The Last Aeon

by Richard Fox

  “And if we haven’t delivered Risen Nargas to his peers by suns’ rise, we will die,” the other Sanheel said as it came into view. He bore a sash over one shoulder, adorned with carvings of metal and bone. “Fail like that and our Risen will not remember us to the great Unity.”

  The target’s here, at least, Santos thought.

  The first raised a forehoof and plucked a flint of rock out from the ornate shoe nailed into it.

  “You’d rather have made this journey in your tank, yes?” the second asked.

  “It is better to fight on your legs than in a box filled with your crew’s passed gas,” the first said. “That Risen Nargas chose to join the horde instead of take his own tank…”

  Santos stiffened inside his pod. The target wasn’t within the protection of a tank?

  “He cares enough to share the difficulty of a long run with us,” the second said, “those that had to leave their tanks behind. We are lucky to have him. An Ixio would have us carry him on our backs, like a beast of burden.”

  “It is the demons,” the first said as he put the water line back on his shoulder. “They nearly sent his soul back to Lord Bale when he was in his tank. They will strike those first. That is why he runs beside us.”

  “Can it not be both?” The second punched the other in the shoulder.

  “It can.”

  Santos tapped out a text message for his lance but didn’t send it. Sending a transmission, even a tight-beam IR, with the Sanheel so close risked detection.

  Kesaht tanks rumbled past the forest, leaving a trail of dust in their wake.

  “I can’t believe the demons wrecked the supply yard,” a Sanheel said as he removed a small rectangle wrapped in foil from its belt. “Nothing but freeze-dried Rakka jerky to eat.”

  “Our thralls are good for something,” the other said. “Especially if you get the spicier packets from home.”

  Santos wasn’t sure if “Rakka jerky” meant jerky made from Rakka or made by Rakka. He let that question slide as an error in the translation software.

  The Sanheel with the sash touched its earpiece.

  “Torsh found footprints farther back,” it said. “Too large for the murderers’ skull soldiers or scouts. Demons.”

  “Torsh is a whelp that sees demons everywhere,” the first said. “It could be feral cyber Rakka or some local wildlife. Don’t bother the Risen until someone with ugirish on their dandan can confirm.” It opened the foil packet and took a bite from the densely packed black jerky inside.

  A crack sounded across the valley and one of the tanks lurched to a halt.

  “What was that?” The Sanheel dropped its food and hefted its rifle to a shoulder.

  “Came from across the valley,” the other said.

  Smoke poured out of the seams in the stopped tank’s turret just before it exploded, sending the tubes spinning through the air. Another crack sounded through the echoes of the explosion and another tank burst into flames.

  Santos tried to make sense of the attack. There was no way Gideon was the one firing with what sounded like a Mauser heavy rifle.

  “Demons!” The Sanheel with the sash touched its earpiece. “Fire coming from the other side of the valley. The Risen is coming here to-to direct the battle.”

  The Kesaht tanks swung toward the firing, exposing their weaker back armor to the forest.

  “Warn the Risen,” the first said, “in case the whelp is right about the enemy being in these woods.”

  The Sanheel with the sash hesitated.

  Santos sent off a burst text transmission and swept his arm back through the soil to the hilt locked to his thigh.

  “What was that?” The second Sanheel peered over the bush toward the ground disturbance and looked right at the lens of Santos’s optic.

  Santos snapped the device back into his helm and burst out of the ground. He stabbed the sashed Sanheel with his gladius, pinning it through the chest to a tree. Yanking the blade free, Santos spun around on his waist servos, decapitating the other with a single stroke.

  Both Sanheel collapsed to the ground.

  “Gideon, Aignar, did you monitor my last?” he asked over the IR.

  Booms from the Kesaht tanks sounded through the forest.

  “About to have company,” Aignar said. “Every last Sanheel on foot is coming right for me.”

  “Moving!”

  “—fire! Falling ba—” Gideon’s garbled transmission came over the IR.

  Santos ran through the forest toward Aignar’s position. Pistons drove his legs hard, but dodging trees slowed him down. The report of Sanheel rifles and gauss cannons carried past him.

