Son of Sedonia

42

Stand


AS SOON AS the lights went dark, shrieking hot rounds cut the stillness that had descended on Officer Vaughn’s outpost. Two of them gouged long, deep channels in his helmet as he dropped behind cover and ducked under a shower of department store window glass. Looking to his left and right, some of his other squad-mates had gotten down in time. Others hadn’t. Sergeant Keyes lay flat on his back, convulsing in an expanding pool of dark blood. Not the way Vaughn had imagined being promoted to squad leader.

Flip the switch. The thought pushed through his screaming nerves, begging him to take control. Same as it had done for each assault since the invasion started.

“We’re cut off!” shouted Officer Reeve, veins popping out of his bulging, footballer neck, “Got no comms, no sat-nav, nothin’!”

Vaughn rifled through his Neural, verifying. His satellite uplink: Disconnected. Real-time battlefield intel: Gone. Soldier to soldier comms: Unavailable. Net Connection interrupted. Tower Signal lost. Whatever triggered the blackout also managed to screw every piece of modern communication equipment he had been trained to rely on since day one at Red Gate. Flying blind along with every EXO holed up in the pitted, cratered ruin of Dynex Valley Mall.

He raked his hand across the Neural display to close it and gripped his assault rifle. It took a few seconds to work up the courage.

“Ok-Okay!” Vaughn shouted to his squad, “On my count, pop up and let em have it! Keep small! One! Two! THREE!”

The six of them pushed themselves up to just above their cover, and opened fire. To Vaughn, it felt like they might as well be shooting paintballs at a tidal wave. Hundreds of T99s roared in the flashing darkness, sprinting through the parking lot toward the mall’s first tier. The food court... From Vaughn’s elevated position on the second tier, he knew instantly that the squads below were screwed. He shouted down to them anyway.

“FALL BACK! FALL! BACK!” He screamed at the peak of his vocal chords. Miraculously, a few soldiers seemed to obey, turning and hauling ass for the left and right escalators to the second tier.

“Reeve! Williams! Get in position and blow the escalators on my signal!” The two of them nodded and sprinted off with the thump-whine-thump-whine of their Augmentors. The food court EXOs scrambled up the steps, but few made it more than halfway before they were ripped apart by focused T99 fire. Desperate, scalding anger boiled in Vaughn’s chest as he watched the last soldier burst into a cloud of red. He toggled to the flare attachment on his rifle and popped a round into the air. It shot up, then drifted down like a smoking emerald star. In the hollow seconds before the explosion, he allowed a small hope to creep in. Maybe the good guys’ll see it. He plugged his ears and curled into a ball.

BOOM! BOOM! The detonations were small in comparison to some of their heavier ordinance, but they still shook all four tiers of the cheaply constructed strip mall. As the tremors settled, Vaughn peeked out from the shadows. The blasts had done their job, both destroying the only access routes up and spraying shrapnel and debris into the enemy. A chorus of blood-curdling agony filled the aftermath.

Sergeant Keyes had really known his stuff. In the lull before the blackout he’d had them destroy all the stairwells and elevators within the complex stores, turning each set of plaza escalators into choke-points. Some of the guys had taken to calling the place “Fort Macy’s.” The few ad-hoc squads they’d managed to assemble here might hold the position for some time, shooting any T99 dumb enough to climb the storefronts. It could even give reinforcements the time they needed to assemble and dispatch from HQ.

If HQ’s still there.

Men from the upper tiers double-timed it down to the second, and assembled in firing teams along the perimeter wall. It was the order Vaughn would have given over the comms. Seeing them do it by themselves made him proud. As the T99s shook off the shock and charged, they ran head-long into a solid field of EXO bullets.

Even with his Neural marking targets and set to infrared, Vaughn could hardly see what he was shooting at between the muzzle flashes. A body would go down here. Another there. Entire rows of them crumpled and folded up to die. Gradually, the tsunami receded. Insane laughter and cheers picked up from the haggard band of EXOs.

“Yeah, motherf*ckers! We got more where that came from!” Reeve bellowed.

“Crawl back to your mud huts, SlumF*cks!”

“Alright, lock that shit up!” Vaughn shouted above them, surprised at his own voice, “Keep it tight, they’re not done yet!” He almost regretted saying it when he heard the approaching hum of engines. Mid-range Scouts judging by the wasp-like undertone.

“Ours?” Reeve asked.

