“Well this is a first.”
“What is?”
“I agree with everything you just said.”
• • •
Betombe had not expected to hear from Santani quite so soon after their last conversation, given her reaction to his little ploy. But there it was: incoming call, ident confirmed.
“Captain Santani, this is a pleasure.”
“Admiral, good… evening? It is evening there?”
“It is.”
“I thought you might like to hear the latest on my situation.”
“I most certainly would, Captain. I could do with a good laugh.”
“Well… guess what happened.”
“You’ve been invited to resign from the fleet, and you’re going to start teaching exotic dance?”
“No, Admiral. Not that.”
“Well that just seems like a huge waste of potential.”
“You are terrible, Admiral. You do realise I’ll be sixty-five in a few months?”
“None of us are getting any younger, Captain.”
“Okay. Try this… guess where I am.”
Santani moved her holo around her in a sweeping arc, and Betombe saw a blurred stream of light and dark colours which he could not possibly hope to interpret into coherent shapes.
“I literally have no idea.”
She sighed. “I’m on the very shiny command deck of the all new, cutting edge Hammer II. They gave me a new ship! How amazing is that?”
“You’re right,” he said. “That is amazing. Congratulations, Captain.”
“Thank you. I wanted to let you know personally, because you did show a genuine interest in my plight.”
“I very much appreciate the update.”
“But also, Admiral, I wanted to tell you so that you would maybe not feel so pessimistic about your own situation. Bel-Messari was actually very reasonable.”
“The face has to fit with him, I’m afraid,” said Betombe. “His problem with me is nothing new. It goes all the way back to Chion.”
“Oh. I didn’t know that.”
“There’s no way you could have done; he doesn’t ever place a single one of his cards on the table. I’m just hoping that the other members of the triumvirate also think he’s a fatuous arse.”
Santani sniggered, then stopped herself.
“Is this… will they be…?”
“Is the conversation being monitored? I doubt it. I happen to know a thing or two about message intercepts, and I’m fairly certain that after our last little tête-à-tête they gave up on all that sly nonsense.”
“Good.”
“Who was your second?”
“Admiral Kalabi.”
“Ah, Kalabi. Yes, good woman. Very forward-thinking, head screwed on the right way. I’m not surprised you got off with it.”
“With respect Admiral, I didn’t ‘get off with it’. I did nothing wrong. That was the whole point.”
“I’m just teasing you, Captain.”
“Oh, of course. Well I very much got the impression that Kalabi wanted me back in the chair from the very start.”
“That sounds like her. She’s one of the rare few, Santani: a senior flag officer who remembers what it’s like to hold a command.”
“Um, she does hold a command. The Fearless.”
“The flagship doesn’t count — it’s just a giant mascot full of offices.”
“But she tells it where to go and what to shoot at.”
“You have me there, Captain Santani. Outmanoeuvred! Truly you are a tactical wizard.”
She laughed gaily.
Betombe realised suddenly that he was flirting with a junior officer. Almost as suddenly, he remembered that he did not particularly care about those sorts of regulations. Two of his ex-wives had been junior officers, and he had not cared then either. And he was always interested in acquiring more ex-wives.
She was a good five years older than him though. Ah well — women generally lived longer than men. Perhaps it would even out.
“So tell me, Captain Santani, where will you be taking the Hammer II on her maiden voyage?”
“Oh, she isn’t quite ready for that yet.” He could hear the disappointment in her voice. “She was supposed to be completed next month, although the work schedule has now been accelerated.”
“In light of the current crisis?”
“Exactly.”
“Yes, I keep hearing that phrase at every turn. Go on.”
“She should be ready to go within a few days, and to be honest I might be hard-pressed to get up to speed with all of the differences in that time. I hadn’t realised how far the newer ships have advanced beyond what I had available with the Commodore-class.”
“This is why, Captain,” he said, “when they offer you a new ship four times in a row, you say ‘yes please’.”
“I was very fond of her,” said Santani.
“I know the feeling, I really do. But they are just ships.”
“I suppose you’re right. No doubt it won’t be long though before I am head over heels in love with this one instead. Anyway… what news on your end?”
“Not much more to tell really. The Disciplinary Branch have been very quiet, which probably means they mean to kick me hard in the balls. To be honest I’m not that worried. It won’t be the first time Command has given me a slap.”
“You’re sure it won’t be any more than a slap this time?”
“Quite sure. From what I’m hearing at this end, right now the armada can’t afford to lose any commanders.”
“Why is that?”
“You didn’t hear this from me — and I expect it to go no further — but I’m receiving whispers already about the possibility of a Six-K retreat.”
There was silence from the holo. Santani’s reaction was probably exactly the same as his own had been: numb shock.
“They’re talking worst case scenario in the echelons of the admiralty, and if that’s what actually happens then they will need every flag officer they have.”
“I can’t believe it,” Santani said. “That could really be in the cards?”
