Orion Rising: A Military Science Fiction Space Opera Epic (The Orion War Book 3)
Page 24
Garza stroked his chin as he eyed the pair. “Put them by the wall, make sure they’re well restrained,” he ordered the soldiers who had brought the colonists in. “Harry, start a new sweep of the ship. I want the rest of their group found.”
“Who knows,” Garza said as he turned back to the holotank, “I may keep this system after I’ve destroyed the world you’ve named Carthage. The shipyards alone make it worth holding on to.”
VISITORS
STELLAR DATE: 04.01.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Landfall Space/Air Traffic Control Center
REGION: Knossos Island, Carthage, New Canaan System
“Oh crap, oh shit, Commander Ouri!” Henderson called out.
Ouri didn’t bother correcting the man on rank—though how he could grow up in a society like New Canaan’s and not understand the difference between a commander and a colonel, was beyond her.
“What is it, Henderson? Just spit it out!” Ouri yelled back from across the room.
“The Trisilieds…they’ve sent four craft to our location, they snuck in around from the south. I took one out, but the other three are landing!”
Ouri felt her temper flare and took a deep breath, forcing her emotions into check. It would have been fantastic if Henderson had let her know about this before the enemy had begun disgorging their troops.
“OK, Sammy, Kris, Bill, you’re with me. The rest of you, keep running the air defenses as long as you can—people across the planet are counting on us. Jim, we still have a fleet of subs that need to stop that wave of assault craft dropping on Paris Island out west, and Brandt has called in for an airstrike on a field near Landfall that the enemy is using for their forward base. Jenny, get our ground-based artillery hitting that target. Amy, make sure the Tower’s perimeter defenses are up and take out as many of those bastards as you can.”
“Aye, Colonel,” Amy called back.
At least someone has been paying attention, Ouri thought to herself.
Though the facility was colloquially called the ‘SATC tower’, it was nothing of the sort. Everyone in New Canaan knew this fight was coming, and no one had even considered a tall, vulnerable tower when it came to civilian space and air traffic control.
Instead, the SATC facility was tucked within a long ridge of granite that lay toward the eastern edge of Knossos Island at the base of a low string of mountains, which had arisen when the archipelago’s plate pushed up over the Mediterranean Ocean plate.
She wished there were ground-based artillery units that could sweep the hillside leading up to the SATC, but none were available that could target their side of the ridge. They were in the plan but hadn’t been built yet.
The lowest level of the facility was little more than a lobby with external access to a parking lot, for those who liked the drive through the countryside on the way to work, and a station for a quick ride to Landfall.
A wide double-staircase led from the foyer to the second level, and a long tunnel ran back into the ridge, which ended in a lift and staircase up to the second level. The control room was on the fourth level, further back in the ridge, and under hundreds of meters of granite.
The facility also had a low signal tower directly overhead, as well as direct, hardline connections to the dozens of other towers ringing the island.
Ouri was impressed that the Trisilieds had picked out this location as the primary facility. Their sensor tech must be better than most Inner Stars civilizations.
Ouri led Bill, Kris, and Sammy down the hall toward the front stairwell.
“What are the four of us going to do against three platoons of Trisilieds solders?” Sammy asked as she caught up to Ouri.
“Well,” Ouri replied as she led the trio down the hall, “I was in favor of killing them. Let’s start there.”
“How are we going to do that?” Bill asked.
“I picked the four of you because you all got high marksmanship scores in Basic,” Ouri replied as she glanced back at her team. “So, what I think we should do is shoot the bad guys.”
She pushed into the stairwell and skipped down the stairs to the third level, where the security office and small armory were located.
“Seriously, Ouri, you must have some better plan than that. Even if we were the toughest Marines in the corps, it’s four against a hundred,” Sammy said, her voice starting to rise in pitch.
“I rated expert in my marksmanship course,” Kris said quietly. “If there’s anything in the armory with range, I could get up in the signal tower and take them out as they approach.”
Ouri looked Kris up and down. The willowy woman was two meters tall, and there was no reason to believe she couldn’t get a rifle up there in time, but the position was a death sentence.
“I bet you could, Kris,” Ouri replied. “You’d give ’em hell, too, but one well-placed rocket and that whole tower will come down. I’m not sending you up there to die.”
Kris’s face blanched, and Ouri suspected that the very real possibility of them all dying in the next few minutes was now entering her team’s minds.
