by T J Mott
Grimacing, Thad quickly shut down the radio and tablet, tossing them into his backpack in case they needed to move, but hoping that the enemy would move on without a fight. Every time his group of Rebels had to defend themselves, the platoon was disrupted and unable to execute missions while reorganizing.
“Whoa,” said Ria, still watching out the window. “Chad, they reacted when you turned the radio off. And they got more alert.”
“Uh-oh,” he said flatly, casting a glance at his backpack with the the large powered-down radio. “They’re trying to track it.”
“I thought that wasn’t possible!” Harve interjected.
Thaddeus began hurriedly stuffing the radio codebook and a few other things into his backpack. “Difficult, not impossible,” he said as he threw the pack over his shoulders and walked towards the window Ria was peering out. He put his hand on her shoulder, giving it a light squeeze, and looked out over the top of her head, counting the number of enemies and watching them prepare for a search operation. “The hard part is localizing it to a specific region, but they can obviously get close. They know we’re here somewhere, they just don’t know which building.”
He stepped away from the window, back to the kitchen counter, and picked up his own carbine from its charging spot there. It was fully charged, as was the spare power pack which he stuffed into a back pocket. “Pack up, quickly. Arm up. I count about twenty-five enemies, numbers are in our favor if we attack first. Take them out and we’ll relocate again.”
Chet nodded.
Minutes later, Thad and his First Squad exited the beat-up duplex from the back door, outside of the enemy’s sight, and carefully entered the tight gap between it and the next building to his left. It was early afternoon and the tiny Ailonian sun was casting down its weak rays. Although Thad felt like he was finally getting adjusted to its dimness, a clear, sunny day on Ailon still reminded him of a fairly cloudy day back home on Earth.
He crouched down beside the duplex and looked out at the narrow street in front of it. His understanding was that the Rebel radios’ long wavelength meant a transmitter couldn’t be tracked and localized very well, at best to half a klick or so. That meant the enemy had stopped here by dumb luck, and they probably didn’t realize just how close they actually were to the Rebels they were searching for.
An Avennian Army NCO was getting his soldiers and the supporting police organized into a few search teams. They were alert, but clearly not expecting trouble…yet.
Thad flicked the safety on his carbine to disable it and brought it up to his shoulder, bracing it as best as he could with the stump of his left forearm as he stood at the corner of the alley and looked down the sights. He aimed at the NCO and squeezed the trigger. The weapon cracked loudly in his hands as its capacitor discharged at the full-power setting, and a brilliant red-violet beam erupted from its barrel, catching the NCO in the face. He instantly crumpled to the pavement with a smoking crater in his forehead.
Thad’s Rebels were definitely alert and ready. Not even two seconds had passed before their weapons fire joined his, and volleys of laser beams began flashing out from the alleys on either side of the duplex, and from its windows and doors. It clearly took the enemy by surprise and several police fell. But a few seconds later, their return fire forced Thad to duck back around the corner. A volley of laser beams flashed in front of him, crossing the narrow alley and blasting chunks from the polymer-concrete walls of the building to his left, filling the air with the sounds of rupturing concrete. Thad winced as a small fragment of hot concrete struck his cheek, feeling like sleet.
He stepped forward again, leaning ever so slightly around the corner, exposing only his weapon and a sliver of his face and unleashing a fresh volley of his own. One soldier dropped, and then the next. He felt something move at his feet, and he glanced down to see Ria crouched below him, firing towards an AFPF officer who was sprinting back to his car. She fired twice, the first one striking her target in the leg and causing him to fall, and the second catching him squarely in the chest as he tumbled.
The volume of return fire dropped abruptly, and the remaining Avennians were retreating to their vehicles. Thad stepped around Ria and moved out of the alley, moving forward in a fast walk and snapping off half-aimed laser beams towards the enemy. “Advance!” he hollered out.
The duplex’s front doors burst open and a stream of Rebels poured out. A heavy volume of laser fire erupted, cutting down the fleeing Avennians and leaving burn marks in their vehicles.
