by P. L. Nealen
Perhaps he should speak to Kranjick about Kunn. The man was a good soldier, but he was no leader. And that could be a problem.
Solanus was sitting with his squad, looking upward toward the ceiling. He was the youngest Squad Sergeant in the Century. Scalas stepped over to him. “How is your squad, Solanus?” he asked, crouching down next to the young Squad Sergeant. He had his speakers pitched low, so that his voice would not carry far.
Solanus started a little and looked at him. “They…uh…”
“Have you checked on the wounded?” Scalas prompted quietly. “Checked on the others, to make sure they are not wounded without realizing it? Checked ammunition stocks, equipment? Made sure that none of them are wavering?”
“I, um,” Solanus replied, “I checked on ammunition. And the wounded. They’re stable.”
“Your squad needs to have confidence in you, Solanus,” Scalas said. “That means that you have to show confidence. Sometimes that means taking the first place in the breach. Sometimes it means simply keeping busy, showing them that you are not simply wrapped up in your own fears and worries.”
“Yes, Centurion,” the younger man said formally.
“But they are not the ones who most need to see us at our best,” Scalas continued. He inclined his head toward the huddled group of Valdekan soldiers at the end of the bunker, near the doors that led to the passages up to the pillboxes. “Our Brothers are all trained and hardened warriors. Their morale is more robust for it. But the Valdekans, the people we are here to protect…they need to see that there is hope. That the Caractacan Brothers are here to help them.”
“But we can’t,” Solanus whispered. “We can’t save them. Can we, Centurion?”
Scalas shook his head slightly. “No, we can’t,” he admitted. “I did not say ‘save.’ But hope will give them the strength to survive. Let them despair at this juncture, and they will die for certain. Even if we must take Rehenek and leave them behind, some will survive. Some will resist. Some will surrender. But either is better than being slaughtered in a rout.” He stood up. “So, stand up, stand tall, and let our Brothers and our allies see what a Caractacan Squad Sergeant is made of.”
Solanus rose, squaring his shoulders under his armor. “Yes, Centurion.”
Scalas clapped him on the shoulder with a hard smack of synthetic gauntlet on hardened armor plating, before moving on.
He looked over at Volscius. His one “pragmatist” Squad Sergeant did not look at him. As well he might not.
Scalas forced himself to go check on Volscius’ squad anyway. They were still his.
Above, the ground shook and shuddered as the starships above rained down destruction.
***
Powergun bolts, HELs, and railgun rounds the size of small vehicles hammered at the defenses, blasting glowing craters in the landscape and the wall, while kicking up fountains of dirt, ash, and smoke, that would rise hundreds of meters into the atmosphere, where the newer debris would be whipped into a frothing fury by the storms raging from the passage of so much energy. Beams of near-lightspeed particles and collimated light stabbed skyward in reply, adding to the whorls of the storms.
Unseen by the men underground, eleven of the twenty starships above were hit. Particle beams carved two into separate pieces, to continue to fly, unpowered, off into the depths of the system. A high energy laser penetrated straight through the hull of another, setting it spinning. Two more were struck by both HELs and particle beams, and the energy dump shattered them into a thousand spinning fragments.
The rest lost reactor containment and detonated. Their radioactive particles would continue on their current trajectories, following their similarly stricken sister ships into the void.
Chapter 12
Captain Mor cursed as a world-shaking impact rocked the Dauntless on her landing jacks. The catastrophic noise that followed actually made him flinch. “Status!” he snapped.
It took a moment to get a reply. “The overhead hatch took a direct hit on one side,” the damage control officer reported. “The shot penetrated, and debris fell down inside the silo.”
“Damage report?” Mor found he was gripping the arms of his acceleration couch.
“Most of the debris seems to have fallen alongside the ship and missed the hull,” was the reply. “We have minor hull damage in Sections Four, Six, and Seven. One of the spaceport umbilicals was destroyed; Umbilical Port Three is gone.”
