The Guardians of Sol Read online

  “Old timer, what the hell is that?” The younger man asked as he parried an enemy blade before using his own to tear through armor with a terrible screeching.

  “That looks like a… Damn! Clear the walls! Everyone hear me? Beat feet! Back to the city! Disengage you whoresons!” Telamon cried, his usually stalwart voice almost quaking with fear, and anger. Spartans and a few Hoplite reservists began leaping from the wall to try and take up defensive positions around the city.

  “Zeus’ beard, Captain, what is that thing?” Arkadios demanded. He continued to battle along with Telamon and several others so that the rest of their forces just might have enough time before the enemy horde caught up with them.

  “It’s a particle cannon, boy. I’m not sure where he dragged it out from but unless we’re lucky enough that it explodes when it fires, we’re all dead men.” Telamon thought about that for a second before laughing loudly over the intercom. “You always wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, didn’t you Arka?”

  “You’re insane, Old Timer! I’m pretty sure that was you!” Arkadios turned around looking for another target to fight. “Um… where did they all go?”

  Telamon swore loudly, but he was already acting, grabbing Arkadios and pulling him along. “The sides! Everyone left on the wall, hurry to the sides!” He barked. Without wasting a second he threw Arkadios with all the power that his armor could muster, and activated the jets on his pack almost simultaneously.

  Behind him a fierce blue-white beam shot through the wall and a good portion of the air above it. Those of the remaining men who were too slow to make it to the transitory safety of the sides simply… disappeared. The edges of where the beam hit had been completely glassed.

  "Who's still alive?" Telamon queried once his vision had cleared.

  "I am. So, if you would be so good as to get off of me, Captain, I believe you ordered a retreat." Arkadios complained. As it was only five others fell in line on the way to the city. Of the twenty men who had held the wall in the last few moments only seven were left.

  "We're skunked, aren't we?"

  "Yes, son. We're skunked." Telamon replied grimly.

  16

  July 23, 2289. Larissa, Greece.

  Telamon finally sat back and relaxed for a few moments. It had taken all night but he had repaired the damage that the particle beam had done to his armor, mostly fried computer components. Eric and a few others were guarding the entrances to the building they were holed up in.

  After the men from the wall had gotten back to the barracks, Eric had immediately put the emergency provisions into effect; getting sensitive materiel and wounded men moving towards the capitol, and scattering what remained of the Spartan forces throughout the city to slow down Marcus. It was a holding effort, though exactly what hopes for reprieve or rescue there were, even Telamon had no idea.

  “Arka, help me get back into my armor,” Telamon ordered. “Eric, have the Sciritai resume their raids on Marcus’ supply lines and tents. Has there been any word from Command?”

  “I already did that, Tel, about ten minutes ago. Though there was a short dispatch while you were repairing your armor. The Sentinel says that the operation in space has been inconclusive. We should have reinforcements sometime in the next two days.” A racket rose from the bottom floor as some of the men put down an intrusion from enemy forces. “Anyway,” Eric continued. “That was all that got through before signal got jammed so I hope there wasn’t anything else important in it. No word from the other battlefronts, but I’m going to assume that they’re faring better than we are since they don’t have a stupid feud screwing up their supply lines. Anything else you want to know?”

  “No, no… that sounds like just about everything. Now it’s time to start planning the next step, don’t you think? Okay… I got nothing. A last stand wouldn’t last more than a day as long as they have that cannon, and if we keep up fighting building to building we’re going to lose more men than I care to. Building to building should buy us the time we need though. Eric, we don’t happen to have any heavy artillery I don’t know about, do we?”

  “Nothing even remotely resembling artillery, old man. Don't you think that if we did we would have used it in the canyon?”

  Telamon sighed as his short-lived idea died completely. “Then I really do have nothing. The next two days are not going to be fun at all. All those poor boys with all that – Somebody tell those guys to stop playing around down there! I need some quiet to think in.”

  “I have an idea,” Eric piped up.

  The Spartan raised a wary eyebrow. “Spit it out, boy.”

