by Rick Partlow
The shipment was on time. The Tahni didn’t care about the human workers huddled and shivering in the uncovered rear of the lead truck; they only cared about the food they’d loaded into the two trucks trailing behind. I could see them coming even through the storm, blobs of red and yellow on thermal, approaching from the road to the farms.
We could have just shot the drivers, but we needed the cabs reasonably intact, and we'd also have been taking a chance that the vehicles would go out of control and overturn, which could have injured the innocent civilians in the back. So, as often was the case, we'd have to do this the hard way.
The cab of the lead truck had soft, canvas doors that zipped from the inside, their windows made of clear, malleable polymer. From a running start, I threw myself head-first at the driver's-side door and slashed it open with a swipe of my talons. The swipe ended in the throat of the driver, spraying his blood across the dimly-lit cab in a fountain of ink-black. The soldier in the passenger seat had his helmet off and he had perhaps a half-second to form a scream at the blood splashed across his face before I shattered his skull with the heel of my boot.
I shoved the driver on top of the passenger's body, ignoring the gurgle as he choked on his own blood, then slammed a foot down on the brakes. The truck skidded through the mud for a few meters before it ground to a shuddering halt. I hit the button to shift it into park, then hopped out through the slashed-open door and circled around to the other side of the cab. The two cargo trucks trailing behind were coming to a stop about thirty meters back, and I was fairly sure they couldn't see me except as a silhouette even if they were using infrared, much less have any idea what had happened.
The driver of the second truck opened his door and leaned out, shouting something in Tahni, asking why the crew of the first vehicle weren't responding to their radio calls. He was cursing the rain when the tungsten slugs from the rifle of one of the Canaanites concealed in the woods ripped through his chest and sent him tumbling out of the cab to collapse into the mud. I was even with the passenger side of that cab by then, and through the soft plastic of the window I could see the face of the Tahni soldier there begin to shift as he suddenly realized what was happening.
It was the second to last thing that went through his mind. The last thing was the slug from my Gauss pistol. I yanked the door open and he pitched through it headless. The third truck was another twenty-five meters back and there wasn't time for subtlety or patience with that one: assigned snipers in the trees took out the Tahni driver and his guard with a ten-round barrage that splintered the windshield.
Troops sprinted out from the woods, swarming over the trucks, and I moved to the back of the first vehicle to check on the civilians. Rachel was there already, helping them down out of the flatbed and handing them off to fighters who wrapped them in water-proof blankets. As I walked up, one of them cried out in disbelief and wrapped Rachel in a hug, sobbing uncontrollably.
"Oh, my God, Rachel," the young, dark-haired woman kept repeating, "I can't believe you're alive!"
The wind and rain slackened off for a moment and I suddenly recognized the woman past the years and the stress and the privation of imprisonment. I pulled off my face hood and grinned.
"Hey Lisa," I said to her.
Lisa Stanfell's eyes went wide and her hands went to her mouth. I thought for a moment she was going to faint. Jase would be happy to know she was alive and okay, I thought. I wondered if he'd kept in touch with her.
"Cal," I barely heard her gasp. "Everyone said..."
"Go with them, Lisa," Rachel said, gently handing her off to one of the volunteers---older people or young teenagers who'd come along to handle the civilians we might free. "Everything will be okay."
Lisa was still staring back at us in disbelief even as the older woman took her arms and led her away. I turned back to Rachel, noting that her company was already tossing cargo out of the last two trucks and replacing it with troops. One of Rachel’s appointed sergeants, the younger son of a now-dead Church Elder, jogged out of the woods cradling my plasma gun like a sack of potatoes, then handed it off to me with some difficulty. I nodded gratitude to him and slung it casually over my shoulder.
"I have to get back to the main effort," I said to Rachel. "They'll be waiting for you to hit the gate to move out."
She grabbed me by my tactical vest and pulled me into a kiss. I wrapped my arms around her and held her close for just a moment, then let her slip out of my grasp.
