“Shoot them!” shouted Maxwell, pulling the trigger on his gauss rifle three times in quick succession. His target collapsed and fell into the undergrowth.

  A volley of rifle fire from the two squads punched several more of the enemy from their feet and then Maxwell shouted at the soldiers to run.

  “There must be hundreds of the bastards,” panted Vaughan, breathing heavily from the high gravity and the weight of his repeater.

  It was true. What had at first appeared to be a limited attack, now seemed more like a full-scale assault of dead bodies. Those which Chau had initially spotted coming from the north-west had been joined by others. They sprinted through the trees to the north, flitting in and out of sight in a way that made it difficult to aim at them.

  “Where’s that destroyer?” asked Fine. “It feels like it’s right overhead.”

  The canopy was too dense to see anything through it and Maxwell didn’t even try. From the way the bass sound of the propulsion was grinding through his bones, he was sure the warship was either above the lakeshore or somewhere even closer.

  Faced with two opponents – one of which he had no hope of defeating and the other which was a complete unknown, Maxwell cursed his luck. For all its trees and plants, the jungle seemed to offer nowhere to hide and he wasn’t sure how he and his soldiers could possibly get out of this alive.

  With little else he could do, Maxwell ran.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  To Maxwell’s dismay, the corpses of the dead could run faster than the bodies of the living – a fact he learned only a short time into the retreat. Presumably those corpses didn’t have to fight against the limitations of blood oxygen levels and a fifty-pound loadout.

  “We’re not going to outrun them, Sergeant,” said Corporal Fine.

  Chancing another look over his shoulder, Maxwell saw that the nearest corpses were within fifty or sixty metres. They didn’t make deliberate use of the trees as cover and came headlong as fast as they could manage. At least the foliage was slowing them down, albeit not by much.

  A third Apiar missile exploded directly west, further from the soldiers than the previous two detonations.

  “We could do with that Aeon taking out these corpses for us,” said Lyles.

  “And we could do with the Marauder taking out that Aeon for us,” said Lowe.

  “Ain’t gonna happen now,” said Lyles.

  “The destroyer sounds like it’s sticking closer to the beach,” said Chau. “Maybe it’ll stay in place long enough for a Ghost strike.”

  “We can’t see the damn warship to transmit its position,” said Maxwell, his own breathing deep and his heartrate climbing.

  “It’s a whole klick long, Sergeant,” said Lowe. “I could hit it blindfolded with this rocket tube from the other side of the damn galaxy!”

  Maxwell cursed. He’d ordered a retreat from the beach to escape the enemy missiles. The unwanted side effect of this was that he could no longer see the destroyer in order to transmit its exact position. There was something in what Lowe said about the size of the warship, but since the Marauder would be launching its Ghosts from thousands of kilometres away, a twelve-hundred-metre target was still easy to miss.

  “We can’t do a damn thing with these corpses coming after us,” said Maxwell angrily. “Let’s cut some of them down!”

  Giving the order for both squads to halt and face the enemy, he came to a rapid halt, turned and aimed his rifle towards the figures among the trees. To Maxwell’s shock, the closest was fewer than thirty metres from his position. He braced himself and fired. A chest shot knocked the creature sideways and a second gauss slug in the same place sent it crashing to the ground.

  Adjusting aim, Maxwell risked a headshot at another corpse, this one approaching from the west. The shot connected and the creature went straight down.

  All around him he could hear the fizzing of gauss rifles and he flared his nostrils at the sharp, acrid scent of the charged coils. Maxwell’s mind recovered much of its focus and he thought hard about how he might turn this situation around.

  “We aren’t going to hold them, Sergeant,” said Fleming calmly from his firing position a couple of metres left. “It’s like the whole damn CES followed us here.”

  Maxwell killed a third target and then a fourth, but he could see that it was no use. The enemy were flooding through the jungle and everywhere he looked, he saw movement.

  The trees offered protection, but it went both ways. Even making no effort to avoid the gunfire, the trunks cut down the soldiers’ firing angles as well as reducing the time available to take a shot. Not only that, but Vaughan couldn’t deploy his repeater since once he was prone, he wouldn’t be able to see a damn thing through all the ground level foliage.

