Mech 3: The Empress (39 page)

Nina watched all this with grim pleasure. She enjoyed every moment of the alien destruction. For years, she’d been watching vids of these creatures preying on helpless humanity—especially on distant colonies that had much lower mech populations. These creatures might be superior combatants when compared to other fleshly beings, but when faced with human-machine hybrids they could not stand.

Now, it was her turn. With a raging army of mechs assaulting their front line, Nina’s knights charged the alien’s flank. She felt a battle fury rising up within her. She’d come from a line of fighters, and unlike her father, there was a part of her that reveled in open conflict rather than quiet contemplation.

The knights encountered very little fire as they swept close. The enemy were too focused on the mechs that were destroying them so inexorably. Their lines were shattered completely when the knights were suddenly among them. Nina lay about her with both her swords, cutting down aliens from behind. Even though the fight was hopeless, she found they were still dangerous. When a killbeast recognized her presence and brought up a laser rifle, she ducked and more than once felt the heat of a passing beam. The enemy took such potshots in many cases, even if they were engaged with a mech in a final death struggle. Knowing their own doom was at hand, they switched to the easier human target and attempted a kick or an angled shot, even as they were being beaten to death by the mechanical monsters. One killbeast fired three shots at her, even at it was being dashed against the stone walls of a nearby building, spoiling its aim. Nina was alarmed at the quick viciousness of the aliens. They knew they were doomed, but there was no attempt whatsoever to run, or to beg for mercy. These beings knew nothing of surrender or fear. They fought like biological machines themselves.

The culus creatures however, did flee. Unlike the killbeasts, they understood the better part of valor when a battle turned into a slaughter. They took flight and a hundred circular shadows swept over the knights, making them wince and duck when their strange shadows passed by. The culus flock swooped, flying low overhead and then went deeper into the city. Knights and mechs fired up a score of lancing shots, and brought a few of them down to flop on the cobbles.

Nina, realizing the killbeasts were almost extinguished, fired with the rest. “Mechs, knights, form up!” she shouted, amplifying her voice with a boom mike in her helmet. “Come troops, after them! Kill them all for Twilight!”

A ragged cheer went up. A thousand throats and a thousand speakers took up the cry. The knights charged after the fleeing enemy—it was in their nature to do so.

#

As the nife traveled the ship’s tube-like steel corridors to meet with the Empress, his stalks drooped down below his maw. In his short life, he’d never had a worse day. He could barely open his cusps to reveal his orbs, which were sticky with dry fluids. His worries had grown by the hour. What had looked like a perfect assault on a reef packed with nearly helpless meat-creatures had turned into a pitched battle—with the Imperium troops on the losing side. They had every advantage, but could not employ many of them.

The biggest problem was the Empress’ rigid rule against bombarding the human city. With a relentless barrage of missiles launched by
Gladius
, they could have made short work of the human army. But instead, they’d only managed to score a few hits as they charged into the city itself, thus forcing the missile batteries to follow their rules of engagement and break off the attack. It was almost as if these humans knew what absurd restrictions the Skaintz were operating under.

“My Highest Lady,” the nife began when he entered her fetid den. “I have grim tidings from the battle below.”

“Due, no doubt, to your incompetence?”

“Due to unforeseen events. Warfare is rarely a mathematical exercise.”

“You are wrong…again. It
is
a mathematical equation, and in this case you have miscalculated. I expect an immediate return to balance. I barely have enough meat-creatures to provide my person with sustenance. There isn’t enough for a breeding stock as well. They breed so slowly, these humans. We must procure many more.”

The nife had prepared a ploy for this situation. His stalks rose a fraction as he presented it hopefully. “You are correct! These creatures aren’t really suitable as a dietary staple. There are many other animals to taste, however. The world below is a veritable buffet of fresh flavors. I would recommend—”

“Don’t,” the Empress interjected. “I don’t even want to hear it. I’ve tasted their beef stews and rabbit dressings. Garbage. Greasy, flavorless swill. Humans dine on the finest of all the other species. I must have human meat, and it must have been raised upon a rich, varied diet throughout its life to maturity. Possibly, to the unsophisticated palate of lesser beings such as yourself, these nuances of taste are insignificant. Not so to a higher form such as your monarch. Feed trachs, juggers and hests your slices of bacon and your ham hocks. I want nothing to do with any of it.”

