Angolin, p.35
Angolin, page 35
“Pilot, hard about and head back to the foothills. Take position four klicks north-northwest of CP.”
Dharmen ignored the shoulder pats and hoots of support coming at him as she contacted CP to advise of their status.
And their trip back through the valleys tucked within the eastern folds came with a disheartening reply from Admiral Gennet—not a rebuke for disobeying orders but grim information: to Dharmen’s intuition, the enemy had moved eastward the minute the gunships sped off. They had located the pass and begun to enter. With no ability to challenge hundreds, perhaps thousands of enemy conscripts, CP had relocated southward and cloaked its position.
“Keep us informed as we will you. Gennet out,” said the admiral just before the channel was abruptly severed.
Dharmen made his way through swaying bodies to the aft cannon station. They were heading north with low shield strength and no light- or time-altering cover, completely in view and with the enemy now fore and aft. Forward and broadside cannoneers shot a path clean through the hostiles, while Theus kept busy throwing fire in the ship’s rear. Dharmen stopped bothering to count how many enemy craft he took out. He peered downward through the open hatch. The rolling grasslands gave way to low hills dotted with bright-orange billowing trees. They were nearing Marchwarden Pass. He sighed. Shame that second autumn had to be met with this . . .
The blast threw everyone to the floor and nearly through the hatches. Dharmen got up and looked around. The gunship’s port ventral section was a mass of up-twisted floor plating around a hole blasted clean through the hull. Bloodied, motionless camos surrounded the wreckage. Another shot jolted the vessel. The whir of the engines died; they must have been hit. Dharmen held tight as the ship lost altitude.
“All hands brace for impact!” the pilot ordered. As the treetops came threateningly close, Dori forewent her comm, stood in the center of the cabin, and yelled her orders: to the pilot to get them as close to the pass as she could safely manage, and to Theus and the other cannoneers to keep firing.
It was a rough landing, but everyone who had survived the initial blast was safe. Dharmen and Dori commended the pilot on her skill, and then formed the survivors into a company and ordered them to extract the wounded and all salvageable equipment possible. The dead would have to be left behind. Dharmen queried Rem-E for geolocation. No reading. Jammed, offline—Rem-E couldn’t determine. Had the suns not shone in the late afternoon sky, Dharmen wouldn’t even have been able to determine direction. His XO’s internal had no luck either.
“Thee, if we can’t determine field position, then we’re in trouble. I have no idea where the pass is from here.”
“We’re not done yet, sir,” said an approaching voice. “We’re nearly at the pass, actually.”
“Beg your pardon, Shipman?” Dharmen said. “You and your brother were raised way beyond the other side of the Great Lake. You familiar with this part of Angolin?”
Leatra rubbed a gash across her forehead. “My family used to hike these mountains all the time. I can navigate them in my sleep.” She nodded to a grove of trees half a klick upslope. “We head past those and hang right. About seven klicks along the way, there’s a stream. It leads up to where we want to be: a way into Marchwarden Pass near the stream’s source.”
Dharmen regarded her wide-eyed. Did she know of a particular feature of the pass that he read about in Captain Falconer’s written accounts, one that would give them an incredible advantage?
“We can be on the pass in under an hour, though we’ll need to get some shield strength going.” Leatra looked back to the disabled gunship. “Hopefully, the portable generators are operable. The trees down here aren’t dangerous, but they extend limbs far and fast. Irz nearly lost an eye to one once.”
“It’s not the trees down here that worry me, Shipman,” Dori said as she came up beside them. “Even if we reach the pass, we won’t last long once we’re on it.”
“Commander, respectfully, we can’t stay here either,” said Dharmen. “The enemy knows where we went down. They’ll come looking for us—the ones already entering the pass or the ones behind us, either way. You know the Carmis don’t like to leave loose ends. We have weapons but no PTS capability, and who knows what’ll go next? We won’t have a Netherworld’s chance if we don’t get moving now.”