  “Aignar? What’s your status?” Santos asked as he shoulder-bumped off a tree and burst through a thick hedgerow.

  The solid ground he’d anticipated on the other side of the bush was missing, and he fell forward into a deep embankment cut out by the stream feeding the forest.

  He landed with a splash in water that came halfway up to his knees. The five Sanheel running along the other bank looked just as surprised as Santos felt.

  Santos’s feet sank into the mud, but he kept his momentum moving forward, albeit slowly. His gauss cannons hit a Sanheel in the flank, punching it against the other embankment.

  A Sanheel, wearing a sash adorned with more carvings than the last one he saw, snarled and charged into the stream, clutching his bayonet-equipped rifle beneath an arm like a lance. Two of the Sanheel followed him, their hooves splashing through the water.

  The last remained on the bank and fired. A round hit the front of Santos’s helm and sent a wash of static across his HUD.

  Disoriented, Santos fired a single gauss round into the stream and blew out a geyser. He drew his hilt and twisted the pommel to reform the blade into a longsword.

  The high-ranking Sanheel burst through the water and stabbed its bayonet into the Armor’s breastplate. Santos twisted to one side and the blade scraped across his chest. The alien had redirected the blow at the last second and landed only a glancing hit.

  Santos swung his longsword up and hit the bottom of the rifle with the flat of his blade, sending the Sanheel’s weapon flying. The higher-ranked warrior kept moving forward until it was just past the armor. It dug its forward hooves into the streambed and its back legs kicked out, striking Santos in the chest. The force of the blows launched him backwards and he landed with a splash.

  Water washed over his optics.

  He rolled to one side out of reflex and another Sanheel’s forward hooves crashed into the water where he’d been a moment ago. He gripped a handful of mud as he kept rolling and tossed it into the face of the Sanheel that almost killed him. The black goo hit with a wet smack as a rifle shot bounced off Santos’s shoulder with a spark.

  The Armor got up to a crouch, mud and water sloughing off his back and helmet, and he growled through his speakers.

  Snapping to one side, he caught the foreleg of a Sanheel just before it could strike. A twist of his torso ripped the alien’s leg off and it fell into the stream with a screech. He flung the severed limb at the shooter on the bank, knocking the rifle to one side.

  A single gauss shot hit the shooter in the shoulder and blood splattered against the embankment. The shell passed through its body and buried deep in the soil with a thump. The muddy foe cleared its vision just in time to look down the cannon’s other barrel and see the capacitor flash just before its head was blown off.

  “Demon!” The ranked Sanheel had recovered its rifle and was charging across the stream, bayonet leveled.

  Santos brought his sword to one hip, the blade angled behind his body. He dropped to a fighting stance and held his ground. The Armor timed the Sanheel’s charge and swung his sword up with a speed his flesh and blood could never have matched.

  The strike cut through the Sanheel’s rifle then slashed it from hip to shoulder. Blood arced off Santos’s sword tip as the alien stumbled past. The forward half of the rifle splashed in the stream as the
alien’s sash fell loose and floated away with the current.

  The Sanheel toppled over. Dead. Blood stretched into a long ribbon through the water.

  “Kid!” Aignar called out from the embankment. Smoke rose from his cannon barrels and his weapon was configured into a spiked mace, splattered with blood. “I was worried about you.”

  “I thought you were on the forest perimeter. You get my alert?”

  “Yeah. You get my mine?”

  An image of Kesaht crescent fighters in a distant sky snapped up on Santos’s HUD.

  “Bogies inbound,” Aignar said, pointing into the woods, “which is why I pulled back. We need to draw them in deeper. Use the forest for cover until we can find the Risen. If he hunkers down in the open with fighters protecting him…tough nut to crack.”

  He ran up the stream bank and Santos followed.

  “Who the hell is out there picking off tanks?” he asked. “Where’d Gideon go? I know he didn’t leave us behind.”

  “The captain knows what he’s—”

  The thunder crack of a rail gun sent a weak blast wave through the forest, disturbing branches overhead.

