Steel Storm (Steel Legion Book 2)

by Casey Calouette

  Mick keyed up the main cannon and trained it on the door.

  The men all looked up at Bulldog. A tank has a certain special way of negotiating that's all its own.

  "Y'all can just head back to the stargate. We'll take it from here," Puck said. He waved Waslinski up to grab one of the crates.

  "We have orders here. Colonel Karling said to get here and load this up." The man crossed his arms on his chest.

  Puck stepped closer. He kicked one of the crates. "I've got orders too."

  "Split?" one of the men said.

  Puck turned and looked over at the tank. "Mick?"

  There was a moment of silence. The men around the truck spread out more.

  "Grab two crates and go," Mick said. "Fuck this."

  Gous protested from the back.

  "Shut the fuck up!" Mick said. "We're not getting into a fight over this."

  Puck grinned and scooped up a crate. Waslinski picked up the other. They backed up to Bulldog and didn't turn until they were in cover.

  Only then did they notice the sniper crouched on the third floor of the bank. He gave them a wave and disappeared into the shadows.

  Tomi just stared up into the darkness of that window. Even though he was safe, they'd have lost Puck for sure, probably Waslinski too. Greed. He felt ashamed of himself.

  "Bulldog? The hell are you?" Lieutenant Torori called.

  "Sidetracked helping out some infantry," Mick replied.

  There was nervous laughter from the back.

  "Well, quit fucking off and get back here."

  "On our way," Mick replied. He leaned forward and tapped Tomi on the helmet. "You heard the man."

  Tomi checked his map and let out a deep breath. He steered the tank toward the stargate complex and, he hoped, safety.

  Men and women ran out from the buildings. They were dirty and dust-covered, with hollow eyes. They held up hands, bags of money, children, anything they thought might halt the tank.

  "Sergeant?" Tomi said.

  "Slow up," Mick said. "Look at 'em all."

  The crowd caught up. More and more appeared from buildings. They banged on the rear hatch.

  "Women and children, get on top," Mick called over the external speaker. "We ain't got room inside."

  The giddy laughter in the rear died away.

  Tomi watched as the refugees crawled up onto the tank. He stared at tear-streaked faces and wanted nothing more than to be gone. To see such misery so close, especially after they'd just risked lives to steal some credits...

  "Move out."

  Bulldog drove toward the stargate with a crowd right behind.

  #

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Deep Space

  Bill the Opoolio, starship engineer and the only one who understood all of the ancient starship, stood at the side of a massive console and watched the display scroll past. Above it was a series of lights that flickered from blue to gray.

  "Hello, Bill," Umi said. He crouched down next to the Opoolio and watched with him, though he had absolutely no idea what the alien was watching. It might've been making lunch for all he knew.

  "This," Bill said in a quiet tone, "is the stardrive."

  "Oh?"

  Bill turned and looked at Umi. "Oh. 'Oh,' he says. Oh, like it's a hamburger." He clattered his legs. "I've only ever seen one, and it was in a thousand little pieces. This...this is priceless."

  Umi scratched his chin. The stubble was starting to get itchy. "Whose starship was this?"

  Bill tapped on the side of the stardrive. Little lights danced on the edges of the screen and then disappeared. It glowed blue from side to side.

  Someone tossed a container into the hallway and it landed with a crash. They'd been working on clearing out as much of the rooms as they could. Not that they needed to, but mostly out of boredom. It was slow work simply because one had to study each artifact.

  They didn't know what anything was. Was it critical? Maybe. Was it junk? Possibly. There was a certain fascination that came from peering at items with no basis in Terran technology.

  Finally Bill spoke. "Q'Dok. They were an ally of the Ken-Ashi, if not a puppet state."

  "Oh?"

  "The Ken-Ashi aren't all benevolent," Bill said. "Some of 'em are decent, but a lot are kind of bitter." Bill raised two of his legs, as if shrugging. "Becoming immortal machines must take a toll on you."

  "So how does it work?"

  "No idea," Bill replied.

  "Then how can you fix it?"

  "I can't. Not if it breaks."

