*****
Fenaday’s
people slept comfortably, under cover from the rain and the lightning.
This time only the robots stood out in the
storm, on watch.
Their airborne sister,
the scout robot so useful on Mars, sat in a shuttle, grounded by the wind and
rain.
The
HCR Magenta detected movement and sound beyond the perimeter.
A draw ran from the valley, and by design or
luck, the Shellycoat army had marched down it.
It allowed them to close to within several hundred meters of the camp
without detection.
The defenders had
not been blind to this danger, lacing the small canyon with mines.
At its end, the draw left any attackers
facing a hundred meters of open terrain, under every gun of the camp.
In a millisecond, the robot checked its
target profile and came up with ‘Unknown.’
Fortunately, its programs contained a new instruction.
‘Unknown,’ meant hostile.
Magenta
signaled an alert to Mmok back in the camp.
In the same instant, she commanded the mines to detonate.
Her steel sisters joined her in a blur of
flashing metal, leading the reserve of crab robots to the section of barrier
wire facing the attack.
In
the camp, Mmok leapt to his feet, yelling warnings.
Fenaday
sat bolt upright from a deep sleep, grabbing his jacket.
Moments later he and Shasti stood on the ramp
door of the shuttle, looking for targets in the driving rain.
Troops spilled out from shuttles and
shelters, running for firing slits and foxholes.
Fenaday popped onto the net, hitting his
command override button, “All section commanders, this is Fenaday.
Hold fire until we have a target.
Mmok, your robots may fire at will.”
Telisan
and Duna joined them on the ramp, both with sidearms.
Shasti left his side racing around the
encampment.
He heard her calling for
everyone to look to their front.
Mmok’s
robots opened up on the prepared killing ground at the draw’s exit.
Anti-tank munitions flashed and boomed,
giving hints of what lay beyond the barrier wire.
Fenaday saw something that looked like a crane
toppling into the dirt.
The
Shellycoat army, its size more than quartered by the ambush, burst out the
sides of the draw.
A wave of creatures
charged at the barrier wire, far faster than a man could run over such ground.
“Weapons
free,” Fenaday yelled.
Shasti
called for fire and everyone, including the top turrets of the shuttles, opened
up at once.
The Shellycoats seemed to
have no sense of survival.
They hit the
barrier line and flashed into nothing.
“Floods,”
Fenaday shouted over the net.
The downpour
made it impossible to see clearly.
Actinic bursts of light from explosions and energy weapons didn’t help.
The
floods clicked on, revealing a scene undreamed of even in Dante’s
nightmares.
Beyond the barrier wire the
ground seethed, alive with thousands of horrific, man-like shapes of all
sizes.
They lurched forward, made from
metal, plastic, wood and rock.
The most
terrifying had skulls and ribcages whirling in their interiors.
The
weaponry of the spacers cut huge swaths through the oncoming mass.
Shellycoats exploded into mere debris.
Barrier wire began to short under the press
of material, throwing brilliant sparks to add to the confusion.
Fenaday
moved to the front, flanked by the others.
He saw Shasti repositioning the ground troops.
He didn’t interfere; she knew more of war on
planets than he did.
Troops ran,
slipping and cursing the mud and rain.
Mmok’s utility robots began to scramble out from the shuttle area in
response to some silent call for ammunition.
Fenaday
turned to Telisan.
“Get the doctors and
the techs to passing out ammunition.”
Telisan
nodded and ran off.
Duna accompanied
him.
Fenaday
hit the net.
“Pilots, fire up your
engines.
We may have to withdraw.”
“Karass,
roger.”
“Fury,
roger.”
“Nusam,
understood.”
Fenaday,
laser in hand, rushed forward to help in the fight.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw
Farriq-Dar’s
turret swing upward.
His eyes followed the gun’s track, and he saw
the giant.
It
stood sixty feet tall, in an ape-like shape.
Behind it came four others, made of gantries, scaffolds and cranes.
They strode out of the draw like colossi,
eating up ground in huge strides.
Weapons fire switched to them.
Farriq-Dar’s
chain gun tore the first
one apart.
Then the shuttle switched to
the second, which was already taking fire.
The giant exploded.
Parts of it
struck the barrier wire and scattered the defenders.
Fire slackened momentarily under the shower
of metal.
Girders struck
Farriq-Dar
as the thing toppled
forward.
The sound of metal crashing on
the shuttle added to the confusion of gunfire and screams.
A
third giant fell to combined fire as the weapons disrupted the unlife holding
it together.
The
fourth stepped over the wire as lesser Shellycoats raced through the gaps.
Magenta, Cobalt, Verdigris
and Vermilion charged in, blazing away.
The crab-like robot guns and utility robots also swarmed to the
breakthrough engaging the Shellycoats.
It gave some of the cut-off troops a chance to run for the shuttles or
better positions.
Shasti reorganized
them quickly and the spacers’ enormous firepower began to contain the threat.
*****
On
the
Farriq-Dar
, Pilot Officer Nusam
looked out at the mass of wreckage on his canopy in dazed terror.
Debris hadn’t penetrated the ceramic steel of
the canopy and turret, but the concussion had.
His gunner hung in the belts of her seat, unconscious.
All he could hear over the communications net
were screams and desperate orders.