“Lieutenant Commander, I’m well aware of—”
A gunsloop appeared overhead and landed. Much smaller than the one they had crashed in, it only had space for a pilot, copilot, and a dozen or so extra hands. It couldn’t provide transit for everyone, but it would just do as a medevac.
Dori ordered the most severely wounded to be placed aboard. She took Dharmen and Theus aside as Leatra and the others saw to it. “This isn’t the worst plan in Guard history, but we don’t stand a chance on that pass! Look at the shape we’re in. If the enemy doesn’t take us out, the trees up there will. Even with shielding, we’ll be up against branches and guns.”
Dharmen watched the groaning, swaying trees in the grove. “Neither will be a problem, Commander, because we’ll get in way ahead of both.”
Dori met that with a bewildered look. “How, exactly?”
“By using something the ancients knew of, but the enemy hopefully won’t find. And if we move soon, we’ll reach the other side of the mountains before they do.”
Dori’s eyebrows lifted. She apparently knew of what he meant.
Theus apparently didn’t. “But I thought we were going to locate the enemy before they got too far and defend the pass. We can’t walk its whole length, that’s impossible! We’re a sizeable group. Borbol troops might not attack a couple hundred armed people if we’re lucky, but the trees up there are much stronger and heavier than these twigs down here. Saaryl pines can rip a man in two. Even the undamaged generators won’t yield enough shield power to get us through them and still have enough if we reach the other side.”
“Then we’ll have to move fast and deal with the shield strength problem later,” Dharmen said. He patted his leg and flexed it a bit. No pain. Rem-E’s temporary medical treatments appeared to be working. His hands weren’t shaking either.
“So that’s your plan,” Theus said, nodding understanding. “The enemy has no protection beyond bullets and maybe a few pulse rifles. You’re hoping the trees and snow beasts—”
“Will weaken them, and then we’ll handle what’s left on the other side. And we’ll move with shields only, Thee. No firing. We want every animal and tree we find, especially the biggest and strongest, completely intact and nicely roused.”
Theus and Dori exchanged looks, but Dharmen could see they were with him on this. Dori informed the company of what, due to circumstances, it had no other choice but to do. Everyone was exhausted. Those not badly injured and haggard were just haggard, but Dharmen could feel their determination to go on and fight. And he felt for the first time ever that everyone was with him one hundred percent.
“Finish securing the wounded for dust-off,” he ordered. “The rest of you ready the shield generators, the working portable cannons, and every hand weapon at your disposal.”
Rior descended behind the highest peaks with Lothnë quickly following. The company made ready to depart under lengthening shadows. Dharmen ordered Leatra to his side to utilize her mountaineering skills. He looked to the faces behind him as he and the shipman headed the group, with Theus, Dori, and remaining UCs interspersed throughout. Will, his father, Yos, and Brona flashed through his mind. He wondered how they were faring, but he shoved that fear aside and concentrated on everyone—in this small band and at home well inland—who relied on this effort.
There was no time for a long pep talk with the enemy in front of and behind them, but there was time for honor. “Let’s move out, people,” Dharmen commanded. “We have a long trek ahead of us.”
19
MARCHWARDEN PASS
“Your user’s condition has stabilized, Qi-VOS. Inform me if you require further assistance with her recuperation.”
“Affirmative, Nijs, but it should not be necessary. Commander Secár is exhibiting great endurance, given the situation.”
“Yes, though not as much as Rem-E’s user. If I were human, I would be tempted to envy.”
Dharmen watched dawn break cool and dim through thin clouds over the western issue from the mountains. The pass widened here but remained hemmed by low cliffs and overhangs clad in near-motionless trees. The company had traveled all night on a path that had been reasonably broad and flat in some places and narrowed to steep defiles in others. The saaryls higher up were stout and strong. Every step came with branches slamming the mobile shields so hard that Dharmen worried energy reserves would fail halfway through.
They didn’t, though the mountain forest’s attack had been unrelenting. And noisy. Mobile sensors and internals curiously indicated no other troop movements, Carmogen, or CP staff. But the enemy had to be right behind, and if nothing else, the boughs thrashing from one end of the pass to the other must have given the company away.
