Transmission Lost

by Stefan Mazzara

  That revelation did make Ara'lana growl. -That woman. That is concerning, indeed. She is better than any of the commanders I have. What numbers do we have for the enemy on the ground?-

  -We outnumber them by a comfortable margin,- Admiral Kris assured her. -They have the disadvantage of requiring transport ships to get their troops to the planet's surface, whereas we are already entrenched. Our fleets and planetside squadrons are shooting down as many landing craft as they can prior to them touching down. As of now, they appear to have landed approximately one and a half million soldiers, with a proportional number of armored units. We can handle that number easily.-

  -Excellent.- Ara'lana turned to Seirin-143. -Your people are ready?-

  The Pteryd clacked its mandibles. ~Indeed we are. The troop divisions on the planet are awaiting my orders, and the other assets you requested are similarly waiting for their orders. We shall be ready whenever you require us.~

  -Good.- Ara'lana allowed herself a sinister grin, and she laughed to herself. -Let's allow them to think they are gaining an advantage. When all the pieces are in place, we shall reveal ourselves. This will be a battle to be remembered, and it shall be the crowning achievement of everything we have been working for these past years. We cannot fail!-

  ******

  The ride down to the surface of Lirna was rough. Aria and the rest of the Royal Guards were divided between three transport craft, about thirty of them to each, and they were accompanied by a further fifty Ascendancy naval troopers with each ship. The guards were clad much the same as they had been on Arbaros, which was very different from the way the troopers were. Ailian soldiers typically wore heavy personal armor and helmets, yet they carried a single weapon each, the standard Ailian battle rifle which could be converted for a number of different functions. The Royal Guards were armored very lightly for better flexibility and agility, and they wore no helmets to keep their peripheral vision clear, but they were armed much more heavily. Each Royal Guard wore a belt with a heavy caliber pistol and a knife strapped to it, and they all carried some sort of main weapon. For Aria and a number of the guards, that meant the shortened version of the battle rifle, while others carried the standard-length version. A select few of the guards, including Aria's executive officer, Lieutenant Ayalis, carried specialized long-range precision rifles in addition to their main weapon. One of every three of the guards also had a single-use, collapsible anti-armor missile launcher strapped across their shoulders.

  One the way down, the transport was frequently buffeted by near misses from shipboard weapons fire. They had escorts from Ailian and Nuretan fighters, and several smaller capital ships were accompanying their wave of landing craft to screen them. Aria stayed up near the cockpit, where she could see out into space. As they entered the atmosphere, one of the ships accompanying them received a direct hit from an enemy vessel, and it detonated in a spectacular fireball. Several small chunks of debris impacted their transport, but the shielding and armor held and they sustained only minor damage. A few minutes later and they were out of danger from the ships in orbit, and they were flying high over the deserts of Aria's home planet.

  Aria turned back to face the interior of the transport. -Five minutes to drop!- she shouted at the guards and the naval troopers, holding up all five fingers on one hand. The Ailian captain walked to where her soldiers were seated, and took her own seat. She knew from previous experience during training that the landing could be just as rough as the flight in.

  She looked around at the Royal Guards and naval troopers in the large craft. Some of them were talking to each other, either exchanging jokes or good-natured insults. Others were quiet, and they checked over their weapons or tightened the straps on their gear, making sure that everything was ready for when they reached their landing zone. A few had their eyes closed, and they looked to all the outside world to be asleep, but Aria knew that they were just lost in thought. Maybe they were worried about the battle ahead, or perhaps they brimmed with the kind of excitement that made one completely still. Aria felt as though she had that sort of excitement right now. She would have liked to join in the joking, but as the commander of this group of soldiers she had to set the example of professionalism. Instead, she closed her eyes, and she leaned forward in her chair with her hands clasped in her lap.

  -Liren'sa, lady of the battle...,- she whispered, quietly enough that nobody would be able to hear over the noise of the transport's engines. -Let my comrades be strong, my aim be true, and my feet be swift. And should the worst come to pass, and I fall this day...grant me the peace of my ancestors.- She stayed like that for the long, dreadful minutes until the alarm sounded through the length of the transport, at which point she launched herself back into full alertness. Now was the time.

