They got settled in and readied themselves to weather the storm.
The Maraukians continued to push. Here and there, they were able to make some gains, but they still weren’t able to reach the trenches that the mergers had been occupying. It wasn’t a case of if but when the Maraukians would advance that far under the current conditions.
The accelerator tubes were all working overtime and only if it was an emergency would they get more to support them and drive the Maraukians back again. In the meantime, they were slowly advancing. There were casualties here and there, with the occasional person being killed, but there was little that they could do. Aid was offered to those who needed it while those who didn’t survive were taken back behind their lines.
There was no guarantee, even in this defensible position they had built up, that they would survive this fight.
Chapter 23
The Yard
In Transit from Sol
6/3555
Moretti hadn’t been one to argue with Jerome and the others who went off in the freighter, but he looked out now at the slowly moving monstrosity that he was in charge of and he worried.
Moving back to his chair, he pulled up the comms, hoping to speak to a friendly face.
High King Hael Desialias’s strained face popped up on the screen. Letting out a breath, the strain slackened off.
“M, it’s good to see you. How are things?”
Moretti wasn’t so sure how much the king actually knew but he had a feeling some of his news wouldn’t be a shock.
Checking over their comms with his usual precision, Moretti then slowly began to fill in Hael.
Hael’s eyes glistened with moisture as Moretti moved to inform him of the current situation on Indalia.
“Do you think they’ve any hope of getting off the planet alive?”
Moretti tried his best to hide even his own fears here. There were a lot of what-ifs, as per usual. “You know I can’t answer that. I do know that Jerome and the men standing with him will do everything in their power to protect the people there and to bring back those we care about.”
Hael took in his words and thought carefully while he sipped from a cup. “You’re not just talking to me now because of this. What do you need?”
Moretti moved to send over a file. This file consisted of various plans for their future.
Hael glanced over it, and then looked him straight in the eyes. “Mark would probably tell you this himself or Ava, but they have our full backing either way and with that, so do you.”
“You don’t think this will cause repercussions?”
Hael laughed at this. “In your line of work, my boy, I would think you know all about repercussions. Those we shall have to deal with. I’ll see to it that we start gathering resources more, and prepare Tricticus for your arrival.”
Moretti watched as King Desialias cut their transmission, a smile on his face. His daughter Ava was, after all, second to Mark, but not only that and they both knew it. The people of Tricticus not only respected her, and her decisions to become a merger, but would likely follow her no matter the outcome.
Moretti’s plans to align the strongest planets in the system were forming in his mind much better. There would be internal struggles and decisions for each of them to make. The side of the legion wasn’t something most would ever have balked at. But now, their greed and stupidity not only put Indalia at risk, but the mergers. The mergers who had almost single-handedly saved billions.
Using his skillful art of deception, M commed for the next person on his list. This time he was after information, hopefully more information to help bring down those who were now clearly against them.
Chapter 24
Eastern Defensive Line 317
Indalia, Otarvi System
6/3555
“Last mag!” Yousef yelled as he pulled the charging handle on his M19 as it hummed.
“Same here!” Augustus said as another plasma blast hit the armorite wall. It cracked with a resonating boom, which caused both of them to duck.
“We’re going to need to run to the armory.” Yousef sounded out what they both knew.
“Yeah. Damn.” Augustus changed to his centurions’ channels, making sure they set up ammo runners and to extend sideways into the less built and defended parts of the mountain range barricade.
“Let’s go.” Augustus took off in a low run so as to not expose his body to the firing ports of the wall. He pulled up feeds from where Mark had deployed his people. It was hell; somehow the Phantoms raced around without cover, firing and actually pushing back the Maraukians.
Each of them looked like blueberries with blocks covering them, thinning out at an unbelievable rate. The upgraded Hades outdid their predecessor by miles. It looked like a scene from a video game trailer as rounds, explosions, fires streams of white and gray as well as bolts of plasma and haze distorted and covered the battlefield. Yet the mergers danced their bloody dance. They were in one place and then another, always pushing and fighting. They were death incarnate: their blacked Pluto the robes of the reaper, their M20s the scythe.
Augustus and Yousef reached the ammunition dump and began reloading as Augustus kept watching his trained hands, knowing where to place his ammunition through hours of repetition. The scariest thing about the mergers wasn’t just their firepower and speed, but the way in which they all moved like a single being. They knew what the other was going to do before they did it and changed accordingly. They weren’t warriors or soldiers; they were all mergers, interlinked on a level Augustus now knew he would never understand unless he joined them.
General, now Legatus, Ortiz’s people seemed like maniacs as they perched in the mountains along the unfinished sections of defenses, raining down fire onto the Maraukians wearing less armored suits than the planetary legion for mobility. Each and every man and woman in the Earth Military Force and legion mishmashed force that supported the mergers were of the highest quality. They couldn’t fight the Maraukians toe-to-toe, but if ordered to by Mark, Augustus had no doubt that they would—to the last soldier.
