The Midnight Sun (The Omega War Book 2)

by Tim C. Taylor

  The Dove leaned back in his seat and enjoyed the sun on his face. His Robusto was half burned through, and he’d hardly done it justice with all the distractions. A quick pat of his jacket reassured him that he had another tube in reserve.

  The pestilential alien hung around nearby in silence, but the Dove’s passive sensors linked to his pinplants informed him the Veetanho was in high bandwidth communication with her fellows in orbit.

  He turned his face to the sea.

  Midnight Sun was still out there somewhere, and inside it was his third Raknar. But what else?

  Whatever surprises awaited him, he could still bring this mission off in triumph.

  The Dove settled deeper into his chair and breathed deeply of the sea air.

  All in all, this was turning into a glorious day.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 78

  Branco regarded the six empty CASPers arrayed before him in the mid-morning gloom and tried to tap hidden reserves to summon up the energy to work on them. But he was all tapped out.

  Whatever his state, though, this essential maintenance work had to be carried out.

  The major had allowed two half-hour stops per day, and Branco was one of three surviving armorer specialists whose skills were always called upon to keep the CASPers running.

  Joints were clogging with impacted mud. No matter how well he cleaned them, after a few hours in the swamp, the suits would begin to lose their full range of motion. If they’d been Mark 5s or 6s, he would have been worried about corrosion and electronic short-circuits from the constant dampness. If they’d been Mark 7s, the drivers would have been struggling in the sweltering heat from fuel cells that couldn’t radiate waste heat effectively into the moist air through their clogged heat exchangers. But these were Mark 8s, and they were mostly standing up well. With all the fuel cells stripped from the fallen at the battle they’d fought seven days ago, it would be weeks before these CASPer motors stopped. The main weakness of the suits were the drivers who operated them. Fatigued, diseased, and riddled with parasites, the suits would last longer than their drivers.

  More important than the suits’ slight loss of agility, the enzyme osmosis membranes in their water filtration systems were deteriorating fast. The mud was pushing the system to the limit, but what tipped them over seemed to be biological. Could be bacteria or microscopic parasites. No one knew for sure, and they lacked the skill or equipment to care.

  The ground here was relatively dry but surrounded by little water channels feeding slow-moving brown sludge into larger bodies of water. When the water filters died, they’d be lapping at the sludge if they couldn’t find fresh running water soon.

  “You’re a marvel,” said Gjalp.

  Branco smile at his squadmate, who’d come to stand beside him.

  “But even you can’t work wonders. Our suits will fail, won’t they? Then we’ll die.”

  Anger rapidly warmed Branco’s blood. He was doing his best. What was Gjalp’s problem?

  His big friend looked shrunken in on himself, skin sallow, and sweat beading on his face. But he had that obstinate frown that announced Soren Gjalp would never back down. It was just that today that frown was directed at Branco.

  “The suits will last just fine,” Branco told him. “It’s their drivers who’ll fail. And you’ll fade first if you don’t get some rest. You’re supposed to be asleep.”

  “What’s the point?” Gjalp snapped back. “This stinking jungle will kill us all. Better to end it with a quick MAC round to the head.”

  “No, that’s not you, Gjalpy. Take the easy way out and abandon your comrades? You wouldn’t. We need you.”

  Gjalp snorted. “For what? It’s madness. Why are any of us doing this?”

  “Because we’re professionals, and because we signed up for it.”

  Branco didn’t like the sneer spreading across his friend’s face. “Oh, yeah. Loverboy Branco. I expect you to defend your girlfriend.”

  “No, I’m going to defend my CO because she’s right.”

  “Is she? We aren’t at war.”

  “Aren’t we?”

  “Look, I don’t like it any better than you, but the Four Horsemen went rogue. Now they’re paying the price. It’s not a price I volunteered to pay.”

  “She gave you a chance to back out. And you chose not to take it. We’re all in this together. Unless…” Branco was about to say ‘Unless she orders us to surrender,’ but she never would. Would she?

