by M. D. Cooper
“Why are those mountains making clouds? Are they on fire?” Cary asked with a frown.
Tanis looked to the east where massive plumes of smoke and steam rose from the planet and escaped into space—the final terraforming work pushing waste gasses off-world, lest they shroud the entire globe.
The evacuated clouds created a glowing nebula that hung over half the sky, a beautiful view that would probably dissipate over the next few decades.
“Sort of,” Joe said to Cary. “Those are volcanoes. Hot, melted rock from inside the planet is coming out of them.”
Cary looked worried and Joe picked her up. “It’s very safe, that’s why their smoke is going out into space.”
“It’s certainly not a sight I’ve ever seen,” Tanis replied with no small amount of awe in her voice. “On Victoria and Tara, we did our best to keep the gasses on the planet, not vent them into space.”
Behind them, the other colony leaders were stepping off the shuttle, and a hundred meters away, another shuttle landed with the lucky winners who won the lottery to be a part of the landfall party.
A dozen more shuttles were queued up in the sky, and Tanis resisted the temptation to check on the schedule.
Today was about enjoying their future together.
The smells of fresh flowers and loamy earth were in the air, and green grass glistened beneath her feet. The organic perfume was much like their cabin by the lake on the Intrepid, but subtly different. There was just something about being on the surface of a planet, under the light of a yellow star.
She laughed and jumped lightly into the air, falling back to the ground under the pull of near-Earth gravity.
Cary jumped as well. “Why are we jumping, Mommy?” she asked with a grin.
“Because we’re so happy to be here, we’re jumping with joy.”
* * * * *
Before long, Chef Earl had the great barbeque pits roaring, and cooked meats and vegetables flowed from his prep stations into the crowd. The choice of meal surprised her, but once she sank her teeth into a medium-rare burger, she knew Earl had made the right choice.
Great tankards of beer, or tall goblets of wine, were in nearly every hand, and Tanis found herself frequently juggling her food and drink to shake hands and slap shoulders.
Music thundered across the clearing, and a dancing space opened up. Tanis whisked Cary into her arms, and the trio danced as the shared exuberance of the assemblage coursed through them.
As night began to fall, no one appeared to be interested in letting up, though the Marines began to set up long tents with cots and blankets for any who wished to catch a few winks before resuming their celebrations.
Not long after the sun set, Joe took Cary via shuttle to the ground-side of the space elevator for a good night’s sleep. Their daughter was fascinated by being planetside with a bright sky overhead, but as the stars came out, the idea of seeing space with no plas or shield to protect her began to alarm Cary.
Tanis, however, stayed the night, knowing that she owed everyone a small piece of her time.
Even though she had spoken to every single person present, crew and colonists alike still approached her through the night.
“I knew you’d get us here, Governor,” more than one happy colonist exclaimed while shaking her hand, hugging, or even kissing her. Tanis appreciated their thanks and reminded them that she was just one part of the effort that had brought them this far. This was a victory for them all.
“You might as well stop saying that,” a voice at her shoulder said after one such exchange. “No one is buying it for a second.”
Tanis turned to see Captain Andrews next to her, holding a glass of beer in his hand.
“Picked out your homestead site yet?” she asked.
Andrews laughed. “Not yet, no. There are just a few things left to do up there,” he gestured to the bright light that was the Intrepid crossing the sky overhead in its high orbit.
“Not too much more,” Tanis replied. “I want that ship emptied out in three years max. It needs to be ready for the next phase.”
“You really think all of this will be necessary? The Intrepid has been our home for centuries,” Andrews asked with a worried frown creasing his face.
“It’s not like I’m dismantling it,” Tanis replied with a laugh. “Just giving it new purpose.”
Captain Andrews nodded slowly. “Well, very soon none of that will be my concern. I think that I’ll see what is involved in becoming a brewmaster.”
“Really?” Tanis asked. “I didn’t know you had an interest in that. In fact, I rarely see you drink beer at all.”
“One of the ensigns has been making his own from a crop he grows in the prairie park. I found myself getting a taste for it. Time for new things and new experiences, right?”
