“Leave him,” Loo yelled.
“Negative, Sarge.” Egger had to release one shoulder to bring her blaster up, then she fired on two more squibs. They rolled to a stop three meters away, and Egger leaned over to grab Stowe again. “I won’t leave him behind.”
“That’s an order, Corporal. His body’s gonna slow you down.”
“I’ll help her,” Vance added, taking Stowe’s other hand. Together the two of them dragged Stowe away from the enemy and into Zimorran Street.
Loo cursed, then opened up on a pair of beasties coming around the right-hand sidewalk. “I want our SMDL putting a VOD on that fat bastard yesterday!”
The two Marines with the rigs copied the order and then set up. Egger watched as the rocket-propelled ordinance soared south and struck the giant squib on the right side of its bug-like shell. The detonator’s blast cleared a small section of the street, flinging Simikon remains across the adjacent building’s sandstone face—but none of it belonged to the big one. The squib bellowed at the hot air, put its head down, and charged.
“Hit it again!” Loo yelled.
At the same time that Second Squad’s SMDLs went off, First and Third’s did as well. Six VODs streaked down Bijzank Avenue and hit the monstrous squib with a quick succession of white light and fire. When the smoke cleared, the enemy was bleeding and missing part of its right flank. Still the thing charged, snarling through the fluid that poured from its mouth. The acid spat and hissed on the roadway, eating through alien corpses and tarmac alike.
Egger couldn’t believe the giant squib had survived so many detonators. Whatever version of the enemy it was, she had no desire to meet any more. It was the seventh and final detonator that finally took the beast down. Fired from an SMDL, the VOD wedged itself into the soft tissue in the creature’s exposed flank. When the device exploded, it took out the torso and blew the legs off in eight directions.
Still the smaller squibs kept coming, and even with Second Platoon’s combined strength to defend the retreat, the Simikon’s pace was increasing. Several of the little devils got close enough to Egger and Vance that they jumped forward. The squibs’ wings flapped furiously as they gained extra speed and height. All Egger could hear was the LT’s warning not to let the buggers stack up on you. She dropped Stowe’s shoulder and used both hands to fire her blaster, putting rounds into three squibs.
“I told you to drop that body,” Loo yelled.
Egger was about to protest again when two squibs lunged forward and took hold of Stowe’s boots. Their mandibles sank into his armor, crushing it in their jaws, biting into his flesh. It happened so quickly that Egger hardly had time to fire before the little demons had bitten off the toes on both feet.
“You bastards,” she roared as her MC87 shredded the squibs’ eyes. They squealed and thrashed, then darted back into the advancing horde. By the time Egger tried to reach down for Stowe’s body again, four more squibs had landed on it, and then more—too many to think about.
A hand grabbed her by the shoulder and turned her around. “We’re getting the hell out of here,” Loo said, pointing back to the COP.
“No, Sarge,” Egger replied. “We—”
“Look!” Loo thumbed over his shoulder. In the heat of defending Stowe’s body, she hadn’t noticed the three new large squibs lumbering around the corner onto Zimorran Street. “Stay focused and keep your fire steady.”
She nodded and looked over at Vance, who was already unloading a barrage of blaster fire on the enemy. Egger stripped Stowe’s body of his mags and blaster, and armed his remaining VOD with a thirty second delay. She backpedaled a few steps, firing as she went, then turned to run and stay even with the rest of the platoon. Having gained a few paces, she spun back and sighted in on the closest beasties, picking them off one after the other. The air in front of her filled with meat and blood and metal. Light and sound pumped out of the Marines’ weapons on her left and right, delivering round after round of high-density energy into Simikon biology.
As she watched the squibs pour over the buildings and run up the street, she imagined the ocean’s rhythmic surge pumping into a coastal rock formation—the kind with dramatic archways and subterranean caves. She used to frequent one such seascape as a kid when her family vacationed on Teledyne Six. Her brothers loved to see who could stay in the tidal activity the longest before chickening out, fearing they might get dashed across a coral-covered boulder or drawn into an underwater hole. And then there was the summer she’d jumped in to show them she was the bravest of them all.
