They Shall Not Pass (The Empire's Corps Book 12)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Let her go,” she ordered. If there were any crew left on the destroyer, they’d be trying to evacuate, not continue the fight. Admiral Singh wouldn't blame them for being so badly outmatched, would she? “Raise the node. Inform them that they have five minutes to board the lifeboat and evacuate.”

  “Aye, Captain,” the communications officer said.

  Mandy settled back in her chair, keeping a wary eye on the display. A holographic sphere was already expanding out at the speed of light, showing just how far any emergency message from the enemy ships had reached. It wouldn’t be long before Admiral Singh knew the node had come under attack and dispatched reinforcements, although Mandy was sure she would have completed her grisly task and vanished back into cloak before more enemy ships arrived. But it was quite possible that enemy reinforcements were closer than she expected.

  And if they do show up ahead of time, she thought, I will have to blow the node and retreat at once, even if it means slaughtering the workers.

  She gritted her teeth at the thought. The RockRats who ran the node had refused to evacuate, when the warning had been issued, but that didn't mean they should be sentenced to death. She’d trained with RockRats, worked with them ... there should have been no real danger, not when their technology was so primitive. And yet, Admiral Singh had found a way to put it to use. The more she thought about it, the more it worried her. What else had been overlooked?

  “They’re launching the lifeboat now, Captain,” the tactical officer said. He sounded amused. “It’s a primitive piece of crap.”

  Mandy shrugged. “At least they can repair it easily,” she said. She understood their logic, but it made no sense in a war zone. “A reaction drive is very simple compared to anything we have.”

  She smiled at the thought. RockRats and planet-bound agrarian settlers had quite a lot in common, although both sides would have loudly objected to the comparison. They never used anything more complex than strictly necessary. The lifeboat slowly making its way out of the asteroid belonged to an era before drive fields and phase drives, before hullmetal and force shields. A laser beam could slide through her hull as easily as a hot knife through butter.

  “They’d better hope Admiral Singh is in a forgiving mood, Captain,” the XO said. “That ship isn’t going to get very far before enemy ships arrive.”

  “No, it isn't,” Mandy agreed. “Communications, offer to take them onboard.”

  “Aye, Captain,” the communications officer said.

  Mandy nodded, slowly. The RockRats might just abandon their principles long enough to board Defiant, if they realised the alternative. Or Admiral Singh’s minders - she assumed they were on the lifeboat too - would force the issue. They might have very good reason to want to go into a brig, rather than be picked up by enemy ships. Someone would have to take the blame for the whole affair.

  And if Admiral Singh starts blaming her crews for something well beyond their control, she thought, it will make them discontented and fearful. And that might just lead to a mutiny.

  Shaking her head, she waited to see what would happen.

  ***

  It was bad news, of course.

  Rani had known it from the moment the young ensign had passed through her bodyguards and entered her office on Orion. The young man - he looked too young to shave, too young to be doing anything more serious than playing games and flirting with girls - had been nervous, so nervous he’d almost forgotten to salute. Rani had been amused, although she’d hidden it well. She didn't have a habit of shooting the messenger.

  She took the datapad and read the report quickly, cursing under her breath. The report lacked detail - she made a mental note to have a few words with the writer - but the gist of it was clear. There would be no more dumpsters for her forces. It wasn't a major headache - she’d produced enough in the last week to get the remainder of her army down to the surface - yet it was a hassle. She’d need to revert back to shuttles to get the next wave of troops down.

  Unless we produce more dumpsters and have them shipped to Corinthian, she thought. But that would be another problem. Dumpsters weren't designed to be dismantled and put back together, not once they’d been forged. Weakening the layers of hullmetal that allowed them to pass through the atmosphere without harm risked disaster. We’ll need a colony support vessel to make the landing.

  It was a bitter thought. She hadn’t secured one - as far as she knew, there were none within Wolfbane’s territory - and constructing such a ship would take years. The Empire had used them to settle entire worlds, transporting everything the colonists might need for the first five years in one massive vessel. Paired with a colonist-carrier, it could found a new colony in a single voyage. If there were any left along the Rim, there was a good chance that the Commonwealth had already secured them.

  She mulled it over for a long moment, using the issue to distract herself from her other problems. Perhaps the huge vessels the Empire had used could be slimmed down. Or phase drives could be attached to the dumpsters themselves, then removed before the dumpsters began the final part of their journey. She wrote a handful of queries for her designers, cursing their corporate masters under her breath. In theory, it should take less than six months to produce something as simple as a freighter, but in practice the corporations spun it out to nearly two years. No wonder there was such a shortage of shipping when it took so long to replenish the merchant marine!

  They’ll give me a shot at their necks sooner or later, she told herself, firmly. Or I can relax the anti-competition rules and see what happens.