None of the enemies made it to the AFPF cars or the single Army truck parked a few dozen meters down the road, and the neighborhood turned quiet. Thad narrowed his eyes as he surveyed the bodies. Wounded or dead Army and AFPF lay everywhere. And no serious injuries among the Rebels, just a few burns from near-misses and minor shrapnel wounds from laser hits against the buildings’ concrete-polymer walls.
He quickly found Chet while his Rebels stole weapons and gear from the enemy casualties. “Is your radio operational and programmed?” he asked, his own radio safely packed up in his backpack and relatively unreachable with only one hand. Chet nodded. “Good. Put out a call, let the rest of the Rebels know that Avennia is trying to localize our radio signals. And keep the call short.”
He glanced at the rest of his Rebels. They all seemed alert and upbeat in the aftermath of their victory. “Form up!” he called out, watching the Rebels—and one young boy with red hair—organize into their squads and prepare to march. Now to move on to our next base of operations, and get away from here before someone decides to check on the patrol.
***
First Platoon’s new hiding place was in the basement of an abandoned, destroyed apartment building, yet more wreckage left over from the first Ailonian Rebellion which had never been cleared away or repaired. The Rebels had destabilized the building by entering it, having cleared away a few load-bearing piles of rubble to gain access, and as a result, every few hours Thad heard the crumbling sounds of fresh debris falling through the unstable rubble somewhere above.
It was clearly not a safe place to live. From the outside, the crumbling, slagged three-story building appeared moments away from final collapse, but that was to the Rebels’ advantage. Who would be foolish enough to hide there?
The basement itself was mostly navigable although difficult to enter, and seemed to be strong enough to hold up against the shifting rubble above. The Rebels had quickly restored power to one section by running a discreet line to a conveniently-located outdoor outlet on a neighboring building. Now, the platoon’s weapon chargers littered the floor in the small laundry room that occupied that corner of the building. Nearby, a radio and a small tablet were set up on top of an empty crate.
The radio was linked up to the Council frequency again, but only for a short time now that they knew Avennia could track the Rebels’ long-wave radio signals. Short calls seemed to escape notice. But longer calls now resulted in door-to-door searches by the regime, such as the one that had forced the platoon—and several others—out of their previous location.
Fortunately, it seemed that the regime had not been able to monitor their communications—only detect them. Thad wasn’t totally surprised by that insight, since the radio system was quite archaic, likely a homemade creation from a black market group somewhere in the Independent Regions. Apparently, the Ailon Relief Foundation had discreetly purchased them around a year ago, and had kept them secretly stashed away until needed. Being an uncommon system, the encoding it used would not be familiar to anyone who’d never seen anything except standard Imperial protocols. The detection equipment Avennia had simply didn’t understand the format, and it could take several months and much trial-and-error for them to bring in the necessary equipment or personnel from offworld.
Unless they captured a Rebel radio. The Rebel soldiers were trained to destroy their radios if defeat seemed imminent. So far, the troops they’d lost must have held up their side of that deal, though the radio operators
still stored incorrect codebooks and memorized the corrections, just to be safe.
In any case, it had had a definite chilling effect on the Rebels’ war efforts. Rebel communication was greatly diminished. Everyone was afraid of making long radio transmissions, and the transfer of intelligence had waned greatly as a result. Still, Thad and his troops had led a few successful skirmishes from their new location.
“We’re trending towards defeat,” said Culper, his voice a bit fuzzy and lacking all high frequencies over the radio. “We’ve dealt some damage to the enemy, but not as much as they’ve dealt us.”
“That needs to change,” said Rhena sternly. “Soon.”
Thad nodded silently. Abram, thankfully, was not on the call. Time to get to the point. “Abram needs to be reigned in. Ever since he attacked the fusion plant, he’s been committing our forces to battles they can’t win, and ignoring too many of the guidelines I’ve laid out. We must only fight where we know we can win, because we don’t have the men or the supplies for a conventional war.”
