“Because five more people won’t make an ounce of difference here. I’m not taking my friends with me to watch them die.”

I cut the connection to Aaron’s communicator and leaned back in the pilot’s chair. I rubbed my eyes with my palms, trying to get rid of some of the grogginess. It wasn’t so much that I’d been woken up at two in the morning by the blaring of the emergency communicator line, though that wasn’t the most pleasant thing in the world. It’s that I’d just finished the dilation training course the afternoon before, and it was like having thirty days’ worth of jet-lag. Well, twenty-eight to be precise, because my brain started showing some fun early warning signs and Camille had pulled me out immediately.

Still, it had been worth it. There was no need to sleep in time dilation, so I got in a lot of practice. Enough so that I wouldn’t get myself killed horribly this morning.

“How much time do we have, Adelaide?”

“From the scouts’ estimates of their speed, I have determined that the Assimilators will reach Sterling within three hours.”

I looked back at the maps projected on the glass canopy of the Merlin. I was planning out the battle as best I could from the lessons that Jack had given me. “How is the militia looking?””

“There are currently 2,112 fighters. Of those, 1,500 are outfitted with the weapons we provided, and less than 400 with a CAS enabled headset.”

I frowned at the map. We barely enough fighters to cover the ground we needed covered. The crux of my strategy was the South Platte River. It separated Sterling from the horde, running unbroken from south to north on the eastern border of the town and upwards, all the way into Nebraska. It wasn’t a particularly wide river, but it was quick and deep enough to slow down the Worms. Most could swim it, but they’d be sitting ducks for the militia to fire on.

“And the defenses?”

“The mortars and the mounted machine guns and railguns we provided are being shifted as we speak. The militia are setting up the minefield and razor wire along the banks of the river. However, the fixed emplacements won’t be ready in time for the battle.”

I cursed, and then heard a soft ping that announced our approach to Sterling. We came in from the East, and I dismissed the maps. The glass cleared to show me a perfect view of the highway bridge that spanned the South Platte.

“So, Adelaide’s clear to destroy the northern rail bridge?” I asked Antonio. We stood around a kitchen table in a house near the eastern edge of Sterling. Nobody wanted to live this far from the center of town, so the small home had fallen into disrepair. The wallpaper had begun to peel, and the room was covered in a fine layer of dust.

The mayor nodded slowly, eyes fixed on the overhead view of the railway that the portable projector displayed lazily above the table.

“Do it, Adelaide.”

It was a good distance away, but we still felt the rumbling and heard the crack of the explosion. Dust fell from the ceiling as the house shook and the dishes in the cupboards rattled. Antonio closed his eyes, but I was satisfied. They wouldn’t be able to cross there anymore, at least. Left us only one spot where they could, or at least could easily.

Sheriff Wild scowled, his block-like face twisted in annoyance, and rubbed the back of his neck, “That will set us back a ways.”

“Getting slaughtered by Assimilators sets you back farther,” I told him.

As a side note, Sheriff Wild was a gigantic idiot. He’d hidden it the previous times I’d come to town by not saying much. I’d assumed he just had a strong and silent personality. Now I was pretty sure he just had a fundamental lack of brain cells. It was a very good thing I’d come to town, because if this bumblefuck had been in charge they’d have made a defensive circle in the middle of town and fought it out that way. I wasn’t being sarcastic. That was his actual plan.

I dismissed my thoughts and looked at Antonio again. His eyes were sunken in, and his face was pale and covered in a patchy layer of scruffy black hair.

“You clear on the plan? I’m going to have to get out there soon, so it’ll be up to you and the sheriff to manage the militia and the evac.”

His eyes flicked up to the map and he tapped a finger nervously on the table. “Go through it one more time.”

“Alright.”

The map zoomed out a good way, and displayed a mass of red dots. Seeing all of them was a little surreal and more than a little terrifying. I pushed through.

“The Worms are coming from slightly north east, but Camille is going to use her drones in a maneuver called the Speyer Funnel to corral them and stop them from spreading out too much. That’ll point them almost directly at the bridge.”

