The Depths of War (Dark Seas Book 5)

by Damon Alan

  Karanya was a backward place to think the death of this one woman would change anything.

  And an evil place for trying to end a woman who labored to save every life she could.

  But Karanya would change today.

  Alarin closed his eyes and reached out. He sensed the thoughts of the adepts in the strike team. They were minutes away from their goal.

  Emille grabbed his arm to turn him and then embraced him again.

  “It will be over by tonight,” she said, her head resting on his shoulder.

  Chapter 31 - Payback

  40 Jand 15332

  He’d volunteered immediately after he’d learned what happened.

  Lieutenant Hamden made some last minute adjustments on his command station. One hundred and twenty marines, and another forty of the meanest looking adepts he’d ever seen in his life were on board the six transports headed to Karanya. In short order they’d be setting down in the capital city and ending, if Hamden had understood the natives on his crew correctly, thousands of years of family rule in that country.

  He didn’t give one damn about their history. They’d tried to kill his Admiral, an attack that might yet be successful. And she’d done nothing but make their lives better.

  He looked at the forward display of his new tank. Three-Eight-One. An atmospheric fighter raced ahead of the shuttle, ordinance stacked beneath its wings. It lit afterburners and pushed further ahead, the lead pilot keying up on the common frequency.

  “This is Illuminate Six, we’re heading to target, arrival time ten minutes before the troops. There probably won’t be anything left for you guys, but hey, you can help clean up the mess we make.”

  Hamden laughed, despite the somber situation. The pilot of his shuttle, Ensign Torris, responded. “Funny, when we think of you attack pilots making a mess, and us cleaning it up, I’m not sure we’re talking about the same thing. Usually you say mess and it means you hit the wrong continent.”

  A strained chuckle on frequency. “Illuminate Six out. See you post-op.”

  The pilots were trying to keep their morale up.

  Two clicks on the radio from Torris was all the acknowledgment the fighters got before they disappeared into a cloud bank and went silent.

  “Fifteen minutes,” Torris called back. “You doing okay, Hamden?”

  “I’m touched by your concern,” Hamden said.

  “I did have to cover you last time,” she said. “At great personal risk to myself and the Refugian with me.”

  “You did a good job,” he replied. “Not that you followed orders. I believe you were supposed to stay back and safe. Shuttles are in short supply.”

  “I knew you’d need me,” she insisted.

  “Okay, mom.”

  “You need me to burp you or change your diapers before this run?”

  That shocked him a bit. He was quiet, thinking about how this friendly banter had even happened. Then he realized she was on a private channel, speaking only to him. This wasn’t the common frequency.

  “Torris, are you flirting with me?” he asked.

  “Pfft. Don’t flatter yourself. I just want you to come back, and if changing your diaper helps, hey, I’m in.”

  “You are flirting with me,” he said. “Look, these guys attacked Admiral Dayson. I don’t know how to explain it, but she matters to me. I’d love it if you flirted with me after we all know how the admiral is and after I kill all these backstabbing…” His voice was rising as he grew angry. He wasn’t going to say the word he was about to say to Torris. “After we kill these guys,” he finished, more subdued.

  “I get it,” Torris said. “You can buy me a fish dinner tomorrow night.”

  “You can buy me one,” Hamden shot back.

  “I figured you’d buy, since I’m making all this effort to keep you further away from death this time,” Torris said. “But sure, I’ll buy. It’s a date.”

  He had no idea how he worked a date out of what was clearly a retributive combat strike. Or if it was him that worked out the date at all.

  “Don’t you have flying to do?” Hamden said.

  “Oh yeah,” Torris answered, laughing, as the shuttle jolted. Her laugh said she’d done that on purpose. When she’d flown for him during the attack on Strick Island, she’d not given any indication of interest in him. What’d happened? Sure, he thought she was stunning, but how’d she know?

  He’d never figure out women, but at least she was giving his mind something productive to concentrate on.

