Star Crusades Nexus: Book 08 - Wrath of the Gods: Read online

  Here we go again.

  Jack looked to his left and right, checking the others were there. Seven of them in this one pillbox arrangement made a tight fit, but at least the walls were thick and angled correctly this time. The slots for the guns were small, but with the visor overlay he could also see the shapes of machines in the distance.

  “How many are there, Corporal?”

  The veteran marine tilted his head just a fraction to look to Jack.

  “Who knows, Jack? Probably all of them.”

  He then looked to Jana.

  “Something tells me we’re gonna need your services.”

  Jana pointed to the stack of boxes to her side.

  “Don’t worry; we’re all stocked up here.”

  “It doesn’t matter. The machines don’t take prisoners. Not anymore.”

  He wasn’t speaking to anybody in particular; it was just a general gripe. The words had little effect on veterans like Jana and Corporal Frewyn, but to the four other inexperienced marines it was electric. The fear was palpable, made significantly worse as their imaginations took over. Corporal Frewyn moved from his position and struck Jack on the shoulder.

  “Private, control yourself.”

  Jack looked into the visor, and even through the darkened material the Corporal could see his eyes flickering.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  He struck Jack’s emergency seal, and the visor slid up to reveal the young man’s face. A thin sheen of perspiration ran over his forehead, but it was the eyes that got his attention. The low-level internal lighting inside the helmet showed him almost enough, but the occasional flare burst lit them up so that he could see the patterns in his retina.

  “You’re high, you idiot!”

  More shells dropped down over the defenses, and then a number of whistles blasted. They were unusual, unlike anything used by the marines. Right after the sound came dozens of Helion militia, a mixture of male and female volunteers with their improvised weapons. Some moved quickly, eager for the fight, but the majority had to be encouraged to move on by uniformed NHA soldiers.

  “Corporal!” called out one of the new recruits.

  Both Jack and Corporal Frewyn turned their attention back to the vision slit and the lower defenses in front of them. The gate was down and locked into position. Dozens more marines protected the lower walls and trenches running on either side of the entrance. Jana spotted the first of the Eques, those mighty six-legged war machines they had now fought so many times. One clambered out from a smashed wall and was immediately hit by three of the L56 machine guns. The continuous streams of gunfire tore chunks of armor off before it dropped to one of the lead knees.

  “Yes!” howled a marine from the front trench.

  The machine tipped over and almost crashed onto its stomach before one of the middle legs interceded and righted the thing. As it leveled, a flank-mounted sponson swiveled and opened fire. The rounds chewed fist-sized holes out of the masonry defenses, but they held up to the attack. Everything darkened to the west, with just the occasional artillery fire flickering and putting the ruined city into silhouette.

  It’s coming, Jack thought.

  He watched patiently, but deep down he knew the attack had not yet begun. A single Eques walker was nothing compared to the horrors they’d faced over weeks of siege warfare. His helmet’s scanning modes were having a hard time locking down on heat signatures, due to the vast amount of ordnances moving about and the wrecked buildings blotting out the distant view. More flares arced up and flashed, lighting up their position and the few hundred meters of cleared ground around their position.

  “Gods!”

  The very ground ripped and shuddered. Dozens of shapes, each the size of a Bulldog vehicle, pushed up like spear tips. What was beneath was anybody’s guess, but from the shaking of the ground, there was most definitely something down there.

  “I thought you said they couldn’t mine!”

  Corporal Frewyn watched the shapes slow down and then come to a stop. He looked confused and turned back to Jack.

  “I don’t know. Intel said the rock this close to the chasm was too thick.”

  Jack pointed at the shapes.

  “Maybe that’s why they’re coming out just in front of us, then.”

  Gunfire glanced off their thick armored flanks, and still they push on upwards. Then the first one stopped, and a pulsing light ran about its structure. Sergeant Stone appeared as if from nowhere and roared.

  “Get down!”

