The Wall, page 21
“They’ve got bloody gunpowder!” a Lazurite screams.
“Our exoarmor is useless!” another bellows.
“Do not retreat,” yells the Lazurite commander. “Continue your charge! Any soldier that disengages will be shot!” But the commander stays in the back, letting his men charge forward, now unprotected.
The Lazurites return fire with their plasma rifles taking out a few of Cephas’s men. The helidrones rain down pulse-grenades, sending more of The Defiance flying into the air. Two of the men manning the Gatling gun are also taken out. Jude sprints towards it, aims the massive gun up at the helidrones, and operates the rusty hand crank sending an array of bullets into the sky. Two drones are hit and crash into a platoon of Lazurite elites. This is not the battle the Lazurites were expecting, but even so they outnumber The Defiance in men, weapons, and of course winged annihilators that continue to search and destroy.
Cephas commands his troops, “Take shifts as we practiced! One group fires as another reloads! Cover one another!”
Reloading takes way too long, and the Civil War-era weapons aren’t as accurate as those of the Lazurites. Cephas sees this is quickly becoming a rout.
“Retreat and take cover!” Cephas bellows painfully.
As he fires his rifle, the musket jams. “Rusted piece of junk!” Cephas tosses it to the ground and whips out his sidearm and lays down more covering fire as he lumbers towards the trees. The helidrones relentlessly inflict a monsoon of destruction. The ground around their feet is razed and burned.
In shifts, Cephas’s men head back towards the forest, while the others provide covering fire. Soon, Cephas and his men are huddled on top of a ridge under a canopy of thick trees. They fire back at the Lazurite army with another Gatling gun keeping them at bay for now, but the helidrones prevent their escape. It’s now just a matter of time. Either they run out of ammo, or Lazurite reinforcements arrive to finish them off. They can do nothing but wait for Asher and his army and hope he arrives soon.
“Now what?” Jude asks solemnly.
“Pray.”
Sarai and I lead my third army near one of Zion’s control towers on the other side of The Wall, just miles away from where Cephas and his men are besieged.
“You sure this is it?” I ask Kenan.
“I was assigned to one of these posts before being transferred to your army,” Kenan replies. “If we can get inside I can hack into the system and open a portion of The Wall.”
“And the drones?” Sarai adds.
“It’s possible I can shut them off.”
I take notice that Kenan’s stutter is but a fraction of what it was. His timbre now confident.
“How do we get in?”
“That’s the rub. The door is just about bloody impenetrable and can only open from the inside.”
“Pulse-grenades?” Sarai asks.
“Not enough to breach those doors.”
For once my army outnumbers their guards, but I’m stuck by a stupid door. We need to do something fast, I’m not sure how long I can leave Cephas hanging. I look at Kenan’s stripes on his exoarmor. Three of them, for third army. I rip two of them off.
“What’s that for?” he asks confused.
“There. Now you’re first army.”
“I don’t get it.”
“You think they’re gonna let us in just because we are dressed like first army?” Sarai asks astutely.
“If Asher the Traitor is your prisoner they will,” I reply.
“That could work, assuming our luck doesn’t run out,” she says.
“C’mon, haven’t you ever seen Star Wars? Han and Luke dressed as storm troopers, Chewbacca pretending to be their prisoner?”
“Let’s get some cuffs on the Wookie.”
I turn to Kenan. “Approximately how many guards should we expect inside the tower?”
“Ten or twenty. And another ten controllers.”
We march up towards the tower with ten of my men donning only one stripe on their exoarmor. Kenan to my left, Sarai to my right. Everyone is wearing their helmets except for me as we want them to see my face. My cuffs are unlocked.
“I’m Han,” Sarai announces as we make our way to the door.
“That fits,” Kenan shoots back.
“How so?” Sarai asks with a smile.
“You’ve got quite the acid tongue,” Kenan replies.