The nife’s stalks dragged even lower. He could not soften the blow any further. He had to confess to the true nature of the situation below. “The humans are driving our forces back. This process will continue without full bombardment to support our troops.”

 “I don’t see how this is possible,” the Empress said, puffing herself a full two feet higher than normal. Her vast bulk loomed over the relatively tiny figure of the nife. “Just hours ago, you assured me we were on the brink of securing the entire city!”

“That was true then, but no longer. It turns out the enemy army was in the field, not home to defend its city. The army was recalled, and assaulted our troops who were unprepared and spread out over the landscape looking for pockets of resistance. They now have a foothold in the south, and are pressing northward with alarming rapidity.”

“Very well. You are to be punished for this incompetence.”

“My High Lady, I hardly think—”

“Do not interrupt as I pronounce the nature of your death. A simple spacing is too good for you. Your genes are corrupt.”

“You have no other commander with my experience. I must advise you to stave off such action for the good of the Imperium.”

The Empress scoffed. “The good of the Imperium? I should have squashed you as you were being whelped to the benefit of our entire species.”

The nife fell silent and brooding. The Empress gathered herself—literally, pulling in swollen bulges of flesh that tended to spread when she grew angry. She finally sighed and relented.

“Very well, you shall be spared until this campaign has reached stability, or until a replacement can be matured.”

The nife came back to life. His stalks rose, but he did not begin to strut, his confidence being a fraction of what it once was. “You will not regret this decision! I will avenge our dead, Empress, and the price will not be too great, I assure you.”

“The price? What price?”

“The enemy will grease the streets with their body fluids—be they oil from the inner tanks of their mechs or the blood of the humans. I promise you a breeding stock of fresh humans within the day. Simply give me full control of all our assets, and—”

The Empress slammed her tentacle onto the deck plates with such force the nife’s feet tingled afterward. “What price?” she demanded.

The nife recovered from his shock and stood as tall as he could. “We must level half the city. The southern sector shall be demolished to protect the northern half, which we still hold. A single low-yield warhead will do the trick, properly placed. The walls of the canyon will reverberate, throwing shockwaves back upon the point of initial detonation, magnifying the effect.”

The Empress was silent for a second or two. “Are you seriously suggesting we use a thermonuclear device on the city?”

“Yes, Empress. It is the best way. To use conventional warheads would be wasteful, and dangerous. Our own troops would be on the line with the enemy. If we simply nuke them behind their lines, the survivors will be rolled up easily by our counterattack on the ground. They will face our troops in front and a radioactive crater behind.”

“I had no idea you were insane,” the Empress said. “I’d thought you were going to ask to release the jugger reserves. Perhaps, in a wild fantasy, you might have believed I would authorize a conventional missile barrage from the ship. But nuclear bombardment? All that fresh meat destroyed? Never. I repeat,
never
shall that be allowed. I’ll see you on the front lines with a laser rifle in your mandibles first.”

The nife’s maw drooped again, along with his stalks. He didn’t know what to say. “I can’t defeat them any other way, my Empress.”

“I don’t care. If they retake the city, we shall breed a new army, and take it back again.”

The nife blinked his orbs in disbelief. He knew the Empress cared primarily about her own comforts, but to risk the entire campaign for her personal dining pleasure—he was appalled. “What can I use, then?”

The Empress waggled an appendage at him. “You may release the jugger reserves. All of them. But do not speak to me further about bombardments. That option is off the table.”

The nife knew enough not to argue further. He walked out of the throne room in the pits of depression. He ordered the last of the jugger reserves released to aid in the defense, but knew it would not be enough. He did not tell the Empress, but he’d already released most of the jugger units. They would attack soon. Hopefully, their weight would carry the day. It was not a strong hope, as the enemy were too numerous, and too willing to die to defend their city.

