The God Mars Book Four: Live Blades (27 page)

Jonathan Drake:

At a full run, we manage to catch up to the Boxes
headed around the point of the Spine and toward our people. The
thick green seems to slow the big rolling bots down, and the wide
crush trails they leave give us an easy path to follow.

To this point, Azazel has been leading the way, while
Lux has run well ahead of us, hoping to catch the Bugs, which are
much faster through the growth, able to scramble almost over the
tops of it on their long multiple legs.

We’re soon running in the middle of the Boxes’
“pack”. The fact that they completely ignore us is a testament to
their focus or their orders.

The Ghaddar stops short and un-slings her rifle,
tracking one of the Boxes that passes close on our flank. But when
she pulls the trigger, nothing happens. She looks confused, checks
the weapon’s function, then sees that Azazel has stopped and has
his hand extended at her as if he’s trying to touch her from a
distance, signaling her to lower her weapon with his other hand.
The Boxes are still ignoring us as they roll on—perhaps a potshot
at them would have changed that. Azazel then points us upslope for
higher ground.

Though he’s still got his full-head helmet on, I can
see from the way he moves that the real reason he’s running at our
pace is that he
is
badly hurt, and probably doesn’t have
whatever his kind need to heal.

We hold position just long enough for the Boxes on
our right to pass, then move quickly up the slopes, which get more
rocky and uneven as we go. But it also takes us up out of the thick
green, giving us a view over the forest. Azazel drops to a kneel
behind a large boulder, levels his own rifle and fires. I see a Box
burst a section as it rolls, damaged. We cling to cover in the
rocks, expecting return fire, but it keeps rolling on, ignoring us,
as do the others. (From up here, I count at least six—we can see
them clearly now from above as they crush through the growth.)

I realize I hear gunfire and explosions from ahead of
us. There’s smoke coming up over a ridgeline less than a klick from
where we are.

I try my short-range link gear, but can’t get a
reply, only static.

We get back to running, now keeping to the higher
ground, changing canisters on the move.

By the time we make it to the fight, Chang’s bots
have already found my people, and lives have paid.

We’ve managed to outrun the Boxes, but the Bugs
arrived at least several minutes before us. Coming up on the
ridgeline I’d seen before—a long sharp-crested branch that reaches
north into the green as it descends from the heights of the Spine
Range—I can see the broken remains of three Bug bots. Fresh
battle-sign goes up to the ridge crest, along with many dozens of
tracks, and I still see smoke and hear fighting from over it.

The pursuing Boxes catch us just as we make the
crest. The Ghaddar and Azazel combine fire, covering our rear as
the machines come up out of the growth at us. They focus on the
lead bot, blasting at it, sinking explosive penetrators between its
shifting sections, managing to stop it enough that I can pop out
from the cover on the rocks and fling a demo charge under it. I
have to grab cover again before I see what I’ve managed. When I
risk looking, the cube-like machine looks hopelessly broken,
tearing itself apart as it tries to advance. Its guns fire into the
ground and sky, unable to aim. But then its fellows come to
reinforce it.

Azazel holds our rear while the rest of us get over
the crest. But that just brings us from one battlefield to another.
We are looking down into a small rounded box canyon, a half-bowl
cut into the range slopes, a few hundred meters across. Down in the
bottom of the bowl are the Bugs: Three of them, though one is
already hopelessly dismembered, and Lux is hacking at the other two
while fire from up on the far slope tries to support him/her
without hitting her/him.

Up the far slope, I see the mass of our people
retreating, heading up and over the far crest, while perhaps a
dozen hold off the bots from behind whatever cover they can find.
Our retreating group is carrying or dragging several apparent
casualties, some so still and limp that they may not be alive.

“
MOVE!
” Azazel shouts, still shooting. “We
can’t hold here!”

Making his point, I hear Box guns rake the far side
of the crest behind us as Azazel and the Ghaddar come flying over.
Miraculously, neither appears to have been hit.

