Under Strange Suns (40 page)

“Should’ve just stayed here in the first place,” he grumbled when he arrived at the stairs he’d descended not even an hour ago.

He reached the parapet with pistol and dagger ready and plunged right into the thick of it. He again lost all tactical awareness. It was only when the Lhakovi had once again been thrown back at tremendous cost of lives and blood that he gathered that the reinforcements he’d sent for had arrived, that the commander had understood his notation, and that the other two holding attacks had ceased, the attackers killed almost to a man.

Aidan leaned against the inner wall of the parapet, panting, as he examined the live feed, reading the troop movements. He thought they might have made a dent this time. But hammering a few more dents like that in the Lhakovi army would cost him the rest of his forces.

Perhaps the Lhakovi general guessed as much.

Aidan had barely regained his wind, sucked down some more water, and dabbed at some freshly earned wounds when the crossbow arrows sped by again. He felt the fletching of one graze his ear, slicing a tiny cut with the neatness of a razor blade. Many around him weren’t so lucky.

He loaded another magazine into the pistol, realizing he was already running low on ammo. He leaned over the parapet and began picking off joon carrying scaling ladders. But he couldn’t stem the assault by himself. Within minutes he found himself once again locked in a wild melee. He didn’t know how long his luck would last, how long the dice would come up in his favor. He had physical advantages over any single joon he faced, but it only took one missed parry, one unnoticed attacker on his flank, one lucky thrust, to negate any advantage. But he couldn’t withdraw. He refused. He owed these people. He owed Checkok. And he wanted to win.

Aidan wanted to win and he wanted to win definitively. With every Lhakovi he faced and struck down, his anger grew. When would he have killed enough of them? Each swordsman he shot or stabbed was just another retributive action, another orbital drop into a terrorist stronghold. If he killed a hundred of them but they still kept murdering, placing car bombs, burning and pillaging Girdled-by-Fields, what had been the point? He knew he was allowing events to conflate but he didn’t care. Somehow stopping the Lhakovi here, reducing its army to a broken, scattered few, would repay his debt to Checkok and restore his sense of the value of his service on the Team, a sense that had slipped from him at some point during his enlistment.

So each blow, each thrust, each pistol shot, each bludgeoning with the empty weapon grew in intensity until he found he was shouting a wordless war cry at every kill. And he realized it must have been terrifying. These Lhakovi doubtless possessed a bravery bordering on the fanatical to face this strange, overgrown monstrosity in combat, with his extra arm and his death spitting club. But his fury became too much; wherever he stalked, the parapet cleared of anyone willing to fight him.

And so the third assault failed, though again the butcher’s bill was high. The few remaining defenders slumped in silence, too exhausted to exult in yet another stand. The cries of the wounded and the dying from both sides rose and fell like a chorus of the damned. Aidan tuned it out.

The enemy, it seemed, had his fill of beating his head against the same wall and had decided to try a different tack. The Lhakovi army was moving again, not directed like a battering ram at any particular part of the defenses, but elongating, like an unspooling thread, the main body of the army diminishing as a column of troops commenced marching about the walls, enveloping Girdled-by-Fields in a single, thin rank.

Investing, settling in.

Good, time to regroup. Time to allow McAvoy to arrive. If the defenders could hold until then, until the mining craft could lift off and make a scorching victory lap around the walls, this could still work.

Aidan called for his runners. He took his pad of maps, stuck his pen in his mouth, thinking. He estimated the percentage of casualties sustained by each reaction force. Then he drew in circles about each force: small circles for the most depleted, large circles for the relatively intact. He repeated this map until he had four more or less identical copies. Then he sketched four copies of another, this version with the circles of equal size. He gave one of each map to four runners and sent them to the commanders. He hoped they could decipher his intent.

He slapped a pressure bandage over a hole in his upper thigh that oozed too persistently for comfort. Then he got to work on the wounded. His knowledge of joon anatomy remained minuscule. Still, bleeding was bleeding. He undertook a rough and ready triage, ignoring those who looked beyond his help and those who appeared capable of treating their own wounds. Then he expended most of his medical supplies bandaging up those he thought might survive and return to the fight.

