The Midnight Sun (The Omega War Book 2)

by Tim C. Taylor

  He pressed the firing stud of the control he’d pinned to his branch, sending a pulse along the wire laid before the Condottieri arrived. It passed down the broad trunk, beneath mud, roots, ferns, and the spawning grounds of a million evil insects, all the way down to the L-bomb they’d hidden inside an empty canister in the underground fuel dump.

  The heat from the explosion seared Branco’s face, even at seven hundred yards.

  A hard rain of gravel, mud, and debris from the Javelin fell through Branco’s tree. He waited for it to pass before lifting his binoculars.

  A horrendous weakness ran through the heart of Sun’s plan: it relied on the enemy acting as she predicted. If they couldn’t be encouraged to redeploy troopers between the town and the landing site…well, there were contingency plans, and no one had suggested a better idea.

  Branco observed the Condottieri reaction to the booby trap and prayed Sun was right.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 54

  “Is that the best you can do?” Lieutenant Garcia said to herself as she scanned the area around the landing strip, just in case the Midnighters intended using the booby-trapped dropship as a distraction. But no attack came in; the status screen for the three squads she’d been assigned were all green. They’d lost one bloodhound, and a second had suffered minor damage to one leg. No matter; the device had plenty of limbs remaining.

  With the main force two klicks away at the half-built colony town reporting no contacts, this Midnighter attempt to slow them down looked seriously half-assed. Were they lacking the cohesion or spirit to do better?

  Or were they trying to lull the Condottieri force into a dangerous overconfidence?

  “Report,” ordered the task force commander, who was running the secure-and-hold operation from the town. “What was that explosion?”

  “They booby-trapped their dropship, Captain Fellini. Wired it to explode a fuel dump. No human casualties. No sign of a follow up.”

  “And nothing to worry about,” said Fellini. “They’re beaten. If they’ve surrendered the only decent landing site on the planet with nothing more impressive than that bang, then they’ve given up. All we have to do is find the Raknar and collect them. I’ll wager that by tomorrow, the Midnighters will start surrendering themselves up for ransom.”

  Garcia said nothing, the silence sitting awkwardly on her lips. In a slick mercenary outfit, where a core of mutual understanding and respect provided the backbone for the professionals to perform their roles well, you knew how and when to question your superior.

  The Condottieri were not such an outfit. Garcia kept her concerns to herself.

  For sure, before the Veetanho crisis, Il Colombo, the Dove, had run the Condottieri as a tight, coreward operation, but now…? The Dove had moved fast to declare his allegiance to General Peepo and make a play to dramatically upscale his business. She shivered, remembering in the briefing hall the glint of unshakable confidence in his eyes. He’d told all the assembled officers and senior enlisted that success in retrieving the Raknar would be the symbolic proof that the era of the Four Horsemen was over, and that the Condottieri would be foremost in the next wave of human mercenary endeavor.

  The sound of a deep male voice clearing his throat came over the channel. First Sergeant Gozhita was voicing his disapproval at the captain’s words in his own special way.

  Garcia smiled. You take the heat on this one, Top.

  To impress Peepo with the Condottieri’s scale of operations, the Dove had recruited aggressively, soaking up between-contracts mercs, and outsourcing smaller outfits. Strictly speaking, Garcia was employed by the Red Lancers. But every day, subcontracting themselves out to the Condottieri was feeling more like swimming into the mouth of a shark.

  With such a hash of hastily-thrown-together personnel, they were still learning to work together slickly. To make that even harder, the Condottieri leader had promoted long-serving company loyalists beyond their competence.

  Or, in the case of Captain Fellini, so far beyond his competence he was more of a danger to his command than the enemy was – especially if Fellini’s roving gaze escalated to roving hands, because she’d chop them off without a second thought.

  She assumed that was why the Dove had assigned Gozhita to Fellini. She’d served with many fine first sergeants, but none finer than the gruff Romanian. She felt a little better knowing Gozhita was with Fellini at the base, keeping an eye on the idiot.

