Exiles (The Progenitor Trilogy, Book One)

by Dan Worth

  The two K’Soth missiles had been fired by the same rail-gun mechanism that had launched the previous salvos of kinetic weapons, but these were unlike the others. The K’Soth had recently designed them in secret, specifically for surface bombardment, unlike the kinetic rounds that were also used in space combat. They had studied the conundrum presented by ground based energy shields which could only be knocked down via high energy weapons such as starship cannons and were virtually impervious to kinetic weapons: the repelling force of the shields being directly proportionate to the impact energy of the projectiles. Essentially, it took a very destructive weapon to knock down such defences, and whilst the K’Soth military generally lacked subtly and had few qualms about using such weapons, there were times when they might want to capture an installation without totally levelling it. This was one such occasion.

  The two missiles streaked down through the atmosphere of Maranos heading straight for the cluster of energy shields around the base of the temple. At a height of half a kilometre above the surface they began to break apart. Sections of the casing peeled away like angular petals, shedding a cargo of small, independent sub-munitions over the target area. These smaller rounds continued to fall another two hundred and fifty metres, whereupon they deployed small airbrakes and parachutes to slow their descent. By the time they reached their target they were travelling at only a few metres per second, a velocity low enough to allow them to slip through the defensive shields with little hindrance. They fell in tightly packed clusters over the command post, airfield and weapon batteries like a fall of explosive hail, detonating with a rippling explosion that decimated the marine positions.

  Simonov’s command ship survived the first few impacts: anti-personnel rounds that skipped off the vehicle’s armour. The next few rounds to hit were armour piercing. A staccato of explosions broke the craft the two, flipping it over and showering the occupants with white hot metal. Their suits of light armour provided little protection.

  Simonov lay trapped upside down under a buckled bulkhead. His command console was above him, pressing him down onto the twisted metal. Burning agony pierced his shoulder. He twisted his head around to look and saw only mangled bloody flesh jutting from his armour where his arm should have been. There was a duller ache in his belly: part of him was glad that he couldn’t see that. He coughed, almost passing out with the pain as his mouth filled with blood. He couldn’t move, couldn’t even use his remaining arm to free himself. Through his blurring vision he could make out the shape of one of his officers, crumpled and wreathed in flame.

  He struggled briefly before more sub-munitions from the second missile fell onto the command post, ending Simonov’s torment for good.

  ‘Captain, we just lost contact with the Marine command post,’ said Andrews, desperately trying to re-establish the link.

  ‘That’s an affirmative,’ confirmed Singh, grimly. ‘Looks like the Disemboweller took them out. Some new kind of cluster weapon, it totally bypassed their shields. There’s barely anything left down there.’

  ‘Could they use that thing against us?’ enquired Chen as she studied the growing form of the War Temple.

  ‘Possibly not. At a guess I’d say the warheads would probably be too small to penetrate our armour.’

  ‘Good, though I doubt that’s much of a comfort to Colonel Simonov.’

  ‘Agreed, Captain.’

  Now Simonov was gone, what about his troops? It must be carnage down there, Chen thought bitterly. Simonov, she’d only met him briefly but she’d been impressed by the man. She’d wanted to get to know him better and now she never would. She felt a twinge of sadness. It only added to her anger. My God she’d make them pay for this! She turned to Singh.

  ‘Position of the Crazy Horse, Lieutenant?’

  ‘Captain Akbar reports he is beginning his attack run on the dropships. The Disemboweller has powered weapons but so far they have not fired. The Crazy Horse group is still out of range.’

  ‘Excellent, we must draw the fire of that War Temple. Commander Ramirez, status of damage control?’

  ‘Damage control report that they have sealed all bulkheads and re-established the ship’s atmospheric integrity. The infirmary is overwhelmed with casualties though Captain. We now have at least fifty dead and many more suffering from burns and vacuum exposure.’

  ‘We have to take down that ship Commander. Our troops are getting slaughtered and we have to stop the landing.’

