by B. V. Larson
“Karst, stay behind me. You’re in battlesuits and might be mistaken for enemy. Breakers, shoot anything in a battlesuit!” Then he stepped to the edge of the tunnel, facing the engineers.
Enemy battlesuiters dropped from openings in the ceiling or crawled out of hatches in the walls. Some were met by storms of fire where Heiser had evidently set up local ambushes. Killmores chopped others in half or blew them to pieces, but even in death, the Hok that took point held down their trigger fingers and sent hot metal by the bucketful screaming among the lightly armored Breakers. Ricochets caused wounds and casualties, creating confusion that favored the attackers.
The engineers did the right thing, flipping the switches on their mining lasers and diving for cover. The hot green beams shone brightly in the smoke, creating a deadly barrier down the center of the two passageways where the attackers would come, one each to the left and right of Straker.
He counted those as interdicted, and concentrated on the area in front of him. Unlike most of the Breakers, his HUD cued and targeted enemies once he told his SAI what to look for. He began putting single gatling shots into battlesuiters, each one a kill. His problem was complicated by ensuring his penetrators didn’t go right through enemy troopers and kill friendlies behind them.
Marines poured out one hole in particular, and Straker turned his attention to it along with his force-cannon. Aiming precisely, he sent a narrow beam through the entrance. When the plasma struck something inside—a wall, a trooper—its point of impact exploded with heat expansion, abruptly cutting off the flow of attackers.
But the Breakers were losing the battle. The enemy battlesuiters were too tough in their armor and too well trained, and each of them had a HUD of his own to help identify friend from foe in the smoke. Straker had no choice but to get in the middle of it and draw their attention.
“Loco, get back here,” he rasped, firing as rapidly as he could choose aimpoints. “It’s going to shit.”
“On my way, boss,” came the reply.
Straker lost his tactical awareness in the fight as his combat mind went into overload. His body, assaulted by the pinpricks of pain feedback, interpreted his situation as death threats and dumped fight-or-flight hormones into his system, speeding up his already-accelerated actions.
Stepping forward, Straker grabbed a battlesuiter out of midair with his right-hand gauntlet even as he fired gatling rounds with his left, letting his SAI do the work. Like a child with an action figure, he slammed the enemy into the deck at his feet, hard enough to shatter bone.
Without thinking, he kicked a nearby Hok, flinging him across the room, and then fired his recharged force-cannon into another maintenance hatch where he saw movement. More single gatling shots tore holes in his enemies, and combat became a whirl of death so confusing and quick that later, he couldn’t reconstruct it in his memory.
He knew he was fighting for his life as he felt severe pain at his knees and shoulders, the most vulnerable spots for battlesuiters. Enemy with chainsaw-like molecular cutters sawed at him, and he slapped them with his ton-heavy gauntlets like a man would strike at rats chewing on him.
Too many, too many! his mind cried as he roared and tried to scrape them off on the nearby walls. He shifted them into the beams of the mining lasers, he smashed them with his fists, he shot them with gatling rounds, but there were too many.
Straker felt a blast of heat wash over him, the feedback circuits faithfully reproducing the sensations of his skin, stepped down only slightly from scalding. Plasma surrounded him, and then the pain in a dozen places of his body began to fade as battlesuiters fell off him like crisped leeches.
He turned to see Loco at the entrance to the tunnel, his force-cannon smoking. He’d sent a flamethrower wide-beam blast directly at Straker, peeling the enemy off him…but several Breakers lay burned by the overblast.
“Dammit, Loco—”
“Sorry, boss, I had to do it. We can’t lose you.”
Straker ground his teeth and turned his attention to finishing off the enemy. Perversely, the more Breakers he lost, the easier it became to kill Hok and Mutuality marines, with no chance of fratricide.
He felt the old anger fill him like a familiar friend, the hatred of those he’d thought of as evil aliens all his life. He slammed the enemy like rag dolls into the deck or walls, stomping on them when they fell.
