Raiders (30 page)

The makeshift plating that was Gate One slowly buckled in and fell. Proximity mines placed by the Raiders ignited and blew all at once. They lifted the Gate up about a half meter until it
thunked
back down. The Raiders had only tack welded pieces onto the original Gate door to repair the damage. It was just enough to keep the Storm winds outside.

“Go go go!” Bjørg yelled. The Stingrays rolled into the Polar City as they
ker-klannged
over the fallen metal gate. The few Raiders near the Gate entrance shot at the Stingrays with their Coilguns. Most of the Coilrounds deflected away but a few bit the hulls and pushed small segments of metal and resin inward.

“Holy fuck!” The lead Stingray’s driver said as he watched small pencil-wide protrusions push themselves inside the crew cabin almost as if it was fabricated of rubber.

“Don’t worry. she’s holdin’,” the leader said. “Guns up!” He yelled.

“Guns to go sir!” the third soldier said. “Guns up and ready!”

“All Rays, guns up!” The leader said into the onboard comm. “Vemi, sync all forwards to one-sixty!”

A female voice emitted from the Stingray’s console. “Done. Sixty two targets acquired. Forty engageable. Assisted or manual?”

“Assisted Vemi,” the Stingray leader said as he felt the oil and sweat coat his face.

“Assisted mode ready. Switching to combat vis,” Vemi announced. Before the onboard Assistant even finished her words the entire inside of the Stingray transformed from a carbon black to seemingly transparent as if it were entirely made of glass. The interior transformed itself into a giant display that wrapped itself around the cabin. Vemi used parallax and other visual modifications to accurately emulate the outside world.

All of the controls pushed away. The chairs transformed into pivotable platforms with thumb-sticks on small hand grips. The driver on the left covered the front and sides. The right soldier took the rear and flanks and the middle driver could micro-navigate the craft with her small hand held controls.

“They’re hidin’,” the navigator said as she moved her head left to right. The Raiders’ outlines were vaguely outlined in red as Vemi worked hard to draw the enemy overlay indicators as best she could. Every red trace seemed to be behind something.

“Ma’am they’re all squirreled away in cover. This may take a few minutes!” The leader said into the Stingray console.

“Negative, we have to get everyone inside now! One way or another!” Bjørg returned. “We got a Storm right on our ass!”

“Copy ma’am.” The leader nodded and said, “You heard the lady. All Rays, engage no discrimination! Light ‘em up!” And with that the Stingray soldiers fired their guns, the reticles moved with a fluid precision against their thumb-sticks. “Burst fire! Don’t burn through!” He said.

Tracer rounds spat out from the Stingrays and into the darkened City streets. Two Raiders crouched behind a concrete bench stammered away as the Rays chiseled them down to powder. They had shot at the craft with their Coilguns for only a few rounds but then violently shook and fell.

“Got ‘em! That’s two!” The other two Stingrays pulled ahead slowly and began to fire at the Raiders who grew more impatient and rattled. They started to peek out from their positions and bravely fired Coilrounds into the windowless vehicles. The indentations they created on the Stingray shells grew more numerous. The displays inside the rays became difficult to see as the distortions increased from the Raider rounds.

They swiveled in their chairs and swept and fired away. They slowly rolled the craft ahead, a few meters at a time. “Twenty-six, twenty-seven point five!” Vemi announced with each successive hit, the
point-five
being an estimated non-fatal Raider casualty. The soldiers continued their deadly survey. “Thirty-four. Thirty-five!” Vemi said.

“Keep it up guys! Yeah!” The leader shouted.

“Oh shit,” the navigator in the middle said.

“What?” The right soldier asked without taking his eyes off the reticle as it appeared to dance and skew outside of the Stingray altogether. “Stewart, what is it?” He asked.

“Shitload of bad guys comin’ in,” she said.

“How many?”

“Don’t know. Vemi, enemy count beyond the perimeter,” Corporal Stewart said.

“Estimating. Eight hundred fifty to nine hundred approaching.” Vemi paused. “Advise withdraw!”

“We’re not fuckin’ withdrawin’ nothin’,” the leader said. “Keep hittin’! Vemi give me an ammo count baby!”

“Ammunition remaining nine thousand six hundred rounds,” Vemi said.

“Ah we got plenty left.” He paused and scanned for any movement or red outlines. “Okay move in! We’re clear ma’am!” The leader said while he rubbed the sweat from his right hand with a small cloth.

