Into the War (Rise of the Republic Book 3)

by James Rosone

  Monsoor continued, “This planet contains multiple Zodark bases. Our goal is to assault this particular ridge. It provides us a decent view of the entire valley and the enemy base some thirty-two kilometers away. Behind the ridge lies a large plateau. The brass has ordered the heavy artillery set up there. The M88s will soften the base up before several brigades of C100s are unleashed on it. After destroying or securing this facility, we’ll stand by to see what the division has next for us.”

  “When do we leave?” asked another officer.

  Major Monsoor smiled. “The fleet leaves in three days. We have to transit twelve stargates to reach our marshaling point. I was told by the captain the trip will take us four months. That means we will have a lot of time on our hands. Run your company and platoons through the simulators as often as you can. Drill into them everything there is to know about this planet and our objective. I have no idea how long this campaign will be, but what I do know is this won’t be like Intus. This is a Zodark planet—a planet they stole from the Primords more than three hundred years ago. It’s now a Zodark and Orbot military depot and industrial center. The hope is that taking this base and facility out of play will put a dent in the enemy’s ability to continue to wage this war.”

  The meeting broke up shortly after that. Everyone clearly felt both nervous and excited about the mission and a chance to attack a Zodark military base and industrial center.

  *******

  “I still can’t believe you reenlisted for fourteen years. You are a special kind of crazy, Pauli,” his friend Yogi said as they played a football game on the computer.

  “Well, I was being stop-lossed, so it’s not like I could exactly leave when my enlistment was up anyways,” Pauli countered as his quarterback threw a forty-yard pass to his wide-open receiver.

  Yogi cursed when his cornerback missed the interception and then the tackle. Pauli ended up grabbing another twenty yards before his player was brought down.

  “Still, why Special Forces?” Yogi pressed. “I heard if you reenlisted in the infantry, they’re offering a ten-thousand-RD bonus per year you re-up. You could have netted a hundred and forty thousand RDs for that same length.”

  Pauli laughed at the sum. “You know what the bonus is for Special Forces, Yogi?”

  Yogi’s defensive ends blitzed Pauli, and one of his players managed to sack Pauli’s quarterback for a ten-yard loss.

  “More than a hundred and forty K?”

  Pauli turned to his friend. “Try five hundred thousand.”

  Yogi let out a whistle at the number. “Damn, dude. Maybe I should look at joining when I get closer to my reenlistment. That’s a lot of money. I’ll bet you could buy a nice plot of land on New Eden with that kind of dough.”

  “Maybe, but I’d actually rather see if maybe I’d be allowed to live on Intus,” Pauli replied. “That planet was beautiful, even more so than New Eden.”

  “Yeah, but it’s a Prim world. You’d probably be one of the only humans on the planet,” said Yogi.

  Pauli shrugged indifferently.

  “Pauli, Yogi, I need you both to come with me,” announced Master Sergeant Dunham as he walked into the dayroom. They turned their game off and got up to follow their platoon sergeant. Whatever was up, they’d find out soon enough.

  When they walked into Captain Shinzo’s office, the other sergeants in the platoon and company were there waiting for them. Pauli felt like a heel being the last ones to show up.

  “Take a seat, gentlemen. We’ve got a lot to talk about,” Captain Shinzo announced as everyone perked up. “OK, so here’s the skinny. We’re getting closer to our final destination. Our particular mission just got its first FRAGO. 1st Battalion, 4th Special Forces Group put in a special request for our particular battalion to assist them in a mission. This is the same SF battalion we worked with on New Eden, so apparently, their commander was impressed with our performance because he asked General McGinnis for us by name. The major was so excited, he didn’t bother asking what the mission was.” Several of the sergeants chuckled. “An hour ago, we got the mission brief, and let me just say, it’s a one-of-a-kind mission to say the least.”

  Pauli was excited that the 4th SF Group had requested them by name. They’d fought with them for more than six months on New Eden. Heck, it was a couple of soldiers from that unit that had convinced Pauli he should apply to Delta. He was stoked to be working with them again.

