Gawain, page 4
That reminded her to be sneaky. Gawain was heavy enough to jar the ground as she ran, if someone was asleep. Plus, she had the computer actively seeking out all radio transmissions and mapping them.
None, so far, but she expected that someone would detect her at some point and radio his location. Someone else would answer and do the same.
Hopefully, they lacked the discipline to be up so much before the dawn doing their katas. If they had gone less than thirty kilometers yesterday, she could catch them still in their tents, aided by Japanese magic to see in the dark.
Before her, a hundred-meter-wide path of chewed up terrain marked her stalk.
Radio silence.
Hopefully, they hadn’t kept going yesterday when they escaped her. Not that they could run far enough, but she had a hard limit at how far she would go today. She would find them, or consider them completely gone for now.
But a leader of a warband probably couldn't just accept defeat and flee, without losing his tribe.
At least she hoped not.
On a screen, she noted that ibn Rustah had begun to move. They could not keep up, but would be there later. That would be good. She would need friends.
Over another rise into a wide, flat valley below, Yasmin could see where the trail turned sharply.
She paused, calling up the map and noting that they were headed towards what had been a lake half a century ago. The water would probably be poisoned yet, but it could be patiently distilled safely. She turned and stayed on this side of the ridge after a quick check.
Empty, like much of Persia today. Abandoned after the Oil Wars, the Water Wars, and the Green Wars that had filled the last half of their so-called Twentieth Century and most of the Twenty-First.
Now, only the scavengers and carrion eaters remained.
The sun was threatening to rise soon, so she pushed a little, already twenty-some kilometers from the village now. How far had they fled her?
Yasmin spied a light on the eastern horizon, too far north to be the dawn. It looked like fire, although any fool burning the wood and scrub that might grow here would end up breathing radiation in.
But did vultures care?
She checked against the American maps and saw a way to approach without being seen. Presumably a competent enemy commander would have a guard tower or watch point there, so she paused, standing still long enough to zoom her camera scanners in on the spot.
Nothing, but that just meant that they had good discipline to be dug in and concealed.
She stayed just below the crest of the nearby ridge and kept moving, ready to fire or cross over the top of and down into the valley as soon as she was seen.
Guards might warn the others, but she would still have surprise on her side for a time.
Gawain could move like a ballerina when she demanded it of him. Quiet, even for as many tons as walked.
She moved at a soft jog now, trying for stealth as much as possible.
If she was in command, she would put the watchers there, spotting down for the most part into this parallel depression, but at the same time protected and able to move either direction as an attack came.
She harked back to the tabletop war games she had played with Grandfather in the evenings. They had moved quickly beyond chess and go, as he believed that such games only taught logical progressions and patterns when warfare was anything but.
Instead, tactical maneuvering with terrain and range. Chaos confined to the kitchen table, but sufficient to teach one to get low and stare from the height of a warrior three centimeters tall and see through her eyes.
Yasmin checked the sword, ready to draw. Shifted her shield a little with a slight twist. Primed the dazzler again and checked her power feeds.
Everything ready.
Radio silence meant that she could not signal Behrooz and Ardashir with her details, but they knew the direction to follow. And once the fighting began, she could triangulate them down on her position.
She understood that Behrooz would not have a weapon on his greenhouse. Perhaps Ardashir needed to lug around some light artillery? A long-range mortar or light howitzer would be perfect for a raid like this, especially if you could load it with shrapnel to engage soft targets.
Yasmin would have to do everything herself today.
Dazzler prepared, she slowed to a walk, creeping along where the slope turned into more of an escarpment, perfect to hide.
Any moment now, she should hear the first panicked call of the watchers. She had debated charging down on them, but it was better to remain in control for now.
Nothing.
Nothing?
What the hell was wrong with those fools?
Another step and she would see them. Yasmin considered peeking around, but presumed some sort of heavy weapon in place to blast her.
Instead, she charged, rushing right past the opening in the cliff face with her dazzler aimed and the shield as close to protecting her right as she could.
Nothing.
Not even tracks. They had never put a vehicle up here to protect their flank.
Yasmin thought dark and malevolent thoughts, mostly insulted now that she had been prepared for warriors.
She was facing hyenas this morning instead of lions.
Gawain crept to the crest again and poked the topmost optical sensor up on the periscope.
There.
That same war bus, surrounded by a score of four-wheeled assault technicals and a half dozen motorcycles. Horses and camels, even, mostly hauling cargo from the look of things. A full camp, semi-permanent from the way that tents and laundry had been set, not on the shore of the lake itself, but only a few hundred meters back.
Yasmin wondered if any dangerous animals had lived in the water or moved in later.
What might all that radiation do, if it didn’t kill you and there were no humans around?
Three and a quarter kilometers, half of it downhill and then across a flat almost as smooth as her mother’s table.
Yasmin looked, but could see no food animals down there. No flatbeds hauling potted plants like Behrooz.
Nothing that suggested this group came to peacefully trade.