  ‘Captain our shields are not recharged, they’re barely at fifty percent.’

  ‘I’m aware of that.’ She addressed her fleet: ‘Thermopylae and Wellesley, you will lead the attack on the Disemboweller. We will join the fight as and when we can, the Beowulf and Tipu Sultan shall hang back and provide fire support. Chen out.’ She looked at Ramirez. ‘I told you I wasn’t about to get us all killed didn’t I? It’s all about balancing risk Commander. Helm all stop.’

  Chen looked on as the other two destroyers raced on ahead toward their target. She watched the War Temple closely. Its captain appeared to be hesitating and it was just what she had hoped for. A few beams reached out tentatively for the Crazy Horse group from the War Temple as the great ship indecisively swung first toward the charging destroyers, then back towards the Crazy Horse. It began to power its main gun, lining it up with the frigate, and fired.

  Captain Akbar must have chosen his helmsman well. The frigate dived at the last moment. The War Temple’s shot missed the Crazy Horse by mere metres, almost brushing the turrets of the rear gun deck. It ploughed onwards towards Maranos where the wayward plasma beam scored a deep furrow in the desert west of Marantis, forming an arcing line of white hot glass a kilometre in length across the melted sands.

  For the crew of the Disemboweller, it was a fatal mistake. By taking the bait and engaging the Crazy Horse group to protect the landing, its captain had left its vulnerable rear quadrant open to attack from the closing destroyers. The Wellesley and the Thermopylae were well within range now. Backed up with supporting fire from the missile frigates and the Mark Antony, they first neutralised the remaining flak cruisers in case they tried to ram, then opened up with all guns into the engines of the War Temple. Their combined fire at close range quickly overloaded the larger vessel’s aft shielding and plunged into the heart of its power-plant.

  A series of explosions rocked the Disemboweller as the Wellesley and Thermopylae pulled back to avoid the imminent blast. Sure enough, a cataclysmic detonation engulfed the rear of the vessel, splitting the craft apart and violently propelling its remaining for section toward the planet below. The huge flat panels of the gun decks and tapered bow section began to break away from the central hull as the vessel broke up. Chen grinned with satisfaction, and sent her congratulations to the crews of the two destroyers.

  With the Disemboweller gone, the Crazy Horse group was free to wreak havoc amongst the K’Soth landing craft. The squadron of small warships ploughed into the stream of descending vessels, lashing out with the combined fire of their rapid firing guns. The K’Soth landing force was rapidly reduced in a matter of moments. Hundreds of the tiny pods were vaporised along with dozens of the larger transports carrying heavy equipment to the troops already on the surface. A growing collection of red hot debris began to fall toward the planet to where it would burn up in the thick atmosphere. They had stopped the landing and secured planetary orbit, for now. But it wasn’t over yet. Lieutenant Singh bore the bad news Chen had been expecting:

  ‘Captain, my sensors are indicating that the K’Soth reinforcements have entered the system, they are on an approach vector and will be here in twenty minutes. Engine signatures indicate ten War Temple class capital ships and around thirty craft of destroyer size, plus cruisers.’

  ‘Time till our reinforcements arrive?’

  ‘The Gustavus Adolphus and Leonides battle groups will not be on station for an hour.’

  Chen’s heart sank, even though Singh was only confirming what she already knew to be the
case. They would have to survive alone against those odds for nearly three quarters of an hour in an already damaged ship. She doubted whether the reinforcements would be enough.

  ‘Captain.’

  ‘Yes Ensign Andrews?’

  ‘We have received an encrypted transmission from Command. The main fleet is massing for the counter-strike in the sensor shadow of the Argyle Dust Cloud. We are to expect them in three hours.’

  ‘Three hours? Haines must have something up his sleeve if he thinks we can survive for that long.’

  ‘I hope so Captain,’ replied Andrews.

  Chen looked at the woman’s expression. She looked afraid, hell they all were. She looked again at the wound ripped in the deck of her ship.

