by Max Glebow
There were explosions in the formation of the attackers. Dozens of dropships exploded or fragmented into shapeless debris, some of the machines were damaged, but continued their descent to the surface, with some chances of a relatively safe landing. However, most of the machines survived, and they fired a coordinated rocket salvo at the enemy firing from the surface, and cleared the area for a safe landing.
“That's more like it!” said with satisfaction the commander of the quargs, “Second wave in 30 minutes. Transports with main forces to prepare for landing on the planets as soon as the commandos have secured the landing zones.”
Meanwhile, on the planets the battles have entered a new phase. The landing force attempted to expand the bridgehead, but encountered combat robots of the humans which, for some reason, were operating without infantry support. The enemy counterattacks did not involve too many forces, but they were constantly approached by reinforcements, which could only be detected when they opened fire.
“The cruisers to provide support for the landing from orbit.”
The ships returned to low orbits and began to thin enemy robot combat orders with coordinated strikes. Orbital support eased the situation of the commandos, and things got better. An hour later, in all landing zones, the quargs managed to push the enemy back enough to establish relatively safe landing sites for heavy troop transports on the bridgeheads.
“Begin the main landing. Atmospheric Air Force to provide troop transports with safe lowering corridors.”
***
“Colonel General, Sir, the losses of my corps have reached 30 percent,” Lieutenant General Almeida reported to Matos, “requesting permission to proceed to active defenses.”
Matos understood the Portuguese in his heart. He was appointed Corps Commander only a month ago, and Almeida was very proud of his new position, 'cause he had a combat unit under his command, armed with the latest weapons, the best in the entire Federation army, and now he was forced by the commander’s orders to drive his robots into slaughter with no visible effect. It would bring him neither fame nor pleasure. But Matos couldn’t help the Lieutenant General.
“Okay, I’m gonna give you a 30-minute break,” decided the Commander, “During this time, your corps' divisions are to regroup and strike again at all three of the enemy’s bridgeheads. We cannot allow the quargs to relax, they must begin to land the main force, and the greater the force, the better. It’s up to your robots, Lieutenant General, to show the enemy how serious we are about our defenses. Demonstrate our strength and determination to them. Your job is to do exactly that, and that’s it, not to save your corps’ matériel, is that clear?”
“That's right, Commander, Sir,” the Portuguese clearly replied, but Matos saw that inside the Lieutenant General was boiling with rage.
During his service, the Cuban Camilo Matos met many such officers and even was a bit like them. A commander has to worry about his unit, otherwise he doesn’t deserve to be called a commander. Matos sighed to himself and turned to tactical projection, making it clear to General Almeida that the conversation was over and further discussion of command orders was at least futile.
The first wave of quarg commandos suffered appreciable losses during the landing and attempted expansion of the bridgehead, but the arrival of the second wave and the support from orbit shifted the balance in favor of the enemy. Despite the regrouping and new strikes by the 17th Corps, the enemy bridgeheads continued to expand, and all of General Almeida’s robot attacks were repulsed with heavy casualties for the attackers. Even powerful Bisons with anti-orbital missiles in their arsenal could not resist the fire from orbit for long, much less the lighter Goannas, which had nothing to respond to the salvos of the ships hovering over the planet.
Matos had no communications with other planets, but he hoped that there, too, the commanders did not deviate from the main battle plan. The thought slipped on the edge of the Colonel General’s mind and disappeared into a stream of ongoing reports and orders. After all, the other planets weren’t in his area of responsibility, but if someone in there really messes up, the quargs would be able to move the liberated troops to Ran-3, which Matos didn’t like at all.
“The first enemy transports entered the atmosphere,” the space operator reported, “They move in columns towards all three beachheads and are tightly covered by atmospheric pursuit planes. Altitude of 90 kilometers, velocity of 1.5 kilometers per second, but rapidly dropping.”
“Second-line batteries, 30-second ready to fire,” it was for this moment that Colonel General Matos sacrificed the 17th Commando Corps, “Atmospheric air force from the 7th, 11th and 14th bases to air! The target is enemy troop transports.”
Now, in nearly 300 unremarkable places on the planet’s surface, powerful armor caps got slowly moving together with the soil. Under them were the surface-to-air and surface-to-surface missile positions, and when the timer ran for 30 seconds, the missiles darted off the tracks with roar and headed for the targets. It took almost a minute for the launchers to launch the entire package, and within seconds of the launch of the last missiles, their position was hit by a dense return volley from orbit, but it didn’t matter anymore - there were no people near the launchers, and as for the equipment, one can always make it as much as is needed.
***
“I’m watching enemy atmospheric planes' takeoff from three previously undetected bases on the third planet. About a hundred machines in each group,” reported the tactical officer, “The assumed target is the columns of our troop transports.”
The commander of the quarg fleet made a wry face. The cover forces were abundant enough to prevent the planes of humans from firing on the ships on their way to landing.
“Multiple missile launches!” the tactician sounded agitated, and the surface map blossomed with hundreds of enemy launchers' positions discovering themselves.
