
The woman had said that they wouldn’t forget who their friends had been when their need was great. Based on everything that Jess had heard about these people, they held their honor in extremely high regard. Debts were paid promptly and in full.
Since the battle, she’d had a lot of time to grieve and cry for Rex and the others that she’d lost. That the Asharim had taken from her. Even now, Sandra was seeing her old friend and occasional lover back to his home town to see him buried and spend a while with his parents.
Part of Jess was glad that she could hide here, as she didn’t want to face anyone. How could anyone survive telling parents or spouses that their loved one was dead? It would wreck her.
She forced her mind back to the situation on Volunteer World. The Army troops were preparing for the assault on the Asharim city, since there was no way her people could lead that attack. Not now.
Brenda had taken the air car up and observed the Peret that had fled the Volunteer settlement via infrared. It looked as if their spirit had been broken and that even though they were returning to the Asharim city, they were not currently a force worthy of considering a threat until the Asharim regrouped them.
That was why the attack was going to take place tomorrow morning. The Army colonel that Brenda had brought in would lead the assault on the alien city with his infantry battalion, stiffened by people with Asharim weapons, and drive the enemy from it before the majority of the Asharim forces could return.
Then, when the Peret arrived back at the city, Lastark would try to get them to surrender. If more bloodshed could be avoided, Jess wanted to make that happen.
If their Peret prisoner wasn’t persuasive, she’d kill every last damn one of the hostile bastards. They were a loose cannon and couldn’t be allowed to threaten the Volunteers again.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a low hum from the sarcophagus. She turned her attention to it and saw that the lid was sliding open. She sprang to her feet and rushed over, looking inside.
Harry lay in the cavity, seemingly still asleep. They’d put him inside in his underwear, so she could see that the awful wound in his shoulder was gone, his skin smooth and unblemished. She imagined he had a lot of other scars that were gone, both on the outside and inside of his body. A lifetime’s worth.
He also looked so young. Not that he’d been all that much older than her, but now he looked like he was in his mid-twenties. Just like she did after the sarcophagus regenerated her and reset her age. Somehow, his rugged handsomeness was still there, though blunted by his new youth.
Even as she thought that, his eyelids flickered and then opened. Before he could say anything, she put her hand on his newly rebuilt shoulder. “You’re okay, Harry. The battle is over, and you’re safe.”
“My people,” he rasped, trying to sit up. “How are my people?”
“Brenda Cabot arrived like a Valkyrie right after you were hit,” she said, keeping her voice as soothing as she could. “She blew the snot out of the Peret, and they broke. I won’t lie. We lost more than half our people, including Rex.”
He closed his eyes in obvious anguish. “Did we keep them out of the settlement? Please tell me that all those deaths meant something.”
“You kept them safe. Susanna Adorno is probably going to pin a medal on you. She called you a patriot, and that seems to mean a lot to her.
“The attack on the city happens tomorrow, and since I know that I can’t keep you from going, I want you to wait here for Doctor Granger to examine you.”
He tried to speak, but she put a finger over his lips. “No argument. You’ll be back in the race in a little bit. Relax, just for a few minutes.”
She stepped over to a panel on the wall and called for Todd Granger. He’d get Harry back on his feet, and then they’d deal with the Asharim. This phase of the fight was almost over, and she was eager to get out into the universe and see what they could find.
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The Empire of Bones Saga Volume 1
The Empire of Bones Saga Volume 2
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About Terry
#1 Bestselling Military Science Fiction author Terry Mixon served as a non-commissioned officer in the United States Army 101st Airborne Division. He later worked alongside the flight controllers in the Mission Control Center at the NASA Johnson Space Center supporting the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station, and other human spaceflight projects.
He now writes full time while living in Texas with his lovely wife and a pounce of cats.
www.TerryMixon.com
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