by Richard Fox
The remaining Toth fighters banked around the far ridge of the volcano.
“Pat yourself on the back later,” Durand said. “Cut over the peak and find them.” She brought her fighter into an almost vertical climb and flew up the steep ridgeline extending north from the mouth of the ancient volcano.
Rays of sunlight struck over the ridge, diffusing through the clouds as they disintegrated over the windward slope. Durand squinted as the apex neared, trying not to look into the rising sun.
A Toth fighter roared across her nose. Her Eagle shuddered as it passed through the fighter’s wake. Alarms blared through the cockpit as wake-driven air swarmed around her ship and broke her wings’ lift. Her Eagle fell out of control and moved through the air with the grace of a thrown rock.
Durand slammed her control stick from side to side, trying to turn her fighter toward whatever direction she was moving to regain some lift. She felt a moment of weightlessness then her Eagle arced toward the downward slope of the mountainside.
Her wingtip dipped to the side and almost cut into the mountainside before the controls responded. She got her fighter level and opened the throttle to gain air speed.
A bolt of energy snapped past her canopy, striking her fuselage hard enough to send her wobbling like a drunk through the air. She dove into a deep canyon between spurs running down the side of the mountain, vibrant green cliffs pressing against her.
She banked away and flew just over the treetops, energy bolts chasing her.
Durand braced herself and fired the fore-mounted maneuver thrusters. Her head jerked forward and her chin bounced off her chest as she lost what little airspeed she’d gained. The Toth ace snapped past her.
Durand gunned her afterburners and lined up a shot on the ace’s tail. She pulled the trigger and a red error message popped up on her canopy: a red X through the gauss cannon on a wire diagram of her ship.
“Ah, merde. Manfred, where are you?” Durand asked. She kept on the ace’s tail, matching his maneuvers as he led them toward the ocean.
There was no answer from the Dotok.
The ace leveled out, practically taunting her to shoot.
He knows, she thought. She broke off her pursuit and crossed over a wide sandy beach, then traced the coastline back to the FARP where she’d left her squadron, flying as fast as her engines could manage. An amber-colored warning icon appeared on the canopy—her batteries were nearly empty.
She dodged over towering waves and glanced behind her. The ace’s fighter glinted in the morning light. She let out a string of expletives that would have made Chief MacDougall blush.
A bolt cracked past her and blasted a fountain of water ahead of her. She corkscrewed over and around the plume and flew so close to the ocean’s surface that her engines kicked up steam and sea spray behind her.
The ace matched her elevation, shooting half-aimed blasts around her.
Durand grabbed the override on her landing gear and pulled the handle. Three wheels extended from beneath her Eagle. She dipped her left wing to the ocean. The landing gear hit the water and ripped from its moorings.
The wheel careened across the surface and slammed into the ace’s cockpit. The Toth fighter sank slowly, then slammed into the ocean. It skipped against the water like a stone and hit the water flat against the ship’s belly. It skidded over the water and broke through a wave as it rumbled ashore. The dagger ship crashed into a thicket of palm trees. Smoke broke around the fighter as brush ignited into flame.
Durand breathed a sigh of relief and changed course to the FARP. She looked over the side of her ship at the wrecked ace, unsure if it was alive or dead.
****
Admiral Makarov watched the Naga’s plot projection on her holo tank as the warship turned toward the moon.
“Admiral,” an aide waved to her from the navigation station, “the Naga’s deep in Luna’s gravity. There’s no way it can recover, even if the engines come back online.”
Excited chatter broke around the bridge as more and more sailors and Marines turned their heads to look out the front windows. The Naga angled toward the moon’s surface like a slow-motion arrow in flight. The rough triangle point of the ship’s prow glinted in sunlight, a ruddy column of smoke and debris tracing the ship’s path through space.
“Any word from the assault elements?” Makarov asked.
Ibarra’s hologram came to life next to the admiral.
“We’ve got some of them out,” he said.
“Why only ‘some’?”
“We opened portals for every beacon we had contact with. Four teams. The rest…” Ibarra shrugged.
