by B. V. Larson
“Breakers, this is Straker,” he comlinked on the general channel. “There’s a new enemy force loose, estimated company strength, somewhere in sector 2-B. It’s probably heading for the command center. Squad leaders, if you can turn over your checkpoints to local insurgents, I need you to regroup on the engineers. Everything depends on capturing the HQ, and that means defending our guys that are drilling in.”
By now, the Ritter brothers’ local Sachsens should have risen up, capturing or eliminating all Mutuality resistance they found, using weapons the Breakers had passed to them. Hopefully they’d also wear their Breakers armbands for identification.
His comlink beeped. “Gurung to Commodore Straker.”
“Straker.”
“The battlecruiser squadron is secured. We are holding in place. Two independent enemy ships have avoided being taken. They’re powering up and making ready for departure. Shall we engage?”
“Yes, Chief. We can’t let them get room to launch shipkillers at you, and we can’t let them get away. Disable if you can, destroy if you must.”
“Aye aye, sir. Gurung out.”
Seizure of the squadron was good news, but it would all be for naught if the control center could still fire the fortress weapons. Any one of the massive lasers, particle accelerators, or railguns could utterly destroy even a battlecruiser with one shot at this point-blank range. That’s why Gurung was holding them in place, too close to be targeted.
Of course, the battlecruisers could fire shipkillers and probably destroy all the fortress’ capital weapons, since they were well inside the base’s defensive envelope and ability to react. But that would leave the Sachsen homeworld defenseless against the inevitable Mutuality counterattack. As a last resort, it would be an admission of defeat.
Straker refused to be defeated. Not yet, anyway.
“Straker to engineers. How long, Foreman Imrone?”
“At least another hour, sir,” said Imrone, the woman in charge, a hard-rock miner from Freiheit. “We’ve exhausted all our high explosives and now we’re working with lances and lasers to cut through the inner vault door.”
“Could a few force-cannon bolts speed things along?”
“No, sir. We’d have to pull our equipment back, and that would lose time, not gain it.”
“Right. Keep at it. We’ll hold them off.” He paused as he checked his HUD for the position of his Breakers. “Heiser, establish a defensive perimeter. Loco and I will set up in the two large tunnels. You have to hold the personnel passageways. If you have any more holo-camouflagers or Killmores, use them.”
“Roger wilco, sir.”
Straker took his position and watched Heiser emplace his infantry. “Corporal Karst, your battlesuiters are the fire brigade. Stay near the engineers, watch your HUD and take independent action to contain any breakthroughs.”
“Got it, sir.”
Straker switched channels. “Straker to Ritters, Straker to Ritters, come in.”
No answer came back. That didn’t surprise him. It was a matter of luck whether a signal could find its way through all the tunnels, bulkheads and hatches in the fortress.
Then he remembered the malware that should have put the Ritters’ insurgent cell in control of the nonmilitary fortress systems. Maybe that included the civilian comlink network. He set his suit’s SAI to scan for less-secure connections and try the Breaker codes. Every time one was found, Straker tried to get a response, until…
“Conrad Ritter here, Herr Kommodore. Good to hear your voice.”
“Same here, Sergeant. Do you have any intel on a company-sized or larger force of infantry in sector 2-B, possibly closing on our position?”
“Yah, we see them on cameras, though they are destroying many of them not secured to the military network. My people say they are elite marines from the naval squadron, mixed Hok and human. Unfortunately they were engaged in combined exercises, and we were not able to take the armory before they resupplied with weapons and ammo.”
“That explains how easy Gurung took the ships, but his good luck is our bad. Numbers?”
“Perhaps three hundred, maybe more. Many appear to have battlesuits.”
Straker grunted as if punched. “Can you confirm where they are?”
“Sector 2-B, near to 1-B, approaching 1-A along several axes. They may also be using the maintenance crawlways.”
“Damn… it’s worse than I thought. I hope we can hold, but I need certainty. Can your locals hit them from behind once we’re engaged?”
