by Rick Partlow
She stood in the open upper hatch of the command vehicle and watched a Marine armored vehicle explode. It was nearly five hundred meters away, yet every detail seemed to jump out at her, every shade of red and yellow and white in the fireball, every single fragment of debris rocketing away from the vehicle, the impossible trajectory of the twelve-ton vehicle as it spun backwards in the air and crashed onto its roof. The concussion wave washed over them, shaking the frame of their command car, and the sound punched into her chest a moment later, battering her ears even through the light helmet she wore.
When the car braked to a sudden halt, she came up against the front of the open roof hatch, grunting as the rim dug into the pit of her stomach.
“All columns reverse!” Hoenig snapped into the microphone of his own half-helmet. “Back off fifty meters now!”
Engines revved and their own vehicle began backing up with a scrabble of treads on gravel, back out towards the path to the landing zone, out of the edge of the city. The fifteen armored cars ahead of them spread out of their column and back into a double wedge, facing into the back streets, into temples and churches and housing. And a hundred potential hiding places for mines and IEDs.
“Send a scout around the west side,” Hoenig ordered. “Find us a clear route!”
“It’s a waste of time.” The general glanced at her sharply, but she didn’t flinch away. He was nothing compared to Grieg. “The Rangers do not do things by half-measures,” she assured him. “They’ll have every avenue of approach mined.”
“Perhaps,” he admitted. “But we must try anyway.” He shrugged. “And a scout vehicle only carries three Marines.”
She pointedly didn’t sneer at him, as much as she wanted to.
“We should dismount,” she advised. “It will be slower, but we have time and they don’t.”
“Well, we’ll find out in…”
Another blast cut off his words as what she assumed was their scout vehicle ripped apart in a gush of flames almost a kilometer away, a mushroom cloud of black smoke rising into the air, a tombstone for three Marines.
“Well, damn.” Hoenig sighed in resignation. “All Marines, park vehicles in a lager formation, guns out, and advance into the city on foot.”
The armored vehicles dug up half-meter deep ruts in the half-paved gravel road as they circled into a defensive formation, their ramps lowering like opening maws. Marines stomped out, heavy-footed trots turning into jogs as they formed into double-wedge formations, two light companies, one on each side of the street.
“Captain Vincent, take Bravo company straight south. Captain Skrein, Delta will head west and circle in from the cross streets. Find me the enemy forces and pin them down. Captain Mace, bring your sappers up from the rear and clear a route for our vehicles to come in and support them.”
“Move out, Marines!”
“Do you wish to move up and join them, sir?” Laurent asked him with feigned innocence. “To have a better sense of the battle?”
To her surprise, Hoenig laughed at the barb.
“This is a sideshow, Colonel. The real battle will be fought out there.” He waved at the plains north of them, toward the canyon. “Even I, a former Marine, know this much. But we will clear this town of the enemy, and perhaps level it in the end, if necessary.”
She had no comment for that, finding it depressingly pragmatic and inarguable. So she simply stood with him and watched, both what she could see with her eyes and what made it back from the IFF transponders and telescopic displays laid out before them on the inside of the open hatch. She’d read there’d been experiments with body cams transmitting live images back to commanders, but they were too vulnerable to ECM jamming and spoofs and far too likely to lead enemy troops to a unit’s command structure.
So, instead, she listened to the distant chatter of automatic weapons fire, to chains of explosions answered by smaller, individual blasts and guessed from the IFF signals going dark which were IEDs and mines and which were Marine grenades going outward.
“I don’t even see them,” she commented after the battle had raged for nearly ten minutes, the reports echoing down the streets from the south and the west, cross-chatter coming over company and platoon nets listing casualties and enemy strongpoints. “I haven’t seen one of them yet.”
“Most of the time you don’t,” Hoenig said. “But they can’t hold. They have no support, nowhere to run but the ocean, nowhere to stand but here. Once we isolate them, we can blast them out, or burn them out.” He smiled broadly. “I particularly like that. They run out one at a time, afire, and we can decide whether to show mercy or let them burn.”
