Weapons of War (5 page)

"But not to line of sight," Donovan said, pointing to the trees where the clone soldiers were still approaching. He took a few shots at them before stumbling down the incline a few steps.
 

"We can lose them in the current," Diaz said. "Come on."

She continued down the slope ahead of him, putting her arms out to balance. He followed behind, each step threatening to knock him to the ground.
 

He was almost to the water when he realized Ehri wasn't with them.

He looked back. He hadn't seen her get hit. He hadn't heard her cry out. Where was she? Had she decided to rejoin the bek'hai after all? Or had she sacrificed herself to help them escape?

"Where's Ehri?" Diaz asked, her sudden concern surprising him.

"I don't know," he replied, still scanning the tree line.
 

The grade and distance had given them a short respite from the Dread soldier's harassment fire. He could hear the fighter's engines growing louder as they approached for another pass. He heard something else now, a crashing sound from the other side of the bank a hundred meters distant. It was the sound of tree branches breaking against something substantial.

Something like a mech.

"Hurry," Donovan shouted, giving up on trying to keep his balance. He scrambled down the slope, slipping onto his back, barely managing to maintain his hold on the pilot. Diaz moved ahead of him, reaching the water's edge and wading into it.
 

Was the water even deep enough for them to hide?

The trees on the other side began to part, the Dread mech making its way through the foliage. Donovan looked back over his shoulder. Ehri was still nowhere to be found. Where could she have gone?
 

She had abandoned them at the worst possible time. Without her, the mech would have free reign to open fire.
 

He got back to his feet, skipping the last few meters to the water's edge. Diaz was in up to her waist and had turned back to face him, holding out her arms to help him in. The mech was clearing the trees, its arms swiveling to target them.
 

"Get down," Donovan said, throwing himself into the current.
 

Then he was submerged, his ears hearing nothing but the rushing of the water as it began to carry him away. He lifted his head to take a breath, shifted his body to ensure the pilot's head was clear. The echo of the mech's weaponry discharging drowned out his hearing again, rounds splashing into the water behind them as the machine's driver worked to get completely clear. Donovan looked around frantically, searching for Diaz, finding her a dozen meters ahead of him, letting the current carry her away.

The Dread clone soldiers reached the edge of the bank, and suddenly Donovan found himself under fire from both sides. Plasma bolts joined with projectiles, striking the area around him and vanishing in gouts of steam and bursts of water. He knew he was hard to see and hard to pick up on sensors submerged the way he was. It didn't matter. The volume was more than enough that he would be struck sooner or later.

He tried to swim a little, to push himself further and faster, to escape the range of the attack. He felt a biting in his leg, a bolt sinking into the water and hitting him, striking the Dread cloth at a reduced strength, burning him but not destroying the flesh and bone. Another hit his shoulder, only inches from the pilot's face. He was too slow, their escape too late. They had taken Matteo, Ehri was missing, and he was going to die at any moment.

At least he would fight to the last breath.

He rolled over onto his back, positioning the pilot on top of him and bringing his Dread rifle from the water to rest it in front. He pulled the trigger, aiming wildly at the soldiers on the side of the river, fighting back until the last. He smiled when he saw one go down. He laughed when he saw another fall.
 

He froze when he realized he wasn't the one shooting them.

The mech was.

Donovan lowered his body, trying to find the bottom of the river with his feet. He kept his eyes on the scene ahead of him the entire time, watching in awe and confusion as the mech on the south side of the bank decimated the Dread clones on the north side, tearing them apart with heavy projectile rounds.
 

"Dios mío," he heard Diaz say behind him, as she caught sight of what was happening.
 

He started swimming toward the shore as the last of the soldiers vanished beneath the onslaught. A Dread fighter streaked overhead, sending streams of plasma into the mech. It burned into the machine's armor, making deep scores but not taking it down. The mech pivoted to track it, missiles suddenly launching from hidden compartments on its shoulders. They streaked behind the fighter like a swarm of angry insects, exploding prematurely as the fighter pilot released some kind of chaff to distract them. A second Dread fighter appeared overhead, also targeting the mech.

The mech moved almost gracefully, sliding down the decline toward the water, shifting to fire at the newcomer. Plasma beams and projectiles crossed over one another, leaving the mech down an arm and the fighter without the rounded wing on its left side. It vanished behind the trees, the thunder of its crash and a cloud of smoke appearing seconds later.

"What the hell is going on?" Diaz said, reaching him.
 

"I don't know. Help me get the pilot closer to the shore."

Donovan and Diaz pulled the pilot further to the side of the river, where grasses overhung the water and gave them somewhere to hide while the battle continued to unfold. The mech had made its way into the water, moving toward the center and submerged to its knees. The first Dread fighter was circling back, coming in for another strafing run.

"It's wide open out there," Diaz said.

Donovan didn't respond. She was right. The mech pilot had left the cover of the trees and made the machine a massive target.

