As though all of what had just happened, had happened at some other time, to someone else not the survivors retreating back to the empty stadium.
The Porter had departed hours before, and so far no other ship had come in to take up position at Objective Rio, the original insertion LZ. A few crawlers, including the one assigned to Headquarters Company, Twenty-Fifth Spilursan, had moved forward through the streets to link up with their particular elements. The colonel was supervising the loading of walking wounded into the Headquarters Crawler when he spotted the woman.
She was blonde, her hair cut short, and wore green military overalls. A worn ruck was slung over one shoulder, and despite having been through it all, despite the dirt and grime and smoke that streaked her sculpted features, she looked determined. Maybe only because she was tall and beautiful and drew attention. Everyone else, even the colonel’s own troops, bore the look of abject defeat.
The wounded moaned as they were loaded aboard the vehicles, and what meds were available were used to comfort them as best they could.
The colonel nodded at the woman.
“Think she could be one of those… human IEDs?” murmured the sergeant major beside him.
The sergeant major had been giving the colonel a casualty count update as more and more of the unit linked up or was found. Captain de Macha, to the colonel’s surprise, had survived the battle, though his tanks had all been lost. He owed his survival to Lieutenant Maydoon, who himself was killed in action rescuing the tanks from an overwhelming Savage flank attack, leaving behind a wife and child back on Spilursa. That last detail had been included in the report at the insistence of Captain de Macha.
“I don’t think so,” said the colonel, eyeing the woman. He felt overwhelmingly fatigued. Like it was time to let down for now, or so the argument his body was making indicated. They’d been going at it since many long hours before the dawn insertion. It had already been a long day, and there was no end in sight.
He didn’t mind that though, and he shrugged off the urge to let down with the ease of much practice. He’d had plenty of these kinds of days in his time. And there was still much to be done to get these troops off the planet—and to finish his mission.
“Well, I guess she looks like one of us. Ya want me to see what her story is, sir?”
The colonel shook his head. “Negative. Get these wounded aboard and head back toward Objective Rio. I’ll see what she needs.”
The colonel left the sergeant major and crossed the distance to the newcomer.
“What unit you with?” he asked as he approached.
She was sitting on a rock. One of the soldiers had given her some rations. She was eating them as though she hadn’t eaten in days.
Marks held out his canteen, and she took it and drank gustily.
“What unit are you?” she asked between bites, not bothering to look at the colonel.
“Twenty-Fifth from Spilursa.”
She swallowed hard. As though her throat wasn’t used to so much food. Then she burped a little and gulped at some more water.
“I’m from here, Colonel,” she said as she took another bite. “New Vega City. Just wondering if you were one of ours.”
The colonel said nothing and sat down on a piece of fractured concrete opposite her.
“You’re not from here,” he said plainly as he pulled out one of his ration bars. “That doesn’t bother me, but let’s not start off with lies. And besides…” He waved his hand haphazardly as he tore at the seal of the bar. “Does whatever you’re covering up really matter anymore? It’s all gone.”
She stopped chewing.
“How do you know I’m not from here?”
“You called me Colonel, so you recognize rank. You sit like you went to Annapolis-Houston despite the clear indications that you’re starving to death. Or at least I think they used to call it Annapolis-Houston. They used to. A long time ago,” he finished awkwardly.
She took another bite and chewed slowly, watching him. “A long time ago. Yeah. They called it that, sir.”
“Oh.” The colonel took a bite of his own ration bar. Waiting for her to go on.
“Captain Ivy Davis, commander of the frigate Raven.”
The colonel smiled like none of that meant anything to him. “Raven wasn’t attached to the strike force. Were you here when the Savage invasion began?”
She smiled and didn’t mean it in the least. The gesture never reached her striking green eyes.
“So is that a yes, or classified UW voodoo and you can’t tell me because you’re pretty sure I don’t have the clearance?”
“Classified,” she replied bluntly.
“Figured as much. Well, Spilursa and Earth are on friendly terms last time I checked, so you can fall in with us and we’ll try to get you back to your people.”
She thought about that.
“Fine,” she said after a moment, watching him as she took another bite of her rations. Then she added, “Thank you. I appreciate that. I really do. It’s just been…”
And then she stopped.
Colonel Marks stood and dusted off his hands on his fatigues. He picked up his pulse rifle and checked it. He’d consumed his whole protein bar in just a few bites. Like every military man, he ate faster than most cared to notice.
He started to go, then turned back to her. “A hard five weeks, give or take?”
She said nothing, but the look of guilt in her eyes told him everything he needed to know.
Then he was gone, back to his troops and following the crawler to the rear. Back to the stadium.
Maybe there’d be another ship to pull the survivors off this rock.
Maybe.
43
Assault Frigate Chang
Objective Rio
The Chang had come in toward midnight. Contact with Task Force Wrath had been reestablished beforehand and comm with the Defiant’s CIC indicated Admiral Sulla himself was going to attempt to bring the Chang in during an orbital window when the Savage hulks weren’t over the area of operation. The scout ship Explorer had been lost in the first assault by the hulks, but some satellite and drone recon was still active and available.
