by P. L. Nealen
“Is there any sign of Century XXXIV?” Scalas asked. He was aware that Lathan was talking to him on a private command circuit. None of the rest of the Century was hearing this.
“If the intensity of weapons fire near the wreck is any indication, there are definitely survivors,” Lathan reported. “But we cannot land close to them. The nearest safe LZ is nearly a kilometer away, directly south of the wreck. Anything closer is either obstructed or under too much fire.”
“Understood,” Scalas replied. “Set us down where you can, and we will proceed to the wreck on foot.” He felt his guts twist a little at the thought. He was going to lose more men. “What does the terrain look like?”
“This section appears to have mostly been devoted to auxiliary support structures for the spaceport,” Lathan said. “Expect built-up…” he stopped suddenly, and the dropship rocked hard to one side, as an explosion went off close enough to make the ship shudder. When he spoke again, it sounded like he was talking through clenched teeth. “Expect built up industrial areas, with a lot of debris and wreckage. It looks like when that ship hit, it spread a lot of pieces over the area.”
It sounded like a nightmare to fight in, but at the same time, Scalas was confident in his Brothers. They were better trained than the clones he’d seen so far, and being able to maneuver would give them an advantage that they hadn’t had while holding the static defenses on the wall.
“Opposition near the LZ?” he asked.
“Not as heavy as it appears to be near the wreck,” Lathan replied. “Though that’s not saying much. Stand by. Touchdown in one minute.”
Scalas switched to the Century’s channel. It was as good a brief as he was going to get. “One minute to touchdown,” he called. “We are landing approximately one kilometer south of what appears to be the wreckage of the Sword of the Brotherhood. We will land, debark, secure the LZ and then proceed to link up with whoever survives of Century XXXIV. Once we have secured our Brothers, we will attempt to rendezvous with Commander Rehenek and fall back to the spaceport.”
Then there was no time for further explanation. There was the momentary feeling of weightlessness as Lathan dropped the lander straight toward the ground as fast as he could, trying to get below the firing arcs of any heavy weapons that might be out there. It was a standard combat drop, but it never got any more comfortable.
The landing jacks hit with a hard, jarring impact, and the lander rocked as the hydraulics absorbed some of the shock. Then he was hitting the quick release on his harness, even as the sides fell away, unfolding to reveal the landing zone around them.
Lathan’s description hadn’t done the industrial area justice. Directly ahead as Scalas stood up was a fiercely burning tank farm, belching black petrochemical smoke from shattered holding tanks twice the size of the dropship. A tangle of pipes stretched out in all directions, some intact, others smashed and twisted into jagged webs of metal. As he turned toward the north, he saw dense grids of containers, vast machines dedicated to the spaceport’s workings, and various outbuildings. Above the whole assembly loomed a dark shape, smashed and jagged, wreathed in smoke, and yet still bearing enough of the outline to identify it as a Spear-class starship.
The Sword of the Brotherhood. What was left of her.
He took all this in even as he plummeted down the steps and hit the ground running. He realized that the only reason Lathan had been able to pick this spot as a landing zone was because the outbuildings had already been flattened, either by artillery or orbital strikes. Ash puffed from beneath his armored boots as he jogged toward the far side of the LZ, dodging the jagged, snapped-off structural members and twisted, blasted sections of wall that still jutted up from the ground. The dropship pilots had needed all their skill to steer around those ruins to find a place to land.
Unslinging his powergun, he jogged toward the dark shape of the wreck above, already deploying his squads to the flanks. Through the drifting smoke, his enhanced vision could make out movement in the container yards ahead.
They had clones to fight through to get to the wreck. And if he was seeing things right, there were a lot of them.
Chapter 14
While Caractacan internal comms codes were supposed to be unbreakable, many of the Centurions still preferred to use hand and arm signals where possible. Because technology was a useful tool, but it was not infallible. That was one thing that every novice learned in the first year. Especially when tossed into a survival situation without half his armor’s systems working.