Augustus’s HUD changed. Alarms went off as they detected a high concentration of anti-matter. He pulled up video of the area as the half working and not fully installed scanners finally tracked the object that had created the alarm.
“Shit.”
“What?” Yousef asked as Augustus was getting into contact with the centurion nearest the Maraukian herd that was protecting the bomb carrier.
“Shoot that Maraukian! He has an anti-matter charge! You have five minutes and then run!” He changed to the other centurions in the section of wall his HUD was projecting to be destroyed.
“Move outside of the blast radius now!” If they had only had all of the sensors up—if the wall had been finished, then they might have been able to prevent this. But that was in the past. Now he had to deal with the knowledge that he was probably going to lose that section of the wall and the men within it.
The Maraukian was hit, exploding among its peers, adding another crater to the scarred landscape. Yousef let out a heavy breath as another alert appeared on his HUD.
He cursed silently as he read a report on Edani, one of the more remote but still populated cities on Indalia.
***
“Alert on Edani. Once the Legion regulars relieve us, we’re to move to the city Edani. Their defenses were broken through. It seems that Indalia wasn’t the only place that they didn’t put much thought into the defenses and rebuilding them to deal with the Maraukians,” Sarah said.
“What’s the situation there?” Mark asked. What had happened was done now; they could only play the cards that they had left.
It looked as if Ortiz’s information and intuition had been right all along.
“The city lies in a hilly region. It’s the gathering point of several different valleys. There are two other passes through the region to the east, where several Maraukian assault barges landed. The main forces are moving for the point where the city Ed
ani is. The people in the city need time to get the hell out and retreat back to the city Ducharev. At the very least, we need to gain the people enough time so that they can pull back. We’re the only unit that has a chance of getting in there, and there are no Bellona units in the area as it is a pain for them to traverse that kind of mountainous region,” Sarah said.
“Okay, so say that we are able to hold the place—are they expecting anything else from us?” Mark asked.
“If we can hold it and get the people back, they want us to do our best to keep the Maraukians in check. They’re coming in waves so that it won’t be too bad. At least we’ll have a break between them arriving. Though every force is going to have more people than the last,” Sarah said.
“What about those other two passes that are nearby?”
“There are no forces that are overlooking them. The forces moving through them aren’t in a large number and the sensor grid isn’t the best. We’re getting images from the satellites and the ships in orbit.”
Mark let out a heavy breath as he went through the information. It seemed Edani was a cork in the bottle. Once it was gone, then the Maraukians would pour out into the low-lying lands and swarm over the cities based there.
Then there was the fact that between the northern and southern passes on either side of Edani, there were countless smaller passes. There was no way to watch over these all.
When the Maraukians had dropped on the planet, they had destroyed any sensors and satellites in their range and flying around the planet.
There were still some that were operational, and the space legion was doing their best to restore these capabilities to those on the ground.
They had ships spread out and looking to pass information but then they were only able to see the ground for limited periods of time. Ground sensors were the best at discovering the Maraukians’ movements as they would sometimes burrow through the ground.
This is going to be a shit show. Even if we can hold the city so that the people can get out of the city—which shouldn’t be too hard if we have the ammunition for it—they want us to hold it for as long as possible. Doing that, I’d want sensors all over the ground. Mark sighed and brought his issues to the other contubernium leaders’ attentions.
“What are you all thinking?” Mark asked.
“That we need Charles to get working on ground sensor units so that we have some idea when the bastards are coming from the north and south,” Polwell said.
“I agree,” Rachel said.
“This territory is going to be hard to work in. It’s practically a jungle. The Maraukians are going to be moving through it faster than we can and they’ll have cover from our fire—much easier for them to sneak up on us,” Chyna said, voicing his concerns.
“Can we drop some area denial rounds on the two approaches through the mountain range to the north and south?” Ava asked.
“I don’t think that they’d go for it,” Evan said.
“They won’t. The weapons are already incredibly powerful and with the amount of dust that they kick up into the air, the legion only wants to use them when there are confirmed Maraukian targets and the legate in charge of the planet’s defense okays their use,” Sarah reported.
“Okay, so that’s out of the equation,” Jarek said.
“We could put out some scouts in those areas, but then getting them back behind the defenses before the Maraukians move off their position will be a challenge,” Dodger said.
“We need to get more eyes out around us, or else I think we’re going to get encircled.”
His words captured what everyone was thinking. If they were encircled by the enemy, then there wouldn’t be much that they could do.
“Drop-ships are on their way to the wall position,” Sarah advised.
“All right, well, looks like we’re going to have to continue this discussion on the move. The higher-ups want us over there now. Drop-ships are incoming to give us a lift over to Edani,” Mark said. They’d only just got their briefing when they were already being sent out to engage the enemy.
