by Jay Allan
He switched over the display to his own dispositions. He only had 11 cruisers and 12 fast attack ships, plus his hastily-converted makeshift carriers. The rest of his forces were in X3 and X4. “Commander Carp, plot a fleet course toward the X3 warp gate.” His small force didn’t have much of a chance against a large enemy fleet, but he figured they might have to buy time for Compton’s forces to assemble. If that was what they had to do, he thought, then so be it.
“Yes, admiral.” Carp’s voice was tentative. He knew what Jacobs was thinking.
“And prepare all remaining laser buoys for launch.” He turned toward Hooper. “Lieutenant, prepare a maximum efficiency deployment plan to cover the warp gate.” The laser buoys were the one thing Jacobs had that packed a big punch. The bomb-pumped x-ray lasers could damage even heavy First Imperium vessels.
“Yes, sir.”
Jacobs leaned back and looked straight ahead thinking quietly to himself…at least I’m going to prepare a warm welcome for these SOBs.
Terrance Compton read the incoming reports with growing consternation. The enemy force approaching X2 was a full-fledged battle fleet. Mondragon’s people had confirmed its strength at 2 Leviathans and 40 Gargoyles, preceded by a screen of 24 Gremlins. Based on the enemy forces encountered on the campaign so far, Compton had to assume they were all antimatter armed.
That intel hadn’t been cheap. Mondragon’s task force had been unable to change vectors back to the warp gate and escape to X2. The enemy fleet’s velocity was simply too high. Half his ships had apparently been destroyed, and the rest had scattered into the depths of the system.
The enemy was strong, but Compton had a considerable concentration of power himself. There were now 11 battlegroups in X2, each built around one of the newest and most powerful battleships possessed by the Powers. He had another four making their way through the X1 system, with ETAs ranging from 11 hours to 2 ½ days. He’d left his most damaged units in Sigma 4, positioned around the planet to support Cain’s ground forces.
If he’d had no consideration beyond defeating the enemy fleet he would have stayed where he was, close to the X1 warp gate and his approaching reinforcements. But he had to protect the captured enemy ship. Sparks’ people were working around the clock, trying to attach a towing cradle to the mysterious dark matter infused hull, but progress had been slow. It was going to take days, possibly weeks to get that vessel out of the system. And that meant Compton had to fight this enemy fleet…fight it and defeat it.
Compton was usually extremely decisive, but now he sat quietly considering his options, not sure which was best. If he moved deeper into the system and met the enemy near their entry warp gate, he could coordinate with Jacob’s forces and Scouting Fleet’s laser buoys. But that would rush the battle, making the engagement occur sooner. His own approaching units, not to mention Garret and the rest of the fleet, would have that much less time to approach.
On the other hand, if he remained where he was, the captured ship would be in the battle zone, at considerable risk of being destroyed. He’d have to stop Sparks’ work on the vessel until the fighting was over. That was a risk he couldn’t take. The enemy vessel was too important.
Whatever choice he made, with the enemy moving at high velocity, they would pass quickly through his own fleet…and then they would be between him and the captured ship. They could continue through the X1 warp gate all the way to Sigma 4, with Compton chasing behind, trying to catch up. Garret might arrive in time to face them, but Compton had no way of knowing where or when.
He pulled up a map of the system on his display. The warp gate was a white star in one corner, with the string of laser buoys positioned slightly insystem. He touched the display behind the lasers and just insystem from Jacobs’ ships. “Designate intercept zone A, Joker.” He was speaking softly, instructing his AI to mark the display accordingly.
“Done, Admiral Compton.”
A line of orange light appeared where Compton had pointed. He was going to hit them there with Duke’s attack ships and half of Greta’s squadrons. He knew a synchronized attack of bombers and suicide boats would be tough to coordinate, but he had tremendous confidence in his two commanders. He believed they could pull it off.
He drew a second line behind the first. “Designate as fleet deployment area.” That was where his battleline would make its stand.
