Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) (49 page)

He held her long enough to let the wave of her emotions pass, and he wiped his own tears away with a quick shrug of his shoulder on the right and an absent-seeming motion of his left hand, while she pulled away and dabbed at her face with her apron strings.

When she was composed, he smiled down at her, all confidence again. “It’s not pretty in Crown City,” he said. “But the Earth people are helping, and … well, if Blue Fire can get through to the Hostile world that is attacking Earth, they’ll have more men to spare. If that happens, I think everything will be all right again. At terrible cost, but all right.”

Movement in the doorway caught his eye, and he saw a small blonde head peering out of the shadows within.

He looked back to Kettle. “Pernie’s home?”

“They sent her back. Her Majesty called up all the instructors at the school ta fight.”

“That was good thinking,” he said. He sent Pernie a smile as best he could given the ongoing thrum of Blue Fire’s fearful agony.

Taking that as encouragement, she ran out to where they were. Altin expected her to bounce into him and hug his leg, but she stopped short. She stood very straight and looked him directly in the eye. “I can help, you know.”

This time his smile moved all the way to his eyes. “You are a brave little sprite, I’ll give you that,” he said. “But I think we’ve almost got it won. Besides, Kettle needs you here to guard Calico.”

She thrust out her lips then, and crossed her arms over her narrow little chest. “Everyone knows all the orcs are at Crown City trying to kill the Queen,” she said. “Nothing is coming here.”

“You’re probably right,” he said. “But it’s best to be safe.”

“I’m not a baby anymore.”

Altin smiled again. “I know you aren’t.”

She was looking at the basin he’d filled. “What’s that for? Are you going to scry out the enemy? I know what that is, you know. Even if I can’t do it, says Master Grimswoller.” Her little frame straightened to its fullest height, clearly pleased with her ability to recognize magic purposes by name.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly right.” He took the bucket from where he’d set it on the edge of the well and poured it into his basin. He flipped the catch and tossed the bucket down again.

“So you might still need me to fight.”

“I don’t think so,” he said as he wound the bucket back up again. “Besides, where I’m going is no place for a little girl.”

“I’m not little.”

“Well, it’s no place for a big girl either.”

“Is Miss Orli going?”

He stopped winding for a moment and studied her. She had a strange look on her face. “Yes,” he said, once more working the well handle. “Blue Fire speaks to her, so I have to take her along.” It wasn’t exactly a lie, and he didn’t want to deal with whatever that look was on Pernie’s face.

Pernie stuck out her lips again. Altin looked at Kettle, who merely shrugged. In the old days, Kettle would have sent Pernie away, sent her off on some time-consuming errand that would give Altin his space. A lot of things had changed.

“I have to get back,” he said. “I can’t leave her out there all alone.”

Kettle nodded. Pernie stalked away.

Two more plunges of the bucket and Altin had enough. Kettle watched him in silence the entire time. When he’d dumped the last of the water into the basin, he let go a long sigh. “It’s going to be all right,” he said, just as he had said before.

The edges of her mouth crept upwards a bit, a wan crescent below the uninhibited love misting her eyes. She hugged him and then watched him go, hoping he was right.

Chapter 39

C
olonel Pewter tapped the glass on the inside of his battle suit canopy, hoping the reading was wrong. It read under forty thousand rounds left for the Gatling arm, and the unit’s power core was down to a quarter charge. He figured he had about two hours of fight left in the suit, but he wouldn’t have half that for ammunition. If he used the laser, he’d have less than twenty minutes. After that, the suit would be nothing more than a toy for the demons to toss around.

“Down to twenty-eight thousand,” came Corporal Chang’s call even as the Colonel was tapping on the glass. “This is going to be a bitch when it’s down to jackhammers and grips.”

“Roger that, Chang. Make your shots count, people,” the colonel said for perhaps the tenth time that day. He’d been saying it since the transport ship hit the wall and they all came scrambling out. He wondered how much more careful they could be.

