by Jay Allan
Is that it, he wondered; is that what the Ancients foresaw, that we would be better able to fight, to kill, than they? The Tegeri weren’t warlike by nature, but they understood conflict and they could defend themselves when necessary. They valued personal liberty above all things, and they would fight, individually or as a race, to defend it. The more he considered it, the more convinced he became. And he saw the importance of the humans with far greater clarity, for they were vastly more aggressive and warlike than his own people, seemingly willing to fight for virtually any cause.
Indeed, he wondered if mankind’s role in the coming battle wasn’t meant to be the greater of the two races. Had the Ancients foreseen the violent nature of men and prophesized that they would be the primary force capable of defeating the Darkness? Perhaps the Tegeri’s purpose was to shepherd the humans, to prepare them for the greatest war the universe has ever seen. If so, Taylor’s quest was the most important thing in the galaxy, a matter of vital importance to every sentient race just beginning to grasp at civilization.
T’arza felt his burden growing heavier. If Taylor fell, if his army was destroyed, the future would be lost before the battle even began. His people would fight alone if need be, but now he was sure they had no chance, not without the men of Earth. If Taylor was destroyed, so in turn would all light in the galaxy be extinguished. There would be nothing left. No illumination, no joy, no knowledge. Only the silent Darkness.
It was midday on Oceania, and the planet’s yellow sun was high in the sky. The Portal connecting Oceania with Sisara was on a small island, far from the single large continent the humans and Machines had battled over for two decades. T’arza had commanded the New Ones fighting on Oceania to dispatch all available transport to the island. If his efforts were to succeed, there was no time to be wasted. He had to rush his reinforcements to the primary combat areas as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately, the battle on the planet had been winding down for several years, the New Ones pushed into an ever smaller defensive perimeter. The available transport assets were inadequate to the task, and that meant it was going to take longer to ferry the thousands of New Ones streaming through the Portal to the battle lines. And every day that went by meant more men and arms would get through to Taylor’s enemies.
T’arza shed his cloak as he walked out into the bright sunshine. Oceania’s climate was almost perfect for humans, though the Tegeri found it a bit warmer than optimal. Homeworld was a chilly place, its equatorial zone not unlike Taylor’s own home in the New England region of Earth. He imagined what Erastus must have been like to the young Taylor, accustomed as he was to cold breezes and winter snows. The Tegeri could not survive the heat of Erastus unprotected, not for more than a few minutes, and the New Ones that had been sent there were surgically modified to increase their endurance. But the humans just stepped out of the Portal into the brutal heat, and they adapted. Even men like Taylor, from one of his world’s cooler regions, acclimated quickly, their bodies changing, become used to chronic dehydration and constant, searing heat.
Yes, T’arza thought, perhaps it is the humans, and not my people, who are equipped to defeat the Darkness. Taylor must prevail. He must.
* * *
“What the hell is going on?” Colonel Marcus Halston stood on a large rock outcropping, staring off into the distance with his binoculars. Columns of smoke rose into the sky, the massive black clouds blocking the slowly setting sun and casting a dark haze over the field. The battle was raging all across the line, with an intensity the commander of UN Force Oceania had never seen before.
His positions were getting pounded, the field hospitals already overflowing with casualties. He’d rushed supplies and reserves to the front, but they’d barely managed to slow the enemy’s sudden advance.
“Where are they getting the strength to launch these attacks?” The Machines were advancing all along the line, pushing his overwhelmed soldiers steadily back. They’d been coming at his people non-stop for three days, massive assaults, one after the other, ignoring losses. General Jonas had been killed in one of the first attacks, caught by surprise and trapped with a cut off battalion. By the time his men had managed to relieve the beleaguered unit, it had lost two-thirds of its strength, including Jonas. Halston had been in the rear, supervising support services for the supply line to Juno, when he got word he had inherited command of the army. He rushed to the front lines to take charge, and he’d been running from one trouble spot to another ever since.