A sailor raised a fist in the air and cheered as the Naga’s prow hit the moon’s surface with an explosion of dust. The warship’s keel snapped in half, and the fore crumpled, ejecting hunks of hull platting across the gray plains of dust. The back half hit flat against the moon, scouring a wide path behind it. Clouds of dust billowed around the wreck like a fog bank, hiding the devastation behind a ghostly blanket.
The bridge exploded in cheers as the first real victory against the Toth played out across the moon’s surface.
“Prep the Breitenfeld,” Makarov said to Ibarra. “This isn’t over yet.”
“She’s ready,” Ibarra said and vanished.
Makarov slammed her fist against the side of her holo table.
“Status on the incoming fleet and the attack on Hawaii!” she shouted. The crew, suitably chastened, bent their heads back to their workstations.
“Enemy fleet is slowing near the Lagrange point past lunar orbit,” a tactical officer said. “They’re maneuvering into attack formation, heavy ships in a Namura cone.” The Namura formation, named after the Japanese void admiral that managed a few victories against the Chinese before his country was conquered, put heavy ships at the apex of a cone, lighter ships toward the base. The tip of the cone would drive toward the center of her ship like the tip of a massive spear.
“Commo, open a channel to the Toth ship. Let’s see if they want to head home after the Naga bit the dust,” Makarov said.
“They’re actually hailing us,” said the lieutenant in the commo work pod. “Wide frequency, the whole system’s picking it up.” Makarov pointed a knife blade hand at her gunnery and intelligence officers. They nodded emphatically and hunched over their work screens.
Makarov snapped her fingers and pointed at the holo tank.
Olux’s tank hovered over the table.
“Meat,” Olux said, “you will surrender. The cost of this acquisition is already too high. Give me the procedural technology and I will not burn your city to the ground. Surrender the procedurals in your Eighth Fleet—every single one of you—as tribute and I will leave you in peace, never to return.”
Makarov felt a chill run down her spine. This conversation needed to end as soon as possible. She glanced at the intelligence officer, who shook his head.
“Toth,” Makarov said, “let me make you an offer you can understand. Get. Out. You tuck your tails between your legs and leave our solar system and never return. Or I will break the rest of you over my knee just like we did to your little toy.”
“Makarov,” Olux said, a tremor going through his nerves, “you are procedural and will not be spared.” A stunned silence fell across the bridge. “Garret is true born. He will order your surrender to preserve himself and Phoenix. Your fleet is procedural. You will surrender. For every procedural killed fighting my fleet, I will take five true born from your city. Choose. Now.”
The officers around the tactical table looked at each other in confusion. Makarov saw the conflict playing through their minds as they considered the Toth overlord’s claim.
She felt several quick vibrations from her forearm screen, an urgent message from Garret that read CRY HAVOC. NO SURRENDER. She was starting to like him.
“Are you the same Toth that negotiated the arrangement on Europa?” Makarov asked. “You all look the same to me in your tanks.”
&
nbsp; “Irrelevant!” Olux bobbed in his tank. “Your forces above Ha-wai-eee will stand down immediately. Any damage to the facility there will be repaid to Phoenix tenfold.”
The intelligence officer waved to Makarov and gave her a thumbs-up.
Makarov slashed her fingertips across her throat and Olux vanished. “Jam everything else coming out of the Toth fleet,” she said.
“We’ve got him.” The intelligence officer reached into the holo tank and touched a Toth battlecruiser halfway between the base and the apex of the Namura cone.
“All ships hold current formation and burn toward the Toth fleet with…” Makarov’s hands danced through the holo tank and repositioned the Eighth Fleet, “angle of attack 328-mark 12. Can’t have any missed shots from us or them bombarding the Earth.”
“Ma’am,” her chief tactician went pale, “that many Toth ships will break our line, pick us apart in detail. We won’t last long.”
“Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake,” Makarov said. “Relay the orders and someone get me Kosciusko,” Makarov said.
A small screen popped to life on her forearm. The Karigole sat in a fighter cockpit, blasts of energy and dashing fighters filling the space around him.
