Galactic Empire Wars: Rebellion (The Galactic Empire Wars Book 3)

by Raymond L. Weil

  “We won’t know until we reach the deep bunkers,” replied General Pittman. “Communications are out to most of them due to the residual effects of the antimatter explosions.”

  Mitchell turned his gaze back to the main viewscreen. With the arrival of Seventh Fleet and the Alliance, the battle was rapidly turning in their favor. The Kleese were no longer pressing the attack but seemed to be fighting a holding action.

  “Sir, we have twenty-two Kleese battlecruisers that have broken away from the main fleet and are making a run for the station,” reported Lieutenant Bryan Vail, worriedly.

  “They’re going to ram,” spoke General Pittman grim faced as he stared with worry at the tactical screen.

  “No, they’re not going to ram, they’re going to try to board us,” General Mitchell said as he leaned forward, gripping the armrests on is command chair. “Major Lest; don’t let those ships dock to the station.” Major Lest was the station’s tactical officer.

  -

  The twenty-two Kleese warships sped toward Centerpoint Station, coming under heavy fire as they drew near. Particle beams and pulse fusion beams played over their energy screens, knocking them down and leaving them vulnerable to attack. Massive explosions spread across the hulls of the attacking Zaltule ships, leaving a number of them nothing more than burning wrecks. However, for all the firepower Centerpoint had, three managed to make it to the station and dock, sending hundreds of Zaltule warriors on board.

  Human light cruisers fell back from the main battle and blasted away at the docked battlecruisers trying to destroy them. While docked, the ships couldn’t operate their energy screens. In only a matter of a few minutes, all three had been destroyed, causing some damage to the station as well. Damage that would take weeks to repair.

  -

  “We have Kleese in the station,” General Pittman reported as he listened to the reports coming in from the docking stations. “Three docking stations have been overrun by Zaltule warriors and the marines at those stations are no longer reporting.”

  “Their fleet is beginning to withdraw; there has to be a reason why they sacrificed so many ships to get their warriors on the station,” said Mitchell as he tried to figure out the Zaltule’s strategy.

  “I know what it is,” Pittman said with a horrified look spreading across his face as he received word of more contacts with the invading Kleese. “They’re headed for the Fold Space Drive.”

  “Crap!” uttered Mitchell his face showing sudden comprehension. “If they can start up the drive they can take the station out of the system to where their fleet will be waiting. We won’t stand a chance.”

  “I’m sending orders to Colonel Nelson and Major Winfrey,” Pittman said. “I’m ordering them to intercept the Kleese and either turn them back or kill them.”

  “Send marines to plant explosives on all the main power plants’ energy couplings,” General Mitchell ordered. The station was powered by sixteen fusion energy plants. “If we cut the power to the drive, the Kleese can’t activate it.”

  “I’ll send the orders and have the command sequence to initiate the blasts set up on the main command console in front of you. If we have to, we can set the explosives off from here.” General Pittman shook his head in worry; this situation had suddenly gotten very serious.

  -

  Wade looked over at Beth, deeply concerned. “The Kleese have managed to board the station and are headed for the Fold Space Drive; we have to cut them off.”

  “Captain Stern, Captain Foster, the Kleese are on board, it’s up to us to stop them.”

  “Lead the way,” Jamie said as she took her RG rifle down from her shoulder looking at the colonel.

  “To reach the Fold Space Drive the Kleese will have to pass through junction eight from transit station fourteen,” Wade said as he called up the schematics of the station on his HUD. “It’s the most direct route for them to take. “If we take the shuttles in station four we just might beat them to the transit hub.”

  “Let’s go, then,” Beth said, turning and jogging down the wide corridor with the two marine companies following close behind.

  It took then nearly forty minutes, but after boarding the shuttles and passing through thirty kilometers of tunnels, they reached the junction, which connected with shuttle line fourteen. The marines jumped out of the shuttles, sending them on so the shuttles behind could unload their complements of marines.

