High Ground

The Helbender boys wait for their signal, taking cover in the overgrowth on the hill along the cliffside, east of the Korben temple. The metal clatter of machinery echoes from the refinery, up on the mountain across the river. But through it, Elliv picks up the drone of a discordium engine. A new plume of white smoke erupts from the loading platforms high up on the mountainside. The train sitting there by the refinery lurches forward. 5:75, right on time as usual.

Clutching their weapons, they wait as the enormous machine slowly crawls around the edge of the mountain, as the drone of its engine and the screeching symphony of metal banging and sliding together fills the valley. It will nicely cover the sound of their approach. As soon as the train disappears behind the mountain, Elliv sees Razha’s signal flare shining bright against the grey clouds. Clear to proceed.

Elliv pulls his bandana over his nose and signals his cadre to strike. From their concealment in the woods, he and Lein have a clear shot at one of the sentinels posted at the temple entrance. They kneel down and aim their shots, firing one after the other. One of them strikes the temple wall, but the other hits its mark and drops the sent to the porch.

“K! R! A!” Elliv shouts.

Another sent peers around the corner, and ducks back behind it when he sees Maris burst out of the woods, charging up toward him with his shotgun raised. Maris lowers his gun and pulls a match from his pouch, strikes it between his teeth, and lights the fuse of a ceramic bomb on his bandolier. He rips it from the belt and throws it, onto the temple porch, then dives to cover behind the stone wall of the graveyard as it explodes.

Lein and Elliv finish reloading their rifles and move in, bayonets attached. Ketha follows a few Length behind, their rifle in hand, staying close to their medic. Just as they reach the porch, they see the heavy wooden doors slam shut.

Maris pulls at the handle. “Barred shut inside!”

“Sents!” Ketha drops to the porch, pointing downhill. Two sentinels charge up the steps on their brown spined drakes. Ketha pulls Kurri down next to them. Elliv, Lein, and Maris drop to the stone just as the sents fire a volley, hitting the temple walls.

“Get that door open Maris!” Elliv says. He takes aim at the sents, with a clear shot down the steps, but they see him and divert their agile drakes down two of the side streets, taking shelter behind the workers’ houses.

“Those cowards!” Elliv says. “Keep your aim, but only fire if the shot is certain not to hit a house!”

“Heads down,” Maris says. He raises his shotgun toward the door, just a Length away. He fires, blowing a small hole in the heavy doors with a large metal slug. He tries the door, but the bar is still intact. He pulls a bomb from his belt and stuffs it in the hole.

“Take cover!” Maris shouts, jumping from the side of the porch and rolling behind the temple wall. Elliv and Ketha and Lein and Kurri follow his lead, ducking behind the other side just before the bomb explodes, scattering ceramic shards and wood splinters far off to the edge of the garden.

The sents on their drakes advance up the hill, hugging the sides of the houses and denying the Helbender boys a shot. But the sents take another shot of their own, still failing to hit anything at their range.

As they all regain their footing on the porch, Maris rotates his two barrels over and pulls the hammer back below to ready his second shot. He steps in through the cloud of smoke. Elliv hears his shotgun fire, followed by another gunshot. Elliv and Lein run in after him. He sees one sent against the far wall, his white coat painted red and full of tiny holes, with metal shrapnel scattered all around him. Maris is lying prone and safe in front of a bullet hole in the wall behind him.

Elliv and Lein both fire at the remaining, now defenseless sent, spattering his blood over the sacred white walls and holy artwork.

Elliv scans the room, coughing as he breathes in the smoke that fills the sanctuary. Once he can see again, he speaks, “Clear!”

“They’re here!” Ketha says, running in with Kurri close behind, as two gunshots resound and impact the temple walls. Elliv, Lein, and Maris hasten to reload.

Once ready, they crawl up to the sides of the open doorway. Elliv peers around the splintered edge of the door, still clinging to its hinges. The sentinels roll out of their saddles and duck behind the stone garden wall as they reload. Across the river, more mounted sentinels charge down the hill to back them up, but before they can reach the bridge, the train crosses their path, a huge metal wall standing in their way, slowly picking up speed through town.

