Progeny (The Progenitor Trilogy, Book Three)

by Worth, Dan

  ‘It gives us more of a fighting chance,’ said Chen, coldly. ‘The Shapers might attack the wrong ones.’

  The Churchill was still climbing. Her four accompanying destroyers were manoeuvring themselves into position around her, but the other carriers were struggling to break orbit. There was simply too much traffic, too many ships that need to slide around one another in order to orientate themselves correctly and move away from the planet. The Marcus Aurelius and the Marine assault carrier Anzio were still wallowing, deep in Valparaiso’s gravity well and boxed in by missile frigates deployed to assist the ground forces. Chen realised then, as the Shaper vessels emerged from hyperspace, their ice-white hulls gleaming coldly in the light from Santiago’s sun, that the Shapers had tricked her into making the very same tactical mistake that Admiral Kojima had made above Maranos, a mistake that had doomed the marines aboard the Normandy. Fully aware of the depth of her error, she ordered her ships to prepare to fire.

  They were still coming. Although Shale’s men were falling back by squads, the rush of enslaved was still catching up with them, falling upon the stragglers and dragging them down beneath the mob. Fire scythed into the enemy, but there were too many of them and they were too close to friendly troops for the heavier guns of the armoured vehicles and gunships to be used effectively. Even so, pintle mounted weapons atop armoured cupolas sliced bloody trails through them.

  They were starting the check the tide. Just. Shale could feel it. The sheer weight of fire being directed against the unarmed enslaved former citizens of Santiago was beginning to check their advance. His men were recovering from the ambush, and though they had taken heavy losses in the opening minutes, they had rallied. Still, the enslaved did not go down easily, and they had a nasty habit of picking their shattered bodies off the floor and resuming their charge and the fact the enemy was in and amongst friendly troops and vehicles made it difficult to pick them off from long range.

  How many apparently fleeing refugees had there been? Shale hadn’t thought to keep count, concentrating merely on getting them all behind his lines. Had they all been puppets of the Shapers? Or had unarmed men, women and children fallen victim to the onslaught as well as his men? Had Mayor Marchand been one of them, even as she had stood before him and told him of the plight of the civilians within the city? Shale didn’t know. Along with the rest of his men, he fired at charging figures again and again, adding the bark of his rifle to the deafening cacophony of weapons fire as the automatic weapons of his command APC hammered away over his head.

  There was a sharp report from further down the column. Shale felt the shockwave travel through the ground beneath him. A column of black smoke began to rise. After a lifetime in the Army, Shale knew by heart the sounds that all Commonwealth weapons made. This wasn’t one of theirs. A few seconds later, and a second explosion rocked the column. This time it was nearer. He felt the overpressure buffeting him in his suit and saw what looked like an APC blown upwards into the air by the force of the explosion. Then came the cries over the comm.

  ‘General Shale, this is Major Fong of the forty second. Be aware: the enemy are using suicide tactics to take down our armoured vehicles. Requesting tactical fire support at grid reference thirty eight alpha, by six niner.’

  Shale ducked back inside his APC and glanced at the tactical display.

  ‘Fong, this is Shale. Those co-ordinates will bring the ordnance almost right on top of you!’

  ‘Yes sir! Requesting fire support: danger close. I’m pulling my men back, abandoning the APCs. They’re sitting ducks!’ As Fong spoke, another explosion ripped through the column.

  ‘Very well, Major,’ said Shale and prepared to give orders to the gunships to comply with Fong’s request. As he glanced at the tactical display once more, he saw more enemy traces winking into existence to the north. They were moving out of the edge of the city only a kilometre away, heading south at speed towards his position, gathering in pace and numbers with every passing moment.

  ‘Back!’ yelled Gunderson. ‘Fall back to the second line of defences!’ He turned and was greeted by the sight of an enslaved scrambling over the parapet towards him. The man’s appearance was distorted by a cluster of sensors in the middle of his face whose anchoring tendrils plunged into his eye sockets and mouth. He was already missing an arm, but that didn’t seem to be slowing him down. Gunderson clubbed him in that ruined visage with the butt of his rifle and knocked the man back and then as he stumbled, shot him repeatedly in the skull.

