The Midnight Sun (The Omega War Book 2)

by Tim C. Taylor

  He could call on only thirty active CASPers, who stood alert on the northern fringe of the fight. They’d be better off back inside the Seven Hills fort. So would the contingent under Captain Handel he’d left running the manufactory at Avanti Base. Although the interior of Seven Hills had been badly damaged by Midnight Sun, the walls were still strong, and he had supplies and more mercs inside.

  But if he ran, the news of human treachery would reach General Peepo. If the fate of his race lay in her hands, it would make a far better story to go down fighting.

  “Colonel, I’m seeing an unauthorized launch from the base,” said Captain Fiorentino, calling from Seven Hills. “It’s a shuttlecraft. Veetanho design. It was buried beneath the walls.”

  “Are any of our Veetanho friends still present at the base?”

  “Negative.”

  The fleeing craft was clearly visible to all the CASPers on the beach, streaking overhead in its dash for space.

  “I think the mystery of our glorious Commissar Boroi’s disappearance has been solved,” said DiAngelo, activating the missile pods on his shoulders.

  “Indeed,” replied the colonel, activating his. “And when the tides of war turn against a good commander, he stands shoulder to shoulder with his loyal troopers. He doesn’t flee into space, abandoning them to their fate. Don’t worry, Seven Hills. Leave this unidentified and presumably hostile craft to us.”

  The two men had loaded their pods with SAMs. Eight missiles arced up to meet the shuttle, which began to corkscrew as it flung out countermeasures.

  But the Veetanho craft was so close, the Condottieri could almost activate their jumpjets and reach out to touch it. It burst into flames, flinging out hot fragments, which hissed as they hit the sea before disappearing to the depths.

  So it had come to this. The Dove brought up his favorite image of his wife with their two daughters. He’d failed them.

  He activated a comm link to the Condottieri battlecruiser. “Dove to Commander Dubroc. Is Case Azure viable?”

  “Yes, sir,” replied Dubroc. “Everything’s in place.”

  “Excellent work. Execute Case Azure. I repeat. Execute Case Azure.”

  “With pleasure, sir. Activating Case Azure. Good luck, Colonel.”

  If all went well up in space, Dubroc would be simultaneously killing every Veetanho aboard Regina Margherita. The human battlecruiser would then disengage entirely from the space battle and surrender to the Midnighters at the first opportunity.

  He gave them a few moments to avoid tipping off the Veetanho before settling affairs planetside.

  “This is Colonel Nicolo SantoPietro, Il Colombo, to all Condottieri personnel everywhere, and to the Midnight Sun Free Company and their allies. I hereby formally disband the Condottieri. Company beneficiaries shall receive death benefits, health plan payouts, and all bonuses due them. To all Condottieri forces, disengage. Those of you on the beach, withdraw to Seven Hills. When it’s safe to do so, surrender to the Midnighters and their allies. I’m proud of you all, but this, my friends, is the end.”

  His comm was filled with cries of dismay, words of support, and condemnation.

  He tuned it all out until he was satisfied his mercs were hopping or running for the shelter of Seven Hills, leaving just two CASPers standing on the beach.

  “It’s been an honor, Lorenzo,” he told his friend.

  The two CASPers shook their metal hands.

  “Likewise. Do you think the Tortantulas have forgotten us?”

  “Perhaps,” replied the Dove, wondering whether he had time for a last cigar. “But not the Flatar.”

  A segment of the Tortantula horde broke away from their fight with the mystery aliens and charged the two CASPers.

  “On my mark,” said the Dove, gazing longingly at his last unopened cigar tube taped beside his status board.

  “No surrender!” shouted one of the Flatar as it fired its pistol at them.

  But the back of a charging Tortantula was not a stable firing platform and the round splashed into the sand at his feet.

  At eighty yards, the Dove gave the order to fire. Both men emptied the autocannon ammo cases on their backs, sweeping the Flatar off their mounts before slicing through dozens of Tortantula legs, sending the giant creatures tumbling into each other.

