He had been hiding for several minutes now, ever since three Human armored vehicles rolled through the gate. Soldiers dismounted out of the rear of the vehicles, but they did not deploy. If they had, then that would have been a sure sign that this complex was valuable, and that he should direct an artillery barrage down upon it. Although the vile Keertran troops did not appreciate the value of artillery, his Is-kaldai Riffen certainly did. His crashed dropship had a complete battery of guns that were already targeting the Human infantry that were attempting to approach through the rain forest. It had been difficult to pass through their ranks without being detected, but he had an important mission. His commander wanted to know if the cities had their own point defense systems, or whether only the military units were protected. To find that out, he and several of his comrades were to find an observation point overlooking the nearby city.
Then artillery would be called in.
A Human female with long black hair had appeared out of the large building to his right, obviously a researcher of some sort. Up until that moment, he had thought that the complex was abandoned. The female had been talking to the infantry commander for quite a long time while the scout waited impatiently, sneaking peaks out a window at periodic intervals. Just when his patience was finally running out, he heard the engines start up, and two of the three vehicles moved out. The last troop carrier, however, remained. Its twelve soldiers deployed around the perimeter fence, and he hoped that they’d miss the cut that he had made in it.
The Human female was nowhere to be seen when he looked.
Escape, without being seen, would be difficult now, but he had to try. The building that he was in had few windows, but he was able to locate nine of the twelve soldiers, and had a good idea where the remaining three were. The sea fence was not being protected. The ocean, he decided, would be his best way out.
Getting to it from the building that he was in would be impossible. The seaside doorway could be seen by several of the Human soldiers. The building to his right, however, he noticed had a concrete canal that ran out into the sea from its lowest level. It wasn’t being guarded.
Sneaking into the building’s front door, although daring, was not difficult. Decorative shrubbery was planted all around the outer wall, concealing his movement. Only the last dash into the doors was risky, and after looking around frantically, he believed that he had gotten away with it. The soldiers were looking outwards through the fence, not inwards.
His scrambling through the other building had given him the basic concepts of Human architecture, and the stairway and elevator were quickly spotted. Because he had no wish to experiment with the elevator, he opened the door to the stairwell.
It was just then that the black haired female made her appearance again, as the elevator doors suddenly opened. A shrill scream echoed inside the scout’s helmet as he tried to push back out the door and bring his rifle to bear. The elevator doors were already closing, but he did have a shot at the form that had retreated against the far wall.
He didn’t take it.
The scout’s aversion to making a loud noise was part of the reason that he didn’t fire his rifle, but another was an aversion to killing a noncombatant. Kezdai blood feuds often ended in the complete annihilation of one clan or another, males and females alike, but noncombatants were always spared. Of course, all members of the warring clans themselves were considered combatants.
This scout had made a mistake, however, and he realized it. Allowing this female to live would risk his own life and mission. As a red arrow above the elevator pointed downwards, so did he run. The stairway had small steps, and he stumbled a few times, but he managed to reach the ground floor in decent time.
As he pushed through the stairway door, he saw that the elevator doors to his right were already closing. To his left was a large, tiled room with a pool, open to the outside at the far end. The woman could have been tricky and gone back upstairs, but he had to be sure.
Before running back upstairs, he ran into the poolroom to look for her. The visuals inside his helmet gave him a three-hundred-degree distorted view around him, but even with that he only caught a glimpse of the female as she came up behind him and gave him a shove into the water. He fired his needle rifle wildly as he plunged into the deep, saltwater pool.
What happened next he never had time to organize into a coherent understanding.
One moment he was sinking rapidly into the water, and the next a massive black and white form was underneath him and pushing him back to the surface. Then, just as he broke the surface of the water, he was hurled, as if from a catapult, directly into the tiled wall of room.
He fell to the floor in a daze.
But Kezdai were immensely hardy creatures whose bones had evolved to absorb great impacts from falling from the high cliffs of their ancient homeworld. Great pains wracked his body, but the scout still managed to sit up, lift his rifle, and unleash a withering fire across the room. His own blood covered his helmet’s visuals, making him uncertain of what shapes were around him. All he saw were shadows until the massive black and white form seemed to explode out of the pool before him, and crash into him.
His last conscious vision was of nothing but teeth . . .
* * *
The bridge was more than two kilometers away, but still no one dared peek over the crest to look into the valley. Even at this range, the alien needle rifles were incredibly accurate. Instead, the periscope on top of Kaethan’s Templar was raised, and Kaethan, his father, and Walter all were gathered around a video screen that was mounted at the rear of the three-hundred-fifty-ton tank. With the last light of the day glowing orange in the sky to the west, they surveyed the heavily shadowed terrain.
Bright crimson and blue-white streamers were flapping in the wind over their enemy’s fortified positions. The temptation to burn them down with their ion bolts had been on everyone’s mind, but was decided to be an ignoble act. They’d make fine trophies, Kaethan had told his men, to bring back to Fort Hilliard after all this was over.
The smell of ozone continued to permeate the air around them, proving the continued readiness of their opponent’s point defense dischargers. It even overwhelmed the smoke that rose from the still smoldering devastation of forest that surrounded them. Several battered, alien armored vehicles also continued to pump out a plume of white smoke into the air, and probably would for several days. Three of Tigris’ Templars had been burning when Kaethan arrived, but these fires had been put out quickly, and engineers were now working on the Templars. All the other Templars of the Tigris Guard were either driven, or towed, to a depot constructed four kilometers to the rear.
“I don’t think they have a single direct-fire weapon targeting this ridgeline,” Kaethan commented while their periscope panned over the valley.
“I can’t see any sign of one either,” his father agreed. “You could probably take the slope and hold it, but they aren’t giving you anything to shoot at. You’d just be setting yourself up for more of those missiles that plastered Tigris.”
“Didn’t hurt the Templars,” Kaethan pointed out.
“True, but don’t expect me to ride in Walter’s Sentinel.”
Walter didn’t like to admit it, but the presence of his defense laser would not have helped the Tigris Guard against the barrage that hit them. There were only a few missiles of modest size, but they approached at tree-top level from the sides. What they needed was a point-defense tower like the ones that protected their artillery. Of course, towers were easy targets when they were this close to the enemy.
“Too bad you can’t fire any high-explosives out of those railguns,” Walter said. “We could blast them out of those positions.”
The sound of a command vehicle rolling up distracted the crew from their viewing. When it stopped, Colonel Neils jumped out of the passenger seat. He returned everyone’s salute briskly, as he obviously had something important to say.
“At ease, Captain,” Neils said, specifically singling out Kaethan to talk to. “I’ve got bad news. That small pocket of hostiles north of Telville decided to go out with a bang. As Chandoine was moving in on them, they unleashed a long-range bombardment onto the city itself, forty kilometers away.”