The Fall of Valdek: A Military Sci-Fi Series (The Unity Wars Book 1)

by Peter Nealen

  This was the closest to a display of temper Scalas had ever seen from the Brother Legate.

  Kranjick took a deep breath and spoke in a quieter tone. “I know your rage, boy,” he said. “I know the sense of helplessness, knowing that all is lost, and that you must leave with the enemy undefeated. I was on Pontakus IX. I was on the retreat from Meretreya.”

  Scalas couldn’t help himself; he looked over at Costigan. The other centurion’s visor turned toward him, and though Scalas couldn’t see his friend’s face, he could see surprise in his body language that mirrored his own. Kranjick had been on Pontakus IX? That was fifty years ago. How old was Brother Legate Kranjick?

  “I could have stood and fought, and inevitably died,” Kranjick continued. “It would have satisfied the demands of honor and glory. But in so doing, we would have left the handful of Brothers who remained at Chalchais understrength, to be ultimately overrun. As it was, we were just barely enough to hold the line once we returned. Had we held to our pride, held the line, and died, then we would have failed our responsibility to our Brothers.

  “There is a fine line between honor and duty. Sometimes it seems that duty is nothing more than a justification for abandoning honor. But duty must come first. And your duty now is to your people. You cannot help them by throwing yourself at that command ship.

  “Those men in the woods are relying on you, Commander. The survivors in the cities are relying on you. Even if you were not hereditary head of state, you are now, to my knowledge, the only senior Valdekan military officer still at large. You can throw your life and those of your men away, or you can come with us and have some hope of organizing an off-world resistance and, perhaps, eventually, rally enough allies to liberate your planet from this so-called ‘Galactic Unity.’”

  Another, older Valdekan had come out of the trees after Kranjick had broadcast Hwung-Tsi’s transmission. He stood just behind Rehenek, barrel-chested and pugnacious, with a scarred, battered face that looked like it had picked up more than a few new wounds since the war had started. He now spoke in rapid Satevic to Rehenek, who answered in the same language, the same strain of bitterness in his voice. But the older man glanced up at Kranjick and spoke even more urgently, gesturing toward the command ship and the flatlands below, where the Unity forces were pushing forward.

  “That is Major Zorek,” Viloshen said quietly at Scalas’s elbow. Scalas hadn’t even noticed that the old corporal had come with him. “He is arguing that your legate is right, and that we must either decide now, or go to their forward operating base. The enemy is getting too close to stay here.”

  Rehenek turned back to Kranjick, anger and resentment still burning in his eyes. “It seems that my executive officer agrees with you, Legate. I am still not convinced. But he makes a good point: we need to move to a more defensible position if we are going to plan our next move, whatever it may be.” He pointed uphill. “We have set up our forward base in some old lava tubes higher up the mountain.” He looked around at the blowers and the bigger IFVs. “I think that we can fit most of your vehicles under cover. The caves are very large.”

  Scalas could imagine. Everything about Gorakovati was oversized.

  “We’ll try to find a route that your tanks can negotiate without too much trouble,” Rehenek finished. As he turned back toward his men and their vehicles, he added, “Try to keep up. The enemy will not leave us alone for long now that they know we are up here—thanks to the pyrotechnics on your approach.”

  Scalas scowled a little as he turned back toward his sled, and he was glad that his visor hid his expression from both Rehenek and Kranjick. He was sure his old mentor’s expression was placid as always, almost bored. The man’s imperturbability was infuriating to some, but it was a trait he’d tried to pass on to his men, including Scalas. “Never let any man get under your skin,” he’d said more than once. “Patience is the only way a warrior keeps his head, and keeping your head is the only way you’ll survive a tough fight, much less survive with your honor intact.”

  Scalas waved at Viloshen to get back to the vehicle, then followed after him. But not without a glance at the eastern sky. Was that an aircraft, or only a bird?

  Were there even any birds left on this war-blasted world?

