Ascendant

by Jack Campbell

  But they were still holding. Mele looked about at the grim-faced militia behind the barricade, impressed. “A lot of professional military forces would break with those kind of losses,” she told Freeman. “You’ve got some damned good soldiers.”

  He nodded wordlessly in reply but then turned to pass on Mele’s praise to his people.

  “How are things where you are?” she sent over the circuit dedicated to her Marines.

  Corporal Gamba called in from her position with another militia unit. “Estimate twenty percent casualties with this bunch, Captain. And they’re pretty worn-out. They can’t take much more.”

  “Understood. Yoshida?” No reply. “Yoshida? Buckland? Answer up.”

  Yoshida finally replied, his voice thin with stress. “Buckland’s dead, Captain. I’ve got . . . ummm . . . I got hit. Can’t use my right arm or shoulder.”

  Damn. Mele called her next words like a command, trying to snap Yoshida out of his shock. “What’s the status of the militia you’re with?”

  “Ummm . . .”

  “Answer up, Marine!”

  “I, uh, twenty or thirty percent casualties, Captain.”

  Mele wished she could pull up her faceplate and rub her eyes, but this part of the facility was in vacuum, the atmosphere having vented through the many holes created by active combat. “Giddings, I need you—Giddings?”

  She realized that she hadn’t seen or heard from him since the last attack had ended.

  And was relieved a moment later when Giddings came toward her at a crouch to stay beneath the top of the barricade. Giddings tapped the side of his helmet.

  Mele looked and saw damage along the right side, where an energy pulse had slagged that part of Giddings’s helmet. The self-repair material in the helmet looked like it had expanded to fill the gap. “Have you got any leaks?”

  He shook his head and made the hand sign for “say again.”

  She made the hand signs for “leak” and “interrogative.”

  Giddings shook his head again before signing more. “Comms. Negative.”

  His communications capability had been knocked out, perhaps literally fried by that hit. So much for the idea of sending Giddings to help Yoshida.

  Mele turned back to Lieutenant Freeman. “Has there been any more activity in the maintenance access shafts?”

  “They made one more try,” Freeman said. “We tossed a grenade down that shaft and sealed it. Captain . . .”

  “I think we should pull back,” Mele said.

  He nodded again, not hiding his relief. “Yes. I was about to ask that. My guys are hurting. They need a little time to recover.”

  Mele grasped his shoulder reassuringly before calling out commands. “We’re going to fall back to the next set of positions. Lieutenant Veren, Lieutenant Danzig, Lieutenant Freeman, designate five people from your units to take up hidden positions where they can cover the back side of our current locations. When the enemy forces make their next rush and get over the barricades, they’ll pause to regroup. The five-person rear guards will open fire on them while the enemy is exposed there so the attackers will drop back to use our own barricades as cover from the rear guard. That’ll slow them down. Make sure the rear guards know their job is not to hold their positions. They’re to hit the enemy, force the enemy to take cover, then drop back to join the rest of us.”

  She switched to the Marine circuit again. “Yoshida? Can you fall back with your militia?”

  “Yes, Captain,” Yoshida said, his voice steadier. “I’ll stay with them. Just fighting one-handed now.”

  Mele recognized the false confidence of antishock drugs, but there wasn’t anything she could do about that. “Good. Stay with them. Keep them steady when they fall back. Corporal Gamba, do the same with your militia.”

  “Keep them steady,” Gamba replied. “Will do.”

  “Giddings has lost comms, but he’s not hurt. He’s staying with me.”

  Anything else she might have said was forestalled by more movement in front.

  It was the worst possible time for another enemy attack, while the militia was falling back and another push might drive them into a panicked retreat. With more than half the surviving militia here already having left the barricade to withdraw, those remaining couldn’t hold. “Everybody back now!” Mele ordered. “Make sure those rear guards take their positions. Everybody else back!”

  She’d half risen to join the retreat when Giddings jerked and fell. Mele caught his arm, seeing a hole in the chest armor, Giddings’s eyes wide through his face shield.

  Mele knew she had less than a second to decide what to do.

  “Lieutenant Freeman! Carry Giddings!”

  “But—”

  “I’ll only stay here a second! Get away!” Mele grabbed the weapon Giddings had dropped. A Springfield Armory Model Seven Pulse Rifle. Designed to be safe from any attempts by soldiers or Marines to mess with its controls and do something crazy like increase the power of each pulse shot to dangerous levels, or, even worse, set the power supply to release all of its energy at once and turn the rifle into a sort of super grenade.

  Mele had been a private when those rifles began being manufactured on Franklin. It had taken the enlisted Marines less than a week before they’d figured out how to bypass all the safety protocols on the controls.

  And how to enter the right commands in the wrong ways to make the rifle explode.

  Her hands flew over the rifle’s controls, making the necessary inputs. “One thousand. Two thousand.” Mele rose up, Giddings’s rifle in one hand and her own weapon in the other. “Three thousand.” She aimed at the attackers who were very close to the barricade, “four thousand,” firing twice at the two closest, “five thousand,” not pausing as her two targets jerked from impacts and stumbled, raising Giddings’s rifle, “six thousand,” and hurling it one-handed into the center of the corridor, the attack was coming down, “seven thousand,” spinning on one heel and running all out to catch up with Freeman as he ran carrying Giddings.

