Blood of Heroes (The Ember War Saga Book 3) (21 page)

The name got the woman to open her eyes.

“We’re humans, here to help. We’ll explain the rest later,” Yarrow said. “Come with us.” The medic pointed to the pathway leading up into the mountains.

A banshee howl echoed through the canyon. More joined, creating a hellish chorus. A half dozen rounded a bend, tearing up the dead riverbed with their feet and claws as they ran.

“Take them,” Hale said. He dropped to a knee and aimed at the nearest banshee.

Yarrow scooped the Dotok up in his arms and ran off.

Hale fired a single shot, hitting a banshee in the shoulder and sending it to the ground. His next shot hit a banshee square in the chest, killing its forward momentum like it had run into a wall.

His next shot came with the crash of Bailey’s rail rifle. The hypervelocity round sizzled overhead and struck the canyon wall, cracking the rock and sending slabs of dark stone crashing down on more banshees as they emerged from around the bend.

“I don’t need some stinking nuke,”
Bailey said through the IR.
“Get your ass back here. I’ll cover you,”
she said.

Hale hit a charging banshee in the legs. He panned his rifle to the next banshee, but a round hit it in the forehead before he could engage.

“I said I’d cover you! Move!”
Bailey shouted.

Hale got up and raced back to the pass. Another of Bailey’s precision shots snapped past his helmet.

“You’re clear, sir, but keep up the pace,”
Bailey said.
“Lots more on the way.”

“Bailey, rig your batteries for—”

“Already on it!”
Her sniper rifle ran on batteries the size of a lunch box. Sabotaging the batteries would produce an explosion strong enough to take out a three-story building.

“Sir,”
Torni said.
“We’ve got positive contact with the birds. They’re almost here, but they didn’t come with any air support. No Eagles.”

“Torni, you get those civilians loaded up and out of here. Don’t wait for me, you understand?” Hale put iron in his last words; this was no time for a discussion.

“Roger, sir. Just hurry up so we don’t have to wait.”
Torni said.

Hale made it to the trail. Bailey took a green cylinder from her belt, attached it to her battery and covered it with dirt and rocks. Yarrow stood over her, taking potshots at the advancing banshees, their howls growing louder and more numerous.

“Ain’t pretty, ain’t much of a charge, but it’ll slow them down,” she said. Hale looked back and saw dozens of banshees clambering over the pile of rocks Bailey sent down.

“Did you set a safety timer?” Hale asked.

“No, figured I’d need to blow this thing pretty damned quick when the time came,” Bailey said. She slung the pack with her disassembled rail rifle over her shoulder and fired her carbine.

“Give me the detonator,” Hale said and took it from Bailey. “Up the mountain, let’s go.”

Hale charged up the steep slope, just behind Bailey and Yarrow. He saw the last of the Dotok vanish over the top of the path and onto the mesa.

He whirled around and fired from the hip at the tide of banshees coming for them, most going for the straight and easy path right to the three Marines. He set his thumb against the detonator trigger.

“Hold on to something.” Hale pressed the detonator…and nothing happened. Tens of banshees poured up the slope. Hale slammed the detonator against his armor and hit the switch again.

The battery exploded with a crack, blowing a cloud of dust and pulverized banshees into the air. A shard of rock moving faster than he could see struck the pathway and skipped into the air. It cut past Hale and struck armor.

Bailey staggered back, her hand pressed against her side. She fell to the ground with a groan.

“Bailey!” Yarrow pulled her hand back. A flint of stone impaled her armor and blood pulsed out of the wound with each heartbeat. Her breathing was short and shallow. “I think it nicked her lung. I’ve got to treat her,” Yarrow said.

“Not here!” Hale shot down a banshee staggering up the pathway. He didn’t see any more of the enemy, but he could hear them in the cloud of dust at the base of the mountain.

Yarrow grabbed Bailey by the carry handle on her armor and dragged her up the mountain, a trail of dark blood staining the ground in her wake.

“Torni, I’ve got injured,” Hale said. “Status on evac?”

“One Destrier transport away, second loading up. Two more Mules waiting to land,”
Torni said.
“Who’s hit and how bad?”

“Bailey took a—” Black talons arced over the side of the pass and struck Hale in the face. Pain lanced through his neck and shoulders as he slammed into the other side of the pass. He heard shouts and the sound of gauss fire.

A dead banshee lay over the jagged rocks; another flung the corpse away from the wall and came for them. Hale tried to raise his rifle, but his left arm refused to move. He pulled out his pistol and shot the banshee at point-blank range, puncturing the armor on its throat and sending it rearing back. It opened its jaws to scream and Hale sent a bullet through the roof of its mouth and into the brain case.

The banshee fell back. Hale watched it fall and saw more banshees crawling up the side of the mountain.

He pulled a grenade from his belt and hooked the pin against a finger on his useless hand. He got the pin loose and tossed the grenade over the side. Hale looked at his shoulder; a gash rent through his armor, exposing muscle and bone on his shoulder.

The shock of the grenade shaking the mountain sent him to his knees. He pulled out another grenade…and the world started to fade away.

“Sir, you’re hurt!” Yarrow shouted at him from inches away, but his voice was distant, like a half-heard whisper. Hale got the pin pulled on his second grenade, then tossed it over the side.

“Get…her out of here,” Hale said.

The grenade Hale had tossed came back over the wall. It arced through the air and glinted in the sunlight before it exploded.

****

“Hale? Sir?” No one had answered Torni since the second grenade went off.

“Standish, get in the bottom turret,” she said. “I think we’re going to need you in there.” 

“On it.” Standish, standing at the top of the final Mule’s ramp, disappeared into the ship. Jorgen took his place and helped the last of the refugees into his ship.

