Chaos Quarter: Imperial Ambitions Read online

  “Get to the spaceport,” Jake said simply.

  The girl nodded meekly.

  “Good,” Jake said, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt. He didn’t waste any more time. With a glance he found the next house down the valley, and took up the race once more.

  ***

  Valley Town

  “Son of a bitch,” said Keith as he watched the transports zoom overhead.

  “That’s why I keep Lucius around,” Rex said from a few feet away. He watched the two remaining transports land to the north, knowing that the battle had just become a little less lopsided. Without the air support the bomber offered, the defensive advantage of the townsfolk had multiplied. And with one of the transports down, they now faced one thousand warriors instead of fifteen hundred.

  It didn’t exactly make things rosy though. The line across the northern reach of Valley Town consisted of, maybe, one hundred militia. A dozen had been sent to Cindy to man the barricade, with another four to take up sniping positions atop the ship with Ken. Rick had another half-dozen men to protect the valley and get the people out, plus Jake, who was undoubtedly far ahead of them. They were outnumbered any way you looked at it. If it weren’t for Longshot waiting to take them out of here, this whole situation would be perfect last-stand material.

  He didn’t know how an epic poem about all this would go, but he’d rather not find out. A soft buzz distracted him. Looking up, he saw a half-dozen drones spreading out above the town. They were small but had oversized, hemispherical bulbs on their undersides. They were a source of illumination for the warriors, who were unlikely to have night-vision gear, given that they were seen as cannon fodder. Once night came they would be lighting for for the warriors. And the militia, Rex thought, shaking his head at the irony of it.

  “Here they come,” Keith announced.

  Rex magnified the vision in his suit, finding the advancing wave of warriors. They ran flat out, straight for the town, apparently with no fear of what might await. Rex glanced back, toward the town. Between them and main street were four cross streets, four city blocks within which to delay the enemy. People were scrambling from various buildings, sprinting for the landing pad and the promise of safety Longshot represented. Others, older men and women not up to the task of combat, continued to work on building barricades. On each successive street, they threw up whatever they could find. It was mostly furniture and the electric carts the locals used to get around—nothing that would stop a determined attack. But they had nothing else to work with, so they threw it up all the same.

  “Better get those big guns of yours up,” said Keith. Turning back, Rex’s HUD found the enemy three hundred yards off, closing quickly.

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Rex said with a smirk, one nobody could see with his suit helmet concealing his face.

  He raised his left arm, the one with the twenty-millimeter grenade launcher on it. The suit’s computers calculated the range and showed where to aim. It was eerily like one of the hundred video games he’d played as a young boy.

  “Here goes,” he said.

  He shot out four grenades in quick succession, adjusting his aim to the right, working down the line. Small explosions licked across the enemy front, a handful of warriors collapsing into the dust. One or two got back up and continued the charge.

  Two hundred yards, his HUD sprawled across the bottom of the visor.

  He traced left, firing three more rounds at the warriors. More explosions, eight more dead warriors. They began firing, blasting wildly as they ran. Bullets pelted the barricade in front of him, and the walls of the buildings around them.

  “Hold your fire!” Keith shouted, repeating it several times. His people were militia; they trained three hours every week, from what Keith had told him. So they were good, but not professional warriors. He wanted the enemy close before the real shooting began.

  One hundred fifty yards.

  Rex blasted away, working to his right, spacing each shot to try and break up the oncoming wave. One by one his grenades landed true, knocking down two or three warriors with each fiery blast.

  Something flashed to his left, and he ducked. Wood shattered and rained down on him, half of the upper wall of the nearest house on his right dissolving away. Rail-gun! Jake’s fears had been well founded. At least one of them had an antiarmor weapon.

  He magnified further, scanning down the line until he spotted the figure with the rail-gun. He ran awkwardly, trying to reload as he went. Rex send two grenades at him. They erupted in his face, shredding him and three other men with a cloud of jagged steel, punching yet another hole in the Europan line.

  One hundred yards.

