by Nick Cole
“Lord Sullus,” said one of his elite shock troopers, his personal guard. “We must get you back to your shuttle for medical attention.”
“No.” Sullus straightened himself. The expression on his face suggested the effort required to stand erect was enormous. “I will not leave until control of the orbital defense gun is ours.”
The elite shock trooper took a step back. “Yes, sir.”
“Shock trooper,” Sullus said. “You will accompany me and my guard into the fortress. We must reach and secure the fire control center at the moon’s core.”
Exo swallowed. “Yes, sir.”
Black Fleet Shock Troopers, Third GroupCasino District En Route to Central Hall
Tarrago Prime
0530 Local System Time
The convoy Bombassa was following in the rearmost supply sled was under heavy fire from all directions. At first things had been slow going. Getting three sleds that could haul most of the platoon—they’d lost three troopers in the drop on the shipyards—had taken a few minutes, and getting everyone organized and loaded up took a few more. Then they’d gone out the main gate and weaved through a vast sprawl of supply warehouses that surrounded the shipyards.
The morning dark had at least given them some cover. But Bombassa had no doubt that the inhabitants of the city knew by now that some kind of attack was underway. There had been city-wide alerts and sirens blaring out over the morning darkness. Intel indicated that troops were being massed to retake the shipyards.
And as a red dawn began to awaken in the cloudless skies over Tarrago Prime, some trooper muttered over S-comm, “Red skies at morning, sailor take warning.”
Bombassa had read books about sailing. Sailing was his someday retirement plan. He knew what the phrase meant. Storm coming. Later today. But coming nonetheless.
The LT had given the orders as they’d loaded up. Downloaded a file into each of their HUDs with mission objectives, command and signal, and real-time drone intel updates as everything progressed. In short, they were tasked with capturing the Republic governor at Central Hall. The governor, who would presumably be attempting to get a handle on what had happened in the pre-dawn dark.
Now, as morning light washed across the fantastic streets of the lower city, the heavily armed convoy of legionnaires entered the narrow streets of the casino district. Which was where they saw their first citizens.
Bleary-eyed gamblers, stumbling out of cavernous casinos still holding drinks, stopped to watch the troops pass by in their commandeered sleds. And though these troops seemed similar to the famous legionnaires, there were subtle differences that no doubt left the watchers uneasy and tense.
Farther down the street they passed the still burning wreckage of a Lancer that had been shot down. It had come in low, the pilot struggling to keep it from crashing, and had burned a scorched path through the lush foliage of the central landscaped median before finally smashing into the front steps of a Tyranian marble–clad gambling palace. Some emergency personnel still remained around the downed fighter, and a white sheet lay draped over someone nearby. Whether it was a pilot, or some passerby, Bombassa didn’t know.
Halfway up that street, moving fast and racing for the governor’s residence at Central Hall, they were ambushed by Republican marines. The LT, TAF01, was in the lead vehicle.
The vehicle that just took an anti-armor round.
The vapor trail of the round came from the darkness of a nearby casino. A moment later blaster fire was everywhere, all over the street, from all quarters, chewing their commandeered supply sleds to shreds.
The shock troopers were covered by improvised armor they’d managed to requisition from the shipyard. Small hull-plating sections that had done the job nicely with a minimum of welds from the torches they’d brought for breaching. But now the lead vehicle was overturned and smoking. Dead shock troopers were spilled out across the creamy white streets of the city, and blaster fire careened and ricocheted off into lush tropical topiary and shrubbery that was suddenly on fire. As was a legionnaire who’d crawled from the wreckage.
“Go, go, go!” Bombassa shouted at the driver. “Move forward! Get through this now!”
That was standard procedure for ambushes: get out of them.
Shock troopers were opening up from the back of the supply sleds as marines could now be seen firing from the wide-open maws of the casinos.
As the sleds pulled alongside the overturned lead vehicle, Bombassa ordered the drivers to halt. He dismounted and scrambled beneath the repulsors to reach the burning wreckage. A few surviving shock troopers climbed, or were helped, onto the two sleds, while men shouted out targets over S-comm.
Sergeant Bombassa spotted the LT. He’d been torn in half, and his fancy new armor hadn’t done a damn thing to save him.
The sergeant grabbed the LT’s datapad and subcompact blaster, draping the sling over his shoulder as he scrambled back to the driver’s compartment of the sled, dodging blaster fire all the way.
“Move!” he shouted angrily at the driver. “Get us out of here now!”
Command Center
Fortress Omicron
0538 Local System Time
Exo wondered how far his broadcast over L-comm would be effective. Legionnaire resistance was scattered. Surrender had made more sense for the legionnaires mustered at the eastern wall, where the flood of shock troopers had given extra weight to his words. For those inside Fortress Omicron, it probably wouldn’t be received as much beyond propaganda. And that meant more legionnaires would have to die today.
Exo ground his teeth. Let this be the last of it, then. Let this be the jolt needed to wake the Legion from its subservient slumber.
He didn’t know who he was speaking to. God. The universe. Anyone who could make it so. It was simply an expression of his innermost feelings. One that rapidly evaporated when they reached the platform at the bottom of the bore for the orbital defense gun.
