The badly executed Titan bomb run had dropped ordnance all over the Coalition rear and on some forward operating units, producing geysers of flame leading all the way up the hill. The ground shook violently for several seconds after the strike. Trembling before fading at last into a dull, low-grade resonance. But none of that interrupted the detachment’s work of acquire, load, and fire. Rinse and repeat.
What did stop the fire missions was the sudden lack of requests coming in. They just blinked out on the fire control computer that had been set up at the center of the gun battery.
“Makaffie,” Sergeant Greenhill said, tapping his comm as he approached the guns. “Why aren’t we being sent new targets? What’s going on?”
“TOC control might be down,” said the shirtless Makaffie as they clustered around it, dirty and sweating. “Or forward observers took a hit and all missions are offline until solution integrity can be reconfirmed. Dunno?”
“Maybe they’re all dead,” said Curts, staring at the plumes of smoke and flames rising before them as buildings pitched and fell and Savage interceptors downed Titan bombers and Phantoms in deadly aerial fighting. “It looks bad, man.”
“No,” said Greenhill, shaking his head. “That can’t happen.”
But then Task Force Wrath jumped into the skies above New Vega City. A big war ship and her two escorts followed by a massive United Worlds carrier and her group.
“Don’t matter now!” someone shouted in that tense moment that hung between triumph and whatever the state of the actual battle was. From back here, it didn’t look like things were going too well at all. But the fleet above would change all that. “They show up and the war’s over!”
Which seemed right. A done deal as it were. An entire task force against one Savage hulk still on the ground. No contest.
All the men standing around the battery stood back to watch the lead battle cruiser engage Objective Nest. There was shouting and whoops as the powerful ship-buster SSMs streaked out from the lead war ship, aiming down and forward, racing in toward their defenseless target on the ground a few kilometers to the south.
That was how it seemed. At that moment.
When the SSMs exploded before reaching their target, a few of the men groaned like naughty children whose fun had been suddenly ruined. But an ominous silence fell across the battery as they watched to see what would happen next.
“They gonna target the Nest and start firing,” Greenhill mumbled to himself, almost willing it to be so. But who knew if friendly troops were that far forward? Battlefield intel had been silent for the last hour. Drones were down. They’d just been firing blind missions, trusting the coordinates and targets they’d been given.
“Oh!”
It was Curts who first shouted when the three massive Savage hulks showed up in atmosphere. When the survivors of the Three-Six Armored Cav stood witness to history.
The first ship looked like a massive low mountain ringed by a wide outer plane, an upside-down city hanging underneath the mountain’s gentle slope. All of it matte-gray steel. That was an incredible sight.
The ship on its heels was a kilometers-long tube with a central disc. A massive blister forward of the spine looked to be some kind of command and control structure. At the rear, a wide block of ancient engines thrust the long ship through the atmosphere.
The third ship, almond-shaped on its top half, was constructed of the same white hyper-mold ceramic as the Nest. Its bottom hemisphere was shelved in decks and small cities all along its massive length.
Every one of these ships was a leviathan compared to the tiny Coalition task force that seemed to have been dwarfed right out of existence.
The massive Savage hulks moved at an incredibly high rate of speed. That’s what they gotta do to avoid smashing into the planet, thought Greenhill, who’d always found starships fascinating things. Due to their goliath-like size, it seemed as though they were pushing slowly through the atmosphere, forging ahead in one pass over the battlefield. But in reality, they were moving very, very fast.
It was the grounded hulk that fired first. The Nest. A drone swarm erupted from its hull, like a hundred thousand ravens had suddenly taken flight. They raked the side of the Campeche, and the Espanian frigate exploded from stem to stern.
Greenhill felt as though he should give orders. Get the men into the vehicles and… do something. But they all just stood there, rooted in fear and wonder, unable to take their eyes away from the awful spectacle playing out in the skies.
The big half-almond-shaped hulk opened up with a weapon system that was nothing like a pulse or blaster. Massive rail guns spewed forth shadowy projectiles. The ghostly images of super-kinetic shots rocketed forth from the bow as the ship closed in on an intercept for the lead Coalition group. Four shots in all.
One missed.
The rest broke the Spilursan battle cruiser Omari in half.
“We in trouble,” Sergeant Greenhill said.
39
Carrier Defiant
Task Force Wrath
In the moments before the Omari was fatally holed in several critical decks, exploding at an altitude of three thousand meters over the western edge of Hilltop, Admiral Sulla had high hopes for the Defiant’s interceptor squadron now making runs against the new Savage hulks.
The pilots were calling in direct hits on the underbellies of the giant vessels, and one explosion—which appeared to critically affect the long slender ship with the massive disc at its center—indicated that despite their size, these beasts could still be hurt with conventional weapons.
Which was a thing that was known, but somehow also in doubt. As though the arrival of the new hulks had swept away everything once held as fact when it came to the Savages.
