The Midnight Sun (The Omega War Book 2)

by Tim C. Taylor

  “No.”

  “Perhaps,” Betty ventured, “we should take just one bite out of each; that will be a more measured approach. More…proportionate.”

  Sun called for quiet. “This is what we do. We demonstrate respect for the Condottieri as individuals, but our contempt for the cause in which they served and fell. We loot the corpses of food, water, ordnance, water filtration, medical equipment, and jet fuel, but we lay the rest of them with their personal belongings alongside our own. Every symbol of the Dove we will deface. Every equipment box, CASPer suit, even personal jewelry, if any bear the symbol of the Dove, we shall deface.”

  “Many of the humans mark their skin with white dove tattoos,” said Betty.

  “Yes, what of it?”

  Her eyes gave a shifty sideways look. All of them. “Those white doves are a sign of the enemy. Can I eat them off?”

  “You can skin the bastards,” someone said, “and hang their entrails from the trees for all I care.”

  The translation came from Sun’s pendant, but the voice that had spoken was Zuparti.

  Zuparti?

  “However,” said Venix at the entrance from the floor above. “The major understands human psychology, and it’s humans whom we face in the field. So we do as she says, with one exception. If any of you desert, Betty, I order you to eat them.”

  “Roger that, Commander,” said the Tortantula, clicking her mandibles. Tatterjee laughed.

  Venix clambered down to the assembly with difficulty, shaking off the trooper who tried to help. A bandage was wrapped around his head, and the way it oozed fluid spoke of infection. He walked with the aid of a metal spar, but he was alive.

  “Commander,” she said. “It’s good to see you. Are you…alone?”

  His only reply was a curt nod. In silence, he walked the line of the fallen, spending a long moment to look into each face. Then he silently trooped the living before coming to a halt in front of Sun.

  “Where are my Raknar?”

  “Nearby.”

  “But you don’t know precisely where.”

  “No,” she admitted and looked down, disconsolate. Then she frowned. She wasn’t taking this shit. She’d made command decisions, and she’d damned well stand by them. “We haven’t located them,” she stated defiantly, “but we’ve paid heavily for the time and space to find them and take them to safety before the enemy appears in numbers.”

  He nodded, a human gesture her sister had taught him. “Good,” he said. “You’ve done well, Major. All of you. But we need to hurry things up here. Hrrn, Kruse, pick three volunteers each and go search for the Raknar. See if the tugs still function. Finn-Holt, Albali, pick the brains of whoever you want, but I want options on how the hell we’re gonna transport hundred-foot high mecha through this damned swamp.”

  “I’ll help,” said Sun.

  “Not you,” the Zuparti said kindly. “You’ve done enough for one day. Rest, because in the morning you have the toughest task of all. We have a thousand-klick march ahead of us, through hostile terrain, and under the enemy’s guns. You need to figure out how to keep us alive.”

  “A thousand klicks? Where are we headed?”

  “There are two Raknar nearby, but the third went down with the ship, and I want it back. Midnight Sun is a tough old bird and full of surprises. It’s possible we might find survivors.”

  Sun’s eyes flashed with anger and her hands trembled. Not with fatigue this time, but the desire to rip the commander’s throat out. How dare he give her false hope? But he’d given her an objective. He was giving them all a purpose.

  A thousand klicks through arduous terrain. With the Condottieri throwing everything at them, and with Veetanho assistance too. The deserter had been right. The sensible approach would have been to yield the Raknar and go to ground. But it was too late now. Blood had been spilled. And there would be plenty more yet.

  Her mind spinning with challenges and solutions, she realized her trembling had left her. This was the darkness before the light. They could do this. She could do this.

  Maybe she wasn’t so different from her sister after all.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 74

  The Dove heard a knock at the door to his quarters, followed by the grinning form of Provost-Major DiAngelo, a post he’d reluctantly introduced recently to ensure the correct level of zeal from the more opportunistic new recruits swelling the numbers of his battalions. The role might be new, but the person holding it was well known to the Dove.

  Lorenzo DiAngelo gave a teasing smile. “Ready, boss?” Bastardo! He knew how much Dove hated speeches.