Another line appeared at the specified location. “Done, admiral.”
He took a breath and looked down at the display. He was going to send orders to the approaching forces in X1 to consolidate and transit into X2 as a cohesive force. With any luck, they’d hit whatever enemy forces were left after the main fleets passed each other…hopefully before the captured ship was exposed to attack.
He sat silently, mentally troubleshooting his plan. There were more holes in it than he cared to consider, but he couldn’t come up with anything he thought was a better option. He turned toward Carp. “Commander, prepare to transmit a fleet battle order.”
Chapter 23
“Dead Man’s Ridge”
12 Kilometers South of Enemy Base
Planet Sigma 4 II
“Where the hell are those Obliterators?” Jake Carlson was talking to himself, his comlink mic switched off. His people had gotten the retreat order twenty minutes before, but by then they were already falling back. The enemy had launched a Reaper attack across the line, throwing their heavy units against the exhausted and depleted Marines and Janissaries. The lines didn’t break – at least not yet – but that was only because they were all veteran units. They did retreat, giving up the ground they had fought so hard to occupy only a few hours before.
Carlson’s carefully reorganized battalion was a shattered mess again, his survivors hopelessly intermixed. They’d lost all unit integrity, and he now commanded a mob fighting in scattered groups and as individuals. He was trying to form at least an ersatz reserve unit, but mostly he was just shouting encouragement, trying to keep his men and women in the line past the point of human endurance.
“Jake, what’s your status?” It was Brown and, from the tone of his voice, things weren’t any better on his end.
“Status? Fucked, that’s my status.” Carlson was a stone cold veteran, but he was near the end of his rope. Two-thirds of his Marines were down. They weren’t all dead, but the wounded had pretty bleak prospects for recovery with his units in headlong retreat. Marines didn’t abandon their wounded, no matter what. He was frantically trying to figure a way to get to his injured people, but he had no idea how he was going to manage it. A few makeshift squads had fought their way back to retrieve wounded comrades, but most of the Marines who were down were trapped behind the sudden enemy advance. He’d been planning to advance and grab the wounded when the Obliterators counterattacked, but the heavy units still hadn’t come. Carlson kept looking back and checking his scanner, but there was still nothing. McDaniel’s people were nowhere to be found.
“You have to hang on, Jake. We all have to.”
Brown sounded better than he had any right to, Carlson thought…I guess this clusterfuck has made him forget his other demons for a while. Was fear easier to handle than guilt? Maybe, he thought. “Where are the Obliterators?” Carlson couldn’t figure what was going on. He knew it would be a tough fight, but he’d never thought Erik Cain would let this happen.
“I don’t know, Jake. I checked with HQ, and all they told me was assistance is on the way.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Carlson was being insubordinate; he knew that. But after being trapped in the shelters on Adelaide with Brown for a couple years, the two had developed a close bond. Besides, Jake didn’t give a shit for military propriety anymore. At least not right now.
“I don’t know, Jake.” Brown’s tone was mildly scolding. He needed Carlson…he couldn’t have the veteran captain losing it on him now. “I guess neither one of us is commanding this army.”
“There isn’t going to be an army in another couple
hours.”
“Jake, just do the best you can.” Brown understood Carlson’s anger, but it wasn’t helping anything. “It’s all any of us can…” Brown paused, then said, “Hold on, Jake.”
He was gone half a minute, maybe 45 seconds. “Jake, hang on, you’ve got support on the way.”
“Finally.” There was a hint of relief in Carlson’s voice. “We need those Obliterators now.”
“You’re not getting McDaniels’ people, Jake. The Obliterators are committed elsewhere.”
“Elsewhere? What the hell is going on?” Carlson was confused, and anger flared again in his voice.
“Colonel Sawyer is bringing up HVM teams. You’re getting a dozen assigned to you. I need you to use them well…because they’re all you’re getting for a while.”
