Everyone in the camp wanted to get out of it, and now. All knew that rescue had come, but they were still in danger until they got off of the planet. So they wanted to get the hell off of it, now.
A large man pushed past a woman and her kids who were next in line to go down a drop shaft. The woman was already smaller than average, and her time in the camp had made her thinner still. Her kids looked malnourished as well, on the edge of starvation. The man had obviously been much larger in the past. He had no shirt, and the rolls of skin over his torso and the backs of his arm showed that he had once been fat. Now he was lean, but still larger than most of the people in sight. The man grabbed the woman by the shoulder and threw her back. She landed on her back and her toddler ran for her, crying.
The man was just about to step into the drop shaft when Stella slapped an armor gauntleted hand on his shoulder and squeezed. The man grunted in pain, and tried to turn, his right hand closed up in a fist. Stella flexed her mechanical muscle and flung the man away, to land on his back ten meters away.
“Wait your turn,” Stella cautioned, looking at the man with her faceplate raised. “Ma’am” she said to the mother. “Are you hurt?”
“Only my backside,” said the woman.
A lot of people had stopped to see what was going on. But a lot were not paying attention at all, their only thoughts still to get off this planet.
“I want to talk to your superior officer, soldier,” growled the once obese man, getting up from the ground and dusting off his pants. “I’m an important man on this planet, and I will not be abused by a damned grunt.”
“First of all, Mr?”
“Koveleski,” said the man, glaring at her.
“Mr. Koveleski. I am the officer in charge of this egress, and I am an engineer, not a grunt. And from where I stand, it doesn’t look like you’re such a big wig at the moment.”
“Big words, standing in a multi-million ruble combat suit,” said the man, a sneer on his face.
With a thought Stella ordered her suit to open. The seals along the arms, legs and torsos of the suit became existent as the nanotech opened them. The suit peeled back, and Artois stepped out of it in the skinsuit that all soldiers wore underneath.
“I’m not in the combat suit now, asshole,” she said, staring into the man’s eyes.
Koveleski stared back for a few moments, then dropped his eyes and started back to the line.
“You can get in the very back of the line,” yelled Stella, pointing toward the last of the people in this particular column, several hundred meters back into the camp.
“That’s, not fair.”
“Just like it’s not fair that a big man tossed a small woman aside so his cowardly ass could get off world,” she replied. “Now you can either get at the end of the line, or you can refuse to get in the line, and the line will grow longer without you. The choice is yours.”
The man looked back, hesitating. A loud boom sounded, something exploding in the distance, and the man made up his mind, walking quickly to the end of the line, looking back every couple of steps with sullen a look on his face.
Bastard, thought Artois, walking back to her suit, backing into it and letting it close up around her. She looked at the other people in the line that was moving forward as quickly as they could handle them down below. All were scared, with the fear of people who just hours before had no hope, and now having some were afraid they might lose it again.
And in many ways these were the lucky ones, who only had to trudge a short distance through the camp before they were evacuated, unlike those who had to walk the kilometers into the mountains and go through those caverns to get off this world.
We need more people to help organize this shit, she thought again as she stepped off in her suit. I know we have other priorities here, but dammit, we came here to get these people off alive, and if we fail in that, we might have well have not come.
* * *
Cat Jeffries thought she knew the camp well. After all, she had spent months here, navigating through the well laid out rows of tents. She knew it as well as anyone. What she wasn’t used to was navigating the area with all the people flowing like a flood toward the edge of the camp. A lot of the tents had been pulled down, trampled, new paths made through the rectangular blocks. The smell of smoke was heavy in the air, along with the odor of burnt flesh. The after effects of the bombs that had dropped on the camp over an hour before.
Now, whenever anything overflew the camp, or they even heard the sound of something fast moving cleaving the air, she cringed and looked for a place to dive for cover, just like everyone else around her. Not that there was any place that would protect her from fire bombs, or even worse, nukes.
Cat pushed between a couple of adults. One started to yell at her before he saw that she was just a kid, but still made a comment about where her parents were. They’re Caca shit, asshole, thought Cat as she glanced back at the man. The next pair she pushed between acted a little more violently, one trying to grab Cat by the shirt, getting a couple of fingers on the fabric and pulling. The child twisted in the grasp and got her teeth on the hand, biting down.
Is that the edge of the camp, she thought, looking at the two soldiers that stood by a break in a fence. They were giving civilians bottles of water, one handing out the containers while another was pulling more out of a large cart that was sitting on the ground behind him. Cat could see that the cart had floater units on the sides, and she figured the soldiers had brought the wagon here from off world. The child accepted a bottle of liquid, then reached onto a table that had a line of nutrition bars. Everyone going by was grabbing one, and Cat wondered if there would be enough for all of them. Everyone was starving, and all would need the calories to keep going.
