Progeny (The Progenitor Trilogy, Book Three) (78 page)

              ‘Fuck!’ he spat and barked into the comm. again.  ‘Infantry: fall back by squad towards this position!  Armour, provide covering fire!’ he turned to an aide, cowering inside the APC.  ‘Get Shima and Reynolds on the comm. and relay these orders:  This is Shale. Column under attack. Converge on our position and reinforce.  Enemy in the guise of civilians.  Tell Gunderson to stand his ground and fight to the last man!’

              ‘Yes sir,’ said the aide as another piped up, clamping his earphones to his head in order to hear above the growing noise of the approaching battle.

              ‘Sir, it’s the
Churchill
, Admiral Chen is on the line.’

              ‘Put her through,’ snapped Shale, squinting southwards towards the sounds of frantic firing.

              ‘General Shale, this is Chen.  What the hell is going on down there?’

              ‘Admiral, we have been ambushed.  The civilians in the convoy just turned on us!’ Shale yelled, trying to make himself heard as a nearby phalanx of main battle tanks unleashed their pintle mounted heavy weapons towards the enemy in a storm of lead.

              ‘Say again, General!?’ Her voice crackled in his ear.

              ‘Some, or all of the convoy were Shaper enslaved all along!  I don’t know how we didn’t detect them.  We even scanned some of them in person and they didn’t show!’

              ‘What!?’

              ‘I can’t explain it.  All I know is that they suddenly attacked as one.’

              ‘Fire support from my vessels is yours to command, General,’ said Chen, as Shale struggled to hear her over the din.  The gunships were streaking in now, gatling cannons ripping bloody furrows in the mass of enslaved humanity as they split the sky with a dreadful tearing sound.  In the midst of the melee, it was near difficult to tell friend from foe and the craft pulled back, turning for another run, fearful of hitting their own side. 

              ‘Negative!’ shouted Shale.  ‘They’re too close.  The enemy are right on top of us, in amongst us.  You’ll only annihilate my men!  We need close support units and fast, but I’ll go hand to hand with these bastards if it comes down to it!’

              ‘What about Gunderson at the array?’

              ‘Say again?’ cried Shale, only half hearing what Chen was saying.  The firing was getting closer.

              ‘What about Gunderson?’

              ‘I don’t know.  We haven’t been able to raise him yet. Give those marines whatever they need, we have to hold that position!’

              As the words died on Shale’s lips, the first of his men that had broken and run staggered out of the smoke towards him.  Charging figures pursued them, some with flesh missing from their bodies, others with more terrible wounds that nevertheless didn’t seem to slow them down.  As they fell upon the fleeing men, Shale raised his rifle to his shoulder and fired.

              Gunderson felt like Canute, trying to hold back the tide.  A wave of enslaved had charged up the hillside on three sides into the teeth of the marines and their carefully deployed firebases.  From their dug in positions, his men poured well ordered fire into the onrushing enemy, from rifles, from deployed heavy weapons and from the sentry guns whose multi-barrelled gatling guns now glowed dully red in the darkness, their muzzle flashes strobing against the darkness as they hosed the enemy with thousands of rounds.

It wasn’t enough.  Enslaved were torn apart by bullets that caused wounds that would kill an ordinary human, and they simply picked themselves up and threw or dragged themselves forward once more, and where one fell, three more were ready to take their place, clambering over the slain until the slopes of the marines’ revetments were piled high with bodies, bodies which showed disturbing signs of surgical and cybernetic alteration.  Eyes replaced by twitching sensors and probing antenna, limbs hacked off and bodies fused with whip-like tentacles and blade-arms, and each with tell-tale crystalline grub-like creatures buried into the backs of their violated skulls.

Gunderson had no time to study the enemy.  Holding his rifle locked against his shoulder, he stood on the firing line with the rest of his men and squeezed the trigger again and again, watching flailing figures fall, blasting them until limbs flew off in welters of blood, until skulls popped and guts spilled and they lay sprawled in their own viscera.  He killed men, and women, or what had once been men and women.  Ragged remains of uniforms marked these down as the remnants of the military units that had been on the planet when the Shapers had taken over, the units that should have died in the orbital bombardment on the bases.  In the strobing light from the massed guns of the marines, the charging figures seemed to move awkwardly, like figures in a silent film, their grotesque movements caught in each split second.

