Empire Of Man 3 - March to the Stars (34 page)

“Boiling oil will be the least of it,” the Diaspran added.

“Well, I'm not planning on stacking bodies to climb up and over it,” Pahner said, and pointed to a stairway. It ran up the inner face of the gatehouse to a heavily timbered door at the third-story level. “We go up there, blow the door with a satchel charge, and take the interior. Somewhere in there will be the controls.”

The doorway in question was on the top of the wall, in full view of the western tower. Firing slits along that tower's eastern side had a clear shot at the stairs and the area in front of the door. Rastar surveyed the slits, which probably concealed heavy swivel guns. They would undoubtedly be loaded with canister, like giant shotguns. He'd seen the same sort of weapon in Sindi, used on the Boman barbarians, and knew exactly what the effect would be.

“We'll still take quite a few casualties.”

“I know, Rastar,” Pahner said sadly. “And it will fall mostly on the Diasprans and the Vashin. I can't afford to lose many more Marines. Hell, most of the ones I still have left are already busy, anyway.”

“What's to be done, must be done,” Rastar said philosophically, drawing his pistols. “We'll need the satchel charge prepared.”

“I got t'at,” Poertena said, pulling out his pack. “Two satchel charge. One or t'e other gonna work.”

“Not your specialty, Sergeant,” Pahner said. “Somebody will need to go into the gatehouse and find the gate controls. That won't be like working in an armory.”

“I'm a po . . . a Marine, Sir,” the Pinopan shot back. “Gots to die someplace.”

Pahner gazed at him for perhaps one second, then shrugged.

“Very well. It appears that the Vashin will have the honor of taking the gate, supported by the unit armorer.”

“What's next?” Julian asked with a smile. “Arming the pilots?”

“And the cooks, the clerks, and the sergeant major's band,” Pahner told him. “Take it from here, Rastar.”

“Right.” Rastar had revolvers in all four hands now, checking to make sure the ash hadn't jammed the actions. “Honal?” he said to his cousin.

“Vashin!” Honal called in turn to the cavalry drawn up behind him. “Good news! We get to take the gates! Up the stairs, the shorty blows the door, and we're in!”

“Well, I suppose that's as close as they're getting to an operations order,” Pahner murmured as he stepped back. He hoped they would at least dismount. The civan might possibly make it up the stairs—all the Vashin were superb riders, after all—but getting them through the doorway would be tough.

As Honal was waving the cavalry to the ground, the lower embrasure on the western tower suddenly gouted flame. A tremendous explosion rocked the fortification, smoke poured through the structure, and a racket of rifle fire sounded from the conflagration.

“I believe His Highness has made an appearance,” Pahner observed. “Go! Get up there now, Rastar!”

“About bloody time, Roger!” the former Vashin prince yelled. Then he waved his pistols at the wall and looked at his own men.

“Therdan!”

* * *

“I think we may have overdone it there, Sergeant Major,” Roger said with a cough as he scrabbled in his pouch for cartridges. He'd expended the last of his irreplaceable pistol beads on the way out of the Temple. Then he'd expended all of the rounds for his own, human-sized revolver on his way into the gate tower defensive complex. That was when he'd picked up the revolver and ammo pouch from a wounded Vashin. It was oversized, designed for Mardukan hands, and fit to fracture even Roger's wrists each time he fired. But the one thing he really hated about it was that he was flat out of ammo for it, too.

“Oh, I dunno, Your Highness.” Kosutic shook her head to clear the ringing. “I think a keg of gunpowder was about right.”

“The door is stuck!” St. John (J) announced. Through the smoke, Roger could just barely make out Kileti, levering at the door with a piece of bent iron. The prince smothered a curse and squinted, but even with his superb natural vision, details were impossible to make out. All morning, he'd regretted leaving his helmet behind at the barracks, since the entire trip had been from gloom to deeper gloom. And smoke-filled deeper gloom, at that.

“Well, we'd best get it unstuck,” he said calmly as another volley echoed from behind him. “Don't you think?”

“And they would do that how, exactly, Your Highness?” Cord asked, then looked up suddenly. “Down!”

The spear had somehow flown past the blockade of Diasprans and Vashin holding the rear guard. How his asi had even seen it under such conditions was more than the prince could say. Unfortunately, just seeing it wasn't quite enough.

