Shadow of Empire

by Jay Allan

  “We’re on the way, Astra. But it’s not that simple. It’s a complete fucking mess down there. I could use your help. I need you to let the Twins out. We need them in the turrets, because it looks like we might have some fighting to do. Please, just trust me. I’m with you, Astra. We’ve got to get them out of there. But I need you at Ace’s station. And I need the Twins in the turrets.” He stared at her, his eyes pleading for her trust. “No tricks, Astra. My word.”

  She hesitated for a few seconds, then put the stun gun in her pocket. She turned and walked back to Ace’s station, sitting down hard on the plush leather chair. She slid Blackhawk’s keycard in the slot and punched a series of keys. “I unlocked the hatches. The Twins and Sam are free.” She looked over at him, and he could see the worry in her eyes. She was no stranger to war, nor its cost. She knew Blackhawk could die here—all of them could die. “What do you want me to do, Lucas?”

  He leaned forward and activated his comm. “Tarq, Tarnan, I need you in the turrets. Now!” He turned back toward Astra. “You know how to use the comm?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll be in range in about a minute. I need you to contact Blackhawk, Ace—anybody you can reach. Find out where they are.”

  “Got it.”

  Lucas grabbed the throttle, twisting it hard to the side. She struggled to stay in the chair as Wolf’s Claw banked hard. “And strap in. I’m going to get us down there fast.”

  Lucas flipped the channel. “Sam, I need all the power you can get me. Now.”

  “Get your men deployed in those outbuildings. A squad in each, with at least one autocannon.” Blackhawk crouched in the makeshift trench, shouting out commands to Lementov retainers and Carano’s mercenaries alike. They didn’t have enough troops to face the attackers in a conventional battle line, so Blackhawk was directing the defenders to scattered strong points. The revolutionaries weren’t well trained, but there were a lot of them. He hoped his dispersed defense would break up their formations and disorder their attack.

  As he gave the orders, that familiar calm came over him. There was something in his voice and his presence on the battlefield, a confidence and authority that commanded respect. He was in total charge, as if he’d been born to lead armies. He just started issuing directives, and the confused and terrified soldiers obeyed. They now had a leader who didn’t just command respect—he demanded respect.

  He could see the enemy forces advancing. There was at least a battalion to the front, and he knew more troops would be coming around the flanks. The defenders would make the revolutionaries pay, but in the end Blackhawk was fairly certain they were doomed. Carano had contacted Vulcan, but the rest of the mercenary forces had pulled back farther to the east. They were trying to push a relief column through, but Blackhawk knew they were too far away. By the time they got to the château—if they got there at all—there would be nothing left to do but bury the dead.

  “Back in the shit, hey, Ark?” Ace was standing next to his leader, holding his assault rifle. Doc had managed to get a quick dressing on his head wound, but there was still half-dried blood all over his face. The injury wasn’t serious, but he looked like an image of death itself.

  “Get yourself some good cover, Ace.” Blackhawk’s voice was cold, distant. He turned toward Ace and there was a strange fire in his eyes, as if some mysterious force had taken him.

  Blackhawk’s voice was different too, his tone almost daring anyone to disobey his commands. It was a sound of pure confidence, even arrogance, and no one on the field—not crew, not mercenary, not house retainer—no one—disobeyed his orders.

  Blackhawk turned and walked back toward a low stone wall. Carano and about twenty of his men were crouched behind. “You see that line of burned-out trees, Carano?” Blackhawk didn’t wait for an answer. “As soon as the enemy reaches that, I want you to open fire. Not before. Understood?”

  “Yes.” No questions, no hesitation. Just obedience. The jaded mercenary leader was following Blackhawk’s orders like a lieutenant fresh out of some military academy.

  “Good.” Blackhawk estimated the tree line was five hundred meters away, well below the minimum range of the Black Helms’s assault rifles.

  491 meters.