  “It looks like we made it,” Wade said as he surveyed the large room they were standing in. It was over one hundred meters across and several transit lines met in this location. It served as a transit hub for many areas of the massive station.

  “They need to get through that hatch to get to the Fold Space Drive,” Beth said, pointing across the room.

  “There’s no cover in here,” Wade said as he looked around trying to decide how best to defend the transit hub. “Let’s move our two companies over against the far wall next to the hatch, and when the Kleese arrive we can try to pick them off as they disembark from the shuttles.”

  “I wish there was some cover in here,” moaned Sergeant Russell. All he could see were a few tables and chairs and some crates of supplies.

  “Just shoot fast,” suggested Sergeant Dawson. “The smoke will hide you.”

  “Yeah, right,” responded Russell, shaking his head.

  It took a few minutes for everyone to set up. RG rounds and RG explosives would be the primary weapons used. Only ten percent of the marines held energy cannons.

  “I hear the shuttles,” reported Sergeant Dawson, who was standing with his squad a few meters away from Captain Foster.

  “Stand by,” Nicole ordered as she unshouldered her RG rifle and clicked the safety off. She had already set it to explosive rounds.

  The first shuttle suddenly appeared and came to a stop, the doors slid open and heavily armed Kleese swarmed out. Behind it another shuttle appeared and then another.

  “Fire,” yelled Beth as she saw the first Kleese.

  Instantly, the area around the shuttles was covered in explosions as RG explosive rounds began going off. A few hit the first shuttle, reducing it to a pile of scrap.

  “Keep firing!” Captain Stern yelled as she fired her RG rifle on full auto, spraying RG rounds into the mass of Kleese, who were now charging across the floor.

  “They’re coming out of the tunnel,” warned Sergeant Russell as a swarm of Kleese suddenly appeared out of the transit tunnel firing their weapons into the marines.

  The fighting grew vicious as the battle ebbed back and forth. Marines were going down as well as Zaltule warriors. The Zaltule continued to come out of the tunnel, and the marines were soon heavily outnumbered.

  “How many are there?” yelled Sergeant Dawson as he fired several explosive rounds into the Kleese.

  “Too damn many,” grunted Sergeant Russell as he continued to fire his RG rifle at the enemy.

  “They’re getting too close,” warned Dawson as he shot a Kleese that had nearly made it to the line of now desperate marines.

  “I’m hit,” yelled Sergeant Russell as a series of RG rounds struck his battlesuit.

  Beth turned pale when she saw the green icon representing Sergeant Russell turn amber and then red. Sergeant Russell had been with them from the beginning and she couldn’t believe he was gone. It had happened so suddenly.

  “We can’t hold them,” Captain Foster said over the command channel. “There are just too many of them!”

  Wade fired two explosive shells at a pair of Kleese, seeing one fall and the other stagger and then continue toward them. “We have to,” he said, savagely. “We can’t let them get past or the station’s lost!”

  “Looking at his HUD, he saw that over half of his marines were either injured or dead, if something didn’t change soon they were all going to be wiped out.

  Wade felt a sudden pain in his leg and fell to the deck. An RG round had penetrated his suit, going all the way through. He felt as if he were going to p
ass out and then the suit began injecting meds.

  “Colonel’s down,” yelled Captain Stern as she rushed over, standing in front of Wade to give him covering fire.

  Beth felt frantic, seeing more marines falling. Wade was injured and she could see no way out of this situation. “Keep firing,” she ordered, taking command. “Keep them away from the hatch. Switch to explosive rounds only.”

  Several more minutes passed and the room was full of smoke and exploding ordnance. Nearly every marine was now injured or dead. Nicole had been hit in both the leg and the upper body and was lying immobile on the deck. The surviving marines gathered around Beth and Wade, who was now in a kneeling position firing his RG rifle nonstop at the advancing Kleese. The room was littered with the torn and broken bodies of both marines and Zaltule.

  Just when Beth thought it was all over, the hatch they were defending suddenly swung open and Major Winfrey charged through. Behind him were marines in Type Four battlesuits.

