by Jay Allan
He punched in the fleet com frequency, while maintaining the transmission to the Alliance flagship. He wanted Garret to hear this. “All units…this is Kublai Khan. Cease fire at once. Cut all thrust and engine output to zero and reduce power levels to the minimum necessary for life support.”
He had no idea if they’d obey. The rest of the fleet had heard his broadcast to Garret…they knew he was trying to surrender them. No one except Kublai Khan’s flag bridge crew knew Zhu was dead, but Wu had no idea how the ship captains would respond to his attempt to surrender them all. It would only take one of them to destroy whatever fragile chance there was. It was a longshot Garret would bite under any circumstances, but if anyone continued to fire, there’d be no chance at all.
Wu leaned forward toward the microphone. “Attention Admiral Garret. This is Fleet Captain Wu. I am offering the unconditional surrender of the CAC fleet, effective immediately. I have ordered all vessels to cease fire at once and power down. Please respond.”
Wu sat in the admiral’s chair and let out a deep breath…and waited.
Chapter 19
Base Omega
Asteroid Belt
Altair System
Gavin Stark stared at the bare rock wall. It was a considerably different view than the priceless wood paneling and floor-to-ceiling windows that had adorned the walls of his office in Alliance Intelligence Headquarters. Omega Base was built with security and defense in mind, not comfort. Bored into the depths of a large asteroid, it could survive almost any bombardment, even one by the heavy burrowing nukes that had destroyed his base in the Dakotas. But defensibility came at a cost, and Omega was a claustrophobic hole in the ground, utterly devoid of luxury.
Stark was breathing deeply as he sat alone in his bare office, suppressing his anger and frustration. Overall, things were still going well, but there were trouble spots too, and they were getting worse, not better. For one thing, Erik Cain was still alive, and his miserable fucking Marines remained in the field, fighting as hard as ever.
Stark was mostly in control of his rage, but he still couldn’t keep his hands from balling into fists as he thought about Cain. How, he thought…how is it even possible? Cobra had never failed on a mission. Neither had Alex before he’d sent her after Cain. What force was looking over the accursed Marine general, confounding Stark’s every move?
There were other problems too, including at least a few new ones. Stark had known, of course, that General Gilson commanded a force of Marines out on the frontier. He’d anticipated her eventual return, but he had expected to have both Arcadia and Armstrong long secured before she did. She commanded a sizeable force, but nothing capable of assaulting either of those key planets once his own people were in charge and dug in.
But the fighting on Arcadia dragged on just like it did on Armstrong. Elias Holm was the problem there. Cain’s mentor had scrounged up some veteran Marines Stark hadn’t accounted for – he still wasn’t sure where they’d come from - and managed to keep the fight going months longer than even the worst projections. Long enough for Gilson and her 7,000 veterans to land and throw the entire battle into chaos. A few weeks earlier he’d been getting confident assurances that the victory was imminent. Now he was getting frantic appeals for more troops.
He stared at the strength figures and casualty reports from the various colonial operations. His forces had easily swept away the planetary militias of the other worlds – everywhere except Columbia. But when his armies faced the Marines on Arcadia and Armstrong, their attacks bogged down, despite their numerical superiority.
His Shadow Legion forces fought with extreme discipline and courage…yet it was becoming apparent they were still no match for the Marines, at least not without a considerable advantage in numbers. He couldn’t understand. They had the training and experiences of veteran Marines implanted directly into their brains, yet somehow, when they faced the real article on anything close to equal terms, they failed. Time and time again, he’d seen the outnumbered Marine forces hold his legions back, despite sometimes massive numerical mismatches.
He tried to put the mounting frustration aside, focusing instead on how to solve the problem. What could it be that made the Marines so effective in battle? It was a question he’d been asking himself for years. He’d always assumed it was their training…and the experience their veterans passed down to the new recruits. But now he could see there was more to it than that. It was strange, some hidden factor that seemed to strengthen the Marines as their situation become increasingly dire. As his legions drove closer toward victory, the Marines seemed to become ever stronger, more resolute. It made no sense, followed no logical pattern…but he’d seen it happen again and again.
He’d initially expected his Legions to fight better than the Marines, not underperform them. His soldiers had all the knowledge and training the Marines did, plus they were conditioned to be fearless, never to lose focus in battle, to ignore losses and methodically, relentlessly follow their orders. No matter how he tallied his mental spreadsheet, it came up the same. His troopers were superior. Yet report after report from the battlefields proved the opposite conclusion.
Gavin Stark was a genius, but he was a sociopath too. His brilliant, but twisted, mind had blind spots, aspects of human motivation he simply could not comprehend. It was a weakness that had caused him to underestimate his adversaries again and again. The Marines didn’t behave as his perversely logical mind expected them to. They fought as a single whole, not just in their maneuvers and formations, but also in spirit. They were driven by tradition, by the memories of their Marine forefathers, who’d passed to them a history…with an expectation that they would add to that record and then pass it to the next generation. They felt the obligation to those who had come before to never bring dishonor to the Corps. They fought for the men and women next to them in line, those other Marines they thought of as brothers and sisters, just as they knew those comrades would give their all for them. They were a brotherhood, a single whole made up of the individual warriors themselves.
