by Damon Alan
“At your command, Fleet Captain,” Harmeen answered, clearly pleased that Heinrich had called him captain instead of commander.
“Emille, I’d like you to be in charge of the transfer more directly than we usually do it lately, and keep eyes on the operation. You can operate from here, but once the op starts you’ll be in direct communication with the Stennis’ bridge.”
“Should be fun,” Emille answered. “I’d like to see how my students, and now their students, are progressing.”
“Captain Kuo and I will return to the Stennis,” Heinrich advised. “Admiral, I will keep you in the loop every moment. Telemetry will be linked to your quarters.”
“You’ve done well,” the admiral told her. “I look forward to seeing you operate, and don’t worry, it will be without a word from me.”
“I’ve seen her operate. It’s impressive,” Kuo said.
Heinrich tossed him a glower to shut him up. “Let’s get to our shuttle.”
After brief goodbyes, she was once again pulling herself through the Sheffaris lock. Only this time she was going to the Stennis, not from him.
A fact she found surprisingly comforting.
Chapter 36 - Assault
26 Seppet 15332
Hamden looked out the shuttle window, trying to figure out where their target was. He didn’t have a clue, but the pilot clearly knew. Too much of the city was still blacked out for him to make out much of anything.
He looked at his pilot, and now wife, Lieutenant Brinda Torris-Hamden. “You’ll drop the unit from ten kilometers. It will take us five minutes from the jump to be in the building,” he reminded her. “At that time, swing around and hit the eleventh floor from the top. That entire floor is security, and I want it gone. There are two hundred soldiers in there, and if my team hits that wall, we’re done.”
Torris patted the yoke of her attack shuttle. “Hey, you let me fly this baby. I’ll land it in Sachelle’s cell if you want me too.”
“If we knew where that was,” he replied, “that would be cool. But we don’t. After you blow the security floor out of the far side of the building, I want you to watch the streets for Komi response. You’ll have forty-eight grapplers and G-Ks in the air around you, but there are only a dozen of these attack shuttles and you’re far better at keeping the streets clear. The others will keep the sky around you safe.”
“You’ve told me six times.”
“You’re important to me.”
“I know. We’re entering the atmosphere. Your drop is in three minutes.”
He jumped out of the copilot seat, then kissed the side of her head. “I love you.”
“Of course you do,” she said. “I’ll love you when you get back.”
“Motivation!” he yelled as he went through the hatch to the cargo area.
There were twenty-four marines waiting for him. They erupted in cheers as he joined them for the jump.
“You ever done this before, Major?”
“None of us have ever done this before, corporal. But it’s in the training manuals, so pay attention. Do as we did in simulation, and be ready for resistance,” Hamden answered, before turning to his platoon sergeant. “Coutts, get the team ready.” He looked at his watch. “We jump in two minutes.”
The shuttle finished shaking as it finally shed enough speed for the air around it to smooth out. He listened as the engines wound up and something tinked against the exterior armor. He threw a small holowindow up from his wrist comm.
Outside two atmospheric fighters ripped past the shuttle. They had Komi markings.
“Hang on,” Torris bellowed over the speakers.
The shuttle rolled over and dove. This was not part of the plan. Marines were slung violently against their harnesses. While the equipment should protect them, any injury would take that marine out of combat before it even started.
Hamden jumped on the comm. “Basepoint, Alpha Leader,” he screamed over the whine of engines and air ripping past the shuttle’s skin. “Do we have cover for the attack shuttles? We just got shot at by aircraft.”
“Six G-Ks closing on your position, hypersonic, Alpha Leader. Ten seconds.”
“Got that,” Torris interjected into his comm. “Climbing back to drop point.”
“Climbing?” Hamden shot back. “How low did you go?”
“You don’t want to know.”
He looked at his wrist display, and the G-Ks tore into view from the edge of the screen. Stars, they were closing on this position at Mach 24. The G-K symbols started flashing to represent their engagement with the enemy. He activated the air combat frequency.
“— two in the air, seven more departing the ground.”
“Air birds in flight seem to be guns only. No missiles.”
“Guns only? Idiots.”
“That departure point is an airbase. Basepoint, request nuclear release.”
“This is Basepoint. Granted. Codes transmitted secure.”
Torris interrupted him. “Thirty seconds, I’m leveling out to give you a good jump platform.”
“Roger,” Hamden said. “Dinner after?”
“Go, you fool!”
“Coutts, get these marines in position!” Hamden yelled. “Twenty seconds.”
“Nuke away,” the air combat frequency barked.
“Ten!” Hamden screamed into his squad microphone as the rear doors of the shuttle opened. “Form on me after jump.”
“Bird in flight, twenty to target,” his comm said over crackling static. Somewhere in the distance another nuke was playing with the radio frequencies. The Komi must have went nuclear first to get such an easy release from command. He wondered what the friendly losses were.
He needed to pay attention to his squad frequency anyway. “Nukes in flight, put on your flash sensing face visors. You don’t do us any good if you’re blind.”
The marines dropped their auto-darkening visors down over their face shields.
