by Peter Nealen
He realized, as he dove to a knee behind the partially opened armored hatch, that there weren’t any Valdekans left alive at this position. Only the heavier-armored Caractacans had survived, and only a handful of them at that. Cobb was still alive, on one knee behind the pile of debris that had fallen from the ceiling, firing into the swarming clones as fast as he could pull the trigger. That close, and with the targets packed that thick, there wasn’t even really a need to use the sights. Cobb and the other survivors were just pointing and shooting.
Scalas fired as he moved forward, dumping the remains of the BR-18’s drum into the charging clones with a strobing flash and roll of thunder that seemed intense enough to split the pillbox apart by sheer volume. The brilliant bolts did their job, ignoring the clones’ flimsy armor and blowing charred holes through heads and vitals. With the intensified firepower pouring into the breach, the assaulting clones were pushed back, and Scalas advanced, though he still had to shelter behind a pile of blasted rubble halfway between the hatch and the breach.
Raskonesh was suddenly behind him, with Viloshen by his side. The warrant officer had ditched the grenade launcher, to Scalas’s relief. Those grenades would have buried not only the clones but what remained of the Caractacans in the pulverized remains of the pillbox. Raskonesh was back to carrying his powergun instead, and he ducked out to fire on the clones while Scalas finished reloading.
He couldn’t have gotten off more than a few shots before he was thrown violently backward with a loud bang, his helmet shattering. Even as Scalas returned fire, he was sure the Valdekan warrant officer was dead. Yet to his surprise, in between shots he heard what could only be a stream of vicious profanity in Eastern Satevic coming from behind him. It seemed that Raskonesh was alive after all.
“This is not going to end well, Centurion!” Cobb barked between shots. He had advanced with Scalas and Raskonesh. “If we try to hold here, we’re going to be overrun!”
Scalas knew it. He just didn’t have a solution yet. He had grenades on his belt, but there was a good risk that they’d be just as effective as Raskonesh’s molecular grenades, but without the standoff. He ripped off another magazine at the swarming bodies in the breach. The clones were forcing the defenders back and pushing inside the pillbox by sheer weight of numbers. It was going to be knife work before long. And then it would be all over but the screaming.
But Cobb hadn’t been looking for ideas. He’d been announcing his intentions, in the way only Cobb could. The squad sergeant was suddenly on his feet, dumping the remainder of his magazine into the breach before vaulting over their meager cover and rushing toward the hole.
“Cobb!” Scalas bellowed. “Get back here!”
The senior squad sergeant gunned down a dozen clones in as many seconds, then took a knee beneath the growing rampart of corpses in the breach. “Get clear, Erekan!” he shouted over the comm. “And take any of the Valdekans who are still alive with you!”
Scalas knew what Cobb had in mind. He wanted to stop him. Wanted to run in there and drag the man who wasn’t quite a friend, but was closer than a brother, back from the breach, to say that there had to be some other way. But he forced himself not to feel. Only to think. They would be out of powergun charges by the time they killed all the clones in the breach. Maybe even well before. And he knew that more clones would be moving in. They’d been thwarted by Costigan’s tanks at the big crater, but the tanks couldn’t stop them here.
“Damn it, Cobb!” he yelled as he picked Raskonesh off the floor by his gear and flung him with abnormal strength down the corridor, back toward Section Eighteen. “You can still get clear!”
“Just go, Erekan!” Cobb answered. He primed a grenade and tossed it over his shoulder, even as he was already pulling out a second. “Get out of here!”
Cobb had decided that the only way to stop the breach was to bring part of the wall down. It was going to take every grenade he had.
The calculation made sense. But the action might well be suicidal.
Scalas grabbed Viloshen by the load-bearing gear and propelled the old corporal down the corridor in front of him. “Fall back!” he shouted, his exterior speakers making his voice boom even over the noise of the fight behind them. “Move!”
