A few streets over, after the interceptors had streaked in and shot up the area, as he heard distant tanks rumbling forward, spraying death across their front arcs in tremendous booms, he found a suitable building. One that might provide a glimpse into the Savage lines. He smashed the glass at the front door and let himself in with little fanfare.
The lobby was dark and quiet. Cool and paneled in rich dark wood. The carpet was plush, and there were big overstuffed leather chairs that would either rot with time or perish in a nuclear fireball if Tyrus Rechs ever showed up and solved problems the way he tended to.
And maybe, he thought, as he began to climb up through the dark stairwells of the building, maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea.
29
Command Tactical Operations Center (TOC)
Coalition Strike Force Warhammer
Fifteen Kilometers to the Rear of Triangle Square
The TOC was jumping. Savage artillery pieces operating from Hilltop had struck the power generator vehicle, wiping out power. The truck was close enough to the TOC that everyone inside was buzzing with the adrenaline from the near-miss. Supreme Coalition Commander Ogilvie was listening to his staff officers and shifting position in the mobile TOC that was supposed to follow the second echelon forces forward.
“Sir,” a staff officer said, his voice tense and his eyes fighting fear. “We need to shift back to the rear. We’re too close to the lines.”
Several more of his staff nodded in support, to the point that Ogilvie sensed an outright rebellion against his command if he didn’t move back. These staff officers weren’t interested in getting killed the way the infantry, armor, engineers, and special forces were currently getting killed trying to take Hilltop.
But the plan—Ogilvie’s plan—called for him to follow the second echelon forward. And the Supreme Commander continued to feel, quite strongly in fact, that the optics of saying something devil-may-care and “fighting on” from closer to the fighting would play well come some future election.
So at the moment, he was undecided.
About everything.
Despite the moment-by-moment wholesale slaughter going down on the streets of New Vega, as far as he was concerned this was all still movement-to-contact. The real battle had yet to begin. But this preparation, this throat-clearing, as he had come to think of it, was not going well. No less than thirty-seven different operations were underway within the Coalition umbrella. And all of them were going badly.
The 247th Sappers out of Epsovulc had disappeared trying to enter the bunker system beneath the old colonial district of Hilltop.
The Spilursan marines from off the Indomitable had missed their LOA and walked into a brutal crossfire halfway up Assault Axis Grand. Their surviving officer, a mere captain of all people, was reporting seventy percent casualties. Ogilvie scowled at the thought. That captain had clearly done something horribly wrong.
The Ninth UW Infantry (Mechanized) had failed to take Triangle Square in the initial push. As had the Second Armor and the Rigelian Mech Lancers. All three of his heaviest assets were now stalled along the Grand Avenue assault corridor.
A special operations unit assigned to knock out the indirect fire atop the anchor in the Savage line had been shot down. Their helicopter took a direct hit and spiraled in somewhere down along Fourth and Commerce. Drone recon confirmed total unit kill.
The list of tragedies, which the general thought of as failures, failures that would be personally attributed to him in the history books, was growing rapidly.
This was not good for his career prospects.
But he coldly appraised his future ambitions, and found they were still intact. The more devastating the battle, the more glory there was to be had when it came time for victory. A not distant part of his mind calculated that a win, in the end, would look even better not despite of, but because of all the casualties.
I know, he hectored himself, I’m a true monster. But it’s not all war. Sometimes it’s politics. And I didn’t make the rules. They were that way before I ever showed up.
So just play the game, Oggie.
Play the game.
Ogilvie held up a hand to the officer who’d pleaded for them to fall back. But before he could speak, an S-3 running overall combat operations for Warhammer entered the circle of huddled officers.
“Sir,” said the S-3, “I need to advise you that we have an open option right now if we’re going to knock out the Nest without resorting to nukes.”
The general raised a droll eye. A look that he hoped said, Oh come now, it’s not that bad… yet.
But the sober look on his heavy-browed staff officer’s face said that it was indeed that bad.
Oh, bother. Staff officers are always so dire. That’s ever their way. The problem with them, the general thought as the man began to lay out the seriousness of the current situation, is that they don’t have vision. They don’t see the grand picture—where all this is leading. And if you don’t have vision, well then, you don’t have optimism, and so the rest is moot.
After all, he reminded himself as the staff officer went on and on about casualty counts on forward units, how do you think I got to where I’m at?
“We can use the bombers to clear the square—if…” said the staff officer with a measured seriousness that communicated that he knew exactly what was in play: lives and careers. “If we pull back our forces now. The Savages might wise up, but our Titan bombers, sir, are carrying Alpha Strike armaments at present. They’ll crater that whole section of the city in one pass. On the other side of that we can bring Strike Force Wrath into play and destroy the Nest on the ground before she bugs out.”
Ogilvie bit his lip and studied the computer-rendered displays of the option he was being presented with.
“Titans, you say….” He said this just for something to say while he bought himself time to think about how this might affect his career. He wasn’t thinking about the legendary UW bombers at all. He was trying to see how authorizing strategic bombing runs within the city limits of New Vega played out politically.