“Two! One! Go!” Hamden shouted as he stepped backwards off of the ramp.
The sudden sensation of falling was exhilarating. Wind whistled past his face mask. Tactical holograms, once they recognized and locked onto the terrain below, gave him a glide path to follow. He extended the stubby wings from his pack and dove toward the target.
A tremendous explosive sound struck him as one of the G-Ks passed by a few kilometers away, obviously unconcerned about the sound barrier. Below, in the darkness of the city, windows must be shattering everywhere. A trail of orange tracers ripped out from the G-K, lancing into something that promptly exploded. In the distance, toward the sea, the orange lances of railguns flashed in multiple locations as the Seventh Fleet engaged the enemy.
It made him feel proud to know his team could bring this sort of strength to bear. But now wasn’t the time to think about it. He had no time to follow the air combat. He had a building to reach.
About twenty kilometers away a brilliant flash lit up the ground, followed by a rapidly growing fireball that grew to a few hundred meters wide before rising from the surface. It was dark out, but the bomb illuminated the area it was in. Dust torn from the surrounding landscape by ferocious winds raced in under the fireball, and rose to form the iconic mushroom of a ground based nuclear explosion.
“There goes that airbase,” he muttered. Komi reinforcements would have to come from farther away now.
Just as he finished his thought about the enemy reinforcements, two broad lances of energy streaked through the atmosphere and slammed into the ground somewhere over the horizon. Looks like the Stennis was taking care of the more distant targets personally. Ground attack railguns were brutal. Made of pure tungsten, the extremely dense one meter diameter slugs struck their targets at about eighty kilometers per second. The resulting explosion was that of a small nuclear charge, and would leave a crater more than a hundred meters in diameter.
Back to the fight, Ton. Don’t get distracted by pretty lights. “Team, form on me. The shuttle dropped us a bit low,
we’re three to target,” Hamden called out.
No more nukes detonated before they reached the target structure.
Two hundred meters from the building, seconds away, four of the marines shot projectiles that adhered to the windows of the top floor, then blew the glass inward. The glass hadn’t stopped sliding across the floor when twenty-five marines rolled through the now open windows and slid to a stop against various furniture in what looked like a penthouse apartment.
Judging by the crap on the walls, someone important lived here. Not to mention the small shuttle pad attached to the exterior of the building offering the resident a private entrance.
In other parts of the city, similar strikes on buildings that might contain Marika Sachelle were unfolding simultaneously. Hopefully the Komi would be overwhelmed.
Hamden got up and ran to the far side of the building, just in time to see the attack shuttle Torris was flying come around a corner, guns blazing. As it rotated its fire back and forth, it blew the contents of the security floor out the side and down toward the streets just as Hamden had asked.
“Marstrick, Bayorn, you hold this floor until pickup. If the occupant shows up, take them prisoner. Everyone else, set up to rappel,” Hamden ordered.
The sound of chaingun fire from the shuttle stopped. She’d completed her task.
Within seconds the marines were dropping down the outside face of the building, past the now gutted security floor. One enemy soldier stared at him, having successfully hidden himself from attack behind one of the building’s support beams.
Hamden shot him.
As he looked through the decimated floor to the other side, he watched as Torris rolled her shuttle downward to control the streets. She must have waited to see his team rappelling before she committed so she’d know the mission was still a go.
He counted floors. On the eighteenth below the security floor, he pulled his sidearm. The pistol carried hypervelocity fléchettes designed for piercing most armored glass barriers, and many metal ones. The next floor down he pushed out from the glass, and as he was swinging out and back in he shot the exterior pane at six points.
The rest of his team was doing the same all along this level.
He crashed through the weakened glass into what was reported to be the Komi Syndicate’s main war room on Mindari. Three people were on the ground already, either killed or wounded by the glass penetrating rounds.
Two security personnel were ushering some VIPs toward the elevator stack near Hamden’s position. Other security staff had already shot one of Hamden’s people, but were in turn cut down by the marines a half second later. Two of his team put four more security staff near the elevators down as well, as others took the people being ushered as captives.
“Shaddmann, get our casualty up to the top floor, stabilize him, then rejoin the main group. Tell Bayorn how to keep him alive,” Hamden ordered.
“Sir!” Shaddmann said as she looked up from the wounded man.
Hamden turned his attention to his captives. “You will accompany me,” he said to the Komi officers, no longer under any protection. They looked at him with contempt. “Or I can kill you now. Your choice.”
“That’s barbaric!” one of them protested.
Hamden surged forward and punched the protester in the mouth. The woman fell to the ground, her face bleeding profusely. “You don’t get to lecture anyone on barbarism,” he growled at her. He reached down and grabbed her uniform, just below her collar. Gripping tight he lifted her back to her feet, then partially off the ground.
“Where is Commander Marika Sachelle?” he demanded. “You want barbarism? What you’re doing to her is barbarism. What you’re doing to the civilians of this world is barbarism.” He slung her around toward the open air a few meters behind him, pushing her back so she was unbalanced against the edge. “I will have absolutely no regrets about what I’m going to do to you next if you don’t answer me. Where is her cell?”
