Hunter Legacy 9: Hero at the Gates (7 page)

I drew my Long Gun as I was lifting off the
ground. I twisted and sighted in on my assailant before reaching the top of the
hop, and fired just as I achieved non-motion. The target took the hit on his
combat suit, which wouldn’t have done him any real damage.

By the time I was down again, I’d holstered
the gun. I was the only person standing. Everyone around me was lying flat on
the ground, looking up at me in wonder.

"Get inside," I said quietly.

They began to crawl up the ramp as fast as
they could.

"So," said an amplified voice.
"You can take a Meson hit and survive it. They said you were invincible.
They said that even in death, you couldn't die. With all the hype, I thought
you'd be bigger too. But all I see is a boy."

I looked around for the audio pickup, since
he had to have heard what had just been said to me. Wherever it was, it wasn’t
obvious. There was a clanking noise from behind me, but I didn’t turn. I faced
towards the voice.

We'd goofed. Again. Along one entire length
of the wall in front of me, the facing had dropped forward onto the ground,
showing the wall itself to be hollow. Lined up along the whole length were
combat suits. The entire area was now lit, forming a killing zone.

"Jack," I sub-vocalized.
"Form a skirmish line in the dark, in front of the civilians. Get them
loaded onto the ships and out of here. Have the teams go to code red, and
execute kill mode."

"Roger that."

"What, no reply from the great Admiral
Hunter?"

The voice was booming now, and totally full
of itself.

"My apologies," I said. "A
Meson to the face does tend to disorient one. Would you care to enlighten me as
to whom has the drop on me?"

He laughed.

"The drop, yes. You are outnumbered
three to one. I am General Maxim Ubuntu. Perhaps you've heard of me?"

My combat suit stopped beside me. Jane's
twelve were coming up behind me now, previously unused.

"I'm sorry, no. Should I have?"

I hadn't actually. So far I’d only come
across ship officers.

"Yes, you should have. No matter, now
you know who defeated you, we can get on with ending this."

I took a quick step back, and sideways, and
entered my suit. It closed behind me, and the systems came up. I activated code
red. An armband on the left arm, shifted to a full suit, and the combat suit
itself took on my likeness.

"Does this meet your expectations more
General?" I asked, now using the external speaker.

The suit shifted again, 'slinky red'
becoming blue jeans over combat boots, bare chest with bulging muscles, and a
white sweat band tied around the forehead, and dangling to one side.

"Don’t play games boy. You can't win
this. Why throw away your lives? Lay down your arms, leave your combat suits,
and we'll allow you to live. As slaves mind you, but at least you will be
alive."

"George and Jane," I
sub-vocalized, "bring the rain."

"Raining!"

"Confirmed."

"Slaves is it?" I said. "You
mean the men work in the mines, and the women get raped by your officers?"

"Ah, you met one of them then? Whom do
I need to demote?"

"A Colonel. And he won't need
demoting, I've already seen to it."

"Ah, the spiritual mercenary, who
takes his enemies prisoner. How noble of you."

"Actually no. I AM Karma's instrument.
When no-one is able to collect the karmic debts, the Cosmos sends me. Karma can
be a real bitch when you fuck with it."

I heard my voice say it, but it wasn’t my
mouth moving.

I said it.

"So you consider yourself a Karmic
Debt Collector do you?"

"Only for the worse cases."

It was Kali talking again.

"And what form did Karma take in this
instance?"

"I cut off his small head so he
couldn’t rape again, and then cut off his big head so he couldn’t even think of
doing it again in any form."

This time it was me talking. But it felt
like the words were not my own, while being my own. Such is channeling.

"A pity. He was so very useful to me.
Alas, as you have done, so shall you receive…"

He broke off as someone interrupted him.
Damn, if he'd only kept rabbiting on a little longer.

"Charge!" yelled the General, and
his people sprinted forward.

They made it just far enough to avoid being
cut down by the capital ship and Mosquito missiles which reduced the wall to
rubble. Most of the lights vanished. But we didn’t need lights to fight.

"Wait for it," yelled BA, as the
line of enemy suits advanced towards the loosely grouped teams, forming a basic
line between the mine and where I was.

"Jane, cover me."