And what he saw was himself in front of a committee trying to explain high civilian casualties. And that was the start of a slippery slope to war criminal status. The next Tyrus Rechs.
“Do we have another option?” he murmured, almost to himself.
No one said anything.
“Option two?” he barked. Knowing what it would be.
The staff officer put the battle board down. He took a deep breath.
“Sir,” he said stiffly. “We pull back and evac the planet. Then we release the nukes Wrath is carrying.”
“Absolutely not!” screamed the general theatrically. “I was sent here to save the planet. Not annihilate it like that bloody Tyrus Rechs! What do you want, for all of us to end up war criminals? And what… millions dead if the survivor counts are right! We’re at nearly fifty percent casualties ourselves. What then—we head back home and say, ‘Sorry, we killed half the force and ended up using the nukes anyway’? Not on my watch! The next one of you that even mentions that option, be aware that I will press field charges and we’ll have you shot for battlefield treason if the fleet JAG can swing it. Or…” He glared around evilly. “I’ll do it myself and face the consequences on the other side of all this.”
He was aware that some spittle was hanging from his lip. He licked it quickly and felt, or rather knew, his face was florid.
The staff officers swallowed hard and looked away, unable to make eye contact with the general.
Good, he thought. Let them be more afraid of me than of the Savages.
“Get me Admiral Sulla on the comm.”
Staff hustled to make this happen immediately.
Astonishingly, the S-3 stepped forward. Alone. Not one other staff officer at his side. Ogilvie’s mouth opened for a verbal scourging that would
be remembered long after he was gone, when the men in this room—his protégés—were in the twilight of their own careers. But the S-3 spoke first.
“Sir, respectfully, I must ask what you intend so that I can send alerts for change of mission to the units forward.”
The general straightened his battle dress uniform, folded his hands over his knee, and fixed the officer with a grave look. Then he smiled pleasantly. Once and quickly.
“Why, dear boy, I intend to use Wrath and the bombers in tandem. We’ll pin the Savage forces forward and… crater them… as you so eloquently put it. Then Wrath will hit the Nest at the same time. Within the hour we’ll have solved this mess, and by dark we’ll be in sweep-up mode. Problem solved. Without nukes.”
The S-3’s face brightened. “Excellent, sir. Shall I send the orders for our forces to fall back?”
“Oh, no. We mustn’t do that.”
“Sir?”
“Broadcasting a change-of-mission warning ordering the forward units back is the height of folly if the Savages have broken in on our traffic, which is highly likely given the rate of mission failures in ongoing operations. They cannot find out about the Titan Alpha Strike or they’ll scurry back down into their holes. Sweep-up would be hell, costing far more casualties in the long run.”
The S-3 stared at his commanding officer in horror. But he said nothing for several tense moments. And rightly so: this was no war to lose a career over. “To be clear, sir, we will be unleashing the strike Danger Close to forward elements?”
Danger Close. That was an understatement.
Ogilvie nodded tersely. “It’s for the best.”
30
Carrier Defiant
Task Force Wrath
Outer Edges of the Vega System
Admiral Sulla regretted the time away from the CIC, though it had been necessary. He’d needed to attend the briefing with Ogilvie’s commanders on the ground, and felt it was equally important to visually inspect the task force with a fly-by in the assault frigate Carruthers. But even these short engagements, followed by a flight off the planet and then a quick micro-jump out to the task force, had taken time he didn’t have. Time in which the entire operation seemed to be going to hell planetside.
And now, as he walked into the combat information center at the heart of the massive United Worlds carrier, he received an alert that General Ogilvie wanted comm immediately.
The first officer of the Defiant couldn’t control the roll of his eyeballs at this latest demand from their prima donna supreme commander. Sulla gave the man a look that reaffirmed his position that rank was to be respected, if not always the person on whom the rank was pinned.
The chastised officer nodded and patched the comm through to the digital sand table currently showing the developing battle on Vega.
On the board below Admiral Sulla’s gaze were a lot of red enemy assets surrounding Coalition blue. The picture did not look good at all. Real-time updates from the Explorer, a scout-class United Worlds corvette holding at sub-orbit over the battlefield, showed an operation turning from dire to grim.
Sulla studied the continental map. The thing that bothered him the most was that they were having a hard time locking down a location on those Savage interceptors that had jumped the initial insertion fleet. Attacking from orbit into atmo, no less—which was a tech not currently available to the Coalition fighter craft and specifically the premier military United Worlds fleet. The most ancient of all the starfaring navies. And still the most powerful.
Atmospheric fighters and bombers had to be taken in by carrier, just as the Indom had done during the combat jump. She was now on station and out to sea at a kilometer above sea level, running flight ops against the Savages protecting the Nest.
And yet there had been no sign of those Savage interceptors since…
“Sulla!” shouted Ogilvie good-naturedly over the comm. As though they were merely old friends catching up, and not commanders waging a losing battle about to go seriously sideways. The noise of the operations APCC sounded in the background.