“I see you love your work, General,” she told him. “I wonder how long it’s been since you had a shot fired your way.”
“If it never happens again, I won’t mourn, my dear.”
“What’s the report from the Armored Corps?” she wondered, trying to take her mind off the inevitable carnage ahead of them.
Hoenig traced a line across the screen, pushing the IFF readouts from the Marines to the side and bringing up the transmissions from the mecha forces.
“They’ve taken heavy casualties,” Hoenig said, not seeming too disturbed by what he read on the display. “But we have the numbers. The outcome is not in doubt. I trust Colonel Kennedy.”
Laurent eyed the board suspiciously. Heavy casualties is right. Kennedy was getting his ass handed to him by a numerically and qualitatively inferior force. But Hoenig was also correct that they had sufficient reserves to win the battle, as long as there were no more surprises.
“General Hoenig!” one of the NCOs manning the communications hub in the shadowed compartment below called up to the big man, his eyes wide and white in the darkness. “There’s a transmission incoming from Admiral Longoria on board the Orkla! He says twelve, that is one-two military battle cruisers have emerged from the closest jump-point and are making for orbit around Revelation!”
“The hell you say!” Hoenig exploded. “Twelve fucking cruisers? Who the hell would have twelve cruisers to send out here to this dirtball planet?”
The general glared at Laurent as if she knew and was just holding the answer back from him. Rather than argue with him about it, she shoved the tactical display off the command screens and pulled up the orbital feed. The sensor relay from the Orkla told the story, a dozen monolithic pillars of metal arrayed in matching globular formations, the starfire of fusion drives pushing them headlong into the gravity well of the colony.
“They’re huge,” she murmured, reading the computer designators beside each of the threat icons. “Those aren’t mercenary ships, converted cargo runners. Any one of those is as large as the Orkla.”
The sensor display was overridden by a broad-beam transmission, switching over as if she’d ordered it herself. It was a demonstration not simply of power but of subtlety. Someone was bragging they had the signal spoofing technology to hack Starkad systems from orbit. The face plastered across every single one of the displays was unfamiliar to her, dark and narrow and dangerous, a dagger shaped from volcanic glass.
Eyes so deeply brown they were nearly black bored into her as if the man were speaking specifically to Ruth Laurent rather than to every transmitter on the planet and in orbit around it.
“I am,” the man said, his voice deep and sonorous as a professional opera singer, “Admiral Buhari of the Mbeki Imperium. All Starkad forces in this system are directed to withdraw immediately. Revelation is now under the protection of the Imperium, and any further aggression toward its inhabitants or any allied forces in this system will be met with overwhelming action.” The corner of his lip curled up just slightly. “And given the imbalance of forces, a confrontation between us would surely lead to your destruction. I wish to avoid this if possible. I do not want to be the man who fires the first shot in the war between us, but if that is the only choice, I have been given clearance to do so. Break contact with Wholesale Slaughter and leave this place while you still have
any ships left to take you.”
“Bugger,” Hoenig said softly, as if he found the information merely annoying.
Laurent couldn’t speak, couldn’t find the breath. Mbeki here could only mean one thing.
As if some malevolent deity had read her thoughts, the admiral’s image was replaced by another, one ever more unpleasant. His eyes were less wild than they had been, his face more filled out and healthy, the hair and beard trimmed neatly, but there was no mistaking the man.
General Nicolai Constantine smiled, and there was nothing but sheer malevolence in the expression.
“I’m assuming you can hear this, Colonel Laurent,” he said. “I wonder if you understand your mistake. You’re a very intelligent officer, and I respect your ability, so I’d suspect you do.” The predator’s smile disappeared, all emotion draining away and leaving the countenance of a stone killer.
“The only time I’m not dangerous,” Nicolai Constantine informed her, “is when I’m dead.”
25
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil.
