The Apocalypse Script (42 page)

The trailers had been positioned
as close to Steepleguard’s entrance as the ruse would allow - a
mere thirty yards from the main doors of the hotel. This meant
Disparthian’s fifty-nine guards would be almost immediately in
harm’s way - as would their opponents - when the trailers’ doors
were finally opened.

The moment Disparthian heard his
name dropped by Lilian, he signaled two men to open the doors and
the 6th Peth Guards spilled out. The first squad immediately fell
to the muddy ground and began firing at targets of
opportunity.
Pop! Pop! Pop!

As the surprised shock troops
realized they were being ambushed and started firing back, the
sound of intermittent shots became a roar.
Popopopopop! Popopopop!
Popopopopopopopopop!
The courtyard
was suddenly alive with the muzzle flashes and sight lasers
whipping across the ground in search of prey.

Disparthian turned to the Peth now
pouring out of the second trailer. “First platoon, clear the hills.
Everyone else, follow me to the entrance!” A bullet whizzed by his
ear and punctured a wall inside the trailer. He resisted the
impulse to flinch, instead yelling, “Careful, gentlemen! Unlike me,
you are
not
bulletproof!”

His guards laughed and raised
their carbines to their shoulders. Disparthian lifted his automatic
pistol to his own, turned, and sprinted forward.

Rudger and the squad with him went
prone and sought concealment behind nearby columns and bushes.
While they had not fought together as a unit, they were superbly
disciplined and trained as individual soldiers. There was no panic
and no unnecessary bursts of fire. The Peth chose their targets and
pulled their triggers back calmly.

The assault was vicious but Rudger
was surprised at the small size of Lilitu’s force. Surely it was
not more than sixty Peth, far too few to overwhelm a defending
force of twice that number. He had spotted Lord Disparthian, the
darling of the Seven and now a traitor, standing upright and
pointing out targets to his troops as if he were an immortal, and
damned if not every bullet fired at the man seemed to change
trajectory in mid-flight. His appearance was cause for some
concern, as he was reputed to be a courageous and inspiring leader,
and thus a force multiplier. Yet one man alone could not turn this
battle.

“
Ready to advance,” Rudger yelled.
“Bring the other squads around and flank Disparthian’s
men!”

He did not see the doors to three other trailers fly
open.

Sibelius was the Maqtu in charge
of supporting Disparthian’s troops. A ten year veteran of the
Nisirtu’s civil war, he was a man of average height but exceptional
girth and sported a bushy red beard. He was affectionately
called
Big Dwarf.

The deal he had brokered with
Disparthian required that the lord’s troops spearhead the attack
against the forces of Moros and Nizrok. Sibelius had told
Disparthian that, after ten years of war, the Maqtu were not about
to go up against the soldiers of two Houses while the soldiers of
another were at their back. Disparthian had reluctantly agreed to
the plan.

“
Come on, you sissies!” the rebel
screamed in a baritone voice as the trailer doors opened and the
Maqtu poured out. “First platoon to the east, second platoon to the
west. Third and Fourth platoons, you greasy bastards follow
me!”

Sibelius wielded an automatic
shotgun. He could see the valiant but foolish Lord Disparthian in
his ceremonial armor ahead, his men circled around him, and
Rudger’s men circled around them.

The Peth lord had advanced to
within twenty feet of Steepleguard’s entrance, a praiseworthy feat,
but there the enemy had swallowed him up. Rudger had summoned his
troops from the east and west sides of the building and his
skirmishers to pinch Disparthian’s forces. Lilitu’s covert allies
were now taking fire from three sides. Though they fought
valiantly, Sibelius knew they would not survive much longer without
help.

Which was as it should
be
, he thought with a grin.

When Rudger finally saw the Maqtu
he knew that the tables had turned against him. By his estimation
the opposing force now numbered almost two hundred. He screamed
over his shoulder, “Damn it, get those doors open! We need hostages
and we need them
now!
”

“
They’re reinforced, Colonel,”
said the woman at the door over her shoulder, who had been trying
to manipulate the lock mechanism, “and the hardware is military
grade. We’ll have to set charges. There might be causalities inside
if we do.” No one on the breach team was really trained for what
they were doing. They were guards, not combat engineers.

“
Do it already!”

Fiela heard Rudger’s orders
through the doors.

“
Princess,” she said, “you must
seek safety in the cave. The doors will be blown open.”

She checked the magazine in one of
her two pistols. The Peth had retrieved her combat armor and
weapons after the first shots were fired. The uniform was different
than standard issue in that it was not black but sable with black
tiger stripes - a secret gift from her uncle many years ago. She
had put her red hair up in a simple ponytail. A
Nocte Sicarius
never wore a
helmet.

“
They will not harm us,” Lilian
said. “I have seen their orders.”

“
How?” asked Fiela holstering the
pistol.

“
Lord Disparthian’s spies shared
them with me. He is our ally – he, and the Maqtu. I will be no
better off in the cave if the forces of the Seven somehow defeat
them. It does not matter where I am captured if that is my
fate.”

“
Princess,” said Fiela, “a bullet
obeys no orders. You could easily be dispatched by an errant
shot.”

The other woman said nothing as
she weighed the Peth’s words. The fact was that she had not
expected Moros’s troops to enter Steepleguard and had made no
provisions for that possibility. She had envisioned the battle
differently when discussing it with Disparthian.

“
I do not wish to hide,” she said
cautiously.

“
Sister,” said
the Peth, “you will not be hiding. You can return swiftly once the
battle is over, either to enjoy your triumph or surrender yourself.
But you must not die
by
mistake
.”