Kenan is fitting in nicely. Soon he’ll be a Dreck. They wave at the video camera perched above the door and point to me, letting them know of their prize. We wait a minute. Nothing.
“Let’s hope we don’t end up in a trash compactor,” whispers Sarai.
Then a voice from the intercom. “State your business.”
Sarai steps up. “First army patrol with special prisoner drop off.”
“We have not been informed. Nor is this on the schedule,” the voice booms back.
“We got cutoff, our communications were destroyed. Take a close look, we have captured Asher the Traitor.”
Moments later the massive steel door slides open. We are greeted by five guards who escort us into the main operations room. The Lazurite guards and technicians manning the computers stare at me in awe. A tall man with squinting green eyes, and long silver hair approaches us.
“I’m the facilitator of this outpost.”
Sarai responds. “We were on patrol just south of here, found Asher with a small band of The Defiance. This was the closest safe place.”
“Excellent,” he responds and motions to two guards. “Take him to holding facility eight.” He then turns to Sarai and my men. “Thank you chaps, you may be on your way.”
“On our way?” Sarai exclaims. “We just brought you Zion’s most wanted man, and now we are to leave and let you get all of the credit?”
“You’re an astute one. And you would be right. This is my ticket out of the outpost and into Zion West, where I shall receive a most honorable commission,” the facilitator shamelessly smiles.
Not going to happen I’m afraid. As the two guards approach me I reach into my coat, slip off my cuffs, and pull out my ricochet. Before they know what is going on, I hit the closest guard across the head and then throw it, hitting the other guard. Sarai whips out her scourge quickly taking out the facilitator. Neither of our plasma weapons do any good since both sides' attire consist of exoarmor. The scene turns chaotic as we resort to stunclubs and hand-to-hand combat. But my men are well trained, and the Lazurite guards posted here are second-rate. The elites don’t babysit outposts that are supposedly impregnable. Within minutes we overwhelm this subpar contingent.
“Guess the chap won’t be receiving an honorable commission after all?” Sarai chaffs.
“Insult to injury, you are more Dreck than Lazurite,” I smile at her.
Kenan stations himself in front of one of the many computer terminals and hacks away. He’s a conductor of code. A maestro of zero’s and one’s.
“I’m in!” Kenan proclaims after a few minutes of typing.
“Open Sector 304,” I request.
“Why not open the entire Wall now?” Sarai asks.
“Each outpost only controls a few sectors,” Kenan explains as his fingers rap the keyboard. “Only Renatus at headquarters can do that. I have drone footage.”
On the massive video screen are live video feeds from the helidrones that beleaguer Cephas and his men.
“Shut them off,” I tell him.
“I’m trying.”
I watch in horror as the helidrones shed pulse-grenades onto Cephas’s army. They are trapped. It is quickly becoming a massacre.
“C’mon Kenan, you can do this!”
“I can’t. There’s just no . . . no way.”
I turn to one of the controllers huddled in the corner. “Maybe they can.”
Kenan shakes his head, “Not possible, unless you speak Tunica.”
“Tunica?”
“It’s a rare Native American dialect. Renatus made sure that all of Zion’s technology gatekeepers only spoke this language just for this purpose.”
I ponder what to do next. With The Wall open, I could lead my army to rescue them as they are just miles away, but I fear by the time we got there the annihilation would be complete. I point to a door that leads to a massive steel room that looks like a warehouse.
“What’s in there?”
“Weapon’s cache.”
“Bring up the manifest.”
Kenan brings it up on the monitor. Among the usual Lazurite weapons is also a helidrone. I point to it.
“Can you operate it from here?”
“No,” Kenan says solemnly.
“Is there a manual override?” I ask.
“I suppose, if you can find someone crazy enough to pilot the thing.”
Sarai touches my shoulder. She spots that look in my eye. The one I get when I’m about to do something reckless.
“What are you doing Asher? You aren’t planning on flying that thing? I mean you might take out one or two drones, but you’ll surely be shot down. There has to be another way.”