“Can we lift?” Mor asked, even as he called up the displays in a window on the side of the holo tank.
“Provided the remains of the hatch can be moved out of the way,” the damage control officer replied. “All ship’s systems appear to be functional, though we will have to run the reactor hotter to make up for the loss of the umbilical.”
We would, except that we’ve been running hot ever since we set down. The needs of combat meant that they had never drawn the Dauntless’ primary reactor all the way down to standby. They had no way of knowing when they might need to lift on short notice.
“Contact the Port Authority,” Mor said. Port Authority in the fortress was controlled by the Valdekan military, and so was directly involved in the defense. “Ask if they can get that hatch out of the way, or if we’re going to have to blast our way out to go support our infantry Brothers.”
“Blasting out would likely do far more damage to the ship,” Commander Fry pointed out. “If we do need to self-extricate, might I suggest a slightly more careful course of action? Like work crews?”
“Not the point, Fry!” Mor snapped. He kept his eyes on the holo tank; any communications from the Port Authority would appear there, unless they were audio-only.
“Caractacan Starship Dauntless, this is Valdekan Port Authority.” The woman appearing in the small comm window in the holo tank was stiff-necked and formal, her blond hair drawn back severely behind her head. Mor thought she looked quite attractive despite the scowl that she probably thought made her seem more professional. “Be advised, the protective hatch on your silo has been disabled; we cannot remotely open it. Do not attempt to launch. Work crews are on their way.”
“Acknowledged, Port Authority,” Mor replied. “We are deploying our own work crews to assist.”
The woman frowned more deeply. “Starship Dauntless…” she began, but Mor cut her off.
“My Brothers are out there on the line, under fire, Port Authority,” he said. “We need to be able to lift to support them. Time is pressing, and many hands make light work. I am sending my work crews up. Have yours rendezvous with us as soon as they arrive. Dauntless out.”
He cut the transmission, reached down, and punched the release on his harness. The ship rocked again as he swung his legs off the side of the acceleration couch.
“Captain?” Fry asked. “Are you really going to do that much good up there? Shouldn’t you stay here, on the command deck?”
“I was turning a wrench while you were still in school, Fry,” Mor replied, as he headed for the lift. “I’m pretty sure I can still remember how to run a cutting torch and a winch.”
On the way to the lift, he said to the comm officer, over his shoulder, “Contact Centurion Scalas and Brother Legate Kranjick. Inform them that we will not be able to lift to provide support or launch the dropships again for some time.”
The comm officer did not look at him, but replied, “We will not be the only ones. The Vindicator has been heavily damaged, and the Boanerges is as trapped as we are.”
“Then we’d best get to work, shouldn’t we?” Mor said as he stepped into the lift.
***
“Acknowledged,” Scalas called over the comm, almost at the same time that the heavy impacts of starship weapons stopped. Brother Quinias’ transmission had been faint and broken through the weight of rock and fortifications, but he’d gotten the gist.
“Brothers,” he said, his voice echoing through the bunker, “we are going to have to hold our positions for a while longer. The Dauntless is trapped in her
landing pit, and cannot launch the dropships to retrieve us. We could start back on foot, but Brother Legate Kranjick has decided that we will hold. If another assault comes before the Valdekan reinforcements arrive, we might be our allies’ only hope.”
He got murmured acknowledgements from his Squad Sergeants. He started to cross the underground chamber to Raskonesh, even as a new series of heavy impacts, or explosions, vibrated through the ground under his feet. He looked up. These seemed lighter, somehow. Not as much dust and grit was sifting down from the steelcrete ceiling.
“Artillery,” Viloshen said as he approached, noting the movement of Scalas’ helmet. “They must not be quite ready to launch next attack yet.”
Raskonesh said something, which got a feral chuckle from most of the Valdekan soldiers gathered nearby.
“Maybe they saw how we chewed up last assault, and some shiver of fear has even reached blank minds of vrykolok,” Viloshen translated wryly.