‘We can’t keep this up, sir,’ said Major Durham, as he slapped another magazine into his rail rifle.  ‘The sentry guns will be out of ammo soon, and the heavy weapons will also be running low within a few minutes.  We have to pull back!’

‘Not yet, Major.  Not when I have them right where I want them.’  He spoke into the comm. ‘Alpha flight, this is Gunderson.  Make your attack run.  Keep it towards the tree-line.’

The two gunships tore in from the east, rocket pods and gatling guns blazing against the night.  Enslaved were immolated, became burning figures staggering forwards as cooked flesh melted from their bones. Some were entirely disintegrated, whilst others were ripped asunder, the fragments of their bodies thrown high in the air as shockwaves flattened their comrades.  The mob paused as the gunships wheeled away, turning for another run.  Gunderson squinted down the slope. His suit’s night vision was useless against the blaze of light and heat down there, but with his own eyes, he could see the sea of leaping figures, as they gathered themselves against the storm of fire and renewed their attack.

Then the mob began to fire back.  Gunderson saw the first of his men fall a mere ten metres away to his right, shot through the throat and choking on his own blood as he hit the ground.  Then others started to drop.  Against the backdrop of the flames and the darkness it was impossible to see the shooters, though from within the tree-line seemed the obvious bet.  The trickle of fire became a torrent.  Bullets began to hammer against the revetment, caroming off sentry guns and supply crates, impacting wetly against un-armoured human bodies and with a dull crack where they pierced armour, or with a sound like eggs breaking where they shattered skulls.

The marines faltered, ducking instinctively to take cover against the fire being directed against them, but were unable to see their attackers or to poke their heads above the parapet to return fire.

Gunderson lay flat on his belly, worming his way forward.  Others were doing likewise, poking rifle barrels over the top of the revetment between crates and sandbags and armour plates to face the enemy, an enemy that was now resuming its assault

Through the sights of his rifle, Gunderson watched them charge with inhuman speed.  No human could or should move like that. Their legs drove down into the churned earth like the pistons of machines, throwing the enslaved forwards with a force that would shatter the leg bones of a normal man.  He fired again and again, watched his attackers stumble and fall in the mud, watched them claw themselves upright and carry on as they were battered by shot after shot from his gun.  They were going for the strong-points along the line, using sheer weight of numbers and the speed of their attack to achieve their objective.  Enslaved swarmed up on the fortified positions holding the sentry guns and heavy weapons, batting their crews aside with inhuman force that sent men tumbling.  Gunderson saw men broken, beheaded, torn limb from limb with sheer physical force, or tossed to the mob charging up the hill to be trampled and dismembered.  Nothing seemed to stop the onslaught.  The gunships returned, raking the slope with their gatling guns and punching bloody, burning holes in the mob with their missiles and rockets, but it wasn’t enough.  The sentry guns stopped firing one by one, then the heavy weapons, and then the enslaved were upon them all.

On the bridge of the
Churchill
, McManus was already busy relaying orders to the flight deck and the other carriers to get more ground attack capable craft down to Shale and Gunderson’s embattled forces on the planet.  Chen watched with horror as the orderly Commonwealth ground assault began to fall apart before her, the neat central column of infantry and vehicles engulfed by the enemy.  The other columns were started to move towards Shale’s but it would be some time before they were in any position to assist without accidentally firing on their comrades.  Meanwhile, icons denoting squadrons of fighters, bombers and gunships en route to the combat zone were starting to wink into existence, but their pilots would have to take extreme care in unleashing their payloads for the very same reason.

‘Contact!’ cried Singh.

‘What!?’ snapped Chen, incredulous.

‘Three Shaper destroyers inbound, bearing ninety by forty eight relative to our orientation.  Range, fifty two thousand kilometres and closing!’

‘No....’ breathed Chen as she quickly took stock of the situation.  Her fleet was deployed for the landing, the vessels scattered across low orbit and focused on the planet below them.  They were not formed up to defend themselves. They wouldn’t be able to manoeuvre.  She had only deployed them thusly because the new sensors, having been proved to work previously, had shown no threats present within the system.  The Nahabe ships were also inbound following her request to scan San Domingo, but it would be some minutes before they would be able to assist and they would be emerging into the middle of a fire-fight for which they were also not prepared.  The Shaper ships were heavily outnumbered, but they had the advantage of surprise.

