by Chad Huskins
“They’re not drop pods, skipper.”
Donovan furrowed his brow. “Say again?”
“They’re not deploying drop pods, skipper. It’s something else. I’m trying to get a reading, but they look like unmanned vehicles. Haulers of some kind, with fat cargo holds, not a lot of weapons or armament.”
XO Vosen stepped to his side. “Something to poison the water supply?”
Donovan nodded. “Or something like it. A kind of doomsday deal, a pistol put to the planet’s head. ‘Continue to resist, and we ruin you completely.’ They want to make it clear it’s better to give them what they want.” He gave vent to a low growl that had been building inside, then said, “Weapons, can we hit them with Pacifier from here?”
“Negative, skipper. They’re at Widden’s poles, and the curvature of the planet is too great.”
“What do we do?” asked Vosen.
“There’s nothing we can do,” said Donovan miserably, “except support Shatterstar, and protect the others coming in. We have to get the rest of the drop ships down to the surface, or Gold Wing and the others are going to be annihilated.”
A chime went off at his tac station. Donovan checked it, and found that the War Council had called for Lord Ishimoto and Shatterstar to maintain geosynchronous orbit while Sikorskiy and Ramlock began to break away from Rah’zen’s orbit and move towards the planet.
As soon as the two ships started veering towards Widden, DeStren called up, “Conn, we’ve got three more of those castleships that took out Reginald! They’re peeking from around the little moon’s dark side, using Honagher’s curvature for cover. Their weapons are showing hot!”
“Damn it.” It was beginning to feel like Second Fleet had stepped into quicksand the moment they had entered the system. No matter how much ground they gained, they lost twice as much just seconds later. “Tightbeam to Shatterstar, make sure they know. Call down to the War Council, see if General Quoden can call one or two ships from Task Force Two to come and support us. And make sure all torpedo tubes have been reloaded. If either of the three incoming ships get within Pacifier’s effective range, fire away.”
“Aye, skipper,” said Vosen, and moved to obey.
VAULTIMYR MANAGED TO save herself from all the incoming craft carrying warheads, but Trebuchet, one of the corvettes that had accompanied it, was not so lucky. Two plasma warheads scored direct hits on her bow, and the double explosion of blue and white light, along with the radiation burst, frazzled Vaultimyr’s sensors and made it impossible to target the incoming threats.
Captain Oblavsky received word that they were being targeted themselves, this time from a vessel much closer. Sensors detected a huge spike in X-rays. Some type of energy weapon was about to be unleashed.
“Plasma shield up!” he called.
Three seconds later, it was done. On all the viewscreens and windows, space went dark, leeched of all starlight. Whatever weapon was smashing their protective bubble, they couldn’t see it. They sent sensor probes beyond their plasma bubble, and had them return with readings—it was the only way to acquire information about what was happening outside of their plasma shield. The readings were worrisome. They had narrowly escaped a weapon with massive yield.
“Drop shield,” Oblavksy called.
As soon as the plasma shield was down, they could once again see the stars, as well as a few scattered clouds of dust and chunks of rock. And there was something else: Two castleships had come within visual range. Vaultimyr cued up its own Pacifier. Fired. The beams washed over the shields of the targeted castleship. Vaultimyr put torpedoes into the vacuum, but all of them were duped by Ascendancy countermeasures. Starscreamers harassed the enemy, and managed to score a direct hit on their engine core. There was a rupture. Not big enough to cause a chain reaction, but enough so that it was dead in the water.
“That one’s out of the game,” said his XO.
Three sub-capital ships tried to protect it. Oblavsky’s people acquired a target on one of them. Fired Pacifier again. The blue-green beam cut through the void and made a direct hit, causing an explosion that brought shockwaves through the dusty field of debris. The explosion happened in perfect silence, like a vid someone had muted. CIC went up with cheers.
The cheering stopped when the sensor room called up with another update. Five more castleships had just dropped into the system, all larger than the two they had just taken out.
