by Jay Allan
The suit’s internal harnesses did everything possible to secure a Marine, and his various appendages and parts, to prevent the wearer from sliding all around, but the ready room after a unit returned from duty was always a display of multi-colored bruises, contusions of all sorts.
But the torment of endless stretches in combat conditions increased exponentially with time, especially in a situation like the current one, where the radiation in the battlezone was beyond lethal levels, denying the Marines even a quick moment to pop a helmet, get a gasp of air that hadn’t been recycled five thousand times.
It had been over a week since Cain had been inside. The suit did everything it could to keep the atmosphere as clean as possible, but after more than seven days, there was no mistaking the smell of putrid Cain. He tried to stretch, a near impossibility in armor for anyone but a fighter as experienced as he was. And still, as thoughts of discomfort, and sadness for Sarah and his family drifted through his head, he watched the enemy position, seeing no sign they were preparing to attack.
He stepped down, into the half plastic, half rock and mud ‘room’ he and Gilson shared as an office and command post. “I don’t understand. This is not their way. Why worry so much about rattling us when they’ve got us dead to rights?”
“I wish I knew, Erik.” Gilson and Cain had been rivals of a sort, once. Cain had actually come up under her command, but he’d quickly caught up, and the two had surged forward together, the next generation of the Corps’ leadership. That had been a long time ago, and the two had gotten past whatever competitive issues they’d once had. The Corps was big enough for two beloved commanders, at least two who tended to agree as often as they did.
Almost as if in answer, both of their comms crackled to life. “General Cain, General Gilson, we’re picking up signals from out in the system.”
“Signals?” Cain beat his co-commander to the punch, probably by half a second.
“Yes, sir. Comm signals, even some energy readings.” The Marines were stuck to their last few receivers, small and close to the ground. That eliminated most readings beyond orbit.
If we’re picking up energy…it’s not very far out there. More enemy ships coming in? Or…”
“It sounds like there is a battle going on up there, sir. The jamming’s preventing us from getting any clear transmissions, but it sure sounds like somebody’s fighting.”
A battle? Cain tried to hold himself back, to tread softly on allowing hope to creep into his thoughts. Was it possible? Had one of their allies arrived? Enough, even, to defeat the Black Flag fleet?
* * * * *
“Core force, continue forward. Flanking detachments, hold those ships back. Whatever it takes.” Darius Cain sat on the bridge of Eagle Eleven. He’d reluctantly transferred from his usual Eagle One because of the old flagship’s heavy damage. Eagle One was still in the line, still ready to fight, but Darius needed a ship that could keep him plugged into the action, one that could take the most damage and keep going. Right now, that was Eagle Eleven.
He’d always considered himself more of a ground tactician than an expert at naval combat, but he knew his way around in a space battle. Well enough to realize what a chance he was taking. The enemy fleet was big, considerably larger than the one that had attacked the Nest…but this time, the Eagles weren’t alone.
Darius Cain’s fleet had encountered a large force en route to Armstrong, one that had taken a few tense moments to identify. But when the scans were complete, and the messages exchanged, it was clear his people had encountered Admiral Garret and the battered remains of the fleet that had defended—or tried to defend—Armstrong.
Garret’s first words had answered the question that had been plaguing Darius the most. He’d left behind an Armstrong full of live Marines, dug in and ready to fight off any attack. Darius knew his father well enough to understand what that truly meant.
It had taken a very brief discussion between the two fleet commanders to reach agreement on a course of action. The combined force would return and engage the enemy…and relieve Armstrong. It wouldn’t be easy—Garret had extensive details on the enemy forces, and no matter how Darius tried to look at it, success seemed…difficult, at best, and an outright longshot at worst. But none of that mattered. Not now. He’d just rescued his father, and whatever it took, he wasn’t going to lose him again.
Garret had been only too ready to agree. Darius suspected it had taken all the old admiral had to pull his fleet back from Armstrong, to save the irreplaceable ships and abandon the Marines, and he could almost feel the relief pouring over the comm line when the decision was made to go back. Darius didn’t know Garret all that well, but he was extremely familiar with the great admiral’s campaigns. It didn’t take much to realize Garret didn’t like running, and damned sure not when doing so left allies behind, at the mercy of the enemy.
Darius’s study had told him one other thing…whatever Augustus Garret had to do to gain the victory, he did. Whatever the cost. He’d read about Garret’s actions at the end of the First Imperium War, how he’d trapped half his fleet—with his best friend in command—to close off the warp gate leading to enemy territory. There had been no choice, Darius knew that well enough, and he had no doubt he would have done the same, but it made him respect the admiral, more even than he might have anyway.
The plan hadn’t come to him until later, and when he’d first suggested it to Garret, he’d gotten every bit of resistance he’d expected. But he’d argued his point, explained his rationale, and finally, sounding as though he’d tasted something bad, Garret agreed. The Marine fleet, all the ships under his command, the larger of the two forces, if not the most modern, or necessarily the stronger, would stay back. The Eagles would transit into Armstrong’s system and attack the Black Flag forces, as though they’d responded to a distress signal and blundered in, unaware of the vast size of the besieging fleet.
