Someone bowled into Moses at a full sprint as he followed Argo’s directions and knocked him to the ground in a tackle. Moses swung a fist, about to crush his attackers skull when the suit froze and he heard a voice high and girlish calling his name. “Moses! Moses! Moses!” He saw the shock of red hair and finally recognized the girl clinging to him as she sobbed his name. He sat up, pulling her into his arms and did the only thing he could think to do. He held her, felt his own tears sting his eyes as she sobbed into his shoulder.
“I thought you were dead.” He said.
“I thought you were dead.” She replied.
She stopped crying after a while and sat up. She tried to wipe her eyes with a gauntlet but looked at the blood and grime stained steel and let the glove drop instead. Moses reached around and took some of the flag cloth and offered it to her. “Thanks.” She said. She blew her nose into it, wiped her eyes with another corner that left long streaks of dirt on her while he pulled his helmet off and let his head rest on the grass while she sat atop him.
Moses hit her shoulder with a fist. She hit his, then he pushed her off and stood, offering her a hand to help her up. “Anyone else?” She asked in a choking voice when they’d stood.
“Maxwell.” He said. “He was with me until the bomb went off. He could be dead. Pete Small too. I told them to run.” The enormity of the possibility that they had died right next to him overwhelmed him suddenly and he remembered his brother cantering past on the hound. He, at least, should be safe.
Kya nodded.
“You?”
“Dyrland and Durigg.” She said. “Both dead.”
“I saw Marloque die.” Moses told her, remembering the flower being pushed from the top of the cliff. It seemed incredible, now that they were standing there, that they had made it. “How did you...” survive, he’d wanted to ask, if that was what they’d done when they marched out to try and win a victory.
Kyra shook her head and looked away. “It doesn’t matter.” She took his hand and pulled him away towards their spot. “Come on. Lets see who else made it.”
Very few had made it as it turned out. The Lieutenant Colonel stood at the center of their rally point surrounded by what looked like little more than a hundred soldiers, a hundred out of the thousand that went out. Maxwell was among them, and a medium found them Moses didn’t remember, following Moses’ flags, and Pete Small, but that was it. Staycoffe, Khouleangkak, Casana, the shovels. They were all dead, and theirs was among the largest surviving squads. He saw one other pair of flags standing among the hundred men. Most of them were knights, sprinkled here and there with mediums and light gunners. Maxwell was the only heavy left.
“Alright.” Fyker said. “Here we are. What’s left of us.” He looked tired, the enthusiasm and wild energy of the morning had been replaced with bowed shoulders. Even his mustache seemed to droop. He looked around at the circle of men, spotted Moses and looked at him for a minute, then turned his gaze to others and shifted uncomfortably in his seat atop the pack master. “Now I was a peace officer in Oostburg for most of my life, before signing up here. I saw a boy once, we caught him good, caught him trying to snatch a barrel from the docks, and we beat the living snot out of him. He tried to run, see, and kept trying to run, and no matter how much we knocked that boy down, he just kept getting back up.” He started the automata walking around the circle of men. “Now You boys have fought through the hardest storm of sewage those bastards could sling at us. You’ve seen it, you’ve seen the worst and you were either the luckiest, or the strongest bastards that I’ve ever seen, because they got you, good as we got that boy, and you made it out, beaten, bloody, but you made it.That man we caught, on the docks, he ended up getting away too. Jumped into the river and lived to steal some more dock goods another day I’m sure. Well we intend to do the same.”
He pulled up his mount in the middle of them and swiveled to look at them all. “Orders are to retreat. There’s a mining facility on more defensible ground ten miles east into the mountains. It’s a long run, possibly harder than the thing we’ve already escaped, and we’ll have to make the sprint in time to get ahead of the army trying to cut us off from the mountains.” He pointed to the black smear undulating over the hills to the east, lines of fire shooting from it as hounds harried them. To Moses left one of the tents collapsed as staff sergeants prepared the whole place for evacuation. “We may have been knocked down, but we are not caught, and by God, they won’t catch us yet. We retreat, and we retreat as one, so you boys make yourselves ready, at this spot, for the signal to run, and when you get it, you go. Follow you’re AI or follow the nearest body of troops. There’s a few of us still have networks of communication once the shields go down. We’ll keep you headed in the right direction.”