  Jack didn’t hesitate and reached out, grabbed Jana, and pulled her down. A bright white pulse blasted out in all directions as the nearest of the objects detonated. More and more followed, each detonating just below the surface. Clouds of dust bellowed out from the craters, and Jack was forced to switch to his mixed thermal and infrared targeting mode. He almost stumbled back at the sight.

  “Jana, look at this.”

  She moved to join him, but he was far too engrossed in the scene before him. Hundreds of shapes erupted from the ground in front of the defenses. They were like thickly spreading lava. Corporal Frewyn looked on in surprise, and it took Sergeant Stone’s presence to force them back into action. He appeared behind them and barked orders at two marines.

  “Get your squad to the left wall. You, I need ammunition and more flares at the CP. Now move it!”

  Both men rushed off to complete their chores, and he turned to put his attention on the secondary run of defenses. A shape appeared at the top of a low wall off into the distance. He flipped out his sidearm and put two rounds into its head at a distance of at least thirty meters. As the thing slid back amongst its comrades in the dark abyss outside the defenses, he looked at the marines.

  “I’ve seen all of this before. It’s the same bastardized tech we saw in the Uprising.”

  With one arm extended, he point to the distant creatures.

  “A generation ago we mistakenly called those things Biomechs.”

  He opened his visor and spat on the floor. The bitterness and hatred was starker than even Jack would have thought. A flash from the flares lit up the saliva to give it an almost silvery look to it.

  “Those things aren’t Biomechs, no more than General Gun is a Biomech. Those things, well, they are the lowest form of foot soldier; a thing created for combat no matter the cost. Each is made from the butchered remains of prisoners. I can promise you now that some of those are Helion and human prisoners from Eos.”

  Jana looked to Jack with surprise.

  “I don’t understand. We’ve never…”

  Sergeant Stone lifted his left hand just a little and pointed to the wall.

  “I can tell you from experience they can tear apart ten men. From their harvested organs, bones, and tissue they are able to produce warriors, each fused with other hardware and wiped minds. It gives them expendable warriors that will fight until every last one is dead. And they can do all of this in a matter of months, perhaps even weeks.”

  Three of the new recruits began shooting as targets appeared from the dust and mist. They fired long bursts, and Corporal Frewyn turned away from the Sergeant and snapped at them for their lack of discipline.

  “Short bursts, and pick your targets.”

  The sound was already deafening but right behind them, far up into the mountains, came the heavy artillery. It started with just a few dozen thumps, followed by the entire mountain lighting up. Hundreds of high explosive, thermite, and armor piercing rounds surged down from the position. The accuracy and rate of fire was astounding, yet the effect on the defenders was electric. Each time a shell smashed down into the ruined city, a yell would erupt from them. Khreenk, marine, and Helion alike shouted out after each blast.

  “This is incredible,” said one of the marines at the vision slit.

  Jack shook his head as he watched the bloodbath.

  “It won’t last. They are expecting this. You just watch…”

  On cue, the hidden weapons of th
e Biomechs began their own counter-battery fire. It wasn’t as impressive as the bombardment coming from the mountain, but it wasn’t far off. Worse were the sight of more than forty Biomech fighters, and even a handful of Bioray transports moving over the city to provide aerial fire support. The guns reduced in number until only sporadic shells came down to the east. The marine looked to Jack with an expression of horror about him.

  “That’s it?”

  Jack nodded and tried to smile.

  “For now.”

  Almost as though it was a premade scenario, a pair of the creatures leapt over the outer wall. They must have used the bodies of the myriad of fallen comrades to reach the position and landed directly in front of the marines. Corporal Frewyn lifted his carbine to his shoulder and pushed its muzzle into the firing slit. Two short bursts were all that it took to cut down the things.

  “Now watch that wall. If anything else comes over the top, you’ll know what to do. Right?”

  All of them nodded and turned their attention to the fearsome horde moving closer and closer. More of the things dropped over the wall, but the weight of defensive fire easily cut them down. Corporal Frewyn looked back to Sergeant Stone and shook his head bitterly.