  An alarm went off on the tank’s coolant turbine. That snapped him back to the present. His crew took care of the problem, and he focused on what was around him. The whistle of air on the hull of the shuttle. The whine of the turbines. He was going to attack the natives of Refuge once again. Sometimes life seemed surreal.

  “Lieutenant?” his gunner asked.

  “What?”

  “Just wanted to make sure you were with us, sir. You were making some strange faces, whoever you were talking to.”

  Sergeant Pladin. From the Fyurigan. Hamden had never worked with him before, but the kid seemed young. “How old are you, Pladin?”

  He sighed. “I get that all the time, sir. I’m nineteen.”

  “And you’re a sergeant?”

  “Surviving Merik got a lot of us promotions, sir. I was there. My scout unit was partially incinerated, but I got several of the men with me to the right spot for anti-rad medicines. We didn’t have anyone above corporal left in the unit, and the corporal we had was too burned to lead. He died later that day.”

  “Crap. Sorry, Pladin, I didn’t know you were there.”

  “It’s in my file, sir.”

  “Didn’t get time to read it. I was on the Stennis until a few weeks ago, and then had duty. Sorry, I’ll get to it.”

  Pladin smiles. “It’s good sir, I just want you to know I’m not going to fail you today.”

  “I have no doubt.”

  Hamden studied the city map of Barotikal, the capital of Karanya. A lot of it should be burning down, or maybe raining down in small chunks, from the fighter strike. The aerial attack might shock some of the enemy into submission, but that didn’t change where the choke points were, where they’d likely encounter adepts that might want revenge, or where the cities guard units were. Any resistance would result in destruction of the fanatics. Alarin, who’d planned this raid with Hamden’s new friend, Captain Kuo, apparently didn’t have time for any games.

  Hamden liked that. Get in, crush the enemy, get out. It was efficient. And resulted in the fewest friendly casualties.

  He looked down into the troop compartment of the tank. Two adepts and four marines were there. This pair of adepts had trained with these four marines for a few months, specifically for attacking the Komi. Now they’d practice their skills on Karanya, arguably a far more dangerous place.

  “What’s the plan for you guys? In tank? On the ground?” Hamden asked. “I was told to be fluid to how you want to fight.”

  “We hit the ground right after this machine does, L-T,” one of the marines answered. “We’ll use your tank for cover at first, but then move into the terrain. You’ll see us when you see us, sir, we’ve been ordered to put down any adept that resists.”

  “You think there’s going to be that many? I mean, it wasn’t that long ago we were preached to about how Merik had unified them all.”

  “Four years is a lot of time to forget, L-T. And to have your brain corrupted with lies.”

  “Sure is, Corporal. Sure is. Don’t take chances out there,” Hamden warned. “I’ve been under adept attention before. One of them can wreak havoc like there is no tomorrow. Literally.”

  “Sir, that’s why we have these guys. They’re sensitive to that sort of thing, and we have worked out enough of a system that when they tell us where to fire, we trust them.”

  “Very well. If you guys need anything from us, call it in. Otherwise the tanks will be standing guard duty on the palace rubble.
”

  “You got it, sir,” the marine answered.

  They were ready. The clock read five minutes until touchdown. He checked the gauges on the tank one more time. The fusion plant was idling. The armor read as intact and ready to respond to incoming projectiles, although that wouldn’t be the problem here.

  Hamden remembered being encased in ice at Merik’s vineyard.

  Fighting adepts was an entirely different class of warfare.

  Surviving this wasn’t nearly as likely as surviving normal combat.

  “Abort, abort,” Torris’ voice called over the radio. “The ground attack is aborted.”

  “What?” Pladin said to Hamden.

  “What’s the situation?” Hamden said into his microphone.

  A new voice came over the radio, and Hamden put it on the main speaker for the entire tank crew.

  “— ops in New Korvand, the attack is on hold. Current reports are sketchy, but details that we currently have indicate the adepts and priesthood of Karanya have contacted Alarin Sur’batti. Karanya has unconditionally surrendered, and the plotters against Admiral Dayson are dead.”