“Keth!” Elliv says. “You’ve got until that train crosses Korben to get the inner sanctum doors open!”

“On it!” They run to the back of the room, pulling their lockpicks from their belt.

Maris hands Elliv a grenade and a match. “No safe shot at them from here, bombs are better.” He rolls another ceramic ball across the floor to Lein.

“Good call!” Elliv lights his fuse and steps out from his cover just as the sentinels raise their heads to take aim. He throws it across the garden, landing just beyond the wall, behind the sentinel. It explodes before he has a chance to react. Pieces of his flesh rain down on the brown leaves of the dead garden.

The other raises his rifle just as Lein lights his bomb and steps out to throw it. But the sentinel fires first, and Lein shouts in pain as he stumbles to the floor, his bomb rolling away from him, sparking as its fuse runs down inside the temple.

“Fuck!” Maris dives for the bomb and throws it through the doorway. It explodes in mid-air just above the sent.

“Clear!” Maris says.

“Lein!” Elliv crawls across the floor to where his friend is sitting against the wall, clutching his side with a bloody hand.

Kurri reaches him with his medic bag already open. “Show me!”

Lein pulls his hand away to reveal the wound. Kurri unbuttons his shirt and takes a close look as he pulls a wad of gauze from his bag.

“The bullet went between your ribs and carved a path clean through your side,” Kurri says, applying pressure to the open wound.

“So it’s not too bad?” Elliv says, kneeling down next to Lein and holding onto his hand.

Kurri holds his ear up to Lein’s chest. He shakes his head. “You have a sucking chest wound. They might have pierced your lung or just your thorax, but the more you breathe the more air will get in and the less space your lungs will have to expand.” He carefully unbuttons Lein’s shirt and peels it off of him.

“What do we do?!” Elliv says, looking at Kurri.

Kurri reaches into his bag and pulls out a rolled up strip of rubber. He unrolls it as he wraps it around Lein’s torso over the wound, pulling it tight with each pass. “All I can do for now is try to keep air from getting in as much as possible. You need to not exert yourself anymore, and I can attempt surgery to close this wound properly when we get to camp.”

“You heard the doctor, Lein, stay right here and just rest. We’ve got the rest,” Elliv says. Lein looks into his eyes and nods his head. His face shows agony as he draws a breath in.

“Got it!” Ketha says as the inner sanctum doors swing open. They run inside and come out with four guns balanced in their arms.

Kurri looks up from his patient and around the carnage inside the temple. He grips the holy symbol around his neck and lowers his head.

“Will you stay here with him, Kurri?” Elliv says.

“What if there are more injuries?” Kurri says.

“It’s too risky to keep our only medic in the line of fire. We’ll make the temple a medic station for the duration of the mission, and we’ll extract the wounded here to you, won’t you stay with him Kurri?”

“Yeah, that’s a better plan,” Kurri says.

“Stay here, Lein,” Elliv says, clutching his hand tight. “I’ll see you in just a little bit when the town is secured.”

Lein stares at him, looking faint.

Ketha reaches Elliv with his armful of arms.

“I’ll take those Ketha, go get some more, I’m gonna find hands to put them in.” Elliv takes the stack of rifles and stumbles through the doorway. The train still rumbles through the town.

And now a crowd is gathering in the temple garden. A group of women, young and old, come out of their homes and climb the steps to the temple. They are dressed in old leather boots and coats of rough hemp fabric, with their hair tied back behind their heads, and each of them has a piece of grey cloth tied around their neck.

Elliv leans the guns down against a pillar and steps off of the porch toward them. “Hello there.”

One of the women steps forward. She’s maybe Kalen’s age, a Kogai woman with brown skin and black hair starting to turn white, tied in a tight braid. She looks to Elliv with intense eyes.

“We are the Association of Union Wives and Daughters, and we aim to take back our town,” she says. “Razha Koronova sends her regards.”

“Welcome comrades! Come and get ‘em.” Ketha brings out more guns, and Maris comes out with a pile of handheld bombs.

“Shoot from cover and stay together in groups of two. One firing and one reloading. You’ll have to share powder flasks,” Elliv says.

Elliv picks up a rifle and offers it to her, and she grasps it.