Cavalry

by Thorby Rudbek

  No! No! NO!

  Richard shuddered as the emotional broadcast hit him like a sideswipe by an out-of-control truck; he dragged his N-beam control spheres back and forth savagely, putting the pain aside, trying to focus on setting off an instability in the first Warrnam’s Shells, and he felt the impact of this Narlav ship’s weapons, bringing down two of Citadel’s life-preserving layers of wall-like energy in rapid succession.

  Brad, Tracy and Beckie whooped as their attack destroyed their targeted Warrnam, the signature flash of energy, a non-discriminatory brightness, this time bringing good news instead of bad, leaving just the one Warrnam battling with Citadel. They swung their N-beams onto the far side of this solitary Narlav ship, adding pressure to the attack and daring to believe victory was close at last.

  Citadel and PC Eight shuddered again, gravity fields wavering, lights briefly dimming, and the five fighters inside these paired vessels cringed in confusion at this unexpected evidence of another attacker.

  “You were right, Landrak, we are back in time to join the battle once more!”

  Green globules continued to hit PC Eight and Citadel simultaneously from the other side and both lost another Shell in this surprise attack. Varshak focused on the close-action they had joined, assuming that the other Warrnam were scattered far and wide and thus were not within line-of-sight scanner range.

  “Welcome back, Varshak!” Chaklan bellowed. “These creatures are good at dodging – make sure you don’t give them time.”

  Richard, startled by the feedback / overload that blew out one of his panels, spewing fragments across the Control Room and narrowly missing his face, checked his side screens and saw Varshak’s Warrnam closing on an approach from Earth.

  That other ship has returned from their ground attack deployment! Kirrina broadcast bluntly. Pull back! The flagship’s pilot blasted this out almost as loudly as Beckie’s routine broadcasts. Yes, risk another turbo!

  Richard glanced over as Kirrina followed her own advice and engaged their emergency retreat power boost. Over in PC Eight, Brad was doing the same, as advised by his adoptive daughter.

  Multiple Macrals blew in both craft after about half the boost was completed, and their Drives went off line, leaving them ‘dead in the water’.

  “They run!” Varshak scorned these tactics and called for maximum acceleration, but the worn-down Warrnam moved more like a tortoise, next to these streamlined, stone-like hares.

  “Now we have them!” Chaklan affirmed some frustrating moments later, directing his pilot to close on the helpless craft. The two Warrnam had detected the damage and now impatiently launched N-beam attacks from what was fortunately to the GAF an excessive range, forcing Brad and Kirrina to dodge as best they could under attitude correction power only. Tracy and Beckie dived under the panels in their ship, flipping through Macral after Macral and replacing destroyed ones from the rapidly diminishing supply of spares. Richard did the same, trying to move as fast as the double-elbowed Paranak could but very much aware that he was just one solitary, short-armed human.

  Wish you were with us! Richard thought how much he relied on his Narlav crewmember, as he fumbled with the components and replaced several in what for him was record time.

  I carry his warrior blood in my veins! Kirrina responded, reminding her husband of her multiple mind merges with the atypically amiable alien. She continued to shift their craft with the minimal power at her disposal, skilfully avoiding most of the incoming green, beady-like pulses. Citadel shuddered as the edge of the occasional Negatruction energy field caressed the Shells, absorbing the structured energy and randomising the previously ordered protective layers as if the Shell were a thin sheet of rock being sand-blasted.

  ‘Poko’ Longclaw, PC Sixteen’s Pilot, ploughed her slower vessel through the five hundred metre gap between the two temporarily immobile Patrol Craft. Captain Dan Sanders and Navigator Petula Wing deployed its weapons against both of the Warrnam. Mere seconds later, PC Eight surged back into action, moving again closer into the fray to support the fearless crew of PC Sixteen, and then Richard called out from the floor, both verbally and mentally:

  “Drive: back ‘up’!”

  N-beams clashed and rippled as the five ships closed on each other – Shells rapidly failing all around as multiple energy fields collapsed under the onslaught. Vision became problematic; space became a vast mass of glowing, interlocking energy. Entropy was about to increase, but where was the universal law going to find its earliest entry, through the resisting layers of energy?