  The militia opened fire. Armed with the local battle rifles, they let loose in a hail of lead. The front line of the Forlorn Hope Brigade lived up to its name. Dozens fell, chewed up by the barrage. Rex adjusted his aim, going for the men behind the fast disappearing front row. He cut loose, balling his fists for continuous fire. Six grenades laced the rear ranks of the Europans, sending men flying in multiple directions, tripping up the men behind them.

  Fifty yards.

  He expected the warriors to cease, to fall back and try another, less suicidal tactic. But they kept coming, leaping over their fallen compatriots, charging forward, screaming and firing as best they could. To his left a woman jerked back, her head nearly taken off by a hail of slugs.

  But the militia kept at it. Above him, militia in the buildings themselves poured on fire, tearing great holes in the press of warriors. Rex switched to his machine gun, and sent a torrent of bullets into their enemies. They fell, flopping lifelessly onto the soil, but it stopped nothing. It was like a scene out of Old Earth days, where men had blindly walked in rows toward where their foes awaited, just to trade volleys. Things like this didn’t happen anymore. Blind bull rushes were an anachronism. Did these idiots know that?

  Twenty yards

  Apparently not.

  He kept up the fire, each shot from the fifty cal on his right arm chopping deep into somebody’s flesh. Their fire started to close in, pelting the upturned carts and tables of the barricade. A man on the far side of the road they guarded flew backward, his chest riddled with fire. Then another, a few steps away, slumped over the barricade and lay still.

  “Cut them down!” Keith roared, never taking his eye from the barrel of his rifle. He shot with quick, precise bursts, moving across his field of fire with practiced skill.

  A knot of twenty or so warriors broke to close the gap, racing ahead of their fellows. Rex’s left arm shot up, and he pumped two grenades into their center. The explosion sent men hurdling, killing half of them and forcing the rest to the ground. They tried to rise and continue their charge but were shot down by the defenders, unable to even make it the first two steps.

  Ten yards.

  “Fall back! One block, fall back and reform!” bellowed Keith.

  He’d barely heard the words when the wave crashed into the barricade. It flexed inward for a moment, holding. Rex took the opportunity to spray a line of fire at the nearest men. Heads and necks became pulp as his shots hit home. He walked backward; the rear camera of his suit fed his left eye, his nondominant eye, an image of the militia sprinting for the next makeshift barricade. Rounds pinged off him as he went, pelting the armor of his suit but doing no real damage. So he kept up his fire, drawing the ire of the enemy away from the retreating militia.

  “Rex! Get back here, now!” Keith shouted.

  Rex increased his backstep, never relenting in his barrage. Something flew at him, a sphere that landed two feet in front of him—a grenade. Red and black filled his vision as it exploded, showering the suit with shrapnel. The force of it sent him staggering backward until his back smacked up against an overturned refrigerator. Around him the sound of gunfire intensified as the militia sought to buy him time. Clearing his head, he vaulted easily over the barricade and found himself surrounded by militia again.

  “Don’t try that agai
n, got it!” Keith snapped. “You’re the heavy hitter, get it? We can’t afford to lose you!”

  He nodded, crouching low to recompose himself. The readouts on his visor registered the damage. It was mostly minor, but the integrity of his chest armor was down to 93 percent. He didn’t know exactly what that meant or how many “percents” he needed to have to remain bulletproof, but he figured 93 was less good than 100. The rest of the suit looked good, with some minor damage to his legs. Both weapons remained optimal.

  “Give them some cover!” ordered Keith, pointing. Several militiamen were fleeing from the houses they’d been posted in, making for the new barricades. They were directly in the line of fire of the advancing warriors. And if Rex tried to fire directly at the enemy, he had as much chance of catching the militia as he did the Europans.

  “Right then,” he said, crouching. He sprung upward, launching himself fifteen feet into the air. Instinctively his left arm went out and fired at the enemy. Three grenades shot out, cutting up a clump of their enemies as they ran. His feet slammed down hard next to Keith. The retreating militiamen leaped over the barricades, crouching down for cover. The last man moved to leap, and then jerked violently as slugs tore into his back. He collapsed just before the barricade.

