Starblood: A Military Space Opera Series (War Undying Book 1)

by N. D. Redding

  “Technomancers! Don’t hold back on ammo as an assault bot won’t do you any good if you’re dead!”

  Dozens of explosions shook the very ground we stood on and was followed by a very brief ceasefire where the Aloi had no idea what the hell was even going on. The seconds proved to be worth their time in detrium as many specialists managed to group up and form small squads or larger units.

  Layla charged into an oncoming group of new troopers while Leo provided her with cover fire, hitting everything that moved with his new rifle. It was only then that I noticed they finally wore some real armor. No wonder she wasn’t afraid to charge an enemy line while protected from anything but higher-caliber rounds.

  “Skull Company,” Tailor’s voice rang out over the INAS. “Establish a defensive position within this perimeter.” A green circle appeared amidst countless red dots. “Stay put as we’re outgunned by the enemy, especially since Qualt is afraid to move. Don’t expect any reinforcements for the time being. What’s more, our regiments aren’t doing well either.”

  “Do we have to stay here and die?” Sergeant Wish’s voice rang out over the INAS. It was my thought exactly as staying in one place was sure to get us killed.

  “It’s survival time, soldiers. We are strewn across the mine so meet up with as many squads in your immediate vicinity as possible and hunker down.”

  This was bullshit. This was Winters-style bullshit. He had no idea what to do next so he made us wait, that indecisive asshole.

  “Captain,” I said as I watched with one eye how Leo and Layla battled it out with a dozen Aloi soldiers. “We have thousands approaching our position. We are dead meat out here. We need to move.”

  “Orders, Stavos.”

  “Fuck his orders, sir!” I replied and cut the connection as I turned to my squad.

  Squads 65 and 33 were hunkered down just across from our position, and if I wanted to pull off what I had come up with, I’d need them.

  “I’m pulling my familiars back so provide some cover,” I ordered over the squad channel. Layla stormed into an oncoming group of Aloi as Leo turned to the other side and laid down cover from her flank.

  “What next, sir?” Leo asked, sounding much calmer than I thought he would be.

  “We’ll catch up with the other two squads and move to a more defensible position, but before we get there, we got a shit ton of killing to do!”

  15

  Squads 65 and 33 were hunkered down in a roofless storeroom at the end of a street creeping with Aloi soldiers. The buildings gave the Raintroopers excellent cover from which they could easily snipe at anyone foolish enough to move from behind cover. We first tried the careful approach of Leo taking them down one by one with his elemental rifle. I supplied him with repeater-slugs which bore fist-sized holes into the Cantari faces and then returned to his gun so he would preserve ammo. That left me at 90% O-Nan cells and got us literally nowhere.

  Layla was useless in the situation we found ourselves in. She kept her trigger on her rifle but that was far from her weapon of choice. She was a Tier 5 Brawler which meant she couldn’t shoot for shit, to put it delicately. It was Bucky who saved the day with his new defensive module.

  I activated his Vibro-Shield which projected a 9x9 bluish shield that deflected almost any kind of projectile if it came from the front. We crept along with Bucky and made our way down the street as he absorbed the incoming fire but also gunned down anything that we could lay our eyes on.

  The Cantari bombarded us with everything they had sometimes halfway up the road, but Beast chimed in there and sent several first-sized shrapnel grenades flying into the bunker. It tore the assailants to pieces but more kept flanking us, so every now and then a projectile struck our H-Nans. Bucky’s shield started to flicker close to our goal.

  “We run on five,” I ordered the two in my squad. “At one, start unloading on their position and hit it.”

  “Sir,” both Leo and Layla replied excitedly. Something had taken over and fear that was present earlier was all gone now.

  “Three… two… one!” I snapped and let out a burst of nanite projectiles that ate through steel walls and found their targets no matter if they were hunkered down, but it cost me some cells. Beast released another wave of covering fire as the two started running.

  I followed after them with Bucky and Beast close behind. Sergeant Ginsk of Squad 65 met us with hearty laughter.

  “Took you long enough, Stavos! Where the fuck have you been?”