Cord's arm sweep knocked Roger to the side, but the short, broad blade of the spear took the shaman just below the right, lower shoulder.

“Bloody hell!” Roger rebounded painfully off the stone wall. Then he saw Cord. “Bloody pocking hell!”

The spear was embedded deep in the shaman's lower chest. Cord lay on his back, breathing shallowly and holding the spear still, but Roger knew the pain had to be enormous.

“Ah, man, Cord,” he said, dropping to his knees. His hands fluttered over the surface of the shaman's mostly naked body, but he wasn't sure what to do. The spear was in the shaman's gut up to the haft. “I gotta get you to Doc Dobrescu, buddy!”

“Get out,” Cord spat. “Get out now!”

“None of that,” Roger said, and looked across at Pedi. The shaman's benan had both blood-covered swords crossed across her knees. “I guess we both missed that one, huh?”

“Will my shame never end?” she asked bitterly. “I turn my back only for a moment, and this—!” She shook her head. “We must take it out, or it will fester.”

“And if we do that, we'll increase the bleeding,” Roger disagreed sharply. “We need to get him to the doc.”

“Whatever we do, Your Highness, we'd better do it quick,” Kosutic said. “We've got the door clear, but the rear guard isn't going to last forever.”

“Take the Marines. Clear the tower,” Roger snapped as he pulled out his knife. Even with the monomolecular blade, the spear shaft twisted as he secured a firm grip on it, then sliced through it. The shaman took shallow breaths and slimed at every vibration, but the only sound he actually made came with the last jerk, as the shaft parted—a quiet whine, like Dogzard when she wanted a snack.

“We'll carry him out,” Roger said as he threw the truncated shaft viciously across the stinking, smoke-choked stone chamber.

“We who?” Kosutic asked, shaking her head as she imagined trying to lift the two hundred-kilo shaman. Then she drew a deep breath. “Yes, Sir.”

“Ammo! Anybody got any?” Birkendal called from the door. “Most of the lower room is clear, but we're taking fire from the second story.”

“I do.” Despreaux threw him her ammo pouch. “St. John, take your team and clear the upper stories,” she continued. “I'll take an arm, Pedi takes an arm, Roger takes a leg, and we let the other one dangle.”

“Chim Pri's down,” Roger said as he grabbed a leg. “Who in hell is in charge of the Mardukans?”

“Sergeant Knever,” Despreaux said. “Knever! We are leaving!”

She saw a thumbs-up sign come out of the force packed around the doorway and grabbed Cord's arm.

“Let's go!”

* * *

Poertena stepped over the remains of one of the Vashin cavalry. He placed the satchel charge against the door, pulled the friction tab to start the fuse, and looked around in the gloom for some cover. His helmet adjusted everything to a light level of sixty percent standard daylight, but the rendering washed out shadows, which had a negative effect on depth perception. Despite that, he could clearly tell that there wasn't much cover on the wall, but at least ducking around to the right of the door put a slight protuberance between his body and the two kilos of blasting powder.

He set his helmet to “Seal,” folded his body into the smallest possible space, and pushed against the tower wall, but the overpressure wave still shook him like a terrier shaking a rat. The oversized pack was no help at all, as the blast wave caught it where it protruded from cover, spun him away from shelter, and hammered him down on the wall's stonework. He picked himself up and shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs, and took a mental inventory of the situation. The downside was that he couldn't hear a thing; the upside was that there was now a hole where the door used to be.

Not that he had a whole long time to evaluate things.

Poertena had never been much of a hand with a rifle. He realized that no true Marine would ever admit to such an ignoble failing, yet there it was. And he was an even worse shot with the chemical-powered rifles the company had improvised in K'Vaern's Cove. Which was why he'd built himself a pump-action shotgun at the same time he designed Honal's.

It was smaller bore than the Vashin's portable canon, and shorter than normal, with a pistol grip carved from wood and a barrel barely thirty centimeters long. It held only five shells, and kicked like a mule, but it had one saving grace—as long as you held the trigger back, it would fire with each “pump.”

Poertena demonstrated that capability to the Mardukans picking themselves up off of the floor in the room beyond the demolished door. There were clearly more of them than shells in the ammo tube, but he didn't let that stop him as he furiously pumped and pointed, filling the room with ricocheting balls of lead, smoke, and patterns of blood.

