Invasion of Kzarch

by E. G. Castle

  Running swiftly, Frank mentally reviewed the situation. He had chosen a landing spot near one of the planet’s few cities, more of a town to be truthful. While he could have tried to set the platoon down near the planet’s main city, which also contained their one and only spaceport, the lieutenant had felt such a move would be… ill-advised. If there was any city on the planet the pirates would’ve wanted to take, and must’ve taken, that would’ve been the one.

  The thing about the current situation though, was that they had no intel. Had the pirates taken over the planet? Were they still hiding? Had they perhaps been attacking the population? What forces did the pirates have, aside from five Blastfires, and a deceased sixth one?

  Well, hopefully the town ahead, apparently named High Cliff, would give some answers.

  ***

  “Well, McKain?”

  “I… think its clear, sir.” The sergeant was obviously somewhat reluctant. “The town’s suffered some damage, yes, but it’s not recent. Well, within the last week, anyway. While I imagine the town’s population was… decimated, there should still be some people left.”

  ‘Decimated’ is perhaps a bit much, thought the lieutenant, looking over the town, which, yes, had been built on top of a cliff. While the town showed the black circles of a missile attack, there weren’t that many of them. At any rate, the town seemed fairly quiet.

  “Okay. Let’s move in. I want s-squad split, and checking out the town as we go.”

  “If I may suggest…” Javer broke in. “Perhaps into teams, sir? We’ll be more effective in smaller groups, and we shouldn’t need more than one back-up.”

  Frank considered a moment, then mentally shrugged.

  “Works for me. See to it, sergeant.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Moving cautiously, their scout squad leading, the platoon moved into town.

  ***

  I don’t deserve this.

  That was Mayor Tho’mas’s constant refrain to herself. To be fair, it wasn’t like she did. She had led a blameless life –well, aside from a few minor items here and there- and had been quite proud of her mayorship. Indeed, she had been looking forward to the next election, where she confidently expected to defeat her opponent by an even greater margin than before.

  Then the pirates came.

  They had strafed her beloved city, and had threatened to destroy it completely unless she complied with their demands… which she had, if reluctantly.

  She had hoped that once they had what they wanted, the pirates would leave; but no, they remained on the planet like spiders on a web, occasionally jiggling a strand of it to provide what they wanted.

  Every day, Mayor Tho’mas had to wonder if it was going to be her last. To wonder if she could provide whatever new thing it was the pirates wanted. If she could survive disappointing them.

  I don’t deserve this, the mayor thought again, tiredly, turning to her secretary.

  “Tina, could you get me another cup?”

  “What? What? Coffee? Right. Right. Wait… Wait a second.”

  The mayor suppressed a shake of her head, as her assistant left the office that served as the center of the city’s operations. Tina had been one of those who hadn’t taken the pirates’ arrival well.

  It won’t take much to send the poor girl into hysterics again, the mayor thought, conveniently forgetting that the ‘girl’ was older than she was.

  Mayor Tho’mas was rustling through the papers on her desk, looking for nothing in specific, when she heard a sudden outcry.

  “WHA-! P-P-PIIRAATES! PI-RATESSS! AAAAAAH!”

  Oh dear, what set her off this time? The mayor was heading to the door, when a figure appeared in it.

  The over six-foot figure, wearing a battlesuit camouflaged in city colors, was holding a weapon, which, the mayor noticed in sudden relief, was not pointed at her.

  “Who- who are you?” Despite her secretary’s outcry, Mayor Tho’mas highly doubted that whoever-this-was was a pirate. Few pirates could afford or use battlesuits, and the pirates had always commed before, whenever they had come.

  The figure cocked its head slightly, then its helmet split. A visor popped out, and slid up, revealing a slightly hard face, younger than it’d prefer to look.

  “I’m Lieutenant Harsmith of the United Federation Marines. Do I have the honor of addressing the, ah, mayor of this town?”

  Mayor Tho’mas went limp in relief.

  “You’ve finally come!”

  “Ah. So you knew we were coming?”

