Fortress Beta City (The Sleeping Legion Book 2)
Page 25
Barin took satisfaction in seeing Hardits dropping dead before he got to the trees. Remembering his brief militia training, as well as those days he’d spent as a cadet, he activated his assault cutters. The end of his rifle began to glow as the needles spun like a drill. A Hardit with a tail snaking around the tree howled in pain as Barin shoved his assault cutters through the tree. The surprised Hardit fell to the ground and yelped as flesh was pierced. Barin replied by shoving the razor-sharp assault cutters through its head.
Like a dancer, dodging and weaving around the Hardits in the trees, Barin became the embodiment of the Hardit’s Death God. After the sixth enemy dropped, having been disemboweled by the glowing assault cutters, Barin roared his rage as he lost himself to a battle-induced bloodlust. Snarling, Barin again screamed the battle cry as he saw his brethren had breached the enemy line.
“Scipio!”
As the intrepid Auxies started bunching together, fighting the incredulous Hardits, Barin urged them on.
“Death redeems all!” he bellowed as he lunged for another enemy.
Out of sabots, he would have to stab his way to victory. Barin could see the silhouettes of the other Auxies who had followed him. Like him, they were hell bent on avenging years of abuse from their Hardit overseers.
Now deep into the ranks of Hardit soldiers, Barin felt pain began to radiate from his leg. His movements were slower and his breath was becoming harder to find. Preparing to punch a hole through the back of a distracted Janissary in front with his assault cutters, his body jerked almost off the ground. Looking down, a knife clutched by a Hardit tail, was embedded to the hilt in his side.
Letting gravity pull his rifle down, Barin plunged the assault cutters through the Janissary’s back in front of him. The pain in his side was beyond words. Before he could realize the extent of the damage, a Hardit blade removed his injured leg. Barin toppled to the ground and stared at the boot of his removed leg. His body jerked as blades plunged into his back. By the time the Hardits had finished, only a chunk of meat remained where a man once stood.
— Chapter 58 —
Late Morning, Post-Revival Day 22
Skies Above Fortress Beta City, Serendine
1st Squadron, 75th Vengeance Air Wing, New Order Army
Captain Rarvi Matar-Vras was ambitious, desperately seeking to rise through the ranks of the Hardit aerial forces. He was willing to sit back while his Wing Commander, Thann, contacted the nefnasts. Rarvi knew he could turn on him at the last minute, and he wasn’t above playing both sides of the fight. He’d do whatever was needed to advance his ambitions. When Rarvi was assigned the mission of scouting enemy forces and killing as many as he could, he leapt at the chance to prove himself.
Rarvi’s squadron of five flights broke past the tree line and began shooting across the pathetic trenches the nefnasts had dug to hide themselves. His onboard sensors revealed a few human vehicles fleeing the tree line. It appeared they had engaged the Janissaries in some sort of suicidal charge which cost most of them their lives. Judging by the dead bodies and the two burning vehicles, the Janissaries must have made quick work of the idiot humans.
Rarvi saw an opportunity to prove their worth. Janissaries were efficient, but not as efficient as a squadron of twenty-seven Vengeance fighters. Smiling, he decided to let his squadron have a little fun.
“Engage the fleeing nefnasts!” said Rarvi into his helmet microphone.
The five flights banked sharply and took turns strafing the vehicles. With twenty-seven aircraft blasting the vehicles, they made quick work of them. One vehicle smoked as it continued sputtering forward.
As 1st Squadron continued toward the fortress, Rarvi broke formation and circled back to finish off the last vehicle. His fingers gripped the steering column as he dumped rounds on the smoking human transport. To his surprise, the humans inside jumped out and ran inside a small polycrete structure. Rarvi smiled as he fired a short-range missile at the construct. It exploded in a fireball of polycrete and dust. Looking at the hole the missile created, he realized there was more to these pillboxes than met his three eyes.
The nefnasts constructed tunnels? Don’t they know we thrive in tunnels?
Rarvi made a quick note into the mission data recorder before he increased his thrust to fall back into formation with his squadron. Rejoining them, they veered into position and prepared for a run on the fortress.
