War's Reward (Free Fleet Book 6)

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War's Reward (Free Fleet Book 6) Page 6

by Michael Chatfield


  The Free Fleet had been given assent to carry out their operation. The Kalu would not listen to anyone that would suggest they could fail, surrender was dishonorable.

  It wasn’t all that long ago that I would have cursed the Fleet and Salchar for their underhanded and dishonorable tactics. There’s nothing honorable about battle, there’s only the hope your people survive and don’t turn into the thing you fight.

  Yasu marched onward. If the Kalu wanted a fight, she would give them one, but not by their rules.

  Chapter Time to go on the offensive

  Commander of the forces on Avar Interim Hermanti (AIH) Ursht looked over the city of Asul, standing in what was supposed to be his battle mistress and masters home.

  It seemed like a lifetime ago that Salchar had come with the newly forged Free Fleet to AIH.

  He’d saved the people of the planet by giving them the fuel they needed to power the planet’s massive shield generator that kept a massive volcano from erupting.

  Salchar didn’t know it at the time, but for his services Ursht gave him his position as the clan leader of Asul.

  Yasu had originally taken over the position, she kicked Salchar’s butt into gear and they’d left Ursht in command of the city while they did their duty to the Free Fleet and the rest of inhabited space.

  Ursht liked his job running the city-state Asul. It became prosperous and many Avarians joined under Salchar and Yasu’s banner, even more joined up the Free Fleet for battle and the chance to use the Commandos powered armor.

  Ursht had wanted to join the Free Fleet, he was still a young man by Avarian standards, capable of fighting and good at it. He had however remained in his position as leader of the city until Salchar asked if he would like to take up the role of Commander over the Armored Marine Commandos that were training up from the Avarian population to protect their world against the oncoming Kalu.

  Ursht had jumped at the opportunity, not about to let his battle master’s faith in him be misplaced and he did everything in his power to turn Asul and AIH into a death trap for the Kalu.

  He had only just got assurances from the other clan leaders that they would also fight the Kalu, just over a month ago. Before they had agreed to join Asul in their fight, Ursht was prepared to fight the battle all by himself.

  He had stood where he did many times before as he thought out the cities defense.

  Below to his right Asul city was a sprawling mass that carried across the center of his view, closest to the cliff face that Salchar and Yasu’s home was built into and to the left edge of the city was a large space port, a rail system had been embedded into the cliff that would accelerate ships into orbit, saving them on fuel.

  Ursht had watched that city grow into a metropolis, a place of trade and the ground-home of many miner families.

  He cast his eyes to the left side of his view, past the spaceport and city that grew from it.

  There was Lake Cook, named after Salchar. It had also grown with the dropping of heavy ice comets. It ran through the city and away from the cliff.

  To the right of the lake was the AMC training area. Commandos trained there from all over the known universe. It’s main facilities however were buried deep into the cliff that ran around the lake.

  It wasn’t as big as the facility on Mars but it was a secondary site for all the trainees on Parnmal. Commandos were constantly being transferred between the two areas to gain not only a knowledge of space borne tactics, but also ground experience.

  The Kalu were around lake Cook now, fighting a fierce battle with the armored and hellish Katak. It was a great challenge to kill the creatures.

  Ursht had ordered them to be captured, with powered armor and stun rounds it had been a shitty task, but only fifteen had died. Many more would have died if they were trying to kill them the traditional way.

  He stomped up to the one-way glass that allowed him to see out of the home. Many had disagreed with using their home as an observation post and command center. Ursht knew that neither of them would have cared.

  “How many Kalu?” Ursht asked, the great trails of additional Kalu had stopped. His scouts reported that there were a few other groups coming, the other clans were on the hunt.

  Kolva, Jahli and Traz, the other three leaders of the Avarian people had declared a hunt against the Kalu and were making their presence felt. They’d sprout an attack out of thin air, their knowledge of the terrain and their ability to camouflage themselves made them hell to see before they attacked.

