by Jay Allan
Hargraves ran back into the cave, past the cluster of Marines in various stages of realization that something was going on. He turned a corner, moving into a small alcove beyond the main cavern. He stopped and dropped slowly to his knees, kneeling over a figure covered in a massive pile of blankets.
“Lieutenant?’ Hargraves spoke slowly, softly, uncertain if the officer was awake.
“Sergeant?” Lieutenant Plunkett turned over slowly, looking up at Hargraves with unfocused eyes.
“Yes, sir.” Hargraves reached out and pulled up a blanket that had slipped down off Plunkett’s shoulder. “We have incoming landing craft, sir. I think they’re ours.”
Plunkett looked back, saying nothing for a moment. Then he rasped, “Ours?”
“Yes, sir. Corporal Miller’s tracking them now, sir. I think we should go meet them.”
“Are you…sure they’re…ours?” Plunkett struggled to force the words out, then he twisted around and went into a coughing spasm. Hargraves could hear a rattling sound, worse than it had been a few hours before. Luke Plunkett was tough, especially for an officer, at least to Hargraves’ way of thinking. But he knew the lieutenant was slipping away. Hargraves had treated the wound himself, after their medic had been killed, but the infection had already taken hold. Now, Plunkett’s body was wracked by some native Santis bug, one that looked a lot like pneumonia. Hargraves was frustrated to the point of rage watching his commanding officer waste away, when a single injection might save his life. An injection the Marines on Santis didn’t have.
“Can’t be sure, sir.” Hargraves paused. “But I’d bet on it.”
“You need to go…” Plunkett spasmed again, his cough spraying speckles of blood onto the blankets. “…and you need to leave me, Sergeant.”
“No, sir. We can’t leave you. Marines don’t…”
“Marines follow orders, Sergeant. And I’m ordering you to leave me.” Plunkett coughed again, and then he lay back down, clearly too exhausted to hold himself up.
“Lieutenant…” Hargraves’ tone was tentative. “We can’t leave you…”
“You have to.” Plunkett gasped for breath. “I’m done, Sergeant. You know that. I know that.”
“You ain’t done, sir. And I ain’t leaving you behind.” He turned and leaned backward, looking into the main cave. “Cole, Weir…get over here. We’ve got to rig up something to carry the lieutenant.”
“Sergeant…no…”
“I’ve served since you were a boy, Lieutenant. Don’t make me a mutineer, not now.”
Plunkett looked back at Hargraves. “Okay, Sergeant…on one condition. If we run into trouble, you drop me and leave me behind. Whatever chance you guys have, I don’t want it thrown away dragging my dying body around.”
Hargraves took a deep breath. Then she said, “Okay, sir. Whatever you say.”
“Your word, Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir…my word.”
Plunkett nodded. Then he laid his head back and struggled to take in a deep breath.
Hargraves turned away, partially to head back and get ready to head out…but mostly because he couldn’t face the lieutenant, not after lying to his face.
Clete Hargraves had never broken his word before, but if it came to leaving Plunkett to die or forsaking a promise, he knew exactly what he would do.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
AS Invictus
30 light minutes from Santis, Krillus IV
Alliance Year 58 (307 AC)
“Open the power feeds…but slowly. No more than five percent at first.” Raban Cinatus stood on the deck, looking up at the massive engines. The structures were immense, rising thirty meters from top to bottom, and almost seven hundred meters in length. And he felt as though his people had covered every centimeter of that vastness.
The Confederation weapons had torn huge gashes in the engines, and they’d shattered the hull, exposing most of the engine room to the vacuum of space. Thirty of Invictus’s crew had died almost instantly, most of them blown out of the rents in the hull. Another fifty, at least, had been wounded. And the engines themselves had shut down immediately, leaving Invictus tearing away from the battle at greater than one percent of lightspeed, with no way to decelerate.
Which it still was. Cinatus had deployed his crews immediately, and he’d worked them around the clock, pumping them full of stimulants and ruling over them with iron discipline. The gruff engineer had always believed loyalty and fear were a combination designed to squeeze the very best out of people, and he’d done his part to supply the fear as well as inspire the needed devotion.
Commander Rigellus had been clear. She needed those engines back online. Every day, every hour before Invictus could return and finish the battle, allowed the enemy to make more repairs, to prepare for the final engagement. At best, that meant more of Invictus’s crew would die in the final confrontation. At worst…
Cinatus stood behind a control panel, watching the indicators as his engineers fed power to the engines. In any other situation, he would have done days of testing before he’d dared to pump energy from the reactor into the engines. But there was no time, and the commander had been perfectly clear. Get the engines working, regardless of risk.
His team had patched hundreds of breaches, replaced millions of meters of conduit and wiring. They had fashioned metal patches to cover the largest of the tears in the great engines. But Cinatus knew the slightest hole, a loose connection, almost anything could cause a catastrophic failure, one that could set repairs back weeks or kill members of his team. A failure even threatened Invictus with massive damage from internal explosions. He’d done his best, focused on every detail to the point of driving himself close to insanity. Now he would see if that had been enough.
