Angolin, p.36
Angolin, page 36
Determined to be quick and not give the enemy an easy three-for-three, he moved to Theus, who had already patched his own wound. The bullet had grazed his cheek, but deeply. “You good?”
“Affirmative.” Theus’s eyes said that he was in pain but still in the fight.
“Great, ’cause before we can find you two a proper medic, we’re going over there to help our people. We can’t do any more from here.”
“Sir?” Leatra questioned, shaking and with camo fibers slightly dimming her in response. “We can’t get over there like this.”
“This is still a battlefield, Vinc. Keep it together and don’t lose your head.”
“I’m trying, sir. I just don’t want to get more shot up!”
“Would you rather see everyone die over there? And after that, watch the Carmis walk on through to Greathall? Our duty is to defend Angolin, to the very last if that’s what it takes.”
“This is as good a vantage as any, Lieutenant Commander,” Theus said, “and the rest of the company’s closing in—” He instinctively ducked as bullets hit the tree just centimeters from his head.
“With no guarantee they’ll succeed,” Dharmen said. “And when was the last time either of your internals had comm ability? No one can report, so we don’t know the hostiles count over there. If they break through, we’ll be fighting them over here again anyway. Alone!”
Theus and Leatra eyed each other.
“You two’ll be staring at powder faces soon if we don’t get moving. That’s an order!”
Theus gave Leatra’s chest wound an uneasy look. “You up for it, Shipman?”
She hesitated but nodded affirmatively.
“Then you heard the man, let’s move out!”
The trio scrambled up the slope, firing. They came just above a section of the pass so narrow that the company had moved single file through it earlier. Dharmen took a running jump. Then Leatra, who stumbled on landing but stood without need of help. Theus followed.
They moved cautiously downslope. Within about twenty meters’ sight of the enemy, they took what cover was available. Leatra pulled out two more bipulses and handed one to each of her superiors. Her wound wouldn’t allow a decent throw. Theus activated his and lobbed it at a platoon, right toward its gray overseer. Dharmen sighted another gray-skin, cooked off his grenade to match the other’s timing, hurled, and dropped prone. The explosion sets blew both captains to pieces along with most of their men.
The three Angolinians rushed the survivors, firing fiercely. They bolted and scattered, with some slipping past the trio’s particle fire. Dharmen body-slammed one, then blew an abdomen-splitting blast into him. The three continued the downward advance, with the rest of the company hitting the enemy from the opposite end. Dharmen caught sight of a tall gray-skin, fired. And missed. He caught a glimpse of the face . . .
And almost didn’t believe his eyes.
He had wondered if the empire would send the same commander against Angolin again. The choice didn’t surprise him. Neither did the haggard conscripts’ speed over the mountains now, despite every obstacle. Makes sense, he thought. They’re the work-taroc, here’s their whip! The gray man disappeared into a grove of static bushes. Dharmen recalled that every Carmogen force, no matter how large, had but one Lescain in command. This one had escaped the Guard once.
“Not this time, Carmi. Not this time!”
He followed, located his target for an instant through the brush. He fired, missed again. The rustle of branches faded as the other moved farther in. Beyond a few tossed stones with stunted trees growing among them, Dharmen came to the head of a wide clearing.
In its center, the other stood waiting.
Dharmen left cover, rifle trained. The man he hadn’t seen in a year was still nauseatingly recognizable. Naul stood still, resting his pistol’s long barrel over his shoulder. Boots scrambled up behind Dharmen. His peripheral vision caught Guard camos with Theus leading.
Dharmen kept sight on his target, who studied him and smiled.
“A rifle, Angoliner? Your weapons have already killed thousands of my men. I want something more honorable and true to my own bearing here. We will not settle this with guns.” Naul dropped his pistol to the ground and kicked it away.
Dharmen held eyes on him, weapon still ready. “This is my fight, Thee,” he said to his side. “But stay sharp, just in case.”
The gray man stepped forward, hands outstretched. “Lieutenant Dharmen Tate, or Lieutenant Commander, I believe it is now. Congratulations to you.”
“Been keeping up with my career, Naul? Since when are you in the business of following Guardsmen’s lives?”