That had been her fear, that yesterday was something other than it had appeared. That Nahal Ghorbani Sayyida was the aggressor, in spite of an evening of tea and conversation.
Something caught her eye, but it took Yasmin a moment to understand, even after she locked in and zoomed.
It was a man, hung spread-eagle from a tall post. Crucified, like the ancient Romans had done to the Christians and other criminals. Dead, but only recently. Perhaps yesterday, as the flesh had not yet begun to blacken and bloat in the desert sun.
A victim then, or someone being made an example by the leader, Dehkordi.
It was probably too much to hope that the others would turn on him. He needed to appear weak first.
Yasmin checked the sky and her clock.
Sunrise proper in seventeen to nineteen minutes, depending on the horizon across the lake.
She had Japanese nightvision sensors and there was enough fire light to see for an unaugmented human walking around the camp.
Most of the vehicles were more or less in a pair of lines, along the north side and south as she came at them. One between her and the raiders with one beyond.
Not many people moving around. A few dogs perhaps.
She flashed back to Ardashir and his lessons.
Lame your foe at every opportunity, he had said. That gives you the tactical advantage to withdraw without pursuit later if the fight runs against you.
Yasmin smiled. She was just sad that an Excalibur like Gawain didn’t mount a heavier weapon, like that one model she had seen in the repair manual, where both arms were replaced with cannons. Nine inch dazzlers that could cut apart a battle tank at this distance. She almost had the range for that sort of silliness in the cool morning air.
She would have to risk confrontation.
Yasmin paused to say a quick prayer for the souls of those who would meet Allah The All-Merciful shortly, that He would take them in and show them their errors with love.
Because she was about to unleash hell.
Gawain came up and over the ridgeline under her drive. The ground here was perfect for a vehicle to drive up, packed well instead of gravel scree, so there was no excuse not to cover their northern flank save incompetence.
Or arrogance.
When one thinks like a predator, one occasionally forgets that even the mightiest hunters are eventually food for vultures and worms.
Thank you, Grandfather.
She charged, intent on the encampment but listening with every sensor she could bring to bear.
The first man to spot her was obvious.
He had emerged from a tent that was little more than a piece of cloth slung over a rope hanging between two posts, wearing only a pair of baggy pants.
Walked a little ways away from the others, but not quite to the row of vehicles. Unbuttoned his fly and started to take a piss, scratching in the pre-dawn chill and minding his own business.
Gawain had no running lights on right now, for all the obvious reasons, but was still a lumbering beast pounding the ground as he approached at a dead run. The earth underfoot would shake.
Movement caused the man over there to look up. Spot her.
His bladder clenched for a second, and then unleashed a waterfall.
The look on his face was utterly comical as he screamed.
She didn’t have the external pickups cranked, because it was about to get loud, so she could only watch in silence as the man screamed and peed.
Finally, he ran out of breath and urine, standing there for a long moment before his brain engaged and he staggered towards the tents behind him, pausing only after he nearly faceplanted to pull his pants up and hook them.
From beyond, heads had begun to emerge. People standing up and looking around, most of them armed with something, like they expected a pack of wild dogs or something.
Two hundred meters. Dead run.
Yasmin opened fire with the dazzler at the nearest truck.
The one with the five inch dazzler was clear across the camp, as was the war bus, but she wanted to lame the raiders.
The technical exploded, a sudden fireball in the morning sky as ammunition stored in the bed all ignited at once. Most of it wouldn’t be deadly, lacking a barrel to give it momentum, but the noise would be deafening. Surprise as an offensive weapon.
The truck next to it flipped over, landing on a third.
Yasmin smiled. Instead of charging into a scrum of armed humans, she pivoted to her left, slowing just enough that every shot could she fired hit the next vehicle in line as the weapon cycled.
Only a few of trucks detonated, but she just needed them damaged beyond immediate driving.
Then she could start hunting.
Bullets began to spang off Gawain’s hull. The shield was on the wrong side, but she’d made the right call to get close, rather than circling around and giving them time to react.
The dazzler was overheating now. Too many shots in a short period of time, however effective it had been, and she didn’t want it exploding or melting on her mechanoid’s arm, so she reached back and grabbed the pommel of her sword.
As promised, the blade came free and didn’t touch the new flagpole. The sun wasn’t up yet, but it was still bright enough by burning vehicles for the flag to be seen, streaming out behind her as she moved.
Yasmin moved close enough to chop at the row of vehicles as humans began to scatter madly, having finally understood that they were under attack.
Gawain’s muscles were more than unarmored steel trucks could resist, and she started by destroying any vehicle that had a weapon mounted in back. The Americans and the others had left behind a frightening amount of machine guns and other things in their invasion, however much it had failed later.
She killed mounted machine guns, tires, and even engine blocks.
Warning. Inbound Targeting Lock.
Yasmin had never heard the system tell her that, and it took a moment to translate out of English.
She dropped into a sudden crouch, just as some sort of missile flew over her head on a horizontal column of fire and smoke.