"Confirmed."

Her suits formed up around me as an escort,
Meson streamers raised and ready to fire.

"Fire!" said Jack quietly.

Every heavy weapon we had, hand held, or on
the ships, fired. Enemy suits went down, but not enough of them, as we were
grouping fire to make kills, instead of each person taking on an individual
target. Jane was coordinating fire over team coms. I wasn’t listening. The
enemy were also firing as fast as their Pulse Rifles would cycle. The Mesons
had died in the missile strike, so it had achieved something. But our line was
going to be overrun very quickly, and then it would come down to suit on suit
combat.

"Sword," I muttered.

It materialized on my back, and I reached
back to pull it free. It was again combat suit sized, and it felt identical to
wield as if it was in my real hands.

I sprinted forward, aiming at the enemy
suit directly in front of me, who was near the end of their line. Pulse fire
was coming at me, some hitting, others hitting the Jane's around me. I ignored
the fire, and ran forward as fast as I could.

The suit in front of me, showing red on the
HUD, slowed down when he realized I wasn’t holding a gun. It gave him a couple
of extra shots at me, before I was on him. The first cut took off both arms,
and the Rifle dropped to the ground with them. The next cut took his head off.
I was moving towards the next one before the rest of the suit hit the ground.

An intense feeling of déjà vu overtook me,
even though these were all combat suits, and not Jane's I was fighting. But the
fighting was very similar. The sword cut through everything I aimed it at, and
enemies were dropping before me. I was hopping and jumping more than walking,
as fire which hit me made my suit hop.

A ninth enemy dropped before me, as my
outer suit shredded. The next armband shifted to return the suit to being my
likeness, although this time in 'slinky red'. I didn’t stop as this change
happened, and I was on the next target before the shift completed.

The teams by now had formed up into
defensive clusters. Their fire was less effective now, as fewer could fire at
the same target. They were holding their own, for now. The ships were firing
when they could, but it was becoming increasingly more difficult for them to
shoot without risking hitting a friendly.

I cut down the next nearest enemy, and kept
moving, now behind the enemy line. A pulse came in at me and I idly flicked the
sword at it. The pulse bounced away. I hadn't known the sword could do that,
but now I did, I paid more attention to protecting myself as I moved between
targets.

"Let me at em," screamed Grace
from above us, as eight Dropships came down, and began firing Meson's into the
now massing enemy troops around each team cluster. The turrets appeared to be
manned, so I assumed some of my pilots had decided to join the fun.

The suit in front of me paused to look up
at the Dropships, and his head went rolling in the direction he'd been looking.
I kept moving.

The outer suit shredded again, and the
third armband on the left arm took its place. I hardly noticed the change this
time, still moving, cutting, jumping, and cutting again.

Gunbus roared past above me, on her way up
with her load of civvies. Unthinkable was close behind, but further away. Camel
lifted last, but instead of heading upwards, took on an angle which brought her
front weapons into play. A torpedo launched downward, and a combat suit positioning
a Meson Blaster tripod, became a hole in the ground.

My moments of inattention allowed a group
of three combat suits to approach me. There were only four of Jane's suits
around me now, with no idea of where the others had gone, and two each moved to
take the outsiders, as I brought my sword up to take the middle suit. Cut,
slice, swipe, rinse and repeat. We moved on.

"Anyone with less than fifty percent
suit integrity," bellowed Jack, "fall behind someone with more, and
fire over them."

On my HUD, the teams reformed. I noticed
each team had a giant suit now, each one forming the front point of the
defensive wedges, their guns damagingly effective when they hit. The Dropships
were now over each team, firing down on the slowly thinning ranks of enemy
suits.

My third outer suit shredded, and the first
armband on the right shifted.

On and on the fighting went. My mind began
to wander, as the body kept on fighting. This must have been what it was like
on the old battlefields where swords were the main weapon, and guns were of
limited use in close quarters. No matter how good you were, fatigue set in
eventually, and I was starting to feel it, even with the mechanical boosting.

I was getting close to my own troops now,
close enough to notice some in the middle no longer wearing combat suits, with
the others trying to protect them from hits.

"Dropships land," I yelled over
the general combat babble. "Evac everyone except those still in full
fighting condition."

