Battleborn

by Andrew Beery

  I smiled and reached down to give the man a hand up.

  “You still haven’t told me who you are.”

  “We’re the Honor Brigade. We fight for Queen and slave.”

  ***

  Having only met Sergeant Jesús a scant few minutes ago, I wasn’t willing to trust him just yet with either a radio or weapon, but I was willing to share information with him. I briefed him on our objective. He agreed to help us… if for no other reason than to reduce the body count. I saw a surprising amount of me in the Sergeant. Minus the bottle of course.

  “The armory is just up ahead. Remember, it’s also where the Major has setup his TOC. There is a good chance we are going to run into a number of troops,” Jesús said as we approached the last bend before our objective.

  The armory was a significant part of the warren and the three corridors leading up to it were sized accordingly. This meant they were exceptionally broad, and the ceilings were exceptionally high.

  I launched a surveillance drone. I was hoping that it was high enough that it would go unnoticed. This time I did not bother with a DX canister as the volume of the chamber was simply too great to allow the gas to be effective.

  As expected, there were three sandbagged guard posts, each with a pair of marines manning them. The Tactical Operations Center or TOC

  “Are you ready?” I asked our newest recruit.

  “I was born ready, sir. Oof oh ah.”

  I don’t know. Maybe it’s me, but somehow his response lost its punch when whispered.

  At this point, Sergeant Del Torres straightened his shoulders and walked around the bend towards the nearest guard post. The Master Gunny and I could hear plainly what was being said even without the enhanced audio pickups built into our Founder Marine Encounter Suits.

  “Halt and be recognized!” one of the Privates barked.

  “Sergeant Jesús Del Torres. Lima Lima Foxtrot Lima. I have important information for the Major. Let me pass.”

  “Permission granted, Sergeant. If you don’t mind my asking what happened to your weapon and rad…”

  At this point the guard stopped talking. The drone showed that both of the guards had collapsed. Jesús, who was again wearing a blue patch under his BDU had just gassed them.

  The Master Gunny and I sprinted for the cover of the sandbags. That’s when the caca hit the preverbal fan.

  Despite our best efforts at stealth, we had been spotted. In fairness, our mechanized armor looked like nothing anybody had seen before.

  An alarm klaxon began to howl. It was quite annoying. I drew a bead on it with my rifle and put it out of my misery.

  Meanwhile, Jesús dove behind the sandbags. Unlike us he didn’t have armor on beyond a light flak jacket and he was not armed. Although that changed in a moment when I grabbed one of the guards’ weapons.

  A number of rounds began to spray the immediate area around us. The sandbags were quickly being shredded. In a few minutes they weren’t going to be offering the Sergeant much in the way of protection.

  The master Gunny began to lob DX canisters into the courtyard in front of the armory. Her mechanized armor allowed her to easily cover the one hundred meters between guard posts. I popped a few more canisters into the TOC.

  As quickly as it had begun, the confrontation ended. I looked around one final time to make sure the field was clear. No one was moving. That was when the Master Gunny spoke.

  “Colonel. We have a problem.”

  Ed Thompson was scared and furious at the same time. He had bought out his indentured contract less than a month ago. His family was already en route from the Azulian province of New Britton. Now he was facing the unthinkable. His home for the last six years had been invaded and many of his coworkers and friends slaughtered.

  When the armory unexpectedly opened up and the police force began passing out weapons and ammunition he jumped at the chance. He’d be damned before he’d allow his family to be embroiled in a fight between corporations.

  Chapter 14: Battleborn Down

  The problem turned out to be Jesús. He was lying in a pool of his own blood… sporting a couple of extra holes in his chest. An armor-piercing kinetic round had passed through a sandbag, hit him on the left side, and exited through the back. I had seen these types of wounds before and the outcomes were always iffy. I quickly injected expanding medical foam into both the entry and exit wounds. It would buy him some time, but without better medical attention he was as good as dead.

  He coughed blood as I finished and attempted to locate his weapon so he could continue the fight. There didn’t seem to be an ounce of quit in the man. I was damned if I was going to let him die. Not on my watch.

  I toggled my comms.

  “Tange?”

  A moment later the Princess answered.

  “Tange here.”

  “I need you to prep the OR. The Master Gunny is going to be bringing in a patient. Do what you can for him. He’s a friendly.”

  “Understood, Colonel. What’s the nature of the injury?”

  “Patient is a twenty-five-year-old male. Battleborn. In and out chest wound; sealed with medical foam.”

  “We’ll be ready for him. I don’t have to tell you sir that time is critical.

  At this point, Arquat broke into the conversation.

  “Colonel watch your clock. You have just over an hour to get back to the ship.”

  Now it was my turn to respond with an, “Understood.”

  Mel walked over to me and physically rapped with her metal gauntlet on my armored helmet. I had seen her do that to newly commissioned second lieutenants more times than I could count. It was something that the butter bars couldn’t stand but it also served to remind the new officers that rank isn’t the be-all-end-all of being a Battleborn marine. Experience often trumped rank.

  In this case, the master gunny was letting me know that I was acting like a butter bar.

  “Can I assume you have an issue that you want to address?”