  Umi scratched his chin again. "Then what are you looking at?"

  "A damned good design. The Ken-Ashi produced these, but they wanted to keep control. So, as near as we can tell, they made the controls as simple as possible. It's a bare-bones drive; all it does is go from one point to the next. If you try to open it up, the whole thing fries at the quantum level."

  "Clever."

  "Infuriating. Because when the Ken-Ashi toppled with the damnable Emflife, they all forgot how to make more."

  "But they're computers. How'd they forget?"

  "Yah, well, not everyone knew, and the Emflife saw fit that if they couldn't have the secrets, then no one could. It's why they're gluttons for information, to try and recover what they knew."

  Umi remembered the mission to retrieve the data case. They'd fought past biological guardians to retrieve a case. A case that led them to discover invasion plans and eventually save Lishun Delta.

  "The Emflife spent a lot of time hammering our sector. They still have a few starships, and they know how to use them. So we fought them on the ground, in system, with asteroids, however, but the bastards damned near wiped us out. Almost my entire species. Planets at a time, gone." Bill didn't speak for a moment. "You humans came in, and we fought them off together. Humans are good at war; it's your particular gift in this universe."

  Umi stared at the screen. A particular gift. He'd never thought of it like that. The blue flickered, and bits of gray popped up before disappearing. "I need a favor, Bill."

  "Don't get me involved in this," Bill said. His voice sounded tired through the synthesizer. "Rachel isn't happy. I can tell."

  "All I need is a little time in Kalivostok. We have to stop anyway and wait for the other starship."

  "If they make it," Bill said.

  "I'm sure they will, and while we're there, why not help out the people fighting the Emflife?"

  "Don't get me involved. The mission is to bring these back to Sigg space."

  "Where they're not needed! If we pop in to Kalivostok and it's quiet, well, we just keep going. But a few orbital strikes from this ship could change the pace of battle."

  Bill looked away from Umi and back to the screen. His feet clacked on the floor. "We don't know what the Vek were contracted for. It could be nothing."

  "Listen, Bill. I'm Sigg. I know how much we need these ships, but we're abandoning people who are already fighting."

  "We don't even know if the weapons work. I've not looked at any of that. This thing is barely structurally sound. It can't take any heavy loads, fast maneuvers, or combat. Nothing! You don't know how close it is to breaking apart."

  Umi licked his lips. "Bill, you want to see the Emflife burn? Stop 'em where they are?"

  Bill's little legs clacked faster and finally stopped. His voice synthesizer was suddenly very quiet. "What do you need?"

  Umi glanced at the stardrive. "Do you think you can break it? Just for a little while?"

  Bill glanced at the blue screen and down at the floor where all the cabling snaked in. "Well, no. But I might be able to render it inoperable for just a little while."

  Umi wanted to pat Bill on the head, but instead he smiled widely. "That'll do, Bill."

  "I'll check on the weapons systems, but no guarantees. If nothing can fire, we abandon all of this."

  "Deal," Umi said. He scratched the stubble once more and left Bill alone with the stardrive.

  #
<
br />   Chapter Thirty-Three

  Planet Squire, Kalivostok System

  Squire-Kali Defense Facility

  Colonel Clarke was in the stargate command bunker. Half of the command screens were dead and black. The other half showed refugees and troops queued up to leave. The normally bustling hub was quiet. Only a skeleton crew still labored, and even they were packing up.

  Auroch and Cunningham stood guard at the doorway.

  "This is a goddamned mess," Arap said. "We can't hold this place."

  "Gate transit in fifteen minutes, Colonel," a member of the technical staff said.

  Colonel Clarke glanced at his wrist. "We'll get orders then, I'm sure."

  The two men stood in silence. Outside, the artillery rumbled to life once more with the high-pitched crack of the defensive emplacements firing.

  Clarke was satsfied that they'd made it this far. Punching through the Kadan line was tough enough; luckily, Carco's troops were still in the industrial area. Without that gap, they'd have never pushed through.

  Colonel Carco came into the room. One side of his face was bandaged up, and his uniform was scorched. The front of his body armor was pocked with shrapnel scars.

