The group then retreated to Alliance space, skirting the border before heading back into Combine territory, emerging in a system just two light years from their previous target. This time the objective was a mining and shipbuilding complex stationed within the system’s mineral rich asteroid belt. After a short, sharp action, the battle group brushed aside a force of defenders and was in the process of assaulting the mining complex when a larger formation of Combine cruisers dropped out of hyperspace.
The enemy immediately accelerated towards the carrier, the three Z’s and half a dozen other units moving out to intercept before the enemy could close to within missile range. As the two formations met, the Zenith was peppered with proton darts and fragments from a near miss by a Spartax missile. The shields flared and buckled… but held. After a further brief exchange the enemy retired, one of their number bleeding gasses from its stern section as it did so. The Zs pursued the enemy for a while before reforming with the carrier group and exiting the system.
Over the next seven days, the carrier group jumped in and out of a further four Combine systems, attacking targets of opportunity and picking fights or withdrawing as the tactical situation dictated. A superior Combine task force finally caught up with them in a remote system at the very edges of Combine space but by then it was too late – the system’s few military assets had been reduced to scrap and attackers already formed up for the jump back to Alliance space. The Combine commander could only curse as the last Alliance warships disappeared from his scope.
* * *
Before the Zs and their companions were back in home port, a separate attack was launched against Indigo 3, a medium sized Combine facility located almost exactly in the center of the battlefront.
It was not an ordinary raid. Reconnaissance had long since revealed the presence of a prisoner of war camp in the north-eastern corner of the base. It wasn’t unusual; both sides had quickly learned the value of billeting POWs within the confines of a high value facility. It was unprincipled, immoral even, but undeniably effective; perhaps even more so than a battery of area defense missiles, though for good measure Ingido 3 had a couple of those as well.
According to the latest intelligence, this particular POW camp – small though it was – was now home to a group of scientists taken prisoner the previous year when their research facility had been overrun in a Combine raid, just one of several successful incursions that had taken place in the months leading up to the Operation Zealous defeat. Along with a large portion of the garrison, the academics had been transported into captivity for the duration of hostilities. It was known that the Combine was now employing them in projects of their own. Since the academics’ particular field of expertise lay in weapons development, it was a situation that the Alliance could not and would not allow to continue.
The first wave of the Alliance task force dropped out of hyper space above the plane of the system. Flotillas of destroyers and light cruisers immediately raced in to assault the defenses surrounding the third planet. There were only a dozen medium caliber orbital batteries on station and none of them stealthy. As the last unit was pummeled out of existence, a pair of battle-cruisers and a squadron of heavy cruisers set up a defensive perimeter in high orbit. Once secure, the fleet carrier Crossbow and the assault carriers Rampart, Redoubt and Raider dropped out of hyperspace in close proximity.
Inside the Crossbow’s combat information center, the fleet commander quickly took stock of the situation. As predicted, Combine assets within the system were insufficient to pose any realistic threat. Short of a suicide run – unlikely in the circumstances – doctrine suggested they would retire to a safe distance and await reinforcements, which, given the location and projected disposition of Combine forces, would be a minimum of two hours away. That was how long the commander had to achieve his objectives.
First to deploy was the Crossbow’s wing of Ares fighters. They formed up around the assault group and descended to low orbit, where the three assault carriers launched their landing craft. The armored landers formed up into flights of four and quickly descended to an open area at the center of the enemy base below.
Covered by squadrons of attack fighters, three companies of Vandenberg’s marines disembarked and quickly advanced to form a defensive perimeter, routing the defenders in a brief but brutal action.
With the perimeter secure, more landing craft arrived, disgorging still more marines, a company of engineers and a single commando unit. The marines raced to reinforce the perimeter while the engineers infiltrated underground bunkers, fuel stores and armories, setting demolition charges as they went. The single company of commandos struck off north-east towards the POW facility.
Inside the perimeter, half a dozen landing craft sat powered up, waiting for their charges to return. By now, the garrison had recovered from the initial shock of the assault and had begun to regroup, in places pressing hard against the marines manning the defenses. Again supported by fire from the attack fighters, the marines dug in, hunkered down and held the line, for no other reason than they were marines, and that’s what marines did, whether it was feasible or not.
Thirty minutes later, teams of engineers began streaming back to the landing zone. Their jobs done, they re-embarked their transports and swiftly blasted off the surface. The retreating landers deployed streams of decoy flares as they climbed up and away to the safety of the upper atmosphere. A dozen anti air missiles chased after them, most impacting the decoys. One missile detonated close by one of the ascending craft, showering its hull with fragments. The ship lurched and a lick of black smoke escaped from one of its engines. For a second it faltered, but then the pilot regained control and the wounded lander limped up to the safety of high orbit.
Back at the landing zone, a fresh flight of landing craft swept in to begin the evacuation of the marines. They came in fast, firing their braking thrusters at the last moment and pirouetting to a halt in a cloud of smoke and dust.
At a signal from their commander, the marines manning the perimeter began to fall back by squads, each covering its neighbor as the defensive circle shrank. Flight after flight of landing craft darted in and out of the landing zone, each ship carrying a platoon back to safety.