  The enslaved had stormed the outer ring of defences and were in the shallow trench that the marines had cut behind the parapet. As Gunderson’s men in the outer defences fell back to the inner layer, their comrades already taking their positions there rained heavy fire down upon the enslaved. But it was too late for those caught by the charging mob, wrestled down into the muck and trampled or torn apart where they stood. Fire continued to zip out of the darkness of the night and claim men, although the gunships were returning for another attack run on the already burning forest that hid the shooters. They swooped down over the battlefield once more, weapons blazing from under-wing pods, and trees splintered under the onslaught. Enslaved stumbled forward, great slivers of burning wood driven through their lurching bodies whilst their comrades were ripped asunder and vaporised by heavy ordnance.

  Gunderson never saw where the missile came from. As one of the gunships swooped over the slopes filled with enslaved, there was a sharp bang and a flash of light, and then the craft was falling, burning, to the ground below. It ploughed into the massed ranks of the enemy where it carved a bloody trench through them and then exploded. The blast lit up the night, scattering burning debris and enemy bodies across the slopes below the array. The other craft peeled away, dropping countermeasures in a frantic attempt to avoid a similar fate.

  Gunderson fired wildly at more enslaved clambering towards him, then grabbed Major Durham by the shoulder and shouted at him to retreat. Durham appeared not to hear him and efficiently felled three enemy troops with clean headshots through their skulls. Gunderson grabbed a grenade from his belt and hurled it over the parapet, grunting with satisfaction as he saw enemy bodies being flung left and right by the blast.

  ‘I ordered you to retreat, Major!’ he repeated.

  ‘I heard you, sir,’ Durham replied. ‘I respectfully decline. My duty is to protect my commanding officer, particularly when he puts himself in harm’s way. Call down fire support. End this.’

  ‘They’re too goddamn close!’ yelled Gunderson over the noise of battle. ‘You know that.’

  ‘My men will hold them here,’ said Durham. ‘Fall back to the array and call down fire support from the fleet. There are too many of them. It’s the only way.’

  Gunderson hesitated for a moment, then saw the look of determination in Durham’s face and nodded wordlessly, before turning and scrambling up the slope.

  The three Shaper destroyers swooped down on the lumbering Commonwealth vessels in a staggered formation. Chen saw them close in. They were like raptors after the scent, aware that they had caught their prey unawares and vulnerable and they moved with frightening speed. She gave the order to fire and felt the Churchill shudder as the spatial distortion cannon beneath the ship’s belly fired. The stream of twisted space reached out and, miraculously, caught one of the craft in a glancing blow amidships. Its crystalline hull shattered, and great shards of hull material broke away from the port side in a shower of debris. The Shaper craft rushed onwards, but now it was corkscrewing wildly. Other ships fired, their shots going wide or failing to land significant hits. Beam weapons probed outwards, their energies playing impotently off the Shaper ships’ heavy shielding as the enemy vessels returned fire with coruscating energies that quickly battered down the shields of the primitive human vessels.

  The Alesia was the first ship to succumb. The destroyer’s forward shields collapsed in seconds leaving the vessel exposed. Shaper energies raked across the forward gun decks, exploding
turrets and power relays before immolating the vessel’s bridge and venting the forwards compartments of the superstructure into space. The ship continued to fire at her attackers, but she was now out of control and locked into a vector away from the planet. The other vessels flanking the Churchill and the carrier itself frantically returned fire with spatial distortion and beam weapons, but with little result.

  Meanwhile, the other warship groups under Chen’s command were still desperately attempting to extricate themselves from Valparaiso’s gravity well and bring their guns to bear on the enemy whilst the Army transports were still climbing in the opposite direction to a point where they would able to jump clear. Their engines blazed brightly as they clawed their way steadily upwards away from the world’s gravitational grasp. The damaged Shaper craft was heading straight towards the warships. Locked into a death spiral it careered headlong towards the carrier Pericles trailing debris in its wake and with the other two craft following close behind.

