Primary Targets (Earth at War Book 2)

by Rick Partlow

  And that, apparently, had been what they were waiting for. The only thing I could figure was that someone had a drone watching the shuttle, that they saw exactly when Joon-Pah stepped away from the aircraft and his only means of escape. The flyers had to have been concealed on the other side of the river and hadn’t taken off until we were too close to the pad to see, then hugged the ground all the way to the base of the platform, because the first I saw or heard of them was when they burst up from beneath us with a scream of overtaxed rotors, just a blur of dull gray metal.

  There were half a dozen of them, and they landed hard between us and the shuttle, not taking the time to hover, just cutting their engines and coming down the last couple yards in a barely-controlled crash, their canopies were opening even before they hit the pad. The only reason I didn’t order the team to open fire before the soldiers scrambled out of them was a residual notion that I still didn’t want to kill anyone if I could avoid it, though I suppose the fact our backstop was our only way off this planet had something to do with it, as well.

  “Don’t fire!” Strawbridge yelled, pulling away from Julie and throwing herself between us and the Helta soldiers like the biggest fucking idiot in the galaxy.

  Everything slipped into slow motion and little details stood out. The tangle of Strawbridge’s hair, once so intricately styled, flopping loose and blowing into her eyes. The look of horror on Julie’s face, the fingers of her left hand clutching at empty air where Strawbridge had slipped away from her. The slight movement of the muzzles of the Delta team’s KE rifles, as if they were about to shoot but waiting for my order, remembering the instructions I’d given them in the plane. The hammer-between-the-eyes realization that the twenty Helta soldiers confronting us were not carrying the sonic stunners but decidedly lethal laser rifles.

  And the sight of Gafto-Lo-Mok not just leading them but carrying a weapon herself, the pistol version of the laser, not very powerful and pretty much useless against our Svalinn armor, but enough to burn a hole through Julie or the rest of the Space Force crew, or Strawbridge. Or Joon-Pah. She was glaring at the Heltan captain with a ferocity that almost didn’t need a laser to burn a hole through him, ignoring us and our armor and weapons.

  “You thought I wouldn’t have your movements traced, traitor?” she spat the words so harshly, I didn’t need my translator to simulate the angry tone for me. “We couldn’t catch you in time at the warehouse, but we knew exactly where you’d go once you left.”

  “Prime Facilitator,” Strawbridge said, almost pleading though I don’t know if the emotion translated well into Helta, “please, we need to be pulling together right now! The enemy is coming here! Haven’t you heard the reports? They’re already in this system!”

  “The enemy has been here this entire time, monster!” Gafto-Lo-Mok said, not even looking at Strawbridge. “And this traitor is the one who brought them here!”

  The Heltan politician pulled the trigger.

  Several things happened at once, running together in a blur, and my conscious mind only received the report on what I’d seen and done well after it was over. The laser beam was nearly invisible, not as powerful as the rifles and incapable of producing the sort of lightning-strike ionization that was their signature. It was a slight crackle in the air and when it struck Joon-Pah’s left arm, the material of his uniform sleeve flashed and burned away, along with a chunk of muscle beneath it. The Heltan shrieked and went down, clutching at his wound, and Gafto-Lo-Mok tried to adjust her aim and go for another shot, but all hell had broken loose.

  I couldn’t have sworn at a formal board of inquiry who fired first, but the laser rifle blasts were certainly what I saw first, eye-searing tunnels of plasma marking their passage. The response from the KE guns was more subdued, less flashy, but way more effective. We weren’t but twenty yards apart, a high-tech, alien version of the gunfight at the OK Corral, except I didn’t have any smartass remarks like Doc Holliday. Instead, I tried to be more like Wyatt Earp and take my time in a hurry.

  I shot two of them, wishing I’d had time to aim for their legs but knowing we just didn’t have the luxury of mercy. I’d killed Venezuelans, Iranians, Russians and Tevynians and never once regretted it, but I winced when the Helta soldiers went down, feeling like one of the tungsten slugs had hammered into me instead. It felt like failure.