  “Targets to the north-east, Sergeant,” said Diaz. “Whatever’s controlling them, it’s trying to cut us off.”

  A fourth Apiar missile detonated somewhere to the north and further away than the previous three explosions. Maxwell ground his teeth together. On this one occasion when he might prefer a Kijol destroyer to be firing in his vicinity, its crew was looking elsewhere.

  When the rolling boom of the missile faded, Maxwell heard other sounds clear above the grumbling of the destroyer’s Charos drive. From the north-east came the sharp snapping of thick wooden stems. Maxwell spun, his eyes aimed high into the trees. He saw nothing and the noises ended, as if whatever was making them had drawn to a sudden halt.

  I didn’t come to Xaros to die.

  An idea came to Maxwell, almost making him jump like that first corpse he’d watched spring to its feet in the storage prefab. If he acted on this idea, his soldiers would be placed in additional danger, but given how this engagement was going, they were likely going to be overrun anyway.

  “Private Lowe, send a plasma rocket to the north-west,” said Maxwell. “I want it to detonate as far from here as you can make it. I don’t care what it hits, but I want that Kijol destroyer to see the blast.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  From his periphery, Maxwell saw Lowe aim his rocket tube high into the trees.

  “Rocket out.”

  The missile streaked away and struck a cluster of branches that formed the canopy seventy or eighty metres from where Lowe was standing. With a whump of detonation, the rocket exploded into plasma flames which engulfed the tops of the nearby trees.

  “Squad B, move!” yelled Maxwell. “South-west to the beach. Stay in cover! Squad A, you’re with me!”

  Corporal Fine didn’t question the orders and led her squad south-west, that being one of the few directions from which no attackers were approaching. Maxwell didn’t move and his eyes went from the ragged army of corpses to the flames created by Lowe’s rocket, and back again.

  “Why aren’t we moving, Sergeant?” asked Fleming.

  “I’m recording the position of that destroyer, Private.” A corpse ran into sight from a tree five metres away. Maxwell was startled that it had made it so close without him knowing. Its face was slack and showing no expression, and its eyes were dark pits. He shot it once and then again. “If the enemy warship hasn’t moved when we arrive at the beach, I’ll request that missile launch from the Marauder.”

  The flames in the canopy cleared, allowing Maxwell a sight of the destroyer’s underside and part of its flank. It was closer than he’d anticipated. No sooner had he recorded the warship’s position than it sent an Apiar missile at an angle through the hole in the canopy. The warhead exploded north, and the sound of its detonation was tremendous.

  Maxwell bared his teeth at the pain in his ears. “Run!” he yelled.

  A second missile exploded, followed by a third and a fourth. Maxwell heard the rending, cracking sound of trees being uprooted or snapped into pieces. The ground beneath his feet seemed to ripple with the shockwave and the expanding air hurled splintered wood outwards from the blasts.

  Maxwell dropped flat and lay there for a moment. He heard debris tearing through the undergrowth and the canopy above. Nothing hit him and he rose again, his rifle gripped firmly in his right hand, and his combat boots hurling up dirt as he broke into a run.

  Heat swept across the jungle floor in a stifling wave, bringing with it a billion glowing embers. To the north, everything seemed to be alight and corpses sprinted through the inferno, blazing like torches.

  Hell came to Xaros.

  Without slowing, Maxwell diverted his gaze from the way he was heading – south-west - to the north-west, then to the north and back again. He spotted more of the corpses and quickly realised that the missile strikes hadn’t nearly wiped them out.

  Squad B wasn’t far ahead and their progress was slowed by corpses attacking from the north. As Maxwell watched, one of the dead evaded the sporadic gauss fire and it swung an apparently clumsy blow at Vaughan – the soldier being easily identifiable by the repeater pack he was carrying. The blow struck Vaughan on the shoulder and he was spun from his feet like he’d been hit by a gravity car.

  Before the corpse could press its attack, one of the other soldiers shot it enough times to send it to the ground.

