Andromeda’s Choice (34 page)

“Yeah,” the other noncom said glumly. “Lucky me.”

McKee grinned. “And one other thing . . .”

“Yes?”

“You can shoot that scout now.”

 • • • 

Heacox removed the headset and gave it to a waiting com tech. Dero was staring at him. Waiting to hear what the officers in Fort Camerone's Combat Control Center had said. His voice was wooden even to his ears. “They will try to give us some air support. That's all we can expect. The battle up north is even worse than before. It seems that Colonel Bodry was killed, Chief Lifetaker turned against us, and they can't commit any additional troops without making the fort vulnerable to attack. They even had the nerve to ask
me
for a platoon of infantry!”

Dero looked away and back again. “Shit.”

Heacox frowned. “There's no need for profanity.”

Dero laughed and walked out. She didn't care what Heacox thought, and he knew why. All of them were going to die.

Heacox stood. It took all of his effort, and his legs felt shaky. Drones had been sent out. And now, as the images came streaming back, they appeared on a row of monitors. Heacox could see riders. Hundreds of them. Some with spears from which pennants flew. Others waved rifles in the air, or stood on their galloping dooths, or switched mounts in dazzling displays of athleticism.

Would one of the savages he was looking at kill him? And how painful would that death be? Heacox felt an urgent need to take a shit and was fumbling at his pants as he left the hab. Fortunately, the latrine was not only close by but completely deserted. He barely made it.

 • • • 

The battle started when a dooth stepped on a mine. The explosion sent chunks of the animal and its rider soaring into the air. By the time they fell, the horde had advanced twenty feet and couldn't stop. Not with thousands of mounts pressing from behind.

And there were more explosions. Dozens of them as the mines planted over the past couple of days did their terrible work. But there were only a few hundred of the devices, and that was not enough to stop the waves of Naa charging in from three directions.

Due to the wide-open terrain off to the west, the western army had farther to travel. That meant the Naa pushing in from the east and the south came into range first. The reward for that endeavor was a full salvo from the energy cannons sited on the southeast side of the mesa. As with all such weapons, they couldn't fire over hills the way conventional artillery could. But there was no need for that, as bolts of energy struck the front ranks and blew bloody pathways through a heaving mass of flesh and bone.

Hundreds of riders and animals were killed with each shot, but the horde closed in to replace its losses, and the gaps ceased to exist. Had there been twenty cannons, they would have been able to turn the tide. But there were four and, because they generated so much heat, the weapons could only fire two rounds per minute. That would have been fine against a smaller force, but it wasn't nearly fast enough for the situation at hand.

So the tidal wave arrived, broke against the south end of the mesa, and was forced to split in two. Mortars had been firing for some time by then, but now the heavy machine guns began to chug, and riders fell in a welter of blood. But not all. And that was when McKee got the call. “Charlie-Two to Charlie-Eight. Head for the south end of the mesa and report to Lieutenant Sanchez. His ground pounders need some help. Over.”

The rest of the squad had been listening, so there was no need to relay the order. A simple, “Let's move out,” was sufficient.

As McKee led her people south, the sounds of battle grew steadily louder. Though muted by her helmet, she could hear the
thump
,
thump
,
thump
of mortar rounds going off, the incessant chatter of automatic weapons, and the
bang
of grenades. All interspersed with voice traffic on the company push. “. . . They're massing to the right. Drop some HE on them.”

“. . . Your
other
left, Bravo-Seven-Three. And aim. We're gonna need every bullet we have.”

“. . . Pull Hollister out of there and put another man on that fifty.”

And so it went as the squad arrived at the south end of the mesa and McKee looked out over the platoon of legionnaires dug in there, to a heaving sea of warriors and their dooths. All trying to reach the top of the plateau and the humans who occupied it. Fortunately, most of them couldn't access the bank due to the crowd in front of them, but their weapons could. And the air was full of spears, arrows, and bullets. They began to ping Sykes's armor, and McKee sought to keep her head down as something buzzed past her left ear.