The twenty-seven Vengeance fighters swarmed over the fortress in a tight formation. Pointing the tips of their craft into the sky they cleared the walls of the fortress and began strafing a group of humans clustered in an open area. Rarvi merged with his fighter craft and gave into the drugs coursing through his system.
In disbelief, Rarvi watched as the Marines working on the affixed weapons stood there like animals waiting for the slaughter. Letting his craft hover, thanks to the VTOL capabilities, Rarvi simply turned his craft toward targets and destroyed them. With two eyes on his nav controls and one on targeting sensors, he saw a cluster of humans. The missile he fired at them was an afterthought. Laughing into his comms link, the group disappeared in a splash of fire.
While Rarvi continued to hover, rotate, and slaughter humans, the other pilots strafed the walls. The five flights of Hardits bordered on mania as they searched for fleeing humans. Like their squadron leader, the pilots of 1st Squadron, 75th Vengeance Air Wing were so focused on the massacre that they didn’t notice the humans with rockets.
— Chapter 59 —
Late Morning, Post-Revival Day 22
Training Field, Fortress Beta City, Serendine
Commander, 1st Aux RGT, Task Force City Builder
Senior Auxiliary Colonel Ashanti Okoro stared at the courtyard of Fortress Beta City in disbelief. Her hands shook as she dug her armored fingertips into the polycrete she was pressing her body against. Her entire being trembled as missiles impacted the fortress walls. Blinking, her vision faded in and out. The shattered remains of the 1st Aux Battalion littered the open space of the courtyard. Their bodies had been ripped to pieces in seconds.
Three Pens. We lost three Pens, she thought as she blinked shocked tears from her eyes.
Lieutenant Colonel Harcourt, her friend, fell as he tried to walk toward her. Blood pumped from his throat. Ashanti rushed over to him, heedless of the danger. She desperately clung to his hand, imploring him to live. He answered her pleas by coughing blood and dying in her arms. Polycrete rained down from the sky as fighter crafts continued punching holes in the fortress.
Ashanti’s tears flowed, unashamedly, as she began dragging Harcourt’s body toward an enclosure. He was dead, but she wouldn’t leave his body to be targeted. Ashanti knew Marine air fighters wouldn’t just target people. They would target infrastructure and weaken defenses for ground forces.
We expected an attack by the Hardits, but everyone knows they’re agoraphobic. Who else would be attacking? These aren’t the same craft Nhlappo showed us from the attacks at New Detroit.
Ashanti squinted at the sky. A large formation of strange aircraft banked, split into two groups, then repositioned for another pass. Bracing, Ashanti hoped the enclosure she hunkered down in wasn’t targeted with missiles.
Streaking ordnance rose into the sky from all five sides of the fortress as the Marines began to return fire. The thud of GX Cannons mingled with the whooshing sounds of the Marines firing missile launchers and Fermi Cannons. As some of the enemy crafts began exploding in fireballs, Ashanti cheered with the rest of the Marines on the walls of the fortress.
Hope replaced fear and shock, and Ashanti’s muscle memory began to reassert itself. Gently rolling Harcourt’s body onto the ground, she sprinted toward the walls. Seeing a SAM pod silent and unmanned, Ashanti’s eyes narrowed. She ignored the chaos around her as she sprinted for the launcher.
In her rush to get to the walls, she shouldered through Marines scrambling up from their barracks below. The Marines shouted curses at her as she shoved them out of the way. Ash
anti didn’t hear them. Focusing solely on her mission of vengeance, she finally reached the surface to air missile launcher.
She unhooked the back of the weapon and set it to manual fire mode. With her AI, Cedar, hooked into the pod, her shaking hands prepared to deliver retribution. She intended to catch the formation as they swerved around the cables of the orbital elevator, exposing their underbelly to her fire.
With her first shot of twelve lined up, Ashanti and Cedar fired. The twelve missiles left burning trails of smoke as they impacted a craft. As it exploded and tumbled out of the sky, it crashed into its companion. Rather than cheer for her two kills, Ashanti scanned the skies for more targets. She saw some of the strange craft veer off towards Beta City and put it out of her mind as she focused on the remaining aircraft.
