by Rick Partlow
Well, at least we know they can’t fire on the Shakak. Probably can’t even use the point defense batteries without main power.
“We got the hub straight ahead, sir,” Tremonti told him, gesturing at where First squad was arrayed around all sides of a large T-intersection just down the passageway. “Down goes back through crew quarters to the auxiliary control room and then engineering, up heads through the computer cores to the bridge.”
Of course, “up” and “down” were meaningless terms in free-fall, but the ship was constructed vertically, like almost all conventional, fusion drive starships, with the deck plates “down” and the overhead “up,” and it wasn’t hard to tell one from the other.
“Davidson,” Lee called back to the platoon leader.
The younger woman boosted up from behind Third squad, nearly ramming into him before she remembered to hit the braking thrusters. The hiss of her gas jets almost masked the hiss of his own, exasperated sigh.
“Yes, sir?”
“Take your platoon sergeant and Third squad and head down to the auxiliary control room. Remember we’re looking for prisoners who might actually know something, so don’t bring me back some Goddamned janitor.”
“Yes, sir!” Davidson seemed as if she would have saluted if it had been practical and was making up for it in enthusiasm.
Lee sighed and switched over to the private channel with First Sergeant Tremonti.
“I hope she doesn’t get herself killed.”
Tremonti laughed, the sound a hoarse bark that made him want to clear his throat.
“Sgt. Montoya will take care of her. I’m gonna take First and head to the computer core and have Alexander try to download their database. You think you can handle the bridge crew without me, sir?” He couldn’t see her grin but he could hear it.
“Oh, I think I’ll manage, Top.”
“Seriously, Colonel, we ain’t seeing nothing up the hub, not a single one of the creepy bastards. They’re hold up somewhere waiting for us, and the bridge is as good a place for it as any. I know we want prisoners, but if it’s too hot in there, well…that’s why Mithra made grenades, you know?”
She was worried, he finally realized, but not about the mission, or herself.
“I’m not going to go get myself killed, Top,” he assured her.
“You damn well better not, sir,” she said, a bit of heat behind the words. “The Rangers already lost one commander, and that was one too many.”
“Go do your job, Top,” he said, but the words were gentle. “And I’ll do mine.”
13
Valentine Kurtz realized that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone into battle without Logan Brannigan in overall command. Then the floor dropped out from beneath him and took his stomach with it. He bit down on his mouthpiece and stamped his feet into his mech’s jump-jet pedals.
Roaring filled his ears and braking thrust pushed him deeper into his cockpit “easy chair,” and the Golem ceased its terminal-velocity plunge toward the harsh, unforgiving surface of Revelation and described a slow, lazy arc downward. The shadowy darkness of the drop-ship mech bay was replaced by the burning, afternoon glare and a dozen other mech from his battalion were already arrayed ahead of him, burning in on their jump-jets.
No strike mecha this time, no Arbalests, no scouts. He’d made the decision to go in with as much force as he could insert quickly, and dropping assault mecha in was faster than landing and disembarking the heavier machines.
Threat displays and IFF transponder signals and navigation overlays fought for his attention, but he forced himself to concentrate on bringing the assault mech down safely first. It was the hardest thing for a commander to learn, and it had taken him as long as anyone. It was easy for a senior officer to become so wrapped up in the responsibilities of the position that they forgot to keep themselves alive.
“Alpha Company is down!” Captain Figueroa reported from a few kilometers ahead of him. “Moving into patrol formation.”
Kurtz let up the pressure on the jump pedals as the heat gauges began to surge up toward the end of yellow, pushing too close to red, and in seconds, sandstone was crunching under the footpads of his Golem. Thirty-five tons of metal compacted the surface beneath the two-meter wide ovals, cracking the dry stone with each footfall as he scrambled for balance.