The map zoomed in on the river and 2,112 blue dots spread along the west riverbank, flanking both sides of the highway bridge.

“I’ve split up the militia into seven battalions of three hundred. Because the Assimilators are coming from the north-east, we’ll need more on that side. The bridge is going to act as the center of our defense. We’re going to start the battle with First, Second, and Third battalions on the north-west bank, because there’ll be more trying to cross there. The Fourth and Fifth will be on the south-west bank. I’m going to be covering the bridge in my Paladin with the Sixth as support. The Seventh is in reserve, and the Merlin will be providing support wherever it’s needed.”

“Okay… but why did we have to destroy the railway bridge?” Sheriff Wild asked.

I resisted rolling my eyes. He’d been firmly against the idea to start with, and it took some serious talking down from the mayor to get him to go along with it. Apparently, the stubborn jackass was still hung up on it.

“Assimilators go for the path of least resistance. Having another route over the river might encourage part of the horde go that way. Camille can’t funnel them if they’re splitting into two groups, and we can’t defend two bridges at once.”

“Then why not blow up both?”

I was losing patience fast, “Think about it for a goddamn second. If there is no path of least resistance, the Worms going to spread out and go whichever way they want. Keeping one bridge up means we’ve got a chokepoint for them to run to, so we can concentrate our resources around there.”

I was interrupted from further explanation by Camille speaking into the communicator channel that had myself and Adelaide in it. I held up my hand to stop the Sheriff’s next question.

“I’ve lost a few drones to anti-aircraft fire. Adelaide, I’m going to need you to mop up the stragglers.”

“Okay, Camille. I’ll be there as soon as possible.”

“Good. And Sam?”

“I’m here. Go ahead.”

“Get set up. They’re starting to go faster. You’ve got forty-five minutes, tops.”

The communicator went silent and a tremor of nervousness went through me. I was talking a big game, but I’d never planned out a battle as big as this before. Well, I had in the simulator, but that wasn’t even close to the same thing. When the lights went out in the simulator, nobody was behind them.

I glanced at the two men.

“I’ve got to go. There are instructions and backup plans on the holopads I gave you if you need them. Remember, we’ve only got to hold them until the evacuations complete. Then we’ll blow the bridges, slow them down as much as possible, and get the hell out of Dodge.”

I didn’t wait for a response, turning on my heel and walking out the broken-down door. It was still dark out, a good hour or so before sunrise. I shivered, my jumpsuit not doing quite enough to keep out the cold. It was above freezing, but only just. The house we’d used as our impromptu command center was a five-minute walk south of the bridge, fairly close to the riverbank. My quick steps took me through the whirl of activity that was the staging ground for the battle. An old pickup truck was hauling three tall spotlights on its bed through the cracked streets, with a group of men riding with them. They looked a mixture of worn out and terrified. I could empathize with them.

The riverbank ahead of me was already glowing with the light from spotlights, the hastily thrown together defenses illuminated brightly. Sloppily stacked sandbag walls provided somewhere for the militiamen to crouch and fire over. MGs nests and mounted railguns were scattered around, but they were placed haphazardly with seemingly no regard for positioning. I watched one of the militia, a younger woman in jeans and a bullet-proof vest worn over a windbreaker, fiddle with the aiming panel on the side of a railgun, looking lost and scared, her hands shaking. I didn’t have time to help her figure it out, so I moved past. I hoped someone else would be able to teach her.

Mary was waiting for me at the bridgehead. She wore the combat armor I’d given her for the mission to Denver, the SMG attached at her hip and an assault rifle slung over her shoulder. She held her helmet underneath one arm, and her scowl was an incredibly reassuring sight.

“Hadn’t realized you’d gotten back from scouting,” I said as I neared, “I’m going to need you to take over for the Sheriff in managing the northern battalions instead of being in the command tent. I know you’re not exactly trained to be in charge, but you’d be better than that. The man is a gibbering fucking moron.”

She cracked a smile, “That he is.”

