Crusade (Exile Book 3)

by Glynn Stewart

  “Don’t trust that forever,” Isaac told him. “This is a colony, after all. An occupied world. They’ll fight harder when we hit their homeworld.”

  “General Zamarano’s landing force reports they’ve secured the exterior of the Prince-Key’s palace,” Hashemi told them. “Similar reports are coming in from the other landings. Ground troops are surrendering in good order.”

  “Any reports on interaction with the Sonba so far?” Isaac asked. “I’d really like to find someone to hand administration of the place over to ASAP.”

  “If they’ve been occupied for a while, the locals might regard what administration exists as quislings,” Connor warned.

  “I know,” Isaac agreed. “We need to get in front of that kind of crap before reprisals and counter-reprisals start. That’s part of why we need to pin down both who’s in charge on the Sivar-supporting side with the locals and who’s running the resistance.”

  “Zamarano reports that she has Prince-Key Still in custody,” Hashemi told him. “No resistance.”

  “Put her on the channel,” Isaac ordered. He wasn’t going to ride her shoulder, not with an entire planetary invasion in progress, but he needed to check in with her.

  “Kira, what’s your status?”

  “I’ve got the fancy alien, but I think he’s in shock,” the Marine told him. “At least, that’s what I’d call it if he was human. Not sure what it is in these guys.”

  “We’ve coordinates for a mountain valley that they were using as a retreat,” Isaac said. “Looks like there’s space there for about sixty thousand Sivar, which is about what I’m expecting to find on the planet. We’ll need to rig up housing and utilities.”

  “My people can do that in their sleep,” Zamarano replied. “Right now, we’re playing dog catcher. These people aren’t being too much trouble.”

  “We also need to worry about the locals,” he reminded her. “Its going to sink in shortly that we’re detaining and moving the Sivar, and they don’t get to start committing atrocities at either the boneheads or the collaborating government.”

  “I have shit that’s going to work nonlethally on the locals, boss,” she said. “If it comes down to shooting Sonba or letting Sivar swing, what do we do?”

  “Fire warning shots and do your damnedest not to let it get worse than that,” Isaac ordered. “Beyond that, I trust you and I know you trust your junior officers. Do what seems right.”

  “That’s an order that’s got a lot of Marines killed over the years, sir,” she replied.

  “I know. What the hell else can we do?”

  “Decide who they should shoot first,” Zamarano suggested. “Don’t leave the moral call to the grunts on the ground. It’s your pay grade, not theirs.”

  He snorted.

  “Touché. If anyone pushes past warning shots, your Marines are authorized to do whatever is necessary to protect the prisoners. Specific enough?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “For that, General, you get to find someone to put in charge of this planet,” he told her. “I suggest starting with the Sonba mayors or whatever the hell title the Sivar hung on them.”

  “Thanks,” she said dryly. “What’s my timeline?”

  “The fleet moves out in thirty-two hours,” Isaac replied. “I’m leaving a battlecruiser and six strike cruisers, but three of the strikes are beaten to shit. Everything else is heading for their capital.”

  “I can’t secure an entire planet in thirty-two hours with twelve thousand grunts, Admiral,” Zamarano objected.

  “That does move making friends with the locals up your priority list, doesn’t it?”

  59

  In the end, Amelie had ended up back on the farm. It was the largest site the rebels had access to anywhere near the Citadel, which meant that it started transforming into a weapons cache and coordination center within days of the meeting.

  Since she was the most obvious problem, she spent most of the days counting down to the scheduled attack underground. The helot rebels’ secret underground base was less solid and well equipped than the Dynast’s bunker, but it had the advantage of modern communications technology.

  The Dynast’s bunkers’ phone systems had been installed a hundred years earlier. It looked like a command center but it couldn’t function as one. The tunnels under the Kond’s farm, on the other hand, were equipped with expensive communications equipment that easily rivaled the systems available to the Republic.

