AMP The Core (23 page)

For much of the following day, the battles raged on between the Durians and our reprogrammed androids and infected ships. When the last of our converts had been taken out, the Durians turned their efforts back towards taking West Fallia.

Again, I was a killing machine as the Durian troops rushed our walls. After fourteen hours of continuous firing, my fingers were again numb. As the walls were breached, I almost had a feeling of relief that it was over. The Colonel ordered the evac shortly thereafter. I powered to the other side and began cutting that swath through the encircling troops for our Marines to escape. This time the attackers moved away, allowing us an unfettered retreat.

When I reached the walls of Mirada, I continued on until I reached the Colonel’s office. I powered into the room, blinked in, and removed my helmet.

I plopped down in my usual chair and spoke with heavy breath. "Tell me that bomb is ready, Colonel. I would be happy to deliver it myself."

The Colonel held up his hand and spoke in a soft voice. "Don’t mention that again, Grange. We can’t be sure if anyone is listening."

I pursed my lips. "Sorry, Colonel. I thought of all places, this office would be secure."

The Colonel replied, "We can’t be sure, so cease all talk of it. What we need to work out is how we defend this place."

I nodded. "I’m all ears, Colonel. Just tell me what you need me to do."

The Colonel spoke. "We are expecting the attack to come directly from West Fallia towards this long wall. What we need is for you and the BGSers to split into two teams. You will be positioned here and here, on the outer edges of the throughway. Our wall defenses are strongest here, so your mission will be to funnel the attackers into this corridor."

I replied, "We can do that."

The Colonel continued, "We aren’t expecting them to begin their assault for another four hours. I would suggest you take your team and have them all sleep for at least three of those four. This could easily be a battle that lasts for several days. We will need everyone at their best for this, Grange. So, go and sack it for a bit."

I nodded as I stood. "Thanks, Colonel, and it might benefit you to get some rest beforehand too."

The Colonel waved his hand in a gesture telling me to leave. He had work to do reviewing the personnel to move around in support of the city’s defense.

I had my team assemble in one of the buildings by the quad. "OK, listen up, we have been instructed to take a rest for three hours. The Colonel wants us fresh, as this is our last front to defend, and we may be going at it nonstop for days if not longer. Set your timers for three hours, and I will brief you all when we wake."

The buzzing on my sleep timer jolted me fully awake. Stimulants added to my bio-gel soon had me fully alert. It was time to prepare for our final fight.

I raised the Colonel on the comm to get the latest briefing. His response was that plans had not changed. We would be used to funnel the Durian assault into a narrow but heavily defended section of wall. The fight for Mirada was our last hope for the Human race.

In and around the target walls of Mirada were just over a million Marines, including eighteen thousand of the Colonel’s Gray Ghouls who had been modified with the upgraded prosthetics.

I found myself wishing I had time to spend with Ashley. Here we were, possibly at the end of our existence, and me without the one I loved beside me. I took solace in the fact that she was safe. A "safe" that would possibly end with her and Jon Touchstone being the only two Humans left alive.

I then laughed to myself as I thought about Frig. Who would be there to keep him in line with sarcastic comments? And what life would the three of them have, being constantly on the run from the Durians? I asked everyone on our team to gather around for a pep talk.

I spoke with my helmet under my arm. "We are the Human race! We were plucked from our homes and placed in this nightmare of an existence against our will. We’ve fought and run a hundred times over. We are survivors. We adapt. We overcome. And here today we are faced with yet another fight.

"Only, this is a fight that we can no longer run from. This is a fight that we have no other option but to win. We’ve all dug down deep before. This time we have to go deeper. We all have to reach down to the core of our very beings.

"When we draw back from this core, we need to have three things in our grasp: all of the resolve we have within us, all of the courage, and all of the fight. We are placing our hearts, minds, and souls on the field for this one final battle, a must-win battle for us all.

"So, take a moment to reach deep down inside for those things. And when you have them firmly in your grasp, share that resolve, courage, and spirit of fight with the others here around you. Draw on each other as we make this final appeal for survival. Draw on me, here today, and know in your heart that we will stand tall when all this has ended! We will be the victors! We will control our fates! We will control our existence and the existence of the Human species!"

I looked around as every member of the BGS team looked down in reflection as they attempted to pull strength from within. As I looked around the room, Frost held her fist up in the air.

Frost spoke. "Humans!"

Frost looked around the room and then yelled, "Humans!"

A chant was soon started that had the room echoing with the sound of emotion!

"Humans! Humans! Humans!"

Hands were then shaken and firm embraces given, along with slaps on the back and every other gesture of encouragement. When the group had finally begun to settle down, all eyes again turned towards me.

York spoke. "Well?"

I replied, "Well what?"

