Rebellion at Ailon

by T J Mott

  It read PARRI.

  Chapter 35

  Thaddeus tried to study the digital map of Orent on his small tablet, but the effort was futile. He was trembling and shivering violently, his soul reeling from what Ria had just told him. He felt cold. Goosebumps covered his arms and his hair stood up on end. His stomach desperately wanted to vomit.

  Of all people he could have met on Ailon. Of all the women he could have fallen in love with. It had to be Ria. This entire time, something deep within him had said it was a bad idea to get involved with an Ailonian woman. But he never could have anticipated this.

  Come on. Concentrate. There’s still a war to win. He forced himself to stare at the map. He had no idea what kind of diversion Abram was about to create. But he needed to find a location to make his comm call. One where his platoon could hold off the enemy long enough for him to coordinate with Captain Laraby and create a plan.

  If Laraby and the Lynx were even still in-system. If the mysterious Ghost Squadron was an enemy of his, he realized sourly, this could easily be the end of the war. They would force the Lynx into retreat, or worse, destroy it. Without reinforcements Ailon would certainly lose the war, and the enslavement they’d suffer would be ten times worse than before.

  But who could they be? Probably bounty hunters. Maybe hired by High Prince Saar. He suddenly tasted bile. How terrible would that be, for a starship like the Lynx to show up, fully capable of changing the course of the war and helping Ailon to freedom, only for their hopes to get shot down by some enemy of Thad’s who was bent on revenge. All during their most desperate hour, when the Rebels were on the verge of defeat.

  Then, he realized, Ailon would also lose its second war because of him, too, despite his good intentions this time around. The universe just kept cruelly targeting anything that came to Ailon’s assistance. Once, by Thad’s own hand, personally. And now, a second time, by enemies he’d accidentally led here. Enemies he’d made during his obsessive, self-indulgent, destructive search for Earth.

  Ria and her son had avoided enslavement after the first war. Would they be so lucky this time?

  He heard the door to the tiny planning room—long ago a small office—open up behind him, and Chet stepped in. Thad concentrated on his trembling to bring it under control. He was only partially successful.

  “What’s the plan, boss?” Chet asked. “I contacted four nearby squads and they’re trickling in now. Abram has some kind of diversion set up and is waiting for us to signal we’re ready.” Thad looked at the map again, struggling for words. “Hey, are you okay, Chad? You look rattled.”

  Thad gulped and nodded. “Yeah,” he lied. “I’m just…exhausted. There’s so much riding on us right now. Ailon needs us to succeed.”

  “Yeah, the pressure’s really on, isn’t it. Hey, look. We’ve both been fighting long enough now, and we always knew things could go wrong. You helped us put up a damn good fight. Win or lose, that means a lot, and we’d never have made it this far without you.” Chet stepped up to the table and looked down at the tiny screen. “What are you thinking?”

  Thad forced himself to speak flatly and evenly to hide his emotions, and his words came out in a dead-sounding monotone. “We need to find someplace easy to defend. Deploy troops there and keep things covered while I comm those starships. And hope that Abram’s diversion keeps the Avennians from paying too much attention to us.”

  “Hmm.” Chet studied the map quietly, one hand thoughtfully holding his chin. Then he pointed at a spot, a few klicks south of their makeshift platoon HQ and near the edge of the city. “Right here. Old ARF dormitory, a smaller one, but with three stories, lots of windows, and easy roof access. Get the platoon in the windows and up on the roof, and we can hold out there for a long time. It has a decent basement, too, that ought to survive orbital lasing for a bit. There might even be a few Foundation cars left there, which we should steal back for use in later missions. We’re very short on transportation right now.”

  Thad swallowed dryly, and nodded, feeling embarrassed at his own inability to think clearly. Yes, it was a fair plan. And he, with almost a decade of combat planning and mercenary experience, hadn’t been able to think of it, because all he saw in his mind’s eye was the crumpled, smoking corpse of Lim Parri, seconds after Thad had murdered him. Instead, a former surgeon, now a rookie platoon sergeant with only a few months’ experience in warfare, had confidently and quickly made a plan.

