by Chris Hechtl
The food was okay. She didn't appreciate the lights always being on, nor the interruptions, but she did appreciate the care given to her, and the food, though bland, was filling. She was a cat and a female, so a streak of hedonism ran in her veins.
A few hours into her second morning awake, a nurse asked her if she wanted to read something or watch some entertainment or listen to the news. She tried all of them. She couldn't read well though, so she watched some of the Federation entertainment recordings they had in their database. The shows were bewildering to her; city life she hardly understood.
But she did like hearing Debois was back on the air when she got to the local news. She appreciated that.
On her second day in bed, she was debriefed by a human male who said he was with Naval Intelligence. She admitted she could cloak during the debrief. That sparked his interest she could tell.
“We could use people like you, not just for your ability, but also your skills in avoiding the Horathians and as a spy. Tell me, are you willing to use that gift to help us fight the Horathians, ma'am? To help the Federation?” he asked.
“It depends on what you've got in mind,” she said warily, eying the human lieutenant. Here came the string she thought darkly. “What's your name again?”
“Liu. Lieutenant Susami Liu,” the young man said with a nod to her.
“Okay, why don't you tell me a little about my options and what you have in mind? I won't commit to anything, but I do like to keep my options open,” she said.
He nodded slowly. “Wise, ma'am,” he said. May I?” he asked, pointing to a chair. She flicked her ears and then nodded when he continued to hesitate.
He took the seat and then started to talk a little about what he knew she could do and how they could train her to do more to hit back.
“You have a gift, a rare gift, ma'am.”
“But I'm small,” Kiki murmured.
“Dangerous things can come in small packages, ma'am,” he replied.
That got her to chuff until pain hit her. “Oh, don't do that, I'm not ready to laugh just yet,” she groaned, touching her sore muscles.
<)>^<)>/
“So, he did survive,” General Drier said as he listened to the latest broadcast by Debois. Before the man had been an annoying folk hero, someone who was an impact on one continent, an irritating pest that needed to be contained. Now, with the help of the Federation Marines, he was a worldwide presence.
“We need to hit them. Hit them again, make them realize why they fear us. Make sure they will not dare act against us,” he growled.
“Sir, should we counter with our own propaganda?” Captain Goddard said.
“No. I don't want the enemy to use it to pick us apart, to try to track us or get an inside look into us. Let our actions speak for us,” the general said. “We will see this world join the empire or we'll see it burn around us to ash in the process, purifying it once and for all.”
Captain Goddard stared at him and then licked her lips nervously. His zeal was good but dangerous she knew. Finally, she nodded. “Your order, sir?”
“Get me Zhukov. I've got a mission for him,” the general growled. “He is going to be our hammer.” He paused, and then his eyes gleamed. “No, he's going to institute hell on this planet. We're going to unleash the dogs of war,” he growled.
Chapter 51
The one hundred suit Death's Head Platoon was arranged in eight squads of twelve, with the remaining four suits leftover for the officers. Each squad had two corporals and a sergeant for the minimum number of noncoms. Each squad had three fire teams with each of the noncoms leading one. Most of the suits were shooters. Four of the squads had a specialist in their ranks such as Sergeant Scornlan's engineering suit. In most cases, it was a heavy weapons suit. Heavy weapons were usually reserved for the noncoms since they could take the most damage and would be held in reserve since they were slower than the other units. They were also designed to provide heavy fire support for the other units. Since the suits had only so much ammo and most of the munitions were for the shooter suits, the heavy suits were ordered to stick to their light weapons or to carry only light weapons whenever possible.
For their brigade, it was their first real deployment to pacify a star system, so it was an active combat theater—not that the natives had offered much resistance. But the troops had gotten a few live fire exercises in before the captain had ordered them to stand-down.
Their armor wasn't cohesive across the platoon. Each had been made out of a mix of salvaged suits and home-built parts. The salvaged suits had come from a variety of places. Some had been hand-me-downs; others had been captured or salvaged. A few had been castoff military gear relegated to the militias and mercs before the Xeno war. A few had been in the pirate's hands all along. A quarter of them had started life as police SWAT armor and a few of those had in turn been military before being reconditioned and turned over to the police forces.
Very few were fully modern military grade hardware as of the Xeno war. But those who had them treasured them.
A few of the suits had started out as parts from species other than human. These were ill fitting and tended to have problems with range of motion and movement. Before they had left, Horath Sergeant Scornlan had tried to root out as many of those parts as possible. Unfortunately, the home-grown replacement parts were considered substandard, so he'd reluctantly hung onto the original parts.
Since the suits had been passed down through the generations, lovingly rebuilt over and over, most of the suits were decorated and customized in some manner. The trademark of their unit was the skull-shaped face mask and helmet of some sort. A few of the older suits sported capes.
A few were dressed to look a little like samurai. Suits that had at one time been with Marine RECON had been traded with the Reapers for a profit. There were a few suits that sported RECON parts, but they were few and far between. The heavy armor suits went ornate with extras welded, bolted, or wired on to the outside of the armor. They ranged from skulls to gold, chrome, or silver trim, underlining lights, holographic projectors, or bone.