  Keith turned from Rex to the militiamen who’d just made it to safety, and then shook his head in disbelief.

  “As I said, you’re the heavy hitter,” he said, and turned back to the fight.

  Rex brought up his machine gun and joined him.

  ***

  Longshot

  From the gunner’s seat the battle, so far, had been remarkably quiet. The line was holding, for now, keeping the main force plugged in the north end of the valley. Jake and Rick’s team were working down the valley, undoubtedly encountering small teams of warriors emerging from the drop-pods. But at the spaceport nothing happened.

  It made Lucius uneasy. He glanced back at Helen, who sat before a holographic projection of the entire area. Small icons superimposed on an aerial image showed the situation as it played out.

  “Don’t look at me,” Helen said, keeping her gaze focused on the hologram.

  “There’s no crime in looking at a person,” Lucius said.

  “It’s what’s behind the eyes that I don’t like,” Helen replied sharply.

  “As you wish,” Lucius said, turning back to the image before him. It was a holographic projection as well, one showing the feed from the rear-gun camera. In the distance, in the town, he could make out flashes and the bright trail of tracers. He could hear the rattle of gunshots, continuous but fluctuating in intensity. But it all remained distant.

  “Keith told me about your conversation with him,” said Helen.

  “Did he now?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It is hard to believe that a man who claims he’s changed, a man who claims he’s found God, would proclaim that he is willing to kill a woman and her unborn child.”

  The words hung there for a moment. Something about the tone seemed a little off. The anger wasn’t quiet as direct. There was an anticipation to her words, as if she were testing him.

  “I’m sure he told you why I was willing to do so, and how much of a last resort such an action would be,” Lucius answered.

  “Yes, I know all about your wife and son,” Helen said. “It doesn’t change anything between us.”

  “I did not expect it to,” said Lucius.

  “In fact, it seems to make it worse,” Helen mused out loud. “Since you clearly care for this woman and your child, you know exactly how Keith and I feel about the baby I carry. You know exactly what you would be taking from us.”

  “I do,” Lucius replied. “But having had time to think on it, I have an amendment to my answer.”

  “Oh?” came Helen’s bitter voice.

  “Yes. Should you try to kill me, I will only kill you. Not your unborn child,” Lucius said.

  Helen cocked her head quizzically. “And how exactly will you do that?”

  “I’ll shoot you in the head,” Lucius declared. “Then I will pick up your body and run to the med bay. The Automated Surgery Unit can perform a cesarean in under a minute if need be.”

  “That’s your offer? Kill me and leave my child an orphan?” Helen said with a dark chuckle.

  “Your child is innocent of this, and I would not leave him or her an orphan,” Lucius spoke. “After what I did to you, seeing that your child grew up cared for is the least I could do.”

  Helen’s face tightened into a dark scowl.

  “You think I’d ever let my child be raised by the likes of you?” she sneered.

  “Would you rather it be alone?”

  “Maybe,” Helen shot back.

  “Then you’d be foolish,” Lucius said. “My wife is not my son’s birth mother. That woman died shortly after Quintus was born. Yet Chakrika raises him as if he were her own. She is with him now, watching over him while I run around the galaxy getting into trouble. Were Keith to not survive, and were you to force me to kill you in self-defense, I have no doubts that Chakrika would welcome your child with all the love she was shown Quintus.”

  Helen’s fists balled and then relaxed. For a long moment, he expected her to explode, but she held firm.

  “It makes no difference. As I said, I have no intention of killing you,” Helen insisted.

  “You brought it up,” Lucius said.

  She muttered something under her breath, and then went back to her holograph. For long moments there was nothing, and then she cleared her throat.

  “There’s a team of five approaching the bow,” she warned, cool and controlled.

  “On it,” said Lucius. “Ventral turret.”

