Star Crusades Nexus: Book 03 - Heroes of Helios (28 page)

“Jack, get on the guns. I’ll watch Teresa.”

Jack was loath to leave her, but the rounds continued to strike around their craft, and every few seconds another struck the metalwork. He nodded to his friend and lurched over to the left cupola. He squeezed into the side of the unit and examined the equipment. Handles and a trigger extended inside with a pair of stubby barrels extended out and facing backward. He held the handles and moved the barrels toward the Animosh. One short pull released a stream of pellets, each no larger than a fingernail. His shots were much too high, and they vanished off into the fog.

Right, try again!

This time he remembered the first thing he’d learned as a marine when he was on the range.

Aim low!

The burst struck the front of a large craft that featured four ducted fans. As the front two fans disintegrated under his gunfire, the squad stood on top fell to their deaths. Jack felt nothing for them and simply moved his weapon to fire at the next target. He glanced to his left at Wictred.

“How is she?”

Wictred had already placed an emergency sealant pack on the wound, and it had stopped the bleeding. He looked at him and shook his head.

“No idea. This blue stuff is new. I think she’s going into shock!”

This filled Jack with even greater determination. He swung the gun around to face forward and checked to ensure they were heading for the spire. Luckily for the crew they were, Jack didn’t want to think about how far he was prepared to go if they didn’t do as agreed. He then pivoted back and returned fire on the Animosh. One more of the bike type vehicles crashed to the ground before they broke off and moved to a safer distance away from the shuttle. Shouting from the other side caught Jack’s attention, but it was just the two Zathee synthetics arguing while trying to operate the right-hand gun. Neither could fit inside the cupola mount, but between them they could aim and control it, even if their fire was erratic and wild.

“Jack?” Teresa called out in a weak, almost impossible to hear voice over the sound of their escape. Jack heard her and immediately abandoned his sponson to move to her. Teresa’s face was pale, and her voice quieter than he’d ever heard it.

“Use my…” she reached into her tunic and fiddled about, trying to grab something. She couldn’t stay conscious and once more slipped away. Jack grabbed inside and found the secpad. He pulled it out and held the battered looking device in front of him. It was locked, but he entered his Marine Corps access code and it activated. The last message had been auto analyzed and converted to text. He read it and instantly worked out what had happened.

So, the LT and the others made it to the spire. They must be heading for the high ground to reach the fleet. If we meet them there, we can kill two birds with one stone.

He nearly smiled, but their situation and the prone shape of his badly wounded mother shook him instantly back to reality.

The gun!

He hauled himself back to the cupola in time to see two of the watchers flash past and rake the side of the craft with thermal gunfire. This time they must have hit something important, as they lost height and dropped twenty meters before leveling off. Jack looked around and saw the spire was now no more than a kilometer away. He fired another burst at them, lifted the secpad to his face, and hit the reconnect option. It took a few seconds, but at this range it could burn through the jamming. The face of Thai Qiu-Li appeared, much to his surprise.

“Jack, where are you?” she asked.

Another blast struck the shuttle, and it lurched to the right, dropping down below the top levels of the nearest buildings. The secpad flew from Jack’s hands, clattering across he floor and landing near Teresa. He was forced to grab one of the many emergency straps to stop him being thrown to the wall.

“We’re going down,” Wictred said in his usual laconic tone.

Jack looked out through the tiny slit on the cupola and immediately knew his friend spoke the truth. They were trailing smoke from a dozen holes, and the ground was getting closer and closer.

“Throw it over,” he called out.

Wictred looked down, grabbed the device, and hurled it to Jack who caught it between two fingers. The face of his friend still showed though the top corner had decayed.

“Still there?” he asked.

“Yes, what’s happening?”

“We’re coming to you, and we have company.”

She shook her head in a knowing way, as if it was exactly what she would have expected from Jack. From his position, Jack could see her face, but the background was continually moving.

“Well, we’re going inside on the twenty-fifth floor. There is a walkway that goes up to the top. We should be able to reach the fleet from there.”

Jack nodded.

“Good, we need to let them know what’s happening. It’s a lot bigger than you think.”

She smiled.

“Isn’t that what you tell all the girls, Jack?”

He almost blushed at that.

“Nice. We’ll see you there. I have Wictred and my mother with me.”

Thai Qiu-Li’s face vanished. For a second, Jack felt a burst of an adrenalin rush through his body, imagining something must have happened to her. But the face of Hunn and then Lieutenant Rossen appeared as she grabbed the device from the marine.

“Private, get here fast. You can explain when you arrive. Watch your backs!”

The image cut, and Jack looked back at his friend who was now helping to load the right-hand gun mount. The Helion defector, who until now had been silent, pulled himself toward the front of the craft and spoke with the pilot before slumping down. He grabbed at the straps, pulling them around him. Jack looked at him before realizing what he was doing.

He’s getting ready for a crash landing!

“Wictred! Get ready!”

