Rebellion at Ailon

by T J Mott

  “Ensign Ash, Ghost 6 wizzo. I’m curious about the systems for a skirmish like this. Surely we aren’t firing actual weapons. Can you elaborate on this?”

  She looked over at Vacek. “I’ll let Commander Vacek answer this, he can probably explain the system better than me.”

  Vacek stepped forward. “Before beginning the skirmish portion of the exercise, all participating starships will have their systems placed in simulation mode. Laser weapons will have their power reduced almost to zero. It’ll be enough for scanners to register hits, but it won’t do any actual damage. Ghost Squadron has no kinetic weapons and the OPFOR kinetic weapons will be completely simulated. All ships, both Ghost Squadron and Opposing Force, will have their sensors linked up and a simulation processor aboard the Lynx will manage all sensors and weapons data to determine hits and misses and damage results. Depending on the outcome of any simulated hits, it will also work with your ships to simulate reduced systems efficiency and may even bring systems offline or disable a ship entirely if it’s deemed to be destroyed. Does that answer it for you?”

  Ensign Ash nodded. “Any more questions?” Poulsen asked. No one responded. “Very well. We will send out more detailed mission plans later today. Flight One will depart in two weeks.” She glanced at Vacek, and he shook his head, indicating he had nothing to add. “Study the mission plans carefully and contact us if you have any questions. Dismissed.”

  Chapter 29

  It felt so weird—and incredibly risky—for Thaddeus to move about Orent during the day. The Ailon Federal Police Force had a number of routine patrols and checkpoints throughout the city, stopping nearly everyone they saw for questioning and a papers check. Avennians were allowed to continue on their way. Ailonians were often interrogated and imprisoned, sometimes even enslaved, unless they had a government-issued permit allowing them limited movement during the day. So far, Ailonian permits were mostly only issued to those who worked for the reformed Ailon Relief Foundation under close supervision of the Avennians.

  After placing a few homemade mines in the road, his squad moved into ambush position at a street intersection, hiding at house corners or behind their front steps. The cramped, crowded city had so much cover available. It was perfect for the kind of hit-and-fade guerrilla tactics the Ailonian Rebels used.

  And they arrived just in time, too, for Thad could hear the sounds of heavy truck engines approaching just a couple blocks away. Two unescorted trucks. It almost seemed too good to be true and he still strongly expected it to be a trap. But his Rebels had the advantage of picking their battlefield and he couldn’t see how the Avennians would possibly pull off a counter-ambush without knowing where the ambush would happen.

  I hope they’re carrying something good. Something useful to the Rebels, and whose absence hurts the enemy.

  And there they were. Two Avennian Army trucks turned onto their narrow street an intersection away and accelerated towards Thad’s squad, moving in single-file.

  From his hiding spot behind an ugly, stunted tree growing near a small, dilapidated-looking one-story house, he glanced at the middle of the street. The mines were barely visible, their cases painted roughly the same color as the road itself. But the Rebels had little access to materials or tooling, and so they were not very powerful devices. He was worried they wouldn’t stop the trucks. But in that case, they’d try to shoot out the tires, kill the drivers, and escape, and it would be nothing more than another minor harassment.

  He lay in wait and focused on his breathing as the truck engines grew louder. Ailon was so different from anything he’d done in the past. One of his main principles as a mercenary was to only get involved in conflicts he knew he could win. He didn’t believe in a fair fight. Historically, he almost never committed to a battle unless he had overwhelming forces on his side. That minimized his casualties and reinforced his image as an elite, always-victorious mercenary.

  On the battlefields of Ailon, at the tactical level, he still followed those principles. At the higher, strategic levels, it was at best a fair fight with the odds slightly favoring Avennia. The regime had far more people and equipment, and freedom of movement everywhere except for a few places the Rebels had locked down unexpectedly well. To create winnable battlefields, they had to divide the enemy up, attack where they were weak, misdirect and sow confusion, and never ever launch an attack he wasn’t confident about. That was the only way for the Ailonian Rebels—with a ton of fighting spirit, but a lack of equipment and experience and personnel—to win against their overlords.

