NIGHTFALL PREVIEW - V

Do Not Go Gently

DO NOT GO GENTLY

BY PETER NEALEN

The alert was silent, just a quick directional flash in low IR. That alone meant that the scouts were nervous. This far into the tumbled badlands, voices shouldn’t carry far enough for the enemy to hear, unless they were close.

The sentry was under a masking cloak, his rifle held ready, but he keyed his own flasher, just for a moment, careful to keep it low enough that any observers beyond the source of the alert flash shouldn’t see it.

The scouts appeared a few minutes later, far closer than they’d been when they’d sent the alert signal. Wrapped in their own masking cloaks, the adaptive fabric mimicking the rocks and shrubs around them, they crawled up out of the defile and joined the sentry in his stony nest.

“Gorsan.” The flat-faced man pushed his hood back as he settled into the hollow. His face was seamed and lined, dirt mixing with camouflage face paint to emphasize the appearance of age.

“Matal.” The sentry was smaller and thinner than the scout, and had always been astounded at just how well the bigger man moved in the bush. Neither had been outdoorsmen before.

Before. It seemed like another life, another universe.

Before the Tosadans came.

“Where are the lords?” That was what they called the handful of Paladins still among them. Many of the formalities had broken down as the tiny resistance was forced farther and farther back into the hinterlands.

Gorsan nodded and gave Matal’s shoulder a squeeze. Then he was gone, pushing back into the tortured network of gullies and caves back in the badlands. The other two scouts followed him without a word.

Whatever they had seen, it was urgent if Gorsan could not take a moment to speak with his old friend.

Flexing suddenly sweating hands around his rifle, Matal returned his attention to the rocky wasteland out of which the scouts had come, watching for whatever it might be that they had seen.

***

The fire was well back from the entrance of the cave, which itself was masked with carefully arranged brush. No heat or smoke would reach the outside, for Tosadan ships or aircraft to see.

The armored forms were indistinct in the dimness, their segmented plate glinting faintly in the firelight. None wore their helmets, their eyes sparks in the shadows.

To their eyes, which needed far less light to see than the normal humans who made up the rest of the resistance, a rag-tag band of former city militia from half a dozen cities, the tattered, walking wounded remnant of the planetary defense phalanx, and the handful of survivors of the Tiberian Paladins’ baseline human auxiliaries, each of them looked far older than they had only a few short months ago. The months of desperate stands, defeats, and retreats had taken their toll, even on the herculean Paladins.

All seven pairs of eyes turned toward the entrance of the cave, as footfalls crunched faintly in the sand and gravel. The men were being quiet, but the Paladin’s heritage put them on a different level.

“Scout Gorsan.” The oldest, Sorus, a silver beard beginning to cover his jaw, stood as the scouts approached. His armor clicked faintly as the segments slid against each other. The Paladins had not shifted their armor to garrison red and gold, but light still glinted from scars gouged in the outer plating by weapons fire. “What news do you bring?”

The flat-faced scout named Gorsan bowed his head and saluted. “Lord. We conducted our patrol to the outskirts of Actylon, as planned.” His voice caught. “We did not get within line of sight of the city, though we could smell the bodies burning.” That took little imagination. The sun had been red from the smoke of the massive industrial pyres as the Tosadans massacred the survivors of the fighting for days.

“On the way, though, near Hill 733, we had to go to ground and could proceed no further.” He produced a small holograph, triggering it at low power. Even deep in the refuge, signals leakage could possibly be picked up by the Tosadans.

The image drew every eye, Paladin and baseline. A broad river valley wound between Hill 733 and a line of bluffs on the other side, nearly ten miles across.

And a Tosadan column was moving through it, crawlers and striders both.

Glinting eyes counted and calculated. “Nearly an impi.” It was one of the younger men, Zarth. “Only a fraction of their main force in this region, though.”

“Perhaps a patrol. Perhaps a control node seeking to set up a post in this area,” Sorus mused. “At any rate, Hill 733 is far too close to our refuge here.”

“Attacking them might signal to the rest that we are near.” Konon’s brow was furrowed as he brought up his own map display from his armor’s gauntlet, showing a wider spread of the surrounding country.

“Possibly. But if we allow them to gain a foothold so close to our refuge, then our position will be even worse.” Sorus shook his head. “No, we must deal with this.” His eyes turned to Gorsan. “Finish your report, Scout Gorsan.”

Gorsan proceeded to outline everything about the force’s size, apparent equipment, direction, speed, and what time his team had spotted them. The Paladins only interrupted to clarify details.

Finally, as he finished, he looked up at Sorus. There was a slight hesitation in his manner. “I do not wish to overstep, Lord, but when can we expect the reinforcements? The Tosadans spread out farther every day, and the pyres of our people are burning day and night.”

Sorus’s expression did not change. “The message has been sent, Scout Gorsan. The Eternal’s warriors will respond when they can. We must hold out in the meantime.”

It was, perhaps, not the answer the flat-faced man had hoped for, but he bowed his head nevertheless. “I understand, Lord. Some of the others have wondered, as well. I will tell them.”

Sorus inclined his head. “Now, you are dismissed. Rest, eat. Prepare. We must plan our next move.”

The scouts bowed again, and departed.