He paused, gathering his thoughts. “Now I know you boys have already gone through hell.” The officer said. “But there’s been a request put through and I’m obligated to pass it along. When the shield moves we’ll need men to the rear who will slow the enemy down while the rest make their bid for escape.” He looked around at them. “You all are our best now, you’re the blooded soldiers. No one can make you stay, orders are to get you out, but if you want to stay, they’re calling for volunteers to hold the line, as many as want to. There’s a thousand or so have signed up already to make time for the rest of the survivors to get out Most of them are unblooded, eager for battle. It would not hurt to season them with a few veterans. If you want to volunteer, you let me know. Otherwise, get ready to run. That’s the orders. Battalion dismissed.”
The circle of men shifted, muttering to one another as they formed their groups. Men familiar with one another seeking out familiar company, the remains of Moses’ squad turning to him. He ignored them and stepped forward towards the Lieutenant Colonel as he saw a few others doing.
“Lost me brother sir.” Someone was telling the officer. “Let me go and fight.”
“To the front then.”
“Moses.” Kyra hissed. She grabbed him by the flag and he turned. “Where are you going?”
“To volunteer.” He said. He looked at her. Her eyes were wide and the edge of hysteria was still visible in her pupils. “Are you coming?” He asked.
She looked at the officer and then at Moses. “Hell no.” She said. She let go of him. “No.”
“Don’t be stupid man.” The medium gunner who’d survived said. “You stay behind you’re a dead man. Why do you think they’re calling for volunteers instead of giving orders. They don’t have a way to get them out.”
Moses shook his head. They didn’t understand, couldn’t. Back there, on the battlefield facing death moment to moment, fighting or running for his life alongside a hundred others all doing the same. He’d never felt so alive. And now they were asking for him, not by name, but for men like him, who were not afraid to die, preferring it, to abandoning the front line.
Pete Small stepped out of the little circle to follow him. He still had the bloody hand wrapped around the knife on his chest like a personal sigil. The hand had two eyes tattooed to its knuckles that stared at Moses absurdly as Pete approached him. “I’ll go.” He grunted. “With Moses.”
Kyra gave him a scathing look. “To die?” She asked.
Pete Small grunted. “We’re buddies.”
“Alright.” Moses said. He nodded towards the officer. “Lets go. Anyone else want to come…” He looked at them all, then turned to walk away.
“You’re not going to heaven.” Kyra shouted after him. “You’re going to die you dumbass!”
Moses and Pete Small reached Fyker and Fyker looked down at them. “You’re here to volunteer?” Fyker asked.
“Yessah.” Moses replied.
Fyker glanced at Kyra, then to Pete, then back to Moses. “You trying to get yourself killed?” He asked him.
“No sir.” Moses replied. “I already died. Like you said. This is just my job.”
Fyker considered, then nodded. “Alright. Go on. Your AI
will tell you where to go.”
“Thank you sir.”
Before he left Pete small patted the hound and smiled, then followed Moses back towards the wall of the camp shield.
“You’ll die!” Kyra yelled at Moses’ back. .
“For the record.” Argo said. “While I recognize the necessity of a few men remaining behind to ensure the success of the other’s retreat. I am also opposed to being among those volunteered for such a duty. If you could just plug me into a power outlet on your way to the front and leave me there, I’d be grateful.”
“Noted.” Moses said. “But I still need you.”
“I would have liked a machine like the Lieutenant Colonel’s.” Pete Small said as they walked. “Means no more walking.”
