by Peter Nealen
He took the steps two at a time, bounding up toward the rectangular armored hatch, his powergun knocking against his torso armor while the HV missile launcher swung on its sling and beat at his sustainment pack. His breath was rasping in his throat, and his armor was turning up the oxygen mix to compensate.
At the top, he hammered on the hatch. The only response he got was the rolling thunder of powergun discharges and the flat cracks of railgun fire. It would have been deafening if not for his helmet. Irritated, he hammered harder on the metal, and seriously considered calling Vargas up with a breacher charge. The fight was going on in earnest, and he was stuck banging on a hatch.
But before he could decide to blast the hatch open, it unlatched and swung inward. Instinctively he stepped aside, out of the direct line of the hatchway itself.
Which was probably wise. Four Valdekan soldiers were crouched inside, barricaded on the short passageway to the hatch, rifles trained on the opening.
“Friendlies!” Scalas bellowed, his helmet amplifying the word into a battle roar that could be heard even over the cacophony of the ongoing tank battle on the other side of the wall. “Caractacan Brotherhood!”
The men inside spoke rapidly in Eastern Satevic. With a sinking feeling, Scalas realized that it might be the only language most of these men spoke.
“Caractacans!” he shouted again, hoping the name at least was recognizable.
“Caractacans!” a voice inside called back. The words that followed were gibberish to Scalas’s ears, but the tone wasn’t threatening, and what might have been a noncom waved them forward as the other Valdekan soldiers lowered their weapons.
Scalas stepped through the hatch, followed by the rest of his squad. “Where is your commander?” he asked. He hoped that the other squad sergeants were keeping their heads and making sure that what little communication was possible was established with the Valdekans in the defense.
The Valdekans just looked at each other blankly, then back at him.
Behind his visor, Scalas grimaced. Yes, they only spoke Eastern Satevic.
He tapped a key on the inside of his vambrace. When he spoke again, his voice reverberated down the passageways, making the nearby soldiers flinch and cover their ears. “Does anyone here speak Trade Cant?”
After a moment’s deliberation, the noncom keyed his comm and spoke rapidly, holding up a hand to Scalas. Scalas gritted his teeth and waited. There was a battle going on, and his friend and his men were in combat, while he stood here and waited for a translator. He briefly considered simply driving on to the nearest firing ports, but he held his place. If he couldn’t establish communication and rapport with the Valdekans, he and his men might do more harm than good.
An older man jogged up the passageway, then halted and reported in front of the noncom. His hair was mostly silver, he had deep lines around his eyes, and he wore the insignia of a corporal on his flak vest. The noncom pointed to the looming, armored figures in the passageway and barked something in their own language.
The corporal turned to face Scalas. “I speak Trade Cant, a little,” he said. “I am Corporal Slovo Viloshen.”
“We need to see your commander, Corporal,” Scalas said. “Or at the very least, we need to know where to deploy to do the most good.”
“Come with me.” Viloshen turned and jogged back down the passageway.
The hall was narrow, the ceiling low, and Valdekan soldiers were hustling back and forth, moving to reinforce or resupply positions along the wall, making it difficult for the armored Caractacans to move quickly. But they soon reached a pillbox set into the side of the wall, about twenty meters up from the killing ground below, where Valdekan soldiers were manning heavy powerguns and what looked like a couple of remote control units for HV missile launchers. There was no using an HV missile launcher from directly within this enclosed space; the backblast would kill every unarmored man in the chamber.
Viloshen called out, and a blond-haired man with a rifle in his shoulder, standing between two heavy powergun mounts, turned.
“This is Warrant Officer Coram Raskonesh,” Viloshen said to Scalas. “He is commander.”
As Raskonesh stepped back from the firing port, Scalas moved up next to him and peered out the firing slit. Two of the Caractacan tanks were dead and burning. Costigan’s standard still fluttered from the turret of his own tank, so he was still alive, though his vehicle’s chameleonic coating was already showing new scars. As Scalas looked on, he saw a railgun round glance off Costigan’s turret, immediately answered by a thunderous flash of a powergun bolt. The tanks were very much still in the fight, firing so fast that their barrels were glowing, and the combat sleds were moving through the gap behind them, the HV missile pods on their back decks adding their own fire.