Private Sanchez’s unit came charging back around the corner as the colonel gave the order to conserve. Cobblestones flew like dark sparks from the smashing impact of each of the battle suit’s footsteps, and Sanchez cut the corner tight enough to splinter a wagon that had been upturned earlier by a demon. Bits of wood flew from it as the Marine burst through its frame, the whipcords of leather straps flapping as the long traces flew skyward, turning slowly in the air before landing behind him. “We got company,” the panting Marine yelled as he ran to where the colonel stood. “Four of the big ones, and about sixteen orcs.” Another Marine rounded the corner right behind him, his suit smoking from a segment at the back, a short length of red hose waving spastically and spraying red fluid in the air.

“Fire Team Two, can you get to my location?” the colonel asked.

“In a minute, Colonel,” came Corporal Chang’s reply. “We have to finish this fucker first.” The sound of gunfire and the profanity of the other Marines in Corporal Chang’s fire team served as background noise as he spoke. “Can you bring them to us?”

“We’ve got a man on foot here,” he said. “Just get here ASAP.”

“Roger that.”

The colonel ordered his men to cover, marking the one building on the block not burning yet as the one not to hide behind. “Commander Levi is in that one,” he admonished as he fell back and positioned himself behind the glare of the burning inn. It would give him a chance to get off a first shot. Sanchez moved down the street a bit further and hid as best he could behind a marginally shattered tree.

The first of the three demons that had been chasing Private Sanchez didn’t bother rounding the corner as sharply as the Marine had, and it erupted through the side of the two-story structure as easily as the mech had run through the wagon. The roof collapsed in its wake, sending embers climbing into the sky, and the demon crawled straight for where the private stood behind the splintered remnants of the great oak tree. It paused only for a moment, looking farther down the street where the Marine in the smoking mech was still running, seeking cover of his own, but mainly hoping he might draw the pursuit after him a bit farther, pulling the demons deeper down the gauntlet his companions made and giving them as much advantage as possible, if only for a time.

The demon watched him running off, but turned back to Sanchez, who must have seemed as if he were cowering there. It rushed at this near victim, just as two more demons essentially finished off the house on the corner and came pounding into Colonel Pewter’s view.

The colonel waited as the first demon ran past, holding his fire and watching through the flames as twelve stilt legs ate up so much ground so rapidly. Right behind it came another, this one twice as large, a top-heavy monstrosity similar in ways to the very first one the colonel had fought, a massive black body like a wide-bottomed beaker tipped upside down. Where the spout would have been was its neck which thrust out before it as it ran upon the five great clubs of its legs and feet. This one did not see him either, and it chased after its fleeing prey farther down the street, leaving Sanchez for the first.

“Steady, people. Wait for the third one to clear me. Levi, watch your fire, there will be orcs after. Take two good shots, then stay down so they don’t figure out where you are.”

“Don’t think I won’t,” said Roberto from his place inside a room looking down on the street, three buildings down from the corner and nearly in line with where the colonel was. “I’m done trying to be a hero after that last one.”

The third demon came past as he said it, a long sinewy thing, low to the ground like a reptile but with a body that was little more than a consecutive set of lumpy mounds. If it hadn’t been moving in the direction it was, Colonel Pewter could not have identified which end was its head. Even then he couldn’t truly know, for the creature had no eyes, no horns, no mouth, no identifying features at all. Just several sequences of bulk, like bulbous sections in a knotted rope.

When its last segment had nearly passed him, the colonel opened up with his Gatling gun, charging into the trailing section of it as he did. The jackhammer blade was already moving as he drew near, intent on plunging it into the hole his bullets cut into the demon’s hard outer shell. But when he got to it and punched into the jagged place where the fifty-cal had been doing its work, he found that he could not penetrate this one. He backed off a step and opened up again, a waterfall of brass casings pouring onto the street. The ammo counter on his canopy ticked down rapidly.

