by Nick Cole
Black Fleet Assault Force Scythe
Tarrago Moon
0322 Local System Time
The HK-PP mech driver checked his chronometer. Five minutes. Five minutes until they’d reach close weapon range.
The massive bipedal machine took another lumbering step forward, causing the driver to lurch from side to side in his seat. These beasts were slow and ponderous—but the firepower! Nothing in the galaxy could match it. Destroyer captains could call down orbital assaults, and featherheads could flick off seeker missiles and snap away with blaster cannons. But the sheer feeling of power that came from annihilating whatever stood before you with the hull-chewing blaster cannons mounted on each arm of the mech… the noise and surge that came with every payload rocketing from the shoulder-mounted launcher—so powerful that an unskilled driver would have to take a few steps backward from the blast… these were true expressions of power. And they were exhilarating.
The mech driver moved forward, maintaining a textbook battle formation. Mechs spread out to avoid collateral damage from artillery—not that there seemed to be any on this moon. The bombers had done that much. Tanks filled firing lines, with combat sleds in the rear, ready to exploit any opening the HK-PPs made.
The S-comm jumped to live. “Giant Three, this is Giant Four, you seeing what’s coming your way?”
The question was accompanied by a manual grid-pulse sent by Giant Four.
Squinting through the forested terrain and attempting to peer above the hills between his mech and the eastern wall, the driver of Giant Three followed grid-pulse until his eyes saw motion. “I see something, Giant Four,” he said, switching to thermal image. “Any idea what?”
“Try combat sleds, Giant Three.”
Combat sleds? The Legion was sending combat sleds against a phalanx of mechs with MBT support? The driver couldn’t decide if they were crazy or just stupid. “Are you kidding?”
“Negative,” answered Giant Four. “I just couldn’t quite believe my eyes and wanted you to verify before I called it in.”
“Well, I see it, too. Going hot with weapons in case they expose any more of themselves…”
Giant Four called in the sighting to the other drivers. “Giant Four to Giant Team, I have confirmed sighting of multiple Republic combat sleds. Say again, multiple Republic combat sleds coming inbound.”
“Copy, Giant Four,” replied the team leader. “All mechs: you are clear to fire on the sleds, just don’t let them distract you from taking down that wall.”
This was a welcome development, the driver thought to himself. A chance to unleash some hell before reaching the eastern wall. It was shaping up to be a good day.
“I’m seeing some more sleds on the right flank,” came the warning from another driver.
Alarms sounded, and the driver of Giant Three could see missile trails billowing toward the line of mechs. “Incoming anti-vic fire!”
The sleds that had made themselves so visibly alluring had been a distraction.
Giant Three swiveled in his seat to watch a salvo of missiles—they must have been slave-fired to come at one target so fast from so many directions—streak toward Giant One’s mech. The lead HK-PP popped heat chaff and sensor scanners, but Legion ordnance was not easily fooled. Only a few missiles arched upward or veered harmlessly into the ground or trees. Most found their marks.
Giant One erupted in a ball of flames. The mech’s driver pod didn’t eject. They’d lost their leader.
The driver of Giant Three refocused on the battlefield in front of him. His HUD showed that the tanks had stopped, as had their own combat sleds. But the Republic combat sleds were darting about like a swarm of gnats. He tracked one sled mounted with twin anti-personnel blasters and raised the gargantuan arm of his mech. Spiraling blaster-fire rained instant death, as the rounds ripped through the sled, cutting the vehicle in half. Nearby, a second sled erupted in flames; a fellow mech had homed in with a shoulder-mounted gauss gun.
Two sleds down, at least a dozen more in the field.
The sleds managed another volley of missiles. These struck the leg of Giant Two, blowing it nearly off. This time the driver-pod did eject into the air—but it was quickly shot to ribbons by a legionnaire manning the twins on another combat sled.
The concentrated firepower of all these sleds was proving to be a match for the mechs. And their tactics were clear: they intended to take down the lead mech and each subsequent replacement.