Former police suits were more basic, usually relying on paint for decoration since they had very light servo motors and could only carry so much weight. Command suits had gold or silver trim and ornate skull masks. Basic shooter suits, which made up the bulk of the unit, were light on decoration, again relying on paint. Every suit had their base color as black. It could be flat black, black pearl, candy black-purple, or gloss black.
One thing that Sergeant Scornlan had scored on was the inclusion of three pieces of his equipment. The first was his tiny forge. With it he could melt down metals and then recast them. His other godsend piece of equipment was his 3-D printer. It wasn't a full-on replicator, but it came pretty close. Oh, the quality was substandard, but it could do basic jobs like print plastic, some basic electrical parts and boards, and even simple metal parts.
But his other favorite was the die press forge. With it he could take wire and feed it into the machine, and it would chop the wire into half centimeter-long rounds for the Gauss rifles. He could scale it up or down too to do various calibers.
Which meant they had a supply of ammunition as long as their metal stocks held out.
His vital skills meant he was confined to the base. The captain couldn't afford to lose him. Therefore, his squad was on guard duty.
Since two of the squads expected company, they had at least one heavy weapon unit with a plasma weapon. Each plasma charge was a four-centimeter-long, one-centimeter-diameter cylindrical round with a bulbous head. The round was basically a gas-filled bottle with a hyper capacitor. Superheated compressed gas inside a magnetic bottle formed the main round. The capacitor charged the magnetic bottle.
Each round was sent out from an electromagnetic rail gun. The tiny hyper capacitor at the rear of the round maintained the magnetic bottle for a microsecond until it got to the target. If the target was beyond ten meters, the round would begin to tumble in
the air and would dissipate, usually splattering its contents and making a mess of things. Against flesh or unarmored targets, it was horrifying. Against armor, it was almost useless. The hyper capacitor extended the range of the weapon; otherwise, it would only have a range of a few centimeters before the plasma dissipated in the air.
In theory a plasma weapon would have more range in vacuum since vacuum was such a good insulator. However, the gas's exposure to vacuum tended to pull it apart faster.
Since plasma weapons required a hyper capacitor of some sort for every shot, their ammunition was in short supply. The Horathian government had spent a premium to reverse engineer a hyper capacitor but had yet to get one to sustain the yields of a proper Federation round. Therefore, plasma ammunition was carefully allocated to elite units or to small heavy weapons squads of regular divisions. Typically, a unit that captured such weapons and ammunition would hoard it and only trade them in when forced to do so by an IG inspection or when they wanted additional pay at the end of a deployment.
Plasma weapons were the souped-up flamethrowers of the modern battlefield. They could be thought of as terror weapons since they burned whatever they touched and could breach energy shields and armor over time. But they had a limited number of shots before their hyper capacitors and the battery packs in their rifles were expended. That was why many heavy units carried tribarrel Gatling guns instead.
The Gatling guns could lay down an impressive rate of fire as long as their munitions held out. The Marines carried their rifles on their shoulders or hand carried them. They were belt fed to canisters in their back. The rounds they fired were caseless and could be straight rounds or a mix of special rounds.
The Death's Head used a similar system given that they could trace their roots to the Federation at some point … and the simplest methods in engineering still worked the best. They had two different heavy weapon systems that affected almost the same thing: The first was a Gatling gun similar to the Marines, and the other was a modified rail gun machine gun that spat out hundreds of rounds a second down range. The weapons could be light caliber or heavy caliber depending on what they were set up for.
Every heavy weapons guy, and most of the stock grunts, loved and feared the plasma guns. There was something cool, awe inspiring, and terrifying to see the white, blue, and purple bolt go down range to hit and tear something apart.
But Sergeant Scornlan's new favorite were the rail gun machine guns. They could fire rounds he could replace, and they drew power from a backpack he could recharge. They had few moving parts to worry about jamming or breaking down in the field during the heat of the moment. And he'd figured out ways to modify their existing plasma weapons into machine guns.
Bravo and Delta squads were about to show the Marines why the machine guns should be just as feared again.
<)>^<)>/
“Damn that looks good,” Miguel said as he wiped his sweaty brow. They had finished the bridge the day before and had handed off the painting to the locals. He had a work crew working on the cement roads moving beyond the bridge. The brass, in this case Mister Hernandez, had signed off on using the excess cement and road material to see how far they could get. They'd gotten past one intersection and had moved on to the second but were quickly running dry on materials. It would have been nice to get further, like say halfway to Fallbrook or one of the closer villages, but he'd take what he could get. The cement plant was having trouble keeping up with all the projects anyway, despite the upgrades they'd recently underwent before they went back into production.
That was fine with Miguel and his crews; they needed a day off. It was hot, summer wasn't quite there yet, but it was getting closer every day. They did their best work in the early morning hours or late evening. It was their bad luck to get the latest batch of cement late. He rolled his shoulders as he surveyed his team.