“I’ve ordered a complete recon of their rear areas as you commanded, sir.” The Tegeri entry Portal was on an island in the center of the World Ocean, thousands of kilometers behind the front lines and hard to reach with surveillance assets. Major Igor Sandrian stood behind the CO, holding a large tablet. “We’re having trouble penetrating their AA near the Portal. It looks like they beefed up their defenses there. We’ve lost at least two dozen drones, but we haven’t been able to pick up anything except vague reports of increased transport traffic from the entry zone to the front lines.”
“They’re bringing more troops onplanet, substantially increasing their deployed strength. That much is clear.” Halston’s voice was edgy. “But why?” The Tegeri typically replaced casualties up to a point, but he’d never heard of an instance of them increasing force levels in the middle of a campaign. Until now. He was sure of it. There was no other answer. “I want all offensive operations canceled immediately.”
“But sir, we’re in the middle of three major offensives. UNGov has given us progress guidelines, and if we…”
“I said all operations are to be terminated immediately, at least until we’ve got some fucking idea what’s happening.” Halston didn’t know what was going on, but he was damned sure he wasn’t blundering forward into some kind of trap. “We have no idea how much force the enemy is bringing onplanet, Major, and no intel on the composition of the new units. Until we do, we will fall back to the line of the Black River.” The waterway had been the main point of contact between the two sides for years before the Earth forces broke through and began to advance 20 months before. The river was a perfect defensive position, very deep and 2 kilometers wide along most of its path. But pulling back that far surrendered almost two years’ progress and threatened to let the battle for Oceania slip back into stalemate.
“Yes, sir.” Sandrian saluted. “I will see to it at once.” The aide turned abruptly and jogged toward the communications hut. He knew Halston was right or, at least, that caution was warranted. But terminating the assaults in progress and coordinating a fighting withdrawal over 60 kilometers was a complex operation. If they weren’t careful, the retreat could turn into a confused rout.
Sandrian felt the stress in his chest and stomach. It was more than the complexity of the withdrawal. He was thinking about how hard it was going to hit the fan when UNGov heard about the retreat.
Chapter 22
From the Journal of Jake Taylor:
Am I stubborn? Tenacious? Dedicated? Pigheaded? How can words that are virtually synonymous mean such different things in practice? How can the same trait be both positive and negative? Is it degree? Context? Or is it something we assign later, after we see if the actions in question lead to success or failure? A tenacious general holds out, standing in the breach, saving the battle. A pigheaded commander gets his soldiers slaughtered because he refuses to retreat from that same position.
Tony Black is my best friend. Was my best friend, at least. For more than a decade we stood together on the burning sands of Gehenna, battling against an enemy we were both sure was evil. We ate together, marched together, shit together. We backed each other up in every way possible. He saved my life more than once, as I saved his.
He swore the same oath I did, to fight our way back to Earth and destroy UNGov, to free a world. How can two men, closer than brothers, see the same thing so differently? I feel the urgent, elemental need to destroy anything that stands in our way, to leave no force behind us
, no survivors among those who challenge our Crusade and stand with our enemies. That doesn’t mean I don’t ache for the men lost, the victims of the Crusade. Later, when I have time, I will cry for them. But the Crusade is bigger than any of us, more important than any life, than any thousand lives, or ten thousand. If we succeed, we will free billions. Is there a cost too high to pay for that?
Now, there is yet another reason we must push forward. There is more at stake than just freedom. There is the survival of the human race, and the Tegeri as well. And other beings on planets far away. Tony doesn’t know about the Darkness. I chose not to tell him, not to burden him with another weight. He doesn’t understand the urgency as I do, the need to finish this fight as soon as possible, to press on to Earth and liberate mankind. To rally them to face a new danger. UNGov made the Tegeri into a false menace, a fraud to scare humanity into yielding to their rule. But now there is a real threat, one far graver even than we’d thought the Tegeri to be. We must have a world united, by free will rather than lies and totalitarian brutality, all mankind standing as one, fighting alongside the Tegeri against the greatest evil in the universe.