Ten percent…so far so good…
There were a dozen readouts, but he was mostly concerned with the pressure gauges. Too low meant the required energy density wasn’t being achieved. Too high meant the control mechanisms weren’t functioning properly. But so far the numbers were spot on, right in the middle of the expected range.
Twenty percent…
The floor under his feet began to vibrate. That was normal, at least unless it got too severe. It was the kind of thing no machine could measure properly…not as well as an experienced engineer’s instincts. And his were telling him everything was still good.
Thirty percent…
Still good. And enough power to test the thrusters. He tapped the com unit on his collar. “Commander, we’ve got thirty percent power flow and holding steady. We’re ready to do a test burst now.”
“Very well, Optiomagis…” Kat’s voice was stony, determined. “Proceed.”
Cinatus turned and waved to a group of technicians about thirty meters down the long room. Then he looked down at the console, and he extended his arm, his fingers resting on a series of levers. He paused a moment, taking a deep breath. Then he flipped each lever in turn, and he grabbed on to the sides of the workstation, holding tightly as he heard the roar of the engines…and then felt the g-forces pushing against him. There was thrust! The engines were working, pushing against Invictus’s vector, reducing the velocity that was carrying the battleship away from its adversary.
He glanced down at the controls. All committed power was going into generating thrust. Invictus’s engines were at thirty percent of capacity, which Cinatus knew was a miracle considering the hunk of junk they had been less than two days earlier.
“Congratulations, Optiomagis.” Even Kat’s iron voice showed signs of surprise. “You and your people are to be commended for a job well done…and I will see this is so when we return to Palatia.”
“Thank you, Commander. I will pass your words to the rest of my team.” Cinatus had been nervous communicating directly with the ship’s commander. Standard procedure called for him to deal with the communications officer or exec. But Commander Rigellus had dispensed with all that, demanding constant direct updates from her engineer.
“How much thrust can we generate, Optiomagis?”
“We’re at thirty percent now, Commander. I wouldn’t go any higher yet. Give me a few hours to do some stress testing and review how the repairs are holding up under the pressure of actual operation. Then we can move up, to fifty, maybe even sixty.” The engineer paused. “That’s the best we’ll be able to do, I’m afraid, Commander. The patches simply aren’t strong enough to hold up at any higher thrust level. I’m afraid Invictus is going to need completely new engines when we get back home.”
The com was silent for a few seconds, and Cinatus was tense, waiting for the commander’s response. “Sixty,” she said, finally. “Get me sixty percent, Raban…and not one watt less.” There was no question in her tone, no sign of flexibility.
“Yes, Commander…sixty percent.” Cinatus stood nervously, wondering if he’d just promised more than was possible. But he’d heard the commander’s tone, and he knew he could throw all the laws of physics and the realities of engineering at her…and she would just stare at him calmly and repeat…sixty percent.
* * *
Damn.
Millius stood in the dark, filthy snow in the middle of the camp staring off to the north. It couldn’t be. It just wasn’t possible.
Millius had fought in many battles, worked his way up from the ranks, but he’d never encountered an enemy so frustratingly difficult to defeat. He’d interrogated the civilians who’d fallen into his hands, had his people pick through the burnt wreckage of the Confederation base…everything he could think of to find out what he was truly facing. But the answer he found never changed. There were about forty Marines assigned to Santis, and his people had wiped out ten of them on the space station.
He’d struggled to accept that his three centuries had been stymied trying to hunt down thirty Confederation Marines. Granted, they’d had some civilians bolstering their number, but his forces still outnumbered them five or six to one. Almost ten to one in trained fighters. And yet a month later they were still in arms, at least a stubborn remnant of them.
And now they’re getting reinforcements…
There was no other explanation. Invictus was the only Alliance vessel within eight transits, and he already had every stormtrooper it carried down on the surface with him. The vessels he’d just watched land had to be Confeds.
He knew what he had to do. Hit them hard, pin them, and fight it out to the end, before they could disperse to the hills and support the guerilla campaign he’d been struggling to stamp out. He didn’t have a solid estimate on their numbers, but he’d only been able to confirm four landers. He had no idea how many each one held, but his best guess was he still had the numerical advantage, despite the sixty troopers he’d lost over the past month.
He had no idea how long that superiority would last, or even what was happening in the space above Santis. He’d lost communication when the commander had moved Invictus toward planet five, getting in position to face a Confed battleship that had entered the system. But that had been days ago, and he’d had no contact since. He’d even dared to consider the inconceivable…that the great Commander Rigellus and the Alliance’s greatest and proudest flagship had been defeated. He found it hard to believe, but he’d spent hours staring at the com unit, waiting to hear something, anything. There had been nothing but silence.
It didn’t matter, at least not in terms of his duty. He was here to hold the planet, and that mission stood, whether Invictus was somewhere finishing off the enemy vessel, or if the space above Santis was filled with Confed battleships.
He turned to Delv Tinnius, who had been standing right behind him watching the Confed landers come in. “Rally the troopers, Optio. All of them.” He turned and looked back over the hill, toward where the enemy craft had landed. “We attack at once.”
* * *
“Let’s get to that ridge up there, fast!” Bryan Rogan was standing next to the assault shuttle, pointing toward a line of rocky heights about a kilometer to the north.
