The Renegade

by P. M. Johnson

  Taqir glowered, his mind aflame with images of what he would like to do to Kurak. He cursed the Separatists for putting up a much stronger fight than he had anticipated. Their ion canon platforms had rendered several of his most powerful warships defenseless, allowing Rahani Aculae fighter pilots to attack with such ferocity that even the Sahiradin ships’ tough borelium hulls could not withstand the onslaught. Even the Humani pilots, those putrescent Alamani whelps, had threaded through the screen of Codex fighters to destroy one of Taqir’s new battleships. Intolerable!

  But it had not been enough. Thought the vaunted Admiral Var-Imar and her fleet had performed remarkably well, they had only prolonged the inevitable. The fleet was crumbling and their land forces were too few to fend off the legions of warriors now on the surface of Agurru. The old fortress of D’norah Kûhn would fall, the power generators would be destroyed, and all access to the Separatists’ most important solar systems would be severed.

  “I asked for the status of the enemy fleet!” roared Taqir.

  “Fleet Commander, Taqir,” said D’Sur. “The enemy fleet is disintegrating. Their ion canon platforms are aflame. We have penetrated their lines in multiple locations and destroyed their most powerful ships.”

  “What about their khâls?. Can they still receive reinforcements?”

  “From where, Fleet Commander?” asked D’Sur, his face beaming with confidence. “They brought every ship they could spare to Agurru, and look at them. They are in ruins!”

  Taqir gripped the arms of his command chair and looked at D’Sur from under dark brows. “What about their khâls?” he asked in a low, threatening tone.

  “Only one remains,” replied D’Sur a little less boastfully, though he had lost nothing of his self-assurance. He glanced over his shoulder at the main view screen. It was filled with wounded and dead enemy vessels.

  “Why has it not been destroyed?” growled Taqir. “Destruction of all khâls was our first objective!”

  “The khâl has been well defended by the Battleship Resurgent. She has been joined by Solar Song and a number of Humani-piloted fighters. Two of our battleships and their support vessels are converging on them now. It will not be long before the khâl has been destroyed.”

  “The Resurgent is the oldest ship in the enemy fleet. Why hasn’t she been broken?”

  D’Sur was about to speak but Taqir cut him off.

  “Take us there now! I want all of Retribution’s guns ready to fire. We’ll charge the old bucket and crack her in two! What is the state of Var-Imar’s ship, Victory?”

  “We have boarded her. I am confident she will soon be ours.”

  “Good. Set course for the remaining khâl. All other ships are to support the ground assault. Tear down the walls of D’norah Kûhn. Destroy those reactors!”

  Chapter 56

  War is capricious as hell. Best thing to do is keep fighting till either you win or you lose. It’s that simple.

  - Interview with General Joshua Chamberlain Longmire.

  “Better check your HUD, sir. We’ve got company,” said Lieutenant Beusey.

  “I’m a little busy now, Beusey,” replied Cap as he wove his way between two careening Codex fighters he’d just ignited with the last of his spinner missiles.

  “Two enemy battleships are converging on our position. And it looks like their flagship is heading this way, too.”

  “I guess they were feeling left out of the fun. I’m out of missiles. All I’ve got is my particle gun and a couple hundred zip rounds. What about you?”

  “About the same. Just enough to take out one more Codex.”

  “If you’re lucky.”

  Cap looked to the lower right of his HUD visor. Two thirds of the EDF’s fighters had been destroyed, and Beusey was the only pilot from his flight of five still living.

  “Can we get back to Resurgent to reload before those battleships get here?”

  “Not this time. We got away with it once, but that was when we still had a fully functional ion canon platform behind us blitzing the hell out of the Sahiradin fleet. The platform’s blown to hell now. Those battleships are going to fire their ion canons as soon as they come in range then they’ll launch every missile in their inventory. This is the last functioning khâl. Once they destroy it, that’ll be it for the fleet.”

  “There’s still a few ships left in the fight,” said Beusey with the optimism only the very young possessed.

  “Yeah, but for how long?”

