“Savages,” he began tersely after a long sigh. “Some have suspected for a long time that they might actually be working together. Today… proves it.”
The sergeant major remained quiet as they moved through the smashed parking lot and onto the street. The amputation casualty was dying behind them; he wouldn’t make it to the evac point. But they were carrying him anyway. When it was time for him to die, he’d die with them. Not alone and left behind.
The dying man groaned and kept asking nonsensical questions. Conversation seemed to be the only way to get the poor bastard’s plight out of your mind. Nobody wanted to hear that background noise in the eerie and vacant night.
“What about Delta Viridian Five, sir?” asked Andres.
The colonel knew exactly what the NCO was referring to. Everyone who’d ever made an effort to study the Savages knew about the Delta Viridian incident. Way back in the early days, when the Savages first started to show themselves in small, isolated incidents, a scout vessel came upon two Savage hulks fighting in an uninhabited system over a colonizable world. The two ships destroyed each other with what the scout vessel’s captain described as “doomsday weapons.”
Survey and reclamation teams went out to that lonely system and, aided by the scout vessel’s visual logs, determined that there had been points in the battle where the two distinctly different Savage cultures could have saved themselves and fled. Instead they had chosen mutual annihilation through their voodoo superweapons. True believers in their own superiority, all the way to the end.
It was because of this incident, and a few others like it, that general theory held that the Savages didn’t like each other. Hated each other. As much as they hated post-Earth humanity. Maybe even more so. And that theory grew in strength every time a lone Savage hulk attempted to take on a colonized world. Always alone. No strength in numbers. Relatively easy pickings for an assembled fleet to take care of.
Except today had made all that conjecture a lie and those past victories moments of grace. A pleasant lie for those who’d wanted to package the Savages neatly into an idea they found comfortable and reassuring. That the Savages were always their own enemies too.
But it was a lie. At least on New Vega.
“I guess things have changed,” said the colonel. “There are so many reasons why this doesn’t make sense, and one reason why it does. And now that it’s happened, the best thing you can do, Sergeant Major, the best thing we can all do, is wrap our heads around it and realize that this is what it is. The Savages are allying. Forming into something cohesive.”
They walked in silence for a while. The moanings of the amputee were more erratic.
The soldiers to the rear set the dying man down. He was going now. He kept telling them he needed to catch his breath between papery gasps.
The colonel and the sergeant major stepped away. Out in front, Martin watched the dark shadows of other units and stragglers making their way down into the lowlands of New Vega City. Off in the distance they could see the stadium they were all headed to. The place where it had all begun.
The Porter was there.
“They can’t communicate,” the colonel whispered to Andres as the dying kid fought to breathe. Marks didn’t see it as his job to comfort the soldier on the way out. Let his buddies do that. Let him be surrounded by those who loved him. “Comm between known worlds and fixed points is one thing. We’ve established that with years of contact and vessel data confirmation. But the Savages are out there, in the vast distances between worlds we never go to. We’ve bypassed all that with the hyperdrive, but it’s where they live—and the volume of that space is so massive it would be almost impossible for two ships to find each other and talk to one another. That’s one problem that’s always kept them apart.”
Sergeant Major Andres nodded, following along.
“The second thing is their culture. Each tribe believes that only it knows the right way forward into the future. The Savage, by the very nature of his society, is convinced with absolute certainty that he is right, and everyone else is wrong. The utopia he thinks will save them all… that’s the only way. Everyone else is a heretic. Everyone else has to die.”
“Yeah, well,” Andres said, working some saliva in his mouth and spitting. “That don’ seem too different from most folks, you ask me.”
“Put it this way…” continued the colonel after a pause. “Certainty. That’s a Savage. Raised in a closed single-belief culture that aspires to a sort of godhood. That’s any given Savage vessel. They pulled up and left Earth during her worst days. Creating cultures in their generation ships that aspired to make right what humanity on Earth had gotten so wrong. Sounds good, right? Every time any world gets into a political debate with itself, both sides start seeing the merits of the Savages… you follow. One voice. Unity of purpose. Everyone who doesn’t think like you is mentally ill. Death to the heretics.
“And then… mass mental illness sets in. All the pitfalls that come with an inbred system of thinking like that—a listener that can only hear its own voice. They go mad out there in the void, and they begin to believe all the lies they’ve told themselves. Just to keep going. Cult-like leaders don’t help much. And the Savages are rife with them.”
“Sounds like crazy stuff,” mumbled the sergeant major. “Way above my pay grade, sir.”
The colonel continued like he didn’t even hear the senior NCO’s comment. As though the sergeant major were privy to the wheels that turned all the time inside the normally stoic officer. Conversations he’d had ten thousand times with himself.
“And so any two Savage tribes are not the same—not in any way, shape, or form. They are vastly different. And each is convinced that the other is societal poison. Mentally ill. Must be aborted. And the hierarchy, because there’s always one within those ships, they’ll do anything to convince their subjects to keep moving through the darkness because that’s the only thing that keeps them in power. They breed paranoia, suspicion, and fear like some people breed cattle. They’re like modern-day pharaohs. But more than. Much more than absolute rulers, if there can be such a thing. Power. Total power like you’ve never thought possible.
