by T J Mott
“Let’s go!” Chet said. Thad’s squad climbed to their feet and descended to street level, leaving behind their hiding place in the overpass’s eaves. He glanced down the street and saw dark forms rise from behind the shrubberies in front of a nearby apartment building. The two groups of fighters advanced towards the Army’s local outpost.
Seemingly nothing happened for several long seconds. The air was still and quiet, and Thad was almost sure the entire city could hear his pounding heartbeat as he walked. Then, another two-man patrol rounded the block. Third Squad fired again, dropping the newcomers as quickly as they’d taken down the first patrol.
The sounds of laser blasts—supercapacitors did tend to make a loud crack when discharging, although they were nowhere near as loud as traditional firearms—in the night could be dismissed as just about anything, at least the first time. But after the second volley, the enemy had no doubt about what they’d just heard. Lights inside the house flashed on and off and windows slammed open. The sound of orders being shouted carried out, and Thad could see quick flashes of movement in the darkened windows as the enemy moved about.
Third Squad was quick, Thad had to admit. They opened fire again, this time sending laser beam after laser beam into the windows and doors of the house, blinding its occupants and allowing the other two squads to advance in relative safety. The shouting inside the house grew louder as the Army troops within realized that the weapons fire was not only very close, it was directed at them.
Thad pointed his carbine at the vehicles parked in front. “Chet, I want demo on those vehicles.”
Chet nodded and said something into his radio. Second Squad broke out into a jog, quickly crossing the street and reaching the vehicles.
“First Platoon, status?” asked Abram over the radio.
Thad tapped his transmit button. “We’ve engaged the enemy. Going to destroy or disable some vehicles and see what other damage we can cause.”
“Copy. The first target has realized the attack is over, and the reinforcements are on the move again.”
Probably headed our way. Thaddeus smiled to himself. And we’ll break away before they can arrive, and then the next attack will start elsewhere in the city and they’ll have to move yet again. If we do this right, those soldiers are going to be quite frustrated by the time the night is through.
The house’s front door finally opened, just partway, and laser fire began to erupt from within. It was unfocused, laser beams spitting out at random, leaving burn marks in the street, the lawn, or on neighboring buildings. Some of them flashed harmlessly up into the sky. But the blind fire had the intended effect. Thad’s squad immediately dropped to the street around him, and a dozen yards away Second Squad also fell prone. But he stayed standing and raised his carbine, holding it against his right shoulder and bracing it as well as he could with his crippled left arm, and began firing at the door as he continued advancing.
“Chad, get down!” he heard Ria shout from somewhere behind him. But the fire from the door had ceased, and the house’s polymer window frames on the second level were smoking and melting from Third Squad’s ongoing barrage.
“First Platoon, Culper.”
“Go ahead,” Thad replied.
“Enemy reinforcements are on your way. ETA ten minutes.”
“Copy, thanks.” He released the radio switch and moved his finger back to the trigger, firing a couple more shots at the door as Second Squad picked themselves up from the street and began dashing towards the parked vehicles. “Ready the firebombs,” he ordered, “and stand by.”
Around him, the other elements of his squad prepared some crude firebombs—Molotov cocktails, although he couldn’t call them as such. The term originated from Earth. Nobody here would know what it meant.
Just a few steps away, Jason, Ria, and Ric—another former Clinic 12 worker who was now in Thad’s squad—were wielding glass bottles stuffed with flaming rags. He turned his attention to the vehicles and watched Second Squad place a few small thermite charges. Thermite was easy to make, even for the Ailon Rebels, composed of powdered aluminum and rust which both were extremely common on a world whose industry centered on mining and refining metals.
“Stand by…stand by…” he said.
Third Squad’s firing pattern changed, now focusing less on the windows and doors. Some of it was now aimed at the tight alleys between the Army outpost and its neighboring buildings. Took them long enough, Thad thought. If they were firing there, then some of the soldiers were finally leaving through the back door. He saw return fire streak out from the dark, blasting against the parked cars across the street. A cloud of smoke began to accumulate as the cars’ paint burned, and Third Squad’s fire diminished somewhat.