He checked in periodically on the Lhakovi movements. If he’d been interested in a breakout, or even a harassing sally, now would be a good time. Elongated to encompass the wall, the Lhakovi army did not appear as formidable, a fragile chain with tightly stretched links. But Aidan did not allow the appearance to gull him. The army was resting, probing for weaknesses. This was a temporary reprieve at best.

His implant chirped.

“Aidan, do you hear me, man?” It was McAvoy sounding considerably stressed. “We’re in sight of the walls, but there’s a bloody army in the way.”

“Where are you?” Aidan asked.

“Southwest, about a quarter mile out.”

Aidan scrolled, zoomed in. He found the tiny cluster of figures, the resolution not sufficient to differentiate between joon and human. He thought he could make out the motorized wagon, a vaguely rectangular object in the midst of the cluster.

“Got you. Okay, sit tight. I’ll be out with an escort. As soon as you see us break through the cordon, you haul ass.”

“Right. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Aidan terminated the contact. “So do I,” he said.

A trickle of wounded joon inched down the nearby stairways, heading into the village center to join the noncombatants. The stairs were treacherous, the packed soil beginning to erode from the tramp of feet and to soften from absorption of blood and other fluids released from gashed flesh. Aidan crept down in turn, until he was close enough to jump. He grunted as his tired, wounded legs absorbed the impact. Then, followed by his recently returned runners, he pushed himself into the trot he knew as the “airborne shuffle.” He was too exhausted for a proper jog.

Lieutenant Hemjeck commanded the southwestern reaction force. Through a combination of images from the live feed, sketches on his notepad, and hand gestures, Aidan made his wishes known.

And learned one more word.

Within minutes Hemjeck assembled twenty joon armed with sword and javelin, the troop bearing a rope and a collection of ladders.

Aidan checked the counter on his pistol. Half a magazine, and that’s all she wrote for ammo. All the more reason to rescue McAvoy, then; he was carrying the remaining cartridges.

He ascended a stairway, waited while a mob of joon below gathered to secure the rope. He took hold of a rope end.

“Over the top, boys,” he said and flung the rope over the wall. He wished he’d had time to rig up for a proper rappel. Instead, he grabbed the rope and descended hand over hand as fast as possible. His palms were still too abraded to allow him to slide down the rope. He couldn’t afford rope burn damage to his hands, at least not his shooting hand. And, of course, the slope of the wall would have impeded a proper slide anyway. Hand over hand was slower, but given that while he descended, joon were laboriously climbing down nearly a dozen ladders, speed wasn’t paramount. The point was to reach the ground as a cohesive force.

Aidan’s feet touched ground. He glanced to each side, watched his rescue force assemble, most dropping from several rungs up. They grouped about him. Right, no point in delay. He filled his right hand with his pistol, his left with his sword.

Then he charged.

Perhaps “charge” was too strong a term. His legs were nearly spent. The unexpected benefit was that his accompanying joon were able to keep up, not outpaced by his longer strides.

He jogged through a relatively bare patch of soil serving as a border between two adjoining fields. To his right, a crop of bright indigo stalks rising to the height of his knees rippled in a breeze. To his left, the field was lumpy with violet tubers. Ahead, a widely spaced line of Lhakovi soldiers were struggling to their feet.

They’d taken advantage of the lull in the action to flop down and rest. Aidan grinned, imagining the moment of disbelief they must be experiencing.

The encircling Lhakovi were spread thinly here, at least a dozen feet between each soldier. They were unprepared for a counterattack. But Aidan’s troop had over a hundred yards to cover. That might allow the Lhakovi some time to concentrate, put up a serious resistance, perhaps slow Aidan’s force long enough for reinforcements to arrive.

Aidan noticed a pair of joon converging more quickly than the others. And he caught the unmistakable straight line and curve of a crossbow. Shit.

