The Siege of Earth (The Ember War Saga Book 7) (26 page)

Elias stuck his arm around a corner and blasted at a pack of drones. He looked the opposite direction and fired bursts of rounds from his rotary cannon and a drone diving down from the top of an apartment building. His rounds tore through the drone and the glass windows behind it.

Daggers of glass rained down on Bodel, who didn’t seem to notice as he destroyed a drone picking through the lobby of the same apartment building.

Elias ducked away as a beam smashed through the corner where he’d been firing. He lowered a shoulder, dove through the window of a coffee shop and rolled to a knee, taking out the last three drones with aimed shots.

One drone skipped out of his line of fire. Its stalks twitched, then it shot around a corner.

“Did that one just retreat?” Bodel asked.

Elias touched the mask hanging from his neck.

“Think we got noticed?” Elias asked.

“I think
you
got noticed.” Bodel lifted up his forearm cannon and fished out a malformed bullet that had jammed in a barrel.

A shadow passed overhead. Elias looked up and saw a swarm of Xaros drones passing across the sun. The drones spiraled into three tendrils reaching for the ground. One snaked toward Camelback Mountain, one angled away into the city, and the third came right toward the Iron Hearts.

“I ever tell you your plans suck?” Bodel asked. “Next time,
I
come up with the good ideas.”

“You can try.” Elias checked his battery charge. “I can’t get a q-shell out, you?”

Bodel stomped his heel against the road and drilled his anchor through the concrete.

Elias bashed down the wall of the coffee shop and cleared a path to a wide service elevator. He ripped the doors away and found a quadrium-shielded hatch leading to the tunnels beneath the city streets.

A sonic boom from Bodel’s rail cannon shattered every glass window of the surrounding buildings. Bodel raised his anchor and ran for Elias, charging through glass and sidestepping more than one disabled drone.

“That was my last one,” Bodel said as he slid to a stop at the hatch and jumped down.

Elias followed and shut the hatch behind them. The aegis plating lining the tunnel and the hatch would slow the Xaros down for a few minutes, but it wouldn’t keep the drones away.

“Last q-shell or last rail round?” Elias asked as they ran down the dimly lit tunnel.

“Both, what do you have left?”

“One rail shot, enough gauss to keep their attention.” Elias went around a corner and tried to raise the city’s defense command with no success. They turned a corner and found their path caved in.

“Shit,” Bodel said.

“There’s another way back to the hangar.” Elias looked across a map of the tunnels and turned around. “It’ll take longer.”

A brief quake shook the tunnel. Then another.

“We’ve got a walker. Big one,” Bodel said.

“Surface.” Elias kept running until he came to a hatch in the ceiling. He pushed it up as a long quake shook through the tunnel. He peeked his helm over the edge as red light cast across his face.

“They’re burning through the roads,” Elias said.

“So much for taking the tunnels,” Bodel said.

The roar of Eagles and the boom of cannons carried through the air. Quick red pulses played across Elias’ face.

“Well?” Bodel asked.

“Mountain positions are fighting, got the walkers’ attention. Come on.” Elias crawled out of the hatch and into an Ibarra Corporation lobby. Plastic mock-ups of construction robots and 3-D printer foundries filled the room.

Elias felt tremors through his suit and saw the legs of the giant walker crush an abandoned car a block away. Elias pushed through the wrecked front doors and ran down the street, past a burning Eagle that ripped down the side of a building before it crashed to the road.

Elias pointed to an intersection. “I’ll anchor there, hit the walker when it comes around.”

A rail cannon shell shattered the side of the building, penetrated through another and ripped through the other side. The entire building collapsed in an avalanche of glass and pulverized concrete. Hunks of masonry showered down and a gray fog swept over the Iron Hearts.

They ducked into the broken remnants of a grocery store and waited for the building to collapse completely.

The shadow of the walker loomed through the fog.

“You’re not going to get an anchor in that mess.” Bodel pointed to the debris filling the streets.

“No, but there’s another spot.” Elias climbed up the broken remnants of the building to a broken metal beam that had once formed part of the building’s frame.

Elias lifted his right foot and slammed the heel against a join between two beams of the frame. His anchor whirled as it drilled into the metal.

“You’re crazy,” Bodel said.

“Bring it here.” Elias waved Bodel away. The other Iron Heart shook his head and made his way over the rubble as fast as his footing would allow.

Elias felt his anchor bite into the frame and his heel tightened against the frame. He reached up and grabbed the side of the frame, standing parallel to the ground.

“Carius would have my ass if he saw this,” Elias said.

“Incoming!” Bodel ran by, firing over his shoulder.

Elias activated his rail cannon and brought it down next to his head. Electricity arced between the vanes as it charged. The walker’s legs appeared beyond the edge of a building, then stopped.

Red light built up through the windows between Elias and the walker. Elias reared back as a beam burst through the structure and blasted a hole through the next several blocks. Elias felt intense heat against his legs and chest as the beam blazed just yards away from him.

The beam died away and Elias swung his body back up to face the walker. The Xaros was plainly visible through the neat hole it had blown through the building, its cannon pulsating. Elias aimed his rail gun right into the walker’s core and fired.

The recoil ripped his anchor point out of the frame and sent Elias careening through the rubble filling the street below.

Bodel rushed over to his friend and found his feet sticking out from under the wide remnants of a wall, his anchor still embedded in a hunk of steel. Bodel grabbed Elias by the ankles and pulled him out of the rubble. His rail cannon was a twisted wreck, the rotary cannon broken loose from its mount.

“Elias? Elias!” Bodel shook his friend’s armor.

Elias sat bolt upright, his rail cannon sparking and jerking from side to side.