The first grenade went off, the heavy thud of its detonation vibrating through the steelcrete. The next four followed in quick succession, and then there was no more gunfire behind them, only a catastrophic crash like the side of a mountain falling, and they were engulfed in billowing dust and smoke.
Scalas took a knee at the turn, pointing his powergun back the way they’d come. Clouds of grit blasted at them, hissing against his armor. He squinted against the flying debris instinctively, even though it would have to be moving a lot faster than that to even scratch his visor. Raskonesh and Viloshen were huddled behind him, and the passageway was packed with more of his armored Caractacan Brothers, weapons either at the ready or pointed at the ceiling.
The world had fallen suddenly silent and still. And even with his helmet’s image enhancement, Scalas could see nothing in the choking clouds that filled the passageway. But he did not relax his guard. It was still possible that Cobb’s gambit had failed, the breach had not collapsed, and they would find themselves facing more swarming clones in another few seconds.
But then the comm crackled with a strained voice.
“Can someone come back here and dig me out?” Cobb called.
Scalas let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Moving up,” he called.
Digging Cobb out was a job for Caractacans. Even if he hadn’t been one of theirs, the dust in the passageway was too thick for the Valdekans, most of whom were without enclosed helmets, to be able to breathe.
The squad sergeant had been buried up to his pauldrons in collapsed steelcrete. He was closer to the hatchway than he had been when Scalas had last seen him; he must have tossed all his grenades and sprinted for the exit. Self-sacrifice was honored within the Brotherhood, but none of the Brothers were suicidal. If sacrifice was called for, they would rise to the occasion, but if survival with honor was possible, they wouldn’t throw their lives away.
Gauntleted hands carefully moved blocks of steelcrete away. “I don’t know if this is such a good idea, Cobb,” Kahane gibed. “If we shift too much of this, it might collapse the whole thing on the rest of us too. Then where would we be?”
“Just get this off me, Kahane,” Cobb grunted. “There’s a slab that’s trying to crush my breastplate into a dinner plate.”
Scalas worked alongside the others, with a few men posted to hold security, in case the cascade of debris slid aside to reveal more clones. Scalas had come to realize that he wasn’t the only hardened Caractacan who was nonetheless disturbed by the clones’ hivelike swarming and utter disregard for their own lives. It was deeply disquieting.
What could make a man act like that?
There were ancient horror stories floating around the galaxy, stories from even before the Qinglong Wars. Stories of mind control experiments, suicide cults, nightmare worlds with collectivist governments that brainwashed their people until they were little more than slaves in their minds as well as their bodies. And worse. Stories of alien environments and influences that had driven sapients mad. But as exaggerated as these stories had doubtlessly become across centuries of time and light-years of distance, none of the Brothers had ever encountered anything like this.
The slab that Cobb had been complaining about was at last uncovered, slowly and laboriously. It was huge; had he not been in armor, Cobb would certainly have been crushed to death.
“Careful,” Scalas instructed. “Ovoyes, brace that side. Don’t let it slip. The rest of you, get over here and push.” He crouched down, bracing his boots against the pile, and grabbed Cobb’s gauntlets. “Can you tell if that slab is the main one pinning you?”
“I think so,” Cobb answered. His voice sounded even more strained than before. Even through his armor, the pr
essure had to be intense. The armor had a certain amount of flex, which kept it from shattering altogether in such situations, but also meant that the slab was surely compressing his ribs painfully.
“Well, hopefully I’m not about to rip your feet off,” Scalas said. “Stand by. Now.”
The Brothers heaved. The slab shifted. Scalas pulled.
Cobb slid forward a fraction of a meter, then caught.
“Push harder,” Scalas instructed.
None of the Brothers complained. They just dug in and heaved. The pile of debris shifted dangerously, and Scalas held his breath as he pulled at Cobb’s arms.
The squad sergeant slid forward, slowly and heavily. There was still a good deal of debris on top of him. But after four more heaves and pulls, he was free.