  The tunnels were dug by Pol and for Pol, though, and that meant they were claustrophobic for just about anyone else. The dark-furred aliens had more than one resemblance to a mole, apparently, and they’d only expanded some of the spaces to fit anyone else.

  But there was a command center in the largest excavated space, and the data on the holographic display had grown more and more detailed over the last twelve days as the various rebel factions integrated their coms.

  “Kond, Minister, take a look at this,” one of the Croni in the cave requested. The insectoid alien was a born helot, easily distinguished among his people by the fact that his wings hadn’t been clipped to prevent him from flying.

  “What have you got?” the Kond asked. Amelie was only a step behind him, but these were his people. Her part in this had been mostly over once everyone had agreed to work together.

  “One of the Broken Chain’s assets at the Rista star-lane reports that a whole bunch of com drones just came through,” the Croni told them. “They’re flying emergency codes and heading right here.”

  “Any way to find out what they’re carrying?” Amelie asked.

  “We don’t have a way,” the Kond replied. “But since the Dynast brought some interesting friends to the meeting, we may now have friends with a way.”

  The Pol traced his finger across a display.

  “How solid is our com link with the Dancers in Darkness?” he asked the Croni.

  “It’s not fast; we’re relaying through a couple of places on the planet and then a couple more in space,” the younger rebel replied. “Maybe twenty minutes to get them a message?”

  “Those com drones are an hour out and carrying codes that suggest they won’t do long-range transmission,” the Kond observed. “Let’s see if the Dancers are feeling up to a covert pickup.”

  Those big square teeth flashed in the cave’s minimal lighting.

  “There’s a dozen of them. No one is going to miss just one…not least because they are known to spontaneously fail.”

  “It’s a risk,” Amelie pointed out, but she was nodding as she said it. “But I think it’s a good risk.”

  “I’ll have a message for you in a moment, Kixix,” the Kond told the winged alien at the console. “Start setting up the transmission relay.”

  The rebels didn’t have live sensor data anywhere, let alone in the deep space between the star-lane and Aris. They didn’t even know if the Dancers in Darkness—apparently a group of smugglers known to occasionally engage in piracy and revolution—had received the message until they got the response.

  “They got it,” the young com tech reported. “They couldn’t decrypt the data, though. They sent us the whole data dump.”

  “Fallen soil,” the Kond cursed. “We can’t decrypt it, either.”

  “Silleck should be able to,” Amelie told him. “Or at least have contacts who can.”

  Which was true, though she hadn’t yet told the Kond that one of Silleck’s contacts was the Keeper of the Citadel.

  “If we keep hitting our com channels, that’s going to draw attention,” the Pol leader warned her.

  “And if this is what we both think it is? We need to know.”

  “True.” The Kond leaned past Kixix and plugged a code in on the console. “There, data packet sent. Now we wait—”

  The console chimed.

  “That was fast,” the Kond said slowly.

  “It appears the Dancers sent Silleck the data package as well,” Kixix reported. “It’s a report from Commandan
t-Key of War Dest, the senior officer in charge at the Sonbar System.”

  “And?” Amelie asked. She still couldn’t read Sivar, after all. No one on this planet could fix the broken scanner on her tablet.

  “Multiple alien ships, but he identifies two of them as equivalent to Watchtower,” the Kond read off the screen. “Potentially more. Twenty-eight hours ago, Dest was maneuvering to intercept them with his force. Three battleships, plus escorts.”

  “Isaac brought five battlecruisers and would have met up with Watchtower,” Amelie pointed out. “Dest didn’t win that battle, not with three battleships.”

  “We need to wait for the final word,” the Kond told her. “We have everything ready to make sure the news leaks, to publicly undermine the Intendant’s authority…but they have to actually lose first.”

  “Twenty-eight hours ago, they were maneuvering to engage,” she replied. “So, they met and fought a full day ago at least. The battle is already over.”