“Those hulks we saw today, each one worships some god, or gods, at its core. And they are the gods. Those cult leaders. Whole societies dedicated to one man, or woman, who’s shed their humanity to rule over the others. All of whom aspire to be that god they worship. And the whole culture lives for that person.
“So when two Savage cultures meet… it’s like two relatives who can’t stand each other, trying to have a civil dinner with nothing but spite and contempt for one another. Before today, any scientist who’s made a career of studying their history, the fragments, the relics of their cultures whenever and wherever we could find them, would have told you it’s absolutely impossible for them to work together. And yet today… they did just that.”
“It’s gonna be all right, buddy,” said one of the soldiers in the distance, comforting his dying friend.
“Why, Colonel?” asked the sergeant major.
The dying man finally gasped, eyes wide open, and was gone.
Marks whispered, not wanting his voice to rise up above the still that had formed in the wake of the soldier’s passing. “The one reason why, as opposed to all the reasons why not, is that if they don’t… they’ve realized they won’t survive. We pick them off. We show up like we did today and put them down…”
“… or Ol’ Tyrus Rechs gets ’em,” Andres finished. “An’ after today I’m not so sure he ain’t right about that, if he actually does exist beyond the little Hollow Eve masks kids wear. Lotta dead wish it’d gone that way today instead’ve the way it did, sir. That’s for sure.”
“Yeah,” said the colonel. “But it’s gone beyond that now. They’re working together. This changes everything.”
He said nothing more, and the usual silence fell between them.
As the march began once more, the sergeant major fell in step beside the colonel and picked up the thread. “How do you know all that, sir? If you don’t mind my asking.”
Colonel Marks fixed him with a glare that he might not have known was on his face. He said nothing for a long minute. Then:
“I was a slave on a Savage ship for fifteen years. A long time ago.”
And then he turned and went off through the twilight dark to the point man ahead. There was only an hour until the Porter lifted off. And they had a long way to go.
41
Three-Six Armored Cavalry (Fast Attack)
931st Artillery Perimeter
In the stunned silence of the aftermath that followed the battle between the Savage hulks and the surviving Coalition vessels that had fled off into who knows where, the remnants of the Three-Six Cav returned to their MTAVs for packaged food and drink.
Sergeant Greenhill tried the comm. Tried in vain to raise Doghouse.
Nothing.
Tried to get any other still-operating unit.
Nothing.
Maybe some EMP device had been deployed on the field and electronics had been temporarily knocked out. Most systems were wired to survive such attacks, but they took time to reboot.
He let the comm mic in the MTAV dangle as he watched the night come on. And he finally became aware, or maybe just accepted, that he was now in charge. All throughout the day, after the death of Colonel Dippel and the company CO, he had assumed that some staff officer would show up to take charge and tell them where to go, who to kill next.
But no one had.
Sergeant Greenhill weighed his options. They could link up with some unit, find another officer, and let that cat decide what to do next. Where to go. Who to kill. Or they could head back to the known at the stadium. Link up with the TOC at the Porter. Though he was pretty sure, as full dark began to settle across a city that was both glittering and ruined—and oh yeah, on fire too—that the TOC had jumped forward when the battle began. And that a lot of artillery had fallen all over the rear when the Titans made their strike.
So there was that. The possibility that the TOC, the overseer of the whole operation, had been hit and wiped out. Which was seeming more likely by the second.
The first survivors from the battle, carrying wounded in slings or helping the walking wounded to hobble along, came trickling through the silent battery of arranged guns in the circular roundabout. No one challenged them. And Greenhill should have thought about that. Getting sentries set up. Who knew if the Savages didn’t have some kind of guerilla warfare plan to mix in and disable?
He’d seen that on Kimshana.
An officer covered in dried blood came up to the troopers gathered around the staged MTAVs. He was looking for whoever was in charge.
That was Greenhill.
Greenhill recognized the Britannian sapper by the iconic dust-brown beret they always wore, even in combat.
“Leftenant Higgs-Patel… Royal Engineers,” he announced when the cav troopers had directed the questing officer over to their sergeant.
“Sergeant Greenhill, Alpha Three-Six. What can I do for you, sir?”
“Ah… excellent, Sergeant. After the strike, we received traffic to fall back to the Porter for evac. But our communications net has since gone down. I just want to clarify that those are still the standing orders from Supreme Commander Ogilvie. Would you happen to know if they are still in effect at this present moment, or are we to return to the offensive?”
Greenhill shrugged. “No, sir. We didn’t even get the fallback message. Far as I know, after the drop the entire Coalition comm went down.”
The Britannian officer sighed rather theatrically.
“Well, I suspect we should just return to the Porter and apologize if we somehow heard wrong. My men are out of charge packs altogether. Fighting was rather fierce up there along the rail tunnels. Thirty-five dead, fifteen wounded. Bit of pickle we found ourselves in, what?”