  “Challenge Marcus to a duel. Well, you wouldn’t do it, I would. Not to disrespect your skills, Tel, but you’re too old to fight him. That… and you rely on your shield far too much.”

  "I can fight him," Arkadios chipped in cheerfully.

  "Only if you feel like dying," Telamon chided. "You thought that Samurai gave you trouble? Marcus would tear you apart piece by piece."

  "So if I can't do it and you can't do it. Then... who can do it?"

  "You're forgetting that you're sitting next to a Swordmaster of the First Tier," Eric grinned. "If anyone is qualified to do this, I am."

  "Which just leaves the little problem of not only getting a message through to Marcus; we also have to figure out how to get him to accept." Telamon sighed again. "Does anyone remember when all you had to do was shoot or stab an enemy and that was it? No tactics, no posturing..."

  “I don’t think even you are old enough to remember those times, Tel.” Eric patted Telamon on his armored back. "One way or the other this will be over by the end of the week, and then you'll be back with Delilah. Now, problem the first. A signal can be sent through because the Europeans obviously won't go and jam their own frequencies. Problem the second. We offer Marcus a deal he can't refuse. He wins; we concede the battle and retreat to Athens. I win; he gives us two days to evacuate our wounded and the last few civilians before resuming his campaign. Marcus isn’t vicious like other Table knights and I’m sure that he doesn't want to lose men anymore than we do. He'll go for this, trust me."

  *****

  “Marcus. Marcus Santiago, Knight of Britain and Spain. Answer me!” Telamon bellowed into the com unit. “I have some words for you, you young pup!” He let it sit a few minutes, shifting uneasily.

  “What do you want, old horse?” A cultured voice came out of the speaker. “I’m in the middle of running a battle, if you hadn’t noticed.”

  “We’d like to make a deal, Marcus. Or rather, a gamble… Not sure exactly what it’s called that we want to do, but it does involve your participation.”

  A sigh. “Ok, I’ll bite. What’s this plan of yours?”

  “A duel. A battle of champions! If you win we forfeit this battle and retreat. If our champion wins you give us a two day respite to clear out our wounded. Fair enough, yes?”

  Telamon could practically hear Marcus thinking about all the angles of the deal, but in the end it really was a chance that Marcus couldn’t pass up. Just as Eric had predicted.

  “And just why should I agree to this? I’m going to win either way.”

  “Because any other way you win you end up losing a lot more men. You’re a good enough man not to want that, aren’t you?”

  “You’ve got me, old man. I’m in. I’ll have a circle prepared on the northern edge of the city. Have your party meet me there tomorrow morning. Is this a deathmatch or shall we use Olympic rules like we did in Kyoto?”

  “Eric says somewhere in between. He wants to use power armor but says that death is not required for a win. Now that I think of it, you better make that circle pretty damned big if you’re going to use armor.”

  “It sounds fair enough. There will be no ranged weaponry, of course.”

  “Of course, where would the fun be in that? See you in the morning, pup.”

  *****

  Telamon didn’t go down to meet Marcus in the morning. Eric told him that he
was needed to command the troops, no matter what happened. Telamon disagreed and had to be restrained by the rest of the command staff.

  Eric walked down to the circle escorted by Arkadios and Argentos. All three were in full armor, though only the Spartans had their full complement of weapons equipped. Marcus was waiting for them with two knights by his side. One was huge, even among men in armor, with Scandinavian markings on his plates. The other was another Spaniard, his armor rather plain compared to Marcus’s.

  “Are you ready for this, friend?” Eric inquired. “I won’t be going easy on you.”

  Marcus put his helmet back on, with its snarling wolf mask. “I am ready. Let’s just get this over with”

  Eric merely nodded as he stepped into the ring. Marcus followed suit and they both drew their swords. They stepped in to meet each other, one of Eric’s single-edged blades striking his opponent’s leading longsword.

  They stepped apart again, began circling. Eric flicked his wrists in a certain way, and cords were now connecting his wrists to the bottom of his swords’ hilts. Eric sent an attack at Marcus’s right side, which was blocked. Sparks flew from one sword to the other before being absorbed into Marcus’s armor.

