“Move out to the external command post and monitor the firing systems. Engage the mercenary infantry as necessary. Primary targets are all enemy fast movers and armor.” Klatk said. “Who has command in the mines?”
“Goss, Excellency,” Raffa said and stepped out of the command post. “Are you moving to the main mine complex? Your protection cell is there and prepared.”
“No,” Klatk said. “These mercenaries don’t scare me, Raffa.”
“It’s not a matter of fear, Excellency. The colony needs you.”
Klatk twitched her antennae. “If there’s not a colony left to lead, what good am I, Raffa?”
An alarm sounded, and Klatk checked the display. “The GenSha have hit the southern mines outer defenses and are pressing forward. Stop the mercenaries, Raffa. I’ll handle the rest.”
Her executive officer left quickly as she tapped controls and connected to Goss deep in the mines near the southern entrances. “Goss, you have inbound GenSha in Sector A.”
“Copy, command.” The infantry commander whispered. “We are in the auxiliary vent system. We will cut the power to the main shaft once they pass the central junction. Once their command element is 200 meters into the entrance shaft, we’ll destroy it as ordered. Will advise on destruction of the vent and return to the colony perimeter.”
Well done, Klatk thought. Goss was young, but extremely capable. He tended to think outside the tunnel, meaning he often sought solutions others did not even consider viable. Unpredictability was a strength she needed to exploit.
“Affirmative, Goss. Proceed with your plan and protect the brood.”
“They won’t get past us, Honored Klatk.”
She looked outside just as a fusillade of rockets tore out of the launchers along the southern wall. Qamm’s mercenary force scattered, but not quickly enough. Several vehicles and armored infantry went down in the burst of rockets. Her own losses were less than eight percent. The mercenary fire tore into the eastern wall more heavily, and she shifted the automated defenses in response. Again, her rockets tore out a respectable chunk of the assaulting force.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” Qamm laughed over the radio connection. Klatk attempted to triangulate the simple UHF transmission but could not. It appeared to come from every one of the Wandering Death vehicles at once.
Or none of them at all. Klatk blinked in realization.
“Goss! Prepare for mercenary forces! Destroy your sector and move to the western complex immediately.” She switched frequencies to Raffa’s private comms. “Raffa, take two squads of infantry and a squad of heavy weapons to the main mines. Secure the far western corridors and recover Goss and his soldiers.”
“Moving!”
The distraction had been almost perfect. Wherever Qamm was, she seemed to be a viable foe. The GenSha proved to be slow and methodical attackers and surprise was hardly their strongpoint. They were notoriously hard to kill, though, and proved much hardier fighters than her own Altar soldiers.
“We’re under attack!” Goss reported suddenly. In the transmission, she heard a constant stream of laser bolts and missile fire. “Moving toward the western complex. Under heavy fire, repeat heavy fire. Enemy forces in the western high ground.”
Klatk froze. The mercenary forces hung back at standoff distances where her weapons were marginally effective. Daring me to withdraw forces into the mines! Bastards!
“Slow the rate of fire,” she commanded her forces on the walls. The mercs had taken cover behind a slight roll of the terrain about 500 meters from the walls to the south and a craggy mini-ridge between the colony and the river. “If they move from cover, swat them back!”
Raffa’s link activated. “We’re in the western corridor, Excellency. The mercs have breached the outer containment. We’ve pushed them back, but they’ve damaged the automated extraction system and—”
Klatk gripped the command console tight enough that her arms spasmed. “Raffa? What did we lose?”
There was no response so she switched frequencies. “Goss! Report!”
“Taking fire! Taking fire!”
Klatk’s head snapped up. The entire southern wall was under intense fire from the mercenary positions. She tapped the slate, brought up the rocket launchers and fired two quick bursts, quelling the incoming fire. Through the vision systems, she watched the mercenaries begin to withdraw with their guns firing—a withdrawal by fire.
“Indirect systems to active. Keep hitting them until they leave our territory.” As the Wandering Death continued their retreat, Klatk’s command and control systems showed a much smaller force of GenSha leaving the mine complex to the south. Nothing exited the western corridors.
