by Mark Barber
Vel Ye lunged forward. Tahl stepped in to meet him, twisting into a basic reverse punch with clinical precision. He rapidly extended his arm and concentrated the clenching of every muscle to transmit all of his force and energy from his feet all the way up through his body and into the very point of his knuckles. Letting out a roar, he slammed his fist straight through the Algoryn’s high guard and into his face, pushing through to keep that one perfect punch hurtling forward to an aiming point behind the back of his target’s head.
With the audible crunching of breaking bone, Vel Ye’s head snapped back before he crumpled backward to the floor. Tahl retreated back and resumed his guard, ready for his next strike. Vel Ye did not move. The roaring of the crowd intensified as statistical readouts scrolled across the screens above the ring. Vel Ye was dead before he had hit the floor. Tahl had won the title.
Chapter One
…Fifteen Years Later
Benin Province
Equatorial Region
Markov’s Prize
Landing Day (L-Day)
Strike Trooper Lian Sessetti’s visual display seamlessly patched into one of the external cameras of the C3T7 transporter drone he sat within, allowing him to look around in awe at the crystal clear waters and sun kissed waves which flew past either side of the company as they closed on their objective. Clear turquoise skies without even a hint of cloud allowed the system’s twin suns to highlight seemingly every detail of the calm waters and the complex of islands which lay ahead of the force, made up of eight C3T7 transporters – known as ‘Dukes’ to the troopers, allegedly due to their visual similarity to the duke bird from Promoria – and their cargoes, escorted by a pair of C3M4 combat drones. He could have almost thanked the beautiful scenery that surrounded him for providing him with a momentary distraction from the fear of entering combat for the very first time.
As soon as that realization returned to his mind and the apprehension intensified, his visual display notified him that he was now receiving external aid from the unit’s shard connection; a soothing wave of thoughts and signals were transmitted directly into his brain’s amygdala and cerebral cortex.
“Stay focused, cupcakes!” Strike Leader Rall snapped. “Three hundred yan to the beachhead! I want a smooth egress and everybody ready for the advance on objective beta.”
Sessetti winced – he knew the cupcake dig was aimed at him. Any administration of external aid would be automatically highlighted to the squad leader. As if in confirmation, Rall stared across the passenger hold to meet Sessetti’s gaze. His helmet’s face mask pushed back to the top of his head, Rall’s dark brown skin and eyes stood out in stark contrast to the white and green of the armored plates that covered the rest of his body. The standard armor of a strike trooper was ergonomically designed for both ease of movement and to angle away the energy of incoming shots, although the torso region was far bulkier to house the power supply, ventilation, fluids and drugs, and processors.
The fear of the unknown ahead eased off a little and was replaced with a cold determination to get the job done. That was the beauty of the shard; the interlocking system of nanospheres that connected every trooper to their squad leader and, in turn, further up the chain of command. Rall’s personality, strength, and experience filtered down through the shard to bolster the mental resolve of all of his soldiers. The connection was as real as a physical one.
Rall gave a momentary thumbs up to Sessetti before turning to look across at the remaining men and women of his squad. Eight of them formed Squad Wen; only Sessetti and his childhood friend, Bo Clythe, had never seen combat before. Sessetti looked to his right to where Clythe sat next to him, but his friend of nearly two decades looked just the same as the rest of the squad; a humanoid shape wrapped in white and green armor, his face plate was down and hiding any trace which might define him from any other trooper in the company.
“One hundred yan!” Rall warned.
The Duke rocked a little as an electronic hum sounded from somewhere to the left of the drone transporter. It took a second or two for Sessetti to realize that it was the shields flaring up. They were being shot at. For the first time in his life, somebody was trying to kill him. He tasted bile.
“Sticks and stones!” Rall grunted. “These people have barely made it into space so don’t worry about their weapons! Ten seconds to egress!”
