Invasion of Kzarch

by E. G. Castle

  “We’ve already decided not to go by date of rank. And considering what your last general did, we’re going to need a colonel who’s particularly popular with the troops. Otherwise we might end up facing serious morale and command problems; not that we won’t anyway,” he admitted.

  “Still, Colonel Fil’dwis is probably the most popular at the moment, especially considering his part in the counter-attack that saved our behinds three days ago.”

  Frank was at his most convincing, but they didn’t seem very impressed. On the other hand, who else could they choose? Only one of the other colonels was not currently assigned to a desk, and he was currently injured; further, he wasn’t as good as Fil’dwis, or as popular. The other field colonels had all gone along with the ill-fated supply compound attack, and had all died there.

  After a considerable amount of argument and protest (Including from Colonel Fil’dwis himself.) it was finally decided.

  The former colonel was unceremoniously presented with a set of General rank tabs, and the camp informed of the news.

  Unsurprisingly, they weren’t taking things well. Although the Kzarchians weren’t sure if they should believe the pirates’ messages, having already heard about them through the rumor mill and some even having seen them, they fit all too well with how things were going.

  Still, once they heard Fil’dwis had been selected as general, there was a broad sense that at least things were being taken care of, and that further direction was going to be provided.

  The commanders of the Kzarchian army, General Fil’dwis, and Frank himself weren’t so sure. But they kept that to themselves.

  Then came the problem of deciding what to do about the pirates’ ultimatum…

  “-attack!” shouted a colonel, pounding his fist against the table, the commanders once again back in the meeting room.

  “We’ll be massacred! Look at what just happened in our last raid!”

  “We were betrayed!” another objected.

  “It would be better to wait a while, to see what they’ll do,” one suggested.

  “No! Send scouts!”

  “Send the Marines’ heavy squad! They can blast those gunboats out of the sky!”

  There was a moment of silence, then they all turned to look at Lieutenant Harsmith.

  “No.” he said, shaking his head. “I know it sounds like a good idea, but only about half of them are left, and they’re all low on missiles. And if we send them out as a group, there’s a good chance of them being detected.”

  “But if we sent them separately-”

  “They’re h-squad, not s-squad. They’re more easily detected then even regular Marines, and they’re not supposed to attack by themselves without support. And one h-marine isn’t going to be able to take down a gunboat; and certainly not a squadron of ‘em.”

  “But-”

  “No. Besides, the pirates could always just send their infantry. And now I’m thinking of it, how would we get the h-squad in position to hit the gunboats anyway? We aren’t going to know which town they’ll attack… And setting an ambush only means they’ll have a high chance of hitting somewhere else without interference. If we got lucky, maybe, but…”

  To that analysis no-one had a ready reply. Well… except for one fire-breathing colonel.

  “So we attack! We’ll strike right at their base and wipe them out!”

  Immediately, the argument broke out again. Sighing mentally, Frank leaned back.

  I hate meetings… he thought.

  At that point, Tom pulled out his pistol and shot the floor. And a second time, when it looked like people were going to complain.

  In the ensuing silence, the Kzarchians’ new general announced his decision.

  “Colonel Tirst’or is right. We have to attack. The only other realistic possibility is to wait until the Marine reinforcements arrive, and by the time they get here, Kzarch might only be populated by the dead.”

  “But-”

  “We can’t-”

  General Fil’dwis glared at them until they shut up.

  “Right. We’ll start planning immediately. And we’ll attack once we’re done, which will be soon. Is that clear?”

  Some of them looked like they would have liked to protest, but the general tapped his gun meaningfully against the table, and they kept silent.

  Frank, however, had something to say.

  “Sir, we need to plan this carefully. The last time we rushed a mission, two-thirds ended up dead.”

  “Yes, but this time there won’t be a traitor. And in any case, we don’t have the time. We’ll plan the best we can, but we’re going in as soon as possible,” General Fil’dwis stated flatly.

  The lieutenant simply nodded. He couldn’t disagree.

  “Then let’s be about it.”

  And with that, the planning began in earnest.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Through the as yet dark forest Sergeant Javer carefully crept, with his stealth on full. The sun was rising though, and he had to hurry.

  Despite that, the scout sergeant moved with precise deliberateness, rarely going faster than a walk. He knew what he was doing; getting detected now could well ruin the whole plan.

  Still moving forward, the sergeant abruptly slowed. He was about to hit the pirates’ active sensor area.

  He waited a moment, oriented himself, and then began rapidly sprinting, despite the encumbrance of the battlesuit’s weight. A blur, he tore through the forest at top speed.

  ***

  In the Superior Fortune, Mad irritably shifted in the second-in-command’s chair. She would’ve preferred the captain’s, but he’d shoot her.

  For having let the Kzarchians and Marines get away, in the ambush four days ago, Bloody Jack had punished her by assigning her to guard duty. She hated it. HATED IT.

  Mad wanted to kill something.

  “Commander Mad?”

  “What?” she snapped.