  The hum-snap-crack of the KE guns went silent at Pops’ yell of “Cease fire,” and all that was left was twenty dead Helta, not one of them in good enough shape that I could look at them and label them as just wounded, maybe worth rushing to a hospital. The tungsten slugs did nasty, nasty things to lightly-armored humanoids, things that were not survivable. And somewhere in the back of my mind, in the space of the single breath I drew when the guns went silent, I understood I was forgetting something.

  I snapped around, as abruptly as you can when you’re wearing heavy armor and waving around a fifty-pound KE rifle, and saw it played out like the splash page of a comic book, the kind I’d read as a kid, when they’d printed them on paper and you had to get them at the comic shops that didn’t even exist anymore.

  Joon-Pah was still curled up on the ground, still holding his wounded arm, his mouth open in an expression I couldn’t identify, even after all this time. Delia Strawbridge lay at his feet, her eyes wide open with shock, as if she didn’t believe anything like this could ever happen to her. A black and smoldering hole had been burned through her chest and blood stained her eggshell-white suit jacket and satin shirt where the heat expansion had torn tissues not cauterized by the beam itself.

  Julie was still in a classic isosceles stance, feet squared off with her shoulders, hands meeting at the tip of the triangle where she held my Glock outstretched, the muzzle smoking. Her eyes were hard and angry, like she’d hated what she’d had to do and resented the person she’d had to shoot for making her do it.

  Gafto-Lo-Mok was face down about ten feet in front of Julie, the back of her skull blown outward by a 9mm hollow point. Two more exit wounds left ragged holes in her back, and I knew Julie had trained with the Mozambique drill: two to the chest and one to the head, repeat as necessary. It hadn’t been.

  A low moan reached me and I thought for a second it was Joon-Pah until I realized it was coming from my left. It was Grunewald, but he wasn’t moaning in pain, at least not the physical kind. Ripken had taken a blast from a laser rifle straight through the mid-section without a stitch of armor. Grunewald knelt beside the younger man, one hand on an unmoving shoulder, sobbing quietly.

  “Fuck.” I said it once out loud, but inside my head, I repeated it like a mantra, a prayer to the Marine Corps gods, the only one they understood. Fuck, fuck, fuck…

  I threw open my visor and sucked in air, feeling like I was going to scream if I left the helmet shut one more second. Shifting my KE rifle to my back, I went to Julie. She was shaking, lowering the Glock, and I was surprised when I saw tears in her eyes.

  “Stupid bitch jumped in front of Joon-Pah,” she said, motioning helplessly at Strawbridge’s body. “Like she thought they wouldn’t shoot her, like….” She trailed off into a choked sob but brought herself under control.

  “Ripken’s dead,” I told her. My voice sounded cold and I wondered who this emotionless automaton inside my armor was. “Can you get the bird up without him?”

  She jerked, like I’d slapped her, and I wanted to tell her I was sorry, to pull her into my arms and comfort her. I know how I felt the first time I killed someone face to face, the first time I saw buddies killed in front of me, knew how hard it could be. But now I had to be cold and I had to be in command.

  “Can you get the bird in the air?” I repeated. “Do you need one of us to help?”

  “No, the chief and I can do it.” She kept the Glock, holding it at her side, her finger safely out of the trigger guard, and stalked past the Helta corpses and between their flyers.

  “Chief Grunewald,” I said. “Help Colonel Miller fire up the shuttle.” He blinked at
me, uncomprehending, like I was speaking a foreign language. “We’ll bring Sgt. Ripken with us. We’ll take good care of him, I promise.”

  He nodded, but it still took him a moment to slide his hand off Ripken’s shoulder and rise to his feet. I tried not to look at Ripken, tried not to meet his open, staring eyes. I did, of course, because I had to. He’d died for my failure. Just the latest.

  “Pops,” I said, then saw he was standing right in front of me. “Get Ripken and Strawbridge on the shuttle. We should have….” I had to swallow the lump in my throat before I went on. “…body bags on board somewhere. Strap them into the cargo area and get everyone on the shuttle.”

  “Roger, sir.” Pops was quiet, subdued. I think he understood more than anyone how badly things had gotten fucked up.

