The Midnight Sun (The Omega War Book 2)

by Tim C. Taylor

  She’d allowed herself to believe the dropships descending from orbit in great waves were their salvation. Venix had died thinking so. But they were landing a mile up the beach, waiting behind the Condottieri line.

  They were the Midnighters’ doom, not their saviors.

  At least they’d avenged Venix, cutting down the sniper perched in the trees with every weapon the Midnighters had left to them.

  She saw sudden movement on her tactical map and set a Tri-V panel to follow with her cameras. Four of the Rietzkens were dancing down the beach on their tentacle-like limbs, and diving into the waves.

  She called them back, but they ignored her.

  “Is it your intention to abandon us?” she asked Gloriana. The rage she should be feeling at this betrayal just wouldn’t come. She’d seen huge explosions to the north, and Blue had disappeared from her tactical grid shortly before. And poor Venix…Without the battlecruiser, their position was without hope. “You should get away to safety,” Sun told the Rietzken. “I don’t understand your race’s code of honor, but mine says it makes no sense to ask comrades to stand and die for no purpose. Run for the safety of the water. We’ll cover your retreat.”

  The alien stormed over to her and straightened all seven legs to draw herself almost as high as Sun’s CASPer. “Major Sun! How dare you impugn my honor? I understand that in your own terms you just offered a selfless sacrifice to save us, and that’s the only reason I’m not firing you on the spot without severance pay and challenging you combat. To even suggest we’d consider abandoning you!”

  “What about those four?”

  “I’ve tasked them with stripping military assets. They’ll return. Don’t speak of this matter again.”

  Sun’s comm chimed. “Looks like they’re about to call for our surrender,” said Top.

  She zoomed into the area he painted on her map and saw a single CASPer marching toward them from the Condottieri line, the mecha dented and scorched. The Condottiere detached the weapons on his arms – she assumed this was the Dove – and dropped them to the sand. He kept walking their way.

  “Surrender is not an option,” stated Gloriana. “Even if this human is genuinely merciful, General Peepo has no such weakness. She’ll make an example of us all. We’ll beg her for death, even me.”

  “The big boss is right,” said Top gently.

  “I know she is,” Sun snapped back. She panned her cameras over the bloodied band of survivors. She desperately wanted to give them hope the way Venix had. She wanted to give them something to believe in.

  But she had nothing to offer.

  “Hold your fire,” she ordered. “Patch your wounds and load yourself up with ammo. We’re not moving from this position. We stand or fall here.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 118

  The Dove halted in the sand halfway between the Condottieri line and the remnants of the Midnighters. There weren’t many of them left, but there had been enough deaths. He had to try talking them out of a one-way ticket to hell.

  Admittedly, if he could avoid committing his reserves and ransom a few captives, maybe he could reduce his financial loss after all. Perhaps the company would be a going concern he could hand on to DiAngelo.

  But Nicolo SantoPietro’s lingering desire to be Il Colombo had drained into the sand. It was finally time to pay Margherita and his girls the attention they deserved.

  “Lorenzo, my friend,” he said to DiAngelo who was with the main group up the beach, “How do our colleagues in space fare?”

  “Commander Dubroc is trying to keep Regina Margherita out of the fighting, to the annoyance of our alien mistresses.” There was excitement in DiAngelo’s voice. Dear Lorenzo still had an appetite for adventure! “It’s just as well she evades,” he said. “See for yourself.”

  The Dove reconfigured the camera feeds into his Tri-V bank. Instead of a metal shroud hung with status boards, tactical grid panels, and tessellated camera views, the inside of his CASPer transformed into a glass ball soaring high in the sky. He pushed higher still into orbit, beyond where huge explosions and actinic blasts of energy told him all he needed to know about the battle raging in space. The Veetanho warships were in a fight to the death. And Commodore Noikaa had not deigned to mention any of this.

