The Lost Stars: Imperfect Sword

by Jack Campbell

  “Negative. Some of those volunteers might be snake agents. Until we can screen the prisoners, everyone is a potential snake. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir. Base sensors are spotting heavy enemy forces massing opposite sector three.”

  Drakon moved as quickly as he could through the underground passageways of the former enemy base, the soldiers he encountered flattening themselves against the nearest wall to make room for him to pass. “I’ll be at the command center in two minutes. Colonel Kai, what have you got available to reinforce sector three?”

  “Nothing,” Kai said. “All of the people I have are on the line, guarding prisoners, or searching the base. The final wounded are being brought in now. I will shift locally as necessary to deal with pressure at each point.”

  Hopefully, that would be good enough. “Colonel Safir, if the Syndicate troops follow doctrine, they’ll be preparing to hit sector six on the opposite side of the base within a few minutes of the attack against sector three beginning. Be ready for it.”

  “Yes, sir. We’re dragging in the last of the medics and the wounded. They’ll be under cover within a minute, but we’re going to lose some of the wounded.”

  Damn. “Getting them inside the base was their only chance,” Drakon said.

  “No argument there, General,” Safir said. “Uh-oh. We’ve got incoming.”

  “I see it,” Drakon said as his display lit with warnings. “How heavy is this barrage, Colonel Malin?”

  “It looks like they’re throwing everything they’ve got at us,” Malin reported. “We’re about to find out how well this base was constructed, General.”

  “Let’s hope they did a good job,” Drakon said, eyeing the massive artillery barrage that was seconds from impacting. “The ground attacks will come as soon as the barrage ends. Everyone on the outer fortifications get into the nearest blast bunker now!” If there were any snakes hiding in the base’s surface structures, they were about to discover how big a mistake that had been.

  He entered the command center as the barrage landed, and the world around him shook.

  “WE have to do something,” Kommodor Marphissa said. “Is there any way we can hit any of the escorts around Happy Hua’s battleship and still screen the surviving freighters?”

  Manticore’s displays showed the expanding balls of wreckage that marked the ends of two of the freighters. As Marphissa had feared, Hua had let some of her escorts swing out far enough from the battleship to destroy the escape pods that the freighters’ crews had used in futile attempts to escape.

  And she could still do nothing.

  “Kommodor,” a message came in from Defender. “We have received a broken transmission from General Drakon. As best we can determine, he is asking us to immediately open fire on the enemy ground forces positions nearest his own soldiers. We have been holding back from firing our hell lances in order to save them for any further rocket barrages, aerospace craft attacks, or cruise missiles. Request instructions.”

  Marphissa checked the distance. Manticore and Gryphon, in their futile attempts to screen the freighters and inflict some damage on Haris’s heavy cruiser, had moved about a light-minute sunward of the inhabited planet. Defender’s message was a minute old. The delay was bad, but not horrible.

  She hit the reply command. “Follow General Drakon’s request and open fire on those ground forces positions. Do so as soon as you receive this message. Hit the ground positions as many times as you can before your hell lances overheat.”

  Diaz was staring at his display. “Drakon must need that support very badly. But there’s nothing else we can do.”

  “Maybe we should give up on trying to protect the freighters,” Marphissa grumbled. “All that we are doing is delaying the inevitable. Maybe if we all head back to the inhabited world and concentrate our fire on the enemy ground forces, we can help General Drakon.”

  “But . . .” Diaz clenched his hands into two fists. “Maybe we should. We can’t save the freighters.”

  Marphissa looked to where Hawk and Eagle were trying once more to come to grips with Haris’s light cruiser, which was once again dancing out of reach.

  She reached for her comm control, but paused, wincing, as another alert sounded.

  Another ship had arrived at Ulindi hours ago. And she did not expect any reinforcements, so it was probably more bad news.

  —

  DRAKON glanced upward at the overhead that bounced and shuddered continuously. The base command center was buried under armor and rock, above it other subsurface rooms also protected by armor and rock, and above them the surface where a variety of buildings had once stood. Those buildings were now piles of rubble that splintered and flew under the hammerblows of the artillery barrage flaying the former enemy base.