The transporter bucked and shunted a few more times before it hit the coastline, rolled up the beach, and turned sharply ninety degrees before coming to a standstill. The doors on the left side of the drone slid open and the passenger seat belts rapidly retracted into their housing. Rall sprang to his feet and dashed across to the open doorway.
“Out! Out! Get out!”
Hugging his plasma carbine into his gut, Sessetti jumped to his feet and followed the line of strike troopers out of the comparative safety of the drone, dropping from the open doorway to land on the sandy beach below. The C3T7 Duke was the third to make it up onto the beach and had turned to offer protection from enemy positions in the tree line ahead; Sessetti saw only the purple waters they had traversed across as he crouched down and awaited instructions from his strike leader. Cooling air flowed across his face from his battlesuit to counter the blazing rays of the orange suns as the troops disembarked. Ahead of them, the squad’s spotter drone – a disc shaped machine a little larger than a panhuman torso – hovered at head height as it scanned for enemy forces.
Rall was the last out of the Duke, crouching down amid his squad as the next two transporter drones shot across the water and peeled away from each other to take their places along the beachhead. Puffs of sand leapt into the air in the open spaces between the stationary Duke transporters and ripples appeared in the otherwise calm waters behind them. Sessetti stared at the evidence of enemy fire in silence, hoping that the shard would administer another round of anything to calm his nerves. The shallow turret on top of the Duke span around to face up the beach before its plasma light support weapon opened fire, sending lines of superheated matter sweeping through the vivid trees at the far end of the beach.
“Squad Wen, advance to my marker!” Rall ordered as a waypoint appeared on Sessetti’s combat array; a pale grey oval marker highlighting a seemingly arbitrary point where the beach met the trees of the dense, multicolored jungle ahead.
Gant, the squad’s most seasoned trooper, hauled himself up to his feet and led the move up the beach, the hyperlight shields which cocooned his physical armor flashing purple a mere hand span from his torso as unseen enemy soldiers targeted him from amid the trees.
“Come on, buddy,” Clythe urged as he ran past Sessetti, “let’s go get stuck in.”
The eight troopers struggled through the fine sand, their armored feet slipping as their shields flared with every impact from an accurate enemy shot. Above their heads, the plasma light supports of the transporter drones cut swathes through the blue-green foliage, sending branches and leaves twirling up through the air and snapping tree trunks in half. Off to the right, a C3M4 combat drone advanced toward the enemy position, its turret mounted plasma cannon firing shots so loud that Sessetti’s earpieces struggled to filter out the deafening cacophony.
Jemmel, the squad’s plasma lance gunner, dropped to one knee and raised her support weapon to her shoulder before firing a long burst into the trees.
“Keep moving!” Rall barked as he grabbed her by the exhaust unit on the back of her armor and dragged her to her feet. “Don’t stop!”
Cycling through every visual channel at his disposal, Sessetti stared in confusion at the tree line up ahead where lines of enemy fire continued to stream down from.
“Where the hell are they?” Jemmel asked. “I can’t see them! No visual, no thermal, nothing!”
Before anybody could answer, a high pitched whistle sounded from the skies above, and then an earth shaking explosion detonated to the far left of the beachhead. A moment later, a second whistle followed, and the C3M4 combat drone on the left flank
was torn apart in a colossal fireball.
“On the deck!” Rall yelled as he dived down to the sand.
Sessetti reacted to the command instantly, hurling himself to the ground as he frantically searched for better cover in his immediate surroundings. The ground shook with each explosion as projectiles continued to rain down from the bright turquoise skies above. A projectile landed close by, shaking Sessetti with enough force for him to bite his tongue and taste blood. Clumps of sand rained down on the squad, half burying them where they lay as enemy fire continued to sweep over their heads.
“Command! Squad Wen!” Sessetti heard Rall yelling into his communicator even through both of their helmets. “We’re pinned in the open with indirect fire and rapid fire weapons in the trees at our objective! Request intentions!”