  “Watching you struggle, Ginsk. Report if you don’t want me to go back.”

  The man narrowed his eyes on mine and flat-out sneered.

  “First off, Stavos, I don’t report to you, but if you already have to know, Squad 33 here lost their squad leader at the drop. That Technomancer shield didn’t work so well for him.”

  I felt the jab but decided to ignore it.

  “Sorry to hear that, 33, but what about your squad?”

  “We lost one. Jeremy Friar was the name. He was a good man. Duskwalker-class specialist.”

  There was a very brief but compassionate moment of silence that lingered between us, and I knew he appreciated it.

  “I’m sorry to hear,” I finally said with some compassion.

  “That’s the war for you,” the 68-year-old Warwalker said.

  Sergeant Ginsk was a veteran if you ever saw one. He never even tried to climb through the ranks. Some people preferred the stench of burnt flesh to the comfort of pencil-pushing. He was a giant among his men, both figuratively and literally, standing at almost seven feet tall all while carrying a beard the size of Leo. He would give an eye and a leg for his men, but as soon as he was done doing that, he would spare no second to insult you.

  “So, how is the famous Squad 88 going to get us out of this shitstorm?”

  I had to give it to the man, he knew how to ask the right thing.

  “What’s your status?”

  “Squad 65 has only Donovan and me left. The kid is a Tier 3 Brawler, good but kind of slow on the uptake.” Jeffrey Donovan was a twenty-something-year-old strongman. He was built like a truck but sadly he was just as smart. “Squad 33 has Commando Zaic; she’s a hell of a gun. Kept most of the Raintroopers at bay for the last two hours.” Just as he said those words Zaic sniped down a Raintrooper and turned to me. She smiled and pushed her hair back behind her ear. Something in me stirred for a second. Damn it, hornball, now was not the time!

  “What’s with the last guy?”

  “The name is Farseer Harper. He’s been our eyes and our roof out here.” If you had one class that was similar to a Technomancer, it was the Farseer. They controlled drones too, but literal drones, not nanite-created bots. The connection between them and the drones was nanite based so the Farseer had to be careful to keep them alive. Unlike the Technomancer, the Farseer was a defensive, supporting class while we were very much used in any kind of role, though we preferred to cause destruction wherever we went.

  “Interesting lineup you got here,” I said with a grin.

  “We sure are, Stavos. Harper is constantly scanning the surrounding area with his drones and plucking the Silkfire barrages out of the sky before they hit our position. Hell of a guy, you know. I just wished they introduced this class earlier. Back in my day, there was no ‘saving Private Ginsk.’ It was either do or die.”

  And there I could see yet another of Ginsk’s special abilities. It was to go on and on about absolutely trivial stuff at any given time, war or not.

  “Sergeant, not now,” I interrupted but he only shrugged just as a missile exploded several feet above our heads, just far enough that the detonation had no effect.

  “Projectile 31, cleared,” Harper said over the INAS. “Got nine drones left. At this rate, I’m depleted within the hour.”

  He returned to stare blankly at the air, looking like a drugged-up madman, but in reality, he was constantly calculating our defensive position over his INAS. Farseers were excellent mathematicians and th
ey were usually paid thrice what we were. There was some ruckus in the ranks over this information, but as soon as they were deployed for the first time and started saving lives left and right, nobody questioned that decision ever again.

  “Can he see our position?” I asked Sergeant Ginsk as the remaining five soldiers covered our little conversation.

  “We’re pretty isolated from the rest of the company way up north. The closest squad is Squad 14 a mile to the south and then we have ten more squads more or less in a cluster half a mile further down. We have Squads 32, 90, 80, and 84 to the east and I hear they are under heavy fire so we might consider helping them out. There were three squads west of us, but they were wiped out minutes after landing.”

  “We’re not supposed to leave cover, Winters said,” I whispered half absently.

  “Fuck Winters! He’s an old piece of Shia spit! I have lives to save, Stavos!”

  “I appreciate the notion, Sergeant. Glad we’re on the same page.”