“We’re not fucking clear Janos! We got nine hundred bogeys comin’ in!” Stewart said as she nervously pointed to the spread spectrum display.

“No choice. We gotta get ‘em in here!” Janos responded.

A moment later the troops flooded in past the fallen Gate. The Stingrays were parked just ahead. Soldiers took cover behind the Rays while others found cover points nearby. There were small barrier walls but they were angled to defend the Gate from the
inside
. The cover barriers felt awkward and clumsy but there was no other option. Half of the soldiers had no choice but to go prone.

Strong winds billowed and howled their way past the Gate. A remnant of soldiers continued to pile in to escape the Storm when the Raiders emerged from the curved road ahead. The forward Raiders took flank positions, some in cover and others none when they fired their Coilguns at the Stingrays and soldiers. Almost instantly twenty-two soldiers were hit, their bodies chewed to shredded heaps from the indifferent shower of Coilrounds.

And then the entire street within erupted at once into a maelstrom of screams and yells and gunfire. Bullets and Coilrounds thwished and stung in all directions and veils of greyblue smoke soon coated all. The Stingrays did not move any further. Their guns stopped their pursuit of target just three minutes into the fight.

“Fireteam Stingray! Move up! You gotta move up!” General Christie yelled into her armband. But they remained still as hundreds of Coilrounds sparked and chicked away at their hulls.

Inside the Rays three bodies lay hunched over, lifeless as a Coilround or two poked their bodies into slightly different positions. The entire cabin was filled with smoke and spark. The display was gone, no more. In its place hundreds of small protrusions jutted inward thirty centimeters or more, a few of them opened into the street.

“Vemi! Advance the Rays slowly! Fifty meters!” There was no response from Vemi but the Stingrays did as they were told and advanced at a stately velocity of five meters per second. She was still in there, initiated and alive, somewhere.

The soldiers who were covered behind the Stingrays moved right with them. A seemingly never-ending curtain of Coilrounds flew around and over the vehicles. More Raiders fell as the soldiers shot from their modestly protected positions. Another soldier was picked off, only a centimeter of his skull had peeped over a barrier. His rifle skidded away and he attempted to stand up even with half his head gone. The apparition splotted into a rivulet of blood and water that rippled over the street’s surface.

Kama, Julian and Aurelia fought ever forward. They stayed behind barriers and bobbed up long enough to get a shot off with the hopeful glimpse of a hand or a head or foot. Kama looked back at the Gate entrance. Outside, about two hundred meters away she could see a blur of debris that whooshed left to right past the Gate. It looked as if the Gate were a portal to the inside of a tornado. And then it hit her. Dusty was out there! She hoped he had found shelter somehow. Did they use the storm pods? She wondered but did not know.

Hundreds of the fallen lay lifeless between her and the Gate, dead Raiders and Polar City Six soldiers both. Belts of storm-blown rain sheeted a hundred meters or more into the City. As the winds thundered outside the large entryway sang in haunted resonance, like a giant bowl of crystal at the hands of some unseen spirit. The song was loud enough that it overpowered the shots and the screams and the yells all-round.

“They’re falling back!” Someone yelled amidst the noise and smoke and projecta. The Coilrounds and bullets lowered their intense attack. Aurelia stole a dashed glance over the masoned barrier.

“Holy shit they are! I say we push up,” Aurelia said while she exchanged magazines. She flopped her torso over the barrier next to Julian who pulse-fired his weapon into the poorly lit streets. Together they did their part as they watched the Raiders slowly disappear. She whispered up to him, her left leg brushed against his right with a feathered pressure. The Stingrays rolled forward. The cars were a good fifty meters ahead of the three friends.

Julian swept his rifle left to right and back. He could see no Raiders in the scope’s glass. “Yeah let’s go!” He crouch-walked away from the barrier in a near-waddle until he reached another barrier, an overturned heavy table, probably from a nearby Pod.

The soldiers of Polar City Six fanned out across the southern part of the City. They cleared living spaces, stores and shops, alleyways and the open common areas as they advanced. Their efforts were coordinated with the help of an unseen Greater Assistant artificial intelligence who was safely stored on Airship Two. General Christie had ordered the three airships airborne so they could safely hover and avoid the great Storm’s violent turn. There were no people on the Airship platforms of course. The Greater Assistant was on her own as she piloted the great ships just above the tropopause line thirteen kilometers into the sky, nature’s upper limit for Earthborne weather systems.