  “Need some help, Major?” he asked as he took up a defensive position just in front of Beth and her surviving marines. Major Winfrey had brought two full companies of his Space Marines backed up by Captain Brandon Perry and his company of Type Threes.

  The tide of the battle quickly changed as the marines in the Type Four suits charged the attacking Kleese, pushing them back toward the transit tunnel. The Type Fours were more nimble and their armor more resistant to Kleese weapons fire. Captain Perry was in the thick of things with his company mixing it up with the Kleese as well.

  For ten more minutes, the battle raged as the marines finally reached the transit tunnel and began clearing out the Kleese still inside of it. At last, the weapons fell silent and no Zaltule were left standing.

  The transit hub was a wreck. Jagged holes were in the walls, the floor was torn apart, and pieces of suit armor were scattered about. It was a very morbid scene and more than a few marines got sick inside their suits. There was so much smoke in the large room that seeing without using suit optics was nearly impossible.

  Major Winfrey returned to where Beth and Wade were standing. Captain Stern was helping Wade to stand on his two metal feet. “The Kleese have been eliminated,” he reported.

  “Where’s Captain Perry?” asked Jamie not seeing him anywhere.

  “He didn’t make it,” replied Major Winfrey, sadly. “He was killed in the transit tunnel but he took a hell of a lot of Zaltule with him.”

  “He was a good marine,” Beth said, knowing he would be greatly missed. “How’s Captain Foster?” She knew that Nicole had been badly hit.

  “Hanging in there,” reported Sergeant Dawson, trying his best not to think about Sergeant Russell. He couldn’t believe his friend was gone.

  “We need to get her to the med bay,” spoke Jamie with some urgency in her voice.

  Beth nodded in agreement. They'd lost so many marines in the fighting. Captain Perry, Sergeant Russell, and many others she had known for years. Looking at her HUD, she saw that out of the two hundred marines who had entered the transit hub with her and Wade, only twenty-two were still showing green and another thirty-two were amber; all the rest were red. For a moment, Beth felt herself sway on her feet as she realized everyone who had been lost.

  “Let’s get our wounded to the med bay,” suggested Major Winfrey, nodding at Captain Stern who was picking up Nicole’s limp battlesuit. “The threat is over.”

  Wade nodded. He felt numb at the losses they had suffered today. After they had time to recover he fully intended to see if he could talk Beth into resigning her commission and taking a civilian job, perhaps in Vesta. If she would have been killed today, he didn’t know what he would have done.

  -

  “It’s over,” reported General Pittman, drawing in a sharp breath. “Colonel Nelson managed to stop them at the transit hub but it was touch and go for a while. If Major Winfrey hadn’t made it when he did, we might have lost both companies of marines, including Colonel Nelson and Major Williams.”

  “At least we won,” replied General Mitchell in an even voice. Looking up at the main tactical screen, he saw Admiral Rivers had arrived and the last Kleese warship was gone.

  “What now?” asked General Pittman.

  “Now we rebuild,” answered General Mitchell in a soft voice. “We rebuild and try to replace what we lost today. This was a brutal battle, but there are more ahead of us. The important thing is that we survived and still have a future ahead of us.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  In deep space, War Overlord Harmock looked at his shattered fleet. Out of one thousand battlecruisers, only six hundred and twelve remained and many of them were heavily damaged. In another week, the reserve fleet would arrive with their five hundred vessels. Once they did, he intended to withdraw to the trading station in sector twelve and repair his battlecruisers. It would take several months for that task to be completed with the resources of the station.

  “What of the Humans and the Alliance?” asked Gareth. He was still shaken that a vermin species had repelled the Zaltule.

  “The Humans may not be Vermin,” spoke Harmock as he thought hard and deep about the enemy. “They fight like Zaltule and their ships are very powerful.”

  “Surely you can’t compare them to our race?” objected Gareth, not believing what the War Overlord was suggesting.

