by Jay Allan
Elias had never imagined that a whole population could be so farsighted…so selfless. They had sacrificed their own comforts, not for any future they would live to see, but for their grandchildren, for the generations of Martians to come.
Vance had tried to explain, telling him the quest to make Mars a habitable planet stretched back to very first colonists. Earth’s close neighbor had been the only place with even the potential to become a hospitable planet. No one had doubted men would live underground and beneath domes on the other bodies of the solar system, but Mars was the true second chance, the place a forward-thinking group of people could imagine another home for mankind, a real alternative to the stifling and poverty-stricken world of Earth’s Superpowers.
That had been before the warp gates were discovered, of course, before men found an entire universe full of habitable planets, but to the Martians, the dream remained, as ingrained as ever in their collective psyche. One day, their descendants would walk on the surface, feel the warmth of the sun as they breathed deeply of the oxygen-rich atmosphere. And they had remained true to that goal, through a century and a half of turmoil no one could have imagined.
Cain glanced across the room, his mind distracted from his thoughts. There was a man standing against a column. Elias wasn’t sure, but he thought he’d seen him before…and now he had the feeling the man was watching him—and worse, perhaps, trying to look like he wasn’t. You’re just being paranoid. Mars is one of the safest planets in space. But still, there was something strange…
He saw the movement, even as the man made it. A wave of adrenalin surged through his body, and he pushed off with his legs, trying to dive to the side. Fool…he’s too close. You were too busy daydreaming to pay attention. He pushed the table over, just as he saw the gun in the assailant’s hand.
He twisted hard, doing what he could to move, to pull his body away from the attacker’s targeting. He heard a crack, and he felt the bullet whiz by. Too close! But now he was in the air, his body moving toward the floor, unable to change direction. He felt the first impact in his leg, hard. Then another in the chest. And another.
He hit the ground hard, and his body came alive with pain. He was covered in blood and gasping for breath, his lungs struggling for air. He saw his attacker fall, shot multiple times by the guards. It was a hazy image, distant, dark. And then everything went black.
* * * * *
“How bad is it?” Sarah Cain burst into the operating room. Her stomach felt like it was clenched into a knot, but her mind was clear. When they’d told her Elias had been shot, she’d wanted to act like a mother, to burst into tears and fall to pieces. But she’d been a Marine trauma surgeon for far longer than she’d been a parent, and she reacted to this crisis as she had to all the others she’d faced.
“It’s bad, Dr. Cain.” The Martian surgeon didn’t look up from table as he spoke. His hands were moving quickly, and his face was twisted into a frown of concentration. “He was hit in three times, and each shot is critical.”
Sarah moved forward, sliding past two of the medical technicians, forcing her way to the table. She knew she had no surgical credentials on Mars, that what she was doing was technically illegal, but it was her son on that table, and anyone who tried to stop her was going to see the Marine side—up close and personal.
Her eyes looked down on his blood-covered form, lying motionless under the surgical lights. She felt a momentary wave of panic, of inconsolable distress. She’d seen thousands of grievously wounded men and women, but this was her son. But she forced it back. She wasn’t a mother now, not a woman—she was the most experienced trauma surgeon in Occupied Space, the single person most able to save Elias. As long as she kept it together.
She realized immediately the Martian surgeon was right. All three wounds were critical. Indeed, there was no way to deal with them all, not in time to save Elias’ life.
“Take off the leg,” she barked after a few seconds.
“But we’re trying to…”
“Take it off,” she repeated, more forcefully. “The femoral artery is gone, and we don’t have time to mess with it. Amputate, and we can focus on the two bullets in the chest…before they kill him.” Sarah had served decades in the Corps’ field hospitals, and she’d seen virtually every way a human body could be mangled. Surgery on the front lines was a different discipline than it was in civilian hospitals, and her mind had been honed into a razor, ready to make snap decisions. A few seconds could be the difference between life and death, and she wasn’t about to waste any now. Especially when the leg was going to be a total loss anyway. “We’ll just regenerate later. But first we have to save his life.”
Save my son’s life.
* * * * *
Elias Cain felt like a herd of Arcadian prairie cattle had stampeded over his body. Still, feeling anything is better than feeling nothing, he thought grimly. He’d been lost for the first minute or so after he awoke, woozy and distracted. But he quickly got his bearings. He remembered the attack in the concourse—the shooter, his own anger with himself for hesitating too long before acting, the shots impacting his body…
“I’m glad you’re finally awake.” The medical AI had alerted Sarah that her son had regained consciousness, and she walked into the room wearing a rumpled set of scrubs. “We put you under pretty deep. Your body needed the time to start to recover.”
Elias looked up at his mother. “You operated?” He forced a smile. “I should have known. But aren’t you a little rusty?”
Sarah smiled. Joking was a good sign. But… “Elias, we had to take your left leg. It was the only way to save you.” Her eyes focused on the distressed look on his face as he reached down, feeling for the leg that was no longer there.