Doubt crept into Ritter’s voice. “We can and will, if so ordered, sir, but most of my people are civilians with small arms that won’t penetrate a battlesuit. We’ll keep them busy, but if we press them hard…”
“You’ll be slaughtered. I’m not asking for that. Do what you can.”
“I have a better idea, sir. The malware has given us some control of the gravplating. We’ll use it to harass the marines. Triple grav will slow them down, and we can turn it off and on again at random.”
“Good idea.” Straker’s external mikes picked up the sounds of battle. “They’re coming. Straker out.” He switched channels. “Breakers, anyone unengaged, watch the maintenance hatches for infiltrators.” Then he checked his HUD.
The display showed contact far to his left, counterclockwise around the Breakers’ perimeter from him. He selected a direct link to a noncom nearby. “Straker to Sergeant Farwell, sitrep!”
“We have heavy contact on multiple routes, sir, taking casualties.” Came Farwell’s nervous voice. “We’re falling back. Need reinforcements.”
“Sending some now. Do your best.” Straker opened his mouth to call Karst when he saw the battlesuiter team already in motion. Instead, he called Loco. “You see this?”
“I see it, boss. I’m shifting to the left, but the action is all in personnel passageways. Can’t squeeze in there.”
“Don’t try. Take a good defensive position with fallback routes and I’ll try to direct support for your defense.”
“Right, boss.” Loco’s icon began to move.
Examining the situation as if it were a wargaming exercise, Straker watched his spherical perimeter collapse like a balloon being punched by a fist—a fist aimed at the control center. His Breakers were being swept aside or shoved back, and little except the battlesuiter squad and Loco stood in the way.
He cued the general channel. “This is Straker. All Breakers in sectors four through seven, rendezvous at the control center entrance and take defensive positions to protect the engineers. Sector eight, attack clockwise. Sector three, attack counterclockwise. We need to put pressure on the flanks of the enemy salient.”
Without waiting for acknowledgement, he began moving toward the engineers himself. His suit had been degraded with the damage, but his nanobots were already filling in holes and cracks in his armor, stealing material from where they could to ensure a smoother, if now thinner, front duralloy plating.
As he walked, he called Conrad Ritter again. “Sergeant, I need you now. If you haven’t already, start your gravity fluctuations and engage the enemy from their rear. I can’t tell you how hard to press, but if we lose the engineers, we’ll have to settle for nuking the fortress—but if we do, there’s nothing to protect your homeworld from a counterattack. So, it’s really up to you.”
“I understand, Herr Kommodore. We’re willing to spend the last drop of our blood for our freedom.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, but if it does...”
“Gott mit uns. Ritter out.”
Straker maneuvered carefully into the engineers’ area and walked around behind their equipment. On one side of the large, vault-like duralloy door, two mining lasers alternated full-power pulses, creating mini-explosions like grenades, their bursts of heat fatiguing and melting the hard, superconductor-reinforced metals. On the other, a pair of thermal lances pressed deep into the overlapping plates. Melted and blackened materials oozed out of their entrance holes like candl
e wax, to run down the sides and harden before reaching the floor.
By the time he’d entered the tunnel nearest the enemy attack, other Breakers were pouring in from all sides. They grabbed discarded packing cases and commandeered unused loaders, moving them to create cover and concealment in preparation for a last stand.
“Imrone, this is Straker,” he comlinked to the foreman of the engineers.
“Imrone here.”
“Reorient your lasers to cover these two passageways.” Straker pointed with his gauntlets. “You seeing me?”
“I do, bossman, but these aren’t weapons. They can’t be aimed easy.”
“If you can get them to fire straight down the corridors, they’re powerful enough to blow through battlesuit armor with one shot, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“Do it now. We need every trick.”
“Okay, will do.”
Within seconds, the laser crews shut down their bulky machines and began to drag them toward their new positions. Straker didn’t watch further; he couldn’t micromanage everything, and had to trust his people to set up for maximum effectiveness.