“COVER!” Vaughn barely had time to say. The Scout ships came in low and fast, spraying parallel lines of fifty-cal ammunition into the second tier plaza. Ten EXOs burst apart. The rest scrambled to the department store, shot out the windows, and dove through the broken glass. Bloody, beaten, and exhausted, they crouched together amongst bullet-riddled mannequins and display cases. The latest fall fashions ripped to colorful shreds.

Vaughn watched his men sink as the rhythmic pulse of chanting wafted through the store windows. Without suppressing fire, the T99s would climb the rubble in no time. He did a quick head count. Only fourteen of us. Fourteen against thousands. They needed a plan and they needed it now.

“On your feet and Legs On!” Vaughn said, “We’ve got about twenty seconds to get to the third tier and blow the escalators, now MOVE!” He leaped through the door first. Hesitated when he saw the Scouts accelerate out of their turns, straightening for another run. Reeve grabbed him by the collar of his flak jacket.

“Come on!” Reeve shouted. Vaughn stumbled, then matched pace to Reeve’s five meter strides. The squads bounded up the escalators just as a wave of T99s climbed onto the second tier. Through blurry vision, Vaughn thought he saw the last of the EXOs make it to the third. He popped another flare.

“BLOW IT! BLOW IT!”

BOOM! The left escalator exploded, knocking Vaughn and most of the others off their feet. The right one stayed quiet. Ignored tears streamed down Vaughn’s cheeks as he pushed his aching body up. Over the ringing in his ears, the screech of the incoming Scouts bore down on them. Their gatling guns spooled up. Started blasting. Ragged ditches shot through the concrete toward Vaughn. He crouched, then pushed his Augs harder than he ever had. Harder than it was safe to do. He hurtled through the window a millisecond before the ground exploded.

Waking from blackness, he found himself on a broken bed. The force of his impact must have snapped it in half. He looked around.

“HAH! You’ve gotta be f*ckin’ kidding me!” Vaughn said.

“Way to kamikaze into a Mattress Hut, you lucky bastard!” Reeve called back to him, firing from the windows with eight others. Vaughn rolled off the fractured bed. Dove into cover by the window. Peeking outside, he saw the Scouts fly off toward the horizon.

“Okay,” he croaked, “Their guns are dry! Everybody up to the fourth tier!”

“Are you f*cking crazy?!” one of the officers said, “There’s no air cover up there, another strafing run and we’ll be torn apart!”

“Won’t even last that long if we stay here!” Vaughn pointed to right-hand escalator. T99s shoved single-file through the bodies choking the space. Others climbed the face of the third tier. Several EXOs fired into them, clogging the path with bodies. “Besides, we’ll blast ‘em one last time after we make it up!”

“Sounds good to me!” said Reeve, tossing aside a smoking, empty magazine then loading a fresh one.

The third tier flooded with T99s as Vaughn and his men made it to the top.

“FIRE AT WILL!” Vaughn called out as he raced for the detonators beneath a garden oak tree. The EXOs backpedaled into the top tier plaza as they fired into the escalator openings. One by one, their ammo ran out. Vaughn slid through a patch of gardenias and scooped up the detonators.

“FIRE IN THE HOLE!” He shouted as he clicked the trigger. Nothing. Tried again. Nothing. Then the sound of engines rose from the distance. Jesus... His weapon felt suddenly heavy in his hands as he aimed it at the T99s. He maintained discipline, firing one shot at a time, aiming for the center mass. As though it mattered now.

But as the sound approached, he knew it wasn’t a Scout. Too throaty and sharp. A Fury? No...a Zeus... It was. There was no mistaking the knife-edged silhouette as it barreled down on the top tier. The T99s seemed to recognize it too, high-tailing it on top of each other back down the escalators. The Zeus opened fire into the enemy, cutting a red swath through their ranks. Vaughn and the EXOs lifted their guns in the air and howled.

“Okay, pick your targets, guys! Push ‘em all the way back!” The group went to semi-auto, cleaning up what the Zeus missed on its first pass. But as they reached the edge of the top tier and looked down, they saw the rest of the horde. T99 soldiers supported by Outer Ring workers in weaponized loader rigs. Steel plate armored trucks with mounted machine-guns. And a mobile, deep-core laser drill platform.

The Zeus’ sensors didn’t register it as a weapon right away, reading only the gathering heat source at the front lines. It cost Kabbard valuable microseconds in reaction time. He sucked in a breath, held it, and rolled left to avoid the initial path of the beam as it bore a blinding hole through the night. The Zeus was fast, but not faster than light. The beam swung to follow Kabbard as he struggled to stay ahead and come about for another run.