  “Private Chau - get Vaughan on his feet!” shouted Corporal Fine.

  “We’ve got some others heading in from the north-west,” said Diaz.

  Willing hands hauled Vaughan upright and then dragged him towards the south-west. Maxwell led Squad A after them. The light from the Apiar explosions was long gone, but the flames burned fiercely, casting an orange glow across the jungle floor. He checked over his shoulder and saw that the CES corpses continued their pursuit from the north-east and in numbers too great to defeat – not without the use of Vaughan’s repeater on clear ground, or a few well-placed shoulder-launched rockets.

  Neither were the Kijol done. The missiles they’d launched earlier were no more than the beginning. Maxwell knew nothing of the next launch until the entirety of his world turned white with the detonation of plasma warheads. He threw himself face-first to the ground, shouting for the others to do likewise.

  Had Maxwell not been protected by his combat suit, the heat and the blast pressure would have killed him. Nevertheless, he felt as if his body had been hit all over with a rubber pipe and he felt blood oozing from his nose.

  Once again, the plasma blasts wrought havoc on the jungle. More trees fell, the sound of their trunks breaking sharp, like a human arm being forcibly snapped across the edge of a table. Maxwell got his knees under him and turned painfully as he tried to see through the ferns and grass into which he’d thrown himself. He grunted with the agony that hadn’t yet released his body. A heavy object landed on the ground somewhere nearby with enough weight that he felt the thump of its impact.

  Corporal Valerio: Life signs at zero.

  The message on Maxwell’s HUD felt like a kick in the balls, on top of all the other trauma.

  “Corporal Valerio, report!” shouted Maxwell, pushing himself to his feet.

  He looked around, still half-dazed. Nearby, three members of Squad A were rising from the undergrowth. Private Lowe was closest and he looked as if he was ready to collapse.

  “Where’s Corporal Valerio?” Maxwell repeated.

  “Sergeant, do you need assistance?” asked Fine. She sounded like shit.

  “Negative – head to the beach. If the destroyer hasn’t moved, request the attack.”

  “You took the positional data, Sergeant!” said Fine. “I won’t know if the enemy ship has changed position!”

  “Just get to the damn beach, Corporal!” Maxwell shouted.

  “Yes, sir,” said Fine with obvious reluctance.

  “We’ve got incoming, Sergeant!” said Barkley.

  Maxwell scanned the jungle, his fury rising by the second. The corpses were evidently not immune to either shockwaves or flying debris because their numbers had been reduced considerably. Still, the blasts hadn’t killed them all, and those which remained were rising from the undergrowth in a vile parody of life emerging from the soil.

  “Kill them!” said Maxwell.

  Clear thought asserted itself and he sent a ping to Corporal Valerio’s suit computer. The body lay a short distance away. The man was face down and a metre-length spear of wickedly sharp wood had penetrated his combat suit.

  Maxwell stooped and ripped open the flap of Valerio’s backpack. Grabbing the top handle of the med-box, he hauled it out and placed it upright on the ground. Beneath a small hatch were two coiled tubes, each ending in a needle. Maxwell pulled out the tubes, took a grip on the needles and jabbed them through Valerio’s combat suit.

  The med-box detected the lack of life signs and suggested Maxwell initiate the automated revival process. He stabbed a fingertip onto the accept button.

  “Sergeant, we’re in the shit here,” said Barkley.

  Leaving the med-box to do whatever it would do, Maxwell surged to his feet. In the short time during which he’d attended to Valerio, a pall of smoke had blown across from the fiercely burning flames. The scent of it was acrid and it would have been choking were it not for the filter in his suit helmet.

  It was immediately apparent that Barkley’s summation was not overly dramatic. The enemy were sprinting through the jungle, most heading towards Squad A, but others in pursuit of Corporal Fine. Maxwell’s eyes located a target and he shot it. Two more went down in quick succession.

  Ammunition low. Remaining: 5.

  The warning on Maxwell’s HUD made him curse. Hardly without looking, he ejected the nearly empty magazine and let it drop to the ground. He had a spare attached to the belt at his waist and he slotted it into the gun.

