by T J Mott
He made a face. “I hadn’t noticed that!” he retorted sarcastically. “We’ve found cover, but we’re outnumbered and pinned down! I need reinforcements!” He fired a pair of half-power laser beams through a window, one of them catching an enemy soldier in the leg as he led a squad of Avennians across the street and towards the Rebel position. The man went down with a howl.
“Sorry, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“Come again?” Thad said, ducking behind the window as a flurry of laser beams blasted above him, blasting chunks out of the room’s interior wall on the other side. “We have far more troops than this!”
“It’s politics.” Culper’s voice dropped to a low tone. “Marcell, most of our fighters are refusing to reinforce you.”
“Dammit, I’m on your side here!” Thad shouted into his mic. The barrage of laser beams halted and he moved back into firing position beneath the window.
“I know that! But our chain of command is breaking down now that we all know who you are!”
“Couldn’t you and Sal have kept my identity secret just a little bit longer?!” he snapped. “Why confront me so openly?”
He heard the other man sigh. “What’s done is done. You’ve got a full company of Army coming your way, where are your troops?”
“Hell if I know!” he answered. “Busy with the Avennian starships, I assume.” He killed the comm channel in anger. Outside, he saw more soldiers aiming his way, and Thad and the Rebels in the same room all dropped to the floor just as a new barrage of laser fire flashed in the air above their heads. The exterior wall was taking heavy damage, with chunks blasted out, holes burned through, and more and more laser beams were simply passing through the structure. The air smelled strongly of burning plastic and overheating power packs and ozone.
He flashed a look at the other Rebels and shook his head in disappointment. “We’re on our own here! We need to hold out until the Marines arrive!”
Chapter 40
“Poulsen, Laraby. What do you want me to do?”
On her sensor display, the Lynx and the rest of Ghost Squadron were still fleeing the Avennian fleet. The Lynx was damaged, having taken a direct railgun hit upon their arrival at Ailon, but the rest of the gunships were mostly unscathed.
And right then, as she was pondering how to continue, she breathed a sigh of relief, seeing that the patrol boats she’d just flown past were angling up to the sky, clearly intending to join the space battle and leave the Rebels on the ground alone. She’d read the situation right. Whoever was commanding the Avennian forces felt that the space battle was more urgent than the ground battle, and that their forces on the ground didn’t need air support at the moment. Good. That gives Marcell some breathing room. And the enemy still doesn’t know we intend to land Marines.
“Lynx, I want you to flutter some thrusters and vent some coolant or something. Act more damaged than you really are and peel away towards Ailon like you want to take cover behind the planet. When you get close enough, contact Marcell and get those Marines landed ASAP!” She gritted her teeth. The numbers were not in her favor…but if she played her cards right… “The rest of Ghost Squadron, form up and let’s do a slash through the enemy formation. We need to keep them away from the Lynx.”
“Aye, Commander.”
The trio of gunships put on a sudden burst of speed as they finally cleared the stratosphere. The air around them began to thin rapidly and their thruster efficiency and output skyrocketed as Ailon’s atmosphere gave way to interplanetary vacuum. Meanwhile, the sensor reading for the Lynx became unstable, with an odd oscillation in its ultraviolet emissions that indicated either severe reactor or thruster problems. Almost simultaneously, its infrared signature shot up as well, looking like a sudden heat buildup caused by overloaded cooling systems. The Swift-class fast frigate altered course, angling towards the other side of Ailon.
Poulsen smirked to herself. None of the Avennian starships were following it. By all indications, the Lynx had just suffered some kind of malfunction and was out of the fight, unable to jump to hyperspace and hoping to escape the battle for the moment. If she were in charge of the Avennians, she’d focus on mopping up the Lancers and deal with the Swift-class frigate later.
