WARP world (63 page)

He glanced at his own leg. “Theorist, maybe I should take the heavy needler and cover you in.”

“I’ll carry it and cover,” Seg said. “We’ll make sure you get in.”

With that, Seg rose and moved along the perimeter of the fight, toward the entry point. The rest fell in with him.

They pressed forward as far as they could, to wait for their moment to breach the temple.

Brin moved beside Ama. “I suppose there’ll be no talking you out of following him into this mess?” he said, in the Kenda tongue, with a nod to Seg.

“Thickheaded, us Kalders,” Ama said, and glanced at Thuy.

“You’ll need this then,” he passed her the extra seft he had strapped on his back.

“Thank you, cousin.” She took the weapon and weighed it in her hand. It had been several years since Fa had first secretly taught her how to use one. An elegant weapon, the seft. Graceful and deadly.

She looked down the line of Kenda men, read their thoughts and fears, as the noise of the weapons from Seg’s world tore apart the air. They couldn’t know, as she did, that they stood on the precipice of a new era. An era of true freedom. Who was this stranger from another world and why should they care for his cause, they would wonder. Except Seg’s cause was theirs–they were all in this together.

“My brothers,” she said, then tilted her chin back, hooked the tip of the seft under her nove and sliced upward. The leather collar split in half and fell away, her dathe were exposed, for all the men to see. She clutched the piece of leather in her fist, raised it skyward, then threw it to the dirt.

“Blood for water.” She raised her fist to her heart.

The men whispered among themselves, “Kiera Nen”,
Nen’s chosen one
.

“Blood for water,” Brin repeated, raised his seft to his neck and followed Ama’s example.

And so it went down the line; the words gained strength with each man. Ama pitied the Welf that stood in the way of these warriors.

Seg waited for the moment it took for Ama to finish talking. He understood the need for ceremony among some. More actually, he understood that some needed ceremony, though he didn’t. There was a task to be done, a war to be fought. Who needed words?

“I bring up the rear,” he said. “I’ll cover. Fismar with me. Shan, you lead the way in with
Ama
. When you get in,” he stressed the ‘when’, “you inform the senior commander of the situation, that these Outers are friendlies, and that we need to get them armed. If nothing else, they can provide
fire suppression
.”

And, from the looks of it,
close quarters combat support
. But in all honesty, if it came to that they were all dead anyway. Firepower would win the day here.

He thought on Ama’s speech for another moment. Such showmanship was not the way of the People, but then it was hardly the time to worry about unortho behaviour now. They were outnumbered and about to run headlong into what might be a death trap, some motivation would not go amiss. He turned to Shan and Fismar. “Those are our people in there,
the
People,” he told them. “We don’t let our own down.”

Fismar looked at Seg for a long moment, nodded and, finally, seeing the seriousness of his expression, gave him a grin. Shan just nodded and muttered under her breath, before taking her place at Ama’s side.

“Brin, get your people between us and Shan and Ama. Fismar, let them know we’re coming.”

Shan, beside Ama, did not even offer a nod of acknowledgment.

“Try and keep up,” Ama told Shan. “I don’t know who this senior commander is and I have no intention of being cut down by some banger-happy soldier who can’t even tell the difference between a Welf and a Kenda.”

“All you Outers look the same,” Shan said, keeping what distance she could between them.

The entry corridor was a blasted ruin. Once, the old courtyard had been used for training Welf acolytes who would serve the Shasir in day-to-day affairs. Taken at a young age to the temple, they were raised slightly above their own kind as conduits to the ‘higher powers’.

The corridor was now laden with dead bodies, many of them those same acolytes.

“If everyone’s quite ready—Shan,GO!” Seg yelled.

At the word, the defending troops inside the ruins of the temple opened fire with a fresh barrage and worked studiously to keep the Welf attackers pinned down while Seg’s party ran for their lives toward the defensive perimeter.

Seg paused long enough to fire up the heavy needler. A fearsome weapon, it threw concentrated spikes of explosive matter up to six hundred meters, which created large, distracting bursts of fiery death. The heavy needler was designed as much for intimidation as effectiveness, and did both quite well.

“Sector seven,” Fismar directed his fire as they trotted in behind the others.