  Armed with rail guns and grenades they hammered the Kalu and took off, melting into the landscape once again.

  Some might think the idea of melting into a landscape of boulders and black soil was hard. It was, but the Avarians prided themselves on their ability to sneak up on one another, or spot each other. They knew the terrain and the signs, Kalu didn’t.

  The hunt was going well. The Kalu were frustrated, too used to being the best hunters, they were unable to think of themselves as being hunted.

  “About three quarters of their entire forces,” Hod said, her voice confident, even with the millions of Kalu swarming through their city to close with the captured Katak on the edge of Lake Cook.

  The AMC bases armored doors had been sealed and covered to look like the rest of the ridge weeks ago. The roads were removed and any sign that anything happened in the area was gone.

  “Good!” Ursht opened a channel up to Holloway, letting it broadcast openly with his commanders and those in the room with him.

  They perked up from their work.

  “Commander Holloway, how are our defenses looking?” Ursht asked.

  “Set and ready, gonna be like playing golf with a sledgehammer,” Holloway said.

  “Are we looking at ten seconds to get them all into position?” Ursht asked.

  “Yep, hydraulics, water, pain in my ass,” Holloway sighed. Ursht smiled, he’d asked the gunnery chief to perform a miracle so he had and more. If the Chief wanted to blow off steam Ursht was fine with it. He’d had to deal with far more than just Ursht’s requests, he was the go-to man for support fire, thus why he was a commander instead of a chief.

  “Commander, open fire at your own command. I think you deserve that much,” Ursht said, giving the great honor over to the commander.

  “Well umm, thanks Commander. I’ll just check with my people one last time,” Holloway stumbled a bit, his voice awkward.

  “Understood commander,” Ursht said, allowing a rare smile to color his words.

  The channel cut and people continued to feed information down from the Cook’s living room into the ridgeline.

  ***

  “Well then I guess we should get this show on the road,” Holloway said, checking his sights.

  Holloway was a fleet gunner, not a Commando gunner, something that grated on his nerves. His normal scowl had become a permenant feature as he had got his command sorted out and made a firing line no warship could best.

  For the barest of moments that scowl moved to an amused smile.

  “I want every gun checked! You’ve got five minutes, any failures and I’ll personally visit the battery that fucked up!” Holloway yelled, his scowl firmly in-place, as he relayed his orders to every gunner under his command.

  Time to see how the boys and girls do, he thought, silently proud of all they’d been able to accomplish.

  “We look to be good Commander,” Chief Goz reported, spitting on the floor, Holloway followed suit. Chewing products came with gunner territory.

  “Well then,” Holloway said, looking at the view screen between two laser cannons.

  These ones unlike their artillery lobbing cousins, weren’t vertical, but horizontal.

  “Open firing ports and present weapons! have the submersed batteries readied. Send word to Commander Ursht, relay when we open fire,” Holloway called out.

  “Yes Commander, though I think him and everyone for a few kilometers is going to notice when we open fire,” Goz said.
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  “You may have a point,” Holloway said, letting out a rare chuckle.

  He spat on the ground as the hall he was in was filled with the noises of armored doors opening on hydraulic arms. Other motors and hydraulics were whining as rail cannons and laser cannons were hauled into position. Lake Cook bumbled and foamed.

  Missile racks rose to the surface on hydraulic systems.

  The Kalu started firing.

  “Cute, FIRE!” Holloways barked, his voice piped to every Commander in the AMC complex and Cook home.

  ***

  Kolva looked up from his scouting position, he knew that Ursht was luring the Kalu to Asul, for what reason he didn’t know. If Ursht fell, then he would claim the city for his own. It would be useful once the Kalu were all dead. It would take time, but the Avar would win. The Kalu were good fighters, but on a level playing field.

  The Avarians weren’t easy prey and they had the malleability to know when to break off contact and conserve their strength. The Kalu attacked everything with all they had at all times.