“Got a minute?” Makarov asked.
Kosciusko’s video jittered as he let loose a burst from his Gatling cannons. “I am killing Toth. Make this quick.”
“We traced the overlord’s transmissions to a single battlecruiser. You were right. He’s hidden himself away from the most dangerous place on the battlefield. If he’s going to cut and run, I’m going to need my fighters back to chase him down,” Makarov said.
Kosciusko grunted and craned his neck to the side, looking down at Earth.
“The landing force is substantial,” Kosciusko said. “Let me cut away a squadron to defend the island. I’ll bring what fighters I can back to the Midway and escort the bombers.”
“Hurry.” Makarov glanced at sensor readings for Olux’s battlecruiser. “There’s a dark-energy signature on his ship. He must have a jump engine. If he gets away and tells the rest of his kind what happened here, I bet they’ll be back with an even bigger fleet.”
“He’ll run as soon as he starts to lose,” Kosciusko said. “I’ll return as soon as I can.” His video cut away.
“Admiral, the fleet is in position and burning toward the enemy fleet. We’ll enter weapons range in ten minutes,” the tactical officer said. He looked nervous as he sipped from a water tube, his skin clammy beneath his visor. This wasn’t like the officer she knew—or thought she knew. And it wasn’t the coming battle that had disturbed him so.
“Fleet-wide address, now,” Makarov said. An icon flashed on her visor, alerting her that she was live to her fleet.
“Dragon slayers, this is your admiral. What the Toth overlord said is true. We are...procedural. You, me, every one of our shipmates. I just learned this a few minutes ago…and it changes nothing! I am Admiral Dasha Valia Makarov of the Atlantic Union Navy. Earth is my home. Your home. No matter how we came to it. The Toth came here to take us away and enslave us. I don’t care if I was molded from clay and touched by a fairy’s wand. I will fight these alien bastards to the hilt. Save whatever doubts you have until after the battle. The only thing that matters right now is victory. Makarov out.”
The broadcast icon on her visor vanished. She tapped a command and captain Valdar, armored and hooked into his command chair, popped up on her forearm screen.
“Ma’am, the Breitenfeld is ready,” Valdar said.
“Time to shine, Captain. Gott mit uns.”
****
Hale stopped next to a burning building, exhausted and breathing hard from running several miles through rough terrain. He saw the trench lines surrounding the Loa facility. The forward lines were overrun, swarming with Toth warriors as they advanced on the base built into the side of the mountain. Only a trickle of warriors advanced from the sea.
A dozen enemy landers loitered over the battlefield, pounding the defenders with their cannons. Burning lander wrecks littered the battlefield and inside the facility’s perimeter. An explosion overhead caused Hale to look up. Eagles danced in the sky with Toth dagger fighters.
He’d left the Iron Hearts to deal with the breach in the lines where they’d found their way into the R&R center’s perimeter.
“Sir, let me hit ’em with Bloke,” Bailey said, tapping the bag slung over her shoulder that held her sniper rifle.
“Do it.” Hale pointed to a building with a singed hole in the roof, its windows blown out.
Bailey kicked the door open and vanished inside.
“Hey, wait for us!” A group of sailors carrying gauss rifles and wearing nothing but fatigues ran up to Hale and his armored Marines. A petty officer stopped in front of Hale. “We got the armory open, didn’t want to die cowering under our bunks. Which way to the fight?”
“Take your pick. It’s everywhere,” Hale said. “But I’m going that way.” Hale pointed toward the embattled trench line. “Follow me!” He waved his hand over his shoulder and took off running.
Bailey’s rail rifle fired with an earsplitting crack. One of the landers shunted to the side and lost power. It crashed into a mass of Toth soldiers and exploded.
Hale ran around shattered trees and jumped over the remnants of the once beautiful forest. Bailey’s rifle boomed again.
He burst through a smoking bush and found himself at the edge of the trench lines. Toth warriors had overrun the first two defense lines. Gauss bullets and blaster shots crisscrossed between the Toth-occupied trench and the final line held by Marines and doughboys. Hale saw a half-collapsed stairway leading into the trenches and ran for it.