Seg pivoted and fired. Quite different using the heavy needler in real life compared to basic familiarization at the range. Quite different indeed. He saw a pack of Welf forming up to rush them from the side and stitched a burst into their midst. Screaming men streamed from the charges, bodies singed and burned.

“Go!” Fismar yelled and hobbled as fast as he could. Seg kept pace with him, profligately expending ammunition as he went.

Ama charged forward with Shan at her side, choked by smoke, the grainy air thick in her mouth. Bodies were strewn everywhere; she concentrated on looking forward and ignored the carnage. Seg had told her the invasion would be harsh; she could not have guessed how much of an understatement that was.

Explosions. Screaming. Fire. Smoke. Rubble. Bangerfire. Ama pushed everything to the back of her mind as she kept one eye on Shan and one on the path. A body sprawled in front of them suddenly came to life. The man struggled to stand upright, grabbing the heavy club at his feet as he did so. Ama passed her companion with a quick burst of speed, brought her seft upward in a smooth arc and sliced the Welf open across the torso without even slowing down.

When Shan caught up, they exchanged a quick look as they ran.
You’re welcome
, Ama thought, in answer to Shan’s unspoken sentiment.

Brin moved his people quickly and efficiently. Fismar provided his own fire from his huchak; electromagnetically propelled slivers tore through armor and flesh. A salvo of grenades arced in, taking out a clump on the left. One of Brin’s people succumbed to a Welf throwing weapon. His comrades grabbed him in an effort to save him.

“Drop him!” Seg ordered. “He’s dead.” He could tell, even from his position at the rear of the line, by the way the head was tilted. Broken neck.

First kill under his command. He avenged the man’s death with a steady burst into the area the projectile had come from.

“Last case!” Fismar yelled as he reloaded Seg’s weapon.

Seg nodded. “We’d best move, then.”

They darted through the wreckage and headed for the lines. Closer, closer. Finally, they tumbled in behind a wall of rubble the raiders were using for cover.

Shan and Ama were ahead of the rest of the group; the former gestured wildly to one of the troopers and pointed in Seg’s direction.

“Theorist Eraranat?” the trooper yelled. Beneath the thick layer of dust and debris that coated every inch of her, the muted insignia that marked her as the squad commander was barely visible.

“Yes!” Seg yelled back.

“I’m the senior commander left here. Do you know if we’re
getting air support
?” the trooper asked. Behind them, there were cries along the line. The Welf, stirred up by the latest incursion, were making another push.

“Eventually, but don’t factor it into the fight yet,” Seg yelled as the guns hammered again. “We’ll hold with what we have. What’s the situation?”

“Most of these Outers only have close quarters weapons but karg if there aren’t endless numbers of the bastards. There were a few shooters in the bunch to begin with, black powder weapons…”

“Damiar,” Seg interjected, speaking mostly to himself. “Welf aren’t allowed to handle those weapons.”

“Whatever they were, our snipers de-pop’d most of them, which disordered the rest for a short time. Too short. Now we just have to keep them from over-running us.”

“Understood,” Seg replied. “I’ve brought some fresh hands, feel free to use them where you need them.”

He turned to watch as Fismar gathered Brin and his people. The wounded trooper spit out a mouthful of grey saliva, grabbed a weapon off the ground and held it out to show the Kenda.

“Alright, this is the basic K-44 gauss impeller, we call it a
‘chack
. That doesn’t mean anything to you. You load it like this,” Fismar demonstrated. “You fire it like this.” He showed them how to pull the trigger. “I’ll put you with troopers. You do what you’re told here and we’ll get out of this alive.”

When Fismar glanced back to Seg and the senior commander, Seg nodded and Fismar limped on to the dazed and bewildered troops of the People. “Look lively, you bastards! All the Outers in the Storm have come for dinner!”

Ama coughed then caught her breath as she watched the Kenda men receive instruction from Fismar–they were confused but eager. She and Shan had made it, carried out their orders; it was time to return to Seg.

As she pushed her way through the crowd, she stopped beside Thuy, who stared in awe at the weapon Fismar had given him. “It’s not magic, big brother.”

“Sure looks like it.” Thuy turned the bulky weapon over in his hands.