  “Eight thousand.” A shot clipped her side, glancing off the armor. “Nine thousand.” More shots came after her as the enemy reached the barricade.

  “Ten—”

  Giddings’s rifle exploded, tearing apart the corridor and the enemy soldiers packed near the barricade.

  The shock hit Mele in the back, but she managed to keep her feet under her this time as she staggered from the blow. A piece of shrapnel wedged into the armor covering her upper left arm but didn’t completely penetrate.

  She, Freeman, and Giddings reached the next set of defensive positions, where the squads left holding those locations stared anxiously at their battered comrades dropping down behind the safety of another set of improvised barricades. Mele paused long enough to give them a confident thumbs-up before leaning heavily on the top of the barricade, gazing back the way she’d come. “Gamba, Yoshida, talk to me.”

  “We’re in place,” Gamba said, sounding comfortingly assured. “The rear guard has already engaged and is falling back to join us.”

  “Yoshida?” Mele pressed.

  “Here, Captain. Everybody’s back at the new position. The rear guard is just rejoining us.”

  “How are you doing?”

  “I’m feeling frosty, Captain,” Yoshida said. “One thousand percent.”

  “You’re doped,” Mele said. “Don’t let the meds make you too frosty. How are the militia with you? How steady are they?”

  “Okay, I guess. Still ready to fight, but they’re tired.”

  “So are the attackers,” Mele said. “Gamba?”

  “I think my guys would have kept going when they reached the fallback position, but I stopped there right in the middle of it all so they stopped, too. Agree with Yoshi, Captain. The militia who haven’t been in the fight yet are rattled and those who have been
fighting are worn-out.”

  “Is the enemy pressing you?” Mele asked. “I’m not seeing anything on my net.”

  “No, Captain. When the rear guard opened up on the enemy they took cover and haven’t come out again.”

  “Good. Make sure the militia you’re with have forward scouts or disposable sensors to spot anyone coming. Rest while you can, and remember to look confident for the militia with you.” Mele switched circuits to speak to the militia lieutenants, who all sounded tired as well. Veren and Danzig both also sounded rattled by events and their responsibilities, but it wasn’t like Mele could relieve either one. She gave both brief pep talks and hoped that would be enough.

  After that she sat down, wincing as her back protested. Lieutenant Freeman sat down next to her, calling on a private circuit so that even though their suits were sealed it was like having a conversation with the person beside you. “We evacuated your guy Giddings to the sick bay on Shark.”

  “He was still alive?”

  “Yes,” Freeman said. “That’s good news, right? I heard that if they’re alive when they make it to a medical facility, they’ll survive.”

  “Not always, but usually,” Mele said, feeling relieved.

  Freeman turned his head to look back toward the enemy. “If I ask how we’re doing, will you be honest with me?”

  “Maybe.”

  “How are we doing?”

  Mele looked at the time on her faceplate display. “Sixteen hours to go.”

  “We’ve lost about two-thirds of the facility,” Freeman said, sounding despairing.

  “That’s okay,” Mele told him. “I mean it. When they first hit us we had a lot of territory to defend, and they were fresh and at their best strength. Yeah, they’ve pushed us back, but it’s cost them. They’ve lost more than we have, and being on the attack is physically tougher than defending. We’re tired. They’re more tired than we are.”

  “If they hit us again soon . . .”

  “Then we’ll face a tough situation,” Mele said, leaning her head back and looking up at a ceiling that seemed oddly clean and pristine after the fighting the rest of the facility had seen. “It depends if the enemy has reserves to throw into the fight. If they’ve been throwing everything they’ve got at us, and don’t have any rested troops to order in now, any attacks are going to be by exhausted soldiers at the end of their strength.”

  “You think we’ll have time to rest some, then?” Freeman asked, sounding hopeful.

  “I’m hoping we do. I think we do,” Mele amended her words. “If fresh troops had hit us when we were starting to fall back they would have overrun us. But the enemy soldiers who took that last position were worn-out, and no one has pushed on to hit us before we got settled in these new positions. So I’m thinking the enemy has been hitting us with everything he has, hoping it’ll break us, but we’ve held, and now he can’t keep hitting us.”

  “What if he does?” Freeman asked.

  “I keep forgetting you haven’t done this,” Mele said. “Put it this way. Suppose I ordered your militia into an attack now. Right this moment. How fast would they move?”

  “Not very. They might have a burst of energy, but then they’d be burnt-out.”

  “Yeah. And the enemy is more tired than your guys. If their commander throws them at us now, we’ll be able to knock them over with harsh words.”

  “Really?”

  “Lieutenant,” Mele said, “I have my faults, but I wouldn’t lie about something like that. If we talk tactics and the situation, I’m telling you what I really think.”

