Run the Gauntlet: Echoes of War Book Six

by Gibbs, Daniel

  Unlike what he remembered from the Lion of Judah, there was no spontaneous outpouring of emotion at the victory. Aibek and his fellow Saurians were focused solely on the remaining enemy. “Tactical, status of reloading?”

  “Almost done, sir. Port auto-loaders out of action. The gunnery teams are manually loading three turrets now.”

  Aibek stared at the plot, his mind working to devise the best engagement strategy for the remaining battleship, especially considering they couldn’t show their forward shield arc to enemy weapons without taking further hull damage. The tactical officer cut into his thought process.

  “Sir, Master Four is turning away. They’re trying to retreat behind the remaining Rand class cruisers.”

  Now was the moment of decision. Aibek could charge after them, guns blazing, and probably destroy another battlewagon, or he could fall back to the Lion and the rest of the fleet. There was no contest in his mind between the options. “Navigator, plot a course back to the Lion of Judah. Instruct the Justinian and Constantine to form up on our port and starboard shields.”

  S’stro hissed from her chair, “Why not take the glory? The chimps are ours for the taking.”

  Aibek turned and glared at her. “Because the greater good is to protect the fleet and ensure all warriors here return from the battle.”

  “Oh, the humans have softened you so. It is sad to see, Talgat Aibek.”

  When he was again about to slap her and draw blood with his claws, Aibek forced the raw emotion down. To his surprise, she grinned at him.

  “Regardless of my distaste for this assignment, I must commend the tactics you employed just now. They were… inspired.”

  “I suppose I should be honored,” Aibek replied, voice dripping with sarcasm.

  “You should feel honored I haven’t killed you by now and taken back my rightful post.”

  He ignored her words and focused instead on the plot. While they were steadily opening the range up while trading weapons fire with the remaining League vessels, the Lion of Judah was surrounded by a mass of red icons—enemy bombers and fighters. Aibek prayed they would get there in time.

  * * *

  There were no cheers of elation on the bridge of the Lion of Judah; only resolute soldiers working together to survive. David reflected for a moment as Aibek and the Saurian battleship moved toward them in space at its best speed. He’d said a prayer in Hebrew, asking God to save his friend if it was His will. Now the Lion had other problems to worry about.

  Kelsey glanced back at the CO’s chair. “Conn, TAO. Enemy fast movers are making another pass on our port shield.”

  It only took a quick glance at the tactical plot to see Amir’s outnumbered fighters couldn’t stop the Leaguers in time. David despaired over what to do when their options were so limited. We still aren’t far enough away to jump out. Aibek and the two other ships won’t get here in time to help.

  “I’ve got an idea, sir,” Ruth suddenly interjected.

  “By all means, share.”

  “We used Starbolt missiles as proximity-fused mine sweepers once before… how about we do the same thing here?”

  That’s brilliant. David stood suddenly and strode quickly to the holotank. He manipulated the controls to show a narrow view of the port side of the ship and the mass of League icons. “If Colonel Amir could box them in, we can saturate this area,” he said as he drew a box in the tank with his finger. “What do you think?”

  Ruth nodded. “Just like old times.”

  David flashed a warrior’s grin and returned to his seat. “TAO, make forward VRLS tubes forty through sixty ready in all respects and open outer doors.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Kelsey replied.

  “Communications, get me Colonel Amir, ASAP.”

  A moment later, a voice crackled from the speaker on the CO’s chair. “This is Amir, go ahead, sir.”

  “Colonel, I’m transmitting you coordinates… I want you to herd the League bombers between those two points. They’re flying on a level plane, so it should be easier than it sounds.”

  “Sir, we won’t be able to interdict them or take out any of their anti-ship missiles.”

  “Understood, Colonel. We’ve got a surprise in store. Execute now, and stay out of the area between those points, understood?”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Cohen out,” he said as he punched a button on the chair to end the commlink connection. “TAO, set XYZ coordinates to blanket the area indicated on the holotank for tubes forty through sixty.”

  “Firing solutions set, sir.”

