The holo showed a wave of enemy fighters coming in from the north, from landing fields outside of the range of their own artillery, which had been lobbing shells at every airbase within their firing arcs. Watcher called up a view on another holo, the feed from one of the fighters as they shot back up to altitude and headed for the enemy, hitting Mach twenty in as many seconds. The enemy fighters came into view, and the targeting systems of the Confederation fighters lit them up at double the Imperial range. The missiles they fired streaked off at tens of thousands of gravities, and half the enemy fighters died.
Particle beams hummed through the air, taking out most of the other fighters. Only twenty-three got into range of their own weapons and launched. Those aircraft died moments later, as did most of their missiles. One got all the way through, why no one could say. But it destroyed one of the Confederation fighters, and the pilot was not lucky enough to get out in time.
It looked good at first, one Confederation fighter versus ninety-eight enemy splashed. But they were still heavily outnumbered, and after another couple of fights aircraft would have to land to be serviced and have their expended ordnance replaced. If another enemy attack came in then, they could be in trouble.
“We have a tank battle developing in Sector Alpha Seven,” called out another technician manning the board.
The holo that had been showing the air battle switched to a view looking down on the ground from a low altitude. A line of enemy vehicles was approaching across an open field, four kilometers from the friendly vehicles. Cannon sent rounds at a thousand kilometers a second at the enemy tanks, blasting them apart with kinetic energy that threw molten metal into the air along with turrets. The rounds of enemy tanks came ripping in, most missing as their targeting vehicles fell prey to the stealth systems of the Confederation vehicles. Some rounds hit, bouncing with loud clangs from the tougher armor of the more advanced tanks. And two were hit just right, penetrators hitting the junction of turret to hull and killing those tanks.
There were two more exchanges of rounds, and when it was over, three of the Confederation tanks had been killed, versus almost ninety of the Imperial vehicles. The recon being performed by the microbots showed all ahead clear, and the tank battalion moved forward, rolling over the field, ten centimeters above the ground.
“What’s it looking like?” asked Watcher, walking over to the plotting table occupied by his staff, and the Major General that was in charge of the whole main force.
“It looks like we’re sucking them out of their positions, my Lord,” said Major General Garanapey, another Suryan who occupied his position because they were still the most technologically advanced of the peoples serving him. “Another brigade pulled out of the capital, leaving only a couple of battalions still in place. That, and the police.”
“And the palace?”
“It’s still swarming with troops. It doesn’t look like their Emperor is willing to take any chances with his own safety.”
“Of course not,” said Pandi with a sneer. “That coward’s not about to risk his own hide.”
“Do not underestimate him,” said Watcher, pointing a finger at Pandi. “And if you get him in your sights, kill him. Immediately, and without hesitation.”
“My pleasure, lover,” said Pandi, enjoying the look of discomfort on his face when she used that term in front of others. She still didn’t think of herself as a soldier, or spacer, and was not about to change who she was or how she acted to suit some artificial sense of decorum. “As soon as I see him, he’s dead meat. And I won’t stop shooting until there’s not enough of him left to scoop into an urn.”
* * *
“What the hell,” yelled out one of the uniformed policemen who was walking curfew patrol. Curfew had come earlier this evening than was normal, since the alarm had gone out that the moon had been invaded.
And why were we invaded? thought Captain Rafael Jiminez, who was leading a police patrol himself this night, something he hadn’t done since he had become an officer in the plainclothes branch. And by whom? That information had not come down, and the police had been told that they didn’t need to know. All they needed was to keep the streets under control while the military garrison was stripped and sent from the city to fight this invasion.
The supersonic crack of incoming rounds drove all other thoughts from his mind, other than seeking cover. What the hell? was his next thought, as another round cracked past him to shatter on the wall behind his back. The policemen started to fire back, though the Captain for the life of him couldn’t tell where the incoming rounds were coming from.
A cop screamed, and a twitching body fell into the street. All the police were wearing body armor and riot helmets, but from the blood soaking the street from the cranial region of the cop, he had taken a hit to the head nonetheless.
The police squad started to fire and maneuver toward where they thought the shots were coming from, as they had been taught, while Jiminez called for air support. Everyone was operating in slow motion, caught up in the shock of the moment. People didn’t attack the police, not in any kind of force. There was the rare murder of a cop who busted the head of the wrong person’s family member. But most of the people were too well programed to try to engage the police that their brainwashed minds told them were their friends.
The squad moved forward, the eight men remaining firing and maneuvering, trying to keep the gunman’s head down. Jiminez circled his finger in the air, trying to rally the men he was leading. He planned to take them up the street and over, in an attempt to get around the rebels.
A fury of fire ripped into the uniformed police squad from the flank, the perfect ambush. Five of the eight went down immediately, as military class projectile weapons tore through their body armor. The three remaining sought cover. One was shot on the way to promised safety. Another was hit from the original sniper, and only one man remained of the squad. Hiding, cowering, afraid to move.
