by Jay Allan
“Unless you’ve got medical training, Captain…no, wait.” She turned and looked back toward one of the tunnels leading deeper into the shelter. “You can help, Captain. We’ve got supply rooms back there, full of irradiated food. It’s not usable, and it’s taking up space. If your people can clear it all out, maybe I can set up another trauma ward in there.”
“Yes, General.” The massive figure nodded to her, and then he turned, moving back down the tunnel.
It wouldn’t be good if too many people saw Marines carting out the crates of food. They’d probably assume the military was keeping it for themselves…but even the truth that two-thirds of the rations were spoiled would be bad if it got out.
She exhaled hard. But that didn’t matter now. She had a simple choice. Find a way to handle more wounded…or watch hundreds of Marines die out there for lack of medical care, wasting away in the radioactive hell that had been their homeworld just a few days before.
Chapter 18
Just Outside Prime Hospital
Columbia, Eta Cassiopeiae II
Earthdate: 2321 AD (36 Years After the Fall)
“First Battalion, secure the perimeter. We’ve got enemy forces all around. We don’t know who made it inside, but your job is to make sure no more get in. And I mean not Goddamned one. Understood, Captain Huger?”
“Yes, Major. Understood.”
“Second Battalion, you’re with me. We’re going to search this complex from sub-basement to the roof, and we’re going to find President Tyler. Black Flag combatants are to be shot on sight, but remember there are probably Columbian soldiers in there too, not to mention medical staff and civilians, so be careful what you shoot. We’re here to secure the president, and that’s the priority. Shooting his soldiers will be bad, but not as bad as not finding him.” Or not finding him in time.
It was clear there had been fighting in the street outside the hospital, and the doors and windows along the front were broken. There were bodies, and more than a few wounded soldiers from what looked like both sides, but Camerici didn’t have time for any of that.
“Let’s move,” she roared, and then she headed toward the main entrance, leading her center company in.
A squad of Eagles slipped by her, moving to point, likely embarrassed by having their diminutive battalion commander the first one entering the building. They fanned out all around, as additional troopers poured in. There was nothing at first, save debris and bodies, but then gunfire erupted.
Camerici ducked back, as did all her soldiers. It took a few seconds to get a read on where the fire was coming from, and then her people opened up, at least two dozen Eagles blasting at what had sounded like two rifles, max. She knew it was almost as likely the shooters were loyal Columbian soldiers as enemies, but her efforts to spare Tyler’s troops did not extend to putting her own in unnecessary jeopardy…and whoever was up there, they had opened fire.
The incoming shots ceased almost immediately. She didn’t know if her people had gotten the shooters, or if they had retreated, but that didn’t really matter, not now.
“Alright, let’s keep going. If there are Black Flag soldiers in here, we’ve got to get to the president before they do. Finding and securing President Tyler is a Priority One objective.”
The space was large, probably a lobby of some sort, but now it was deserted, the desks and walls torn apart by automatic weapons fire. There were a dozen bodies scattered around, a bit better than two-thirds of them unarmored, wearing the uniforms of Columbia’s Guards Regiment. The others wore fighting suits, at a quick glance as heavy and sophisticated as the Eagles’ own Mark VIIIs.
Black Flag…they are in here…
She raced toward the back of the large, open area. There was a bank of elevators against the wall, but they were as blasted apart as the front desk, and they looked completely non-functional. “To the stairs…I want a platoon on each floor. Full power comm blast the second you see something, understood?” There was sporadic jamming, but nothing that would prevent at least a base signal from getting through.
“Yes, Major.” A series of acknowledgements came in, from the center company’s platoon leaders, and now from Company A, moving in behind the lead group.
“First Platoon, with me.” Her senior platoon was one hundred percent veteran, mostly Eagles with four or five years’ experience in Red and White Battalions. She paused for a second at the door leading to the stairwell, and then she swung around, her rifle ready. But there was nothing.