  Lieutenant Ayalis rose from her seat and began barking orders to all of the soldiers, who stood up and braced themselves against the walls of the craft. The pitch of the engines changed, and they all lurched as the pilot made a sudden dive. One of the naval troopers retched as her stomach reacted to the drastic change in altitude, and vomit spattered the floor. The Royal Guard next to her cuffed her on the shoulder and laughed, and she managed a weak laugh of her own after wiping her muzzle. Aria grinned. At least morale was high.

  Seconds later the craft shook violently as it settled hard onto the ground. A hatch at the rear opened up, and the cool, filtered atmosphere of the airtight ship was almost instantly replaced by the hot, dry air of Lirna. Their ears were immediately assaulted by the sounds of battle. The pilots had landed them right in the center of Mat'aar Airbase, as planned. Aria could hear gunfire and scattered shouting, quite close by, as well as the muted “crump” of grenades going off. At a shout from Aria, all of the soldiers in the transport charged out into the fray and split up into their designated fire groups. They all had their own individual assignments, and they didn't need her supervision to carry them out. Aria and her group had one task at this point: to link up with General Soumaren and her Imperial Marine contingent at the airbase and push forward into the city to slip inside the royal palace.

  -Alright, Mari,- Aria shouted, with a slap on the back of Lieutenant Ayalis. She flinched a little as a round ricocheted off the armor of their transport craft. -Let's get to it. Our rendezvous point with General Soumaren is the front gate of the airbase, and we're already behind schedule.-

  -Yes, Captain,- Lieutenant Ayalis agreed. She turned to the rest of their group, composed of fifteen Royal Guards and ten naval troopers. -You heard the captain, move it! Take cover at the nearest building and we'll start pushing for the front gate!-

  They started running, paying no heed to the fighting that was taking place all around them except to return fire towards incoming rounds. The sand of her homeworld felt glorious underneath Aria's booted feet, and the atmosphere of battle was even better. This was her element. It had been far too long, for her, since she had experienced combat of this sort. All around her was the stuff that legendary fights were made of. The expansive landing field of Mat'aar Airbase was as occupied as on any day, except not by ships and other flying craft this time. Armored units had landed along with the troops, of every kind that the Ascendancy and the Nuretan Empire could field. The largest of these were the towering two-legged walkers that were the mainstay of the Ailian Navy's ground divisions. Ten meters tall, made of metal as tough as that which composed a fighter, the walkers had thick legs that bent backwards, topped with a bulky, rotating pilot compartment, the right side of which was fitted with a long, large-caliber cannon that was capable of firing a 108-millimeter shell three times in a minute. These walking tanks began prowling the base, searching for and finding enemy positions close-in and far away and lobbing high explosive rounds at them. They were accompanied by smaller wheeled units equipped with machine guns and missile launchers, who fielded the dual task of protecting the larger walkers while engaging infantry. The Nuretans helped out with their curious, oblong hovering tanks, which sported independently-tracking ca
nnon turrets that allowed them to cover multiple directions at once. Designed with aquatic terrain in mind, they had been upfitted with engine covers that allowed them to handle the sandy, hot conditions of Lirna.

  Aria and her team made it to the line of buildings after a hard run, but instead of heading inside they hugged the walls and pushed on into the building complex itself. They began moving away from the center of the base, where the fighting was heaviest, and leapfrogged from building to building as they moved for their first objective. Along the way, they came across scattered squads of rebel soldiers, all Ailian, and had to stop several times to deal with these obstacles. The enemy troops were very well-trained, as soldiers of the Ascendancy could expect to be, but the Royal Guards were better-trained than them all. Every time, Aria and her guards got in close and dealt with the enemies while the naval troopers hung back and offered supporting fire.