Darius wanted the enemy thinking they had his people, that they could crush his fleet by sheer force of numbers. Darius knew Black Eagles were more than numbers, and he was sure his people could put up one hell of a fight, if he concentrated his forces, and tried to defeat the enemy units piecemeal. But that was exactly what they weren’t going to do.
Darius’s two wings would take on the main enemy forces, outnumbered ten to one or more in some spots, while his center pressed on directly for the planet. The Marines had to be desperate by now. He knew enough about ground combat to understand they’d be low on ammo, and probably food too…the enemy using its superior numbers to hem them in, collapse their flanks. Darius knew how good his father was, the kind of fight Erik Cain would give the enemy. But he also knew General Cain and his Marines would go down this time, unless help got there in time. And Darius’s center was escorting his assault transports, and the entire Black Eagles strike force. If the Black Flag wanted a ground battle, he would give them one…one they would never forget. Regardless of what it took to get his people there.
The plan called for Garret to wait…to wait far longer, he suspected, than the legendary admiral would find easy to do. Then, if Darius’s plan worked, his ships would come streaming through just as the Black Flag forces were converging to finish the Eagles. All hell would break lose, and the battle would turn into a wild melee, groups of ships scattered all over the system…and, finally, Commodore Allegre leading the center Eagles force back from the planet, with any luck, enough to turn the tide and secure the victory.
It was risky, some might say reckless, but it was the only way that offered any reasonable chance at all of saving the Marines.
Darius’s eyes were fixed on the screens, watching as the two groups, each of four battleships, plus every smaller support vessel the Eagles’ fleet had been able to put into space, struggled to engage the massive forces pushing down on them. Space combat wasn’t two dimensional like ground warfare, and ‘holding back’ an enemy was more of a general term than a literal one. There was nothing a ship could do to prevent a
nother from zipping right by, but there were practical ways to attempt to defend areas of space like an army holding ground. For example, a battleship could position itself so it’s weapons came to bear on the enemy vessel as it exposed its rear to fire.
The Eagle ships on the wings were executing almost perfectly, but they were too outnumbered to hold. Each of them was quickly surrounded by three or four times their number, and still more enemy ships streamed through the gaps, pursuing Darius’s rapidly moving attack force.
Darius knew the enemy could never catch his ships, not at their current velocity. But his vessels couldn’t continue to move so quickly, not if they intended to land ground forces on Armstrong. Even at maximum deceleration, he’d have to start soon, and then the enemy forces would have to make a choice. Maintain their own acceleration, zipping by Darius’s ships, and Armstrong…or decelerating along with the Eagles. Either way, Darius was betting he’d get his people on the ground, just. His ships were tough enough to endure a single attack run if the enemy maintained its acceleration, and if the enemy did decelerate, it would take them more time to close. It wouldn’t be enough for any other military force in Occupied Space to execute a full combat landing, but his Black Eagles could make it work. Barely.
Darius stood up slowly. It wasn’t easy to stand with Eagle Eleven’s engines blasting as they were. He turned toward Teller’s station. “You’ve got the fleet, Erik,” he said calmly.
Teller looked horrified. “Darius, you can’t…”
“That’s my father down there, Erik. And my mother, too.” He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t have to.
He walked across the bridge toward the bank of elevators. No instructions, no last minute directions on how to approach the planet or how to deal with the enemy. Darius Cain trusted very few people to any degree at all, and only the sheerest few with his life and the lives of his Eagles. Erik Teller was at the top of that miniscule list.
Darius’s mind was already in the bay. On his armor, the landing…and what he would find on the surface.
On his parents, and on the desperate race to save them and the rest of the Marines.
Chapter 23
LZ “Aerie”
Planet Armstrong, Gamma Pavonis III
Earthdate: 2321 AD (36 Years After the Fall)
Darius stood in the center of the landing zone, watching his Eagles stream out of the sleek landing craft that had brought them down to the very edge of the battle. Most landings were conducted away from the main area of fighting, giving an invading force time to emerge from their ships and form up before they could be engaged. It was a virtual rule of war…an attack force didn’t land in the teeth of direct enemy fire.
It was a rule Darius Cain had just broken. He’d brought his people down right into the teeth of enemy resistance, almost directly on top of their main battle line. He suspected most people would call the operation ‘crazy,’ but like all his other insanities, it had a grounding of solid logic behind it. First, it gave him the advantage of surprise. If he’d assessed one thing in his encounters with the Black Flag so far, it was a decided lack of military creativity. They were a force that operated in most ways, ‘by the book.’ It almost seemed as though someone with millions of soldiers and no understanding of war had relied on a manual to plan out a campaign. They followed the book well, and that tended to make them competent and capable, but to an adversary like Darius Cain, it also made them predictable.
The Eagle landers were heavily armed and armored, and they laid down a heavy bombardment on the enemy position as they came in, enough, at least, to disrupt most of the return fire. Darius had lost four landers on the way down, and every one of those hurt, but in terms of overall losses, it had gone better than he’d dared to hope.
