Turning Point (Galaxy's Edge Book 7)

by Jason Anspach

  Third Squad leader came over comm. “Get down! Bang-bang out!”

  Besson watched in horror as the junior NCO at the tip of wedge pulled something from his cargo belt while firing his blaster with one hand into the two zhee lunging for him. A third zhee was coming in with two knives, both curving and shining in the darkness, his massive donk buckteeth wide and chomping. The NCO stepped forward and slammed the adhesive explosive breaching charge onto the third donk’s chest plate. Then the legionnaire sergeant fired at point blank.

  The entire stairway was engulfed in an orange apocalyptic boom that knocked everyone to the ground. Besson was momentarily knocked out, and when he came to he was being dragged behind the already working N-42s. The heavy squad automatic blasters, interlocked and manned by two competent gunners, were near impossible to get past in small-unit tactics.

  Besson’s head and ears were ringing. And he was getting a text message over L-comm from the commander running all the recon ops in advance of the main assault.

  Hurricane had just entered atmo.

  14

  Task Force Whirlwind

  Assault Carrier Hurricane

  Approaching Ankalor Entry

  Most of the Repub Navy personnel who flew the sturdy assault carriers liked working with the Legion. They sympathized with the Legion’s grievances and had made the switch to fall in with Article Nineteen.

  “We’ve come out somewhat early, sir,” announced Commodore Rist.

  No scowl crossed General Hannubal’s face. He’d been in enough Legion battles to know that things started going sideways fast once any plan was set in motion.

  “Problem, sir!” called out the sensor officer over the chatter of bridge traffic.

  Both Rist and Hannubal turned away from the tactical holos in the center of the dark Combat Information Center at the heart of the assault carrier Hurricane. Other officers hurried through the darkness. The static wash of traffic between the task force’s carriers and units staging within each ship filled the ether.

  “What is it?” snapped Rist.

  Commodore’s never been in a firefight ten feet off a SLIC in an LZ that wasn’t supposed to be hot, thought Hannubal as he studied the updating tactical displays. He could already tell what the major problem was. Every Repub military asset on Ankalor was flashing combat ready status. The Legion base was now marked hostile, and her radar and sensors were up and scanning.

  Someone’s tipped them off.

  A moment later Rist was back at his side and looking positively sick.

  “I don’t know how, General… but they know we’re here.” Rist looked at the deluge of information coming in. “Oh. Oh, dear. The shuttle containing the Dark Ops team sent to take down the planetary shield was shot down.”

  “Have they put it up?” demanded the general. Time was of the essence. This was all split-second, and it could cost lives. If there was a chance the carriers could still slip in, Hannubal would take it. But if the shield came up before he could get into atmosphere… they’d all be dead.

  “Not yet. It could be any moment. Shall we call off the assault?” Rist looked desperately at the general, who was in full battle rattle.

  “Negative, Commodore. Our teams down there still have time to knock out those guns. We’re committing. Before the shield is up. Not about to abandon those leejes by getting stuck in orbit. Signal Tornado and Sirocco to stand by to activate the interlocking defensive shield system. Center on us.”

  Commodore Rist turned away and set a series of orders in motion.

  “All legionnaire companies, report to your assault bays,” echoed a public address system across the interior spaces of the assault carriers.

  ***

  Thirty-Third Legion Recon, Shadow Company, First Platoon

  Air Defense Tower Four

  Ankalor

  The deadly crossfire set up by the N-42 blaster teams wasn’t enough to dissuade the zhee from relenting in their suicidal counter-assault. As Besson led what remained of First Squad back out onto one of the balconies, one of the team leaders remarked over L-comm, “Them donks don’t take the hint, do they, Sergeant?”

  Warpig agreed that they did not.

  The N-42s continued their high-cycle blare of shrieking fire. Captain Besson was momentarily afraid that one of the N-42s would over-cycle and melt down. Their repeating high-pitched whine indicated the weapons were firing almost non-stop without even pausing to engage individual targets.