— Chapter 60 —
Late Morning, Post-Revival Day 22
Skies Above Fortress Beta City, Serendine
1st Squadron, 75th Vengeance Air Wing, New Order Army
Captain Rarvi Matar-Vras couldn’t believe it, Bravo Flight was gone. They’d been shot down, destroyed, and defiled by the nefnast. After noting the number of Marines he was seeing, he saw Delta and Echo Flights veer off toward Beta City. He screamed over the 75th’s radio channel, but they ignored him as they sought the safety of the dead city. He even tried logic, a rarity for the ambitious officer, and reminded them that the city might still have some of its automated defenses working. Still, the two flights pressed on.
Howling in rage, Rarvi aimed his cannons at a group of Marines rushing up from the open field inside the fortress toward the walls. As he strafed the human scum, all of them wearing what he recognized as engineering combat suits, he redoubled his efforts to destroy them. Eliminating a high value asset like an engineer was even better than killing ten regular humans. He kept the barrels of his cannon glowing as he made a low pass before he had to pull back up. The belly of his craft narrowly avoided the top of the wall.
While he scanned the skies around him, Rarvi saw that his fighters were being picked off at an alarming rate. The Marines inside the fortress began to wake up and shoot back. Seeing that he would need the rest of his air wing to win back the skies, he called back to Brevet Sub-Commander Vendar. There was no reply. In his bloodlust, he’d forgotten about the comms blackout and his mission to hit and run. In a desperate struggle to live, as the skies around him grew thick with missiles and gunfire, he continued jerking his fighter around the sky to avoid incoming surface to air missiles.
After banking, he saw that only three of his fighters remained airborne over the fortress. Watching them disappear from his sensors, Rarvi was alone. Realizing that his only hope was to flee, Rarvi made a final low pass, hoping that being close to the ground would prevent the smart features of their missiles from hitting him.
He never counted on a Marine with a grenade launcher getting lucky and sending a shot up the exhaust manifold of his fighter. It was a one in a million shot. Rarvi’s aircraft exploded. Its forward momentum carried the shattered fragments of flesh and machine forward into the open area beyond the fortress walls.
— Chapter 61 —
Late Morning, Post-Revival Day 22
Skies Above Fortress Beta City, Serendine
Delta & Echo Flight, 1st SQDN, 75th Vengeance Air Wing, New Order Army
Lieutenant Ralnell Vondt-Bolett was a competent officer, though unimaginative. What she lacked in creativity, she made up for in the graceful way she piloted her fighter. To the outside observer, it was as if the fighter was a living being, rather than a machine of war. While flying over the human stronghold, she realized that the tactics of her fighter squadrons allowed too many of them to become targets of enemy guns. In a play of desperation, she banked hard and headed towards the abandoned Beta City to regroup.
It took little time to traverse the 300 miles between the fortress and Beta City. Her comms vibrated with urgency as a garbled message from Brevet Sub-Commander Vendar. She couldn’t make it out completely, but could tell Vendar wanted them to make another suicidal pass on the fortress and return to base. Ralnell had other plans.
She hoped to find a place to hole up, where they could claim engine trouble or some other nonsense. Out of the corner of her eye, Ralnell could see that the witless commander of Echo Flight was doing the same thing, matching her flight’s every move.
Ralnell’s three eyes jumped to her console as alarms began to sound. The flight was so close to the deck that it triggered several dormant missiles. With the benefit of hundreds of hours of training, Delta Flight began instituting evasion techniques, as they sought to lose the anti-air missiles.
Executing a steep banking maneuver, in an effort to shake the missiles, Ralnell saw one of the fighters from Echo Flight get hit and explode. Due to poor piloting, the single missile managed to take out two fighters. A third fighter from Echo Flight banked too hard, overcorrected, and crashed into the ground. Ralnell growled as the ordnance separated into several smaller missiles.