  “I think we’re getting something. Looks about a mile and a half away.”

  “What!?” Mad sprang up, crossing over. Indeed, a small light was occasionally blinking on the screen, as the ship’s sensors briefly located something, then lost it.

  According to the read-outs, it was a Marine, attempting to sneak in.

  Sometimes prayer was answered.

  Mad smiled toothily.

  “Get a lock on him!”

  “He’s too hard to locate! We’re only spotting him sporadically!” the pirate protested.

  “Do it anyway!”

  ***

  Back in the forest, now zig-zagging constantly, Sergeant Javer was getting in range of the ships. And at this point, he was beginning to encounter defenses, including a few traps. Hurdling a fallen tree, Sergeant Javer had a bomb go off right underneath him. But it wasn’t powerful enough to get through a Marine’s battlesuit.

  Folding his arms and cannonballing, the scout sergeant flew though the air and hit the ground with a bounce. Immediately rolling up, he continued forward.

  ***

  “One of the trap bombs went off! About a mile away!”

  “Target the area with beams! Nedder, get the ship’s shield up! And make sure Anne’s Revenge and Whydat do it too!”

  “I did that as soon as we spotted ‘im!” the pirate objected.

  “How long ‘til they’re up?”

  “Half a minute.”

  ‘Hurry it!” Mad snapped absently. The pirate opened his mouth, then shrugged. Turning back to his console, he watched the screen without doing anything. The shield needed twenty-eight more seconds, and there was nothing he could do to change that. But he didn’t see the point in explaining that to Mad. She simply wouldn’t care.

  ***

  Energy beams stabbed around the running sergeant, mostly behind him. Then he was away from the targeted area.

  Still running, Javer considered his options. He was about as close to the ship as he needed to be. All he had now to do was activate his battlesuit’s sensor and comm
unication functions. That, however, would make his location far more easily detected.

  But that was why he had been chosen.

  The data he had been sent to get was absolutely essential to the plan. Which was why the scout sergeant had been drafted; they needed the best chance they could find to get them what they absolutely had to have.

  To be honest, it was fairly close to a suicide mission, even for him. A single Marine, scouting out three armed and alert spacecraft? But that was the job sometimes.

  With a mental shrug, Sergeant Javer sent the activate command through his implant, and his computer display flipped on and blossomed with incoming information.

  ***

  “He’s activated his sensors! We’ve got him!” The dot indicating the Marine had begun to pop up with a greater frequency.

  “Then I’m gonna kill him!” Smiling a psychotic smile, Mad sent another barrage of beams at the blinking dot on her screen.

  They hammered around it, through it, and seemed to overwhelm it. But when the beam volley was over, the dot was still there.

  “Shit!” Mad cursed, as she set up another barrage. “Nedder?!”

  “Another nineteen seconds!”

  ***

  Breath heaving, Sergeant Javer threw himself into a roll, as one last beam blasted just behind him.

  Jumping straight out of the roll, the sergeant zagged to the side, then zigged the other.

  Another round of beams was headed his way…

  Twisting behind a tree, the scout sergeant avoided the first two, then the third brought down the tree on top of him.

  His shield stopped it, but he was trapped.

  Then a beam blasted the tree out of the way, and Javer was free.

  ***

  “-Damn, stupid-” Mad cursed as her second barrage finished, to no discernible effect. Setting up the third one, she demanded, “Shields?!”

  “Fifteen seconds!”

  ***

  “Uuf!” the sergeant grunted as he hurdled a beam, as it struck the ground at his feet. He kept running.

  Finish up already! he mentally growled at his display, energy beams striking around him like a deadly game of high-speed dodgeball.

  It was at that point, that one of the beams finally managed to make contact. It punched through the Marine’s shield, and slammed him back through several trees.

  As Javer regained his momentarily lost consciousness, he calmly noted that the majority of his chest was gone. He was too far gone to really even feel the pain of it.

  The second thing he noticed was that his display was beeping. His sensors had finally finished gathering the needed data.

  In his last moment, his brain and what remained of his body shutting down, Javer sent the information he had sold his life to gain.

  ***

  “Got ‘im!” Mad hissed victoriously, as the dot went blood-red. But had the Marines really only sent a single scout?

  “Bonehead?”

  “Not detecting anything or anyone else…”

  “Nedder?”

  “Another eleven seconds. Should I shut it down? And tell the other ships to do the same?”

  Mad considered a moment.

  “No. They still might have something up their sleeves.”

  ***

  Six miles above the three ships, the six remaining members of the h-squad hovered.

  Wondering how much longer Javer was going to take, Kate kept a nervous eye on the time. If the scout sergeant didn’t hurry it up, things were going to get tight.

  Then data uploaded itself into her battlesuit’s computer, showing the precise location and information on the three pirate ships.

  “He got it!” one Marine crowed.

  Then a death notice dinged.

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Damned pirates,” the Marine said, voice filled with hatred. Then the battlesuits slammed forward, their internal systems sending then hurtling forward in a pre-programmed maneuver. Immediately after, the battlesuits shut down, now resembling nothing more than human shaped meteors.