“Honored Queen, you may wish to consider a change in strategy. We got through your defenses and entered your mine complex with little effort. Next time, the damage won’t be nearly as contained.” Qamm laughed on the radio. “If you want to discuss this, you can—”
She snapped off the conversation, and ran from the command center aware that she was leaving the firing batteries to their own leaders and turning her back on the battle itself. Klatk ran for the central mine entrance. “Goss! Raffa! Report!”
There was nothing but static in the connection. Klatk sprinted as fast as four legs would carry her toward the western main corridor entrance. Three hundred meters outside the colony’s security wall, a four-meter-wide hole gaped in the Araf soil. Eyes adjusting instantly to the near darkness, Klatk hardly broke stride for more than two thousand meters until she reached the junction of the southern and western corridors. Ozone seemed to crackle in the air from the weapons fire. A thick haze of smoke hid the upper meter of the mine shaft. Dozens of her soldiers were injured. More than a few were dead.
Among the wounded, she saw Raffa propped against the curved wall. Other soldiers looked up at her, and she tried to comfort them as she moved, but it was difficult to see their faces as she closed the distance to Raffa. His injuries looked grave, and the medical team had essentially abandoned him.
“Raffa?”
His eyes lolled to meet hers, and he struggled to straighten up against the wall but failed. His voice was little more than a whisper. “Excellency.”
“What happened?” She leaned down and touched his upper shoulder. “Are you in pain?”
Raffa nodded. “Pain, yes. It will pass soon enough.” He moved his upper arms and Klatk saw a ragged, oozing hole in his carapace. Black blood spilled out. “I didn’t move fast enough, I guess. The brood was damaged as we moved them.”
Klatk leaned closer. “We will take care of the brood, Raffa. Please—”
“Hit them.” Raffa coughed once. “They tried to take our children, Klatk. They could have destroyed them but did not. Want to...scare us.”
Klatk nodded. “We won’t be scared, Raffa.”
He twitched once, and the light in his eyes dimmed suddenly. The small belt monitoring his vital signs beeped in alarm. Klatk tapped it twice gently and disengaged the biomonitors. “Rest, Raffa.” She touched his face lightly and stood. Goss stood watching her, a laser rifle held across his chest, barrel facing down. Blood caked in a few spots across his dark face, but he looked otherwise unwounded. He nodded once at her.
“Excellency,” he said. “Raffa was as good as they come.”
Klatk nodded, her mandibles clacking. “You will try to do better, Goss. My need for an executive officer is greater than your need to lead our infantry. Find a suitable replacement and get them started with the engineers. We need to know what damage those bastards did.”
“Fifteen percent casualties to the brood, Excellency. Twenty-four killed and twice that wounded. The western corridor sustained heavy damage at the first junction. The southern corridor lost all automatic defensive systems before we destroyed it. The GenSha made it past the first junction and tunneled down to destroy the extraction system. We stopped them on Level Two, but they’d already hit the incubators in that section. We lost 700 young, Excellen
cy.”
Klatk stiffened in shock. The loss of 700 young was a priority information demand from the Consortium. Likewise, she’d have to report the loss to the Altar Council as it met their critical reporting criteria. The Altar council could recall the colony.
Which is exactly what the Consortium wants.
“They withdrew as soon as they’d damaged the incubators and the extraction system in the western corridor?” Klatk asked. “Or did they attempt to press the attack?”
Goss shook his head. “They went only to Level Two and hit there. We stopped them at the third section, and they withdrew. None of them found the connection tunnel to the central complex.”
Dirt fell from the ceiling and Klatk brushed it away without immediately realizing what it was. Her eyes widened in shock. “We need to evacuate this section! To the surface! Carry the wounded and leave the dead. When the rocks settle, we’ll return for them.”
