The blast was not large, but it was well-shaped. Clarke ran across the hallway and kicked the door, which flew open. He rushed inside, Tran behind him. He was immediately hit in the back of his neck with something, and stumbled, almost falling. Before he could react, he hard Tran yelling: "Stop! Seals! Navy Seals!"
Carla Bianchi held up the wooden leg of the bench, staring at Clarke. He groaned, rubbing his neck. "Carla, it's me. Don't hit me again!"
Carla dropped the bench leg and grabbed him in a bear hug. Clarke tried to break free, finally getting her hands unwrapped from him. He broadcast over tacnet, "I have the good guys, basement level, first door, Team Five down here to escort. The rest of you, light 'em up!" Immediately he heard a barrage of fire overhead as his teams cleaned out the remaining survivors of the erstwhile Hanoverian Guard.
2000 Hours – Tolleson Great Hall
Cautiously, the rebels peeked around the staircase into the darkened basement hallway. They knew the Marines were there, but there was no other way to get to them. They had tried. They had spent the last ten minutes looking for any other way to get around them and flank them, but there was nothing. The North stairway at the other end of the Great Hall was blocked by the collapsed roof. The only other route, a service hallway behind the ballrooms, was covered by the Marines as well. Three troopers had found out the hard way. There was nothing for it but an all-out assault straight down the hallway - or go home.
Captain Armand conferred with his Sergeants and Corporal Mueller.
"You just have to hit them hard, keep going, don't stop for anything. There is no other way. And this time, I better not see anyone stop. Keep going, keep firing, kill them all. Then we can be done with this."
Sergeants Helmand and Gibbon nodded, as did Corporal Mueller.
Armand glared at them. "We've got 250 men left. They have maybe a dozen. Get this done!"
The noncoms nodded and moved out, back to their troops huddled all along the stairwell to the basement. Gibbon muttered quietly out of the side of his mouth to Helmand, "...more like 150, I think..."
"Shut up," said Helmand.
Arriving at the top of the stairwell, Helmand issued orders over the tacnet. Soon he had organized the assault into three platoons. An initial group stood right at the cusp of the turn in the stairwell, only feet from a direct view into the basement. Their job was to charge into the first ballroom on the right, then out the back into the service hallway, and flank the Marines positioned at the middle barricade, halfway down the main hall.
Behind them, another platoon stood ready to go to the left, through the ballroom on that side, and through the service corridor into the next ballroom, flanking the Marines from the other side.
And finally, the third platoon, looking nervous, was positioned to charge straight down the main hallway at the middle barricade, after the two flanking platoons took the Marines under crossfire.
Helmand issued the orders and with a yell, the first group charged down the last half of the stairs and into the ballroom on the right side. A wave of shots took their toll on the attackers, leaving five more bodies on the stairwell, but most of them got through.
Immediately behind, the second group charged down and went to the left, losing a half-dozen troopers but making it into the ballroom and out of sight. After a minute, sporadic fire from both platoons turned quickly into a full-on assault as they flanked in from both sides toward the Marine’s third barricade, mid-way down the hallway. The third platoon charged then, down the hallway toward the two makeshift barricades halfway down. Shouting and screaming, they fired at full auto into the barricades.
Unfortunately, their comrades coming from the left and right were also still firing on full auto, reloading their rifles as fast as they could, screaming at the top of their lungs. By the time the carnage stopped, more than fifty troopers had died. Only twenty were killed by the Marines, who had long since abandoned the decoy mid-hallway barricade and were firing from the very end of the hall, from the fourth barricade at the top of the North stairs. The other thirty rebels were killed by their own troops in the crossfire.
And then all was quiet. Sergeant Helmand arrived at the makeshift barricade at the half-way point of the hall, looking in disgust at the dozens of bodies lying around. There were no Marine bodies behind the barricade.
Helmand cursed. "Devils! It was a sham! They knew this would happen!"
Gibbon stood beside him, looking down the long hallway at the fourth barricade at the end, leading down to the sub-basement level. There was no sign of activity. Nothing moved.
