Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars

by Jason Anspach

  Again, the colonel cleared his dry throat.

  This irritated General Ogilvie for a brief second, but his calm cool savvy player’s professionalism quickly covered. He sensed an opportunity to assert total control over the coalition of factionalized world militaries who’d been distributed to him in an almost pell-mell fashion to deal with the Savage threat once and for all. Pulling this off was sure to put him in good standing to run for United Worlds prime minister in the next election, two years from now.

  And then… who knew? Some factions were talking about forming a Galactic Confederacy of all the human worlds. Was it too much that he dare to dream of being the first leader of such an assembly?

  “Something wrong, Colonel?” he asked, fixing Marks with a look of cool, contemptuous appraisal from his perfect blue eyes.

  The colonel smiled. And it seemed a thing he was not necessarily given to or much practiced at. Then he walked forward through the press of career officers gathering about the task force’s supreme commander. Some of the officers looked rather put out at having to make room for this nobody colonel who’d only just been attached to the strike force at the last second.

  “Well, sir,” began the colonel. He didn’t bother to add the customary no disrespect intended. “If the Savages push, most of those units located nearest the colony ship are not suited for combat operations, specifically CQB.”

  He moved toward the tactical display and indicated the forwardmost unit. “This is the Ninety-Third Artillery out of Hayes’s World, firing hundred-forty-millimeter counter-battery fire. Or here…”

  He swept his hand, dirty and bloodstained, toward another flanking unit resting under the digital shadow of the massive leviathan he’d called the colony ship even though operations SOP had made sure to specifically refer to it as “the Nest.” Like it was just a bunch of insects that needed clearing out before the city could return to normal commerce and operation. Nothing more, sorry about the inconvenience of a horde of post-human monsters descending on you en masse with who-knew-what technological voodoo they’d cooked up in their long haul through the stellar darkness to download on the unsuspecting citizens of this world.

  And of course, that was always the question. What had they cooked up this time?

  “This…” continued the colonel, “is a UW heavy armor regiment. If the Savages come at us again, they won’t have infantry support for more than two hours, according to your… timetables. Sir.”

  No one missed the amount of cold disgust with which the upstart intruder colonel had used the word timetables.

  Now it was the supreme commander’s turn to clear his throat.

  “I’m sorry, Colonel.”

  He wasn’t.

  “But the Savages have obviously seen our initial display of force and are on the run. Hardly the first time they’ve fled before our might. I wouldn’t be half surprised if they didn’t back up into their little ship and scoot off altogether. So far…”

  He murmured once more to the aide.

  The aide murmured back.

  “… we have no active units engaged, and drone recon analysis indicates zero enemy contact on the field at this time. They’ve either fallen back completely to the Nest or they’ve gone underground. In which case we can gas the tunnels and deal with them more than effectively in that manner.”

  “Excuse me, sir…” said one of the staff officers. A small, unassuming man. Major Musahshi. He was running intel for the entire operation. Attached from the Sinasian Worlds Defense Forces. “We’re ninety percent sure that the New Vega populace is sheltering in the subway system. From the early days of the colony, it was specifically designed to be used an emergency bunker system. Respectfully, sir, gassing the subways will result in tens of thousands of civilian casualties.”

  This took the supreme commander back a bit. Enough so that it may have been evident in his expression to the other men in the room. Marks certainly saw it.

  Any hope Ogilvie had of being a galactic leader would be torpedoed in light of a genocide of his own making.

  Yes, he thought to himself. Genocide must be avoided at all costs.

  If only for the sake of his political aspirations.

  “Thank you, Major, that option must be taken off the table,” he announced, as though he alone were the voice of reason restraining them from their eager push for results despite pesky mass civilian casualties. “Our primary objective is to rescue the civilian populace. If we do nothing else here, then we must do that!”

  There. That sounded like a quote someone might put on a statue, in light of how well everything was certain to go.

  “But the point will be moot once we’ve eradicated the Nest. We obviously have superior forces,” continued Ogilvie, finding his tenor and feet once more, “and once we’ve breached the old colony ship… er… the Nest… we can certainly expect enemy forces on the ground to go into a defensive posture if standard Savage hierarchical philosophy kicks in like we know it will. Then, why, for all intents and purposes, they’ll just clean themselves out of the sewers and subways, attempting to save the ship. As I’ve stated previously in my papers on this subject, once they feel threatened, it’s wheels up for them and they’ll clear off. And if the Navy…” Supreme Coalition Commander Ogilvie nodded to the Navy admiral and his small support staff attending the briefing. “If the Navy arrives on station at the appropriate moment, once the ship lifts off and she’s fat and slow in low atmo… well then, the game will certainly change. Won’t it, lads?”

  Lads.

  Lads, thought the colonel. Like this is some weekend vulx-hunting party on Britannia Centauri.

  Lads.

  “You’re going to get everyone killed,” muttered the colonel through gritted teeth.

  Several career-minded officers immediately expressed their disgust at such an insubordinate outburst.

  “Excuse me…” began Supreme Commander Ogilvie, going florid. “Just who the hell do you think you are exactly, Colonel?”

