Then he was up and running again, trying to get around to the side of the metal monster as it kept coming, invincible, unstoppable. He caught sight of other warriors firing missiles, saw terrified women dropping to their knees, fumbling with weapons they had only the vaguest notions of how to fire. The ogre’s gun snouts belched flame and death. Trees crashed all around, cut off like twigs by the ogre’s guns. Screams of pain and terror echoed through the forest. Wakiza fired his rifle at the thing, hating with a maddened red haze. Guns higher off the ground than three fully grown warriors spat at him. He threw himself prone as flame and explosions erupted everywhere around him.
And still it kept coming. Missiles detonated against its sides without effect.
Sobbing in terror and frustration, Wakiza wondered with a despairing howl, Why have the Ones Above forsaken us? Can’t they hear our frantic pleadings? Have they no eyes to see our distress? They were alone in this glade of death, abandoned to the monstrous shape of the enemy’s guns, with no hope remaining. All that remained was to die in defense of home and nestlings. Wakiza hurled himself forward, screaming out his hatred as the only antidote to terror.
Chapter Seventeen
I run a gauntlet of enemy fire.
Their missiles, fired at point-blank ranges, pass my malfunctioning gun systems with devastating ease, wreaking havoc with my forward sensor arrays and small-arms systems. My commander grits her teeth as we grind forward, slashing out as best we can with poorly aimed salvos from my infinite repeaters and chain guns. The enemy falls sporadically, crushed under my treads when I pass over those who fall wounded in front of my prow. Many of those opposing us fire awkwardly, as though they do not know how to use the weapons in their hands.
“They’re throwing everything they’ve got into the defense,” my commander says in a hushed voice. “Look at the difference in size and personal decorations. Those are Tersae females down there.”
I believe my commander to be correct.
Slaughtering females who are all but helpless is distasteful, but the enemy has shown no mercy to human females and children. I press forward through the scattered defenders, determined to neutralize the threat from this base camp. The deep-fissured ravine appears through a thin screen of remaining trees. I grind them down and angle my guns to fire into the deep cavern at the bottom.
Ion-bolt infinite repeaters bark and snarl, whipping through the flimsy covering across the cavern entrance, vaporizing it and part of the rock with it. Weird, alien screams rise from beneath the stone overhang. Mortars streak upwards toward my hull, half of them detonating against the rocky walls of the ravine. The remainder arc high overhead. I angle my upper turret guns toward them, knocking down five of the seven incoming rounds. The remaining two detonate against my turret. Pain spreads through damaged sensor arrays. I fire VLS missiles and more ion bolts into the ravine, chewing away at the stone of the cavern entrance. Smoke and rocky debris choke the air.
Surviving enemy ground forces rush forward from behind me and along my flanks, firing ineffectually with rifles and grenades. I scatter antipersonnel mines and devote my main attention to taking the base camp. Another blast from ion-bolt infinite repeaters smashes into the cavern entrance and a massive chunk of rock shifts and falls, collapsing down from the ceiling. Screams erupt inside the cavern once again. The enemy does not return fire. Zero point eight minutes after the partial collapse of the cavern roof, Tersae begin staggering from the cavern entrance. I take aim with antipersonnel systems . . .
Then pause, startled.
The Tersae hold no weapons. But neither are they attempting to surrender.
They are fleeing something terrible within their own cavern. Those staggering into the open are falling, twitching horribly. Blood appears, oozing from body cavities, pouring from beneath skin and fur.
“Omigod,” Alessandra breaths, her voice raw with horror. “Something’s broken open a container of chemical war agents! Or maybe biologicals.” Her voice goes dark with rage. “Those goddamned bastards gave biochemical warfare compounds to stone-age savages!”
I notice with a chill of horror through all my systems that the few surviving Tersae who have been trailing me, firing rifles into my rear armor, have begun to stagger, already falling down and writhing in massive spasms. There is no time for consulting anyone, even my commander. I fire Hellbores into the ravine, again and again, turning the entire cavern to molten slag in my efforts to destroy as much of the unknown biological or chemical agent as possible before it can spread.