I heard Grace acknowledge, and Jack give
orders. I continued to hack down enemy suits, as nearly three quarters of the
teams dived on board the Dropships, some leaving their combat suits behind.

The rest of them, including all the giant
suits, came together in a single firing line. Each giant suit picked its own
target, while the remainder of the combat suits all shot at the same target
together.

Jane and I continued to engage the suits
continuing to come at me, as I worked my way across the back of the remaining
lines of enemy suits.

"Jon," said Jane, "Its
almost equal numbers now, and they've stopped advancing. We have two stable
lines now, firing at each other."

"Who’s senior on the ground?" I bellowed.

"Us," said the twins.

"Pick them off from the left, I've got
the right."

"Right."

"I said left."

"Left, right!"

My line all fired at three targets down the
left of the enemy line, and I rushed the enemy suit on the right end.

We moved in towards the center.

Fire picked off the second last one, while
I hacked down the last.

I stood there for a moment, fighting
exhaustion.

It started to rain.

Actual water this time.

I looked around me. Broken suits littered
the ground for hundreds of meters in all directions, with holes everywhere,
some of them still smoking. I looked up, rain spattering the head of my suit.
The small group of my remaining team were ponderously walking over to me.

I stood there, thinking about what to do
next.

The rain stopped, but not far away it was
still bucketing down. I looked up again, to see Gunbus coming down above us.
The rain started again, as Jane was forced to find some empty space to set down
on. From her Cargo Bay, a mixed group of marines, led by Jack and Sam, escorted
about half the medical team out. All of the marines were in 'slinky red', which
told me none of their combat suits was combat worthy. Jack headed for where I
was, while the rest headed for the nearest barracks. I assumed they were looking
for anyone left behind earlier, or injured and needing assistance. Or both.
Jane would be directing them in any case, so I left them to get on with it.

"Jane."

"Yes Bwana?"

"Clean this mess up please."

"Camel is already on the way down with
a cleaning crew."

"Good. Next task is finding the
entrance to this bunker. We may have destroyed it, in which case we either need
to find an alternate entrance, or make a new one."

"Confirmed."

Eight combat suits started off for
different places along the wall. I assumed it meant four others hadn't made it
through the fight, protecting me.

"Better keep an eye out for anyone
coming out of an escape tunnel somewhere. I've no idea if we took out the
General, but I suspect we didn’t, and he's either cowering underneath us
somewhere, or trying to escape."

"On it."

The twins dropped down from their giant
suits, and then stepped out of their combat suits, and did some stretching
exercises. BA and the others followed their example. Jack came up to us, as I
stepped out the back of my own suit. There was a patch of clean grass in front
of me, so I sat on it. The rest did the same in a group facing me.

"What's our operational status,"
I asked generally.

"The majority of the combat suits are
almost out of charge," said Jack. "A lot of them are damaged in some
way, and some of them are over on the grass over there. The Mesons are
wonderful to be able to fire without a tripod power source, but they really
chew through the juice if you don’t get a chance to let them recharge properly.
The whole system works brilliantly, but the power doesn’t last anywhere near as
long as with using Pulse Rifles."

Camel roared overhead, and Jane landed on
the grass next to me. She waved in a general direction.

"Four of my suits are over that way.
They're repairable, but weren't able to keep up with you, so I left them where
they took damage."

"I'm sorry I didn’t listen to you more
boss," said BA. I raised an eyebrow, and she went on. "I didn't take
you seriously about adding shields to the giant suits. They would have made a
huge difference today."

She nodded in Jane's direction, and
received one back. The two of them had some development work in mind it seemed.

"I think we learned a few lessons here
today," said Alison.

"A few?" I grinned at her tiredly.

"Yes," said Amanda. "I
wished we'd thought out these new suits a lot better."

"How so?"

"It strikes me we've only been
thinking of them in terms of larger suits, and limited use vehicles. But what
we desperately needed here a while ago, was a small fortress. If we'd thought
it out properly, we could have changed the giant suits into a fortification,
which fired its own weapons while giving the normal suits somewhere to hide
behind."

"Could have had its own shields
too," said BA, "keeping the regular troops safe as they picked off
attackers."