Landing operations on all four planets were conducted simultaneously and according to the same scenarios, therefore the quarg commander sent transports with troops to their surface by a single order, and now all the descending ships were caught in the middle almost simultaneously. Disturbing reports of atmospheric air force attacks and missile launches from the ground came to the Fleet Commander one by one.
“Stop the panic!” roared the Fleet Commander, “The battleships to descend into low orbits and destroy the enemy’s detected positions. Concentrate the heavy ships over the cities and prepare to launch an orbital strike on them. It’ll force them to reveal all their trump cards,” the Commander said the last sentence quietly, as if to convince himself of the correctness of his actions.
The descending troop transports were severely beaten. Their anti-aircraft weapons couldn’t cope with the enemy’s massive strike, and these large, unwieldy ships were unable to evade missiles in the atmosphere. There was still hope for a rather strong armor, but they were not battleships, not even cruisers. One by one, the transports were hit and there were dents on their sides and hull breaches. A transport could withstand two or three surface-to-air missile strikes, but then the damage accumulated, became critical, and led to the loss of control of the ship, turning its landing into an unmanageable fall.
Things weren’t going well on the ground, either. At the same time as missiles were launched at air targets, the humans made a rocket strike at the bridgeheads. The landing sites were considered safe because the landed commandos succeeded in repelling the counterattacks of the humans and pushed them away from the bridgehead centres by a considerable distance. But now, columns of fire and the ground from the explosions of intermediate-range missiles' warheads were raised at the points where the transports were supposed to land. The anti-aircraft defense of the bridgehead had supposedly to repel this strike, but the missiles were too many, and a lot of them were targeted specifically at the air defense weapons of the commandos. As a result, the transports that had already reached the surface had nowhere to land. This led to them having to land where they were able to, often break
ing their own equipment, which had been unloaded earlier, and sometimes being damaged.
“Enemy launcher positions destroyed,” reported tactical officer without much joy in his voice, “The atmospheric air force strike has been repelled. No more than 10 per cent of enemy machines have been able to launch missiles with precision.”
“Report our losses,” ordered gloomily the Fleet Commander, when explosions on the bridgeheads ceased and few surviving troop transports descended to the surface of the planets.
“No exact figures yet...”
“So give me the inexact numbers!” The Fleet Commander was barely holding back his rage.
“About 50 per cent of the forces intended for landings. Approximately six corps of heavy infantry with reinforcements. It is not yet possible to estimate more precisely.”
The Commander was silent. Now he could not and did not want to think about the consequences of what had happened. Instead, he recalled with longing the time when he could not even have imagined that he would become a Fleet Commander, then he was just a little quarg named Yash, and it was undoubtedly the best time of his life.
Now old enough, this quarg has been at war ever since he became an adult, first with the antangas, but they were quickly defeated, then with the lizards, and later with the humans. He had a vague recollection of the Masters coming because he was still too young, but his parents had somehow changed, they became tense and morose. And then things started to change. When he was a kid, those changes didn’t affect him too much, but even he noticed that there were more and more quargs in uniform on the streets, and more and more reports were being made on the commissioning of warships instead of children’s favourite shows on TV, although at that time they did not seem to be at war with anyone...
When he was 15, he was taken to the Loyalty Center. A normal-looking doctor said it was just an examination and put an injector on Yash’s forearm, and when the patient woke up, the doctor was nowhere to be seen, but there was an officer in the uniform of Surveillants sitting in the chair opposite him.
“Hello, soldier,” Yash heard the first words of his new life…
Remembering this, the Commander flinched a bit and returned his consciousness to the ruthless reality. He would never lead his fleet into this attack of his own free will, but the Masters didn’t want to listen, and the worst part was, they weren’t going to help. The humans had new weapons, dangerous weapons, but they could still be dealt with. What was worse was that intelligence data had virtually ceased to arrive. They were still able to penetrate the space occupied by the humans on small reconnaissance ships equipped with the best camouflage techniques, although it became increasingly difficult and dangerous to do so. Except it didn’t make any sense in itself. What can be found in interstellar void? In order to extract truly useful data, it was necessary to conduct reconnaissance inside the star systems belonging to the enemy, but about a year ago, the scouts who tried to get in there simply stopped coming back. The flow of reliable data about the adversary quickly turned into a thin stream that ran out in a matter of months.
They had to draw up an operation plan based on data from almost a year and a half ago, which Yash thought was absolutely lunatic, but nobody even asked his opinion.
And now he knew practically nothing about the enemy. There was no human fleet in the system, but that doesn’t mean the fleet isn’t one jump away from here. Before the operation they were unable to reconnoiter the composition of the enemy fleet or its location. An analysis of the industrial potential of humans, again based on data from a year and a half ago, gave some estimates of the possible battle power of their fleet, and it seemed that the humans would not be able to deploy even half as many ships as were now under Yash’s command, but could he believe those estimates?
