Exodus - Empires at War 04 - The Long Fall (Exodus Series #4)

by Doug Dandridge

  The firefight was short and sharp. The Rangers lost thirty-two men, in exchange for almost three hundred of the unprepared enemy. But now that enemy was alerted, more warriors were pouring into the fight, and there was great risk of being swept away. The gate to the inner compound blew in front of Preacher, and he hurried his group through, while most of the rest of the Rangers simply jumped over the fence with their enhanced muscles.

  The enemy fire was intensifying by the moment. Lasers and particle beams were joining the mix, and Preacher knew there was no way his light troops could stand up to that firepower. His Rangers were falling back around him while his demolitions expert set his explosives at the side entrance to the bunker. The enemy was firing from cover, and his men were trying to take advantage of what little they had. It wasn’t enough, and Preacher watched as man after man was burned or blasted out of existence. We’re getting murdered, he thought, holding back his tears of rage and frustration.

  “Fire in the hole,” yelled the Ranger who had set the plastic explosive around the door. He ran himself and put his back to the wall, while the rest of the Rangers hunkered down as best they could to keep fire on the enemy. The demolitions man hit his trigger, pulling it three times. The explosive went off with a blast of fire and very little smoke. It was the most advanced chemical explosive made in the Empire, one gram equaling twenty kilograms of the TNT that was still held up as the standard measure of blasting power. The door crumpled and flew inward. Seconds later the first Rangers ran through, gunning down the disoriented Cacas in the entrance halls.

  “There’s the elevators,” yelled one of the men, and the demolitions man ran over and started to set his explosives on the door. There was no hope that a car would be there for their use. But they really didn’t need one. All they needed was the shaft. He blew that door in, dropping it into the shaft for the long fall down.

  All the surviving Rangers crowded through the hallway. One placed an explosive charge on the ceiling just inside the outer door, pulled a pin, and ran after the others. Just as the first Cacas reached the doorway the charge went off, lifting their dead bodies up and out while dropping the ceiling into the hallway.

  “That won’t hold them for long,” said Preacher, turning to locate his gate carrier and make sure he was deploying the wormhole. I shouldn’t have worried, he thought. The Master Sergeant had the meter by half meter device out of his pack and was setting it up. After unfolding it twice, he placed it on the floor, where it continued to unfold itself until it formed a frame two meters tall by a meter wide. In the center was a ten centimeter mirror. And immediately after the device expanded a cylinder came popping through the wormhole.

  “Get that stuff injected,” ordered Preacher, listening to the noise coming from the barrier they had dropped as the Cacas started to burn their way through. “Be careful. That shit will cancel your asses.”

  The men nodded, and caught cylinder after cylinder, until four had come through. The Master Sergeant hooked the tanks up to a nozzle on the frame and started to inject the negative matter into the system. As each was emptied the opening grew, and the frame adjusted to pull it toward the edge of the construct. In moments a fully opened wormhole stood in front of Preacher. Moments later a meter diameter sphere came out of the hole, floating on a framework set with grabber units.

  “OK, everyone not necessary for setting the bomb, through the hole.”

  The men started to move toward the hole and through, evacuating quickly but without panic. The Master Sergeant started to prep the bomb, a simple device holding two kilograms of antimatter in a strong containment field. He set the timer and the proximity fuse on the device that would simply turn off the containment field, then nodded at Preacher.

  “Everybody through,” he yelled, looking at the barrier that was crumbling before the particle beams of the enemy. The last three men moved through the hole, and he and the Master Sergeant moved the bomb to the shaft. Preacher looked down, and saw a glow at the bottom where the enemy was melting through the lift doors they had dropped.

  “Let’s do it,” he said to the NCO, then pushed the bomb into the shaft. The NCO armed the bomb and Preacher pushed the grabber commit that sent it on its way down. A blast sounded behind them, and the barrier in the hall exploded inward.

  Preacher ran for the wormhole, then turned as he heard a grunt from behind. The Master Sergeant was lying on the floor with a deep burn through one leg. “Leave me, General,” said the man in a strained voice.