  “TAO, match bearings, shoot, tubes forty through sixty.”

  The Lion shuddered as twenty Starbolts thundered out of their launch tubes. David stared at the tactical plot, his hand balled up into a fist, clenched tightly as the icons representing the missiles separated and started their runs. At the same time, another mass of red images rushed forward toward the Lion of Judah—they were the enemy bombers and what was left of the League fighters. Amir and the remainder of his airwing nipped at the heels of the formation, keeping it tightly packed. Then the friendly warheads started to go off, one after another. At first, the enemy didn’t realize the damage and flew blindly on. Even when they did, it was too late. The kill box was rocked by massive fusion explosions that wiped the League bombers from the universe, not even leaving debris behind. When it was all said and done, they’d wiped out ninety percent of the inbound force. The rest streaked away, headed toward the planet.

  David let out a breath. “Communications, order the fleet to form up in a sphere formation.” He glanced at Ruth. “Not bad for your time sitting in that chair with me, Lieutenant.”

  She grinned. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Sir,” Master Chief Tinetariro interrupted. “Damage reports coming in from all decks. Hangar fire has been extinguished, and the fire relight watch is set.”

  Her words ended all happy thoughts of victory in David’s mind. Thrust back into the harsh reality of the fight for their lives they were embroiled in, he glanced back toward her. “Master Chief, any word on how many casualties there were from the hangar?”

  “Over five hundred missing, sir. At least one hundred pilots.”

  David closed his eyes for a split second. “Deploy all possible search and rescue teams.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “ETA on reopening the flight deck?”

  Tinetariro’s face turned ashen. “I don’t know, sir. Engineering teams are assessing it, but there’s a lot of melted debris. It’s going to take time.”

  “Get the contractors down there, and all off-duty personnel. Anyone not doing their job needs to be tasked to getting our flight deck back online.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” she replied crisply.

  “Conn, TAO. Aspect change, remaining League contacts. They’re jumping out, sir.”

  Not that the few escorts remaining could’ve made much of a dent on the concentrated firepower we have here. “Navigation, resume course toward the Lawrence limit, best possible speed.” As he surveyed the damage to the fleet and reflected on the cost so far, David felt something in the pit of his stomach. A feeling he’d pushed them all too far. He shoved it down with the realization that if they survived the next two hours, he’d have much to answer for.

  23

  MacDonald watched his HUD intently while the sounds of battle echoed around him. Every minute or so, an unlucky—or more likely, stupid—Leaguer would leave cover and try to engage them. Each one paid with their lives. Then his flanking unit was in position. They’d divided up into two elements of three. “Execute, execute, execute.”

  The Saurian on their team, Kucuk, charged forward with an anti-armor rocket cradled in his arms. He raised it to his shoulder and stroked the trigger. The projectile’s solid-rocket-fuel motor ignited and sprayed flames out of its end. It roared ahead, and in just a couple of seconds impacted in the middle of a mass of League Marines in power armor. The resulting explosion and ball of fire
sent a blast wave down the corridor in both directions.

  Leaguers fell over like pins on a bowling lane from the power of the explosion, dazed but crucially out of the fight for a few seconds. In those moments, the team exploited the opening for all it was worth.

  Rostami, Harrell, and Mata charged forward, single shots and bursts ringing out from their battle rifles, while MacDonald, Kucuk, and Ahmad moved up, catching the enemy in a sustained crossfire. Quickly dispatching their foes with burst rounds, they chewed up the cannon fodder security officers and focused on the real threat: the League Marines.

  When MacDonald’s battle rifle clicked dry, he dropped it into its one-point sling and drew his sidearm. He’d loaded the trusty weapon with armor-piercing rounds before the battle, and it paid off. With pinpoint accuracy, he fired again and again, shooting Leaguers through the weak point of their armored suits—the faceplates.

  No quarter was asked, and none given by the combatants. Men and women fought for their lives, and the Terrans came out on top. Superior equipment and training mostly, but there was something about the fierceness of the warrior spirit within the commandos that brought an X factor to the fight. As Harrell dispatched the last enemy, a quiet descended over the passageway. It was the kind of quiet that was eerie, as moments before, there had been nothing but the crashes and thunder of combat.

