by Richard Fox
Hoffman looked toward the isthmus that had protected this city from ancient invaders. Partially covered with a white forest and marshes, the narrow landmass was just big enough to move a major land force. Beyond were foothills and mountains Hoffman had already seen enough of.
Duke and other PDF irregular forces had slowed the Kesaht advance and nearly held them until the sheer number of Rakka and Sanheel grew too large. The battle raging across the west and south portions of the city looked like a picture from Dante. Beyond that hellscape, the Kesaht formed up several divisions of infantry, armor, and combat engineers.
PDF tanks rolled down from the heights and parked on Hoffman’s terrace facing the main attack. Below them, two kilometers distant, Kesaht forces reduced the outer wall to rubble and tanks rolled over the debris as Rakka infantry followed at a loping run. Hoffman and his team watched as the main force joined the shock troops.
Behind the tanks and infantry, artillery batteries set up and renewed the bombardment.
“Lieutenant Hoffman,” a man said as he jumped down from a tank and strode forward. “Lieutenant Colonel Hague Mattern, PDF Tanker Corps.”
“Sir.” Hoffman saluted. “Lieutenant Thomas Hoffman, Strike Marines.”
“Good to meet you. My men admire the hell out of your sniper. Good work. Really stuck it to those bastards.”
“How many tank squadrons do you have?” Hoffman asked.
Mattern hesitated. “Just this one. Everything was in storage the Kesaht blew up or scheduled for delivery. We’re lucky to have a force this size. Koen isn’t…wasn’t…central to the war against the Kesaht.”
Hoffman gave his after-action report to Mattern, all the time wondering how long it would be before Koensuu City fell.
Mechanized infantry arrived and deployed on the high ground. Men and women went to work fortifying the heights with concrete road barriers instead of trenches. Cranes rearranged ugly blocks of concrete and steel as fast as the engineer crews could move.
“It won’t be enough,” Hoffman said.
“I know.” Mattern stood with both fists clamped behind his back. “Don’t tell my men.”
Planetary Defense Force rockets launched from the Koensuu City heights. One small artillery battery fired at regular intervals while shells from the Kesaht artillery slammed apart barriers and caved in buildings.
“Duke, Booker. Set up and start doing what you do,” Hoffman said.
“We need to get to the jail,” Booker said.
“I know.”
Hoffman thanked the Saint for having the high ground. Without the elevated position, Koensuu City would already be overrun. He looked out across the panorama. Even when clouds weren’t dumping snow, the wind blew up loose powder and smoke. Sounds arrived from a great distance, out of sync with what had caused them. He heard a man scream but never saw him. Rakka squad leaders barked orders that sounded like a chant.
“I wonder how deep that snow is in the canals. Might be worth it to push that far and fortify the line there,” Mattern said.
“The canals are deep. The Rakka chasing us sank up to their necks,” Hoffman said.
“Interesting. You have firsthand knowledge.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mattern considered the battlefield for a long time. “Thank you, Lieutenant. I need to confer with General Allan.”
Lines of Sanheel trotted forward in synchronized quickstep with Rakka shock troops behind them. “Out of range,” Duke said. “They’ll be a challenge to hit at a full gallop.”
“Strike Marine Lieutenant Hoffman for command HQ.”
“HQ for Hoffman, go ahead.”
“Hoffman for HQ, I have eyes on significant Sanheel movement. Right flank. Looks like they’re going to storm the defenses in that quarter.”
“HQ received. We are aware. Stand by for reinforcements. Will need you to assume command of that sector,” the voice said.
“Negative, HQ. Can’t do that. I’m on mission.”
“Not negotiable. HQ out.”
Hoffman tried three times to reestablish the radio link but couldn’t get through the radio chatter. “Booker, I’m heading back to HQ. I have to settle something.”
“I’m just a field medic right now. Just make sure you don’t forget me when we finally get the chance to get off world.”
Hoffman ran to the nearest command tent, saluted the guard who was little more than a teenager stolen from the militia, and went inside. He saw few people he knew and those only from brief encounters. Captain Pine was there, whom he’d never seen but Duke had referred to him. General Allan seemed to be in command of the city at present.