  Marcus hopped back, surprised. Eric’s left sword, the one that had been blocked, still didn’t look any different. Yet, the edge of his right hand sword had begun to glow a shining blue, and the air around it wavered.

  Inside his helmet, Eric smiled. Marcus launched a blistering offensive, though every strike was blocked. Marcus took the slightest of missteps in his footwork, but it was enough for Eric to shift the momentum into his favor. Marcus only struck his armor once, at an oblique angle that glanced right off. On the other hand Eric got in a good half-dozen blows that tore off a shoulder plate and left several bright lines on other plates. They finally broke off their assault on each other.

  “You can’t beat me, Marcus. You never could.”

  Marcus merely saluted with one of his swords – swords that were now humming audibly. One blade slashed in a murderous arc towards Eric’s midsection, as the other thrust forward.

  Eric deflected the thrusting sword but only partially managed to block the slashing one, which caused an unearthly shriek.

  “You’re not the only one with special blades, Eric. This battle is not as over as you want to think it is.”

  “Ah yes, vibroswords. Very damaging if one is not wearing adamantine armor. Too bad for you that I am. Those swords have other greater weaknesses, you know.”

  “We don’t all have the resources of Alkaios Tech or the Guardian Corps at our disposal. But we will soon enough. Perhaps even resources greater than those.”

  Something about the smugness in Marcus’s voice bugged Eric. It positively stuck in his craw. There was something in it was more than the hyperbole of a would-be conqueror. He would definitely have to mention it to the higher-ups so the Venators could be set in the right direction. Nothing he could do right now though.

  “And here I thought you were the humblest of warriors. Though I’m glad I found out about your flair for dramatic dialogue now instead of when lives hang in the balance… oh wait, lives do hang in the balance. You put them there!”

  He punctuated that last word with a lightning fast attack that burned through the outermost layer of one of Marcus’s chest plates. Marcus kicked him away and launched his own series of attacks, which Eric managed to block skillfully until Marcus’s sword slipped through a gap in his defense that he hadn’t even known was there. The blade worked into the armor’s support frame, shaking Eric until he managed to remove the sword.

  The Swordmaster was beginning to get annoyed with those vibroswords. He directed his next flurry of blows toward the left blade striking as near to the hilt as he could manage. The actual sword blade soon glowed dully from repeated impacts from the heat of Eric’s swords. A lucky shot as Marcus tried to block, opened up the bottom of the sword hilt and filled it with electricity, blowing out its motor. A rapid follow-up sheared the blade off at its base.

  Marcus threw the useless stub away, taking the remaining sword into a two-handed grip. Eric stepped back for a second and started circling his old friend. Some strange spirit of fairness had him put his heat blade back in its place on his pack. He took his other blade, which used older ARC technology to make it more destructive, in both hands to mirror Marcus.

  Marcus darted forward, zigzagging, curving an attack at Eric’s neck. Eric partially deflected the blow so that it caught near his shoulder instead of his head. The painful vibrations tore apart the inner connections there, ripping off the shoulder plate and exposing the exoskeleton beneath.

  Immediately recovering, Eric’s sword lanced out, but was deflected from its course. Though it came close enough for an arc of electricity to leap out and expand on the whole in the chest plate he had made earlier.

  Their blades ended up locked up by the hilts. Vibrations threatened to loosen Eric’s grip on his sword, as current ran up and down Marcus’s sword threatening his armor’s ability to absorb or disperse the energy. Unfortunately for Eric and fortunately for Marcus, the vibration generator in the latter’s sword was too well insulated to burn out under the electrical assault.

  Marcus took a swing at Eric’s head with his free hand. Eric swayed back and tried to kick Marcus’s feet out from under him. Neither of the attacks hit and they were soon stumbling around trying to unlock their swords while taking swings at each other with whatever appendages they had free.

  After a moment Eric received a click over his comlink from Argentos that demanded attention. It was just enough distraction for Marcus to make Eric lose his grip on the swords to regain his footing several feet away.