  ‘All ships, this is Chen. Good work in taking down those ships, but I’m afraid that enemy reinforcements are on their way. We’ll have to break orbit and evade them until more friendlies arrive.’ She turned to her navigation officer. ‘Lieutenant O’Rourke, what options do we have? Is there anywhere in this system we can hide?’

  O’Rourke studied his map of the system for a moment before replying. ‘Only one possibility, Captain. The inner system has been swept clean of all debris. There isn’t even a trojan cluster near any of the gas giants. That leaves us with the Kuiper Belt.’

  ‘Very well. Helm lay in a course for the edge of the system in the direction of the approaching relief force. Relay the co-ordinates to the other ships, we need to withdraw.’

  ‘What about the people still down on the planet?’ said Ramirez as the mottled orb of Maranos began to swing out of sight.

  ‘There’s little we can do for them Commander,’ replied Chen grimly. ‘We can’t hope to hold this position against those odds. They’ll just have to hold on.’

  Now facing away from the planet, the Mark Antony and the other surviving ships jumped to the edge of the system.

  Steven could see the dim point of light ahead of him through the fallen rubble and dust. It taunted him, disappearing momentarily as smoke passed over the ruins, blotting out the illumination. He shifted his footing and got a better grip on the heavy wooden beam he was trying move, letting the suit take the weight. A marine by the name of Ingrams braced himself against the other end whilst others stood behind them, ready to pull them free if it looked like the piled debris might collapse on top of them.

  Once the bombardment had stopped, Steven had tried to organise the marines in the cellar into freeing themselves from the blocked-in chamber. His assumed rank as a corporal meant that he outranked all of the marines still fit for duty in the cellar, their lieutenant having suffered a head wound, and he had assumed temporary command of the dazed, motley collection of soldiers. The demoralised band had welcomed leadership and he tried to get to know a few of them; providing himself with a suitable cover story as none of the troops were from the same unit as the man he had liberated his armour from. Christ, where was Corporal Jameson now, was he alive or dead? Would the armour Steven stole from him have saved him? He felt a pang of guilt.

  The building that had stood above had collapsed, filling the cellar’s exit with a tonne or two of masonry, wooden beams and other debris. They had succeeded in clearing much of this, but several larger pieces had remained firmly wedged in place, preventing them from clearing the rest of the rubble from further up the stairwell. This heavy beam had proved the most recalcitrant. Steven and Ingrams strained again: there was a deep creaking sound from the wood before the end wedged against the floor began to scrape slowly forwards. Some of the smaller pieces of stone wedged behind began a small landslide, rattling against the armoured grieves of the two men.

  They pulled again. Steven heard Ingrams grunt with the effort. Just a few more inches… there! They freed the beam as a cascade of rubble buried their legs up to the knees. Carefully, with the help of the others, they laid it aside then began clearing the smaller chunks of stone and masonry. The point of light was larger now. Steven could see it flickering slightly. There must be flames nearby.

  It was a further half hour or so before they managed to clear a large enough exit from the cellar. Steven emerged first from the subterranean prison that had shielded them from the K’Soth weapons, and stood open mouthed at the scene of devastation that greeted him.

  This part of the city had been almost totally flattened. The initial strike had shattered the buildings and showered the area with burning debris, and then the area had been pounded by dozens of the deadly missiles launched by the Disemboweller. There was little left except piles of masonry and timber, drifts of ash and jagged ruins that were once homes and shops and public buildings that still burned, filling the sky with acrid black smoke. There were bodies everywhere, some humans in armour, but mostly Dendratha. They lay in sorry charred piles, some where they had been hurled by the blast. Others still cowered in death in places that had offered, but denied shelter. Some were little more than immolated remnants of people. The smell was unbearable; charred flesh and entrails, burning wood and oils. Shit and puke and death.