Sessetti looked over his shoulder at the waterline, just in time to see an enemy projectile slam into the sand next to one of the Duke transporter drones, the explosion lifting the huge vehicle up and onto its back. One of the transporters from the last wave drove up the beach but could not react to the flipped Duke in time. It plowed into the first vehicle and slid off its side, nosing over into the surf. Its doors slid open and its embarked strike squad all but fell out into the water, their squad leader grabbing troopers and manhandling them quickly out of the water.
“Off the beach!” Rall yelled. “Get in the trees!”
Struggling up to his feet, Sessetti followed Clythe as they continued to advance toward the colorful trees and foliage up ahead. Gant was at the front again, diving to the ground near the trees before hurling a plasma grenade into the dense foliage. A staccato crack sounded and clumps of earth and vegetation flew out from where his grenade had landed.
An unseen hand grabbed Sessetti by his back and flung him up into the air, his hyperlight shields flaring pale purple all around him as he was tossed across the beach like a discarded toy. All sounds were replaced by a shrill, even tone as he stared up at the bright sky, branches and leaves fluttering silently and seemingly in slow motion above him and landing all around him. His vision blurred, he looked carefully around in an attempt to locate his carbine. Staggering up to his elbows, his hearing and vision suddenly drew back into sharp focus as his battlesuit sent a shot of chemicals into his bloodstream to assist him.
“Casualty! Casualty!” Clythe was screaming from behind him, his old friend lying in a smoking crater with steam rising from blackened holes in his armor. “Get a medi-drone over here!”
Fearing for his friend’s safety, Sessetti staggered over and slid down into the darkened sand beside him. Next to Clythe lay the decapitated body of one of their squad. Sessetti stared in disbelief for a second before grabbing his shocked friend by the upper arm.
“He’s dead, Bo! He’s gone! We need to get into the trees!”
Struggling to drag Clythe to his feet, the two limped on toward the jungle. It was only as they were approaching the trees that Sessetti realized it was over. The bombardment had ended, the enemy fire had stopped. Up ahead, Rall and Gant crouched over a smoking gun and tripod. Rall looked up at the two troopers as they approached and shook his head.
“Sentry guns,” he spat. “The bastards were never even here.”
***
Operations Room
Concord Warship, Aurora II
Mandarin Owenne watched the warship’s captain out of the corner of his eye. The tall, thin woman walked slowly from terminal to terminal, pausing by each individual crewmember who crouched over a holographic projection in front of them, monitoring a variety of ship’s functions ranging from scanners and propulsion to weapons systems and long range communications. Owenne wondered why the Ops Room was so dark – probably some ludicrous naval tradition stemming back to the days when warships had portholes and light emissions would alert the enemy. He found ‘ordinary people’ awkward to deal with at the best of times, and Captain Uin was no exception.
Scratching one eyebrow with a long, pale finger, Owenne turned away from the two dozen naval personnel clustered in the center of the Ops Room and stared at the metal grate plates which formed the floor beneath his feet. The carrier Aurora II was the flagship of Task Force 1312, a Concord fleet of some thirty warships and minor war vessels, which was charged with establishing naval supremacy across twenty designated systems of Determinate Space near the Concord border. For the most part, this meant breaking off small groups of two or three warships to safeguard assaults on planets whose governments refused the Concord’s invitation to join with them. The most recent of these was the assault of Markov’s Prize, a relatively advanced planet in the adjoining Do System.
The mandarin looked up as Captain Uin approached him.
“Word from HQ, 44th Strike Formation, sir,” the stern woman said impassively. “Our forces have a foothold on Markov’s Prize. The landing has been a success with only light casualties.”
“Yes, I know,” Owenne continued to stare down, perplexed as to why a woman of Uin’s seniority and experience would wait for verbal confirmation of that information, rather than just use a shard connection and find out herself.