On his HUD, the lead elements of the enemy had engaged his few battlesuiters. One, then two icons winked out as they fell back, and furious fire filled the space between the two forces. Killmores detonated, slowing the enemy for only a moment.
“Karst, fall back to the next major crossroads,” Straker ordered, and began a careful jog toward Loco’s position. By the time he got there, the four surviving battlesuiters were racing back from passageways, crossing the intersection to take a stand behind Loco’s Foehammer.
Straker saw Heiser directing emplacement of his pair of heavy slugthrowers, setting them inside two passageways with their lethal snouts poking out into the open space. He approved; Heiser knew his business. The crew-served weapons would establish cones of fire devastating to everyone who crossed in front of them, while remaining protected from the sides.
Sure glad these corridors favor the defender, Straker told himself, not for the first time. In fact, any constricted terrain made it hard on an attacker, which was the only reason his lightly armed force was able to contemplate making a stand against elite armored marines and suicidal Hok, each with the firepower of an infantry squad.
“Loco, move over to the left,” Straker said, coming up behind the other Foehammer.
“Boss, your armor is degraded.”
“It’s repairing. I’ll hang back half a pace. That way you can maneuver a little and so can I.”
“Okay,” he said. “Just don’t shoot me in the ass.”
“If I shoot you in the ass,” Straker told him, “rest assured, it’ll be for a good reason.”
Straker set himself so the other mechsuit covered his left arm and gatling. That shoulder had been repaired and reinforced from its earlier damage, but it still felt a little dodgy. As good as it was having a parts factory on Freiheit, it wasn’t the same as a full-up maintenance depot.
Karst and the other battlesuiters edged back even farther, pressing themselves to the side to shoot past the ’suiters’ legs.
“Spear, this is Straker.”
“Heiser here.”
“Good as those slugthrowers are, they’ll get taken out before we will—‘we’ the mechsuits, I mean. That means you’ll get overrun, so fall back down those passageways when it gets too hot. Leave the slugthrowers if necessary, but make sure they’re useless if you do.”
“Roger wilco.”
“You take charge of the last stand at the engineers’ position. I’ve directed them to use their mining lasers as weapons. We’ll hold this big tunnel as long as possible and be the rock in their stream. All you have to do is bottle them up in the little ones. Because, if they break out…”
“They’ll rip us apart. Got it, sir. Good luck”
“You too.” Straker’s HUD beeped a warning. “Here they come.”
Heiser must have seen them at the same time, for the two slugthrowers opened up with streams of high-velocity bullets, belching the fire of their burning liquid propellant byproducts into the crossroads.
Loco fired as soon as he had a target. Straker saw the bell of his force-cannon brighten with plasma discharge that reached out like an arrow of pure coronal fire. It crossed the open space to strike the lead trooper, a Hok. The antitank weapon cut through the creature’s armor and flash-boiled it so quickly that it exploded like a burst pressure-cooker.
The blast knocked over several more assaulting enemy even as the tube of plasma continued to impact another Hok, then a human marine. All of them exploded in like fashion before the energy dissipated.
Loco didn’t wait, but began snapping short gatling bursts, targeting those troopers still active. The high-velocity rounds were designed to punch through light armor, so they made short work of battlesuiters.
But the enemy were numerous, well-armed, and fearless. Those not killed outright poured fire into the tunnel—lasers and bullets and rockets, probably even grenades. Loco staggered as his front armor ablated and explosions blossomed all around him.
Straker fired his force-cannon on a wide setting, turning the weapon into a combination EMP and flamethrower as the plasma spread into an ever-widening cylinder. It incinerated rockets, flash-heated the closest enemy troopers, and its thermal and electromagnetic pulse futzed the sensors needed for precise targeting, buying Loco time to recover.
Squatting, Straker used his left arm to fire blind bursts of gatling fire from between Loco’s ankles at floor level. Hopefully some of the heavy penetrators would skitter along the deck and take out a few of the enemy.