  Marks squared his shoulders and faced his superior.

  “Ahem.” The impending stare-down was interrupted by the Navy admiral, a man named Sulla who wore the midnight-blue dress trench of the United Worlds Navy. “I’d like to invoke the Commitment Clause established by our respective governments. Clearly, this spat is interplanetary—Earth and Spilursa—and it needs to be tabled. Time is of the essence. If we miss putting the cap over the battlespace and that ship reaches jump, we won’t get another shot at this particular group of Savages until they reemerge at a time of their own choosing, causing the same chaos we see before us today.”

  “That some Savages have implemented jump technology is undisputed, but that’s hardly confirmed with this batch,” Ogilvie said, not removing his gaze from the subordinate colonel. “And if they’re without it, we’ll easily chase them down, even if they do manage to lift off planet.”

  “That’s true, Commander,” said the admiral. “And until we get in and crack the local sensor data net, we can’t be sure what their capabilities are. But that ship came in fast, without warning, and set down before the local military could respond. Even before the government could get off a boosted message to her local allies. If not for a damn free trader captain and her crew, who barely got out of here alive, we might not have even known the Savages were here. So I can’t say for certain they have jump capability, but I’m not prepared to bet against the possibility, sir.”

  Admiral Sulla knew he had delved farther into the details than was called for. A tendency of his of late. But of course, all that was an act. He had achieved his purpose: getting the meeting back on track and taking fire off of Colonel Marks.

  Ogilvie swept away Sulla’s comments. “Regardless of their capability, you are correct about one thing: according to regulations, we need to stay on mission. Though”—he fixed Marks with a steely glare—“I will certainly be pursuing this ma
tter with the arbitrating Coalition body at a later time.” He regained his confident, almost haughty bearing. “I am well aware that our assets aren’t picture-perfect on the field as of this moment. Once operations commence and we get our marines, Centauri crusaders, and the other infantry units attached to the strike force forward and up in front of the support units, then our positioning will be correct for a final assault on the Nest.”

  The general turned and murmured once more to his aide-de-camp.

  The aide did not murmur and instead set up the tactical display to show Phase Two of Operation Warhammer.

  “As you can see… we cross the line of departure here and pick up the flanking support units. By the time we form our line of advance, we’ll still be at least four kilometers from the identified Nest entry point TacAn has targeted for breach. While we can’t gas the subways, a thing I simply will not condone, we can of course nerve-gas the Nest once we set up a control perimeter here.”

  He pointed with an actual riding crop at the digital schematic of the Savage colony ship. Halfway up the rising district of Hilltop, along a narrow street lined with half-crushed buildings, an outer deck hangar had opened up.

  Colonel Marks was about to speak up again, but Admiral Sulla caught his eye and gave a fractional shake of his head. No one noticed what passed between them. They were all staring at the Nest.

  The colony ship, the hulk, was truly a relic out of the past. An ancient lighthugger forty decks high at least, it should have burned up in some celestial miscalculation, or come apart in the gravitic tides of one of the super gas giants of some undiscovered system it wandered into years ago, or settled into decay on some lost planet out toward the galaxy’s edge.

  It had no place here.

  And yet here it had arrived, a threat to the human hyperspace colonies, established while it lurched through the outer darkness. And whenever these abortions showed up, there were, historically and inevitably, only two possible outcomes.

  Either the planetary defenses destroyed the hulks and their post-human inhabitants…

  … or the Savages killed every person in the colony before moving on.

  Total kill. One way or another.

  10

  When the meeting broke up and commanders who’d be working together began to interface, the admiral drifted away from his staff who were busy coordinating naval support for the upcoming operation. He crossed through the crowd in the tactical operations center aboard the troop hangar of the Porter, toward Colonel Marks.

  The colonel saw him coming and said something to Sergeant Major Andres. The sergeant major nodded and moved off, probably to interface with the supply chains aboard the Porter. Now that the Montague could no longer resupply the Twenty-Fifth, they’d need to dip into the Porter’s combat stores. Charge packs for the standard M73 automatic pulse rifle were chief among the most critical of needs if the barely combat-effective unit were to remain operational. Otherwise they’d be using sidearms, demo packs, and snide remarks.

  Never a good combination.

  “Colonel Marks,” said Admiral Sulla formally, glancing from side to side.

  “Admiral,” muttered the colonel.

  “Okay, you’ve said your little piece. I know this looks bad, but you’ve got to give this a chance. Can’t do it the old way.”

  The colonel said nothing.

  “He’s an idiot. I get that. But the Coalition couldn’t form unless they picked the least threatening and least capable person they could find to lead this. They didn’t want another Warren turning absolute dictator. So… he’s an idiot, but he’s our idiot, Colonel.”

  Marks took a deep breath and continued to stare at the admiral. His eyes were cold casual murder.

  But Sulla considered this to be their normal state. More or less. And sometimes he wondered if it was he, Sulla—who’d known the man the longest—who was the only one to see that cold casual murder. Wondered if all the rest of the galaxy saw was just a normal, early middle-aged man, compact, trim, and fit. All business. No mirth. Military.

