Rick Partlow - Honor Bound

Ari saw out of the corner of his eye that Matienzo had come up beside him and was firing his battle rifle one-handed-at this range, it didn’t matter, as none of them could miss. The remaining two Protectorate troopers fell under the withering crossfire and suddenly the area around them was deathly quiet.

Ari jumped down into the drainage ditch and knelt down to help the soldier there as she dragged herself out of the culvert. She couldn’t stand: there were bullet wounds in both her legs and her helmet was gone, a gash in the side of her head matting her short, dark hair with blood. She was also the most beautiful thing Ari had seen in his life.

“Thank God,” he breathed as he lifted Roza from the ditch. Then he remembered to key his external speakers. “If it weren’t for this damn helmet,” he said, “I would kiss you.”

“Later, kedves ,” she leaned her head against his chest for a moment. “Now, we must get out of here.”

“Hold on,” he told her, crouching down and throwing her over his left shoulder, hearing her gasp at the pain it caused in her legs and wincing in sympathy. “Matienzo!” he said. “Watch our backs and follow me.”

His left arm wrapped around Roza’s legs and his right hand filled with his carbine, Ari took off at a trot, as fast as he could manage carrying her extra weight and as fast as they could go and still allow Matienzo to keep up. The first hint of false dawn was visible as a grey line across the eastern horizon and Ari used it as a beacon, more real and visceral than the indicator on the map in his HUD, more comforting than the lines of tracer-fire that cut through the darkness all around them.

“Hurry!” He could hear Matienzo’s yell over his external audio pickups and he risked a glance backwards. A few hundred meters behind them, hundreds of biomechs were swarming out from the wash and he could see hundreds more behind those, all pushing in, spurred on by whatever human was controlling them, sensing that this was the time to throw everything in on one final attack.

“ Kusemek ,” Ari grunted, reverting to the curse words of his youth on the streets of Tel Aviv. Motherfucker. He tried to run faster, but his right thigh felt like jello and Roza was not a small woman: a meter seven and 54 kilos of muscle, not to mention the weight of her armor. His breath came in short, painful gasps and his feet pounded the dirt, sending jolts of pain up the muscles of his back and into his shoulders with each step, and still that icon on the map seemed so far away…

The pounding of his own pulse in his ears was so loud that he almost didn’t hear the whine of the turbines, couldn’t understand Matienzo’s shouted warning… and was totally unprepared when the officer candidate took him and Roza down in a body block. He rolled off of Roza, ready to scream an obscenity at the younger man, which was when he saw the assault shuttle screaming down behind them, anti-personnel missiles dropping free from its hardpoints and rocketing their way.

Ari threw himself down over Roza, catching a glimpse out of the corner of his eye of Matienzo curling into a fetal position, hands over his head, and then the whole world exploded. A pressure wave lifted him and Roza off the ground, sending them tumbling across the ground, coming to a rest in a rut in the field. When his head stopped swimming, Ari saw a wall of fire where the advancing biomechs had been, the line of fireballs slowly mushrooming into the night.

The assault lander rose into the sky above them, climbing against the bright stars then tumbling back into a turn that took it down the way it had come, passing back over the next wave of Protectorate troops and letting loose another flight of air-to-ground missiles. Ari watched in awe as the ground erupted with a chain of explosions a kilometer long… and then felt elation as he saw a half dozen more assault shuttles coming in from the west, breaking out of a V formation to split up and split the enemy force into separate sectors.

Waves of missiles rained destruction down on the Protectorate forces, secondary blasts from their APC’s exploding in antiphonal counterpart. As they expended their missiles, the shuttles opened fire with chin cannons, hovering on belly jets to pour explosive shells into clusters of surviving biomechs.

Roza sat up beside him, pain etched on her face but satisfaction in her eyes as she clung to his neck for support and, he hoped, just because. Ari worked free the yoke at his neck and pulled his helmet off, feeling the refreshingly cool night breeze drying the sweat on his forehead. He leaned down and kissed Roza gently, savoring the warmth of her, the softness of her lips for a long moment.

She put her head against his chest and just rested there for a moment. Thinking of her wounds, he patted at the pockets of his tactical vest, but found them empty.

“Matienzo,” Ari said, “do you have any smart bandages left?”

“No, sir,” the young man said, shaking his head… then stopped and stared at Ari curiously, seeing him with his helmet off for the first time. “Captain Al-Masri,” he said, frowning, “what the hell happened to your face?”

Ari laid his head back on the grass and laughed.

Jason McKay stepped down the ramp of the lander slowly, chains of exhaustion and pain dragging at him. His emotions were a roller coaster, taking him from deep sadness to extreme relief and almost giddiness, and it took a concerted effort to keep himself from breaking into sobs. There would be time for that later.

Dawn was breaking over the trees, the golden light coloring the billowing smoke that climbed into the morning sky and adding a hint of gold to Shannon Stark’s red hair where she stood waiting for him, her helmet held under her arm. She looked as drained as him, but they met somewhere in the middle, falling into each other’s arms.

“Hi honey,” he whispered in her ear, recalling words he’d spoken to her over five years ago, “I’m home.”

She snorted, punching him lightly in the shoulder.

“Easy!” he hissed, wincing. “I think my collar bone is broken.”

“I told you you should stay behind that desk,” she said, touching lightly at the bandage on his neck, her tone still playful but tears welling up in her eyes.

“General McKay,” General Kage approached them, clearing his throat. He had stripped off his helmet as well and sweat matted his dark hair. McKay kissed Shannon on the forehead, then turned to face the CeeGee officer.

“General Kage,” he said, nodding to the man. He didn’t know what to expect from the man, but given past experience, he decided to try to defuse the situation preemptively. “Sir, from what I’ve seen and been told, your people fought very well here. Their sacrifice saved tens of thousands of lives.”

“And you saved our lives, McKay,” Kage acknowledged, surprising Jason with his gratitude. “So I gather from that,” he waved at the other shuttles, which were still patrolling back and forth along the battlefield, hunting stray biomechs, “that our ships in orbit prevailed?”

McKay’s expression was grim. “Yes, sir, they did. But not without a hell of a cost. The Bradley is disabled, and the Decatur and the Sheridan have both been destroyed. Admiral Patel,” McKay kept his voice from breaking with an effort of will, “sacrificed his life ramming the enemy cruiser with the Sheridan after the crew had abandoned ship.” He nodded at the assault aerospacecraft. “Some of them are on those shuttles.”

Shannon had looked up sharply when he mentioned Patel’s death, then closed her eyes, mouth moving in a silent prayer, her hand grabbing his in a tight grip. McKay sighed. “It’s not quite over yet. There are some Protectorate ships still insystem, but our cislunar cutters and the Fleet Headquarters station should be able to stand them off until the rest of our cruisers arrive.”