“This incursion is not like anything we’ve seen before,” said Betombe. “We have no idea where the Shaeld Hratha are coming from, and we know nothing about them; all we do know is that they may be striking from the Deep Shadows — in which case we have a snowball’s chance in hell of finding their base of operations — and their ships are overwhelmingly powerful.”
“But what about the outer colonies? All those worlds…”
“I think the way Command sees it is that anyone who moves outside the Six-K radius does so in the knowledge that a day like this might come eventually.”
She gasped.
“I know, it sounds callous. But that is the grim reality of it. We don’t have the ships to hold every single system against this kind of opponent, and the older, more established worlds must take precedence.”
“Some of those outer colonies are heavily populated,” said Santani. “I know the average is pretty low, but still… Damastion alone has a third of a billion citizens. Some of our greatest minds have retired there. What about them?”
“I’m not sure what will happen with Damastion. It is, as you say, something of an anomaly. It might be that the Empress sees fit to try and hold onto it, if only for the fact that it’s one of the few truly Earth-like planets we’re aware of.”
“That concern should always be secondary to the welfare of the population.”
“I know, and I agree with you, but it won’t be. War on the kind of scale Command anticipates will always mean decisions like that have to be made on a purely pragmatic basis.”
“Well, Admiral,” said Santani, “that has dampened my spirits considerably. I hope that if they do put you back in the chair, you will not kowtow to such cowardly, murdering orders.”
“That’ll be the day.”
— 09 —
Shards and Splinters
Bruiser open
ed his eyes, shook his head, and groaned. Flat on his back, he stared up into the sky. The clear, unobscured sky. The explosion had thrown him outside the bank of mist which surrounded the splinters.
Way up there in the big pale blue, something flared brightly then disappeared. A moment of nothing, then a grey streak, a tail of white vapour with darker children puffing from it.
He knew ship debris when he saw it.
A long, low rumble of distant thunder shook his helmet gently. More flares now. More streaks, visible objects burning and smoking their way into the atmosphere.
He rocked his body until he had enough momentum to sit up, and checked his armour. It was scorched, some of the front plates melted and the outer panels misshapen, but it seemed intact. The skinprinting was useless; no great loss in this environment.
He clambered to his feet.
A flashing red icon in his visor display dragged his attention to the status readout. Great, integrity compromised. Somewhere on his helmet there was a crack, or a hole, and the outside air was getting in. There was nothing he could do about that right now.
He looked around for his GPMG, and saw nothing but rocks and gravel. Even better.
Bruiser could still hear the shouts and screams and shots coming from inside the fog bank. Somewhere straight ahead of him, his comrades were either laying injured on the ground or still fighting the army of Thralls.
He ran back into the mist.
His helmet visor was playing up now, flicking overlays and data grids on and off at random. But he did not need it; his own vision was enough. He could see the faint differences between the unnatural warmth of the mist, and the heat of the bodies hiding within it.
He saw the brightest patch of heat — what remained of the Kodiak, burning still, its shattered form spread sideways across the ground.
As he ran, he scooped up a piece of metal which until recently had been the Kodiak’s rear evacuation hatch.
Someone lunged at him through the pall of smoke, arms outstretched. There was no armour, no weapon: it wasn’t a friendly.
He swung the hatch to one side, horizontally, and it smashed against the Thrall’s neck and jaw. The attacker crumpled to the ground.
There; a group of them, all struggling with someone on the ground. One person in armour trying to help the one on the ground, a Thrall trying to yank a rifle away from the prone human. An axe or hatchet being raised high…
Bruiser charged straight through them all, carrying the hatch like a shield, and bowled them over. He swung the hatch back hard, ramming it straight into the face of the first Thrall to turn on him, then lifted it above his head and — with both hands — rammed its edge down into the chest of one who had fallen beneath his feet.
The other two were back on their feet in seconds, and both turned their attention to him. They ran at the same time, from two directions, and Bruiser brought his improvised weapon down hard on top of the first’s head. The second he grabbed by the neck, lifting her feet off the ground, and threw her back again. She leapt to all fours like an animal, and scrabbled back to upright as she once more attacked.
This time, she was felled before she reached him.
Bruiser looked behind him. On the ground, the soldier had recovered both their wits and their rifle.
“Thanks for the helping hand, Bruiser.”
It was Caden’s voice.
Bruiser reached down to take the Shard’s hand, and pulled him to his feet.
“You see anyone else yet?”
“No,” said Bruiser. “I was thrown clear. Caden, there are ships coming down from orbit.”
“Whose ships?”
“I do not know.”
“Nothing we can do about that right now. We need to do what we came here to do.”
Caden leapt to one side without warning, and fired a short burst from his rifle. Someone sprawled on the ground next to Bruiser’s feet.
“Sorry, that was a little close. IR is next to useless in here.”
“I can see these people just fine.”
“Really? What are your visor settings?”
“No, Caden. With my own eyes.”