  Outside, he heard the sounds of gunfire, and it was slowly getting louder. Avennia was still making a sweep through the city, chasing out and cleaning up Abram’s Rebels as they flushed them out. And now the fighting was approaching their location. If they didn’t get out soon, they’d be forced to abandon their mission. Their latest makeshift base made a good hiding place, but it was not very defensible if Avennia realized there were Rebels within.

  He eyed his platoon sergeant and nodded. “Excellent,” he said softly, his throat feeling incredibly dry. “Get the platoon assembled, briefed, and ready, and update the Council.” He looked back at the map. Several klicks away, but near the edge of the city. Could his platoon fight their way back here if the Avennians homed in on his comm signal and attacked? Only if they sent a small force. The location looked defensible, but had no easy exits.

  If Ghost Squadron is enemy, and I can’t contact the Lynx, I’m going to die in that building, he realized. Once again, he saw Lim Parri’s corpse, and his most recent conversation with Ria played through his mind again. And maybe that’s for the best. Although Ria would mourn me…and that’s…that’s—

  An abrupt thunderclap shook the entire building, vibrating the floors and rattling the windows and doors. Chet frowned and looked up at the ceiling as dust fell from the ceiling trusses and ventilation ducts. “A thunderstorm? Strange. We only get those once every few years.” Imperial years, Thaddeus thought, absentmindedly correcting Chet. Ailon’s sun was small and weak, and Ailon orbited it closely. An Ailon year was only eight days long.

  A second thunderclap boomed outside, and this time Thad frowned. “No. That’s not a thunderstorm, that’s laser fire! From starships!” A third thunderclap. Very loud this time, and closer than the first two. Until now, Avennia had not used their patrol boats against ground targets. “Orent’s under orbital bombardment! Get the platoon ready to move! Now!” He paused for the briefest fraction of a second. “And that includes Rin!”

  Chet dashed out of the room. Thad took a minute to stuff his backpack of some basics: some food and water, extra power packs for his laser, the comm he’d smuggled onworld and left shut down all this time. On a whim, he also tossed in his prosthetic hand, which was sitting in a pile of parts on another table where Ria had been trying unsuccessfully to repair its damaged micro-cable bundle.

  As the terrifying sound of starship laser blasts continued outside, fortunately getting a little quieter and more distant, he tossed the bag over his shoulders, slung up his carbine, and stepped out of the room. Outside, in the main store area, were about fifty tired and dirty-looking men and women—and one child—ready to move. All eyes were on him. “Listen up!” he barked. “Time’s short. We need to get away from the battle before it reaches us, and cross several kilometers quickly! Once there, we’re making a comm call to some mercenary starships that are somewhere”—he pointed his hand upwards—“up there! If we can coordinate with them, we can get the reinforcements and starship support we need to finally win this war!”

  Or so I hope, which he didn’t say aloud. Could the Lynx have even brought enough Marines to make a difference? It was a small ship, like every warship in Blue Fleet. And how could they land them, with that unexpectedly-powerful surface-to-space gun and a potentially hostile enemy squadron in the area?

  He dismissed those thoughts for now. First thing’s first. Get out of here before we’re blasted from orbit. As if to punctuate his thoughts, there was another thunderclap. This one very close.

  He nodded at Chet. “Let’s get moving! Chet,
you’re in the lead!”

  Chet stepped up and began shouting orders. “Platoon in line formation! Third Squad take point, Messier’s squad next, Second Squad, and Fourth Squad at the end! Squad formations at squad leaders’ discretion! Weapons hold, avoid enemy contact, keep Messier guarded, and move! Move! Move!”

  The Rebels filed out of the old, abandoned store, into the narrow streets outside. The nighttime seemed even darker than normal, and the faint smell of smoke and ozone filled the air. The sounds of small-arms weapons fire echoed through the night, ebbing and flowing but never seeming much closer than a klick. Thad’s squad—Ria, Rin, Sema, and a multitude of Ailonians he didn’t recognize—kept him boxed in and guarded. He was the only member of the Rebels with a comm unit capable of reaching the starships above. They were illegal, even for free Ailonians and ARF workers, and Thad had hidden his very carefully to smuggle it onworld.