  Not everyone was as ready to trash Winters, especially the younger recruits, but Ginsk was almost as old as the colonel and he wasn’t afraid of that Santa-faced bureaucrat.

  I checked my INAS before I came up with a decision. Squads 14, 90, 80, and 84 all had Technomancers in them. I needed to meet up with as many as possible if I wanted my plan to work at all. One Technomancer of my tier wasn’t enough to pull it off alone. According to my calculations, we’d need at least twenty Technomancers to bring my shaky plan to fruition.

  “We can’t go east, Sergeant. Those squads will have to help themselves.”

  “You want to go south? To the center of the mine?” he almost snapped at me.

  I sighed and nodded. I knew that wasn’t what the sergeant wanted to hear, and it was far from what I wanted to say.

  “Well, shit. Donovan, what do you think of the Sergeant’s plan? Should we go where the fighting is thickest?” Donovan the Brawler was occupied with staring at Layla as she successfully missed another Raintrooper and cussed. She hated long-range battles, all Brawlers did. Donovan turned to me, then turned back to Layla and back at his Sergeant.

  “Whatever you want me to do, Sergeant, is what I’ll do.”

  “Hear this, Stavos? That’s how real soldiers think, with their dicks!”

  Donovan smiled and then realized it wasn’t a compliment, so he turned back around to missing enemies and wasting ammo.

  “So? What’s the plan of attack?” Ginsk asked.

  “Nightfall soon so we wait. I doubt they’ll send reinforcements up north as there’s too much going on in other places. Then we move south to meet up with the other squads.”

  I relieved Zaic and Harper from their guard duty. Leo took over the sniping and I took over the scouting with Buzzard. Layla sat in a corner while hugging her hammer and drifted off into a light sleep for the biggest part of an hour. Once she got back though, she looked pissed.

  “What?” I asked as she glared daggers at everything around us.

  “That guy is one annoying ass redneck!” she hissed under her breath. “Let me take the shift, Leo. You go and relax.”

  “And let you do the shooting? I don’t think I’ll catch much sleep knowing you’re on the trigger.”

  Layla waved him away and muttered something under her breath. At least I caught part of the “fucking city boys” rant she had going.

  “Caught between a rock and a hard place, eh?”

  “Don’t even ask,” she muttered. “I know I’m to die for and that I’ve got bigger balls than most men, but that doesn’t mean I’m available.”

  I wanted to snort and give her a retort, but I did it inwardly instead of drawing her ire.

  For the next hour or so, a steady influx of Raintroopers kept us on our toes. There were never too many of them to warrant bringing out the big guns, but also never too few to let our guard down. I kept Beast in the back to preserve his ammunition, anticipating I’d need to use him soon enough. Buzzard stayed in the air while trying to shield us from artillery fire which came sporadically, and I think even Harper was impressed with how my drone and its mini-gun fared.

  The B-class star Detera orbited had disappeared behind the horizon within two hours and everything seemed to be quieting down as I expected. The Aloi pulled much of their forces west toward Qualt’s Second Army, so it was only natural that our path was clearing up.

  “Get ready to move out,” I said over our squad INAS. The squad had grown from three to seven people. Every single one of them moved, even the sergeant, and got ready to move out on a moment’s notice.

  “Do you guys feel that?” the Farseer asked.

  “Feel what?” Ginsk asked before I could.

  “The slight tremor in the ground. Are you sure they pulled back?”

  I frowned and sent out Buzzard hurriedly. It flew off through the lone window on the first floor and disappeared far overhead.

  “What is it? Raintroopers?” Layla asked.

  I saw a lot of smaller red dots moving to our position but their movement wasn’t at all similar to that of Raintroopers. No, but I could swear I knew what they were. And then it dawned on me.

  “Bunker up again! Go, go, go!” I yelled as I finally realized what was heading our way. “And no, not troopers! They’re far worse!” I added as we shut ourselves back into the storeroom.

  Raintroopers were intelligent as they had a course of attack, could take cover, came in formations, and tried different lines of attack. These new bastards... Well, they were something different entirely.