  The Pericles fired, the shot from its main gun narrowly missing the jinking vessel. Two of her destroyer escorts succeeded in successfully targeting the Shaper craft, but their lighter guns only succeeded in striking more hull material from the vessel without shattering it entirely, and then the Shaper craft collided with the Pericles.

  The Pericles was torn apart. The Shaper destroyer impacted at an oblique angle just forward of the bridge, the diamond hard, crystalline hull material slicing through the human vessel’s skin as if it were made of paper. The armoured prow of the Shaper craft plunged onwards through the carrier, eviscerating her in one fell swoop, driving through decks filled with crew, through the hangars laden with loaded fighters and bombers and onwards into the vessel’s power plant which it shattered and drove through. The carrier began to break in half and then exploded with a nuclear shockwave that entirely blew the vessel to pieces and immolated the Shaper vessel. The Shaper ship emerged from the inferno, blazing like a comet, molten and incandescent, and began to fall towards the planet whilst debris and radiation battered the Pericles’s escorts.

  As Chen brought her ships around, the two remaining Shaper vessels began tearing into the destroyers that had been flanking the Pericles, disabling the engines of the Minden and crippling the forward turrets of the Austerlitz.

  ‘Jesus, would you look at that!’ breathed McManus as glowing debris expanded from the wreck of the Pericles and beams of energy criss-crossed space as vessels desperately tried to fend off their assailants.

  ‘No escape pods...’ said Chen quietly. ‘They never stood a chance.’

  ‘The Nahabe are still ten minutes away, Admiral,’ said Singh. ‘There’s something else too. We’re seeing increased enemy activity on the planet. Massed enemy traces emerging from the suburbs of San Domingo and heading for General Shale’s column.’

  ‘Colonel Gunderson is still under heavy assault at the array,’ said Andrews at the comm. ‘He’s requesting fire support from the Alcibiades.’

  Chen called up the map of the battle zone on the planet’s surface in her HUD. San Domingo blazed a violent red. The entire city was now pulsing with enemy traces that were beginning to flow southwards out of the city. General Shale’s columns showed as slender fingers, the central one half swallowed by more enemy traces. Far to the south, a shrinking enclave around the array was surrounded on three sides by more pulsing red. An intricate web of communication linked them all, concentrating back on the centre of the capital city.

  ‘San Domingo is lost,’ said Chen, looking in horror at the sensor readings. ‘I believe now that it was lost from the start. Send orders to the Themistocles. They are to destroy their target. Order all other available missile frigates save the Alcibiades to engage and destroy all enemy forces moving south towards General Shale’s forces.’

  ‘I hope you’re right about the city,’ said McManus. ‘If there are still civilians down there, they won’t stand a chance.’

  ‘Shale’s units are about to be over-run. We need to dislocate the enemy force,’ said Chen. ‘Attack their weak points. Taking out the control node below the San Domingo Assembly should achieve that aim.’

  ‘And what about these two?’ McManus replied, pointing at the battle going on above the planet. The Shaper vessels were coming about for another run against the struggling Commonwealth ships. ‘They’re in amongst our own ships. It’s going to be tricky taking them down without hitting our own.’

  ‘I have faith in my crews, Commander,’ said Chen and shot him a look. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ McManus replied then breathed. ‘God help us.’

  Shale was desperately trying to arrange his units to fight the battle on two fronts at once. Having pulled his men back, his remaining infantry and armoured units were drawn up in two defensive lines arranged back to back facing north and south. The other two columns were still inbound towards his position but were slowing their advance for fear of being flanked by the massive force advancing out of the city.