With Leatra’s guidance, they did find their single saving grace. Even the ancients had no explanation for it: a spatial anomaly three kilometers below the summit line that with one step, led directly to the opposite side of the range. Angolin’s very first soldiers had used this portal to avoid the snowy heights and all their living dangers: the real Marchwarden Pass that Dharmen counted on the enemy to miss in favor of a deadly combo of angry trees and frostbite. He thanked the gods for that advantage. But before and after the hidden doorways, the company had stirred the rooted mountain community, and the Carmogen remnant was following regardless. No need for sensors to indicate that. Good bait to draw the enemy in and finish them off, or bad bait that would lead them right to the Hidden Realm’s doorstep—Dharmen couldn’t be sure. He hoped to Krone and to every deity in the universe that he had made the right choice.
Communications followed sensors now. No dispatch could be exchanged with the reserves in the South. Nothing stood between the Carmogen and the entrance to the Realm’s oldest marches but this one company. Dharmen knew Angolin’s fate stood on the edge of a blade thinner than his own sword’s . . . As they rounded a jagged set of low tors, he stopped, heartbeat pounding into his throat at the sight.
Not of the high valley of Vinalhaven that the ancients called Shadowvale, or its river cleaving through leafless woodlands blanketed in hoar frost, but of the Alkmaar Range beyond its opposite bank. Within its tree-covered profile, the Great Hall’s nemurite-tipped dome shone brightly beneath the rising Lord and Lady of Light. And the enemy could see it just as easily.
Dori came to the front. “What is it?”
Finger shaking, Dharmen pointed. Dori stared at the iconic structure in the distance. “Krone help us.”
Dharmen went back through the company, checking sensors along the way. Still nothing. PTS next. Zero power—how unsurprising! “I get no readings on the pass behind us or anywhere else,” he said when he found Theus. “I’m walking blind here. You?”
Theus queried Nijs, then furrowed his brows down to the tops of his eyelids. “Status unchanged.”
Dharmen forced himself not to panic. “Then we’ll need better cover quickly. This spot’s too narrow and exposed for a solid defense,” he said to everyone around them.
“There’s no real indication that our sensors are inoperative. They just haven’t picked up any other movements—Angolinian or otherwise—since 0100,” Theus reasoned. “Your plan most likely worked and so did the anomaly. Carmi’s probably up the pass in pieces, becoming saaryl and borbol pickings.”
Dharmen regarded him unblinking. “You sure ’bout that?”
Bullets whizzed over their heads, hitting the cliffsides. Negligible energy strength made the company’s shields as ineffective as Dharmen’s now-dead antiparticler. The small shells ricocheted right through them.
“Take cover!” Dori yelled.
Dharmen and Theus scrambled behind a low rock. The others found what shelter they could, mostly with no option beyond throwing their backs to the cliff faces, with little ability to return fire. Dharmen looked up the pass. It and the heights on either side crawled with Carmogen conscripts, several hundred by his estimate.
“Maybe we can get one last bit of shield power from the portable generators,” Theus said.
“Not possible, Lieutenant. Who has time to fiddle with spent generators through all this?” Dharmen swung his rifle around and fired at a group moving on the rocks above.
Screams preceded suddenly disappearing heads—he had hit at least a few of them. But he wondered what shape they were in. The saaryls must have had some effect, but if so, how had this many of them gotten so far so quickly? It was unlikely that they had found the anomaly. Its apertures were invisible to the naked eye and one had to either know exactly where they were, or locate them with finely tuned, advanced sensors that the enemy didn’t have. So had they really been so determined to get over the mountains and into Angolin that they pushed on that much harder?
Stony shards pelted Dharmen and Theus from bullets grazing their rock cover. Dharmen’s whole body shook. Rem-E intervened. “W-what do you think of my plan now, Thee?”
Theus said nothing through the shots gluing them to their spot.
Dharmen looked around, found Dori in the same situation with Leatra and others behind another large stone. “This won’t do at all, Commander. We can’t stay pinned here and let them just pick us off! We’ve got to move farther down and find a wider spot, or—” No. It’s too risky!
