A Pale Dawn

by Chris Kennedy

  The Varangian Guard had arrived at the field earlier in the day and had been waiting in the next hangar over so they didn’t spook the shuttles. Once everyone had disembarked, the plan was for the Guard troopers in their CASPers to swoop in on the people and capture them for questioning. The goal was to take them peacefully, with no shots fired, but force was authorized, if necessary, to bring them in. Or if they tried to escape—that was not to be allowed.

  A large Tri-V had been mounted on the wall with several cameras positioned outside to give numerous views of the people getting off the shuttle. If Hanson hadn’t known any better, she’d have said that the people looked guilty of something, based on their body language. The first few people off the back of two of the shuttles looked around suspiciously, with the practiced eyes of mercs. One of the cameras zoomed in, and she could see a scorpion patch on the sleeve of one of the men. Sinclair’s Scorpions. She had heard of them but never worked with them. They had a good reputation.

  Hanson’s eyebrows knit. The Scorpions were one of the units that made it off-planet. How did they get back? What were they doing here? The Guard hadn’t been told, but it was obviously something important if six shuttles of mercs had arrived to get it.

  As the camera shifted, she drew a sharp breath—walking down the ramp of one of the other shuttles was the Golden Horde’s XO, Lieutenant Colonel Laverno. She recognized most of the people debarking from that shuttle, as well as the shuttle next to it. If the Horde and the Scorpions were here, it was more than just “important”; their mission was something vital to the safety and success of Earth.

  She had to do something.

  But what? She only had seconds before the Varangian Guard swept out the doors and grabbed them…and she doubted the Horde members, at least, would allow themselves to be captured without a fight. If they were doing something important, they would do everything in their power to complete their mission. Looking closer, she could see they were all armed. This was going to be ugly. And bloody. Very, very bloody.

  She initiated a private laser link to Staff Sergeant Decker’s suit. “We have to stop this,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” Decker asked. “Stop what?”

  “Half those people out there are Golden Horde!” Hanson replied. “I know them! If they’re here, this is a mission of the greatest importance to Earth. We have to help them!”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me! Are you crazy? With all the Besquith here, and right as we’re about to charge out and snatch them all, you want me to…what? Kill all the Besquith and let them go? What about the rest of the Varangian Guard? What do you think they’ll be doing?”

  “Well, your squad will do pretty much anything you tell them. They’re all a bunch of newbies who are too afraid of you to say anything. If you can get the company commander to go along with it, we can wipe out the Besquith and help the Horde do whatever it is they’re here to do.”

  “I don’t think there’s any way he’ll go along with it. He’s advanced rapidly under the new management, and he’s done that by doing everything Peepo says as soon as she says it. Helping your friends will mean throwing away everything he’s done, and I don’t see it happening.”

  “Well, can I ask him? Maybe if I tell him how important this is to humanity, he’ll see that there are more opportunities with us than by fighting for the Merc Guild.”

  “You can do what you want,” Decker said. “If you can get him to go along with it, I’m in. Otherwise, I’m going to do what I’m told. I’ve got family to look out for.”

  “Fine!” Hanson replied. “Thanks for nothing. Just when I thought you actually had a backbone under that wussy Varangian Guard front. I’ll do it myself.”

  “That’s enough,” a large Besquith wearing first sergeant’s stripes said, stepping in front of Hanson’s CASPer. Two more Besquith flanked him, one on each side, with one pointing a laser rifle at Hanson and the other at Decker. “We’ve been listening to your conversation, and I think your sedition has gone on far enough already, without implicating anyone else.”

  “Hey!” Decker said. “If you’ve been listening, then you know I didn’t agree to help her!”

  “I know that you also didn’t do what you should have,” the Besquith said.

  “What’s that?” Decker asked. “Report her? I was just about to do that.”