  It was getting dark by the time they reached the lava tubes. The entrances were actually lower down than Scalas had expected, and nearly hidden by trees. It took a moment to see that not all of the trees were actually growing there; the Valdekans had cut some down and hauled them up to thicken the grove. The Valdekans pulled some of these out of the way to allow the vehicles through, and soon they were passing defensive emplacements set back just inside the entrance. Heavy powerguns, autocannons, and HV missile launchers were mounted on tripods and carriages behind parapets built of quickset steelcrete and rock. Anyone trying to force their way into the caves would have a tough fight on their hands.

  The tanks and sleds roared and howled, the noise battering the dismounted troops in the enclosed space. Scalas pitied the Valdekan troops who had to be out there without the hearing protection built into the Caractacan Brothers’ helmets. He and the rest of the infantry Brothers stayed in their sleds until the vehicles were parked along the walls of the cave, their noses pointed back toward the entrance, along with their turrets, their noisy fans shut down.

  A glowing symbol appeared in his visor. Kranjick was calling assembly. Scalas gave his squad sergeants quick instructions: let the men get some rest, but be ready to move out in a minute or less. It was standard Brotherhood procedure for a temporary security halt in hostile territory. Then he was heading deeper into the cave, jogging past vibrating tanks and combat sleds toward the deep bunker where Rehenek had set up his field headquarters.

  That headquarters proved to be almost as heavily barricaded as the entrance; clearly the Valdekans were prepared to mount a defense in depth if they were found. But the command post itself consisted of little more than two heavy comm units and a single portable holo-tank, which was currently displaying Gorakovati and its much smaller neighboring mountain, the name of which Scalas didn’t know.

  Rehenek was leaning over the holo-tank but looked up as the Caractacans approached. He seemed more composed now, and there was a certain air of resignation about him, though still mixed with a certain resentment.

  “Major Zorek has convinced me that you are right,” he said to Kranjick. “It’s a bitter thing to swallow, but yes, Valdek is lost unless we can gather enough force to overwhelm this ‘Galactic Unity.’” He sighed. “I will not thank you for taking me away from my world and my people in their time of need, but I can recognize the strategic necessity of it.

  “However, I will not go as a helpless refugee aboard a Caractacan ship. From what I know, you don’t have enough space aboard your remaining starships for all of my men and our equipment anyway. We have somewhat more than a reinforced company—it’s more like an understrength battalion. And I will not leave this behind for the vrykolok.”

  He pointed to the holo, which zoomed in on the smaller mountain. A tracery of lines began to show what looked like a large and extensive installation in or on the mountain itself. The view zoomed in further, revealing a starship landing silo built right into the peak of the mountain. A big one. A very big one.

  The ship inside was a massive, towering cylinder with a thick ring wrapped around her hull amidships and huge, tapered engines at the base.

  “What is that?” Soon asked.

  “That,” Rehenek said with a note of satisfaction, “is the most powerful ship we have. One of the last ships we have,” he added, some bitterness creeping back in. “Unfortunately, we didn’t have him crewed and ready to launch by the time the rest of our fleet was destroyed, and my father did not wish to see him destroyed for nothing.” He paused, with a small frown, as if his father’s logic had suddenly clicked in his mind now that he could apply it to the current situation. He shook his head a little. “That is the Pride of Valdek, a Triamic Hegemony Ast
rana-class dreadnaught.”

  Costigan let out a little whistle. “How did you end up with one of those?”

  “He was stationed here while Valdek was a protectorate of the Triamic Hegemony. When the Hegemony collapsed…”

  “They just left it here?” Soon asked.

  “The crew was of the Hagrash Pack,” Rehenek explained. “Their pack-home was destroyed.”

  Scalas couldn’t suppress a bit of a wince. One of the horror stories that had made it out of the triamic worlds after the Hegemony’s collapse had been the genocide of entire packs. Hagrash had been one of the worst hit. And something about the pack culture of the triamic race had led the survivors to suicide once word reached them.

  “They were good enough to swallow poison instead of flying the ship into the sun,” Rehenek said dryly. “Our people cleaned him up and have worked to maintain him ever since.”