“Cover fire from everyone not doing demo!” he ordered. Thad continued his approach down the sidewalk. He was directly in front of the outpost’s neighbor, and in another few steps he’d be in view of the soldiers hiding in the alley. Laser fire streaked in both directions in front of him.
Elements of his own squad, and some of Second Squad by the outpost vehicles, opened fire, sending their own laser beams towards the gaps. They certainly weren’t connecting with anything other than concrete walls, but it kept the enemy confined.
Hearing something flare, he glanced at the vehicles again. The police cruiser now had a bright glowing hole in its hood as a thermite charge ignited. The molten thermite burned right through, landing on the hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engine. When globs of glowing molten aluminum dripped into the grass beneath the vehicle, Thad knew that the car’s engine was already destroyed beyond repair.
And within seconds, the two personnel carriers received the same treatment. “Firebomb! Now!” he shouted as he poked an eye and his carbine into the mouth of the alley. He opened fire blindly, spraying laser beams down the alley and hearing the sudden shouts of startled soldiers. The return fire instantly stopped.
“Hold your fire!” someone shouted from the alley. “Dammit! Same side, same side!” Thad turned to see three Avennian Army soldiers crouched against the alley walls, and he carefully stepped into their view, remembering that he himself was wearing a stolen Avennian Army uniform. “Hell, you guys are fast!” one of them shouted. “We just put the call for help out a minute ago. What the blazes is going on up there?”
Thad shrugged. Flipping the firing selector to continuous beam mode, he held down the trigger on his carbine and swept a single low-power laser beam across the three soldiers, then advanced beyond the alley as they cried out in pain.
Now he was in front of the house, not far from the newly-disabled personnel carriers. He snapped off a few more laser beams into the front door as Jason stepped up beside him and threw his Molotov cocktail. It trailed flames as it soared through the air, then flew right throw an open window on the house’s second floor. “That was perfect!” Thad congratulated.
And a second later, four more Molotov cocktails followed. One splashed against the house’s front door, shattering and erupting into flames that sprayed into the building’s interior from momentum. Another landed on the rooftop, creating a waterfall of burning liquid that poured down from the eaves. Two more broke against the siding, creating small patches of fire around the dry grass near the house’s foundation.
“ETA five minutes on reinforcements!” his radio crackled as the stench of burning and molten polymer began to fill the air, mixing with the stinging ozone from laser fire and the hot fumes from the molten metal and thermite that pooled up under the outpost’s vehicles.
Thad made a hand signal to Chet, who gave the retreat order a moment later. Third Squad stayed in place, continuing to dump laser fire into the house’s windows and doors and the alleys beside it while First and Second Squads made hasty but orderly retreats. Once they’d gained a little bit of distance, Third Squad retreated as well. “Return to base,” Thad ordered, and Chet relayed it via radio to the other squads. “I’m staying behind to observe for a bit.”
&
nbsp; “I’m coming with you!” Ria said.
Thad flashed an annoyed look at her, but didn’t protest. As the platoon fled the scene, leaving in multiple directions and blindly firing at the base to promote more confusion, the two ducked under the nearby overpass again, sitting next to each other in silence and observing the outpost.
The enemy soldiers were too disoriented to effectively pursue. Thad’s platoon had attacked and then left very quickly. After the weapons fire had ended, they quickly escaped the smoking outpost and set up new patrols. This time they were alert, and their gestures and shouts were quite furious.
The concrete-and-plastic house was evidently not too flammable. Most of the flames burned out quickly, and fire-extinguisher-wielding soldiers made short work of the rest. Another group of soldiers crossed the street and investigated the cars where Third Squad had been, and still more soldiers advanced up and down the street itself, looking for any sign of more attackers. One set even walked under the overpass, passing just meters away from Thad and Ria but never looking up.