  Then he wasn’t speculating about Sun because Gjalp threw a punch – one so slow that Branco easily ducked underneath. By the time he came back up, Gjalp was closing in for a bear hug. But instead of a bone-crunching attack, Gjalp could only manage a clumsy shove.

  Branco pushed him back, and Gjalp fell. He landed heavily, clutching at his gut. Branco hadn’t even hit him there.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were so ill?” he demanded of the fallen man. “Can you still drive your CASPer?”

  “It stinks in there. I mean really, gut-wrenchingly bad. But I can still drive it. I walked into a tree today, though. Must’ve dozed off. Just fatigue.”

  “No, it’s more than that. Why are you clutching at your guts?”

  Gjalp provided an answer in spectacular fashion, blowing the contents of his stomach over a wide area.

  “That’s absolutely rank,” said Corporal Cleggy, who was coming off shift.

  “What?” groaned Gjalp in abject misery. “Ain’t you seen barf before? What the hell kind of bars do you drink at?”

  “No,” said Cleggy pointing at the splatter. “Look!”

  Branco wrinkled his nose in disgust. Gjalp’s vomit was moving. Pallid worms were crawling through it like the fingers of corpses trying to pull themselves up from the ground.

  “Ah, man,” said Cleggy. “I hate this swamp.”

  One of the huge brown slugs flew down from a low branch and sat on the writhing pile. A short while later more slugs moved in, but the first one spat acid at them to fend them off.

  When it followed its rivals soon after, all the worms had gone, replaced with steaming holes where acid had burned through into the damp ground.

  “Well whaddya know?” said Gjalp, rising to his feet. “Jungle cleaning service, free of charge. Works too. I feel so much better.”

  “Incoming!” came a shout “Drones. Weapons free, people. Blast them to hell.”

  Branco scrambled up the nearest CASPer and jumped inside, but as he did so, the whine of light aerial motors burst through the tunnel they’d cut through the jungle. He’d never get the suit active in time.

  While chaos erupted throughout the temporary camp, Branco jumped down and joined Gjalp in grabbing a laser rifle from a nearby stack that had just been cleaned.

  While the chemical reaction in the magazine charged the gun, the drones shot through the tunnel.

  They were light reconnaissance drones, armed with nothing more than a laser that fed off their small power cell. Not only were they down in the tunnel, but flying through the branches higher up. Probably above the canopy too. It wasn’t enough for the drones to spot the Midnighters; they also needed to relay the signal back.

  Branco captured one drone in his sights, leading it slightly before he fired. The miniature aircraft flew into his laser beam, slicing itself neatly in two. Other drones were dying more spectacular deaths in explosions and evasive maneuvering that slammed them into the trees.

  There were only a couple left.

  Branco was seeking the next target when he heard Sun’s heavily-amplified voice. “Cease fire! I want a few words with Il Colombo.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 79

  The Condottieri had found them!

  These were only recon drones, but Sun knew they were the enemy’s feathery first touch of contact that could rapidly build to a crushing grip.

  She stomped across the damp ground to stand beneath one of the drones. What this little machine represented scared the shit out of her.
What was going through the hearts of her people?

  She reached out a metal hand to the device and beckoned it closer.

  You always knew it would be a battle of morale, she told herself. And now they need you to demonstrate defiance.

  “Take a good look at me,” she said at the device. “I know someone’s monitoring this in real time. To whom am I speaking?”

  “I am Colonel Nicolo SantoPietro, known as Il Colombo. I must thank you for keeping my Raknar safe. With whom do I have the pleasure of conversing?”

  “This is Major Sun of the Midnight Sun Free Company, and I tell you that you’ll never get your hands on our property. Take a good look if you want, because it’ll do you no good. Send more drones; we could do with the target practice. Better still, come in person, and I’ll kill you myself.”

  “Come now,” said the enemy colonel in a silvered voice. “Let us be reasonable.”

  “Request granted,” Sun replied, and blasted the drone to fragments with her autocannon.