Captain Tather moved past her, with his own weapon, and paused to touch his hand to his heart, then his forehead, “An honor, Kiera Nen, to die beside you.”

“To
fight
beside me,” Ama corrected as she returned the gesture. “And I you.”

She found Seg moving rapidly along the lines of troopers and slipped quietly to his side.

Seg wasn’t concerned with such trifles as proper positioning of the guns, sight lines, flanks, and other military jargon best left to the professionals. His role here, one he had adopted, was to be on the lines. He stopped to pick up some extra cartridges that were lying next to a downed trooper, then slung the needler up and moved along among the men, with Ama as his shadow.

“What’s the situation?” he asked the latest bunch of troopers he met, a trio who had taken an overwatch position around the remaining shattered chapel.

“Quiet here now,” the youngest answered, a boy who didn’t look old enough to shave.

“You the Theorist?” a second trooper asked, a woman and likely well seasoned in battle by her demeanor. “What in the name of the Storm are you doing here?”

“My raid,” Seg answered. He glanced over the edge of the rubble pile the three used for cover, “Movement.”

The sniper shifted position. “Sector four, scans showing upwards of thirty. They’re massing for a rush.”

“Good eye, Theorist,” the female trooper said. “If we’ve got thirty coming, that heavy needler might come in handy.”

“Where do you need me?” Seg asked. The man gestured to a position a short distance away. “Come up over there, and when we give the word lay down a sustained volley on the breach south of the gate.”

“Understood.” Seg crouched low, darted away from the cover and into the new position. Once there he aimed the needler then glanced at Ama, who had followed on his heels, as if he had just noticed she was there.

“Watch my back, if you please,” he said.

“Here they come!” came the shout. “Hold… hold… hold… HIT THEM!”

Seg watched the mass of Welf pour in through the gaps between the damaged out buildings.

This wasn’t war. This was slaughter. He held down the trigger and fired a stream of needles into the mass. Men screamed and died under his guns. But if he and the others let off for a second the slaughter would invert, and the screams and cries would be theirs.

“Flankers, flankers, flankers!” a cry went up from the left. An outpost they hadn’t visited yet was getting hit, up close and personal. Welf had somehow infiltrated into their midst, and troopers died noisily as the peasants swarmed them with their crude weapons.
Black smoke
rose from close-range weapons fire.

“Curl left and anchor, Theorist!” a trooper shouted. Seg wasn’t sure what that meant precisely, but he assumed that he was now responsible for holding this section of the line. He slapped a fresh cassette into the needler and took aim.

Where are they all coming from?
Ama wondered as she gripped her seft and crouched behind Seg. Every Welf in the east must have turned up for this battle. They were everywhere. She closed her eyes and hoped that Tev, the boy who had helped her, was not among them.

All she could hear was the din of weapons and the screams of the dying. And the pounding of blood in her ears.

Here and there, small groups of Welf made it through the line of fire. Not enough to do any damage but enough to create distractions. Two were headed in her direction. Teeth bared, she ran forward over the rubble to meet them. Her seft hung in her right hand, with a deceptive casualness. The key to this weapon was to remain loose and let the blade flow.

Welf weapons were intimidating but clumsy. And heavy. As she approached the first man, Ama dropped to one knee, slid forward, then swung the seft up and across his extended thigh. When the weapon hit its apex, she reached out with the other hand, grabbed the handle, stood up, brought her right elbow back hard and drove the sharp bottom end into the Welf’s gut as he dropped. She twisted the blade slightly before she dislodged it.

The second Welf was more prepared and brought his axe down in a heavy-handed swing. Ama raised the blade over her head just in time to save her skull from being split. As it was, the force of the blow knocked her backward and she scrambled to avoid the next strike that landed just wide of her leg but lost her grip on the seft as she did.

Wielding the cumbersome axe had its costs, though, and the Welf took a moment to raise the weapon and reset for another strike. In that briefest of pauses, Ama leapt to her feet and unsheathed her knife. With two bounds she reached the Welf, used the man’s knee as a springboard and mounted him like a gresher. She grabbed a fistful of hair and sliced his neck open in one swift move. As the body fell, she rode it to the ground, then collected her seft and turned to make sure Seg was unharmed.