The Altar skittered to and fro, gathering their nearest comrades and tossing them across their backs. As she ran for the main tunnel complex, Klatk looked back at Raffa’s remains and set her jaws. The GenSha would pay. They’d done more than ensure a war by purposefully attacking the Altar brood. Children were non-combatants and were to be treated as such. The despicable attack was no accident.
Klatk hoisted a wounded soldier to her back and made for the fortified tunnels of the upper levels. The rounded ceilings held as they moved toward the exit, but every rumble from the surface seemed to reverberate throughout the entire mine. Peace, like dependable weather, was increasingly out of the question.
Goss came alongside as they moved. Two wounded soldiers rested on his back. “The mine is holding, Excellency. The lower levels have been evacuated. We still have robots working there and production continues.”
“Fine,” Klatk barked through sudden anger. Removing the various precious metals from Araf’s terraformed soil provided a solid income for the colony, but it was not worth any more loss of life. “Recall the supervisors. Our priority is surface defense and counterattack. The mine systems can go into standby as far as I am concerned.”
“Understood. I’ll recall them immediately.”
They reached the fortified levels and found her medical team waiting. The wounded soldier was lifted from her back as she entered the chamber. Chaos became a systematic process of triage and treatment. As such, there was nothing she could do, so Klatk moved to the side of the chamber and eventually to the door. Goss was already there, and they watched their doctors work. He leaned over and spoke softly in her ear.
“The defenses are re-armed and ready,” he said. “Mercenary forces have withdrawn toward the GenSha colony and are out of effective weapons range.”
“Stand down the defenses to ready five status.” Klatk said. “Initiate a rest plan and prepare to hold the defenses all night.”
“Yes, Excellency.”
“Anything else?”
“The Consortium has asked for a status report on the mine. They say they’re going to look into the attack, but have encouraged us to maintain production at the required rates.”
Klatk whirled on him. “You tell them any investigation will wait until the Peacemaker arrives, and that I will not extract another gram of anything in that mine.”
“With respect, Excellency, we don’t know that a Peacemaker is even coming.”
Klatk looked back at her wounded soldiers and those trying to care for them. “Two dozen dead. Seven hundred young lost. Two of our mines inoperative. Was the Raknar damaged?”
“No. Our power couplings remain intact, Excellency. Levels are stable and the damaged sections have been disconnected,” Goss reported. “We must find another way to warm the young. We cannot expect the Raknar’s power to last forever.”
Klatk nodded. “We can’t, but this planet does not provide the necessities our colony needs. The Peacemakers will come, and they will help us.”
“What if they can’t, Excellency? What then?”
Klatk studied the younger male. “The Peacemaker Guild will send the best they have. The Consortium lied to us, and our people are suffering because we need power. We scrounged to find and use it for our benefit when it was promised to us. Three colonies are set against each other, Goss. A Peacemaker will come. And they will defend us.”
Goss nodded. “That’s a lot to assume. We must do something other than hope.”
He was right. They needed to do something besides bolstering their defense and preparing for the inevitable attacks to come. Klatk considered the options and found her thoughts turning to the 700 young ones that would never see the sunrise or know the love of their colony.
“The GenSha protect their children in a central paddock, do they not?”
Goss flinched. “Yes, Excellency. In the center of their colony.”
“Can it be reached via tunnel?” Klatk asked.
“Perhaps,” Goss said. “I’ll check with the engineers and see if we can make it happen. It may take several days to dig, Excellency. You’re not considering another response? The GenSha are mostly peaceful and not prone to war. That’s why they’ve brought in the mercenaries.”
“I don’t care that they are peaceful and not prone to war. They’ve taken our young!” Klatk looked at him. “If the engineers think it’s possible, take a squad and hurt them. Hurt them like they’ve hurt us.”
“Of course,” Goss answered. For the moment, he appeared sated with her response to the attack. “Should we prepare the defenses?”
Klatk nodded. “Full perimeter. If there is no attack by sundown, place listening posts in a five-kilometer ring around the colony with set artillery missions from every automatic system. When they come back, I don’t want them getting any closer than that.”
“You believe they’ll be back?”