Only after they were well out of earshot for a baseline human did Konon turn to Sorus. “Should we have given them such hope, Uncle?” The desperate fighting and the precariousness of their position had long since made ranks fall by the wayside, the bonds of family and clan more important among the Paladins. Sorus was the seniormost remaining, anyway, and all looked to him for wisdom and guidance. “We know that the rest of the clan is bound up on Monthala and Utarauas. They have no forces to send. Is it not time for all to accept that we will die here? To prepare to meet it as we must?”

“Perhaps, perhaps not.” Sorus lowered himself to sit by the fire again. “The mind can be a fragile thing in these circumstances.” He nodded toward the passage where the scouts had disappeared. “Gorsan perhaps would accept it, and fight all the harder. Some of the others. For more, however, it would dash them into despair. A man in despair does not fight as well as one who either has hope or who is truly ready to die.” He looked around the fire. “And we must fight. Whether doomed or not, this is still an Imperial world. It is not a Tosadan world. And so we will punish these alien interlopers to the very last drop of our own blood. Even if we must ultimately fall along the way.”

“For the Empire. For the fallen. For the last light in the darkness.” Mellus’s deep, sonorous voice intoned the words. Ancient words, from a time long past, lost in the mists of history. From a time just after the Eternal and the patriarchs of the Paladins had escaped the Night World.

The others echoed the old intonation, and then they set to planning.

***

Zarth’s helmet optics picked out the Tosadan advance element through the brush and the rocks below. The squat, round-bodied aliens looked almost like balls on legs as they waddled along, their heads nearly melding into their torsos, the effect made all the more blatant by the way their armor was designed.

This group was all infantry. While the smoke of the pyres of millions of slaughtered humans and virdans spoke of the Tosadan victories, they were still moving carefully, tactically, on the alert and with their long-barreled weapons held ready.

He turned to his companions. Four Paladins stood poised in the hollow, now only two hundred yards ahead of the advancing Tosadan infantry. Coil guns were held in gauntleted hands, their helmet visors identical impassive effigies of Tiberius’ death mask. Zarth knew each of them, despite their anonymity in armor. Portos was his brother, two years younger than he. Numa and Gorgion were distant cousins, sons of Sorus’s cousin.

They said nothing, yet each could read every nuance of movement and stance, almost as if they could speak mind to mind without words. They were ready. Poised and set to slay until finally slain.

His gaze moved up. The support element, made up of baseline human Tiberian infantry, armed with heavy weapons and sniper rifles, was invisible to the naked eye, hidden behind rocks and draped with masking cloaks. They were ready, as well.

Unlimbering his shoulder launcher from his armor’s support pack, he lobbed a charge toward the leading Tosadans.

The aliens heard the thump of the launch, but for the three in front, it was far too late. The grenade detonated with an earthshaking thud, throwing all three Tosadans aside, their armor shattered, limbs flying through the smoke and dust, trailing orange blood.

Heavy weapons fire stuttered down from the rocks above, hammering at the others, heavy slugs kicking up dust, pulverizing rocks, and battering at the Tosadan armor. Some of them broke through, and two fell in welters of fragmented armor and orange gore as the Paladins moved.

Coilguns roared, crackling thunder spitting engineered metal spikes at hypersonic speeds, slamming through Tosadan armor, cracking the rotund shells as they ripped through vegetation and flesh alike. Numa and Gorgion poured fire into the shocked, staggered Tosadan fighters, while Portos and Zarth dashed to the next rocks, only a few dozen yards away.

The combination of hereditary speed and strength and the powered armor hurled both Paladins across the gap in seconds. They planted behind the boulder, each man leaning out to either side to pour more coilgun fire into the shocked Tosadans.

Zarth slammed two shots into the nearest alien, the pair of discharges spitting bluish coronal discharge from his muzzle at almost the same instant that the first round cracked the creature’s breastplate and the second turned its helmet into a cloud of flying shards, bone, and auburn blood. Before that corpse had fallen to the dust, he had shifted to the second, putting a single round right through its dulled faceplate.

Armored footsteps pounded the dirt off to his left, as Numa and Gorgion charged forward. Zarth sent another Tosadan sprawling, the impact of his coilgun projectiles throwing it to the dust as it tried to run away. The support fire was sweeping ahead of them, but now that the initial shock had worn off, the surviving Tosadans had fallen back to a hollow just above the river, and were now beginning to return fire.

Gorgion had nearly reached his next position, almost moving too fast to effectively track, when a storm of Tosadan fire reached out and hammered him to a halt. His armor withstood the first few hits, as he returned fire. Two of the Tosadans vanished in mists of blood and smashed plate, the fire slackening, but then one of their own projectiles found its mark just beneath his helmet.

Blood sprayed, and Gorgion staggered, but he continued to fire. Then another round smashed his eye lens and he fell.

Zarth shot two more, forcing the rest farther back into cover, as Numa found his own position and opened fire. Gorgion’s death was a dull ache in the back of his mind, to be dealt with at a later time, provided he did not join his cousin in the next few moments.

Then the missile launchers farther down the valley rippled fire into the hills, and the support position suddenly disappeared in a cloud of smoke, dust, and offal, the thunderous impacts and explosions rocking the valley for miles.

The surviving Paladins did not hesitate or pause. Numa’s fire raked the Tosadan position, blinding their enemies with clouds of atomized grit, and Zarth reloaded before swinging around the boulder and charging toward the alien invaders.

Do not go gently into the night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.