Vengeful Dawn
By Richard Patton
Vengeful Dawn
Copyright 2018 Richard Patton
All rights reserved.
To my dad, Fred, for making sure the science-fiction is, at least in part, science-fact
To my mom, Ginny, for helping make the characters come to life
And to my brother, Jeff, for making suggestions on how to have badass fight scenes
CONTENTS
The War
The Veterans
The Agent
The Interview
The Ambush
The Call
The Tide
The Phantom
The Warship
The Signal
The Encounter
The Intelligence
The Reporter
The Station
The Lead
The Prison
The Traitor
The Revolt
The Debt
The Reprieve
The Evaluation
The Analysis
The Remainder
The Approach
The Race
Contact
Frames of Reference
Rico
Field Trip
Endurance
Empire News Nightly
Trust Issues
Retired
The War
On 2344.272, the I.C.S. Voyager Dawn was attacked by aliens that identified themselves as the Naldím. Voyager Dawn had unknowingly trespassed in their territory, on the fringes of the Reach Sectors, and was given no opportunity to leave. The Naldím opened fire.
After nearly eight months of struggle, the courageous crew of Voyager Dawn repelled the attacking force and sent out a distress signal. The Delta Flotilla of the UOE Navy’s First Fleet rescued them shortly thereafter.
As now patrol ships are discovering Naldím vessels amassing on our border, I – in collaboration with the Imperial Council – do officially declare war on the species known as the Naldím, in the name of the United Orion Empire.
Official Declaration of War (Naldím – 2345.084), Prime Imperator William A. Smith
“INCOMING!” Before the warning was even finished, the mortar rounds struck. Twenty-five seething spheres of brilliantly green energy were catapulted down at the Imperial line from the ridge above, blasting through the ranks with indiscriminate force. The survivors fell back behind cover to reassess their strategy, which had thus far proven to be less than effective.
“They’ve got us in a kill zone,” someone gasped, clutching a piece of debris protruding from his abdomen. The wound was deep, but adrenaline flushed away any reaction. Pain had to wait.
What was left of the command chain – a sergeant, freshly promoted – chanced a glance over the icy embankment they were hidden behind. The Naldím artillery was dug in just over the crest of the ridge, out of sight but well within range. There was only one place the sergeant could go to escape the bombardment.
“The ridge,” he said, “We go for the ridge. They can’t hit us there.”
“That’s a hundred meters of soft snow between there and here,” a corporal objected, “We’ll be sitting ducks!”
“Better than waiting here to die.” Not waiting for his comrades, the sergeant vaulted the barricade and began his mad dash for the foot of the cliff. The ice caved beneath his feet with ever step, turning what should have been a sprint into a farcical hop as he pounded forward. Behind him the crunch of boots on snow told him the others knew as well as he did there was only one chance for survival, no matter how slim the odds. Not everyone would make it to safety – that much was certain. But it was all any of them could do to try.
Fire rained down on them with unceasing ferocity, blowing the ground out from under their feet and disintegrating flesh whenever a soldier was unlucky enough to fall into its path. The casualties grew with every passing second until suddenly, in their feverish state of panic, the men found themselves embraced by the shadow of the ridge that marked sanctuary.
The sergeant held a finger to his lips, tensing dramatically as the sound of Naldím voices carried over the cliff edge. Over the wind and snow it was near impossible to make out what they were saying, but the sergeant didn’t have to guess for long.
With the unmistakable hiss of Naldím amps, a dozen massive figures dropped down from the ledge, weapons trained on the soldiers before they hit the ground. There was no time to waste. The sergeant yelled an incomprehensible battle cry and charged the nearest foe, driving his knife into its neck.