  “Such a disappointment,” said the Dove, as the last surviving drone soared into the trees, ducking between branches in its hunt for cover.

  “You’re a beautiful and spirited woman,” his voice told her from the trees. “I don’t wish to destroy you, Major. I desire you by my side.”

  Sun let off three bursts of fire that brought branches and foliage crashing down onto Raknar-Beta’s tug.

  “Missed,” said the Dove from somewhere in the trees. “You Midnighters impress me. Seriously. I invite all of you to give yourselves up and join the Condottieri. After a hard battle at the Zuul colony town, you’ve marched seven days and nights through swamp and jungle, and still you keep your weapons clean and your fighting spirit hot. This is good. But how defiant will you be in another seven days? Or a further seven days after that? You know I don’t need to kill you. In time, the swamp will do it for me, and I can wait to let hunger and disease claim you. So why don’t we skip the part where you die slowly and get straight to the part where I collect my Raknar?”

  A bolt of red – ephemeral but visible in the damp air – shot into the trees and into the drone.

  “No deals with traitors,” shouted Branco, his laser rifle gently steaming in its breach.

  The drone he’d shot caught fire as it clattered down the trees to land with a thump on the muddy ground.

  Sun looked to the others for their reaction, hoping they’d echo Branco’s words of defiance.

  No one spoke. The faces she saw regarded the smoldering drone sullenly for a few moments, then doggedly returned to their assigned tasks.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 80

  “Seven Hills Base has completed Phase One construction,” DiAngelo reported. “The sensor grid is now self-replicating across the sea, extending the perimeter of its coverage by 10 meters per hour, a rate that will increase exponentially. If Midnight Sun so much as squeaks, let alone rises to the surface, the sensor team of Seven Hills will know well in advance.”

  “Good.” Dove turned from DiAngelo to the holographic participant in the meeting. “What of Avanti?”

  “The fabricators are coming online,” reported Captain Handel, the commander Dove had left running Avanti Base. “Still teething problems, of course, but we expect the initial batch of new bloodhounds to enter service tomorrow. The assembly line for the artillery munitions is still being assembled.”

  Handel’s Tri-V hologram glanced nervously at Commissar Penree, who was physically present, along with the Dove and DiAngelo, in the conference room of Fort Palatine. Dove didn’t blame him. The Veetanho were growing impatient and regarded Condottieri lives to be of no consequence. Captain Handel’s included.

  “And your pursuit?” Dove nudged.

  “Is underway but hitting problems,” the captain replied. “Since the target’s encounter with the drone flight yesterday, they’ve taken more effort to cover their tracks. They’ve been cutting false trails and leaving ambush parties. I lost a CASPer two hours ago, sunk into a pit and never got out again. But we know their approximate location, and we’re grinding them down.”

  “Good,” Dove replied, blowing a smoke ring that turned in the air to DiAngelo’s amusement. “Drive them, harry them, but don’t engage closely. To do so would be wasteful.”

  “To do so would expedite the retrieval of our Raknar,” said Penree. “You should assault. You know their location. Attack them.”

  “My dear Commissar,” soothed the Dove, “these Midnighters retain far too much spirit. Let it first drain into the mud.”

  “You promised results.”

  “And you shall have them. But I promised you those Raknar, and cornered humans do desperate things. Such as exploding ordnance that would kill them all but would also destroy the Raknar rather than let us retrieve them. We must wear them out first.”

  “Approach them at night,” the Veetanho insisted. “Overwhelming strength. Chain guns and sword blades. Your vaunted CASPers can kill the enemy and act quickly enough to secure the Raknar.”

  Dove bit down on his reply, but DiAngelo voiced his thoughts verbatim. “An attack now will be risky and costly. We don’t need to throw away the lives of our personnel for no purpose. Let us wait a little longer.”