The firefight wasn’t a surprise. This was a fortified position they knew they’d have to go through in order to reach the fire control center in the middle of the moon. The heart of Fortress Omicron. So when they stepped off the lift at the bottom of the bore, and were greeted by immediate fire from the leej platoon assigned to guard the bridge to fire control, they were expecting it.
A crew-served N-50 opened up devilish fire on the first elite shock troopers—Sullus’s personal guard—who charged onto the platform. There was little room for tactics. Ground would be taken through attrition. Even as the lead shock troopers fell, riddled with charred holes from the N-50, their frag-launchers had already announced the departure of their massive grenades.
Fwomp! Fwomp!
The two fraggers were aimed directly at the N-50 crew. One struck the leej gunner in his bucket, cracking his visor a split-second before exploding. The force of the blast tore the leej apart. The second fragger bounced off the far wall before detonating, sending searing pieces of shrapnel at the hunkered-down leejes around the barricades.
More shock troopers flooded the platform, using the sacrifice of the two elite guards to gain a strong offensive foothold. Still, this was going to be a bloodbath. Both sides exchanged blaster fire, with legionnaires and shock troopers alike succumbing to scorching wounds.
Exo remembered his L-comm.
“This is Command Sergeant Major Gutierrez,” Exo said. “I urge you fellow legionnaires to surrender before anyone else has to die. The eastern wall has surrendered and are being treated humanely. The same will be true for you.”
“Go to hell, traitor!” came the reply.
An errant blaster bolt streaked toward Exo. He ducked behind a cargo crate.
“You are speaking to them,” Goth Sullus said to Exo through S-comm.
“Yes, sir.” Exo wondered how Sullus knew that. He hadn’t shared the L-comm frequency with anyone else.
“And they have decided not to surrender, I take it.”
“No, sir.”
“Very well.”<
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Goth Sullus strode to the forefront of the battle. Blaster fire seemed to fling itself away from him. As he neared the first trooper he made a gesture, and the man was flung into a wall, eight feet up. He slid to the ground, his body limp. A second later the hatch leading into the bunker imploded inward, and Sullus alone walked into the bunker.
There was more blaster fire. But not for long.
Goth Sullus emerged.
The dripping of blood from his damaged armor continued. Exo was certain he was gravely injured. But whatever… power he had was enabling him to continue on in battle.
They moved across the bridge, which was guarded by a series of blast doors. Each was breached using powerful charges detonated by Sullus’s elite guard. The gas that was deployed against them was just as easily overcome; their armor purified it from the air.
And then came the two cyclopean war bots.
The first of the guards went down in a hail of bright blaster fire. The other troopers took cover as the war bots set up a blistering crossfire. Even Sullus was behind cover. Gutierrez watched the man. His head was bowed, as though he were drifting off to sleep. Something Gutierrez had seen leejes do in every situation from HOLO jump to actual artillery strikes.
One war bot slowed, its gears and servos smoking, as though it were refusing to obey its own mechanisms. And then it turned its heavy blasters on its counterpart. Seconds later that war bot exploded.
Sullus stepped forward—and at the same instant, the murderous war bot regained its senses. It pivoted, and both its blasters came to bear on the man in the black Mark I armor.
Sullus flung his gauntlets wide as though he were ripping some object down its length. And the war bot’s massive piston-like “arms” came away from its body.
The thing began to smoke, then it caught fire.
The shock troopers moved on.
Three more blast doors and they found the N-50s—the very thought of which had frightened Captain Thales.
With his guard moving behind him tactically, Sullus lumbered into the N-50s’ arc and held out one hand. A hurricane of fire blurred from each heavy blaster system.
Sullus forced the shots to ricochet away from him and smash into the ceiling and walls. He strode forward, directly into the hail of fire, his hand still out in front of him, palm facing out.
Then he closed his fist, and the guns went instantly dead.
Sullus stood before the final blast door.
His shoulders slumping, his chest now heaving, he raised his hands, and the door slid aside. Barely.
Beyond it, the fire control crew, and Thales, waited with blasters in hand.
Sullus swept one arm across them all, scattering them like tiny toys. Some died from broken necks. Captain Thales felt like he’d been hit by a loaded mining sled. When his head slammed into the back wall, it was lights out. Several of his bones had been broken.
And that’s when Goth Sullus finally collapsed to one knee, as if sensing there would be no one and nothing else with which to contend.
As if there was very little left of who it was he’d once been.
Black Fleet Shock Troopers, Third GroupStaging Area for Raid on Central Hall
Tarrago Prime
0547 Local System Time
“Nightstalker Six, this is TAF02,” said Bombassa once more over S-comm. They’d had negative contact with command since arriving at the staging area. They were supposed to link up with two other elements that had taken separate routes through the city to reach Central Hall, but so far, no one but what was left of Fourth Platoon had arrived.
They’d abandoned the smoking and heavily damaged sleds that had survived the ambush and gone in on foot to the alleys surrounding Central Hall. Now they were two blocks away, with drone recon above giving them a pretty good idea of who, and what, was guarding the front entrance.