Scalas pointed to Cobb and Solanus, and signaled for them to set up a base of fire on the pile of rubble overlooking the nearest avenue through the container yard. To Kahane, Volscius, and Kunn, he indicated that they would move down the next avenue over, leapfrogging as they went.
The objective was not to kill as many clones as possible. They could probably hold their position and run their ammunition stocks dry if that was what they were there to do. They had to get to the wreck.
“Lathan,” he called, risking the comm. “Hold on the LZ as long as you can; we will extract as many of Dunstan’s men as possible and be heading back here as fast as we can. If you have to lift, just make sure you let me know; there will be only so long we can hold if we have to re-clear the LZ for you.”
“I’m deploying the defense guns, at least until the enemy starships get within low orbit,” Lathan said. “After that, we’re going to have to run for shelter or risk getting pasted.”
“Understood,” Scalas told him. “We’ll be quick.” I hope.
He jogged forward, through the drifting smoke, toward the nearest cover. That proved to be one wall of a wrecked outbuilding, that was still smoking. Considering it appeared to have been made of vitrified concrete, that meant that whatever had hit it had been packing a lot of energy.
Of course, he reflected, as he crouched behind the ruined wall and peered around it, there were plenty of weapons being thrown around that fit that description. He had been in some brutal fights in his time, but this was the worst he had ever seen.
And that included the handful of times he’d gone up against the M’tait.
The lane ahead was clear, at least for the moment. Smoke and dust clouded the air, making it difficult to see more than a little over a hundred meters. Even the image intensifiers in his helmet were struggling to deal with the murk.
Kunn and his squad ran past, ducking into the gap between two stacks of containers across the lane from where his own squad had halted. Kunn himself stood in the center of the gap, as three of his men set in, covering down the lane. One held high, the other low, and the third leaned out beside the two of them, exposing himself somewhat more, but providing three powergun muzzles pointed down the lane. The fact that he was one of the MT-41 support gunners helped.
Kunn, standing ramrod-straight behind the Brothers covering the danger area, looked around to make sure that all angles were covered before looking across at Scalas and signaling that they were set. His motions were stiff and precise, about as anyone could expect from Kunn. It was as if the man was a machine.
Scalas ignored Kunn’s robotic oddity. It wasn’t interfering with the mission. He just got up, brought his powergun to his shoulder, and glided out into the lane.
Behind him, Kahane’s squad followed, spaced out, in a rough file, weapons trained on every gap and overhead that was not filled by a Caractacan. Target identification was going to be crucial over the next few minutes; they were moving toward other Brothers, who were presently engaged with the enemy. They had to be absolutely certain what they were shooting at before they fired.
That was part of Brotherhood training, as well.
As he moved down the lane, Scalas swung to cover each opening he passed, keeping his muzzle trained down cross-passages until another Brother moved up to replace him. With visibility being as limited as it was, they could not afford to take chances. An enemy might appear within a few meters at any moment.
He reached an intersectio
n, or what had been one, until a high-energy weapon had struck the top of the nearest container stack, blasting one container in half and knocking the entire stack into an avalanched heap across the lane. He quickly took a knee facing down the left-hand lane, while Volscius took his squad and set up on the opposite opening.
The roar and crackle of weapons fire filled the smoky air, though aside from dim flashes from the direction of the wreck, little could be seen. There was quite a fight going on, but it was shrouded in dust and smoke and obscured behind piles of wreckage and containers.
The eerie quiet of the lane was suddenly broken by the snarling thunderclaps of powergun fire. Someone in Volscius’ squad had just opened fire.
With a glance to make sure that Kahane’s squad was covering their sector, Scalas lifted his muzzle and turned, looking back toward Volscius’ position. He couldn’t see much; only powergun bolts flickering into the murk beyond. Then a cone-bore round skipped off the ground not far from his boot with a nasty buzz, confirming that Volscius’ men weren’t shooting at shadows.