  The message repeated again.

  “New orders coming in,” Torris said to him.

  “Push them through.”

  “I have Lieutenant Hamden in the loop,” Torris said to someone.

  “This is Hamden,” he said.

  “Lieutenant Hamden, this is Captain Heinrich. You are to abort your attack, you are now to set up an occupation headquarters until such a time as ground troops from Antecar arrive. The airstrike was conducted, and I added an orbital strike from the Stennis for effect. Much of Barotikal is probably in shock over what they just saw from us. I want you to set up a landing zone for supplies, we will be making drops into the city.”

  The mission just changed radically.

  “Captain, do we know for sure all opposition is suppressed?” he asked.

  Her response was confident. “They are suppressed. The priests of Faroo and Jalai have taken charge of the city, and all surviving adepts on both sides have agreed to restrict themselves to a small zone a few blocks in area.”

  Wow. That must be hard for their egos. “And any Karanyan adept outside that zone is a target?”

  “Unless they have permission directly from you, Lieutenant. Otherwise you may eliminate any threats.”

  “I understand, sir. I’ll have the LZ squared away in six hours.”

  “You have eight,” Heinrich replied. “We’re using shuttles and lifters for their VTOL capability, since there is no runway. It will take time to organize them, so take your time and get it right.”

  “You bet, sir. I’ll square it away.”

  “Heinrich out.”

  “We’re over Barotikal,” Torris said as soon as Heinrich was done. “You should see this.”

  Hamden turned on the front view again. Torris slid the shuttle into a hover, then panned the area. Several different areas of the city were burning, all military targets on Hamden’s list. Barracks, guard posts, supply depots, and a few known areas where adepts congregated.

  He whistled at what he saw next. A column of smoke extended up into the stratosphere, now twisted and bent by winds aloft. On the ground, where the palace would have been, a two hundred meter wide zone of destruction burned. A crater, nearly a hundred meters wide, lay directly in the center. In the distance, over military targets outside the city, similar zones of destruction burned with a single smoke tracer reaching skyward toward the source.

  Heinrich wasn’t messing around. No wonder the locals had revolted and surrendered. To them it must have looked like their gods had turned on them.

  “Set us down by the palace… or where it was. We’ll set up our secure zone there,” Hamden said to Torris. “You should land, I bet we’re here for a while.”

  “You got it,” Torris said. “So you and me, two dehydrated dinners, say, in four hours?”

  Hamden smiled. If things went well, that sounded good. “You and me, dehydrated dinner for two, in four hours,” he agreed.

  Chapter 32 - Leadership

  03 Febbed 15332

  Heinrich paced outside of Mayor Jannis’ office.

  Admiral Dayson was heavily injured and would be down for a while. At least she was going to live, a relief to everyone. As competent as Heinrich felt, she was quite happy to let the admiral and her experience carry the final burden of the big command decisions.

  Now that her boss was down, she hated to admit, neither she nor the fleet was ready for a permanent Inez Heinrich leadership. That was something that wasn’t her fault or even within her control.

  But, of the current choices to fill in temporarily, she believed she was the best option.

  That was in fact the question she was waiting to have answered. Pacing was just a sign of her nervousness regarding the outcome to that wait.

  Who would be in charge of the fleet until the admiral was well again?

  More than one contender existed. Herself, as XO of the Stennis and carrying the rank of captain. The crew of the Stennis at least knew her competence and fairness of command.

  Captain Vargas of the Fyurigan. Vargas was well known to everyone as risk adverse, the perfect Captain of an engineering vessel. But not a war fleet. A wartime captain had to have the nerve to put it all on the line at the right time, and hold back when that was called for.

  The other option was Captain Kuo, the new arrival, captain of the Hyaku-hari, and the only reasonable alternative to Heinrich. He’d commanded in battle. He’d survived Hamor. But he knew nothing of their operations in Oasis. That would take as long to understand as it would for Admiral Dayson to heal.