‘Put me through to the fleet,’ she ordered.  ‘All ships, all ships, this is Admiral Chen.  Shaper vessels have emerged from hyperspace.  You are to come about and engage the enemy.  Cease all landing operations immediately.  Destroyers and carriers, climb to fifty thousand kilometres relative to the surface of Valparaiso.  Missile frigates are to remain on station and assist ground forces if required.  Transports are to vacate orbit to the fallback co-ordinates in the system.  Stand by for further orders.  Chen out.’  She turned to her bridge officers.  ‘Helm, bring us up out of the gravity well to give us room to manoeuvre.  Comms. Signal our destroyers to form up with us.’

‘How in God’s name did those crafty bastards manage to get the jump on us like that?’ growled McManus as the vast formation of ships outside began to slide out of their orbital positions, angling themselves to climb out of the planet’s gravity well as main engines and manoeuvring thrusters began to fire. 

‘I don’t know, sir,’ said Singh.  ‘One minute nothing, the next... they appeared in what looked like empty space.  I don’t understand it.’

‘They’ve figured out how we’re detecting them...’ said McManus.  ‘They must have done.  We’ve been played, Admiral.  Clever little buggers, aren’t they?’

‘I fear that you may be correct,’ Chen muttered grimly as the
Churchill
began to climb.  ‘Shale’s men were taken completely by surprise.  They’re being torn apart by people that they were helping only moments before, that they’d even scanned for god’s sake!  Make no mistake, we are up against an enemy that learns how to counter our moves very quickly.’

‘If you’re right, then we’ve lost our tactical advantage,’ said McManus.  ‘If I might ask,’ he added.  ‘Why bring those destroyers that can’t use their new cannons?’

‘It gives us more of a fighting chance,’ said Chen, coldly.  ‘The Shapers might attack the wrong ones.’

The
Churchill
was still climbing.  Her four accompanying destroyers were manoeuvring themselves into position around her, but the other carriers were struggling to break orbit.  There was simply too much traffic, too many ships that need to slide around one another in order to orientate themselves correctly and move away from the planet.  The
Marcus Aurelius
and the Marine assault carrier
Anzio
were still wallowing, deep in Valparaiso’s gravity well and boxed in by missile frigates deployed to assist the ground forces.  Chen realised then, as the Shaper vessels emerged from hyperspace, their ice-white hulls gleaming coldly in the light from Santiago’s sun, that the Shapers had tricked her into making the very same tactical mistake that Admiral Kojima had made above Maranos, a mistake that had doomed the marines aboard the
Normandy.
  Fully aware of the depth of her error, she ordered her ships to prepare to fire.

They were still coming.  Although Shale’s men were falling back by squads, the rush of enslaved was still catching up with them, falling upon the stragglers and dragging them down beneath the mob.  Fire scythed into the enemy, but there were too many of them and they were too close to friendly troops for the heavier guns of the armoured vehicles and gunships to be used effectively.  Even so, pintle mounted weapons atop armoured cupolas sliced bloody trails through them. 

They were starting the check the tide.  Just.  Shale could feel it.  The sheer weight of fire being directed against the unarmed enslaved former citizens of Santiago was beginning to check their advance.  His men were recovering from the ambush, and though they had taken heavy losses in the opening minutes, they had rallied.  Still, the enslaved did not go down easily, and they had a nasty habit of picking their shattered bodies off the floor and resuming their charge and the fact the enemy was in and amongst friendly troops and vehicles made it difficult to pick them off from long range.

How many apparently fleeing refugees had there been?  Shale hadn’t thought to keep count, concentrating merely on getting them all behind his lines.  Had they all been puppets of the Shapers?  Or had unarmed men, women and children fallen victim to the onslaught as well as his men?  Had Mayor Marchand been one of them, even as she had stood before him and told him of the plight of the civilians within the city?  Shale didn’t know.  Along with the rest of his men, he fired at charging figures again and again, adding the bark of his rifle to the deafening cacophony of weapons fire as the automatic weapons of his command APC hammered away over his head.