Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) (28 page)

“I must insist, sir, that you comply with the instructions I have given you and remove yourself back to Little Earth. If you do not, there will be no help for what comes next.”

Colonel Pewter shook his head and tapped the controls to lower his canopy back to where he’d set it earlier. “Look, it’s your funeral,” he said. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Into his com he said, “Bring them up, Major.”

“You are making a terrible mistake,” warned the mounted officer. “You have one last chance to call them off before it is too late.”

Colonel Pewter only continued to shake his head. Dumb kid, he thought. Probably some rich guy’s son. Going to get all his men hosed. They wouldn’t even know what hit them.

The sound of the approaching line of mechs rose, the vibrations in the ground more pronounced, until all of them had come even with the colonel and his two companions of the recent parlay. “Tell them to step aside,” said the colonel one last time, hoping the young Prosperion would comply. He did not, so the colonel ordered his men to advance. “Steady ahead,” he said. “Don’t shoot if they don’t.”

The young officer turned his horse sideways, the length of it directly blocking the colonel’s battle unit, about which the animal protested with a wide-eyed whinny, rearing high on its hind legs. But the skillful young rider spun it round in a full circle and sidled it up to where its flanks nearly brushed against the unit’s plasma shield. “Halt, I say,” demanded the youth.

Colonel Pewter reached down with both of the battle suit’s arms, and down it was, for the horse at the withers was only half as tall as the war machine, and as gently as possible, he picked up both horse and rider and placed them carefully aside. Laughter erupted over the com channel as the colonel pressed forward past the officer.

With the young officer behind him now, the colonel did not see the signal the youth gave for his men to charge, but signal he did, and suddenly on they came.

The first line of horsemen lowered their lances and pounded across the wet turf, cries of “For the War Queen” sounding from the darkness inside their helmets.

“Do we fire?” asked Corporal Chang, sounding uncomfortable. “I mean, it’s going to be bad.”

“Concussion grenades in front of the charge. Give them a fifteen-yard buffer. Try to scare the horses off.”

The hollow
thwoop-thwoop-thwoop
sound of two hundred and fifty concussion grenades being launched from tubes in each Marine’s mech filled the air, followed by the dark shapes of the grenades tumbling in the direction of the onrushing horses like lobbed rocks. Almost as one they went off, a tremendous blast of sound and a pressure wave washing out toward the oncoming animals. A few of them reared and pulled up, tumbling riders off their backs. Others stopped short and hard, pitching the riders forward. But only a few. The rest, while angling sideways, reflexively veering away from the unseen force, came on anyway, their eyes wide with fright, but their ears back with anger, trained war beasts with courage in their hearts. Their riders leaned forward even closer to the necks of the charging animals, and it was clear that they would not be scared away. The tips of their lances began to glow.

“Shit,” muttered the colonel when he saw it. He knew there would be some kind of magic in that glow, and it was likely not going to be good for his men. Into the com he said, “Take down the animals. One burst. Do it now.”

The motors of a hundred mech arms sounded, the armored limbs rising across the line as one, and then came the white flash of Gatling fire erupting from each of them. A spray of fifty-caliber bullets spewed forth, a burst of barely a second and no more, the rush of lead projectiles invisible but for a slight darkening in the air, like the barest shadow had passed across the land. The bullets bit into horseflesh terribly, cutting the powerful heaving chests of the charging creatures into ribbons of slinging hide and bright red meat. Limbs were gone, knees vaporized, and the riders flung into the air.

The burst of gunfire was over as quickly as it began, and the riders lay in various states of disrepair upon the ground. Some lay still, necks broken, while others thrashed about in agony, gripping legs that had been struck by gunfire or bones that had broken and pushed through the skin when they fell. Cries of pain filled the air.

Colonel Pewter shook his head ruefully as he ordered his men to continue onward, toward the city again.

The young officer and his two companions rode fearlessly back through the line of mechanized Marines and rejoined the rest of the cavalry, though from the way the less elaborately armored rider gesticulated, it appeared the next course of action was a matter of debate. Colonel Pewter hoped the young, feathered fool wouldn’t do anything as stupid as that again.

