Prisoners of Darkness (Galaxy's Edge Book 6)

by Jason Anspach

  Reez stood before his men, who were stacked in the hangar bays, ready to assault the station, as the menacing Wolf approached the gas mining facility, weapons armed. The plan was for the ship to hard dock alongside the big gas mining freighter docks, and for the shock troops to first take that section of the floating city before moving inward and capturing the main command and control areas that governed power and security for the sprawling complex that hung just above Jasilaar Nine’s violent and turbulent atmosphere.

  Unlike the past three raids, this was a full-scale asset capture. No hit-and-run. No smash their stuff and leave it burning as you jumped out of system. Right now, the Empire needed assets as badly as she needed shock troopers. Jasilaar Nine would become an Imperial mining facility, providing the raw materials needed to build the ships and equipment required for a rapidly escalating war.

  “Captain says we got nothing, sir,” announced the task force’s intel officer over comm. He was stationed up in the frigate’s ops center, where he could parse the sensor data and relay it to the commanders on the ground inside the station when the time for that came.

  Reez waited. There would be more. Scout Drone Recon had indicated the facility had only recently been built and was still largely unoccupied. At best, the dark legionnaires should only meet a few techs completing the last of the shakedown tests.

  “Negative on any military presence,” continued the intel officer. “Intel confirms go for op start.”

  “Roger that,” said the colonel. He gave a thumbs-up to his company commanders, and the troops began dispersing through the red-lit interior cargo hold of the assault frigate. In just moments the Wolf would come alongside the facility, the cargo doors would rise, and the shock troopers would storm the station.

  The Wolf’s engines began to pulse as she slowed for docking contact, her massive engines reversing forward momentum. A deep hum and vibration passed through the ship, and not for the first time did Reez wonder if the frigate was as spaceworthy as it should be. Things were moving so fast, errors were bound to happen, and out here in the vast blackness of space, structure malfunctions were not easily recovered from. Deep space, despite all the technology, was still the most unforgiving of all environments.

  Back in the Legion, he’d once been aboard a corvette that came apart in orbit after being hit by a surface-to-space missile in an MCR conflict. Reez had been just as stunned as everyone else running for the emergency escape pods as the ship came apart rather violently and quite rapidly. He’d received a medal as a result of that incident, for carrying a wounded crewmember off the ship. He was a sergeant at the time, and one of his privates had been caught by a blast door. Reez cut the man’s arm off with a hull cutter, cuffed the wound, and carried the unconscious man to a lifeboat.

  The Republic had always assured service members that ships were built to stand up to enemy fire; they didn’t just come apart at the first blow. But that one certainly had. Reez read later that the defense contractor had been busted for using subpar impervisteel that hadn’t met Repub Navy standards. He also read the contractor was some relative of a House of Reason inner council member. Nothing came of it.

  “Still nothing,” whispered the intel officer on S-comm. That was good, thought Reez. He liked things easy, but they seldom were. So he didn’t plan for them to be.

  Docking clamps fell into place. The Wolf’s, not the station’s. Reez dialed in his S-comm for two channels: Command, and First Platoon. They’d be the first out onto the docks, and he wanted to hear it as it happened.

  The platoon sergeant was hectoring his men. “… open space. But never mind that, you sociopathic poko herders. The docks have gravity plates, just like the ship. Move forward to position one and set up to cover Second Platoon. You see anything… engage. No questions, Satterly.”

  Reez knew the man the platoon sergeant was reminding general orders to. Reez knew all his men. He was that kind of commander. He was also the kind of commander who would have preferred to lead up front, but that was against Imperial SOP. There were fewer trained officers than shock troopers.

  Of course, for Reez, a win was that everybody made it back and no one got killed.

  The Wolf’s massive cargo doors, all along the lower decks port side, rose into position, and a brilliant burning orange light flooded the holds, washing over the dark armor of the heavily armed shock troopers. Even from deep within the hangar, Reez could see the rising pinnacle of the facility’s central hub in the distance. The docks’ long spindly spider’s arms stretched hundreds of yards from the distant main hab, and all of it floated high above the turbulent thousand-year storms wandering slowly across the breadth of the gas giant. It was both a terrible and beautiful thing to behold. Such super gas giants were resource rich, and this facility was capable of extracting and producing some of the most valuable raw compounds in the galaxy.

  Pending success of this mission, captured Republic freighters would be docking here within the week and jumping back to Tarrago to deliver much-needed supplies to the factories, shipyards, and corporations already forming to support the newly established Empire. Soon the immense shipyards would be at max capability. Soon there would be more ships. And there were rumors that one of the first ships the Empire would produce was a dreadnought. A ship three times the size of their battleships.

  With a ship like that, Utopion would fall, and something new would begin. Or at least that was the talk.

  “Go! Go! Go!” shouted the platoon sergeant over comm, ordering his men to hit the docks. A long moment passed as troopers called out orders and sitreps. Though Reez couldn’t see it directly, he followed his troops’ opening movements on the tac display in his HUD.

