Blood of Heroes (The Ember War Saga Book 3) (14 page)

A blast of red energy shot from the cannon and struck the city’s walls, annihilating a segment of the outer perimeter with a thunderclap. Bricks and bodies flung into the air, pelting Hail’s armor with ejecta the size of his fist. His armor withstood the blows, but Un’qu wasn’t so lucky.

The Dotok took a rock to his helmet, which hit hard enough to leave a deep divot against the graphene-reinforced steel, and sent him sprawling. Hale grabbed the carry handle on the back of Un’qu’s armor and dragged him away.

“Elias!” Hale shouted into his IR. “Elias, can you hear me?”

A second blast from the construct bit deeper into the city and struck the mooring beneath a starship that had been converted into a hydroponics farm. The ship lolled to the side and fell into the hot springs, sending a wall of near-boiling water crashing toward Hale. He covered Un’qu’s body with his own. The water knocked him off balance and sent them hydroplaning into the fence along the edge of the wall.

Steam rose off of Hale’s armor as Un’qu moaned in pain.

“Elias!”

****

“What the hell was that?” Bodel asked. “Sounded like the
Breitenfeld
fired a rail shot in atmo.”

Elias stood in a grav-train tunnel with darkness around him but for the circle of light that poured in through an access tunnel above his head. His fellow soldiers were in the same tunnel that stretched north out of New Abhaile, all waiting for him to make a decision. Elias looked over his transmission log and found nothing of note. He grabbed onto the sandstone rock of the drill shaft leading to sunlight and started climbing.

“Armor, get to your firing positions. Looks like the party started without us,” he said.

“How did we lose comms so fast?” Silva asked. “I thought…that’s new.”

Once Elias got clear of the shaft, he saw an antique antenna array with solar panels scattered around a man-made clearing in the mountain peaks. Windswept snow ghosted around him. He looked between two shards of rock and saw the construct, banshees swarming past its legs.

“That is new,” Elias said. He’d faced a drone construct before on Earth, but that had been made up of only a few drones. This was another animal entirely. “Get a brace and prep for rail cannons. We mass fire on my mark. Check in once you’re anchored.”

“Any particular target?” asked Cruz, another of the Smoking Snakes.

“The middle, aim for the middle,” Elias said. He climbed over the rock walls and found a small mesa amidst the peaks. He raised his right foot and a yard-long spike shot from his heel. He slammed it into the mountain and barely made a dent. The spike began spinning, boring into the mountainside.

“I’ve got maybe three minutes until I’m anchored,” Kallen said.

“Two for me,” Bodel said.

“Same. Get secure and charge up your lances. You go flying off the side of this mountain and it’s a long way down,” Elias said.

“Elias! This is Hale. Do you read?”
The Marine had an edge to his voice that Elias almost didn’t recognize—fear.

“This is Elias. I’ve got you.”

“I need you to engage that construct—”
his transmission broke into static
“—minutes!”

The glowing eye at the center of the construct grew in strength.

“Hale, I don’t think you have any minutes for us to wait,” Elias said.

“Elias, this is Silva. You should see what that thing did to the city. We can’t let it fire again. I’m anchored, taking a shot,”
the leader of the Smoking Snakes said.

“Silva, constructs have point defense. Wait for the rest of us!” Elias looked down at his anchor, barely halfway set into the mountainside. Elias raised the twin rail cannon vanes up and out of the scabbard on his back. They bent at a hinge next to his shoulder and electricity arced along its length.

Silva’s rail cannon cracked like thunder, the sonic boom knocking snow and rock around him, telling the enemy exactly where he’d fired from.

Red lasers stabbed out from stalks attached to the construct and scored a glancing blow against the hypervelocity round. The round impacted hard enough to lift the construct off two of its spider legs, then it slammed back into the ground.

The cannon swung toward Silva.

“Silva, move!”
Cruz shouted.

“Second shot almost ready!”
Silva’s transmission crackled with static electricity.

The cannon fired a beam of light that nearly cleaved the mountain in two. Rage boiled in Elias’ chest. Silva was dead and gone.

“I’m anchored!”
Kallen said. Bodel and the two remaining Smoking Snakes signaled their readiness.

“Pinpoint shots, that thing will be looking for us now,” Elias said.

“Elias, I’ve got javelins incoming,”
Hale said.
“Hold your fire.”

“I don’t think you understand our situation,” Elias sent back.

He looked up and saw four white-hot lines of light screaming toward the construct. The javelins operated on a very simple principle: gravity and kinetic energy against large ground targets. The American military had used the munitions against Chinese fleets during the Analog War, knocking out several aircraft carriers without having to rely on computers. If even one of the javelins connected with the construct, the effects would be devastating.

The cannon swept over the mountain range, stalks attached to its outer shell writhing.

“What’s the call?”
Kallen asked.

The cannon froze, then swung toward Kallen. Elias watched the javelins break through the overcast sky and felt his anchor take hold.

“Light it up.”

Explosions rippled along the mountain peaks as five rail cannons fired. The construct’s stalks lashed out with wide swaths of laser energy, but weren’t enough to defeat every rail cannon shell, or the javelins that fell around it.

Dust and pulverized rock cleared around Elias. The construct had two legs blown away and a deep gash across the cannon housing.

“Again.” The hum of his rail cannon rose to a whine and he sent another shot into the heart of the construct.

“Construct is disintegrating,”
Bodel said.
“That’s my kill.”

“My puckered white ass it’s your kill,”
Kallen countered.
“I saw my round blow it clean in half.”

Elias considered going back into the tunnel, then he looked down the mountain range to where Silva had perished. Banshees scrambled around the remnants of the construct as it burnt away from an internal conflagration, heedless of its loss.

