The Vanguard Emerges (Maraukian War Book 2)

by Michael Chatfield

  “Sir, I—”

  Again the chairman cut him off, a light shining in his eyes as a sneer spread across his face. “Is it because you were unable to complete a wall you were placed in charge of that you wish to flee our men on the eve of battle?”

  A wall you all meddled in, putting it in its current sorry state, Yousef thought as the chairman continued, on a roll.

  “I will have you brought up on charges of leaving your post and I am submitting charges of failing to carry out orders in completion of the wall.”

  On the eve of battle, you want to keep an officer in charge who you just called, not once but twice, a coward and dishonored him. Insurmountable rage filled Yousef. He looked up from the memory, patting at his chin. The committee was filled with sneers and smug smiles.

  “You want to charge me with insubordination,” he said almost conversationally, growing fury in his voice.

  “You have your—”

  “Shut up, you fat, spineless excuse for a man! I was not done speaking!” Yousef’s words stuck the chairman back in his seat.

  His eyes swept back and forth. “You wish to charge me for the incomplete wall, which all of you meddled in to the hilt to try to get your own cities covered!” Their faces went pale with the accusation; any sneers and smugness evaporated. Thought so.

  “It is because of this committee that there are holes in our defenses. The men and women who are willing to go out and defend these cities—which aren’t even their own—with their lives ask to use a weapon that will allow them to move into the area. You’re probably thinking, what about the fallout? Fallout is minimal—should be gone within a week. Overall, what is a little bit of background radiation in a few areas if we can live on Indalia and we’re still alive? Not fucking bad, I say.

  “So this is your choice: allow them what they need and maybe we can pull a wall together, which all of you played a part in its incompletion. Don’t, and well…” He clicked his fingers outside his helmet’s field but still heard it through the metal of the armor.

  “Who but the gods know. That is all. Give me your decision and let me keep as many Indalias alive as I can. Legate Yousef out.” He hit the disconnect button on his arm fiercely, his suit ringing with the hit. The committee vanished, leaving him looking at his battle HUD with maps and information streams covering it.

  He looked to his side. The ever faithful Augustus waited, his M19 ready.

  “Let’s go and get us some Maraukian hides.” Yousef’s voice was deadly. He was in a mood to kill something. As he pulled the charging handle on his M19, he walked out of his command center, knowing Augustus was right behind him.

  Five minutes later, the anti-matter weapons were cleared, with nothing attached to it. He forwarded it to Mark and stopped suddenly, nearly causing Augustus to crash into him as the other man scanned.

  That sneaky bastard. Yousef’s battle map showed him the Vanguard legion moving into the pass where the wall was. Bellona deployed on the ridge as trooper legions and the Phantom Lords walked into the valley created by the two mountain ranges.

  “What is it, sir?” Augustus asked after a minute or two.

  “Mark blinded the sensors, making us think he was at his base camp. He’s already at the valley.”

  “How’d he spoof the sensors?”

  “Well, he did make them and put them down—would make sense he could tell them he was somewhere else.”

  “Oh. Hmm, then why did he hide his movement?”

  “Certainly gave the committee a good kick in the right direction.”

  “Yes, sir,” Augustus said, clearly not understanding what his commanding officer was saying, who was already moving off again toward the wall.

  Chapter 20

  Eastern Defensive Line 317

  Indalia, Otarvi System

  6/3555

  Mark and the Phantoms finally dropped their frames where the wall was supposed to be. They took to the sky again, now much more maneuverable and faster. They flew nap-of-the-earth, feet above rocks and mountain outcrops. It was a thrilling and scary experience as g-forces pushed them as they banked before quickly accelerating and being thrown back as they surged. Adrenaline pulsed through Mark as a grin filled his face. The gravity engines’ output sent them cruising along at Mach two, up to four. Well above the assumed limits of the Thunderbolt. Damn, that beautiful engineer. I’m going to kiss you, Charles—if I make it out of here, he vowed to the engineer working the forges a few hundred kilometers away.