  “The Midnighters give the appearance of being sloppy,” said Top. Meaning: Don’t count them out, Garcia.

  “We’re maintaining vigilance,” she replied. Translation: I know. Secondary meaning: But I’m going to let you take the flak anyway.

  “Stop chatting,” snapped Fellini. “This isn’t a Sunday afternoon stroll in the park. Garcia, the Midnighters have obviously abandoned the drained area. Send one of your squads over to the main base to assist in establishing operations here. Half the town is taken up with the terraforming machinery, and I need more people to check it’s clear.”

  “Sir, I haven’t yet completed our sweep of the landing area.”

  “That won’t be necessary. Send them without delay and by the fastest route. I have a lot to do here, and I need the base secure and operational before the colonel hits planetside.”

  Garcia swallowed the reply that Fellini so desperately deserved. Instead, she gave a snappy affirmative and began arranging compliance with the captain’s orders.

  Gozhita helped. A little. “We’ve placed 3rd and 4th Squad on the eastern perimeter of the base,” he told her on a private channel. “I’ll extend their zone of operations eastward so you’re not so isolated. Sorry, Lieutenant, it’s the best I can do.”

  “You can do more than that, Top. You can pray the captain is right and the Midnighters really have given up and melted into this bitch of a jungle.”

  “I actually believe that’s the most likely scenario,” he said thoughtfully. “But what I believe to be so and what I prepare for are two very different things.”

  “Amen to that,” she replied. “No matter how thick this jungle heat, my squads will stay frosty. To hell with what our company commander thinks. Garcia out.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 55

  “Sir, I urge you to reconsider.”

  “Drop it, Albali,” said Sun as she double checked the ammo state and fuel reserves for the CASPers registering on her tactical display. Even bunched as they were, many of her mercs had dropped off grid, their signals bounced and absorbed by the trees.

  “But, Major,” Albali insisted. “Think about it. Rakbutu-Tereus is an uninhabited swamp world. No one will drop by to pick up any deserters we allow to live. We’re pushing them into the arms of the enemy because there’s no other way out for them.”

  She sighed. This wasn’t easy on any of them. But Branco had sent the first signal by blowing up Javelin-8. They’d soon move out at his second signal, and she needed Albali with her.

  “Listen, Xavier. First Sergeant Landers was a fine Top, but she’s dead, along with everyone aboard Javelin-2. I need a replacement who’ll steer the officers when needed, but I don’t want someone who needs to be told the same thing twice. I lead professional mercenaries, not conscript soldiers. If they aren’t fully committed, I don’t want them at all. And if they run to our enemies, then there’s nothing they can reveal about us that the Dove doesn’t already know. The matter is closed, First Sergeant.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Sun ran through the tactical plan one last time. She found it a calming pre-battle mantra. Unless they’d been lucky enough to take out anyone with the booby trap – which she doubted – she had 72 personnel in the vicinity split into three commands. They faced approximately 100 Condottieri in Mark 8 CASPers. Most of her Midnighters were also in Mark 8s, though she’d ordered eight out of their suits and into scout gear. Branco and the other scouts had stealth and agility the CASPers lacked but couldn’t stand up to them in a fight. Nonetheless,
they were vital to the plan, because they would make a show at the landing strip that she was counting on provoking an enemy reaction. The Condottieri commander might think the scouts were a feint to draw troops out of the town, and so respond by bringing squads back from the landing strip. Or they might take the scouts seriously and respond by reinforcing the landing strip. Either way, she wanted confusion and Condottieri troopers transiting along the road.

  Somewhere to the north of her position, 1st Company’s commander, Captain Gerontious Finn-Holt, was waiting for Branco’s second signal with his three depleted squads – about 20 CASPers. To the northwest, Sergeant Hrrn’s Vengeance Squad waited upstream of the river that flowed through the terraforming settlement. To the south of the road connecting the town with the landing strip, Sun and the newly promoted first sergeant waited with the main force – six reformed squads of six CASPers apiece.

