The Black Flag (Crimson Worlds Successors Book 3)

by Jay Allan

  * * * * *

  “Erik, I’m glad to see you in one piece, you old dog.” Darius Cain stepped off the shuttle and walked toward Teller. There were half a dozen Eagles behind him, their heads shifting as they scanned the area for any threats.

  “I could say the same about you, my friend. Things didn’t look any too good there when I left.” There was a sour touch to the last few words. Darius knew how his friend had felt leaving the Nest as the battle was just getting started. He wouldn’t have sent him away, but he’d wanted his ground forces under Teller’s stewardship, not so much because he’d anticipated the fighting on Columbia, but in case the worst had happened. If Darius had died in the Nest, at least some of his people would have escaped, and they’d have had the leadership they needed to survive, to carry on the fight. And Teller understood that as well.

  “We managed to get through, as we always do. But I’m afraid we’ll have to wait to catch up. We’ve got to get the Eagles ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  “We’re going to Armstrong.” A pause. “It’s as much a gut call as anything, but I think the Black Flag is going to attack there…may have already.”

  “You mean another force, like the one they threw at the Nest?” Teller was rarely surprised, but Darius could tell his friend was taken aback by what he’d just heard.

  “Bigger, at least if my guess is right. I think what we faced was just a diversion, never intended to take out the Nest, only to keep us busy.”

  “But if that’s the case, they’re almost certainly already there.”

  “Yes, Erik, but you know what will happen. If Garret’s fleet can’t hold, they’ll bug out…and the Marines will dig in. They’ve got all kinds of shelters there, courtesy of my father’s paranoia forty years ago.”

  “They could hold out even against a nuclear assault.”

  “Yes, of course. The Black Flag will have to send down ground forces to dig them out…and they’ll be facing thousands of Marines with my father in command.” He paused. “We have a chance to get there in time, but we can’t wait. I have to see Jarrod Tyler, right now.”

  “He’s right here, General Cain.” Tyler moved across the landing field, propped up in a powered chair, and followed by a dozen guards, six of his own, and six armored Eagles. “Thank you, my friend. I’m not sure we’d have gotten out of that one without your help.”

  “What are friends for, Jarrod?” Darius walked toward Columbia’s president. “And you know it’s Darius to you. I hear ‘General Cain’ about two thousand times a day. No need for two thousand one.”

  Tyler forced a smile, clearly through some pain, and he nodded. “I heard most of what you said, Darius. What can I do to help? Columbia and its military are at your disposal.”

  Chapter 19

  Field Hospital 1001 – Shelter A3

  Planet Armstrong, Gamma Pavonis III

  Earthdate: 2321 AD (36 Years After the Fall)

  The room shook again, harder than the last time. The fighting was getting closer. Sarah hadn’t had time to check the monitors and confirm that, not with both hands deep in a sergeant’s chest cavity. But she’d been on enough battlefields to know without checking. She could read those rumbles in the ground like words in a book.

  The comm was down completely now, the enemy close enough to blanket the whole area with impenetrable jamming. Erik had sent two more messengers, each reporting with increasing urgency on the advance of the enemy forces. She had no doubt he’d have ordered—or asked, depending on perspective—her to pull the hospital back, but there was nowhere to go. Anybody stepping out of the shelters without full armor, even for a few minutes, would get a massive overdose of radiation. That pretty much guaranteed every one of the wounded would die, at least, even assuming she’d somehow managed to get all her medical staff suited up. Of course, that didn’t even address the civilians. There were twenty thousand of them in Shelter A3, crammed so tightly, she’d had sixty medical cases and four deaths from asphyxiation and crowd-related injuries already. Every one of them would die if she tried to move them. There simply wasn’t protective gear available, and certainly not in the quantities she’d need.

  Not that there was anywhere to go.

  She wasn’t entirely sure Erik wouldn’t have wanted to order her to leave the civilians behind, but it was a pretty good bet he knew she wouldn’t do it. That wouldn’t have stopped him from trying years before, but he’d become more realistic with age.