  He wondered if that was all they saw.

  And how could there ever be mirth, having seen what he’s seen? thought Sulla. Having done what he’s done?

  How?

  “I am doing it your way,” the colonel muttered. “But it sure as hell doesn’t seem like anything other than the same old same old. And a lot of these kids are going to get killed today. You and I both know, if the Savages get a stranglehold on a world, they’ll spread like a virus.”

  “We’re running out of worlds—”

  Sulla caught himself. His voice had been more forceful, more insistent, than he’d wanted it to be. He smoothed his coat and finished without saying what he was going to say.

  There was a long silence. Some of the other officers from the breaking-up meeting may have glanced over as the exchange got a little intense. Or so it seemed.

  The colonel leaned forward and spoke in a low voice.

  “This world is already dead. They…” he said, indicating with a terse nod the staff officers of the supreme Coalition commander, “just don’t know it yet.”

  And then a hubbub that had been rising over near sensors and acquisition grew in volume. Officers were picking up their gear and running for the cargo door of the Porter. Running for their waiting units spread out beneath the Hilltop District.

  11

  Three-Six Cav

  Twenty-Sixth and Park

  For all intents and purposes, Sergeant Greenhill was in command of Fourth Platoon, Charlie Company, Third Battalion, Sixth Troop. The element Colonel Dippel had selected for the recon-in-force to place the drop markers. The company XO was now the commanding officer.

  After handling the wounded—there weren’t many; most had died—and getting a blue-sky report, they’d been ordered to hunker in place at the bottom of the long sloping park that led up to the Hilltop District. It was a perfect golden morning with clouds off to the east. In the distance, up the slope, the behemoth walking mech that had come out from the Savage Nest was still burning, sending up oily plumes of dark smoke to drift off to the west.

  “Look at that!” someone shouted from farther back along the convoy parked in the shade of a silent office tower. Greenhill had ordered everyone to watch their sectors and to stay vigilant—and to stay inside the MTAVs in case the need to roll out on a react fast came down from higher up.

  They were “fast attack, all the way.”

  Or so they barked out each time they saluted a superior officer.

  Someone had been watching the sky. To the south, where the bizarre old dinosaur of a Savage hulk wallowed beside the glittering jewel Hilltop neighborhood that had once been New Vega’s boast to the galaxy, the air around the massive ship was beginning to shimmer and sparkle, all along its flat dirty white exterior.

  Greenhill grabbed his ’nocs from off his chest plate and dialed in on the enigmatic ship.

  His mouth dropped open.

  “It’s a damn drone strike.”

  He touched the comm on the side of his helmet and got a message off to the fleet CIC, alerting them of a possible inbound drone strike. Then he turned to his men.

  “Seal up the vehicles and switch the mounted guns over to internal remote. Right now!”

  Mere seconds later, vicious bat-shaped drones, ceramic white on their tops and shimmering polished metal underneath, slammed into the convoy and filled the skies around the city streets with great dark swarms.

  Windows smashed. The automated guns dialed up and engaged the drones as they came whipping down the street firing small bursts of low-caliber ammunition. Sudden violent sprays of lead smashed into the armored vehicles.

  The Savage drone fire was ineffective. The MTAVs had been designed for conflicts out along the Spilursan frontier where many of the local indigenous races, like the violent wobanki, possessed antiq
uated firearms as their highest military tech.

  But then the drones began to smash directly into the MTAVs and explode. That was where most of the damage was done. Three vehicles cooked off within the first minute.

  Through the smashed safety glass of his MTAV’s front windshield, Greenhill tried to observe what the drones were doing. Those that weren’t smashing into vehicles were circling, as though waiting their turn to exploit some vulnerability.

  And, thought Greenhill to himself, who’d been in a drone strike during the brief Spilursa-Espania Conflict over Tezakan, they’re acquiring more data for a better strike.

  The MTAV, Greenhill knew, had one design flaw. It carried external munitions cases along its rear panels. The containers were bulletproof and blaster-proof and could be deployed outward like shields for the infantry to cover behind when dismounted… but the end of one side of the large box had been left unarmored for some enigmatic design reason. A hit on this panel would cook off all the munitions within, volatile charge packs and demo packs together. Worse, the vehicle’s fuel cells were close by, under the thinly armored skin in this section. They were protected from below in case of mines, which meant the resulting explosion was a shaped detonation that blew through the troop compartment to the rear of the vehicle, usually killing everyone.

  Greenhill had seen it happen before.

  “They tryna figure it out and all,” he muttered to himself.

  And then, as if on cue, one drone streaked away from its holding pattern and whipped straight in at Sergeant Beachum’s vehicle.

  Flying debris and fire went in all directions. Greenhill watched as the driver, the guy with the only chance of escaping a cookoff, struggled from the vehicle without his weapon. His fatigues were on fire in a few places, but he could have rolled on the ground and put those out once he got the mind to stop running.

  The driver managed five steps before another drone, maybe half a meter across and a meter long, slammed straight through his back and came out the front of his chest, dragging his heart and spine out onto the street before fluttering away.