Alliance Marines: The Road To War

by John Mierau

  A souvenir from Officer Franzen.

  Her money and genius didn’t matter unless she did something that mattered. Which is why she’d brought a green marker with her to a seedy nightclub out by the spaceport and scrawled the number for her new screen on the bathroom wall of the third stall, just like the note on her anonymous messaging account had told her to do.

  The next message came with instructions to take the last train of the night out of the department, to wait until the last minute to board, and to watch for anyone following her.

  Only then was she to turn on the screen.

  She ran her tongue over the scar on her lip again, then made a fist and told herself to stop. It was a nervous habit, and she was a damn sight more than nervous.

  Eighteen months ago, she had been a married woman with no scar on her lip. A much sought after machine intelligence designer and problem solver.

  Until Franzen hit her over and over, and left her there to die.

  Until Nate's shame for fleeing during her assault drove the final wedge into their rotting marriage.

  The train shuddered and slowed to a stop. The doors hissed open. The automated voice called the station, but she didn’t hear it. Frankie stared at the screen. Her instructions were to get off the train only if and when she received instructions.

  The doors hissed shut and the train continued on its way.

  Frankie looked past her phone at the elegant clothes she wore—another far cry from the entrepreneurial coder of old. The new Frankie—going by Olander again, Nate could keep his shitty last name—had sold her company and signed the shackles, edicts, nondisclosures and contracts of Gov. Thrilled to have her, Governor Card created a floating position just for her, giving her access to virtually every public, private, and secret computer network pushing electrons on Reach.

  There were still a few Black systems. As she was a certified genius and networks always broke, she’d get into those too, eventually.

  She knew so much more than the stupid girl left to die for the sin of trying to please a worthless husband.

  The train stopped again.

  Someone walked on.

  Frankie ignored them.

  Until a woman sat down right beside her.

  Frankie turned to look at her. The woman with the wavy brown hair smiled back. Frankie whipped her head back to the front.

  The woman patted her leg. Frankie looked down and saw a wedding ring on a brown-skinned hand. Clear polish on short nails. “It’s okay, we can talk.”

  “Who are you?” Frankie asked, her voice quavering.

  “You can call me El—just El. I know you were told to wait for a message, but it’s better this way. It was time to meet, Frankie.”

  “Are you going to hurt people?” Frankie blurted.

  The woman’s smile faded. “We don’t want anyone hurt, but you know what’s happening better than anyone. You’re the one who showed us how bad it is.” The hand patted her leg. “We have to speak for them. We have to fight for them.”

  Frankie nodded. Leaking the truth had been her idea. She’d sought El’s people out. She’d passed on the un-redacted records and secret laws. The meeting notes detailing cover-ups for corporate crimes, disappearances and deaths. She’d cried, alone in her apartment over the pictures and horrors and plans.

  Holding back tears, Frankie pulled a foil wrapper out of her pocket. El took it.

  “There’s a student protest planned for next week. Gov military are going to be there to pose as protesters, start a riot and ‘force maximize’ the police response.”

  “It’ll be a slaughter,” El breathed.

  Frankie nodded. She couldn’t keep back the tears after all. El put a hand around her and squeezed her shoulder. “Let it out now. You have to hide it every day you walk into that office. Let it out.”

  Frankie’s lips quivered, all except the thick lump of scar tissue, but she held the flood back a little longer.

  “There’s more,” she gasped, turning to face El. “There’s a recycling plant near the equator, but it’s full of… oh, god, it’s full of…”

  The flood broke, and El held her while Frankie let go.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  September 05 2348

  South Reach City

  North Side

  Agriculture Sector 2

  Sameen was a chameleon. She could blend into any crowd. Her undercover squad had nicknamed her ‘Ghost.’ Today she was a student, carrying a metre square screen upon which scrolled ‘Where are you taking them?’ Her boss wanted someone on the scene, even though the higher-ups had told him to stand down. The idiot wanted to be the city’s top cop, so he ignored the hands-off order in the hopes of infiltrating the so-called 'resistance movement', bringing in one of the names on the ‘most-wanted’ list and making a public splash he could ride for a promotion.

