Teik was preparing to give weapons release when the Human ship altered course and launched smaller craft at a high angle of approach.
“Dropships,” a planner announced. “Flight profiles are a perfect match.”
“Who uses dropships anymore?” Teik demanded.
“MinSha use them regularly,” the planner said. “Also the KzSha.”
“Bugs,” Skep snorted.
Teik agreed with his XO. Insects had a high G tolerance and wouldn’t mind a ballistic approach. The Humans were certainly not insects, yet they were using dropships. The problem was as the dropships hit the atmosphere at high speed, the natural ionization of their interface made them extremely difficult targets. He couldn’t use nuclear weapons because of the side effects to his defensive mission.
“See if we can predict their approach and prepare interceptor missiles once they get into the lower atmosphere.”
“So it shall be,” his XO reported.
They never got the chance; the two dropships only skimmed the upper atmosphere and discharged dozens of smaller objects. They were too small to be weapons and didn’t appear to have more than cursory attitude control capabilities. The planners had no idea what they were, and neither did Teik.
“Is the course of the dropships staying within profile?” Teik asked.
“Negative, they appear to be boosting back toward orbit on a circumspect course.”
“Expend some missiles on them,” he said.
On the far side of the tactical command center his factor’s head popped up. Despite the cash infusion, he was just as nervous as he was back on the Jandu Station. If anything, he was worse, because Teik allowed him to voice his opinions more than Kloot had. When he’d reviewed the contract, after their commander was dead, he was upset at the vagueness of many points just as Teik had been.
Exercising his commander position, he speared the factor with a glare, and the factor looked away. He had enough to deal with without adding an annoying factor to the mix.
Missiles left the launchers and raced into the sky. Within a second of launch, each of the targets split into six or more targets. The fixers worked with their instruments trying to resolve which were decoys and which were the real targets. It was impossible to tell. So much so the missiles went crazy and hit absolutely nothing. The targets, whatever they were, plummeted down and disappeared from the screen.
“Where did they land?” Teik demanded.
“Far western plain, near the water. As far as you can get from here without having to land in the mountains or the sea.”
“What is it?” Skep asked.
“I don’t know,” Teik admitted, “my guess is armor.” He didn’t say but the size was too small for substantial armor, even APCs or flyers. He simply didn’t know. “Prepare scout drones.”
* * *
Chapter 6
The little recon drones flew at 250 kph, hugging the ground and perfectly moving around any terrain or other obstruction in their path. They were capable of 400 kph, though that was reserved for emergency maneuvers and to escape threats. At 25,000 credits each, you expected quality and versatility. Four of them had been dispatched.
Teik decided if the factor didn’t stop twitching every time he committed an asset to the operation, he’d have him taken to the lowborn barracks and tied up. Right then, he was concentrating on the monitors relaying data at high speed from the drones. At the same time he kept an eye on the two dropships rendezvousing with their ship in high orbit, well outside their ground-based defense’s range.
“Drones approaching landing area.”
The view skimmed over the grass and past a herd of the grazing creatures. It had just seen something and went dead.
“Drone 1 down,” a fixer said needlessly. Another went out. “Drone 3 down, too.”
“Evade,” he ordered, and the main plot showed the two remaining drones turn on wildly different courses. The images from one showed the unmistakable image of a laser, which narrowly missed. “Keep them back and run a circuit so we can plot out the LZ.” He looked at the factor, who was grumbling under his breath. “You, shut up.”
“S-sorry, Commander.”
The map slowly built up as the drones circled the area when the targets dropped below radar. Sensors were picking up metallic signatures and medium to high energy readings, which would make sense if the enemy had brought lasers down with them. In a minute they’d mapped the alien LZ out, but it wasn’t enough.
“Can we get a satellite view?” he asked a fixer.
“They were all in power-down mode when the invasion began. Bringing them online will risk them.”
“We have four with a view of the area, yes?”
“Yes, Commander.”
“Activate one and get as much intel as you can, as fast as you can.”
Several fixers reconfigured slates and prepared to recon. They knew their jobs well and coordinated perfectly. When the satellite was woken up, data flowed in. It survived 29 seconds before a laser from the enemy frigate fried it. He didn’t have to look at the factor to know they were responsible for the satellites, which were existing infrastructure.
“Show me an image as soon as you can.”
“On the main screen.” The big wall-sized Tri-V lit up with a 3-D construct of the plain. Dozens of smoldering impacts pockmarked the grasslands, impact points for whatever had been dropped. They were interesting, but nothing compared to the huge metallic shapes moving about the LZ, setting up a static defense.
“What are those?” Skep asked, pointing. “Combat armor? It’s so bulky.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Teik said. “Get the planners to start going over the GalNet for any matches. For now, muster four squads and APCs for an assault.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to wait?” Skep asked. Teik gave him a critical look. “Just until we know what those are.”
“They’re getting ready for another wave,” Teik said. “Go, bloody their noses. Destroy them if possible. Quickly.”