Bruiser shield-punched a Thrall who ran at them from the mist, and she fell back on her behind. Caden shot her in the chest.
“Very helpful. Right… first we get this situation under control, then you and I are going to finish the job.”
Caden began moving around the wrecked Kodiak, and Bruiser followed. They found several MAGA soldiers and one Tanker laid out on the ground, all dead.
“Euryce, you still there?” Caden said over the group channel.
“Need some help here,” said Eilentes. “Daxon and Norskine are both out cold.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m… Caden, I have no idea.”
“Do you have any flares?” Asked Bruiser.
“No… wait, I’m sure Norskine probably has one.”
There was a pause, silence over the links, then Bruiser saw the unmistakably intense glow of a single flare, wavering in the distance.
“That way,” he told Caden.
“You sure? I don’t see anything.”
“You will.”
Bruiser led the Shard towards the signal, through a graveyard of Thralls and troopers. The dazed, armoured bodies he saw shuffling through the mist he ignored for now; they would have to wait.
“Ah, I see it. Faint red glow.”
“I told you it was there.”
Bruiser and Caden found Eilentes holding the flare high over her head. When she saw them emerge from the fog she tossed the flare, crouched low, and squatted between the unconscious forms of Daxon and Norskine. She worked hurriedly on her holo, interrogating their visors to try and establish any injuries.
“There’s not much I can do,” she said, “without removing their helmets.”
“Don’t,” said Caden. “It’s not worth the risk.”
Daxon coughed, spluttered, and struggled to sit up.
“What the fuck happened?”
“That Kodiak took a hit,” said Bruiser. “Blown to pieces.”
“How do you feel?” Asked Eilentes.
“Battered and bruised,” said Daxon, “but I’ll live.”
“We need some kind of a marker to get everyone back together. Daxon, do you think you can talk to that drone?”
“Sure, if it didn’t drop when the Kodiak exploded.”
“Good. Have it light up the ground here with its acquisition laser. We’ll have everyone who’s still on the group channel come to us.”
“There are people walking wounded around us,” said Bruiser. “Those ones won’t respond.”
“Once we have everyone together who’s able-bodied, it’ll be easier to sort that out. Anyway Biggun, you and me are going on ahead.”
“Where’s Dyne?” Eilentes asked.
“Fucked if I know,” said Caden.
Bruiser saw a large heat pattern moving slowly across his field of vision, followed by another even larger one which was very oddly shaped. The second figure could only be one specific person.
“Burner,” he said over the link. “To your left.”
The larger shape stopped, the smaller one stopped a moment later, and they both grew in size and intensity as they changed direction and approached him.
Burner and Overkill emerged from the mist, blue flames still licking ceaselessly in the igniter of Burner’s flame unit. The rim of the igniter was still red hot.
“Good,” Caden said. “You guys can get us there.”
“Where?” Said Overkill.
“Bruiser and I, we’re going to complete the mission. There are still Thralls out there, and we don’t have time to find them all. Burner; the light from your flamethrower will draw them towards you. It’s pretty obvious that they’re trying to repel threats from the splinters, so they’ll be all over that. Overkill, your job is to watch his back.”
“I take my orders from Harth and Feior,” said Overkill.
&n
bsp; “Don’t get him started,” Bruiser rumbled. “Shard this, Empress that.”
“I’m fine with that plan.”
It was Feior’s voice. Bruiser scanned the surroundings, but for now there were no new heat patterns that he could make out.
“Where are you?” Caden said.
“Don’t know,” said Feior. “I’m still waiting for Daxon — or Harth, if he can be bothered — to get that drone’s cooperation.”
“You’ve been listening in this whole time? Why didn’t you say anything?”
Bruiser knew enough of human emotions to sense that Caden was annoyed.
“Wondering if anyone would miss me. But yeah; Burner and Overkill. Take’em. When we have a grip of this cluster-fuck, we’ll follow you.”
“Okay then,” said Caden. “You ready for this Bruiser?”
“Show me the way.”
• • •
“I can’t see a Deep-damned thing,” said Caden. “Bruiser, how the fuck do we get into these monstrosities?”
Caden had a fairly good idea where Bruiser was, thanks to his size, but it would only take a few steps for the Rodori to vanish entirely in the thick fog which surrounded the bases of the splinters. He tried his best to keep one eye on the private, in case they became separated.
“I’m looking,” said Bruiser.
“Can you actually see it?”
“Yes. This structure is very strange. Cooler than the surroundings. Those markings are…”
“Alien?”
“That is the right word.”
“We knew that part. Nothing you recognise, I take it?”
“No.”
Caden waited while Bruiser examined the splinter. Without being able to see it himself, there was nothing else he could do.
Over the group channel, he could still hear Overkill whooping and yeah-ing after his occasional bursts of gunfire. Once in a while a pale yellow eruption in the mist told him that Burner was torching any Thralls who still had the lack of sense to prowl close enough.
Books One to Three Omnibus (Armada Wars) Page 75