She ran up the stairs, one level, then two. The steps were some sort of marble or stone, and several of them cracked under her hard, armored steps. There was a handrail, but she didn’t touch it. She was experienced enough at operating powered armor to realize she’d snap the thing off like a twig.
She had her onboard scanners operating at full, trying to pick up any abnormal energy readings, even motion that seemed suspicious. She turned and ran up to the fourth floor, stopping and looking around, checking her readings. The building was a hospital, and one look at her display confirmed there were people everywhere running around in a crazed panic, trying to hide or escape. The lobby had been deserted, not surprisingly, since that was clearly a spot where Tyler’s guards had tried to make a stand.
Camerici didn’t doubt the courage of the president’s soldiers, and she knew some of Tyler’s people were equipped with powered armor, albeit older models. But the loyalists had clearly been caught by surprise, with only unarmored units to face the rebels…and whatever fully-powered allies those behind the assassination attempt had been able to smuggle in.
She walked toward the door leading to the fourth floor hall. She was about to go through, and then she heard gunfire. It was distant, several more floors up. It wasn’t conclusive, but it was all she had to go on. She waved for the lead troopers to follow her, and she bounded up the stairs, the clatter of armored feet echoing loudly off in the confined space.
The sound was closer now, and she got a better read on it. The eighth floor, she thought. Then: no, the ninth.
She ran up the last flight and burst through the door without delay—a reckless maneuver, she knew. The sound of combat was heavier now, from somewhere down at the far end of the hall. “Let’s go…combat formation,” she snapped. “Just make sure you go after the right targets.” Easier said than done.
She advanced, more cautiously than she had emerged into the corridor, her rifle at the ready and her visor amped up to level three mag. The corridor was wide enough for two armored troopers abreast. She knew she had no place in the front, but she’d managed to get herself there anyway, and she wasn’t about to make a spectacle out of trying to slip back a few ranks. Besides, this way she had a better chance of avoiding anyone firing at Tyler’s guards. Assuming she could manage to pick out the correct target any better than one of her troopers.
She moved steadily, picking up the pace. The hall was open, with no cover of any kind, so she figured it was a better bet to speed things up, get her people into the action. If the enemy saw them coming and opened up now, it would be a bloody mess.
The hall was long, at least a hundred meters. There were signs of fighting the entire way, one hospital room after another, doors shattered, bullet holes riddling the walls. Most were empty, no doubt abandoned by occupants who’d had any ability at all to move. There were some bodies, too, troopers who’d clearly died fighting, and patients, those who appeared to have been bedridden…shot where they lay.
Whoever had come this way, they were killing everyone they encountered. Tyler’s reputation was that of a hard man, and a brutal one when necessary, but she’d never heard anyone characterize him as the kind of psychopath who murdered sick people in their beds.
The Black Flag…
Camerici knew many people in Occupied Space cursed the Eagles, thought of them much as she now thought of this new enemy. It’s not fair, she thought. Then: Or is it?
No, it isn’t. General Cain was always ready to do whatever ha
d to be done, but we never murdered civilians, we never abused prisoners. Still, millions died nevertheless in those campaigns, burned to death in their homes, caught in the fire and the blasts of artillery barrages. Were any of them less dead than these patients lying in their bloodstained beds?
She saw an opening up ahead, a large room at the end of the hall, and shadows inside. There was a firefight going on, but she couldn’t make out the sides, not yet.
She raced the rest of the way, stopping at the doorway, and leaning in cautiously. There were six soldiers in powered armor, gunning down a mass of blue-coated soldiers struggling to take whatever cover they could. Camerici recognized the beleaguered group as Tyler’s elite troopers, and that was all she needed to know.
“Take down the armored soldiers,” she snapped to her Eagles, rushing forward into the room. She was on the side of the armored troopers, almost the rear. She opened up on full auto, her hypervelocity rounds slamming into one of the enemy, then another.
