“Nerva puts the timeline at five months. They’re pushing back the Harmony forces, letting them throw themselves at their positions, grinding them down. Harper has given his blessing for certain freighters of Chosen to make the trip. It takes a week and a bit to get to Shipping Station and the same back, so the whole evolution takes about three weeks,” Haas said.
“So they’ll get nearly seven rides up there,” Holm said throwing a rock against another wall.
“When do we start putting the plans into motion?” Mark asked, looking to Haas and Zukic.
“Four months’ time we start pushing the resistance to take on a role. A week before everything goes down we hit their machinery, raid their armor and weapons, and get the resistance ready to make a difference. I know the training is hard and annoying without the right gear but at least they’re motivated,” Haas answered.
“Carry out the plans in your sub-groups when you deem it right. We don’t need to share unless you think it might affect another person’s part of the problem. Anything else?” Zukic looked around.
“Have we got any word from higher, on whether they are going to follow our recommendations?” Yu asked.
“We haven’t got any indication. I hope they do, but it’s the EMF,” Haas said, shrugging.
Everyone had assumed that, but if they didn’t follow any of the recommendations then it was the troopers and combat shuttle crews that would pay for their ignorance.
Jerome didn’t need to look around at the anger simmering beneath their professional veneers. It was only out of respect to Haas and Zukic that no one started bad mouthing higher-ups.
Chapter 35
Tower
Earth, Sol System
7/3241
Nivad looked at the three orders before him.
One would put trillions of credits from the government coffers into the EMF for the purpose of running out ammunition capable of piercing the armor the Chosen were being issued and making vibra-blades available to every trooper.
The second gave incentives to companies to build Earth Military Carriers. He’d had recruitment ramp up and there were contracts available to whoever was able to provide EMFC’s. It would start the biggest ramp up in the EMF in centuries.
He signed and submitted them both.
He looked at the third order, which laid out a plan to provide the EMF with powered armor.
He wouldn’t be able to get it to Osdal in time. Masoul’s war wouldn’t drag on that long and the fleet would be ready twenty-four years after Masoul’s combat was wrapped up.
Shipping from Earth to Osdal would take forty-one and a half years. Too late to be useful.
It would take him a year to convert what he needed. It would take another five to start making carrier loads of it.
He wasn’t going to have the armor built anywhere else but under his direct control.
He didn’t think that Osdal was the end of Harmony, he felt another player was in the game, so he filed the order away, a provision for the future.
If the enemy did indeed prove to be in other systems, then Nivad knew he would need to get powered armor to the troopers that would fight them.
Which brought about another problem. The troopers, the most dysfunctional group of the EMF would be given weapons that could make them a true threat. He would work safeguards into the system but there was always a way around them.
His other option was to give a select group of troopers the powered armor and use them as a strike force.
He looked at other reports that seven carriers were moving to Osdal, and forty-five were moving into the sphere, ready to be deployed to any system.
The reports hadn’t changed in months. He stood and wandered over to his liquor cabinet.
He poured himself a double bourbon, ice clinking in the cup as he carried it back to the desk, pulled a cigarette out and lit it.
Relaxing agents stifled his nerves, but he rarely used this type of cigarette, preferring the stim-infused blend that kept him alert and active.
He smoked and sipped on the priceless bourbon, waiting on a message coming from nearly thirteen light years away.
How did they get powered armor? That question would hopefully be solved soon. Nivad drank and smoked, his eyes moving over the updating reports and graphs that covered the side of his office, the heartbeat of Earth and her colonies.
A reminder on his implants alerted him to his weekly meeting, so he tossed the rest of the drink back, took a drag of his cigarette, and threw the butt in the trash chute.
He stood and did up his jacket, running his hands over the fine material and flicking off some cigarette dust on the lapel.
He checked a mirror, making sure he was presentable. With medical treatments he looked like he was just middling twenties. The treatments cost as much as a freighter, but Nivad was happy to pay for the additional lifetimes he had earned.
With a snap of his fingers the screens changed to a view of Mega City as he strode through his office doors, his security detail ready and waiting for him.
***
Nivad looked around the conference table, his eyes resting on the head of Osdal’s operations.
They had had a private chat a few days ago and the woman looked like she hadn’t slept since. Nivad approved; there were things coming from Osdal that he didn’t like. She had traced Harper back to his roots, he was a middling CEO, real name Zhang Henry.
She had looked into his associates and it seemed that many of them were working with Harmony.
On Osdal, Harmony had taken their time in growing. There were agents throughout the ranks but the Osdal Harmony had been smart, they’d opted for creating cells.
Zhang Henry ‘Harper’ seemed to be one of those cells. A specially trained operative sent to Masoul for the strict purpose of raising hell and knocking out Strike Station and Gas Planet.
More information was coming in from the planet, but not at a rate that Nivad was happy with.