  “Even so,” Kranjick said, “that ship must be almost two centuries old.”

  “Older than that,” Rehenek said. “But I’ve been assured that he will still fly, and still has working weapons.” He stared determinedly at Kranjick. “I will come with you, Legate, but in my own flagship. If my new task is to find allies to free my world, I will not do it as a refugee and a beggar aboard someone else’s ship.”

  Kranjick nodded. “Very well, Commander. We happen to have some of your spacers with us, if they can be of assistance. They returned with us from the wreck of the Mekadik.”

  “They are welcome,” Rehenek said. “The dreadnaught’s crew is presently extremely small, based on the last reports I had.”

  “How quickly can the ship launch once we get there?”

  “It will take some time, even with additional spacers,” Rehenek admitted. “At least two hours. And there’s an enemy unit not far away from the mountain that we will have to get past.”

  “And in the meantime, they’ll be massing for an attack here on Gorakovati,” Kranjick said. “We don’t have much time.”

  “No, we do not,” Rehenek agreed. “My men will be ready to move in thirty minutes. Can your men be ready in that time?”

  Kranjick looked down at him. “My men are ready to move now.”

  Rehenek might have looked slightly chastened as he nodded.

  19

  Under cover of darkness, the combined column of Caractacan and Valdekan fighting vehicles rumbled out of the lava tube and turned north, toward the mountain where the Pride of Valdek waited. Scalas watched the holo display in the troop compartment, thinking that he had spent entirely too much time lately in the back of a combat sled. The cramped quarters aside, he wanted to be able to stick his head out and see, to be able to run and fight and maneuver, instead of feeling like cargo in a truck.

  The holo showed the glowing threat indicators of a pair of Unity fighters flying overhead, but he couldn’t hear the distant scream of their engines over the pitched howl of the sled’s fans. He just watched, his eyes riveted to the blood-red darts on the display.

  The two transatmospheric fighters were skirting the higher slopes of the mountain, circling off to the northwest. They seemed to be flying a search pattern. Scalas wanted to point them out, but he knew that everyone else in the command elements was watching the same holo display and seeing the same craft, and they were well aware of the threat they represented.

  A remote sensor drone, launched from one of the starships, was providing the bulk of the sensor data keeping the holo updated. It was a tiny craft, hopefully too small to be noticed by the fighters. But of course the ships on the ground were far too large to go unremarked, either by the ships in orbit or the fighters circling above, even if they hadn’t been seen landing.

  “We have just been painted by a targeting scan,” Captain Trakse announced over the comm. “The orbitals are still clear at the moment; it appears they have not deployed their ships to cover the entirety of the planet yet. But the drone is picking up a major launch from the direction of the command ship. At least two wings of transatmospheric fighters are coming this way.” The holo zoomed out to show a cloud of crimson advancing quickly from the east. “We are launching to provide direct support. I suggest that you gentlemen get to that mountain as quickly as possible.”

  “Is the Boanerges ready to launch?” Kranjick asked.

  “We’ve gotten her weapons back online,” Trakse replied. “She’s not spaceworthy, though—the damage taken in that last attack was too extensive. We wouldn’t be able to get out-system without major groundside work. The plan at the moment is to provide top cover for the column en route to the target installation, then land, evacuate the ship, and rendezvous with you to lift with the dreadnaught.”

  “Understood,” Kranjick said. “Godspeed.”

  “And to you as well, Brother Legate,” Captain Trakse said. “Be advised, one of the enemy ground formations has penetrated nearly ten kilometers into the forest, about five kilometers from your planned line of march at this moment. They’re moving slowly, but they are making headway.”

  Scalas peered at the holo display. Sure enough, a blob of red was pushing into the woods and the rougher terrain of the mountains. The Unity vehicles were definitely having a harder time of it; they didn’t have the maneuverability of Rehenek’s mountain terrain vehicles or the sheer power of the Caractacan blowers. But as always they had the advantage of numbers, as well as that same unsettling, single-minded persistence that the clones had displayed from the moment the Caractacans first engaged them.