  She reached deeper into the pool of blood and ooze, moving her fingers around, searching, trying to find the chunk of metal the scanners told her was still there, all the while desperately attempting not to cause more damage to the Marine’s shattered chest. He had seven broken ribs already, a lacerated aorta, collapsed lungs, massive blood loss. She’d almost ordered him placed with the hopeless cases, but then she’d decided she could save him. She still wasn’t sure about that—she figured it at 50-50, not much better—and there was little question the time and resources she’d put into her attempt to pull him back could have saved three or four others. She imagined wounded Marines dying in the triage area waiting for attention…or her surgeons losing patients for lack of artificial blood and pharmaceuticals, while she poured time and precious resources into a coin toss to save one man.

  She doubted she’d have done anything differently, though, even if she’d had another chance. The idea of setting a maximum value on the effort and materiel a life was worth was anathema to her. But she could detest it all she wanted, she still knew things were coming to that. Quickly.

  At least she’d gotten the secondary ward set up, though more space didn’t give her more trained staff or doses of needed meds. At least it gave space for the medtechs to get wounded Marines prepped, hooked up to the drugs and blood that was available until one of her surgeons could get to them. As she had so many times, she shook her head in amazement at how quickly field conditions could erase centuries of technological advancements. For all she could do in a proper hospital to save even the most gravely ill and injured patients, right now she was little better than a doctor during the Unification Wars, or even farther back, to the mass struggles and barbarous medicine of the twentieth century.

  She angled her head, wiping her sweatsoaked brow on her shoulder. Then she stopped. She felt something. Her fingers tightened and pulled out a small chunk of dense metal. She looked up at the scanner. Clear. She’d gotten it all.

  She still had a ton of repair work to do, sealing the damaged arteries, reinflating the lungs. But she felt better than she had a few moments before.

  “I think you’re going to make it after all,” she said softly, allowing herself a brief smile amid the terror and death. Her 50-50 case was now a good 80-20.

  * * * * *

  “Cate, I’m going up to the front and have a look at things myself.” Erik Cain was crouched behind a small rise in the ground, peering out toward what was effectively the battle line. The combat hadn’t been a typical one, at least in one way. The enemy hadn’t been after terrain or objectives. They were here for one reason and one only. To destroy the Marines. And if that meant chasing them through the radioactive rubble or pulling them out of underground tunnels, then that, it seemed, was what they were ready to do.

  “Erik, don’t be crazy. That line’s going to fall any minute. Even if none of those Marines break—and there are a lot of green units up there—the enemy’s going to be pouring through half a dozen gaps where all our people were wiped out.”

  “No, Cate. We can’t let that happen. We’ve got to hold here. If we don’t, we’ll lose the forward shelters…our remaining food and ordnance, the wounded, the civilians.” Sarah.

  “I don’t see how we can hold, Erik. Not unless we commit the last of the reserves.” There was a doubtful tone in Gilson’s words, and Cain understood completely. If there was one maxim, one overused, but usually correct, rule of war, it was that the first one to commit his final reserves loses.

  “M
aybe we should.”

  “Erik…we have no idea how long it will be until we can expect relief, if we can at all. We have to hold out a damned sight longer than this. We’ve already gone through too many of our reserves.”

  “How do you define ‘holding out?’ What are we going to be able to do if we lose our bases? Hell, the enemy could just withdraw and blast us again from orbit, and this time we won’t have the bunkers. Because you know what will happen when they take each one. They’ll kill everybody there, and then they’ll blow the things from inside. We’ll be on the surface, in the open, without food, without medical support, without what’s left of our supplies.” Cain shook his head. “No, there’s no retreat from here. We can try to hold back the reserves as long as possible, but we can’t let these bastards get around our flanks…or through gaps in the line. If it comes to that, if we can’t stretch the lines any farther, we have to throw in the last we have.”

  Gilson stood still for a moment, silent. Then she said simply, “You’re right, Erik.”