Who was in command of the mechs now?
Giant Three realized it was him.
He shook his head. He wasn’t about to get taken out by bunch of leejes flying around in combat sleds like teenagers racing their parents’ speeders. The driver throttled his controls forward, causing his lumbering mech to enter a full run. This depleted fuel at a daunting rate, but they were close enough to the wall that he could spare it. So long as a retreat wasn’t called, the driver wouldn’t have to get out and walk.
“Take back the initiative,” Giant Three called into the S-comm. He began firing his arm cannons, destroying sled after sled. The other mechs followed suit, and soon the main battle tanks joined the pursuit, their repulsors bouncing up and over the rocky terrain.
The Republic sleds knew they were beaten, and attempted to return to the safety of the eastern wall. They were putting ground between themselves and the advancing line of mechs and tanks, but not without paying a toll. More combat sleds exploded in towering balls of fire as the mechs continued their sprinting pursuit and the tanks’ repulsors roared at their limits. These bastards weren’t going to get away.
Giant Three watched as the sleds took the speed track around the massive gun bore cavern. This gave them the fastest route around and back to the still-open impervisteel gates at the eastern wall.
The mech driver pushed the sticks forward so hard he thought he might break them. “You’re not getting away,” he told the retreating sleds. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
Eastern Gun Bore
Fortress Omicron
0334 Local System Time
The legionnaire captain watched as his sleds sped homeward, the mechs and tanks in hot pursuit. There wouldn’t be time to let the sleds back inside and close the doors before the enemy attack vehicles arrived to send a devastating volley of missiles inside the eastern wall.
There didn’t need to be.
“Now!” the captain shouted into his L-comm.
It dawned on him that he’d never yelled at a company commander before. And he probably wouldn’t get the opportunity again.
Command Center
Fortress Omicron
0351 Local System Time
Commander Yoon heard the voice of one of his captains give the word. This was a matter of trust, and Yoon trusted his front line legionnaires completely.
“Fire cannon east,” Yoon ordered.
“Firing cannon east,” confirmed the gunner.
The ground shook as the gun bore hurtled a projectile designed to destroy a capital ship in a single shot.
Black Fleet Assault Force Scythe
Tarrago Moon
0352 Local System Time
The shock trooper sergeant monitored the battle from the holoscreen mounted inside his combat sled. The mech and tank drivers seemed to have bloodlust, and if there was a commander on hand capable of giving an order to keep back, it wasn’t being heeded.
“They’re being drawn in,” the sergeant said to no one in particular. “Need to slow up and let those sleds get away. Today ain’t gonna be won or lost because of a few extra combat sleds getting dusted.”
“Unless it’s ours,” chimed in another shock trooper.
“Ooah,” answered the sergeant. But distantly. His mind was trying to comprehend what was before him. The Repub sleds were moving full speed toward the eastern wall’s vehicle entryway. The sergeant didn’t need his bucket to tell him that the mechs pursuing would get multiple missiles fired into that opening before the leejes on the other si
de had the chance to seal it up. It looked like an enormous tactical error by the Legion. Exactly the sort of thing a point would do.
And therein lay the problem for the sergeant. A point would send out sleds against mechs, spouting some kind of nonsense like “Speed defeats strength.” A point would also leave the back door open and get leejes killed. What a point wouldn’t do is launch a coordinated missile attack through slave-fire controls. That was some impressive shooting, taking down two HK-PP mechs with a concentration of aero-precision tank-buster missiles.
So did the point get lucky… or was this a trap?
The sergeant heard the dat-dat-dat-dat of his combat sled’s twin blaster cannons. They were joining the fight. Unlike the Republic models, these Black Fleet sleds had automated turrets controlled from the cockpit. The sergeant didn’t like that. No driver could shoot like a leej—like a shock trooper.
The sergeant hailed his sled driver through the S-comm. “What’s going on, buddy?”
