Under Strange Suns (42 page)

“I’ve got a hole in my leg. I can’t run. Hell, you wouldn’t think a miner would get his testes so shriveled around explosives.”

“Explosives I can handle, you desk-bound egghead. This is a fucking bomb.”

“Let’s keep the channel clear,” Aidan said, employing the same tone he had heard Captain Merit use to stifle the team’s banter.

Aidan massaged his legs and stretched, trying to keep himself limber. He’d had nearly an hour to rest, but even a week of rest would be useless if his legs stiffened up.

He glanced up. A third of the gas giant had eased over the western horizon, reminding Aidan of a fat man lowering himself into a chair. A reddish gleam to the east presaged the rising of Tarik. It was nearly as dark as he had yet seen it, the hint of about a dozen stars dotting the heliotrope sky directly above.

Aidan returned his attention to his datapad. Movement on the live feed. The small force north of the wall stirred into action. Flags waved, ladders rose overhead. Even from his position a half-mile away Aidan could faintly hear the battle cries and the blare of horns.

“Here they come,” McAvoy said. “Should I light the fuse?”

“Wait for the command, Sam,” Aidan said. If McAvoy set off the explosive device too early, the Lhakovi general might hold the actual attack. Aidan’s plan would fail if the enemy had not committed to the assault.

He watched the tiny figures near the north wall. Ladders planted. Troops began to climb.

“Come on, what are you waiting for?” Aidan asked. “Attack me, you bastard.” The assault to the north didn’t include enough soldiers to actually overwhelm the defenders. But without troops on the walls, they could do some real damage to the massed villagers below if they managed to take the parapet.

And then came the true assault, sweeping around from behind each side of the concealing outbuildings, rolling toward Aidan’s position atop the western wall.

“Now, McAvoy,” Aidan said. “See you back at the mining craft.”

The attackers remained silent. No flags delineated individual companies. No horns sounded. All the sound had been assigned to the feint. Aidan faced the fury.

But there remained time to order a withdrawal. If the Lhakovi general sensed something amiss he might still do so. Aidan had to sell the impression that the wall was defended.

He snatched up a javelin, hurled it. He grabbed another, not bothering to see where the first had fallen. The enemy was still out of range, but he wasn’t trying to hit anyone, he only wanted to maintain the illusion that this section of the wall did retain a few defenders.

Aidan scampered along the parapet, tossing javelins, yelling the few words he’d learned from Echeckok. “Tree” wasn’t much of a battle cry, but he wanted an audible component to his illusion.

The first ladders slammed against the slope of the wall. Aidan threw another javelin, watched it glance off the armor of the second joon on the rungs.

More ladders. Easily over a hundred. That was it. The enemy had committed.
Come on McAvoy, what’s taking so long
?

Explosive thunder reverberated, a sound like the growling cough of a lion-god. It echoed, the sound wave rolling along the walls, bouncing among the buildings of Girdled-by-Fields.

Aidan wanted desperately to check the live feed. The sound of the explosion meant that McAvoy had dropped one of Park’s anti-personnel explosive devices into the diversionary force. The geologist should now be climbing down from the wall and then should be running full out toward the mining craft.

Should.

Timing. All timing. Because if Checkok did not come through with his task now, this plan would lead only to unforgivable tragedy.

The head of a joon soldier rose above the parapet not two paces away. Aidan swept the rapier from its sheath, continuing the arc in a powerful, fully extended blow. The edge of the sword cut deeply into the soldier’s neck, and wedged between two vertebrae. Aidan cursed himself. He had truly expected to cleanly sever the head from the body. He knew his blade didn’t have the mass for that. He was getting too caught up in his heroics, his one-man stand.

More Lhakovi appeared above the wall.

“Shit,” Aidan said. He tugged the rapier free, looked to both sides. Soldiers were dropping from ladders onto the parapet. The nearest stairway down was a dozen paces away. Two soldiers stood in his way.

He switched the rapier to his left hand and drew his pistol. He had retrieved all the ammunition he had given McAvoy, excepting a single magazine. He hoped he would not need it all.