  “I’d rather be back in the SleSha slave pits.”

  “I know, boss.” DiAngelo looked thoughtful before adding, “I remember seeing you chained to a cold stone wall, lying in a slick of your own filth, so emaciated I could see the rear curve of your ribcage, and so weak you could no longer swallow solid food. Yet even then, I still saw that gleam in your eye that said you’d find a way out of that alien hellhole.”

  “But it was you, DiAngelo, who got us out.”

  “Maybe. But only because the belief I saw in your eyes kept me fighting.”

  “What you saw in my eye was more likely early onset glaucoma, but let’s not dwell on the inconvenient details of where we came from. Instead, let’s focus on where we go tomorrow.”

  DiAngelo smiled beneath the salute he snapped off as he opened the door to the prefab bubble tent. The son of a whore could play his boss like a Stradivarius, and Dove couldn’t do without him. The provost major gestured for his CO to get his ass in gear and face the world outside.

  His blood warmed at the sight that awaited him on the parade ground. The Veetanho had lent them some serious kit: portable fortification modules, drones, atmospheric lift fliers, sensor tech he didn’t even have a name for, and a serious artillery park. At its heart were three full companies of CASPers. In all, he had 360 CASPer drivers and almost 40 support personnel.

  His best guess put his opponents at fifty Midnighters, and they were encumbered by their wounded and two massive mecha, which his Veetanho advisors swore wouldn’t activate.

  For all their sakes, the aliens had better be right, because even with such numerical superiority, this wouldn’t be easy. The obvious tactic would be to harry the Midnighters. Wear them down with minimal risk and make them pay for their limited supplies. When the wretched survivors had run out of ammo, fuel, food, and fresh water, the Condottieri would overwhelm them and take their prizes. But the Veetanho advisors wanted to take the Raknar back to General Peepo without delay. Condottieri casualties were of no consequence to them.

  He trooped the line of his mercenaries, proudly lined up alongside their gleaming CASPers, knowing that he had to protect them from the Veetanho as much as from the planet and the Midnighters.

  The opening battle had wrought destruction on the Zuul colony settlement, and on its smoking ruins his opponents had scrawled taunts.

  Alien slaves.

  Traitors.

  Collaborators.

  Leccaculo Veetanho lovers.

  There were many more lewd examples, some anatomically impossible or at least ill-advised. Childish really, but the NCOs reported that the accusations were hurting morale. Dove’s response had been to level the place and start again, renaming this outpost as Avanti Base. But DiAngelo insisted that wasn’t enough, that he must puff out his chest, trim his beard, and orate. He must play the part of Il Colombo.

  He hated this, but DiAngelo was right. If his superior numbers didn’t tell, the fight for the Raknar would be decided by whoever held their belief longest. The Midnighter victory had sent a message. Now he must counterattack. He wouldn’t be firing missiles out here on the parade ground, but all the same, his words would be shots fired in this contest.

  “Those of you who knew Captain Fellini and his advance party will be grieving and angry,” he said. “The Midnighters label us as traitors to bolster their will to fight. I expect a
few of them – those with the most limited imagination – actually believe this slander. They say that all of us are evil. You!” He stood in front of a young trooper. “Are you evil, Private Rozalski?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Of course you aren’t. You’re a fine young man working his first contract.” He backed away to address the entire parade. “We are Condottieri. We are mercenaries, yes, and that means we fight for profit. But we fight with intelligence and honor, unlike those idiots who oppose us. The Midnighters flatter themselves that they’re fighting for Earth. They’re not. They’re fighting for a storybook ideal. The way forward for humanity is to prove we’re valuable to our superiors in the Union, because if we don’t, then as a mercenary race who are more trouble than we’re worth, we become a liability.”

  The Dove stood before a different trooper in the front row. “Private Desault, what does one do with a liability?”

  “Gets rid of it, sir.”