Dying, the Naldím grabbed him by the throat and hurled him into the snow. The other soldiers charged, smashing into the alien line with fury but not enough force. Freezing temperatures and days of combat with no real rest had taken its toll, and the Naldím quickly cut through them. The sergeant watched his men die with all the struggle of an infant fighting its mother. Slowly but surely the cold overtook the sergeant, and as the light faded, he could just make out the concussive tattoo of a Switchback rifle. The Naldím collapsed in heaps around their opponents, and the sergeant looked up on the ridge with only moments to spare to see a shadowy figure staring down at him. The figure watched him for a moment, then, seeming to decide that he couldn’t be saved, turned and trudged away.
*
“A resounding success, all things considered,” Sloane said grimly, fingers drumming on his tablet.
Rebecca looked up at her handler. “Was it?” she asked. They were well within acceptable casualties, but if only she had been faster, she might have saved the platoon.
“Don’t beat yourself up, Rebecca,” Sloane pressed, patting her on the shoulder before moving toward the door, “You did everything you could.”
Rebecca winced. That was not good enough for a Wraith, especially one of her caliber. What troubled her more, though, was how much it troubled her. She was not supposed to be fazed like this; a suite of cranial implants worked tirelessly to make sure of it. Reaching up, she felt her right temple, which had suddenly become a throbbing mass of pain. It had done so before - several times, in fact, since her return from Voyager Dawn.
"You okay?" Sloane asked, still standing just inside the threshold. Lost in her thoughts, Rebecca failed to notice that he had not yet left.
"I'm good," she said, only half-believing it herself.
"You're good," Sloane affirmed, "but you're not invincible. You've been going non-stop for months now."
"That's my job," Rebecca pointed out.
Sloane chuckled mildly. "Maybe, but even SWORD thought you should go in for reconditioning. That stint on Dawn didn't do you any favors." Leaving Rebecca to wonder what that meant, Sloane walked away, his polished browns shoes tapping on the cross-hatched metal floor all the way down the hall.
She could have accepted SWORD's offer. She could have spent a month finding her footing again on the Scabbard, but Rebecca knew that Voyager Dawn should not have done anything to her. A lifetime of training, thousands of hours logged on missions, and suddenly she was having what she could only describe as a breakdown. It infuriated her.
"Agent Winters," the PA system squawked, yanking Rebecca out of her reverie, "please report to the cab. Repeat, Agent Winters to the cab." With a sigh, Rebecca went.
The cab was a bustling hub, despite it being at its core merely a cockpit. Navigators darted about, corresponding with pilots, mechanics, and tacticians, while they in turn relayed information to each other. Lights flashed, alerts blared, and people moved at a feverish pace. It seemed so much more chaotic than it needed to be, Rebecca thought, given that even a cursory glance out the windshield would tell them there was nothing to be concerned about. The planet that stretched out in front of them was a blank and frozen wasteland.
Captain Clay, who evidently shared Rebecca's view on the severity of the situation, took his time in approaching after she stepped off the elevator. He leisurely signed off on a navigation chart, turned, and slowly ambled toward her. She didn't mind; it gave her a final opportunity to center herself before returning to the action.
"Winters - sorry," he checked himself, "Agent Winters. I know you Wraith types are big on that sort of thing." For the most part it was true: Wraiths preferred order and clear authority, and a lack of respect carried a weighty amount of meaning behind it. Now, though, Rebecca couldn't have cared less. Clay took her silence as an indication for him to continue. SWORD may have assigned him as her commander, but he knew very well who was whose superior. "That ridge was our last obstacle, as far as scans can tell. We're about a mile from the cave entrance."
Rebecca took a tablet from Clay's assistant as he approached and looked over the radar map of the tunnels they were bound for. "Any indication as to the Naldím presence?”
"Not a word," Clay said, grimacing slightly, "and I admit that makes me nervous. The hydrogen pockets are blocking any deep scans, so we're in the dark."
Rebecca cocked an eyebrow. "Hydrogen doesn't block a seismic pulse."
"No," Clay admitted, "but one could break up the pockets, and that would sort of defeat the purpose of our being here."
