"Let it in, let it in," Valentine called over the increasing noise of the engine. "The troops are coming in behind it." He half closed his eyes.
Quiet.
Centered.
Valentine pictured his consciousness as a large blue ball filling the horizon, and breathing deeply, he shrank it and shrank it, all the while inhaling and exhaling from a point at the bottom of his rib cage. He felt his heart slow, felt the whole world slow. The people around started to look like mannequins, dummies like he'd seen turning round and round in shop windows in Chicago. With his mind faint and open, he felt the presence of Reapers. A lot of them, terribly near. And coming closer, cold will-o'-wisps of death drifting toward him out of the fog.
Valentine's first view of the Twisted Cross, coming straight at him out of the midnight fog, froze him in place. A tracked vehicle, like a bulldozer with armored plate on its arms and front instead of a blade, towed a tanker-trailer that someone had torch-cut and welded into a mobile fortress. Crew-served machine guns pointed out of each side of the trailer and the windows and doors of the tractor were covered with slitted armored plating.
Behind them, in two columns, came the Reapers of the Twisted Cross. More like insects than men, they wore carapaces of heavy body armor, topped by visor-covered helmets that hung down at the sides and back like old samurai versions. The battle-Reapers held assault weapons at the ready and bulb-headed tubes in a harness on their backs.
The Eagle men cheered, some of them almost hysterically, others tentatively. A few inched away, ready to run for cover at the first shot.
Valentine crawled and flattened himself into the depression cut by the stream of water as the battle-rig rolled overhead, its bulk straddling the little spring with ease.
C'mon, Waldron. Now!
A whistle trilled in the night, to immediate effect. The swivel guns began to go off in such quick succession that it sounded like one continuous roar; an avalanche of sound and air pressure washed over Valentine. From beneath the still-moving trailer, he saw armored figures knocked down, some never to rise again. Others seemed not to even feel the blasts, and they turned to fill the night with muzzle flashes like yellow flowers blossoming.
Valentine, deafened by swivel-gun blasts and the gunfire, crawled out from beneath the trailer.
A Reaper ran toward the back of the truck, trying to take cover from the cross fire streaming down from the battle-wagons.
He rose to his feet with his gun at his shoulder. It pulled up and stared, perhaps surprised by his sudden appearance. It brought up its gun but caught a chattering blast from Valentine's PPD through its visor and into its face.
He heard the machine guns in the armored trailer firing, stitching the side of the battle-wagons to either side. Men toppled and dived for cover.
Valentine turned. He took two steps toward the rear of the sawed-off tanker and leapt, vaulting into the air as if lifted by an invisible pole over the ten-foot moving wall. The Cat landed on a walkway that ran along the spine of the converted tanker. The top hatch was round like a manhole, locked tight. He found a fan mounting on one of the sloping sides, the exterior closed by wire designed to keep grenades out.
Quisling mechanics take no pride in their work. Quick and cheap does it every time.
He squatted next to it, ignoring bullets whistling all around. Balancing on the balls of his feet, he coiled his body, grabbed, strained, and tore the thin grating free. Then he kicked the plastic blades out of the way.
He tucked the gun and dropped inside.
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.