  Fine dust shifted down onto Drakon and the other soldiers in the command center. The emergency lighting didn’t waver, though, and the displays remained bright and steady. The base’s power plant was buried deeper than anything else, invulnerable to anything short of a massive orbital bombardment.

  “They’re not scoring many direct hits on the outer fortifications,” Malin reported. “Their global-satellite positioning arrays were taken out by the Midway warships before we landed, and all of the chaff and dust in the atmosphere near here is interfering with direct targeting systems, so their accuracy is far from precise.”

  “They’re getting some hits, though,” Drakon said. Most of his soldiers were huddled in the blast bunkers near the outer defenses of the base, riding out the barrage in as much safety as possible. “If they were dropping rocks on us from orbit, we’d all be chewing dirt right now.”

  “The Kommodor must be keeping the enemy warships occupied.”

  “If she doesn’t continue to keep that battleship occupied, it will drop a world of hurt on us. We can’t disperse over the surface as I’d hoped while we’re penned in here by those Syndicate ground forces out there.” Drakon turned as a prisoner was escorted up to him.

  The prisoner saluted in the Syndicate fashion, right fist coming across to rest on the left breast. “Sub-CEO Princip.”

  Drakon ran his gaze over the man’s precisely tailored suit. “Why weren’t you in battle armor when you were captured, Sub-CEO Princip?”

  Princip gave Drakon a disdainful look even though he couldn’t hide his nervousness as the ground shook from more impacts above them. “I am not a front-line worker. I am a high-level manager.”

  “No, you’re a waste of resources,” Drakon said, leaning closer, menacing in his own battle armor, his blank faceplate a few centimeters from Princip’s sweating forehead. “I want a full accounting of snakes in this base, and I want it now, or I am going to give you an escort up to the surface, where you can personally evaluate the effectiveness of the artillery striking this base.”

  “I—I—I don’t have—”

  “Get rid of him,” Drakon told Malin, turning away.

  “Finley would know! Finley is the senior snake here! Get her!”

  Malin nodded, smiling. “We have an Executive First Rank Finley among our prisoners. A logistics executive, she claimed.”

  “Get her and find out what she knows. We’re getting hit hard from the outside, we’re about to get hit harder, and we don’t need any hits from the inside.”

  “What about the sub-CEO?”

  A thought of Conner Gaiene crossed Drakon’s mind, along with a temptation to order Sub-CEO Princip disposed of. But Conner hadn’t liked that sort of thing, and neither had his much-longer-dead wife Lara. “Put him with the other prisoners.”

  “I am a sub-CEO!” Princip protested. “I should—”

  “Shut up while you’re ahead,” the senior soldier among his guards cheerfully informed Princip. “General Drakon is already treating you a whole lot nicer than you deserve. Get going.”

  Cringing as well as outraged to be talked to that way by a mere worker, Princip left the command center under the prodding of the barrels of weapons. Drako
n knew his soldiers would not disobey him by killing Princip, but he suspected that the sub-CEO would “accidentally fall down the stairs” at least once on the way back to the other prisoners.

  A medic came into the command center, attention focused on her helmet display. “Who needs a patch and a pill? You.”

  She rapidly applied a combat wound patch to a soldier’s arm, pushed three tablets into the soldier’s mouth, then, with another look at her display, began to leave.

  “Medical specialist,” Drakon said.

  “Do you need—?” Her eyes focused on him, and she went to attention, saluting. “I’m sorry, General, I didn’t—”

  “Never apologize for doing your job,” Drakon said. “Were you one of those out in the open bringing in the casualties?”

  “We all were, sir.”

  “Pass the word around that I told you how much I admire all of you medical personnel for doing your best to save our wounded while under enemy fire.”

  “Yes, sir.” The medic sounded a bit confused as well as very tired. “That’s our job, sir. Our responsibility.”

  “You do it well. All of you. Thank you. I’ll make a formal announcement to everyone when this is all over.”