  Cap took a moment to flick through his HUD functions to locate friendly ships. His heart skipped a few beats when he could not locate his desired ship then he sighed with relief. Victory was still alive, though just barely. Her engines were silent and dozens of Sahiradin gunships were docking along her hull. He didn’t want to think about the swarm of warriors and Karazan that must be surging through her corridors in search of Admiral Var-Imar.

  He suppressed the desire to abandon the defense of Resurgent and the last remaining khâl. He wanted nothing more than to go after those gunships now piercing Victory’s skin, burn them to pieces, expose their guts to the vacuum of space. But he knew it wouldn’t do any good. He was powerless to change the course of events onboard Victory. Lena was facing impossible odds, but so was he. As those odds grew worse, surviving was becoming less about skill and more about things outside their span of control. Destiny, luck, karma - call it what you will. The fact of the matter was they were all living on borrowed time. They were thrashing along in the surging seas of battle and could do nothing but try to keep their heads above the raging torrent.

  “Commander! Are you seeing this?”

  “Yeah, more Codex fighters coming our way.”

  “No sir! The khâl has been activated. Something’s coming through!”

  Cap turned his gaze toward the hypergate. There were four silvery balls of light located in various points around the khâl. As he watched, they rapidly expanded to sizes Cap had never before witnessed. He didn’t know what was coming through, but it had to be a lot.

  “More Sahiradin warships, sir?” asked Beusey.

  “No. Not unless they got the codes to the Lycian gate. But it can’t be Lycian ships. Var-Imar had brought everything we had.”

  “Me too. So what’s coming through?”

  Just then, the approaching Sahiradin Codex fighters broke from their flight path and veered toward the silvery spheres. The battleships started firing on them, though nothing had yet come through.

  “Well, whatever’s happening, the Sahiradin don’t like it,” said Cap. “And that’s good for us.”

  One of the spheres burst in a great flash of blinding light. The others did the same in rapid succession. When Cap looked once more in the direction of the khâl the sight made his jaw drop. There were hundreds of gunships surrounding larger vessels - not battleships, cruisers, or frigates, but something else. They were transports, he suddenly realized. Troop transports. And in the heart of the four groups of ships were ion canon platforms. Their massive nodes already crackling with blue-tinged energy.

  “Who the hell are these guys?” asked Cap.

  Just then, a communication came through from Fleet Marshal Laurent, who was onboard the Resurgent.

  “All EDF fighters,” said Laurent excitedly. “All wings report immediately to the nearest Lycian capital ship for rearming. The Lycians are calling for us to help defend the newly arrived ships. We will protect them from enemy fighters and help the transports reach the surface.”

  “What’s happening, Commander?” asked Beusey.

  “Hell if I know, but if they’re here to fight the Sahiradin, I’m not going to ask questions. Let’s get to Resurgent and reload.”

  Chapter 57

  War is fought with swords and guns, but it is won through the courage of soldiers.

  - Interview with General Joshua Chamberlain Longmire.

  Logan watched the monitors near the secret hatches hidden in the slopes along the Sahiradin army’s line of march toward
the gates of D’norah Kûhn. He now understood how the Sahiradin were able to field so many more warriors than the Alliance had anticipated. For the first time ever, they had armed auxiliary forces of Tullans and Rahani drawn from the Reclaimed Worlds to help in the assault. Their presence in Sahiradin armor shocked and confused the Lycians for it flew in the face of conventional wisdom that those living under the enemy’s rule would never willingly assist their oppressors. That might have been true when those worlds were first conquered, thought Logan, but that had been hundreds of Earth years ago. Generations of Lycians had been born, lived, and died under Sahiradin rule since then; they didn’t know anything different and would fight for their homes and loved ones.