  He studied the area that was to be their defensive position with his optical sensors, which Sarah dutifully magnified. A few kilometers past it, he saw the shaking of jungle tree tops.

  “Overlay Maraukians.” Mark’s HUD showed him the storm of Maraukians that rushed under the cover of the jungle like a continuous wave from as far as he could see on his left and right.

  “Leri, report.”

  “In position. AD loaded.”

  “Good. Fire as they enter kill zone.”

  “I calculate that at that time, you’ll be airborne still.”

  “Correct.”

  “Are you nuts?” Leri said sharply.

  “No, I’m a Phantom Lord. Mark out.” He thought he heard the sigh from the tanker’s commander even as he closed the link.

  “All right, it’s time for the Bellona to make the ground rumble! Check targets. Fire as the Maraukians enter your envelope! Let’s pound them flat!” Savage cheers reached back to Leri as she merged, leaving behind the worrisome exterior of her normal self. Cold precision filled her every movement as she had targeting information directly linked to her eye, the other checking the Maraukian advance.

  “FIRE!” Leri yelled, her voice cracked like a whip.

  Even in what had been come to be called the “womb” of nanites that created the gunners’ command consoles and kept them alive and protected no matter what happened to the tank, she felt as the main gun barked. She flicked to external sensors, watching as her line of Bellona fired from left to right, the main gun causing each tank to buck backward a fraction.

  A fraction for a forty-five-thousand-ton tank was damned impressive. No less than I’d expect. Leri then yelled to them, “Load cluster bombs, slackers! Where are my damned LBMs!” She cut her channel to Evan’s contubernium, who were rushing back with her armaments. Each Bellona had their weapons bay churning out two of them every hour and a half but she was soon going to need that for actual rounds.

  “Secondaries, fire as Maraukians come into range.” She was so focused on her job that when she glanced at the mushroom clouds now forming where the front line of the Maraukians had been, extending back into the tree line, they’d come a few kilometers and she was surprised.

  Heh. Well, they won’t be bothering us anytime soon. Leri checked her raw feed. As sure as hell, the Phantom Lords flew through the shockwave that killed Maraukians, landing directly where her first anti-matter packed area denial round had landed.

  “They might be squishies but they’ve got balls of carbon hendral.” Her second-in-command Ashtar looked at the same feed from his tank.

  “Good. The squishes are on the ground. Now get on task, man, before they start to take the kills for us!”

  “Yes, ma’am!” Ashtar growled hungrily.

  Chapter 20

  Eastern Defensive Line 563

  Indalia, Otarvi System

  6/3555

  “All right, girls and boys, this is gonna be a tad rough.” Mark saw the incoming shells, which passed over him and his Phantom Lords as they flew in aerial formation. Six contuberniums of mergers brought a whole lot of pain.

  Mark and the others tracked the shells that were descending before them.

  “Brace!” The area denial shell hit with an earth-shattering boom as matter and anti-matter reacted violently. Mark’s suit’s audio and visual sensors lessened to the bottom of their range as Mark could swear he could see through his helmet. He slammed his fists by his side as Sarah tracked the shockwave.

/>   Hopefully I know enough of this hands-free thing. Well, at least I’m not plummeting…yet. He pushed up the acceleration as they accelerated to their upper limits. They cut a terrifying sight as they raced toward the blooming explosion. Shockwaves raced outward to greet them. Mark was at the front of the formation. He hit the first shockwave head on, literally. The mergers fought against the power of the anti-matter warhead, descending toward their positions.

  Mark’s Pluto surged with power. He felt alive, threading between life and death, riding the waves of destruction that resounded off the valleys and hills, ripping out trees. The heat incinerated them and the ground around, turning it into a glass-like landscape.

  Waves of destruction tore through the area.

  The Phantom Lords’ suits whined as power was forced into their anti-gravity flight systems, fighting against these incredible forces.

  Against the shearing noise that tore at their armor, they couldn’t even hear their anti-gravity flight engines.