“Look,” she said as they entered the armory. “We don’t have to take them all out, we just have to hold out. Murry has already put out the call that we’re under attack, and as soon as Landfall is safe, those Trissies out there are going to have Force Recon boots up their asses, courtesy of the ISF Marines.”
“Trissies,” Sammy chuckled. “I like it.”
Ouri had already assessed the armory’s loadout, and, like everything in New Canaan, it was a shining example of over-preparedness, yet still insufficient for what they were up against.
Five sets of light body armor stood on racks, and she directed her team to gear up. The armor wouldn’t stop beamfire, but it would keep projectiles and shrapnel from cutting them to ribbons.
While they geared up, Ouri laid out four multifunction rifles, sidearms, spare magazines, and five detpacks. She stuffed all the grenades into a bag that she planned to hold onto. They had enough to worry about without a bad toss getting them all killed.
Once the team was armored up and had begun checking over their weapons, she quickly donned her armor while calling Amy.
Ouri was impressed. Amy’s voice didn’t waver one iota. The woman sounded like cold steel incarnate.
“Bill, Sammy, grab those two CFT shields. We’ll set them up down on the second floor landing. Kris, I want you to stay up on the third level’s landing and pick off anyone that gets past our fire,” Ouri directed.
“What if they get past you and come up the rear staircase?” Kris asked.
Ouri picked up one of the detpacks and tossed it to her. “Before you take up your position, rig this to take out the rear stairs if they get back there. Put it on the landing between the second and third floors. Set up some nano to watch the stairs and trigger the pack if the Trissies make it that far. Oh,” Ouri tossed her another detpack, “and rig this one in the elevator shaft outside the third level’s door.”
Kris gave a crisp nod, slung her rifle over her shoulder and ran out of the room, turning right toward the rear stairs.
Sammy and Bill followed after and turned left, hauling the Carbon Fiber Tube shields with them toward the front of the facility.
/> Ouri cast about the room, looking for anything else that would help. She spotted a locker that none of them had opened and peered inside to find a crew-served railgun.
“Well, this will come in handy,” she said with a smile.
She grabbed her selected gear and moved out.
When she reached the front stairwell’s second floor landing, Bill and Sammy had already set up the CFT shields and were taking sight on the foyer below.
While the rear staircase was narrow and utilitarian, the front one was wider and more ornate. A four-meter-wide string of steps rose up to the second level, before arching around to the third.
The fourth floor was only accessible from a secondary flight of stairs in the middle of the third level. That would be their final fallback before abandoning the facility and taking the rear tunnel out to the far side of the ridge.
Ouri took a position behind Sammy, glad for the cover the shield would provide. She peered down her rifle’s iron sights, ensuring that they were aligned with her HUD’s targeting system.
Her team’s position on the landing gave them an angle of fire where they could hit the leading edge of any troops that entered the first floor, while only enemy well within the building could bring significant fire to bear on them.
It wasn’t enough to give them a large advantage, but it was enough to stem the enemy’s advance and give them a fighting chance.
“So…what if they just launch rockets in here and blow the whole facility,” Bill asked as he glanced nervously around his shield.
Ouri considered that scenario. The working theory was that the Trissies wanted the picotech, and were prepared to take hostages to press their claim. However, they didn’t need all the civilians on the planet to do that. She knew that if it were her, she would simply neutralize the facility and move on.
“Good point, Bill,” Ouri nodded. “If they take the foyer down there and we have to fall back, will the facility hold if they place charges down on the first and second floors? The control center is quite a ways further back in the ridge.”
Bill considered it for a moment. “Well, there are blast doors on the third and fourth levels. If those close, then the control room should be fine. All the critical systems, power and com and stuff, link right in there, too, so it could stay operational.”
“OK, then—” Ouri began, but Bill spoke over her.
“Unless they plant them all along the back wall, then maybe it would bring down the whole ridge.”
“Then we’re gonna have to make sure that they don’t do that,” Sammy replied.
“Great plan,” Kris called from the landing above them. “I knew I should have stayed in bed.”
She wished that she could send the station personnel down the maglev to Landfall, or out the rear tunnel to the other side of the ridge, but too many people needed the air defenses to keep running. They had to hold the line.
A thundering roar came from outside the facility, and Ouri chuckled. “They’re meeting Amy’s welcoming committee out there now.”
Today, she would have to manage that work manually.
Ouri sent an affirmative response and nodded to her teammates. “Defenses are down. They’re coming.”
“Faaack,” Bill whispered, while Sammy sucked in a deep breath.
