Gamma Nine (Book One) (37 page)

“Now is the
time Wolves, stand!” Locke yelled over the radio, leaving the
channel open for Gunn and Jinx and the rest of the ground troop to
hear what he was about to say.

Locke’s
inspirational speeches before battles were as much legend as he
was, and he delivered them with fervour, instilling courage into
all who heard him speak.

They were less
than thirty seconds away from their drop zone, so Locke needed to
make it short and very powerful.

The hero that
Locke was obliged and rose to the occasion, as was his way.

The Maiden
reduced its speed as it swooped in low between the buildings
overlooking the first objective. A stealth drop was quick and
unnoticeable to any untrained onlookers. The Maiden’s belly was
only a few feet above the ground and still moving when its bay door
opened to unchain its angry cargo. Gloomy clouds had obscured the
sunset over Santor, giving the Wolves and the rest of the ground
forces another advantage in the falling darkness.

The Wolves
leapt from the Maiden’s gaping door, touching down on the ground
with barely a sound. Gunn raised the nose of the Maiden of Flame as
soon as the last Wolf exited her ship, gaining altitude and
increasing power, racing towards the next objective.

Elsewhere the
other drop ships had performed the exact same manoeuvre to offload
their own cargo, compensating only slightly more for the weaker
Lancers and the support vehicles.

“Package
delivered,” Gunn reported less than a minute after the Wolves had
touched down.

Jay was alone
until his protection detail arrived, which would be barely a
handful of minutes. Jay was still locating the best position for
Godwaker to be set up when the other drop ships appeared overhead.
Eight Lancers dropped from the leading ship in silence, only
nodding at the scout Titan as they passed his position. Two of the
Lancers carried a mounted heavy machine gun, and another followed
with a portable scanning station attached to his back. The Lancers
took up positions on the roof surrounding Jay, leaving nothing to
chance, covering all of the angles they possibly could. Jay felt at
ease as he saw the heavy machine gun positioned close by, its field
of fire covering the doors leading up from the bowels of the
building beneath.

“In position,”
Jay reported to Locke, who was hidden in the doorway of an
abandoned cafe. He could see the first objective, the school, from
his positions, as could the rest of the Wolves on the ground.

Christian and
Nathan crouched nearby, watching for movement on either side of the
street in front of the school.

Xander stood in
the doorway of the building next door, silently flicking at one of
the devices attached to his armour, scanning the area in front of
the school with his tactical sight.

Pyoter was
invisible to the naked eye, standing upright behind Locke in the
shadow of the cafe. He stood dead still, like a marble statue of
ancient times, watching over the Wolves flanks from within the
cafe.

Rivers was
pacing between tables of the deserted cafe, making sure to side
step anything that could make a sound, careful not to alert
whatever else lurked in the shadows nearby. He noticed how plates
of rotting food and cups full of drinks were left by customers,
almost as if they had just vanished, leaving everything behind
without even taking a bite or a sip.

“Where is
everyone?” Xander muttered mostly to himself, but the others heard
it over the squad radio.

“The only thing
left are ghosts and the stench of unwashed bodies,” Rivers replied,
still pacing back and forth.

“I see
nothing,” Jay said over the radio, “no movement.” The scout Titan
was using Godwaker’s superior scope to sweep the objective for
signs of life.

“Sabian?” Locke
asked over another channel.

“Captain
Locke?” Sabian replied with a hint of tension to the veteran’s
voice.

“Take position
on the east side of the objective, quietly if you please,” Locke
ordered, his advanced hearing from his suit OS picking up the
engine noise of the approaching Lancers.

“Roger that,
Captain.”

A few seconds
later Locke heard the engine noise of the Lancer’s vehicles vanish
almost completely, melting into the background noise of the dead
city. Locke made a mental note to shake Sabian’s hand when he saw
him again; the old man’s was damn good at his job.

“Taking up
position, my men are in the buildings overlooking the school’s
stone courtyard. Vehicles are in the alley behind the brown
building,” Sabian told Locke.