  She sneered at the line of police vehicles. The disdainful expression wasn’t part of the disguise, but a part of her. Behind the line of signs like hers were old ladies, students, and a handful of men. Why the hell did SRPD need riot control mechs for this?

  Four of the fourteen-metre-tall mechanized battle suits sat between five cars, blocking off access to the SuperDome being constructed on the agriculture site behind them. Each mech was fitted with plastic screens to either side, which would allow officers to advance safely when the shooting started.

  After the last few protests, Sameen knew there would be shooting, followed by a crushing response.

  She never talked to Lena about what she saw at the protests turned riots. Lena had stopped asking, too.

  Which sucked.

  She reached the end of the police barricade, turned around, and walked back.

  Some of the protesters carried speaker boards tuned to a public streaming station. The music choice indicated sympathy for the growing anti-Gov movement. Sameen wondered how long they’d be streaming for.

  The music cut off, replaced by a special news report announcing a riot in place at Agriculture Sector 2.

  The students and protesters looked around. It was almost cute how innocent they were, trying to figure out where the riot was.

  Sameen dropped her sign and ran, but the suppression gas was already dropping onto the protester’s heads.

  She kept herself out from under the riot-control mechs. Other protesters weren’t so lucky. Heads and legs were crushed. A marching line of cops beat back anyone who tried to scurry out.

  She could have used the code word to get herself out. That was before one of the cops beat an old lady to the ground. She took him down instead.

  She spent two days in a holding cell with the dozen or so survivors. One of them was a woman named Elena. She introduced herself as ‘El,’ for short. Sameen shook her hand over the head of the sleeping woman bleeding in El’s lap.

  Elena told Sameen about other sabotaged riots, other atrocities. Sameen told Elena about mining deaths covered up by Gov. The conversation between women was long, and hard, and true.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  November 16 2347

  Butler Plateau

  Former Site of Butler Township Farming Co-Op

  Lee's home was gone.

  He turned away from the half-completed dome rising from behind razor-wire fence. He stared back the foothills he could draw with his eyes closed.

  “Told you,” grunted the driver of the truck who had given him a ride out from town. He spat a thin ripple of spit and snot at a screen bolted to the fence:

  Ministry of Agriculture SuperDome 6.

  “No place safe from corporashins and gub’mint no more.”

  In prison, he’d dreamed coming back to this exact spot, this exact view. In Maggie's last letter, three months back, Lee had learned his brother Tom was dead. Shot in the middle in the night while defending the farm's main dome from thieves.

  Nine months in prison behind him, he'd come back to visit his brother's grave and start his life again, with Maggie. Now he was here, and she was gone.
<
br />   His home, his life...it was all gone.

  “Where did they take them? The farmers?”

  “The bodies, you mean? Probably left ‘em under that dome. Why pay for burial if you won’t pay a body when you steal their land?”

  A patrol vehicle rolled around the corner and stopped between them and the fence. Two armed soldiers jumped out.

  The truck driver backed away, hands up. “We were just leav—”

  Lee stepped in their way. He didn’t listen to their shouts, didn’t care when their hands rested on sidearms. He only cared about one thing.

  “Where’s my wife?” he wailed. “Where’s Maggie Zhang?”

  Something metal hit the side of his head. He went half-blind but screamed the question again.

  “Where’s Maggie Zhang?”

  They beat him to the ground, only stopping when the truck driver leaned on his horn.

  They left him there with a last kick.

  The truck driver got him back in the truck’s pressurized cab and taped up his cuts.

  He stared back at the half-constructed dome and the ache in his guts changed. Hardened.

  His life was gone. They’d taken everything.

  Now it was Lee's turn to take…and he had nothing left to lose.