  “Yes, sir. Respectfully, sir, you are a damned idiot, sir… respectfully speaking of course.

  “Of course. Do you object to treating Jesús or to carrying him back to the ship?”

  “As I said, an idiot, sir. Of course, I don’t object to patching him up. I object to being the one to drag his lard butt up there. You have the damaged suit and a hole in your shoulder. If you weren’t so intent on acting like a second lieuy with his first compass, you would realize that I have a much higher chance of completing the mission.”

  She was, of course, right. I hefted the sergeant onto my shoulder. The morphine shot I had given him dulled his pain enough that he hardly groaned at the movement.

  “There must be a limit on the number of times a gunny, master or otherwise, can call a superior officer an idiot.”

  “I’m sure there is… I haven’t reached it yet.”

  With that, she headed into the armory at a run. I took off in the other direction with my cargo. I wasn’t fifty meters down the hall when I heard the first of several bursts of gunfire. My HUD was showing the Master Gunny’s MES was still five by five, so I stopped worrying about her until such a time as that changed.

  I’d learn later that she would discover virtually the entire Domer police force in lockup. Once the Mashuta goons were eliminated, the Master Gunny freed them. She took the opportunity to recommend a tactical redistribution of their weapons into the hands of their civilian population. She also encouraged them to make a concerted effort to record and disseminate the Mashuta atrocities that had occurred.

  I continued to make my way through the warren and back to the ship. I only ran into opposition once and that was from some armed civilians. I popped a DX canister in their general direction. Ten minutes later, I was carrying Jesús up the ramp and into the Defiant. Tange and Thompson met me with a hover board. I surrendered my charge and headed to the weapons locker to divest myself of my mechanized armor.

  Arquat joined me as I stepped out of the back of the
suit. It was nice to get back into the open air… even if the open air was the infinitely recycled air of a starship. No Battleborn was ever truly claustrophobic but that didn’t mean we were immune to the effects of being enclosed in a machine that wasn’t even as spacious as a coffin.

  “Status,” I said to the ship’s AI.

  “The lead ships of the enemy’s fleet are forty-eight minutes from entering orbit. The sooner we can launch to intercept them the better our situation will be.”

  I paused as I was donning my BDUs and looked at the AI. What he was saying didn’t jive with what I was thinking. I was expecting an orbital battle and yet what Arquat was intimating was a battle out beyond the orbit of Epidamnus.

  Finally, I said by way of an admission, “I have no ship-to-ship combat experience. I’ve always been a ground pounder. Explain to me the defect in my thought processes. I would think holding a picket line in orbit would be the preferred approach. The enemy would be forced to come to us.”

  Arquat brought up a holographic display. On a personal note, I thought that was highly unfair. As a bag of meat and bones, I couldn’t just wish holograms into existence. To my way of thinking, he had a leg up in any argument we might have. That said, this wasn’t really an argument, so I let my holographic envy slide… for the moment at least.

  Arquat proceeded to explain his thinking process, and by extension, my defective thinking process.

  “In orbit we are essentially dealing with a two-dimensional field of battle… even given that two-dimensional field of battle is wrapped around a three-dimensional planet. On the other hand, in open space the area of engagement is truly three-dimensional. Since the Defiant has both a speed and weapons superiority, the more flexible battlefield works to our advantage.”

  Arquat and I began to make our way to the bridge. I tried not to think about Jesús, the dead children I had seen or the bottle I so desperately wanted.

  “OK, but we are one ship facing fifty or more. Those ships in orbit would be in a much more confined space and easier to target. In addition, since we are faster, we could use the planet to shield us and not have to take them all on at once.”

  Arquat smiled. It was strangely both human and not human at the same time.

  “Have you forgotten about the cloak?”

  I stopped halfway through the hatch that led onto the Bridge.

  “We have a cloak?”

  ***

  “The ship is all buttoned up Colonel. We can lift off anytime,” Horse said.

  His team had been successful in its mission. We now had the means to repair our Skip Drive. The Chief and Doc Thompson were running the materials through the fabricators as fast as they could. Since the bulk of the repair work had been completed weeks ago, I was assured we would be able to test the new systems in a few hours. Meanwhile, we had the pesky business of dealing with, what turned out to be, sixty-one enemy vessels.

  “Go ahead and take us up,” I ordered. “Estimated time to enemy intercept?”

  “Fifteen minutes to weapons range,” Mel answered.

  I leaned back in my command chair. If anybody had been watching me, they would have seen a wicked grin on my face. I would remember the next words out of my mouth all the days of my life. I have to admit there is a little boy inside every man. That little boy was giddy with anticipation. He was about to play with his newest toy.

  “As soon as we clear the atmosphere,” I said to Horse, “engage the cloak.”

  Mel must have heard the glee in my voice. A whispered, “Boys and their toys…”, drifted forward from the general direction of her station.

  The comms beeped. It was the Medical Bay. Suddenly the mood on the bridge got serious again.

  “Riker here. What’s the news Doctor?”

  “The news is, despite your best efforts to get the man killed, the patient is going to live. He lost a lot of blood and I’ve given him a stimulator to push his bone marrow into high gear. It’s extremely painful so he’s in a medically induced coma for the duration.”