  “Let me guess, the mission’s a real ballbuster,” Lieutenant Atkins said aloud to the chagrin of the others.

  Captain Shinzo grunted. “That’s an understatement, Lieutenant. This mission’s going to suck. It’s going to be tough as hell. Honestly, I can’t believe the major agreed to this. I think he forgot we aren’t augmented superhumans like they are. This mission is actually so tough, the entire battalion is being outfitted with Delta body armor and equipment. The reason I called you all in is, starting tomorrow, we’re going to be issued the new equipment. I need you all to drill your men relentlessly in it. We don’t have a lot of time to get ready. Worse, we’ll be carrying it out with entirely new equipment and weapons we’re not used to using—”

  “New weapons? What are we getting?” asked one of the master sergeants with a grin.

  Shinzo shrugged. “Not new weapons per se. We’re still going to be using the M85s, M90s, and M91s, we’re just going to be fitted out with the SF versions of them. They’re generally smaller and more compact than our current infantry weapons. They’ve also improved the battery packs for the blasters, doubling the number of shots they can fire. The magrail and 20mm smart grenades are also double the capacity. I think the biggest change for us is going to be the armor. It’s made of a lightweight composite material, but it’s also bulky and essentially covers your entire body—”

  “Sorry to interrupt, sir,” said Lieutenant Atkins. “If the Greenie Beanies are giving us their fancy armor and improved weapons, it means they’re expecting this to be a nasty fight. What exactly is the mission?”

  Captain Shinzo snorted at the bluntness of the question. He and Atkins had a well-known back-and-forth. Atkins was a thirty-year veteran of the infantry; he was direct and to the point, and he seldom missed much either.

  “Unlike the rest of the invasion force, the Deltas go in during the first wave. For this attack, they’re going to assault a Zodark military base in high orbit over the planet,” Shinzo explained. “Once they breach the facility, they want our help in securing it.”

  The captain brought up some images of the station provided to them by the Primords. He then showed them a short video clip of how the attack was going to play out. Basically, the Prims were going to use several of their ships to disable the station’s defensive weapons. Once that was done, the Deltas would land a contingent of soldiers on the outer shell of the station. They’d cut their way into it and then move down to the hangar bay. Once they secured the hangar bay, Pauli’s unit would fly in and help them hold the hangar facility while more reinforcements were brought on board. When a beachhead had been secured, they’d expand further into the facility. The goal of the entire mission was to capture the station and any technology or intelligence they could use from it.

  Lieutenant Atkins cleared his throat. “Well, then I guess we have our work cut out for us. We’ve got, what, three weeks until we arrive in the system? It sounds like everything is situation normal—nothing to see here.”

  The others laughed.

  *******

  RNS Tripoli

  Training Bay

  “I think I could get used to this body armor and these fancy rifles, Sarge,” one of the new replacements said.

  “Just remember, this armor might keep a blaster bolt from penetrating, but that doesn’t mean it won’t hurt,” Pauli said to his squad. “You still need to stay frosty, heads on a swivel if you want to survive. This is going to be a tough fight. We’ll be confined to a starbase. This won’t be like fighting on the planet surface where we can spread out. This
will be tight-quarters, close-in, dirty combat with the Zodarks. You need to be ready for it, all right?”

  His two corporals nodded their heads, knowing it was going to fall on their shoulders to make sure each fire team was ready.

  The next two weeks were spent practicing close-in combat on a simulated starbase. They practiced clearing rooms, corridors, hangars, and anything else they could think of. They went for daily runs in their new body armor and combat rigs, carrying their modified weapons. The officers and NCOs were doing everything they could to get the men ready for what would certainly be a tough fight.

  As they neared the planet Rass, the training continued to intensify. They were embarking on a mission that had never been attempted before—the capture of an enemy starbase. If all went according to plan, they’d capture the facility and learn a lot more about their adversaries.