“Step over the fallen,” Colonel Pewter ordered as they got to the swath of wounded men and decimated animals.

Twenty-eight fireballs, some as big as freight trucks, suddenly streaked across the field as the Marines passed through and clear of the carnage. Someone said, “Oh, shit,” over the com. The fireballs had formed in unison, appearing out of thin air in front of the next line of horses, and came on like rockets now. One of them came straight toward the colonel’s unit, so fast there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t help but squint as the nearly blinding glare struck his plasma shield. The fire wrapped around the shield for a moment, like a ship entering an atmosphere. The flames didn’t make it inside, but the heat coming through the gap in the partially open canopy was intense. But that was essentially it. The force of the blow was considerable, causing him to stagger back several steps, just as it did the others whose suits got struck to greater or lesser degrees, but that was the full extent of the damage. And even that could be adjusted for.

“Gravity boost to nine,” he ordered. “And lean into those when they come.”

“Should we open fire again, Colonel?”

“Not yet, Sanchez. Just keep walking. Maybe they’ll figure it out in time.”

Lightning played upon the suits next, huge bright arcs of it, sheet after sheet, the energy climbing up out of the ground and streaking down from the sky. The smell of ozone was everywhere.

“Fuck, I’m shorted,” called a Marine on the left flank. “I can’t believe this shit.” Colonel Pewter could hear the sounds of the Marine pounding on his com panel.

“Take it back to base,” the colonel said. “Everyone else, keep moving.”

More lightning came, and more fireballs, another unit shorted out before they’d covered half the distance to the waiting line of cavalry.

“Colonel?” this time it was the Major’s voice.

“Keep moving.”

A shaft of ice, thick as the torso of the Prosperions’ largest horse and easily five times as long as any of the beasts, formed at one end of the Prosperion line, and it shot out like one of the mineral shafts the Hostiles fought with, a massive battering ram hurtling across the intervening space with incredible velocity. It struck one of the mech units square on and stove it in as if it were an aluminum can.

“Oh, my God,” cried a woman’s voice. “They got Ashcroft. Did you see that shit?”

Another bolt of ice, again the size of a steel girder, shot out and crushed another Marine. Then two more came. Four after that, and suddenly the attack was on.

Having no choice but to order return fire, Colonel Pewter called for a full-out response. The Marines as one set into high gear.

They ran in long ground-devouring strides, covering the distance at a speed that nearly matched the horses, the cavalrymen having launched into a charge of their own. The two sides closed together rapidly. The fifty-cals spun and sung as the bullets flew. But still the horsemen came. Electricity sparked from the tips of their lances, flickers of it like captive lightning reaching blue fingers across space at them. None of them went down.

“What the fuck?” Corporal Chang said. “We’re not even hitting them.”

“I don’t like this,” said Major Kincaid.

Twenty-eight ice beams streaked over the heads of the riders and crushed in another bunch of battle suits.

“Goddamn,” cried Sanchez, watching the Marine to his right get pulverized. “Our shields aren’t doing shit.”

“They were never meant to fend off freight trains,” someone remarked.

Still the cavalry came.

It occurred to Colonel Pewter that something was odd. He kept charging, and yet, as he watched through his canopy, it seemed that they should have closed with the horsemen by now. He squinted into their onrushing line, watching them, the riders bent over the necks of the animals, their mouths moving, their lances level and lit up with magic. But he saw as he stared at them that they moved in a dreamlike way. He could see it if he focused hard enough on them. It was as if they were moving and yet, somehow, the distance was growing as they charged, very subtly, as if the ground were stretching, just enough to make it so they didn’t quite cross the field. An effect like in a dream.

“Are you guys seeing this?” the major asked, as if reading his mind. “They’re not really coming. Or something.”

“What?” That was Sanchez.

“They’re not coming. Look.”

Twenty-eight more tree-trunk-sized beams of ice bashed in what remained of an entire platoon and a few more to boot.