“We’re moving to engage the enemy,” the driver answered. “Giant Three has identified an opening in the eastern wall. All sleds are requested to shoot the gap.”
Shoot the gap? Before the mechs and tanks can really pound the leej defenses? Gonna be a tall order.
“Listen,” the sergeant said, hoping that he’d finally learned how to pick his words carefully. “I’ve served all throughout the galaxy, and I can see a potential sket-show when I see one. This is one. That opening isn’t gonna close up with the way the mechs and tanks are positioned. But that doesn’t mean the Legion won’t blast our sleds to hell if we rush in too quickly. Slow it down a bit and wait for the heavies to lay down some damage. At least give my guys a chance when the doors drop. You under orders to go in now?”
The sled’s deceleration provided an answer before the driver even spoke. “No orders, just a request from Giant Three. I think you’re right, though. I think—”
If the driver finished his sentence, the sergeant didn’t hear it. He was thrown down hard onto the deck, then tossed into the shock troopers still strapped into their jump seats as the sled rocked and spun out of control. The S-comm was little more than white noise from some sort of catastrophic distortion.
As the S-comm system rebooted, the whine over the comm gradually gave way to frantic communication between shock troopers. The sergeant tuned it out and pinged his driver. “What happened? Did we get hit?”
“No! But almost all of our armor did!”
“What?”
“They fired the main gun! The mechs and tanks were right by the edge of the bore. They just—incinerated.”
The sergeant pulled himself to his feet and stared at the blank holoscreen. “Can you feed me combat visuals?”
“I think so…”
The screen came to life with a chaotic picture of the battleground. The sergeant controlled the holocam. There didn’t seem to be a mech left on the field. And not more than a few tanks. At least the Black Fleet combat sleds were mostly intact, not having had the chance to get in the blast zone before the Legion opened the gates of hell.
A trap, then.
The sergeant saw legionnaires manning the battle stations along the top of the wall. Incoming fire began to rain down on the surviving vehicles. Leejes fired the familiar aero-precision missiles from shoulder launchers. For now, the tanks took priority, but that wouldn’t last.
“Get us up against that wall!” the sergeant yelled to his driver. “We’re sitting targets out here, and you know we can’t go back the other way. Just don’t get too close to the gun bore!”
The sled sped forward, and the other sleds did the same. Retreat was not an option. That had been made perfectly clear in the Black Fleet training leading up to this assault. Fight until you win. Period. The sergeant thought it was the foolish blustering of idealists… but the Legion needed saving. The prize was worth the fight.
For their part, the tank crews were dedicated to the last. They focused their main guns on high-value targets, blasting away at fortified emplacements and making life end too soon for the legionnaires manning them. But the aero-precision missiles kept coming. Eventually the tanks ran out of bafflers, chaff, and interceptor bots. They began taking evasive maneuvers, concentrating their fire on anti-personnel weapons like N-50 nests. And when they could, they sent high-explosive blasts into the wall’s vehicle entryway. These made little more than a fist-sized dent.
The sergeant watched all of this from his holoscreen.
“Thirty seconds,” the driver called out as the sled swerved and juked to avoid the maelstrom of incoming fire.
“Get ready, STs,” the sergeant called to his men. “There won’t be time to sound off and move. When I drop that door, you know your numbers. Get your asses outside and set up a squad perimeter. KTF! Because you can bet for damn sure that’s what the brothers on the other side are aiming to do to us!”
The sled fishtailed to an abrupt stop. “Here!” cried the driver.
The sergeant hit the ramp release. “Go! Go! Go!”
Eastern Gun Bore
Fortress Omicron
0411 Local System Time
This was all going well. Better than the Legion captain could have hoped. The swarming combat sleds led the mechs and tanks perilously close to the gun bore, and the Legion made ’em pay. But the battle was far from over. Enemy combat sleds were now using their own speed and maneuverability to reach the wall, and several of the enemy’s combat-effective main battle tanks remained.