A moment later, the lane was filled with projectiles, shredding the tattered whorls of smoke and dust, the sharp cracks of their passage muted by his helmet. He threw himself behind cover; his armor could stand up to a lot, but that didn’t mean that standing in the open under fire was a good idea.
Even so, they couldn’t afford to get bogged down there. There were going to be a lot of clones between them and the wreck of the Sword, but there were also starships inbound, ready to rain destruction down on their heads. Time was short.
Taking a deep breath, he heaved himself to his feet, bellowed, “On me!” and began to run forward, into the teeth of the clone rifle fire.
A shot spanged off his shoulder pauldron, but didn’t penetrate. He answered with a fast trio of powergun bolts, even as he neared Volscius’ position and started to make out the dim shapes of clone troops in the murk. There were a lot of them, as he’d come to expect. But they also weren’t using fire and maneuver, either. They were simply rushing forward, firing from the hip, just like the assault on the breach, back at the wall.
Volscius’ support gunners opened fire with their MT-41s, the bulky, heavy powerguns seeming to rake the oncoming mob of clones with what looked almost like continuous, blue-tinged beams of destruction. The clones fell as fast as they came, mowed down like grain, but kept charging, and kept shooting.
Scalas added his fire, dropping two more with as many shots, as he came abreast of Volscius, who was barricaded against a container, leaning out to fire on the mass of clones. “We need to push through,” Scalas said. “We can’t stay here!”
“There are too many of them!” Volscius protested, his voice amplified by his helmet to be heard over the thunder of powergun fire. “Even if we kill one with every shot, they’ll mow us down!”
Scalas shot three more, as fast as he could transition between targets. Heat was already starting to ripple off his barrel, though it was nothing compared to the support guns. That was what the MT-41s had the thick cooling sleeves for. “If we push forward, some of us die, but we get to the Sword,” he said. “If we stay here, eventually we either get overrun anyway, or the starships kill us from the upper atmosphere. And I wasn’t suggesting. Move!”
Scalas might have been justified hanging back to coordinate his men. That, however, was not the Caractacan way. Firing as fast as he could switch targets and cycle the trigger, he ducked out into the lane and ran for the next available cover, a narrow gap between containers. Two more cone-bore rounds skipped off his armor, and a third struck his breastplate almost dead center, staggering him, but then he was in the alcove, dumping the rest of his magazine into the mob of clones still milling beyond the stacks of smoking bodies that the support gunners had laid in windrows in the lane in front of him.
A sudden flickering, thunderous hurricane of powergun bolts tore into the flank of the clone unit, through the next lane over. It seemed that Cobb had moved the support by fire element up as soon as he’d heard the shooting.
A crackling voice speaking an unfamiliar language—or maybe a code—boomed out over the smoky alleyway. Almost instantly, the clones still standing started falling back behind a blizzard of gunfire. The Caractacans kept up their own fire, answering hypervelocity bullets with sun-hot plasma bolts.
Then the last of the clones disappeared into the smoke, and there were no more targets. The powergun fire slackened; the Brothers only shot at what they could see.
“Status reports!” Scalas barked. The Squad Sergeants reported in. Volscius had taken some losses. Urien, Tommas, and Borgin were down. Fredrich had taken a bullet through a joint in his armor and was out of action, though he looked like he’d survive.
A lot of ammunition had been expended. And they still had a long way to go.
“Move up, and watch for flankers,” Scalas instructed. He didn’t know what that voice had been, but his suspicions that the clone cannon fodder had trained commanders were getting stronger. It was a horrific, inhuman way of waging war, but he supposed that if one viewed the clones as expendable, easily replaceable assets, it made a cruel kind of economic sense.
Ducking down the next lane, he led the way toward the Sword. The sounds of battle coming from the wreck were only getting more intense.
***
Scalas dashed for another half-destroyed hunk of machinery, the purpose of which was doubtless lost to time and the powergun bolt that had shattered it. Crouching in the lee of the warped and blackened metal, he peered out, his helmet’s enhanced vision helping paint him a picture of what he was looking at.