"I really hate these bastards now," he said.
***
Vladimir Victorovitch Volotskoi, temporary commander of the battleship Arizona, watched with satisfaction as the Taizong give up the fight and pulled out, making for the outer system on two of her four engines. Behind her, the rest of Cobb's fleet followed, excepting the frigate John Paul Jones and the cruiser Galileo, which were both dissipating clouds of debris orbiting the planet.
Vlad almost giggled at the relief he felt as he realized he, and the rest of the crew of the Arizona, had survived. He looked across the holotank at Carter, who was simply catatonic, staring into space. Rogers and Kawasaki were not much better; both just stared at him as if he were an apparition.
On the holo, damage messages blinked in red for nearly every major system, and Vlad was receiving updates from at least ten damage control teams hell-bent on saving the ship from fires and perforations to space. But they were alive.
***
Below Basement Level One, Level Two consisted of a storage area. Rob and his Marines waited at their last barricade, behind a wall of furniture, tables, chairs and cases of wine. Nick had groaned as they placed the cases of wine in the front of the barricade, butted up against the hard surface of banquet tables. “What a waste of good wine!” he said to Rob. Rob grinned and kept stacking.
Now they waited, crouched behind their makeshift defense, knowing this was their last stand. There was no way out of the storage area except back up the way they came. Behind them, the hundreds of Navy, Marine and civilian VIPs lay on the floor, having dragged furniture in front of them to protect them from the coming onslaught. Mike had passed out the two extra rifles to a couple of VIPs who insisted on joining the fight. All of them together made twenty-eight people, counting Phoebe, Ginger, Mika and the two VIPs.
“How many do you think they got left?” asked one of the VIPs, a Marine Colonel.
“Roughly, I’d say about 150,” said Nick. Rob nodded in agreement.
The Marine Colonel grinned. “Good, that makes a half-dozen for each of us.”
Rob pointed to the back corners of the room. “Nick, what do you think about putting a couple of rifles in each of the corners? Get them in a crossfire…”
Nick shook his head. “We’d only have the element of surprise for one volley, then they’d be completely exposed. I’d keep everybody together.”
Rob nodded. Just then, they heard noise up above, and pieces of their previous barricade came tumbling down the stairs. “Here they come,” said Nick.
Around the corner of the staircase came a solid wall of men, firing madly in every direction into the sub-basement. As they had briefed beforehand, they held their fire until the staircase was completely full of packed men. “Fire,” yelled Nick, and they opened up on full auto. Rob fired until his gun went silent, out of charge. He yanked the old magazine out and slammed a new one in and fired that one dry. Still they kept coming, now halfway across the floor to their barricade. Rob fired his third magazine dry, and just then he saw the attackers falter. The wave of men stopped, then reversed, men screaming in fear as they ran away from them, back up the staircase. The floor and the staircase were littered with bodies. In a moment, it was quiet again
. Nick looked over the barricade, counting.
“Looks like we took out about forty,” he said. “That leaves them with about a hundred-ten and change, I think.”
“Yeah, but I’m out of charge,” said Rob.
“Me, too,” said Phoebe and Ginger.
Nick canvassed the group quickly. Between them, they had only six magazines left. Six of their cohort were down, two dead and four with severe wounds. The survivors dragged the dead and wounded farther back, placing them in the care of some of the VIPs who had formed a makeshift aid station off to one side. Coming back to the barricade, Nick looked at Rob grimly. “We can’t hold back another rush like that,” he said.
Rob looked around, trying to think of anything they could do to hold back the next attack. But there was nothing. “I guess we’ll go hand-to-hand at the end,” he said to the group. Everybody nodded, their eyes glinting with anticipation of death.
Suddenly, Rob heard a faint “ping” in his comm. It was the sound that usually meant his comm was going online to the Base AI. He saw from the faces of the others that their comms had done likewise.
Immediately he got an answer.
Rob looked at Nick, who shook his head.