“Supreme Commander Ogilvie.”
“Good, good. Well… we’re having a hard time of cracking this nut. Heavy casualties.”
“So I see…” murmured Sulla, turning away from his command staff hovering around the digital sand table.
He’d had higher hopes for this operation than the way this was going down. Many in the galaxy were ignoring the Coalition and planetary forces’ successes in driving Savage hulks away. There was fear at play. And that fear was leading the galaxy to think that perhaps Tyrus Rechs and his ruined world tactics were the right way to deal with the Savage menace. A convincing victory on a planet as infected as Vega would have gone a long way toward putting an end to that reckless and unsustainable strategy.
But something had gone horribly wrong here.
These Savages weren’t shoving off like they were supposed to. Like they always did after their raids. Loot as much of the planet as they could before the Coalition, or whatever body, could get a force together to stop them, and then head off once more into the interstellar dark in their nightmare hulks, taking their prisoners with them.
Slaves.
And perhaps worse.
Loved ones simply disappeared forever. The Savage ships, massive things, were often never heard from again. Maybe they found a home. Maybe they were destroyed by a stellar anomaly. Or maybe their ancient ships finally came apart at the seams.
Who really knew?
Sulla knew.
He’d been on one for fifteen years.
Few people still living knew that. Just a handful. Including the two other slaves who’d survived.
“So, what I’m thinking is that I see an opportunity here, Admiral,” said Ogilvie, his eyes glinting.
“And what would that be?” asked Admiral Sulla, committing to nothing. Part of the deal he’d struck with the power brokers of the loosely confederated worlds was letting this idiot run things. The logical choice would have been someone else. A specific someone else. But that came with problems Sulla would have been unable to navigate.
And Sulla ever worked behind the scenes to make things happen as a combined effort. Because it had to be that way.
“I admit… it may,” said General Ogilvie after clearing his throat, “look bad from Explorer’s sensor feed. But examined in another light, there’s a moment of opportunity here for us to seize the reins.”
“Let’s hear it then, General,” said the admiral a bit testily.
“I’m sending in the bombers,” announced Ogilvie. “Full Alpha. Coordinated. All the bells and whistles. Savages are committed to our line. No civvies on the streets. Intelligence believes the survivors are bunkered, or… well, I’ll be blunt here—that they’re already inside the Nest. With civvies are out of the way for all intents and purposes, we realize the Alpha Strike, and then bring in Wrath to hit the Nest now. Immediately. Go with Beta Two targeting solution. Cripple the Nest’s engines and establish a cordon denying liftoff.”
There was a long pause. Static in the comm across the great distance of a solar system. Which itself was nothing more than an island in the dark sea of the galaxy.
The hypercomm was still years from being a reality. The leading, bleeding edge of intergalactic communication tech was tachycomm. Boosted quantum. Which meant it could feel like real-time at this solar distance… but it wasn’t. There was lag. And across the void between the stars, it was like sending an ancient Pony Express rider.
It was during that pause that Admiral Sulla considered the general’s proposal. That the general would pull his troops back before that strike was a given, meaning Sulla would have to determine what the true timetable of “immediately” truly was.
“That seems a reasonable plan, I agree. When will your troops commence withdrawal? ”
This pause seemed lo
nger than the last. Perhaps the distance between them. The mechanics of quantum.
Or…
“Troop withdrawals are already underway. I need you to jump in… just under forty-seven minutes. Can you do it?”
The admiral looked at the CIC clock. Then the sand table. The represented death still proceeding at an industrialized pace.
And still he said nothing.
The plan had been to wait until the Savages lifted off before engaging the hulk with a naval task force. Task Force Wrath. Wait until the Savages had removed themselves from the planet. Less chance of contamination and infection. Less chance of the Savages releasing whatever voodoo they might have cooked up in the dark.
This route, by contrast, would destroy much of that jewel of a city. Though the planet would at least be spared. All in all, it was something halfway toward the Tyrus Rechs solution.
Which would make some people happy.
What was being suggested by the desperate general, planetside and on the ground, wasn’t the plan. But plans went out the door the moment the shooting started. Always had. Always would. And in the end, it would still end up proving Sulla’s point. Rechs’s strategy of using trigger-nukes to destabilize and ruin entire planets at the atmospheric level was not necessary. It needed to stop. And Sulla hoped what was about to happen would convince the bullheaded Rechs of just that.
“Agreed,” he said. “Starting the jump clock for forty-six minutes to atmospheric insertion with Wrath. Stand by.”
31
Team Ranger
First Bank of New Vega, Triangle Square
The comms still hadn’t come back online as Martin and Colonel Marks started assaulting the Savages embedded on the roof of the old bank. Firing short controlled bursts after knocking out two positions with tossed frags, the colonel and the point man, taking sectors, advanced across the wide smooth rooftop above the battle. They reached the edge of the roof and began shooting down the Savage indirect fire teams absorbed with annihilating the Coalition forces on the streets below.
Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars Page 14