Turning her head, a red circle appeared on her screen. Not one she’d ever seen in her training, but it was bullseyed on a man with some sort of contraption over his shoulder.
Missile launcher, something whispered in her brain.
Yasmin stayed in her crouch and raised the Dazzler. The man exploded. There was no other way to describe the sudden spray of flesh and blood.
Hopefully, the missile launcher was also dead and couldn’t be reloaded. How many more were there that the dogs hadn’t bothered to use yesterday?
Or had they stored all the heavy ordinance here at their camp and returned for it?
Had Dehkordi intended to destroy the village today when he got everyone in motion?
Yasmin put a dazzler bolt into larger tent nearby to the man she had killed. The explosion was reward itself, as it flattened anybody within twenty meters and lit the clouds overhead for a long moment.
She rose and reversed field now, like a horse at the end of a jousting pass. This side wasn’t destroyed, but she needed to take advantage of the chaos and increase it.
Now, the shield was protecting her, and the sword on the away side, but there was nothing to slice at here and she needed to let her systems catch up and cool down.
The Americans had designed the Excalibur as a command unit for a team of other mechanoids, rather than a heavy weapons platform. She had better sensors and communications, but the reactor was complaining right now and the batteries were nearly depleted, in just thirty seconds of engagement.
Over there, vehicle engines began to roar and trucks moved, throwing up clouds of dust and dirt as they began to maneuver.
The flatbed with the dazzler had it mounted fixed, rather than in a turret. Probably wise, considering the size and weight, but that meant that it was facing the wrong direction now as the driver hauled ass away from her.
She had a few moments.
A man came around the front of the war bus with a large rifle she didn’t recognize in his hands.
Yasmin had grown up with an ancient 8mm bolt action rifle that Grandfather had saved, along with dies and tools to reload it. This one looked modern, in the sense of the American invasion of Persia two generations ago, when they fought Ardashir of the Desert for control of the sands.
He spotted her and raised the weapon to a shoulder. Yasmin stutter-stepped and then pushed off hard as a bolt of energy streaked back.
She hastily fired back, but the man also ducked, disappearing into the scrum of people, tents, and fire.
“System,” Yasmin called, waking it up. “Identify that weapon.”
Hopefully, it was smart enough to parse her words. She moved for greater cover so she could plan a mobile engagement.
“One inch dazzler,” the woman’s voice replied soothingly. “Infantry squad support weapon.”
A side screen showed the thing. Yuck.
“Threat rating?” she asked, hoping that the rule about diameter held going down as well as up.
Her three inch bore was only one third as powerful as the five. Hopefully the one inch would be one tenth of hers and she could largely ignore him.
A scale appeared instead of the weapon.
“Threat Rating Three in competent hands,” the system’s voice replied.
Gawain always spoke to her in a woman’s calm tones. That helped, especially in the middle of fire and madness.
She could deal with a three. A man with a club was a One. With a heavy rifle he made it to Two. Three was a medium machine gun at medium range.
She moved anyway.
The warbus had been where he emerged, so Yasmin had a moment to wonder if that was Dehkordi himself, but pausing now to ask was silly.
Instead, she slung the sword again to free her hands, also causing her shield to collapse some as well.
Yasmin raced right up to the side of the bus and squatted down, getting both hands down under the hull and gripping.
She had no idea how strong Gawain’s servos were, but she’d find out shortly as she tried to stand up.
The bus rocked, but weighed too much to overturn.
Yasmin howled a curse at the machine and thrust anyway.
Something or someone watched over her, as the vehicle shifted. Twisted.
Rolled suddenly away from her onto its side, where it could not flee nor fight.
A bolt of energy slammed into her back with a hard ring, but didn’t penetrate.
She’d stayed put too long. Grandfather had pounded on her time and again the importance of fluidity in battle.
Yasmin leapt to her left, closer to the shooter rather than farther away, like one might expect.
Her sensors were tracking people moving around, with a red ring on one half-hiding behind a stack of boxes, aiming at her.
She slipped to her right now, triggering her shield to full coverage again. The next bolt hit home hard there, but didn’t penetrate.
Other infantry fired, but they all had pistols or light rifles, so they weren’t a risk of hurting her or Gawain.
Yasmin surged forward again, pushing the Excalibur as hard as she could, rather than playing safe.
The next shot missed, not turning fast enough to track her as she closed.
Yasmin didn’t try for anything elegant. No smooth flow of kata as she moved, following ancient principles of conservation of energy within form.
She lashed out with a three meter left leg as she came even with the man, driving him like a football towards some unseen goal from a free corner kick.
Her foe flew like a mouse she had encountered underground in Aynalo last year, but there were no walls to catch him and he didn’t bounce to his feet to run off when he was done skidding and bouncing.
The firing stopped, at least.
She didn’t look back, either, because the technicals had had enough time now and were starting to circle back. A few of the smarter ones had turned around at what they probably hoped was a safe distance and were starting to snipe at her.