  Corporal Valerio: unable to revive. Recommend recovery of body and return to primary medical facility.

  Maxwell had known that would be the outcome the moment he saw the injury. His fury rose another notch.

  “Squad A – withdraw to the beach!” he yelled.

  He could see it was too late – the enemy were too fast and numerous. Squad A might make it as far as the beach, but then they’d all be overrun.

  At that moment, the Kijol destroyer aimed a Dasor turret into the jungle and opened fire.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The whining of multiple large-bore barrels spinning reached Maxwell’s ears a split-second before the Dasor turret ejected a storm of high-calibre gauss slugs into the trees about fifty metres north-east. Wood and foliage alike were pulverised, smashed into pieces by the fusillade. Accompanying the destruction was the clanking of metal and a roar, clearly heard above the sound of the jungle being torn apart.

  Such was the brutality of it that Maxwell’s primal instinct couldn’t decide if it wanted him to run until his heart gave out, or lay down in the foliage and accept whatever fate had in store for him.

  Maxwell wasn’t ready to die. “Move!” he yelled.

  As he turned for the beach, he caught a glimpse of several CES corpses exploding into chunks as they were stuck by Dasor slugs. The gunfire raked north through the thickening smoke, then east and then south-west, throwing up huge fountains of soil, chewing up foliage and shattering trees like they were no more than twigs.

  Luckily for Maxwell and Squad A, the canopy in this area of the jungle still offered a degree of cover, and the Kijol focused their efforts on the areas which had been exposed by their missiles. Maxwell doubted the situation would last – once the visible targets dried up, the enemy might decide to clear more of the foliage using explosives.

  The light from the flames was strong enough that Maxwell switched off his night sight, which brought an instant improvement to his vision and gave him increased confidence as he pressed on through the undergrowth. Every few seconds, he glanced over his shoulder. The enemy were still in pursuit, their dead eyes fixed on him and their faces showing no emotion whatsoever.

  “Sergeant, we’re at the beach,” said Corporal Fine, her voice nearly inaudible over the Dasor gun.

  “I’m transmitting the positional data I took from the destroyer,” yelled Maxwell, panting the words out.

  Transmitting the data while at a full sprint across uneven ground was near-impossible and Maxwell was forced to slow. The soldiers nearby did likewise, though they checked anxiously over their shoulders.

  “We have to move, Sergeant,” shouted Fleming. The smoke swirled thickly and the Dasor turret fired nonstop.

  Maxwell didn’t respond. Having accessed his suit datafiles, he chose the one he wanted and made it available in the squad comms channel. By the time he was done, the nearest enemy was less than ten metres away. He’d seen how easily Private Vaughan had been knocked to the ground and Maxwell wasn’t eager to learn if he’d fare any better.

  Accelerating once again, he realised he’d misjudged. One of the corpses was going to catch him. Twisting his head, he could see the bloodstains on its once blue clothing and the wide cut across its throat. Three others were a short distance behind and even if he stopped, Maxwell didn’t think he’d be able to kill them all.

  A short distance ahead, a figure holding a gauss rifle detached itself from the cover of a tree and Maxwell spotted a second crouched in the foliage. The discharge note of the soldiers’ guns was lost in the cacophony of the Kijol destroyer’s onslaught, but the chasing corpses were sent tumbling to the ground by multiple shots.

  As Maxwell sprinted by, he gave a thumbs-up to Private Lyles and Private Chau and the two soldiers turned to follow.

  “Sergeant, the destroyer hasn’t changed position since you took the first reading!” said Fine, her voice edged with excitement.

  The beach wasn’t far now and Maxwell spotted Corporal Fine next to the trunk of a huge tree which had grown almost on the sand. He couldn’t see the other soldiers and guessed they were in cover, watching out for more of the corpses.

  Looking behind him again, Maxwell was surprised at how much his pursuers had been thinned out. He gave quick orders and the soldiers of Squad A found themselves places from which they could send gauss fire into the enemies which remained.