Suddenly, Stowe’s VOD detonated and took out a patch of squibs, blasting them skyward. The explosion startled her, and she snapped out of her daydream.
Egger put her MC87 on full auto and cleared a swath before running west for a dozen meters. When she stopped to turn back toward the enemy line, Egger heard the launch concussion of mortar rounds. Someone at the COP had finally set off MTR40s, recognizable by the telltale trill that their rounds gave off as they hurtled through the air. Norse must’ve called in the fire support, and there wasn’t a Marine on the street that didn’t thank the mystics for the whistling sound soaring overhead.
The first mortar rounds landed in the intersection of Bijzank Avenue. The placement wasn’t an effective target in terms of saving their hides, but more dead Simikon was good with Egger. She glanced over her shoulder as she ran to see fountains of squib entrails launch skyward. It was as if a child threw a large rock into a shallow puddle. She took a few more steps and fired on the enemy, then the next mortars hit, this time much closer.
Too close.
It seemed as if a wave of squibs rolled toward her, propelled by the mortar’s blast. When they struck her, Egger flew westward, carried by the surge of energy that welled up from behind. There was a moment of weightlessness as the explosion, the bodies, and the wreckage served to buoy her against gravity. And then it all came crashing down. Egger slammed down, and her armor ground against the pavement. Simikon bodies thumped across her back and rolled over her helmet.
“Get up!” Loo yelled. “Come on!” Egger blinked and saw her sergeant helping other Marines stand up. Somehow, the man managed to stay standing after all that, firing and helping Marines as he backpedaled. “And I’m not gonna ask nicely the next time!”
When Egger gained her feet and looked back, she saw that one of the giant squibs had taken a direct hit. That was the good news. The bad news was that another three were rounding the far end of the street, making the current count five.
“Fall back to the secondary rally point,” Norse said over the platoon channel. “All units, fall back to secondary!”
“You heard the man,” Loo said over the squad channel.
Egger had been trained to fire over her shoulder, although like everyone else, she knew it was a last-ditch tactic to cover your ass when everything had gone sideways. But this had gone sideways.
For several moments, she felt as though she were running in slow motion. The blaster bolts seemed to slow down—their sounds muffled and far away. Sparks popped all around her as squibs landed on half-spent energy mags and exploded. She saw one Marine who’d succumbed to a gang of the Simikon fall to the pavement. A squib shot acid onto his armor’s power core. The resulting explosion covered Egger in light and blood, but still she kept running, firing over her shoulder until her mag went dry.
Up ahead, she could see the COP—see the MUT50s. They were already spinning, sending their dense streams of fire against the building faces overhead. She watched as white poofs of smoke signaled more mortar launches, and all the while she ran—ran like her life depended on it.
She remembered getting stuck in the cave. Remembered her brothers crying out her name. She’d been so afraid. Afraid that she might die in there. But that was not her greatest fear.
“Keeping going,” Loo said. “Don’t stop!”
For a moment, Egger wasn’t sure what her sergeant meant. They were only twenty meters from the first line of sandbags m
arking the COP. If they got there, they could turn and make a stand.
Unless that’s what Loo was ordering them not to do.
Suddenly, the pit in Egger’s stomach seemed to consume her. Even without looking, she feared that the Simikon numbers had swelled. If Loo really was telling them to keep running, it meant that the COs had ordered a retreat into the royal palace itself.
The first sign that Egger’s intuition was right appeared when a MUT50 team picked up their unit, turned, and ran.
“Run,” Loo ordered again, throwing his hand back and forth like he was waving a hatchet.
Egger vaulted over the first line of sandbags. She saw the rest of the MUT50 teams pulling up their weapons and firing as they retreated. One team had a Marine cradling the barrel in his arms as the gunner fired. The red-hot barrel chewed into the man’s arms, but still he held on, giving his gunner the necessary support to aim and fire as they backpedaled. The act bought the retreating platoons more time, but cost the two men their lives, as squibs overran them.