  DiAngelo joined him in jumping high over the stumbling mass of aliens, firing a stream of MAC rounds at them as their jets arced them hundreds of yards away toward an unoccupied area of beach.

  “Bastardo!” Dove shouted, as pain seared his left shoulder while he was bending his knees to make a landing.

  “Are you hit?” asked DiAngelo.

  “One of the wretched squirrel things shot me with its pistol. Don’t worry. It takes more than one shot to kill Nicolo SantoPietro.”

  They were much closer here to the battle with the ghost aliens. Riderless Tortantulas eager for a fight but unable to reach the knife-wielding foe saw an opportunity in the two CASPers. Within moments, hundreds were charging at them.

  The Dove and DiAngelo stood back to back and flicked open their blade arms.

  “My friend,” said the Dove, “did I ever tell you the story of how I met the most beautiful girl in the world hiding in the oily shadows of a Neapolitan dockyard?”

  “On many occasions,” answered DiAngelo, opening fire with his MAC cannon on the advancing tide. “But a man can never boast of his wife too many times.”

  “Quite so,” said the Dove as the drum of MAC shells on his back ran dry. “It was a sunny day” – he slashed at the Tortantula trying to bite through his suit, causing it to rear up – “not unlike the fine weather we enjoy today.” CASPer motors grunted, and hydraulic rams jetted as the Dove put every ounce of his suit’s strength into his blade thrust, gutting the Tortantula.

  “It’s good that we didn’t die in that hellhole of a slave pit,” said DiAngelo.

  A fresh wave of Tortantulas leaped on the two CASPers, drowning them beneath a violent sea of rending claws and snapping jaws.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 122

  Blue thanked the medic and wrapped herself in the blanket he’d given her before pulling the tap on the self-heating can of ultra-caff.

  After the Rietzkens had cut her from her CIC station and she was evacuated to the beach – meaning she’d had to suck on an alien’s blowhole while blasting beneath the sea at warp speed – she’d flopped onto the beach, eager to reunite with her people.

  She’d taken five steps and stopped. Nothing had prepared her for the scene of slaughter. Thousands of bodies lay across the beach, most of them giant Tortantulas with shattered heads, but not all. Not all.

  And the smell!

  The battlefield had also become a landing zone, with defenses established and alien equipment coming down before being lifted away to secure the planet. There was a group of about thirty of the amphibians who ignored the activity and stood silently in an inward-facing rectangle. One of these Rietzkens noticed Blue and broke away to launch a series of clicks and gurgles her way.

  She stared at the strange creature. Better get used to them, she supposed. The way this one bunched its seven legs on land made it look like a bow-legged thug, completely at odds with the graceful underwater speedboats who’d rescued her from Midnight Sun.

  Their equipment harness and clothing were the color of bleached bone stained in pink and purple patterns. The bony peak that ran high over their head resembled the Phrygian helmets of classical Greece – if the ancients had sidestepped the use of bronze and flourished in a coral age.

  Something about this particular Rietzken was different, and not just that it was jabbering away at her. It wore a plain iron collar totally unlike anything else carried by the aliens.

  Since her translator pendant had crashed while underwater, Blue hadn’t been able to understand a word. She nodded politely at the alien, then returned to scanning the beach for survivors.

  There they were! Thirty yards away, between those two r
idges in the sand, were the pitifully few humans within this sea of Rietzkens and dead Tortantulas.

  Sun!

  She was alive, in deep conversation with one of the medics Sinclair had summoned from Tau-Rietzke. Of the Scorpions themselves, she’d seen no sign. At least, not down here on the planet’s surface.

  Blue gave a sharp whistle and waved. Sun looked up and saw her. Her sister waved back but returned her attention to the medic and the wounded and stretchers.

  Others had spotted Blue and hurried over. Jenkins ran around her ankles in imitation of an armored cat, while two of the elSha clambered up her body and began fiddling with her pendant.

  “Is it working yet?” asked the Rietzken with the iron collar.

  “I can understand you,” Blue answered.

  The elSha techs both gave Blue a thumbs-up and scurried away.

