The CRES code

Chapter Sixty Five - The Battle of Gorsty Common

     Loach pulled himself up out of the elevator shaft to join Emily who was staring after Randall as he and Dolly raced out of the camp on horseback. "Where's he off to?" she asked while, behind them, Jane struggled to pull herself out of the gaping hole in the ground.

     "He's got a soft spot for some kid back in the city," Loach replied. "We need to go after him in case he does something stupid, like surrender to the machines to save her."

     "Would he do that?" asked the eco-terrorist.

     "Once I would have said no," replied the mob boss, "but this place has done something to him. Made him go soft." He strode across to where the horses were tethered. One of the Barons was hastily strapping a saddle to the back of the best one. Loach grabbed him by the shoulder to spin him around to face him, then stunned him with a punch to the jaw. Then he jumped up onto the saddle.

     "What about us?" demanded Jane, running after him, but Loach was already kicking the horse into a gallop. He disappeared into the night without looking back.

     "Looks like we're on our own..." began Jane, but Emily was already chasing after another horse being ridden by one of the workmen. She stabbed him in the kidney with a thin bladed knife, dodged to the side as he fell out of the saddle, then jumped up to replace him. Jane stared in wide eyed astonishment as she followed Loach into the darkness. "I can't ride!" she called after her in shocked betrayal.

     She looked around in fear and confusion. Everyone else seemed to be fleeing the camp, either grabbing a horse or just running into the night. She glanced back at the transmitter and her heart leapt in terror as she remembered the destruction falling towards it from space. How much longer did they have? She began running, desperate to get away from it before it exploded into a fireball.

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     The soldiers who were supposed to be on the perimeter had all fled, Loach saw as his horse tore past where they had been. He didn't care. He barely noticed until he saw a corpse lying face down in the grass, barely visible by the light of the moon. Suddenly alert, Loach stared around, searching for what might have killed him, but he only had time for the barest glimpse of the dark form that suddenly rose up ahead of him. Then his horse was stumbling and falling, pitching Loach out of the saddle to land hard on the grass.

     His combat app activated automatically, making his hand reach for one of the knives on his belt and throw it, all without the control of his conscious mind. By the time he managed to recover the orc was drowning in its own blood, clawing at its throat as it sank to its knees. Loach looked back at his horse and saw that it had been skewered by the orc's halberd. He pulled it free, just in time as another orc came bounding over to attack him.

     The halberd was heavy. It had been designed for a creature larger and stronger than a human, but the combat app overrode the inhibitions that normally prevented people from overexerting themselves. It was a condition known as hysterical strength that occasionally arose naturally during times of extreme stress. Parents finding themselves able to lift a car to save a trapped child. Small women somehow managing to fight off attackers twice their size. Later, when (or if) he had time to recover, his whole body would ache from the effort, but for now the weapon felt light in his hands and he was able to swing it easily, bringing it to bear on the second orc.

     The orc thought it was attacking a normal human, and when it saw the orc sized halberd his opponent was carrying it assumed that he would be unable to use it properly. It rushed in heedless, therefore, intending to bat the weapon aside and then thrust with its own, but it was Loach who batted aside the orc's halberd and thrust his own weapon through the creature's throat.