Egger dodged the rows of sandbags until she was on the landing pad. She thought maybe this was their about-face, but Loo was still ordering everyone to fall back to the palace, so she kept going. Adrenaline helped to mitigate the pain in her lungs and legs, but she knew she’d been sprinting almost nonstop for a couple hundred meters. Her HUD warned her to take a drink, and also noted areas of muscle tissue that were experiencing high lactic acid buildup, as well as a steep rise in all cardiovascular and pulmonary functions. “No splick,” she said, and canceled the alerts by focusing on the Clear Notifications prompt.
As Egger neared the palace, she could see that more Marines had already set up inside the first of the walls. The palace’s perimeter was composed of three concentric rings of sandstone, such that entry arches through the first wall opened on the solid wall of the second. This old tactic of forcing an enemy to turn 90º before finding the second archway—which also led to another wall—kept assailants from advancing straight through. It was a simple but effective deterrent, and therefore elegant.
“Everyone in,” the sergeant ordered.
Egger followed her platoon as the squads filed through one of the broader openings. As soon as she crossed into the wall’s shadow, someone pointed her to the left. She jogged ten paces before another Marine directed her to turn right. Egger stepped through another arch and into the second wall’s partition. Already she felt safer, like the massive structure that had been standing here for who knows how many millennia would keep her hidden from the enemy. Even relief from the sun’s sweltering heat was a welcome surprise as she watched her suit’s thermometer reading fall.
As Egger moved through the third wall and emerged back into the sunlight, someone tapped her on her shoulder and relieved her of Stowe’s weapon. She was hesitant at first, but then realized the inner courtyard was not only a casualty collection point, but also an improvised armory, where techs where gathering any extra weapons they could find. As soon as the MC87 vanished, Sergeant Loo directed her squad up a stone staircase that ran parallel to the walls. When she reached the summit, she found herself in a covered overlook that seemed to run around the complex’s entire perimeter. She hadn’t noticed it from the ground when the LT had first briefed her unit, but now that she thought about it, the pillars and archways did look a familiar—they just seemed too pretty to be ramparts.
Looking east, and contrary to the LT’s insistence that 2nd Company would not lose the COP today, the Simikon had swept across the COP and turned it into a sea of churning squib bodies. Gone were the sandbags and MUT50 emplacements. Gone where the LZ markings, the comms array tower, and the makeshift HQ. Instead, from the palace wall to the buildings lining Zimorran Street, there were just Simikon.
The enemy was trying to summit the first wall, but every damn squib that tried met hellfire. Sometime during the earlier fight, two platoons from 1st Company had arrived and set up along the ramparts. Their east-facing weapons made quick work of anything that tried coming up and over.
“Keep yourselves hydrated,” Loo instructed. “I don’t want anyone becoming squib jerky just because you forgot to drink.”
Egger took the instructions to heart and grabbed her helmet’s drinking tube from the sidewall. She downed a few ounces of water before giving her stomach a rest. She also flipped her visors up to eat two bites of a protein sup. When she’d caught her breath, she drank some more, not knowing if or when the next opportunity to do so would come. For now, another unit was keeping the squibs at bay, and that was fine by her.
She turned to look away from the front lines and take another deep breath. Something moved in the shadows against the overlook’s back wall. Thinking it was a squib scout, she raised her MC87 and reduced her visor’s shade. But it wasn’t a squib at all. It was a kid wearing a Repub bucket with the visor knocked out, holding a long bowie knife.
* * * * *
Part 2
“Get outta here, kid,” Egger said. Her voice sounded gruffer than she’d meant it to, more like the tone her brothers used with her. Then again, she’d just spent the last thirty minutes watching Marines die, so she figured she was entitled to some severity. “I said, get lost!”
But the kid didn’t move.
Egger took a few steps toward him and noticed his dark arms and feet. He couldn’t be more than eight or nine. Then again, adult Miblimbians were typically much larger than their human cousins—maybe he was even younger. She didn’t know how it worked with kids.