  “No,” the Besquith said, raising his own rifle to point it at Decker, “you should have killed her, like this.” He fired, and the laser bolt hit Decker’s CASPer before he could flip open his shield. The Besquith was obviously familiar with CASPers—the beam drilled through Decker’s head. The CASPer took a step backward then crumpled as Decker slumped.

  “There’s only one end for treason,” the Besquith said, turning to Hanson.

  Her left arm started to come up as she deployed her laser shield. But the Besquith was faster, and his laser beam went through the front of her suit and through her chest as she began a dive to the left. The dive turned into an uncoordinated slide as the laser severed her spine and she lost control of her motor functions. As everything faded to black, she triggered a sustained blast from her MAC.

  * * *

  “Entropy!” First Sergeant Gal-An swore, diving to the side as the CASPer’s MAC fired. He picked himself back off the floor and turned to find the rounds had hit one of his troopers and removed his head. Worse, the rounds had gone through the wall of the hangar on the side where the Humans had just landed.

  A quick glance at the Tri-V confirmed his suspicion—nearly all of the Humans outside had recognized the sound of the MAC firing and were now sprinting for the hangar.

  “Quickly!” he roared as one of the dropships started to lift. “Outside! Shoot down any of the dropships that try to flee!”

  The Varangian Guard mechas joined his troops as they raced for the hangar doors. Some of the Humans showed a little more initiative, deploying their arm blades to cut the thin metal of the hangar before slamming their CASPers through. He followed one of the CASPers through the gap it had made in time to see the third dropship lifting. Missiles were already flying off the rails from a number of CASPers, and within seconds, all three of the airborne craft were hit and tumbling to the ground. Several other CASPers surrounded the other dropships, and the pilots shut down their engines.

  “What do you want us to do?” the Human captain in charge of one of the CASPer companies asked on the command frequency. “We’re starting to take fire from the hangar, and if they get to the CASPers inside it, we could have a real fight on our hands.”

  “There is no reason to worry,” Gal-An replied. “Peepo had the suits removed a week ago. All the people in the hangar are, right now, probably looking at each other with fear in their eyes, knowing that they’ve been outplayed.”

  “So, what do you want us to do?” the captain asked again. From the tone of his voice, he didn’t find taunting their prey to be as much fun as Gal-An did.

  “What do I want you to do?” Gal-An repeated. “I don’t want you to do anything except watch what ultimately happens to all of Peepo’s foes. She gave them the opportunity to turn themselves in, and they refused. Now the time has come to dispense justice. I said the people in the building would be afraid; it is now time to put their minds at ease.”

  Gal-An pulled a transmitter from his utility belt, armed it, and pushed the button triggering the device. The explosives hidden in the hangar detonated with a force that pushed back some of the Besquith and CASPers on the line who were too close. As the smoke cleared, Gal-An could see his explosives experts had done their job efficiently. The entire hangar had been leveled.

  “I doubt anyone survived that blast,” he said, waving his troops and the CASPers forward, “but let’s go make sure now, shall we?”

  * * *

  Shuttle One, Descending to Earth, Sol System

  “Captain!” Abby Smith called from Pegasus. “Combat is breaking out again in Alaska!”

  “Isolated?” Alexis asked. />
  “No, a Golden Horde company and all the mercs they recovered from the internment facility were just slaughtered, along with a company of Sinclair’s Scorpions!”

  Alexis cursed and changed frequencies to the one Peepo had used. “General Peepo, we’re getting reports of an attack against our forces in Alaska. What’s the meaning of this?”

  “I’ll have to talk to that commander,” Peepo said. “They jumped the gun, as you Humans are fond of saying.”

  Alexis felt her blood run cold. “What the fuck does that mean?” she demanded. The connection with Peepo was cut at the other end.

  “Attacks across all fronts!” Abby yelled. “The Merc Guild has reinitiated hostilities in Houston and São Paulo as well!”

  “We have contacts,” Flipper cut in. “Dozens of, ships lifting off the surface of the moon.”