  “Listen to her! Private Christiana Desault has more sense than the Midnighters and all the Four Horsemen put together. If we fail in this campaign – if we prove to the Veetanho and the strong races of the Union that humanity is a liability, they will get rid of us. Maybe not in my lifetime, but in my children’s, yes. If we don’t win here on Rakbutu-Tereus, our species is doomed.”

  Absolute silence reigned on the parade ground. Even the creatures in the trees had fallen quiet.

  “To hell with the Midnighters,” roared the Dove. “We are Condottieri, and we always win.” He punched the air. “Avanti, Condottieri! Avanti!”

  The chant rang out with ardent fervor: “Avanti, Condottieri! Avanti!”

  With the chant showing no signs of dying away, the Dove whispered to DiAngelo, “How did I do, Lorenzo?”

  “For someone who hates speeches,” DiAngelo said, miming cupping an ear to the deafening chant from their army of mercs, “you did passably okay.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 75

  Place one foot in the mud, ensuring its stabilizer fins are extended to spread your footprint. Let it sink until it compacts the ground enough to bear the approximately 975 pounds of your weight.

  Lift the other leg.

  Drag it through the water and place in the mud until it reaches a firm foundation.

  Lift the rear leg and repeat.

  And repeat.

  Endlessly.

  Sun pushed into the harness lashed around her CASPer and tried to remember what the feet of her CASPer looked like. It’d been a while since she’d seen them.

  Stop thinking, she admonished herself. I’m supposed to be resting.

  On the trail ahead, she heard with dismay the familiar whine of Raknar-Beta’s tug spooling its four tilt-prop motors. She trained her exterior cam on the developing scene, because she’d learned on the five days of their trek from the abandoned Zuul settlement that if the tug was spooling up, her brain would need to do the same.

  Sure enough, the tug’s progress was blocked by a fallen tree.

  She had to admit, the lifter tugs were impressive machines. They drove through the tunnel hacked out of the swamp by CASPer sword blades, pushed along by their rear engines on an undercarriage more comfortable with smooth runways.

  Raknar-Beta lay on its cargo bed, hidden beneath the cylindrical tunnel of the tug’s metal cargo cover. It looked like a dish served at a swanky restaurant for titans.

  Sun’s stomach growled at the thought of food. No matter how much she tried not to, her mind was running a countdown until the day, hour, and minute when her nausea and diarrhea suppressants would run out.

  But the tugs were better suited for the swamp than her guts. They were rated for much heavier loads than the Raknar, and the combination of buoyancy in the muddy swamp water and the multitude of thick wheels of its undercarriage meant the tug could progress surprisingly well through the crude tunnel cut by the CASPers.

  The pioneer team up ahead had cut away branches but hadn’t removed this fallen tree. They hadn’t had time.

  The tug ran its rotors hard, pushing itself off the ground and making a short hop over the obstacle.

  The down blast swirled the swamp water into a swirling, bubbling vortex.

  Looks like hot chocolate, she mused. Then the mud thrown up by the blades splattered against her suit.

  She groaned. Not about the mud. She was so thoroughly coated in it that it was impossible to get muddier. The constant rain would soon sluice off this coating, in time to be replaced with yet more mud. It was the hop over the fallen tree that worried her. It would expend a little more from the lifter’s precious fuel reserves. In a few days, they’d need to begin siphoning jump juice from the CASPers to refuel the two tugs.

  Raknar-Beta’s tug was quickly swallowed up by the dark tunnel ahead, disappearing behind the curtain of rain that dripped through the trees.

  If Sun were on her own, she could probably scramble over or under the log. But her current role was to be a mule, pulling a litter of sleeping mercs. She surveyed possible routes through the brackish ground and slewed left.

  Damn tree. She hated it.

  She herself had installed the three-shift system for the Midnighters. The days on Rakbutu-Tereus were nearly thirty hours long. Each shift spent five hours asleep, five hours on an active duty – such as rearguard, pioneering, or command – and five hours pushing the tugs to save on fuel or dragging the litters.

  Repeat.

  Two times each day.

  Forever.

  Unless, by some chance, Venix’s dream became reality, and they finally reached the sea.