He’d failed his people, he knew. He held back hot tears of rage, rage that made him want to wipe them all out, them and every single one of the sneering bastard Inquisitors and the haughty commissars and the unseen evil Committee members pulling the strings of the common folk from their fetid, corrupt lairs—
“Boss, boss… Boss!” Straker found his leg caught in both of Loco’s arms, metal grinding against metal. He looked down to see a Mutuality marine, his helmet knocked off, his face filled with the terror or his own mortality, holding up his hands as if to fend off the sole of the Foehammer poised to crush him.
“Boss, throttle down. Come on, Derek, ease off. We’ve won. We’ve won.”
Straker took a shuddering breath and told his SAI to reduce his mechsuit to minimum mobility mode. “I’m good, I’m good, Loco. Let me go.”
Loco let him go, and he stepped back. Post-battle fog made his vision fill with dark spots of fatigue. Gazing around, he realized he stood in the middle of a charnel house, an abattoir of the wounded and dead, now overrun with lightly armed Sachsen civilians. Some were cheering, chanting and shaking weapons in the air. But some were attacking the fallen, stabbing or shooting wounded battlesuiters.
When one drew a bead on by mistake on a Breaker in half-armor, Straker was jolted out of his funk. He activated his external speakers and roared, “Cease fire, cease fire! Dammit, how do you say ‘cease fire’ in German?” He reached down to knock the civilian over before he could murder his ally by mistake. “Kill the Hok, but nobody else!”
Loco, Karst and the other surviving Breakers began echoing his orders. Aldrik Ritter marched among them and yelled, “Halt! Nicht schiessen!” over and over, until the berserkers among the insurgents had come to their senses. The elation of victory showed in their eyes and, denied more violence, some began looting weapons and equipment from the fallen.
“Spear, you still alive?” Straker comlinked, hoping for an answer.
“Here, sir.” Heiser waved with one arm from a seat on a destroyed loader. A medic was working on his other arm, and his leg was already wrapped in a combat dressing.
Straker left his external speakers on and synched with an all-channel comlink broadcast. “Listen up, all Breakers and Sachsens and any of you Mutuality motherfuckers that are still thinking of fighting. This is Commodore Derek Straker, the Liberator. All organized Mutualist units have been defeated. Most of them are dead. Within an hour, we’ll have drilled through to the command center. This fortress is ours.”
A renewed cheer went up from everyone around him. The surviving engineers got back to work with the lasers and thermal lances after helping to drag bodies and wounded out of the way.
“If you’re not with us already, surrender now and you’ll be treated in accordance with the laws of war. You can show your good faith by identifying the commissars or inquisitors among you, or any other lackeys of the Mutualist regime.” Straker enjoyed calling them lackeys, a fair reversal of the name they’d called all the Hundred Worlds POWs when he’d first been captured.
“If you know where Hok are hiding, we need to know that too,” he continued. “To those inside the command center: you can save yourselves a lot of trouble by opening up and surrendering. If we have to dig you out of there, well… I’m not sure I can keep these Sachsens from rampaging in there and cutting all your throats.”
That brought another cheer, and some of the militia fighters began dancing in a circle, firing their weapons into the ceiling.
“Stop that! Aldrik, get control of your people!” Straker bellowed.
Ritter raced over and punched one man, knocked anot
her down, and snatched a carbine out of a woman’s grip, snarling harshly in the local speech.
Straker continued, “Control center duty officer, I’m sure you’ve heard me. Respond on this channel, now.”
He waited, and then repeated his instructions. “Come on, whoever you are. I know you’re just some poor slob stuck on the night shift, surrounded by a bunch of scared people. Give up before your own noncoms think about putting a bullet in your back and taking my deal. Get out ahead of this thing and we’ll all be okay.”
Straker waited as the seconds ticked by. The engineer lasers sparked and popped and the thermal lances continued to work on the hinges.
He was just about to give up, thinking the control center crew was commanded by some die-hard fanatic, when he heard an unfamiliar woman’s voice. “Commodore Straker, this is Subaltern Jimson. We will open the inner door if you promise to keep out the mob and treat us as you should.”