The corner of her mouth quirked upward as she turned away. "See you after, soldier."
I pulled on my hood and ran. I was into the forest and following the old four-wheeler trail before the trucks started moving, and in seconds I couldn’t even hear the hum of their motors. I sprinted recklessly, with habits grown from too much time in lighter gravity, and only my headcomp and jacked reflexes kept me from smashing into trees or tripping over rocks and roots almost invisible in the darkness.
I wanted more than anything to be with Rachel, to protect her, and I knew that was exactly the reason I shouldn’t. It was just as well we were too worried about the Tahni signal-intercept to use drones or live video feeds, because I would have been trying too hard to follow what was going on in the city. My head needed to be in the fight.
I found Delta and Echo companies still tucked into the trees along the path, only a few dozen meters from the crest of the gentle slope leading down to the open plain that circled Harristown on the western side of the city. The lights of the city pushed back at the encroaching fog and rain, fighting their own battle against the Night but not penetrating far enough to give away our positions.
I could probably have run right past our sentries without them seeing me, but I didn’t want to chance someone getting spooked and firing off a stray shot, so I yanked off my hood and walked slowly up the middle of the path.
“It’s me, Caleb,” I announced quietly when I knew I was within earshot of them,
“Come on through,” the woman crouched by the right-hand side of the trail said, leaning out from behind the trunk of a native growth.
I found Isaac out past the front lines of our position, lying prone on the crest of the hill, peering down at the city with a compact set of digital binoculars, with Pete and Tom McCrey on either side of him. I crawled out to join them and the motion made my older brother glance away from the display. He nodded to me, able to see my face in the glow from the Tahni floodlights that glared out of the imprisoned city below.
“How’d it go?” Pete asked me. His eyes were alight and eager, filled with the immortality of youth. Had I ever been like that? I couldn’t remember.
“It went,” I told them. “We secured all three trucks. They should be hitting the gates any time now.”
“I wish we had vehicles,” Tom fretted absently, tapping a finger on the grooved fore-stock of his Gauss rifle. “We’re gonna’ be crossing a lot of open space on foot.”
“If we’d tried to bring trucks up here, they’d have seen it,” Isaac replied with strained patience that told me they’d had this argument before, in my absence. Then he visibly checked himself, shaking his head. “Get Delta ready to move out,” he said instead.
Tom scooted back off the hilltop before standing and heading over to his company. I watched him go, then told Isaac, “I’m heading down to scout the route. The second you hear Rachel’s people blow the gate, everyone needs to be balls-to-the-wall down this hill. Clear the open space as quick as you can. I’ll meet you at the road junction.” I pulled my face hood out and slipped it partway on. “If you come under fire before that, do not engage, just get to that road junction.”
“I was at the briefing,” Isaac said dryly, tucking his binoculars away and putting on his night vision goggles. “Go,” he waved at me. “We’ll be there.”
I tightened the sling of my plasma gun, then skittered over the crest of the hill on my belly, feeling mud squelching under my weight as I slid through it and over the grass. As I descended, I rose t
o a high crawl and finally stood and began to run. It was easy going, no trees or rocks in the way, though my feet nearly slid out from under me more than once from the mud and slick grass. I stayed as far from the fence line as I could without venturing into the nearly impassable wetlands further to the West, keeping about a kilometer between me and the wire mesh barrier. The further North I made it, though, the wetter the ground became, and soon I was only about three hundred meters from the fence.
There were no patrols out here; most of them were down by the spaceport, which was why we needed the diversionary attack. I didn’t see any Tahni except the lightly-armored soldiers manning the weapons turrets at intervals, and those seemed disinterested in anything beyond the fence line. Actually, they didn’t seem much interested in anything except staying out of the rain. I gave into a soldier’s superstition and tried not to stare at them, even though I was doing it through the electronic sensors built into my hood.
