by Piers Platt
another voice asked.
The cops! Rath realized. They captured the spaceport!
Rath locked eyes with the lieutenant, and gestured to the buildings on either side of them.
The lieutenant glanced at the buildings apprehensively.
<… if they don’t decide to kill you just for the fun of it. Either way, if I were you, I would get the hell back to your ship,> Rath concluded. The young officer hesitated for a moment, then stood and ran, disappearing down the street.
I doubt he makes it more than two blocks.
Rath hurried over to the tank and hauled himself up, before clambering down into the turret.
“I think I figured out where all the cops went,” he told Jaymy. “It sounds like they’re making a stand at the spaceport.”
“Did you find out where Yo-Tsai is?” she asked.
“No. But if there’s a fight at the spaceport, he won’t be far away.”
“I’m guessing that’s where we’re going, too?” Jaymy asked.
“Yup,” Rath agreed. He pulled the hatches closed above them, sealing them inside the turret.
Jaymy fired up the tank’s engine. “Which way?”
23
>>>One of the Jokuan vessels in orbit just broke off from the main fleet formation, Six told Dasi. According to radio traffic I intercepted, it has orders to dock at the transfer station and reinforce the troops there.
Okay, Dasi replied. Atalia should be able to fend them off as soon as she has control of the station’s defense systems.
>>>True, Six agreed.
Dasi checked the clock on her heads-up display. … but how long has it been since we called Atalia?
>>>Nearly ten minutes, Six reported.
That’s a long time. They should have called in by now. And we need to update her on the orders to abort and all of that mess.
>>>I am gaining access to the transfer station’s network to check on their progress.
Okay, good.
A video appeared on the monitor in front of Dasi. She saw Atalia, along with a handful of police officers, trading fire with a large contingent of Jokuan troops in what looked like a shopping mall. Six showed her a different view, of a corridor littered with the bodies of police officers. At the end of the corridor, the tip of a machine gun poked through a half-closed hatchway, scanning the corridor.
>>>The control center is still in Jokuan control. Detective il-Singh and her team appear to be caught between the control center and a large contingent of Jokuans on the ground floor.
Shit! Can you access any systems on the transfer station?
There was a pause, and Dasi watched as Atalia ducked to avoid a fresh fusillade from the Jokuans.
>>>I have obtained administrator access. Call your friend and tell her to take cover inside the corridor on my mark.
Dasi flipped her phone on and dialed Atalia. On the monitor, she saw a police officer next to Atalia fall backward, clutching at a wound on his chest. Atalia turned to help him.
Come on, come on. Pick up!
Atalia pulled her phone out and thumbed it off.
Shit! Dasi called her again. Pick up, damn it!
Atalia flipped the phone open this time. “Can’t chat right now!” she snarled.
“I know!” Dasi said. “Just listen: I’ve hacked into the station’s systems. I can help you get out of this. In a second, get your team inside that corridor behind you.”
“What?” Atalia asked. “There’s a fucking machine gun in there.”
On her screen, Dasi saw the hatch to the control center slam shut, crushing the machine gun as it snapped closed.
“Not anymore,” Dasi told her. “Go!”
Atalia hurried over to the doorway, and risked a quick glance down it. When she saw it was clear, she gestured to the rest of the team, and they dashed inside, carrying the wounded officer with them. Atalia held her phone to her ear with her shoulder, pulling a spare magazine off of the body of one of the dead officers and reloading her weapon.
“I don’t know how you did that, but thanks,” she told Dasi. “Don’t suppose you can take care of the dozen soldiers down on the first floor, too?”
“I don’t know,” Dasi said. “But there are about to be a lot more of them. The Jokuans are sending a ship full of reinforcements to the transfer station.”
“Shit,” Atalia observed. She grabbed two of the officers in the corridor and pointed them toward the doorway. “The Jokuans will be coming up the escalator in a second. Keep their heads down.”
“Roger that,” one of them agreed. The two of them knelt by the doorway, covering the top of the escalator.
“I don’t know how many Jokuans are inside the control center,” Atalia told Dasi, when she lifted the phone again. “But I don’t think we can take them.”
On her screen, Dasi saw footage of the control center. Nearly twenty Jokuan soldiers and naval personnel were arrayed in a loose semi-circle facing the hatch to the corridor, weapons at the ready.
Six? Dasi asked. Any ideas?
Plumes of white vapor descended from the ceiling inside the control room, whiting out the feed.
>>>I am activating the fire suppression system inside the control center. That will replace the oxygen in the atmosphere with an inert gas, and asphyxiate the room’s occupants in approximately three minutes.
“Hang tight, Atalia,” Dasi said. “Just need you to hold your ground for a couple more minutes.”
* * *
In the corridor, one of the officers finished reloading his rifle and turned to Atalia. “We’re still trapped,” he said. “If they get to the top of the escalator, all it will take is one grenade …”
“I know,” Atalia said. “We’re working on it.”
“Who’s ‘we?’ Who’s on the phone?” he asked.
“Our guardian angel, apparently,” Atalia said.
The two officers at the end of the corridor opened fire simultaneously, suppressing the Jokuans attempting to reach the landing. Atalia slid them each a spare magazine.
