War World: Cyborg Revolt Read online

  First Citizen Diettinger was a good Vessel Commander, but he did not understand dirtside war and the strict measures it took to pacify cattle. Also, unlike most Sauron norms, he was hard to ‘read.’ This made him unpredictable. For now the odds were on Diettinger’s side, but soon the Soldiers would see the dangers of coddling cattle. Already, they had destroyed precious Sauron fuel and ammo stock, most of which could not be replaced.

  If Zold were killed, there would be no war leader for the Cyborgs or Soldiers in the field. First Rank Köln was wise but cautious; these days he was only fit to command staff meetings. The one who called himself Hammer fought well, but was too young to command the respect of Cyborgs older than himself. As much as it ran against Zold’s grain to be un-zealous in battle, try he must. Otherwise, all might be lost.

  He ran across no one in the next three streets, then he turned a corner only to find himself at the rear of a street riot. Or at least he called it a rear, for want of a more precise term. The line of cattle across the square must have broken since Zold came over the wall. Now Soldiers were chasing screaming Springfielders in as many directions as there were streets to hide in.

  Some of the pursuers appeared to be playing with their victims. Others had already run them down, clubbing the men to the ground and rounding up the women. A female barely old enough to be called a woman ran past Zold. Almost absently, his arm shot out, fingers closing like a waldo in her hair. She sat down with a thump and a screech and began to sob. Zold dragged her to her feet and half-pushed, half-threw her to the first Soldier who passed by.

  From the number of Soldiers loose in Springfield he began to wonder if there was anyone still guarding the caravans. The caravan escort should prevent an attack from the rear, but there was a half-klick of broken ground between the village and the road—

  Zold took a deep breath, flexed his legs, and leaped to the top of the wall. Here it was only about three meters high, and he landed on his feet. Within moments a bullet whistled by. Zold flung himself to the rough rocks, feeling glass and metal fragments prick his skin. The muzzle-flare of crude black powder weapon gave Zold a fix on his enemy’s location. A quick burst from his assault rifle did the rest.

  The enemy started a scream that quickly faded to a moan, finally to silence. Zold gave him little attention. All across the ground between the village and the road muzzle flashes and grenades sparked and flared.

  It was no wonder the Springfielders had chosen the apparently suicidal path of resisting the Sauron advance. The more Saurons they drew into town, the fewer to defend the caravan, or the more to trap if the infiltrators came south instead of north. Cyborg Zold sprang to his feet, towering three and a half meters above the top of the wall.

  His voice thundered like a cannon. “SOLDIERS! Rally at the Gate! RALLY! We’ve been lured into a trap. RALLY NOW!”

  He heard shouts of acknowledgement and the slap of running feet. He also heard even louder screams than before. Soldiers determined to quickly finish what they’d begun. As they rallied at the gate, he saw that no one was missing. Two Soldiers were limping, one favored his left arm and several were almost out-of-breath. But all had weapons, and all looked up at Zold where he towered over the wall.

  “First squad,” he said, pointing to four Soldiers, “at point. Second squad, take positions on the wall; cover us until we pass that big hangman bush on the far side of the stream. The rest in double column, standard intervals, weapons loaded and locked.”

  The men moved over the wall, bypassing the Gate and formed ranks in about a minute. Zold nodded his approval. When the snipers were in position, he took a flying leap into the middle of his men. He nearly landed on the sprawled, shapeless thing that had no doubt been a man before darkness fell. Springfield would not forget the price of defying their conquerors for generations to come.

  II

  It seemed to Fourth Rank Boyle that Cat’s Eye’s orange light was even more sinister than usual. Or maybe it was just his senses, heightened beyond even a Soldier’s normal limits as the troop carrier ran the ridges along the Miracle Mountains.

  Boyle had gone ridge-running before, while in training back on Homeworld. But then he’d been just a grunt or a passenger. Now he had to cope with the sensory overload and also keep his wits clear enough to perform his duties as second leader of the squadron.