“Listen.” Egger willed herself to be softer and took a knee. “It’s not safe for you here. You need to leave.”
The bucket sloshed left and right, swimming on his head. Then he raised the bowie knife—not in a threatening way, but more as a gesture that he wanted to fight.
“I see,” she said. “You want in.”
The helmet nodded, hitting his chest.
“Well, the enemy is pretty fierce today. You sure you’re not afraid?”
He shook his head.
“That’s just the kind of fighter we need. But with a knife like that—” Egger tapped her weapon with a finger, noting that it looked like it was made of duradex, “—we’ll need you protecting families. Know any families you can help?”
The kid hesitated as if considering the ramifications of her logic, but nodded.
“Good.”
“Egger,” Loo said. “Get that kid outta here.”
“On it, Sarge.” She leaned into the child. “Go protect your family, kid. That’s where I need you the most right now.”
The child seemed reluctant. Egger couldn’t see his face, of course, but there was something about the way his shoulders sagged that said he was disappointed with the orders he’d been handed. Aren’t we all, kid? Egger thought.
She patted him on the head, and then watched as he turned into a small opening in the back wall and disappeared into the darkness.
“Third Squad, slide south,” Loo said over comms. “We’re needed in that gatehouse.” Egger tracked to where her sergeant pointed and saw a large sandstone tower, maybe four stories tall. It offered several porticos with good sight-lines of the expanding battlefield. “Let’s move!”
Egger double-checked that the kid was gone then led Vance toward the gatehouse with the rest of the squad. They proceeded south about 125 meters, following the palace’s round contour until they reached the gatehouse. Egger ducked inside the rounded door and bounded up the stairwell. The circular stairs wrapped an open cavity that stretched from the ground floor some ten meters below to a bell in the canopy at least thirty meters above.
“Third level,” Loo said. “Pierce, you’re northside. Billings, east. Egger, take the south.” All three corporals acknowledged on their HUDs, and Egger moved around an interior walkway before stepping into the light. She and Vance had a perfect view of the southern sweep of the open ground outside the palace. The optimal setup would have been an MS800 sniper blaster or even a well-stocked SMDL. But her MC87 was bet
ter than nothing.
A resupply team of four Marines appeared at the top of the stairs and dropped two small cases of energy magazines and a box of protein sups on each porch. Egger and Vance thanked them as they dug into their new cache and swapped out for fresh mags. Egger put a few extra on her back, then racked her weapon.
“New wave,” Loo said. “Bearing 170º.”
That was Egger’s direction. She looked down and saw Simikon emerge from the city and start crossing the open ground. “Let’s toast ‘em,” she said to Vance and raised her weapon.
Shooting from this height meant having a steadier hand, but the stone railings made that easier. Plus they provided excellent cover. Egger tracked a line of six Simikon heading toward the lower wall and squeezed the trigger. Her first grouping was tight and succeeded in taking out the first half of the line. The squib bodies sank to the stone, soaking the thin layer of sand with their blood. Her second shots did equal damage, felling the last of the line.
“Nice,” Vance offered. “I saw that.”
“You too,” Egger replied, having noted the small cluster of squibs he’d dispatched along the enemy’s leading edge.
The gatehouse tower had become a fusillade-dispensing nightmare for the Simikon, and after the treacherous retreat Egger had survived, she was okay with holding the high ground.
“Hey, Corporal,” Vance said, nudging her arm. “Look.”
Egger followed Vance’s head nod behind them. It was the kid in the Repub helmet again. “Splick. Give me a second.”
“Copy that.”
Egger switched to her external speakers again and knelt. “I thought I told you to go help your family, kid.”
The boy didn’t offer any verbal reply. Instead, he raised his knife and pointed it toward the Simikon below.
“Right, right. I get it. But this is no place for you.” She needed to get through to him, or he was going to die out here. “What’s your name?”
The Dogs of God Page 28