  She shook her head curtly, then returned her attention to the real problem. Her forces were brushing against the force shield, making their way towards the capital city. She was damned if she was going to call it Freedom City. And yet, matters were proceeding far slower than she would have liked. What was so bloody difficult about crossing eighty kilometres? It wasn't as though she was asking her officers to sail around the world or travel from one star system to another! The longer the fleet remained tied down at Corinthian, the greater the chance of the enemy inflicting some major damage elsewhere.

  The display in front of her made it clear that her forces were practically inching forward, even though the resistance was very limited. A handful of missile attacks, a couple of destroyed bridges ... it was hardly enough to slow an entire army! And half the region had been evacuated ahead of time. She didn't give a damn about civilian casualties, at least outside the city itself, but there was hardly any real resistance. The remaining civilians could stay in POW camps until the war was over.

  She glanced back at the report. No more dumpsters. No more shortcuts to getting forces down to the surface. She’d sent messages back to Thule and Wolfbane, ordering the immediate dispatch of additional ground forces - and supplies that could not easily be replenished - but it would be at least six weeks before anything arrived. And withdrawing more heavy equipment from Thule would weaken her grip on that world ...

  Impatiently, she keyed her console. “Get me a direct link to General Haverford.”

  “Yes, Admiral,” the communications officer said. She sounded scared, much to Rani’s irritation. Communications officers knew what was going on ahead of everyone else, even if it was meant to be classified. She wasn't about to shoot people for bringing her bad news ... or for merely being there when she was in a vile mood. “I’ll raise him now.”

  It was nearly ten minutes before Haverford’s face popped up in front of her, by which time Rani’s temper had risen to boiling point. He looked tired - it was midnight on the planet below, she recalled with a flicker of guilt - but it wasn't as if he was on the front lines. No, he was in the FOB, safe and secure in the rear. The enemy hadn't even been able to fire a mortar round or two into the FOB, let alone hit it with something lethal.

  “General,” she said, curtly. “The industrial node is gone.”

  Haverford winced. “They took it out?”

  “Correct,” Rani said. The wretc
hed report might not have given many details, but she could guess. A single nuclear warhead would be more than enough to blow the asteroid into dust or melt the equipment to slag. No one had any inhibitions about using nukes in space too, unlike planetary surfaces. “There will be no more dumpsters for at least two months - and that’s assuming we can find a way to get them here.”

  “Understood,” Haverford said. “We may be able to put together smaller dumpsters in the MEUs.”

  “It’s a possibility,” Rani said. “But they also need to keep pace with your demands for ammunition.”

  She eyed him for a long moment. “Are you sure you’re not overstating your requirements?”

  Haverford looked back at her evenly. “I would far sooner have too much ammunition than too little,” he said. “Many of our early battles on Thule made it clear that pre-war estimates of just how much ammunition we would use were hopelessly inaccurate. If we hadn't been able to call down KEW strikes at will, Admiral, we would have lost hundreds of outposts when the ammunition ran out.”

  He paused. “And we’re not talking about an ongoing insurgency here,” he added, after a moment. “We’re talking about a thrust directly into a line of defences, without KEWs.”

  Rani nodded in irritation. That damned shield! If it didn't exist, the battle would have been over within an hour. But it did exist, constantly reminding her that the Commonwealth was far more innovative than Wolfbane. It was just another reason to get on with the war before it was too late, before they were too far behind to catch up. Who knew what else might be being invented in the other successor states?

  “Then you are to take the offensive as soon as possible,” she ordered, flatly. “No more delays, General. I want that city taken!”

  “We can try,” Haverford said. “But Admiral, no one has done anything on this scale for hundreds of years.”

  “Then it’s high time we remembered how to do it,” Rani snapped. “You have your orders, General.”

  She tapped a switch, closing the channel before he could raise any more pettifogging objections. The city would be taken - and, if they were lucky, the shield generator would be taken intact. And then the battle would be over ...

  “And then I can strike at Avalon itself,” she muttered. “And put an end to this whole damned war.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The officers, in fact, were often worse than the men. Having acquired their positions through birth, rather than merit, they were a mixed bag. Some were good officers, by their standards; others were cowardly autocrats who believed their birth made them superior to their soldiers.

  - Professor Leo Caesius. The Role of Randomness In War.

  General Mark Haverford prided himself on being a calm and composed man, under all circumstances. But he found it hard to resist the temptation to swear loudly as Admiral Singh’s face vanished from the display. Didn't she realise just how hard it was advancing forward, now his forces were under the shield? Of course she didn't! She only cared about capturing the city and to hell with however many good men died in the fighting.