  “Those poor bastards.”

  He then lifted his carbine and selected the high-power mode.

  “It’s our job not to just win this battle; now we have to put all of them out of their misery. We kill them all, every damned last one of them.”

  Jana opened her visor, retched, and then vomited. Stone ignored her and nodded at the vision slits.

  “Put some fire down!”

  The view from the slits gave then a look out over the outer lower walls and to the ruined city. Dark shapes of metal machines filled the skyline, and thick black smoke mixed with the night to reduce the visibility to only a few hundred meters. Out of that darkness came ten, then hundreds, and finally thousands of the enemy. Jack took aim and opened fire. The targeting mode on his visor tagged the first thirty of the enemy, and then he lost count.

  Keep shooting.

  One magazine went and then another. Then he realized he’d used five. A quick look to his side showed the others were still blazing away. Their own gunfire seemed insignificant next to the entrenched heavier weapons. Even so, the swarms of foot soldiers continued to try and breach the outer walls.

  How many are there?

  He activated the overhead view that took in data from the scouts as well as the aerial drones. It showed a massive ocean of red completely engulfing the last remaining outpost this side of the chasm. Jack almost choked as he looked at their situation.

  “Corporal, have you seen this?”

  “Not now!” he snapped back.

  The ground rumbled and shook, and then three Eques walkers appeared outside the walls. All of the defenders continued to shoot at any available target, and one Eques was brought down. The second soon followed, but not before collapsing down onto the wall. The mass of the thing, combined with the barrage of mortars, rockets, and gunfire tore open a section ten meters wide. Scores of creatures poured through, along with almost as many of the terrifying Decurion war machines.

  “Aalkab!” shouted the NHA officer.

  He ran out from where he’d been waiting just to the side of the bunkers, directly toward the breach. More and more of the machines moved in, and explosions ripped along the wall. The marines and robotic defenses tore them apart, but still they came. Two managed to reach a SAAR robot and tore it apart before a pair of Khreenk warriors moved into the open and blasted them apart. They too were then killed by overwhelming numbers of the terrifying Biomech creatures.

  “We can’t hold them,” Jack said quietly.

  A marine runner dropped a metallic box next to him and tapped him twice on the shoulder. He looked down and saw the twelve magazines fitted into the box.

  More ammo, great!

  With a quick movement, he grabbed at the box, pulled out the nearest magazine, and slid it into the L52 with a clunking sound. He then took aim through the slot and found an unlimited number of targets. It was like some hellish breach that limitless monsters streamed through. Jack pulled the trigger and emptied the magazine in one long, noisy burst. He could see the Eques walker as it climbed over its fallen comrade. Around its legs lay scores of dead creatures, crunching and tearing under the weight of the machine’s metallic limbs.

  “Look!” said Jana in terror.

  Jack moved a little to his left and continued to fire. A group of seven Helion civilians were out in the open and running toward the Eques machine. Their long, thick coats broke up their outlines, but their Marine Corps helmets marked them out as soldiers, of a kind at least. They carried no firearms. In their hands they carried their spears, each fitted out with a powerful shaped charge. They moved with speed but little skill, as they clambered over the bodies to reach the enemy.

  “Give them covering fire,” Corporal Frewyn shouted.

  Jack, Jana, and the rookies took aim at the eastern wall. There were hundreds of targets, but it was the small screen of Thegns and the biological monstrosities moving on all four legs that were the current problem. Jack emptied round after round into the Thegns that had now moved in behind the wall of dead from both sides. A flicker of white light marked return fire, but Jack ignored it and kept on shooting.

  They can’t get us inside here.

  He knew it wasn’t true, but by trying to convince himself, he hoped it might bolster his already failing confidence. The enemy was not holding back and surged ahead. They hacked with their blades and shot at any one they could find in the killing ground between the breached outer wall and the next line of defense. Three Helions were cut down in the opening volley in the first few seconds. The remaining four managed to reach the metal monster and stabbed at it with their long spears. As each one connected, the tip exploded in a blinding white light. Two of the Helions were vaporized in the blasts, but the others survived long enough for the ruined machine to fall down onto them.