Lieutenant Sanchez had taken cover behind a rock formation. He waved McKee over. “The bastards brought ladders!” he shouted. “There's a bunch of them at the foot of the embankment—and we need to push them back. Check channel 43 for the drone feed.”

McKee nodded. “Roger that, sir.” Then to the squad, “You heard the lieutenant. Let's go out and fire down on them.”

The infantry's fighting positions were set back from the edge by six feet. That gave them some additional protection but meant they couldn't see firsthand what was taking place at the foot of the embankment. Not without peering over the side, which would be fatal. So they had been rolling grenades over the edge and monitoring the feed on channel 43. It showed piles of dead bodies, but McKee could see a team with a ladder as well. They were getting ready to push it up, so they could storm the top.

Sanchez ordered his troops to stop firing as the T-1s and their riders went out to the very edge of the embankment. They looked down, the Naa looked up, and McKee could see the terror on some of their faces as the cyborgs opened fire. The .50-caliber slugs harvested lives like wheat as McKee and the other bio bods tossed grenades into a mass of tightly packed bodies.

She saw one rider leave his animal and jump dooth to dooth in an attempt to flee the carnage, only to be cut down by Larkin, who was firing his AXE. But the battle was anything but one-sided. The T-1s were big targets and easy to hit, especially at close range. They were generally immune to spears, arrows, and small-arms fire, which was why they had been chosen for the job.

Not so the bio bods, however. And as Sykes turned to fire on a group of warriors, McKee found herself exposed to fire. Was that an accident? Or was Sykes trying to get her killed? “Sykes . . . Turn to the right,” McKee said, as a bullet nipped at her neck. “Your butt is bulletproof, but mine isn't.”

“Sorry, Sarge,” Sykes said, as he made the turn. He said he was sorry, but was he? Not that it made much difference at the moment because all McKee could do was fire her AXE and give thanks as the Naa were forced to withdraw. “Pull back, Charlie-Eight,” Sanchez ordered. “We can see all of them now, and you're in the line of fire.”

McKee gave the order, and the moment they were clear, the infantry platoon opened fire. Would the same thing happen all over again? Yes, if the Naa came in such numbers that the legionnaires couldn't hold them back.

“Charlie-Eight, this is Charlie-Two,” Bo said. “They're taking a run at the slide. I have a squad here but we could use some help.”

“Copy that,” McKee replied. “On the way. Over.”

The slide area that McKee and her squad had been forced to climb while running from the Naa was a weak point in the Legion's defenses. They knew it, and the enemy knew it. So the Naa who had been forced up from the south end of the mesa were trying to charge straight up it. And judging from the carpet of dead bodies that covered the approaches, they had cleared the protective minefield by dying in it. Now the survivors were free to take run after run at what amounted to a ramp.

Bo and his T-1 were halfway down the slope along with three members of a squad. McKee led her people past the group of robots who were digging more fighting positions and down the slope to the point where Bo was waiting. He pointed toward the west. “See how they're circling out there? That's what they do while they get up the courage to come at us. Then, once they're ready, about a hundred of the bastards ride straight in. And they have some of our weapons. They nailed Charlie-Seven-Four with a rocket. And once she fell, they killed Charlie-Seven, too.”

Seven had been one of Bo's squad leaders. And as McKee looked out at the wheeling riders, she could see that two of them were towing a T-1 behind them. The carcass bounced over a rock and landed hard. A dead cyborg would make quite a display in their home village. There was nothing the legionnaires could do about that, but McKee spotted what might be an opportunity. “Look over there, sir . . . See the group of Naa who are staying in one place? The ones with the pennants? They could be chiefs.”

Bo looked. “By God, I think you're right.”

“We might be able to take them out,” McKee suggested.

“Maybe,” Bo allowed cautiously. “
If
you had a diversion. Something to draw most of them away.”

McKee knew he was right. Any attempt to charge two or three hundred Naa warriors would not only fail but get everyone killed. Then something occurred to her. “How about using one of the construction droids? We could send it out and let them chase it down.”

“Good idea,” Bo said enthusiastically. “I hate to sacrifice a robot, but if those warriors are chiefs, the trade-off could be worth it. I'll order one of the droids to join us. Then we'll go for it.”

