Gamma Nine (Book One)

by Christi Smit

  Orders from commanders like that always left officers in very peculiar positions when the time came to choose, and eventually they would have to choose between their orders and their own lives. Gray had served under such a commander in the days after he had graduated from the academy, and he knew that the weak officers would flinch ever time and choose their own pathetic lives instead of following an order. Gray hoped the captain of the Duchess was one of those weaker men as he aimed the Hyperion directly at the escort ship’s bow.

  The Hyperion would intercept and collide with the Duchess if both captains did not change course. Gray was gambling on the condition of the other captain’s mental state, but he had no other choice and he needed a sacrifice to shake the bomber wing closing fast.

  Captain Roy of the Duchess saw the Hyperion veer towards it suddenly and watched as it closed the distance towards his small vessel within seconds. Bile rose in Roy’s throat as the words from Lord Vincent echoed in his mind. Sweat covered his entire body as the Hyperion bore down on the Duchess without changing course.

  Gray was not going to flinch. He was determined to finish what he had started.

  Less than five-hundred miles separated the two vessels - in void warfare five-hundred miles was like taking a shit on your neighbour’s lawn while he watched from the porch - and it was time to choose for the captain of the Duchess.

  Captain Roy chose to flinch, pulling his small vessel out of the path of the steamrolling Hyperion. Roy breathed a sigh of relief as the Hyperion passed above it, close enough to see the battle scars on the enemy vessel’s hull. But his relief was short lived and he had only a few seconds left to live as he watched the Hyperion’s aft weapon batteries fire a full volley at the Duchess.

  The volley hit the Duchess right in its most vulnerable spot, right behind the shuttle bays were only thin armour protected the bays from the void outside. Because of its light classification and its generic build the gunners of the Hyperion knew exactly what would happen if their shots hit their intended target.

  It was the fusion lances that succeeded in piercing the Duchess deep enough to rupture its small core. Roy stood unmoving as the flames engulfed his entire vessel, killing everyone on-board in the blink of an eye.

  The Duchess vanished in a plasma explosion as the Hyperion powered away from the silent, yet deadly, shockwave spreading outward like a boulder thrown into a glassy pond. The ripple of hungry plasma engulfed everything for thousands of miles. Larger vessels further away from the explosion took almost no damage from the small core rupture, but the lesser vessels with less armour were not so lucky. Smaller vessels were damaged or utterly destroyed.

  The unlucky ones included the bomber wing intent on crippling the Hyperion. Gray’s sudden decision had cleared the Hyperion’s wake in one daring move.

  Gray chuckled to himself as he focused on opening up some distance between his ship and the hunting pack hell bent on destroying everything he held dear.

  On the bridge of the Stygian Council Lord Vincent slammed his bony fist into the arm rest of his magnificent command throne. His eyes were aflame with anger, watching as the Hyperion pulled away from the rest of his fleet. Vincent did not realize it, but a small crack had appeared in his resolve, and that crack was exactly what Gray had been waiting for.

  Torsos exploded and gore splattered on paving as the guns mounted on the convoy’s lead vehicle scythed through the straggling monsters on the way to the second objective. The explosion at the first objective had drawn the beasts like moths to a very large flame. Every street the convoy passed the Wolves saw less and less threats stalking the avenues of Santor. Gunn and her drop ship companions had reported the same thing as they circled around the perimeter of all three objectives - the beasts were heading for the first objective at speed, rushing to investigate the bright lights in the night sky.

  Xander’s unnecessarily large bomb had been the perfect diversion for the convoy to escape what could have been a certain death situation. Hordes of beasts that still drew breath headed directly for the site of the first objective, base instincts compelling them to investigate what could be a delicious feast of dead flesh.

  That was the only reason why Locke decided not to reprimand Xander for his recklessness, well that and maybe one more reason he would never mention to his squad. Locke watched the abnormally-shaped mushroom cloud rise above where the first objective used to be. The firestorm from the explosion lit up the night sky with a strange blue-yellow glow, casting alien shadows every time another fireball erupted from the cloud above the bomb site. Locke smiled behind his visor, beaming with joy at the destruction one of his Wolves had caused. The joy was not because of the explosion itself, but rather the realization that so many enemies were killed in one masterful, yet rash stroke. So many lives would be saved by Xander’s endless experimentation with volatile elements and compounds. Locke had to admit to himself, even though Xander was a fool, he was still an artist at making things go boom.

  Locke was pulled from his reverie when the driver of the vehicle below announced that the second objective had come into view.

  Locke wasted no time, opening a channel to his eagle-eyed scout almost immediately. “What does it look like Corporal?” Locke asked Jay through static filled communications. Xander’s bomb had done more than just made minced meat piles out of mutants.

  “No beast activity, sir. I see Santor Defence Forces holding of what looks like black armoured infantry assaulting the objective,” Jay replied.

  “How many are we looking at?” Locke checked his Kicker as he spoke, and the rest of the Wolves were checking gear and equipment as they drew closer to the second objective.

  “I count less than twenty defenders, and I can see close to fifty assaulters. Please hold.” Godwaker screamed three times from its perch before Jay continued his assessment of the situation of the second objective. “Forty-five enemies, sir.”