As the nife trudged down long, echoing corridors, he despaired. The solution was so clear! A few bombs would solve everything. It was as the oldest Parent had said: the Empress was selfish and impossible to reason with. She had the required self-confidence and commanding nature for the role, but none of the experience or wisdom to make appropriate judgments.

In short, she should never have been spawned.

#

Aldo, Nina and Sixty-Two pushed the aliens back block after block, driving ever more deeply into the canyon. In six hours, they’d retaken a quarter of the city. Resistance was stiffening, however, and there were reports of larger alien creatures moving up from the enemy rear ranks.

Every minute or two, Aldo’s eyes were drawn up to the great dark ship that loomed overhead. It looked like a large black moon up there, in the general shape of a spiny lobe of cactus. The spines were really large modules, rotating around the central torus, but from the ground such details were beyond the ability of the naked eye to make out.

At any moment, Aldo knew the ship could unleash a barrage on the city, destroying it, his army and the surviving civilians. He wondered with each city block they took if this would be their last—if the aliens would decide they’d gained too much ground and it was time to level the place.

The threat of the ship worried him greatly, but he couldn’t see any way to eliminate it. If they withdrew, they would simply expose themselves to missiles on open ground. If they stopped advancing, they would be effectively leaving the city to die in the hands of the aliens. Already, there had been a grievous loss of life and thousands more had been transported up to the ship for purposes he didn’t want to contemplate.

That left the sole option of continuing to press the attack. He took that option, but with each passing hour he felt a growing sense of doom. At some point, the aliens would have to realize they were losing and should unleash all their firepower to annihilate his army. What were they waiting for?

Aldo got his answer in the sixth hour. The enemy counterattacked then, with new monsters he’d not seen since he’d battled on the decks of the
Zürich,
the great Nexus battleship which had stopped the alien assault of Neu Schweitz.

Creatures twice the height of a man charged. They stood on two, powerful hind legs. Their maws were filled with huge teeth like daggers and their bodies and hides were thick in every proportion. Their heads were so massive, they required long tails to balance themselves as they ran.

To a man with a rifle, the juggers did not seem overly dangerous at a distance. They did not have any form of ranged attack. They simply focused on a target and charged on those huge, bulging legs.

When they first came into view, milling and releasing throaty roars, snipers all up and down Aldo’s line began firing at them. They were easy targets, and they winced and shivered when their umber hides were burned and pierced.

Then they gathered themselves into groups of seven to nine beasts, and the charge began. Their muscles shivered and swelled with power. Their pace picked up as they came, and they were soon bounding down the streets toward the human lines, each stride taking them thirty feet or more.

Aldo could feel the cobbles tremor as each massive foot struck down and then pumped up again. Around him, men on the barricades began to show signs of worry. They fired a withering fusilade of laser bolts, but not a single one of the monsters fell. A new reality quickly took hold in everyone’s mind: these creatures were too large, too hearty, to be taken down by rifles.

Aldo was not quite certain what to do.

“Sling rifles!” shouted Baroness Droad as she stepped up beside him. “Draw blades and stand your ground!”

Confused, eyes wide and round, the men did as she said. But when the charging juggers were almost upon them, some finally did break and flee.

The juggers crashed into and bounded over the barricade a moment later. They hooted and cried to one another in excitement, dipping their great heads to snap up those that fled. The knights slashed and roared, but their voices seemed tiny in the face of a swirling mass of giant predators.

“Strike low!” shouted Aldo. His sword blazed with fire, as he had set it to its maximum power. Such was the thickness and weight of the beasts, he found it best to slash at the joints—ankle, knee and hip. His sword could not strike all the way through, but it was able to cripple the one he attacked while the monster busied itself with devouring a man who had been knocked flat by stacked crates. The barricade that the men had built up to defend themselves had now become a pile of falling debris. Crushed down and trapped under the crates, men howled as they were plucked apart by hungry juggers.