"Talking of fortifications," I
said. "Didn’t anyone think of using the big Mesons, or bulldozer mode, to
dig trenches?"

There was an embarrassed silence. Camel was
down now, and cargo droids were swarming out. With them came a number of butler
droids, with what looked like packs of water.

"This whole thing was nuts," I
went on. "I mean, two combat suited armies charging each other? It's
really stupid when you think about it. What can two suits do in hand to hand combat,
but batter on each other until one suit fails? I guess that happened a bit, but
the real combat is dueling at a distance using heavy weapons. So what happened
here? We ended up dueling with heavy weapons at point blank range. How did that
work out for all of you?"

"Badly," admitted Jack. "We
won because of three main things. One, better suits, and the added protection
of extra belt suits. Two, better weapons, and discipline firing them. And
three, one of us had an invincible sword."

"I wish we'd all had them boss,"
said BA. "Given your success with it, we need to come up with something
along those lines for this sort of melee. Jane, we need to go back to the
drawing board for hand combat in suits. We need something which will cut
through a combat suit, as if it wasn’t there."

"Confirmed."

Water was passed around, and we all drank
deeply. The butlers had finger food as well, and we nibbled for a while, each
lost in our own thoughts.

"But that defeats the purpose of the
exercise," I said at last. "I've never seen the point of wearing
armour which conventional weapons punch through easily. Granted, we were
breaking all the rules here today, but such rules are meant to be broken. But
if you make suits pointless, you need to improve the suit again so it isn’t
pointless. And the one thing which always happens when we make a breakthrough,
is someone steals it, and uses it against us. It's only a matter of time before
anything you develop now, will become general use, and we're back to today,
only worse."

"Still worth doing," said Alana
quietly from the back.

"True," I admitted. "I also
like the fortification idea."

"And we can think about better tactics
on the ground too," said Jack. "Trenches was such an obvious move,
and none of us thought of it. We could have had bulldozers make a trench and
berm arrangement in the dark zone, while the talking was going on."

"It didn't occur to me either."

"You were rather busy," said
Aleesha, with a grin.

I flopped back on the grass, and lay there,
letting the rain hit me in the face. I really needed some sleep.

"In hindsight, maybe it would have
been better had I not destroyed the wall, and forced them to charge."

"It was the right call," said
Jack. "Without their Mesons, we weren't quite so disadvantaged by numbers.
Code red was also the right call. The extra suit protection was the difference
here. As was the command to pool fire, and concentrate on outright kills for
each firing. They were less prepared for this than we were, as they expected to
be picking us off from their fortification. Depriving them of it, made a huge
difference to the outcome. It levelled the playing field, since neither side
had a plan."

I lay there, fighting fatigue.

"Found the entrance," said Jane.

"We got this boss," said BA.
"You rest. We'll take a look downstairs."

"Fine, but be careful."

"You know me boss. Careful is my
middle name. Not."

She grinned at me, and I couldn’t help
smiling back at her.

"Saddle up," said Jack, taking
charge.

Those with still functional combat suits,
stepped back into them, and followed Jack towards where Jane's suits were
grouped. It was mid-way along the now destroyed wall. Jane's avatar stayed with
me.

Jeeves was back a short time later, and
gave me a stimulant. My mind cleared, but my body still felt like it was weighted
down with lead. I stayed where I was, lying on the grass, listening to team
coms, as Jane's suits led them down, and into a warren of corridors and rooms.
Reluctantly, I pulled my attention away from their search, and began doing
karmic releases. Surprisingly, they didn’t generate much in the way of physical
reactions.

Above ground, cargo droids were collecting
suits. In each case, they took a genetic sample, to aid identification of the
body, and in case any bounty was claimable. The bodies which could be removed
from the suits were taken beyond the wall, ready for burial. The suits were
piled together ready for collection. The not so badly damaged ones could be
repaired. The rest would be scrapped and salvaged.

In the time it took for the battlefield to
be cleared, the team below had searched most of the complex down there.

"Took your time Hunter," said the
General. "You did well above. But here, I win. Goodbye."

There was a massive explosion below me, and
the entire area fell into the crater which was all that remained.