“Our escape route is compromised,” Elias said. “Blow your anchor and meet me at the base of the mountain. Let’s see how tough these things are.” An explosive bolt severed the spike from his heel and Elias began his descent, sliding down the loose rocks and snow patches.

Elias snapped off shots from the twin gauss cannons mounted on his forearms, easily hitting targets in the great mass of charging banshees. The Iron Hearts and Smoking Snakes charged down the mountainside, demanding attention with their fusillades.

“Elias, what the hell are you doing?”
Hale asked.

Elias leapt over an escarpment and fell twenty feet, the impact rattling him within his armored womb.

“Pulling your feet out of the fire, as usual,” Elias said. He blew a banshee to ribbons and slid across a sheet of ice. “We’re your anvil, Hale. Drop the hammer on my mark, or you’ll end up in a knife fight with these ugly bastards.”

“What location?”

“Launch an area target mission on my location on my mark. Just let me get their full attention first,” Elias said.

“Elias, I know you think you’re invincible but the high explosive—”

“Do it. Or I will crush your jarhead like a grape the next time I see you.”

Elias trotted down the slope of the mountain and came to a stop. Kallen slid next to him. Elias looked up the mountain and saw Bodel, tumbling down like a loose barrel. The German came to a rest in a cloud of dirt and gravel, then got to his feet.

“You all right?” Kallen asked.

“Meant to do that,” Bodel said.

The Smoking Snakes paired up a hundred yards away.

The banshees farther away in the valley charged toward the New Abhaile and its gutted defenses.

“I hate being ignored,” Elias said. He turned his armor’s megaphones to full power and roared. The sound echoed down the valley. Banshees ground to a halt and turned to face the Iron Hearts, distended jaws slathering and yellow eyes burning behind the armor bolted against their skin.

Elias charged, Bodel and Kallen at his side.

A banshee leapt at Elias. He caught it by the skull and crushed it into pulp. He swung the corpse back and hurled it against another banshee.

Bodel slapped an arm against his forearm cannon, fighting the recoil as he let it rip on full auto, his rounds scything through the banshees, throwing a gray mist of blood into the air.

Kallen smashed an enemy to the ground and kicked it in the gut launching it through the air and into more banshees.

A significant mass of banshees had come to answer their challenge. Some would still make it to New Abhaile, but not enough to doom it.

“Hale, fire on my position now!” A banshee slashed at Elias’ chest, and sparks arced from the gash the blow left behind. Elias punched the banshee in the chest, his hand embedding inside the armor. He kicked the corpse away and fired his gauss cannons until his last round was gone.

“I’m empty,” he said.

“Still think this was a good idea?” Kallen said as she reached up and grabbed the banshee on her back trying to claw into her armor and then crushed it against a boulder.

“Shot, over!”
Hale shouted, announcing that the gremlin launchers had sent their mortar shells into the air. With high-angle weapons like the mortars designed to shoot over walls, the time of flight on the incoming munitions could be almost a minute. A very long minute.

“Shot, out,” Elias sent back.

A red beam of energy shot through the banshees and struck Bodel in the shoulder. The beam severed his arm and sliced into his chest. Bodel fell to his knees, then collapsed to the ground.

“Kallen, cover him!” Elias scanned the banshees, knocking them aside until he saw the banshee with a Xaros disintegration beam for an arm. The banshee pointed the cannon straight at Elias.

Out of bullets, Elias scooped up a dead banshee and hurled it at the armed enemy like the corpse was a fast ball. The disintegration beam hit the body and diffused inside the banshee, making it glow like a bulb.

Elias ripped the cannon arm from the banshee and kicked the mortally wounded enemy away. The banshee hit by the beam was nothing but a pile of armor plates. Elias, his body buzzing with adrenaline, felt a part of his mind mark that observation as being very, very important.

“Elias! I need help!” Kallen called out.

The Smoking Snakes, now a few dozen yards away, shot down any banshee that got too close to Kallen and where she stood over Bodel’s felled armor. Elias sprinted over and found Bodel’s chest armor open, his armored womb leaking fluid. Elias peeled the inner tank open slowly. Bodel thrashed against the womb, his eyes rolled back in his head as he convulsed.

“He’s spiked in a feedback loop,” Elias said. “If I don’t unplug him, he’ll have a stroke and die.”

“Isn’t there—”

“Splash, over!”
Hale’s transmission came as a warning. They had five seconds until hundreds of mortar rounds came raining down around them.

Elias grabbed the wires leading into the base of Bodel’s skull.

“I’m sorry.”

He tore the wires out of the womb and flipped Bodel’s armor over, sheltering the stricken pilot from the coming storm. Elias then laid himself over Bodel.

“Hit the deck!” Elias got the warning out a split second before the first mortar hit.

The ground shook as blast after blast churned the surface of Takeni into a hellish moonscape. Elias felt the tiny stings of shrapnel bouncing off his armor, the mosquito whine of jagged metal zipping around them.

Elias waited thirty seconds after he felt the final round explode. There was nothing but broken banshee bodies and scorched earth absorbing gray blood that smelled like rotting flesh. Shorn limbs twitched in the dirt, and for the first time in his life, Elias came to hate war.

Kallen and the Smoking Snakes picked themselves up from the dirt, looking over what remained of their foes.

“Bodel?” Elias lifted the armor onto its side and Bodel tumbled out of the womb and rolled into the dirt. He vomited out clear fluid and curled into a ball. Elias reached for his friend, now just a skinny man with a mop of dark hair plastered over his face.

“Don’t…” Bodel said, his voice ragged and weak, “don’t leave me behind.”

“Never, Iron Heart.” Elias scooped Bodel up and cradled him like a newborn.

“No,” Bodel reached back to his armor. “Don’t leave me! Go back! Go back for me!”