Free Fleet #03 No Rest for the Wicked

by Michael Chatfield

  He studied it for a minute as grabbed my swinging gun, checking where my group had been moving during my little fact finding mission.

  “Uhh, could you? ...”

  “Just give me your orders, George,” I said in a soothing tone, he didn't need me looking over his shoulder.

  “Thanks. Take out the two nearest you,” he said, sending my squad the locations for the junctions.

  “On it,” I changed to the CAF. “We’ve been reassigned to take out the beauties on your HUDS,” I said.

  “Calerd could you get us a route,”

  “Certainly. Give me a hand here, Janice,” he said as he stopped in front of a wall, cutting into it as Janice checked the wire overlay of what lay behind it.

  “I always like the express route,” I said, getting a few displeased head shakes at my terrible try at humour.

  “Don't have any sense of humour, you lot,”

  “Spent too much time around you sir,” Shreesht said. I couldn't help grin at my group’s chuckles.

  ****

  Henry swung his plasmid battle axe, taking out two mecha's legs. One side of his blade had special hardened spikes which drove into the two troops' chests as he smashed them to the floor, shooting another one in the neck with his pistol.

  “Come on you fuckers!” He yelled as the Commandos roared with him. The commando to his right went down under a blade, but Henry made sure his attacker quickly followed him. Henry backed up slightly. He was tired and losing people too fast. The syndicate forces were having a hard time in the high gravity, but in a battle those things mattered little: fighting hormones and chemicals ruled. The syndicates also had more reinforcements than Henry had people. Nearly five times over.

  A syndicate troop got a weapon up, hitting Commandos in the faceplates and hitting Henry's shoulder before they stopped shooting. A Syndicate jumped, trying to plant his blade in Henry's neck. He hit the attacker away with the flat of his blade.

  “Pull back!” he said. He needed to change out people. His front lines were bone tired from fighting constantly.

  “Need to change, give us some room,”

  “There's a gun emplacement, but it's broken!” a gunner said who had re-donned his mecha. One needed to know how to fight no matter if they were an electrical technician, a gunner or a fully trained commando.

  “How long?” Henry got a glancing blow to the leg as he pushed an attacker back by the face plate, shooting that one while his axe crashed into the troop beside him.

  “Ten minutes!”

  Ten minutes was a lifetime.

  “We'll hold them off. Won't we, Commandos?!” Henry barked as his troops stepped up and cut into the enemy with renewed ferocity.

  Henry reloaded his pistol as he smacked a blade away, planting the spike between his two axe blades into the attacker’s shoulder. Another blade took off part of his helmet as he ducked. His rail pistol reloaded and he shot the enemy troop three times before finding something soft, at the same time dragging the plasmid blade across the groin of the one he’d spiked earlier. With an upward stroke his axe went through a helmet. His Commando's energy had waned again, and one over balanced as Henry leveled his axe. With an enemy troop going for the kill, he pressed a button on the axes handle and the spike at the end shot out, going through the attacker’s neck.

  “How long?” he barked as he used his pistol to avert a blow, turning it into a useless lump of sparking electronics. He threw it at a lunging trooper, giving the commando on the ground enough time to smack the blade away and take off the attacker’s helmet in a grisly display.

  “Five minutes,”

  It's only been five minutes. Henry's mind didn't seem to be able to comprehend that. As he grabbed a grenade with his now free hand, he turned stopping a blow from hitting his helmet only to have it lodge in his shoulder, forcing him to drop the grenade.

  “Argghhh!” Henry groaned, his eyes filled with pain driven anger as he extended the shaft of his axe with a press of a button, clearing a five foot area in front of him with four swings.

  “They're coming from behind!” someone yelled. Dread filled Henry as he employed the moves Yasu had taught him to use minimal energy for the most devastating attacks with a longer weapon.

  The enemy seemed to know that their forces were coming to cut off Henry's people. Their attacks redoubled, pushing back Henry and his defenders, many of them falling. Henry himself only barely survived, with limited mobility in his legs, his upper armoured torso a series of plasma burns.