Hoffman saluted and stood at attention. “General Allan, may I have a moment?”
“At ease, Lieutenant,” the general said.
“Permission to speak freely, sir?” Hoffman asked.
The general looked at him with tired eyes and let out a slow breath.
“Sir, my team has two high-value targets in custody. Getting them off world and back to Earth for interrogation is vital to unraveling the Ibarran infiltration into the Terran—”
“There’s no viable way off world,” General Allan said. “The Kesaht have the high orbitals and everything we’ve sent to make a break for the Crucible has been destroyed. You’re here until we break the Kesaht invasion or we all die in place. Those are our options.”
Hoffman hesitated.
“Your Strike Marines have been a blessing to our defenders. Great for morale. I also happen to think you know what you’re doing,” General Allan said. “So relax, Lieutenant. Do what you can, while you can, for our defenses. I was sent a communiqué about your mission and I understand its importance and intricacies.”
Hoffman wasn’t sure how to respond, so he just stood at parade rest.
Allan stared at his tactical map for a long time. None of the other officers spoke. Lieutenant Colonel Mattern stared at Hoffman. Sounds of the closing battle passed through the tent. Artillery shells whistled through the air and explosions shook the ground. Team leaders’ distant commands echoed dryly as though from a television broadcast poorly tuned in.
“Lieutenant Hoffman, despite all this, I’m not going to blow smoke up your ass. Surrender of the city may be inevitable. I may be able to scrape together a mission to get you through the Crucible with your prisoners, but if I do that, we lose what little air cover we have. That won’t happen until the defense of this city is no longer viable.” General Allan stared at him without emotion.
“Yes, sir.” Hoffman waited to be dismissed.
“One last thing,” General Allan said. “If you are on this mission, be on mission. Go police up the rest of your team and wait for me to send you to the fighting. It won’t be someplace quiet.”
“Yes, sir.” He saluted and strode away from the HQ. “Hoffman for team, check in.”
“Booker.”
“Duke.”
“Opal.”
He waited several seconds. “All team members, rally on me at the HQ. Immediately.”
“Yes, sir.”
“On my way.”
“Sir!”
They formed up and headed for the police station.
A roar echoed across the city as the Kesaht assaulted the defenders of Koensuu City. Sanheel and Rakka charged in waves, the sheer weight of their numbers shaking the ground. Artillery and rockets hammered the first-line defenders less than a hundred meters ahead of the assault.
As Hoffman used hand signals to communicate with his team, Duke grabbed his shoulder to yell something at him, but his words made little sense beneath the barrage hammering the city.
“…help them!”
“Stay. On. Mission. You’ve done enough. We have to go!” Hoffman pointed toward the police station.
A civilian aircraft launched from a rooftop only to be blasted from the sky by surface-to-air missile batteries. Undaunted, several civilian and military shuttles scattered into the sky as other civilians fled higher into the city, d
ragging children and bundles of valuables.
Booker argued with Duke. Opal opened and closed his fists, angry veins twitching in his neck. “Enemy. Enemy. Enemy.”
“Get us to the police station. Remember the mission!” Hoffman yelled. “We need to find King and Garrison.”
Opal noticed the strange missiles first and grabbed Hoffman by his shoulder. “Missiles!”
Hoffman and his team faced the snowstorm-obscured mountains. Hoffman carefully removed Opal’s hand from his shoulder and stepped involuntarily toward the imminent destruction of the city.
“Doesn’t seem right,” Duke said. “I wouldn’t have pegged the Kesaht to slag the city…especially not while they’ve got forces still fighting in it.”
“They would’ve nuked us earlier if they had the intent,” Hoffman said.
Booker spoke in a throaty murmur as she stared in horror. “They’re coming fast. No time for the civilians to get to the shelters unless they’re already in them.”
A few of the civilians stood transfixed as others screamed and dove for cover. To Hoffman’s amazement, a few came out of buildings to watch the new threat.