“Maybe,” Scalas replied coolly. He looked up again. He was not given to the chest-thumping that some men needed to get their morale up before a fight. He was cold, calculating. “Somehow, I doubt whoever is directing these ‘living dead men’ is as mindlessly aggressive and loyal as they seem to be. The clone assaulters might not care, but I expect that their commander has recalculated, and is not in a hurry to waste quite so many of his resources.”
Viloshen shook his head before even translating. “They have thrown thousands of them at us,” he said. “They do not care about their soldiers’ lives. If they even have lives.”
“They are human, are they not?” a familiar voice asked through Caractacan helmet speakers. “They breathe, they bleed, they move themselves. They have lives.”
“Father Corinus,” Scalas said, turning to the familiar voice. The Legio Chaplain was clad, as always, in black armor, with a white cross above the star-and-crossed-rifles emblem of the Brotherhood. He carried no weapon, but the Chaplain walked the battlefield without fear nevertheless. He must have landed with Kranjick and the rest of his Century.
Viloshen did not know who the Chaplain was, but pointed at the wall, indicating the devastation beyond. “They swarm like insects, heedless of their own lives, and kill with as little conscience as wolves,” he said. “How can they be human? They do not act like humans.”
“And that is one of the great sins we look upon here,” Father Corinus said, sitting down on an ammo crate. “Whatever tinkering made these men the way they are, it has robbed them of their very dignity, made them little more than cogs in a machine, instead of children of God.” He shook his helmeted head sadly. “I weep for them as much as I weep for the devastation they have wreaked upon the Valdekan people.”
Coming from a politician, the words might have been mere platitudes. Coming from Father Corinus, Scalas knew they were sincere. If there was any Caractacan who took his moral duty completely seriously, it was Father Corinus.
And given that no man joined the Brotherhood without knowing that moral duty, that was saying something.
He gritted his teeth Squad Sergeant Volscius spoke up, even as Viloshen translated what Father Corinus had said to the Valdekans.
“Men?” Volscius scoffed. “How can you call those…things ‘men?’ They are clones. Copies of human beings.”
Father Corinus’ black helmet turned toward him, even as Scalas snapped around, ready to put his subordinate in his place. “Copies?” the Chaplain said mildly. “Yes, I suppose they are, in a way. In the same way that an identical twin is a copy of his brother. Is he any less of a man because he shares a genetic code with his sibling? Is he a carbon copy, a ghostly echo? Or is he his own person?”
“That’s different,” Volscius insisted.
“Perhaps in origin,” Father Corinus said. “I will not deny that, although we do not know the details, there must be terrible things done to produce these clones. To play God, to artificially force life into one’s desired template…that is a great crime. But it does not make these men any less human. It only makes them the victims of someone else’s manipulation.”
“If they are human, then they still have free will, do they not, Father?” Kahane asked. Most of the men in the bunker had begun to gather around the priest as the discussion continued, even as the enemy artillery pounded at the defensive positions above them. “Then they must know what they are doing.”
“I will not dispute that,” Father Corinus said, “on some level. Nor do I dispute the necessity of killing them in combat. A man may understand his enemy, even have compassion for him, and still be required by the moral imperative of defending his home and his people to kill that enemy. I do not say that they are victims in order to argue that we must lie down before them. But the greater crime lies with whomever has brainwashed them, presumably from the first moment of their birth, and thrown their lives away in the pursuit of power.”
Viloshen had been translating the conversation to his comrades as Father Corinus had been speaking. Raskonesh spat, and snarled something. “We have seen more of vrykolok than you have,” Viloshen interpreted. “They are monsters, nothing more. We will kill them, all of them, wherever we find them.”
“Even if they surrender?” Father Corinus asked mildly.
“They do not surrender,” Viloshen said flatly, not even bothering to translate the question. “They do not know how.”
“And if they do not, and they still present a threat,” Father Corinus allowed, “then you truly have no other choice.” He sighed. “And so I fear for what this means,” he said quietly, “what this war heralds.”