THE DEXANNONHOLD HAD never looked farther away. Lyokh peeked around the corner of a massive column that supported a freeway that wound around one of the pyramids, and zoomed in on their target. Even though they had made some progress, the massive fortress still loomed in the distance, framed by a darkening sky that was growing more star-dappled by the second. The mechanicae were falling back to regroup with others who had survived the orbital bombardment. Lyokh and his people had driven enough of a wedge between the stragglers that there was finally room for the incoming Novas to land safely. Though, one of them was tagged by a grasshopper on the way down, and landed clumsily. Heeten jumped on the grasshopper and tore it to pieces.
The five drop ships landed either on this street or the one over. Each one spilled out a hundred men, a dozen warhulks, and one or two Ravagers apiece. Indigo Wing, Cross Wing, Fierce Wing, Jupiter Wing, and Ares Wing were the largest forces, and they ran screaming into the streets, taking up key points that Lyokh outlined with waves of his hand.
Lyokh had no time to meet with the wing commanders individually, he just conferred with them on their shared command channel, made sure they all understood that he was still alive and in charge, and told them where their teams were needed most.
“Let’s not form a parade,” he told them, even as he advanced with the warhulks through a street littered with debrist, and the corpses of Vastillians and mechanicae. Here and there, a med bot bent to inspect a Republican corpse, seeing if it was salvageable, taking its weapons if it was not, and setting a marker on its body for pickup later.
“If we stay all clustered on one street, we’ll be an easy target for a blockbuster. Indigo, Cross, Jupiter, split your teams up and have them cover the streets west and east of us. Fierce, Ares, Everest, stay one street behind, cover our ass. Hoy up and move out!”
The Novas that had dropped them off were now taking to the sky, beginning a slow, circling patrol, keeping local, hovering over buildings they had already secured with Mantises. Wyrm flocks formed wider circles, scouting ahead, the Tamers relaying any information of strategic value to Lyokh and his people.
Lyokh patched himself into the camera feeds of each hatchling, seeing what they saw. It was a tortured landscape of gutted buildings, smashed homes, charred pyramids, and littered bodies, all seen from above. Also, nests of those grasshopper platforms, crawling through the streets, sometimes up the sides of buildings, across highways and through high-rise train tunnels.
Way high up, an explosion marked the end of a battle between a skyrake and an Ascendancy fighter. Impossible to tell who the winner was from this distance.
A flash-message appeared in Lyokh’speriphery. He eye-flicked it, read it:Ramlock approaching orbital insertion point. ETA fifteen minutes. Three Ascendancy ships incoming, skirmish expected. Trying to make contact with Widden command structure, Ascendancy still jamming us. ORDERS: Maintain. Do not lose the progress you’ve made.
“Sounds easy enough,” said Meiks, who came jogging up beside Lyokh.
“You survived.”
“Don’t sound so disappointed, doyen. Cheer up. The day’s still young.”
They heard firing up ahead, and ran to it. At the tip of their spear, someone had engaged with the retreating enemy. When Lyokh and Meiks got there, Gold Wing was securing cover with members of Devastator Wing. They were at the dead center of a T-junction, one gray and bleak with the dust of a bombed-out marketplace. Within that dust, flitting around like phantoms, were Ascendancy troops taking cover behind abandoned vehicles, and one crashed skyrake. Ziir sent up an EyeSpy to
get a better view of the area, but it was shot down almost immediately. It appeared the mechanicae had retreated as far as they cared, and had decided to stop running and dig in.
Heeten led four warhulks to the front, and received fire. Some large PBCs fired down on them from high atop a building, two of them, these with enough yield that it forced Heeten to pull her group back.
“We can deal with their tinzer rifles,” Heeten said, taking cover behind a some kind of large computer terminal that looked like it had once been used to request transit. Her warhulk knelt, just barely concealed. Through her holopane-covered window, she looked across at Lyokh. “But those lasers really overheat mech armor fast. What do you think, handsome?”
Lyokh took a knee near the front, peeking over a wrecked civilian shuttle. There was some firing from the back. The tactical data showed on his display, coming from Ares Wing’s commander, a man named Josep. Ares was covering their rear, and had caught a bit of fire with some sneaky mechanicae trying to drive up their tails.