His words were prophetic, as within fifteen seconds the stairs suddenly filled with yelling, screaming Hanoverians firing wildly at them, charging down the stairs and across the basement floor. They rushed the barricade, shooting and screaming. Rob’s team – those who had charge left – fired slower this time, trying to space out their shots to have something left at the end. But Rob heard the rifles go silent, one by one, as the Marines depleted their magazines.
Rob had earlier grabbed a fistful of butcher knives from one of the boxes around them and handed them out to the Marines. Now he prepared to stand up and fight to the end. But just before he stood, when the enemy was no more than fifteen meters from him, a fusillade of shots rang out behind the Hanoverians. There on the stairwell, Rob saw several dozen Marines taking careful aim, knocking down rebels by the bunch while trying not to hit the friendlies. Pulses whizzed over Rob’s head, and he hunkered down trying to dig a hole in the concrete floor, as was everyone else behind the barricade.
“We surrender! We surrender!” someone yelled. The firing stopped. Rob hesitantly peeked over the top of the barricade. 60 to 70 Hanoverians stood between him and the Marines on the stairwell, their hands in the air, their weapons tossed on the floor. Rob looked at Nick, and cautiously they rose. Marines poured into the sub-basement from the stairwell, surrounding the Hanoverians quickly. Rob and Nick moved out from behind the barricade, keeping an eye on the enemy. Half-way across the floor, they met the Captain of the Marine company. He handed them both full magazines and they checked and inserted the charges, their hands shaking with after-action jitters. Lieutenant Owens and Gunny Cook came up to join them.
“Gentlemen,” Rob said, “I don’t know about you, but I was composing my speech to St. Peter!”
Nick, Lt. Owens and Gunny Cook nodded. Together they turned off their pulse rifles and listened to them whine down as the Marines secured the prisoners.
***
It had taken a week to get everything cleaned up and restored back to some semblance of normal. Jake Hammett had returned from his trip to the Aeolian Empire and now sat at his conference table with his staff. They waited patiently while he finished reading last-minute reports on the holo. Finally, he looked up.
“Where’s Cobb now?” he asked.
“He ran for Earth,” said Ginger. “He claimed political asylum and the North American Alliance gave it to him. The bastards. He’s sitting in a bar in Denver right now, enjoying a cold beer, while we bury our dead.”
“Not too surprised,” said Jake. “Earth has always had leanings toward the Saints, especially the North Americans. Where’s the Taizong?”
“Parked in orbit around Earth, along with all his other ships,” said Ginger. “The North Americans are claiming it and refuse to give it back.”
“Fine, let them keep it,” said Jake. “I want to make sure he has a way to leave Earth, because someday he will, and when he does…”
“Roger that,” said Ginger. “We’ll light him up like a candle if he ever sets foot off that planet again.”
“He will,” said Jake. “And we’ll be waiting.”
“I have a question,” said Wei Lei, Jake’s Chief of Logistics. “Where did that signal come from that alerted the Arizona? The one that said, ‘Coming at you not friendly…’”
Jake grinned. “You know where it came from. She’s still puttering around our little neck of the woods, keeping an eye us. Like an old mother hen…”
“Pandora,” Ginger breathed.
Privend
By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.
- Socrates
Kamilaroi - Tolleson Base
7 February 2205 - 83 Years after Pandora
Lieutenant Commander Vitus kicked hard left rudder, and the A40 spun around, facing back the way it came. Running backwards, he fired two missiles at the pursuer, and watched as they both ran hot and true toward the Bat corvette chasing him. The corvette jinked to dodge the missiles, but it was hopeless. The corvette had maneuvered too close and Vitus had it cold. With a flash, the missiles hit, and the corvette disintegrated. Vitus' screens froze, and his canopy opened automatically as the simulation was ended by the training NCO.
"Not too bad, sir," said the Senior Chief running the simulator. "Remind me not to go up against you in one of these new birds."