The air cover came in the form of hunter killer drones, too late. The rebels were already gone without a trace.
* * *
“I told you this was the time to strike,” said Freddie Santana, pumping a fist in the air. He knew of two policemen he had hit, and hopefully killed. Eight men had gone down, all at least seriously injured. And they had gotten away through the sewers before the drones had arrived.
“They’ll be ready for us next time,” said the team leader, Leonal Navare.
And that’s the reason all the teams have to hit at the same time, thought Santana, nodding his head. They had gone for maximum disruption.
There had still been some dissent from within the Opposition about attacking, until the news had come that some unknown was attacking the planet in force. Freddie could only think of one unknown that someone could be. The leadership had agreed, and so they had come out in force to start an uprising that hopefully would get the government’s attention, and take some of the pressure off the invaders.
“Shouldn’t we turn these weapons off while we move?” Freddie asked Navare as they moved from one main to another, taking a turn that would take them uptown.
“Why would we want to do that?” asked a man who Freddie didn’t know. “Hell if I’m going to disarm myself. I want this baby ready to fire when I need it to.”
“What’s the idea, Santana?” asked Navare. “Why do you want us to turn our weapons to an off position?”
Freddie shook his head at the question. Very few of the immune had served in the military, there was just too much chance of discovery. Santana was an exception. He had just been a grunt, but he had known what he was doing. That one ten year enlistment was all he could handle. The military was constantly checking their programming, testing them on a weekly basis, and Santana had only gotten through some of the tests by pure dumb luck.
“When the rifles are on, the magnetic coils are kept warm,” he told the leader. “They produce a signal which can be picked up on some scanners. If we were on a battlefield, with thousands
of people moving around, it probably wouldn’t be a big deal, because there would be so many signals out there that none would be traceable to an individual source. Down here, that might be another story.”
“I’m still not turning mine off,” said the man who had refused earlier. “If we get shot at, I want to shoot back immediately, not have to take the time to switch my damned rifle on.”
“That only takes another second,” said Santana, trying to reason with the man.
“Turn off your rifle, Gabriel,” ordered Navare.
“Fuck you, Leonal,” the man told the leader.
“I could have you shot for disobeying orders,” said Navare, glaring at the man.
“And I could blow you away while the words were leaving your mouth, asshole,” said Gabriel.
Navare stared at the man for a moment, then shook his head and turned away.
He’s a weak leader, thought Santana, considering shooting Gabriel himself. But we aren’t military, and no one here is under that kind of discipline. Santana thought for a moment longer, then gave it up as a bad idea.
They took a right turn and walked up toward a large drainage field, where a half dozen mains emptied into a drain that led out of the city. Santana made sure he was near the back of the column, still feeling nervous about their moving with their weapons on. His was off. He would take the extra second to flip a switch before shooting.
Rounds cracked through the air, breaking the sound barrier as they sped across the opening. Gabriel was the first man to go down, a pair of rounds hitting him in the front and coming out his back with little loss of velocity, splashes of blood spraying the wall being him. Navare was down a moment longer.
Santana backed into the main, then turned and ran toward another junction. It was obvious that they were outnumbered, and that the police had been tracking them, just as he had warned their late leader. It was also obvious that this area would soon be surrounded, if it wasn’t already. If any others broke free, Santana would try to reunite the squad. If not, he would head out on his own and turn sniper. The thing he refused to do was to die because some others decided to ignore his good advice.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Death is softer by far than tyranny.
Aeschylus
“We have a revolt going on in the capital, your Majesty,” said Lt. General Maximo Nagoles, the commander of the Kallis Imperial Police.
“What?” said the Emperor, who had been following two concurrent battles where his side wasn’t doing so well. One of his missile units was preparing a ground strike with cruise weapons, hoping they wouldn’t present such a good target to the enemy. And he had ships less than an hour from the planet, ready and able to drop kinetic weapons on the enemy. Kinetics were harder to intercept than missiles, based on the fact that they fell through an atmosphere in seconds, and, being solid objects, most laser, and even particle beam, hits were normally not enough to stop them from hitting their targets. Otherwise, his ground forces were being rolled up, and the enemy was advancing on his capital with little trouble.
Thirty kilometers in an hour, he thought, shaking his head. In modern warfare, at least as practiced by his forces, ten in an hour was considered excellent. Of course, that didn’t consider that the other force was a thousand or more years advanced than his own. The other side was also being hurt, but the difference was like that between a man being mauled by a bear, versus one getting some scratches from a housecat.
“The Opposition is rising up in a revolt, attacking police patrols, even the precinct headquarters,” said Nagoles, his breath coming in gasps. “They’ve taken down two headquarters, and over four hundred of my police.”
“Well, kill them,” said the Emperor, his face flushing with anger.
“We are trying, your Majesty. But I must request that we have military aid. And the local garrison commander will not cooperate.”