  “Clear out as many as you can, we will be arriving shortly,” Locke ordered.

  “Roger that,” Jay answered. Godwaker spoke again seconds later, felling another enemy.

  Locke motioned for his Wolves to disembark from the lead vehicle, ordering Sabian to power through to the objective drawing fire from the enemies surrounding it.

  Sabian’s convoy sped up as the Wolves jumped from the convoy, his Lancer’s priming mounted and hand-held weapons for a fast swooping manoeuvre through the enemy lines. Sabian would hit the assaulters head on with something ancient military tacticians called the Shock and Awe, hitting them fast and hard and then withdrawing to a safe distance to allow the Wolves to close in from the shadows.

  Godwaker took down two more enemies as the convoy broke into the middle of the enemy lines. The shock move surprised the enemy troops while their attention was on the hospital and its defenders, the convoy broke their lines with a hail of automatic fire from mounted weapons and Lancers firing from vehicle slits. The convoy did not stop as it passed through, peppering everything armoured in black gunners and Lancers could see.

  By the time the convoy had left the awe set in, in the convoys wake fifteen enemies lay dead and three more would never fight again. Sabian took his convoy around the objective in case Locke requested another pass, doubling as a safety net if anything should find its way to the second objective from the inner city.

  The Wolves moved silently through a building overlooking the enemy lines, counting the black armoured soldiers as they took their positions, ready to pounce.

  There were only fifteen left, and all of them were resuming their assault on the hospital. Sabian’s sudden attack had left everyone dumbfounded, and without direction they resumed what they had been doing since nightfall. The enemy’s two officers were killed in the shock attack, and so they could do nothing more than follow the last orders they were given - kill everyone, destroy the hospital.

  Locke did not have to tell any of his Wolves what to do, all of them moving out of their own accord.

  Nathan sighted a group o
f enemies below him, aiming at the head of the first of three soldiers manning a heavy machine gun. Sabian’s attack had not penetrated the defensive barriers deep enough to destroy the more deadly weapons.

  Locke did the same, taking position next to his second in command, aiming his Kicker at the soldiers at the front of the enemy lines.

  Xander silently unclipped two grenades from his belt and adjusted his position to throw them into the midst of soldiers on the far side of the enemy filled avenue in front of the hospital.

  Pyoter, Christian and Rivers dropped down to ground level, using the building’s broken staircase to descend three floors in relative silence.

  Pyoter led the three, Christian followed, his shield held up to hide his profile from anyone looking in his direction. Rivers was a few steps behind, his shotgun held at his hip as he scanned the bottom floor of the building they were passing through.

  The enemy soldiers never heard the three Titans moving in behind them, never expecting to be attacked from that position when most of Santor was dead or dying.

  A soldier at the back of the enemy lines paused to reload his rifle, asking in a whisper for the soldier next to him for another clip. Both soldiers were joking about shooting fish in a barrel, unable to see the giant, shadowy figure rise up behind them.

  They were still chuckling like school children when Pyoter struck. He did not want to blunt his blade on these idiots, so instead he used his bare hands to kill both soldiers. He punched downward with his giant fist, almost pulping the first soldier’s head, backhanding the second in the face. Both soldiers died instantly, their bodies going limp before they hit the paving.

  Christian slipped his blade into the neck of a soldier close by as Rivers used his shotgun as a club to snap the neck of another enemy.

  A soldier a few feet away noticed the Titans in their midst and screamed, but his scream died in his throat as his body sprouted new holes and his life blood poured out.

  The element of surprise was now gone. The Wolves massacred the rest of the enemy within moments; Xander did not even have time to use his grenades.

  Cheers erupted from the defenders around the objective as the gunfire from enemy positions fell silent. The cheering grew as they saw six Titans step from the enemy lines into the light of the hospitals compound.

  The Wolves were already legends, and just laying eyes on them was a tale to tell on your deathbed. None of the defenders ever thought they would get the opportunity to fight alongside Titans.

  But they would get the opportunity and more, and before the sun rose they would see why the Titans were all regarded as heroes of humankind.

  Santor’s largest hospital was not what one would expect when seen from the outside. Any off-world patients would refuse to go inside if they caught sight of the decrepit exterior posing as a place of healing.

  It was never meant to be a permanent structure, built hastily during a time of great exploration in the sector and on the planet itself. Engineers had used pre-fabricated buildings at first, adding more and more structures as the years went by and the population grew. Eventually engineers ran out of pre-fabricated structures to expand the ever growing need for more capacity, so instead they built with whatever could be salvaged or spared from other municipal buildings.

  New Horizon’s age of prosperity brought many changes to the capital cities spread out across the planet’s surface. But somehow the prosperity and renovations had skipped Santor’s largest medical facility, and it was not aging well. Many of the older pre-fabricated structures had collapsed, leaving the younger patchwork structures by themselves. New Horizon’s plant life had already begun to reclaim the older buildings, giving the entire medical compound the eerie atmosphere of a ruined city left to nature’s own devices for far too long.