Finally, all that remained was the rearguard, the last of the troops maintaining the reduced perimeter. First they deployed their Sweepers, autonomous, static drones programmed to engage advancing enemy units. Next, the marines popped their smoke grenades. Then they ran like hell, scampering helter-skelter to their rides off planet.
LC 225 was one of the last landing craft to leave Indigo 3. Hunched over his controls, Major William Redmayne scanned the battle-space, waiting until the last possible moment before he blasted back into orbit. In the rear of the lander, his crew chief waited by the still open doors.
“Any more, chief?” he shouted.
“Doesn’t look like it, sir. I’d say we’ve got about all we’re going to get.”
Three hundred meters to the south, Redmayne saw a squad of Combine troopers emerge from the smoke. On sighting the lander, they immediately opened up with small arms fire. Their light weapons made little impact on the lander’s heavily armored hull but it wouldn’t be long before they called in artillery support or brought up some heavy weapons of their own.
“We’re done, chief. Let’s get closed up and get the hell out of here.”
“Roger that,” said the chief, but no sooner had the words escaped his lips than he saw a group of Alliance soldiers heading out of the smoke and towards the lander. Not all were regular troops, he saw. Some were dressed in some kind of coverall. “Hold up!” he yelled. “We’ve got friendlies coming in. I count ten, maybe fifteen approaching from the north-east.”
“How long?”
“A minute, maybe more.”
I’m not sure we have a minute, thought Redmayne. The bad guys to the south had eliminated enough Sweepers to punch a sizable hole in the perimeter. Dozens were now pouring through the gap, fanning left an
d right of the breach in the line. Redmayne could see at least one weapons team setting up a heavy caliber plasma cannon. “Gunner!” he shouted.
“I’m on it,” said the gunner from his station above and behind Redmayne. An instant later he fired a prolonged burst from the lander’s twin rotary cannon, hurling a mix of explosive and tracer shells towards the advancing enemy. The cannon wasn’t the most accurate weapon in the Alliance inventory; it wasn’t designed to be. Its job was area defense, to put as many rounds downrange as it could in the shortest possible time. The gunner didn’t even aim in the normal sense of the word – he just sprayed, but it had the desired effect.
Almost as one, the enemy infantry ducked for cover as the rounds tore up the ground around them. Redmayne was amazed to see one group still standing out in the open, boldly continuing to set up their plasma cannon.
That’s not very clever, he thought. It wasn’t. A second later half a dozen rounds fell in their midst. The plasma cannon rocketed up into the air at the head of a gout of blue flame and the unfortunate gun crew was bowled over like so many tenpins. Redmayne shook his head, wondering whether he’d just witnessed an act of extreme bravery or incredible stupidity. More likely they’d been a squad of raw recruits who just didn’t know any better. And now they never would. At least it had given the last elements of the Alliance attack force a brief respite. Right now, the one thought in Redmayne’s mind was to get the troops on board and then get the hell out of Dodge. One thing was for sure – after that little show, the Combine weren’t going to be in much of a mood for taking prisoners.
Above the armored windshield was a video feed from the rear facing camera. Redmayne quickly identified the approaching friendlies as the commando unit – or rather, what was left of it – along with the POWs they’d been tasked with liberating. The commando unit had been made up of thirty officers and men. Redmayne had no idea how many scientists there were supposed to be but as far as he could tell, no more than a dozen men were now scrambling towards the rear doors of the lander.
“Nearly there,” shouted the chief.
As Redmayne readied for take-off, a mortar round hit fifty meters to starboard. He cringed as three more struck in quick succession, the last falling just abaft of the lander’s rear doors. The video feed abruptly died.
“Chief?!”
There was no answer, just a cacophony of muffled curses, shouts, and shrieks erupting from the speaker. Then Redmayne heard the familiar whine and thud as the rear doors closed and locked shut. That was all the encouragement he needed; he engaged full thrusters even before a voice finally screamed, “Go, go, go!” It wasn’t the chief’s voice, but Redmayne had no time to worry about what was happening in the back. He slammed he throttles wide open and pointed the lander’s nose at the sky, popping groups of decoy flares as he surged upwards. The lander shook as a missile detonated somewhere off the port beam, a loud clang echoing through the hull as something bounced off the armor. Further detonations followed, peppering the hull plating with still more chunks of shrapnel. For the troops in the back it would be a terrifying ordeal but Redmayne had been in this situation before; it sounded much worse than it generally was. Keeping a measured eye on his altimeter, he held the lander steady and true, every passing second bringing them that much closer to safety. Passing twenty thousand meters he allowed himself to relax a little; he knew it would take a direct hit in the engines to bring them down now.
Full throttle, decoy flares and a silent prayer – it worked every time. Or very nearly.
As blue skies gave way to the blackness of space, his thoughts returned to the people in the back of the landing craft. “Harper, you’d better get back there and see if you can help out.”
“Aye-aye, sir,” said the young gunner, clambering down from his perch and making his way aft.
A few minutes later, Harper returned to the cockpit.