  Finally their landing zone came into sight. They continued to be buffeted by the wild winds.

  Mark gritted his teeth, allowing his speed to slow and losing some control as he crashed into the ground in a controlled manner.

  The other mergers spread out, all of them landing in different ways.

  Mark checked his position was where he wanted it to be before he threw out a cratering charge.

  “Get dug in, boys and girls. Let them come to us and we’ll stack ’em like cordwood.” Mark’s voice was calm and steady in the face of chaos as cratering charges went off, creating foxholes for the Phantom Lords to hide in.

  His cratering charge went off. He jumped in and checked everyone’s status. So far, so good—no casualties.

  The area in front of the wall had been turned into a dust-filled apocalypse. There seemed to be no way that anything could survive after the passing of the anti-matter area denial round.

  Carated Maraukians started to appear, a few at first, but then more and more of them walked through the destruction that had washed away their front lines.

  Mark raised his M20s, firing bursts of bolts at the Maraukians. Silver streams of the Phantom Lords’ M20s joined his as the green flash of Maraukian rail guns returned fire. Plasma cannons and missile launchers kicked off, illuminating the dust hurled into the air. The two forces fought at the edge of the area denial’s impact zone.

  He let a stream of bolts go as Sarah carated Maraukian forces already advancing, even after the pasting they’d received from the Bellona.

  “They’re nothing if but determined,” a Phantom said.

  “We’re fully loaded, armored, and hell, I think I just let loose my next meal.”

  “That’s disgusting, Ilis!”

  “Let me say, thank God this thing has air fresheners.” This drew disgusted noises of most of the Phantoms but not without a few laughs as the culprit fist tapped with his neighbor.

  Ava opened a side channel. “I still don’t think I get most other cultures’ humor.”

  “I found it pretty funny.” Mark chuckled.

  “That’s because you came from the EMF. I’ve heard their radio chatter and watched their sensor feeds. Who would throw a sonic grenade in a washroom! The entire floor of the citadel experienced a backflow. Though it was quite interesting watching the outside of one of the general’s bathrooms. He might’ve been a bought and sold man, but I didn’t know the human race could have that many swear words. It was the most watched video for an hour until he found it.”

  Mark could hear her smile through her words as one threatened to form on his face.

  If this was a regular unit, he’d probably tell them to quiet down, but a normal unit didn’t try to fight genetic machinations that were over ten feet tall and literally dropped metal out of their rear ends. His men knew what was coming; who was he to tell them to be quiet? They were professionals—they knew what to expect.

  “We’ve got targets.” Mark checked his internal magazines were connected via his wrist to his M20s. He sat down in his trench; his optical sensors slaved to one of each of his eyes as they worked independently.

  “Maraukian bastards!” Rachel muttered on the net.

  “I think I’m going to paint my house blue.”

  “Ilis!”

  “What! Just take one Maraukian and an M20—instant paint job!”

  Laughs came from the line as Mark laughed. Maraukians indeed turned to blue mist as the rounds caused them to explode.

  Rounds and plasma were returned back at them with gusto as the rumbling charge of thousands of Maraukians advanced against the Phantom Lords and into the mouth of the valley.

  “Looks like this’ll be a good one,” Mark said happily. Ava returned the sentiment as he changed to Ortiz’s channel.

  “How are things looking for you?” Mark asked.

  “Not too bad. We’re coming up on you guys. However, we’re having to wait till those shockwaves pass. I think that we’ll be able to get most of our people up to this point.” A line appeared behind the Phantom Lords, where Ortiz wanted to deploy his people.

  “Looks good to me,” Mark said.

  “We should be another thirty minutes. Also, once we’re in position, we can start to get some of those armorite fabbers building a real defensive line and some diggers to work on squaring up some proper trench lines,” Ortiz said.

  “I’ll leave it in your hands. Gotta talk to our Bellonas in support and the artillery park.”

  “Good luck.” Ortiz cut the connection.

