War Criminals by Gavin Smith (ereader for textbooks .TXT) 📕

and an acrid chemical stench filled the air but the thick vine or creeper that had been burrowing through the earth towards them was now whipping around above ground. Suddenly it disappeared as though yanked back.

Miska reached up to the gas mask on her helmet and slid it down the groove that ran between the goggles’ lenses. She pulled it over her nose and mouth. It clicked into place and then she felt the suction as it adhered to her skin.

‘Masks on!’ she ordered over the comms. ‘Spray the ground, deny it to them!’ She was looking around trying to see what was going on. She could see the Cyclops doing the same thing. The war droid just wasn’t armed for this fight. Nyukuti was watching her back.

It was clear that they were being attacked from the north. The entire treeline was burning now. The pollen fall was a black rain silhouetted against burning, skyscraper-sized trees. Even the mechs, gushing flames, were dwarfed by the wall of fire. She could hear slugthrower fire and see muzzle flashes all over. It was self-evident that the perimeter had been breached. Flame guns squirted fire all over, and bits of the camp were burning. Other than the two Medusas configured for bunker busting and their flame guns, the other six mechs were pretty quiet. She heard the occasional hypersonic scream from their 30mm rail guns. Their rate of fire didn’t sound right, but other than that they seemed to be searching for targets.

There was cannon fire from Pegasus 1, and moments later the assault shuttle fired two missiles. They shot overhead. Exploding plasma blossomed in the north between the perimeter and the wall of fire. Moments later Heavy-One-Actual, Mass’s Medusa, fired its plasma cannon, twice, in the same area. Miska heard screaming coming from all over the camp.

‘Gunny!’ she shouted. The Cyclops’s head swivelled round to look at her. ‘Get the survivors into groups, then move back to back, three-sixty coverage, fold into the defenders in the north. They lay down the defoliant, deny the ground.’

‘Understood,’ he said. His modulated voice didn’t sound right and he was moving strangely. She watched as more and more pollen drifted towards him.

‘Wash him down,’ Miska told Nyukuti.

The stand-over man turned his squirter on the Cyclops and started spraying the war droid with the biohazardous defoliant.

Miska glanced up. Pegasus 1 kept veering from side to side, as though the pilot was struggling to keep control of the assault shuttle.

‘Hangman-One-Actual to Heavy-One-Actual and Pegasus-One, what are you shooting at?’ she asked over direct comms. She was aware of her dad giving orders over open comms.

Screaming nearby. Miska spun round to see one of the Offensive Bastards yanked up into the air by vines dangling down thousands of feet from the huge skyscraping trees. The vines ripped the man apart, his innards raining down. Higher in the trees she saw one of the Machimoi caught in the vines like a fly in a spider’s web.

‘Gunny, they need to watch above!’ she told the Cyclops. The war droid was moving better now. She knew that he would pass on the warning as soon as he could.

‘Fuck! Shit!’ Mass snarled over comms. She could tell he wasn’t subvocalising.

‘Heavy-One-Actual, get a grip,’ she snarled back. The shoulder-mounted plasma cannon on Mass’s mech didn’t seem to be folding away down his back the way it should.

‘Heavy-One-Actual here, apologies but I’ve got system after system going down …’

‘Pegasus-One to Hangman-One-Actual, we’ve got things in the perimeter,’ McWilliams told her.

‘Can you be more specific?’ Miska demanded. She was still making her way towards the northern perimeter. She watched as roots exploded through the ground and impaled one of the Offensive Bastards. Moments later the roots and dead Legionnaire were engulfed in flame. She saw Corenbloom and Raff sprinting towards her.

‘… no,’ McWilliams offered. ‘Miska, I’ve got vines trying to wrap themselves around the shuttle. I’ve got systems going down all over. I’ve either got to put her down or get out of here.’

‘Get out of here,’ Miska told him, ‘meet you at exfil point three.’

‘Sorry boss, call if you’re gonna evac,’ he told her. Above her the shuttle pulled up, tearing away from the writhing vines that were trying to entrap it.

Trying to evac would just get messier. They needed to get things under control.

About three hundred feet to Miska’s left a Satyr scout mech appeared as its pollen-covered reactive camouflage failed. Roots burst from the earth all around it and dragged the mech to the ground. Miska was gratified to see legionnaires sprint towards the mech and begin spraying it with the defoliant. Screaming vines were sucked back into the earth.

Raff and Corenbloom reached Miska, both of them gasping for breath. Corenbloom was doubled over but Raff was attaching one of the defoliant squirters to his carbine-configured M19. She noticed that the ‘journalist’ had liberated two other canisters of the defoliant. She also noticed that Corenbloom was watching Raff’s practised ease as he handled the weapons.

‘What have we got?’ she demanded. They’d come from the north. Raff was just shaking his head. So much for the intelligence professional, Miska thought, somewhat uncharitably.

‘They’ve come for the heads,’ Corenbloom told her.

‘Who?’ she demanded. They were still moving towards the north. Small groups from all over the camp were doing the same. She heard the whipsnap of passing bullets. Tracers shot by too close for comfort.

‘Gunny, tell them to only use the squirters and the flamers in camp, until everyone reaches the north perimeter, and everyone needs to check their targets!’ Moments later she heard that going out over open comms. She turned back to Corenbloom. ‘Who?’

It was clear that he didn’t know how to answer her question. He was covered in sweat and shaking.

‘Women,’ Raff told her, ‘made of wood.’

Corenbloom was nodding.

One of the Machimoi flew unsteadily overhead, tearing through the vines reaching for it. Something flew up from the ground and embedded itself in the combat exoskeleton’s head. Was that a fucking arrow? The blind