Stars & Empire 2: 10 More Galactic Tales (Stars & Empire Box Set Collection)

by Jay Allan

  “Sarge, I got a drone over the ridge. Feeding you the scans.” He paused, sucking in a deep breath, trying to control his edginess. “You better get what you need fast, Sarge…cause this thing ain’t gonna last long.”

  “Thanks, Frantic. Great job.” Taylor was slamming down his visor as he spoke, hitting the small button on his helmet that activated the projection system. The inside of his visor flickered with a soft blue light, and then the feed from the drone’s camera started.

  “Fuck…” Taylor stared as the drone transmitted a panoramic view of the backside of the ridge. A few seconds later there was a flash, then nothing.

  “Sarge…did you get what you needed?” Young again, shouting into the com. “We lost the drone. I tried to keep it in a random pattern, but they picked it off anyway.”

  “Yeah, Frantic.” Taylor’s voice was grim. “I got what I needed.” Now, he thought…what the fuck am I going to do with it?

  He tapped his helmet controls, cutting the link with Young and calling up the lieutenant. “Sir…Taylor here.”

  “Go ahead, Jake.” Cadogan sounded exhausted. He was up on the forward ridge with the other three sections. Taylor’s people were getting some partial shade at least, but the rest of the strike force had been in direct sunlight for almost 90 minutes. Taylor didn’t know for sure, but he suspected they’d already had fatalities from heatstroke.

  “We got a drone up over that western ridge. They’re massing back there. Looks like battalion strength, at least.” The Machines didn’t use human organizational structures, but UNFE forces tended to refer to enemy formations by their own force equivalents.

  The line was silent for a few seconds. “Alright, Jake. You know you need to keep the escape route open. I’m gonna start sending the worst hit sections back toward the target LZ. You and your boys…hold firm.” It was a pointless order, but it was all Cadogan had to give.

  “Yes, sir.” Taylor took a deep breath, wincing a little as a sharp pain lanced up his side. “Fuck,” he grunted. He’d cracked a couple ribs on patrol a few days before, and they were bothering him more than he thought they would. Doc hadn’t wanted to clear him for duty, but there was no way he was letting his people go out on a strikeforce level search and destroy mission without him. Especially this one…so far from base. And right after he got six new cherries transferred in.

  “Blackie…” He turned to face his number two, shouting across the ten meters or so rather than using the com. “I’m going slip Jackson’s team in on your flank. The way we’re set now, if these guys attack, they’ll just swing right around your boys.” He paused, thinking for a few seconds. The whole situation was bad news. He was sending his least experienced unit commander to hold the exposed flank. But he was only going to have one team left in reserve, and he needed a veteran in command of it…and the only really seasoned guy back there was Young. Barret Jackson was a good soldier, but this was his first mission commanding a team.

  “I’m gonna go with Jackson’s team.” He started sliding his way down the embankment as he spoke. “Frantic’s people are in reserve. Be cool, Blackie…we can’t burn through them too quickly. But pull them up a pair at a time if you really need them to plug your holes.”

  “Got it, Jake.” Black was still firing through the split in the rock, turning his head back as he shouted after Taylor. “You take care of the south flank. I’ve got things handled here.” It was bravado, but that was Blackie’s style.

  Taylor scrambled down into the gully and started moving south. He tapped the com controls on his helmet. “Jackson, get your boys up and moving. I want you on the line south of Black’s team.” He glanced back. He could hear the incoming fire on Black’s position, and it was getting heavier. “Immediately, Corporal.”

  Chapter 2

  From the Journal of Jake Taylor:

  What the hell am I doing in a place like this? The bureaucrats back home, they call it Erastus. I don’t know what that means or where it came from. Some Admin’s daughter probably named the place. But we grunts, the ones who do the fighting and dying here…we call it Gehenna. Literature and myth offer a host of names for the fiery hells conjured by God or man’s imagination, but that’s the one that stuck.