“You’ll make major for this, sir,” the communications lieutenant said as the captain surveyed the battlefield.
“Gotta survive first,” the captain replied. But he sheltered hope that it would be so. Fate had left him—a captain—in charge of the one section of Omicron’s walls that the enemy had chosen to attack. And he’d risen to meet the challenge.
But now the tanks were the priority. Each well-aimed shot from their heavy main guns denied the captain the further use of a defensive emplacement. Several of his anti-vehicle batteries had been destroyed, which would pose a significant problem if another bombing run came in this direction.
The captain brought up his supply hot list and smiled. They were still flush with aero-precision missiles. As long as he had legionnaires to fire them, they could at least make sure any incoming featherheads only had a one-way flight.
“Get me a status update on the remaining enemy battle tanks,” the captain ordered over L-comm. The north and west walls had their own tanks, and the captain wished he could send them out to deal with the mechanized rivals.
“We’re tracking five enemy tanks left,” came the answer. “We think they’ve expended their internal anti-missile defenses, but they’ve managed to find natural cover to avoid direct missile fire. We keep trying to pop ’em when they sneak out to take a shot. Rat-and-croaker game, sir.”
“All right, keep on ’em.”
The captain turned his attention to the combat sleds beneath the wall. The soldiers inside the sleds wore black armor. Almost like Dark Ops, but with different buckets and a high gloss. That, and the blood red paint that really made them stand out. Dark Ops would never go for that sort of thing. These dark soldiers were exchanging small-arms fire with the leejes of the eastern wall. The captain’s bucket assessed the troop strength at fifteen hundred—still three times what he had, even with the reinforcements being sent his way from the other walls. The enemy had the numbers, but the Legion held the wall. And the result at the moment was a standstill.
Not for long, the captain thought to himself.
The legionnaires on the wall had to be careful about exposing themselves. The fire coming up from below was accurate and deadly. Whoever these guys were, they had Legion training. The real stuff, not the “Legion” hit squads full of point lackeys that the Republic sent to collect taxes. These soldiers had to be former Legion. Dark legionnaires. And they’d come to fight him.
The protected blaster cannons at the top of the wall and observati
on towers had either been destroyed by the tanks or simply weren’t firing and thus were unable to target the dark legionnaires. And those weapon emplacements dug into the walls themselves that could shoot down on the gathered horde were priority targets for the enemy. Every time a leej went to man them, they were cut down within seconds.
A sense of sadness came over the captain, for two reasons. First, that he might never know the reason for this schismatic fight. This civil war, it would seem. And second, because he was going to win. And in a fight like this—perhaps like every other fight in the galaxy—a victory comes with the cost of Legion lives.
And now that number would be doubled.
“Gather up your fraggers and any satchel charges you can find,” he ordered over L-comm. “Time to make it rain. KTF.”
07
Black Fleet Assault Force Scythe.
Tarrago Moon
0415 Local System Time
“Sergeant Gutierrez! Command Sergeant Major Caleb Gutierrez!” A shock trooper who’d somehow lost his bucket came running over to the sergeant.
“That’s me,” said Gutierrez.
“Sir,” the helmetless runner said breathlessly, “I’ve been sent to discuss command by First Sergeant Bule.”
The S-comm, Sergeant Gutierrez noted, was nowhere near as reliable as the Legion L-comm. This close to the wall, they were being jammed hard by the Legion and could only communicate via S-comm within a five-meter radius.
Sergeant Gutierrez spied a leej attempting to man an N-50 positioned toward his line. He squeezed off three bursts from his rifle and watched the leej fall from the emplacement. Points for persistence, at least. “What’s the message on command, then?”
“You’re it, sir!” the shock trooper answered.
“What about Lieutenant Mercer?”
“Dead,” the shock trooper replied. “All dead or missing. You’re it by rank, and you’re it by the choice of the STs. If you hadn’t convinced your driver to hold the sleds back, none of us would have lived to this point.”