Owenne knew precisely what was going on at Markov’s Prize. He had monitored the landing, the assault, and was now monitoring the units establishing their perimeter. All of this was achieved via a simple transfer of information from shard to shard – trooper to leader, on to company command and then formation command. From there it was transmitted more conventionally to the Task Force, but then Owenne, as a NuHu, could utilize his vastly superior ability to manipulate nanites to grab that information straight from the warship’s shard before even the communication technicians had dealt with it.
“Do you wish to initiate landings on Andenn?” The warship captain queried.
“No,” Owenne replied simply.
Now was not the time to conduct two simultaneous planetary assaults across a four system spread of real estate. Owenne was one of three NuHu mandarins employed in Task Force 1312, and it was more logical to pool their collective experiences before making strategic decisions. In addition to that, a frigate in the Zolus System had detected something which concerned Owenne. Greatly.
***
Another series of staccato explosions sounded as engineering drones felled another row of bulbous, blue trees to make way for the new base. At the far end of the beach, the destroyed M4 combat drone was already being towed to a more suitable recovery site whilst repair drones set to work on the overturned T7 transporter; their efforts augmenting the slower, invisible repairs being carried out by the shell of nanobots which swarmed over the damaged drone. Semi-opaque kinetic barricades had been set up to form a perimeter to protect the soldiers and drones as the routine of setting up accommodation and messing areas, command and briefing facilities, and transmat pads was carried out with well-drilled efficiency.
His plasma carbine still held at the ready as his eyes scoured the northern horizon to his right, Rall walked over to where the six surviving members of his squad sat only a few paces from the water’s edge. The midafternoon suns were high in the sky, and with his helmet removed, Rall felt the full force of the suns’ rays on the back of his head. The closer of the two suns, Aen, blazed proudly in the clear sky whilst its twin, Boa, sat higher but many millions of yan further away, a more faded yellow next to Aen’s burning orange. Sessetti and Clythe, the two new boys, stood up and dusted themselves down as soon as Rall approached.
“I’ve talked to the boss,” Rall announced to his strike troopers. “That barrage that tore us to bits, it was an orbital artillery battery. And then there’s the sentry guns they left here for us; no intelligence, just simple, automated weapons with a tracking system – cloaked, though. Turns out that the natives aren’t quite as primitive as we were told. Their cloaking technology is better than we expected.”
“Orbital artillery?” Gant exclaimed. “How the hell did they miss that? We’re not talking about a hidden sniper here, we’re talking about a massive floating platform in space w
ith half a dozen guns as big as a house on it! Drop troopers or navy aerospace or some idiot who gets more credit than us should have taken that out days ago!”
Rall nodded but kept a stern stare locked onto Gant’s dark eyes. Gant had five years combat experience under his belt and should have made strike leader already. A tall, swarthy man with curly hair, he had joined C3 straight from school, just as Rall had. Just as all the best troopers had before the war against the Isorians had intensified to the point of the C3 recruiting citizens for short stints of a few years. Citizens like Clythe and Sessetti.
“Navy aerospace took out the platform within minutes of it being detected,” Rall replied. “Even them pretty flyboys can’t kill the bad guys unless somebody tells them where to go.”
“Wasn’t quick enough to save Weste, though, was it, Lead?” Jemmel said, staring up at him from her crouched position in the center of the group.
Another experienced trooper, Jemmel’s short stature and shaven head made her instantly distinctive from the other women of the company; her previous trade as a tattoo artist was evident in the line of stylized stars which were visible along one side of her neck.
Rall leaned forward to address the short woman. “He knew the risks, same as the rest of us. We lose people with every planet we assault. I don’t like it, but there it is. We’ve established a perimeter, we’ve done the first part of our job. The operation is proceeding as planned.”
“Lead?” Clythe cleared his throat.
Rall looked down at the freshly qualified trooper, his blue eyes unable to meet Rall’s stare.
“What happens to Weste now? I mean, that explosion took his head off. Can he really be regen’d? Or is that it? Is he dead?”