“But too many of our fighters look up to him,” interjected Sal. “He has enough direct control over our troops that the rest of the Council has little sway with them.”
It was turning into a destructive clash of personalities. Abram was ignorant and self-absorbed, but very motivational. In contrast, Thad was well-experienced in leadership and battle, but he was quiet and tended to avoid the spotlight. And a rift had formed rapidly among the ranks of fighters. Those who’d worked directly with Thad realized he knew what he was doing. But the others naturally followed Abram, who’d been involved in the previous rebellion and had the authority of a full Council member, who officially led the war efforts even though he lacked the experience and wisdom for his position. And many from that faction had unconsciously absorbed Abram’s prejudices against outsiders, tending to reject Thad’s advice outright because he was not an Ailonian.
He’d been brainstorming methods of expanding his own faction and reducing Abram’s influence, but nothing viable really came to mind. It was a tricky political situation, and Thaddeus despised politics. Most approaches, he figured, would simply increase the rift and make the Rebels even less effective. He’d considered a few bold ideas—such as assassinating Abram—but that was not an option to him. The old Thad Marcell would have done it, and probably gotten away with it, too. But the new Thad Marcell, the one who’d emerged from the events of Waverly and Cadria Minor, was a different man.
His best option, he realized sadly, was to do nothing and hope Abram got himself captured or killed and that there’d be enough of a rebellion left to matter. But that seemed unlikely. The man was a coward and an expert at hiding. Lately, he’d been skipping the Council’s radio sessions out of fear of his signal being tracked. But he still held sway over a majority of their fighters, who saw him as an inspiration and followed his every order no matter how unlikely they were to succeed.
He had another option, though it was extremely risky to himself. But, as he reflected on their situation, he realized he needed to bring it up to the Council. Soon. If he waited too much longer, that option would not be viable anymore.
“The reality,” Thad said sorrowfully, “is that we’ve split into two factions. There’s an Abram faction, and a Messier faction. They’re losing trust in each other and it’s growing more and more difficult to coordinate between the two. At this point, I’m afraid we need to work with our own faction and let Abram do his own thing.”
The radio was silent for several long seconds. “I tend to concur, although I don’t like it one bit,” said Sal. “But that leaves us with just a fraction of our forces. Even if we win every single battle, can we really save Ailon with what we have left?” Sal paused. “And each time we attack, Avennia enslaves more free Ailonians, in retribution.”
Thad felt his heart beat nervously in his chest, and a sudden sense of fear rose within him. Could he do this without exposing his identity? “I can call for help,” he said. “If I can get a message off-world, we can get mercenary reinforcements.”
“I appreciate the offer,” said Rhena, “but how could we ever pay for mercenaries? We’ve lost access to even the meager accounts the Foundation operated. We have nothing.”
“I can cover the costs,” Thad replied.
Again, the radio fell silent as the group pondered. It was Lyra who finally broke the silence, speaking, as always, in quiet and sad tones. “We could probably access the courier networks through the Foundation, but I’m sure Avennia is reading all outgoing mail and refusing anything that’s encrypted.”
He’d come to that same realization. The ARF had never had starships of its own, not even small ones. They were too costly for the cash-strapped charity to operate, and Avennia would never have allowed it, either. And so the Foundation had always received offworld shipments through commercial firms from other systems. Those firms were surely under close enemy scrutiny now, lest they smuggle anything in or out that would benefit the Rebels.
But he already had the initial outline of a plan in his mind. “We need to steal a starship,” he said matter-of-factly. “If we can get one starship away from the star system, they can enter a message into the standard courier networks. Chilon is not far away, and isn’t controlled by Avennia, either.”
“And how long until someone responds?” asked Rhena.
Thad pursed his lips. He was a long ways away from Headquarters. And it was unlikely any of his own forces were nearby. Ailon was not far from the Norma Empire’s border, and his group rarely ventured close to Imperial borders, not overtly and not without good reason. He’d once had some…interesting…interactions after selling information among a set of Imperial Dukes back when he was younger and more naive, and he’d worked hard to avoid attracting any Imperial attention since then.