  It was a good way to tire themselves out and make them weak when eventually they would need that power.

  He pulled out the telescoping viewer from his pocket, his hand moving in swift and precise motions, but not too fast as to disturb the outcrop he rested on.

  Other Avarians moved into their observation positions to watch the show.

  The AMC camp looked like it had never existed, most of it had been swept away. Kolva only knew that it had existed because he had seen it before it’s recent changes.

  He saw something flicker, moving. Slowly he tilted the small rectangle in his hands, guiding it to the movement, holes were appearing across the front of the ridge line.

  The lake was bubbling, the Kalu were still attacking the Katak, jumping on them and herding them into killing circles, a few near the lake were paying attention to the water, they didn’t notice the ridges as barrels extended out from them.

  Missile launchers raised up from the lake, AIH seemed to stand still then as the ridge line’s guns recoiled.

  They weren’t the small mobile rail cannons, these were a warships heavy rail cannons and laser cannons.

  The Kalu were bowled over, those closest to the opposite bank just disappeared, ripples from the supersonic speed rounds blasted away in cones of explosive torment. The pressures on their surface making them bow down to the weapons ferocity and then fight back with mother nature’s tenacity.

  The rounds ripped Kalu from the ground and tossed them around like rag dolls, they shredded anything they came into contact with, the power turning the rounds and whatever they hit into bombs.

  Laser cannons traversed across the Kalu, leaving smoldering ruins. The missile launchers fired, sending multi-warhead missiles up at the Kalu fighter swarms.

  They didn’t pause to reload, the nuclear blasts ripping the Kalu formations apart. The ridge line wasn’t some dull feature anymore, it was fire, rail gun rounds ripped through the air for their targets, their tracers igniting the dusk crisp atmosphere. Laser cannons brought new light to the planet as they cut through Kalu.

  Missiles hunted down Kalu fighters with the same ferocity that the same fighters hunted down their targets.

  There were too many sights to see, too much destruction to take in. Kalvin put down his viewer and looked at the ridgeline which released lines of fire, explosions wracking the atmosphere. The cacophony of noise only added to the experience, the rounds and lasers already finding their targets by the time he heard it.

  He saw more movement now over by the city, he looked to Asul, more rounds were zipping through the streets, this wasn’t from the base. HAPA’s were moving in their massive bulk between buildings. Ursht was clearly done trying to hold the line, now he was attacking. The HAPA’s moved forward, rolling through the buildings that stopped the Kalu advancing in mass.

  The Commandos had trained in this very city and lived in it for the months leading up to the Kalu arrival. They knew it like the back of their manipulators, and Asul city was illuminated with the sights of fighting because of it. Explosion tracers and lasers flashed. Kalu charged the city and the ridge line, their lasers carving into HAPA, house, rock side, whatever they could find.

  A number of them got in range of a path leading up onto the ridge line and out of the weapons oncoming fire.

  The world exploded again as laser beams blinded Kalvin’s eyes. He shook his face, opening and closing his eyes a few times. A beam five times the size of the laser cannons clouding his vision.

  As it cleared he looked over the scene.

  Someone had taken a space mine and buried it in the ground around the base.

  Thousands of Kalu had died in the blast.

  Ursht wouldn’t open fire if he didn’t think he could win, Kalvin thought, his estimate of the Asul leader and AMC commander had only risen as he had spent more time around him. It was rare that Kalvin found himself liking a person that he had thought of his enemy.

  Kalvin pushed back from the rocks away from the sights of Asul and the Free Fleet base. There was no escaping the sound.

  The other hunters with him gathered around.

  “I feel the need to hunt,” he said, seeing the proud nods of those around him.

  “Let’s go get some of the Kalu on the Western lowlands,” Kalvin said.

  His hunters agreed with his decision. He ushered them off, taking up the rear, silently they slipped into the coming night, their natural night vision helping them as they made their way to new hunting grounds.

