Opening Moves (76 page)

Rubbing her face clean of her of tears Alyosha took a deep breath and straightened. “Yes. Yes, I can,” she said after a pause in a quiet but determined voice that somehow made it through the cacophony rising up from the streets below them.

“She'll slow us down,” Grunt commented wearily on an internal comm channel.

“
Yes. That's why you'll carry her, soldier.” Masters' voice was flat and cold as iron. “Take that buffoon's carbine, Lee, and let's get going. We've wasted enough time as it is. And Lee? Nice work.”

Samantha simply nodded.

“We need to move quickly. My soldiers and I are trained for moving through difficult terrain, but you're not,” Masters explained, now using his helmet's speakers again. “Private Kayser will carry you on his back, Ma'am. Hold on tight.”

Grunt wordlessly accepted his fate, as did Alyosha. She was a featherweight, small and light even for pre-spaceflight standards, but she did as Masters had told her and clung tightly to the soldier's back. The Sergeant and Samantha took the two into their midst, with Masters leading the squad and Sammy taking the rear.

Given the expected urban terrain they made surprisingly fast progress. Tanash Kutur's roofs were either only gently sloped or outright flat. The worst difficulties they had to deal with besides height differences that could be managed by simple leg-ups or jumps were posed by the multitude of antennas laundry lines, solar panels, and exhaust vents that cluttered seemingly every housetop.

But with the ease of movement also again came the opportunity to ingest what was happening around them.

People had begun to flood into the back alleys and side streets but these valves did little to ease the pressure on the filled, narrow streets along the shops of the city's mercantile suburbia. Tanash Kutur's population numbers had swollen considerably during the past months, and the nearby war had made for good business. Now, all those people and the locals found themselves trapped in the same mouse trap they had delivered the cheese for just yesterday.

A panicked mass had no direction or purpose. It knew only one basic instinct: to flee, at any cost. People were trampled down and crushed to indistinguishable heaps of flesh under the boots of thousands pushing each other forward, away from where they were. Others fainted or had their arms and legs shattered as they found themselves pressed against walls with no means of escape. The windows of shops exploded inwards in torrents of razor sharp glass as they gave way to the moving mass outside, and people – alien and human alike – found themselves pushed into the shards. Again others suddenly found themselves surrounded in their vehicles and torn to shreds by the frightened mob, each and every one of them seeing the ground cars as a means of escape. It was a vain hope. Against the mass there was no way out. It was its own worst enemy.

The scenes Samantha numbly registered as she made her way across the rooftops as fast as their paths allowed it were gut wrenching. Too much was happening for her mind to process it all, but a few things stuck. Like the pair of Érenni females, taller and stronger than the males of that species, pulling their husband and children behind them to shield them as well as they could, standing up against the breakers. Would she herself see her partner and her son again?

But worst of all were the air cars that tried to rise from the bubbling madness below. People clung to them, tried to claw their way into them, their eyes just as wide as those of the frantic drivers piloting the vehicles. Weighed down like this, only a few of them even made it off the ground, and those that did were worse off than those that didn't. People fell from the sky, their high pitched screams drowning even the orchestra of noise all around them. Other drivers lost control of their air cars, falling back to the ground again or racing off course and into the scores of others who tried to flee the airspace above the city. It was like nothing she had ever imagined during even her worst nightmares.

The end of the block focused her thoughts back to the task at hand: getting out of there alive, themselves. She stopped and knelt down at the edge of the roof. Masters and Grunt sunk down beside her, keeping Alyosha at their back. At first she thought the scenes four stories below her were the same as everywhere, but on second look, something was off. The people below were running away into just one direction. Something or
someone
was driving them away.

Then she heard it. A wheezing cough, repeating itself over and over again as it drew closer. Like sand pushed away by the tides, the people below backed away from a group of only five.

Samantha zoomed in on them. They advanced in a crescent formation with almost casual ease. She swallowed hard. They all wore military grade armor in shades of brown and black and even scarlet, the different harnesses and extra gear marking them as mercenaries, not soldiers. Their helmets were higher than the ones the airborne soldiers of Alpha Platoon wore, merging almost into a crown-like crest, and the mirrored black transparent parts of their helmets' visors took up a larger part than they did with Samantha's equipment. Only one of the five wore no helmet, but even without that one the tall athletic features and the style of the armor would have marked the quintet as Rasenni.

It was a man, as evidenced by the almost dark gray rather ivory bone crest on his elongated head, the color the result of a higher degree of silicates in the Rasenni bone structure. That much Samantha did remember from the xenosociology training courses that were compulsory for career soldiers like her. Leathery redwood skin stretched over a flat face with a high forehead, and two large onyx eyes calmly scanned the surroundings from deep sockets. Thin silvery muttonchops twitched with every breeze and every now and then his head tilted in one direction or the other as he listened closely to something his funnel-shaped ear notches had perceived.

Even though he handled the heavy blaster rifle in his hands expertly, he appeared unimpressed by the scenes playing out in front of him. As with most technologies, Imperial weapons were a good step ahead of the rest of the galaxy. Their energy cells were small enough to be implemented like ordinary magazines rather than being connected to the backpacks of the soldier as was the standard with most other armies. Even so, the effective power of a blaster was significantly higher than that of other milspec lasers.

She felt... nothing as she watched.