The Commander had to be in a hurry, because a fleet of humans could have appeared at any moment, and this haste proved fatal. Instead of systematically bringing troops to the planets by sending transport ships to the surface in successive waves, Yash had to land all at once. He was trying to save time, which in his view was now the most scarce resource, but as a result, he lost both his time and his troops, almost half of all the forces dedicated to surface operations. The humans were acting in an unconventional way. They’ve never used such tactics before, but there's a first for everything, and Yash was unlucky to run into just such an occasion.
The Fleet Commander didn’t hate humans. Gone were the days when the young quarg’s mind, clouded by propaganda, called him to battle. Then he took the block set by the Masters lightly, because the block could be triggered if only Yash betrayed the holy cause for which he was willing to give his life without any block. But time passed and the sanctity of the matter began to fade, but the real purpose of the block became more and more clear, just as the total impossibility of changing something in this life became apparent. If Yash wanted to live, if he wanted his wives and children, the children of their children to live, he had to fight. But the Commander remembered well who made him go into battle and lead thousands of other quargs, and they were not humans at all. Besides, humans have tried many times to negotiate to end this senseless war, but any contact with the enemy was strictly forbidden by the Masters, and any peace negotiations were considered treason. Anyone who tried to respond to humans' proposals would have a quick and painful end.
But Yash understood something else, as well. If he blows the operation, his block probably won’t be renewed, and there's only two years left until the scheduled renewal. His wives and children may be left alone, but that will depend on how the battle goes.
The Commander shook his head and drove off his seditious thoughts, he tried to focus on fleet and troop management. Who says the battle is lost? The fleet is intact, the ground forces are still in reserve, so we have to fight.
“The battleships and cruisers have taken positions in low orbits above human cities, Commander Yash,” reported the tactical officer.
“Start the orbital bombardment,” the Commander said, putting all doubt aside.
Chapter 7
Ran-3 was not Camilo Matos' home planet, but his family lived here in recent years. The Cuban liked this comfortable world, which had the beautiful name of New Luanda. The nature of the planet even resembled the historical homeland of the General. And now this world was crumbling before his eyes.
Massive orbital strikes on cities have occurred in this war before, but they still have been the exception rather than the rule. Either the quargs needed prisoners for some reason, or they didn’t want their civilians to be treated the same way, but they didn’t usually specifically destroy non-military targets. Of course, if there was a military facility near the city or there were troops in the city itself, no one was interested in how many civilians would die when they were attacked. But to just throw bombs and rockets into a mega-city without a single shot being fired from there... Matos probably saw it for the first time.
“Colonel General,” the Chief Analyst has taken the Commander away from his unhappy thoughts, “The enemy is provoking us to retaliate.”
It was difficult to disagree with this assertion. Projection screens showed collapsing high-rise buildings, huge clouds of dust and smoke illuminated by fiery flares rose above the ruins. Secondary explosions sometimes occurred among buildings when bombs or rockets hit power substations. By order of Matos, when evacuating people, the power supply to the cities was not stopped, so that the enemy did not know until the last moment that the mega-cities had been abandoned by their inhabitants.
“Perhaps it’s time to show them that we’re trying to protect the cities,” responded Matos, “'Cause if people were still there, we’d be hitting their ships with everything we’ve got.”
***
“A missile strike from the surface of the third planet. The enemy deployed camouflaged surface-to-space missile launchers that had not been used before.”
“All right, so it should be,” answered Yash with confidence,“They sat quietly behind their
camouflage, waiting for the next wave of our transports with the troops, but the humans couldn’t tolerate the destruction of their cities. Continue bombardment. Enemy batteries to be suppressed by fire from orbit. What's happening on the other planets?”
“On the second planet, the situation is almost the same, and on the first, the enemy has not yet responded to the bombing. The most active resistance we feel on the fourth planet. There were several times as many missile batteries, we lost four cruisers, two battleships were severely damaged.”
“It’s all within acceptable range, we’re continuing the attack. The Fleet, to destroy the detected anti-space defense batteries. In an hour, we’ll begin to land the troops. Transports, to land one by one under cover of aviation. Cruisers, to enter the upper atmosphere and crush anything that moves on the surface.”
***
“The next transport has entered the atmosphere, Colonel General, Sir,” reported the operator on duty.
“Do we have any chance of bringing it down with what we have left?” Matos tried to make his voice sound cheerful, but a third day without sleep was too much for the not-so-young commander, and he wasn’t very good at showing off.
“About fifty-fifty, Colonel General, Sir. The transport is landing in the range of one anti-space defense battery and two surface-to-air missile positions, so if we let it descend into the bottom layer of the stratosphere and fire a single volley of missiles, there’s a chance. But then we’ll have nothing left in this area.”
“We’ve lasted 48 hours, officers, Sirs,” pronounced Matos with a mixture of pride and fatigue in his voice, “For 48 hours, under the complete domination of the enemy in low orbits. I don’t remember anyone doing that. Calculate the optimal firing time. Even if we don’t bring this transport down, our activity will make the enemy behave more cautiously and allow us to buy more time.”