  “The gun’s ready” a voice called out. “But they're almost here, we have to pull back.”

  I know that voice... Henry thought. It somehow reminded him of Verlu. Commander Tully! The man that took his spot, he thought sadly in a haze brought on by fatigue. I miss you buddy, he thought as he took off a troop’s arm, reversed his weapon and buried his blade in the soldier’s torso. Shit. His axe stuck as the trooper fell. Henry backed up and hit the armoured wall of the gun mount.

  Troopers sensing an easy prey slashed at Henry. He took a blow to the leg which burned, telling him it got through, as another attacker stabbed at his arm. He pulled and turned the trooper, drawing the soldier’s blade against his own neck as he got around the armoured shield of the turret. He rested as he saw the mess behind the first liners. All of the commandos were bone tired. They might be able to move easily with the higher gravity, but it didn't mean it didn't tire them out. All of them were exhausted. They had been fighting for hours now. Wounded were being dragged back behind the lines, but there were more of them than people standing. Commandos were taking two or three at a time as they ran to the rear. The enemy reinforcements had almost arrived. They were no more than five meters away.

  “Well sometimes you just have to do something stupid.” He grabbed the turret and depressed the trigger, rounds thudded into the syndicate who were at point blank range. The weapon was one of the PDS systems.

  “How do you like a seventy five calibre Gatling gun?” he yelled as the massive shells punched through the first ranks, exploding to take out the enemy behind them.

  “Pull back Commandos!” he yelled as his HUD alerted him that his people were in position. Using his eyes, he opened a channel.

  “Get em,” he said, sounding every bit exhausted and angry as he felt.

  The corridor where Henry had been fighting was clear up to thirty metres.

  “Breech!” someone said as Henry turned the turret to the other corridor, to see the last commando stumble as her leg was cut. She stabbed her attacker, getting a blade in the shoulder, she pulled the attacker in, head-butting the other soldier and slashing him, taking his blade, as she stabbed another with the first and batted a second away with her new blade. A railgun came up and a short burst announced the end of the Commando who dropped to her knees.

  Blood pooled around her. She’d been a Sarenmenti.

  “No!” Henry yelled. Tears blurred his vision as he clamped down on the trigger, his face remorseless as he kept firing.

  The troops that had recovered from his initial onslaught and were quickly working their way to him. He fired into them as he glanced back to his Commandos.

  “Come on, Commander!” Tully said.

  “You wouldn't be able to get our brothers and sisters out of here then,” Henry said as he pulled the pins that held the Gatling gun. He fired into the mass that were surging over the Commandos that had defended their brothers and sisters with their lives.

  He grabbed hold of four linked boxes as he hit a switch to lower the rate of fire, walking backwards crouched over so he could drag the crates, using the same arm to cradle the monstrous weapon while he depressed the trigger with the other hand.

  Heavy grav is useful for one thing. Henry thought grimly. His mecha's power output was cranked up and the thing that was slowing him down, was also making the recoil feel much less.

  Sweating but twenty metres back from where the two corridors filled with Syndicate troopers, Henry took a knee and bra
ced the Gatling gun as he fired into the converging group which continued toward him.

  “Take that fuckers!” he said as he fired into the oncoming tide. The Gatling gun was a weapon of mass death but the Syndicate just had so many troopers. Using his eyes and pressure balls on his fingers to activate another view screen he looked backwards down the corridor. A group of gunners was waiting to unleash hell, but they were blocked by the casualties and the ones carrying them to safety.

  Henry's gun ran dry as he thumbed two grenades and threw it into the mass just five meters away. It killed tens of them but barely slowed them. Henry only had enough time to stand, using the Gatling gun like a blunt club he crushed a trooper’s face plate.

  Suddenly everything became much lighter as an unseen weight lifted from Henry. He didn't change his mecha's power settings however as he whirled, the Gatling gun now feeling like a pillow in his hands instead of a desk. Suddenly, the syndicate troopers looked like Henry's squad had when they'd first got the full abilities of mechas; they went flying off in every direction, mostly into the walls.