  “Warpig… blue sky?”

  Besson reached a balcony beyond the tower walls and chanced a quick glance upward. If the zhee were smart, they’d be doing what he was about to do. But they weren’t.

  As what remained of First Squad began to climb upward once more, this time as fast as their arms and legs could haul their armor upward, the platoon sergeant came back with the casualty and ammo report.

  Effectively, Shadow was down to half strength.

  “Copy that. Keep ’em busy, Sergeant. We’ll start our flank shortly,” said Besson between gasps as he pulled his armored body up from handhold to handhold along the side of the tower. Above, the eighty-eight displacement gun batteries on their massive concrete spurs were lobbing massive photonic energy shots surrounding a shell in which antimatter was encased. Deflector shields wouldn’t hold up against that kind of firepower for long.

  Besson turned away from the rock face and stared out across the horizon. He oriented himself between the massive Gibraltaar Rock and the ranges that had been established as the assault force’s landing zone out on the desert floor. Lonely roads snaked out through the pre-dawn darkness. Searchlights crossed the night and scanned the desert floor beneath the base. Dawn was just a short time away.

  His men passed him along the side of the tower, berating each other over L-comm for weakness or general unworthiness.

  Then he saw what he was looking for. The unmistakable flare of the Legion’s assault force, inbound and hot, streaking through the lower atmosphere. Three massive Hammer-class assault carriers, wide and squat for most of their length, with massive hammerhead bridges located above the bow, were flying in a tight formation.

  For a moment he got a reflection glare from the IDS deflectors that were now engaged, thus making the ships almost invulnerable to forward attacks. Unfortunately, the eighty-eight batteries that ringed Gibraltaar Rock would have firing angles on the ships’ sides.

  “Move!” he shouted to his men, using a command tone he’d learned from a particularly brutal drill sergeant out of his past. “We got five minutes, Leejes, or this mission is ate up real bad.”

  His breath came in catching gasps as he pulled for the extended firing positions above his head.

  “Once you reach the balconies, go over the top. Team up and KTF! Objective is the fire command center in the control tower above the batteries. Forget our flanking maneuver. We’ve got to stop those guns now or the assault force is going to get shot up on the LZ.”

  He got affirmatives, and moments later they were going over the concrete lip of the massive batteries.

  Massive shots of displaced energy were hurling themselves away from the quad barrel systems that pumped energy and encased antimatter skyward. Besson could feel the air pressure around his suit contract and expand with each dynamic shot. He had no time to see if any of the shots were finding their range and slamming into the inbound ships; he was already engaging zhee danger close. He wasn’t an officer now. He was just a leej, and he moved quickly, killing more than thinking, like it was something he was born to do.

  ***

  Task Force Whirlwind

  Approaching Landing Zone

  Ankalor

  Aboard the Sirocco, Typhoon, and Hurricane, legionnaires—broken down by battalions, companies, and even platoons and teams—were already in the assault holds that would swing open and forward allowing the first units to hit the ground with enough cover to get clear of the carriers as they sank onto the LZ.

  The assault battalions, three from
each carrier, would have the hardest job. They had to cross open terrain once they crested the berms that surrounded the LZ. Once they traversed a quarter mile of open terrain under fire—covered by SMAFF rounds lobbed from the assault carrier’s top-side artillery batteries while covering fire from the carriers’ forward turrets hopefully kept enemy heads down—they would be the first into the extensive trench network that had to be cleared before the main doors to the facility could be breached.

  No one was under any delicate illusions here. Drone recon estimated the zhee force inside the trenches numbered fifteen to twenty thousand.

  It was going to be a slaughterhouse in there.

  Six companies were assigned to protect the HK-PP walkers that would be dropped as the carriers came in through the atmosphere. Even before the ships touched down, the walkers would be unlocking from their drop configurations and approaching the LZ on massive hydraulic articulating legs. Two stories tall, and armed with heavy forward blaster cannons, they would provide critical fire support on trench bunkers and other fortifications once they made it to the forward lines. They could target fire down into key chokepoints the zhee would no doubt try to defend in there. But they were extremely vulnerable to infantry with anti-armor, hence the added company legionnaire protection.