  After disconnecting the comm feed from that alien bitch in orbit, the Dove flipped open his suit’s cockpit and wriggled his arms out of their haptic sleeves. Taking care not to show the need for haste, he picked a half-smoked Robusta from the inside of his suit, stubbed it against the cigar lighter that gave his technicians palpitations, and enjoyed the honest pleasure of the best Honduran tobacco.

  If you’re going to make a point, he mused, do it with style.

  “Surrender and you can go free,” the Dove announced, his suit carrying his words down the beach to his opponents. “Let’s prevent needless bloodshed.”

  “I agree,” came a woman’s voice, which he surmised was Major Sun. “Needless bloodshed is senseless and cruel. And that’s why we’re standing firm, because to do so is not senseless. You see, Dove, you’re forgetting one crucial detail: we’re not fighting for money alone. We’re fighting for principal. For Earth. For liberty. For the freedom to win treasure and fame, and the freedom to fuck things up when we make the wrong choices. Those are freedoms Peepo will deny us forever.”

  “Noble words, my dear. Although I wonder whether your non-human comrades understand they’re fighting and dying for Earth. But I fear it’s you who’s forgetting a crucial detail. Rather a boring, practical matter, but nonetheless a vital one. A good field commander will nurse their reserves for the crucial moment, and then unleash them to utterly break the enemy.”

  I gave them a chance, he told himself.

  Keeping the cigar in his left hand, he reinserted his right into the haptic sleeve. He lifted his metal arm and snapped its fingers.

  Behind him, hatches opened on the dropships parked in a widely-dispersed pattern across the beach. The waiting Tortantulas swarmed out. He didn’t have to look to know this – the ground thundered with the impact of thousands of Tortantula legs, and the air filled with their hisses of bloodlust.

  Five thousand Tortantulas and several hundred Flatar riders had descended from orbit. Midnight Sun had taken out much of the first wave with its strike on Seven Hills. How many Tortantulas remained? The precise number didn’t matter. There were more than enough.

  After a lengthy last draw, the Dove flicked his cigar out onto the beach and resealed his canopy.

  “Surrender now,” he shouted to the Midnighters. “You know once I order them to attack, they can’t be stopped until you’re all dead.”

  He started counting to ten, but Major Sun gave no reply. Fair enough – it was already too late for her. At eight he gave up, turned, and ran for safety. “Set them loose, DiAngelo.”

  The sea of black death rampaged toward him. He barely managed to activate his jumpjets in time to soar over the charging monsters.

  The only thing in the entire galaxy that might have stopped the Tortantula horde were Raknar. But the two buried in the beach had been inactive for thousands of years. The Midnighters were dead.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 119

  Sun watched death streaming toward her. The Tortantulas were so huge and so densely packed, it was like watching a black void expanding to envelop all in its path.

  She could call on a half-dozen active CASPers, a handful of wounded spacers, Betty, and…

  And there was one other.

  Taking care not to let her half-ton suit trample the wounded, she bounded over to Betty and the man propped up against the sand beneath her abdomen. Maybe she was delirious, but she thought the Tortantula was guarding him like a faithful hound.

  “How is he?” Sun asked.

  “I think he’s broken,” said the Tortantula. “He closes his eyes for a few moments, then he wakes, speaking words my translator doesn’t understand. Those it does translate make no sense.”
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  “Did he say anything…about me?”

  “Normally you’re his favorite topic of conversation, Major. We speak of you often. This is how I know he’s broken, because instead of you, he speaks of his mother.”

  Sun smiled. “It’s common with humans, to ask for your mother at a time like this.”

  “No, Major. Branco is not calling for his mother to be with him, but for her identity to be revealed. I’m beginning to suspect that Branco’s not his real name. If he recovers his health, when we leave this planet, I’ll teach him a new identity, and the old one he’s lost will no longer matter. I and Tatterjee and Branco will form our own clan. He’ll forget he ever had this human mother.”

  Sun looked at the oncoming storm. There were thousands of them. “I admire you, Betty. You really believe we can get off this planet, don’t you?”

