by M. D. Cooper
Tunk replied.
Kent nodded.
Kent smiled. Tunk apparently did see everything—like the soldiers in the platoon always claimed.
Tunk allowed.
The scouts reported no sightings of enemy movement, and the platoon advanced, crossing the final two kilometers to their destination in fifteen minutes. Before long, they reached the entrance to the underground base.
It was marked by two large doors, tucked under an outcrop of rock. Debris from the cruiser lay strewn about the area, and as luck would have it, all but four of the automated defense turrets around the entrance had been taken out.
The squads took up positions five hundred meters away—what they estimated the maximum effective range of the enemy beams would be with the dust and ash in the air.
Kent replied, perhaps a bit too defensively. Nethy was a new CO, and it was taking Kent more effort than he expected to adapt to her sarcastic humor.
Ten minutes later, Kent’s platoon was ready to take out the turrets with burn-sticks. The magnesium-fueled thermite devices would attach and burn through the turrets without issue in the oxygen-thick atmosphere of the terraformed world.
Once they were taken out, four of the heavy weaponers would advance behind CFT shields and trigger the Gatling guns so that the sharpshooters could fill the ports with canister-delivered suppression foam.
The company AI placed a countdown over everyone’s HUDs, and at zero, they began the assault. True to Nethy’s prediction, the termite burn sticks did a number on the turrets, and from there, the heavies moved in.
Seven Gatling ports opened up—one must have been damaged—and their projectile rounds began chewing away at the carbon-fiber surface of the CFT shields.
By then, two of the heavy weaponers had moved close enough to the base’s doors that they could get out of the remaining Gatling gun’s field of fire. They each tossed a grenade through the openings and two blasts of fire and shrapnel shot out.
Squads two and three advanced, while one and four held back, ensuring that the perimeter remained secure. Kent saw no reason to bunch everyone up at the entrance.
As third squad approached the doors, Kent heard a sound behind him and spun to see defense drones crawling from the ground and attacking the two squads, which had held rear. The drones were scrappy things, each sporting a dozen arms that allowed them to crawl over any terrain while still firing weapons mounted to every appendage.
Many of the drones climbed up directly underneath the soldiers, and their squad-mates tore them off, firing kinetic grapeshot rounds into the drones’ metallic bodies. The fight only lasted a minute, but several members of first squad took damage to their armor, and Kent signaled them to approach the opening and take shelter in the lee of the rise.
The soldiers acknowledged his orders and the platoon’s techs began effecting field repairs.
Two other techs were working on the door and Kent approached them, watching them set up a radio frequency suppression field while deploying hard-linked nanofilament into the control mechanisms.
Kent checked the company-wide combat net. One platoon was already in, working their way down a maintenance tunnel, while the other two were still dealing with defense drones. Kent glanced at his entrance and surmised that while he wasn’t at the main entrance, it wasn’t a maintenance shaft, either.
He expected to meet resistance inside.
Two of the soldiers damaged by the defense drones had critical mobility issues in their armor, and their fireteams got assigned door duty. They held to the side while second and third squad formed up behind CFT shields.
The doors slid wide, revealing a long, dimly lit corridor sloping gently into the earth. Kent cycled his helmet’s cameras to an IR/UV combo and saw another door forty meters down the hall. Sergeants Tunk and Jutek signaled the squads to advance slowly down the corridor, sweeping for traps as they went.
Kent had some idea, given the locations of the four entrances the platoons were breaching; the underground complex was at least two kilometers across. How deep? That was anyone’s guess.
Kent shared a look with Tunk, and the sergeant spread the soldiers out along the sides of the corridor to set up fields of fire.
This would be the most dangerous part of the mission so far. The corridor sloped down, but if the room beyond had a level floor—which it probably did—then any position in that room could bring fire to bear on the entrance, while only his soldiers at the base of the slope could return fire.
The only way Kent could keep his platoon from getting pinned down was t
o push through the opening with overwhelming force.
Every rifle was set to fire proton beams, and the heavy weaponers unslung their kinetic repeaters and loaded clips filled with pellet slugs. Above them, two of the platoon’s techs mounted four small turrets to the ceiling.
The techs hit the final sequence, and the inner doors slid open.
Enemy fire hammered into the lead soldiers, their previously eroded CFT shields weakening as the platoon identified and targeted the enemy within.
Kent got a clear view of the room, a large cargo storage facility—though it was mostly empty at present. Less than a dozen stacks of crates occupied the changer, along with several lifts and other equipment.
Every possible piece of cover had enemies behind it. Kent also counted four portable shields with several squads’ worth of soldiers behind each. To their credit, his platoon pushed forward and, through the liberal use of grenades and the heavy weaponer’s wide sprays, they secured a beachhead behind two crate stacks.
The automated turrets whined overhead, spraying projectile rounds into the room, ripping apart cover, and more than one exposed limb. Thirty seconds later, they wound down, their ammunition spent.
Through the weapons fire, smoke, and screams of both fury and terror, Kent realized that not all of the enemy troops wore armor. At least half of them wore nothing other than cloth uniforms.
He tagged their positions on the combat net. Their weapons hurt just as much as the armored foes, but if they could take out half the opposition, the platoon could push the separatists back and take the room.
He was ready to send the new orders when a sudden change on the battlefield forced him to alter that plan.
Across the space, four mechs lumbered into view and Jutek yelled across the combat net,
Kent was already through the opening and in the room. If he ran for the ramp, he’d be in the open when the mechs let fire the missiles he saw mounted on their shoulders.
He scampered to cover behind one of the crates with the members of three/two, all praying that the mechs would shoot through the doors and into the corridor first. None of them harbored any illusions that the crates they hid behind would stop even one of those missiles.