York laughed. "Well, you got us all worked up an hour before the fight, Mr. Grange. What are we supposed to do with all this energy now?"

I pointed towards the door as I shook my head. "Well, go forth and spread that energy around, York. I am sure there are others that need a good pep talk out there. Go, spread the love!"

York again laughed as she turned towards the door. "I’ll give a pep talk, Mr. Grange, but spreading the love, that sounds a little more like something for Frost!"

The team left the room full of laughs and high spirits, high spirits that I hoped would carry on to others. When I reached the Colonel’s office, I saw a team of staffers that were hustling about with encouraging smiles on their faces and banter coming from their mouths. The Colonel and Admirals had just finished a similar speech. For a moment, I wondered if I might really be the leader the Colonel had often talked about. If I was, I knew in my heart that it was as a leader of the species that most deserved to win the final fight. We were Humans, and it was time for us to kick ass like Humans do.

The Colonel brought me back from my little self-hurrah with a hard slap on my back. "Grange! It’s time! Take your teams out there and give those aliens a fight like they never dreamed of having. Make them pay for messing with the Human race!"

The Colonel then leaned in close. "About that which I told you to not talk of earlier, we need to keep those walls up for three more days. If we make that happen, we can possibly turn this thing around."

The Colonel then leaned back and spit a chaw of Omega root juice on my pant leg. He then turned away to bark orders at his staff. I followed with the order for my teams to deploy.

York and Frost joined me on the right side of the field as we split into two groups of seventeen BGS Marines each. By the time we moved into position, the Durian soldiers were on the move.

As predicted, the Durians marched towards us in a column that our sensors quickly counted as being fifteen million soldiers deep and growing. I took a long breath as I prepared for the endless fighting that was to come.

York spoke. "All the marbles, Sir. Last of the Mohicans. End of the paved road. Final spin of the wheel. Last call, Sir!"

I shook my head and raised my fist as I looked over towards a grinning York.

Frost spoke. "Really? You two are going to monkey up our last fight with all that archive speak?"

I pointed to Frost as I smiled. "Monkey up. I like it, Sergeant!"

Frost rolled her eyes.

Seconds later, the fight began with the first shot from an ion cannon on the Mirada wall behind us. The skies then turned bright blue as thousands of ion bolts of energy raced back and forth across the fields. Our BGS teams each separated into a long line. A hundred meters separated each of us as we began to cut down the troops along the outside of the column.

The killing was under way. A continuous stream of death that would possibly go on for days. I squeezed my triggers, and countless Colossun androids, Colossun regulars, Durian Helgrons, Durian regulars, Dakar regulars, Prassi regulars, and even a mix of Targs fell before me. Bodies began to pile up as the attackers marched forward. Those in the middle of the funnel, who had avoided death from a distance, then charged at the wall.

For hour after hour, the surge of troops pushed forward only to be slaughtered or pushed back. Before I knew it, the day had turned to night and then once again into day. My feet had not moved from their position since I had set them in place. Only the pain drugs from my BGS suit had prevented me from giving up on pulling my triggers.

Midway into the second day, the Durians decided their mass frontal assault was not working. Bodies lay a meter deep on the fields before us, hindering their attacks.

As I continued with the slaughter of the enemy, the Colonel blasted out an alert. "We have incoming enemy ships! Grange! Pull your teams back to the wall!"

As I began to repeat the order, two dozen Durian cruisers swooped in with their heavy cannons firing, striking the fields around us. As we turned to flee, the strafing rounds carried through our BGS positions. The active skin on my suit shot to 60 and then 84 percent as I powered back towards the wall. All twenty-four of the cruisers crashed into the nearby fields as our city cannon fire ripped them apart. The Durian barrage was heavy, killing tens of thousands of their own troops.

When I reached the wall, I pulled up the stats on my HUD to get a count of who had survived on my team. Seven names remained on the list, including my own. The hair on the back of my neck stood tall as I realized that Sergeant Frost’s name was not among them.

York was soon standing by my side. "She’s gone, Sir. I saw one of those heavy bolts hit her dead on."

I looked out over the field of death that lay before me. Before I had time to think or to mourn, the Durians continued their offensive. I again moved out into the onrushing troops and fired with the relentless rage that I now felt. Body parts flew, blood splattered, and full energy packs exploded, but the enemy continued to come.

We pushed back hard for an hour, but the weaker parts of the wall began to falter. The enemy troops piled themselves against the walls as living wedges for others to climb. I began to run along the base of the wall, blinking in and out as I continued to fire. My efforts were not enough.

As the battle raged through the thirty-fourth hour, the outer wall defenses began to fall. In under an hour, the ion inhibitor defenses of the once heavily fortified city began to shut down. An unstoppable barrage of heavy ion bolts rained down from above. Our troops and our people were fleeing the bunkers that filled the earth under the city of Mirada.

