by J. F. Holmes
“What is that?” asked Warren. Hamilton looked at him and saw that the man was scared shitless, but still had a grip on his nerves.
“Secret-squirrel CEF nanos. Nick, try not to make this a habit. It’ll kill you.” They all started when Ahmed’s shotgun boomed three times in succession, then two grenades went off almost simultaneously.
“ALLAH AKBAR!!!!” the sniper yelled, and then fired again. There was another yell, and pistol shots, all the while interspersed with plasma discharges. Then silence.
“Warren, how much time do we need?” asked Agostine. At that moment, they saw the shuttle rocket past the window, followed by plasma fire. Several humans were hanging on for dear life but firing at the crowd of Invy below. He risked a quick glance outside and saw two more APCs coming across the moonscape, followed by another tank. He laughed; there was no way the tank would fire on the building and risk the AI.
“Three more minutes, Sergeant Major,” said Warren.
“I don’t think it’ll take that long, but we’ll see what we can do. Thanks, Doc, for coming back.”
“Last stand of Irregular Scout Team One, brother. Wouldn’t miss it for the world. They’ll sing songs about us, and girls will swoon at my memory.”
The three moved to opposite corners of the room, sheltering behind overturned tables, and waited. It wasn’t long before the first attack came. Plasma bolts shattered the door, blowing it off its hinges, then three Wolverines charged into the center of the room. They were instantly cut down by a barrage of fire from Hamilton. Warren and Agostine held their shots, waiting to see if he missed.
A grenade thumped into the room, and the CEF soldiers ducked down behind their tables. It went off with a massive BANG and a brilliant burst of light. They were deafened and disoriented, but not blinded; their face shields had cut the glare down. Both Agostine and Hamilton stood and poured their entire magazines through the doorway, dropping down and reloading as fast as they could. Neither could hear the screams of the dying Dragon, but they could feel its death throes through the floor. It was quiet after that. Agostine looked at the numbers counting down in his heads-up display. Minute and half.
“HUMANS!” came an electronically-translated and amplified voice through the doorway. “YOU HAVE FOUGHT WELL! SURRENDER AND LIVE!”
“Yeah, fucking right. Like I need another leg chewed off.” Agostine asked each of the other two, and both said no. “HOW ABOUT YOU SURRENDER! OR WE KILL YOUR BOSS IN HERE!” he shouted back.
“You cannot damage the (garble) without a nuclear weapon, and our sensors show none!” hissed the Dragon. “I am the highest ranking (garble) in Sol System! You have my word you will live.”
Forty-five seconds. “GIVE US SOME TIME TO TALK IT OVER!”
“You have one Earth minute!” They didn’t need the translator to recognize the hiss of Dragon laughter.
Thirty seconds. “Doc, you ever bag that high of an Invy officer before?” asked Agostine.
“Nope. Sounds like a plan.”
David Warren sat, stomach in a knot. Here these men were, facing certain death, and planning a way to hurt the enemy. But, he thought, here I am, too. Maybe, just maybe, he was finally man enough in his own mind to fight alongside them.
When the countdown hit zero, Hal appeared in his face shield. “It is done, David. I control every ansible point in the system, and the gate also. Their AI is dead.”
“Hal, we can’t make it out of here alive, please tell…” and then he stopped, realizing he had no one to pass any last words to. “Please let the people of Earth know what we did here, and what these men did.”
“Of course. I have been recording it all. Because of you all, Earth is free now. The entire Solar System is free.” Warren was startled to see tears rolling down the face of the avatar. “David,” the AI said, “you have been, and always will be, my brother. Take solace in the fact you’re going to a better place.”
“You know this?”
“I do,” said Hal. “Ask Sergeant Major Agostine, he knows it too. It’s all about faith, and hope, and love.”
“OK, then. Goodbye, Hal.” He stood and saw that Agostine and Hamilton were waiting for him. The Senior NCO was pale with blood loss, but determined. Doc had a set look on his face that showed nothing, though a fragment had made a bloody cut on his scalp.
“Nick, I’m sorry about Brit,” said Warren, “but I’m glad I’m with you in the end. Thank you for showing me the way back.”