The Black Flag troopers spun around, trying to bring their own weapons to bear against the new, unexpected threat, but the two she’d hit dropped to the ground before they could fire. Another pair fell in a cloud of glowing, 8,000 meter per hour projectiles, but the last two were able to open up before they, too, went down. One of the shots clipped Camerici in the arm, and a burst hit one of her troopers just as he ran into the room.
She could feel the trauma control system in her suit responding, sterile foam pouring out of the tiny tubes built into the armor, expanding, sealing the wound. She knew it wasn’t that bad…but it hurt like a son of a bitch, at least until the suit injected her with a moderately strong painkiller a few seconds later.
She pushed the thought out of her mind, along with her reflexive concern for her more seriously wounded trooper—Figus, her AI informed her. Eagle training was strict and clear. Secure the location first.
The six enemy powered troopers were all down, clearly incapacitated, if not dead. But there were another dozen or so unarmored, wearing uniforms different from the guards, but styles Camerici recognized as Columbian. The turncoats.
Antonia Camerici was a tiny woman, barely one and a half meters tall, at least without her armor, and she didn’t look brutal or dangerous. But she was both. And among the many things that rubbed her the wrong way, traitors were at the very top of the list.
The soldiers were standing around, one or two taking an ineffectual potshot at her armored Eagles. The nuclear-powered assault rifles the powered troopers had carried could penetrate the reinforced osmium-iridium alloy of her Eagles’ armor, but it took one hell of a shot from a standard issue explosive propellant weapon to do the same.
The enemy soldiers looked confused, as though they wanted to flee, and realizing there was no way, they were about to surrender. Tyler’s guards were mostly down, some of them wounded, and a few just climbing back from the spots where they’d been pinned.
“Take them down,” she said, without the slightest hesitation in her voice. She gestured toward the traitors.
Half a dozen Eagles were in the room by then, and it took only a few seconds to gun down the stunned enemy troopers.
“Stand down,” she snapped toward Tyler’s guards, as she saw a few of them bringing their weapons to the ready. “We’re Black Eagles. We’re here to secure the area and safeguard President Tyler. Can you tell me where he is?”
“He’s right in here.” The voice was strained, but loud enough and defiant. “Thank you for your aid.”
Camerici turned her head, peering through a door on the far wall. There was a man lying on a stretcher, leaning on his side and facing her. He was clearly in pain, but he was awake and alert. She recognized him at once.
“You are welcome, Mr. President.” She turned her head to the side slightly to face one of her Eagles. “See to Figus,” she ordered. She had checked the medical scans. The soldier was seriously wounded, but nothing his trauma system couldn’t handle until he was evac’d.
Her eyes darted up to the reports coming in, status updates quickly collated by her AI and organized for easy reference. Everything was under control. The Eagles were all around the capital, and all known Black Flag and treacherous units had been wiped out or captured. No Black Flag personnel had surrendered, of course. It would be Columbian soldiers taken captive, all of whom would swear they had no idea what was going on and were only following orders. But that was Tyler’s mess to deal with.
She took a few steps forward and said, “President Tyler, allow me to offer you General Darius Cain’s warmest regards. This facility is now secure, as is the capital city. Eagle forces are in possession of all vital facilities, and all detected enemy units have been neutralized. I have been instructed to protect your person, and otherwise to do anything you require to aid your immediate resumption of full control over Columbia.”
“Who am I speaking to?”
“Major Antonia Camerici, Mr. President.”
“Well, let me start with this. Thank you, Major Camerici, to my ally General Cain, to you, and to your troopers.”
Camerici nodded, as gracefully as she could manage in armor.
“We’ve had word that the Nest was under assault,” Tyler said, clearly worried. “If you’ve secured the main communications center, I will order our fleet to mobilize at once and rush to your aid.”
“Thank you, Mr. President, but that won’t be necessary. We just received word from the Nest. The enemy forces have been repulsed, and the survivors have fled the system.
