“What are they waiting for?” Briggs wondered aloud.
He was answered not a moment later. Out of nowhere, without any sign of its approach, a gigantic, seething grey mass materialized behind the formation. It was twice the size of the Imperium and moved like a sentient liquid through space, approaching each of the Naldím ships surrounding it in turn and extending a dull grey appendage out to touch it. The deposited mass crawled across the ships, piling onto their armor and morphing into engine-like formations on their aft sides.
Then slowly, almost serenely, the Naldím ships turned toward the Imperial fleet, and, with the alien form at their backs, attacked.
Frames of Reference
A Short Story Anthology
By Richard Patton and Selma J Lewis
Rico
Dawn Six was supposed to be Rico Fleishmann’s retirement plan. He had served a stint in the Navy during the Frontier Disputes, and another nine years aboard Voyager Dawn, turning down every promotion offered, and that had earned him – as it did for every Colonial Guard – a place in the colony of his choosing. But for all the secrets he was convinced the government had kept from him over the years, especially in the tumultuous and treacherous years of the Disputes, an alien invasion was the last thing he expected.
So, despite his inherent distrust of The Man, the first thing he did when the Navy evacuated him and his fellow colonists to Mars was enlist. They were fighting for humanity’s very survival.
“A Guard in FAST, huh?” Rico’s drill sergeant looked him up and down like he was the runt of the litter.
“A Guard that’s already fought Nellies, sir,” Rico snarked.
“Still a Guard.” The sergeant turned on his heel and walked down the row of soldiers standing before him. There were only a few veterans among them, and even fewer veterans of FAST. “And Guards don’t know what life’s like in the Navy proper. There’s none of that cutesy fraternizing bullshit. Civilians are livestock. Command is a myth to make you believe there’s some semblance of order in this shithole galaxy. As far as you know, I am your god!”
The recruits barked their agreement in unison. The sergeant smirked.
“That’s what I like to hear.” He stopped halfway down the line and tapped something into his comm. “Now, you’re here because you’re either extremely brave or extremely stupid. Or you’re compensating for something. Because FAST is not for the faint-hearted. First Assault Shock Troopers. We go in first, we go in hard.”
As if on cue – and probably so, Rico mused – the door behind the sergeant snapped open and a FAST soldier stepped through, decked out in thick plate armor and surrounded by a hefty exoskeleton. He had twin miniguns hanging from his shoulders and carried a Switchback in full machine gun configuration – a weapon heavy enough alone to wear down a normal trooper, with its enormous box magazine, thick gun shield, and myriad other attachments. But this soldier carried it like a toy.
“First Assault Shock Trooper Enhancement Rig,” the sergeant introduced. FASTER, Rico thought, smirking. R-and-D loved their acronyms. “Armor’ll stop a fifty-cal at point-blank range. Exoskeleton can lift in excess of two hundred kilos, most of which is taken up by that fritting arsenal bolted to the back of the frame. Like I said…” The sergeant returned to Rico, leaning in centimeters from his face. “… we hit hard.”
Seemingly satisfied that he had instilled some sort of fear in Rico, the sergeant resumed his pacing. “Over the next few weeks, you will be learning how to operate one of these monstrosities, and when you finish – if you finish – you’ll be dropping in on the Nellies’ front door.”
*
Rico was dropped on the Naldím’s front door.
Technically, it was a border world, where the line between Imperial and Naldím territory had most recently been drawn. There was a mining facility here, one of the few erbium mines in the Empire not yet stripped bare, and thus a vital resource in the war effort. And the Naldím knew it.
The front door in question was a narrow gorge that ran between the mine itself and the refinery. The Naldím had already seized the refinery and reduced it to rubble by the time the Navy got boots on the ground, but it was deemed unimportant – the erbium could be refined off-world. Imperial troops had since taken control of the mine and were locked in a brutal, unmoving firefight with the Naldím in the middle of the gorge.