  Varshak targeted the weaker PC Sixteen and detected further Shell failures. This one will go soon! His crew had already confirmed to him that the battle had fared badly during their absence, though the full extent of their losses had not been absorbed, or even calculated, as yet. However, in typical arrogant Narlav style, he was confident he could turn the tide. “Destroy this weaker one before we deal with the other two!”

  His frustration boiled up as the Patrol Craft engaged its turbo-boost and pulled rapidly away from the melee, leaving the two, dual-powered Patrol Craft to handle the remaining enemy ships as the relatively over-powered vessels finally closed in on the enemy positions.

  Target the first one! Kirrina and Beckie thundered the instruction to their two crews and Varshak’s ship was suddenly in the clear, temporarily free from danger. Otahk in turn directed his colleagues to concentrate on Citadel, aware, by the gap between the impacts of the N-beam and the black-bodied enemy ship’s outer surface, that less than half of its Shells remained functional.

  A stupendous flash wiped out all vision. It was the final echoing representation of Chaklan’s Warrnam; now it had turned to vapour, atoms and disordered energy in a cataclysmic explosion, scattering infinitesimal fragments of twisted Hybralloy that impacted on the Shells of the remaining ships as their locations, already a matter of mere hundreds of metres apart, became ever closer.

  This conquest left Varshak very alone, but his decisions never varied, his single-minded battle fever allowed no equivocation. He urged his team to continue their focus on Citadel and the green, twisting writhing energy splashed, wavered and continued its deadly caress on the melded Scout and Patrol Craft. However, PC Sixteen returned, though time had allowed only one Shell to be restored, and boldly added its N-beams to the already impressive fire-power arrayed against the suddenly-outnumbered Warrnam, an intimidating and impressive indication of superiority, a final warning for Varshak and his crew, a warning that he would not, simply could not, acknowledge.

  A few more moments, and the inevitable happened – his ship became the last of the Rhaal attack fleet to flash into oblivion. The glare, so close at hand, overwhelmed all scanners, made the sun seem dim in comparison and even caused the remaining Shells to waver. Within a few seconds the super-star-like glare dissipated; the pulsating energy fields, rippling between the three remaining Patrol Craft and the slightly reduced vacuum – all that remained of the Warrnam – faded away rapidly… the final, subtle signs of this, the battle for Earth… until all that was left to tell the tale was a slightly raised system dust count in their vicinity.

  Kirrina and Beckie, their emotional interlocking sending their joint power to a new high, tried with their vaunted mental powers to reach PCs Nine and Thirteen from their extreme range, but of course could not. Kirrina got Richard to send a conventional message instead, declaring the last of the enemy fleet to be destroyed, or at least, that part that had attacked them. She released the Navigation Sphere and sank back in her pilot seat, her body shaking as the adrenalin seemed to overwhelm her precarious mental / physical balance. She broke the mental connection with Beckie, knowing this would help them both off the ‘high’ that their link had generated, and then she grabbed Richard by the hand, hungrily soaking up the power and emotional cushioning she knew he had in reserve. She gasped with relief, looked at the scanners, hoping that she would discover no further, distant Warrnam.

  Connected now with her husband, she a
ccepted the simple fact with an almost overpowering feeling of relief: there was no sign of enemy ships between their position and the relatively distant Moon and none between them and Earth, either. And the other ships? The ones that Latt claimed were still functional when he left Rhaal… If they came with the ones we have just destroyed, then there could be a few more somewhere near, but if so, where are they?

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Boots on the snow, blood on the ground

  Terry checked the plan view of the coming battle scene once more, intensely relieved that the troop-carrying Warrnam had not tried to laser the hangar during its descent, as he would then have been required to reveal their ‘ace in the hole’. They aren’t quite all inside our perimeter, but that lead squad will be on the tarmac in a few seconds, and that would be too late for… this! He activated the remote control and turned back to the observation devices to see the result of his timely ‘card-playing’.