And then she was out of the camp, walking on the ground that had meant death to walk upon just that morning. She looked over at the nearest tower to the opening, or, she amended in her mind, the remains of that tower. All that remained were the supports and one small section of the wall that had made up the guard post. She could smell the odor of burnt materials, along with the cloying odor of something rotting in the heat of the sun. Couldn’t think of a better asshole for it to happen to, she thought, realizing that the smell was from the remains of the guard.
“Keep moving,” said one of the soldiers beyond the fence. “Follow the people ahead of you, and don’t deviate from the course. The mines have all been deactivated along this path and for twenty meters to each side. Though we went over the entire field, we cannot guarantee there are no mines off the swept area, so do not chance it.”
The soldier repeated the warning in Russian, for those who might not understand English. While the overwhelming majority of the people in the Kingdom spoke the Teranglo that was the linguae franca of the Empire, there was a small minority that only spoke the Russian that was the official language of New Moscow.
It was hot as hell out, now that it was getting near to noon. There was a line of thunderheads to the east, a sign that things were going to cool down, but at the cost of everyone getting soaked. Thunder crackled in the distance, or did it? Cat stared at those clouds as she moved with the line, wondering if the noise was really thunder, or something else.
A couple of large vehicles sped by to the west of the line, skimming above the ground on their lift units. Cat couldn’t remember what they were called, only that they provided lift and propulsion without reaction mass. She couldn’t guess what was in those vehicles, until a couple of lift carts flew by with a suited soldier in the front guiding it. People sat or lay in the back. People who didn’t look very healthy, more malnourished than most, some bandaged from injuries. She envied those people for a moment, until she thought of having to wait for a space wherever they had to wait. No thanks, she thought. She would rather walk on her own two feet toward the gate that would get her off the planet. At least that way she had some control over the situation.
There was the angry buzzing that had most of the people looking i
n alarm to the east. An angry red beam connected from that direction, hitting the line of people up ahead. A dozen civilians basically exploded as the beam touched them, and earth flew into the air as the death ray swept along. Everyone hit the dirt, trying to get what cover they could, and another beam came in and scorched the backs and clothes of some of those people, not really hitting them, but still putting enough energy into them to cause series injury.
Cat heard more of those beams, with a slightly different sound, and she rolled over to look at the west, to see more beams connecting a line of soldiers with something she couldn’t see.
“Everyone stay down,” shouted one of the soldiers. “Stay down, and we’ll get you moving as fast as we can.”
Some suited soldiers flew low to the people who had been burned and started treating them. Moments later the sounds of explosions erupted to the east. Cat continued to lay there and watch, seeing the blast of dirt from misses. Some more beams came flying over the line of refugees, and it was obvious to her that they were not the primary targets here. Just as it was obvious that if the Cacas broke through that line of soldiers, the civilians would be next.
* * *
“Here they come,” yelled one of the forward observers, his suit rising into the air as he flew in a crouch back toward the line, staying centimeters from the ground. The Ranger dodged back and forth as he flew, dodging a couple of beams that tried to take him out of the air.
Walborski looked at the tactical display on his HUD that showed about four hundred Caca soldiers heading his way. They were moving fast, over a hundred kilometers an hour. He knew they had to be flying, which was unusual for Cacas. While their suits had flight capabilities, they never seemed to be that good at maneuvering them. And they made very large targets in the air. Along with them were a dozen tanks. Not mecha this time, but real tanks. His company sensor array was showing him that those tanks were in the six hundred ton range, much smaller than the heavies he had, even if there were only four of them.
“Prepare to open fire,” he said into the com, assigning targets over his tactical system.
The holographic projectors were down for the moment, the Captain not wanting to show the enemy where his lines were, though they probably had a good idea.
“Incoming,” shouted out one of the tank commanders. The tanks were monitoring their own sensor net, which included drones that were in the air above the line. Now their sensors were showing hundreds of rounds in the air, most of them arcing like artillery, though there was a mix of low flying attack drones.
“Take them out,” called Cornelius to his own men. Unfortunately, that would show the enemy where they were, unless. “Bring all deception systems online, now.”
The jammers went to full power, blasting out their electronic signals to cover what the suits and vehicles were putting out. The holographic projectors sent out images on dummy positions, just what the approaching troops would see themselves, while the real positions were hidden under three dimensional window dressing. And the exterior electromagnetic field generators, big cylinders interspersed along the line, also came on.
“Fire mission,” said Cornelius over the com. “Suppressive and counter battery.” He sent the information over the com to the fire control center that had been set up in the mountains, who would relay the information to the three batteries of artillery that were set up within range of Cornelius' defensive position. What he got back was not what he wanted to hear.
“We can give you two tubes and a rocket launcher right now, sir,” came the reply from the tech manning the com net. “That’s all we can spare.”
Which means we’re being attacked in other places, thought Walborski, watching as the heavy weapons suits that had been assigned to him launched their mortars, throwing in some anti-drone missiles as well.
The enemy opened fire at five hundred meters. Hundreds of particle beams came ripping in as explosives burst in the air, a few getting through to blast dirt into the sky. Some of the beams made it through their positions and hit the line of civilians a couple of kilometers back.