Now his soldiers were coming out of their ships, armed and ready. The lead elements were going into battle within minutes, if not seconds. Darius knew his landers would continue to take damage from the fire raging all around the LZ, but again, it was a risk he’d considered and accepted. The Eagles already on the ground would be on the enemy positions before the still-arriving ships took too much damage. His warriors had won their reputations through audacious behavior, by engaging in tactics others shied away from, and he wasn’t about to stop now.
He moved toward the front, followed, as always, by the detachment of the Eagles’ most experienced veterans, the guard Erik Teller had formed to keep an eye on their sometimes too aggressive general. The Eagles’ commander had resisted, to a point, but Teller had insisted, to the point of threatening to resign if Darius didn’t accept at least some kind of bodyguard. Darius had been pretty sure his second in command was bluffing, but he wasn’t about to risk the only other officer he really trusted to stand in his place, not to mention his best friend, so he’d reluctantly agreed…after negotiating down the size of the detachment.
It was no mystery why Teller had been so determined to do what he could to protect his friend. Darius often drifted toward the front, for a variety of reasons, including the fact he simply did not like being the kind of general who led from behind. Some of his reasons might have lacked compelling military justification for risking the life of the commander-in-chief, but now it was different. He had people to find, to save…assuming they were even still alive. His father, in particular, who from all Darius had been told over the years, was no less likely to be in the thick of the fighting than his son. If his parents were still out there, holding out, he was going to find them and make damned sure they stayed that way. And whether he was in time to save his parents or not, the Marines were his allies, and he had to come to their aid before they were overwhelmed and destroyed.
He swung his head back and forth, watching his Eagles snap into formation and advance, under scattered fire the entire time. The enemy had been surprised by his aggressive landing, and they’d only managed to respond in a disordered and haphazard manner, as he’d anticipated. If the enemy had been ready, if they’d responded and hit his lead elements with everything they had, his gamble could have ended in disaster. But for all the strengths of the Black Flag, tactical creativity wasn’t one of them.
He looked back and forth as he moved forward. He was surrounded by the troopers of the Black Regiment. The Blacks had been his first unit, though they’d been a company then, and only later a battalion, and they’d given the ‘black’ to Black Eagles, when his army’s name became more commonly known. When the Eagles expanded, the Blacks remained the senior formation, though Darius had to admit, Cyn Kuragina’s White Regiment had become damned near as good if not their outright equals.
Darius had always believed in having an elite reserve. He’d studied every similar force, from the Spartiates of ancient Greece to Napoleon’s Old Guard, and he was convinced of the utility of having an intensely reliable, last ditch force to throw into the battle…though until the Black Flag came along, his people had rarely been challenged enough to put the theory to the test. Now, however, he was going against that maxim, at least in that he was throwing his senior troops in first. Time was of the essence. Any chance to save the Marines—to save his parents—relied on cutting through the enemy formation and throwing their entire army into hopeless disorder as quickly as possible.
The fire was increasing in intensity as he moved forward, and he could see his people were taking casualties. He knew the forward services units had just landed, under fire just as the combat forces, and that even now, they’d be setting up the field hospital and aid stations. Darius understood how to generate loyalty from his soldiers, and ensuring they knew they’d be cared for no matter what, whether it was regular rations or medical care when they were wounded, was a big part of that. He’d long considered his thoughts on the matter to be purely mercenary, intended to manipulate his soldiers, to get the best service he could from them. But now, as he watched the first of them fall, he knew it was far more than that. His devotion to the Eagles was as genuine as their loyalty to him. He’d first truly realized that when almos
t all of them had elected to stay with him to fight the Black Flag, despite the lack of tangible rewards, and the likelihood the fight would be a difficult and brutal one.
It was one thing to retain and attract people when the rewards were great. He’d had a hundred applications for every available slot in the Eagles over the years, probably more. Service with his private army had been a virtual guarantee of wealth, and the superiority of his soldiers had kept casualty rates relatively low. But there were no rewards to be had now, at least not tangible ones. All this war—which was already being called Black vs. Black, despite the fact that the Eagles were only one component of the coalition—was likely to offer was death and suffering. Darius had been attracted to the mercenary trade expressly because the relationship between fighter and paymaster was so clearly defined, so unencumbered by emotional baggage and the kind of manufactured patriotism governments used to control their citizens. He didn’t think much of people in general, and his powerful cynicism made it difficult for him to form emotional bonds. But, now he realized his connection with the Eagles ran deep.
“Activate comm…try to contact any Marine forces.” He snapped out the order to his AI. He didn’t think it was likely he could get through the jamming, not with just his suit’s power, but it was worth a try.
“Negative, General. Interference is too great.”
“Keep trying.” The landing forces still coming in had heavy auxiliary power units. If he hadn’t hooked up with the Marines by the time they were set up, there was a good chance they could power a message through. The Marines might not be able to get a response back, but at least he’d be able to direct them to link up with his forces.