“You heard the Captain…move your asses.” Ernesto Billos was standing next to Rogan, sounding exactly like the Marines expected a veteran senior sergeant to sound.
“See to it, Sergeant.” Rogan had two lieutenants under him, but they had the same lack of hardcore experience under fire he did. Billos had been in battle, fought the Union FRs. He’d even been wounded twice. And one thing Rogan was sure about…his people were about to go into battle.
“Yes, sir.” Billos started moving toward the nearest group of Marines, but Rogan called him back.
“Sergeant…”
“Yes, Captain?”
“You saw the scanner data we collected. It’s inexact, to put it mildly, but it seems pretty likely we’re going to be outnumbered here. So, I want the men right at that ridge, and I want them to dig in. No complaints, no delays. We need the strongest position we can get. And I doubt we have much time. You agree with that, Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir. Completely.”
“Carry on.”
Rogan stood and watched as his Marines moved out, forming into something resembling a combat formation. Then he turned and walked back toward one of the landers, stopping in front of an officer wearing a flight suit. “Alright, Ensign, I think we’re clear of your engines. You can lift off whenever you’re ready…but I’d move it. I expect we’re going to have company here soon.
“Yes, Captain. We’ll launch at once.”
“And, Ensign…do me a favor. Try to get a good scan in after you lift off. We could use a better idea of what’s coming.”
“Yes, sir…if they’re deployed and on the way, we’ll fly right over them. We might even manage a strafing run, maybe soften them up a little.”
Rogan nodded. “Anything you can do would be a help, Ensign. And the Marines would owe you one.”
* * *
“We’ve got twenty-six down, sir. At least half of those are dead.”
Millius’s face was twisted with rage. Alliance landers weren’t armed. Invasion forces went in supported with special ground assault ships that pounded enemy positions. But these Confed landing craft had their own weapons, and the quad-autocannons had taken his people by surprise. One of his centuries had been caught in the open, moving toward the enemy positions. And they’d been hit hard.
“We’ve got to keep moving, Centurion. We can’t afford any delays.”
That’s a diplomatic way of saying, leave the wounded behind to die…
“Yes, Praefectus.” The officer nodded abruptly. Alliance forces were trained not to salute on the battlefield. There was no advantage in giving a gift to enemy snipers.
Millius watched the officer run back up toward his forward line. There hadn’t been a hint of disapproval, nor even surprise at the command to leave his wounded behind. The way was the way.
No one ever said life as an Alliance warrior was easy…
Millius felt a pang of regret for those he was abandoning, but he understood the math of war, in a way few of the Alliance’s enemies seemed to. He could pause, stop his advance, detach vital troops to tend to the wounded…but he’d just be trading one group of dying soldiers for another.
Besides, a wound is damned near a death sentence in this forsaken wasteland…
He moved forward, his legs pushing through the hip deep snow. It was exhausting, and the cold cut through him like a knife, despite his winter kit. But he wasn’t about to stop. He’d spent a month chasing down Confederation troops who’d had the time to disperse, to hide in the hills. He wasn’t going to let this new force do the same thing…and that meant bringing them to battle. Now.
He heard a crack, in the distance, to the front. Then another. His head snapped around, and he looked out over the slowly rising ground. There was a ridgeline up ahead, and his forward line had pushed beyond it. There was a valley beyond that high ground…he remembered it well. His people had pursued a band of Confeds right between the flanking ridges.
Another crack. Again. And then a whole seri
es of shots.
Of course…they’re on the far ridge.
He worked his memory, trying to picture the ground. It was rugged, with a rocky approach. It was a strong position…but he couldn’t let that affect his judgment. He considered a flanking maneuver, but he didn’t know how long the enemy line extended. And every hour he spent maneuvering was more time for the Confeds to disperse, to slip away and continue the guerilla war that had raged for a month.
But with five or ten times the strength.
No, he couldn’t allow that to happen. Alliance stormtroopers were trained for actions like this. If they had to pay with blood for the victory then so be it.
He grabbed his com unit and flipped it on. “All forces…the enemy is on the ridge beyond the valley. We will attack at once. Prepare to advance…”
The way was the way.
Chapter Thirty
CFS Dauntless
Krillus Asteroid Belt
41, 000,000 kilometers from Santis, Krillus IV
307 AC
“I’m sorry, Captain. We’ve done everything we can, but I’m afraid getting any more batteries back online is going to take a month in spacedock.”
“I understand, Fritzie. Your people have done an outstanding job. Please relay my thanks and my commendations.” Barron was sitting as his desk, staring at the updated damage reports as he talked to his chief engineer.
“Yes, sir.” A pause. “Thank you, Captain.” Fritz’s voice was somber. It was clear she wasn’t used to admitting there was anything she couldn’t fix.
“How about the primaries, Fritzie? Any chance?”
Barron could hear his engineer’s exhale over the com. “Possible, sir. But I can’t promise. The main accelerator tubes are intact, but the damned things are so fragile…and there’s a lot of peripheral damage. Plus, we’d have to get the reactors back up a lot closer to one hundred percent, and that’s an iffy proposition right now.”