The Golem settled into a walk and Kurtz finally allowed himself the time to check the sensors readouts. They were, he saw, just a few kilometers outside Revelation City toward the Run, right on target. The gargantuan roar of jets overhead pulled his eyes away from his displays for just a moment, and he twisted the torso of the Golem around to watch the second drop-ship blocking out the system’s primary star. Its engines screamed in protest at the almost stall-speed run just three hundred meters up, slow enough to disgorge another company of Wholesale Slaughter mecha.
I still think of us as Wholesale Slaughter.
Technically, they were all Spartan Mobile Armored Corps now, but the change hadn’t had time to percolate from his head to his heart. It might take a while. He’d been a loyal son of Sparta, but the most significant events of his short life had occurred serving under the Wholesale Slaughter banner, following Logan Brannigan.
“Assault One,” he called to Commander Haskell, running their combat air patrol, “this is Armor One, gimme a sitrep on the enemy forces.”
“Roger that, Armor One,” Haskell’s laconic drawl responded.
All assault shuttle pilots sound the same. They must study that fucking accent in flight school.
“They had a single assault shuttle on a wide sweep around the other end of the Run,” the pilot reported, “but Oliveira took him down in about ten seconds. These sorry fuckers can’t fly for shit. You got a company-strength element of Jeuta armor heading your way from the city, though. About three kilometers out, ETA eight minutes or so, if you let them come to you.”
Kurtz grunted. The response wasn’t unexpected, but he’d hoped for a bit longer to maneuver before the enemy figured out where they were.
Ah, well. The best laid plans and all that shit.
“Any sign of their dismounts?”
“Nothing clear. There are some likely thermal readings out in the canyon, but I can’t be sure if they’re human or Jeuta.”
He nodded, though Haskell couldn’t see it. That made sense. If there were still any survivors, the Jeuta would be patrolling the Run, hunting them down.
“What about their drop-ships?” he asked, but the words weren’t all the way out before a faint rumble reached the sonic sensors in the exterior of his mech, like the echo of distant thunder rolling across the plains.
He followed the sound, peering back toward the spaceport landing field and zooming in with the telescopic view of the optical display. A pair of thick, black mushroom clouds spouted over the landing field, merging as they climbed high over the low, rolling hills.
“That would be them, now.” Haskell’s tone was dry and self-satisfied, almost as if he were trying to rub it in that his aerospace wing had already accomplished its mission. “Whatever you’re facing on the ground, they’re on their own now. You want me to swing through and thin out the herd of mecha for you?”
Kurtz considered the offer. It was tempting, but three kilometers was damned close, and by the time Haskell circled around and lined up for the shot, it would likely be more like a kilometer and a half. Too easy when the lines were that close for the enemy to charge his forces, try to get too close for the shuttles to engage, and if that happened while they were still forming up, it was a recipe for disaster. Better to do this the more straightforward way.
That’s all just fucking excuses. He winced at the admission, but being honest with himself was a necessary part of being a commander. He wanted to beat them mech-to-mech because it was more viscerally satisfying as a form of revenge for the people they’d killed, for his friends.
“No,” he told Haskell. “We’ll handle it from here. I want you and Oliveira
to patrol the Run and find me those dismounts…and any survivors.”
“Aye, sir.” Hendrick’s cocksure pilot’s tone sobered at the thought. “We’ll find them. Assault One, out.”
“Alpha One, Bravo One, this is Armor One” Kurtz called to his company commanders, checking the disposition of their mecha in his IFF display. He didn’t see any damage indicators and all the mecha had dropped clean, already circling into a defensive perimeter. “We have a company of enemy armor incoming from the city. Alpha, get your platoons into a double wedge formation and move to contact at the double time. Bravo, I want you on their left flank at wide separation in an echelon right, ready to jump into a hasty line on contact. Clear?”
“Roger that, Armor One,” Figueroa confirmed.
“Yes, sir,” Braxton said, tension evident in his voice.
Kurtz frowned and keyed into the man’s private comm channel.
“Let’s not forget proper comm procedures, Bravo One,” he said. “I know you’re worried about Andrea, but lots of us have friends and loved ones we left here. Let’s keep our heads in the game.”
