Gamma Nine (Book One) (47 page)

One of Sabian’s
snipers fell, his body falling backwards, a burning hole in his
chest. The man had died instantly from the bullet that had
destroyed his heart and lungs, making no sound as his life lost its
grip on his dead body.

Rivers picked
up the dead Lancer’s rifle and sighted through its scope, searching
for targets in the windows overlooking the courtyard. He fired the
high calibre rifle a few times, rounds penetrating through walls,
seeing past the stone and cement with his helmet’s Reap sight.
Rivers was down on one knee, using his solid armoured suit to
anchor himself to the ground. The recoil from the marksman variant
of the Kicker rifle was not enough to bother a Titan, instead the
position helped Rivers’ accuracy. He was the oldest Titan still in
active duty, and was not going to take any chances with his aging
body inside the protective shell of his suit.

Rivers could
not see Locke anymore, the Titan captain vanishing into the
building and into the midst of the traitors just as the fire had
erupted from both sides. He did not dare to try and raise Locke on
the radio, knowing full well that he was on one of his rare
rampages, and nothing anyone said or did would be able to stop him.
Locke would stop when everything standing against him was either
dead or running away. And in most cases the enemies that were
attempting to flee never made it very far, hunted down by the Alpha
Wolf as their backs were turned and their cowardly hearts searching
for salvation. That salvation would never come and Locke was not
one to allow a coward and enemy to live longer than they needed
to.

Rivers silently
wondered to himself what Captain Locke’s kill count was. It was
probably higher than anyone could guess. That alone was a haunting
thought. The weight of those deaths, human and monster would crush
regular humans, but not Gabriel Locke. All Rivers knew for sure was
that he was happy Locke was on his side, and not storming the
defender’s lines he found himself in at exactly that moment. The
Titan sergeant dismissed the thought and returned his mind to the
present, pulling the trigger of the marksman rifle, killing three
more traitors who stuck their heads out to fire down at the
defenders.

Pyoter on the
other hand was having the time of his life. He never thought he
would love a weapon more than his machine gun he had almost lost on
board the Fateful Moment, but the borrowed breaching cannon was
quickly becoming one of his new favourites. If weapons were
females, his machine gun would be his regular lover and the cannon
he now held his secret mistress.

This thought
caused the giant Titan to smile, his grip on his new mistress
tightening as it roared, its barrel spewing rounds of molten
shrapnel at the traitors on the second floor of the south
building.

He did not kill
as many traitors as he would have liked, but the breaching cannon
was perforating the walls of the building, turning it into almost
see-through mesh on the courtyard’s side. This gave the Lancers
more targets to fire at as the traitors’ cover disappeared with
every round Pyoter fired.

The smiles on
the defenders faces’ vanished when western edge of the south
building collapsed and crumbled. The remaining man-killer vehicle
stormed through the rubble, its side-mounted guns opening fire
before the dust even cleared.

Lancers died
and Titans dove for cover. The armoured vehicle ground to a halt,
its cannon rotating to aim at the overturned truck Pyoter was
hiding behind.

‘Run!” was all
the giant Titan could utter before the cannon fired and the truck
was consumed by an angry explosion.

Pyoter would
survive, his armour protecting him against most of the fireball
melting his previously sturdy cover, but the Lancers with him were
not so lucky, all of them perishing as soon as the man-killer round
hit the overturned truck. Some were blown to bits while others were
killed by shrapnel from the explosions.

The vehicle
needed to die, but Pyoter was too far with his breaching cannon to
bother it, and Rivers’ rifle would do nothing against the thick
armour of the man-killer.

Something would
have to happen, and soon, otherwise the enemy vehicle would kill
everyone in the courtyard within a handful of moments.

Rivers was
suddenly aware of his mortality, and knew that even Titans could
bleed and die. Rivers voiced words from a prayer his mother had
taught him as a youngling. “Reach down from the sky and shield us
lord...” he said, his voice trailing off as he watched the
man-killer’s cannon rotate to fire again.