“I don’t think those are nukes,” Hoffman said. “They almost look like…” He blinked several times as the missiles veered toward the front lines, decelerating rapidly. They moved in diamond shaped formations of tour missiles. His brain told him to brace for impact and explosions that didn’t come.
“What the…” Booker stared at the attack.
Retro-rockets fired off the front of the missiles and they slowed. A humanoid shape dropped from the missile and landed on a boulevard, sliding across the road. Three more of the fifteen-foot-tall mechanized soldiers dropped in and their missiles accelerated across the city. Gatling cannons snapped onto shoulders and spun to life. Sunlight glinted off massive double-barreled gauss cannons attached to the soldiers’ forearms.
“Those are lance formations. It’s Armor!” Hoffman said, watching as more missiles dropped their payload.
Opal jumped, thrusting one fist in the air. “Armor! Sir! Armor! Armor! Armor!”
Two lances fell on the Kesaht artillery batteries like ravening wolves. Rakka leapt onto the backs of Armor units only to be snatched off and slammed against the ground like sacks of meat. Ixio officers spilled away from the chaos as Rakka rushed in to die. Kesaht cannons and rockets panic-fired in every direction—at the Armor, at the city, and into the sky.
Hoffman called a halt, then scanned the scene with binoculars. “I don’t see any Templar crosses.”
“Not sure what that means,” Duke said. “They look like they’re on our side.”
“I expected Templars for something like this,” Hoffman said.
“Could they be Ibarrans?”
“I’d rather not fight the Kesaht and the Ibarrans right now.”
The bulk of the Armor counterassault touched a hundred meters in front of the still-charging Sanheel and Rakka shock troops. Armor fired their arm cannons as they smashed into charging Sanheel. Blood and debris fountained into the air from the collision of two unstoppable forces. Hoffman felt the impact, heard the amplified battle cry, “WE ARE ARMOR!”
“Kill enemy!” Opal cheered.
Hoffman could barely look away from the spectacle of Terran Armor charging forward to meet the Kesaht advance, but Opal’s excitement stunned him. He laughed uncontrollably.
The doughboy turned toward him, arms wide as he advanced.
Hoffman held up his left hand, palm out. “Opal, no hugging.”
“Sir. Armor came.”
“Yes, they did.”
“They’re probably here to stomp on King and Garrison for going radio silent,” Duke said.
“Don’t be jealous, Duke. You had your moment of fame,” Booker laughed.
Hoffman took one final look at the battle. He quickly counted at least fifty suits of armor attacking en masse. The lead soldiers formed a wedge and drove at the Kesaht center, smashing Rakka underfoot or throwing them aside like rag dolls. Double-barreled gauss cannons lit up the gloomy scene as snow cascaded down from the lead-colored sky. A second and third wave of Rakka and Sanheel surged forward to stop them.
One Armor lance ran swiftly at each of the flanks, holding their fire until they were on top of their enraged enemies.
Chapter 24
“Pull up the location of the police station on your gauntlet,” Hoffman said. “Let’s move.”
Duke jogged forward to take point and Booker fell back twenty meters, taking rearguard. The center of Koensuu City was coming alive. Civilians crowded windows and doorways. Groups of young men and women climbed to rooftops to watch the spectacle while Hoffman wished they would get to shelter and stay there.
The police station, by contrast, was a ghost town.
“Something’s not right,” Hoffman said. “Stack up by the door. Treat this like an assault but try not to shoot friendlies if I’m wrong.”
“Bang?” Booker asked.
“No bang. Tap up,” Hoffman said. Booker was last in the stack as no one wanted the medic going down in the doorway. Keeping her eyes forward like the rest of the team, she would tap the Strike Marine in front of her when ready.
Time always dragged before a room entry. Hoffman readied himself for a point-blank gun battle.
Opal tapped his shoulder. Hoffman tapped Duke’s shoulder and they went streaming through the front door, weapons fanning across the room.
A neat row of police officers lay on their sides, handcuffed, legs shackled, mouths gagged.