His
shuttle sat where the breakthrough was worst.
Outside the cabin he could see monsters made of wood, steel and bone
skittering over the shuttle’s sides trying to reach him.
Nusam’s
nerve failed and he rammed the throttles forward.
Farriq-Dar
began to lift.
Its thrusters tumbled men
and Shellycoats alike.
*****
Fenaday
looked up in shock at the desertion.
“Nusam,” he yelled into the headset.
“Get that shuttle back down here.
Nusam!
Acknowledge!”
Farriq-Dar
rose slowly, thirty feet,
forty.
Then the fourth giant struck at
it with steel arms that had once drawn fishing nets through the deep ocean.
Her armored hull withstood the blow, but the
port engine nozzle did not.
It crumpled,
cutting thrust from the engine.
Unbalanced, with the other engine running full blast,
Farriq-Dar
flipped over.
Fenaday
was on his headset, still demanding Nusam’s return, when he saw the shuttle
turn over and start down directly toward him.
“Down, everyone down,” he screamed into the command override.
“Everyone drop.”
Something
hit Fenaday, throwing him backward, the breath rammed out of him.
They
got me,
he thought numbly as he hit the wet ground.
Long, fine, black hair fell into his
face.
He realized Shasti had knocked
them both into a partly rain-filled ditch.
They lay face to face—for a second.
Then the sky over her shoulder lit up with an orange flash; the ground
bucked as the shuttle exploded.
They
clung to each other, gasping for air.
For a moment, it was simply enough to be alive.
Shasti
heaved off him and lunged out of the hole.
He followed with less grace, half soaked.
They hit the ground running, looking for
targets.
The
shuttle lay upside down and burning.
Its
blast must have hit
Banshee
badly;
her top turret had stopped firing.
Pooka
and her gun still blazed
away.
Bodies lay everywhere.
Fortunately, the blast did their enemy worse
harm;
Farriq
fell on the main
breakthrough.
The giant that had struck
the shuttle stood wobbling as if wounded.
Fenaday ran forward, scooping up a fallen tri-auto.
He fired a weapon from either hand.
The laser set the giant ablaze as the
tri-auto ate at its substance with explosive charges, bullets and energy blasts.
Other fire joined his and the giant
toppled.
Fenaday turned, looking for
targets.
He saw the last giant moving
toward Shasti.
She
stood at the perimeter, gunning down a group of Shellycoats trying to surround
survivors fleeing from the front trench.
Her hearing, more sensitive than a normal human’s, must not have
recovered from the blast.
She did not
hear the clangor of its approach, too intent on the enemy before her.
She did not hear Fenaday’s scream as he raced
forward, firing.
He was too far
away.
Too late, she felt or saw
something and began to turn.
Forty feet
tall and made of suspended debris, the giant swung down a girder arm.
Johan
Gunnar sprang from a foxhole, almost at Shasti’s feet.
The big Swede hit Shasti with a shoulder,
sending her sprawling face down in the mud.
The girder missed her by inches.
It hit Gunnar squarely.
He didn’t
even scream.
His body lofted into the
air, flung like a child’s toy into the forest beyond the shattered perimeter.
Fenaday
grabbed another weapon from the bodies on the ground, put it on full auto and
fired.
It emptied its ammunition in a
rush; the particle accelerator spat out metal and energy fitfully.
He continued charging, firing his hand laser
at what he thought of as the thing’s face.
The giant stood, its head a mass of flames as the laser refracted off
metal, igniting anything flammable.
Even
the metal began to glow.
The weapon,
made for short bursts, grew hot in Fenaday’s hand.
The
giant backed away as its girder arms came up to shield its face.
Oh my God,
he thought,
this one is aware.
He shifted to fire around the shielding
arms.
Shasti appeared at his side, face
bloody, eyes wild.
Death’s Angel, the
crew called her.
Now she looked the
part.
She held tri-autos in each hand
and fired them with a scream of hatred.
Explosive bullets began to detonate in the giant.
Cobalt appeared next to them, firing her
heavier weapon.
The thing continued
backing, then came apart, its pieces thundering into the mud, splashing them
with its death throes.
With
all the giants down, the smaller Shellycoats’ attack became disjointed, as if
the will or intelligence had gone out of them.
They skittered around at random.
A counterattack would rescue the situation.
Fenaday turned to find Shasti, only to see
her race through a section of downed barrier wire into the forest, heading for
where Gunnar’s body had been flung.
Fenaday
was torn.
The camp needed him, but
Shasti was running heedlessly into the dark.
He heard Telisan’s strong voice and decided the Denlenn would take care
of the camp.
No one else could cover
Shasti.
He raced after her, leaping over
a body he couldn’t recognize.
He spotted
movement heading for her back and snap fired from long range.
A Shellycoat flared and disintegrated.
Shasti’s long legs ate up ground.
He lost her in the rain for a few seconds.
Then a power gun flared in the distance, and
he ran to the spot.
Shasti
knelt over the crushed corpse of Johan Gunnar, cradling him in her arms.
Fenaday saw from his injuries that he must
have been killed instantly.
He stood by
Shasti’s side, trying to look in all directions at once.
They were too far from the camp site—alone.
In the downpour, he could not tell a
Shellycoat from foliage.