It was a contest of firepower and reaction time.
The killing ground between Defensive Line Three and what had been Defensive Line Two was flat, without defilade or cover. Up against the Unity’s numbers, the Caractacan armor should have been mowed down quickly.
But the Destriers were faster and more agile than the lumbering Unity tanks, and they could stand up to multiple railgun hits, while their powergun bolts killed wherever they struck. Their turrets, too, were made to move as fast as a gunner could react, making the Unity tanks’ crude railgun turrets seem to move in slow motion by comparison.
At first the Unity armor continued to try to advance even in the teeth of that the Brotherhood’s deadly storm of energy. Only when their strength had been cut by nearly a third did they fall back, moving as a unit, firing back over their back decks and dumping smokescreens that were all but useless against the scanners aboard the mammoth Destriers.
Costigan did not pursue. He had lost three of his tanks, which for a cavalry century was no small loss. Besides, he knew as well as any of them that they were not here to win this war.
Scalas straightened and turned away from the slit to face Raskonesh. “Where is Commander Rehenek?” he asked. “We need to find him.”
Viloshen translated, then said to Scalas, with a bit of a chuckle, “He was here, but probably no longer. He always looks for the hardest fight. It is like he can smell it. He will be moving to where the next big attack will come.”
“Where would that be?” Scalas asked. If Viloshen was telling the truth, they might still be able to intercept the man.
Both Viloshen and Raskonesh shrugged. “Only he knows,” Viloshen said. “He does not tell.”
Kahane snorted. “This is great. A simple retrieval turns into a manhunt.”
“It was never going to be ‘simple,’” Scalas replied. “We just have to find him. If that means rushing to every hotspot on the line…”
A titanic impact made the ground itself shudder. A moment later came another. Through the blowing dust and smoke, Scalas saw flashes in the distance, in the direction of the Unity survivors’ retreat.
“They regrouped quickly,” he said dryly.
Viloshen shook his head. “No, now they change tactics. They bombard wall, infantry come up behind bombardment. Try to get into breach and through to take defense positions.”
“Centurion,” Dravot said, “these men would have been overrun if we hadn’t arrived when we did. With that gaping hole in the wall, they’re not going to be able to hold on their own.”
Scalas knew Dravot was right. The Valdekans looked exhausted and shell-shocked to a man. Smoke drifted through the passageways, and as he looked down the line, he could see dim light that was not the interior lamps. Some of the incoming railgun rounds had penetrated the wall, and in more than one place. And even if it were possible that the Valdekan defenders might manage to hold on their own, a part of him rebelled at just leaving them to their fate, no matter what the mission given by the General-Regent might be.
He keyed his comm. “Brother Legate, this is Centurion Scalas.”
“Kranjick,” came the reply.
“The Valdekans are reporting that Rehenek has likely moved
on from the breach, sir. He has been running from trouble spot to trouble spot, so he’s probably detected another potential breach elsewhere in the fortress’s defenses. However, there appears to be a renewed attack on the way to our current location. I am requesting permission to aid the Valdekans in repelling it before we go looking further for Rehenek. These men won’t hold long without us.”
There was a long pause. “Our primary objective is to secure Commander Rehenek and get him off-world,” Kranjick said. “But… it is in accord with the Code to aid those we can, when we can. We will help the Valdekans secure the breach as best we can before moving on.”
“With all due respect, Brother Legate,” Dunstan put in, his tone putting the lie to his words, “you said yourself that we cannot hold this world’s defenses. Even their own General-Regent said as much. We should lift, find Rehenek, and get off-world. To do anything else would be to throw Brothers’ lives away after men who are already dead.”