The two flights of gunships had nearly formed up. “Great job!” she called out into the comm channel. “Good luck, Lynx. Ghost Squadron, I want all units except mine to switch to full stealth operation. I’ll keep this channel open and transmitting for orders, but until you hear otherwise, I want comm silence.” She couldn’t go silent, Ghost Squadron just wasn’t experienced enough to work together without comms. Besides, she’d burned off all of her starship’s stealth coating and even some of its armor during her re-entry stunt earlier. There was no way Ghost 1 could go quiet enough to fall off the enemy’s sensors.
One by one, her subordinate gunships began disappearing from her own screens as they switched off their transponders, put their comms in receive-only mode, turned off active sensors, and shut down their thrusters and coasted on inertia only. Now, only her ship and the Lynx were visible, and the Lynx was too far away to shoot at now.
And the Avennians were confused or concerned. The enemy fleet shut off their thrusters and began coasting, while cranking their active sensors to full-power in an attempt to scan the area and find the gunships. Several seconds later, seeing only Ghost 1, they turned about and changed course, throttling up straight for her.
With careful vectoring of their thrusters, the gunships could remain invisible. “Flight 2, accelerate towards the enemy. You’re approaching from behind. At range one hundred klicks, all weapons fire on this target.” She tapped her display, selecting an Avennian frigate, specifically one of its main thrusters, and forwarding the info to the rest of the squadron. “Flight 1, go full throttle. We’re the bait but I don’t want us to get shot. Shoot at targets of opportunity as we pass.” Remembering the Lancers’ torpedo tubes, she wished her squadron actually had some ordnance for them. If they could sneak up close to the enemy, too close to dodge, and drop a fusion warhead…but they didn’t have any. This would be a lasers-only battle for Ghost Squadron.
They moved into range, and she winced as the enemy fleet began firing lasers at her gunship. “Flight 1, go active on sensors.” That would make them visible, hopefully splitting the enemy’s fire at three gunships instead of just one. Otherwise, a run like this was suicide. One small gunship against multiple destroyers and frigates?
Ghost 2 and 5 reappeared on her sensors. They were far ahead of her, still having stock Lancer Mark V thrusters and no helium tanks. And they were going fast, having nearly reached max acceleration now.
The enemy split up their fire. Suddenly, Flight 2 was behind them, momentarily showing on sensors as they unleashed a barrage of lasers at the stern of the frigate Poulsen had designated earlier. The sensors indicated a loss of plasma containment on one of its main thrusters, and it spewed a massive cloud of superheated fusion plasma in all directions until that thruster went into emergency shutdown.
And then Flight 1 was behind the enemy and Flight 2 was in front, having switched sides by cutting through the formation from either side and passing through. Flight 2 disappeared from sensors again. The Avennian fleet, realizing this, turned around to pursue Flight 1.
Poulsen stole a glance at her overall tactical display. The Lynx was nearly to Ailon now. Soon, the frigate could begin launching its Marine transports, hopefully turning the war on the ground. Up here, Ghost Squadron was still massively outnumbered and outgunned, but things were generally going the right way for the moment.
She grimaced. This is not what I signed up for. Ailon’s not going to pay us. There will be no cash bonuses, no spoils of war here. We’re not here as mercenaries-for-hire, we’re here as Marcell’s private army, trapped by our leader’s whimsical crusades.
Shaking her head to clear it, Poulsen studied her tactical display for a long moment, noting that her flight’s trajectory woul
d take them close to Ailon’s small moon—more of a giant asteroid than a moon, lopsided and cratered and in no way spherical. “All right, Ghost Squadron, let’s head towards the moon. Lead the fleet away from Ailon, so the Lynx can safely drop troops.” Then, we figure out how to survive this.
***
Thaddeus and the Rebels closest to him finished their retreat into an interior room. The outer wall where they’d been was reduced to slag and no good for cover anymore. Now, they were in a kitchen, exchanging fire with the enemy through the new holes that were being burned through the interior walls at a startling pace.
He’d left with three platoons. Now, he had no idea how many remained with him—probably most of them, he concluded, judging from the volumes of laser fire outside. But he didn’t have a Rebel radio, only his normal Imperial-grade comm unit. It couldn’t connect with the longwave transceivers his squad commanders carried, and his foot couriers were not being efficient at relaying reports or orders through the building.