  “Uh . . . yes, sir.” The medic left, heading for the next soldier who her display indicated needed help.

  Drakon sensed the next event a second before his display alerted him. “The barrage is lifting.”

  Malin nodded, his hands moving rapidly over his display. “Colonels Kai and Safir are ordering their soldiers out of the blast bunkers and into the outer fortifications. Surviving base automated defenses are already engaging attackers.”

  “They sent the first wave in too close to the barrage,” Drakon said with disgust. In an attempt to catch the defenders still in their blast bunkers, the initial attacks had gone in while the barrage was still under way. That was risky enough when precision guidance was ensuring the artillery fell pretty close to exactly where intended. With precision guidance on the artillery badly impaired, it was too risky for any commander who cared about their soldiers.

  But, then, the commander of the Syndicate forces was a Syndicate CEO, and to him or her, the soldiers were workers, faceless creatures whose fates did not matter.

  Heavy artillery or rocket rounds falling short of the base ravaged the front ranks of the attackers. As the survivors staggered out of the blasts, no longer screened by chaff clouds this close to the base, a wall of fire from the base’s defenses and Drakon’s soldiers hit them and wiped them out.

  No one cheered. Like Drakon, many of them had been sent on similar attacks in the past while still under command of the Syndicate, lucky enough to survive and knowing too well how it felt.

  Enemy warbirds darted closer through the skies overhead, continuously testing the base’s antiair defenses and preventing any of those weapons from shifting to engage ground targets.

  Another wave of enemy soldiers erupted out of the murk, going all out. “Colonel Safir is reinforcing sector six with her reserve company,” Malin reported. A single drop of sweat trickled down his face, clearing a meandering path through the dust. “She’s going to need more.”

  “We haven’t got more,” Drakon said, eyeing the disposition of his soldiers through the base. “They want us to short Kai’s forces because they’re going to hit there next.”

  Malin, his voice calm, pointed. “We have a lot of soldiers tied up watching the prisoners.”

  “No. I will not murder the prisoners to free up those soldiers.”

  “General, this is a matter of pragmatics,” Malin argued. “If we do not survive, if you do not survive, all we have fought for will be lost.”

  Drakon shook his head. “You miss the point, Bran. If I start doing whatever I think needs to be done purely on a pragmatic basis, then I’ve already lost.”

  “I can give the order.”

  “Outsourcing murder doesn’t outsource the responsibility,” Drakon said. “I want you to evaluate each prisoner holding location and reduce the guards to the minimum number. If we can seal off the entrances to a location and just post guards on each entrance, that will do. See how many we can free up.”

  Malin hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, sir.” He bent over the display, eyes intent, hands once more moving rapidly.

  Drakon opened a window to see the view from Safir’s armor, immediately giving him front-line perspective again. Safir was moving through the defensive strong points in her brigade’s sectors, personally checking on the soldiers and bolstering their morale. As Drakon watched, Safir’s weapon came up and she joined with a platoon pouring fire at a wedge of attackers charging one of the strongpoints. The wedge shattered under the blows, Syndicate soldiers falling back or going to ground, but another wave came through right behind them.

  “How does it look?” Drakon asked Safir.

  “Ugly, General,” Safir replied, aiming and firing as she answered. “Wait one. Tanaka! Pull a squad from Badeu’s platoon and shift it ten meters to the left! Here, where I’m designating. Got it? General, they’re breaching the perimeter in spots. We’re sealing every penetration so far, but I’m running out of assets, and ammunition is getting low in many units.”

  Drakon looked at Malin, who had straightened up. “Two platoons,” he told Drakon.

  “Load them up with ammo from the base stockpiles and send them to Safir. Colonel Safir, I’ve got two platoons with ammo resupply on the way to you. Put them where you need them.”

  “Thank you, sir!”

  Malin was watching his display. “The Syndicate forces should hit Colonel Kai any second now.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.” Standard tactics, trying to get the opponent to shift forces to counter a major assault, then hitting the weakened areas with assaults at least as powerful. Alerts sounded at sector two. “There they are.”