  CHAPTER NINE

  March 02 2349

  Planet Reach

  South Reach City

  Government Row

  The yellow sky was crystal clear above South Reach City, despite the criss-cross of missile plumes and burning buildings in the distance.

  Lehu ‘Lee’ Zhang—callsign ‘Paladin’—stepped his mechanized battle suit out the pressure hatch onto the roof of a low building. He swivelled the mech’s ‘head’—a complex sensor pod stacked on top of the armoured cockpit—until he was sure the roof was clear. “Nap time,” he whispered. The four pads surrounding his head captured the memory engrams associated with the words, and began the power down cycle. The most complex cybernetic interface system ever devised walked the six-metre-tall war machine clear of the hatch.

  The hiss of air circulating through the suit's vents died off. The low whine coming from the tri-barrel assemblies on each arm faded out. Two large, humanoid arms bent at the elbows and locked into position. Two legs, modelled after a pack animal’s, bent low to the ground for stability. Finally, the cockpit dropped between the legs and the HUD being projected onto the pilot’s eyeballs winked out.

  “Like you have every reason in the world to be here,” Lee muttered to himself, plastering on a smile. Lee, a newly minted captain in the newly minted Independent Congress of Reach, did have every reason in this world to be here, but the Earther soldiers who still controlled this part of the city would disagree if he were discovered. Violently.

  He pulled and turned the manual canopy release. Reach’s thin atmosphere sucked greedily at the suit’s warmer, over-pressured interior as the back of the mech opened up. The nervous sweat on the back of his neck chilled as Lee twisted his legs out of the suit and knelt them on the ledge of its armored backside. He tugged his arms out of the control sleeves, reached up and grabbed onto handholds between the shoulder mounted missile pods. Finally, he closed his eyes and pulled his head out of the neural interface crown.

  After more than a year using the cybernetic piloting system, the wave of dizziness passed quickly and Lee climbed down the eight feet from metal backside to rooftop. He caught a glimpse of the patchy brown Gov uniform he was wearing, in place of his own. A necessary camouflage here in the belly of the beast. “Sorry for littering in you, girl,” Lee told his mech, rapping his knuckles on one twelve foot high mech leg as he surveyed the eerie calm and order surrounding him.

  Several city blocks ahead of Lee, three elegant stone towers shot through with blue crystal rose into the air. Several deep blocks behind him stood three more towers. Beyond the towers in all directions lay swaths of destruction. Within their borders lay a century’s worth of pristine architectural marvels, domed ornamental gardens, statues, and carved walkways: ‘Government Row.’

  A pair of fighters circled high above the city. Lee stared up as he twisted the knob of the canister on his waist. Far too late, explosions shook air behind the jets. He tugged a plastic tube at his neck up over his ears and upper lip. Two nasal prongs fit inside his nostrils and warm, humid oxygen trickled into his lungs, making up the difference between what Reach could provide and the human body needed.

  Lee sketched a rough salute toward the departing birds before turning back to his mech. As of yesterday, the fledgling ‘Reacher’ government controlled the raft of military satellites in orbit around the colony’s southern hemisphere. The only planes in the skies belonged to the ICR.

  ‘Independent Congress of Reach’ sounded way too fancy for a bunch of farmers and miners, Lee thought, as he unpacked three long, narrow boxes off the mech’s right leg. Still, he admitted to himself, as he arranged the boxes in a semi-circle behind his suit, it was nice to lay claim to those three letters, after being branded a terrorist for so long.

  Lee walked to the front of his suit and struggled with two bulky crates, lugging them a dozen feet ahead and to either side of his mech. The second heavy crate had greasy handles and fell to the ground with a crunch. Lee winced, but the box behaved.

  Tracer fire drew his attention to the far right tower. Anti-aircraft guns mounted on a crystal perch grown into the air outside the building threw lead after the long-gone planes. Their phosphorescent orange lit up the sky. Watching the fireworks, he rubbed grease from the crates off on the front of the Earther uniform he wore. That barrage fell well short too, but the fact that Gov still had arms to waste in idle threats served as a reminder of why Lee was here.