A Toth lander exploded, launching flaming fragments and spinning hunks of shrapnel over the battlefield.
Hale got into the trenches and slapped each Marine and sailor on the shoulder as they came in behind him, counting. He admired the sailors’ bravery. The flimsy coveralls were no protection against Toth weapons compared to the power armor he and his Marines wore.
Steuben was the last one in the trench. Hale tried to get around the Karigole as they worked their way forward.
“You think the warriors know the Naga was destroyed?” Hale asked. “Would that get them to surrender?”
“It won’t matter. Toth warriors will not stop fighting until an overlord commands them,” Steuben said. “We have no choice but to kill them all.”
“Somehow I knew—”
A lander roared overhead toward the buildings beyond the shattered forest.
“Bailey?” Hale broadcast over radio and IR. “Bailey, they’re coming for you. Displace!”
There was a distant explosion from the mountainside—and no answer from Bailey.
“Come on, Marines!” Cortaro’s command pulled Hale back from worrying about his sniper.
Hale ran into the final defense line. Wounded Marines and Army soldiers lay crumpled against the trench wall, and more were being carried in. Marines, soldiers and doughboys snapped shots over the parapet, ducking back down before well-aimed blaster shots could find them.
“Yarrow,” Hale said to the medic, “do what you can.”
“Sir, with all due respect, if I don’t lend my rifle to this fight, I don’t think it’ll matter if I treat the wounded or not,” Yarrow said.
A blaster bolt blew through the lip of the trench and tossed a Marine from the wall. Hale caught the woman on her way down. Wisps of blond hair stuck out from her broken visor.
“You OK?” Hale asked.
“Sure, third time that’s happened today,” she said. She had a sergeant’s stripes on her shoulder armor and her chest.
“Who’s in charge?” Hale asked.
She looked at his rank and name stenciled on his chest and frowned. “I thought you were, Lieutenant Hale.”
“What? I just got here,” he said and pushed her to her feet.
A Toth ululation broke through the air.
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“Here comes another charge,” the sergeant said. She tapped at her waist then looked at Hale and his new arrivals. “If you’ve got grenades, now’s the time!” She jumped onto the firing stoop and lifted her rifle over the edge of the trench to shoot.
Hale jumped up next to the sergeant, and his Marines found a piece of the wall without being asked. He looked over the edge and saw dozens of Toth warriors charging toward him like a pack of hungry wolves.
Hale grabbed a fragmentation grenade from his belt and hurled it at the enemy. He tossed his last two grenades with a little less force, catching the forward edge of the charging warriors. He brought his rifle to his shoulder and put a round in the center of a warrior’s chest. It collapsed and rolled snout over tail, tripping up the warrior behind it.
The warriors stampeded toward him. They were fearless in the face of the massed rifle fire from the defenders and their dead were only an issue when they got in the way of the others. Hale watched as a Toth warrior lost its left fore- and mid-arms to gauss fire, stumbling as it bled out. A warrior smashed it to the ground and the wounded Toth was trampled by those coming from behind.
A low whine sent a tremor though the ground—a lander hovering high above the trench line. Hale snatched his last grenade, an anti-armor shaped charge, from his belt. He cranked the grenade twice and used his augmented strength to hurl the grenade into the air.
The radar-activated detonator picked up the Toth lander and exploded, the tungsten disk deforming into a bullet and carrying the explosive energy from the grenade into the lander. The explosively formed penetrator pierced the bottom of the lander and blew through the top. The lander swung from side to side, then stabilized. The crystal cannon glowed with power.
Before Hale could shout a warning, a bright lance skewered the lander and shot out the other side.
“Bailey?” Hale asked.
The lander nosed down and plummeted toward the trench. Hale yelled a warning at a dirt-caked Marine and a doughboy running toward him. The lander crashed near the edge of the trench and upended, slamming across the top of the trench and over the fleeing Marine and doughboy.