But these marines? What were thеу fighting for?
A fallen regime that had lied to them and probably erased the truth of their own lives with invasive brain surgery.
That was no reason to die, yet here they were, fighting a battle to the death.
As he was contemplating such weighty thoughts, a trio of grenades arced into the chamber. Valerian saw them coming and dropped, cursing at his stupidity. The middle of battle was no place to meditate on the absurdity of war, yet it had seemed the most natural thing in the world at the lime.
Strange what the mind will do in times of stress, he thought.
Clearly the marines had learned their lesson and the grenades exploded almost as soon as they landed. Grenades explode up and out, so Valerian pressed his face to the floor as the enormous force of the blast roared over him.
Two of his father's soldiers vanished in a seething orange fireball and the gun culler lurched dangerously as the blast's shock wave dislodged the rubble holding it in place. More choking clouds of smoke billowed upward, and Valerian knew their defiance was at an end.
He heard the sound of charging marines and the ripping-cloth sound of sustained gauss fire. Impaler spikes zinged from sheet metal and neosteel armor plates and the last of his father's soldiers cried out in pain as he was brought down.
Valerian coughed and rolled to his feet. He'd hung on to his rifle this time and, though he knew it was futile, aimed it toward the marines assaulting their position.
A continuous roaring howl, like the thunder of the mightiest storm front, filled the enclosed landing platform chamber. Valerian dropped to his knees with his hands pressed against his ears at the overwhelming, unbelievable volume.
The marines in front of Valerian disintegrated in a storm of blazing light, chewed up by hypervelocity slugs and exploding like wet, red sacks of meat. He looked up to see the dorsal-mounted cannon turret of the gun cutter spewing shells from its quad-barreled weapon mount. Armor and bone and flesh vaporized under the holocaust of cannon fire. The sheer killing power of the guns at such close range was utterly terrifying.
Valerian could just make out his father sitting behind the weapon, working its fire over their attackers in merciless arcs. Even as he watched, sparks and ricochets hammered the upper fuselage of the cutter, and Valerian looked up to see half a dozen marines firing down into the landing platform's shaft from above.
The armored Plexiglas of the turret held long enough for his father to drop out of the gunner's compartment, but within seconds the interior was a shattered ruin of broken plastic and metal. More shots rained down from above and Valerian ducked back as Impaler spikes hammered into the ground beside him.
He fell a hand seize his arm and, with his rifle raised, swung to face his assailant.
Master Miyamoto slapped the barrel away and Valerian let out a shuddering breath at how close he'd come to cutting the man down in a point-blank burst of fire.
“Need to get into the cutter," gasped Miyamoto. Blood streamed from a cut on his head and his robes were soaked with red at his shoulder and hip.
"You're hurt."
"I know," replied Miyamoto, with typical brevity. "Nothing I can do about it, though."
Valerian nodded and pressed himself against the buckled hull of the cutter. They couldn't break from cover—the marines on the surface would pick them off. Valerian could hear more shouts coming from beyond the doorway.
"These ones don't know the cutter's turret is out of action," hissed Miyamoto, guessing why none of their enemies were showing themselves. "That will not last. We need to move."
"Yeah," agreed Valerian. "Damn it, I hope my father got a message through to Duke."
"Either he did or he did not," said Miyamoto.
"He should be here by now."
"But he is not, so we still need to fight."
"Always the teacher, eh?" said Valerian, scrambling around the edge of the cutter, keeping low and making sure he didn't expose himself to the marines up top.
"Always there is more to learn," countered Miyamoto. "The man who thinks he knows everything in fact knows nothing."
Valerian let out a laugh, though there was a slightly desperate quality to it. Despite the precariousness of their situation and the undoubted pain of his wounds, Master Miyamoto still found the time to dispense a bon mot.
"There," he said, bending over and pointing to a hole ripped in the cutter's underside. "We can climb in through there."
Master Miyamoto nodded, glancing back toward the doorway for any signs that their attackers were moving in.
"You go in first," said Miyamoto. "I will cover you."
Valerian didn't argue and slung his rifle over his shoulder, dropping to his belly and crawling toward the hole. He jumped as he heard a blast of gunfire, spinning around in time to see Master Miyamoto drop his rifle and sink to his knees with a gaping, raw wound in his stomach.
His former tutor's eyes were shut and his face was serene as he crumpled to the ground beside him. Valerian looked up and saw a marine in scarred and dented armor behind Miyamoto, and raised his hands.
Entire plates had been torn from the marine's combat suit and Impaler impacts and shrapnel scoring covered almost every inch of the armor. The marine's helmet had been ripped off and blood clotted the cropped hair. The hair was blonde, and Valerian realized that Miyamoto's killer was a woman in her early forties, and even through the mask of blood, grime, and sweat, he saw she was exceptionally attractive.
Was it better to be killed by a good-looking marine or an ugly one?
The thought made him smile, and he giggled in her face.
"Man, you are one crazy son of a bitch," said the marine, limping toward him with her rifle aimed unwaveringly at his chest. "I'm gonna enjoy killing you."
Valerian wanted to reach for his rifle, but knew he would be dead in a heartbeat if he so much as twitched a muscle in its direction.
He was dead anyway, and they both knew it.
As she approached, her eyes narrowed and she let out her own bark of laughter.
"I don't believe it," she said. "You're Mengsk's kid, aren't you? With that face, you gotta be related to him somehow. Hell, we got ourselves a twofer!"
"I am Valerian Mengsk," he said proudly. "Son of Emperor Arcturus Mengsk the First."
"That figures—you got that same damned arrogance."
Valerian tensed. "Who are you?" he demanded. "Why are you doing this?"
"What do you care who I am? I'm going to kill you is all you need to know."
"I want to know the name of my murderer," he said.
"Angelina Emillian," she said. "I recruited your old man into the Marine Corps and taught him all he knows. So you might say I'm making up for that mistake now."
Emillian brought her weapon up and said. "So long, Valerian."
Before she could pull the trigger, a blur of silver steel flashed and the rifle exploded as Master Miyamoto sliced his sword through the magnetic accelerator pack with the last of his strength. Valerian blinked away the brilliant afterimages as Emillian staggered and dropped her useless weapon, drawing the combat knife sheathed on her leg.
She leapt at him with a feral snarl of rage.
Valerian swept up his rifle and unloaded the last of his clip into her.
Most of his spikes flattened themselves on her breastplate, but a squirting spray of blood arced from her neck and she landed next to him with a gurgling scream. Valerian kept his finger pressed to the trigger, his breath heaving as the firing mechanism whined and the magazine clicked dry.
"Nice shot," said a voice behind him, and he turned his head to see his father emerge from the hole in the culler's belly.
"Thanks," gasped Valerian, dropping the rifle and looking over to Master Miyamoto.