  That’s what he wanted: to wait until the enemy was in the true killing zone, and then hit them with everything all at once. They were mostly green troops, levies conscripted by the Revolutionary Council. Blackhawk could tell from the way they were advancing: disordered, clumped together. He wanted to hit them hard and break their morale before they could bring their numbers to bear. He knew it was ultimately futile. He could see more formations moving up behind the front rank. He doubted Carano or any of his men had been able to make out the distant figures in the near darkness, so he didn’t bother to tell them. Better they focused on one threat at a time.

  He pulled back from Carano’s position, ducking behind the shattered remains of an old storage shed. He crouched down in cover, observing the field from a new angle. He was on a small rise, and his location gave him the best visibility available on the night-shrouded field.

  He watched the revolutionaries approach. He suspected the early rebel armies had been driven by revolutionary ardor and hatred for the nobility, but those days were long gone. He had no doubt the force approaching him was sustained as much by fear of its own leaders as it was by foolish dreams of freedom.

  The men and women—and children, he thought grimly—now moving forward were pawns, caught up in the power struggles of others. They would do most of the dying, as they had throughout history, little more than slaves. Blackhawk would normally pity them, but he was focused on the battle, and old impulses rose up from the depths of his mind, where he’d kept them long suppressed. His pity turned to a merciless drive to destroy those who opposed him, without hesitation, without even a second thought. War was war, and he was in command. It was victory or death, and if it was to be death, he would make his enemies pay dearly for it.

  He heard Carano’s line open up, and his head snapped around, looking toward the tree line, watching the attackers fall in bunches as they ran into the deadly fire. The stunned enemy staggered, but they regrouped and pushed forward, driven, Blackhawk suspected, by kill squads positioned behind them.

  The revolutionaries ran toward the stone wall, right into the withering fire of Carano’s twenty troopers. Their lines rippled with disorder, and some sections stopped to return fire, while others continued forward, further disordering their already mangled formation.

  They passed by a series of small buildings and piles of ruins, and as they reached each of them, the troops Blackhawk had positioned there sprang out and blasted their flanks with deadly fire. The formation was reduced to a disorganized mob, and the soldiers paused—the worst thing they could do, Blackhawk thought, with the grim anticipation of a carnasoid eyeing its next meal.

  He felt the excitement, the satisfaction at crushing the first attack so brutally. At least three hundred were down, well over half the men who’d come past the tree line. Now, the survivors were panicking, and his men were raking them with fire from three sides. Barely one hundred were left standing when they raced back the way they had come. Blackhawk knew there was no escape for them back there, as their own brutal masters would cut them down for fleeing.

  Across the field, the defenders were cheering, raising their rifles in the air and taunting the retreating enemy troops. They had shattered the attack, suffering only a dozen casualties in the process.

  Blackhawk could hear them chanting his name, but he stood stone still, staring out at the field. He felt alive, his mind given over totally to the fight. He was like an addict fallen from a long recovery, savoring the first taste of his drug after a long abstinence. He remembered the feelings, the exhilaration of the battlefield, and his mind drifted back across the years. He recalled the glory of battle now, not the cost that had so long haunted his dreams. Right now his nightmares were forgotten, and images of victory passed
through his mind, of broken enemies kneeling before him, of cheering soldiers screaming his name. Let them celebrate. Let them shout my name. They’ll all be dead soon enough, and me along with them.

  “Anyone who retreats will be shot!” Tellurin was shouting to the surging mass of soldiers. “Today the revolution achieves victory. Today the long struggle ends.” He’d sent three waves to attack the château, each one larger than the one before. By all accounts, he was facing fewer than two hundred men, but they had shattered every unit he sent against them. They seemed to anticipate his every move, and they were always positioned perfectly.

  He’d faced the mercenary generals and the commanders of the noble troops before. Some of them were capable leaders, but this was something different. He had a feeling, in his gut as much as his head, that he was up against someone new, a military genius of a sort he’d never encountered before.

  He knew the enemy troops were better trained and equipped than his levies, and he was rational enough to understand that the enemy commander, whoever it was, outclassed him in every way. Every way but one.