  “Heat signature!” the copilot shouted. He rattled off coordinates that might as well have been in Chinese for all Boyle could make sense of them. He peered into the cockpit and studied the map display.

  Two and a half meters of Cyborg loomed up behind him. “Ignore it,” Sargun ordered. “That’s not where the report said the camp was.”

  “There was an error factor in the report, sir,” Boyle reminded Sargun. “That heat signature is well within the limits of error.”

  “A big signature, too,” the pilot added. “Could be fifty campfires, maybe more.”

  “All the more reason to ignore it, then. Nobody unfriendly would be lighting that many fires in Soldier territory.”

  “Not unless it’s a decoy,” Boyle pointed out.

  Sargun’s glare made Roger think twice about continuing the argument. But First Citizen Diettinger had given him this position because the Cyborg might step in it.

  “Can we make one firing pass at the fires?” he asked.

  The pilot ignored Sargun’s glare, secure in his knowledge of being indispensable. The Saurons were down to fewer than thirty pilots, with not enough fuel or equipment for training more.

  “Fuel allows it, but ammunition’s another matter. One really good pass, and we’d be a bit short if the cattle do show up.”

  Ammunition wasn’t like pilots; it could be manufactured, even for the sophisticated rotary cannon in the belly of the tilt-rotor. But the nearest supply dump was at Firebase Two, which wouldn’t be particularly helpful if there was a strong force of cattle just beyond the next ridge.

  Boyle stared at the IR scanner display, as if sheer willpower could draw out of it more information than it was willing to give. As a Communications officer, he knew more about the sensors than the average Soldier. With their enhanced senses, the Cyborgs knew little, and cared less about the scanners.

  “I think that heat pulse is a group of campfires left burning to attract our attention,” Boyle concluded reluctantly. “I don’t read any human or animal heat signatures.”

  “They might be lost in the spillover effect from the fires,” the pilot said.

  “Possibly,” Sargun observed. “But the cattle could also have simply run off and left their fires burning when they heard our engines.”

  “Or—” Boyle began.

  “Or what?” Sargun interrupted, his voice growing in volume. Obviously, he was not used to being challenged.

  Boyle decided that he was not arguing with a superior, merely encouraging consideration of alternate tactical possibilities. Furthermore, this was the area rumored to contain one of Brigadier Cummings’ bases. He’d seen satellite photos showing signs of small-group movements toward these mountains and the accompanying lowlands.

  He swallowed and continued. “Or left the fires burning to draw us into position for an ambush, sir.”

  Sargun didn’t smile. By temperament, if not by heredity, Cyborgs were almost incapable of the act. But his face looked less stern.

  “Then we’ll land on the ridge running west from Hill-1367, about halfway along. That will give us a good command of the camp. If they want to come back to it, the cattle will have to run the gauntlet of our fire.”

  The pilot’s line-of-sight lasered Sargun’s orders to the other pilots, who were already turning the tilt-rotors toward the ridge. Boyle noted that they were also keeping a thousand meters above the ground, out of range of most small-arms fire.

  It wasn’t small-arms fire that met the three craft five hundred meters short of their touchdown. It was two missiles, signaling their launch by searing yellow back blasts, then leaping on tails of red fire toward the
transports.

  The pilots were already diving as the missiles climbed. The three tilt-rotors dropped flares and broadcast EMP bursts. One missile soared past the transports, wobbled, started to turn to track the heat pulse of the last tilt-rotor, then ran out of thrust and began to tumble. Before Boyle could see where it landed, the second missile exploded just under the left wing.

  Windows shattered, gouging skins with flying plastic. Lights flickered and dimmed, and the note of the left engine changed sharply.

  “We’re going straight down before we lose her,” the copilot shouted, while the pilot slapped control switches and came as close as a Soldier could to praying.

  Boyle lunged for his seat, hanging on to the shoulder harness when the transport landed—hard.

  The landing sent everything and everybody not strapped down flying toward the overhead, then crashing down. A squad of cattle would have lost half its strength to fractures and concussions. The Soldiers had only one man disabled; he took a full ammunition box on the knee.