The hours before the Chang arrived were tense. Every hour, almost on the hour, one of the massive, almost otherworldly Savage hulks would cross the sky above like some high-altitude wraith drifting ghostlike through the night. The strange and ominous howl of its engines drifting down from the tens of thousands of meters it was running at washed across the graveyard city.
“They can’t maintain any kind of altitude,” one of the commanders said during an ad hoc organization of forces still on the ground. He then went on to tell everyone about the suspicions that repulsor tech was one of the few things the Savages hadn’t perfected in their long crossings.
“They’ve got to keep circling the planet in low orbit, so they’ve broken formation to keep a presence over us at least once every hour,” he explained.
And that did seem to be the case. It was a different ship every hour, always one of the three smaller vessels. The biggest did not appear even once.
“Those things were never meant for orbital insertion,” said the supply captain, who seemed to know a lot about Savages. “They’re almost forty kilometers long! They’d collapse of their own weight if they actually surrendered to gravity and set down. Probably.”
Colonel Marks knew the truth of that.
He’d lived fifteen years on one of those ships and had barely explored it. From what he could remember, anyway. That was a long time ago.
Other surviving officers still fit for duty had gathered at the Twenty-Fifth Light’s Headquarters Crawler to figure out who was in charge and what was going to happen next. There was only one other colonel left: a staff officer who’d been badly wounded and was expected to die. That put Colonel Marks in charge f
or the time being.
Contact was finally reestablished with Strike Force Wraith, and it was decided by Admiral Sulla that the Chang, under-crewed, would come in and try to pull what remained of the task force off the planet in one go. Then what was left of the fleet would jump for home, and they’d let the higher-ups sort out this mess and next steps.
For the next hour the wounded and the details assigned to get them aboard the Chang as fast as possible were sussed out. A lot of equipment was being left behind and sensitive systems were being demoed as evac preparations got underway.
The Chang, a boxy assault frigate with a central bridge built right into the superstructure, came down through the atmosphere and drifting smoke fast. Diving through the skies after a calculated pass by one of the Savage ships. And just as quickly, appearing from out of the night sky all around the city, friendly United Worlds interceptors still operating off the carrier Indomitable hidden somewhere out to sea took up positions to escort the assault frigate to the LZ.
Everyone held their breath, watching the landing lights of the big ship come on at the last second and wondering if the Savage Nest was going to shotgun a broadside of drones into the Chang as she made her approach.
Which would most likely seal the fate of the survivors, stranding them on the planet for what little time remained to them.
But that didn’t happen, and soon the Chang was dropping her four cyclopean ground struts and coming in to hover over the shell-riddled stadium that had once occupied pride of place between the industrial districts and the suburban living areas of northern New Vega City.
Once the big ship was down, medical teams poured forth as though coming out under fire. Soldiers and wounded were quickly moved forward and onto the loading deck as crew chiefs swarmed the ship checking for structural damage and getting ready for a rapid departure.
What those on the ground didn’t know, didn’t expect, hadn’t been told, was that the admiral himself was aboard the Chang. And Admiral Sulla stepped off the frigate and paid a visit to Colonel Marks just as the colonel was shucking out of his bloodstained fatigues near two cargo containers he’d had loaded aboard the crawler before the operation had begun.
One was large.
The other was about the size of a man.
The sergeant major and a few of the men, including the woman, watched the colonel from nearby and just figured he was an officer doing that officer thing where they always looked ready to lead. Swapping out the ruined and bloody uniform for a clean one. As though combat operations were likely to resume at any moment and he was expected to be ready.
The engines of the Chang were kept live and howling in case one of the Savage ships appeared overhead and started firing.
The admiral swept into the area behind the crawler, his naval trench wrapped about him like a tightly pulled shroud. His security team took up overwatch positions along a rough perimeter of which he was the center.
“Need you aboard now, Colonel,” Sulla said.
The colonel shook his head and returned to the case he was busy opening. The one about the size of a man.
“Negative. Job’s not done. We did it your way. Now I’ll do it mine.”
The admiral opened his mouth like he was about to say something, thought better of it, then unconsciously glanced toward his security team.
“Don’t, Casper,” said the colonel, sensing what the admiral was considering.
No one, not even the security team, had ever heard Admiral Corrin Sulla called by the name Casper.
“There’s no other way today,” said the admiral through gritted teeth as he looked around. Clearly, he was not happy about something. “Not even your way. They’re on full alert, or whatever passes for full alert for them. You know that… Colonel. They’ll know you’re coming. Get on the ship and we’ll figure out an alternative.”
The sergeant major and the woman, along with a few soldiers, had come closer to listen in on the showdown between the two officers. The cav company who’d been assigned as a rear guard was busy hustling the last of the survivors aboard.