  The main Condottieri carrier force had still not arrived in orbit, and already her attacking force was outnumbered and outgunned. The trick was making sure the enemy never realized that.

  She took deep, rhythmic breaths so her voice didn’t shake, and got ready to address the six squads under her direct command. To spread their weight, they were sitting on their haunches in the swampy mud, but they’d still sunk over a foot into the brown ooze. They looked faintly ridiculous.

  Between them and the levee that marked the southern perimeter of the drained island was a jungle of tree roots, pools of putrid water, and treacherous muddy sinkholes. For a CASPer, it was the worst terrain possible. Her command looked as if they’d sat down in contemplation and mulishly refused to travel farther.

  The good news was that the nightmare terrain was hell on the enemy too, which she counted on severely hampering their ability to reinforce the perimeter when the Midnighters launched their sequence of assaults.

  “Get ready to move out, people,” Sun announced. “We face professional human mercenaries and state-of-the-art CASPers. One-on-one, they’re nearly as good as we are. And they definitely beat us in numbers. We can’t win a fair fight. If we are to survive, we have to fight dirty, to make the Condottieri traitors pay for every inch of ground. I want every second they spend on Rakbutu-Tereus to feel like a nightmare eternity. We start here by wiping out the force holding that base. We can afford no caution, no mercy, no doubts. We have to win here today, because we have no other option. We shall prevail because we must.”

  Around her, the handful of CASPers visible to her suit’s external cameras began the ritual of spinning their drums of MAC shells, flicking out two-foot sword blades, and clenching and unclenching metal gauntlets that could crush bone to powder. The mecha were limbering up.

  “My offer still stands,” said Sun. “But this is your last chance. Anyone with doubts. Anyone uncertain about our contract’s legitimacy, or squeamish about killing human mercs, eject from your CASPer now. Take food and water, and go.”

  Her heartbeat echoed inside her suit as the silence stretched on. What if they all desert?

  Panic hit her, and she began shaking. She hadn’t considered that. She’d guessed there might be one or two uncommitted individuals. Better in the long run, because this was going be a long and arduous campaign that would be a battle of morale as much as anything else. But if one ran now, then maybe a second would. And a third. By the fourth, panic would set in. No one wanted to be at the rear of a rout. She had a red flare, the only signal to communicate to the other teams she was calling off the mission. Would she have to use it?

  “Here’s what I don’t understand,” said Corporal Lau in Stone Squad. “We’re being paid to guard those Raknar, so why haven’t we recovered them? They might have broken up when they crashed.”

  “Highly unlikely,” Sun replied. “They were built during the most terrifying war in galactic history. They withstood that, and the thousands of years that have passed since. Those mecha are no more likely to be damaged in a two-thousand-foot drop than you yourself, Lau. So long as you landed on your thick skull first.”

  “Thank goodness,” he chuckled.

  “They’re out there somewhere, not far away. There’ll be time to recover them later. My overriding priority is to destroy the enemy forces in the field.”

  “Understood, ma’am,” said Lau. “We’ll do you proud.”

  “That we will,” growled Albali. “We’ll hit those Veetanho-loving traitors so skraggin’ hard, the bastards’ll mistake us for a pack of Tortantulas.”

  The tactical net filled with whoops and hollers, and cries of Midnight! Midnight!

  Sun let it wash through the network for a few seconds, then gave the order to advance to the jumping off point by the south bank of the levee.

  At her command, they hauled themselves out of the mud and squelched through the swamp, picking their way carefully over the roots that had tripped up many a metal foot since their landing.

  As they trudged onward, Corporal Lau said something that made no sense to Sun. “I am Betty.”

  To add to her confusion, a second member of Stone Squad answered, “No, I am Betty.”

  Then comms was full of it.

  “I am Betty.”