  I was a farmer, and a writer too, or at least I wanted to be. But they made a soldier out of me instead. I didn't have a choice, at least not a real one. The harvest had been bad, the worst I'd ever seen. We went hungry that year, all of us, and there was no crop left to sell. When the inquisitor came, there was no money to pay the taxes.

  My father was a good man, but he was never as careful around the monitors as he should have been. He was older, already past forty when he met my mother, and he remembered a time none of the rest of us did. Before the Consolidation. Before the monitors were installed. Mother begged him to be more careful, and I did too when I was old enough to understand. People disappeared for saying things they shouldn't…the Enforcers came and took them in the night. He tried, but it just wasn't in him to hold his tongue. He hated what our world had become, and he cherished the memories of his youth, when people were free to read and think and speak as they wished.

  But misty-eyed memories don’t change the harsh present, and his passionate rants only put all of us at risk. A good man, my father, but a fool. He must have been on more than one watchlist, so when he couldn't pay the taxes, there was no chance for leniency, no possibility of an extension.

  There was one option, though. I still remember the government man sitting at the kitchen table explaining it to me. His eyes…I don’t think I’ll ever forget his eyes. They were brown, but there was something else there, something cold, feral. His name was Carruthers. He sat there at our table, wearing a suit so fine, I remember thinking it must have cost more than our tractor. He came right out and said it to me…I could enlist to serve in the off-world military. If I did, the debt would be waived. If I refused, my family would lose the farm. There was no negotiation, no discussion. Either I accept immediately or we’d be put off the land by morning. He laid it all out in brutal detail. My term would be life; if I accepted I’d never come home, never see my family again. He said it all matter-of-factly, without the slightest trace of pity or understanding.

  Father begged me not to go, swearing empty promises that we could find another way. Mother cried hysterically when I told her I was going to do it, her grief turning to unfocused rage as she grabbed at me and beat on my chest in a tearful fit. I listened to Father’s entreaties, though I knew they were without substance, and I held Mother in my arms until her anger burned itself out into whimpering sobs. But my mind was made up.

  What else could I do? Stay and watch my family slowly starve in the urban free zones? See my baby brother grow up a gutter rat, picking through the garbage for food? Let my little sister sell herself for scraps of bread?

  No, I didn’t have a choice. I was scared, screaming inside, dreaming of days long gone, when I was a child and felt safe, when a mother’s hug could make everything better. Memories I’d thought long forgotten came rushing back to me. Simple things…picnics and family dinners and walks by the stream. Experiences I suddenly realized I hadn’t truly appreciated. The little joys I took for granted as a child now seemed a distant, lost dream. I ached to go back and relive those days, truly valuing them this time. I was sad and terrified and longing for a life I could feel slipping away…like water through my fingers. But I signed the papers anyway and bonded myself to a lifetime’s service.

  I was a laughable choice as a soldier, unsuited in more ways than I can easily list. I'd always been a weak, skinny kid, prone to illness and without much stamina. I was gentle by nature and not at all aggressive. Not until the government taught me to hate.

  *

  Firebase Delta was built into a rocky hill on the edge of Erastus’ biggest desert. The 213th had rotated in a month before, after a year’s posting in the jungle belt. They’d gotten used to the steamy humidity of the planet’s equatorial zone, no less unpleasa
nt than the desert, but different. They were still re-acclimating to the searing dry heat, and Taylor felt his section’s performance was suffering as a result. They’d get used to it eventually, but Taylor wasn’t going to wait…he was going to give them a day’s rest after the heavy fight they’d just been in, and then they were going to do midday maneuvers. More than anything, winning a fight on Erastus meant staying sharp and alert despite the intense heat.

  The battle at Blackrock Ridge the day before couldn’t be classified as a win, not by any reasonable measure. They’d inflicted heavy losses on the ambushing Machines, far more than they had suffered, but that was only normal. The Machines were relentless attackers and highly tolerant of casualties. They always lost more. In the end, the human forces were forced to flee the field, and they barely got away at that. It hadn’t been the disaster it could have been, but it was nothing anyone was going to write any songs about.

