by Jay Allan
It was one shot at first. No one seemed to know if it was a soldier or a civilian trying to get a gun away, but the trooper felt back, his chest a widening circle of red. By all accounts the lieutenant on the scene tried to stop the soldiers, but it was futile. The squad began firing into the crowd, half of them on full auto. It was only a few seconds before the officer regained control, but that was enough. Two dozen civilians were down, and the rest were stampeding wildly, climbing over each other to flee. Dozens more were killed, trampled to death by their terrified neighbors. The toll was 53 and rising, and it was hours before order was restored, before help got through to the wounded.
Brown was furious when he heard, but anger quickly gave way to sorrow. To guilt. He knew there would be more trouble, that the hatred of the people would flare hot now. But he didn’t care about that anymore. All he could think about was the horror of an Alliance militia gunning down civilian colonists. He issued the orders he had to, the ones that couldn’t wait. Then he walked out of the command post and up to the surface. He needed to be alone.
He spat the last bits of vomit from his mouth and straightened up slowly, wiping his hands on the sides of his pants, trying to get the mud off. Or was it blood he was trying to scrape away? His head arced upwards, staring into the sky. It had been close to a year since Hornet had blasted off on its crazy mission. Brown wondered what fate had befallen the brave little ship. How, he wondered sadly, did Jacobs die? He couldn’t imagine his friend was still alive. Enemy ships had been pouring through the system. One of those task forces must have found Hornet…if the ship hadn’t already succumbed to some random failure or accident.
“Well, my friend, I hope you died well, a death with some honor and purpose. There is none of that here, only misery and despair. My death will be meaningless, shrouded in shame. And it will be a relief.”
“Crash start reactor now!” Jacobs gave the order and sat quietly. He’d have power in 30 seconds…or Hornet would be a rapidly-expanding plasma. He was counting down to himself, imagining that coin spinning in the air, waiting to see if he could pull heads again.
“Reactor at 100%, sir. Engineering reports ready to execute burn on your command.” Mink’s voice was a little shrill. She was a veteran, but they were all worn down, and the stress was hanging heavy on the bridge.
“Execute burn.” That couldn’t have been twenty seconds, he thought. They did a great job down there. Why, he wondered, couldn’t they just do it in the first place instead of always angling for more time?
He gripped the handrests on his chair, an unnecessary effort at 3g, especially since everyone was strapped in. He could feel the pressure almost immediately. Three gees wasn’t fun, but a short burn wasn’t going to be too hard on anyone.
“Plasma torpedoes armed and in the tubes, captain.” Mink’s voice was lower, steadier. She was getting into her battle persona, and her hunter’s instincts were taking over. She wanted to nail that ship, possibly even more than Jacobs did.
“Ensign Carp, transfer optimum firing point data to Lieutenant Mink’s station.” Jacobs knew the rest of this was out of his hands. But he trusted his crew. They’d already been to hell and back, and he believed – truly believed – they’d get through this too.
“Transferred, sir.” Carp turned to face Mink’s station.
“Receipt confirmed.” Mink’s tone was distracted now. She was prepping he shot, and all her concentration was focused. “Torpedo launch in 30 seconds.”
Jacobs had been in combat many times, but he still got the cold feeling in his stomach. Anticipation, uncertainty, fear.
“Twenty seconds to launch.”
Jacobs watched Mink with admiration. Sometimes he forgot just how good she was. He was counting down himself. He was trying to keep it in his head, but his lips were moving silently.
“Ten seconds to…”
“Energy spike in enemy vessel.” That was Carp, his voice urgent, but controlled as always.
Jacobs knew immediately. “Fuck,” he muttered under his breath. His hands clenched tightly, gripping the handrests, his fingers white. This enemy ship had active weapons.
Carp’s faced was buried in his display. “I think it’s…”
Hornet shook violently. The bridge wasn’t hit, but there were sounds of explosions aft. The ship started to roll, pitching end over end…probably a hull breach spewing atmosphere into space. The damage control system would seal off the compromised section. But Mink’s shot! The ship was totally out of the plotted firing window, spinning wildly.