Stark’s forces were trained in Marine tactics, the nuts and bolts of their way of battle. They even had the partial memories of veteran Marines replicated in their own minds. But they were still actors playing a part. The motivations, the thoughts and emotions deep within a Marine that made him behave as he did…these were foreign ideas to the Shadow Legion soldiers, just as they were to their commander. Something they could try to copy but never truly comprehend.
Stark stared down at his desk, trying to understand, but failing utterly to grasp the difference between his soldiers and Marines like Erik Cain. He was a cold, calculating machine, almost devoid of human emotion, and for all his enormous intelligence, he simply couldn’t understand certain basic motivations. Only two people had ever drawn any kind of real feeling from him. Alex had been one of them. Something about her seduction was irresistible. He told himself he’d fallen prey to her sexual charms, that it had been weakness of the flesh only, and not true emotion. But something about the cool, intelligent beauty had reached him on another level, one deeper than pure lust. Briefly, fleetingly, in his deepest thoughts he’d allowed himself to see her as a female version of himself, a fit consort for the man who would bring all humanity under his rule. But Alex had betrayed him, let herself be derailed by useless emotions…and his affection for her had turned to rage and hatred, further fueling his evolution into what he had become.
Jack Dutton was the only one who’d ever really been able to control Stark’s behavior. He had been Alliance Intelligence’s longest-serving agent…and Gavin Stark’s mentor. The old man had been the only real friend Stark ever had and the sole restraining influence on his megalomania. The ancient spy had known how to handle Stark, to channel his energies. But Dutton was five years dead now. Even the Alliance’s master spy hadn’t been able to cheat death forever. And with Dutton died the only chance of restraining Gavin Stark’s ambitions. Indeed, the loss of his only confidante had accelera
ted his progression into the pure monster he’d become.
Stark was brooding grimly when the com sounded, and Anderson-2’s nearly monotone voice came through the speaker. “Sir, we have an incoming transmission." A brief pause. “It is marked Priority One, sir.”
“Send it down at once,” Stark snapped, shaking himself out of his thoughtfulness.
“Yes, sir.”
A few seconds passed…decryption, Stark thought. Then his screen filled with decoded text. He stared down at the report. The news was staggering. The CAC fleet had finally engaged Garret’s Alliance forces in a climactic battle…and Garret had annihilated them. He hadn’t just won a victory. He’d completely obliterated the CAC fleet. No more than 4 or 5 ships escaped; all of the rest were destroyed or captured. For all practical purposes, the CAC navy no longer existed.
Stark had mixed feelings as he read the communique. It was what he’d planned…what he needed. Stark had rid him of the CAC fleet, just as he’d expected, and opened up CAC space to invasion. But the victory was so decisive, so complete it left Stark with an uncomfortable feeling. He reminded himself what a dangerous enemy Augustus Garret truly was. He had wanted Garret to defeat the CAC…but he’d never considered the prospect of such total and complete annihilation.
He looked at the estimates of the Alliance fleet’s losses. They were considerable. That was good news, certainly. And Stark knew Garret’s weapon stockpiles had to be close to exhausted. Still, he wondered if Garret could ever be beaten. Was the admiral simply too brilliant, too perfectly attuned to war in space for anyone to defeat him?
He sat staring at the monitor, a small grin working its way onto his face. Stark answered his own question. Garret was the closest thing to an irresistible force in space combat. Admiral Liang was a perfectly competent naval commander, but Stark was a cold-blooded realist. He knew the renegade CAC admiral could never defeat Garret, not without a massive superiority in arms he knew he couldn’t provide.
Stark’s grin widened. He’d always planned for Liang to deal with the Alliance fleet. But he had never intended to have the former CAC admiral face Garret. No, that was something Stark had seen to himself. Augustus Garret would die before the decisive battle…right on his own flag bridge. He would die never having guessed one of his own officers was actually one of Stark’s pawns.
But he wasn’t done with Garret yet, and there was other work to do. He’d managed to keep his fleet out of Garret’s reach while he instigated the war that sent the CAC navy after the Alliance admiral…and ultimately to its destruction. He had intended to wait it out, and then send his ships to destroy Garret’s battered survivors. But it wasn’t time yet. First he had to take other action.
He leaned over and hit the com. “Anderson-2, activate Plan R immediately.” Now that the CAC fleet was gone, Stark’s hidden strike forces would invade and occupy five of the Combine’s most valuable colonies. The CAC would almost certainly blame the Alliance, and any chance to prevent escalation of the war on Earth would be gone. Its fleet destroyed, the CAC would have no way to strike back except to escalate the war on Earth. And Stark’s interstellar empire would gain the resources of five more handpicked worlds, every one of them a treasure house of priceless minerals.
“Yes, sir.” Anderson-2’s perfunctory response.