  Several platoons mounted in fast-attack ATVs called “mules” were gunning their engines and performing last-minute weapons checks. Armed with N-50s, the mules would act as cavalry; they would swarm from the assault hangars down ramps and attempt to destabilize any flanking attacks the zhee tried that didn’t come from the main trenches.

  From the aft flight deck of the hangar, shielded by the massive forward-arrayed interlocking deflector system, SLIC dropships would be ready to pull the wounded out, provide more troops to critical points on the battlefield in order to take advantage of any exploitable developments, and make close-air support runs against well-defended targets as long as the anti-air capacities of the zhee were minimized.

  Task Force Whirlwind was ready for a fight.

  At fifteen hundred feet, all three carriers side by side, six HK-PPs were dropped away. Limited capability repulsor pods fired, cushioning the impact of the landings, as five of the massive walkers touched down on the desert floor. But a round from a nearby air defense tower managed to connect with the sixth falling HK-PP, and the armored walker went up like a sudden fireworks display, raining down equipment and legionnaires across the desert floor in a terrific explosion.

  Another round smashed into deck five of the Sirocco, tearing away a gun turret and an unoccupied barracks passage. The shot narrowly missed the ship’s IDS relay tower, which, had it hit, would have collapsed the powerful defensive system altogether.

  At five hundred feet, the assault doors began to swing out and away from the ships, acting as spoilers to retard the carriers’ massive forward motion. The pilots had set throttles to max approach to give the air defenses as little time as possible to range and target the incoming Legionnaire assault force.

  Within the bellies of the massive ships, legionnaires began to whoop and call out to one another as the doors exposed the bays to the fireworks display of incoming fire.

  At two hundred and fifty feet, all three carriers reversed main engines to full and brought in all available power to the repulsors. Lighting flickered across the interior passages and bays as every spare ounce of power was diverted to arrest the sudden drop of the multi-hundred-ton starships.

  On Hurricane’s bridge, the flight crew stared out the blast-reflective cockpit windows surrounding all three sides of the flight deck. The scene before them was awesome. And utterly frightening.

  Above them loomed the mass of Gibraltaar Rock. The fortress’s artillery batteries were lobbing shots that arced like bright falling angels and smashed into the desert floor, creating geysers of sand and flying dirt. Heavy turret fire was already smashing into the ship’s forward IDS system. And beyond the massive rock, the sun of Ankalor was just beginning to rise above a range of low broken mountains, dark in the distance at dawn.

  Traffic and comm died as the flight captains called out, “Brace for impact!”

  And a moment later all three ships slammed into the barren wastes of Ankalor.

  “Down and clear!” called out the first officer of the Hurricane.

  “Commence the assault,” ordered Commodore Rist as a signal to all three ships.

  General Hannubal was not on the bridge at that moment. He’d gone aft to the hangar deck just as the ships cleared jump. He would direct the battle from an operations-configured SLIC.

  Nine thousand legionnaires hit the sands of Ankalor, running to clear the berm that provided forward cover for at least the lower decks of the assault carriers. The massive IDS system that provided deflector cover for the force stopped twenty feet above the ground beyond the berm. Sergeants screamed at their men to move faster than they were moving. Concussive whumps from the top side carrier’s artillery batteries prefaced the smoke rounds that arced out and upward before landing across the desert floor, exploding into sudden ghosts of swirling blaster-retardant smoke that obscured ECM and IR targeting.

  The Legion companies had just begun to run hard into the smoke when the zhee unexpectedly surged out of the trenches and ran straight for them.

  What would happen next would go down in Legion history as the Battle of the Blind.

  15

  The battle started out as good tactics meeting bad tactics.