“Load your wounded, sir, and we’ll take them back,” Greenhill offered.
“Ah, smashing. Rather solid of you, thank you so much. Hope we’re not a bother and all. My sergeant was killed. Head blown clean off by a sniper, I suspect, and… to be honest… I know a lot about mines and explosives, but really not much about getting things done. That was her job. And… well… as I said… she’s gone now. So thank you very much indeed for seeing us out of this mess.”
Greenhill could see by his red tactical light that the Britannian officer, despite the cheery tone in his voice, was about to lose his marbles. His left eye was twitching fiercely. And most likely the dried blood all over his uniform was that sergeant’s. Or perhaps from his thirty-five wounded. Or fifteen dead.
“Have some water, sir,” Greenhill offered. He handed over his canteen. Maybe the twitching was just dehydration. It had been a long day; shipboard time on the Porter had been two thirty in the a.m. when they had first call. And most had slept badly anyway in the tense hours before.
The Porter, possibly five kilometers away, howled to life and lifted off from the nightmare landscape of ruined shadows sticking up into the night sky like fingers from a grave, or dead trees in a cemetery after midnight. The central grid power had gone out over in the suburban sections of the city. Mass swaths of darkness made the area look like an old and long-abandoned graveyard.
“Where they goin’?” someone asked as the assault frigate climbed into the night sky. Others shouted at it.
No one knew.
How could they?
How could Sergeant Greenhill, or any of them, know that at the time of the Titan bombing run, Ogilvie had been shifting toward the front in his personal armored vehicle? His APC, strengthened and hardened enough to stand up to even tactical nuclear weapons, though not a direct hit? Ogilvie had wanted his staff photog to capture some battlefield shots of the commander at the front. You know… field glass to face and scanning the distance. Maybe a dead soldier in the road. The price of war and all. Ogilvie and his inner circle had been on the move from the TOC to the rearmost engaged units when the Titans showed up and annihilated the rear. And everything else that had the misfortune of being on the receiving end of those payloads.
Sergeant Greenhill could have had no idea that upon witnessing the destruction from inside the halted armored command car, and then seeing the Savage vessels show up moments later, Ogilvie had determined that all was lost, and ordered the AACV back to the Porter and gears up for emergency departure.
The captain had protested abandoning surviving units. There was more than enough room to take two full battalions.
The supreme commander had threatened to relieve him if the departure order wasn’t executed immediately.
Now as the Porter climbed into the night sky above the fires raging out of control throughout much of the ruined city of New Vega, the general sat pensively staring out the aft passenger deck porthole on the command quarters deck, fully aware that his photographer was shooting him.
He affected a brooding, reluctant-to-retreat-in-the-face-of-overwhelming-force moodiness. As though he were still studying the battlefield. As though he were that kind of commander. As though his officers had insisted he retreat. Had insisted that the loss of their general, now that the tides had turned, would be devastating to the Coalition. Never mind all the ruined units they were leaving behind.
Men, women, and equipment could be replaced.
But not genius. Especially the tactical kind.
At sub-orbital altitude, Admiral Sulla sent transmission location idents for the Porter to rendezvous in order to assist with the emergenc
y evac operations to get all the surviving task force personnel off the surface. Supreme Commander Ogilvie’s most trusted staff officers denied the Porter’s comm officer permission to reply. Security risk. This was a desperate escape.
And so the Porter leapt away into hyperspace leaving the ruins of the battle behind and the Savages firmly in control of New Vega.
Heading back to the galactic core to warn of the Savage invasion—that was the mission reorientation the staff officers decided on. That was the most important task now, the general had “reluctantly” reasoned in concurrence with their arguments. That, and not allowing a senior military commander to fall into Savage hands.
And back on New Vega, the wounded continued to die as their surviving brethren stared into the night sky, wondering if any ships had survived. And if the Savages were coming for them, even now as the day finally disappeared into full night.
42
Team Ranger
Thirty-Fourth and Fulgham
She came out of the rubble when they left the last of the smashed downtown district. The colonel saw her making for their ragged column. The soldiers of the Twenty-Fifth saw her because she was tall and feminine and the opposite of everything they’d just been through. She was life after a feast of death.
Maybe to some she looked like just another refugee joining the long column heading back to the rear in silence. A soldier from one of the units females served in. A pilot maybe. Intel perhaps. A survivor caught forward when everything went to hell it what, in hindsight, now seemed an instant.
But to most she was a reminder why it was good to be among the living, and not the dead.
The roar of the day’s battle seemed a foreign thing now in the eerie silence disturbed only by the sound of boots working their way over the rubble of a ruined world. Thumping on pavement or grinding broken glass and gravel under heel. There were so many retreating soldiers dejectedly making their way rearward now that their boots formed a discordant chorus.
There were no words in the columns making their way back through the industrial streets in which they’d first encountered the Savages. Those firefights were now old friends that would never be forgotten. The dead who’d been killed early in the day waited there still like memories that could not fade no matter how many times they were recalled. The corpses of dead Savages also waited, like the remains of strange creatures found on foreign shores.
Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars Page 19