  “Thanks Doc. I appreciate your hard work on this one.”

  The Princess shared a little more of what she was forced to do, and then, went back to monitor her patient. She had to remove the lower lobe of his left lung. It had been too damaged to make any repair worthwhile. For most people, the lost would be a minor inconvenience. For a Battleborn, it was a career ender.

  Fortunately for the Sergeant, he was on the Defiant and I owed him a favor. Tange had a cloned lung printing on the 3D biogenerator. The printer was a marvel of Founder technology. It would take a week to print and mature but, when it was ready to go, it would be every bit as good as the one his momma had given him.

  “Coming up on maximum weapons range. We’ll have a fifteen second advantage against the first targets.”

  I toggled my comms for Engineering.

  “Chief, I know you have your hands full but, we’re about to mix it up with a pretty rough crowd. Bring the reactors up to one hundred percent and transfer power to shields and weapons.”

  “Bridge, this is Thompson. Orders acknowledged. The Chief is pulling parts out of the fabricator, so you’re stuck with me for the moment. I’m spooling up the reactors and transferring power, now.”

  “You’re a good man Jamie. I don’t care what your friends and neighbors say. Riker out,” I said as it hit the comms to close the channel.

  I activated a floating holographic display in front of my chair. I looked out of the corner of my eye to see if Arquat noticed that I, too, could summon such a display. I think sometimes, I may be a tad too competitive.

  “Fire the railgun and both plasma turrets on the lead ship.” I tapped the screen to indicate the exact ship I meant and used a flick of my wrist to transfer a copy of the display to the Master Gunny.

  “Helm set a course for 34.12 mark 6. Maximum speed. Spin about and start hitting them from behind.”

  I traced the route on my display and sent it over to Horse.

  My strategy was a simple one. Take advantage of our speed and our cloak to keep the Mashuta ships guessing about our location. Make them guess where we were going to attack them next. Make them guess how many ships were attacking them.

  “Firing main weapons.”

  Colonel Clarkson studied the board in front of him. He was in the situation room just off the bridge of his flagship. They were making best speed towards the Twins, but they were still a day and a half out. It was infuriating. A massive battle was taking place. The entire Menaechmus taskforce was taking on Riker and his strangle little ship. It was infuriating because Clarkson wanted to be there when the drunkard was taken down.

  He reached for the comms on his situation board but paused. He had intended to order the taskforce to capture but not kill the disgraced Battleborn. Hamstringing his people was not a good way to ensure victory.

  Chapter 15: Sting Like a Bee

  Say what you want, but the Defiant packed quite a wallop for a ship its size. Because of the distances involved when firing weapons at extreme range, there was a good fifteen or twenty seconds before contact with the enemy. This gave us plenty of time to reposition ourselves… especially since both our top speed and acceleration curves greatly outclassed our opponents.

  “Float like a butterfly. Sting like a bee. Move us about and prepare to fire on their rear.”

  The first of our weapons struck the shields on their forward-most ship. Since they didn’t realize they were in a combat zone yet, we caught them with their metaphorical pants down. They were running with environmental shields only.

  These types of shields were meant to protect a fast-moving ship from the dust and small rocks that inhabited the space between planets. Our weapons barely noticed their presence.

  “Direct hit,” Mel reported, from her station. “Severe damage. Secondary explosions. Ship number one is coming apart.”

  I nodded. A good number of men and women had just died. The only comfort I drew from taking those lives was the realization
that these were combatants that showed a complete disregard for the lives of innocents. That, and the fact, that the taking of their lives now would very likely save the lives of countless others.

  “Fire on the next target, Master Gunny.”

  We repeated this pattern of attack for several minutes. Fire and move. Fire and move. We never stayed in one place long enough for the enemy to draw a bead on us. In point of fact, because of our cloak, the enemy could only see us when we fired our weapons… by then it was too late.

  After losing or having twelve disabled ships in almost as many minutes, the commander of the Mashuta fleet decided that he or she needed a new strategy to deal with us. I had been expecting this, but I was still surprised by the form of the new strategy.

  The Mashuta ships dispersed. Each ship headed away from the others in what seemed a totally random vector. All save the three ships we had wounded. One limped away on what barely amounted to maneuvering thrusters. The other two simply stayed in place.

  As we watched, each of the two ships launched dozens and dozens of escape pods.

  “Receiving a destress call from one of the pods,” Arquat announced. “It’s the captain of the Titan. His Chief Engineer needs immediate medical attention.”

  The pod in question was drifting rather than accelerating, which meant, it was soon the only escape pod in its immediate vicinity.

  My first thought was that this was a delaying tactic designed to give the rest of the Mashuta fleet a chance to scatter like cockroaches. On the other hand, I’d rather be guilty of excessive compassion than excessive apathy.

  “Set course for the pod issuing that destress call,” I said to Horse.

  The big man turned in his seat to face me.

  “No disrespect Colonel but are you sure you want to do that? It occurs to me that this is nothing more than a ploy to…”

  “Buy time for their compatriots to scatter to the winds,” I finished for him.