The two soldiers advanced, sword points extended. So he shot them and sprinted for the stairs, leaping the bodies.

A shout arose. The Lhakovi were no doubt surprised to find only a single defender. Aidan’s only remaining worry was that a paranoid commander might order a withdrawal, fearing a trap. But he counted on two factors: the lesser was the chase instinct. He, the monster, was fleeing. Of course they would pursue; their blood was up, the hunt was on. More strongly, of course, was the simple fact that they had taken the wall. The village was open, victory guaranteed. They had nothing left to do but mop up, chasing scattered defenders from house to house.

So they would keep coming, pouring over the walls, chasing him. Exactly as he wanted.

When this scheme had popped into his mind he had not dwelt much upon the pain in his legs. He took the stairs two at a time, experiencing an adrenaline spike when his foot slipped fractionally on one of the uneven steps. He corrected, and leaped the remaining distance to the ground. His legs buckled and he stumbled, almost losing his grip on sword and pistol. But he had stumbled forward, and he kept his feet beneath him, allowing his momentum to bring him up to full stride, feeling the protest of his stiffened legs both when he pushed off and when he absorbed the impact.

He spared a glance over his shoulder. Lhakovi soldiers streamed down the stairs, spreading out in a line of pursuit. A javelin wobbled his way. Aidan faced front again. This was the final race. He tried to focus on his breathing, attempting to ignore the pain from overtasked legs.
Keep moving, find firm footing, avoid loose soil. Find the most efficient lines around obstructions. Breathe
.

There squatted the mining craft, red and blue lights blinking about its exterior. Aidan saw McAvoy coming from the north, knees lifting high, arms pumping. The geologist slowed, skidding, rounded the rear of the craft and scrambled through the hatch.

A javelin clipped the back of Aidan’s boot. It threw off his rhythm, but he maintained his balance, recovered. He felt a blow to his back, then a wet trickle running down his spine. A flash of fear–hot, then icy cold–rippled through him. But he felt no pain; his body still responded.

Aidan reached back, plucked out a shaft, the metal head damp–with water. A javelin had pierced the water bladder in his battle harness. But it hadn’t penetrated farther.

He chuckled, the volume growing, and he was still laughing as he ducked through the hatch into the mining craft. He came to a stop against McAvoy, who stepped around him to seal the hatch.

The mining craft was cramped, built for utility rather than comfort. Ducking through the inner airlock door, Aidan crabbed sideways between a rack of EVA suits and a bank of charging hand tools. A short passage to his right led into the cockpit. Yuschenkov sat in the pilot’s chair, looking over his shoulder expectantly at Aidan. Aidan lowered a hinged seat, bolted to a bulkhead behind Yuschenkov, and strapped himself in, then waited while McAvoy did likewise.

A ringing noise, as of hail on a car roof, echoed inside. Glancing at a monitor, Aidan could see Lhakovi soldiers hurling javelins at the mining craft. There wasn’t any danger of them penetrating the hull, but there was always the possibility of damage to some non-hardened component, an antenna or sensor perhaps.

Aidan examined the live feed again. Girdled-by-Fields was occupied, the Lhakovi complete masters of the village. The northern section showed no sign of habitation. The temporary wall across the stream exit had been lowered and now bridged the water. The remains of the Lhakovi diversionary force lay strewn beyond the wall, either killed by shrapnel from the bomb McAvoy had dropped or by the blades of the Girdled-by-Fields Militia as it sallied forth across the makeshift bridge. Farther north, Aidan could see the rear guard of the Militia urging the entire population on, moving fast: Girdled-by-Fields evacuated
en masse
and on the double. Aidan asked his datapad to calculate the distance and was satisfied it was within the margin of error.

“It’s time, Doc,” he said.

“Are you sure you can fly this thing?” McAvoy asked.

“I don’t need to,” Yuschenkov said and reached for the console.

