Havoc of War (Warp Marine Corps Book 5)

by C. J. Carella

  The jungle was smoldering in spots, and every other tree he jogged past was pockmarked with shrapnel, the ones that were still standing. Others had been knocked down or been turned into kindling. The company’s mortars had been busy prepping their path by lashing it with fragmentation bombs.

  They soon ran into a small river. The infantrymen located a ford with their range finders and a fireteam waded in while the rest of the squad covered them. They’d almost made it to the other side when the Obans sprung their ambush.

  The aliens had been hiding behind camo blankets, with their shields down so they couldn’t be detected by the Marines’ sensors. That meant they had just hunkered down and taken the mortar bombardment with nothing but body armor for protection. That took guts; Russell had to hand it to them. They also had lost a lot of people, because the volley that erupted from the far side of the river was ragged and fairly light, mostly hand-held lasers.

  For the bastards on point, that was plenty bad enough.

  One Marine got hit by three continuous beams. He was frantically ducking for cover when his shields failed with a colorful flash. Smoke began rising from his armored suit as the composite material was boiled away. PFC Green screamed and dropped in the water.

  Russell didn’t have a target yet, but the grunts in front did. They lit up the enemy positions. Plasma rounds and 15mm grenades tore into the jungle. The lasers fell silent; Green was flopping about in the river, still screaming. One of the energy beams had cooked half his intestines. The Corpsmen who’d been following them moved forward to drag him back. His status icon was bright red. Better than the black that meant he’s dead, worry about him when it’s over, but not great, either.

  They kept moving, passing the spot where the mortars had wiped out the better part of an enemy platoon. These tangos had hunched backs and no necks; their heads were below what passed for their shoulders. Their skin was purple with green mottling, with long slender arms and squat legs, better suited for leaping than running. In death, though, they looked like anybody else. Bloody and broken.

  Up ahead, the hundred-mike-mikes were still at work, lashing enemy positions with more bombs. Russell’s imp projected a route for the flanking force; a swampy dip along the way would keep them out of sight from direct enemy fire. The Obans had deployed an artillery battery, but Marine fighters had already wrecked it. Score one for the flyboys. Russell reached the swamp; about three inches of water and muddy ground beneath, which didn’t make for an easy stroll. He kept moving. More of the local trees lined up both sides of the swamp; their roots reached into the water, and a Marine in front of him tripped on one and face-planted with a splash. Russell was saving his breath, so he didn’t laugh or make fun of the guy as he helped him up. Besides, everyone knew it could just as easily been any of them.

  “Incoming!”

  Crap. Hitting the dirt wouldn’t help out in the open. Russell hunched forward and kept going. Had to get through the dead ground as quickly as possible and hope their shields held. He heard overhead detonations, saw the watery ground froth under multiple impacts, and felt shrapnel splattering against his force field. A hundred percent charge became ninety, became eighty, and a shell went off right behind him. It was like getting hit by God’s own pillow. The impact spread and diffused against his shields, but if still slapped him forward as if he’d been shot out of a cannon. Water and mud blinded him. His suit’s seals held, though, so he didn’t even get wet.

  “Come on, brah!” Gonzo said, helping him up.

  “I’m good, I’m good,” Russell said. Shields were down to fifty-three percent, but all systems were green. The wet mud clung to him as he made it to one knee. Gonzo pulled him up the rest of the way. There weren’t any more explosions. Someone had taken care of the Eet mortar or grenade launcher or whatever.

  “Move it, Marines!” Sergeant Fuller yelled. They got going, too busy to bother cursing FOS under their breath.

  They reached their firing position a couple minutes later. The grunts in front had dealt with a squad of Froggers that had tried to make a stand there. A couple of them were moving the dead aliens out of the way. By the time Grampa set up their field gennie, Russell and Gonzo had their Widowmakers warmed up and targets selected: a buried bunker, only its gun port visible under a mass of rock, with overlapping shields that were glowing in bright colors as all kinds of explosive ordnance went off against it.

