by Richard Fox
Gott Mit Uns
Terran Strike Marines Book 5
by
Richard Fox
and
Scott Moon
Copyright © by Richard Fox
All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission.
ASIN:
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
From the Authors
Free Ember War Short Stories
Ember War Universe Suggested Reading Order
Authors’ Note:
The phrase Gott Mit Uns (God is with us) has been used in the German government, military and police force heraldry since the 17th century and through the 1970s. It was the rallying cry of the army led by Gustavus Adolphus at the Battle of Breitenfeld (1631).
Chapter 1
Hoffman stared across the expanse of Deep 14, one of Ceres’ many caverns. The walkway lattice that linked the myriad of storage vaults, workshops, foundries and barracks built into the walls of the cavern always made the Strike Marine feel like he was in an inside-out space station, with everyone in Deep 14 looking into the void instead of out to the darkness of infinity.
From the other side of the cavern, one could barely make out Hoffman and the others standing at his sides. Being dwarfed by the immense space was daunting, but it wasn’t what drove a gnawing sense of dread into Hoffman’s mind.
Ceres shouldn’t have been in orbit around Earth, should never have been a second moon, but the Xaros chose to shift the dwarf planet after they’d conquered the solar system. The alien drones had constructed immense graviton rings around Ceres and moved it to Earth, like the hand of God perfecting the mise en place of his creation.
The Xaros didn’t mine raw material from Ceres’ surface, but had excavated immense, perfectly symmetrical caverns, leaving the exterior as pristine as possible. The drones spent decades constructing the Crucible jump gate, melding material scraped off Earth’s surface with what they dug out of Ceres.
For the Xaros had left little trace of humanity after they’d wiped out every last man, woman and child across the solar system. Just why the drones were programmed to commit full and complete xenocide—to the point of erasing any and all evidence of any living sentient civilization they encountered—had remained a mystery to Hoffman. The why of what the Xaros had done hardly mattered to him anymore. The Xaros were destroyed. The great world ship that carried their leadership had been annihilated, their countless armadas of drones destroyed in star fire.
But the Xaros legacy—the power they’d wielded to move planetoids and the scale at which they could operate—still bothered him. That humanity had fought and won against such a foe still left him in awe.
He touched a patch painted onto the left shoulder of his power armor: a strike carrier against a star field, the subdued heraldry of the defunct Atlantic Union in the background, a scroll at the top with TUS Breitenfeld, and the words Gott Mit Uns across the bottom of the patch.
The Breitenfeld had been there at the final battle, had carried the weapon that won the war against the Xaros. Hoffman and his Strike Marines had been assigned to that fabled ship…but they weren’t there when it was taken from the Terran Union.
He looked toward the center of the cavern, where a miles-long construction yard hung in the negative space. Drones and robots worked nonstop to assemble a new Terran Union battleship, and motes of light from welding torches wavered across the ship. The prow and the hull of the forward third were complete, but the rest of it was a skeleton, slowly forming to maturity as a warship. While he was never one to concern himself with the inner workings of how the Navy built the ships that carried him and his Marines to war, Hoffman made an educated guess that it wouldn’t be ready for months.
And the Terran Union needed it online and fighting in less than two days.
“What’re they going to name her?” Hoffman asked the Marine on his right.
“Hell if I know,” Gunney King said, shaking his head at a holo projected off his gauntlet screen. “Battleships are…regions? Maybe they’ll christen it after Novis. Honor the million people lost after the fucking Vish destroyed it.”
“Fight Vishrakath?” asked Opal, the massive doughboy, as he shifted from foot to foot and glanced around the walkway.
“Not right now, big guy.” Hoffman put a hand on the doughboy’s arm. “Vish aren’t the target. Not yet.”
“But what do you do when you see Vish?” King asked.
“Shoot.” Opal beat a fist against the railing, denting it with a clang. “Crush. Kill.”
“He’s got the idea,” King snorted. “Wish the planners down in Phoenix had the same mindset.”
“The Union’s fighting the Kesaht and the Vishrakath Alliance,” Hoffman said. “Too many fronts. That’s why Command has a holding action against the Vish while we prep the assault on Kesaht’ka. Win one, then win the other. We don’t have the ships or manpower to go full bore against both enemies.”
“Would be easier if the damn Ibarrans weren’t against us too,” King said. “Rumor is they’re why the Vish came after us.”
“Rumors are rumors,” Hoffman said with a frown.
“The Ibarrans capturing the Breitenfeld sure wasn’t a rumor,” King said. “They still have Admiral Valdar and her crew. We’re the only ones from that ship still free to fight…pisses me right off.”
“You think we can afford to fight the Ibarrans too?” Hoffman asked.
“After the shit they pulled on Eridu? They sure as hell ain’t on our side. Human or not. But…we’ll make them pay. We’ll balance the scales…eventually.”
“We did capture Masha,” Hoffman smirked.
“But that big bastard Medvedev got away!”