  They moved swiftly but silently through the city, sticking to narrow side streets and alleyways where they hoped to avoid any Avennian patrol vehicles. Chet and the squad leaders communicated solely via hand signals, lest their voices attract unwanted attention, all radios offline to avoid being tracked. A few times the point squad spotted enemy patrols, forcing the entire platoon to quietly change their route and avoid contact.

  A few times, avoiding the enemy wasn’t possible. His squads surrounded him, picking off nearby patrols, leaving Thad’s squad safe inside the formation. Each time, some of the Rebel fighters in his platoon fell, but the rest pressed on. It felt wrong for him to hide behind everyone like that, but he was the only one who could contact the Lynx.

  They had barely gone a klick when they encountered a company of Avennian Army soldiers, Thad guessed from the amount of laser fire that was suddenly flying around. They’d passed into some kind of complex. Several large three-story buildings surrounded them, probably offices for the administrators of the city’s slave-operated industry.

  The Rebel fighters had taken cover wherever they could. At the corners of the buildings, behind parked cars, or taking concealment behind some hedgerows. The enemy was seemingly everywhere. Laser beams flashed out from rooftops and windows on three sides of them.

  “Chet!” he shouted through the noise. “We can’t get pinned down like this! They’ll lase us from orbit!” Thad looked around at his surroundings, searching for a solution.

  “Everyone back off!” Chet ordered. “We’ll double back and try to move around them!”

  Something behind him flashed like lightning, nearly blinding Thad even though he was facing away. A heartbeat later, a deafening thunderclap blasted through the air as a mini-earthquake rocked the ground beneath his feet. An orbital strike had struck nearby. “They’re walking their fire into us!” he shouted.

  Chet pointed at something in the dark. “Cars! That way! Get to those cars!”

  Thad couldn’t see them at first, his eyes still blinded from the previous strike. But the next strike briefly illuminated the area again, and he saw what Chet was referring to. He’d pointed at a parking lot. A multitude of orange-colored Foundation cars—most likely confiscated from both the ARF and the Rebels—were parked there.

  Per Avennian law, Foundation cars could be operated without keys. Privacy and security were luxuries not allowed to free Ailonians. In this case, that worked to the Rebels’ advantage. “Go!” he shouted. “Go!”

  Chet shouted at the top of his lungs and made hand signals at the same time. “Second Squad, take up position over there! Third, over there! First and Fourth, get to those cars!”

  Thad’s squad followed Fourth Squad at a distance of twenty meters, pushing towards the parking lot. The other two squads quickly reached their positions and began pouring laser fire at the enemy locations—a volume of fire heavy enough to light the area up. Thad looked ahead and saw dozens of Avennian Army soldiers all around them. Some snapping laser shots off from around building corners, others on the roofs, still others in the windows. And now that the Army knew there were Rebel fighters here, enemy soldiers began exiting the buildings to join the fight. They must be searching this complex for Rebels! And we walked right into it!

  Fortunately, the soldiers were ignoring his squad, at least for the moment. First and Fourth moved quickly towards a cars in a low crouch, not using their weapons and hoping to present a lesser threat than the other two squads. And it worked. The enemy was exchanging heavy fire with Second and Third Squads, completely ignoring First and Fourth. A few seconds later, they were at the cars. He heard Chet shouting somewhere. “All squads! Into the cars! Go!”

  Thad climbed into the driver’s seat of the nearest electric sedan. Ria then appeared in the passenger seat beside, looking determined and even a bit battle-hardened. Opening her window, she began snapping off laser shots into the distance. Then Rin popped into the back seat, and Thad brought the car out of standby. He tapped the controls, disabling the headlights and running lights just moments after they engaged, and started to drive.

  Outside, the Avennians seemed to realize the Rebels’ escape plans, and the volume of enemy fire suddenly intensified. Now laser beams were lancing at the cars—and at the Rebel fighters rushing to enter them. He saw more than a few Rebel bodies strewn around in the dark, only visible for moments at a time when a nearby laser beam flashed by, or when one of the strikes from space lit up the city.