Carlson stood where he was, stunned, silent. Hyper-velocity missiles were effective against Reapers, but a dozen launchers was no substitute for the Obliterators he’d been expecting. He wanted to argue, to complain, but he knew better. It wouldn’t do any good, and he’d been a Marine long enough to understand his duty. No matter how much it sucked.
“Let’s go people…speed is essential here.” McDaniels was moving quickly toward the enemy base, careful to move side to side so she didn’t take a huge leap into the air. She’d been in the rear, organizing the overall operation, but she intended to be in the front lines when they attacked. The entire army was essentially bait, drawing off the enemy Reapers and giving her this opportunity. There was no way to know how many of 1st Army’s combatants were dying because her Obliterators were here attacking the enemy base instead of facing the Reapers assaulting their lines. She couldn’t do anything about that, but she was going to make sure her people made it pay…that those on the battle lines were at least not dying in vain.
The energy readings from the base were off the charts. Cain and Hofstader had no idea what their scanners were detecting but, whatever it was, it was something they’d never seen before. They couldn’t get any real details…the shell of the fort blocked most scanning activity. Maybe it was what they’d come for…some technology they could use to face the enemy on closer to equal terms.
Everything about the enemy base was conjecture, but Cain and Hofstader had chosen this spot, so that was where her people went in. She had 3,000 Obliterators massed on a front barely 3 kilometers wide…her people ripped right through the First Imperium defenders, and now they were almost to the armored bastion itself.
The enemy base was a massive construct, built into the side of a mountainous ridge. Cain had asked Hofstader for his best guess on where to enter, and the German scientist had given it to him. It was wild conjecture, but it was all they had. They had no idea how big the facility was, or how far underground it stretched.
McDaniels’ people had bombarded the area heavily with hyper-velocity missiles and plasma bombardment modules. She’d done everything she could to knock out the weapon emplacements that could fire on her units. Now it was time to storm the wall and plant the heavy charges. If they were lucky, the plasma mines would breach the armor. In case they didn’t, her teams had nuclear charges as well. The atomic weapons would be harder on the inside and pose a greater risk of causing damage Cain wanted to avoid. But they were getting into that base one way or another.
“Assault team A, advance.” She’d barely finished issuing the order when 400 of her most experienced troopers moved forward. They swept toward the wall, gradually fanning out, forming two lines perpendicular to the fort, covering the flanks of the breaching team. The area in front of the fortress walls was a relatively flat plain, though it had been torn up by bombardments during the initial fighting. There was the detritus of battle everywhere, mostly shattered First Imperium bots, but also her own dead, lying in the twisted wreckage of their heavy suits.
There was sporadic fire on each side, a few surviving enemy bots continuing to engage her advancing troopers. Her people returned the fire, hosing down the flanks with heavy autoguns, quickly silencing any pockets of enemy strength as soon as they exposed themselves. A few of her people went down, but they had overwhelming local superiority, at least for the time being. They’d hit the enemy forces hard and fast here, but she knew the gains wouldn’t last. Enemy reinforcements would already be heading toward the area…and those counterattacking forces would probably be Reapers. She had over 2,000 of her people in reserve, ready to march out and block any enemy advance to the area, but she wanted to get Colonel Storm and his team inside the base before she had to worry about fresh enemy attacks. Then it would be Storm’s problem to take the facility…and hers to defend the breach against the enemy’s attempts to seal it off.
“Breaching team forward now!” She shouted into the com, speaking slowly, clearly. Sixty Marines in their hulking Obliterator suits ran forward in small groups. To any but a trained eye they would have looked bizarre, waddling ahead in their massive suits, crouched low. There were six 4-man teams, each carrying a large plasma charge and escorted by another 6 Marines, weapons at the ready.
They closed the distance to the wall in less than two minutes. There was no fire from the fortress itself…the bombardment had taken out the gun emplacements along this sector. A few enemy cluster bombs came in, fired from mobile launchers off to the flank. Most of them went wide, but one spread came down around one of the breaching teams, taking out five Marines and destroying the charge they were carrying.