Murphy has already lent his gun (and his precious
remaining HE ammo) to helping Lux cripple one of the remaining
Bugs. I focus on the other Bug as we all run into the bowl, away
from the greater threat. Lux looks to be slowing down, exhausted or
injured or both. A surgical shot from Azazel finishes one of the
Bugs, and he charges into the last one with his broad blade.

“
GO!
” he’s yelling at us. “Get cover!”

The three of us run upslope for our fellows as the
two immortals decide to try to hold the bottom of the bowl. The
rocks slide under my boots—this entire depression is scree, talus
from an old slide. I see my father up in the rocks, at the center
of our line.

“
INCOMING BOXES!
” I shout ahead, just as the
machines roll over the crest behind me and tumble down into the
bowl. Apparently the bots have poorer traction than we do, but
Chang’s machines are designed to tumble. I don’t take the time to
look back, but I can hear their sections rotate, bringing their
guns around…

We get hammered by chain fire, but not our defensive
line: the Boxes go for our retreating group. Rock and dirt and
bodies come sliding down at us. All I can do is hunker down behind
stone. I can feel the shells cutting the air over my head, bursting
into rocks and dirt and (yes, I can feel the difference) flesh and
bone.

Over the deafening buzz of the guns I hear a war-cry,
look in time to see Azazel and Lux hacking at the Boxes’ guns. Only
five Boxes have made it over the crest and into the bowl, and one
of those is badly damaged. But each Box has one 20mm main cannon
and two Gatling guns—they sprout from different rotating faces, so
they can’t get more than one at a time on the same target, but what
they can do is shoot in three directions at once. The immortals
have to keep dodging auto-fire. (For some reason the Boxes haven’t
used their big guns. They could certainly obliterate our positions
if they decide to.)

My father signals our line to concentrate on the
remaining guns, especially the cannons before they can be used.
Thankfully, we’ve learned from prior encounters, developed our team
tactics: Distract. Fire surgically. Put penetrators and grenades in
the most vulnerable spots.

But the last time we faced this many machines we had
well over a hundred guns—ours and the Knights—as well as an unknown
number of “invisible” Shinobi. And we still incurred far too many
losses.

In our favor: This batch of machines doesn’t appear
to be nearly as sturdy as the ones we faced in Melas. Perhaps Chang
is sacrificing quality for quantity.

It’s big gun broken, one of the bots tries to take a
roll uphill at us, but the talus does prove a hindrance, letting us
get grenades under it, tearing up some of its treads and wheels
before sending it tumbling back down. Lux sees it coming, meets it
with sword-point, pumps a charge deep into it before needing to
jump free. But then one of the bot’s fellows manages to rotate a
gun, and Lux gets hammered with auto-fire. Azazel shoots the
offending gun away, but then can only manage to drag his
partner—his white robes now shredded and stained red—to the
relative cover of some rocks before the other bots decide the
immortals need discouraging. Their isolated and barely-adequate
protection gets chiseled by multiple guns, until it vanishes from
sight in the resulting cloud of dust. (Again, they don’t use their
cannons. Are they lacking shells? Or are there other reasons?)

The bots stop firing, as if waiting for a target.

We take the brief respite to inventory what ammo,
grenades and charges we have left. Too much of our original
load—much of it from better times when Colonel Ram was still the
Unmaker’s planetary commander, before they replaced him as soon as
they returned—was poorly spent against the Silvermen. Those holding
the line flash hand signals back to my father that say we’re all
running low. We may not have enough to finish these machines, even
being careful and lucky. If more come…

I realize that my father looks crushed, but it
doesn’t seem like a shortage of ammo is all that’s weighing on him.
He looks at me with a profound sadness that I’ve never seen, then
turns his eyes back to peering at our metal enemies. I feel my gut
twist, sick with dread. What happened before I made it back
here?

I look across our line. I don’t see Terina. I
expect—hope—she got sent ahead to lead our people to her home
(assuming her home is any kind of safe haven). I also don’t see my
first stepmother Fatima, or Sarai. I hope they made it over the
ridge before the Boxes started their bombardment.

The Box guns rake our positions, but again just with
their Gatling guns, not their cannons.