“They’re on the run ma’am! We got about a quarter of the City cleared and secure!” A voice emitted from Bjørg’s cloth armband.

“Okay Colonel,” she responded. “I’m right behind you. Keep pushing the squads forward.”

“On it,” the voice said. By now only about three thousand soldiers remained, two thousand of which continued to advance Pod by Pod, shop by shop. They reached the Military Centre and passed it by for now. The entire substructure was completely abandoned. Veliosa and Venusia’s cores were stashed somewhere inside but the soldiers opted to continue their forward campaign. They would worry about the smaller details later.

The soldiers encountered some resistance but these were the bold few who staggered behind the Raiders’ retreat and took a posited stand, mostly the ones addicted to synthmeth or some other nerve destroying stimulant.

One Raider sprang up from a pile of stacked pillows and cushions in the main street’s right hand lanes. She roared something in Mandarin from her edentulous mouth and then lifted her Coilgun to Kama who was only about eight meters distant. The crazed woman faced their right flank. She kicked away a cushion as her external jugulars pulsed and gorged from her neck, paused to fire for a half-second when Kama twitched to the surprise. The Raider re-beaded her Coilgun against Kama’s head but then froze in place. Blood showered from her shoulder and neck, her body presently unresponsive to the interrupt of cerebral flow. She seized and collapsed where she stood, her leather-strapped Coilgun fired its final round into the pillow nest. Fibers and fluff kicked up into a micro-cloud as she fell,
faa-poofff
.

Julian lowered his rifle, a smokey streamlet wafted from the barrel’s end. They stared at the ruined Raider for a moment while they recollected themselves from what almost could have been. Like so many of the others her body appeared almost impossibly perfect and strong although her face and arms were heavily cracked from synthmeth abuse, aged far too early. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, Julian thought. “Let’s go,” he nodded ahead. And they did.

The three soon caught up with the mainline soldiers. After thirty minutes of advance they stopped in the City’s middle area, Centre Link. Hundreds of soldiers walked and surveyed the area. There were no living Raiders anywhere. Officers reviewed their tactical displays and issued orders to the splayed out troops. Soldiers emerged from the shops and Pods that lined the Centre Link’s circular lines. They shook their heads side to side in confusion.

“Okay where are they?” Aurelia asked while she studied her face. Kama did not respond but looked above and below, left to right.

She paused for a moment to consider things and then walked to the Bigstairs banister. Aurelia and Julian leaned against a sign nearby that was over a meter high. On its face it said Level One in an old world beige serif. As she looked to the lowest level Kama announced, “Down there,” and then proceeded down the stairs alone.

Aurelia and Julian dashed to walk alongside her. Aurelia grabbed her arm and said, “What are you fucking crazy? Go down there by yourself? Christ,” she said, exasperated as she pointed her rifle’s barrel toward the stairwell below.

Several soldiers noticed Kama’s descent and followed her. Before they knew it everyone proceeded down the Bigstairs. The lower levels were not nearly as extensive as Level One so for every landing small fireteams broke away from the massive spiraled ramp to sweep and clear each area. There were no Raiders to be found anywhere.

Until they reached Level Seven. For the Polar City Six troops the experience was new but for the decanted people of the City itself it was all too familiar a journey to the bottommost realms of their once charm-blessed, hideaway world.

And there they were, the remnant Jia Ting, about two thousand left alive or thereabouts. They mostly sat in place but a few stood. The ones who did stand up waited in a line two or three wide, the Great Elder at the head, his Chosen escorts to his left and right with their hands wrapped round his arms and to either side of them, two Temple Guard soldiers, easily identified by their silken-cloth Temple Wraps pointed their Coilguns at an inward angle toward the line’s lead position.

“Freeze! Drop your weapons! Hit the deck!” A Sergeant and two infantrymen yelled out at the crestfallen and somber Raiders. But they did not. They said nothing and only shuffled slightly ahead in their line, eyes ahead and to the floor as if they were not surrounded by hundreds of Polar City soldiers. The transcendently beautiful Chosen women with their twice-braided hair and golden silk and leather-lined wraps stood abreast the Elder with saddened faces. Even in the gloomy and dim desaturated spaces of Level Seven the two Chosen women transmitted their dignified glow against the shadowline, their genetically selected bodies captured the attention of some soldiers as they landed onto that final place. It was not unlike running across two alien beings in an undiscovered cave, someplace far away.