“Disagree,” the colonel said. He nodded toward the Chang. Engines hovering. Everything about her said they were ready to get up into the night sky and through the wispy stratus and off this rock forever. Never coming back again.
“How so?” asked the admiral, without indicating in the least that he actually wanted to hear an answer.
“Once you lift off, they’ll think they’ve won,” said the colonel. “I might catch a few with this.”
He opened the big cargo container.
“Uh…” said the sergeant major as soldiers began to swear and back away from the large case. “Is that what I think it is, sir?”
The colonel ignored him.
Everyone had seen what an old-school trigger-nuke device looked like. Every time Tyrus Rechs, war criminal or hero, depending on whom you asked, used one, the news networks filled their show segments with information about the highly illegal weapons. Banned weapons. Weapons of mass destruction, in the purest sense of the words.
Doomsday weapons.
“Now wait a minute…” began Andres slowly, putting two and two together. “That’s… your way? Sir, are you telling me, sir,” he said, getting excited. “Are you telling me that you’re… that you’re him? In the flesh? All along, sir! Are you telling me that?”
No one said anything.
Then the admiral muttered a curse.
“Soldiers,” he said, making a bitter face. “Meet Tyrus Rechs.”
Part Two
44
The admiral cleared everyone away from Rechs as he began to skin into his armor. But they didn’t go too far away, and in fact still more gathered to watch as word that Tyrus Rechs, the Tyrus Rechs, was on site and getting ready to go his own name on the Savages. The name of the infamous war criminal had become synonymous with excessive destruction in the collective zeitgeist of pop culture and on the never-ending bleat of news streams.
Some who’d been ready to evacuate, even wounded, had suddenly asked to disembark the Chang in order to help any way they could. Casts were cut, painkillers popped, and sedatives used in high doses to restrain those hovering between critical and last rites. Others from a variety of militaries merely grabbed a ruck and whatever rifle they could get their hands on, tightened their bandages, took two tabs of Chill, and left the ship despite being threatened with every possible military punishment.
But now Rechs and Sulla were talking alone. Or rather Sulla was hectoring the infamous legend. Practically shouting in Rechs’s face. Which was not something most citizens in the galaxy could dare to do and go on living. But the admiral and Tyrus Rechs had a history no one knew about.
“You brought one of those damn trigger-nukes along?” Sulla shouted. “Tyrus! We were supposed to try it this way in good faith.”
“I did,” said Rechs as he shrugged into the old armor he’d taken off a Savage ship years and years before. High-tech stuff the best R&D in the galaxy had never quite been able to match. It stood up to blaster fire most of the time and shrugged off projectiles with ease. Jump-jet capable. A defensive shield that could power up and deflect damage for short periods, rated up to a direct hit from a nuclear weapon. Physics was another story, though. Physics didn’t care how rated your armor was. It would pulp you all the same.
And then there was the helmet. One of the most advanced tactical HUDs humankind had ever produced. Although it wasn’t necessarily totally human in the original sense of the word. More shadowy science of a particular group of post-humankind that had gone off and touched the data void known as the Quantum Palace. A place listed on most stellar charts as the last known position of a number of disappeared ships.
And that bunch were long dead. Thanks to Sulla and Rechs and a detachment of Martian light infantry. All that was a long time ago.
“And now yo
u’re going to… what?” asked Sulla incredulously as Rechs pulled his helmet from the shipping clamshell it had been stowed in, hidden within the crawler. Alongside the banned weapon of mass destruction called a trigger-nuke. “Waltz into the Nest and set it off? Ruin another planet? Y’know, we’re running out of those. There are only so many conditionally habitable ones left. Zero viability for the combined galactic population is actually a thing again, Rechs. All that for just one ship?”
“Well,” began Rechs. “I’m hoping for one of the other ships too. Coming in to assist once they recognize the threat. That’d be somethin’, wouldn’t it, Cas? Two-for-one special.”
Rechs had tried a smile. But he was not a man to whom humor came naturally. That he was trying this unfamiliar tack spoke of how much he respected the admiral, and what their long history meant.
Sulla saw this and looked off, his face storm-cloud dark.
Rechs pulled the old hand cannon that he’d kept at his side for ages. A massive sidearm that fired fifty-caliber slugs on full auto, stabilized and auto-fed by the armor’s impressive internal systems. He checked the initial load and holstered it on his plated thigh.
“Listen…” said Rechs, coming to stand in front of his old friend who wouldn’t see him. “I get that you’re pissed, Cas. But maybe it’s not at me. Maybe it’s about the fact that you had a good plan, and it was poorly executed through no fault of your own. Where’s Ogilvie?”
Sulla said nothing for a moment because his oldest friend had just scored a direct hit and made his point in a bare minimum of words: Where’s Ogilvie.
Typical, he hissed inwardly. So he just continued to stare off at the dark and ruined city and the fires burning out of control.
Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars Page 20