by Shawn Jones
“Excellent. Keep me updated. I’m going to suit up.”
--
“We have lost forward group nine,” Bru said to his command staff. “They reported four simultaneous explosions, then we lost audio. According to the radio techs, their tracking signals are weak. I suspect they have been buried by an avalanche. I have diverted their rear elements to other passes. Signal the other columns to proceed slowly, but not to give up. We have to get control of, and over the passes, in order to engage the humans.”
--
“Here they come!”
Cort wasn’t sure who said it, but it didn’t matter. What did matter was that his plan worked. They had corralled the Tapons armor into two passes, and those two openings in the mountain range faced each other in a shallow canyon, rendering their artillery effectively useless until they were able to reform, facing the Marines. He did not intend to give them enough time to do that.
From the drone feeds, he could see that the last of the enemy vehicles had entered the long, narrow cuts in the landscape, so he gave his next command. “Cut them off! Blow the passes!”
The explosions didn’t just close the two funnels that guided the enemy, they also collapsed the throats of the passes. Hundreds of thousands of tons of rock, dirt, and snow buried the enemy vehicles still in the passages, and created a box canyon and cut off the only means of escape from the Marines.
“Bravo Company! Round ‘em up! I’m going in!” Cort said as he started running like a wolf, the way Munroe had on Tapon. Within seconds, he was in the midst of the enemy, while the captain in charge of Bravo company began firing at the enemy. In the relatively close quarters of the small clearing, Cort was only able to use his sidearms, and every time he blew a hole in one of the vehicles around him, Tapons poured out of the top of the vehicle and fired at either the HAWC or the more vulnerable CONDORs. He needed to keep the enemy contained, and while the Tapons themselves were harmless to the armored men and women, their heavy weapons were not.
The ape-like Tapons’ four thin upper arms made them unable to carry weapons that had much recoil or weight. So their hand weapon of choice was a directed energy weapon. On Tapon, the weapons had been useless against Cort’s Marines. Here though, he was hearing his people go down. They must have improved their weapons. Or the ones on Tapon weren’t military.
Twenty Marines were incapacitated in one way or another when Cort literally stumbled onto a solution. He was running toward what appeared to be an armored personnel carrier when he tripped on a boulder under the snow. The ten-meter tall HAWC suit fell with a ground shaking thud, and in his effort to right himself, Cort grabbed the side of one of the smaller vehicles around him. Because of his own center of gravity, the tank-like vehicle was on its back by the time Cort was upright again. He quickly realized there was no other hatch for the enemy to escape from, so he started flipping all of the vehicles over.
“Flip them!” he commanded over the combat channel. “Pair up and flip them over! They can only get out through the top of their armor.”
While Cort’s HAWC was strong enough to flip the enemy vehicles over without help, the CONDORs needed two suits to turn them over. He was reminded of camping as a child with his dad. On the banks of the Arkansas river, if they came across a snapping turtle when they were fishing or swimming, they would turn it upside down and put rocks around it to keep the aggressive reptile from righting itself. Once, he even remembered his dad making turtle soup because the fishing had been bad that day.
Shaken from his memory by an artillery shell that hit the HAWC square in the chest, he reached down and bent the barrel of the tank that had fired the shell, before he turned it upside down. “And bend their barrels!”
Cort’s last command came too late for one Marine who stepped in front of the barrel of an upside down vehicle. The gun fired and tore the leg off of the CONDOR from the knee down, along with the human leg inside it.
Eleven
Bru was pacing in his tent. “How many have we lost?” he asked.
“Before it is over, we will have lost six divisions of armor and infantry support,” his aide Foz answered. “The good news is that they have blocked the passes, so they cannot get to us either. At the expense of the armor, we are where we were before the Ares Federation arrived. The H’uumans cannot function in this climate, but Addison’s forces cannot reach us.”
“Ares, or Addison as you call him, is smarter than that. He has something planned. We have two choices. We can dig in and fight, or we can move on the H’uumans and fight.”
“We cannot dig in, sir. The Ares warriors can bury us beneath more of the avalanches. If you see no other options, we must attack.”
“Where are the reinforcements?” Bru asked. “Without them, all is lost.”
“May I be blunt, General?”
“I would expect nothing less.”
“I believe we have been abandoned. The battle at the other pole is going better for our people, so I believe the war council has decided to reinforce them, rather than stretch our forces.”
“It would not be the first time,” Bru conceded. “They did not even try to evacuate the planets that were lost. The council has long been known to back successful.”
“My family was on Tapon,” Foz said. “I am told there were no survivors there.”
“Who brought this damnable Ares to our time? I would kill that human’s sire and never make war again.”
“I agree, General. And there is the irony.”
Bru looked up. “The irony?”
“Yes, sir. Evolution dictates that we are his sires. That is, the humans are further along our evolutionary path. In another two or three hundred thousand winters, we will become like them. It would be sooner if we had not become adept at tool usage.”
“Tell that to the god-followers. They would argue your beliefs.”
“Science is not a belief system, General. You taught me that.”
“Do you always listen to me, Foz?”
