The Black Flag (Crimson Worlds Successors Book 3)

by Jay Allan

  “General, I’ve got Commodore Allegre on the comm.”

  “Put him through.”

  “General, I think the enemy is attempting to break off.”

  Darius’s eyes flashed to the main display. Allegre was right! It wasn’t obvious at first glance. Many of the ships had intrinsic velocities that were still bringing them closer to the Eagle vessels. But the energy outputs, the thrust readings, they all told the same story. Every enemy ship was blasting its engines, some at full, others at the most they could coax from damaged engines and crippled reactors.

  Whatever the degree of thrust, the headings were all the same. Directly back toward the warp gate.

  “It appears you are correct, Commodore. Your people are to be commended. Suitable words fail me, but I will try to remedy that at a later time.”

  “I am about to order a pursuit, General. We can stop some of them from getting away, no question about that.”

  Darius was nodding gently to himself, about to confirm Allegre’s intentions. But there was something there, a thought, disturbing but persistent. He hesitated, so much so that he could feel the eyes of his control center crew, utterly used to his snap decisions and bold orders. But he was deep in thought now, and the conclusion forming in his mind was unsettling.

  “Negative, Commodore.” The words came out of his mouth, even as he was still considering the situation.

  “Sir? We can take out more of their ships, almost certainly.”

  “No, Commodore. We can’t risk further losses, not now. If we press them, they may turn and fight to the end.”

  “Then we will destroy them.” Allegre seemed shocked, as though it had never occurred to him Darius Cain would refuse to pursue the defeated enemy.

  “And we will lose more. No, Commodore. You have your orders. Reform the fleet and see to damage control operations.” His tone virtually eliminated the possibility of further discussion. No one challenged Darius Cain when his words sounded like that.

  “Yes, sir. As you command.”

  “Cain out.” He cut the line. He understood Allegre’s concerns. Pursuit was the right option, save for one problem…

  “Why, Darius? We’ll just have to fight them again, and they’ll be repaired and rearmed.” Elias’s voice cut through the heavy silence in the Nest’s command center. Darius’s brother was the only one there who dared to question the mercenary. The others had seen his fearsome fury, and they dared not risk unleashing it. They didn’t know, as he did, and perhaps Elias did as well, how much of that fury was staged, planned for its effect, and Darius didn’t want them to know.

  “You’re right, of course,” Darius replied, his voice calm, the storm his officers feared nowhere to be seen. “By normal tactical considerations, we should have pursued them right up to the gate, even through it, perhaps.”

  “Then why break off?”

  “Because these aren’t normal situations…and this wasn’t a normal attack.”

  Elias looked back, a confused expression on his face. “Then what was it?”

  “A diversion.”

  Elias was dumbstruck. “A diversion?” He looked around at the blackened sections of circuitry in the control center, the chunks of plasti-steel that had fallen from the structural supports. “Darius, we barely got through the fight, perhaps we wouldn’t have at all if Eagle Fourteen hadn’t gotten to the enemy flagship.”

  “Yes, that’s what we’re supposed to think, Elias. It was a well-planned scheme, certainly. They knew we’d never believe they’d hit us with all they had, not unless we were hard-pressed.” He paused. “But look at these damage reports. We got hurt, no question, but it wasn’t as close as it looked. Eagle Nine and Eagle Six were destroyed, but the other fourteen battleships are still operational, at least to some degree. I’ve been running some scenarios in my head. We’d have won without Eagle Fourteen’s attack. Almost every possible outcome I can conceive is a victory, the only variables being the damage we sustain.”

  Elias just stared back. It was one thing to understand his brother’s gift for war on a general level, and quite another to see it in action. But he didn’t doubt what Darius had said, not for an instant.

  Darius looked back at his brother. “It takes a certain kind of mind to commit so many ships and combatants to a battle you expect to lose…know you will lose.”

  “You’re assuming they did know. Even if…I’m sure your calculations are correct, but that doesn’t mean they knew that. Perhaps they thought they could win.”

  Darius shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. That’s a dangerous road, underestimating an enemy. This is an adversary that lurked in the shadows for more than thirty years, that extended its tentacles throughout Occupied Space all through that time without ever being discovered. Not by us, not by the Marines…by no one. In that time, they clearly built an awesome industrial powerbase, one with a technology at least on pars with ours—and by ours, I mean the Eagles—and probably a cut above. They’ve seized control of Atlantia, of almost four hundred worlds now, all without firing more than a random shot or two.” He paused. “We can’t underestimate these people again, Elias. To date, they have exhibited far more capability than we have.”

  “So, why would they launch a diversion? If they have more forces, why not just send them here and finish us off.”

  Darius stared back coldly. “Because they needed it to be somewhere else. Because if this was the diversion, the real attack force is somewhere else.”

  “But where?” Elias had asked the question, but a second later the two of them were staring at each other, and it was clear neither one of them had the slightest doubt about the answer.”

  “Armstrong,” Darius said after a few seconds of silence. “They’re at Armstrong.”