  “Andy,” Joon-Pah said. He was trying to clamber to his feet and I lent a hand, letting him use his good arm to pull himself up. “Perhaps I should stay here,” he suggested. “The Council will have questions….”

  “Fuck the Council,” I told him, surprised by the harshness in my voice. “They’re a bunch of useless, cowardly shits and the only thing they’ll do right now is get you and your whole fucking civilization killed. I’m sorry, dude, but your system of government sucks ass.”

  “It does…what?” He cocked his head to the side, face screwed up in confusion.

  “It’s absolutely insane, even compared to Russia,” I expounded. “You just had a fucking gladiatorial fight to the death to settle policy differences, Joon-Pah. Fuck the Council. Your people need you up in the Truthseeker using what you’ve learned these last few months. The Jambo is on her way, and when she gets here, you have to be the one up there working with General Olivera.”

  Joon-Pah hesitated as he thought about my words.

  “All right, Andy. You have been a good friend and your people have saved my life more than once. I will need you on the bridge when I confront the Tevynians.”

  “I’ll be there,” I promised, my eyes flickering to Gus and Dog gently, respectfully picking up Delia Strawbridge’s body to carry her onto the shuttle. “But I don’t know how good my advice is going to be. I’m going to be damned lucky if I don’t wind up at a court martial.” I shrugged. “If we survive.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  No spacecraft challenged us, no orbital defenses targeted us on the way to orbit. And no words were spoken, not until we were within sight of the Truthseeker’s docking bay. It seemed years since we’d left her and yet it had only been two days. Two days and so many dead. Not one, but two different Prime Facilitators, which was akin to the United States losing the President one day and the Vice President the next. Though I didn’t think much of our VP anyway. Twenty Helta soldiers who’d made the fatal mistake of following the orders of the wrong leader. Tech Sgt. Ripken, who it might be argued died of that same mistake by following mine.

  And Delia Strawbridge, Deputy Secretary of State and the highest-ranking American diplomat to ever go into space. Certainly the only one to die getting shot through the heart by an ancient-alien-worshipping cultist were-koala. It was going to be tough writing up this report. I couldn’t honestly say I liked the woman. She knew all the ins and outs of diplomatic relations on Earth and she did her job with a thorough professionalism, but she’d made the same mistake I’d seen one State Department pencilneck after another make all over the world: she assumed everyone else was as reasonable as she was. Gafto-Lo-Mok had been neither reasonable nor logical and two dozen people were dead because of it.

  “Captain,” the executive officer of the Truthseeker broke the silence, appearing on the video screen on the shuttle’s main control console. “Have things gone well with the Council? What are our orders?”

  Joon-Pah was seated in the gunner’s chair while I anchored myself to the deck just behind the control console. I was only a few feet from Julie, but she hadn’t even looked at me the whole voyage. Joon-Pah did though, almost as if he was asking for advice on how to answer his subordinate’s question.

  “Things are…unsettled with the Council,” he finally replied. “But right now, our primary concern is the Tevynian fleet. What are they doing? What is their disposition and number? Do you have any communications with the defense stations in the outer system? What of the other cruisers?” He looked aside to me again and clarified. “There are six in the system, not including the Truthseeker.”

  “Sir,” the ship’s XO stumbled over the next few words, obviously confused about which question to answer first and trying to remember them all, “the Tevynians have brought what looks like nearly everything they have. There are at least six cruisers our sensors have detected, though they’re keeping those out beyond the orbit of Leviathan and we can’t get an accurate count.” That was their largest gas giant, or at least a fair English translation of the local name. I suppose it could just as easily have been called Giant, but that didn’t sound as good and whoever had programmed the translators must have had a flair for the dramatic.

  “More troubling is how many of their fighter carriers they’ve brought along sir. There are dozens and they’re overwhelming out outer system defenses already. We’ve lost contact with the outermost defense stations and their fighters are swarming over the moons of Leviathan even as we speak, taking horrible losses to our defense lasers but overwhelming them with sheer numbers.” He hesitated. “Our computer estimates show they’ll be in complete control of the entire outer system beyond the asteroid belt within hours.”

  He made a motion off-screen and his image was replaced by a tactical display of the enemy forces. I was no space combat tactician, but the whole situation looked pretty shitty to me.