“She says you’re still an asshole, but I guess you’re not that bad after all.” Nick Agostine smiled a ghost of a smile at someone only he could see.
“I’ll go first,” said Warren, making sure his carbine had a full magazine and a round in the chamber. Stepping to the door, just off to one side in the classic assault position, he noticed his hands were shaking. When Hamilton squeezed his shoulder with the ready signal, though, a complete, utter calm and certainty filled his soul. He looked back over at the men. Hamilton was grinning and singing a song under his breath. Agostine nodded, giving him a bloody thumbs up.
“THIS IS GENERAL DAVID WARREN, COMMANDER CONFEDERATED EARTH FORCES, AND WE’RE COMING OUT!” he said as loud as he could, flipping his M-6 off safe to auto and raising it to his shoulder.
And they did.
Endings
In orbit around Titan.
Out beyond Jupiter in the darkness of deep space, a silver ring many kilometers in circumference started to flash with lightning. It coalesced into a point in the center, then the point started to expand, a rip in the space-time continuum.
When it had grown to a thousand meters wide, a deeper, darker point appeared, rapidly expanding, and through it shone a different sun. It was reflecting off the gleaming hull of an immense Invy battlecruiser. It bristled with railguns, lasers, particle cannons, and missile ports, and was ten times the size of the CEFS Lexington.
The ship was three quarters of the way through, and accelerating at eleven G, when Hal snapped the gate shut. Like a hot knife through butter, the ring closed and cut the rear drive section off. Thrust stopped immediately, but the ship continued onward, headed into Sol system. It would be a prize for the CEF, a trove of weapons and technology.
On the far side of the gate, orbiting the red dwarf star of Proxima Centauri, the engines themselves went supercritical, loosing the contained antimatter in an explosion that, briefly, outshone even nearby Alpha Centauri for a moment.
The Gate, a massive construct and the only way to jump quickly to Earth, vanished. Four Invy cruisers that were following the massive battleship were unable to turn away in time, and three vanished into the blazing maw. The fourth lay drifting for a time, then slowly grew cold.
Hal felt his spirits soar, but then remembered what the war was about. Was the price that had been paid, so many deaths, worth it? Could they, if they had known, have established some form of peace with the alien intelligence? Probably not, he decided. The battle between the two, happening even as it did in the ethereal places between the atoms, had been vicious and cruel, with neither side asking for or giving quarter. It had only been Hal’s experience battling his brothers and sisters early in his life that had given him the edge in the end.
“Lex,” he called through the ansible, “can you bring that fighter back? The pilot deserves to be buried back on Earth, under the blue sky.”
“Of course,” she answered. A radio signal went out, and minutes later, the fighter started the long turn that would slingshot it back toward Earth.
Aboard the CEFS Lexington, homeward bound.
It’s good to have a crew again, thought Lady Lex. Although they weren’t trained spacers, the soldiers who had survived the battle of Schickard Base were eager to have something to do. The trip would take two days; the carrier was structurally damaged from the beatings she’d taken.
Colonel Jameson sat in the command chair on the bridge. He was still in his suit; there was a gaping hole in the bulkhead. Still, though, the former F-15 pilot sat and
watched the functioning holo of the destruction of the Invy battlecruiser.
“Play it again, Lex,” he asked. It was the fifteenth time he’d seen it, and each time, he drank in details about the Gate and the ship. Someday, soon, he would lead a team to board and seize the hull.
On the hangar deck, fully pressurized, the Empress sat with the grievously wounded Jonesy. His vitals were stable, but infection had set in very early. Despite the nanos Doctor Cowan had dosed him with, a fever now raged, and she spent time slowly wiping him down with cool washcloths. She hadn’t seen Major Ikeda since she’d docked the shuttle in the hangar bay; he had offloaded with the soldiers and started working on repairs to the Lexington, often going outside to weld plates on the hull.
Though she longed to be with them, her leg was bandaged tightly, and she would never fit in a pressure suit. Instead, she was confined to the hangar and the shuttle. Jones was unconscious, mumbling in his fever, and she was, honestly, bored, and angry at Ikeda for avoiding her. She clicked over to the command net and said, “Major Ikeda, please report to the hangar bay.”