  Numbers.

  He’d massed ten thousand troops here, and he was going to send them on one giant wave, pushed forward by Red Guard kill squads positioned to shoot down any who retreated. This time he would take the château, and his army would drive through, flanking the retreating mercenary forces and destroying them before they could regroup.

  Today the revolution would see its greatest victory, and the total destruction of its enemies. He turned to his aide, and spoke a single word. “Attack.”

  Blackhawk knew it was over. He’d seen the shadowy formations in the distant darkness, moving forward, massing behind the trees. The next attack would begin any moment, and it would be the last. He shifted uncomfortably, trying to move his leg somewhere it gave him less pain. He’d caught a round in his thigh in the last attack. Doc had put a field dressing on it, but it still hurt like hell.

  His makeshift army had fought hard, driving back three attacks and killing thousands of the enemy. But they’d lost a quarter of their numbers, and they were running low on ammunition. Leadership, morale, training, technology—they were all crucial to success in war, but at some point, the brutality of mathematics asserted itself. His one hundred fifty exhausted soldiers had no chance against the thousands he saw formed up and ready to attack. They would fight bravely, and they would take down hundreds more of their enemies. But they would die, all of them.

  Blackhawk could feel his second in command come up to his side.

  “Well, Ace, we did the best we could, but there are just too many of them.” There was an aching sadness in Blackhawk’s voice. It wasn’t for himself. Once more faced with death, he realized he didn’t fear it. Not really. In many ways, he suspected it would be a release for him. But the thought of his crew dying here tore at his insides. They were good friends, loyal and true, and they deserved a better end. “You should have left, Ace. All of you.”

  Ace smiled. “We’re a team, Ark. A family. There’s nowhere else I would be right now except standing here at your side. And Shira and Sarge and the boys all feel the same way. You know that, right? You pulled every one of us out of one shitstorm or another. Do you think we’d ever leave you to face anything like this alone?”

  Blackhawk stared back at Ace, his eyes locked onto his friend’s. He opened his mouth, but no words came. He just nodded. At least Astra is safe, he thought. And Sam and Lucas and the Twins.

  “They’re coming.” It was Carano, standing just to the side of the shattered building that Blackhawk had made his command post. “It’s time.”

  “You fought well today, Vladimir,” he said softly. “You and all your men. You’ve done an admirable job training them. You should be proud.”

  The mercenary looked back, an odd expression on his face. Blackhawk realized the dominating commander with frozen blood in his veins was gone, replaced by the grim adventurer he’d been before.

  “Thank you, Blackhawk. I never thought I’d say this, but it’s been an honor.”

  “For me too, Vladimir.” Blackhawk extended his hand. “If we must die, let us die as friends.”

  The mercenary grasped Blackhawk’s hand and repeated the oath. “If we must die, let us die as friends.” He nodded and turned to run back to his men.

  “Well, Ace . . .”

  Ace’s comm unit crackled to life. “This is Wolf’s Claw calling to any crew member. This is Wolf’s Claw, calling to any crew member. Ark? Ace? Shira?”

  Blackhawk’s head snapped around. He knew that voice.

  What the hell was she doing here?

  Ace grabbed the unit from his belt and raised it to his lips. “Astra? What the hell is going on?”

  “We’re saving your ass, Ace, that’s what’s going on. And that arrogant SOB you work for too.” Her voice was cocky—and one of the most beautiful sounds Blackhawk had ever heard. “And now that we have your coordinates, we’ll be there in a flash.

  “Don’t get shot in the next minute or two.”

  “My God,” Lucas muttered as he moved the throttle, putting the Claw on a course for the coordinates of Ace’s comm unit. “You were right, Astra: they’re right in the middle of a shitstorm.”

  He flipped the comm to the shipwide frequency. “Tarq, Tarnan—get those turrets warmed up and ready. We’ve definitely got some fighting to do.” He turned toward Astra. “Ace’s station has the cluster bomb controls. The AI will help you get them activated.” His voice became almost feral. “Let’s give those fuckers on the ground a demonstration of what the Claw can do.”