  General Hannubal had managed to get his force in as close to the zhee-held fortress as possible while still providing enough cover for disembarkation not under direct fire and establishing a forward operations base around the carrier assault group. Good tactics for what was going to be a straight-up fight anyway.

  The zhee holding the extensive trench works around the base should have—according to all rational tactical decisions made by any sane commander—held position in the trenches and waited for their foe to come in after them. The trenches were arranged in three concentric rings surrounding the fortress, and each ring was a mass of locks, kill zones, and pillboxes overwatched by larger bunkers. A state-of-the-art monitoring system also ran a vast array of automated defensive systems. Inside these bunkers, pillboxes, and protected staging areas, the zhee could have easily waited out the assault and surrendered each line while exacting heavy casualties on the attacking force.

  Which, of course, was the specific purpose for which the base’s trench system, and even the base itself, had been constructed.

  The Legion had known it was just a matter of time before the zhee declared another holy war and sought to take out their grievances on the Republic. Violent uprisings were an essential part of who they were. And Legion War Planning Theory—which was a term the House of Reason points overseeing the projected hated—argued that instead of fighting that inevitable fight on the zhee’s home grounds, in brutal house-to-house combat within the zhee slums, it would be wiser to create a rally point, a target… a military base for the zhee to try and storm.

  A base that was really just one big kill zone.

  And so, if the zhee had understood the grand scheme underlying the technological wonder that was Fortress Gibraltaar, they would have waited for the Legion to attempt to take the trenches.

  But that was not the zhee. It was not their way.

  The Legion had dared array itself before the zhee’s glorious new “Palace of Kibbel Ba-Ram,” as they were now calling Fortress Gibraltaar. And so these outsiders would be met in fierce battle. They would see who the superior fighting force was. They would know the zhee to be the master race destined to enslave the galaxy.

  The galaxy would see the might of the noble zhee tribes.

  It was thus that the zhee, with numerical and tactical superiority, sacrificed half its numbers in the trenches to go out and meet the Legion in a battle without pity or restraint.

  ***

  Charlie Company, First Platoon, “Punishers”

  Private First
Class Lango Huzu ran forward into the electrochemical smoke now drifting across the battlefield. His HUD immediately began to experience distortion and signal drop due to the inherent ECM effects of the refractive “smoke” known as SMAFF. Comm went sideways a moment later, and he looked off to his left and right to check his orientation relative to the rest of the platoon, which had started out in a rough wedge formation on the leftmost flank of the attack.

  “Donks are coming out … st… at us!” someone shouted over comm, their transmission breaking up, the pulse and whine of blaster fire bleeding through. Then a message appeared in Huzu’s HUD. Switch to hand signals.

  He caught sight of his platoon sergeant just ahead, signaling for everyone to continue moving forward. As fast as possible. Double time. Blaster fire came in from overhead, raking the dust and sand about twenty meters ahead of Huzu’s position. The donks up along the face of the rock were firing down into the smoke regardless of their ability to target. The sand all around the running legionnaires exploded, throwing grit in concussive blasts that scraped at their armor.

  Then the first donks came running in through the foggy SMAFF. And even though the platoon was supposed to have switched over to hand signals and local audio comm, leejes were still attempting to call out targets over comm. The broken chatter was a blare of static and unintelligible targeting locations.

  The savage donks came in firing, and before Huzu knew it he had multiple tangos all across his front. He hit the dirt and sent return blaster fire streaking into the smoke all around. Two donks tackled the platoon leader, coming out of the swirling shrouds of smoke all around like nether phantoms from a grave of unquiet rest. PFC Huzu scrambled to his boots and moved in close, taking down both donks with precise fire.

  Then a hundred or more donks came at the platoon from an odd angle that didn’t seem to be where the attack should have been coming from—they came from what Huzu would have sworn was the right flank and the other attacking assault battalions. But in moments the donks were in and among the platoon, hacking and blasting away in a desperate scrum to see who could shoot each other down first.