Legion Of The Damned - 02 - The Final Battle (31 page)

“Break left, Snakeyes . . . I’ve got ’em.”

A tone sounded and a target appeared on Ritter’s display. The parameters didn’t match anything in memory so she ran them again. Nothing changed. Whatever the Hudathans had sent down was big, real big, and coming her way. A strategic target, then, something worth dying for. The flight leader glanced at the place where her wingman should be and saw that he was there. His name was Kisley, but was better known as “Kisser,” since he had a tendency to kiss anything with lips, especially when drunk. “Hey, Kisser, do you see what I see?”

“That’s a roger, Delta Leader. It’s big, it’s fat, and it’s ours.”

“Exactamundo . . . let’s engage.”

Arrow Commander Indu Korma-Sa stared into the holo tank with a sublime sense of detachment. The fact that two fighters had appeared, and were getting ready to attack his large, rather awkward surface support ship, bothered him not at all. For unlike all but a few of his peers, Korma-Sa had taken the time and trouble to read many of the data cubes captured during the first war, and had discovered something called A
Book of Five Rings
by a human named Miyamoto Musashi. Not just
any
human, but a warrior who had killed more than sixty samurai in personal combat, before retiring to a cav
e and writing his boo
k. A book that Korma-Sa knew by heart. The situation gave rise to the appropriate quote.

“To attain the Way of strategy as a warrior you must study fully other martial arts and not deviate even a little from the Way of the warrior. With your spirit settled, accumulate practice day by day, and hour by hour. Polish the twofold spirit heart and mind, and sharpen the twofold gaze perception and sight. When your spirit is not in the least clouded, when the clouds of bewilderment clear away, there is the true void.”

Korma-Sa looked into the true void, saw that which should be done, and gave the necessary orders. ‟Allow the enemy to close and use the short sword to destroy them.”

Long accustomed to his commanding officer’s almost allegorical orders, the hard-faced weapons officer signaled willing assent, waited as the fighters closed with the ship, and readied the short-range weapons.

Ritter and Kisley expected to die at any moment and fired all their long-range weapons in hopes of a lucky hit. They exploded harmlessly against the supply ship’s protective shields. Both pilots waited for the inevitable response and were surprised when it failed to materialize. Thus encouraged, they readied their short-range armament, and arrowed in for the kill. They were only twenty miles away when the alien ship opened fire. Kisley died immediately. Ritter was hit but kept on going. Hudathan computers tracked her, but the flight leader was good, and managed to stay alive
for another 10.7 seconds. She didn’t see the torpedo that hit her aircraft or feel the explosion that took her life. Korma-Sa honored her bravery, cleared the episode from his mind, and reentered the void.

 

Chrobuck watched Quanto die through her scope, bounced a signal of a low-flying drone, and sent the video to Brigade HQ. “Zulu Four to Bravo One.”

The first voice she heard belonged to Colonel Wesley Worthington himself, C in C, Jericho ground forces. “This is Bravo One . . . Go.”

“Sending video on freq four. We are in contact with what appear to be military androids or enemy cyborgs. They eat fifty-caliber ammo for lunch but don’t like missiles. I am one T-Two, sorry, make that deuce T-Two’s down, and fading fast. Over.”

There was a moment of silence while Chrobuck watched her four remaining Trooper IIs fire their laser cannons to no visible effect. Whatever the things were shrugged the energy off, unleashed a flight of mini-missiles, and halved what was left of her cybernetic armor. She didn’t have to tell Worthington because he’d seen the firefight firsthand. For him it would be just one more piece
of bad news in a day filled with nothing else. Worthington had deployed what troops he had around what the archaeologists had named the “Valley of Temples,” which featured a Class III spaceport, some fairly well fortified SAM launchers, and the colonel’s underground command post.

“Bravo One to Zulu Four. Assume cyborgs for now. Pull back but make ’em pay. Help is on the way. Bravo One out.”