Rebecca nodded silently, but within started seething again. She should have realized that. Such a simple mistake was for marines, not Wraiths. "Where do you want me?" she asked.
"I'm glad you asked," Clay said spryly, as if he had not been the one to summon her to the cab. "I'm putting you on recon duty. Normally I'd send the marines ahead of the caravan, but given we don't know what to expect, I'd rather have you on the job. Don't engage if you don't have to, though; you can't report back if you're dead." Clay flashed her a grin and turned to deal with some other problem.
Without waiting for permission, and certainly not expecting any, Rebecca stepped out of the cab. Clay was a strange captain, indeed, a strange man, and Rebecca was unable to comprehend him. Every authoritative figure she had ever encountered had the same characteristics: stoic, firm, and unwaveringly dedicated to the task at hand. A lot, she realized, like her.
Clay, on the other hand, simply seemed to enjoy his duty, and saw it as recreation rather than a life-or-death situation. It was unnerving, another feeling Rebecca should not have felt. She shuddered slightly before heading toward the armory.
*
The snow was already compacted near the mouth of the cavern, as if a thousand feet had traversed it, or one exceptionally large thing had slithered in. The Tunnels of Carmine Five were one of the great mysteries of the United Orion Empire's furthest reaches. Each perfectly round and smooth path burrowed thousands of meters through ice and rock, gently glancing off massive pockets of hydrogen gas and slipping past frozen lakes. It was believed by the vast majority of the scientific community that long ago some race of massive worms fed off the hydrogen and carved the extensive network in a search for sustenance.
Despite all she had seen in her life, however, Rebecca could not imagine a worm so huge. The central causeway reached a breathtaking forty-five meters in diameter, its offshoots were almost as large, and the network itself spanned the majority of the planet.
Whether or not the worms existed, though, the presence of the tunnels was welcome news to the UOE since its discovery. Carmine represented a fuel reserve more plentiful than anything in the Core or even Frontier, and its uniquely concealing magnetic field made it a military haven. Now, though, the Naldím had taken a similar interest in it, if only to disrupt the Empire's supply chain, and it was for that reason a caravan of three hundred tanks, four hundred supply trucks, twenty command carriers, and eight thousand marines now trudged into the icy abyss, intent on flushing the Naldím out.
Rebecca stepped lightly across the solid ice of the cave's interior, intent on silence, though the vast rumbling of the caravan some distance behind her made her efforts moot. The Naldím knew they were coming, that much was certain, but Rebecca preferred not to spring any traps until she was fully aware of their presence and could deal with them. In her distracted state, she was taking no chances.
A solitary gun emplacement ahead told her she was reaching the Naldím's outer defenses, and she slowed to a halt, extracting a sniper rifle from the sling on her back. Leveling her eye against the scope, Rebecca scanned the imaginary boundary that the gun drew across the cave. There was nothing, not even a soldier to man the weapon. And then she looked up.
Half a dozen slim silver figures crept along the cave's length, making barely any noise as their claws dug into the ice, and with a lurch in her gut Rebecca realized what they were. Panta'kolos, as the Naldím called them, were the alien's favored mounts in battle; mechanical beasts with razor-sharp legs and weapons in every direction. To the Naldím, they were an artistic extension of their own bodies. To the humans, they were called Spiders, and they spelled death.
The Spiders unlatched from their positions on the ceiling and dropped toward Rebecca, several of their Naldím riders screaming war cries. Instinctively, Rebecca raised her rifle and took a shot before rolling clear of the metal rain of death. The bullet grazed one of the pilots and his mount landed on unsure footing. Rebecca took the small window of opportunity given to her and charged, leaping off one of the mechanical terror's legs as they slipped about on the ice and driving her karambit knife into the Naldím's neck. The Spider collapsed in a heap as its rider died, but now Rebecca had stranded herself amidst the rest of the Naldím, and even with her skills, killing them all seemed an impossible goal.
She attacked anyway.