  The computer responded. The ventral turret sat on the underside of the ship, near the front. It was affixed at the bottom of a protrusion that held the large missile bays. With the ship on the ground it was only a few feet off the tarmac, but that was still enough for it to swing forward. The ship’s bow and its big guns faced the valley, but those guns were fixed in place. The twin-gun, thirty-millimeter ventral turret was not. So while they were on the ground, it was Longshot’s forward gun.

  Lucius’s view shifted to the ventral turret’s camera. There, two hundred yards ahead, he could see five forms moving. It was hard to make them out against the falling night, so he switched to infrared. Their body heat screamed out against the cool, fall air.

  His hands squeezed back on the trigger.

  ***

  The Valley

  A series of roaring shrieks filled the air, causing Jake to pause. At first he didn’t recognize them, but then he pieced it together. It was one of Longshot’s turrets, joining the fight. He didn’t know the noise, because they were normally only used in space, where you couldn’t hear anything. Heck, the ship’s computer sometimes even added noise for the crew’s benefit. But on the ground, the thirty-millimeter rail-guns left no doubt as to what they were and what they were here to do. Jake actually cringed a little when he imagined what those shots had done to their targets.

  But only a little. It was hard to cringe for people when they were sprinting after a mother and two toddlers, guns up and ready. He could see the mother clearly, running flat out despite the weight of her twin girls. Fifty yards away, she was clearly going on adrenaline. His computers quickly calculated her rate. Despite her valiant effort, she was slowing, imperceptibly but steadily. The squad of warriors chasing her could catch her long before she reached the spaceport.

  Lucky for her he could double their speed. Jake sprinted straight for her. Her eyes went wide at the sight of him. Apparently the residents outside of town hadn’t had a chance to gawk at him yet. She skidded to a stop, looking from him to her pursuers, clearly out of her mind with terror.

  He simply sprinted past her, raised his right arm, and sprayed lead at the warriors. At one hundred yards, it was an easy shot. Three went down immediately, chewed up by his attack. The other two dove behind a small knoll, surviving. />
  “Get to the spaceport! Get on the ship!” Jake screamed back at the woman. She jolted at the words, shocked into action, and took up the sprint again. The crying of her little girls faded as she put distance between them.

  Jake did not slow down; he ran straight for the knoll. His systems did a quick calculation. With the knoll between him and his targets, a direct shot was out of the question, but the grenade launcher on his left hand didn’t need a direct shot. He tilted it upward, matching the angle his system had worked out, and fired a pair of grenades. They arced over the knoll and erupted. One body was flung forward, halfway over the knoll, blackened and torn. The other warrior stumbled out—his right arm, a mangled mess. Jake lifted his machine gun and fired three quick shots. The warrior shook violently, and fell backward dead.

  The squad eliminated, he turned south again. He was two-thirds of the way down the valley. Only a half-dozen houses lay in front of him. One, at the southern end, was on fire. Gunshots rang out ahead of him, his computers separating them from the continuous clatter of sound coming from the village.

  He continued on, again at full sprint. He made it ten yards when a dozen bullets struck his breastplates, bouncing off wildly. He scanned quickly, finding his foes surrounding the nearest house. Two of them were engaged with whoever was inside. Flashes of light erupted from the windows, undoubtedly from the homeowner. The other three members of the squad were behind a water trough, the kind livestock drank out of. They were using it as cover. They had to have seen him tear through the last team.

  Jake changed course, heading straight for them. The rounds came again, causing him to serpentine. The fire became erratic, rounds missing him. He could run and change direction faster than any unaugmented human, and the warriors were having trouble timing him. The space between him and the water trough closed.

  Then, ten yards shy of the trough, he sprinted dead on. Rounds ricocheted off his armor as he closed. Nearing the trough he planted his left foot, and pivoted himself into a side kick. His foot slammed into the tall, metal trough, hurling it backward into the warriors. Trough and warriors flew through the air, smashing into the wall of the home. Water splashed over the dying men as they rebounded.