  “Kai will hold them if anyone can,” Malin said.

  “I know. He’s my rock.” Others had complained about Kai’s slowness, his careful evaluation of aspects before making decisions, his caution on the attack. But, on the defense, Kai would not be moved. “Colonel Kai, let me know if you need anything.”

  The view from Kai’s armor showed a mass of Syndicate soldiers coming into view, the attack wide enough to cover most of the second sector’s frontage. “We might need some more ammunition,” Kai said judiciously. “This is a very target-rich environment, General. I’ll let you know if any problems develop.”

  Kai’s soldiers and the remaining base defensive weaponry in sector two opened up, tearing holes in the attacking ranks.

  Malin was watching, too, and now shook his head. “We need to be prepared to fall back on inner defenses, General. Kai simply doesn’t have the firepower to stop that heavy an assault. The Syndicate commander is sending them in without regard to losses.”

  Drakon checked Safir’s status, seeing that her brigade was still being heavily pressed and that no forces could be shifted from her to help Kai. “Set up a plan for the fallback. What are our odds if we have to abandon the outer fortifications?”

  “Poor,” Malin said.

  “Do the best you can.” Drakon watched the wave of Syndicate troops lapping against Kai’s positions, masses of more attackers crossing the open area behind, saw the ammo status of Kai’s troops dropping far too rapidly, and knew the line would fall within minutes. “Get it done fast.”

  He barely had time to notice the alert on his display before several massive explosions erupted outside the base, tearing huge gaps in the forces attacking sector two. The entire base trembled as the shocks rolled through the planet’s upper layers like minor earthquakes.

  Malin’s mouth had fallen open in surprise. He shut it with an audible snap. “Orbital bombardment. Kommodor Marphissa must have saved a few bombardment projectiles, General, and managed to get her ships back overhead despite the enemy warships.”

  The attack against Kai’s brigade had been shattered, the Syndicate attackers closest to the
base suddenly isolated and panicking, breaking off the fight and fleeing into the newly spawned craters where the bombardment projectiles had fallen. Kai’s forces kept firing as long as they had targets, riddling the retreating enemy ranks.

  Drakon checked with Safir, seeing the Syndicate attackers falling back there, as well. “I think they’re worried there may be more rocks falling,” Safir announced with glee.

  “There probably aren’t,” Drakon said. “Our warships probably just shot their last load. But that one barrage hurt the Syndicate badly.”

  “Their CEO has been throwing their lives away to keep the pressure on us,” Safir said. “Unless they’ve got another division in the rear, they’re not going to be able to keep that up.”

  “Yeah,” Drakon agreed. “It almost worked, but after the losses they sustained, they’re going to have a hard time hitting us that hard at multiple points again.”

  Maybe, just maybe, the situation had swung from hopeless to not-quite-hopeless.

  Assuming that Kommodor Marphissa had figured out how to handle that Syndicate battleship.

  —

  MARPHISSA felt a sudden surge of hope as she realized that the new ship had arrived at the jump point from Midway.

  It was a big ship.

  Pele. It must be the battle cruiser. Pele wouldn’t even the odds, but it would give them more of a chance. “I don’t believe it!” Marphissa cried out loud. “Thank you, Madam President! How could she have known?”

  Kapitan Diaz was staring at his own display. “It’s not Pele.”

  “What? How can it not be Pele? That’s too big to be anything but—” Marphissa couldn’t say anything else for a moment as Manticore’s sensors produced a unit identification for the new ship. “It’s the Midway.”

  Marphissa could hear the bridge crew unsuccessfully trying to suppress cries of joy. Diaz was grinning like a fool. “Our battleship. This more than evens the odds!” Diaz said.

  Had they forgotten that Midway’s weapons were still being fitted, activated, and integrated? Would a bluff work again, on the attack? Marphissa was about to dump cold water on the enthusiasm when Midway’s status feed arrived. “Do you see that?” she asked Diaz, amazed. “Look at her status!”