“Roger that Armor One,” Braxton acknowledged, his tone abashed. “Bravo moving into formation.”
Kurtz fretted silently, wondering if he’d done the right thing bringing Ian Braxton along. The young officer had a lover among the civilians of Revelation City and he wouldn’t be the first soldier to let personal affairs cloud his military judgement. But as he’d told Braxton, he would have been hard pressed to find any of the Wholesale Slaughter troops who didn’t have connections among the civilians or troops they’d left on Revelation.
Hell, the only reason I don’t have a girlfriend here is Logan kept me too damn busy training troops to have any sort of a social life.
Kurtz broke the Golem into a trot, each loping step a sledgehammer blow into the ground, punctuated by the gentle squeak of the suspension of his control seat. The terrain was flat and the clusters of trees scattered wide, making it easier for him to monitor the disposition of the two mech companies. Alpha was arrayed into two sets of parallel wedges moving across the map display at twenty-five kilometers an hour, already drawing away from him, while Bravo was stretched out into a slanted line on their left flank. He’d considered splitting Bravo and arraying them on either flank, to catch the Jeuta in a pincer movement, but jumping in as a company had a significant tactical impact.
Kurtz felt like a coward hanging back so far behind them, but that was the curse of senior command. He had to be out of the scrum to guide his units more effectively. If he had to fire a shot, he’d failed. And it only got worse the higher his rank climbed.
Theoretically, I’m a brigade commander, but I’ve never led more than a battalion in actual combat.
It was damned hard to land a brigade of mecha, and short of a full-scale invasion, it was almost never done. Even fielding a battalion was a huge logistical challenge, with a minimum of five drop-ships and usually seven or eight assault shuttles to cover them, which meant at least three cruisers involved in the operation.
He tried to imagine what it would be like commanding a full brigade during an operation large enough to require that many mecha and shuddered. It wasn’t something he could have done from a mech, not even a Sentinel command platform. He would have been stuck in some operations bunker, surrounded by monitors and displays, nagging at his battalion commanders for details and watching icons move around a virtual battlefield. It sounded dreadfully boring.
Was that what lay in his future now that Logan was the Guardian? Was he destined to be the next Donnell Anders, shuffling from one meeting to another, stuck in an office? It seemed like a fate worse than death. He wasn’t even thirty yet and he certainly wasn’t ready to hang up his spurs for a desk.
And yet what else did this future hold? Logan was the ruler of the whole Dominion and he’d need people he trusted in key positions. Kurtz was a full bird colonel already, obscenely, absurdly over-promoted for his age simply because there was no one else available.
If I’m lucky, maybe that’ll keep me in the field. Maybe the Council greybeards will force him into keeping one of the old generals in charge, maybe even Anders, if Logan can get over him working for Hale.
Kurtz shook off the reverie as the Jeuta mecha came into optical range, less than a kilometer away now, a line formation. This far away, they were a band of Iron Age warriors charging across the open plain at the enemy, missing only the spears and shields. It was easy to dismiss them as savage, stupid, but he knew it wasn’t true. They didn’t have the technological capabilities of the human Dominions, but they were ruthless, fearless and damned good at killing.
He wanted to order Alpha to launch missiles, but held his tongue. Either he trusted Figueroa as a company commander or he didn’t, and now was the time to find out. Figueroa earned his trust three seconds later in a spider-web of smoke trails arcing out from the launch pods of Golems, Agamemnons and Valiants. The Jeuta responded in kind and the dance began, performed with slight variations in machines just like these for half a millennium. In a broader sense, the dance had begun tens of thousands of years before that, on a world no human could even locate on the star charts anymore and Mithra knew when it would end.
Maybe never.
Figueroa charged his company into the oncoming missiles, ordering them all to their top speed at the expense of the precision of his formation, while the Jeuta simply kept up their pace as if they were certain of their own invulnerability. Warheads detonated prematurely as anti-missile systems targeted them with machine-gun turrets, but not enough. Kurtz winced at the ones that made it through, at the flashing red from two of Alpha’s machines in his IFF display. The pilots were alive, but the mecha had debilitating damage. Three others took minor damage from close detonations, but most of the missiles spent themselves into the bare ground, ripping apart sandstone in impotent fury.