“We’ll come back to them. Keep moving. Find the rest of our team and the Ibarrans,” Hoffman said, feeling the mission slipping away.
They cleared room to room until they found the jail cells. Hoffman found Garrison sitting on a cell bunk, hands cuffed behind his back, looking down at his feet as if thinking deep thoughts. King sat against the bars.
Hoffman tapped his knuckles on the cell.
Garrison’s head snapped up and he chewed on his gag. He leapt to his feet and stumbled toward the door in his unpowered armor, mumbling furiously.
King looked up, his shoulders slumped.
“Sir,” King said, “the targets escaped a little over an hour ago. The police were Ibarran agents.”
Hoffman pulled the gag out of Garrison’s mouth.
“What he said, sir,” the breacher said, working his sore jaw from side to side.
“Gone?” Opal asked.
“We dragged them across frozen wastes and ice-capped mountains…” Hoffman said, “…and they got away?”
“Gone?” Opal looked around frantically.
“We were ambushed.” Garrison shook in his armor. “From behind! By cops! You think if anyone on the planet would be trustworthy, it’d be the boys in blue!” He leaned forward and let Hoffman see the black-and-blue welt on his forehead from the taser needles.
“Can you see this bullshit?” Garrison asked. “Does it look bad? Booker, you can fix it, right?”
Opal thrust his arms through the bars, grabbed Garrison by his sides, and lifted him off the ground. “Why gone?” the doughboy asked. “Why gone!”
“Not my fault, big guy.” Garrison’s feet kicked in the air. “Sir? Little help here.”
“Drop him.” Hoffman rubbed a hand against his face.
“We have to find and catch those two assholes…” Booker said. “…again?”
“They can’t get off world,” Hoffman said. “We’ll find them. Again.”
“Sorry, sir,” King said.
“My mission. My responsibility,” Hoffman said. “I assumed the local cops would be screened against Ibarra influence. And assumptions are the mother of all foul ups.” He grabbed the bars and heaved, using his armor’s strength assist to rip the door free of its hinges.
“She had a message,” King said. “We catch up to her again, she’ll kill all of us.”
“She could have capped us both pretty easy, but she did say thanks for the escort back to the city,
” Garrison said. “So that was nice.”
“We’re not done with her,” Hoffman said. His gauntlet screen chimed with an alert. He stepped aside as Opal and Duke went into the cell and freed the other two Marines.
“Kesaht have broken through the city’s outer defenses,” Hoffman said. “PDF are calling Ice Claw to the front.”
Duke took his sniper rifle off his back and gave Buffy a pat.
“We don’t have a trace on the Ibarras, do we, sir?” Duke asked.
“The city’s in a full on panic with the attack,” Booker said, looking out a window. “You want to try and find them in this? Almost half a million people in this city, sir.”
Hoffman looked at King, who kept his face turned from the lieutenant, and Garrison, who had a sheepish grin as Opal popped a fresh battery pack into the breacher’s armor. Garrison pulled his wrists away from his back and snapped the chain on the cuffs.
“She left you two alive,” Hoffman said. “We’re not done with her or Medvedev, but I’m changing the mission. We defend this city and the civilians inside of it. Soon as we kick the Kesaht back to whatever hole they crawled out of, then we’re back on the hunt. Understood?”
“Sounds fair to me,” Duke said.
“I like not being dead,” Garrison said. “So those two get a head start. So what? Not like they’re going to get off world while the skies are full of Kesaht. And Masha ain’t going back out in that snow. She wasn’t kidding about hating the cold.”
“I need a weapon,” King said, his gaze on his feet. Duke pulled a gauss carbine off of Opal’s wide back and tossed it to the gunney.
“Let’s move,” Hoffman said. “This city needs us.”
****
An open-topped cargo truck slid to a shaky stop at a bend in a road running through a thick forest. Hoffman jumped out of the back and his team followed. They made their way into the forest and passed a small logistics point in a clearing. Koen PDF milled about, a mood of excitement and victory as the battle for the planet neared its end.