Rather than spin around to face him, the demon simply stopped running and raised up its back half as if it had changed its mind as to which end was its head. It curled back on itself like a serpent about to strike and, quick as a whip, slammed its bulbous mass down at him.

He dove to the side just in time to avoid being smashed, and the rounded bulb of the demon bashed through the cobblestones that remained and punched a six-foot hole into the gravel and dirt below. It wrestled with itself for a moment to extract its hammer head, and once again raised it up into the air. The colonel expected to hear it roar like the others had, to feel the vibrations of its awesome size through his suit, but it made no sound other than the hard plastic sound of its clattering feet. For a moment most of it was lost in the dust and flying debris of its first strike.

The colonel rolled his battle suit back to its feet and ran at it again, guns blazing into its exposed underside, though with what appeared to be the same results as before, which was nothing, or so little it might as well have been. That’s when the streak of Roberto’s laser cut across the street and bust out a chunk of the black armor, so the colonel moved the line of his fire to that spot as well. The place where the beam hit had already begun to glow some, becoming molten, and a second line of laser fire sent a melt of black fluid running down the demon’s side and onto the street. Two steps was all the colonel needed before he could jam the jackhammer into the hole, but already the massive stone-smashing bulb was on its way down again, intent on driving him into the avenue like an old-world railroad spike. Again he had to dive out of the way, and this time the momentum of it carried him into the fire raging in the building behind which he’d been concealed.

The monster clattered after him, still silent but for its many feet striking the broken ground, and a second swipe, this time of its tail section, or perhaps of its original head, came swinging back at him. It caught him full on in the back, smashing him through the flaming wreckage of the house, flying through the wall and tumbling back into the street. He immediately checked to see if his console was still operational, even as his machine was still sliding to a stop against the unmolested steps of the building where Roberto was. He saw the
Aspect
’s top gunner peering down at him from the window with a grim look upon his face.

He quickly got to his feet, just as the demon was nearly upon him again. The beam from Roberto’s laser lanced out across the street and burned into the demon again. Three bursts in rapid succession, at first a slow melt of black fluid began, but that quickly became a smoking stream like hot oil pouring down.

The colonel managed to turn back to face the demon head-on as it rammed him, and this time he plunged his jackhammer arm deep into the huge bulbous end where Roberto had softened it up. Fortunate timing too, for the penetration came barely in time to prevent his bulky war machine from being flung through the frame of Roberto’s only sanctuary by the demon’s wild thrashing.

He triggered the jackhammer’s blade and chewed up everything he could reach inside the creature’s head, or tail, whichever it might be. He had to resist the urge to open up point-blank with the suit’s other arm and finish it off more rapidly, but he did not. He knew how precious every round would be, and they’d be wasted on armor as thick as this. He knew he had to hold on and wait for it to die from the wounds the jackhammer could make.

As if reading his mind, Roberto started in trying to open another soft spot on the other side of the demon’s massive bulb. A long sustained shot, followed by two more.

The colonel saw the beams and barked for Roberto to stop through clenched teeth, straining as he spoke with the effort of keeping the tenuous hold he had on the demon’s hammer head. He’d managed to stuff the mech’s right vise claw into the hole he’d started when he’d first rushed it, and opening the claw wide, got a purchase, though not reliable he knew.

A group of orcs came around the corner then, several of the seven-foot brutes and a handful of the shamans that the colonel had come to dread. They, like the Queen’s cavalry earlier in this long, long day, had figured out the effectiveness of the massive ice rams. It was like fighting the goddamn Hostiles all over again, huge shafts of primitive solidity crushing Earth machines as if they were made from cardboard. They’d been designed to withstand high speed, armor-piercing rounds, and energy weapons of all kinds, even some heavy impact resistance was built in, but only to the point where it would not impact mobility. But nobody had ever expected them to endure being hit by veritable freight trains with any regularity. And these green barbarians had begun casting just that. Only one of them at first, but soon others got word, and he’d been losing men ever since.