Previous engagements had shown that SSMs were sufficient to take down a Savage lighthugger. And even though Objective Nest had been able to jam the first strike from Omari and her escorts with a powerful electromagnetic pulse, that didn’t necessarily mean they could pull that trick all day long.
The bombers on the lower hangar deck, seated in the belly of the carrier, were being reloaded with more SSMs as fast as possible. The armaments section chief was saying eight minutes until combat drop.
They would make short work of this little trick the Savages were attempting to pull.
Except… Admiral Sulla reasoned as he studied the tactical display… this is a trap.
Doctrine indicated Savages didn’t work together. Didn’t even communicate with one another. Perhaps couldn’t. They were as alien to one another as they were to their distant hyperdrive relatives. But doctrines changed.
And this was no lucky-timed jump. No. The Savages had purposefully dropped a ship on New Vega, waited patiently for a Coalition strike that had taken six weeks to get here, and then jumped in with four additional Savage hulks that seemed to be working together.
There was nothing accidental, or lucky, about any of this.
“Target Three Zulu firing… something… sir.”
Three Zulu was the identifier that had been assigned to the half-almond-shaped Savage hulk currently bearing down on the carrier.
“What is it?” barked Sulla.
A second later everyone in the CIC had a pretty good idea of exactly what the Savages had developed out there in the long dark between suns and worlds.
“Most definitely a rail gun system, Admiral. Massive proportions,” stated the matter-of-fact TacAn officer in the tense darkness of the CIC.
Three shots slammed into the battle-hardened Omari and broke her in half. She erupted in such sudden fury that it seemed impossible to imagine survivors. Her burning remains plowed into a distant section of New Vega City.
Two ships in two minutes, thought Sulla.
And so far each Savage ship had shown itself to have some kind of massive end-game offensive weapon capable of knock
ing out an entire ship in one strike. But different designs, each based on that Savage tribe’s brand of long-researched tech. Suggesting that this wasn’t some particularly large Savage colony that had lifted off together to face the galaxy in unison.
“Interceptors concentrating fire on Two Zulu.”
Two Zulu was the long-spined ship with the central disc.
“Stand by to jump now! Emergency escape protocols in effect on my order. Broadcast to fleet!” Sulla shouted so that there was no mistake about the order, or its urgency.
“Powering up jump batteries…” someone called out. No one dissented. No one questioned the decision.
“Rally calc locked in. Go for jump.”
“Recall squadrons?”
“Negative recall,” shouted Sulla over the chaotic din developing across the command deck. “Tell them to make for the forward airfield established prior to combat operations. Or link up with Indomitable.”
He knew some would call him a coward. But they could do that after he’d saved the carrier. No carrier meant no fighters.
If the Savages had to keep moving through the atmosphere to maintain altitude, then they couldn’t hold the field for long. Or at least, so Sulla gambled. They’d have to orbit in hard atmo or climb out beyond the Lagrange to avoid the gravity well. Either way they weren’t sticking around over New Vega City unless they were intent on crash-landing. Which meant that by simply jumping away with what remained of the task force, Sulla could return within a few hours in order to effect rescue operations. But sticking around—that would just get his ships destroyed by whatever other superweapons the Savages were keeping back for just the right moment.
As of right now, it was clear they couldn’t stand up to the Savages’ firepower.
The reserve jump batteries released their energy and powered up the massive hyperdrive that would hurl Defiant from the battle. Ahead and all around, escort ships were violating protocol and leaping away before the carrier. All heading toward the emergency rally point. All desperate to save themselves now that the order to retreat had been given.
Tyrus Rechs had been right.
The planet would need to be nuked straight into the Stone Age.
It was the only way to be sure.
40
Team Ranger
First Bank of New Vega
A massive piece of one of the destroyed starships, burning and coming apart as it fell toward the city of New Vega, barely missed smashing into the First Bank the soldiers of the Spilursan Light had been defending. The near-miss rattled the building and sent the Team Ranger survivors behind cover as new waves and dust and debris flew down the streets and through shattered windows.
As far as Colonel Marks knew, they were the most forward unit that day. A day now turning to night.
He watched from the massive gap where a section of the bank had been blown in. The entire building looked like a giant block of swiss cheese now, but in testament to those early colonists who’d built it to defend their hoarded new wealth, it had held up.
Out there, he could see one of the massive stories-deep craters that had formed after the GeeBee strike erupted through the city streets and down into the transit and maintenance tunnels. What remained of Grand Avenue was littered with dead Savages and dead Coalition troops from any number of worlds.
And in an odd counterpoint to it all, the city lights had come on where they had not been destroyed. Like some weird irony playing itself out now that the city had been turned into a deserted graveyard. As if declaring the war over and a return to business as usual.
The bloody play was finished and the house lights had come on.
Sergeant Major Andres put a hand to his ear, listening to a flash comm transmission. “It’s the Porter,” he said, relaying the message in real time for those who’d lost their comm abilities in the maelstrom they’d just survived. “Sayin’ all Coalition survivors gotta fall back and evacuate. Assault frigate liftin’ off with whoever shows up. Got a little less than two hours.”