“ ’Vanen, you still with us? Report. Over.”
A moment of silence.
“Takirovanen? Say status. Over.”
It appeared he was gone.
No luck today, Lyokh thought.
Then, a voice came in a bit staticky, and finally resolved. “I’m here, doyen. Go with your message.”
He breathed a quiet sigh of relief. “How many of your sniper team are left?”
“Just me.”
That was extremely sobering. “What happened?”
“One of those grasshoppers happened upon us. Just bad luck.”
“Where are you right now?”
“High up, like you told me.”
“How high? Enough to see us from where you are?”
“I always see everything,” said Takirovanen.
Meiks snorted out a laugh. “Arrogant prick.”
Lyokh peeked over his cover. “ ’Vanen, do you see the building directly south of my present location?”
“Affirmative, doyen.”
“Do you see the two laser shooters at the top?”
A few seconds passed. Takirovanen did not respond.
Then, they heard the report of a rifle in the distance. Lyokh looked at the building where the laser shooters had been. He zoomed his visor in, saw one body plummeting, and another one slumped on the roof’s ledge, blood pouring from his skull.
“Negative, doyen,” said Takirovanen. “I don’t see anyone there. You must be mistaken.”
Lyokh smirked. “Copy that. Heeten, move your people back into position. Ravager One, you’re right behind them.”
“Copy that, handsome,” said Heeten.
“Arrogant prick,” Meiks repeated.
The warhulks marched back into the middle of the street, forming a wall of compristeel. Behind them, Ravager One slewed to a halt, then sprouted its legs and thumped against the cobblestone street, lifting itself slightly off the ground, ready for advanced maneuvering.
They heard the pop of gunfire to the east, just one street over. Grenades, rockets, explosions, then silence. Jupiter Wing, encountering some resistance, but it had been dealt with. Things were running semi-smoothly, they had a widened area of control now, a nice landing strip that wasn’t such a hot zone. And now, as he looked up, Lyokh saw the first tendrils of fire that signaled Ramlock’s deployment. He then received a message from the War Council:Second bombardment commencing at the following coords. Lyokh checked the coordinates on a 3D map that showed on his visor, manipulated with the wave of his hands, and saw that the strike zone was to their tail end, as well as farther up the street from them.
He needed to pull up the rear wings, to make sure they did not get caught up in that bombardment.
“Fierce, Ares, Everest!” he called. “This is Gold Wing Actual. Abandon staged fall back and proceed on a one-one-fiver. Repeat, one-one-fiver. Double-time it!”
“Fierce Actual, I copy.”
“Everest copies.”
“Ares Actual, copy that.”
Lyokh looked around at the relative stillness. They were sitting tight, listening to distant gunfire. Three or four small groups had gotten split up from their wings, and were now cut off. He tried to follow their radio chatter, but it was too confused, agonized screams mixed for calls for help, then silence.
“We sitting tight, doyen?” came Takirovanen’s voice, like a spirit whispering over his shoulder.
“We are for now. Maintain your overwatch.” Wherever the hell you are, Lyokh thought privately.
“Copy that.”
Lyokh chanced a peek over his cover again, looking through the smoky haze that just wouldn’t dissipate. He switched his visor to infrared, still saw little—many of the enemy were behind thick, non-porous cover.
He moved to the other side of his cover in a low crouch, and the toe of his right boot happened to bump up against something. He looked down, directly into the vacant face of one of the mechanicae. Dead, mostly covered by rubble. Human, no mistake, but distantly so. The cheekbones were higher, the jaw more pointed, the eyes sunken like pits. Fleshy wires jutted out of its skull, seemingly at random, and attached to some electronic device at its wrists and elbows. The lights on those devices had all gone out. The creature’s mouth was agape, its upper and lower teeth connected by some steel structure like braces. The spinal support structure looked like some cruel torturer’s gimmick, black plates like a tiny Stegosaurus’s had been wedged in between vertebrae, the skin all around them having merged seamlessly with it. It looked like the mechanicae had been in agony before he (it?) died.