Militiamen scrambled around the concrete near the bridge, trying to build up the sandbag walls as best they could. There an arc of fortifications being constructed that faced the bridgehead, spanning the length of the four-lane highway. The exit off the bridge had been blocked off with large clumps of razor wire. While it wouldn’t kill any Worms, it’d tangle them up and make them easier to pick off. Six MG nests and two mounted railguns were spread across the sandbags. Not as many as the other locations, but my presence more than made up for that.

Watching the militia set up, Mary’s slight smile turned into a deep frown, “I’ve been touring the defenses. We need to talk.”

That drew a few worried glances, so I motioned at her to follow me and moved towards my Paladins. They were a bit to the north of the line, and there weren’t any people around that area, so she could speak openly. The militiamen already looked terrified as it was, there was no need to add to it.

She kept talking as we reached them, “We’re screwed. The townspeople aren’t ready to fight. I can count the ones that know how to use a mortar on one hand. Ditto for the railguns. The hovertank pilots are passable, they’ve at least had some training.”

My stomach dropped. I knew it already, but I’d been ignoring the reality. Two thousand professional soldiers, outfitted with gear like we’d provided, would’ve been able to take a group of ten-thousand Assimilators. Not without losses, but with the defensive positioning we had, it wouldn’t be that difficult. Five to one odds were actually pretty generous when fighting Worms.

But with a militia like this one… they knew how to fire rifles, but beyond that they had no training for a battle of this scale. I could give them all the fancy toys that I had, but if they didn’t know how to use them it made no difference. I cursed Commander Berston and the Red Eagles again. The mercenaries would’ve turned this from a near-impossible victory into an assured one.

Still, all we had was the hand we were dealt.

“We’ll be okay. Keep you battalions from breaking, keep them firing at the Worms in the water, and we can make it through this. We’ve got the advantage, after all. Besides, Adelaide might have something up her sleeve if we can hold them long enough.”

She gave me a skeptical look and I shrugged. It was better than saying ‘we’re all going to die a horrible Wormy death’, right?

Mary sighed, “Fine. I’ll try to keep the men together up north. Antonio is going to be a problem in the south though. He doesn’t have any experience at all. There’s a retired Lieutenant Colonel, Harold, living here that’ll do a better job, and that way we can shift Antonio to my old job, directing reinforcements and communications in the command tent.”

“Thank God. The man looked like he was going to piss himself when I told him he’d be in charge down there. See if you can get this Harold subbed in as soon as possible.”

I was relieved, but it was terrifying as all hell that it’d come to this. All of this last-minute scrambling to find anyone capable. The slapdash attempt to put some semblance of a defense together. It was a miracle we even had as many weapons as we did, because we hadn’t gotten around to fabricating enough armor. The only saving grace was the amount of ammunition we’d been able to bring. There’d be no shortage of railgun rounds and bul-

The loud blare of tornado sirens went off in the town. The half hour warning.

“I’ve got to get over to my troops,” Mary said, “Don’t die, yeah?”

“You’re the one without the metal shell. Be careful.”

She jogged off, leaving me standing on the dirt next to my Paladins. A shuddering breath left my mouth and I closed my eyes. There was so much that I hadn’t accounted for. So much that we’d rushed, that we’d almost forgotten. The triage was understaffed. The ammunition supply chain was a barely cobbled together farce. Only the squad leaders had CAS headsets. Even calling them squad leaders was a sad joke. They were just people picked nearly at random to keep four of their fellow townspeople in some semblance of a group.

It had been just over two weeks since Camille had discovered that the Assimilators were missing. Just two weeks to convince a town that a threat was real, and try to put them into force capable of fighting off a horde of Assimilators. Not enough time. Not enough time at all. I felt sick to my stomach just thinking about all the cracks we’d left. And maybe it was arrogant, but I knew that I’d have to be the one that filled them, that held this whole damn thing together.

My brow broke into a cold sweat as I thought of it. The bridge was where the vast majority of Assimilators were going to go through, and without me the two Battalions stationed there would fall like wheat in front of them. If I failed, the battle would be over. The Worms would rush over the bridge like water and tear apart into the defenders on the riverbanks. Then there’d be nothing between them and the town.