  “How is that possible?” Alexis asked. “Even though the lunar settlements were largely evacuated, there were observers who would have told us.”

  “We’ve lost contact with all those observation posts. All of them…at the same time.”

  Ghost said.

  “What race are they?” Alexis asked, afraid she already knew the answer.

 

  Alexis used her pinplants to rapidly examine her shuttle’s course at the same time she transmitted to Pegasus. “Hoot, prepare to maneuver. Xander, get a threat assessment underway and prepare to alter orders to the entire fleet.”

  In her pinplants she could see the CIC on Pegasus as her command crew flew into action. The calculations finished, and there was just enough delta-V to avoid atmospheric entry on the shuttle and move toward rendezvous with Pegasus, but the Gs would be bad. “Paka, what’s taking so long! Get up here, we have to boost hard.” The hairs on the back of her neck suddenly stood up, and she started to turn. The deafening roar of a gunshot stunned her ears, and an inconceivable pain tore into her back.

  “Gahk,” she cried, trying to move, but she couldn’t seem to make her limbs work. She tried to yell; instead, she coughed violently, and bright red blood sprayed from her lips. The lights in the cockpit seemed to dim as she turned her head and saw Paka holding a smoking gun, braced against the door with her back and her other hand. “But…” she started to say, and darkness fell.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Nineteen

  EMS Pegasus, Geosynchronous Orbit, Earth

  The CIC was alive with activity as Pegasus’ crew jolted into motion. Fusion plants began to move toward peak output, and shields were maximized. A corner of the Tri-V showed Colonel Alexis Cromwell in the cockpit of her shuttle giving orders from the camera at the back of the cockpit.

  “Hoot, prepare to maneuver,” she ordered. “Xander, get a threat assessment underway and prepare to alter orders to the entire fleet.”

  “Roger that,” Hoot said, now wearing the hat as temporary commanding officer. He heard Alexis call for Paka and looked up just as the bullet struck Alexis in the back. There was a gasp and a scream in the CIC. Alexis cried out and flailed, looking over her shoulder with bright blood flowing from her mouth. She only managed a single word.

  “But…” before a clawed hand grabbed the camera and turned it to show Paka, a gun in one hand and a look of intense anger on her face.

  “Your commander is dead,” she said, “surrender.” And then all comms from the shuttle were severed.

  “Can we scramble marines to intercept that shuttle?” Hoot asked. Nobody answered. He could hear someone crying, probably Human. “Hussars!” he snapped. Everyone turned to look at him. “Can we intercept it?”

  The helmsman Pleek shook her head. “No,” she said.

  “Very well,” Hoot replied, shaking his head and ruffling his feathers in a full-body motion. “Xander, destroy that shuttle.”

  “What?” Xander barked. “Are you crazy?”

  “I’m in command now, Lieutenant!” Hoot replied, snapping his beak for emphasis. “I will not let our commander’s murderer get away. Take that shuttle under fire and destroy it!”

  Xander wiped tears from her eyes. “But…”

  “God damn it, Xander,” Abby said, also crying, “don’t make this any fucking worse than it already is!”

  Xander looked from Abby to Hoot and gave a single gasping exhalation. “Preparing to fire,” she said.

  “To Entropy with you, Paka,” Hoot said. But nothing happened. “Why haven’t we fired?”

  Xander looked up from her board, grief changing to confusion. “Weapons not responding.”

  “We’re coming under power!” Pleek said. “Orbit is being altered.”

  “Who’s doing it?” Hoot demanded.

  “I don’t know!”

  As Hoot watched in furious impotence, the shuttle carrying her commander’s body fell into Earth’s atmosphere and disappeared, the ionization blocking their sensors.

  * * *

  Micky Finn Hangar, Houston Starport, Houston, Texas

  The dropships landed alongside the hangar, and Nigel watched as the Golden Horde troops marched out warily. Although the ceasefire was still in place—and they were wearing their CASPers—it never hurt to be careful. There were plenty of mercs through the years who’d thought they were walking into a situation where a ceasefire was in place, only to find out—to their detriment—that hostilities had again broken out.