  The best thing they had going for them was the enemy’s lack of tactics and experience. Everything he’d seen had convinced Thad that Avennia didn’t have much military doctrine. Someone somewhere may have studied a few basic publicly-available Imperial field manuals, but they’d simply never been in any kind of real, prolonged conflict, instead having a military force whose sole purpose was to keep their slave worlds subjugated.

  Would Avennia withdraw if Ailon became too difficult to hold? If the Rebels could gain hold of Orent’s surface-to-space gun, at the very least this hemisphere could become independent. And without Orent—the largest, most populated city and also the administrative center of the world—Avennia would struggle to maintain control over the rest of the world. But, he wondered, if they were too obstinate to surrender once the costs of controlling Ailon exceeded the resources they received from the planet, what about the other minor cities scattered around the planet’s equator? Or the slave-operated mining facilities on the moon?

  Or what if they turned punitive and petty, and decided to obliterate their former holdings while withdrawing? He’d seen enough slaves nonchalantly gunned down during vain escape attempts, back during his pre-war time in Ria’s clinic. Would they do that on a global level? Avennia didn’t keep many warships in the Ailon system, but even their few small patrol boats could kill millions.

  He was clearly at a strange moment in his life. He’d come to Ailon alone, to avoid combat for a time, and found himself in the middle of a war anyway. Without his fleets and Marines at his command, so many of Ailon’s upcoming challenges remained a riddle with no obvious answer. And yet, despite how challenging everything was, Ria’s accusation from a few days ago rang true to him. He felt alive in the midst of the chaos.

  He was still struggling to understand his place in the universe after his disastrous and painful Waverly mission. He’d nearly lost everything there. But now, fighting among the Rebels on Ailon, he wondered if he was meant for this type of work. For the first time since being taken from Earth, he was helping another people not for money, not for reputation, and not for vague Earth clues. He was doing it because it was the right thing to do, regardless of the effect to his own goals and desires.

  Was that why he felt so alive?

  The trucks were nearly to the mines—and moving quite fast, too. He braced himself. Would the triggers activate in time?

  His question was answered by a deafening blast that left his ears ringing. The first truck lost control, tipping over and falling onto its side. It haphazardly slid across the pavement at seventy klicks per hour, kicking up sparks where metal dragged against the pavement. Moments later, the second truck, unable to react in time, crashed into it from behind.

  The Rebel squad launched to their feet and rushed the pair of enemy vehicles. Two confused individuals exited the second truck—both armed and wearing Avennian Army battle uniforms. Good. True enemies. Military targets, not Avennian civilians like I’d feared.

  Several violet-colored laser beams flashed towards the vehicles as the Rebels opened fire. The beams were visible, but surprisingly dim in the daylight, even in the weak daylight of Ailon’s small sun. Thaddeus had definitely grown used to night-time engagements.

  The two soldiers fell motionless to the pavement within seconds. Thad watched as Harve and another Rebel moved towards the first truck, the one lying on its side in the middle of the street. They stopped in front of it, checked their angle
s to avoid catching any laser reflections, and then fired through the truck’s windshield, quickly dispatching its occupants before they could radio for help or attempt to escape.

  And just like that, the battle was over. Short, easy, and with overwhelming force on his side, just like he preferred. “Team 2,” ordered Harve, “post up and watch for enemies. Team 1, let’s see what’s inside.”

  Thad let go of his laser carbine, letting it fall on its sling and rest against his abdomen. He jogged up to the rear of the first truck with a couple other Rebels, and soon they were quickly tearing through fallen crates.

  It was a food truck. Full of Avennian Army rations—certainly nothing gourmet, but there was a lot of it here, and Thad’s platoon was still quite short on supplies after relocating. They’d been forced to leave behind so much at their previous base, focusing on critical weapons and medical supplies and things which couldn’t fall into enemy hands such as radios and codebooks, while leaving behind food, clothing, and a stockpile of other weaponry and gear.