This wouldn’t have happened to any other unit, but the Phantom Lords had been made for just these kinds of situations.
Chapter 25
Edani Northern Wall
Indalia, Otarvi system
7/3555
“The Fourth Legion has just collapsed in the center! Legate Revas has fallen. Tribuni Porz has taken command,” Tribunus Xiao said to Primus Legate Quina.
“Shit.” Quina looked to the information that flashed across her vision. She slid down a hill; rounds whizzed past her and trees let out a constant rain of splinters, falling down onto the legionnaires below.
She commanded three of the legions for the defense of Edani. It would have been more than enough if she’d had the defenses she’d been promised. Instead, she had half-formed foundations and faced a Maraukian horde straight on.
She had two legions deployed to cover the small passes that were on either side of the main valley that threaded through the mountains, connecting Edani to the eastern plains.
Centuries from both legions had been pulled to reinforce the 39th Legion that was in charge of holding the valley.
They’d lost their minimal defenses and now they were rushing backward in a fighting retreat, their legate falling in battle.
Losing the head of their legion was only going to lead to more insatiability among their ranks.
While they were going through a fighting retreat, as soon as they left the valley then they would be in open ground, Edani laid bare in front of the Maraukian horde.
If their formation fell apart, then they would be not only losing that center but it would be possible for the Maraukians to spread outward, hitting the other legionnaires and military formations that were holding the passes to either side of the valley.
Quina had been told there was a unit coming in to try to assist them and let her people pull back to Edani and evacuate the last of the civilians.
The sky around the city of Edani was filled with drop-ships that were moving people back to the city Ducharev.
Ground vehicles were ripping up the highway that ran between the two cities. They knew that waiting would mean getting caught up in the Maraukians. Already some forty percent of the city area had been evacuated.
There were still hundreds of thousands to be moved.
How the hell does Yousef think this one group is going to help us? Hell, they’re only just over two centuries large.
“Get some area denials in the depth of the Maraukians. I want to have the artillery barrages coming down right on the Maraukian lines,” Quina said.
“If we do that, then we’re going to start losing our hold on the passes,” Tribunus Xiao said.
“You don’t think I don’t know that?” Quina hissed.
“Just checking, boss,” Xiao said, not taking offense, trying to dissipate some of her tension.
She took a breath. Xiao’s words reminded her that although she was in the middle of a firefight, she was still the primus legate of these three legions.
Her vision scanned over the battlefield.
On one side, there was some plains that stopped at a massive mountain range. There were valleys, small passageways and trails through these mountains but the largest was a valley running between the two. The valley had been cut out by the water flow from the mountain ranges. The river meandered through the mountain range. On one side of the valley, there was a forested plot of land; the other, the river that had cut out the valley.
Maraukians couldn’t swim, so they were stuck on the land portion.
In one of the long corridors that the valley thinned, there was a line running from the mountains through the valley to the opposite mountain range. This was supposed to be their defensive wall.
Now it was nothing more than a line in the sand, trampled under Maraukian foot as the legionnaires continued to pull back through the forested areas of the valley ahead of the Maraukians. Getting into clo
se combat with the Maraukians was a death sentence for legionnaires.
Xiao passed on her orders as an alert filled her vision. Looks like we’ll get to figure out just how good this group is.
“Incoming!” someone yelled as drop-ships seemed to appear from nowhere.
“What the fuck?” Quina looked at the eight drop-ships that threaded their way through the valley that weaved through the two mountain ranges to the north and south of Edani.
They were just skimming the river that ran through the valley, meters above the trees.
Either they’re some of the most skilled pilots I’ve ever seen, or the god’s cursed craziest!
The lead drop-ship’s engines flared, followed by the redeeming and air shaking brrpt of heavy rail cannons opening fire followed by the rushing air of missiles and rockets released from their mounts, to slam into the ground, illuminating the Maraukian horde from behind, opening up holes in their depth.
Rounds whizzed and cracked past Quina, the Maraukians didn’t even understand the idea of quitting. Quina gritted her teeth, taking a knee and pushing up, ignoring the now familiar noise, that brace with death, knowing that it waited, just millimeters away but knowing that she had a job to do. Her ingrained training turning her from sheep to wolf.
Her eyes picked up on the once scenic area now turned into a shelled-out war zone.
Artillery rained down on the mountains and the Maraukians that were inside of the valley, not pausing for a moment. If they did, then the Maraukians would be able to gather their strength and strike at the weakened legion.
There was no way for more ammunition to get in and the wounded were being rushed back to the rear in vehicles and carried by their friends in powered armor.
Missiles whizzed overhead, ripping out trees and laying waste to the valley.
The rail gun rounds crisscrossed, legionnaires and Maraukians cut down by them as the natural vegetation between the two groups was churned up.
The Vanguard Emerges (Maraukian War Book 2) Page 15