Damn. Where in the hell were those engineers when we needed them, thought the Captain, trying to wait for the last second to open fire and give his positions away. He had requested that the engineers come in and dig positions two kilometers farther out, in the interest of protecting the civilians. These positions would have become his fall back line. Instead, he had some hasty positions his unit could dig with their medium suits, even closer to the civilians.
He heard some panicked calls over the com net, soldiers further back screaming about particle beams hitting the civilians. That decided it, and he could wait no longer.
“Fire,” he yelled into the com, and every particle beam rifle, grenade launcher and tank gun fired at the same instant.
Four of the enemy tanks went up in fireballs before they could engage their own camouflage routine. Fifty or more troopers were burned out of the air, and the rest landed and went low, going into prone and kneeling positions that would minimize their profiles.
The fight went on for over ten minutes, a long time for modern warfare. At the end Cornelius only had two of his supporting tanks left, and was missing thirty-nine Rangers from his company. Twenty-two killed and the rest injured to the point where they had to be evacuated. Eighteen more were wounded, but remained in their positions.
The Cacas, due to being the attacker and being much larger targets, as well as having slightly inferior combat suits, lost about half their attack force before they broke and ran. When the attack was over he sent another request to the engineers, asking again for new positions to be dug. This time they listened, and within five minutes a platoon of heavy excavation suits were on site and digging new positions two kilometers out, while Cornelius and his men provided security.
A short time later some aircraft were tracked flying toward the camp. Cornelius prepared his men to add to the integrated air defense unit. The six icons appeared on everyone’s HUD, every vehicle screen, as they prepared to fire on the aircraft, hopefully before they didn’t do too much damage. The icons swept closer, and Cornelius looked back at the line of Refugees moving again to the mountains.
The aircraft were coming in at under a thousand meters and dropping lower as he watched them on his display. The heading was to the southern part of the camp, so they would be coming over his area.
“They look like ground attack aircraft,” said the voice of the officer in charge of air defense.
No shit, thought Cornelius, bringing his own rifle online.
“Altitude, four hundred meters, speed, four hundred kilometers an hour.”
They were definitely on a ground attack mission, flying that low. And while the target wasn’t a sure thing, he was sure that the civilians would be in the danger zone.
“Altitude, two hundred meters, speed, two hundred kilometers an hour, range fifteen kilometers.”
Those aren’t attack craft, thought Walborski as the contacts dropped completely off the track. They’re transports.
Fourteen more contacts appeared, following much the same path as the first. Before they disappeared the six original contacts came back on the plot. As they flew away another fourteen showed up.
The Cacas were delivering troops to an assembly point. Probably more than one, so they couldn’t be hit with concentrated fire before they moved out. From all the Captain could tell from the plot they were somewhere in a three hundred square kilometer area. They might be able to bring down a kinetic on them, but one powerful enough to take out that whole area would probably also harm many of the civilians on this edge of the camp. And a mass of smaller weapons would have limited effectiveness.
“Launch some drones,” ordered Cornelius after linking in with the NCO that was now the reduced tank platoon commander. The acknowledgement came back, and moments later a pair of third of a meter wide discs rose up from the tanks, oriented themselves, then headed out at four hundred kilometers an hour. In about a minute and a h
alf they were slowing on the approach to the area that Walborski was interested in, while another group of transports approached the area.
A tank raised its box launcher and sent off a missile, streaking out at Mach twenty and homing in on one of the transports. That aircraft must have detected the launch, and it dove for the deck. The missile lost lock and regained on one of the transports that was flying away. It streaked off after that target, ignoring the decoys all the transports were now dropping and flying in unerringly into one of the now empty transports, blasting it out of the sky.
The drones made it to their target area, scanning ahead with light amplified visual sensors and other passives. Some Cacas and suits became visible, while the sounds of many others moving in the background were apparent. All of the Cacas were in the heaviest battle armor they used, almost as deadly and well protected as human heavy suits. The drones held steady in the sky on full stealth, boosting silently on their grabbers. They were sending their information back by whisker laser, and detection was unlikely.
“Send out an active pulse from one of the drones,” ordered the Captain. He wasn’t getting the information he wanted, and drones were expendable. Their purpose was to gain information, not to survive. One of the drones gave out an active pulse of radar and lidar, and suddenly the ghost images of several hundred Cacas appeared on the plot.
The Cacas opened fire at that point, blowing that drone out of the air, crisscrossing beams that caught two of the other three and blasted them away. The last drone backed off, using only its passive sensors, trying to keep track of the Cacas that had been revealed by the active drone pulse.
More transports came in, these landing five kilometers to the south of the first company. And they kept coming. Obviously the Cacas were preparing for an attack in force, and all they had facing them were soldiers in medium suits.
The dark clouds of a storm continued to rush in from the east, lightning flashing through that sky as the rumble of thunder followed behind.
* * *
Exodus: Empires at War: Book 8: Soldiers (Exodus: Empires at War.) Page 31