  “No fucking way,” said Preacher, grabbing the man and lifting him into a fireman’s carry. A particle beam came swishing by, and the General cringed as he ran, jumping into the hole with the other man on his shoulders.

  He landed on the other side and fell to the floor, just as the wormhole behind him flashed and white hot flame started to come out. Then the gate was inactive, cutting them off from the massive explosion that must have totally destroyed the enemy ground force headquarters on the planet.

  “Welcome home, Preacher,” said a familiar voice, and the General found himself looking up at the short form of Grand Marshal Mishori Yamakuri, the Army Chief of Staff. “And congratulations on all you did.”

  “I lost a lot of men doing it, sir,” said Brigadier General Walther Jodel, laying the Master Sergeant gently on the floor and moving away so the docs could get to him.

  “And I’ve sent a lot more to their deaths,” said Mishori, putting his arm around the Ranger.

  “When do we go back?”

  “Not for a while yet,” said the Army Chief of Staff. “I’m sending two more battalions through to fill out your brigade, but you and these men are getting a leave. After that we will figure out something else for you to do.”

  Preacher nodded, and looked back for a moment at the dead frame of the wormhole. Marveling at the fact that they had used a device that took the energy equivalent of thousands of tons of antimatter to create, just so they could deliver a two kilogram warhead. But the effect on the enemy should be worth it.

  *

  “By the Gods,” yelled the Great Admiral, looking at the explosion rising from the far southern Continent. They had gotten word that the planetary headquarters was under attack, but nothing from the sensor feeds had shown a bomb of that caliber being snuck into the facility.

  “We have lost communications with the General,” yelled out a Com Tech.

  “One has to wonder why,” said the Great Admiral, glaring at the tech.

  “It had to be a suicide mission,” said the Brigade Commander who was the Admiral’s liaison officer. “There’s no way they could have gotten a bomb in there and then escaped.”

  “What care I if some of their foot soldiers sacrificed themselves. I wish they all would.” The Admiral walked the deck for a moment thinking, wondering if any of these worlds were worth the lives he was paying to try and hold them. But I can’t destroy the surface of the planet. The priests would raise hell. Word would get back to the Emperor. And I would be removed from my position. But if I lose any more troops for no gain I can also kiss my command goodbye.

  “Pull all our troops off the planet,” ordered the Admiral, turning to the Brigade Commander. “Now, as soon as you can load them up.”

  “But, what are we to do with the planet?” asked the ground force officer.

  “We will seed the planet with drones and microdrones, and hit anything we see from orbit.”

  “They’ll still be able to move people about the planet,” said the ground force officer. “They’ve gotten quite good at it.”

  “Then we will hit what we can, until the time is right to put troops back on the surface. Meanwhile, we will hit more systems, destroy their infrastructure, and move on, until we are in a position to take out that wormhole generating station of theirs. Until that moment, we will secure the orbitals with heavy warships.”

  The Great Admiral looked over to where his human slave was seated, glaring at her. He was sure that she had told him what she knew. No being
could withstand the combination of pain and pleasure she had been subjected to. And there was definitely no way she could have transmitted information to her side. So I will keep her around for now, he thought, giving her another stare. And then he was looking back at the planet, which he had hoped would be theirs by now.

  *

  CORE WORLD SPACE, MARCH 5TH, 1001.

  The surface of the planet came toward him fast. Too fast. The Brigadier cut in the grabber units on his suit and decelerated, a little bit past the capacity of his inertial compensators to handle. He was pulling six gravities above capacity as he came down, the by the book standard for assault jumps.

  There were already men on the ground, forming up into their units and starting to move off, their one ton combat suits carrying them a meter above the surface. The Brigadier looked on his HUD to see that some unit mixing had occurred. That was to be expected during a mass drop. It was more important to get the troops into battle than order the ranks.