  Aria didn't take long to reach the vicinity of their objective. The front gate of Mat'aar Airbase was pretty much exactly that, a gate, though it was fortified and usually flanked by stationary armored units. Aria paused, afforded cover by the outer wall of a building, and peeked around to see what was awaiting them. What she saw was a company of Nuretan Imperial Marines, pinned down behind the scarce cover given to them by the hulks of several of their burned-out hovertanks. The marines were clearly trying to advance on the inside of the front gate, but they were stalled by rebel troops stationed there. The rebels were well-placed, atop the wall of the gate with snipers and rifle infantry. As the Ailian captain watched, several of the Nuretans were picked off when they ventured too far out of cover. The situation was going to turn ugly for them very quickly, especially if rebel armor descended on the area.

  -Mari,- Aria called, waving her executive officer over. -Take three guards and get to high ground. We need to thin out the enemy troops so we can take the gate. Do it quickly. We'll distract them while you get in position.-

  Lieutenant Ayalis nodded and motioned three of the other guards over, and she made sure that one of those she selected was a sniper as well. They vanished behind the rest of the squad to look for a way to get on top of the building they were taking cover at. Aria shouldered her rifle and took aim at the top wall of the front gate. The soldiers around her mimicked her, placing themselves so they had clear shots while grabbing as much cover as they could. So far they hadn't been noticed by the defenders at the gate, but that would soon change.

  Aria took a deep breath, and her ears pricked forward as she tuned all of her senses carefully. Without any sort of verbal command, she pulled the trigger on her weapon and sent a burst of fire towards the rebels on the wall, and the rest of her squad followed suit a split second later. Though they had little hope of hitting them from this distance, owing to the enemy's superior position, the point of it was to make them duck down and to draw fire towards her own men while Lieutenant Ayalis made her move. The tactic worked, and they soon heard the crackle of bullets striking the ground and walls around them. They ducked into cover when they needed to, but they never let up their firing for more than a few seconds.

  Meanwhile, Lieutenant Ayalis and her fire team had found a spot at the back of building where there were water and electrical conduits on the exterior wall. The four of them strapped their weapons to their backs and started climbing, and though the handholds were small and not easy to grip they were able to get to the roof of the three-story building without too much difficulty. Once on the roof, they low-walked across the flat surface until they neared the side that faced the front gate. All four of them dropped flat to the sandstone surface at the same time and crawled the rest of the way. The lack of sandy bursts near the edge of the roof, which would signify shots hitting the building there, let them know that they hadn't been seen.

  The Ailian lieutenant and her other sniper, a sergeant, unstrapped their weapons from their backs and rested the bodies of the rifles on the slightly raised edge of the building's roof, letting the barrels extend out over empty space. The sniper rifles bore only passing similarities to the standard Ailian infantry weapon. The main body of the weapon was slender at the front, with a stock which broadened out from the rear end of the body and had holes carved into it for the shooting hand's fingers to fit into. The long end of the barrel was capped with a triangular prism-shaped protrusion with slots notched into it at regular intervals, which served to dissipate the flash from the gunshot as well as to decrease noise. On the dorsal side of the rifle was a thick cylindrical scope that allowed the shooter to have an extremely clear view of their target at great distances.

  Mari looked through her scope and sighted in on the top wall of the front gate. A built-in rangefinder lased the wall, and the tiny readout told her that the distance from there to her position was approximately two hundred and twenty meters. Just outside of the maximum practical range for the short-barreled rifles the two guards accompanying the snipers carried, but child's play for the sniper weapons. The lieutenant did her level best to make herself melt into the roof, and she relaxed almost every muscle in her body. Her tail was lying straight out behind her in between her legs, which were spread at an even distance, and the only parts of her body that were raised were her head and shoulders. She tucked the stock of her rifle tightly into the crook of her arm, and she let her free hand rest on top of the weapon underneath her cheek. Her eye stared unflinchingly into the scope. The black-furred female had a perfect view from here, and the targeting dot of her scope rested on the head of one of the rebel soldiers. He had impressive cover from the troops on the ground below. Not so much from above.