Her knife flashed and her gun spat fire and she danced between the bladed legs as they stabbed down around her, jetting up puffs of icy vapor each time they struck where she had been just moments before. Another Spider fell, then another, but the cold and ice were weighing on Rebecca in a way the robotic mounts could not feel. Slowly, she lost ground, backing away from the fight and firing blindly to cover her retreat each time she did.
The three remaining Spiders pushed forward, an unrelenting swarm of blades. Rebecca took another shot, crippling one of their legs to the hiss of leaking hydraulic fluid, then lunged again, but suddenly there was no target.
Four streaks of white and grey camouflage yanked the Spider away, driving it into the snow. Before the other two could respond, the darting figures were on them as well, leaping over like rabid animals and tearing at the Naldím riders.
They appeared to be giant, two-legged lizards, mounted by humans in grey leather, and in her adrenaline-fueled state, it took Rebecca a moment to comprehend what she was seeing. She waited until the beasts had finished brutalizing the Spiders - which took only a few seconds - before speaking.
“What company?” she called out to the soldiers. The creatures hopped down from atop the gory remains of the Spiders, and the squad’s sergeant dismounted.
“Forty-fourth Scouts,” he answered, removing his helmet. He was grinning beneath it.
“You looked like Sector Security riding those things,” Rebecca replied, pointing at the beast. Her intuition as to the thing’s identity had been confirmed a moment before as the rider dismounted and the creature powered down; it was a Raptir, an artificial mount infamous for its use in SS scare tactics.
“SS doesn’t get the new models,” the sergeant said, patting his mount’s rump. “These puppies are earmarked for Naldím-killing.”
“Any special improvements?” Rebecca asked, stepping around the sergeant to inspect the Raptir for herself.
“More firepower, faster top speed,” the sergeant said, ticking off the list on his fingers as he went. “More intuitive terrain sensor for sure. Much better than before. And it has friend-or-foe recognition, finally.”
“All the R-and-D guys get really smart right when it counts,” Rebecca observed mildly.
“Yep,” the sergeant said, “you’ve got
to love war.”
The Veterans
OLYMPUS MONS AIRBASE - Notice of Unused Assets
100 m. Fuel Patch Line
53 ct. Quad-Barrel Missile Launchers
20 ct. Crates/Extended Switchback Magazines
1 ct. Captured Naldím Fighter Craft*
*Special Note: The Naldím fighter in question was captured during the fighting on Dawn-Six. As far as R&D is aware, it can only be piloted by Lieutenant Ethan Walker (retired).
The IMS Gorgon screamed hellish fury as it pulled away from its moorings and into the open air, retro thrusters kicking up cyclones of dust in their wake. A hundred meters from the platform, the main engines came to bear, white-hot exhaust spewing from them to push the ship forward. Slowly and not so gracefully, it reared skyward and blasted away, leaving in just a few seconds nothing but silence and smoke.
Ethan watched the ship’s departure from his apartment’s balcony. It was not prime real estate, only a few blocks from Briggs Starship Industrial and hence only a few blocks from the roaring engines that heralded a launching ship every week or two, but he did not mind the noise. The sounds of a starship were comforting to him, having spent the majority of his career in the Colonial Guard aboard one or another.
That life was over now. Honorably discharged with full veteran’s benefits after receiving a fair amount of commendations for his actions on Voyager Dawn, Ethan sought the quiet life. His war was over.
It was over for most of Dawn’s remaining crew. Whether they had been hospitalized like Ford Shields, or simply chose to free themselves from the horror of combat with the Naldím, they had seen enough. They had done their part, giving the Empire the warning it needed to defend itself, and the system, in turn, rewarded them. Looking around his reasonably-furnished apartment, he felt sure the government had his interests at heart.
Not everyone had such luxuries, though. There had been no choice presented to Rebecca. She was expected to return to duty after a brief recuperation, and from what little got through to Ethan over encrypted channels, she was thrust back into service. At the very least, he told himself, she could handle herself.
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