  “And the news of that won’t arrive for at least six hours,” he said. “If they don’t manage to get a message out, we might not even know for certain for days.”

  “Isaac is playing to intimidate the Intendant to keep me safe,” Amelie explained. “He doesn’t know I was broken out. We have no way of telling him…but he’ll still make sure the news that Sonbar has fallen gets back to here.

  “How long until that hits everywhere with your leaks?”

  “News that big? If we get the news in six, it’ll be everywhere in twelve.”

  “And how fast can we get the entire attack moving?” Amelie demanded.

  Kond snapped his teeth.

  “Eight hours. Might take ten.”

  “So, we need to start the wheels rolling now,” she told him.

  “If you’re wrong,” he said slowly, “that call could get a lot of people killed.”

  “Even if I’m right, we could be about to get a lot of people killed,” Amelie admitted. Her own failed revolution had only ended without mass bloodshed because Adrienne Gallant hadn’t been willing to execute her own son. The purge had been no less complete for its lack of mass executions.

  “Are you certain, Amelie Lestroud?” the Kond asked.

  “We all committed to this when we put everyone in one damn room on a planet with a bloodthirsty secret service,” she said flatly. “From the moment we were in that room, every single one of us has a countdown until the Eyes of Sivar take us…and it’s running down fast.

  “If we don’t take down the Intendant, we’re all dead.”

  From the way Kixix stared at her, the Croni hadn’t put together the trap part of Amelie’s plan. The Kond clearly had, as he just bared his teeth at her again.

  “But your mate can take their fleet?” he asked.

  “My mate has the resources to level the entire Governance,” she snapped. “And while he’s a damn professional, believe me, I know he’s tempted.”

  The Kond snorted.

  “So am I,” he admitted. “I’ll put out the call, Amelie Lestroud. You know your people may not be safe once this starts?”

  “I know. That’s why I’m going with you,” she replied. “You can go for the Intendant. I am going for my friends.”

  The Kond sighed.

  “I presumed,” he admitted. “I have arranged for a small team to accompany you on that part of the mission. I cannot do more. We have too much going on.”

  “And we’re out of time,” Amelie agreed softly.

  The tunnels got much busier over the following hours. The number of species represented more than doubled. In what was almost certainly a first, several Sivar from the Broken Chain set up in a tunnel off from the main communications room. Using a communications setup that had clearly been acquired from the Knives of the Keys of War, they were linked in to their own bunker and several other sites.

  “Our source reports another wave of drones,” one of those Sivar announced, stepping into the larger room and speaking clearly. “Over thirty of them this time.” The armor-headed alien gestured expansively with her hands.

  “They would only send that many in case of a defeat, but the Dancers are already moving to intercept one,” she continued. “We’ll know in a few minutes if the Republic has delivered the promised defeat.”

  “Are we ready to move?” Amelie asked, looking to Kixix. The Kond had left to organize from his office in the City.

  “We’re still gathering and preparing,” the Croni com tech replied. “But the channels to leak it to the news networks and the bribes to make sure it stays leaked have already been arranged.”

  Seconds turned to minutes, time moving with a treacly slowness as Amelie waited for the final news.

  “We got it,” the Sivar officer reported. “Three battleships and eight cruisers destroyed without a scratch on their enemies. The Prince-Key is ranting about another eight cruisers surrendering after that but concedes that he has no choice but to do the same.

  “The Sonbar System has been liberated!”

  Amelie wasn’t certain if the Sivar rebel was as enthused about that idea as anyone else in the room was going to be, but they sounded honest enough.

  Or maybe they’d just known that proclamation would get the loud cheering in a dozen languages that it got.

  She waited for it to die down before leveling a smile on Kixix. “And those leaks?”

  “Already sent while everyone was cheering,” the Croni replied. “In half an hour, everyone awake on the planet will know. An hour after that…”

  “Your people’s fate gets decided,” Amelie concluded. “I hope it all goes according to plan.”