Nivad’s eyes left the Osdal head.
“From now on we assume that the enemy has the same capabilities as us in the area of information gathering. That was the reason screening took so much longer today, that, and because this information I’m about to tell you is not to make it into the public realm.” He looked around, and people paled under his gaze, trying to hide their fear. “Harmony have the ability to make powered armor and weapons capable of piercing trooper armor,” Nivad said, there were some knee-jerk reactions, but no one intentionally interrupted him.
Nivad snapped his fingers, and folders appeared from Wallace’s briefcase, which were distributed around the room.
Nivad paused to let his people take in the true weight of what he was implying. Plus, the fact that all of the information was on paper instead of electronic copy.
“The weapons can only be used in stationary positions, but we need to strike the enemy so that won’t matter and it will make things more difficult on Osdal. I expect them to take a toll on Masoul Actual as well. They’re not just using the planet to cut off the sphere from Earth and direct military action. They’re using it as a test-bed for their weapons,” Nivad said.
Only Dalia and Wallace didn’t look confused. He’d been working with them more closely than any other operatives under his control, even people he’d worked with for years.
And they didn’t look too pleased with that little fact.
“I have ordered the reserve powered armor in our storage to be sent to the front lines on the fastest freighter I was able to contract. With the powered armor goes three forces to protect it and the ammunition aboard that will allow trooper weapons to pierce the Chosen’s armor,” Nivad said, seeing a few confused faces look in his direction.
“Harmony call their fighters Chosen. It reinforces their religious ideology that they were picked to fight Harmony’s battles. That they were picked to fight the corporations,” Nivad said.
He didn’t care to get stuck in military matters or like to explain things to people. But
with his need for expediency, he had to get this whole thing moving. He was playing on a different field, he had used the EMF as a hidden threat, a way to disperse favors and show his displeasure. Now it was not just a thinly veiled threat, it was his direct tool to change the balance of power. He had to back them to the hilt, at least the ones fighting against Harmony.
If the troopers lost and died, then there would be no one to stop them. Harmony wasn’t just a group of colonists thinking about rebelling. They had taken time to create, time to organize, and they were zealots. Their fighters went into a battle knowing that if they died they’d be rewarded.
You couldn’t make a deal with people that looked forward to dying for their cause.
Sure he had more troopers but he still needed to crush Harmony as fast as possible. Otherwise the military technology Nivad and the rest of Earth and her colonies had let stagnate would become inferior to the power of Harmony’s capabilities.
Nivad had learned everything he could about the EMF as fast as possible, and he saw it for the dysfunctional machine that it was; a machine that had been born from CEOs and their politics. It worked, but he now saw the need to have more than just politicians in the lower ranks.
He needed a military that didn’t just look good but could perform. In the higher ranks the leadership had been cultured to seek out corporation sponsorship. Nivad might be able to clean up the lower ranks, and with the old guard that were sitting in the higher positions, he would quietly force them out, filling the vacancies with capable and loyal personnel.
It was time for the infighting to stop for now. It could return afterwards; one didn’t want the EMF getting too strong to control.
Chapter 36
Landing City
Masoul Actual, Masoul System
12/3241
Mark looked over the fifty sets of powered armor in front of him. In that group Haas and Zukic rested. They might be Mark’s official leaders but Tony had picked Mark as his second.
Once the real fight started then Haas and Zukic would take over. In the meantime, they kept up the ruse and trained constantly.
Harper had come down all smiles and pride in the powered-armored Chosen that were capable of taming the power of the armor. Mark had wanted to punch the man in the face for all he had created.
Mark remembered walking through the barracks when a fight broke out. Mark and Tony had just been walking through, talking about the last time they’d gone drinking and making plans for that night when someone yelled out “Non-believer!”
Tony’s face turned from excitement at the coming night to instant anger, all of the enforcers flocked to the cry and grabbed a man being accused of being a non-believer.
An educator had been nearby and watched with interest as the accuser said that the other man had been in contact with the resistance and was trying to funnel rations and weapons to them. The accused cried and wailed his innocence, which had only increased as the educator walked into the fray.
“Well we shall find out the truth of these accusations,” the educator said, instructing Tony to pull the clothes from the man.
Tony did as ordered; the man bucking against him and another enforcer.
The man screamed out and writhed, yelling his innocence.
The educator made soothing noises taking their knife and drawing it down their chest.
The man screamed out as the educator asked him questions, skinning the man’s chest.
The man’s screams and tears dissolved into incoherence.
A matter of hours later and the man was talking about how the accuser was trying to make moves on his woman. The accuser looked shocked and hurt, saying that they were turning the blame on him.
The educator sighed, telling the accused that their lies would not help them here. More hours passed, blood covering the educator’s hands and the man looking more like a biology experiment than human, he died in agony. Mark was disgusted, he wanted to kill them all.