“How we doing?” asked Redmayne, turning in his seat. One look at Harper was enough to tell him the news wasn’t good. Fresh out of training, whatever the young farmer’s son had seen in the back of the lander wasn’t something he’d been used to seeing in his previous life on the prairies of Delton 7.
“The chief’s dead,” said Harper, his face white and his voice near to breaking. “He… he took a mortar fragment through the chest.”
Redmayne felt as if he’d been punched hard in the guts. “Understood,” he said after a few seconds. The outward calmness was for Harper’s benefit; inside he was in turmoil.
Redmayne and the chief had been as close as it was possible for two men to be. The bonds forged by brothers in arms were in any case strong, those realized only by those who ate, slept, fought and died together. Even stronger were the bonds forged in a small ship like a lander; these were the bonds that lasted forever – or at least until a day like today came along. LC225 had been their billet for almost two years. Two full tours together – almost – for what made this unbearably worse was that today was to be their final mission before rotating out of the front line. Just one more drop, then one more pick up…
Redmayne shunted his grief aside; there would be a time for that later. Right now he had a ship to fly and a mission to complete. “How about the others?” he said to Harper.
‘We got seven alive, sir. Most of them wounded – some badly. Three others… they didn’t make it. I’d… I’d better get back there.”
“Good man,” said Redmayne. “Do what you can.”
The rest of the flight was a blur. Redmayne recalled the lander being slightly sluggish as he’d docked with the assault carrier Rampart; nothing to cause concern – just a brief vagueness of the controls as he’d slid LC225 into her usual berth. Then as soon as the hangar deck was pressurized, a swarm of medics descended upon them. The walking wounded were speedily escorted off, giving the medics space to attend to the more seriously injured. They worked quickly, stabilizing their charges before stretcher parties whisked them off to the carrier’s hospital. Then all that remained were Redmayne and the dead.
Three commandos and one of the liberated POWs lay together in the center of the deck. The POW had given up on life during the transit despite the best efforts of the commando corpsman, himself one of the wounded.
The chief lay near the rear doors, a jagged hole in the center of his chest. His face was so tranquil that he might have been asleep. There was no surprise, no anguish, just… peace. Looking at the wound, Redmayne was surprised how little blood there was. He imagined there would be more. Crouching by the chief’s side he up took the man’s hand in his own; something he would never have considered in life, but in death…
Finally, the body bags arrived. A group of orderlies removed one of the dog tags from each of the dead and placed them in pockets in the heavy duty, plastic sacks. One by one, the bodies were lowered gently into their bags and the zips fastened with an almost ceremonial deference. And then began the journey to the ship’s morgue, a slow procession with members of the ship’s company standing at attention to salute the passing of the fallen.
Last to leave was the chief.
“We have to take him now, sir,” said the sergeant in charge of the detail. Redmayne nodded and stood aside as the orderlies took care of the chief, treating the body with respect as they carried him away.
And then Redmayne was alone, all save the sights and smells of the battle’s aftermath; the lingering, antiseptic odor of the medic’s primary treatment, the jumble of discarded equipment and the blood smears staining the deck plating.
Leaving by the rear doors, he saw Harper standing at the edge of the landing gate, throwing up into the space below. The young gunner straightened up as Radmayne approached, a look of embarrassment on his face. “Sorry, sir,” he said. “It won’t happen again.”
“That’s alright, Harper,” said Redmayne. “You aren’t the first, believe me. And you certainly won’t be the last. Why don’t you go and get yourself cleaned up? Have a bite to eat.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you
, sir.”
“And Harper.”
“Sir?”
“You did well today – both in the turret and afterwards.”
Harper nodded and moved off towards the mess deck. Redmayne stayed behind; the mission wouldn’t be complete until he’d given LC225 its after-action walk around. Rounding the rear port quarter, he stopped dead in his tracks. The upper port engine had lost a large segment of armor plating, almost certainly as a result of the near miss by the first Combine missile. The innards of the engine were completely exposed, including the vulnerable fuel injectors. If just one, small missile fragment had found the gap in the armor and severed an injector – and all around the breach there were indeed signs of shrapnel strikes – the entire engine would likely have exploded and LC225 would have ended her days at the bottom of a smoking crater on Indigo 3.
Gazing at the damage, Redmayne could only wonder at the vagaries of fate. Half a meter to the left or right and one of those missile fragments would have killed them all. By the same token, if the chief had been standing just half a meter to the left or right when the mortar round exploded, they’d all be heading off for a well earned beer by now, laughing off the near miss and teasing Harper for his woeful aim with the cannon.
Lady luck was a damned fickle mistress.
Later that evening, Redmayne was sitting in his quarters aboard the Rampart, writing his letter of condolences. What good it would do, he wasn’t sure; the chief had been married once but was long since divorced, and though there was a daughter somewhere, the chief had never really spoken of her and Redmayne hadn’t asked. But he’d write the letter just the same. All he could do was say that the chief had been a good man and had done his best, and then hope that his estranged wife and daughter would at least grant him some token of respect as a soldier if not as a husband or father.
Across Enemy Space Page 21