“I don’t know who that is,” the officer wailed. Valiant loyalty or the desperate truth, Hamden didn’t know.
“The high interest prisoner cells are seven floors down,” one of the captives said, apparently believing Hamden’s threat to harm the woman. “Maybe your friend is down there.”
The building rattled as a shockwave struck it.
“What was that?” Hamden asked as he sat the woman’s feet back on the floor and pushed her toward the other marines.
Outside the building, in the distance over the sea an angry cloud of fire roiled upward into the sky.
“By the stars, Major. A nuke. A big one, sir,” his sensor tech said. “Airburst, seven kilometers distant. Five hundred kilotons. Not one of ours, we didn’t bring anything that big.”
“That’s close,” Coutts said. “There are going to be flash burns and blind people all over this town.”
“Great,” Hamden said, irritated. “Nothing we can do about it. Let’s get this mission rolling.” He turned to his troops. “You four marines are staying on this floor until pickup. Guard the prisoners, hunt down and take more if you can, kill any resistance,” he said. He turned to the rest of his small force. “All of you, however, back outside! Seven floors down.” He pointed at the prisoner. “You better be right—”
The elevator next to Hamden’s group opened. Four men were inside, one of them immediately reached for a pistol when he saw the marines.
Hamden shot him in the head. “Out!” he yelled to the remaining occupants, gesturing with his combat rifle.
Three men filed out under threat of death. Hamden looked them over. “Cothis,” he said, reading a name tag. “You have lots of shiny things on your uniform, you must be important. Over there, join the rest of the prisoners.”
The elevator shut, taking the dead man inside to some other floor.
Once the new prisoners were secure, the main body of combatants dropped down seven more floors and reentered the building as they had above.
Inside, they rapidly searched the area, gunning down six guards in the process.
“These cells are filled with prisoners, but they’re all male, sir.” Coutts reported. “I checked the logs at the security desk, this is the only floor like this in the building, so Commander Sachelle can’t be here.”
“Not good, Sergeant,” Hamden said. “Captain Heinrich isn’t going to be happy.”
She shook her head no as she answered. “The squad is checking to see if any prisoners are Alliance, and grabbing those. Should we leave the rest?”
“No,” Hamden replied. “They’re in jail for a reason, and not for petty burglary if they’re here. Knowing why might be useful. Take them all.”
“Yes sir,” Coutts replied and rushed to her duty.
“Torris, pick us up. Target isn’t here,” Hamden radioed his wife. “Pick up at the three levels with broken. We have lots of civilians we’ll be taking with us on the lowest, and potentially some important captives on the middle, so hold the ship steady.”
“Got it,” Torris answered. “Be there in seconds.”
Hamden watched as the shuttle spun upward, past the window he was standing near. His helmet muffled the sound and that was a good thing. The engines jetted blue fire downward as they turned air to plasma.
The attack shuttle stabilized above him, with the landing ramp extended out into the building. Seconds later it descended to the floor he’d just left, picking up the marines and their prisoners. That took longer, the four marines he left must have picked up more captives.
He had his men plus eighteen prisoners on this level. It was going to be a tight ride home, not to mention full of stale air.
Finally the landing ramp settled on the floor he was on, with the shuttle hovering just outside. The engines screamed their power out to the world, and it was uncomfortable being this close. He and the other marines guided the prisoners on board.
Standing room only.
He punched the comm on the back wall by the ramp. “We’re all in, Torris. No
body is strapped in, there’s no room. Get us out of here and advise Basepoint we’re ready to extract.”
“Will do,” his wife answered.
He grinned as the ramp clanged shut behind him and the upward acceleration of the shuttle pushed him into it.
His was an exciting life.
Chapter 37 - Strange Ships
26 Seppet 15332
“Captain, there are FTL bubbles all over the system. I can’t tell who is going where,” Mors complained. “I think they’re looking for something still, they’re pounding away with the sensor sweeps.”
“Just keep tactical updated with what you have,” Kuo ordered. “After we jumped in and attacked the surface, they’re probably looking to see if we’re still around.
“Yes sir,” Mors answered, looking overwhelmed.
“They shouldn’t even know that we’re still in the Mindari system, let alone our precise location,” Heinrich said. “I don’t know what they’re looking for, but I doubt it’s us. They know we can move out of their reach at will. Any sign they’re searching as far out as we’re sitting, Mister Mors?”
“No sir, it’s all in system,” Mors answered.
“In system or not, I recommend we go to battlestations, condition two,” Kuo replied. “I’ve learned to hate random luck.”
Heinrich looked at the strategic display on the Stennis’ massive viewscreen.
“Agreed.” She punched her fleet comm. “Battlestations, remove condition three, set condition two throughout the fleet. Sheffaris, be prepared to retreat to safety.”
“Stennis, Sheffaris. We understand.” A moment’s pause, then Seto continued. “Admiral Dayson wishes to speak to you.”
“Put her on.”