  After months of all-out war, the Reachers controlled the colony’s equatorial settlements, polar outposts, and most of the rail lines between the only real cities on the entire planet: South Reach in the southern hemisphere, and North Reach in the northern. Today, the Reachers would liberate both cities from Earth Gov, and more importantly, each city’s spaceport…or die trying.

  It was going to be bloody, but there was no other choice. The Siege of South Reach had to end today, or many more Reachers would die.

  Lee turned in a circle, examining the other government buildings in the Row. Four other rooftops were occupied by black mechs like his own, but newer and prettier. Fresh paint and putty hid the battle scars on Lee’s mech. The disguise would hold up from a distance, but he hoped no one would come by for a closer look before he did what he came here to do.

  There was no chance of postponing the attack. No more time for peace talks or treaties. A convoy from Earth was due to appear in the sky any day now, and Reach had to remove Gov authority from the planet before it did. Otherwise, that convoy’s supplies and reinforcements could keep this war going, keep Earthers killing Reachers.

  Lee put both hands on the waist-high wall and leaned over the side, eyeballing a puff of smoke at the base of the middle tower straight ahead. Two blocks away and ten stories below, a small force of Reacher mechs had just appeared around the tower, pouring their firepower into the weapons platform at the base of the tower.

  He slapped his palms against the brickwork of the low wall. “Right on schedule.”

  Air molecules were farther apart on Reach than on Earth, and sound travelled slower accordingly. It took a moment for the music of the assault to reach Lee’s ears. When it did, he smiled a remorseless grin and pointed at the far side of the tower. Like clockwork, the expected Earth Gov reinforcements pounded into view.

  Mechanized soldiers and armoured vehicles advanced on the smoking ruin of the weapons platform, laying suppressive cover fire and bravely forcing the resistance mechs back from whence they’d come. But not before the Reacher mechs mowed through the first line of reinforcements.

  That would be Grunt’s work, Lee was sure. Sergeant Garner was never one to avoid a fight, but that was his role today: to draw attention away from the massed invasion force gather
ing on the other side of Government Row. Well, he’d done that in spades. Now, Lee waited for some terrified junior officer to carry the news up the chain of command.

  Lee walked back to the mech and cracked open a utility door on its waist. He withdrew a sniper rifle with a ridiculously large sensor/scope. As he returned to the ledge a smaller, humanoid mech soared over the back wall and landed silently on the roof. “We got in clean, Paladin.” A woman’s hushed voice carried through speaker’s in the suits chest, as the legs of the two-metre-tall suit swayed in a very self-satisfied manner on their way to park beside Lee’s.

  He flashed his partner a thumbs-up over his shoulder as he slapped out the legs of the sniper rifle’s tripod and set it on the ledge. He’d fought General Kapoor about sending backup with him. Yes, comms were down, so they couldn’t be challenged. Yes, Reacher mechs were just stolen Gov mechs and eyeballing one more in the Row wouldn’t send up a red flag. Yes, having a partner might keep him alive long enough to do his job if something did go wrong. And yes, Second Lieutenant Sameen Tenjin—callsign ‘Ghost—had volunteered.

  That didn’t make the likelihood of her death any easier for her Lee to stomach.

  The head of the dull, patchy yellow scout mech slid up. The upper body and legs down to the knees butterflied open and a tiny but fierce woman levered herself up and out. “It’s working?”

  Lee nodded as he screwed the big scope on the sniper rifle. He sighted in on the weapons platform engulfed in smoke at the base of the opposite tower. Gov reinforcements were jumping into the nest, hauling out bodies and equipment. More AV’s and more mechs filled the wide stone plaza, setting up a dense field of fire between the tower and the shattered commuter rail line beyond it. Ready and waiting for the attackers to return and try again.

  Which they wouldn’t be doing, Lee knew. “Hey assholes, we’re already he-ere!” he whispered in a singsong voice.