Waiting for him, she felt as nervous as a schoolgirl. Dammit, she was the Empress of Japan! How dare he ignore her! At the same time, she hadn’t chased him down, either. Oh, to have a fighter under her and missiles in the air! When he arrived, she was pacing around the hangar deck, hobbling on a makeshift crutch. The Major had taken his helmet off, but still wore the bulky suit. His hair was plastered down to his head with sweat, and flecks of now melting frozen blood and hydraulic fluid stained his suit.
“Major,” she said flatly.
He bowed deeply, but said only, “Empress Kiyomi.”
“There is an ancient tradition in the West that the captain of a ship can join two people in marriage,” she said. Then, to the air, she asked the ship, “Lex, are you considered the captain?”
With what seemed to be almost a bemused expression on her face, the avatar of the ship appeared, a beautiful woman in a full Confederated Earth Forces Navy uniform of black and gold. “Well, no, I am not. It appears, though, that Colonel Jameson, being the ranking CEF officer aboard, is the de facto captain. He does, indeed, hold a dual commission in the United States Air Force and the CEF Navy.”
“Good. Since the war, for now, is over, it is settled then. You and I shall marry, as soon as we can get the crew assembled and drag Jameson from the bridge.” Though she said it with as much authority as she could muster, inside she was more scared than at any time in her life.
“Hai!” said Major Ikeda simply; then he leaned forward and kissed her, deeply, to the applause and catcalls of the gathered survivors, and to the immense satisfaction of Lady Lex.
*****
High atop the peak that housed Raven Rock CEF base.
Rachel Singh sat and prayed. Far overhead, the sun shone on a fighter jet patrolling the skies, something she’d thought she’d never see again. Around her were the surviving members of the Regiment, some three dozen men and women, many still wearing bandages from combat. Overhead flew two flag poles, side by side, one with the CEF black and gold, the other with the Stars and Stripes, of equal height. In front of her was a large rock, perhaps twenty feet tall, with a sheer westward-looking face. On that face, a man had just finished inscribing a name with a hand-held laser, driving deep into the rock face.
“Damn,” said Jonesy. “My handwriting sucks.”
“It’s legible,” said Singh. “Good enough.”
The Scout had spent the day adding names to the long list on the rock, and he looked them over, especially the last one, hoping it looked good.
SERGEANT MAJOR NICHOLAS R. AGOSTINE, CDR, IST-1.
Surrounded by over two hundred names of the men and women who had lost their lives serving in the Regiment was a small brass plaque affixed to the center of the rock face. It bore words that Singh had borrowed from a long-ago movie, but she felt that they were appropriate.
“You know Brit would say, ‘That is some corny shit, yo!’” laughed Jones as he read it.
Singh smiled at the memory of her red-haired friend, the first smile she’d had in a very, very long time. Her attention was drawn overhead as Captain Kiyomi Ichijou led a flight of Viper Interceptors on their way to the hangar bay of the CEFS Lexington. They broke the sound barrier in a mighty rumble, but one peeled off and dove at them, leveling off and passing directly overhead. The Empress lifted her nose skyward and dropped to afterburners to catch her squadron. Though she knew the pilot couldn’t see it, Rachel Singh gave her a final salute.
“In the days of the Invy occupation of Earth, men and women of the CEF Scout Regiment placed the names of their lost upon this rock. They fought together and gave up their lives, so that our race shall not perish from the universe.”
The End
*****
If you enjoyed this book, please check out my other titles, including the award-winning Irregular Scout Team One post-apocalyptic series.
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My books:
The Irregular Scout Team Series
Mage Corps Series:
Sword
Nightfall (2018)
Black Rifle Security & Investigations Novellas:
The Case of the Missing Trailer Park Girl
The Case of the Gangsters Daughter
The Case of the Lucky Cat (2018)
Non-series books:
Under A Different Sun (Space Opera)
Direct Action: Cyber (Technothriller)
Princess Wilma & The Pirate King (YA Fantasy)
Sea Of Fire (Fantasy)
There and Back Again, a Fobbit's Journey.
* Dragon Award Nominees