  “Commander Venix and Captain Blue both told me that if we kept the Condottieri busy for long enough, the human called Sinclair would bring reinforcements to save us.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “I know I am right. Major, can you not smell it? The Tortantulas out there are thick with it.”

  Sun looked again on the black tidal wave of death, but it was just your regular unstoppable Tortantula horde. “Nope, I can’t say I do.”

  Branco came to and groaned. “Fear,” he said.

  “You see? Branco understands,” Betty said delightedly. “You humans know so little. Those Tortantulas are humming with anxiety.”

  “Fear?” queried Sun, allowing a last spark of hope into her heart. “I didn’t know that was even possible. Will they turn and run?”

  “Of course not,” said Betty. “The fear will drive them to an even more manic killing frenzy than normal. But why would they feel such fear—”

  “Unless our reinforcements have arrived?” finished Sun.

  She shifted her view to the sky and saw dots raining down. Under magnification they looked like ten thousand clones of Mary Poppins descending from the heavens beneath oversized umbrellas. But even her CASPer optical software couldn’t filter out the blur from the shaking ground. The Tortantula flood was almost upon them.

  Whether what had panicked the Tortantulas was friend or foe to the Midnighters, it would make no difference if they were all slaughtered first.

  For everyone connected to the tactical grid, Sun painted a line just forty feet beyond the northern Raknar-berm. “Wait until they breach that line,” she told the survivors. “Then hit them with everything you’ve got. Hold…hold…hold…FIRE!”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 120

  Branco was shaken back into a semblance of alertness by the wave of explosions behind him, which tore chunks out of the front ranks of Tortantulas, swiftly followed by a shower of alien blood and shattered Tortantula legs. Then the alien avalanche tumbled over the Raknar berm and flooded the Midnighter position.

  He squeezed off a few bursts from the autocannon Betty had wedged into the foxhole she’d built for him.

  Brrrp! Brrrp!

  It was all he could do to stop the barrel jerking high into the air, let alone aim, but he didn’t need to. Wherever the barrel pointed, there’d be a Tortantula, mostly with a Flatar rider. But firing the damn thing was agonizing. The rot spreading fast through his stumps, butt, and groin made even breathing feel like his lower extremities were crawling with venomous biting ants. He couldn’t fire much longer.

  Brrrp! Brrrp!

  One of the Tortantulas had checked its momentum after leaping over his head, and was coming back for him, slightly to one side where his barrel couldn’t traverse.

  The Flatar rider leered from its high perch and raised a hypervelocity pistol.

  “Betty!” he screamed, but his friend was grappling with another Tortantula. If any CASPers survived, they were out of sight, buried beneath the onslaught. And although the Rietzkens were leaping from Tortantula to Tortantula, sweeping them clear of the Flatar, none could reach him in time.

  Then a half-ton of Binnig metal encasing a precious and deadly jewel flew across the battlefield like a rocket.

  “Eyes on me!” screamed Sun at the Flatar as she barreled through the air on a parallel course to the ground.

  The little alien had half-turned its head to see what the hell was going on when the top of Sun’s CASPer smashed into him, bursting him open like a sledgehammer wielded with malice against a plump watermelon.

  Sun disappeared out of view, but the enraged Tortantula, dripping with its partner’s viscera, hissed at Branco. It was a stomach-churning noise of pure evil, but it didn’t last long. This was personal. The Tortantula leaped, the ten-foot high killing machine descending on Branco fangs first.

  But Betty was waiting. She sprang up from the sand, intercepting the other Tortantula and rolling it over onto its back.

  Betty’s opponent snapped with its jaws, bit one of her legs clean off, and raked her flanks with the claws on its legs. But Betty didn’t notice. Her head was already buried deep inside her enemy’s guts, ripping apart its intestines.

  Betty’s opponent still twitched, but the fight had left it.

  Two more Tortantulas came at her, but Betty didn’t see them, being too distracted eating her opponent.

  “Betty!” Branco warned. He fired low at one of the advancing Tortantulas, and it fell to the ground, its legs sliced out from under it by the autocannon fire.