  “You stay here, and direct things overall. I’ll go to the front. We’ve coaxed the impossible from our people before…I think I can do it one more time.”

  “There aren’t the same Marines, Erik. Not most of them, at least. They’re not the warriors we led against the Shadow Legions or back in the Third Frontier War. They’re good men and women, and loyal…but they’re not those old Marines, not save for a few here and there. Most of the Marines you remember are dead now, you know that.”

  Cain paused for a moment, looking across the room at her. Then he said, “These Marines won’t ever be the equals of their predecessors, Cate, not if we never give them the chance. If the spirit is there, anything is possible. They’ve got the equipment, the training…let’s see if they’ve got the hearts of Marines.”

  He stood up, turning to leave.

  “So, why do I stay back here, and you get to go up to the front?”

  Cain turned, smiling, though he knew she couldn’t see it through his armor. “Because I thought of it first, Cate.”

  * * * * *

  Explosions ripped through the air, mortar shells, hyper-velocity rockets, grenades. The fight was raging, all along a sixteen-kilometer front, from what had been the center of the capital city to the flattened remnants of the suburbs. The enemy had continually extended the line, feeding ever more troopers into the maelstrom, trying to work around the Marines’ flanks. But whatever they did, wherever they attacked or however many reserves they poured in, Erik Cain had been there, leading a small group of defenders, shifting the defenses, holding the line, sometimes, it seemed, by force of will alone.

  They’d even tried landing a new force behind the Marines, but Cain had thinned his lines and pieced together a reaction force, one he’d led against the new LZ, overrunning it, at a cost of sixty percent casualties.

  The fight had been brutal, exhausting, a nightmare for all engaged…but not one of the shelters had fallen to the enemy. Conditions in the tunnels and underground chambers, already almost unimaginable, had grown steadily worse as wounded Marines flooded into the field hospitals, and the dwindling food supplies approached complete depletion.

  Cain knew there would be trouble there soon, that the civilians, already mad with hunger from a week of quarter rations, would eventually turn on their protectors. Rationality only held for so long, only warded off a certain amount of suffering. Then insanity took hold. Cain and Gilson already had every able-bodied Marine in the battle lines, and security in the shelters had fallen to the walking wounded, men and women too injured to return to the fighting, but sufficiently ambulatory to wander the tunnels of the subterranean refuges, adjudicating fights over scraps of food, and doing what they could to preserve morale, their own as well as that of the civilians.

  Cain had held up everyone’s morale, the officers, the rank and file who saw him in the thick of the action, even Cate Gilson’s, worn down by the steadily increasing hopelessness of the situation. The two Marine generals had agreed they needed time, and that’s exactly what they’d scrapped and fought for. But neither knew just how long it would be before help arrived, if it ever did, and they were decidedly uncertain how much longer their worn troops could last. Supplies were dwindling, the hospitals were down to the last of the pharmaceuticals, and those that remained had been reserved for only the most serious cases. He’d heard that Sarah was scavenging antibiotics, antivirals, and pain meds from the trauma control systems of the wounded Marines’ shattered fighting suits. It had made him smile for a moment, remembering that she was just as stubborn as he was, at least in her own way. He imagined she’d saved countless lives, but now he began to doubt if any of that would matter in the end.

  “Erik…” At first, he thought the sound had come through the comm, but then he realized it was outside, pumped into his receivers by the external microphones on his armor.

  He turned and saw an armored form moving toward him, even as he recognized the voice. “Cate, what are you doing up here?” They’d been swapping shifts, one of them on the front with the Marines at all times, the other in the small dugout that passed for army HQ. Sleep had been a moment here and a moment there, combined with enough stims to nearly blow the helmet off his suit. He’d finally had to order his AI to stop reporting blood pressure and other health alerts, even as he’d demanded another injection.

  “I couldn’t get through on the comm. They amped up their blocking efforts, lots of new power. They must have brought down some portable reactors or something.”