  Santos looked toward where the shot came from. “That’s from the other side of the valley,” he said.

  “Now I get it,” Aignar said. “That’s the hammer.” He beat against his chest. “We’re the anvil.”

  The snap of branches and a rustle of brush came from the north. Sanheel, dozens of them, worked their way through the forest.

  A pair of enemy fighters tore overhead, so low they almost scraped the treetops. They pulled up into a vertical climb, disappearing into the night sky.

  Aignar pulled Santos over the embankment and they took cover from the Sanheel behind trees.

  “Think the fighters saw us?” Santos asked.

  “Better assume they did than get strafed later,” Aignar said. “Still might get strafed. But somehow, it’ll be better if it isn’t a surprise.”

  “Stand by for rail shot!” Gideon said over the IR. “I need close air defense immediately following while I recharge for the next round.”

  “He’s doing what?” Santos asked through his speakers. “A second shot while anchored? He’ll be a sitting duck!”

  “Which is why he wants air defense. From us. In the middle of the forest.” Aignar looked up at the thick branches. He put a hand against a trunk and his mace snapped into an axe.

  “You know how many trees we’d have to knock down to get a clear shot of the whole sky?” Santos asked.

  “Sturdy. Deep roots. Should hold me.” Aignar looked at Santos. “I’m going to need your mortar case.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” Santos peeked around the trunk to the Sanheel milling around in the distance.

  “Keep them off me,” Aignar said and then switched to the lance IR channel. “Gideon, roger on air defense. Give me ninety seconds before shot.”

  “Sixty,” Gideon sent back.

  “Knew he’d say that. Kid, get on the other side and push. Aim for the monster of a tree behind me.” Aignar hit his axe against the trunk with a crack, embedding the blade deep into the wood. He pried it out and hit again, cutting out a wedge.

  “If I don’t know what’s happening, no way the enemy does either,” Santos muttered, rushing around the tree as Aignar hit it again. The Sanheel hadn’t noticed yet, a boon the Armor attributed to the echo of tank fire coming from the valley. He put his hands against the trunk and shoved, bringing every hydraulic and servo in his suit to bear.

  The tree cracked and groaned as it fell.

  “Left! Left!” Aignar shouted.

  Santos dug his fingers into the bark and guided it to the left. The tree crashed into the upper branches of a taller one and came to a rest, angled up into the sky.

  “Mortars!” Aignar whacked the back of Santos’s Armor. He popped the ammunition cover and Aignar pulled the inner case out, slapping it onto his back, where it mag-locked into place. He climbed up the partially fallen tree and got to the top. Leaves and sticks rained down on Santos as Aignar cleared branches away with his axe.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Santos asked. Shouts were coming from the distant Sanheel.

  “Mortars come with variable fuses. Point detonating. Radar range finders for air burst. You know you can set them manually too?” Aignar asked.

  “I think that was during next week’s gunnery training,” Santos said.

  “I’m going to use our mortars as field-expedient air defense. Don’t worry about—son of a bitch—there’s one!”

  The rumble of jet engines grew and red-hot bullets snapped over Aignar’s head. He activated the shield in his forearm housing and rounds bounced off it. His rotary gun snapped onto his shoulder and opened fire. There was a boom and a Kesaht crescent fighter flew overhead, trailing black smoke and rolling over and over. It tore through treetops and exploded a hundred yards away.

  Aignar lifted a foot and his anchor spike embedded into the trunk. His helm snapped toward the nearby mountain.

  “Kid, hold on to—”

  A blast wave from Gideon’s rail shot swept through the forest and slapped Santos against Aignar’s perch. The trunk started rolling over.

  “Kid! Kid!”

  Santos wrapped both arms around the trunk and heaved back, righting Aignar on the top, his servos straining to keep a grip.

  “That’s great, hold it steady,” Aignar said.

  A cloud of atomized rock rose up from the valley.

  “What’s happening out there?” Santos asked.