  His breathing labored, MacDonald glanced around to take in the fallen bodies that littered the floor. “Blow the door,” he said quietly.

  Harrell stepped up and affixed strips of thermite-based explosives around the hatch. They’d burn through it quickly without risking the structural integrity of the station. “Fire in the hole,” he yelled after stepping back to a safe distance. The material ignited as he triggered the detonator and blasted a roughly man-sized opening in the hatch, which fell inward with a loud thud.

  Battle rifle reloaded, up and at the ready, MacDonald charged through. The sight that greeted him was a cavernous computer core stretching several decks in height. Banks of processing units displayed green and red lights, while the room itself was brutally cold—only five degrees Celsius, according to his suit’s sensors. What wasn’t present was other humans. The team moved in behind him, fanning out. “Senior Chief, post security on that hatch. I want claymores on either side of it and then set up a kill zone. Rostami! Get your nerd butt over to this console and kindly blow this piece of shit Leaguer station to hell, please.”

  “On it, Master Chief!” Rostami called out cheerfully through his suit integrated commlink.

  The commandos moved as one, skillfully setting anti-personnel mines in the passageway and taking up firing positions behind maximum cover, all the while Rostami plied his trade, pounding away at the exposed master terminal connected to the computer core. Out of the corner of his eye, MacDonald saw him slide a device into a data-chip connection. He recognized it as an ICE pick—the ultimate Terran Coalition hacking technology that easily defeated most League computer security suites. “We don’t have all day,” he grumbled.

  “Here goes nothing,” Rostami muttered, more to himself than the rest of the team. With a flourish, he depressed a final button on the keyboard.

  Nothing happened, at first. Then an ear-piercing alarm klaxon sounded, and a count started up. “Self-destruct in fifteen minutes. Proceed to the nearest evacuation zone,” a disembodied computer voice intoned through the station’s intercom. Almost on cue, loud explosions echoed in the corridor beyond the hatch as a League security team tripped the claymores.

  “Uh oh,” Rostami said as he pointed to the terminal. “Uh, Master Chief, I pulled up the station’s internal sensors. We’ve got a problem… it looks like they sent every security guy and League Marine left on the base down here. Hundreds of em.”

  While tier-one operators, of which the Spacewalkers were at the top of, were typically seen as supermen by civilians and even regular CDF troops, MacDonald knew they were capable of being overwhelmed just like any other soldier. At the mention of hundreds of hostiles, his mind leaped into overdrive. We need to hit hard, hit fast, and get out of here before they bottle us up. “I’m not interested in being pinned down in here for fifteen minutes and dying when the station goes up. Harrell, set a charge on that terminal, then we’re outta here. We’ll rush the gravlift, and get back to friendly territory before our Leaguer friends show up.”

  “On it, Master Chief!” Harrell called out as he pulled an explosive block from a recess on his power armor and slapped it against the computer interface station.

  Around MacDonald, the commandos formed up and reloaded their battle rifles and sidearms, preparing for sustained combat. He glanced right, then left. “Ready, ladies?”

  “Let’s get this party started,” Mata rumbled in his slight Spanish accent. “I’m ready to get off the ride.”

  “Okay. I’ll take point. Ahmad, you’ve got our rear. Everyone else, fall in. Short bursts, make every shot count.”

  “Hoorah!” Rostami yelled through his commlink, drawing smirks from several others.

  “That kid is a walking, talking recruiting poster,” Harrell commented on a private commlink back to MacDonald.

  MacDonald didn’t respond, instead snapping his battle rifle up into position and leaning out of the hatch. Finding no enemies, he strode quickly through the melted hole that was still warm. The team formed up behind him, as they all stepped over bodies, broken weapons, and the wreckage of battle. An unlucky Leaguer rounded the bend in the passageway—the station was a concave torus and laid out in a circular manner—and he stroked the trigger of his battle rifle without thinking. The man dropped in his tracks, dark red stains spreading across the dark gray League uniform.