“Did I hit it?” Elias asked.

The smoking remains of the walker lay in two neat pieces, one half crumbled over behind the building Elias and the walker had both shot through.

“Are you OK?” Bodel asked.

Elias kicked at the metal still attached to his anchor.

“That was a damn stupid idea,” Elias said.

“If it’s stupid but works…” Bodel grabbed Elias’ anchor, gave it a twist to detach it and tossed it aside.

A light burned through the sky, like a fragment of the sun was coming to Earth.

“That’s him,” Elias said, “the General.” He got to his feet and stumbled against Bodel.

“I’ll tell the hangar we’re coming.” Bodel pointed Elias at Camelback Mountain and led him forward.

****

The mountain shook as another blast from the walkers hit. Hale stumbled against the tunnel wall. Dust showered down from the metal tracks bolted to the rock ceiling.

Hold together a little longer
, Hale thought.

“Almost there.” Cortaro ran past Hale and hopped onto a ladder against the wall leading down a rough circle cut through the floor. Steuben, Jacobs and Weiss followed Cortaro down the ladder.

Yarrow picked Hale off the wall. “Sure hope that shortcut works.”

“You and me both.” Hale got to the ladder, braced his hands and feet against the frame and slid down. He looked between his feet and saw the floor of the next lower level. He heard the crack of plasma fire before he cleared the ladder well. A Xaros beam cut through the air beneath his feet and ripped the ladder apart.

Hale released his grip and swung his rifle off his shoulder. He charged up the plasma coils and hit the deck solidly. A Xaros drone filled the hallway, stalks splayed out like a spider’s legs. Hale fired from the hip, ripping a gash across the drone’s side and breaking off a pair of stalks. The drone staggered backwards and thrust a stalk toward Hale.

He dove to the side, rolling out of the attack and onto one knee. He put two shots in the drone’s shell and spilled its pyrite across the floor. Hale spun around, searching for the Marines that came down before him. Behind him was a partially collapsed hallway, the floor sloping downward.

Cortaro stuck his head over the edge.

“Nice shooting, sir,” he said.

The rest of his team, covered from head to toe in dust, climbed over the edge.

“The drone hit something special,” Jacobs said, jerking a thumb over her shoulder. “That happened.”

Yarrow landed behind Hale.

“I miss something?” the corpsman asked.

“At least the drone didn’t knock down the tunnel we need,” Hale said. “Come on.”

The tunnel curved, leading them to a rounded stone wall marked
BATTERY 12.
A hole the width of a coffee can ran through the wall.

“Drone came out of there.” Hale pointed to the hole. “Cover the entrance.” He grabbed a lever attached to a hydraulic rig and pulled it down. A blast door several feet thick swung open. Inside the battery, empty armor suits lay around the breach of a rail cannon. Smoking craters marked the impact of the drone’s killing blows.

“See if she’ll still fire,” Hale said as he crept toward the open firing port. The rail cannon was smaller, the vanes stubbier than the
Breitenfeld
’s, not meant for long-range void combat. Outside the mountain, a Xaros walker like Hale’d faced on Takeni and Malal’s vault pounded redoubts with its main gun.

“Got charge in the capacitor,” Cortaro said, “but no round in the chamber.”

Steuben grabbed a handle to a metal plate embedded in the floor and lifted it up. A matte-gray tapered dart twice the size of a Marine lay just below the floor.

“I will need help,” the Karigole said.

“Sir, you aim. We’ll load,” Cortaro said. The Marines gathered around the shell and hefted it into the air, their power armor struggling with the weight.

Hale swung himself up into a chair bolted to the side of the breach and tapped a control panel. A cracked screen came to life, displaying garbled text.

“No help there,” Hale said. He looked around and saw a pair of hand wheels on either side of the breach.

The Marines heaved the round into the breach, Cortaro cursing up a storm the entire time.

Steuben looked up at Hale. “Now would be appropriate to fire.”

“Have to aim over open sites.” Hale pointed to the hand wheels. “Move the declination right and elevation down.”

“I don’t know what a declination is but…” Weiss grabbed one of the handles and spun the wheel. The gun shifted to the left and Weiss changed direction.

Hale climbed onto the top of the rail cannon and looked down the barrel.

“Stop,” Hale said as the weapon lined up on the walker. “Down…stop.”

A shadow flit across the open port.

“Think we got something’s attention,” Jacobs said.

Red light cast through the gun chamber as the walker beat against the mountainside.

The walker moved closer, throwing off the shot.

“Lower another—” Someone grabbed Hale by the ankle and yanked him clear of the breach. A pencil-thin beam cut through the metal where Hale had been.

Marines fired on a stalk tip bent over the lip of the firing port, blasting it—and a generous portion of the façade—to smithereens.

Hale spun a hand wheel, trying to gauge the elevation correction he needed from the side of the weapon. He spied a lanyard connected to a metal handle against the breach, the analog firing system.

A beam hit the side of the cannon, boring through the electromagnets.

Hale lunged forward and grabbed the lanyard, pulling it down as he fell to the deck.

The cannon fired with a clap of thunder loud enough to pop Hale’s ears. The buzz of a thousand insects filled his head as he struggled to his feet. He took his rifle off his back and stumbled to the open edge, his balance reeling from the disruption to his inner ears.

A stalk tip hooked over the edge. Hale batted it aside and leaned over the battlements. He found the drone and pounded it into oblivion with plasma bolts then he looked up. The walker lay on its side, its weapon’s array shattered by the blow from the rail cannon. The walker burned beneath the setting sun.

“Well done,” Steuben said as he lifted Hale up from the edge.

“What?” Hale asked, loudly.