The Brothers holding up the slab let it go. Almost immediately, the debris pile shifted, and part of the ceiling started to crack.
“Out!” Scalas bellowed, getting a hand under Cobb’s arm and lifting him off the floor. “Move! Before it comes down on all our heads!”
As the Caractacans dashed for the hatch, the cracks widened, and the entire structure creaked and groaned. They made it through the opening, dust sifting down around them, as the entire wall shook as if struck by a giant hammer.
“The bombardment’s started again,” Cobb gasped, as he leaned against the wall for a moment. “Thank you, gentlemen. I don’t know how much longer I could have held out under there.”
“We don’t leave Brothers behind,” was all Scalas said. He was vaguely uncomfortable. It was similar to the feeling he got when he talked to Costigan. He was already haunted by the nagging thought that Cobb should have been promoted to centurion by now—even before Scalas himself had been. And now he had survived thanks to the other man’s self-sacrifice. If Cobb had been killed in the process… It was a painful thought, one that he didn’t want to entertain.
Sometimes, in the quiet of the night when he couldn’t escape such thoughts, he wondered if his misgivings about being promoted ahead of Cobb were selfish. If they were more about his own self-image. If he was worried it would all come out that he shouldn’t have been promoted ahead of Cobb.
He didn’t know.
But right then, he was just glad that Cobb was still alive. Too many others weren’t.
He clapped Cobb on the pauldron and got an answering buffet in return. It was Cobb’s signal that he was all right. Not to worry about him. But he didn’t say anything.
Scalas knew that silence. He knew it from Venulia VI, where too many Brothers had died, all because the local commander had wanted the genocidal rebels wiped out without losing any of his own men. So, the man had deliberately understated the threat to the Caractacans, letting them do the fighting and the dying while he kept his own forces back and refused to commit them. They’d won. But they’d lost a lot of Brothers. And Cobb had been just as quiet then.
As Scalas was starting to turn back toward what was left of Section Eighteen, to determine just how many of his hundred men he had left, Cobb spoke. His voice was flat and weary and distant.
“I lost my powergun.”
Scalas swallowed. He knew Cobb well enough to hear the pain behind those four words. It wasn’t just about his weapon.
“There are many that no longer have wielders, Brother.” It was all he could say. The Brotherhood stood for a certain stoicism in combat.
He felt Cobb’s eyes on him, even through the visor. Then the squad sergeant nodded and heaved himself off the wall, straightening. Scalas studied him for a moment, then nodded in response and turned away.
Cobb would recover. As much as any of them ever did.
“Brother Legate,” Scalas called, as the wall shook again. “The east flank is secure for the moment.”
“Acknowledged,” Kranjick’s heavy voice replied. “Fall back to what hardened positions you can. It appears that the enemy has abandoned the assault and renewed the bombardment. Valdekan Command informs us that the next wave of starships is inbound from the L4 point. Valdekan armor will be moving to replace our tanks at the breach once the space-to-surface fire has passed. Centurion Costigan, withdraw your armor to a safe haven within the fortress.”
Scalas checked that he was on the private command channel with Kranjick. It would not keep his words from the other centurions’ ears, but it would keep the rest of the Brothers from hearing. “Sir, what happened to Centurion Dunstan and Century XXXIV? They weren’t in position to help repel the clones at the breach.”
“Dunstan is not answering his comms,” Kranjick said coldly. “But Valdekan Command informs me that the Sword of the Brotherhood lifted and flew toward the far side of the spaceport shortly after the artillery bombardment began, apparently on ‘special orders.’”
“What are they doing over there?” Costigan asked. “What ‘special orders’ did Dunstan get?”
“He received no special orders from me,” Kranjick answered. “But apparently there was a second push made in that area not long ago, a push that’s still going on, though the defenders appear to be holding for the moment.”
“He’s probably looking for Rehenek on his own,” Soon replied acidly. “It seems Dunstan’s contempt for the Code now extends to abandoning his position and disregarding orders in a grab for glory.”
