NIGHTFALL PREVIEW XII

Pick Up Your Weapon, Trooper

BY PETER NEALEN

Pick Up Your Weapon, Trooper Part IV

Ulgar fought down the sudden surge of fear, banished by the desperation of their position before then, but now surging back during this lull in the fighting. Before, he had been in the moment, facing utter annihilation with each heartbeat. It had lent him a focus that he’d never experienced before.

Now, though, they had room to breathe, and the nightmare of their situation came crashing down on him.

Trying desperately to hold himself together, he peered up over the lip of the trench, through the drifting smoke and dust, to see the Charul in the mechanized palanquin still standing there, watching, as more thralls began to quickly dig in, while others hastily set up support weapons and sent a hissing web of beam fire crackling over his head. He ducked down, though not without feeling somehow that the Charul in the amber mech had been staring straight at him.

He felt himself start to shake. The imminent reality of death had suddenly become all too close. While they’d been in the thick of battle, he hadn’t had a chance to think about it… and there had always been the hope that the rest of the Phalanx might be able to push up and support them. If they were surrounded, though…

Some would hope that the Phalanx would move the heavens themselves to rescue their cut off troops, but Flag Sergeant Eliphas had made one thing clear. Phalanx troopers bore arms to serve the Empire, to defend it against its enemies.

He did not see where the Phalanx would take more losses to try to extricate this small clump of survivors, especially if they had no way to know they were there.

“What do we do, Ulgar?” Jerigan’s plaintive question came at the same time that a thought jolted through Ulgar, yanking his head up to look around the bodies piled in the bottom of the trench.

“Find a wavecast.” He staggered away from the wall. “Quickly. Gather up any weapons, ammo packs, grenades. Anything we can fight with.” His panic started to subside, buried under a new… not hope, but purpose. “Try to pile the bodies at the trench junctures. We’ll use them as sandbags.” He looked up toward the blizzard of beam fire flickering through the smoke and dust above their heads. “They’re not just shooting at us for fun, boys. They’ll be coming for us soon.”

“There’s a support beamer over here, Corporal.” He didn’t recognize the trooper, a short, wiry man, who hadn’t noticed that Ulgar was just a rank-and-file trooper himself. The man must have simply assumed that the man giving orders must be a noncom.

“If it’s functional, get it set up where it was.” The section of trench he and his little ad hoc squad wasn’t that big, and the support beamer had already had a position prepared, if hastily. He looked to right and left, trying to think of the next move. He hadn’t expected to find himself in this situation, and neither had his superiors. He hadn’t been trained for this.

He fought the clawing terror in the back of his mind as Daskand, who was looking over the lip of the trench, warned, “They’re starting to move, Ulgar. I see two groups, one on the left, the other on the right. I think they’re going for the flanks of the trench, where they already broke through.” He peered through the smoke and dust again, flinching as beam fire clipped the ground and exploded dirt and rocks into his face. “There are Charul with them. Not just thralls.”

Think, Ulgar. He took a deep breath, redolent of ozone, smoke, and death, as he tried to focus on the problem instead of the fear. It seemed as if the Charul had taken notice of this part of the trench system that had held out while the rest to their right and left had fallen. Now things were going to get really bad, and here he was, essentially in command of the remnants, when he had heard his first shot fired in anger only hours before.

He resisted the urge to look back, through the drifting smoke, toward the manmade mountain of Megacity Iellius, where it loomed high in the sky even all those miles away. There was no relief there. Nor was there relief to be found from the main body of the Torremaddan 5th, whatever was left of it, on the plains outside the ancient megalopolis. There were swarms of Charul thralls between them, now.

“Found the wavecast.” Fohrand pried the blocky unit off the back of Trooper Arvans, where he lay next to Aubrian’s corpse, having just caught up with the corporal before joining him in death. He crouched over it, fiddling with the controls, frowning as he tried to figure the unit out. Arvans had had training that the rest of the rank-and-file hadn’t.

It was too late to call for help, though. Another of the troopers that had fled the breach suddenly toppled into the trench, half his face blasted away.

He had been facing the rear, toward the distant megacity, and he toppled backward into the trench. The shot had come from behind their position.

“Get to positions!” Ulgar realized as he said it that he hadn’t assigned any such positions. “Find a spot to cover and get ready! Fill in where you fit!” He pointed to the dead man, still twitching in the mud and gore at the bottom of the trench. “Make sure we have someone watching the rear! Remember, we’re surrounded!” There must be something more to say, some inspiring words like Flag Sergeant Eliphas would use to fire them up for the defense, but nothing came to him. He rushed to the wall of the trench, not far from where the unknown trooper had gotten the support beamer up with the help of a burly, scarred man with dead eyes who looked like he had been a convict before being drafted into the Phalanx.

The thralls were moving forward at a crouched run, spitting beam fire from the hip as they came. Behind them, he could see the bulk of armored Charul, advancing in a similar crouch, looking even more insectoid than ever in their power suits.

He and his comrades had held against all odds, and in so doing, they had attracted the baleful eye of the slavers themselves. He could see the Charul in the amber armored palanquin behind, imagine it tilting its head in cold, alien curiosity as it stared toward him, wondering at these humans who had somehow, through a strange twist of fortune or divine providence—if the Charul even believed in such a thing—held while the others had broken.

Ulgar knew little about this enemy. He knew little about this world. Yet he knew one thing, as he leveled his pulse rifle and rested his finger on the trigger.

He would not be taken. He would not serve those alien monsters. And he would not go down alone.

To be continued…