“I promise.” Straker checked to see who’d heard the response. It appeared as if only those with comlinks had. The locals seemed unaware. “Spear, can you move?” he asked, still broadcasting both on comlink and speakers.
“Yes, sir. Slow.” Heiser stood on shaky legs.
“Have your noncoms clear out these fine allied Sachsen citizens. Escort them to the cafeterias and galleries. Have a few beers. Ritter, you hear me?”
“Yes, Liberator,” Aldrik said with raised voice.
“Get your people moving, and tell them not to loot! We only have a few days until the enemy shows up in force. This fortress needs to be operational. Their lives depend on it! Spread the word. I’m counting on you.”
“We will not fail you, Liberator!” Aldrik cried, clearly for the benefit of those Sachsens nearby. He continued in a loud voice, relating Straker’s instructions in German.
Over the next couple of minutes, the citizens cleared out and headed for other areas of the fortress, still celebrating. Two of the young men kicked a battlesuit helmet back and forth between them like a football, laughing uproariously as they proceeded down the passageway. Straker hoped it didn’t still contain a head.
He heard Aldrik Ritter crying words that sounded like “Heil der Be-fryer,” over and over again. He remembered that “Frei,” which sounded like “fry,” meant “free”—as in Freiheit, freedom. So “der Befryer,” or Befreier, must mean Liberator. Hopefully, Ritter was giving them a good impression of him, a legend to cling to in what might be dark days ahead.
“Subaltern Jimson, you may open the inner door now.”
“Opening now, sir.” From behind the massive, damaged outer, the next layer swung inward. “I think you’ll still have to cut through. The interlocks are welded shut on the outer door.”
Straker felt himself begin to relax from hyper-vigilance. The victory had been won, and now he and the Breakers—those that remained—would be inheriting an intact command center, along with the vital capital weaponry on the fortress.
Over the next hours, the orbital fortress was cleared of a few residual Hok and Mutuality troops. The Hok always died fighting, but the humans surrendered to the promise of humane treatment, and of not being turned over to the Sachsens.
The locals calmed down after a while and returned to their jobs and businesses. Many wanted to return to the planet.
Reports from the surface indicated the small Mutuality garrisons were quickly overwhelmed by mobs of citizens, while the military base in the capital city of New Dresden surrendered when Straker threatened to strike it with particle beams the next time the fortress passed overhead. Ditto for the installations and bases scattered around the star system, once they knew Straker had the power to come conquer them.
All in-system warships were now under Breaker control. Gurung’s and Zholin’s skeleton crews manned them and formed a combined squadron in high orbit above Sachsen-3, joined by Liberator and Revenge. The local attack ships on patrol were already heading in to surrender themselves. Without sidespace engines, and with nowhere to go, their choices were to give up, to make suicide attacks, or to die when their air ran out.
As Straker had suspected, nobody in the Mutuality proved loyal enough to make a last stand with no hope of victory.
In the fortress’s spacious control center, Straker gathered his key personnel for a conference around its holo-table. Their mood was jubilant, except for First Sergeant Heiser, Straker noticed.
“What’s bothering you, Spear? Those wounds hurting?”
Heiser lifted his elbow slightly, the arm in a flexi-sling. “No, sir. Pain meds. I’m counting the cost, and thinking about the future.”
Straker nodded soberly. “The price was high. Eighty Breakers dead, many of the infantry wounded. But we took every objective, despite the enemy’s best efforts. We’ve done something not seen in centuries of warfare. We’ve liberated a whole star system, not merely conquered it for a different empire.”
“But what next, sir? What happens when they respond with a fleet? Dreadnoughts will crush us.”
Straker pressed his lips together. It wasn’t like Heiser to despair in the midst of victory. Maybe he lost someone close to him. He’d been seeing a civilian woman, Straker vaguely remembered. A rock miner? An engineer, maybe? Looking at Heiser’s bleak face, he knew he’d guessed right.