  He looked up to see the last companies coming down, along with the heavy tanks that were assigned to his brigade. They still impressed him whenever he saw them, a thousand tons of metals and materials, floating down on their own grabbers and the two hundred tons of carrier. The lower skin of the carriers still glowed red from their entry into an atmosphere, and the heat that had made it through their ejected ablation shields. He counted them off on his HUD, breathing a sigh of relief as the total reached forty-seven vehicles. The battalion was only missing one vehicle, not bad for a drop onto a hostile surface.

  Brigadier General Samuel Baggett allowed himself to smile for a moment. His brigade was doing well. He was tempted for a moment to check in on the other three brigades of the 384th Heavy Infantry Division, then decided that it wasn’t his business. He needed to concentrate on his own command. If they needed help they would call. He had his own battle to fight.

  “Looking good so far, sir,” said Sergeant Major Terry Zacharius over the personal com.

  “You enjoying yourself, you old warhorse?” asked the General, pleased that his old top NCO had accepted transfer with him to heavy infantry. Terry had risen through the ranks in light infantry, then did a stint with the General in the mediums. But Terry knew a good thing when he saw it, and more protection and firepower was always a good thing.

  “So far, sir,” said the irascible NCO. “But it looks as if the shit is about to hit it.”

  Baggett grunted as he expanded his HUD and saw the red dots of the enemy force heading his way. He knew each of those suits was bigger than his own, carrying a larger being. Some of his dots started to drop off the screen, then some of the enemy’s. The tanks opened up and sent large high speed projectiles at the enemy units, followed by particle beams and lasers. More of the enemy dropped off the plot.

  One of the tanks closest to the General went up, turret rising on a ball of fire into the air from the hyper-v hit. Stingships flew over, enemy craft, and started to strafe his forces. Beams and missiles rose into the air from suits and vehicles configured for such work, and half the stingships were blotted from the sky.

  Now the battle was joined in earnest, beams and projectiles lighting the sky ahead. And the fourth brigade was falling from the air, starting to form up, while his own men pressed forward. Here a battalion commander was taken out, there a company commander. Several lieutenants fell off the net, and in every occurrence the next man down took over without a hitch.

  The beings they were fighting were bigger and had larger weapons. But they also made larger targets, a disadvantage that was beginning to tell.

  “I think we’ve got them, Terry,” said Baggett, then cursed as he noticed that the NCOs icon was no longer there. More red icons appeared on the HUD, and the General knew they were in trouble.

  But Major General Maxwell was doing his job, and Second and Third Brigades began to pinch in on the enemy, while Fourth Brigade moved up through First to deliver a killing blow. Baggett looked at his own casualty figures with alarm. He had lost half of his heavy infantry troopers, over fifteen hundred men, and thirty one of his heavy tanks. The other brigades had not suffered near the losses, as his had hit the enemy head on, always a recipe for lots of casualties. Now the enemy was falling back, struggling to keep their formations intact, and not succeeding.

  “Let’s take this one back to the club, gentlemen and ladies,” said Major General Betrum Maxwell over the com.

  Most of the smoke and dust disappeared from the atmosphere as the suit displays cleared up. The tank Baggett had seen destroyed returned to normal, the holo projectors that had simulated the damage turning off. He checked his HUD as the people who had been killed came back up. Some had minor damage to their suits. A few had injuries, but none were seriously hurt. People were often seriously injured on maneuvers like this, sometimes even killed. He felt fortunate to only have those minor injuries, and the armorers would soon have the suits back up to full capacity.

  Baggett flew low over the ground to the meeting, Zacharius at his side. The Division Commander was already there, as was the Phlistaran commander of the OPFOR. As they waited the other three brigade and eighteen battalion commanders made their way to the meet. All remained in their suits. It was important to get used to staying in them for long periods of time. In a real deployment they might be in the suits for weeks, resupplied with food, water and energy cells.

  “I am very satisfied, ladies and gentlemen,” said the Division Commander. “Not everything went perfectly, of course, and there is room for improvement. There is always room for improvement, but it doesn’t always come.”