  “My tribal ancestors used to migrate across salt flats,” said Venix from the litter, a construct of woven branches and twigs. “If their treks were anything like this, I have more respect for them now.”

  Sun opened a view through her rear camera, showing the litter she was dragging and its precious cargo.

  “You’re supposed to be asleep,” she said to the small figure with the stretched body and drenched whiskers who nestled amongst the sleeping human mercenaries.

  “Not with this leg,” he said.

  As the days dragged on in this nightmare march into the dark interior of the swamp, Venix had begun acting very strangely for a Zuparti.

  He was being nice to people. Most of all, he was being nice to her.

  Whether this was delirium or burgeoning comradeship, she didn’t know, but it was possible that he was blaming the pain from his wounded leg, when really what had woken him was her bumpy ride. She was dragging the sleeping cargo over roots and squeezing between branches that hadn’t been cut. She trained her rear view over the two women and two men she carried in addition to Venix. But it was obvious it would take more than a few bumps to wake the exhausted mercs. It wasn’t just exhaustion, though that was biting and endless. The shades of yellow and green on their skin boded ill, and Trooper O’Hara had something white crawling up into her nose.

  Sun didn’t stop. They all had things crawling on and inside them.

  She looked ahead and saw she had another 30 yards before rejoining the main tunnel. Now was the perfect time to raise a matter she’d been avoiding for days. “We’re making 40 klicks per day,” she said to Venix through her rear speaker. “I’m proud of what we’ve achieved, but we won’t maintain that rate, and there’s another 800 klicks to the sea. We won’t make it. Do you honestly think we will?”

  Venix cast a sly look at his companions lashed to the litter. Satisfied they were too deeply asleep to hear, he replied, “We probably won’t make it to the coast. We probably won’t be able to evade the Condottieri forever. With all this rain, I couldn’t see what they were bringing down from orbit, but there was a lot. However, we do have an ace up our sleeve. It’s the same assumption the CO used during the engagement in space, and it’s still in force. Colonel Dove can’t risk damaging our Raknar. If he shells, bombs, or nukes the entire area, the Raknar will go with us. He has to come in after us through the swamp the hard way. If you
r sister can get Midnight Sun operational, maybe we can reunite our forces and smash the Condottieri.”

  “It’s been almost six days since the ship went down,” Sun replied grimly. “No contact. If there were any way she could contact me, I know she would, even if only to let me know she was still alive. Every day she fails to do so makes it less likely. We have to face facts, Commander Venix. My sister, the crew, and the aliens aboard Midnight Sun are probably dead.”

  “Probably this. Probably that. Maybe squared. We can guess all we like, but we don’t know any of the key variables other than what we do here of our own volition. Major Sun, if you require a high degree of certainty for every variable in order to function as an officer of this company, you’re not fit for your role. Are you quitting, Major Sun? Are you deserting?”

  “I am asking pertinent questions,” Sun answered. “It’s the officer who’s incapable of considering a range of undesirable outcomes who’s not fit for her role.”

  Venix’s heavy whiskers lifted a little. “Neither is one without fire in her gut. That’s what I wanted to see, Sun. Welcome back, Major. I was worried you’d lost your fire. To recapitulate – your sister, our mysterious alien allies, and our flight home are probably all lost. But we can’t know that for sure. And until we do, we shall continue.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Besides.” He growled and yipped in a manner she’d never heard before. “I know Veetanho. Humans don’t see them the way I do. The mistresses of the Merc Guild wear goggles, little tails, and have cute whiskers. They look like chubby Zuparti with an eye infection. But they’re not. The Veetanho are the true warriors of the Union. Compared to them, the Tortantulas and Besquith are merely hired boots. Insult those lesser races, and they’ll rip off all your limbs and eat them. But if you insult Veetanho, you risk the extermination of your entire species. They scare me, Major. They’re not a forgiving race. In our communications with the Condottieri flagship, I saw Veetanho advisers on their CIC. Colonel Dove might be running the operation here, but he’s on a leash held by the Veetanho. And in the sensitive eyes of the Veetanho, we’re as good as allied to the Four Horsemen. We’re…what’s that human word?”