“You have kept me alive for a long time, General. In the rebellions, I would have died twice had it not been for you. So yes, I always listen to you.”
“Yes, I believe you do. I appreciate that. But now, if you are right and we have been abandoned, we may have met our fate.” Bru sighed and said, “Try the fleet once more. If they cannot give us support, we must attack the H’uumans. I would rather die fighting than wait for death to come to us.”
--
Cellphone switched from the tactical net and spoke directly to Cort. “Norvan is sending the air support to the southern pole. The Tapons are reinforcing there, and he feels we have this situation in hand.”
Cort was looking at a holographic map of the northern pole, studying the topography of the area. “Okay, so we need to make our way through the passes and come down on them. Once we clear this region, we can reinforce the other northern groups. What is Jane Munroe’s status?”
Sung opened his flexpad and checked on General Munroe. “She is at mess, General.”
“Okay, ask Norvan for six flights. Then start moving our assets into these three areas,” Cort said, marking the map. “We don’t want to fall into the same trap we sprang on them, so clear the passes and move us through in small groups that are well spread out. And everyone goes through in CONDORs.”
--
General Munroe was standing up from her first solid meal in three days when her comm went off. Without her helmet, she had no HUD to tell her it was Cort when she answered, “What now?”
“It’s Cort.”
“Oh, I am sorry, sir. I thought you were my staff.”
“It’s okay, Jane. You are fighting a few more battles than I am.”
“Yeah, they seem to be sending what few troops they get to the surface down to us. I think they are afraid of you.”
“True, but that isn’t what I meant. Your command experience isn’t extensive because of how I promoted you so quickly. And you have very limited combat experience. Those things
you have overcome quite well, and I am proud of you for that. But you haven’t figured out how to command yourself.”
“I don’t understand, sir.”
“When was the last time you slept?”
“Sir...”
“When was the last time you slept, General?”
“Two days ago, sir.”
“The fortified synthetics can only do so much, Jane. They can give you nutrition, but they can’t rest your mind. You are mentally exhausted, and I want you to get rest.”
“I will soon, sir.”
“No, you will now. That’s an order. I want you off your feet for at least six hours. And moving forward, I want you to sleep for at least four continuous hours out of every twenty-four. Do you understand?”
“Four hours of continuous sleep every twenty-four hours. I understand, sir.”
“And Jane, I will be checking your stats, so don’t try and get out of it.”
Munroe sighed. “Yes, sir.”
“In my time, Generals weren’t fighting leaders anymore. They were what we called…”
“Rear echelon mother-fuckers. You have told me that before, sir.”
“Do you know why you are not a rear echelon mother fucker, Jane?”
“Because I am not attracted to my mother, sir?” Munroe joked.
“Funny, but no. I want my brass to know what the troops are going through. Not remember it or figure it out, but know it.”
“We put these people through hell, sir.”
“Yes we do. And you being mentally sharp can make that hell a little more bearable. You being exhausted makes it worse. Get my point?”
“Yes, sir.”
Cort changed the subject. “What’s it like there?”
“It is not good. We are on a plain. I doubt there is a hill taller than my HAWC within one thousand kilometers of us. And of course the weather is perfect. The drones are giving us an advantage, but their energy weapons are way more powerful than what we faced on Tapon. Norvan is sending me air support, but I am outnumbered seventy to one. Fortunately, the Navy is keeping most of their ships out of orbit.”
Cort said, “I wish we could use kinetic strikes. We are far enough away from populated areas that the environmental impact would be negligible, but I think Norvan is trying to show Terip that he has their best interests at heart. Unfortunately, that means more of us will die.”
“It’s our job to clean up the politicians’ messes. They teach us that at war college.”
“Get some sleep, Jane. We are moving out, so I need to suit up.”
“Yes, sir. Munroe out.”
--
“Sam, I have an idea,” Cort said as he lit up their HUDS indicating a small plateau overlooking the enemy base. “Have some CONDORs carry the smaller enemy vehicles up to this point.”
The Marines were pinned down in the pass leading to what Cort believed was the main enemy camp. Every time a CONDOR moved into view, enemy beam weapons hit anything they could see. Cort had even lost two fingers of HAWC’s left gauntlet. The other two camps had been wiped out, but it was at the cost of all six Ares combat flights. The aircraft had drawn enemy fire long enough for CONDORs to flood out of the passes, and in the process, three were completely lost, one was down with the pilot safe in friendly hands and the remaining two were limping back to the airbase. That left Sung’s men bottled up until reinforcements arrived.
“How many, sir?”
“Keep enough people at the pass to make it look legit. Send the rest to start carrying vehicles up to me.” Cort did a quick of the vehicles in question and added, “Nothing larger than the smaller turrets.”
“Yes, sir. Dare I ask?”
“The gods are angry, at least Ares is. So I’m going to start dropping their own weapons on them.” Cort said as he started up the mountain.
There were thirty vehicles on the hill when Cort began his attack. They were carefully stacked so that the Tapons who were still alive inside them could not escape. Connecting to the drones that were high over the enemy camp, Cort picked up the first vehicle and, with the incredible strength of the HAWC, threw it over the last hill between him and the enemy.