The hammer clicked on an empty breech, and he rolled out of the doorway and back into his original cover. He lay there, licking a slice on the back of his hand where one of the ricochets had come too close, then reloaded while the second wave of Vashin finally made it up the slippery stairs.

“I t'ink I leave it up to you line-dogs from here,” he said to the Mardukan cavalrymen as the last round clicked into the magazine.

“What? You mean leave some for us?” Honal asked. He stopped by the hole and glanced in. “So, how many were there?”

“I dunno.” Poertena glanced at the far tower as shots rang out from its top floor. “Not enough, apparen'ly.”

He'd decided not to stare at the muzzle of the medium bombard pointed from the top of the other tower to sweep the wall. It had fired once—carrying away the entire first wave of Vashin who'd been supposed to cover his own approach with the demo charge—and he'd fully expected it to sweep him away, as well. But the bombard crew had apparently had more important things on their minds after firing that first shot. Now the gun shuddered for a moment, then rolled out of the way to reveal a human face.

“Birkendal, what t'e pock you doing up t'ere?” Poertena called. “Get you ass down here and do some real work!”

“Oh, sure!” the private called back. “Expecting gratitude from a Pinopan is like expecting exact change from a K'Vaernian!”

“What is t'is t'ing, 'exact change'?” Poertena asked with a shrug, and followed Honal through the hole.

* * *

Roger thrust the blade of his sword through the doorway, then moved forward. There was a hole in the base of the opposite tower, which was apparently the inner side of the main gatehouse, and he could hear shots from the upper stories. But the top of the wall was momentarily clear.

There was more fighting to the south, back into town. It looked like the Diasprans and Vashin were being used to hold off the Kirsti forces. From the looks of the locals, there were more of the city guards, armed only with staves, and a sprinkling of the formal “Army.” They were distinguishable by their heavier armor and heavier spears. The weapons were something like the Roman pilum, and the soldiers wielded them well, holding a good shield wall and pressing hard against the human-trained infantry.

The Diasprans and Vashin had been pushed back by force of numbers, and now they were so compacted they could barely use their firearms. It was obvious, however, that neither group had forgotten its genesis as cold steel fighters, for the Diasprans had brought forward their assegai troops. That elite force had started as city guards, similar to the locals, and had since smashed two barbarian armies in its travels with humans. Side-by-side with the Vashin, who had drawn their long glittering swords, the Diasprans held the Kirsti forces at bay. More than that, they were probably killing at least three of the locals for each of their own who fell.

But the locals had the numbers to take that casualty rate, and Roger could see more moving up the roads to reinforce the attack. It was only a matter of time before the Vashin and the Diasprans were overwhelmed. Time to get the hell out of Dodge. Or Kirsti, or wherever this was.

“So many cities, so many skirmishes,” he muttered as the remnants of his own party poured through the door behind him.

Sergeant Knever was the last through, and the Diaspran closed it behind him.

“We've sealed the doors on the other side and set a slow fuse on the gun powder store,” the sergeant said with a salute. The nice thing about Mardukans was that they could salute and keep their weapons trained at the same time, and Knever was careful to cover his prince even while saluting. “Shaman Cord is being evacuated back to the company, and all live personnel are clear of the building. We had three more killed in action, and two wounded, besides Shaman Cord. Both of those have also been evacuated.”

The sergeant paused for a moment, then coughed on the harsh, smoky air.

“What about the dead?” Roger asked.

“Per your instructions, we loaded them in the Marine disposal utilities and burned them, Sir,” the sergeant replied.

“I'm really tired of this shit,” Roger said, checking his toot. It was barely ten a.m., local time. In a day which lasted thirty-six hours, that made it barely two hours after sunrise. “Christ, this is going to be a long day. We need to didee, Sergeant.”

“Yes, Sir,” Knever agreed, and waved towards the far tower. “After you, Sir.”

The sergeant took one more look to the north, into the mysterious darkness of the valley. As far as the eye could see, there were thousands, millions—billions—of scattered lights, lining the darkness of the valley floor. What created the lights was unclear, but it appeared that the city continued for kilometers and kilometers and kilometers. He gazed at the vista for a moment, then shook his head in a human gesture.