  They killed you, huh, Javer? Kate thought, allowing her body to relax from the impact of suddenly going from zero to two hundred.

  Guess you finally ran outta luck. We’re gonna arrange an escort for you, though. Just wait a couple of seconds…

  ***

  “Commander! We got a couple of missiles or something incoming! They got no energy signature though,” Bonehead continued in puzzlement.

  “What? Odd… Nedder!” she called as she prepared another volley of beams, this time at the incoming unknowns.

  “Seven seconds!”

  “Hurry up!”

  ***

  The plan was simple. If difficult.

  Basically, it boiled down to them absolutely having to get rid of the three pirate ships. To do that, the best option was to attack before they were prepared and shielded. But a long range missile attack would give the ships too much time to notice them and blow them away. Sneaking a heavy Marine in was the next obvious idea, but he would have a fairly high chance of being detected, and even assuming he managed to sneak within two miles or so, there was still a good chance of him only managing to get off a missile or two, which would hardly suffice.

  So Lieutenant Harsmith had decided the way to go was a hard-entry fire-twist. Unfortunately, they hadn’t have the information necessary to ensure the attack would be successful. Which was why the Sergeant Javer had been sent in.

  Screaming in at a high velocity, the heavy squad waited the few seconds it took them to cross the five and a half miles they had to go.

  Beams began to blast around them, but there was nothing the Marines could do, but hope and wait. Soon, it was going to be their turn.

  ***

  “Mad, I think their deactivated battlesuits!”

  “What? Battlesu- NEDDER!” Mad’s hand frantically tried to get the ship’s beam cannons to fire faster.

  “Four seconds!”

  ***

  At a half a mile above the ground, two seconds before the pirate ships’ shields could come up, the Marines’ battlesuits suddenly sprang to life.

  Acting according to pre-set orders, the suits whipped forward the Marines’ missile launchers, and sent a precisely targeted salvo at the three pirate ships below, two to each ship.

  “Re-load, re-load!” Kate chanted over the com, as she frantically did just that, while beams randomly ripped past her.

  A second salvo went in. Then the battlesuits slammed to the side, avoiding the pirate ships’ cannon beams, which now had targets that were far easier to detect.

  The SIAM missiles were hammering home, their high speed and the low range making them unstoppable.

  Large explosions ripple across the three ships, smashing at them moments before their shields could rise. Armor and hull buckled, then the ships just… shattered, all three ending up as complete wrecks.

  The ships weren’t the only things affected by the explosions; the cliff they were hiding behind was rocked by them as well, causing a landslide over the top of them.

  The Marines came down on top of the cliff, some way inwards, avoiding the now collapsed section.

  “We did it!”

  “I’d say nice shooting, but it was the computers,” Sergeant Kate said dryly. Then she noticed a death message.

  “Shit! They got Will!” The other Marines had seen the message as well.

  “Cut it!” the sergeant snapped, putting her grieving aside. Now wasn’t the time.

  “Come on, we still have our secondary objective. Move it, people!”

  The h-squad, now reduced by one, jogged forward, focusing on their next goal.

  ***

  Meanwhile, Bloody Jack was being woken up by a ringing com.

  Growling, the pirate chief wished for a moment that he was the sort of pirate captain who shot people for interrupting their sleep.

  Then he slapped the on button.

  “Well?” he demanded.

/>   “The ships are under attack! We’re not sure what by- but it looks like they’re gone!”

  “The attackers?”

  “No, the ships! It’s a bit hard to tell, but it seems like the, uh, cliff collapsed over them!”

  “Send me the sensor readings!” Bloody Jack snapped, now wide awake.

  “Er… They’re a bit scanty…” the other end of the line hedged.

  “Send them!”

  “Right away, captain!”

  ***

  “Looks like the anti-ship strike went in. We can’t tell if it was successful though.”

  “No matter. We’ll just have to hope for the best.” Keying on his com, General Fil’dwis ordered, “All units, forward!”

  Lieutenant Harsmith gave his own orders, to the remnants of his Marine platoon.

  “All Marine squads, take forward positions and keep an eye out. Take down the defenses fast. We can’t afford to slow down!”

  The Kzarchian guerrillas and the Marines, spread out as much as possible to avoid detection, began heading inwards towards the governor’s mansion, at the best pace they could keep up.

  “Here’s hoping the pirates are slow on the uptake,” Frank grunted. Tom snorted, and kept moving forward.

  ***

  Carrying a box which he was hastily arming himself from, adding a few additional weapons to his usual flamer, Bloody Jack strode into the pirates’ combat command center. It used to be the former governor’s and was a bit out-dated, but the pirates had found it quite easy to convert to their own use, with some additional equipment.

  “What’s the situation?!” the pirate captain demanded, setting down the only half-empty box.

  “We don’t know!”

  “Then you’d better bloody well find out, or I’m going to need a new operations officer, Hamil!”