  “On my mark,” Fuller said. A moment later: “Fire!”

  Six beams of twisted space-time speared into the bunker, and Russell grinned as the enemy shields flared up, and then vanished. The bunker began to fall apart. A couple seconds later, one of the beams hit something major, and the whole installation brewed up. Flames shot out of every hole. All the tangos inside had been transformed into good dead tangos. The slog to get there, getting blown up and stuck in mud, it’d all been worth it just to watch that bunker burn.

  Those were the moments he lived for.

  Fourteen

  “Bunker Three is down, sir. Bunker Four is still holding out.”

  Fromm looked at the map. His company had cleared three gun emplacements, each smaller than a full-fledged Planetary Defense Base but still heavily armed and fortified. Two remained before this sector was cleared of bunkers, although there would still be hundreds of tangos to mop up afterwards. The 101st MEU was taking on a division’s worth of troops fighting from prepared positions. Even with air support from fighters and gunships, it was taking its toll.

  He was down a platoon commander, gone before touching the ground.

  “All right. Shift First to the east and have them take those heights here.” His imp marked the spot on the shared virtual map. “The LAVs and mortars can engage Bunker Five at long range while we concentrate for an assault on Bunker Four. How about calls for fire?”

  “We can get one pass from a War Eagle squadron in thirty minutes. Nothing after that for another hour.”

  Fromm did the math. Everybody was going to have to hustle, but the assault should go off in time for the fighters to do some good. Even with the new tech, the Marines’ heavy artillery couldn’t be warp-dropped. Their only support was from the fighters and gunships, and there were too many targets available. Until they cleared enough anti-shipping emplacements for shuttles to survive the trip groundside, the Marines would have to fight with what they had.

  “Let’s confirm the request for air support, Hansen. Goldberg…”

  First Sergeant Goldberg had gotten good at reading his mind. “We’ve run through twenty percent of our combat loads, sir. Mortars, it’s close to thirty percent. Losing that truck during the drop didn’t help. We’ll get everyone loaded up before the assault, though.”

  They’d been on this rock for a whole seven hours, and they’d eaten through most of their alleged one-day supplies. The local troops were well dug-in, and taking them out took a lot of firepower. Without the new hardware they’d liberated at Xanadu, his company would have been rendered combat-ineffective by now. Only toys like those portable power-pack rechargers and the new heavy energy weapons had kept his people going, and they wouldn’t do so for much longer.

  “Anything we can borrow, beg or steal from Battalion?”

  The 101st headquarters company and four supply truck platoons were holding station in the rear, with its organic tank platoon acting as a mobile reserve. Those trucks were their entire logistical reserves until the Navy could start landing supplies the old-fashioned way.

  “They told us to send them four of our trucks, and they’ll load ‘em with what they can spare. S-Maj Hollander knows what we need, but every company on the 101st is crying for more of everything, and they are trying to allocate things as best they can.”

  Four truckloads wouldn’t replace what Charlie Company had expended so far. After they were done taking the next two objectives, Fromm’s Marines would be running around with one basic combat load. Plus maybe half of that left in reserve. They were going to run dry long before they ran out of tar
gets.

  “If we clear those two bunkers, we might get Fleet to start making deliveries,” he said, trying to sound more hopeful than he felt.

  His specialty in college had been pre-Contact military history. The name ‘Market-Garden’ loomed large in his mind. Like the paratroopers of old, warp-dropped Marines could only fight so long before supporting forces – or in this case, supply runs – reached them. After that, very bad things started to happen. They were behind schedule. They should have cleared all five objectives by now, but the Obans were there in greater numbers than expected. Only air strikes had kept the Marines from being counter-attacked in force.

  Goldberg nodded. “We can do our job, sir, as long as those Fleet pukes do theirs.”

  * * *

  Thermopylae shook like a rat in a terrier’s jaws.