  Astra smiled. “I’m on it, Lucas.” She stared at the scanner. “There must be ten thousand troops concentrated right there. And more coming in from both sides.” She flashed a glance back to Lucas. “They sure managed to step in some neck-deep crap, didn’t they?”

  “It wouldn’t be a wolf’s claw if it wasn’t covered in blood and dirt,” he said. “Hang on, we don’t have any time to lose.” He turned toward the comm. “Sam, that extra power we talked about. Now would be a good time . . .”

  The Claw ripped through the atmosphere, her engines flaming yellow and red in the dark night sky as she raced for the battlefield. Lucas was pushing her as hard as he could, throwing caution to the wind. He knew the Claw, and he took her to the edge of the ship’s endurance . . . and then kept going, watching gauges and feeling the controls, but never once doubting the Claw would do whatever he asked of her.

  She always did . . .

  Lucas swung the ship around and dove, dropping from five kilometers to a bare one hundred meters off the ground. He could see the scene ahead, the fires and explosions of battle lighting up the blackness of night. He looked down at the masses of enemy soldiers, thousands of them, pushing forward toward the château and its outbuildings. He angled the throttle again, bringing the ship around for an attack run along the enemy line.

  “All right, guys, get ready. Tarq, Tarnan, you have full power for the lasers.” He stared at the display, adjusting the course, cutting straight across the widest swath of enemy soldiers. “Astra, let’s make those cluster bombs count. We don’t have many, but they are nasty as hell.”

  He couldn’t see the frigid expression on her face as she stared into the firing scope. If he had, he wouldn’t have worried.

  “Lucas, my man!” Ace thrust his arm into the air. Blackhawk almost did the same thing. They were standing behind the pockmarked stone wall of a partially collapsed building, watching the Claw tear across the night sky. The ship looked like some nightmare from mythology, a fiery dragon swooping down on the masses of confused and terrified soldiers. God, I love that ship, Blackhawk thought. Blinding bursts of deadly light flared out from her laser turrets, ripping through whole rows of men, obliterating their burned bodies and leaving piles of dead in their wake.

  But it was the cluster bombs that ripped the heart out of the enemy formation—in many cases, quite literally. The fuel air explosives dropped
from the Claw’s belly, and the big thousand-kilo shells burst open, scattering small incendiary units across a path five hundred meters wide.

  The entire field erupted into billowing flames, lighting the whole area like day. Inside those plumes, hundreds died gruesome deaths, their bodies incinerated by the raging fires or suffocated as oxygen was sucked into the whirling firestorm.

  The survivors of the Claw’s attack turned and fled for their lives, trampling the autocannon teams positioned to prevent their retreat. The revolutionaries were shattered, their morale utterly destroyed. Even their officers joined the rout, abandoning their rally points and chasing after their terrified soldiers.

  Blackhawk stepped out from his command post and watched the enemy fleeing the flaming nightmare of the battlefield. He still didn’t understand what the hell the Claw was doing on Saragossa, but he couldn’t argue the timely intervention had saved the day.

  He looked back away from the battlefield to the south. Lucas was landing the ship just behind the château, and Blackhawk made his way over, Ace and Shira falling in behind him.

  They walked around the manor to the open field beyond, staring up at the looming bulk of Wolf’s Claw. The ship had just landed, and they could feel the heat radiating off her hull. The airlock opened, and the ladder slowly extended down, settling in the soft dirt. A few seconds later, Lucas poked his head out and climbed down, with Astra just behind.

  Blackhawk walked forward. “What the hell do you think you were doing, taking a risk like that, Lucas? You should have been on your way back to Celtiboria.” There was anger in his voice, tempered with gratitude, but mostly he felt relief. Astra and the rest of his people were safe.

  “Ahh . . . well . . .” Lucas was trying to think of something to say, when Astra pushed him aside and walked up to Blackhawk.