“Enough,” Kranjick thundered. “Centurion Dunstan will have the opportunity to answer for his decision, should he survive. Until then, regroup your centuries and take shelter. I don’t need to tell any of you that our armor will not withstand a direct hit from a starship’s weapons.”
Being under a space-to-surface bombardment is a terrible experience.
They were in the deepest parts of the defenses, fifty meters below the pillboxes, in the orbital fire bunkers, and still the pounding from above was rough enough to shake the ground under their feet. It wasn’t the first time for Scalas, or for most of his century. But it was the first time for the ten newly minted Brothers who had joined just before departure.
No, not ten. Seven. Only seven were now left. One had died in the crater, before Costigan had intervened with his tanks. Two had died at Cobb’s side, trying to fend off that swarm of suicidal clones in close quarters.
Cobb didn’t talk about it. He proceeded as if he hadn’t even noticed that his squad of twenty was now down to eight. But of course he’d noticed. Of course he felt the loss.
And Scalas knew Cobb well enough to know that he was thinking about more than just the men he’d lost. He was thinking about Dunstan.
He wasn’t alone. Dunstan’s desertion was weighing on all of them.
Kahane, for certain. He was trying to joke with his men, but Scalas could hear the brittle edge in his voice. Kahane was young, aggressive. And while he had lost far fewer than Cobb, he would be itching to take his rage out on Dunstan.
Kunn was… Kunn. Blank, impassive, good at giving directions, not so good at connecting with the men in his squad. Scalas had heard him asking his men about their wounds, their ammunition, their equipment. He’d even said a few things that might have been inspirational, coming from anyone else. Except that Scalas had been listening long enough to hear the same sentences, in the same order, three times. It was a speech that Kunn had memorized. Nothing more. Perhaps Scalas should speak to Kranjick about Kunn. The man was a good soldier, but he was no leader. And that could be a problem.
Solanus was sitting with his squad, looking upward toward the ceiling. He was the youngest squad sergeant in the century. Scalas stepped over and crouched beside him.
“How’s your squad, Solanus?” He had his speakers pitched low, so that his voice wouldn’t carry far.
Solanus started a little and looked at him. “They… uh…”
“Have you checked on the wounded?” Scalas prompted quietly. “Checked on the others, to make sure no one’s wounded without realizing it? Checked ammunition stocks, equipment? Made sure that none of them are wavering?”
“I, um… I checked on ammunition. And the wou
nded. They’re stable.”
“Your squad needs to have confidence in you, Solanus. That means you have to show confidence. Sometimes that means taking the first place in the breach. And sometimes that means simply keeping busy, showing them you’re not completely absorbed in your own fears and worries.”
“Yes, Centurion,” the younger man said formally.
“But they’re not the ones who most need to see us at our best,” Scalas continued. He inclined his head toward the huddled group of Valdekan soldiers at the end of the bunker, near the massive blast doors. “Our Brothers are all trained and hardened warriors. Their morale is the more robust for it. But the Valdekans, the people we’re here to protect… they need to see that there is hope. That the Caractacan Brothers are here to help them.”
“But we can’t,” Solanus whispered. “We can’t save them. Can we, Centurion?”
Scalas shook his head slightly. “No, we can’t,” he admitted. “I did not say ‘save.’ But hope will give them the strength to survive. Let them despair at this juncture, and they will die for certain. Even if we must take Rehenek and leave the rest behind, with hope, some will survive. They will resist. Or even surrender. But either is better than being slaughtered in a rout.” He stood up. “So stand up, stand tall, and let our Brothers and our allies see what a Caractacan squad sergeant is made of.”
Solanus rose, squaring his shoulders under his armor. “Yes, Centurion.”
Scalas clapped him on the shoulder, a hard smack of synthetic gauntlet on hardened armor plating, before moving on to Volscius. His “pragmatist” squad sergeant.