“Why aren’t they using their big guns?” I ask out
loud. I see the Ghaddar look up, and she points to the sky. I
don’t…

“Unmaker satellites,” my father understands. “They’re
out in the open. Big explosions would get attention from
orbit.”

Their camera eyes could certainly recognize the
shapes of Chang’s bots, if they had reason to look this way. And
that would tell the Unmakers that Chang is nearby. (But didn’t the
storm already tell them that? Or perhaps the tracks the Boxes leave
could be followed back to base…)

Keeping my head low, I move around to where I can see
Azazel and Lux, still pinned down in the bowl, either trying to
heal or planning their next move. From the amount of blood staining
Lux’s robes, he/she should be dead. Both look very tired, winded,
weak, hurt. They embrace like an old couple.

I look upslope, try to pick out the bodies and parts
of bodies in the blasted talus.

I turn in time to see Benim pop up to take a shot.
His head disappears in a burst of Gatling fire, but his last effort
damages one of the Boxes’ sensor heads.

And so we settle into a protracted siege, each side
conserving, patient. (Do these machines have need of resources?
Refueling? Or just reloading?)

A half-hour passes. One of the Boxes begins to roll
for us, trying the make it up to our positions. I toss one of my
last grenades in its path—it explodes under the rolling sections,
jars loose one of the edge cubes, and causes a slide that makes the
machine lose traction. (Can
our
explosions be seen from
orbit? And would the Earth commanders send help, or just bombard
the entire region from space?) Then I have to duck because the
other Boxes are chewing at my cover. Their distraction allows some
of my people to concentrate fire on the closer target, going for
the remaining guns, the gaps in the cube sections, the retractable
sensor heads. We manage to hurt it badly before it tumbles back
down the way it came.

The other variously damaged but still-functional
Boxes roll their line back, putting some more distance between
us—they must have calculated that killing them requires them to be
in grenade range or very accurate shot placement, so they make it
more challenging for us. I wonder if they’re also able to calculate
that we’re running out of ammo. Then I remember that the machines
are networked back to their masters, who are probably enjoying this
game. I’d wondered why they haven’t simply tried to take the long
way around us—I expect it’s just their maker’s stubborn pride. Or
sadism. Or all this bloodshed—like Lux and Azazel told us—is simply
to keep the immortal heroes too busy to address the real threat.
(Or worse: it’s to torture them by showing them they can’t save us,
despite all their gifts.)

An hour passes. We manage to disable another Box as
it tries to take a run through us. We manage to cripple it in a
crossfire, but it costs us: Jibril and Kassim fall, drawn out from
cover. The Box’s sacrifice was a distraction to expose us.

Azazel’s recovered enough to give us a crossfire down
in the bowl, but he’s also conserving whatever ammo he has, and he
doesn’t look very mobile, certainly in no shape to engage the
machines with his blade. Lux looks even worse now than earlier,
sprawled with his/her back to a rock, barely moving, maybe not even
conscious. (I wonder if they feel pain like we do? Erickson said
he
did, when he got himself shot and stabbed. What is it
like to be riddled with what should be lethal wounds and not be
able to die? Is that another of Chang’s desires, to inflict
physical as well as mental suffering on his kindred enemies?)

Half-buried in the rock and sand that the Boxes have
been bringing down on us, I look at my father as he checks again
what little we have left to fight with. When I can see them through
his goggles, his eyes are still a glazed mix of anger, fatigue and
sorrow (for bringing us to this end?).

I look across the slope, lock eyes with Murphy. He
shakes his head, holding up his pistol and a finger to say he’s
down to his last load. The Ghaddar has been conserving, but I
expect she’s running low. Two more of us—Zayed and Ali—signal that
they’re out, helpless in their makeshift holes.

Another Box takes a turn at making a run at us, this
time using its rotating sections for traction, taking its time, as
if it knows it will win by making it uphill or tempting us to shoot
at it. I have one grenade. I don’t think…

A satchel charge bounces down the hill and blows
under the oncoming machine, sending it back down the hill, damaged,
maybe even disabled. I look up-slope in time to see Terina sliding
down at us, laden with ammo and fresh canisters, as the Boxes try
to shoot her. But she flies…