  “Me too,” the Croni said softly. “I’d very much like to see the world my egg came from, but Aris is my home.” The butterfly-like wings fluttered. “I want to live here but as a citizen. Not a slave.”

  “We’ll make it happen,” she promised, a sudden weight in her chest.

  She’d intentionally set up a situation where the rebels had to act once they’d committed to her. She’d done everything she could so that this would work…but that honestly wasn’t that much. And the last time she’d done this, the people who’d followed her had been flung to the other side of the galaxy.

  The Intendant had neither that technology nor that mercy.

  She needed to not fail.

  “The Kond said there was a team ready to go in with me?” she asked Kixix instead of facing that more closely. “Where are they?”

  “Just arriving now,” the Croni said. “If you go up top, Dos will show you where to go.”

  60

  The surface of the farm had undergone a vast transformation in the last few hours since Amelie had last been up. Massive swathes of fabric had been hung up in the air, covering most of the site from aerial and orbital surveillance.

  Fabric chunks that large would be sure to garner attention quickly enough, but they’d do so much less quickly than boxes of weapons being opened, vehicles being rapidly converted to armed technicals, and the farm grounds generally being used as a mustering site.

  “Minister.” Dos’s voice was entirely-computer generated. The two-and-a-half-meter-tall treelike Toorg didn’t produce anything that most Governance species could hear. Their species had produced quite capable computers by the time the Sivar showed up, however, so translations had been easy enough.

  The tributes from their homeworld had implanted voice boxes with neural interfaces. Amelie couldn’t imagine that was pleasant…but she also didn’t expect that the Sivar had given them a choice in the matter.

  “Dos,” she greeted the tree. “Kixix said there was a team I’d be joining to go after my people?”

  “Yes. Follow me.”

  As she followed Dos, she realized that they were already armed—and heavily so. Sivar energy weapons were heat-spewing energy hogs requiring massive structures. They were squad-support weapons or vehicle systems, not personal arms.

  Dos was twice the height of any Siva and had a retrofitted Sivar bl
aster cannon hung over their back. It was a squad-support weapon that achieved much the same effect as a standard EMC pulse rifle in a package four times the size.

  The treelike alien and their compatriots were probably the only people on the planet capable of using blaster cannons as regular arms. Everyone else Amelie passed was loading up with the Sivar’s standard magnetic firearms, high-efficiency coilguns firing steel penetrators.

  They were what her people had called mag-kinetics. Effective for what they were—the EMC used a slightly more efficient version of the same weapon as their standard personal weapon—but no match for even a man-portable pulse rifle.

  “Here,” Dos concluded, gesturing at a collection of Sonba. “I am with you as well. Some of my fellows will join.”

  The broccoli-headed aliens were speaking among themselves; a mix of head-frond gestures and a liquid burbling Amelie’s translator couldn’t pick up. The device could roughly manage the main Pol and Croni languages now, but without a spaceship’s computers backing her tablet up, well… It could only do so much.

  “Minister Lestroud,” one of the Sonba greeted her. She was reasonably sure the pattern in their florets matched the Sonba who’d told her they’d fight with her if Sonbar was freed.

  “We have seen the news,” they continued. “You have kept your word, so we keep ours. We fight for you, Minister.”

  “I fight for everyone here,” she replied. “So, if you fight for me, you’re fighting for everyone. Not just Sonbar. Not just the Sonba. Everyone.”

  She suspected these were the Green Stalks of Light that Silleck had passingly labeled as mass murderers. If they were going to fight alongside her, that needed to be avoided.

  “We owe you debts for the freedom of a billion groves,” the Sonba told her. “I am Bush-Waving. I and my warriors are yours. Through life, death and the cycle of rebirth. For our world, our lives.”

  The Sonba couldn’t physically kneel, but from what she could read of their body language, they all would have been if they could.