  The wounded Soldier was half-carried, half-dragged out, as the squad swarmed out of every door and hatch, and a couple of the shattered windows as well. Roger smelled leaking fuel and felt the ground give under his boots.

  By the time he’d deployed a security squad around the transport, Sargun had taken the other two squads from the undamaged craft uphill. Boyle’s night vision and the distant glow from the campfires let him see the Soldiers alternately creeping and rushing, using every bit of cover and maintaining silence and fire discipline.

  Sargun might be an arrogant son-of-a-retort, but with Soldiers of this quality he couldn’t do much harm. Boyle began making the rounds of the security perimeter.

  As he finished, the pilot came up to him. “We’re going back to check for damage.”

  “No lights,” Boyle ordered. “We’re leaking fuel, and I don’t know if that missile crew is the only cattle around.”

  A quick jerk of the thumb uphill told Boyle whose fault the pilot thought it was. Then the two crewmen were climbing back uphill toward their disabled machine.

  They’d just disappeared through the cockpit hatch when rifles spattered the transport’s armor with bullets. The two pilots skedaddled in a hurry, while the security squad promptly imitated drillbits, burrowing deeper into the ground than ever. Like their comrades uphill, their fire discipline held. Moments later the other two tilt-rotors rose in a cloud of dust. Boyle scanned the darkness, wincing every time bullets punched out another window or struck sparks from the armor. Sparks and fuel leaks made a bad combination.

  It wasn’t the sparks that did the final damage. It was a grenade, launched with an asthmatic cough from somebody’s rifle attachment and detonated on the right wing. An almost full tank ignited.

  A ball of flame spewed over the transport, igniting what was left in the other tanks and on the ground as well.

  Before the ammunition for the belly gun started cooking off, Boyle had his people close in on the grenade launcher. The cattle didn’t run; they got off two more grenades but the blazing transport seemed to dazzle them. Both grenades hit wide of the mark and the return fire from the Soldiers cut them down where they stood.

  They died in silence. Once more Boyle had the feeling that a capricious fate had brought Dol Guldur and her soldiers to the best place in the whole Empire of Man to build a new Homeworld.

  The burning fuel illuminated the slope of the ridge, giving both sides uphill targets. The Soldiers’ superior firepower and marksmanship gave them a quick victory, but not a bloodless one.

  When Boyle reached Sargun on the ridgeline, the first thing he saw was two Soldiers dressing each other’s wounds. A third lay with his helmet pulled down over his face.

  “How many cattle were up there?” Roger asked.

  “Eighteen, with two launchers,” Sargun replied. “We killed them all, captured one launcher and two spare missiles, and are ready to move on the camp.” The Cyborg paused and twisted his lips into what passed for a smile among Cyborgs. “We questioned one prisoner. Most of these troops are veterans of the Fighting First, Cummings’ own regiment.” He followed that with words almost too low for even Sauron ears to hear. “If we can bag the Brigadier, the war will be won.”

  Boyle wasn’t sure what the Cyborg was getting at. Sure enemy morale and military capability would be hampered by Cummings’ death, but the war for Haven would almost certainly continue for generations. Or until the Breedmasters had raised enough full-blooded Saurons to settle the issue.

  They would be good troops then, he decided. That did make sense. The Fighting First were under Brigadier Cummings’ personal flag. He also knew that he would not want to be on the receiving end of Sargun’s questioning methods, if the Cyborg’s hands, still covered in dried blood, were any indication of his interrogation techniques. Boyle tried to look in every direction but at Sargun until he could control his facial expression. “Attack the camp?”

  “Of course. These cattle can hardly be the only ones. From a camp that size, there might be an entire battalion of militia. If we hold it when the other cattle return, they will be walking into the kind of trap they set for us. Besides, their supplies will be available to us.”

  He realized that the Cyborg was serious. He also decided the move would be keeping the tactical initiative, not committing suicide. Too many supplies had been lost with the damaged tilt-rotor, and any cattle in the area would have to come back to the camp.