“Every one of our casualties is a tragedy, Spear. But we all knew what we were getting into, and our fallen heroes were willing to sacrifice themselves to free others—millions of others here in the Sachsen system.” Straker swept his eyes around the table. “Billions of others—and we’ll free billions more.”
Engels put her hand on Heiser’s shoulder and whispered something into his ear, glancing at Straker as she did so. The big man relaxed at the touch, took a deep breath, and nodded. “I know. Fuck it and drive on, right, sir?”
“We have to, Spear. To honor them.”
Zaxby opened his mouth to speak, but Loco clapped his hand over the octopoid’s rubbery lips. “It was still a good question, boss,” Loco said. “What next?”
“That’s what we’re here to talk about,” said Straker. “My intention is to take the forces we have and hit more new or lightly defended systems. We’ll try to Trojan Horse them if they have fortresses, conquer them if they don’t. If we can’t take them, we’ll try a different system. We need to spread this Galactic Liberation as far and wide as we can. If we can take enough territory, I’m hoping systems will start revolting on their own.”
Zaxby used three tentacles to pry his mouth free. He’d donned a water suit again and, though he looked battered, seemed to have recovered his old energy. “Commodore Straker, as you’ve said so often, hope is not a plan.”
“Yes, but liberations are based on people, and people need hope. We’ll send message drones to broadcast to every system we can reach. The word of our successes will cause widespread unrest, which will cause the Mutuality to crack down, causing more resentment. When we show up in force, we’ll have ready-made allies.”
“I understand your reasoning, but my projections show that we will fail, absent finding some other advantage.” Zaxby’s fingerlike sub-tentacles danced over the surface in front of him, activating the holographic function.
A star map sprang into being above the holo-table, showing the local spiral arm. Zaxby continued. “This view encompasses approximately ten thousand star systems. Here is the territory of the Hundred Worlds, which despite its poetic name, includes 247 star systems, 134 fully habitable planets, and thousands of asteroid habitats and moon bases.” A small, bean-shaped area flashed yellow.
“Go on,” said Straker, intrigued. Until now, they’d not had such a capable military-grade holo-display available, and if he had a weakness, it was in visualizing three-dimensional space. This helped immensely, and he could see the others leaning forward, also interested.
“This is the Mutuality, composed of 1963 star systems, 1011 fully habitable planets, and over 12,000 associated bases and installations.”
A larger, red bean sp
rang up next to the smaller yellow one. The two nested into each other, concave to concave, rather like an adult’s hand holding a child’s.
“Taken together, humanity’s range is roughly spherical, and is centered around the Sol System of Old Earth, as one might expect.” An icon deep in Mutuality space flashed. “Old Earth is industrially spent, though it is apparently a lovely museum and shrine to humanity’s origins. I would be very interested to visit someday. The ruins, the old walled ports… did you know over seventy percent of the surface is water?”
“Thanks for the brainiac lecture, but can you get to the point?” Loco said with an air of boredom.
“With that attitude, I have no idea how you made it through Academy, Lieutenant Paloco,” said Zaxby.
Loco shrugged. “I seduced a few lady professors, that’s what I did.”
“I find that extremely unlikely.”
“You can find it and shove it—”
“At ease, you two,” Straker snapped. “Zaxby, go on. I’m all ears.”
“Your ears are malfunctioning?”
Straker waved. “Never mind. Proceed with your briefing.”
“Thank you, Commodore Straker. As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, the capital of the Mutuality is here, on Unison-4 in the Unison system.” Another icon flashed a few parsecs from Old Earth. “And we are here.”
A tiny blue dot appeared, and then expanded as Zaxby zoomed in on it. Now, half the display was filled with sections of Mutuality and Hundred Worlds territory, and half showed other star systems. The small blue bead of Sachsen lay just within Mutuality space, at the outside edge of the territories of both empires.
“I will now highlight the most vulnerable systems and planets—the most lightly defended, or the ones most likely to revolt, or both. I include eleven outlying human-settled systems that have remained independent, as Sachsen used to be, before the Mutuality decided to claim a pretext for conquering it.”