I want to tell my friend, to unload my burdens, even if only for a few minutes. I want to say to him I am not the monster he thinks I’ve become, that I feel the pain and death my soldiers face as acutely as I ever did. But I can’t, I won’t. It will do nothing but ease my own pain, and that is not a good enough reason. It is my place to endure, to be the pillar that supports this Crusade. I will not give my friend yet another load to carry. If the price of protecting him is his anger, even his hatred, so be it. I love Tony Black like a brother, and I will protect him any way I can. Whether he knows it or not.
“General, the enemy is advancing on all fronts.” Black’s voice was cold and efficient. Taylor had noticed the new formality in his exec’s speech, “generals” and “sirs” replacing “Jakes” as he reported. “Major Samuels and Major Young are both falling back under heavy attack.”
There had been communiqués all morning, but now the data was becoming clear. There were thousands of enemy soldiers, apparently fresh formations, plunging into Taylor’s exhausted and battered men.
What is this, Taylor thought, what the hell is going on? He’d hoped his troops’ ceaseless attacks had broken the enemy’s morale and shattered the combat effectiveness of their formations. For days his forces had pursued broken units, driving toward the Portal, the enemy’s link to Earth and their source of supply and communications.
Perhaps this was their last reserve, he thought, a final desperate attempt to stave off defeat. If so, all his people had to do was hold on until the attack spent itself. But he had no idea what reinforcements were coming through the Portal, how many fresh units the enemy still had. He reminded himself his adversaries had all the resources of Earth behind them. If enough reserves were moving through the Portal, it wouldn’t matter what his people did. They’d be overwhelmed eventually. That is why he’d been pushing so hard to crush the enemy lines and reach the Portal. As long as the enemy could bring in fresh troops and supplies, there was no hope of victory.
He looked at his oldest friend and second-in-command. He was hurt by Black’s coolness, troubled by their quarrel. But he didn’t have time for that, not now. The enemy counter-attack was unexpected, and it was a problem, maybe a big one. If there was enough force behind it, his army was in dire peril.
“We’re going to have to burn the rest of our drones.” Taylor’s voice was somber, emotionless. “There’s no choice. Launch a triple spread. That should just about clean out our stocks.” He hated using the last of his recon drones, but there was no other option. He had to know how many troops the enemy was moving forward. He needed to know if it was just a diversion, or if they still had enough strength left to seriously threaten his battered army.
“Yes, sir.” Black saluted crisply. “I will see to it now.” He spun around on his heels and headed toward the communications tent.
Taylor almost called him back, but he stopped himself. There would be time enough to talk to Black, to mend fences, when the battle was over.
* * *
“All units, maintain position and keep firing.” Young was shouting into the com. His hands were balled into fists, and his face was twisted in a determined grimace. He wasn’t going to fall back any farther. Not a centimeter. Not if he had to nail his people to this ridge by will alone. “All platoons, detach a detail to strip the dead and wounded.” Ammo was becoming a problem. It wasn’t critical yet, but Young wasn’t about to let it get there.
The enemy had counter-attacked three days before, and they’d been coming on nonstop ever since. He’d thought they were broken, but now they were getting new strength from somewhere. There were enhanced troops leading the attacks, but they were supported by thousands of regular soldiers, far more than he could account to UN Force Juno alone. Clearly, UNGov was pouring more troops through the Portal.
His people had almost made it; they’d almost broken through to make a move against the Portal. If they’d have gotten there, the enemy would have been cut off from all their supplies and reinforcements. It wasn’t hard to defend a Portal entrance…one machine gun nest would do it, at least for a while. No more than two men abreast could come through at a time, and they’d be disoriented when they first stepped out. But his men had fallen short of reaching the Portal. The enemy had managed to rush enough reserves through to seize the initiative and counter-attack, pushing Young’s forces back along with the entire Army of Liberation.