  Just like that, the battle was joined. MacDonald kept moving forward, while he and the rest of the team poured enemy into the oncoming enemy troops. Leaguers dropped like flies, mostly security types with little actual combat training or experience.

  “Twenty meters to the gravlift,” Harrell noted between bursts of gunfire. “There’s a lot of these clowns.”

  “No shit,” MacDonald replied.

  “Contact rear!” Mata yelled into his commlink.

  MacDonald twisted his head around to see three power-armored League Marines charging them from behind. Mata and Kucuk put sustained bursts into their center mass, felling two of the Goliath suits. That left one, which had a large weapon he wasn’t familiar with, raised. It spoke with a thundering roar, a split second before Mata fired his battle rifle into the last Marine’s helmet. Adrenaline coursed through MacDonald’s veins, subsiding ever so slightly as the behemoth collapsed to the ground. He’d turned back toward the direction of their escape when a weak voice caught his attention.

  “Uuuuh,” Harrell moaned. “Master Chief… I’m hit.”

  The sound of pain in Harrell’s voice twisted inside MacDonald like a knife. He whirled around to see one of his worst fears: one of his men, collapsed on the deck, blood trickling from a break in the incredibly tough power armor they wore. Wounds that would incapacitate an average human were nothing to the commandos, as they trained to be the top one-thousandth of a percent in physical prowess. A quick check on his HUD confirmed the suspicion. Harrell had a mortal wound. Work the problem. Shit, we’re exposed out here. “Mata! Get over here, get him back on his feet, now.”

  “On it, Master Chief!”

  With a quick touch of a button, MacDonald cued his commlink to the private commanders’ line—directly to Calvin. “Colonel, this is Alpha team.” As he spoke, more Leaguers approached from the front and behind. The rest of the commandos gamely exchanged fire with them. “We’re pinned down and I have a casualty. We need immediate assistance and medical support.” One of the enemies got too close for comfort, and he raised his battle rifle to shoot him, only to find it was empty. With a fluid motion, he let the weapon drop into its one-point sling and drew his sidearm. A squeeze of the trigger later, and there was one less Leaguer alive.

  “Read you loud and clea
r, Master Chief,” Calvin’s voice boomed through the commlink. “We’ve got our hands full up here, but I’m sending a couple of squads and medics to assist. Hang on, help’s on the way.”

  “MacDonald out.” He knelt next to Harrell and glanced at Mata. “How’s he doing?”

  Mata shook his head. “That was a gauss sniper rifle. The projectile pierced the front armor and went through his left lung. It clipped two veins, and he’s bleeding internally. I’ve administered coagulants… but there’s little more I can do. We need to get him back to a surgical facility.”

  “Yeah, I bought the farm. Got it,” Harrell said, his tone taciturn as ever. “Leave me behind. I’ll hold off the fools behind us long enough for the rest of the team to punch through to the gravlift.”

  MacDonald shook his head, causing his helmet to move back and forth. “I’m not leaving you.”

  “The rest of the team comes first. Now get out of here.”

  He’s right. I know he is… but I’m not leaving a brother behind. “You’re gonna have to do better than that.” MacDonald cracked a grin inside his helmet. “I’ll stay with you until the relief force gets here.”

  Rostami spoke up, between three-round bursts fired down the passageway. “I’m not going anywhere, Master Chief. We all go or none of us go.”

  “It would be dishonorable to leave an honored warrior behind,” Kucuk rumbled.

  * * *

  “Colonel, this is Mayborn.” A voice interrupted Calvin’s commlink, breaking his train of thought as he oversaw the retreat back into the captured League ship they came from.

  “Go ahead, Lieutenant.”

  “Sir, we’re pinned down by company-strength Leaguers. I can’t get through them to the commandos.” While the man’s voice was calm, the sounds of battle—gunshots and explosions—echoed through the open communication line.

  Calvin bit down on his lip. I’m not leaving MacDonald. That man’s saved my life more times than I can count. “What kind of opposition are you facing?”