Kent looked around for any possible weapon they could use in the enclosed space against the mechs that wouldn’t kill them, as well. His pair of shoulder nukes were definitely out of the question, and they didn’t have any crew-operated rails, because this was supposed to be a quick infiltration.
Then, he saw that one of the men in the fireteam had a satchel of burn-sticks.
He pulled out two of the burn sticks and rushed from cover, praying that the enemy wasn’t firing his in his direction, and that the men and women behind the crate had the guts to follow him.
Ahead, two of the mechs dropped their shields to fire, and Kent lobbed the burn sticks into them. To his right, he saw the fireteam’s corporal charging forward, throwing his sticks, as well.
It was at that moment that Kent realized the enemy soldiers had not stopped firing and that his right leg had gone numb. He looked down to see his femur jutting out from his thigh and then everything went black.
RECOVERY
STELLAR DATE: 04.16.8935 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: OGS Firestorm, Trisal
REGION: Freemont System, Orion Freedom Alliance, near the Transcend border
Kent snapped awake, thrashing in his restraints, desperate to get free and get to his platoon.
“Whoa, whoa, easy now,” a familiar voice said near his head. “You’re safe, you’re OK.”
He struggled to identify the speaker. It was on the tip of his tongue; male, the tone was gentle like they were familiar with one another, and he knew he liked this person, whoever it was. Then the name came and he relaxed.
“Sam,” his voice croaked.
“One and the same,” Sam replied. “Here, have some water, you sound like shit.”
A straw touched his lips and Kent drew the cool liquid into his mouth and let it wash down his parched throat. When he had his fill, he pulled his head away.
“Better?” Sam asked.
“Much,” Kent replied. “Why can’t I see?”
“You took some corrosive gas to the eyes from that burn stick you threw. Docs say they’re all healed up, but they still have some stuff covering them up. I guess they want to do a final check before you start using ’em.”
“That’s good…I was afraid it was neural at first,” Kent sighed in relief.
“Nah, though they did give you an upgrade on your peepers while they were in there. No more relying on your helmet for IR and UV vision,” Sam replied.
Kent’s mind suddenly returned to his platoon and the warehouse with the mechs. He feared the worst and was afraid to ask. Almost as though he knew what Kent was thinking, Sam brought it up.
“You saved the day, by the way. You took out the mechs with those sticks,” he said.
Kent cared less about saving the day. He wanted to know the cost. “How many did I lose?”
“Five,” Sam replied quietly. “The corporal in the fireteam that rushed the mechs with you, and three in the corridor. One other got hit fatally in the opening salvo.”
“Damn,” Kent whispered. He hadn’t even realized anyone had died at that point. Granted, from the logs he was now accessing, the entire exchange had only lasted two hundred and fifteen seconds before he was taken out of commission.
“Did we win it?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Sam replied, and Kent could tell he was smiling from how his voice changed. “You guys had the hardest one to take. Ours was a breeze by comparison—or it’s just because Shrike kicks major ass. Ares took three days. We had to come help you guys.”
“So, what was it all?” Kent asked. “What were they doing here?”
“Brass hasn’t said anything earth-shattering. From what I can tell, it just looked like a big supply depo to me.”
Kent grunted. “Seems like a lot of trouble to protect a supply depo. Stage two terraformed worlds aren’t exactly friendly places—wait…my right leg feels funny.”
Sam laughed. “I was wondering when you’d notice that. You lost yours almost at the hip, they’ve fitted you with a temp for now while they grow you a new one.”
“Almost at the hip?” Kent asked, suddenly too scared to feel between his legs.
Sam laughed again, this time almost for a full minute.
“Stars, Kent, you should have seen the look on your face. Yes, by some miracle your bits are all where they were. Don’t worry, it was one of the first things I checked on.”
Kent let out a long breath and laughed, which made Sam laugh again. They swapped breathless, nonsensical comments regarding the state of Kent’s bits, and were gasping for air when a nurse came in to check on Kent’s elevated heart rate.
AN UNEXPECTED VISIT
STELLAR DATE: 05.15.8937 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Outskirts of Landfall
REGION: Carthage, 3rd Planet in the New Canaan System
Four years after Landfall
Tanis leaned back in the seat of the maglev train and closed her eyes.
The last week at the capitol had been especially trying, not because of any one person or problem, but more the volume of issues and crises that seemed to crop up at every turn. A weekend by the lake with Joe and Cary was just what she needed to recharge her batteries.
In the five years since landfall, they had made incredible progress—and the colonists of the Intrepid had lofty standards for what qualified as incredible.
In space, the new, non-covert shipyard was completing its first cruisers, and a larger station to sit atop the existing space elevator was well underway. On the far side of Carthage, another elevator was already half complete—
on schedule to be finished in just another three years.
The capital city, sentimentally named Landfall, was already growing, housing over one hundred thousand inhabitants. A second city named Marathon was also under construction on one of the northern continents.
It made their pace at Victoria and Tara seem glacial by comparison.
Tanis nodded. Angela was right, and she fully expected that, in a few decades, when the colonized systems in The Cradle saw their activities, the Transcend government would have to acknowledge who was at New Canaan.
Though it took some cajoling and big promises of being left alone for a century, Tanis had managed to get Sanderson to take the reins of the fleet for a decade, while the academies trained up a new generation of enlistees.
During her time at Victoria, Tanis had built an upper echelon of captains, several of which were more than capable of taking the reins, but Sanderson’s experience commanding fleets numbering in the thousands in Sol gave him experience in strategic management and operations that no other person in New Canaan possessed.