  The enemy Tullans had employed machines to rapidly dig under the edge of the hardened Lycian shield dome. The Lycians responded by causing their hardened shield to vibrate with such force that it caused the enemy’s excavations to collapse. The invaders renewed their efforts in two other locations. One of the tunnels suffered the same fate as the first, but the second was strong enough for them to create an opening below the bottom edge of the shield twenty meters wide and five meters deep. The Lycians reduced the shield dome’s rigidity setting in order to reestablish its bottom edge across the newly formed opening, but they were too slow to prevent Tullan auxiliaries from deploying a sturdy arch beneath the shield dome’s edge which prevented it from reshaping itself. The opening which the auxiliaries had established was a small one considering the tens of thousands of warriors who would need to pass through it, but it was wide enough for aggressive Sahiradin and a heavily armored vehicle to pass through. On the back of the vehicle was a Sahiradin shield dome which immediately deployed once under the Lycian dome, thereby protecting the invaders’ vanguard from the defenders’ ballistic and particle beam weapons which immediately opened fire on them.

  Logan watched with grim determination as the Sahiradin streamed through the gap their Tullan auxiliaries had created. The force field arch holding up the tunnel began to expand on either side as Tullans quickly removed debris. Soon it was double its original width, allowing warriors to stream thought. They gathered under their mobile shield dome by the thousands and prepared to launch themselves at the gates of D’norah Kûhn. Logan estimated there were now at least ten thousand warriors and auxiliary fighters gathered under their dome’s protection. Many more waited outside the Lycian shield dome and would no doubt enter and deploy under a second mobile shield generator as soon as the first group of Sahiradin advanced far enough forward.

  It was at that moment that the Lycian shield dome flickered and disappeared only to immediately reappear much closer to the defenders’ fortifications. The Lycians had reset the dome over a smaller area in order to place the Sahiradin forces once more outside its perimeter. Just as this happened, automatic particle beam and cannon fire erupted from hidden locations in the surrounding hills, cutting down black-armored warriors not under the protection of a shield. Simultaneous with this brutal barrage, Rahani-controlled battle droids emerged from hidden tunnels on the far side of the valley. They charged forward and tore into the Sahiradin and auxiliary troops. The force of the machines’ assault created a great bow in the Sahiradin formation, but the battle droids could not maintain their momentum. As Logan knew, having witnessed the same thing at the Battle of Bullard Creek, the Alamani had equipped their Sahiradin servants with swords having the ability to use harmonics and other technology to tap into each battle droid’s electronic and cybernetic systems. This allowed the Sahiradin to cut through their metal arms and legs with alarming ease, proving once again that the best weapon against a Sahiradin warrior was not high-tech battle droids equipped with particle beams and ballistics but low-tech swords, knives, and prosks.

  The Rahani droids did kill many warriors and pressed forward in order to divide the enemy force. But the droids’ advantage was fleeting. The Sahiradin quickly reformed their lines then proceeded to swiftly dispatch the droids while auxiliary units repeated the sapping process under the defenders’ shield dome. They once again poured through a tunnel to the dome’s interior, now at a point much closer to the Lycian fortifications. The Lycian trick of shrinking the dome had worked before, but Logan knew that it would not work again; there was not enough space between the enemy and the outer perimeter of the fortifications.

  The Sahiradin resumed their advance toward the defenders’ gates. Soon they would be close enough to place War Dog Brigade, Zish’s Tullans, and Agrom’s Grenn within the boundaries of the Sahiradin mobile shield dome. Logan gave final instructions to Hamza and his troops, who listened intently to his words. He reiterated that their goal would be to destroy the Sahiradin force’s mobile shield dome generator. If they destroyed that, the enemy would be exposed to withering automatic fir. That’s when Ghorla would launch the counter attack. Logan did not mention the Tullans’ wavering commitment to the plan of attack.

  “You ready?” he asked Hamza through his comms device.

  “Ready,” replied Hamza, who would be leading the right flank of the War Dog Brigade.

  “Good.”

  Logan looked at Beth, who was by his side. “Here we go.” He opened a general channel. “Listen up War Dogs. Prepare to attack in three, two, one. Go! Go! Go!”