“We can regenerate it, Elias. It’s a routine procedure.” A pause then: “Your father regrew both of his legs, after all…and half his insides too.”
Cain’s face had momentarily turned into a mask of horror, but when she mentioned his father he almost laughed. He was distressed about the leg certainly, but he was well aware he’d be as good as new, despite the reputed…discomfort…of the regen procedure. And he’d always been amused by the story of how his parents had met. By all accounts, there had been no more than half of Erik Cain left when he’d found his way onto her operating table. Yet he’d walked out of that hospital and gone on to become the legendary Marine general. And Elias remembered his father’s daily ten kilometer jogs down the beach each morning, proof enough that his regenerated legs served him well.
“What about the guy who attacked me?”
“The guards killed him, I’m afraid.” She frowned.
Elias was well aware his mother had no pity for anyone who tried to harm her family, but he suspected she knew as well as he did that, with the assassin dead, it would be almost impossible to discover who had been behind the attempt. And whoever wanted him dead had come close the first time—and they would almost certainly try again.
Who could it be? He tried to think if he had any enemies back on Atlantia, criminals or other adversaries looking to settle a score. No, no one with a reach that extends to Mars. Then who?
He thought for a few minutes, and he suspected his mother’s silence suggested she was doing the same. Finally, he moved his head, slowly, painfully, and looked up at her. “Is it possible this is related to the other incidents?” he asked, his tone doubtful. It didn’t make any sense, not really. But it was all he could think of.
Chapter 22
Outside Unidentified Base
Planet Eris, Sol XIII
Earthdate: September, 2318 AD (33 Years After the Fall)
“Companies C and D, form a skirmish line now. Squad weapons deployed every twenty-five meters.” Cyn Kuragina was moving forward at a moderate walk, about as fast as she could maneuver safely on the frozen oxygen and methane that covered Eris’ frigid surface. The Mark VIII combat armor had been designed for battle in any conditions, even in space itself, but it took a lot of
extra care to operate in environments as hostile as Eris.
The two companies had been the first wave, and she’d had them formed up in a defensive cordon. But now the rest of 1st Battalion was down, and the first two companies of Second Battalion would hit ground in five minutes. She’d been afraid the enemy would attack and try to pinch out her LZ, but they hadn’t made a move. If it hadn’t been for the energy readings coming from inside the base—and of course the missile attack when the fleet was approaching—she’d have guessed the facility had been abandoned. There was no fire, no sign of any troops in defensive positions on the surface, no communications.
Now it was time to advance. Despite appearances, she knew there were enemies inside, and from the size of the base, she expected she’d have her hands full when they made their move. Maybe they’re trying to mess with my head, get me to drop my guard. They should live so long…
“Companies A and B, occupy the defensive perimeter around the LZ until the first wave of 2nd Battalion is down. Then advance in support.” She looked out over the eerie terrain, an endless plateau of nearly monochrome gray. She knew it was midday, but Eris was so far from Sol, visibility was poor, no better than dusk on Earth. Still, with the magnification turned up on her visor, she had a pretty good view of the base. There were damaged areas, sections where the fleet had destroyed weapons installations. She knew General Cain had ordered intensive scans, and that they had shown no remaining gun emplacements. But she was well-aware that orbital scans were far from perfect. If the enemy wanted to hide something badly enough, chances were they could.
She continued forward, moving a bit more quickly than she suspected she should. She wanted to get up to her forward positions and take a better look around. She had to decide where her people would hit the base and force their way in. The enemy shielding and jamming had prevented more than a cursory scan—enough to find obvious weapons, but not close to coming up with any reasonable guesses about the interior. Ideally, she’d break in as near the control center or vital engineering facilities as possible. But with the sketchy intel she had, she was just as likely to blast her way into the kitchens.
She stopped and stooped down behind a small rock outcropping. There wasn’t much cover around the base, and it seemed as good a spot as any. She scanned the exterior of the facility, looking for something, anything that might be a good ingress point. But the enemy saved her the trouble. Suddenly, access ports opened all along the wall facing her people, and files of armored soldiers came pouring out.
“Eagles,” she said calmly, grimly, “…open fire.”
* * * * *
Darius Cain was lying flat on his belly, his assault rifle extending forward as he picked off the approaching enemy targets. It wasn’t an easy position for a man in powered armor, but Cain and his Eagles had mastered it well. The ground surrounding the base was flat and open, with little natural cover. And, armored or not, a soldier was a much smaller target lying down.
The enemy troopers were proficient too, though their doctrine appeared to be more tolerant of casualties than Cain’s was. They were advancing, pushing forward in fairly dense formations and raking his positions with concentrated fire. It was a good tactic for maximizing the intensity of the ordnance brought down on his people, but it was suicidal against soldiers as good as the Eagles. His people blazed away at the columns, their well-drilled marksmanship dropping hundreds of the enemy in just a few minutes.