  It would have been easier to jam from their fleet in space, but then, of course, it would catch their own forces too. This way, they could direct the effects out at the Marine line, and keep their own channels open.

  “I think they’re about to launch attacks on both flanks. I sent up a flight of drones—I know we agreed to conserve what we had left, but something didn’t feel right.”

  Cain nodded, then remembering what an ineffectual gesture that was in combat armor, he said, “You did the right thing. No point having leftover drones if we’re overrun.” A few seconds later: “So, what did you find?”

  “Well, it’s still sketchy—the jamming didn’t do anything to help the drones either—but it reconfirmed my suspicions. They’re playing our game now, thinning out the lines and building makeshift reaction forces.”

  “Maybe that’s a sign that they’ve got their full strength committed.” Cain paused. “Or maybe just that they know they can spare the manpower because we’re so thin. They could have another hundred thousand troops up there for all we know, and they’re just trying to avoid the expense of landing them.”

  “Well, I guess it doesn’t really matter, not now anyway. They’re going to hit us on both flanks at the same time, I’d bet my stars on it. And we don’t have a thing to throw in their way.”

  “Except us.” Cain turned and looked out over the line. The Marines had been digging in for two weeks now, and they’d managed to claw out a deep network of trenches. Things were actually quiet now, almost no fire from the enemy positions…and that convinced him even more that Gilson was right. “So, how about you take the right, and I’ll take the left, and we’ll scrape up whatever we can to push them back.”

  Gilson didn’t answer right away. Cain knew she’d come up to discuss the situation with him, to devise a counter. He wished his response was heavier on tactical planning and lighter on raw bravado, but you used what you had.

  “It may end up being just us out there.”

  “If that’s how it goes, so be it. But I’d wager we’ll get some of the Marines to stand with us. We’re either going to win this, hold out long enough…or we’re not. And if not, do you really want to be here to see the bitter end?”

  “No,” she replied grimly. “No, I don’t. So, go get that armored hulk over to the left, because I don’t think we have much time.”

  “Good luck, Cate.” He’d almost thrown back a humorous response, but they weren’t coming all tha
t easily to him just then. Besides, some moments called for sincerity.

  “Good luck, Erik.”

  Chapter 20

  Conference Room – Eagle Eleven

  Uninhabited System AR-311

  Midway Between Gamma Pavonis III & Eta Cassiopeiae

  Earthdate: 2321 AD (36 Years After the Fall)

  “I was finally able to glean some navigational data from the ship Eagle Fourteen captured near Atlantia. It was incomplete, but still useful. A preliminary scan of the wreckage from the battle provided additional information, perhaps less than we might have hoped for, but still of considerable value.”

  “Are you saying you can get us a line on the enemy’s home system, Tom?” Darius Cain stood and looked at the charts and figures on the large tablet in Sparks’s hand. His voice suggested doubt that the scientist’s data went that far…and it also carried a somewhat disquieting tone that hinted at just what he intended if it did. No one had ever doubted Darius would pursue any enemy with all the power and ability he possessed, but it was different this time. They had kidnapped his father, and then they had attacked his home. Now it was personal.

  “No, sir…not yet at least. I guess what I’m saying is, we’re getting closer.”

  Darius sighed softly. “That’s all well and good, Tom, but we can’t exactly send a fleet to ‘someplace closer.’ We need to know where they come from. So we can destroy them.” The words were cold, and there was iron determination behind them. “We’ve got to chop the head off the snake, and soon, or they’ll keep coming. They’ll wear us down. It’s a good bet they’re more than a match for us in terms of military resources, and they’re definitely a damned sight better organized than we are. We’re still sitting around in dozens of systems, our forces hopelessly scattered, while they come at us when and where they choose. They’ve already got close to half of Occupied Space, and if they take a few more decent-sized worlds, they’ll have the resources to outlast us no matter what we do. We’re nowhere close to being able to liberate worlds and fight them off wherever they might attack next. One thing is damned sure for certain…if we don’t find some way to wrest the initiative from them, we’re as good as done.”