  Sabian had circled the compound a few times to patrol its perimeter, ensuring that nothing was sneaking up on the objective and that nothing was lying in wait to ambush his convoy and the Wolves within the facility.

  Sabian heard his men’s comments and murmurings about the facility, all of them maintaining stalwartly that the hospital was a relic and a place of great sorrow. No-one had any good memories of it, and morale was starting to slip as the convoy stopped in front of the main administration building of the medical facility.

  The Lancers not assigned to gunner duty disembarked from the vehicles and spread out around the main structure. Squads took up defensive positions, relieving Santor’s defenders, giving the tired soldiers the time to take a breather before more shit hit the fan, and in a war with the beast - not to mention the traitors - poop would always hit some kind of moving part eventually.

  Sabian stepped into the only double storey building inside the medical compound, eyeing the ruined buildings to either side of the administrative buildings as he stepped over the threshold.

  The Wolves were waiting inside speaking to a soldier with exhaustion written on his face by deep wrinkles and dirt.

  Locke spoke before Sabian could ask what the situation was. “Corporal Lemink here is the highest rank these men have to look to for guidance,” Locke said, pointing at the poor soldier being scrutinized by the rest of the Wolves circled around him.

  “Any civilians?” Sabian asked, nodding at Corporal Lemink as he stepped to stand next to the towering Locke.

  Lemink answered, eager to prove that he was worth his salt, especially in the presence of such legends. “A few made it here before the bastards in black armour cut us off...” Lemink trailed off for a second before continuing. “Speaking of which sirs, who the hell were those sons of bitches?”

  Locke stepped closer and put a hand on the Lemink’s shoulder, looking down at the tired soldier. “All in good time Corporal. Where are the civilians?”

  Lemink swallowed and understood that whatever was going on was far above his rank, he raised a hand and pointed at a side door leading to another part of the medical facility. “In the morgue sir. It was the most secure section of the hospital.”

  “Good,” Locke replied, he motioned to Christian and Nathan to go check out the condition of the civilians and the morgue.

  The Titan brothers moved without a word, moving at a quick pace through the door leading to the morgue. They disappeared in the darkness beyond the door, reporting back moments later with civilian count and condition.

  Lemink was visibly nervous. He looked around at the other Titans, daring to ask a question, unable to maintain discipline because of his exhaustion. “Are you here to rescue us?” he asked.

  “Of course,” Pyoter replied, stepping closer to the man, lowering his voice so the man understood the gravity of the situation. “But our fight is not over yet Corporal.”

  Lemink’s shoulders sagged visibly, words escaping him as he realized that his men were not out of trouble just yet.

  “Have faith soldier,” Sabian said from close by. He had already been planning a defence with Locke a few feet away from the other Wolves. “Our arrival here has piqued the interest of enemies nearby, steel your nerves, they will be upon us soon enough.”

  Lemink turned and walked to where his rifle had been resting against a table full of radio equipment. He picked it up and pulled back on the slide, arming it with a greasy click.

  Xander slapped Lemink on the back. “Don’t worry too much about it; we will be fighting next to you and your men. If something big and nasty comes for you, just hide behind Pyoter,” Xander pointed at the giant Titan, “they won’t see you behind him.”

  Xander’s words brought a chuckle from Lemink and the rest of the Wolves.

  Locke silenced the light-hearted moment with a wave of his hand before speaking. “Take up positions outside and cover the front of the building with the Lancers. Corporal Lemink and his men will take cover inside and defend the civilians.” Locke said, relaying his orders to Christian and Nathan who were still in the morgue calming down the scared civilians.

  Christian and Nathan would remain inside as well, acting as a final
line of defence should whatever enemy shows up breach the defences outside. Luckily the building sported no rear entrance or even any kind of weakness from the building’s rear. Engineers had designed and built the administrative building like a solid concrete block, with only a front entrance and windows on the second floor. The lead engineer must have been a military man, because the building was more like a bunker than anything else.

  Sabian walked away, heading for the door leading outside. He was already issuing orders to his men as engines growled to life and vehicles moved to form defensive barriers in front of the entrance to the administrative building.

  Locke heard Sabian tell his men to stop playing grab ass and form up, allowing Locke a wye smile behind his visor.

  The Wolves exited next as Lemink’s men entered, all of them still in shock, looking at the Titans with wide-eyed admiration as they passed them.

  Locke was the last to step outside, opening up a channel to his scout. “What do you see Corporal Jay?” he asked the Titan sniper.

  “Shit sir, and a lot of it,” Jay replied.

  “Good, I was starting to feel like this was too easy.” Locke replied.

  All of the Wolves heard their Captain’s words, and for a moment they all smiled out of anticipation.

  Soon those smiles would be grimaces, and the situation would be far from easy.

  The Beast was the excrement heading for the Titan’s metaphorical spinning blades, pouring out of every crevice like a tidal wave of mutant flesh, all of them unique in form and size. Grotesque parodies of human beings streamed from buildings to the north of the medical compound. The commotion caused by the silencing of the traitorous forces had piqued the attention of the monsters further north, monsters that had been heading for the giant mushroom cloud forming in the night sky when sounds of killing drew them from their hungry path.