  Chapter Eleven

  Task Force Rass

  RNS George Washington

  Stargate 352-NHW

  “You can do this, Captain McKee,” said Admiral Abigail Halsey via the holograph communication. “I have the utmost confidence in your ability to lead this task force.”

  Deep down, McKee felt overwhelmed with self-doubt and uncertainty. She’d lost a lot of friends during the attack on Intus; a lot of ships under her command had been destroyed. It weighed on her a lot.

  “I wish we had our new warships ready,” McKee commented. It was just the two of them talking privately in her office—she’d never say something like that in public.

  Halsey grimaced. “We all wish we had the new ships, Fran,” she countered. “We’re just going to have to wait until they come online, and we’ve had time to get our crews trained up and ready for them. In the meantime, we keep punching the Zodarks and Orbots with what we have. Let’s not forget you also have your new Primord friends here with us: Admiral Stavanger and his fleet. Heck, they’ve brought more ships to this fight than we have in our entire fleet. I’m sure this battle will go differently than the last one.”

  “Thanks for the pep talk, Admiral. I guess I needed some reassurance. I’m still having a tough time being in command of so many ships and people. It really hurts when you lose a ship and know that eleven hundred people died because you ordered them into a position that put them in harm’s way,” Fran lamented.

  Abigail nodded her head in agreement. “Wait until you become an admiral and you have to do this on a much grander scale. You suddenly find you’re responsible for dozens of warships and tens of thousands of people. You learn that no matter what you do, people are going to die. It’s the nature of war. Our job is to minimize the number of losses we take and increase our chances of winning.”

  *******

  “The Prim fleet is jumping through the gate now,” announced Captain McKee’s operations officer, excitement and tension in her voice.

  “Stand by to follow them in,” Captain McKee announced as her ship and sixteen other RNS warships prepared to join the fight.

  For five minutes, they watched and waited as one group after another of Primord ships led the way and jumped through the gate. Everyone knew on the opposite side was an enemy fleet waiting to greet them, so the Earthers anticipated an outright melee once they jumped through.

  McKee turned to her flight operations officer. “Once we emerge on the other side of the gate, launch our squadrons of Orions immediately. We don’t know how bad the battle will be on the other side. Deploy them and make them ready to assist us. Have the B-99s ready to deploy as well. I want our bombers to focus their weapons on any Zodark or Orbot battleships that may be waiting for us. It’s going to be important to take those ships out first.

  “EWO, I know they’re going to be in close, so you may not be able to jam them as effectively as you otherwise would. Still, try to do what you can. Focus on the smaller frigates and cruisers who may not have as strong a countermeasure as the battleships. Also, make sure you’re constantly deploying our SW antilaser countermeasures. Create a constant bubble of that crap around our ship, even as we’re moving.”

  Now that McKee had given some last-minute instructions to her crew, she was ready for whatever was waiting for them on the other side. Come hell or high water, this was going to be a defining battle: one that would either throat-punch the enemy and put them on their heels or force the allies to fall back and rethink their strategy.

  Finally, it came time for the GW and its accompaniment of two battlecruisers, six cruisers and six frigates to jump through. The squadron approached the gate and waited their turn. When the gate activated, it created a liquid shimmer inside the center of it, the signal for them to pass through. As the squadron approached, the gate sucked the ships into it. Once inside, the bridge crew watched as they appeared to speed down, up, and to the sides of some sort of tunnel. Meanwhile, all sorts of different colors of lights swirled about them for a couple of minutes as they transitioned through the gate. Although only a couple of minutes passed, it felt like an eternity. The gate ejected them out the other end and into the blackness of space.

  It took only minutes for their sensors to pick up what was going on around them and to visualize the light from the nearby sun and planets in the system. In fractions of a second, their radar screens lit up with dozens upon dozens of Prim and Zodark warships. They also spotted two dozen laser turrets and other weapons anchored around the gate. The gate guns were actually something new—the human fleets hadn’t encountered them before.

