by Jay Allan
“Yes, General.” Heath’s voice showed his excitement. His forces had advanced relentlessly, but the enemy maintained their order as they fell back. He’d almost lost hope the enemy would break. But now it felt like victory was truly possible. “We’ll be right on their asses.”
“That’s where I want you, Rod. I don’t want them to take a breath.” She paused then added, “Go get ‘em. Gilson out.”
Heath stared out over the blasted terrain to the left. It looked like it had been a sparse area of woods once, or maybe an orchard, but the trees were gone now, blasted to kindling by the nonstop fighting. Only a few blackened trunks remained to offer a hint at what this ground had been before the armies came.
“Captain Zimmer, take your company to the left. Put some pressure on their flank.” Heath had been holding Zimmer’s people in reserve, but the enemy line was showing signs of solidifying, and that was the last thing he needed. Breaking the enemy’s lines and forcing them to retreat had been a costly exercise, not one he cared to see repeated. His job was to keep the pressure up, prevent the enemy from rallying or forming a strong defense. And that was turning out to be a 24/7 job.
“Yes, Colonel.”
Heath could hear the sounds of Zimmer’s people forming up behind him, even as the veteran captain acknowledged the order. Zimmer’s people had fought at Sandoval and at Sigma 4. They were veterans who’d marched relentlessly into the teeth of the First Imperium’s robotic legions. Heath was confident they could do the job here too.
Don’t underestimate this enemy, he thought…they are trained and equipped just like Marines, and they are clearly disciplined and courageous. “We’ve got them off balance now,” he muttered softly to himself, “but if we give them a chance, they’ll pull it together and come right back at us.”
He watched as Zimmer’s lead platoon swung around the flank and headed toward the enemy. There were a few shattered buildings along their route, probably where a small village or a good-sized farming operation had stood. Some cover, at least, Heath thought.
“Captain Linz, I want your people to hit the enemy line with grenades. One full spread per man. Keep their heads down while Zimmer’s people get into position.” Heath looked across at the enemy position. “I have a surprise for you,” he whispered softly, imagining his counterpart trying to pull his disordered units back together.
Heath’s Marines had something special. Something far more effective than the standard issue grenades…the newest weapons system from General Sparks’ miraculous laboratory. Sparks was still at Sigma-4, studying the ruins of the First Imperium facilities there. But he’d finished a limited number of his new thermobaric grenades and given them to General Gilson before her force left the frontier. And Gilson had given them to Heath.
“Yes, Colonel,” Linz snapped back. “Commencing fire at once, sir.”
Almost immediately, he heard the distinctive sounds of the grenade launchers. They each fired six shots, one after the other. The popping sounds were nearly synchronized, but not quite, as each squad fired off their spreads.
The grenades were a high-trajectory weapon, taking a few seconds to reach their targets. Heath was staring right at the enemy line when he saw the first bright flash. Then another…and another. In an instant, the entire enemy line was engulfed in massive, billowing flames. Inside the raging hell, he knew the temperature exceeded 3,500 degrees. Dozens of enemy soldiers died, roasted alive inside their suits. Others fell to the ground, imprisoned in disabled, partially melted armor.
Heath looked across the field in stunned surprise. Like most Marines, he tended to discount the usefulness of the grenade launchers built into every suit of armor…at least against other powered infantry. But watching Sparks’ thermobaric creations wreak havoc on the enemy changed his mind on the spot. They would be a tremendous addition to the Marine arsenal once Sparks got back and put them into mass production. But Heath’s people had been assigned only two spreads each, all that were currently available, and he’d ordered Linz to save the last one for an emergency.
“Captain Zimmer, your people are to fire a single spread of thermobaric grenades targeting the last half klick of the enemy flank.” Linz’s attack had been so effective, he wanted to see what Zimmer’s people could do, focusing on a truly concentrated target area.
“Yes, sir.” Zimmer’s acknowledgement was immediate. “We’re in position and commencing fire now, sir.”
Heath could see the launches from Zimmer’s company, and a few seconds later, the enemy line was again engulfed in a nightmare of searing white fire. The attack was as effective as Linz’s, and the enemy was wavering in disorder over a kilometer of front.
Heath flipped the com to the unit command channel. “Captain Zimmer, Captain Linz…your strike forces are to advance immediately and assault the enemy line.” Heath stared out at the slowly fading hell he’d unleashed on the enemy position, and a small smile crossed his lips. The effectiveness of the grenade attack had created an opportunity. Yes, he thought. Time to hit them hard.
Kara stood in front of the Capitol, staring up at the building’s battered remains. The façade was still standing, but she could see that whole sections on the side and rear were gone. The fighting had been fierce throughout the city, but the enemy had made their last stand there. Hundreds of her people had died within 75 meters of where she stood. Half her army had been killed or wounded in the two weeks of seesaw fighting it had taken to liberate the capital, and nowhere had the combat been more desperate than where she was standing…and inside the shattered shell of a building in front of her.
She was trying to ignore the pain in her side. The doctors had almost physically restrained her when she tried to leave the hospital, but she had work to do, and lying around in a makeshift bed wasn’t going to get it done. The wound had been fused shut and the lost blood replaced with a synthetic. She might be sore, but she was patched up enough to do her job. At least in her own judgment…which was all that counted as far as she was concerned.