  He glared at the display, then turned his attention to the map. The advance had slowed, at least in part, because the locals were constantly setting traps and sniping at his forces, as well as destroying bridges or rigging them to collapse when his men tried to cross them. It wasn't costing him much, in material terms, but it was costing him time. Merely pausing long enough to sweep the countryside or put a new bridge together delayed the advance, giving the enemy time to emplace the next set of traps. His men were holding together better than he’d expected, given the constant threat and frustration, but there had already been a handful of nasty incidents. There were just too many men used to having their way cleared by orbital strikes in his force,

  And she wants us to move faster, he thought. I don’t know how!

  He ground his teeth in frustration. The outer edge of the defence line was growing closer, a point where he would have to commit himself to a major thrust right into the teeth of enemy fire. Training and doctrine called for the defences to be outflanked, but there was no way to outflank them. The damned city was surrounded by heavy defences. He’d looked at ways to try to get a force up the river, yet every last scenario he ran past the planning staff ended in disaster. There was just no shortcut to victory, no way to drop commandos into the enemy base or break their morale in a single blow. It was going to be a long hard slog through the network of bunkers and fortifications, a slog that would be immensely costly. He shuddered to think of just how many men would be killed or wounded in the coming battle.

  But he had his orders. There was very little wriggle room.

  He tapped his console, summoning Colonel Ferguson. If he’d been woken at midnight - clearly, the Admiral hadn't bothered to check a chronometer before placing the call - it was time to spread the misery. He pasted a calm expression on his face as the younger man entered the compartment, reminding himself sternly that he couldn't trust anyone completely, not when Governor Brown had seeded commissioners and spies throughout the military. It said something about the bastards, he felt, that most of them had promptly switched their allegiance to Admiral Singh when she’d taken control.

  “General,” Ferguson said. He managed to look dapper, despite having only a couple of hours sleep since his return from the front. “You called for me?”

  “We are to thrust the offensive forward as fast as possible,” Mark said. He knew Ferguson would see the problems, but they didn't dare discuss the matter openly. Who knew who might be listening? “Start putting Plan Beta into operation, Colonel. I want advance units ready to make the thrust within two days.”

  Ferguson frowned. “Plan Beta?”

  “We don’t have the forces in place to launch Plan Alpha,” Mark said, curtly. Ferguson was just covering his ass, he was sure. “Besides, Beta also gives us a much better option for cutting our losses and falling back, if the first stages fail.”

  He scowled as he turned back to the console. Losing the dumpsters would hurt in the long run, although his logistics officers were working hard to sort out the colossal pile of supplies that had been dropped near the FOB. Plan Alpha was pretty much ideal - insofar as anything was ideal, given the limited room for manoeuvre - but it would take at least another two weeks to get everything in place for a broad offensive. They’d have to gamble on breaking through at the point of contact, then clearing the enemy defences before thrusting forward into the city.

  “I believe that a number of regiments have been recalled for Intercourse and Intoxication,” Ferguson said. “They’ll have to be rushed back to the front.”

  Mark nodded without taking his eyes off the display. Men weren't machines, he knew from bitter experience; hell, even machines needed constant maintenance and replenishment to keep them going. He’d allowed five regiments who’d distinguished themselves in battle to fall back long enough to visit the FOB’s new facilities, after squashing complaints from a whole number of REMFs who hated the thought of seeing muddy soldiers in muddy combat uniforms waiting in line outside the brothels. Sending a handful of the loudest whiners to the front had done wonders for his morale, even if it hadn't done anything for theirs.

  “Move them back,” he ordered, quietly. He turned his head to look at the younger man, meeting his eyes. “I want the offensive to kick off in two days from now.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ferguson said.

  He saluted, then left the compartment. Mark scowled at his retreating back before turning his attention back to the display. A handful of raids - and a pair of drones, before they were shot down - had told him things he didn't want to know about the enemy defences. They were robust, erected by experts who knew precisely how best to fuck up a major armoured and infantry assault. Landsharks were the most powerful tanks in human history, as far as he knew, and yet even they would bog down in the defence lines. Clearing the way into the city would require a full-scale assault, which would be immensely costly ...

  And if
we don’t take the city, he thought numbly, I don’t know what the Admiral will do.

  ***

  “They’re picking up the pace,” Jasmine noted. Stewart, Buckley and herself hid under camouflage netting, watching as an enemy convoy made its way down towards the front lines. The remainder of the platoon lurked nearby, awaiting their cue. “That’s nineteen lorries and a quartet of escorts.”

  “Got it on tape,” Buckley said. He returned the portable sensor to his belt and reached for his rifle. “I’m sure the Colonel will be glad to see it.”

  “I’m not,” Stewart said. “How many men can you shove into a truck like that?”

  “Thirty, if you cram them in really tight,” Jasmine said. The enemy convoy slowly faded into the distance, a pair of helicopters flying overhead as they headed north, back towards the nearest enemy airbase. “Maybe more, if you forced them to lie down.”

  “Blake was always talking about the day he managed to cram ten marines into a shuttle,” Buckley said, softly. “He said the answer was ten.”