Gunfire clipped Dori’s reply. She and her group returned fire as best they could, given the constraints of their dangerously low perch.
Dharmen eyed Leatra. Between salvos, she shook her head negatively. “Sir, there’s nothing below us but skinny trees and more rocks—not the cover you’re looking for!”
A cloud of bullets had everyone crouched and unable to get off a single return shot. In a lull, Leatra raised her rifle and fired over the hostiles’ heads, striking a large, loose stone in a cliffside cleft above them. Yells followed its fall. And they were quickly silenced—an excellent hit.
Dharmen peered at Theus, eyes glinting. It is risky, but what’s the alternative? “If we can’t go down . . . then the only way is up.”
Theus sniffed. “Why did I know this was coming?”
Dharmen swiveled his head back to the women. “Cover us!”
“Aye!” Leatra responded.
“Tate and Tarkala! Don’t you two even think of . . . damn!” Dori looked over to Ilbron and a group pressed against the rock face. “Get ready to lay covering fire! All of you!”
Dharmen found his target: an outcrop on the opposite side of the pass just low enough to reach if done quickly. “Ready, Lieutenant?”
“When you are.”
“Then let’s do it.” Between bullet rounds, Dharmen signaled. “Now!”
They dashed. Leatra, Dori, and the others hurled particle fire up the pass and across the overhangs. Dharmen and Theus bounded the outcrop and ran upslope, hitting everything possible. Hostiles fell before they could get off a single bullet.
As Theus cut down every target on the left, Dharmen noticed Guard camos to his right firing across the pass from the opposite side. He made it a three-pronged offensive, mowing down all forward opposition. They reached what had been the core of the enemy’s right flank and took cover behind tree trunks. Bullets flew across the pass at them, but on this side, all opposition lay dead. They had done it.
Dharmen examined the motionless carnage around him. Aside from fresh particle lacerations, every body was bruised and bandaged. Bloodstained rags replaced missing limbs and covered likely empty eye sockets. What a meal the trees and snow beasts must have made of the body parts and from all the conscripts who never made it down. Not wise to roam the East Ranges unwary, Dharmen thought. But what drove them on so? Or who drove them on?
“Good job, Shipman,” he said to the young woman sheltering at the next tree. “But I thought I told you to cover us?”
“I did, sir, every step of the way,” said Leatra. “But you needed more than two rifles to take this lot out.” She looked around her. “Even if the upper forest did start the job for us.”
The bullet fire began to move down the opposite side. Particle beams answered—coming fast upslope were Dori, Ilbron, and two platoons of camos, half visible through taroc fiber fear response.
“Now who has the upper hand?” Leatra reached into a belt pouch and retrieved a bipulse grenade. She moved around the tree and threw it across the low chasm. As it left her hand, a bullet struck her in the chest. She stumbled backward.
Double shockwave explosions rocked the opposite cliff. Melon-size boulders showered the pass below, along with limp bodies of conscripts. A short, surprised pause led to a bullet spray. Theus yelled as one struck him in the face.
“Krone be with me!” Dharmen gritted his teeth. He wanted to assist, but Leatra’s chest wound was more serious. He managed to reach her position without getting hit. He took out a medi-patch, but before he could activate its nanoprobes, Leatra deactivated her armor at the entry point, reached in and pulled the shell out of her chest with her bare fingers. She groaned through her teeth as it popped out. Dharmen ordered her to hold still. He wanted to affix the treatment before her wound poured blood.
“Shipman, that was dangerous. Suppose your lung collapses now?”
Eyes tightened to wrinkled slits were her answer.
Gingerly, Dharmen removed his hand from the patch. He watched it pulsate and begin its repair sequence, glad that no blood ran from beneath it for the moment. “Looks like they’ve upgraded their ammo to match our armor. Hopefully, this’ll hold, but if you have any trouble inhaling for even a few seconds, you let me know immediately. And don’t try another stunt like that!”