“Warn Rustenberg to evacuate,” I say. “I’ve done what I can to contain most of the spill inside that cavern, Commander, but I can’t destroy the compound that’s already escaped. Rustenberg is directly in the wind-dispersal pattern.”
Her hand shakes as she reaches for the controls on her command chair. “How long do they have and how far do they have to run?”
I check wind speed and direction. “Seven minutes, Commander. They need to reach a point forty kilometers due north within seven minutes.”
“My God,” she chokes out, “they’ll never do it in time.” She slaps controls. “DiMario here. Evacuate Rustenberg immediately; repeat, evacuate Rustenberg immediately! The Tersae have released an unknown biochemical warfare agent into the atmosphere. You are at critical risk. You have seven minutes to reach a safe zone forty kilometers due north of Rustenberg.”
The familiar voice of the Operations Director gasps across the connection, “Gianesco here. We don’t have enough transports to evacuate everyone!” She then snarls at someone else, voice swinging away from her comm link, “Dammit, move those children faster!”
Another voice breaks into the conversation, a terse female voice. “Lieutenant Carter here, en route to Rustenberg aboard a Darknight transport shuttle. We dropped from orbit three minutes ago. We’re jettisoning medical equipment to make room for evacuees. We’re ETA your location two minutes at maximum speed.”
“How many can you take out?” Ginger Gianesco’s voice is ragged, raw.
“Seventy adults, maximum, inside the shuttle, and that’s stripping her to the deckplates. Lieutenant Commander Lundquist is doing that right now. If you can pack people into one of those big ore containers, we have the engine capacity to lift it out with us.”
“We’ll cram ’em in ’til they can’t breathe,” the Operations Director vows. “Set down at the mineworks, we’ll be waiting there with everyone we can’t ship out in our own aircars. Gianesco out.”
There is nothing further my commander and I can do for the civilians we have come here to protect. We are too far from Rustenberg to reach it, even at maximum speed, and even if we could reach the town in time, my war hull is thoroughly contaminated. Indeed, my commander is now trapped in the command compartment. I watch that realization dawn in her eyes, see the terror rise with cruel devastation as memory of lying trapped inside another Bolo breaks through her awareness.
“I am with you, Commander,” I say gently. “This time, you are not alone.”
Her breath is ragged as she nods. “Yes. I know. Thank you, Senator. I’ll be . . . fine.”
Her shiver belies her words, but she holds onto the shreds of her composure, eyes closed, lips trembling as she wages an internal battle to rival the one we have just come through. I sit beside the blasted cavern, surrounded by the enemy’s dead, and hate the unknown creatures who have wrought this devastation. Whoever, whatever, wherever they are, they must be made to pay. The contaminated wind whistles across my turret, racing toward Rustenberg and the desperate refugees trying to flee. Oh, yes, this unknown enemy must be made to pay.
Most dearly, indeed.
Chapter Eighteen
“John!” I hail my commander through the comm link, urgently. “Trouble at Rustenberg!”
I relay the messages I have picked up from the Darknight’s descending shuttle and from Unit SPQ/R-561 and his commander. I forward a second VSR outbound from Unit SPQ/R-561.
“—preliminary data indicate a type of rapidly acting neurotoxin. I have taken tissue samples for analysis. I have also discovered the carcasses of a flightless bird species which shares a probable 99 percent matching genetic material with the Tersae. The timing of their deaths indicates a high probability that these animals also died within three minutes of contact. All Units of the Line, be advised to use extreme caution when attacking any Tersae home base.”
My commander snarls a curse through the comm link. This is, indeed, dire news. Not only are the colonists at Rustenberg at serious risk, it will be difficult to effectively neutralize the Tersae as a fighting force without the ability to attack their camps. My commander, voice rasping with tension, speaks brusquely. “I’m coming aboard, Rapier. Get your duralloy backside up this bluff, stat. And get me a link to General McIntyre. Patch it through the Darknight, if you have to, but get him.”