I point to the manifest. “I won’t be the only cargo.”
Cephas and his men are still hunkered down in the thickest part of the forest. The helidrones hover above them to the south, systematically dropping pulse-grenades as they take suppressing fire from the Lazurites from the north. Some divine intervention has given them a helping hand as light fog rolls in, enhancing their cover. One of his men manning a Gatling takes aim at an incoming drone.
“Hold your fire,” Cephas tell him, not wanting to give up their exact location.
Jude peers up at the fog, “The Almighty has granted us a gift for now, but once it burns off, we need a plan.”
“Patience,” Cephas responds calmly.
“How can you be patient at a time like this?”
“It was impatience that got Adam and Eve booted from the Garden.”
“Ha! This coming from the most impatient man I know,” Jude cackles.
Cephas shakes his head as he has more than enough firepower and guns, he just doesn’t have the manpower to utilize all of them at the moment. Then he spies another helidrone coming in low from the west. It swoops down, almost tapping the treetops, cutting through the fog.
“Incoming!” Jude utters.
It is almost directly above them, the guard at the Gatling prepares to fire, looks to Cephas for permission.
“Not yet.”
Then Cephas can’t believe his eyes when he spots Asher manning the drone.
“That Asher?” Jude asks, bewildered.
What is that kid doing?
They watch Asher fly the helidrone until it is positioned almost directly in the middle of the ten other drones. Then its payload doors open. A small box attached to a parachute begins to float down.
“What is that?” Jude squints.
Cephas knows right away and grins. “It’s a crafty boy I raised is what that is.”
The box pulses, sending electrical currents spreading through the air.
“An EMP!” Jude hollers.
The electronics inside the drones buzz, then shutoff. They fall from the sky like shot pigeons, as does Asher and the drone he is manning. The Lazurite army looks on, confused as to what just happened. Asher crashes in an open field between Cephas and the Lazurite army. Cephas sees Asher’s drone begin to smoke; Asher is having trouble opening the hatch.
“Get him outta there!” Cephas yells.
Jude and a contingent bolt towards Asher’s downed drone. They dodge potshots fired by Lazurite soldiers on the ridge. The fog has still provided some cover. Jude is the first one there and sees Asher bang on the glass hatch as his drone fills with smoke.
“Cover your head!” Jude screams as he shatters the glass with his large wooden club.
Shards stick to Asher’s arms that were covering his face and scalp. Coughing, he is pulled out of the drone in a plume of black smoke. They race back to the cover of trees zig-zagging to avoid being hit by the plasma blasts. Asher stumbles a few times, hacking like the Marlboro Man, his lungs still filled with smoke. Cephas gives Asher a once-over to be certain he is okay.
“Nice of you to drop in buckethead.”
“That took stones!” Jude adds.
Asher catches his breath. “More like stupidity. I forgot that it would take out my drone as well.”
“Seems life with the Lazurites didn’t completely suck the Dreck out of you,” Cephas says.
The three of them share a much-needed laugh. But only for a moment, as the Lazurites have begun to march towards them. They spot the Lazurite commander in the back of his infantry barking commands at them.
“To arms!” Cephas orders.
“No need,” Asher tells them still trying to clear his lungs.
Sector 304 of The Wall suddenly opens. Pouring from it is Asher’s third army. They quickly overwhelm the small detachment of Lazurites. Most of them surrender. Cephas slaps his giant mitt against Asher’s shoulder.
“Nice work son.”
“Where’d you learn how to fly a drone?” Jude nudges him.
“On the way here. Wasn’t sure how to land it, so I guess it’s good that I crashed.”
“A Dreck landing if I’ve ever seen one!” jabbers Jude.
Asher peers over at Jude’s Springfield rifle, “How many of those you got?”
Cephas smiles. “Not enough to arm your entire army, but I think we have enough to give us a fighting chance.”