Staying on drier ground, I was able to maintain a quick trot past the city that ate up the distance quickly. I was only a kilometer from the crossroads when I heard the explosion. It was all the way across the city and the sound was dampened by the soggy air, but it still carried across the kilometers the way only ten kilograms of hyperexplosives can. I wish I had been able to bring more, but there was only so much space on the damn ship.
I could picture the scene in my mind’s eye, at least the way we’d planned and rehearsed it. Fighters had replaced the civilians in the back of the lead truck, and the driver and guard had loaned helmets and armor they’d no longer need to the humans who’d taken their place. It wouldn’t have stood up to close inspection, but the rain and fog would have gotten them close enough to jam the throttle open and jump out of the truck. By the time the gate guards had figured out what was happening, it would have been too late.
I didn’t know if God was listening to me anymore, but I said a prayer for Rachel just in case. Then I headed for the crossroads as fast as I could. I needed to see how the Tahni troops at the port were going to react, and I needed to do it before Isaac and the rest arrived.
The footing solidified the closer I got to the road and I sped up…and then I threw myself to the ground and froze. I heard the vehicles before I saw them, and recognized them when I did as the cargo flatbeds that the Port Authority used for unloading heavy lift shuttles. There were three of them, each loaded down with a squad of armored Tahni shock troops, bristling with weapons. They were headed through the gates standing in the beds of the trucks, leaning into the weather and the danger, confident that their armor could handle either.
My training, my instincts, my gut all yelled at me to open fire on them with my plasma gun, to take them out before they could get into the fight, to keep them from getting to Rachel. But instead, I watched them drive across the causeway and on into the city, hoping they’d be so busy fighting and killing my friends that they’d be unable to back up the troops at the Control Center.
"Goddamn it," I muttered aloud. They had sent all the shock troopers from their reserve at the spaceport garrison, but they'd only sent their shock troopers, not their squad of High Guard. If they held the battlesuits back, they could drop them right onto the Control Station when we hit it; if they caught us outside, we were screwed.
It seemed like I had forever to consider the problem, and I tried to force myself not to think about how long Delta and Echo were taking to get to the crossroads. I rose to a crouch and I could finally see them. They were running as fast as they could, not in any particular order or tactical formation, but Isaac was in the lead with Pete by his side. The sight reminded me of a computer recreation I'd seen of a Medieval battle, if you'd replaced the swords and axes and spears with Twenty-Third Century weapons.
I stripped off my hood and rose to meet them, fighting an impatient urge to run towards them. Better to give Isaac a chance to catch his breath before I sprang this on him.
"Did they take the bait?" He gasped, bent over slightly as he reached me, face red and beaded with sweat.
"The shock troops did," I told him. "But the High Guard hasn't left the spaceport garrison yet."
"Shit," Pete swore, realizing with admirable quickness what that meant. "What do we do?"
"Isaac," I said, feeling like someone else was saying it, like I was a bystander watching it unfold in virtual reality, "I want you to reinforce your company with a platoon from Delta. We're going to need a bigger distraction, something that makes them think the main effort is the spaceport. Take two platoons instead of a squad, go after their shuttles. That'll tie down the High Guard and the mecha. Break radio silence when you’re in place."
He opened his mouth to say something, closed it again, then nodded. "Right."
"As soon as I inject the computer worm," I promised him, "I'll send what I can free up to support your withdrawal. But you have to keep them off us till then."
“I got it,” he replied, his face a carefully neutral mask.
“Isaac,” I said, grabbing his shoulder in a grip I knew was tight enough to hurt. His eyes flashed at me in surprise. “I know this seems like a perfect opportunity to get yourself killed, but we still need you. Hit and run and stay alive.”
“Thank you,” Isaac replied, gripping my shoulder back. I barely felt it. “Thank you for coming back.” I let loose my grip and he turned to the others, who were crowding around us.
“Delta Company, Second Platoon, you’re with Echo!” His voice boomed and I winced, but there was no help for it. He waved a hand. “Follow me!”