  His vision swam, and it hurt to think, but he looked again and saw that his gun wasn’t the deadliest attack the Tortantula was facing. A Rietzken was on its back, smashing four of its tentacle-limbs into the back of its enemy’s head in a high-speed repeating sequence. Each of the hammering arms held a barbed knife that seemed to be made of the same bony substance as the Rietzken body armor.

  Where had those knives come from?

  More to the point, where had those Rietzkens come from?

  Before the Tortantulas hit, there’d been at most a dozen exhausted and battered Rietzken survivors.

  Now he could see scores of them, leaping from back to back across the Tortantulas, hammering away with their bone knives at the same weak point at the rear of their enemy’s heads until the heads stove in and the knives drank deeply of the organ within.

  And these Rietzkens looked fresh.

  A Tortantula loomed over him.

  “You scared the crap outta me!” he told the huge alien wearing the saddle they’d adapted for his needs and the tattered armor that still bore the star logo of the Midnight Sun Free Company.

  “It’s not safe for you here,” she told him.

  “It’s all right. The cavalry’s here.”

  “I won’t lose you too,” she said.

  “No, listen. The reinforcements—”

  Betty wasn’t listening. She plucked him from the sand. With two limbs cradling him beneath her enormous abdomen as if carrying a precious egg sac, she bounded away on the seven legs that remained to her, and charged the still advancing Tortantula horde, screaming a battle cry so high it soon raised above Branco’s hearing.

  Dodging Flatar pistol bullets that screamed past Branco’s ears, she jumped onto the back of an onrushing Tortantula, ripping the head off its rider while firing the lasers strapped onto two of her legs.

  The hail of Flatar bullets fell silent.

  “Betty!”

  Her head bent down to look behind at the underside of her abdomen. “Is something the matter? You told me once you enjoyed surfing.”

  Branco’s jaw dropped in surprise. By the time he’d worked out what she meant, Betty was jumping from one Tortantula back to the next, surfing the black wave of death. It was like traveling up the freeway in the wrong direction, stepping from roof to roof of the speeding traffic while the passengers fired at you with automatic weapons.

  Branco screamed – at first in fear, but exhilaration pushed its way in, too. If the pain from his rotting flesh weren’t so excruciating, surfing Tortantulas would be the most exciting extreme sport he’d
ever experienced.

  He noticed that no one was shooting at them anymore. The Flatar had only ridden the first few lines of Tortantulas, but he could see out the corner of his eyes that they were not alone. So who was riding the enemy?

  He strained to get a better look.

  The Tortantula horde had gained new riders. Rietzkens.

  And the Tortantulas were being slaughtered.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 121

  The Dove could see why these aliens had ruffled Veetanho fur so much. They’d fallen out of the sky in mushroom-shaped body bags that had unzipped twenty feet above the ground, depositing the octopus things onto the legion of Tortantulas.

  His translator pendant could make no sense of their cries. His attempts to look them up on his in-CASPer reference stores drew a blank.

  They were ghosts.

  But the Veetanho knew and feared them.

  And with good reason. The ghost race was slaughtering the Tortantulas and were using nothing more than bone knives to do so. As they danced atop the Tortantulas, they’d pause occasionally to brandish the gore-coated knives in front of the cameras that buzzed around like flies.

  Their fellows who’d fought their last stand with the Midnighters had wielded handheld blasters and had enough tech savvy to hack his sensor network.

  “I think we’re witnessing the making of a propaganda film,” said DiAngelo.

  “Madonna! You’re right. Today the whole galaxy fears Tortantulas. Tomorrow it will fear these strange creatures who can take them on and win with nothing more than a piece of bone.”

  “And they will win,” said DiAngelo. “Commissar Boroi has disappeared. Commodore Noikaa is fighting in space. What does this mean for us?”

  His friend was right. The ghost soldiers were taking casualties as senior Flatars rallied the Tortantulas. But they moved with such speed that even the Flatar riders with their hypervelocity pistols struggled to track them. How would these ghost soldiers fare against CASPers, though? That might be a very different story.