  “Other truck’s fuel of fuel!” someone shouted from behind.

  He noticed a pile of cargo straps in the back of the tipped truck, and quickly formed a plan. “Use the other truck and those straps to pull this one upright,” he ordered. “We’ll drive this over to base and unload it.”

  Harve nodded, and Thad stepped aside as they worked. A few minutes later, the first truck was again operable, though its engine sounded pretty rough. He looked at Harve. “Everyone load up and head back home,” he said before turning and approaching the other truck.

  “And what are you doing, Chad?” Harve asked.

  “I’m going to return this truck to the Avennians,” he answered simply.

  The back of the truck was indeed full of fuel oil drums, no doubt inbound to this section of Orent in response to the loss of their local fuel depot. And the plugs on the top of the drums were easy to loosen by hand. He removed the plugs from three drums and tipped them over in the cargo box, letting the fuel oil pour out and pool within. He left them leaking on their side while he took position in the driver’s seat.

  Driving the stolen truck around Orent was surprisingly easy. The Rebel attack had been so quick that the trucks’ original occupants never commed out, and so none of the patrols had any reason to suspect that an Avennian Army truck was now under Rebel control. He wished he had more time to plan, but he didn’t know how long he had until they knew something had happened. And what he had in mind was risky enough.

  Ailon was a hellhole of a backwater planet, and even Avennia was, for that matter. Still, they weren’t so far behind the rest of the galaxy that their trucks didn’t have cruise controls. He needed it for what he had in mind.

  Two klicks later, he was nearing his destination and lining his stolen truck up with it. Behind him, the cargo box was saturated with spilled fuel oil, and much of it was dripping out onto the road surface.

  He sped the vehicle up to nearly sixty klicks per hour and set the cruise control. A hundred meters ahead of him, the road came to a T, right in front of an Ailon Federal Police Force facility and its parking lot. Around a dozen AFPF patrol cars were parked there.

  He opened the door and grimaced. This is going to hurt. But before he could second-guess himself, he jumped out. He covered his head with his arms and rolled, and tumbled and tumbled down the street, smacking his elbows and knees over and over again. He came to a stop, and, grimacing against the pain, rolled up to one knee. The unoccupied truck was still moving down the street. Wielding his laser carbine, he opened fire on its cargo box—there was no tailgate or rear door or anything, and fuel oil was draining right off the back. And after a few shots, his lasers ignited the fuel, and flames slowly began spreading throughout the oil-soaked cargo box.

  He didn’t stick around long enough to see how it all played out, instead quickly ducking into a nearby alley and beginning his long, slow trek back home.

  A lone Rebel in the middle of the day. Hopefully the Avennians were too busy to come looking for him.

  ***

  The platoon practically feasted that night, if one could call Avennian Army rations a feast. Morale certainly improved, and then, except for the night watch, the Rebels went to sleep on a full stomach for the first time since being forced out of their old hostel.

  But the next morning, Chet called Thaddeus into the kitchen/command center. The radio was already linked up with a few members of the Rebel Council.

  Abram had ordered an attack on the city’s fusion power plant.

  “We don’t have a clear picture yet,” Culper was explaining. “We think around seven or eight Rebel platoons are involved, but Abram ordered them to shuffle their comm codes. We can’t even radio them right now. I have some observers in that section of the city and Chad was right, it was a setup. The fusion plant is heavily defended, and Avennia’s been moving in reinforcements to attack Abram’s troops from behind.”

  Thad cursed. That was why Abram had seemed so easy to defuse the last time they’d spoken. He’d planned on attacking anyway, with or without Thad’s—or the Council’s—approval, and he’d acted rather agreeable just to placate them. “How many troops does the enemy have there?” he asked.