He called to Torni, but she ignored him as she ran for the pathway leading down the mountain where she found Yarrow, trying to drag Hale and Bailey the last few yards up the path. Yarrow, the armor of his helmet and upper body dented and ripped, had blood running from beneath a shoulder plate. He fell to the ground, never letting go of Hale and Bailey.

“No…” Torni ran to Yarrow and helped him up. She took up his burden and got them over the top of the path.

“Grenade, got us good,” Yarrow said. “Hale’s bad. Bailey’s worse.”

“Shut up and move,” Torni said through gritted teeth. She dragged the injured Marines to the Mule and got them into the cargo hold. Dotok jumped out of the way as she pulled down the stretchers built into the walls. She grabbed the nearest Dotok adult, screamed at him to get the Marines strapped into the stretchers then charged back out of the Mule.

Yarrow still hadn’t made it. He was down to a knee, firing poorly aimed shots as a banshee crawled up the pathway. Torni grabbed Yarrow’s rifle and put a round between the banshee’s temples. She tossed Yarrow over her shoulder and got him back to the Mule.

“How bad are you?” she asked him.

“It hurts, but it could be worse,” he said.

“Do what you can for the others,” she said. Yarrow nodded. She slapped him on the helmet. “Move!”

There were another half-dozen Dotok at the base of the ramp, reaching to Torni.

“What’re we waiting for?” she demanded from Jorgen. “We’ve got room.”

“I don’t have the air!” Jorgen shouted. “New Abhaile is on fire. We’re going to the
Breit
, no atmo. I take on any more civvies and they all suffocate.”

Torni looked back at the Dotok and saw the woman and child Hale had risked so much to save. She grabbed the two of them and pushed them up the ramp. Torni reached under her armor and detached her O2 tanks. She took off her helmet and shoved them into Jorgen’s hands.

“With my re-breather, that’s four hours of air. Get in the cockpit,” she said to the pilot.

“What about you?”

“I’m staying.” She pointed to the Dotok. “There are five more women and children out there. Who will stay with me so they can live?”

Two Dotok men and Nil’jo came to Torni; one man held a child on his hip. He passed the child to its mother, who pleaded with her husband not to volunteer.

“The little ones don’t breath as much,” a man said. He ran down the ramp and pulled the rest of the women and children up the ramp.

Torni jumped off the ramp, and her volunteers came with her. The ramp rose out of the dirt and closed as the Mule took off, blowing up a cloud of brown dirt.

Torni closed her eyes and listened to the Mule fade away. She took her rifle off her shoulder and looked at the five Dotok men who’d stayed behind. A banshee’s wail echoed up the mountain.

“Sarge, is that you down there?”
Standish asked, the IR already breaking up from range.

“Standish, you’re a good Marine. Take care of everyone for me,” she said. Standish’s response was lost in static.

Nil’jo picked up a rock. “I was honored to serve as your Chosen.”

“Our families will be less without us,” said the father who gave up his spot, “but they will live, and become greater.” He lifted up a rock with both hands.

The sound of banshees grew louder.

****

Torni stabbed her pistol into the back of a banshee and fired a round. The banshee reared back and swung an elbow at her. She ducked under the blow and jammed the pistol into its face. The gun clicked empty.

It knocked her pistol away, nearly breaking her fingers with the blow. Torni stumbled back and found her gauss rifle in the dirt. She swung it up like a club and cracked the butt across the banshee’s head. The blow staggered the monster and shattered the stock. She pulled the weapon back to her hip and jammed the jagged edges into the banshee’s throat.

Gray blood splattered across her hands. The banshee lashed out and scored a glancing blow across the top of her head. Torni backpedaled, her world spinning from the concussion. She fell to the ground, the taste of blood and dirt in her mouth.

She rolled onto all fours and spat. She’d taken too many hits for her adrenaline to tamp down the pain of broken bones and a dozen cuts up and down her body from the fight she never had a chance of winning. Her bayonet snapped from the forearm housing and she got up to face the banshees.

Tens of banshees surrounded her, standing over the ruined bodies of the Dotok who’d stayed behind. The monsters stared at her…and did nothing else.

“What is this?” Torni kept her guard up. “What’re you waiting for? Huh?”

No response.

“What’re you waiting for!”

A banshee in front rank twitched. Its arms and shoulders rose into the air like a scarecrow’s. The armor on its arms peeled away from the body and floated in the air. More armor ripped away from the banshees, all of it coalescing toward a single point over their heads. The armor swirled inside a vortex; wind rose from it and pressed Torni back. A point of light emerged from the armor, growing so bright Torni had to look away.

Then…it all went silent.

Torni looked up. Plates of red armor formed a humanoid shape in the air, encasing a being of pure light. It looked down on Torni, tendrils of light floating out of the eye slits on a flat mask.

“You…” the word came from the banshees, all of them speaking in unison, “you are known. Your trace was on Anthalas. Now you are here.” The General descended toward the ground, its feet never touching the surface.

“You must be in charge,” Torni said.

“How did your species survive my purge?” the chorus of voices asked. “What did you take from Anthalas?”

Torni felt fear rise in her chest. The General reached toward her, phantom fingers swinging toward her like tentacles of a leviathan.

“Don’t know?” Torni backed away. Her foot hit the edge of the mesa, and she looked back and saw rocks and dirt falling to oblivion. “Let me tell you something about humanity.
Gott. Mit. Uns.”
She flung herself back and closed her eyes.

A force grabbed her body like an enormous hand had just wrapped around her, pinning her arms and legs against herself.

“You think petty gestures will deny me?” the voices said.

Torni floated toward the General, its eyes burning.

“All corruption will be cleansed. I will burn your species’ existence out of memory. Your fate will be no different.”

Torni spat on the General’s faceplate.