But there were more coming, thousands, he guessed. The base was massive for a reason it seemed. For the second time in a few months, Kuragina’s forces were fighting an enemy that vastly outnumbered them. But they were holding firm, using what little terrain there was to the fullest and coloring the gray surface of Eris with frozen sprays of blood.
He stared at the scanning reports coming in, the first close shots of the enemy soldiers. He had seen images like this before. On Lysandria. There had been no reason to suspect any relationship between Lysandria and Eris, but Cain found that he wasn’t surprised to find one. Indeed, for no quantifiable reason beyond gut feeling, he’d expected a link. And now he had it. Whatever was going on was widespread, something massive in scope…and probably a threat to all of Occupied Space.
Cain remembered the savage fighting on Lysandria, and he had no intention of allowing this to turn into another fight to the finish, not if there was anything he could do to prevent it. His people had endured a bloodbath on Lysandria, and he had no stomach for another one.
“Kuragina, hold your positions. Under no circumstance are you to advance without my express order.”
“Yes, sir.” He could hear the stress in her voice. She was dead center in the line, and that was where the heaviest enemy concentrations were headed.
“And Cyn, I want your people to get every drone ready to launch when I give the word. Every last one.”
“Yes, General.”
Cain flashed a thought to his AI, opening a com link to the flagship. “Eagle One, is Admiral Garret still on the bridge?”
“I’m here, Darius.” Garret’s voice was raw, hoarse, but there was a feral quality to it as well. Augustus Garret had a pleasant, easygoing personality—except on the bridge of a warship in battle, where he became the angel of death. “What can I do for you?”
“You think you could hit the area in front of this base without frying my people?”
There was a short pause, no doubt Garret checking the scanning data. “It’s tight, Darius, but I think I can manage it. There’s some risk, but probably less than you fighting without support.”
“Do it.” Darius Cain was many things, but indecisive wasn’t one of them. “Give me thirty seconds, and then hit them as hard as you can.”
* * * * *
Cyn Kuragina crouched behind the small rock and watched as the Eagle fleet pulverized the enemy positions in front of her line. Eris had almost no atmosphere, nothing to disperse the laser energy of the massive projectors now blasting away from orbit. The near-vacuum was almost devoid of particulate matter, so the lasers were mostly invisible, apparent to onlookers only when they slammed into the ground, obliterating a cluster of enemy troops and vaporizing the frozen oxygen and methane.
She was impressed with the discipline of the enemy soldiers. They ignored the heavy bombardment, taking their losses and continuing to advance. There was no rout, no panic, just a grim movement forward, through the deadly assault. Their dense columns were ravaged by the fleet’s heavy weapons, but it didn’t slow them at all.
“All units, prepare to fire on my command.” She gazed out with icy eyes, watching the survivors reform and continue their advance. That’s the smart move, she thought. Staying where they were—or even retreating—would only leave them in the target zone longer. Moving toward us shuts down the fleet’s fire. This is about as pinpoint as orbital barrages get, but once they get within 500 meters, Garret’s going to have to silence the guns…or risk hitting us too.
She glanced up at her display. The enemy line was 800 meters away, well within range of her fire. Normally, she’d wait until they were closer, hit them with a morale-crushing blast of fire at 500 meters. But that was a strategy for fighting planetary militias and other mercenary companies, troops whose morale could be broken by massive sudden casualties. She doubted that would work here, and the sooner her people started firing, the more casualties they would inflict.
They are coming through Garret’s barrage in good order, as sharp and resilient as we could have managed. We’re not going to break their will easily. Or at all. We’re going to have to kill every one of them. Just like on Lysandria.
“All units…fire!”
* * * * *
“Let’s go, Eagles! Into the breach!” Cain leapt forward, racing toward the shattered wall of the base. Garret’s barrage had blown a 50 meter opening, and Darius Cain was the first man through, his assault rifle in hand, spewing death in front of him as he ran.
The sight of their commander charging alone into danger worke
d the rest of the Eagles into a wild frenzy. They chased after him, pouring into the facility, pushing ahead and forcing Darius behind them, interposing themselves between him and whatever waited in the unknown depths of the station.
The battle on the surface had been short but extremely bloody. Garret’s bombardment savaged the enemy formations, inflicting casualties as high as 50% in some sections of the line. But the survivors continued their advance, ignoring losses and moving straight toward the Eagle positions.
The relentless enemy advance would have shaken many forces, Cain knew. Planetary militias, half-hearted mercenary companies, even veteran armies. But they weren’t facing any of those. The force arrayed against them consisted of Black Eagles, and Cain’s deadly soldiers had stood firm, unwavering, firing mercilessly and ignoring their own losses.
The battle had raged for half an hour, and in the end it even came down to hand-to-hand combat in a few places. The Eagles had inflicted damage that would have broken any normal force, but still the enemy fought on. When their lines were severed, they continued the struggle in small units and groups. When those were gunned down they fought alone, and when their ammunition was exhausted they charged toward the nearest Eagles brandishing their molecular blades.