  Heinrich was the clear choice, but would Mayor Jannis make it?

  The door to the mayor’s office opened, and Kuo walked out. The grin on his face made Heinrich nervous. Had Jannis selected him without even talking to her?

  “Captain,” he said, looking at her, tipping his hat.

  She nodded at him in acknowledgment of his greeting. “Captain.”

  “Next,” someone bellowed from inside the room Kuo just left.

  He shrugged, shook her hand quickly, and headed toward the door.

  Heinrich sighed, straightened her dress uniform, and went into the office. She hated politics of any kind.

  The Mayor was sitting in her chair, behind a massive wooden desk. Behind her, on the other side of plate glass, gulls rode the sea breeze coming over the top of the building. She could just barely hear their calls through the glass.

  Heinrich walked to the carpet in front of the desk, stood at parade rest. It wasn’t customary in the Alliance to salute civilians, even leadership.

  “Captain Inez Heinrich, Executive Officer, OSV Michael Stennis.”

  “OSV?” Jannis asked, looking up.

  “Oasian space vessel. We can’t very well call it Alliance space vessel anymore,” Heinrich answered.

  “Oh, that does make sense,” the mayor agreed, managing to sound noncommittal. She looked back down at the paperwork on the desk. Heinrich’s file, in hard copy print.

  “You know the difficulty of putting you into the command slot with the recent memory of Orson still poking at the open wounds in the fleet, don’t you?” Mayor Jannis asked without looking up.

  “I admit that is a huge problem,” Heinrich agreed. “But it’s the only service flaw I can think of.”

  “I agree. And I know full well that wasn’t your fault. I don’t consider it a flaw, I consider it an event. So you’re it,” Jannis said.

  “What?” Heinrich exclaimed. “I just saw Kuo walk out of here grinning like a madman. I thought for sure—”

  “Kuo doesn’t want it and Vargas isn’t the guy for it,” Jannis said, interrupting her. “Kuo walked straight in and said he didn’t have the experience with our organization here to run this show. And that if Sarah trained you like she trained him, you were the one.”

  That felt like a weight off her shoulders. Admiral Dayson wa
s grooming her for a reason, and now Heinrich would get to extend her wings a bit.

  “You’re getting a temporary promotion to Fleet Captain Inez Heinrich, and you’ll run our acquisition operations until Sarah is back on duty,” Jannis said.

  “You don’t look happy,” Heinrich noted.

  “I’m happy you’re the one, if that’s what you mean,” Jannis said. “My problem isn’t with you being our military commander. I just don’t like not having other options if you’re not around for any reason. So you’ll take Kuo as your XO, and train him to do what Sarah has trained you to do.”

  “He’s good with that?” Heinrich asked.

  “It was his idea,” Jannis said, shrugging. “He’s quite curious what another protege of Sarah Dayson is like.”

  “So am I.”

  “Well, that’s comforting,” the mayor replied, her tone sarcastic. “What’s your plan?”

  “To go to the Andromeda colony, and see what’s going on there. Then return here to press our attack on the Komi,” Heinrich answered.

  “Don’t tell me any more,” Jannis said. “I understand the need to take the Komi down some notches, but I don’t like that innocents are paying the price. So I’ll run this system, and you do what you need to do to get the ships to protect it properly from any Hive attack.”

  “I’ll do that very thing,” Heinrich promised.

  “You doubted I was going to give you the job,” the mayor said.

  “Pardon?”

  “When you walked in. You thought Kuo had the job,” she restated. “You are not allowed to have any more doubts, at least not that anyone else can see. I only commanded for a short time, but doubt tore me up. You, my dear Captain, will make your decisions based upon your expertise, execute them with conviction, and deal with the aftermath. You will not have doubts.”

  Heinrich laughed. “Mayor Jannis, I didn’t doubt myself at all. I knew I was right for the job. I just doubted you knew it.”

  Jannis laughed. “You and Sarah deserve each other up there.”