“I am a Carmogen soldier through and through. My enemy is my business!”
“And somehow, when all those heavy bombers went down over the Abyss, yours was conveniently not one of them. Why isn’t that surprising?”
Dharmen’s meaning was clear: protectively tucking the Lescain’s vessel in the formation’s rear just before battle was standard imperial practice. But only another gray-skin elite would dare mention such. It was execution-demanding slander coming from anyone else.
“You, of all people, understand reality, Lieutenant Commander. Life does not work so simply. It never has.”
“Not for the rest of us, with you people turning this planet inside out for all you can get.”
“You sound like the rest of your kind, Angoliner.” Naul drew a curved scimitar. The script of the imperial warrior caste etched into it glinted.
Dharmen handed Theus his rifle.
“But true warriors do not talk idly, so stop wagging your immoral, man-loving tongue and fight like one!” Naul’s dark smile degenerated to a snarl. He rushed forward.
Dharmen held his ground. Naul yelled, raised his blade. Dharmen threw his hand over his right shoulder, snatched his sword up and out. Sparks flew between the blades as they met. Naul’s eyes bucked at the instantaneous block, but he wasted no time.
The blades locked again and again. The pair briefly drew apart. Naul was incredibly strong and half a meter taller. Dharmen was winded but only for a few heartbeats—an Ergyre knew the art of pacing a duel. He glanced around. Handfuls of conscripts came up on one side. Theus and lines of camos countered opposite, guns aimed from both camps.
“Stand down!” Naul bellowed at his men. “This is an exercise in courage. You will watch and learn, not shoot. If even one bullet is fired, its owner will answer to me personally!” He held black-flecked yellow eyes on his opponent.
That didn’t intimidate Dharmen on Negara, and it didn’t now. It didn’t impress the conscripts either. Even from a distance Dharmen sensed their fear. With their overseers dead and their supreme leader in unexpected hand-to-hand combat, they were ready to cut and run. Naul was doing his boastful best to compensate.
Dharmen took the advantage. He rotated his long, straight blade skillfully in one hand, let its tip drop to within centimeters of Naul’s face. “It’s just you and me then.”
Enraged, Naul skirted Dharmen’s blade and lunged, stopping short for a feint before making a second true thrust. It failed. Dharmen anticipated the first and blocked the second. Clashing metal echoed on the surrounding stones. Naul closed. Dharmen thwarted what could have been a fatal slice through his chest, but Naul landed an elbow hard to his side in the pass.
Dharmen grunted. He didn’t know which of his injuries were complaining: the ones from the battlefield and the gunship crash, or the still-healing ones from that night beneath Mount Condorcet. Or the ones in his mind transferring now to his hands. They began to tremble.
“You make this too easy, Tate. I could not ask for a greater insult! I had high expectations of your abilities. They have not been exceeded. Some famed sword handler—I should have known a warrior’s match would be too much for a homosexual!” Naul looked around to his own men. “Someone find me a real opponent if this woman of one cannot stand up to a fight—”
Infuriated, Dharmen roared and lunged.
Naul tried to block, but the bitter animus was too much. The force nearly knocked the scimitar from his hand. He had unwittingly struck a deep, deadly nerve. The last man to insult Dharmen this way was painfully silenced, and he was always ready to put down the next. In another quick-fire move, Dharmen thrust his blade directly at Naul’s head, ready to cleave it in two.
Naul backed away but not fast enough. The Ergive blade pierced his left eye with force enough to shatter the skull bone behind. He howled. A rifle clicked from the Carmogen side. “I said stand down!” He could barely fight off Dharmen’s rage-driven thrusts. He blocked each one but only just and with strength fading.
Dharmen had never fought this hard in his life. He thrust, parried, and repeated the sequence faster and more times than he could keep track of. But he was tiring. The anger that had aided him began to consume him now. Along with quaking limbs.
No, not again. Not now! Dharmen glanced to his sword hand as it shook.
“Sir . . .” started his internal’s prompt for another treatment.
Do what you have to, Rem-E, Dharmen commanded, but I’m not out of this yet . . .