  “Knew? No. Hoped, yes. I am Mayor Tho’mas.” The mayor slid into her chair, as much as out of the release of tension as anything else.

  “Of course, after the planet’s governor sent the distress message aboard the Spacewind we knew that the military would respond eventually, but-”

  “Wait, Spacewind?” The lieutenant’s puzzlement was obvious.

  “What? You mean you didn’t get the message?”

  “There was no specific message, as far as I’m aware. We received a report from a merchant ship, the Trudger, that they had heard pirates had been seen landing and hiding themselves on the planet. My platoon was sent to secure the situation.”

  “The… Trudger? Wait, yes, there was such a ship here two months ago… And it was about then that the pirates arrived…” Then the mayor was suddenly struck by something.

  In a fearful tone, she asked, “Ah, you said… that you had a platoon? How… How many soldiers is that?”

  “Sixty-two, ma’am. Although we did lose a Marine on our way in, to a Blastfire.”

  “Sixty? Just sixty?” Mayor Tho’mas’s voice sank into a whisper.

  “Is there something wrong, mayor?” The lieutenant’s voice was slightly chilly. Behind him, another battlesuited figure appeared; Sergeant McKain.

  “Captain-”

  “Lieutenant.”

  Ignoring him, the mayor continued, “-the pirates have three spaceships, over a dozen gunboats and several thousand men. You have a mere sixty.”

  For a second, the lieutenant was nearly as shocked as she was. From what little his briefing had said, the implication had been of only one ship; which had meant he had been assuming that the pirates would only have several hundred or so men. A thousand at most. The Blastfire attack as they headed in system had convinced him his numbers were on the low side, but nothing like this.

  Then he rallied. Or tried to at least. After all, he had already expected to be outnumbered, so, really, it didn’t matter much one way or the other. At least, that’s what he tried to persuade himself of.

  “Be that as it may, Ms. Mayor, I have my duty to perform. If possible, I ask that you share any possible information on and of the pirate scourge.” Frank heard a snort over the com from his sergeant, and gave a mental wince. He always tended to get overly stilted when nervous.

  “What? You can’t seriously expect to-”

  “I can, and do, Mayor Tho’mas. I know my duty.” She stared at him.

  “…As you will,” the mayor said in tired defeat. Mayor Tho’mas then proceeded to tell them of what she knew. It wasn’t much.

  After landing, and with the care that they had taken in doing so keeping all but one ship from being detected, the pirates had remained hidden for a time, the quiet lulling the planet into thinking it had just been a false alarm. So it had been nearly a complete surprise, when, six days after they were first detected, the pirates had abruptly swarmed the planet’s capital city over.

  Admittedly, it hadn’t been difficult. Kzarch barely had any defenses, and certainly none up to the job of taking on a powerful pirate force.

  Once they had seized the capital city, Newholm, they had killed the governor and anyone who had attempted to resist. Then, they had proceeded to every other city, town and village on the planet, systematically making sure the Kzarchians knew who the new people in charge were. As they did so, they had also destroyed anything they felt could cause them problems, including any communication towe
rs.

  Which meant that any town knew little about what was happening in any other one.

  ***

  “…And so that’s about the size of it,” Frank concluded to his sergeants. He had called a meeting as soon as he had finished talking with the mayor, wanting to discuss the platoon’s next action.

  “However, she did say that she thought there was a, ah, ‘guerrilla’ encampment, in the mountains near Newholm.” There wasn’t even a moment of silence, Sergeant Lovel immediately speaking up.

  “Sir, I agree we should attempt to make contact with them, if they exist, and if we can find them. But I feel that our only realistic course of action is to wait for reinforcements to arrive. A single platoon is hardly enough to take on an army.”

  The lieutenant held down a flicker of annoyance at being argued with. He had already told them he intended to continue pursuing offensive operations as originally planned. But he had to admit the sergeant made a fair point.