I wanted to hear Camille’s voice. I wanted to plan things out with her, see if there was a better way to go about this whole thing. I knew in part that I just wanted to hear her tell me it was going to be alright. Camille always seemed to know just the right thing to say to me when I got like this. I was about to call her over the coms, but stopped myself. It was too late to change anything now, and she and Adelaide had better things to do than listen to me whine.

I bit the inside of my cheek, hard, snapping myself out of my spiral. Right. They were busy doing their jobs. I had to do mine.

The Assault Paladin looked menacing in the dim light cast by the spotlights, much more so than its smaller brother. It stood at nine feet tall, and while the original Paladin was sleek and streamlined, the Assault was solid and bulky. There was an angled ‘collar’ of sorts that extended from the very top of the chest to add a protective covering to the neck, and the visor was reduced in size. The armor was nearly twice as thick as the normal Paladin’s in places, particularly the torso, shoulders, and legs, which made it weigh much more. The two long cannons that were folded on the back added to that weight as well. I hadn’t fully painted the Assault Paladin yet, so the armor was its original matte grey-black with the exception of a large shield etched in white on the front.

It opened from the front, not a smooth rippling motion, but a less refined mechanical split from the base of the neck to the bottom of the feet. One of those things I hadn’t gotten around to perfecting. I couldn’t get in through the back, so I had to clamber awkwardly into the Paladin. The suit jerked closed, and the systems booted up, the HUD springing to life in front of my eyes.

I clenched and unclenched my fists, the Assault Paladin moving just a hair slower than the original. Part of that was down to the software being imperfect, but there was also more to move. It was a similar feeling when I started walking. It just felt slower, like I was walking through a very shallow pool of water.

But despite all that, every step was powerful, and it might have just been an entirely mental thing, but I felt more secure in the Assault Paladin than I ever did in the normal model. I gave a mental command for the support pod and a spare original Paladin to follow me, and headed towards the bridgehead again.

The fortifications around the bridge were nearly complete by this point. The Sixth and Seventh Battalions would remain in this area, prepared to either give me support or provide relief to another part of the front. A command tent sat a hundred feet east of the line. I grimaced as I saw that. It should’ve been back much farther, but there wasn’t time at this point to fix the mistake.

The militia turned to look at me as I approached. I hadn’t wanted to bother them, but this thing made a Hive Lord look subtle. I could see the machine guns rattling on their mounts. I’d really have to put this guy on a diet for the Mark II version. The area where I’d set up the Assault Paladin was left clear, a four-foot by four-foot patch of concrete. It was the center of the arc, directly on the two yellow dividing lines in the middle of the road, and faced directly down the bridge. I walked towards it, taking in the militia around me.

There were so many different stripes of people here. More men than women in this group, though there were about equal numbers in the entire militia. Aged anywhere from fifteen to mid-forties, from what I could tell. It was odd seeing what I considered as children holding assault rifles, but these were the times we lived in. I saw fear and exhaustion stamped on all their faces, just like on all the other militiamen I’d seen, but there was something else that hadn’t been there before as they watched me pass. I couldn’t quite identify it, but I didn’t think it was a bad thing.

A portly man stood out of the ranks and gave me a sloppy salute. I returned one that was significantly better. He wore a tight fighting baseball cap and hunting jacket.

“Howdy friend. I’m Marshall, I’m leading the Seventh Battalion. Uh. Sorry to bother you, but Janet never showed up and I was wondering what to do about that.”

I took a second to think, “Janet was the head of the Sixth Battalion, right?”

“Yessir she is. Can’t seem to get in contact with her either.”

“Alright. Find someone dependable to take over for her. Actually, scratch that. Radio Anto- Mayor Valdez in the command tent. He has a list of everyone in the battalions, so he’ll be able to point someone out,” I said quietly to Marshall.

I raised my voice, “Listen up! Change of plans, the Seventh is going to cover me, and the Sixth is going to fall back to the reserve gathering point. Squad leaders, make sure you keep track of your updated orders!”

There was an awkward pause and many of the militiamen looked around at each other hesitantly.

“Move!” I bellowed, my suit amplifying the sound.