Chrobuck grimaced. “Make ’em pay?” With what? But orders are orders, and she knew Worthington didn’t have a whole lot of choice. She ordered the surviving cyborgs to fall back to a point where hastily trained civilian support teams could rearm their missile racks, called in an artillery mission on the area between them and the enemy LZ, and called for the company supply sergeant. Her name was Horowitz and she was built like a truck. She didn’t have a lot of respect for lieutenants and let it show as she low-crawled onto the roof. “So, Lieutenant . . . what’s up?” Horowitz had to yell to make
herself heard over the shriek of outgoing arty, the thump, thump, thump of HE a half-mile in front of her position, and the cloth-ripping sound of machine-gun fire.

Chrobuck ignored the lack of respect and cut straight to the point. “How many shoulder-launched missiles have we got?”

Horowitz knew exactly how many SLM’s she had, but pretended to consult her wrist term. Never one to give
all
of anything, the supply sergeant took ten percent off the top. “I issued twelve SLMs day before yesterday with forty-three stashed to the rear. We didn’t think we’d need that many of them.”

Chrobuck nodded. “Well, conditions have changed. Order some professors to bring the slims forward. They will be issued to uniformed personnel only. We can’t afford to waste them on trees.”

Horowitz remained impassive. “Yes, ma’am.”

“And, Horowitz?”

“Ma’am?”

“Have the eggheads bring the rest of the SLMs, too. There’s no point in saving them.”

Horowitz was embarrassed but tried not to show it. She looked into the young officer’s face, saw the determination in her eyes, and nodded slowly. “Yes, ma’am. Camerone.”

Chrobuck nodded. “That’s right, Sergeant . . . Camerone.”

The sergeant back-wiggled into the jungle while Chrobuck continued to observe. The artillery mission came to an end, and with the exception of some intermittent machine-gun fire in the jungle below, a temporary silence settled over the ruins. The arty had carved an arc-shaped swath through th
e jungle and Chrobuck saw a number of Hudathan casualties. The only problem was that for every enemy casualty she saw two of her own.

She pulled back from the scope just in time to see something pass through her peripheral vision. It was a spy-eye, one of thousands released by the Hudathans, and was held aloft by a tiny antigrav generator. A legionnaire saw the device, nailed it with his energy rifle, and returned to the mines he was placing.

The momentary respite ended as a flight of Hudathan ground-support craft appeared out of the south and swept in at treetop level. Missiles leaped away from their wings and homed on the artillery pods located to the rear. They responded with motor-driven gatling guns, antimissile missiles, and a full-spectrum electronic-counter-measure defense. Most of the incoming weapons were destroyed or misdirected but a few got through. They destroyed three large-caliber tubes, an ammo dump, and the quad that had been ordered to move up in support of Chrobuck’s company. Twenty-three bio b
ods were killed. The explosions shook Chrobuck’s command post and sent flames soaring into the sky.

But the enemy aircraft were still coming, ejecting chaff, and jinking back and forth to evade surface-to-air missiles. Chrobuck saw bombs drop from their wing racks and watched a line of explosions march her way. Entire trees, blocks of stone, and the occasional body were tossed into the air. It was only when she saw lights winking along the leading edge of their wings, and felt rock chips hit the side of her face, that Chrobuck realized how exposed she was. She scrambled to her feet and was halfway to the jungle when the line of planes roared overhead. They flew so low that she co
uld feel the air that they displaced and see the alien unit designators.

A storm of small-arms fire, along with the hail of slugs produced by the two remaining gatling guns, formed a curtain of lead. A pair of SAMs reached up, didn’t have time to arm themselves, and zigzagged towards the sun. One of the planes staggered as it hit the line of fire, performed an unintentional wing-over, and crashed into an ancient temple. Chrobuck heard a series of secondary explosions as she slipped into the coolness of the jungle and tried to reestablish contact with her platoon leaders.

The resulting reports weren’t very positive. Staff Sergeant Nibo, who had the first platoon, and a hodgepodge of legionnaires, desk jockeys, and port trash, had linked up with Master Sergeant Fhad, who led the third platoon, comprised of the remaining Trooper IIs, some archaeologists, and two squads from the 2nd REP. Together, both platoons were falling back. Louie’s booby trap had acco
unted for one of the Hudathan cyborgs, and some well-placed slims had destroyed two more, but the rest kept on coming.