  “No idea,” Culper answered. “But it’s…not good. Spies have seen light tanks moving towards the battlefield to flank our men.”

  Thad felt his stomach go cold. Light tanks against a motley collection of Rebel infantry. They’d known Avennia had at least a little armor, but until now, their tanks had remained out-of-play, simply too slow to respond to the unpredictable hit-and-fade tactics the Rebels had been using.

  But an ambush situation was completely different. If Avennia knew the battlefield ahead of time, and they certainly had since they’d laid bait there, they could move all kinds of personnel into position beforehand. Including their rather small unit of light tanks, which carried mounted high-powered laser cannons that were capable of literally cutting armored infantry in half.

  “Mr. Messier, we are open to any suggestions you have,” Rhena said.

  He closed his eyes, shaking his head and frowning. They couldn’t reinforce, not even to help with a retreat. The Rebels were so poorly-equipped that fighting Avennia on the enemy’s chosen battlefield was a guaranteed slaughter. “Do you have contact with Abram?”

  “Negative. He’s not responding to radio calls.”

  “Keep trying to crack the radio codes. If you get through to anyone, order an immediate retreat.” He paused, imagining several platoons of Rebels caught between a heavily-defended power plant and an unknown number of light tanks. “If they can get away,” he added softly, feeling a shiver run down his spine.

  “We’re already doing that!”

  Culper’s normally-calm voice had a serious edge of irritation in it, leading Thaddeus to wonder what kind of heated conversation the Council must have had earlier. “Radio all platoons,” he said. “Get a report on readiness, and see if there are any nearby targets of opportunity.” Thad narrowed his eyes, looking down at the digital map of the city. “I hate to say it, but I don’t think we can do much for whoever Abram’s pulled into this. But maybe it’s enough of a distraction that we can punch back elsewhere while Avennia is focusing on their ambush.”

  ***

  With Thad and Culper’s guidance, a few Rebel platoons were able to effectively launch some small-scale attacks around the city, taking advantage of the battle at the power plant to cover for them.

  But Thad and Chet’s radio interactions with the other Rebel platoons showed some serious problems in the Rebel heirarchy. Many of the Rebels trusted Abram completely, due to his overblown status as a “veteran” of the previous war. Those same Rebels distrusted Thad because he was not an Ailonian. And other Rebels trusted Thad, believing him to be a better commander than Abram.

  In short, the Rebel army was starting to fracture.

  Thaddeus was in the duplex kitchen, listening in through the radio links and watching the tabl
et maps, struggling to keep his frustration from showing as his platoon staff watched nearby. Abram’s move had been costly. Eight platoons—a third of the Rebel army—were still out of contact, and reports from Culper’s spies scattered throughout Orent indicated heavy losses or capture among the ambushed Rebels. Now, many of the Avennian troops involved in the ambush were pushing out and pursuing the Rebels who’d managed to retreat.

  Ria was clearly pissed. She was pacing the kitchen, still moving with a minor limp, and with a scowl on her reddened face. She hadn’t said much of anything but Thaddeus could easily guess at what was going on in her head. Ailon had already lost one war. Would they lose the second one, too?

  Harve stormed into the room, looking urgently disturbed. “Chad, we have enemy activity in the region.” Thad turned away from the tablet screen and frowned at the squad leader. “There’s a slow patrol of four police cruisers and one Army personnel carrier passing through our neighborhood. Moving very methodically. Like they’re looking for something.”

  Ria stopped pacing, slightly pulling aside one end of the curtain and peering outside. She looked back to Thaddeus with worry in her eyes and nodded. “Put the platoon on full alert,” Thad ordered. “Keep me updated.” Harve nodded and stepped out, and Chet took control of the tablet to sent an intel update to Culper. Less than a minute later, icons representing the nearby patrol appeared on the tablet’s map.

  Harve returned just as quickly, now armed with a laser carbine. “They’re disembarking troops in the street outside. Army regulars and AFPF.”