  Still, the 213th survived, at least some of it did. For a while that had seemed like an impossibility. Even Taylor had almost given up hope. By the end, he had everyone on the line; he even took most of 2nd Team from the eastern flank, leaving Just Bear and one private to protect against an attack there.

  Taylor still had the images fresh in his memory. The Machines looked a lot like humans, especially from a distance. The plain in front of the ridgeline was covered with their dead. They launched two all-out assaults, and the second came close – too close – to breaking through. The 213th had been a hair’s breadth from being overrun. For a few seconds, Jake thought they had been. He still wasn’t sure how they’d managed to beat back that last charge, and he knew just how tight it had been. Taylor’s section had 11 casualties, 3 of them KIA. That was half the casualty rate of the rest of the strikeforce. His people remembered what he’d been telling them, what he’d been pounding into their heads.

  The evac finally came – closer to 30 minutes than 20 – and it would have been too late except for the pair of Dragonfire gunships escorting the transports. The big antigrav craft strafed the line just as the Machines were launching their third assault. The heavy autoguns tore into the advancing enemy, massive hyper-velocity projectiles tearing the Machine’s flesh and steel bodies to shreds.

  Two or three more passes might have shattered the enemy force, Jake thought, but the gunships withdrew after one attack. The fire from the ground was too heavy, and the Dragonfires were too valuable to risk. The 2 gunships were worth more to the high command than every man in the 213th, so one firing run was all they got.

  It turned out to be enough. The Machines suffered heavy casualties and were badly disordered. It took time for them to shake back into an attack formation, and by then Jake Taylor and Blackie were mounting up on the last transport. The strikeforce was on its way back to base, battered but not destroyed.

  Now it was the day after. Most of the 213th was sacked, trying to catch up on sleep after the grueling fight. A lot of guys had trouble sleeping on Erastus; the relentless heat was just too uncomfortable. But sooner or later, when you got tired enough, you could sleep through anything. And most of the 213th was tired enough.

  Taylor was walking slowly down a corridor. The passage had been dug into the solid rock, the walls smooth and wavy, like part of a candle that had been melted and re-hardened. The look was familiar, the tell-tale sign of the plasma drills that had bored out this refuge.

  He pulled a small cloth from one of the large pockets on his fatigues and wiped his forehead. It was hot, even in these subterranean passageways. The mind expected tunnels and caves to be cool and damp, but Erastus was a different kind of world, its crust and mantle wracked with geothermal activity. It was almost as warm underground as it was outside, though at least you could get out of the direct sunlight. You could even be in the dark inside, something you couldn’t quite manage outside, even with your eyes closed tight. That didn’t make it any cooler inside, but it helped somehow. It was an illusion, perhaps, but on Gehenna, you took what you could get.

  The mission had been a search and destroy that turned into a trap. The Machines were unimaginative and tactically weak, but they were highly organized and uniquely able to move rapidly to exploit an opportunity. And the 213th had walked right into an ambush. It had been a poorly planned op from the start. Too far from base, inadequate support, and a long march that practically telegraphed the objective. It wasn’t Lieutenant Cadogan’s fault…it was Battalion that screwed the pooch. They sent a crack strikeforce into an unwinnable situation with insufficient intel…and now it was all shot to hell.

  It was without a commander too. The 213th had suffered just under 50% casualties, and those losses included the lieutenant. He wasn’t dead, not yet at least. But he was in bad shape…or at least that was the rumor going around.

  Taylor was on his way to the infirmary. The pain in his chest had migrated to his back. He was pretty sure he’d broken at least one of the cracked ribs, and he figured he’d have to deal with it sooner or later. He was also hoping to get some info on the lieutenant.

  Cadogan was the only man in the 213th who’d been on Erastus longer than Taylor. Jake looked like he’d make a poor soldier when he first stepped out of the Portal into the searing heat of Erastus. The skinny kid almost passed out, and he certainly didn’t look like he had what it took to survive. But Cadogan had been the same when he arrived, and he saw something in Taylor, something that wasn’t obvious on a cursory glance. Then-Sergeant Cadogan took the shaky new private under his wing, teaching him how to survive, and later, how to lead.