  “Fucking Zealots!” Ginsk cursed as he used his Steep Weapon ability to imbue his Nas-axe with nanites. The two one-handed axes shone with yellowish light that was almost too bright for the eyes. “I won’t be much use with these now. You better use some of that Technomancer magic, Stavos.”

  There was a hint of anxiety in the Warwalker’s voice, and yes, I felt the same just like him.

  I forwarded the stats over our INAS and studied the horde through Buzzard’s sensors. It was almost unnecessary since the sound of hundreds of Zealots on their tiny little legs echoed even through the thunder of mechs bombarding the enemy lines.

  Zealots were low-tier, melee units that had even less regard for their own lives than any other Aloi soldier. Their Apex Faith ability took probably more infantry lives than any other ability in the Hegemony’s arsenal, even above bombardment from spaceships. It was a suicide run that ended in explosions, but I knew what I had to do as it had a single, big weakness. We had little time to react, so I sent out Bucky to meet them and exploit that weakness, knowing I would most probably have to sacrifice my familiar by the time the fight was over.

  The Zealots came en masse as they always did, chittering across the ground and each other as they tried to compete who would get us first. It was a twisted sense of loyalty that reached into death and beyond. The Aloi bred them specifically for this purpose, and worst of all, they were the cheapest of all.

  The swarm came at us with full force. Zaic put up his turret and opened fire immediately. Leo followed using Bullet Alchemy to imbue his projectiles with fire and lightning after he set up his own turret. His bullets stormed through the Zealots like a twister of fire and electricity, forcing them to pop early and take out dozens of others with every explosion.

  Each of Leo’s shots was worth its weight in pure detrium, but Zealots kept coming like a tidal wave ready to drown us. They were easy to kill if you hit them, but since they came in swarms people lost their nerves. One of the best things you could do was to attack with area-of-effect abilities or ammo, bombs, etc.

  All seven of us were now firing into the swarm with everything we had. I used twenty nanites to spike them in a big area that came in from the flank and turned to fire that way, leaving me at 80% cells. The Zealots had almost no armor so my INAS was cluttered with insane numbers.

  Beast was doing his part while it bombarded the incoming Zealots with a missile swarm that caused dozens of the five-foot spiderlings to fly
through the air. The Zealots, despite their suicide ability, never truly exploded inside their own ranks and caused chain explosions. No, they exploded from incendiary rounds and explosive devices, but never took anything out that was farther than the next Zealot in line.

  There had been studies about the exploding bastards, but no one had managed to replicate or figure out what it was exactly that made them go boom. You couldn’t keep them in captivity as they’d just explode, nor could you disable them in a way that would allow you to study them. They exploded on death, be it just falling apart or taking out others around them. It sure was a strange ability the Aloi could weave into them.

  “Keep up the pressure!” I yelled as they hit the fifty-yard line. Bucky rushed forward and slammed into them just as he activated his Vibro-Shield. The spiderlings threw themselves mercilessly at the shield, exploding and rocking him backward with each one. Bucky stood his ground, and it was only because I upgraded him before coming out here that he was large enough not to topple over.

  “He’s one tough bastard, sir!” Layla laughed as she dropped her rifle and pulled out her hammer.

  “Hell yes, Private! Give them all you got!”

  She didn’t need to be told a second time as the battle was what a Brawler lived for. The moment she jumped out through the window, several dozen Zealots veered off and streaked toward her. Layla’s armor and AOE ability were perfect to take them on, so I didn’t worry as much.

  “Shit, Stavos! Are you guys insane?” Ginsk protested.

  “We sure are!” I laughed and released another spike where their density was thickest.

  The shield gave out before I could help Bucky with a second spike. He was thrown back as two Zealots exploded against his chest.

  “Damn it!” I cursed as I missed the short window to activate his Harden ability. As soon as I did, the numbers changed drastically.

  “Fire, fire!” I yelled as the Zealots overtook Bucky who was wrestling with five at a time before they exploded and kept draining his Nanite pool. The little spider-bombs came hurling over Bucky and right at our faces once he was down on his back.