  Yeah, thought Baggett, that only comes after the dead wood has been killed off. In his experience not everyone who graded out positively in training became a great combat soldier. Only the Darwinian selection process of real combat would tell him who were the best soldiers, and who were the dead meat. And, as always, there was always an amount of luck to who lived or who died. He had seen some of the best soldiers imaginable die due to plain bad luck, while lesser troopers lived, all because the missile trajectory as a little off for one, on for the other.

  “Anything to add, General Lanbardran?” asked Maxwell of the Phlistaran commander of the One Ninety-fifth Heavy Infantry Division, one of the other units in the Corps.

  “Only that there was some bunching up on landing,” said the booming voice of the huge being. “Other than that, the organization was fantastic, even in the face of casualties. I thought we had you for a moment, until your counter attack got us.”

  “It was still four brigades against one, sir,” said Baggett.

  “And that is what we would normally expect to face on a drop,” said Maxwell, his armored head swiveling to look at the brigade commander. “We would try to overwhelm the enemy with numbers to get a foothold, and would not want to drop on a position where the numbers were even, or worse.” The General waited for a moment, then looked back at Baggett. “What has been your experience, General Baggett?”

  Samuel was aware of every head turned his way. He took Maxwell’s question at face value. All of the assembled officers knew he had more recent combat experience than all of them put together, except for Sergeant Major Zacharius. And again, with the exception of the Sergeant Major, the only combat experience against the ancient enemy.

  “My experience is that nothing goes as expected, and we must always be ready for everything.”

  Later, aboard the heavy assault ship that served as the brigade headquarters while waiting for a mission, he met with his own staff. He was not so ready with the praise as his commanding officer.

  “I expect the men to not bunch up so on the drop,” he said, scanning the faces of his battalion and company commanders, and their XOs and senior NCOs. “I know the troops feel insecure dropping out of the sky like they do, and want to seek he security of their fellows. That just makes them bigger damn targets, and the larger the target the more enticing it is to be hit.”

  “When are we going to deploy for a mission
, sir?” asked Lt. Colonel Wanda McTavish, the commander of his Second Battalion. “The lads and ladies are hearing things through the grapevine, but it’s all just useless speculation so far.”

  “Nothing official has come down the pike,” said Baggett, looking at the attractive officer. “You all will be the first to know when it does, so be ready. We have a simulator exercise tomorrow at oh seven hundred. Have your people plugged in and ready to work. At least we can’t break any of the suits in the simulators.”

  The next morning the entire brigade was plugged in, and the computers were providing a situation to challenge them, working at the rate of one minute to the hour. The organic brains linked into the cyber systems, playing through the simulation, then going at it again, correcting mistakes, making new ones. After four hours the brigade unlinked, and the tired troopers, having undergone scores of variations of the tactical situation, went to their lunches. Most of the soldiers had experienced deaths as real to their minds as the actual thing, a good way of pushing the importance of the exercise home.

  That night the Gallipoli, the troop ship they called home, powered toward the hyper barrier and deployment, along with the rest of the division. Baggett didn’t know their final destination at that point, and wasn’t even sure if high command knew. But one thing was a known. They were headed for Sector Four, and he was heading back into the shit.

  *

  FREE SPACE OUTSIDE OF SECTOR IV AND NEW TERRAN REPUBLIC TERRITORY. MARCH 12TH, 1001.

  New Terran Republic Ship Hephaestus was the last to work its way into line. The hyper VI destroyer was ready for a long deployment. How long no one knew, but being equipped with a wormhole it was sure to be an extended stay. Four other ships were already in place, one centering the formation, three others to three sides of that vessel, six light years up, down and toward the Republic. They would catch the hyperdrive emissions of any ship passing within six light years of their positions in hyper VII, over two light years in VI. When the net was complete any ship passing through within twenty-four light years of the central vessel, a light cruiser, would be detected. Fifty light years closer to the New Terran Empire were nine of their ships in a similar formation to cast an even wider net. It was hoped that they would pick up all enemy traffic coming or going, and so warn their governments about incoming Ca’cadasan ships.