A voice
answered his prayer, but it was not in the form of words, only a
throaty roar. Moments later the wall on the top floor above the
vehicle disintegrated and Rivers’ prayer was answered.

“
Mark my words. Your faith is misplaced
in these cowards posing as heroes. You fools put all of your hope
on the shoulders of these...Titans. Can’t you see? They are only
men and women, they are not special, and they will not be our
salvation. You can clad the weakness beating inside their chests
with technology and layers of armoured plating, but it does not
change what they are underneath. I urge you to vote against the
deployment of the Titans against the Beast on Arkelis. Instead,
give me the authority to use our fusion weapons against these
monsters. Let me crush them with my vessels. I can singlehandedly
win this war for the council. Do not deny me! I seek only the
obliteration of the nightmares that hunt us through the
void.”
-Council Member Vincent, High Lord and Commander of the Northern
Sectors, Recorded during the Arkelis War Summit

Rivers could
not make out what had jumped from the hole in the wall above the
vehicle at first, his tactical vision struggling to see through the
debris and smoke the sudden explosion from within the western
building had created.

But the
tactical vision was a powerful tool in a Titan’s arsenal, piercing
the smoky veil as the human shape object plummeted towards the
armoured man-killer.

Rivers almost
cheered when his Suit OS locked on to Nathan’s armoured body
falling feet first.

The Titan
brothers had made it, and they were joining the fight against the
traitors with quiet the entrance.

There was no
sign of the rookie yet, but there was no doubt in Rivers’ mind that
Nathan would not leave his brother behind, let alone a brother
Titan.

Nathan hit the
top of the man-killer’s turret, buckling the armour right above the
commander’s hatch. He punched with all of his artificial strength,
aiming his armoured fist at the joints locking the hatch in place.
It only took one hit, the joints and bolts bending and shattering
under the force. The turret’s cannon barked off two more shots, the
shells fired blindly and out of sheer panic, aimed in the general
direction of the defenders’ lines.

One shot missed
and hit one of the broken up smoke stacks, shacking the ground and
showering the defenders with dust and debris. The second shot,
however, hit home. It exploded only a few feet to the left of
Rivers and Sabian, engulfing the marksmen and their commander in
flame and shrapnel. The screams in the courtyard drowned out the
screams from the inside of the south building.

The man-killer
did not get a chance to fire a third round. Christian had dropped
down from the hole above the vehicle, landing with shield first on
the cannon’s barrel. The barrel was a thick tube of hardened steel
and rare alloys, but the Titan’s velocity and force was enough to
bend it, bend it enough to hinder it from firing again.

Christian
rolled away from the vehicle, dodging smaller calibre fire from the
sides of the doomed man-killer, his entire body still rocking from
the connection with the barrel, his arms pained and his shield
dented. Christian did not waste any time, he headed back into the
west building, making for the fourth floor to where the Titan
brothers’ companions were waiting for the all clear. They had left
Jessica, Tristan, Sam and Nash there for safety while they took
care of the danger below.

Nathan peeled
off the hatch like a homeless man attacking his last can of
sardines. His strength was immense, the metal hatch never resisting
the Titan warping it with his strength. Wide eyes stared up at
Nathan as he tossed the mangled hatch away. One man in particular
was shitting himself when Nathan reached for him.

The commander
of the traitorous ground forces tried to draw his pistol, but
Nathan grabbed his arm and twisted it, breaking it instantly.
Nathan held the man up with his right hand, his armoured hand
grasping the commander’s rat-like neck tightly, but not tight
enough to strangle the vermin.

“Scream. Your
men aren’t hearing you,” Nathan whispered to the man, his visor
inches away from the commander’s pain filled face.

At first he
made no sound, but Nathan urged him on with a punch to his side.
The man obliged as his ribs shattered inside his body. His men
heard the agony escaping his lungs, fear reaching for their
traitorous hearts.

“Mercy,” the
commander managed to say through all of the pain.