  “I’m realizing this idea was a lot better in my head,” Aignar said, crouching on the trunk and gripping it. He pointed his suit’s internal mortar tube toward the valley. “But an OK plan, violently executed, is better than the perfect solution five minutes too late. There we go…fighters massing for an attack run on Gideon.”

  A rifle round snapped through the air and blew splinters off the tree just above Santos’s grip.

  “Enemy inbound,” he called out.

  “Hold them off!” A mortar spat out of Aignar’s tube with a bloomp and more rounds fired in quick succession.

  Santos aimed his gauss cannons in the general direction of the Sanheel attack and fired two rounds. The trunk listed to one side before he got control of it again.

  “Hey!” Aignar shouted as an empty mortar case landed next to Santos.

  “You want me to hold you steady or hold them off?”

  “Both!”

  The crump of exploding mortars echoed through the forest, mingling with rifle shots from the Sanheel and the residual roar of the rail gun still sounding off the mountains.

  A bullet whacked against the top knuckle of his right middle finger, twisting the digit into an ugly angle as more shots snapped past his helm. He shrank back behind the trunk and looked to one side: nothing. To the left: glimpses of Sanheel galloping through the forest in the distance.

  “We’re getting flanked,” Santos said. “Anytime you want to—”

  A round punched into his side, ringing his internal pod like a bell.

  “Fire solution loaded…don’t move!” Aignar shouted.

  A dozen Sanheel tore through the forest, rifles lowered like lances as a war cry rose from their throats. Fire from the other group cut off.

  The tree rumbled as Aignar’s mortar sent shells into the air. They exploded directly overhead with small puffs of black smoke, sending shrapnel through the air and into Kesaht fighters coming in low over the treetops.

  A hunk of a mortar shell thumped into Santos’s shoulder, embedding in the suit and smoking.

  “Done?” Santos released the tree and went to one knee, swinging his Mauser off his back. He fired from the hip and struck a smaller tree, shattering the trunk into a thousand splinters that sprayed the charging Sanheel.

  Another blast of overpressure from a rail gunshot slapped him from behind, pushing his Mauser barrel into the dirt.

  “Fuuuu—” Aignar’s tree rolled over
, pushed by the blast. Santos reached up with his free hand but missed it by inches. The tree broke through the supporting branches and fell with a groan.

  Aignar fell from the sky and landed in a cloud of dust. The tree crashed to the ground a few yards ahead of Aignar, sending up a brown fog.

  “I’m good,” Aignar said. “Sort of.”

  Santos felt the rumble of hooves through the ground. Sanheel shouted warnings and he heard bodies smack into the fallen tree. He fired his Mauser at shoulder level and racked another round.

  The dust cleared, and he saw that the Sanheel charge had come to a stop at the sudden palisade. Santos shot another high-caliber round into the chest of an alien mashed against the trunk. The round passed through its back and punched through the alien behind it.

  Aignar snapped to his feet and chopped his axe over the trunk and into the shoulder of an enemy, embedding it in flesh. He dragged the Sanheel over and tossed it aside with a flick of his wrist.

  “For Novis!” Santos fired his Mauser again, exploding a Sanheel’s head, and charged forward. He vaulted over the trunk, kicking an enemy in the jaw hard enough to snap its neck. He put two gauss cannon rounds point-blank into another chest as he landed and kicked the dying foe into two of its fellows.

  Sanheel at the back of the scrum turned and ran as Aignar’s Mauser blasted through an alien’s flank.

  Santos’s vision went red as he tossed his heavy rifle up and caught it by the barrel. He swung it like a club at an alien that tried to block the strike by bracing its rifle in the way. The Mauser stock tore through the rifle and collapsed the Sanheel’s chest with a wet smack.

  His mind seemed to detach from his body as he dropped the weapon and grabbed a Sanheel by the shoulders. He bashed his helm into its face, crushing features into a bloody pulp. Flinging the corpse aside, he saw a pair fleeing into the woods.

  A roar bellowed from his speakers, and he started after them, but a blow from behind sent him to the ground, then pinned him down.

  “Pull back! Pull back before you redline!” Aignar shouted.