Kranjick’s voice was mild as ever. “And how do you suggest we convince a commander, one who has put himself at great personal risk, deliberately throwing himself into the thickest of the fighting, to cooperate with us when we left his men to die in the teeth of a renewed assault? Your recommendation smacks more of self-preservation than ‘pragmatism,’ Centurion Dunstan. No. Not only does honor demand that we help the Valdekans here, where we have already landed, with the foe already at our doorstep, but prudence suggests that it might make our ultimate mission easier.”
Scalas glanced at the indicator in his helmet. Kranjick had shifted the conversation to the command-only net. The rest of the Brothers could not hear this argument; it was solely between the Brother Legate and the centurions.
“I repeat: we will assist the Valdekans against this assault, then proceed to search for Commander Rehenek once the breach is secured,” Kranjick finished. “Dropships are to lift and return to the spaceport immediately, lest we lose them to the bombardment.”
Dunstan did not reply, but Scalas could imagine him fuming.
“Acknowledged,” Scalas said into the momentary silence. “Thank you, sir.” He turned to Raskonesh. “Where are your defenses the weakest?”
10
The wall shook, reverberating with the heavy thud of another nearby impact. Dust sifted down in a steady, if quavering, stream. The bombardment had been going strong for at least an hour. That none of the dropships had been hit on the way out was a minor miracle, especially given how late some of them had lifted.
It had taken only a scant few minutes to get his century’s squads set in, reinforcing the most likely spots where the Unity infantry would come. Since then, it had been a matter of waiting, peering out through firing slits and cracks in the wall at the smoking, dust-scoured no-man’s land between the wall and the enemy.
“How long do they usually keep this up?” Scalas asked Viloshen.
Viloshen was looking out into the haze, sitting on an ammo crate, his sleek K-74 powergun across his knees. His fatigues were ragged and covered in dust, but his weapon was nearly spotless. Scalas had seen him take out a rag to wipe the dust and soot off it twice already.
The older man shrugged. “They do not set patterns,” he said. “Smart, that. They pound wall with fire until they are ready.”
Scalas nodded in reply. He had not removed his helmet, making him appear to be a hulking, armored statue, faceless and grim. But the stark prow of his visor and faceless eyeslit did not seem to bother the Valdekan corporal.
After a moment, he spoke again. “Aren’t you a little old to be a corporal?” he asked. “I’d think a man of your age might be a warrant officer—or a colonel.”
Viloshen chuckled. The sound of amusement was jarring in the tension within the revetment, as the thunder of the bombardment continued outside. He shook his head. “I was corporal when I mustered out from my term of service, many years ago,” he said. “I took berth as spacer, on deep-space trade vessel.” His chuckle died, and his pale eyes looked somewhere far away. “I was lucky to be on home leave for Iveniya’s latest voyage. Sure that he was destroyed in orbit.” He shrugged again. “I join up again. They give me last rank I had.”
Scalas nodded solemnly. It was not a new story. He had been in countless wars on countless planets in the ten years since his novitiate had ended. In the really grim ones, the truly desperate fights, you could always find men like Viloshen. Men who had served their time in their youth, gone on to other things, and been called back when the war got bad. Some came willingly, like Viloshen. Others were dragged back into the ranks, kicking and screaming. Some recalled their training and were better soldiers than they ever had been when younger. Some resented their recall so much that they became a danger to themselves and everyone around them.
Scalas pegged Viloshen as one of the former. Especially given the almost obsessive way the man kept his weapon clean.
Raskonesh ducked through the hatchway to join them. The hatches between pillboxes had been designed to be defensive chokepoints; they could be sealed, with firing ports that could only be opened from the inside. Presently the hatches were all open, to allow for easier communication and movement within the defenses from hotspot to hotspot. But if the Unity forces penetrated the line, they would all be locked down.
Raskonesh, younger than Viloshen by most of a decade, dropped onto another ammunition crate with a gusty sigh, knocking some of the dust off his trousers. His weapon, another K-74, was noticeably dirtier than Viloshen’s, but he soon pulled out a rag of his own and started to wipe it down.