“Arm salvo!” he shouted to the Zeus console. Four red lights appeared on the Zeus diagram in the canopy glass, followed by the ‘Armed’ message. As the heat of the laser drill distorted the canopy glass, Kabbard screamed.

“FIRE!”

The payload fell away just as the laser clipped the Zeus’ right wing, sending Kabbard into a slow spin. He felt the shock of the explosions beneath him. Through the whirling chaos, he caught blurred glimpses of the top tier of Dynex Valley Mall, and pulled against the spin with all the strength his ill-fitting Augs could muster. Pops rippled through the cockpit moments before impact.

FwwooooOOOOOP! BANG! The Zeus’ impact foam dulled the crash, but it still felt like absolute shit. The undercarriage ground to a stop in the concrete beneath him as he struggled to dig out. Finally, the canopy blasted off the frame, deflating the foam around him. Aching from head to toe in his old, tight-fitting Augs, Kabbard climbed out to the sound of cheering.

A group of what looked like kids in EXO kit rushed over to him, jumping up and down. Kabbard noticed the glow below to his right. The salvo had found its mark, decimating the T99 ranks. He allowed a half-smile to cross his face before straightening.

“Who’s in command?!” he barked.

“I-I am, sir!” said one of the rookies. No...not rookies anymore. These guys had really been through the ringer. Augs torn to hell, blood and dirt all over. A few had holes through them, leaving arms dangling limp. Kabbard squinted at the commanding officer. Recognized him.

“You’re the ‘sir,’ Officer Vaughn, I’m a civilian,” said Kabbard, saluting. He turned and trotted to the wreck of the Zeus. Yanked open the rear hatch.

“Weapons! Ammo! Grenades! Take what you can, sir, it’s gonna be a long night!” Kabbard hefted two crates out and slid them across the ground where the EXOs tore them open. For himself, he took his favorite out of the hatch. A belt-fed fifty cal SAW. Even with his Augs on, the thing weighed more than he remembered.

“Sir—uhh...Mr. Kabbard,” said Officer Vaughn, limping over, “Is HQ gone?”

Kabbard chambered the first round of the ammo belt and paused. Nodded.

“Saw it go up right after I left the armory.”

“So that’s it? There’s no one else coming?”

“Governor Sato will call in the Feds, but who knows when they’ll mobilize.” Kabbard saw the young officer sink. Sato probably can’t even get that much done. He cleared his throat. Spoke to Vaughn loud enough for the other men to hear. “What are your orders, sir?”

Vaughn looked back at the men. All waited, weapons at the ready.

“Okay...I want claymores set up in stages at each escalator! You six, set up along the front line! You three—” Vaughn stopped as he saw something over Kabbard’s shoulder. Kabbard turned in time to see the RPG smoke trail streak toward the fourth tier.

“INCOMI—”

BOOOOM! Kabbard woke up in mid-air, just in time to feel himself crunch down into a flower bed. The Zeus had gone up in flames, and EXOs lay scattered across the tier. Only four were moving. The rest lay still in smoking heaps.

“VAUGHN!” Kabbard yelled. It sounded like he’d shouted the kid’s name into a pillow. He winced at the pounding in his skull as he rolled on the gutted flower bed. Against the firey backdrop at the tier’s edge, shadows climbed up. Kabbard scanned the ground around him. Found the SAW. In an agonizing lunge, he dove for the weapon, scooped it up, and opened fire.

The shadows screamed as they fell back, but more shadows replaced them. An endless wave of devils cascading over the edge. Kabbard’s Neural readout beeped at seventy-five percent ammo. Then fifty. Then twenty-five. It ran dry as they closed on him.

“COME ON!” Kabbard screamed, losing his voice. He tossed the SAW aside, and reached behind his back. Detached the two-and-a-half foot carbon steel short sword from his back panel.

“YOU WANT THIS CITY?!” Kabbard sprinted toward the gathering crowd with Augs at full tilt. “COME BLEED FOR IT!”

The honed, vibrating edge of the blade sailed through bodies as the horde converged on him. He cut one from neck to armpit. Lopped another open at the waist. Kabbard’s Augs screeched with every desperate, swing, kick, elbow, and punch. Until finally a shot shattered his knee. Kabbard howled and doubled over onto his side. Hands reached in for him. He writhed, hacking a few off until he caught another round in the forearm, and a final one through the other knee. The blade dropped to the ground as the rabid throng reached underneath the former Sergeant. Heaved him up over their heads.

Kabbard screamed a curse, silencing the crowd for the briefest instant. It roared from his throat in no language and yet all languages. As the blood loss took him, it stopped.