Vitus grinned. The A40 was the latest attack craft in the RDF arsenal, and much improved over prior models. Vitus loved it. It was responsive, fast and deadly. With two full-size shipkiller missiles, it could - in theory- take down a battleship if the missiles hit in just the right spot. Of course, that was the trick all right - getting the missiles to the right spot without getting killed on the way in. Intelligence reports on the Bat Fleet stated their close-in point defense weaponry was not as good as the RDF's - but even mediocre point defense could kill you.
Vitus stepped out of the simulator just as his MEMSAI pinged.
Vitus stepped quickly to his quarters and changed, getting ready for his date with Eva, one of the young Daneki of his generation – a girl born just days after their arrival in the RDF, nineteen years before. She had recently graduated from Kamilaroi University as an engineer and started work in the Weapons Lab, where the entire Daneki contingent spent their time developing “skunk works” projects. There was no better group of engineers in the Rim – their prowess was legendary. At their fingertips had been born the A40 attack fighter, the shipkiller missiles that it carried, the sentient AI that now powered many of the RDF’s point defense systems, and a host of other innovations – all of which crafted a Rim Defense Force of power much greater than thought possible just twenty years before.
And she was cute, thought Vitus. Very cute. They had been dating for two months now, and he had brought her home to meet his Dad, Captain Cassian, a few days before. And Cassian approved. With the small population of Daneki that had survived the Bat onslaught on their home planet and escaped to the Rim, there was an unspoken – but very real – pressure to re-populate the race as quickly as possible. And Vitus was all for that.
Leaving his cabin, he ran up the ladders to the long transit tube down the starboard side of the ship and, reaching for a grab handle as it went by, got himself on the fast slidewalk toward the stern of the Enterprise. In a few seconds, he jumped off at the shuttle bay doors and slapped his hand on the exit pad, getting the green light and beep that cleared him to leave the ship. Jumping through the doors, he ran to the dirtside shuttle, which was just on the point of leaving. Slapping his hand once more on the pad at the shuttle entrance, he got the green light and beep and the guard nodded, checking his name off a tablet in his hand. Vitus slammed himself into a seat just as the door closed behind him. He felt the shuttle pressure up as the door sealed, felt the grav plates energize, and with a bump and a thud, the shuttle was out the launch tube and on its way to Tolleson City.
Vitus thought about the last twenty years of his life. In those dark days after their escape from the Bats, struggling to find a place to survive, he could never have foreseen the events that led him to his current place – an officer in the RDF, living his dream, flying the best bird any pilot could ask for, in love with Eva. He still missed his parents, he never stopped thinking about them – but he knew they would be proud of what he and the other Daneki had accomplished. Vitus was content, even more than content – he was happy. And soon, very soon, he was sure, it would be time to take the fight back to the killers of his family. He could feel it in his bones. And it would never be soon enough.
With a slight lurch, the shuttle touched down and everyone started filing off, down a boarding tube into the terminal. Vitus followed, in no hurry, knowing that no matter how early he arrived at the restaurant, Eva would not be there. She was always late. If Eva said to meet at six pm, he arrived at six-thirty and then waited a half-hour for her. It never failed. It had become a standing joke between them.
Just outside the terminal, he caught a flitter to town and sat, looking out the window at the bright, neon-lit nightlife of Tolleson City. Beyond the city, just on the horizon, he could see a glow as the volcano Bombarri sent a small river of lava down its western slope. Kamilaroi did not have a lot of habitable land area. There were only two major land areas in use; one holding Tolleson Base and Tolleson City, the surrounding town catering to the military - and on the other side of the planet, the slightly larger area holding New Geneva, home of the Rim Parliament. At Tolleson, the town surrounding the base was called the “ville” by the sailors from the base, a slang term that as near as Vitus could tell, dated back to the early 20th century on Earth, maybe even before that. Like most military towns, it had its share of problems, and a thriving business for the Shore Patrol on a Saturday night. But tonight, Vitus was going uptown, to the high-toned end of the city, because he had a special question to ask Eva. He took the ring out of his pocket and looked at it again, smiling. She would be surprised, he thought. But would she say yes?
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