  He jogged out to meet Sansar. “Good to see you,” he said. “I guess your assault went well?”

  “Better than yours, apparently,” she replied. “Where’s your CASPer?”

  “It’s being repaired.” He could feel his face going red. “There were troops waiting for us here, and we took a lot of losses.” He shrugged and moved on. “There are still are a lot of Merc Guild troops here, so it’s really good to see you. It looked like they were trying to trap us here—they let us land, but then tried to hit us from all sides.”

  “Yeah, the Merc Guild had some surprises for us, too,” Sansar replied. “Still, we got through it all right and recovered about forty mercs. My XO is getting them patched up and into CASPers, along with a contingent of Sinclair’s Scorpions, which showed up unexpectedly. We should have another three to four companies of CASPers here shortly. Between what you’ve got here, my folks with me, and what we’ve got coming, we’ll kick the shit out of anything the Merc Guild—”

  She cut off suddenly, as if receiving a transmission, and Nigel waited patiently.

  “Shit!” she exclaimed. “They just hit our forces in Alaska, and it looks like they wiped them out! Not captured—they wiped them all out without warning. Most of them weren’t even armed, and they just slaughtered them like animals!”

  Nigel heard his pickets reporting in—the enemy forces were moving and had taken them under fire.

  “Those motherless sons of goat fuckers!” Nigel said with a snarl. “Dishonorable bastards! It sounds like they broke the ceasefire everywhere—my pickets are saying they’re taking fire.”

  “Where do you want my people?” Sansar asked, ever practical.

  “We broke the forces to the north, so we should be good there for a while. Take your forces to the south end of the hangar and coordinate with my XO, Colonel Valenti. I need my CASPer.”

  Nigel turned and sprinted to the hangar as the Horde’s CASPers marched off toward the south. Nigel could hear weapons firing from that direction, and the sounds quickly grew more and more frantic.

  He raced into the hangar and found one of the techs still working on the Mk 9 he had replaced his original with. “Is it ready?” he asked as he climbed up and into the running mech. It didn’t fit, exactly, as the original driver had been a little shorter than Nigel, but at least the cockpit was now clean; he didn’t have to get Private Johanson’s blood all over him.

  “Not yet, sir,” the tech replied. “It’s been rearmed, but the jump juice reservoirs are only about ha
lf full. It’s also only got a sword blade on the right arm; we haven’t found one for the left yet, and I know you like to have one on each arm.”

  “The ceasefire is over; I’ll take it,” Nigel said. He closed the canopy and connected the leads to his pinplants, but he was instantly overwhelmed by the amount of traffic on the networks—everyone seemed to be shouting at everyone else, with no one really in charge.

  He turned off the non-Asbaran networks for the moment and mentally toggled the command override. “Valenti, report!” he ordered. “Everyone else, shut the fuck up!”

  The tech moved to the side as Nigel ran past.

  “I don’t know where the armor went, but we’ve got Torts and Flats coming from the south,” Valenti said. “They’re massing at the Hellcats’ hangar, but so far they’re only probing our forces. Nothing from the west on the tarmac, and nothing, yet, on the perimeter road to the east. I have people watching that in case they try to flank us. The north is quiet; apparently, they were counting on the Besquith to hit us, and they may have sent the missing armor there to cover that gap. The Horde forces are online and integrated. We’ve got enough to hold out against what we’re currently facing.”

  “What forces do you have in reserve?”

  “The Bold Warriors and the Proud Fists.”

  “Perfect. Major Sulda, Major Gage, meet me with your forces at the north end of the Micky Finn hangar.”

  “We come,” Sulda replied.

  “On the way,” Gage added.

  “What’s your plan?” Valenti asked.

  “What do Tortantulas and Flatar do when told to attack?” Nigel asked.

  “They charge,” Valenti replied. “Why?”