Chrobuck did what she could to encourage Nibo and Fhad, checked to make sure that the second and fourth platoons were in position along the ridgeline, and laid down covering fire. The moment that the first and third passed through the defensive line, Chrobuck planned to put mortar fire on the slope in front of her, stiffen her defenses with whatever remained of the third and fourth, and hold the ridge for as long as she could. She knew it wouldn’t make much difference in the long run, but Worthington was counting on her to hold his right flank, and every Hudathan killed was o
ne less for the Confederacy to deal with.

Raksala-Ba proceeded more cautiously now that Tornu-Ka had been killed by means of a booby trap. Like all such devices, its real value lay not in the number of casualties actually inflicted, but in the amount of fear generated, and the degree to which that fear inhibited the enemy’s activities. And while Raksala-Ba couldn’t speak for the other cyborgs, he knew that the explosion had inhibited
his
activities, and caused him to pay greater attention to his surroundings. They spy-eyes helped a lot, floating ahead and broadcasting videos of everything they saw, so the cyborgs knew what
they were facing.

The humans had been falling back for some time now, or “up” as the case might be, since they had the rather unenviable task of fighting a rear-guard action while climbing a steep slope. The combination of the jungle and tumbledown ruins provided the enemy with excellent cover, which allowed them to pause every now and then, and fire on the steadily advancing cyborgs.

Regular troops would have been decimated long before, but the humans’ SLMs were of only limited value at close range, and almost impossible to use with thick foliage blocking the way. So the cyborgs kept coming, their automatic weapons pumping death up towards the ridge, while their energy cannon probed the jungle and started innumerable smoky fires.

In the meantime Raksala-Ba prayed for an air strike. Anything that would prevent another devastating artillery attack. But the planes were busy elsewhere, and the moment that the last of the humans made it to the ridgeline, and were pulled into hastily dug fox holes, mortar shells began to fall.

The earth shook as 120-mike-mike mortar shells detonated on the forward incline while 105-mike-mike artillery rounds pounded the lower slope. Geysers of earth and vegetation shot skywards, a cyborg screamed on channel three, and the attack stalled.

Crouched in whatever shelter they could find, Raksala-Ba and his comrades had a limited number of choices: they could stay put, and wait for the assault to end, an almost unbearable alternative given the ferocity of the attack, they could retreat, and face the possibility of execution at the hands of the Observers, or they could attack, overrun the human positions, and silence the mortars and artillery. They chose to attack. Dagger Commander Wala Prolla-Ka uttered the cry “
Blood!
” and was answered by every cyborg that could transmit. “
Blood! Blood! Blood!
” Raksala-Ba stood, gritted nonexist
ent teeth, and started uphill.

 

“Here they come!” The words originated from one of the civilians and were heard on freq four. Chrobuck ignored the break in radio discipline and used the command override. “Save your ammo! Prepare your grenades. Don’t throw until I give the word.”

Some of the humans had grenades, and some had homemade bombs, thanks to Louie and a demolitions expert from the 2nd REP. Given the effectiveness of the Hudathan armor, Chrobuck figured they were the only close-in weapons likely to make much of a dent on the advancing cyborgs. The problem was to determine the exact moment to use them.

The officer stood, forced herself to ignore the death that whistled all around her, and looked down into the shell-tossed jungle. Shadows moved here and there as the Hudathans fought their way upwards. They were getting close and so was the appropriate moment. ‟Okay . . . wait . . . wait . . . wait . . . arm your weapons . . . hold . . . hold . . . hold . . . throw!”

At least one of the homemade bombs went off in a dock walloper’s hand, killing her along with two legionnaires. But the rest sailed out and down, hitting, then bouncing into the air, where most of them exploded. The force of the explosions, plus the shrapnel they produced, killed a number of the Hudathans, but the rest, Raksala-Ba included, kept on climbing.

His mind had gone somewhere safe, and was only partially aware of the command-detonated mines that went off just before he reached the top, or the fact that whoever was in command of the humans had called for an artillery attack on the ridge itself, slaughtering even more of his comrades, along with an equal number of defenders. All he knew was that he had survived the slope, had reached the top, and was wading through the enemy bio bods as if they weren’t even there. Orgasm after orgasm racked his nervous system as he killed and killed and killed.
Blood! Blood! Blood!
It was all that matt
ered.