“So the idea is,” Sergeant Belleview shouted, straining to be heard over the grinding roar of the dropship’s dust-choked engines, “we drop in behind friendly lines, assess the situation, and break through the Naldím entrenchment. Full frontal assault. Think you greenies can handle that?”
“Ooh rah, sir,” Rico shouted back.
Belleview jabbed a finger at him. “I like this guy.”
Suddenly, the cabin flooded with yellow light. The sergeant hefted her Switchback onto her shoulder and faced the door. “Yellow. Ready up!”
Rico reached back and brushed his fingers against the handles connected to the two weapons stored there. It was comforting about knowing he had both a minigun and a grenade launcher handy.
The transport lurched with a dull thud, and yellow turned to green a moment later to confirm they had landed. “Green! Go, go, go!” Belleview ordered. The door fell open into a ramp, and the FAST squad charged through. Seconds after the last soldier stepped off, the dropship rocketed back into the air.
Though deep inside friendly territory, the ravine was clearly a warzone. A foul stench pierced the air, a cacophonous mix of blood, sweat, and burning. The distant sound of gunfire echoed endlessly between the high rock walls. There was not a second of silence or relief.
Rico activated the air filter on his helmet and muted all noises not coming over the comm as he wandered forward. He was only vaguely aware of the other shock troopers around him. The horrid sights of men and women suffering and dying around him was something he had pushed out of his memory long ago when he finally escaped the Frontier Disputes. Now, it was all coming back to him.
“RV at the rumble in five mikes,” Belleview said, walking backward through the camp to address her squad. “If you need a minute before we head out… well, I get it.”
Rico didn’t need a minute. The professional dispassion the Navy had drilled into him the first time he had seen battle had been reinvigorated by his first few seconds on this world. He hated it, but he knew he needed it. In a moment of clarity, he wondered if that was where his distrust of the government came from, and his interest in unearthing its lies.
It didn’t matter now. Only one thing mattered on the battlefield: survival. Rico continued until he was surrounded by soldiers in lesser armor than his, desperately sending every bullet they had downrange at an enemy obscured by dust. He crouched in a foxhole near a battered and worn marine.
“Thank Hawking,” the marine said upon seeing the hulking suit of armor. “Started to think the Navy forgot about us.”
Rico didn’t doubt it. “How long have you been here?”
“Twenty-seven days.” The marine pointed at the command tent about fifty meters behind them. “See the FOB? That’s where the fighting started.”
“You’ve moved fifty meters in a month? Where’s your support?”
“There isn’t any. From what I can tell, this position isn’t important enough to commit more resources, but we’re also keeping two cruisers’ worth of Nellies busy down here.”
“Which is why command isn’t making any efforts to win.” Conspiratorial thoughts began to creep into the back of Rico’s mind.
“Got to keep them in a stalemate,” the marine reasoned. “If they lose, they’ll bomb the place on their way out. If they win, they get the mine and we lose it.”
Rico felt physically sick imagining that the people in charge of this mission would so willingly sacrifice so many for such a small victory. But, he supposed, he wouldn’t be here if the admirals hadn’t decided to finish this fight. The marine echoed his sentiments a moment later.
“But hey
, you came with, what? Two battlecruisers? More than enough to take care of their ships, and then we can win down here without it all being for nothing. And they sent you guys to win it for us.”
“You’ve certainly done your part,” Rico said, trying his best to sound sincere. Fifty meters may not have been much, but the marines more than paid for it in blood. He looked at the mission briefing scrolling lazily across his HUD. Twelve hundred marines deployed. Nine hundred and fifty-three remaining.
Belleview appeared behind him, breaking him out of his stupor with a slap on the shoulder. “Ready up, Corporal.”
Rico stood and fell into line with his fellow troopers. “We’re going straight down the middle,” Belleview addressed them. “Save the heavy weapons for visual contact. If one of you goes down, leave ‘em. The marines are coming up behind us. They’ll take care of the wounded.” She glanced over her shoulder at the dust cloud behind which the Naldím were waiting. “Let’s move.”