“So it shall be.”
* * *
Skep raced out of the main barracks motor pool with a pair of their hover APCs. The lightly armored transports skimmed at 200 kph. With little to no obstructions on the plains, they made top speed. He’d taken three squads of stormers and a squad of fighters. It was a classic force distribution designed to overwhelm enemy positions in a rapidly moving wave. The stormers would close to hand-to-hand, killing indiscriminately. The fighters came in behind and cleaned up any survivors.
Two more expensive drones rode with the assault force and were released when they were a kilometer out. Seconds later, the APC grounded and disgorged their forces. They deployed in two waves in squad strength, all stormers. The young Aposo had just enough training to use their weapons, but not enough to switch or reload. Most wouldn’t live long enough to matter. It was a tactic intended to swarm a static defense, and it had worked perfectly a thousand times in the past.
Only Tortantula used similar tactics, though with considerably less subtlety. Their frontline troopers were released by the hundreds of thousands to slaughter indiscriminately. Anything before them would be killed in an orgy of blood and violence. Aposo stormers were a blunt weapon because they were indiscriminate. That was why shooters and fighters were sent along, to guide them.
Moving in formation, Skep took command of the fighters as they ran, just a hundred meters behind the stormers. The two new drones moved in behind the advancing force to observe the battle. Teik would record everything. They’d learn quite a bit from the slaughter of the Humans. The fixers had confirmed there was nothing like what the simians were using in the databases.
“Won’t matter,” Teik said. “We’ll figure it out from the pieces left after we kill them all.”
They had good telemetry from the combination of four drones building a virtual battlespace. Teik could watch in his pinplants, but because only a few of them had the brain implants, the command center’s Tri-V was s
howing the battle.
“They aren’t coming out to meet us,” a planner said. “Fools.”
Teik nodded. He’d expected the Humans to rush out and meet their Aposo attackers head on. Without improved fortifications, letting the enemy into your midst was suicide, especially Aposo, who like to engage hand-to-hand. The lead element of their stormers were about to reach the enemy. Here we go.
One of the two drones was with the stormers as they rushed into the enemy LZ, so Teik had a front row seat to the slaughter. Lasers flashed, and heavy weapons cracked. “Those are magnetic accelerator cannons,” a planner said in disbelief. The drone only survived a few seconds longer than the 20 stormers, which wasn’t long at all. They were, however, treated to the first closeups of the alien’s armor.
“It’s powered armor,” Teik said. He hadn’t thought it possible that the Humans had powered armor. Horribly expensive, complicated, and difficult to train your troopers on. He’d been pretty sure the only race who used it was the KzSha. They were an insectoid race who used their powered armor for multiple-environment contacts. He activated his comms link to Skep.
“Withdraw, it’s powered armor. Your first squad of skirmishers were wiped out.”
“We can flank,” Skep said. “Did the enemy take any losses?”
“None,” Teik replied. “Withdraw.”
“Pulling back, stormers covering our retreat.”
Teik could tell even through the pinplants that Skep was mad about retreating. It wasn’t the Aposo way. Only you didn’t assault a reinforced position, and the amount of fire coming from the Human powered armor was staggering.
The armor was powerful and probably provided impressive protection. It would also be slow and cumbersome. Once Skep fell back, Teik would take four more squads, and they’d attack the Humans from multiple flanks at the same time. It would chew up a lot of stormers, but that’s what they were for.
The flanking drones from their positions at maximum range picked up strange bursts of fire. Teik took control, moved one of them in closer, and watched in horror as the hulking combat armor flew across the sky! He estimated their flight speed at 150 kph using a parabolic arc a half kilometer long. More of a jump than flying.
Regardless of how it worked, the Human combat armor caught up to and fell in the midst of Skep’s retreating forces in seconds. Skep linked his pinplants to the data feed, letting Teik watch everything. The two remaining drones were too far away to get detailed views of the fight. The outcome was brutally fast; Skep’s forces were completely wiped out.
The command center was deathly silent. Teik used his pinplants to rerun and correlate data from the drones and his former XO’s pinplants. It was a disjointed mess. For the first time Teik had a sense of what it would feel like to be on the other side of an Aposo stormer attack.
He learned a lot of details about the armor, such as height, mass, and mobility. They were shockingly dexterous and responded fairly quickly. Not as fast as his stormers, of course. There were several images of a stormer on the back of an armored Human. The stormer was using his teeth to tear at the exposed joints, power lines, attached equipment, or anything they could find. He could see they were inflicting damage, too.
The problem was, the Humans worked well together. They quickly came to support a besieged trooper using mechanical hands and small chainguns to kill stormers. The armor was impervious to the small arms, which Teik also saw. The only thing that hurt them was lasers, and he couldn’t tell how well the handheld lasers did. There simply wasn’t enough footage to judge.
The last bit he got was Skep’s end. One of the enemy powered armor suits produced a long blade from one arm and ended his XO’s life in an efficient manner. Entropy, this is bad.