  “Are you injured?” asked the Rietzken.

  “Nothing that couldn’t be fixed by a few days liberty with a case of good whiskey.”

  “That is well. My company has been severely damaged by the events on this world, but so long as you and your sister are intact, and the battlecruiser can be salvaged, I can rebuild.”

  “You’re the boss, right?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Then I have bad news. I don’t think Midnight Sun is lifting off from her watery grave.”

  “You’re incorrect. The ship needs new reactors and some minor repairs. Everything we need is already en route.”

  “Dandy. Shame we can’t fix all the dead people as easily.”

  Gloriana’s beak opened then snapped loudly. “I don’t consider the lives of my employees to be without value, Captain Blue. But there are some matters more important than individual lives – mine included.”

  “I’ll tell you what I think, Gloriana. I think you Rietzkens have been hiding behind humans and other races for long enough. And if you can field this miniature army, it isn’t just the Midnight Sun Free Company you’ve hidden behind. I mean, look at it.” Blue waved her arm across the hundreds of Rietzken personnel busy with more military tasks than standing in a rectangle. The hover motors that had propelled the Rietzken armored column on their way to take Seven Hills had fluffed up the sand and stained it black where they’d traveled through heaps of Tortantula dead. A patrol of atmospheric fighters screamed past. “You’ve held a grudge against the Veetanho for years, and you’ve been using mercs like us as a shield to prepare your revenge. Enough already. We deserve the truth.”

  The alien clapped with three of its limbs – a sound that Blue’s pendant translated as electronic laughter. “You and your people are mercenaries, Captain Blue. What you deserve is your pay, not the right to ask questions of your employer. Nonetheless, in a short while I expect the Council of Vengeance to come to order here on this beach and declare you to be something more than mere mercenaries. You’ll become allies.”

  Sun joined them, and the two sisters hugged. “Just in time,” Blue said over Sun’s shoulder. “Gloriana’s about to spill the beans.”

  The Rietzken tilted her head upward and began to explain. “After the destruction of the Ancient War, in which large parts of galactic civilization were burned to ashes, the survivors were gripped with a morbid fear of power blocs and military alliances. With good reason. Deep grievances burned; younger races looked upon a galaxy on its knees and saw opportunity. If another galactic war broke out, this time it might extinguish life altogether.

  “And so these fearful survivors put their faith in the guild system and the Peacemakers. The guilds predate recorded history, but now they were greatly strengthened. My ancestors were instrumental in creating the modern Mercenary Guild.

  “As we’ve shown on this beach, we Rietzkens are a martial race. Even back then, with the embers of the last war still hot, we hid our true strength, but the other mercenary races feared us, the Veetanho included.

  “We dominated the Inner Council of the Mercenary Guild, a body based upon our own Rietzken councils. We fought countless micro-wars neatly packaged as contracts and grew rich on the results. After millennia of lucrative combat, we dropped our guard.”

  “The Veetanho bought off the other merc races and left you in the cold.”

  “They did more than that, Captain. The Veetanho tried to expunge all knowledge of my race from the galaxy. They nearly succeeded. That’s why your pendant had no entry for my language until we patched in one of our own making, and why you’ll find no reference to my people’s existence on GalNet.”

  “Which explains a lot,” said Blue. “But not how Midnight Sun seems to be a valid registered company.”

  “Because at the last moment, the other races of the Mercenary Guild feared they were about to create in the Veetanho the very monster they’d sought to defeat by humbling us.

  “The Inner Council reached a stalemate with the Veetanho, a wary armistice if you like, that’s lasted a thousand years. We register our companies by a separate and hidden process but use other races as our public front. We retain one of the permanent seats on the inner council, though no more than one of my race has been allowed to walk upon Capital Planet at a time since the day the Veetanho turned on us. In the shadows, our influence still stretches far, and always, we prepare for battle.”

  “So, General Peepo’s intervention…are you saying she’s broken the armistice?”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not. But the balance of power is shifting, and we see our chance. Come, join me in the Council of Vengeance. We honor you as the interlocutors for the human race.”