Nightfall was rapidly approaching. From the way the laser fire moved about outside, shifting targets as the Rebels changed positions or took cover, he knew he had troops on the upper two floors, too. And seeing the blasted remains of the outer wall, and the occasional chunks of debris that broke free and fell from above, made him wonder just how long the building had until collapse. The only reason it had lasted this long was that most of the incoming fire was laser. Had the Avennians turned any real firearms or cannons towards the Rebels, it would punch right through the concrete-polymer walls without even slowing down.
Thad’s comm chimed, and he opened the channel. “Culper here. Marcell, the Zhale phi-band sensors just detected thirty-three phi-band flashes at the edges of the star system.”
Thad’s blood turned cold in an instant. “Thirty-three? Poulsen must really be giving them hell up there. I didn’t know the Avennians had that many!”
“Warships, no. But if they brought police vessels and deputized some armed civilian ships, and pulled from their other colonies—”
Thad cursed. “Ailon must really mean a lot to them. Hang on.” He dropped to the floor, wincing as a small chunk of overheated concrete-polymer exploded from the wall and burned his forehead, and changed comm channels. “Poulsen, Marcell.”
“I know, we saw it too,” she said, sounding distracted and angry. “Their transponders are off, no idea. Look, I’ve got the Avennian fleet tied up at the moment, but things could go wrong real quick. The Marine transports just left the Lynx and are re-entering now. Where do you want them?”
“Follow my comm signal!” he replied. “Land them here!”
“Copy, Admiral. Poulsen out.”
He turned to face away from the kitchen wall, now above and behind him, which had dozens of fist-sized holes burned through it, with more appearing every second as the Avennians poured their fire in. A handful of Rebels squatted behind it, firing through the damage at the Army unit outside. Thad cupped his hands around his mouth like a megaphone. “Reinforcements are on the way! Stand firm!”
He heard it echo a few times as the Rebel fighters relayed it through the building, and in a heartbeat he saw their mood lift. It was that obvious on their faces, and just like that they instantly became more ferocious in their defense, firing more rapidly and calling targets out to each other.
Peering through the wall, Thad examined the carnage outside. They’d done a lot of damage. The street was littered with Avennian Army bodies. Across the way, the enemy had holed up in a similar building, which looked just as damaged as the one Thad was in. Laser fire moved in constant sheets between the two structures, and every few minutes a fresh group of Avennians would attempt to press towards the Rebel building only to be cut down by the defenders.
His weapon chirped. His final power pack had just run out of energy. He cursed, tossing the useless carbine aside, and scanned the environment, hoping for a replacement. There were no corpses in the room with him, no fallen comrades he could pilfer a weapon from.
Abruptly, a brilliant laser beam appeared outside, angling in from the sky and nearly dazzling Thaddeus with its brilliance. It remained, a continuous, steady beam instead of a high-powered pulse, tracing across the enemy’s building and cutting through the outer walls. He heard concrete crackle as it superheated and failed, mixed with the surprised shouts of enemy soldiers, and as day continued to give way to night, the thin smoke that began pouring out of the building glowed with reflections from the beam.
He heard a new sound then: that of fusion thrusters whining and whistling in an atmosphere. It grew louder, and suddenly two armored transports landed on the street between the two buildings, their heavy continuous-beam antipersonnel lasers still cutting into the enemy’s position with terrifying precision.
Applause and shouts of joy rang out within the Rebels’ makeshift fortress. Thad let out a huge sigh of relief and watched as the transports’ ramps extended. Immediately, a platoon of his own Marines disembarked, charging into the streets in medium-duty body armor and wielding high-powered laser weapons that made the Rebels’ stolen carbines seem like children’s toys.
A few stray laser beams continued to emanate from the enemy’s position, occasionally connecting with a Marine but doing little or no damage against their armor. The Marines returned fire and pressed in, storming the building as soon as the transports’ own lasers stopped shooting.