  Admiral Sondra Givens cleared her throat and fought the impulse to cough. The stench of electrical fires filled the fleet bridge despite the best efforts of its air scrubbers; at one point smoke had shrouded the CIC, restricting visibility and forcing everyone to make use of emergency oxygen masks until the conflagration, a mere two decks below them, had been brought under control. That had been a close one.

  The ground fortresses were pounding her fleet. Without warp shields, one third of her forces would have been crippled or destroyed by now. And they were only facing half of the enemy emplacements; Third Fleet was maintaining station so that only the daytime side of Ugo-Two could engage it. Destroying those facilities, which filled a vast continental mass broken only by scattered land-locked seas and lakes, would be enough to let them proceed to the next warp point, but it would mean leaving a sizable portion of the planet’s industrial might intact. Ugo wasn’t the backwater everyone had expected. Her ships were engaging any targets they could with their secondary guns, but the uneven exchange was costing them.

  The air cleared up a bit; Sondra’s eyes no longer stung, and her breathing came a little easier. On the holotank display, the icons for two enemy planetary defense bases had gone black. That left three PDBs still in the game, not to mention seventy-eight lesser facilities, each packing the firepower of a battleship. The Marine forces on the ground had performed admirably, but were running dangerously low on supplies. The trickle of warp-dropped supplies wasn’t enough to make a difference.

  A quick look at the threat assessment display showed her that trying to send shuttles into the area was still unfeasible. The PDBs no longer covered the entire hemisphere, but enough forts remained to slaughter anything smaller than a warship.

  It’s taking too long. She was going to lose most of her Marines, unless she brought her ships closer and engage those forts with her light weapons. Which would result in enough damage to render Third Fleet incapable of continuing its mission.

  I fucked up. The realization hit her like a punch in the stomach. Outwardly, she retained her calm demeanor as she ordered the Thermopylae to hover on the edge of the atmosphere. A third PDB fell, but the Marine battalions assaulting the fourth one had to fall back, nearly out of ammo and in danger of being overrun by a mass infantry charge. Only the quick vectoring of half her fighters kept the retreat from turning into a rout. The Obans caught in the open were slaughtered, but it didn’t matter. Two PDBs still stood, and she was going to lose too many ships if she didn’t pull out of range.

  “Ma’am, we are being hailed by the Ugo’s Provincial Governor.”

  “Onscreen.”

  The Oban that appeared on the main 2D display was a corpulent specimen, wreathed in silvery garments, one eye noticeably larger than the other. According to Sondra’s imp, the alien’s expression and body language indicated a great deal of stress.

  “American Warmaster: I hereby offer the surrender of this system. We will enact a cease-fire as soon as you accept it. My orders are to make no demands of you and surrender unconditionally, but I would beg you to spare my people.”

  If this was a trick, Sondra couldn’t see what it could be. Even a brief cease-fire would only benefit her forces, especially the Marines she’d stranded on the planet.

  “I will order a temporary cessation of hostilities while we review your offer, Governor.”

  “My Warmasters will comply.”

  It took several minutes, but fighting eventually ground to a halt. Damage control parties continued their frantic work, just in case the truce proved to be short-lived. The Obans were true to their word; their ground facilities stopped firing on her ships. The Marines assumed defensive positions and began to dig in.

  Once the ceasefire was fully in effect, the Governor hailed her again:

  “My superiors want to know two things, Admiral. Can you stop the Black Fleet? Will you stop it, as you claimed was your primary purpose?”

  The questions took Sondra aback. Despite US protests to the contrary, the Imperium’s official position had been that Kerensky’s renegades were still under American control, and that the mutiny was merely an excuse to perpetrate atrocities while publicly disavowing them.

  “My orders are to stop the Black Ships by any means necessary, Governor. We will do so, even if we have to set your Imperium ablaze in the process.”

  The Oban slumped in what might be defeat or relief.

  “Then do with us as you will, Warmaster. All we ask is that you stop those monsters.”

  What has Kerensky done?

  Imperial Star Province Vahan, 169 AFC

  Emergence.