  “I am Betty.”

  It wasn’t a chant; it was a single solemn statement made by each individual in turn.

  Finally, Albali added his own deep voice. “I am Betty.”

  “What the hell?” Sun queried him in a private channel. “Is this about trying to be Tortantulas?”

  “Essentially, yes,” the first sergeant advised her. “It’s a butchered attempt at an American cultural reference. I recommend you join in.”

  No one spoke. Everyone had declared themselves but her.

  She was out of the mud now, sloshing through the final moat-like ditch, thick with fluorescent green scum. She pressed the hand of her CASPer to the levee bank and contemplated the top just a couple of feet above the level of her suit torso’s highest exterior camera. When Branco sent his second signal up, they’d go over the top. What would be waiting for them?

  She wouldn’t have long to find out.

  “I am Betty,” she told her command.

  The cheers were so deafening her headset automatically reduced its volume.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 56

  As he clambered down the engorged tree trunk, a task made considerably easier by the plentiful vines, Branco saw ghostly human shapes leaping from branch to branch and tree to tree – his fellow scouts finally on the move, he hoped. When they stopped suddenly, he froze too, turning his face toward the trunk and putting his faith in the camouflage of his scout armor to protect him from whatever his team had spotted.

  His armor didn’t project an image of its surroundings – not like those fancy stealth sheets that worked okay when the conditions were perfect but turned into bright white come-get-me flags the moment they developed a fault. What his armor did possess were several hundred preset camo configurations. He trusted the suit software to have picked the right one for this verdant foliage dappled with rare fingers of sunlight reaching through the jungle canopy.

  He heard a CASPer splashing toward him.

  He didn’t turn around. The CASPer passed the base of the tree – just six feet beneath his feet – tripped on a root and fell headlong to splat into the mud.

  Another CASPer pumped through the swamp to aid its fellow.

  Don’t look up! he urged the mercs below.

  Don’t look up!

  He was tempted to try hacking their radio circuit. Slung around his chest on the inside of his armor, he had the equipment to try, but it was too risky. Besides, he had the impression that the CASPers were in a hurry. They’d be on their way soon.

  A pack of old Zuul mercs he’d befriended in a distant alien cantina had spoken passionately about an ancient mind trick practiced by their people. They said that that those of strong wills can distort the perception of those who hunt them and make them look the other way. The idea was a pile of steaming goose droppings, of cour
se, but Zuul had tells a light year wide – as any professional card player could tell you – and he was convinced those old mercs had believed every word of the secret they’d entrusted to him.

  “Move away,” he whispered to the Condottieri behind him. “You need to be on your way. You don’t have time to check your surroundings.”

  The two CASPers splashed southward toward the landing zone. Far too soon for safety, Branco turned and looked. He recognized one figure splashed with alien slug-gore and decided this was the five-CASPer patrol group who’d passed nearby a few minutes earlier. Hidden from sight a few hundred yards to the east, he heard another pair of CASPers splashing toward the landing strip.

  What was drawing them there?

  It was his job to find out.

  With the CASPers disappearing into the trees, the swamp came back to life. The ghostly shapes of his scout comrades headed away to their prepared positions to the west of the landing strip. Branco descended to a fork low on the tree in which he’d secreted a junction box. He plugged in a cable drum and began laying signal wire as he clambered down the last few feet to the ground.

  He proceeded carefully through roots, trunks, and undergrowth, heading for the edge of the clearing. He only managed ten yards before he heard a wet slurp behind a tree to his left – the sound of a boot pulling itself out of sucking mud.

  As he reached for the rifle over his shoulder, a voice said, “Branco. It’s Pak. Sitrep.”

  “Other than wondering why the hell I volunteered for this, Sergeant, we’re A-OK. I think the Condottieri perimeter teams are being recalled.”

  “If you’re right,” said Sergeant Pak, “strike if you feel the target environment is as rich as you’ll get. Don’t wait for us.”