by Kali Altsoba
“What, an army that fucks?”
“Well, come on! We have one of those!” Scattered cheers, some laughs.
“OK, but we’re real small, like you say.”
“Speak for yourself, sergeant, when it comes to having a small package! Yeah, I heard about you!” More laughter. “But I also hear that every man wearing a Wreckers’ combat-suit and standing in this cave has a huge package!” Loud laughter. “And at least half the women too!”
A roar of coarse approval and confirmation. And a big grin from the sergeant as two women standing nearby point to him and make ‘very little’ signs with thumbs and index fingers.
“Seriously, everyone. You need to know what you did here. This fight to hold open the Minotaur caverns provided cover for 26 NCU transports to get away, full of our determined comrades, 200,000 brave Calmari soldiers who fought on Portus Cale before it fell, then flew here past the DRN patrols. We could only get them out of the system two or three at a time, with NCU and Wildfire making escort to the nearest LP. Some of those brave men and women were badly wounded, but most will now get help and will live thanks to what all of you did here.”
“Hear, hear! Vive l’Armée de Union Calmari!” The shout rises from somewhere near the back of the crowd of Wreckers, eliciting murmurs of warm agreement across the cavern floor.
“Indeed, vive! Many tens of thousands made it out of this system. They're refitting on an ACU base, making ready to fight again. Or already transferred into another fight in yet another violated system. ‘Cause there’s combat underway now on three dozen free systems in Orion.”
“We shall make peace no more, forever!”
General Amiya Constance’s promise, which has become the Wreckers’ battle cry. Again, the shout came from the back. It sounds to Jan suspiciously like Zofia’s voice, but just a little too deep. He doesn’t know she yelled it into her helmet, which she’s holding over her mouth.
ACU liaison has heard the Wrecker war cry before, in the lava caves and on the surface. It’s starting to become famous. It gives him chills to hear it. And he’s not a sentimental man.
“Some of our ACU comrades-in-arms who could not, or would not, leave are sheltered here with us today. They have eaten with us, fought with us, died with us.” Jan nods toward a contingent of 300 tired-looking fighters, ‘trailing pikes’ in pale-blue weaves. All are streaked with smears of black regolith. They’re standing in a group to one side, remnant of a whole ACU brigade from a month ago. Murmurs of respect and approval echo though oakish ranks.
“They’ve also slept with more than a few of you. Except for you, sergeant! It’s that small package thing again. Maybe you should see a medic? What do you think, girls?”
“Medic! Medic!” More laughter, a relief and release of pent-up tension. Stupid, sheepish grins on even more faces than Jan thought he’d win with a cheap, coarse crack. He turns serious.
“Many others wearing Blue bled and died with us here on Minotaur, as we and they shall do again on other worlds, as Krevans and Calmari are already doing elsewhere. We shall fight and we will bleed alongside Blue comrades-in-arms on many, many battlefields to come. This new Alliance will make peace no more, forever. We shall fight side-by-side and we shall win, side-by-side and arm-in-arm. We, the soldiers of the Grand Alliance. We shall not quit. We shall not surrender. We shall make no peace until all the free worlds of Orion are free once more.”
‘Maybe this can work. These rough Krevans are good folk and better fighters. They saved a lot of our people on this wormy rock, came without hesitating as soon as we asked for help.’
He intends to pass his approval of Colonel Wysocki up the chain of ACU and Alliance command, as far as MoD on Caspia. He doesn’t know that Jan also has a high opinion of him, even if he thinks Kornilov smells faintly of sour cabbage and sausages. Well, he actually does.
The cavern floor shakes with far-off vibrations almost on cue, for Jan’s not done. “Now it’s our turn. The bombardment is forcing our last ships out of hiding even in the smaller tubes. General Proust has ordered every ship we have with quantum-drive to make convoy rendezvous in Swiftburn’s Cavern, that’s the real big one right below the surface, last on the way out. Most ships will get there via the bigger tubes. Any that can’t we gotta blow and leave behind. We’ll booby-trap some, leave them looking like we skedaddled too fast to finish the demolition job.”