  The Black Fleet emerged on the edge of Vahan System’s gravity well, seven light-hours away from the inhabited planet that was its target. After being forced to flee during their previous incursion, Kerensky wanted to take his time and observe what awaited him there He only had eight warships and a hundred and twenty fighters left, and any losses at this point would be unacceptable.

  Sixty-three new contacts appeared on the holotank. It was to be expected, now that the enemy knew the Black Ships had access to the system. The fleet was small in comparison with the teeming hordes the Imperium had deployed before, but the energy signatures of the new ships were nearly off the scale. All those ships were at least dreadnought class; and twenty of them were super-dreads like the ones he’d ambushed at the Battle of Capricorn. The Imperium had sent an all battlewagon fleet to reinforce the system. Kerensky didn’t know whether they were part of some sort of central reserve, or newly-built vessels, not that the answered mattered much at this point.

  In any sort of conventional action, his forces would be annihilated in short order. Even ghosting wouldn’t save them. Enough residual energy would get through. And the thousands-strong swarm of FTL fighters was somewhere in the area as well, lurking in stealth mode to turn the Black Ships’ warp generators against their owners. If he fled, those ships would likely follow him to Sokolov System and finish him off there. Under any other circumstances, his situation would be hopeless.

  “You have nothing to fear,” the Prophet said, or rather, the thing using the Prophet as its meat puppet.

  “To put it to the touch, to win or lose it all,” Kerensky heard himself say. The quote was a reflex from what remained of his human mind. Losing or dying didn’t matter all that much anymore.

  “We will proceed with our plan,” he sent out. The telepathic orders reached everyone instantly. Moments later, they were underway.

  Inside warp space, the Prophet dropped any pretense of humanity. The thing that remained by Kerensky’s side was in constant flux, changing shapes and species from one instant to the next. Humans from the admiral’s past were intermixed with aliens from every Starfarer species he knew of and many others he didn’t recognize. Beneath all the fake forms lurked something far worse, something that would shatter even Kerensky’s hybrid mind if it fully revealed itself. The Warpling inside him was terrified of the one that had devoured the Prophet. And the Prophet was in turn intimidated by the One who had accepted the Black Fleet’s sacrifice at Sokolov System.

  “Everything will be well, Nikolai,” the Prophet whispered in his
grandmother’s voice.

  The Black Ships arrived within half a light-second from the enemy wall of battle, point-blank range for most weapon systems. They remained on the threshold between universes, their warp generators working overtime to keep them there. All eight vessels fired with every weapon system in their arsenal. Their firepower was relatively puny, but they all targeted a single dreadnought and inflicted some damage. Even though Kerensky knew those broadsides were merely a distraction, the professional side of him noted with appreciation that his gunners were doing their job far better than they had when they’d still been merely human.

  The Imperium defenders reacted swiftly enough. Warships returned fire within seconds of ghosting ships’ arrival. Over two thousand converted shuttles turned off their stealth fields and targeted the warp apertures with their disruptors, hoping to repeat their previous success. Specially-attuned graviton beams began interacting with the warped spacetime fields around the Black Fleet, altering their energy gradients.

  This time, however, the results were not at all what Imperium designers had intended.

  The warp apertures grew to impossible sizes, generating tidal waves that filled all graviton-based communication and sensor systems with static and exerted enough force even at tens of thousands of kilometers away to send ships veering off-course or make them vibrate like glasses struck by a high-pitch sound. Hundreds of the enemy shuttles were destroyed outright, either by side effects of their own weapons or spacetime distortions they’d unwittingly helped create. The Black Ships were unaffected and continued to fire on their targets. It was something to do until the real killing work began

  A host of Warplings poured out of the enlarged apertures.

  Most of them were formless wraiths, beings of pure tachyons who leaped towards the nearest Imperium vessels like a swarm of angry hornets. Chaos erupted as crewmembers had their minds shredded, becoming mindless beasts bent only on destruction. Thousands of others died screaming as their souls were ripped from their bodies.