  “No one’s getting off this planet alive without our say so,” said the other holographic figure in the meeting. From Regina Margherita, the Condottieri flagship in orbit, Commander Dubroc made her point by transmitting a real-time view of the orbital zone around Rakbutu-Tereus. “The Midnighters understand the importance of orbital superiority, and I own it, unchallenged. They cannot hope to survive for much longer in that swamp. The only way for them to live is to surrender the Raknar; they all know it. They just need time to accept that conclusion.”

  “Time! Time! You humans talk endlessly of time as if it’s the most abundant commodity in the galaxy. Time is not fixed. Events change. The advantage can slip.”

  “Last transmission said our reinforcements are almost here,” said Commander Dubroc. “Our intelligence that you say comes via the Navigation Guild tells us nothing of similar reinforcements for the enemy.”

  “Time is not abundant!” The Veetanho bared her teeth at Dubroc’s holographic image.

  The commander gave the alien a look of absolute disdain, and the Dove’s heart couldn’t help being gladdened by such a tableau of beauty.

  Commander Pascaline Dubroc was an excellent officer with an arresting presence despite her petite stature. A little like the mad sisters, he supposed, except Dubroc was more assured in her role, and possessed elegant layers of grace and sophistication utterly unlike the Midnighter street filth. In fact, Dubroc would be not merely good but perfect if not for one fatal flaw. One he confessed was not entirely her fault.

  She’d been born French.

  Dubroc punctuated her disdain with the classic Gallic shrug, an artifice reserved for those she held in particular contempt. “Fille de taupe,” she muttered. Daughter of a mole.

  “Thank you everybody,” said the Dove quickly, before Dubroc’s insult precipitated a Franco-Veetanho war. “Our plans are proceeding well. My friends, I accept the Commissar’s excellent advice that we mustn’t take time for granted. Therefore, I shall accelerate the timetable I had planned.” He glanced at the Veetanho and wondered whether she would realize he was lying through his beard. “We shall establish a cordon on the north bank of the main river that passes through the swamp, and which I now name the River Pripyat. The Midnighters’ path follows the south bank of the river, and I believe they feel compelled to stay close to the Pripyat, the only source of relatively fresh water. We shall deny them this crucial resource with a blockading force. Handel, your force is to continue harrying, but to fall back if pressed heavily. I shall lead the blockade with the assistance of Provost-Major DiAngelo. I leave the Seven Hills fortification ring and the naval operations in the capable hands of Captain Fiorentino, who should be assisted in this by Assistant Commissar Boroi. One final week of pursuit, a
nd the Raknar will be ripe for the plucking.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 81

  The signals specialist waited for his moment, protected from observation by the impact crater’s rim that had been eroded over many years into a ring of low and broken hills. He watched his comrades on point at the northeast crest, ensuring the way was clear.

  But in war, there is no safe. Nothing is ever entirely clear.

  Take the Pattex, for example. This planet had been used by that race as an evacuation staging area when they were raided by Spinward Cartel forces about 130,000 cycles ago. The Pattex had thought they were safe. But the Cartel attack had left these impact craters, and it amused the scout sensor specialist that the enemy human mercenaries were clinging to the debris of that earlier conflict of which they had no understanding.

  The humans weren’t safe either. Not here on this world. And certainly not on their homeworld of Earth.

  The clouds shifted slightly, propelled by a stiffening easterly sea breeze. A beam of moonlight shone down on the crest of the hill, gleaming off the shell of one of their squad.

  Revealed by this sudden illumination, the scouts on the crest solidified into immobility.

  One of them still glinted. Presenting a smooth, reflective surface on a reconnaissance mission? On their return, serious questions would be asked by the elder of the Fast Venom Clan.

  The signals specialist shivered to contemplate being caught even in the vicinity of her anger.

  But the crestline scouts acted as if nothing had happened, and when the cloud returned, one beat furiously at the offender’s shell to remove any smoothness, while the other waved a beckoning limb at the specialist waiting below. He pushed the equipment trolley the short distance up the slope to join them, the fat tires leaving faint channels in the dirt, which those following behind soundlessly brushed away with their limbs.