P
ONTIFEX-GENERAL VONGÜK STRODE ACROSS TRAMPLED FIELDS,
savoring the heady sensation of victory. Ahead of him ran his triumphant troops, eager to sample the more tangible fruits that were the due of the conqueror. Even in this the Watchful God demonstrated his wisdom and benevolence, the Dictates delineating the propriety and the bounds of the Soldier’s Tithe.

A worm of unease did threaten to sour the Pontifex-General’s triumph. He had thought the village’s defenders more numerous. If so, where were they? Did they plan an ambush, or hope to launch a counterattack on the Lhakovi soldiers once they’d scattered in search of spoils?

Vongük dismissed the notion. He had again allowed himself to be taken in by the mock soldiers manning the walls. His initial assaults had so thoroughly decimated the villagers that the remainder were tied up in futile defense against his diversionary attack. His scheme had succeeded. That must be the explanation.

“Sir,” said Thergal. “I believe you should come see this.”

“What is it?”

“I cannot say. I do not know what it is nor how to describe it. It may be an artifact of the demons.”

Vongük gazed at his lieutenant. The man appeared sincere, his confusion and worry both apparent in the tilt of his head and the flare of his nostril.

“Very well. Lead on and I will see this abomination.”

Lhakovi soldiers crowded around a building or construct of some sort. Vongük could make out little of the object behind the screen of joon barraging it with javelins.

“Make a hole for the Pontifex-General,” Thergal said, employing his parade-ground voice.

The screen of soldiers parted, allowing Vongük an unobstructed view of–something. It reminded him of one of the scuttling creatures dredged up from a stream bed, only of monstrously magnified proportions, and–judging from the sound made by javelin heads rebounding from it–made of metal.

It did indeed appear to be a demonic artifact. Perhaps even the demons’ home.

Well, if demons wished to test the servant of the Watchful God, they had chosen the wrong time–now, in the hour of his victory.

“Lhakovi,” Vongük said, and waited for the hush. “The Watchful God has smiled upon our endeavors this day. And see how he rewards us? He gives us another opportunity, the chance to exterminate a demonic infestation from the face of the world. We will open this–this evil box as we would pull the stopper from a bottle of the green berry. Find the weak points. Now, for the honor of the Watchful God, follow me.”

He drew his sword of office and strode toward the demons’ abode.

A faint crimson glow warmed the bottom of the strange structure, then strobed into a red flash...

A
IDAN STARED OUT THE NEAREST PORTHOLE,
awed. The same patch of ground confronted him, but appeared to be gradually dropping away. The heliotrope sky was gone, replaced by blackness spangled by stars. A hint of blue just at the edge of the view the porthole allowed indicated the position of the gas giant, Upsilon Andromeda d.

Lhakovi soldiers drifted by the porthole in a variety of gentle trajectories. While Aidan was still no expert on joon facial expressions, he was willing to bet that what he saw on every single one of them was shocked surprise.

“I don’t imagine that when these lads woke up this morning, they expected to end the day exposed to hard vacuum,” said McAvoy, a note of wonder in his voice.

“What do you think I ought to feel about this, Aidan?” Yuschenkov asked. “Azziz destroyed DC this way, and here I am pulling the same stunt. Is this irony?”

“Hell, I don’t know Doc,” Aidan said. “I’m just a glorified security guard. We were out of options. I’d call it expediency.”

Aidan watched the cold and emptiness of space easily manage the job he had labored over with blade and bullets for so long. As the mining craft gained separation from the semi-circular chunk scooped from Ghark by the field of the activated Y-Drive, Aidan looked for evidence of Girdled-by-Fields villagers–collateral damage. All he saw were slowly spinning Lhakovi corpses.

“Do you think they all got away clear, Doc?”

“All of them? I don’t know. Odds are at least some of the badly injured never made it outside the walls. But if you’re still linked to that live feed from the geo-synchronous satellites...”

“Shit, of course.” Aidan flipped up the Kevlar flap from his datapad and checked the feed again. He zoomed in, north of the massive hemispherical pit that marked the former location of Girdled-by-Fields. There, at least a hundred yards beyond, he could see the throng, the exodus of the villagers.