The colonel grunted.
“That’s thirty clicks, sir,” said the sergeant major. “We won’t make that no-how.”
They had three wounded. And eight men who could carry.
That was all that was left of the Spilursan Light he’d cobbled together into Team Ranger.
Marks shook his head, thinking. “Try to contact the LT at Delta and tell him to move the crawlers forward to the northern edge of Hilltop. We’ll try to link up.”
“If they’re still there.”
Marks nodded. “If they’re still there. We might miss the Porter, but they’ll send in other ships to pull us out.”
“Hmmm…” said the sergeant major, like he didn’t totally believe that what was supposed to happen would actually happen, but would accept his orders nonetheless.
“Everybody else,” Marks said, pivoting to make eye contact with his battered and bloody surviving soldiers, “get out the carry slings and divvy up the wounded. Martin, can you still take point? We’ll move back through our lines following streets we knew we were in control off before all the intel went down. We’ll probably meet more survivors.”
Specialist Martin, sitting on his helmet with a bandage wrapped around his skull, stood, wobbling slightly. “Good to go, sir.”
Everyone was injured in some way.
But the seriously injured stood out. Immobile. Unconscious. One battlefield amputation. It wasn’t the enemy, but the explosive-propelled debris from the errant bombing strike that had done most of the damage.
Marks was surveying the abandoned streets when Sergeant Major Andres joined him at his side. “Got Delta on comm, sir. They was a little beat up, but said they’d move on position.”
“Good.”
Andres looked out onto the night. “Weird about them streetlights, huh, sir?” He seemed to be just looking for something to say in the eerie silence that had fallen over a battlefield that only an hour ago had been turned up past eleven.
The lights shone down, sometimes at odd angles from those lamp posts that had been bent and twisted from the ravaging fight. Each one bringing into focus some grisly scene of death beneath its light. Ruined tanks, burnt or mangled men, and dead Savages everywhere. Sporadic fires burned like bright flares in the night, and the smoke from the fires had made the orange streetlights misty in the early evening twilight. Like something out of an ancient novel about the end of the world.
“Modern city, modern tech,” replied the colonel.
New Vega didn’t need a soul alive to keep working. If all the Savages and Coalition forces up and left the planet forever, the city would keep up its automated rhythm, indifferent as to whether it would ever again be appreciated. Predestined to perform its task until it could no longer.
That was not unlike how Marks felt about himself. Keep fighting. Keep moving. Until you can’t do it any longer.
Ten minutes later they had the wounded in carry slings and were making their way to the rear. They used the ruined street as long as they could, then detoured through a building that miraculously remained untouched by all the chaos—as though it had been away during the fighting and had only just now returned to ease back into its foundations. But inside, that illusion that some part of this city had escaped the terror of the day vanished. The team found a dead Britannian commando in the expensive lobby, shot through, bled out, and huddled into himself.
“Died a while ago,” said Martin after checking the body.
And then they moved on through the building and out onto a loading dock in a narrow alley.
“Let’s hold up here,” Colonel Marks ordered. “Martin, let’s take a look up this alley.”
The colonel and Martin reconned the alley and found a way back toward what had been Coalition-held streets. The hulking ruins of burned-out tanks, holed and gutted by Savage anti-armor weaponry, stood
like smoking ghosts.
“Probably hit during the battle,” whispered Martin as they scanned the dark spaces near and far. “Then the GeeBees blew out the fires. They do that. Saw it a lot on Huando.”
The colonel said nothing and led them back to the group waiting on the loading dock.
Those had most likely been de Macha’s tanks, and somewhere within the remains his blackened and charred body was probably lying on the deck of one of those heat-twisted behemoths.
De Macha had been a good officer.
A good soldier.
A few streets farther on, as they came down off the district called Hilltop, they linked up with more units moving to the rear. Streaming soldiers, sometimes in one and twos, sometimes in whole groups that seemed like they could have been cohesive units until you looked close and saw all the different gear and fatigues, were shuffling through the rubble and ruin, avoiding the dead and sometimes stumbling onto body parts and trying to force themselves to forget what they’d stepped on as they made their way to safety.
The colonel thought about what he’d seen. And what it meant. He’d watched much of the sky battle go down from almost directly below it. And though he hadn’t been as stunned as everyone else when the four Savage hulks showed up, he’d been surprised. A little. But in a different way. Something other than what everyone else experienced. Finally seeing the proof of the thing he’d suspected all along.
“Had to happen,” he muttered to himself as they crossed through a ruined parking lot, the march thrusting him further into self-reflection. Artillery fire had struck the building that watched over the lot, and it had collapsed in on itself.
“What’s that, sir?” asked the sergeant major. “What had to happen?”
In their short relationship as commander and senior NCO, the colonel had not been given to long conversations, loose talk, idle chatter, or much communication beyond the business at hand. But now, lost in thought, stunned like the rest, Marks spoke about what was on his mind.
Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars Page 18