  The leading warrior died very suddenly, part vaporised, part sliced as the Mega-hemi-Shell coalesced into existence, the remaining fragments of his body falling back towards his closest comrades. Energy field and living being had occupied the same space at the same time, with deadly consequences – like a soft rock impacting on a hard place. The second-in-command immediately recognised the destruction of his leader as being due to the activation of a ground-based Shell field and ordered the sixteen squads under his direction to retreat and regroup – lasers do not penetrate Shell fields, and neither do bodies, but –

  Laser beams ripped through the air from a few hundred metres behind his position; the warriors back there fell or dived for cover as the attacking force realised it was in a trap! Those of the airborne ‘scouts’ that had already been lethally lasered began falling haphazardly, tumbling onto the crouching warriors below, their Personal Antigravity Units continuing to function briefly until the automated sensors within their control systems detected the sudden reduction in occupancy mass and self-selected a gradual shutdown, returning the devices gently to the ground like de-powered hydraulic elevators, oblivious to, or at least unconcerned about their riders’ fate.

  Osgood and Wordsworth barrelled out and sprawled behind the small, ex-foundational ‘monument’ of discarded concrete conveniently located at the edge of the snow-filled field. Silvia picked off the fearless (or foolish) Narlav still hanging above the advancing warriors nearest to them and then swung her weapon towards the warriors at the left edge of the group, as they started to turn towards her. Violet was already swinging her beam inward from the other side. A moment later, and two hundred and fifty-five more Narlavs lay, quartered, sliced, but most emphatically dead.

  “That’s quite the sound!” Silvia commented, referring to the high-pitched whine of the power converters within their modified Narlav weapons.

  Similar sounds from their left and right told them that the ambush was in progress around the perimeter, as planned. They set off to find more victims.

  Penny-Lee and Jane targeted the airborne warrior together, to ensure that he did not escape, and then picked off a few of the straggling Narlavs at the back of the group some two hundred metres in front of their position. They found rubble falling all around them as the remainder of the squad returned fire, determined to simply bury them in the building where they were based.

  “Come on!” Jane grabbed Penny-Lee’s hand and pulled her away from the wreckage. “We’ll be holed if we don’t get out now!”

  The two girls half climbed, half fell out of the side window, bits of wall still tumbling around them as more gouges and gashes were made by the Narlav warriors.

  Penny-Lee squealed as she noticed her left hand was bleeding; she found just a bloody semi-stump left as she pulled it towards her, partial palm down. She shuddered, realising that the familiar image had been erased. What she gaped at had no fingers and only half of the residual portion of her hand, the part nearest her wrist, still remaining.

  Jane went to grab her by the hand again but gulped and had to hold her wrist. She pulled her wounded, shocked friend behind the next building, where they dropped flat on the snow-packed ground. She slid across the snow to the corner, and sliced into three more warriors approaching rapidly. The rest dropped out of sight.

  Jane scuttled back and the corner of the building vaporised where she had been a moment earlier. These guys are deadly!

  Chop-chop sounds rose in volume above the ever-present whine of lasers and an attack helicopter came into view. Captain Alder swung the nose of his ‘bird’ to align the weapons pods. His gunner smiled. Machineguns blazed at the troop of Narlavs, decimating this contingent, but not before several lasers had targeted the craft in return. It plummeted the thirty feet between it and the ground, crashing and exploding into flames right at the edge of the untidy stack of bullet-ridden enemy bodies.

  Penny-Lee had joined Jane at the crumbling new ‘corner’ in time to catch most of the airborne action, and the oriental girl gasped as one of the Narlavs rose, burning, from the flaming mess and swung his laser rifle up into the attack stance. Kellogg pushed Croft back, raised her own pistol and opened fire at the same time, barely making contact before the shaky aim of the mortally wounded warrior could be corrected – still, a deep gouge in the snow just centimetres to the right of her feet showed how close to death she had been.

  Patricia and Jennifer Norrington could not locate any overhead warriors in their area, so they took careful aim at the group of Narlavs running past their hideout, slicing into about half of them before the rest took cover.