“Let’s focus on the fifty-meter target, yeah?” Hoffman rolled his shoulders, shifting the feel of his power armor against his skin. He’d lost track of how many hours he’d been in his suit, but fatigue and discomfort didn’t matter when they still had a mission to train for.
“We don’t have enough current intelligence on Toth ships,” King said as he swiped a fingertip across the holo projection and stills from a grainy video capture ticked by on a carousel. “We can’t be sure the layout of their dreadnought is the same as the one that crashed during the Toth incursion. Our ships change over time. Our data’s almost two decades old.”
“Steuben’s sure of the layout,” Hoffman said.
“He’s sure he wants to kill every last Toth he can find.” King shook his head. “I know the Karigole are aliens, but are they all that bloodthirsty? Some of them seemed chill when we went to their village.”
“Not when it comes to them and the Toth,” Hoffman said. “There’s some history there. None of it good. Steuben promised me he’ll keep his murder face in check…but he wants the Toth priority target, Lord Bale, dead.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem.” King shrugged. �
�We’re not going to the Kesaht home system to deliver a strongly worded letter.”
“Kill Toth. Kill Kesaht,” Opal grumbled.
“You ever fought Toth, Opie?” King asked. “Their warriors are big, four-legged lizards. Assuming there are any left. The last sighting was on Balmaseda, an Ibarran colony. And that information came from a traitor.”
“Hammer?” Opal reached over a shoulder and touched the haft of his war maul locked to his back.
“Shoot them before you crush them, Opal,” Hoffman said.
The doughboy’s jaw worked from side to side and he yanked his hand away from his weapon like a scolded child.
“Toth warriors, Rakka, Sanheel, Ixio…who knows what we’ll find on the target?” King said. “Don’t even know the layout of where we’re going.”
An alert icon beeped on Hoffman’s gauntlet. “They’re ready for us,” he said, tapping his screen. “Let’s go.”
“Dark…bad,” Opal said.
“I know, that’s why you need to come with me.” Hoffman rapped his knuckles against the doughboy’s barrel chest. “Keep me safe.”
****
The metal tip of a crow bar slammed through the seam of a door. It slid up in fits and stops, the crack of gauss fire invading the dark space along with a sliver of light from the rip left by the bar. There was a groan of servos as the metal wrenched to one side.
“Get it. Get it!” Garrison shouted.
Gloved fingertips gripped the torn seam and half the door shuddered open as it was jerked to one side.
Max swept into the room, a light on the end of his gauss rifle flooding the space with light. Clear tubes as wide as a man’s thigh ran along the walls and fed into a cube. Silver and white mush fed slowly through the tubes, glittering beneath the light from Max’s weapon.
“Clear. This the place?” Max sidestepped as Garrison, crow bar in hand, rushed into the room.
“Power conduits, check,” the breacher said, glancing around. “Flux mitigation morph—molecular…cube thing! Check. Right place.” He looked over his shoulder and shouted, “Hold here!”
“Three minutes!” Hoffman yelled from the end of a short corridor leading to the power room, brandishing the requisite number of fingers.
“What happened to five?” Garrison asked as he knelt down and opened a satchel. He pulled out two bottles—one filled with clear fluid, another with gray dust—and set them on the ground.
A heavier-caliber gauss weapon opened fire. The snap rattled the two bottles as Garrison lifted up his visor and pulled off one armored glove with his teeth.
“Careful with that stuff, Garrison.” Max swallowed hard and looked back up the hallway. The rest of Valdar’s Hammers held the outer door, firing furiously.
“It’s a binary explosive, you big sniveling poof,” said Garrison, reaching for a bottle and knocking it over. Max braced against the bulkhead, startled. “I haven’t even mixed it yet. No boom boom until it all comes together.”
The breacher removed a length of metal from the satchel and connected it to each bottle. There was a whirl of a pump and the fluid mixed with the powder, turning deep blue.
“Now we’re dangerous.” Garrison took a roll of tape off his utility belt and bit the end as he tugged out a length. “How we doing on time? Need to stow this someplace—”
“This is taking too long!” The words thundered and a massive leg stepped across Garrison’s view outside the hallway. Gauss cannons thundered loud enough to sting his unprotected ears.
Garrison touched an IR transmitter on his throat.
“This is delicate work, thank you very much!” He released the button and fumbled through the satchel. “You think he heard that? I shouldn’t have said that. You know how armor get when they’re angry.”
“Garrison!” King shouted.
“You’re worried about the armor?” Max asked.
“Got the detonator.” He examined a small device in his fingers then looked up over Max’s shoulder to an air vent. “What the hell is that?”
“Really, G? Now? We don’t have time for—”
A green alien the size of a small man leapt out of the air vent and landed on Max’s shoulders. Lizard-like hands and feet scraped at his armor while a tail whipped around furiously.
“There’s only one—you handle it!” Garrison attached the detonator to the bomb as Max slapped at the Toth menial beating him about the head and shoulders.