“Keep shooting!” she yelled. Then she put the phone back to her ear. “Dasi? They’re getting a little close for comfort here.”
“Thirty seconds,” Dasi said.
“In a few seconds, that hatch is going to open up again,” Atalia yelled to the surviving officers, over the noise of the gunfight. “We’re all going inside when it does.”
“How are we supposed to fight our way in?” an officer asked.
“We shouldn’t have to,” Atalia said.
“What?” he asked.
“You’re just going to have trust me on this,” Atalia told him.
The hatch slid open a moment later, and white smoke billowed out into the corridor.
“Go! Inside, now!” Atalia shouted.
They scrambled down the hallway, coughing. Atalia fired a final burst down the corridor, and then ducked through the hatch as it slid shut again.
“Jesus,” one of the police officers said.
Atalia turned and looked across the control center. As the white gas dispersed, she saw the corpses of the Jokuan military personnel sprawled around the room.
“What did you do?” another officer asked, staring at Atalia.
“Wasn’t me,” she said. “Someone find the defense systems – we’ve got more troops inbound.”
They located the station’s weapons console after a brief search, and Atalia took a seat behind the station, typing frantically.
“Boot up, boot up …
,” she muttered.
Another officer took control of the room’s viewscreen, and an external view appeared, showing the transfer station’s spider-like docking arms. An armed cruiser was moving into position along the largest docking arm, extending a boarding tube toward the station.
Atalia flicked through several screens, punched in a sequence of keys, and then looked up at the screen. In the foreground, a large, double-barreled gun battery emerged from the hull of the station, rising up on hydraulic pylons. The battery spun slowly, lining up on the cruiser. Then it opened fire, the barrels recoiling rhythmically as it launched each set of projectiles. The first rounds impacted on the cruiser’s nose, and the gun shifted its aim, ripping the cruiser open in a neat line down the ship’s longitudinal axis. The cruiser’s lights flickered off, and Atalia saw gases venting out of the ship’s gaping wound – it rolled slowly to one side, bumping into the station’s docking arm briefly, before drifting away into space.
A cheer went up from the remaining officers. Atalia exhaled slowly, letting her chin rest on her chest. Then she pulled her phone out of her pocket again.
“Transfer station captured,” Atalia said into her holophone. “Defense systems are online, and I can see the Jokuan fleet pulling back out of range.”
The line was silent.
“Dasi?”
“Sorry,” Dasi replied, after a moment. “I heard you, transfer station is under control.”
“Everything okay down there?” Atalia asked.
“For the moment,” Dasi said, distracted. “I’m just trying to keep an eye on Jokuan unit movements.”
“Any word from Childers on those reinforcements?” Atalia asked.
“They’re not coming,” Dasi told her. “We’re on our own. Sorry, I’ll try to call back later and explain – right now I’ve got Jokuan troops headed toward the spaceport.”
“How many?” Atalia asked, frowning.
“Uh … most of them,” Dasi said. “I’ve gotta go.”
24
General Yo-Tsai stood at the Rampart Guardian’s viewport, watching the distant transfer station, and the wreckage of his cruiser drifting slowly away from it. A naval officer approached him, hesitantly.
“Sir? We can put together a plan to retake the station.”
Yo-Tsai scowled, but shook his head. “No. Move the fleet out of range of the station’s defense systems.”
“Sir, if the Federacy is planning a counter-attack, the transfer station would be a critical element in that plan.”
“We don’t need to recapture it,” Yo-Tsai replied. “As long as we hold Tarkis’ spaceports, the enemy can put as many troops as they want on the transfer station – without a spaceport to land at, they’ll have nowhere to go.”
“Yes, sir,” the naval officer agreed.
“We’ll need to reinforce the units at the spaceports, just to be safe,” Yo-Tsai mused.
“Sir!” a battle captain called. “Colonel Zhu reports troops in contact at the Gates-Pahr Spaceport.”
Yo-Tsai pushed past the naval officer, and strode over to the battle captain’s station. “The unit there is under attack?” he asked. “Get Zhu on the line, now.”
The battle captain typed in several commands, and after a short delay, the colonel’s face appeared on the viewscreen.
“Report,” Yo-Tsai ordered.
“Sir, I regret to inform you that the spaceport is no longer under our control,” Zhu said, stiffly.
Yo-Tsai clenched his jaw. “What happened, Colonel?”
“The reconnaissance squadron at the spaceport failed to report at the scheduled time, sir,” Zhu replied. “When I sent a platoon to investigate, they were fired on by an unknown enemy element.”
“You promised me you would hold that spaceport, Colonel,” Yo-Tsai said, barely containing his anger.
“Yes, sir,” Zhu said, chagrined.
The general turned and glanced at the console that controlled the orbital drones.
“Shall we ready the PKDs, sir?” the battle captain asked.
Yo-Tsai nodded. “Select a major target on each planet and lock it in. Just one dart each, but I want maximum casualties from that strike. Except for Tarkis. On Tarkis I want the first dart targeted at the spaceport.”