  All along the right side of the canyon, disguised doors parted and Humani, Tullan, and Grenn came pouring forth, screaming their war cries and slamming into the surprised Sahiradin army’s right flank. Soon, the valley was filled with the screams of anger and pain, the ringing of metal against metal, and the roar of howlers fired at close range. Grenn warriors bellowed their challenges to the hated Sahiradin and swept them aside with their glowing prosks.

  To his dismay, Logan’s hands quaked involuntarily when he faced his first adversary. Images of fierce, scale-covered warriors flashed across his mind. The spirits within him recoiled at the sight of their once loyal but deadly servants. But just as they had done before, the spirits joined under the leadership of the One Voice and not only enhanced Logan’s physical strength in his time of need, they also lent him their deep understanding of Sahiradin battlefield tactics and fighting styles, knowledge which Logan used to deadly effect. Like a threshing machine harvesting a field of wheat, he cut a wide swath of death around him as he surged toward the Sahiradin shield generator.

  All along the line, Humani and Sahiradin tore at each other with primal ferocity. Grenn prosks caved in skulls and crushed bones. Zish’s Tullans charged ahead, a scimitar blade in each hand slicing through the enemy’s ranks.

  Yet, the Empress’ warriors soon overcame their surprise and reformed their line. They cut and slashed with their swords while auxiliary forces fired their particle guns on the Grenn, Tullans, and descendants of the hated Alamani.

  Undaunted, the warriors of the Alliance returned hate for hate, delivering death by sword and prosk, avenging many Sahiradin atrocities.

  “Phalanx!” ordered Logan to all troops. “Phalanx formation!”

  Upon hearing the command, all the soldiers of War Dog Brigade altered the configuration of their force shields from small and round to long and convex. They then formed into tight lines of four soldiers deep. The Sahiradin threw themselves at the wall of shields, trying to break through, but they were pushed back by sword thrusts in their faces, chests, and necks. Then the Humani soldiers pushed forward as one, shouting Hoorah! with each step. In this way, they forced the Sahiradin back toward their center and the mobile shield generator.

  Onward pushed the soldiers of War Dog Brigade. Heaving their shoulders against their shields, knocking over the enemy’s front line. Stabbing and slashing, they advanced like a wall of death, destroying all who stood in their way. Yet, the Humani advantage over the enemy did not last long. The Sahiradin soon adapted their tactics from free-flowing combat to a more disciplined line. They called forward auxiliary Tullans, who stood behind the Sahiradin and thrust pikes over the Humani wall of shields. Behind each army’s line were sharpshooters, firing at th
e opposition until shields were overwhelmed then downing soldiers and warriors one by one.

  Logan and Beth were in the middle of the line, their elongated shields linked to their comrades on each side. They had advanced their wall again and again, but now the Sahiradin were holding strong. They repeatedly thrust their swords over their shields while soldiers in the second and third lines jabbed with pikes. Many Sahiradin fell, only to be immediately replaced by more. Many Humani fell too, but their numbers were dwindling fast and they had no reserves.

  Logan glanced toward the gates of D’norah Kûhn. Why were they not opening? Now was the time to attack the enemy’s far flank and center. Ghorla said he would give the order. Where were the Tullans? Logan cast his eyes along the line of battle. Only Zish and his Tullans had come out. Logan was about to contact Longmire and demand the Tullans come out when he heard a great bellowing sound to his right. It was Agrom. He was ordering his followers to form a two-deep defensive arc. They quickly complied then crouched low and froze in their position.

  “What the hell is Agrom doing?” shouted Beth.

  Logan didn’t know what to say. He was just as puzzled. But before he could say anything, the ground below his feet began to tremble. Then he felt it shift from side to side. Small rocks rolled down from the canyon walls. Soon larger boulders were doing the same. Soldiers and warriors lost their footing as the ground shook with ever greater violence. The planet, Agurru, had decided to enter the fray, and it didn’t care who died. Each side’s lines bent and buckled as combatants vainly strove to maintain their formations, but with each stumble they were pierced by a sword or pike thrust. More and more human blood was spilled to seep into Agurru’s rocky soil.