A bullet
ricocheted from Nathan’s shoulder before he replied. His attacker
died moments later at the hands of a Lancer close to the Titan’s
position. “Mercy?” Nathan genuinely asked. “Where was your mercy
when you attacked this planet? Where was your mercy when you killed
women and children?” Nathan’s grip tightened around the man’s
neck.

“Please,” the
commander begged. “Spare me,” he said, his voice soft and weak,
struggling to breath as his lips formed the words.

“Beg all you
want, no-one will listen to your cowardly words,” Nathan said.

He did not wait
for the man to say anything else, crushing the commander’s neck in
his grip. Instead of just discarding the body, Nathan jumped down
from the vehicle with the dead commander’s lifeless body still
clutched in his armoured hand. He walked in clear view of the
enemy, lifting their commander’s limp body high for all to see.

“Look!” he
yelled through his helmet’s speakers. His voice echoed throughout
the courtyard, drowning out most of the gunfire and screams. Nathan
threw the body disdainfully to the ground, stepping over it towards
the enemy hiding within the south building. Another Alpha Wolf had
joined the fight, and this one was hungrier and enjoyed the hunt
even more than Locke did.

Rivers was
about to call out to Pyoter, who was picking himself up from the
man-killer’s first attack, to join Bear, but the sound of coughing
behind him drew his attention first.

Rivers knew the
sound. He recognized it as the sound of blood drowning the lungs of
a dying man. He turned to where the final round of the man-killer
had impacted and horror gripped him for the first time in many
years.

Sabian was
crawling from the impact zone, his legs were missing from the knees
down, one of his arms mangled and his emerald armour melted and
broken.

The words could
not come at first. Rivers froze as he watched Sabian, crawling
painfully towards one of his fallen marksmen. Emotion gripped him
as he watched Sabian, his body almost destroyed, still worrying
more about his men than his own excruciating pain and survival.

“Gabriel! If
you can hear me, Sabian is down. I repeat Commander Sabian is
down!” Rivers yelled over the radio. The Lancers heard him as well,
some of them rushing through gunfire to come to the aid of their
beloved leader.

There was no
reply at first, but Locke answered Rivers after a handful of
moments. “Then the situation has changed,” Locke said. The Titan
captain was out of breath, gunshots echoed in the background as he
spoke. “Kill them all,” was all he said before going silent
again.

The Lancers
would take care of Sabian, but the Titans needed to finish the
fight, and they needed to finish it soon.

Rivers called
for Pyoter to join him and both of them rushed the traitors’ lines,
taking the fight to the enemy.

None of them
knew that Corporal Jay would soon give them even more bad news, and
that news would force the Titans to do something that went against
everything they stood for and fought for.

They hated the
mere notion of it, choosing to never even utter the word.

Retreat was not
something the Titans did willingly.

The Beasts were
coming.

The chaos in
and around the extraction zone had drawn the attention of every
mutant for miles. The bloodshed on both sides was an irresistible
and delectable potential feast for the beasts. There was always
this feeling in the back of everyone’s minds that the amount of
monsters they had fought and killed were not even close to the
amount of civilians that had inhabited Santor. Scores of people
were missing, and the encountered monsters could not have eaten or
killed all of them.

That feeling
was proven correct when Scout Titan Jay had radioed in that the
nightmares everyone thought were dead or missing had finally shown
their disfigured faces. And they were swarming towards both his and
the other Titans’ positions.

Locke had
ceased his hunt to ask how many and from where.

Corporal Jay’s
answer was short and to the point, and enough to send chills down
every friendly who heard his words. “Unknown and from everywhere,”
he had replied to Captain Locke.

Godwaker had
fallen silent after that.

Traitor
soldiers on the ground and in the air had been left leaderless, and
were now left to choose their own paths to salvation or
damnation

The soldiers
had chosen to escape, to run and make for whatever shelter they
could find, no doubt their pilots had been reporting the exact same
sights to their ground troops as Jay had reported to the rest of
the Wolves.