“If we move quickly,” Agun said, “Hawk and Eagle might get there in time to be of some help.”
Jaswant shook his head. “You’d need Crescent Moon to support you, you don’t have the firepower to make much of a difference.”
“We could give them close defence like we do for you, keep the deebees clear while they clean them out.”
“Good idea, brother,” Kubai said, “but that would leave Crescent Moon without support.”
“Someone needs to stay here and guard the families.”
That brought a frown from Jaswant, one that silenced his son. “If Graves and the others fall, there’s no point guarding anything else.” He pointed to the satellite images of deebees pouring towards the distant farmstead. “The colony lives or dies at the Graves farmstead.”
“What do we do, father?” Agun asked.
“The best we can my son, the best we can.”
Brutiful’s autocannon whirred and clicked as they finally ran out of ammunition. He was down to his last three shotgun rounds and then he’d be useless until the deebees got into close range, and by then it would be all over.
“Hank!” Wright’s voice cut over the radio. “I’m reloaded, you’re up!”
Carnigore stepped beside him, its clown-face a garish red grin as it opened fire on the aliens. Wright had no concerns at all about ammunition now and was firing it as fast as he could — there were certainly plenty of targets for everything he had to throw at them.
Graves stepped back out of the line and moved quickly to the clump of ammunition canisters the drones had dropped off for him. Brutiful was a large exomech, with lots of ammunition storage and he knew it was going to take him a while to get completely reloaded.
“Crap,” Crazy Bill cut in, “I’m out too, nothing but close-in guns and my fists!”
“I can hold them,” Wright replied, “But you’ll need to be quick!”
“Bill, grab your canisters, make for the next hill,” Graves said. “We’ll cover you, you reload up there and cover us as we move back.”
“Roger that!” Crazy Bill picked up his ammunition drums and ran for the next hilltop as fast as Grampage’s servo-motors would go.
Graves could hear the sounds of firing behind him as he reloaded.
“Hank!” Wright yelled over the radio, “I need you real bad!”
Graves picked up the remaining canisters on Brutiful’s lower arms and turned back to the line, his heavy shoulder-weapons coming back down, as reloaded as they were going to be.
The swarm was only a few hundred yards away now, and the exomech sensors still showed thousands of creatures out there. True, they could see the swarm was smaller than it was before, but they both knew it wasn’t going to be enough.
Graves started firing, autocannon on maximum rate, shotgun blasting out a spread of tungsten as soon it chambered another round. Beside him, Carnigore matched him round for round, and the slaughter amongst the deebees was incredible.
But not enough.
“Hank,” Wright’s voice came through on a private direct channel. “I don’t think we’re going to make it.”
Graves knew he wasn’t wrong, but really didn’t want to admit it.
“I know,” he said softly, “but we’ll go down swinging, give the Singhs and the others as best chance we can.”
“I guess we will,” Wright said, triggering another burst. “I just hope it counts for something.”
The two men were silent for a long time, firing rapidly and switching fire to deal with the targets that presented the greatest threat.
“Hank, honey!” Beth’s voice cut through urgently, “I need you to both get off the hill, and now!”
“What?”
“Don’t argue, just get the hell off there!”
Graves shrugged and powered Brutiful off the hill as fast as he could, and a moment later he saw Carnigore do the same, with the front ranks of deebees only a dozen or so metres behind and closing.
His suit sensors pinged as they picked up a flight of something coming in fast and low, and he instinctively ducked as something flew overhead. He’d barely made it half-way down the slope when there was an explosion on the other side of the hill, powerful enough to knock both Carnigore and Brutiful off their feet and send them tumbling down the hill.
Jenkins day just wasn’t getting any better. Jessie was sending him the video and satellite feeds and he knew the colony was well and truly screwed over. There was a small chance Graves and the others could hold the deebees back, and he wanted to still be alive when the battle was over, but sitting back and watching wasn’t going to help anybody, including him.
“Keith, I’m picking up movement on the ridgeline,” Jessie said. “Big biomass, headed towards Graves’ place.”
“Well, that’s them screwed then,” he replied. “Might be best if you start packing some things Jessie and we take our chances in the wild until the next ship arrives.”
“Might not be so bad, Keith… that big swarm of deebees isn’t showing up on the satellite at all!”
“What now? That son of a bitch Graves took out an entire swarm by himself?”
“No idea,” Jessie replied. “Might be worthwhile getting over there though, just in case.”
“Good idea, Jessie,” Jenkins said. “There should be plenty to claim from the colony account after this.”
Turning Shepherd southward, he started mentally calculating the claims he was going to be putting in for his defence of the colony… and very, very inflated claims they would be.
Shaken, Graves struggled to get his exomech back on its feet, but whatever had knocked him down must have had enough force to throw Brutiful’s gyros out of alignment.
He noticed the ringing in his ears only when he started to get his hearing back, and only when that died down did he hear Beth calling out for him over the radio.
“Hank! Hank! Do you read me?” Her voice was frantic, and Graves had no idea how long he’d been out.
“I’m here, honey,” he replied. “Quit yelling and tell me what the hell just happened.”
“Oh, Hank, honey!” she said, the relief evident in her voice. “I thought I’d lost you!”
“Nope, still here… what did I miss?”
“You missed a lot! The Singhs came through, the smaller gates are all closed and the two Singh boys are on their way over, should be at the bunker within twenty.”
“Just the boys?” Graves asked. “Jaswant didn’t make it?”
“Jaswant’s fine!” Beth replied. “They stripped the fusion cell out of Crescent Moon and sent it in on a drone, rigged to detonate on command.”
Graves paused as that sank in… fusion cells were expensive and temperamental, and it would have been fast and risky work to take one out of an exomech and rig it to a crop-dusting drone.
No wonder Beth had wanted him off that hill in a hurry!
“Wait… the Singh’s just nuked my back yard?”
“Honey!”
“We’ll talk about it later, Beth,” he said. “Right now, I need an update on everything else.”
“I can’t give it to you, honey,” Beth replied. “The blast’s EMP took out our sensors and all the drones, and our satellite link is going to be down until you get back and fix it.”
“Okay… I’ll look around here and let you know what’s going on.”
“Roger that… I’ll get this place sorted out and see to the families I have here.”