Thad stood and quickly left the building, changing comm channels as he moved towards the transports. Behind him, a disorganized formation of Rebels followed. And as he located the Marine unit’s comm channel, a flurry of voices cut into his headset, cool and calm and professional. “Breach in three, two, one, go!” “Four targets inside!” “Room’s clear, advance down that hallway!” “Transport Delta, put some fire through the third story window, second from the north.” “The enemy is retreating through the back doors. Squad Three, circle around and deal with them!”
He reached the closest transport. Two Marines standing guard at the ramp momentarily pointed their weapons at him before recognizing him. “I need a weapon!” Thad called out, and one of them wordlessly handed over his laser carbine and a belt full of spare power packs. “Thanks!”
But it was over already, this battle at least. The Marines had effortlessly driven the Avennians from the building, forcing them into retreat. Around the two transports, the Marine platoon and Thad’s remaining Rebels formed up. The two Marine transports were well-equipped, and Thad’s soldiers began handing out spare weapons to the Rebels.
A Marine officer approached Thad and saluted. “Admiral Marcell, Captain Toma, company commander. Glad we got here in time. I dropped one platoon here. The other three are still in their transports, ready to provide air support and waiting for landing instructions.”
Thad nodded. “Thanks, Captain.” He pointed to the east. “Most of the government buildings are that way, including the Capitol and some of the Avennian military leadership. Find a safe spot to disembark the rest of your troops, and then we’re going that way and forcing a surrender.”
“Aye, Admiral.” The Marine captain disappeared into the transport to coordinate the movements.
Thad’s comm came alive again. “Marcell, Culper. Those thirty-three contacts jumped back into hyperspace.”
He scowled, suddenly reminded that things weren’t going that well in space. “Must be making their final jump into the system. ETA?”
“Uh, your phi-band sensor tap doesn’t really give us that much information.”
He looked ahead at the cityscape in front of him. Things on the ground were suddenly going well, but without a break in space, it meant nothing. Unless they could reach the Capitol and the garrison, and force a surrender before the reinforcements left hyperspace above Ailon…and would the newcomers abide by a ceasefire if they shifted the balance of power that much?
He gritted his teeth as he contemplated. He didn’t have any choice. But around him, the formation of nervous-looking Rebels and his own
rock-steady Marines seemed ready, and then he heard Toma’s order through the comm system. Overhead, he could hear the rest of the Marine transports hovering and landing somewhere in the near distance, quickly returning to the air where they could provide some basic air support with their heavy antipersonnel lasers and provide battlefield intelligence from the skies.
Ailon’s sun finished setting and the city rapidly plunged into nighttime as the group began to advance. They’d only moved two hundred meters when they met resistance again. The enemy Avennians had fallen back and formed a line, taking cover within a new row of government office buildings in a last-ditch effort to stop the Ailonian advance.
And as Thad, his Marines, and the Ailonian Rebels advanced, they quickly ran into Avennian light armor.
Thad looked up at the night sky in frustration. “Without our gunship cover, they’re bringing out tanks,” he said to nobody in particular. They didn’t have many, only four or five, but four or five tanks were more than enough to force the Marine transports to retreat from the battlefield. He keyed his comm. “Captain Toma, I hope you have something that can deal with tanks?”
“Affirmative, Admiral,” Toma replied. “I’m pulling back one squad to rendezvous with a transport and arm themselves with antitank rockets. We’ll handle it.”
Thad nodded to himself, grateful that the Marine company was that well-prepared. He’d grown too used to the haphazard and inexperienced Rebel army. “Thanks,” he replied distantly as he and some Rebels and Marines took position in a narrow alleyway behind another building.
The next stage of the battle hadn’t quite begun. Each side fired a few lazy shots at each other, but both sides were dug in, the Avennians and their squad of tanks holding position and daring the Rebels to advance, and the Rebels and the Marines not willing to charge without air support. It was a waiting game, and Thad hoped the Marine antitank weapons would arrive soon to break the stalemate.