I dropped down into one of the main corridors of the bunker complex and began to unleash my wrath on the enemy who entered from above. For every twenty soldiers I killed, ten others passed my position. Our chances for existence as a species were slipping away rapidly. In the next hour, the city of Mirada and the bunkers under her foundations were in the hands of our enemy. The crossing bunker tunnels from Mirada to her sister cities were all blown in an attempt to allow us to regroup.

I powered up through the earth that surrounded me and settled into the city of Housil. "Colonel! Are you out there?"

Several seconds passed before the Colonel replied, "I’m here, Grange. This war is not going well. We need another full day with the labs under Furnac to have that bomb ready for use. We probably only have ten or twelve hours that we can keep them at bay. If you have some dirty tricks up your sleeve, now would be the time to pull them."

I raised York and the other remaining BGS Marines on the comm. "We have thousands of ships up there. We can’t make much of a difference down here on the ground, but we can make it up there. I’m ordering the Wrens to land in Housil. I want each of you to take a Wren and use it to take out as many of those ships up there as you can. Blink in and out, use the coil gun, doesn’t matter. Just do whatever damage you can."

As we lifted off towards the bulk of the fleet that sat in orbit, I passed along the reminder: "Keep in mind that they can track us to some degree, even when you are blinked out fully. Just keep moving, as I don’t think they have any solid way to do that. Good hunting, all!"

As we lifted above the atmosphere, the blue glow from the Durian ships that made up the net that surrounded the planet could be seen by the naked eye. I selected a Colossun battleship as my first target. I maneuvered until my Wren occupied the same space as the ship’s bridge. With a simple blink in and out, the entire officer crew on the ship, along with much of her control circuits, was taken out.

I repeated the process another five times before the ships in orbit began to make the random moves that made targeting difficult.

As I slipped into a Durian command ship, the Colonel came on the comm. "Just letting you know that the final push is on. They are already hitting the walls of Housil hard. We have moved as many Marines as we can through the bunker corridors. As soon as we have all the civilians out of there, we will evac the walls and bring our boys back to Bethel. Furnac should be the last city they attack."

I replied, "Thanks for the info, Colonel. We are going to exact our toll up here for as long as we can."

After closing the channel, I swiped my holo-display until the enemy ship counts appeared. Fifty-five thousand, one hundred and forty-eight. Our little fleet of seven Wrens was not going to make a difference, but we would do all we could.

Word soon came that Housil was lost. Three hours later, the same news came in about Bethel. The once-towering Gonta city of Furnac was our final hope. The walls of the city were high. Our troops were packed in tight, as were our citizens in the great bunkers below. In a final gesture of bravado, in an attempt to show their strength, the Durians halted their attack as their troops surrounded our last best hope.

Our sensors placed our Marines at twelve million ready and willing. The Durians now had twenty-six million surrounding Furnac, with reinforcements coming in a continuous stream.

I slid the Wren into another Durian command ship. For a moment, I held off my blink in and out as I looked at their war screens that covered the walls surrounding the bridge. As I focused my eyes on a single screen that displayed a map of Furnac, my psyche was rocked as the blue troops surrounding the city turned to a yellow and then a flashing red. The final assault had begun!

Without thinking, I pulled the trigger on the Wren’s coil gun, flooding the Durian bridge with flying debris. I spun the Wren 180 degrees and fired off another round before going in search of my next target.

As I hit free space, I swiped at my holo-display to show the closest target. What I was not expecting was the sight of two green blips on the tactical screen. The two green blips soon turned into two hundred twenty-seven.

Ashley’s voice came over the comm. "Don, thank goodness we made it in time!"

I replied, "The Durians are assaulting our final city below! We only have a few hours at best before they overrun the walls! I wish you had gotten here before they finished constructing that net. Flying through those beams will overwhelm the active skin on these ships. And we don’t have any way to reach them to take it down."

Frig replied, "Don’t get your panties in a wad, Sir. We have a solution."

In an excited move, I stood up from my chair. "Oh! Please tell me you are not trying to make some sick joke!"

Several seconds later, the first of the Durian net ships exploded as a wormhole moved through its internals. The same fate was then suffered by another and another until a hole existed in the Durian net large enough for the fleet of Wrens and the Swift to slip through.

I threw my right fist up into the air as I let out a howl of joy! My unbridled fist met with a console just over my head, smashing its contents and rendering my environmental system inert.

I quickly joined the Swift and the procession of Wrens as they dropped through the atmosphere towards the city of Furnac. The Durian troops were just at the beginning stages of topping the high walls as the Swift opened up with her coil gun.