The front of the craft lifted up, and the pilot managed to increase height by using what energy was left in their engines and also the forward momentum they had built up. Even so, it was already slowing down and probably not far from a stall. It suddenly seemed to float in the air, neither moving up nor down. The pilot shouted something, and the Helion unfastened his straps and moved for the door. Only when he reached it did he look back and shout into his translator.

“Get out, now!”

* * *

Hunn spotted the shuttle first, reaching out with his left arm to identify it. From the position so far up the spire, they had an excellent view of the surrounding area, but the fog and periodic clouds of pollution had masked its approach until it was barely a hundred meters away.

“I see them,” said Lieutenant Rossen, finding the black trails.

“How did they make it that far?” asked Thai Qiu-Li.

“Easy,” explained Hunn, “Jack and Wictred are on board. It takes more than a few natives on bikes to stop them.”

Lieutenant Rossen looked back at him.

“Bikes?”

“Yeah, like those.”

A flight of five ducted fan riders powered overhead and performed a steep bank to target the shuttle. Even as they moved in, it was clear people were trying to get out onto the platform five levels below them.

“They won’t make it,” said Rossen bitterly.

It was obvious to all three of them, yet only the Lieutenant had wanted to say anything. Streaks from the heated rounds slammed into the shuttle, and chunks of melted metal ripped off from its hull.

“Maybe, maybe not,” muttered Hunn, lifting his carbine.

In the brief moment before he pulled the trigger, he altered the firing mode and chose the most powerful triple-round blast. It kicked into his shoulder and sent a super-velocity round. The other two did the same, each taking careful aim and firing at any of the Animosh watchers if they strayed too close. Two of them were quickly downed before they realized there were shooters actually inside the spire. Hunn spotted a small group leap from the shuttle as it tipped over and tumbled down toward the ground. A yellow flash ripped apart the nose of the craft, and an armored section rocketed into the sky before a series of retro rockets activated.

“Nice shooting!” came a familiar voice from five floors down.

Hunn moved to the edge and leaned over to get a better look. He could see Jack and Wictred carrying a wounded marine between them. There was also a Helion and two more figures that he couldn’t identify.

“Get your asses up here!” he bellowed, watching the synthetic Zathee following the others to the passageway in front of the wide set of stairs. He turned around to face his comrades.

“Right, who are they?”

Lieutenant Rossen shrugged.

“Who, the two giants at the back?”

Hunn nodded quickly.

“Who cares? Right now, we have a signal to make, and now they know we’re here. Look!”

She pointed as three of the larger ducted fan aircraft moved down and landed in the street. Small groups of Animosh fanned out into the structure. Thai Qiu-Li pulled out her secpad and held it up, trying to get a signal. The interference was already substantially less, but her view of the sky was still obstructed by the rest of the spire.

“I have to get to the top to finish this.”

Thai Qiu-Li didn’t wait for confirmation and simply ran off to the nearest steps, continuing the last few levels to the top. Hunn checked his carbine and moved to the ramp that led back down to the next floor. He threw the Lieutenant a side-ways glance.

“I take it we’re going to keep them busy?’

She nodded.

“Yes, they’ll pick us off on the roof. We’ll watch each of the four sides, and give Thai Qiu-Li the time she needs. Are you ready?”

“Always.”

They split up, each moving to a different side of the building. This far up it was much narrower, and the central core was solid with apartments and derelict control rooms littering the place. The design reminded Lieutenant Rossen of the Eiffel Tower back in France on Earth. The difference was that the ancient tower in France was simply a metal tower. This spire on Helios was a black framework that supported an internal tower of black stone. It meant they would not easily be able to see each other when spaced out.

Jack and the others finally arrived and fanned out on the same floor. He moved up to her and saluted.

“Sir, we have this.”

He handed her the breacher unit.

“What is it, Private?”

The Helion that had gone with them approached with his two synthetic comrades right behind him. He spoke, and his translator did its usual job of reducing any sense of compassion or emotion to that of a pitiless machine.

“It is what our leader was killed for, and why your ship was crashed. With it, we can bring down this regime.”

“What?”

She turned to Jack with a bitter expression on her face, paying no further attention to the device.

“You want to get us involved in a Helion civil war? You fool!”

How many would have thought that visitors from the Orion Nebula might have visited the moon of humanity millennia earlier? The Helios Expedition opened up research into the fields of genetics, physics, and cosmology in ways nobody could heave dreamt a generation earlier. Life on other worlds had long been considered likely, but the discovery of so many races came as a shock. Archaeological teams soon made discoveries under the surface of Titan that would finally prove the links between the races of Earth and Orion went back to before the ancient Biomech War.

The Lost World

General Rivers waited inside the Great Council along with Admiral Anderson. They had been waiting there for almost ten minutes while the representatives from the other Powers arrived. Ambassador Broby Ramir entered with several Helion officials. He smiled and shook their hands before walking toward the two military men.

“Well, that went well,” he said with a smile on his face.

Anderson looked to the General and back to the Ambassador.

“What went well? We haven’t started yet.”

“My meeting with the Helions. We have come to a number of agreements.”