“A lot of them look rusted,” Asher points to the rifles.
Cephas says, “So are we.”
They all three nod in agreement. Rusted Drecks against shiny golden Lazurites.
“Renatus’s first army is massive, and well-armed, along with the weapons from the armory we’ll need other unconventional methods of battle if we are to win.”
Cephas waves his hand at his dirty but scrappy army. “You want unconventional? You came to the right place boy.”
And for what might be the very first time, all three of them truly believe they just might pull this off.
Asher gazes to the sky. “Still can’t believe you found the armory. I thought maybe Boaz had given us a fake. Or that it didn’t exist.”
Jude cackles. “You should have been there. Cephas threw a rock at me.”
After twelve straight hours of marching west we break for camp. My army has become adept at quickly setting up tents and cooking copious amounts of food, as we have been at this for two weeks. We gather in our makeshift command center composed of three adjoining tents. I unfurl a map across a plastic folding table. Kenan flips open a laptop he had pilfered from the Lazurite outpost where we had opened a section of The Wall.
“I was able to hack into one of their sentinel drones,” Kenan informs us.
The grainy image on the laptop is live footage of Renatus’s first army marching at a good clip.
“Where are they?” I ask.
“I’m not sure, I can’t get a GPS reading.”
I take a closer look at the footage. “Does anyone recognize any of these landmarks?”
Sarai points to a dilapidated building with crumbling columns. Birds fly from the many gaps in its roof, probably curious of the drone flying above them. “That’s the old capital building, old Sacramento, California.”
“And we’re currently here,” I point to a section on the map that used to be Central Nevada. I ponder for a moment and peer closer at the map. “There, Donner Lake. How long do you think it will take for Renatus’s first army to get there?”
Cephas measures the distance on the map and makes some calculations. “Three days. Maybe faster.”
“And us?” I ask.
“About the same.”
“We need to get there in two,” I say.
“Why? What’s so special about Donner Lake?” Sarai queries.
“Should be frozen this time of year,” is all I say, looking up, seeing if anyone else is tracking with me. Blanks stares. “Napoleon? The battle of Austerlitz? Am I the only one who knows their history?”
“You talking getting them in the middle of the lake, then breaking the ice?” Cephas asks with a smile.
I point to the eastern edge of the lake. “If we can get there before them, make a fake camp here, we should be easily spotted by their drones.”
Sarai points to the western side of the lake. “So you’ll be bait, and their quickest attack route will be here, right through the middle of the lake.”
“From their perspective we’ll be sitting ducks.”
Sarai isn’t so sure. “My father’s first army isn’t stupid. What makes you think they’ll come straight at us instead of attacking our flanks?”
Smart as always.
Cephas looks to me. “She is right nephew. Basic warfare dictates they will come at us from our flanks, and possibly from behind.”
I reply with mock bravado, “Because, we are just stupid Drecks, and they are brash Lazurites. Do you sneak up on an ant to smash it? Or do you walk directly up to it and stomp on it with your foot? I have spent enough time among them to know how they think. Besides, it’s the only way for my plan to work. So they must.”
“We can have two platoons on both ridges, to take out whatever army the lake doesn’t, as well as protect our flanks,” Cephas adds.
“They won’t all fit on the lake, we are still going to be way outnumbered,” Sarai reminds me.
I ponder for a moment and think about some of my most cherished memories spent with Sarai, fishing on the lake, and it gives me an idea. “How do you catch a lot of fish at the same time?”
“Nets?” Jude guesses, bewildered.
I look to Cephas. “You said unconventional right?”
“I’ll take one of the ridges,” Sarai says.
While I admire her bravery, I want her next to me, or in the rear with the second wave where it will be safer, but I know it’s a lost cause mentioning it, so I simply nod in agreement. I cannot cage who she is—a warrior, a leader. Cheerleading on the sidelines would never suit her. Besides, if I’m to lead I cannot play favorites.