His men were exhausted. They’d suffered massive casualties and, even with the reinforcements Taylor had pushed forward, he commanded barely half as many men as he had ten days before. He’d launched the operation with a force that consisted entirely of enhanced Supersoldiers, but now half his men were unmodified planetary regulars thrown into the line as last-ditch reserves. They weren’t anything close to a match for enhanced troopers, but the enemy forces were also mixed now. The brutal fighting had cost both sides many of their elite soldiers, and they were throwing anyone who could carry a rifle into the maelstrom.
Young watched as the enemy surged forward again. They’d charged three times already; this would be the fourth. They were mostly regulars coming now, the Supersoldiers deployed in small teams to stiffen the line. He stared for a few seconds as his enhanced eyes focused on the attackers, climbing over the bodies of their comrades to push forward. Enhanced or not, Young couldn’t help but admire the courage of the men approaching his line. Such valor, he thought…has such courage ever been wasted for such a terrible cause before?
His men were raking the attackers’ line, dozens falling, hundreds. He had his unmodified troopers in the front line trench, but his snipers and handpicked crack shots from his Supersoldier units were deployed among them. The rest of his enhanced soldiers, the survivors of the original two battalions he’d led forward, were organized as a reaction force, ready to counterattack anywhere the enemy broke through.
He stared out at the field. There were thousands of men coming at his line. His people were outnumbered at least 10-1. He didn’t know where the enemy was getting so many troops, but he was beginning to realize there was no way his men could hold. Not against so many.
He heard a sound coming up from behind…gunships approaching. An instant later, his com crackled to life. “Major Young, this is Major MacArthur. I’ve got close air support inbound to your position. Prepare for FAE runs.”
“Acknowledged, Major. And boy are you a sight for sore eyes.” He flipped the com to the forcewide frequency. “Alright boys, grab some dirt. We’ve got friendly Dragonfires inbound!”
* * *
Macarthur’s hand gripped the throttle as he veered his craft down toward the advancing enemy formations. The strike force was following him in, three ships total, the battered remnants of AOL’s once powerful air command.
The fighting had been no less brutal in the air than on the ground, the opposing gunships tea
ring into each other, struggling with the last of their strength and ordnance to gain superiority in the sky.
Neither side had managed to achieve that, MacArthur thought grimly as he arced his craft downward in a sharp dive. They’d come close to mutual extermination instead. MacArthur’s three birds were just about all the AOL had left, except for a few semi-wrecks the technicians were trying to get back in the air with a combination of recycled parts and good hopes.
He mourned all the men he’d lost, but there was pride there too, admiration for the way his outnumbered forces had grimly held their own. They’d knocked just about every enemy bird from the sky and, while he couldn’t call his three remaining ships air superiority, he was proud of the near 2-1 kill ratio his people had achieved.
There hadn’t been an airstrike from either side in three days, not until Taylor ordered MacArthur and his survivors take off and support Young’s overwhelmed command. MacArthur knew the situation on the ground was desperate. He also realized this was going to be just about the last sortie for his forces. Even if his three birds made it through the AA fire and returned undamaged, they were loaded up with the last of the FAEs. They might manage one more mission with nothing but auto-cannon rounds, but then they’d completely out of ammo and grounded for the duration.
MacArthur had declared victory in the air war, at least in his own deepest thoughts. It was the only way he could reconcile with the losses. But he knew that success was only temporary. He had no more gunships and no way to get any. His birds were out of ammunition and spare parts. The Earth forces would get more of everything – ships, ammo, replacement parts – and probably soon. It would take a while to get new birds through the Portal and reassemble them, but he knew his last few ships would eventually be hunted down and destroyed. It might be a week, or two. Maybe even a month. But it would happen. And then the air would belong to the enemy. And Taylor’s people on the ground would be in a worse holocaust than they were now.