Dirt rarely affected a powergun much, but when it did, it could be catastrophic. There were nightmarish stories, told far more often than they ever actually happened, about obstructions in the workings managing to divert the energy of the bolt just enough that some of it leaked out somewhere besides through the barrel.
Needless to say, the shooter in such stories did not survive.
Raskonesh looked up at Scalas. His dark eyes, set in sunken sockets, were almost black, in stark contrast to his fair hair. His cheeks were hollow, as if he had not eaten well for days. It was entirely possible that he had not. Blond stubble showed on his jaw, though only when the light was right.
He said something in Eastern Satevic, speaking directly to Scalas’s faceless helmet.
Viloshen translated. “What is it like, joining one of the brotherhoods?”
“That depends on the brotherhood,” Scalas replied. “Some still hold to their Code and the principles they were founded on—to protect the weak and defenseless, to punish aggressors, to provide some kind of deterrent to the pirates, megalomaniacs, and M’tait of the galaxy. Others have become mercenaries, hiring out to the highest bidder. Others are little better than pirates themselves.”
“They say the Caractacans hold to their Code,” Viloshen ventured.
Scalas nodded, even as he thought of Dunstan, and even Volscius. How much longer will that be the case?
“The Caractacan Brotherhood takes care in our training to pass on our philosophy and principles. We train in that as much as in the arts of war. Caractacus Regnus, our founder, wanted to call it the ‘Artorian Brotherhood.’”
This was met with blank stares from both Valdekans. Of course; they had no idea who Artorius was.
“Artorius was a legendary figure from Old Earth,” Scalas explained. “A warrior king. He gathered all the finest warriors of his country around him and gave them a code and a purpose. He said that Might must always serve Right. Caractacus believed in that too, down to his very bones, and he gathered legates and elders around him who believed the same. They handed down the Code to the novices and the Brothers who followed.”
He turned his gaze far away as he recited the words every novitiate learned by heart. “To fear God and obey His commandments. To protect the weak and defenseless. To help the poor whenever possible. To refrain from the wanton giving of offense. To live by honor and for glory. To despise pecuniary reward. To fight for the welfare of all. To obe
y the superiors of the Brotherhood. To guard the honor of our Brothers. To eschew unfairness, meanness, and deceit. To keep faith with our given word. To always speak the truth. To persevere until the end in any enterprise begun. To never flee before the enemy.”
The Valdekans in the pillbox listened quietly to Viloshen’s translation. Dravot and Powell, stationed at the firing slit with their BR-18s, and Geroges with his MT-41, listened in silence. Scalas spared the younger Brothers a glance. He remembered that Kranjick had always led his century in the recitation of the Code before insertion, and he felt a momentary pang of failure as he realized that he had let his mentor’s tradition slip. He really should start doing that again.
One of the younger Valdekan soldiers, a skinny kid whose fatigues seemed to almost hang off his bones, asked a question. Viloshen translated. “He wants to know if the training is hard.”
All the Caractacans in the pillbox chuckled at that. “It was the hardest thing I had ever done,” Scalas said, “and I had been a Vitorian Commando.”
That drew a whistle from Raskonesh when it was translated. The Vitorian Commandos were not nearly as well-known as the Caractacans, but their actions against the cultist insurgents that had nearly taken over the Vitor system were known for parsecs around. They were hardened, ruthless men of war, driven nearly to collapse in the selection process. To hear a former Commando admit that the Caractacan novitiate was harder had to be an eye-opener.
“To be a Brother, you have to learn all the arts of war,” Scalas continued, with Viloshen translating. “In space, in the air, on the ground, even on the water. That’s why the novitiate is so long. Five years of training and fighting, right alongside full-fledged Brothers, in every environment and every situation your Elder can find to throw you into. You learn what it’s like to march for a week on two days’ rations. You discover just how long you can last in vacuum without a suit. And when you’re done, and you take your oath as a Brother, you learn that there’s still more to endure, more training to go through.”
