Only one had time to even look in astonishment at the intruder who had appeared in the their midst as if conjured out of the fog before Valentine swept the forward half of the gun bay with a burst from the submachine gun. The PPD roared in the confined space of the platform, sending men sprawling.

Valentine sensed movement behind-ducked as a pistol shot ricocheted off the armored wall where his head had been. He put a burst up into the soldier, lifting the man clear from the deck. He squeezed a second blast into the other rear gunner as the Twisted Cross man struggled to put a new magazine in his rifle.

Eight dead or dying men lay inside the back of the truck. Valentine moved forward to the crew-served weapons, shooting one crawling soldier in the side of the head as he did so. The semi was turning, bringing its deadly sides to bear on the main gate, the drivers in the cab still unaware of the destruction wreaked in the rear.

He pulled the machine gun facing the wall of wagons out of its mount and looked in the box magazine at its side, half-empty of shells. He decided it was enough and climbed up to the firing position at the front of the old tanker, using a step that gave him a clear view out over the top of the tracked dozer. The driver and his companion traded shots with the Eagles on the wall from within their reinforced cockpit. Nothing but canvas and wire mesh stood between him and the two men in the cab. He shoved the gun tight into his shoulder and pressed the trigger, snarling down at the unsuspecting Troopers. The muzzle flash blinded him. When he lifted his finger and could see again, both men lay dead in the bullet-riddled cab.

He went to the other machine-gun slit in the tanker wall. It was a well-designed weapons bay: a slit cut in the armored side of the trailer, with the gun mounted on a tripod behind a second bulletproof shield. Through the slit, he could see a triangle of Reapers. They had made it past the gate, firing all around as bullets hit their body armor. They seemed invulnerable. A grenade exploded amidst the three, causing one to drop to its knees. It righted itself and continued firing.

Valentine sighted the weapon and loosed a long burst, the tripod easing his aim. The weapon hardly shook as the bullets poured out of it, cartridge casings sounding in the gun's deafening chatter like faint bells as they tumbled to fall through the holes in the wire grid deck, where they wouldn't be tripped on before they could be collected from the belly of the tanker.

The first Reaper went down, broken in half by the machine gun. Another's head vanished when it turned to look at the first, and the grenade-wounded third tried to crawl away after he knocked it over with a blast. Valentine must have put a hundred rounds into it-in short bursts that alternated with mindless obscenities-before it finally lay still.

Get a hold of yourself. Use your brain as well as this gun.

Fighting the madness still heating his blood, Valentine dropped two more Twisted Cross off the wall. Another team vaulted into one of the battle-wagons. One removed the head of the defender in the wagon with a single hand-thrust up and under the Eagle's chin; its companion fired a weapon that looked like a plunger with a football glued to the end of it. The warhead took off in a whoosh of rocket-sparks and exploded under a battle-wagon, tossing men and debris into me air.

Valentine emptied the weapon into that pair, knocking one-its midsection torn to a pulp of black goo-into the bullet-riddled wall and blowing the other off the parapet. It fled, swinging over the wagons and into the trench minus an arm and a leg.

Working as though possessed, he lifted a new ammunition belt from the locker at the base of the weapon and opened the feeder at the top. As he placed the first round in the gun, a Twisted Cross rushed out of the darkness. In two seconds, it covered the distance to the truck.

When Valentine saw it leap, he drew his sword, and by the time it ripped through the top hatch, he had the blade held ready.

It came through headfirst.

His first slash removed the thing's arm at the elbow; it just dodged his backswing designed to take off its head. Had it immediately dropped in clawing fury on Valentine, it might have ended the fight there, but whoever was animating the Reaper decided to use its gun.

It dropped and spun to land on its feet; as it fell, it brought up the Kalashnikov, giving Valentine the instant he needed to roll forward under the burst of bullets. He opened its stomach just beneath its vest, where the groin-guard joined the armor above, then used the return thrust and skewered it under the armpit.

It turned, plucking the sword out of Valentine's hand like a wounded bull taking off with a banderilla. It staggered a step away as Valentine reached for his parang, drawing the machete-like knife and striking the back of its neck with one fluid motion. The body took one more step with its spinal cord severed before crashing to the deck, smearing a tarry black substance on the wire flooring as it rolled and flopped.

The men at the walls and figures outside the gate were still exchanging shots. Valentine heard a great deal of fire on the hillside at the north end of camp, not the chatter of the Kalashnikovs but the pop-pop-pop of aimed rifle fire. An occasional heavier whump sounded as one of the swivel guns discharged, joined by sharper explosions Valentine knew now to be rocket-propelled grenades.

Feeling thick-limbed and dull-eared, he retrieved his PPD and replaced the drum. Shaking himself back to coherence, back sore from adrenaline-burn, he readied the mounted machine gun and trained it on the gap at the gate, but even the muzzle flashes of the Twisted Cross guns had ceased. The gunfire around the camp faded into a moaning chorus of the wounded calling for help or screaming out their pain.

There was nothing left to kill.

Valentine sagged against the butt of the gun, aware of nothing but the smells of cordite and hot metal; he waited for someone else to make the decisions.

As the Twisted Cross Reapers withdrew, the barrage started, a fall of mortar shells blasting man, animal, and wagon into pieces. Valentine had never experienced anything like it. Though they fell all around the wagons, each explosion seemed aimed at him.

Thirty minutes later, it stopped. Then the cleanup began.

"If mis is victory, I'd hate to see a defeat." The outrider leader, Danvers, looked across the smoldering ruin of the campsite as dawn burned away the fog. Valentine had joined him in the survey, asking that he might also employ the outriders in looking for a "pile of four" message from Duvalier.

The Eagle's Wings Brand dead lay in a long row, blanket-covered bodies with feet, at least in the cases where the deceased had both legs, protruding from beneath the earth-toned shrouds. Among them was the Camp Engineer Waldron, killed by a Reaper while reloading a swivel gun.

As they waited for the dawn and organized what was left of the defense, Danvers told Valentine about his outriders' fortunes on the hill above the north wall. During the Twisted Cross retreat, they discovered insectoid Grogs they called "Sandbugs" scattered on the hill above the camp.

"Sandbugs we can handle. They're out of the Dakotas- they live mostly in the unoccupied prairie and Badlands area," Danvers explained. "They look kind of like big sow bugs-they grab you in their front choppers and stick a needle with some kind of venom into you. If you're lucky, it kills you; if you're not, you get paralyzed. Either way, they throw you in a hole with a bunch of their eggs."

"Weaknesses?" Valentine asked mechanically, watching a widely spaced line of men on horses checking the grounds around the camp.

"They're the dumbest damn things, they don't organize at all, just scuttle in to the attack whenever they spot motion. Of course, if they had made it to the walls, there would have been trouble, they can dig like hell and they would have just hit the trench and gone right into the sand, come up in camp. That wouldn't have been pretty. What's left of my men are trying to hunt them down. They'll be hiding from the sun now that it's coming up. All we need are Sandbug nests on top of everything else."

Valentine's business was with the Twisted Cross, not new Grog physiognomy. He hadn't seen Duvalier, or discovered any message from her.

He found the deacon overseeing the care of the wounded and preparations for interment of the dead.

Tags: E.E. Knight Vampire Earth Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net