Lilian thought for a moment and
nodded. “I shall do as you ask.” An awkward second passed. “You
must come with me, Fiela. You are serretu and second to the queen’s
throne.”

Fiela shook her head. “Our guests
above - who will protect them, if not me? There is no time to usher
them into the cave. We have but minutes.”

Lilian thought to command the Peth
to come with her but having already been proven wrong about the
impossibility that the doors could be breached, she doubted her own
judgment on this matter, also.

“
Very well,” she said. “I am proud
of you, Sister. Ben would be, also.”

Fiela smiled sadly. “Do you
think,” she said, wondering if she had asked the question before,
“that the Seven will allow him to live if they capture
him?”

Lilian decided she deserved the
truth. “No. They have orders to kill him.”

The Peth did not react and indeed,
seemed not to hear the other woman. She rotated a leather belt
around her waist to better position four sheathed knives and said,
“On the wall next to the stairwell leading down to the cave there
is an electrical panel. Will you turn off the lights so that I am
in my element?”

Lilian nodded and disappeared into
the corridor. A moment later the hotel and the grounds beyond were
plunged into darkness. The cacophony of gunfire beyond the walls
was muted for a few seconds as the combatants took in this
development, but then the pace picked up again, and the battle
raged on.

Alone, Fiela walked toward the
main doors and placed herself only twenty feet from them, deciding
that against a large number of opponents she would rather fight in
close quarters with her knives. She’d never win a
gunfight.

Not that she expected to
win
any
engagement. Knowing that Lilitu’s allies had
arrived and were closing in on the Peth trying to enter
Steepleguard, she needed only to delay the attackers once they
entered the building to give those allies sufficient time to come
to the guests’ rescue. It was a holding action, pure and
simple.

When she found her spot, she
turned her back to the door, lay flat on the ground, and closed her
eyes. She did not want the inevitable explosion to ruin her night
vision.

Her husband was dead, she decided.
He would not have abandoned her, and Lilian, and was not being used
as a hostage. Ben was dead, and in the Nisirtu underworld, for that
is where all Nisirtu royalty went. He was there, and alone, because
he had no Nisirtu family to greet him, which meant he might wander
the dark corridors forever.

She had failed him, as both his protector and
wife.

Lightning from the storm flooded
the room with a blue light. She listened to the yells and screams
and gunfire outside the building’s walls.

To clear her mind for the battle ahead, she
whispered a poem to herself.

“
For the sword outwears its
sheath, and the soul wears out the breast, and the heart must pause
to breathe, and love itself have rest, though the night was made
for loving, and the day returns too soon, yet we’ll go no more a
roving-”

The doors to Steepleguard exploded inward with a
roar.

Rudger and three Peth rushed into
the Great Hall, rifles and carbines raised, but they slowed when
they discovered it was as dark inside as it had been outside. With
their numbers dwindling and the enemy at their back, the ingress
had been hasty and disorganized and the lack of any indoor lighting
was yet another unexpected obstacle. Rudger led the way, determined
to find a decent hostage. Preferably Lilitu, though any noble would
do.

“
Lights!” he screamed.

A second later the reply: “No joy.”

Damn it!
He raised his carbine’s night-vision scope to his eye and
scanned the room. The large hall appeared to be empty. He
calculated that his troops could hold the building for five
minutes. That was just enough time for those with him to reach the
rooms on the second level, where surely some of the nobles were
hiding.

“
Follow me,” he said, and took a
step toward the nearest staircase, but the moment his trailing foot
left the floor he felt his other kicked out from under him. He was
still floating in the air when the knife entered his
neck.

The Peth behind him stumbled as he
collided with Rudger’s falling body. Before he could right himself
something grabbed his helmet and pulled hard, forcing the fall he
had been trying to avoid. The man felt something cold at the base
of his neck and then felt nothing at all.

“
Commander!” yelled one of the men
who had just entered the hall. He went down, too, and was
silent.

Another four of Rudger’s soldiers
entered the Great Hall but instead of fanning out they found
themselves corralled by the attackers behind them, the nothingness
before them, the bodies collecting at their feet, and the enemy
that lurked below. Their night-vision scopes were useless in such
close quarters.

“
Ahhh!
”
screamed one of the female attackers as she was dragged to
the floor like a swimmer pulled beneath the waves by an invisible
shark. A nearby Peth shot at where she had been but the round
struck the shinbone of the man who had been behind her. The wounded
man screamed bloody murder and fell to the floor of his own accord.
There he listened to the fallen woman’s gurgles as she drowned in
her own blood.

“
Nocte
Sicarius!
”
yelled
a man in the front but then a bullet entered his skull from beneath
his chin, shattering a number of teeth before taking the scenic
route through his brain and exiting out the back.

The remaining Peth let their
carbines and rifles fall to their sides and pulled out their
pistols, aiming at the floor, site lasers glowing red.

Disparthian cursed the Maqtu even
as he gave thanks for their appearance. They had arrived at the
last possible moment. Only two men out of his assault platoon still
stood at his side. The rest were injured or dead. A dozen could
have been saved if Sibelius, the Maqtu leader, had attacked only a
thirty seconds earlier.

Still, the Maqtu
had
arrived, and Colonel
Rudger’s troops were being pushed away from the hotel, with the
exception of the squad that had breached the main doors and entered
Steepleguard. Thankfully, someone had shut off the property’s
lights and slowed the assaulting force’s advance. Fiela, he
assumed.

The battle could be lost yet if
Rudger’s troops were to capture Lilitu or Fiela. As the battle
devolved into hand-to-hand combat near the entrance, he summoned
his two remaining Peth to his side and made a final
push.