Scalas could not see the older man’s features behind the black casque of his helmet, but he knew the sorrow he would see there. Father Corinus was a warrior’s priest; he did not preach nonviolence where such would leave the defenseless at the mercy of the aggressive and the cruel. But he was a priest, and saw all men, ultimately, as brothers. Brothers estranged at times, to deadly extent, but brothers nevertheless. War was his parish, but he saw war as all Caractacans should; as a sometimes-necessary evil.
A heavy hand descended on his shoulder pauldron. He turned to see the massive armored frame of Brother Legate Kranjick. The Legate was taking the time they had to be hunkered down under the bombardment to check on his Legio. All of it.
Kranjick didn’t say anything. He simply inclined his helmeted head toward the far corner of the bunker, near the tunnel leading to the next such shelter, where one of the overhead lights was out, and away from the group gathered around Father Corinus, debating the ethics of killing clones in job lots.
Scalas nodded, and slipped away from the edge of the knot of battered, dusty survivors. Kranjick followed, a looming colossus of high-tech armor in the dimness of the bunker.
***
“Hold it!” Mor barked, his voice amplified by his helmet’s comm. His armor was different from the infantry suits; sleeker, slimmer. It needed to protect him in case the hull was breached, not from close combat. It was still designed along similar lines, though the vision slit in the visor was wider. “Don’t cut that yet! Connors hasn’t secured the lines! You want to be the fumble-fingers who dropped half a ton of steelcrete on the Dauntless’ nose?”
He was not impressed with the Valdekan work crew that the Port Authority had sent him. They were nervous and hasty, and their urgency to get the job finished as quickly as possible had already nearly crippled the Dauntless with falling debris twice. They were scared, and they were sloppy.
Of course, as another rocket buzzed overhead to slam into a more distant part of the spaceport, he had to admit that he somewhat understood their nervous haste. They had been under bombardment in some form for days on end by then, and more and more of the rocket artillery was getting through the spaceport’s rapidly degrading network of point defense lasers.
He’d probably be jumpy and trying to spend as little time in the open as possible if he was them, too. Except that understanding that didn’t get the Dauntless freed from her damaged silo any
quicker.
The damage to the clamshell had meant that they needed to set up winches to pull the doors apart. These had been provided by the Valdekan work crews, who anchored the powerful motors with their big cable reels to the roof of the silo, before starting to deploy the lines to pry the damaged silo hatches apart. The anchoring had gone mostly according to plan, but they were in enough of a hurry that actually freeing the damaged hatches and getting them open was proving more difficult.
And the language barrier wasn’t helping much. Mor was doing a lot of pointing and makeshift sign language to get his directions across. He was still shouting and carrying on, but it was mostly noise to the Valdekans, and would have provided considerable entertainment to his own crew, had the situation not been as dire as it was.
Another pair of rocket projectiles roared overhead. The first went long, but the second impacted against another closed clamshell hatch only a few hundred meters away with a tooth-rattling wham. Fragments were thrown into the air, and soon came pattering down around them. Mor flinched just as much as the rest when a chunk of errant steelcrete smacked off the still-intact clamshell with a bang and fell into the silo. It probably wasn’t going to do much more damage to the hull, but he begrudged every impact against his beloved starship by then. She’d been battered enough, and this was no way for a ship to be destroyed, slowly crushed underground while she sat on her landing jacks.
“Connors, hurry up and get those last two lines secured and get tension on them,” he snapped. “Our friend with the cutter there doesn’t look like he’s all that certain that he should wait.”
His crewman was already hard at work, trying to set the pitons that would anchor the lines to the jagged edge of the damaged hatch. The pitons were designed to punch into steelcrete and then practically weld themselves in the hole, nearly becoming a part of the material itself. But they needed to be placed right, especially given the damage that had already been inflicted on the hatch. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to keep the heavy, armored door from falling onto the starship below.