“Faster, damn it,” ordered the colonel. “Get in close. They aren’t missing with those things.”

That’s when he hit a wall, literally. He slammed into it and came to an immediate halt. They all did. The impact jarred him, stunning him for several seconds. It took as long for the spots in his vision to clear as it did for his control panel to come back up.

“It’s a goddamn iceberg,” Sanchez said, coming to quicker than the rest.

Colonel Pewter took a second to confirm it and saw that, at least in principle, Sanchez wasn’t far off. A huge wall of ice now stood before them, stretching away to the left and right and bending back at a gradual angle, making it impossible to see if there was an end to it nearby. It rose up high into the air as well, perhaps two hundred feet. “Major, see if you can go around. Everyone else, burn it down. Ice melts.”

Flamethrowers erupted like the breath of so many steel dragons, licking out from the extended arms of the remaining mechs, melting the ice in waves.

“Readings still showing it twenty-feet thick, Colonel,” said Corporal Chang. “It’s staying constant. They’re refreshing it from the back side.”

Colonel Pewter saw the readings on his own console. He called back to Little Earth. “I need air support. Do we have any of those fighters up yet?”

“We’re getting close, sir. Ten minutes,” came the reply.

“We don’t have ten minutes.”

“Colonel, they’re waiting for us around the end of the barrier,” reported Major Kincaid.

Colonel Pewter bit back the profanity that leapt nearly to his lips. His instincts couldn’t believe he was being held off by a bunch of men on animals, despite what he knew of magic intellectually. He’d fought alongside Altin once, so he had an idea of what the magicians were capable of, but somehow he hadn’t expected this.

He looked up. That wall was very high.

He could shift down his suit’s gravity settings and jump, but mechs didn’t do well as aircraft, and he didn’t want to risk that kind of vulnerability. So he started climbing, jamming the powerful vices that served the unit for hands into the ice and pulling himself up, one yard at a time. Seeing him do it, several other Marines started climbing as well. The colonel wasn’t sure what to expect, and he had no ships or satellites in orbit to send him a visual of what was on the other side. At least not yet. He didn’t want to order the rest to climb with him. Those that had were enough. “If you’re not already climbing, stay down,” he said.

When he reached the top, he debated peering over the far edge but quickly put that idea aside. They’d be waiting for that, and he’d take one of those massive ice beams straight to the face.

One by one, the Marines who’d climbed after him joined him. Soon there were twenty-four mechs atop the wall.

“You want the rest of us up there yet, Colonel?” asked an eager young Marine from the ground below. It was clear he felt like he was missing something.

“No. They’ll probably just cancel the damn thing and we’ll all fall. We’re going to see if we can’t disrupt this thing. You be ready to come in when it goes down.” Without the proper gravity settings, that would be fatal, and the colonel knew what he was doing was going to be dangerous as it was. Better to do it on his own terms.

He turned to the men with him and nodded through the canopy at them. “Let’s do this. On my mark, let’s jump down and take them out, make them drop this thing. Set your landing for sixty yards out from the wall. Maybe we’ll get behind them.”

“Roger that.” Private Sanchez wore a come-get-it grin as he set his suit’s gravity for the leap.

“Flash grenades now, concussion right after. On three, two, one, go.”

The grenades shot out in rapid succession, then they all jumped, hydraulic force sending them flying out over the edge of the wall and, as hoped, out over the lines of horsemen and down to the ground beyond them.

Despite the gravity adjustments, the force of the landing sunk the suits several feet deep in mud, and it was the work of a few seconds to get free. In that time, the magicians had turned to see what had happened. They were still too late. Colonel Pewter and his men did not need to move to unleash the Gatling guns. Once again the white flare of fire blew out from the spinning carousel, and in the span of seven seconds a huge section of the Prosperion line lay dead. All of them, mages, knights and animals. Where they had been, what they had been, was now a swamp of mutilated flesh, soggy fabric and rent metal. In patches, leather burned from the heat of the onslaught.