“Nightstalker, this is TAF02. Do you read me?”
Still nothing.
In his HUD, Bombassa was looking at a holographic sandbox of the front entrance. Two companies of marines stood ready to defend the place with their lives.
Over two hundred men.
What remained of Fourth Platoon was twenty-six shock troopers. And while Repub marines weren’t legionnaires… they were tough monkeys nonetheless. Plus there were two light mechs on patrol in the streets nearby.
“TAF02…” The transmission was coming in broken and distorted. The high-pitched whine of blaster fire in the background was evident. “This is Nightstalker Six. Contin…” The transmission broke up. And in the sudden wash of static, Bombassa heard someone calling for a medic. Then an explosion that almost seemed to knock out comm completely. Then another explosion.
Obviously the assault to take back the shipyards had begun in earnest.
Then a new voice, imperious and hard, was on the channel with Bombassa. “TAF02, what is the status of TAF01?”
Bombassa almost blurted out that his platoon leader was dead. Killed in an ambush. But the voice, whoever it was, hadn’t used any kind of protocol identifier. It just demanded answers. Intel, really.
“Cannot comply. Identify yourself now or get off this channel!” ordered Bombassa. He stared up and around, checking his shock troopers’ placement and spacing along the alley. One fragger could do a lot of damage right about now, but it couldn’t be helped. They were surrounded and shoulder-deep inside enemy territory. And from the sound of things, it wasn’t going all that great at the nearest friendly position they had to fall back to.
Not for the first time did Bombassa wonder if he hadn’t made some kind of colossal mistake. Because what if this all went sideways?
What if?
“TAF02, this Nightstalker Actual. Again—confirm status on TAF01!”
Bombassa swallowed thickly. He was in communication with General Nero now. Which meant everyone was really busy back at the shipyards.
“Sir,” replied Bombassa. “Oh-one is dead. KIA in an ambush en route. We have arrived objective but don’t have the numbers. We’re looking at a mech-reinforced company of marines sitting on the front door. Requesting new orders.”
There was a long moment of ambient open-channel noise. Men and weapons barked and screamed bloody murder. Bombassa could hear the heavy thump of the crew-served N-50.
“Sergeant!” General Nero was back once more. Bombassa could see him in his mind, moving among the troopers and rallying them, focusing them, leading them. He was the opposite of every point that had ever tried to get him and all the other leejes killed.
“We have drone recon on your objective. Stand by, we’re softening the target. Once it begins… move forward and enter the facility. Intel indicates the target is inside. I don’t need to remind you… capture is mission crucial. Do you understand, TAF02?”
More blaster fire.
Someone shouting for a medic.
“Can do, sir!”
13
Black Fleet Shock Troopers, Third Group
Kesselverks Shipyards
0548 Local System Time
General Nero dragged a wounded shock trooper back from the barricade with one hand while firing his blaster with the other.
They were being overrun from almost every direction. Legionnaires had arrived to pull some kind of counter-strike.
And yet for this to work they had to hold the line here at the gate until the capital ships could make orbit. This line could not be broken. They had to hold until the fleet got close enough to provide further support.
Physically larger, and powerfully built, Nero had loomed above the other shock troopers the Repub marines had been trying to kill in assault after unsuccessful assault. And even though his shock troopers had beaten them back, they’d taken losses they couldn’t easily replace.
Right now, he wished he had the troops he’d sent out into Tarrago Prime on opportunity missions. Chances to make more of the day than what they’d already achieved now seemed like the over-ambitious failures that had dogged his career in the Legion.<
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And yet there was still a moment here. A way to salvage all of this. If they could just hold off this next attack.
Someone tossed a fragger right over the barricades. Nero was closer than anyone else, and he saw it roll to a stop near two shock troopers firing back at the marines.
He dropped the dying man he was trying to save and reached down, praying the thing wouldn’t go off in his face. If it did… well, then that was it, wasn’t it? He felt the explosive in his hand and pushed away thoughts of it simply blowing up right now. He side-chucked it as fast as he could back at whoever had thrown it.
He heard the close explosion and dodged sudden sniper fire to get back under cover.
It was that kind of day.
“Get that fifty working!” he shouted over S-comm. Damn, he thought, at least give us some cover.
He switched to a private channel with one of his most trusted NCOs. A grunt he’d known from the Legion since he’d been a captain in some hellhole no one cared to remember. He always kept a hotkey for his best NCO when things absolutely needed to get done.
“First Sergeant Indiro!” he bellowed across the ether of S-comm.
“Here, sir,” came the reply.
“There’s a Repub corvette in dry dock near your position. I need you to board that corvette and access its point defense systems. Sending you a target location now. Deploy the anti-torpedo flares and tell the ship’s AI to drop everything on the selected target. I need this in the next two minutes, Sergeant, or some kids are gonna get killed doing something foolish like obeying my orders.”
There was a pause. A moment that seemed overridden by all the carnage and chaos of the brutal firefight. As men died and blasters whined while charge packs hit the gritty pavement all around the battle at the gate. As killers reloaded with thoughts of nothing other than making sure the other guy was good and dead.