“Madjenik engineers only,” Zofia calls out. “Move now to the cut-off ships. Make ‘em ready to greet the Daurans. Sergeant Gomez, you turn them into piñatas, you hear? Only make them blow inside-to-out. And make ‘em dirty. Lots of poison on the frags. Then get back here.”
Jan nods agreement and resumes the brief. “We move off-moon over the next two hours, then we’ll haul for the Minotaur L4. I gotta tell you, that’s right between us and Portus Cale.”
He notes nervous looks exchanged among his fighters at the thought of running toward a Dauran-occupied planet, to a heavily defended bohr-zone. He shoots a swift glance over at Zofia. She’s stone-faced, as she always is when he looks at her in front of Madjenik Battalion and the other Wreckers. Quite a contrast to the jokes she flings only to him over the command-link even while in the middle of a firefight. ‘They have no idea what a cut-up their major really is.’
“We’ve got no choice. It’ll be a fast-and-short run in, followed by a hot-jump out. That’s what Captain Aklyan told me. Wreckers out there will tell you that she’s done it before.” There are hundreds of knowing nods and assurances to the Blues. And thoughts of churning stomachs.
“So just buckle in your belts, new or rusty, when we get to the troopships. Sit tight and hold on. You’ll be back at Orestes Base before you know it.” He pauses. “Most of you.”
They all look up, rivet on his face. Expectant. Fearful. Not a word is whispered in the cave as they wait for what most knew would be coming in some form or other, given they still hear the boom! boom! of heavy mortars and DRN ice-sabot slamming into the surface overhead.
“General Proust needs 200 Wrecker volunteers to join the rearguard, while the rest of the Wreckers, Buckles and Blues head for the ships and home. Sorry people, there’s no other way.”
More than 600 hands shoot up almost as one, without hesitation. Jan refuses to let any of the battalion majors make the hard choices. He walks down the line, making all selections. He simply taps men and women on their shoulder, saying nothing, before walking on to tap another.
Then he turns around and walks back, down the line of volunteers who stepped out to form a new unit. He stops, looks each fighter in the eye, and shakes every hand. Those chosen are released for three minutes to say final farewells, then they reform ranks and march off in a crisp column-of-fours. They’ll join 2,000 volunteers in blue, ACU fighters forming the mainstay of the Minotaur Rearguard. Already the new Alliance is learning how to share out death and sacrifice in ways roughly proportionate to its member’s numbers and ability to absorb both.
Proust’s evacuation plan means leaving 183 in-system-only attack boats behind. They’re destroyed in place or left with disabled drives and clever booby-traps. Some are big enough to collapse safe-harbor caverns where they’re parked, seemingly abandoned in haste but ready to blow at any slight disturbance by Daurans. A thousand more traps, little ones that will kill one or three or five Daurans at most, are scatted all over the labyrinth. Alliance fighters now know that popovs just can’t resist picking up or touching anything shiny or odd. They poison air and water tanks and inject cyanide and spider venom extract into alcohol left in view in carefully smashed cellars and on pantry shelves. Hundreds of popovs will die in gut-wrenching agony before their officers start shooting anyone who takes a drink of anything, without testing or their permission.
That leaves only the problem of the honorable dead, the bodies of over 32,000 unburied from the past two months of round-the-clock combat. General Proust decided weeks ago to store all Alliance casualties deep below evacuated Ellora. Now he gives the o
rder to blow the cavern tunnel at both ends and collapse the roof, burying fighters in blue and beige combat suits as they died, together. When it’s done the convoy will leave Minotaur to the Rearguard and booby-traps.
***
Zofia is nearly killed on the way to Jutlandia. It’s not the enemy that nearly does her. It’s a combat-suit failure while marching in now airless, broken and dead Ellora. A micro-fracture in her HUD goes unnoticed when it first appears right at the end of the last surface fighting, when Jan orders all Wreckers back down the surface-access tubes. She doesn’t notice anything wrong during his speech inside a sealed cave with good airlocks, or when she took it off to muffle her voice as she yelled encouragement.