  Blue followed Gloriana into the rectangle of aliens, who were throbbing with excitement and snapping their beaks. Look at me now, Ma. I’m an interlocutor, whatever the hell that is.

  Sun wasn’t impressed. She walked off, heading back to a man on a stretcher being inspected by Doctor DiMassi. Betty hovered nearby, never far from the stricken man.

  “Captain,” said Gloriana, “the proposal is made that we should ally with the Four Horsemen. Can you share with the Council your opinion of their leaders?”

  Blue grinned and forgot her sister. “An opinion of the Four Horsemen? How long have you got? Let’s start with Asbaran and their boss, Nigel Shirazi. He’s a playboy, and for most of his life the only action he saw was in bed – not to mention by the pool, in his cars, and a diversity of other locations. However, underestimate him at your peril. Shirazi has the habit of succeeding, just like his father. Sansar Enkh leads the Golden Horde, and she runs her miniature army with such ease that I know for a fact she’s sold her soul to the devil. Alexis Cromwell of the Hussars is an ace at fleet combat. She can make warships do things no one else can, which makes me wonder how. That lady has so many secrets they’re spilling out of her ass. As for Jim Cartwright, he’s our Raknar whisperer.” Blue looked over to the man Sun was bending over. “Cartwright’s only a kid, though, and word is, he suffers from the same affliction as my sister.”

  “An affliction?” Gloriana sounded worried. “Will they die?”

  “Worse. They both find it impossible to keep their hands off their subordinates.” Blue sighed. Didn’t look like Sun would have that problem much longer. “Listen up, Council of Vengeance. You want my advice on the Four Horsemen; here it is. Activate every asset, call on every favor, and place every chip you have on the Four Horsemen to win. If you want to kick the Veetanho where it hurts, it’s now or never.”

  The Rietzkens crept inward, and as the rectangle shrank, their beak-snapping grew in intensity.

  Gloriana was saying something about the Council making a decision, and that decisions might take seconds or days. But Blue wasn’t listening. All she could think about was the look of pain etched onto her sister’s face.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 123

  Branco looked at peace.

  Lying on the stretcher with the IV pumps and medi-doc bot hidden by the blanket pulled up to his shoulders, he looked as if he were snoozing on the beach after a pleasant lunch.

  “D
on’t you dare get too peaceful,” Sun snarled at him. “I need you to fight, Trooper.”

  “He can’t hear you,” said Doctor DiMassi kindly. “Not even his subconscious. It’s a side effect of what I’ve administered to arrest the necrotic decay of his nervous system. The nerves in his thigh stumps are just rotten slime inside their epineurium sheathing, which means there’s not enough left for neuro-reconstruction. I can’t regrow his legs, and he doesn’t have enough nerve material left to connect a smart-prosthetic, so he’ll never drive a CASPer again. It’s his life I’m fighting for now. I’m sorry.”

  Sun balled her fists and glared at the elderly medic who’d shipped out from Tau-Rietzke. The rational part of her knew that no amount of browbeating could ever push Doctor Decima DiMassi into doing anything but the right thing for her patients.

  But rationality was on temporary leave of absence inside Sun’s head. “There are things I need to tell him,” she demanded. “Can’t you revive him?”

  The doctor held Sun’s gaze as she thought over the situation.

  “This man is seriously ill. His body is infested by things I don’t even have names for. I can’t promise he’ll pull through, but if he dies, it won’t be a few moments with you that kills him.”

  The doctor administered a hypo-punch to Branco’s neck. “He’ll come around soon, Major. But only for a minute or so.”

  Thank you, Sun mouthed.

  “Oh, I’m not doing it for you, Major. But at this stage, those words you need to tell him might be the best treatment he can receive. Choose them carefully.”

  The doctor withdrew a few paces to give Sun a little privacy while she watched Branco’s gaunt face for signs of revival.

  The ground shuddered, and an enormous shadow spread over Branco’s stretcher.

  “Will you discard him?” Betty asked.