Klatk watched the receding plumes of dust smear the verdant swathes of the GenSha prairies. “I would, so they have my attention, Goss. When they return, we will be ready for them. If no Peacemaker is sent, we will stand for what is ours.”
* * *
The prospect of going home didn’t thrill Hex, nor did the idea that he could just run around the solar system with the Victory Twelve. Filing a flight plan for Mars gave him the flexibility to visit his sister and her family if he wanted. They were nice people, but oil drilling wasn’t like being a mercenary. No matter how nice their estate was, and how well-prepared they were for any type of impending disaster, Hex could not relate to them. Four days was about all he could handle in the presence of any of his family anymore. They didn’t understand why he wanted to be a mercenary. His father, they said, made more than enough money to take care of the family for generations. No one else in their family needed to go fight someone else’s wars. Hex knew differently. Fighting another’s war could be dangerous, but it was lucrative as hell. Depending on where you go and what you do, his father said once, a soldier can live like a king without hearing a shot in anger.
Hex tore at the label on a bottle of Budweiser. Alone at an empty bar, he idly watched a football game on the Tri-V screen and tried to figure out what to do next. There was no unit to go back to. Lemieux’s Marauders had been officially disbanded with Marc “Hammer” Lemieux’s forced retirement. Only Hex and Lemieux, himself, had survived the Marauders’ final mission, except for those aboard the Trigger Happy who’d run for Karma when things went south. The Mercenary Guild would deal with them soon enough, but Hex Alison was a soldier without a unit, and it stung.
He did, however, have a ship, even if it was loaned. There would be a time to go back to Karma and re-enter the pits to search for a posting or maybe even create his own unit. It wasn’t the right time yet, even though he knew that getting back on the proverbial horse would be both good and bad for him. Maybe he should go visit his sister, play with her kids, and try to be a normal human being again?
“Pardon me? Is this seat taken?”
Hex snorted and gestured to the emptiness of the bar. “I think you have your cho
ice of seats, friend. Why sit next to me?”
“I have my reasons,” the voice said.
Just my dumb luck, Hex thought. There were always people who just had to strike up a conversation even if for no reason other than to hear themselves talk. Hex spun and spoke slowly, “Look, I really don’t want to...”
The words died on his lips.
A Sidar, his pterodactyl-like visage smirking, stood at Hex’s side. His ceremonial robe was dark, and the glint of a Selector’s badge shone even in the dim light of the bar. “Mister Alison, I presume?”
“Selector Hak-Chet,” Hex sputtered. “I meant no disrespect.”
“None was taken,” Hak-Chet said. “May I join you?”
Hex nodded and the Sidar spun into the high-backed barstool quickly. The robot bartender appeared and Hak-Chet carefully looked at Hex’s beer and frowned. “I’ll have a cider, please.”
So much for good first impressions, Hex thought. He looked up, met the Selector’s eyes, and tried to think of something to say to open the conversation. He’d never been approachable or the kind of person to speak first. The Sidar said nothing, merely drinking from his pint of cider without looking at Hex. Hex licked his lips. “So, what brings you—”
“Mister Alison, I’m afraid this visit must be short and to the point,” Hak-Chet said as he downed a solid third of the pint of cider in one swallow. “I’ve closed the bar to make this meeting possible and must move quickly before people ask questions, do you understand? The Guild has need of your services.”
Hex blinked. He’d never considered being a Peacemaker. “I don’t know what to say, Selector. I’m honored the Guild would ask me.”
Hak-Chet scowled and shook his head. “You are not Peacemaker material, Mister Alison. The Guild, however, has need of your services and is prepared to compensate you for your efforts.”
“I don’t understand,” Hex squinted. “I have a single CASPer and a few million credits to my name. What can I possibly do for your Guild?”
Hak-Chet took another long sip of cider. He wiped his maw with the back of one hand, a completely human gesture that looked totally out of place for an alien, and locked eyes with Hex. “You are a friend of Peacemaker Francis, yes?”
Peacemaker (The Revelations Cycle Book 6) Page 5