Beams of crimson around a core of molten white stabbed into the crowd, searing through four or five people at a time. Wherever they struck, explosive hyperthermia followed, the boiling of blood and rupture of organs and veins in the gory blink of an eye before the intense heat cauterized the very wounds it had cut. Heads that had been cut open like melons, limbs torn from their bodies, torsos slashed open to spill organs and guts: the weapons made no distinctions, leaving the dead horribly distorted.

Uncaring, unnoticing, the mercenaries stepped over the mangled bodies their weapons created like a wave of death preceding their steps. The streets below Samantha's position cleared as the coldblooded aliens approached.

Alyosha staggered back from the edge of the roof and sank to her knees, retching.

“
Everybody, stay in cover!” Masters sounded even grimmer than usual.

Samantha pulled back, but not quickly enough.

The barefaced Rasenni spotted her. Their eyes met. His gaze was cold, calculating. Two black orbs measuring, weighing her. She felt as if he could see right through her helmet, and given Rasenni technological superiority, maybe he could. Slowly he turned his head away and continued on his path.

Samantha stared after him, suddenly very happy that humanity had made its interstellar debut after the Empire's expansionist phase had come to an end. The thought of having to deal with an armada of Imperial soldiers, each and every one of them taller, faster and stronger than the average human was the thing a soldier's nightmares were made of... if they weren't made of what she had just witnessed.

Bit by bit the echo of the bellowing blaster fire ebbed off as the mercs marched on.

“
Sarge, these bastards are murdering those people!” Grunt grated.

Sergeant Masters stared over the ledge, his right hand opening and closing around the grip of his railgun carbine.

“Sarge?”

Masters shook himself, then slowly turned to look at Kayser as if he was in a trance. “Not our fight,” he harrumphed. “Time's running out. Well, seems like we can take the street now,” he cackled mirthlessly. “Get down to the ground level asap. Take care of the civie, Grunt!”

It sounded as close to despair as she had ever heard him. And he was right. Their time was running out. They didn't want to be here when the Ashani knocked on the door.

Masters was the first to reach the ground. Grunt, carrying Alyosha, followed him down. Sammy was last. Up close, the veil of numbness that had surrounded her dissipated in an instant. The street was littered with bodies and still twitching body parts. There was surprisingly little blood but what was there, was more than enough to solidify the impression of having stepped into a giant slaughterhouse.

She tried to pull her eyes away from the carnage but it was easier said than done. With almost every step they had to avoid some remains of what had once been a sentient being. It was hard to ignore the horror if you had to concentrate on not planting your boots right into it. Still, it was easier than running
parcours
across the rooftops. She gritted her teeth. All you had to do was forget you had had breakfast.

They made their way through deserted and corpse-littered streets. The eerie choir of sirens accompanied them to their destination. A maybe five meters high knoll covered by lilac grass sat in the center of a large roundabout, creating a more than fifty meters wide clearing between the adjacent houses.

“Move it, people! The dropper's inbound!” Masters called out.

The words had barely left his mouth when the external audio sensors on Samantha's helmet picked up the characteristic howl of the dropship's engines and the aircraft's silhouette appeared over the nearby roofs. The lieutenant wasn't kidding around either. The nose-mounted gun turret moved with the motions of the pilot's head and assault craft's missile pods were hot. The dropper's load-out was enough to flatten a couple square kilometers and have ordinance to spare.

Samantha watched the craft slowly maneuver between the houses and power lines as it descended to pick them up. The pilot knew his trade. With minute accuracy the several hundred tons moved into position. Small thrusters fixed its bearing and it began to sink down, opening the tail ramp as it did so. They were maybe fifty meters away from the descending dropper. Lieutenant Jones' head popped out of the opening ramp and he waved his arms to make them hurry. It was a most welcome sight.

Now it was only a few moments until they would be airborne and –

A flash of searing white light burned away all her thoughts. She grimaced in pain even as her helmet's visor immediately compensated for the brightness. Next to her she heard Alyosha cried out in pain and horror. From afar thunder rolled over the city and... oh, fuck, no!

Samantha's thoughts stopped. She forced her eyes open again. More bright flashes accompanied the thunder while mushroom clouds soared towards the sky. A wave of dust and ash and debris rolled over them, hitting her and the rest of First Squad like a steam hammer. Their cries of pain drowned in the roar of the shock wave. The last thing Samantha Lee saw before the blast wave of a nuclear explosion hurled her into a nearby building was the dropship, as the several hundred kilometers per hour fast winds picked it up like a toy and smashed it into a nearby housing block. Samantha hit a wall, and the world turned to black.

* * * * * * *

Far above them the sky burned as hundreds of Dominion dropships entered the atmosphere to land troops on Tanith and fight down what was left of the overwhelmed defenders. Strategos Corr'tane followed the deployment from the bridge of his dreadnought as it approached the besieged planet. Marine commandos were invading the world's orbitals and warehouses. What little was left of the local defenders fought an uncoordinated rearguard action. But it didn't matter. The battle for the system was over, even though the battle for the planet had just begun.

His interest had however been picked by that one valiant ship – a wreck really – that had stormed right into the claws of his fleet and fought like a berserker, showing more skill in the short moments it had lasted against 3
rd
Fleet's amassed firepower than he had observed in all the rest of the system's defenses. The design was unfamiliar and the prowess its crew had shown was in equal parts worrying and intriguing. Could there be a new player in the game?

But investigating that line of thought would have to wait until the planet was theirs. War was always full of uncertainty except for one constant. The weak would suffer.

Because war never changed.

T H E    E N D

Who died? Who survived? How will the war continue?