The Silent Hand by Michael Mersault

Author:Michael Mersault [Mersault, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, Space Opera, Military, Action & Adventure
ISBN: 9781982192952
Google: xM-gzwEACAAJ
Amazon: B0C32QPQV9
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2023-10-03T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

“While it is now fashionable to sneer when speaking of Emperor Yung’s reforms within the Halls of Learning, my learned colleagues seek to diminish that one guiding cultural value, while offering nothing at all to replace it.”

—Dr. Ramsay Stirling Attenborough, Ivory Tower Follies

In the darkness, dozens of dirty, weary Imperial Legionnaires took cover within a foliage-choked drainage channel on the southern fringe of a bombed-out metropolitan area. They learned a few hard truths in painful succession as green tracers arced over the intervening highway and whipped about their heads, even as nuclear fires flared and died far above the clouds, and intermittent death cries shrieked into silence among the undergrowth.

Corporal Kyle Whiteside retained a small pocket of rationality somewhere within his psyche, and in this pocket a dry little voice itemized the terrors besetting them: a heavy weapon position raked them from the northwest, someone in the heavens above (probably their Fleet allies) were in the process of receiving nuclear-level bad news, while some thing ran loose within their confused ranks, horribly executing Legionnaires, one by one.

Kyle had even seen the thing that stalked among them for a moment in the last glow of nuclear fire, though he could not yet fathom or accept that vision: a dumb-mech bearing crude metal mandibles and what appeared to be a central ram blade, like the spade-tongue of a predatory arthropod, gutting a Legionnaire.

Sergeant Avery Reardon evidently put the rational part of his mind to much better use in the midst of all this. A moment after the flare from above died out, the mortar Molo thumped out three more rounds, bracketing the enemy’s distant auto-cannon. Seconds later, Reardon appeared beside Pippi and Kyle, yelling and shoving at them. “Go! Move, damn it! Across the highway. Move, move, move!”

Kyle, Pippi, and a dozen other Legionnaires stumbled up onto the exposed surface, hurrying through the darkness, feeling that enemy fire would reach out and cut them down at any moment. Kyle heard Major Chetwynd’s voice babbling and ordering in shrill tones as Sergeant Reardon clearly ignored the Pathfinder officer. Kyle ran, his armor seeming to pull him down as he tried to accelerate, scrambling over the center median and running on.

In moments, Pippi, Kyle, their Molo mechs, and a collection of various Legionnaires reached the cover of a mostly intact structure on the north side of the highway. Pippi adjusted to the change more quickly than Kyle. “You and you,” she said to a pair of Legionnaires, “cover flanks.” They didn’t debate her peremptory command, scuttling to either corner of their erstwhile cover.

Kyle belatedly flipped his tactical eyepiece down from his helmet, looking back across the highway as another ragged line of Legionnaires came staggering through the potential kill zone. He imagined what Avery Reardon might do next. As the Legionnaires reached the cover of the building, Kyle tagged four of them. “We need to clear this structure.” He pointed his carbine at the adjoining wall. “Go there, around the east wall, and look for an entrance.

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