“Good. Marking
your positions on my display,” Locke replied.

“Much
appreciated, Captain.” Sabian closed the channel before Locke could
say anything else, probably too busy with setting up his men and
creating firing lines to support the Wolves.

“Corporal
Joshua, report,” Locke said over the squad channel again.

“I see nothing
yet, sir. I can’t see the south entrance, but from here the school
looks empty.” Jay was scanning the windows of the objective for any
movement, but the darkness inside obscured whatever was still
there.

There was
silence for a few moments as the Wolves considered their next
action. They had not expected to find the school like this. In fact
they did not expect everything to be so quiet, and the eerie
atmosphere in Santor did not help the situation at all. Where were
all the soldiers? Where were the civilians? There weren’t even any
dead bodies anywhere. Nothing, there was just nothing, only stone
and concrete. Locke had seen some strange battlefields in his
career as a soldier, but this was an anomaly, especially after what
they had seen in orbit before making planet fall. Death always
accompanied war, and it had to be close by. What unsettled Locke
the most, was that he could not see it this time, which meant only
one thing, it was patiently lying in wait, for whatever crossed its
path first.

An explosion
drew everyone’s eyes to the skies above the school, watching as an
enemy fighter burst into bright flames, tracer fire from friendly
fighters still peppering its destroyed hull. The Hyperion’s fighter
wing was making sure that the enemy did not eject and add more
bodies for the ground forces to face. It trailed smoke and flame as
the wreckage that was once a ship lost altitude, crashing loudly in
a street to the south of the school.

Everyone tensed
as the fire roared in the gloom a few streets away, lighting up the
south in an unsettling glow.

The Wolves were
the first to hear it, their advanced suits granting them the
ability to hear far better than most normal humans. Off in the
distance, behind the curtain of flame from the fallen fighter and
the sound of the dead city, a howl built slowly.

Pyoter’s head
snapped up as he heard the rising sound, recognizing it instantly.
“Beasts?” he asked with surprise in his voice.

“We can ask
Lord Vincent about it later.” Locke raised his hand and gestured
for Christian and Nathan to take the lead. “He has some explaining
to do,” he added before crossing the street behind the Titan
brothers.

Pyoter, Xander
and Rivers followed without a word. The Wolves had to search and
clear the first objective, before the unknown monsters prowling the
streets of Santor discovered there was something new on the
menu.

Like thunder
splitting the sky Godwaker fired its first round, hitting a monster
leading a horde of mutants towards the school from the south,
leading them towards where the Wolves were silently clearing the
first objective.

The bullet hit
the monster in the chest, liquefying its torso instantly and taking
the limbs off another beast behind the intended target. At more
than two-thousand yards away the bullets of Godwaker were still
lethal to anything organic, not bothering to discriminate between
armoured targets or bare chested mutants.

Another
artificial clap of thunder announced Godwaker’s eagerness to kill.
Two more targets went down as the horde advanced closer to the
first objective.

“Captain, your
guests will be arriving soon,” Jay reported over the channel open
to the entire ground force.

“How many
guests will be crashing our party?” Locke asked his scout
Titan.

“Unknown,” Jay
replied, “they are rapidly advancing on your position. It is as if
they smell something.”

Locke paused
before replying, the scene he was looking at explained exactly what
the monsters on their doorstep smelt. “We know why...keep me
updated Corporal,” Locke ordered Jay, switching channels to the
squad radio the other Wolves were talking on. Locke caught the last
part of what Rivers was saying.

“...these are
bullet holes. This was done by human hands, and there are no bite
marks or cuts in the flesh of these bodies.” Rivers stood from
where he had been crouching over a dead body, moving to the corner
of the great hall were an old wooden desk stood. On top of the
table was an emergency broadcasting station, lights glowing dimly
as it repeated the recorded message over and over again. Rivers
flipped a switch on the station’s side and the recording stopped
moments before the lights went out.

“How many do
you see?” Locke asked the Wolves standing around the great
hall.

“At least fifty
over here,” Xander replied.