Knees buckling, he stumbled and fell. Naul landed a hard thrust downward. Dharmen rolled. The curved blade pierced his lower side, just shy of his armor. He screamed in pain, but he threw his weapon upward and, forcing himself to get to his feet, wrenched Naul’s blade from his hand. With one last burst of strength, he rammed his blade into his opponent.
Naul shuddered, screeched a stunted yelp as Dharmen yanked his sword out of his torso with an innards-slicing twist of his wrist. Dharmen backed away, hyperventilating as Naul fell to the ground. Sweat poured down his face through the green blood splattered on him from his victim.
“You couldn’t . . . be satisfied with your own homeland. You had to come and . . . try for mine,” he heaved across short, burning gasps at Naul. He saw rifles train on him from the conscript line and Theus and company readying. His head felt light. CSD was hardly the problem now—blood spilled from his wound. “You and your empire might win this fight . . . or you might not, but you . . . won’t take Angolin without getting through me first. That’s a promise from me to you, Carmi!”
“Save that for your own gods, Angoliner. I am here through trial put to me by the only ruler in heaven to claim my own,” Naul gurgled through dark fluid spilling from his mouth. “These mountains . . . and that settlement over there. That will make a fine first cantonment for my army.” He weakly pointed toward the Great Hall’s dome in the distance. “Everything here belongs to Carmogen. It belongs to me!”
Naul tried to stand but fell to his knees. He looked up at Dharmen and spat blood at him. It landed short, with a dull splat across the Guardsman’s boots. Dharmen lifted his leg and kicked the green plasma into Naul’s glaring face. The brush rustled behind him. He turned, saw conscripts fleeing, though not all of them. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Naul grabbing the pistol he had tossed aside, but not in time to react—
“Look out!” Theus yelled and aimed.
Another beam hit Naul first. He fell limply into the grass.
Dharmen looked over, saw Leatra with rifle raised. Barrels from the enemy lifted. The Guard line fired. Dharmen thrust his bloodied sword into his belt and scrambled to join Theus, reclaiming his own rifle as they took hasty cover. Replacing his spent power cell with his last, he aimed for the enemy and let his trigger finger race. Fierce return fire pinned him and Theus down. He used the time to rip away his pant leg cuff and stuff it into the tear in his camos to stem the blood flow. Grinding his teeth through the pain, he made ready to leave his shelter for a particle run at the other side . . .
Great beams came from the sky. Blasts hit the center of the enemy position. Dharmen threw himself to the ground beneath flying, rocky debris. He looked up. A vessel appeared, exiting TimeSpace. Its underbelly bore the blazing red and blue of the Angolin Guard Jack, casting away fears of a particle cannon-rigged Carmogen copter as it landed.
Camos stormed out with their commanders right behind. Dharmen was amazed at the leaders: Admirals Gennet and Sajeva jumped to the ground, armed and ready, ordering the reinforcements toward the enemy remnant. He and Theus left cover. Gennet eyed Theus’s patch, then Dharmen and his bloody hand holding his side. “Medics! Over here, now!”
Welcomed assistance and just in time. Dharmen had forced himself to stay standing through light-headedness, hoping he wouldn’t collapse charging the enemy.
“Dharmen! Thee!” yelled a strangely skittish, excited recruit alighting the emptied ship.
“Yos? Is that you?” Dharmen said to the tall, thin man in ill-fitting camos.
“And suited up no less,” Theus said. “When did you become a soldier, soldier?”
“They’re for my protection. Your admiral’s insistence,” Yos returned. “He said the taroc fiber would give me some cover if I got separated.”
Dharmen couldn’t help but chuckle. “We’re making a real man of you! But where’s Brona? Please tell me she’s back at PDP, and safe.”
“She’s still there, saving our skins at that end.”
“If that traitor, Folc—”
“Don’t worry. She’s fine.” Yos scanned Dharmen up and down. His peaceful smile evaporated.
Dharmen felt his unshaven face, eyed the green blood on his mud-blackened fingers. He grinned ruefully. “Never seen a soldier fresh from battle, huh? Not used to this Dharmen—don’t I dirty up nice?”
Yos’s lips quivered. “Dharm, if I’ve ever once questioned your . . . I’m sorry.”