They scattered, and I clenched my teeth. Too slow. These people weren’t cut out for this. Amidst the chaos, I moved towards my position. The support pod, an ugly six-foot tall rounded rectangle, hovered over to its spot ten feet behind me, and descended with a soft hum to land on four legs. Another rush job, but it’d serve its purpose.

I was about to start settling in when I heard Marshall’s voice behind me.

“Uh, sir? I’ve got one last question, if you have the time.”

I couldn’t look over my shoulder because of the bulk of the armor, so I had to turn back around fully. The man was fidgeting nervously. I checked my HUD. Twenty-four minutes left, more than enough time to deploy the Assault Paladin. I nodded at him to continue while I checked over the read-outs on the HUD.

“It’s… it’s not the most important thing in the world, but me and the other guys were just wondering why.”

I tried to cock my head at him and failed miserably, the Asssault Paladin's bulk preventing it. I considered leaning my entire body and realized that would look dumb, “What do you mean?”

Marshall took off his hat and rubbed his messy hair nervously, “It’s just that, y’know, you don’t have anything in Sterling. The rest of us do, got family and homes here. I guess we’re not really getting why you’re sticking your neck out is all.”

“So, you’re basically asking me why I’m fighting for you?”

“I suppose I am.”

The militia stared at me, and I finally recognized what else I’d seen in them as I passed. Hope. They’d placed their hopes in me, that I might be able to pull off the impossible and lead them to victory. But that hope hinged on the fact that I had a reason to be here, a reason to fight and maybe die for them. I had to honor that.

“I’m not really sure, to be perfectly honest,” I said.

Everything went silent and militiamen wore flabbergasted expressions. Marshall’s mouth fell open, but no sound came out.

“I know that I want to help whoever I can. I know that I hate seeing anyone die if I can do something about it. I took an oath protect the people left alive on this world. But none of that really gets to the core of it, does it?”

The Assault Paladin’s power supply indicator was fluctuating in a concerning way, but that wouldn’t be a problem soon. The rest of the diagnostics showed up clean. The map on my HUD showed a mass of red dots approaching like a tidal wave.

“To me, the why of it isn’t so important, because to me it’s not a choice to help or not. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t. Maybe I’ve got a superhero complex. Or a God complex, or whatever you want to call it. Who the hell knows. All I do know is that I’m going to hold this damn bridge no matter what comes at it.”

The surrounding troops didn’t really have a response to that, just a series of grim nods. I’d like to think they returned to their preparations with an added jump in their step, but that was probably just wishful thinking. I’d have to work on my speeches. Part of the job was inspiring hope, after all.

But that was fine. If I couldn’t get them to believe in me through my words, I’d do it by shit-stomping some Worms.

Standing in my cleared-out spot on the road, I gave a mental command, and the support pod behind me became lined with cracks that revealed cooling vents. It began to glow with a deep, blue light as it emitted a low hum. From the top of the pod, a flight of four small drones detached themselves and hovered in place, each holding a large cannon shell. A group of tiny spider-bots scuttled out the bottom of the support pod, dragging a set of four cables over to me. They fixed the cables to the attachment points on the back calves of the Assault Paladin. A line of text ran across the top of my HUD.

Secondary reactor online.

I took up a steady stance in my Paladin, and several claws deployed from the top of the metal boots with a soft whir. They thrust themselves downwards, sinking into the cracked concrete like a knife into butter, and anchored me firmly to the ground.

The pair of six-foot long railguns unfolded slowly from my back, three-feet of rectangular barrel pointing over each of my shoulders, angled slightly upwards. They left enough room for the rocket pods to deploy as well, significantly larger ones than on my original Paladin, capable of holding forty-two rockets apiece. In addition to the rocket pods that sat on my shoulders, one emerged from the outside of each thigh as well, but smaller and lower profile.

I was handed two large, six-barreled Gatling cannons by another group of spider-bots. I held one on each arm, the back ends of them hooking into nooks at my elbows, the weapons’ length running down my forearm a foot past my hands, which held their handles tightly. The tips of the barrels glowed with a dark red light. I hefted them, and a second line of text joined the first.

Assault Paladin defensive deployment complete.