  Henry grinned sadly.

  Good memories. He thought.

  A blade glanced off of Henry's helmet as he used the gatling gun to check the owner's helmet.

  “What the fuck are these people? Monsters?” someone asked, and Henry realized that his comms had changed to CAF, so he was picking up the syndicate troopers.

  “Fucker won't go down!” another panicked voice said and Henry grinned as he used the lighter gravity and his still fully powered mecha to jump past the first line of attackers and bury himself in the second or third.

  “We're Commandos! Armoured fucking Marine Commandos, and we are your death!” Henry brought the gun low, tripping troops as he crushed one, the Gatling's handle flying off.

  He grabbed a blade that made to jab up into his torso. The syndicate troops seemed to be moving in slow motion as they tried to get hold of themselves and adapt to universal gravity. Henry got inside the troopers reach, grabbed the hilt of his weapon and smashed his helmet with his own extra armoured helmet.

  He took down three more in quick succession as the troopers oriented themselves to the gravity changed. The last Commando was just five meters from safety. Henry's leg cut out as an attacker behind him took out the circuits. His leg was mangled underneath the armour, and he was unable to stand on it. He jumped backwards, cutting a trooper that stabbed at him as he plowed through mechas.

  “Fuck you, fuck your shitty army!” one of them yelled.

  “Yeah, we'll kill you all.” Henry rolled and flicked his leg out as he activated the locking bolts, making it nothing more than a peg leg essentially.

  Henry took down two as he stomped his other foot and righted himself.

  He cut and sliced, nothing left but to kill, to defend what had become his family, to give his commandos the time they needed, just as the Sarenmenti commando had done.

  “Commandos came from nothing, yet we will not die, we will not stop, we will never give up. That is what the Free Fleet does. We crush our enemies so totally that others do not even know about us. Your dead will be the legions that await every Commando when they go into the dark,” Henry growled and no one said anything as he staggered, getting a slice across his side.

  He smashed a trooper in the face as he reversed his grip on his sword, getting close so the troopers couldn't attack him without killing their own. Someone stabbed clean through the trooper he'd just stabbed in the arm, the blade pierced Henry's arm and tourniquets clamped around it.

  He switched his blade to the other hand as another blade raked his side. Feeling dizzy from blood loss he backed up as a blade seemed to appear in his chest and pain flared throughout his torso.

  Shit that hurts, he thought as he dropped his blade, looking at the one embedded in his chest.

  The syndicate troops still stayed out of his reach as they went around him and ran towards the end of the hall where the gunners waited three hundred meters away. Henry pulled the blade from his chest as painkillers made everything softer and the pain disappeared.

  He looked at the fallen Sarenmenti.

  Taleel. He read as he sighed, changing to the command channel.

  “I think this is it. I'm going to miss you bastards,” he smiled sadly. “But now it's time to go see those beyond the dark. Give them hell Commandos. For the Free Fleet,” Wish I could've gone on a date with Evelyn. Wouldn’t have done it any other way though.

  Henry Terrance Phillips slumped, resting on his knees with a blade in hand.

  The Commando's took a second.

  “For the Commander of the AMC,” one of them said in reverence, and others said it, turning into;

  “For the CAMC, FOR THE CAMC!” The guns opened up, voices competing with their machine guns as a storm of rounds passed around their CAMC, Henry.

  Chapter - This Ends

  My chest felt tight as sadness and anger warred inside of me. I stabbed an engineer, cutting down another as I whirled, my first blade cutting another's weapon apart, I cut up with my second blade. I sheathed both as I moved, thumbing a grenade and throwing it at the PDS power junction. The announcement that Bok Soo was now the new CAMC had come over the comms. Which would only happen in the event that Henry was dead.

  “We end this now,” I said, my voice as cold as space. As I pulled out my rail gun, Shreesht got in front of me, but none of them were willing to try and get me out of the fighting.