Her suit reports no problem all that time because her HUD is up the whole time, helmet unsealed and suit pressure not needed or recorded. Red curls escape onto her combat suit, along with air, gently flowing down to brush her rosette cheeks. She’s watches Jan’s eyes dance as he wins over the crowd. Then she orders Madjenik engineers to set their death traps. Just before the evacuation column marches into airless Ellora, she secures her helmet and seals her vacuum-suit. Halfway across the lava-cave city a micro-crack suddenly widens to let hissing, moist air escape.
Jan panics as he sees a pillar of mist erupt from her HUD. “Oh my gods! Zofia!” He can’t think what else to say or do. There’s nothing he can do but watch her visor with hope and fear.
Zofia shuts her eyes and wiggles down inside her separately-pressurized suit, until her face meets a spongy ledge that catches her nose. It’s there to block nasal passages and keep air in her lungs, in case of just such a radical pressure readjustment. She holds her breath and counts as emergency self-repair begins. Micro-glue mist finds and fills the crack before her visor can come apart under shifting pressures and she’s exposed to Elora’s cavernous vacuum. She’s temporarily blinded by the glue-mist and has to be assisted into Jutlandia, like other fighters full-blind from combat in, or on, this moon. They’re all going to need new eyes when they get back to Orestes.
Wobbly and blind or not, Zofia’s still takes charge of Madjenik as the battalion readies to clamber aboard Jutlandia from a jutting shelf of ancient lava forming a solid waterfall of rock. It has been frozen in place for over a billion years, and still pours silently into the pitch dark below. Its smooth flatness serves as a natural loading dock inside massive Swiftburn’s Cavern. Seven NCU troopships are lined up along the lava-ledge, behind the KRN’s Jutlandia and Warsaw.
As she’s about to step onto Jutlandia’s gangway, Zofia feels heavy thrumming-vibrations rise up her legs, then into her torso. It’s the Tomb of the Dead caving in, deep below Ellora. As the roof and walls implode atop the dead, they’re saluted by solemn combat engineers who set the charges. Then they, too, hurry up to Swiftburn’s Cavern.
“Right! Time to leave, people.” She gives the order, then accepts assistance into the troopship, taking a command seat by the side scuttle in the first row.
Zofia can see again in ten minutes. After assuring Jan she’s OK and waiving him back to his duties, she watches out one of hundreds of side scuttles on the converted luxury liner. The ship rises hard and fast, right into evasives as it leaves Minotaur falling rapidly below. All guns on all ships lase on the way out of Swiftburn’s Cavern and into King Minos’ sky, a dull red glow of the Portus Cale star just rising over a bleak horizon. The troop convoy quickly arcs away from the dead moon, straight into the path of a heavy DRN blocking force straddling the inner L4.
One NCU troopship is hit hard astern but manages to scud into a bohr-jump and escape. Three of eight NCU destroyers are lost flying outside escort to the L4, over 3,500 sailors dying with their ships. Almost no escape-pods are spotted. Most watchers are glad of that. They know all about the Shishi now, and what they do to any and all Alliance prisoners.
One of the destroyers goes down with all hands when it rams an old Dauran battleship that’s about to fire a full broadside on a line of five defenseless troopships. The last thing the troop convoy sees before its surviving ships jump all-together is the burning ruination of the battleship tumbling into a big cavern leading into the bowels of the labyrinth, impaled by the suicide destroyer jutting from amidships. Behind the burning picador escort, still stuck in the great bull it’s killing, is a trail-cloud of lost air, steam-ice, and crew. The shuddering battleship expected a minor pica stab. Instead he’s mortally hurt, going down hard and forever.
The ships fleeing lost Minotaur make six bohrs in quick succession, then tear at battle-speed down though Clytemnestra system as Magda pulls at flank descent into Orestes Base. She does it because she needs to detach Wildfire’s warships from the docking troopships, redeploying her flotilla of cruisers, destroyers, and frigates in support of orbital defenses. Why? Because MI says Clytemnestra system, and NCU Orestes Base, is about to be attacked. MI is hazy whether the enemy will be DRN or Kaigun. Or perhaps both. Because it never happens, the main effect of the fast-docking maneuver is to cement her reputation for tossing and churning KRA stomachs.
