Under Siege

His arm stretched out into nothing. For what seemed like several minutes, Andy closed his fist on that nothing. He was stranded, stuck in a limitless abyss. A memory was stirred up by this, or perhaps it was the illusion of a memory; faces and places all familiar yet alien. Where he was right now was a mere inkling. It was high up, he knew that much. Someone he knew was here, but he couldn’t quite place his finger on who it was. Was it dad? No, that didn’t seem right. His hand still feebly clung to the empty air. Where was he, in bed? No, that wasn’t right. The feeling of his bed couldn’t be recreated. He remembered the mountains, a cool still lake far below. That’s right, he was at a castle, one of those nice European-looking ones with a gorgeous view below from the top of a cliff.

A cliff?

Andy opened his eyes and desperately began clawing to his left, only to be met with more nothing. Before he fully realized where he was, he fell, hitting his face on a stone floor. He sat up, rubbing his forehead as he looked around. When did he get down to the medbay or sickbay or whatever they called this place? A nurse came rushing over to help him up.

“How’d I get here?” he asked her. “I was just out front with the mortars. What happened?”

“Your friend from back home helped you down here.” She pointed down the room. Spartan was sitting on a bed talking to Viking. Andy saw Sarge laying on the bed next to them, motionless. Beside him, Coulson was being covered in bandages. Polski was there, too, a grin plastered on his face as a redheaded nurse cleaned a cut on his forehead. He was completely unbothered by the sling around his arm.

The memory of the Warmonger’s round came back to him. Andy’s blood ran cold. “What happened out there?”

“You boys just got hit hard, that’s all. Give me a second, I’ll go let the other two know you’re up.”

She walked over to Spartan’s bed. Andy watched her talk to them, pointing his direction. Spartan glanced over, then nodded. He stood, and all three walked over to Andy.

“Took a wallop, as they say,” said Spartan. “Doc says a couple broken ribs, and that’s it. You’ll be right as rain soon.”

Andy saw the bandages around Spartan’s hands. “What happened? Why are your hands...?”

“Cut myself on some glass.” Andy couldn’t comprehend how he was so calm about it, like he simply forgot his keys in the other room. “I’ll be fine. You haven’t been out long. How are you feeling?”

Andy rubbed his head again. “Just disoriented, I guess. I was up on the cliff last I remember.”

“No one’s up there now.”

Andy looked between Viking and Spartan, then back at Sarge. “Is everyone okay? Is this it?”

“People are fine. Some are dead. That’s what happens when several guys take a 50mm to their collective faces. You’re lucky, same as Sarge and his boys.”

Andy swallowed. “You say that, but I don’t see Sanders.”

“Sanders ducked out of there a minute or two before the Warmonger on the cliff,” Spartan explained. “He was going inside to find a radio and better light.”

“Why?”

“The shore was being fired on,” Viking said. “He wanted to let some of those guys know where to go to safely get out of here.”

Andy laughed. “So the guys down there didn’t have an escape plan?”

“The default escape plan is to fall back to the castle. Not really an option if the castle’s been cut off from the rest of the world.”

“What do you mean by ‘cut off’?”

“There’s a wildfire burning on the other side of the mountain. There’s also a Warmonger ready to obliterate anyone crossing the lake. We have no way to escape, Crusader. We’re stuck here.”

Andy’s stomach churned. “So what? We wait for these Khardis or whoever the hell to come and kill us?”

Spartan shook his head. “We need to be ready. I don’t know how long the fire on the other side of the mountain’s going to last. I do know the result will be wide visibility for the enemy on anyone trying to escape. I also don’t know how much fuel their ship has. For now, Castle Drügeldorf is under siege.”

Andy sat down and put his head in his hands.

“Look on the bright side,” Spartan said with a smile, “this hasn’t happened for three centuries.”

“Yay, I always wanted to be a part of history.” Mildly accepting his current situation, he continued, “So what now?”

Spartan shrugged. “We wait. The pillboxes are gone. The fire’s blazing. The dock downstairs is decimated. Oh, the Warmonger fired a second time at us, by the way. They haven’t sent their men yet, though. Actually, the ship hasn’t even gone over the lake yet.”

“So why not get more mortars out there, then?”

“Because we have no more.”

Andy looked down at the floor. “Oh. Well, what about shooting the balloon or something? Sarge was telling me these things are like the Zeppelins from back home.”

Spartan shook his head. “I wish. They managed to make a much more durable material for these things.”

Andy thought back to when he was up on the cliff, to the echoing gunshots from across the lake. Then his brow furrowed. “Wait a minute, didn’t beardy cut through the balloon of the other one? You two were talking about it at dinner last night.”

Spartan raised an eyebrow. “He did. Think of it like Kevlar. You can easily cut through Kevlar with a knife, but it’s still what they make those bulletproof vests out of. Try to get some rest while you can. You’re in good enough shape, we’ll call on you when you’re needed.”

Andy nodded. He really didn’t want to be called on for anything, but he didn’t have much say in the matter.