  Kalvin made a mental note, anyone that went up against Asul city was a damned idiot. He remembered an Earth saying he had heard a number of times from Avarian sub-cities leaders, they would say it when they submitted to Asul.

  “If you can’t beat them, join them.” His words were barely a whisper on the wind.

  ***

  “We’ve got incoming wormholes,” Jorvut said, coughing.

  Cheerleader knew he needed medical attention, there was something going through him and pinning him to his seat. It was why he was still in his seat instead of on the line that was formed in front of the bridge’s main doors.

  Cheerleader felt her rifle buck in her hands, the force physically pushing her back. Mondal had lost gravity long ago, everything was floating now. Her mag-clamped boots kept her on the deck as another Kalu went spinning backwards.

  Someone tossed a grenade through the opening from above.

  It went off with a muted crunch. They were leaking atmosphere from a hundred locations.

  “Who is it?” Cheerleader asked.

  “The HCD’s,” Jorvut said, sighing, and bringing on another bout of coughing.

  Cheerleader’s heart went out to her sensor commander, but she couldn’t leave her position and she knew he’d been given all the medical attention her force was capable of.

  Cheerleader felt some tension bleed from her shoulders.

  They had done it; they had held on long enough for Bregend’s split force of two hundred to arrive. They had paid for the pause with hundreds of thousands of lives, three-hundred and seventy-one Independent Kalu ships and fifty-seven from the Free Fleet.

  “We held out long enough for them to get here. All of you should be proud,” Cheerleader said, more Kalu appeared in the hole that was caved into the bridge’s doors as if they could hear Cheerleader’s words.

  Rounds hit them from several directions, corpses spinning away.

  Someone had been hit with a laser, a new red symbol changing to dead black.

  Cheerleader winced.

  “Now we only have to focus on taking back our ship. Soon we will have the forces necessary to make that a reality. We will hold on a bit longer and just like the HCD’s have shown up, so will the Commandos,” Cheerleader said.

  She got tired noises of agreement and it made her damn proud of her people. Even after all they had given, they pushed on. Not complaining or groaning, at least out loud, but getting the job done.
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  “They’re wormholing around the largest Kalu clan’s groups,” Jorvut reported.

  Another three Kalu tried to rush the bridge, they wounded one person, catching them in their upper arm. None made it through.

  “They’re launching fighters, and missiles, they must be fully supplied,” Jorvut continued, his relief palpable, it brought silent tears to Cheerleader’s face.

  “Damn, sometimes it’s hard to not be proud of the Free Fleet,” Jorvut said, sounding tired, so very tired.

  The bridge crew and the three commandos on guard duty when they’d been breached fought on.

  Cheerleader lost track of time, Wake-up keeping her awake. She was almost lucid when she heard the firing increase.

  Realizing she was staring at a section of the melted door she twitched her gun at the door and waited.

  Wait, who the hell is shooting? She thought, not seeing the sparking of rail gun rounds hitting the bulkhead or floor. A Kalu came into view, everyone seemed to open up on it and then nothing.

  Yasu’s HUD blinked, showing that someone wanted to talk.

  “Who is this?” Cheerleader said, blinking to get the sleep away but finding that they just wanted to glue together even more and pull her into sleep.

  “This is Commander Xel, we’re outside the bridge, please have your people lower their weapons so that we might render aid. My people are quickly helping to clear the rest of your carrier.” Cheerleader was too tired to cry, she added the commander to her private channel with the bridge defending force.

  “Don’t shoot, friendlies coming in,” Cheerleader said, looking around to make sure everyone acknowledged. “Come on in commander.”

  A Commando walked in warily, it seemed they new a thing or too about an itchy trigger finger after a fire fight which had been constantly ongoing for nearly two days.

  Once they were inside, Cheerleader seeing all the right tags and the markings of a Commando she allowed herself to relax.

  “See to Jorvut, he’s badly injured,” Cheerleader said, leaning against the box she’d been using as cover.

 

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