  Like most of the guys who’d been around a long time, Cadogan had a nickname…Scholar, though it had largely fallen into disuse as his original peers died or moved on to other units. Taylor certainly never dared to call him that, though Cadogan was fairly tolerant of informalities around base. The lieutenant himself never called any of the men by their nicknames either, usually referring to them by their ranks and surnames. When he wanted to be more informal, he used first names, but almost never handles.

  Cadogan had been a teacher of some sort; Jake knew that much. He’d been older than most of the recruits when he first got to Erastus, and highly educated too. It was a mystery to everyone how he ended up in the off-world military. As far as Taylor or anyone else seemed to know, Cadogan had never talked about it. At all. There were plenty of guesses, but no real facts.

  His age was another frequently discussed topic. There were rumors – never spoken of in his presence - that the lieutenant was over 30 years old. Most of the recruits who came to Gehenna were 19 or 20, and some were even 16 or 17. Not many of them survived their first year, and lasting a decade was unheard of. The UN supervisors and appointed senior officers were older, of course, but a 30 year old combat soldier was rare indeed.

  Jake was 25 himself, which made him pretty old too, at least on Erastus. He’d picked up the handle Mad Dog not long after he arrived. No one seemed to know why…it didn’t match his personality at all. But the mystery would remain unsolved…whoever hung that tag around Taylor’s neck was long dead, and Jake himself wasn’t talking.

  Except for the lieutenant, no one had been onplanet as long as Taylor. He was a Five Year Man. He’d been wounded three or four times and had a few close calls, but no Machine had been able to put him down for good. At least not yet.

  Nobody could remember how the use of handles and had become so widespread in the UN forces on Erastus, but the tradition seemed to date back almost as far as the original expedition. Sooner or later, nearly all the veterans picked up nicknames. It didn’t take too long, usually just a couple months. A new guy would survive a few battles, make a few friends…then someone would pick something out - a personality or physical trait - and pin a new name on him. Most of the time it stuck. It was OK to call someone at or below your rank by his handle, even in combat. In camp you could usually call an enlisted superior by his nickname, though generally not in the field. It all depended on the non-com. Things tended to be much more relaxed among the real
veterans, guys who’d been onplanet two years or more. With first year casualties averaging over 80%, that was a small group.

  Taylor reached the end of the rough tunnel leading from the barracks area to the infirmary. The field hospital was several levels lower than the main base, in the most secure section of the facility. The 213th was lucky…they shared their HQ with the battalion hospital. The other strike forces had only rough aid stations. They had to get their serious casualties evac’d to Base Delta, which was anywhere from 20 to 50 klicks from the other strike force HQs.

  There was a rough metal ladder built into the stone wall, leading down through an opening. UN Forces Erastus didn’t waste time on anything fancy. Everything needed for the war effort had to come through the Portal, and it took a dozen nuclear reactors on Earth to power the thing. Casualties brought in from the field came through a larger tunnel that ramped down from the surface, but lightly wounded grunts making their own way from the barracks had to climb.

  Taylor reached out and grabbed the first rung, wincing as he felt the predictable pain shoot through his chest. There were 36 rungs leading to the infirmary level, and every one of them was going to hurt.

  *

  “I told you to stay off-duty, didn’t I?” Doc Evans had what was generally considered to be the least original handle on Erastus. He’d been there for a long time, so long that no one Jake had ever met could remember a time when Doc wasn’t the battalion surgeon. His handle was so ubiquitous, Jake wasn’t even sure he’d ever known Evans’ first name. If he had, he’d forgotten it.

  Jake made a face. “It’s a damned good thing I went, Doc.” Evans was a captain, an exalted rank that should have precluded a sergeant like Jake from using a nickname. But everybody called Evans “Doc.” Everybody. “Somebody really screwed the pooch on that one. We’re lucky anybody made it back.”