Max reared back and slammed his back against the bulkhead, crushing the menial’s legs. It hissed furiously, scratching at the emergency latch on the base of his helmet. It wrapped its tail over his visor, blinding him.
“Hate these things!” Max grabbed it by the tail and flung the Toth to one side, whacking it against the bulkhead, then twisted and struck it against the ground with a crack. It twitched, but stopped struggling. Max stomped the alien’s skull several times to finish it off.
“Delicate work, you mind?” Garrison slapped his bomb behind a conduit and stepped back. He smiled, slapped his visor down and slipped his glove back on as he ran out of the room.
“And time!” Garrison tapped furiously on his gauntlet screen as he and Max came out into a wide, hexagonal passageway. Their Strike Marine team looked frazzled, smoke wafting from the ends of their gauss rifles.
Four suits of armor, each towering over the Marines, formed a semicircle around Valdar’s Hammers. They looked like knights of old, but they had servos for joints and carried gauss rifles as big as each Strike Marine. Rotary weapons mounted to their shoulders spun in a blur, ready to unleash a torrent of fire at any target. Twin-barreled gauss cannons on their forearms crackled with electricity.
Garrison instantly regretted mouthing off earlier to one of the armor. Each suit carried more firepower than an entire Strike Marine company…and that was before he factored in their rail guns, the big brother to the weapon the team sniper, Duke, carried.
The passageway was littered with dead Toth warriors, the eight-feet-tall quadruped lizards armed with crystalline weapons and clad in frosted-glass battle plate. The deck and bulkhead were pitted and smoking from hits from the enemy.
More of the aliens emerged from hatches up and down the passageway, and Opal ducked through the legs of one of the armor and braced himself to fire his heavy gauss cannon.
“Opal kill enemy!” Braces on the doughboy’s leg snapped open and gripped the deck. Opal’s mouth pulled open in a smile, revealing slab teeth. He pulled the trigger…and nothing happened.
SIMULATION TERMINATED flashed across Garrison’s visor and he muttered a number of expletives.
Opal shook his weapon in frustration.
“Stand down, Opal,” the lieutenant said, going to the doughboy.
Garrison felt a hand on his shoulder and he turned around, a fake smile across his face.
Gunney King and Steuben, the Karigole warrior, glared at him. Garrison was used to the NCO’s stink eye, but Steuben’s gaze was harder to read. Steuben was deadly serious most days, and Garrison was never sure if he’d receive constructive feedback or if the Karigole would open his prehensile jaws and bite his face clean off.
“You broke seal,” King said, tapping his visor.
“Roger that, Gunney,” Garrison said. “We’re in atmo and we had a time crunch. I lose dexterity with the gloves on and my HUD was going nuts with updates. Had to concentrate.”
“You can’t depend on there being atmo on this mission.” King shook his head slightly. “We’re breaching the hull. Toth don’t have emergency force fields on their ships to stop explosive decompression. We get in, it’ll be a vacuum.”
“Adapt and overcome. That’s the Strike Marine way,” Garrison said with a nervous chuckle.
“We cannot plan on anything working out in our favor,” Steuben said. “Your battle demon, Murphy, knows this.”
“Do…Karigole have Murphy’s Law too?” Garrison asked.
“Breacher!” A naval officer in shipboard fatigues, standing near Hof
fman and Gideon, the leader of the armor lance, waved him over.
“Fun times,” Garrison said and hustled toward the group.
“And you,” Steuben said, leveling a knife hand at Max, “failed to look up. How many times must I stress that the Toth are excellent climbers and they will attack from above?”
“Didn’t anticipate the little bastards being able to fit through there.” Max nodded quickly. “Lesson learned. I’ll keep my head on a swivel next time.”
“And there will be a ‘next time’ today, won’t there?” asked Booker, the team medic. “We’re getting down to the wire on this mission.”
“We achieved the mission standards…barely,” Steuben said.
“Comms window’s about to close,” Max said. “Normal to shut off any word going in and out, even for routine ops…this is the big one.”
“How is that relevant?” Steuben asked.
“Wife and kids, sir,” Max said. “I want…want to talk to them before the balloon goes up.”
“You nervous?” Booker nudged him with an elbow. “Come on, you got shot on a routine snatch mission. Just a flesh wound. Breezed through everything else since without a scratch.”
“You know it wasn’t just a flesh wound.” Max touched his stomach where a bullet had ripped through him. “But I appreciate you telling my old lady that’s what it was.”
“Harder training is the answer to your concerns,” Steuben said. “Sweat saves blood. Karigole and humans know this.”
“So long as we don’t have to load back up in the damn torps.” Duke held his helmet under one arm as he touched the vanes of his half-assembled rail rifle on his back. “Bad enough I’m as useful as tits on a bull in here. But then I get sardined next to Garrison, who I swear is ordering extra chili from the galley just to piss me off.”
“Hammers,” Hoffman said, holding up a hand. “Back to the simulators. We’re loading up again.”
Duke lifted his helmet back up. “Mother fu—” the rest of his words were muffled as he slapped his helmet back down and activated the seal.