by E. G. Castle
Bloody Jack busied himself with checking what the sensors had detected since he had seen the read-out in his room, while his operations officer frantically tried to come up with a situation report.
“Jack, we’ve-” Hamil began before finding himself facing the barrel of a gun.
“I- I mean, Bloody Jack,” the operations officer quickly corrected himself.
“And don’t you forget it! Now, what did you want?”
“We’re getting some positive sensor readings, about four miles out. Should we send the gunboats to check it out?”
“Sensor hits where?” Bloody Jack asked, avoiding the question for the moment.
“Uh… It looks like three groups. Coming in from the west, although from different routes.”
“Hmm…” Bloody Jack stared at the new information on the display. Small dots would occasionally flare up on it, then disappear. Overall, they did seem to be in three groups.
“I don’t like this…” he finally said. “It looks like a major attack.”
“So, the gunboats?”
“No. Hold them back. We may need them soon.”
Hamil shrugged, used to taking his boss’s sometimes odd orders. If Bloody Jack didn’t think it was time to use the gunboats, then it wasn’t time to use the gunboats.
Turning, he shouted at the pirates working the sensors to find the guerrillas already!
***
Back by the invaders, the three large units, four hundred men each, steadily moved forward, the smaller groups that made up each unit moving in together to form larger, more ordered formations.
At this point, they were three and a half miles in.
“Think they’ll be sending the gunboats?” the general asked Frank as they jogged along.
“Maybe. But they don’t have many of them. Actually, I’m beginning to wonder if they spotted us in the first place.”
“Eh?”
“I would’ve figured they would’ve attacked by now. Either by using their ships’ missiles, if any of them survived the h-squads attack, or maybe the gunboats, or, if not even that, at least toss a couple of ‘infantry’ at us.”
“We’ve got a good bit to go before we’re supposed to be close enough to see any pirates,” Tom pointed out.
“Yeah, but my sensors should’ve picked up them doing something. …Unless they’re holding everything back for a close-in defen- Oh. There they are.”
“The pirates?”
“Yup. Marines, keep an eye out!”
“All units, prepares for attacks! The pirates are responding!”
***
Bloody Jack kept an eye on the display, as Hamil argued with him.
“-too weak! If the sensor readings are right-”
“If they’re right. For all we know, it might be a feint, or even a trap. Best not to commit too much of our forces just yet.”
“But they’ll barely be able to match the Kzarchians!” After over a month of combat, the pirates weren’t likely to underestimate the planet’s inhabitants.
“So? That should be more than good enough to hold them back until we can get reinforcements forward.”
“But-” Hamil shut up as Bloody Jack glared at him.
Both of them turned back to the main display, watching as the three invading groups made their way inward, as three pirate units went to meet them.
***
Continuous blasts and booms sounded as the two sides fought, just a bit more than two miles from the mansion. One side was quite definitely getting the worst of it though.
“Well?”
“Looks like hundred-fifty of them.”
“Really? That’s it? What about the other groups?”
“The same.”
“Odd… Maybe they’re only trying to slow us for a bit?”
“Perhaps. Or maybe they were just scrambling to throw anything at us?”
“They seem too organized for that.”
Frank fired a weg before replying, taking out a pirate who was lining up a shot.
“I don’t know,” he finally said, a bit unhappily. “Maybe they just thought our groups are weaker than they are.”
“Could be. Forward! Drive them!” the general shouted, as his unit overran the remnants of the pirate’s blocking force.
***
“Well?” Bloody Jack said sharply.
“We- we must’ve missed half of them!”
“Oh, we ‘must’ve missed half of them’! That explains it!” Hamil kept silent, as Bloody Jack glared at him.
“It’s too late to do anything about it now,” the pirate captain finally said. “But we still need to deal with them, so get everyone else scrambling! I want everyone mobilized in five minutes!”
“Right!” Slapping a button, the operations officer soon had klaxons blaring through-out the entire governor’s complex.
As soon as the klaxons quit, Bloody Jack slapped a switch, sending his voice through the building and the ones nearby, where the pirates were encamped.
“Everyone get ready! We’re about to be attacked by over a thousand Kzarchians! Form on the west side and get ready to attack! Move it!” he snarled, then cut the channel.
“The gunboats?”
“Hold them a bit first. I want them to attack in concert with the ground troops.”
“Should I at least get the crews to prep them?”
“Go ahead.”
***
“It looks like they’re forming up their main group.” Frank observed, as he waited for the group he was in to finish reforming after the pirates attack
“Hurry up! We need you to help hold our right flank!” General Fil’dwis ordered into his com, only paying half attention to Frank. The right unit was having the hardest time getting past its blocking force and was still trying to eliminate it.
“We’re coming, sir. Just don’t start the party without us!”
Snorting, the general turned the com off for the moment.
“Frank? What’s the situation?” he asked.
“The pirates are forming up, and it looks like they’re going to use a defensive line rather than come after us.”