He smiled. Another useful intensification of the war on Earth. Stark needed the CAC and the Alliance to destroy each other. He needed all the Superpowers in ruins before his plans could succeed. His agents had already instigated a tactical nuclear exchange between the CEL and Europa Federalis, but the two powers managed to pull back from the brink. He hadn’t expected the first incident to spark the final battle, and he was confident his plans for Earth would come to fruition. He had more schemes in place, backups after backups. Whatever it took, he would see to it that Earth’s Superpowers savaged each other in an orgy of destruction.
When it was over, the terrified survivors crawling through the wreckage wouldn’t have a chance to resist his Shadow Legions. They would bow down before his soldiers, swear their eternal allegiance to him in return for scraps of bread. Mankind would willingly sell itself into eternal slavery.
Stark smiled broadly, thinking of his plan. But his grin began to fade as his thoughts drifted. The terrified masses of Earth, picking through the radioactive debris would be far easier to break than the colonists. His expression soured further. It was always the damned colonists. They were naturally rebellious, especially on the Alliance worlds. None of them knew how to do what they were told. He wondered how many he would have to kill…in the war certainly, but afterwards as well. How many would his soldiers have to drag from their homes to disappear in the night before the will of the survivors was finally broken? He didn’t know, but he intended to find out.
But first, there was one thing he had to do. A problem he had to solve once and for all. He leaned over the com. “I want the reserve legions activated immediately.” He was committing his last available forces. The rest of the inactive troops were hidden on Earth or committed to the CAC strike forces. He had no way to get the terrestrial legions into space, and he needed them where they were anyway. He’d already lost the Dakota force, and he had barely enough strength left to take control after the Superpowers destroyed each other.
“Yes, sir.” Anderson-2’s response was vaguely monotone as usual. A few seconds later: “Orders transmitted, sir. Force readiness estimated in 4 hours.”
He looked around the room, seeing only the bare rock walls, but imagining the asteroid field all around…and the battlefleet he had hidden among those boulders and planetoids.
He would take that fleet, and the reserve infantry…and he would finish things on Armstrong. He would destroy the Marines, all of them. And he would find Erik Cain and rid himself once and for all of the accursed Marine. Personally.
Chapter 20
Columbia Defense Force HQ
40 Kilometers South of the Ruins of Weston
Columbia, Eta Cassiopeiae II
“Let’s go, Hernandez. How the fuck long does it take you to reload that thing?” Reg White was firing his own autocannon as he barked out orders to the other three gun crews under his command. The enemy was making a big move, and White’s guns were cutting into them, killing hundreds. The action had been hot and heavy for the last two days. Whatever was going on, the lull was definitely over. The enemy was back, and they meant business.
“Almost done, Sergeant.” Hernandez’ answer was slow, distracted. White knew he and Sand were loading the autocannon as quickly as they could. But it still pissed him off how slow they were.
When he first got back to the front, he found that he’d already been reassigned. The army’s new position was a series of trench lines, connected by heavier strongpoints every three-quarters of a klick. White was in charge of the fort on the extreme left. His four guns were backed up by a squad of powered infantry. It was quite a jump in responsibility for a discipline case who’d been a private just a few days before, but for the first time in his life, White was focused, serious, disciplined…determined not to let the army down.
He was on the opposite flank from where he had been, and his command was drawn from a different unit entirely. There were no familiar faces, no old comrades to greet him when he arrived. He didn’t know anyone assigned to him, but he could see immediately he was in charge of the most vulnerable spot on the line. His stomach heaved a little when he realized how crucial his small force was to the overall position, but he adapted quickly and took charge. Now the enemy was pressing them hard, trying to force the flank. And Reg White was pushing his small unit, determined to stand no matter what came at them.
“Now, Hernandez.” White was impatient…and completely disgusted with the standards his inherited gunners displayed. Did these guys ever fucking practice, he wondered to himself, or did they just sit on their asses until the enemy came knocking? “If I have to come over there and do it for you, I promise you’ve never been that fucking
sorry.” It felt strange giving orders again. It wasn’t new…he’d been a sergeant before. But this was the first time he’d ever commanded anyone in action. White was wearing stripes for the third time, though he had promised himself his big mouth and volatile temper weren’t going to get him busted back down again.
“Yes, Sergeant. Firing now.” There was a pause, at least ten or twelve seconds, before White could hear the autocannon firing. Hernandez had bullshitted him a little, but there was no time to worry about it now. Later, maybe…if they both survived.
The enemy had launched a series of direct frontal attacks, all of which had been decisively repulsed. But now they were moving to the flank, trying to get around the Columbian left. And White and his gunners were the extreme end of that flank.
White had positioned his own gun slightly back from the front, with a field of fire covering any attempt to move around. He’d been hosing down the area, inflicting heavy losses on the enemy formations as they came around. But he couldn’t kill them all…and that meant the enemy was going to get through…and outflank the whole position.
He flipped his com to the HQ line. “This is Sergeant White reporting from strongpoint 9.”
There was a short delay then: “Sergeant White…hold for General Tyler.”
White was stunned, and he had to force the words from his suddenly-dry throat to acknowledge. General Tyler? He’d expected to speak with an aide or a tactical officer. What did the army’s commander want with a sergeant on the line?
“What’s happening, White?” It was Tyler’s voice, crisp, calm, demanding.