  Judging by what they saw on their sensors, the Zodark ships were pounding the Primord ships hard, trying to finish them off before their human allies could jump in and assist them. Several of the Prim cruisers were being ripped apart and exploding all around them.

  Crap, what did we jump into? Fran silently asked herself.

  “Target those gate guns now! Take them out before more ships jump through the gate. Then find us a target for the plasma cannon!” she commanded as the bridge crew on the ship went into overdrive trying to analyze and handle all the incoming data.

  Her weapons department locked up the gate guns with their primary and secondary turrets. It didn’t take many shots from their magrails to pulverize the gate guns.

  Once they were silenced, they turned their massive magrail turrets on a Zodark battleship that was pounding away on a Prim battleship. The two vessels were hitting each other with brilliant stabs of light. Each laser shot cut deep into each other’s vessel. Chunks of debris, atmosphere, and even bodies were being ejected from the vessels as they tore into each other.

  Then the GW got into the fight. They hammered the enemy battleship with dozens upon dozens of sixty-inch and thirty-six-inch slugs. The enormous projectiles rattled the Zodark warship hard. The ones that penetrated through its armor and into the ship lit off their high-explosive warheads, causing further damage and destruction on the enemy warships.

  “Firing the plasma cannon now!” yelled out one of her targeting officers.

  The massive cannon fired, whiting out their screen momentarily. When they could see what was happening around them again, they realized that the plasma cannon had scored a direct hit on the Zodark warship, blowing a twenty-meter-wide hole clean through the ship. With the hole in their midsection and a near-constant broadside barrage of magrail slugs, the Zodark ship started breaking apart. Secondary explosions rippled across the chunks of the vessel as it began to separate into two main sections.

  “Shift fire to those enemy cruisers!” called out Captain McKee. There had to be thirty Zodark cruisers battling it out at the gate with the Primord ships. They needed to thin the herd before they became overwhelmed.

  With a view of the GW and the battle unfolding around them, McKee saw both sides of the GW’s primary and secondary weapons blasting away at the enemy cruisers. Their lone plasma cannon repositioned to fire on the remaining two enemy battleships.

  “Release the bombers,” McKee ordered her flight operations. “Focus their torpedoes and missiles on the battleships.”

>   The F-97 Orions were soon in the thick of the fight, heavily engaged with the Zodark fighters. McKee saw two Primord cruisers explode moments later, succumbing to the volume of enemy fire being directed at them.

  The GW itself was starting to shake more and more. Several enemy cruisers circled in on them, firing their powerful lasers. The enemy were going after their primary and secondary guns, knowing that would minimize the damage the GW could inflict on them.

  The stargate behind them suddenly activated again. Three more RNS battleships emerged, escorted by two dozen frigates. The human ships spun up their engines to full speed as they dispersed and put some distance between themselves and the gate.

  The added firepower from these ships would greatly help in the battle. The Primord ships did their best to hold out against the Zodark vessels, but more and more of them were succumbing to the volume of fire being thrown at them. The battle at the stargate was proving to be an epic battle for the ages.

  As more Primord and human ships continued to jump through the gate, group after group of Zodark ships also arrived to reinforce their fleet. The vast array of ships crowded into this area of space was creating a hectic and chaotic scene to say the least. The Zodarks clearly knew if they lost this battle, then chances were, they’d lose the system.

  The gate activated again, and moments later, thirty-two Primord cruisers and battleships emerged. Seconds later, the remainder of the Earth fleet jumped through. The Galactic Empire fleet now outnumbered the Zodark ships by a five-to-one ratio. Several of the Zodark ships near the perimeter of the battle jumped away, presumably back to the planet Rass and their orbital stations there.

  The battle around the gate continued to rage, but it wouldn’t last much longer. While the Primord and Zodark ships blasted each other repeatedly with their lasers, masers, and direct-energy weapons, the human ships made good use of their magnetic railguns to pulverize the thinner-skinned Zodark vessels.