“Huh. That’s going to be a problem…”
***
“WHY AREN’T YOU MOVING?!”
“Captain, we-”
“I didn’t ask your opinion; I asked why you’re not attacking as ordered!”
“See, cap’n, we didn’t-” a pirate nearby tried to explain.
His flamer appearing in his hand, like a magician pulling a rabbit out of the hat, Bloody Jack fired at the pirate, the stream of fire from the pirate captain’s weapon soon making him into a temporarily living pyre.
“Well?” the pirate chieftain asked coldly, of the first pirate he had been talking to.
The pirate captain gulped.
“The thing is,” he said carefully. “They wouldn’t go.”
“Wouldn’t… go.” Bloody Jack’s voice was ice cold.
“No. They… refused. Said that it was too dangerous.”
“You explained that over a thousand troops are about to descend on them?”
“Yeah, but… Honestly, I think if I had kept forcing them, they would’ve mutinied and retreated to the ships. The best I could do was to get them to form a defensive perimeter.”
“I see.” Despite the pirate captain’s quite reasonable explanation, Bloody Jack’s tone was still cold. He gave a thin smile.
“Well, you might want to inform them, that, apparently, the ships have been destroyed.”
“What!?”
“There will be no retreating from this one. Make sure they understand that this time, it’s victory or death. And death at my hands, if they try to run away. Is that clear?” he said softly.
“Y-yeah, Bloody Jack.”
“Good. Go command the troops, Captain Silver. And make sure you either win, or die at the Kzarchians’ hands. If you don’t…” Giving a very toothy and bloodthirsty smile, Bloody Jack watched as Captain Silver hasti
ly backed up, and began bawling frantic orders.
Turning on his heel, Bloody Jack headed back to the mansion, and, once there, the pirates’ command room.
As he strode through the steadily emptying hallways, he allowed himself a smile. Things were going to plan so far, aside from losing his ships so early. Not that was necessarily a problem. In some ways, it was a bonus.
At any rate, the first small groups had gotten slaughtered by the superior forces of the Kzarchians (Which his operations officer had miscounted. Obviously, at such a range, a good few would be slipping through the sensors’ metaphorical cracks. Idiot. Though Bloody Jack had been careful not to point out his mistake, since it fit with his plans to have the first strike slaughtered.), and the rest of the pirates were about to embark on a desperate defense that would quite probably get them all killed. Or at least most of them.
For a second, Bloody Jack wondered who would win the battle. Then he dismissed the thought.
All he needed to do, to accomplish his aims, was to ensure that nearly every pirate got killed, and the Marines and Kzarchians with them.
Bloody Jack would’ve preferred a total kill on all three groups but he knew that was unlikely. The best he could hope for was massive casualties, and then either deal somehow with the remainder of the groups, or take his escape option.
Mind furiously planning, Bloody Jack continued through the as yet intact governor’s mansion.
Intact, so far.
***
The Kzarchians and Marines heading again through the forest, after having finished off the pirates’ forces, and were now less than two miles from their destination. By this point, they were beginning to regularly encounter automated defenses and traps.
The Marines in the lead spotted and dealt with most of them, but a few managed to escape notice.
BOOOOM!
“Medic! Center left!”
Wincing, Frank glanced over the bloody and torn bodies, quite glad his battlesuit was filtering the air. Judging by the reactions of those around him, the smell was terrible.
Then he was moving forward again. There wasn’t anything he could do here, except report the loss of a squad.
“How bad?” General Fil’dwis demanded over the com.
“A squad’s totally out. Some might survive, if the medics work fast.”
“Damn. All right, I’ll get Gordin’s unit to move up. You coming back to the front?”
“Yeah. See you in ten.”
***
“They’ve passed the two mile mark, cap’n.”
“I can see that,” the pirate chieftain snapped, intently studying the display. The Kzarchian forces were being displayed as three red triangles, each a near solid mass of red dots. The three groups were pointed straight at the governor’s mansion, and were moving at a steady, fast pace. They’d be within range in only thirty or so minutes.
“Bloody Jack, the gunboats…?”
“Not yet, Hamil!” the pirate said irritably. “Once they begin to hit our line and are distracted, then we send them in.”
“But…” Despite his protest, Hamil was unable to meet his captain’s furious eyes.
“But what?”
“Nothing.”
With a curl of the lip, the pirate chief turned back to the display. Internally, he was still calculating furiously.
-should be about equal. The gunboats could shift the advantage though. But then again, there’s still a good few Marines about…
***
“General, we’ve passed the one mile mark now,” Frank commented. Besides him, Tom puffed along, listening to the chatter on the com.
“Hm. Now things are going to get difficult.”
“We can but hope.”
Tom snorted.
“Maybe you do; in that armor you’re wearing. I’m personally hoping this goes as smooth as silk.”
“Yeah. Sure. You just keep hoping that. In the real world, meantime…” The two laughed, as they dodged around a dead Kzarchian, killed by a dart shooting sentinel. The sentinel that had killed him was itself down just a few yards away, destroyed by the same dead Kzarchian.