  Clarke held out a hand; Carco shook it after a moment's pause. "We owe you one, Colonel."

  Carco clipped his helmet onto his belt. "Well, shall we begin?"

  "Where's Karling?" Clarke said.

  "He left three days ago."

  "Very well," Clarke said. He wasn't surprised. Maki had already warned him.

  "He left another officer in charge and departed the day after we received the orders."

  Colonel Clarke leaned against a table. "Did you ever receive any of our broadcasts?"

  Carco shook his head. "To be honest, I assumed you were dead."

  "Not yet," Clarke said.

  Arap spat onto the floor. "They got themselves a space catapult thing. An orbital offense platform went up and, we're assuming, some sort of troop transports."

  "Into orbit?" Carco said quickly.

  "I think if it went into orbit, they'd have already hit this structure," Clarke said. "My guess is they're going to hit Kalivostok."

  "Son of a bitch," Carco said. He looked away and shook his head. "Damn near every soldier is defending the Squire stargate."

  "We'll relay what we know when the gate opens. Till then, can your troops continue to hold?" Colonel Clarke needed that infantry. There was no way he could hold the industrial district, let alone the stargate complex.

  "My orders were clear, Colonel. The Sixth is headed back."

  "Damn it, Carco," Clarke said. "The Emflife are going to start orbital bombardment any time. You can't do a goddamn thing on Kalivostok other than die."

  "And what can we do about it here?" Carco snapped back. "You hardly have any armor left, your troops are dead tired, and what will they do? Shoot into space."

  Clarke pulled out his tablet and set it onto the table. He stabbed at the screen and called up a set of videos.

  It was the gun camera on one of the tanks. The gun fired; the tracer raced away and then dipped and rose once it came into the gravity field. A second later, the view pivoted, and the massive connector plate was high above. Rounds slammed into it but didn't seem to have any effect. A voice came on a second later, and then they halted firing.

  "Those plates are the weak point. If we can break that link, then it won't work."

  Carco watched the video again. "You're not even hurting it."

  "We had penetrator rounds loaded, not high explosive. Our Engineers think we can hurt it," Arap said.

  Carco looked skeptical. "Colonel, your orders are to relieve my troops so we can transit back to Kalivostok."

  Colonel Clarke was about to argue when he caught the out. "And if we don't relieve you?"

  "Then I can't abandon my post."

  Arap cracked a crooked smile.

  Carco shifted where he stood. "But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Is your data ready to go through? This is going to be a long transit. They'll have enough time to respond."

  "It's ready."

  The men turned and watched the transit yard. The cameras showed thousands of refugees in a mob. Troops struggled to keep them away from rows of wounded. One of the Vasilov tanks struggled through the crowd; behind it was a flatbed trailer covered in more wounded. A long line of walking wounded followed behind.

  "On your call, sir," the gate technician said.

  Colonel Carco nodded. "Gate engage."

  A second later, alarms rang out. The stargate pulsed and hummed. Steam rolled up and off. The dust burned away and then the gate was open. Almost immediately the crowd surged ahead, only to be beaten back by the soldiers. It was a raw and brutal duty. Men raced through from the Kalivostok side and carried litters of wounded through.

  "Data packet sent and acknowledged," a comms tech said.

  The support staff looked nervous and anxious to leave.

  "Orders?" Carco said.

  "Pending, sir."

  The last of the stretchers disappeared through the stargate. The crowd was wild. They surged as a mass and finally broke through the line of soldiers. The crush of humanity rushed through the gate. Those on the outside were burned by the carbon black, while those in the center were crushed.

  Minutes passed by, and still the crowd struggled through. By now the realization that they really would escape settled in, and the crush seemed less. Finally, soldiers moved through in ordered ranks.

  "Kadan troops pushing in sector four," a captain from the Sixth said.

  "Send up Captain Kolekof," Carco replied.

  Colonel Clarke realized he was sweating. The air wasn't hot, but he was nervous. Once again, he relied upon those inside of a bunker to make the correct call. He looked between the screen and the comms officer. Any second the stargate would close.