  Steven felt the bile rising in throat. He bent double, coughed a few times and heaved onto the scorched ground between his booted feet. When he’d emptied his guts he wiped his face and tried to compose himself. He looked toward the centre of the impact point: there were the barest outlines of buildings upon the ground, though some still stood, strangely alone and seemingly intact, their walls marked by the burnt in shadows of departed citizens. A wasteland.

  He looked toward the centre of the city. The temple still stood relatively unharmed, wreathed in the smoke from the burning city at its feet. Despite everything it filled Steven with hope. Perhaps the others were still alive? He’d have to hurry, K’Soth landing pods were still falling from orbit. His eye followed the stream upward into the sky where a group of flashing lights were just visible at the limits of his vision. One of them blossomed briefly, a brilliant evening star. A moment later, the pods ceased to fall. Steven wondered if Chen had had anything to do with that, assuming she was still alive of course. Part of him grudgingly hoped that she was, despite everything. Rather her than them. Did this mean he owed her one?

  He squinted at the lights for moment, saw them move then disappear. Had they jumped out of orbit? If so, what did that signify?

  ‘Sir?’ One of the marines broke his train of thought. ‘Sir, what do we do now?’ she was shaking slightly as she wiped a smear of vomit from the corner of her mouth. The others had emerged now and stood in a loose huddle around the tunnel exit, some held on to wounded comrades to support them.

  ‘Try to get to the temple I guess. Follow our last orders; see if we can find anyone alive on the way. We have to hurry though, some K’Soth reached the planet and you can bet that they’ll come looking for us.’

  ‘Sir, we have wounded. What about them?’ said another, whose pauldron bore a medic’s symbol and the name Tomita. ‘We may not have the option of hurrying; the Lieutenant here can barely stand.’

  ‘We’ll just have to do the best we can. Anyone get anything on the comm?’

  ‘Nothing sir,’ said Ingram grimly. ‘Still, it could just mean that their transmitter’s down,’ he added, trying to inject some optimism.

  ‘Alright, let’s move out. Wounded in the middle of the column. Kovacs and Krohn take point, Nguyen bring up the rear. Everyone stay alert and be prepared for possible ambush. If it has scales, you shoot it, understand?’

  ‘Sir, look!’ one of the marines was pointing at the horizon, where a group of lights had begun to rise. More ships were entering orbit, dozens of them. Steven had no way of knowing if they were friend or foe. They would have to hurry.

  The Mark Antony lurked in the darkness of the Fulan system’s Kuiper Belt, the halo of sub-planetary objects that encircled the system, left-overs from its creation billions of years in the past. This far out, the light of the system’s binary was reduced to a faint glow, the stars showing as little more than two brighter points against the vast swathe of stars and nebulae.
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  Not that the crew of the Mark Antony could see the twin suns directly. The ship hid in the shadow of one of the larger belt objects, using the frozen mass to conceal itself from the searching sensors of the newly arrived K’Soth reinforcements. The other Commonwealth vessels had done the same, dispersing themselves among the sparsely scattered chunks of rock and ice.

  However Chen needed to see what was going on around Maranos. It was imperative that she stall the K’Soth fleet long enough until her reinforcements entered the field of engagement. If the enemy ships realised that they were relatively unopposed, they might decide to take the initiative and press on into Commonwealth space instead, with disastrous consequences both for Haines’s battle plan and the inhabitants of the systems they would rampage through.

  To this end she had ordered her engineers to link the ship’s systems into those of the monitoring arrays in the system via the vessel’s hypercom and disable their general transmissions whilst hacking into them to lock out access to non-Commonwealth users. This had the effect of denying the K’Soth access to long range tactical information about ship movements on the Commonwealth side of the border, whilst allowing Chen to keep a close eye on the fleet around Maranos as well as the huge armada massing inside the Empire. It also provided a faint hyperspace signal for the K’Soth ships to detect. The mass and position of the Kuiper belt objects relative to her ships would make it difficult to pin down, but it would leave the K’Soth fleet in little doubt as to the presence of a force of Commonwealth vessels of unknown strength somewhere within the system.