  The display didn’t show infantry patrols—which meant the Unity forces might be a lot closer than they appeared, if they’d pushed their foot-mobile forces out ahead of the vehicles. Infantry would be a lot harder for the sensor drone to spot, being smaller targets even in their swarming mobs, and better concealed by the trees and the terrain.

  Once again, he wished that he was out on the ground, on his feet. The requirements of speed made it impractical—they could cover a lot more distance a lot more quickly in the vehicles—and he understood that.

  But he didn’t have to like it.

  The Dauntless leapt for the sky, keeping close beside the wounded Boanerges. Mor had shifted the holo display so that the wider situational view was now in its own window, off to the side. He was facing a closer-in, nose-cone view from the Dauntless herself. He needed to be even more “one with his ship” than usual for the maneuvers ahead.

  The four ships rose on tails of fire made even more brilliant by the darkness of early night. They spread out as they climbed, turning toward the oncoming fighters and roaring at them at blistering velocity, passing the speed of sound in seconds. The hammering shockwaves of their passage blasted the mountainside below, making the trees bend and sway violently, some being nearly flattened to the ground.

  The oncoming fighters opened fire on the starships as soon as they rose above the ridgelines, and the starships answered. Thunder rolled in a continuous, crashing roar as destruction flickered back and forth between the opposing formations, powergun fire turning the sky into a curtain of blue- and green-tinged light.

  Entire flights of fighters were blasted to glowing wreckage by single 20cm powergun bolts. Answering 3cm bolts seemed like ineffectual pinpricks by comparison, but enough hits could bring down even one of the silvery behemoths streaking across the sky.

  The Boanerges had pulled ahead of the other three ships, and as such was the focus of more of the enemy fire. Still, although bolts peppered her hull where her ECM systems hadn’t been able to spoof the enemy targeting scanners, those systems were largely successful, creating an intense hash of electromagnetic noise, invisible to the naked eye, that filled the atmosphere around the ships and the fighters alike. When the weapons employed against you were as deadly as powerguns and HELs, the best defense was not to get hit in the first place. And when the weapons fire moved at the better part of the speed of light, the only way to do that was to make the enemy shoot at ghosts and shadows.

  While the two formations started several
hundred kilometers apart, they closed within minutes, the starships plunging through the center of the fighter formations. Nearly a dozen fighters exploded in a brief few instants, but fire also gouted from the flank of the Boanerges. A burst of powergun fire had found a hole in her already compromised defenses and punched deep into her hull.

  Then they were kilometers past each other once more, racing away at a combined velocity many times the speed of sound. Compared to the speeds they’d be reaching in space combat, the fighters and starships alike were moving cripplingly slowly—but this close to a planetary surface, at such close engagement ranges, it was still nearly too fast to think.

  Mor punched the thrusters and pulled on the main drives’ thrust vectoring, dragging the Dauntless’s nose around to circle back toward the fighters. More powergun and laser fire reached for the starships from below as they came entirely too close to the grounded command ship. A few blue-white stabs of light flashed back down from the Dauntless—Fry, grunting under the gee forces of the turn, had swiveled the starship’s powergun turrets to return fire—but Mor was too tightly focused on flying the hurtling missile that was his ship to see if the commander had hit anything.

  The fighter formations had similarly split and banked hard to either flank, trying to come around and reengage the starships before the big, fast-moving craft could come around. It was ultimately futile, as the starships’ weapons were far more mobile than the fixed-forward powerguns mounted on the wings of the fighters.

  Mor found himself facing a formation of nearly an entire wing of fighters. The Vindicator was just off his starboard side, but under the circumstances, that seemed somewhat less than comforting. There were just too many of the enemy fighters, no matter how many they’d already blasted out of the sky.

  Mor glanced at the wider display. They had to finish this quickly; the nearest formation of Unity starships in orbit would be over the horizon in a matter of minutes, and the closer they got, the fewer maneuvering options he had. He didn’t dare climb too high, lest the Dauntless be targeted by orbiting starships and fighters at the same time.