It was worse for the Jeuta, if for no other reason than their warheads and guidance systems were inferior to the Dominion builds. Wholesale Slaughter machines launching Spartan-built weapons didn’t miss at this range, and four of the Confederation mecha went down, destroyed or immobilized. Fire and billowing smoke consumed the open plain, burning away the thin layer of surface grass and weed and concealing the clash of arms behind a thin veil of white.
Kurtz’s thermal sensors pierced the camouflage, flashing white and yellow and orange with the exchange of laser and cannon fire and again he clamped down on impatience, waiting on Braxton to engage.
There.
Twelve shimmering columns of superheated air, twelve metal titans soaring over the battlefield, the gods of ancient myth descending amidst the smoke and thunder and crackling lightning. The Jeuta line had become ragged under the missile attack and the enemy had responded to its losses by clumping up, trying to fill in the holes and instead making themselves easier targets. Bravo Company landed nearly in the midst of the cluster on the enemy’s right flank, firing even before they touched down.
Watching the chess game from half a kilometer away, Valentine Kurtz felt disconnected from the immediacy of it, found himself missing the visceral desperation of combat, of having the enemy in your lap and the transcendence of action on instinct, without conscious thought. One of Bravo’s mecha went red and he saw the machine stagger off-balance, its left arm dangling by actuator cabling, pulling it off to the side. Red flashed beside the IFF transponder of Warrant Officer First Class Hart. A Jeuta Reaper raised its laser, targeting the damaged machine and Kurtz acted, firing his Golem’s ETC cannon before he’d realized he’d even targeted the older mech.
His cannon round streaked away on the plasma fire of superheated gas and took the Reaper through the cockpit and on into the reactor core. Sun-bright flares streamed through the holes the tungsten round had cut through both sides of the mech and the humanoid shape stiffened in mid-step and collapsed forward, streaming smoke and flame.
Oops. Fired a round. Guess that means I failed.
We
ll, at least he’d failed at self-control, but he hadn’t been willing to take the chance someone else would see the enemy in time to keep it from finishing off the Wholesale Slaughter Valiant and Warrant Officer Hart with it.
By the time he’d let his gaze widen again, withdrawing to a big-picture view of the battlefield, the battle was nearly over. A single platoon of Jeuta remained intact, scattered amidst the burning wreckage of their fellows. Enemy mecha stood their ground, frozen in machine death like victims of the Medusa, monuments to this petty, nameless battle, and it was difficult to tell the survivors from the casualties until they moved. He thought they might charge blindly into the Wholesale Slaughter attack and die in the attempt, but again he’d underestimated their intelligence. Either one of their leaders had survived or else they’d all had the idea to disengage and withdraw at approximately the same time and in the same direction, retreating through a forest of burning mecha.
They were racing right through the center of the Wholesale Slaughter formation, which seemed suicidal to Kurtz at first, until the genius of it struck him. Bravo couldn’t fire on them without taking the risk of blue-on-blue casualties on Alpha, and Alpha’s mecha were blocked out by the standing husks of dead Jeuta machines. One or two fired anyway, trying to squeeze a shot through, blowing pieces off already-disabled enemy armor in the attempt.
They were heading for the Run, and Kurtz knew they couldn’t be allowed to reach it. It would be too easy for even a platoon of enemy mecha to delay and ambush in the confines of the canyons, attriting their numbers and delaying their search. He should have shouted an order, should have let his troops put themselves in harm’s way while he stayed back and coordinated the attack, but there was just too much mech-jock left in the colonel to stay out of the fight. Kurtz mashed down his jump pedals and rumbled upward and forward on columns of superheated air, sucked in by the turbines just behind his Golem’s shoulders and funneled through the fusion reactor.