  Holes appeared in the broken-down vehicles, and laser light, like rods of white-hot metal, penetrated clear through to the back wall.

  Jennifer grabbed her daughter’s hand and started to crawl towards the doors of the service bay, but Patricia failed to respond. The older Norrington turned to urge her, only to find Patricia bleeding heavily from a gaping hole where her stomach had previously been located.

  “Mom!” Pat gasped, her voice faint and slurred. “Drop back. Get them… from side. Before they… get you!”

  Her mother tried to move her again, but realised the damage had destroyed the lower part of her daughter’s spine, meaning any movement would be extremely painful, as well as a sure way to accelerate her impending demise. “I’ll be back for you!” She crawled away and somehow made her way to the back office of the service station. Cautiously raising herself into a crouch and looking out the side window, she saw a Narlav passing by, and she swung up her pistol and fired wildly, removing most of his head. She kept on moving, and felt the heat behind her as several laser beams struck the wall behind the point where she had just been standing.

  Pat heard a crunching as a foot stepped on broken glass and she fired blindly through the vehicle she lay behind. Her eyes went out of focus as her concentration wavered, but she squeezed them briefly and tightly shut and opened them again in time to see the Narlav, damaged at least as severely as she was, but still on his feet, step haltingly around the end of the vehicle. Both fired simultaneously, and the younger Norrington had the horrifying satisfaction of seeing her laser beam move unevenly across the warrior’s chest, just as his beam caught her weapon and cut through it and up her arm, slicing it all the way to the elbow, before the alien collapsed at last in his own black-orange gore.

  Snow started to fall heavily on New Leeds, covering up the bodies and the blood, and making further helicopter sorties impossible. The Narlav floating lights ironically made the panorama seem like a serene scene from a Christmas celebration, or the inside of a seasonal ornament filled with clear liquid and tiny white plastic flakes, but the contrasting reality was ironically and intrinsically incompatible with that dreamy, peaceful imagery.

  Terry showed Tony the vantage point in the attic space of the cottage. “We’ll take out as many as we can in ten seconds, then drop back down the ladder and exit from the opposite side.”

  Tony looked more than a little worried, so Stadt explained:

  “My bio-mon
itors show a lot of injuries amongst our forces, and most of them are within a half dozen metres of their original hiding places – so I infer the response from the Narlavs is very fast, and very effective. Best defence, don’t be there!”

  Tony nodded and settled on the creaky attic flooring, his laser pistol pointed through a handy head height hole. Wait a minute; I need to look through that! He shook his head and moved the pistol sideways a little, so he could peer through the gap. The laser will fire right through the roofing, in a microsecond or so, I expect! By edging right forward until one eye was close to the hole, he was able to get a fairly wide view across the street.

  They were just in time. A squad of Narlavs edged around the corner of the building opposite, though Holt could see only five or six at a time. The sound of Terry’s laser discharging a few feet to his right startled him, and he shot wide initially, hitting a section of wall above the warriors and showering them with debris. He lowered his aim just in time and managed to slice the Narlavs into a staggering mess that quickly subsided to the ground, moving feebly. He watched the movement, horrified by what he had done.

  “Down!” Stadt ordered in a loud whisper, crawling back to the attic access point and waiting for him to join him there. Tony scrambled back and hurried down the ladder, only to be knocked flat by the impact of his older companion, falling from just behind and above him. Blood poured from gouges in Terry’s shoulders and upper arms, and broken or semi-vaporised bones glinted through the rents. Tony worked his way out from beneath the much larger man, trying not to aggravate the awful injuries, and propped him against the wall. He could see the pain in his hero’s eyes and feel it in a strange, empathetic manner as the visual reality flooded his senses. Not finding his own laser, he grabbed Stadt’s weapon and burst out through the door, crashing into a warrior and knocking him sideways. The warrior fell, tripping on the uneven surface, and Holt’s right hand came up, dispatching the Narlav with a fairly neat hole through the head. Amazingly, no others were in sight; the battle rage left Tony as fast as it had come and he found himself weak at the knees.