--
“What was that?” Bru asked when the ground shook and he heard his fighters begin to shout. He stood and ran out of his command post to see a smoking hole in the ground fifty meters away. As he reached the edge of the crater caused by the light personnel carrier’s impact, he gasped. Once he realized what the projectile was, he prayed that it was empty. After a few seconds, the hope was dashed as he watched viscous, yellow blood begin to leak from a tear in the side of the vehicle. Just then, another vehicle landed nearby.
By the time twenty pieces of armor landed in the camp, the Tapons were panic-stricken. Had it been just rocks, or even empty vehicles, Bru may have been able to maintain control, but when one of his commanders pulled himself out of a mangled tank, seeing his broken and bloodied body put an end to any fight that was left in the primates. Then the Marines began pouring through the gap in the bluff. Once the Tapons saw the enemy standing in their own midst, the battle for the northern polar region became a slaughter.
--
General Norvan walked beside Cort into the chambers of Terip and said, “General Addison, may I present Terip, Cardinal Fourth and leader of our ancient cousins. Terip, this is General Addison, Warlord of the Ares Federation.”
Cort walked to where Terip was standing and presented his hand. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Cardinal Terip. I am sorry it has come to this, but I am glad we are on the same side again.”
“General,” Terip flexed his mandibles into a smile. “You are without a doubt truly the god of war your people speak of, but I think you also to be a god of treachery. Perhaps when this is over, you will tell me how you were able to deceive the Collaboration so completely.”
Turning his gaze to Lap, Cort said, “He will be taken into custody. I appreciate that he is a member of your government, but he has betrayed a hundred species and he will answer for it.”
“Do I have a choice, General?”
“You will always have a choice. In this case you must choose between our help or your extinction. Because if you try to keep him from me, I will pull every single member of the Ares Federation away from your planet and watch the Tapons burn it to the ground.”
“You are not a diplomat, General. Lap has told me that. Very well, you may take him into custody. May I at least have your word that he will be treated fairly?”
“He will be fairly tried once the war is over. Until then, he will be kept at a detention facility.”
“Where?” Terip asked.
“That isn’t your concern,” Cort said.
“Very well.”
Once Lap was taken into custody, Cort said, “As you say, I am not a diplomat, Terip. I am a warrior. You have agreed to our terms?”
“I have agreed. I have no choice,” Terip clicked before correcting himself by adding, “At least no other option that would preserve my people.”
--
After leaving Terip, Cort and Norvan were eating lunch at the makeshift Ares base. “I don’t like the terms of H’uum’s agreement with Terip, Norvan.”
“Why not?” Norvan clicked.
“Heroc’s Law. Your people will die to honor it, and I trust each and every one of you with my own child. But these idiots haven’t sworn that oath. I don’t trust them any further than I can throw them.”
Norvan’s mandibles flexed. “General, it is my understanding that you can throw an armored vehicle quite far. Terip weighs much less than one of those. But I understand your concern. And I ask you to trust H’uum about this. Trust me about it. They will be watched closely. And to be blunt, unfortunate accidents happen very frequently to those who are not loyal to the Laws of the Queens. Further, it will be generations before any of them are allowed in positions of importance.”
“Did you know Heroc?”
“I did not have that fortune. It
is my understanding that I am less for not having met her.”
“She and I used to talk quite a bit. Once, she told me something that led me to believe your people were just as cruel as I am, if not more so.”
“General, I would not want this to be repeated,” Norvan said. “You are cruel. Much more cruel than one of us could ever be. I doubt there is any being in the universe with the same capacity for cruelty as you possess. Not even among your own people.”
“So she was wrong.”
“No, but I think perhaps you misunderstood her. Our species is both logical and brutal. That combination can be quite horrific. What you call torture, is simply science to us. In our eyes, your own humans were simply a lower species to be exterminated.”
“I see. Why aren’t we anymore?”
“Heroc’s Law. By decree, we are bloodsworn to Prince Dalek. Extending that line of reasoning, you must be at least our equal, for we would never submit to a lesser species.”
“Heroc’s Law. That must be a helluva rule.”
“Pledge Father,” Norvan reverted to the honorific title to emphasize his point, “among your people you are the mythological god of war, are you not?”
Cort sighed. “I have been called that.”
“Among our people, your son is a living god. He is more important than H’uum himself.”
“I didn’t know Heroc at all, did I?”
“It would seem not, Pledge Father. Perhaps you should study our traditions.”
“Perhaps I should. At least I know my son is still safe.”
“Undoubtedly, Pledge Father.”
“Stop calling me that.”
Norvan’s mandibles flexed into a smile. “Not for as long as I live, Cort.”
“Okay, okay. What’s going on in the south?”
“General Munroe is making progress. The air support was instrumental in tipping the scales in her favor. May I ask you a question, General?”
“Of course.”
“Why do you let her run that theater? Why haven’t you taken over that area? For that matter,” Norvan asked, “why have you allowed me to run the war? You are the senior military officer.”