Bo was planning to come along. McKee gave him points for that but was reluctant to surrender her tiny command. “Yes, sir.”

Bo summoned a robot and gave it some orders plus an armed grenade for each “hand.” The idea was that when the robot “died,” its hand would open, the safety lever or “spoon” would release, and with any luck at all the machine would take a couple of warriors with it.

Having acknowledged its orders, the robot took the rest of the slope in a series of jumps. Then, as it arrived on flat ground, the android began to run in the same way a human would, only faster. The enemy noticed it right away.

Naa warriors were incredibly brave, but they were also undisciplined and determined to build their personal reputations before all else. So with no one who could tell them to do otherwise, all of them gave chase in hopes that they would be the one to bring the machine down.

That was the chance Bo had been waiting for, and he uttered a whoop of excitement as he led McKee and her squad out onto the flat, rock-strewn desert. The group of Naa they were after remained where they were for a moment, as if unable to believe what they were seeing, then bolted for the south and the safety of the horde.

They were too late. The T-1s were running at fifty miles per hour by that time and on an angle that would cut the Naa off. As they began to close on the group, McKee saw that one of the Naa was carrying a totem stick, and she knew he was a mystic. As such, his death might affect morale even more than the loss of some chiefs would.

Rather than try to flee, the Naa turned to face their pursuers and were immediately cut down. It was a slaughter, and it made McKee feel sick to her stomach, as the entire party went down, mystic included. “Got 'em!” Bo shouted triumphantly. “Mission accomplished. Time to run like hell.”

As the squad turned back toward the mesa, McKee heard two overlapping explosions and knew the robot's grenades had gone off. She looked to the right, saw that at least some members of the horde had seen the attack on their leaders and were starting to respond. Now it was
their
turn to attack.

McKee was still in the process of absorbing that fact when Lieutenant Dero's voice flooded her helmet. “Charlie-Two, this is Zulu-Two. Stop the combat car! Destroy it if you have to. Over.”

McKee turned to look at the mesa, and sure enough, one of the four-wheeled combat cars was bumping its way downslope. Then, as it hit the bottom, the vehicle took off. “You heard the XO,” Bo said over the squad push. “Stop that thing. Over.”

That was easier said than done. Two of the T-1s scored hits on it, but the car had been built to take that kind of punishment, and kept on coming. The squad could follow it. But if they did, the Naa would cut off their line of retreat.

Dero could monitor the whole thing via a variety of camera shots from both the bio bods and the cyborgs and wasn't about to let that happen. “Okay, break it off. Return to base. Over.”

“Roger that,” Bo replied. “So who was at the wheel? Over.”

“Captain Heacox,” Dero said darkly. “Major Hasbro has assumed command. Over.”

The news didn't come as a shock to McKee—not given what she'd heard about the Battle of Bloodriver. But where did Heacox plan to go? There was no way for him to reach Fort Camerone on his own, and he would be court-martialed if he did. That seemed to suggest that he was in a blind panic. And the officer's decision to run was a frank assessment of what Heacox thought was going to happen to those on the mesa.

The squad managed to outrun the Naa, but not by much, and as the horde swept in, a battery of mortars opened up on them. The explosions were sufficient to slow the pursuers and force them to turn around. Then, without top leaders to provide them with guidance, they lost what little bit of cohesiveness they had. And that made it the perfect moment for subchiefs to assert themselves, issue conflicting commands, and rekindle old grudges.

So the original group withdrew to a point just out of range, where they broke into smaller groups, dismounted, and began to heat water over hundreds of tiny fires. But with a
new
army of unbloodied warriors starting to arrive from the west, it wouldn't be long before the leaderless rabble were subsumed by the larger group.

Meanwhile, during the brief period of time while Bo, McKee, and her squad were out on the desert floor, something horrible had taken place. The south end of the plateau had been overrun. And as they arrived on top of the mesa, Dero was there to meet them. She was mounted on a T-1. “We lost the south end of the plateau and most of the people stationed there,” Dero said grimly. “I called for air support and got the usual ‘We'll send someone as soon as we can' bullshit.