  “Where’s Chet?” Thad shouted into the car. He frantically scanned the scene with his eyes, finally locating Chet crouched behind a concrete barrier at the edge of the parking lot. He stomped on the throttle as he pointed the car in that direction and opened his window. Its motor whined as it accelerated, and just as quickly he skidded it to a stop. “Get in!” he hollered.

  Chet shook his head. “No! You get moving! I need to help cover the platoon while they load up!”

  “Negative!” Thad shouted back. “I need you and your radio so I can talk to the Rebels!”

  Thad was right, and Chet knew it. He seemed to mouth an expletive, and then jumped into the seat behind Thad, next to Rin. “I need directions!” Thad barked out. “I don’t know this part of Orent!”

  “That way!” said Ria, pointing a finger towards a parking lot exit a hundred meters to their right. “Go there and turn right onto the highway, and we’ll be going south towards the warehouse!”

  “Got it!”

  Thaddeus put the car into motion again, weaving around curbs and light poles and parked cars, flinching each time an enemy laser beam struck his vehicle or flashed past the windows. Behind him, several other orange-colored cars followed closely. They pulled onto the highway and accelerated quickly. Laser beams continued to flash out at them across the distance, burning holes in the car’s body, but nobody got hurt and it didn’t seem to affect the car’s handling. A few seconds later, they were far enough away from the Army company that they stopped taking fire.

  Thad checked his mirrors and grimaced. Only four cars followed him. The standard Foundation sedan could seat five, so he had at most twenty fighters following him. The rest of the platoon didn’t make it. “Chet, get on the radio and tell Abram to start his diversion!”

  He flipped the headlights back on. It was so dark, and the occasional cloud of smoke blew over the road, bringing visibility to almost nothing for a few seconds at a time. He didn’t want to exit the war by driving off the road at highway speeds.

  “He’s launching his diversion. Says we shouldn’t have anything to worry about.”

  Thad huffed disapprovingly. Abram had made so many bad calls during the war already that he had strong doubts about the diversion. “Any idea what he’s doing?”

  He heard another round of radio chatter between Chet and the leadership. “He’s ordering all units to attack the garrison.”

  “He’s WHAT!?” Thad shouted at the top of his lungs. “Is he out of his goddamned mind? There’s no way that’s survivable!”

  “Some of our men agree!” Chet replied. “Chad, they’re asking you for orders!�
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  “Dammit, I don’t really have time to think about that right now!”

  “Chad, Chad!” Ria pleaded. “Look. He’s doing the right thing for once! What better way to keep attention away from us than an attack on the military’s strongest position!”

  Thad chewed on his lower lip for a short second. So many Rebel fighters would fall…

  “Chad, listen!”

  He nodded to himself. It was a stupid, hasty attack. But it could keep attention off the remnants of his platoon, and he was far too occupied to come up with a better plan. “Tell them to follow Abram’s orders,” he said, almost too quietly to be heard over the whine of the motor and the wind outside. “Attack the garrison. But be ready to retreat as soon as I say, we’re not going to throw away everyone’s lives!”

  This war could end in a blink, and it’s still too soon to tell which side will win. Either we get the Lynx and bomb Avennia off the planet, or all our men die attacking the garrison.

  They drove in relative peace for another thirty seconds, but that silence ended abruptly when a pair of Ailon Federal Police Force cruisers suddenly emerged from the darkness behind them. Their windows were open, and Thad glanced over to see men inside lining their weapons up on him. He tapped the brakes, disrupting their aim for a moment, and behind him Chet radioed the other cars. A moment later, the others took up formation around Thad’s car, boxing him in and keeping him hidden from their pursuit. Brilliant red-violet beams shot out from their windows, stitching patterns of glowing, molten holes and blackened scorch marks into the police cruisers. The ear-splitting crack of conventional firearms occasionally sounded out between the far-quieter snap of discharging laser capacitors.

  One of the police cruisers peeled away from the chase. Thad couldn’t tell if the driver had been hit or was just retreating. But two more cruisers quickly took its place. During the recent parts of the war, the AFPF and their fast, agile cruisers had acted like cavalry, able to swiftly move through the tight confines of the city and respond to smaller threats while leaving larger formations of Rebel fighters to the slower but more heavily-armed Avennian Army.