“The suit does it for you.” Moses replied.
Pete grunted. “My legs are tired.”
The two men reloaded and recharged at a station before going back to the front line. It was a mass of men, far smaller than the line he’d stood at that morning. Flags and squads that hadn’t seen action that day dominated it. Reserve soldiers who shifted nervously as they stared out at the Kamele battalions massing less than a hundred yards away, mediums and heavies occupied shallow bunkers and trenches along the peak of the hill while knights massed below and in front of them. A line of light gunners between them.
Moses and Pete pushed into the lines of knights. Some of the soldiers turned to shout at them for jostling, but most fell silent when they saw the tattered flags, or the hand on Pete’s suit of armor. Whispers followed them as they pushed to the front and Moses pulled out his sword while Pete studied the letters on the one he’d scavenged from the battlefield.
“Helen.” The boy next to Pete said looking at the sword.
Pete grunted.
The boy glanced shyly away, fiddling with his sword nervously. “Where you get your sword engraved like that?” He was young, a townie or water wanderer from the accent.
Pete grunted and turned on the sword, hiding the engraving. “Man died had this one.”
“He the owner of the hand too?”
“Nope.”
“I hope Helen won’t miss him.”
Across the shield from them enemy automata without turrets picked their way up and down the lines of soldiers, recharging shields and passing out ammunition to the men waiting for the camp’s shields to go down. Just before the shield, other six legged machines trundled about, guns always pointed at the lines of silver knights. Occasional aircraft passes strafed the enemy position along the side of the shield, but for the most part they were unharassed. To the north and south machines several times the size of a man were making their way towards the shield on jointed legs.
“You guys were out there.” The boy next to Pete said. “You got any advice on how to make it through?”
Moses could hear someone praying and looked across the ranks trying to identify the man, all he could see were faceless masks, swords, a few flags. Thousands of silver plated men glinting in the sun. “Oh Lord, if I die today.” The voice whispered, as though on the wind.
“Kill the other man.” Pete replied. “Do not let him kill you.”
“In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit.”
Moses crossed himself with the voice. “Keep your sword low.” He told the boy beside Pete. “where the belly can cover it, aim for their hand holes or lock the blade under their own guard. Don’t try to stay alive,just try to protect the man beside you. Fulfill your commission.” He’d never felt this way before. Never felt so fully as though he belonged. Right here, right now. Beyond this moment, there was nothing. He was precisely where he needed to be. “Oh Lord” He thought, beginning the prayer he’d been assigned by the priest, in case he didn’t survive his second engagement. “I love you and I trust in you.”
“The shield will move in thirty seconds.” Argo said as he prayed.
An officer shot by the front on a packmaster and someone further down the line shouted “Any minute now!”
“Don’t see why they had to move in the first place.” A man muttered in a quavering voice just behind Moses. “The shield can’t be broken. We could be safe.”
Down the line, the huge enemy machines reached the shield. Moses couldn’t see what they did at that distance, but the lightning storm that followed was enough to blind him without Argo dampening the light.
“I am sorry for my failings but commit myself to an ever greater love of you.” Moses whispered.
“Holy wah.” Someone said.
The huge dome of the shield moved. Song grass rippled as it’s edge passed over it and slid towards them.
“Tomorrow and for the rest of my life.” Moses finished. “Amen.”
“The commission.” The boy beside Pete said as the edge slid towards them. “What is that. What did you mean?” His voice had the same tremble of the man behind Moses.
“To protect the rear.” Moses replied. “To slow them down.” To live, he thought, or die. But to live until that moment came. At that moment, watching the shield slide towards him, with the enemy outside, Moses felt completely at peace, unafraid of the death that had plagued him since the moment his father asked him what he wanted from the rest of life. Life, it seemed to him, was too long to want anything from it, anything except this. To stand, facing the end, unafraid, and ready to either meet it, or pass through. To fight.