  Chapter 17

  Ruins Near Marine Headquarters

  Planet Armstrong, Gamma Pavonis III

  Earthdate: 2321 AD (36 Years After the Fall)

  “Keep moving…grab whatever cover you can, and set up those autocannons. They’re coming this way.” Richard Dern leaned down, crouching behind the pile of Earth and re-solidified rock, all that remained of whatever had once stood in front of his position. The mess hall? He tried to get a feel for exactly where he stood, but in the incinerated nightmare of the battlefield, it was impossible to be sure. Even hills and ridgelines had been moved and reshaped by the cataclysmic fury of the thermonuclear barrage. He was pretty sure he was somewhere in what had been the main Marine compound, but that was as close as he could get.

  “Where do you want these, Captain?” The voice was thin, the speaker’s anxiety clear in every word.

  “Right here.” He extended his arm, pointing toward the meter high lip of cover he’d spotted. “It’ll give you some protection if you lay low enough, and you should have a good field of fire if the enemy advances up this way.” Which they’re going to do, almost certainly…

  Dern had been a Marine for twelve years now…well, a cadet for four and on active duty for eight. He’d come from a small colony world, one on the outskirts of Occupied Space. One that had been hit hard by the First Imperium forces during the Second Incursion. Dern had lost his parents in that war, and a lot of others close to him too. He’d have been dead himself, along with his sister and what remained of his family, had it not been for the Marines.

  They had come, landed, and immediately threw themselves against the great killer robots, fighting with a passion like nothing the young farmer had ever seen. He’d wanted to follow them then and there when they left, go back to the legendary Academy and become one of them. He was smart enough, and fit enough, he’d figured, and for a farm boy, he’d gotten a damned good education too. But he’d had to wait. His sister needed him, and he’d remained behind until she’d come of age and gone to school offworld. Then he sold the farm and booked a passage to Armstrong.

  He’d thought he was in good shape, but the drill instructors almost ran him into an early grave. When they were finished, he was str
onger and faster than he’d ever been, and he felt something new, a pride that hadn’t been there before. And that education he’d gotten years before paid off. He’d passed the Academy entrance exams with flying colors and qualified for officer training. It would delay his entry into the Corps by four years, but when he first suited up for active duty, he would do it as a lieutenant, and a platoon leader. That’s what he had been for most of the last eight years, at least until the massive mobilization bumped him up to captain and company commander.

  He’d have given his left eye for his old platoon right about now. His entire company had been formed from current trainees, men and women who’d barely completed basic training when the invasion force arrived. They were good, of course. The Corps didn’t accept anything but the best, but they weren’t ready, not for the hell that had erupted all around them. Not that there wasn’t much choice.

  “Battalion HQ, this is Captain Dern. I’ve got my company deployed along a rough stretch of light cover, maybe six hundred meters south-southwest of the old admin hall. Transmitting the coordinates now. Request further instructions.”

  “Copy, Captain. Your people are to stay put. You’ve got a column of Black Flag coming your way. ETA less than seven minutes.”

  “Understood, Battalion. Dern out.” He looked down at the screen projected inside his visor. His AI, which had been listening to the conversation of course, had displayed an area map, with icons representing the enemy formations. It didn’t take more than a second or two for him to realize his people were facing three times their number…maybe four.

  He moved down the ragged line his people had formed, trying to remember to crouch as he did. It would be a fine display for an officer to remind his Marines to stay low…and then to get his own head blown off. “Extend these lines, Marines. What did they teach you in basic training? You trying to make it easier for these sons of bitches to kill you all?”

  It was basic tactics in modern war, but it was more than that. Code Orange protocols were still in effect, and that meant nuclear warheads could come screaming down any second. And even a fully armored Marine didn’t want to get too close to one of those.

  Companies were about the biggest operational formations General Cain had sent out, and he only did that when he was sure platoons couldn’t do the job. It meant being outnumbered in almost every engagement—a virtual inevitability anyway considering enemy strength—but it also eliminated the chance of losing whole battalions and regiments at one time. The enemy had total control of orbit and the space around Armstrong, and they’d shown no compunction about launching additional nuclear strikes anywhere a worthwhile target showed itself, even if doing so meant taking out a few of their own people. It was simple math to them, and it seemed pretty clear they valued killing a Marine far more than preserving one of their own.

  Dern could see the approaching forces now. Normally, his armor would be linked into the battlefield net, and he’d be pulling data from every drone and scanner in the army. But with the enemy having total local space superiority, and the utter devastation from the nuclear strikes, the defending forces didn’t have much in the way of information sources. And the scanners in Dern’s suit, and those of his Marines, didn’t have much range, not burning through the heavy jamming the enemy was laying down.

  “Here they come,” he said into the comm, trying to sound as cool as he could, which he suspected wasn’t all that cool. He gripped his own rifle, and leaned forward, pressing his form against the newly-hardened lip of rock. “Autocannons…open fire.”

  The heavy weapons started shooting immediately, and he could see shadowy figures in the distance, a few of them dropping as the rest pressed on. The Black Flag soldiers had powered armor every bit as good as the Marines’, which snatched away an advantage Dern had hoped his people might have.