  “Thanks. That’s okay to share with my guys?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  Mele closed her eyes, trying to relax, but that effort lasted only a few seconds before the nagging tug of duty caused her to call up the other two militia lieutenants and give them the same updates as well as another round of quick encouragement. Afterward, she looked around at Lieutenant Freeman’s troops. The unit was a mix of those few who had made it out when the forwardmost defenses were overrun and Major Brazos killed, Freeman’s own personnel, the soldiers who’d been posted here to hold this place until the fight reached it, and several militia from the other units who had been cut off from their own people during the most recent retreat and instead found refuge with Freeman’s.

  She studied the men and women she could see, trying to make out expressions through helmet face shields and otherwise trying to judge how much their drooping demeanor was the result of tiredness and how much it might indicate dwindling hope. Either way, if the enemy had been able to mount another attack right away with rested troops, Mele didn’t think these militia would have held.

  But they’d done all right when properly led. Give them a few hours to rest, and maybe they (and she and her Marines) would get out of this alive.

  The moment of cautious optimism shattered as Corporal Gamba called in. “We’ve got movement to the front of us! They’re coming again!”

  * * *

  • • •

  Carmen flinched as the building trembled, a long, slow shaking that told of some portion of the structure collapsing. Probably the far end of the eastern wing, she guessed from the direction of the vibrations and sound.

  The rumble only momentarily eclipsed the sounds of battle as invader forces pressed at the northeastern and southern sides of the government building that Carmen had helped recapture that morning. Night had long since fallen outside, but the conflict raged on regardless. She wondered how many defenders had already been lost in what increasingly felt like a losing battle.

  But that concern was almost immediately replaced by worries about a very specific defender. Carmen moved cautiously down a darkened hallway, seeing a few defenders huddled over pads. That was surely a command group.

  She recognized one of Dominic’s officers in the glow of the pads. “Where’s Captain Desjani?”

  The officer, face lined with worry and weariness, blinked at her as if trying to grasp the question. “Captain Desjani? I . . . he got hit.”

  “Hit?” Carmen said, hearing the way her voice choked off. The darkness of the hallway seemed to press in on her.

  “He’s down at the medical station. In the basement.”

  Dominic wasn’t dead, then. Or hadn’t been dead when he’d been sent to medical. Her own fatigue forgotten, Carmen turned and ran until she reached stairs and rattled down them so fast she nearly fell.

  The building’s power had gone out long ago, even the emergency systems fed by solar cells and batteries lost when damage caused the circuits to trip. The belowground portions of the building were pitch-dark except where stickup lights had been slapped into place at wide intervals. Carmen hastened through the darkness, the sounds of battle muffled down here, dust filtering down from the ceiling as the building shook from nearby explosions and impacts on it.

  She found the reinforced vault intended to protect vital documents but now pressed into service as a medical station. Carmen paused in the entrance, seeing the injured laid out side by side on the floor as medics triaged and treated them. Several maintenance carts with solid tops had been fastened together to serve as an operating table. A single trauma bed, probably an emergency unit normally kept in the building, sat in the corner with its lone, lucky occupant unmoving as the bed tried to save her life.

  Carmen knelt by one of the medics. “Captain Desjani. Where is he?”

  The medic barely spared her a glance. “Uh . . . over there. Are you next of kin?”

  “What?” Carmen stared at the medic, paralyzed at what the question might mean.

  “If you’re not, you can’t be in here unless you’re his commander.”

  “Oh.” Carmen exhaled, realizing that she’d briefly ceased breathing. “We’re married.”

  “That counts.” The medic bent back to work, eyes intent, expression numb as if all feeli
ng had been momentarily buried to allow total focus on his task.

  She made her way in the direction indicated, moving carefully among the injured, the smells of spilled blood and antiseptics and skin seal bandages mingling to make Carmen dizzy.

  Dominic rested next to one wall, his eyes closed. She went to one knee beside him, watching his deep, slow breaths and knowing they meant he’d been sedated.

  The reason why was clear enough, a tourniquet on Dominic’s left leg above where the knee and the rest of his leg had once been.

  Carmen had enough first-aid training to read the status patch stuck onto Dominic’s forehead, the figures and codes flickering as they updated. Stable. That was the critical part. He was stable.

  She fought off tears that threatened, looking around her. “Are any of the wounded being evacuated?” she asked the nearest medic.

  The woman, looking too old to be working in a combat environment, shook her head. “Too much fighting outside, and the subway tunnels are blocked. They’re all stuck here with whatever we can do for them until either they die or our side breaks the siege of this building or the invaders come down here and shoot us all.”

  Carmen looked down at Dominic. She’d almost forgotten that she was still carrying her rifle. “Hold on,” she whispered, leaning close to his ear. “I have to go and help fight. We have to win so we can get you to a hospital. I have to go,” Carmen repeated. “I love you, Domi.”

  She picked her way carefully out of the medical station, staying out of the way of the medics and doctors and not jostling any of those hurt. Once in the gloomy hallway again Carmen ran for the stairs leading up, through the stretches of darkness punctuated by small lighted areas, gripping her rifle tightly.

  The stakes of this fight had changed. It was no longer about freedom or peace or anything but one truth that filled Carmen. They had to hold this building, had to push back the attacks, or Dominic would die.

  * * *

  • • •