“I want a missile strike,” he ordered. For a change, the factor didn’t react. He’d watched the slaughter as well and knew what it meant. The fixers programmed the missiles, and they launched seconds later. The batteries were located on the top of the mountain, above where the command bunker was located. Teik could hear the distant echoing of the missiles leaving their tubes; the sound carried through the tunnels leading to the surface.
Once again he only had two drones to watch the results. The Humans used their jumping ability to clear the target area before the missiles arrived. They also used small lasers mounted on one or more of the units to shoot down several of the weapons. From what he could see, none of them scored a hit. Entropy.
“Enemy dropships inbound. Another launch is underway.”
How many of these suits do they have? This time it was weapons, not powered armor. Small autonomous missiles homed in on the bunker antenna and ground fire systems. In minutes, they were blind.
“Prepare all forces for assault. They’ll be coming.”
* * *
Chapter 7
With the lowborn moved into the bunker’s storage areas, it was crowded. The worse part was the shuttles. There was no way to protect them. Teik left them secured on the runway up on the surface. By the time he had the lowborn out of the surface installation, enemy drones were scouting their perimeter.
He didn’t have time to give a new XO any thought. There were only two planners left, and he didn’t think either were capable of the job. Lashku was reduced in force by 20% from one engagement. If he didn’t play it right, there would be no need to promote anyone. Once they were set, he met with the leaders of each squad.
“The Humans have powered armor. They’re formidable. They’ve taken out our static defenses, and face to face inflicted heavy casualties. Now when they attack the facility, we’ll turn it on them. They dealt with a head-on assault; we’ll see how they handle an encircling attack.”
He set the most experienced fighter in charge of each of the six remaining squads of stormers, and the two planners along with himself to lead the last three squads of fighters. The APCs arrived back just in time to take cover inside the armored hangars before indirect rocket bombardment. Teik didn’t care about it. They were targeting the defensive facilities, obviously wanting to spare any useful planetary infrastructure.
While the ship the Humans had arrived in was an unknown design, it was a frigate class, which meant extremely limited space for a ground force. After the initial landing of armor, then the dropship’s second run with missiles, Teik sent scouts into the mountains to observe. The Human dropships landed almost directly next to the Aposo shuttles and disembarked more troopers, though not in armor.
“So they have a limited number of their entropy-cursed armor, good.”
The scouts counted 11 powered armor suits, which—based on the recording of the earlier fight—meant one was missing. Unarmored fighters were another 40. He had numerical superiority of three to one. It would be more than enough.
His plan was simple; he’d take the three squads of fighters and move around to flank. Once in position, the stormers would rush out to a full-frontal attack. When the enemy was occupied, he’d take the fighters to land, drive into their midst, and defeat them in short order. They only had the three heavy laser rifles, so he issued them to the two planners running squads of fighters and himself. If the stormers hadn’t cracked the powered armor, the laser rifles would.
He’d just set out with the fighters when his pinplant comms signaled. He activated it.
“Commander Teik.” It was the Zuparti F’slan.
“What do you want, I am busy.”
“We’ve negotiated a settlement. Cease hostilities.”
Teik was stunned and didn’t immediately respond. “You can’t do that,” he finally responded.
“It’s in the contract,” F’slan replied immediately.
Teik called a halt to all forces. Luckily the stormers hadn’t yet set out. He used his pinplants to call the factor.
“What’s this Zuparti Kafu talking about?”
“I’m checking, Commander,” the factor replied. He was on the command channel so he’d heard F’slan’s comm at the same time. “Yes, there’s a negotiate
d truce clause at the end of the contract.”
“You’re serious?”
“I would never be anything but serious with you, Commander.”
“You reviewed this contract before Kloot signed it?” Teik knew the factor had, just as he had. Teik had read it as an XO would read it, with the concern about combat requirements, adversaries, time of service, victory conditions, and he’d noted his problems. What he hadn’t read was the add-on clauses. Like most Mercenary Guild contracts, there could be thousands of them.
He wanted to have the APC take him back to the base and kill the factor. It would provide some degree of satisfaction, at least. Was it the factor’s fault? Yes and no. Would it fix the problem? No, and he’d then be without the factor. Plus, when they got home, he’d have to explain why he’d killed the factor and request a new one.
“There’s an exclusion,” the factor said.
“I’m listening.”
“Sub-clause 5 of clause 33, being the negotiated settlement clause, states no retreat in the face of substantial losses.”
“We only lost four squads,” Teik reminded the factor.
“Four squads out of thirteen, which is 30.7 percent. The sub-clause states we can’t be forced into retreat or surrender if we’ve sustained more than 30 percent combat losses.”
“Is this negotiated peace under such a case?”
“It’s not specific, and neither is merc law. Thus, without precedent, as Commander you can proceed based on your judgement.”
“Your diligence is noted, factor.”
The Gates of Hell Page 42