The rest of McDaniel’s people made it to the wall without further losses. They knew what they were there to do, and they sprang into action immediately, setting the massive plasma charges and priming them for detonation. In a minute, perhaps 90 seconds, everything was ready.
“Charges in place, General McDaniels.” Major Travers was the commander of the breaching group. “We are withdrawing now.”
“Well done, major.” McDaniels was standing upright, watching the action on her monitors. “Now get the hell out of there. I’m blowing these things in one minute.”
“Yes, sir.”
McDaniels watched the group withdraw. She was proud of her people, even more than normally. She had some of the pick of the Corps in her Obliterator brigade, and they had put everything they had into mastering the powerful new suits. Now she watched Traver’s group move back in perfect order, pausing only to pick up their wounded.
She waited, watching the retreating Marines struggling to move quickly while carrying several wounded comrades. The Obliterator suits were massive and enormously heavy. It was extremely difficult to carry one…even for other Obliterators.
She glanced at the chronometer. It had been 55 seconds, but the breaching teams were still too close. She knew she couldn’t wait long…she had to get Colonel Storm’s people inside before enemy reserves arrived. But she stood still and watched the seconds click off. One minute fifteen…one minute thirty. She took a deep breath and pressed the button.
There was a flash of blinding white light along the fortress wall as the charges released their compressed gasses and superheated them into plasmas. No physical substance could withstand the heat of those charges…by every law and theory of human science, when the plasmas cooled, they should leave a massive breach in the wall.
“I’ve got two more teams moving over there to back you up.” Carlson’s voice was ragged, hoarse. Things were hot on the line…very hot. The enemy was pushing hard, and the Reapers were driving through 1st Army’s lines in several places. Carlson’s section of front wasn’t one of those, not yet…but it was damned close. “Still, it’s gonna take at least ten minutes to get them set. Until then, it’s all you guys.”
The HVM teams were the only reason Carlson and his people were still there. The hyper-velocity missiles were really just projectiles that broke into a dozen pieces near the target, each delivering a massive blast of kinetic energy to anything it impacted. An HVM shot could take down a Reaper, but only with a direct hit.
“All units, focus your fire on the standard bots supporting the Reapers
. Let the HVMs handle the bigs.” Carlson was trying to think of orders to give his troopers every couple minutes…just to give him a reason to talk to them. He knew his lines were shaky. They weren’t even lines anymore, just a bunch of shattered remnants clustering together. He doubted he had a squad with even half its strength still in one place.
He zigzagged forward, trying to keep the rising elevation between him and the Reapers he could see moving forward. There were three more HVM teams coming up, and he was going to place them personally. Every shot counted if they were going to stop the Reapers. Every shot.
“Captain!” Carlson’s eyes focused on his visor projection, his AI automatically displaying the name and location of the Marine on the com. Sergeant Packer…up on the extreme left of the forward firing line. “They’re pulling back! They’re breaking off.”
“Get a grip, Packer.” Carlson snapped his response. “Give me a real report. Now!”
“Sorry, sir.” The veteran sergeant sounded exhausted, and distracted. “Sir, the enemy was attacking us aggressively until just a minute ago. They abruptly stopped, and now they are retiring.” There was a short pause. “It’s a miracle, sir. I can’t explain it. They had us. There was no way we were gonna hold out.”
Carlson was just as surprised as Packer. Then the rest of the reports started coming in. All across the line…the enemy was abandoning its attack and pulling back. Pulling back, Carlson thought…what the hell is going on?
He called up Brown on his com. “Colonel, I have to report…”
Brown didn’t let him finish. “You have to report the enemy ceasing its advance and commencing a withdrawal.” There was confusion in Brown’s voice as well. “I can’t explain it, Jake, but it’s happening all across the line.” He took a quick breath. “And not just our front…the same thing’s happening in front of Farooq’s people. Everywhere, from what I’m hearing.”