  “It had to happen someday,” Harmock answered as he descended from the Command Pedestal. “The Humans, while they are not Zaltule, are clearly not an inferior species. I found it hard to believe myself, but the proof is in the battles; we have yet to defeat the Humans.”

  “Then they are a grave threat to the Empire,” uttered Gareth. “We should gather the entire Zaltule fleet and destroy them.”

  “We must learn more about them first,” Harmock replied as he thought about what needed to be done. “We shall repair our fleet and then capture a number of Humans to interrogate. We'll learn their strengths and their weaknesses. Once that has been done, it will be necessary to return to the home world and speak to the Council of Overlords. Our ships must be updated with new and more powerful weapons. It may take time, but someday the Kleese will rule the galaxy and the Humans will be no more.”

  Gareth bowed his head in acknowledgment. If the Supreme Military Overlord said it would be so, there was no doubt that someday his prediction for the Kleese and the Humans would come to be.

  -

  General Mitchell was in his office meeting with General Pittman and Fleet Admiral Kelly. They'd been discussing the losses incurred during the Kleese attack.

  “We lost forty percent of the fleet,” stated Fleet Admiral Kelly with a dismal look upon his face. “It will take two years to replace the losses, let alone the personnel.”

  “We’re already moving the damaged ships into the station’s bays,” replied General Pittman. “Vesta is moving ships out of her spacedock to make room for the damaged battlecruisers.”

  “We're fortunate the Alliance fleet made it here in time,” Kelly said, shaking his head at how close they'd come to being defeated.

  “The Alliance fleet is headed home,” commented General Mitchell. He had personally thanked the commanders of the Alliance fleet for coming to the solar system’s aid. “Seventh Fleet will remain in the system until further notice.”

  “The Kleese fleet suffered heavy losses,” Kelly said his eyes looking intently at the other two. “They won’t be a threat to anyone for a while.”

  “The Defender and her small fleet will soon be in Alliance space,” added General Mitchell. “For now, they will have to represent our people to the Alliance.”

  “They don’t even know what happened,” pointed out General Pittman.

  “The Alliance worlds will tell them once the Alliance fleet returns home,” replied General Mitchell.

  “It will be a shock, particularly when they hear about Mars Central,” Kelly said. He wondered if anyone in the small fleet had relatives on Mars.

  “I spoke to President Ste
ward a short while ago,” Mitchell continued. “Mason is going to take over running the cloning program with the goal of doubling the number of clones being produced over the next several years. We can’t fight this war without them.”

  “There will be problems over that with the civilians,” General Pittman warned. “We were already having near riots before.”

  “Cheryl Robertson will shortly be starting a new campaign to help the clones become more widely accepted,” Mitchell said. “A lot of clones died in the fleet and here on Centerpoint. She will be pointing out how they died to protect regular Humans.”

  “People are stubborn,” said Kelly, feeling dubious that any type of campaign would help considering the deep rift in public sentiment toward the clones.

  “We can try,” Mitchell said, leaning forward. “We need to rebuild and after this battle we can say one thing for sure. The Alliance is real and with some luck and good negotiating on the part of Hyram and his people, about to get much larger. We’re not in this alone.”

  “To the Alliance,” spoke Fleet Admiral Kelly in agreement. Perhaps there was hope for the future after all.

  -

  Wade and Beth were standing in the training dome, gazing at Charring Mountain. They had gone to the dome to talk and decide their future.

  “It’s hard to believe that Eugene and Brandon are gone,” spoke Beth with sadness in her voice. Sergeant Russell and Captain Perry had saved her life more than once.

  “Not only that, but so many others,” replied Wade, reaching out and taking her hand. “A lot of those we lost have been with us for a long time.”

  “Even from the days when we were Kleese captives,” answered Beth her eyes glistening with tears. “Wade, I don’t know if I can do this anymore.”

  “You don’t have to,” answered Wade, understanding her sorrow. He felt much the same way.

  “I think I want to return to Vesta to take care of my mom and raise a family,” she said her eyes focusing intently on Wade.