They had broken out of the container yard after only a few more sporadic clashes with more clones. The pattern had generally held; the clones themselves seemed almost mindlessly aggressive, yet were completely obedient to the commands blasted out by some unseen loudspeaker. He had yet to glimpse one of the commanders, but had already resolved to put a powergun bolt through the helmet of the first one he saw.
Most of the ground around the wreck of the Sword of the Brotherhood had been blasted to dust. It was apparent that there had been buildings there; the remnants of foundations were still clear among the craters, but little remained that stood more than knee-high. Since most of the craters weren’t massive, vitrified pits of blackened glass, he had to assume that the destruction was due to heavy ground fighting, rather than starship bombardment.
The ship itself had come down at an angle, striking near the engine bells and then tipping over to hit the ground. The impact had burst the hull in several places, and there were even more gaping holes along her visible flank from weapons fire. The area around the reactor was still glowing; it was going to be ferociously hot, both in terms of thermal energy and hard radiation, though the emergency dump should have kept most of the contamination down.
If there hadn’t been an emergency shutdown, then there wouldn’t have been a starship left. Nor would there be much of the surrounding landscape, either.
The crash had thrown up a humped berm of debris, and the survivors appeared to be using it as fortifications. Ferocious powergun fire was blasting from the crater rim, giving the distinct impression of an intense lightning storm, at ground level, centered around the wreck of the Sword.
And the defenders certainly had no shortage of targets.
The ground around the crash site was swarming with clones and Unity fighting vehicles. The angular tanks that they had fought at the breach were closing in, even as hundreds of infantry fired on the defenders from craters, wreckage, and shattered buildings.
Kahane leaned out from behind Scalas and scanned the open ground between them and the wreckage. He whistled. “That’s going to be interesting,” he said.
Scalas watched a platoon of tanks rumble past, apparently oblivious to the now grayish-brown armored forms hidden in the dust and ruins. He was wracking his brain, trying to think of a plan. They had three less-than-intact Centuries, against the thousands that were out there on the four
hundred meters of open ground between them and the remains of Century XXXIV. They could do a lot of damage, but could they win through to their beleaguered brothers, and get out, without getting slaughtered to a man?
“Costigan, this is Kranjick,” the familiar voice rumbled over the comm. “Report your position.”
Costigan came over the comm, rattling off a set of numbered coordinates. A touch of a few keys set into his gauntlet brought a faint overlay map up in Scalas’ visor, pinpointing the cavalry Century’s position relative to his own. “We have been slowed by obstacles and dense structures,” Costigan reported. “We should have line of sight on the crash site within the next five minutes.”
“I need your tanks to go hull-down to provide direct fire support,” Kranjick said. “There are enough enemy vehicles out on the open ground between our last covered and concealed positions and the crash site that I do not want to risk a direct attack. I have identified a covered route that should allow the infantry Centuries to cross to the crater, provided your vehicles can keep the enemy occupied.”
As Kranjick said it, the overlay inside Scalas helmet flashed an indicator, showing him the path of craters and low ground that might provide enough cover to cross to the beleaguered defenders. It would still be risky, but if the tanks could keep the enemy’s attention…
“Acknowledged,” Costigan replied. “Any chance of direct support from the starships?”
“Not yet,” Kranjick said. “It’s obvious that the enemy in this vicinity can present enough massed fire to bring down a Spear class. I want to thin them out a bit before we risk losing another of our starships.”
“Confirmed,” Costigan said, a note of resignation in his voice. Scalas understood the other man’s misgivings. The starships’ batteries packed far more firepower than even Costigan’s tanks, especially the Challenger’s. But losing the Sword of the Brotherhood had already placed them at a severe disadvantage, making the surviving ships that much more precious. Men on the ground, with cover, had a chance that a starship, hovering on its drive plume, might not, at least until the situation on the ground changed.