He had seen a good number of terrible things in his life, but nothing as crude or terrible. All because a man was accused of not believing.
As much as Mark hated it, he watched and went through it. If he killed them all then his people would have the same or worse done to them. It was cold hard math. He didn’t want this to happen to his friends so he did the only thing he could think of.
He slipped his blade along the man’s veins, quickening his end.
The enforcers nailed him to the wall and the educator wrote absolved in their blood. Then they walked away. Mark had heard them talk about various Harmony religious texts as blood covered their clothes. It was like nothing had even happened.
“Damn that’s thirsty work, let’s get a beer,” Tony said, unfazed by the violence.
“Haven’t seen anything that fucked up in a while,” Mark said.
“Yeah City Eight didn’t get many non-believers, here at central with a bigger population they can hide out, though we always find them,” Tony said, dark satisfaction on his face.
Mark had later followed the accuser, found him as he was breaking his way into a household. Mark heard a disturbance inside, the accuser was forcing his way onto a woman as a boy pitifully tried to fend him off.
“Get back or I’ll do to you what I did to your father!” The man yelled, pulling at the woman’s clothes.
She’d given up fighting when she saw Mark come through the door.
He’d grabbed the man by the collar and pulled him out of the doorway. The man struggled but Mark’s hand was a vice as he pulled him out of the house and down the street, and people spat on the man as he cried for mercy.
Mark saw the white of an educator.
“This one used the edicts of Harmony to kill a father and tried to rape his wife,” Mark had said.
The educators were a sadistic lot, but largely emotionless about their work. Mark saw a flash of anger in this one’s eyes.
The educator pulled up the man’s shirt, seeing the tattoo of Chosen.
“Was the man he had put to death Chosen?” The educator said.
The man was now crying, resolved to his fate.
“Yes,” Mark said.
The educator nodded.
“You have done well, enforcer,” the educator said, raising a communicator to their face, moments later, educators were walking through the crowd, and they took the man from Mark.
“For the sake of Harmony,” Mark said saluting to them.
They repeated the vow, solemnly, turning their attention to the man.
He lasted for days, educators moving through as they each inflicted their own unique brand of torture .
Harper and his followers had brainwashed the population and assured their rule through a combination of kindness and loving words, but when they were crossed they reacted with public displays of controlled violence. Enforcers were the cops and jury; educators were the executioners.
The system worked and made Harper’s words the words of a higher power, one that people believed they could never surmount.
“Today our great leader Harper will lead us on a parade of the city, I don’t want any fuck-ups. We are there to show the people of Harmony how we will beat the troopers, to inspire them with our strength and power, to assure them that their hard work has not been in vain,” Tony said, his helmet open as he looked at them all. His neck was covered by the bulk of the large armor, making him practically invisible.
Nods and agreement came back. They were nothing close to a military unit.
Most of them at least, Mark thought, his eyes falling on his people.
“Good, let’s go.”
Mark and the others had adjusted to using the powered armor. It had been slow going but Moretti’s enforcers spent every waking minute that the powered armor wasn’t charging, using the things or the weapons they were given.
They had hardened blades, rudimentary grenades, and a repulsor. There was no aiming assistance. Aiming was done by using the tracers to draw a line to their target.
> They were getting better at hitting targets by feel, but it took practice. They were up to max strength whenever they could be.The training area was much too small to actually open up full throttle and truly run, but it was a freeing feeling. There were a number of issues with the command software and the internals of the powered armor.
Everyone cataloged the weaknesses and made sure to not work on them or raise them to the techs.
Don’t want Harmony improving the machines if they could help it.
They closed their helmets, screws and bolts sealing them, showing angles that were supposed to help deflect blasts and rounds.
The rest of the armor looked like an oversized human with long arms and shaped armor plates that were meant to take massive frontal damage. The back was hardly armored, another flaw that tank gunners a few centuries past were all too aware of.
People looked at them in awe as they marched through the testing area, towards the command center. They waited there; enforcers, Chosen and others looking at them and cheering, whooping, and yelling all kinds of Harmony propaganda.
Mark was thankful he was inside his armor and could openly show his disgust at them. He silenced the audio, scanning the crowds.
Harper walked out and people went wild as he stepped among the powered armor wearers. He was smiling and waving, saluting to a few, he was more celebrity than a leader. At least at this moment he was.
Mark looked around, they were safe here, but outside was different. If there was a threat he would have to react. He hated the need to protect Harper, but if he didn’t then the whole operation would be in jeopardy.
They exited the barracks and walked through not only Central Tower but also the other towers that made up Landing City.
They walked and walked, and after about four hours Mark was bored but watching the crowd when he saw someone move forward and bring a gun out of their jacket. Mark started to put his body in the way of Harper’s. Moretti who was also part of the procession, pushed Harper down, a pistol coming up in his hand.
Masoul (Harmony War Series Book 2) Page 27