And the closer their opponents came to the tunnel they defended, the heavier the mechsuiters’ fire became. Like water from a hose, the pressure was highest at the nozzle.
“Shit,” Heiser called on his comlink. “Left flank slugthrower is down. Falling back now.”
“Roger, Spear,” said Straker. “Keep those engineers alive.”
“Wilco. Spear out.”
Loco fired another force-cannon bolt, this one widened like Straker’s had been, and then said, “Boss, we gotta fade a little. I’m degraded as much as you are, and some of these HEAT rounds are going to penetrate if they hit me square.”
“Hit you square…that gives me an idea. Back up ten meters and stand southpaw. I’ll do the same.” Straker walked backward so Loco didn’t trip over him, and the battlesuiters jogged backward even farther.
Loco backed up and took a stance with his right arm—and his force-cannon—extended toward the enemy. He placed his left, with the gatling, across his abdomen and below, also aimed at the oncoming Mutualist troops. “Like this?”
“Perfect,” said Straker, taking the same stance. “It’s the same principle as an old-fashioned duelist, reducing his target surface area. Transfer reinforcement power to only the parts that’ll get hit.”
“Got it.” Loco chuckled. “Just like old times, eh? Johnny and Derek against the world.”
“Yeah, well, let’s not get captured again.”
“Not gonna happen. I’ll die first.”
“Let’s avoid that if we can.” Straker fired his force-cannon as he spotted movement in the smoke, filling the tunnel in front of him with another dose of sun-hot plasma.
“Aye aye, Commodore Liberator sir.” Loco sent a gatling burst downrange.
“Our main job is to block this big tunnel and force the enemy to go around, channeling him into ever-smaller passageways and kill zones. As long as we only have to fight on a narrow front, we can do a lot of good.”
“Yeah, but these guys ain’t stupid, boss. They’ll eventually stop sticking their dicks into the wringer and just hold us here.”
As if the enemy had heard Loco’s statement, the enemy fire quieted down. A few desultory shots spanged off their mechsuits now and again, but no more rockets or grenades flew at them.
“Sir, the other slugthrower’s out of action,” said Heiser. “Everyone who made
it is back with the engineers.”
Straker nodded, and then replied, “Understood. Loco, take Karst and his men, head back to help. Stay in the rear exit of this tunnel so nobody gets behind me. I’ll hold them here.”
“Forget it. You’re the big boss. You have to direct this battle. If one of us goes down, better it be me.”
“Loco—”
“Shut up, Derek. They ain’t even pushing here now, but if they do and take down my suit, I’ll survive in my cocoon. They don’t have weapons heavy enough to dig me out. Not for a while. When you win, you can cut my ’suit open and we’ll drive on. But you have to command.”
“All right. But don’t be afraid to fall back. We need your firepower.” Straker swallowed. “And…”
“Yeah, yeah. Tomorrow this time we’ll be downing some of the local brew. Now go. Go!”
“Going.” Straker waved the battlesuiters to precede him toward the last stand, and then followed. He comlinked Heiser to warn him they would be appearing in the tunnel.
At the open space in front of the command center, the thermal lances still drilled into the vault door, making slow progress. Imrone comlinked Straker when he appeared. “Sir, we really need those lasers to be drilling, not sitting here—”
The engineer foreman’s declaration was cut off as multiple explosions shook the walls, ceiling and floors.
Chapter 14
Sachsen Fortress, Command Center
With the bursting of many charges, the area in front of the command center doors became obscured with smoke and gases. Breakers opened fire, and attackers did too, appearing suddenly as if out of the walls themselves.
Straker’s HUD helped him see through the obscurants and identify what was happening. “They’re coming out of the maintenance shafts!” he called. He felt like barking a reprimand at Heiser, for he’d told the man to make sure to have those hatches covered. Maybe he had, and maybe he did, but it was sure hard to tell right now.