Ouri pulled the feed from the cameras on the tower above the facility and watched as the Trisilieds soldiers crept across the smoking hillside leading up to the parking lot, taking cover behind the smattering of groundcars as they approached.
She could understand their hesitancy. The facility should have had additional layers of defense, but only so much could be built in eighteen years, and most of the effort had been put into the fleet and orbital defenses.
After an agonizing three minutes of careful probing, the Trisilieds soldiers reached the facility’s front doors and pulled them open.
As she expected, the enemy fired optical and sonic pulsers into the foyer, and she was pleasantly surprised to find that the helmets blocked both with reasonable efficiency.
As the pulsers flashed and wailed, an enemy squad breached the foyer and Ouri opened fire. Bill and Sammy let loose with their shots a moment later.
None of them held back, their rifles’ high-velocity kinetic rounds slamming into the fireteam’s legs before the enemy could see them.
Most of the rounds bounced off the enemy’s armor, but one of Bill’s caught a weak point and a Trissie fell. Ouri assumed he cried out in pain, but the sounds of weapons fire drown it out.
The Trissies fanned out along the edges of the foyer and dropped prone behind a kiosk and table, returning fire that was successfully absorbed by the CFT shields.
Ouri’s team kept up their suppressive shots and wore down the scant cover in moments, causing the enemies to fall back to the far corners of the foyer. Sammy leaned out to take a shot, and Ouri pulled her back an instant before a slug tore through the air where her head had been.
“Watch it, they’re gonna try to draw us out now,” she cautioned.
“Yeah! I can see that!” Sammy gasped as her face turned white.
“Don’t worry, Sammy,” Ouri said as she took aim at an enemy who was creeping along the wall, putting three solid rounds into his torso and one in his neck. None of the shots penetrated his armor, but they were enough to send him racing back to cover.
Ouri estimated where he and at least one of his other teammates must be, and grabbed a grenade from her pack, primed it, and tossed it down the stairs and into the far corner of the foyer.
The timer she set on the grenade was spot on, and it detonated the instant it reached their position, the force of the explosion blowing out the foyers’ windows and flushing a hot wind up the stairs.
“Yeah! Got ’em!” Bill yelled.
“There’s still another sixty or so out there,” Ouri replied. “Don’t get too excited yet.”
INFILTRATE
STELLAR DATE: 04.01.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: OGS Britannica
REGION: Stellar North of Carthage, New Canaan System
Jessica watched the battle unfold on the holotank as the Orion Guard fleets drifted closer to Carthage. She was impressed with how Symatra decimated the Trisilieds carriers and thanked the stars when the ISF fleet came through their dark layer jump intact.
“What is their plan?” Admiral Fenton asked General Garza after the ISF fleet appeared above Carthage’s poles. Garza had no answer, and the admiral’s eyes darted to Jessica.
“Colonel! What is Richards’s plan? If she can jump through the dark layer, so can the Hegemony fleet!” Admiral Fenton demanded.
Jessica saw Garza shake his head and she suspected that neither of them wanted a full-force Hegemony fleet present around Carthage. She shrugged innocently, and her suspicions were confirmed when Admiral Fenton glared at Garza.
“Involving them was a mistake. First they jump the gun taking out the Transcend fleet beyond the heliopause, and now this.”
“The battle isn’t over yet,” Garza replied.
A minute later, a smattering of AST ships appeared near the main ISF fleet. In short order, the number of functioning Hegemony vessels approached zero, and Garza laughed.
“See, Admiral? No n
eed to worry. Governor Richards has taken care of our little problem for us.”
“You know what that means?” Fenton asked.
“Oh, I do! I do!” Jessica spoke up, drawing both men’s attention.
Garza peered at her over his shoulder. “I bet you do. What is your purpose here? It’s time you told us,”
“We just wanted a good view,” Trevor said. “Heard your CIC was the best in the fleet, so we got ourselves captured to get in.”
“You didn’t get captured—” Garza began.
For the first time, the man began to look worried and it gave Jessica a perverse sense of pleasure to see it.
“Harry, status on the search!” Garza called out.
Jessica couldn’t hear the AI’s response, but by the look on the general’s face, it wasn’t good. She breathed a sigh of relief. Everything was still going according to plan—mostly. Getting caught wasn’t what she’d had in mind, but it did get them into the CIC, and by now the pico packages that she and Trevor had deployed should have finished their tasks.
Iris replied.
Jessica sighed in her mind.