  “I don’t quite agree,” he said mildly. “Yes, the odds are bad, on the face of it. But they won’t have much battlesuits, if any at all. Nor do they having our training. Along with the Kzarchian forces-”

  “It still isn’t enough.” Sergeant Lovel’s tone was still respectful, but getting less.

  “Aw, common, Georgeh, it ain’t that bad.”

  “Kate, it is that bad.”

  “They only have about a regiment, not an army,” pointed out Sergeant Abe Von Hervitz.

  “A regiment’s quite bad enough!” This was from the platoon’s q-squad’s sergeant, Martin Kanova.

  “I think that we need to find out more, about what’s going on,” opined the scout sergeant.

  Frank let the argument rage for several more minutes, then asked McKain, who had been fairly silent so far, “What do you think, McKain?”

  The rest of the sergeants fell silent, all turning to McKain, suddenly curious themselves. All of them had a great respect for their more experienced platoon sergeant.

  McKain shrugged, a bit bothered by all the attention.

  “Not much, sir, to be honest. I don’t think we really know enough to make plans; so we obviously we need to hook up with the group the mayor mentioned. But on the other hand…” The sergeant looked unhappy.

  “I think, whether we like it or not, we’re going to have to fight. Even if we hid ourselves, they’d be certain to find us… And attack at a time we won’t be ready for them. If we keep trying to move around, we’d be all the easier to detect. Further, even if we managed to hide ourselves, how long would we have to remain that way?”

  “In all, I think we’re going to have no choice but to pursue offensive operations; if for no other reason than to keep them off-balance.”

  This time there was a moment of silence. The platoon sergeant had laid their situation bare, as well as the few choices remaining to them.

  “At any rate,” Frank said briskly, “It seems our next move is to head to Newholm. Once there, and hopefully after we’ve made contact with the guerrillas, we’ll be better able to decide what further actions to take. And we’ve gotta get moving fast. Undoubtedly, the pirates are searching for us already. Let’s get to it, people!”

  A chorus of, ‘Sir, yes, sir!’ answered him, then the sergeants dispersed.

  ***

  “I still don’t-”

  “A question once asked is but a question, a question twice asked is foolishness, and a question thrice asked is insubordination.” The speaker paused for a second, then smiled a thin-lipped smile.

  “You don’t want to be… insubordinate, do you?”

  The other started sweating. It was at first hard to see why. The person at the head of the table was only of average height, with a slight build, black hair and brown eyes. Indeed, such a person hardly seemed to be dangerous. But that was only so until you looked into his eyes. Eyes filled with the darkness of the soul, with a restrained and focused brutality and violence, which you knew were only being held back because their owner thought you could be yet of use… So far.

  “N-no! I, ah-”

  “Good.”

  The pirate leader let the silence stretch out a bit, then spoke again

  “I will say again, for the final time, that a full fledged attack on these… Marines, would have been highly inadvisable, especially since their full strength was unknown. Even after committing half of our Blastfires, we lost one for absolutely nothing.”

  “That’s true,” agreed Hamil, his operations officer. As much as pirates had officers, anyway. “But the fact remains that we now know they only have a platoon. And we know where they are. Perhaps…?”

  “Where they were,” the pirate captain pointed out. “To be sure, their destination is obvious; that stupidly named town, whatever it is. But they won’t remain there long.”

  “Still, if they do something dumb like staying there for a while, we could easily catch them off-guard!” broke in Bloody Jack’s second-in-command, Mad.

  “And throw down a barrage of missiles? Until the town is simply a plain of overlapping craters?” The smiles around the table grew bloodthirsty at the thought, though the thirstiest was on the face of their leader, Bloody Jack.

  The smile was still there, as Bloody Jack continued.

  “And, of course, losing most if not all our gunboats, for maybe a couple of Marines?” Everyone elses’ smiles suddenly disappeared.

  “Battlesuits and Marines are tough. If they activate their shielding… We’d have get a missile within less than ten yards to guarantee a kill on them. And how, exactly, do you expect to be able to locate them in a city? Plus the fire from an entire platoon of Marines would wipe away our gunboats in short order.”