And then a convoy of personnel carriers rolled into view in the distance, coming down the street from the other side of the outpost, their headlights briefly blinding Thad. “First Platoon. The fight is over. Enemy reinforcements are arriving now.”
“Copy. Fifteenth Platoon, beginning our attack.”
The two of them quietly watched as the troop carriers turned around and drove away. Then, they made a quiet retreat, staying clear of streetlamps and carefully cutting through alleys and yards on their return to the hostel.
***
Ria rested well that night, her mood lifted by First Platoon’s minor victory and her thoughts filled with the hopes of soon seeing her world and her people set free. And the next morning, she awoke to find that Culper had a message for her and Chet. “So what did you find out?” she asked, rushing her words with anticipation. She shot a glance at Chet, who stood on the other side of the table.
“Not much, I’m afraid,” Culper’s barely-recognizable voice crackled through the low-bandwidth radio channel. “The name Europe doesn’t really show up anywhere. I found a few things, mostly in other languages, but I don’t think they’re what you’re looking for.”
Ria’s heart sank. As the leader of the Rebels’ intelligence-gathering efforts, Culper ought to have more access to information than just about anyone else in the insurrection. “So there’s nothing to go by at all?”
She could sense Culper’s hesitation through the radio. “The closest match I could find to a 1916 Europe is 916 Eerop.”
Her heart jumped within her chest. Maybe she’d just misheard Chad? He had been muttering to himself and she’d barely caught his words. 916 Eerop. Is that where you lost your arm, Chad? Is that the war that changed you, that you’re still suffering from? I wish you’d just tell me… “Was there a recent war there?”
Culper briefly laughed. “No, I doubt there was ever a war there. It’s a nickel-iron asteroid with a mean diameter of eight kilometers. The nine-hundred-sixteenth catalogued item orbiting a low-mass brown dwarf called Eerop, an uninhabited system a few hundred light-years east of Norma. The entry for that system almost seems like a joke. There’s nothing of value there, but someone took the time to scan and catalog around thirteen hundred asteroids. Whoever did the survey must have been on some kind of punishment duty.”
And her heart sank again. She glanced at Chet and shook her head in disappointment. “Well, it was worth a try,” she said sorrowfully.
“What’s this about?” Culper asked. “I mean, what are you actually looking for? I don’t think you’ve told me.”
She put her palms on the table—the crate in the middle of the basement—and leaned forward with a sigh. “Please keep it quiet,” she said. “I’m trying to figure out Chad Messier’s history. He won’t tell me anything about what he did before coming to Ailon. I caught him muttering something about a war at 1916 Europe and I thought it could be a clue to his identity, but maybe I misheard him.”
“Didn’t he come from your Foundation clinic?” Culper asked. “You probably know more about him than anyone else.” The link was silent for a few long seconds. “Do you have any concerns about him that the Council should know about? Anything that could affect the resistance?”
“No,” Ria answered quickly, shaking her head. “No, nothing like that. It’s…personal. That’s all.”
“I see.” The link fell into awkward silence. “Personnel records are notoriously spotty, and that’s not an Ailon thing, it’s a serious problem almost everywhere in the galaxy. Except for maybe on Norma. But I’ll continue to do some more research as a background task, see what I can find on him. ”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
Chapter 23
About 3.5 Years Ago
The Ailonian freighter’s bridge smelled of smoke and ozone as Thaddeus entered, stepping through the hatch behind his protective Marine escorts—escorts which were unnecessary in his opinion since he knew how to fight, but they wouldn’t dare to let harm come near their employer when he was with them.
A moment later, the sickeningly-pleasant smell of burnt meat reached his nostrils. A dense cloud of smoke hovered near the ceiling, flowing in the spaces between conduits and ducts like an inverted river as it was sucked towards the ventilation return. The dark haze blocked out most of the overhead lighting, leaving the bridge eerily dim, but the underside of the artificial cloud blinked red and orange with reflections from the bridge consoles as they flashed various alarms and damage reports.
“Bridge is clear!” one of his Marines shouted to the collection of soldiers in the bridge. “Marcell is here! You and you, guard the bridge exit.”