They were the words from something Katy had called a Psalm. She’d recited it as a prayer for comfort, but for Logan Brannigan, there was no comfort to be had in this valley of death.
Burned, cracked soil crunched beneath the soles of his boots and soot coated the sleeves of his utility fatigues, blackened his hands and face. The heat from smoldering mecha was nearly unbearable, shoving him back and forth between one twisted and blackened metal corpse and another. They were the skeletons of titans, burning with the fire of the wrath of a god, and he was just a mortal trapped among them.
Men weren’t meant for this. They’d arrogated themselves, wrapped their fragile, mortal bodies in metal and weapons and the fire from the heart of a star and thought they were as gods themselves, but this was the battlefield of legends, when giants walked among men.
Logan wasn’t sure how long he’d been wandering between life and death, searching each blackened and fiery hulk for signs of survivors and finding none. The sun was below the horizon, but between the dregs of the dusk and the glow of the fires, there was enough light to see by, though not quite enough to make out fine details. He wasn’t sure where he’d left his Vindicator or where the front lines were. The assault mech was battered and broken, its systems glitching and unusable and he’d left it standing alone amidst a sear of enemy dead. No one had answered his radio calls, nothing had shown up on his IFF display except blinking error messages.
The last thing he’d heard before all of his systems had overheated and gone dead was the arrival of Mbeki, the ultimatum their Admiral and General Constantine had given to Starkad. He’d killed the Starkad mech-jock he’d been fighting, taking advantage of the man’s distraction and felt no remorse, but after that last blast of plasma fire, the Starkad mecha had begun to withdraw. It hadn’t been immediate, and it hadn’t been fast. There had been damaged machines and damaged pilots for their recovery crews to come out and haul away.
Wholesale Slaughter’s own crews had taken longer, coming from farther away, deep in the canyon. He’d seen them as he walked, only dimly aware of what they were, what the muted headlights burning on the road from the canyon represented. He’d thought they’d seemed hesitant, probably sure Starkad would try to double-cross them somehow. If he’d had any sort of communications, if he hadn’t been two kilometers away across the valley of the shadow, he would have told them to hurry, that lives were at stake.
But then the Mbeki shuttles had begun to land, descending on columns of fire on the opposite end of the valley from the Starkad drop-ships. There was no mistaking them for the ships of any other Dominion military and he knew them by reputation though he’d never seen one in real life. Everyone else chose a lifting body design for maximum aerodynamic capacity, but Mbeki had gone for sheer power, a squat, bullet shape that maximized cargo space over all else.
Their strike mecha had stepped out first, stomping around the boarding ramps like bulky dockworkers, guarding the way for their own recovery vehicles, for trucks full of medics. He had to make it back to them, take charge of the aftermath. It drove him forward through the heat and the dark and the pain, through the emotional inertia trying to drag him down, through images of Katy somewhere out there in the desolate plains beyond the habitable zones, broken and dying or burnt to ash, a human sacrifice to gods even older than hers.
Was that the sacrifice he was expected to make by Mithra? The death of everyone he loved in exchange for victory, for the salvation of his world? It was the sacrifice his father had been forced to make. He’d lost the woman he loved, lost his father and his grandfather and, in the end, his own life. Perhaps it was the fate he’d chosen, or the one that had chosen him, passed down to him with the death of Jaimie Brannigan. The lot of the Guardian, to walk alone and, in the end, lay himself down for his people.
The truck’s headlights pierced through the guttering flames of what had once been a Scorpion strike mech and Logan squinted and looked away as the vehicle swerved through the wreckage, coming straight to him. It stopped two meters away in a spray of dust and ash, the lights cutting swathes through the particulate haze of the fires and debris.
“You are Logan Brannigan.”
The voice was familiar, though he was surprised to hear it dirtside. It wasn’t often an admiral left his flagship to set foot on a battlefield. The man was tall and slender, a pine tree swaying in the wind, his grey fatigues practical and unadorned.