Dharmen lifted eyebrows at that.
“Why, Lieutenant Commander, I do believe you’ve been busy. And recently,” Gennet said matter-of-factly of the soiled, naked blade hanging at Dharmen’s side.
“As have you, sir, no doubt,” Dharmen returned.
“How many did you take down, Mister?”
“Only three.”
“Well, that makes four who’ve taken an Ergyre’s blade in battle. That hasn’t happened on this soil in nearly a millennium.” Gennet looked to Leatra. She reddened. Unlike her superiors, she had taken the earlier recommendation and dutifully left her sword behind. “I only got one.” Gennet reached over his shoulder and produced his weapon. The blade was notched. “Mine had a helmet. Midrate conscript—Trogen miner, by the look of him. Wore a light on the front of his head. Typical of the Carmogen to make men fight without proper combat gear, not that it would have helped.”
Dharmen read despair in the admiral’s voice. He understood. Gennet’s pride was in defending Angolin, not in killing a man who had been more a slave to the enemy than the enemy itself.
“But suffice it to say, he no longer has it,” Gennet continued. “Cleaved in two. And the helmet, well . . .”
“Sir, I won’t brag, but mine . . .” Dharmen pushed the medics aside and darted to the area of trampled, bloody grass where his opponent had fallen. “Naul! Where is he?”
“If you mean the gray-skin who was lying there,” answered Admiral Sajeva, “I saw him run when we touched down. Our people are after him.”
Dharmen stared at her. “Ma’am, I ran him clean through! And Shipman Vinc shot him point-blank, there’s no way he could have—”
“Never underestimate a Carmogen, Tate, not even a crippled one,” Gennet said. “And definitely not one who’s murdered his way up through the Lescainate like Naul has.”
“But we can’t let him escape, we’ve got to find him!”
“We will,” said Gennet. “And if he’s twice done in as you say, he won’t get far.”
The grass rustled behind the admirals. Dharmen did a double take at the white-haired man coming up beside them. “Father?”
Nüren’s stony face smiled. He gave his son as brisk a hug as he dared through his injuries. Then he put his finger to his own lips to silence Dharmen’s questioning as he activated his comm. “Will, I’m here and so is he! Alive and standing right in front of me looking like Krone himself just appeared. Tell your cousin. I’ll get him home as soon as I can. I promise!”
Dharmen stood stunned. Glad but astounded. “Father, you’re a civilian now. What on Tentim are you doing up here?”
Nüren glanced to the admirals. To raised eyebrows and shaking heads. “I’m an old general, son, what did you expect? We just came through the biggest battle in Angolinian history, and my boy helped win it. I couldn’t just sit at home through it all.”
Dharmen eyed Theus, Leatra, Yos, the admirals. “Win it?”
“For the most part,” said Gennet. He redirected his voice to the crowd of camos filing in from the opposite cliff. “The report came in from the south twenty minutes ago. Third and Fourth have secured the Osterrand. I’d like to say the enemy was routed, but unless they intended to leap the fjords into the Abyss, they really had nowhere to run. May the Nether Halls and their own god receive them well.”
“It couldn’t have been that easy, sir,” Dharmen said as Dori came up, looking equally perplexed.
“It wasn’t,” said Admiral Sajeva. “When their second wave engaged our reserves, it looked hopeless. Most of the plain had already been taken, and we were about to lose Helmer Fjord and the entire south. But Third and Fourth fought as hard as you all did, and they might have been wiped out had it not been for all our additional help: the particle detection system and the Cloak’s mending by your friends.” She gave Yos a nod. “We can’t thank you and your colleague enough, Dr. Andren. Admiral Gennet and I will see that you both get the highest recognition the Kraal can offer for this one.”
“Add Bemin Central Command to that list,” said Gennet. “It took them some time, but once they got the Orbital Weapons Platforms up and running, every airborne Carmogen vessel was downed in a matter of minutes. Without air support, they had no chance of a win. And our forces hit the enemy hard from the south while the Lenan brigades took them from the north.” He looked across the clearing to troops funneling in with manacled conscripts. “Aside from this lot that splintered off and headed up the pass, the Carmogen lines were smashed to pieces.”