  “Poor fools,” Jack muttered under his breath.

  He could see another group of the Helion volunteers charging out and stabbing their weapons into Decurion machines and even a team of Thegns. Each time the result was the same, as bright blasts would destroy the enemy and also sometimes the user. The outer wall was untenable now and dozens of marines, Helions, and Khreenk abandoned their positions and ran back under the cover of bunkers, robots, and turret fire.

  “Incoming!” Corporal Frewyn cried.

  A flaming object streaked down from the sky and crashed into a pillbox just behind their position. The structure was torn apart, and a dozen Decurion assault machines leapt from the vehicle. The Corporal turned about and faced them, his carbine held low to his hip. He managed to squeeze off just three rounds when the first one reached him. It lifted two arms to stab at him, and then Jack was there. He put a single high-power round into its center mass and continued to empty a magazine on the normal setting. The machine staggered back and dropped to the ground.

  “Thanks, Private. Your left!”

  Two more of the machines were heading for the side of the bunker and managed to catch one of the marines. In one swift stroke, the young man was decapitated, and the second man took a swipe that left a gash from his stomach to his collar. Jana screamed as she fired her own weapon at the machines and then turned back to help the badly wounded man.

  “What do we do, Corporal?” Jack asked.

  He slid in yet another magazine while watching the shapes moving all along the eastern wall. It was now breached in a dozen places, yet less than half of the enemy troops were able to make it through. He took aim and fired again, and again.

  “We keep fighting!” said the Corporal through clenched teeth.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Zealots of the Uprising were an odd mixture of religious organizations and individuals. One thing they all had in common was a religious zeal, built and encouraged by the influence of the Biomechs. Ev
en after the Fall of Terra Nova, it was never entirely clear how the machines had been able to influence so many different peoples. In time, the last dark days of the ancient Great War would give up pieces of information, one of which was the pact, signed in blood between the vanquished leaders of Carthago and the mysterious group now known simply as the Sons of the League.

  Origins of Echidna and the Zealots

  ANS Titania, near Helios Prime

  The ship had been dead in space for an hour now, and still the fighting raged on inside. This was no conventional boarding action though, as there were no valuable systems still functioning inside the warship. The battle was over the very bodies of the crew, and they were making the enemy pay for every soul they took.

  The port gunnery deck was a mass of twisted metal, yet the crew of six had managed to construct a primitive barrier in just minutes. The lack of gravity meant they had been forced to jam equipment and containers amongst the wreckage to deny access through the three breaches into the rest of the ship. Just as before, the machines attacked, but this time the Decurions took their time. Three of them approached and began carefully pulling and cutting at the barriers.

  “What now?” asked ensign Harris.

  The young officer almost choked as he asked the question. Lieutenants Matius and Ingo Morato looked at each other and then to the young man. Ingo spoke first.

  “Use any weapon you can. We’ll get to the weapons locker.”

  He turned and pushed away back into the darker section of the deck. Two of the lockers had already been raided but right at the back where a gun-loading mount had been shattered, lay another. Ingo pulled on a grab handle and drifted silently through the ship to the unit. He crashed into the metal frame without a sound and yanked on the handle. It pulled open to reveal two magazines and a single thermal pistol.

  “That’s it?” Matius asked, landing alongside him.

  Ingo pulled out the pistol, checked its slide operation, and pushed in the thermal clip. He tucked the second into his utility belt and then looked back. Both of them were dressed in their Navy Personal Defense Suit, a much lighter variant of the gear used by the Marines Corps and now used by a small number of frontline crew. It was designed to function as a basic protective layer against fire, flash burns, and the vacuum of space for short amounts of time. Unfortunately for the crew, it was completely unsuited to the rigors of combat with Decurions, as was made evident by the countless mutilated corpses floating about the ship.