Because he has more important things to deal with, you idiot, thought the Emperor, like the possibility that the military force they’re fighting might drop soldiers into the capital.
“We have no forces to give you aid right now, General. Your police are going to have to handle this revolt on your own.” He saw the face of the General fall as he said that. The same expression he had seen on the visage of his ground force commander just moments before. “How many rebels are there? This can’t be a popular revolt, can it?” The people are too well programed for that. And there can’t be that many immune, can there?
“Several thousand at most,” said the General, looking out of the holo at something on his side of the transmission.
The Emperor changed the plot that was showing the ground battle with a thought, and swore as he saw the red dots that had appeared all over his capital city. Small screens opened in the holo, showing the aftermath of several vehicle bombs that had shattered the fronts of buildings. He growled in anger as he saw the damage to the jewel in his crown.
“I will be sending you some help, General. It’s about time we let the citizens help.” He killed the link and linked in with his Propaganda and Programming Authority.
“May I help you, your Majesty?” asked the senior officer on duty.
“I need for you to start sending out new messages through the subliminals,” said Kitticaris. “I need the people to rise up against the rebels that are attacking our police.”
“Yes, your Majesty,” said the man in a smooth voice. “We can do that. Give us a couple of minutes.”
The Emperor killed the com, something only he was allowed to do while talking with his subordinates. He went back to looking at the tactical plot of the ground battle, then switched back to the fight in space.
“The message is out, your Majesty,” came a transmission from the PPA.
“Thank you.” Kitticaris brought up another holo that showed a shot of the downtown, along with audio. The billboards and floating banners were still showing their nonsense, commercials and such. His optical center looked through the surface fluff to see the message underneath. Defend your Emperor. Turn in the rebels. Help the police. Kill the rebels. The same message was playing through the background hum in the air, reprograming the citizens, turning them against the Opposition, who they would see as the enemy of their beloved Emperor.
Kitticaris switched back to the holo of the naval battle, just in time to see the icons of a couple of his ships fall off the plot, no longer emitting gravitons. He cursed, wondering what could have happened, as there had been no enemy ships or missiles nearby, and the range was too great for any chance of a hit by beam weapons, even if one could be powerful enough to blot out a ship at that distance in such a limited time. And the ships were twenty light minutes away, the time it would take for a com transmission to get to the moon. The time before he could find out what had happened. But whatever it was, it was never a good thing to see your ships stop transmitting gravitons, since it was likely they were no longer complete vessels.
* * *
Flight Captain Stephan Hertz was not Suryan by birth, at least not from one of the four terraformed moons that made up the center of the kingdom. His world had been annexed by the Kingdom a year after his birth. The Kingdom had come in and helped to raise his people, who had been functioning at an advanced muscle powered level of technology, sailing ships being the most advanced machine on the planet, and raised them to their own level in a generation. Hertz had been a part of that generation. And had become an officer in the Suryan navy. Due to his flexible mind he had been asked to join the Donut project, one of the Suryan personnel sent to the giant station as part of the new Confederation’s military.
Because he had been on the forefront of the development of ships using a more advanced version of the Suryan inertialess drive, he had been chosen for command of one of the wings of fast attack ships that had been prepared for the Confederation Navy. All of the ships were equipped with wormhole coms, something the Suryan warships hadn’t been. So they weren’t completely blind to the Universe like their pre
decessors had. No, thought the officer, watching the plot as his ship, and the other forty-seven of his wing, decelerated toward their target, we’re only as blind as a drunken man trying to walk through an unfamiliar city in a thick fog.
They were getting the feed from probes that were sending their signals back to their launching ships, from the ships to the Donut, then on to the fast attack ships. The probes themselves were not ideally located for his purposes. The closest was ten light seconds from the targets, the furthest several light minutes.
When the warning klaxon went off he almost jumped out of his seat, until he realized the collision warning was not intended for his ship. One of his vessels fell off the com net, four seconds later another, and he cursed under his breath as he ordered the probes to give him a visual of what might have happened.
It took over a minute for the first visual to come in, a bright flash on an Imperial cruiser that expanded, then died as the plasma spread in the vacuum of space. He ordered the vid to reverse and zoom, then go into super slow motion. He still couldn’t see what had actually happened, as the ship shattered from the impact of, something. And the only something he could think of was one of his ships.
It was supreme bad luck for such to happen. Space was so vast that the chance of a collision was a million to one. And a continued look at the vid showed that it happened again, a multi-billion to one occurrence. The only problem with probabilities were that they weren’t impossibilities, no matter how much they seemed like they should be.
Hertz buried his face in his hands, saying a quick prayer to the God of his upbringing for the souls of the people involved, all of them, his side and the others. He looked back at the plot as soon as the last word left his mouth. He had the crews of forty-six other ships to worry about, including his own. And the plot showed that they were coming up on their target ships in another eight minutes.
Deeper and Darker (Deep Dark Well Book 3) Page 29