  I numbed my mind as I focused on the mission. I wasn't the commander of the Free Fleet. I was a grunt following orders, and I would execute them. I couldn't mourn for Henry, that thought alone made my eyes itchy. Either I would honour his memory, or I would join him in the dark.

  ***

  Falesh was getting weird reports of walls opening and the enemy throwing grenades into their midst when he watched the last defender of his corridor fall, killed with a rail gun. One Commando had grabbed the damned multi barrelled weapon and turned tens of troopers into mush. He'd slowed Falesh's newest troops, killing most of them. Then when his ammo had run out he'd used the gun as a club. The gravity changed and the Commando without even stopping started destroying the weapon as he killed even more troops.

  He'd announced who and what the enemy they were fighter were, but it had only made Falesh more scared. These people were proud as they were deadly. Falesh took his favourite throwing dagger, and when the Commando stumbled backwards it flew true, straight into the man’s chest.

  “Get moving!” Falesh yelled. There was an eerie silence as he heard a chant gradually grow. He just made it out before the auto cannons fired, their gunner’s accuracy scary as they cleared a way back to the now slumped over, but still upright commando.

  That chant would live with Falesh forever. He didn't know what a CAMC was, but the words, 'for the CAMC' would be forever seared into his mind as he ran into the adjoining corridor to save his life. Enemy fire whittled down his forces, the walls opened upwards on some kind of hydraulic system and grenades were thrown into the corridor. The corridors were packed with the fifty thousand that was all that was left of the Syndicate troopers in Parnmal. The rest were dead, on the surface, or fighting in their own ships. Red filled Falesh's screen as he grabbed dead mechas and covered himself.

  I'm not dying here, he thought to himself as he shook with fear, that thought playing over in his mind as he prayed to every religion, god, deity and mythological creation to let him live and that he would repent. Falesh was already defeated, and he knew it. And he knew that any of the syndicate troopers that put up a fight were dead as well.

  ***

  Captain Kelu walked off of his shuttle, meeting Captain Durv, a captain in his personal fleet.

  “We're leaving. Gather the fleet,” Kelu said as Durv nodded, talking into his earpiece as he walked with Kelu through the Dreadnought to the Bridge.

  “All but twelve vessels have Commandos on them,” Durv said, recoiling as Kelu snarled.

  “Leave the ones
with those—creatures on them,” Durv nodded as he barked to whoever he was talking to. Kelu felt the engines rumble as the Dreadnought picked up off of Parnmal.

  Urlow followed him faithfully as Kelu walked into the Bridge, sitting in the Captain's chair. Durv was smart enough not to tell Kelu to move as he took the seat of the first mate. Urlow stood at Kelu's side.

  “Groups of troops are surrendering. It seems the Commandos ambushed them,” the comms officer said, looking somewhat awed as Kelu snarled again.

  “Plot us the best time route out of here,” he barked as the bridge went silent.

  “We have jump emergence signatures! They're coming from Mikaw system,” Kelu sat up.

  Possible reinforcements?

  “Who are they?”

  “Processing, IFF.”

  It took a few minutes and Kelu was beginning to wonder if the sensor officer needed some incentive to hurry the fuck up, like a round in the main body cavity.

  “It's one of ours. It's being led by a known middling planet enforcer. They used capacitors to jump,”

  Middling planets were planets that had been a part of the Union. When the Union fell apart Lady Fairgate had made the planets pay a certain tax to be left alone. Enforcers made sure that the tax was paid, and if it wasn't they exacted a price that was even higher. Yet those planets were a month away in straight travelling, and the fact the ship had come from Mikaw system made Kelu hope that they were at least a syndicate force. The fact that they used their capacitors made that hope very close to fact in his mind.

  These commando's ships used their generators to jump from Parnmal, even when they had their capacitors undoubtedly charged. The ships wouldn't have enough troops to take the station, but they would have missiles. All I need is to put a few into the softer areas of Parnmal and I have the station, if not really intact, he thought a dark grin spreading across his face.

  “Hold position. Don't take us past the shields,” Kelu said.