“Ensign Carp, stabilize the ship.” Jacobs snapped the order crisply.
“Yes, sir.” Carps hands were already dancing across his work station. He was firing the positioning jets, calculating most of it on the fly. The rolling slowed gradually. The ship wasn’t exactly stabilized, not yet. But the violent pitching had stopped.
“Lieutenant Mink…”
“On it, captain.” He face was buried in the targeting scope.
My God, Jacobs thought, stunned…she’s going to eyeball it. Everything depended on this shot. If the enemy got off another blast of its particle accelerator the fight was as good as over. Mink had been technically insubordinate interrupting the captain, but there was a place for everything…and this wasn’t the time for formality on the bridge. Jacobs had to trust her…and, to his surprise, he found he did. Everything was against her, but Hornet’s captain had complete faith in his tactical officer. He sat quietly in his chair, and a fleeting smile even crossed his lips. He imagined throwing her the coin. It was her toss now.
Hornet bucked twice in rapid succession. “Two torpedoes away.” Mink’s voice was soft, distant. Every bit of her focus was on the targeting scope. It would take the torpedoes about twenty seconds to reach the target. In half a minute they’d know.
Time seemed to stop on Hornet’s bridge. Carp was monitoring the scanners, looking for the energy spike they all knew was coming. They knew the enemy weapons needed to recharge between shots, but they had no hard data on how long. And if that particle accelerator fired again, Hornet would die.
“Torpedo impact in five seconds…four…three…”
Jacobs wiped the sweat from his forehead and took a deep breath.
“Two…one….”
There was a pause after one…an instant that hung frozen in the air, testing the mettle of Hornet’s crew.
“Two direct hits, sir!” Mink spun around to face the captain. She tried to jump out of her chair, but the straps held her in place.
“Enemy vessel is rolling captain.” Carp now, his face glued to the scanners. “Secondary explosions.” A pause…ten seconds, maybe twenty. “Sir, I am not reading any internal energy generation.” His voice was becoming more excited. He looked up and turned to face Mink, then the captain. “I think it’s dead, sir. I think we did it!”
“Well done, Lieutenant Mink.” Jacobs smiled broadly as he looked over at his gleeful officer. “Well done.”
Jacobs leaned back again and sighed loudly. Heads again.
Chapter 20
South of the Great Sea
Planet Samvar
Theta 7 System
“The Line”
“Attack!” Force Commander Rafiq Zafar shouted the command into his comlink. His Blue Force was the senior unit in the Janissary corps, the cream of the Caliphate’s elite troops. Admission into the Blues required a minimum of ten years’ combat service, though many of his troops had twice that. Now they were going to show the First Imperium what the Janissaries could do.
Samvar’s system was the third segment of the Line. Sandoval has been hit early and, by all accounts, its defenders faced the largest enemy invasion force. But the First Imperium hit Garrison as well, and finally Samvar. A minor sector capital, Samvar had been heavily fortified and reinforced since the Grand Pact came into being. The Caliphate’s CAC allies sent a strong corps to back up the Janissary regiments, and Europa Federalis dispatched two heavy infantry divisions. These regul
ar forces were reinforced by colonial levies, called in from every Caliphate world within five transits.
The fleet had put up a fight, and for a time it looked as though they might hold the system. But the enemy brought up its Leviathans, and the massive dreadnoughts were more than the Pact fleet could handle. The Caliphate battleship Tamerlane was destroyed, along with the CAC’s Shanghai. The Europan contingent’s Austerlitz and Marshal Lannes were gutted by antimatter explosions and had to be abandoned as the shattered fleet fell back and fled the system.