“Aye!”
Somewhere, a klaxon was blaring. “Shut that noise off!” Thad ordered, scowling at the ear-splitting sound. A pair of Marines frantically ran from console to console, slapping at alarm overrides as they moved between stations, and a few moments later the bridge finally fell into relative silence. As his hearing readjusted, he heard the whir of the life support fans as they worked hard to clear the smoke from the room, and somewhere a console was still steadily beeping out an alarm at reduced volume.
He glanced around the room. The freighter’s bridge crew were all dead. He counted twelve bodies laying slumped around the room, each one producing several thin columns of wispy smoke that rose to the ceiling, rising from the laser wounds which had killed them.
Two of the bodies wore the light armor of his own Marine force. He shook his head solemnly. Losing men was never easy. He push the sight out of his mind. “Get in their computer,” he ordered. “See if you can find their cargo manifests and figure out where everything is stashed.”
“Aye, Admiral!” reported one of the Marines—this one a tech specialist—who’d escorted him from the shuttle. He stepped up to one of the bridge consoles and shoved a still-smoking body away from the chair it was slumped over. The corpse landed on the deck with a dull thump. Then he sat down and began working the console.
“Well, what do you see?” Thaddeus asked impatiently.
“Sir, their internal sensors are recording everything. Shall I purge the logs and memory?”
Thad made a face and waved a hand dismissively. “No, no, I’m not worried about that,” he said, feeling annoyed at the distractions. “Just find their manifests so we know which cargo holds to search.”
“Just a moment, Admiral,” said the Marine. “Lots of stuff on this ship. They’re carrying a bit of everything. Food, clothing, medical supplies…ooh, here we go. A large shipment of anti-vehicle laser rifles. Infantry-grade laser carbines, some explosives, flak vests…” He looked back at Thaddeus, his expression unreadable behind the dark visor of his security helmet. Was he grinning? “And one surface-to-space laser weapon.”
Thaddeus smiled behind his own visored helmet. “Excellent. Have you heard from the others yet?”
The other man’s comm-equipped helmet bobbed up and down in a nod. �
�Yes, sir. All resistance has been pacified, and we’re sorting through the other computers now. Similar cargo on the other freighters.” He paused, as if listening to something. “Sir, they put up a hell of a fight. No survivors among the freighter crews, and heavy casualties on our side.”
Thaddeus frowned and looked down at the deck by his feet, still thinking of the Marine corpses nearby. “Get the cargo ready to move. Signal the frigates to launch their cargo shuttles. Prioritize transferring the surface-to-orbit weapons. After those have been moved to our ships, I’ll leave the rest up to you guys. If you find anything you want, it’s yours.” He smiled. “Enjoy the spoils of war, Marine.”
“Aye, sir! Thank you!”
Chapter 24
He was hanging by a shackle on his right wrist. He was greatly injured and beaten. He had no strength, could not even stand on his own two feet, and all of his weight was suspended from that one arm.
His left arm was an inferno of pain, the worst pain he’d ever felt in his life. The limb ended just centimeters below his elbow in a swollen, exposed, and inflamed stump. Pus and blood dripped from it at a steady pace. The rest of it, his detached hand and forearm, lay on the ground at his feet.
Indistinct voices filled the room. Spotlights shone on him from the ceiling, dazzling him so that he could barely see the hundreds of people who surrounded him on all sides. Occasionally, he could make out a few words in the din, but they didn’t seem to make any sense.
One quiet voice suddenly cut through the noise. “Thad.” He strained to pick his head up and look for the source, and there she was. A figure approached from the crowd. Somehow he could see her clearly, even though the spotlights’ glare blinded him to everyone else. She approached, walking slowly and carefully, then stopped a meter away from him, looking crisp and present while the rest of the room seemed distant, blurred, unreal. Her dark hair framed her lovely face, which held an expression of disdain and disbelief. Her sharp hazel eyes scanned him, seeming incredibly sad and disappointed.