In terms of forces, he didn’t need much. A few Blue Fleet frigates could easily keep the Avennian Navy contingent at Ailon at bay, and the threat of orbital bombardment could bring the enemy’s groundside operations to a standstill. And if his Marine forces came to Ailon to reinforce on the ground, the planet would be free in short order.
If they arrived in time. “It could be months,” he admitted. This war’s only been going on for a few months. Can we survive that long?
“We don’t have to make any decisions now,” Sal offered. “But Messier, go ahead and write up a plan for this, and the Council will deliberate further. I suggest that stealing a starship from Zhale might be easier than Orent. And there’s no surface-to-space gun over there.”
“Copy.”
“Good luck. Our timer’s up and we need to close the channel.” The radio switched into standby mode as the link ended.
“Thoughts?” he asked without turning around, knowing some of his platoon staff were standing behind him.
“Getting to Zhale will be hard,” Chet said. “We have some vehicles we can use, but how do we get around the roadblocks and avoid detection?”
Thad nodded and crossed his arms, still facing away from the others.
“Surely we still have contacts in the Foundation?” asked Harve. “They have to be running trucks from here to Zhale. We can sneak our fighters in that way.”
Thad smiled slightly. His platoon was learning to think like him. “A few at a time, here and there, so as to avoid suspicion.”
“Do you think the Council will even go for it?” Ria asked. “Mercs?” she added after a long pause, and he knew she was thinking about the band of mercs that had raided the Ailonian weapons convoy in the last war.
“I don’t think they have much choice,” Chet said. “The Council may not trust outsiders much, but they clearly trust Chad. I’ll radio around a bit, see if I can find anyone who knows how to pilot a starship and navigate hyperspace.”
Chapter 30
Giles had had little to do with the Rebels since his old Clinic 12 had been disbanded just before the war. He was too old and out-of-shape to fight, and so he’d stayed with the Ailon Relief Fo
undation. Even that was hard, though. The Foundation had been completely taken over by Avennians, and they distrusted the Ailonians’ every move. Every clinic he’d worked had been closely monitored by armed Avennian Army soldiers and the quality of support the Foundation could provide to the Ailonian slaves had plummeted greatly as a result. Before the war, the Foundation had been nearly invisible. Now, they couldn’t so much as blink without prior authorization from an Army officer.
But Giles had one skill the Rebels desperately needed. He knew how to pilot a starship and navigate hyperspace. Furthermore, he wasn’t known as a Rebel, and he still had some freedom of movement when on Foundation business. Getting to Zhale hadn’t been difficult once the right people had been notified. The Foundation didn’t have many full-blown doctors with his level of knowledge and experience, and they had urgent need of one in Zhale.
Of course, the Army officer who’d signed Giles’ orders had no idea the request was a sham. The Rebels had only mostly broken from the Foundation, but they still had a few allies in key positions.
And now he was crossing the fields of the Zhale Spaceport, at night, with two platoons of Rebel fighters as laser beams flashed back and forth. I’m definitely too old and out-of-shape for this.
This spaceport had never operated with security in mind and resistance was only moderate. The Rebels had a small presence in Zhale, but the majority of the war was occuring in the Ailonian capital city of Orent. At some point, more than a few Avennian soldiers had left Zhale and other outlying cities to reinforce the capital.
The Rebels reached their destination with only a few losses. They’d even timed it right. The small, independent freighter was wide open for cargo loading, and Giles followed a squad inside as they cleared the ship and kicked out its alarmed civilian crew.
Then, half an hour later, he had the freighter in the air and heading east at twice the speed of sound, staying low to avoid the Orent gun’s line-of-sight until they could safely climb towards space. He also began a quick-charge on the hyperdrive. He only needed enough range to escape Ailon and any phi-band detectors.