He had a good crew of about twenty guys and gals, all of them local. They'd trained on the gear fairly easily and had kicked in their own gear to supplement things. They would make a good road crew he thought with a mental nod of approval.
The roads had to be made out of cement, gravel, brick, pavers, or hard-packed earth; there were few alternatives. Pavers and brick were labor-intensive, backbreaking work he could and would do without.
Gravel and packed earth were the most common but both tended to wash out in the rains. Gravel also tended to kick up under fast moving wagons and move around over time.
Asphalt tarmac was obviously out; they didn't have it since Destria like many colony worlds was a terraformed world. It didn't have its own seas with life eons ago so there were no pockets of rotting algae to turn into oil. Therefore, it didn't have reserves of oil to draw on for fuels or asphalt; they had to make do with artificial sources or do without.
Which sucked, asphalt would be a better material he thought as he looked down at the concrete cement mix. Asphalt was solid and cured in minutes and could flex in the weather extremes that came on the planet. There was a reason cement was only used in the big towns and cities he reminded himself.
Well, if the colony bought up more air transport, they'd put his boys and girls out of a job again he thought. Or not he thought as a worker in a yellow vest flagged down a wagon coming up to the bridge.
The worker explained the situation. The guy in the wagon tried to wave to go around, but they'd extended the drainage ditches and pitched the slope steeper to get more of the runoff off the road. He scowled, then turned back the way he had come.
Miguel shook his head.
“We're about done here, boss,” Joe said waving a hand.
“Post the signs, then clean up. The cement should set up in a couple hours in the sun. We'll let it cure overnight,” he said as he watched a team float a section, then sprinkle aggregate over the top so it wasn't too slippery. “Now, if we can keep people from using rock salt on this it'll be good for ten or so years or more.”
“I'm more inclined to keep people off it until it sets,” Joe said as the worker with the vest and stop sign waved another wagon back. “Then there is also the weather,” he said, shielding his eyes as he looked up to the distant clouds. “Radio report said we've got possible rain storms coming our way,” he said. “Too much is never a good thing with concrete and cement.”
“Yeah, I know,” Miguel sighed. He was less worried about the rain than Joe. He knew the chemicals in the mix would have it set up within hours, and it would be half cured by the time the rain came. He turned back to the bridge.
The bridge was his latest pride and joy, a steel girder bridge made out of arches. It was sturdy, far sturdier than many of the bridges the locals had built before. It also spanned one of their biggest rivers and was wide enough to have two wagons going in opposite directions—a first for some of the bridges in the area. He could see work crews on it painting it for the ceremony tomorrow.
“I'm going to go check on the painters. Finish up here,” he said.
Joe nodded and went back to work.
<)>^<)>/
Miguel sighed as he got into the pub. Evenings in Quenos was nice, even nicer indoors with a bug zapper outside and screens over the windows to keep the blood suckers at bay. The utilities still needed some work though. The work crews had run utilities in the ground, but in some parts, they'd run pipes and cables any which way. A few of the buildings were festooned with them and looked like steamer punk fire hazards. But they were getting better he reminded himself for the umpteenth time.
Just as he pulled up a stool for a much deserved beer, he heard the first light clatter on the roof and window. He turned to look over his shoulder to see the rain begin lightly, almost a mist, but then pick up in speed and strength.
“You timed that well,” the bartender said as she set down a coaster and a stein with a good head on it.
“One great thing about this planet, you have a lot of grain so you folks make some dynamite alcohol drinks to drown your sorrows in,” Miguel said as he picked up his stein and salut
ed his hostess with it.
She smiled as he took a gulp. She went back to wiping the bar down with a rag.
“Like liquid bread,” he said with a grin of approval.
<)>^<)>/
Rain begins just as the raiders arrived at the outskirts of Quenos. Instead of using one of the bridges, they had forded the river at a low point downstream, then stayed in the river depression out of sight of the Marine's sensors.
The daily weather report from Debois and others like him had helped them plan the attack. The Horathians used the bad weather to their advantage; the storm was a perfect cover for them to get in close before the enemy realized they were under attack.
The bored and annoyed fire team at the intersection leading into the city were targeted and taken down fast. They died without getting a shot off but didn't die in vain. Their deaths instantly sparked a red alert through the computers. Militia units further back saw the enemy incoming and fired their weapons in a desperate attempt to stall them.
The remaining Marines woke and geared up fast. They charged to the sound of the fighting only to be contemptuously swept aside by the armored titans. The Marines light weapons were no match for the armored troops. Some knew it and did their best anyway, hoping their distraction would allow others to get in to take the enemy out or at least their deaths would buy the civilians time to escape.
A few of the Marines managed to lob grenades in to do some damage. One heavy weapons Neodog whimpered but hip shot his heavy gauss rifle right into the abdomen of three of the suits in a row as they came running up the street and took out the rest of his fire team. The suits were most vulnerable in certain places due to the need to remain flexible. The abdomen was one of those places. Once a shot got through the armor, the follow-up shots that penetrated ricocheted around inside tearing the operator apart from within. They jerked and went down, but other troopers swiveled and cut the Neodog down.