The early fighting had been bloody, but her people quickly gained the upper hand against their outnumbered foe as they drove into the city’s center. But then the enemy diverted reserves from the south and counterattacked, pushing her forces back…and almost expelling them entirely. She’d managed to rally the army and lead them back one more time, fighting their way block by block toward the Capitol.
She’d been wounded during that fighting, and she missed the final assault on the Capitol. It was the climactic struggle of the battle, and there were only a handful of enemy survivors left when it was over. They fled the city and retreated south. Arcadia City was Arcadian again, a victory the cold and suffering citizen soldiers couldn’t have imagined just a few weeks before when they were trudging across the frozen wilderness.
But victory was rarely without cost, and this time that loss struck close to home. Among the hundreds of dead and wounded from the final assault was one very dear to Kara. Ed Calvin had led the final charge, bursting into the Capitol itself and driving the enemy out room by room. The battle was almost won, and he was one of the last to fall…at least that’s what Kara had pieced together from the multiple versions of the story already circulating.
He’d been pulled out alive and brought back to one of the aid stations. When Kara found out, she leapt out of her bed in the field hospital, practically assaulting the doctors and nurses who tried to stop her. She rushed over to see Calvin, but he died before she got there.
Ed Calvin had been a loyal compatriot and a dedicated friend, and the pain of his loss hit her hard. He’d loved her, of course. She’d known that for a long time. She had even tried to return the feelings for a while. But they just weren’t in her anymore. Kara could be a friend, a confidante, a comrade in arms, but she knew in her heart she’d never love anyone again. Not like she had Will Thompson.
She would give all she had to see Arcadia free, fight each battle with everything she had. But, apart from her son, she knew she would nev
er truly love again. Her passions existed now for her country, for Arcadia, and that was where she would channel them.
She stood in the center of the street, near the spot where her grandfather had been gunned down early in the war. She wanted to cry for him…and for Ed Calvin. For the thousands – soldiers and civilians - who had died in the fighting. But there was nothing there, only a cold numbness.
She turned away from the wreckage of the building, looking over at Independence Park. It was still there…the statue of Will Thomson, standing tall in the center of the small square. She’d half expected it to be gone…torn down or defiled by the enemy, but there it stood, proud and defiant. She gave herself a minute to stare at the statue and remember her lost love. Then she turned and walked back toward headquarters.
Her army had fought itself to exhaustion, but now she was going to ask more of them. There was elation over the liberation of the capital, but the fight for Arcadia wasn’t over yet. It was time to wake her people from their exhausted slumber, to pull them from well-deserved celebrations. They were heading south…back into the battle. It was time to help the Marines in the final struggle to drive the invaders off Arcadia.
Catherine Gilson stared at the large ‘pad on the table, nodding in satisfaction as she scanned the glowing symbols spread across the display. There were blue triangles extending in a semi-circular formation across a 10-kilometer front…her forces, pushing back the enemy on the flanks. Behind the main line there was another, smaller cluster of triangles…Holm’s and Teller’s exhausted Marines, now forming a tactical reserve while they rested and reorganized.
Red squares denoted the positions of enemy formations. There were more red symbols on the screen than blue, but the small squares had been moving back, as the enemy abandoned position after position under the relentless assaults of her Marines.
But now there was something else, a small cluster the AI had arbitrarily chosen to display as gray ovals…Kara Sanders and the Arcadian army. The group of gray symbols was the smallest of the three forces, but it was right behind the red line, marching directly on the enemy rear.
Gilson’s face wore a narrow smile. She’d never met Kara Sanders, but she still had a healthy respect for the Arcadian leader. Erik Cain had mentioned her a few times when he returned from Arcadia after the rebellion…and anyone who could impress Erik Cain was worth taking a look at.
“General Sanders is quite a leader, wouldn’t you say, Cate?” Elias Holm walked into the command tent, his armored helmet retracted, and his filthy, matted hair blowing softly in the breeze whipping in through the open door. “I would say she is offering us a chance to end this now.” There was satisfaction in Holm’s voice, but exhaustion too. The fight on Arcadia had been long and brutal, and it wasn’t over. Not yet, at least. But the enemy army was bracketed between two forces. It was time to finish things.
“She is very impressive, sir.” Gilson was one of the toughest screws in the Marine Corps’ tool chest, but her voice was soft, pensive. “I can’t imagine what her forces have been through, General. I can’t begin to understand how she held them together. They’re only militia, after all. At least most of them.”
“I think we sometimes underestimate what good men and women can do when they’re fighting for something important, don’t you, Cate?”
She looked over at Holm and nodded gently. “Perhaps, sir.” Gilson wasn’t quite the cynic Cain was, but she was close. She didn’t tend to expect much from most people…outside the Corps, that is.