Having secured the space around the planet, the First Imperium fleet bombarded the surface from space, laying waste to all the populated areas, as they had on the other worlds of the Line. Unlike Garrison and Sandoval, however, Samvar had not been evacuated. Despite Admiral Garret’s entreaties, the Caliph would not relent from his decree that the planet’s occupants would remain, that they would join the fight to save their world. The nuclear bombardment became a humanitarian catastrophe, with over a million dead in less than two hours. The cities and towns built painstakingly over 80 years of human occupation were consumed by the nuclear fire, the terrified civilians trying, hopelessly, to flee the winged death swooping down on them.
Pasha Murad held the top command on Samvar. A cousin of the Caliph, Murad had long been a senior military officer, but he had spent those years at a desk, not in the field. Garret had originally assigned a senior Janissary officer to the overall command, but the Caliph overruled him and sent Murad instead. Garret was troubled by the choice, but there was little he could do. Samvar was a Caliphate world and, trying desperately to hold the embryonic Pact together, Garret didn’t push the issue. There was no delicate way for the Alliance’s top military commander to make demands on the absolute monarch of the Caliphate, even if he had been named supreme military commander of the Pact.
Murad had not put significant resources into digging the types of extensive subterranean fortifications Cain and Gilson had. The enemy hadn’t used nuclear weapons in any ground engagements to that point, and he decided it was a waste of time to prepare for an attack that was unlikely to occur. Murad was accustomed to a life of extreme decadence, and he was unsuited to the rigors of aggressive field command. While Cain was driving his engineers nearly to the point of madness, Murad was expanding his underground headquarters, outfitting it with priceless furnishings and luxuries imported from his palace on Earth.
Most of his troops were sheltered in shallow trenches when the nuclear attack came. Thousands of soldiers died in those first hours, detected from space and obliterated by targeted bombardments. Soldiers in powered armor were well-equipped to survive on the nuclear battlefield, but no combat suit ever made could save those caught too close to the primary blast zones.
Murad’s electronic systems were inadequately shielded as well, and the EMP from the nuclear airbursts wreaked havoc on the targeting systems for the planetary point defense. The First Imperium landing craft came down virtually without loss, and Murad’s scattered and shell-shocked defenders were in no condition to interfere.
The surface of Samvar was mostly covered with a giant ocean, a hundred kilometers deep. It was dotted with large islands, jutting plateaus sitting just above shallow veins of volcanic activity. These hot, sulfuric land masses were virtually uninhabitable, and the entire population was located on a single small continent in the southern polar region. Once a warm but pleasant savanna dotted with settlements, it was now a blasted hell, strewn with the melted remains of manmade structures and swept by fallout-laden winds.
The First Imperium army assembled in a single landing zone along the northern coast and formed up to march south, sweeping up the remaining defenders as they did. It was less than 200 kilometers to the opposite coast. The battle for Samvar would be short and sharp.
The surviving defenders clung grimly to their inadequate fortifications, awaiting the onslaught. The front line units had suffered casualties of 5-20% from the bombardments, and they were too disordered to seize the initiative. Many of their supply depots had been above ground, inadequately protected, and their logistics were disrupted. Morale was faltering, even before the enemy forces began their advance. The troops were already shaken, and their lines were fragile, tenuous.
Except for the Janissaries. The Caliphate’s elite corps had as much pride as the Alliance Marines, and they were determined to hold at all costs. They’d been badly beaten in the Third Frontier War a decade earlier, largely because their leaders couldn’t match Elias Holm and Erik Cain and the rest of the Alliance’s high command. They were anxious to show what they could do, to regain the honor and prestige of their regiments.
“High Commander, my forces are advancing as ordered.” Zafar’s troops were moving against the enemy flank, trying to take the pressure off the colonial levies holding the trenches in the center.