He estimated he’d covered about half the distance. Time to practice his new vocabulary.

“Gathotol!” he yelled, and was gratified to see his men reaching for their javelins.

They threw on the run, the momentum adding to the distance. Meanwhile, Aidan took aim at the bowman. He slowed a bit, squeezed the trigger. Missed. The crossbowman finished ratcheting back the cord.

Aidan slowed more, dropping a pace behind his men. The crossbowman slotted that long bolt or short arrow into place, brought the butt of the stock up to rest against his chest.

Aidan stopped, breathed. Fired.

The crossbowman crumpled, disappearing into the vegetation.

Aidan scrambled to catch up with his men. The line ahead had grown more rather than less patchy, several of the thrown javelins having struck their targets.

A half-dozen or so javelins wobbled toward Aidan’s troop, a desultory return volley. One hit home, a joon stumbling as the javelin drove through a leg. He fell headlong, rolled. Aidan jogged past, not allowing himself to spare a glance. He hoped the joon could limp back to the wall while the nearby Lhakovi were otherwise occupied.

And then they reached the line, perhaps ten soldiers who’d had time to link up. A tiny picket fence of sword points faced Aidan...for a split second. The resistance disintegrated, scattering before the attackers like a covey of quail before a galloping horse.

“McAvoy, we’re through,” Aidan said.

Even before he had finished speaking he saw the geologist behind a cluster of joon, coming fast. The terrain was relatively level and forgiving; McAvoy was keeping pace even while operating the wagon remotely.

Aidan turned around.

“Okay, men, form up. We’re on escort duty.”

He knew his words were meaningless to them, but he got their attention and Hemjeck had explained the mission. The militiamen formed a hollow shell into which the returning miners could shelter and began retracing their path back to the wall.

But the Lhakovi on both flanks were forming up.

“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful,” McAvoy said, taking up his position opposite Aidan at one point of the semi-circle, pausing to suck air between each shouted word, “but I think you missed a few of them.”

“Sorry about that. Why don’t you take the hundred on the left, I’ll take the hundred on the right,” Aidan said, not entirely sure that it wouldn’t come to that.

The broken line was closing fast, and if it closed before his band could get through they’d be faced with a lot more than the few unprepared soldiers who’d tried to prevent them breaking out. So, to hell with making the last few rounds count. Aidan opened up on the right flank, firing as fast as he could, more concerned with disrupting the cohesion of the onrushing Lhakovi than with hitting each target. A staccato bark from his left told him McAvoy was following suit.

The three forces closed, all racing for the center of a rapidly shrinking gap. Aidan saw three or four soldiers tumble as his bullets hit home, tripping up another half-dozen or so around them. He could only hope the same was occurring to his other side, though he doubted it. Not only was McAvoy firing the more inaccurate, short range backup pistol, he also had to split his concentration between shooting and piloting the wagon. Hardly conducive to crack marksmanship.

Aidan squeezed the trigger again, saw another Lhakovi fall. Again. This time, nothing. That was it–out of ammunition.

Individual faces grew clear now beneath their helmets. He holstered his useless pistol, his pistoning legs and the uneven surface beneath his feet conspiring to botch his first attempt to slip the muzzle into the mouth of the holster. Then he switched his rapier to his right hand, picking out the first Lhakovi he’d collide with, knowing that once he engaged he was a dead man, he would never make it to the wall. Still, he meant to sell his life dearly. Perhaps he could run enough interference to spring McAvoy. If he could do that, he could still win, even if only a posthumous victory.

Closer. He could clearly discern distinct eye colors. There, that one with the eyes like a dorado he had once hooked in the Sea of Cortez, on leave with the team. Nearing...

And then he was past.

They’d squeezed through, Aidan–and opposite him a dozen yards, McAvoy–last to slip the closing cordon. A sprint to the wall, then. Hell, he did
not
want to sprint. His legs felt like tree stumps.