  First Platoon was in place, and Second Platoon was deploying forward. Passing First and heading toward a small docking control tower that oversaw gas transfer operations out along this particular arm of the docks. Reez had it in mind to make the small tower his command post until they reached the main hab, but he wanted to stay mobile and as close behind the forward platoons as possible.

  Soon Third Platoon was out and moving to secure the spinal rail system that led back to the main hab from this docking arm. The rail system ran out to each of the eight docking spines, with bulk cargo rail cars occupying one side of the spine and light passenger cars occupying the other. The big cargo cars moved more slowly while the light passenger cars were supposed to zip along. Of course, all this was only reported intel, not actually known. There was a chance that this docking spine didn’t even have rail access up yet. If that was the case, they would walk the tube into the main hab. At a run—in armor—that would take twenty minutes. If there were emplaced defenders, it would take much longer.

  “Sniper teams in place,” whispered Fourth Platoon’s leader over comm. Fourth Platoon handled the special teams assets for the task force. Snipers, engineers, and anti-air. The other three platoons were straight CQB infantry.

  “We got two cars up and ready, sir,” said the lieutenant commanding Third Platoon.

  “Do we have control?”

  Pause.

  “Roger on control, sir,” came the lieutenant’s voice over comm. “We can move downspine to main hab at this time.”

  Reez waited. He’d moved forward with Fourth’s anti-armor section. They’d cleared the small docking tower and found that it wasn’t operational yet. It looked as if construction had only recently been completed, and no computers or comm gear had yet been installed alongside the fresh white paint that covered the walls.

  Reez turned to glance back at the deadly Wolf docked alongside the spine. It rose up several stories over the tower. So far, so good, he thought as he ran through his ops checkpoints once more. He knew them by heart, but it never hurt to check in.

  Now came the part of the operation Reez had never fully liked. Now they would need to thread a chokepoint by loading all his men into the rail cars and moving them downspine as one element, with no cover beyond the guns of the Wolf. And the Wolf’s wea
pons, though powerful, were imprecise. Anything the assault frigate shot at had just as good a chance of hitting them as it did of hitting the enemy.

  “Any changes?” Reez asked the intel officer aboard the Wolf.

  “Negative, sir. In fact, we’re not even getting any traffic from city docking and approach control. In other words, they know we’re here, and they probably know who we are and what we’re up to.”

  And what if they try to just scuttle the station with us on board? thought Reez. Except there were some things that didn’t need to be said aloud. They’d been sent here to capture a gas mining facility, and of course that was inherently dangerous. You couldn’t just not do things because people got killed doing them. That was the other side of being a soldier, no matter whether you served the Repub or the Empire. People were going to get killed once the shooting started.

  Reez gave the order to deploy forward into the cars. He stayed with Fourth Platoon as they moved forward and boarded the second car. The signal was given, and both cars started slowly downspine.

  Reez and everyone ignored the worst-case scenarios their minds conjured—chief of which was that someone would blow the emergency disconnect bolts on that docking spine and send them spinning off into space. Yes, they were in armor and had life support, but neither would protect them from the crushing gravity well just below the storm-tossed surface of the upper atmosphere. If Reez and his two hundred and eighty men were to fall into that atmosphere… then they were lost. There would be no rescue.

  But that scenario did not unfold, and ten minutes later both rail cars reached the central terminal ring.

  And that’s when the company of dark legionnaires got ambushed by a reinforced battalion of Repub marines.

  The Repub marines had the rail platforms covered with emplaced N-50s set up in what would one day be the mining city’s shopping arcades, spacer cantinas, and tattoo parlors that always seemed to cluster about production cities’ outer transportation rings. First Platoon vanished in a sudden electrical storm of high-cycle heavy blaster fire. They were the first off the rail cars, and they had ninety percent casualties inside thirty seconds.

  The miracle, Reez thought a few moments later as he pushed his way forward past his armored men, was that one of the anti-armor teams now attached to Second Platoon reacted as quickly as they did. Without waiting for orders, they fired on the heavy blaster emplacement directly forward of their position. The anti-armor team’s smoking missile trailed out like a Nytherian naga and smashed into the dark storefront where the heavy blaster team had set up. Its explosion knocked that team out, and perhaps killed them all outright. The platform was still in the targeting reticules of the other Repub marine N-50s, but the emplacement that had been able to fire directly into the cars themselves had just been taken out.

  The Second Platoon leader had his men pop all their explosive ordnance and send it out onto the platform. A series of explosions rocked the outer ring, and suddenly the entire area was venting atmosphere—which didn’t bother either side since both sides had come armored and armed for tyrannasquid. Second Platoon low-crawled out through the brief howling windstorm as Third provided cover from the inside the cars, shock troopers holding out their compact assault blasters and spraying the terminal with fire.

  Second Platoon gained the concourse and bounded up on the emplacements in teams, using fire and movement while lobbing more explosive over the barriers. They took losses, but nothing near as heavy as First. And of course, when you’re being shot at… there’s no other way but to do the thing that must be done. Whether it’ll get you killed or not.