It was just a minute after that, when the Kzarchians began hitting the pirate’s defensive line.
Well, sort of.
A large barrage greeted the guerrillas, forcing them to slow, though they still proceeded forward as best as they could. Using their sensors to determine the Kzarchians’ basic location, the pirates were simply laying out a huge wave of fire in their general direction.
Most of the shots were absorbed by the trees, bushes, and general landscape. But enough managed to get through to cause trouble.
“Oh, shit.”
“I don’t see why you’re complaining,” Tom grunted, crawling on the ground, slowly making his way forward, occasionally popping off a shot. “You’ve got that nice protective battlesuit there.”
“Yeah, but have you ever tried crawling in one of these things? Trust me, hell itself has got nothing on it.”
“Well, if you don’t hurry up and start, you’ll soon be able to compare them!” the general retorted.
Groaning, the lieutenant shut off his battlesuit’s shield and dropped to the ground. With that, he began pulling himself forward.
“Oh, how I hate this…”
“Whine, whine, whine…”
***
“They’re still coming in,” Bloody Jack said into the com. “But the volleys you’re throwing out are slowing them down and killing a few. Keep it up.”
He paused, listening to the pirate on the other end of the com.
“What? No, not yet. I want them closer. As it is, they’d have enough space to handle things.”
A short sentence came questioningly back to him.
“I don’t care if you don’t understand. Kill them, Silver.”
Turning the com off, Bloody Jack considered the situation in the display abstractedly.
At the moment, it almost looked like a stalemate. But on a closer inspection, it was obvious that the Marines and Kzarchians were making their way forward. As it was, their counter-fire was taking a toll of the pirates’ defensive line. Once they really got in range, things would begin seriously heating up.
In theory, it should take a while before that happened, based on the way the guerrillas were crawling forward…
But that assumed the pirates would be able to keep up their fire.
The pirate captain smiled coldly.
At the rate they were wasting their shots, they’d soon run out; even of their reloads. And since they were all shooting together, there wouldn’t be enough pirates with ammunition left to provide a serious cover.
Which meant the Kzarchians and Marines would have the opening they needed, as the defensive line tried to desperately re-supply itself with ammunition.
And when that happened…
Bloody Jack’s smile grew colder.
***
“How long are they going to keep this up?” a Marine groused over the com channel. “Shouldn’t they already be out of ammunition?”
“They’re probably carrying reloads,” pointed out Sergeant Kanova, the only Marine sergeant yet alive, aside from Kate. The situation was so dire, and they were so low on men, that the sergeant and his quartermaster squad (Of which there were only he and five others left.) were being used as regular troops. Indeed, considering the weaponry most of the Kzarchians had, the q-Marines actually nearly qualified as a heavy squad in comparison!
Since he was the only sergeant with the attacking force, he was acting as Frank’s second-in-command, which was why the next question over the com was of one from him to the lieutenant.
“Sir?”
“Yeah, sarge?”
“They’re sure to run low soon, at this rate…”
“I figured. We’re planning on taking advantage of that. As soon as they slow down, the general will order a charge.”
“Then why not-”
“Don’t want anyone jumping the g
un by putting themselves in front of one,” Lieutenant Harsmith grunted, pulling himself forward using a tree root.
“Yes, sir.” It wasn’t quite agreement. The sergeant was obviously worried that an immediate charge, without prior preparation, had the potential to be disastrous. But the decision had been made.
Cutting the com, Frank heard a creaking noise. He looked up.
“Oh, not another one!”
Throwing himself into a sideways roll, the lieutenant tried to avoid the falling tree. He was only partially successful.
A tree branch slammed down onto him, temporarily trapping him.
“Frank? You okay there? Need a hand?”
“No. One second…”
Twisting and leveraging hard, Frank managed to lift the branch and part of the tree with it, enough to get himself some room to move. Another couple of seconds, and he had managed to worm his way out of the tree’s embrace.
“You hurt?” Tom inquired, as the Marine made his way away from the fallen tree.
“Not much. Couple of bruises.” Frank grunted, instinctively ducking as two shots based by over his head. “Let’s keep moving, shall we? I’d like to get to the pirates before they get me.”
“I think you’re going to get your wish soon,” General Fil’dwis rejoined, resuming crawling forward with the lieutenant. “They must be almost out by now.”
***
Bloody Jack was thinking the same thing.
Which meant that any second…
“Er, sir?” the operations officer asked hesitantly.
“Yes, Hamil?” His tone was almost pleasant. But anyone who knew the pirate would know that only meant he was about to engage in… un-pleasant behavior.
“The crews- I mean, the defense line, they, er… They’re almost out of ammunition.”
“Oh? And why is that a problem? Didn’t you arrange for them to be re-supplied from the stores?” The pirate chief’s tone was still pleasant, but now it was also sounding a trifle ominous.