Knowing they had to shake these missiles off, or offer them better targets, Ralnell ordered the pilots to make a run for the fortress. She hoped they’d be able to lose the missiles, or the projectiles would run out of fuel and fall out of the sky. Some of rockets did just that, running out of the reserve power they were operating on. Unfortunately, in their panic, the two remaining pilots from Echo Flight made themselves easy targets. Glancing at her sensors, Ralnell saw Delta Flight was all that remained from 1st Squadron.
Evasive maneuvering seemed to be allowing Ralnell to gain distance from the missiles on her tail, but her Flight was down to three of the original five fighters. Her indicator panel revealed there were only two missiles streaking after her. Kicking out the last bit of speed the Vengeance was capable of, she could see the fortress looming ahead. The closer she got to the fortress, the more confident she became. Ralnell headed straight toward the orbital elevator. She hoped that the missiles would have fail safes, which prevented it from damaging the critical asset. She was right.
The instant Ralnell set her collision course with the orbital elevator, the missiles following her broke off pursuit and banked towards the other two fighters in her flight. With her focus so tightly centered on the elevator, she missed the rapid explosions, leaving her the remaining pilot from 1st Squadron. Dropping a wing at the last moment and dipping into the sky, she let out a whoop of joy. In her excitement, she missed the shoulder-fired rocket closing on her. A present from one of the Marines manning the walls of the enemy compound.
When the rocket impacted her craft, it didn’t cause her to instantly explode like Ralnell had dreamed in her nightmares. Instead, the shot clipped off the stabilizing wing of her fighter and shorted out her manual controls. The craft, aided by the laws of nature and physics, continued its steep bank into the fortress walls. Ralnell screamed as the craft exploded.
— Chapter 62 —
Late Morning, Post-Revival Day 22
Hangar Bay 24 Delta, Beta City, Serendine
Commander, Akoni City Regional Army, Human Legion
Field Marshal Marchewka was in the middle of a discipline hearing, when his aide, Major Kobe Hiecht, tried to get his attention. Hiecht had rudely ran into the hangar bay and now appeared breathless. Knowing discipline was the most important building block for successful armies, Marchewka moved to finish the proceedings. His aide would have to wait.
The issue was with a recently revived Marine. This individual decided that humans couldn’t be officers, disobeyed lawful orders, and then assaulted the young lieutenant who’d given them.
“You, Marine, are a member of the Human Legion now. A place where your kind has been given the honor of rising to ranks once unobtainable. For your insolence and inability to adapt, you will receive twenty lashes. Know this, if we still followed the old ways, I would kill you where you stand. If this happens again, I will,” said Marchewka.
Marchewka’s tubular finger pointed toward the Marine as he finished speaking. K
nowing the human would be horrified, he slid his claw from the end of his finger and brought it inches from the Marines face. Just as the human looked like he might run for it, Marchewka retracted the claw and looked to his sergeant major.
“You heard my orders. Discipline this Marine so that he may grow,” said Marchewka. “Ensure he receives medical attention afterwards.”
Turning away from the scene, Marchewka gazed down at Major Hiecht, who was still panting.
“Field Marshal, there were Blinder Missiles left dormant sitting above the city. We didn’t even know they were there. A recent incursion by enemy craft brought those missiles online and alerted the system AI to an attack upon the island. An unknown force, likely the Hardit New Order, is attacking Fortress Beta City and potentially making incursions elsewhere on Scrofa Island. What are your orders going forward, sir?”
Knowing that prompt action could save them from being unprepared later, Marchewka ordered the Marines in the Akoni City Regional Army to be mobilized. They would man the tunnels under Beta City and Fortress Beta City. He went on to order the Marines to string the normally unused ancient communication lines behind them, since communication signals were intermittent at this point.
Rubbing his ears with two hands, Marchewka thought about the fact that Hardit aircraft could be lurking around in the sky.
“Scramble the Drako units within the hour. I want them en route to the orbital elevator to provide aerial support,” said Marchewka. “I want our remaining Storks conducting combat air patrols over Beta City. Make it happen, Major.”
Major Hiecht sucked in a deep breath and ran out of the room, shouting into his Aimee as he moved. Marchewka’s hands felt the scars on his ears as he continued rubbing them. Knowing battle was likely imminent, he headed to his quarters to grab his combat armor.