  A sunny, yellow light bathed through from Kalivostok.

  "Packet incoming."

  Colonel Clarke stood with his hands locked behind his back and waited.

  The comms officer looked at Colonel Carco. "Eyes only for you, sir."

  Colonel Carco glanced at Clarke and then marched over to the comms station. The officer backed away, and Carco leaned over. He scanned the screen and then stood up sharply.

  Artillery rumbled in the distance like summer thunder.

  "General Makinen has been arrested for treason."

  Colonel Clarke glanced at Arap and then back to Carco. Had the coup failed? A sudden nervousness came over him. He was part of it; he'd agreed to that same coup. Did Maki talk? "What?"

  "Duke Kornilov has assumed command."

  Clarke didn't know what to say. His chain of command was gone. He wasn't part of the Kalivostok planetary militia. The 19th ACR was attached through General Makinen.

  Colonel Carco stepped over to the door. "The orders stand, Colonel. I'm to depart when relieved, or if not relieved, we abandon this complex in twenty-four hours."

  Colonel Clarke looked back just as the stargate winked shut. Twenty-four hours. What could he do in that little time? It would take nearly that long just to drive to the pillars. He had precious few options, and he didn't like any of them.

  "And the orbital platform? What did they say of that?" Arap said.

  Colonel Carco cleared his throat. "Duke Kornilov doesn't believe you."

  "That stupid son of a bitch!" Arap yelled. "I'm sick of these two-bit, provincial dick-suckers. He's a fuckin' idiot."

  Arap continued his rant. “Bunch of blue-blooded, inbred, cross eyed morons!”

  Colonel Clarke walked over to Carco. "I can take down those pillars."

  Colonel Carco looked to the door. "Even if you hit the pillars, they'll repair them again. You'll just waste your troops for nothing."

  Colonel Clarke looked back at the display. How? How could they do it?

  "I have a barony on Kalivostok, Colonel. My family is there, and when the invasion comes, I want to be with them," Colonel Carco said
.

  Colonel Clarke thought. Something was on the edge of his mind. Doctor Sokoloff said something. He looked at Arap. "The pillars, what did she call them?"

  "Who?" Arap said.

  "Garilov! That physicist."

  Colonel Clarke ran back to the table and called up the aerial view. "Spokes of a wheel! A gravity conduit. What happens if one spoke suddenly takes all the weight?"

  "The wheel collapses."

  Colonel Carco walked over. "What are you talking about?"

  "If we can't use conventional explosives to blow up the pillars, we'll use the pillars themselves."

  "How?" Carco said.

  "Garilov said if we can shear those cables when the capsules rise, it'll throw off the balance. Catch it at the right moment, and gravity itself will tear them down."

  "Will it work?" Arap said.

  "You have a better idea? Otherwise they'll be able to pour troops down onto Kalivostok, and there's not a damned thing we can do about it."

  Colonel Carco stared hard at Colonel Clarke. "I'll hold it for forty-eight hours, Colonel."

  Colonel Clarke nodded and stuck out his hand. "If we need more time than that, we're all dead."

  Colonel Carco shook his hand in a single crisp snap. "Good luck, Colonel. Give them hell."

  "I intend to."

  #

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Planet Squire, Kalivostok System

  Industrial Transit Zone

  Tomi sipped water and brooded on the sniper he'd seen earlier. The theft sat heavy with him. As a young man, he'd grown up knowing it was wrong; his parents had taught him right from wrong. Now he was steered as part of the group. It didn't feel right.

  Gous was just behind him with one of the credit sticks. He worked with one hand and kept plugging in and unplugging the stick. His face went between rigid concentration and a frown. "Fucker."

  Vinovy wiggled the change jar. The plastic credit coins inside rattled.

  Gous ignored him.

  Bulldog sat on the edge of the industrial zone. Shortly after meeting with Captain Torori, the captain directed them to a prepared fighting position. Now they held nearly the same ground as they had when they first arrived on planet. Far off to one side, artillery rained down. Flashes of orange blossomed in the air; the explosions themselves were obscured by the dust.