While they wait their turn for a repair yard, damaged ships hold place in the defense line. However much they leak or creak and groan from stressed bulkheads, and shrapnel holes in their tail systems and armor. Smaller ships, frigates and armed schooners and the like, head down to the surface for repairs in a dry-dock, taking some pressure off overwhelmed spaceyards.
***
Every fighter in the 2,200 strong Minotaur Rearguard left behind is soon dead. Most are killed in intense, close-order combat keeping the Browncoat hordes away from Swiftburn’s Cavern. Some are murdered while lying wounded and helpless in a lava tunnel or the alcove from where they were sniping at the advancing krasnos. The last are extinguished by their own hand-maser, thrust under the chin of a HUD and fired as the battle line collapses on either side. Frag grenades also do the job, and may take a last enemy with you. But masers are more certain. They’ve all heard unbelievable horror stories about the Shishi. No one will be taken prisoner unless they’re too badly wounded to do themselves in first, or are unconscious and taken alive.
A tawny horde of charging krasnos gets close enough over the smooth lava floor for the last defenders of the last confined cavern to see stubble on unshaved cheeks, and promises of wild and horrific deaths in raging, samogon or drug-addled eyes. That’s when the last few and proud Rearguard make final choices. They’ve held back Daurans from Swiftburn’s Cavern while the convoy escaped. They’ve blown all the airlocks as they retreated cavern-by-cavern, fighting in vacuum dark from behind roof rubble collapsed by demolitions the engineers set before they left. They’ve killed 20 times their number in tube-fighting since then. They’ve suffered enough.
Frags burst from grenades held against the gut or dropped inside an opened combat suit, wisps of air escaping out a hundred holes. Calculated microwaves cook gray-cortexes, explode outward along with shattered cranial-bone, tearing through synapses and minds and memories.
‘No open casket for mama to weep over,’ thinks one pretty young ACU soldier before she pulls the trigger, just as a popov lays his hand on her shoulder to take her prisoner. It takes him half-a-day to clean her brains off his combat suit, cursing at her in Jahandar’s name all the time.
The last dead aren’t buried under Ellora with their comrades in the underworld. Ellora is gone, collapsed forever. The last Alliance dead, the Minotaur Rearguard, aren’t buried at all.
Royko orders Alliance bodies and all dead krasnos should be tossed down an industrial waste shaft under Lava Center. Then he heads out-of-system to his next command, on Amasia.
At last, blackness covers the battlefield with dark and mercy. The last echoes of a lost battle, of suicides and executions, are eclipsed by the sound of silence in a moon turned tomb.
Admiral
Weary from nine weeks of fighting on Minotaur, Jan and Zofia return to barracks on Orestes to be greeted by a happy, leaping, bouncing young husky. Samara has pined for them daily, lying with her
nose pressed to the bottom of the door since they left her in care of a ship’s mechanic working in one of the groundside shipyards. Now she insists on lying coyly between Jan and Zofia as they sleep, watching her prodigal master and mistress with wide, jealous eyes.
They’re both unhurt, but the Wreckers are down by 585 dead fighters and twice as many wounded. A third of the dead were volunteers lost during the extended bot-fight on the surface, caught out by the unexpected DRN bombardment or shot in the back by some popov as they ran helter-skelter when Jan gave the withdrawal order. Another third died holding the entrance to the twisted, cold-lava underworld that its pioneer discoverer, an exogeologist named John Swiftburn, dubbed “King Minos’ Labyrinth” over 14 centuries ago. They’re buried with him in its ruins.
Jan thinks most about the final third he left behind, 200 of his best troopers still alive when the Wreckers pulled out and Wildfire pulled away. They formed a mixed-Alliance unit, a Minotaur Rearguard that held while the Wrecker and Rusty Buckles and Union Blues raced to escape on the troopships. A half company of oakish Wreckers and five companies wearing blue, sacrificed to save their “comrades of the caves.” They stayed behind with the last few hundred maser-bots and thousands of hidden booby-traps while old friends and new fled to the nearest bohr-zone. The fact that every one was a volunteer doesn’t ease his pain at all. It makes it worse.