Tanis shook her head. “Whatever you say, Captain. You’re talking to a woman who learned how to grow just the right flowers to get just the right pigments to paint a masterpiece. I know all about diving into a craft.”
“What are you going to do with your little cabin?” Andrews asked. “You spent more time out of stasis than anyone…well, you and Joe.”
“I really don’t know,” Tanis said. “Cary wants us to bring it down here, which wouldn’t be too hard. I might be ready for a change, though.”
“Oh?” Andrews asked. “No more cabin by a lake?”
“No, no,” Tanis smiled. “I’m all for that, I just want a much bigger one.”
Andrews barked a laugh in response. “Bigger lake or cabin?”
“Both! You know, I am the governor now,” Tanis said with a wink.
ASSAULT ON TRISAL
STELLAR DATE: 04.11.8935 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Durden Continent, Trisal
REGION: Freemont System, Orion Freedom Alliance, near the Transcend border
The air around Kent thundered and shook with the force of the orbital bombardment. Nothing in his time as an enlisted man, or his officer’s training, had prepared him for what it would be like to witness an assault of this magnitude.
Trisal was in stage two of its terraforming process, and the cloud cover was too thick for beam weapons to penetrate without diffusion. Taking out the separatist cruiser would require a less measured approach.
Captain Bellan, the company CO, had called down conventional weapons in the form of tactical nukes.
The corporal nodded and steadied the laser. With miles of cloud above them, the Guard’s ships couldn’t track ground targets well enough to strike them without accidentally pulverizing the 547th battalion in the process. When the next round of nukes broke through the clouds above, they would only have seconds to find the painting laser’s target and lock onto the separatist cruiser.
While he waited for the visor to clear, he replayed scan data from the impacts. Nine of the explosions had occurred above the cruiser and three below. The combined power of the weapons knocked the cruiser’s shields offline and two of its engines winked out, but it still hovered above the landscape on a powerful grav column.
The hot wind from the nukes swept up and away from the cruiser and pushed the clouds back. Not completely, but enough that the fleet overhead could lock on the target.
Nine arcs of star-stuff lanced down from the heavens and tore the cruiser to pieces.
Kent shook his head as the cruiser crashed to the ground with a thunder almost as loud as the bombs. It was such a waste of life.
The soldiers in his platoon let out a cheer and Kent looked on and smiled at their enthusiasm. They had the rig
ht of it—it was better the enemy than them.
He joined up with third squad and followed them into a shallow gully that wound through the low hills in the direction they needed to travel. It wasn’t so deep as to be a potential trap, just enough to hide them from broad scan sweeps and casual observation.
Two hundred meters ahead, the pair of soldiers in the lead fell prone, and the rest of the squad followed suit, ducking behind rocks and scanning probe data.
Kent wasn’t so sure; the ship had stayed, defending the ground base below, to the end. Those were not the actions of cowards.
The squad’s first fireteam worked their way up the gully’s slope, staying low, and deploying recon probes. Normally, they would have swathes of nanobots probing the area around the platoon, but a combination of the developing world’s heavy winds and the radiation from the nukes made that impossible.
The separatists didn’t have the same spec armor or weapons as his troops, but they outnumbered his squad five-to-one. Fourth squad was on the far side of the enemy platoon and Kent considered his options. His maps of the area showed he could continue down the gully undetected and pass right by the enemy formation.
But, all it would take was one member of that separatist platoon to see a boot print from his soldiers and they’d have beam fire up their asses—probably at the least opportune time, too.
Each squad separated into four fireteams and moved toward their assigned positions. Kent joined fireteam four and crept up the gully’s side to the crest, and peered over. There, in the three-hundred-meter expanse between the squads was the separatist platoon.
Their weapons were multifunctional rifles, much like the ones his own troops used, but he could tell that they were subtly different, though they didn’t look cheap. Their armor, however, was of a lower quality, that much would help his platoon out. Their proton beams should be able to penetrate with just a few direct hits.
The combat net showed all the fireteams in position and ready. Kent set a five second countdown.