The fog was closing in again, moving like a wave across the plain, blocking the spaceport from view, turning the glare of the security lights there into a bright, hazy halo. Isaac ran at the head of a hundred twenty men and women and, together, they disappeared into the haze like they had never been.
Chapter Thirty-One
It was black, and the brush was wet with the steady rain falling. I could feel the coarse surface of the leaves beneath my left hand and the hard, tungsten curves of my plasma assault gun under my right. Beyond the thick bush where I hid were the lights of what had been the Commonwealth Space Fleet Orbital Defense Control Center---what was now the planetary headquarters for the Tahni occupation force on Canaan.
It had taken the eighty of us nearly ten minutes to circle around the road junction and make our way through the stand of trees and brush that separated the Control Center from the spaceport, but we were finally in place and waiting for Isaac to kick the show off on his end. I couldn’t hear a damn thing from the city and I had no idea if Rachel’s group was still fighting or even still alive. I knew the shock troop reserves had made it there by now.
Tahni shock troops in their black powered armor patrolled the outside of the heavily-fortified buildings, supplementing the automatic sensors and traps that lined the perimeter. Unfortunately for them, I'd already disarmed those handy devices---fairly easy, since they'd all been Space Fleet issue. Now all that was left was to take out the guards, and get me access to an input terminal to inject the virus which would disable the defense satellites long enough for the Commonwealth battle fleet that would arrive in less than an hour to achieve orbital insertion and take out their picket ships. We hoped.
It would have been easier if Harristown had a normal, above-ground fusion reactor like most colonies; a reactor was harder to guard than a control station. But the Church had carried the whole technological simplicity thing to an absurd length and forced the Fleet Corps of Engineers to put the reactor for the defense lasers underground and out of sight, which made cooling and servicing difficult…and which also made it almost impossible for us to take out with the forces we had.
"B-Team's ready," Pete whispered to me, relaying a transmission from the headset he wore. He was so young, I thought again; he looked out of place in the scrounged Tahni body armor, a Gauss battle rifle at his side.
"Right," I said. "Wait for my signal."
Damn it, Isaac, I thought. Hurry up.
; The thought had barely had time to form when I heard a series of distant “bangs” and a rolling thunder of explosions echoing across the plain from the spaceport.
Go, Caleb. His radio transmission whispered into my neurolink like the voice of God.
“Thirty seconds,” I said to Pete, and I heard him relay the order to Tom McCrey, who would send it down to the Platoon Leaders and they to the squad leaders and then to each of the individual fighters.
I readied myself, gathering my legs beneath me, and I could hear the dozen others with me doing the same. Pulling on my gauntlets, I briefly considered donning the face hood that completed my combat suit, but decided against it. This fight was personal, and I'd go into it not as the faceless demon of an Omega Group commando, but as Cal Mitchell, a man fighting for his home. My headcomp had counted down to fifteen seconds by the time I began to draw a bead on the sentries, raising the heavy plasma gun to hip level. Mine was the weapon with the most obvious signature, so I was elected to trigger the attack.
As the last few seconds crept by, I thought of my parents and I wondered if Dad would have understood what I had to do. Then the count hit zero and I fired.
The gun bucked in my hands as it spewed a ball of ionized hydrogen at relativistic velocities along the path burned through the atmosphere by the pilot laser. The dazzling flare of plasma impacted the rightmost of the Tahni guards, exploding against his chest armor with a thunderous roar of liberated water vapor, disintegrating a section of armored torso big enough to stick my head through. I jacked another round from the magazine with the gun's pump action, a mist of the liquid nitrogen that had flooded the cartridge from its burn-away cooling jacket hissing from the chamber as the spent ceramic shell flew out of it.
Before I could get off my second round, the others had opened up with their Gauss rifles and appropriated Tahni lasers, cutting most of the remaining shock troops down in a hail of hypervelocity tungsten slugs and pulses of coherent light. One of the Tahni troopers managed to get off a wild burst from his KE gun, the tantalum darts crackling into the trees, before I blew off the top twelve centimeters of his torso with another plasma round.