“Very well, commander.” Ali Khaled’s voice was deep, commanding. He sounded like a man born to power, though he had not been. Khaled had been conscripted into the Janissary Corps at age 6, the same as Zafar. In a highly stratified and rigidly hereditary society, the Janissaries themselves were, like the Marines, almost entirely egalitarian. A peasant boy from the slums of New Cairo could rise to the highest levels of command, as Ali Khaled had done. That power and prestige did not extend beyond the military, however. Service as a Janissary was for life. There was no retirement, no return to Earth to enjoy the rewards of a lifetime of war. Older and infirm Janissaries were moved to training positions or reserve formations, but only with death did they finally leave the corps.
There was no family for the Caliph’s elite troops, no home other than the regimental depot. Officers were allowed permanent concubines, but the closest the rank and file came to ongoing relationships were favorites in the regimental brothels. The Marines fought for a future, for colonies they would call home when they mustered out…but the Janissaries existed only to fight. War was their purpose, their reason for being. For them there was nothing else. Now, the First Imperium would feel their sting.
“Your forces are performing well, commander.” Zafar’s troops were advancing smartly and in good order, and Khaled knew the commander would benefit from his praise. Ali Khaled knew how to encourage his men.
“Thank you, commander.” Zafar could hear the sincerity in Khaled’s voice, and he waxed with pride. “We should be engaged in less than two minutes.”
“Good luck, commander. And keep me well informed.” Khaled had other fronts to worry about too. Pasha Murad had panicked, and he had placed the Janissary High Commander in charge of the overall battle. He’s terrified the Caliph will have his head, Khaled thought…if the First Imperium doesn’t take it first. But Khaled’s concern was for the troops, and he would do his best, not to save Murad’s stinking carcass nor for the rewards that would accompany victory. He would give his all for his men, and he knew in defeat they would all die.
The cowardly and bloated Murad would take most of the credit if he was successful, Khaled knew that, and his didn’t care. Not really. There was a time he might have, but he’d become resigned to the way of things. He thought momentarily of the Marines, the enemy he had fought all his life. They were unappreciated and mistreated by their government too, though not as badly as the Janissaries. He wondered, only for a fleeting moment, if they both hadn’t both been fighting the wrong enemies all these years. It was a compelling contemplation, but not one he could address now. He had work to do. Perhaps later there would be time to revisit the idea.
Kemal Raschid popped his armor and pried himself out in a far less dignified manner than he typically carried himself. Raschid was an emir, the ruler of three worlds and, in most situations, answerable only to the Caliph. While his position and rank carried with it the military command of his levies, he was not a soldier by trade. He found the armor difficult to use, even with the built-in AI doing most of the work. And getting out was particularly humiliating for a man who prided himself on his dignity and nobility.
; Raschid’s worlds had been the first in the Caliphate to endure the attack of the First Imperium. The invaders annihilated his tiny spacefleet and occupied his capital of Bokhara, exterminating the population in the process. He escaped, along with 500 of his Spahi petty nobles. The Spahi levies were an anachronism in the ranks of the Caliph’s forces. Nobles, albeit lowly ones, they were the social betters of the Janissaries. But in the field, the regulars were vastly superior, and the levied nobles served a supporting role in battle.
The Caliphate drafted peasants too but, unarmored and without significant training, these militias were of limited value, rarely worth transporting from their native worlds to fight elsewhere. The Spahis were wealthy enough to purchase fighting suits, at least basic ones, and they had the time and resources to obtain at least rudimentary training. They occupied a difficult place in the hierarchy – they had wartime obligations as part of their social pact, but they had enough influence and standing to avoid most of the rigors of military life between combats. Against other second line troops they could sometimes acquit themselves well, but they were typically crushed when facing a first tier opponent like the Alliance Marines. Raschid didn’t have much hope for his forces in a battle with the First Imperium, but desperation could be its own source of strength. Perhaps the levies will understand what is at stake…that they fight now for their own worlds and families against an enemy that would exterminate all mankind.
Raschid was the highest ranked colonial noble present, and he commanded not only his own Spahis, but all the noble levies in the army, over 10,000. They’d been deployed to the center, not because of their ability to hold, but because sitting in a trench was about all Ali Khaled trusted them to do.