Lyokh watched Meiks lift one of the tinzer rifles, and give it a testing shot on the ground that made others around him jump back. Meiks looked at him, and shrugged, “Never know. Might come in handy if we run out of ammo.”
The others looked hesitant, but when Lyokh didn’t stop him, a few of them started looting the bodies of the other dead mechanicae all around them.
Lyokh actually thought this was a good idea, and said so over the command channel. The other wing commanders soon selected one or two soldiers to be their team’s weapons mule, and even put the med bots to work gathering up tinzers.
While they were doing this, Lyokh received another flash-message: Sikorskiy moving to orbital insertion. ETA twenty minutes. If all goes well, Task Force Two will send two more ships to help with occupation.
So, now they were expecting drop ships from both Ramlock and Sikorskiy. That should take a load off. If they make it here in one piece…
More gunfire from the rear. An explosion one street over. Overhead, skyrakes, Novas, and wyrms continued to chase Ascendancy ships all around.
Lyokh took a moment to look around the street. This was the first time he really had the chance to see this place. There were fluttering banners hanging from almost every window, from every highway and skyway. One of the banners was on fire. Statues of hideous demons stood at the corner of every street and cast their baleful gaze on all that they saw. Some of the signs were in English Standard, while others were of some alien alphabet, and still others were a strange hybrid of the two.
As for the corpses…those were everywhere. Here was a man holding a small girl, the bullet that tore through her brain had gone through his chest, dropping them both instantly. Over there was a mutilated woman in ornate robes, her face pale and turned up to the sky, the last embers of a question still lurking in her eyes.
And all their bodies had scars. Not recent scars. Old scars. Scarification tattoos. Lyokh had seen their like. On Timon, when the Harbingers came. He had not seen the practice of scarification since then.
He had fled Timon in part to be rid of religious zealotry. What a cruel trick that he would probably end up dying here, on a world filled with mad zealots, having come full circle.
Suddenly, someone fired. Lyokh would know who started it, or why, just that it involved a heated exchange with some of his people and the mechanicae hiding within the dust. Heeten got involved, her
warhulks hammering targets that moved like wraiths within the dust cloud. After being in so many battles, you got the sense when one was going to pop off, if it was going to last a few seconds or a few hours. This exchange had that sense of constant return fire, that need for reciprocity on both sides.
This one is going to last a while.
And he was right. It was nearly twenty minutes of sustained fire, missiles flying from each side, the warhulks pulling back as Ravager One moved in front of them to protect them. From the other streets, Lyokh could hear the other Ravagers booming. The battle was in full swing. Then, suddenly, it quieted down. It didn’t end, though.
“Uh, doyen?” came Meiks’s voice. “You need to come up here. Something’s changing.”
“What is it?”
“Not sure. Come take a look.”
Something in his voice made Lyokh uneasy. He took one more look up at the Dexannonhold, and at the sky all around it, at Rah’zen and Dor’fahn—the other two moons were occulted by Rah’zen alone. He looked at the space between stars, silently willing the Sikorskiy’s drop ships to materialize there, then headed for the front line.
ASTEROID CRYZEK WAS lost. It was evident right away that Ecclesiastes had bitten off more than she could chew. Captain Utica could see the writing on the wall. After forty years of commanding a starship through patrols, battles, and reconnaissance, one became good at seeing which way the tide was turning.
The ’screamers had done their job of taking out most of the torpedoes headed for them, but a few had gotten through and slammed into the surface of Cryzek, knocking out key installations. Ecclesiastes had tried rounding the asteroid to get a bead on the Ascendancy ships, but their enemies had so far done a good job of matching their speed and flying around Cryzek, keeping the asteroid between them and Republican forces. Meanwhile, they were free to pound Cryzek from the opposite side. The wyrm flocks were harassing them, and a few of them had plucked torpedoes out of the void and flung them back at their shooters. The wyrms had wreaked some havoc, yes, but just as many had died when the torpedoes detonated in their claws.