“I am Emmanuel Buhari, Vice Admiral of the Imperator’s Navy,” he said, saluting in the Mbeki way, fist to chest. “I greet you in his name.”
Logan drew himself straight and returned the salute, fingers to eyebrow in the Spartan tradition.
“Admiral, I thank you for your actions here today. If it weren’t for you, we might still have won the battle, but many more would have died, and the people of Revelation would have been left with nothing but ruins. No matter what happens in the future, you will always have a friend and ally in Logan Brannigan, whether I am Guardian of Sparta or simply the commander of Wholesale Slaughter.”
“Oh, I think we can do better than that for you, Lord Guardian.”
Nicolai Constantine emerged from the haze of the vehicle headlights, cutting a more dashing figure than when Logan had left him on Guajarat. He wore a fresh set of unmarked grey utilities, plain and pragmatic yet somehow seeming pressed sharp enough to shave with the creases. Pain and fear and the stress of months of confinement had worn new lines into his face, but the gleam was back behind those dark eyes.
“I should have known you wouldn’t come back empty-handed, Nicolai,” Logan said, offering the man a hand.
“Nicolai is it, now?” Constantine asked, cocking an eyebrow.
“It is if it’s Lord Guardian now,” Logan replied somberly. The general nodded and gripped his hand tightly.
“I don’t know if you heard,” he said, not letting go of the hand, clapping Logan’s shoulder with his other, “but the Shakak survived. There are quite a few injured, but no KIA. Terrin is safe.”
Logan sagged against the general’s grip just a bit, a measure of relief flooding through him.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’m glad to hear it. Down here…we didn’t fare quite so well, I’m afraid. I’ve been out of contact since my electronics got fried by a heat spike, so I don’t know the numbers, but…”
“We just came from the aid station.” Constantine’s face went grim. “You lost twenty-seven mecha, twenty of those the older machines the mercenaries brought with them, and fifteen pilots. Your commanders are still alive, though Captain Bohardt took a pretty nasty shrapnel hit through his cockpit.”
Gears turned in his head, numbers crunching impersonally. The pilots hit the hardest, harder than the machines, but if most of the stolen Starkad mecha were still reparable…but something else was more important. He didn’t want to ask the question, didn’t want to know the answer.
&nb
sp; “What about our assault shuttles?” The words weren’t spoken so much as expelled, an agonized sob beaten into submission and released as a tightly controlled question.
Constantine’s grip on Logan’s arm tightened, as if he suspected he might have to prevent him from collapsing.
“They all went down in the battle, from what I was told. We haven’t heard any transponders from ejection pods. We’re still looking.”
Logan nodded, pushing the older man’s hands away, standing on his own.
“The Imperium of Mbeki has pledged its aid to your cause, Lord Guardian,” Buhari told him, as if the man had sensed this was the right time to bring up the subject. “This includes mecha and spacecraft, and aid in recruiting personnel if you need it, though despite what I told the Starkad forces here, we are not committed to open warfare with Starkad.”
The man paced around to Logan’s other side, the headlights throwing his jagged, hard-edged face into sharp relief.
“The Imperator is concerned what Starkad will do should they consolidate their alliance with the usurper on Sparta and then finish off Clan Modi.” That thin line of a mouth quirked just slightly. “Actually, I do not think it would be disrespectful nor inaccurate to say the Imperator is scared shitless about what a combined Starkad, Sparta and Modi could do militarily. The only question is whether they would try to absorb Shang first or us.” He shrugged. “Or, if Lord Aaron is as smart as he thinks he is, they could try to work out a deal with Shang to split out territories. Still, we can’t afford an all-out war with Starkad. The distances are too great, and we would have no allies…” He titled his head toward Logan. “Unless Sparta were in the hands of someone who owed us a large favor.”
“The Imperator is a wise man,” Logan conceded. Bit of a dick, if I remember right from the state dinner when I was a teenager.
“I assume you don’t want a foreign power making war on your own people,” Buhari went on, “but we can give you aid and shelter, and keep Starkad off your back.”