  Before Marcus could sever the cord connecting Eric’s armor to his sword, Eric issued a command that trebled the current flowing through the blade. The power finally began to overload servomotors and circuits in the Spaniard’s armor even as the miniature reactor in the swordmaster’s armor struggled to supply enough power to meet the demands placed on it. Eric finally gave his attention to Argentos, just as Marcus collapsed.

  “I hope you have a good reason for giving him an opening on me,” he groused.

  “Look up, sir,” the Spartan replied as he extended his plasma-tipped spear.

  Eric did look up, and saw lines of fire filling the sky above. There must have been over a hundred. He giggled a little before gathering his wits and getting up.

  “You knew about this, didn’t you, Eric?” Marcus asked through a barely functioning com unit. “You knew you were getting reinforcements. Heh. Just stalling for time. I should have seen it.”

  “You really should have. I mean, really, two days? With puddlejumpers an evac would only take one?” Eric replaced his blade by his other sword. “I don’t think we’ll need it now though.” He turned to the Spartans. “Argentos, Arkadios, let’s go. We have to get a proper reception ready to cover our friends.”

  However, as soon as they began moving towards the laying man, the Scandinavian knight stepped up and swung the biggest mace that Eric had ever seen. Argentos went flying several feet before landing heavily on his back, a large dent showing obviously on his upper body.

  For his part, Arkadios caught and deflected the blow that went his way mere seconds later. The force of the blow, however, staggered him even through his armor, long enough for a gigantic ax to sweep up and sever his spear-wielding arm. Sparks flew from armor where it had been rent, and Arkadios began swearing up a storm. That awful mace rose once again and again a Spartan went flying. The monster stepped towards a still winded Eric.

  Three drop pods landed with a resounding crash. Eric was thrown from his feet. Their doors blew off from locks and hinges. The nearest one actually hit the giant, staggering the man for a moment. The Spaniard that had thus far stayed out of the festivities rushed in and hoisted up Marcus, making his way towards the AEU camp.

  From one pod stepped a nondescript figure in black Castigar armor. This was a
man from Demonsblood, the seventh Elite Castigar squad from the Specials battalion. From another stepped a man in gold and blue and wielding a hammer. Eric didn’t recognize the armor or the hammer over lightning bolts crest that was upon the man’s shoulder.

  The last man wore armor of red, black, and gold. A fuel tank was attached on the right side of his back, a fuel line leading down that arm to a flame tipped emitter nozzle. Eric recognized this man from the eighth elite squad, Dragonflame.

  The Daemonsblood man closed fast, almost faster than Eric could track, and downed the Giant in one swift blow, leaving shattered armor plates in his wake.

  The man walked over to Eric and extended his hand to help the swordmaster up.

  “What did we miss?”

  Eric shuddered. The man’s raspy voice was like fingernails running down a chalkboard, though not nearly so high pitched.

  17

  July 23, 2289. Bastion-class battleship Gungnir in orbit of Venus

  “Two weeks! What kind of enemy attacks in force and then disappears for two weeks?” The Gungnir’s captain howl. “I have better things to do! Like rooting out the pirates that have been attacking the mining centers in the asteroid belt. Not chasing phantoms.”

  Every couple of days, the captain invited my fellow Specials captain Jacob and me to join him for dinner. Unfortunately, he was doing more complaining than eating tonight.

  “With all due respect, sir,” I replied. “These aren’t phantoms we’re chasing. I have fought them. They killed one of my men. Just look at the recordings of what they did to Pluto or that Saturn colony. I don’t care if it takes the rest of the year, destroying these guys is worth it.”

  “You don’t have a lot of experience with space battles and pirates, do you Castle? We’ve only hit our main population centers out here so far. There are at least another two dozen colony clusters just in the inner solar system we haven’t checked. The area around Pluto we scanned? That was less than half of a fraction of a percent of the whole Kuiper belt. And that’s not even getting into the asteroid belt, the Oort cloud, or the other asteroid groups scattered about. The rest of the year, Captain? Rooting out a few little ships could take a good chunk out of the next decade. You keep to the ground, and I’ll keep to space.”