  That mob was moving with incredible speed. Sensors and recon had not identified any vehicles amidst the attacking force - it was simply a million strong mob of augmented humans moving at the speed of an express train towards the Commonwealth positions. The Shapers were not employing any tactical subtlety. It was a pure numbers game, an attempt to overwhelm them with a single sledgehammer blow. His infantry might be largely occupied holding off the attack from the south, but the open terrain gave the armoured units and gunships an opportunity to use their heavy weapons. Hull down, tanks and what remaining scraps of the artillery were left began to open fire, launching a barrage of energy beams and high explosive ordnance towards the advancing wall of enslaved. Thousands died instantly. Thousands more rushed forward over their shattered bodies to take their place and charged headlong into a wall of lead and fire. The bullet riddled, plasma burned bodies of half flesh half machine things that had once been the citizens of San Domingo powered themselves forward on pistoning legs, their bladed claws and biting metal jaws slicing the air before them.

  Standing atop his APC, Shale first saw the enemy force as a vague heat smudge on the horizon, then as a spreading stain across the plains, then as a moving sea of bodies rippled by the impacts of ordnance. The pounding of their feet was a bass rumble that accompanied the jack hammering of the heavy guns and rattle of automatic weapons. To his south, more detonations marked the demise of more enemy suicide bombers, and more of his men and vehicles. He saw a light scout tank flip end over end atop a pillar of flame, his men moving like ants amidst wrecked vehicles, cutting down charging figures amidst a hail of bullets, laser and plasma fire. He saw them bludgeoning struggling forms to the ground or being cut down themselves by humanoid forms that moved more like stalking wolves than people.

  The mob to the north was getting inexorably closer.

  A line of gunships screamed in towards the south of the column and Major Fong’s embattled position. Rippling fire from missile pods and gatling guns pounded the road, each craft swooping down in a strafing run to unload tonnes of ordnance on the target before peeling away. The craft swooped around to the west and then stood a few hundred yards off the target and hovered in a line, guns blazing away at anything that moved.

  The force from the city was almost upon them.

  ‘Stand fast!’ cried Shale into the comm. ‘This is it! Give them hell! Fire! Fire with everything you’ve got!’

  And then, from low orbit, the fleet opened fire.

  The first rounds from the missile batteries of the Themistocles struck the Assembly House in the centre of San Domingo. Accelerated by their rail-gun launchers, the depleted uranium projectiles streaked down from orbit at over fifteen times the speed of sound, glowing like falling stars as they were heated by the friction with the atmosphere and then they struck with the hammer-blow force of an angry god. The Assembly House in the heart of San Domingo, whose basement now housed vile agglomerations of flesh and metal that had once been the government of Valparaiso and which now s
erved as a communications node for the Shapers, was instantly annihilated. Struck by kilotonnes of kinetic force, the structure was utterly obliterated in a titanic fountain of masonry. The shockwave of the impact travelled outwards through air and ground, shattering the tower blocks on either side as if they were cardboard and blowing away their outer claddings in an instant in a whirlwind of twisted spars and broken glass.

  More rounds fell on the same spot, hammering into the ground and completing the destruction, gouging immense craters out of the earth and ensuring that whatever had lurked beneath the Assembly was undoubtedly utterly destroyed.

  Shale saw the mob falter. It was as if they collectively stumbled. They were almost right on top of his men when their charge stopped. His men kept firing. Shale swore that for a split second he saw some of the distorted figures come to their senses as if awaking from a terrible nightmare and then realise that it was in fact real. They stared in horror at their own mutilated bodies before they were cut down, holding up bladed hands towards ruined faces and screaming. Death was a blessed release.

  ‘Kill them!’ cried Shale. ‘Do not stop firing! Kill them all!’

  The deafening sound of the impacts in the city washed over him as shockwaves spread out across the grassy plains, rippling the tall stems. More rounds descended from orbit. This time they fell amongst the enslaved. Savage explosions gouged bloody wounds from their ranks in fountains of dirt and torn bodies. Blow after blow struck. Each impact was an ear splitting crack that split the sky and rocked the earth with shockwaves as the overpressure washed over the Commonwealth Army units that stood fast in the face of the enemy and kept firing.

  In the sky above, a livid, blazing star began to fall from heaven as the stricken Shaper destroyer plummeted to its death.