He smiled. “Don’t get me wrong, Cate…there is nothing like the Corps, at least not anywhere I’ve seen. But I think sometimes true patriots tap into the same sources of strength our people do.” He took a few steps and pulled out one of the low, stubby stools that passed for chairs for powered armor. “Look at Kara’s people. They spent almost a year in the field, low on weapons and supplies. They marched halfway across the planet and then back through a polar hell. They suffered thousands of casualties, but they stayed together…and when they had the opportunity, they liberated the capital and immediately marched down here to help us.”
“It’s still going to be a brutal fight, sir.” She looked toward Holm as he slowly eased his armored bulk onto the stool. “And not the least for her people, unarmored and poorly equipped as they are. I don’t think any of us expects the enemy to give up without one hell of a fight.” Her eyes moved involuntarily upward. “And there’s no escape for them…not with Camille’s ships up there. So if they aren’t going to surrender, they’re going to fight to the bitter end.”
“No, they won’t surrender, at least not right away…” – Holm glanced across the table at the ‘pad – “…but we have them caught between two lines. They’ll fight like hell, but I think we’ve finally got them.” He paused for a few seconds. “You’re right that Kara’s people will probably take heavy losses, but they’re fighting for their homes…and if we win this last battle, they’ll have taken their homes back, driven the invader from their world.
“Victory within our grasp?” Gilson wondered if there was truly any such thing. She’d won her share of battles, but the triumph had always been fleeting, without permanence. Every battle won just seemed to lead to another, harder, more costly one. “How many more of our people – of General Sanders’ soldiers – will die before that victory is won?”
“You’ll know the answer to that when the fight is over. You know that, Cate.” Holm looked over at his longtime subordinate and nodded solemnly.
An orderly ducked his head through the open door. “Excuse me, sirs, but General Sanders has sent a communique. Her people are ready to attack at any time.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Holm answered sharply. “That will be all.” He turned back to Gilson and nodded again. “Well, Cate…” – he started to stand as he spoke – “…shall we go finish this?”
Gilson stood up brusquely, pushing her doubts aside and snapping to attention. “Yes, sir.” The grim hardness of her battlefield persona was back, and it was clear in her voice. “Let’s end this now.”
Chapter 24
Outskirts of Nancy
French Sector, Europa Federalis
Earth – Sol III
The heavy guns shattered the pre-dawn stillness, the echoes of their fire bouncing kilometers across the valley. Hans Werner, now major general of the CEL and commander of the south-central front, stood on a nearby hill and watched the shells smash into the fortified outbuildings near the city of Nancy.
His forces had pushed their way across the Rhine and sliced deep into Europan territory. Nancy was on the line to Paris, and Werner’s orders were clear. Advance directly on the city, ignoring losses.
Ignoring losses…that part didn’t sit well with him. He’d three times requested permission to pause in his advance and regroup his weary and strung out forces, but each time he’d been denied…and urged to push harder, faster into Europan territory. He was winning the CEL’s first victory of the war, and the high command wanted him to keep it going.
He stood unmoving as explosions erupted behind and next to him…the enemy artillery returning the fire. The Europan batteries were weak…his forces had captured large numbers of their guns as they fled across the border. He looked to the east, where his forces were sheltering on the reverse slopes, waiting for the word to advance.
The bombardment wasn’t going to last long; he was sending the attack in shortly. He had 300 Leopard Z-9s massed, the last of the front line MBTs. Behind them, there were 70,000 infantry in the first attack wave, and another 85,000 reservists after that. Even the troops of the first wave were mostly replacements and second-line troops, but they’d all been blooded, at least, in the advance across Lorraine. The reserves were pure rookies, just arrived at the front. He wondered for an instant how many troops from his original battalion remained in the line, but he decided he’d rather not know.
Werner tried not to think about casualties, but that didn’t keep him from running a rough coun
t in his mind. At least 100,000 soldiers had been killed or wounded under his command, and possibly twice that. It was almost impossible to accurately determine how many were MIA or AWOL. But losses didn’t matter. His sector had been the most promising when things were disastrous on the other fronts, and the high command kept feeding him more troops…meat for the beast.
The enemy started pulling forces from the northern front, moving them to face Werner’s growing threat. Then the trapped CEL front line armies burst out of the Dusseldorf-Cologne pocket and launched a counter-offensive that put the Europans on the defensive in the north for the first time since the war began. Werner had heard rumors of the casualties in the massive northern battles. He didn’t want to believe them, but he suspected the reports of 2,000,000 lost on each side were accurate.
The tide had turned, and the CEL was seizing the initiative, but they were paying for every meter with rivers of blood. He tried to imagine the countryside up around Dusseldorf. What does a battlefield look like after 4,000,000 men and women had been killed or wounded? What about the civilians? Had they fled eastward? He knew enough about the CEL and the way it was run to be sure the refugees were a low priority for supplies. Would the displaced civilians starve? Would they run wild across the countryside, rioting and stealing to survive?
“General…”
Werner had been so deep in thought, he didn’t hear Potsdorf running up the hill toward him.”
“Yes, Captain?”
“The forward elements are ready to go, sir.” Potsdorf had been running around all morning, and he was breathing hard.
Werner stared out over the small valley between his army and the city. If his forces broke through the enemy defenses and took Nancy, the Europan lines would be compromised. His army would be one step closer to Paris. “Commence the attack, Captain.”