  Mark dialed up the artillery park replacement and the leader of the Bellona forces.

  “Target data coming at you guys. I want to try to delay these Maraukians as much as possible so that we can set up something like defenses up here. The longer we hold them here, the more we can build that defensive wall that’s supposed to be behind us,” Mark said.

  “We’re ready in support. Got two area denial rounds loaded into their tubes,” the Bellona commander reported.

  “Good shit. Accel tubes, how is it looking on your side?” Mark threw out more cratering charges to connect his hole to the other Phantom Lords. His right hand fired as he went, Sarah taking control and cutting down Maraukians.

  “We cannot in good conscience fire on these targets,” the legate in charge of the acceleration tubes park said.

  “Why the hell not?” Mark asked.

  “You are too close to the point of impact. It is likely that we will be hitting you instead of the Maraukians.”

  “We’re in goddamn Pluto suits. There’s not much that the artillery is going to do unless you start dropping anti-matter shells all over the place,” Mark said, trying to reassure them.

  “I will have to talk to the higher-ups.” The legate’s voice lilted, as if Mark was unable to make these kinds of decisions as they cut the channel.

  What the hell is the problem with that guy? Mark needed to have the acceleration tubes ready to fire in case things turned dicey. They might have dropped an area denial shell on the Maraukian bastards, but they were already recovering.

  He didn’t have time to think about it anymore, hoping that the legate would get his head out of his ass in time when Maraukians rushed out of the aftermath of the anti-matter shell.

  Their weapons were slung on their chests as they were no longer upright, but rather prone, utilizing all of their limbs for greater speed.

  The cannons on their backs lit up the battlefield. The Maraukians’ fire and the mergers’ intersected one another’s. The Maraukians were killed in the hundreds but as they fell, those behind them would charge forth, avoiding their bodies and continuing the charge.

  The ground rumbled with the Maraukians’ head-long stampede.

  With the area denial clearing out a lot of the frontline Maraukians, those at the rear had charged forward with all their speed. They were now traveling at their greatest speed, crossing the distance between them and the mergers.

  “We need that support!” Mark yell
ed. He knew that the battlefield changed on a dime, but he hadn’t expected the Maraukians would be so fast about it.

  The Bellonas in support rocked as their main guns bellowed and their armor opened up. Acceleration tubes appeared and fired.

  The Maraukians were backed by the still rising mushroom cloud of the anti-matter shell. They unleashed missiles, plasma rounds, and rail gun bolts that rushed across the battlefield as artillery rained down on them from above. Shells exploded into bomblets and shrapnel, cutting down groups of Maraukians and opening up the charge.

  The Phantoms didn’t need to communicate to one another as they merged. The world seemed to come into focus, their weapon fire became deadlier, and they worked with coordination that made it seem as if they were one being with many parts.

  The Maraukians’ advance was suppressed. As their pace was forcefully slowed, the Maraukians started to raise their upper bodies and grab the weapons that were slung on their chests.

  Their speed dropped off with them standing up and it made them bigger targets.

  The artillery from the Bellonas continued to rain down on them. There was no answer from the artillery park. Mark sent a message to Yousef to ask him to look into the issue.

  If he didn’t have their support, then they would use all of the shells that the Bellonas held in reserve in a short period of time.

  Once that artillery ran out, they wouldn’t be able to keep the Maraukians at a distance.

  They would close and it would have to come down to hand-to-hand fighting. There was no way that they would be able to stop the Maraukians from getting past them at that time.

  Mark had two area denial shells ready to use but he didn’t want to. If he did, opening up the gap again, then he’d once again be right in the way of another Maraukian charge.

  Sarah uploaded a map to his mind, showing the Maraukians that were flowing toward Mark and his mergers.

  “What the hell is happening with that artillery?” Ava asked.

  “I don’t know. They denied my request,” Mark said.

  “When will Evan get back with those LBMs and ammunition?” Mark thought in the channel, but Sarah relayed the information to him.