  “Our other cruisers are already heading to the outer system?” Joon-Pah asked, stabbing a finger at the image. “Who gave this order?”

  The simulation of the ships disappeared and the XO was back.

  “The Prime Facilitator herself, sir! Less than two hours ago. She ordered us as well, and told me to take command, she said that you were a traitor to our people.” The Heltan second in command made a gesture of negation. “I did not accept this. You have been a good and wise captain and I knew you would never betray us. I refused to acknowledge the order. Do you…do you think I’ll be punished, sir?”

  “No, Versa-Mun,” Joon-Pah told him, gentle fondness in his tone, “if anyone is to be punished, it will likely be me. But not by the Prime Facilitator.”

  He touched a control and the transmission cut off.

  “What are we to do?” he asked and I wasn’t sure if he was posing the question to Julie, me or the rhetorical gods.

  “They’re drawing you out,” Julie said, sounding analytical, very much the naval aviator. “Your inner system defenses are pretty impressive and I don’t think they could take on the static weapons platforms and your cruisers, both. They’re trying to draw out your strength and string out your lines.” She shrugged. “At least that’s what General Olivera would say.” The corner of her mouth quirked up. “I’m just a pilot.”

  “I’ll order them back,” Joon-Pah said, his voice shuddering just slightly as the shuttle passed through the energy field holding the atmosphere against the vacuum without, and the ship’s gravity field took hold of us. The belly jets screamed briefly and we touched down lightly, rolling forward a few yards on tractor treads before the bird settled into magnetic locks. The Heltan captain threw off his straps and stood to face me. “Though I doubt they’ll listen.”

  ***

  He was right, of course.

  I could see it playing out on the main tactical display as I entered the bridge less than half an hour later, see the expression of frustration on Julie’s face. She’d gone with Joon-Pah while I’d accompanied the Delta team to the armory to store our weapons and armor…and to secure the bodies of our dead.

  The Helta didn’t have any sort of facilities to store corpses, since their own traditions were a bit more practical, involving recycling the body for its useful parts and disposing
of the rest for compost. In fact, the Helta medical crew had seemed vaguely horrified when I’d suggested we were going to take a pair of corpses home with us to Earth, but they’d managed to find a stasis freezer they used to store cloned tissue for transplant. It had been a tight squeeze and I felt a bit guilty—well, guiltier—stuffing the body bags into the cabinet and forcing the door shut.

  I’d left Pops to deal with storing my armor and weapons, which also made me feel guilty, but I felt an urgent need to get up to the control room and find out just what the hell was going on. Every step seemed to be the tick of a clock and we only had so many of those left before Helta Prime was gone, along with our chance of winning the war.

  And maybe even less time than I’d thought. The tactical display was a feed from surveillance satellites in the outer system, somewhere around the orbit of the gas giant Leviathan, and it was there the Helta cruisers had chosen to make a stand. They hadn’t made any sort of tactical formation because that wasn’t something even the most experienced of them could conceive of, their major concession to combat organization being an effort to keep out of each other’s firing arcs.

  The Tevynians were no better at organizing their stolen battle wagons because the ships weren’t their own designs, but the carriers…those were something they’d developed all on their own. I’d seen images of them taken in battles the Helta had lost, because there were barely any examples of the opposite. They were stolen as well, cargo haulers the Helta used to transport ore, oil, water ice, whatever, from their colony worlds. Skeletal frameworks, they were designed to mate with multiple spheres hundreds of yards across, each of which could be ejected into a different orbit once the ship reached its destination.

  The Tevynians weren’t particularly smart, but they were damned clever. They’d already turned orbital transfer vehicles into makeshift space fighters by the simple expedient of stealing anti-missile laser turrets from Helta orbital weapons platforms and mounting them on the spacecraft. These weren’t the dual-environment fighters we’d seen before, the ones they used in a planetary atmosphere. These things were crude and lightly armored and could be destroyed by a backward swat of your hand, but they were so damned cheap and there were so damned many of them. And then some Tevynian tactical genius had the idea of carrying hundreds upon hundreds of the fighters on those cargo ships.