The lightning storm died as the shield escaped the enemy machines attacking it and it slid over Moses and the others in the front line. The Kamele horde surged forward as one, screaming as their guns poured fire into the Marain line’s wall of shields.
Moses joined his scream to theirs as he threw himself forward, into the fight.
Chapter 23 : Carthalo // What’s to come
Citizen Carthalo Wald Nordemsun stood atop his personal walking machine and watched the sea of soldiers hurl themselves at the corporation’s shield from the edge of the small town they’d taken in the night. Between them, the savannah was scarred and burnt from the bombardment it had received, scattered with the black mounds of the dead or dying. In one hand Carthalo gripped a walking stick, far tighter than was necessary. What he saw across the savannah was not a battle, what he saw was a slaughter. Soldiers with no idea what they were dying for, a force to small to do any good against the revolution, an irrelevance in the grander scheme of the revolution’s purpose on Marain. They would be a footnote in the histories of the war. A slaughter of the innocents, or fools, or both.
Carthalo’s stick rose and fell with a bang on the platform of the Matsumishi on which he rode. It was A close copy of the war machines walking in support of the soldier’s out on the savannah, the gun replaced with the more formidable weapon of a human mind, his mind. They should never have went out onto the plain in the first place. Let the corporation be while they sowed its final destruction here among the people they had come to liberate. Now, many who might have been spared were dead.
“Are you alright sir?”
Ode Jelani stood at the foot of Carthalo’s Matsumishi. He was one of Carthalo’s adjutants. A boy, only eighteen, the same age Carthalo had been when he’d joined the revolution all those years ago. His skin had a touch of the color of the night sky, making his eyes appear like stars when he looked up at Carthalo. Carthalo was also dark, but not like Ode, if he had been a piece of white bread in the womb, the birth had only toasted him. Ode had been burnt to charcoal.
Carthalo unsealed lips he hadn’t realized he’d compressed to answer him. “I am fine Ode. Thank you.” Ode was the boldest of his Adjutants, the most zealous, though perhaps that was youth, or inexperience. This was Ode’s first crossing to a new planet, Carthalo’s third. He’d been there when Serranar rose up, when the banner of the revolution was placed over the Kintiktu palace, he’d been in the trenches around the manufacturing center on Mawast, led soldiers to victory, and to their graves. He’d thought he would die many a time himself. He almost had, when a plasma beam found the chink i
n his shield. It had bit out a piece of his leg and transformed his sword hand into a disfigured claw. He’d seen battles, and what he saw now was not a battle.
The magnified view projected on the Matsumishi’s dashboard showed him the moment the corporation’s camp began its flight and the face covered warriors of the revolution made their advance. The corporation mercenaries wore flags on their backs. No doubt in an attempt to maintain some sort of battlefield system of communication. It made for an impressive sight, but it also made such men targets. Better the revolutionary way of personal emblems and decorations on the armor. Let the men learn to recognize their officers for the men they were, rather than the rank conferred upon them. It meant for better unit cohesion, a more personal connection to the revolutionary cause, a reminder of the men that lived beneath the machines they wore.
Confusion followed the soldier’s advance but not before Carthalo watched a half dozen of the enemy turned to clouds of blood by revolutionary swords and a few turned to smoking piles by the battle walkers sown amongst their army. Carthalo rammed his stick into the platform again. This was no way to show the people that they were their friends.
“We are winning.” Ode said.
Carthalo ground his teeth. “Yes.” He said at last, defeated by his anger. It was not Ode’s fault that men must die in the course of war, nor was it his fault that they must contend in this pointless action today. “Yes.” He said again. He thought of the man whose fault it truly was, commander Akereke Owolowo, dark and fat. The fat man his soldiers called him. The fat man with ideas of empire instead of revolution. He was an abomination, a man Carthalo had been sure the men would not choose to follow, but they loved their fat man, while he, Carthalo, a citizen, named before all the assembly, they called the cripple.
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