“Sir,” Zhu said, coming to attention. “If we strike the spaceport, we’ll be unable to use it to launch troops and equipment into orbit in support of future campaigns.”
“I’m aware of that, Colonel,” Yo-Tsai replied.
“Perhaps there’s another solution, sir,” the brigade commander said.
“What are you suggesting?”
Zhu swallowed nervously. “My brigade is already preparing a counter-attack. A coordinated air and ground assault, with artillery support. Let me retake the spaceport, General.”
Yo-Tsai studied his image, frowning.
“You have thirty minutes, Colonel,” he decided, finally. “Thirty. If the spaceport isn’t under your control in that time, I’m launching the drone strike. Regardless of where you and your forces are at that point in time.”
* * *
>>>I have confirmed that they are coming here. A Jokuan brigade just received orders to assault the spaceport, Six told Dasi.
How big is a brigade? she asked.
>>>This brigade is composed of two mechanized infantry battalions and a heavy armor battalion. Several hundred tanks and armored trucks, with over a thousand soldiers.
Dasi’s eyes went wide. “Martin,” she called. “We have a problem.”
“What is it?” he asked.
“A few hundred tanks coming our way,” Dasi said. “With about a thousand troops.”
“My god. How long?” Beauceron asked.
“About five minutes,” Dasi told him. “They’re just organizing themselves into an attack formation now.”
>>>I have reviewed several Jokuan field manuals from their archives. According to their doctrine, they will assault with the tanks first, Six told Dasi. The infantry will be close behind, in support. We can expect an artillery bombardment as the tanks move into position, and there is a wing of armed drones launching to provide air support, as well.
Jesus Christ! Dasi thought.
>>>This scenario is part of the reason why I gave this operation a low chance of success when I evaluated it back on Anchorpoint, Six pointed out.
Well, we’ll just have to figure out a way to even those odds, Dasi thought back.
* * *
Beauceron pulled open the back door to the Jokuan truck. He climbed inside and flipped on an overhead lamp, then rummaged around the equipment inside the truck, pushing aside combat packs and ration boxes. Finally, he spotted a pair of meter-long green tubes mounted in brackets along one wall. He yanked on the release clips on one of the tubes, and pulled it gingerly off the wall. He saw an instruction diagram printed on one side – he couldn’t read the words, but the pictures were easy enough to understand.
“All IP officers,” he said, keying his radio. “There are anti-tank missiles mounted in the passenger compartments of the trucks. Grab them and get ready – we have tanks headed our way.”
He took the second missile down, and, struggling under the load, climbed back down out of the truck. He carried them to a pair of officers kneeling by the cement barricade. “Here,” he said, grunting as he lowered them to the ground.
“Do you know how to use these?” one of the officers asked.
“Instructions are on the tube,” Beauceron told him, and then jogged back to his position.
He took a sip from a water bottle that he had found earlier, and then paused. What’s that? The noise was low, a deep rumbling, like distant thunder. Beauceron looked out and down the ramp, but he could see nothing on the street below. The noise was getting louder, though. Tanks, he realized.
“Here they come,” he warned.
Beauceron heard a series of far-off blasts.
“That’s artillery!” the man next to him said.
The f
irst salvo shrieked in overhead, and Beauceron ducked as a round impacted in the center of the platform. Several pieces of shrapnel rattled off the truck’s armor above him. Another round hit the spaceport roof, and a third scored a direct hit on an armored truck down the line, smashing its roof in and instantly killing the vehicle’s gunner.
“Stay down!” Beauceron yelled, but the officers near him were already prostrated on the ground, hugging close to the armored vehicles and cement walls of the platform.
He heard a different kind of blast, closer this time, and as another barrage of artillery rounds crashed in, Beauceron stood quickly, glancing over the hood of the truck. In the light of the street lamps below the ramp, he saw nearly a dozen tanks rolling toward the spaceport, their treads spinning as they closed the distance. The lead tank fired its main gun, and the truck to Beauceron’s left exploded, sliding several feet backward. The force of the blast knocked Beauceron over.
He shook his head and stood again. “Missiles!” he yelled, and then remembered his radio. “Missiles!” he repeated into the microphone.
A patrolman nearby shouldered his missile, fumbled with the controls for a second, and then the weapon bucked in his hands, the missile bursting out of the tube with a loud roar. Its rocket engine lit, dazzlingly bright in the night air, but Beauceron could see that the round was far too high – it would pass well over the tanks below. As he watched, though, the missile surged upwards, nearly vertically, and then dove back downward at a steep angle, and impacted on top of the lead tank’s turret. The tank burst into flame, coughing out thick, black smoke.
“They’re guided!” Beauceron reported. “Don’t worry about aiming, just get those missile rounds off – they’re programmed to find the tanks on their own.”
“Try to hit the lead tanks,” Emeka ordered his men, over the radio. “If we take out enough of them, the other tanks may not be able to get past them in those narrow streets.”
Beauceron saw two more missiles streak out, and knock out tanks in the formation. The gunner in the hatch above him was firing, too, but his machine gun’s rounds just ricocheted off the tanks’ armor. Another truck exploded behind them, and Beauceron could hear screaming from a wounded officer.