“The same here,
maybe more,” Nathan added, standing next to his quiet brother, who
had not said a word since they had found the scene before them.

“More than a
hundred in the hallway beyond the hall, and many more scattered
everywhere” Pyoter said in a low and grim tone. “They were trying
to flee from whatever was killing them.”

“We know what
was killing them!” Rivers yelled at the giant Titan, the anger in
him breaking through his emotional defences. “It was him, and he
needs to pay!”

Pyoter did not
respond, choosing to only nod at Rivers instead of punishing him
for the outburst.

“He will,”
Locke said.

“I count more
than five-hundred dead, sir. No-one was spared.” Xander walked over
to where a mother was clutching her daughter in her arms, both of
them were ice cold, staring with dead eyes at the ceiling of the
school’s grand hall. Xander closed their eyes with his armoured
hand, and muttered curses under his breath as he moved to do the
same with all of the bodies near him.

Gunfire
suddenly erupted from the east as Sabian’s men encountered the
first monster clambering over the east walls of the school.

“There are
targets everywhere Captain Locke. They snuck up on us from the
east. Your squad will be surrounded within moments. They are coming
from all sides!” Sabian’s voice was strained, and gunfire could be
heard in the background as he reported the situation from his
position.

“Can you make
it to the vehicles?” Locke asked Sabian.

“Aye, we can
make it,” Sabian replied.

“Mount up and
move to the north side of the objective. Kill everything you
encounter that looks unfriendly. The first objective is clear. No
survivors to rescue.” Locke switched channels to the Wolves again
before Sabian could reply - not that he needed to hear Sabian
reply, he trusted the man completely. “Xander, make a hole. We are
leaving.”

Xander
unclipped a device from his thigh as he moved to the north wall of
the great hall, punching in a sequence of numbers as the red lights
on the device started to flicker.

The gunfire to
the east died down slowly and Locke could hear the engines of the
light escort vehicles growling into life, there was no need for
stealth anymore. The hornet’s nest had been kicked and the mutants
wanted to feed.

“Here they
come,” Pyoter announced from the window overlooking the stone
courtyard Sabian and his men had been covering, the lull in gunfire
had allowed the mutated humans to climb over the stone walls and
were now almost on top of the Wolves. “Fifty meters and closing
fast, sir.” Pyoter added, clipping his sword to his back as he drew
his pistol, aiming it through the window, taking slow steps back
towards the middle of the hall.

Nathan and
Christian stepped up beside Pyoter and readied their own weapons.
They would need to protect the rear of the squad as soon as the
device went off. The beasts would rush in and break through any gap
they could find to reach the still living buffet inside. The Wolves
would only have to hold them off for a few minutes while they
waited for Sabian to clear a path to the north of them, but those
few minutes would feel like a lifetime.

The device
Xander had so lovingly attached to the north wall went off with a
muffled blast, directed outwards by the custom casing covering the
device. The stone wall cracked and burst outward like a ripe boil,
spewing stone everywhere, piercing the flesh of the monsters who
had ventured close to the north wall. Concrete and stone shrapnel
from the explosion tore a hole in the horde to the north, but it
was not enough as more beasts stepped over the bodies of the dead,
filling the gaps in their ranks within moments.

Pyoter’s pistol
echoed in the great hall as the first monster broke through the
windows overlooking the courtyard. The shot took the head off the
leaping monster in a fountain of blood, but another monster was
right behind it to take its place.

All of the
Wolves fired at the beasts entering the hall from all sides;
killing droves as the seconds ticked by before they could leave the
relative safety of the great hall and make a run for the vehicles
approaching from the east.

Godwaker was
bellowing from the distance, pulverizing mutated flesh with every
shot. Jay was covering his new squad with expert precision, and he
was living up to everyone’s expectations, for now.

Locke dodged a
fast moving mutant trying to dart into the hall from the hole
Xander had blown there, but the creature’s attacks were clumsy and
Locke dispatched the thing with a powerful punch to its face,
leaving nothing but a bloody mess behind where the creature’s head
used to be.