* * * * *
“Erik, I’m glad to see you in one piece, you old dog.” Darius Cain stepped off the shuttle and walked toward Teller. There were half a dozen Eagles behind him, their heads shifting as they scanned the area for any threats.
“I could say the same about you, my friend. Things didn’t look any too good there when I left.” There was a sour touch to the last few words. Darius knew how his friend had felt leaving the Nest as the battle was just getting started. He wouldn’t have sent him away, but he’d wanted his ground forces under Teller’s stewardship, not so much because he’d anticipated the fighting on Columbia, but in case the worst had happened. If Darius had died in the Nest, at least some of his people would have escaped, and they’d have had the leadership they needed to survive, to carry on the fight. And Teller understood that as well.
“We managed to get through, as we always do. But I’m afraid we’ll have to wait to catch up. We’ve got to get the Eagles ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“We’re going to Armstrong.” A pause. “It’s as much a gut call as anything, but I think the Black Flag is going to attack there…may have already.”
“You mean another force, like the one they threw at the Nest?” Teller was rarely surprised, but Darius could tell his friend was taken aback by what he’d just heard.
“Bigger, at least if my guess is right. I think what we faced was just a diversion, never intended to take out the Nest, only to keep us busy.”
“But if that’s the case, they’re almost certainly already there.”
“Yes, Erik, but you know what will happen. If Garret’s fleet can’t hold, they’ll bug out…and the Marines will dig in. They’ve got all kinds of shelters there, courtesy of my father’s paranoia forty years ago.”
“They could hold out even against a nuclear assault.”
“Yes, of course. The Black Flag will have to send down ground forces to dig them out…and they’ll be facing thousands of Marines with my father in command.” He paused. “We have a chance to get there in time, but we can’t wait. I have to see Jarrod Tyler, right now.”
“He’s right here, General Cain.” Tyler moved across the landing field, propped up in a powered chair, and followed by a dozen guards, six of his own, and six armored Eagles. “Thank you, my friend. I’m not sure we’d have gotten out of that one without your help.”
“What are friends for, Jarrod?” Darius walked toward Columbia’s president. “And you
know it’s Darius to you. I hear ‘General Cain’ about two thousand times a day. No need for two thousand one.”
Tyler forced a smile, clearly through some pain, and he nodded. “I heard most of what you said, Darius. What can I do to help? Columbia and its military are at your disposal.”
Chapter 19
Field Hospital 1001 – Shelter A3
Planet Armstrong, Gamma Pavonis III
Earthdate: 2321 AD (36 Years After the Fall)
The room shook again, harder than the last time. The fighting was getting closer. Sarah hadn’t had time to check the monitors and confirm that, not with both hands deep in a sergeant’s chest cavity. But she’d been on enough battlefields to know without checking. She could read those rumbles in the ground like words in a book.
The comm was down completely now, the enemy close enough to blanket the whole area with impenetrable jamming. Erik had sent two more messengers, each reporting with increasing urgency on the advance of the enemy forces. She had no doubt he’d have ordered—or asked, depending on perspective—her to pull the hospital back, but there was nowhere to go. Anybody stepping out of the shelters without full armor, even for a few minutes, would get a massive overdose of radiation. That pretty much guaranteed every one of the wounded would die, at least, even assuming she’d somehow managed to get all her medical staff suited up. Of course, that didn’t even address the civilians. There were twenty thousand of them in Shelter A3, crammed so tightly, she’d had sixty medical cases and four deaths from asphyxiation and crowd-related injuries already. Every one of them would die if she tried to move them. There simply wasn’t protective gear available, and certainly not in the quantities she’d need.
Not that there was anywhere to go.
She wasn’t entirely sure Erik wouldn’t have wanted to order her to leave the civilians behind, but it was a pretty good bet he knew she wouldn’t do it. That wouldn’t have stopped him from trying years before, but he’d become more realistic with age.