  -Do you have a target, Sergeant?- Lieutenant Ayalis asked. Her voice was almost too low to be heard.

  -Yes, ma'am.- The other sniper's posture exactly mirrored hers.

  -Alright. Wait for the firing to pick up, then take your shot. Keep it up until I tell you to stop.- Mari started breathing deep and slow, calling upon all of her training to slow her own heart rate down. When she was totally relaxed, and when a new flurry of gunfire rose to a near-deafening crescendo, she pressed back on the trigger of her weapon. The rifle kicked back against her shoulder, but the sound that issued from it was barely a whisper in the cacophony of noise coming down from below. The bullet took barely a tenth of a second to travel the distance from where it exited her weapon to when it impacted the unfortunate soldier she was targeting. When it did, his body stiffened and jerked back, a greyish-pink cloud erupting from the other side of his head as the bullet made a mess of his skull. He crumpled dead to the top of the wall as another soldier three down from him did the same, felled by the other sniper atop the building.

  One by one, Lieutenant Ayalis and the sergeant picked off rebel soldiers, and the fire coming down at Aria's squad and the Nuretan marines began to slack off. This gave them the chance to time their shots more effectively, and the enemy troops began falling from shots fired from the ground as well as from the roof. They spent nearly fifteen minutes on this deadly game of pop-up targets, but in the end the coast was clear and the Nuretans were able to relax a little, as Aria and her guards broke cover and swiftly crossed the ground towards their allies.

  One of the amphibian aliens came out of cover to meet her, and Captain Me'lia found herself face to face with General Soumaren, who looked a little breathless but unhurt. -Thank you for your assistance, Captain,- the general said gratefully. She was dressed in the fashion of the Imperial Marines, wearing a mottled-blue uniform and the curious tilted green cloth hats that were common among Nuretan military units. A few of the other marines echoed her sentiments of gratitude, some of them congratulating each other on surviving the skirmish while others started tending to the wounded who could be saved. Out of the company of fifty, thirty-three were unhurt, five were injured but still capable of moving and fighting, and the rest were either dead outright or would soon be. -I've heard from some of my troops over the radio. They report that the airbase is largely under our control. That's none of our concern. I have a few of your ar
mored ground vehicles heading to us, and they'll carry us into the city. Our scouts and recon drones are telling us that the streets are mostly empty. It seems a lot of the rebel forces in the city are spreading out to try to stop our advance.-

  -That would make sense,- Aria said. -There is a lot of cover in the city. They'll split up to try to take advantage of it and make us waste our time going building-to-building.-

  General Soumaren nodded her agreement, and then she gave a tight-lipped grin. -We're not going to play that game. Your squad and mine will load up and lance through Hayikwiir City to the royal palace. We're not stopping for anything. I've ordered some of our air cover to break off from the main battle and clear the streets on the most direct route of any enemy armor that may be patrolling the city.- The Nuretan general's neon-colored eyes were flaring with anticipation. -I plan on being at the walls of the royal palace within the next two hours. We still have a lot of daylight left. Does that sound adequate to you, Captain?-

  Aria gave a smile that was all teeth. -I like that plan.- She turned her head as Lieutenant Ayalis and her fire team rejoined the group. -Excellent shooting, Lieutenant.-

  -Yes, Captain,- Mari said.

  -Everyone reload and eat what you can,- General Soumaren ordered. -We have two minutes until the vehicles are here, and then I want to keep it tight until we reach the next checkpoint. Am I understood?-

  A chorus of shouts in the affirmative answered her.

  ******

  Admiral Kris wore a look of grim satisfaction on her face. Anyone else would have thought that she had little to be satisfied about. The combined fleet of Nuretan and Ailian ships that were opposing her in the space above Lirna were slowly gaining the advantage. Her own ships were being worn down, little by little, as her numbers began to drop. As she checked the radar readouts from her command chair aboard her flagship, she saw another battle group drop off the screen as their ships were overtaken by enemy fire.