  Then they could be fought on ground of the Soldiers’ choosing, instead of being chased all over the Miracle Mountains to be fought only when they chose.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I

  Brigadier Cummings could swear that he felt the cold lance right through the stone walls into his temporary office in the small town of Last Chance. He pulled on his lightest gloves, then turned back to the map showing the deployment of his brigade.

  He reached down and turned up the heater, then turned back to his maps and charts. Most of one regiment, the Fighting First, were scattered all over the Miracles and their foothills. He had four companies in decoy units, hoping to catch some Saurons napping, but most of his men were in small squads billeted in almost every small town and village in the Miracle Mountains.

  The other regiment, the Falkenberg Irregulars, were deployed all through the Atlas Mountains, in the north near the Citadel. The Irregulars had originally been based at Fort Fornova, which had been one of the first Sauron targets. Strategically it was too close to Firebase One and the Citadel for the Saurons peace of mind. The survivors, under Colonel Robert Cahill, had dug themselves deep into the Atlas Mountains range and were biding their time.

  Technically the Irregulars were still under Cumming’s command, but in reality his communication with the regiment was too sporadic for direct command. Both Cummings and Cahill kept their headquarters constantly on the move and the only time he knew where the Irregulars’ HQ was, was when he received a tight-beam message.

  This was beginning to cause trouble. Lately Cahill seemed to believe that he was going to execute a major counterattack, with Cummings’ support. Together they would drive the Saurons out of Fort Stony Point, or the Citadel as the Saurons were calling it. A noble ambition, but Cummings wondered if maybe Cahill had taken a head injury during the attack on Fornova.

  So far the Colonel was only talking, not acting, but Cummings wondered how long this would last now that his attack on Firebase Five had failed.

  The secret to fighting the Saurons had to be to never concentrate against them. Put the Brigade in one place for a major attack, and the Saurons could make a quick end of Haven’s only military resistance. The way to meet the Saurons was to snipe at them, in guerilla ambushes, local uprisings—the whole repertoire of the weaker force.

  Who are you fooling, old man, came a bitter thought. The only reason your command still exists is that you haven’t yet got the Saurons pissed off enough to do anything serious to you. This could change any day, and your
first notice that it has could be a squad of Cyborgs coming through your door.

  Loud knocking jerked Cummings back to reality.

  “Come in.”

  Instead of a Cyborg, Major John Hamilton entered.

  “Sir, we’ve made contact with the enemy!”

  Cummings wished he could share in his new aide’s enthusiasm. Hamilton had received his battlefield promotion to major after Colonel Leung had been killed in an ambush outside of New Salem. One more old friend gone; not too many left now. With Leung dead he was critically short of good line officers and it had occurred to him that rather than pull an experienced officer out of his command, he’d use Hamilton as his chief of staff.

  Cummings knew there’d be grumbling, but Hamilton’s appointment was making the best of a bad job. The Brigade was desperately short of experienced line officers; if Cummings pulled one of them back he’d either weaken a unit or have to send Hamilton in his place. In close combat against Saurons, Hamilton might last a standard week. At Headquarters, he’d be under Cummings’ eye, with time for a little on-the-job training.

  He might not even need that much training. He’d done a good report on the ambush that killed Leung, one that impressed Cummings almost as much as the ambush itself.

  No doubt about it, the bandits were getting bolder since the Sauron invasion. Or at least controlling more ground suitable for ambushes. Even the best scouts couldn’t scout out everything in Haven’s twisted and overgrown terrain. The bandits had taken full advantage of their cover and as a result Cummings had lost thirty-five irreplaceable men. If his reserve hadn’t found their way around the bandits and cleared them off the ridge, it would have been much worse. Saurons in front, bandits to the rear, local potentates on either flank—the whole planet seemed to have overdosed on borloi weed.

  “Where are the Saurons?” he asked.

  “They landed about fifteen klicks northwest of Ranjapar village, sir. Captain Morales reports three squads of Soldiers. His missile teams took out one of the tilt-rotors during landing.”