  “Our sensors-” Hamil began.

  “Won’t be able to locate them. As soon as they learn we’re coming, and they will, they’ll activate their ECM and keep moving. And even without that, they’ll be nearly undetectable in a city, with all of a city’s emissions. No, wiping out a town to get them won’t work.”

  “What if we launched from far enough away that-”

  Bloody Jack leaned forward.

  “Do you really think that’d work, Mad?” His second-in-command’s real name was Madeline, but no-one called her anything but Mad after knowing her long. “At best, they won’t be able to kill any of our gunboats from that range… but chances are, we still won’t be able to kill them either. All we’d end up doing is waste a lot of missiles. Missiles, which, may I remind you all, we cannot replace.”

  “What if we use Superior Fortune, Whydat, and Anne’s-”

  Bloody Jack snorted.

  “Please. Spaceships are hardly designed for atmospheric use. And we don’t have a large supply of their missiles either.”

  Mad made a moue, but finally held her peace, not able to think of any other practical way to commit mass slaughter.

  “However,” Bloody Jack continued, raising a hand to attract attention. “We still need to investigate. Grinner, take your Blastfire and scout it out. Check their landing spot first, then the town. Do not attempt to make contact. If they’ve left town, or if you detect them in town, report back before do anything further. Is that clear?”

  Grinner leered, although, considering the way his mouth was fixed by a multitude of scars, he could do little other.

  “Oh, very.”

  “Excellent. Now get moving, before I set you on fire to speed you up,” Bloody Jack said, fingering the weapon at his side.

  “Going!” Grinner hastily departed, knowing his commander was offering no idle threat.

  Abruptly, Bloody Jack stood up.

  “If anyone else has anything to say, you can flap your gums all you like. I’m going.” And suiting actions to words, Bloody Jack strode out of the room.

  His mind was busy.

  Things weren’t developing quite the way he had intended. He had been expecting a company or more of Marines, not just a platoon. And he had been forced to restrain his officers. Of course, everything h
e had said had been true, but nonetheless, he hadn’t thought such stratagems would be necessary. It looked like he was going to have to modify his plan…

  He grimaced, then smiled a cold smile, causing a pirate he was passing by to flinch.

  Oh, well. This way he’d at least get to kill more Marines.

  ***

  “Hey, captain.”

  “Yes?”

  “You told me to report in, after I spoke with the mayor.” Actually, that wasn’t quite what Bloody Jack had ordered, but he was in no mood to argue.

  “All right. Then?” he said, after a pause.

  “They’ve been and gone. The mayor said they dropped by for a few minutes, then left, after hearing we were around. She also claimed that she ordered them away immediately.” Grinner’s tone dripped with disbelief, a disbelief Bloody Jack fully shared.

  “I see. Of course, I suppose she couldn’t inform us, the communication tower being down…” His tone was idle. Then he shrugged.

  “Kill her. Now.” Grinner’s grin was even worse then usual, as he casually pulled out a pistol and began shooting to the side of the camera.

  Waiting for Grinner to finish, the pirate captain frowned mentally. Grinner had called with the mayor nearby? It demonstrated a severe lack of security consciousness.

  It hardly mattered any more, of course. Nevertheless…

  Bloody Jack made a mental note to kill Grinner the next time he did it.

  Grinner finished shooting every last bullet he had in his gun, and began reloading, nodding to his captain.

  “Done.”

  “Good. Then I want you back here.” Bloody Jack shut the com down without waiting for his subordinate’s reply.

  Chapter Three

  “We’ve made fair time, sir,” the platoon sergeant pointed out. “Perhaps they’re simply behind us.”

  “Maybe. But I don’t like it. Where are they?”

  The platoon had spent what remained of the previous Kzarchian day, as well as half of the current one, traveling towards their new destination, hiding in trucks they had ‘borrowed’. However, as hidden as they were, all of them had been expecting an attack from the pirates’ Blastfires. And certainly, to at least detect them going by overhead.