He watched in fascination as the two Dread weapons faced off. The fighter continued its trajectory, heading right at the mech while the mech responded in kind, raising its remaining arm and unleashing a barrage of missiles to go with projectiles and plasma bolts. Firepower met firepower, each machine generating small explosions as the attack caused extensive damage to both. The fighter passed fifty meters over the mech before spinning out of control, veering hard to the left and smashing into the trees. The mech groaned, pushed back by the assault, before flopping backward and slamming into the water.
 

Donovan turned his head away as the resulting wave crashed over them. Once it had passed, everything fell into silence.

He stared at the carnage upstream, barely able to breathe. His heart thudded in his chest, while his mind worked to make sense of what had just happened. Why had the mech pilot decided to defend them instead of killing them? It didn't make any sense.

A minute passed. Then another. Everything remained quiet. No other fighters flew over. No other mechs arrived on the scene. It was the closest thing to a miracle Donovan had ever seen.

"We're still alive, amigo," Diaz said, her face telling him she was as shocked and pleased as he was. "Someone up there is looking out for us."

"I guess so." He put his hand to the pilot's neck, feeling the steady pulse below his fingers. "For all of us."

"Not all," Diaz said.
 

Donovan flinched. He shouldn't have said that. "Diaz, you know-"

"Forget it. I know what you meant. It isn't your fault. We need to head downstream. We may not be alone here for long."

"Ehri's gone."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"You are?"

"Why not? I know you like her. I'd be an asshole not to care if you lose someone important to you, even if I'm not as fond of them. Or if I'm jealous of them."

"Jealous?"

"You know how I feel, D. We don't need to rehash, especially now. We need to get the hell out of here, stay alive and do something with these weapons. We can't count on St. Martin to come back and save us, not when he's got a Dread starship on his ass."

"The Dread ship didn't leave," Donovan said. It was large enough that they had seen it hanging in a synchronous orbit above the Dread fortress before the trees had blocked their view.

"Not yet. It will, or it would have come back down."

"Yeah, you're right. Hopefully, General St. Martin and his son will make it back, but we need to be able to handle ourselves either way." Donovan shifted his grip on the pilot. "Let's head another kilometer or two down the river, and then we can set up a camp for the night. I can barely think straight."

"Yes, sir," Diaz said, climbing out of the water, and then reaching out.
 

Donovan shifted the pilot's weight, turning him over to Diaz so she could pull him out by his shoulders. He hoped they weren't doing lasting damage to the man with as rough as they had been forced to be with him.

He planted his arms on the side of the river and lifted, pulling himself up and out. He paused on his hands and knees, a sudden feeling of nausea nearly overwhelming him. He was exhausted beyond any limits.

He dry heaved then, coughing and sputtering. Diaz lowered the pilot gently to the ground, and then came to his side, rubbing his back as he continued to choke.
 

"It's okay, D," she said. "Relax. You'll be okay."

Donovan nodded. He would. He had to. He coughed again, and then turned his head to the side, back toward the fallen mech. The front of it looked different now. The enclosure near the shoulders was open, revealing part of the internals. It was composed of wires and some kind of organic compound coated in a layer of gel that pulsed with light.
 

Someone was in the water, swimming toward them.

"Diaz," Donovan said. He had two of the Dread rifles hanging from his body, and she took one and lifted it from him, aiming it at the approaching figure. "Don't shoot."

She grunted in response. He wasn't sure if she was going to listen or not.
 

The figure was ten meters away when it stopped swimming and stood in the waist deep water.

Donovan fell back onto his rear, the tension draining from him, the exhaustion making him dizzy.
 

"I don't know how you did it," he said, "but I'm glad you did."

Ehri's face was covered in a layer of grime, her hair had been singed, her left arm was cut and bleeding, and she had another wound across her abdomen. Despite all of that, she was alive, her expression serious as she approached them.

"I've bought us some time, Major," she said. "Let us not waste it."

Gabriel stood in front of the hatch leading down into logistics, staring at the cold metal. It was the only thing remaining between him and Lieutenant Daphne O'Dea. The only remaining barrier before he would have to be the one to deliver the bad news.

"I'm sorry, Daphne," he whispered to himself. "Soon didn't make it back."

He wasn't sure how she would react when he said it for real. She was a soldier, and she had fallen in love with the pilot and married him knowing that he would likely die somewhere near Earth. She might be coldly accepting of his fate. She might fall apart. He needed to be ready for either reaction. The silver lining was that there was a chance, a small chance, that Soon wasn't dead. He was landing the starfighter, not crashing it.

He heard a noise behind him and glanced over his shoulder. A tech crossed the corridor behind him, pushing a heavy cart of tools. Two hours had passed since they had come out of slipspace, somehow still alive. Two hours since Reza had informed them that they were essentially trapped out in the middle of nowhere, right after they had kicked the hornet's nest and sent the Dread searching for them.

It was a truth that didn't sit well with him, or with anyone on the bridge who knew about it. Calawan was only fifty light years from Earth, close enough that if the Dread wanted to find it, they would be able to find it. Nobody had any doubts about that. Meanwhile, the only chance they had of defending the settlement was resting in a makeshift laboratory near the hangar, waiting for Reza and Guy Larone to be able to take a break from calculating possible stream positions to take a look at it instead.