The twenty-man squad spread out into a wedge formation as they entered no-man’s-land. A few token shots of blinding green energy rocketed overhead – the Naldím knew they were here. It was enough for Belleview. “Weapons free,” she called. The squad raised their weapons in unison and loosed a torrent of bullets downrange, picking up their pace as they did so.
Their rifles emptied quickly, just as the first pair of glowing green eyes came into view. Rico grabbed the handle on his left shoulder and yanked it forward, pulling the grenade launcher along its guiderail and into firing position. With a squeeze of the trigger embedded in the handle, Rico lobbed a grenade into the enemy entrenchment. It ripped apart in a spectacular fireball, scattering debris and gore across the narrow path.
The other troopers followed suit, bringing up grenade and rocket launchers, miniguns, and heavy cannons, and bombarding the Naldím with impunity. The Naldím returned fire in earnest now, their shots glancing off or simply absorbed by the shock troops’ thick armor. There was no repelling FAST’s onslaught.
But then a bolt found its mark.
Rico barely registered it at first, caught up in the chaos as he was. The shrieking ball of energy flew out of the dust and slammed into Belleview’s face, shattering her helmet. She was flung backwards. Her health monitor on Rico’s HUD spiked and then flatlined. She was dead before she hit the ground.
The soldiers were trained for this. Rico had experienced it a hundred times before in the Frontier Disputes. But it didn’t stop the shock from hazing his vision and sapping his limbs of their strength. Win now, he told himself weakly, mourn later.
So he pushed forward, channeling the shock into rage. In an instant he was on top of the Naldím, hammering them with grenades and shredding the survivors with hot lead. The squad followed his lead. They fought in a blind fury. Two more soldiers dropped to the ground as they pressed forward, but the others did not stop. At this point, they couldn’t afford to – they were among the Naldím, and even a moment of distraction would get them killed.
Rico wasn’t exactly sure when the order to hold position came through; the fight may have lasted a minute or an hour. Whichever it was, the squad finally stopped, having routed the Naldím, and waited for the marines to catch up and seize the position. Rico looked back at the grizzly scene. Scores of mutilated corpses littered the ground behind them. The marines marching toward them had to step gingerly between the pools of corrosive blood the Naldím had spilled across the ground.
A lieutenant came to debrief FAST and sent them to the back of the line for R-and-R when he was finished with them. Rico shed his armor the moment they reached the barracks and fell asleep the moment his head touched the bedroll.
*
More ships arrived a day later, reportedly carrying with them enough supplies and reinforcements to take and hold the facility. The idea that they were only now committing proper resources to the fight made Rico’s blood boil. A small, underequipped detachment had done the heavy lifting and paid the heavy toll. Now the Navy could come in and clean up with little resistance.
A dozen dropships landed that evening. Rico had no interest in greeting the soldiers pouring out of them. The bitterness of the old troops towards the newcomers and the indifference of said newcomers to their plight was one of the aspects of war he had had enough of in the Disputes.
But when he heard no snark or shouting emanating from the landing sight, Rico was intrigued. He stepped out of his tent and saw the two marine detachments not scowling each other but embracing each other. The soldiers who had been stuck in this hellhole for the last month greeted the reinforcements with exhausted joy. The new arrivals consoled them, treating them to comforts brought from home.
Rico felt a lump forming in his throat. These were not politically charged soldiers on a mission to enforce the regime. There was no disagreement on the morality of their mission. They were all human, and they were in this together. There was no room for contention.
He heard someone – a commander, by the looks of it – announce that their ship was open to the troops for hot meals and entertainment. The weary soldiers gladly piled onto the transports. Rico didn’t join them. FAST was going to see this mission through. But now he walked with a spring in his step, knowing that however the admiralty saw their soldiers, the men and women on the ground saw them for what they were: people.