  It was in such moments that Reez felt the most helpless—when the violence requires your men to act and react without your ability to protect them. In those desperate moments, the commander must merely wait for his men to succeed, or die. For the emplacement to be overrun, or not overrun.

  But Reez did not wait. He dashed out onto the concourse and poured fire at the N-50. He saw the marine gunner swinging the powerful barrel over toward him just seconds before Second tossed in the last of their grenades. The gunner never completed his swing.

  Blaster fire from another position filled the air. Third Platoon bought enough time for the snipers to take shots up close and personal and in full-effect CQB, in order to knock out the third and last of the marine heavy blaster teams.

  As silence fell over the impromptu battlefield, Reez took stock of the scene. On the platform and in the lead rail car the medics were working to save whoever could be saved from First. There were a few. Their armor had saved them. But most had been drilled straight through by the high-intensity gain inherent in the universally deadly N-50 weapon system. They were dead now. Their war was over.

  All around the Imperial assault task force, blast doors were irising and sealing off the damaged sections of the ring. As it turned out, this little automated reaction saved the task force from instant annihilation in the next few minutes. Two full companies of marines were coming up to sweep the kill zone the marines had planned, moving from opposite sides along the terminal ring, coming in to hit the flanks of the task force. But the blast doors stopped their advance.

  Reez’s platoon leaders were calling in blue sky reports on casualties and charge packs while Reez got his intel officer on comm.

  “You got marines all over the ring,” said the intel officer. “Captain Tancay says he can use the ship’s turrets on the terminal ring to engage. Standing by for your fire mission request.”

  Captain Tancay was the commander of the Wolf.

  “What will that do?” asked Reez. “As far as structural integrity to the facility?”

  There was a long pause during which the intel officer left the comm open. Reez could hear the bridge chatter, electronic and actual, and beyond all this the marines using their hull plate cutters to get through the blast doors protecting the task force. He knew his first sergeant and the company CO were setting up defensive positions. Which wouldn’t amount to much if they got hit from both sides at once.

  “Ship’s engineer says the outer ring is connected to the main hab. She’ll hold if we fire on the marines from the Wolf. Your call, sir. Standing by.”

  Reez hesitated. He looked at how his men were set up. Because there was no oxygen in here they couldn’t use the plasma throwers. And if both companies of marines came through at once and hit them from both sides… they’d all die.

  And yes, there was that. Their personal deaths. But there was also the blow of their loss to the Empire. And for all his cynicism after getting busted out of the Legion on a bogus charge, he’d come to believe in this… this whatever it was. The Empire. Maybe not all the make-the-galaxy-a-better-place-rah-rah. But he believed.

  And he had always believed in being a soldier and keeping his men alive. Whichever side he was on.

  “Fire for effect,” said Reez bluntly, then cut the comm link to the ship. Over command, he told the surviving platoon leaders and platoon sergeant to hang on. He was calling in fire and it was “danger close.”

  Republic Gas Mining Station

  Jasilaar Nine

  The tactical commander for the marine detachment watched in horror as the menacing ship, a ship that looked built for war in ways no Repub Navy ship ever had been in his memory, began to fire on the station. It didn’t bring all its guns to bear, but two powerful turrets located along her port side opened up on the outer terminal ring.

  Over comm, his officers were screaming at him for support. The ring was coming apart around them. He knew in his heart that those men and women were now falling out into the vastness of space, just above the atmosphere of the gas giant. And he knew they were lost. Atmo contact was less than two minutes. There was nothing that could be done. They hadn’t planned for the assault ship to actually fire on the station once her troops were boarding.

  It was a brutal loss. Three companies of Repub marines so far. But he had five more to burn.

  The marine commander was a point in the worst
sense of the word. It was more important for him to succeed than anything else. No matter what the cost. Or “who” the cost.

  This ambush had fallen out of the sky like a gift for the Republic and his career. Some deep source, most likely from the shadowy world of Nether Ops, had alerted the Republic, at just the last second, that a strike team from this… Empire… was inbound for the newly constructed gas mining station at Jasilaar Nine.

  “It’ll be a lunkfish shoot,” Admiral Stacs, a distant relative and ardent supporter of the marine commander’s career, had assured him. “Do this right and we can get you confirmed for a promotion to general staff on Utopion. This will be a feather in your cap.”

  But at the moment, watching the evil-looking warship fire point-blank into the station he was aboard, this didn’t seem too much like a feather in anyone’s cap. He tried to ignore the casualty count in his HUD.

  “Stage all five companies in position two. Main hab. Once they enter the central dome we’ll engage them in a kill zone. Target the mall sprawl.”

  But there will be no “we” in this engagement, he thought, and he did not like this distant voice inside his head reminding him that he was not paying the ultimate sacrifice for his own advancement. He patted his sidearm. In time he’d have to go out there and lead something. Hopefully after they’d won. If just to get some footage for the award ceremony when they gave him a medal for running the ambush.

  He turned to the station’s chief engineer. “Are we experiencing any orbital decay whatsoever?” he snapped.