5… 4… 3… 2… 1…
Each squad fired a series of sonic detonators into the enemy position, confusing and disorienting them as the beam-fire lanced into their ranks. Half a dozen separatist soldiers fell in the initial volley, followed by several more as they scrambled for cover.
Kent felt a moment’s pity for the men and women dying in the killing field between his two squads. Their CO was still treating this area as though it was land they controlled; they thought they would be the hunters, and so held to the high ground for a better vantage.
Better to behave as though you were the hunted—Kent had learned that in the wilds of Herschel as a young boy. To catch prey, you had to think like prey, and always be aware that you were not the only hunter out there.
Return fire hit the ground near him, and Kent rolled to a new position. His force may have had the element of surprise, but the enemy had found enough cover to dig in and was putting up a good fight, something that Kent respected—but it was too little, too late.
Even in cover, three more separatists fell, and a minute later, a group stood and surrendered, throwing their weapons to the ground.
Like a wave, more of the separatists rose, tossing aside their weapons.
Mendez’s sentiment was shared by them all. Even without their primary weapons, a soldier in a suit of powered armor was a serious threat. The matte black suits held a variety of integrated weapons system and gave the wearer the strength of a dozen unarmored humans.
Two fireteams from third squad gestured with their weapons to the first separatist group, directing them down into the gully. The other two fireteams held their weapons on the remaining enemy, while fourth squad worked their way across the battlefield, checking for any hidden soldiers who had not surrendered and ensuring that any wounded would not see another day.
It seemed brutal, but Kent knew it was a mercy. If a soldier’s armor were penetrated in this irradiated landscape, they weren’t going to make it long enough for anyone to treat them, anyway—they were already dead. Not to mention the rads from the proton beams that took them down.
While his squads applied suppression packages to the captives, he reviewed the first and second squads’ progress. They had reached the first marker and were holding position, waiting for third and fourth squad to catch up.
Kent watched the first enemy soldiers feel their armor lock up. The suppression packages were systematically seizing every mechanical joint and crystallizing the fluid sections. The nanobots in the package would also be severing their Link access and burning any repair systems.
He marked the gully’s location on his personal map. If they didn’t pick these soldiers up in a day, they would be dead from radiation sickness. He never hesitated to kill in combat, but he would never want to die alone in the dark—these men and women deserved better than that.
The squads got moving again, and he trailed behind three/three once more, his eyes sweeping the terrain while reviewing the feeds from his men and their probes.
So far, the coast was clear.
They reached a low rise, and the two scout fireteams ranged ahead, working their way down the boulder-strewn slope on the far side. Their feeds showed a terrifying landscape of ash and fire. Hot sections of glassy rock glowed brightly on the infrared band, the result of plasma splashes from the cruiser’s destruction.
The separatist’s warship lay three kilometers distan
t, its hull torn into three sections, each smashed upon the ground as though a god had torn it up and thrown it down as trash onto the world.
Kent’s map showed a suspected entrance to the enemy’s underground base only seven hundred meters south of one section of the fallen cruiser. He hoped that it would still be intact; scouring this hellscape for another way into the underground bunker was not on his list of fun ways to spend the afternoon.
He was lucky the men respected him and allowed it—likely because he had been a squad sergeant before joining OCS.
Those thoughts brought Sam to his mind. Somewhere, on the far side of the world, Shrike Company was hitting another separatist base. Kent hoped that things were going as well, or hopefully better, for them. Sending in just one battalion—granted, with fleet support—to take an entire separatist world was spreading things a bit thin.
Kent knew from his experience, and study of the Guard’s history, that something was up. A lot of battalions had been deployed to locations in the OFA that were far from the front. Others were on training missions, while only a few remained near the border with Transcend space.
It was almost impossible to speculate what was going on. With the OFA spanning over eleven thousand light years of space, there could be a full-scale war going on and he may not have heard about it.
Kent didn’t think his introspection was noticeable, but Tunk had been doing this job for a lot longer than Kent had been alive. The old sergeant probably knew tells he had never heard of.