The rest of the FAST squad formed up on Rico near the front line.
“We moving out, sir?” one of them asked, loading a jampacked magazine into her rifle.
“Just got word,” Rico nodded. He looked down the dusty ravine, then back at his troops. “Let’s go save the Empire.”
Field Trip
Professor Holden herded his fifth-grade class toward the station’s main viewport, an enormous array of transparent carbon panels that afforded a panoramic view of the space around Tesla Four. There had been an announcement moments earlier that the IMS Imperium was going to be passing through the system, and he’d be damned if he was going to let the children miss the sight.
Successfully piling into the observation room, the children crowded against the glass, keen on being the closest to the hulking battleship when it dropped into normal space. They arrived not a moment too soon. The Imperium’s dish appeared first, slowly followed by the rest of the ship as it crawled out of compression, surrounded by a halo of light. The sheer size of the ship was staggering – it took nearly a minute to exit compression entirely, and when it did, its hull occupied most of the viewport. Holden listened with simple satisfaction to the amazed gasps and exclamations of his students.
He expected the Imperium to carry on, line up its next compression jump, and exit the system. It did not. Much to his students’ delight, the dreadnought came to a halt, positioning itself parallel to the space station’s outward bulkhead.
Suddenly the Imperium was not the only ship in view. A group of six corvettes dropped out of compression, quickly followed by a number more destroyers. So, the whole fleet’s coming through, Holden thought. The kids will love that. It certainly appeared as though the entire fleet was intent on stopping by the humble Frontier world. More and more ships poured into the system, ranging from the smallest corvette to massive carriers and battlecruisers. But they were not passing through.
Each ship took a position within a formation that was beginning to look disturbingly like a wall between the planet and the void beyond. Shit was the only word that came to Holden’s mind. Surely it was not possible that the Naldím were coming here. The war was in the Reach, lightyears away.
The PA system proved him wrong. A quick noise remarkably similar to the air raid sirens left over from the Frontier Disputes was followed by a calm female voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please. Military operations have begun in the system. Please move to the nearest airlock and await transport to the surface.”
As if to emphasize the point, a squadron of fighters screamed past the viewport, falling into a patrol pattern around a shuttle that had already detached from the s
tation and was bound for the planet below.
Holden spread his arms wide to shepherd his students into a tight group. “Gather up, gather up,” he said, slightly breathless. “Find your buddies.” The students seemed reluctant, either unable to comprehend the severity of the situation and still keen on watching the ships form around the station, or simply because they were afraid. “Everything’s going to be fine,” Holden added. He wasn’t sure he believed it himself.
The terminal was in chaos. Hundreds of people – families, businessmen and women, station workers – stampeded in a mad dash for the airlocks. “Stick together,” Holden ordered, taking one last look through the viewport. It was impossible to see if the Naldím had entered the system, but the evidence was there; the fleet let loose a volley, smoke and fire billowing out of a thousand guns in unison. It was awesome, yet terrifying to behold.
“Just keep moving,” Holden said under his breath, as much to himself as the children. They scurried frantically ahead of him, forcing him to jog just to keep pace. A shuttle just a few dozen meters away was holding its doors open, the steward calling for families and children, but by the time Holden’s group was near enough to grab the man’s attention, the doors were closing. The steward threw him an apologetic look, better suited for a minor inconvenience than delay that could have meant the difference between life and death.
An explosion rocked the station, sending cascading shockwaves through its core. Blinding green light and the shadowy figures of fighters flashed past the portholes as the battle steadily drew closer. Another shuttle blasted away, replaced a moment later by the welcome sight of a Navy dropship. The airlock snapped open and scores of marines poured through.
“You there. With the kids.” Holden was so caught up in the sight that he did not register the marine addressing him. One of his students tugged on his sleeve and pointed at the soldier. “Professor!” the marine barked. “On the Bronto, double time!”
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