  The Black Flag soldiers—we really need to come up with something to call them—were well trained enough, but they were no match for the Marines in terms of drill and maneuver. His company had fought half a dozen skirmishes, and he’d guess they’d taken down four or five for every one of their own they’d lost…and he’d heard of loss ratios of ten to one or higher for some of the veteran formations. But his company had still withdrawn from each engagement, as had the more experienced units, falling back from one position to the next, a bit weaker each time. There was no reason to hold anywhere, nothing left to defend, at least until the enemy drove them back to the shelters. General Cain had been clear. Short of those access points, there was nothing left on Armstrong worth losing a single Marine to defend.

  Now, Dern had lost nearly a quarter of his strength, even giving up ground as he had, and for all the casualties the Marines had inflicted on the invaders, the Black Flag seemed to have no shortage of soldiers to feed into the maelstrom.

  “Swing those fields of fire around,” he shouted into the comm, his eyes darting to the edge of his visor display. The enemy had doubled up on the right, a dense column pushing forward. He needed more fire there, and his puppy Marines hadn’t reacted quickly enough on their own.

  “Yes, sir.” He could hear the terror in the recruit’s voice, and he knew his people were close to their limit. He wondered if the utter hopelessness all around them, the endless plateau of blasted, radioactive nothingness, actually made it easier to keep them in the line. Where were they going to go? The shelter was ten klicks behind them, and there wasn’t so much as a building standing between here and there. There truly was no place to run.

  He aimed his assault rifle, watching the enemy forces approaching on the targeting projection inside his visor. “Company C, open fire,” he said, as he pressed his own trigger, feeling the slight vibration through his armor as the rifle opened up. He knew the recoil would have knocked him on his ass, and probably dislocated his shoulder, had he fired it unarmored.

  The tiny hypervelocity rounds ripped out over the gloomy terrain, and he could see the enemy line pause as it was hit by the incoming blasts of fire. Perhaps a dozen more enemy troops dropped, but then the others went prone and opened up with their own weapons. The Black Flag’s small arms were at least the equals of the Marines’, and Dern ducked low, sucking in a deep breath as a burst of fire ripped by, perhaps ten centimeters above his head. A quick glance at his display told him four of his people had been a half second slower than he had, with disastrous consequences.

  “Winger, pull your platoon back and move to the right. Hoover, stretch your people out, cover the whole frontage.”

  Winger answered, but Hoover didn’t. Another look at the display showed the platoon leader’s monitors flat. That didn’t mean he was dead, not necessarily. It could just be a sensor failure. But he didn’t answer the comm either, so it didn’t look good.

  “The lieutenant’s down, sir.” It was Sergeant Stein. A veteran…thankfully. “I think he’s dead, but I’m not sure.”

  “Well you make damned sure before we leave him there. And then get that platoon moving. Winger’s group is heading south, and I need you to cover the extra frontage.”

  “Captain, we’re already pretty strung out…”

  “So, you’re going to be more strung out. Unless you think we should just let the enemy march through our center and hit both wings from the inside.”

  “No, sir…I mean, yes, sir. I’ll see it done.”

  “I know you will, Sergeant. Dern out.”

  He’d been firing the whole time, carefully aimed three shot bursts. But the enemy was getting closer, using the same kind of melted and re-hardened ridges of stone to screen their advance. They were taking losses, but not enough. Dern’s people could have held against even numbers, or against two to one, even three to one odds…but he had six or eight times his number bearing down—more even than he’d expected—and he was just about to call HQ and report his forces were about to be overrun when his comm crackled to life.

  “Captain Dern, I need you to pull your men back. We’re retreating to the industrial sector on the edge of town.�
�� Colonel Fairchild paused. “What used to be the industrial sector,” he added, grimly.

  “Sir, we’re hard-pressed here. I’m not sure…”

  “Orders are direct from General Cain, Captain. The lines are collapsing north and south of your position. If you don’t get out now, none of your people ever will.”

  “Understood, sir.” Shit. He turned and looked behind him. What had once been part of the Academy grounds and a large shopping district beyond was nothing but dead flat, open ground. Bugging out was going to be a bitch. And it was going to cost.

  He flipped the comm channel back to his company’s line. “Winger, cancel that last order. We’re pulling out. Drop back two hundred meters and grab the best ground you can. Set up a line to provide covering fire while the rest of the company retreats.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Dern could see Winger’s people on his display, already moving. With any luck, they’d make it back without too many losses. They had the rest of the company covering them. It was going to be a damned sight different when the other two platoons dropped from their cover and took off. But there wasn’t a choice. Dern had never served with Erik Cain before, but from all he’d heard about the famous general, if he’d called a retreat that probably mean the shit was really going to hit it.

  * * * * *

  “This one’s hopeless. Give him 20cc of Methatolin, and set him down somewhere quiet.” Sarah Cain stood in the dim light of the makeshift hospital, awash in blood rituals. The casualties were coming in faster than her people could even perform triage. It sickened her to give up on a patient, even one she knew she couldn’t save, but decades as a battlefield surgeon had driven home the realization that four or five others might die while she wasted her time on one lost cause.”